Dr Paul Allen

Image via Wikipedia “This is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and…we didn't have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track." ~ President Barack Obama Has America gotten soft? Lost its edge? Wandered off track? In many ways, society has indeed gotten soft. As younger generations of Americans, we have grown up accustomed to affluence and expectant of instant rewards for our efforts. As such, we tend to be wasteful, irresponsible, and undisciplined. Yet, in another respect, we have gotten hard and uncaring. Those of us with money insist on having deservedly obtained our wealth through individual merit, and many of us ungenerously spend our surplus earnings on ourselves. Today’s troubles are rooted in a two-pronged culture of entitlement . In the midst of scarcity, we feel entitled to a better life, and when blessed with abundance, we feel entitled to our standard of living. Both sides of the coin...

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Image via Wikipedia A sign flashed at the Occupy Wall Street protest reads "People Before Profits." It is an effective sign. Who could support Profits Before People? Some Wall Street employees have apparently responded sympathetically to the protestors, trying to understand their demands. But part of the power of the protest lies in its ambiguity. Americans are angry about many issues today. In such a climate it may be more strategic to focus on the common anger than on specificities. The protests are centered on Wall Street because they target political corruption in the finance industry. But the world of finance is very complex. Part of the problem is that it became too complex, so complex that even the financiers themselves couldn't understand the implications or robustness of the financial derivatives they were trading, or even how to properly price them. (They seemed to be particularly challenged with pricing derivatives of sub-prime mortgages.) The problems with...

Image via Wikipedia There is certainly a biblical injunction that we discern the times. God calls us to do this, however, not so we will know the right move to make at the right time, but so that we will remember what the right move always was. Circumstances don’t change our calling, though they can wake us up to our calling. Such is the case here. Christians should do what Christians are always called to do. First, we should be looking to our own sin. Why is it that Christians are up in arms politically during a time of shocking deficits, high unemployment and a moribund real estate market, but have been comparatively content over almost forty years of abortion on demand? What does that say about us and our priorities? The obvious answer is this- money is an idol to us.  We think because money seems to be even more important to Gordon Gekko , or Donald Trump , that we are therefore free from seeing it as an idol. We think that having less than somebody else is proof we’...

Image via Wikipedia Christians know something else: true virtue , and hence genuine happiness, is not merely a matter of thinking correctly or behaving properly.  As Jonathan Edwards put it, the seat of true virtue is in the heart. Real happiness flows from character and comes to those, as Jesus said, who are poor in spirit, merciful and meek, and who hunger and thirst for righteousness and peace. Can freedom survive where virtue doesn't thrive?  Some of the founders were less than fully orthodox in their theology, but they believed this: No person or nation can be good without God . This is why, in setting forth the most radical program for self-government in human history, they appealed not only to nature, but also to nature's God. Image via Wikipedia True virtue is personal, but it is never merely private. It involves a commitment to civic duty and the common good—traits seen so clearly by Alexis de Tocqueville in the Americans of the 1830s. "Americans of all...