Browsing through my bookmarks tonight, I came across the following poem by Roy Moore. It seems only appropriate after Terri Schiavo’s murder was finalized today.

America the Beautiful or so you used to be,
Land of the Pilgrim’s pride, I’m glad they’re not here to see,
Babies piled in dumpsters, abortion on demand,
Oh, sweet land of liberty, your house is on the sand.

Your children wander aimlessly poisoned by cocaine,
Choosing to indulge their lusts, when God has said abstain.
From sea to shining sea this Nation has turned away,
From the teaching of God’s Law, and a need to always pray .

So many worldly pastors telling lies about our Rock,
Saying God is going broke so they can fleece the flock,
We’ve kept God in our temples, how foolish we have grown,
When all the earth is but His footstool and Heaven is His throne.

We’ve voted in governments that are rotting to the core,
Appointing Godless judges who throw reason out the door.
Too soft to put a killer in a well deserved tomb,
But brave enough to kill that child before he leaves the womb.

You think that God’s not angry that our land’s a moral slum?
And How much longer will it be before His judgement comes?
And How can we face our God, from whom we cannot hide?
What is left for us to do, but stem this evil tide!

For If we who are His children, will humbly turn and pray,
If we Seek Hit holy face, and mend our evil way,
Then God will hear from Heaven and forgive us of our sins.
He’ll heal our sickly land and those who live within.

But America the beautiful, if you don’t then you will see,
A sad but Holy God withdraw His hand from thee.

A Presidental commission has determined that our spy agencies were dead wrong about Iraq’s possession of WMD. So, those such as Norman Schwarzkopf who wanted more solid information, or those like Scott Ritter who said that Iraq’s weapons system was dismantled would seem to be vindicated. Again.

That reminds me – you remember the whole aluminum-tube thing that turned out to be based on forged documents? Did we ever figure out who forged those, anyway? Seems to me that might be kind of important.

It also turns out that the FBI flew Saudis out of the country on 9/11, including Bin Laden family members. I really, really hate it when Michael Moore turns out to be right about something, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

On the good news front, word is that Condoleezza Rice may support pulling out of Iraq. So not all is lost.

Michael Lee Swails of Immokalee, Fla., was charged recently with starving 120 cows. The 47-year-old rancher “was arrested Thursday in connection with the discovery of dead, dying or severely malnourished cows on his ranch last year.”

Meanwhile, Terri Schiavo continues to starve to death thanks to the court-ordered removal of her feeding tube. While the exact value of a human life hasn’t been determined, we now know that it’s less than the value of 120 cows.

4.) Christians believe in heaven and Terri was a Christian therefore we shouldn’t act like this life is everything.

To refute this argument I am just going to quote from a piece written by Mrs. Ray Dunsworth. Mrs. Dunsworth’s refutation of this argument is better than anything I could offer. Mrs. Dunsworth writes,

“I think part of the problem we’re having on the larger cultural scene is that Christians have bought into the pop-evangelical idea that death is natural. It’s nothing more than God’s way of taking us home.

We think that because we have been/are being/will be delivered from it, that it is our friend.

So we can say nice, comforting things like, “If Terri is a believer, she’ll go to Heaven anyway. I just hope she is.”

We forget that death is OBSCENE. That going to Heaven is deliverance from death, not the outcome of death. Death isn’t just a station platform on the way to Heaven. It’s the ultimate opposite of all that is heavenly, which only the power of Christ overthrows for us. We need not fear it because it is FOR US swallowed up in victory, but we should never stop hating it.

Forgetting that death is OBSCENE lets us comfort ourselves with platitudes about it, lets us indulge in hopes that aborted babies go to Heaven, and lets us lose sight of how wicked it is to cause the death of another. This attitude lets us be lulled to sleep while people around us continually call us uncompassionate for denying that Terri would be better off dead.

If Christians don’t hate death, how can we expect the culture to?”

5.) Therefore people shouldn’t advocate the State to get involved and Michael’s relationship as husband gives him the authority to dehydrate and starve Terri.

If the premises are not true the conclusion cannot hold. I trust that we have seen that the premises of these conservative friends are faulty and worthy of being seriously doubted.

There is something else we must observe before closing. It would be foolish to think that this case will not have implications. Already one can see handwriting on the wall that suggests that this case will be used to advance active euthanasia. The argument will be easily advanced by the Hemlockists among us that Terri died from a passive euthanasia that was unusually cruel and undeserving. From there the argument will advance that in such cases where euthanasia is required it would be better to be pro-active and merciful in putting people down by giving them lethal injection rather then the prolonged suffering the patient and the family must go through in the long wait that dehydration and starvation requires. The conclusion will seem so reasonable. We as a society should ‘put people down’ since that is far more humane then passively letting them die.

In the end let it be observed that the fundamental problem in the Schiavo case is not our mistaken paleoconservative friends. Neither are the fundamental problems the State, nor the one Political Party that we have in this country, nor even Michael Schiavo. The fundamental problem in the Schiavo case is a Church which has not stood against the encroachment of a Worldview that winks at the Anarcho-Tyrannical State, supports Politicians who are unfamiliar with integrity, and embraces, if only by its passiveness, a culture of death.

In the end an insipid, spineless, and wayward Church, weak from years of the prioritization of personal peace and affluence, pulled the feeding tube from Theresa Schiavo. Her death, like the death of millions of pre-born, is on the Church’s hands and as a minister of the Gospel on my hands. I wish it weren’t so, but it is what it is.

A great amount of cyber-space has been filled with writing on the Schiavo case and since that is true I am hesitant to take up the subject again. Yet, because of the writings of some high profile people who are considered leaders of the paleoconservative movement I believe it is necessary to refute arguments that are coming from a movement with which many of us at Backwater Report have been identified and with which we have been traditionally sympathetic. If these arguments advocating that the Government shouldn’t get involved in the Schiavo case, and so let Terri Schiavo be murdered were coming from the usually Liberal journalistic organs I wouldn’t trouble myself with attempted refutation but as it is a case that it is those who are, for good reason, respected and esteemed, the deficiency in these ‘conservative’ arguments must be exposed.

I am going to summarize the pro-death argument that is coming from the Hard Right and then seek to speak to it.

Argument #1 — Relationship of next of kin trumps all.

It should be said at the outset that those Paleoconservatives advancing an argument that results in Theresa’s Schiavo death do not do so because they have any sympathy for the kind of man or husband that Michael Schiavo has been to his wife. Their point in supporting Michael Schiavo’s decision to deprive his wife of food and water has been in part based upon the insistence that as husband Michael Schiavo’s authority as next of Kin should be held inviolate in this case. They believe that in the sphere of family life the relationship of next of Kin trumps all.

Normatively we would agree that next of Kin relationship should be held to be the voice of authority in family settings. Normatively, the State or Church shouldn’t be allowed to over step their respective sphere boundaries to interfere or meddle in the other spheres. However to say that one sphere of authority should NEVER interfere with any other sphere of authority in highly questionable matters, would be to make each sphere of authority absolutely absolute unto itself, which would be to contend that each sphere should be unchecked by any other Sphere, thus resulting in the head of each Sphere exercising Godlike sovereignty in their respective Spheres. This is not Biblical for only God has that kind of Sovereignty.

Protestants at least, going back to the Reformation, have not believed that the authority of a Sphere is an authority that is absolutely absolute. Passing through a Lineage that includes John Knox, and Samuel Rutherford, and writing that includes, ‘Lex Rex,’ ‘Vindication Against Tyrants’, and ‘The Magdeburg Confession’ Protestants have historically believed that there are times when the action of a Sphere Sovereign can be so egregious and wicked that it would be unbiblical to not resist the Authority in question. Throughout history, those of the Reformed persuasion, have insisted that no authority is such an authority, that they can in a continuous and steadfast fashion defy the living God and expect the submission of those otherwise properly under their authority.

We live in a Post-Christian culture and so we shouldn’t be surprised when the State tyrannically interferes where it shouldn’t and doesn’t interfere where it should thus allowing for anarchy to go unchecked. Still, the fact that we live in a post-Christian culture doesn’t mean that those who are Christian shouldn’t lobby the Authorities in the Sphere of the Pagan State with an expectation that the Pagan State and its representative would use their authority to check the rogue authority of a pagan husband in the Family Sphere. Such lobbying doesn’t suggest a belief in the expanse of State authority at the expense of family authority, nor does such lobbying presage surrender to State authority in lieu of proper family authority. Such lobbying only says that when one Sphere has spun out of control other Spheres exist in order to check such wickedness.

In summation, no Authority in any Sphere is so absolute that it can or should go unquestioned. In this specific case the next of kin authority of Michael Schiavo is seeking to do murder and as such the authority in other spheres is properly petitioned when the request is that the Authorities in another Sphere not allow murder to be committed.

Argument #2 — Terri’s existence might be a material existence and not a human
existence, therefore since we don’t know we dare not appeal to
human existence as a reason why Michael does not have the authority
to starve and dehydrate his wife.

When you combine this argument with argument #1 you end up with a strange consequence for if it is conceded that next of kin relationship trumps all concerning allegedly questionable situations then one has seemingly vacated the high ground in the abortion debate. The Mother carrying the child is certainly the next of kin and questions abound in some people’s mind whether that which she is carrying is of a human or material existence. When you combine argument #1 and argument #2 you arrive at a conclusion that though Christians may not like abortion the State has been right not to interfere with the practice since,

a.) Next of kin relationship trumps all and

b.) It is open to question, by many, whether that which the mother is carrying has a
human or only a material existence.

It is difficult to believe that outstanding Christian gentlemen are advancing argument #2.

It is true that we don’t know exactly what kind of existence that Theresa has in her disability, but it is precisely because we don’t know that it would seem that the benefit of the doubt among a Christian people should be given to the fact that Terri’s existence is still human. If that benefit of the doubt isn’t given then we are in the position of having to determine which living is living that isn’t worth living. Who of us are sufficient for that task? If this reasoning is correct then Jack Kevorkian’s only fault lie in being ahead of his time.

Perhaps there is a reason for the proverb, ‘Where there is life there is hope.’

Argument #3 — Looking to the State to intervene opens the specter that the State will
intervene where it shouldn’t.

I spoke to this under argument #1 somewhat. It has come to a pretty sad state of affairs that we need to worry about the bad conclusions that the State will come to when we petition it to do that which it should do. In the end though I don’t think that the State is going to restrict its evil and unwarranted intrusions in other Spheres all because it doesn’t do what it should do here. It is past obvious by now that the State has decided that it will be an accomplice in the murder of Terri Schiavo. Does anyone seriously think that because of this decision the State now will decide to no longer interfere in the lives of American Families? Will the Leviathan State, because it didn’t take up authority in the Schiavo case, now give up on trying to take American children at an ever younger age for their camps of indoctrination sometimes called Schools? Will the Leviathan State, because it didn’t take up authority in the Schiavo case, now cease to squeeze families with its confiscatory taxation policy? We must sadly conclude that State intervention will continue unchecked despite the fact that the Politico-bureaucratic machine didn’t take this Schiavo opportunity to expand its powers into the family. The growing expansiveness of the State would not have been increased if the Governor of Florida had rescued Terri, and neither will it decrease in light of the fact that the Governor didn’t act for Terri.

Secondly, in repudiation of this argument I would suggest that the State’s action here was a perfect example of its Anarcho-Tyrannical style. Here was an opportunity for the State to do the right thing by defending a citizen but instead it practiced Tyranny against Terri in being complicit in taking her life while at the same time allowing anarchy by enabling Michael to Murder his wife. The case of Terri Schiavo serves as a perfect example of the Anarcho-Tyranny under which we currently live. In this current system Leviathan will consistently act against the interests of its innocent citizens while turning a blind eye to its nefarious elements.

Cross-posted at Buried Treasure.

I’ve been following the events in Pinellas Park through the eyes of two blogging brothers, David and Tim Bayley. I appreciate their passion about the heinous act taking place there and their willingness to be another voice for that helpless and virtually friendless woman, Terri Schiavo. Reformed pastors, they have lamented the lack of pastors at the scene of the crime. While I understand that Terri is only one person in an overwhelming sea of victims in our culture of death, it does seem wrong that there have never been more than a few dozen at most who have come to protest the most visibly egregious slow-motion murder of a living human being in America’s history. Most of the slippery slope deeds of death have been done behind closed doors with no names or faces to make them real. This case has a face and a name which everyone in America knows. Christians can’t be silent about what is happening in Florida. I am especially unhappy that there has not been a greater outcry from the Christians in Florida. If you believe in the principle of federalism—though it’s also been starved to death, by the national Leviathan—then the Floridians had the most at stake in the outcome of this situation.

One of things I’ve noticed about the writing of the Bayley brothers the past few days is a change in tone. Like many, they had gone to Florida motivated by their Christian principles to “do something,” but they had pinned many of their hopes on the sandy foundation of political power brokers. Over the past few days, I’ve seen them go through a process of disillusionment and anger about the disappointing performance of the other brothers in this drama, two chief executive hand-wringers, to a place where they have come back to the foundation that is built from the Rock. David said:

As I was leaving a Baptist pastor new to the site was leading a crowd in a chant of, “National Guard, National Guard,” while standing in the road, Bible in hand. I asked him to stop. “Our hope is not in the realm of human government or power,” I said. “These people don’t want or need to hear more about the government. They need true hope. They need to hear of the power of Christ.” He generously acknowlged what I said and changed his approach.

There is nothing wrong with Christians waging proper appeals to the civil magistrate or with Christians being involved in the political process. I even think we are remiss if we do not get involved in civil affairs to a certain extent. To not do so is to deny that God is Lord of the civil affairs as well as the spiritual affairs of men, a gnostic, not a Christian, viewpoint. But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among many Christians, who are so anxious to gain admittance to the political process that they have ceded sovereignty to the state in their quest for a few crumbs and pats on the head. They are not pressing the crown rights of King Jesus in the civil realm, they are pressing for some kind of comfortable Leave it to Beaver morality. Compromise covers a multitude of sins.

How is it that we have come to covet political power more than the favor of our omnipotent God? Claiming to be wise as serpents, harmless as doves, many have been bitten by the asp of political lust and become that which they have been warned against: shifty political operators pushing for power. In Terri’s case, this has led the conservative sheeple to fall down at the feet of the “pro-life” handwringers who “did their best, but their hands were tied” (they weren’t tied very tightly, were they, if they could wring their hands so freely?) Pick any issue and the results are the same: those political big-wigs on the side of morality talk big, but they are impotent. That’s because they don’t really have any power.

It’s time to go to the Source of true power. I am no pietist who hides her light under a bushel of spirtual platitudes. But in the flight away from fleeing the world, we’ve sailed right into that stormy sea of Pragmatism again. We need to remember what that good old hymn tells us…”there’s power in the blood of the Lamb.”

I heard Doug Phillips once tell about listening to a friend on a national television show debating the subject of sodomite marriage. His Christian friend made every pragmatic argument against the state sanctioning the union of two people of the same sex, but he pointedly avoided saying that such perversion was wrong because God condemns it in the Bible. His opponent wiped up the floor with him. Because God is the Author of reality, the laws of reality will be on our side, but serpent-like, the unbelieving world can always twist any fact to make it fit with their false reality. The bottom line is that we need not to be ashamed to proclaim God’s truth as He has given it to us in His powerful word. History has proved that all the political strategizing in the world will only get us a few measly crumbs, and that’s not enough to live on.

Our Lord said in Matthew 10:27-33:

Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.

And in A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament (page 40), Peter Leithart said:

Recovering the Old Testament as a text in which Christians live and move and have their being is one of the most urgent tasks before the church. Reading the Reformers is good and right. Christian political activism has its place. Even at their best, however, these can only bruise the heel of a world that has abandoned God. But the Bible—the Bible is a sword to divide joints from marrow, a weapon to crush the head.

There has been much written about the Terri Schiavo case in the last two weeks. Amongst the essays has been a fair number pointing out the complicity of the Republican party, especially that of the Bush brothers. I don’t necessarily disagree with this view, however; I believe that in the rush to pin something on the Republicans that the Old Right may be attacking the wrong target. Yes, there are plenty who, through either their passivity or their abdication of duty, have become enablers. However; the man that they are enabling has been getting very little attention. It was Michael Schiavo, not Judge Greer or the Bushes, who decided to kill his wife. It’s this jerk, who has already had two children while his wife’s been in the hospital, who ought to be bearing the brunt of the criticism.

Again, I’m not saying that it’s wrong to point out the hypocrisy of any judge or politician involved in this case. I’ve agreed with pretty much every essay I’ve read on the issue. (Though to be honest, I have a hard time making political hay out of this in the first place – politics seem so petty compared to what’s at stake. Unfortunately, it has come to play an important role in the matter.) However, in our zeal to expose their crimes, we ought not forget the man who started it all. I’m merely suggesting that we take a balanced view – hold both Pilate and the mob responsible.