Mike McLoughlin's Blog

Defining Reality & Dealing in Hope - Facts, Feelings & Faith

Mike McLoughlin — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 17:56:54 -0700

Max Depree in his bestselling book, Leadership Is an Art, says that the first job of a leader is to define reality. The last job is to say thank you. In between they serve their people.

Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted as saying that “leaders are dealers in hope.”

Last night’s address on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 , President Bush gave us an excellent demonstration in these two leadership principles.

First, he defined reality. “This struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it is a struggle for civilization. We are fighting to maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations. And we're fighting for the possibility that good and decent people across the Middle East can raise up societies based on freedom and tolerance and personal dignity.”

Second, he offered hope. “We look to the day when moms and dads throughout the Middle East see a future of hope and opportunity for their children. And when that good day comes, the clouds of war will part, the appeal of radicalism will decline, and we will leave our children with a better and safer world.”

Reality and hope go hand in hand. There is the present reality. There is a future hope that things will get better. This is the stuff of leadership.

Yet, many people will disagree with President Bush’s version of reality and the hope he offers. In Canada, a recent poll found that a majority of Canadians think the United States is to blame for the attacks. One out of five Canadians think the attacks were actually carried out covertly by the US government in order to provide an excuse to go to war with Iraq for access to oil resources.

A Canadian viewer commenting on the documentary “Loose Change” broadcast on CBC News: last Sunday states,

“How any rational person looking at the physical evidence and having at least a fundamental knowledge of physics can still believe the governments version is quite clearly incapable of seeing reality. I believe completely and without any reservation whatsoever that the US government murdered all those who died in the crimes committed on 9/11.”

9/11 Conspiracy theories are so prevalent on the internet that the magazine Popular Mechanics has published a book. Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts: The Editors of Popular Mechanics, John McCain, David Dunbar, Brad Reagan

Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary many people continue to believe the conspiracy theories. Why?

People prefer a version of reality that provides a better hope. Branislaw Malinowski, an anthropologist and professional skeptic stated in Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. "Science is founded on the conviction that experience, effort, and reason are valid; magic on the belief that hope cannot fail nor desire deceive."

The facts of 9/11 tell a dreadful story. Islamic terrorists hijack airplanes and murder thousands of innocent people. There is little hope in that story.

Bush oversees a secret plot to precipitate a war against Iraq starting with the World Trade Centre demolition. It is still a gloomy story but at least we know that in the US democracy Bush’s term of office comes to an end in 2008. There is hope a new President will not act so rashly.

Writer Gore Vidal once said, “It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true” However, in today’s Postmodern world, facts are not what they used to be. Feelings are the dominant criteria for judging the believability of assertions. If facts do not fit your version of the story then they get jettisoned. If somebody 'feels' an alternative version based on a different set of facts is more hopeful, their spin on the story becomes more believable. Especially if their spin supposedly unmasks the hidden agenda behind the official version of the story. This is what the conspiracy theorist are so good at exploiting – the general cultural suspicions of truth claims.

As Tom Wright states in his audio series Christian Hope in a Postmodern World,

Facts are not important, spin is everything. And every country of every locality can produce examples of this. Reality is no longer divided into facts and values, or truths of reason and truths of science; it’s whatever you make it. You invent it as you go along, choose your value, choose your spin and the story will follow. Too bad if unenlightened readers think you’re simply telling them the facts. So this is one of the main features of post modernity, that reality seems to be in a state of collapse, we don’t know about the world out there, we only know about the inside of our own heads.

So if reality is what ever you make it to be and you want to manipulate people with the hope for a better reality than you can do that in today's world through political spin.

The problem is that people are also suspicious of people who make truth claims. As Wright observes, “All truth claims are made by someone or some group, and all persons and groups have agendas.” These agendas are smoked out by the postmodern skeptics. They are in it for the money, or for the sex or for the power.

As the conspiracy theorist argument goes, George Bush is a person with an agenda. He seeks power to dominate the world. Therefore his assertions about reality and his statements on a future hope are suspect.

The critical eye that is cast towards President Bush is also cast towards the Church. The Church makes assertions about its version of reality. It has a claim to knowing the truth. It has an agenda for converting people. It seeks influence and control in society. Therefore, in the postmodern culture, its claims are suspect until proven.

As my pastor once said, “The Church must hold ...

Theocracy Hysteria Must Not Stop Us Taking Faith to Work

Mike McLoughlin — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 08:09:56 -0700

Secularists who oppose faith in the public arena such as workplaces often complain that allowing Christians to bring faith to work blurs the lines between church and state. Faith is a private matter, they say. So it ought to be kept for private affairs and not allowed to influence decisions in the public square. To permit it is to travel down the road to a theocracy.

A theocracy according to Webster's dictionary is “Government of a state by the immediate direction or administration of God; hence, the exercise of political authority by priests as representing the Deity.” Wikipedia has an article on the history of the word here.

TheocracyWatch, a project of Cornell University, documents the influence of religion in American politics. Many on the Left believe religion plays far too great a role in American public life. (See Street Prophets: When is a theocrat, not a theocrat? (w/poll!)) A number of these people have been recently published books on the subject.

Ross Douthat, a writer for The American Scene and Associate Editor for the Atlantic Monthly, writes a review of three of these books in the most recent issue of the magazine First Things.

“Most of these books aspire to be anthropologies, guides for the perplexed that lead the innocent reader through what the subtitle of American Theocracy calls “the perils and politics of radical religion.” There isn’t perfect agreement on what to call the religious radicals in question: Everyone employs theocrat, but Kingdom Coming also proposes Christian nationalist, while The Baptizing of America favors the clunky Christocrat. Others have suggested Christianist, the better to link religious conservatives to Osama bin Laden—and of course there’s the ubiquitous theocon, suggesting a deadly mixture of Oliver Cromwell and Paul Wolfowitz.

But the various authors are in agreement about the main point, which is that something has gone terribly wrong with the separation of church and state in this country, and that America is poised to fall into the hands of people only one step from the ayatollahs. Today’s battles aren’t just a matter of ordinary political factionalism, they insist. The hour is much later than that, and nothing less than the republic itself hangs in the balance.”

Douthat unpacks the complaints of the anti-theocrats well and shows their fears to be groundless. His review makes good fodder for those who would defend faith in the workplace from secular exclusionists.

Some others that have written on this topic:

Joe Carter at the evangelical outpost: Theocrats and Theophobes: Kevin Phillips and Carter’s Law of Political Rhetoric Also, the evangelical outpost: On Earth As It Is In Heaven: Americans and the “Theocracy” Canard

John at Brain Cramps for God: Toward a Definition of Theocracy

crimsonline: A moratorium on "theocracy" talk

GetReligion: Putting “theocracy” fears in their place

What's the Rumpus?: Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean the anti-theocrats aren't out to get me

Christian Alliance for Progress Blog: The Hysteria over Theocracy

It’s a Bird! No! It’s a Plane! No! It’s The Christian Carnival CXXXII!

Mike McLoughlin — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 21:43:55 -0700

This week the Christian Carnival is HOT! Lots of HOT Topics to match the summer HEAT with a little humor thrown in!

Thank you to Donald Bosch at the The Evangelical Ecologist for helping me as a rookie host for the Christian Carnival and for John Howell at Brain Cramps for God for forwarding all those great entries and for the much esteemed Dory at Wittenberg Gate for giving us the opportunity to host.

Tom Gilson at Thinking Christian discovers two “tin woodmen" in his short snippet of a story - Only Natural.

Polly at Life is a Buffet (as opposed to a box of chocolates J? ) does a review of her Book of the Month: - The Holy Bible!. “Synopsis: God creates the universe and a man and a woman and then the story blasts off from there with an ending that is out of this world.”

The Deputy Headmistress shares an inspiring story of the authenticity of the Bible in her post: The Common Room: Ancient Manuscripts.

Sprittibee has some practical insight about God's Smoke Alarms from her reading of Bruce Wilkerson’s The Secrets of the Vine.

Dave Lorenzo at Career Intensity promotes The Power of Prayer at Work. My question is, does prayer serve business success or does business success serve God’s purposes in the marketplace? Perhaps Carnival readers would care to comment on the role of prayer for prosperity’s sake or the power of prayer for God’s glory through our work?

Trivium Pursuit posts an article by Mike Evans on Spiritual Depression, Rest, and ASSISTANCE Buttons.

Prince of Thrift discusses debt, specifically, becoming and staying debt free in Understanding The Great Misunderstanding.

Diane at CrossRoads in commenting on the Emergent church “thinks the children of the Baby Boomers have learned their parents' teachings quite well” which perhaps is not such a good thing. Check out her concerns at Where Faith and Inquiry Meet: Emerging into Emergent.

Martin LaBar at Sun and Shield looks at What's really important. And that is showing Christ’s love!

Jeremy Pierce at Parableman discuses Mark Roberts’ argument against doubting the traditional authorship of Mark & Luke. His post is entitled Mark, Luke, and Pseudonymity.

Mandi at Praising Fool in a quest for a church asks “Am I being too harsh since I don't want to go back based on the fact that not a single person welcomed me into their church?”

Jim Nutt at A Nutt’s View asks the question, God has not given us a spirit of fear, so what are we all so scared of?

Andre Yee at Every Square Inch exhorts fellow believers to See God in the Monotony. He offers a quote from G K Chesterton, “But perhaps, God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.”

Brandi at LongStarAcademy shares an incredible story of Words of Affirmation from the Lord.

Father David Jennings at Left of Calvary takes issue with the city of Las Vegas for stopping the service of mobile soup kitchens for homeless people in his post Does Vegas share in Sodom’s real sin?

Katy McKenna at Fallible.com discusses how blogging started for her “as a way to relieve my poor husband from a small measure of his listening duties” at The Beauty Of Budding Bloggers

Mary Yerkes of Releasing the Artist Within discusses her experience with the return of a prodigal son, specifically her 23 year old son returning home to live. Her jumping off point is Henri Nouwen’s Encounter with a Painting. Read it at http://maryyerkes.com/blog/?p=418

Rev Bill makes the point that we all need to Cross the road to see (and understand) what's on the other side! He quotes Henri Nouwen on neighborliness.

Nerd Mom from the Nerd Family explores the trend of Denominations and Colleges Breaking Ties. She thinks denominations are a good idea and wonders why people who disagree ought to still stick together. I can think of some pretty good reasons from Scripture, but perhaps Carnival reader could take up her challenge.

Lennie Jarratt at CrossBlogging discusses the important issue of Stem Cell research at Stem Cell Treatment Allows Girl To Walk.

Anthony at Fides et Veritas responds to Christians proclaiming the imminent return of Christ at Keep on keeping on.

A Penitent Blogger reflects on the attitude that should be maintained by ministers and indeed all the faithful at Ministry with an attitude.

Eric Williams in Ales Rarus asks the question "Must Christians always support Israel?" in his comments about the recent conflict in the Middle East at http://alesrarus.funkydung.com/archives/2414/

Leslie Carbone takes issue with Senator Ron Wyden’s Tax Reform initiative but agrees the tax code needs reform because it is unwise, unjust and immoral in Is the Tax Reform Man Coming?

Mark Olson at Pseudo-Polymath discusses arguments against eugenics from a purely utilitarian viewpoint http://www.pseudopolymath.com/?p=1642.

Barbara Sanders of Alabama at Tidbits And Treasures comments on the ministry of Bill & Gloria Gaithers, some of the best, if not the best, Christian artists of our time God's "Interruption" of the Gaithers

Rey from the Bible Archive looks at his lawn and thinks "Man, there's a lot of work to do in the Church." The Bible Archive - Why Lawn (and Church) Work Doesn't End

And last but not least Mike (that’s me) of the Faith at Work posts his solution to “The Clergy Conspiracy – Decode this Post to Uncover An Explosive Truth!” in his short article commemorating the passing of Kenneth Lay - So Dark the Con of Lay Man.

Thank you everyone for participating. Don’t forget to check ...

Overcoming Office Politics by Following the Pathway of the Cross

Mike McLoughlin — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 17:41:01 -0700

In my previous post I talked about a Christian response to bullying in the workplace. I recommended that the person being bullied make a diary and appeal to higher authorities if the bullying does not stop. In this post, I caution Christians against the temptation to play office politics to get the upper hand even though they may feel justified because they are being treated unfairly.

For what I mean by ...

Earning The Moral Authority to Govern

Mike McLoughlin — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 17:35:21 -0800

Pundits say the Conservatives have set a record for the shortest political honeymoon in Canadian history. (globeandmail.com: The curse of the Conservatives: Not again!) It is a record unlikely to be broken since it is a negative 25 minutes! That’s the time between when erstwhile Liberal David Emerson arrived at Rideau Hall and his swearing in as a Conservative cabinet member. A surprise that confounded the expectations of the ...

A New Way to do Politics - To Get Ahead, Let’s All Get Along

Mike McLoughlin — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 05:49:25 -0800

One week ago, the Canadian electorate foisted a new way of doing politics on our political parties. Conservatives have a “precarious” minority government with 124 seats. The Liberals have been reduced to opposition at 103 seats but not wiped out as some predicted. The NDP have increased their seat count to 29 but do not have enough to play king makers, The Bloc hoped for the knock out punch to the ...

The Wisdom of Canadian Crowds in Electing Faith Full Leaders

Mike McLoughlin — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:34:53 -0800

Barring an unforeseen meltdown of voter confidence, the Conservative Party of Canada will win today’s federal election. Many in the Liberal crowd will shake their heads and wonder how foolish Canadians could be to elect conservatives what with their neighbors to the south being governed by 'those stupid conservatives'.

There will be the inevitable excuses that the Liberals “lost” the election. That if they had just run a better campaign ...

Love the Lord your God with ALL your mind!

Mike McLoughlin — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:22:07 -0700

Stockwell Day spoke at New Life Church in Kelowna this morning. He is the Member of Parliament for Okanagan-Coquihala; the Foreign Affairs Critic for the Conservative Party of Canada and a former leader of the party. He was speaking from Mark 12:30 "and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your ...

Steve Camp gives me a piece of his Mind!

Mike McLoughlin — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 11:08:51 -0700

I received an e mail from Steve Camp expressing his disappointment in my presentation of his perspectives on cultural engagement. He stated he felt I was misrepresenting him in my article Steve Camp thinks I am Misreading his Mind.

This is my response.

Okay, Steve!

I have links to your articles in the blog so my readers can read your material and judge for themselves whether or not ...

Politics & Prayer in the Vancouver Sun

Mike McLoughlin — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 10:45:35 -0700

As I predicted here, the Liberal Left media in Canada continues to fear faith at work . Vancouver Sun published a feature on Social conservatism in politics in Canada today. (Pray: Canada's social conservatives are anxious to have their voices heard where it really counts in a democracy) It was peppered with the usual fear inspiring words used to demonize sincere people of faith who are forthright ...