Way I actually spent Friday evening: feverish trip to Home Depot (20 minutes before close!) to rent the 100' sewer snake.

But it's not yet 10 pm, and the sewer is once again running freely, and at half the cost of calling a professional.

Still doing the post-mortem on the remains, but my first guess is that a small stuffed toy got sent to its' watery grave by a resident toddler.

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[Disclosure: Thomas Nelson Publishers provided me a free copy of For These Tough Times in return for publishing a review on my blog.]

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That's the question that Justin Taylor proffers at his blog, courtesy of Brad Green, theology professor at Union University.  Professor Green's response to the "what would Jesus do" question has four main points:

• Conservatives don't think that big new legislation will fix the problems with the system
• Conservatives are opposed to the expansion of federal powers as an infringement on liberty
• The Constitution doesn't explicitly enumerate power in this area to the Federal government, so Health Care reform would be unconstitutional
• Christians have a "strong view of human sin and thus are often not inclined to want to grant large amounts of power to any governmental body"

While I will concur with the final point, in the first three points Professor Green misses the boat in two critical ways.

First, he fails to acknowledge the reality that, regardless of how strictly he'd like to interpret the Tenth Amendment, the United States Supreme Court has a long history of allowing the Federal government expanded powers via the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution.  Just because he, personally, disagrees with that interpretation doesn't mean that health care reform legislation will be unconstitutional.

Second, and far more greviously, Professor Green, by virtue of his first two points, has somehow assumed that Jesus' political views were American Evangelical Conservative.  How else can he leap from "What Would Jesus Do?" to "Conservatives are opposed to this"?  If he wants to make the argument that Jesus would've held those views, he can try to make that argument, but he is foolhardy to think it can just be assumed.

If the evangelical political Right in America wants to oppose increased federal involvement in the health care system, there are reasonable arguments that can be made.  Shoddy reasoning, though, as demonstrated in this article, only makes them look silly.

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Ten years ago when we moved to Iowa we decided on a church relatively quickly, and once there, proceed with similar pace through the membership process.  After eight years there we left to help plant another church.  There was no official "membership" in the early stages of that church plant, but we were on the core team and I was an elder, so we were quite obviously committed. 

When it was clear the Lord was leading us away from the church plant, we finally settled on our current church home, where we've been attending for a year now.  Not just attending – involved, too.  I'm playing on the worship team once a month, Becky is volunteering in the nursery.  We attended the "welcome to the family" class several months ago.  It was a helpful introduction to the church's history, doctrine, and philosophy of ministry.  At the time, we weren't ready yet to join.  And now, as the announcement comes around again every three months, I wonder again, is it time?

My hesitancy isn't a fear of responsibility or accountability – in fact, I'd much prefer being under the authority of a local church body to being some sort of Lone Ranger.  Three months in, I wasn't ready to join mostly because joining felt like dating someone on the rebound – it was just too soon.  We'd been with our previous church family for nearly ten years, I wasn't just gonna dive back in.   But now it's been a year.  I don't have any big doctrinal issues that would keep me from joining.  I guess it's just mostly cold feet.  What if this ends up not being the place for us long-term?  On the other hand, how long do we stay in this holding pattern before we should just give up and admit that our current church has become our de facto home church and we should just go ahead and join?

Much to ponder.  Your thoughts are always appreciated.

Posted via email from Chris’s posterous

Posted via email from Chris’s posterous