Health Care Costs

Posted on 7/14/2005 by Dabitur

I was talking to someone yesterday about health-care costs. His wife had their first child just a couple of months ago, not long after our daughter Elisabeth was born. He was telling me about their future plans, and his wife is returning soon to her job as a public school teacher. One of the primary factors in this decision is that they want to have another child soon and want to have his wife’s insurance (through the government school) to pay for it.

We got to comparing notes on pregnancy-related expenses, and he told me that their total bill was “around 35.” Silly me, I thought he meant $3,500. Nope, he meant THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. (When I told him that I paid $1,300 for delivery, I think he probably thought I was just talking about my deductible.) That is quite amazing, in my opinion. No wonder health insurance is so expensive.

Here’s a couple more pieces of information that I think are worth considering when pondering the future of health care costs.

1. The imminent wave of baby-boomer retirements will sharply increase need for health-care workers (along with several other industries). The effect of this will be severely exacerbated due to the shortage of qualified workers created in part by that same wave of retirements. Lots of upward pressure is already being exerted due to shortage of staff, and this is going to get much worse. Higher demand from elderly people demanding huge amounts of healthcare servcices, and lower supply of younger people to provide healthcare services spells higher costs in a big way. That problem won’t quickly go away either, as life expectancy is getting longer and people are generally living longer after hitting 65. People over 65 spend 3 times as much on healthcare than people between 34 and 44. People over 75 spend about FIVE TIMES as much.

2. Consider that more than half of all workers with health insurance are covered by plans that are either partially or completely self-insured. This is troubling, and we can draw a parallel between the future of healthcare costs and the future of company pensions, social security, and the stock market. Almost 80% of all large employers (more than 5,000 employees) are self-insured in regards to their health-care coverage. Under the Employment Retirement Income and Security Act (ERISA) of 1974, self-insured plans are EXEMPT from state regulation – including reserve requirements, mandated benefits, premium taxes, and consumer protection regulations.

According to current population trends, by 2030 over 20% of the population of the U.S. will be over 65, and when you combine that with the fact that younger generations have been having few children, you have a demographic problem that affects all the age-based wealth-transfer pyramid schemes that many are counting on to pay for their retirement and health-care costs. It is a supply and demand problem for both labor to provide healthcare and money to pay for it.

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There Goes The Neighborhood

Posted on 7/13/2005 by Dabitur

Awhile back I listened to a sermon by Dr. Francis Nigel Lee called Marriage, Family, and Kin, and towards the end of the message he talked about community ideals and generational relations. He used as an example a traditional neighborhood, into which a bunch of hippies (yes, some of Dr. Lee’s sermons are a bit dated!) began moving. This of course drastically changed the neighborhood and created tension between the original residents and the new. Dr. Lee said that this same tension exists between generations when children rebel against their parents and adopt radically different values and traditions.

Like many things, this issue can be both easy and hard to understand. It is easy to understand when we feel that others should respect our values and culture. We’d get up in arms if we lived in a nice neighborhood and a big factory hog farm decided to relocate right smack dab in the middle of it, ruining your evenings on the porch with a foul stench and making you keep your children indoors to avoid being run over by the large trucks and tractors going past your driveway at all hours of the day and night.

But its not so easy when we want to have the liberty to take our own values and culture and plant them in someone else’s back yard. Suburbanites in gated communities give no thought to buying rural property and trying to turn it into a suburban vacationland. That’s when we stop talking about neighborhoods and community, and start talking about property rights and all that. A good way to ruin your relationship with your new rural neighbors to move in and try to turn it into a upscale suburb, and compain about the smells, the tractors, and the lack of a Wal-Mart.

The Nearings talked about this when they moved to Vermont:

We started as “summer folk”, who are usually looked upon by the native population as socially untouchable and a menace to agriculture. These “foreigners” come with a little or a lot of money, and do not intend to stay long or work much.

In so far as summer residents occupy abandoned land or marginal land unfit for agriculture, they do no great harm. Usually they cultivate little or no land beyond small vegetable and flower gardens. Their pastures go back to wood lots and the wood lots grow timber without benefit of selective cutting. They need no income from the land, or they count on its future income. In so far as summer residents occupy productive land, take it out of use and let it revert to brush, they are a detriment to the agriculture of the state. Certainly this is true in the most productive valleys.

Another thing the summer residents do to Vermont agriculture is to put a premium on factory goods and specialties shipped in from out of state, have them carried in the stores and thus help persuade Vermont residents that it is easier and cheaper to get dollars, exchange them for canned goods sold in the stores, and abandon long-established gardens in the course of the turnover. Thus the state is made less dependent upon its own agriculture and more dependent upon dollars, many of which will be used to buy out-of-state produce.

If this process goes far enough, Vermont will develop a suburban or vacationland economy, built on the dollars of those who make their income elsewhere and spend part of it during a few weeks or months of the Vermont summer. Such an economy is predominately parasitic in terms of production, although income and expense accounts may be in balance. Carried to its logical conclusion, it would make Vermonters sell their labor-power to summer residents, mowing their lawns and doing their laundry, thus greatly reducing their own economic self-dependence. Such an economy may attract more cheap dollars to the state, but it will hardly produce self-reliant men.

Summer people do more than upset Vermont’s economy. By living on their places during the summer and closing them for the balance of the year, they turn sections of the State into ghost towns. Neighborhoods, to be meaningful, must have continuity. Part-time towns are parasitic dead towns. “No dwellers, what profiteth house to stand? What goodness, unoccupied, bringeth the land?”

~ Helen and Scott Nearing, Living The Good Life

When I read this, I couldn’t help but think of Florida, where I lived for a number of years. Its probably true of Arizona and Texas as well. We didn’t have summer folks, we had “snowbirds” that flocked to their trailer parks during the winter months, clogged up the roads, and demanded their senior citizen discounts. It was a tenuous relationship – the economy depended upon the influx of Yankee cash, but more or less despised those that brought it. A common bumper sticker summed up the prevailing attitude – “Welcome to Florida – NOW GO HOME!” What the Nearing said about the economy of Vermont is very similar to that of Florida and probably many other places. Even native folks have become culturally and economic transients, giving up the family’s land and livelihood to become interchangeable parts in the monetary economy. Crackers that once farmed and homesteaded in Florida find it increasingly difficult to be able to afford to stay, with the vacationland economy driving up property values and taxes so. Economically, it all seems wonderful and innocuous to most people. An inflating balloon is great fun until it pops when credit contracts and property values drop.

Hopefully most people want to be good neighbors, because we should. The golden rule would solve much of this tension and enable us to be better neighbors – its not the actual length of time you live on a piece of property that defines those people disliked as summer folk or snow birds, its the attitude that they generally bring with them.

Most agrarian and country folks that I know would be tickled to help out part-time country residents that really wanted to enjoy homesteading and country living. But its more than a little irritating to a family that’s farmed the land for many generations to be priced out of their own neighborhoods by vacationing city slickers that buy up good land to put a second home on and bring McDonalds and Wal-Mart into their once peaceful habitat, especially when they know that once their small towns are transformed into a tourist trap, that the invaders will move on in search of greener pastures and leave the blight in their wake without a care in the world about the effects of their choices on others. As Captain Basil Hall wrote in 1829,

I think it should be a rule for persons coming to a new country, always first to follow the customs of that country as closely as possible, reserving their improvements till they get firmly established, and see good reason to apply them.

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Living The Good Life

Posted on 7/12/2005 by Dabitur

This past weekend one of the rummage sales in our small town had a good amount of books for sale and we ended up purchasing about 110 of them. It would have been more if our new neighbor Valerie hadn’t beaten me to some of the good ones, I’m guessing she bought even more books than we did. Every book was 50 cents, so we made out well. They had a couple of boxes of books on homesteading and country life, and one of the most interesting ones I found was Living The Good Life – How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World by Helen and Scott Nearing.

It probably seems odd that I’d be recommending this book, as the authors were hard-core pacifist socialist vegetarians, but the book is really a treasure. Read this introductory passage from the preface:

This is a book about a twentieth century pioneering venture in a New England community. Most of the subject matter is derived from twenty years of living in the backwoods of Vermont. The book aims to present a technical, economic, sociological and psychological report on what we tried to do, how we did it, and how well or ill we succeeded in achieving our purposes.

During the deepest part of the Great Depression, in 1932, we moved from New York City to a farm in the Green Mountains. At the outset we thought of the venture as a personal search for a simple, satisfying life on the land, to be devoted to mutual aid and harmlessness, with an ample margin of leisure in which to do personally constructive and creative work. With the passage of time and the accumulation of experience we came to regard our valley in Vermont as a laboratory in which we were testing out certain principles and procedures of more general application and concern.

It was, of course, an individual experience, meeting a special need, and a particular time. When we moved to Vermont we left a society gripped by depression and unemployment, falling a prey to fascism, and on the verge of another world-wide military free-for-all; and entered a pre-industrial, rural community. The society from which we moved had rejected in practice and in principle our pacifism, our vegetarianism, and our collectivism. So thorough was this rejection that, holding such views, we could not teach in the schools, write in the press or speak over the radio, and were this denied our part in public education. Under these circumstances, where could outcasts from a dying social order live frugally and decently, and at the same time have sufficient leisure and energy to assist in the speedy liquidation of the disintegrating society and to help replace it with a more workable social system?

Now, if you just take out three words – pacifism, vegetarianism, and collectivism – everything they said, and did, is very close to the way I feel about things. The parts of the book I have read so far have been fascinating. I enjoy studying the fates and histories of various forms of societies, and in addition to being interesting in that aspect, its also a compelling story about a couple that really wanted to live out their principles and be separate from a world system they disagreed with. And unlike the Amish, their form of separatism involved eventually replacing the current system with a better one – you might say that they were postmillennial in many respects.

The book is also very interesting from a purely practical perspective. They describe how they made a living off the land, how they built a stone house (it looks nice too!), how they approached the dilemma of using modern technology when necessary, how they dealt with the many visitors and like-minded people interested in pursuing a similar lifestyle, the successes and failures of their communal endeavors, making maple sugar and syrup, creating an independent economy, etc.

Anyone who enjoyed Henry and the Great Society would probably enjoy this book, if only to get some answers to the many questions that the book provokes about the practical considerations of unplugging:

Many a modern worker, dependent on wage or salary, lodged in city flat or closely built-up suburb and held to the daily grind by family demands or other complicating circumstances, has watched for a chance to escape the cramping limitations of his surroundings, to take his life into his own hands and live it in the country, in a decent, simple, kindly way. Caution, consideration for relatives or fear of the unknown have proved formidable obstacles, however. After years of indecision he still hesitates. Can he cope with country life? Can he make a living from the land? Has he the physical strength? Must one be young to start? Where can he learn what he needs to live? Must he keep animals? How much will a farm tie him down? Will it be but a new kind of drudgery all over again? These and a thousand other questions flood the mind of the person who considers a break with city living.

This book is written for just such people.

So, be forewarned that there are going to be some eye-rolling moments while reading this book, unless you happen to be a pacifist vegetarian collectivist. But there are some valuable lessons in this book. While it is good to learn from your mistakes, it is even better to learn from other people’s mistakes, and the Nearings give us the opportunity to learn from people that spent a good portion of their lives pursuing the good life.

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Watch Out For Falling Prices

Posted on 7/11/2005 by Dabitur

Here’s a hypothetical situation for you to consider. Say a guy, Mr. Smith, decides he wants his his neighbor Mr. Jones’ vinyard. Jones doesn’t want to sell, but Mr. Smith is very crafty, and convinces the local town that it would be in the best economic interests of the town to take Jones’ vinyard and then lease or sell it to Smith’s company – Low-Cost Wine LLC, which would increase the town’s tax base, bring in tourists for wine-tasting conventions, and provide jobs for local workers. Jones, on the other hand, avoids modern vinedressing methods and produces a rather small (relatively speaking) quantity of organic wine which is used primarily for communion in his denomination’s churches, employs only his family, and doesn’t provide the town with much tax revenue.

So the town decides that this taking would be a good public use of Jones’ vinyard, and Low-Cost Wine LLC soon transforms Jones’ modest enterprise into a highly indstrialised wine production facility. Jones’ fellow parisioners were, understandably, quite upset about the theft. When their state’s supreme court approved the town’s taking, they demanded that the U.S. Supreme Court go outside its jurisdiction and overturn the state court’s ruling. When this failed, they called on the President to take advantage of the retirement of a Supreme Court Justice and appoint a judge that would keep such thefts from happening. Whatever the cost to the President, they insisted the truth and justice were more important than pragmatic concerns.

Funny thing, though. The people demanding that organized theft shouldn’t be tolerated, really loved the cheap wine that Low-Cost Wine LLC was producing. So much so that they purchased it regularly, often in bulk which made it an even greater bargain. And that’s probably what hurt Mr. Jones more than anything. He never really expected the federal government to do the right thing, but he didn’t think that his family and friends would support the thieves by buying the wine they had made with his stolen vines.

In The capitalist case against Wal-Mart, Timothy P. Carney writes:

Wal-Mart, it turns out, is no paragon of free-market virtue. The retailer benefits from eminent domain takings, special tax breaks, corporate welfare and all manner of subsidies – driving up taxes and eroding liberty.

One recent study, conducted by a pro-labor group called Good Jobs First, estimated that Wal-Mart has benefited from at least $1 billion in assorted subsidies for its stores and distribution centers.

In many cases, it appears local and state politicians are eager to offer special favors to Wal-Mart, which in turn promises tax revenue, jobs and possibly a ripple effect of redevelopment. With so many communities willing to waive Wal-Mart’s property taxes, discount its land and build its parking lots, the company is in position to demand such special favors from any town or county where it is considering locating.

The Commonwealth of Virginia, for example, has helped Wal-Mart set up four distribution centers. In James City, the county and state handed over a combined $578,000 in grants. The Governor’s Opportunity Fund issued a $500,000 grant to Wal-Mart in Louisa Co. and a $1.5 million grant for the distribution center in Mount Crawford. In Sutherland, the state government used a $700,000 Community Development Block Grant (federal money) to help build infrastructure for the distribution center site in 1991.

In some cases, the construction and opening of a Wal-Mart establishment looks more like a government project than a private one. In MacLenny, Fla., for example, state and local governments subsidized the distribution center from beginning to end. The county gave Wal-Mart the land for free and built the roads to get there. Between the local and state governments, taxpayers footed the bill for the plumbing, the recruiting and the job training. Finally, Wal-Mart couldn’t lure any workers unless it could find somewhere for them to live. Unfortunately, rents in MacLenny would be too steep for new workers earning Wal-Mart’s wages. In a free market, Wal-Mart would have to raise its wages to cover the cost of living. Instead the federal government volunteered to make up the difference by subsidizing the new housing that went up to accommodate the new workers.

In Ogden, Utah, a Wal-Mart superstore will be built on land the town government took against the will of the property owners and handed over to Wal-Mart.

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Too Many People Owe Too Much Money

Posted on 7/9/2005 by Dabitur

From The Daily Reckoning of July 7, 2005:

The Chinese are using more and more oil. But they’re using it in an economy that is based partly on fantasy – producing things for Americans, who don’t have the money to pay for them. It is just a matter of time (we will keep saying this until the time actually arrives… or we go to our graves… whichever comes first) until Americans stop buying. No people can run up debts forever – even people who have the world’s reserve currency. Americans’ debt binge is collateralized by rising property prices. Someday, that must end too. When it does, demand for Chinese-made goods will fall, and so will China’s consumption of oil.

But the fall in U.S. consumption will have other consequences. In the Anglo-Saxon world’s high debt culture, a credit contraction – or a cut back in consumer spending – should be devastating. Too many people owe too much money. When they can’t pay, the whole system is threatened by collapse. This is, of course, the last thing the dissemblers at the Federal Reserve, Congress or the Bush administration want. Former Fed governor Ben Bernanke announced that would take extreme measures to prevent it – “we have a technology,” said he, “called a printing press.” You can imagine the howl that will come up from lumpenhomeowners when they begin losing their houses. And you can imagine how eager public officials will be to repeat the miracles of the past – the LTCM rescue operation… the post-’87 crash recovery… the turnaround of the 2001 recession. Each one was dealt with in the same way – with more cash and credit!

From every angle we look at it, we see the same picture – the picture we have been watching since the tech crash of 1999-2002. The U.S. economy continues to sink into a long malaise – a soft, slow slump, a la Japan. Our major corporations slip and slide. Wages go nowhere. Growth figures are positive, but they are phony; they record the rate at which Americans ruin themselves with excess consumption, not the rate at which the economy grows stronger and richer.

“There’s good growth and bad growth,” writes Stephen Roach. “The former is well supported by internal income generation and saving. The latter is driven by asset bubbles and debt. The United States, in my opinion, has been on a bad-growth binge for nearly a decade, but especially over the past five years. In a US-centric global economy, that means the rest of the world has also become overly dependent on bad growth as the sustenance of a false prosperity.”

Eventually, but not necessarily soon, this picture will give way to another one – when desperate officials destroy the imperial currency in order to try to save homeland consumer spending. That is when oil, copper – and especially gold – really begin to fly. Ultimately, the supply of dollars is unlimited. The world’s supply of oil, on the other hand, grows smaller every day.

So much to say about all of this – but where to start? The questions raised by these issues sometimes far outnumber the answers. Al Doyle wrote a review of Living Well On Practically Nothing in today’s LRC, which sounds like it contains the type of common sense needed for us to put into practice.

I get lots of questions about investment advice, and sometimes that’s the wrong question to ask. For many people, paying off debt is the best investment they could possibly make. If you’re paying on debt that’s costing you 7% – any money you put on the principle “earns” you 7% tax free, and on long-term debt that can really be a lot when you save the effects of compounding.

I was browsing through Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography last night, and in one of his letters to a friend on money matters, he closed with these words:

In short, the Way to Wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the Way to Market. It depends chiefly on two Words, INDUSTRY and FRUGALITY: i.e. Waste neither Time nor Money, but make the best Use of both. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary Expences excepted) will certainly become RICH: If that Being who governs the World, to whom all should look for a Blessing on their honest Endeavors, doth not in his wise Providence otherwise determine.

Modern American financial practices fail on both principles – we try to earn money dishonestly (usury, legalised plunder, etc.) and we (myself included) have generally lost all concept of what Franklin termed “frugality” and “necessary expences”. In America, even some homeless people are obese. We Christians believe that the Lord will provide all our needs – and if not we’ll put it on our credit card or take out a consumer loan.

Get out of debt and save money (some real money would be good) for a rainy day (Not in a retirement account, either.) Anybody doing a job that could be done cheaper by the Mexicans or the Chinese ought to be considering how they will provide for their family when their employer figures this out. Invest your time and money in educating your children and starting family enterprises that they can participate in. DON’T get caught with a huge mortgage when the credit contraction hits and housing prices fall.

And remember that all the financial advice in the world is useless apart from God’s grace and blessing. Seek him above all else. Good Financial Planning is based on the idea that we are covenant stewards of God’s earth.

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Vaccines and Autism

Posted on 7/6/2005 by Dabitur

If you haven’t taken a look at Dan Olmsted’s series The Age of Autism, which endeavors to detail “the roots and rise of autism”, you should by all means do so. It contains some really fascinating articles.

In the June 8 installment, entitled One in 15,000 Amish, Dan points out the ridiculously low numbers of Amish children with autism. One doctor, who has been studying Amish children for three years, has seen just one case of autism out of 15,000 children:

The autism rate for U.S. children is 1 in 166, according to the federal government. The autism rate for the Amish around Middlefield, Ohio, is 1 in 15,000, according to Dr. Heng Wang.

He means that literally: Of 15,000 Amish who live near Middlefield, Wang is aware of just one who has autism. If that figure is anywhere near correct, the autism rate in that community is astonishingly low.

Olmsted also cites a doctor in Lancaster who has been treating the Amish for almost 25 years and has not encountered a single case of autism.

Hey, do you think that has anything to do with the fact that Amish don’t generally vaccinate their children? Nah….

But guess what? That one-in-fifteen thousand case was a 12-year old boy that, unlike most Amish children, had received childhood vaccinations. Curiously, another case of autism found in an “Amish” child in Pennsylvania was in a little girl adopted from China that had received the battery of vaccinations.

According to Olmsted,

Some parents and a minority of medical professionals think a mercury-based preservative in vaccines — or in some cases the vaccines themselves — triggered a huge increase in autism cases in the 1990s, leading to the 1-in-166 rate cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1999 manufacturers began phasing out that preservative, called thimerosal, at the CDC’s request.

What’s interesting on that point is that at least one purveyor of pharmacia, Merck, believed at least as far back as 1991 that its vaccines had unsafe levels of mercury in them, but still continued to sell them for ten years, until 2001. And for two of those years, they were telling the public that their vaccines no longer contained mercury! In his Daily Dose newsletter, Dr. William Campbell Douglas M.D. wrote:

Whether factually right or wrong, in response to rising public concern about childhood exposure to mercury (along with pressure from the U.S. Public Health Service in the late 90s), drug companies began to curb their use of Thimerosol. Or at least, they SAID they did.

According to an L.A. Times report from last month, at least one major drug company, Merck, issued a press release in September of 1999 claiming to have eliminated mercury-based compounds from its entire vaccine line. But recently, evidence has surfaced indicating that they continued to dole out Thimerosol-preserved versions of vaccine until as late as October of 2001 – more than 2 years after they claimed to be mercury-free!

Merck confirmed this in their response to an FDA inquiry generated by a recent Congressional investigation. The drug giant admits no wrongdoing, however, insisting that they were indeed PRODUCING mercury-less vaccines at the time of the press release. They attribute the continued supplies of the old vaccine to the need to keep up with demand during a “transition period” between the two medicines. Sounds to me like they just didn’t want to waste any inventory.

Now do you see why parents in the know have good reason to distrust the drug giants? Keep reading…

If Thimerosol did indeed cause autism (or even if proof surfaces later that it does), vaccine-skeptical parents who believed Merck’s slippery verbiage between 1999 and 2001 would have unwittingly exposed their children to risk. The fact that it may not contribute to the condition is irrelevant to my point. Why?

Because Merck itself was worried about Thimerosol’s effects, and they did nothing about it for a DECADE. Get this:

According to the Times expose, a recently “leaked” corporate memo from Merck shows that the drug giant was aware – and even concerned about – the levels of mercury in some of its vaccines for kids. The date of that memo: 1991. A full ten years before their vaccines were made mercury-free. The memo came from a leading vaccinologist and former Senior VP of Merck and clearly highlights Thimerosol as a potential safety hazard.

The bottom line is this: Merck believed its vaccines contained unsafe levels of mercury years ago, yet continued to make and distribute them anyway. Here’s what I really want you to understand about all of this: This cover-up by Merck isn’t an isolated incident – along with the recent Vioxx scandal, it’s evidence of a continuing pattern of deception that could be KILLING PEOPLE.

Remember: Merck & Co. is facing massive legal actions right now because they also knew about the extreme risks of their Vioxx arthritis medicine years before the recent scandal – yet never made a move to change the medication or pull it from shelves until people started DYING in large numbers. And they most surely wouldn’t have stopped selling the medicine if it hadn’t been for increasing awareness among doctors and public health entities that something was amiss with the drug. The same goes for these vaccines, I’m sure.

But the real question is this: How many other drugs in their line does Merck believe (or know) are hazardous, yet continue to sell anyway? And if every other drug company’s doing this same kind of covering-up, we’re in a lot of trouble…

The mercury connection to autism isn’t exclusively through vaccinations. Read Mercury On The Mind by Donald W. Miller, M.D., for a short primer on the subject with links to other sources of information to get you started.

A doctor in Virginia is treating six unvaccinated Amish children with autism – four of whom the doctor believes developed autism from mercury toxicity from sources other than vaccines. In another installment of the series, Olmsted shifts his focus from the Amish to the homeschooled:

Where are the unvaccinated homeschooled children with autism? Nowhere to be found, says a doctor who treats autistic children and is knowledgeable about the homeschooled world.

“It’s largely nonexistent,” Dr. Jeff Bradstreet told UPI’s Age of Autism. “It’s an extremely rare event.”

Bradstreet treats autistic children at his medical practice in Palm Bay, Fla. He has a son whose autism he attributes to a vaccine reaction at 15 months. His daughter has been homeschooled, he describes himself as a “Christian family physician,” and he knows many of the leaders in the homeschool movement.

“There was this whole subculture of folks who went into homeschooling so they would never have to vaccinate their kids,” he said. “There’s this whole cadre who were never vaccinated for religious reasons.”

In that subset, he said, “unless they were massively exposed to mercury through lots of amalgams (mercury dental fillings in the mother) and/or big-time fish eating, I’ve not had a single case.”

Bradstreet said his views do not constitute a persuasive argument that low vaccination rates are associated with low rates of autism, but it is worth studying.

My guess is that this is not worth studying to the businesses that finance the majority of medical research. My reasons are similar to why I guessed that O.J. would never “find the real killer”.

So, drug companies like Merck are liars, scientific studies financed by the government and drug companies are inconclusive, and doctors can be found to support both sides. What’s a father to do, then?

Even without considering the possible link to autism, there are lots of good reasons to NOT vaccinate your children. I made a few comments on the subject here, and hope to write more in the future. But don’t take my word for it, because its your decision to make as a father. I would be willing to wager that most fathers have spent more time researching the TV Guide than they have spent learning what substances are injected into their precious children as a matter of course. Don’t just take your wife’s word for it, either. Like our forefather Adam, we too have a tendency to shirk responsibility by going along with what our wives tell us and then blaming them when we are told it was a bad decision. Its fine to have your wife do some of the research, but don’t throw all the responsibility of such important decisions on her.

Part of being a man is being willing to shoulder responsibility. In this age of specialists, we’ve bought into the convenience of passing off our responsibilities as fathers to doctors, social workers, school teachers, youth pastors, babysitters, and even our wives. Then we sue those specialists if they make bad decisions. But we shouldn’t be doing that. The problem is not the quality of our specialists, it’s the lack of responsibility shown by the modern man-without-a-chest.

The modern father has become a mere figurehead because he has abdicated the majority of his God-given authority and responsibilities. He delegates his responsibility for providing for his family’s well-being to others and his office has become as meaningless as the English monarchy. My challenge to you is to take those responsibilities back and embrace the calling God has placed upon you as a man and a father – and then spend your time and your money in a way that becomes a good steward of God’s precious gifts.

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Theocracy and Denominationalism

Posted on 7/5/2005 by Dabitur

In the Savoy Declaration (1658) we find these words on the relationship between the civil magistrate and church doctrine:

Although the Magistrate is bound to incourage, promote, and protect the professor and profession of the Gospel, and to manage and order civil administrations in a due subserviency to the interest of Christ in the world, and to that end to take care that men of corrupt mindes and conversations do not licentiously publish and divulge Blasphemy and Errors in their own nature, subverting the faith, and inevitably destroying the souls of them that receive them: Yet in such differences about the Doctrines of the Gospel, or in ways of the worship of God, as may befall men exercising a good conscience, manifesting it in their conversation, and holding the foundation, not disturbing others in their ways or worship that differ from them; there is no warrant for the Magistrate under the Gospel to abridge them of their liberty.

In the ORIGINAL Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), in Chapter 23 Of The Civil Magistrate, we read similar words:

The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven (2Ch_26:18 with Mat_18:17 and Mat_16:19; Rom_10:15; 1Co_4:1, 1Co_4:2; 1Co_12:28, 1Co_12:29; Eph_4:11, Eph_4:12; Heb_5:4): yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed (Lev_24:16; Deu_13:5, Deu_13:6, Deu_13:12; 2Ki_18:4; 23:1-26; 1Ch_13:1-9; 2Ch_15:12, 2Ch_15:13; 2Ch_34:33; Ezr_7:23-28; Psa_122:9; Isa_49:23). For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God (2Ch_19:8-11; 29:1-30:27; Mat_2:4, Mat_2:5).

An obvious question in my mind, of course, is how modern “Reformed” folks can be so virulently and steadfastly opposed to a Christian theocracy. The authors of the reformed statements quoted above seemed to have radically different ideas from the political views commonly held by the modern reformed. The Westminster Assembly itself was convened upon an order of Parliament.

American Presbyterian churches answered this question handily – they changed the Westminster Confession of Faith. The entire section of Chapter 23 quote above was re-written. Is the Confession too theonomic for you? Just change it! Now I don’t condemn everyone that disagrees with the Westminster Confession of Faith on certain points. But at least the Baptists renamed the Confession when they modified it to suit their doctrinal persuasions! Let’s not play games and keep saying that the PCA and OPC (as examples) are faithful to the Westminster Confession of Faith. At least call it a Modified or Revised version.

The OPC has a summary chart of the revisions they recognize here. You don’t even have to get to Chapter 23, Of The Civil Magistrate, to get to the revisions which reflect a departure from the traditional reformed view of the civil magistrate. In Chapter 20, Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience, for instance, they revised this passage:

And because the powers which God hath ordained, and the liberty which Christ hath purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another; they who, upon pretence of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God. And, for their publishing of such opinions, or maintaining of such practices, as are contrary to the light of nature, or to the known principles of Christianity, whether concerning faith, worship, or conversation; or, to the power of godliness; or, such erroneous opinions or practices, as either in their own nature, or in the manner of publishing or maintaining them, are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ hath established in the Church, they may lawfully be called to account, and proceeded against by the censures of the Church, and by the power of the civil magistrate.

The last phrase was deleted in the American revisions. One of the Presbyterian micro-denominations, the RPCUS , holds to the origianl WCF and not the revised American version(s). I would think that more denominations (some of which at least loosely hold to theonomy) may eventually follow suit and bring into question the modern revisions which were a de facto repudiation of the theonomic view of the civil magistrate? Its an idea that might warrant some consideration for a couple of churches in the CREC as well, as they have latitude in the confessional documents they profess adherence too.

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More On Architecture

Posted on 7/2/2005 by Dabitur

Down in the area towards where I work, Salem Baptist Church is having a grand-opening this Sunday:

Salem Baptist Church will open the doors Sunday to its House of Hope, seeking to lift a blighted neighborhood with a mega-church modeled after the United Center.

The multipurpose facility boasts one of the largest sanctuaries in the nation and is one of a growing number of churches aiming to widen the reach of religion in a community.

Housed in the complex are two regulation basketball courts, a state-of-the-art TV studio and a 10,008-seat sanctuary with a stage fully equipped for concerts, plays and symphonies.

But neighbors who fought construction of the combination worship center and sports arena are bracing themselves for traffic and congestion when many of the church’s 22,000 members flock to Salem Sunday for its inaugural worship service.

Senior pastor Rev. James Meeks, who envisioned the $50million facility on 24 acres of a long-vacant brownfield on the edge of the Pullman neighborhood, said he wants it to instill hope, not headaches, for residents of the historic neighborhood.

“There has to be a place where people can go in a depraved and depressed world and feel this is a place where somebody will help me move ahead and assist me in my present condition–be it a single mother or a corporate CEO,” said Meeks, also a state senator.

“People want God brought near to them.”

The last quote is tempting to comment on, isn’t it? On one hand, it probably summarizes a lot of things that are wrong about modern people and modern churches. Modern people want to have a convenient religion that meets their needs. Modern churches often seem to focus on giving the modern people what they want in order to increase their numbers. This is illustrated superbly in Christian Pragmatism 101: How To Grow Your Church, which is worth taking a minute or two to enjoy.

On the other hand, I also think that the statement that “People want God brought near to them” may represent some of the modern man’s underlying, maybe even subconscious, realizations that something is inherently wrong and unsatisfying in the modern way of life. When community is separated from church, church attempts to fill the void by creating virtual community – hence the plethora of programs and activities. Its only natural for us to get excited about such things, as we discussed here, here, and here. But virtual community can’t replace real community, except temporarily.

What I really thought was interesting about the 10,008 seat church is that it claims to have over 22,000 members. Now if our church, which I would estimate has between 100 and 150 members, were to build a new church building, I know that we would definitely not design a sanctuary with only 75 seats. Not every member is in attendance on any given Sunday, but most are, and sometimes we have all the members present plus some guests. The answer to the discrepancy is the presupposition by the mega churches that multiple services will be used to rotate the membership through the building, whereas a smaller church will presuppose that the church members will actually worship and celebrate the Lord’s Table with each other at a common time. It occurred to me that when I think of churches building virtual community, to replace real community, I haven’t even considered churches with multiple services. In smaller churches, you may only see your fellow church members once per week, or twice. But in a church with multiple services, you may see some of your fellow church members once a week, or once a month, or you may never see them if they go to the Saturday night service and you go to the Sunday afternoon bilingual service.

On another architectural note, consider the house that the Dugger family is building to accomodate their growing family (15 children and pregnant with number 16!):

Former Arkansas state Representative Jim Bob Duggar and his wife, Michelle, will soon be welcoming their 16th child. And they’ll also have a new house to help cope with all the kiddy chaos.

For the last two years, the Duggars have been working on a home that will accommodate their big family. When it’s complete, the 7,000 square foot home will have a commercial kitchen, four washers, and eight driers. And they say this might not be their last bundle of joy.

God bless ‘em!

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Rights – Not Universal

Posted on 6/30/2005 by Dabitur

A lot of interesting comments and questions were directed to me as a result of my post on the Kelo decision. One common one concerned the idea of pagans and Christians having equal rights under the law. On that, R. L. Dabney wrote:

God’s commonwealth was not founded on universal suffrage. That he rejected the Jacobinical principle is plain from the history of the Gibeonites. They were exempted by covenant with Joshua from the doom of extinction, and retained a title to homes for many generations upon the soil of Palestine, and as we see from 2 Sam. xxi. 6, they were very carefully protected in certain rights by the government. They were not domestic slaves, neither were they fully enfranchised citizens. From the higher franchises of that rank they were shut out by a hereditary disqualification, and this was done by God’s express enactment. (Josh. ix. 27.) … Individual descendants of the Gibeonites, however law-abiding and gifted with natural capacity, did not enjoy “la carriere ouverte aux talents” equally with the young Israelites, which the Jacobin theory demands indiscriminately as the inalienable right to all. And to make matters worse, the Scripture declares that this disqualification descended by imputation from the guilt of the first generation’s paganism and fraud upon Joshua.

~From Anti-Biblical Theories of Rights, found in Discussions, Vol. III, Philosophical,, p. 507.

All men, pagan and Christian alike, are duty-bound to obey God’s law. One law to rule them all, you might say. Yet that does not mean that all are “equal under the law” and have to be given the same “rights” and privileges. There is one law for men and women alike, yet there is still an order, a rank, and separate duties and responsibilities which are particular to each sex. Though Galatians 3:28 teaches us that male and female “are one in Christ Jesus”, that does not mean that they are the same and must be treated the same. God does not contradict his own word by requiring women to keep silent in the church, not to have authority over a man, restricting military service to males, requiring them to submit to their husbands, etc. Likewise, God’s law does not demand that all men be treated as equals. The responsibility to worship God cannot be construed to imply any kind of rights to worship other gods, and there is no basis for any right of pagans to erect houses of worship to their idols, even if it is on private property. I tend to think that much of the disagreement over the original intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights stems from the improper divorcement of it from its Christian presuppositions and historical context. But regardless of our view of the Constitution, the Scriptures are still our ultimate authority, and to the extent that the Constitution or any other document is interpreted as supporting equal rights of pagan and Christian alike, it is unbiblical and incorrect.

What we call rights are really inferences derived from a) the responsibilities of all men to obey God’s law, and b) the jurisdiction given by God to earthly authorities. What we call the “right to life” stems from God’s prohibition of murder, and might be thought of as the “right to not be murdered.” Given that the modern concept of rights are derived from the aforementioned aspects of God’s law and supremacy, how then can it be maintained that the civil government can protect anyone’s rights without being theocratic? To enumerate a right is to make a theological inference, and the only question is whether that theology will be explicitly Christian or one of the many flavors of humanism. The latter results in arbitrary legalism and corporate self-worship.

So one of the differences between a Christian theocracy and a “secular” civil government is that under a Christian theocracy all people, even the non-Christians within its borders, would enjoy a greater enjoyment of what we call “rights.” For example, under a Christian theocracy, murder would be unlawful because God says it is unlawful, so everyone’s “right to life” would be protected under threat of the sword. Under a non-Christian form of government, the “right to life” will always be in a state of flux and subject to the changing morals of whatever the religion of the day happens to be. The “right to life” can never be secure without submitting to God’s law as an objective standard. Yet many Christians who are “pro-life” still protest against the idea of Christian theocracy. Like Don Quixote they dedicate their political energies to a never-ending exercise in futility by attempting to persuade a non-Christian government to act in a Christian manner without becoming explicitly Christian. In a Christian theocracy, the state is bound by God’s law. In a secular civil government, it does whatever man decides is right – as it is doing right now.

As sinners we tend to emphasize these inferred rights rather than the clear responsibilities under God’s law that they were derived. God on the other hand clearly emphasizes the latter. When we do not fulfill our responsibilities, God often takes away our life, liberty, and property, using his ministers in the civil, ecclesiastical, and familial realms. In such a case it does little good to complain that our rights have been violated, and in fact it is evidence that we are in more need of chastisement. Tyranny often has a covenantal basis which is ignored at our own peril. Rejecting theocracy and then complaining that our rights are being violated is like Esau selling his birthright and then complaining about not getting his inheritance. To demand that our government be non-Christian and yet demand that it execute justice for all and protect our “God-given rights” is wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Yet the covenantal basis of tyranny does not require that we “embrace the curse.” The rebellious son must accept his punishment, and should be thankful for his father’s correction, but if he embraced the rod we might think he had psychological problems. He ought to instead embrace his father, which is what the prodigal son wisely decided to do instead of embracing his status as a swine-feeder.

The American experiment in pluralism and non-Christian government has resulted in the emasculation of Christianity, a Federal government run amok, abortion on demand, gay pride, a humanistic education system, bondage to debt and usury, a ticking demographic time-bomb, et cetera, et cetera. And yet Christians shudder in horror when it is suggested that the civil government recognize Jesus Christ as Lord and enforce his standards of righteousness. Apparently the current evils are preferred by the prodigal people to taking on the yoke of Christ in the civil realm (where he is King whether we explicitly recognize it or not). What this means, sadly, is that we have not yet wallowed in the swine pen enough to come to ourselves.

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Presuppositional Architecture

Posted on 6/29/2005 by Dabitur


For a little historical perspective on the Lord’s Table from the days of the early Reformers, we read from the very informative book, The Kirk in Scotland, by Bullock:

    “It has often been supposed that Scottish kirks are generally designed as mere halls for preaching and those accustomed only to some of the churches of Victorian Scotland might well be pardoned for the error, but the planning of our first reformed kirks, while making place for preaching, was dominated by the Lord’s Table. Finding themselves in possession of the pre-Reformation parish kirk, a long, narrow oblong from which the altar and screen had been removed, the Reformers ran along its axis a communion table capable of seating, not the ministers and elders alone, but the whole congregation . . . This tradition lasted long so that, whether the sacrament of Holy Communion be celebrated seldom or often, the characteristic Scots kirk was built with communion service as its dominating principle.”

The reason for the central communion table was very important and would serve to greatly encourage the body of Christ today in these days of apostasy and retreat. The early Reformers saw the Lord’s Table as a time of celebratory communion not only with each other, but also especially with Christ their beloved King and High Priest. This is a decisively victorious worldview of Christ’s present, Kingdom rule from David’s Throne over Heaven and earth (Acts 2: 29-35, Heb. 8:1, Rev. 3:21). In the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup together by faith, believers confess their faith and confirm the covenant of grace by which they stand, not only as individuals, but more importantly as a community of believers. The taking of the Lord’s table together is an act of true Christian community where it really counts . . . locally. Oh that God would be merciful to bring His people back to a living, joyful communion with Him and each other . . . as local kirks that are brightly lit cities set on a hill. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

~ Pastor Thomas C. McConnell

Its interesting to consider the need for epistemological self-consciousness in architecture. In these Scottish kirks, the reformation in doctrine was reflected in a reformation in the actual physical form of the kirk.

Likewise, the design of modern church buildings likewise speaks volumes about the underlying philosophy of the church. For example, looking at many of the newer churches, the great amount of funds and attention given to the parking lot belies the fact that they never had any hope or intention of ministering to their local community or parish. Instead they seemed to take for granted that their support would come from a distance, and they would need room to park their vehicles. Little wonder then that churches are filled with people that don’t live in the same community and have minimal fellowship throughout the week. Its merely the logical outflow of their presuppositions, which took physical form in a flawed architectural design.

“Attend the church of your choice,” says the advertisement in the local paper. Some churches pull out all the stops to become the church of your choice, through cutting costs (no commitment required!) or offering free extras (youth programs, singles programs, seniors programs, donuts and coffee, video games, early service, late service, drive-up service, etc.). Others seek a remnant of those dedicated to particular expressions of doctrine. Reformed Baptist churches, for example, have a narrow market that includes reformed Baptists and disgruntled dispensational Baptists. Presbyterian churches pull in presbyterians and disgruntled reformed Baptists. Micro-presbyterian denominations pull in disgruntled presbyterians from other presbyterian denominations. I’m speaking tongue-in-cheek, of course, but they all take different approaches to gaining members and focusing their ministries. But the need they all have in common is the parking lot so they can draw people out of other communities.

So, one day I’d like to build a church building with FEW OR NO PARKING SPACES! A church in a town or village could forego them altogether, while a rural church might have a couple (but maybe stalls for buckboard wagons instead of parking spaces for automobiles). Such a building would reflect a genuine commitment to the local parish, not just lip service. It would also reflect a belief that communion is a serious commitment to a corporate body, one that really can’t be fulfilled by people that live so far away from each other that they only see each other on Sundays. Visitors to the kirk would be limited to actual vistors to the kirk, as distinguished from visitors to the kirk building.

Whether or not you agree with the parking lot issue, church building design reflects our epistemology. Even in our church, where we use a rented facility, we have recognized this and done some thinking about how we arrange the furnishings and what decor we use. Whether your walls are blank white panels or covered with pictures of Jesus and the apostles, they speak of your underlying faith and beliefs. What does your church say about what you believe? Any good examples to share?

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