If John McCain Wins

Tonight I give you the first of two pre-election posts. The second will be entitled "If Barack Hussein Obama Wins."

A surprising number of people in my contest have chosen to predict a McCain upset victory. I remain unconvinced. But if it should happen, I have the following observations for you:

• If McCain has not conceded the race by Wednesday morning (November 5), I recommend that you go out to your cars, yards, etc., and immediately remove every sticker, sign, or placard that might say "McCain/Palin" or any other such thing. An Obama loss would provoke scattered violence throughout our nation. I'm as serious as I can be. If you don't want your car keyed, your house egged, or your person confronted, then you'd better take those signs down and don't even think about gloating. The sole exclusion from this rule is C.B. Scott. If an angry mob of Obamaniacs surround and attack C.B., they have coming whatever they get and we should have no pity upon them.

• Wave goodbye to Sarah Palin. John McCain will put up a high-voltage fence around the Naval Observatory (where the VP resides) and instruct the Secret Service to shoot her if she approaches the gate and tries to escape. Her best shot at getting on TV after the election would be if she could land a cameo on Deadliest Catch. I'm a fan (my bumper sticker says "SARAH!" with a tiny "McCain" underneath), so I'm not saying that she doesn't deserve better. I'm just predicting what she'll get.

• McCain will be under tremendous pressure to bring "healing" to a nation deeply riven over the election's outcome. In response, McCain will do the sort of thing that he does when he's under that sort of pressure—he'll cooperate with Barney Frank or some other such wild-eyed liberal to draft some piece of "bipartisan" legislative agenda. In doing so, he'll be operating in the same way that President Bush did early in his administration before he learned better. For the Kennedys, Franks, Obamas, and other folks on the left, a firm cooperative hug is merely a better position from which to insert the stiletto into your back.

• The happiest people on earth will be David Letterman, Jay Leno, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart.

• Oprah will cry.

• Rush Limbaugh will say "I told you so."

• American troops will get out of Iraq on about the same timetable that they would have under an Obama administration.

• Barack Obama will not go gentle into that good night. He will not pull an Al Gore, freak out, gain 120 pounds, and jet around the world to encourage people to forsake travel for the environment's sake. He'll preserve his image in hopes of running again.

• The NYSE will not like a McCain victory. Stocks will plummet if he wins, albeit temporarily. Eventually stock traders will trade on news other than politics.

• Contrary to speculation, John McCain will easily outlive his term of office. Until some Democrat socializes it, for now we have the best healthcare system in the world. The President of the United States gets the best of the best. McCain would not, while serving, die of disease.

Stick around for the flip-side in part two.

Praisegod Promotions: Contest # 1

The winner of this contest will receive his choice of (a) The right to post an article on this blog of his or her own composition and choice, edited only to exclude obscene words or thoughts, or (b) The right to require the host of this blog to author and publish a post on any question of his or her own choosing.

Here's the contest: Name the precise date and time that the loser will concede the national presidential election, and who will be conceding. Of those who identify the correct loser, the closest time prediction will win. All dates will be Eastern Standard Time (unless you explicitly state otherwise).

Submit your entries into the comment stream. Fair Warning: Grosey tends to win my contests at the last minute.

Russell Moore on "Judgement House" Evangelism

Click here for an excellent column by Russell Moore. Here in the DFW area a group of liberal United Methodists have started to picket one of the local manifestations of the "Judgement House" (see the story that I watched here). Their on-camera objection was that the concept of divine judgment is incompatible with the concept of divine love (typical shallow inane liberalism).

Moore's article is something entirely different. He shows from a God-honoring, biblically-faithful perspective why these productions are such a misdirection from weightier things. Read and enjoy.

Program Your DVRs Now

Mike Huckabee's talk show will feature as a guest (among others) Bill Maher!

!!!!!

Your predictions please:

1. It will be a loser-leave-town cage match: All heat and no light.
2. Huckabee will wuss out and dodge any conflict with Maher over religion because Huckabee's truly a liberal softy at heart.
3. Maher will wuss out and pretend that he's really not trying to insult people like Huckabee…just the "religious wackos."
4. Maher will trounce Huckabee, who's really more politician than preacher and doesn't know enough religion and philosophy to hold his own against Maher.
5. Huckabee will mop the floor with Maher, who is, after all, nothing more than the modern equivalent of a court jester.
6. When Huckabee and Maher shake hands—actually touch—then…well…Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. :-)

Coming your way Saturday at 7:00 PM CDT on Fox News Channel.

The Current Void in Background Checking Technology

I'm so thankful that we live in an age in which churches are able to investigate the background of candidates for pastoral office so thoroughly. Churches can and regularly do perform criminal background investigations, credit investigations, driving investigations, and the thorough questioning of provided references. Here at First Baptist Church of Farmersville, when they called me nearly ten years ago, they asked my references to provide the names of people who knew me, and then asked those people to provide the names of people familiar with my ministry, going three levels deep to investigate my background.

What a great idea, since all pastors are not alike, and since there are some predators and bad apples out there who can do major damage to a church!

Some have suggested that the Southern Baptist Convention set up a database of sexual offenders in the pulpit, reacting, I'm sure, to the fact that the vast and rapid improvement in resources to investigate pastors still has not eradicated the problem of clergy abuse. What remains to be demonstrated is not that a problem still exists, but that any of the proposed solutions would actually accomplish more good than harm.

So, not all pastors are alike. But neither are all churches alike. I'm keenly aware of that fact, being blessed as I am. First Baptist Church of Farmersville, having been founded here in 1865, has never terminated a pastor and has never split. The congregation has faced good times and hard times, seasons of growth and seasons of challenge. We have weathered all of the storms of over 140 years and have done so, so far, without acting abusively toward those whom she has called to serve. Not every pastor, I have come to realize, enjoys the blessing of serving at a church like this one.

But the government does not maintain a database of abusive churches. No national bureaus report whether churches pay what they have promised to pay or deal fairly in their conduct of business or follow the rules of their own governing documents. Where do you turn when a Pastor Search Committee lies to you? Are you certain that the local Director of Missions will tell you the truth? Will he risk alienating a contributing church to give the honest truth to a rank stranger? Some will and do, and we all thank God for them. But sometimes pastors walk into abusive situations with no fair opportunity to learn all of the facts.

Here's hoping that the onward march of technology will result in some system that holds rogue congregations accountable for their actions. I would much rather that it be an informal system than a formal system. The staggering decline in the number of people interested in pastoring existing congregations is, to some degree, influenced by the abuses of these bad-apple congregations. There are fewer of them than we suspect, I am convinced, but the difficulty in identifying them poses a frightening prospect for pastors. The stories of pastors and their families brutalized by congregations may not outnumber the stories of good things done for pastors, but they certainly stick in the memory and move the heart. A great many pastors have had their zeal for ministry and their love of the church beaten out of them by cowardly bullies masquerading as Christians.

Ideally, churches and pastors should find one another in a free and open exchange of critical information. But it needs to be a two-way street. And it needs to be centered around the conviction that God brings pastors and churches together, and that He rewards the actions of anyone who deals honestly and justly in submission to His will and with respect for His children.

No, That's Not a Roar in the Background Audio

File this one under "Blind hogs and acorns."

My artistic skills are…well…questionable. That's why I'm so tickled that today's pumpkin carving turned out so well. Last year I carved my first-ever pumpkin. I haven't touched the tools since that day. What I wanted to do this year was create an Aslan pumpkin. But I couldn't find a suitable pattern anywhere online. I decided to do my own.

The project turned out to be much more involved than anything that I attempted last year. For one thing, I wouldn't have a simple pattern to follow. Indeed, I had to make my own pattern. I downloaded a JPG photo of Aslan from the recent movie. Using Photoshop, I added adjustment layers for Hue/Saturation and Brightness/Contrast to create a highly contrasted Grayscale image of Aslan's face. I then upscaled the image to fit my Letter sized page and printed it out.

Now, for the next complication. It became clear to me that a simple cutting out of holes (like I did last year) just wouldn't do. I was going to have to accomplish shading and highlights—partial shading of the gourd. And there's really no way to tell what it is going to look like (for a novice like me) until darkness falls and you light the thing up, although deeper cuts ought to mean brighter light, right?

So, I transferred some rough reference points (eyes, nose, mouth, outline of the mane, etc.) and worked the thing over with scraper and knives, and the movie below depicts the results. Honest…this is the first and only attempt that I made. I'm pretty tickled with it. If you aren't impressed, it's just because you don't realize how poor my artistic skills really are.

Enjoy. BTW, You'll need QuickTime to view it.

Thomas White in His Own Words

I've only got a couple of seconds to cobble together a quick post here. Not to post for myself, but to direct you all to Dr. Thomas White's own words on the matter of birth control and Christian ethics.

I'm curious as to everyone's thoughts.