The terror “event” over Detroit on Christmas Day hits closer to home for me than it may for many other people around the country. I live in Detroit. The house I grew up in, the house my 81 year old mother still lives in, is in the landing pattern of Detroit Wayne County Metropolitan Airport where Abdulmutallab had planned to detonate himself with the intent of causing catastrophic loss of life in the air and as much collateral damage on the ground as possible.

So when President Obama held a press conference to update the country on his administration’s response to this near “man made disaster” in the skies over Detroit, you can bet I was hanging on every word. He made his nine minute statement having just emerged from a high level meeting with his cabinet to formulate a response to the Flight 253 attack.

The president called his cabinet together “because we face a challenge of the utmost urgency,” but evidently not so urgent that his aides didn’t inform him about the terror attack over Detroit until three hours after the plane landed. He didn’t make a public statement about it until three days after it had happened. He continued his Hawaiian vacation for ten days after it happened. Remember that President Bush was roundly criticized for continuing to read to kindergartners for five minutes after the attack on 9/11.

The president’s non-pulsed response to a critical breach of airline security not seen since 9/11 is inexplicable unless one concludes that the president does not view his actions or those of his administration as in any way responsible for the breach. In his response to the terror over Detroit he spoke of the “systemic failures” of the  ”intelligence community” and “the U.S. Government,” as if these were entities without a face totally disconnected from his presidency. In fact, in his statement President Obama took no responsibility at all for the failures leading up to the attack over Detroit. Rather he informed us that 

 ”…the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way. And it’s my responsibility to find out why and to correct that failure so that we can prevent such attacks in the future.”

So the president calls a press conference to inform us that he isn’t responsible for the system failing. He’s only responsible for finding out why the system failed. He sounded more like a high school football coach whose team is down by 12 at half time:

“Time and again we’ve learned that quickly piecing together information and taking swift action is critical to staying one step ahead of a nimble adversary. So we have to do better, and we will do better. And we have to do it quickly.”

While the president takes no responsibility for “the systemic failures” which allowed a terrorist with a bomb in his pants to board a U. S. aircraft, it seems individual members of his cabinet do take some limited responsibility:

“I appreciate that each of [the members of my team] took responsibility for the shortfalls within their own agencies.”

The president has obviously surrounded himself with imbeciles. He admits that his closest advisers are responsible for “shortfalls within their own agencies” which led to an attack (not a potential attack) on United States citizens on an aircraft bearing United States markings and nobody gets fired?

Nobody gets fired because this president doesn’t view his administration as in any way responsible for what happened over Detroit on Christmas Day. As a matter of fact, I’m not so certain the president even holds the terrorists responsible. The way the president sees it, it’s we – the American people – who make the terrorists want to hate us, maim us, kill us, and disrupt our way of life because of how we have mistreated Al Qaeda enemy combatants at Gitmo! And he’s serious:

“Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interest and become a tremendous recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. In fact, that was an explicit rationale for the formation of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”

Enough of this blaming America. It’s time to lead, Mr. President. It’s your “system.” It’s your “intelligence community.” It’s your “U. S. Government.” You’re no longer the Senator from Illinois throwing partisan bricks at the occupant of the White House from the safety of your perch on Capitol Hill. You’re the president. Not of the world, but of the United States. You have been for nearly a year. It’s time to stop blaming “the last eight years.” It’s time for you, Mr. President, to take responsibility for allowing an attack on the United States, thwarted though it was by heroes who were able to accomplish with mere brute force what billions of tax dollars and government bureaucracy was charged with doing but failed to do.

Your first priority as Commander in Chief is to protect the citizens of the United States, not our image in the eyes of the world or the sensibilities of those who hate us. Lead, Mr. President, or get out of the way.

Two blogs you should be following:

David P. Murray’s Head, Heart and Hand and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/davidpmurray

The Church Report and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thechurchreport

Rediscovering Values is Jim Wallis’ latest book. It is a prescription for economic recovery: applying (out of context) social justice texts from the Torah, together with selective texts from the Gospels (primarily the Sermon on the Mount), while advocating the application of some aspects of Shariah law to the United States banking system (see page 128 of his book).  The result is an over emphasis on social justice and zero emphasis on the necessity of the gospel to fundamentally transform the fallen nature of corrupt sinners before values can have any meaning at all.

Wallis makes the error of applying theocratic texts from the Old Testment, together with admonitions of Jesus from the Gospels (which are limited in their application to those who have forsaken all, denied themselves, and taken up their cross to follow Him)  to the economic and political realities of secular America.

This is a fatal flaw. To quote the Apostle Paul, “the law is good if a man uses it lawfully” (1 Timothy 1:8). There is no better illustration of a man using God’s law unlawfully than Wallis’ Rediscovering Values. Wallis is counting on the law (the Torah, the social justice texts of the Gospels) to do what only the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ can do – make a man righteous so that he actually desires to “do justice, show mercy, and walk humbly with his God.” Man by nature – and by the law – is incapable of pursuing these things outside of his own self-interest.

Wallis is either ignorant of or intentionally ignoring gospel realities, including man’s fallen nature and the remedy for sin accomplished through the incarnation, humiliation, suffering, death (vicarious atonement) and exaltation of Jesus Christ.  He wants to generalize Gospel principles for people who have not been transformed by the Gospel, the end result of which is a kind of humanistic salvation that cleans the outside of the cup but leaves the inside of the cup corrupt.

Bottom line, Mr. Wallis: You can’t apply the words of Jesus to people who have no use for Jesus as Lord. Jesus didn’t come to give general principles for economic recovery or moral values. He came to revolutionize the economy by demanding that we recognize him as Lord – which is why he was ultimately crucified. Wallis is attempting to get the people who crucified Jesus to live by Jesus’ rules without Jesus as Lord.

Wallis’ out of context use of Scripture is too numerous to catalog here, but one of the most egregious is his use of Leveticus 25 (the year of jubilee) to justify forced governmental wealth redistribution. Kevin DeYoung, while not specifically responding to Wallis, offers a proper exegesis of Leveticus 25 in its historical context, which Wallis would do well to consider. You can read DeYoung’s exegesis here:

Social Justice and the Poor (Part 3)

Mark Driscoll makes an interesting point in this article at Resurgence:

 “…administrative structures grow to prepare for numerical growth…”

Most churches wait for the growth before adding ministry programs and never see it because the structure isn’t in place for growth to happen. This structure must include the right programs with the right people leading those programs. 

What are we waiting for? In what areas do our “administrative structures” need to grow in order to see numerical growth? What are these “adminstrative structures”? Should there be a programming priority (children’s ministry before youth ministry before worship ministry before…)?

From Symantec, the internet security people, comes this disturbing list of 100 online search terms used by your kids (ages 18 and under). For kids under age 7, “porn” is the number four most searched for word. “Sex” is number four with kids ages 8 – 18.

The study also shows that many kids are using search engines to find ways to disable or get around website blockers installed by parents.

What are the implications for youth and children’s ministry in your church? Kent Shaffer at ChurchRelevance.com offers this:

From a children’s ministry perspective, it is important to realize that statistically quite a few 7-year-olds in your class are searching for porn and exposing themselves to things much more serious than what traditional lessons cover. Obviously, children’s ministries cannot be straightforward about sex, but being too vague doesn’t work either.

Perhaps there are subtle ways to layer lessons with mature spiritual principles. Ideally, children’s ministry lessons should clearly yet subtly word things in a way that trains, helps, and ministers to the kids who are hurting and/or have picked up bad habits while simultaneously “going over the heads” and still teaching the kids who still have their innocence. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done.