Faith

From an article of the same title by Claire Hoffman in the LA Times:

A study released Thursday by the Parents Television Council, a frequent critic of the TV industry over such issues as broadcast indecency, found that prime-time shows in the last year dealt with religion half as much as the year before. When they did, the Los Angeles-based group said, religion was cast in negative light more than one-third of the time.

The study was the council's seventh annual report on the subject. This year, the group pointed an angry finger at the Fox network, specifically such shows as "The Family Guy" and "House," that it said consistently mocked religion and people of faith. A Fox spokesman declined to comment.

...it gives reality shows high marks for showing frequent, unscripted outbursts of faith.

Francis Collins, author of "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief," was on The Colbert Report last night. The director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, Collins considers DNA "the language of God," the means He used He was profiled in the LA Times a while back. There was a debate of sorts between Collins and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins in a recent issue of Time. It was an interesting read. I'm going to read Collins' book. I certainly don't have all the answers, and I'm sure he doesn't either...but I'm interested in ways to synthesize what we observe in the world with with we observe in the Word. Here are the video clips from Colbert:

From the LA Times article:

He believes in evolution and in the resurrection. He wears a silver ring with a raised cross and works at a dining-room table painted with the double-helix of DNA... Collins considers evolution irrefutable; he has no doubt that all life emerged from a common ancestor over millions of years. But he began to ask himself whether God could have set this amazing process in motion... ...perhaps evolution is a logical, even elegant, way to populate the planet. Maybe God intended mutations in DNA over the millennia to lead to the emergence of Homo sapiens. Once man arrived, maybe God set him apart from the other creatures by endowing him with knowledge of right and wrong, a sense of altruism and a yearning for spiritual nourishment.... Polls have found that 40% of scientists believe, as Collins does, in a God who actively communicates with man. Among elite biologists, however, the figure is much lower, about 5%...

From David Plotz's discussion of 2 Kings chapter 3 in his Blogging the Bible series:

Another appalling war. The bad king of Israel allies with good King Jehoshaphat of Judah to attack the Moabites. The armies end up in the desert without any water. The Israelite king begs Elisha to save them. Elisha says he would let the Israelites die without a second thought, but because he admires Jehoshaphat, he'll help. Elisha then reveals himself to be the Funky Prophet: He can only conjure the power of the Lord when music is playing. A musician is summoned, and Elisha delivers a lifesaving flood of water. Here's the bad part. Elisha also orders the armies to block every Moabite spring, cover Moabite cropland with stones, and chop down every Moabite fruit tree. They do it, and triumph. But let's hearken back to Deuteronomy, chapter 20, when the Lord establishes laws of war. One of them, explained very carefully, was that you may not cut down enemy orchards. The trees are innocent parties and must be left unmolested. Cutting down fruit trees is a 50-year war crime, ruining the lives of your enemy, as well as their children's and grandchildren's lives. This is presumably why God banned it so emphatically. So, it's confusing and tragic that He encourages it this time. (Alternative theory: Elisha is a false prophet, and these were not God's orders.)

The passage from 2 Kings 3:14-19

14 Elisha said, "As surely as the LORD Almighty lives, whom I serve, if I did not have respect for the presence of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, I would not look at you or even notice you. 15 But now bring me a harpist." While the harpist was playing, the hand of the LORD came upon Elisha 16 and he said, "This is what the LORD says: Make this valley full of ditches. 17 For this is what the LORD says: You will see neither wind nor rain, yet this valley will be filled with water, and you, your cattle and your other animals will drink. 18 This is an easy thing in the eyes of the LORD; he will also hand Moab over to you. 19 You will overthrow every fortified city and every major town. You will cut down every good tree, stop up all the springs, and ruin every good field with stones."

The passage from Deuteronomy 20:10-20

10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. 16 However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them-the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites-as the LORD your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God. 19 When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees of the field people, that you should besiege them? 20 However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.

What do you think? Why would Elisha encourage them to cut down all the trees in violation of the Deuteronomy passage? I don't know...when I read the passage from 2 Kings, it isn't obvious to me that Elisha is encouraging or commanding but rather simply predicting. Approval of cutting the trees doesn't seem to be necessarily implicit in his statement...though I would probably assume it but for the Deuteronomy passage.

Kathleen Parker recommends the documentary "In the Womb: Animals" to be shown on the National Geographic Channel on December 10:

The film...may be the best weapon yet for the pro-life movement. That wasn't the purpose of the documentary -- the first ever to record animals in the womb -- but these images of gestating life pack a powerful wallop. The mind makes a natural leap to questions of how we consider and treat the pre-born.

Here are a couple reviews of The Nativity Story (in theaters this week): ChristianityToday.com Slate.com Neither seems to have too much praise or criticism for the film.