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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 21 June 2011

Unless Congress acts to raise the debt ceiling by August 2, the U.S. could default on its bills for the first time in history. The debt ceiling is an oddly named term meaning the amount the US can borrow to pay its bills.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s not doom and gloom and howl at the moon film noir. It’s not Dooms Day. This isn’t “Repent, For the End Is Near,” though a case might be made for this point of view. This is real economics, real politics, and real morality all in one.

The United States holds a $14.4 Trillion debt, which climbs by the moment. In fact, if I wrote the number to the last dollar it would be out of date before I finished this paragraph, let alone posted text or checked my website tomorrow morning for comments. It increases, meaning deepens, at mind-boggling speed.

The U.S. Treasury borrows $4 Billion, that’s with a B, per day to pay American debts. This in a country with the world’s largest economy yielding an annual GDP of $14.7 Trillion (2010). Yet we’re also enduring a 9.1% unemployment rate.

Since 1981, the national debt has gone from $1 Trillion to $14.4 Trillion, most under Republican Presidents. The debt ceiling has been raised 78 times in the past fifty years, 10 times since 2001. Almost one-half of American public debt is held by China and Japan. The US pays $225 Billion per year in interest.

To say that the US economy, perhaps even culture or country, is in trouble understates the problem. There’s nothing about America’s economics or its political culture that suggests we cannot experience the violence recently witnessed in Greece in response to so-called “austerity measures” and resulting lower standards of living—all traceable to Greece’s own profligate spending, economic denial, live for today culture.

The issue at hand is not simply the need for Congress to act to raise the debt ceiling by August 2 so the country will not default on its bill payments. That comes first, but the real issue is whether congressional leaders and the President can work together, which is to say can Republicans and Democrats work together, to identify the hard decisions and solutions to bring the country’s budget into line, reduce the national debt, and reinvest in our children’s future. To date no political party has risen to the task.

The Republicans do poorly or do irrationally. The Democrats do nothing at all. President Barack Obama’s record on the budget deficit and national debt is simply to add to both—through extending the Bush tax cuts, tiptoeing around Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, fighting not two, as Bush did, but three foreign wars, and offering Stimulus bailouts that put the country ever more deeply in arrears—all while talking about “bumps” in the road.

Neither party is impressive, nor are its leaders. So we keep going deeper in debt. Meanwhile, we put up with the likes of Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Don’t let partisan pundits fool you. Neither side of the aisle is in league with the Devil. Neither party has God on its side. Don’t believe politicians or pundits who opine there is no solution.

Economics may be the dismal science, but it’s not rocket science. There are solutions to the national debt crisis.

The question remains: do we have leaders with enough creativity and courage to identify solutions, help the American public understand them, and resolve to see them through to enactment and outcome? Canada did in the 1990s. But at the moment, I have my doubts we have leaders who can rise to the level of statesmanship required.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 20 June 2011

Rob Bell’s Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And The Fate Of Every Person Who Ever Lived has taken the Christian community, if not the general public, by storm. It’s become a bestseller in the process. It’s also become a highly controversial book provoking considerable backlash from opponents and impassioned affirmations from proponents. These reactions have been immediate and continuing. Some reactions have been based on reasoned consideration, some pretty much on emotion, but reaction nonetheless. And controversy sells books.

Commentary based upon in-depth study from people schooled in relevant disciplines usually takes more time to develop. This is one thing that makes Michael E. Wittmer’s Christ Alone interesting. Reports indicate he and his publisher wrote and produced the book, respectively, in less than two months, yet Wittmer, a seminary professor with an earned doctorate in theology, gave Bell’s book and viewpoints the careful, thorough, theologically astute evaluation they deserve.

The core of the controversy generated around Love Wins deals with whether there is indeed a real hell, whether the Scripture teaches people who reject Jesus Christ will one day be eternally punished in hell, and whether a God who loves can allow such a thing to happen, thus perhaps giving people who need it an after-death chance at salvation. In the end, Bell seems to suggest no one can be consigned to hell by a God whose “love wins” over all forces, including an individual’s rejection.

While Bell argues otherwise, rejecting or even re-envisioning the idea of hell, asserting the existence of post-mortem salvation, and claiming everyone, universally, ultimately goes to heaven are ideas on the edge if not out of the mainstream of historic orthodox Christianity. Hence the noisy reactions.

Wittmer approaches the matter with a Christian’s fellowship, avoiding denigrating Bell as a person, and a scholar’s care, evaluating Bell’s theological arguments with Scripture. He does both well.

The crux of Wittmer’s critique is that Bell does the following in his book:

--frequently omits without comment consideration of multiple important passages of Scripture dealing with topics the book addresses, including salvation or the “lake of fire";

--constructs a weak, one dimensional, humanized view of God that does not align with the Sovereign God of the Bible;

--offers hope he cannot substantiate scripturally, or as Wittmer says, “Our hopes are only as strong as the reasons we have for holding them”;

--argues for post-mortem, that is after-death, second chances to accept salvation, yet provides no scriptural justification for this view;

--presents a view of heaven more in common with Purgatory than with Scripture’s description of a New Heaven and a New Earth;

--contends all men and women are saved or at least will be saved, a view called universalism, and does not seem to grasp the depth of human depravity and sin described in the Bible and evident in the world, or recognize that if this view is true, it effectively eliminates a need for redemption and Jesus’ sacrificial death, burial, and resurrection;

--presents hell as not much more than our worst days and worst issues here on earth, a place people may stay for only a time and experience purging, none of which aligns with Scripture’s description of hell as an eternal place of judgment, suffering, and separation from God;

--opens the door to other religious views and interpretations, particularly as apply to salvation, that do not comport with Scripture;

--changes the meaning of the Gospel creating as Wittmer puts it, a “tale of limitless happy endings” wherein “nothing is ever really at stake.” In this approach, Wittmer says the Gospel is “the tepid news that you don’t really need saving, that you’ve never been lost except in your imagination, and that God already accepts you just the way you are.”

Wittmer graciously and effectively demonstrates why Rob Bells’s Love Wins should not be considered an expression of historic orthodox Christianity or of latter day evangelicalism. By so doing Wittmer has done a service to the Christian community, offering theological and philosophical perspective on what Bell shares, thus helping people develop their own understanding of the worthiness of Bell’s writing.

Bell is entitled to his doctrinal views. It is, after all, a free country. But the popularity, good feeling, creative communication, and contemporary nature of his views do not make them correct in terms of what the Bible says.

While Bell’s earlier books were quirky, interesting, and thought-provoking considerations of tradition and culture, Love Wins jettisons what the New Testament books of 1, 2 Timothy and Titus call “sound doctrine.” Bell is no longer tossing aside traditions that may no longer be justifiable. He’s tossing aside biblical teaching he finds uncomfortable or doesn’t believe fits his view of what he wants to be true. Love Wins is therefore not simply controversial but careless and confusing. Consequently, the book should not be trusted as a guide to what the Bible teaches.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 18 June 2011

America has been at war for nearly ten years and two presidential administrations. Responding to 9/11, the U.S. initiated military operations in Afghanistan October 7, 2001. Thus far, the War in Afghanistan has cost 1,623 American lives, with over 10,000 wounded.

Not quite two years later, March 20, 2003, the Bush Administration decided to go after “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, to later take down dictator Saddam Hussein, and later still to defend freedom and re-establish stability in the region. The weapons of mass destruction proved not to exist, Saddam is gone, freedom is tenuous, and stability is a non-starter. To date, 4,462 Americans have lost their lives in the Iraq War and more than 33,072 have been wounded.

On March 19, 2011, with NATO the Obama Administration launched “Operation Odyssey Dawn” air strikes over Libya. Ostensibly no American casualties have yet occurred in Libya, but it depends upon how you count.

The cost thus far of these wars is about $424,820,059,200 in Afghanistan, $783,721,570,100 in Iraq, and $608 million so far in Libya. The costs are increasing so fast a dollar estimate is incorrect as soon as it's printed.

You’d be forgiven for asking, “All this for what?” Today in Washington, D.C., as well as amongst the Republican aspirants to the presidency, no political leader can give you a clear answer, just politics-speak. None of the worn out arguments any longer hold water.

President Barack Obama won office in part because he voted against the Iraq War and in part because he promised to bring troops home from Iraq and draw them down in Afghanistan. He hasn’t delivered, and then he started his own military action in Libya, defended by liberals who had verbally assaulted President George W. Bush for doing the same thing in Iraq.

Obama Got Osama May 2, 2011, the Al Qaeda terrorist we’ve been chasing for a decade. He’s a goner, but we’re still fighting.

Recent CBS and “USA Today” surveys respectively indicated 51% and 59% of Americans believe it is time to end the War Without End. I agree.

It’s time to bring American troops home safe, sound, and soon. Not soon, now.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 18 June 2011

Big Blue celebrates its one hundredth anniversary this week, quite an accomplishment for any business, even more so one in technology. IBM’s four full pages in “The Wall Street Journal” acknowledged where the company made mistakes, what it learned, and how it tried to create a culture oriented to the long-term.

Out of 25 top United States corporations in 1900, only 2 continued in operation in 1960. Of the top 25 companies in 1961, only 6 still exist today. So IBM’s 100 years is indeed impressive.

What did IBM learn? “Not to confuse charisma with leadership,” “Leadership often requires shedding emotional attachment to (its) heritage,” and “Leaders must show up in defense of the future.” Notice all these points are about leadership. IBM learned and demonstrated that leadership that grows, that looks proactively forward, that acts with integrity reinforces a company’s potential for surviving and thriving.

Leadership is not the end of an organization, but it is most certainly one of the key and essential means to determining the end of the organization. Leaders must be future-oriented or by definition function behind the curve. On behalf of their organizations leaders must stir and stimulate their organizations even to the point of discomfort—that is, if they and others within truly want the organization to improve by competing with itself.

Thomas Watson, Sr and Thomas Watson, Jr set IBM on a path to greatness that faltered. Louis V. Gerstner, Jr rescued and resuscitated IBM, putting it back on track. Gerstner wrote about IBM’s radical self-induced culture change in one of the best leadership books I’ve ever read, Who Said Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround.

Leadership involves more courage than most people think. It’s easy to slide, to duck, to wink at percolating problems. It takes courage to tackle them head on. IBM has been blessed with more such leaders than most organizations can claim. Consequently, it’s celebrating its one hundredth birthday.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 14 June 2011

“McEnroe/Borg: Fire and Ice” is one of HBO’s “Legends and Legacies” summer documentaries. I watched it earlier this week and recommend it highly. It’s 60 minutes of interviews and matches worth watching; indeed, if you like tennis, it’s downright enjoyable.

Bjorn Borg is the stoic Swede who took the tennis world by storm as a teenager with Viking good looks and an even more stunning game. He won six Wimbledon tennis championships in a row and dominated tennis during ten years of sensational baseline tennis in the 1970s and early 1980s.

John McEnroe is the volatile New Yorker who took the tennis world by storm as a teenager with long frizzy hair and a frenetic energy that burst from both his racket and his mouth. He eventually ended Borg’s Wimbledon run and beat him in the U.S. Open final in exceptional serve and volley, yell-at-the-umpire (“You can’t be serious), incredible tennis.

Nothing surpasses Borg and McEnroe’s 1980 Wimbledon final on Centre Court at the All England Club. McEnroe saved 7 match points and finally won the 4^th set tie-breaker 18-16 in what is yet today considered one of the game’s most riveting, indeed one of sport’s most spellbinding, events. Borg came back to win the decisive 5^th set 8-6, and with that, the championship. They went on to split other matches, but Borg soon retired and McEnroe followed not long thereafter. Neither man won a major championship after the age of 25. Like Ali and Frazier, McEnroe and Borg needed one another.

Borg and McEnroe’s rivalry is compelling in part of course because of the highest level of tennis excellence they consistently drew out of each other, but also because of their friendship. As they both said in the documentary, they liked and respected each other from the beginning. Now they use the term “love.”

I watched nearly all their matches over five years including every point of the 1980 Wimbledon final. There’s not been another rivalry like them. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have produced some great matches, including especially the 2008 Wimbledon final. But they do not have the personalities of McEnroe and Borg and they have not made the same kind of impact upon the game, much less beyond it.

Watching “Fire and Ice” brought back a lot of memories. I was 28 in 1980, not too much older than the players. McEnroe and Borg’s antics, excellence, and accomplishments, their contrasting styles and personalities, their resolve and friendship were and are inspiring. Their head-to-head rivalry ranks with Palmer and Nicklaus. The fact they’ve survived various life and business foibles with their friendship flourishing represents what sports at their best are about.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.