Jim Prentice: Doing The Right Thing For All The Wrong Reasons

There was quite a bit of anger among conservatives in Canada last week when the boys in Ottawa blocked the sale of a Canadian (space) satellite division to an American buyer. Gerry Nicholls railed against the decision by a Minister of Industry who is admittedly not so inclined to keep industries prosperous, given some of his initiatives since inheriting the role last year. Others were more timid in their criticism, but wondered if the Reform spirit of free enterprise got lost during the move from Stornoway to 24 Sussex. Admittedly, when you have a decision that is hailed by the leader of the NDP as being “the right move” it should certainly give you pause to reflect on whether you’re not just having an off day!

With that said though, I think that the Harper government, keen to keep itself from acting too rational on matters dealing with our southern neighbours, lest our nation’s favourite case of racism bloom along with the other spring offerings, might have come to the right conclusion on this one, even if they still don’t have a good reason for why they did it in the first place. Consider, if you will, the wider context of this sale. Yes this was a sale between two willing organizations that was perfectly legal within the context of business and contract law and in appearances it appeared very free-trade and amicable for all parties. However, the aerospace industry and its derivatives, including satellites, is notoriously regulated the western governments involved. For MDA, this means that it cannot compete for U.S. business because U.S. law requires that contracts are rewarded exclusively to U.S. firms. In fact, if you look at why MDA wanted this deal so badly, it’s precisely because of this law — it would’ve allowed the company to compete in the massively larger, and far more lucrative U.S. ocean instead of being concealed within its present Canadian fishbowl. Not that we’re much better, screaming how any foreign interaction would be an immediate compromise to our sovereignty and national security.

At the end of the day though, if we’re going to play nice and laissez-faire, the least we owe to ourselves is to expect the same attitudes in return. NAFTA would’ve never worked for Canada if it was all give and no take. It’s also why North America’s flirtation with China is ultimately doomed in the long run as well. As soon as they actually get an economy over there, do you think the Chinese government’ll actually welcome the free flow of wealth out of its country, given the way it handles every other non-expedient situation it encounters right now? This sort of vigilance might have also given our local auto industries a fighting chance, if the union python wasn’t helping Japanese protectionism to choke it to death!

So in retrospect, I think that even conservatives will look back on the Prentice decision as one that was beneficial for a Canadian firm. Not that the man actually deserves any credit, given his willingness to invent guilt-by-association taxes to appease record labels and other blunders that indicate that Jim Prentice clearly doesn’t *get* how economies work! Of course, lost in the translation during this whole situation was the question of how MDA got into its mess in the first place; if Prentice were wise, he’d be spending the upcoming weeks with his American counterpart on that one…

Offensive Content: Only When It Offends the liberal Elite

How insane is Canada?

Or is it just Canada’s media?

We are already intimately familiar with the media elites, uniting in solidarity to cut off Canadians from viewing the “offensive content” produced by the Danish cartoonists a few years ago.  In their own eyes, they were righteous in their roles as gatekeepers of knowledge, to keep us from offensive content then.

But now, with Bill C-10 and the government’s efforts to save Canadian taxpayers from paying for porn and snuff, they are crying out that it is ludicrous to talk about censoring “offensive content”.  Open season, they call for!  Artistic expression they cry!

Unless it offends their orthodoxy that is.

Or maybe they are just railing about who makes the decision.  When it’s themselves, that’s fine, because they know what is right.

When it’s the Conservative government, it’s censorship of the arts.

The Decision to Downgrade - the End of the Dream Truck

For me, gas prices have finally reached the tipping point.

It is no longer even marginally cost-effective to own my truck.

I love my truck, don’t get me wrong.  It has been my goal to own a truck since I got my first car.

My Dad always had a truck.  I grew up with a truck in my family.  I remember back in Prince George in the early 80’s me and my brother sharing the center seatbelt in a ride into town, with my sister in my mom’s lap.  No crew cabs at that time.  It was just a ‘78 GM Sierra, with a whole passel o’people.  3 on the column, so I only had to watch my knees when Dad hit 3rd gear.

I learned to drive in that truck.  I remember at age 14 barrelling down a dirt range road outside of Edmonton with my Dad in the passenger seat, doing about 70, when I realized the road took a hairpin turn to the left.  I slammed on the brakes and made the turn at about 50.  I don’t know to this day how I managed to keep us out of the ditch.  Dad drove the rest of the way home.

We used the thing for everything - hauling garbage, moving stuff.  Camping.  We had an old Okanagan camper, that my brother and I rode all the way to Thunder Bay in, looking out of that little front window.  That truly was the best way to see the country - no seat belts, we could lie on our backs and read comic books or look out the window or whatever.  This was in the days before seatbelt laws were as draconian.  Would I do that now?  I don’t know.  Traffic is 100 times worse now than back then (especially since I live in Metro Vancouver, and I grew up in smaller towns elsewhere), so I think that it is more dangerous not to wear seatbelts.  But I digress.

That truck meant a lot to me growing up, and I figured when I had a family of my own, I’d have one too.  Not from some status thing (though it probably has a small part of my image of an ideal family), but from usefulness standpoint.  The things I knew I wanted to give my kids pretty much required a truck.  From hauling camping gear to hauling bikes to moving garbage to the dump, I couldn’t conceive of life without one.

When I got married though, my wife’s family never had a truck.  In the early years, her folks played a large role in how we spent our money, because they helped us out a lot.  When my wife didn’t support me getting a truck, and her folks didn’t either, and my folks were 2000km away, then I pretty much had to settle.  I did manage to get a 4×4 though - another of my passions.

It would be 8 years later that I was starting to think about something else.  My wife always knew I wanted a truck, so when I mentioned, at a time when we had the money to get something new, that I was thinking about getting a little commuter car and a beater 4×4 for the weekends, she said to me, “I thought you wanted a truck!”

That was July of 2006.  By the end of the month, I had my shiny red Dodge Ram.  I picked Dodge because at the time, they were the only of the full-size truck manufacturers who offered the ability for half the cylinders to be shut off on the highway for cruising, for fuel efficiency.  And it did save me.  I probably got at least 100km more out of a tank than regular trucks.

Since then, I have done everything I envisioned.  I have taken it four-wheeling, hauled at least a dozen loads of garbage, helped many people move stuff, pick up stuff.  I’ve picked up all kinds of building and renovation materials, IKEA furniture, and lots of stuff that no way would have fit in our minivan.  We’ve gone camping with it, loaded the back up with all kids of good stuff and headed off to the hinterlands.  I’ve really used it.

But the problem is primarily, I have used it to commute in.  My work is 30km away from home, and half of that is through the city.  Stop and go, hurry up and wait, idle and burn gas.

When gas was 60 cents a liter, it was no problem.  When gas was 80 cents a liter, it started to hurt how much gas was costing.  When gas broke a buck a liter, I started asking questions of myself, but I still thought  all the benefits I was getting from the truck were worth it.  And I enjoyed being able to help people out with my truck so there was a community benefit too.

But now, with gas holding steady over $1.20 and we aren’t even at the May long weekend yet, I have to reconsider.  When I am commuting in the truck, I will drop nearly $400 per month in gas.  Add to that a $450 lease payment.  Add to that my insurance, already pretty much maxed out in terms of ICBC discount, which when subdivided by the month works out to $210 per month.  That means, not even including maintenance costs, this truck is costing me $1060 per month to run.

Wow.

Now, compare this to a compact commuter car.  I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect half the gas costs - most of them have a 40 liter tank, and my truck’s was 100 liters.  I expect I will get a little more km out of a tank in the car (that was true with my old ‘86 Hyundai Excel, my first car) than I did with the truck, so count on 3 fills a month.  That’s $150, maybe $200 if I have to do 4 fills.  The lease (or financed) monthly cost would be in the neighbourhood of $250.  Insurance will probably be less, though I am not counting on that, so say $175 per month.  TCO/mo = $625.

That means I will save the family $435/mo from a downgrade.  We will still have the van (which I don’t really like to haul stuff in because if things spill, it’s carpet and I can’t just hose it out).  I could always get a utility trailer, or if I need a 4×4 a few times a year (really, I have only gotten to 4×4 3 or 4 times a year for the last couple years), I can rent one.  The savings will still be significant.

If I wasn’t commuting, I could rationalize keeping it.  But given the primary usage, it simply doesn’t make sense anymore.  It sucks, because it represents the death of a dream, an ideal.  It will also effect my whole social network, who may not have relied on me for my truck, but certainly appreciated when I was there for them with it.  Sadly, they did not subsidize my truck (and couldn’t be expected to anyway - its primary use was mine and it only makes sense I should bear the burden for its cost).

Life could change in the future.  If I change jobs to something closer to home, it could become affordable again.  But for now, it seems like the best decision.

Celebrity Endorsements May Hinder, not Help Campaigns

Costas Panagopoulos, an assistant professor of political science at New York’s Fordham University, has pointed out that Oprah Winfrey’s support of Obama may have done little for the Obama campaign, and may have actually hurt Oprah’s personal popularity.

To be sure, Oprah remains one of the most popular figures in America, but recent data suggest her popularity has eroded. One possible explanation for this decline is that her endorsement of Obama and her support for him may have done more to damage impressions of her than to strengthen support for Obama. Then again, Obama may become the next president of the United States, and he may feel he has Oprah partly to thank for going out on a limb for him — not a bad situation for the talk show queen.

Still, a lesson celebrities may extract is that political endorsements carry the risk of alienating fans, often without the reward of considerably boosting support for the candidate. While celebrities are certainly entitled to express their political beliefs — just like every other American — it is possible that the public prefers high-profile entertainment personalities to stay on the tube and off the stump.

Politics and Religion: Why Are We Talking Religion?

Many have wondered why a site called The Politic winds up talking about religion so much. There are very good reasons for this. Firstly, religion drives some of the most significant events occurring in the world around us. The question of Islam is affecting world politics to a level unprecedented. Understanding the difference between various Islamic sects from Sunni to Shi’ite to Ismaili to Wahhabi is critical for the discerning citizen today trying to understand what drives people to terror attacks and fatwas.

But at the same time, Christianity - what it means, what it claims, and how it affects those who follow Jesus - is big news too.  Many people who discuss religious extremism like to compare radical Islam to fundamental Christianity.  But is this a fair comparison?  Is it appropriate for TV shows like Law and Order to product episodes that paint an extremist Christian group stoning people as a conceivable reality?  These types of questions cannot be answered without an understanding of what religions teach and how they differ.

Sadly, religious literacy is becoming rarer and rarer in the 21st Century.  Unless you are an active follower of this or that religion, you may have no idea what they actually believe and how that affects them.  It used to be that Universities, as part of their goal of a “well-rounded” education, would make mandatory comparative religion courses.  Few now do.  Even the options are scarce.  It also used to be that the average citizen knew what the Bible said.  They knew the content, they had memorized passages, they knew the stories, they knew the characters, their virtues and their failings.  They may not have been followers of Christianity, but they knew what it was about.  I am a part of the generation that came after.  I didn’t even know that King Solomon was a Biblical character until I was 16 years old.  I knew the name Jesus, but I couldn’t have named any of his 12 followers.  I had heard the names, Hezekiah, Ezekiel, and Jehosaphat, but I thought they came from tales of the Old West, not from the Kingdom of Israel ca. 1200 BC.

People think they know what Christianity is and stands for, but they know it second, or third hand.  It is something their parents, or grandparents believe, and that’s because they’re old and stuck in their ways.  They’ve probably never even asked them what their faith means to them or why they believe it.  However, now more than ever, a knowledge of what people believe and why they believe it is critical.  What makes today’s situation so concerning for many is that the public thinks they know what Christianity is about, and so makes judgements (incidentally, the exact same judgements they rail against from “Christians” who are thought to be “judgemental”) based on erroneous information or simple ignorance.  If people acknowledged their ignorance, the problem wouldn’t be so bad.  It’s the fact that people think they know but don’t that can and will lead to bigger and bigger problems and conflicts between those who are religious and those who are not.

The reality is, for those many who are religious - whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, their faith doesn’t just play a part in their life, it defines their life.  Their religion informs not only their daily decisions but also governs what issues in the public sphere are important to them.  At first glance, this could look extreme, but take a step back.  What do you believe?  Everyone believes in something.  If you don’t believe in a God or Gods, then you are your own god.  Everything you do, everything you consider important stems from your belief in yourself as the primary purpose and priority in your life.  This is not extremism.  This is internal consistency.  To condemn another for having consistency with their faith is to condemn yourself and your own consistency with what you believe in to be important.

This is a very important concept.  People who are religious have every right both to express their faith informed convictions in public and to hold public office.  To deny them such is to discriminate against people by religion, which is expressly forbidden by the very tenets of freedom this nation was founded upon.  Yet, we have seen in the ridicule of Stockwell Day’s leadership campaign and the more subtle statements made against many politicians of faith in recent elections, that there is an undercurrent of opposition and censorship against those who exercise these fundamental freedoms.   An opinion is an opinion, and it should be irrelevant whether the opinion was arrived at via reading the Bible or via reading Rene Descartes.

Which leads me to my last point.  Debate surrounding abortion, and also surrounding the gay marriage issue has often been framed by leftist writers and speakers as being about the “religious” trying to impose “their morality” on “the rest of us”.  This is a false assertion because there is no such thing as a faith-neutral political position.  We are all informed by our beliefs, and so our political positions all have equal weight.  There are many people who do not believe in the God of the Jews or the God of the Christians or the God of Islam, who were and are opposed to gay marriage, or abortion for that matter.  It is ludicrous to suggest that all arguments against those two issues, or any other issue for that matter, are only founded upon the principle of “imposing your religious belief” on people.

This is not to say that there aren’t people who are Christians, or Jews, or Muslims (I should have said earlier, these are not meant to be taken as an exhaustive list, but just as examples) who seek to impose their morality on everyone.  Sadly it is true that there are traditions in Christianity who have in the past sought to implement “Christendom” (and most Muslims today still appear to ascribe to the belief that Islamic Law or Sharia Law should be the law of all lands).  I believe that this has no place in politics myself.  However, there is a big difference between believing that certain political positions are in fact quantifiably the best for society, and believing it is “God’s Will” to impose certain political positions on everyone regardless of their religion.  The religious have every right to state what they think is best, and vote for what they think is best, regardless of the reason - that is what democracy is all about.

It should also be noted that much of what we here in Canada considers leftist, socialist style government has its foundations not in Marxism but in the social gospel movement of the early 20th Century, where many churches began to support governmental advocacy and service to the poor and the ill.  Previous to this, churches did this work apart from government.  During that period, for the sake of efficiency, advocacy was made to centralize such social programs to prevent redundancy and make it easier on everyone.  Because at the time, church and country were much more synonymous than now, nobody minded giving more in taxes if they didn’t need to give to support the program offered through a church.  The best illustration of this trend is the fact that Tommy Douglas was a baptist preacher.  They believed at that time, that making the government more Christian would make society more Christian - the Christendom idea mentioned above.   The ideals they held of charity and mercy are admirable, but the question about the best means to go about them are political.  Hence, they need to be discussed.

So, what I am trying to say is that while this site is called “The Politic”, I do believe that religion has a place and should have a voice in the political discussion.  We need to make clear for people what is at stake, and also communicate what beliefs are and mean so that the dialogue can be with understanding instead of ignorance.  Discussion is about understanding the other side and finding common ground.  Ruling the other side out of hand simply because your faith is different from theirs only results in alienation, xenophobia and fracturing of the body politic.

Paul Champagne, Hewlett-Packard and the tax-payer

Can we destroy any incentives that may lead to this corruption from happening again? or any other corruption that is happening right now? I wonder.

Sometimes we can be suckers for punishment to the point where we are blind to the bigger picture of corruption in public office or the civil service. I do not care whether Paul Champagne goes to jail or not. I just want my money back!

Even if we can not get all of the money back, I would say that realistically, firing him is probably sufficient punishment given that he is going bankrupt. Try applying for a job with “I swindled the tax-payer.” written on your forehead and unexplained blank time periods on your resume.

By the way, I think a few people in the Department of National Defense should be fired too.

“All Canadians were victims of these offences and all no doubt felt a sense of betrayal and loss because of them,” said Justice Ann Alder who sentenced him to seven years in jail. Sorry, not good enough. In fact, I think the judge’s statement is highly naive because not all Canadians were victims at all. [Maybe being naive is the best thing we can do? The justice system is part of the civil service too.] Some clearly benefited by being his clients. We should never forget the middlemen.

Hewlett-Packard reached an out-of-court settlement with Champagne before he was convicted of fraud. If you read the rest of the article, you find a lot of tax-payer’s money was spent by Champagne in many different extravagant ways. As it turns out, many assets “owned” by Champagne but paid by the tax-payer are now going to Hewlett-Packard! Great!

Unless you grow your own vegetables, raise your own livestock, chop your own wood, fetch your own water and weave your own wool, there will always be a middleman. I am not saying that all middleman are complicit and I do not want to cast aspersions on Hewlett-Packard. My hope is to point out that how we deal with corruption should be more profound than putting one guy on a chopping block. Bureaucracy can be a nasty network.

Richard Warman Tells Canada’s Top Conservative Bloggers: “SILENCE!”

The rubber has met the road. The game is afoot. Richard Warman, a former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, who has famously taken the inside knowledge of the workings of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act to create himself a lucrative channel of cash, has taken his hurt feelings to the court system, serving the National Post, Kathy Shaidle, Kate McMillan, Ezra Levant and Free Dominion with a lawsuit for defamation.

What he is really saying to every single Canadian Conservative who writes anything on the internet is “Shut the hell up!” He wants us silent, so that he can go on extorting funds from libraries, students, and everyone who dares to think differently from his brand of political orthodoxy.

This lawsuit will be won, but the costs are being footed by the defendants in these early stages. Their fight is our fight. Their fight is for every conservative voice in Canada. I for one stand behind them 100%.

If you read this, stand up for freedom of speech. Pick one or all of the defendants, and give through their sites to their paypal, to support their defence. Not all of them have responded on the net, but here is Kathy’s post on the subject - a link to her paypal is at the bottom. Here is Ezra’s. Here is a post from Free Dominion.

Overplayed

You all know the songs that get played endlessly on the radio these days: Paralyzed, Hey There Delilah, songs like those. You can’t listen to a mainstream music station for more than half an hour without hearing one of those two, I can pretty much guarantee it.

It’s the same when it comes to politics. Certain ideas and concepts get repeated over and over, until they become the conventional wisdom. Some of these things can be disproved simply by looking a little, but no matter how untruthful it is, the facts will always be mismangled into an unruly juxtaposition of figures that morphs reality to fit into the “conventional wisdom”.

One of these such fairy tales is thus: The Republicans cannot win in ‘08.

The facts say otherwise. All you have to do is glimpse at a recent Gallup Poll to see that McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, holds a marginal lead over either of the two remaining Dems. While this could very possibly fade once one wins the nomination and memories of the bitter primary battle fades, the fact remains that the decision is far from set in stone. And yet, talk about it in conversation and most people will tell you that George W. ruined any chance the Republicans had at the White House.

Another is that Conservatives have only a slight chance of forming the government here in Canada at any given time. That the left wing is far more powerful, and holds a strangle hold on Canadian politics. While I would have to agree that the left (NDP) and the centre (Liberals) tend to be more powerful combined against the right (Conservatives, PC, Reform, SoCred, etc), you have only to look at history to see that the Liberals are not so dominant when facing a united right. In recent history, they haven’t bested one since Wayne Gretzky’s rookie season.

You can’t just accept the overplayed, conventional wisdom. Even the media can see through it, when they choose to do so.

 

 

Segregation Returns to Little Rock - Victory for Progressives Everywhere

Elizabeth Eckford, a shy fifteen year old, was the first black woman through the doors of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, one of nine students who represented an early victory in the civil rights movement. Until that day, all of the students in the most prestigious high school in the city were white. Her story is breathtaking and sobering. Read it all.

How sad that the school has reverted today to segregation in the name of progress:

Central High School looks as imposing as ever, but over the past 50 years, its innards have changed unimaginably: the school is now more than half black. It’s all misleading, of course, because Central is really two different schools, separate and unequal, under one roof. The blacks go to different classes, sit on separate sides of the cafeteria, have different, and far lower, levels of performance and expectations.

And it echoes all the way into Toronto of 2007.

It’s amazing what you read when you follow unrelated links over at Kathy’s blog.

The Essence of Christianity: Part 1 - Yes, There ARE Club Rules

Each Sunday, I will be exploring the realities of what it truly means to be a follower of Jesue of Nazareth, the one Christians refer to as the “Anointed One” who will save humanity from the tragic situation it has gotten itself into. The series is meant to expand upon previous entries and so a running list will be updated each week on each post to assist the reader.

---

If you go to the Conservative Party’s website, you can still find a page detailing it’s now-historic founding principles, which start of like so:

The Conservative Party will be guided in its constitutional framework and its policy basis by the following principles:

* A balance between fiscal accountability, progressive social policy and individual rights and responsibilities;
* Build a national coalition of people who share these beliefs and who reflect the regional, cultural and socio-economic diversity of Canada;
* Develop this coalition, embracing our differences and respecting our traditions, yet honoring a concept of Canada as the greater sum of strong parts;
* The Conservative Party will operate in a manner accountable and responsive to its members;
…

These are, in terms of ten year-old boys, the club rules for CPC members. Political parties, notoriously open-ended in order to capture as many volunteers and recruits as possible, still realize the necessity of functioning within a certain boundary of parameters.

If I were to ask someone on the street what an environmentalist was, I would certainly hear about how it was a person who saw natural protection as a high priority both personally and for society at large. A more detailed explanation might go into how such a person spends their times and energies working to develop such things as sustainability, preservation and recycling.

Just as in the first example, it’d be fair to say that an NDP MPP would not be welcome into the club without first making some changes with regards to what they believed, and in the second example a person who regularly dumped tires in the local forest and had no outward concern for nature wouldn’t be much of an environmentalist, so too there are limitations on who can be a Christian. Contrary to popular belief, matters of the spiritual and faith are not so ambiguous that it just requires a person to say that they’re a follower and that’s it!

In a previous post that I wrote as a preamble for this series, I began to establish the grounds that proved God’s very real presence in our lives. I’m going to make a judgment call here and state that no challenger to this premise offered a sufficient explanation for how God could not exist today in a universe as complex or real as ours is; anyone is welcome to disagree however I link to the March post, and its predecessor, to allow each reader to make their own call on that matter. Recognizing the reality of God’s existence though brings about a profound realization; we’ve had many religions invented over history, religions that recognize the presence of God in human history, therefore it’s a natural assumption to believe that God has indeed tried to reach out to us and play a role in our history.

This is an important tenant for Christians since the relationship between God and us is the foundational motive for everything that Christians believe. God isn’t a concept, or a jolly green giant up in the clouds, but has a real personality and desires a relationship as social and tangible as the one that two human friends would share. This realization is pointed out continually from Genesis to Revelation throughout the Bible which brings us to the next essential understanding of Christianity: its literary manifestation on Earth.

To say that the Bible is crucial to the Christian church is one of the biggest understatements ever. In the show Arrested Development, there was a point where the main character and his son are standing outside of a courthouse and the father states that life and faith would be so much easier if the guidelines were just written down for them and sent down to them from on high; the camera then pans up slightly to a giant monument of the Ten Commandments that are dangling above. The scene is perhaps the greatest tragedy in the series for me, not because of anything related to the show, but because the scene is played out in so many lives today, including in those who sign up to the Christian club on a trial basis. If Christianity is going to be about anything, it would stand to reason that the *something* came from somewhere, be it a person or instructions (in this case, it came from both!). The idea that you can make it up as you go along wouldn’t square things in the Conservative Party, Greenpeace, the CAW, or thousands of other organizations, so why is the church any different? Christianity is also not a Choose Your Adventure guide where you can take the massively popular ideas like all men being created equal, caring for the poor, sick, and jailed, or turning the other cheek but leave out the more out-of-fashion ideas on divorce, devotion to God or sanctity of life because it personally clashes with what you want to believe in.

That in turn, brings us to the most important aspect of Christianity that we of a spoiled society have the biggest trouble with: it’s not about us at the centre, it’s about God! Sure, we get a pretty sweet deal out of it when you consider the salvation from hell, inner peace and fellowship that we’ll share with other believers, but time and time again, the Christian life exemplifies how much God could’ve found other ways to bring praise to Himself without involving or, particularly, blessing us. This is the humility that everyone knows is intertwined in Christianity but few experience.

Since this is just a beginning for what will be a long series, I will point out that much of what was written today will be discussed in greater detail during the coming weeks (I plan to write a post each Sunday for this series). For now though, just the realization that to be a Christian means to be a certain kind of person with specific priorities and specific beliefs is the primary but essential place that things need to start at before anyone can take faith in Christ seriously — and that is why the word Christian is far too diluted today!

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