Here are links to articles that ran in the May 2012 Samaritan Ministries Christian Health Care Newsletter:

Cover story: “Political talk and the Christian.” Answering the question “Should Christians avoid political conversation and action?”, Dr. Ritch Boerckel says “That is a bit like asking if Christians should avoid breathing air.”

Rules to implement health care law require separate abortion premium. By Jed Stuber.

Temptation and sin: Where’s the line? By Ed Buch of PureLife Ministries.

Member Spotlight: Dr. Jonathan Sarfati and a sidebar on his challenges to atheist Richard Dawkins. By Michael Miller.

“Hate Crime“: Term obscures difference between sin, crime. By Rob Slane.

But does anybody actually read their policies?

By Jed Stuber

Rules to implement the new federal health care law require every individual in qualified plans to pay a separate monthly “abortion premium.” According to analysts from the Bioethics Defense Fund, the rule also instructs insurers to hide the abortion coverage from advertising or information listings in state exchanges.

Abortion Memorial (Photo credit: DrGBB)

Pro-life groups including LifeSiteNews.com, Americans United for Life, The Family Research Council, LifeNews.com, and LifeIssues.org have reported on the rules since they were issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on March 12, but the story has been overshadowed by the Supreme Court hearings on the individual mandate and doesn’t seem to get enough attention to make national news.

Here’s how the rules work. Insurers may include abortion coverage as part of health care plans approved under the state exchanges to be created by the health care law. All enrollees in such a plan must make a payment of not less than $1 per month into an account exclusively for paying for abortions.

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Scientist and apologist Jonathan Sarfati of Creation Ministries International doesn’t mess around. When he tackles the evolutionist view, he goes right to the top.

That’s why his most recent book, The Greatest Hoax on Earth?, took on evolution’s and atheism’s most popular promoter, British scientist Richard Dawkins, whose most recent book is The Greatest Show on Earth.

The subtitle of Dawkins’ book is The Evidence for Evolution. That of Jonathan’s book is Refuting Dawkins on Evolution.

’Nuff said?

“Dawkins is widely regarded as a champion of evolution and Darwinism and atheism,” Jonathan says. “He’s a vocal atheist, anti-Christian, and evolutionist. It’s very interesting he wrote his book on the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth because he admits that his previous books really did not prove evolution, but assumed it to be true. In The Greatest Show, he was trying to remedy that by producing the best possible arguments he could for evolution.”

But, in Greatest Hoax?, Jonathan shows that “here’s the best they can do, and here’s how it can’t add up.”

Jonathan ably plows through Dawkins’ arguments point by point, highlighting not only the weaknesses in Dawkins’ science, but his failures in logic as well.

For example, when Dawkins complains in Greatest Show that the human body is inefficient and wouldn’t have been created by an intelligent designer as it is, but more likely is the product of haphazard evolution, Jonathan deftly exposes the fallacies of his argument.

“An assertion about what a designer would or would not do is actually a pseudo-theological argument, not a scientific argument that mutations and natural selection could produce a particular complex design.” (Emphasis in original, page 266.)

Creationism works better as science because it doesn’t have the “prior assumption of materialism, which is being a hindrance to science in so many ways,” Jonathan says. (Materialism maintains that material things are all that exist and that nothing supernatural can exist.)

Instead, the creationist view “encourages research in the beginning because we’re given dominion over creation (Genesis 1:28) and the great early scientists believed that they were following God’s dominion then by doing scientific research,” Jonathan says.

“Atheism and evolution can’t justify the scientific endeavor.” 

By Rob Slane

Special to the Christian Health Care Newsletter

Watching the Trayvon Martin case unfold from here in Britain, I note that the American media and political classes seem to suffer from the same disease that the media and political classes over here have contracted. That is, without being in possession of practically any of the facts of the case, they jump to the hastiest of conclusions, pronouncing their verdicts with the kind of certainty which really ought to be reserved for divine omniscience alone. Whatever else we can say about the case, there appears to be an awful lot of Proverbs 18:13 going on: “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.” (KJV)

The shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman seems to have reopened a lot of old wounds that we might have hoped had been firmly closed. At the time of writing, it is not clear whether Martin was the innocent victim of a racially motivated crime, or whether Zimmerman’s claim of acting in self defense against an attacker stacks up. What is clear though is that many have used the incident as an excuse to hitch up the “race” bandwagon, alleging—without any possible means of knowing—that this was a “hate crime” in which Zimmerman was driven by an ideological hatred of black people. Whatever did take place, may the truth be established and may Zimmerman be punished severely or acquitted accordingly!

But whatever the outcome of the case, what are we to make of the phrase “hate crime?” The term is a relatively modern invention, first being popularized after the Second World War. Unfortunately, like many modern expressions it tends to obscure much more than it reveals. Biblically speaking there is simply no such category as a “hate crime,” as distinguishable from another type of crime. There are “hate sins,” but no “hate crimes.” According to Deuteronomy 19:6, if there was a killing, the judges of the case needed to establish whether the one responsible for the death had a motive—some kind of grudge against the victim. If one was found, then the killer was deemed a murderer “worthy of death,” but if no motive was found, then he was deemed to be “not worthy of death.” In other words, while it was vitally important to determine whether the killer had a motive, the only reason for this was to establish his guilt or innocence. It mattered not what type of hatred it was. All that mattered was to establish whether he was guilty of murder, in which case he would be put to death, or to establish if the killing had been accidental. The crime was therefore in the murder alone, not in the motive. The motive itself, while sinful, was not of itself a punishable crime.

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If you abide in Me, and My Words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

John 15:7

“Ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.” How can this be?

Parents and other human authorities can never keep such a promise, no matter how great their love. None of them have unlimited resources, so some things are just beyond their ability. It is a promise that only God can keep.

There are also some things loving parents will not give, even if they have the ability to give them. They will not give things to their children they know will be harmful. Likewise, there are some things Jesus will not give us, because He knows they would not be good.

How can we know what to ask? Jesus says that we must have a solid connection to Him—we must abide in Him. He also says His words must abide in us—transforming our hearts. When these things are true of us, we can ask whatever our heart desires, and it will be done for us. There is no limit to what our Lord can give.