Sky Links, 2-15-20

President Trump is planning on taking the presidential limo, known as "The Beast," for a ride at the Daytona 500

-Tim Pearce

The White House is working with NASCAR officials for Trump to do a lap on the Daytona track in Florida to start off the racing season on Sunday, sources told Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts, who said the plan is "not 100%" as the logistics are still being worked out.

NASCAR welcomed the president’s visit and named him the grand marshal of Sunday’s race, making Trump the first sitting president to hold the honor.

Evangelicals Still Agonizing Over Trump

-Rod Dreher

I was talking politics the other day with a close friend, a pro-life Christian who is a Bernie Sanders supporter. He doesn’t like Sanders’s views on abortion, but he is planning to vote for Sanders in the Louisiana Democratic primary (though he’s an Independent) for other reasons. I disagree with his prudential reasoning, but I recognize it as exactly that: as a thoughtful voter trying to figure out the best way to use his vote when all of the available candidates have what are to him serious lacunae in their positions. In other words, I think he’s simply wrong, not a bad person, or an accomplice to baby-killing, or anything like that. Similarly, I hope he realizes that if I vote for Trump this fall, I’m doing so as the least bad of available options, based on weighing prudentially the things I care about politically.

It’s not sexy to say it, but I don’t hate people who vote for Trump, I don’t hate people who vote against Trump, I don’t hate people who vote for Sanders, or anybody. I don’t believe we are facing a Twilight Of The Gods showdown between Good and Evil. I believe we are facing a particularly vivid, emotionally charged version of the usual choice between deeply flawed candidates. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t get worked up into spiting the Other, because if I put myself in their shoes, I can see why they would vote as they do, even if I think they’re wrong. Is this lukewarmness?

OK, it’s lukewarmness. But politics are not my god, so I don’t care.

Democrats Want a Prophet, Not a President

-Bobby Jindal

The Democrats have turned religious. Not in the sense that they espouse a belief in an omnipotent and benevolent Creator or eternal and universal moral principles. They are religious in the sense that they hold dogmatic beliefs that are impervious to contradiction by logic, evidence or experience, and cultivate a moral superiority toward unbelievers. The party that loudly prides itself on tolerance and diversity is increasingly intolerant in at least three areas.

First, Democrats have moved beyond traditional environmentalism, with its emphasis on regulation, technological innovation and market incentives to achieve incremental progress, toward a radical vision grounded in an unshakable belief in climate apocalypse....

Second, Democrats have moved beyond their support for keeping abortion “safe, legal and rare,” as President Clinton put it in 1992, to denounce anyone who views abortion as regrettable or proposes any limitation on it. The party seems determined to run out its few remaining pro-life members...

Third, Democrats have moved beyond demanding legalization of same-sex marriage to insist on rearranging social norms based on the belief in “gender fluidity.” What was once a civil-rights movement focused on marriage has moved on to demands for individualized pronouns, access to opposite-sex bathrooms and violations of parental rights...

National Prayer Breakfast reveals a great evil of the left

-Cheryl K. Chumley

President Donald Trump created quite a media stir when he stood at the National Prayer Breakfast podium and, in response to keynote speaker Arthur Brooks‘ call to love thy enemies and leave behind thy contempt, said he saw things a bit differently — that it was rather difficult to swallow the bitter bites of fabricated impeachment pushes with a simple shrug and “oh well” hug.

Well, Trump is right. Love does not mean tolerance of evil.

Neither does it mean acceptance of evil.

“I’m a follower of Jesus — the Jesus who taught each of us to love God and who taught us to love each other,” said Brooks, a Harvard University professor, ex-American Enterprise Institute president and author, at the breakfast. He went on, adding that “the biggest crisis facing our nation” is “the crisis of contempt and polarization that’s tearing our societies apart.”

He called for love of enemies and prayer for those who persecute. And on that, he’s quite right — that is indeed a biblical command for believers; that is indeed a call from Jesus for those of the faith.

But love and tolerance and acceptance of evil are not the same. And this is where the left not only goes astray, but also exploits.

“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” Trump said, taking the podium after Brooks. “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not [what they do].”

President Trump:

"(People of faith) like people, and I'll be honest, they sometimes hate people. I'm sorry. I'm trying. When they impeach you, it's not easy. I'm trying my best,"

"I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong." He also said, "I don't like when people say, 'I pray for you' when that's not so…"

What REALLY Happened At The D.C. Prayer Breakfast

-Lance Wallnau

The F Word: Forgiveness and It's Limitations; An Interview With David Augsburger

-National Association For Christian Recovery 

INTERVIEWER: It’s not a very easy topic to talk about and many of our readers have been hurt by all the ‘hurry up and forgive and forget’ stuff that you find in the Christian community. Maybe it would be easiest if we started off with a question about the asking for forgiveness side of things. Any advice about how to ask for forgiveness?

DAVID: Actually, I have a significant hesitation about ever encouraging people to ask for forgiveness. Requests of this kind can very easily contain a coercive element. When I ask you to give me forgiveness, how can you say ‘No’? You may not be able or ready to forgive yet. Asking can easily feel like demanding. It can become a kind of pious blackmail.

...The focus is not on asking them for forgiveness but on making amends. If I have injured someone, it is not appropriate for me to ask them to give me something. What I need to do is to become entirely ready for God to change me and then to make amends for the wrongs I have done. The focus is not on asking for something but on demonstrating repentance. I can go to the one I have injured and say “I have wronged you. I recognize that. I deeply regret what I have done. I will live now in a different way. And I hope that someday forgiveness will be possible between us.” This takes the injury seriously and allows the injured person however long they need for the process of forgiveness to move to completion. It is very different from just requesting that the person I have harmed change how they feel about me.

...forgiveness can be aiding, abetting and enabling. Forgiveness is the central function of the enabler. So, it’s understandable that people would reject this kind of forgiveness – it is part of the problem.

INTERVIEWER: So, if you’re only familiar with that kind of forgiveness – the kind that’s part of the dynamics of abuse – it doesn’t help to be told ‘you should forgive.’ That kind of forgiveness is what got us into the trouble we’re in now. We need a whole new way of thinking about, feeling about, and doing forgiveness.


DAVID: Maybe one way to get at this is to talk about the true nature of an authentic apology. It’s important to distinguish between a true apology and either an appeasement or what I call an account. An appeasement is when I suck up to you and put myself down. I might say: “It was rotten of me, I am terrible.” I grovel at your feet until you say “you’ve groveled enough now, you can stand up again, it’s OK.” In this process of appeasement I suck you into forgiving me because my talking so badly about myself makes you feel badly about the relationship or badly for me. Afterward the person who was tricked into forgiving by the appeasement finds themselves feeling resentment because there was no justice to it. A similar avoidance happens when I give an account rather than an apology. An account is an explanation of why I did what I did. It is a story that is designed to minimize my responsibility by explaining all the reasons for my behavior. An account avoids authentic repentance and immediately leaps to justification in hopes of exonerating myself. The person who accepts this kind of pseudo-apology finds themselves later bereft of any authentic connection with the person who is responsible for the injury. A true apology, by contract, involves simply saying “I deeply regret what I did. I was wrong. I am sorry. I will not act that way in the future. If there’s any explanation to be offered of why I acted the way I did, it can wait for some other conversation. For now I apologize.”

Devin Nunes on the endless Trump coup

-Siraj Hashmi

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-CA, discusses the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, what he discovered through his own investigation, Objective Medusa, and how this all led to Trump's impeachment and acquittal.

Pray for Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson's Year of Absolute Hell

-National Post

Jordan Peterson is recovering from a severe addiction to benzodiazepine tranquilizers and was recently near death in an induced coma, his daughter Mikhaila said.

He is being treated at a clinic in Russia after being repeatedly misdiagnosed at several hospitals in North America, she said.

The University of Toronto psychologist who became an intellectual hero to a global audience by aligning self-help theory with anti-progressive politics was first prescribed the medication a few years ago to treat anxiety after what Mikhaila described as an autoimmune reaction to food. His physical dependence on it became apparent to his family last April, when his wife Tammy was diagnosed with cancer.