"For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge." (Romans 10:2)

Tonight, as my girlfriend sat on the other side of the couch, I thumbed through a friend's copy of Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. (My friend is theologically evangelical, and apparently an ardent liberal. He had underlined a paragraph about the military being an inefficient way of creating jobs. Well, duh. The purpose of the military is to protect, not serve as public-works program.)

The book was an odd mix of things -- part of it seem to be taken from the latest conservative views on international development (lower tariffs, more free trade, microloans) and part of it seem to be leftover economically illiterate, guilt-driven 1970's neo-Marxism: first worlders got rich by stealing stuff from and exploiting third-worlders. (Which makes no sense: you can't get rich by robbing destitute people who have nothing to steal.)

In the edition I read, he laid on tons of guilt (much of it false) in the first 90% of the book, and then added a final chapter on what to do to improve things, which didn't seem to have nearly as much impact as the allegedly-dire situation in the first part. So I wondered if he'd had to drop his old solutions, and hadn't come up with a replacement, but just left the original guilt-trip materials in place anyway.

A few seconds with a search engine confirmed my hunch: according to his critics, Sider had originally been far more socialistic back in the 1970s, and has since admitted "I didn’t know a great deal of economics when I wrote the first edition of Rich Christians." [1] To his credit, he seems to have moderated his stance significantly.

But, in retrospect, isn't that a bit rich?

The whole point of his book, in Sider's own words, was that it wasn't just good enough to go to church -- God demanded we all get involved economically and politically. Yet apparently that "involvement" only included making demands and laying on half-baked guilt trips -- and no corresponding obligation to first do the hard work of trying to educate one's self.

Yet after giving advice on how whole nations should be restructured (and apparently also recommending things like global taxation!) to then admit you were utterly ignorant in the specific areas in which you "preached"? It's simply stunning.

Don't get me wrong: I have no doubt he's quite sincere, loves God quite a lot, and means well. But it's still quite an astounding bit of unintentional hubris.

Conservatives are complaining they don't like the current crop of Presidential candidates: among the front-runners, there aren't enough "real conservatives".

Why? I'll tell you: because there's a sense that there isn't demand for real conservatives. Like Huckabee's positions more than Rudy's? From what little I know, I do. But there's a huge mass of people out there who get to make a choice: will they turn out for the primaries? And who will they vote for?

If they don't vote for your candidate, then the problem isn't "the system" -- the problem is us, the citizens. We're getting what we asked for. Hate the kind of political animals who end up in Congress? Blame all the voters -- including those 'conservative' Iowa farmers who love their ethanol subsidies, and the alleged "rugged individualists" from Alaska who vote for the guy who promises to send 'em the most federal pork.

Not to mention all those people for whom "personality" and "caring" (or at least the pretense thereto) seem to be the main deciding criteria.

I'm not one of these people who runs around advocating an armed revolution. I also don't think you can change a culture by somehow getting one guy you like into power. You'll never get what you want that way: if the populace isn't good enough for what you're advocating, and doesn't buy into it, even if you somehow succeed for a season, your victory will be short-lived.

Instead, I think the work must be done on a near-individual level, through the painful business of persuading people to support better public and personal solutions and approaches. In particular, I'm shocked at how economically ignorant many Christians are: I hear the "social gospel" (really the "economic gospel") preached from the pulpit, at times, by someone who doesn't know the first thing about economics.

So, that said, I think I'm going to start writing with more concerted attention to those areas: trying to produce a few hopefully-cogent pieces which explain basic economics, logic, and other important foundational skills -- particularly to Christians, who seem, at times, strangely ignorant in this vital area. I get tired of seeing people suckered by each new con artist who comes along.

If this interests you, stay tuned. If you like what you read, mail it to a friend. (Or, even better, an opponent!) If you think it sucks, go ahead and blast me. (Constructively, that is.) Or just tune out and find something else more to your liking.

Regardless, best to all of you, whoever you are, and where-ever you're coming from.