by Jed Estrada

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, … and spends himself in a worthy cause.” They say a critic has an easy job, that he can spend his time building nothing, and still make a livving in the profitable field of breaking down the creations of others. The church is one organization that is probably criticized more than any organization in this country, besides the government. This may likely be that because the church has the great commission to be the light in the world, and one can always find something else that it could be doing… or not be doing. But as necessary or useful even constructive criticism can be, it is always greater to point out achievements, and success. In that standpoint, I believe it is extremely noteworthy to mention what the church is doing right. 

The Christian community in Elmira is extremely vibrant, and has been increasingly active in the past few years. Many churches organize street ministries, or open their doors to the community in a variety edifying and educational programs. Probably the biggest example of church activity was the Let Elmira Live rally last May, in which more than 10 churches sent volunteers, and supported the ministry. But it wasn’t just a week long project that ended with the final rally at the Elmira Christian Center, it was the beginning of a greater movement of the churches within Elmira. On August 12th, I sat in on a meeting of several churches discussing the success of Let Elmira Live, and how they were following up with the people who had become saved through it. One lady told of how their church sent a group to Hawthorn Court, and the kids came running out asking, “Are you from the Elmira Christian Center?” It struck me that it is an incredible thing that the community recognizes the church’s involvement, and even looks forward to it coming to into the neighborhood. 

Another example of the way the community sees the church took place two weeks ago at the Living Word Evangelical Free church on Lake street, not far from Pigeon Point. Some kids were playing in the church park, and began to break a window on the shed with rocks. The other kids called the youth Pastor, Mark Walker, who lived down the street. When Mr. Walker arrived, he found the adults from the neighborhood stopping the kids, and scolding them. “This is God’s house” said one parent, “and you don’t treat it this way.” The interesting thing here is the sense of ownership that the parents in the neighborhood have for the church property. Even though they don’t attend church, they recognize it’s presence, and feel the duty to protect it. Living Word reaches out to the kids in the community with Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, and a 5 Day Club ministry at the Walker’s house. The kid’s parents have even come to church picnics on occasion. This builds a trust, and a mutual connection with the neighborhood, and is great way for the church to gain respect in the community. When parents see how the church takes their kids in, and shows them love, and teaches them, it shows the parents that the church is part of the social structure. “We see it as an opportunity to get close to them” said Mr. Walker. “You can’t force the issue, but when they open their hearts then there is an opportunity to share God’s love.” 

The Bible tells us that we are the salt of the earth, and to let our light shine among men. Not merely a salt that adds spice, but as a cleansing, and preserving component. And not just a light so the world can see our works, but a light that shines the way to Christ, who is the Light of the world. A church that is built on this firm foundation is one which Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:18 that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against.” I am encouraged to see a generation growing in churches that recognizes their responsibility in the community, and a generation in the community that respects the role of the church. I firmly believe with many other Christians in this city that if we persevere with Faith and Hope, that a revival is truly possible in our land.

On July 30th, President Bush signed a bipartisan bill to increase the money spent on AIDS in Africa from 15 billion, to 48 billion. This historic bill is what Bush calls a picture of the generosity of the American people, which the Wall Street Journal reports will save 5 to 7 lives. people. Since the benefit of life is so significant, I would be very reluctant to criticize such an expensive gift. But I am left to wonder whether our government is just looking for opportunities to spend money. I don't know how many people can grasp the concept of a multi-trillion dollar national deficit, but it basically means that the next several generations are going to be paying off our nations debt. Our leaders may have promised that they wouldn't raise taxes, but by spending so much on credit they are essentially passing the bill down to the next generation.

On the same day that President Bush approved the AIDS package for Africa, he also signed a bill to bail out  the gigantic Freddie Mae and Fanny Mac organizations, and cover up to 400,000 home owners, according to the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch. It is one thing that the government has spent billions of dollars on disaster relief. It is still another that it spends additional billions on disaster relief in other countries. But for the government to become involved in the 'free market' is a vast overstepping of it's constitutional bounds, and will invariably cause further problems for the market. Not only does this give government a foot in the door of the market, it also opens up dependency for yet another area... our failures. The market bill also included a provision to create a federal backstop to ensure the future stability of the mortgage giants. Businessmen learn judgment and discernment for a reason, so that their companies don't go bankrupt. But now the government has sent the message that they will bail out important corporations who go broke.

So doe generosity and good intentions make it right? Giles St. Aubyn, an author and historian said "It is melancholy to reflect that Mankind has suffered more from ill-judged philanthropy than calculated malice. The road to hell is no less harrowing for being paved with good intentions." To give a gift is a worthy thing, but not if it is not yours to give. It is one thing that our government wishes to use its taxpayers' money abroad, but it is quite another to borrow money against the future, and bind that future in debt. Just because the government deals in the trillions of dollars doesn't mean that basic principles of economics and saving do not apply.

The Heritage Foundation, a research and educational think tank published an article entitled My Neighbor's Keeper? Rethinking Responsibility and the Role of Government, in which it noted that "Government is not solely-- or even primarily--responsible for taking care of our neighbors. That responsibility belongs to each one of us as participants in a variety of relationships and overlapping communities."

So what is our Christian responsibility? When the Bible says to give to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar and to God the things that belong to God, it is addressing an individual responsibility. Our taxes are due to our government, and our gifts are due to God. The AIDS crisis in Africa may be beyond individual generosity, but the poor of our community are always with us. Just because our government gives welfare to the needy in society, doesn't mean that we don't have a responsibility to minister to them. To sit back and ignore them just because they have handouts from the government will only cause more dependency, and make it harder for them to achieve success. An old Chinese proverb says "Give a man a fish, and you have fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for his life."  As we reach out to help our neighbors, we can teach them to be responsible instead of dependent, and perhaps our politicians will learn to temper their generosity with prudence.

In 1995, the Department of Justice reported a dramatic decrease in serious violent crimes. After a steady rise of criminal violence, this year marked the greatest drop ever, and started a steady decline that continued through the turn of the century. There have been many theories about these facts, including the notion that this is due to the legalization of abortion in 1973. Several professors and lawyers have published papers and articles citing this explanation. Their reasoning is based on statistics that since the poor, uneducated, and single parents are more likely to have an abortion, and since most crimes are committed by 18 to 25 year olds from poor, single, and uneducated parents, according to even more statistics, that the millions of abortions per year since 1973 basically aborted a generation of criminals. Aside from the obvious discrimination and defamation of the poor and uneducated, this reasoning relies far too heavily on a slippery slope fallacy. Is this how society justifies abortion? By saying that they would all grow into criminals anyway?

Lliberal professors saw this as an easy opportunity for put in a plug for abortion. Liberals have been waiting for the chance to jump on the benefits of abortion ever since it was legalized. But what was really the reason for the decrease of crime in1995? Well if we were trying to twist events that into a political statement, it would be just as easy to say that this was because of the newly elected republican legislators, or that the conservative appointed judges of Reagan and Bush Sr. (who according to the Law and Order research society were much less supportive of criminal defendants) were finally starting to curb crime. But in all objectivity, it should be noted that neither of these politically polarized remedies have much of a direct connection on criminal actions, and crime rates themselves. I think we should take a look at the obvious: the statistics.

The Department of Justice uses two sources to create its statistics. It compiles documented arrests, along police and FBI reports from the Uniform Crime Report, but it also relies heavily on National Crime Victimization Survey. The NCVS polls an average of 77,200 households per year, randomly selected by the Census Bureau. The survey asks questions on domestic violence, and is launched from the principle that there are many crimes which aren’t reported to the police. However, in 1989 the NCVS went through a redesign, in which the methodology of the survey was changed, purportedly to improve the gathering of information. The questions were also changed to be more direct, according to the Bureau of Justice. This new method was phased in between 1993 and 1995, in perfect timing with the documented decrease in crime. The interesting part is that the decrease was almost entirely according to the NCVS portion of the statistics. The police arrests and reports for serious violent crimes remained roughly the same, with only smaller decreases towards the end of the 1990s.

It is a sad thing when we become used to evil. This has happened in our nation after 35 years of abortion, where it is starting to become just another side for a politician to take, and not the life and death struggle that it truly is. It is something that is mentioned almost as an afterthought from the pulpits, and just another statistic in our country. Now we have come to the point where people in our nation are showing it to be a benefit. What is truly sad is that the Justice system in our nation is devaluing life on the one hand by narrowing the margins, and lowering the statistics of serious crimes, and then our professors credit the murder of millions of unborn as our solution to crime. Yet even with the sharp drops on the graphs, and the coincidental introduction of a survey redesign, there is still no logical correlation between abortion and crime rates. The statistical evidence that tries to link the two also fails to take into account the ratio of crime with population increases. Dr. John Lott, professor of Law at Yale University, and John Whitley, an Australian economist published their own rebuttal article, in which they applied the theory to all the states, and all the statistics, including abortions before the Roe. vs. Wade decision. Not surprisingly, the evidence did not show a proportional decrease in crime. "Many factors that reduce murder rates, but the legalization of abortion is not one of them. Of the over six thousand regressions that we estimated here, only one regression implied even a small reduction in the murder rate” said their summary.

Do we really understand the value of life today? Do we feel anything when we hear that 50 million babies have been aborted since 1973? Does it hurt us to know that 300,000 people were murdered in Darfur? Do we weep for the 80,000 people killed in an earthquake in Myanmar? A friend on mine recently asked me, "what is life worth, and what is worth dying for?” For example, 60 million soldiers died for us in WWII for the freedom and safety of America and her allies. So would it be worth if the reality was that abortion was decreasing crime? The difference between taking a life and giving a life, is ultimately love. Sacrifice is noble, and the Bible says that there is no greater love. It is a sacrifice that is vastly opposite to the selfishness that defines abortion. Killing only leads to more death, or as Dr. John Lott says, “Essentially, the message is, if you choose death, you get death. With interest.”

There are some things that never get better with time. Gas never gets cheaper, taxes will never go down, and the concept of penny candy exists only in Norman Rockwell's nostalgic paintings. It happens by the law of gradients, or in Economics the "boiling frog" principle: that if you turn up the heat ever so slowly, a frog will boil without ever realizing it. After all, who noticed the price of bubble gum go from 1 cent, to 5, to 10, to 25?

 Sadly, the same is true for morality. From generation to generation, the line between what is acceptable and what is appalling sinks further and further. Many of the problems we face today can be directly tied into a break down of values from yesterday. Deborah Brezina, a faculty member for Summit Ministries, and author of several books calls this phenomenon “points and counterpoints in history.” Or consider it this way: the family used to be an icon of society. Dad's and their sons used to go fishing, or hunting together. Now many kids are hunting for the fathers they never knew. Justice used to prevail, and the Law would lock the crooks up, so children would be safe in the streets. Now we lock ourselves in our houses, while criminals roam the cities. When did these changes occur, and what caused them? The truth is, morality has been on a downward spiral for a long time now. Divorce became an accepted norm long ago, and kids who grew up without their parents didn't learn to be good ones. With marriage no longer being sacred, there came a rise of immorality. And can you guess what impact that has had on the value of life itself? Society is accepting abortion as legitimate, and now battles over euthanasia are not too distant. So it shouldn't be any surprise that after immorality has been accepted for so long that we are now fighting homosexuality. After all, if everything that family stands for is eroded, why should the very structure of family be respected any more?

Arthur W. Pink, a Christian evangelist and Bible scholar noted "We can form no conception of social virtue or felicity, yea, no conception of human society itself, which has not its foundation in the family." A. W. Pink himself was converted to Christianity due to his father's constant and patient admonitions from the Bible, and having lived in both England and the United States, he was able to witness the necessity of strong family values to the well being of society. "No matter how excellent the constitution and laws of a country may be, or how vast its resources and prosperity, there is no sure basis for social order or public as well as private virtue, until it be laid in the wise regulation of its families" said Pink in his book, An Exposition of Hebrews.

So what is it like when generations are firmly rooted in families? It still exists today, despite its disappearance from popular culture. Meet Al and Shirley Russ, long time residents of Elmira. In a city that is questioning the basic components of a family, (specifically a man and a women) Al and Shirley just celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary this past May.

Al was born in Canandaigua, and Shirley was born in Addison. They met in Elmira, at the intersection of Broadway and Franklin Street, where Shirley waited for the bus in front of the gas station that Al worked at. Al Russ joined the military at age 22, and he and Shirley were married in Rantoul Illinois, where Al was serving at the Chanute Air Force Base. Mr. Russ is a veteran of WWII, in which he served with General Chennault's famous 'Flying Tigers' in China as a mechanic. Shirley Russ went into nursing, and served in the Women's Nursing Core during WWII. Al and Shirley had two daughters, and today they have many grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Two of their great-grandchildren currently serve in the military; One in Afghanistan, and another in the Navy's maintenance division, while one of their great-granddaughters has also pursued nursing. But the greatest way that their children are following their steps is in their faith, which has been passed down throughout their family's generations.

So what is the secret to Al and Shirley Russ's strong family? "Good church affiliation" says Al Russ, and Shirley adds that strong Christian faith is also the key. These are some of the basic principles of traditional family values, and Shirley notes that a lack of fellowship with Jesus is part of the problem today. Or as A. W. Pink said back in 1954, "a nation is but the aggregate of its families, and unless there be good husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, there cannot possibly be good citizens. Therefore the present decay of home life and family discipline threaten the stability of our nation today far more severely than does any foreign hostility." The effects of the decay that A. W. Pink saw are sadly apparent today, and we are coming to a time when such degeneration will indeed threaten the very stability of our nation. The good news is that there still are many strong families today, and as we continue to build on the sacred and solid institution of family, we may see a generation that halts the moral decline, and institutes and upward spiral that lifts this nation to the heights that great men once dreamed of.

TIME Magazine’s 2007 Person of the Year title was chosen from a unique and intriguing group of individuals. The runner-ups for the title were notables such as Al Gore, for his dedication to the environment, Hu Jintao, the communist president of the People's Republic of China, the internationally acclaimed author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, and U.S. General David Petraeus, who TIME says “fought America's most difficult foreign war — and one at home” However, the man who rose above all these others in the bold, earth-changing leadership that defines the title was Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia. In a feature article entitled “Choosing order before Freedom,” TIME Magazine recognized Putin for his “extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it.”

 The problem is, the Kremlin’s leadership of Russia has run contrary to the free and democratic principles of America and it’s allies. Even worse, Putin has been contrary to the U.S. in its efforts to fight terrorism and promote security. During a time when the United States is attempting to build nations, and promote democracy abroad, Russia has seen an increased infringement of freedom and democracy since Putin came to power. According to the Heritage Foundation, the Kremlin and its supporters have systematically been gaining control of all the key areas of influence over Russia. Since 2003, all television networks are run directly by the government, or by groups that support it. Practically all Western broadcasting corporations are also banned from Russian networks. It is also disturbing to note that in the past decade several Russian journalists and critics have mysteriously been murdered. The most recent death of Alexander Litvinenko, in 2006 by radioactive poisoning, was directly linked to the Kremlin.

The media hasn’t been the only field where the Putin has sought control. Private, and non-governmental organizations have recently been subjected to excessive restrictions, and regulations. Foreign involvement, or “interference” as it was put, was prohibited in January 2005, and the following year Putin enacted a law that gave the Kremlin the authority over all private and non-governmental organizations which threatened the “national interests of the Russian Republic,” as defined by the Kremlin. The law also allowed government officials to attend and observe any and all meetings that a private organization might hold.

Over the course of Putin’s presidency, the Political system in Russia has become almost completely one-party. Through a program of propaganda and intimidation, opponents of Putin have slowly and quietly been replaced by supporters, and allies. Local government has been either circumvented or heavily controlled, and the power of direct representation has been extremely diluted, and limited. In 2001, Putin signed a law that required any political party to have a minimum of 10,000 members before it could have representation, with an additional requirement of at least 100 members in each of Russia’s 89 districts. Given the restrictions on free media, this made the rise of a new party practically non-existent. Furthermore, 3 months before the 2004 elections, Putin signed a law censoring criticism of political candidates by the media. In Russia’s 2003 Parliamentary elections, Putin’s supporters had won 300 of the 450 seat parliament, and in 2004 Putin won a second Presidential term in a widely acclaimed landslide victory, which many westerners viewed with suspicion.

So is this an example of the leadership that TIME Magazine admires in its Person of the Year? TIME magazine insists that the Person of the Year award is not an honor, nor an endorsement. It is rather intended to be a candid recognition of the individual who has had the most significant impact on the world “for better or for worse.” After all, Adolph Hitler was named Person of the Year in 1939, and a year later Joseph Stalin given the title for 1940. Believe it or not, Osama bin Ladin was a runner-up for the 2001 title, which was given to New York City’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani instead, due to a large public protest. However, the so called “order” that Putin has established is nowhere along the lines of Mayor Giuliani’s heroic leadership, and in international policy Vladimir Putin has been more of a foe to the United States.

Even though Iran has defied the U.S. as well as the United Nations, Russia has persistently engaged in selling weapons to Iran. The Center for Strategic and International Studies published a report in December 2006 detailing Russia’s weapons trade with Iran, and noting the increased military contracts since Putin became President in 2000. According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a well-respected observer of global military transfers, Russia provides 70 percent of Iran’s military imports. Furthermore, and despite a United Nations sanction on nuclear technology, Russia helped to fund and build Iran’s nuclear power plant, which it claims is only for peaceful purposes. In addition to Russia’s obvious support of Iran, it has also been the only nation to hold diplomatic relations with Palestine’s extremist Hamas government. Vladimir Putin also opposes the war in Iraq, and has been deliberately divisive with the United State’s plans for an allied missile defense system.

With all these facts and discord so obviously contrasted, why has TIME Magazine insisted on exalting this man for leadership qualities? The political irony of such a choice is far too apparent to be coincidental, especially at a time when President Bush’s leadership is criticized, the war in Iraq is opposed, and missile defense initiatives are viewed with skepticism, often by TIME Magazine itself. It raises the question of the objectivity with which the Person of the Year title is bestowed.

In the end, we do not yet know the full extent of Vladimir Putin’s legacy as President of Russia, but with the Presidential elections this past March, Putin has stepped down to the role of Prime Minister, and Dmitrii Anatolevich Medevedev is now the third President of Russia. Only time will show the impact of the Kremlin’s infringement of freedom in Russia, and how Russia’s new President will display his leadership and power.