These date farther back, to January 2002

I am a great admirer of Alan Keyes; Mary and I once
heard him speak in person about his experiences at
the United Nations. During that brief, blessed period
when Dr. Keyes had his own TV talk show, I twice had
occasion to write to him...
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Dear Alan:

My wife and I met you once in California, and we
voted for you in the last Republican primary. Your
new program is the first thing we have ever made
a special point to watch on MSNBC. (Let me also
applaud you for your pro-life insights given on
James Dobson's radio program "Focus On The Family.")
The following concerns your Wednesday night show
on capital punishment.

I am not a very adamant advocate of capital
punishment, but my reservations are based on the
danger of executing innocent persons, and on the
hope that a criminal might repent of his crimes
and be saved from Hell if given time...NOT on
any silly idea that murderers don't _deserve_ to
be punished in proportion to their offense. And
there is great merit in your argument about
preserving the force of the law.

I'm afraid that women did not score high for good
sense on the broadcast in question. To address the
most obvious foolishness first, Jane Henderson was
simply grossly wrong to say that executing murderers
"brings us down to their level." If she can't see the
obvious difference between the innocent victim and
the guilty murderer, how on Earth can she sort out
_any_ moral distinctions?

Ms. Henderson's reliance on cliche was also to be
seen in her claim that executing terrorists "only
makes martyrs of them." The self-pitying, self-
adoring mentality of the terrorist will fabricate
martyrdom out of any defeat or setback. The only
way to be _sure_ of not creating any fake martyrdom
for terrorists is to yield to all their demands,
to give away the store and surrender the whole
world to them.

Top honors for cliche-dependency go to the phone
caller "Mariam," with her all-too-typical reliance
on the blindly over-broadened application of "Thou
shalt not kill." You properly told her that the verb
in the commandment (ratsah) means "murder," NOT all
taking of life without any distinction. If you had
had more time, it would have been appropriate to
explain to Mariam that this word is rare in the
Old Testament, used only to describe criminal
homicide and private blood-revenge.

My gentlest criticism, but still a serious criticism,
goes to student Abbi Crutchfield. She deserves credit
for acknowledging the moral authority of God, and for
noting that His judgment is supreme; but her view of
the roots of human evil shows that her education has
been sadly contaminated by fashionable political
correctness. She said that the ultimate and
foundational element of evil is hatred. As you
already know (but just didn't have the time to
explain to Abbi), that is totally false.

Not all evil is hatred, and not all hatred is evil.
Psalm 97 tells us that "The LORD loves those who hate
evil." Those who do evil may or may not feel hatred;
when they do feel hatred, the wrongness is not in
the emotion, but in the fact that they hate unjustly;
they hate persons who do not deserve their hatred.
The true core of evil is self-centeredness. The
Devil did not begin to go wrong by suddenly hating
God for no reason; he went wrong by loving himself
too much, which derivatively led to a hatred of
God because he envied God's superiority.

Abbi's view that prison is always a sufficient
penalty for crime fails to take adequate account
of sinful human nature. Many murderers are depraved
predators who feel a sick delight in having power
over persons weaker than themselves. For monsters
of this type, sending them to a prison where they
can torment and sodomize weaker prisoners is almost
a reward. Because of these monsters, prison often
ironically becomes _more_ of a punishment for less-
vicious convicts than it is for the most vicious.
There are some souls who simply have chosen to wipe
out their own conscience in the course of enjoying
the deaths of others; by their stubborn refusal to
repent, they forfeit all right to demand that
society let them live on to continue preying on
the weak.

European nations flatter themselves as being better
than America, just because they don't execute murderers;
but for those punishments that do exist in European law,
the protections for the accused are far less than in our
legal system. So which is the greater injustice: to put
a real murderer to death after giving him exhaustive due
process--or "merely" to imprison a man who was falsely
accused of murder, having wrongly convicted him through
a judicial system that has no presumption of innocence?
You will agree that the answer to that is obvious--and
is not favorable to Europe's Napoleonic legal systems.

Thank you, Alan, for setting a high standard in moral
discussion. We've had more than enough of those who
assume the audience to be stupid; even though some
who participate in dialogue with you frankly are not
very bright, you at least offer them the opportunity
to rise to higher levels of understanding.

Yours in Christ,
Joseph Ravitts

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I WROTE THIS IN RESPONSE TO THE PROGRAM IN
WHICH DR. KEYES AND HIS GUESTS COMPARED THE
HARRY POTTER STORIES TO "LORD OF THE RINGS"...

Dear Alan,

I'm beginning this letter before your fantasy-
discussion broadcast is even finished. Entertainment
does influence people. Politically-correct
Hollywooders deny this truth when it suits them to
do so; but just try making a movie in which gays are
shown as villains, and then see if they'll agree that
entertainment is harmless!

All favorable statements about "The Lord of the Rings"
are well-deserved. Mr. Tolkien, a believer in Jesus
Christ, put up a firewall around his story to prevent
it from prompting people to seek occult powers: the
story is long ago in a made-up land, and the
supernatural powers are connected with types of
beings that obviously don't exist in our world.
This frees us to enjoy all the instructive
elements of which Connie Neal spoke. But Ms. Neal
absolutely misses the boat when she extends equal
approval to Ms. Rowling's writings. Harry Potter
is seen as existing in our world--which inevitably
gives the message that, if we were offered a chance
to obtain magic powers (even, perhaps, by means of
a certain ring??), there would be nothing wrong
with grabbing the chance. And, as you indicate,
that would be insisting on a power in ourselves,
independently from God.

Everybody who defends the Harry Potter stories
repeats the same refrain--that as long as it has
ANY concept of good defeating evil, there can't
be anything wrong with it. But no Christian can get
by with seeing only horizontal moral relationships;
the vertical relationship with God is crucial, and
indeed even defines the horizontal dimension. The
Hebrew slaves in Egypt had a valid horizontal moral
grievance against the Pharaoh who held them in
bondage; but resorting to false gods for liberation
would not have been "just as good" as relying on
the real God. It makes a difference to everything
whether your solutions to Earthly problems are based
on eternal truth or not.

In the group-discussion section, Chris Dunn continued
the failure to see the point. He said that parents
should be protecting their children from drugs and
crime instead of worrying about witchcraft. But
those who actually deal with youth crime and youth
addictions know that these phenomena often are
closely connected with occult experiences.

I expected clearer thinking from Mona Charen, but
she only showed again that failure to acknowledge
the whole truth about God leads to confusion about
mortal life. She gave no place to the Lord Jesus,
and therefore ipso facto she could not get the
whole picture clear. It is _N_O_T_ enough to say
that a book says you should be good and oppose
evil--notwhen the _means_ offered for achieving
good are inherently wrong. Harry Potter's wizardry
is _N_O_T_ in any way to be likened to the miracles
of Biblical saints. The saints did all they did in
conscious obedience to God's authority (not just
an empty abstraction of deity, either, but the
actual God); in contrast, Harry Potter seeks
autonomous power, not answering to the Creator
for anything. Harry's pursuit of "good" ends has
no more ties to God than did the Narnian dwarf
Nikabrik, who was prepared to bring back the
White Witch if only she would help him against
King Miraz.

Perhaps it will bring the matter of horizontal
and vertical relationships closer to home if I
point out a very tangible expression of wrong
metaphysical ideas. Abortionists are now using
fake spirituality to deceive the conscience of
girls at abortion clinics; they tell the girls
that the aborted baby will simply be reincarnated,
and so will not lose anything by having been killed.

No, God is _N_O_T_ magic. Magic allows for multiple
magicians, but there can only be one God. Magic
allows for frivolous and even vicious uses; but
God is never frivolous, and He never allows His
supernatural power to be co-opted by created beings
for evil. (Remember, for instance, "Your silver
perish with you, because you thought the gift of
God could be purchased with money!") Any hypothetical
supernatural power that is equally susceptible to
good and evil use is just not the same as God's
power. Remember that, in "The Lord of the Rings,"
the evil Ring tries to deceive its potential users
that it can be made to serve good purposes; but
that's a lie. God has nothing to gain by erasing
the distinction between His power and witchcraft;
it is the real-life equivalent of Sauron who has
a vested interest in creating that misunderstanding.

No, I do not expect that children who accept Harry
Potter will begin performing bloody ritual murders
under a full moon; but I guarantee you that children
who are deceived by Harry Potter will thereby be far
less capable of ever combatting or even recognizing
the deeper evil that does lead to such crimes.

Yours in Christ,
Joseph Ravitts