Years ago, I decided to put together a sermon that dealt with the subject of envy. I wasn’t sure I had ever heard a message on envy, even though it is considered one of the seven deadly sins. To be fair, I have heard messages on coveting, which is after all one of the Ten Commandments.

Envy isn’t just a biblical subject. Envy is also a political subject. A quarter century ago, Doug Bandow (Cato Institute) wrote his book, The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology. One of his arguments was that citizens filled with envy usually do not want public policy changes so that they can get more money. They want to take money away from other citizens who have more than they have.

Anne Hendershott argues in her essay adapted from her book that envy is a destructive emotion. The success of a nation to control it, she says, will determine the greatness of that nation. I was struck by the picture they put with her article. Senator Bernie Sanders is speaking to a crowd filled with Bernie signs about the fact that the richest billionaires have so much more money than the rest of America.

But consider the irony. Everyone in that audience has food, clothing, shelter, and a bank account. They will go home to apartments or houses that have heating, air conditioning, electricity, appliances, televisions, and much more. While they are being encouraged to envy the rich, they don’t even consider that billions of people on this planet would consider anyone in the audience to be incredibly rich.

Tomorrow, I will go into more detail about how envy is used by politicians to advance government programs and tax policy. But don’t miss the irony that much of the world would consider Americans wealthier than they could imagine.

American presidents often confront this painful lesson: they may have political plans but those plans often crash into political reality. This week was supposed to be the final orderly withdrawal of US troops and civilians from Afghanistan. Next month, Congress was to pass the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. At least that was the plan.

It is too early to tell how the debacle in Afghanistan will affect the Biden administration’s legislative goals. What is happening in Afghanistan might be merely a distraction or might even derail the bill.

Republicans will remind members of Congress that spending lots of money doesn’t necessarily make things better in the world. Democrats will argue that we should have spent billions on roads and bridges instead of a war that was eventually lost to the Taliban.

I have seen some polling that shows most American voters know more about what is happening in Afghanistan than know there is even an infrastructure bill. I doubt that many voters will have much enthusiasm for a $1.2 trillion bill when most commentators are talking about the trillions of dollars spent on a failed war.

Polling also shows something else. President Biden’s approval ratings were already at their lowest point before the crisis in Afghanistan developed. It is reasonable to assume those numbers will drop even further.

Military leaders will tell you that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Or if you want to use the most popular version by fighter Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” President Biden and the Democratic leaders in Congress are learning this painful lesson.

G.K. Chesterton once observes that, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.” Dennis Prager starts off with that quote to illustrate that nature has become a substitute god for many today.

That’s not surprising. Many pagan religions had some form of nature worship. They worshipped the sun god, the moon god, or the goddess of fertility. Today there is a religious foundation to the environmental movement. We need to protect Mother Earth. Back in the 1970s, James Lovelock developed the “Gaia hypothesis” and more recently noted that “environmentalism has become a religion.”

But nature worship has run into some tough times with this virus pandemic. Nature can be beautiful, but nature can also be brutal. Alfred Tennyson describes nature as “red in tooth and claw.” There are no moral laws. It is the survival of the fittest.

How should Christians think about nature. First, nature is part of the fallen world and should not be worshipped. G.K. Chesterton explained, “Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us.”

Second, in Genesis 1:28, God commands us to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion.” Being fruitful (having children) is just the opposite of what environmentalists would allow. One of my professors at Yale was the founder of zero population growth, dedicated to limiting the number of children that could be born.

Moreover, environmentalists and animal rights activists reject the idea that humans should subdue nature and have dominion over the earth. An article by Lynn White in the 1960s even blamed Christians and this passage in Genesis for our environmental problems.

This pandemic is a reminder that nature is not a friend, and nature is not our god. The Christian worldview is the true picture of reality.

A frequent phrase used these days is that we need “to trust the science.” But I have found that often “trust the science” really means “trust the model” which is not the same thing. Computer models are used to predict everything from the climate to the economy. Often, they are inaccurate. Asking legitimate questions about these models and their assumptions is appropriate and not “anti-science.”

When I was in graduate school, many of us worked with professors who had developed computer models attempting to understand more about the environment. These models helped me learn two valuable lessons.

First, you need good data for the model to accurately predict the future. No doubt you have seen the word GIGO that stands for “garbage in, garbage out.” If the data you have for a pandemic model comes from China or Iran, you may not have good data.

Second, a good model also needs to be based upon accurate assumptions. If you don’t account for the impact of mitigation procedures, you are going to come to scary conclusions about the infection rate and the death rate.

Should we have some skepticism about the models used to predict the future? The climate models that were developed back in the 1990s predicted rising temperatures. Instead, we had a “warming hiatus” that lasted for nearly a decade and a half. Global temperatures essentially remained flat.

The Congressional Budget Office is given the responsibility of estimating the impact of legislation on federal revenue but often limited in the assumptions they can use. For example, if a tax reform bill reduces taxes, the CBO score assumes that lower taxes will mean lower tax revenue. But individual investors and consumers react to lower taxes by investing more and spending more. Lower taxes might actually generate more revenue.

Often “trust the science” really means “trust the model.” But we have lots of evidence that sometimes the models are wrong.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued its latest report and the media has dutifully raised the alarm level. The editors of the Wall Street Journal humorously described it this way: “The climate Apocalypse is nigh, humanity is to blame, and unless the world remakes the global economy, havoc and death are inevitable. Repent of your sins all ye who enter here.” They say that is only a mild overstatement of the media’s “fire-and-brimstone accounts” of this latest report.

Dr. Steven Koonin worked for President Barack Obama in the US Department of Energy. He is best known these days as the scientist who wrote the book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.

In a recent op-ed he explains that often climate-assessment reports have misrepresented scientific research in “conclusions” section of their reports. These are intended for policy makers and the media. He has also been critical of the dependency on climate models which he believes are deficient.

For example, these models “don’t reproduce the global climate of the past. The models fail to explain why rapid global warming occurred from 1910 to 1940, when human influences on the climate were less significant.” If the computer models do not accurately model past temperatures, why should we assume they are accurate when they attempt to predict future temperature increases?

He concludes by reminding us that, “Good science is characterized by detail, data, proven models and reasoned debate. That takes time. Meanwhile, we should be wary of the torrent of hyperbole that is sweeping the globe.”

These are wise words from a scientist who isn’t convinced that all the science is settled and therefore warns us of climate change hyperbole.

China and the Chinese Communist Party have been stealing the wealth from America and American companies for years. But the establishment media have generally done a poor job of covering this important issue. Fortunately, a public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee brought needed focus on this issue.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) estimated, “China is stealing between $300-600 billion a year of American technology and intellectual property.” He concluded that this is “the biggest illegal wealth transfer from one nation to another in the history of mankind.”

He described the way the Chinese have been able to do this. “They use venture capital funds to buy promising technology startups; they hide their ownership, by the way. They partner with universities on research and then they steal that research – often research whose seed funding came from the U.S. taxpayer. They force American companies doing business in China to give the technology over to them.”

The Chinese Communist Party not only steals our wealth; they steal our privacy. Bill Evanina is the former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and testified at the hearing. He estimated that 80 percent of American adults have had all of their personal data stolen by the Chinese Communist Party and the other 20 percent have had most of the personal data stolen.

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) serves as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He explained that the committee normally does not hold open hearings but did so in this case because he believes “this story needs to get out to the American public.” Unfortunately, the establishment media too often ignore this important story.

Former President George W. Bush once said that the political left often viewed minorities with what could be described as “the soft bigoty of low expectations.” We see it in studies that discover that white teachers are much less likely to see black students as college material.

Derek Hunter argues in a recent commentary that “the soft bigotry of low expectations” has been replaced with “the hard bigoty of no expectations.” This was inevitable once you accept the idea that minorities are disadvantaged because they live in a world of systemic racism. A recent decision in the state of Oregon provides a good example.

The governor and other Oregon leftists are convinced that having any academic standards, no matter how low, are disadvantageous to minority students. The argument is that having no standards would help “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”

Before we look at the absurdity of this policy, it’s worth noticing that the Oregon governor and staff added Asian students to the list of other minorities. In fact, many universities are being criticized (and some even being sued) because high-achieving Asian students face quotas and discrimination that make it difficult to gain admission into many prestigious colleges and universities.

The real issue is this. “Black and brown students aren’t failing school they’re being failed by schools.” Educational achievement tests highlight failing schools and poor teacher performance. Teachers and politicians don’t want to be blamed for the failures committed in these schools.

This is their solution. If students aren’t doing well on academic achievement tests, then let’s stop testing the students. Call it the “hard bigoty of no expectations.”

For months we have been told to “trust the science.” The reaction from many of us is that we believe in science, but we aren’t as convinced of the scientific validity of some of these admonitions. This has led to frustration from political leaders and the media.

One example of this frustration surfaced on a Twitter post. The author stated:
“If you think you don’t trust scientists, you’re mistaken. You trust scientists in a million different ways every time you step on a plane, or for that matter turn on your tap or open a can of beans.” One follow-up comment said, “I trust engineers. Big difference.”

Charles Cooke used the post to explain that “many otherwise-reasonable people have come to conclude that ‘science’ is being routinely used as a means by which to launder political authority. Over the last 16 months, institutions from the CDC to the NIH to Facebook have been caught making up the rules as they go along.”

Americans don’t question the science of airplane flight because flight works, and we aren’t given constantly evolving rationales for why airplanes fly. If scientists and politicians started giving us changing and even contradictory information about airplanes, plumbing, and beans, you can bet many people would turn skeptical.

Cooke reminds us that “we have been told that masks were useless and that they were imperative; that protests were disastrous super-spreader events and that they were safe and necessary; that the lab-leak theory was a conspiracy and that it was the most plausible explanation.”

The vacillations and contradictions don’t sound like science to most Americans. That is why many of us are a bit more skeptical when confronted with the admonition to “trust the science.”