NPM: Detroit

Despite a short stint up in the Wolverine backwoods, I've spent over 75% of my life living one block from the city of Detroit. I grew up in a house across the street from my grandparents and I now live in my grandparents old home. Funny how life can work out sometimes.

Anyone paying attention to the News is well aware of the problems with Detroit. I love the city. I love how dirty, grimey, and unpolished it appears to outsiders. I love the view you get driving north on I-75 coming over the Rouge River Bridge and the city skyline appears with the RenCen glistening and the Ambassador bridge in the foreground and the smoke and haze of manufacturing surrounding the beauty. I'm pretty unapologetic of my love for all things Detroit (even Kid Rock and Eminem, but not so much Lions and City Council)

They say New York is the city that never sleeps, well Detroit is the city that never stops working.

That was until they starting bailing out Wall St.

I won't aplogize for this video, and it's as in your face as it needs to be.

“Pardon me if I don’t shed a tear...‘Cause they’re selling make-believe and we don’t buy that here.” - John Rich

Unfortunately, no one's listening.

NPM: Black and White

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who wouldn't agree with you. A camera in the right person's hand can be as powerful as any great work of art or composition. For quite sometime now a niche market has developed within photography focusing on black-and-white and the artistic ability it provides. According to Wikipedia,

"Today black-and-white media often has a "nostalgic", historic, or anachronistic
feel to it."

Who doesn't love black and white pictures? They usually capture a moment that communicates pure beauty. The magic is in there simplicity. Just one snapshot, catching a slice of life, that can sweep through our emotions. Stripped down to bare essentials, everything covered in shades of gray.

It evokes a simpler, much more easier time.

How long before my grand-children look at pictures of my life and "see the story of my life right there in black and white."

What I mean is, many of us nowadays hear the phrase "back in the day" to explain a time when things were easier and a Norman Rockwell moments was more commonplace than a car in the driveway. Dad worked, mom stayed home, and Eddie Haskell was your biggest problem.

But were those times easier?

Did my grandfather find times were great and things were easier as he walked to his factory job every day? Did my grandmother find her life charming and quintessential washing laundry by hand and walking to the grocery store with her kids everyday? Did they view their experiences as Norman Rockwell moments.

So, when will my grandkids pull out some old pictures and see my life in Black and White?

Really, is any time in life ever really simple and completely pure? Black and white? I don’t think so.

”A picture’s worth a thousand words but you can’t see what those shades of
gray keep covered …You should’ve seen it in color.” - Jamey Johnson

NPM

In answer to Corey's comment and to show my support for NPM and to prove just how clueless I can be sometimes, I offer this little diddie....

They said timing was everything, made him...
Want to be everywhere, there's a...
Lot to be said for nowhere
(Eddie Vedder dba Pearl Jam - "MFC" from the album Yield)

Most of you are far more talented in the arts than I am and should have a pretty easy time with this one....

Hopefully

9 lbs. 6 oz. 22.5" long 8:16 am 10-02-08

NOAH MICHAEL

Still speechless, just like last time

Born a week earlier than the due date, and 1 oz bigger and 1.5" longer than Seth (who was born on his due date)!!! To quote the doctor, "You made the right decision to deliver this baby with a planned C-Section."

Michele is a small woman at only 5' 3", Doc says no way she delivers that baby the normal way.

So Seth now has a big, little brother sort of

The Revolution continues!!!

Watch out world, couple little Maloney boys gonna be running around doing there thing!!

*TEAR-DROP(S)*

Extermination and War

Chilling piece from Joe Carter in Culture11 about how China and India, among other countries, are exterminating shocking numbers of baby girls in the womb. Hey, if abortion is legal and accepted, what right do any of us have to tell Indian and Chinese mothers they may not kill their baby daughters -- sorry, female fetuses -- because they'd prefer to have boys? Right, feminists?

Beyond the confluence of feticide and sexism, Carter foresees violence in the womb leading to violence elsewhere:

Even if we set aside the moral horror of a world that is killing its daughters, this oft-ignored trend of female feticide could pose a greater threat than many of the high-profile concerns that are touted by the media. For instance, the Chinese government says that by the year 2020 the men in that country will outnumber women by 300 million--roughly the entire population of the United States.

Imagine hordes of men, numbering in the hundreds of millions, who will never be able to have sexual contact with a woman, never be able to marry, and never leave a descendant to carry on their lineage. Think about the level of anger and frustration that will be generated. Now consider the fact that the number of males fit for military service (ages 18-49) in the U.S. is currently and remains steady at 54 million.

Pious Hand Wringing

Further proof that the Catholics are getting it more right all the time and why the Evangelicals flounder and spin their wheels under the banner of "conversation."

Truth hurts, truth divides, and truth is love. Truth is not judging. Truth is compassion and not tolerance. Hurt and divide are the ugly results of truth, the difference is that the glory in truth is to far outshine the ugly. Too many times, we focus on the ugly and not the glory.

The Roman Catholic arhcbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, is someone I'd be a dummy for when it comes to the issue he writes about in this magnificent teaching document. He sets the Speaker of the House - Nancy Pelosi, a self-described "ardent practicing Catholic" straight about what her Church actually teaches and expects its communicants to believe on abortion. Rarely do religious leaders of any church speak so clearly and forcefully about faith and morality in public life. Here's a characteristic passage:

Ardent, practicing Catholics will quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times, the Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil. In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be animated or "ensouled." But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself, and the early Church closely associated abortion with infanticide. In short, from the beginning, the believing Christian community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong.

Of course, we now know with biological certainty exactly when human life begins. Thus, today's religious alibis for abortion and a so-called "right to choose" are nothing more than that - alibis that break radically with historic Christian and Catholic belief.

Abortion kills an unborn, developing human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it. Catholics who make excuses for it - whether they're famous or not - fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live their Catholic faith.

Magnificent. Of course many Catholic Democrats and Christian Democrats will continue to vote and serve the Democratic Party. Earlier he wrote:

But [Catholics who support pro-choice candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a "proportionate" reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It's the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life--which we most certainly will. If we're confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.

And further

Carter lost his bid for re-election, but even with an avowedly prolife Ronald Reagan as president, the belligerence, dishonesty, and inflexibility of the pro-choice lobby has stymied almost every effort to protect unborn human life since.

In the years after the Carter loss, I began to notice that very few of the people, including Catholics, who claimed to be "personally opposed" to abortion really did anything about it. Nor did they intend to. For most, their personal opposition was little more than pious hand-wringing and a convenient excuse--exactly as it is today. In fact, I can't name any pro-choice Catholic politician who has been active, in a sustained public way, in trying to discourage abortion and to protect unborn human life--not one. Some talk about it, and some may mean well, but there's very little action.

"Pious hand-wringing." Exactly so.

Where's the humanity in a "Pro-Choice" stance?

This happens alot to me....

Maybe all the time actually.

I can't figure out why some things become such a huge deal before legitmacy is proved.

Maybe I am missing something. And I know my bias comes out in these types of things, but nothing has appeared with these types of news stories to make me regret showing bias. Actually, there's been nothing, ever, at all to make me re-think my bias in these situations. That, as the media purports will happen, has my faith been shaken and rocked to its core. Everytime these things prove to be fakes, frauds, or were completely misinterpretted.

James Ossuary (Or "Loss Tomb of Jesus)? - Fake
Gospel of Judas? - Grossly embrassing for National Geographic
Tomb of Jesus? - That was the same thing as the James Ossuary, and yet, it made it's way back to the forefront under a different name and had the backing of "famous" people like James Tabor and James Cameron. Books, TV shows, etc., etc., etc. Big oops on that one

So why keep going?

So, why is Dan Brown-esque hysteria allowed to happen?

So, what am I missing with the newest discovery that, get this, goes from having no evidence at all to almost no evidence at all that Messianic resurection was an option.

There are elements in the Jesus story -- and in other stories in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) -- that have analogues in other traditions. If this new discovery proves to be exactly what some think it is, so what? How does that falsify the resurrection of Jesus? It certainly makes it easier to believe that the Jesus cultists, so to speak, made it all up. But couldn't you say the same thing about the messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Bible -- that Jesus's followers, knowing about the prophecies as part of the Jewish tradition, adapted the story of their Lord's life and death and resurrection to fit those prophecies? I mean, if you're determined to disbelieve, there are plenty of reasons to disbelieve. And if,like me, you're determined to believe, material evidence doesn't much matter, does it? Especially when that material evidence continues to fall short time and time again.

My reaction to this latest news is, "Ho hum." But maybe I fail to grasp its true significance. What say you?

Context

Cheez-it, cheez-it.

One of the worse kept secrets right now is the continued rising price of gas. $4 a gallon right means to me that it costs me $12 a day for one round-trip drive to work (25 mpg, 76 miles round trip). And that's if it's normal and then I do no errand running during lunch or after work. $60 a week isn't too bad and thankfully, Michele and I are in a spot right now where it is affordable for us. None the less, I've been trying to figure out a way to car pool. Back in 2006 and the very early part of 2007 I was able to car-pool with a co-worker. You know back when gas was $2.50 a gallon! We took turns driving weekly back and forth to work. At that time we were working on the same team and were able to hold the same hours. Since then we've both been promoted. Me within my same team and she took a position with a new company that my company spun off. So both our hours kind of increased and she had to trvale more and then we had Seth and I needed to have a car in case I had to run home...so it has fallen apart. Now no one lives close enough to me to car pool.

So, I started looking into the bus system. It is very extensive system in Detroit actually. It's surprising actually. I live in Lincoln Park exit 42 off of I-75 (same house you and JP visited me Gary, way back in the summer of 2001). It's about 8 miles South from downtown Detroit. I work in Auburn Hills, MI (exit 79 off of I-75) about 3 miles from the Palace of Auburn Hills. My normal daily routine is that I leave the house no later than 6:45am (6:30 ideal). Arrive at work by 7:30 and then leave anywhere between 4pm and 5pm. Sometimes I take an hour lunch sometimes I don't. I prefer not to take a lunch and leave as soon as possible so I can be home. I kind of figured the bus thing would result in more time away from home, but would include some cost savings as well as the experience in public transportation. The ability to meet all kinds of people, see some different parts of the Metro Detroit area, even allow me to some work on my laptop as I occassionally have to do at home.

So I started to research the routes and potential pick-up and drop-off points, would I need a ride to the bus-stop or from the bus-stop, how much would I have to walk. All those details.

So what does all this have to do with Cheez-Its?

I'm getting there.

I was shocked at what would be required of me to use the bus system. The best I could find for my trip to work was to leave at 5:13am and arrive to work by 8:06am. This meant I would have to walk a total of 45 minutes, wait for a bus for 13 minutes, and ride 2 different buses for 2 hours combined. And that was just to get to work by 8:06am. But to get to the bus stop by 5:13 meant I'd have to get up at like 4:30am at the minimum. Not that ideal.

Then for my trip home, assuming I can leave after working a straight 8 only (not that likely). I would hop the bus at 4:18 and be home at 7:46.

Basically I would have less than 9.5 hours at home...throw in 6 or 7 hours of sleep and I'm down to a couple hours of awake time at home. My kid goes to bed now at 8:30 - 8:45, I'd see him for an hour a day at the best, thus leaving just an hour with the lovely and talented one and myself.

This idea kind of went out the window almost immediately.

And then I got to thinking....

Sometimes you need context.

Con-text, con-text.

No idea how I remembered this movie, and if you search YouTube you'll find a lot more on this movie. But we've all heard the stories from famous athletes, people on TV, and the kids down the street or in our Youth Groups.

Sometimes we all deserve a slap in the face.

Context, context

So, is God still judging America?

Thanks to the 4 people who voted and the 3 who left comments (I'm sure those 3 also voted) on whether or not you think God is still judging the nations. I know I have more readers than that so maybe I should have included a "I do not know" option so you could have added to the conversation.

Even with the small response here at MP, the conversation has continued offline on this whole God still judging the nations discussion. As a result, this interesting question has raised it's ugly head.

In Romans, we are commanded to obey our government. As such, were our forefathers very, very wrong to engage in the Revolution? Afterall, it was an uprising against the government resulting in war? Which resulted in a complete over turn of said government.

So, was the Revolution wrong in God's eyes?

Is God still judging America for those actions?

Leave some comments, vote in the poll and let's see what we all think about this.

Politics and Culture

"The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Culture and politics are intimately related. And the current economic crash we appear to be on is proof of this. The financial recklessness that engulfed Wall Street and Main Street both didn't come from nowhere, and it wasn't imposed on us from on high. No, the politicians that allowed this to happen came out of a culture that enabled it. Politicians aren't created in some lab or basement or factory and come out minted 100% whole; they are human beings who are produced by the culture they serve, and as such reflect the strengths and weaknesses of that culture.

How many politicians of either party could have hoped to have been elected to national office over the past quarter century by preaching thrift, self-discipline and self-sacrifice?

Already we can see our tendency is to blame other people for this confrontation with limits. It's the Chinese and Indians. It's the oil companies. It's Bush/Cheney. It's the Islamofascists. It’s like heavy traffic. Heavy traffic is always other people. When you say 'traffic was terrible' you’re never talking about yourself. Well, folks, the traffic is terrible. But the last thing we should be doing is building more roads.

Here's what I don't get about conservatives (i.e. me). We are able to recognize the danger in Big Government; our understanding of the fallenness of human nature makes us rightly suspicious of the concentration of power in the hands of the state. But what makes us so willing to disbelieve that concentrating so much unchecked power in the hands of financiers will lead us to paradise? Is the financier any less human and more angelic than the government bureaucrat? Is he less susceptible to greed, to envy, and to all the ordinary vices that deform human character and cause us to behave in foolish and reckless ways? Law and culture are two gifts of civilization to help us order our liberty, and put constraints on individual action. Too much constraint, and you stifle life, growth and creativity; too little, and you have shipwreck.

God's Judgement on the Nation cont....

Wouldn't you know it........

Following a reference from one of my buddies in response to reading "God's Judgement on the Nation" he lead me to a couple resources he knew of that would perhaps answer some of the questions I proposed in that post.

The issue came up not long ago in an Mars Hill Audio Journal interview with Prof. Steven Keillor, author of a book called "God's Judgment." Unfortunately, if you click on the link you have to pay for the podcast or other form of media you'd like to use to hear it. I didn't get to hear the podcast but was given the highlights and the following link with an excerpt from a critical but largely favorable review of the Keillor book, which appeared in Books & Culture and was written by Prof. Brad Gregory of Notre Dame:

Those of us skeptical of Keillor's aim [to show that it's possible to argue seriously that God intervenes in history -- my note.] need not accept his premises in order to see the force of his arguments. His claim that the Bible offers a divinely revealed understanding of history can be tested (albeit never proved) by its analytical power in interpreting major historical events. Keillor seeks "to correlate known causes of the event with known categories of divine holiness and judgment" as disclosed in Scripture, well aware that such interpretations can be perilous and are often abused:

We must beware of presumption in claiming to know the mind of God. But the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme, where the inability to know for sure morphs into a refusal to ask questions that cannot be known with certainty and then into a dismissal of the category of divine judgment.

In short: if God's purposes are such and such, then certain events are plausibly understood as his judgments in the flow of human history.

I won't get into the details of Keillor's theory of how we can discern God's purposes in historical events -- the B&C review does this nicely. Bible Girl's column, though, was a good reminder as to how rarely many of us serious Christians ever think about God's judgment with regard to national events -- and how unbiblical that is. In the Mars Hill interview, Keillor explicitly discusses the temptation to read divine purposes into the events after the fact, or perhaps to justify wars and other events. But just because it's common for people to do such a thing doesn't mean that we should dismiss entirely the idea that God uses dramatic events to chastise nations and to teach them something about their behavior.

We all remember Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson's pronouncement right after the 9/11 attacks that the event was God's judgment on America brought about because of the actions of the abortionists and gays. When I heard that, I was enraged and furious. Some time later, though, I had to confront the possibility that they were right, that the events of that day were, in some sense, permitted by God as a judgment upon America. I think that given the symbolic power of the attacks, a far stronger case can be made that if -- if -- the God of the Bible intended those attacks as a judgment, the symbolic meaning of the targets would lead us to conclude that He was trying to teach us a lesson about the corrupting power of wealth and materialism (the Twin Towers), and about American militarism (the Pentagon). That interpretation wouldn't suit the political purposes of the Revs. Falwell and Robertson, but it makes a lot more sense to me. See the difference?

It seems to me no bad thing for American Christians to think more rigorously about how our nation measures up to the Biblical standard, and how God might be speaking to us collectively through historical events to call us back to obedience and fidelity. We so often assume that our national aspirations and intentions are consonant with the Almighty's, and that's a profoundly hubristic assumption. So many US Christians support the idea that spreading liberal democracy is a fulfillment of the Great Commission, a sort of divine "mission civilisatrice " for the world, that we don't even stop to consider how God might see what we do. Even the Chosen People fell away from the divine will, and suffered for it. Why shouldn't we?

In the Mars Hill interview, Keillor said that one reason we modern Americans are uncomfortable thinking about interpreting history in this way is that we are opposed to the idea of collective guilt. We judge individuals, not groups, in our legal system. We expect God's judgment to conform to that model. But insofar as the Bible is a reliable testimony of God's literal historical dealings with humanity, we are imposing our own model on Him, and it's baseless. He does judge nations. Neither the United States nor righteous Americans are immune.

So: laugh at Bible Girl if you want to, but whether or not you agree with her conclusion, she's standing on firm Biblical ground in asking the right questions.

God's Judgement on the Nation

This is some interesting stuff I came across and has me really thinking just what it is I believe.

Bible Girl, aka Julie Lyons, is a white Pentecostal who keeps a blog at the Dallas Observer (Dallas' weekly Alt-mag). From what I can gather she worshipes at a black church. And as you will see, she apparently has a history of being fearlessly honest in her writing.

She's got a column about why, even though she remembers a Nigerian pastor prophesying in 2001 that after the Bush years, God would give America a black president, and even though she's a pro-life D will not consider voting Republican until the GOP gets serious about what she regards as racial justice, she will not vote for Barack Obama. The reason? Abortion. Excerpt:

It is interesting how Scripture virtually ignores a king’s political or military accomplishments. Jeroboam II, for example, presided over a time of great prosperity and influence for Israel. Yet the Bible dismisses these things in a few brusque sentences. Jeroboam II ultimately failed in keeping God’s commands, and he was judged to be evil. Because he called evil good, he caused the people to do evil as well. End of story; over and out.

Which brings me to abortion again. I’m one of those people who was never passionate about this issue until I had a child of my own -- kind of like the folks who don’t care about famine in faraway places until they see the pictures of starving children. God touched my conscience one day concerning abortion; today I passionately oppose it and call myself a pro-life Democrat.

I see it as an elemental thing: the value of life. You couldn’t identify an issue that cuts to the core more than that.

I won’t say I’m the deepest thinker on this subject. It’s just simple to me. I will put no other god before me, neither will I play God and make decisions reserved solely for him. Every time man has been given the power to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die, hideous things have resulted.

The Middle Passage. The Holocaust. The Nazis’ extermination of the mentally retarded and gypsies. Genocide in Armenia, Rwanda, Darfur. The executions of innocents in Texas and other states. Abortion.

More

Yet I can’t escape the words of Kings. God will judge a leader by one thing: his faithfulness to God’s Word on matters for which the Christian position is clear.
No, that’s not a fashionable concept these days. It won’t win me many friends in the circles I travel. I do understand that we don’t live in a theocracy; our nation is governed by a constitution. As voters, we deal in a continuum of hope and reality. We don’t get everything we want.

Well, whoever said the world would understand or approve of followers of Jesus Christ?

I believe that Barack Obama will be our next president; the hand of God is upon him. If you read Kings, though, that can cut many ways.

But I will not give him my vote.

So, does God still judge nations?

I mean her explanation is unusual. She based her conclusion in large part on her reading of the Bible, and its clear testimony that God intervenes in history to judge nations that fall away from His will. She is withholding her vote from Obama because of her very real conviction that God's judgment will fall on this nation if it fully embraces the legalized extermination of unborn lives (nearly 50 million of whom have died at the hands of abortionists since Roe v. Wade was legalized in 1973).

For non-believers, it is obviously foolishness to make a political decision based on fear of God's judgment. But do believers really have the option not to consider it? Abraham Lincoln didn't think so. His Second Inaugural Address framed the Civil War as God's judgment on America for the sin of slavery. Excerpt (again):

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

I don't think Lincoln was speaking figuratively. He really believed the Civil War was an act of divine judgment. Anyone who takes the Bible seriously as a record of God's dealing with His people in history cannot escape the testimony in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) of God withdrawing his protection from Israel in response to its stiff-necked behavior. God sent the Prophets to call Israel back to holiness. And when that didn't work, He allowed chastisement to humble his Chosen Nation.

If we believe that God dealt with Israel that way, why wouldn't he deal with us, and with any other nation, that way?

An Inconvenient Conference

This weekend, my family and I (or should I just say my family?) travelled to Cedar Springs (15 miles or so North of Grand Rapids) to visit some college friends and to partake in the festivities of a first birthday party for their son Ethan. Good times for sure.

But during the festivities, I believe it was channel 8 news ended up on the TV and the weatherman proceeded to tell the viewing public that February 2008 was going to go down as the snowiest ever for Grand Rapids and only had 16% sunshine the whole month.

What a truly incovenient month it has been for Grand Rapids and really the whole left coast of Michigan. And I can tell you that Metro Detroit has not been much better at all. Probably right on the same track. And again today, 3-6 inches of snow.

It has almost become something of a joke when some "global warming" conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather.

But stampedes and hysteria are no joke -- and creating stampedes and hysteria has become a major activity of those hyping a global warming "crisis."

They mobilize like-minded people from a variety of occupations, call them all "scientists" and then claim that "all" the experts agree on a global warming crisis.

Their biggest argument is that there is no argument.

A whole cottage industry has sprung up among people who get grants, government agencies who get appropriations, politicians who get publicity and the perpetually indignant who get something new to be indignant about. It gives teachers something to talk about in school instead of teaching.
Those who bother to check the facts often find that not all those who are called scientists are really scientists and not all of those who are scientists are specialists in climate. But who bothers to check facts these days?

A new and very different conference on global warming was and is currently being held in New York City, under the sponsorship of the Heartland Institute, on March 2nd to March 4th -- weather permitting.

It is called an "International Conference on Climate Change." Its subtitle is "Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?" Among those present will be professors of climatology, along with scientists in other fields and people from other professions.

They come from universities in England, Hungary, and Australia, as well as from the United States and Canada, and include among other dignitaries the president of the Czech Republic.

There will be 98 speakers and 400 participants.

The theme of the conference is that "there is no scientific consensus on the causes or likely consequences of global warming."

Many of the participants in this conference are people who have already expressed skepticism about either the prevailing explanations of current climate change or the dire predictions about future climate change.

These include authors of such books as "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years" by Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, and "Shattered Consensus," edited by Patrick J. Michaels.

This will be one of the rare opportunities for the media to hear the other side of the story -- for those old-fashioned journalists who still believe that their job is to inform the public, rather than promote an agenda.

The subtitle of the upcoming conference -- "Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?" -- is also the title of a British television program that is now available on DVD in the United States. It is a devastating debunking of the current "global warming" hysteria.

Nobody denies that there is such a thing as a greenhouse effect. If there were not, the side of the planet facing away from the sun would be freezing every night.

There is not even a lot of controversy over temperature readings. What is fundamentally at issue are the explanations, implications and extrapolations of these temperature readings.

The party line of those who say that we are heading for a global warming crisis of epic proportions is that human activities generating carbon dioxide are key factors responsible for the warming that has taken place in recent times.

The problem with this reasoning is that the temperatures rose first and then the carbon dioxide levels rose. Some scientists say that the warming created the increased carbon dioxide, rather than vice versa.

Many natural factors, including variations in the amount of heat put out by the sun, can cause the earth to heat or cool.

The bigger problem is that this has long since become a crusade rather than an exercise in evidence or logic. Too many people are too committed to risk it all on a roll of the dice, which is what turning to empirical evidence is.

So why has no one heard about this conference? Why no news or reporting or a daily update from cable news networks? Why no "panel of experts"?

Because, it's a true inconvenience for those who have a big stake in global warming hysteria to show up at the conference in New York, and unfortunately that includes much of the media.

To pass on the faith, live it...with discernment

I was emailed this link by a buddy of mine who, even though it has a Catholic slant, thought I would greatly appreciate it....I did.

It is an interview with Amy Welborn, who appears to be a pretty big deal in the Catholic blogosphere.

ANYWAY, back to the interview, here is a snippet worth repeating...

The problem is that when you look at Catholic history, the faith has never been passed on predominantly in classroom situations. The faith has been passed on in families and in parishes and in communities. You can have really nice catechetical materials in which you have kids learn about a saint each week and you introduce them to various devotions, but if all of that is absent from parish life, and if all of that is absent from the life of Catholics, which it is for the most part…It's something that any teacher of, particularly, the humanities can sympathize with. Think about the poor teacher trying to teach Shakespeare or Chaucer to kids who go home and are on the Internet for four hours and then are playing video games and doing all kinds of other things. It's not just a religious ed problem; it's a cultural problem. [Emphasis mine]What we are trying to transmit in a classroom setting isn't reinforced culturally.

In the Catholic setting, that means it's not reinforced in most parishes. There's no Catholic life that continually reinforces the Catholic faith. Our churches are bare. Kids don't have the opportunity to study murals and pictures of stained glass and they get bored.

Catholic education is getting better in the classrooms but we haven't grappled with the bigger cultural issue of a community's responsibility to transmit the faith outside the classroom setting.

What's the broader message for people of faith? That passing on the faith to our children is not something we can or should rely entirely on the institutional church (sermons, Sunday school, Christian schools) to do. We have to do it in our homes and in our cultural lives -- and not in the sense of, "Tonight, children, we are going to discuss the doctrine of the Incarnation." The Christian faith has to be woven into the fabric of everyday life, has to be experienced not as an interesting add-on to normal life, but as normal life itself. This is particularly challenging in a culture like ours, where increasingly the only normative belief is that there is no normative belief. But what choice do serious religious believers have?

This is why I'm attracted to the idea of living in some sort of community with other families who share our faith. My kids need to see that it's not just our family that believes and lives by these things -- and they need to see that every day of the week, not just on Sunday.

But there can be problems to that and it was why I am VERY selective on who I include in that community in terms of leadership and influence in my life and that of my family. I'll talk to anyone and let anyone "in" but when it comes to who I am going to listen to and take direction from, who I want to be a role model and someone to follow, sorry but I am judicious and selective.

And ironically, while purusing more of the Catholic website where Amy's interview came from I came across this "essay." It furthered cured the cement work I have laid down for my foundation on life, faith, and community. The author's summation with a number of statistical facts is fascinating and all too revealing, most of them showing that despite the Catholic Church's growing numbers on paper, the content of the Catholic faith in the hearts and minds of its adherents is rapidly changing to something that's Catholic in name only:

A survey in 2005 found that 76 percent of the Catholics of the United States thought someone could be a good Catholic without going to church every Sunday. Other elements of Catholic belief and practice also fared poorly. Three out of four said good Catholics needn't observe the teaching on contraception; two-thirds said the same of having their marriages blessed by the Church and accepting the teaching on divorce and remarriage; 58 percent took the same view of giving time or money to the parish and also of following Church teaching on abortion. These numbers have gone up dramatically since Davidson and his colleagues began collecting them in 1987. And, by 2005, nearly one in four held that a good Catholic needn't believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead.

In 2003, the researchers tested American Catholics' views on the Catholic Church and other religions. Some results: 86 percent agreed with the statement "If you believe in God, it doesn't really matter which religion you belong to"; 74 percent said yes to "The major world religions are equally good ways of finding ultimate truth"; and 52 percent accepted the proposition, "The Catholic religion has no more spiritual truth than other major religions."

Apparently not all of those highly educated and loyal Catholic Americans measure up too well by the standards of Catholic orthodoxy. I am reminded of the 25-year-old chap, a baptized Catholic with six years of religious education who claimed he went to Mass twice a month. Upon leaving a showing of the movie The Da Vinci Code, he told The New York Times: "The Catholic Church has hidden a lot of things—proof about the actual life of Jesus, about who wrote the Bible. All these people—the famous Luke, Mark, and John—how did they know so much about Jesus' life? If there was a Bible, who created it and how many times has it been changed?"

People who talk as the happy-talkers do about the glories of contemporary American Catholicism aren't crazy. They know what’s going on. But they pass it over lightly because that suits the project of replacing a form of Catholicism they consider moribund with an endlessly evolving religion without norms. In their estimate, a Church like that would better suit the exigencies of post-modern times. Call it Anglicanism with a figurehead pope. (In general, I think, bishops who take the same line don't share that objective—they simply think blarney is good for morale.)

The author concludes by saying that anybody who believes there's a simple solution to this very deep and broad problem is either a liar or a lunatic. But he says any attempt to turn it around must begin with telling the truth:

Jesus tells us, "The truth will make you free" (John 8:32), but today illusion—the illusion that we aren't doing so bad—is choking the life out of the Catholic Church in the United States.

Shaw's critique concerns the US Catholic Church, but it's not hard to read it as a broad indictment of the American way of being Christian. What he's talking about is the evolution of the Christian faith to fit American cultural norms: whether we realize it or not, most contemporary Christians are Moralistic Therapeutic Deists now.

See, this is why I'm not impressed when I read news reports saying that America, unlike godless secular humanist Europe, is still a land of vibrant faith. I suppose it is, in a way, but what is the content of that faith, anyway? What does it mean to tell a pollster that you are a Catholic, or an Evangelical, but in practice do not mean by those terms what they historically mean? What does it mean to report that Christianity is doing well in terms of the numbers of people who call themselves Christians, but to ignore or downplay the qualitative aspect of their belief?

I'm not trying to read anybody out of Christianity, but what I am saying is that as a theological matter, to claim you are a Christian -- a Catholic Christian or a Protestant Christian -- means and has always meant that there are a certain number of irreducable foundational doctrines that one must believe -- doctrines that teach who Jesus is, what He did on the Cross, what Scripture is, what the Church is, what man is, and so forth. See, even a trampoline has a sturdy frame that everything else is attached to. To reject them is to reject the faith itself, in any meaningful sense. Over the course of the past 2,000 years, the churches argued over aspects of those foundational beliefs, which is why the church, sadly, is no longer united. Christians have argued over what it means to be a true Christian, but have not argued over the idea that there was an objective standard by which to define Christianity. What you wouldn't have seen, until the present day, is the widely accepted belief that it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you believe you're Christian. That Christianity has no objective definition, and is primarily defined by subjective emotion.

Why does this matter? For one thing, some of us have this quaint idea, as did every Christian until practically yesterday, that the point of religion is to save souls, and Jesus taught us how to do that. To be crude, humankind was lost, but God intervened in history to send us a guide. Scripture (and, for most Christians throughout history, the Church) is our map out of the wilderness. If we lose the map, we could lose our souls, and the souls of our descendants, whose salvation depends on our passing the map to them in good condition. So much American Christianity has become a matter of forgetting, or denying, that there is any such thing as a map.




Why does it seem the Catholics are getting "it" more and more often?

Gimme some of that New-Old Time Religion

[UPDATE] - I couldn't help it, while looking out my window at the blustery winter Sunday afternoon of single digit temps and below zero wind chills. Watching garbage blow away down the street, tree limbs bend oh so close to breaking and thankful for the ability to burn fossil fuels to stay warm.



Modern man has shucked off most of the restraints of traditional religion. While a majority of people still say they believe in God, or at least in some form of higher being, they have rationalized their belief system so as to owe no real tribute to their ill-defined deity.

No longer are they bound by the sanctions and rules dictated by the old-time religions.

But instead of enjoying their “liberation”, their “freedom” from the inconvenient "thou shalt nots," they're embracing a different sort of puritanism and welcoming equally suffocating restrictions in regard to the new gods of health and the environment.

These new faiths, in practice, are amazingly similar to the old.

They have their own schedule of sins and vices and are just as intolerant and judgmental of those who stray from the path of righteousness. They also will go to extremes to impose their doctrines -- witness New York City's recently-passed law forbidding city hospitals from sending new mothers home with baby formula, to push breast-feeding (it's amazing what news stories catch your fancy when a child is introduced into your life).

Skeptics are demonized as heretics. To question the causes and impact of global warming, for example, is blasphemous, and many in the scientific community are finding the price for expressing doubt is banishment.

The new religions are no more tolerant of non-conformity -- smokers are shunned the way libertines once were. And they are equally instilled with an evangelical zeal to spread the faith. "Fan the flame!!" (or should we say "put out the flame" or........)

Like their predecessors, the obsession of the new religions is controlling the behavior of the flock. The real agenda of the campaign against global warming is to achieve the longstanding goals of environmentalists to force people onto mass-transit, draw them back from far-flung suburbs and minimize their ability to profit from the earth.

The new religions give new interpretations to several of Catholicism's seven deadly sins, including:

• Pride . The vanity of individualism is discouraged as a threat to the collective good. Lifestyle choices must conform to the standards of propriety set by all-knowing spiritual leaders (think Al Gore).
• Gluttony . Consumerism and overconsumption are the great evils. Frugality is a virtue, and piety is attained by the Carteresque measure of living a smaller life, accepting less. Traditional religions reward sacrifice and self-denial with immortality (allbeit heretical in it’s own rite); it's not yet clear how the new faiths will incentivize deprivation.
• Greed. The notion that American ingenuity and productivity entitle this country to a bigger piece of the pie is unholy. We're expected to feel guilty about our prosperity, pressured to give away our wealth.
• Lust. While these new faiths don't meddle so much in your sex life -- nearly any sexual practice is OK, as long as it's "safe" and consensual -- if you hunger for big trucks, big houses, big cigars -- your wages are damnation.

Unfortunately, there is no rabid oppession and acceptance of a separation of church and state to protect non-believers from being pressed into observance as their is with the "Old-Time Religions". Canonical law is written by secular legislatures and enforced by public agents.

An agnostic -- or Mother Earth forbid, an atheist -- living in this new religious environment may find life as uncomfortable as did the “witches” of Salem.

This sounds familiar...

Not sure if you'll ever hear me quote Rush Limbaugh ever again in my life but I read this in a news article and it sounded oddly familiar.

If the Republican Party expands because we have a candidate who's going out trying to attract liberals by being like them, then the party's going to be around but you won't recognize it.

How does Limbuagh pontificating and fire breathing anti-McCain rhetoric sound familiar you ask?

Like this:

If the Church expands because we have Christians going out trying to
attract non-believers by being like them, then the Church's going to be around
but you won't recognize it.

Already pre-ordered it....

And here, if you do not have a PDF reader.

Amen!

"The ultimate measure of man is not where he stands in moments of comfort
and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." -
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

UPDATE - For the sake of expediency I have published these thoughts without having fully edited them to make it "flow" better. I'm still embarking on this whole Christmas/Advent thought process and with Christmas just days away, I wanted to make sure to get this fledged out. I apologize if this appears to be a jumbled mess of writing and preachiness, I tried really hard to not make it that. But as I wrote out my thoughts I started to make sense of some of it and make conclusions. I write this more for me and myself than to appear to being "preachy" to you. I hope you enjoy it and I pray that this will continue to make your days merry and bright as we celebrate the birth of the greatest man who ever lived, the Savior of Mankind. Merry Christmas!!!



Been thinking more about this Christmas story and the fact that Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Last time focused on the shepherds and their comparisons to us. The normal mundane human going about their day-to-day job and yet God brings down his glory to the shepherds, to us. And their response to it compared to what our response is. One comment left by a reader mentioned their “scrooge mood” response to Christmas and how it has changed somewhat as a result of the post. And I feel that is the best comment someone has ever left me. It bums me out that Evangelicals allow the world and its systems to “bum them out.” To let it seep into their very fabric and being and sap the glory of God from their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty of it too. But at the expense of advocating CEO Christianity (Christmas and Easter Only) it is at Christmas and Easter that Christians should be at their peak of revelry and fun.

Both are doctrinal tenets of the faith but both are clouded in mystery and mysticism. Incarnate, Infinite God taking on the form of a helpless new born babe, being entrusted to the care and provision of humanity. The same humanity that if they have proven anything, it’s that we screw things up, actually, we screw everything up. Incarnate, Infinite God dying with the weight of the world on his shoulders, only to show His Incarnate and Infinite Godship by rising from the dead. All to rescue our screwed up humanity.

But Easter doesn’t carry the “scrooge” effect with Christians. There isn’t the commercialism and consumerism attached to Easter as there is with Christmas. Easter has been hijacked, but Christmas gets the negative connotation. I’d like to diffuse that. I had to start with myself and begin to embrace Christmas some years ago and everything around it. As well as put a renewd focus on the Christmas story and see where it applies nowadays.

So I have continued this thought with the story of the wise men.

First things first. I know people like to harp on the fact that in the nativity scenes around the world, there are 3 wise men represented for the 3 gifts brought to Jesus. More than likely, it wasn’t 3 individual wise men on their own. It was a massive caravan of hundreds and they probably met up with Jesus and the family as much as a year or two after his birth. These trivial issues behind us, let’s continue.

Most times the focus of the wise men is the gifts. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The King, the Priest, and the Sacrifice. Or the focus is on the mystical journey these wise men embarked on and how that applies to our life. The fact that there was this spiritual force in play put in action by God to turn the cosmos to get these wise men from afar to follow a moving star to the boondocks of Bethlehem. We feel this sometimes in our own lives. That there is a spiritual force at work and all things are linked together someway, somehow. It’s all been contrived and set in motion to arrive to this one moment. And we are left scratching our head sometimes when we realize it. How did that just happen? Sometimes God will move the whole universe for you to experience him.

But there’s another element to this story I’ve been contemplating.

It seems that everyone wants to talk about the story behind Christmas. To give life to all the central characters and share in the secret they were able to discover. All the big bookstores have displays setup to sell books that speak about Christmas. To give you the meaning behind Christmas. To maybe provide more depth and understanding to the cast of characters. Most of these books are conjecture on the part of the author. Sprinkling in real life with some historical perspective with some just good old fashioned writing. All to entertain you and warm your hearts. Well, I want to explore this secret. A secret that not a lot of people think literally about, but if you think literally about it, it will change your life so dramatically you’ll never be the same. And it’s all based around the story of the wise men. We can still see the bumper stickers that say “Wise men still seek Jesus.” Well, we still have to seek him and it’s interesting where we can find him. To give you a hint, I’d almost call this, “Why I stick with the Church 3” because if you can grasp this you’ll look at people and church differently.

The wise men blazed this path and discovered something about the way God works. They were lead somewhat mystically to “The King of the Jews” but stopped along the way to still ask “Where is the King of the Jews.” A lot of people are asking that even now a days, Where is Jesus? While we can’t discover it in the same way the wise men did we can still discover it and act on it.

Ever seen pictures of Jerusalem? Israel? Bethlehem maybe? How do those compare to Hawaii or Ireland, or Bermuda? Israel is chalky white and cold hard concrete. Not a pretty place. Not very “green.” Why in the world would God show up there? I’ve been to Cancun and Cancun looks a lot better then Israel. Israel looks like the backside of the world. Why not show up in Rome, the capital of the known world?

Jesus comes to this place with no pomp and circumstance. Sure there's the big party in heaven, but what of the earth? His mom was a teenager, who wasn’t married to his earthly dad. Despite the picture, she is probably walking, not on a donkey like the Hallmark card’s show. They were dirty, knocking on everyone’s door looking for a place to stay. Started at the Hampton Inn, then went to the Motel 6, then the Econo Lodge, then the hourly motel and then the truck stop, and then the rest area, and finally someone says, "hey I have an old Chevy in my garage and behind there is a cot if you wanna stay there."

Where’s the pomp? Where’s the circumstance? Instead, it’s the smell of animals and stubble and hay and fleas and birth. All those smells and earth and dust of travel mixed together.

And isn’t that just like God? So humble to hide one of the greatest events of all time.

This is the birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and it’s hidden in a shed. We’ve come up with all kinds of King James words to make it grand. He was born in a manger. He was born in a stable. Stable makes it sound permanent. But if we say he was born in a shed, in a barn, next to dung, they laid him in a dog dish that was big enough for all the animals to eat out of is crazy…just crazy.

He was so hidden and tucked away in earthiness, that some of the wisest men in all the world had to stop and ask for directions. These guys were waiting for this. They had put their money where their mouth was. They know it is happening and they go out searching for him, “traveling afar” and he’s so hidden that they have to ask the leader of the Jews where the King of the Jews is and he doesn’t even know. He so doesn’t know that he says to an entourage of hundreds of brilliant people, be sure to look hard for him. He’s hidden. Trying to find a needle in a hay-stack.

But they do find him, lead by divine providence. They see him, leave their precious gifts, depart, and our mystically lead again to not return to Herod. So that is their story.

What is ours?

Where is Jesus?

Is he hidden in the stuff of the earth?

Yes he is.

And you know what stuff he is hidden in?

You and Me!!!

Now, I don’ think we go to each other and fall down and worship each other. But I can be a blessing to Jesus by being a blessing to any one of you. Just as I can persecute Jesus by persecuting anyone of you. Jesus even implicates Paul this way at his conversion.

Here is why I go to church?

I get to see Jesus. He dresses up like Jeff and like Matt and like Corey. And he is visible in the eyes of every person there. He hid himself in you and me. I see him in Jeff, I see him in Matt, I see him in Corey. And he likes looking at himself. And that is why he put himself in both Corey and me. So now when the 2 of us look at each other, Jesus, goes “man I’m good looking.” And he’s not ego-maniacal because he is God and he’d be idolatrous if he didn’t think that.

This is the Christian ethic for loving one another. It’s why Mother Theresa could take care of dying people and orphans in Calcutta. I think she was looking for Jesus in each and everyone of them. Ministering to them like they were Jesus.

Christmas and the magi path is a wonderful story and I think if we’re wise we are still going to seek him. And one of the ways we discover him is in the lives of each other. The way I treat any of you is the way I am treating Jesus. This is the reason for us to go to church. Maybe I get there first so Jesus can walk on a snow free path to church. Then maybe Corey gets their early and he’s playing some drums getting ready because he’s going to play to Jesus who’s out in the congregation getting ready to worship Jesus. I’m not trying to take this to a tripped-out new age level and saying were all divine. But the logical conclusion of Jesus being in you and me is that we get to love Jesus by loving each other, and if we seek him through this mystical journey and find Jesus in one another, the world wouldn’t know what to do with us.

We should be ministering to each other. Bring gifts to Jesus by bringing gifts to each other. Being a blessing to each other to be a blessing to Jesus in each of us. Respond to the Savior inside of us, not to what comes out of our mouths. And allow yourself to be real and transparent enough for them to see Jesus in you and to allow others to be a blessing to you. Let people minister to you and be a blessing to you. Our own pride or fear can get in the way and we run away from help. But let it be done for you.

I hear all the time from people, “Why does everyone give me a present for Christmas, it’s Jesus birthday anyway?”

Well you know why I give presents?

Because it’s Jesus birthday and you’re his body and so I’m going to give you the ugly tie with the lit up palm tree, because I want to. I love you and I love Jesus inside of you.

M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

"In the air, there's a feeling of Christmas"

Kind of makes you wonder what all the hub-bub is about.

Yesterday I made my annual pilgrimage out to the local malls and shops to do some Christmas shopping. And try not to laugh, but I actually like shopping at Christmas time. At no other time of the year can Michele even come close to getting me excited to want to go shopping. But, come Christmas time, I go with her when I need to and I always make one trip on my own.

As I said, last night I ended up not getting home until nearly 10 after shopping 2 malls, a couple other strip mall locations, and a Meijer. And I enjoyed it...all of it. As I wrote the same thing this time last year, I love everything about Christmas. And I thing it has something to do with the fact that Christmas never changes. Same decorations, same songs, same story, etc. But I got to thinking yesterday about all of this.....

What's the big deal?

Trees all over the world, wreaths on doors, whole neighborhoods full off lights.

What’s the deal? It’s just a birthday right?

Christmas is more than just a day that Santa supposedly comes and it’s more than the day we max out our credit cards. It’s a day set aside each year to celebrate the birth of our King and Messiah Jesus Christ. We celebrate him because he is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the greatest man that has ever been and still is the greatest man that has ever been. In fact he is so powerful that he was born of a virgin and lived a perfect and sinless life, teaching of his Kingdom, using stories to explain that Kingdom and how it works. And then he did the ultimate thing. He was beaten and flogged for us. Nailed to a cross, gasping for breath and of a broken heart, breathed his last breath and died for our sins. And of course, 3 days later, rose from the dead declaring himself both Savior and God for all of eternity. Because of that he is available to us today. The Bible says whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

That’s why there are wreaths hanging around. That’s why we have Christmas trees. That’s why we have carols. That’s what the hub-bub is about.

And when you compare our hub-bub nowadays to this miracle, how does it measure up? How does all the pomp and circumstance and energy exerted nowadays compare to the same of the original day? Specifically, to the Sheppards response on the actual day?

Of all the people in the Christmas story, the sheppards are probably the most like us. Normal blue-collar people who we know very little about. We don’t know their names or where they are from or even exactly what it was they were doing in the field (watching over their flocks…what does that mean). Kind of like us.

But God interrupts all that normal and mundane. A heavenly host, the glory of the Lord all around in the middle of the night. The deep, dark midnight sky fully bright and fully alive with the same glory that Moses had to hide his face from.

BOOM!!!!

There it is.

What did they do with it?

They were told all this truth, but did not sit around in the field and just talk about and converse about these deep spiritual truths that the angels told them. And that happens a lot at Christmas. The theology is extremely important in the Christmas season. 100% God and 100% man and both are necessary for salvation. But we can talk about Christmas in such deep ways that we don’t really experience it too much. We get too wrapped in the teaching about.

Just the same we can make it too much of a pageant. Dress up in costumes and turn on all kinds of twinkling lights. But the Sheppard’s didn’t really pull out some wreaths and garland in celebration. One Sheppard didn’t reach down, pull of his sock and tell everyone his crazy idea of hanging that sock from a fireplace and having some fat old elf stuff it full of toys. That’s not what they did.

What they did, is get up from where they were and went to the party of Jesus birth. Quite the invitation!!

They got up and went and saw it with their own eyes. And the Bible says when they saw it, they went out telling EVERYBODY what they saw. We have carols that we sing to tell everyone about the fact that the sheppards went and told everyone what they saw at the party. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could have gone to the party? Wouldn't it be cool if we told EVERYBODY about the invitation we've all been given?

Everything is Spiritual

"Everything we do we do as an integrated being. 100% physical, 100% spiritual. These first Christians latched onto this right away.

'Whatever you do whether in word or deed do it in the name of Jesus Christ.'

What were they saying?

Every act is a spirtual act. It is, whether or not you are aware of the implications of what you are doing."

This is still one of the best speeches, lectures, sermons whatever you want to call it, I have ever heard.

Cannot wait to get my copy in the mail and pop it in the DVD player.

Well worth the $20 plus S&H.

Here's a morsel.