The Road Not Chosen

In Word & Deed

Last week the nation witnessed the horror of the events in Arizona. Politicians on the Left were quick to point out Sarah Palin’s website happened to have a graphic featuring certain politicians with the symbol of crosshairs over their faces. Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Gifford was one of them.  So began a national tussle over the effect of violent words in politics. Both sides are equally to blame. The right reminded everyone that the President had once said about fighting his opponent's “If they bring a bat, we bring a gun” etc.

With all this talk rumbling about, an interesting thing happened on CNN last night.

CNN anchor John King issued an on-air apology to his viewers Tuesday for the terminology guest Andy Shaw of the Better Government Association used during a broadcast of "John King, USA".

Shaw used the term, "in the crosshairs" while the pair discussed the mayoral race in Chicago.

King apologized saying:

"Before we go to break, I want to make a quick point. We were just having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race just a moment ago. My friend Andy Shaw, who now works for a good government group out there, used the term 'in the crosshair's in talking about the candidates out there. We're trying, we're trying to get away from that language. Andy is a good friend. He's covered politics for a long time. But we're trying to get away from using that kind of language. We won't always be perfect, so hold us accountable when we don't meet your standards."

Alrighty then. If we all learn not to say anything violent we will have peace & harmony. The lion & the lamb will lay down together & the streets will flow with dark chocolate.

Oddly, after hearing that bit from John King (who I usually like) I turned to ABC to watch V, a show Harold & I have really enjoyed. Last night I had to turn it off. The theme of the night was torturing humans & aliens. Aliens were hung from chains so that their skin could be cut off of them as they screamed in pain. A human had several spikey things attached to his body so current could go into him to test the Queen V’s daughter’s willingness to torture someone. That is when I clicked away.

We can get all picky and uppity about not saying “in the crosshairs” but then we go home and watch popular TV & movie dramas that emphasize brutality all for our enjoyment. What is accomplished by our censoring words? If we are really committed to having a less violent country it has to encompass not just vocabulary & political dialogue, but movies, games,  etc.

As a writer I am acutely aware of the power of words. I become concerned however, when we assign them too much power, resulting in an emphasis on being politically correct but not changing the violence behind the word which imbues it with power in the first place.

Which do you think is more powerful; the word or the graphic image? Let me know.

Strike A Pose

On New Year’s Day, out of the blue, I started thinking about self portraits. Not the artistic ones by, for example, Picasso.

 

 

 

Picasso: Self portrait 1972

Copyright Pablo Picasso

 

 

 

 

 

I was considering the proliferation of pictures of ourselves on places like Facebook. Here is a recent one I took of myself:

I don’t usually take pictures of myself. Not because I’m not vain, mostly because I don’t like pictures of myself ever. Wait. That’s vanity. Oh well.

We Baby Boomers don’t really get into the self-portrait thing like the current Generation does. I’d like to say it’s because we are too busy cleaning up the environment like we said we would when we were 18.  Probably it’s because we’re too busy scraping money together for retirement since Social Security is going to be sucked dry in a couple of months.

I am truly curious though why so many of the younger ones seem obsessed with how they look in pictures. A quick tour of the photos on some of my Millennial friend’s Facebook pages reveal themselves in lots of solo poses. I will admit that I admire their courage for posting goofy looking pics. Here’s one of me:

(I need to brush up on my goofiness.)

As humans our default gear is self-love, otherwise known as narcissism. This trait was perfected by we Baby Boomers when we made it all about us in the 60s and 70s. Some Boomers continue in the path today and a smaller number of us at some point realized that the best life was one given away in service to others.

Tomorrow, my 11th & 12th graders will begin reading a book by two young men who realized that they were so self absorbed that they couldn’t begin to relate to people who were poor, destitute, and homeless. They embarked on a one year journey of being voluntarily homeless. It will be an interesting read for my wonderfully sheltered middle-class kids. My goal of course is to remind them (and me) that it’s not all about us. It’s all about someone else, Jesus, and how we best show the world what he looks like.

Back to the pictures. I’m not very good at the kind of picture taking where you hold the camera out & have someone scooch in close so you can get a pic of both of you. Here’s one I took on New Year’s Eve where I actually managed to get both of us in the frame:

Now that’s something worth getting obsessed about!

The Bridge To Nowhere

Our president made an interesting observation this week. In talking about his party he said the following:

“There are going to be some disagreements and details to work out, but to the Democrats, I want to say to you, Democrats, let's make sure that we keep our eye on the prize.

Sometimes Democrats can be their own worst enemies. Democrats are an opinionated bunch.

You know, the other side, they just kind of sometimes do what they're told. Democrats, you're all thinking for yourselves. I like that in you, but it's time for us to make sure that we finish the job here. We are this close and we have got to be unified.”  (For the video click here.)

I’m sure all president’s have taken shots at the opposite party. However, our current President is the first one in my memory who lets his staff go about declaring a news agency that disagrees with him to not be a news agency and he actively shuns them by not giving them equal access to him that the “favored” news agencies have. This in effect declares FOX news to be “an enemy”.

My purpose in this post is not to get into an argument about which news agency is “more impartial” than the other because none of them are. The item on my growing “List of Humongous Concerns That I Have About The State of Our Country” that I am thinking about is the lack of bridge building in the current administration.

Remember when you were a kid and you would gripe & gripe about someone? Your mom or dad would tell you (hopefully) something like “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything”. Then you would say “But they keep calling me a boo-boo butt!” to which your parents would (again hopefully) say “That doesn’t matter. Just because someone is mean to you doesn’t make it alright for you to be mean back!” (Or as Jesus calls it “turning the other cheek”.)

One of the jobs of being a leader is to lead by example. I wonder what would happen if President Obama woke up tomorrow morning and decided that no matter who was being critical or mean or poopy to him, he was going to turn the other cheek. Wouldn’t it be great if he called a press conference and said “Fellow Democrats, we are not going to bad mouth anyone who disagrees with us. We are going to work hard to bring unity to this country. We are going to be self-sacrificing instead of self-promoting. It doesn’t matter if someone talks bad about us, we are not going to talk bad about them. We are going to go about the business of this country, work as hard as we can to bring unity and healing. History will judge us on what we did, after all, not on how hard we hit our detractors.”

Can you imagine the possibilities? The HOPE that would arise? The CHANGE that might come?

Of course, you may say to me “Well, the Republicans started it!” or “They need to be nice too!” or even “The President & his party have a right to defend themselves against accusations!”. Yes, all sides need to be nice. Yes, we all have a right to defend ourselves. But here’s the kicker: someone has to choose to be the one to start acting in a positive manner. The president sets the tone for the nation. If he is divisive, no matter for what reason, everyone will be divisive. And you can’t bring unity any other way than by standing up for peace in whatever form that may be.

At this point in time, our President & his administration are stoking the angry fire by speaking words of disunity and accusation. They are acting vindictively. I hope President Obama doesn’t make the same mistake that Republican President Richard Nixon did. Nixon was paranoid, mean, deceitful, & vengeful. He tore our country to shreds and brought shame to America.

Unfortunately I have no immediate access to the White House, but I do have access to you, dear reader. Let’s all promise each other that we will speak and write words of peace not war. When we write & talk about our differences, let us do it in a spirit of humbleness not arrogance. Because, as my husband likes to say, God is not on our side, He is on His side!

Two Heaping’s of Crazy

Here are two new items that made me say “There is a tsunami of crazy headin’ our way!”

 Yet Another Reason to Move Out of California, Mom and Dad

In a decision that could dramatically reshape California's criminal justice system, a panel of federal judges on Tuesday ordered Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators to find ways to cut the prison population by 40,000, or about one-quarter of all inmates.

I thought today is Aug. 4th, but it surely must be April 1st. What have these judges been smoking? Or drinking? Or ingesting? Are they just trying to make California into what New York was like in “Escape From New York” staring Kurt Russell. If you’re too young to remember that movie, all the criminals & crazies were all living on Manhattan island, free to terrorize each other. I’m seriously thinking about investing in barbed wire manufacturing because Cali is going to need a bunch of it if they let 40,000 criminals out.

And from the White House blog

Facts Are Stubborn Things  (Click on link to see entire blog entry)

Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things."

Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

What exactly is the White House going to do with the reported items? I really cannot fully explain the creepy feeling I got when I read this. Even if the W.H. has harmless intentions, do they not have the sense to see that this request is unprecedented? Are we going to go back to the McCarthy era when people were reporting fellow citizens as “Communist sympathizers”?

 

We need to remember our not-so-distant American history. During WWII we intered (nice word for imprisoned) Americans of Japanese decent ‘just in case” they might be spies. The McCarthy lead Committee on Un-American Activities in the ‘50’s resulted in American citizen’s losing their jobs, being “black listed” just because they were accused of being sympathetic to Communism, not because they were convicted of any crime.

Below is the comment I sent to the White House regarding this matter.

I was extremely concerned today when I read the following on the White House blog under the title "Facts Are Stubborn Things" - "There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.... If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

I want an explanation of exactly the White House plans to do with the "fishy" items that are sent to them. Do you not realize how this can be interpreted? Germans were urged to report those that were deemed inferior by Hitler. The Soviet Union has a long history of urging citizens to report on each other.

I'm not saying that is what the intent of the above request is but it adds to an overall impression that the White House has an us vs them mentality, "us" being the Democrats and "them" being whoever may disagree with the agenda being put forth by this administration.

There must be open discussion and debate about items that are being put forth by the administration. Asking people to "turn in" e-mails, etc. that are "fishy" is a ridiculous thing to do. If you want to correct what you feel are errors then do that. Don't ask citizens to forward other citizens e-mails, etc. to the White House. That is just, well, creepy.

I take the opportunity to send my comments and opinions to the White House and to my representatives on a regular basis, as I have mentioned here before.  And as I say a lot here, please do the same. Speak now while we still can.

The Time is Right

The North Koreans are testing long range missiles and setting off underground nuclear bombs.

Obama is in Hollywood telling all those famous people what a great job he’s doing.

Home foreclosure rates are at 12%, an all-time high.

Orwell’s 1984 is looking more and more as a prophetic guideline for this decade.

So what’s a Bible believing, critical-thinking, political junkie to do?

GO GET A PEDICURE!

 

“My, what beautiful feet you have!” you might say. Yeah, right! Like I would put up a picture of MY feet up!! Mine do look pretty darn good though. My daughter-in-spirit, Kristin, gave me a gift certificate for a pedicure for Mother’s Day. This was my first professional pedicure and I loved it! I could get so addicted to that wonderful experience. 

Do something special for yourself this weekend. It doesn’t have to be something  big or expensive just something that makes you go “Ahhhhhh” in that wonderfully contented way. Enjoy!

There Is a Plan

I have always been a political junkie/activist. My first memory of my political inclination was when I was in 7th grade. I led a sit-in protesting the fact that we weren’t allowed to wear pants to school. Oddly enough, the Principal compromised, letting us wear pants on Fridays which only further fueled our rebelliousness.

In eighth grade I wore a P.O.W. bracelet (Gregory Benton Jr. I still remember his name.) In ninth grade I wrote an essay on the fact that the Pledge of Allegiance wasn’t true any more. Not only did I get an F, but almost got kicked out of school. My parents met with the principal and pointed out that, while the topic was terrible, the essay was grammatically correct with no spelling errors and that I should at least get a C. In 10th grade I helped organize a local “Walk for Hunger” which was something Bobby Kennedy started. We got pledges and walked 10 miles to raise money to feed the poor. In 12th grade I wrote a poem for our high school literary magazine about one of our lecherous teachers. (Your Playboy key has rusted, your hand is on the door, Go drink your bottle of Geritol and bother me no more)  The principal wasn’t going to let me participate in graduation, even though the teacher who was the subject of the poem, told the principal not only was he not offended but he thought it was a great poem! Again my parents made the trek to the office. (By now they had a lot of practice.) My folks actually backed me up this time, saying it was free speech and there was nothing obscene in the poem, it was merely my opinion. Needless to say, I got to participate in my ceremony.

In college I volunteered at the local Free Clinic working the suicide and abortion hotlines. Part of this I am now very ashamed of as abortion had just become legal in California and I counseled many young women, presenting abortion as a viable option. (I was a card-carrying member of N.O.W. and feminist to the bone.) This one made my parents very, very angry to the point that my dad told me that if I insisted on volunteering there he wanted me out of the house.

So today, 2009 A.D., when I look at what is happening in our country and around the world I understand where the liberals/socialists are coming from. I considered myself a socialist from 11th grade until I was 23 or 24 years old. I know very well how they think, what their tactics are, and what their goal is. And, if I am not careful, I get scared, very scared, of what the future may look like. Fortunately I became a Christian when I was 22 and God has slowly but surely altered my worldview and politics.

The temptation arises often these days to be worried and fearful. Sometimes I feel like I literally have to grab the fear by the throat and declare “I will not fear because the Almighty One is in control of everything and He works all things together for good for those who love Him.” I pray. I meditate on the Bible. I center my thoughts around God and His Kingdom which will surely come no matter what the enemy does to try and stop it.

I read something on a blog yesterday that said “sometimes bad things have to happen first so that the good things will come.” They were referencing the death of Jesus which had to come before the resurrection could happen.  So I prepare my heart and mind for what may or may not come. I try and make peace with the thought that Christians in America may have their religious freedoms taken totally away. We are not so special that we will automatically escape what millions of our fellow believers endure daily around the world.

I am still political but that is secondary to being Christian. I pray for the President and Congress to be wise and make good decisions, but I also write to them when I disagree with what they do, savoring the fact that we still have freedom of speech. Conscious of that. on this blog I write about God and about politics while I still publically can. 

Most importantly I know how this all ends, being assured to my core that God will triumph over Satan and what we endure in this life is just a tiny moment compared with the eternity we will experience joyfully with our King. I leave you with this wonderful encouragement from the late S.M. Lockridge.

 

Does This Mean 1 in 3 “Christians” Have Poor Reading Comprehension?

1 in 3 'Christians' say 'Jesus sinned'
Barna poll shows adults develop their own beliefs

By Bob Unruh © 2009 WorldNetDaily

Half of Americans who call themselves "Christian" don't believe Satan exists and fully one-third are confident that Jesus sinned while on Earth, according to a new Barna Group poll.

Another 40 percent say they do not have a responsibility to share their Christian faith with others, and 25 percent "dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches," the organization reports.

Pollster George Barna said the results have huge implications. "Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible," he said. "Growing numbers of people now serve as their own theologian-in-residence," he continued. "One consequence is that Americans are embracing an unpredictable and contradictory body of beliefs."

The results are a dramatic departure from the nation's foundings, when leaders held prayer meetings in the halls of Congress and attributed to Almighty God the victory in the Revolutionary War.

Barna noted the millions of people who describe themselves as Christian and believe Jesus sinned, or those who say they will experience eternal salvation because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior, "but also believe that a person can do enough good works to earn eternal salvation."

Barna's private, non-partisan, for-profit research group in Ventura, Calif., has been studying cultural trends since 1984. For this study, the organization randomly sampled 1,004 adults across the continental U.S. The study has a margin of error of 3.2 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.

For the study, "born-again Christians" were defined as people who said they had made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that was still important in their life today and who also indicated they believed that when they die they will go to heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. The results highlight the significant shift in beliefs held by Americans, the study said.

"For much of America's history, the assumption was that if you were born in America, you would affiliate with the Christian faith," the report said. Now however, "half of all adults now contend that Christianity is just one of many options that Americans choose from and that a huge majority of adults pick and choose what they believe rather than adopt a church or denomination's slate of beliefs."

Fifty percent of Americans believe Christianity no longer has a lock on people's hearts. Two-thirds of evangelical Christians (64 percent) and three out of every five Hispanics (60 percent) embraced that position, making them the groups most convinced of the shift in America's default faith.

In contrast, the poll showed the importance of belief was growing along with the number of options about what to believe.

"By an overwhelming margin – 74 percent to 23 percent – adults agreed that their religious faith was becoming even more important to them than it used to be as a source of objective and reliable moral guidance."

Forty percent of respondents who do not affiliate with Christianity confirmed the increasing influence of their beliefs.

The result "underscored the fact that people no longer look to denominations or churches to offer a slate of theological views that the individual adopts in its entirety," the report said.

By a margin of 71 percent to 26 percent adults "noted that they are personally more likely to develop their own set of religious beliefs than to accept a comprehensive set of beliefs taught by a particular church," the report said.

Nearly two-thirds of "born again Christians" adopted that stance.

"In the past, when most people determined their theological and moral points of view, the alternatives from which they chose were exclusively of Christian options - e.g., the Methodist point of view, the Baptist perspective, Catholic teaching, and so forth," Barna noted. "Today, Americans are more likely to pit a variety of non-Christian options against various Christian-based views. This has resulted in an abundance of unique worldviews based on personal combinations of theology drawn from a smattering of world religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam as well as secularism."

And Now A Message From Dr. King

Excerpt “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” April 16, 1963

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ecclesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour.

Thoughts for Today

Therapy for Post-Election Blues by Pastor Mark Chanski

So, you’re discouraged and downcast about the outcome of the presidential election?  You’d hoped for better.  You’re concerned that we’ve taken a huge step backwards on such crucial morality issues like abortion, homosexuality, and stem cell research.  You fear our nation is culturally slipping into a season of ethical darkness.  You’re tempted to think that evil has somehow snuck up into the heavenly throne-room, seized, gagged, and bound God in a celestial corner, while unchecked wickedness will now trash history for a four-year term.  You may feel the onset of spiritual depression.

Don’t go there.  The children of God have every reason to rejoice in their Father’s undisturbed and sovereign reigning over the events of the November election.  The Bible is clear.  The decision was ultimately the Lord’s.  “For not from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert comes exaltation; but God is the Judge; He puts down one, and exalts another” (Psalm 75:6-7).  We ought to hold to the deep conviction that Barack Obama is God’s man for the White House.

The carpenter holds his power drill.  He’s finished with the drill bit for boring holes.  He removes and puts down the boring bit, passes by the screw-driver bit, then selects and inserts the sanding bit.  He has purposeful and important work to do.  Likewise, the Lord has put down Bush/Cheney, passed by McCain/Palin, and exalted Obama/Biden.  He has work to do. 

(Read the rest here.)

The Suspense Is Growing

and everyone is on the edge of their seats waiting to see who is going to be the next POTUS (Pres. of the U.S.  That’s Secret Service talk.)

Here’s a video to help you review the candidates main points plus 3:56 minutes of absolute hilarious weirdness. (Be sure to watch the whole thing!)