PublicChristian

Former Sec. of State Madeleine Albright said this in an email I got this week.

Every new president inherits headaches, but President Obama has inherited an entire emergency room.

Our struggle to reclaim our standing in the world has been challenging, but we are making progress. Together, we will need to continue to speak up, fight back, and give President Obama the support he needs to succeed.

The President told David Letterman last night that we were losing 700,000 jobs a month when he became President. And that’s just in one bay of a pretty large emergency room.

And Connie kept saying, while Obama was on Letterman, that he just always seems so calm, so reasonable, and not at all “full of himself.”

Sort of like a grown-up should be!

Or a Christian.
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4  Men of perverse heart shall be far from me;

I will have nothing to do with evil.

5  Whoever slanders his neighbor… ,
him will I put to silence;
whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart,
him will I not endure.

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Did you see the recent comment from “Donna”? It stirred me up! Come on people! Christian integrity and humility should compel you to allow that those who voted for Obama are NOT thereby proven to be ignorant or reprobate!

I know that my response refers to the behavior and attitudes of the “religious right” as if they could be sterotyped. But in fact, in my experience, these problems VERY consistently show up in people who get their input from those sources – they are stereotypical responses. On the other hand my experience with Christian Democrats shows them almost always to be much more welcoming and open to information and to real discussion.

Here’s my response (The numbered headlines are quotes from Donna’s comment.):
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Some Biblical perspective.

First, our hope has to be higher than human society, politics, government, churches, or wars.

Psalm 146:

3 Do not put your trust in princes,
    in mortal men, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
    on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the LORD his God,
6 the Maker of heaven and earth,
    the sea, and everything in them—
    the LORD, who remains faithful forever.

Second, it matters greatly to the Divine Spirit what kinds of values we support.

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Quotes from the e-newsletter I get from Information Clearing House.

… the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights:
one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public,
and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists.
Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret.
-Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author

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Palin and Her Big Speech

I watched the Wednesday evening convention speech of McCain’s VP choice (Alaska Gov Sarah Palin) all the way through. It was not pleasant. In fact, it gave me the creeps – she’s a literally scary person.

She vigorously and deliberately presented herself as a gifted speaker who is entirely willing to throw integrity and truth to the wind. She energetically slandered » Continue Reading »

Obama and McCain each just spent an hour answering questions from Rick Warren, pastor at Saddleback Church in Forest Hills, CA.

I have a few apparently biased observations:

OBAMA

Obama put considerable emphasis on the actual moral priorities of Jesus, mentioning the Matthew 25 teaching more than once – Jesus’ statement that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” He emphasized that Jesus definitely was concerned about “the least of these.”

In fact, when asked what has been America’s greatest moral failing he said it was the violation of that directive from Jesus in a number of different ways down through the years. It was obvious listening to the Fox News types afterward » Continue Reading »

The Matthew 25 Network website features Bible quotes like

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with your neighbor, for we are all of the same body.
- Ephesians 4:25

Seems elementary, doesn’t it? Why should we have to remind fellow Christians to tell the truth about other people? But Paul had to remind the believers at Ephesus, and we have to remind the believers of America.

Because a lot of professing Christians are still parroting lies about Obama (and others), and still forwarding – and choosing to believe – those lying emails.

It also features a verse from its namesake chapter, Matthew 25 » Continue Reading »

Words of Jesus, who is called “Christ.” It is from his title that we derive the word “Christian” (from Matthew 25:34-46)

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

•For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,
•I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
•I was a stranger and you invited me in,
•I needed clothes and you clothed me,
•I was sick and you looked after me,
•I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry » Continue Reading »

It might be a good project for each of us – to try to summarize the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 – 7) in 209 words.

Brian McLaren has done so, in his The Secret Message of Jesus (chapter 15, “Kingdom Ethics”, p 136). » Continue Reading »

The prior post (”Twillight of the Gods – Greed and Money“) mentioned increasing economic distress throughout our nation. This is for real.

I expect it will continue, though the extent to which it spreads and strengthens, and it’s impact on our international positions, are very much debatable questions.

We could be facing major tragedies in our economic life. That means major tragedies for millions of individual Americans and their families.

But we could also be moving into a time of repentance. » Continue Reading »

There’s a lot of hunger in Zimbabwe –
a lot of economic distress –
a lot of political violence –
and enormous corruption.

As an American woman walks to work she carries bread in her pack, and hands it out to the begging children she passes.

Hold your hand out, child,
hold your hand out and I’ll fill it
I know it’s not much, but will it do?

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Politics makes strange bedfellows – it’s often the lure of money and power that does it. I wonder what’s doing it in this case.

Here’s Dobson, a leading voice for “family values,” still supporting men whose unsavory characters are on public display and whose personal and political actions have done much to damage our world’s families and little to support or protect them. » Continue Reading »

[Last weekend the public library sponsored one of those huge used book sales. For less than $20 we got about 3 dozen books. One of life's pleasures! And most of them, after a week, I'm still glad we got. (Where we're going to put them is another question.)]

Here’s some good stuff from No Man Is An Island by Thomas Merton, a collection of essays.

These are the first two paragraphs of Chapter 10, “Sincerity.”

We make ourselves real by telling the truth. » Continue Reading »

Psalm 52

1 Why do you boast of evil, you mighty man?
Why do you boast all day long,
you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?

2 Your tongue plots destruction;
it is like a sharpened razor,
you who practice deceit.

3 You love evil rather than good,
falsehood rather than speaking the truth.
…

5 Surely God will bring you down … » Continue Reading »

What do you do when it’s over?

One of the problems left by an authoritarian or extensively dishonest and illegal regime is this – how much do we need to talk about or otherwise “deal with” such misbehavior once the national power balances have changed?

Remember what Gerald Ford said when he became President after Nixon resigned? “Our long national nightmare is over.” Unfortunately it wasn’t. The illegalities and other offenses were swept under one of history’s bigger rugs; but the bulge remained to haunt us. It seems those same attitudes and behaviors have revisited us » Continue Reading »

I. Waves of Slander

I don’t have statistics, but we all know there’s a lot of falsehood circulating freely online.

An email arrives with frightening accusations or innuendos and the reader gets frightened (as was intended) and forwards the email to warn others of the great danger revealed.

But what if the email is one of the mostly false ones? How should we react if we’re not entirely sure of it’s truthfulness? After all, when we accept at face value lies about a person, group, or situation, and repeat those lies, we have put ourselves in a very bad place – we have become gossips and slanderers.

Slander, you may have heard, is not a Bible virtue, » Continue Reading »

Isaiah 10:1-3 (emphasis added)

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.

What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?

Time is passing without me posting on this blog, that is. But it’s not because I’ve lost interest. We are just in a kind of whirlwind right now – candidating for jobs in another part of the state, selling a house here and buying one there so we can be closer to Chelsea and 10 other kids-and-grandkids. It’s all exciting and a little nerve-wracking. But as things become more certain we’ll put up more of the details.

In the meantime, this is still very certainly a good set of values, and a good simple prayer:

“Hallowed be Thy Name,
Thy Kingdom come,
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in Heaven.” – Jesus

I Timothy 2:

I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone – for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

Pretty important “that.” And loving our neighbors as ourselves will make us think of “we” in quite broad terms.
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Senator Kennedy recently got a bit worked up in the Senate, trying to get the Republican side to deal honestly with the minimum wage problem – which is really the problem of working people living in poverty in this country while their employers live in unprecedented wealth and comfort.

There’s a short video (maybe 10 minutes) online. Here are a few excerpts.

When does the greed stop?

Do you have such disdain for hard-working Americans …

Disdain is the right word. Contempt also works. Something about those without power or prominence tends – as a general human pattern down through history – to irritate and offend those who do have money and power.

Jesus was touchy about this problem, as were many of the earlier prophets.

Kennedy contintues:

What is it about [a minimum wage increase] that drives you Republicans crazy? What is it? Something. Something!

What is the price that the workers have to pay to get an increase?

Remember – the author of “James” really went to bat for “the workers” against their employers.

Can you live on $5.15 an hour – working 30 or 40 hours a week, with no health insurance? Maybe if you’re homeless. Or willing to go further into debt every month. Or mooching off your parents. And don’t want a family life.

And Kennedy’s most potent line of all:

What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?

“Working men and women.” They are DOING what the conservatives so often pretend to admire – they are actually WORKING!

Unfortunately, they are offensive because they don’t have money! They don’t live like “WE” do – and we are clearly the real Americans. Ipso facto, they don’t live like real Americans. That is offensive.

They live in tiny houses with cars that are not only not classy – they are not even brand new! VERY irritating and contemptible.

They don’t own businesses or have a lot of interest income. They don’t watch tv on high definition big screens. They don’t fly often or at all. They go to the emergency room to get medical care.

The go to public schools of all things! Talk about repulsive! They shop at K-Mart and Wal-Mart – makes your skin crawl to think of it.

James 1:27

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress …

Leviticus 25:35

If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you.

Unfortunately, if we treat US citizens like we treat aliens or temporary residents, that’s going the wrong direction. Maybe we have a few things to learn even from the ancient “books of Moses.”

Amos 4:1

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and say to your husbands, “Bring us some drinks!”

Amos 5:11

You trample on the poor and force him to give you grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine.

Believe me, this list of Bible references to the poor could go on for page after page.

“Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say” asked Jesus. I suspect he is still asking that question.

I guess I’m stuck on this Bush escalation-disaster for a while.

Juan Cole, whose blog, Informed Comment, is a very reputable source of information about what is happening in the middle east, weighs in bluntly on Bush’s speech Wednesday night.

Bush Sends GIs to his Private Fantasyland

To listen to Bush’s speech on Wednesday, you would imagine that al-Qaeda has occupied large swathes of Iraq with the help of Syria and Iran and is brandishing missiles at the US mainland.

That the president of the United States can come out after nearly four years of such lies and try to put this fantasy over on the American people is shameful.

Stubborness, dishonesty, and sending thousands to their deaths – it is indeed shameful.

11 Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter.

12 If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who guards your life know it?
Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?

from Proverbs 24

So from the speech tonight we learn that our President has a new and improved strategy for our occupation of Iraq – escalation. If you’re old enough, this only continues to be sickeningly reminiscent of our “Vietnam era.”

Scripture offers some wise insights now as then.

A wise son heeds his father’s instruction,
but a mocker does not listen to rebuke.
Proverbs 13:1

And now, unlike then, some of the advisors and close associates of the physical father of this President have warned him away from the road he is enslaving himself to.

A man who remains stiff-necked after many rebukes
will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.
Proverbs 29:1

We see him stiff-necked and wooden-headed – the march of folly enacted futilely and infuriatingly right before our eyes.

Paul said:

Tad Dunne, writing of the philosophy of Bernard Lonergan, says:

Colonel Ann Wright is registering strong protest against us keeping our prison operating at Guantanamo.

This is a Biblical moral issue.

Hebrews 13:3

Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

“As if you were” there with them! That’s asking a lot.

Connie and I watched the movie “Road to Guantanamo” a couple of weeks ago. It is probably one of those necessary movies for Americans – because Guantanamo is being done in our name. And it illustrates, on the basis of the true stories of a few former victims of Guantanamo, what Col. Wright is talking about in this article.

I do urge the watching of the movie. » Continue Reading »