Thanks

Tomorrow is the holiday Thanksgiving. It’s quite possibly my favorite holiday, because it’s less corrupted than most others. Even the secular version of Thanksgiving gives at least a nod toward the real purpose of the day, to take a break and remember, thankfully.

To be honest, though, what might be my favorite part of Thanksgiving observance is my church’s Wednesday night service. We meet to celebrate Communion, but for the Thanksgiving service we also open up a bit. People talk about the things for which we’re thankful. The statements vary in depth, but they’re all very real, and very meaningful.

Always, there are a few that really pull at your heart. This is a great service, and one that I wouldn’t want to miss for the world.

That’s tonight. I can’t think of any better way to stop and get my heart and mind in the right place for Thanksgiving Day.

A bit of fun, to Alfie

In honor of the comments thread over here, I’d like to share this with Alfie from In2theFray:

I wish I could back the Manhattan Declaration (Updated)

(Update) Some other great posts on the subject, by the way:

Rod at Political Jesus tells you “What the Manhattan Declaration Does Not Tell You“

Ellen Haroutunian would like to share “Why I Cannot Sign the Manhattan Declaration“

and Polycarp at The Church of Jesus Christ states simply “I Will Not be Signing the Manhattan Declaration“

 

When I first heard mention of the Manhattan Declaration, I really wanted to be able to get behind it. Then I read it.

I can’t.

First of all, the document is a political statement posing as a statement of faith. Many people made the same accusation about the Evangelical Manifesto last year, and I reject that charge. However, I think it stands in this case.

It takes only a few sentences after the Preamble for the document to go on a rant about the current administration. In so doing, it immediately falls into the trap of making the Church an arm of a political movement, a thing in which I am not willing to take part.

Worst Advertisement Ever

I used to work for a credit union in New Hampshire, and during that time our branch in Rochester relocated. It didn’t move very far, but still the Marketing department was very diligent about making sure that the web site and mailings let everyone know where the new Rochester branch was.

The problem was, they identified the location as “the intersection of Old Dover Road and Route 125.” The new branch was close to that intersection, I grant, but the building that actually occupied that particular fork in the road? It was a branch of the Bank of New Hampshire.

This comes to mind as I read the mail today, as I have finally found an ad worse than that one. Today, we received an advertisement from Verizon Wireless promoting their new product.

Only, they don’t actually want us to buy it yet. Here it is:

Not your next phone, so wait a while ...

It’s not your next phone, it’s the one after that.

So, since I don’t plan on replacing my current phone anytime soon, and I’m sure not trying to figure out what I’m going to use to replace my next phone for some time, why are they bothering to send this to me now?

I wonder if this sounded like a better idea in some marketing department.

“The Hole in Our Gospel” by Richard Stearns

(Disclosure: I did receive this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers for review purposes.)

I’ve had The Hole in our Gospel for some time now, and have been interrupted frequently in reading it. Finally, I finished. It’s a very good read.

Richard Stearns is the president of World Vision, a Christian charitable organization. He used to be the CEO of Lennox Corporation, which makes fine china such as those plates my wife and I got for our wedding (the ones we’ve never used).

In this book, he chronicles how he made that transition. Mostly, it was kicking and screaming. He had no interest in doing so, and was sure that he was the wrong person for the job. God, however, wanted him. He concedes that, ultimately, God was putting him where he needed to be.

Stearns takes a good look at what was wrong with his own attitude, and how that same thought process is at work around him and us, and what he sees as very wrong in much of the Christian community. The hole that he sees in our Gospel is the part where we take it and make it real and meaningful.

Yes, it is the same turf that Jesus’ brother, James, went over in his book of the New Testament. James 2:17 (NLT):

So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.

However, it’s worth the time to look over a real life, in the modern world, with a person facing the same challenges and thoughts that we face — if not greater, since most of us don’t have to choose whether to give up seven-figure salaries.

I’m not sure that the book blazed any new trails for me, since I’ve already been on board with the idea that Jesus wasn’t kidding when He talked about the need to take care of others, but it was a good book. Looking at how another man struggled with that calling was very interesting.

I’d recommend it.

A few current events items

The trial gamble

So, we’re going to try some alleged terrorists in civilian courts. This really is a bold move by the Obama administration, and we’ll see how it plays out. The lines are drawn. According to Pres. Obama’s critics, this is inviting such folks as Khalid Shiek Mohammad to have access to intelligence secrets and inviting terrorist attention to New York.

On the other hand, supporters assert that this shows confidence in our justice system and the concepts of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Politically, someone is going to win big on this. If nothing bad happens, then the Right is going to have a very hard time asserting that it was a bad move. If something bad happens, then Pres. Obama might as well sit out the 2012 election.

The Shoe’s on the Other Foot

For the past six years or so, we’ve been told from certain sources that liberals would benefit from the country’s losses in Iraq, and so you knew that they were hoping for bad things to happen.

Look at the situation I just described above … It is now the Republicans who would benefit from a terrorist attack related to the KSM trial. Will anyone stoop so low as to accuse the GOP of hoping for such a thing?

Mammograms: Rationing, or Good Sense?

It’s been all over the place on this one … a survey group came out and suggested that mammograms be less routine and that doctors not spend time teaching women to self-examine. From the Right, of course, this has been cited as evidence of rationing to come. Other than that, responses have been all over the place. Some doctors are pointing to this as part of US medical culture — we do too many exams, too many procedures, exploratory surgeries, biopsies, etc. in response to false positives or so-called “defensive medicine.” On the other hand, other doctors point to the fact that early detection does save lives.

I’m undecided on this one … I understand that argument that the focus group is looking at the statistics dispassionately, and so presents an unbiased result. On the other hand, how many of us know someone whose life was saved by one of these exams that wouldn’t happen? (Actually, I don’t, but my wife does!) If you’d like to hear a great conversation on this, Diane Rehm had it on Wednesday. I feel like I learned a lot from the discussion, and ultimately came out no more certain what was right than I had been before the show started … though I knew more for both sides! The podcast is available at that link.

Psalm 109:8

It’s all over the Internet now, and I saw the bumper sticker today. A guy I know e-mailed me to say that he saw the bumper sticker in Massachusetts (of course, he thought it was funny!) … “Pray for Obama — Psalm 109:8.” Here, by the way, is Psalm 109:8 (NLT):

Let his years be few;
let someone else take his position.

Ha, ha, isn’t that funny? No? Oh, well …

It gets even less funny, and more disgusting, if you read the next couple verses (Psalm 109:9-10, NLT):

May his children become fatherless,
and his wife a widow.
¹⁰ May his children wander as beggars
and be driven from their ruined homes.

Let’s read the whole passage and see if this is really something that people want to say.

Christians are called to be salt and light in the world, not to be obnoxious jackasses. This is a flagrant misuse of Scripture, and we have to stand against it.

Two Videos My Son Wants to Share

Not ours, but they’re pretty funny. Wiggle is here with me and we’ve just encountered “The Duck Song 2.”

So, here for your … ummm … enjoyment? … is “The Duck Song”:

 

Since one just isn’t enough, here’s the sequel:

 

Enjoy, or something!

Padre Steve Defends the Rights of Moslems

It’s a great piece, hitting on some of the same themes I was but taking it farther and deeper.

A Christian Defense of the Rights of Moslems and Others in a Democracy (or Constitutional Republic)

From Joe Schriner, re: the Moon thing

I was going back and forth on whether I wanted to post anything about this, and then I saw Joe Schriner’s blog post about it. So, I’ll let him say it for me:

Front page stories in newspapers across the country scream that, at last: Water Has Been Found On The Moon! I mean, there’s water in India.  And there’s water in Uganda.  And there’s water in El Salvador…  A lot of it unsafe to drink.  But the poor are drinking it, and dying.  And then there’s all that polluted water in the Great Lakes.  And what about not enough water in southern California?  And… Yet we’re spending billions of dollars on this moon thing.  Billions of dollars that could be spent setting up water purification systems in the Third World, better water filtration plants for the Great Lakes, and water pipeline conduits into Southern California.  All on this planet.  Have we become so devoid of common sense?

A popular argument that can’t stand up

In one form or another, I hear this one a lot:

“Forced compassion through government taxation can never replace or even supplement true Christian charity”

I grabbed it from this thread today, but I’ve come across it many other times.

The idea is that if the government is making us give our money to help others, it doesn’t really require charitable thoughts, and so it doesn’t count.

It’s among the weakest straw-man arguments that I’ve ever encountered, for a very simple reason: that’s not the point.

When it comes down to it, laws don’t change the internal behavior of those subject to those laws. The law is a tool of compliance, not internal change.

Laws against murder don’t make citizens value human life. Laws against slavery didn’t make everyone equal in everyone else’s eyes. Laws against theft don’t make people respect other people’s property. What they’re meant to do, though, is define a limit to those internal failures.

It’s true that using the government to provide social services doesn’t make taxpayers into better people. It does, however, provide for the poor. That is the point of these programs.

A question that I’ve asked in various places (not the above-cited thread, though) is this: If you believe that it’s okay to use the government to impose social values, such as laws against abortion, gay marriage, or whatnot … why not imposing a form of charitable giving? I’ve never seen a good answer to that question. The fact that I couldn’t come up with one myself is why I changed several of my own political positions a decade and a half ago.