OK, so, the National Mall is a fairly large place and from what I understand there may be dozens, even hundreds of people there this weekend. So I guess if we're going to try to meet up at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, we should probably plan something more specific than "Hey, see you Saturday on the Mall." Details seem called for: When and where and who, particularly. How's 10:30-ish sound for the when? As for the where... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 277-279 The "Bible prophecies" on which the Left Behind series is based are not actually in the Bible. One way of responding to this nonsense, then, is to point that out — to turn to the Bible and look at what it says and what it means and to contrast that with what Tim LaHaye claims it says, pointing out all the gaps, the unsupported leaps, the incoherence of his eisegesis, the inconsistencies, contradictions and outright inventions... Read more
"No one has ever seen God," the first epistle of John says. "Those who say 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also." The apostle Philip wanted to see God. "Show us the Father," Philip said... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 275-276 The press conference announcing the ill-defined, but legally mandatory, one-world religion continues, with one of the nameless and unimportant non-Buck reporters asking: "Is there one major tenet you all agree on?" another reporter asks. This was met with laughter by the participants. Why the laughter? I think Jerry Jenkins intends it to be nervous laughter, a kind of awkward acknowledgment that the world's formerly disparate religions don't share many particulars in common. I've seen that sort... Read more
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Republican Christine O’Donnell, a candidate for the United States Senate, is unfamiliar with those 16 words. P.S.: I’ll be getting the belated LBMonday post up late tonight sometime Wednesday. Sorry for the delay on that. Read more
Clarence Jordan, the late founder of Koinonia Farm (the community that gave us Habitat for Humanity), used to tell a story that nicely illustrates the importance of "Test everything. Hold on to the good." In the 1950s, an old hillbilly preacher invited Jordan to come and speak at his church in rural South Carolina. Jordan arrived to find, to his surprise, a large, thriving and racially integrated congregation — a remarkable thing in that time and place. (Sadly, it's actually... Read more
This post is addressed to one person in particular and I'm afraid I don't know his name. Your name. Your aunt, unfortunately, didn't mention either your name or hers when she drunk-dialed me Thursday to let me know I was at the top of the list of Bad People she's praying against due to my supposedly contributing to your doubts about the inerrancy and infallibility of the footnotes in the Scofield Reference Bible. Your aunt was too intoxicated — three... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 274-277 Well here I am and there you are. Since you're not here, you must be elsewhere. This kind of basic binary distinction is a necessary and useful tool for making sense of the world. We need words to mean things, meaning we need them not to mean everything else too. So if you're not here, you must be elsewhere because this is what "elsewhere" means. (It's also, in a way, what "here" means, i.e., not elsewhere.)... Read more
Some simple equations: Subsidiarity + Solidarity = Democracy Subsidiarity – Solidarity = Tyranny It really is that stark and that simple. The good news — at least for those of us who don't favor tyranny — is that these two things are not easily separable. Subsidiarity clarifies solidarity, but it cannot exist apart from it. And solidarity without the focus provided by subsidiarity is too amorphous and overwhelming to provide useful guidance. Both principles share the same premise: Everyone is... Read more
Bill Maher continues his weekly Christine O'Donnell video clip releases, with this week's showing the Republican Senate candidate claiming to have explored becoming a Hare Krishna. "I was dabbling into every other kind of religion before I became a Christian," O'Donnell says: I was dabbling in witchcraft, I've dabbled in Buddhism. I would have become a Hare Krishna but I didn't want to become a vegetarian. And that is honestly the reason why — because I'm Italian, I love meatballs!... Read more
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