Tribulation Force, pp. 147-151 A great deal of theology has to do not with God but with us — with humans and human nature and human choices. God is still in the picture, of course, that's what separates theology from other varieties of philosophy, psychology, history or ethics. But you can't do theology without also addressing all of those disciplines. You can't talk about theology without talking about human nature as well as the nature of God. One of the... Read more
The good thing about zero visibility is it keeps you from driving faster than you should on unplowed roads. I get home this morning and I get about two-thirds of the driveway shoveled and I'm clammy-sweaty and I start to remember all those articles we've been running in the paper about the dangers of dropping dead from shoveling snow. And then I think: I'm middle-aged. I'm only a couple years younger than Django Reinhardt was when he had his fatal... Read more
The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are persons and that money is speech and that, therefore, corporations have a greater right to free speech than other, mortal persons with actual mouths but not as much money. These poorer, merely human persons also don't get to enjoy the apparently divine right of limited liability. Among the more intriguing repercussions of this astonishing and absurd ruling is that foreign corporations are also now free to buy up all the airtime they... Read more
So I'm reading a painstakingly thorough work of investigative journalism when suddenly, in Chapter 6, our friend Tim LaHaye makes a surprising and pivotal cameo appearance. The book I'm reading is Selling Satan: The Evangelical Media and the Mike Warnke Scandal, by Mike Hertenstein and Jon Trott. It expands on the reporting the duo did for Cornerstone magazine in the early 1990s, exposing as a hoax the "Satanism" stories of best-selling Christian-brand author and speaker Warnke, who was swindling millions... Read more
… the life he thought would just happen to him like the changing of the seasons "Jack of All Parades," Elvis Costello"Jack's Valentine," Over the Rhine"Jackeyed," Micah P. Hinson"Jacksie," Over the Rhine"Jackson," Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash"Jackson," Lucinda Williams"Jacksons, Monk and Rowe," Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet"Jaded," Green Day"Jail Guitar Doors," The Clash"Jailer," Asa"Jailhouse Rock," Elvis Presley"James," Huffamoose"James Bond Theme," Leroy Holmes Read more
OK, that could have been clearer. Let me take another run at the same idea a bit less elliptically. I see the parallel between Jackie Robinson and Barack Obama as much closer than all that heady post-election talk of a "post-racial America" seemed to suggest. Robinson — who wore No. 42 with the Brooklyn Dodgers when he joined the team in 1947 — broke the color barrier in baseball the first time he stepped onto the field, making history in... Read more
The first year was brutal, at times almost unendurable. Wherever he went the grandstands were filled with the hateful, angry voices of boorish louts screaming nasty threats and accusations. To the mob he represented, somehow, everything they hated. His very presence there was a reminder that the thing they most feared and despised was happening whether they liked it or not. Truth be told, the angry mob had gone crazy. It hadn't so much lost its mind as surrendered it,... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 139-147 * * SPOILER ALERT * * Rayford Steele will eventually take the job of Head Chief Master Boss Pilot of Air Force One. No, this doesn't mean that "Captain" Steele is going to enlist in the Air Force. In Tribulation Force, "Air Force" One seems to be a civilian plane, evidently staffed by a civilian crew from the passenger carrier Pan Continental Airlines. The airline also apparently oversees the hiring and vetting of the pilot, with... Read more
Hey you. You there in the Glenn Beck T-shirt headed off to the Tea Party Patriot rally. Stop shouting for a moment, please, I want to explain to you why you're so very angry. You should be angry. You're getting screwed. I think you know that. But you don't seem to know that it doesn't have to be that way. You can stop it. You can stop it easily because the system that's screwing you over can only keep screwing... Read more
The Alliance Defense Fund is fighting for its life. It's current case — defending the constitutionality of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 — cuts to the heart and soul of this organization and, indeed, to the core and essence of the religious right groups who came together to create it. The ADF was founded as a sectarian, conservative response to the ACLU.* Where the American Civil Liberties Union exists to protect the rights of minorities from being denied or eroded... Read more
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