Rejection

According to the media, Terry Jones is a
Christian pastor with a dwindling 
congregation of about 15 at
 last report.

Jones conducted a public burning of the Koran
in 2011. In response to the media coverage,
protesters in northern Afghanistan attacked
a UN Aid Mission, killing 12 people,
 including 7 UN workers.

Jones has been denied entry into Canada,
the U.K., and Germany for his hate-speech.

According to the German Evangelical Alliance,

Jones was released from the leadership of the

Cologne Christian Church in '08 due to his

indefensible theological statements and

 his craving for attention.

In 2012, Terry Jones promoted a film vilifying

 Islam, titled Innocence of Muslims. The film

led to protests in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia,

and Libya. Jones screened it at church on

9.11.2012, a day he named, "International

 Judge Mohammad Day"

In 2012, Jones hanged an effigy of Obama in
front of his church. Effigies of Obama and
Bill Clinton were burned in 2013.

For the the 2012 elections, he declared

 himself an independent presidential

candidate. He is a listed candidate

for the 2016 U.S. election.

A formulaic approach to religion is common but troublesome.
Do this and this, and you'll be saved and go to heaven.

If you refuse the gospel, you won't.  You'll be rejected at the gate.
Those are the rules.

So, what if you hear the gospel from folks like Terry Jones?  How does that affect your salvation equation?  Only the most unlearned can listen to this fellow.  Does his talking about the Bible and Christianity count?  Most will reject what he offers, and wisely so.

There are so many who have been driven away by religious rules and rule purveyors.  There's truth, and then there's arrogance and foolish error that spills out of narrow minds.  The two are unrelated.

The media flail over Jones is inappropriate, of course.  Talking with his few followers about Jesus and burning the Koran doesn't make him a legitimate spokesperson either for Christianity or its author.

Had Jones encountered the author, he'd perhaps have a different message.

The 'good news' is farther from this sort of nonsense than can be described in words, and it's not about rules. 

• Although he's perhaps running for president, Jones hasn't been in the news lately.  In January, he was working at Fry Guys in a mall food court in Florida.  Here's hoping he gets his thinking straight.

From 2012... and Muslim Peace

Are banks necessary?

No.  As individuals, we don't need them.  There are many alternatives for the typical household.  Credit unions, brokerage accounts, insurance accounts, and prepaid/reloadable credit cards are a few examples.

Are banks trustworthy?
Not particularly.  Banks are supposed to play by the rules, but that hasn't gone well.  Between 2009 and 2014, the largest U.S. banks paid $130 billion in fines, settlements, and criminal penalties for their illegal activities.  That was just for the times they cheated and got caught, of course.  Small, local banks are more reasonably managed.

Are banks keeping your money safe?
No, that's the government's FDIC.

Our first banks were small, local, and community focused.  They knew their customers.  They held money for folks in the form of deposits, and they loaned it back within the community.  Interest on deposits and more interest on loans is how they managed their costs, but that was and still is their purpose.  All the rest is questionable.

Most banks now are far removed from communities and from their customers.

Some folks these days would like to take their business elsewhere, perhaps for ethical reasons.  The big banks do all manner of things that cause people of conscience to prefer an alternative.

"Virtually all independent economists and financial experts agree that the economy cannot stabilize or recover unless the giant, insolvent banks are broken up (and 1, 1A,  2, and 3).  And the very size of the big banks is also warping our entire political system."  ... as in purchasing the legislation they need.  And size ... the larger banks are bigger than most countries.

A capitalist free market economy has much to commend it.  Big banks aren't included in the list.


The current generation has seen emphasis on insider plays, manipulation of the marketplace, and purchased regulation.  Every president and virtually every congressman has supported the financial industry and the wealthy at the expense of the citizenry.

The result is a national ponzi scheme.  It's wealth extraction from the top with the price tag at the bottom of the pyramid where most people live.  That's the U.S. economic model since '79.

Assets.  I'm sure that was supposed to be 'by assets'.

   Okay, maybe not.
Note the asset scale increments, five hundred thousand million,
then one million million, ... incredible wealth concentration.

A classic ponzi requires suckers to buy in, but today's version depends on government regulation to open our collective financial resources without our permission for use by the ponzi players.  It has been noted by leading economists that the financial industry now serves the few and provides nothing for the well being of the citizenry.

There are a number of factors suggesting change is coming.  For now, you can get along fine without any banks being part of the process.  The more difficult task is defending the nation.  Feel free to suggest to your representatives that you'd be quite happy if the big banks were disassembled and made to behave responsibly.

Crossing the Line

The Law:  The problem with drawing a line in the sand is that someone is likely to cross it; it's almost a challenge to see if you can find a way to do it.

Ask any business executive or Wall Street player if there aren't trade and finance laws that you can beat just by arranging your books the right way, and you can make a killing.

The authority of law rises from the moral intent to prevent harm, to avoid a pitfall, as in 'don't do that or you'll hurt somebody'. We know it's not perfect; loopholes in the law let you hurt others legally, so for now, the law says that's acceptable.  Some folks are fighting to keep it that way, but to be fair, perhaps they don't understand what they've agreed to.



Norma McCorvey was Roe in Roe v. Wade.  She later testified to Congress:

Her parents named her Amillia - which means
resilient in Latin, a fighter and hardworking
 - to reflect her survival against the odds.
Born at 21 weeks and 6 days ...
Fortunately, Planned Parenthood was
 not involved.

"It was my pseudonym, Jane Roe, which had been used to create the "right" to abortion out of legal thin air. But Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee never told me that what I was signing would allow women to come up to me 15, 20 years later and say, "Thank you for allowing me to have my five or six abortions. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible." Sarah never mentioned women using abortions as a form of birth control. We talked about truly desperate and needy women, not women already wearing maternity clothes."

Instead of a last resort to avoid unendurable troubles, abortion has become a convenience available without restriction.

From the 2012 Democratic Party platform on abortion:

"... unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade  ...  We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right. Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way. ..."

Although unintended by the court, the ruling has loopholes big enough for an eight-month pregnant minor to walk through for an abortion without "her family, her doctor," or "her clergy" ever being part of the decision.

The party has removed the sentence “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare” from its platform. 

The question?  After millions of written pages and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the legal battles in state and federal courts and in government houses, the original question is lost.
Is there harm to anyone?

Abortion -- does it hurt anyone?

It's a moral question, not a legal one. We've come so far from our first intent that we now permit an abortionist to dismember a living, viable baby in the womb (just like these pictured here) and then sell its' heart and brain and other organs.

Where is the transition from embryo to child?  At what point have we crossed that line?

Food, Education, and Income

What we eat is perhaps affected by both education and income.  This illuminating graphic from Bloomberg Business is based on statistics and information from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.  It suggests that that poverty is unhealthy; what a surprise.

The impact of economic distress persists across generations.

A fellow I met recently laughed about working two jobs and sometimes three in order to meet the needs of his baby boy.  The child's mother had left him with custody and impossible debt.  As he wrapped up one job around 7 PM, he was off to another after a stop for supper at the gas station, a couple of burritos.  His own upbringing hadn't been easy; his father had been out of the picture for most of twenty-seven years.  Despite the difficulties, he was enthusiastic about moving forward career-wise as a worker on major construction projects, but employment opportunities have been scarce.  Walmart turned him away because he was 'overqualified'.

The difficulties some face are greater than for others.  Opportunity isn't truly equal and advanced education is difficult to tackle financially.  Those who attempt it are often left in debt for years whether they finish or not.

In the recent debate among presidential contenders, much was said about business and tax cuts and national strength, but not a word about our decades of accelerating inequality.  I'd hoped they would notice.

For the record, neither party is addressing the issue.

No one has an easy path.  Both success and meaningful life require great effort and perseverance.  None of us has any chance of doing it on our own alone.

Ascend

There's a general impression among us that the country is losing its' moral footing.  Got an opinion?

With a variety of hot-button issues in the public forum, Americans are perhaps concerned.  Is this public opinion valid?  (Gallup is among the more objective of poll takers.)

We have indeed seen changes over time.

• The reputation of our nation has declined among the peoples of the world.
• Western cultural influence on the rest of the world is seen as harmful.  MTV tops their list of detrimental social elements.
• Our financial marketplace, seen as greed unleashed, now affects the entire world.
• Meanwhile, the rich get rapidly richer while everyone else loses.
• Our legal definition of marriage now includes same-sex couples.
• Corporations have the same rights as individuals in the political realm.
• Our legal definition of 'person' excludes a child in the womb.  We kill 20% of our children before they're born.
• About 30% of all internet traffic goes to adult sites.
• More than half of all births are now to unmarried parents, and a third of all children live in a home without a father.

None of these were true just one lifetime ago.  Doom-and-gloom-cryers claim it's the death of the nation's soul, the end of all that was noble and good.

• On the other side of the story, crime numbers are down, homicides are down, teen pregnancies are down, abortion rates are down, and so on.  Does that balance the equation?

If there are moral concerns today, (and there are, or course), can things improve from here?

There's a long history of tension between secular and spiritual perspectives.  The secular mind sees the list above and is unconcerned.  The spiritual response is otherwise.

There's no doubt that individuals and families can defend themselves against an immoral culture, but it's combat, not a minor divergence.  Our nation was born in the midst of such conflict.


As the colonies coalesced into a nation, history tells us of the first Great Awakening, a period of spiritual revolution and turning to godly ways. Persisting for more than a decade, the tumultuous time shaped much of what became the American Revolution and foundation of the new nation.

Narratives from the time tell of churches and even civil governments calling for days of prayer and fasting for the nation.  Evangelists like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield spoke to crowds of thousands in a time when such a number required significant travel for most.

Benjamin Franklin hosted Whitefield when he was in Philadelphia.  Franklin records for us, "From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street."

Entire towns turned out to be in the presence of God's spirit and be changed, refocused.  Evangelical preachers "sought to include every person in conversion, regardless of gender, race, and status."  The awakening brought heart-change instead of just intellectual instruction, and the result changed the nation's mindset.  It was a time of changed priorities and moral clarity.  Just to be clear, that's clarity, not religion.

An adult mind cannot help but appreciate the tremendous difficulty faced by leaders in the national forum.  Similar difficulty is faced by pastors and teachers, by caregivers, and parents.  Perhaps the critical need in each case is a similar moral clarity.

There have been perhaps five such 'great awakenings' in our nation's history.  If we are to ascend as a nation above what today appears to be a moral cesspool, perhaps another such awakening might turn the corner.  Or split the nation even further.


As a youngster, I was told with a smile ...

 Things are not as they seem.
    You were born into a world at war.

       Everything you do counts. 

I'd rather ...

Decadence?

dec·a·dence

/ˈdekədəns/noun

• luxurious self-indulgence.

• moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury.

e.g., "he denounced the decadence of the elite"

synonyms: dissipation, degeneracy, corruption, moral decay, immorality

The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, or skill in governance, most seen among members of the elite.

The greatest risk faced by a successful civilization is perhaps visible when great progress turns inward to luxury, purposeless wealth, and a self-centrality that is blind to the world of others.  ... with ten or a hundred times more than enough, they don't even notice that they're blind.  They say they can see clearly.

On a storytelling day, he talked about sorting two kinds of people like a shepherd sorting out sheep and goats, these to the right and the others to the left. (I doubt he had anything against either one; it was probably just an easy visual for his hearers.)  

To the people on the right, he commended them for their good hearted service and welcomed them into his home, but they were dumfounded.  "When ever did we serve so well as to be rewarded like this?"  "When you served the least among you, it's me you've served," was the answer, or words to that effect.

To those on the left, he commanded them to leave, reminding them that they had served only themselves and had habitually neglected the needs of others, they had turned a blind eye. Something like that, anyway.  The poor and hungry, the sick and those in prison, the widows and orphans, all pretty much ignored, I suppose, while the goats just ate and got fat.  Decadence.

Favorite friends -- five kids in the family; dad lost his arm in an accident.

After recovering, a stateside friend of mine sponsored them for a couple 

of years.  Roberta (NGO Coordinator) coached them through rebuilding 

their house, adding floors and bed pads, getting the kids back in school.  

They took off from there; ran pipes for a water spigot in their front yard, 

bought some breeding pigs and ducks, and they cultivate a 500x500 foot 

garden that adds a lot to their survival.  Last time I visited, they were 

bursting with pride at the progress they'd made.  They have electricity 

now, too.  They did all the hard work themselves with just a little help.
for materials and stuff.
2016 Update: after four years, dad is working again, and the family has
some regular income; mom and the kids tend the home business; things 
are going pretty well.

For a look at the difference one might make, remember there were many who helped slaves flee to the North, and there were many who hid Jews and fed them during the war years.  Today there are many who help those trapped in poverty, deprived in a world that's rich and blind.  

Did you know that you can put a kid through regular school and then trade school for the price of a nice television?  You can sponsor a family's progress building a home, planting crops, and putting their kids through school for less than it takes to insure your car.  Change makers and help bringers are among us; be one of them.

Would you rather live in luxury or in making a difference in the lives of others?   Easy choice.  :)