Very cool and appropriate article, check it out!

http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php/1645/Jason_Carlson

I don't know much about Richard Daley, mayor or Chicago, or the political machine that makes up that city's governing system. But I did enjoy two quotes in Joseph Epstein's opinion column in today's WSJ centered around the Daley dynasty in Chicago:

In his novel "LIfe and Fate," the Russian writer Vasily Grossman notes: "Man never understands that the cities he has built are not an integral part of Nature. If he wants to defend his culture from wolves and snowstorms, if he wants to save it from bring strangled by weeks, he must keep his broom, spade, and rifle always at hand. If he goes to sleep, if he things about somethign else for a year or two, then everything's lost. The wolves come out of the forest, the thistles spread adn everything is buried under dust and snow."

The great administrators-and Richard Daley, I believe, qualifies here-are those men and women who have no desire to be elsewhere: The best academic deans do not dream of being president of Harvard, the best husbands do not dream of sleeping with Nicole Kidman, the best mayors do not dream of going on to the Senate and up the greasy pole from there. They are anchored, happy in their work, committed to the job at hand in perpetuity.

Out of commission!

That is the best way to describe my last few weeks. A few things have kept me from posting:

1) Basketball season wrapped up for me on Feb. 12 and the last two weeks were just a whirlwind. It is still going on but my team is done. 16-0, my first undefeated team ever.

2) Lisa's work schedule. Her boss and manager had a child at the end of January and Lisa has been picking up her hours to keep the store running. She has been working full and even overtime the past few weeks, and most shifts are 2-10pm, so we got days without seeing each other. It's taken it's toll on both of us, only four more weeks left!

3) The flu. I got the real deal starting last Saturday, influenza, and it took me right out of commission for the past week. I went to work for half a day on Monday, had to take Tuesday and Wednesday off, and then slugged through the day on Thursday and Friday. Today is the first day I feel half-way decent. WOW!

Look forward to getting back into things soon!

What do you think of this from TMQ?

The Athlete's Prayer: Every year between the college bowls and the Super Bowl, there's at least one major game that begins with some unctuous minister leading a prayer for victory. As a churchgoing Christian, I wince whenever I hear clergy appeal to the divine for success in sports. God doesn't care who wins games, while many sports prayers boil down to, "Lord, help me crush my opponent." For that matter public prayer contradicts Jesus, who taught, "Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Amen I tell you, they have received their reward. When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." (Jesus often said of religious hypocrites or the rich that they "have received their reward," meaning they will not ascend to heaven – everything they are ever going to get, they already have.) At sports events, dedications and at the openings of legislatures, Christians routinely violate Christ's teaching regarding public prayer. Considering the rabbi Jesus even opposed prayer in synagogues, it can be argued that Christians contract Christ when they pray together in churches. Each time I read of Christian fundamentalists or evangelicals demanding prayer in public schools, I wince anew, since it suggests they know little about the actual ministry of their Redeemer. But don't get me started on ways in which Christians ignore the teachings of Jesus.

I fought and I fought and I fought myself not to have to get into this again, but Wallis makes me so angry I have to post this stuff to get it off my chest. First, he is at it again with taking Scripture out of context on the topic of minimum wage:

What does the Bible have to say about the minimum wage?

The prophet Isaiah said: "my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain ... " (65:22-23).

James, who was the sibling of Jesus, and probably knew what his brother thought about things pretty well, said "Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord."

I'm pretty sure the Bible doesn't have anything to say about minimum wage except what we put into it.

Second, in simple terms, I've always felt that the term theology meant the study of God. Wallis feels different:

What is at risk here is a genuine opportunity society. It's a "fraud," I would say, when the average CEO of a Standard & Poor's 500 company made $13.5 million in total compensation in 2005, while a minimum wage worker made $10,700. Thirty years ago CEOs made 30 times what their average workers made. Japan and Germany are still at about that ratio. Now in America its 400 to 1 – which means the average worker has to work a whole year to make what their boss makes in one day. This is wrong; it's an injustice; it's a theological issue.

Hmmm. I theological issue, never thought of it like that.

I've got to disagree here with the ESPN article posted earlier today (they've since taken the article off and I can't get the link or the author's name, it was Ian something).

Johnson is 6-3, 315 pounds, and he is afraid. Not of Peyton Manning. Not of Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne. Not of Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes.

Tank is afraid of you. He is afraid that you believe he has no business playing against the Colts in Super Bowl XLI.

That means he's afraid of me, too, and millions of right-minded Americans who are sick and tired of the rich and famous, the athletes and movie stars, living by a set of rules never available to the ordinary Joe.

I could be wrong and a few of my few readers may have better insights or backgrounds on this kind of thing (Hint, Adam), but I'm pretty sure that if I were in Tank's position, charged and out on bond and my work forced me to travel to a different state where I was not a risk of flight or to the harm of others, I would be allowed to go. And where does this guy get off calling himself "right-minded"? Kind of arrogant in my mind. Thoughts?

Some cool stuff in this article too, and well-balanced, keeping with the theme of this blog.

I was reading an article on The Ooze and then filtered through some of the comments to this article. I like this one in response to the author's comments on the hanging of Saddam:

the Bible are complicated by unbelief then thrown out as "out dated" or "God didn't really say that" (sounds like the original lie in the garden doesn't it?). Read through Romans... the whole thing. Get out your Greek helper books. See where the Bible stands on this issue. Some practical examples of "what would Jesus do". He did die on the cross. Unfairly, unjustly. Without the death penalty being in place at that time.. we'd still all be dead in our sin. There was also a thief on another cross... Christ forgave him... but still allowed him to die there. why? Why would God , that is going to have the final and fair judgement, not allow for some amount of world government power to keep the peace? Some things are not pleasant but are nessasary.. we live in a sinful world. That will not change until Jesus returns and judges the world. ( I know alot on this site don't believe that... but it doesn't change the truth of the matter). No true Christian should rejoice in the death of someone else...especially if they are unsaved. But do we not rejoice in justice? There is such a thing as justice.. and right and wrong.. even today. If anyone here claims to be a Christian... well the Bible is the bottom line for you.. so go it and know it. Read it all not just portions. Reading only portions is how we end up with denominations.. mega churches .. and the emerging church is no different. We all err when we depart from God's Word. Even if you don't believe that.

A few cool quotes/thoughts from Theroux's book:

Theroux describes an experience in the desert region of Sudan north of Khartoum where he comes upon a group of men sitting at a well waiting for the water to be pulled up by a donkey tied to a rope. After they made their dislike for both Bush and Clinton known, they said to Theroux, "Tell Bush we want a pump!" Theroux's written response is perfect: "No, I don't think so: a pump would need gasoline, spare parts, regular maintenance. Ultimately, the contraption would fail them. They were better off hauling water the ancient way, with donkey's, goatskin pails, and goatsin water containers that when filled looked like little fat goat corpses." This response is appropriate as too often the Western aid that is given does little good. We too often try to bring the people up to our standards rather than just providing the necessities for survival that the people can use to better their lives. This is where I like what Sachs wrote in "End of Poverty," where he said that our job (I don't like this term "job" as it could be inferred that this is our mandate, which is not at all true) in the West is not to make them rich, but rather simply to help them rise to the first rung of the economic ladder, where 99% of their time and resources will not be dedicated solely to survival, and then they will be able to continue upward from there. I like that.

Upon arrival in Khartoum Theroux describes the men he sees at his hotel, all international aid workers. He writes, "They were all aid experts, and they ranged from selfless idealists to the laziest boondogglers cashing in on a crisis. In an earlier time they would have been businessmen or soldiers or visiting politicians or academics. But this was the era of charity in Africa, where the business of philanthopy was paramount, studies as closed as the coffee harvest or a hydroelectric project. Now a complex infrastructure was devoted to what had become ineradicable miseries: famine, displacement, poverty, illiteracy, AIDS, the ravages of war. Name and African problem and an agency or a charity existed to deal with it. But that did not mean a solution was produced. Charities and aid programs seemed to turn African problems into permanent conditions that were bigger and messier."

Finally, he chimes in on the topic of tipping, I share his disdain: "Tipping confounds me because it is not a reward but a travel tax, one of many, one of the more insulting. No one is spared. It does not matter that you are paying thousands to stay in the presidential suite in the best hotel: the uniformed man seeing you to the elevator, inquiring about your trip, giving you the weather report, and carrying your bags to the suite expects money for this unasked-for attention...It is bad enough th at people expect something extra for just doing their jobs; it is a more dismal thought that every smile has a price."

For some reason I was just convicted that I am quick to bash the beliefs of others but have not yet posted what I believe. I don't know why, but I'll give it a shot:

- I believe in One God, which exists in Three Persons
- I believe that God is good, and when created, the earth was good
- I believe that at the Fall of Man, when sin broke the perfect God-Man relationship, that a curse was put upon both Man and the earth, resulting in the calamity we presently experience in both
- I believe that the only way back to relationship with God is through faith in Jesus Christ
- I believe that the troubles of the world will continue to grow worse, resulting in Jesus Himself one day returning to take home His people
- I believe that the ministry of the Church is God-ordained but in no way what we view today in the Western world
- I believe God loves all people
- I believe that sanctification is a process, one that takes a lifetime, and is not meant to be a "if you don't shape up and act like us pretty soon we are going to begin questioning your salvation" type of process
- I believe that the only way to transformation is through the ministering of the Holy Spirit
- I believe too often we've reduced God to a formula, taking out the mystery and miracle and awe and power that He possesses
- I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is meant and "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness."

I believe a lot more, but this summarizes it for now.