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Forty-five years later

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

-- The Rev'd Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 28, 1963

Ask your local Obama supporters what they know of the content of his character. Ask them if their presidential candidate believes that little children have a right to life. (Obama opposes every sensible restriction on abortion/infanticide - protections that are granted the preborn in the most liberal of European democracies!)

Live the dream of looking beyond skin color - either to assume guilt or to be absolved of guilt. And recognize that all who are created in God's image - male and female, black and white and brown and red, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, preborn and postborn, intellectually gifted or developmentally retarded - ALL WHO BEAR GOD'S IMAGE have a fundamental right to life. And no government on earth can condone the taking of that life without due process for God's laws writ large in nature.

In the word's of Dr. King, "Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

Putting the MESS in Messiah

Would somebody please sic the Americans United for Separation of Church and State on these guys?

Oh wait...they're only concerned if someone believes that Jesus is the Messiah.

If You Thought They Messed Up the Olympics

This little gem is from the English (Engrish?) subtitles on a Chinese-made hack of Star Wars Ep III.
Believe it or not, Anakin Skywalker would be an improvement over some of the folks I know that got "made" [ministers] by the Presbyterian Church.

Indecision 2008

I'm having trouble.



I'm not sure if this gets tagged under politics, humor, or zombies....

Was Spong Wrong?

For some reason, people are still reading John Shelby Spong. His recent article in the Washington Post is titled "Good Show, Poor Theology."

When I first read the title, I thought: "He must be talking about a rather up-the-candlestick Anglo-Catholic parish in TEC." You know the kind. Appareled amices and albs on every server. Chanted Psalms, sung gospels, and solemnities abounding. A priest that enters in cassock, surplice, hood, tippet, cope, zuchetto and biretta, then changes during the anthem into alb, amice, crossed stole, silk cincture, and chasuble. Lot's of bells, smells, bowing and wowing - but the sermon is about the latest episode of 60 Minutes or the View.

No such luck. Instead, Mr. Spong was talking about Dr. Rick Warren's forum for Obama and McCain. He went on to say this:

Homosexuality is no more a choice for gay and lesbian people than heterosexuality is a choice for straight people. It takes a while for that knowledge to trickle down to the masses. Prejudice lives only in the untrickled down gaps. The condemnation of homosexuality as a sin or as a distortion by the hierarchy of the Vatican or the leaders of evangelical Christianity is simply a sign that both groups live in the backwaters of knowledge and education. As this knowledge spreads, those groups will look like what they are - dated people similar to the members of the Flat Earth Society.

Tell you what, Spong... I'll publicly acknowledge that "homosexuality is no more a choice for gay and lesbian people than heterosexuality is a choice for straight people" if you'll publicly acknowledge that there might be a reason other ignorant prejudice for resistance to homosexual acts.

My Brother's Keeper?

Obama has been spending plenty of time finger-pointing and telling Americans that we're not living up to the Bible's social ethic - that we just pull it out when it's convenient, then tuck it away. His stab at Saddleback Church showed how out-of-touch he is with most people whose behavior reflects a high degree of Christian devotion.

But little shows his own grasp of the faith "with its boots on" than his rhetoric being held up to his own action. For instance, he chides America for its wealth, though he is raking in MILLIONS each year in book sales. I don't begrudge him his cash, but I'd appreciate if he would practice giving away more than 1% of it before he asks me to give him another 10-15% of my income.

Secondly, if you want to talk about personal ethics, just consider the case of George Obama. What... haven't heard of him yet? Just hearing more and more about McCain having seven or eight houses (even though several of them are investment properties owned / managed by his wife's estate)?

George is Obama's little brother. He lives on $1 / mo, eking out an existence in a violent urban ghetto outside of Nairobi, Kenya. Now when I was a little kid, we sent $18/mo to a child in Haiti and $22 /mo to a child in Niger. That money came from the meager support my father paid...but we felt we had plenty compared to the rest of the world. It provided food, clothing, medicine, and education so that the children could pull themselves (and hopefully their family) out of crushing poverty. I don't know what happened to them because we lost touch after middle school. But I do know that for a while, our meager American funds were able to make them rich.

Nairobi is one of the least expensive cities on earth. It would cost very little for Obama to send cash to his half brother - who has ambitions of higher education - and it would dramatically improve George's life. So why aren't we hearing about this as an example of Christian virtue?

1 Timothy 5:8 might have something to do with that.

Before Obama opens his mouth again about McCain's money (which is mostly his heiress wife's) or American avariciousness, he needs to look to another one of those conveniently ignored passages from the Sermon on the Mount.