Somebody put up the “He’s Gonna Marry Me” video again. Enjoy it while you can.
When in doubt, post a Sissel video
Sissel and some guy singing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
That song always takes me back. I remember a night in college, when a friend was leaving because he’d flunked out (turned out in the end he had a learning disability). We took him out to our favorite haunt, Mitz & Bert’s diner in Lake Mills, Iowa, where you could get a tremendous hamburger and a big plate of hot-enough-to-burn-your-mouth french fries, plus a chocolate malt, for $1.03 (I had to watch my dollars in those days, so I remember). Before we broke up for the night, somebody played this song on the juke box, and it was like a benediction.
That was some time after my high school graduation, which is on my mind because we’re having a sort of informal class reunion this weekend, down in Kenyon. Every molecule in my body is screaming, “DANGER! STAY AWAY!!!!!!” but I guess I have to go, because I missed the last regularly scheduled reunion.
I’ve never understood why people invite me to things, or register disappointment when I fail to show up. Is it my unsmiling, expressionless face they miss? The way I sulk in the corners and avoid eye contact? My bitter, self-pitying jokes? Or my early exits with lame excuses?
No wonder I can’t talk to people. They’re strange.
New Trailer for "To End All Wars" Movie
This is a great movie and based on a true account of Scottish POWs in Japan during WWII.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian, but neither does not going
I hope I didn’t contribute to the confusion.
I posted a while back (during the election, I think) that I wondered if Muslims around the world might be offended if we elected a man whose father was a Muslim, but who was not practicing Islam. I based it on what I believed to be a Muslim teaching, that the son of a Muslim man is always a Muslim, forever.
Apparently that doctrine is not universal among Muslims. Certainly we haven’t heard much about it during this administration. So that doesn’t seem to be an issue, and I was mistaken.
But it appears, according to a Pew Research poll, that 34 percent of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim, while 43 percent aren’t sure what he believes.
The usual voices are blaming talk radio, but I’m sure I’ve never heard any national talk show host espouse that idea (though crazy callers bring it up from time to time). Well, Michael Savage might have said it, but Michael Savage will say anything.
I did hear a guest on a local talk show last weekend say the president was a Muslim, but that was small-time radio.
Our president says he’s a Christian, and I believe he’s a “Christian,” at least according to his own lights (which would appear to be very different from my lights. Insert Rev. Wright joke here). When the form says “Religion,” he checks the box next to “Christian.”
But is anybody really surprised people are confused on the matter?
Has President Obama ever made a positive statement about Christianity to rival the many flattering statements he’s made about Islam since his inauguration? American politicians have a tradition of joining churches and parading their piety. It’s often hypocritical, but the president’s avoidance of public worship while in office has been no secret.
If I know a man is married, and I hear him talking all the time about Jane, and how beautiful Jane is, and what a great wife Jane is, I think I can be excused for being surprised when I learn that he’s in fact married to Sally, about whom he never talks.
Joe Carter Facts
Our friend Rachel Motte has been documenting several facts about Evangelical Outpost founder Joe Carter. Others have joined in. Here are some:
- @DustinSteeve: John Calvin died just before he was to write his magnum opus: The Institutes of Joe Carter.
- @RachelMotte: If @joecarter888 were President, Israel and Palestine would be united by their efforts to get into his good graces.
- @RachelMotte: When Anselm proposed that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought, he was referring to Joe Carter.
- @RachelMotte:When Paris fled, trembling in #Iliad 2.36, he was overwhelmed by the impact of Joe Carter’s brain waves. Also his fists.
- @RachelMotte:If @joecarter888 were President, the Presidential teleprompter would read HIM
- @RachelMotte:If @joecarter888 were President, he would fix the economy. With common household items.
- @joecarter888 once caught his own stare in the mirror. Space-time has yet to recover.
- @RachelMotte:#joecarterfacts are not copies of #chucknorrisfacts. They are the Platonic Form Chuck Norris only wishes he could partake in.
- @RachelMotte:Twitter was over capacity because Joe Carter forgot to turn the internet on this morning.
- California has not fallen into the Pacific because Joe Carter knit the San Andreas Fault together with his own hair.
Thanks, Joe. Happy Birthday.
Late: a day. Short: a dollar
Another night of contending with my lawn mower. I suppose I should pity the thing. It’s dying. The guy at the shop said fixing it isn’t worth the price of replacing it. So I’m running it as long as I can, until its wife becomes a grass widow, or my fuel mixture runs out.
But it’s a temperamental patient. It smokes as it runs, and when it gets tired it stops, refusing to start again until it’s rested. Which makes mowing an indefinite operation.
Hence the lateness of this post.
And all I’ve got to share is this link from Dale Nelson, about the release of a new edition of The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, translated by Christopher Tolkien.
Like my lawn mower, I can only do what I can.
A New Favorite Word
Jocoseriosity: half-joking, half-serious, like this blog.
How many times have you hear someone speak with jocoseriosity? He makes his point with a slight spice of humor, and half the audience loves it, the other half hates it. Both remember it, so the jocoserious speaker wins.
Silver Tequila
And now for something completely different: a Tequila commercial.
This is thought-provoking. Is liberty or morality improved by using it, by thinking through your choices instead of following convention?
This is a view of My Favorite Things
Edna at My Favorite Things reviews West Oversea.
The thoughtless side of the Force
Today I was too busy to listen closely to the weekly Ultimate Issues Hour on Dennis Prager’s radio show. But I caught one guy calling in on the subject of the existence of God. He explained that, for his own part, he thought of God as some kind of Force. Seeing God as an “old man in the sky” seemed to him primitive thinking.
One hears that sort of thing fairly often. I attribute it to the scientific world view that’s dominated public thought ever since the Enlightenment. Religion, under that view, is irrational and all about emotion. Science is about reason. If there’s a true explanation of ultimate reality, such thinking argues, it must be a scientific answer. So if there’s a God, He must be describable in scientific terms. A powerful Force seems to fit the bill.
Hey, George Lucas built a whole movie franchise out of it.
I would like to propose that describing God as a Force is both inadequate and profoundly unsatisfactory. Here’s why.
My first proposition is that God must be the greatest thing in the universe. Because if anything were greater than Him, that thing would be God. God is, by definition, that which has no superior.
A Force is by its nature an impersonal phenomenon. Forces do not think or choose or love.
Therefore, if God is a Force, God is not love.
But if you believe (as I do, and most people in our culture do, because they’ve never examined their beliefs) that love is the greatest thing of all, how can you say that God is a Force? That would mean that something that cannot love is superior to things that do love (that would be us).
You have to have it one way or the other. If God is a Force, He is not love, and love is not the greatest thing of all.
If God is Love, He is not a Force (or not merely a Force). He has to be a Person (three persons in one, according to Christians).
For me it’s a no brainer. Love wins. God must be Personal.