Tantalizing if True

There are no limits, there are no rules, anything can happen - if you’re in the Matrix.

Of course, if you’re in the Matrix, nothing is really happening.

We look down on entertainers and promoters who have sold their souls for success. But the forces they yielded to are pressing on our souls too.

American institutions such as the free enterprise system and representative democracy were not established by people who trusted other people. They were founded by people who didn’t. That’s the point. People will not naturally seek what’s best for society. They will naturally seek what’s best for them.
(more…)

Why do they call it the Christian Right when so many of its best spokespeople are Jewish? Syndicated columnist Don Feder, talk show host Dennis Prager, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, film critic Michael Medved, pornography researcher Judith Reisman: all these find common cause with conservative evangelicals.

And how about intellectuals Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, or talk show host Laura Schlessinger, or journalist Charles Krauthammer? Other influential heroes of the Christian Right are Jewish converts: former abortionist and now pro-life advocate Bernard Nathanson and World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky.

And there’s another category of Jewish leaders that the Christian Right has been willing to follow: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Lewis Libby, and Elliott Abrams. Several of them have not been convicted of any crimes, something which cannot be said for certain Christian ministers.

The moral is that right doesn’t always mean Christian. And perhaps, that Right doesn’t always mean right.

Jolly Blogger makes several good points in his comments about Silent Spring, a book which helped to launch the environmental movement.

• Believers should care more about the natural world than unbelievers do, because we know the one who made it
• We should care about the natural world, not because it’s purer and superior to us, but because it’s fallen like us.

On a whim, I added a button to my sidebar. I have no right to - I was too young to have participated in Freedom Summer or the Freedom Rides. But I hope that I would have stood beside them if I could have. I’ve written about these people and their fruit before. I keep thinking that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was a kind of movement that we don’t see today.

• They were hopeful.
• They were peaceful.
• They sought to love their enemies.
• They did not love their lives unto death.

We don’t see that in churches much today either.

Somehow we decided that we don’t need to be like Jesus if we’re right. Or that if we’re right, we’re like Jesus. Or that if we’re right, we don’t need to be righteous. We got confused.

My mother just called me, tearfully.

She told me that this morning in St. Louis, Missouri, my grandmother passed away.

You can read about her life in my book Pathway: A Family History and view pictures of her at Elva Online.

She will rest in New Ulm, Texas, where Christoph Ashorn settled more than 150 years ago. She was his oldest living descendant. She always talked about getting back to Texas someday.

During the past couple of years, caring for my grandmother became my most important priority. Later, my fiance also fell in love with my grandmother, and we continued to care for her after we were married in September 2005.

But soon after our wedding, my grandmother’s family and friends began taking over responsibility for her. At the beginning of March, we informed them that we would be moving to Texas, closer to my family.

After we told Grandma, she kept saying with a smile, “I’m going to miss y’all. Y’all have spoiled me.” Now that we are gone, the family has hired other caregivers to come to Grandma’s home, at least until she decides on permanent arrangements.

We still believe that love triumphs over hate, that mercy triumphs over judgement, and that truth endures forever.

Now that my former boss Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, it’s become easier to think of him as a ruthless criminal instead of a Baptist Sunday School teacher. It’s more comforting that way. (more…)

My 93-year-old, blind, deaf, arthritic grandmother hates to be helped. We finally learn to stop replying to comments such, “Don’t go to any trouble!” “I hate to have you wait on me,” “I’m just a lazy bum.” I wonder if, when she arrives at the gates of Heaven, she will say to Jesus, “Now Lord, please don’t go to any trouble for me! I can help myself.”