This is my second attempt at this idea and I'm guessing more will be needed. Paul's calling the Gospel a mystery didn't make it so. Paul was simply expressing a nugget of truth he had discovered. One that all who dare to follow Christ will encounter. While I am willing to argue that my faith is a reasonable one, not a foundation-less belief in some fairy tale or vague legend that has been verbally passed down for generations, it nevertheless, leaves me scratching my head a bit. When I apply faith to the compelling evidence of Jesus being who He says He is, I enter a new life. Not a life lived according to a different set of rules and regulations, but a life changed. Not perfect, but being moved to a more Christ-like place. Not through shock treatments and sleep deprived emotional encounters, but through my awareness of God's activity in my life. As I explore this intellectually, I am left with some illogical notions that seem to be, nevertheless, true. Isa. 1:18 says, "Come now, and let us reason together", says the Lord. (then Isaiah goes on to present an UNreasonable offer)
"Though your sins be as scarlet, They will be as white as snow;
Though they be red, like crimson, They will be like wool ......."
While God is unspeakably powerful and beyond our understanding and is Holy, (that is to say fully righteous or perfect, complete, if you will), according to Isaiah God isn't saying get your life in order and come back later to finish our little talk here. He doesn't turn His head away from our lives in disgust but presents us with an offer He calls reasonable. Then Isaiah beautifully exposes God's love and forgiveness with the "reasonable" offer that is presented. An offer that I suggest finds its most satisfying expression in Jesus. This is indeed the mystery. Our Perfect, Holy, God is orchestrating the most scandalous of propositions. The perfect man marrying a prostitute and unconditionally loving her. And just to add to the mysteriousness of it, on the wedding day, we get to wear white.
(If you're a music lover, like me, listen to the 2003 song titled "Wearing White" recorded by Martina McBride. It's a great companion to this idea.)
Thank you and have a nice day.
Have you ever had that gut feeling that things were not as they seem? That the alleged facts of a situation didn't seem to jive with the attitudes being exhibited? Or there was a feeling that you were missing the punch line of a joke you didn't know was playing out? Can it be that so many very intelligent people are being sucked into the AGW idea. Do we actually have to believe that the best argument for gun control is the horrible, recorded murder of a TV news personality and her cameraman? Are there really a significant number of leaders in our country that believe the 14th amendment bestows citizenship on a baby born to alien parents who are here in defiance of our laws? Really? REALLY? I'm a proud C student of both high school and college and I'm looking around at ostensibly the best and the brightest to whom we have entrusted the leadership of our country and am increasingly struck with the idea that we are a great country in decline being led by a bunch of idiots. Or are they? Climate change. Gun control. Open borders. Arguing these positions if one is inclined to believe in them is fine, but do we have to enter the twilight zone of dialogue to approach them? If you want to argue gun control why pick and choose an event every several months and milk it for all the emotional energy you can while ignoring the fact that in Chicago alone we have already had over 200 murders this year? Most of which are carried out with guns. Isn't this worth mentioning in a discussion? I guess not. We have to wait for a nut to kill a bunch of people at a school or in a movie theater. What gives? And climate change. Wow, you mean to tell me the climate is changing. What genius figured that out? Not only are we prohibited from questioning the computer models and the incomplete and shaky data that the models are using but the only way to fix this earth-ending cycle is to end the world as we know it. Nothing less will do. News flash. The Civil War didn't end discrimination as if you'd flipped a switch. The South and North did not immediately shake hands and say, "good game" after the war. The union was spared, and I'm so glad it was, but several amendments were introduced to help lay the foundation for the freedmen. A legal tool to try and encourage the assimilation of the blacks into the fabric of society. This is the spirit and intention behind the 14th amendment. Trying to expressly declare citizenship on the freed slaves.
Back to my original contention that something is amiss. The only way really smart people might say the things they are saying and do the things they are doing. The only way the media would use the template they are using to decide what stories to cover and what not to cover, is this. There is a class of people, many of whom darken the halls of Congress, and many who reside at influential positions in media or on university campi, (thank you Rush), who feel like a Utopia is coming within their reach and they are trying to move us away from our Constitution and Democratic Republic form of government. They are already acting like a ruling class and are working together, Republican and Democrat alike, to continue seizing power so that they can implement what they know to be best for us. While you may find fault in my theory, you can not deny that smart people are acting like idiots. And I think the safest way to deal with them, regardless of their grand scheme, is to kick the bums out.
If you've been waiting for a sign, here it is.
LET'S WAKE UP AND TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!
Sort of odd times we live in, eh? We are so concerned about smokers that we all but ban them from society. Poor things are just too stupid to make good decisions so we have to step in with the force of law and save them from themselves. Yes, I know some people are "allergic" to cigarette smoke. Just like milk and peanut butter and gluten. But any substantial health issues are reserved for the person who has decided to smoke, not the general public. Please don't point to the many studies about second-hand smoke as proving otherwise because I will ask you to take a close look at those studies and see that they are far from convincing. Even if they had more damning data in them I could suggest looking at all the other "scares" the media, with their cherry-picking of studies, have foisted on us in the past. Even some of the more authentic concerns have been found to be less ominous than first thought; cholesterol being the most recent. Alar, silicone breast implants, DDT and others come to mind. The greatest health threat from smoking is to the one smoking, not the whole of society. So I say, let them have the freedom to choose to smoke. And when they come to your house I'm sure they will gladly go outside, and the free market will see to it that there are plenty of smoke-free restaurants available. On the other hand, the behavior that takes many more innocent lives from our society every year than smoking could ever hope to, is celebrated and so comfortably ingrained in our culture that it is absolutely immovable. Drinking is just one of those things that we do. You know, like kids having sex. There's just nothing you can do about it. Boys will be boys, girls will be girls, and innocent dead people will be, ah, I guess they will just be dead. Oh well. So now I'm headed to work every morning, passing bicycles on a narrow, busy, 2-lane road with no shoulder, contemplating the fact that the danger they are putting themselves and everyone who passes them in, is forgiven because they are trying to do the right thing. They are trying to save our poor, delicate planet we call earth, from those money-grubbing rich bastards who don't give a rip about it. So as the death toll rises from this behavior it will be quickly forgotten and forgiven. As the cyclists and the motorists fail at trying not to put themselves in situations that sometimes takes a life, it will simply be a necessary loss to aid in the salvation of Mother Earth. Meanwhile, we are ticketing people who choose not to wear a seat belt in order to save them from their idiocy. It seems to me there is certainly idiocy on display but that it resides right in front of our faces, and is the direct result of some nuanced action by our powerful, ostensibly benevolent government to further the "general welfare" of our country. I think our country would be "generally" better off if they took a more constitutional approach to our welfare.
It is not with pleasure that I enter this blog today. It is with frustration on the one hand and thanks on the other. My family and I have not lived with an excess of financial success. We have lived rather frugally by most standards but have managed to find money for the things we really wanted to do. One of the main things that has allowed us the freedom to do many of the things we wanted to is our ability to find contentment in places other than those advertised on TV. We have never owned a new car and likely never will. Thankfully, my wife and I both feel like a car is to be a servant to our family, not our master. When I buy a car now, I expect it to run well over the 300,000 mile mark. If it doesn't make it I feel like I have failed to choose wisely and am disappointed. Additionally, I do most of the maintenance myself which has saved us untold thousands over the years. Unfortunately, this approach to car buying leaves us looking at Japanese-made vehicles, not American-made. A few years ago I purchased a Camry with over 200,000 miles on it, for an even thousand dollars and when we gave it away, (still running), it had over 300,000 miles on it. America should be producing the best everything as far as I'm concerned, but we're not. While GM was becoming a manufacturing-based health care provider the Japanese were working hard at developing processes to produce high quality cars. While we were demanding more and more pay for producing lower quality cars, they were taking personal pride in their workmanship. While I don't have specifics in front of me I believe that, by and large, union workers at GM were making more money with better benefits than the vast majority of the people who were buying their cars. I understand the challenges of manufacturing here in the US; many of those challenges are unavoidable. But the big paychecks and huge pension promises made by our biggest companies will see that we are held at a disadvantage for decades.
So this is my frustration. And here is my thanks. Thank you, Japan, for supplying my family and me with reliable and efficient transportation for the last 40 years.
