Thought for the Day

Jesus healed blind people…

War-Time Wisdom

I have been playing over and over again a lecture by a guy named Peter Kreeft.  Kreeft is a professor of Philosophy at Boston College.  He is an extensive writer and a great thinker and synthesizer of millenia of philosophy and thought. 

On top of being an academic, he is also clever and humorous. 

A few years ago, on recommendation I downloaded a lecture he gave called “Wartime Wisdom: Ten Uncommon Insights about Evil in Lord of the Rings.”  You can read it here.  Or, as it is meant: heard.

It is a spiritual message right up my alley:  nerdy, thoughtful, theological, inspiring, educated and just enjoyable.  I don’t know if you’ll enjoy it as much as I did, but I am putting it up here for those who’d be interested.

Thanksgiving Cometh

This is the first real Thanksgiving that I have had outside of the Central Arkansas area in my life. 

Usually I was at Harding and we were out all week of Thanksgiving.  We’d have lunch at my house.  Relatives would come.  Usually my mothers parents would come as well as a cousin with her children and family.  From time to time there was a dark horse relative like an  or something. 

We’d serve up the food and from there it was a race between my dad and grandfather to get to the television remote.  If dad won we’d watch 3 hours of sports.  If grandfather won, it was three hours of Soap Operas.  It was very predictable. 

This year is different however.  With me being here the family is breaking the norm and are all traveling to Northwest Arkansas for the holiday.  This means that I will be playing host to my family as well as Logan and her mother this holiday. 

I am excited.  It should be a good time.  Stories to come I am sure.

Song of Change #3

Sometimes change isn’t about you fixing other people or fixing the world.  Sometimes it starts on the inside then can work out.  Thats the basic message that I get from this song, and whether you prefer Michael Jackson’s version or the more recent version by James Morrison, it is a great song.

Both versions of “Man in the Mirror” have been provided.  Contrast.  Compare.  Enjoy.

Home for the Weekend

I made the three hour (3.5 when diving 65mph) trip from Fayetteville to Beebe, Arkansas tonight. 

Weekend plans are loose.  Tomorrow my mom and I are going to see a movie.  I am having a late dinner with my friend Sarah Walker sometime.  Other than that I think a game of Settlers of Catan may be going down. 

It will be good to be home, relax, hang out with family and friends.  It will be the first break I have had in a while.

Have a great Sunday and Monday!

Attack Evolution!

According to a recent CNN story child-star turned active evangelist Kirk Cameron has written his own version of Origin of The Species.

He and his organization are handing out his reductionist work with a new 55 page introduction around the country.  The looks of it is that the introduction is a pretty standard anti-evolutionist stand.  Rather than attacking the science, they attack the scientist: calling Darwin Anti-woman, racist and a plethora of other things.

One thing they rest on is showing how evil evolution is because it led Hitler to kill 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. 

Sources say that Cameron and his group will also be producing their own algebra, history, and romance novels with introductions that point out that Hitler believed in those things too, thus they are evil.

The CNN story does a good job of pointing out that some would suggest that you can believe in evolution and Jesus.  That is a popular stand that doesn’t compromise your soul.  It is possible that God created the earth and the creatures in it and that by adaptation we have ended up with the genetic diversity that we have today. 

I don’t know what the “right way” to discuss evolution is.  But,  I am pretty sure that handing out loaded books is not the way t go about it…

Though I do want one…

Judas

I love Postsecret.

Part of my weekly ritual is to stop off and catch up on the week’s updates.  It is a good past time. 

Every once in a while I find a card that I think about for a few days, maybe weeks.  But there has only ever been one that I have grabbed and saved. 

It is this one:

It is easy and simple.  Most of all, it is true.  Spending a lot of time learning about history, especially church history, gets you to thinking about who you would have been in the Story. 

No one says Jesus.

Sometimes I think I would be Peter.

Sometimes I think I would be more like Luke or Barnabas. 

But I need to realize sometimes that though I might share some qualities with those other guys, at heart I am Judas.  I can be sneaky, manipulative, shifty and lie.  And oh what wouldn’t I do for a little bit more money right now? 

These are just some thoughts for the day…

The Antropology of YouTube

This was a great video that I watched last night about the Anthropology of YouTube. 

There are some interesting ideas and statistics in here for you as well as some interesting things to meditate on.

Black Eyed Peas: Sell-Out to the Max

I don’t like the Black Eyed Peas. 

I had never really listened to the Peas until I got to college.  You try all sorts of dumb things when you get to college. 

On recommendation from a friend in the dorm I listened to the song, “Where is the Love” and liked it.  I listened to it over and over again over the course of a few months.  If I were more thug back then I would have said “word” every time I heard it.  It was that good.  It is a song about love, respect, treating each other with fairness and equality.  One particular verse talked about media sending bad messages to kids and how that really changes the way that kids see the world and the people around them.

I loved that song.  After that euphoria I decided to play around on YouTube and see what else was out there by the Peas.  Then I found out the truth:  The Black Eyed Peas don’t give a damn about peace, love and respecting others. 

I offer you Exhibit A: My Humps.  In nearly the same breath as they were telling the world that they need to love and respect each other, and watch what kind of messages we send to kids, they put out My Humps.  The song is an obvious objectification of women not by men, but at the hands of Fergie herself.  This song does nothing but draw attention to the female figure and encourage girls to use their bodies to get things from guys that you want.  This is only the lyrics.  We will not discuss the video.

exhibit B: I’ve Got a Feeling.  Now, I do not have many of the same issues that some people  do, but I do feel that those are also valid criticisms.  Again, my problem is with the still blatant, though now not spoken, objectification of women.  In this video you can see all sorts of great things that you before had to google and hope for the best like Fergie in a bra and a shot of her in a thong.  They just said, “Lets put it in a music video.”  So in addition to Fergie’s Fergalicious Humps you can see all sorts of bikini clad women dancing around while Will.I.AM talks about taking his money and spending it up.

I could go on, but how can you look at the Peas and think that they are anything but sell-outs?   Lets look at a couple scenarios…

1) Black Eyed Peas never cared about actually loving and respecting each other, they just made that song to get them a stronger foothold in the music community.  Making a song you don’t believe in to become popular.  That is selling out.

2) They do care about love, equality and respect for everyone, but that message is hard to put out there if you want to be popular, so they make other (nastier) songs to remain popular.  Again, creating songs you don’t believe in or agree with to be popular = selling out.

3)  Perhaps in the beginning they did really care about those things, but moving through this journey called stardom, they’ve become less interested in those things are more interested in the material.  They had a message, but when hit with popularity they faltered and became just like everyone else…sell outs.

No matter how you cut it, sell outs.

Take Up Your Mat

In  my Bible class today we discussed the healing story about the paralyzed man.  His friends brought him to the house that Jesus was staying in, but seeing the huge crowds, were forced to improvise.

They punched a hole in the roof and let their friend down into it.  Jesus says a few interesting things here.

One, and first he says to the man, “Your sins are forgiven.”  People stop for a second, because they don’t really get Jesus yet and say, “Did he just say ‘your sins are forgiven?’  Who does this guy think he is?”

Jesus then says, “What is easier?  Saying your sins are forgiven, or telling this guy to pick up his bed and walk out of here?  Will that prove to you who I am?”

There are a lot of things going on here.  First of all you have to keep in mind that First century sickness is not like today’s sickness.  Being blind, paralyzed, sick, lame, or suffering meant only one thing: someone sinned and you are being punished for it.  Similar themes are in the book of Job where his friends say, “You must have done something to deserve this.”  Or in John where they bring Jesus a blind man and said, “Who sinned?  Him or his parents?”

 

It was explained like this.  Imagine that you were caught doing a crime–say graffiti.  You were caught with a paint can in your hand tagging some old lady’s house.  Therefore, you became a prisoner, wearing stripes.  So, when people saw you and your stripes, they knew that you had done something awful.  You committed a crime, and therefore you were ostrocized by the world. 

Then comes along a man who says to you, “Your crime never happened.”  People begin to look at each other and say, “Yes it did, that is why he is wearing those stripes.  Who are you to say his crime never happened?”  And in that moment, all evidence of the crime was gone.  There is no more graffiti, no more paint can.  It is all gone.

“Now, take off those stripes and walk out of here a free man.”

Jesus is saying in this story, I have control over physical and supernatural.  I am over sin and paralysis.  Jesus says to the man, in essence, “You don’t have to live in punishment of old sin and no one has to know about it either. ”  The damage done by sin has been wiped clean, therefore you don’t have to be under its bondage any more.  You don’t have to be an outcast for that anymore.”

Quite a statement from a carpenter. 

It is one thing for a healer to come along and alleviate the punishment.  That happened all the time in ancient Israel.  It is another thing for someone to go around forgiving the crime and relieving you from your punishment.  That is what Jesus was doing.