DISQUS

And I'm done. I'm fasting from talking this s***. The revolution starts at home.

I can't vote, because I am not registered.

But at several points, I've been almost persuaded to vote for Obama, not because I think Obama is the answer to all ills, but because of what most Obama supporters talk about. It is nice to see people actually talking about mutual responsibility (which is so much better than the non-existent personal kind), about caring for the least of these, and striving for peace, and other things Jesus talks about. Plus, I think it means something to vote for a black man. And no, that's not racist, and no, I won't discuss it further. So, I've come close.

Seriously: if voting is nothing else but an act of self-interest, then it is actually immoral. I've never argued that voting is immoral before, and for good reason; I know of people in my own family who vote morally.

But we should speak truthfully: if voting is nothing but self-preservation and self-interest, than it's immoral. I'll give you an example: here's a phrase no Christian is allowed to say: "my money." And yet, here's a phrase lots of Christians say when they talk about voting (and voting for John McCain specifically): "my money." It pollutes the way we thing about discipleship, because it causes us to ascribe worth to the wrong things.

And nobody's gonna convince me to do that.

By definition (which seem to be pretty fluid here), futility can't be fun.

What she describes isn't socialism, its totalitarianism. She was not democratically elected by either the waiter or the homeless guy; she merely took control herself and did what she wanted with the waiter's money (at least she's progressive enough to consider the tip as belonging to the waiter).

Hey--she's part of FFL, which has a history of advocacy for nonviolence and opposition to the death penalty. maybe I should reconsider.....

Actually, I think this guy started the campaign first......

http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/09/03/steph...

I'm hoping to hear Palin preach sometime.

Sadcox,

I was talking about Pres. Bush, not McCain's version of Obama.

I think everyone's fear with W was that he is really, really dumb.

Jonah Goldberg is here, as always, a raving idiot. Every candidate for the past fifty years has been a postmodernist, and postmodernism (and please, please don't ever call it "pomo") actually was not a fad of the 80s, but rather descends from Nietzsche and really takes hold in the 50s. Bill Clinton and W are master postmodernists, as was Nixon.

Furthermore, if you actually read the transcripts that Goldberg links, Obama clearly understands sin as a transgression of of his values because he sees his values as being in line with those of Christianity. Ask yourself: if transgressing your values isn't sin, what's the point of having your values?
Assuming that *this* makes him a postmodernist, as well as assuming that being a postmodernist makes him a leftist radical idiot, is to misunderstand postmodernism.

:)

The Almighty Market is no god for me, so I think there are lots more risks and stakes than financial. That's basic Christian theology. 2000 years since the birth of Christ and the advent of God's presence, and we're still building Pigeon Forge?
That the market may serve those with the means to have a financial stake, I too can take as granted. That this thinking is what gives us Dixie Stampede is what makes me embarrassed .

I'm all for letting the market decide taste. Why, just look at what the market gave the world in Pigeon Forge--absolutely, the most stunning tribute to the Great Smokies one could imagine having created. The same could be said for Myrtle Beach, and increasingly, the entire South Carolina coast.
Thank you, almighty Market, for blessing us with this creation, and the sense enough to enhance it with strip malls and outlets.

"...embrace American values and culture.."? ummm, like cheating on your wife, lying about it, and then divorcing her while she's in the hospital, while trying to impeach the president? Newt's got that value down pat. Glad he's so anxious that all of those conservative Roman Catholic latinos will embrace his ideas of american marital fidelity.

sheesh. why doesn't someone just deport him?

ummm, hello? how about revise the plan to this:

...and share a bottle (or 3 ) of Bully Hill Love My Goat..."

see--that didn't take any effort!

As a big fan of the f word, I say let him rip!

We Johnson City natives need to claim the Everybodyfields as a Johnson City band, not a Knoxville band. Knoxville is so bandwagon.

Seattle's Best is owned by..............Starbucks.

http://www.seattlesbest.com/About/release.aspx?...

Skip the misto and go for the Americano.

I would take a Diego over Bob the Builder anyday--Diego has the ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh Rescue Pack...comin' to the rescue, I'm the Rescue Pack, i got your back. I can turn into a kite or a kayak...

Mohler is the only person among many today who profoundly disagree with me that I can safely lash out at, from the safety of a computer. :) How's that for manly?!

Really, though, I think Mohler's problem, and it is a serious one, is that he doesn't take Jesus into account when he talks about men (and, by extension, doesn't take Jesus' mother or great-grandmother into account when he talks about women, not to mention his g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandmother and beyond. There's a reason Matthew includes those women in the geneology). Jesus calls all men into the embodied care of people, not away from it. Best I can tell, contemporary calls to the renewal of "biblical" manhood contradict the very things Jesus was about, in part because it uncritically accepts a model of "masculinity" that ignores Jesus own "man-hood."

I joked about fighting him because his argument is just a Southern Baptist version of the central argument of Brad Pitt in Fight Club. :)

I find Al Mohler frightening. Maybe, to prove my dutiful manliness, I should fight him.

Seriously, though. Notice that he doesn't mention any passages to support his crazy position on masculinity. That's because masculinity is a social construct.

Mohler also seems to forget that Jesus himself exhibited none of the supposed qualities of a real man, but instead was financially supported by women, hung out with children and other needy people, and never bothered to get married. Someone should have made Jesus read Wild at Heart.

As someone who has done a variety of work, including my fair share of manual labor, I wouldn't say that staying at home being a homemaker was the "manliest" thing I've ever done (though no less manly than driving to work and back in rush hour traffic, pathetically confined to my car. I need to get one of those man-sacks to hang from the back of my car to let everyone know that despite being stuck in traffic, i'm pretty manly), but it was the most Christian I ever felt.

Happy Birthday, SVD!!!!!!!!! Here's to hot b-day lovin' all night long (though be careful--you know what that stuff leads to).

mbw and crew

The greater issue is, I think, if you are a Christian. First, the author says that in the real world, people keep score. The church's witness is, though, that the kingdom of God is the real world. I'm curious what kind of score it is that God keeps in the real world. What it is we are communicating when we obsess over the need for our kids to compete? And against whom do home-schooled kids compete?
By the way, I'm not a voter, but I am a late-gen-Xer, which is truly the first self-esteem generation out there. In my 4th grade class, we sat in rows according to our performance in the class, and I generally had the first seat. Extremely competitive, and if you failed a quiz you had to copy a dictionary page by hand. By the author's (highly) flawed logic, I should be able to be the most self-respecting person out there. Of course, this character development based on competition, score and accomplishment didn't stop me from "scoring" a 1.7 my first semester of college, and "losing" my "competitively won" full tuition scholarship. I suspect that self-esteem vs. self-respect is hardly so simplistic as this person would have us believe.

I enjoy pretending that someone finds what I write meaningful, moving, and smart.

:)

TVD,

If is see any country music stars, I probably won't speak to them at all. Sorry. But thanks for the greetings and hope you guys are well too!

All I know is what I learned at church: God makes possible a world and a "politics" in which we need not fear anyone enough to kill them (not even, as the Father shows us, when our own children are the ones who are threatened), by defeating death in every way through the incarnation . Anger is merely motivated and mobilized fear. Undoubtedly the nation-state is incapable of inhabiting this kind of fearlessness (otherwise, there would be no war). As Christians, though, our first task is to witness our faith that God makes possible a world and a politics in which we need not fear anyone enough to kill them.

It's hard to do that when, like Mohler, Christians are groping for reasons to support killing people. At the very least, we should call those people to task when they employ anti-Christian rhetoric.

Mohler, who frankly is a frightening man, thinks Bern is right in his editorial. But consider this sentence from Berns' article:

"Punishment has its origins in the demand for justice, and justice is demanded by angry, morally indignant men, men who are angry when someone else is robbed, raped, or murdered, men utterly unlike Camus's Meursault. This anger is an expression of their caring, and the just society needs citizens who care for each other, and for the community of which they are parts. One of the purposes of punishment, particularly capital punishment, is to recognize the legitimacy of that righteous anger and to satisfy and thereby to reward it."

This is, sorry to say, blatantly anti-Christian. If this is a justification for Christians to support the death penalty, it's a sad one for sure. Like most of Mohler and his ilk, it assumes that it [is] possible to know what is "moral" apart from the incarnation, which of course is a useless assertion for Christians. Consider, for example, God's own words on anger in Matthew 5.

ha ha. good point....