Word Compaction

Have you noticed that many radio commercials compact the speakers words? By this, I mean that the speaker begins a new sentence a bit before finishing the previous one. This, of course, is impossible without recording technologies. What does this mean?

1. Words became even more clustered and unpleasantly delivered.
2. There is no room to breathe, to really hear anything.
3. Quantity is valued above the quality of the true human voice.

This is but another example of uploading our beings into The Cloud: the subtle technologies that shape our culture and our minds. Beware, beware.

Acedia

Overheard in a bookstore: "I have a very personal belief. The syncronicity of things in the last three days has been amazing. Everything fell into place. Some people may call it God. Awesome. I try to not figure it out..." Think about that! It is another example of cognitive acedia, which is epidemic in our "information society." "The more words, the less meaning, and what does it profit anyone?"--Ecclesiastes.

Battles

For every battle won in public--a strong sermon, a wise lecture, a well-led small group, a fruitful evangelistic discussion, real love shown to the suffering--there are a thousand unseen battles, without which, what is seen would have never occurred.

“Jesus is not an ambiguous inkblot upon which we project our pet theories, hopes, or fears. He is a living reality who can be mastered by no one, since He is the Master of the universe. He challenges every counterfeit with His genuineness, every distortion with His veracity… The cross remains a fact of history, and the gospel continues to be the only means of setting people free”

~Douglas Groothuis “Jesus in an Age of Controversy ” (1996)

Rejection, Obama Style

Obama's budget was unanimously rejected today. Every vote in both house and Senate was against it. Think about that... The man cannot lead his own (debased) party, nor can he convince even the most liberal Republican to sign up. And this is the third year in which his budgets have been overwhelmingly rejected.

Do you want this man to "rule" (as he sees it) what's left of America for another four years? I think not.

Vote Romney for President.

"Congratulations: Christian Apologetics has been reprinted. This is the 3rd printing, bringing the total number of copies in print to 8,008. We are pleased to see your book have this continuing ministry."--To me from InterVarsity Press.

Antidotes

We are becoming addicted to the deadly substances of incoherence, glibness, crudeness, rudeness, and kitsch.  Truth takes the hindmost. The answer:

1. Read good books.
2. Talk about them with friends.
3. Have conversations about what matters.
4. Pray deep and wide and long, by yourself, with others, and in the church. That means use a prayer book for most of it.
5. Spend protracted time alone with God and your Bible.
6. Refuse PowerPoint.
7. Refuse video games.
8. Refuse ubiquitous entertainment.
9. Lament this fallen world. Be specific.
10. Rejoice heartily when grace is revealed.
11. Listen to others, without the obstructions of mediations: earbuds, laptops, blue tooths, text messages, and any other egregious theives of practicing the presence of people.
12. Be polite to strangers: say please and thank you. Be patient in lines.
13. Observe art object when you can. Stop, think.
14. Yes, be different--for God's sake and your own and for others.
I could go on and on..

O, Oh No!

Obama wants to:

Spend other people's money
Spend it inefficiently
Spend it to create a massive bureaucracy
Spend it to regulate your personal life (the cars you drive, the energy you use, the light bulbs you have)
Spend it to bankrupt the country and its children
To make you a slave of the state
To make you a parasite on the state
To make you a drone hooked on the dole.
Spend it to destroy liberty
Spent it to fund abortions
Spend it to regulate, control, and devalue health care
Spend it to imitate failing economies, such as Greece and Spain.
Spend it in ways alien to the Constitution.
Not spent it where needed: the military.
And I could go on.

God, Pain

In our most agonizing pain, God appears to be, feels to be, a sadist. But, in fact, he is the most skillful surgeon, whose operations we cannot fathom at this time. The proof of his competence is the Cross and Resurrection, which we can understand.

For Romney

My essay on why I will vote for Romney is on line at Patheos.

Hewitt Blew It

In a recent column about Obama's endorsement of same sex marriage (or the solemnizing of sodomy), Hugh Hewitt says this:

"This is not to say that single parents, or same sex couples cannot be terrific parents. They can be, often far better at it than married couples who are terrible, horrible parents from whose “care” children must be removed."

Wait a minute and think, Mr. Hewitt. Of course, single parents (if made single through divorce or the death of a spouse or even adoption) can be loving caring parents. But saying that a homosexual couple can be in the same category is just plain wrong. Of course, such couples may care for the children they adopt or arrange for through artificial insemination, but they as homosexuals end up modeling an unnatural and ungodly association for those children, thus probably leading them toward homosexuality. See Psalm 1.

I am afraid too many Christians are losing their moorings on this crucial issue.

Statism against America

The statists cradle to grave security means "the abolition of man" (See CS Lewis, The Abolition of Man). It requires excising the moral sentiment, producing a heard of geldings, trotting sheep-like and stupefied into the humanistic abyss. Deviants commit atrocious "thought crimes"/hate speech (George Orwell, 1984) and must be reeducated (shades of the USSR). The DSM manual will list "political dissent" as a mental disorder. This is our future apart from a Second American Revolution, which must be firmly rooted in the first American Revolution. Like the first, it would be a conservative insurgence of principled citizens whe refuse to become "brave new" automatta (see Aldous Huxley, Brave New World) at the hand of the omnipotent (and apostate) state.

Conclusion: Vote Obama, the apotheosis of messianic statism out of office and election Mitt Romney. Do all you can, with God's help, to make this happen. If not, America becomes another Babylon.

Cut it Away

Cut away, with the sharpest razor of Truth, pretense, pomp, teleprompter, triangulation, fluffing, posing, talking points, evasion, bullshit, kitsch, flattery, seduction, propaganda, and sexual manipulation--and what in the world is left: a way worth Being and Having and Sharing. 

Be Skeptical of the American "Recovery."

The mainstream media are now oh-so-positive about America and the economy. There is a simple reason for this that does not lie in the facts. Unemployment is 8.1, which does not count the legions who have just given up on trying to find work. The debt mountain has not gone away, but is ready to turn into a spewing volcano.

But Time and Newsweek and Rolling Stone (that execrable rag filled with scatological utterances) want to paint rosy political picture of America in recovery, America ascending on the regime of Obama. The facts and logic speak otherwise. Be advised and vote accordingly--for Mitt Romney