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…He would be an idolater.

Think about it- God is jealous to protect His honor, His glory. God’s jealously is righteous because He wants to be recognized for who He is.

Some Biblical support:

Exodus 20:5 “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me”

Exodus 34:14 “(for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God)”

Deuteronomy 4:24 “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”

Deuteronomy 5:9 “You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,”

Isaiah 48:11 “For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.”

(I included Exodus 20:5 and Deuteronomy 5:9 because when God repeats something in Scripture, He means business)

God alone is deserving of all honor and glory. God is right to view Himself as the One of ultimate value. If He were not jealous about protecting this, it would mean that He sees something else as more important than Himself.

If that were the case, God be an idolater.

Thoughts? Objections?

60frames found this footage of a young Hillary Rodham Clinton in her early school years.

In the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom, the daughter of rabidly militant feminist and author of The Color Purple has written an article which we all ought to read: How My Mother’s Radical Views Tore Us Apart.

Rebecca writes:

(M)y mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.

In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life.

She then goes on to catalog the results of the well-intentioned but terrible results of feminism in her family and between her and her mother.

Her mother has essentially disowned her because she chose to have a child, and found that child to be so much more than she’d been told.

Rebecca has found that freedom is not found in a lack of entanglements, but in choosing to base ones life on what is truly valuable.

There are several things which caught my eye today, so consider this another installment of I, Pandora’s “Around The World”.

First, from the pen of Thomas Sowell comes an essay on race politics: “Mascot Politics“:

Years ago, when Jack Greenberg left the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to become a professor at Columbia University, he announced that he was going to make it a point to hire a black secretary at Columbia.

This would of course make whomever he hired be seen as a token black, rather than as someone selected on the basis of competence.

Would not it be so much better to just hire the best secretary? And if they were black, all the better. Even looking at that one individual from the ubiquitous perspective of identity politics, that one black secretary, having achieved their high success through their own hard work and having overcome all comers would have done provided a better and stronger role-model for thousands and millions of other than one hundred secretaries preferentially promoted due not to their ability, but to the color of their skin. Something, incidentally, they had nothing whatsoever to do with and therefore can claim no honor for.

So it would seem that this (primarily) liberal fixation with promoting based on immutable characteristics will only continue to cheapen people.

It is a wonder the liberal in need of a secretary can get anything accomplished if they are willing to write-off potentially qualified candidates in favor of one conforming to an arbitrary stricture predetermined.

So then conservatives take of the world of bureaucracy by employing qualified secretaries regardless of their race and get so much more accomplished we’ll rule by fiat.

Next, the Czech President Klaus is ready to debate Gore on Global Warming.

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the “climate alarmism” perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.
“Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality,” he said.
“In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat – this time, in the name of the planet,” he added.
Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he opposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.

McCain the hot air maverick should take note. The Global Warming issue is yet another attempt by Marxist/Communists to enslave the world in thrall to their totalitarian dystopia.

Memories of his old friends in Hanoi should be sufficient to change his mind, or else he is no man.

And finally, Germany adds to the lies by opening a memorial to the homosexual victims of the Holocaust.

Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit, who is openly gay, hailed the grey, concrete memorial as a long overdue acknowledgment of the repression of homosexuals, 50,000 of whom were convicted by Nazi courts during Adolf Hitler’s 12-year dictatorship.

“The monument consecrated today is a reminder to us of the horrors of the past and draws our attention to the degree of discrimination that currently exists,” Wowereit said.

“Great efforts will still need to be undertaken before the sight of two men or women kissing here or in Moscow or elsewhere on the planet is accepted by society in general.”

How easy it is to overlook the insignificant fact that the Nazi party was started in gay bars and by pedophiles.

The brown shirts and the Nazi youth grew out of a German young-mens group known for rampant homosexuality, and many of the leaders of the Nazi party were known for their preference for young boys.

So then, who were all these homosexuals killed in the Holocaust?

They were the effeminate “girly-men” homosexuals. Butch’s and pedophiles were the leaders, worshiping an enhanced manhood and ushering an era of super-maleness and domination. They could not brook weakness, either racially or sexually.

All this and more in “The Pink Swastika” (you can read the book in it’s entirety at that link). It is well researched and documented and a necessary read in today’s culture.

“He will get the best care possible.” – Katie Couric about Kennedy’s cancer

I’m not saying Kennedy doesn’t deserve the best care possible; but here’s a question, why does he, more than anyone else, deserve the best care possible? Because he is a well-known senator?

I have a friend who is undergoing tests soon to see if she has a fast-moving terminal form of cancer. This friend is kind, caring, loyal, and very deserving of quality care.

Kennedy will get the best possible care because he will pay for it. Either with the superb insurance plans covering members of government which they vote for themselves, or because of the relatively limitless extent of his financial ability or those who will donate to his medical bills.

Katie Couric uses her “Notebook” session to point out that Kennedy has fought hard for making the same care that is available to him available to every American (legal or not). The problem with this is one perhaps best summed up by Thomas Sowell in his recent series of articles titled “Too “Complex”?” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3): It’s economics that provide the true and lasting solutions, but economics doesn’t bleed, and politics follows blood.

This friend of mine is bright and sweet, she’s young and incredibly skilled. If anyone deserves a future, she does. She’s articulate and thoughtful, her life is well examined. She’s tenacious and self-reliant, taking high loads of classes at a tough school while working to pay the bills.

She’d be an preeminent poster child for any socialized medicine program.

With the socialized medicine Senator Kennedy has fought for being such a good thing, why have we not gone for it already? After all, it’s been tried elsewhere, it must have been successful, right?

Well, most readers know how successful it has been. Failure.

If socialized medicine, such as that promoted by Senators Kennedy and Clinton, were the reality in America, it would be hell.

As it is, my friend is able to fly to across the country on a few days notice, receive a biopsy, get the results back within a matter of hours, and have a reliable diagnosis presented to her.

It costs money, but with friends paying for her airline ticket, and her doctor asking a colleague for a favor, she can get her procedure done in time to participate in an international internship if the prognosis is good.

If there were socialized medicine here in the US, she would be shunted into a line, put on a waiting list, told to wait her turn.

In a system with little or no incentive either to self-regulate our medical needs or limit considered options to necessary procedures, there would be bloated numbers of people seeking medical help for slight and psychosomatic symptoms.

With the fast-moving nature of the cancer my friend may be suffering from, there is little chance she’d even make it in for an exam, let alone a biopsy, before she died.

May Senator Kennedy enjoy the benefits of a capitalistic medical system, and may his efforts to deny that benefit to the rest of us perish.

**Written by both American Texan and Matthew**

I do not believe God can generally be termed retributive to those of us He allows to continue on this earth. Instead, Grace and Mercy are His hallmarks as He seeks to draw us to Himself, giving us ample and sufficient evidence for His existence, glory, and purpose.

God in His sovereignty allowing Senator Kennedy is not an act of justice or punishment. It is another likely completely misunderstood example of God’s sovereignty working in our world to cause us either to draw near to Him or to condemn ourselves with the hardening of our own hearts.

I do not believe Senator Kennedy is a man of honor. I do not believe he is a man of courage. Nor of conviction, nor of morals.

But he is a man.

And in his humanity, I grieve for him, for his family, and for others who are hurt by this new struggle he is facing.

Now, if only Katie Couric were able to stop herself from being quite so thrilled at this opportunity for political grandstanding on behalf of this fixture of the Senate.

Anybody remember blackface? Considered to both be the advent of black culture growing in the entertainment industry and an evidence of racism based on exaggerated racial stereotypes. In its ugly form, blackface was white people laughing at white people acting like white people thought black people acted.

Courtesy of the CBS Website, I’ve been watching Numb3rs for the past few weeks and find it an enjoyable show. It combines some of the crime drama of CSI with some different forms of character development all arranged around some seriously stretched applications of mathematical models to extremely complex systems which in reality would require super-computers hundreds of years to compute, but with Charles Epps brain, can strung together into accurate models in matters of minutes.

Reality-stretching aside, I’ve enjoyed the show for the most part.

In the season finale “When Worlds Collide” however, the show tries to be political and shows that blackface is still alive an well in America.

The show’s tag was intriguing, to say the least:

A Pakistani non-profit group is suspected to have ties to Jihadist groups and is on the FBI’s terrorist watch.

It was a decent show for the most part, rife with moral quandary, suspense, relational tensions, etc. But as the plot moved along and it became clear who the bad guy was and what his relationship was with the rest of the members of the involved groups, I was rather disturbed.

Xenophobia

A typical xenophobic perspective of other cultures, and one based in sad reality across the world, is that other cultures see themselves the same way we do.

If you don’t know many people of a particular ethnicity, it is normal for you to find it difficult to differentiate recognizable differences and unique characteristics between individual members of that group.

The standard “they all look the same” is real and normal and definitely an indicator of the perceivers lack of familiarity with the perceived.

Blackface

The writers of Numb3rs had resorted to the crudest of blackface to create their villain. The bad guy ends up being an opportunistic former member of the IRA terrorist groups seeking money and markets for this illicit weapons trade.

Using face paint and a beard reminiscent of British military officers in the far east of the last century, he transformed himself into a swarthy quasi-pseudo-Pakistani.

The assumptions were:

• The members of the organization would not recognize this impostor as not being authentically a member of his supposed race.
• The members of this organization would not recognize this impostor for his lack of connection to their group through relationships.
• White people can pretend convincingly to be other races through extensive makeup and acting and survive extended contact while not being recognized.

Individually, these may be true in certain cases, and with dedication and a good makeup crew, they could indeed be accomplished. But the circumstances of the case where such that such foresight did not likely occur.

Just as in your race you are most able to recognize by look, action, and vocabulary, those who belong and those who don’t, and even more so in those groups you are involved in and even more so when those groups are primarily of one race.

So too, in the story premise, the writers of Numb3rs, in an attempt to bring the far-fetched possibility that we’re not really fighting against Muslims: after all, they’re a religion of peace, eh? But against opportunistic old-school European terrorists such as the IRA.

I know they’re not saying “all” such suspect charities are not funneling money to terrorists. I know the government in it’s dealings with Muslims right now is treading a thin line, and most likely, more often than not, abusing it’s responsibility and prerogative in it’s dealings with the same.

But our primary enemy right now, not of our own creation, but born of sheer necessity and self-preservation, is Muslim-based Islamo-Facist ideology and it’s supporters, both active and passive.

Cal Thomas, In Defense Of ‘Big Oil’:

Where is it written that the cost for a product or service should be frozen in place and in time, never to rise again, or to rise at a pace commensurate with our incomes? People who think this way know little to nothing about supply and demand and less than nothing about the profit motive. That’s because at least three generations have been raised on the notion of entitlement, and when one feels entitled to something, one believes someone else should pay.

I tend to be dense, sometimes.

Over the last two years, at least, I’ve noticed a theme in God’s work in my life. A lesson, as it were, He spends all year drumming in to my head. And usually it takes a while for me to notice I’m still in class, as it were.

Last year, it was around this time that I started really realizing all God’s work in my life was not just Him being nice or more obvious about His niceness.

Rather it was Him trying to drum into my head some slight concept of his Glory and Sovereignty.

If you followed this blog for any period of time, you know I spent three weeks in Italy from the end of December 2006 into January 2007. Right before New Years I was separated from my friends in Pisa. I ended up in Rome and due to communication issues (they had the cell phone, I had the pay phone) we were unable to find each other and meet again.

I was faced with a large bill for housing that used all my cash reserves only 5 days into the trip and no idea where I should go. After panicking for a day, I tried tracking my friends down in Naples and then returned to Venice to spend the balance of the time.

After trying unsuccessfully to find an airplane ticket back prematurely, I was able to reach my credit card companies and inform them (again) that I was over seas and they should unlock my accounts because it was me making those charges, as I’d told them I would a week previous.

Things being resolved financially, I proceeded to spend the rest of my time in Italy wandering the streets of Venice, usually away from the standard tourist haunts and byways. It was a quiet time of reflection and observation. For me this was a big thing. I have at times been nearly co-dependent in my relationships, even with ‘just friends’ and to have a period where I was completely incapable of being dependent was freeing.

Prior to leaving for Italy, I’d determined that this was a good time to put in motion another long-thought plan: returning to Chicago, for good. After returning to the states I packed my belongings in my car and drove across the country in the middle of winter. Sans heater.

Arriving safely in Chicago I was at the generosity of friends in the area until I found jobs and found my feet under me again.

Grace came into my life soon thereafter, and life has continued to progress since then.

But as I mentioned, about this time last year I came to realize God’s overwhelming interest in my life.

We go about our ways assuming that at least some of the world revolves around us, and we around others. If we’re really humble we think only a little bit of the world revolves around us.

But God is the only thing important. To the extent that three possibilities are true:

1. Some of the world revolves around us,
2. We revolve around others, or
3. None of the world revolves around us

…we have an incorrect perspective of the nature of God, and all of creations’ relationship to Him.

He is the end-all and be-all. He is the only one for whom the universe was created, because it was through Him and His planned, considered and definite action that we, or anything we naturally perceive, came to be.

To the extent that we see ourselves defined by or defining others, we are denying God’s ultimate definition of our lives: To Glorify Him.

“What is the chief end of man?” asks the Westminster Catechism: “To glorify God and praise Him forever.”

After realizing the lessons God had for me seemed to be along a common theme, it was exciting to look forward to how He’d next reveal Himself to me, and amazing to look back at His awesome provision, protection, and guidance.

But perhaps the biggest thing was to realize I’m not a power-player in this story of His abundant love. I’m not even a regular player. Nor do I have a bit part. Not even a walk on.

God is the one and only actor in His story. In His mysterious grace and mercy He has chosen to have a relationship with me, but not for my sake.

The bible over and over again says that it is for His names’ sake, for His glory, for His purpose and according to His will, that things happen and events occur.

My best hope is to follow His lead, accept His direction, and hang on for the ride.

It’s not about me.

Which then brings us to this year.

Pastor Rob found the Lord leading him to set the vision of the church this year to be one of purpose: purpose in our lives individually and corporately.

The sermon series in my bible study group, 631, is on James and it’s central tenet of the deadness of faith apart from works.

And in the sermons at church, the studies at 631, the lessons from books and passages I’ve meditated on have all pointed to salvation being so much more than what I found I’d assumed it to be.

Salvation is not a train ticket: punched once and ready for the trip.

Salvation does indeed begin, in our human perception, at a point in time. It is confirmed in our praying to admit our own guilt and accept Christ’s act of redemption and forgiveness and justification.

But it is also a continuing action.

A study of James’ and Paul’s teachings on works and faith and their balance in the life of a believer will show that faith is defining term in our moment of salvation, and that works are the evidence by which others will see our faith proved throughout the rest of our lives.

And then it isn’t about me or you or even us.

God didn’t had Jesus die because He needed us to be forgiven or justified or saved. Jesus died because God wanted to glorify Himself throughout this meager sweep that is human history. It has been often said that the most defining point in time for the entire world has been when Jesus died on the cross to glorify God.

God’s glory was brought about in the act of sacrifice in that it was His will that the chasm between God and His creation be bridged, and His further glory that He bridge that gap Himself. He was the only One who could, the only One who would, and the only One who succeeded.

So in Him choosing me and drawing me into His salvation, what do I give? Not to pay Him back, or settle a debt, because there is no way I can do either of those things. But to seek to bring further glory to the One God who chose me.

Everything. That is all I can give.

So when I do not give Him everything, as I have not, and continue to hold back, am I saved?

I know I am saved, because His Spirit bears witness in my spirit that I am a forgive child of God engaged in a justified life of sanctification.

So, looking forward, I expect that God will continue to reveal new, exciting, and convicting perspectives on His nature as revealed through His work of Salvation.

As y’all have no doubt noticed, there has been a bit of spam making it through iPandora’s Akismet filters this last week.

I’ve been deleting them as I see them, but they keep coming. A few more each day.

What do y’all use to block spam on your blogs?