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When one of the commentators, Frank, posted that he wanted to continue our discussion privately so as not to misuse his privileges, I was surprised to read this reply from Dr. Paulien’s spokesman:
Frank,
I can speak for Dr Paulien when I say this… that the blog was set up for this type of open ended discussion. It was Dr Paulien’s opinion when we set up the blog that it would be open-ended discussion… without approval or disapproval of the comments. No one edits out any comments… other than things that are obvious spam. In other words… I was reading what you said too… with interest. I was disappointed to see you go to a private discussion.
Regards,
John Miller (system admin)
Being the ironic and spasmodically irascible writer that I’m, I replied:
John,
That a ‘blogger’ who has only posted 18 times since Nov. 2006 would expect his ‘administrator’…I am laughing now…to comment in his behalf betrays a certain and ironic ignorance of the online community.
I respect you (tell him for me, John) as a theologian and to be fair, blogging is…well…it’s blogging.
They are as common as grass and share the same fate. My own has never reached more than 6,000 readers a month, not counting the linkoverse, and is presently much less; I am sure all of those, apart from my mother, would get along just fine if I died tomorrow.
Really, Jon, (or is it John) if your too busy to blog or your just wanting to post a few hooks to hang your other ventures on, call it something else. But it ain’t bloggin’.
Sometime ago I had considered removing your link from my blogroll for being inactive. I thought I would wait a little longer, hoping, hoping, for a post.
Now, I’ll have to delete for mere pretentiousness. Sorry. Bloggers rules.
P.S. Frank, I’ll be waiting on that email. Of course, being a busy pastor with two churches…someone else may reply in my behalf. Nothing personal.
How Mr. Miller missed the irony of “speaking for” the blogger is just too funny! Why…Oh why…do we bother….?
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What disturbed me, and I already knew this, was the virulent opposition by outspoken Muslims, white Muslim converts, or Muslim wannabes toward the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and what those doctrines mean for an interpretation of his atoning work. I was reminded of just where I stand in this culture and it made me feel uncomfortable. It also made me feel angry.
I don’t mind reasonable discussions. Not long ago I spent some time with a Muslim friend, a Ph.d. in sociology, and we explored a few of our mutual and not-so-mutual beliefs. But these televised, ignorant assertions made about my faith and my Lord irritate me. The twisting of Biblical passages, the willing ignorance of their context, and the producers choice of loud, marginal voices as representative of their respective faiths, Christian or Muslim, is an obvious attempt to get viewers through nonobjective polarization of opinions. And this is passed off to those not educated in the various subjects as real, substantive discussion.
Let’s call it what it is, pure entertainment on the lower scale of the entertainment food change. Like a ranting Michael Moore documentary, it is biased and sometimes overtly deceitful. The only good I salvage from such propaganda is the belief that even this serves to awaken discussion on the greatest question confronting human beings today, the same question Jesus once asked of his disciples: “Who do men say that I am?”.
I believe, whether or not you agree with his position, that it is unfair, misleading, and unethical to falsely characterize his remarks, particularly when such an action will knowingly inflame already tender religious-racial tensions, not only in Britain, but on wider world stage. That a tabloid such as the Sun does so is no surprise and doesn’t deserve further comment, but for those of a more reasonable persuasion, I would encourage you to take time to thoughtfully read the full manuscript of his remarks before offering your valued opinion, whether in print on air. You will find the full manuscript here.
For an interesting and articulate discussion of whether or not the Archbishop was wise in making his remarks, see this blog post and related comments at Faith and Theology.
I have only had time to read part of the manuscript myself, so I’ll wait before drawing any further personal conclusions.
From Wired Magazine…here.
[For the fortunate, uninitiated ones, the Matrix is a movie about machines ruling the world, powered by the body heat of human beings who are farmed as bio-fuel. The humans mysteriously find a way to rebel. It is a play on concepts of reality as dream and dream as reality. The powerful, delusional, subtext is the glorification of the autonomous self, i.e. man as god against God, who is vilified as the autocratic machine trying to destroy our right for absolute freedom. I nice little demonic work of half-truths. Typical for the devil.]
]]>It appears a ships anchor may have damaged an undersea telecom cable in Alexandria, part of a 17,000 mile undersea system that services the Middle East, North Africa, and India. Egypt has a 70% reduction in service, India as much as 60%. The BBC say it may take up to a week to completely restore service.
Who is affected?
For those of us in the U.K. who routinely hear the garbled tones of a foreign voice on the other end of our phone or mobile, this break in communications only adds to the frustration and you can be sure to hear a chorus of “I-told-you-so’s” from those who oppose the heavy outsourcing done by many global businesses for the sake of larger profits. We must compete, we must compete, we must compete….or we’ll lose our market share!
But more to my point, how long will it be before the penny drops and we realize, in our everyday, humdrum, routines, that our tech-dependant lives are only a power cut from oblivion?
An old friend of mine in America used to bait his sociology students by first reviewing the decline and fall of the Roman empire and then stating in a deadpan voice, “Of course, this will never happen to America”. Sadly, few of his students caught the note of irony. I imagine many are still swaying to this deceptive dirge, humming the words, “it will never happen to us”.
]]>What makes the economy unstable has less to do with economic models or market forces than it does with the unethical ethos of those who buy and sell. Take for example the recent debacle in France, where a single man runs the bank over € 3 Billion in debt through fraud. Or Enron’s corruption. Or the sub-prime lunacy. Or the Northern Rock implosion in the U.K. Or the manipulation of money markets that devalue entire national economies so a few millionaire’s can add a few more pennies to their their name.
You can take any profession and work the same principle. No amount of regulation, policy, or monitoring can insure us from the corrupt practices of those who live to serve themselves. Of course, democracy has taken self-interest into account and tried to provide a system of checks and balances to provide some measure of sanity. But in the largest democracy in the world, the United States, that is failing. And as a result, so are many economies inextricably linked to her through their need for trade and outright avarice.
Surely something is wrong when consumers who need to save instead of spend can have such a catastrophic world impact. When American’s try to bring their debt into some semblance of reality, the rest of the world begins to panic. Who will now pay good money for all of our needless products? Who can now afford to buy all the rubbish trinkets and tinsel we mass produce for no other reason than to make more?
And on a larger scale, who can afford to buy or invest in companies who are so adept at disguising their monstrous debts. To say they are overvalued is a gross understatement. When will shareholders get the message? It isn’t merely that buyers and sellers can’t be trusted, but that their mutual wizards can no longer divine the deceptions. When a thing can’t be valued, for whatever reason, it has no tangible worth.
The smoke and mirrors have done their job. Everyone is now blind. I hope your good at chaos theory.
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To get you started, here is a video recipe.
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Romania: Adventist national ad campaign
declares Bible-reading a must
Bucharest, Romania … [Rajmund Dabrowski/ANN]
Beatrice Lospa never imagined a nationwide initiative to make reading the Bible attractive and accessible to every Romanian would be so popular.
A coordinator of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Bible reading clubs, Sola Scriptura (Latin for “Scripture only”), Lospa eagerly tells how a national advertising campaign backed by an anonymous donation is blending high-profile marketing with the church’s basic mission outreach. Now, hundreds are coming to Bible reading clubs across Romania.
“We never thought we would find ourselves at this crossroads,” Lospa says while standing at a street intersection in the heart of Bucharest. For her and her team the crossroads are literal.
“Look, our billboard will come up next,” she says, beaming with excitement at seeing the Sola Scriptura ad roll up on an electronic billboard — a picture of a thoughtful-looking man at the National Library with the words, “Knowing how to read does you no good if you have never read the Bible. www.solascriptura.ro. A program for reading the Bible.”
The slogan seemed a bit risky to some church members, Lospa says, but with access to 148 billboards in Bucharest, Constanta, Timisoara, Brasov and other cities around the country, church leaders decided to be bold.
Romanians had little access to Bibles under communism’s 50-year rule, Lospa explains. “Today, everyone seems to be talking about religion, but many people have little or no knowledge of the role the Holy Scriptures play in Christianity.”
“Romanians have a Christian Orthodox tradition where priests passed on knowledge about Christianity, the Bible and its message, to the people,” Lospa says.
“Romanians have yet to read the Holy Scriptures by themselves.”
In 2000, Adventist Church leaders tried to stir interest among Romanians by inviting people to simply read the Bible. Sola Scriptura reading clubs were given meeting space by the church’s 20 nationwide Christian bookstores, which share the same name.
But the clubs were sparsely attended and lacked financial backing for promotion. That changed when a donation of €60,000 (about US$88,000) arrived in the Sola Scriptura bank account.
“I cannot express in words the emotion, the joy and the intensity of the feelings I had, because the money came in response to our prayers,” Lospa says.
Then the anonymous donor set up a meeting with her. “I believe I can do more,” he said confidently while sitting across from her in her office, she recalls.
“What can be more than 60,000 Euros?” Lospa asked him.
He explained that as president of the largest billboard advertising company in Romania, 60 percent of the country’s outdoor ad business was under his control.
Impressed, Lospa congratulated her guest. “Oh, I didn’t tell you this in order for you to congratulate me,” he quipped, “but for you to think of what you should write on the billboards I intend to place at main road junctions and in the bus and tram stops.”
Years earlier the donor attended the Sola Scriptura two-year Bible course after a young man in Constanta offered him a flier. “I bought books from the Sola Scriptura bookstore, I learned how to pray and I applied everything I had learned to the business I run,” he told Lospa. “Things are different than before, and this is only because I began to apply God’s principles. I think it’s high time I did something to thank Him. It’s nothing compared to what He has done for me.”
After the messages were posted on billboards in July, Web traffic on the Sola Scriptura site doubled to 5,383 visitors. Nearly 300 registered online to join a local club. Each meeting at various sites draws about 30 to 50 attendees. Most sites host several meetings that gather biweekly.
“This is a club, not a seminar,” says Liviu Stanescu, a pastor in his 30s, who runs a local club in Bucharest.
Starting with the book of Genesis, the Bible reading clubs are designed to encourage conversation. Participants are urged to ask questions based on both the Bible and their experiences, Stanescu explains.
After a Bible reading class, many participants ask “Where do we go from here?” Another course addresses prophecy because the first club reading doesn’t include prophetic books such as Isaiah, Daniel or Revelation. Other course topics include improving health, family life and discussions about the parables of Jesus.
Participants come from all walks of life. “We have ordinary people and university professors, scientists and even one senator,” Stanescu says.
“The Orthodox Church invites people to the church,” he says, “but we are inviting people to experience a personal relationship with God by pointing them to the Bible. You can rejoice in God everyday, not only on holy days, we say. People react to what they find in Sola Scriptura as if this was something new to discover in their Christian life.”
In August, Lospa and her team were in the middle of their four-month long public billboard campaign. The Sola Scriptura team, busy with the Internet, radio and television promotion, was reporting a doubling of participation in Bible reading clubs despite the Summer holidays.
“The Bible offers a challenge and an invitation that one’s preparation for life is not complete without being confronted with the message of the Bible,” Lospa says. “The Bible helps to overcome that void.”
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A more basic question, one we could discuss here: What is “news” to you and why does it matter? Any takers? Feel free to address one of the other questions or ask your own.
