progressive involvement

No sacraments at Saddleback

It's all about us.  It's a "testament to a believer's faith."

Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, is an ordinance given to all believers by Jesus Christ to remember his sacrifice for us and to symbolize the new covenant. The elements of bread and wine or juice are symbols of Christ’s broken body and shed blood. Communion is not a means of salvation. Rather, it is a testament of a believer’s faith in the atoning work of the cross.

Saddleback is a baptist church, and baptists don't do sacraments.  They basically adhere to the perspectives of Greek philosophy which consider the material realm--the physical and fleshy--to be corrupt and inferior to the "purer and higher" spiritual realm.  From an historical Christian perspective, this is the gnostic heresy.  It's not for nothing that many baptist churches are built to look like Greek temples.

 

Romantic comedies are bad for your love life

So says Gregory Rodriguez at the LA Times, and not without reason:

According to a few enterprising social scientists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, romantic comedies can raise unrealistic romantic expectations among fans and may therefore set them up for personal failure and a lifetime of disappointment.

I think I'll spend New Year's watching "Patton" and "The Godfather."

St. Paul: "All Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:26)

Rick Warren, on the other hand, thinks not.

When it came time for questions, a woman stood up, proclaimed her Judaism, and asked Warren if she was going to burn in hell. He paused before responding--and then answered her question the only way it could be answered. Yes, he said to audible gasps.

Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?

Under the law, Rod Blagojevich is the Governor of Illinois.  Yes, he is the focus of a criminal investigation for trying to sell a Senate seat.  Fine.  Prosecute the case.  If you find him guilty, put him in jail. 

Until then, he's the Governor and fully entitled to appoint someone to the Senate, which he has just done.  Give the man credit.  It was a shrewd pick.  Roland Burris is African-American, has broad support in the African-American community, and was a legitimate contender for the post before the scandal broke.

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Senate won't seat Burris, but it's questionable whether the Senate has the right to refuse to seat him.  In any case, the action of the Senate Democrats is true to form.  The one time they get their back up about something, it's to slam someone for performing his constitutional duty.

Lectionary blogging: John 1: 1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Other observations on Caroline Kennedy's interview

She was very diplomatic with respect to other names being mentioned for the appointment.  She lauded Andrew Cuomo right off the bat, mentioning that she had known him for several years.   This is mainly because Cuomo was once married to her cousin, a relationship that didn't end well.

She also spoke favorably of her predecessor, Hillary Clinton, once referring to her as a "very visible, very strong, very powerful advocate."  At another point, she said, "Well, I think she spent a lot of time traveling around the state and really working to represent all the people of the state, and that’s the kind of commitment I would make, so I think she did a great job, so I would love to continue in that tradition."

Ms. Kennedy has been getting some push back from Clinton supporters in New York State who remember, not with fondness, Ms. Kennedy's endorsement of then Sen. Obama over their own home-stater, Hillary.  For her part, Hillary has let it be known that her supporters are not to interfere or impede Ms. Kennedy's campaign for the appointment, though did anyone catch the Politico article last week that casually mentioned that Ms. Kennedy had had some trouble getting through on her call to Hillary?

Caroline Kennedy backs off from pledge to run in 2010

She said she was going to run no matter what when she was in upstate New York last week.  At the time, she was being criticized for seeking an appointment rather than displaying the expected and customary "fire in the belly" and running for the office.  Now, after having been criticied for trying to muscle her way in to the appointment, she has decided to back off a notch and proclaim her support for whomever gets appointed.  From the New York Times interview:

NC: You said that you would run — and this earned you, I think, some applause from Democrats who were skeptical before, but you said you would support in 2010, whoever the governor appoints, but it occurred to me to wonder why: Why not run if you want this job? If you were sincere about this job, why not run in 2010 regardless of what happens in the next two months?

CK: Well, you know, I’m a Democrat, a loyal Democrat, I would support whoever the governor appoints, and as I said, I think there are many ways to serve and advance the issues that I care about, and I have a long time to do that, so I plan, in 2010, to support the Democrat.

That, of course, would be the complete opposite of what she said last week.  This is reminiscent of Walt Whitman, who said, "Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself.  I am large.  I contain multitudes."  The truth is, of course, that like every other prospective candidate, 2010 is two years away, and she may or may not run in 2010 depending on what the political landscape looks like at that time.

New look for the new year!

As Jim Gronebeck, manager of Skaggs Drug Store in Hays, Kansas, c. 1973, used to say, "If you've done it one way for a long time, that's reason enough to change.

German Protestant Bishop takes Deutsche Bank to task, and on Christmas Eve no less

Bishop Wolfgang Huber levelled a sharp blast at Deutsche Bank for seeking a 25% pre-tax profit in 2009.  “Never again should a Deutsche Bank chief executive set a profit goal of 25 per cent,” said Bishop Huber to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.  He termed seeking excessive profits “a form of idolatry," and added that “money has become a god.”  Financial Times has the story, and reported that the Bank was "taken aback" by the charge.

Criticism of bankers from German politicians and church leaders is far from new but the complaints intensified and became more mainstream after the financial system almost failed in the wake of the mid-September Lehman Brothers collapse.

Deutsche Bank called the Bishop's comments "inappropriate," which is lame.  The Bishop's remarks may be right, they may be wrong, but it is certainly not "inappropriate" for a church leader to comment publicly when the deadly sin of greed is openly embraced by the head of one of his country's and the world's largest banks.

The trouble with ideologues

They'll tell you any damn thing to support their ideology, such as Fox News, for example, saying that "historians pretty much agree" that FDR's policies prolonged the Great Depression.  This assertion flies in the face of actual facts which show that the country was in much better shape in 1937, after four years of FDR's policies, than they were in 1933. 

It was only in 1938, when FDR dialed back the New Deal and tried to balance the budget, that unemployment started going back up.  In other words, it was when FDR stopped being FDR and flirted with being Herbert Hoover that the recovery stalled.

Rick Warren, ideological soul-mate of Fox News, pulled the same kind of stunt when he claimed, in an ad favoring California's Prop 8, that marriage has been the same throughout 5000 years of human history.  That is obviously false, as anybody who knows anything at all about history surely knows.

Ideologues simply cannot be trusted.  They'll tell you anything, sometimes just flat making it up on the spot, in order to convince you that their propaganda is really true.  Now, I have nothing against propaganda.  Propaganda has its place.  If not, the advertising business would have to close up shop.  But just because ideologues actually believe their own propaganda does not mean that anybody else should.