As the election draws closer (5 days from now) I am getting more and more emails and phone calls asking who I am voting for. Along with those there are the emails and YouTube pieces attacking Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin. There is the current squabble over who is more irresponsible with campaign funds Barack Obama for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to take the 767 campaign plane to visit his ailing grandmother or the McCain campaign for spending $150,000 on a campaign wardrobe for Sarah Palin. On the other side are interviews of Obama discussing his views on redistributing wealth. The first example seems to me to be a bit like one party arguing that the opposing candidate is ugly and the response coming back “Well your candidate is fat.” Whether the accusations are true or not doesn’t really bear on the questions directly related to who would be the best Commander and Chief. It seems to me the question of whether or not a campaign spends funds on a flight for personal business or wardrobe is more of an issue between the respective campaigns and their donor base.

The question of redistributing the wealth seems Continue reading …

If nothing else this has been an interesting election cycle. Both major parties had a huge field from which to choose their candidate. But as Duncan McLeod of the clan McLeod declares in the opening narration of The Highlander,“In the end, there can be only one.” Of course, that is equally true of the Presidential election itself. At the moment the nation seems about equally divided between the candidates for the two major parties. One candidate represents age and experience (too much age and experience for some) and the other represents youth, energy, charisma and new ideas. The division between these two candidates extends into the Evangelical church as well. Emerging Church leaders such as Brian McLaren have formed the Matthew 25 Network to entice Evangelicals to vote for Barack Obama. In July of this year headlines read Conservative Evangelicals Discuss Backing McCain. In August the Evangelical Left was ecstatic as one of their very own, Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz) gave the closing prayer at the DNC meeting the evening of August 25th. Randy Alcorn who is friends with Miller and was also personally excited about voting for Obama has since rethought his position and decided Not Cool: Obama’s Pro-abortion Stance, and Christians enabling him. Many on the Evangelical Left have turned a blind eye to the killing of innocent unborn toward what they consider more pressing issues. One of the issues they are aligned with Barack Obama on came up through an exchange between Barack Obama and “Joe the Plumber”. Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is considering Continue reading …

If you’ve ever wandered down the hall of a humanities department at a major public university, you no doubt noticed that humanities professors love to post things on their doors. Cartoons, clever sayings, inside jokes and the occasional vintage rock poster are favorites. I’m no exception. I’ve posted my share of cartoons and clever epitaphs. The reason humanities proffs do this is because humanities professors tend to be passionate about their free speech. They want to express themselves for a number of reasons. One of those is to elicit conversation. That’s right most humanities proffs look at their office door as one big billboard or conversation piece. Continue reading …

Over the years John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopalian Bishop and member of the Jesus Seminar has come out with a number of books such as Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture, Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile, and, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes among others. His basic views are that we have misread the Bible by taking it in its historical, grammatical context and as a result misunderstood the Bible. It isn’t about sin which resulted in separation from God and redemption which He provided through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. No, according to Spong, it is about Jesus being a political revolutionary and the Apostle Paul being a closet homosexual. Since Spong and the others in the Jesus Seminar operate outside of biblically sound churches most have paid little attention to them. However, emerging church leaders have similar views and recruit from within the Evangelical church. A case in point is Mike Gorman’s de-privatization on the “Reclaiming Paul the Apostle of the Emerging World” blog site.

Gorman declares: Continue reading …

And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” (John 9:39-41)

As I was thinking about what to write for the blog this week an article in Christianity Today arrived at my computer titled, “The Blind Spot of the Spiritual Formation Movement”.A couple of days after reading this Joy and I met a graduate of the trucking school we are attending. He graduated about six months ago and is working for a large firm and is very happy in his new life. He stopped by the school to visit the instructors and was in a brand new company truck and on the passenger side was a large (perhaps 2’ x 2’) yellow sign which said in bold black letters, “Warning: You Are In my Blind Spot.” Blind spots are very important to be aware of. Some tractor trailers have similar decals on the back of the trailer which show the areas which are “No Zones”. These are areas Continue reading …