Advent And Christmas

Another season of Advent and Christmas has passed. Gone is another month filled with to-do lists, agendas, etc, etc, etec. However in all of these things we felt we had to do or was told we should do (especially as a Christian), I feel that one thing was missed – something that I am not sure if I heard stressed: That of contemplating Christ. The world  not only encourages the commercial aspects of this season, but also the social, whether enjoying the company of loved ones or in doing good deeds. The latter is also embraced by the Church. But the Church doesn’t just have an earthly aspect to it, it also has the spiritual. I think to reclaim the season for what it is, a good first step would be to stop, be still, reflect, pray, empty ourselves of our burdens and be moved and filled with the joy and love of Christ. After all, Jesus is the reason for the season.

Amazing and Kinda Scary

Peanuts

Here is a little article that gives  a little background on one of the classics of Christmas TV specials. I know that ever since I was a kid, starting from around Halloween, I always looked forward to the holiday specials featuring Charlie Brown,  Snoopy, Linus and the other characters from Peanuts. Couple of thoughts from the article:

1. One of the themes of the special is this reaction against the commercialism of Christmas. Considering that the cartoon was made in 1965, before video games, internet, cell phones – heck, even before widespread use of color television or washing machines – this conflict of material versus the spiritual aspect of Christmas possibly is as old as the industrial revolution. Perhaps even older than that and is probably something that replays itself over and over again each holiday season.

2. It is also interesting that a big problem the network had was the Biblical reference from Linus’s speech.  Maybe it points to the fact that even in the early 60s that Christianity was losing the cultural war.

3. One thing of note is the audience it garnered with the Biblical reference and all and how it has endured through the years. Which I think tells me that the Christmas message, simply told, impacts people powerfully. Which is one thing that I fear these days – Christians not telling the message simply and powerfully, but instead transforming it into a sort of an advertisement with all of the flash, effects and trimmings that comprise something like that. Something that may grab the attention widely but does not penetrate lives deeply.

Let me know your thoughts

Interesting

This man had quite a journey.

RIP

Steve Jobs – a person rightfully called a luminary. He brought computing down to the personal level and became a household name. Perhaps only Bill Gates can match that. I certainly cannot think of anyone else that comes close.

Liberals

I know, I said that I would try not to bring politics into this blog, but when I saw this, it was just too much.

This video supposedly is causing a great sensation among liberal democrats and others even left of them. You can see the affect on the enraptured Northeastern liberals in the audience. The views espoused in it are some of the reasons why I do not see myself supporting liberal causes and liberal candidates. Forget about the Bush bashing (even after almost 3 years he left office – a sure sign that democrat’s policies have been failures), I want to talk about the stuff after that. If anyone wants to talk about those four things she mentions about Bush, I can do that later, point by point. Anyway, about what she said in the 2nd part. Here are my thoughts:

1. If she really wanted to go off on people that take advantage of public money and goods without giving something back, she should have done it against the 47 percent of the people in the United States that do not pay any income taxes. That successful factory owner that she has such disdain for due to the sin of wanting to keep more of what he or she makes, probably pays more into the system than the workers he hires. The United States has a very progressive tax system and if that factory owner happens to be in the top five percent of earners, he is in a group that contributes over fifty percent of the federal income tax revenue. Of course, to build that factory, he or she probably had to pay all sorts of fees and stuff. That person’s company is also probably paying licenses for this and that on a regular basis and who knows what other taxes – all of which goes to government coffers. Ranting against greed is one thing, but greed is present everywhere, even in the entitlement mentality of those that may not make a lot of money and especially in the unsatisfiable maw of government. You have not seen greed and corruption unless you have seen our government in action, it is horrible and would make honest people into Ron Paul supporters (I know some who did). The thing is, in context of the world our government is kinda mild when it comes to that kind of stuff compared to other country’s governments….

2. She should also stop with knocking down straw men and stop the bait and switch. Conservatives want limited government, not no government. People that want no government are the anarchists (though some of those that espouse anarchy these days are not quite that, if you strictly define anarchists). If all government did was infrastructure, law enforcement, military and education – that would make even the libertarians smile. However we know the scope of government is way beyond that now. Which brings me to the bait and switch: I mean, because I am for infrastructure, I should also be for obamacare? Because I am for law enforcement I should be for public unions? Because I like some of the things that government does and think that they are legitimate, that I should think all the other stuff that it does as equally good and legitimate? If I vote for a bridge, it should be for a bridge, not some ongoing, neverending government program for whatever else.

3. Finally this is the main reason I do not ever see myself supporting liberals: the destructive anger and hypocrisy. Notice the use of ‘them’ (to denote the entreprenuer) and ‘us’ and how she is filled with righteous indignation that ‘they’ would try to keep more of what ‘they’ make after ‘they’ had a fill of things that were provided by ‘us’? What is this ‘they’ and ‘us’? I’m sorry, there is no ‘they’ and ‘us’ here – we are all Americans. How dare you even think of running as a U.S. senator with that mentality? I can’t imagine her taking the same tone with illegals or even Islamic terrorists with the same tone – she would probably be a lot more measured taking on those subjects on than with the subject of ‘rich’ Americans or American corporations. You know the entities that provide goods and services to Americans and employment to Americans (as well as a large chunk of tax dollars to American government). Then on top of it, she dares state that ‘no’ she is not talking about class warefare? I may not be as smart as her, but to me if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – it probably is a duck. How destructive do you think she would be if she carried that to congress? The thing is, all of her life, she has not pursued the objectives of so called everyday Americans. She has attained positions in high levels of government and teaches at an elite institution – probably making a healthy six figures if not more. If anything, she is less ‘us’ than the factory owner or the entreprenuer that she labels as ‘them’ – she is more them than they are and she has not run from it. Heck, she probably will be running to be one of a hundred special people in the world….

This lady is supposedly some real smart person. She teaches law at Harvard and was the person picked by Obama to oversee TARP. She is probably going to run on the democrat ticket to challenge Scott Brown for the Massachusetts senate seat. All I can say is: Lord, please save us from these smarter than thou’s that want to rule over us.

Faith and Science

Interesting discussion in last week’s Uncommon Knowledge:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5

Couple of thoughts

1. Though I do not have the knowledge in the life and physical sciences to judge what was stated concerning these areas in the discussion, I do agree that in general, that science goes with many unstated assumptions of our universe that one could almost say touches or actually are in the realm of faith.

2. I know that some espousing scientific-atheistic viewpoints have cheered postmodernism’s attack on faith, but this also shows how the scientific-atheistic positions can also be damaged by these same postmodern assaults.

3. About the statement from the Vatican, I also agree that science and faith are not mutually exclusive. They are two large branches from the same trunk and agree that faith should excite discovery. It is not surprising that the Jews, have distinguished themselves in the sciences, as exemplified by the number Nobel prizes to those of Jewish descent that are totally out of proportion to the percentage of population that they make up in the world. When it comes to achievement, the tiger mom has nothing on the Jewish mom.

4. I agree that the Old Testament is a book rich with complex layers of human experience with each other and the Divine, and confess that I have not read it as readily as the New Testament. I hope to rectify it in the future.

Ten Years

It’s been 10 years. I still remember the moment. I was in South Africa for work. I still remember feeling I had: Sad, angry, confused….

The thing that I can’t believe is that we have yet to finish rebuilding ground zero. I mean, Freedom Tower and other buildings are not yet up. I still cannot believe that flight 93 memorial has yet to be completed. How many record breaking buildings have been built since that time to now?

Readings

I have an e-reader: No, not a Kindle. I am probably one of the few that has a Sony E-reader. I have been reading a lot of old works with it, mainly due to the fact that those are free. There are plenty of free books out there as long as you do not mind that they are about one hundred or more years old.

I just finished reading ‘Chronicles of the Cid’. It is a telling of the life and times of an 11th century Spanish knight, named Rodrigo of Bivar otherwise know as, suprisingly enough, The Cid El Campeador. If you are not familiar with that story, I suggest you go to your nearest video rental (if any exist anymore) and rent out ‘El Cid’ with Charleton Heston – gives a dramatic version of the story. Before that book, I read ‘Beowulf’ and all of you should be pretty familiar with that story. If not, I blame your high school english teachers. I also downloaded Romance of the Three Kingdoms, otherwise known as Sam-Guk-Ji (not sure how to write Korean  here, so I did it phonetically in English – or at least attempted). I actually read an abridged version of that book (or should I say books) while I was in college, but am looking forward to reading a more fuller version.

Anyway, as I was finishing the Cid book, it struck me how the atmospherics of that book was similar to Beowulf as well as to what I remember of the Three Kingdoms. These three works are about peoples and places seperated by vast distances and centuries of time, but I get the same feeling reading them. They all are historical, but have elements of supernatural in them whether it is the vision of Gabriel by Rodrigo or the monsters that Beowulf fights or manipulation of wind by Zhuge Liang or the Ghost of Guan Yu. They all deal with wars, conquests and combat. However, the biggest thing that contributes to this familiarity is the way that the characters treat each other in the stories. The notions of honor, name,the lineage and fame and what are held as good and bad even in the ways that they deceive each other seem to be very similar. Perhaps it is due to the martial nature of the tales. Perhaps I am way off base.

Just wanted to share this.

Mercy

Ran across an interesting piece today by Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor. It got me thinking about another column that I read from David Goldman that came out about a week ago.

Ok, you’re thinking, so what do these opinion pieces have in common? Well both articles reference the Bible, specifically the Old Testament and even more specifically, Genesis 18:23-33 for Prof. Dershowitz’s and various passages scattered through Deuteronomy and Leviticus for Mr. Goldman’s. I also think that what both of these columns have in common are that they both point to the mercy of God as recorded in the Bible. Frequently (and this is a little peeve of mine when someone does this) people divide God into the God of the Old Testament and God of the New Testament with descriptive such as judgemental or angry associated with the former and love or merciful associated with the latter.  However as these two pieces point out, God displayed tremendous mercy even as the Old Testament God (there are many other passages in the Old Testament that displays God’s heart of love and mercy). God is so merciful that He agreed not to pass judgement on a wicked city if just ten righteous persons were found there and God showed mercy even to animals in that if they were to be used as food or labor, He instructed that they were to be humanely treated and killed as painlessly as possible. Especially when you consider the context of the times these events in the Bible were recorded, God’s mercy is demonstrated. Actually when I think about the reaction of Casey Anthony’s verdict (as well as other famous verdicts such as OJ Simpson’s), even in today’s context, God’s mercy is demonstrated.

Now, I am not advocating vegetarianism or its the hezbollah like offshoot (according to Bourdain), veganism (heaven forbid) nor am I saying anything against capital punishment (I am comfortable with frying murder-rapists). All I am saying is perhaps we should pause and meditate on God’s mercy as recorded in both the New and the Old Testament.