A Church Sign That Should Never Have Been

I was driving through Oak Ridge the other day and saw a church marquee that really made me wish I carried my camera with me at all times.  The Nazarene Church sign boasted the following:

I Made Chuck Norris Too  — God

I honestly have no idea what this is supposed to mean.  Does it mean 1) that God made a dreadful, second rate, no talent, badly singing his own theme song, actor who’s show was without question the worst in the history of television and so if God made such a miscreant as that you should be glad that he did a better job with you?  Or does it mean 2) God made a mistake?  Or 3) God does great work and Chuck Norris is the proof?  Or 4) God isn’t very good at making actors?  Or 5) that God made political activists who can hardly be imagined to bring voters to their chief’s tent?

It’s just so bleeding ambiguous.  Church signs should mean something plain, simple, and clear so as to avoid this sort of lack of clarity.  They aren’t goofy personalized license plates that folk are supposed to decipher- they are brief, cogent, articulate expressions of some sort of message.  Or should be.

Besides, though in a general sense it’s proper to say that God made Chuck Norris- it’s improper to imply that God made Chuck Norris what Chuck Norris is.  A nice, albeit untalented karate chopping actor.

More Presidential Misdeeds

New evidence, which you’ve doubtless already heard of, suggests the White House KNEW there were no WMD in Iraq and forged the evidence it used to urge war.

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war. The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

Par for the course for the current administration. And really not at all surprising. They wanted war, and they were willing to do and say anything to get it.

Segregation: Why Some Blacks, And Whites, Prefer it On Sunday

Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour of American life. There are, to be sure, churches of mixed congregations (and this, in my estimation, is the way it should be). But many Churches, both white and black, prefer to separate themselves. Why? CNN has an interesting take on the subject.

The Rev. Paul Earl Sheppard had recently become the senior pastor of a suburban church in California when a group of parishioners came to him with a disturbing personal question. They were worried because the racial makeup of their small church was changing. They warned Sheppard that the church’s newest members would try to seize control because members of their race were inherently aggressive. What was he was going to do if more of “them” tried to join their church? “One man asked me if I was prepared for a hostile takeover,” says Sheppard, pastor of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Mountain View, California. The nervous parishioners were African-American, and the church’s newcomers were white.

Sheppard says the experience demonstrated why racially integrated churches are difficult to create and even harder to sustain. Some blacks as well as whites prefer segregated Sundays, religious scholars and members of interracial churches say.

The racial divide in Christianity isn’t confined to white preferences. Having attended a Black church on a number of occasions I have to confess that it just wasn’t for me- not because of the color of the skin of the majority of people there- but because of the style of worship. Indeed, I was as uncomfortable in Pentecostal services. In point of fact, I don’t think that segregation on Sunday has as much to do with race as it has to do with worship.

Smell Like The Pope…

I’m not referring to the ‘old man smell’ that seems to cling to elderly guys. You know, the grandpa smell that’s a mixture of old shaving lotion, a failure to use deodorant, and hard candy from a lint filled pocket. I’m talking about the pontiff’s own cologne! With thanks to Esteban Vazquez, who has once more demonstrated himself a strange little chap by noticing this. But I suppose my noticing his noticing it puts me in the same Orthodox boat.

It’s Discovery Day!

From dead Canaanites to gold coins, it seems it’s discovery day in Israel. Antonio Lombatti has the news of the 4000 year old Canaanite warrior who has been found; and he also has the news about a cache of gold coins discovered in Jerusalem. Doubtless someone will claim they fell from the purse of Gedaliah and will say that their discovery proves the biblical narrative. Ah archaeology!