Only believers know and experience the fact that Christ will not let his people be idle. They alone know how joyful and pleasant a thing it is to engage in his service. — Huldrych Zwingli
Huldrych Zwingli
Jim doesn’t say how old he is, but I’m guessing 41. I don’t know how close that is- but whatever his age, I hope he has (or had) a very happy day indeed!
John Edwards, former candidate for the Presidency admitted today that he had an extramarital affair, and that he lied about it during the campaign.
Color me shocked…. (not). Politican + Lie = normal behavior for American politicians. Politician – Ethics = the typical politician.
The system is broken because the people running it are depraved, self-involved twits and anyone with a modicum of ethics or self respect can’t be elected.
UPDATE: I’ve just been reminded that Elizabeth Edwards was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, underwent treatment for the following months, and had a recurrance in 2007. So slimy John Edwards was cheating on his ILL wife. What a dirtbag. I don’t care what your political affiliation is- that’s depraved behavior.
It’s Friday and I’m relaxing and this particular blonde joke, just sent to me, is pretty good:
I was sitting next to a blond who was engrossed in reading a newspaper. One of the headlines read: “12 Brazilian Soldiers Killed.” She shook her head at the sad news. Then, turning to me and asked, “How many is a Brazilian?”
Thanks to Dorothy King for spotting this. It’s a hoot! When good cakes go bad, they can provide a lot of great laughs. This one (in the middle) reminds me of the fundamentalists and their ‘reading of the Bible’.
Via Justin Taylor,
[At the just concluded meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association we] had a presentation from Marc Girard on Psalm 1, which he is contributing to the ‘demonstration volume ‘, also presentations from José E. Aguilar on a new proposal for translating Gal 2:6, from Michael Patella on the reception of the Bible in the Arts (with particular reference to the new St John’s Bible), from Martin Albl on the translation and reception history of James 5:13-18, and from Christian Brady on the Jewish interpretation of Lamentations. In the Fall the editorial board will be putting the finishing touches to the 12 contributions selected for the demonstration volume and writing the introductory material. We will hope to hand over the completed ms. to the French publisher, Les Editions du Cerf, by the end of the calendar year.
Justin Taylor
Thanks, Justin! It’s a fantastic project, mentioned here in June and here’s the homepage of the project. I’m working on Obadiah- and if you have some expertise in that little book I’d love to have a consultation with you. Just contact me here.
Nor is he Moses, in spite of the efforts of the McCain camp to paint him as pretending the image of prophet and savior. Drew’s got the scoop (and now that he’s out of the biblioblogger’s big brother house, he has resumed his good work of keeping us abreast of the most interesting things).
I couldn’t believe it either- but
A Tyson Foods Inc. plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., will recognize a Muslim holy day as one of its eight paid holidays in place of Labor Day, a decision that has left many residents angry and some proud. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union negotiated the contract to assist the poultry processing plant’s Somali workers, many of whom are Muslim. The contract makes Id al-Fitr–which marks the end of Ramadan and falls at a different time each year, typically in late fall–a day on which all union members can either stay home or work for extra pay. The labor agreement also sets aside prayer space for Muslim workers.
Well isn’t that special. Read the report in Ethics Daily, and note the reactions they note.
UPDATE: From comments note the reversal by the Union at the Shelbyville plant. Seems Labor Day will remain in place after all.
The New York Times asks a simply stupid question and one which shows how common it is to rip ancient persons from their contexts in order to make them say or do something today. “How would Isaiah text”? Not at all. They didn’t have the technology in Isaiah’s day to allow him to do it.
I’m not just being pedantic here. It is a widespread and grave error to make ancients contemporaneous. It does them a foul disservice to make them nothing more than puppets in the laps of ventriloquists who then put modern words in ancient mouths. It is the logical conclusion of eisegesis. It is the ultimate act of reading into texts and persons what we wish to see in them and hear from them.
In the same vein the now tiresome ‘what would Jesus do’ falls into the same category. The proper question is ‘what should I do as a disciple of Jesus’. The first is evasion, the second is responsible behavior.
Let Isaiah be Isaiah. Let Jesus be Jesus. And let moderns be moderns. Anything else is just nothing more than deception and frivolity.
CNN tells us today that
She’s the wife of a renowned evangelical pastor and one of the leaders of a Houston megachurch, but Victoria Osteen is being accused of behavior that wasn’t very Christian. Opening arguments were set for Thursday in a lawsuit that accuses Victoria Osteen of assaulting Continental Airlines flight attendant Sharon Brown before the start of a 2005 flight from Houston to Vail, Colorado. … Brown alleges Victoria Osteen threw her against a bathroom door and elbowed her in the left breast during an outburst over a stain on her first-class seat. The Federal Aviation Administration fined Victoria Osteen $3,000 for interfering with a crew member.
When you are the co-pastor of a mega church, especially when your husband, the pastor, is a heretic of the stature of Joel Osteen, I suppose you feel yourself immune from common decency. You know, you’re above it all, right Victoria? Better than the hoi polloi, you can, and do, ’seek your own’ – as taught by your husband / pastor that you should; and in clear contradiction to the teaching of Scripture (which you utterly ignore anyay). A stain on a seat can, and should, set you off, princess. Just as the pea disturbed the sleep of the precious girl of the tale.
Many of those in the jury pool said they had been to Lakewood Church and acknowledged holding the Osteens in high regard and being star-struck by them. But other potential jurors said they didn’t like preachers or televangelists and that ministers can lie.
Star struck? Well, I guess if Britney Spears and Clay Aiken can have fans, so can Marcionites. There’s no accounting for tastes. Anyway, in spite of your superstar status, Victoria Osteen, that’s no way to act! I hope Brown wins billions in her suit.
Away with proper spelling! It doesn’t really matter all that much! That’s the inane, and insane claim of a British academic!!!!
Fed up with his students’ complete inability to spell common English correctly, a British academic has suggested it may be time to accept “variant spellings” as legitimate. Rather than grammarians getting in a huff about “argument” being spelled “arguement” or “opportunity” as “opertunity,” why not accept anything that’s phonetically (fonetickly anyone?) correct as long as it can be understood?
Indeed, rather than encouraging intelligence and excellence, let’s lower the bar even more and allow ignorance and stupidity to win the day. It’s not as though loads of students care about academics anyway what with keggers and ballgames to occupy their precious time (when they aren’t asleep, that is).
“Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I’ve got a better idea,” Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement. “University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.” To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including “ignor,” “occured,” “thier,” “truely,” “speach” and “twelth” (it should be “twelfth”). Then of course there are words like “misspelt” (often spelled “mispelt”), not to mention “varient,” a commonly used variant of “variant.”
University lecturer huh? Sounds like he should be a politician instead. His gifts seem more suited to that enterprise than education as he supports the stupidity of society rather than its intellectual improvement. Read the whole annoying suggestion and its ‘justification’ at Reuters.
The manifestation of total depravity takes place in behavior which shows lack of concern for others. Granny is today’s winner of the Total Depravity of Humanity award because she showed a complete lack of regard for her grandchild’s safety.
Authorities say a grandmother was arrested for driving around the parking lot of a Marathon grocery store with her 3-year-old child sitting on the roof of the car. … The woman said Thursday she would never let anything hurt her granddaughter. She says she was driving at “snail-speed” and holding the child’s leg. Authorities say the woman told police she was giving the child some air and letting her have fun.
It’s a shame that the report from the Associated Press doesn’t name names. This story is a fine reminder that total depravity isn’t just about murder and abuse and violence- it’s about behavior which puts others, and self, at risk. It’s about a failure to apprehend the imago dei in others. In fact, it’s a denial of the importance, value, and worth of others for the simple sake of the exaltation of one’s own selfish desires and wishes.
