Traitor

Oh do yourself a favor gentle reader and go see this film!  It is FANTASTIC.  And I mean FANTASTIC.  Indeed, if I were Drew Tatusko I would use the word FABULOUS too!  Don Cheadle (I hope I’ve that right) does a brilliant and Oscar worthy job.  The dialogue is wonderful and insightful and sensitive and so very well performed.  I love this movie and you will as well.  Do yourself a favor and take the family (but bewarned there is profanity) to see it this weekend.  Did I say it’s FANTASTIC?  Well it is.  5 thumbs up.

Biblioblogger’s Big Brother: Episode Five

Our houseguests, Doug, James C., James S., Nick, and Antonio will be forced, this evening, to vote out two, yes two of their fellow houseguests. And they will have to do it by playing a game called ‘rock, paper, scissors’!

In a Biblioblogger first, our contestants will play a game of ‘rps’ to determine who will stay and who will go. Let’s let them in on the surprise!

‘Houseguests, please assemble in the common room’.

Doug Chaplin- ‘I don’t see why we have to assemble ourselves together. The whole notion is just absurd. We live and die alone and all this constant ‘come together’ rubbish is most irritating. I would much rather be left alone with my puppy. Oh I miss my puppy Fernando.’ [Tears stream down his face].

James Spinti- ‘What a pansy!’ ‘Anyway, you’ve apparently never read the Bible have you? You Anglicans. You kill me’.

Doug- ‘Yes well I’d certainly like to’.

James Crossley- ‘Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!!!! I can’t take your idiotic bickering any more. Please, for the love of God, vote me out!!!!!’

Nick Norelli- ‘I love assembling! It’s dinner time I bet! I love eating!’

Antonio Lombatti- ‘Great, another big brother pan of nonsense served up on a plate of stupidity. I can’t wait to win and get back to Rome where people have sense!’

Contestants! Please be seated while we explain the rules for tonight’s double elimination competition!!!

Crossley- ‘If there’s a God in heaven I’ll lose and go home!’

Here’s how it will go- you’re all familiar with the game rock, paper, scissors. Well tonight, in a BB first, the two James’s will compete against each other and Norelli and Chaplin will compete against each other. The two losers will be eliminated and when they are they will have 30 seconds to pick up their backpack and get out of the house. Lombatti has a pass because, as an Italian, he would be at a serious disadvantage what with never having heard of this game before.

[mumblings of 'yeah, we aren't morons' and 'good grief what a stupid show, what did I come here for' and 'oh goodie, games, will there be food too????' are heard].

Crossley and Spinti- you’re first. [They throw down and Crossley throws scissors and Spinti throws paper]. Spinti is eliminated!!!!! [Foul explitives are heard exploding from Crossley's mouth which are properly bleeped out].

Now, our second round pits Chaplin against Norelli. [They throw and both throw paper. They throw again and both throw rock. They throw again and both throw paper again. This tie throwing goes on for 3 and a half hours until, finally, exhausted, Norelli throws rock and Chaplin throws paper!] Norelli, you’re out!!!!

Nick- ‘Good, can I eat now please?’

Houseguests, we’re very pleased to announce that James Crossley and Doug Chaplin, along with Antonio Lombatti are our final 3 contestants. Tune in next time to see our final head of household competition and elimination.

He Should Have Sent It…

Infuriated and agitated by “the denouncing badgering of Eck” Zwingli writes him a letter, on the 28th of August, 1524 which, according to Oskar Farner, is probably the most extreme expression “which Zwingli in his displeasure ever got carried away with”. He does not send it; he even leaves it unfinished. But the fragment has survived.

After the stereotypical greeting, “grace and peace from our Lord”, Zwingli mercilessly attacks Eck:

“Look out, you impudent chap, now you will experience a pounding which by Hercules, won’t suit you, but me. You actually deserve it, that one would hurl against you every existing insult, derision, and offense… Is it not sheer madness that you lend yourself to write about me to the Confederation in such a shameless, rude and disgusting manner? Were you born to cause only confusion everywhere? That would be the cherry on the cake of your heroic deeds – after you exposed your stupidity in the presence of all, you also had to divulge your wickedness, so that the world not only remembers Eck’s foolishness, but also his meanness for a very long time as a deterring example before its eyes. They will be silent, then, about evildoers such as Herostratus, Plemminius, Antonius and Catilina, but only speak of Eck, the embodiment of all scandal . Even from childhood your life was piggish, your tongue impudent, your mouth evil, your voice impure, your eyes ruttish, your forehead shameless. Your heart burned from the craze for greed and fame in such a manner that you, as the prophet says, simply could not bear rest and peace. Therefore you went to Rome and, because you did not become a Bishop there, you returned to Germany right away, in order to mix up everything. Can one among all mortals show another who has lived such an infamous life (scelestam)? Your belly is so devoted to voracity and lasciviousness that… you would have been a better raptor or ass than a human being. But then again, it is all the same, whether you look like a human or like an ape. You are indeed nothing other than a beast. Everyone uses you, as it appears to me, simply like one would use a mule or a donkey. I could never find a man more miserable than you, even if I scanned the whole of Germany… Since one cannot bend you into shape, neither with mildness nor sharpness, nothing else can be done but to flog you like a runaway slave or a miller’s ass with a club. Or is one to send you into the mad house? Alas, there is no mad house good enough to bring so wicked a man back to order. Even if one made every effort and managed to restore him again from an insane and raving man; nothing different could come than a completely stupid and spiteful wretch. You have always naturally been like that anyway… “

Yes, he should have sent it.  Because it was true.

Unseemly and Misguided

That’s the phrase an ethicist has used to describe churches using raffles and giving away gas cards and other such ‘methods’ to draw folk to worship.

Robert Kruschwitz, director of The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, called the promotions “unseemly” and “misguided.”  …   David T. Olson, director of the American Church Research Project and head of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church, said independent, Pentecostal and Baptist churches with nontraditional ways of attracting new members are more likely to use promotions like the gas raffles. But he said there are other more effective ways of drawing newcomers.  “I personally would encourage them that having people from their church build relationships with their friends who do not attend church, and invite them as their friend, would be a much better strategy,” Olson said.

Indeed!  You know, the way the early church did it…

Nathan White, an Atlanta-area Baptist, was troubled by a church gas card raffle he learned about at a Baptist church in Snellville, Ga. The corporate executive, who plans to become a pastor, thinks gas giveaways are shameful financial gimmicks that undermine the Gospel.  “They are appealing to the natural corruptions in unbelieving people … . The Bible warns very explicitly about the dangers of greed, the love of money being the root of all evil,” said White. “Appealing to the selfish motives of people is not Christianity.”

Now there’s a fellow who understands theology far, far better than the pandering pastors now numbering in the thousands.  The last sentence in his quote is right on the mark.

Kruschwitz worries that people who come to church because of the enticements won’t stick around long enough to listen to the preaching and join the worship. “Are they being tempted to think the church is about such gimmicks and external rewards?” he asked.

And they won’t.  Trust me.  As soon as the gimmick is gone, so are they- because such churches haven’t appealed to their need for spiritual development, but to their need for greed.  You’d think pastors and churches would be smart enough to know the difference.  Alas…

A Festival I Would Never Attend

One of the annoying things about Facebook is all the goofy ads.  There are ones of nearly naked folk demonstrating their lean tone and ads for older guys ’supplements’ (if you know what I mean).  And then there are ones like this:

Chri-Stain?   What kind of festival will that be?  Oh Facebook- don’t you have copy editors there?  If you can’t spell it, you shouldn’t sell it.