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Weekly Meanderings

Weekly Meanderings

Last updated on: April 9, 2011 at 12:05 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings 2011-04-08T12:23:15-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Blue, we love ya, and we hope to see Butler back!

LaVonne on Medicaid: “It’s easy to throw blame around for our country’s health-care problems: we’ve been doing it for years, to no appreciable effect. Democrats blame Republicans for doing nothing, and Republicans blame Democrats for doing the wrong thing. Consumers blame greedy doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies. Doctors blame greedy lawyers, the high cost of medical education, and inadequate reimbursement. Hold your blame, folks, no matter how certain you are of your opinions. Blame could justifiably be attached to any or all of the above. The underlying problem, though, is neither greed nor bad law nor a broken system. The underlying problem is that the United States, unlike all other developed nations, has no system at all. Nor do we have the non-system of a genuinely free market with open pricing, vigorous competition, and informed consumers. And until we get some sort of unified approach to health care, prices will continue to rise, accessibility will continue to fall, and Americans will continue to die younger than we need to.”

John Armstrong’s been to Rome with an ecumenical venture: “So why did I go to Rome? A few evangelical critics might be inclined to say that I went to consider becoming a Roman Catholic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I went to meet brothers and sisters in Christ, who happened to be Catholics and non-Catholics alike. All of those I met, to varying degrees, are deeply interested in missional-ecumenism, my life’s passion. I went to be with one friend (John Green) and to meet several dozen new friends. I so believe in “relational ecumenism” that this journey was a natural outcome of my life’s work. I knew some could/would not understand the reason for this venture but that has never stopped me in the past so it didn’t not stop me now. I am too old, and too powerfully focused on mission, to worry about negative response to my mission and Spirit-given purpose. ACT 3 exists to “equip leaders for unity in Christ’s mission.” This was the reason I went to Rome.”

On Lenten fasting … or? On following Jesus by Faith Totushek.

Derek Leman makes three corrections of common opinions. From the mind of the scientists: “I had the privilege, with colleague Johnny Lin, of welcoming friend Randy Isaac (the executive director of ASA) in for a talk this past Wednesday. He spoke on Science and the Question of God and the students responded well. I was very glad to have him at North Park. At the end of his talk, he mentioned in passing an idea he had come across recently. The idea: Death entered the world (or was caused) by sex. The point was that in asexual reproduction, the “being” never really dies because every progeny is a clone of the parent. During sexual reproduction, the offspring becomes different from the parents and thus, when the parents die, their “beings” die. Or at least their collection of genes do. It’s an interesting thought. What’s your response?”

Karen on surviving the awful.

Remembering Edwin Gaustad. Remembering iMonk — and his quotations.

C.S. Lewis on purgatory: “The other night, I found myself reminding a classroom full of (I imagined) rather incredulous Bethel Seminary students that “Saint Lewis” himself believed in purgatory. I’ve always known that this was chiefly expressed in his Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer. Now I find someone has kindly collected those remarks..” :mic on God’s glory.

Allan Bevere on the totalizing impact of empire.

Jim Martin begins thoughts on how to make your preaching better. And Mike Glenn on how to make your time count.

The Allman Brothers top ten.

Meanderings in the News

1. Mark Bittman: “If you’re serious about eating sustainable fish, you may have given up on the most fundamental of all: the white fillet. After nearly exhausting cod stocks 20 years ago, we have gone through a dozen or more alternatives, from red snapper to orange roughy to so-called Chilean sea bass, and fished them all practically out of existence. Now it seems difficult to know which fish are managed well enough to eat without guilt. (As it happens, cod, of all things, isn’t bad right now, as long as it isn’t caught by a trawler.) But if you buy from a reliable store, like Target, Wegmans or Whole Foods, which have adopted seafood-sustainability practices far more effectively than many other major retailers, or consult online sources like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, you can eat white-fleshed fish without guilt. The next problem is that you may wind up buying a fish with which you’re unfamiliar. Is it cod, catfish, sea bass, halibut, grouper, tilefish, haddock, some form of snapper — or what? The good news is that it barely makes any difference.”

2. The Gladstone Report revisited: ” I continue to believe in the cause of establishing and applying international law to protracted and deadly conflicts. Our report has led to numerous “lessons learned” and policy changes, including the adoption of new Israel Defense Forces procedures for protecting civilians in cases of urban warfare and limiting the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas. The Palestinian Authority established an independent inquiry into our allegations of human rights abuses — assassinations, torture and illegal detentions — perpetrated by Fatah in the West Bank, especially against members of Hamas. Most of those allegations were confirmed by this inquiry. Regrettably, there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Simply put, the laws of armed conflict apply no less to non-state actors such as Hamas than they do to national armies. Ensuring that non-state actors respect these principles, and are investigated when they fail to do so, is one of the most significant challenges facing the law of armed conflict. Only if all parties to armed conflicts are held to these standards will we be able to protect civilians who, through no choice of their own, are caught up in war.”

3. Editors of NYTimes: “At the Justice Department, it’s called the post-Sept. 11 backlash — the steady stream of more than 800 cases of violence and discrimination suffered by American Muslims at the hands of know-nothing abusers. These continuing hate crimes were laid bare at a valuable but barely noticed Senate hearing last week that provided welcome contrast to Representative Peter King’s airing of his xenophobic allegation that the Muslim-American community has been radicalized…. It was former President George W. Bush who first warned against turning on Muslim Americans after Sept. 11, 2001, stressing the fact that Islam is “a faith based upon love, not hate,” regardless of the religious veneer the fanatics of 9/11 tried to attach to their atrocities. Since then, American Muslims have served as the largest source of tips to authorities tracking terror suspects, according to a recent university study.”

How about this? Turn your house into a billboard! (From Geeding)

4. David Brown: “Radioactive water is leaking into the sea, there’s a little plutonium in the soil, and traces of nuclear fallout have been detected in places as far apart as Kuwait and Maryland. In a few parts of Japan, you’re also not supposed to eat the broccoli or the beef. The effects of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant grow by the week, creating a lengthening catalogue of worries and proving once again that nuclear power frightens people as few other technologies do. But when the dead and sickened are added up, how dangerous is it really?” Here’s the answer: “History suggests that nuclear power rarely kills and causes little illness. That’s also the conclusion engineers reach when they model scenarios for thousands of potential accidents. Making electricity from nuclear power turns out to be far less damaging to human health than making it from coal, oil or even clean-burning natural gas, according to numerous analyses. That’s even more true if the predicted effects of climate change are thrown in. Compared with nuclear power, coal is responsible for five times as many worker deaths from accidents, 470 times as many deaths due to air pollution among members of the public, and more than 1,000 times as many cases of serious illness, according to a study of the health effects of electricity generation in Europe.”

5. Charles Krauthammer on Hillary Clinton’s claim that that Bashar Al-Assad, President of Syria, is a reformer: “During the worst days of the Iraq War, this regime funneled terrorists into Iraq to fight U.S. troops and Iraqi allies. It is dripping with Lebanese blood as well, being behind the murder of independent journalists and democrats, including former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. This year, it helped topple the pro-Western government of Hariri’s son, Saad, and put Lebanon under the thumb of the virulently anti-Western Hezbollah. Syria is a partner in nuclear proliferation with North Korea. It is Iran’s agent and closest Arab ally, granting it an outlet on the Mediterranean. Those two Iranian warships that went through the Suez Canal in February docked at the Syrian port of Latakia, a long-sought Iranian penetration of the Mediterranean. Yet here was the secretary of state covering for the Syrian dictator against his own opposition. And it doesn’t help that Clinton tried to walk it back two days later by saying she was simply quoting others. Rubbish. Of the myriad opinions of Assad, she chose to cite precisely one: reformer. That’s an endorsement, no matter how much she later pretends otherwise. And it’s not just the words; it’s the policy behind them. This delicacy toward Assad is dismayingly reminiscent of President Obama’s response to the 2009 Iranian uprising during which he was scandalously reluctant to support the demonstrators, while repeatedly reaffirming the legitimacy of the brutal theocracy suppressing them.”

6. Adam Goodheart: “On May 23, 1861, little more than a month into the Civil War, three young black men rowed across the James River in Virginia and claimed asylum in a Union-held citadel. Fort Monroe, Va., a fishhook-shaped spit of land near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, had been a military post since the time of the first Jamestown settlers. This spot where the slaves took refuge was also, by remarkable coincidence, the spot where slavery first took root, one summer day in 1619, when a Dutch ship landed with some 20 African captives for the fledgling Virginia Colony…. Yet to Fort Monroe’s new commander, the fugitives who turned up at his own front gate seemed like a novel case. The enemy had been deploying them to construct a battery aimed directly at his fort — and no doubt would put them straight back to work if recaptured, with time off only for a sound beating. They had just offered him some highly useful military intelligence. And Virginia, as of 12 or so hours ago, was officially in rebellion against the federal government, having just ratified the secession ordinance passed a month before. Butler had not invited the fugitives in or engineered their escape, but here they were, literally at his doorstep: a conundrum with political and military implications, at the very least. He could not have known — not yet — that his response that day might change the course of the national drama that was then just beginning. Yet it was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that an unanticipated bureaucratic dilemma would force the hand of history.” … Then this dialogue: “Cary got down to business. “I am informed,” he said, “that three Negroes belonging to Colonel Mallory have escaped within your lines. I am Colonel Mallory’s agent and have charge of his property. What do you mean to do with those Negroes?” “I intend to hold them,” Butler said. “Do you mean, then, to set aside your constitutional obligation to return them?” Even the dour Butler must have found it hard to suppress a smile. This was, of course, a question he had expected. And he had prepared what he thought was a fairly clever answer. “I mean to take Virginia at her word,” he said. “I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be.”

7. Chris Rovzar, on the NYTimes interview with Arianna Huffington: “The end result is that Arianna looks like a jerk, and all of Keller’s points are made once again through Goldman’s queries. I suppose to the paper’s credit, by publishing the Q&A they did give Arianna a chance to respond to the one-sided attacks they’d been making for a few weeks. But doing it in such a contentious way, which seems designed to make her seem defensive and witchy, just further serves to demonize her. To be fair, it’s not like the Times is the only party acting a little childishly here. Arianna herself pulled a semi-humorous (but mostly just scathing) April Fools’ prank today by fake-announcing a pay wall of her own — only for New York Times employees. “Slideshows and videos of adorable kittens (our signature offering) will be available for free only to one very senior New York Timesemployee,” she wrote in a blog post. “And, of course, stories that aggregate falsehoods to support an administration’s efforts to take the country into a disastrous, decade-long war based on lies will always remain free.” It’s a cheap swipe, but it also makes an inadvertent point: This kind of shenanigan feels more at home at the personality-driven HuffPo. The Times should be above it. The Times wants people to pay for its website, and it can be useful to have an enemy to play against in order to raise the stakes. So the Times is turning Arianna Huffington into a straw man, using a caricature of her standards to better frame their own. But will this strategy really sell subscriptions? I doubt it. Keller and the Times team should leave this strategy to the guy who does it best — Rupert Murdoch.”

8. Gardiner Harris: “Her decision is part of a sweeping cultural overhaul of medicine’s traditional ethos that along with wrenching changes in its economics is transforming the profession. Like Dr. Dewar, many other young doctors are taking salaried jobs, working fewer hours, often going part time and even choosing specialties based on family reasons. The beepers and cellphones that once leashed doctors to their patients and practices on nights, weekends and holidays are being abandoned. Metaphorically, medicine has gone from being an individual to a team sport.”

9. Mark Galli, on Christus Victor: “I have noticed—and do tell me if you see otherwise—that in general those who publically champion Christus Victor don’t pepper their talks and prayers with personal guilt for sin or the need for divine forgiveness. By way of contrast, note the oldest advocates of Christus Victor, the Eastern Orthodox. Personal sin and guilt, and the consequent wrath of God, regularly weave themselves into their prayers. Note this prayer recommended for each morning:

Arising from sleep I thank you, O holy Trinity, because of the abundance of your goodness and long-suffering, you were not angry with me, slothful and sinful as I am. Neither have you destroyed me in my transgressions, but in your compassion raised me up as I lay in despair, that at dawn I might sing the glories of your Majesty.”

10. D.B. Hart takes on Joe Carter: “What, then, does this mean with regard to Christian thinking on capital punishment? For myself, the only compellingly convincing answer is that Christians can have no recourse to it, ever; but I will not go so far as to state that I know that this is what Scripture positively requires–certainly not with those sonorous italics. What I will say is that, if the Gospel is in any measure true, then its challenge is far more radical than the sort of argument Carter makes allows. In Christ—in the historical event of Christ—so profound a re-orientation of moral and metaphysical perspectives has been introduced into history that all our understandings of nature, of holy law, and of moral obligation have been shaken to their foundations. One must first dwell in the sheer wonder of that event before one then tries to make sense of what it demands of us. Where this will lead, I cannot say with perfect conviction. But, when trying to think of capital punishment in light of that event, I suggest we begin by contemplating the only two episodes in the New Testament that seem to have any direct bearing on the issue, and that involve any clear dominical or divine pronouncements….”

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