davintosh

The big buzz phrase in the Obama campaign this week is, “Jesus Christ was a Community Organizer, and Pontious Pilate was a governor.” Some enterprising individual has even gone so far as to make a lapel button with the slogan on it. Cute, and impressive, eh?

If only these bozos knew how far they were sticking their feet down their throats…

First off, Jesus was not a “community organizer”, whatever that is. I’m still a little fuzzy on what exactly a community organizer (CO) does — Kyle-Anne Shiver wrote a piece at American Thinker last week about the history of community organizers; according to her a CO is essentially a political rabble-rouser, working to get people up in arms enough for government officials to take note of their plight long enough to throw some money their way. Granted, Kyle-Anne is probably a little biased against Obama, so I sought out & found another opinion that was biased in the other direction that described the CO as someone who helped people who had recently lost jobs “recover and get the services they needed — job training, help with housing and so forth — from the local government.” And if you look at the things Barack Obama says he did as a CO, it was basically trying to get funding for this project or that (unfortunately for him, most of the projects he took on have since failed miserably.) If either one is even a little bit accurate I rather doubt you could describe Jesus role in his earthly ministry in that way.

But it’s more than a little insulting to even suggest that Jesus’ mission on earth was to be a political rabble-rouser, or even just here to help beggars beg a little more efficiently. Jesus was concerned with the well-being of the people he ministered to, but that was not his primary mission. I wrote about this very thing not long ago in reference to Obama’s alleged Christian faith;

… most people seek to follow Jesus’ example in order to earn their way to heaven. The problem for most is they only make a cursory examination of Jesus’ ministry on earth. Looking closer at Jesus’ ministry reveals that while he eased the suffering of a lot of people by healing them and relieving them of demon possession, that was not his primary focus. A good example of this is found in Mark 1:23-39 depicting a day at the beginning of Jesus ministry. In this passage, he ends his first day in Capernaum by healing many who were sick and casting demons out of many others. The next day, he got up “very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” When the disciples finally rolled out of bed, Jesus was nowhere to be found.

Mark’s Gospel doesn’t say it in so many words, but I’m sure the disciples were awakened by the sounds of a gathering crowd; a crowd who had heard about the previous nights’ events and had come to be healed or to have demons cast out. I can imagine the people clamoring for the help they knew they could receive from Jesus, and the disciples looking all over the place for him while trying to placate the crowd… “I’m sure he’ll be back any minute!” When they finally found him, “Everyone is looking for you.” Likely they were more than a little anxious to get him back so that he could start work again, because surely, that was what he had come for.

But Jesus had other plans; “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” There was still work to be done in Capernaum, and Jesus knew it. But instead of continuing with that work, he went “throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.” He knew there were others who were seeking relief, but if that’s what his ministry was all about, don’t you think he would’ve stayed? Christ didn’t ignore the sick and needy, but neither were they his primary focus.

Pundits on the right regularly mock Obama as the “messiah” (small ‘m’), and this new slogan — from the left of all places — only reinforces that mockery, and those using it make themselves out to be even bigger fools by using it. The trouble is, many on the left must really think of Obama as their savior, here to rescue the world from sure destruction at the hands of the evil Republicans and their Big Business cohorts, and their devotion to him is nothing less than fanatical. And their devotion to him has served to give Obama quite the ego as well, but from the sound of things, he had a pretty good start on that long before his bid for the Presidency.

And it doesn’t stop there; the slogan also tries to equate Sarah Palin with Pontius Pilate. How ridiculous.

First off, with this statement they unwittingly recognize and admit that Sarah Palin is a threat to Obama. That is the one thing that they’re right about; since the Republican National Convention, the buzz has been all about Sarah, and the bounce in the polls from that convention has been huge. Every imagined controversy that comes up involving Sarah just gives her more time in the spotlight, eclipsing the pathetic Obama even more.

But it gets even better because Pilate didn’t really have a grievance against Jesus, it was the Jewish priests who dragged Jesus in front of Pilate, trying to force him to kill this rabble-rouser (yes, they didn’t get it either.) Pilate wanted nothing to do with it, so he washed his hands of the situation and told them Jesus was their problem. Pilate was no hero, but neither was he the scoundrel the left now wants to make him out to be.

So all in all, this is just another pathetically weak attempt to boost Barack Obama by denigrating Sarah Palin and John McCain. But in the process they are only making themselves out to be the fools they are. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

I’ve got a new favorite song. Not exactly new; it’s Grace Like Rain by Todd Agnew (iTunes link), which is Agnew’s rendition of the 250 year old Amazing Grace by John Newton. I love the song to begin with; adding Agnew’s gritty vocals makes it that much more appealing.

Amazing Grace has been around since about 1772, but the lyrics still hold their meaning for today’s Christian.

Amazing Grace
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.

Many hymnbooks — and Agnew’s rendition — add the following verse, which isn’t attributed to Newton, but it’s got to be one of my favorites:

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.

Some say it doesn’t fit well with the rest of the song, being “we” instead of “I”, but I still like it, and the thoughts of eternity it conjures.

If you haven’t heard Todd Agnew’s music, take a listen. His album Grace Like Rain contains several other songs that are revamped versions of old hymns, treating them respectfully, doing an excellent job of conveying age-old concepts of the Christian faith. Thanks, Todd, for your work. I look forward to hearing your other CD’s.

While listening to the radio one day last week I caught some snippets from a stump speech Barack Obama gave over the 4th of July weekend at a church in St. Louis. In that speech, he was talking about his Christian faith, and going into far more detail than I’d heard from him before. But there were a few things I heard that made me a little concerned, so I dug a little deeper to find out exactly what he said. And it’s not just me; Cal Thomas wrote an article for Fox News entitled, Obama Is Not A Christian. Strong words, and I can’t disagree with what he wrote.

I found a video of that speech on YouTube which confirmed my concerns about Barack’s newly ballyhooed Christian faith; it’s just plain old-time salvation by works, nothing more. (more…)

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain

Dad has been gone since 1987, and there are days I miss him sorely. Like today. That quote from Twain really hits home; I never really appreciated him or his advice when he was around, and never took the opportunity to tell him how much he meant to me. He was never the kind of guy who would put his arm around one of his kids & tell them he loved them, and unfortunately that rubbed off on me to a large degree.

The funny thing (or sad thing) is that as I grow older, I remember more of what he said to me in years past. Little nuggets of wisdom dispensed by a guy with an 8th grade education. Totally dismissed by me at the time they were handed out — I was so much smarter than him — but were tucked away in long term memory for retrieval when they’re really needed.

Amazing how the human mind works.

I should probably add a few things about the photo above… Dad was born & grew up on a farm near Canton, SD. As a kid his family had only horse-drawn farm implements, and remembered clearly the time that they got their first tractor. When I was a kid, Dad bought a farm near Schindler, SD, hoping that we as a family would move there; the problem was that he hadn’t consulted Mom about it, and she wouldn’t have any of it. So Dad kept the place as a hobby farm, keeping some sheep, pigs, chickens, horses, and an occasional cow. The livestock & crops did bring in a little extra money, but with nine kids at home, Dad didn’t have a lot of money for equipment, so he would buy what he needed at auction sales. He was always on the lookout for old horse-drawn equipment, and was usually able to pick things up for a song.

The farm was always a point of contention between Mom & Dad, and finally in the late ’70′s he traded the property by Schindler for 40 acres near Hartford, built a new house, and we moved there. Mom wasn’t thrilled with that idea either — she wanted to live in Sioux Falls — but went along with it. She ended up hating it though, and when Mamma ain’t happy… But that’s another story for another time.

All his life Dad had a wish to farm as he did when he was young, with horses, and when he retired in 1981, he finally set to work to do that. I think it was in 1983 that he had it all together and actually did it. Earlier that year I had bought a decent 35mm SLR camera — a Canon T70 — and Dad asked me if I’d take some photos of him doing some cultivating, and that’s where the photo came from. The funny thing is that the cultivating showed him that there was a reason horses were replaced by tractors — it’s a lot of work! — and he had the corn harvested by a combine that fall.

I gave the photos to him after they were developed, he put them in a little album and carried them around to any and all family get-togethers, showing them to anybody who’d give him the time. But the negatives… Lord only knows where they ended up. I think I gave them to him with the photos, not realizing how important they’d become to me and the rest of the family, and now they’re nowhere to be found. So when I ended up with the original photos (in Dad’s little album) after he died, I scanned them in and did some Photoshopping on them. Not the greatest quality work, but the prints that I made from those doctored scans were a pretty popular item with the family. Dad was doing that day something that made him truly happy, and it’s good to have those photos to remember him by.

The family and I went to see Prince Caspian on opening night a couple weeks back, and we were all a little disappointed in the movie’s departure from the original story. My better half read the Narnia Chronicles to the kids when they were younger, and the older ones have read the books numerous times. We also listen to the excellent Focus on the Family Radio Theater versions of the stories to pass the time on road trips, so you can say that we know them pretty well. Inside and out would be a good description.

A week or so ago we pulled the Prince Caspian CD out for a drive to Grandma & Grandpa and listened to it again, just for a closer look at what the differences were between the movie and the Radio Theater version (which follows the book pretty closely.) While listening, one of the lines hit me hard; near the end, Aslan is preparing to send the Telmarines back to their original home, and tells them where they originally came from — the Telmarines descended from pirates who stumbled through a gateway between our world and Telmar. This was unsettling to Caspian, and that made him wish he “came from a more honorable lineage.” To that, Aslan replied,

You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve. And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.

How very, very profound. We, like Adam, are made in God’s image, set apart from all creation by God’s incredible gift. Yet we stumble and fall and dishonor ourselves all too readily. Shame and honor.

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

Following the statement about Christ’s crucifixion, death and burial, the Apostle’s Creed says that he then descended into Hell. This is all that is said about the day between Black Friday and Resurrection Sunday. But some churches and some variations of the Apostle’s Creed don’t include that line at all, leaving us to wonder what Jesus was up to on the day in between.

The cynic might say he did nothing. After all, he was dead.

For the Evangelical Christian, this line raises questions. For us, Hell is the place of eternal punishment for those who reject God’s forgiveness, so why did Jesus go there? The Catholic Church Catechism says that the second day was spent “in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection… … that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.”

Early teachings refer to hell — Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek — as the abode of the dead where they await the Redeemer. According to the Catechism, that is the case for all who die, righteous and unrighteous alike. Jesus descended into hell to free the righteous; not to deliver the damned nor to destroy the place of punishment that is reserved for them.

Other teachings say that Jesus went to the place of the dead to give those who died before the Messiah appeared a chance to believe in Jesus as the Christ and redeemer of their sins.

I don’t know what the truth of the matter is. It’s likely one of those things that God intentionally left vague in the scriptures because it makes no significant difference to our salvation. It was Saturday, the traditional Jewish Sabbath, so my guess is that cynic is partly right; Jesus took the day off for a well deserved Sabbath rest.

Today is Good Friday. Not sure why it’s called “Good”, as it’s marks the day that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was brutally tortured and killed. The day that he suffered in our stead. The Creator of the Universe had humbled himself and took on flesh, lived a sinless life among sinful people, and died the horrible death that we — not he — deserve.

Black Friday is more like it. Black as the sky at noon on that horrible day. Matthew 27:45-47

When his blood had been spilled and he had breathed his last, the soldiers stuck a spear in his side to make sure he was dead. When he was pulled down from the cross, a disciple named Joseph from Arimathea placed Jesus’ body in his own tomb, and a large stone was placed in front of the tomb. The hypocrites, afraid of funny business, talked Pilate into placing guards at the tomb. Matthew 27:57-66.

They thought that would be the end of this Jesus thing, but they thought wrong. It’s Friday. But Sunday’s coming!

By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas;
the one who by his strength established the mountains,
being girded with might;
who stills the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples,
so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.

Psalm 65:5-8

While reading Psalm 65 for my devotions the other day, this passage really hit me, especially that last line; “… so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs.” It struck me that the people who are most likely to scoff at God are those who live in urban areas, those who surround themselves with things built by the hands of man. The more shiny stuff we see that is of our own design, the less we see of God’s handiwork; and the less we see of what God has wrought, the more inclined we are to dismiss God.

This isn’t to say that there are no atheists who “dwell at the ends of the earth.” As for me, I much prefer a view of God’s handiwork than my own.

The media guys at church ran a neat spoof this morning — Sports Sunday: The Big Show. It gave a worship service and the church staff the same treatment a sports network would treat a big football game and the players. “We’re just about ready to start the big show here in sunny Steeplevillle…” “Dan Verbosity. Pastor…” Funny stuff!

Anyway, I was in the recording room this morning, so I didn’t see the video but heard the audio for it. Later, Randy showed me the bluefishtv.com site so I could see the video too, then got to poking around elsewhere, and they’ve got some great stuff there. Like their knockoffs of the Mac vs. PC ads; I like the Truth vs. Deception addy; good comedy, with a grain of truth behind it.