Thursday, February 11, 2010
Success
In his Sunday sermon on the 7th of February, 2010, Pastor Wayne Kirk asked this general question of the congregation: “What do you think “success” is?” He followed this by asking”: What do you think God thinks it is?”
The first question is by far the easier. It is best described as “a desired or favorable outcome.” The third definition is the “attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.” I would suggest that each personal definition is as variable as the huge variety of folks who attempt to make a response. As Christians, we have a reliable source of information available in our scriptures to assist in evaluating our progress toward the favorable outcome which we seek. Here the rules (laws?) are plainly stated along with frequent examples of how others have embraced those rules to achieve success. The most important feature of our faith is a clear understanding of just what that favorable outcome might be. I happen to believe it is to emulate Jesus Christ and rise beyond this earth to be with Him. That, would indeed, be a measure of success.
We need to note here that the actual use of the word success only occurs on one page of the Bible. In Joshua 1:8 we find the following: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate there day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” Given this lone example of the use of the word might lead one to believe that God is not as preoccupied with success in its common usage as his followers. The use of the word by His Son, Jesus Christ is completely absent.
In that single verse, God does make it clear that he sees a relationship between success and “thy way prosperous.” Among other things, to prosper indicates further growth and is not necessarily a synonym for enrichment. To acquire wealth and “eminence” here on earth, although presenting temporary advantage, would seem to be of little use once one enters the heavenly realm. We are taught that we will carry only the memory of our behavior to the next world. Fortunately, God has promised in James that if we have repentance, “he remembers it not.” Thus a man in rags, who keeps the commandments, observes the laws as outlined, declares repentance from his sins and actively seeks the counsel of God will approach the throne as a success. In fact, his very presence there represents the richness of the word.
Once we have cast off our earthly bodies, cares, and possessions, we can go before our Maker with a contrite heart and plead before a righteous Judge for the continuance of our existence with Him. As stated in our Holy Book, our God’s entire thrust for us and the purpose of His son’s sacrifice is to ensure our success.
In His abiding love,
Cecil Moon
The Tea Party—A Serious Look
This struck me this morning as an opportunity to firmly acquaint you readers with The Tea Party movement. Most are familiar with it but this writer brings many new aspects which you may have over looked.
It came by way of Instapundit to Malkin and then back to the original writer at Doctor Zero. I am grateful to all of these sources and claim none of the article as my own. Rather than link it, I have placed it here in its entirety to make it more conveniently read.
Enjoy!
“The Tea Party movement is a political Andromeda Strain to the media, a baffling outbreak of viral unhappiness which has thus far defied every attempt at diagnosis. This is unsurprising, since the media has little interest in listening to what the Tea Party is actually saying. Instead, they attempt to stuff this remarkable grassroots movement into a variety of scary costumes, so they can be conveniently dismissed.
The most common of these costumes is a straitjacket. The media likes to view the Tea Party as a psychotic break with establishment reality. Writing in the L.A. Times, Gregory Rodriguez calls American distrust of government “neurotic – irrational, defensive, and born of emotional trauma.” He prescribes a dose of past-life regression therapy, until we get back to “our national birth trauma, our violent revolt against our ‘father’, King George III, which gave us our independence in the first place.” Wow, people named George cast really long shadows over history, don’t they?
If the buckles on the straitjacket break, certain elements of the Left are quick to dress the Tea Party in white sheets. The tedious Joe Queenan, working for a Guardian U.K. that evidently couldn’t afford to hire an American writer who has actually seen a Tea Party rally, describes the attendees as “smallish, grassroots, inbred” anti-intellectual pasty-white Nixon voters. He also can’t stress enough how white these abhorrent, pasty-white, “ethnically monochromatic” white crackers are. Oh, and they’re also a small fringe movement that likes to send tiny squads of loudmouths to intimidate rural Idaho congressmen… but they’re also a vast, sinister, potentially violent mob, lurking in the deep red shadows of flyover country, where people have forgotten how to properly appreciate their massive central government.
If you can’t quite buy the image of the Tea Party as a massive Birth of a Nation re-enactment, some liberals would like to conjure marionette strings leading from their awkwardly jerking limbs, up to puppet handles gripped in swollen feline paws. Lee Fang at Think Progress sees the helpless, mindless swarms of protesters as nothing but a Pampered Chef party for Republican “profiteers.” The mainstream press retails the usual smear about anyone who protests high taxes or government spending as either unwitting tools, or paid operatives, of the fat cats who stand to rake in millions from their agenda. (Remember the feeble attempts to paint anyone who disagreed with ObamaCare as henchmen of the insurance industry? Joe Queenan would remind you they were white henchmen of the white-owned insurance industry.)
Of course, no leftist caricature of the Tea Party would be complete without a dunce cap. To paraphrase the exasperated alien villain of Plan 9 From Outer Space, these protesters are stupid, stupid, stupid! They’re slaves of a woman Stephen Colbert assures us is “a f—ing retard.” Kurt Andersen of New York Magazine sees them as irrational hysterics, whipped into a frenzy by talk-radio hosts, threatening to unleash mere anarchy upon the nation by planting themselves ankle-deep in the blood-dimmed tide of mindless intransigence. They’re too dense to realize the establishment they oppose is an eternal institution, their lives mere grains of sand against its trillion-dollar fortifications.
The Tea Party movement is not crazy, hateful, or stupid. Their rallies are disarmingly cheerful affairs, which most certainly do include women and minorities. The movement is still in the process of coalescing, and seeks inspiration and representation, rather than leadership. They know their country is rocketing down the wrong path, and while the current President has a heavy hand on the throttle, the course was set long before he entered politics.
If you seek madness, look for it in the President’s delusional State of the Union speech, or the people who indulge his belief that another three or four trillion piled onto a $14 trillion national debt will get us at least halfway to utopia. If you want to taste hatred, sample the venom directed at Sarah Palin, the only person currently capable of building a bridge between the energy of the Tea Party, and the established resources of the GOP. If you would like stupidity illustrated, witness the spectacle of the Democrats passing off their oily mass of backroom deals and political payoffs as a rational plan for improving health care.
The lack of a comprehensive solution doesn’t make criticism invalid. The point is that comprehensive solutions are inherently inadequate, compared to the creative power of free markets and private industry. Tea Party stalwarts are entirely rational in refusing to submit themselves as raw materials for the next big adventure in central planning. After several lifetimes of watching an increasingly huge federal government fail at almost everything it tries, while displaying increasingly less enthusiasm for the Constitutional duty of national defense that it actually excels at, the middle class demands the freedom and respect to get busy solving its own problems. They’re understandably tired of watching every story in the evening news twisted into another reason the government needs more money, every market fluctuation offered as proof the private sector has too much freedom, and every change in the weather presented as a omen their standard of living is a mortal wound to the Earth.
Donald Luskin of the Wall Street Journal worries that the Tea Party could veer into destructive populism. Others fear they’ll mutate into a third-party dead end that drains enough strength from the Republicans to ensure a continued plunge into the collectivist abyss. Both are real dangers – there are always predators hiding in the grass roots. I believe the Tea Party is not a populist revolt against Wall Street, but rather a firm indictment of centralized power in general. Big Business brings reduced costs and advanced products to consumers, and American prosperity would be impossible without the financial resources of major banks, from business loans to credit cards. However, when Big Business merges with Big Government, the result always ends up looking more like the latter. The temptation to purchase government power is great, and it has many aggressive salesmen. Risk-taking is an essential component of growth… but there is no such thing as subsidized risk, and no healthy gamble can be made by companies which have gained federal certification as Too Big To Fail.
The Tea Party movement is not simplistic. It’s a revolt against the simplistic, and painfully inaccurate, notion that spending bills solve problems, and legislation is the only real form of action. It’s a rising tide of indignation from people tired of being told they’re ineligible to participate in the national discussion because of their race, class, religious belief, radio listening habits, or choice of cable news network. The idea that tagging a huge movement as “all-white” would serve as a devastating insult is deeply insulting to Americans of every skin color.
The Tea Party movement is young, and it could make a lot of mistakes… but it’s amazing how much it’s accomplished so far, just by clearing its throat. It’s not surprising the Left is trying to dismiss them, instead of answering their questions… but they’ve come too far to be discarded as lunatics, hate mongers, or idiots. They’re not a blank screen where the Left can project its neuroses and obsessions. They reject the narrative of a fading nation that should do the best it can to make amends for centuries of sins before it dies. They have not yet begun to fight, and theirs is the energy of a revolutionary spirit that can’t wait to get back to building a future beyond the limited imagination of their detractors.
Cross-posted at http://www.doczero.org/.
This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.”
In His abiding love,
Cecil Moon
It came by way of Instapundit to Malkin and then back to the original writer at Doctor Zero. I am grateful to all of these sources and claim none of the article as my own. Rather than link it, I have placed it here in its entirety to make it more conveniently read.
Enjoy!
“The Tea Party movement is a political Andromeda Strain to the media, a baffling outbreak of viral unhappiness which has thus far defied every attempt at diagnosis. This is unsurprising, since the media has little interest in listening to what the Tea Party is actually saying. Instead, they attempt to stuff this remarkable grassroots movement into a variety of scary costumes, so they can be conveniently dismissed.
The most common of these costumes is a straitjacket. The media likes to view the Tea Party as a psychotic break with establishment reality. Writing in the L.A. Times, Gregory Rodriguez calls American distrust of government “neurotic – irrational, defensive, and born of emotional trauma.” He prescribes a dose of past-life regression therapy, until we get back to “our national birth trauma, our violent revolt against our ‘father’, King George III, which gave us our independence in the first place.” Wow, people named George cast really long shadows over history, don’t they?
If the buckles on the straitjacket break, certain elements of the Left are quick to dress the Tea Party in white sheets. The tedious Joe Queenan, working for a Guardian U.K. that evidently couldn’t afford to hire an American writer who has actually seen a Tea Party rally, describes the attendees as “smallish, grassroots, inbred” anti-intellectual pasty-white Nixon voters. He also can’t stress enough how white these abhorrent, pasty-white, “ethnically monochromatic” white crackers are. Oh, and they’re also a small fringe movement that likes to send tiny squads of loudmouths to intimidate rural Idaho congressmen… but they’re also a vast, sinister, potentially violent mob, lurking in the deep red shadows of flyover country, where people have forgotten how to properly appreciate their massive central government.
If you can’t quite buy the image of the Tea Party as a massive Birth of a Nation re-enactment, some liberals would like to conjure marionette strings leading from their awkwardly jerking limbs, up to puppet handles gripped in swollen feline paws. Lee Fang at Think Progress sees the helpless, mindless swarms of protesters as nothing but a Pampered Chef party for Republican “profiteers.” The mainstream press retails the usual smear about anyone who protests high taxes or government spending as either unwitting tools, or paid operatives, of the fat cats who stand to rake in millions from their agenda. (Remember the feeble attempts to paint anyone who disagreed with ObamaCare as henchmen of the insurance industry? Joe Queenan would remind you they were white henchmen of the white-owned insurance industry.)
Of course, no leftist caricature of the Tea Party would be complete without a dunce cap. To paraphrase the exasperated alien villain of Plan 9 From Outer Space, these protesters are stupid, stupid, stupid! They’re slaves of a woman Stephen Colbert assures us is “a f—ing retard.” Kurt Andersen of New York Magazine sees them as irrational hysterics, whipped into a frenzy by talk-radio hosts, threatening to unleash mere anarchy upon the nation by planting themselves ankle-deep in the blood-dimmed tide of mindless intransigence. They’re too dense to realize the establishment they oppose is an eternal institution, their lives mere grains of sand against its trillion-dollar fortifications.
The Tea Party movement is not crazy, hateful, or stupid. Their rallies are disarmingly cheerful affairs, which most certainly do include women and minorities. The movement is still in the process of coalescing, and seeks inspiration and representation, rather than leadership. They know their country is rocketing down the wrong path, and while the current President has a heavy hand on the throttle, the course was set long before he entered politics.
If you seek madness, look for it in the President’s delusional State of the Union speech, or the people who indulge his belief that another three or four trillion piled onto a $14 trillion national debt will get us at least halfway to utopia. If you want to taste hatred, sample the venom directed at Sarah Palin, the only person currently capable of building a bridge between the energy of the Tea Party, and the established resources of the GOP. If you would like stupidity illustrated, witness the spectacle of the Democrats passing off their oily mass of backroom deals and political payoffs as a rational plan for improving health care.
The lack of a comprehensive solution doesn’t make criticism invalid. The point is that comprehensive solutions are inherently inadequate, compared to the creative power of free markets and private industry. Tea Party stalwarts are entirely rational in refusing to submit themselves as raw materials for the next big adventure in central planning. After several lifetimes of watching an increasingly huge federal government fail at almost everything it tries, while displaying increasingly less enthusiasm for the Constitutional duty of national defense that it actually excels at, the middle class demands the freedom and respect to get busy solving its own problems. They’re understandably tired of watching every story in the evening news twisted into another reason the government needs more money, every market fluctuation offered as proof the private sector has too much freedom, and every change in the weather presented as a omen their standard of living is a mortal wound to the Earth.
Donald Luskin of the Wall Street Journal worries that the Tea Party could veer into destructive populism. Others fear they’ll mutate into a third-party dead end that drains enough strength from the Republicans to ensure a continued plunge into the collectivist abyss. Both are real dangers – there are always predators hiding in the grass roots. I believe the Tea Party is not a populist revolt against Wall Street, but rather a firm indictment of centralized power in general. Big Business brings reduced costs and advanced products to consumers, and American prosperity would be impossible without the financial resources of major banks, from business loans to credit cards. However, when Big Business merges with Big Government, the result always ends up looking more like the latter. The temptation to purchase government power is great, and it has many aggressive salesmen. Risk-taking is an essential component of growth… but there is no such thing as subsidized risk, and no healthy gamble can be made by companies which have gained federal certification as Too Big To Fail.
The Tea Party movement is not simplistic. It’s a revolt against the simplistic, and painfully inaccurate, notion that spending bills solve problems, and legislation is the only real form of action. It’s a rising tide of indignation from people tired of being told they’re ineligible to participate in the national discussion because of their race, class, religious belief, radio listening habits, or choice of cable news network. The idea that tagging a huge movement as “all-white” would serve as a devastating insult is deeply insulting to Americans of every skin color.
The Tea Party movement is young, and it could make a lot of mistakes… but it’s amazing how much it’s accomplished so far, just by clearing its throat. It’s not surprising the Left is trying to dismiss them, instead of answering their questions… but they’ve come too far to be discarded as lunatics, hate mongers, or idiots. They’re not a blank screen where the Left can project its neuroses and obsessions. They reject the narrative of a fading nation that should do the best it can to make amends for centuries of sins before it dies. They have not yet begun to fight, and theirs is the energy of a revolutionary spirit that can’t wait to get back to building a future beyond the limited imagination of their detractors.
Cross-posted at http://www.doczero.org/.
This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.”
In His abiding love,
Cecil Moon
Monday, February 8, 2010
Monday Morning Rant 131
What a glorious day! Oh yeah, Buzzard Ridge (Ed.: his name for it; not mine) is now covered with mud because of a recent melting snow pack but that didn’t prevent returning to the Miami Restoration Branch for church and first Sunday sacrament services. Elder Wayne Kirk brought the message and it was challenging. Looking after Granny made going over there impossible for about three months so it was more like “old home week.”
After a great lunch downtown with Wayne, Jewell, and Jack, I got home in time for the Puppy Bowl. The little critters provided quite a bit of excitement. It was not nearly as exciting as the “aints” turned out to be. Living in Houma prepared both Granny and me to be extremely pleased when they came back in the second half to beat the Colts. I thought perhaps it was all because we turned off the TV and made the 6 PM church services at Fellowship Baptist. No, I do not really believe that God gives a hoot about our football preferences. But, the win made our ugly local weather almost bearable.
ABC’s Latest “Shock” Headline
STUDY SAYS ARCTIC ICE MELT TO COST GLOBAL ECONOMY $2.4 TRILLION
It is apparent that ABC and the Pew Charitable Trusts folks are deaf, blind or absolutely clueless. In the months following the complete melt down of credibility of the climate scientists at East Anglia and their fellow scam artists in other research facilities, they choose to ignore the lies and false data which they spewed to further their personal agenda. It is as though none of the discreditation of bogus data and opinion ever occurred. They continue to hammer the same exaggerated claims and wrong-headed conclusions in an exact same boring repetition of the lies.
Anthropogenic climate change (global warming?) research has become the canon of scripture to replace Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the church of the grant money seekers. Pew claims to be a non-partisan American think tank. Located in D.C., it is self-described as applying “a rigorous, analytical approach to improve public policy, inform the public and stimulate civic life.” To furnish the data for the above headline puts the lie to that mission statement.
They projected the cost of world-wide crisis at a staggering figure which was spread over a ten year future. Keep in mind, the population of the earth is a little more than 6 billion souls. Do a little math and learn that it amounts to an annual outlay of $10 per head, per year. Positioned against a world wide gross domestic outlay it comes to a little less than 1%. Individually, it is chump change but when viewed collectively and in total it is sufficient to make a really scary headline. A headline which depends on settled science, (it’s not!) the dependability of a self-directed and compliant earth, (it’s not!) and an effectively targeted object for all that cash.
The object is obviously to gain additional controls of population behaviors, further advance redistribution of wealth and fatten the larders of the credentialed few who promote such insane policies. For a better view of those at Pew who assemble this clap-trap, check this page on their web site and look at the high powered list of just the personnel in the Pew Environmental Group. The final irony is that the original founder of the trust made his money in—ugh!—nasty, gaia raping, oil!
Snow White Strikes Again!
As I read this piece, I was certain that it had been extracted from the Onion. The administration of the Seattle area Robert Frost Elementary school felt compelled to “clean up” their presentation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Seriously, the PC Nazis searched the script and found sections which they deemed too sensitive for middle-schoolers to stage for the parents and other relatives who watch such things.
As usual, the commenters were more articulate than the original reporter and one had this to say:
hnuh wrote...
Offensive p/c stuff
I am offended! Bowdlerizing Snow White, a wonderful story of the hierarchical, patriarchal sexist, racist, objectifying morals driven judgmental discriminatory ageist, animal eating pre post modern society. Why don't we sit these children down and have them look at a large sheet of gray paper for the years we have them in our "schools". That way, no one will be offended by the absolute HORROR of a fairy tale...oops I wrote fairy... homophobe!!!! The wiccan was "differently visaged enough to stop a clock"...
February 5, 2010 8:40 am
Yet one more commenter came up with this:
Common Sense wrote...
What's next....?
No Humpty Dumpty - death by clumsiness. No Three Blind Mice with stubby tails - farmer's wife has anger control issues. No Cat In The Hat - Strangers shouldn't be invited into your home when mommy is gone. No Wizard of Oz - Bully girls drop houses on unsuspecting elderly ladies. No Cinderella - sibling rivalry and favoritism results in a hostile home environment. We will have to remove all parental deaths, all villains, all idiotic acts and all reference to race, religion and sexual persuasion from all fairy tails. Boy those Grimm brothers were just plain evil and should have their names removed completely from history! Now where is my copy of Little Black Sambo?
February 5, 2010 8:54 am
No doubt their next presentation will be Goldilocks and the Three Bears which deals with a serial housebreaker who breaks in to observe the intimate life of a benign family of bears and actually steals their food and sleeps in their bed in their absence.
And Finally
Close to midnight last night, I walked the dogs one last time before retiring for the night. As we started around the garage on our familiar path, the night was split with a piercing scream from down in the woods. It was like no other I have ever heard here on Buzzard’s Ridge. It embodied pain, terror and fright, all in one very expressive, yet plaintive call. The volume was intense and more common to a large animal with a greater lung capacity yet was totally unfamiliar.
Sounds of animals in distress or shows of bravado are not uncommon here and I would not have been shaken by it except for one observation. Maggie, my Rottweiler/redbone hound mix trotted out about twenty feet and stopped. She showed little interest in pursuing the source. Typically, she would take on a bear, a man, or a dragon if one were to appear. She is fearless but apparently not foolish. Upon that observation, we, as a unit, retreated to the house. I feel content to consign the event to the ever accruing list of unsolved mysteries which one acquires living in the woods. The final thought is to trust my dog and let life/death follow its natural path.
For those of you in the path of latest storm in the East; stay warm, don’t shovel snow to excess, and learn to love cheese sandwiches until you run out of bread. From the “been there, done that” crowd, you have our sympathies.
In His abiding love,
Cecil Moon
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