No, she was not a slave. But the point still stands. Of course, we were nice. Of course, we loved Lucy. Of course, she was invited to my sister’s wedding. As long as she and her family “knew their place.”  Being nice to, and having strong affections for, and including in our lives is what we do for our dogs too. It doesn’t say much about honor and respect and equality before God. My affections for Lucy did not provide the slightest restraint on my racist mouth when I was with my friends.

via Bloodlines by John Piper

A “corporate raider” — as unfair as that term may be — just shouldn’t be using the phrase “I like to fire people” in any context, never mind amid a really awful economy. I don’t care if the full sentence is “I like to fire people who hurt puppies,” you know which snippet the Democratic National Committee will use.

via Romney Is Right on Corporations – Jonah Goldberg – National Review Online.

Much like his more recent statement about how he likes to “fire people,” the corporation remark has been taken grossly out of context. The “fire people” line simply referred to the fact that he likes to use his power as a consumer to deny his support to firms — specifically insurance companies — that don’t provide good service. Who doesn’t like doing that? Let me know who you are and I will gladly sell you a lifetime supply of unicorn repellent. No refunds, of course.

via Romney Is Right on Corporations – Jonah Goldberg – National Review Online.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was writing an advice column in 1958 for Ebony magazine when he received an unusual letter.

“I am a boy,” an anonymous writer told King. “But I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I dont want my parents to know about me. What can I do?”

In calm, pastoral tones, King told the boy that his problem wasn’t uncommon, but required “careful attention.”

“The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired,” King wrote. “You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.”

We know what King thought about race, poverty and war. But what was his attitude toward gay people, and if he was alive today would he see the gay rights movement as another stage of the civil rights movement?

via What did MLK think about gay people? – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs.

Interesting

If “we” (pretend for a moment that we in the present all feel the same way about homosexuality) have to cut MLK slack about his positions because of his time and place in history, does that mean that we have to cut other people some slack about their positions (maybe racist positions?) because of their time and place in history?

If not, why not?

Superstition has fixed most positively the day of our Saviours birth, although there is no possibility of discovering when it occurred. Fabricius gives a catalogue of 136 different learned opinions upon the matter; and various divines invent weighty arguments for advocating a date in every month in the year. It was not till the middle of the third century that any part of the church celebrated the nativity of our Lord; and it was not till very long after the Western church had set the example, that the Eastern adopted it. Because the day is not known, therefore superstition has fixed it; while, since the day of the death of our Saviour might be determined with much certainty, therefore superstition shifts the date of its observance every year.

via Pyromaniacs: Joy Born at Bethlehem.

The entitlements embody a staggering amount of unkeepable promises. And the reality is that unkeepable promises won’t be kept. Let us go over this principle again. That which cannot be done won’t be done, that which cannot happen won’t happen, that which is not sustainable will not be sustained, and that which cannot go on will not go on. You get the drift.

[...]

But in this diminishing sea of candidates, who cannot or will not say what must be said, we are indeed fortunate in the arrival a dark horse candidate. Like many horses, including the dark ones, he has an odd name. Basic Math is the dark horse candidate who is going to successfully bring in a true austerity program. And unlike all the other candidates, he doesn’t even need to get elected to do his thing.

via Basic Math as Dark Horse.

“It took us over 100 years to become this progressive and nanny-dependent as a society. It took over 100 years for the citizen to beg the government to do as much as it does for the citizen, and for the government to oblige said citizen. It will not be undone in 100 minutes.”

Actually, at the rate we are going, it will soon be undone in about ten minutes. When we run out of money, we will have run out of money. When we are Greece, we will then be Greece. When there is no financial back-up, there will be no financial back-up. Here is a helpful little visualization I have linked to before. Make sure to scroll down to the bottom, and reflect on the fact that we are spending multiples of that amount of money annually, and we are doing so without being in possession of that amount of money. That is the kind of tab we are running up, and this is being done by all the smart people, by the non-mediocrities. And when we hit the wall, the resulting involuntary budget cuts will make Ron Paul look like a commie

via Ron Paul and Some “Yeah, Buts”.

You would think that people who lived among rocks, goats, and scrub brush would want to know how some other people turned their scrub land into a garden, but thus far that is not how it has gone.

via You Play the Hand You Hold.

Perhaps we should rename the Golden Rule, and call it the Gilded Rule. What Jesus actually taught has been wrapped up and stored in the attic, while a poor substitute—which is “expect everybody to be comparatively decent”—has been plated with a flakey, golden looking substance, and placed on the mantel. And our workaround understanding of the Golden Rule looks like an old small town bowling league trophy from 1965.

via The Gilded Rule.

One place where the Lord’s words are still widely disregarded — and not just “kind of,” but in a kind of Wild West kind of way — is in the realm of hermeneutics. Hear as you would be heard. Read as you would be read.

Think about it for a minute. Why do we not get to read Supreme Court decisions with the same hermeneutic they apply to the Constitution? Why do Supreme Court decisions have no penumbrae? Why do we not get to read a fanciful exegete’s commentary on Exodus the same way he reads Exodus? Why do postmodern philosophers expect us to treat their words as bearing objective truth, even though the words say that no words actually do?

via The Golden Rule Hermeneutic.