CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

Because at certain times, a pastor's word will stifle necessary conversation:
1. When a healthy discussion breaks out in Bible study.
2. During a meeting when members of the committee are having a vigorous and lively debate on what is best for the church.
3. When someone in great pain is expressing it.
4. In certain situations when someone expresses a view with which the pastor vigorously disagrees.
5. When the pastor speaking will cause more harm than being silent.
6. When a tear speaks more clearly than a word.
7. When someone simply feels the need "to vent."
8. In accepting unfair criticism, when it deflects away from someone else, who has also been treated unfairly.
9. When what the pastor is hearing is also painful from personal experience.
10. In any situation when the presence of the pastor is more significant than his or her profound words.

How will President-Elect Barack Obama govern?

Click on the image to enlargeASBO Jesus

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."



Theodore Roosevelt***"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Abraham Lincoln***"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

James Madison***"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."

Woodrow Wilson***"The nine most dangerous words ever spoken: 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"

Ronald Reagan***"There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress ... than I had any conception of, before I became President of the United States."

James K. Polk***"When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were."

John F. Kennedy***"The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation."

James Earl Carter***"There is nothing wrong in America that can't be fixed with what is right in America."

William J. Clinton***"We Americans have no commission from God to police the world."

Benjamin Harrison***"War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed."

William McKinley***"As tools for learning, the arts and humanities have a positive impact on our children's cognitive development, their confidence, and their motivation. As we face the challenges of a new era, the arts and humanities will be vital to a future of innovation, opportunity and hope."

George W. Bush***"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

Harry S. Truman***"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror."

Franklin D. Roosevelt***"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, in a final sense, [is] a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

Dwight D. Eisenhower***"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected."

Thomas Jefferson***"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other."

John Adams

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Did you vote early or on Election Day?

"We do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become as gods-- that they could cease directing their lives to their Creator and taking all their delights as uncovenanted mercies, as 'accidents' (in the logical sense) which arose in the course of a life directed not to those delights but to the admiration of God. As a young man wants a regular allowance from his father which he can count on as his own, within which he makes his own plans (and rightly, for his father is after all a fellow creature), so they desired to be on their own, to take care for their own future, to plan for pleasure and for security, to have a meum from which, no doubt, they would pay some reasonable tribute to God in the way of time, attention, and love, but which, nevertheless, was theirs not his. They wanted, as we say, to 'call their souls their own.' But that means to live a lie, for our souls are not, in fact, our own. They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God, 'This is our business, not yours.' But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives."
The Problem of Pain

There Are 0 Gaps in Your Knowledge

I think it more likely that there are gaps in the test!

Where you have gaps in your knowledge:



No Gaps!



Where you don't have gaps in your knowledge:



Philosophy

Religion

Economics

Literature

History

Science

Art

Do You Have Gaps in Your Knowledge?HT: Richard Hall

O God, we thank you for this earth, our home; for the wide sky and the blessed sun, for the salt sea and the running water, for the everlasting hills and the never-resting winds, for trees and the common grass underfoot. We thank you for our senses by which we hear the songs of birds, and see the splendor of the summer fields, and taste of the autumn fruits, and rejoice in the feel of the snow, and smell the breath of the spring. Grant us a heart wide open to all this beauty; and save our souls from being so blind that we pass unseeing when even the common thornbush is aflame with your glory, O God our creator, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918)

Submit your post to umweeklyroundup@yahoo.com by noon EST on Saturday to guarantee that your post is included.
*Rules for Inclusion
Important Note: There will be no MBWR next weekend. I will be in Boston attending the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.
The week in review in the Methoblogosphere:
Jeremy Smith is wondering if churches can use fake news to spread the Good News.
David Perry posts Celtic Imagination No. 17: Stocks and Shares - A Very Public Humiliation.
Ken Carter explains why he likes Morning Joe.
Some thoughts from Craig Adams on the life expectancy among gays.
Holy Communion online? Read Andrew Thompson. Best of the Methoblogosphere!
What's going on with Art Ruch?
Brian Russell reflects on leadership for life. Best of the Methoblogosphere!
Grace happens according to Melissa Yosua-Davis.
Betty Newman asks, "Is the Bible relevant to today's life?"
Richard Heyduck reminds us that we are getting what we wanted.
A post from Sky Lowe-McCracken on Remembrance Day - Veterans Day.
Ken Hagler encourages us to share the love.
Shane Raynor is seeking a spiritual fat burner.
David Hallam wonders how the churches will handle the recession.
Are you having a mixed day? Sally Coleman can relate.
Chris Roberts is off to Washington D.C. to a gathering of Young Evangelical Clergy sponsored by the General Board of Church and Society.
Gerry Charlotte Phelps writes on jealousy, taxes, and the stock market.
Identity vs activity-- Some thoughts from Andy Bryan.

Dave Camphouse posts his notes from his November 9th sermon.

Mark Winter had a shoebox shindig.

The anger that remains according to Jay Voorhees.

Will Grady at the end of the week.

The Methodist Church has called for UN emergency food aid access into Gaza. Get the details from Richard Hall.

Kathy James affirms, Great is thy faithfulness!

Greg Hazelrig posts his thought for the day on Philippians 4:7.

The power of One-- Reflections from Deb Spaulding.

Perspective II from Steve Heyduck.

Andrew Stoddard posts reflections on Joel 2:21-27, James 1:1-15, and Luke 15:1-2, 11-32.

"The Meaning of Service"-- A sermon by Tony Mithcell.

Henry Neufeld offers his thoughts on being Christian and killing people.

A post on stewardship from Kim Matthews.

Olive Morgan is having a bad hair day.

Don't sweat the money-- A post from Questing Parson.

Kevin Watson on Peter Rollins at SMU.

Willie Deuel has the gift of healing.

How does God help? A question from Larry Oksten.

Gavin Richardson honors his veteran family.

Some reflections on peacemakers from Dave Faulkner.

John Meunier ponders Reggie Miller and Matthew 25:14-30.

Jesus as third servant-- Some thoughts from Jim Parsons.

Matt Judkins writes on finding the Jesus you thought you had lost.

Matthew Johnson posts on enduring faith.

Scott McKay shares church memories.

INformal, INtimate, In Christ... An INformative post from Joseph Yoo.

The Great Emergence-- Metaphorical musings from Matthew Kelley.

Seven random rules from Beth Quick.

Kevin Baker writes on Holy Communion Harry Potter Style.

Keith McIlwain is home from Jumonville.

Pastoring men according to Dale Tedder.

Rick Mang wonders if the religious right is dead.

Reflections on potty ministry from Christopher Gudger-Raines.

C.D. Harringer never embraces a rattlesnake.

Craig Moore is practicing Obama economics.

Feds: NYC man claimed liquid drug was 'holy water'
From Associated PressNovember 11, 2008 3:17 PM EST
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. - A New York City man is accused of trying to smuggle a date rape drug into the United States by putting the liquid in bottles he claimed contained "holy water."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say laboratory tests recently confirmed that dozens of bottles seized at a western New York border crossing contained Ketamine, a powerful hallucinogenic used as a date rape drug.
Authorities say 50-year-old Warren Maynard of Brooklyn was arrested Oct. 16 near Niagara Falls after he tried to enter the U.S. from Canada, where he said he'd bought some religious items.
Officials say a Customs dog sniffed out the drug while Maynard was being questioned by officers..The status of his case and whether Maynard has a lawyer couldn't be immediately determined Tuesday.

Do you plan to go Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving?

Is the Primary Cause Human or Not?
The globe is warming, it's our fault and the consequences are going to be terrible. So goes the rhetoric spouted by politicians, celebrities and the media.
It's hard to turn on the TV or open a newspaper these days without hearing about the horrors caused by our warming climate. We can expect more floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes as global warming continues, and pretty soon we'll have to flee from the coasts as the polar ice caps melt and our shorelines flood.
But is it a crisis? The globe is warming, but is it really all our fault? And is it true the debate is over? No. What you think you know may not be so.
I interviewed some scientists who say the debate is by no means over. John Christy and Roy Spencer won NASA's Medal for Exceptional Achievement for figuring out how to get temperature data from satellites.
"We all agree that it's warmed," Spencer said. "The big question is, and the thing we dispute is, is it because of mankind?"
Climate changes, they say, always has, with or without man. Early last century, even without today's huge output of carbon dioxide, the Arctic went through a warming period.
Greenland's temperatures rose 50 percent faster in the 1920s and reached higher average temperatures in the 1930s and 1940s than today's temperatures.
Some scientists argue the warming might be caused by changes in the sun, or ocean currents, or changes in cloud cover, or other things we don't yet understand. The debate is not over.
You can read John Stossell's post, "Man vs. Nature: Challenging Conventional Views About Global Warming," here.

Click on the image to enlarge

Dawkins blames religion for most of the evil and violence perpetrated in human history
*Dawkins is certainly correct that religion has been to blame for much violence and evil that has been perpetrated. Christians have no stake in denying this. Yet, his critique of religion in reference to violence lacks rigor.
*Dawkins assumes that most of the violence in history can simply be chalked up to religious zealotry, but he fails to understand that human beings develop what anthropologists call collective identities, which include not only religious identities, but also ethnic, political, national, and personal identity with groups who have endured the same problems. What is happening in Darfur, for example, is not religious, but tribal.
*Dawkins must explain the great violence perpetrated in the twentieth century that had nothing to do with religion. The Holocaust was the result of extreme racism, and Stalin was an atheist. Non-religious wars in the twentieth century have killed more people than all the religious wars in the previous centuries combined. That does not justify religious wars, it simply acknowledges that the motivations for violence in the world are more complex than Dawkins suggests.
*Dawkins argues that parents who raise their children in their religion are guilty of child abuse. How would Dawkins then suggest atheist parents raise their children? Should they make them go to church to give them the free choice of possibly being religious? If the key factor is allowing children to decide for themselves, shouldn't children of atheists be allowed to do the same? Why is it that only religious parents indoctrinate their children? Do not atheistic parents indoctrinate as well? It is naive for anyone to think that it is possible for children to remain a blank slate on matters of religion or politics or anything, for that matter, in their developing years.
*Dawkins also fails to take into account the objections of many Christian leaders, down through the centuries, when wars have been waged. While some Christians have made a case for the justifiability of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, plenty of other Christians have argued otherwise, including Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The issue concerning religion and violence is more complex than Dawkins will allow in his shallow polemic.

Since the election, I have been watching the news and reading political commentary and surveying the blogs. It shouldn't amaze me, but it does, how some people simply lose perspective and common sense.
On the one hand, there are some supporters of Barack Obama, who in their exuberance, act as if the Kingdom is about to arrive. One group in Kansas is organizing a campaign to have November 4 declared a national holiday commemorating the election of Barack Obama. There are also those who have written songs about Obama, sung in choir-like fashion. One bishop has compared President-elect Obama to Moses. The hopes of some are so high that one wonders if any mortal can fulfill their expectations.
On the other hand, there are those who are convinced that president-elect Obama will not bring in the Kingdom, but start Armageddon. They actually believe that he is the Antichrist, or if not the Antichrist specifically, one who will prepare the way for him. Then there are those, who are less inclined to scare us over an Obama presidency in religious fashion, but who suggest that he will move us toward a leftist dictatorship. Yes, one congressman has warned us of such.
Now, the last time I checked, a person had to be dead before getting a holiday named in his or her honor. Moreover, such holidays are reserved for uniquely significant accomplishments. President-elect Obama has had his accomplishments to be sure, but they are hardly worthy of a national holiday. Moreover, even if history eventually judges him to have been quite an effective president, it will not be the start of some new and unique era of human history. We human beings, all too often, get caught up in the prideful arrogance of thinking our era is and will be the best of all. How sad it is that even Christians forget that the new age has already been ushered in through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and there is nothing that will be able to upstage that.
Moreover, those who are scared that president-elect Obama is Fidel Castro in disguise need to bone up on some history. Politically Left does not mean functionally Marxist; and dictatorships are extremely difficult to give birth to in established democracies. Those on the left, who have screamed for the past eight years that George W. Bush was turning America into a dictatorship are now eating their alarmist words as he prepares to willingly leave office. As far as those who are now certain that Barack Obama's election as president is the beginning of the end, they would do well to remember that all the other figures of history that have been labeled as the Antichrist or the Beast or the False Prophet of Revelation, are now dead as history moves forward. One would think that such continual errors in their eschatological weather forecasting would cause them to rethink their methodology; unfortunately once again sound biblical exegesis takes a backseat to Left Behind ideology.
The realities of political office tend to kick the marble out from under the person we put on a divine pedestal, and they also over time reveal the silliness of the extreme fears that do not come to pass. To be sure, the vast majority of those who voted for Barack Obama are not ready to anoint him Messiah; they simply believe he would make a better president. And most individuals who voted for John McCain are not combing their Bibles for proof that our president-elect is the incarnation of evil. They simply believe that John McCain would have made a better president. Thank God that the vast majority of the electorate exercises common sense as opposed to extreme nonsense.
President-elect Obama will not usher in a new golden age, nor will he bring about the destruction of the world; and for those who believe either one, I have some friendly advice-- step back, take a deep breath... inhale... exhale... in... out... and relax.
Now, don't you feel better?
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Cross-Posted at RedBlueChristian

"God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata-- of creatures that worked like machines-- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free."



Mere Christianity

Click on the image to enlarge

Dear Lord Jesus Christ, those whom we honor today are examples of your words: "Greater love than this no one has: that he lay down his life for his friends." They gave up their lives in the defense of freedom for their loved ones and their country. Teach me to appreciate the virtue of patriotism -- a true and Christian love of country. Let me love my country, not to follow it blindly but to make it the land of goodness that it should be. Let my patriotism be such that it will not exclude the other nations of the world, but include them in a powerful love of country that has room for all others too.



St. Joseph People's Prayer Book

Submit your post to umweeklyroundup@yahoo.com by noon EST on Saturday to guarantee that your post is included.
*Rules for Inclusion
The week in review in the Methoblogosphere:
John Lomperis offers prayers for the family of Andrew Weaver.
Andrew Thompson asks, "Is 'Mainline' Wesleyan?"
An open letter from Matthew Johnson to fellow evangelicals the morning after the election.
In Rene Descartes philosophical fashion, Matthew Perry writes, "I blog, therefore I am."
Craig Adams reflects on Psalm 50.
Thoughts on Joe the Saint from Matt Judkins.
Should North Carolina recount or just be purple? A question from Jim Parsons.
John Meunier writes on imperial tendencies in the preacher's heart.
An account of accounts from Dave Faulkner.
Gavin Richardson offers an election prayer.
Larry Oksten reflects on the night after the election.
Will Deuel posts on what hasn't changed since the election.
A military chaplain's perspective on the new commander-in-chief from Mitch Lewis.
Wayne Cook has some thoughts on a great joy and an awesome responsibility.
Kevin Watson wonders if it must be Halloween.
The dichotomy of a historic election according to Questing Parson.
Olive Morgan's blog is getting noticed with good reason. Best of the Methoblogosphere!
Reflections on preparation from Kim Matthews.
Henry Neufeld on the scientific study of the supernatural.
Tony Mitchell ponders the first Tuesday in November.
Andrew Stoddard posts reflections on Ezekiel 24:1-14, Revelation 14:14-15:8, and Luke 13:1-19.
Perspective from Steve Heyduck.
Deb Spaulding serves us some thoughts on the banquet.
Greg Hazelrig posts his thought for the day on Romans 15:5-6.
What about civil discourse? Read Kathy James. Best of the Methoblogosphere!
Richard Hall has given Connexions a makeover.
Stephen Taylor posts reflections on the new landscape in America.
Musings on politics from Theresa Coleman.
Will Grady sends his congratulations to president-elect Obama.
Moments of leadership according to Michelle Hargrave.
Reflections on the open source presidency from Jay Voorhees.
Mark Winter tells a joke to make you squeal.
The Pastor's Corner posted by Dave Camphouse.
Andy Bryan says, "Yes we did."
Gerry Charlotte Phelps tells us that the treatment of George W. Bush has been a disgrace.
All saints reflections from Chris Roberts.
Sally Coleman ponders in narrative form what it means to be truly forgiven and fruly free.
An english pub and a prayer for America from David Hallam.
Michael Daniel reflects on certain realities.
Some Christian notes on voting from Clifton Stringer.
Ken Hagler reminds us that is always something.
How did Sky Lowe-McCracken vote? He ain't playing that game, but read his post.
Tyler Schwaller posts a weekly inqueery.
Richard Heyduck has some thoughts on confirmation.
Conversion is not a "one-time" event according to Betty Newman.
Daniel McLain Hixon writes on Israel, Palestine, and the elusive peace.
Melissa Yosua-Davis voted.
The Word of Amos or the Word of the Lord from Brian Russell.
Danny Gmyrek reflects on voting.
Marty Schwartz ponders the power of love.
Thoughts on the aftermath of the election from Derek Tang.
A prayer for All Saints Sunday from Abi Carlisle-Wilke.
Art Ruch reflects on the election results.