New York Times Deifies Obama

From the New York Times the Obama Jesus. Says Jammie Wearing Fool [photo at link]:

Not content to show Obama with a halo, the New York Times is now creating images of him with a cross in the background.

Good grief. I guess the separation of church and state no longer applies when it comes to The Sainted One.

This is the definition of sacrilege. But I’m not sure the editors at the New York Times know God–that’s why they’re fooled by Obama.

Posted in Barack Obama, Bias, Christianity | 1 Comment »

Kurt Westergaard, Mohammed Cartoons, And Liberals Ignoring The Obvious

Liberal bloggers are so very, very brave. They can quote out of context and everything! They can also question the bravery of others while not being brave themselves. They can accuse other of hypocrisy and can’t see their own. It’s awesome. Ummmm:

I’m more than a little troubled/confused by the story of Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who survived an attack this Friday from an axe-wielding critic by hiding in a semi-fortified panic room. (Westergaard drew one of the controversial Muhammad cartoons in 2005). I mean, there are any number of complexities about the story, but here’s the one that I’m most perplexed by.

At the time, Westergaard was looking after his five-year-old granddaughter, Stephanie. He was confronted with a terrible choice: risk being killed in front of his granddaughter, or trust that the PET, Denmark’s security and intelligence service, knew what they were talking about when they had told him terrorists usually don’t harm family members but stick to their target.

Westergaard chose to escape into his bathroom, which had been specially fortified as a “panic room”, while Stephanie was left sitting in the living room. From the bathroom he alerted the police as his assailant reportedly battered the reinforced door with the axe, shouting, “We will get our revenge!”

Both survived unscathed, although God knows how a 5-year-old processes something like that, and you’ve got to imagine her folks aren’t going to be letting Grandpa babysit again anytime soon. Still, how does one even make that choice? Was it really a rational process, as implied above? I could not even begin to say. Or judge.

Well, actually, I think that this author is judging…as am I. If there was a way to get the kid to the safe room, I’m guessing he would have, right? If he callously left her…what the hell? But of course, there’s more to the story.

From the Guardian article:

“Those minutes were horrible,” Westergaard recalled yesterday. “But I think I have got through this fairly well – and so, it seems, did my grandchild. That, of course, is the main thing. I would not have been able to live with myself if something had happened to her.”

From the outside, Westergaard’s house in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-biggest city, looks like your average suburban home. But according to the cartoonist, it is a “fortress without a moat”, equipped with security cameras and armoured windows. Living under the constant threat of revenge, he has always had to take precautions when leaving his home – visits to the gym, for example, could not be at predictable hours, so he would change his schedule every week. He carries a personal alarm and tracking device everywhere, and every day a police car would escort him to and from his work at Denmark’s biggest-selling daily newspaper.

Makes me think the above blogger wants to note the cartoonist’s hypocrisy…he’s not all that brave. While she also omits that this guy is being hounded by radical Muslims every day because of a cartoon.

Can we focus on the closed-mindedness here? Imagine, say, that the cartoon was about Jesus and years later the cartoonist had to have a police escort and a tracking device and a safe room.

It’s called perspective liberals. While you kvetch about his cowardice leaving his grand-daughter in the living room–something, I too, question–you also ignore the constant, relentless threat he lives under for being an artist who dared poke fun of the Religion of Peace. The real story is that a couple years later, psychotic Muslims aren’t enlightened enough to endure criticism of their religion and then reinforce all stereotypes of a barbaric religion by being barbaric. (Ya gotta admit, an axe is pretty barbaric, no?)

It’s also getting more difficult to ignore the Religion of Peace when their extremist adherents are trying to blow up planes on Christmas. Oh yes, they respect other religions as much as they endure insults to their own.

So, until Islam goes through a reformation, focus your ire where it belongs: On the psychotic people unwilling to embrace enlightened values like tolerance and love and peace. You know, all those things John Lennon liked to imagine. It’s not the Christians conducting a jihad, here. They’re making difficult choices like whether they have time to pull their five year old granddaughter into the safe room without getting them both killed by an ax-wielding Muslim or trying to not get blown up on their plane home on Christmas.

Posted in Islam, Islamofascism, Liberals, Not America, Terrorism | 1 Comment »

Brit, Tiger, & Religion, Oh My! And: Is Christianity Shunned From Public Discourse?

A couple arguments surround the Brit discussion: One, should anyone be talking about Tiger’s relationship to God? Two, can Buddhism “save” Tiger like Christianity can save Tiger?

Charlie Martin and I both write pieces for Pajamas Media today talking about this issue. Here’s a bit of what I say:

There was a time when discussing one’s Christian faith may have been less controversial, but I don’t know. Even fifty years ago, there would have been a presumption that people would view Tiger Woods’ actions as immoral and a sign that he had some sort of emptiness in his life. Back in the day, such wanton infidelity was simply not spoken of publicly. It would be too shameful. Now the media spreads every sort of salacious detail of a celebrity’s life, and everyone is free to comment. Why should there not be a comment on his faith, too? We know that Tiger likes rough sex and sex without condoms and sex with porn stars and has super-human, possibly steroid-enhanced endurance. Should his spiritual beliefs be off-limits while his sexual exploits are fair game?

Discussion about either seems unseemly. Tiger’s sex life should be personal, and his relationship with God is even more intimate than that. His own careless actions made his sex life public. Does that free people to speculate about his spiritual life? It seems a personal relationship with Tiger would give a friend some cause to talk with him about God. A calling out like Hume’s seems destined to fail.

Then Charlie says:

Hume’s right that Buddhism doesn’t offer Tiger forgiveness from a deity or redemption. All Buddhism can do is remind him that he’s responsible for his actions and the consequences of those actions (the real meaning of karma) and remind him that his suffering now is one of those consequences. With that comes the recognition that you need to make amends to those you’ve hurt and try to remedy your behavior in the future.

Maybe that’s not as good as being forgiven and redeemed, but to me it seems a lot more productive.

To which I respond:

As to Brit’s theological assertion that Buddhism would not offer Woods the sort of redemption that a relationship with God and Jesus would offer, Buddhists like Charles Martin admit that Buddhism won’t give redemption or a relationship. The emphasis is on karma — what goes around comes around — and how Tiger is reaping the rewards of it.

In Christianity, the karmic notion is nothing new. Galatians 6:7 makes clear that God is not mocked and that we reap what we sow. The Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis noted a “Tao” of belief that most great religions share, and how this is centered around some version of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do to you.

Charles implies that in Christianity, there is no attempt to “make amends,” while in Buddhism that is the core tenet. As for remedying faults, the Greek word metanoia — translated as “to repent” — means to change. It implies a before and after. A Christian demonstrates his change by actions. “By their fruits you shall know them.” (Matthew 7 is a good book to read about condemning and discernment and repentance.) It’s not repentance or forgiveness of sin. It’s both.

Please go read both of our full articles.

Also, Brit Hume on O’Reilly said something interesting last night. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, that just mentioning Christianity is inflammatory, that no one wants to hear it. Do you agree?

Posted in Christianity, Corrupted Culture, Spirit, Sports | 2 Comments »

Can President Obama Be Ambiguously Christian Forever?–UPDATED The Obamas Didn’t Want The Nativity Scene?

Remember the Ambiguously Gay Duo from Saturday Night Live? Yeah, well, President Obama reminds me of them whenever he makes vague references to “divine” anything like he did in his Nobel Peace Prize speech today.

He’s so ambiguous that 39% of Israelis believe that President Obama is Muslim.

Updated:

President and Michelle Obama didn’t want the Nativity scene? Do you notice how inclusion means being nothing? Become everything to everybody and end up nothing to nobody….the danger of Barack Obama’s stance on, well, everything.

Posted in Christianity, Islam, Spirit | 4 Comments »

Random Tiger Woods Thought

The woman who publicized her affair with Tiger Woods could be stoned if she lived in Iran or Saudi Arabia. I mean, she’s admitting the affair. It would take four male witnesses [or eight women, because women are worth half a man], though, for Tiger to get stoned. I doubt there were that many witnesses. At the least, though, he might get 100 stripes.

Here’s some examples of tolerance.

So, if Tiger ends up out $300 million, at least he can be thankful he still has his hide. Good idea, not explaining his “transgressions.” That should be vague enough under Sharia.

Posted in Corrupted Culture, Islam | 1 Comment »

Evil

Roger Simon met Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and says, “I was in the presence of pure Evil.”

Roger’s analysis of coming face to face with evil is compelling. Please go read the whole thing. After you come back, I’ll have some thoughts that were triggered by his piece.

I met evil once. She was in the form of a patient. She made the hair on my neck stand and I felt physically ill/drained being around her. She is the first and only patient in eleven years who prompted me to ban her from ever setting foot in the practice again. There were other wacky and weak people. There were even unbalanced and in one or two cases, psychotic people. There’s been a stalker. But evil is a whole different kettle of fish and it’s a disgusting, oily, leaves-a-rancid-residue experience to interact with them.

When I met evil, I felt afraid.

Unlike Roger, I’ve never been atheist. I’ve had agnostic periods where my faith faltered, but God has influenced my life such that disbelief would be ungrateful and stupid, really. The school of hard knocks gave me some very direct answers. The answers have tended to be more mysterious than I expected and lead me on some paradoxical paths. God, it turns out, is nuanced.

Let’s face it. Being atheistic simplifies things. The world is what we experience and nothing more. The print we make on the earth begins at birth and ends at death. Bad people had bad life experiences which makes them do bad things. A better, kinder upbringing would make a better person who would do better things. And that’s mostly true, but sometimes it’s not.

An atheist doesn’t have to fiddle with good or evil. There’s just gradations of human. Some behavior is more helpful. Some behavior is less helpful. Iran’s leader, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mussolini, and even Hitler just consistently chose unhelpful behavior. A lot.

Acknowledging evil, though, complicates things, because that means there is also good. And we know this to be true. I’ve been in the presence of people who have a pureness of soul that’s difficult to describe. It’s just a relief to be around it. That’s why people love babies so much. They are so pure and sweet and good. It’s rarer to find in adults, but exists.

Roger asks why evil is allowed to exist. A friend and I discussed this recently. How, though, can free will exist without the possibility of choosing to do right and wrong? How can God know we believe if we’re guaranteed a simple, pain-free life just by being a believer? How will our faith be tested if every brush with evil leaves us unscathed? The ultimate evil, in my opinion, is death. From the loss of physical life, there is no redemption. Well, there is none without faith.

One more note. It is fashionable on the Left to label anyone who disagrees with politically correct ideology as evil. President Bush was called evil. There is a scripture that foretells of days when evil will be called good and good evil. To even imply that President Bush was evil is atrocious and diminishes true evil. I actually think that those on the Left have an easy time bandying about such terms because they don’t really believe in the concept of good and evil, but that know people on the Right do. So, calling President Bush evil is really about impugning believers–poking fun at their simple-mindedness.

But who is simple minded? Running away from the notion of evil lands a person in a place where engaging it is “rational”. Roger Simon asks incredulously, after meeting Ahmadinejad, “This was the guy that my president wanted to talk with?” Yes. Because evil doesn’t exist. Evil is the same sort of superstitious notion as ghosts and angels.

The evil count on this denial. The evil count on the weak and faithless to cower behind intellectualism and rational thought. Only those willing to name evil are willing to fight it.

Believing isn’t for sissies. It’s challenging, paradoxical and yes, nuanced. Does evil exist? Yes. Thankfully, so does Good.

Posted in Spirit | 2 Comments »

Obama Jesus

Well, self-love is all the rage. So why not substitute yourself in Jesus’ parables and not mention his name? From Dawn Eden:

And so it came to pass, beneath Gaston Hall’s beautiful painting of Morality, Faith, and Patriotism, with gold letters on the wall behind him spelling the Jesuit motto “Ad majorem Dei gloriam”—”To the greater glory of God”—Obama shared his prosperity gospel at the nation’s oldest Catholic university.

But there was one thing missing: Jesus’ name.

I’m not just talking about Obama’s failing to mention Jesus—though he did pointedly fail to mention the name of the One—that is, for him, the other “One”—who first told the “parable” he shared.

No, Jesus’ very name, in the form of the ancient monogram IHS, which had been in gold lettering on the wooden archway above Gaston Hall’s dais, was painted over (or otherwise expertly camouflaged) prior to Obama’s arrival. Apparently, the Name that is above every other name is not permitted to be above Obama.

The photo above shows the archway “before.” You can see the “after” clearly in C-SPAN’s video, as Georgetown President John DeGioia emerges to give his fawning introduction.

I can’t say I’m surprised. If Obama has a theology, I think it’s the if-I-believe-it-I-can-achieve-it. A Higher power interferes with self-love.

Obama is an amalgam both literally and philosophically and religiously. He believes and is everything and nothing. He’s a literal melting pot–heating up ideology and rhetoric and coming up with messages and meaning that suit him.

He is only offensive if you believe anything. No wonder he’s so popular.

Posted in Political Animals, Spirit | No Comments »

Behold! Christians Don’t Hate Jews!–UPDATED

Newsflash, people, Jesus was a Jew, The Guardian’s Howard Jacobson informs us. His real message seems to explain why Jews still fear Christians (and I might add, ignore all the evidence to the contrary and vote for people who actually aren’t pro-Israel and pro-Jew). He says:

It is a question of the deepest interest, how Christians have been able to maintain two parallel but entirely contradictory attitudes to Jews. The one, as described above, the effect of which has been to remove Jews from the sphere of the human altogether. The other, full of piety and respect, expressed in reverence for the Jewish Bible, in tender pilgrimages to the Jewish places of Jesus’s birth and upbringing, and even, in some quarters, in the fond adoption of Old Testament names for their offspring. The mind is a wonderful thing, capable (when it chooses) of entertaining apparently irreconcilable emotions. In this case, it is as though Christians simultaneously know and don’t know that Jesus was Jewish, but in order for the not knowing to win supremacy over the knowing they have had to do mental violence to themselves, of which the collateral victims have been the Jews. [Emphasis added.]

How else does one account for a calumny as grotesque and misapplied as the blood libel – a belief common throughout England and Europe in the Middle Ages and not entirely expunged in some parts of the world today, that Jews kill gentile children for their blood, which they drink or cook with in the course of whatever diabolic things Jews do when worshipping their God. If that is not an unconscious parody of the eucharist, a transference of shame felt towards something cannibalistic at the heart of Christian ritual, blame for which is then laid at the door of the older, crueller, fathering religion, I don’t know what it is.

Explain it how you will, Judaism is Christianity’s guilty secret, and God help whoever happens to be the occasion of a people’s guilt. “When will Jews be forgiven the Holocaust?” asks that dark philosopher John Gray. There is a prior question. When will Jews ever be forgiven giving Christianity its religion?

There is so much wrong with Jacobson’s take, but at essence, he writes like a European Jew stuck in history and explaining why Jews are right to be wary of Christians. Or rather, excusing Jewish bias towards Christians.

There is no question that historical Christian leaders had deep antipathy for their Jewish brethren. One could argue that changing the Sabbath to Sunday was a very real attempt, by Christians, to differentiate from Jews because back in the day, they were persecuted together because they were mostly Jews by birth who became Christ followers. The Gentiles came in later.

Mr. Jacobson clearly, though, does not understand or in some cases, distorts Christian dogma. And even that is difficult because everything from the nature of God to Armageddon is debated by Christian theologians. In essence, he’s debating a caricature of Christianity.

But this is all a diversion. Mr. Jacobson seems to be straining to find a reason why Christians can’t be trusted. It’s their own mental gymnastics that make them Christians to begin with–to believe that Jesus is God’s son. And it’s their own twisted morality that would have blamed Jews for Christ’s death. Therefore, Christians who do support Israel and Jews generally, are just delusional.

And that’s the real issue. In order to justify voting Democrat in the United States, and whomever the secular humanist, politically correct moral equivalence candidate is over in the UK, a Jew has to make Christians into conflicted, unpredictable, Illogical, immoral cartoons. Jews have to make Christians scary in order to turn a blind eye to the true threat before them: leaders who see no good and evil. Well, there’s an evil and the evil is the minority scape goat who makes life difficult because the more violent majority hates them.

I wouldn’t want to be a Jew in the UK or Europe today. Certainly, I wouldn’t want to be a Jew in Paris or Denmark right now. But the threat isn’t coming from the Christians. The threat is coming from the P.C. crowd who won’t condemn violent followers of an unreformed religion: Islam. Please read that sentence again. The threat isn’t even the violent Muslims. Not yet. They still need more numbers. And, as Mark Steyn says, time is on the Muslim’s side. The threat to Jews are those Machiavellian secularists who refuse to name evil when they see it.

The threat is the papers who sanitize phrases and refuse to note that the “youths” are Arab or Muslim. The threat is the schools who refuse to stand up to violent children and parents and protect Jewish children. The threat is the different newspapers too afraid to offend Muslims that they won’t put cartoons in the paper. The threat is the corrupt leaders appeasing terrorists and condemning Israel.

The threat to Jews has not been Christians, certainly not American Christians, for a very long time. And while I think it’s imperative for Christians to know about the Jewishness of Christ, I believe Mr. Jacobson’s angst is misplaced. Right now, the Jews staunchest allies and friends are Christians. It is difficult for some Jews to understand, but it’s actually quite simple. Christians acknowledge that the Jews were God’s people and still are. God loves them and blesses those who bless them and curses those who curse them. Christians who love God, will love the Jews.

Mr. Jacobson operates from an old reality. His suspicion is self-destructive. Many Jews seem to have a certain mind-blindness to the true existential threats before them. It’s time to see the world as it really is. Christians, Mr. Jacobson, are your best friends. It’s time you let go of your prejudice.

H/T Hotair

UPDATED:

I would recommend reading two books that relate to this issue:

David Brog explains why many Christians ardently support Israel and Jews specifically.

Mark Steyn illuminates the actual existential threat. Hint: It ain’t Christians.

Also read Jonah Goldberg’s recent Op-Ed Who Are the Real Nazis? Here’s a snippet:

Perhaps one reason Israel fails at genocide is that it isn’t interested in genocide? That would explain why Israel warned thousands of Gazans by cell phone to leave homes near Hamas rocket stockpiles. It would clarify why, even amid all-out war, it offers aid to enemy civilians.

Meanwhile, calls for the complete extermination of Israel are routine. The Hamas charter, invoking the fraudulent “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as justification, demands the destruction of Israel. Hamas exists solely because it is dedicated to the complete obliteration of the “Zionist entity.” Remove that “principle” and Hamas is meaningless.

A sick mixture of Holocaust envy and Holocaust denial is the defining spirit of Hamas. Indeed, Holocaust denial passes for a scholarly pursuit not just in Gaza but throughout much of the Arab and Muslim world.

Why the obsession with casting the Israelis as the new Hitlerites? One answer is surely that critics know such charges are painful to a country largely born of the Holocaust and marked by its scars. It also grabs attention, galvanizes radicals, vents legitimate frustrations and anger, and helps demonize the enemy and, hence, justify the murder of “Zionists everywhere,” as Hamas often declares in its communiques.

But I think the desire to cast the Israelis as Nazis is fueled, deep down, by the haters’ need to see their own hatreds and ambitions mirrored in their enemy’s actions. Hamas has an avowedly Hitlerite agenda. The only way to make such an agenda defensible is to convince yourself and others that the Israelis deserve it. Hence, Hamas and its allies insist that when they aim rockets at grade schools and playgrounds, they are resisting the “new Nazis.”

Also, for the genesis of liberal thought, read Jonah’s book. It should be required reading:

See also: Infidels Are Cool–great blog detailing the threat. He’s up for a BlogAward!

Posted in Isms, Spirit | 5 Comments »

The Travolta Tragedy

I hate cults.

Let’s just get that out of the way–whether it’s the ideology that encourages psychos in a compound to impregnate minors or convinces otherwise seemingly rational people that aliens gave diseases to earth dwellers or assures people that Gore is going to save the world one glorious carbon swap at a time–I hate cults. There are many reasons to hate them and the leaders that get rich off the followers of the ideology. Mostly, I hate cults because people cede their power and potential to another person or group and often drag innocent people (children) along with them in their craziness.

Here’s the thing, though. This is America. People are free to do what they damn well please as long as it’s legal. And because the line between cults and corporations or churches or groups is so fine, I’d rather err on the side of the individual to choose his own crazy. State-mandated “sanity” is its own crazy cult and I want even less a part of that than some insane idea cooked up in a basement somewhere.

That preamble brings me to Scientology and the death of John Travolta and Kelly Preston’s son, Jett Travolta. The death of Jett Travolta is a tragedy. It is a family tragedy. It is a personal tragedy. I might not agree with their family’s “religion”, but it is none of my business and it’s no one else’s either.

The fact that the Travolta’s son might have had autism and that the Church of Scientology doesn’t recognize the illness does not matter. Science has little of value to help families of autistic children so the diagnosis is nigh to irrelevant. If the family doesn’t want the label, who cares? Science fiction has about as much to help an autistic family as science. Right now, the best families can do is to love their kids and give them intense one-on-one education–something the Travoltas did (home schooling is very one-on-one).

Americans are free. They are free to be stupid. Parents are free to educate their children in a manner they see fit. They are free to go to the church and associate with whom they desire. And people are free to not accept a diagnostic label, even if it means they’re in denial, when the diagnosis yields little benefit (if any) and treatments are elusive.

All citizens should feel protective of these rights even if they disagree with how a person employs these freedoms individually. Freedom can be uncomfortable business, but totalitarianism is a whole lot less comfortable and it creeps on Americans one conventionally accepted dogma and public indictment at a time.

Posted in America, Body, Isms, Mind, Spirit | 4 Comments »

Are You Uglier Than A 5th Grader?

‘Tis the season of school concerts and behold the cherubic angels sing and play bells and perform vague “winter” music. But I’m not going to talk about political correctness run amok in our schools. No, today, I’m going to talk about the ugliest year in school–the year we all look back on with regret.

Fifth grade is ugly.

There were over fifty kids gathered last night. Individually, the kids are cute in an awkward, pot-bellied, big-pawed puppy sort of way. Collectively, the effect is hideous.

Teeth are too big for heads. Boys don’t care about personal hygiene and they are in serious need of some. Hormones are making bodies bulgy in all sorts of places. Girls are heads and shoulders taller than the boys. Some boys are midgets. Some look like short men. Kids are still coerced by parents, or just don’t care very much, about pants that are too short, hair that’s too straggly and long, glasses that are too big for the face, and shoes that don’t go with the clothes. Fifth grade is a fashion disaster.

And I’m not casting any stones here. I wish I could find the picture so I could scan it and show you people what I looked like in 5th grade. I’ll try to describe it. First, mom put me in a brown plaid shirt–you know, because plaid looks so good in pictures. I think I might have worn one of those bolo ties that were popular in the day. (Who could forget the leather vest stage? You know you had one.) Then there were the big man glasses. Those were awesome. They were the glasses that came with the insurance plan, don’t you know, and looked great on boys AND girls. They were straight across the top and too big with rounded bottoms. Did I mention that I carried a violin case everywhere?

There is a saving grace. In fifth grade, there still seems to be a measure of ignorant bliss. That is, the lack of self-awareness confers happiness. By seventh grade, a kid becomes aware and therefore miserable and that’s kinda sad. Wouldn’t it be great to hold on to nerdy selves and embrace it and not go through thirty years of angst trying to be something we’re not, only to come back around to who we were to begin with? It’s not like our essence changes, but we do try to package ourselves for public consumption–and let’s face it, to mate and be mate-worthy.

5th grade might be ugly, but its the beauty of the age that really makes grown-ups mourn.

Posted in Spirit | 7 Comments »