The image, by the way, is from the Armenian genocide, not from the Jewish Holocaust.

and why the church does not know how to respond:

The interview is long, and they spend almost the whole time dancing around the issue.

Jen finally hits the nail on the head in the last video around the 4-5 minute mark.  She says (paraphrased), “You want that teenage girl in your church struggling with feelings of faith and sexuality to choose faith over and against sexuality.”

This is the first issue.  Churches preach a lifestyle which is quite often just what is convenient.  Because I don’t want my kid to be gay I support the preacher who says that being gay is bad, and take my kid to listen to them invoke a magic book that says being gay is bad.  But the key is the motivation.

The second issue, which they did not get into, is the political motivation.  There is a problem when Christians more highly value the marriage contract they have with the state than the covenant they have with God and the church.  The fight for maintaining the status quo in terms of the legal definition of marriage has two political motivations, at least.

The first is the idea that if America chooses laws which reflect Biblical laws then it will enjoy a special blessing.  This blessing extends beyond the mere natural good consequences of good rules, but also invokes a special blessing.  I don’t know that God has extended that kind of a blessing to any nation since Israel.

The second is selfish guarding of political privileges afforded to some and not to others.  My marriage certificate from the state is no better than a discount coupon on state services (which reflects efficient bundling of contracts), and a signal to other institutions, such as insurance companies.  This set of contracts should either be extended to all or to none.

I listened to Knapp, and played her records on-air back when I was in the business.  Her lyrics are powerful and creative.  Honestly, in my shallowness, I was less interested in her work because I didn’t think she was “cute.”  But I’ve been listening to a lot of Derek Webb lately, and Knapp started her US tour with Webb last month, and his new album is very challenging, especially on the issue of homosexuality.

Christians keep missing the beat by falling into the patterns listed above.  They key is to center in on the peculiar nature of Christian marriage.  We understand marriage to be a peculiar covenant designed to reflect the relationship between Jesus and the church.  Jesus is depicted as a bridegroom and the church as a bride.  Male and female.  Whether this metaphor is strict in its use of gender may be the center of the debate.  I take it to reflect a hierarchy which does not imply superiority, and believe some of that meaning is lost by moving away from the particular gender employed in the passage.

Does this mean that homosexual Christians are not saved?  No.  But it does mean that they have a broken understanding of sex and marriage.  They are missing out on that.  But 99% of evangelical pastors cannot articulate the profundity of the meaning of marriage and its peculiarity in a Christian context, either.  The pastor on Larry King could not articulate it.  Haggard could not articulate it.  Knapp did not deal with it.  Chances are, none of your pastors have, either.  I learned it from Derek Prince’s book, “Husbands and Fathers;” and from Elizabeth Elliot’s books, “Passion and Purity”, and “The Mark of a Man.”

April 5 was a remarkable day for sports — especially sports and religion. With baseball’s opening day, Tiger Woods’ spiritual transformation, and the miraculous NCAA championship game, one only needed to watch American sports to see that the national soul is alive and well.

Soulfulness? Really?
How united was America Monday? Some watched basketball (like me), some watched golf (yawn), and some watched baseball (meh). This strikes me more as peaceful division and the satisfaction of individual preferences, not anything having to do with heritage or solidarity.
Why is this community/solidarity concept so important to you anyway? We have another community, the church, which has nothing to do with sport, or tribalism (nationalism), or classism, etc. America is not united, nor need it be! With a minimal agreement to get along with each other and through voluntary exchange we each have greater opportunity to pursue our individual goals. When solidarity is pushed too hard those individual goals are prohibited in order to force the group’s goals.
I don’t know why you are reaching for a touchy-feely kind of experience here.
And America does not have a soul. Each human being has a soul. For some reason, that which you are searching for through community, God has preferred to give to us through individuals.
The only legitimate community is when the individuals subsume their own preferences to another. This can be a national ethos, a government, or a club, in each of these cases it is idolatry. Instead we need to subsume ourselves under Christ, and Christ alone. There is no room for these other communal attachments for the Christian.

Already outrage is focused on Massey Energy, owner of the Upper Big Branch mine. Massey has a history of negligence, and Upper Big Branch has often been cited in recent years for problems, including failure to properly vent methane gas, which officials say might have been the cause of Monday’s explosion.

My comments:

I’m sorry, but whom are you blaming here?  Did not these miners voluntarily take these jobs?  Did they not know the risks?  Whose responsibility should it be to assess risks?  I never trust the opposite side to a transaction, I always check things out for myself.
Miners are paid a premium to work in risky conditions.  Is this unjust?  Firemen and garbage collectors similarly get paid a premium for working in distasteful conditions, is this unjust?  Should no one have to be a fireman?
This article implies that no one should have to be a miner.  Fine.  Then don’t be a miner.  But if other people are happy to take the job, then it is their own lives they are putting at risk.  They are free to do so.
Accidents happen.
People get in car wrecks.  If we lowered the speed limit to 15 mph fewer people would die in car wrecks, that is, conditions would be safer.  But then it would barely be worthwhile to drive or own a car.  “Yet much increase is by the strength of the ox (automobile).”
People who wish for a perfect world where there are perfectly safe conditions everywhere live sheltered lives, and fail to appreciate how much better off the world is thanks to people who are willing to push forward and take risks.
Surely we grieve when loved ones die in accidents.  We grieve whether the accident was in a mine or in a minivan.  But we step outside of grief into vengeance when we propose outlawing minivans because they can result in accidents.
If there was fraud, then the liars should be made to pay.  But the workers themselves should never assume that the ones who pay them are telling the truth, and neither should any of the rest of us, whatever our occupation.  We often assume that the government should step in and regulate industries so we don’t have to adopt a “buyer beware” approach to transactions.  But what should make us trust the government???  We must always practice “buyer beware” even when it is our job we are buying.  Any other approach is an attempt to shirk responsibility.
Oh yeah, and West Virginia was loosing before Da’Sean got injured.  He also took on a risk, but do we blame his coach for his injury?  Of course not.

Pajamas Media has another interpretation.  (Gavel bang to Adam Gurri)  It is a war.  People die.  The soldiers followed protocol.

I posted on the Pajamas site, and provided my email address to their readers.

In this post I tried to avoid the more incendiary issues at hand.

I appreciate the more in depth reporting this post provides when compared to the wikileaks version. I understand that many readers here believe the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is justified due to the 911 attacks, and threat of WMDs. I don’t know that we can ever eradicate all terrorist threats, however, and I am inclined to believe that continued war (it has been 8+ years now) has decreasing benefits.
The incident in question is important because American public opinion may shift away from support of the war if the brutality, justified or not, is shown to them more often.
Personally, I am in favor of bringing all our boys home now. The war is too expensive. For the price we have paid so far we could have given every innocent man, woman, and child Iraqi citizen almost $20,000. If we let the oppressed among them move here they would have shown their gratitude by becoming productive citizens, as many Iraqis who have been able to immigrate have done.
Also, all our soldiers could be at work building and making things rather than breaking them and tearing them down. It could help with economic recovery.
I hope that more videos like this are leaked, and that the American public does shift against war support. I only hope that condemnation of soldiers, who have been voluntarily putting their lives on the line, does not follow. The politicians and their bad decisions are to blame, not the soldiers.
End the war now.
Bring our boys home.
ndsnow@gmail.com

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