Well, once again, I am a bad, bad, man. I did not blog yesterday...but it was another crazy day.

I'm not really sure what to write today except that I am dying to do a podcast because there is so much that I want to talk about. Crank up your podcatcher cause I got a lot to say soon!

The Sound of Theos

Baptist gathering in Atlanta is one sign of theological shift
By RAY WADDLE • January 26, 2008

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Despite all the talk of public religion now, there's little public discussion of theology. People have passionate opinions about Fox News or Hillary Clinton, not St. Augustine or John Wesley, and judge others accordingly.

But it's the curse of religion writers to detect a theological dimension to everything, including politics. A person's concept of God (harsh, merciful or indifferent) shapes political outlook.


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Even denials of theology carry a whiff of the theological: Rejecting God, many an atheist is merely rejecting a deficient concept of God from childhood.

Theology never disappears. It just goes underground, where the theological tectonic plates quietly grind on, altering the landscape, adjusting to new social conditions.

For centuries, American theology was monopolized by a particular brew of Protestant piety. It honored Scripture and insisted on vivid personal conversion. It said human sin shipwrecks all dreams of social progress. Salvation was intensely personal ? no vision of political reform.

In the South, it inspired personal kindness and neighborliness but, paradoxically, blessed slavery and segregation. Doctrinal conformity enforced the social contradictions.

This old pattern is crumbling. That's been a storyline for 40 years: the old theological arguments that once gave denominations their identities carry no weight with new generations.

In the South, the old but uneasy mixture of revivalist evangelicalism (born-again experience, available to all) and intellectual Calvinism (respect for God's majesty, notions of preordained salvation) has trouble holding up against the messages of pop music, therapy, digital proliferation and global pluralism. The rise of megachurches and the rise of yoga are different responses to the same thing: rejection of doctrinal enforcement of the old rules.

New theologies struggle to be born.

Diverse Baptists to meet
Next week's unusual Baptist assembly in Atlanta is another sign of spiritual tectonic shifts.

The New Baptist Covenant will attract 30 organizations (racially, geographically, theologically diverse) to promote the example of Jesus and liberalize the Baptist public image, now dominated by the conservative, high-profile Southern Baptist Convention.

The new movement may turn out to be the biggest surge yet of "golden-rule Christianity," a theological style emerging as a defiant alternative to doctrinal conflict. Golden-rule Christians (as sociologists describe them) favor compassionate action over creedal uniformity.

As an informal alliance, the New Baptist Covenant isn't indifferent to doctrine.

Officially it reaffirms traditional Baptist values. It also aims to fulfill "the biblical mandate to promote peace with justice, feed the hungry ? and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity."

Many will be watching. Can it have an impact? Can it build momentum and be theologically coherent too, despite its diversity?

In a world driven to violence by rival claims of religious truth, many are searching for a new theology, a new way to balance compassion with moral certainty.

Columnist Ray Waddle, a former Tennessean religion editor, can be reached at ray@raywaddle.com.

Well, yesterday was an incredibly long and hard day. I did not blog...obviously. Time just did not allow it.

The subject for today is quite simple. As a matter of fact, I am going to let the words and the images speak for themselves. Go to www.abort73.com and remember these images and facts when you go to the polls to vote this year. The platform for the Democratic Party is pro-choice, i.e. pro-murder. This website is for those who think the abortion issue is no longer as important or relevant. It is just as relevant and important today as murder because abortion is murder. It is murder in the most hideous form. It is genocide, particularly among the black community and the poor.

Remember that when Monica Lewisky's ex-lover's wife smiles and cries for the camera and talks about needing change in Washington.

Before I start, just to let you know, I might put up a podcast today or tomorrow or both so be looking for that.

Sorry for not blogging yesterday. It was my wife's b-day and a crazy day at work and with all the excitement, it just did not happen. I do hope you enjoyed the funny video though...btw, no reflection on my day; I do not think I would ever destroy a computer just for the heck of it. I have been tempted though. :)

So today, I've been thinking a lot about family and the biggest thought that I have right now is that the relationship you have with your family, in particular to the one that you marry into, is just plain weird. For instance, last night at my wife's b-day party, some jokes were made at my expense. To be honest, they were jokes that I did not really appreciate. In particular, they were jokes regarding our financial state. That's a pretty sensitive subject with me right now and frankly, I was hoping that most of my family understood that and would not bring it up, but I guess I was wrong. Honestly, it bothered me, but I recognize that I am a sensitive guy and I did my best to let it roll off my back. To be honest, it wasn't easy though. I did that typical hypocritical thing that I hate that I do and put on a smile and laughed through it while inside it felt like my heart was ripping out...not to be overly dramatic, but it did suck. Part of me wanted to just simply tell them that I did not appreciate the jokes, but really, what would it have mattered? It probably would have simply made things worse. Perhaps next time I should just make a point and walk away, but I did not and here I sit writing.

Anyway, I digress. For those of you who are single, remember: When you marry your wife, you also marry their family, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now, God knows my family is not perfect and He also knows that I am not, but regardless, there will always be things about your family, be they blood or not, that will bother you. However, somehow, these people end up endearing themselves to you in a way that can only be explained by love. Slowly, but surely, you end up loving people despite the flaws that you can see and despite the fact that there is so much about them that you want to change. I can honestly say that I love my in-laws dearly, but living with them is definitely not supposed to be a permanet thing and as my wife pointed out to me once, it is not supposed to feel good; it is supposed to feel uncomfortable.

So with all that being said, your family becomes part of your life and as you step back and look at them, you see that in so many ways, they are so much like you. In fact, maybe that is why those flaws bother you sometimes because those flaws are the exact ones you see in yourself. It is true that life is beautiful in weird ways and my life, just like my family's lives, often looks like a beatiful disaster. I am learning that accepting my family, the good, the bad, and the ugly, is a part of life, just like accepting yourself. In yourself, you accept the good and you try and change the bad and the ugly, if you can, and learn to live with it if you cannot. The same is with your family. You easily accept the good parts, you want to reject the bad and the ugly, but you cannot. You find that just like yourself, you can only change what you can change, and for the rest, you learn to live with it.

It seems to me that it is all just becomes part of this kaleidoscope we call life...

glumbert - Bad Day at the Office

Ron's Revolution

January 23, 2008 - 12:54 ET

GLENN: I thought I would get Ron Paul on the phone and find out where he stands on the economy, what the problems are with the economy, what he thinks is coming in our future and how he would correct it if he was President of the United States, and he's on with us now, hello, Ron Paul.

PAUL: Hello, nice to be with you.

GLENN: Nice to be with you, sir. First of all, tell me what's happening with the economy.

PAUL: Well, it's making the correction that was inevitable due to the malinvestment and the unbelievable debt accumulated due to a federal reserve policy. Once they create credit out of thin air, they cause business people, savers to do the wrong thing and you always have to have a correction. So dealing with the recession is very difficult because the cars with a few years ago and we have to work our way out of this, which means there has to be a correction.

GLENN: Okay. If you were President of the United States, what would you do?

PAUL: Well, the advice would be return to the market economy. First we would have to deregulate. We had a crisis a few years ago, at least a supposed crisis with Enron and they superregulated. So I would repeal certainly major portions of the Sarbanes-Oxley. So we would argue for deregulation. Then, of course, there should be major, major tax reform and --

GLENN: Hang on. Before we go into tax reform, let me just start with Sarbanes-Oxley. I don't want to get all -- that's way deep. So let's kind of surface skim here so we don't make people's heads spin off their shoulders. The deregulation, some people will say that part of the problems, for instance, with the bonds is that these insurance companies, they had no regulation. So they just kept insuring people even though they didn't have the money.

PAUL: Yeah, but that was all government, you know. When you have the FDIC or the FHA or whatever ones. The main problem is that we don't save money. That's where capital's supposed to come from. Instead we print money. We create money. We call it capital and then interest rates may be 1 or 2 or 3% and business people think, well, there's a lot of savings going on out there. So they do the wrong things. If interest rates were very high, they would be more cautious but instead we create the bubbles. People start building houses to extreme and then they overbuild and then you have to rest in order for the markets to catch up. And that's when the bubble collapses, and we're in the midst of that. But government does it in both ways, excessive credit and also pushing money into certain areas such as housing or the financial markets and they overprice. Then the prices have to come down. So it's a very difficult situation, but the main goal should be the restoration of the market economy.

GLENN: Okay. So now, you mentioned tax cuts. Congress, both sides of the aisle are talking now about $800 tax rebates to the poorest people in America. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a job created by a guy who's at the bottom of the ladder. This seems just like a plan to get people to spend which to me is what got us here in the first place.

PAUL: Yeah, you are right. And all you do is you encourage consumption and we're overdoing consumption right now. It's not a tax rebate if you send somebody a check for $800 for not paying taxes. That's a welfare check.

GLENN: Thank you.

PAUL: And that money really doesn't go to producing jobs. What you have to do is restore the savings and encourage capital investment. You have to eliminate taxes on capital gains and we have to do whatever we can, get rid of the taxes, the death tax and eliminate taxes on dividends and savings. All these things would encourage savings and then have a market rate for interest rates to give us the signal on whether we should be investing or saving or spending. But that doesn't exist anymore and that's why we have these perpetual bubbles. I think this bubble right now that has been kept together for quite a few years is a major problem and the unwinding of this problem is very critical. The biggest bubble's in the dollar bubble and now the dollar is coming under attack. And what are they proposing? Excessive spending, you know, deficit spending which, where are they going to get the money? They don't have any money in Washington. They either have to borrow from China or print it, which means there's more inflation. Or the Federal Reserve comes in and said, like yesterday, drastically lowering interest rates? How do they lower interest rates? They print a lot more money. Yesterday when they announced that, the dollar immediately reversed itself and sharply went down and it's the weakening of the dollar that is the crisis that we face because everybody suffers from that. You and I suffer because all of a sudden the dollar in that wallet buys 80 cents worth of goods instead of a dollar's worth. So we all get poor and we have to stop that cycle.

GLENN: Nobody understands that, well, they say let me give $800 to the poorest, they are really not doing that much because the dollar is worth so little. The poorest are being hit by inflation harder than anybody else.

PAUL: That is exactly right. The do-good liberal who said we have to take care of everybody -- and they are well intentioned. The more debt they run up to give to the poor, the poorer the people get because they cannot keep up. Take, for instance, even Social Security recipients. Their inflation rate might be 10 or 12% and we give them a cost of living increase of 2%. So they're losing. And you just can't keep that cycle going. You have to balance the budget, you have to live within our means and then we have to restore confidence to the dollar. So it's a major, major undertaking. But we have to reverse it.

I think the most immediate thing is to cut back on spending, not increase spending, and get the money back into the hands of the market of savers and investors and people who are spending. But government economic planning does not work and that's what we're coming to the realization.

GLENN: Well, when you say government economic planning, the Fed is not the government and the Fed just made the largest cut that they have made since 1984. It is the first emergency cut since right after September 11th. There's talk now that they may cut another quarter, which is insanity. There's just no more that you can cut unless you destroy the dollar. What are your thoughts on the Fed?

PAUL: Well, they are the culprit. They caused it. They caused it by keeping interest rates artificially low. How are they trying to solve the problem? Keeping interest rates low. For an hour or to the markets rebounded because they're conditioned to listen to that and they figure, oh, the market's going to go up because interest rates are coming down but today I predict the market's going to go down again because that was only temporary. You cannot change the long-term trend of the market. You can temporarily tinker with it. You can artificially make them go up. But eventually the market is more powerful than the Fed and the government and the rejection of the dollar is the crisis that we face and we face that because we create too much money and we do that because we spend too much, both overseas and domestically and we have to deal with this. We have to live within our means. If we could just freeze all spending domestically and I know we disagree on the overseas expenditures but why do we pay for the defense of Europe and Japan and Korea? We could save hundreds of billions of dollars. So this is my argument and it's well received. Yeah, why do we pay for defense of Europe?

GLENN: Right.

PAUL: If we could save that money, why don't we spend that money here? Just think of all the money that would float back to this country if all those military personnel were stationed here spending the money in this country. We wouldn't be less safe. I think we would be more safe.

GLENN: I'm not necessarily, I'm not necessarily opposed to pulling troops out of some parts of the world but I don't want to get into that today.

PAUL: Yeah, with he don't need to get into that today.

GLENN: We can get into that some other time. I really want to focus on the economy and the gold standard. You are one of the only people that is talking about the return of the gold standard. It was -- I mean, honestly, I mean, Ron, you know, jeez. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but you know what, at times I believe I am a conspiracy theorist because there's a lot of stuff that just, if you read history and you go back all the way to Woodrow Wilson, you can see that the foundation was laid for one-world government, the foundation was laid for socialism, and I really, truly believe that these -- you know, Hillary Clinton says she's not a liberal, she's, quote, a modern day Progressive. Anybody who knows what a Progressive is, that is a nightmare. It is the road to socialism.

Do you believe that there is any intentional intent to take us down these roads and bankrupt us because anybody with a clue would know what's coming around the corner with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and I don't know how you can say I want to do universal healthcare as well.

PAUL: You know, I guess there's a lot of evidence for that. It's awfully tempting. I always try to say, well, they are doing it out of ignorance and lack of understanding of how the market economy works rather than saying, oh, I'd like to bring on a Depression. I think they actually believe that they are good managers. Alan Greenspan once told me -- because he used to be a gold standard person and he's written very well about that in his early years. But he says, no, he says, we central bankers have learned to make paper money act as if it's gold. You know, they come to believe in themselves that there is good and they can manage as well as the market, and I told him after that, I said, you know, if you do that, this will be the first time in all of history that anybody could do that, you know, to make paper money act like gold money.

You know, you should never be embarrassed about the gold standard because one of our most favorite Presidents, Ronald Reagan, told me personally once, he says, you know, he says, I'm interested in gold because, he says, if you study history, you find out any great nation that has gotten off the gold standard will no longer remain great. And we just got off the gold standard totally in 1971 and if you look at the statistics, in '71 when it comes to spending and deficits and inflation and the value of the dollar, I mean, they're dramatic. And I just want to make sure we wake up before the dollar totally collapses because that is a real tragedy if we let that happen.

GLENN: How come Ronald Reagan didn't put us on the gold standard? I mean, if anybody had the clout to do it, how come he didn't do it? And if you were President, how would you propose we would do that?

PAUL: Well, it's not easy but what I would do is not want to close down the Federal Reserve because that is dramatic and it wouldn't happen. It would be chaotic, too. All I want to do is legalize the Constitution, let you and me use gold if we want, which means you have to remove sales taxes and capital gains tax off gold and let it circulate just like currency circulated around the world. So if you want to save for your kids' education, you can put them in gold bonds and if the dollar, if you've got, the dollar's going down more rapidly than the price of education goes up, you could save in gold. You could get paid in gold and if we --

GLENN: Hang on.

PAUL: Then paper will not be used anymore.

GLENN: Wait a minute. But what you're proposing, you're this close to being arrested if you -- I mean, if you went and actually did that, they already have. The liberty dollar guys. They have tried to arrest the guy and say, you are trying to compete with the currency of the United States of America. What you're talking about now, you can be arrested for.

PAUL: Yeah. So the Constitution is being violated by law and it's supposed to be the other way around. And this is why I used to term this legalize the Constitution, this legalize gold and silver which is in the Constitution. So you would have to change the tax code. You'd have to persuade the congress to do this, but it would be less chaotic. This is exactly what I proposed in the early 1980s when I was on the gold commission, competing currencies. Economists think you can have competing currencies easier today than in the past because the world's always have competing currencies. Just allow gold and silver to do the same thing.

GLENN: When you were on my program on television, you said something that I didn't correct because I didn't -- I mean, it sounded so outlandish but I let it go because I didn't have the facts and you sounded so convinced of it that I thought, hmmm, I've got to check into that and I'll correct it the next time he's on or I'll correct it the next day. What you said was, if we got rid of the income tax, the Government would still take about the same amount of money in as they had ten years ago.

PAUL: Approximately.

GLENN: We looked into it and it's accurate. Can you explain that and how do we get that message out to people?

PAUL: Well, it's just that the growth of spending is so rapid that people don't realize that freezing budgets would be a tremendous benefit and that's one of my proposals in my economic reforms is just, freeze nondefense and nonentitlement spending which would go a long way to coming to the balance. I think $1 trillion less 10 years ago, I think government was adequate size 10 years ago. But we have this notion that everything that is to have perpetual growth. Just think of our friends in the Republican party that used to run against the Department of Education. What did we do when we finally got in charge? We doubled the size of the Department of Education. We create new departments. We never slow up. Do we do anything to unwind the dependency of the farmers on centralized planning for farmers which pushes cost of food up? You know, it just doesn't make any sense. The people demand change, or they did in '94 and the year 2000, no wonder they're aggravated with us.

GLENN: Wait, wait.

PAUL: We need to at least freeze things without cutting anything.

GLENN: Hang on just a second. The people demand change. Well, the people are demanding change now so much that the voice of the people is so clear that everybody has as their slogan or on their little yard signs either "Change" or in your case "Revolution." And it is -- I mean, it's everywhere. Everybody knows we want change and yet the people are going to the polls and they are voting for Hillary Clinton or John McCain. How do you explain that?

PAUL: Well, it's not easily explained but I think there's a lot of information lacking from these people. A lot of people, you know, you and I and others talk about, you know, the issues and the politics of it but, you know, probably 80 or 90% of the people feel like it's their patriotic duty to vote but they only think about voting about two or three days before the election. We think everybody's interested. You know, we get on a stage and have a debate. We think, boy, everybody's paying attention to us. 80 or 90% of the people are looking at football games but they still feel like they have to vote. It will be very vague information. But all I can see is the people that support me do a lot of reading and they know what's going on and they know what they're supporting and they know about the economic issues and they know about the gold standard and they know they don't like the income tax. So that's a little bit different. And the other thing is they always know I've voted the way I've talked and right now there's a lot of disenchantment with people saying one thing and doing something else.

GLENN: Will you run as a third candidate if you done get the nomination?

PAUL: No, I don't want to do that. I have no plans of doing that. This is a tough enough job right now.

GLENN: Really? Well, why is that? You don't think -- I mean, if it was McCain and Clinton, you don't think there would be a lot of people going, well, jeez, I can't vote for either of them?

PAUL: I think it's the system that bothers me the most. You know, the job of getting on the ballot, I probably spend millions of dollars and half of my effort just wondering if I could even get on the ballot. Then the debates wouldn't be available to me and you probably wouldn't have me on your program or something.

GLENN: Yes, I would.

PAUL: I wouldn't be a major party.

GLENN: Yes, I would. Yes, I would. You know what, I'm very offended by some of your supporters because they always say that, you know, I won't listen to you or I won't have you. I'm probably the guy on talk radio, mainstream talk radio that will at least say I agree with you on a lot of things. I just disagree with you vehemently on others.

PAUL: And I appreciate that.

GLENN: I mean, you know, we just -- I just happen to disagree with you, but I respect you, sir, for your opinion. I have said this, you know, behind your back. So let me say it to your face. I think you are the closest we have running to a founding father. You seem to be the only guy who has actually read the federalist papers. So I appreciate your efforts, sir.

PAUL: Well, thank you very much.

GLENN: You bet. We will talk to you again.

PAUL: Thanks for having me.

GLENN: You bet. Bye-bye.

You know how I said I would try to blog everyday? Well, I'm trying, but today, it is not easy. So to continue my thought...My question was: "If theology applies to every aspect of life, including how and who we elect for the Presidency, then what effect has postmodernism had on this process?"

Remember, WikiWikiWikipedia (that's a joke, not a typo) defines postmodernism as "postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality." So, if truth does not have a "central hierarchy," if truth does not have any "organizing principle," then how can a candidate appeal to any greater power for responsibility? At this point, truth becomes relative and very subjective. Truth becomes about Me. What are the Republicans going to do for Me? What are the Democrats going to do for Me? Truth becomes complex because truth becomes about the individual and each candidate for President realizes this, therefore, most of them appeal to the "let me tell you what I am going to do for you as President" and very few candidates are actually running on a legitimate platform that talks about theories of government that work best for the country as a whole.

Talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Quinn and Rose, and especially Sean Hannity (annoyingly so) point to direct contradictions among the Democrats, but to the average American, they do not care because it is not about truth (or at least not an objective view of the truth) because Truth has not central hierarchy, no organizing principle, is contradictory and thus extremely complex and purposefully ambiguous.

So think about that as you realize that millions of Americans will go their respective state polling places to vote in their state primary and will go to the polls on November 4th to elect a national President and they will not have this country's best course in mind; they only have themselves in mind.

Still think that Postmodernism has nothing to do with you?

Those of you that listen to my podcast know that I have been talking a lot about politics, in particular, Ron Paul. My premise is that "theology is everything." It affects everything we do. I made this proposal in a paper that I wrote as a theological reflection of Helmut Thielicke's A Little Exercise For Young Theologians.. I think that it affects how we even choose a President.

I listed to part of a sermon by Pastor David Denny, pastor of Whipple Avenue Baptist Church in Canton, Ohio, where my father-in-law and stepmother-in-law attend, as well as many other family members. I like Pastor Denny, and in this sermon, he talked at length about the difference between modernism and postmodernism. According to Wikipedia, modernism is "a series of reforming cultural movements in art and architecture, music, literature and the applied arts which emerged roughly in the period of 1884-1914." It goes on further: "The term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. It is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation." If I may be so bold as to add to this, modernism fits very well in classical Protestant liberalism and in many of our current theologically conversative churches, particularly among fundamentalist churches. The difference is that the elements are changed in fundamentalism to include a very narrow set of "set of thought" that replaces human beings with a certain formula of traditions that will "create, improve, and reshape your enviroment." Let's not fool ourselves. The fundamentalist movement in the United States, complete with its legalism that is not part of the Bible, can be just as dangerous as Protestant Liberalism. Perhaps this is part of the reason there was such a strong reaction in the system of postmodernism.

I should pause here and explain that by fundamentalism I do not mean the typical fundamentalist theological system that holds to the "fundamentals of the faith." That aspect of the original fundamentalist movement is to be commended from moving away from the more liberal aspects of modernity. According to Wikepedia: "The term 'fundamentalism' was originally coined to describe a narrowly defined set of beliefs that developed into a movement within the US Protestant community in the early part of the 20th century. These religious principles stood in opposition to the modernist movement and espoused the strict adherence to and faith in religious 'fundamentals'." The fundamentalism that I am referring to is the branch that Wikepedia describes thus: "Over time the term came to be associated with a particular segment of Evangelical Protestantism, who distinguished themselves by their separatist approach toward modernity, toward aspects of the culture which they feel typify the modern world, and toward other Christians who did not similarly separate themselves. Examples of things that fundamentalists might believe important to avoid[citation needed] are modern translations of the Bible, alcohol and recreational drugs, tobacco, popular music (often including Christian contemporary music), television,[5] the use of instruments in worship, dancing, "mixed bathing" (men and women swimming together), gender-neutral or trans-gender clothing and hair-styles, and clothes that are immodest, i.e. show an excessive amount of flesh. Such things might seem innocuous to the outsider, but to some fundamentalists they represent the leading edge of a threat to the virtuous way of life and the purer form of belief that they seek to protect and to hold forth before the world as an example. Many fundamentalists accept only the King James Version translation of the Bible and study tools based on it, such as the Scofield Reference Bible.[citation needed]"

Postmodernism is defined by Wikipedia as "a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism..." It goes on to talk about this reaction: "Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo) was originally a reaction to modernism (not necessarily "post" in the purely temporal sense of "after"). Largely influenced by the disillusionment induced by the Second World War, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality." In other words, and as Pastor Denny put it, postmodernism is characterized by asserting that modernism (remember: the system that Protestant liberalism is rooted in and the system that I believe fundamentalism is also rooted in) did not have the answers that it said it did and by further asserting that not only did modernism not have the answers, but no one has those answers.

One of more troubling aspects of postmodernism, particularly when it is applied to modern textual criticism of the Scriptures, is that of deconstructionism. Deconstructionism asserts that not only can we not know the answers to modern problems, but there are also other things that we cannot know, such as the author's intent when he/she is writing, thus we cannot truly know what, for example, the Apostle Paul was truly trying to get at in his epistles because we cannot know his underlying assumptions or issues. Taken to the extreme, we can never know truth about anything, thus truth become relative. Subsequently, if we are to try and truly understand what the author's intent is, we must deconstruct the writing and then try and reconstruct them to discover what the true intentions are.

Now, back to my original thought: If theology applies to every aspect of life, including how and who we elect for the Presidency, then what effect has postmodernism had on this process? This is a big thought, and one I will have to write more on later...

By the way, as I was writing this, I heard on the radio that Fred Thompson has dropped his bid for the nomination of the President. Apparently, his mother is very ill. Or...as the postmodernist would say..."Is that the real reason?"

For the record, so you guys do not think I'm a jerk or anything...I wish Thompson and his family all the best and pray that his mother speedily recovers.

It has come to my ever-widening attention that I blog very few original posts, so with a cynical eye to my own consistency, I am going to endeavor to blog something every day, even if it is something very little.

Today, I continually butt my head against my own ignorance. Although I have a college degree and even pride myself on my ability to be able to have very good grammar, I always seem to catch myself violating the "i before e except after c" rule. Everytime I type the word receive, it looks to me like it should say "recieve." The other one I struggle with is the affect/effect rule. I even printed out something to help me remember when to use which word. There are times I feel like such a moron. :)

Wee Frees told to 'cheer up' by own magazine

By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent

Last Updated: 3:46am GMT 14/01/2008




Members of a famously dour Presbyterian church have been urged by their official magazine to "lighten up".

For decades the ultra-Conservative Free Church of Scotland has been caricatured as gloomy and depressive, only truly content when it is opposing Sunday ferry services or chaining up play park swings on the Sabbath.

The Calvinist church is most strongly represented
in the west Highlands of Scotland

The central tenet of its faith is the fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy", and one minister caused outrage when he said the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 in which 226,000 people died was sent by God to punish "pleasure seekers from all over the world" who broke the Sabbath.

However, the God-fearing members of the Calvinist church, most strongly represented in the islands and west Highlands, are now being urged to express what the editor of the monthly magazine calls "serious joy".

The Rev David Robertson, editor of the Monthly Record, said worshippers needed to dispel the notion that Wee Frees, as they are nicknamed, are characterised by "doom, gloom and joylessness".

As part of its bid to shed its fire-and-brimstone image, the church has endorsed the Harry Potter stories, as well as the fantasy movie The Golden Compass, both of which have been denounced as "ungodly" by some Christian groups.

Mr Robertson wrote: "The definition of a Calvinist as being a person who is miserable at the thought that someone somewhere is actually enjoying themselves is sadly all too typical.

"In the Free Church I'm afraid that we are not good at joy in worship. So much of our worship has no soul, no spirit and very little joy."

Mr Robertson said his fellow clergymen were often lampooned with some justification as being like the late Rikki Fulton's lugubrious TV clerics, the Rev IM Jolly and the Rev WE Free.

He added: "They are caricatures, but sadly they are popular because they reflect a common understanding.

"Religion, especially of the Scottish Presbyterian kind, is doom, gloom, blackness, depressive and joyless. Let congregations pray, think and act in order to deal with the sin of joyless worship.

"This is not a plea for frivolity, flippancy or entertainment - 'fun' worship. But please can we have some serious joy."

Mr Robertson, who recently took over the editorship of the traditionally staid magazine, said Presbyterians should rejoice rather than recoil at the success of the Harry Potter series and The Golden Compass.

"The Potter books are popular because they are immensely enjoyable," he said.

"JK Rowling has no aim other than to write good stories which are actually moralistic, and in the tradition of all good fairy tales, about the battle between good and evil.

"In terms of attacking the Christian world view they are a lot less dangerous than Neighbours or EastEnders."

Mr Robertson said on Sunday that the reaction to his liberal stance had been largely positive.

However, his call for cheerier congregations and ministers has not met with universal approval.

One reader wrote to cancel his subscription and accused Mr Robertson of "endorsing witchcraft".


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