Dan Haseltine is the lead singer for Jars of Clay. In January he posted the following on the Jars of Clay message board. I think its worth serious contemplation before your knee-jerk reaction:

“I do believe that there is a great amount of injustice surrounding the abortion issue. There are people on both sides of the argument that have made some tremendously hard and wrong choices in elevating their views on the issue. And the very basics of a child being killed is both unjust, and tragic.

IT is also a tragedy how Christians have sidelined almost every other issue, the majority have not even considered environmental issues, greater issues of poverty, and disease…. and perhaps the greatest epidemic, isolation.

I believe that part of our problem is that we have chosen issues that seem to require legislation to create a solution. But for the Christian church to hope and rely on this governmental fix is both ignorant and devastating to humanity at large.

Abortion is the symptom of greater problems… problems of isolation, greed, prosperity and in some cases, poverty… There are reasons people get abortions, the reasons are vast, but they are not undocumented. Beyond the emergency medical reasons, most of the other reasons stem from a person making decisions without the benefit of a community that commits to come along side of a person in raising a child or offering a different perspective on western entitlement.

We can see the “at-risk-groups” and because of the way this issue has drawn out the worst in Christians, those people who are considering an abortion would most likely NEVER talk to a christian to get real advice. This is tragic.

Rightly, abortion is something to be mourned, something to scream at God about. But it is not going away. It did not get fixed by a Republican Congress with a Republican President… obviously.

It gets dealt with on a person to person…relational level. IF we could deal with abortion more intimately, we would see that government is NOT going to truly make a difference in this situation, we are. We are the ones who lock arms with people contemplating abortion. Where are we? How have we built our community? Have we made room for people who are at risk of abortion?

And basically, I wish more people who fit the profile of “Pro-Life Megaphone” would share the same interest and passion for people who are already alive. For Things our government can intervene or respond appropriately …ie: genocidal scenarios in Uganda, Sudan…. Health care and poverty issues around our world. Education in our own country. and even…

Consumer issues that are creating Environmental issues that are causing our sea life to become extinct, and our ice caps to melt, and our fossil fuels to dry up. We don’t seem to make the connection that EVERYTHING we buy, eat, wear, drive effects the world we live. And we are killers each one of us. And we need to have a wider kingdom perspective…

This is my afternoon rant… Hope this offers a little more insight into that one sentence. Feel free to disagree and/or offer huge amounts of criticism. -D”

I needed this prayer, offered by the grandson of Billy Graham:

A Sabbath-Eve Gospel Prayer

Read Tullian’s explanation of his name

Just how absorbant are Viva paper towels? What kid has never dreamed of doing this! What true life Mom would ever allow it, not the least participate!

From YouTube’s description of the commercial:

This is an advertisement for VIVA paper towels that features actor Trevor Heins. Heins is best known for his work on the shows “Wonder Showzen” and “Rescue Me”.Here’s some behind the scenes information as told by Trevor Heins himself:

“They had the soda bottle hooked up to pressurized air canisters. You can’t see the line but it ran down my leg and across the floor. It was a 2 day shoot with long wet hours but in the end turned out to be a great commercial. Yes, it was non-carbonated colored water for easy clean up….well as easy as something like that can get. We each had many sets of clothing and had dryers running constantly. Originally there was a dad in the commercial and when he returned home from work my mom and I both sprayed him. That was cut out but the guy playing my dad is now on “Arrested Development”.”

I don’t drink beer and I’m not advocating any one else drink beer, but the new Miller High Life commercials are classic. There’s something about this blue collar beer truck driver going into these high class restaurants and night clubs and repo-ing their Miller High Life because he deems them too pricey. Obviously these commercials were designed to sell beer - but I think there is a secondary, deeper philosophical message here. What is it?

Some of the Republican candidates for president are having second thoughts about their participation in the scheduled September 17th CNN/YouTube debate and with good reason. If the first of these so-called excercises in democracy is any indication, the Republicans may be walking into a setup.

At the Citadel on July 23 the Democrats were handed their questions on a silver platter, served up like softballs.  You knew how the Democrats would respond even before the question ended: ”Do you believe the response in the wake of Hurricane Katrina would have been different if the storm hit an affluent, predominantly white city?,” “How many more soldiers must die while these political games continue in our government?,” “What would you, as President, do to make low-cost or free preventative medicine available for everybody in this country?” Did Howard Dean provide the questions for this new age of political videographers?

The Media Research Center points out that of the 39 questions CNN used of the more than 3,000 submitted via YouTube, 17 were liberal and 6 were conservative. Their question by question breakdown, including an analysis of where each question came at what point during the debate, is informative.

Andrew Keen is the author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture (2007, Doubleday). His book came out well before CNN and YouTube decided to collaborate on the debates. In it he prophesies:

The YouTubification of the political process is a threat to civic culture. It infantilizes the political process, silencing public discourse and leaving the future of the government up to thirty-second video clips shot by camcorder wielding amateurs with political agendas.

Many conservatives, especially those of us who use the New Media to disseminate facts into the marketplace of ideas against the main stream media’s stranglehold on that market, concluded that Andrew was merely defending the status quo. Having read his book, and now after speaking personally with him three times, it’s not the status quo Andrew is defending so much as it is accuracy, reason, fairness, and decorum in the new public square that is the blogosphere.

I agree with Andrew that what is lacking in the blogosphere is accountablity and verification of facts. Where I disagree with Andrew is on the notion that the main stream media - because it has the trained, professional journalists - is the best arbiter of what news and commentary is fit for public consumption. Andrew told me,

What I liked about it was that CNN was still in control, that you had editors at CNN selecting the videos. I think it would have been really chaotic and anarchic if there hadn’t been that editorial control. I think Anderson Cooper is very good. He maintained a relatively strict editorial control of the debate. Without Anderson Cooper it would have degenerated into chaos.

CNN had the trained, professionals in this case choosing 39 videos out of 3,000 and the slant was 3 to 1 in favor of liberal ideaology. Those same editors chose a video featuring an animated snowman asking a serious question you couldn’t take seriously, and another video recorded by a woman in her bathroom. Is this not indicative of the fact that even the so-called trusted professionals can’t be trusted with what is and is not acceptable for a debate forum? Andrew Keen:

The CNN people have fallen under the cult of the amateur. They’ve been seduced by this idea that the sillier the content the more authentic it is. I’m sure the CNN people realize that that’s just as inane as we do. But there’s this sort of leveling of political discourse in this country which means that they chose questions which, I think, were particularly silly and inane. It reflects a dumbing down of our political culture. What was missing to me was serious policy questions by people who are able to articulate themselves, people on the level of the politicians. I thought a lot of the questions were really poorly expressed, were too personalized, were too emotional. I don’t want to see questions with people pulling off wigs or people with dying parents. This turns politics into Reality TV.

I asked Andrew if he thought the editorial control of CNN showed a left leaning bias:

I think alot of the questions were rather silly. But I actually would turn it on its head. I don’t think questions about gay marriage help any Democratic candidate because they’re not vote winners. You can only lose votes from those sorts of questions. You know, “how black you are,” or “how white you are,” or “how Jewish you are,” or “how female you are,” those are questions that can only embarass candidates. So I’m not sure if it reflects a Left bias at CNN. I think it reflects a bias, perhaps, toward trivia or sensationist questions..

The biggest problem I had with it was twofold: Firstly, I thought there were many too many questions. None of the questions were properly answered. I was struggling with the fact that some of the more interesting questions weren’t even answered by half of the candidates. I don’t understand how that works. And secondly, I think a lot of the questions were rather trite. I wish that the candidates had gotten into more substantive policy issues. The challenge in this medium is I don’t want to elect a president who is a reflection of us, where we are looking for these candidates who are ordinary, who work for minimum wage, who cry when we cry. When it comes to being president we need an extraordinary person, not an ordinary person.

The majority of the questions CNN chose for response from the Democratic presidential candidates clearly played to the issues of importance to their base constituency. I surmised with Andrew Keen that the Republican candidates come September 17th would not be so fortunate. Andrew Keen,

I think you may be right. The hard question to ask Democrats in this is, it’s all very well getting out of Iraq, but what happens when we get out, you know, when hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered, and that question came up and I don’t think any of the Democrats answered it very coherently because none of them have coherent answers to it, except perhaps Biden, who came out of that quite well.

I think the problem with this YouTubification of politics is it tends to trivialize everything, it tends to make everything into entertainment. What struck me most about the CNN/YouTube debate is I think in many respects America is in deep crisis. And I think there is a kind of denial about that crisis. There’s a crisis certainly in foreign policy and identity, to some extent in morality, and a crisis in media itself. And when you watched that event last night it did appear sort of like a political version of American Idol, just kind of silly entertainment, with silly questions and politicians doing their best to maintain their integrity. I don’t think this YouTubifiication of politics improves our political culture. I don’t think it makes politicians look very responsible or adult. The same will happen with the Republicans when they do the thing in September.

MSNBC: Smoking pot may hike risk of psychosis

Do they know it also gives you the munchies?

The Christian label doesn’t market very well. The managing editor of Christianity Today writes of..

…20-something Christians who refuse to identify themselves with the word Christian. They feel it comes with too much baggage and only makes their non-Christian friends think of stuffy churches, televangelists, the Crusades, and witch trials.

Read Mark’s apologia for the Christian label: Grace - That’s So Sick, posted at Christianity Today.

Internationally renowned Christian apologist and theologian Ravi Zacharias raised a bit of controversy in evangelical circles back in November of 2004 when he accepted an invitation to speak at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, UT.  He chose for his subject “The Exclusivity and Sufficiency of Jesus Christ.” I asked Dr. Zacharias recently if he were at all concerned about the potential for a Mormon becoming president in the person of Mitt Romney:

What we want is a politician who will understand the basic Judeo-Christian world view, and on the basis of that  the moral laws of this nation are framed, and then run this country with the excellence of that which is recognized in a pluralistic society: the freedom to believe or to disbelieve, and the moral framework with which this was conducted: the sanctity of every individual life.

If we are looking for a minister to run this country just look back and see what havoc sometimes has happened when the church got aligned totally with the state. That’s not what we want. We want political leadership that is wise, political leadership that frames itself on the moral framework of God and recognizing that you cannot dictate political ideaology to all of humanity. That’s why Jesus refused to run for office, that was not what his mission was about. His mission was to change hearts.

But as you look back at the book of Kings and Chronicles you see one difference between every king: either they followed the Lord with their whole heart and blessing came; or they turned their backs upon God and then the entailments were there. And that’s what will happen to this country.

Would we rather have someone who is a total secularist? Is that what people are asking for? Are we looking for someone who would run this the way he would run a bishoprick or something? I think we should ask the hard questions of everybody, be it Mitt Romney or anyone else and see if the framework of the value of human life and the moral framework of the Judeo-Christian world view, (which is the only moral framework under which this country could have been framed. It was not framed under a Hindu framework. It was not framed under a Muslim framework, not framed under a Buddhist or a naturalistic framework) that we are all created equal, that liberty and justice and all of those terms that I’ve given only make sense within the Judeo-Christian world view.

Created? Equal? Naturalism does not tell us we are equal. Naturalism does not tell us we are created. Liberty? Islam does not believe in the total liberty of the individual. Equal? Hinduism believes in the caste system. The Judeo-Christian world view is the only world view that could frame this country. And so I think as we elect, we go before God and see out of the candidates who will be the best one to represent the values and at the same time be a good leader for the country whose first responsibility should be to protect its citizens.

This is a great country and the challenges we face are immense to a point where this country could be totally mangled with the onslaught of a rabid atheism ala Christopher Hitchens, Samuel Harris, Richard Dawkins, those kinds of vociferous, acerbic writers in our time who would like to strip the notion of God completely from our culture. For Sam Harris to actually say if he had a magic wand to eradicate religion or eradicate rape, he would eradicate religion tells you the kind of mindset, and his book is in the top ten bestseller list of the New York Times. There’s a rabid atheism out there and there’s a rabid Islamic extremism out there and the secularism combined with that. I’ve responded to Sam Harris in a book which will be released in the early part of next year. I’ve said to him basically his choice is not going to be between religion and secularism. His choice is going to be between Islam and Christianity. Secularism has no staying power and has proven itself in Europe today. Europe is on the decline and on the demise and it’s only a matter of time before Islam would take a foothold there unless the Christian world view reemerges.

Headline from MSNBC: Thieves are Robbing the Rich in LA

Why would they rob the poor?

Dr. Leon Kass is the chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics, Addie Clark Harding Professor in the College and the Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago, and a conservative Jew. His wife, Amy, is Lecturer in the Humanities Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago.

In an essay first published 12 years ago in First Things (First Things 57 (November 1995): 14-25), the Kass’s ask,

What, then, is the case with our proper names, our personal names, the names we carry throughout our lives? Are they merely arbitrary and conventional handles that serve simply to designate and uniquely pick us out of a crowd? Or do our names, like those given by God, have power to shape our lives? Which passions do and should govern acts of naming: when we name, do we express desires for ourselves (ishah - woman) or hopes for the future of others (Chavah - Eve)? Is it a matter of substantial indifference what we are called, what we call ourselves, or what we call others?

I commend the full essay to you: What’s Your Name?