Wednesday, December 14, 2005

 

Eminent domain, imminent demise

I am all for this. The Supreme Court's decision in Kelo vs. Connecticut widened the concept of "eminent domain" to a dangerous level.

Oklahoma is the first state to push for a state constitutional amendment to protect private property rights that were swept away by U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo decision in June.

Read all about it from Focus on the Family.

Focus on the ... Family?

Focus on the Family's PAC applauds it. Fine.

Somebody tell me what property rights have to do with "family" or Christianity or, specifically, the Lord Jesus himself.

Nothing.

Focus on the Family and its PAC continues to confuse secular politics and worldly government with the Gospel. James Dobson's worldly influence continues to grow. His spiritual influence is reduced accordingly.

His smart-ass reference to "the Supremes" is especially offensive to me. Dobson would set himself, and his flock, above the law and above the very institutions of American government.

Dobson's fall -- not from secular power, but from eternal influence -- is imminent.

Where a man's treasure lies, there his heart will lie also.

--ER

Comments:
Dobson said. "A Wall Street Journal poll indicated on July 15 that the legal issue that people care about, above all other issues right now -- including even the sanctity of human life -- was private property rights."

Robert Ardrey, a playwriter turned anthropologist, wrote about his phenomena in the 1970's in two of his books, "Territorial Imperative" and "The Social Contract". They are worth anyone's time to read.
Indeed buried in the very depths of our most primative part of the brain is the coding that territory is worth more than life, because as an animal (or plant for that matter) you must have territory in order to exist, eat, and reproduce. So it is not unexpected, nor is it wrong, that humans would innately feel this need and translate it into "property rights".

It is however facinating that Dobson apparently sees this instinctive reaction as a spiritual matter. What would Jesus say about property rights and the territorial imperative?
 
Pastor Tim, you are dead-on write, although I wouldn't call it "hate." I'm ashamed.

And I never said he didn't have the right!

I am saying that he is wrong. And that he, specifically, is wrong to borrow the name of Jesus for right-wing politics.
 
OMG. Dead on "right," I mean. (Shouldn't try to talk on the phone and type at the same time.)

Oh, and Tim, this is one of a bozillion things we differ on! :-)

JESUS IS A LIBERAL.
 
BTW, Timmy, I, too, operate from a Christian world view. So that answer is an outright non-starter.
 
And another thing.

"Aeeeiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" -- as Howard Dean said.

That primeval "YAWP" makes more sense to me as time goes by.
 
Or Snoopy's AARRUUGHAA.

Pator Tim, maybe for ER it is "Angst" and "Anguish" at seeing a brother on the wrong road at the wrong speed, instead of "hate". Why does that word seeminly cast so easily, for a man charged to spread God's love?
 
Hey, ER, could I borrow Jesus for a little while?

I'm engaged in an argument on another blog about the Iraqi Election, and I could really use Him...

I don't like to use anyone else's property unless I ask first...
 
Pastor Tim, what do you see as a "Christian World View"?
 
He's all yours. But if you're using him to argue for war, expect Him to kick up a Holy Fuss.
 
Strange, last time he spoke to me he said both of you were his property.
 
Why not, ER?

You use Him to argue for the taking by force of property from one individual and giving to another.

I don't remember Him being in favor of that...

Maybe I read it wrong...
 
Can I use Him to argue for a war to help poor people??
 
Drlobojo, you are right.

Tug, I will not let you pretend that our form of government, and taxation, is a form of robbery,. That's bull.

So, I do argue that Jesus would have us use all our resources in ways to help the poor and hungry and homeless. Our vote and politics are two important resources.

I don't buy the conservative argument that we should only teach people how to take care of themselves. Yes, we should. But we should feed the hungry and house the homeless -- that is, those who want to be fed and those who want to be housed -- too.

There is no way anyone can read the red letters in the dang Bible and not believe that that is a basic Christian duty. The question is whether we should vote our Christian conscience -- and I say we should.

We should both help people develop independence from others -- and we should feed, clothe and house them in the meantime.

That's the MAIN criteria upon which I base my political orientation -- and despite Pastor Timothy's extremely narrow view of it, THAT is a Christian world view. Not the only one. But it IS one, nonetheless.

And I thimk it would be pretty silly to argue that Jesus would ever be for war -- the real deal, not a rhetorical device like "War on Poverty" -- even to help poor people.
 
ER, your disdain for Dr. James Dobson is rivaled only by your Disdain for President Bush.

Do you think they are both evil?
 
I must have missed Sunday school the week they taught the property rights lesson. Is that in the Old Testament or the New?

But I certainly agree with Pastor Tim that Christianity should change "how we view everything," if he is referring to the poverty, disease and oppression in our own country and around world and our responsibility to reach out to others in love.

Proverbs 29:7

7 The righteous care about justice for the poor,
but the wicked have no such concern.
 
ER, we have been around this Mulberry bush before, you and I.

Jesus intended for us to help the poor ourselves, one on one, and to witness to them in the process, not to vote to turn that responsibility over to a third party (Government) to handle that responsibility for us, eliminating any oportunity for witnessing.

(Seperation of Church and State, and all...)

If that is your idea of what Jesus wanted us to do, then we will have to agree to disagree. I think that that is a misguided idea of what Jesus wanted us to do, but, oh well.

Programs which take money from my paycheck in this particular stage of my life, and give it directly to my grandparents and my wife's grandparents, who have already paid off their houses and saved up their nest-eggs, and to people who do not work when I get up and go work 60+ hours a week sure seem like robbery to me.

I do not believe that things like that are what Jesus would have wanted.

And as I have reminded you before, Jesus resorted to violence Himself.
He would have told you that some fights are Just and Nessecary.
 
Stunned. Shocked. Dismayed.

I always liked things Tuggy said, particularly about me. But his BS here looks more like one of Mark's rants.

Disappointed in ya, Tug. I thought you were MUCH smarter than that.
 
Forgive me for my weakness in Scripture, but the only example I remember of Jesus actually resorting to violence (as opposed to speaking metaphorically about it) was his vigorous interference with private enterprise engaged in lawful and consensual exchange in a location He seems to think should not have been zoned for such activites, and even then his crime seems to have been against property rather than persons.

I also seem to recall his very specific line on taxes was "Render unto Caesar those things are Caesar's," at at time when the Roman Empire was well into its bread and circuses phase. I'd say that sets a good precedent for good Christians paying for welfare programs - and public broadcasting.
 
I'm with ya, Tug.

ER, you confuse me. On the one hand you want God completely removed from government and public life. On the other hand, you expect the government to do "Jesus's Work". I don't get it. How do you expect to have it both ways?
 
Hebrews 10:33-35 (New International Version)

33 Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated.
34 You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.
35 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.
 
Rem:

Doing right by the poor, unclothed and homeless is not JUST "Jesus' work." It's the right thing to do.

It also happens to be among the commands of the Saviour.

So, try again to show me a conflict between my belief that the church and the state in this country ought to be separate, and my other belief that Christians in this country are obligated to use their votes in a way that is more likely than not feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless.

Timothy, those are great arguments, those that worry about dependency caused by "handouts" and social pressure felt by people who, you say, are "kept down" by welfare. Great arguments. Great conservative arguments.

They are great traditional, conservative, American arguments.

But they are not Christian arguments. The only Christian argument I know of says: Feed, clothe, house.
 
No, Mark, I don't think either Dobson or Bush are "evil."

I think Dobson is a powerful man of influence who has created a machine that his hired guns use to manipulate people into unwittingly giving voice to an extreme slice of American conservatism.

I personally know one of the hired guns, and he does, in fact, think in terms of manipulating people -- although he might not use that word. He has, however, used terms like "stirring up the base" in reference to some of the more outlandish statements and positions Dobson's machine takes. It is an extremely well-oiled machine, and it plays the politics game very well -- and for that, I applaud Dobson, et al.

But it's also very cynical, and it alsoi is not really very Christian, actually.

As for Bush, I'd probably enjoy eatin' barbecue and drinkin' iced tea with the Bushes out at Crawford.

What I disdain is the neocon world view and conservative social and economic policies in general.

In other ways, but the fifth year of any Republican presdidency, I'd probably be bitching.
 
Sigh: "IN other words," I mean.
 
ER, I don't think I would enjoy beer and Barbeque with the Bushes. What would we talk about? Those damn Democrates? Maybe that Woose John McCain, who thinks he is Holier than everybody else. That punk little Congressman Murtha, that little turn coat, just like McCain, thinks some time in Vietnam allows him to question the comander in chief. What would I do when he put his hand on my shoulder making sure I knew my subordinate position as he gave me a demaning nick-name and then proceed to talk about that California c**t. Shehann, is that her name? he might say. "She loses one kid and becomes an expert on war. Hell I've lost over two thousand fine young men a women and I FEEL the lose of each and every one, I realy do!" he would say.
Naw, no Bush's beer and Barby for me, not that there would ever be a snow balls chance in hell that such an invitation could ever come my way.
Cause even if I put up with all that other stuff, I just couldn't stand there and watch him smirk as he said it. I may not hate the man, but I do, I really do hate that shit-eaten-grin of his.
 
Pastor Tim, what do you see as a "Christian World View"?
 
Well, you're probably right.

The thing is, Bush is such a "type," and I gladly drank beer and ate barbecue bought by such types in Texas for years, all the while thinking they were totally nuts.

I once survived a bus trip from Wichita Falls to Corpus Christi and back with some of 'em, during the election that brought Ann Richards, GOD LOVE HER, to the Texas governer's mansion.

It was the ugliest situation I was ever in -- right up until a girl racecar driver wrecked Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Texas Motor Speedway a few years ago; the things that were said in the men's bathroom afterward were much worse.

Anyway, as LBJ is said to have said, and I paraphrase, "If you can't drink their whiskey, smoke their cigars and XXX their women, and still vote against 'em, you don't have any business in Congress."
 
Yes, Tim, define that, please.
 
I've always figured that if we gaged our religion on who wrote the most in the New Testament we would have call ourselves, Paulians rather than Christians. It is Pauls interpretation in his writtings to the early churches and ministers that make up the bulk of the book.


How sad that we can't only rely on the reported words of Jesus to reveal truth to us as Priest-Believers of God's word.
Paul/Saul was the ultimate True-Believer, before and after the Road to Damascus experience, it is through Paul that our main concepts of Christain theology have come. It took 300 years to cleanse the various books and concepts that weren't acceptable to the Church leadership from relm of Christian thought, and come up eventually with the inerrent and devine 66 books, known most generally by the non-protestant, anti-Catholic, Anglican King James version, written over a thousand years latter.

If the Catholic Church is run by Peter, then the modern day Neo-Evangelical Movement is run by Paul. Is Jesus, the subject of it all, is left only with his "degrading" red text-words?
 
Dog gone it Pastor Tim, I go to all the trouble to write a post partially commenting on yours, then I pushed the button and find yours is gone. I look like I am ranting into the wind.
Well maybe, maybe I am.
If you rant into the wind, is that like tossing defecation into the fan?
 
Uh oh. Drlobo has hit a Timothy nerve. I know he has.

Timothy believes that every word or both the Old and New testaments must be accepted as if Jesus hissownself uttered every one of them. I think he bases that on John 1:1, which refers to "The Word" in an extremely and wonderfully profound, spiritual and philosophical sense that today's Fundamentalists wrongly (in my view) equate with the colloquial nickname for the Bible as we know it today, "The Word."

Everybody duck. I b'lieve Timothy is fixin' to wield his 97-pound Westminster-approved reference Bible at us!

And he should, actually, I guess. He has pointed to the Westminster Confession as the end-all, be-all before, and has suggested that it is the standard by which all Christians should self-judge their own Christianity.

Not.

Myself, I'll take the Bible first, seriously, but not always literally, and as for supplemental materials, I'll take the "Baptist Faith & Message," 1963 version.)
 
Further more, as far as Republicans, you can no longer say that they have no concern for the poor. Our Republican house, senate and president have added more help to the poor children of this country than any other administration. There are more children on the free-lunch program than ever before. So they are being fed, housed, and clothed...

Where is your Christian call to repentance?
 
John 1:1 referes to the Logos, a Greek concept originating with the Pythagoreans and the Stoics, it signifies the underlying orderly nature of the world. It is translated as word/argument/reason all in one thought. Logos is therefore in Greek philosophy the fundemental order of reality from which all order in the world comes.
John is attempting to tell the Greeks who Jesus was and connect him to all creation. The Bible was not the subject.
 
But, Drlobojo, read further, my friend. John 1:14 reads, "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

If that doesn't prove John was referring to Jesus as the Word, I don't know what does.
 
Mark is using selective hearing.

No one has said that Jesus is not "The Word" John talks about.

But that is not the same thing as "The Word" used as a colloquial nickname for the Bible.
 
Mark, yes that is what I said, Jesus is the "Logos" and of course much more.
The writer of John is using a previously defined Greek idea to introduce Jesus to the non-Hebrew world. ER is correct that I ment it to say that John 1:1 is refering to Jesus and nothing else.
 
Focus on the Family is just a front, like when Mafia guys would run restaurants. They certainly don't care about my family, they certainly don't care about anyone’s family who isn't white, Christian, heterosexual, or without 5 blond stepford children. This is further proof that they are a political machine with an agenda. Although this time they are actually right, for once.
 
Thanks Pastor Tim for that thoughful reply. I was 18 when I discovered that there were books written in the first and second centuries that were left out of the Bible by men in the third century. Why? Did the Church in the third century have devine guidance to select only certain of the books for inclusion? And which Bible shall we use the Greek Orthodox, the Catholic, the Anglican, the Coptic?
All of them proport to be "The Word". Which of them is "Inerrant"?
When we find original text from the first century, as we have, that were supressed by the "church", as Christians what should we do with them?
If the gospel of Thomas was actually written by Jesus's follower and brother as some claim, and the text found buried in the desert at an ancient monestary, is only a third or forth generation copy from an original, then how can it be dismissed as not part of the Biblical Cannon?
Is the Bible the only revelation that we non-Catholics should recognize. If so then what value is the Priesthood of the Believer?
If the Bible is not inerrant, does it lose its authority?
 
The reason that I have a tremendously hard time accepting the Bible's own claims to the Bible's own authority is because the Bible, as we know it today, dod not EXIST at the time that the Scriptures that make such claims were written!

It's not only illogical, it just seems ... I don't know, cheesy or something!

If that 2 Peter verse should be taken literally, then it referred, did it not, to all other epistles and manuscripts that were being used by the church at the time?

Pastor Timothy will say no, because of the magic that caused the Canon to come together 300 years later. Knowing what I know of the politics of the day, the cynicism of Constantine especially, of course I question the veracity of any claims that the yahoos at those early councils tidied everything up for us, so we should just shut up and accept it.

THAT's one of the reasons I say I take the Bible seriously, but not necessarily literally. Too many human agendas in there for me to believe God "breathed" it.

Inspired it? Yes. Directed it? Yes. DICTATED IT? No.
 
Thanks Pastor Tim for that lengthy and thoughtful posting.

Pator Tim said:
"The Bible is reliable, and trustworthy."
That statement I believe in. Notice I said believe IN, not just believe.

But here is where I question the "magic":

"As for the councils, they did come together and decide which books were authentic and not... but not with authority. The Gospel of Thomas was written by Gnostics, an error of the day that spoke of special knowledge, and was rejected early on as not breathed by God."

"...but not with authority..."
If they didn't have authority what were they doing? Did you mean to say.... but not without authority..
In which case the questions become:
Whose authority? The Church? Which Church?

"...The Gospel of Thomas was written by Gnostics...." Written by Gnostics or adopted and copied and recopied and preserved by Gnostics?

"...Gnostics an error of the day....and was rejected early on as not breathed by God...."
Error? Rejected by whom, as not breathed by God.

The Anti-Baptist, now know as Baptist were a "error" and heritics of their day as well according to the established Church.
My own ancestors part of the Palitines were errors of their day and run out of Switzerland and Germany in the 1630's.

".....Even if you take the most serious variations, of which there are only about 50, none of them change any major doctrine of Christianity........"
True (for the European based Christian Bible), none of them changed any major doctrine of Christianity as defined by those men back in the third century.

Pastor Tim, you may not credit this statement, but you are stretching my mind. Thanks.
 
Timothy, that was pretty reasonable, except for the unnecessary slap at me. You have a mean streak, and I hope you lay it upon the altar every day, because if you don't it will be your downfall.

The original "Jesus is a liberal" post was in the form of a resolution to spark debate. Jesus is neither liberal nor conservative -- but his message can be so labeled. And there is NOTHING "conservative," by the current social and economic definitions, about ANYTHING he had to say.

Oh, and on revelation: Tell me why revelation is said to have stopped, and why. Has God developed laryngitis? Have we become deaf?

"God is still speaking."
 
Sorry Pastor Tim, the story you told about the toasted pigeons is not in the Gospel of Thomas, perhaps there is such a story in the apocrypha somewhere, but not in Thomas. I just re-read the book of Thomas to confirm that.
You also said, "Therefore, when we come to writings like the Gospel of Thomas, we look at it and say: "sounds nice, but that doesn't sound like Christ."
Actually most of Thomas parallels exactly the sayings of Christ in Mathew, Mark, and Luke.
Heresy is not in these exiled gospels, no more than heresy is in the four canonical gospels. Heresy is in the act of finding in the scriptures only that which validates our own experience, when our own experience has nothing to do with God; thus the difference between the intellectual understanding and the inspired understanding. Which is which only God and the individual can know.

I look at our supreme court and our government, who have a two hundred year old document that is in perfect unchanged readable condition and they still can't agree on what it says. You say that Church leaders in the third century did not have the same problem becuse the spirit breath into the its desire as to which text should be canonized and which should not. I guess here is where we will part company on this subject.
Thanks Pastor Tim it has been interesting.
 
OK, searching through the "Lost Books of the Bible" I found the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in three versions. Indeed there are stories here that toast kids not just birds.
reference:

http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/LostBooks/TheInfancyGospelOfThomas.html

Thus we were talking about two different books. The first, the one above, was translated in 1924.
The second, referenced below, was not discovered until 1955.

http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/LostBooks/thomas.htm
 
I stand self-corrected.

Jesus is the Son of man. Jesus is the Son of God.

His Self if beyond secular politics.

His message, however, by today's secular, and religious, definitions, is liberal.
 
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