Mark Byron

GAFCON-A Study in Headlines

Here's a variety of headlines on the GAFCON this weekend; somehow, that sounds like something that you'd expect to see Klingon outfits at rather than priestly robes.

BBC-"Anglican Conservatives Form Group." Sticking with the basics.

NYT-"Anglicans Face Wider Split Over Policy on Gays." You have to watch out for those wide splits; they got Larry Craig in trouble.

Lastly, the most descriptive headline from ESPN-"Church Returns from DL." The problems with Gene Robinson had knocked the Anglican community around, but the folks at GALCON seem to have gotten the confession section of the Anglican church back in action.

For more serious coverage, here's some good coverage from Chris Johnson and from Get Religion.

Draft Musings

I was busy earning my keep last night during the NBA draft. The Pistons merely picked D-league fodder, especially after trading away their first rounder, D.J. White, who looked like he could be Jason Maxiell Jr, for a pair of Seattle second-rounders. The first of the two, Walter Sharpe, is described as being "a bit raw;" he'll get the Amir Johnson Memorial Locker in the D-league. I would have hoped they grabbed Joey Dorsey, who looked a lot like a young Ben Wallace in Memphis' Final Four run; Portland grabbed him with the next pick.

The interesting thing about the Pistons in the post-season, other than bringing Michael Curry on-board as head coach, was the rumors of a Prince-and-Billups for Carmello Anthony trade. Denver turned it down, but I could see it helping both teams. However, the signal that sends is that Joe Dumars is ready to hand the reins over to his Mini Me, Rodney Stuckey.

I don't understand the Nets trading away Richard Jefferson to Milwaukee for two journeymen, unless it's a salary dump. I also don't understand the Bucks then picking  Joe Alexander with the 8th pick; you don't spend that high a pick on someone who isn't going to start, unless they picture playing a lot of small ball with both Jefferson and Alexander playing forward at the same time.

I have a hard time thinking of Michael Beasley without thinking about a Mrs. Beasley doll that was Buffy's sidekick on Family Affair; my sister had a talking Mrs. Beasley doll with (as per my motto above) a chatty ring. However, he'll probably turn out to be a nastier version of Luol Deng; he, Shawn Marion and D-Wade will get the Heat back in the hunt in a hurry, depsite Pat Riley's lusting for a point guard.

O.J. Mayo? Somehow, I see him being the next Harold "Baby Jordan" Miner, who was a fellow USC matriculator who never really blossomed at the pro level. I could wind up eating my words, though.

Swinging With Tony Kennedy

Conservatives were ripping Anthony Kennedy rather hard for being the swing vote yesterday in a 5-4 decision to strike down the death penalty for a non-lethal rape case; the guy on Death Row was there for repeatedly raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. However, one thing that we might want to remember in that case is that the standard for capital punishment since the 1960s has been that there has to be some sort of murder involved in the crime for the death penalty to be imposed; capital punishment for things like rape or bank robbery were thrown out. One of my favorite web sites has the motto "Stare Decisis is fo' Suckas" but Kennedy is one such sucka who tends to go with established precedent.

I'm not sure if that standard isn't a good idea after all.  Once we get past the murder-only line, what other crimes do we trot out the death penalty for? China's executed CEOs for fraud and a lot of Muslim countries dispatch homosexuals and adulterers. Even though Patrick Kennedy (not the Congressman, the Louisiana rapist spared by his namesake) looks to be on the Lord High Executioner's little list of folks "that never will be missed," I think the line is in the right place.

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Justice Kennedy redeemed himself today to a lot of those disgruntled conservatives by being part of a 5-4 conservative decision overturning the District of Columbia's handgun band, holding for the first time that people do have a right to bear arms as individuals, not just as members of an organized militia.

Police can't be everywhere; their job isn't as much to prevent crime as to track down criminals once a crime has been committed. Self-defense is one of the reasons the Second Amendment is in the Constitution; even in a 911-era, police aren't going to stop armed bad guys from doing what they want to do, and individual citizens have the right to defend themselves.

Christmas in June

Yes, it must be, because James Dobson is talking about fruitcake; Matt Brown has some good linkage on the issues at hand and here's a transcript of the 2006 Obama speech that set everyone's favorite Christian psychologist off.

I'm rather disappointed in Dobson's choice of words, especially since he is a professional psychologist; at least that's his academic background, with a Ph.D. in child development from USC; here's one Christian leader with a legit doctoral (from a well-regarded secular school, no less), Bene, no diploma mill here.

Obama's view of the constitution may be flawed, to be sure, but it isn't crazy. Calling the take of a Harvard-educated lawyer a "fruitcake interpretation" does a disjustice to folks who struggle with mental illness and does a disjustice to political discourse. The second definition of fruitcake is "nut," in the sense of "a foolish, eccentric, or crazy person."

Right now, Dobson's diatribe seems more foolish and eccentric than Obama's Call to Renewal speech. I don't agree with a lot of what Obama shared in that speech, but it was a level-headed look at how to speak a message of faith and hope in a multi-religious setting which has a lot to absorb, more level headed than Dobson's reply.

If Obama is foolish, it is the spiritual foolishness of merely looking at the Gospels in the absence of the rest of the Bible. Dobson has a tactical foolishness of overstating his case and saying things that might make sense in a narrow conservative audience but sound batty and multiple notches over the top to secular ears.

As both a caring follower of Christ and someone who's getting treated for depression, I don't like people unfairly calling someone crazy, which is what Dobson did with Obama. That's rhetoric that should be found on a Free Republic post, not on a Christian ministry show.

The Least Wonderful Time of the Year

For sports, at least.

Boston locked up the NBA title Tuesday, thumping the Lakers in game 6. Basketball is done for the time being, with only the NBA draft next week giving us some "hot stove league" (somehow that old baseball adage for off-season chatter doesn't work in 80-degree weather) stuff for basketball. Football won't start up for a month and hockey's done as well, not that hockey shows up in radar in a Versus-free TV set in Kentucky much.

We're left with baseball, and a Red-centric coverage on local TV, which is cold comfort for a transplanted Michigander. We've got the European soccer championships, with an intriguing Germany-Turkey semifinal (Turkey won their quarterfinal match with Croatia in a shootout); it will be interesting to see how the large Turkish German community interacts with the German Germans in the run up to that game. However, that's more interesting on a cultural and political basis (they let the Turks into European soccer but not the EU as of yet) than on a sports basis.

I'm not much of a generic baseball fan, modern tennis is rather dry and golf just got less interesting with Tiger's ACL surgery that will have him out for the rest of '08.

So, the month and a half before pre-season football and the Olympics is rather dry. Olympic trials, where Eileen will get to watch gymnastics without me itching to grab the remote this weekend, the British Open in golf (which is always interesting even sans Tiger) and Wimbledon will get some TV time in the interim. The latter two will see the remote stop from time to time, especially with my free-during-the-day teaching schedule catering to the +5 hours UK time frame.

Well, I could do more productive things with my time, like do more blogging and better prepping for my coursework.

"Obama-Yes, We're Loving It."

The political news of the week is that Obama's opting out of the federal funding system for the general election, passing on the $84 million that major party candidates are alloted in order to raise his own money.

Through April, Obama has raised a record $265 million for his primary campaign; the May numbers are due out shortly. If he can merely get his existing supporters to match what they gave in the primary, he'll have triple what McCain will have if he sticks with the government-financed program.

Obama's backers spent about as much getting Obama nominated as Southern Baptists spent on foreign missions; their 2006 International Missions Board budget was $282 million.

One of the things I was mulling over with Eileen over dinner is that Obama almost personifies the modern religious left, where one's faith is measured by what you do to help the poor and needy, promote international diplomacy and acceptance of all folks, be it with your own dollars or the dollars of government. Given the twin spires of orthorpraxy and universalism, it's far more important to do the right things than to believe the right things.

Since the right things mentioned above aren't exclusively Christian, it matters more that they get done than under who's banner they get done on. If they can leverage their giving by getting a godly liberal in the White House, they can control billions of dollars of tax money, control the foreign policy of the US and veer it away from the militarist stances of the recent past, and control the next four years of Supreme Court nominees and lock in a liberal working majority for another decade or two.

From a liberal vantage point, getting Obama nominated does more good than a cadre of 5000 missionaries preaching the Gospel around the world.

The daunting thought from my vantage point will be what would a half-billion dollar budget (if the Obama team can get all Democrats to match what they gave in the primaries) in a two-month window; the general election campaign only gets to spend money from after the convention in late August (25th-28th) until election day. Let's take McDonald's as a guide. They have an estimated $1.7B/year ad budget. If you shrink that down to a fifth of a year, they'll spend about $340 million in a 10-week span.

When you factor in the concept that political campaigns get the best available rate for a time slot, a half-billion dollars will buy a lot of air time, spending a lot of change we can believe in promoting Obama's Billion Dollar Menu. Obama will be more ubiquitous this fall than the Verizon geek. Yes, senator, we can hear you now, and I'm not sure that's good.

Edifier du Jour: Luke 5:27-32(NIV)

²⁷After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, ²⁸and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

²⁹Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. ³⁰But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

³¹Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ³²I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

That’s good to remember, since we draw away from God (and especially Jesus) when we’re in the most need of Him. When we’re down, we’re feeling unworthy and self-centered, often falling back into bad habits.

It’s then when Jesus comes along side, kicks you lovingly in the keister, and says “News flash, Sherlock; you’re not perfect. I already died for all that. Let’s get moving in the right direction rather than standing still.”

Todd Bentley Involved With Magic

These stories should confirm the worst fears of some critics of the Lakeland Revival; it seems clear that Todd Bentley has been working with Magic.

No such luck, folks; the links are to an Australian named Todd Bentley, who is a 6'7" center for the Moss Vale Magic in a regional basketball league in New South Wales. It's clear they're two different folks, since the Aussie Bentley missed at least one game with an injury; no healing outpouring down under, at least not in Moss Vale.

Oh, you were looking for someone who looks more like a nose tackle hailing from Canada? Can't help you there, at least not in a way that would vouch for the headline.

Johnny Hunt a.k.a. Willie Baptist

A few years back, I told the sad story of one William Baptist, a promising young scholar-athlete framed for robbery; signs popped up around south demanding that the authorities "Free Will Baptist."

We have echoes of Willie Baptist here in the new Southern Baptist president Johnny Hunt. While Bene Diction beat the Christmas rush and is on his case from the get-go over going by Dr. Hunt with only honorary doctoral degrees from academically-flimsy schools, Hunt will get more flak from the Baptist faithful for being an free-will anti-Calvinist. I'll have a second post on this coming up; as a homework assignment, think of free will and Calvinism as it applies to Schrödinger's cat, especially if God knows about the cat and we don't.

There's one good thing I see from the Hunt election; he doesn't like the mission board's take on private prayer languages. As long as the missionary keeps it private, it's OK with Hunt. Don't ask, don't tell?

In addition, he takes a proper take on alien (non SBC) baptisms

I am not sure that I fully understand all that the IMB trustee guidelines have said, however, if a person has received Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, and has been baptized by a minister who embraces the Gospel and the Scriptures as we do, their baptism should count in our churches. If James Dobson desired to become part of First Baptist Church Woodstock, I would not require him to be re-baptized.

In short, he seems to come from the evangelical wing of the Southern Baptists rather than the Baptist wing on the Southern Baptists; neither are moderates in any normal sense, but the fights seem to be brewing on whether the SBC is to be more generically evangelical or whether it is to be more separatist, more Calvinist and more cessationist than the Baptist Faith and Message currently stands for.

Even with some bad use of honorary doctorates, Hunt may be a step in the right direction.

Obama, Stevenson and Bryan

I was reflecting this morning on the relative electoral inexperience of Barack Obama; he's working on only his fourth year as a US Senator.

If you look down the Democratic list of non-incumbent nominees of the last 60 years, they've all been veteran governors (Carter, Dukakis, Clinton, Stevenson, FDR) or senators (Kerry, Kennedy, McGovern) or VP/Senators (Mondale, Humphrey). Of that list, only Stevenson, who was elected governor four years prior to his 1952 nomination, has the same level of statewide elected office experience as Obama will have come November; everyone else had more experiences in statewide elective office.

Here's an interesting line from Stevenson's Wikipedia; after being told that Norman Vincent Peale had endorsed his foe, Stevenson quipped back-"I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling." So should most modern evangelicals that aren't in the Word of Faith camp.

By the way, here's the proper quote for the Stevenson classic-

During one of Stevenson's presidential campaigns, allegedly, a supporter told him that he was sure to "get the vote of every thinking man" in the U.S., to which Stevenson is said to have replied, "Thank you, but I need a majority to win.

The one nominee that Obama does trump in elective experiences is William Jennings Bryan. He had but one term as a congressman before getting the Democratic nomination in 1896. I learned a few things about him today that I hadn't heard before, that he nearly got elected head of the PC-USA in the 1920s and that one of his best-read writings against Darwinism was delivered as the Sprunt Lecture at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, Eileen's alma mater; the Sprunt Lectures are still a fixture at Union-PSCE.

Some other notes-

• Bryan was what we'd call today an old-earth Creationist, a bit to the left of folks who take the six days of Genesis as 24/6.
• He was very involved with the Social Gospel movement, which would make him a decent role model for Obama's liberal Christianity.
• He was a thinking pacifist, preferring diplomacy and rejecting colonialism, but serving in the military during the Spanish-American War (he was only 38 at the time; it's odd to see former presidential candidates young enough volunteer to serve in the military, but he's likely retired the trophy as the youngest major party nominee at 36). Here's a good quote-"Universal peace cannot come until justice is enthroned throughout the world. Until the right has triumphed in every land and love reigns in every heart, government must, as a last resort, appeal to force."

That last quote is worth pondering and applying for folks on both sides of the aisle. The kicker is deciding when the "last resort" has come.

Pre-Modern Preaching in a Post-Modern World

On our trip last week, we would up staying overnight in Pensacola. As we were having breakfast at the hotel, I saw a old-school Smyrna Baptist Church across the street. As I remember, the sign had out front had this 2-by-3 grid of distinctives.

Fundamental                           Evangelical

Independent                           Missionary

KJV 1611                               Traditional

Thanks for the last one, Sherlock; I wasn't sure if I might find a happening praise band in a King-James-only self-defined fundamentalist church ;-).

The Gospel is getting preached there, if their Web site is any indication. However, it doesn't exactly seem seeker-friendly, where people who don't come from a old-school independent Baptist background would be drawn to them.

The adjective "pre-modern" comes to mind for where Smyrna is at; their theology is flash-frozen at about 1930, where the majority of people in town were theological conservatives, modernity was seen as a corrupting influence, and new translations of the Bible were seen as corrupting and watering-down the Gospel, thus leaning them back to the un-watered-down King James as their linchpin. When most people bought into a old-school take on things, you can get by in your spiritual rhetoric to hearken  back to Biblical basic without having to do a lot of convincing.

One of the problems I see with a lot of Southern Baptist rhetoric is that they often come at things in such a pre-modern mind-set; "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it." That's well and good, but such rhetoric will often leave a modern listener unmoved. The post-modern, who doesn't get the concept of the capital-T Truth that can be found in the Bible, has tuned you out five minutes ago. The modern listener, who goes by more of a scientific, hypothesis-testing framework, wants you to reason with them rather than get dictated to.

For instance, rhetoric on creation can leave people cold if they aren't being reasoned with; for a modern listener, discussion of intelligent design, where you can point out the ain't-gonna-happen odds of life developing on its own without some outside guidance, is going to work far better than pounding them over the head with Genesis. However, folks who learned their rhetoric in a pre-modern framework will tend to just state their chapters-and-verses a notch louder rather than try to reason with the modern listener.

That type of reasoning can be done within a orthodox Gospel-preaching context. One good book on that line is Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict, that looks to rationally walk through the Bible and supporting documents of the era to make the case for the Gospel. For instance, you can back up the Resurrection by pointing out that if Jesus' body didn't go bye-bye, somebody's got the corpse. If the Romans or the Jewish authorities had the body, they could squash the new Christian faith in the bud by producing the corpse of Jesus. If the early church folks hid the body, they died martyr's deaths for a bold-faced lie, which seems unlikely. That leaves the historic version of a risen Christ the past of least resistance, since any other option would have people acting very strangely if they were in possession of the corpse.

Moderns want to be reasoned with. Post moderns want to experience God, not just hear about him; for the post-modern, you're going to witness best with your life, letting the observers "taste and see that the Lord is good" through how you walk the walk.

Bloggers are used to debate and fact-checking; old-school Baptists sometimes aren't. That's probably why a lot of Baptist pastors and officials are uncomfortable with blogs, since they have to use lines of reasoning and presentation that they're not used to having to deal with. They're often used to dictating to people and have to adjust when folks don't say "How high?" when they say "Jump."

We're in a world where most folks have to be persuaded into jumping into the River of Life; drill sergeant preaching doesn't cut it anymore.

Going the Distance

I slept through most of the playoff and was running errands during the finish, but Tiger finally finished off Rocco Mediate, having to once again birdie 18 in order to send the playoff into overtime, then parring the first extra hole to send Rocco Balboa packing.

The background music to the fight in the original Rocky is Going the Distance; Mediate did just that, playing even up with golf's Apollo Creed for five days before losing a split decision. No one had ever left the ring standing with Creed before and no one had ever taking a final-round lead away from Tiger in a major; Tiger's streak of holding leads stands at 14, but not without 19 holes of OT.

All on a bum knee which had him wincing after most drives. Any questions as to whether El Tigre is the best golfer of his day? He's closing in on making that "best of all time" but has to get a few more majors under his belt and pass Jack Nicklaus for that honor.

Sunday Musings

I'm back in Lexington after an interesting trip; the last few days have been largely too busy visiting friends and driving to blog, and I'm rather exhausted after getting home yesterday afternoon.

That fatigued state left me in good stead to watch a lot of the US Open yesterday and today.. and possibly tomorrow, if I'm still too pooped to do much prepping for Summer term that starts a week from tomorrow. Yep, they'll be playing tomorrow, since Tiger drained a 12-foot birdie putt on 18 to force a playoff with Rocco Mediate tomorrow; all Mediate could do is watch from the clubhouse (he was in the next-to--last group and had already finished) and mutter "Unbelievable. I knew he'd make it." They play 18-hole playoffs the next day in the US Open, unlike the three-hole overtimes of the British Open and Masters and the sudden death of the PGA.

We've been talking a bit about Lakeland on the blog as of late, with Todd Bentley and Dontrelle Willis getting sent down to the Tiger's single-A farm club there; Mediate has Lakeland roots as well, having gone to college at Florida Southern in Lakeland. While the Bentley pilgrims would be more comfortable theologically with Southeastern College, a big AoG school in town, I'd recommend a visit to the Methodist-affiliated Florida Southern (not to be confused with the big public USF in Tampa)  and it's striking Frank Lloyd Wright designed campus.

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Speaking of the Tigers, they seem to have gotten their acts in order and have a six game winning streak going. They're now only 6 back of Chicago and have a fighting shot at winning the Central if people start playing up to specs.

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I haven't gotten around to comment on Tim Russert's passing on Friday. He had Democrat roots, but could be depended upon to ask the tough questions of whomever was on his beat. If he skewered your guy, it was often due to the fact that he had it coming; you didn't wear any open-toe shoes on Meet the Press, for Russert would call you on each and every flip-flop in your wardrobe. Here's a good Red State obit and another good one from Get Religion.

Russert played things pretty much down the middle, with his blue-collar Catholic roots that stayed with him to the grave. Some people "outgrow" church when they mature, but Russert was a devout Catholic who's sense of ethics made him sure to call BS when it was needed.

Russert may well be the last of his generation of iconic network-news guys to leave the stage. All three of the network anchors of the 90s have moved on and Russert's top rival for best interviewer on broadcast TV, Ted Koppel, is retired. Cable TV has more must-see people that the network news does, even when you factor out the talk-show hosts; I'd be more inclined to watch Shepard Smith or Anderson Cooper than any of the big three network anchors.

That doesn't bode well for network news.

Another Lakeland Revival?

Here's a stunner from the sports news page; the Tigers just optioned Dontrelle Willis to Lakeland, not for rehab stint, but a full-fledged sent-to-the-minors demotion to the Tigers single-A club. I was surprised that the Tigers still had "options" on Willis.

Willis (0-1) has walked 21 batters in 11 1/3 innings. The 8-2 loss to the Indians came in his second start since going on the disabled list with a hyperextended right knee.

Maybe he can stop by and see if Todd Bentley can get a word of knowledge on where his control went; that would be a true miracle. That would be a Lakeland career revival that even a cessationist would approve of.

One Beautiful Game, at Least

I got to catch a bit of the Italy-Netherlands game kicking off Group C play in this summer's Euro 2008 soccer championships, including a pair of spectatular goals from the Dutch to go up 2-0 on the blue boys late in the first half; the Dutch hung on to win 3-0.

Van Nistelrooy's breakthrough goal was claimed to be offside by Italy, but the striker deflected a 20-meter (yard) shot from Van Bronckhorst past Gianluigi Buffon with an Italy defender off the field next to the goal.

The second goal was a perfect counter. Van Bronckhorst first kicked a ball off his own line in a goalmouth scramble and immediately rushed up the left, where he took a long pass from Rafael van der Vaart. The Italians had trouble dragging their aging feet back and were woefully out of position when Van Bronckhost sent a defense-splitting pass to Dirk Kuyt on the right.

The Liverpool player, who only started because of a groin injury to Arjen Robben, headed it perfectly into the path of Sneijder and the midfielder volleyed it past Buffon. There may not be a better goal in the tournament.

That first goal reminded me of a hockey goal where a player deflects a shot close to the goal such that the goalie has little chance to respond. However, such goals are harder to do in soccer, since that deflected shot is treated as a pass, and you have to have two opposing players in front of you when a pass is made to avoid getting called offside.

The Italians were screaming offside, as was I (sort of; I had no dog in the fight and was rooting somewhat for the Dutch since the Italians get cocky about their football) when the goal happened, but as it turned out, there was a Italian defender on the baseline to provide that second defender, and the goal was deemed legit.

The second goal is one that had to break the Italian's heart. They had a corner kick that almost went in, then the Dutch quickly countered and scored in seconds; there's the action that American soccer skeptics claim to be missing from "the beautiful game."

I'll have some afternoons free the next two weeks during my between-term-break; I might catch a few more of these games if they keep this up.

Godly Self-Esteem?

We had to go to the southern side of Houston for the baptismal service yesterday, and scooted down US-59 past Lakewood Church's  new digs at the old Summit basketball stadium downtown; that's Joel Osteen's joint.

I was reminded of a verse from Steven Curtis Chapman's Blind Lead the Blind-

There's a preacher in a nice church
Anchored in the heart of town
People flock to hear his eloquent delivery
He talks of Jesus how he can please us
But the cross cannot be found
Makin' theory out of facts until they're all deceived
And the lost lead the way
And more hearts are led astray

In the past, I pictured such a church as being one of those old-brick mainline churches, where traditional theology has been chucked out the door in order to fit into modern culture; the need for a personal Savior that has moral standards that need to be followed is what generally goes in such churches.

However, a lot of mainline churches have adopted a Social Gospel ethic of helping the poor and railing against middle-class hedonism. Such orthopraxy isn't bad, but needs to be matched with orthodoxy, a theology that maintains the classic Gospel of a savior that died for us and a human sinfulness that needs to be died for and personally responded to.

What Osteen does is maintain orthodoxy (on the basic points of faith, he's a fairly orthodox evangelical) and shoves communal orthopraxy out the airlock. His message is of self-help with the Holy Spirit's help, of using scriptural truths to improve our lives rather than focus on improving the lives of others, of focusing on what the Holy Spirit can do rather than what Jesus did on the cross. That's a more pleasing Jesus than what your stereotypical brimstone-merchant Baptist would bring to the table.

There are a lot of people who lack self-confidence and need an ego boost from a preacher that holds up the Bible and says to folks that you're created in God's image, that He don't make junk and that God will equip you to do the things He said his believers will do. Is that half Dr. Phil and half old-school Gospel? Yes. However, it seems to scratch a big enough itch in Houston where the church generates enough cash flow to pay for a nine-figure overhaul of their new stadium-church.

I run into a lot of night students in my college teaching job that lack confidence that could us a bit of that positive attitude. It does set people up for disappointment when the real God delivers a bit slower than the Osteens of the world advertise. That doesn't mean there isn't a place in the American spiritual marketplace for some spiritual confidence-building.

Thus, I was taken a bit aback by Randy McRoberts' suggestion of anti-Osteen theological sabotage at the bookstore. We could use better books that Osteen's on how to gain confidence in yourself as a child of God, but there is a niche that he his filling; it's up to more orthodox Christian to come up with a better way of expressing that love of God to the struggling folks, of providing a sense of godly self-esteem that doesn't flow from a Word-of-Faith theology that misrepresents God.

Monday Musings

Spring quarter's finally in the books; I posted grades earlier this morning. I have an all-conventional summer term, so I have no on-line material to work up in advance and can enjoy an actual vacation for the first time since starting back into teaching.

We're in Houston for the week visiting my in-laws, including my newest niece born late last month. The weather is hawt and the nieces and nephew corner the cute market so bad, the CTFC is investigating; we got to see them get baptized (it's the Presbyterian side of Eileen's clan; on my side, my sister's clan's Assembly of God, so we're waiting on Jessica and Tyler to have their own profession of faith first) yesterday.

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Good news from the Saudi entity; they think oil prices are too high. We'll see if that helps bring oil prices off of the ceiling.

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Speaking of oil prices and oil producers, Caesar Chavez is actually playing nice for once in recorded history, asking the FARC to lay down their guns and cough up their hostages- "At this point in time, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place ... guerrilla wars are history."

I wonder if Chavez is looking at Nepal as a role model, where the Maoists were brought out of the hills and into an new electoral system. However, the Nepalese Maoists didn't have a billion-dollar drug industry to sustain them, which complicates things in bringing the FARC out of outlaw status.

The FARC may well be the one thing that could stall Chavez's plans of a pan-South American Bolivarian movement with Chavez as sugar daddy; they give a rival vision to a politically-gained socialist system and disrupt things enough where the US might come to blows with Chavez if he does anything more to support FARC. Getting the FARC off the field takes away the one rationale the US could use to get involved in the region and oust Chavez.

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Ted Kennedy's out of the hospital. Just a reminder to the rightmost wing of the Peanut Gallery; we are supposed to pray for our enemies, even the guys on the other side of the political aisle. Also, no snide comments about brain cancer.

Barack, Take the Wheel

Hillary is finally getting the message that she won't be the nominee and is slated to officially suspend her campaign like it was Rasheed Wallace. However, she's taking precautions.

She's bowed to the inevitable, but I'm not sure she likes it.

Buy Your Own Sweet and Sour!

"Free Chinese from Gitmo, US Lawmakers Urge." They have plenty of perks already, like a great health care plan; members of Congress don't need government--subsidized Kung Pao Chicken.

"No we don't carry Moo Shoo Pork. It's not halal. Sorry."

Seriously, there seems to be an issue where we let Chinese officials "interview" some Uighur detainees who got caught helping out in neighboring Afghanistan; the Chinese aren't nice to the Muslim Uighurs in the western part of China.

Buying Power Recession

My stock response as of late for people who cry "recession" is that we still have positive GDP growth; the first quarter figures got revised up to 0.9% last week from an initial reading of 0.6%.

The problem with that is that buying power didn't go up with it. In that first quarter, gas prices went up 7% from $3.16 a gallon in January to $3.38 a gallon in April. Since the GDP figures assume a yearly growth rate, let's compound that 7% figure for four quarters and get a 31.2% yearly rate ((1+7%)⁴-1).

Gasoline makes up 5.2% of the CPI, so that buying power in the first quarter went down at a 1.6% annual rate (31.2%*0.052). That's roughly twice the rate of economic growth. So, even if the economy was growing at just under a 1% clip, the high gas prices was draining our pocketbooks at a 1.6% clip, making us 0.7% poorer.

Well, we all have to cut back some. Suck it up, feline friend.

We're having to cut spending in other areas, like squeaky toys or durable goods, in order to finance the increasing cost of gas. I'm just working on the 5% cost of gasoline in that math above, since the CPI is 9% energy and quite a bit of the non-gasoline energy budget is oil-based, that 1.6% hit could be more like 2% when oil-based energy costs are factored in.

It may not meet the textbook definition of recession, but our buying power is taking a beating. To our LOLcat friend, it if wokz like a reseshon, and quakz like a reseshon.... itz a reseshon .

We may not have had two quarters of negative GDP growth, but we've had at least one quarter of negative buying power growth and are hot on the heels of two, given our $4/gallon  (or just under here in Lexington) gas as of late. That's going to be on people's minds as they go to the ballot box in November.

Palace Coup

In Auburn Hills, at least; Flip Saunders got let go by the Pistons yesterday. Detroit wound up eating the last year of Flip's contract, but this was a good time to get rid of him rather than have him lingering as a lame duck for next year. He got the Pistons to three straight Eastern Conference finals but couldn't get past that point during the Saunders regime.

Was that a failure, as some of the talk show hosts have been saying? Yes and no. He did a solid job, but when he inherited a team who won the championship two years before and narrowly missed winning it the year before he got there, he was expected to get them back their at least once in this period. Saunders going from Minnesota to Detroit was going from undergrad to grad school; C's work at the undergrad level, but they'd don't in grad school (where C's are like Ds and Bs are like Cs), and Flip was doing C-level work with the Pistons.

He's still a good coach and there are plenty of NBA teams that could improve their staff by hiring him to run things, but Detroit isn't one of them.

Michael Curry is the heir apparent; it wasn't that long ago (2003) that he was playing for the Pistons as an undersized swingman who did all the little things well. It's folks like that that often make good coaches.

The next question is whether Joe Dumars cleans house on the roster. Rasheed Wallace is the most likely person to relocate; he's got one year left on his contract and seems to have worn out his welcome in Detroit and gone a notch past his freshness date.

Here's a few suggested trade partners. All three of these would pass salary-cap muster and benefit both teams at a quick glance.

(1) New York for Zach Randolph. Randolph has a good upside but a big contract with three years left on it; Rasheed would fit in well with Mike D'Antoni's offense. MSU alum Randolph might make for an interesting Bruise Brothers tag team with Jason Maxiell. If Donnie Walsh wants to start cleaning up after Isaiah's messes, this might be a good place to start.

(2) Dallas for Eric Dampier. Dampier is somewhat under-perfoming for his $10.5M salary and could serve as a good wide-body in the Pistons rotation, either as a starting center or the first big man off the bench. Rasheed and Dirk as a pair of long-range capable big guys might give some interesting options for Rick Carlisle.

(3) Sacramento for Brad Miller. Rasheed could bring some positive energy to a King lineup, as long as he and Ron Artest could co-exist. Miller would fit into a low-key lunch-bucket motif in Detroit rather nicely.

I could see any of those three options happening, but the Knick trade would look like it would make the most sense. We could also see Chauncey Billups on the block as well, although his capology is a bit funky after signing a long-term deal.

 

Lakeland on Lakeland

Before I go on to the meat of the post, let me posit some information for folks looking for travel information for the Lakeland Revival.

Most of the hotelage in town is on the north side of town along I-4. If you're staying for a week or so, the Suburban Lodge is a decent extended-stay bet, which is on US-98 (I-4 Exit 32) near the Lakeland mall and about a mile south of Ignited Church. There's also a Motel 6 at that exit for budget travelers and a number of nicer motels at Exit 33.

If you're on a bigger budget, there's a nice Holiday Inn on the south side of town on Florida Avenue (FL-33) and a nice Residents Inn rather close to the Lakeland Airport site of the revival.

Flying in? The airport in Lakeland isn't commercial, so you'll be looking at either Tampa or Orlando. The Tampa airport is easier to get around than Orlando and has free WiFi, but getting from the airport to Lakeland can be a challange; the airport is on the west side of downtown and you have to go through downtown Tampa and the infamous Malfunction Junction of I-275 and I-4 in order to get over to Lakeland; the Ignited Church host site is off of exit 32 while you'll most likely want to use the Drane Field Road exit on the Polk Parkway to get to the revival site.

If you're flying in or out during rush hour, it would be less stress to go via Orlando; if you're coming or going during off hours or on the weekend, I'd recommend Tampa.

______________

Meanwhile, let's get a take on Todd Bentley that I trust, from Lakeland Vineyard worship pastor Rick Esquevel; I attended there from 2002-2004, and found him to be a very level-headed guy. When someone Googled in looking for LV's lead pastor Dave Baker's take on Bentley, I found this regional Vineyard worship leader discussion board where Rick was sounding off on the revivial-

While the call to discern and test the spirits is obviously scriptural, I fear that many throw the baby out with the bathwater. [Vineyard movement founder John] Wimber said "When you eat chicken, you eat the meat and spit out the bones" good advice. "The people most opposed to a new move of God are the folks from the previous move", also from Wimber.

Jesus had angels minister to him, and told the disciples "I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man". John 1:5 John would also have quite an encounter and prolonged discussion with an angel while on the island of Patmos, yielding the book we now call Revelation.

I have read Todd's accounts, and watched on You-Tube postings and been at several of the meetings here, and have never heard him say anything that indicates or encourages angel worship. The only one he seems to want people to worship, again in my observations, is Jesus! Jesus is always credited with the healing power, and Todd has said that signs and wonders, healing miracles should cause people to want to find out about Jesus and get saved. Hard to argue with that.

In attending the meetings, we had to consciously suspend our critical and judgmental attitudes and seek God. Are You at work here, Father? What would you have me see and learn here? Does Your move always look the way I think it will? There is lots we could be critical of, but I think the important thing is to go a few times observe, pray, before forming an opinion. Todd is no theologian to be sure, but can God use him? I guess so, it seems that He is using him, and many of the healing are quite dramatic and verifiable, including some known personally to us.

I also know that the ones who most opposed Jesus and what He did were the religious folk, the ones who had it all together, who knew the book! While weighing all things, testing the spirits, confirming with God's Word, we must be cautious not to be so "correct" that we miss what God is doing, and His move in our midst.

One line that I like to use from time to time is "God used Baalam's donkey to deliver a message, and He'll occasionally use a jackass to deliver His message even to this day." Bentley may well fit that description; remember that the disciples were a motley crew that a human-resources headhunter wouldn't have pick for Jesus ministry team.

The one line in Pastor Rick's take that leaves me a bit cold is the start of that next-to-last paragraph where he wants to "consciously suspend our critical and judgmental attitudes." I'll buy the judgmental part, but I think we still need to be critical in the good sense of the word; not in a Monday-morning QB sense but with a spirit of discernment to see if things are spiritually on the up-and-up. We need the Word to balance the Spirit and can't go into things rationally brain-dead.

That being said, I'm still on the fence on this revival. It seems risky and run by a guy with some off-beat theology, but I don't want to get in God's way if he wants to use this tattooed biker dude to get His message out to folks.

Making Out with Darwin

I was tailing an interesting car on my way home from campus this evening. The back of the car had a Darwin fish "kissing" an unadorned fish decal;  here's a crude sketch of the thing.

The Darwin fish isn't doing anything hostile to the generic fish, just coexisting. As I read the decal, I see the church making out with Darwin, to which the Baptists down the road would say "get a room!"

Guess what church the owner belong to? No, not Unitarian, but that's a good guess.

The car was also packing a "Blessed to be Episcopalian" sticker.

The Peanut Gallery's free to come up with their own crass comments, but I'll just merely pass on what I've reported as food for thought as we observe the North American White-Breasted Mainliner in their native suburban habitat.

End of the Road... For Now

It looks like Obama will push over the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination either today or shortly thereafter; the AP has him already over the top, while NBC has him 11 short. Either way, we're in garbage time on the Democratic side.

To borrow from a line of her husband's, I can feel Hillary's pain. She gave it her best shot, spent at least a decade setting herself up for this run, only to come up thisshort, losing by a split decision in what has been a campaign that will set the standard for a mano-a-mano primary.

For weeks, it seems like the Clinton camp has been in a state of semi-denial; "No, no, no .... hell, no.... we didn't come this far, and worked this hard to just barely lose to this [insert bleepable pejoratives]. It isn't fair."

Maybe not, but life isn't always fair. That's not all that bad, for if it were fair, you'd get exactly what you deserved.

Where does Hillary go from here? VP wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. If Obama wins the election and serves two terms, she's the heiress apparent in 2016. If he runs a poor campaign and loses, she's the heiress apparent in 2012 and can sooth some sore spots with Obama primary voters by being a trooper and being the VP nominee.

Is there too much vitriol between them for them to be a ticket? Not really. George Bush perecoined the phrase "Voodoo economics" during the 1980 primaries, but wound up being Reagan's running mate. On the Democratic side, Kennedy and Johnson had little love for each other as the two main contenders in 1960, yet managed to hold their noses long enough to get the "Boston-Austin" ticket elected. Compared to those parings,.Barack and Hillary all but need to get a room.

Would she be a good pick? She does have a following and could be helpful in hanging on to some blue collar states like Michigan and Ohio,(which seems to be where a McCain-Obama race will be won or lost), more so than picking Gov. Strickland. She has her baggage, but she also has a following.

We'll see what the next few days brings, whether Clinton can be magnanimous and whether Obama would want her on board. Hillary may well be the LBJ to Obama's JFK, the savvy and ruthless insider pairing with the charismatic youngster; A slight tweak of an LBJ line would be good advice for Obama-it's better to have your rivals inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in.

MMA in MMVIII

It's been an interesting sports weekend. I was up late watching the Red Wings go up 3-1 in the Stanley Cup finals; it hasn't been often that I've been able to catch a game, since we don't have Versus on our cable system. They're a game away from having their first post-Yzerman Cup win.

Unfortunately, the Pistons weren't so lucky last night; Boston came in and dispatched them, giving us a back-to-the-80s throwback of a Celtics-Lakers series, with Paul Pierce playing Larry Bird, Kevin Garnett playing Kevin McHale and Kobe as Magic.

Rasheed Wallace disappeared last night; they're might be a missing-persons report out by now. 2-12 and an o-fer-6 from three. It may be time for the Pistons to look to move him and retool; for whom, I'm not sure, but a productive Wallace has Detroit in the finals, which he wasn't.

Another back-to-the-past moment happened as I heard of Manny Ramirez hitting homer #500. I can remember driving down to Canton about this time in 1993 to watch the Indians' AA farm club with their next big star, Ramirez. At the time, he reminded me of Hal McRae with his good solid stance and power to right center as a righty. He has that  McRae like batting average, having a .312 career mark as we go to press compared to McRae's .290, but I wasn't counting on Cooperstown level homer numbers.

However, the interesting thing that got my attention was the debut of mixed martial arts on prime-time; when I started channel surfing during the Red Wings games, I saw that CBS was running a card of MMA with the highlight being a heavyweight match featuring "YouTube street-fighting phenomenon" Kevin Ferguson, who uses the nom-de-guerre Kimbo Slice. Slice looks like a cross between
Mr. T.'s Clubber Lang from the Rocky movies and one of Worf's DS9 drinking buddies; "It is a good day to bash someone's head in."

Slice is now 3-0, having let the Cauliflower-eared "Colossus" James Thompson take him to three rounds. A journeyman MMAer with a 16-8 record coming in, Thompson almost had him in submission mode, having him pinned and applying elbows to head late in the second round, where Slice was literally saved by the bell. However, Slice proceed to slice open that big right ear of Thompson early in the third with a nasty volley of punches, getting a third-round TKO and leaving the Slice legend tarnished but intact. His first two foes in organized MMA didn't get out of the first round.

MMA seems to hit an interesting spot as a combination of boxing and pro wrestling, but without the fakery (that I know of). With pro wrestling seemingly in decline and more people being able to pick Slice out of a lineup than the heavyweight boxing champ, we might start to see this interesting-but-brutal sport make it to the big time.

It's not good news that it's becoming popular, since it appeals to the lesser angels of our nature. However, it does seem to be a cleaner, less raunchy alternative to the WWE, having legit competition without as much trash-talking or sexual innuendo. It will be interesting to see if the various MMA schools can become mainstream sports or whether they'll merely grab the cable shelf space of wrestling.