September 11, 2010 - Vespers

The Nations will rage, the infidels will rattle their swords. Yet, He remains in firm control and is returning to settle the score. Maranatha!

September 11, 2010 - II

The Reverend Terry Jones and imam Rauf could be considered emblematic of the trial that has held this nation in a vise grip for the past decade. At one pole there is an astounding lack of sensitivity for the thousands whose voices were silenced on a clear Tuesday morning in September. On the other pole there is an amazing level of jackassery in promising an act that offers little or no positive fruit and incalculable negative blowback.

Jones and Rauf are within their constitutional bounds to build and burn as their resources allow. Rauf has the same rights accorded to the pornographer, pawnbroker or payday loan purveyor to hang a shingle and open up for business. Jones too, has the same rights given to the militant atheist and the islamic extremists who burn Bibles, crosses and crucifixes with routine regularity.

These two creepy men are textbook cases in the "rights vs. responsibilities" continuum. Rauf fails to understand that what he calls a "bridge", a majority of others would call a "siege- work". The imam claims that his intentions are as pure as the driven snow, yet history's report concerning islam's penchant for triumphal "mosques as monuments" stands in stark contradiction. And for the love of all that's holy, he doesn't help his case a wit by tossing out a thinly veiled threat on CNN in front of all 417 of her nightly viewers.

Jones, clearly a graduate of Jack Chick Theological Seminary, has missed the bus. The pastor considers this koran barbeque to be an act of faith or obedience to Holy Scripture. Yet his "auto de fe" is understood to be, at its very best, sub-christian by reasserter and revisionist alike. At its worst, its an act of benighted ignorance that gives absolutely no thought to its unintended consequences.

What's the Deacon's take on this on this solemn morning?

I believe that Rauf's decision to build Dar al Cordoba in the shadow of a symbolic mass grave is tantamount to the same "colonialism" decried by so many on the left (and I wish they'd get their heads around that!) "Right" says he may build his missionary enterprise wherever the market will bear. "Rectitude" demands that he should consider another location.

I don't recognize the koran to be divinely inspired any more that I consider the Book of Mormon, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, the writings of Ellen G. White or Mary Baker Eddy to be divinely inspired. The koranic doctrine of abrogation serves only to invalidate the work as the words of an indecisive deity.

Yet, because one fifth of the global population DOES consider the koran to be inspired, I believe that it should be handled respectfully. It shouldn't be placed on the level of The Holy Bible, but it shouldn't be handled as any common book.

It would be far more beneficial if rather than burning the koran, it would be better open and read. This way, its errors could be engaged prayerfully, intelligently and thoughtfully.

September 11, 2010

"Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted" -- Jesus of Nazareth

On "Rights"

Ok, let's all stop shrieking for a moment and forget about who's ox is currently being gored. Its September 9, 2010 and we're still a Constitutional Republic and not the Orwellian dystopia we're on the fast track in becoming. In this Republic, you have the right to:

• Damn the nation from the pulpit like rev. Jeremiah Wright
• Emotionally assault mourners at military funerals like the trolls from Westboro Baptist
• (Apparently) Intimidate voters a la New Black Panthers
• Take your best white sheets off the bed and wear them in the public square
• Burn the Holy Bible
• Engage in sex acts on a public street, in front of children (gay pride parade style)
• Engage in street evangelism at that same pride parade.
• Build a monument of triumphal conquest in the shadow of a mass grave in Lower Manhattan.
• Burn copies the koran on the anniversary of the most cowardly against civilians in American history

Alright, now that I have your attention let's think about this like adults. I want to emphasize the "adult" aspect because more and more, the national dialog has been resembling a junior high school lunchroom dominated by petulant children.

Every one of the aforementioned bullets is burning someone's bacon or jazzing them on. One is reading and saying "yeah baby" while another is saying "how dare them..." Your ox or not, it may be "gored" under the protections of the First Amendment. Yet, for everyone who clamors to assert their "first amendment right", too few are willing to cowboy up to their "first amendment responsibility" to own the consequence or fallout of their expression.

How does this play out? Quite simply. If you're going to engage in street evangelism at a pride parade, you'd better be prepared for the same reception that Lot received that evening in Olde Towne Sodom. If you're going to stand in your pulpit and damn your nation while spewing marxist liberation theology, don't hide behind the race card when you suddenly become an object of scorn.

For the rest of us, it should be a no-brainer. There is no enumerated right that protects us from offense. If you believe that this SHOULD be the case, you're playing with fire in the fact that you too offend folk on any given day. Any protected class is only an election away from becoming a public pariah, or vice-versa.

Someone has said, "There was a time when people had tender hearts and tough hides, seems that has become twisted around." I wish I knew who actually made that remark because it contains a wealth of pithy wisdom.

Tuesday Chuckles

I saw this one in the Freelance Star yesterday and mused, "Would this have been the alternate ending to the fairytale had it been set in Stafford County (aka Suburbia Majora)?"

We moved down here from Washington County Maryland in 1994. Shortly after our arrival, I would hear this mantra repeated often: Don't get in trouble in Stafford. Initially it seemed to be sour grapes from someone who crossed the line and was called to the bench to answer for their "misdemeanourin" (to quote Governor Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel). It soon became clear that far too many people were making the claim for it to be mere simpering.

One only needs to read the Freelance Star a week or so to realize that the phrase "held without bond" appears in nearly every story concerning some neer' do well who ran afoul of the Stafford County Mounties. Dovetail this fact that the County is saddled with a Commonwealth Attorney who has made it his personal crusade to turn as many citizens into felons as the calendar will bear. This is the same one who's office charged an 8 and 10 year-old as felons for the Mansonesque crime of chucking snowballs at a moving car (something that could be remedied by a simple trip to the woodshed).