I’ve been reading a really interesting book on the history and development of the Glock pistol and popular it has become across the United States, particular as the weapon of choice of police departments around the country. The Glock pistol is used by over 65% of all police and law enforcement agencies in the country. Even if you have absolutely no interest in firearms or shooting, this book is interesting because it examines America’s gun culture and the various issues that continue to swirl around the use of firearms and the Second Amendment. I highly recommend the book. Here is a link to where you can buy it.

Here’s a little video I put together about the Glock for those who have no knowledge of them.

Isak Gerson, Church Leader

This is true. I’m not making it up. Story posted here.

The Church of Kopimism, a religion whose central tenet is the free sharing of information, has been formally recognized by the Swedish government.

Kopimists believe all information sharing is “holy” and that the value of information multiplies when it’s shared. They hold CTRL+C and CTRL+V, keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting, to be sacred symbols of their religion. (We’re not making this stuff up.)

According to a press release on the Church’s website, Kopimism has been striving to achieve legal recognition in Sweden for more than a year. The church’s board chairman, Gustav Nipe, says the Kopimists has tried three times to register with Kammarkollegiet, the Swedish Administrative Services Agency. They were ultimately successful and recognized as a religion just before Christmas of last year.

Formal acknowledgment provides the Church of Kopimism, named for the Swedish word for “copy,” with legal protections under that country’s law and potential access to government-assisted funding.

The recognition of the Church of Kopimism is the latest success for Europeans fighting for a free and open Internet. The Pirate Party, formed in Sweden in 2006, aims to reform copyright and patent laws and to protect online access to information. The Pirate Party won over 7% of Swedish votes in 2009′s European parliamentary elections, and it has spawned an international movement under the banner “Pirate Parties International.”

Not everything has gone smoothly for the Church of Kopimism. Its website buckled under the pressure of sudden international interest. A temporary page is urging people interested in becoming a Kopimist to check back “when the storm is settled.”

Read more here.

I have watched and listened and read, with increasing disgust, the story about Joe Paterno and his negligent handling of the sexual assault on young boys by one of his football team’s coaches. The story is sick enough in itself, the details of which will make you literally feel like vomiting, but nearly as revolting is the reaction of many people to Paterno’s firing. It points how utterly stupid the entire college sport scene has become and particularly, college football. But how can the Church learn from this situation? Kudos to Al Mohler for some excellent thoughts and reflection on the entire sick and sordid incident. Here are Mohler’s comments from his web site.

No one thought it would end this way. Joe Paterno, the legendary head football coach at Penn State University heard of his firing by the school’s board of trustees by phone last night. Just two weeks after achieving the most wins of any NCAA Division One football coach in history, Paterno was fired. His firing — a necessary action by the Penn State board of trustees — holds lessons for us all.

Almost a decade ago, a graduate assistant told Coach Paterno that an assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, had been observed forcing a young boy into a sexual act in the school’s football locker room showers. Sandusky was himself a big name in Penn State football, and he was considered a likely successor to Paterno if the head coach had retired. Sandusky also ran a non-profit organization for boys, and he brought the boys onto the Penn State campus. He continued to do so even after his own retirement from Penn State’s coaching staff.

After hearing the report, Paterno informed university officials of the accusation. At that point, little or nothing seems to have happened. The scandal broke into public view last Saturday, when Sandusky was arrested and charged with 40 felony counts of sexual abuse involving young boys. Penn State had been harboring a serial child sex abuser. Also arrested were the university’s athletic director and its senior vice president of business and finance. Both were charged with failure to report the abuse and with perjury.

What about Paterno and the university’s president, Graham B. Spanier? The Pennsylvania grand jury said that both men had knowledge of the 2002 first-hand report of abuse, and neither contacted the police. Furthermore, Sandusky was allowed some use of university facilities even long after this report. Paterno went back to coaching football. Spanier went back to raising money and building the school’s reputation. Jerry Sandusky had every opportunity to keep on sexually abusing young boys.

When the facts became known, the firings of both Paterno and Spanier were inevitable and necessary. Both men had credible knowledge that young boys were being sexually abused, and neither did anything effective to stop it. Most crucially, neither man did what they should have done within minutes of hearing the first report — contact law enforcement immediately.

Every single coach, athletic director, and college or university president awoke this morning to a changed world. Nothing will ever be the same again. The firing of Joe Paterno will send shock waves through the entire world of higher education. A man who a day before had announced under pressure that he would retire at the end of the season was told by phone that he would never coach another game. Penn State University will forever be associated with a scandal the likes of which college athletics has, thankfully, never seen before.

But the world has not only changed for college athletics. The detonation of the Penn State scandal must shake the entire nation into a new moral awareness. Any failure to report and to stop the sexual abuse of children must be made inconceivable. The moral irresponsibility that Penn State officials demonstrated in this tragedy may well be criminal. There can be no doubt that all of these officials bear responsibility for allowing a sexual predator to continue his attacks.

What about churches, Christian institutions, and Christian schools? The Penn State disaster must serve as a warning to us as well, for we bear an even higher moral responsibility.

The moral and legal responsibility of every Christian — and especially every Christian leader and minister — must be to report any suspicion of the abuse of a child to law enforcement authorities. Christians are sometimes reluctant to do this, but this reluctance is both deadly and wrong.

Sometimes Christians are reluctant to report suspected sexual abuse because they do not feel that they know enough about the situation. They are afraid of making a false accusation. This is the wrong instinct. We do not have the ability to conduct the kind of investigation that is needed, nor is this assigned to the church. This is the function of government as instituted by God (Romans 13). Waiting for further information allows a predator to continue and puts children at risk. This is itself an immoral act that needs to be seen for what it is.

A Christian hearing a report of sexual abuse within a church, Christian organization, or Christian school, needs to act in exactly the same manner called for if the abuse is reported in any other context. The church and Christian organizations must not become safe places for abusers. These must be safe places for children, and for all. Any report of sexual abuse must lead immediately to action. That action cannot fall short of contacting law enforcement authorities. A clear lesson of the Penn State scandal is this: Internal reporting is simply not enough.

After law enforcement authorities have been notified, the church must conduct its own work of pastoral ministry, care, and church discipline. This is the church’s responsibility and charge. But these essential Christian ministries and responsibilities are not substitutes for the proper function of law enforcement authorities and the legal system. As Christians, we respect those authorities because we are commanded to do so.

There may well be further arrests in connection with the Penn State scandal. One can only imagine the lawsuits that will consume the university’s time and treasury in years ahead. Christian institutions and churches looking at this scandal had better act immediately to ensure that all operate under adequate policies and guidelines. What would prevent this scandal at your school or church?

Church leaders and pastors must decide now — not later — that we will respond to any report of sexual abuse with immediate action and an immediate call to law enforcement officials. We must decide in advance what we will do, and not allow ourselves to think that we can handle such a challenge on our own. Every church and Christian institution needs a full set of policies, procedures, and accountability structures. As leaders, we must develop the right instincts for right action.

The leaders of Penn State University must have acted, or failed to have acted, out of many motivations. One may well have been to protect the image and reputation of the university. Well, we now see where that leads. A scandal reported and ended in 2002 would be horrible enough. A scandal that began there, was known by officials, and explodes almost a decade later is too horrible to contemplate.

We all need an immediate reality check. I discovered yesterday that the policy handbook of the institution I am proud to lead calls for any employee receiving a report of child abuse, including child sexual abuse, to contact his or her supervisor with that report. That changes today. The new policy statement will direct employees receiving such a report to contact law enforcement authorities without delay. Then, after acting in the interests of the child, they should contact their supervisor.

In a real sense, the whole world changed today. We all know more than we knew before, and we are all responsible for that knowledge. The costs of acting wrongly in such a situation, or acting inadequately, are written across today’s headlines and the moral conscience of the nation. The tragedy at Penn State is teaching the entire nation a lesson it dare not fail to learn.

I know, they aren’t “divorced” but…well…what do you call it when people who are living together, sharing common property and so forth, just like a married couple, decide to call it quits and, effectively, get a “divorce”? Picked up up from G.E. Veith’s blog site and thought you would find it interesting.

As the number of co-habiting couples skyrockets, a new legal problem has come to the fore:   What to do when the couples split up?  From an article in the Washington Post:

A study by the Pew Research Center found that 39 percent of Americans think marriage is becoming obsolete. But it still takes a marriage (or some other legally binding agreement) to get a divorce. And as the number of couples choosing to live together rather than marry has increased drastically, so have the spats over their splits. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that almost half of its 1,600 members are seeing an increase in court battles between cohabiting couples. Nearly 40 percent of those lawyers said they’ve seen an increase in demand for cohabitation agreements — the equivalent of a prenup, sans wedding ring.

“It’s pretty heartbreaking,” Luxenberg says. “People don’t have rights unless they have the title — their name is on a piece of property or a bank account or something like that.”

Luxenberg recalls one client who lived with her partner for 20 years. They’d had a child and built a home together. The woman’s income was about $50,000, Luxenberg says, and her boyfriend’s was “six or seven times that.” When the couple split, the woman hired Luxenberg to see what recourse she had. The answer: not much.

There would be child support, “but she didn’t get any of his pension benefits or any of his profit sharing. And she wasn’t going to get alimony,” Luxenberg says. “I don’t think people think about those kinds of issues.” . . .

A recent census report found that 7.5 million heterosexual couples lived together in 2010, up 13 percent from 2009. The report suggests that some of the shift may be attributed to the economy — more couples than in the previous year reported at least one party being unemployed. (An Onion TV headline put it this way: “Nation’s Girlfriends Unveil New Economic Plan: ‘Let’s Move In Together.’ ”)

The numbers have been climbing over the past decade as cohabitation has become more socially acceptable.

Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project, an organization that promotes marriage, worries about the effect this has on children.

The good news, he says, is that divorces among parents with children have returned to levels not seen since the 1960s. Of couples who married in the early 1960s, 23 percent divorced before their first child turned 10. The rate peaked at slightly more than 27 percent in the late 1970s. By the mid-1990s, the rate dropped to just above 23 percent.

But a recent report Wilcox wrote, titled “Why Marriage Matters,” concludes that American families are less stable overall, in large part because couples are choosing cohabitation over marriage. Today, 24 percent of U.S. children are born to cohabiting couples, according to the report, and an additional 20 percent will live in a cohabiting household at some point in their childhood.

And 65 percent of children born to cohabiting parents will experience a parental breakup by the time they turn 12, compared with 24 percent of kids born to married parents.

“The more commitment people have to a relationship, typically the better they’ll do, the happier they are,” Wilson says.

This generation’s preference for cohabitation, he adds, may be a backlash against their parents’ propensity for divorce. But not getting married doesn’t protect couples who live together from heartache when the relationship falls apart.

The article goes on to give a number of sad stories.  But isn’t the point of just living together instead of getting married so that no one gets “tied down”?  Don’t a lot of people avoid getting married precisely so as to free themselves from the cost of divorce, alimony, sharing of assets, and the like?   If a couple isn’t married, what claim can they possibly have on each other’s property?   I don’t see how cohabiting couples have any grounds for complaining.  Of course the relationship isn’t permanent.  Of course you don’t have any kind of legal ties.  I thought that was the point!

Maybe we could restore the time-honored option of common law marriage.  If you live together for longer than a specified time, then you are married, whether you have a ceremony or whether you want to be or not, with all of the rights and responsibilities thereof!

One of you kind readers passed this article along to me and thought I’d find it interesting. As a member of the baby-boom generation, though I’m always quick to point out, I’m on the very trailing edge of said generation, I can’t be accused of bashing boomers simply because I’m not one, so…well, read this article and let me know what you think. I think this is pretty much spot-on accurate. Here’s the whole article. I’ll post a snippet below.

Behaving well, behaving responsibly, learning the norms of politeness and refusing to abandon them without good reason tend to make you a more self-controlled, successful, and finally better person. This is precisely the wisdom my generation threw away. Their promiscuity, adolescent foul-mouthedness, bad manners, and disregard for tradition — all of which they claimed were a new kind of freedom — were in fact the precursors to the very oldest kind of slavery:  slavery to one’s own impulses and desires. This slavery, packaged in the Sixties, as “identity” or “culture” or “the right to be yourself,” ultimately leads to enslavement by others as it makes you indolent and irresponsible and in need of protection and restraint by the powers that be. A poor black man’s journey from hip hop culture to prison is a perfect example. So is a middle class white man’s journey from moral license and unwarranted praise to his sniveling need for an all-providing — oh, and by the way, all-powerful — state.

It is unfortunate that some people in this country do not understand that there are many people around the world, particularly Islamic fundamentalists, who will stop at nothing to kill you, and me. Make no mistake about it: these people can not be reasoned with, we can not appeal to them on the basis of our Western limp-wristed multiculturalistic values. They want to kill us.  They want to destroy us. They want to impose Sharia law everywhere. This is a struggle to the death, period. Dear reader, if you do not understand this, or agree with it, I invite you to crawl out from under the rock you have been living under, smell the coffee and wake up!

I thank God that He provides courageous soldiers who stand up against those who would destroy us and protect us, day and night. As Winston Churchill once said: ““We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” In light of recent events, here is a great video from an organization I’m proud to be a life-long member of the National Rifle Association.

I’ve been struck by the reactions to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. On the one extreme, we hear triumphalistic theocratic rhetoric, falling into the error of assuming, or thinking, that somehow America is “God’s chosen nation.” On the other extreme are the pacifistic, hand-wringing comments made, sadly, yes, even by some Lutherans who should know better. Why should they know better? Because we know and understand the doctrine of vocation and the doctrine of the two kingdoms.

The doctrine of vocation teaches us that all callings and stations in life are honorable and noble, from the person who changes the bed pan in a hospital, to the person who drives a taxi cab, to the soldier who does his duty in service to country and neighbor. This is why Martin Luther wrote in his treatise, “Can Soldiers Too Be Saved?

…In the same way, when I think of a soldier fulfilling his office by punishing the wicked, killing the wicked, and creating so much misery, it seems an un-Christian work completely contrary to Christian love. But when I think of how it protects the good and keeps and preserves wife and child, house and farm, property, and honor and peace, then I see how precious and godly this work is; and I observe that it amputates a leg or a hand, so that the whole body may not perish…

…The office of the sword is in itself right and is a divine and useful ordinance, which God does not want us to despise, but to fear, honor, and obey, under penalty of punishment, as St. Paul says in Romans 13 [:1-5]…

…Self-defense is a proper ground for fighting and therefore all laws agree that self-defense shall go unpunished; and he who kills another in self-defense is innocent in the eyes of all men…

…When the battle begins…they [soldiers] should simply commend themselves to God’s grace and adopt a Christian attitude…everyone should also say this exhortation in his heart or with his lips, “Heavenly Father, here I am, according to your divine will, in the external work and service of my lord, which I owe you first and then to my lord for your sake. I thank your grace and mercy that you have put me into a work which I am sure is not sin, but right and pleasing obedience to your will. But because I know and have learned from your gracious word that none of our good works can help us and that no one is saved as a soldier but only as a Christian, therefore, I will not in any way rely on my obedience and work, but place myself freely at the service of your will. I believe with all my heart that only the innocent blood of your dear Son, my Lord Jesus Christ, redeems and saves me, which he shed for me in obedience to your holy will. In this faith I will live and die, fight, and do everything else. Dear Lord God the Father, preserve and strengthen this faith in me by your Spirit. Amen.” (American Edition, Vol. 46)

The other doctrine to keep in mind is the doctrine of the two kingdoms. We know that God works to save souls from hell through the “right hand kingdom” that is, within and through the Church via the means of grace, given to her to proclaim the Gospel for the salvation of sinners. This is the calling of the Church, not the state. On the other hand, it is to earthly government, the “left hand kingdom” that God gives the authority to protect and defend life, by giving to it the power of the sword, as Paul explains in Romans 13. It is this duty that our government discharged in hunting down and killing Osama Bin Laden, for the sake of defending us and our families and our nation. Bin Laden has demonstrated, for many years, a clear desire and intention to do our nation harm and proved it many times over, most dramatically on Sept. 11, 2001. We do well to remember that pacifism is not a Christian teaching. The Bible does not support it, and it is therefore indefensible.

Do we rejoice in the death of a wicked man, who from every human perspective, is facing now nothing but eternal torment and punishment in hell? No, of course not. Do we however rejoice that justice was carried out and a man who wished to kill us all is now dead? Yes, of course we do. This “no” and “yes” response is incapable of being understood without the doctrine of vocation and the two kingdoms clearly in view.

Do we rejoice in the death of the wicked? No, because the Lord does not.

Can we however be grateful and rejoice that justice has been done? That the Lord has, through the instrumentality of the kingdom of the left, exercised this justice? Yes.

Here are a couple thoughts on the killing of Osama Bin Laden that well summarize what I’m feeling and thinking this morning. How about you?

FIRST, from a Lutheran pastor:

Please remember that the special forces had their God-given vocation to do last night, bearing that sword not held in vain. One may not like the use of lethal force on principle, but there are honorable men who exercise that force and bear the price, with that just sword, of taking human lives. While especially-squeamish people wring their hands back here, please also remember all that runs through the special forces’ minds even after a ‘righteous kill.’ It’s just hard for me to be an earnest, handwringing parson right now. Justice frequently needs frail human souls to carry it out.

SECOND, from Winston Churchill:

“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” – Winston Churchill

Dr. Netto sent me this column and I’m passing it along to you….

FAITH MATTERS: The tsunami last week and the Apocalypse . . . eventually

The Bible cautions believers against speculating about the date and time of the Apocalypse, although current world events and calamities seem to invite such conjecture. There are the uprisings in the Middle East. In Japan, the tsunami and earthquake disasters are fueling raising nuclear fears. And then the nuttiness of clergymen fitting Luther’s definition of “false clerics and schismatic spirits” reminds us that Christ listed some signs of the looming end of times, for example the appearance of many bogus prophets. The Rev. Steve Lawler, part-time rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal church in Ferguson, Missouri, might just fit this rubric.

Fawler decided to “give up church for Lent,” and to adopt Muslim rituals and dietary rules for the 40 days until Easter. Thankfully, his bishop threatened to defrock him if he continued this practice, which manifestly confirms a Roman verity that preceded Christianity: Whom the gods want to destroy they first make mad. As Bishop George Wayne Smith told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “He can’t be both a Christian and a Muslim. If he chooses to practice as Muslim, then he would, by default, give up his Christian identity and priesthood in the church.”

If the times weren’t so dire it would be fun to spin Fawler’s rationale further: How about giving up love for marriage in Lent? How about giving up death for funerals, or birth for adolescence, or motherhood for fatherhood? One must cheer the bishop for trying to maintain theological sanity, which isn’t easy in today’s religious environment where major denominations are degenerating into post-Christian neo-Gnostic sects, to wit the joint celebration of the Eucharist by Episcopalians and Hindus three years ago in Los Angeles, or a same-sex wedding in a sanctuary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), also in southern California. The most titillating moment during this betrothal came when the woman pastor placed a consecrated host on the tongue of a seeing-eye dog; it is worth remembering in this context that according to Lutheran sacramental theology communicants receive Christ’s true body and blood “in with and under” the bread and the wine.

Taken by itself, the emergence of Gnostic sects is of course insufficient evidence for the imminence of Judgment Day. Gnosticism, a set of diverse syncretistic religious movements, has been around since antiquity and a huge threat to the early Church; yet the Church prevailed. St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was a Gnostic before his conversion to Christianity in 386 A.D.; be became one of the most important Fathers of the Church.

Spurious end-time prophecies also have a long track record. As Anglican theologian and philosophy professor Gerald R. McDermott points out, Christians in the days of Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century thought that Judgment Day was nigh when the Lombards, a northern Germanic tribe, invaded present-day Italy. In the 16th century, Martin Luther was certain that the Apocalypse would occur in his lifetime or shortly thereafter. Later less formidable characters obtained their 15 minutes of glory, to paraphrase Andy Warhol, by prophesying precise dates for Christ’s return (parousia), never mind that Jesus said in Matthew 24:25 that nobody could know the time and day.

In 1856, the prophetess of the Seventh-Day Adventists, Ellen G. White, reported that an angel had announced to her the nearness of Christ’s return. The angel, she said, told her what would happen to most people: “Some (will become) food for worms, some subjects for the seven last plagues.” Also in the mid-19th century, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, predicted that Jesus would be back within 56 years.

Then in the 1970s and 1980s, Hal Lindsay achieved notoriety by informing his millions of readers that 1988 would be the year of the parousia; well, it turned out it wasn’t. This list can be continued ad infinitum and include the fear-mongering forecasters of the impending Rapture.

The craze to hypothesize about the end of time or even advance this event by human means, which according to Martin Luther is the ultimate form of utopianism, spills over to other religions as well. In Japan in the 1980s, a semi-blind charlatan by the name of Shoko Asahara founded a “neo-Buddhist” sect called Aum Shinri-Kyo. It recruited primarily graduates of leading universities and gained worldwide infamy by producing huge amounts of Kalashnikov rifles and developing chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. In 1995, they set off a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system killing 12, injuring 54 and affecting thousands of others, a misdeed for which Asahara was sentenced to the gallows; he is now awaiting his execution.

What was that all about? In an interview one of his top lieutenants told me that it was the purpose of this crime to trigger World War III between Japan and the United States, which would result in the destruction of the universe. Why would a bunch of young scientists wish to do that? “Well,” he said, “the Lord Shiva has commanded us to give him a helping hand;” Shiva is the destroyer in the Hindu trinity. When he’s done, Brahma, the Creator, would be able to begin a new cycle of creation.

So here we had a “Buddhist” sectarians killing in behalf of a Hindu god, and to top the syncretistic madness, they explained this in Christian terminology. With his hands on a Bible, Asahara’s white-robed henchman informed me that he and his co-religionists were Christ’s soldiers in the Battle of Armageddon. But who was Christ to them? “An incarnation of Shiva, the god of destruction,” he said.

All this would be hilarious if it weren’t so deadly and in total contradiction of what Scripture is saying. It is possible, suggests Gerald McDermott, that calamities such as the current disaster in Japan, are a warning or even temporal punishment from God. In fact, a prominent devotee of the Shinto religion suggested the same thing. “The character of the Japanese people is selfish. The Japanese people must take advantage of this tsunami to wash away their selfish greed. I really do think this is divine punishment,” Shintaro Ishihara, governor of Tokyo, told a press conference.

As for the ultimate Day of Judgment, the Christ’s message is clear: repent and be watchful! “If you are not watchful, I will come like a thief, and you will never know at what hour I will come upon you” (Revelation 3:3).

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 54 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.

It is time once again for me to make my annual comments about Martin Luther King day. Sadly, every year when I do this I get the same sort of responses, no matter how hard I try to be clear on why this day is so important to so many of our African-American brothers and sisters, and in fact, why it is so important for our whole country.

Sure enough there are those quite happy to entirely ignore the point of my post and wax on about how Martin Luther King was this, that, or another thing, about how his theology was bad, or how he was ‘liberal’ and on and on.

I will again however say that such comments display an astounding lack of sensitivity and concern about the feelings of our fellow Americans who look to Martin Luther King as a significant figure in advancing civil rights in this nation. And please do not, please, do not say, "Some of my best friends are Black." Oh, really? Then try to be a bit more sensitive, please. Some of my best friends are left handed, but I don’t go out of my way to offend left-handed people by denigrating honoring a left-handed person whom they have high regard for. But, seriously, some of my best friends are left-handed. I even married a left-handed person. See how hollow that sounds?

I do wonder how many of us with pale skin have ever shared a table with a Black person, actually spoken at length with them as people, not as "Blacks." Similarly, how many Blacks have had Whites into their homes and hosted them for a meal and spoke to them as people, not White? I know the problem cuts both directions, but on MLK day, this is not the appropriate time for White folk to go on and one about their gripes with Black folks.

And then, I hear from people telling me how terrible the civil rights movement has been for African-Americans, and how it has only led to what is now a permanent underclass in this country, etc. etc. There is plenty to talk about here. But that the Civil Rights movement was a good thing in many ways is undeniable.

Would you have preferred the continuation of Jim Crow laws, lynchings and telling people they can’t drink from certain water fountains, use certain bathrooms or ride only in the back of the bus or not be served a meal just because their skin is dark? Would you feel the same if the laws were in reverse and it was the white-skinned who could not do these things? "Good Christians" are not immune are they? I still have a vivid memory of angst being expressed by some members of my home congregation when Black folks showed up once for Holy Communion, from the common cup! And that was only in the late 1960s, not that too far long ago.

After the Civil War and well into the 1960s many, many African-Americans were still treated nearly like slaves in so many place. Despite the Civil War, many states made it impossible for blacks to vote and via indentured servanthood [aka sharecropping] created a serfdom across the South? Can we be a bit sensitive to the bitter, hard and long struggle of a people brought to this country as slaves?" [Yes, yes, I know blacks sold other blacks into slavery in Africa...and yes, African-Americans can be as prejudiced against others because of race as anyone else].

So, I apologize for what appears to be a gloomy post, but it is always sad that whenever anyone tries to say anything about Civil Rights, particularly on MLK day, we have to have a litany from white folks criticizing, whining and complaining, thus quite entirely missing the point of MLK and his meaning for our nation and for so many of our fellow citizens.

I’m actually seeing signs that the times they are a changing. When I was a kid it was inevitable that we would refer to other kids as "that black kid" and no doubt they would refer to us "as that white kid." My own kids have delighted me in that they have spoken of friends by name and never once have referred to them as "that black kid" or "you know, my Chinese friend." They’ve had friends over to the house that we have heard about from school for weeks and I’ve been delighted to find they are African or Chinese, and not once did our kids refer to them by race, but by their qualities as persons. A good sign indeed and this is where we need to be. No, it is unrealistic to believe we will ever be "color blind." That’s not what I’m suggesting, but it would be great if we would not always jump to race as the first way to describe a person.

Recently in an interview on 60 minutes one of my favorite actors, Morgan Freeman, laid it out in a blunt way. He just wants to be referred to as a person, not a black man, but as a man. And he thought the notion of a "black history" month to be absurd, and even insulting, trying to suggest his "history" could be reduced to a month on the calendar.

I believe it is a necessary and good thing in the kingdom of the left, to work for that day when across this great nation people will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. And I suspect that if people’s skin tone was a bit more dark than it may be now they might have some better sense of why this is a dream worthy of our full support, and sympathy. So, I say, "Happy MLK day."

While I appreciate the interest in The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, in addressing first article issues, such as caring for God’s creation, let’s keep very clear that the First Article is not the Gospel, or as this article puts it, “Green is not the Gospel.” HT to Justin Taylor for this piece.

Kathleen Nielsen examines a new booklet Green Awakenings, distributed by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), which is a report from “Renewal”—a movement of Christian college and university students in North America who are caring for creation.

Dr. Nielsen applauds their intentions, but makes “four observations, in light of the biblical gospel, concerning the presentation of creation care in Green Awakenings“:

1. This booklet co-opts language of the biblical gospel to articulate the work of creation care.

2. Green Awakening’s articulation of renewal suggests, at times, a replacement of the transcendent God of the Bible with another god: the earth itself.

3. The renewal presented in this booklet defines the role of human beings differently from the way the Bible defines it.

4. This articulation of Renewal skews the whole biblical story, from beginning to end—because it misses the central point.

Here is her conclusion:

The biblical gospel, with Jesus Christ at the center, must be at the heart of everything we do—even at the heart of our loving care for the world God made and gave to us to fill and subdue and work, until Christ comes again. There are indeed young people who believe the biblical gospel and who aim to offer their environmental efforts as one of the many ways they serve the Creator God as his redeemed sons and daughters, all for Christ’s glory and for the advancement of his kingdom. As we communicate this gospel perspective to the next generation, may we communicate it clearly and biblically.

You can read the whole thing here.

Dr. Gene Edward Veith who runs a “must read” blog site, had this to say about the Tiger Woods mess, and I have not read anything better.

Our culture pretends to be free and easy about sex, but we really aren’t. I was kind of astonished that all of Tiger Woods’ multitudinous endorsement ads have been pulled from prime time TV after his auto accident provoked some nine women (at last count) to admit committing adultery with the golf superstar. Our culture remains capable of moral disapproval over sexual sins! On the other hand, our culture remains pruriently interested in hearing the salacious details of those sexual sins, as evidenced by the current media frenzy over the matter. We are repelled and compelled at the very same time!

Here is a story I found very interesting, and perhaps you will to. How does a nation come to terms with its history?

Russian archbishop’s censure of Stalin as ‘a monster’, makes waves – Feature
By Sophia Kishkovsky

Moscow, 4 August (ENI)–Comments by a senior official of the Russian Orthodox Church condemning Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, accusing him of genocide, shortly before a European security forum equated the crimes of Stalin and Hitler, have stirred heated debate in the Russian media and blogosphere.

“I think that Stalin was a spiritually-deformed monster, who created a horrific, inhuman system of ruling the country,” Archbishop Hilarion had said in a June interview with the news magazine Ekspert. “He unleashed a genocide against the people of his own country and bears personal responsibility for the death of millions of innocent people. In this respect Stalin is completely comparable to Hitler.”

Hilarion is head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, a post Patriarch Kirill I held before he was elected leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in January.

Hilarion’s comments came shortly before a session of the parliamentary assembly of the 56-member, Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Lithuania. At its 3 July meeting, the organization in a resolution stated that both Nazism and Stalinism “brought about genocide, violations of humans rights and freedoms, war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

The resolution called on member states to mark each 23 August, the day of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which divided Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union, as “a Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism”.

The Russian foreign ministry denounced the resolution as “an attempt to distort history for political purposes”.

The Second World War is considered a sacred topic in Russia, where it is called the Great Patriotic War. In May, President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the creation of a commission to fight the “falsification of history” and defend the official account of the Soviet past.

Stalin is portrayed by top officials, and also in a study guide for high school teachers approved by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin when he was president, as an effective manager, comparable to the Russian tsars or to Bismarck, who united Germany in the 19th century. Putin has also continued his efforts to unite the pre-revolutionary and Bolshevik strands of Russian history into a seamless narrative.

Shortly before Victory Day celebrations on 9 May to mark the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, Patriarch Kirill indicated an interpretation of events that might diverge with that of the Kremlin. The Soviet victory in the war was “a miracle,” Kirill said, and the suffering of the Soviet people during the war is atonement for its rejection of Christianity during the Bolshevik era after the Russian Revolution in 1917.

At the end of July, during his first official visit in Ukraine, Kirill laid a wreath at a monument to victims of a Stalin-era famine that Ukrainians regard as genocide, and which President Medvedev refused to visit in 2008. The Patriarch spoke of how his family, and the entire Soviet people, had suffered under Stalinism.

Read more…

I know the second ammendment of the United States Constitution gives citizens the right to bear arms for the purpose of maintaining a well-regulated militia. Have you drilled with your local militia lately? No, neither have I.

And from what I can tell, there sure-as-shootin’, ain’t been well-regulated militia since the 1800s. Today, a bunch of armed thugs and nut-jobs threaten me and my family, one of whom recently decided to take the law into his own hands and killed people because he did not like the fact that he could not park his construction vehicles on a public right of way in his neighborhood. Solution? Kill the mayor and his staff, and he gave it a good try.

I do not believe that the second amendment gives anyone the right to go out and buy any firearm they want, whenever they want it, for whatever reason they want it: period. The amendment clearly was intended to provide for a well-regulated militia. Last I checked, we have more than enough weapons to destroy this planet ten times over. And I say all this as a person who did at one time belong to the National Rifle Association, who qualified on several weapons as a teenager, and won certificates and medals, who loves firearms, and has had many pleasurable hours shooting them: pistols, shotguns, rifles, you name it. Note well: I’m in favor of concealed carry laws. I have no problem with gun ownership. I would kill anyone who tried to enter my home to attack my family, with an absolutely clear and clean conscience.

Having said that, I see no reason why it should be more difficult to receive, and continue to hold, a driver’s license, than it is to purchase and own a firearm. The killing in Northern Illinois underscores the fact that something is definitely broken in this nation when it comes to guns. The facts are clear: the USA has more gun related crime, killing and other horrible social problems than any other industrialized nation on earth: period.

Read this chilling statement from the story on the recent killings and tell me why it is that a person should be allowed to stroll into a store and simply buy firearms.

Police said they learned that a week ago, on Feb. 8, Kazmierczak walked
into a Champaign, gun store and picked up two guns — the Remington
shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun. He bought the other two handguns at
the same shop — a High Point .380 on Dec. 30 and a Sig Sauer on Aug. 6.

Why should we not require people purchasing firearms to produce
evidence that they are not being treated for a psychological disorder?
Why should we not have extensive background checks and a waiting
period? Why should we not require people buying firearms to take, and
to pass, an extensive, and intensive, series of classes on gun
ownership, gun safety and the like? Why should people who own guns not be required to register their ownership, just like I register my car? Why should I not be required to pass tests to continue to maintain my gun license, just like I do my car license? It makes no sense to me.

OK, go ahead, fire away at me, so to speak, and tell me how I’m a deluded liberal who doesn’t realize that guns kill, people do, that the right to bear arms is in the Bible and that the the only reason we will ever be a free nation is if every one has the right to go out and buy his own arsenal. Go ahead, I’ve heard it all. I’ve read it all. But I believe it is warmed over baloney. And the consequences are tragic.