Throttling Sparrows

From Dale Frank's Random Superbowl Notes:

I’m a little tired of this God stuff. "How do yo feel about this victory?" "Well, first, I want to thank God for giving us the victory." Why is it always God running the show when you win, but not when you lose? Just once, I’d like to see this interview: "Well, you guys played hard to tonight but you just couldn’t pull it off. What are your thoughts about today’s game?" "Well, Jesus screwed us today, Troy. We did everything we could, but Jesus just stacked the deck against us. I’m converting to Buddhism as a result of this travesty." God may know when the littlest sparrow falls, but that doesn’t mean he’s out there throttling the poor birds himself. By the same token, he isn’t actively trying to beat the spread in Vegas. I suspect God has more important things to do than slipping on the Motorola headphones to transmit his preferred game plan to the Holy Spirit for execution down on the field.

The Economics of Marriage

To quote the introduction, "This week Slate is publishing two excerpts from Tim Harford's new book, The Logic of Life, which is premised on the notion that if we want to understand our world—or how to change it—we must first understand the rational choices that shape it."

The two excerpts are great reads. They read a lot like Freaknomics, a book that shares the excerpt's life-through-the-lens-of-economics basis (and which I also recommend). And for people that share a "family-values-based" concern about the direction marriage is headed, I think these two excerpts are a must-read. Unfortunately, I can see "pro-family-values" leaders lazily (ignorantly) dismissing these pieces like various conservative leaders dismissed the abortion-lowered-90s-crime-rates argument given by Freakonomics).

Anyway: Excerpt one. Excerpt two.

Spotlighting Amish Grace

When Chuck Colson, a leading figure of the conservative Christian right, and Bill Moyers, a leading figure of the liberal secular left, both choose to positively highlight the same thing, I think it's worth sitting up and taking notice.

That's exactly what's happened with Colson's recent commentary, "The Context of Forgiveness" (mp3) and Moyer's closing monolouge of his Bill Moyer's Journal program, "Bill Moyers on the grace of the Amish" (mov).

Both discuss the new book, "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy". I think they are both worth listening to/watching, (and the book itself is probably well worth a read) but here's just a snippet from the Colson commentary:

A demented gunman, Charles Roberts, took a school-room full of Amish girls hostage in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Before he killed himself, Roberts had murdered five girls in cold blood.

But as shocking as this senseless act of violence was, it was what followed that sent the real shock waves through the nation.

Within hours of the shooting, several members of the Amish community visited Mrs. Roberts and her family, to express their sorrow over her loss and to say they did not hold anything against them. Another Amish man visited the killer’s father. A Roberts family spokesperson said, “He stood there for an hour, and he held [Mr. Roberts] in his arms and said, ‘We forgive you.’”

...

But the question is, how are we working in our own communities to build cultures of grace? Do we teach our children to forgive? Are we actively working to restore offenders and to reach out in aid to victims? And are we overcoming the evil in the world by good, as we are commanded to?

The Amish have given us a great lesson in the way to defeat hatred and alienation. It is the Christian worldview—the only one that makes such a magnificent response to such a horrible tragedy possible.

Slow Down

From an article posted at "A Mirror of My Thoughts!" (http://nrsl.wordpress.com):

...

We would arrive early at the company and he would park far away from the entrance (2000 employees drive their car to work). The first day, I didn’t say anything, either the second or third. One morning I asked, “Do you have a fixed parking space? I’ve noticed we park far from the entrance even when there are no other cars in the lot.” To which he replied, “Since we’re here early we’ll have time to walk, and whoever gets in late will be late and need a place closer to the door. Don’t you think? Imagine my face.

Nowadays, there’s a movement in Europe name Slow Food. This movement establishes that people should eat and drink slowly, with enough time to taste their food, spend time with the family, friends, without rushing. Slow Food is against its counterpart: the spirit of Fast Food and what it stands for as a lifestyle. Slow Food is the basis for a bigger movement called Slow Europe, as mentioned by Business Week.

Basically, the movement questions the sense of “hurry” and “craziness” generated by globalization, fueled by the desire of “having in quantity” (life status) versus “having with quality”, “life quality” or the “quality of being”.

...

This no-rush attitude doesn’t represent doing less or having a lower productivity. It means working and doing things with greater quality, productivity, perfection, with attention to detail and less stress. It means reestablishing family values, friends, free and leisure time. Taking the “now”, present and concrete, versus the “global”, undefined and anonymous. It means taking humans’ essential values, the simplicity of living.

It stands for a less coercive work environment, more happy, lighter and more productive where humans enjoy doing what they know best how to do. It’s time to stop and think on how companies need to develop serious quality with no-rush that will increase productivity and the quality of products and services, without losing the essence of spirit.

Hello. I'm a Mac. And I'm a Christ Follower.

I was surprised to come across this via Digg, given the inclinations of the Digg community, but some well-produced "Christian" parodies of the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" commercials made the Digg front page the other day.

I found them clever and humorous, but I'm not so sure about their message.

Like the first commercial, I want to get legalism out of The Church. So did the Apostle Paul. Legalists would benefit greatly by reading Galatians. Or something by Steve McVey. So, OK, good, we're in agreement: grace is the key to the Christian (Christ following) life, not the morality-player-II.

Where I take exception with the parody is with the idea that "wearing [your] heart on [your] sleeve" isn't what the cool Christ Followers do. The world needs more Christians expressing their faith, not fewer – even if it means more tacky bumper stickers out there.

On to the second commercial. Again, some more general agreement. People dressing up "spiffy" for church, for the purpose of getting other people to notice, please know: Jesus isn't a fan.

But, despite the "Christ Follower"'s implications that this makes me, like, so uncool, I'm not keen on dress-down Church. When I go to work, out of respect, I wear a nice outfit. Shouldn't I offer more respect to my God than my company?

And this brings us to number three. As to the "Christian"'s list of six genres that all contain "Contemporary Christian" – hilarious. :-) Beyond that, I really don't like this one. Yes, yes, listening to non-Contemporary-Christian music doesn't make you a bad person or indicate you aren't a "Christ Follower". But I'm of the opinion that whatever you surround yourself with, like music, does have an effect on you; and I'd rather be affected by positive music than music from a guy who drops the F-bomb on national TV. It's that whole "whatever is true, whatever is noble" thing the Bible talks about.

And, finally, number four (which isn't on the ThinkChristian page, but is on YouTube). Surprisingly enough, I like this one. A lot. The Holy Spirit should be integrated in the life of a "Christ Follower". And the punny "fire-wire" line – good stuff.