Advent

It’s really very simple: Christmas is the feast of the incarnation and the season following that event. Advent is the recognition that we need a savior and the longing for that savior to come, according to God’s promises.

Christmas is joyous, but the joy comes after weeks of waiting, watching, lamenting and calling upon God. Advent is that season of waiting; of looking for the signs and promises of the savior in the scriptures and in the world.

That distinction should save us. We think we can manufacture our own salvation by going shopping. Advent says we cannot save ourselves, that only God can save us and that in his own time and in his own way.

Michael Spencer

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North   You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland	 
The South	 
The Northeast	 
Philadelphia	 
The West	 
Boston	 
North Central	 
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Penn State, Joe Paterno, and the Meaning of Justice

Papa Joe is gone; fired from his job as head football coach at Penn State University. Allegations abound of criminal sexual misconduct involving a minor child on the part of an assistant coach, and a cover up of those criminal actions on the part of college administrators. Did I mention the president of PSU was also fired?

The reactions to this whole sordid affair have been pretty intense as one would expect given the emotional punch that sexual abuse of children rightly generates in our culture. As usually happens in these and similar cases, the popular sentiment is the alleged perpetrator is obviously guilty, the school also obviously guilty, and burning at the stake is to lenient a sentence for perpetrators of such atrocities. It is very easy to let the heat of emotion have rule and sway over our comments on this disgusting sordid affair, and for that heat and emotion to color our sense of what justice in this case should look like.

What I want to do in this post is step back from the emotion and heat of the Penn State scandal, and take a look at some of aspects of what justice is that should temper our heat and emotion as we view this affair.

Foremost and fundamentally justice is about truth. Justice is not about what allegedly happened, or about what you and I think happened, but about what actually empirically did happen. Justice is not based on what is reported in the news media, or on what you or I choose to believe happened. That is why in our court system we have rules about what evidence and testimony can be given in any specific judicial court case.

Justice is about culpability and having the consequence of criminal actions involve an accountability for those actions that is in measure with the nature of the criminal activity. The determining of culpability defines guilt or degree of guilt. We are answering the question of who is to be held accountable for what happened, and taking measure of what the appropriate consequence should be. A side caution to the question of culpability is that of guilt by association. We don't hold the bank robber's children accountable for the father's crime, even though there are secondary consequences the children will suffer as a result.

Justice is also about protecting the innocent; the innocent victims, and the innocent accused. The victim requires justice for the loss suffered. Justice says the innocent are to be acquitted when falsely accused. We also need to again look at the issue of guilt by association. In the above example, the bank robber's children are innocent and not considered as being guilty of the crime of the father.

It gets a little complicated doesn't it?

There is a lot more that could be said for these three aspects of justice and there may be other aspects that could be mentioned.

So what are some conclusions we can draw from this discussion?

A lot of innocent people; students, PSU athletes, faculty, alumni, staff, parents, taxpayers, PSU sports fans, and etc. are and will be to one degree or another impacted by this scandal. Justice would say we need to cut them a break, and avoid guilt by association. It also means we need to give the PSU community room and time to heal and move on, while at the same time giving the victims due and full justice. That will take some real wisdom.

Our statements of opinion on the affair need to be tempered by the fact that all we are hearing about this is from secondary and tertiary sources, and as such is hearsay. It may prove to be true hearsay, but it is still hearsay.

If in the course of investigation the allegations are proven true, all those guilty and culpable need to be made to answer in proportion to the degree of their specific guilt and culpability.

All involved; victims, innocent PSU community members, and the guilty need our prayers. With a understanding of all that justice means, we can't go wrong in praying that justice will be done in the Penn State scandal.

"But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

~ Amos 5:24

[Side Note: The context of my interest in the Penn State scandal is through my alma mater Michigan State University's association with Penn State in the Big Ten conference. The ripples of the scandal reach to all Big Ten schools; just ask Nebraska who played a conference football game with Penn State at Penn State just a few days after Paterno's firing. ]

Why We Need Sound Theology

A Decade Ago Already?

I have had occasion to ponder some of the events in my life that happened 10 years ago this month. Has it been that long already?

It was a time of change for myself and my family; significant major change. Those events were a culmination of things that had been churning and gestating and fermenting for a number of years before they reached the point of critical mass and our world shifted.

Yes, it was only a few months after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York. But what was going on in my life and the life of my family at that time was not the stuff of newspaper headlines.

Looking back at that time, in all our personal turmoil and tumult, what I remember most is how God's hand guided us through the darkness, and how in those personal and family events of November 2001, that point of deepest darkness was actually the point when the light of dawn began to break upon our weary hearts and souls.

In the end we were free. Truly and really free...

God is good... "Hereto has the LORD helped us..." To Him be all praise, honor, and glory foever and ever. Amen!

"Then you are an individualist, a materialist, and, logically, a hedonist."

"I wouldn't stand for that," he replied. "Couldn't see the necessity for it, nor the common sense. I cut out the race and the children. I would sacrifice nothing for them. It's just so much slush and sentiment, and you must see it yourself, at least for one who does not believe in eternal life. With immortality before me, altruism would be a paying business proposition. I might elevate my soul to all kinds of altitudes. But with nothing eternal before me but death, given for a brief spell this yeasty crawling and squirming which is called life, why, it would be immoral for me to perform any act that was a sacrifice. Any sacrifice that makes me lose one crawl or squirm is foolish, —and not only foolish, for it is a wrong against myself and a wicked thing. I must not lose one crawl or squirm if I am to get the most out of the ferment. Nor will the eternal movelessness that is coming to me be made easier or harder by the sacrifices or selfishnesses of the time when I was yeasty and acrawl."

"Then you are an individualist, a materialist, and, logically,
a hedonist."

"Big words," he smiled. "But what is a hedonist?"

He nodded agreement when I had given the definition.

"And you are also," I continued. "a man one could not trust in the least thing where it was possible for a selfish interest to intervene?"

"Now you're beginning to understand," he said, brightening.

"You are a man utterly without what the world calls morals?"

"That's it."

"A man of whom to be always afraid —"

"That's the way to put it."

"As one is afraid of a snake, or a tiger, or a shark?"

"Now you know me," he said. "And you know me as I am generally known. Other men call me 'Wolf.'"

(The Sea Wolf by Jack London, Chapter 8)

"MANY clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?"

~GK Chesterton: The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Of This And That

• It has been a slow summer for blogging. I get home from work and crash, and there isn't a lot of energy left for much else. Work is getting hectic. I did set a personal deadline for retirement. All I'll say at this point is it is less then two years, ready or not. I found I needed to set that deadline to give myself some focus. Otherwise I was just kind of drifting along waiting for something to happen instead of focusing on making it happen.
  
• Our Detroit Tigers are tearing up the central division. They have a pretty good lead heading into the end of the regular season. It has been fun to be able to turn on the TV and watch some or parts of the games. It will be interesting to see what the playoffs bring. Also Detroit Lion fans are looking forward to what the regular season will bring. Will this be the year the Lions roar is heard throughout the NFL?
  
• New Toy Department: I have a new Toshiba Satellite L755 Laptop. The laptop I was using was a work issued HP, and I was restricted as to how I could use it and what software I could add on. I really like the Toshiba. I don't do gaming so didn't need a lot of bells and whistles. The price for the total package was good and in budget.
  
• The days are getting shorter. The trees, flowers, and other fauna are getting that late summer tired, washed out look. Here in our part of Michigan we've even seen a tree here and there that has turned color. A few more weeks and we will put the AC window unit away. Our AC got a real workout during the extended hot weather we had in July and August. I am looking forward to the Fall season.
  
• Reading: How Long O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil (2nd Edition); D. A. Carson; (Baker,2006)
  
• I have friends and family living in Texas. Things in Texas are really bad; no rain since last fall, and a number of destructive wild fires. Here are some pictures of the devastation caused by the record setting extensive drought. We can expect the economic impact to extend far beyond the Texas borders. The cotton crop has been wiped out. The impact on the livestock industry is simply devastating. We need to pray for our friends in Texas.

Theological Propaganda?

I am in the process of reading a book; a book that received much attention, far and wide, when it was published earlier this year. I found myself asking the question, "What am I really reading? What is it about how this book was written?" After a while the word "propaganda" came to mind.

Now there are words of a negative connotation that you don't want to toss loosely around when talking of those whom Jesus said are our neighbors, even with those neighbors whose theology and message we take strong exception to.  "Propaganda" is one of those words. It is one of those words we could quickly toss out as part of an ad hominem argument; and that even as ad hominem arguments are one of the techniques of propaganda.

Nonetheless if the shoe fits, then we are also obligated to speak truth about what our neighbor has said.

 

At this point we need to refer to the Propaganda Critic WWW site which has built on the work of the original Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA). To quote from this site:

"The IPA is best-known for identifying the seven basic propaganda devices: Name-Calling, Glittering Generality, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain Folks, Card Stacking, and Band Wagon. According to the authors of a recent book on propaganda, "these seven devices have been repeated so frequently in lectures, articles, and textbooks ever since that they have become virtually synonymous with the practice and analysis of propaganda in all of its aspects." (Combs and Nimmo, 1993)"

The above quote lists seven basic propaganda techniques. It is not my intent to expand on the seven techniques. For that discussion I greatly encourage you to go to the P-C link above. If you have been around Christianity for any time, you will also recognize that some of the techniques listed are also marks of cultish behavior found in some churches.

All that said, there were several things about the book I'm reading that raised a flag; a total lack of footnotes or bibliography, partial quotes from Scripture used without any reference to the wider context of the quote, broad sweeping assertions or unqualified statements and subtle ad hominem allusions.

And I've seen this before in other theological contexts from those who would take great exception to the author I'm reading. The rhetorical techniques fit the definition of propaganda; theological propaganda.

Let the reader beware...

~ The Billy Goat ~

Four Myths About the Crusades
Paul F. Crawford (from Intercollegiate Review (46:1) - 04/21/11
The four myths Crawford deals with are as follows:

Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world.

Myth #2: Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich.

Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives.

Myth #4: The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians.

Click on the link above to see the whole article with the details and extended footnoted references.  This article is a refreshing breath of wind amidst all the propaganda we are bombarded with.