Politics

So what would a conservative Mennonite care about mere earthly politics? And why?

Transition

Another orderly and peaceful and smooth transition of power

OK, some of my scattered thoughts while listening to inauguration coverage on the radio for a while earlier this morning.

President Obama is no great orator, but then neither is President Bush. It’s OK.

President Obama’s inaugural speech included plenty of statements that sounded as though President Bush hadn’t been doing a bunch of things President Obama mentioned were now going to happen.

I wonder what will be President Obama’s first Executive Order.

And what about his birth certificate?

Kudos to Rick Warren for mentioning the God of Israel and excluding Allah of the Muslims. And for praying in Jesus’ Name. I must confess to being surprised by both. Seems like there was something else, but I don’t recall.

Who messed up the administering of the Presidential oath of office: Chief Justice Roberts or President Obama?

That was quite the “poem” that gal had!

And the prayer after it had more rhyming in it. (Yep, I still say real poetry rhymes!) And that prayer! Well, never mind. I’m white…and I’ll let it rest at that. 😀

So what was with letting some music trump the United States Constitution? Or perhaps the Constitution doesn’t require that the Presidential oath of office be administered by noon. Because if it does, and since the oath was a few minutes after noon, is George W. Bush still President? 😯

And speaking of that music — I thought it sounded like funeral music! Which struck me as somewhat ominous given it was “forcing” the oath to wait til after noon.

Oh, and did I hear a news commentator actually refer to one of the Obama girls as, “Cute as a bug”?! 😯 I hope that doesn’t get branded as racist.

Well, let me close with some positives and some good news:

  • President Bush didn’t hold on to power.
  • By all appearances, it was another orderly and peaceful and smooth transition of power. Thank you, God! (And thank you, too, President Bush.)
  • Like President Reagan before him, President Bush survived the “death-in-office curse” on US Presidents elected in years divisible by 20 (beginning with 1840). Thank you, God!
  • Terrorists didn’t succeed in striking such a juicy target as the inauguration. Thank you, God! (And thanks also to all individuals and agencies working on preventing such a strike.)
  • President Obama is younger than I am!

President Bush, bless God.

President Obama, bless God.

America, bless God.

And may it please God to bless America and President Obama and President Bush.

Amen.

Guessing Bush’s Note

So President Bush left a note for President-elect Obama:

Continuing a White House ritual, President George W. Bush left a note in the Oval Office for President-elect Barack Obama, wishing him well as he takes the reins of the executive branch.

The White House on Tuesday declined to provide intimate details of the message the two-term Republican left for the incoming Democrat, saying only that Bush wrote it on Monday and left it in the top drawer of his desk.

What does it say?

  • To help you improve your Convincing Lies Score (for fooling the American people about WMDs in Syria and about your role in tragedy in New York, for instance), I left you my personal lie detector in the broom closet.
  • Don’t let Barack Derangement Syndrome derange you.
  • I lost my nerve to implement martial law at the last minute and stay on as President. So the job is yours after all. Enjoy!
  • Don’t forget to keep The Masters in mind. Rush might even be your caddy.
  • It’s OK for Presidents to go to church. Surely that’s the least we can do to acknowledge the Almighty who saw fit to put us in this place.
  • Way to go on the birth certificate deal! (But you really didn’t have to go to that extreme — see previous point.)

I had another one, but I can’t remember it, so that’s enough of that. 🙄

Mexico on the Verge?

I was stunned to see the red headline on Drudge a couple mornings ago: US military report warns ‘sudden collapse’ of Mexico is possible.

Mexico is one of two countries that “bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse,” according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

The command’s “Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)” report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. “In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.

“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.”

That matters to me. Not just because Mexico shares a long, relatively-porous border with the US, but because I grew up there as an MK. And because I served as an adult missionary there for some five years. And because the Mission Board I chair presently has workers there. As you might imagine, I have lots of friends there.

Oh, the news story ends with this interesting sentence:

The U.S. military report, which also analyzed economic situations in other countries, also noted that China has increased its influence in places where oil fields are present.

So there you are.

Another Orissa Update

I know I’m blogging here only once a week now!

But it seems urgent I remind us of Orissa.

Orissa: insecurity and hatred await Christians forced out of refugee camps

There is no sign that the long journey of suffering by Orissa’s Christian community is anywhere near its end. The government has decided to shut down refugee camps and force Christians to leave but no one is providing them with any guarantee as to their security against further violence once back home; instead, they are still the object of hatred and rejection.

[…]

“Christians in Kandhamal are treated like animals. They live in fear and cannot find shelter, anywhere. They cannot live in dignity. The money they got [from the government] is not enough to buy food; their fields lie abandoned, burnt; their homes all but destroyed.”

Christians Without Borders

I don’t usually read Covenant News but the above headline caught my attention. Here you have the opening and closing paragraphs, with my own title borrowed from the body:

Our Banner, Our Emblem, Our Flag of Allegiance

The relationship between church and state continues to be a subject of great interest and importance to me, particularly the dangers of statism and its inevitable by-product, nation-worship. For example, I think the flying of the American flag in our churches is a bad idea. In my opinion, it sends all the wrong messages. For one thing, it confuses the kingdom of God with the kingdom of man. We wonder, “Where does America stop and Christianity begin?” For another thing, Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. It transcends tribe and nationality. And it is God’s primary agent of activity in the world. Because of this, the nation-state is always seeking to usurp Christ’s kingdom authority. Allegiance to the nation replaces (or at least actively competes with) allegiance to Christ.

[…]

There is reason for thinking that if Christians could look, not at their own country, but at a man – the God-Man whose kingdom unites people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation – there would be no need for displays of national patriotism in their churches. By its very nature, the church is different from any other society on earth. And the cross, not the flag, is the point of intersection between the church and the world. The cross of Jesus Christ is the secret of being in the world without being of it. It is the source of freedom for us to be given to the world as broken bread and poured-out wine. It is our banner, our emblem, our flag of allegiance. Let us fly it high!

Here is some further reading from one of my own sites:

Replacing the Irreplaceable

Here’s a piece of a piece at American Thinker:

We can replace almost anything in our lives — human organs, currency and credit, electronic records and documents – but ultimately these things do not define life.

What matters in life is the yearning of the human spirit for goodness and truth and the courage and grit to make that yearning into deeds and words that matter. Men who personify these values, unlike hearts and dollars, are irreplaceable. It is not they who have died: They are immortal. It is rather us who die each time one of these rare few leave this world. We have forgotten, in our busy rush to nowhere, how to replace the irreplaceable.

If they don’t make them like they used to, why not?

And who will?

Next, personalize the matter: “Am I rare or run-of-the-mill? Would I be placed in the irreplaceable category?”

How would you go about replacing the “irreplaceable”?

Above all, love God!