"As a Senate vote on health-care legislation nears, those negotiations are occurring in a setting that is anything but revolutionary in Washington: Three senators are working on the bill behind closed doors. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (R-Nev.) sits at the head of a wooden table at his office as he and Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) work to merge two competing versions of health-care legislation into one bill. The three men will be joined by top aides as well as by members of President Obama’s health-care team, led by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The sessions started on Wednesday and could be completed this week.
It is shocking that this Administration’s promise to have the “most open and transparent in history” is not as important as getting this bill to the President’s desk by the end of the year. Instead liberals in Congress are crafting Obamacare in secret, so they can railroad a bill through before the American people can raise objections to an Obamacare bill written in this secretive and closed proceeding.
Democracy does not begin and end on Election Day for the American people. Whether you are for or against Obamacare, we the people deserve an opportunity to read, digest and understand the most important health care legislation to be debated in the United States Senate in our lifetime. The American people relied upon the promise of the Obama Administration and the leadership in Congress to be open and transparent, therefore it is time to stop the closed door negotiations and allow the American people to participate in the democratic process."
I won't even go to the unbelievable amounts of hidden pork that has already been passed under the cover of such legislation as the stimulus bill or the latest Defense Appropriations Bill. There is no change...except more of the same and worse.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
When God Moves...
Remember this post from a little while ago? (Truncated for effect)
"The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church."
I am listening to John Piper preach on John 5:36-47 right now. You know those A-HA moments when God speaks to you? Piper hit on something that immediately drew me back to the Tim Keller passage noted above. Look at John 5:43(ESV):
43I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.
Why would people be so against someone who comes and takes his cues from another...gives glory to another...walks in the will of another? Why would they prefer someone who "comes in his own name"...who struts around and makes much of himself? Because the latter example fits right in with who we are. We can get behind a king like that. We'll be more than happy to fall in line and strut around with him and have our ego fed and our pride fulfilled. But who wants a Messiah who is humble, who admonishes the prideful, who offers himself as a living sacrifice? NO ONE. Unless God moves. Because that kind of Messiah makes me look at myself with guilt. He makes me feel bad about myself. He is convicting to my core. This is why Jesus attracted the broken and marginal and not the prideful who lived for themselves.
Now go back to the beginning of this post. Why do so many of our churches not attract the broken and marginal but rather the prideful and moralistic? Who are they giving glory to? There can only be one answer that would attract the prideful like a magnet.
Themselves. "Not my will but your will be done." The most terrifying phrase to any human. It means death to ourselves yet that is where life is truly found.
Oh Lord, help me to not be counted among those whose desires for praise and pride eclipse desire for You.
"The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church."
I am listening to John Piper preach on John 5:36-47 right now. You know those A-HA moments when God speaks to you? Piper hit on something that immediately drew me back to the Tim Keller passage noted above. Look at John 5:43(ESV):
43I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.
Why would people be so against someone who comes and takes his cues from another...gives glory to another...walks in the will of another? Why would they prefer someone who "comes in his own name"...who struts around and makes much of himself? Because the latter example fits right in with who we are. We can get behind a king like that. We'll be more than happy to fall in line and strut around with him and have our ego fed and our pride fulfilled. But who wants a Messiah who is humble, who admonishes the prideful, who offers himself as a living sacrifice? NO ONE. Unless God moves. Because that kind of Messiah makes me look at myself with guilt. He makes me feel bad about myself. He is convicting to my core. This is why Jesus attracted the broken and marginal and not the prideful who lived for themselves.
Now go back to the beginning of this post. Why do so many of our churches not attract the broken and marginal but rather the prideful and moralistic? Who are they giving glory to? There can only be one answer that would attract the prideful like a magnet.
Themselves. "Not my will but your will be done." The most terrifying phrase to any human. It means death to ourselves yet that is where life is truly found.
Oh Lord, help me to not be counted among those whose desires for praise and pride eclipse desire for You.
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