Tiger Who?
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Interesting Article
“Daddy God,” is how Victoria Osteen refers to Him. Honestly. We’re not making this up. When Mr. Joel Osteen took a wife, it was Victoria that he got, for better or for worse. And now the two of them preside over a mega-church in a suburb of Houston. Mr. Osteen is the author of a super bestselling book, Your Best Life Now . God wants us to be prosperous, he argues, in front of thousands of worshippers. How does he know what God wants? He speaks “face to face” with God, says his wife, making him the first person ever to do so. (What did He look like? Has anyone asked?)
Over in Atlanta, the Rev. Creflo Dollar Jr., seems to be doing even better. He and his wife, Taffi, entertain at another huge church, drive around in a Rolls Royce, and have a private $5 million jet to move them from one speaking engagement to another.
Mr. Dollar, like Mr. Osteen, believes in the power of God to move mountains, but they trust in the Almighty Dollar to smooth out the little foothills in their way. Last year, for example, Mr. Dollar sent 100 of the local Fulton County police officers checks for $1,000 each – a month after two traffic tickets the Reverend Dollar had received had been downgraded to warnings.
And back in the Lone Star State, Kenneth Copeland and his main squeeze, Gloria, have done even better – with 4 jets at their disposal. Mr. Copeland, the subject of a MoneyWeek article last month, is also said to have a parsonage the “size of a hotel,” probably more like a huge Motel 6 than a Crillon.
This might be just another part of the baroque spectacle that makes America such an amusing place. But there is more to the story, which is – as you might guess – the subject of today’s column.
Gibbon blamed the fall of Rome at least in part, on Christianity; it encouraged a retreat from the battle for money and power, he said. Now, Kevin Phillips, in a new book, Bad Money, charges the pentecostal wing of American Christianity with undermining the U.S. empire in the opposite way. He argues
that the evangelicals pushed the Republicans down-market. There, the yahoo voters brought them temporal power – 30% of Republican voters identify themselves with an evangelical sect. But they also hollowed out Republicans’ traditional respect for sensible finances.
Among the many frauds of the Reagan-Bush II period, few were gaudier than the “prosperity gospel.” Preached in America’s gamy religious outposts, the concept does for religion what the neo-conservatives did to conservatism, what modern portfolio theory did for Wall Street, and what Keynesianism did to the economics profession – it a made a monkey of it.
In politics, the neos turned conservatism inside out. The old conservatives were wet blankets, do-nothings and naysayers. When news spread of Calvin Coolidge’s death, for example, people asked, “How could they tell?” But the new conservatives are the life of the party. It is said that George W. Bush “doesn’t even know the meaning of the word can’t.” (Of course, there may be other words he doesn’t know the meaning of.) And the neocons’ idea of political economy was similarly liberated from any residual notions of conservatism and common sense. “Deficits don’t matter,” said Dick Cheney,
speaking for every wishful thinker since Caligula.
On Wall Street and the City, the old conservative doctrines were put away with top hats and spats. In place of prudence came derring-do. In the place of reasonable salaries came breathtaking bonuses. Mortgage lenders no longer studied a borrower’s finances to make sure he was a good credit risk; they didn’t even take his pulse. And they no longer seemed to care whether their takeovers, triple-A paper, and structured products made any real financial sense; it was enough that they paid a fee.
In economics, too, somehow, the world’s leading economists bent the figures into a preposterous new shape so appealing that even a teenager could love it. An economy can get richer by living it up, they said; and the purpose of central banking was to encourage consumption rather than capital formation.
Was it any wonder that the pulpits sank into the honey too? Along came Jim and Tammy Faye Baker with a sexy new religion – spreading the get-rich gospel over the TV waves. Then, poor Jim got sent to prison for fraud, and when he came out he renounced the new doctrine. But other couples – for some reason these preachers seem to work in husband and wife teams, like Juan and Eva Peron – picked up the tablets. Soon, they had convinced millions to give up the hard-benches of the old Calvinists and sink their plump derrieres into some of the cushiest seats in Christendom.
Churchgoers at Mr. Dollar’s World Changers church services wave envelopes full of cash, reports the Atlanta paper. On the big screen, they offer testimonial proof of the ‘financial blessings’ that came their way after they began sending the preacher 10% of their pre-tax earnings: “The congregants…yell in joy as ushers pass the white buckets down the row to collect the envelopes. After more singing, Dollar preaches… He relentlessly attacks the idea that Christians should limit material possessions. Christians have for too long let the ‘devil’s crowd’ get all the money, power and real estate, he says. Then he tells congregants to say, ‘I want my stuff.’”
“I want my stuff,” they repeat, laughing.
Politics, money, religion – the flim flam was the same everywhere. It was the promise of something for nothing, gain without pain, Easter without Good Friday. But with America’s housing prices falling and unemployment rising, the Pentecostals will find it harder to get their stuff than ever. Maybe God didn’t want them to be wealthy after all. On the evidence, maybe He just likes a good laugh, like the rest of us.
Over in Atlanta, the Rev. Creflo Dollar Jr., seems to be doing even better. He and his wife, Taffi, entertain at another huge church, drive around in a Rolls Royce, and have a private $5 million jet to move them from one speaking engagement to another.
Mr. Dollar, like Mr. Osteen, believes in the power of God to move mountains, but they trust in the Almighty Dollar to smooth out the little foothills in their way. Last year, for example, Mr. Dollar sent 100 of the local Fulton County police officers checks for $1,000 each – a month after two traffic tickets the Reverend Dollar had received had been downgraded to warnings.
And back in the Lone Star State, Kenneth Copeland and his main squeeze, Gloria, have done even better – with 4 jets at their disposal. Mr. Copeland, the subject of a MoneyWeek article last month, is also said to have a parsonage the “size of a hotel,” probably more like a huge Motel 6 than a Crillon.
This might be just another part of the baroque spectacle that makes America such an amusing place. But there is more to the story, which is – as you might guess – the subject of today’s column.
Gibbon blamed the fall of Rome at least in part, on Christianity; it encouraged a retreat from the battle for money and power, he said. Now, Kevin Phillips, in a new book, Bad Money, charges the pentecostal wing of American Christianity with undermining the U.S. empire in the opposite way. He argues
that the evangelicals pushed the Republicans down-market. There, the yahoo voters brought them temporal power – 30% of Republican voters identify themselves with an evangelical sect. But they also hollowed out Republicans’ traditional respect for sensible finances.
Among the many frauds of the Reagan-Bush II period, few were gaudier than the “prosperity gospel.” Preached in America’s gamy religious outposts, the concept does for religion what the neo-conservatives did to conservatism, what modern portfolio theory did for Wall Street, and what Keynesianism did to the economics profession – it a made a monkey of it.
In politics, the neos turned conservatism inside out. The old conservatives were wet blankets, do-nothings and naysayers. When news spread of Calvin Coolidge’s death, for example, people asked, “How could they tell?” But the new conservatives are the life of the party. It is said that George W. Bush “doesn’t even know the meaning of the word can’t.” (Of course, there may be other words he doesn’t know the meaning of.) And the neocons’ idea of political economy was similarly liberated from any residual notions of conservatism and common sense. “Deficits don’t matter,” said Dick Cheney,
speaking for every wishful thinker since Caligula.
On Wall Street and the City, the old conservative doctrines were put away with top hats and spats. In place of prudence came derring-do. In the place of reasonable salaries came breathtaking bonuses. Mortgage lenders no longer studied a borrower’s finances to make sure he was a good credit risk; they didn’t even take his pulse. And they no longer seemed to care whether their takeovers, triple-A paper, and structured products made any real financial sense; it was enough that they paid a fee.
In economics, too, somehow, the world’s leading economists bent the figures into a preposterous new shape so appealing that even a teenager could love it. An economy can get richer by living it up, they said; and the purpose of central banking was to encourage consumption rather than capital formation.
Was it any wonder that the pulpits sank into the honey too? Along came Jim and Tammy Faye Baker with a sexy new religion – spreading the get-rich gospel over the TV waves. Then, poor Jim got sent to prison for fraud, and when he came out he renounced the new doctrine. But other couples – for some reason these preachers seem to work in husband and wife teams, like Juan and Eva Peron – picked up the tablets. Soon, they had convinced millions to give up the hard-benches of the old Calvinists and sink their plump derrieres into some of the cushiest seats in Christendom.
Churchgoers at Mr. Dollar’s World Changers church services wave envelopes full of cash, reports the Atlanta paper. On the big screen, they offer testimonial proof of the ‘financial blessings’ that came their way after they began sending the preacher 10% of their pre-tax earnings: “The congregants…yell in joy as ushers pass the white buckets down the row to collect the envelopes. After more singing, Dollar preaches… He relentlessly attacks the idea that Christians should limit material possessions. Christians have for too long let the ‘devil’s crowd’ get all the money, power and real estate, he says. Then he tells congregants to say, ‘I want my stuff.’”
“I want my stuff,” they repeat, laughing.
Politics, money, religion – the flim flam was the same everywhere. It was the promise of something for nothing, gain without pain, Easter without Good Friday. But with America’s housing prices falling and unemployment rising, the Pentecostals will find it harder to get their stuff than ever. Maybe God didn’t want them to be wealthy after all. On the evidence, maybe He just likes a good laugh, like the rest of us.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, 1918-2008
Acclaimed Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died Sunday in Moscow at age 89, ending what he famously called his "struggle with falsehood." While serving as a Red Army Captain in World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested for writing a derogatory comment about Josef Stalin in a letter to a friend. For this "crime" Solzhenitsyn served eight years in the Gulag, the Soviet Union's system of penal labor camps in Siberia. Solzhenitsyn's imprisonment convinced him of the evils of communism. After his release from the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn wrote his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev mistakenly believed that Solzhenitsyn's novel would discredit Stalinism while leaving the communist system intact, so he allowed it to be published in 1962. The novel created an international sensation, forcing many Leftist intellectuals in the West to re-evaluate their views on communism. Solzhenitsyn was even awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, though he was unable to leave the Soviet Union to accept it.
In 1973 Solzhenitsyn published his greatest work, The Gulag Archipelago. It was a veritable nail in the coffin of totalitarianism. According to American writer Tom Wolfe, "Marxism was finished off... in a single year, 1973---with the smuggling out of the Soviet Union and the publication in France of... Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago'." What moral standing the Soviet Union still enjoyed in the West was destroyed as The Gulag Archipelago documented how the commissars had stained their hands with the blood of millions. Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but he continued his fight against totalitarianism from his new home in a remote Vermont village, where he lived until returning to Russia in 1994.
Solzhenitsyn warned the world against "an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses," and a "tilt of freedom in the direction of evil... evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent in human nature." The great novelist knew better: Evil is all too real, and it has to be confronted. In this, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn led by example.
My thought: Isn't it interesting how the forced belief that evil doesn't exist is the very thing that allows evil to flourish and proliferate? No wonder it is one of Satan's favorite tactics.
"One word of truth outweighs the entire world." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/gospeldrivenchurch/2012/07/26/of-universal-significance-men-have-forgotten-god/
http://www.samstorms.com/enjoying-god-blog/post/five-years-ago-today--one-of-my-heroes-died
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/rayortlund/2014/01/07/forgotten/
In 1973 Solzhenitsyn published his greatest work, The Gulag Archipelago. It was a veritable nail in the coffin of totalitarianism. According to American writer Tom Wolfe, "Marxism was finished off... in a single year, 1973---with the smuggling out of the Soviet Union and the publication in France of... Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago'." What moral standing the Soviet Union still enjoyed in the West was destroyed as The Gulag Archipelago documented how the commissars had stained their hands with the blood of millions. Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but he continued his fight against totalitarianism from his new home in a remote Vermont village, where he lived until returning to Russia in 1994.
Solzhenitsyn warned the world against "an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses," and a "tilt of freedom in the direction of evil... evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent in human nature." The great novelist knew better: Evil is all too real, and it has to be confronted. In this, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn led by example.
My thought: Isn't it interesting how the forced belief that evil doesn't exist is the very thing that allows evil to flourish and proliferate? No wonder it is one of Satan's favorite tactics.
"One word of truth outweighs the entire world." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/gospeldrivenchurch/2012/07/26/of-universal-significance-men-have-forgotten-god/
http://www.samstorms.com/enjoying-god-blog/post/five-years-ago-today--one-of-my-heroes-died
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/rayortlund/2014/01/07/forgotten/
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Economic Thoughts
Can we all just admit that our Founding Fathers were a lot smarter than our current leaders? Obama's economic policies are almost a 180 degree departure from the wisdom of those who gave us our Constitution.
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." ---James Madison
As James Madison described it in his era: "[I]f industry and labour are left
to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects
which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner
than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out."
Jefferson similarly observed: "Were we directed from Washington when to sow,
and when to reap, we should soon want bread. ...[W]hen all government,
domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to
Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks
provided of one government on another." He noted correctly, "The natural
progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
Jefferson was clear on his disdain for taxes: "To take from one, because it
is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much,
in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised
equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of
association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry
and the fruits acquired by it."
Obama's economic plan is nothing more than a remake of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's class-warfare proclamation: "Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to
ability to pay. That is the only American principle."
In fact, Roosevelt's "principle" was no more American than Obama's. Not to
be confused with the biblical principle in the Gospel according to Luke,
"From everyone who has been given much, much will be required..." (which,
ironically, some Leftist do-gooders cite as justification for socialist
policies), Roosevelt was essentially paraphrasing the gospel according to
Karl Marx, whose maxim declared, "From each according to his abilities,
to each according to his needs."
Jesus used parables to enlighten the heart, in this case, about our personal
responsibility. Marxist methods are a bit more coercive---rejecting God and
anointing the state as the supreme deity.
Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe." ---Thomas Sowell
Disclaimer: The above comes from Friday's PatriotPost but I found them worth reprinting here.
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." ---James Madison
As James Madison described it in his era: "[I]f industry and labour are left
to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects
which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner
than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out."
Jefferson similarly observed: "Were we directed from Washington when to sow,
and when to reap, we should soon want bread. ...[W]hen all government,
domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to
Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks
provided of one government on another." He noted correctly, "The natural
progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
Jefferson was clear on his disdain for taxes: "To take from one, because it
is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much,
in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised
equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of
association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry
and the fruits acquired by it."
Obama's economic plan is nothing more than a remake of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's class-warfare proclamation: "Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to
ability to pay. That is the only American principle."
In fact, Roosevelt's "principle" was no more American than Obama's. Not to
be confused with the biblical principle in the Gospel according to Luke,
"From everyone who has been given much, much will be required..." (which,
ironically, some Leftist do-gooders cite as justification for socialist
policies), Roosevelt was essentially paraphrasing the gospel according to
Karl Marx, whose maxim declared, "From each according to his abilities,
to each according to his needs."
Jesus used parables to enlighten the heart, in this case, about our personal
responsibility. Marxist methods are a bit more coercive---rejecting God and
anointing the state as the supreme deity.
Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe." ---Thomas Sowell
Disclaimer: The above comes from Friday's PatriotPost but I found them worth reprinting here.
This is my favorite picture from my recent trip to Colorado...that doesn't include my parents. That should make them happy. ;) I definitely enjoyed the time up in the mountains. It is quite a contrast from the usual concrete and steel I see on a daily basis. It's certainly more the way God intended I think. To be able to witness His glorious handiwork. It gives you just a taste of heaven. It also shows you how awful hell will be as no life will exist there...not even a single green leaf. I understand why my brother decided to make that his home.
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