Eclectic Amateur

Borg barely makes it to page 3 before tipping his hand that he plans on some serious deconstruction:

Just as the first image of Jesus leads to a fideistic image of the Christian life, so this image leads to a moralistic image of the Christian life. Both images, it seems to me, are inadequate.

Wow, and here I always thought the Christian life had something to do with Faith and Morals.

Not only are they inaccurate as images of the historical Jesus, …

… a debatable assertion among scholars outside of the Jesus Seminar …

… but they lead to incomplete images of the Christian life.

You mean, there’s more than belief and trust in Jesus as Son of God and Savior of the world, and in following His moral teachings as a disciple? Preach it, Brother Borg!

That life is ultimately not about believing or about being good. Rather, as I shall claim, it is about a relationship with God that involves us in a journey of transformation.

Er, transformation into what?

Someone (perhaps his wife, who is an Episcopalian priestess) should inform Prof. Borg that countless Christians throughout the ages have known perfectly well that belief in Christ involves “a journey of transformation”:

Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

— Romans 12:2 (RSV)

Welcome to “False Dichotomies ‘R’ Us”!

I never thought I’d read Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time again, but my church is using it as a study guide for new adult confirmands(!).

So I guess it’s time to read it again, and prepare to defend the apparantly controversial view that Jesus Seminar material is probably not what we want to use to strengthen the faith of the newly confirmed …

While they say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, sometime all you should need to know are the reviews on the inside front page:

“He … invites us to look with fresh eyes at the Jesus that the church has distorted in the service of its doctrine and its creeds… I loved this book.
— Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong, Bishop of Newark

What more should one need to know?

David, unprompted, at dinner last night:

Mommy, these [hamburgers] are lots better than the ones from the drive-through!

Take that, McDonalds!

Not that I always agree with everything Orson Scott Card writes, but he nailed it perfectly with Why We Should Not Rebuild on the Site of the World Trade Center :

The place where six thousand people were slaughtered all at once for no other crime than being at work in an American skyscraper is no longer just real estate.

It is holy ground.

…

Whether we like it or not, that pile of debris is their grave. And I, for one, believe it would be wrong to haul the entire thing away and dispose of it as landfill.

…

One of the reasons our enemies who did this thing despise us is because they believe we value making money more than we care about anything else. More than we care about each other. More than we care about God.

To erect a commercial building on the site of the two towers, to continue to make money there, would, I believe, prove that our enemies were right about us. [Emphasis mine]

Too bad this is advice unheeded.

Greg Popcak points out that Serious Researchers™ are investing Serious Research™ into something that Nancy (veteran of many day care centers, elementary schools, and Mommy of four small snifflers) knew already: Day Care Makes Kids Sick While Breeding Superbugs.

Like so many things, the solution is simple: Stop pressuring families to be dual-income. Kids belong with at least one parent.

A less radical solution: Get employers to recognize that Kids Get Sick. Get daycares to stop insisting on “24 hours on antibiotics” as a return-from-illness criterion.

But then, nobody asked me. Or Nancy.

For example, being able to do for yourself without depending on foreign sources? Pat Buchanan has an interesting article, The Hollowing Out of America, discussion the collapse of our manufacturing base and the Third-Worlding of our economy.

The little ones made it from sessile embryos to free-swimming fry! Go, little ones, go!

Now, if we can just make the transition to them eating (and without being eaten), maybe we can raise this batch.

Doug has reminded me that the proper term is “People’s Republic of Ann Arbor”.

Spent most of the day gardening today. Bliss!

And the angelfish that hatched yesterday are still doing fine. They aren’t much to look at right now, just little white yolk blobs with a madly beating tail, but we’ve got hope for them. This is the first batch in several spawnings that have made it this far, so it’s very encouraging.

I’ve been completely successful in not thinking about work all day. Other than to think “this is so much better than being in the office.”

I need more days like this.

A Ballade Of An Anti-puritan

They spoke of Progress spiring round,
Of light and Mrs Humphrey Ward–
It is not true to say I frowned,
Or ran about the room and roared;
I might have simply sat and snored–
I rose politely in the club
And said, `I feel a little bored;
Will someone take me to a pub?’

The new world’s wisest did surround
Me; and it pains me to record
I did not think their views profound,
Or their conclusions well assured;
The simple life I can’t afford,
Besides, I do not like the grub–
I want a mash and sausage, `scored’–
Will someone take me to a pub?

I know where Men can still be found,
Anger and clamorous accord,
And virtues growing from the ground,
And fellowship of beer and board,
And song, that is a sturdy cord,
And hope, that is a hardy shrub,
And goodness, that is God’s last word–
Will someone take me to a pub?

Envoi
Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword
To see the sort of knights you dub–
Is that the last of them–O Lord
Will someone take me to a pub?

This is one reason why I love G. K. Chesterton.