I suppose this is as good a photo of the day post as anything. I took this shot around 11:30pm ET last night with my iPhone and it about says it all. It’s probably the biggest news to hit the “war on terror” in 10 years, but last night as we the country awaited a rare (and almost scary, unknown, speculative, bizarre) live news conference at 11:30pm on a Sunday night I did not share the overwhelming “joy” that Geraldo Rivera had or the giddy, almost tailgate-ish rejoicing, in the street in front of the white house and at ground zero. Yes, it was a victory for the United States, yes, it was necessary in the same way it was necessary to rid the world of Hitler or the like, but a time to a time to jump up and down like the U.S. just won an olympic event? No.
On a side note… this “War on Terror” is unlike previous wars where we can clearly define a victor, or a even when victory has occurred. That’s because this war is not a war over territory, or resources, but ideologies and ultimately at it’s base root, it’s a holy war. Those who don’t see the religious side can parse out the war to a way of life, or political freedom, but ask an Israeli and you might get a different answer than the average Joe Smith waving a flag in front of the White House. Because of this, the war on terror will not end until the second coming of Christ.
The Wisdom of the Psalms
So, from a Christian perspective, I just don’t see anything that teaches us to be joyful in the death of an enemy. In fact, it says just the opposite in Proverbs 24:17-18. This section of Proverbs represents the “Thirty Sayings” of “the wise” as clearly indicated in Proverbs 22:20, which covers from Proverbs 22:17 to 24:22. Proverbs 24:17-18 is the twenty-eighth saying, and where 15-16 are aimed at the wicked over the righteous, 17-18 is talking about the righteous gloating over the downfall of the wicked. Maybe rejoicing in the street or on TV isn’t gloating but to me that’s just semantics.
17 Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, 18 lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him. (ESV)
On the practical side, verse 17 tells us not to rejoice when our enemy falls and verse 18 tells us why, because God may turn around and bless our enemy, making us even more miserable. If that isn’t enough, God actually tells us that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11), and if God takes no pleasure in the death of Osama Bin Laden, than neither should we. The bible clearly indicates that God will “punish sin and vindicate his holiness and justice… but God also feels sorrow over the punishment and death of creatures created in His image” (ESV notes on Ezekiel 33:11). God would rather the wicked repent of their sins and live than die in their own sins without forgiveness.
Although this must be an almost impossible task for those who had family members killed on 9-11 (or the USS Cole or any of the other terrorist acts) by the hand of Osama Bin Laden, I find it hard to rejoice over the death of a (seemingly) lost and unrepentant soul. Rather we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44). As impossible as this may sound, Jesus gave us the example and did this very same thing as he went to the cross.
Posts Related to This Topic:
The photo of the day today is a shot I took of Air Force One on it’s takeoff run at Las Vegas McCarran Airport a while back. With the elections taking place tomorrow I thought this would be an appropriate shot, but we are also trying to get to a place where we can watch the Space Shuttle launch tomorrow as well, so it served two purposes today. If we get to the Space Coast I will post some photos on Twitter and here, but I am sure we won’t get as close to the shuttle as I was able to get here with AF1. For additional aviation photos you can check out some of my shots at http://www.planephoto.net as well.
Posts Related to This Topic:
I am truly amazed at how much press Dove World Outreach Church in Gainesville, Florida is receiving for it’s planned burning of the Quran, or as they put it “International Burn a Koran Day” planned for this Saturday, September 11th. It truly shows how a message, any message good or bad, can spread in our world today. This is a 50 member “church” in a small town. Fifty members. How many millions of dollars will other churches (with far better messages) spend to get their message out, and much of the time with little effect. Our church, and many others like it, are helping to change lives locally, and all the way over in Africa, but that isn’t news of course.
Sometimes it is the “shock-and-awe” that makes a message go viral, and their message, Terry Jones’ message, has reached every corner of the earth at this point thanks to Hilary Clinton, Gen. David Petraeus, Attorney General Eric Holder, CNN, Fox News (Orlando), and every high profile person who mentions the Quran burning. Even the Vatican (multiple times) and the White House has weighed in, all giving semi-credibility to this tiny little “outreach center” and their “look at us burning” party.
Other churches have tried this, like the one in North Carolina who created a sign that said “The Koran Needs to be Flushed” and was later forced to leave the SBC. If you dig into “Dove World Outreach” you will see they are a “church” who is mainly focused on the “shock-and-awe” of Islam, not on teachings of Christ and Christianity.
What I haven’t read in any of these reports however is that no matter how much stupidity they claim as their own, the lack of any true sensical Christian message they offer, and the Adolph-Hitler-Natzi-like event this seems to be, this country has fought to allow these freedoms, even if we don’t like them. We don’t fight for only those freedoms we like, but for all freedoms within the law. What would dilute their message today is to heavily vet “Dove World”, Terry Jones, and their other fifty members. Their Facebook page alone is enough to discredit them, and their “about” information for their church shows no focus on any doctrinal beliefs of Christ, yet, today, shock-and-awe wins out.
I do not use the term “idiot” lightly. The dictionary definition says this is “someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way”, and this is exactly what this group of 50 are doing, in many different aspects, but, in this country, they have the freedom to act like idiots, and others in turn have the freedom to condemn their actions as idiotic.
Posts Related to This Topic:
Linus in his great wisdom instructs Lucy well, sound theology is a great comfort to the mind, but I wonder how that would be written in the 21st century. I try to read a small dose of poetry every day in my quest to understand this complex and powerful form of literature, and this one, “Theology” by Paul Laurence Dunbar was so funny, sad, and true, I had to share it today. Some days it seems there is such a Christianity culture shift going on in our country that Christians themselves are trying to re-write what it means to be a Christian.
The New Hipster Christian
Each generation sort of does this and re-defines how they see the Church and tries to make it their own, which is fine, better to revive and revitalize the church than leave it all together (which many young people have done too). The danger is when we re-write the Gospel message to meet our pop-culture needs, and turn Christianity into our own personal Jesus (as Depeche Mode put it about a decade ago). Christian theology isn’t something a generation can choose to define, it was defined for us, by Jesus himself.
A recent article in Christianity Today by Brett McCracken entitled “Hipster Faith” (also from his book Hipster Christianity) put it so well. This pretty much nails it.
It’s [hipster Christianity] a world where things like the Left Behind book and film series, Jesus fish, and door-to-door evangelism are relevant only as a source of irony or nostalgia. It’s a world where Braveheart youth-pastor analogies are anathema, where everyone agrees that they wish Pat Robertson “weren’t one of us” and shares a collective distaste for the art for Thomas Kinkade. The latest incarnation of a decades-long collision of “cool” and “Christianity” is in large part a rebellion against the very subculture that birthed it.
It’s a rebellion against old-school evangelicalism and its fuddy-duddy legalism, apathy about the arts, and pitiful lack of concern for social justice. It’s about a rebellion against George W. Bush-style Christianity: American flags in chruches, the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, and evagelical leaders who get too involved in conservative politics, such as James Dobson and Jerry Falwell.
They prefer to call themselves “Christ-followers” rather than “Christians.” They cringe at the thought of an altar call, and the prospect of passing out tracts gives them nightmares.
Nothing is inherently wrong there except I do find that the “hipster Christians” do not give anyone the respect they deserve, like the aforementioned Dobson and Falwell, but I don’t see them giving due respect to hardly any of their “elders” per-say. They may disagree with the method (I always hated the thought of door-to-door myself) but much of their theology is very sound. We all far pray to our own culture, it is just part of being alive. You can follow me and my exploits around on Twitter just like you can McCracken, but where do we get our theology today.
Theology, Get it Wherever You Like
So they/we get theology from CCM (Christian Contemporary Music), and the pop-trends of the day. The latest craze that includes us older generations with Glenn Beck (see Beck Wants to Lead, But Will Evangelicals Follow? and a great article by Dr. Russell Moore God, the Gospel, and Glenn Beck, and for another look, And Glenn Beck Shall Lead Them). Beck calls for a return to God, and then on Chris Wallace’s program (see video) Beck made it quite clear that he totally understands the Gospel message, and the differences between the LDS Church (Mormon Church) and Christianity. Sometimes it seems that the only ones who can’t see the difference, and there are plenty of differences, are us Christians.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
I guess the question is, who are we looking to for our theological base and teaching, Beck? I don’t want to just pick on Beck, I like his show. While he is a super pop-culture-talking-head and has many good points, should we really be taking our theology from Beck? He would probably even say that’s not a good idea. Luckily, Christians today can go right to the source and skip all the middle men. The unchanging God of Abraham is still there for us. We are the ones who change, not Him.
I was going to post the poem, “Theology” by Paul Laurence Dunbar here as well but this post is too long already, so look for it in the next post shortly.
Posts Related to This Topic:
Today all across the country people came out to protest the taxes and spending our government started months ago and has continued into present day. After flipping through the mainstream media outlets, even CNN, I have determined that they just don’t get it. They portray this to be a GOP or Republican thing and they are so far from understanding that people are fed up with our government overspending, growing larger and larger, and more importantly today, ever-increasing the taxation (in various forms) its citizens.
The media downplayed the Tax Day Tea Parties as insignificant and just noise that only a few loons from the far right would attend but in city after city thousands of people have gathered to say enough is enough. Even the Texas governor this morning said he was personally going to three different Tea Parties in the state of Texas, and as governors go, Texas holds a mighty powerful position in the Union.
It started out with large cities like Boston and Atlanta but soon enough there were small rural towns, and yes, even Auburn University, who played host to a local Tea Party. Below are just a few of the images from the Tea Party in Auburn today out in front of the University library. Sadly, even the signs were censored as you will see below. One of the guys holds up the sign that says “Stop Over Spending” was told he could not hold up his sign, which originally said “Stop Obama Spending”. He was made to cross out the Obama reference and told he couldn’t say that?
I guess Bush did do a bit of spending before he left office but come on, this guy should be able to hold up a sign that has the word Obama on it? Like no one ever made a sign that had BUSH on it with far more hateful things than that. Oh well, such is life in 2009.
Here are some of the photos from today’s protest (thanks Deb).
Posts Related to This Topic:
Today both Deb and I used the freedom we have in this country to vote. I hope you did as well, it is one of the things that makes this country great. Doesn’t matter who you voted for, just as long as you exercized your right to vote.
Posts Related to This Topic:
Sometimes it really amazes me who is called a photographer and who isn’t. Photography takes on many many forms from journalist to fine artist and everything in between. When one photographer is able to garner the spotlight of the news for political purposes, such as what Jill Greenberg has done this week with her photo shoot with John McCain, purposely misleading her client, has done harm to the profession of photography for all photographers.
Outside of that, for someone to manipulate an image to the extent that Jill Greenberg has done, takes photography out of the work and inserts something else. One person put it on the news last night, what Jill Greeberg has done is political pornography, which is an insult to pornographers. I was so disgusted by the images she posted on her website and that were shown on Fox News and CNN that I don’t know how anyone can call her a photographer. In the end, at least the Atlantic Monthly has apologized for her representing their magazine, but they shouldn’t have to do that, a photographer should work in a professional manner, no matter what the subject.
The editor of The Atlantic Monthly said Monday he is sending a letter of apology to John McCain after a woman the magazine hired to photograph the Republican presidential nominee posted manipulated pictures from the photo shoot on her Web site. Photographer Jill Greenberg, who is vehemently anti-Republican and expressed glee that the photos would stir up conservative ire, took pictures of McCain for the cover of The Atlantic’s October issue.
Did anyone even notice that this woman is Canadian? There seem to be so many non-U.S. citizens that seem to want to influence the election, and these are the tactics I guess are needed to do just what she has done, but she has done a true dis-service to all photographers at this point. If you look at it from a blogging perspective or google, she has accomplished exactly what she wanted… to create a fire storm of media attention (and bloggers, see Jill Greenberg Is Not Afraid To Dump All Her Clients At Once, Low blow, The Atlantic should have Googled Jill Greenberg before hiring her, and Fallout From Jill Greenberg’s McCain Images just to name a few) to her disgusting manipulations of the photography profession.
What new mountains of paper work will form from her stunt that will have to be signed, released, political backgrounds checked and so on. Most photographers I have met would never behave in this manner at all, and I am glad she doesn’t represent me or any photographers that I know. So that is my rant on the business of photography. I have yet to find someone on either side of the political isle that is willing to defend her actions, I hope none arise.
