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No. 373 February 12th, 2012 this week
Turn the Mess Off
The Bible 101
The King & I
Whitney Houston
Body & Soul |
She Gave Good Love
Whitney Houston Dead At 48
I’m saddened by the news of Whitney Houston’s death. Actually, I’ve been saddened by this news for many years now, perhaps ever since this brilliant and talented young woman revealed much of her grace and mainstream likeability to have been a remarkable marketing illusion. Far from being the wholesome and sensible girl next door her carefully constructed image portrayed her to be, Ms. Houston was actually, literally, the girl next door—Shaneequa, the loud and irascible urban pixie who inevitably falls for the local drain-circling hood rat. While it is perhaps easy and maybe even right to blame Bobby Brown for Ms. Houston’s shortcomings, we are all ultimately responsible for our own decisions. There is every indication that Ms. Houston knew God, or certainly had the opportunity to know God, and that is where our responsibility ends. Not to force people into being what we want them to be—as the conservative “Christian” right tends to do by passing laws and backing political campaigns—but to simply tell them about the love of Jesus Christ. Only God knows what choices Ms. Houston made about their relationship, but the shock to our collective system was how intentionally fraudulent the Whitney Houston image was. No matter how utterly disappointing and at times even disgusting, the reality of her final years at least provided some veneer of truth. Hers is a cautionary tale, the looming lesson specifically for the black church being how utterly inefficient our tradition can be in introducing Christ to young people in a meaningful way, in a way that sticks. Like Ms. Houston, I grew up in the black church, but found Jesus in a white one where, stripped of all the pomp and circumstance of our traditional pageantry, Christ was allowed to reveal Himself in a meaningful and effective fashion. For someone to inhale our vapors for the majority of her young life and to reveal herself, willingly and unapologetically, as a sad and lost individual and cruel caricature of the greatness God had endowed within her, is terribly sad. Her passing last week was, for me, merely the conclusion of that sadness, giving rise to hope that she is indeed in a better place, freed of the flawed humanity that oppressed her for so long.
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No. 373 Feb 12, 2012
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by
the mercies of God, that ye present your
bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable
unto God, which is your reasonable service.
2 And be not conformed to this world: but be
ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good, and
acceptable, and perfect,
will of God. —Romans 12:1-2
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They Don't Care Who Wins
The Collective Psychosis of Conservative America
Every poll, every one of them, lists conservatives’ top priority
as removing Barack Obama from the presidency. They don’t seem to
care who they replace him with. Conservatives are so desperate,
in fact, to oust Obama, that they are willingly if not
enthusiastically abandoning their own much-touted principles and
alleged “moral” values, backing a professional office-seeker, a
dilettante multi-millionaire with too much time on his hands who
runs for president as a hobby, as an escape from boredom. Within
conservative circles, there doesn’t seem to be much conversation
beyond the economy, as if the economy is all the presidency is
about. No one seems at all concerned that GOP frontrunner,
former Governor Mitt Romney, has absolutely zero military
experience and zero foreign policy experience. He served one
term as governor and has spent the rest of his professional life
stripping companies for profit while running for president as a
kind of ad hoc hobby. But this is the guy (mostly) white
conservatives are turning cartwheels over. Why? Because he
embodies their beliefs? Represents their hopes? Of course not.
He is a soulless robo candidate and proven liar—they all know
that, which, of course, makes liars of them as well. No, they
are backing Romney out of their irrational loathing of the
president, a race-based predisposition the overwhelming majority
of these people refuse to confront or deal with. All the noise,
every bit of it, is about the economy. As if Israel weren’t
threatening to start a war with Iran—which would inevitably
trigger terror attacks against the U.S. around the globe and
here at home and likely drag us into yet another war.
These people seem to be thinking only, exclusively, and
desperately of ousting this man they demonstrably revile. Why?
This is not a simple disagreement over the president’s policies.
It’s personal. So personal, they don’t care if the country is
wrecked or diverted into war. They really don’t care who wins so
long as Obama loses. That’s a clear indicator of something
deeply wrong with this nation. An evil we continue to refuse to
face. The only people who can’t see that racism is the heated,
molten core of this disgraceful political battle are the
(mostly) white conservatives desperate to find any other
rationale for what is clearly irrational behavior.
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