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Civil Rights Leaders Applaud Obama
The GRIO
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Marissa Alexander Sentenced To 20 Years
The GRIO |
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No. 375 May 20th, 2012 this week
The Levite’s Concubine
A Woman’s Place
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The Spirit of Rhoda |
Second Sunday In May
Why Motives Matter On Mother's Day
Mother's Day is, likely, the worst of American holidays because it exploits women, preying on the sentimentality of a certain generation. It divides families by forcing women to expect certain behavior or certain acts on a certain day. A woman's self-worth can often be injured by the measure of the demonstration of affection she receives that day. Mother's Day encourages vapidity and codependence in women. Like children at Christmas, the commensurate value of the Mother's Day gesture becomes the proportionate measure of external validation these women receive. My mother suffered greatly every second Sunday in May, and I hadn't done anything to cause that. They—whomever "they" are—did, by enacting this insipid holiday in 1914, a ritual my mother and, just as likely, yours, bought into wholeheartedly. The pernicious element of the supposedly benign day is guilt. Guilt sends us to the mall. Guilt has us squeezing into crowded restaurants and blowing cash on florists. What I love most about God is that He responds not to our acts but to our motives. Christians should not be a people motivated by guilt, but by love. There's nothing wrong with buying your mom flowers unless you are doing so out of obligation to some date on a calendar. That is bondage. It would be better to make your own Mother's Day. How's the 3rd Sunday in September? That seems to be free. Anna Jarvis, who created the holiday first in Grafton, West Virginia, later became so incensed by its commercialization that she spent her entire fortune lobbying Congress to repeal it as a national holiday. She failed and died broke in an asylum. For everyone waiting on long lines at restaurants today, I wish you well. I also wish you'd find a way to honor mom that also honors God by not placing His people in bondage. Most mommies I am acquainted with don't know and don't care whether or not their child is acting out of love or guilt. But it really should matter, because only one of those motives actually honors you. Our motives matter to God, and it is His divine example that we should emulate. I certainly wouldn't want anybody doing something for me because I guilted them into it. That kind of love is cheap and shallow. Real love can't be defined by a calendar.
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Civil Rights Leaders Applaud Obama
The GRIO
|
Marissa Alexander Sentenced To 20 Years
The GRIO |
No. 375 May 20, 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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Why It Just Ain’t Happening
PAGE SIX
Gay Marriage
Obama Comes Out Of The Closet
Well, for the moment, at least, nobody is talking about the
economy. Which was likely the point. Last week’s gay marriage
circus which, to me, seemed obviously staged for the cameras,
swept the slowing economic trend (and Mitt Romney along with it)
right off of the headlines. The truth is, the news media really
isn’t all that interested in Mitt Romney unless it’s reporting
on his having bullied some gay kid back in high school, a story
conveniently timed to coincide with the president having been
outed on his support of gay marriage. It was like an episode of
the West Wing, Vice President Biden shoots his mouth off,
forcing the president into announcing his change in position on
gay marriage earlier than planned, while a group of Romney’s
high school buddies come forward with the gay bullying story.
Are we actually buying any of this? Job growth has slowed to a
trickle for the second month in a row, portending a slowing of
the economic recovery. Romney wins on the economy. Both he and
the president know it. So we can expect the subject to be
changed to social issues, to terrorism (the foiled bomb plot,
the increasingly ominous warnings about al Qaeda, both straight
out of the George W. Bush playbook). There is unprecedented
money being thrown against President Obama’s reelection bid,
making his reelection, as implausible as this sounds, more
unlikely than his election in the first place. And, between now
and November, we can expect the Conversation Switcher of The
Week.
Is the president really in favor of gay marriage? I don’t know.
I surely don’t know why he would talk about it at all,
especially now, other than for political staging. If this is
some genuine change of heart, its been tainted by the appearance
of political expediency. It looks like the White House is simply
using the LGBT community much the same way conservatives have
used them: as strategic political tools to raise money and
change public opinion. Which makes the Obama reelect campaign
absolutely no different from the Bush campaign. Whichever side
of the issue you’re on, I hope you’re not stupid enough to fall
for this.
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As a civil rights matter, it is absolutely wrong to deny any class of people civil rights guaranteed to all Americans under the law. As a personal matter, I honestly don’t care who people marry or, for that matter, who they sleep with. I want to know, do you know Jesus? That’s the only question I am interested in asking. We are commanded to “…come out from among them and be ye separate…” [2 Cor 6:17] which, for me, does not mean a physical separation—all Christians run off to the mountains or what have you—so much as a separation of purpose. While certainly being “in this world but not of it” [John 15:19] Jesus’ concerns were focused on His mission. He was not distracted by all the noise around Him, nor did He seek to play God in the lives of those who did not receive Him—even though he *is* God and certainly has a right to do what He pleases. Jesus did not come to us as a Judge but as a friend, as a rescuer—the word Savior. He is our model for all that we do, and there simply is no documentation, no evidence, of Jesus having an opinion, one way or the other, on gay marriage or any of the other social issues of the day the fundamentalist Christian church loves to wallow in. Caution, however, is also advised: there is no biblical model for single-gender marriage. My hang-up, at this point, is mostly about semantics. Call it something else, and I’m happy to not care one way or the other. But the word “marriage” has—so far as I know—from the word’s conception referred not to merely the joining of two people or even two souls but of two *genders.* In terms of churches being open and affirming, I agree that all people who are actual Christians (as opposed to those Christians in name only) must, by the personal example of Jesus Christ, be open and welcoming of all people. Doctrinally, I get tripped up by affirmation. It’s tough for me to affirm something I have no specific biblical model for or, for that matter, to condemn behavior there is no specific scriptural warning against. I find no model for gay marriage. I’m happy to keep looking. I might attend a gay wedding but I am constrained from performing one for these reasons. I *might* applaud the president if my cynicism wasn’t so engaged (it all sounds political and thus robs the president’s gesture of its integrity)..
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