Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Quotes of the Week

Quote of the Week: July 26th, 2007

by Jimmy Hopper

Our quote this week speaks to those of the postmodern generation who have glimpsed the abyss and despair because of it. It is from a teenager quoted in Walter Truett Anderson’s book, Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be:

I belong to the Blank Generation. I have no beliefs. I’m lost in this vast, vast world. I belong nowhere. I have absolutely no identity.

This is a tragedy beyond words and I believe it to be all around us. Does the church understand and respond? Give us your thoughts both of this phenomenon; how we got here, and your ideas of what the Christian response should be to it.

Politics

Carrie Nation in Nashville

by Clay Staggs

If I were to survey the good people of Tennessee about what the worst problems facing their state were, I think I know what I’d see: jobs, economy, health care, education, taxes, security, etc. I’m pretty certain that underage drinking would not make anyone’s top 10.

Yet, this seems to be much on the minds of the legislature and governor in Nashville. Tennessee has apparently become the first state in the nation to require proof of age to purchase beer in stores. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, this applies only to sales of beer, not wine or liquor, and only where the beer is to be consumed off-premises, i.e., it’s not applicable in bars or restaurants.

Get this quote from the Governor of Tennessee, Phil Bredesen (whom some have mentioned as a future Democrat presidential nominee), who is 63, on how he’d feel being carded to buy a six-pack:

“I’ll be very pleased when I’m carded, and in my mind I’ll just imagine it’s because I look so young.”

Puh-leeze. The ostensible reason for this nonsense is (of course) stopping underage drinking. Yet, this rings somewhat hollow when bars and restaurants are exempt, and when it doesn’t apply to virtually every other stronger alcoholic beverage.

So what gives? Surely the folks in charge in Nashville have bigger fish to fry. Perhaps that’s it, actually. It’s hard work to lower taxes, provide more services, and keep the books balanced (though businesses do this every day, in addition to complying with idiotic governmental mandates). Agreeing to make Joe Six-Pack show his ID is easy in comparison. And all under the guise of protecting our minors - er, make that underage drinkers, or something, since you legally become an adult in TN at age 18.

But it seems more than that to me. Carrie Nation’s tactics were somewhat crude, with that whole ax routine and all. This is much more subtle, yet the aim is, I believe the same. Implicit in this and the Alabama legislature’s refusal to lift the alcohol content cap in beer (which 48 other states have done now) is that drinking beer is EVIL. It’s just a kinder, gentler revival of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union mentality if you ask me. And, this time, it’s working incrementally. First, keep grown men and women from drinking until they’re 21. Then, make all college campuses alcohol-free. Then, get those nasty bars off the strip. Then, make all beer buyers show their ID, even if they’re 87. And, heaven forbid that any gourmet beers be sold in Alabama. And it’s all for “the children” - who, in many cases, are, as noted above adults.

I’m not in favor of boozing up 10 year olds or anything. But, this is just getting ridiculous.

Humor

The USRSF in Iraq

by Lowell Urban

The Pentagon announced today the deployment of a previously unknown elite fighting unit called the

US REDNECK SPECIAL FORCES (USRSF).

These North Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Tennessee boys will be dropped into Iraq and have been given the following facts about Terrorists:

1. The season opened today.
2. There is no limit.
3. They taste just like chicken.
4. They don’t like beer, pickups, country music or Jesus.
5. They are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the death of Dale Earnhardt.

The official motto of this elite new unit is: “If it swims, walks, runs or flies…it dies.”

Sources inside the Pentagon indicated off the record that they expected that the “mess in Iraq should be over in about a week.”

An angry Governor’s Office in Baton Rouge issued the following statement: “We don’t know why they left out Louisiana. We would bring our own 4-wheelers and squirrel guns. Just give us plenty of ammo, that free pass hunting license, air transport and our boys are there! This is obviously another Bush Administration mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina.”

The Pentagon responded: “Well, we heard people talking in French, and just assumed….”

Initial reports from Iraq were positive: “Wait ‘til the Taxidermy Man see what I brung him!!!!”

Quotes of the Week

Quote of the Week: July 19, 2007

by Jimmy Hopper

Our quote of the week is below. Consider it and let everyone know your thoughts, opinions, etc. This quote is from C. S. Lewis from an essay entitled “Democratic Education” in his book Present Concerns: Essays.

The demand for equality has two sources; one of them is among the noblest, the other is the basest of human emotions. The noble source is the desire for fair play. But the other source is the hatred of superiority.

What are your thoughts on this idea; and how does it play out in your experience in society and in Lewis’ subject, education in a democracy?

Quotes of the Week

Quote of the Week

by Jimmy Hopper

Below is our second “Quote of the Week”, an observation on Christianity and/or life. Feel free to register your thoughts about it, positive or negative.This week’s quote is from “Puritans and Prigs,” an essay in The Death of Adam by Marilynne Robinson:

A Puritan confronted by failure and ambivalence could find his faith justified by the experience, could feel that the world had answered his expectations. We have replaced this with an unsystematic, uncritical, and in fact, unconscious perfectionism-the idea that society can and should produce good people, that is, people suited to life in whatever imagined optimum society, who then stabilize the society in its goodness so that it produces more good people, and so on.

Have at it.

Humor

On Being Presbyterian

by Blake Johnson

What does it mean to be Presbyterian?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmiTlaZd5Yg

H/T Mark Horne

Culture Wars

Soak up the Sun

by Clay Staggs

We return again today to a perennial favorite on this blog - the battle between wacko environmentalists and the rest of us. Be warned: this one is ridiculous even by the already-low standards of the debate on this issue.

We humans have now been accused of being too greedy for the sun’s resources, and using a disproportionate share of them. Truly, I am not making this up. Read it all here.

Now, the first thing anybody reading this is going to wonder is how any one thing on the face of the earth takes more of the sun’s resources than any other thing. Ah, well, you see, they’re talking about that great biological storehouse of solar energy - plants. We apparently are guilty of using more plant resources than any other species on earth.

Folks, I couldn’t dream up quotes like this:

An agriculture professor at the University of Melbourne, Snow Barlow, said … humans were taking up too much of an important natural resource. “Here we are, just one species on the earth, and we’re grabbing a quarter of the renewable resources … we’re probably being a bit greedy.”

Now, I’ll drop the sarcasm for a minute to actually point out what should be blazingly obvious to everyone. There are a considerable number of those “renewable resources” that are only renewed by HUMAN ACTIVITY. To read this article, you’d think that corn, wheat, soybeans, etc., just magically spring forth from the ground, and rapacious humans descend on them like locusts, leaving nothing for the subsistence of the myriad innocent (and totally not greedy) species.

That’s just coming at it from a non-Christian perspective. As Christians, we understand that the reason that it is good and proper for us to plant and harvest crops, use trees for wood, etc., is because a) God has given the Earth to us so that we can exercise dominion over and be stewards of it, b) the earth is made for man, not man for the Earth, and c) we worship the Creator, not the creation.

So, all of this is really dumb, and probably not worth the pixels I’m devoting to it. However, if there’s a substantial part of the environmentalist movement that buys into this, consider this line from the article:

[T]he increased use of biofuels - such as ethanol and canola - should be viewed cautiously, given the potential for further pressure on ecosystems.

How’s that going to be for an internecine environmentalist feud? The plant-huggers vs. the alternative fuels crowd. It ought to at least be entertaining to watch. Get the popcorn. Oh, wait….

Overated Freedom

by Peggy Drinkard

iIn the “Reflections” section of our church bulletin yesterday there was a thoughtful meditation on the emptiness of “freedom” as it is popularly conceived….the notion of no responsibilities, no commitment, no debts to anyone, just free-floating through life. The pursuit of such freedom seems to be tauted today as the pinnacle of existence. Many people are willing to pour hours and life and energy into the pursuit of this illusive concept…working hard and making relational sacrifices of all kinds so that they can retire before 50 and be “free.” After reflecting on this since yesterday, by happy coincidence I read a poem this morning that spoke to the joyous antithesis to this notion…the sweet and pure freedom that issues into our lives once we are slaves to Christ. It reads:

   As flame streams upward, so my longing thought
   Flies up with Thee,
  Thou God and Saviour, who hast truly wrought
   Life out of death, and to us, loving, brought
   A fresh, new world; and in Thy sweet chains caught,
   And made us free!
                               Maurice Francis Egan

The further one goes in the Christian life, or so it seems to me, the more one realizes how often the mind and ways of God contradict those of our own. And how thankful I am for those sweet chains.

Culture Wars

“Nothing new under the sun….”

by Jimmy Hopper

Ecclesiastes 1:9 says the following: “That which has been is what will be; that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.’ While reading Henry Morton Stanley’s (“Dr. Livingston, I presume”) memoir of his explorations in equatorial Africa in the 1870’s, I ran across this passage. Stanley and his party are north of present day Uganda and are staying in a village for the night. “Mirambo” is the great chief and overlord of the area with whom they have negotiated for permission to cross his country:

Zegi, swarming with a reckless number of lawless men, was not a comfortable place to dwell in. The conduct of these men was another curious example of how “small things make base men proud.” Here was a number of youths suffering under that strange disease particular to vain youth of all lands, which Marambo had called “big head.” The manner in which they strutted about, their big looks and bold staring, their enormous feather head-dresses and martial stride, were most offensive. Having adopted, from bravado, the name of “Ruga-Ruga,” they were compelled, in honor, to imitate the bandits custom of smoking bhangi (wild hemp,) and my memory fails to remind me of any similar experience to the wild screaming and stormy sneezing, accompanied day and night to the monotonous droning of the one-string guitar (another accomplishment de rigueur with the complete bandit) and the hiccuping, snorting and vocal extravangances which we had to bear in the village of Zegi.

There is very little in that description that I thought doesn’t apply to the young street gangs of today. There is the ridiculous dress, the posturing, the violence, the drugs, the imitation of the most violent aspects of society, and if you substitute the one string guitar for the incessant bass that rocks automobiles (I think the monotonous droning applies both to the bass and to the lyrics): the music is even the same. Maybe the social engineers of today can examine the Zegi society and find out how the Ruga-Ruga were disenfranchised and determine that they are only seeking a “family” to which to belong. On the other hand, maybe it’s a fallen world and man is flawed….

Ah, the wisdom in God’s word. There is truly “nothing new.”

Quotes of the Week

Quote of the Week

by Jimmy Hopper

Each week, a quote pertinent to life and Christianity will be posted on the Riverblog. Your approval or disapproval of the quote or your thoughts regarding it are welcomed, so have at it.

The quote of the week this week is from Peggy Noonan in her book, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness:

I think that we have lost the old knowledge that happiness is overrated—that, in a way, life is overrated. We have lost somehow a sense of mystery—about us, our purpose, our meaning, our role. Our ancestors believed in two worlds, and understood this to be the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short one. We are the first generation of man that actually expected to find happiness here on earth, and our search for it has caused such unhappiness. The reason is that if you do not believe in another, higher world, if you believe only in the flat material world around you, if you believe that this is your only chance at happiness— if that is what you believe, then, when the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you are more than disappointed ; you are in despair.

Culture Wars

Christianity and Country

by Jimmy Hopper

As the 4th of July approached, I saw again church signs and even billboards that indicated that the worship of God in certain churches has been changed to a “patrotic celebration” advertising all the fervor for country associated with that particular endeavor. Last Saturday, I read an editorial column in the Tuscaloosa News from Cary McMullen, who writes a religion column for the Lakeland , Fla. paper that is syndicated throughout the country that addresses this tendency. While Mr. McMullen and I don’t always agree, I have found him to be an excellent, often perceptive observer of religion in America. However, this is a column in which he and I agree totally in every respect (except he is probably more lenient toward it than I.) The link is here. http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070630/NEWS/70629010/1005/SPORTS0106