here are a couple of things to read tomorrow on the day off in between grilling hot dogs and being thankful for the soldiers who have won and kept our freedom.
the first is for all those people who claim to be spiritual but avoid religion. a taste:
So we find Lady Gaga, the pornographic songstress, telling a reporter for The Times that she has a new spirituality just before taking her out for a night at a Berlin sex club. Asked by the reporter, “You were raised a Catholic — so when you say ‘God,’ do you mean the Catholic God, or a different, perhaps more spiritual sense of God?”, she responded, “More spiritual. . . . There’s really no religion that doesn’t hate or condemn a certain kind of people, and I totally believe in all love and forgiveness, and excluding no one.”
the second is a bit of encouragement for those who begin to feel that Christians have no influence in the world. a tease for it:
God may have (and I believe that He does have) a special love for the poor, but that does not mean that the poor get sophisticated religion. They get strong religion and hot religion more than they get subtle religion and sophisticated religion. Pentecostal preachers all over the world are casting out demons, speaking in tongues, healing the sick and in some cases raising the dead. While many African Christians have broadly positive views of Muslims, I have heard African Pentecostals describe Muslims as demon-possessed; I have heard Nigerian Christians (in a country where interfaith violence has taken thousands of lives) singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” in a very non-metaphorical sense. The Muslims across town are getting a similar version of their faith; stripped of nuance, ready for combat. The backwoods Nigerian imams who tried to block a polio vaccine on the grounds that the vaccine was a western plot against Muslims were no more learned or sophisticated than some of the neighboring Christian pastors who tell their flocks that if they will only believe, God will bless them with good jobs and fancy cars.
anyways, give them a read and tell me what you think.
Bonus story of the heroism of Jason Dunham on this Memorial Day weekend.
On April 14, 2004, Dunham made a decision that would save the lives of two Marines… at the cost of his own.
Dunham, a 22-year-old machine gunner from Scio, N.Y., was manning a checkpoint near Karabilah, near the Syrian border in Iraq, on April 14, 2004, when an Iraqi man grabbed his throat. As the two scuffled, the Iraqi dropped a grenade with the pin removed, and Dunham quickly jumped on it, using his Kevlar helmet and body to smother the blast.