Middletree

I've been mostly avoiding politics in this blog, but will jump in: I'm not happy with the efforts of Republican congresshumans to refuse to pass a budget unless Obamacare is defunded. Obamacare is an awful piece of legislation, and will do more harm to our nation than its proponents can fathom. But it is the law, and it was passed fair and square. Republicans are wrong to use the budget approval process to try to strike it down.  Democrats have tried similar tactics in the past. It's wrong no matter who does it. Obamacare passed. It's the law. They got more votes than we did. Them's the rules. When we start saying "I don't care what the majority voted for, I'm going to hold my breath till I get my way", we are no better than 3rd-world countries. If you don't like a law, vote it out. That's how democracy works. Don't try an end-around.

As part of Thomas Nelson's Booksneeze program, I recently received a copy of Zondervan's NIV College Devotional Bible for review purposes. I'm not a fan of the NIV translation, but I really like the way this bible is put together. The 200+ devotionals are well written, and applicable to anyone, not just college students. The devotionals often use extra-biblical stories to illustrate the point. For example, next to the story about Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers outside the temple, there is a devotional about righteous anger. As an illustration, it refers to Florence Nightingale and her observations at the appalling conditions for wounded soldiers during the Crimean War, and how her anger at the situation led to her personal life mission to care for the sick and injured. This parable-based approach is like to work for anyone, but particularly those at this age, an age that most people are learning the importance of making their life count for somethin...

Before Miley Cyrus stole the spotlight Sunday night, approximately 75% of the nation's Internet's bandwidth was being consumed by comments about the selection of Ben Affleck as Batman in the upcoming " Batman vs Superman " movie.  Most of the talk was negative, some supportive, and some was just funny. (The best line: "I've just seen Christian Bale going to Affleck's apartment with some Huey Lewis records and an axe.") The protests kept coming, drowning out admonitions from level-headed people like myself to just. calm. down. We're talking about a fictional character, people. As one of the few who refused to contribute to the vitriol, I could step back and notice some things about the way these discussions were going. Besides the Bennifer and Daredevil references, the bulk of the protests (and even some of the pro-Affleck comments) focused on comparisons : "Ben Affleck will be the worst Batman since that fat guy in the ill-fitting s...

In a recent tweet, Rosanne Cash said that she is obsessing over the order of songs for her new album: Resequencing my record for 94th time even tho only 5 people in the universe listen to a record in sequence now. Don't care, obsessing anyway — rosanne cash (@rosannecash) August 23, 2013 Within a minute, she received over 100 replies from fans (including myself) who still find value in listening to whole albums, in order. I don't do it all the time, of course. Listening to various songs by different artists is how music fans have listened to the radio for longer than I have been alive. Clearly, there's no harm is doing the same with our personal music collections. But some albums are so well put together, and have a common theme running throughout, that they actually have a stronger impact when heard in their entirety, in the intended sequence. It's a matter of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. My favorite CD's to listen to in o...

If you were asked to name the single biggest threat to American Christianity these days, what would it be? Some will argue that laws curtailing free speech are doing the most damage to Christians today. Some will argue that changing marriage laws and acceptance of various sexual sins are a bigger threat. Some Christians seem to think that it's those Target employees who say "Happy Holidays" and find other ways to secularize Christmas. From where I stand, none of the items listed above, which all originate from sources outside the Church, has as much potential to do the most damage to the cause of Christ and the work of the Church in America as this one thing, and it's coming from within: Christians refusing to see God as He is, and replacing the real God with one which makes them most comfortable. The most uncomfortable, difficult thing to accept about God is His anger, and the most difficult thing for 21st-Century American believers to accept is that w...

Toward the end of Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz", the author mentions Burnside Writers Collective , a website he created with friends, in order to create a web presence for aspiring young Christian writers who tend to be a little Left of Center. While I am neither young nor left of center, I have been privileged to have some of my writing published at BWC. Here's a list: How God Will Use Unimpressive People   The Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 Book Review: Billy Coffey's "When Mockingbirds Sing" God Expresses His Love For Me and Offers to Heal the Wounds of Fatherlessness Why I Voted For Mitt Romney The Value Of the Hurts In Our Lives My Disagreement with Springsteen's "Glory Days" A Lesson I Learned From Little League In addition to those, I have participated in Cross Talk, a series of  discussions in which Emily Timbol (Reaves) and I have talked out our disagreements on important theological/political topics: When I...

Through Thomas Nelson Publishing's Booksneeze program, I obtained a free copy of Billy Coffey's "When Mockingbirds Sing" for review purposes. I'm free to give my honest take on this book. This paragraph is here to make the IRS happy. I started reading Coffey's blog about 2 years ago, and along the way, I read his first two novels, "Snow Day" and "Paper Angels". The former is a nice first effort, while the 2nd is not only an improvement, but with it, he demonstrated an ability to walk the fine line between saying something profound and not trying to sound like he's trying to be profound. "When Mockingbirds Sing" continues in that direction, but the result goes from being merely good to remarkable. The author manages to tell a compelling story that contains important truths without the reader feeling he's being preached to. I've never written a novel, but it seems to me that the difficulty of writing fiction for...