Come pretty near having two holidays of equal importance in the same week, Halloween and the election, and of the two, the election provides us the most fun. – 2 November 1930 Will Rogers This one doesn’t need any explaining and it is equally true as it was 82 years ago. Continue reading Two Holidays of Equal Importance….
I am adding a new category starting with this post. It is entitled “The Shrinking Middle Class”.
Here is one of the reasons why I am doing that. It is well into the Fall season here in the Midwest and soon all the outside work will be over. That means about five months of pretty much staying in the “cabin”. To ward off cabin fever I usually try to take on a special project for each in-door season. The project this year will be to learn as much as I can about the history of the middle class and the possible causes of its recent decline. ” Continue reading “The Shrinking Middle Class….”
via Jack Welch: I was right about jobs report – Oct. 9, 2012. Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, had previously contributed content to Fortune, but following critical coverage of his comments on the jobs report and tenure at GE, Welch said in an e-mail Tuesday that he was terminating his contract with Fortune. In his WSJ op-ed, Welch suggests that the reaction to his criticism of “the ruling authorities” was something he would expect in Soviet Russia or Communist China. “Nope,” he wrote, “that would be the United States right now, when a person (like me, for instance) suggests … Continue reading All Rich Guys Think They are Infallible….
I have often said on this blog that maybe we should give up our stained glass churches and move them to strip malls, abandoned buildings, or other less costly surroundings. For many churches today paying the mortgage and utilities is a the second biggest drain on a small congregation (the biggest drain is usually the pastor’s salary). That is why there is some validity to the claim that churches are more like clubhouses than anything else. Many spend the vast majority of their money on themselves. For small churches, and most churches are small, these two areas of expense take … Continue reading The Common Cathedral…..
Now that I have passed the 1,000 post mark on this blog and have managed to get a regular and growing following I thought I would give you some “secrets”on blogging. Even though I am just an ordinary guy and not a Pulitzer prize winner I think I have some wisdom to offer beginning bloggers. Continue reading “Its All In The Editing….”
via Due Diligence: Where the candidates differ on foreign policy – CBS News. The president wants the military to focus more on nontraditional threats like al Qaeda, and no longer wants the United States to serve as the world’s policeman. He noted on Monday that America spends more on the military than the next ten countries combined – which you only say if you think America is carrying too large a burden. It can be difficult to tease out differences between the candidates on specific issues. But when it comes to the larger, overarching philosophy, there is a clear difference: Romney … Continue reading Where the candidates differ on foreign policy…. thank heavens….
Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a well known Lutheran theologian, wrote some tantalizing letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage where he wrestles with what he calls “religionless Christianity.”The letters in question were written in 1944 not long before he was executed by the Nazi’s. What did Bohhoeffer mean by Religionless Christianity? Here are some of the words from those letters: What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of … Continue reading Religionless Christianity???
No this post is not about anything in today’s world. There are some Christians who are on evangelism missions abroad who are doing risky things but for the most part Christians are pretty well settled down in their safe lives much like everyone else in this country. But that definitely was not the case for many in the early church. Here are some words about early Christians doing very risky things to show that they were followers of Jesus and were intent on following his examples. This quote is from A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the … Continue reading Christians Doing Risky Things….
I saw a statistic somewhere that said that 68% of U.S. citizens are war weary. I am certainly one of them. Neither party seems to shy away from sending our kids and/or our dollars to fight in this or that conflict. After twelve years of constant war costing us thousands of our kids and $trillions I am war weary. Do we really need to be the policemen of the world even if it bankrupts us? Our war machine has cost us enough! Continue reading “I am War Weary…….”
The phrase “I believe” seems to have a lot of weight in today’s world but to me it is a cautionary phrase. We have to distinguish between “I believe” and “I am”. Let me give you an example of that: “I believe that Jesus told us to take care of the poor.” This seems to be a powerful declaration but is it really? What if I asked the person making the statement “What are you doing to take care of the poor?” and he said “well really nothing but I do believe that we should.” I’m sure you can see … Continue reading I Believe……
In 1997 Richard Carlson wrote a very popular book entitled Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff…. and it’s all small stuff. In that book he listed one hundred things to make our lives more peaceful. Some of those topics that I took to heart included: Let Others Be “Right” Most of the Time Learn to Live in the Present Moment Surrender to the Fact that Life Isn’t Fair Most of the things we worry about the most have little real impact on our lives. They are just clutter that gets in the way of having a happier life. As I have come … Continue reading And Its All Small Stuff…..
Tonight is, thank heavens, the last debate for this presidential season. It will be on foreign policy. I can tell you in advance what will happen. Each side will tear into the other saying their opponents foreign policy will assure the total destruction of the United States. There will be little of anything but put-down and counter-put-downs.
If I were running for president I would give you very clearly what I would proudly call RJ’s Doctrine: Continue reading “RJ’s Doctrine….”
I am going to start a series of posts around quotes from some of the many books I have read. One of the favorites is the book “If God is Love” by Philip Gulley. Here is the quote for today: The theology of love begins with the assumption that all people are God’s cherished children and deserving of love. “We love because he first loved us. Those who say ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars, for they do not love a brother or sister who they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not … Continue reading If God Is Love… (Part1)
We have been away from New Jersey for over twelve years now and are quite settled again in our Indiana home. But there are still some things about N.J. that I miss. One of those are the diners and the one in Freehold was our favorite. Continue reading Freehold Diner…
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith by Brian D. McLaren: We’re following the best Christian tradition of going back to Jesus and the Scriptures, so our quest for a new kind of Christianity is, in fact, a most conservative quest. In our return to our roots, however, we’re not writing off all the great sages, scholars, and saints of church history. We’re simply going back to the original Evangelists, apostles, and especially Jesus and making sure we’re as in sync with them as possible from this point forward. We’re not trying to explain … Continue reading A New/Old Kind of Christianity
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that’s Memoirs. – Will Rogers I think almost all of us who have ever put pen to paper so to speak have thought about writing our memoirs. But it seems that only those folks who are famous ever actually get theirs published and I have a sneaking suspicion that many of even those are actually ghost written. I guess I have sort of written my memoirs in that I have been keeping a journal for about twenty years … Continue reading Memoirs…..
As we have learned in several of my recent posts Origen was one of the most influential theologians in the early church who was later deemed a heretic and then after that a saint again. He spent quite a bit of time reading the “scripture” of his day. I put scripture in parens here because there was no Bible as we know it today in existence. Today Origen is definitely not one of the more popular early Christian figures with some in our establishment churches. That is particularly true of those that believe all of the Bible comes from God’s … Continue reading Oh That Founding Father Origen…
I can’t seem to shut my brain off with all this change talk the last few posts. Hopefully this is the last post in this area. Here are some more basic things that need to change in our country in order to go forward with a least a small hope of getting better. I will admit that a some of the items on the current list are said more in jest than seriousness. Schools should be free as long as a kid wants to learn — We are becoming a third class country in regard to the number of our citizens … Continue reading More Brainy Stuff….
I guess I am still fixated on the post from yesterday about how so many very sparsely populated States in the U.S. now have so much power. It seems that our country is quite out of balance right now as a result of past decisions. Maybe it is time to revisit some of that stuff. Being that I am the fool who rushes in where angels fear to tread I will take a stab at this. If you want to call this the Walters’ Doctrine go ahead. I will take the blame for all of it. Here is my list … Continue reading How About Some Changes….
There are many today who believe that all of the Bible must be taken as absolutely happening and the stories are without the possibility of error. But this is not the case with many of us follower of Jesus.. Several of the early fathers of the church warned against taking things literally. One of those was Origen. Here is a quote from People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story by Diane Butler Bass from him: The problem with literalism began, according to Origen, in Genesis: Who is found so ignorant as to suppose that God, as if … Continue reading Don’t Take It Literally….
The West has got lots of open country but none that you can live on. – October 1, 1933 Will Rogers Of course when Will talked about the “West” I’m sure he was not talking about the States along the coast but instead those along the east slope of the Rocky Mountains. But it turns out that he was mostly right in that not many people live in that area of the U.S. I always remember the old saying that “50% of the people in the U.S. live within 50 miles of the coast”. But, just how many people live … Continue reading The Great American Desert….
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 