AMERICA JUST GOT LESS TALENTED

America’s Got Talent premiered last night, a few weeks earlier than usual.  I did not watch it. After years of idolizing it, I voiced my growing disaffection and slammed three X’s into my channel changer and went in search better television fare,  What had possessed them enthrone Howard Stern as their newest judge of America’s talent totally mystifies and only less totally disgusts me. Even Baywatch geezer David Hasselhoff and unamerican Larry King wanna-be Piers Morgan had a better grip on the kind of talent that the average American appreciated.

The downward spiral for America’s Hot Talent began when Howie Mandel was added to the team of judges,  He initially functioned as merely eccentric, obsessed with oddball acts at the expense of true talent. Last year he morphed into demonic as he appeared more intent on making a raging maniac out of Morgan than in finding the next Jackie Evancho.   There were weeks when AGT’s version of The Twilight Zone drove me to reruns of America’s Best Home Videos and the archives of theLifetime Movie Channel.

My sympathies with any one who has auditioned who had real talent.  Unless you wear Seven Dwarf costume or are a drag queen imitator of Tina Turner, you don’t have a chance.  Although taking off your clothes and talking dirty might earn you Stern’s vote.  It sure swayed Hasselhoff and Mandel on more than one occasion.

Get out Sharon Osborne before they try turning you into Rosanne Barr.

 

This seems like a very long time ago

MONDAY MORNING REFLECTIONS - DISTRACTING US

Courtesy USA Today

The culture war ramped up again last week threatening to swallow up the debate that properly accompanies a presidential election in a free society.  In North Carolina voters rejected same sex marriage, earning the ire of a large part of our prevailing culture.  At the same time, Mr. Obama became the first sitting president in history to publicly support same sex marriage.  I find myself in agreement with creator of this political cartoon published this week in USA Today.

As a pastor, I deal daily with the struggles that the average person and family wrestle with in 2012. There are few greater threats to the well-being of this nation and its citizens than the economy that continues to create one problem after another.  From student loans, to volatile oil prices, to rising grocery costs, to the deterioration of support for mental health care, to the unresolved debates over health care, to an utter impossibility for most Americans to save, to the coming crash of social security; the failure of our political leadership to find a sane and fruitful path to economic health that will rob us of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as surely as an Islamic terrorist, or eroding morality, or laws that empower the worst of human philosophies.

Mr. President, Mr. Boehner, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Romney - will someone go to work to expeditiously and fairly bring economic healing to this nation.  Stop distracting us with political stunts and sending us down energy-draining side paths that simply reinforce the symptoms instead of finding the cure.  I would vote for a wild-eyed holy man from the far side of Mars for President if he would truly focus on the real issue and find real, viable answers.

Note: I am preparing a post on the same sex issue but am taking some more time to reflect.  In the mean time I would invite to read this post from SHE WORSHIPS which I found very helpful in my own reflections as a Christian.

A little more Monday Morning Reflection that speaks for itself.

WEB SITINGS - PROVIDENCE

From Los Whit and his blog Ragamuffin Soul

Man’s Agenda Vs. God’s Providence

Providence: God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny
People have agendas.
God has providence.
You have a choice today.
You can live off of the agenda of man…
Or you can live off of the providence of the Maker of man.
The agenda of man isn’t inherently wrong.
It is often right.
Yet the providence of God is ALWAYS right.
The choice seems like an easy one.
Yet it is an extremely difficult one.
Especially since YOU are one of those called “MAN”
I like to look at is as a 3 to 1 choice.
It makes it easier.
Choose Father, Son, and Holy Spirit every time.
What are some ways you will intentionally choose God over man today?

WEB SITING - RAVI ZACHARIAS ON RACE AND HOMOSEXUALITY

This post via the blog FAITHFUL THINKERS (see the link on the right sidebar of LIFE MATTERS home page.)

Ravi Zacharias on Race and Homosexuality

Posted by Luke Nix at 6:00 AM

This quote got me thinking...
"The reason we are against racism is because a person's race is sacred. A person's ethnicity is sacred. You cannot violate it. My race is sacred; your race is sacred; I dare not violate it. The reason we react against the issue of homosexuality the way we do is because sexuality is sacred. You cannot violate it. How do you treat one as sacred and desacrelize the other? Sex is a sacred gift of God. I can no longer justify an aberration of it in somebody else's life than I can justify my own proclivities to go beyond my marital boundaries.

Every man here who is an able-bodied man will tell you temptation stalks you every day. Does it have anything to do with your love for your spouse? Probably not, because you can love your spouse with 100% desire to love the person, but the human body reacts to the sight entertained by the imagination and gives you all kinds of false hints that stolen waters are going to be sweeter. They are not. They leave you emptier. So a disposition or a proclivity does not justify expressing that disposition and that proclivity. That goes across the board for all sexuality.

When God created mankind and womankind, it was His plan, not our plan. It is extraordinary what He said. He said, 'It is not good for man to live alone.' Well, man wasn't living alone; God was with him. Why did He say that? He created the mystique and the majesty and the charm and the complimentary nature of womankind in a way that made it possible for her to meet his emotional needs that God, Himself, put only within her outside himself from himself in her in that complimentariness. It is a design by God." -Ravi Zacharias*

OLD SCHOOL, OUT OF DATE, OUT OF STEP

 by Steve Dunn

Last night Cole Hamels did a stupid thing. In a crucial game with the Washington Nationals, Hamels intentionally threw a pitch at Nats rookie phenom, Bryce Harper.  In the first inning he hit Harper in the small of the back.   In the language of baseball, he "plunked" him. "I was trying to hit him," Hamels, a two-time All-Star left-hander, said Sunday night. "I'm not going to deny it. I'm not trying to injure the guy. They're probably not going to like me for it, but I'm not going to say I wasn't trying to do it. I think they understood the message, and they threw it right back. That's the way, and I respect it."

Baseball responded promptly and issued a five game suspension.  It is a small punishment.  He will be pitching again right after the suspension is up without basically missing a beat in the rotation.  One baseball blogger wrote: "In any event, regardless of how you feel about Hamels's "old school" affectations, five-game suspensions of guys who appear only once every five days remain pretty toothless." The Nats Ryan Zimmerman, of course, retaliated.

So often people defend their actions as being "old school" and wear that as a badge of honor  Yet so often "old school" describes out of date and out of step.  Out if date because it lives in the past and excuses not living constructively in the present.  Out of step because it is so often a reflection of a reactionary lifestyle that has not bothered to understand or value the present.

We do not live in the past. We live in the present.  "Old school" seeks to return to a time before the world changed, thumbing its nose at the present and refusing to participate in making a better future.  "Old School" often lays claim to the "values" position as if anything "new" is amoral or immoral.  No, the values are just different.  History will judge which values were better,  God certainly will judge.

"Old School" in America thought separation of the races was the natural order, that women should have no other career than homemaker, that quality music should have a minor key and not played by anything that required electricity.  Yet now we know that that separation foster virulent racism, that women kept the war machine functioning and the national financially healthy while men went off to repel the Nazis. A pipe organ connected to an electrical circuit produces a sound of majesty and joy.

Baseball does not need an "old school" tactic that could seriously injure or even ruin a man's career and lifetime earning capabilities.  Those of us who love baseball  prefer to win because of a timely home run or a daring steal or at light's out pitching with a fastball across the plate as the power hitter flails to catch up with its speed.

Cole, to paraphrase John Kruk on Baseball Tonight,when did the MLB hire you as the welcoming committee for  bright young rookies? Your kind of Old School needs to close its doors.

LIFE MATTERS IN PICTURES

THE FUN THEORY

Maurilio Amorim writes a blog that I really like. Today he posted a great one. - STEVE

 The Fun Theory

Intuitively we know that the more fun we inject in activities, the more likely people are to respond positively to them. When my boys were small I used to play let’s-see-how-fast-we-can-put-up-the toys game. They would clean the room in a matter of minutes as opposed to the whining and gnashing of their teeth that would be manifest during other chores. This video is another reminder that people will choose even a more difficult path if we make it fun.


Where have you experienced the fun theory in your work or ministry?