EMINEM - LOSE YOURSELF (CHIPMUNK)

The Gospel

“…because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing…” Col. 1:4-5

As I read this passage as a “mature” Christian, who is knowledgeable and well trained in Christian doctrine, once again I stumble across the word “gospel” and move on. I can easily explain it and share about it, but seldom ponder it. Today I had a chance to ponder it and it reminded me of my ignorance as well as my salvation by Jesus.

As the cliché goes, the gospel is “the good news”. It is that which the good Christian tells others if he or she is doing their “job” as a Christian. One may explain it by the Roman Road, or 4 Spiritual Laws or many other charts. As I sit and ponder this, I think it is more than a process to infinite afterlife with Christ. The gospel, as we know, is a story. It is the full story of Christ which ends with the phrases, “it is finished” and “He is risen.” This is not a story of glamour and love depicted in this world, but it is a story of real glamour and love. Like soldiers in a battle far from the main fronts receiving word that the war is over, so too is the individual who hears of the gospel and believes. The striving can cease. The worry can be nullified. The fear of death can subside. It is finished.

This does not mean the Christian simply lays around and “does nothing”. There is a rest, but also a work. Many modern people—including Christians—cringe at the word “work”. Yet, according to scriptures, work occurred before the fall (did not Adam have a job?) and is to be done (“work out your salvation”). This is not a work to gain anything, but simply to let something out. Those who believe in this so called “good news” do not have anything to gain or lose. One cannot grasp the love God has for them and therefore cannot do anything to receive more or less of this love. Those who believe in this “good news” let out what has happened.

This letting out is a tricky thing. It may come out broken as the embodiment of the individual begins to walk this new way. It may come out morally perfect. Yet, the expression of this “news” does not define the individual, but what that individual believes. As this new life emerges from a dead body (but physically living), this “good news” slowly transforms this body into a well oiled instrument, tuned to the Creator’s music. As Paul further writes in Colossians, in the same chapter, the goal of the person who believes the “good news” does not become morally perfect in everything, but attains “all steadfastness and patience” (Col. 1:11).

I have received the “good news” today. It is finished. He is risen.

Oasis - The Shock Of The Lightning

Finally, they are making great music again.

Mission

"Once you have a mission," (Shai)Agassi told me over dinner one night last winter, "you can't go back to having a job."

//http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi

Engaged

On Friday, October 10, I became engaged to an amazing woman named Courtney Odom.

What If

After a dismal debate between two candidates, who do not have original thoughts, politics has never looked more disconnected. In a world where budgets are too large and spending is too great, both candidates support increases of deficits or spending while painting a picture that we as a country can “eat our cake too”. We cannot have everything.

In a country “for the people, by the people”, we have been given two choices that are similar. We have slowly become numb of the reason why we vote, why we should care about Washington and what the words “economy”, “Capitalism” and “government” really mean.

This is not recent, but a gradual decline of rational thinking by the public. We cannot afford to allow this to go on and wait for others to change the economy, government and the likes. Change does not happen at an executive level: it is local. It is made of similar minded people, choosing to be bold.

What if Americans simply expressed their view that two candidates are not good enough? It doesn’t have to be a violent protest or carry an angry demeanor, but simply casting a vote for an independent party representative. What if Americans wanted to explore and experiment other economic systems (there is more than Imperialistic-Capitalism and Socialism)? What if the public began choosing their own means, not changing currency, but using other items of currency or bartering?

What if the public began to use their minds and gifts instead of buy or rely on the gifts of the few, rich talented ones?

An Inconvient Truth

A FINANCIAL crisis on the scale of the one unfolding on Wall Street would be terrible at any juncture. But the timing of this one is astonishingly bad. In one corner is a president with just over a hundred days left to serve, who many people believe is among the most calamitous ever to occupy the White House. In the other corner is Congress, where a third of the Senate and the whole of the House face re-election in exactly one month’s time. Flickering in and out of the fray are the two presidential candidates, whose campaigns have become the playthings of forces over which they have no control. If ever there were a recipe for poor political leadership, this is it.

The malign coincidence of crash and election reinforces the difficulties. Political weakness makes it hard to get to grips with a reeling economy, and the economic crisis disrupts the process of choosing a new president. Most obviously, it is distracting attention from the contest. At a time when voters ought to be weighing up the candidates’ characters, records and policies, the airwaves are saturated with the grim news from the world’s banks and bourses. Even worse, the crisis makes a mockery of many of the campaign promises laboriously crafted in focus groups and policy workshops, and methodically laid out on the stump and via the internet.



Read all about it
Even before the cost of bail-outs is considered, the budget deficit for the current fiscal year is estimated at slightly over $400 billion, already about 3% of GDP. If America were part of the EU, it would be facing trouble for breaching the Maastricht guidelines; and if it moves into full-blown recession next year’s deficit will be a lot worse. Even though the full $700 billion cost of the proposed bail-out would be spread over several years, and the offsetting value of the loans the government intends to buy up will increase if the bail-out works, the current crisis is likely to drive a large hole through a budget that already looks stretched. Deficits do, and ought to, rise in recessions; but if they start out high and are coupled with promises of expensive tax cuts and spending boosts, the long-term consequences for the public finances are alarming.

This week we publish a special 20-page briefing looking at the pledges the two presidential candidates have made; we also have a survey of economists examining their schemes—(see article). Both men are exposed to a budget crunch (as indeed are parties elsewhere, such as Britain’s Tories—see article). John McCain has the bigger tax cuts, but an empty Treasury may hurt Barack Obama more because he has proposed a lot more on the spending side. He has more promises that may have to be broken if there is no money.

To many voters, Mr Obama’s most attractive single policy is that he is committed to introducing universal health coverage, ending the disgraceful situation whereby some 46m Americans have no health cover and get little or no health care until they end up in an emergency room. On top of that, tens of millions more have health cover that is restricted or inadequate, and an even larger number fear that they could fall into one or other of these categories should they lose their jobs and the health insurance that goes with them.

Fixing health care is a laudable aim, but even on Mr Obama’s own reckoning, it will cost some $50 billion-65 billion a year, and most analysts think that the true price would be a lot more. Mr Obama also promises investment in alternative energy, affordable university tuition, a big push to upgrade America’s crumbling infrastructure and much else. He has admitted, under questioning, that the state of the economy means that some of these promises will have to be “delayed”. He has been, unsurprisingly, reluctant to say which ones.

Mr McCain’s problems are rather different. He has made fewer economic promises than Mr Obama has, but the ones he has made, mainly to business in the shape of slashing corporate taxes from 35% to 25%, and allowing immediate write-offs of lots of equipment, are very expensive. One reason why our polled economists come out so heavily against Mr McCain is because the deficit would rise dramatically under his plan. Against that, few people, including probably Mr McCain himself, have ever believed that he would get his tax cuts through a Democrat-controlled Congress. To that extent at least, the Republican, who once used to be a fiscal conservative, has less to lose in the crunch. But that is hardly a flattering yardstick.

The candidates’ economic plans are still a useful guide to their very different political philosophies. But when it comes to paying for it all, neither is offering much straight talk.


-The Economist, October 4th