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Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

Psalm 19:4b-5

 

God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.
It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding.
      It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race.

Morality and Economics

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman:

F.D.R. said in his second inaugural address — “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics” — has never rung truer.

And right now happens to be one of those times when the converse is also true, and good morals are good economics. Helping the neediest in a time of crisis, through expanded health and unemployment benefits, is the morally right thing to do; it’s also a far more effective form of economic stimulus than cutting the capital gains tax.

Read the full editorial here.

Americans for Stable Quality Care

Kevin Drum on Reality and Journalism

Contrarianism is genuinely useful, and I'd hate to see it go away.  Conventional wisdom, whether it's mine or someone else's, deserves pushback.

The problem with modern contrarianism is that it's lazy.  Too often, it's the sole focus of a piece, and it's the focus for reasons purely of entertainment or ideology.  Which is too bad, because the kind of journalism that's most useful is the kind that explains both first order things and counterreactions and doesn't pander to readers' desires to pretend that the world is simpler than it really is.  After all, counterreactions may usually be less important than first-order effects, but they're still worth investigating.  Some tax cuts really don't raise as much revenue as you'd think.  Raising the minimum wage really can have perverse effects in specific slices of the economy.  If you're genuinely interested in knowing how the world works, you want to know this.

And that's what seems to be missing in an awful lot of modern journalism: the desire to genuinely try to puzzle out how things work.  Instead, we get writing so dedicated to either ideology or entertainment that it's satisfied to cherry pick contrarian arguments and leave it at that; or else mainstream he-said-she-said journalism that's so determined not to take a stand that it enlightens no one.

But the world is a complicated place.  It just is.  There are first order effects, counterreactions to first order effects, and counterreactions to counterreactions.  And there are whole big chunks of the world that stand entirely aside even from that.  If you want to explain what's really going on, you need to take in all of this, and you need to take all of it seriously on its own merits, and then you need to try to make sense of it all.  You can't just ignore or brush aside everything that would inconveniently make your narrative a little messier or harder to understand.  (I'm looking at you, Malcolm Gladwell.)  You have to respect your readers enough to assume they'll stick around even when the ride gets a little bumpy.

HT: The Daily Dish

Humor Reflects Truth

The Fun Theory

I Wish I’d Said This…

One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers at The Daily Dish made this observation regarding the President’s approach to Iran and the recently announced nuclear facility in Iran:

Obama has known about this facility from day one. At Cairo, he reached out the Muslim world, undermining the Iranian regime's ability to engage in arm-waving, fear-mongering anti-Americanism.  He built himself a triumvirate with Brown and Sarkozy, who actually have an intelligence presence in Iran.  He used that presence to build an airtight case.  He cut a deal with the Russians.  He reached out to Iran, knowing that they would likely reject or ignore his overtures.  Then, when Ahmadinejad comes to New York, having to face Western journalists, Obama announces the the existence of the Qom facility, turning the spotlight on Iran when they are unable to hide behind state-controlled media.  Obama, cool and calm, pulled off a near-perfect diplomatic pincer.

Our Hands On President

With Secretary Chu

With the President of Chile

With the Vice President

With Speaker Pelosi

Forty Maxims

The Forty Maxims (some say 55) of Father Thomas Hopko. Some of them are really good!

• 1. Be always with Christ and trust God in everything.
• 2. Pray, fast and do acts of mercy.
• 3. Read the Scriptures regularly.
• 4. Read good books, a little at a time.
• 5. Practice silence, inner and outer.
• 6. Cultivate communion with the saints.
• 7. Be an ordinary person, one of the human race.
• 8. Live a day, even a part of a day, at a time.
• 9. Be honest, first of all with yourself.
• 10. Be faithful in little things.
• 11. Do your work, then forget it.
• 12. Do the most difficult and painful things first.
• 13. Face reality.
• 14. Be grateful.
• 15. Be cheerful.
• 16. Be simple, hidden, quiet and small.
• 17. Never bring unnecessary attention to yourself.
• 18. Listen when people talk to you.
• 19. Be awake and attentive, fully present where you are.
• 20. Think and talk about things no more than necessary.
• 21. Speak simply, clearly, firmly, directly.
• 22. Flee imagination, fantasy, analysis.
• 23. Flee carnal things at their first appearance.
• 24. Don’t complain, grumble, murmur or whine.
• 25. Don’t seek or expect pity or praise.
• 26. Don’t compare yourself with anyone.
• 27. Don’t judge anyone for anything.
• 28. Don’t try to convince anyone of anything.
• 29. Don’t defend or justify yourself.
• 30. Be defined and bound by God, not people.
• 31. Accept criticism gracefully and test it carefully.
• 32. Give advice only when asked or when it is your duty.
• 33. Be strict with yourself.
• 34. Be merciful with yourself and others.
• 35. Do nothing for people that they can do for themselves.
• 36. Have a healthy, wholesome hobby.
• 37. Have no expectations except to be fiercely tempted to your last breath.
• 38. Endure the trial of yourself and your faults serenely, under God’s mercy.
• 39. When you fall, get up immediately and start over.
• 40. Get help when you need it, without fear or shame.

HT: Catalystspace

I Hope 1 & 2 Get More Attention Than 3 Has

Good-O-Meter

"God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food...

I want you to picture Jesus gathered with his disciples around the table for their last supper. Or think about Jesus at the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Hungry multitudes cover the hillside. Jesus takes the bread and the cup or the little boy’s lunch, lifts it up, and says the familiar prayer:

“Father, bless this food to the nourishment and strengthening of our bodies and us to Thy service. Amen.”

The Greek word for "gave thanks" (NIV) or "blessed" (KJV) is ευλογεο, from which we get our English word "eulogy." It means “to speak well of, to praise and extol.”

The word commonly translates the Hebrew word, כאראב, “barak,” “to bless.”

Every faithful Jew would offer this blessing before partaking of bread:

Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu melech ha-olom, ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz.

“Blessed is the Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who causes bread to come forth from the earth.”

Before partaking of the fish, the blessing was said this way:

Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu melech ha-olam, shehakol nih'yeh bidvaro.

“Blessed is the Lord, our God, Ruler of the universe, by whose word everything comes to be.”

Before partaking of wine, the blessing was said this way:

Baruch atah Adonai eloheinu melech ha-alom, bor-ay peri ha-gafen.

“Blessed are You, O Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine.”

The first word, כאראב, “barak” / ευλογεο reminds us to eulogize or praise God before we eat. It wasn’t the food Jesus was “speaking well of” or “blessing” He was speaking of His Father in heaven.

A second praying-before-meals word is the Greek word ευχαριστεο”, from which we get our English word “Eucharist,” often used as the name of Holy Communion. ευχαριστεο means, “to be thankful or to offer thanks,” and was used at the Last Supper.

“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed (ευλογεο) it and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”

Then he took the cup, gave thanks (ευχαριστεο) and offered it to them saying, “Drink from it, all of you'“(Matthew 26:26-27).

At this Passover meal Jesus was offering to His Father the traditional blessings when bread and wine were eaten.

So how did we Christians end up blessing the food instead of God? Tradition? Habit? Some of the confusion may have come from a mistranslation of the passage I just quoted. In the King James Version, Matthew 26:26 reads:

“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it and gave it, to the disciples, and said, 'Take, eat; this is my body.”' Notice how the tiny word “if was added after the word “blessed”?

The word “it” isn't part of the Greek text – that is why it is in italics in the King James Version. But “bless it” implies something far different than “bless God.” That addition of one little word may have turned the way we pray before meals into something Jesus did not do at all.

Not that there's anything wrong in asking a blessing from God. There's not. Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” —

But only after praise: “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. “

No, asking favors from God is not wrong, but it should not be the primary part of our praying, or we become like greedy little children: “Gimme this! Gimme that!” Those prayers are essentially selfish rather than self-giving. They don't fulfill either the First Great Commandment, to love God with all our heart, or the Second, to love our neighbor as ourselves.

The Apostle Paul put it in this perspective. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6).

Notice the phrase “with thanksgiving” tucked in there with “present your requests to God.” It's essential to keep prayer God-centered rather than self-centered. It's also the key to praying with real faith.

So when you pray, remember that your food doesn't deserve a blessing nearly so much as God who gave it. You can bless like Jesus did, “Blessed is the Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who causes bread to come forth from the earth.” Or offer a simple prayer of thanks to God for the food. Next time, do not “ask the blessing,” but offer a blessing to God.

"Why did we buy Alaska in the 1950s?" Oh Please!

Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. This guy says this, uncontested by the other hosts, and we worry that our kids don't know U. S. history! Hey Fox viewers. What else did you "learn" today that was totally wrong?

HT: The Daily Dish

Total Praise

Richard Smallwood's Total Praise played by FAMU, Morris Brown, TNSU, Clark Atlanta, Morehouse, JCSU and Tuskegee Marching Bands

It's Always Better to Go Directly to the Horse's Mouth

The President is being accused of calling the United States a "Muslim country."

This quote is directly from the transcript of his interview with a French media company:

Q    Tomorrow we're leaving for the Middle East.  It's going to be your first trip there.  What do you want to achieve with this trip?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we're going to be traveling to Saudi Arabia; I'll be having discussions with King Abdullah.  And then we'll travel to Cairo, in which I am delivering on a promise I made during the campaign to provide a framework, a speech of how I think we can remake relations between the United States and countries in the Muslim world.

Now, I think it's very important to understand that one speech is not going to solve all the problems in the Middle East.  And so I think expectations should be somewhat modest.

What I want to do is to create a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.  And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.  And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.

The "E" Word!