Real men (don’t) pray

I’m bothered by the “Real Men Pray” mantra that has been going around Christian circles for the last 20 years or so. I was inspired — if that is the word — to write this post because I noticed one of my Facebook friends had changed their profile picture to a meme with those words on it.

The reasoning beyond this mantra, which I believe came out of the Promise Keepers movement from the 1990s, is that real men recognize a power higher than themselves, God, and real men should grow in their walk with Christ to become more like Jesus and the heavenly father such that they should teach their children to grow up and become real men (or women) themselves. Real men read the Bible, pattern their lives after Christ, base their lives on faith, and of course, pray.

I’ve taken a whack at coming up with a few catch phrases of my own. Maybe some will stick:

  • Real men don’t mislead children into wishful thinking and false hope.
  • Real men don’t indoctrinate children with false information about the way the world works.
  • Real men don’t scare children into believing in God by telling them stories about hell and damnation.
  • Real men make decisions based on reason and logic and after careful consideration of the facts, not on a voice they think they heard.
  • Real men don’t huddle around an ancient book looking for answers.
  • Real men cast their cares on nothing but their own resolve and face life’s challenges with calm perseverance.
  • Real men take responsibility for their actions and don’t blame their “sinful” nature.
  • Real men donate to charities that actually work to improve the lives of human beings on the ground.
  • Real men teach children to think for themselves.

Feel free to send me some of your own.

Short book review: ‘Six Women of Salem’

salem

This is a short book review I prepared for Good Reads on Marilynne Roach’s 2013 book, “Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials.”

While Roach does provide interesting accounts of these six women’s lives and grounds the reader firmly in 17th century New England, this is a tedious and sometimes confusing read, and the “fictionalized” sections compounds the problem. Some reviewers said they could not finish the book because of the dry prose. I did manage to finish, but it was a challenge to do so. I really wanted to move on to another book about halfway through, so in that regard, Roach wasn’t able to hold my attention the way other colonial histories have done.

I was also looking for a little bit more analysis of witchcraft itself and why the “spectral” hysteria on that scale was more or less isolated to the Boston area in 1692. Roach stuck rigidly to the narrative of the six women and didn’t provide much of a big picture look at the political and religious contexts of witchcraft at that time in history.

All that said, I’m glad I gave the book a chance because I definitely learned a good deal about the accusers, the condemned and the afflicted, and I appreciate Roach’s diligence in digging up all the old records to be able to compile such a detailed narrative, even if the finished product left something to be desired.

[rating:2.0]

On health care debate, GOP desperation has set in

This whole GOP-led debate about the evils of Obamacare reminds me of Christian apologists. Opponents are desperate to point to any possible deficiency in the law to support a repeal. When all of Christian believers’ stock arguments have long-since been debunked, apologists like Sye Ten Bruggencate, William Lane Craig and scores of others are just relegated to playing word games and rote sophism.

Similarly, the Obamacare legislation was passed by a democratically elected Congress, subsequently vetted and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. While the roll out of the health care bill’s website allowing people to register for the exchanges has been somewhat of a train wreck, people like Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., aren’t just satisfied in pointing out legitimate concerns about the site; they have to make up arguments too in order to continue railing against it.

Blackburn recently claimed that the website will jeopardize people’s medical record privacy, and thus, be in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This argument suffers from two unavoidable problems: First, the only health question on the form is, “Do you smoke?” The rest is just basic information that any insurance company would necessarily gather when signing up a new member. So, essentially, if Blackburn wants to take issue with the information the Obamacare website is gathering, she must also be prepared to take issue with the information nearly every insurance company in this nation requests from potential customers.

Second, and more importantly, HIPPA doesn’t even apply to insurance programs in which customers willingly enter their information. It only applies to health care providers and in some cases, business associates (human resource agents, etc.).

So, whatever personal information Blackburn is attempting to protect regarding the health care website might also apply to hundreds if not thousands of health insurance websites and, indeed, even retail sites across the nation.

Here is the full exchange from CNN, in which Blackburn could not name one question on the site that violates HIPPA:

Why am I not surprised?

Marco Rubio’s claim that he “never” supported the government shutdown falls flat, and is, I’m sure, what will be numerous examples of Republicans trying to back pedal on the shutdown and salvage what’s left of their political capital.

Look for this trend to gain momentum come election time — that is, unless the public has forgotten about GOP-led 2013 brinkmanship by that time, which is entirely possible. The GOP leadership is probably hoping beyond all hopes the American public comes under a severe case of amnesia by the next election, but really, that’s about every incumbent’s hope.

For Squirrels: What a shame

I loved this band from back in the day. They were solid songwriters.

From Wikipedia:

The band’s original lineup consisted of vocalist (Jack) Vigliatura, bassist (Bill) White, guitarist Travis Tooke, and drummer Jay Russell. Explaining their name, the band had said that they were so committed to being in a band, they would play music “for squirrels.” The group played jangly alternative rock akin to R.E.M., one of their prime influences, with heavier moments alluding to the sound of grunge rock and Nirvana. …

On September 8, 1995, while returning from playing the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City, the band was involved in the auto accident that killed Vigliatura, White, and Bender. Griego and Tooke suffered multiple injuries but survived the crash. The album was released as planned. The single “Mighty K.C.”, about the death of Kurt Cobain, was a minor hit and continued to drive album sales.

Here is my favorite For Squirrels song, “8:02 PM”

And my second favorite, “Disenchanted:”

So much potential lost. But it’s all in God’s good plan. Keep believing that.

GOP fail

Now that the Republicans have sufficiently embarrassed themselves while managing to embarrass the country with their dangerous game of brinkmanship, it’s safe to say, as does this New York Times blog post, the strategy of using the federal default to win political battles in Washington is probably all but dead in the water, much like the GOP will be if it doesn’t purge itself of the Tea Party and toe a somewhat more moderate line a la Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

In addition to appearing not only unprofessional but sophomoric in their attempts to hold the government hostage until their demands were met, Republicans in the House also looked incredibly weak since the strategy, as we all know now, failed and failed miserably. President Obama and the Democrats were not going to flinch on defunding Obamacare, a bill that was considered, vetted and passed by a democratically elected House and Senate and upheld by the Supreme Court.

Grand Old Party of Irony

If the Republican’s aren’t that good at maintaining any level of credibility or even relevancy here in the year 2013, at least members of the House do one thing well: irony.

The same party that touts small government and limited spending proceeded to waste taxpayer dollars on almost 40 symbolic and separate votes against Obamacare the last four years and may also cost government $1 billion or more in the shutdown.

And now, apparently the thinking among some in Washington is that the shutdown is just what the doctor ordered in repairing their sullied image:

… the negative effects of the shutdown, even when felt by constituents, are softened by the idea that the members of Congress are fighting the good fight. And Republicans have been deliberate about shifting the blame for those things that threaten to frustrate their constituencies. The series of small funding bills — passing a measure to fund veterans’ services or to re-open national parks — serves to put the Senate Democrats in the difficult position of saying no. But more immediately it allows Republicans who might be on the hot seat to say to their districts (and the veterans and outdoors enthusiasts therein), hey, we tried, blame the Democrats. — “House Republicans Think This Shutdown Thing Is Going Fine

GOP proponents might think this move is brilliant. And it would be if not for the glaringly obvious fact that the Democrats were ready to pass a bill that would have continued funding the government, thus saving the paychecks of 788,000 people and possibly $1 billion more in spending, were it not for Republicans’ attempt at extortion to defund what is already the law of the land.

Of course, no one should really be surprised by this current bit of stupidity on The Hill; Americans on the right have kowtowed to the Tea Party for the better part of six years now, and the fringe’s plan all along has been the wholesale breakdown of a strong federal government or most preferably, the evisceration of government altogether. Take a big whiff. Americans who voted firebrands like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul into office are now getting the just fruits of all they deserve and more.

Pre-believers?

So, thanks to Atheist Intermarried, I’ve come across a new term called a “pre-believer,” who is someone who is not yet a Christian, but who will one day, presumably, either come to believe in Christ in this life or at the end of time at the supposed final judgment. This is true enough based on biblical teaching. People will either accept Christ during their physical lives or if not, they will at least come to believe in Jesus — albeit briefly — just before being thrown down to perdition by this kind and loving god.

According to blog commenter, godswordistruth, the term “pre-believer:”

is coined by the “seeker friendly movement” churches seeking a softer language approach to refer to people attending their churches but does not yet believe the Gospel.

In other words, this is another strategy by the liberal Christian movement to sort of “soften” the cruel message of de facto Christianity to make it more appealing to a wider and more modern audience. Read more at this post. Of course, who knows what these liberal Christians would make of the person who gets carried up in the final days, meets Jesus and still refuses to believe. One can only guess.

This notion of a pre-believer is peculiar indeed, and it seems to be kind of a pretentious term, for how would church members know which attendees were already believers and which were not? Simply being a new attendee to a church obviously doesn’t make a person a nonbeliever outright. Perhaps they accepted Christ before trying a new church and have been a Christian for decades. Or, perhaps this is a Christian strategy just to lump all new attendees together on the baseless assumption that they are all nonbelievers — a type of reverse justice: Damned until proven innocent, as it were. When you think about it, that about sums up the Christian worldview, doesn’t it? Such is Yahweh’s unimpeachable justice.