FaithTempo's Blog

Buchanan seems to think that black people should be grateful for being kidnapped and shipped to this county as slaves centuries ago.

From his recent blog:

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks - with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

End of column.

What?????????  So we should be grateful for being shipped over here, enslaved, beaten, raped, mamed, robbed, humiliated, hanged and hindered for over 400 years?  What????? 

What his column fails to mention is that all that so-called freedom we got wasn't GIVEN to us.  We FOUGHT for it long and hard, and because his comments prove that racism is still very much alive with a strong pulse in this country, we're STILL fighting! 

Fighting for that freedom came with many price tags marked by dead bodies hanging from trees burned to death, burning crosses in front yards, strongly running water from fire hoses, biting by dogs and beatings by the very laws governed to protect us all. 

And all those programs he talks about...hmmm...

Those were not programs originally even available to black people because for the longest time, we weren't even people, and therefore, didn't deserve assistance or consideration.  Rights?  How can you give right to property?  How can you give rights to people, who even after being emancipated, you still considered as less than human?

If you let Pat tell it, we've never done anything in this country or for this country. 

Hmmm...how about fighting in wars overseas just to come home to still have to walk through the back door. 

How about fighting to preserve everyone else's freedoms while we had none? 

How about the major inventions we never got proper credit for? 

How about the lack of recognition of what REALLY happened during slavery right here in America but all kinds of recognition for Hitler's dastardly deeds in Germany?

How about dying if found to be educated? 

How about stripping us of our native tongues?

Oh, there's more.  But I'll let you all touch those bases.

And don't even get me started on what was perpetrated upon the Indians...the true "Native" Americans.

I think it's finally official.  Pat Buchanan is a blitering idiot.

 

I don't know if anyone caught it, but Barack's speech was at least a  little disingenuous. 

All that talk about "What my 'former' pastor fails to recognize..." and "What my 'former' pastor didn't understand..."  (whatever he had to say about his former pastor)...

...DOESN'T amount to a hill of beans because Wright is his "former" pastor only because the man RETIRED IN FEBRUARY and I didn't hear Obama mention that fact in his speech AT ALL. 

In other words, Obama referred to the man as his former pastor because he really is his former pastor since he RETIRED in February of this year (2/10/08 was his last day behind the pulpit as Pastor).  He has mentioned his retirement in quite a few articles since the speech, but not in the speech or not that I heard.  (If I'm wrong and he DID say his pastor retired anywhere during his speech, please, correct me.  I can stand to be wrong and hope that I am).

In any case:

"Obama wrote that he had known of similar statements by Wright over the years, which he strongly condemned. He wrote that he chose to remain in the church because “Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community.” "

The man was on the verge of retirement for 20 years????????????  Huh?????????

 

I am truly about sick and tired of everyone touting Barack Obama as some savior to the American people.  I think people are confusing his impeccable public speaking abilities with his ability to actually DO what he seems to so naively think is possible.

I'm amazed that this one man has everyone convinced that he's the ONLY one who can institute change for this country.   He talks like he can singlehandedly go in and just do whatever he wants.  That's foolish and shows exactly how much political INexperience he has.  It certainly doesn't help matters than in not one of his speeches (that I've heard) has he actually outlined specifically what his so-called changes will be.

If he actually becomes president, he has a rude awakening coming.  It takes a body of people in cooperation with each other in government to institute change.  If one man could just do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, America would be a totalitarian dictatorship, NOT a democracy.

Anyway, I'm just waiting on someone to realize that although he IS a VERY eloquent speaker and also VERY intelligent, he is:

1.  Inexperienced to the hilt, and therefore, not yet qualified to become President.  The way he talks in his speeches about how HE is going to change and about how HE will do whatever speaks directly to that.  There's never any mention of a concerted effort to accomplish, just HIM, HIM, HIM.

2.  We're not hiring a motivational speaker, but the President.  (If we were hiring a motivational speaker, he'd be IT, hands down). 

Here's a link to one of many articles about this recent tragedy:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/22/heath
.ledger.dead/index.html

It's sad and tragic that he would have been so distraught or beside himself that he would commit suicide.  The official motive is not confirmed yet, but it is at least definite that it was a drug overdose.  Whether or not it was accidental or suicide has yet to be determined.

There were sleeping pills strewn about his room, which suggests suicide to me, but we'll see.  Either way, it's sad.  I wonder if Heath knew God.  He was a wonderful actor and he will be missed.

Once saved, always saved? Absolutely! Salvation is a gift and by it's very definition, a gift is free. Once you've accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are saved forever. The truth of the matter is that many people tend to confuse salvation with faith and works.

We sometimes tend to think of it in terms of perfection, which is unattainable because the only perfect human is Jesus. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to live the best saved life we can. It just means that we shouldn't tear ourselves down when we unintentionally fall short of His will. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.  Falling during the journey doesn't mean that we lose our soul's salvation.

How can we lose something that didn't cost us anything? Salvation is a gift that God offers to save you in this life and the next. God explained the benefits, made the offer and left it up to us to decide whether or not we would choose to accept Him.

A gift is accepted or rejected and once you've accepted the gift, in God's eyes, you've accepted it forever. We confuse 'being' saved with 'living' saved. Ideally, yes, you would accept the Gospel, be instantly washed clean and stay absolutely BLEEP and span for the rest of your life. Therein lies an unhealthy view of what it means to be a spiritual being on a very human journey- WE ARE NOT PERFECT and never will be. We fall down sometimes, we backslide sometimes; yes, we SIN sometimes, but that doesn't make us less saved. There are no degrees of 'saved.' Either you're saved or you're not. Falling short doesn't make us less God's sons or daughters. It just means that we need to learn to focus on building a one-on-one relationship with God and constantly ask Him for His wisdom, strength, perseverance and other spiritually empowering tools while simultaneously thanking Him for His constant grace and mercy.

So, I ask again: one saved, always saved? Heavens, YES. And thank God.

In a word, NO. 

None of us is sinless.  The ultimate goal is to DO BETTER when you KNOW BETTER. In this case, the goal is to SIN *LESS.*  

If God expects us to be perfect, what was Jesus for?  He gave His Son Jesus to save us from the PENALTY of sin. I've heard a lot of scriptures with the words "perfect" in them, but when you study the Word, you also have to dive deeper into word origins and the CONTEXT in which the word is used.

And perhaps the MOST important thing (before I go on) is that **no one** has the capacity or ability to live a sinless life -- if that were the case that would cancel grace & nullify mercy -- to boot it would actually cancel the *need* for Christ's crucifixion -- see 1 John 1:8.

And I can't say enough that not looking at the entirety of the text is like starting to watch to a movie in the middle. You can't get a full picture of what's happened before or what's going to happen because you didn't start at the beginning.

Let's take Matthew 5:48, for instance, which reads:

48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Firstly, in this CONTEXT, the word "perfect" doesn't literally mean perfect-- it REALLY means "mature" and it's from the Greek word "teleios."

The unit of thought from Matthew 5:48 actually starts with Verse 43:

"43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy."

Now that you know where the unit of thought begins, you can begin to under the CONTEXT in which Verse 48 is used:

Love.

Notice all of the verses following v43 that lead to v48 are discussing how to love people who don't show love to YOU and how to not worry about being wronged because God will deal with those use persecute you:

44 But I say unto you, LOVE your enemies, BLESS them that curse you, DO GOOD to them that hate you, and PRAY FOR THEM which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

NOW, v48, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

Do you see what I mean? Looking JUST at that scripture says one thing, but looking at the ENTIRE CONTEXT says something else.

Matthew Chapter 5 is part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is addressing the Jews.

In v43, he repeats the Law: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt LOVE THY NEIGHBOR, and hate thine enemy.

In v44, Jesus advises of what one should ACTUALLY do: "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;"

(See this also in Luke and similar passages all over Psalms from David).

v45 talks about God's LOVE and care. V46, he uses tax collectors analagously and in v47, he uses the Gentiles analgously (HE was speaking to the Jews) and asking them to make sense of getting something extra special out of loving only people who love you or being nice to (greeting) only those who are nice to you (greet you).

ALL of this leads up to v48, so Jesus is saying to be different and LOVE like God. Loving only those who love you is easy...loving those who don't is the challenge God is looking for us to live up to.

This is a fundamental difference of what it means to love completely-- without condition-- the way God loves US.

Devotional    

Psalms 27:11-14   

11  Teach me your way, O Lord,

 And lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies.

12  Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries;   

      For false witnesses have risen against me, And such as breathe out violence.

13   I would have lost heart, unless I had believed

            That I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living.

    14  Wait on the Lord;

    Be of good courage,

          And he shall strengthen your heart;

          Wait, I say, on the Lord! 

 

Footnotes from the Nelson Study Bible:  

Enemies might dissuade the righteous from seeking the presence of the Lord.  But the psalmist wants to know God’s presence in this life—in the land of the living. 

 To wait on the Lord is to demonstrate confident expectation.  The Hebrew word for wait may also be translated hope.  To hope in God is to wait for His timing and His action (see also Psalms 40:1 & Isaiah 40:31). 

 Independent Study Notes: 

Verse 11:  David starts out by humbling himself to God in seeking God for His will.  “Smooth path” is synonymous with integrity, which sometimes is hard to maintain when dealing with our enemies or those who act as our adversaries. Ultimately, David is respectfully asking God to help him maintain his God-ness in the midst of adversity.  He doesn’t want to act in a manner that is not conducive to God’s will.  He wants to…needs to…be the better person—the one that God wants. David’s humility, sincerity and prudence remind me of the Proverbs passage from 7/16/07’s Devotional from Proverbs.   

Verse 12:  David is asking God to not allow his adversaries to gain anything through underhanded, ungodly tactics, including slandering his name (“false witnesses”), manipulation and conniving to destroy, even to the point of violent acts against him.  He is asking God for this divine protection because he sincerely wants to do and say what God would want and he knows that the enemy will try anything to destroy those whose heart’s desire is to do God’s will.

Verse 13:  David’s confirming his faith with this verse.  He knows that without relying on God and believing in (better translated inTO) that reliance, he might as well have perished long ago (“I would have lost heart”).  Wow. 

Where would we be if not for knowing that we serve a God that can and does  __________(fill in the blank)???  Wow. 

Here, David’s not only believing God for His word; he’s also believing that he’ll be “…in the land of the living” to see God’s word manifest in his life.

Verse 14:  David encourages himself.  He’s telling himself to hold on…”wait on the Lord.”  David provides a perfect example here of how we should learn to encourage ourselves…to give ourselves that pep talk and to consistently remind ourselves that God is our Source and REsource. 

David’s also preparing himself for the outcome of his current dilemma as well as for future challenges/distractions/deterrents as he tells himself to “Be of good courage,” meaning to continue to have the strength and courage in times of adversity, and furthers it by saying, “And he shall strengthen your heart” because he knows he can’t persevere without God.  This suggests that David knows that God may not come immediately (like David wants), but that God will come…and He will come in time enough to usher David out of whatever his wilderness is at the time. 

 

And the final line of the Verse 14 is David’s final admonishment to himself:

“Wait, I say, on the Lord.”  Wow.  He’s encouraging himself to the end and what’s more, he’s insisting to himself that whatever he’s going through, if he just waits patiently for God, his

"I’m going through, but I know God can_______ ." (fill in the blank).’ will eventually be a testimony of ‘I was going through when God  __________  (fill in the blank).’       

 

© July 2007, Faith Tempo

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just recently saw a Jack in the Box commercial with it's caricature hanging from a noose at the end of the commercial.  It's really bothering me.

How can something that represents so much evil, racism, hatred and violence actually be touted as a joke?  I think that nooses should be outlawed because they are not at all funny. 

It would be like putting swatiskas or Deaths Heads all over a Burger King commercial.  It would NOT be funny at all.  If a swatiska was added to any commercial for the sake of comedy or to sell a product, the Jewish community (and hopefully, all of humanity) would yell from the rafters and fight to have it taken out and outlawed.

Why isn't the African-American community granted the same respect?  It wasn't even 50 years ago when our great-grandfathers and grandfathers were hanging from trees and had burning crosses in their front yards.  Heck, I'd take it even farther:  it wasn't even 15 years ago that James Byrd was tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to his death. 

And I guess the burning question of all regarding this issue is:

Why does America absolutely break its neck to say and show that what happened to the Jews overseas is the most atrocious thing in the world (and right up there with slavery, it is) but treats the cruelty of slavery and the all out degredation, murder, rape and enslavement of an entire race as if it deserves to be hush hush? 

It was a rhetorical question.  It pains me to know the answer.  It's for the same reason that it's easier to criticize another's wrong doing or shortcomings...IT TAKES THE FOCUS OFF OF YOU.  America doesn't want to face the fact that it has historically been one of the most oppressive nations ever.  America will talk about Hitler all day, but will seldom address the issue of slavery or the hate symbols associated with it because it would be an acknowledgement of the ultimate hate the so-called founders birthed and cultivated for 400 years.

 Finally, it seems to me that the noose (and later, perhaps the burning cross) will continue to be accepted as folly and treated with some gross measure of selective amnesia.  Just look at all the people in Jena who alleged that they didn't know what the noose supposedly represented.  It's selective amnesia.  The Civil RIghts Movement isn't even 50 years old yet. 

People remember...when they WANT to.

If you respond to this post, please, don't innundate me with comments about Jena because that is not what this blog is about. 

Janet Jackson and Tyler Perry were invited via satellite to participate in an interview about Tyler's latest movie, "Why Did I Get Married?"  Well, midway through the interview, one of the newscasters (Mark) asked her, "Hey, Janet, anything happen to you in the Super Bowl?"  I could not believe it.  Tyler continues to talk about the movie, but you can tell from the clip that these people were just having a ball making fun of her.

Look at the video and give feedback.  I'm interested in what everyone has to say about it.  I thought it was completely disrespectful and uncalled for.  What's worse, the guy kept on going.  He would not let up.  I think he should at least be reprimanded for his level of disrespect and unprofessionalism. 

http://cbs13.com/video/?id=25898@kovr.dayport.coma>

This link will take you to the site.  You have to type Janet Jackson's name in the search string for this actual link to pop up.

 

It was amazing. 

I laughed, I cried, I yelled at the screen. My husband did the same. This movie was spectactular. It's Tyler's best yet.

I was especially impressed with two particular actresses: Tasha Smith and Jill Scott. I SO enjoyed Tasha's character because she was straight-forward, unafraid, brash and protective of and loyal to her friends. Tasha played this to the hilt. She worked it and I don't think anyone could have played this role better.

Jill Scott, whose career I've followed for many years, turns out to be a phenomenal actress, too! You go, Girl! She laid it down. She owned this role-- the pain, the disrespect, the longsuffering, the faith and hope, and ultimately, the joy and strength that comes partly from having a heart for God and a healthy and humble love of self and that of a good man. She floored me. I knew she was deep, but I didn't know she could take it there!!!!

Tyler has outdone himself. This movie didn't need Madea, although I look forward to seeing her on screen again. This movie was just beautiful from beginning to end. I especially like the way Tyler doesn't hold back the harshness of unpleasantry that is sometimes ever present in marriage. My husband and I kept looking at each other laughing because some of those couples reminded us of ourselves and how quirky and sometimes ridiculous we are.

Keep it coming, Tyler. You've earned a fan for life.