The CCJ Blog

I like to read a lot as most of you know. One of my weekly readings is Breakpoint commentary by Chuck Colson. Chuck Colson is a very good cultural commentator. While I certainly don’t always agree with his particular points of view, he is a wonderful Christian man and most of the time he hits it pretty close. Today I am going to include a portion of his commentary on truth. This subject covers a variety of other topics and while I am not breaking Daniel’s rule of political blogging. Truth telling affects everything in life including politics. The fact is in our society today and really all the way back to the Garden of Eden, people have had a hard time with the truth. So read this and see what you think:

There are a lot of words you could use to describe our current national conversation about politics, religion, and culture. One word that comes to mind is shrill. You could also call our discourse rude, shallow, thoughtless, self-absorbed, and banal. But worse than all this is the fact that few people involved in these discussions seem to care about the truth. Consider the political documentary that won all kinds of acclaim, even after it was shown to have twisted the truth into a pretzel. Or the best-selling novel that presented ancient fabrications about Jesus and Mary Magdalene as unquestionable facts. Then there was the commentator who took money from political candidates, or the one who took it from the government to promote a particular cause. And who could forget the big news story that was rushed to the air, only to fall apart when the documents it was based on turned out to be fakes? As we promote our ideas through Internet forums, movies, talk shows, and more, the goal often seems to be scoring points rather than finding the truth about a given subject. In fact, truth often seems to be the first casualty. Disregard for truth is nothing new. Jacobs shows that throughout history, people like Pontius Pilate have asked, “What is truth?” but were too pragmatic, too afraid, too lazy, or too preoccupied with other concerns to wait for an answer. — Copyright (c) 2005 Prison Fellowship/ BreakPoint with Charles Colson

I think that is true. We in our own laziness accept the first and often wrong explanation of things instead of forming our own opinions over time. In fact in this ideology-driven culture we often just accept the truth that most agrees with our ideology. May the church always seek and preach the truth and never compromise in this area. The church should be one place where society can turn to find real truth.
Good day.

I have been studying a lot of people who take strong stands for God these past few weeks in preparation for my message this week. One of the more notable people to stand up for his beliefs was Martin Luther. There is a movie out (”Luther”) about his life. I am trying to secure a copy because from what I am hearing it is good. Anyway there is a scene in the movie based upon record when Luther is standing trial for his writings against the teachings of the official church. Martin Luther is on trial for heresy. In his condemnation of papal indulgences and the veneration of religious relics he has come under the scrutiny of his superiors in the Catholic Church. Martin appears before the German emperor, and the representative for the crown asks if the writings arrayed on a desk before them are his. Martin admits that they are. The representative asks if Martin will recant them, and Martin says that he cannot.
Now listen to Luther response after the representative screams at Luther to recant.

A good time was had by all. I’m pretty sore today from the pounding the youth put on us old folks in our flag football game.

Ricardo reminds us that this really isn’t football.

Livia takes a bite.

Karen and Carla take a break from the action.

Isabella’s (really) close-up.

A game within a game.

“The Left mocks the Right. The Right knows it’s right. Two ugly traits. How far should we go to try to understand
each others point of view? Maybe the distance grace covered on the cross is a clue.”

— Bono (in a summation of the book, God’s Politics)

p.s. while this is a quote about politics, it is not about politics (so I’m not really breaking my rule).