The way I style my computers, desktops and browsers often betray how I’m feeling. Getting into the holidays, I installed the Tinseltown theme recently (making the tech reporter laugh at me when I showed him something at work), but took it down today when I discovered the Winter Village theme for my Google homepage.
I can’t believe we’re already past Thanksgiving!
I’ve been a bad blogger. With trying to keep up with everything (work, home, Trivia Bowl prep), I’ve mostly been posting the articles and stuff I find interesting to Facebook and Delicious. So if you were wondering what I’ve been reading lately, you should check those two links. The Facebook feed, by the way, is in my sidebar. :)
Flute Prayer posted this article from Time recently with the headline “Maybe We Should Blame God for the Subprime Mess.” As Trinity pointed out, the headline is misleading, since the article is not about God, but about churches preaching the “prosperity gospel.”
While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise — that God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”
The subprime lending debacle is an outrage. Prosperity gospel is a twisting of Scripture. I don’t believe prosperity gospel is the sole reason for the subprime lending boom and subsequent bust, but there is a point in this article that is valid — that prosperity gospel is flawed and trying to become rich or obtain some measure of wealth is no reason to go to church or call yourself a Christian.
When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.
Billy Graham
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.
John 14:27, ASV
OK, OK, this is not actually what I, nor Kip, think of Christmas. But Kip’s face in this photo is so irresistibly disdainful, what else could I do?
So far our weekend has consisted of work (Saturday), Christmas shopping (Saturday at Costco, Sunday at Burlington Coat Factory, Target, Ross and Marshalls) and a worship and prayer service at church, where Trin shared a poem he was commissioned to write last week. I’d like to share the poem with you here:
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