Hard cat news
Gayle's old cat, Maggie, had to be put down last week. She's been around for 18 years, sometimes Gayle's only friend. Her kidneys were completely shot, and there was no more to be said.
Gayle is distressed because she did make some mistakes that made things worse than they would have been if she knew better. Thing is, it seems like in all things we do that really matter, we get to see how dumb we were, and how it would have been better if we had more smarts. Only with trivial things do we ever get to congratulate ourselves on how perfectly we played it. Anything more significant than a game of solitaire, we don't get to boast that way.
Gayle has gotten to look at some issues that she wouldn't have without Maggie's death, and so God has used the death of a cat to cause her to draw nearer to God. Gayle also has said a number of times that Maggie taught her how to love.
A dead cat is close to dead last in the world's estimation. So I am reminded of Paul's assessment: "God has chosen foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God."
Gayle is distressed because she did make some mistakes that made things worse than they would have been if she knew better. Thing is, it seems like in all things we do that really matter, we get to see how dumb we were, and how it would have been better if we had more smarts. Only with trivial things do we ever get to congratulate ourselves on how perfectly we played it. Anything more significant than a game of solitaire, we don't get to boast that way.
Gayle has gotten to look at some issues that she wouldn't have without Maggie's death, and so God has used the death of a cat to cause her to draw nearer to God. Gayle also has said a number of times that Maggie taught her how to love.
A dead cat is close to dead last in the world's estimation. So I am reminded of Paul's assessment: "God has chosen foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God."
posted by Peter Attwood at 9/13/2010 01:52:00 AM
5 Comments:
Peter,
Revenge, Fools Gold?
or
Revenge, Sweet as Honey?
You may be thinking right about now that this post is off topic.
I do not think so.
Stupidity, who among us is not human? It seems to me that stupidity can certainly be forgiven by society. When it is really bad and results in someones death or injury it may have to be punished. Yet I bet a lot of people have done things as stupid as others have gone to jail for they just got lucky and it did not come to anyones attention.
Of course in macho professions no one will admit to being loosers because that would damage thier credibility. No, they have their shit together at all times.
I was really a fool to fall for that. What is worse is I never figured it out on my own. My wife had to tell me that, "No one has there shit together there are just some people who have their bull shit together."
Cowaridace, seems to me from what I have read over the years has a lot to do with genitics. In other cases like when the South Vietnames Army was ordered to shorten their devensive lines in 1975 beginning a chain of events that turned in to a route, the route was not at all the result of mass cowaridice but of a more complex calculation of by people caught between a rock and a hard place in reguards to their families who would have been left outside of the new defensive lines. So I think that cowaridice can also be forgiven. In any case no society should too much from a person in the first place.
No one should ever be asked to advance in to the face of machine gun fire across an open field being bombarded by artillary fire. Should we expect repoters to air the dirty laundry of their own army? Well if they do not who among us can say that they have not ever taken the easy path. After all we can not fight every battle.
But are there some things that can not be forgiven?
I have my own pet peeve for example and that is politicians or government officials who use their position for personal gain.
I expect bussinessmen to use the rules to the best of thier ability to their advantage. I even expect bussiness men to take risks and break the rules to thier advantage. Of course they have to be punished when they get caught and I think that a businessman would even agree that they have to be punished when they get caught.
Then we can even take it one step farther and say that I expect businessmen to try to get the rules made especially for their advantage.
I do not expect them to be able to get away with it! That is the whole purpose of legeslators to write legislation that is of benifit to the general welfare and not to the benefit of special interests to the expense of the general welfare. Carrying out policies of empire is a special case in point. This is a criminal act even if it would be of benefit to the society carrying out such policies.
So if there are cases in which people commit acts or carry out activities which can not be forgiven who a Christian fight only to remove them from power and let them escape for example to China to reduce the bloodshed inolved with removing them from power? Or would a Christian actually fight to punish them further by imprisioning them for example in order to hold them accountable for what they had done at to set an example for other in the future who may has similar ideas?
I bet that this is too long.
Hubert H. Humpery I am not.
The Cross and The Switchblade.
A very emotional testimonial.
I read it in Junior High School.
It has been almost 40 years since I read the book. I seem to recall that the point of the book was not about saving ones soul but about the golden rule.
It does not seem that there are many preachers like that in America anymore. At least they do not get much publicity if there are. The big donations must be going to the Churches that promise certianty, certainty that America is right and that you will be saved.
I read the book in Cross and the Switchblade because it was avialable in a pulic school.
I wonder if it is still avialable in public schools and if anyone reads it. I wonder if it is available in Christian schools?
How many pastors are there in America today that are making reaching out to the drug gangs their purpose in life? Who supports them?
Somehow I was going to relate this to further talk about the subject of revenge but then once I started writing I got sidetracked and now I lost that train of thought. I do not know if it will pull back in to the station or not.
But I do want to smear a little butter around. The word secularist has become a smear word in some churches I think based upon some conversations that I have had with a very limited number of people. I think that that religous people should know that I can see two kinds of secularists in broad terms, those that reject religous traditions, and those that accept religous traditions of any religion and also of non religous traditions and measure these traditions against some kind of standard.
Where does this standard come from?
I am not qualified to answer that question, except perhaps in my own case. It is a very comlicated question so I do not want to answer it now.
Curt
I noticed a typo in the 5:51 am post,
I reads now as, .....carry out activities which can not be forgiven who a Christian fight only to remove from them from power.....
It should read WOULD a Christian fight only to remove them from power.............
Curt
On the other hand.
I was watching this Al Jazeera special this evening on the death penalty in the US.
I was for most of my life a death penalty supporter until the Republican Governor of Illinois suspended the death penalty in that state when DNA testing showed that 5 of 10 inmates on death row in that state were actually innocent.
I was very surprised by this as I imagine the Governor was as well.
So why I still believe that there are many people for whom the death penalty is a just punishment I still hold the opinion that to many mistakes are made to justify the death penalty as a legal punishment, I think.....at least for to today.
I heard a couple things on the program that were quite emotional.
One I heard a mother tell the story of how her daughter was kidnapped and murdered by two men who after raping her drove her to a remote area locked her in the trunk of the car and then set the car ablaze. Second a mans son was on death row and not long before his execution his wife was murdered. A man was convicted for the murder of his wife and sentenced to death but was freed after 10 years on death row after many appeals with new evidence.
After I became a convert to the anti death penalty cause it was a hot button issue with me.
It no longer is. On one hand some people deserve to be very severely punished. On the other hand the death penalty is really not all that sever of a punishment. After you are dead you no longer have any earthly worries. So it is tempting to say, Yes we should bring back torture for scum like the two men who locked the young woman in the trunk and burned her alive. Yet there is still the problem of getting innocent people punished and in my book being tortured is worse than being killed.
Life imprisonment might be an appropriate punishment for some people but for others it is just more opportunity to spread terror and manipulate their environment.
When someone is dead they can not kill or rape another prisoner, one that might only be serving 10 years. A dead prisoner can not escape.
Punishing people does not bring back or heal their victims. Punishment does not even seem to be a very good deterrent because most people that commit crimes either act impulsively or do not plan on getting caught. Then in some cases especially those with a political motive there is no punishment, except for perhaps torture, that could possibly serve as a deterrent.
One of the members of the German Red Army Faction was up for parole 2 years ago. He told the parole board that he was not at all sorry for the people he had killed and he would kill them all again tomorrow if given a chance. He was released on bail anyways last year.
So if serial rapists get the death penalty what should a Christian society do to those people who have waged a war of aggression half way around the world which has caused many people to be burned alive which has caused many people to be tortured which has orphaned many children and ripped many childrens lives away from their parents? Where does the responsibility for this horrible crime end?
When it comes to crime and punishment the only thing that can be easily concluded is that an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.
What is prevention? Well humans know beyond any shadow of a doubt that a person is very strongly influenced by their environment.
An environment that supports the development of individuals who highly value fairness is the prevention. It takes an environment in which there is more than just preaching about fairness. It takes an environment in which the individuals and the institutions of the environment DEMONSTRATE fairness.
I think that no matter what terrible fate befalls those who wage wars of aggression they have no reason to complain about it being unfair.
Curt
Who do you love, Bill O'Reilly or Jim Zwerg? Who do you love, Rush Limbaugh or Rosa Parks? Who do you love General Betrayus or Jeff Huber?
The AIPAC and the Tea Party movement can get incumbents knocked out of office.
John Walsh, of America's Most Wanted can inflame Americans hatred for people who are COUNTER ATTACKING the Americian Empire.
Is there something wrong with us?
I mean that in two ways. Is there something wrong with Peter and or Curt? Is there something wrong with liberalism in general and the anti empire movement in particular?
Is it possible to remove the firing pins from weapons of injustice with out the mob knowing what happened?
Curt
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