20 October 2006

What's a good Christian to do?

This story in the New York Times is extremely striking reality for us Christians who live in priviledge.

This raises several questions for me:
1. The words of Jesus to turn the other cheek are far more alive and real for these people who live in the persecution similar to that of the time when Christianity was born. In a position of power, these words are often meaning less to us.
2. How persecuted are the Christians, comparitively speaking? It seems that every other day we hear about bombings of the Sunni and Shi'a mosques - where the Muslims are blowing up each other - and taking each other captive.

It also makes me think about some general issues I struggle with about Muslim countries. We would agree that many of the things that go on in Muslim countries are shocking, and according to our laws a violation of human rights:
1. Conversion from Islam to another religion is punishable by death.
2. Adultery is punishable by death.
3. Homosexuality is punishable by death.
4. The age for a woman to marry is 9 years old.

The issue is that many of these things are part of the Koran, and are part of the countries' laws based on the authority of the Koran. It seems that there is no way to criticise these practices with out it being a criticism of the religion - which is not what the intention of this conversation. Somehow Christianity and Judaism have managed to put away some of its harsher laws (like the ones listed above) - even if they are from their scriptures. Where did this separation happen for us?

It seems to me that a lot has to do with the way that they hold their scripture which is very different from that of the Christian and Jewish tradition. There has been a lively tradition of intepreting and discussing scritpure within both of these traditions - even the translating of scripture was done for both the Jews and the early Christians (aside from the Roman Catholic Church for 1500 years). The Koran is not translated, and not interpreted - it just is. This leaves laws from the 8th century which are very shocking to us in America in 2006 in a place where they cannot be criticised. Where can we go from here?

11 October 2006

Funny Commercial - very funny

Here it is. My sister sent me this - and I found it on YouTube.

Oh so funny.

09 October 2006

Reasons why MadTV is funny - OJ Bloopers

Do you remember when OJ Simpson put out that video tape interview explaining how he was innocent?

Well I finally found this clip, after looking for a few years. It gets funnier each minute...