Be egalitarianism in people but an elitism in ideas

Only in biblical terms do we see how God is able to humble each of us without humiliating us and to elevate all of us without flattering any of us. The West today lives off the capital of the Christian faith without realizing it. The work ethic of the West and the belief in the dignity of labor are biblically based. And the same equality applies in matters of race and gender, two turbulent conflicts of our time.

Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, elaborates on this marvelous truth of equality that retains a difference. He demonstrates that in -God's economy there is egalitarianism in people but an elitism in ideas. By that he means the equality of all humanity but the inequality of ides. While human beings am equal, ideas are not By contrast, in the world's way of doing things we have created an elitism among people and an egalitarianism of ideas: We have made some people superior to others and rendered all ideas equal. The end result has been the exploitation of people and the death of truth. And that is why we have an epidemic of evil that denudes people but fights fix ideas.

Extracted from Ravi Zacharias' Deliver Us from Evil.

10 year old inspires adults at D.C. Mayor Barry's prayer breakfast

At the 1995 Mayoral Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., ten year old Ashley Danielle Oubré, delivered a memorable speech that brought the audience to its feet in two standing ovations. The brief mind-stirring text follows.

Good morning, Mayor Barry, platform guests, ladies, and gentlemen. I appreciate this opportunity to speak to the leadership of the greatest city in the world on behalf of the children. I wondered what I would say to you when I was first asked if I would make a presentation. Being young limits the experience you have in most areas, but not as being a child.

Jesus said, “Unless you become like a child you cannot enter the kingdom.” When I think about my friends, who are all young people like myself, many things come to mind.

If you would like to be a child in God's kingdom, I will share some of what we think about and do.

Children play together, have lots of fun, and sometimes fight, but the very next day we make up and play again. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, neighbors and our leaders would be more that way? It hurts us when we see you fighting and not making up.

When you tell us something, we believe it, and we don’t ask many questions. We have faith and trust in you until we grow up and find it's really not that way with adults. I think you tell us Bible stories because we are children. The Bible stories do us a lot of good, but you don’t tell each other Bible stories. Are they only good for children?

You teach us that when we have a problem, we should talk it out with others and with Jesus. You say that we should pray about it and keep our hearts right for Jesus. You say that Jesus can solve all of our problems, both big and small. But we notice, when people get older and have problems, they are embarrassed to talk like that among themselves. We wonder if you really mean it, or is Jesus only for kids? I am still young enough to believe that Jesus knows how to solve my problems, the problems of the city, and of the world. I hope I never grow old enough to stop believing and that you all become like children in search of God's kingdom.

Thank you very much for listening to me. God bless you all!

How Millionaire Athletes Go Broke

On SI.com, Pablo S. Torre wades deep into the waters of players going broke and comes up with all kinds of interesting specifics.

Whatever the percentage, certainly too many millionaire athletes end up broke. One of the themes, of course, is trusting the wrong financial people. And players are surrounded by people, from a young age, who want to invest their money for them. Would the best and most reputable financial advisors, I often wonder, invest time and energy getting close to athletes? If you get great results managing people's money, you wouldn't need to go to all that trouble. I suspect that a good portion of those who target this market are those whose businesses rely on people with deep pockets and a lack of financial sophistication.

Magic Johnson -- widely seen as a shining example of handling his money well -- tells Torre some of the lessons he dispenses.

"That's the killer," Magic Johnson says. Johnson started out by admitting he knew nothing about business and seeking counsel from the power brokers who sat courtside at the old L.A. Forum, men such as Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz and Sony Pictures CEO Peter Guber. Now, Johnson says, he gets calls from star players "every day" -- Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O'Neal, Dwyane Wade, Plaxico Burress -- and cuts them short if they propose relying on friends and family. "It won't even be a conversation," says Johnson. "They hire these people not because of expertise but because they're friends. Well, they'll fail."

Says [Torii] Hunter, "They'll say, 'I got this guy, a cousin who's an accountant.' But he's usually an accountant in the 'hood. You hire him, you're doing him a favor."

[Former NBA player Erick] Strickland realized that all too late. In 2001, when a "friend of a close friend" of the nine-year NBA vet proposed a real-estate deal in Georgia, Strickland turned to his business manager: his dad, Matthew, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. The paperwork on the plot of land, which was on sale for $1.8 million but supposedly had been appraised at as much as $3 million, appeared legitimate, and Strickland bought it. "I trusted my father to help look it over for me because I was hooping and didn't have time," Erick says. "He checked it out. But he didn't go that extra length."

The land wasn't worth anything close to what Strickland was told. "I had to take that hit," he says. "I wish my dad hadn't been put in that position. He just didn't have the knowledge." As for his close friend? Strickland says the man secretly got a cut of the deal, and the conflict caused a permanent "falling out" between them.

Relatives are not the only ones foolishly trusted with athletes' money. One up-and-coming guard in the NBA allows his entire fortune to be managed by his former AAU coach, who has the player's power of attorney. In a meeting with Butowsky in December, the guard's dad admitted that he has no idea who the son's accountant is and said he wanted a financial "intervention."

That last paragraph is, to me, wholly shocking. I mean, I understand that players don't want to take the time to manage their money.

But there's no need to give anyone power of attorney.

As a drastic example of extreme simplicity, you could, in about five minutes online, set up automatic investments in some low-fee very broad index funds. You might not hit a home run, and you might miss out on some tax trickery. But that's a small price to pay to spend very little time watching anything, and to be in control of your money without having to trust anybody who could swindle you.

As comes clear in this article, is that they seek risky investments. Rather than boring mutual funds or bonds, it's all about private equity investments in startups and risky land deals. Those are high-risk even for sophisticated investors.

(Read the whole article. From devices that make your furniture float in a flood, to mouthguards that make your brain work better -- athletes have invested in it all.)

Another costly error many athletes make is having all kinds of relationship troubles. From child support payments, to divorces, some kinds of athlete lifestyles can prove to be extremely expensive.

One thing that comes up is pre-nuptial agreements, which are not very common in the NBA -- but Dikembe Mutombo is said to have called off his wedding at the very last minute, at tremendous cost, when his then fiancee wouldn't sign one.

The Present Crisis

[Written in 1844, this poem provided inspiration for the leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. When deciding on a name for their new publication in 1910 they agreed that the name of their magazine should be The Crisis.]

WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,

Nation wildly looks at a nation, standing with mute lips apart,

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,

Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.

For mankind are one in sprit, and an instinct bears along,

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;-

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is strong,

And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng

Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,

That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea;

Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry

Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgement hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,-

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,

Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn this iron helm of fate,

But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,

List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,-

"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,

Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,

Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,

Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;-

Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,

Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just;

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,

Doubting in his abject sprit, till his Lord is crucified,

And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

Count me o'er the earth's chosen heroes,- they were souls that stood alone,

While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,

Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,

By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,

And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned

One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned

Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.

For Humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr stands,

On the morrow, crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;

Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return

To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father's graves,

Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;-

Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?

Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's;

But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires;

Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away

To light up the martry-fagots round the prophet of today?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her campfires? We ourselves must Pilgrims be,

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.




James Russell Lowell

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-P.B. Shelly

A thought about 2 Cor 6:14 application

A more difficult case is presented by a text such as 2 Corinthians 6:14,"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers." Traditionally this text has been interpreted as forbidding marriage between a Christian and non-Christian. However, the metaphor of a yoke is rarely used in antiquity to refer to marriage, and there is nothing whatever in the context that remotely allows marriage to be in view here.

Our problem is that we cannot be certain as to what the original text is forbidding. Most likely it has something to do with idolatry, perhaps as a further prohibition of attendance at the idol feasts (cf. 1 Cor. 10:14-22). Can we not, therefore, legitimately "extend" the principle of this text, since we cannot be sure of its original meaning? Probably so, but again, only because it is indeed a biblical principle that can be sustained from apart this single text.

Extracted from How to read the Bible for all its worth, 2nd edition - Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart.

Hounds of Sins

A dear friend of mine who was quite a lover of the hunt, told me the following story. "Rising early one morning," he said, "I heard the barking of a number of dogs chasing deer. Looking at a large open field in front of me, I saw a young fawn making its way across the field and giving signs that its race was almost run. It leaped over the rails of the enclosed place and crouched within ten feet of where I stood. A moment later two of the hounds came over, and the fawn ran in my direction and pushed its head between my legs. I lifted the little thing to my breast, and, swinging round and round, fought off the dogs. Just then I felt that all the dogs in the West could not and would not capture that fawn after its weakness had appealed to my strength." So is it, when human helplessness appeals to Almighty God. I remember well, when the hounds of sin were after my soul, that at last I ran into the arms of Almighty God. -A. C. Dixon

Extracted from E.M. Bounds' Prayer and Spiritual Warfare