The Foreignist

I’ve been tipped off that we might be getting a Wii at our house for Christmas. I don’t know what games are available for Wii, but if at all possible I would like to get this one. See the press release here: http://tominthebox.blogspot.com/2007/11/preacher-hero

I knew this had to be out there, but it’s better than I could have imagined.  Is Dr. Travis Tokar running Huckabee’s campaign?

Here are a few examples of the things Hugo says that I find entertaining. I don’t think he’s insane, just eccentric. I do think he has some compelling reasons to be distrustful of the US if you read our own government reports about what we did in Latin American during the Reagan/Bush I years. But he’s gone from distrustful to completely paranoid. Above all, he is very flambouyant AND he’s recently started learning Arabic and using it in his speeches. My favorite quote is the one where he’s talking about Condi Rice. There have been world leaders who make snide comments about America before, but few have had the creativity and boldness to go to the lengths that Hugo goes to. He’s not just Castro with oil. He’s Castro with oil and a flair for the dramatic. He loves making it in to the news in the US and knows how to get attention for himself.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7090600.stm

Just remember that every time you fill up at a Citgo station you’re helping to fund Hugo’s traveling comedy routine… at least until Pat Robertsen has him assasinated … or CNN.

Get ready for Huckabee mania. He’s close enough to Mitt Romney in a recent poll that it’s a virtual tie (once you throw in your margin of error). Hope, Arkansas — birthplace of presidents.

I don’t agree with Huckabee on some things, but I think he’s the most interesting candidate on the Republican side. But the biggest positive for him is something that I found at http://deancirelli.com. The venerable Chuck Norris is endorsing Huckabee. I hope that Huckabee can incorporate Chuck into his cabinet as Director of Homeland Security. We would have nothing to worry about because Chuck’s mere presence in the White House would intimidate all terrorists and possibly all of our allies as well.

In all honesty, I’m not that interested in the primaries or the candidates. I just want another Arkansan as president because our state gets a lot more appropriations for some reason when we have a president. I also enjoy how having a hillbilly in the White House confounds ivory tower/silver spoon east coast politicians.

I love this stuff. As a high-strung American living in Croatia, I thought most Dalmatians were incredibly lazy. However, Dalmatians looked down their noses at Bosnians because they thought Bosnians were lazy. I guess this AP story is an example of what they are talking about:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories…

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — A would-be thief took a nap while burgling a house in Bosnia - and the owner found him sound asleep on the couch, police said Thursday.

The man, identified only as Edin M., 21, managed to snatch two bracelets and an earring before falling asleep, police in the central Bosnian town of Maglaj said.

He confessed to breaking into the house. “He saw the couch and just sat to down to rest for a while and fell asleep,” police said in a statement.

“Oh, this is a nice necklace. Aha, diamonds. That couch looks comfy. I didn’t have my 10th cup of coffee today. Feeling sleepy.”

As the broadcast of Arkansas’ epic 3OT victory over #1 LSU ended just a few seconds after Matteral Richardson intercepted the 2-point try, CBS play-by-play guy Verne Lundquist exlaimed, “The dream is dead at LSU.” No better way to describe what Darren McFadden did to LSU on Friday. Certainly, no more dramatic. It made it sound like 94,000 people walked out of Tiger Stadium utterly hopeless after D-Mac wrested their dreams from them. He ruined their entire lives. And knowing SEC football fans, he probably did.

The 4% who picked Arkansas to win must be big-time Nutt-supporters. That just gave me an idea for a mens underwear line.

Here is a picture of me in front of the Iranian Cultural Center and Embassy in Sarajevo. While I find Hugo Chavez wildly entertaining, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is just not funny. I’m leaving a “gift” to show my disapproval of his act.

Politics always aims at some kind of a harmony or balance of interest, and such a harmony cannot be regarded as directly related to the final harmony of love of the Kingdom of God. All men are naturally inclined to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity. This is why religion is more frequently a source of confusion than of light in the political realm. The tendency to equate our political views with our Christian convictions causes politics to generate idolatry.

I’ve seen this with various numbers, but all the estimates I’ve seen involve numbers so big they boggle the mind.

http://www.iags.org/costofoil.html

I can’t handle it any more. We have an old TV, so I can’t figure out how to delete the religious stations the TV scanned in when I first set it up. I am flabbergasted nearly every time I let the tuner stay on one of those religious stations for more than 10 seconds.

Aside… I would like to point out a fun game that my friend Brandon Wood pointed out to me. Switch on the religious channel and see how long you can go before you hear the word “seed.” Average time is about 20 seconds.

However, being flabbergasted stops short of the full-fledged outrage over what I saw the other night on James Robison’s show. Now I must preface my comments by saying that in the past I’ve had some respect for James Robison. He was one of the few TV evangelist that didn’t seem like a actor portraying a preacher or a southern-fried used car salesman with a Bible degree from Hillbilly Backwoods Bible Institute. He actually seems to be doing some good with the money that is being sent to him by reaching out to the poor all over the world. Because I see this in him, I can give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his heart is in the right place.

But what I saw the other night was at first confusing. Bill O’Reilly was in his Factor studio and was having a conversation with James Robison. O’Reilly seemed to be leading the discussion, so I assumed I was watching Fox News Network. After a while I noticed the little Daystar Network icon down in the corner of the screen and it hit me — James Robison is interviewing Bill O’Reilly on his religious TV show. WOW!! As I watched it more I found out that Robison wasn’t just interviewing O’Reilly, Robison was pimping O’Reilly’s new book Culture Warrior. As O’Reilly sat there stumbling through the interview as he tried to phrase his answers in the most religious way possible. He was clearly schmoozing with Robison since Robison had taken his own program time to pimp O’Reilly’s book, something his own Fox News producers probably don’t give him much of. I could no longer sit. I was getting so angry, I started pacing the room. Could a Christian possibly find a bigger asshole to partner with? James Carville, maybe? It made my skin crawl to see a so-called “Christian” leader aligning himself (and by extension, all of us in the eyes of the world) with one of the slimiest media figures in the world. How do Christian leaders keep missing it so badly? Whether you agree with O’Reilly or not (and I don’t on most issues), he isn’t Christian. So why give him time on a Christian show? I’m guessing because Christian leaders think it is their duty to push the “Christian” political agenda forward. And therein lies the problem.

Ever since Jerry Falwell died, so-called “Christian” leaders have been making a push to replace him as the mouthpiece of the conservative Christian right-wing branch of the Republican party. James Dobson probably has more influence in Christian circles but doesn’t have the unofficial role of right-wing Christian political “spokesperson” the way Falwell did. When Larry King needed someone to interview about so-called “Christian” issues, Falwell was always there. Who’s going to replace him in this role remains to be seen. In the meantime, upstart Christian rabble-rousers are doing their best to carve out a niche for themselves in the political limelight.

Meanwhile, when Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you a king?” Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not of this world.” In other words he’s telling Pilate that his kingdom doesn’t involve Pilate’s pitiful political power. Jesus didn’t reach for political power when Satan offered it to him in the wilderness, and he still understood his mission and purpose when he met with Pilate. Why can we not understand this now? C.S. Lewis said that true power is never political — never has been, never will be. I think that by identifying ourselves with either one party or the other, the church loses its prophetic voice in the culture. I am not Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Green Party or anything else. I am an ambassador of a different kind of kingdom, and getting myself entangled in the ridiculous American political sham confuses the issue and pulls us away from our real mission as Christians.

Just like it would have with Jesus in the wilderness, reaching for political power renders the church powerless to do the things it needs to be doing.