Dear Theophilus

Here is part of a speech printed in Jesus for President by the Chaplain who blessed the Atomic Bombing, which is especially fitting as we just marked the 64th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings on August 6th and 9th. "Sixty years ago, as a Catholic Air Force chaplain, Father George Zabelka blessed the men who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the next twenty years, he gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing. Zabelka, who died in 1992, gave this speech on the 40th anniversary of the bombings. He left this message for the world: As a Catholic chaplain I watched as the Boxcar, piloted by a good Irish Catholic pilot, dropped the bomb on Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, the center of Catholicism in Japan. I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to the men who were doing it...It never entered my mind to prot...

Controversial post about violence. Are we called to complete non-violence? I believe so. I have been having a huge debate with members of the seminary I will be attending in a few weeks. Here is a passage from Jesus for President that really stuck out to me and fits with what I ahve been thinking about immensely: "There is another young man, a decorated veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, who felt that the world killed the good in him. You might remember reading the letters he wrote home from the war. He told his family he felt like he was turning into an animal because day after day it became a little easier to kill. His name was Timothy McVeigh. He came home from the Special Forces in the Gulf War, horrified, crazy, dehumanized, and became the worst domestic terrorist this country has ever seen. His essays cry out against the bloodshed he saw and created in Iraq: 'Do people think that government workers in Irag are any less than those in Oklahoma City? Do they think that Iraqis do...

"In the Market We Trust" I had a liberal, secular professor in my senior year of college at Chico State. There is a redundant statement. But if this professor was liberal at Chico State, they were pretty liberal, but it is in her that I saw Christ shine brilliantly, more so than many Christians I encounter. We discussed world problems the globe over and each time her heart bled in all the ways Christ's did. I saw her teach with fury about injustice, I saw her walk with humility in her own struggles against the world and try to make sense of the things of God. She looked like Micah 6:8, "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." There is one phrase that stood out to my over the course and it had little to do with the actual lecture. We ended up talking about poverty and poverty reduction. I mean, we all want poverty reduction, don't we? But then she said so...

This passage is definitely interesting. It has been interpreted many different ways, but this is one of my favorites. I will post the Scripture and the JfP's interpretation: "This title was written on her forehead: MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus." (Revelation 17:5-6) "After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted: "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive l...

What is this this picture saying? How can this be justified? One could possibly say, "We are to be subordinate to the state, Romans 13 says so." Ok, for the sake of not arguing, why even fly the Christian flag? Let me clarify my own opinion a bit. I think Christian flags are uber-cheesy and not appropriate, but that aside, let me see it from your point of view. You have a flag, that you give value and power to represent, symbolically, the Kingdom of Christ for you, as a believer. You then choose to fly it under a secular authority that does not represent Christ. I looked up the rules, there is no law, only etiquette. At the very least, "When flags of two or more nations are displayed, they are to be flown from separate staffs of the same height. The flags should be of approximately equal size. International usage forbids the display of the flag of one nation above that of another nation in time of peace" ( Flag Rules and Regulation, Rule 11 ). We can fly a Christian...