How Do Jokes Get Started?

One day he wins the lottery, two days later he meets the love of his life. Some guys are so lucky.
http://content3.clipmarks.com/image_cache/merrie/512/9C174855-492F-4D6A-BFF1-E4A6157E7BCE.jpg

Nearly every day I receive jokes from one or more sources, often in retaliation for something I sent them. They range from the squeaky clean to the ones not repeated in polite company. They are often about sex or other topics that regrettably frequently involve unfavorable stereotypes of women, especially blonds. Over a lifetime I must have heard or read thousands, yea, tens of thousands. But how do these funny stories gets started?

A little googling yielded no helpful results, except for a professor who is quoted as saying the obvious, i. e., that it is nearly impossible to trace the origin of a particular funny story.

My guess is that many start as one liners. Somebody says something funny in some circumstance. It gets repeated, catches on, and is gradually elaborated and revised as it goes. Eventually it reaches canonical form and is more or less retold verbatim, with memory lapses and surges of creativity endlessly refining it.

Some are doubtless created by the deliberate efforts of people with a comic spirit. Some genres with particular subject matter may originate collectively when two or more people try to add to a type, e. g., "Yo Mama" or "Little Debbie" stories, fanatical golfers, a guy walks into a bar, etc. In my rural Georgia childhood I heard a number of scatological stories from the “Ike and Mike” series. A joke is a favorite way for one group to make fun of another regarded as inferior or to show the superiority of ones own.

Examples: How do you lubricate a Volkswagen? You run over an Italian?

How do you tell the bride at a Polish wedding? She's the one with the clean polo shirt.

Here are some I came across today that illustrate various genres:

A little girl goes to the barber shop with her father. While her dad gets his hair cut, she stands right next to the barber chair, eating a Hostess snack cake. The barber says to her, "You know, sweetheart, you're gonna get hair on your Twinkie." "I know," she replies. "I'm gonna get tits too."

A husband and wife were having dinner at a very fine restaurant when this absolutely stunning young woman comes over to their table, gives the husband a big open mouthed kiss, then says she'll see him later and walks away. The wife glares at her husband and says, "Who the hell was that?"
"Oh," replies the husband, "she's my mistress."
"Well, that's the last straw," says the wife. "I've had enough, I want a divorce!"
"I can understand that," replies her husband, "but remember, if we get a divorce it will mean no more shopping trips to Paris, no more wintering in Barbados, no more summers in Tuscany, no more Lexus in the garage and no more yacht club. But the decision is yours."
Just then, a mutual friend enters the restaurant with a gorgeous babe on his arm. "Who's that woman with Jim?" asks the wife.
"That's his mistress," says her husband.
"Ours is prettier," she replies.

My favorite fanatical golfer story: One Saturday morning a wife reluctantly agreed for her husband to take the car and go golfing – but only with the solemn promise that he would return by 1:00 PM so she could have the car. By 3:30 PM when he finally got back, she was livid with anger at having to miss an important engagement. She was ready to excoriate him when she noticed he looked so weary and so terribly downcast that her mood changed.
“Honey, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, it was terrible,” he said, "Just horrific.”
“What happened,” she asked anxiously.
“Well, everything went fine until the fourth hole when Charlie dropped dead.”
“Oh, honey, that must have been awful for you.”
“I’ll say, from then on it was hit the ball, drag Charlie, hit the ball, drag Charlie.”

A global search for the best joke in the world elicited many thousands of entries from a large number of countries who voted for their favorite. The winner:

Two hunters from New Jersey go into the woods. One collapses and the other rings for help telling the operator he thinks his friend is dead. She asks if he is sure. There is a gun shot. When he comes back on the line, he says, "OK, now what?"

OK, but I liked the winner in the UK better: A woman gets on a bus with a baby in her arms. The bus driver says, "That is the ugliest baby I ever saw. Ugh!
Very angry she goes to the back of the bus, takes a seat and says to the man next to her."That driver just insulted me."
"Well," he says, "you just go right back up there and tell him what you think. Go on, I'll hold your monkey for you."

I wonder how they all got started.

The Obsoleteness of Some Classical Dualisms

Christian theology inherited a set of dualities from the Bible that have been the source of mischief and of irresolvable problems.

1. The first -- and fundamental one--is the sharp distinction between the saved and the lost. This can be traced to apocalyptic thought in which at the Endtime a final judgment will separate the sheep from the goats, roughly -- though not universally or without qualifications -- translatable into Israel and its enemies. In the New Testament this dualism is spiritualized and universalized and functions without regard to nation, race, or ethnicity but still divides the human race into two distinct categories. You are fundamentally either in or out; you go to heaven or to hell (Matthew 25).

2. The second is between salvation by grace or by works as determining whether you are to inherit the Kingdom or not, i. e., be a sheep or a goat. However grace and works are related and whether grace goes to those divinely chosen (Calvin) or who freely accept proffered grace (Arminius) and however the two might be combined in the total picture, the fundamental distinction between the saved and the lost is not abrogated here and hereafter-- with rare exceptions (Origen, e. g.).

3. The third is between justification and sanctification -- closely related to but not identical with grace and works. Justification is absolute; you either are or are not justified-- saved or lost--whether by grace or works or some combination. Sanctification is a matter of degree. You can be in a perpetual paradox -- justified and yet a sinner, no matter how good your works get (Luther), or you can move part way (Calvin) or ideally totally toward perfection (Wesley), with most reserving total sanctification for the life beyond.

Brevity compels me to assume that readers can spell out the major positions that been taken and the names of theologians who developed them over the centuries. History discloses a complex variety that would take volumes to detail and that cannot be represented accurately in every respect in a few words. (The professor is leaving an escape hatch for himself.)

The problem with all these dualities is that the complexity and variety of human experience defy the precision they seek. There is no way the spiritual and moral multifariousness of actual life in real people can be fit into the classical theological categories designed for the purpose without vitiating them. In fact they were not developed inductively by reasoning from experience. Rather, in classical theology they were constructed from the exegesis of texts and by using the vocabulary that arose over the centuries and applied to experience, although experience certainly entered into their original formation and were tested through the ages by experiential references, though the inherited tradition provided the fundamental referent points in deciding among options.

Let us admit these categories with their dualities do not function operationally in many churches these days, especially those in the mainstream of non-fundamentalist, non-creedal ones. Liberal professional theologians give vary degrees of attention to them in their constructive work, and the everlasting distinction between the saved and the lost has been generally abandoned, along with the notion of a never-ending hell for the wicked. For some, belief in the reality of life beyond death is itself optional. Even when the classical categories are employed, it often seems it is more out of respect for tradition rather than as essential tools of thought.

Why, then, do I bother? Good question! I guess because the professional in me likes to practice a little in retirement mode.

The alternative to classical categories is some form of holistic thinking which employs more organic models using biological analogies like health. I propose that the physical, moral, and spiritual dimensions of health in their unity, distinction, and interdependence are manifested in "infinite variety" (Shakespeare). The Hebrew notion of shalom meaning "completeness, wholeness, health, peace, welfare, safety, soundness, tranquility, prosperity, perfectness, fullness, rest, harmony, the absence of agitation or discord" (Strong's Concordance 7965) might be a good place to start.

This would produce a continuum from the least moral and spiritually fit human being to the most healthy, e. g., as we would get with physical health. While there are certainly enormous differences between human beings with respect to their relationship to God and neighbor, any bright line between the saved and the lost would be arbitrary and of limited utility.

Well, you can take it from there.

Cry, no Saab -- and Other Oddities

Sob, Sob, Sob. Saab is gone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/world/europe/23saab.html?hp

National Garlic Day is the 19th of April, which is Stress Awareness Month. Keeping up with all this is so000000 stressful. And wouldn't eating garlic tend to increase stress for those around you? I worry about these things.

Martin Feldstein in The Washington Post criticizing Obama's proposal to reduce slightly the charitable deduction on high-income folks:

"While no one makes a charitable contribution to get a tax deduction, the deductibility of charitable gifts reduces the cost of giving and therefore increases the amount that individuals give."

While there is not necessarily a logical contradiction here, it does make an empirical assumption, which does not necessarily follow, i. e., the conclusion may or may not be true.

I wonder why

Some liberals reportedly don't like Rush Limbaugh.
I WONDER WHY.

Firefox 3.1 and Internet Explorer 8.0 have a "Private Browsing" feature which makes it possible to access sites and leave no record. It is also called "Porn Mode."
I WONDER WHY.

Pharaoh said to be upset with Moses after Red Sea incident.
I WONDER WHY.

Claimed by some males to be the best USC cheerleader picture ever.
http://www.hottestgirlsofcheerleading.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/usc-cheerleaders-14.jpg
I WONDER WHY.

In Ulysses, James Joyce the Prison Gate Girls sing:

"If you see kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me."

Many people have found something dirty in these lines.
I WONDER WHY.

Wholesome Britney Spears latest video "If U Seek Amy" contains the following line:

"All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy."

I understand that some folks have suspected something unwholesome here.
I WONDER WHY.
See: http://www.slate.com/id/2214106/

The Ambiguity of Capitalist Self-Interest

Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, patron saint of capitalism, believed that if all economic actors pursued their own self-interest, an "invisible hand" would guide the nation into general prosperity when properly joined to the miracle of market efficiency by governmental laissez faire.

Certainly there is some truth here -- but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Sometimes general pursuit of individual self-interest leads to national harm. Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" illustrates.(1) In a pasture open to all (a commons), it is in the interest of each herder to add one more cow to graze, but if all add one or more cows, the whole commons could be ruined for everyone.

Apparently something like that is happening today. A lot of people, after the recent debauchery of greedy, profligate, credit-enabled spending, are saving -- all in the perceived self-interest of the former prodigals. But what the return of general prosperity requires now is consumer spending, in the absence of which the federal government must provide -- thus stimulus packages.

Again, note that nobody expects or even seems to think that the big banks should make the slightest sacrifice to begin lending, although the economy as a whole is dependent on their functioning as banks. Why, because it is not in the self-interest of individual banks to do so. As a result we all suffer. Many economists think this calls for a temporary nationalization of the essential financial institutions to break out of this bondage, but the Obama Administration seems too timid to do so, despite the fact that some Republicans call for it.

Memo to Adam Smith: Send us your recommendation immediately.
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(1) http://dieoff.org/page95.htm

The Virtuous Lie

Last Saturday morning my wife Gloria left the house saying she was going to get her hair cut. Some time later she returned, opened the front door and entered. A few steps behind her was my wonderful younger daughter Melissa. The two had conspired for weeks to surprise me in anticipation of my approaching birthday by having Melissa come for a visit. I was totally astounded, had no hint of what was going on. We had a marvelous weekend.

But Gloria told me a lie. It was unvarnished prevarication, an outright fabrication totally lacking in verisimilitude. Yes, but it was a virtuous lie, free of all moral delinquency., absent of any moral taint. The act met the two fundamental criteria of moral judgment(1). It honored my worth as a human being, and it had good consequence.

I shall always remember with gratitude this virtuous lie.
___________________________
(1) The two are: honor the intrinsic worth of all sentient beings, especially humans, and promote the optimum good possible in a situation. My authority is the renowned philosopher-theologian Kenneth Cauthen in his classic work, The Ethics of Belief, 2 vols (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Co., 2001)

Annual Primal Scream

It is time for my periodic rant against grocery store -- and other -- coupons. On March 4, the store receipt says we saved $21.46 from manufacturer's coupons on a total grocery bill of $300.86. Hooray for us, right? Well, yes and no. Here's why: We saved money in the immediate context but contributed to a scheme that is on the whole inefficient and wasteful.(1)

Suppose all manufacturers and retail stores without exception abandoned them and competed solely through prices. That practice would be more efficient and could make possible reductions in prices for all consumers and yet not hurt the ability to compete or the profit margin -- but only if everybody cooperated and did not violate the process for their own immediate private gain..

Just think of the complicated and expensive process involved: Somebody has to decide which items are to be promoted with coupons. They have to be designed, printed, and made available to consumers in various ways. The consumer has to look for them, choose relevant ones, clip and sort them, search for the qualifying products in the store, and hand them to the cashier, who has to ring them up, followed by a further sorting to send to the manufacturer, who has to make sure they qualify, send the promised handling fee to the stores, which have to feed it into their accounting system. Whew! The inefficiency involved is clear in terms of money, time, and materials.

So why do they work? A. Manufacturers like them because of what economists call "price discrimination."(2) B. Customers use them to save money in the immediate context.

Will they be abandoned? Not likely, so I will continue my protest-- a voice crying in the wilderness, fragrance wasted on desert air.
_____________________________________________
(1) At one time Proctor & Gamble said "it would lower prices instead of providing coupons"and called "coupons inefficient, saying only 2 percent of the millions it distributes are ever redeemed."
http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=/madison.com/html/archive_files/wsj/1997/09/11/9709110144.php

"But despite the growing sentiment among many major marketers in the US that coupons are ineffcient and wasteful, very few are likely to abadon them entirely." See:
http://books.google.com/books?id=T3UUfNBE1DcC&pg=PA315&lpg=PA315&dq=%22coupons%22+inefficient+wasteful&source=bl&ots=atZMW3UhbF&sig=dO6EzTmrqm8454yrARdkI3beNwc

(2) Read about the theory of "Price discrimination," i. e., the ability to sell the same product at different prices to different customers to the sellers advantage:
http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com/2003/06/economics-of-coupons.html

Valentine's Day at My House

Me: I have to go to the bank on Mt. Hope and deposit a check.

Her: Stop at the deli on your way home and get us a tuna fish sub for lunch.

Me: Well, actually, I had a secret mission in mind after going to the bank, but if you come with me, you could pick out your Valentine flowers.

She: I had rather have a tuna fish sub.

Me: In addition to or instead of?

Her: Instead of.

Me: Well, OK.

Now it is hard to top a tuna fish sub for Valentine's Day, but I did get a piece of tiramisu before the night was over. Now that will blow your chakras.

Oddities for Today`

Did it ever occur to you how funny the act of eating is? Just think of it. You sit down at a table and push stuff into a hole in your head that opens on a hinge. In a few hours you repeat the process. Angels must get a big kick out of watching.

At this time I will not deal with the the other end of the story, but it is hilarious.

We are so fortunate in this country to have three all-news networks. There is Wolf Blitzer with "The Most Conceited Political Team on Television," Campbell Brown with "Mostly Bias, Lotta Bull," Lou (Keep Demagoguery Alive) Dobbs, and Larry (Hit Them with Powder Puff Questions) King -- all on CNN. Next we have MSNBC as "The Place for Democratic Politics." Finally, we have Fox Network with its "Unfair and Unbalanced" approach -- so far right, its wrong. They all love controversy, prefer heat to light, and have hours to fill, and not all the fillers are edifying.

Oddities for Today

The lead sentence in the article said, "Some Super Bowl viewers had their football interrupted by porn. It could happen to you, too!" (Slate, February 4) Really? How can I improve my chances of that happening?

I used to amaze, amuse, and produce consternation in my students by asking: "Since the church continues the ministry of the apostles, how is the project of raising the dead and casting out demons going in your congregation (Matthew 10:8)?"

Or, "Why do we stop praying for people when they die, since an omnipotent God would have no problem bringing them back to life here and now? Why such a God could do it before breakfast without breaking a sweat."

In church when we sing "Breathe on Me, Breath of God," I always add quietly, "Unless you had onions for lunch!"

Does this cast light on why I entitled my autobiography, Born into the Wrong World?"

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Hoping and Waiting: Obama Again

I still have hope for the country and the world with Obama at the helm, but not everything he has done or not done has pleased me, e. g.:

1. Rich appointees who couldn't afford a good tax accountant.

2. So many Clinton leftovers some tainted -- and too many who are so closely identified with the reigning plutocracy I thought we might tame -- you know, change.

3. A stimulus bill that includes too many liberal-loved items that should be left for later in order to concentrate on the more stimulating features needed right now -- as Alice Rivlin has suggested.

4. An Afghanistan policy that sounds too much like a continuation of the same old things -- bombing Pakistan, e.g. -- and no sign that the solution is not primarily military but requires new developmental and political initiatives -- those suggested by Fareed Zakaria, e. g. (See February 3, today's Washington Post)

5. Appointment of a Commerce Secretary whom the Chamber of Commerce will love and labor Unions will hate. See
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/3/23010/80009

6. And sometimes I wish Obama were not so damned confident about everything.

Perhaps he is thinking long-term and will be shown to have taken the right approach. I did hear him say to his critics -- look who's sitting in the Oval Office right now. He got elected by ignoring half of what I told him.

A wait and see -- and hope-- approach is called for, i. e., whether his attempt to be so post-partisan and inclusive is the beginning of a new era or a path to disappointment.

Obama: The Gift of Providence?

"And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Question for Obama

Will Obama's passion to be post-partisan, inclusive, to reach out to the opposition, etc. lead him to make compromises with a progressive agenda? If so, how far is he willing to go to get consensus? As the landslide winner with a majority in both houses of Congress, will he forge ahead enact a robust progressive agenda if he can only get 60 votes in the Senate instead of compromising with the opposition in order to get 80 votes or 90? How does one measure short-term success for liberal to left measures enacted with a bare majority versus long-goals of remaking American politics and gaining a sustained capacity to get things done?

I have noted before the tension between principles and pragmatism and idealism and realism. The questions above are grounded in that tension. How will Obama resolve them in practice? We will have to wait and see.

Oddities for a Cold Day in January

When the Treasury Department was asked why the new 20, 10, 5, and 1 dollar bills that beamed brightly in vivid color in the dark did not work when used as decorations on a Christmas tree, they replied, "Everyone knows that money does not glow on trees."

Who ought to be in jail? The !&%$#@! people who leave their #@%$#& grocery carts in the parking lanes, especially on a rainy day.

In with them and Bernie Madoff should be the ^&%#!) folks who straddle two parking places in order to create distance between them and the law-abiding citizens who park inside the lines. Thus do they create distance and reduce to the danger to their -- usually large -- vehicles.

Russia has started passing gas toward Ukraine again. Paradoxically, this is good news.

President Bush claimed that he was a unifier not a divider. Exactly. More than 2/3 thirds of Americans are united in disapproving of his presidency.

Memo to Liberals: Cool it!

We have gotten so sensitive in this country that every group across the ideological spectrum dares anyone to offend them. So my message is: cool it, calm down, take it easy, get a sense of perspective.

The latest example is the liberal furor over the Obama choice of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation. It would not have been my choice, and I am on record as an advocate of gay marriage and have performed one for my son. Granted, some of Warren's acts and comments have been despicable. But he has also broadened the evangelical agenda and has devoted enormous energy to fighting poverty, AIDS, and global warming.

The liberal criticism magnifies the significance of this prayer all out of proportion. Did liberals not hear what Obama said repeatedly throughout his campaign -- that he intends to cross ideological and political boundaries?

Anyway, the bigger story is that Rick Warren has agreed to pray at the inauguration of a pro-choice, pro-gay rights president.

Ignored is the fact that Joseph Lowery-- a civil rights hero and an advocate of civil unions -- is giving the benediction.

No one could get elected who ran on my agenda regarding cultural, political, and social values. But Obama's aim is to govern effectively not to be doctrinally pure. After eight years of government cronies who were ideologically correct but sometimes incompetent, we should welcome Obama's more ecumenical approach.

My main concern would have been that Warren and Lowery not give a sectarian prayer in the name of Jesus and would have made that a condition of appointment.

So, Americans, calm down, develop some tolerance for others while vigorously pursuing causes dear to you.

Would I have made the same argument if the appointee had been a vicious racist? Probably not, unless he or she had overwhelming countervailing values on other vital issues backed up by deeds -- an ulikely possibility. Lines must be drawn between the tolerable and the intolerable. Knowing when and where to draw them is the challenge to social wisdom.

The Common Good: Difficult to Define

Everybody believes politicians should seek the common good not some particular private or selfish good. But seldom does anyone define what the term means. It turns out to be a complex notion, as slippery as a live, wet catfish.

A beginning can be made by saying a good is common if all participate in it. Two dimensions can be specified:

A. it refers to the general structures and processes necessary to there being a community at all worth living in -- a well-functioning democracy, a system of law and law enforcement, a peaceful social order, and the like with all the conditions that undergird them.

B. Closely connected but distinct are particular goods from which everyone benefits. Roads, bridges, a postal system, an electrical grid, and the like benefit us all or nearly everybody and certainly are essential for a functioning society. Other things benefit many or most but not necessarily all -- airports, e. g., except in some diluted or secondary form. If we don't fly, we may get UPS packages that came most of the way by air.

After that it get more difficult. Take the trio all, some, or none. Some things benefit all or almost so. Few, if any, things generated politically help absolutely no one. "It's an ill wind that blows no good."

I suspect that most goods benefit some and not others and may harm others. This is what we fight about most of the time. Who is helped and who is hurt and who is not affected at all? Politics, we say, determines who get what.

We all like to identify the good we seek with the common good. "What is good for General Motors is good for the country." (former GM CEO Charlie Wilson) We were told that Main Street had to to help bail out Wall Street, or we would all go down together. Enough people in power believed it to make it happen.

What about the auto bailout? Agricultural subsidies, NAFTA, state subsidies to foreign car makers versus a federal bailout for the American Big Three, etc., etc., etc.

Too much of our discourse is conducted in a Manichean framework in which a sharp dualism of good and evil reigns -- a policy is either good or bad, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable, common or private. Is it safe to fly in an airplane? Meaningless unless you define safe. Then we can state facts and don't need personal opinions, unless we are just asking whether someone is afraid to get on an airplane, i. e., feels safe. Are we safer now than before 9/11? What does that mean?

Approve or disapprove? Ask me if I approve of Barack Obama, and I will ask you whether you mean in all respects, in some particular respects, or in no respect.

Social reality is complex and ambiguous -- a mixture of good and bad, costs and benefits. But we cheapen and trivialize discourse by framing it in terms of of a shallow dualism.

The press, including print and electronic media, could serve a valuable service by helping us sort all this out instead of simplifying most everything to sound bites and offering us banalities, pablum. Thank goodness for PBS and C-Span -- a small oasis in the "vast wasteland" of TV (Newton Minnow).

We cannot do without reference to the common good, but it would serve us all if we defined what we mean by it and insist that all everyone else do the same.

Buzzards and Journalists: How They Are Alike

• The cartoon pictured two gaunt buzzards, obviously very hungry, sitting on a bare limb on a leafless tree in a barren wilderness. One says to the other, "Patience, hell! I'm gonna kill something."
• The election excitement is over. Obama's moves have been flawless and his appointments impressive. We are in the holiday season when much else clamors for time and focus. What are the poor political journalists to do to grab attention?
• You would think the bleepin Blagojevich scandal would be bleepin juicy enough for them. But Obama is the center of the political world right now, so they are straining every nerve, looking under every rock, parsing every word he or his staff utter or write, following every lead large or small and otherwise turning the universe upside down to find something that stinks linking Obama to the Governor. Leading the pack, of course, are the slobbering Republican operatives who have been dispirited since November 4. Right alongside is Fox news drooling at even the prospect of some hint of scandal. But even the more sober journalists can't resist the hunt.
• Meanwhile, out in the real world many struggle to pay the mortgage, keep or find a job, and otherwise stay afloat in these perilous times. The rest are too busy with Christmas, Hanukkah, or the non-offensive generic "holidays" to care about the trivial pursuit the hungry birds are undertaking.
  
• So leave Obama alone unless you find something worth reporting and go spend some money shopping. That would at least help the economy, while all this furor over trivialities merely annoys.
• Be patient, you buzzards, until something dies, and you can follow the bad odor to relieve your post-election hunger for some Obama excitement. Meanwhile, I can understand your feeling that you may be forced to kill something.
  

Biblical Exegesis Will Not Solve Gay Issues

Anyone who thinks that finding out what the Bible really teaches about same-sex love will resolve the issues for churches and individual believers misunderstands how things work in the real world. What the Bible really teaches is a function of somebody's interpretation. As my country relatives in Georgia used to say, "You can prove anything by the Bible."

A more humane view of gay marriage and its attendant issues will come like the resolution of African slavery, the right of women to vote, segregation, and the role of women in the church. It will come as a result of a change of consciousness in the secular culture and in the minds of Christians.

Slavery, the denial of women's rights, and segregation were all once defended on biblical grounds by wide segments of the Christan world, including biblical scholars, theologians, and lay people. They are not any more because the Christian community came to recognize that what they had been defending and supporting was wrong, and accordingly exegesis now easily produces a different result aided by hermeneutical miracles that are always available when needed.

Christians never let the Bible when it is speaking as the Word of God support or condone what is known or strongly believed to be either untrue or immoral. Check it out in church history.

The same pattern will repeat itself with regard to same-sex love. Southern Baptists apologized some years ago for defending segregation. Bob Jones University has decided its ban on interracial dating was a matter of culture and not a scriptural mandate. Nobody today thinks the Bible supports slavery.

With regard to homosexuality we are now where we were with slavery in 1850 and segregation in 1950. Biblical scholars at the moment divide sharply on the question of whether the Bible forbids and condemns same-sex love as immoral. In a half-century, I predict the exegetical, ecclesiastical, and theological worlds will sing a different tune. The Roman Catholic hierarchy moves at its own pace, but eventually will come around as it did on Galileo, evolution, democracy, separation of church and state, and other things.

Meanwhile, in the secular and political world change is coming slowly, and it is coming generationally, geographically, racially, ethnically and in terms of social and cultural location. New New England led the way, and California and New York are moving along. The upper Midwest could be next. The South, Midwest, Plains and Mountain States will follow in time.

Many highly-educated whites in the knowledge and professional classes are further along than many African Americans and Hispanics, especially the more religious ones, although education, culture, and class matter here too.

In the meantime, it you wish to gauge the opinion of Christians ask first not about their church membership but about their zip code.

When all the nuances, qualifications, and caveats are added, I will stand by the claims herein.

Signs of the Times

News headline:

Cell Phone in Man's Chest Pocket Stops Bullet
Associated Press, Nov. 20, 2008

It used to be that pocket New Testaments did that. My how times have changed.

Oh No, Barack, Not That!

Most of the time I agree with Barama on issues and have defended him even when he is a pure politician, i. e., have recognized pragmatically that idealistic purists win only moral victories and never get elected. But now he has gone too far. He has endorsed a playoff system for college football and says he will throw his weight around to bring it about. Terrible, terrible!

A playoff system to be fair must include more than eight teams. Basketball starts with sixty-four. It would extend the football season even further into the New Year. Who says we have to determine a number one anyway? Better to have something to argue about over the winter. Besides one game does not necessarily decide which is the better team. Too many things can happen to determine who wins on a given day.

I will throw my weight around to return to the good old days when the major bowl games were on January 1, and we were done with it after such a major overdose on one day. Today's money-driven system is crazy, beyond redemption.

College football is thoroughly corrupt anyway. Consider the salaries and perks of the big-time coaches compared to that of the best professors and presidents of those schools. Utterly absurd. It is a sport driven by money and fat TV contracts, an abomination for educational institutions.

So Barama, get real. If you really want to do something worthy of your office, denounce it for the corrupt system it has become.

OK, OK, I know supporting a playoff system will get you lots of plaudits with thousands of fans who are beset with the same delusions you apparently share. So much for new politics.