Currently Listening Writing on the Wall By Jill Phillips see related

Something to think about this Easter Sunday:

So wherever you assemble, I want men to pray with holy hands lifted up to God, free from anger and controversy. 9And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. 10For women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do.

I Timothy 2:8-9

Currently Listening Goddess in the Doorway By Mick Jagger see related

Oscars

It's good to see that people agree with me that Crash was the best movie of the year.

I really wanted to see Travlin' Thru win song of the year, but it did make for a funny moment when John Stewart said: In case you haven't been keeping up its: Martin Scorsese 0; Three 65 Mafia 1.

I was hoping Paradise Now would get foreign film, but I really have not seen the others yet.

Currently Listening The Imposter By Kevin Max see related

I have been reading the book The Gospel According to America - A Meditation on a God-Blessed, Christ-Haunted Idea by David Dark. It is a great book. Here is a paragraph about what journalism should be:

Fred Friendly  ...  believed that his vocation (and that of any news organization) was to provide individuals with information on which they can actually act. What is more, he believed that the storytellers of the media should resist making up people’s minds, or shaping their desires and strive instead to tell it like it is in such a way that the viewer is drawn into the agony of having to make a decision. According to Friendly, the journalists job is “to make the agony of decision-making so intense that you can only escape it by thinking.”
 - from The Gospel According to America by David Dark

Currently Listening Me Died Blue By Steven Delopoulos see related

NEWSRADIO - Season 3

It is finaly coming to DVD on February 28, according to tvshowsondvd.com.

(still no word on Becker or Benson)

Currently Listening Mockingbird By Derek Webb see related

War and Peace

Shaun Groves wrote an interesting post on his blog (read the post and discusion here: http://readshlog.blogspot.com/2005/12/brants-questions-on-my-non-violence.html)

That got me thinking about the subject of violence and pacifism. And I have really only come up with questions not answers or solutions.

The way I see it, Jesus introduced a 'new reality' (as Michael Card calls it). When he came to earth. His teachings were so different than what people had always thought. Instead of having one nation that he wanted to keep pure and show blessings to, he invited everyone to follow Christ, love him and love others. So with the way he works shifting, it seems the need for his followers to use violence no longer exists. And Jesus teaches that we should turn the other cheak and love our enemies.

The group of missionaries that were killed 50 years ago when they went to a tribe in Ecuador, actually had a gun with them. One man said that he would probably not use it because he had already settled were he would spend eternity and the tribesmen had not. That seems like the right christian attitude (it also seems like it would be really hard to practice if someone was attacking you).

Derek Webb wrote:

I have come to give you life
and to show you how to live it
i have come to make things right
to heal their ears and show you how to forgive them

because i would rather die than to take your life

how can i kill the ones i’m supposed to love
my enemies are men like me
i will protest the sword if it’s not wielded well

peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication
it’s like telling someone murder is wrong
and then showing them by way of execution

when justice is bought and sold just like weapons of war
the ones who always pay are the poorest of the poor

I think he somes things up well in the chorus of another song:

my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man
my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
it's to a king & a kingdom

My questions are: Is violance ever encouraged in the new testament? What scriptures do we justify capital punishment with? When should a christian use violance? What are the alternatives? Does this subject really concern me?