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Showing posts from July, 2010

"I'm Not Sure God Really Cares!"

Ultimately, it is inexpedient to faith and injurious to religion for one to claim to know the will or plan of God in partisan politics. As it always seems to turn out, it’s not all that good for politics either. I will confess that I am uneasy when I hear someone talking about an event they participated in or an experience they had or a circumstance that has occurred in their life, and then somewhere in the remarks, they say something like “this is God’s will for my life” or “this is part of God’s plan for me.” I don’t use that kind of language to describe either my own spirituality or my experience in life, and maybe that’s the reason why I’m uneasy when I hear it from others. It seems somehow pretentious, a bit gnostic, to lay claim to knowing even a fragment of the divine purpose that is not otherwise disclosed to others of like religious faith. It also seems too individualistic for my comfort, and I imagine what others might think or feel when they hear the certitude of o

Will There Be No End to the Violence?

I understand that slightly more than half of the members of the U.S. Supreme Court believe that the Second Amendment right to own a firearm in this country is inviolable. They have now made that clear in their 5-4 decision on McDonald v. City of Chicago , striking down the Chicago’s 30-year old handgun ban and extending to all the states the protections of the amendment. Okay, I get that. What I don’t understand is why that unassailable right to “keep and bear arms” trumps the right to public safety. And I really can’t grasp how expanding the number of guns and the people who have them will reduce the volume of gun violence in this country. Is this an individualized version of the policy of mutually-assured destruction (MAD)? Is there any evidence to suggest that this court decision will not result in the increase in the sale of firearms? It appears that one result of the court’s decision is a way of life in society where deterrence is the desired effect, rather than the promotio