22 April 2009

Perspective


Perspective
Originally uploaded by bobmendo
I flew from the US last week and went through Los Angeles Airport (LAX). What a view I saw as I scurried from one concourse to another. I had to stop. And maybe that's what is required in life, too.

So much news about trillion dollar bailouts. So much news about gay rights. About wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. About North Korea and its missiles. It can be overwhelming. Global warming, global crises.. how do we solve them? Can we even be a part of solving them?

Miss California, Carrie Prejean, was in the Final Five for Miss USA. She was so close. Then Perez Hilton, a celebrity blogger, and himself a gay man and activist, asked her about gay rights and gay marriages. She answered saying that she believed in marriage between a man and a woman.

Hilton replied later on "The Early Show" on CBS in the USA, "When I first heard her answer, I was shocked, because I thought having been from California, a state that recently passed Proposition 8 outlawing same-sex marriage, she should have been better prepared to answer that question." "There are various other ways she could have answered that question and still stayed true to herself without alienating millions of people."

On NBC's "Today" show, Prejean stood by her answer, saying she had "spoken from my heart, from my beliefs and for my God" and never meant to offend anyone.

"When I heard it from him, I knew at that moment after I had answered the question, I knew that I was not going to win because of my answer," she continued. "It's not about being politically correct. For me it was being biblically correct."

There it is. Being correct is about having a right perspective. Is it celebrity thinking or biblical thinking? Good answer Miss Prejean.

James Pinkerton is a FOX news analyst. He writes about the bailouts and torture as follows:

Why seek to thwart bad behavior now–bad behavior that’s happening in real time, all the time, costing the taxpayers billions–when it’s so much more fun to investigate your opponent’s supposed bad behavior in years past? Besides, since so much of the current financial skullduggery seems to involve top Democrats, why not seek to change the subject entirely–for instance, by aiming the investigative attack dogs overseas? Why go after sitting Democratic governors when you can go after CIA agents?

Democrats in both the Executive and Legislative Branches are moving to establish some sort of “Truth Commission” aimed at uncovering instances of torture and other possibly illegal acts committed by government operatives during the Bush administration. And what will happen after such an uncovering? Justice Department prosecutions? Civil suits? Indictments from overseas, followed by extradition efforts? More terror? Nobody knows, but everybody should be worried.

Leading figures from the Bush era, including former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, warned last week in The Wall Street Journal that retroactive vindictiveness towards people who operated according to good faith understanding–tough rules for a murky counter-terror road–would be a calamitous mistake, potentially jeopardizing all Americans.

They need perspective.
And so do I.
And so do you.

And whether it's a truth commission or a biblically correct re-think, it's time to get it right.

Where will you go to gain Truth?
Where will you go to get biblical correctness?

Start with the Bible, read the book of Proverbs, and the Gospel of John, and see what God had to say about so much of our lives. It couldn't hurt, right?

As unto the Lord... a sermon on conscience given in Sydney in April 2024

  As unto the Lord—don’t judge the servant of another!   A sermon on conscience from Romans 14 By Bob Mendelsohn Given at Sans Souci Anglica...