Texas engineer finding the signal of grace in grief, code, and Scripture
https://biblehub.com/philippians/4-8.htm
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. https://biblehub.com/john/14-6.htm
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To some extent, the Democrats’ bizarre smear campaign against Kavanaugh is explicable on short-term political grounds. The Democrats’ crazed base demands that they #Resist, so resist they will, whether it does any good or not. But I think there is something deeper and more sinister at work.
Brett Kavanaugh enjoys one of the most spotless reputations of anyone in American public life. He has been enthusiastically endorsed by those who have known him all his life–by girls he knew in high school and college, by judges he has served with, by professors and students and Harvard and Yale law schools, by judges who have worked with him, by his judicial clerks–most of whom have been women–by the American Bar Association, by sitting Supreme Court justices. In short, everyone who has ever known or dealt with Brett Kavanaugh endorses him.
I think that Judge Kavanaugh’s pristine reputation is one reason why the Democrats have unleashed against him a smear campaign unparalleled in American history. This is the message they are trying to send: If we can do this to the Boy Scout Brett Kavanaugh, we can do it to anyone. Are you thinking of serving in a Republican administration? Or accepting an appointment to the federal judiciary from a Republican president? Think twice, and then think again.
Because our smear machine will reach back to middle school if necessary. If we can’t find any dirt on you, we will manufacture some. There is no depth to which we will not stoop, and your honesty, integrity and spotless reputation are no match for our control over the media and our determination to dredge up ridiculous allegations against anyone who stands in our way.”
So as a Christian, I think that our goals for ourselves and our leaders – including the Government (congress, judges, administrators) should lead by good example.
Truth
Integrity
Honesty
good virtues
all are important and should never be ignored in making decisions.
Fairness and equal treatment are important.
the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh from high school are unsavory, and if true embarrassing. the question is what should be used as the qualifications for office holders in morality and ethics?
if attempted accused groping while a drunk 17 year old is a bar to holding office 30 years later with no other incidents , then I must ask
at what point does righting one’s life count? what about forgiveness?
is the accused still doing this or has he continued to do this since the 30 year old incident?
Why did Bill Clinton get a pass? for his entire career? and stands accused of multiple sexual assaults?
Why is Keith Ellison getting a pass?
Why do we know nothing about Obama and he served as president for 8 years?
Why did Ted Kennedy get to serve decades and have multiple accusers ignored and he likely as the cause of Mary J K’s death in 1969?
the same goes for any politician who has stayed in office doing terrible immoral things, they should be held to the same standard as any of use mere mortals.
I did things in high school which I am not proud of. I never was drunk. I was mean to people sometimes, and was juvenile acting many times. I am sure I locked people in rooms as a joke, with this much time, I truly cannot remember.
without some other data points that show the Judge being an immoral person doing harm to women past high school, one incident, I do not see this as being something to bar him from confirmation. I my opinion, if this does, then half or more of congress, the military, many judges, most GOP and DEM leaders, state leaders should immediately resign – if they have any sense of honor left.
at about 820 am Sunday 9/9, I received a call that Robert Andrew Paw Burnett had died during the night at age 31.
Andrew was one of two survivors of the wreck in 2002 that killed our son Joshua Blake Hargrove. We only came to know Andrew as a result of the wreck – we visited him in the hospital only days later to assure him he had no fault in the accident (a truck had crossed the oncoming lane to head on collide with Joshua’s van, the driver Shelly age 20 was also killed in the wreck.).
Andrew came to be a close friend, in a way a second son to Leisa and I, and when life turned bad for him (he struggled with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues) and his mom developed cancer, then died – it was more than he was willing to handle. We saw him rise and fall with life’s challenges. He was at our home often, sometimes in the early morning hours – just talking through good and bad things. He was connected to a lot of people and loved to talk, debate, support, and just enjoy talking to people. He enjoyed sharing his Faith in Jesus, inside and outside of church and Bible Study.
Andrew appears to have died of natural causes at night, in the early morning ours of 9/9/2018.
this is a short tribute to his life
he was a Friend, loyal to a fault, willing to help, loved marvel comics, played D&D, knew a lot of his Bible due in no small part to the influence of his uncle Larry Hatch. he attended Tuesday night Bible study from 2003 to his death in 2018. He loved his family. He was creative and smart, sensitive to others, loved to laugh. He played a lot of video games, loved to draw, write stories. Music was important to him as a means of thinking and connecting. He had long time friends from kindergarten to now.
We miss you Andrew Paw Burnett.
Our prayers are with his friends and family. We know we will see Andrew again when our time comes to leave this world. Thank you Jesus!
We do not know what Life Brings
Each day is new day and also could be the last
Robert Andrew Burnet died last night of apparent heart attack. he was 31 years old.
He was injured and almost died in the accident that killed Joshua in June 2002. He has been part of Leisa and I’s lives since that fateful night.
He has struggled with many health issues physical and mental. He seemed to be up in spirit last Tuesday night (the Bible Study that Joshua started). He was in poor health – missing his mom who passed away last year, and struggled greatly just to survive each day.
I am reminded in some way of my Uncle James Welden Hargrove who passed in large part by smoking himself to an earlier death.
Andrew will be missed. I know he knew Jesus as his savior. I know he is now at peace and fully healed.
if you will, please be in prayer for his family and friends.
What I read in newspapers and see on TV has changed over the years. I started paying attention to the larger world in college in 1978 and then in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.
I grew up thinking that Walter Cronkite was America’s newsman and was sad when he retired in 1981. I believed he reported truth and facts. and maybe sometimes he did. He reported that the USA was losing the Vietman war and I believed him. The truth.
“The American public believed that if Cronkite reported it, it must be true. If it wasn’t true, then when Cronkite reported it, it became the truth. That was how a 10-year-old kid viewed Cronkite. Multitudes of politicians, activists, journalists, academics and ordinary Americans who mourned his death expressed that same singular belief in Cronkite’s omniscience regarding any news event he reported on…” “There is an old saying: The devil’s greatest trick is to make people believe that he doesn’t exist. In my opinion, Cronkite’s greatest (or most infamous) legacy during his storied 50-year career as a journalist was to make most Americans believe he was a blue-blooded patriot; a political “progressive” who represented the best ideas of what it was to be an American – liberty, freedom, intelligence, respectability, trustworthiness, unimpeachable character.”
The US lost the war due to political changes in the US during 1972 to 1975. Militarily the US won every battle and forced the Vietcong to the peace talks. the lack of support for the South Vietnamese in 1975 allowed the vietcong to overrun the south. The US wasted the lives of every one of the 58,000 + who died in Vietnam. Once started, the US should have pushed to victory in military defeat.
Global Warming and Climate change Watts up with that is a good source of science based facts and research on Climate and Weather and the antidote of truth vs the fake news industry created by Al Gore and the religion of climate change as a reason to do more abortions, stop economic activity, etc.
Fossil Fuels the greenest energy
“It was Michael Crichton who pointed out in his Commonwealth Club lecture some years ago that environmentalism had become the religion of Western elites. Indeed it has. Most notably, the burning of fossil fuels (a concomitant of economic growth and rising living standards) is the secular counterpart of man’s Original Sin. If only we would repent and sin no more, mankind’s actions could end the threat of further global warming. By implication, the cost, which is never fully examined, is bearable. So far the evidence is not convincing. It is notable that 13 of the 15 older members of the European Union have failed to achieve their quotas under the Kyoto accord — despite the relatively slow growth of the European economies.” 2005 ARTICLE IN WSJ
What happened in 2016 election and since?
News outlets talk of Russia and collusion, Trump is many bad things? The special counsel investigation was formed to convict Trump and stop the Russians influence.
So far, except for grand jury indicting a few Russian nationals in court, who when they showed up with counsel, the special counsel Mueller h
hastily filed motions to keep the opposing counsel from getting any of the evidence used to produce the indictments….
What is real ? , and what is a narrative?, offered by the combined forces of what we used to be able to call journalists and the reporting of reality instead of opinion.
As Christ the living Word is truth, so his written word is truth. Though heavenand earth will pass away, God’s truth never will.
Over half the New Testament uses of “truth” (aletheia) are in John’s gospel. Truth is reality. It’s the way things really are. What seems to be and what really is are often not the same. As I develop in my novel Deception, “Things are not as they appear.” To know the truth is to see accurately. To believe what isn’t true is to be blind.
God has written His truth on human hearts, in the conscience (Romans 2:15). Shame and twinges of conscience come from a recognition that truth has been violated. When the world hears truth, if spoken graciously, many are drawn to it by the moral vacuum they feel. The heart longs for truth—even the heart that rejects it.
As followers of Christ, we are to walk in the truth (3 John 1:3), love the truth, and believe the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12). We’re to speak the truth “in love” (Ephesians 4:32).
excerpts from an excellent article on what God intends for a man. By George Paul Wood
What, for Jesus, was the primary marker of manhood?
At the outset of His ministry, Jesus proclaimed, “The time has come …. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15).
I would suggest that, in Jesus’ eyes, the measure of success in life is whether a person — male or female — accepts God’s dominion over his or her life. True success depends on faith in Christ, who embodies the Kingdom in His person and works (Matthew 7:21–23).
From that perspective, a man who has money, sex, and power, but not the Kingdom, has failed to be the kind of man God wants men to be. His masculinity is worldly, not godly, and thus of no eternal significance. By the same token, a man who has the Kingdom, but not money, sex, or power, has succeeded in being God’s man, because his life has eternal significance.
As Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel” — remember, the gospel is the proclamation of the kingdom of God — “will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Mark 8:34–37).
From that perspective, a man who has money, sex, and power, but not the Kingdom, has failed to be the kind of man God wants men to be. His masculinity is worldly, not godly, and thus of no eternal significance. By the same token, a man who has the Kingdom, but not money, sex, or power, has succeeded in being God’s man, because his life has eternal significance.
As Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel” — remember, the gospel is the proclamation of the kingdom of God — “will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Mark 8:34–37).
Ask a Christian man how he defines success in life, and he should say, “By repentance and faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the kingdom of God.”
As a Kingdom man, he will spend money generously, cultivate purity of heart sexually, and use his power in service to others. The great need of the present hour — in which we see so many men abusing money, sex, and power — is for Christian men to be Kingdom men and show the world a better way.
And thus we sing,
“Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and mind and soul and strength
To serve the King of kings.”
As all of this suggests, we are now at a turning point. The Lavender Mafia controls the Papacy and the Vatican overall, and Pope Francis is packing the College of Cardinals, who will elect the next Pope, with sympathizers. Pope Francis and his minions have now been exposed, named, and shamed; and there will be a civil war within the Roman Catholic Church. Either Francis leaves and his supporters and clients are purged. Or the Church is conceded to those who for decades have sheltered and promoted the pederasts and those who regard their abuse of minors as a matter indifferent. It is time that those bishops, archbishops, and cardinals who are innocent of such conduct stand up and force a house-cleaning. In the meantime, the laity should speak up loud and clear.
McClaughry: Would you say that the movement toward collectivism has been largely among intellectuals?
Friedman: Yes I would, and this is a real puzzle. In some ways you’d think it would be the other way around. Intellectuals, of all people, ought to value freedom of speech, freedom of thought. In fact they do value them in intellectual areas for themselves. But their attitude in general is that they want freedom for themselves, but control over everybody else.
John Hargrove Seeking Truth and Reality 