Tuesday, January 02, 2007
---Year End Review, State of the Weblog, 2006
Year End Review, 2006
We were faced with the usual choices in that "special" holiday spirit, of the usual government and secular and other religiously indiscriminate charity operations, or whatever recognizably Christian Churches could put together. It is apparently the will of our political and social leadership that we take the charitable impulses of our faith, strip off any merely Christian notions, and just go fix things without really changing anything important, so as not to harm anyones' multicultural diversity, or whatever.
It's not just about Christmas/New Year's, but the general philosophy now applied generally to relief and charity operations worldwide at all times of the year. Even charities that use some variation of "Christian" in their titles have been Spiritually dumbed-down to avoid challenging, let alone offending anyone in the administration of charitable works. They just want the food, not the sermon, just like they did when Jesus was preaching ( John 6:25-27).
Just imagine!---no, let me rephrase that---think about it! What if we could actually set aside all of our political, social, and religious differences, and accomplish what we claim to want for the world? What if we could use our science, engineering, technology, and agri-business economic acumen to end the great evils of human existence, hunger, disease, poverty, and so on (If I left out any of your favorite great evils, leave me a comment). We almost certainly have the means to provide safe housing, stable nutrition, education (I won't dwell on this one, since that would probably make a long weblog post by itself), and proper medical care (ditto) to the entire human population.
Assume! for the moment that we could persuade leaders around the world to lower political barriers, redirect resources from other national interests, and most of all, actually care what happens to the people they govern. Never mind how that would happen, just guess that somehow we could have a brief, golden moment of reason and get all that done. Food and water and medical care, and first-rate technology and political intervention for the Rwandas, the Darfurs, the Indonesias, the Bangladeshes.... Then we clap the dust off our hands in satisfaction and everybody goes home....
Everyone knows what would happen next, if they are being honest about it, because everyone knows how it happened in the first place....
Jesus predicted the outcome with His usual miraculous precision, a long time in advance. Matthew's Gospel concludes "That is how it will be with this wicked generation". It's not just the fate of individuals who are fixed up and left empty, but a whole generation, who will be left vulnerable to even worse things than they were suffering before---caught up in a maelstrom of evil as the endless cycle that has bedeviled every generation of humanity reasserts itself with renewed determination; hatred, violence, reprisal, revenge.
The job of lifting up the poor and the job of teaching the Love of God, the Law to be placed in their minds and written on their hearts, are not separable commissions. There is no solution to evil that does not involve a second Birth, a new Creation, a genuine Spiritual revolution in mind, heart, and soul. Unfortunately for your diversity, there is only one of those....
State of the Weblog, 2006
I have spread out somewhat, and tried several different (free) servers. Strangely enough, the one with the most constrictive and possibly the worst-designed support tools--WordPress, which charges if you want to use CSS or JS, and may actually make your existing weblogs disappear if you try to import them, at least until you can find the archive switch they flipped---also gets the most traffic. I have pooled the archives of HeartBreakLog , HeartBreakLogNews , and The Shining Pasture on the WP log, and used their searchable Categories to distinguish the content.
The hits from SiteMeter and StatCounter come from many interesting places. It seems strange that they often don't agree on where the hits came from. I probably got the most visits to my reposting of my Fall season celebration post, ---Still The Scariest Story Ever Told, especially on the WP version at Savage Utopia . Most recently, I got a few hits from Ask.com searches looking for the "graphic Saddam hanging video", because I used the words "Saddam" and "hanging" in a sentence a couple of months ago. I didn't post a link to the Saddam hanging footage, which has to be considered questionable taste at best.
I have a tiny, but consistent news readership through Feedburner. It appears that someone (or a very sophisticated content 'bot), in Spain regularly clicks through on every post.
Overall, my collection of weblogs remains a tiny, unexplored niche of the Internet, which only gets any real attention when I make someone really angry. Probably just as well....
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Another year, another Winter holiday season---er, Christmas season, since this is hardly a public forum---and it's now a plain old day in January. It's not even especially cold here.
Matthew 12:43-45
43"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation."
We were faced with the usual choices in that "special" holiday spirit, of the usual government and secular and other religiously indiscriminate charity operations, or whatever recognizably Christian Churches could put together. It is apparently the will of our political and social leadership that we take the charitable impulses of our faith, strip off any merely Christian notions, and just go fix things without really changing anything important, so as not to harm anyones' multicultural diversity, or whatever.
It's not just about Christmas/New Year's, but the general philosophy now applied generally to relief and charity operations worldwide at all times of the year. Even charities that use some variation of "Christian" in their titles have been Spiritually dumbed-down to avoid challenging, let alone offending anyone in the administration of charitable works. They just want the food, not the sermon, just like they did when Jesus was preaching ( John 6:25-27).
Just imagine!---no, let me rephrase that---think about it! What if we could actually set aside all of our political, social, and religious differences, and accomplish what we claim to want for the world? What if we could use our science, engineering, technology, and agri-business economic acumen to end the great evils of human existence, hunger, disease, poverty, and so on (If I left out any of your favorite great evils, leave me a comment). We almost certainly have the means to provide safe housing, stable nutrition, education (I won't dwell on this one, since that would probably make a long weblog post by itself), and proper medical care (ditto) to the entire human population.
Assume! for the moment that we could persuade leaders around the world to lower political barriers, redirect resources from other national interests, and most of all, actually care what happens to the people they govern. Never mind how that would happen, just guess that somehow we could have a brief, golden moment of reason and get all that done. Food and water and medical care, and first-rate technology and political intervention for the Rwandas, the Darfurs, the Indonesias, the Bangladeshes.... Then we clap the dust off our hands in satisfaction and everybody goes home....
Everyone knows what would happen next, if they are being honest about it, because everyone knows how it happened in the first place....
Jesus predicted the outcome with His usual miraculous precision, a long time in advance. Matthew's Gospel concludes "That is how it will be with this wicked generation". It's not just the fate of individuals who are fixed up and left empty, but a whole generation, who will be left vulnerable to even worse things than they were suffering before---caught up in a maelstrom of evil as the endless cycle that has bedeviled every generation of humanity reasserts itself with renewed determination; hatred, violence, reprisal, revenge.
The job of lifting up the poor and the job of teaching the Love of God, the Law to be placed in their minds and written on their hearts, are not separable commissions. There is no solution to evil that does not involve a second Birth, a new Creation, a genuine Spiritual revolution in mind, heart, and soul. Unfortunately for your diversity, there is only one of those....
State of the Weblog, 2006
I have spread out somewhat, and tried several different (free) servers. Strangely enough, the one with the most constrictive and possibly the worst-designed support tools--WordPress, which charges if you want to use CSS or JS, and may actually make your existing weblogs disappear if you try to import them, at least until you can find the archive switch they flipped---also gets the most traffic. I have pooled the archives of HeartBreakLog , HeartBreakLogNews , and The Shining Pasture on the WP log, and used their searchable Categories to distinguish the content.
The hits from SiteMeter and StatCounter come from many interesting places. It seems strange that they often don't agree on where the hits came from. I probably got the most visits to my reposting of my Fall season celebration post, ---Still The Scariest Story Ever Told, especially on the WP version at Savage Utopia . Most recently, I got a few hits from Ask.com searches looking for the "graphic Saddam hanging video", because I used the words "Saddam" and "hanging" in a sentence a couple of months ago. I didn't post a link to the Saddam hanging footage, which has to be considered questionable taste at best.
I have a tiny, but consistent news readership through Feedburner. It appears that someone (or a very sophisticated content 'bot), in Spain regularly clicks through on every post.
Overall, my collection of weblogs remains a tiny, unexplored niche of the Internet, which only gets any real attention when I make someone really angry. Probably just as well....
Labels: News Commentary
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