The next important principle of voting in elections is identify and eliminate the incompetents. What has the incumbent actually accomplished? This is particular useful in evaluating congressmen, senators, state and local legislators. All of these men and women are elected to maintain the welfare of the people, not to enrich themselves, nor to sponsor frivolous legislation, nor to support the party at all costs, but to maintain the welfare of the people. If they are not doing that, they are not doing the job for which they were elected.
Remember, however, that meeting the needs of the individuals in their home district is a valuable indicator. Not everyone can be a great leader, but everyone can work their district! That is a good reason to vote for someone.
The Hermeneutic - Voting Principles (so far)
1. Throw the scoundrels out.
2. Identify and eliminate the incompetents.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Voting
The silly season is now over in Florida. The Primaries are done and the real campaigning will be on us in full force.
The basic Hermeneutic principle of preparing for the fall elections is
Throw the Scoundrels out.
This is a thought worth your serious consideration.
The basic Hermeneutic principle of preparing for the fall elections is
Throw the Scoundrels out.
This is a thought worth your serious consideration.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
The Laborer is worthy of his hire.
Some more thoughts on Labor Day.
I live in Orlando where our primary industry is tourism and most jobs offer only the minimum wage or something close to it. We talk about a "living wage" which ends up being a couple of bucks more than minimum.
The reality is that with employees there are certain unavoidable costs. Let's enumerate them: a place to live (shelter), food, clothing, utilities, transportation, health care. If you live in an area like ours, where the public transportation is minimal, you must have an automobile. All of these things add up and they must be paid for, if not in wages, then in taxes and donations.
When people have no insurance or resources they must turn to tax supported clinics and the emergency rooms. These things have to be paid for one way or the other.This means we can't run around saying no more taxes, when taxes are needed to pay for services provided for those whose wages are too low to pay for them.
This is a real problem and we have to get real and stop ranting the political slogans of the right and left. We need leadership that will focus on solving the problem.
I live in Orlando where our primary industry is tourism and most jobs offer only the minimum wage or something close to it. We talk about a "living wage" which ends up being a couple of bucks more than minimum.
The reality is that with employees there are certain unavoidable costs. Let's enumerate them: a place to live (shelter), food, clothing, utilities, transportation, health care. If you live in an area like ours, where the public transportation is minimal, you must have an automobile. All of these things add up and they must be paid for, if not in wages, then in taxes and donations.
When people have no insurance or resources they must turn to tax supported clinics and the emergency rooms. These things have to be paid for one way or the other.This means we can't run around saying no more taxes, when taxes are needed to pay for services provided for those whose wages are too low to pay for them.
This is a real problem and we have to get real and stop ranting the political slogans of the right and left. We need leadership that will focus on solving the problem.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Labor Day
Today is Labor Day. Yesterday the CBS magazine show, Sunday Morning, did a segment on workaholics and on those who had to work 2 jobs just to make a living. Both of these raise moral issues.
It was interesting that the workaholics often described themselves as addicts, unable to stop working 70 -90 hours a week. For some, it was clear that nothing - family - society - social responsibility - or even the vast sums of money they gained from their work was more important than working. We know how to arrest the addictions, but you do have to want to stop. None of these folk were remotely interested in stopping work.
You can tell what God you worship by looking at your life. Well?
Having to work two jobs just to make a living raises another whole stream of questions. What should the doing of work provide for the worker? This is not a free market, supply and demand issue. The free market concept is not a moral one, but one of power. Morally speaking, someone is profiting from the work. The one who profits from the work of others needs to pay them accordingly. If you don't make a profit, you probably ought to go out of business. The problem, of course, is not this simple, but those are the moral battle lines.
Did you ever think to ask whether what you do and how you do it is God's will for you? Honor the workern in you by asking and answering the question.
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It was interesting that the workaholics often described themselves as addicts, unable to stop working 70 -90 hours a week. For some, it was clear that nothing - family - society - social responsibility - or even the vast sums of money they gained from their work was more important than working. We know how to arrest the addictions, but you do have to want to stop. None of these folk were remotely interested in stopping work.
You can tell what God you worship by looking at your life. Well?
Having to work two jobs just to make a living raises another whole stream of questions. What should the doing of work provide for the worker? This is not a free market, supply and demand issue. The free market concept is not a moral one, but one of power. Morally speaking, someone is profiting from the work. The one who profits from the work of others needs to pay them accordingly. If you don't make a profit, you probably ought to go out of business. The problem, of course, is not this simple, but those are the moral battle lines.
Did you ever think to ask whether what you do and how you do it is God's will for you? Honor the workern in you by asking and answering the question.
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Saturday, September 02, 2006
R&R
I took the afternoon off today. Watched a movie - Into the Woods, a Sondheim musical. It was beautifully done. It had a moral which I could spend any number of days examining. But above all the music, though excellent, was not memorable. Not a song in the lot that will have me humming it tomorrow.
Friday, September 01, 2006
God's will - doing right and feeling good?
Some years ago I was given a plaque for my office. The wording was more or less like this:
We have not succeeded in answering all of your problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.
If ever there was a warning about counselors being overconfident, that certainly is it. If you were considered to be successful, all your clients left feeling better but confused. You consoled yourself with the thought that at the very least they were confused on a higher level than they were when they first came to you.
But, in the real world this approach just won't do. People are looking for answers that work. They are less concerned about feeling good than they are about really messing their lives up by following advice they have been given. If, as we work together, we concentrate on learning God's will, and not on people, places, things, and other side issues, we won't become more confused. And, most of us probably won't have to become involved with more important things.
We do the best we can to learn God's will for us and then we do the best we can to carry it out in our lives. That may be scary. It requires Faith. Faith is not about intellectual correctness, or about doing good, but absolute trust, and God will not take us anywhere He can't protect us.
We have not succeeded in answering all of your problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.
If ever there was a warning about counselors being overconfident, that certainly is it. If you were considered to be successful, all your clients left feeling better but confused. You consoled yourself with the thought that at the very least they were confused on a higher level than they were when they first came to you.
But, in the real world this approach just won't do. People are looking for answers that work. They are less concerned about feeling good than they are about really messing their lives up by following advice they have been given. If, as we work together, we concentrate on learning God's will, and not on people, places, things, and other side issues, we won't become more confused. And, most of us probably won't have to become involved with more important things.
We do the best we can to learn God's will for us and then we do the best we can to carry it out in our lives. That may be scary. It requires Faith. Faith is not about intellectual correctness, or about doing good, but absolute trust, and God will not take us anywhere He can't protect us.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
I'm right - you are wrong!
Those of us who think about such things have had to trudge a long, hard intellectual road to reach our understanding of the Faith Once Delivered to the Saints. Because we worked so hard and were so careful, we became absolutely convinced that our understanding is definitive. A similar process takes place on an institutional level, also. Therefore, anyone who thinks differently must be (at best) misguided, or (at worst) a damned heretic. Often there is no gray area. However, some groups have sort of a lazy, daisy, practice of enforcement, so some deviance is allowed.
There are two major problems with this approach to doctrine.
If it is true of us, can it not also be true of others?
There are two major problems with this approach to doctrine.
- First, nowhere in Scripture is there a requirement for intellectual orthodoxy in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Heresy is man made!
- Second, Look at your own relationship with God and your own understanding of God. Has it changed in the past 20 years? Past 10 years? Past 5 years? The past year? Don't you now have a deeper and fuller understanding of God than you used to have?
- Of course you do!
If it is true of us, can it not also be true of others?
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