The disparity of the rich and the poor will continue to become more marked. It will eventually fuel discontent. As one of my favorite bands, Adam Again, said years ago in their song Tree House that there is a tree house in the sky where the strong rule and they pulled up the ladder and children are left out of the tree house. "Someone throw the ladder down". We need some sort of reform or transformation to help those in power see their need to share the wealth in radical ways. I appreciate the Buffet and Gates’ challenge to the super rich. But we need more than challenges, we need change.

Overall, my concern isn’t for the middle class of America. We are still the richest in the world. My concern is for the third world and the desperately poor. They will rise in judgment on the last day on our culture of luxury. But since we have the majority of the super rich in our country and the majority of the corporate gods, we have to work for reform in our country. We are the closest to the super rich and we have the vote to bring some change. We also can pray and enter into the battle for the hearts of the super rich.

Enough ranting for now…

I work as a taxi driver for an Amish work crew. We were going through a McDonald’s drive through when three Amish friends walked up to our vehicle and started conversing. The drive through line was moving slow and so it wasn’t a problem. Just as the conversation ended and the Amish men left, a man jumped out of a vehicle and went over to the three Amish men (one was a young man about 14 years old). He told them to stop taking jobs away from him. They had never met. He knocked off one’s hat and threw his coffee on the young man.

We went through the drive through and had the opportunity to try to follow him. We weren’t able to follow him but we did meet him at the intersection where he proceeded to threaten to punch and pile drive us. He sped off when the light changed.

I understand that many people of different races have it a lot harder than this in the United States. This was my first encounter with this type of anger and prejudice. I asked my boss if he had experienced this before. Yes he had and even more threateningly. I just don’t understand it. It hurts me deeply to see people being hated because of race or religion.

Have you ever experienced prejudice? How did you feel? What can we do about this problem?

Eugene Cho has a nice commentary on Glenn Beck’s recent remarks about the communist churches in America.

I usually don’t listen to Glenn Beck becuase he gets my blood boiling. Today, I happened to catch a few minutes of Glenn Beck and finally my pressure cooker went off and I need to respond. He was speaking about his remarks concerning the social justice movement in church and he challenged his listeners to find a passage that Jesus supports the redistribution of wealth. Of course, there isn’t any clear cut passage.

Here is the lack of logic in his argument. Can you find a passage where Jesus is against abortion? How about slavery? Can you find a passage where Jesus supports capitalism? Or democracy? Of course you can’t. I could argue, using Glenn Beck’s logic, that God loves chickens more than turkeys because Jesus never endorses turkeys in the gospels. There are many topics that the gospel writers did not write about or that Jesus never spoke about. But we make religious claims about those issues based upon the intent of Jesus’ words or by comparing Scripture to Scripture.

The quick point is that Jesus never explicitly condemns or endorses the redistribution of wealth. But clear arguments can be made that the redistribution of wealth could be supported Biblically and perhaps by Jesus. The Old Testament points to the more equitable distribution of wealth by calling the people to care for the widows and orphans. God when He sent manna sent it in such a way that the ones who had much didn’t have too much. Those who gathered little didn’t not have too little. There was some equity, though not uniformity, in the distribution of food.

Paul elaborates on this when he says that the church has fulfilled this manna call (2 Corinthians 8:13-15). The early church lived in a community that redistributed its wealth (Acts 2:44). Glenn would probably go nuts in the first century church.

Lastly, Jesus taught us to pray: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Is there poverty in heaven? Are there large discrepancies in the wealth of people in heaven? Since there probably are not large discrepancies in heaven, we should work to do the same on earth. Jesus said that some of the last will be first and the first will be last. Does that apply to economics? How about those sheep who looked after “the least of these”? I think a strong case can be made that Jesus had some intent of social justice.

Here are a couple sites talking about Glenn Beck’s latest tyrade:

Wantagh posts their response on their sign

AlterNet talks about the nazi Jesus

Aseline – Aseline’s CD is looking to get printed within the next month, if everything goes as planned. Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing a copy. It is a very solid CD.

Recording Studio – A recording engineer from Port-au-Prince has relocated in Gonaives due to the earthquake. He has plans for the recording studio. He sees that we have nearly everything to get the studio up and running. Pastor Benoit is going to take a computer back to Haiti when he returns this Wednesday. The engineer hopes to have the studio up and running by mid-May.

We are working on getting other equipment (mics, monitors, jacks, etc.) for the studio. We hope to get the equipment to Haiti in mid-April.

The studio is going to be an answer to prayer in several ways. Most of the recording studios were located in Port-au-Prince and the earthquake damaged or destroyed some of them (I don’t know how many). With the shortage of studios, this studio will have an instant demand for its services. It will provide funds for the LCH and jobs for musicians and technicians that I know.

I don’t know much about this website but I think this is a very thoughtful article about the historicity of infant baptism in the church. Both for and against can be argued from Scripture and church history. Is it possible that we have two paradigms that, although mutually exclusive, represent two legitimate ways of following Christ? Though early Christians disagreed about this issue, there is no record of it being considered heresy to be one or the other. Could it be that the early Church agreed to disagree? Maybe we need to learn to get along and get on with the Gospel message.

Why I love being a Christian. Sarcasm has deep roots in Christianity – think of Erasmus. Think of God – God gives Job quite a tongue lashing for thinking that he understood the ways of God. Anyway, some sarcastic fun…

A very profound article that has lots of implications to the issues of life and death in patients in a persistent vegetative state. For me, it reminds me to never assume that a patient cannot hear or understand you. Even when a patient is unresponsive, treat them as if they are there and respect them as humans.

Please pray for the people of Haiti and for the efforts of those who are helping.

We are collecting the following:

• bottled water
• canned food with pull tabs
• nutritional bars and shakes
• first aid supplies
• antibiotic ointment
• over-the-counter medications (Tylenol, Advil, etc.)
• dishwashing liquid
• bar soap
• washcloths & hand towels
• toothbrushes & toothpaste
• hygiene items
• baby formula with pull tabs
• shovels
• buckets
• bed sheets
• clothing (boxed and labeled)
• duffle bags & tote bags
• cleaning supplies
• tarps
• rope

Monetary donations also can be made. Any funds collected will be used solely for disaster relief, to purchase needed supplies, medicine or transportation. Distribution of relief supplies will be through our accountable partners on the ground in Haiti.

MISSION: HAITI is an IRS recognized 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization. All donations are tax deductible and you will receive a tax receipt and updates on the relief effort.

Address for donations: MISSION: HAITI 7601 SW 39th St, Davie, FL 33328

Personal contact:

Dale Miller, Claridon Christian Fellowship, 440-856-5065, zoelavie@gmail.com

Carrie Miller, Claridon Christian Fellowship, 440-477-0427, c.bear70@hotmail.com

Helen Roenfeldt, Mission: Haiti Treasurer, 954-868-8218, hondee1@aol.com

Not knowing too much about restore functions in Ubuntu and having only a couple days of info on the computer, I decided to re-install from scratch. The installation went smoothly and I was back up and running in 1 day. For a comparison, it takes 2-3 days to get everything configured the way I like it in Windows.

Needless to say, even in an unfortunate event, I find myself becoming a fan of Ubuntu and the Linux experience.