Thoughts on Kingdom, Church, and Grace from an American living in Hong Kong

Friday, May 20, 2011

I'm back... and some thoughts!

I had made it a point at the beginning of this year that I would get much more frequent with my blog posts.  I've come to like this little trafficked corner of cyberspace and enjoy the interaction with new friends as well.  Though since the end of March I have have been traveling for business 4 weeks and in the intervening time I finished my University work to get my teaching certification.  (My thoughts on that process are forthcoming).  With those two issues pressing in plus the taking on of a new project at work (and a new baby at home) means I've been "crazy busy".  So the thought of putting even more thoughts to paper, or computer screen, was unthinkable.  In the last 7 weeks I've managed to travel to Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, the earthquake area of Sichuan, and all across Greece (and no, contrary to what you may have heard, I was not in Pakistan doing anything a couple weeks ago :)

So...some thoughts on things that I would have blogged on had I been around:

* The Royal Wedding- I'm an unashamed Anglophile who remembers being about 14 years old when Charles & Diana were married.  Our whole family got up at about 4:00 AM Detroit time to watch it together.  The wedding of William & Kate was just as beautiful and, I suspect, will turn out much more successfully.  As a family we went to a little reception at the home of some British friends of ours.  We ate scones, cucumber sandwiches, and drank Earl Grey Tea (which admittedly gave way to red wine as the evening progressed).  It was a fantastic event for Mother England so God Save the Queen!



* It appears that while the Royal Wedding was going on, President Obama was giving the order for Navy Seals & CIA para military to engage in an operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden.  U.S. forces entered deep into Pakistan entered the house he was suspected to be in, found him, killed him, brought him back to a U.S. ship, performed a Islamic funeral and then dumped his bullet riddled body overboard into the sea.  I don't usually celebrate the death of anyone and to perhaps say I "celebrated" would be an exaggeration...but I'm glad he's dead and I have no problem with how we did it.  I'm against the death penalty so perhaps that makes me a hypocrite...but thats OK, I can live with it.

* This kind of is an add-on to the previous point but an issue I wanted to blog on.  Do you think we can not invoke religion, and specifically Christianity, in every argument that has little to do with religion?  I was seeing Facebook and news articles where the lines of argument started out on the legitimacy of U.S. actions in the death of Osama, meandered into the views of evangelical Christians, which eventually descended into the Old Testament, Leviticus, and homophobia. It's like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.  Take an issue and somehow link it to homophobia in 6 degrees or less. I think debate on serious issues may be better served by not linking them to Leviticus!

Just some thoughts...oh, and I'm back

3 comments:

Bob said...

And glad you are! I am also anti-death penalty and while I would not go into the streets pumping my fists saying, "USA!" at the hearing of this news, I trust that it was the right thing at the right time. And even though by the 2012 election it will be ancient history -- and voters have short memories -- I think President Obama did much to increase his chances of being a two-term president.

Steve H. said...

I think you're right Bob. I think this demonstrated Obama's resolve on foreign policy issues as well as the the perception that Dems often have of being "soft". For the Republicans it has forced them to take the election seriously and has knocked off would be pretenders like "The Donald". The GOP will be more likely to nominate a serious contender now...

Anonymous said...

I know you're itching to blog about The Terminater.