Podcast Update -- July 1, 2008
This week's podcast does the usual turn around NASCAR, and touches on making a decision along with wondering why so many in the pursuit of holiness are so eager to deny others grace.
You can listen to the podcast here, or if you have iTunes subscribe to it here. As always, please let me know what you think, and thanks.
Here's the text for this week's podcast.
And welcome to this week's edition of the Diecast Dude's (Mostly) NASCAR Positively Persnickety Podcast. It is Tuesday July the first 2008, and this week I'll be taking a look ahead to Daytona, mention a miracle of miracles in that I've actually made up my mind on something, and take a look at the perceived conflict between judgment and grace.
But first, a look back at the weekend that was in NASCAR.
I quite enjoyed this past weekend's race at New Hampshire. No doubt much of this was fueled by how Jeff Gordon ran up front most of the day. However, even with that set aside there was a sense of normalcy about the whole thing, and also a sense that I was being genuinely entertained. Which, sadly, has seldom been the case this season. Even the strange ending with pit strategy and weather dictating the eventual winner far more than anything taking place on the track was enjoyable. And if you're not enjoying something that's supposed to provide you a mini-vacation from the daily grind, what's the point in paying any attention to it at all?
This coming weekend NASCAR will be at Daytona, which means restrictor plate racing under the lights. I used to completely detest this form of racing, but have grown to love it in recent years. The thrill of seeing the pack thunder off the turn together, thirty or more cars separated by mere inches, is unique in all of sports. Hopefully we won't have "the big one" and instead we'll be... well, entertained. I'd like that. I believe we all would.
There's a lot of off-track news taking place right now, what with Dario Franchitti suddenly having a lot more time to spend with Ashley Judd -- oh, the poor man -- due to Chip Ganassi shutting down his race team earlier today. Apparently Mark Martin will drive the #5 full-time next year, which as I said in the blog a few days ago I have my doubts about but we'll see. I believe there's still a chance for major developments taking place that will put Tony Stewart in the #5, but it'd take a lot in a very short period of time for that to happen.
Speaking of the blog, I'll get into that in the next segment.
After receiving some clarification, I've come to a decision regarding the NASCAR blogging side of things. I'm going to stay with Restrictor Plate This. However, I am going to get back to being, for lack of a better way of putting it, me. Which may be for better or worse. But if I didn't get back to being me, complete with going off on tangents along with excursions into bizarro humor plus talking openly about my faith and related matters, there was no way I could have continued. It wasn't quite to the level Jeremiah talked about when he said, "But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,' his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot (Jer. 20:9)." But close. Very close.
Anyway, I'm back and I hope to keep it that way. If you'll please pray for me that I stay on course I'd appreciate it, just as I have all of you in my prayers.
Some songs before the next segment.
This comes from the Goldfish And Clowns blog.
I was link-wandering off of a favorite political blog yesterday and came across a personal/spiritual blog I’ve glanced at before written by one Dawn Eden. Her primary shtick, if you’ll pardon me calling it that, is the constant proclamation of chastity as a pearl of great price to be highly prized and maintained. And endlessly written about in blog and book, and spoken about in speech and media appearance. Not to knock the concept of self-control, but it brings to mind a paraphrase of the old Mitchum antiperspirant ads: “I didn’t have sex today, and I may not have sex tomorrow because I feel really satisfied even though I hormone freely.” But I digress.
The topic on hand (no pun intended) was the late Tim Russert, best known as host of Meet The Press. Ms. Eden referred her readers to an article written by one Hadley Arkes, whose central theme was, and please pardon the expression, pissing on Mr. Russert’s grave while calling it a shower of reality by railing against him for obviously not being a “real” Catholic -- Mr. Russert often referred to his faith in assorted writings -- because he didn’t make an anti-abortion stand strong enough for Mr. Arkes’ liking… er, assertion of Church teachings. Never mind that as a journalist it was not Mr. Russert’s job to promote his personal/spiritual agenda in the professional realm; while certainly all believers have a mandate not to contradict their faith in the workplace, this does not give free license to preach and especially judge others based on ones faith. Mr. Arkes believes otherwise. He also sharply criticizes Mr. Russert for his connection via employment prior to becoming a journalist with publicans and sinners, otherwise known as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Mario Cuomo who were noted for their adherence to separation of their Catholicism and positions on public policy. Guilty by association, y’know.
Given that Ms. Eden’s blog gets more readers in a minute than everything I write put together in a month -- hey, she works at it a lot harder than I do and is reaping a consummate (again, no pun intended) reward -- the comments area for said post was a happening place. The thoughts primarily ran along two lines:
* Speak no ill of the dead.
* Mr. Arkes did us all a favor by calling out the painfully apparent heathen.
The former bothered me; the latter irked me. While I am a firm believer in as best as possible looking at history and those now part of it with a Chronicles rather than Samuel/Kings mindset, it’s important to also be honest and objective in such things. No one gets a free pass for the sole reason of being dead. That duly noted, the harsh judgmental attitude copped by many because Mr. Russert failed one of their litmus tests for true believers gave cause for me to do something I don’t do very often, namely leave a comment on someone else’s blog:
Last time I checked, God was in the sin-forgiving business.
Which fortunately includes forgiving the sin of those whose sin is not forgiving the sin of others.
No, there is no free license to sin because of grace's presence. There is, however, grace. It is unfortunate how the pursuit of holiness when colored by pride in one taking part in said pursuit -- an oxymoron to be sure, but a common occurrence nonetheless -- often deviates into attacks on others for failing to live up to holinesses' standards... not realizing the attack itself signals a failure by the one making the attack to live up to holinesses' standards.
Someone named Margaret -- my guess is it was probably not Margaret Becker -- commented on my comment thusly:
Last time I checked, for us to repent and ask forgiveness of our sins, we have to know what those sins might be and face them squarely.
Not standing up for the most helpless when you have the opportunity to speak out is a sin, and should be acknowledged as a sin, a sin all of us have reason to repent of.
Me being me, I felt it proper to respond.
And what would you have had him do, Margaret? Refuse to interview anyone who was pro-abortion? Should he have interviewed anyone who believed that way, grill them incessantly on that one point? End every episode of 'Meet The Press' with an anti-abortion speech? Demand those he interviewed repent on the spot? In which case he wouldn't have been the host of 'Meet The Press' for more than sixteen years. More like less than sixteen minutes before he would have been shown the door at NBC.
Tim Russert did his job week in and week out. He did it extremely well. To rail against him because he didn't use his professional position as a pulpit -- and why are there not more mentions of how he openly shared his faith? -- demonstrates a rather alarming propensity toward looking for reasons to condemn someone in lieu of accepting that despite his being as human as you and I, God loved Russert and from all indications Russert loved God.
There is no arguing that abortion is a hideous abomination, one that should be firmly opposed. But again I ask, what would you have had Russert do? He was a journalist. A journalist -- a good one anyway -- in the course of carrying out their job duties does not have the option of taking sides. Period.
Unless you live in either a cocoon or the Christian ghetto, every one of us every day has personal and professional interaction with people who are morally bankrupt and do that which is detestable in the eyes of our Lord. How do we see them? Reprobates? Heathen? Unclean? Someone at whom we should throw the Book?
Or do we see them as someone worth dying for?
Which, according to Scripture, is how Jesus sees them.
And before anyone labels anyone else not a true believer, please be reminded of a man who had an affair with a loyal, devoted co-worker's wife, got her pregnant, did everything he could to cover up what had happened, and when that failed arranged for his co-worker to be killed so he could quickly marry the woman to make it seem plausible she had become pregnant immediately after their marriage.
What would you call such a man?
God called him a man after His own heart (Acts 13:22), and from him and the woman he married under the above circumstances descended the direct lineage of Jesus.
Neither you or I know what was in Tim Russert's heart. God alone knows. And frankly I'm more than content to leave it at that, for He is the one and only true judge. Our opinion is utterly without importance. "It does not concern me in the least that I be judged by you or any human tribunal; I do not even pass judgment on myself; I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord. Therefore, do not make any judgment before the appointed time, until the Lord comes, for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts, and then everyone will receive praise from God (1 Cor. 4:3-5)."
Margaret again replied:
Jerry, you are conflating two different kinds of judgment, or two different uses of the word.
The ability to apply judgment in the sense of appraisement, observation, or rational critique is one of the ways in which we're made in the image of God, and we do it quite appropriately all the time, whether judging an action or a fine wine. An inability to apply this kind of judgment is the mark of a child or a fool.
No one in this discussion, and certainly not Arkes, is interested in arrogating God's right of ultimate judgment, of weighing the man's deepest motives and eternal destiny. To suggest otherwise is unfair and uncharitable.
And I again replied:
Margaret, re-read Arkes' article. "Amidst all of the mourning and celebration for Tim Russert, the most critical thing he imparted as a public man was that the central moral teaching of his Church was not, in the scale of things, all that important or true" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement for someone's eternal destiny. The implication is clear: if Russert could not hold this one thing true, then why should anyone believe he held any of the Church's teachings, or for that matter faith itself, true? That goes way beyond appraisement.
The exchange seems to have concluded there.
Fellow believers, there’d be a lot more of us if we’d let God be God. What part of James 2:12-13 (“Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!”) aren’t we getting here? For further reference, consider Romans chapters 2, 12, and 14. It’s not that we’re supposed to sit around quietly and never speak up about right and wrong. However, neither are we called to play Avenging Annie against everyone who doesn’t in our view toe the line. Again referring to Paul’s letter to the Romans, note his quoting the book of Exodus when he writes, “For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion (Rom. 9:15, which references Exodus 33:19).'"
Mercy, people. Let's show some mercy.
And that concludes this week's podcast. Take care, everyone, and we'll get together next time.
Well, that podcast gave me a Rush...
...yeah, I know. Someone had to say it.
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I can't believe no one's said a word about the inclusion of Barry Manilow...
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