Pondering Today's events

Many events to cogitate over today:

• On the anniversary of John Wayne's death, I'd like to talk about the need for heroes in today's world. Manly men, patriotic, hard-working, sacrificial, and dedicated to the American ideal. Feminine women, teaching and molding children, strong and self-sufficient, dedicated to the American ideal.

• But then there is the matter of a report out of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary where the President of that institute, Dr. Akin, is calling for larger families. His premise that the downturn in SBC baptisms is a consequence of smaller families is, I believe, misplaced even if accurate. The premise for larger families should be that God wants Genuine Believers to raise up families who will be a light to the world. If the larger families are simply to increase baptisms, there are much easier ways to do it. One could offer $1,000.00 per family to each family which joins the church and stays for a year. Surely some of them would stick around longer. And it would certainly not cost the individual family as much as having a child. Better still, each young family could spend $5,000.00 every five years and get five families. That would certainly be easier and cheaper than raising a child.
  

• Today's Drudge Report links to a news report headlined: California Nears Financial Meltdown...". http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE55974820090610 I wonder just how long those on the left coast are going to continue to overlook the obvious. Begin drilling for oil off your coast. The influx of money will be almost instantaneous as people jocky for position and purchase land for building support industries. The working people of California will be heartened by prospects of new found wealth, and the rest of the country will have a reason want California to not fall off into the ocean.
  

• Then, of course, there are the Lakers. Kobe failed to deliver in the last close game, so he must be losing it. I wonder if sports writers have any idea of the intense emotional drain high intensity sporting events have on people. There are inevitable let downs in anything where one must be at his best continually. However, when the Lakers win he will once again be hailed as "the greatest." Amazing.
  

• Why do people who have wronged you, feel such a need to denigrate you? When people or groups lie and fail to follow through on promises, they tend to try to justify their own failure to act by manufacturing offenses by you. Then, of course, they want to break off all contact. Perhaps that is to lessen the guilt which comes to them when they think of you. It is worse when the group or individual is Christian based.

• Just not sure I trust Newt Gingrich. He is a great thinker, and has some terrific insight, but he appears, to me, too willing to make the Republican Tent inclusive of vastly divergent concepts. He invokes Reagan's appeal to a wide range of people, but seems to forget that Reagan didn't accomodate such divergent views, he won people to his view. That is the profound difference between Gingrich and Reagan.