Left, Right, and Wrong

Micah 6:8 

He has told you, O man, what is good. 

And what does the Lord require of you? 

To do justice, 

To love kindness, and 

To walk humbly with your God. 

The religious and political right focus upon justice, making sure we believe what we are supposed to believe and do not do whatever we are not supposed to do. Rules dictate. This justice is used to protect God, keeping Him and His people sacred.

The religious and political left focus upon kindness, allowing us to believe whatever we want to believe and do whatever we want to do, as long as we are nice about it. Freedom dictates. This kindness is used to endlessly extend God, defining Him and His creation such that all is sacred (and therefore, nothing is).

The right are blind to doing right to the over-extenders. The kind are blind to being kind to the over-righteous. Neither seems cognizant of their hypocrisy, sufficiently humbled by out walking with God

Secondary to Primary

Matthew 15

You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophecy of you, saying, 

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.

Isaiah 29

This people draw near with their words and honor me with their lip-service, but they remove their hearts far from me and their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote.

We generally blank the slate in our rebirth with God. Then we start to grow hedges, organic-like, as we embrace His teachings:
This is right                             This is wrong
This honors God                     This dishonors Him
This is the truth                      This is falsehood
The hedges grow, and we find comfort in their presence, for their perceived protection.
In our wisdom,
we dig up the organic hedges and replace with stone walls,
from farmers to masons,
trading nature for precision,
from working in the dirt to finishing concrete.
As God-followers, we would do well to be in the habit of purging the precepts we take comfort in and expose ourselves to the direct influence of God.

2011 Books I Listened To

The introduction of downloadable audio books from the local library makes for nerd-fun.

• My Favorite: Golden Ocean - a non-Aubrey O'Brian
• Unexpectedly Good: the Cadfael series, which I have another dozen to enjoy.
• Unexpectedly Bad: World is Flat - when reading, I was able to skim through the endless repetition; I was not afforded the same when listening in the car. The book is excellent, and twice the length it deserves.

1. Fellowship of the Ring (dramatized) - JRR Tolkien
2. The House on the Strand - Daphne Du Maurier
3. Ben Hur - Lew Wallace
4. The Black Cauldron - Lloyd Alexander
5. Moneyball - Michael Lewis
6. The Wild Things - Dave Eggers
7. The Heretic's Apprentice - Ellis Peters
8. Doctor No - Ian Fleming
9. Monk's Hood - Ellis Peters
10. In a Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson
11. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
12. Brother Cadfael's Penance - Ellis Peters
13. Unnatural Causes - P.D. James
14. All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot
15. In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
16. The Broken Gun - Louis L'Amour
17. Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson
18. Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
19. Surgeon's Mate - Patrick O'Brian
20. The Golden Ocean - Patrick O'Brian
21. A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans - Michael Farquhar
22. The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman
23. Genghis: Lords of the Bow - C. Iggulden
24. The American presidency: from Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan