Carville Finally Gets One Right

James Carville was on 'Good Morning America' this morning, and finally someone blasted the government not only for not responding quickly to the oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, but for not paying attention to the families of those workers who were incinerated on that well. He made it clear that the President and other officials should be there meeting with those families and doing what they can to both console them and be actively directing efforts to stop the oil damage. It is the lack of empathy for the families that bothers me at the moment.

Last night on ABC news was the first time I saw any significant media coverage of the families of those 11 men killed in the explosion and fire on the oil rig. It had been35 days since the accident. Had it been a coal mine or an airplane, most of the media attention would have been on the families. The lack of attention to the families has been telling in my opinion. That lack of attention has made the national values clear: nature and wildlife matter more than people.

The oil well is clearly doing a lot of damage, and that is definitely an environmental disaster. No question about that. But the people matter even more. There is no reason for ignoring them. Certainly the coverage could have been both the horrible loss of life and also the environmental damage instead of focusing only on the ecological impact. It seems to me that the media focus on the loss of life with the recent coal mine cave-in was more focused on the people. Why? My opinion is that it was because that was the best way to show their opposition to underground mines. With underground mines, the environmental damage is less obvious so focusing on the people best accomplishes their agenda. With the oil well, they clearly want to focus on the opposition to the oil industry since the loss of life has been barely covered.

This is part of an overall tone in our culture that disturbs me: a woman's choice matters more tha a baby's life; avoiding the burden of a disabled child or parent is more important than the life of a Down's syndrome baby or a elderly and ill parent; ecological damage matters more than the fatalities in this oil well disaster. I am not a fan of James Carville at all, but he got it right this time. There is a least hope that we will deal with the oil spill, but those families will never be the same.

The Mystery of Women (Post-Mother's Day)

It is ironic, or perhaps even a conspiracy, that as we celebrated Mother's Day this past Sunday the media was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill. I commented a couple of weeks ago how 'The Pill' has had unintended consequences for women that are ingored by the left. Having this in the papers, magazines, and on TV during Mother's Day prompted a few questions on my part:

• Why do women praise the sexual liberation and sexual equality they think is produced by the pill but then wonder why many men find marriage no longer necessary?


• How is it a good thing that the pill, which was sold to the public as 'family planning', has resulted in a society where 40% (and still rising) of all children are born out of wedlock?


• If women object to being treated as sex objects, why do they use the pill before marriage in order to be treated more like sex objects and less like potential marriage partners?

As my mind wandered, a few other thoughts related to Mother's Day occurred to me, which are not related to the pill, but here they are anyway:

• Why do women who would never marry 'momma's boys' do all that they can to make their own sons into 'momma's boys'?


• Why do women define 'helping' in a way that men define as 'nagging'?


• Why do women who compete against men in the marketplace, sports, school, etc find it surprising when men come to view them as competitors instead of as marriage partners?

None of this is to belittle Mother's Day. I like Mother's Day. Our society, on the other hand, seems to be very confused about motherhood in general. Newsweek's Julia Bard wrote about how bad mothers can give us hope to 'lower the bar' from the thought of being a perfect mother, but goes beyond that, quoting the French philosopher Elizabeth Badinter (from The Conflict, the Woman and the Mother) that women are no longer oppressed by men, but rather by children. While she hedges by saying that she doesn't agree with everything in the book, she does find it 'bold' and 'refreshing'. This sort of thing, along with the continuing plague of abortion, simply reminds me that there are a great many bad mothers out there, mothers unworthy of Mother's Day. Which should make us all the more grateful for good mothers. So I once again say a big 'Thank You!' to my mom and my wife for their work as mothers.

The Great 'Caught Up' (or 'Catch Up'? Ketchup?)

We recently had a sermon series on the book of Revelation and it necessarily included some discussion of what is called 'The Rapture' of the church. One of the books recommended by our pastor during the series is titled Three Views of the Rapture and is a debate on Pre-, Mid-, or Post-tribulation points of view by 3 seminary professors. Since they teach at Trinity where I attended seminary for a couple of terms, I decided to read it and I recently finished the book.

First I must vent a little, however. The first thing I dislike about this whole topic is the title. 'The Rapture'. I had never even heard of 'The Rapture' until I went to college and became friends with some folks who had been reading Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth. This doesn't prove much except that it is at least possible to be a serious Christian without caring a whit about 'The Rapture'. But why call it that? It comes from the Latin translation of I Thessalonians 4:17 where Paul says that at Christ's Second Advent those believers who are alive at that time will be 'caught up' to meet Him. 'Rapturos' is the Latin for 'caught up'. So 'The Rapture' is actually 'The Caught Up'. Huh? I suppose trying to talk in Latin makes folks think you are educated or something, like talking about chemistry to marketing folks. It might make you feel smart but it doesn't communicate anything. It reminds me of the way the media today is constantly turning verbs into nouns and vice versa. Rapturos is a verb, not a name for an event. 'The Caught Up' : yuck. If the aforementioned marketers had been involved, they would have quickly changed that (alas, 'morphed' it) into 'The Ketchup' just to make it more catchy. Talk about anticipation! But then I just realized that my kids probably don't even remember that great ketchup commercial that I immediately recall whenever I hear the word 'anticipation'. In any case, the very term 'The Rapture' irritates me.

I much prefer the words that are actually used for the event rather than for an action. Those words used often for Christ's return include apocalypse (revelation), epiphany (appearing), and parousia (coming). 'Apocalypse' and 'epiphany' are both transliterations of greek words in the Bible (apocalypsis and epiphaneia) rather than translations, though we don't use transliterations of 'parousia' in English. I like all of them better than 'rapture', though, since 'rapture' has lots of other meanings in English as well.

Enough venting. The book, though, was a more studious and non-hysterical approach to the subject than most of what is out there. It does point out the history of the subject, which is important since it has only been in the last century that this idea of a pre-tribulation 'Rapture' has gained any significant support among believers at all. My take on it is that the Post-tribulation view has by far the best argument that requires much less reading into the text than the Pre- or Mid- tribulation points of view. Basically, the Post-tribulation view is that 'The Rapture' and the Second Advent are one event, not two separate events. It is not an easy read and the writing style tries your patience at times, but it does a good job in pointing out the differences among these views.

Meanwhile I prefer to skip the ketchup and have the second advent instead.