Several Random Indications That we Live in a Morally and Ethically Bankrupt World

1. A woman being offended that I dared to open a door for her.
2. A policeman turning on his blue lights and siren so he can pass through a red traffic light, then turning them off and resuming normal speed.
3. Able bodied persons taking handicapped parking spaces, using their handicapped aunt's parking sticker; some even using counterfeit stickers and placards.
4. Millions of persons download music illegally from the internet, and the business in pirated movie DVD's is a billion dollar affair.
5. Americans and Europeans consume billions of dollars worth of illegal drugs annually, ignoring the fact that the drug trade is built on smuggling, murder, theft, bribery, the use of children as "mules," and the fact that a large portion of the financing for international terrorism comes from the illegal drug trade.
6. Thinking that the hip-hop/rap music culture (based on the glorification of violence and mysogyny) is somehow "authentically  black."
7. 95% of US high school students admit to having cheated on their school work at least once.
8. As many as 22% of married men, and 14% of married women, have had at least one extramarital affair even though up to 90% of Americans say that marital infidelity is wrong.
9. Sexual abuse of children by schoolteachers, pastors, and priests is increasingly reported worldwide.
10. Abortions in the United States: 193,491 i 1970; 1,429,279 in 1990; 820,151 in 2005.

The list could go on and on.

Book Comment: The Church Ladies' Divine Desserts

The Church Ladies' Divine Desserts. Heavenly Recipes and Sweet Recollections (2001) is a cookbook compiled by Brenda Rhodes Miller. The recipes are for cakes, pies, cookies, candy, custards, puddings, frozen delights, sauces, frostings, fillings, glazes, and beverages. Sweet delight.

Along with the recipes are numerous biographical sketches of gracious Black Church Ladies (and one male pastor) who faithfully serve their churches, and have done so for years. The compiler, Brenda Miller, is the executive director of the DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and is the wife of a Baptist pastor.

The foreword was written by Dr. Dorothy Irene Height (b. 1912, Virginia - d. 2010), an educator and social activist who, for forty years, was the president of the National Council of Negro Women. In 1994, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and, in 2004, the Congressional Gold Medal. At her death, US President Barack Obama had the capitol's flags flown at half-mast to honor her.

Film Comment: Watermelon Man

     In Watermelon Man (1970), a comedy directed by controversial director Melvin van Peebles [Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song (1971)], an obnoxious white man (Godfrey Cambridge in white makeup not up to 2009 standards) wakes up black and his entire world collapses around him.  He thinks it's a medical condition but he finds out that he's just black.  Everyone starts to treat him differently, even his progressive liberal wife (Estelle Parsons) who finds out that she's not so open minded after all.  He becomes increasingly alienated and hostile.  

     It amazes me that people, black and white, won't let it go, but, in America, race really is still the 800 pound gorilla that won't leave us alone.  Some people are so conditioned to think race first that they assume that any criticism of a black person by a white person must be because of a racist motive.  Others are convinced that persons descended from slaveholding ancestors ought to walk around in a heavy cloud of guilt.

     I am convinced that the solution does not lie in education, patriotism, nationalism, mind control, forced political correctness, shaming, or emerging from a cocoon as a "pod person."  The solution lies in the like-mindedness which comes from having the same nature, the Mind of Christ.

     Racism and other divisive attitudes are incompatible with a declaration of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  If we are His we should be like him.

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:" Philippians 2:5

"Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." Acts 10: 34-35.

"For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him." Romans 10:12

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:28.