Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Life Lessons from Little Miss Sunshine

I'm a big fan of sarcasm. Sarcasm makes people sound smart and witty. I also appreciate how much disillusionment can occur using pithy and simple observations.

Anyway, I was watching a movie today, Little Miss Sunshine, and this line stuck out:
Sarcasm is the refuge of losers. Sarcasm is losers trying to bring winners down to their level.
I know, the movie was making a point with that quote. Of course, there is a lot that can be learned from losing things in life. A sarcastic comment is an expression of truth, which is healthy. Sarcasm also makes people laugh, which is healthy too.

So, if laughing and the expression of truth are healthy things, why is sarcasm so bad?

I'm glad you asked.

Someone whose teaching I respect very much wrote about why sarcasm isn't always a good thing: anti-sarcasm one and anti-sarcasm two. In short, sarcasm gets old after a while because it identifies problems without identifying solutions. So I've been trying to be less sarcastic about things. Unfortunately, if you know me, you know that it hasn't really been working out too well.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
2 Corinthians 5:16-19 (NIV)

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

What is it exactly that you do here?

Show of hands. Who here is as glad as I am that our president knows his job description?

Thursday, January 15, 2009

You need to read this

I got to this story via Jeff's blog, who got it via Kamp Krusty. Good stuff. Have a kleenex handy before reading.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

"God have mercy on them."

My first reaction to most things is usually cynical and/or skeptical. I'm trying hard to not react this way so much because I feel that most times these attitudes result in inaction and/or whining.

That being as it may, I read this article on Reuters and I'm a little cynical of Saudi's intentions.
"(King Abdullah) saw you on television and was extremely affected," Health Minister Hamad al-Manei told the girl, Jamila, at a meeting of Arab health ministers in Riyadh.
It's good that someone is caring for innocent children who have been severely injured by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, maybe it was the explosives and not the children that were in the wrong place. In any case, the children are alive for at least one more day to [hopefully] recognize God's grace through Jesus Christ. Now they just need someone to tell them the Good News that can really save their lives.

Meanwhile, in other news, some Christians in Gaza are protesting the conflict by wrapping themselves in bandages covered in fake blood. I'm not sure what this is supposed to communicate that the actual images of war don't communicate already.