Let me share one verse

“My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.”

John 18:36>

That’s what Jesus says about his kingdom.

I’m not saying that Jesus didn’t have strong opinions on the death penalty. Let me give you a tiny bit of context on this verse. Jesus was being tried for execution. When he said “my followers would fight [to save me]” he is referring to stopping him from being executed. Again, I’m not trying to say that this is Jesus justifying the death penalty. I’m saying this is Jesus saying “my Kingdom is about other things.”

Does Jesus care about the environment, whales, trees, life, choice, the death penalty … YES!!! Do those concerns take precedence over his mission? Never. He didn’t want to die. I’m sure he would have loved to set the slaves free, turn over the Roman government, setup a utopia … but that didn’t fit his purpose at that time.

I’m not saying we need to ignore these issues. I’m not saying we need to abolish the death penalty or keep it. I’m just saying you don’t need to throw Jesus under the bus to make your point. We crucified Him once for out sins, now lets try dealing with political things politically. Once you’ve witnessed successfully to everyone in your life, then you have earned a break so you can try and guess what Jesus’ opinions on political issues were.

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I’m Voting for Change
Voting Against a Candidate

Anyways, in both of these I said we had a broken system in which candidates can make all kinds of promises but really only end up focusing on the money. I think we can see the truth in that now, but that isn’t really the point of this post. I was reading an article about the $165 million in bonuses AIG has paid out in the past weeks. I am very angry about the whole deal because we shouldn’t have bailed them out in the first place. I know that many believe that we must or the entire financial system will fail but the truth is that other institutions that didn’t mess around with poor financial models like that will benefit and grow stronger thus showing that smart business wins in the long run in capitalism instead of training people to make money at any cost so the average guy can pay for the stupidity of the rich.

The part that worries me the most is this statement.

The development came as a wave of Congressional condemnation greeted Mr. Liddy on Wednesday over the bonuses paid to company executives, with some lawmakers vowing to do something to get the money back.

“We are the effective owners of this company,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, going on to suggest a lawsuit to recover the $165 million in bonuses. “I think it’s worth trying.”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/business/19web-aig.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=igw

The congressman is saying that congress (aka the government) now owns AIG and so should control them. This is a small step that leads to actual government control of everyone that takes advantage of the bailout money.

I am against the bailout in general but it is out there. We cannot continue to help out businesses with a failed model like AIG but we can’t turn around and let the government set a precedent by actually taking ownership of the business. This is a very slippery slope that we are now on. My advice (as if anyone in the government would listen to me) is to walk very slowly and carefully to a safer place. Having walked on many icy hills I’ve found that to be the best way to avoid breaking my skull open.

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