Wednesday, September 28, 2005
The rebel flag
Well it's hit us now. My local school district yesterday placed a ban on the rebel flag. No rebel flag stickers on cars, no rebel flag tshirts and I find myself in a quandary. On one hand I think it is the closest thing we have in this nation to a swastika, on the other hand I am kind of attached to the first amendment. What really sealed it for me was this morning when a coworker commenting on the story referred to the people who wore/displayed the flag as "stupid hicks." I know some of those folks. They're not racists, they like the Dukes of Hazzard, they're put off by people who call them stupid hicks and they think Larry the Cable Guy is kind of funny. They heard Jeff Foxworthy and they laughed and maybe related just a little.
It always amazes me how quick "freespeech" liberals will jump off the freespeech band wagon the second the speech is something they disagree with. I wonder if the comment would be the same if the shirts/stickers said something PC but equally or more reprehensible (plenty of PC things are). To many that flag represents hatred, to others it represents their heritage and some just want to "git-r-done". I could live without it, but my free speech that I'm kind of attached to. As a Christian and a minister, I'll lose that soon enough. I don't need to grease the slippery slope.
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Well it's hit us now. My local school district yesterday placed a ban on the rebel flag. No rebel flag stickers on cars, no rebel flag tshirts and I find myself in a quandary. On one hand I think it is the closest thing we have in this nation to a swastika, on the other hand I am kind of attached to the first amendment. What really sealed it for me was this morning when a coworker commenting on the story referred to the people who wore/displayed the flag as "stupid hicks." I know some of those folks. They're not racists, they like the Dukes of Hazzard, they're put off by people who call them stupid hicks and they think Larry the Cable Guy is kind of funny. They heard Jeff Foxworthy and they laughed and maybe related just a little.
It always amazes me how quick "freespeech" liberals will jump off the freespeech band wagon the second the speech is something they disagree with. I wonder if the comment would be the same if the shirts/stickers said something PC but equally or more reprehensible (plenty of PC things are). To many that flag represents hatred, to others it represents their heritage and some just want to "git-r-done". I could live without it, but my free speech that I'm kind of attached to. As a Christian and a minister, I'll lose that soon enough. I don't need to grease the slippery slope.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Separate God from your ministry.
I think to be truly successful in ministry we need to separate God from our ministries. Now I know that sounds really, really wrong, maybe even heresy, but it's all about priorities. Because as ministers, our work is so connected to God, the line between work and God can become very, very blurry. Of course we can never succeed in ministry without God, but if we allow that line to come too blurry we can allow our lives to fall way out of balance. God is our number one priority, ministry can never be more than number three if it moves into that second place, the one where family lives or, God forbid, number one we are destined to fail.
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I think to be truly successful in ministry we need to separate God from our ministries. Now I know that sounds really, really wrong, maybe even heresy, but it's all about priorities. Because as ministers, our work is so connected to God, the line between work and God can become very, very blurry. Of course we can never succeed in ministry without God, but if we allow that line to come too blurry we can allow our lives to fall way out of balance. God is our number one priority, ministry can never be more than number three if it moves into that second place, the one where family lives or, God forbid, number one we are destined to fail.
