Sunday thoughts

Just returned from another hour of puppy training. Very helpful, but I must say that we are all exhausted. It might be the sinus infection I am fighting for me, but trying to get a rambunctious border collie to behave in a Petsmart is the other part, I am sure. Have to rest up, though because tonight we get to see David Olney and Sergio Webb at a house concert.

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The conversation with Andy was also exhausting, perhaps because I have less patience with fundamentalism than I once did. But my last comment pretty much summed up my frustration with any of the "Bible said it, I believe it, and that does it" crowd. As I noted, when the Bible says homosexuality is bad, there is no discussion of motives, no parsing of context, no suggestion of language barriers. It is just assumed to be iron-clad law. But when the Bible says that being wealthy is bad, and even an impediment to God--that is prone to interpretation. It is only when you love money more than God--though who the hell admits that? Or when the Bible says that we are to love our enemies, the fundies, to a person, don't think that includes terrorists or really dangerous people. Surely Jesus didn't intend that we actually "turn the other cheek," right?

And to be fair, I have no clue. I think that we live in a far more complex economic system to conclude that charging interest is evil. And I have no intention of letting a terrorists kill me in my house if I have other choices. But neither am I convinced that either Genesis is a scientific or historical document, nor that the sexual norms of an ancient tribal society are exactly the same as ours, or should be.

But if we are going to parse some of it, then insisting on absolutism for the part that doesn't effect you? That is just self-centered and inconsistent.

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Ok, one more question. Conservatives constantly say that cutting taxes on the rich helps the economy (always) because those rich people then invest in companies that create jobs and increase our tax revenue. Well, I think they are actually lying about the last part, and that they don't even intend for it to increase revenue, but that is another question. But about the job creation and investment, why do we always assume that the rich will invest that money here? Why do we think automatically that their investment dollars won't go to China or India?