Things I Think…
1. All of my life I’ve had heroes.
When I was very young those heroes were fictional characters that taught me about virtue and bravery and justice.
As I grew up there were public figures and sports heroes that demonstrated those virtues in real life.
It mattered little that these people were not as virtuous as the stories about them…as a culture, we wanted to celebrate virtue as the proper way to live and we built virtuous narratives about people to learn from and admire.
Now, most of my heroes are gone and so is the culture that celebrated virtues and decency.
Losing heroes is a great loss…losing the desire to have them is cultural terminal illness…
2. We celebrate anti-heroes today…those who succeed through the lack of traditional virtues and decency.
You become what you admire…
3. I cringe when I see people affirming the war in Iran…because Americans don’t understand what it means to live in a country under attack. We can hope that this brings freedom and a “regime change’…but the collateral damage involved Iranians sifting through bombing rubble for loved ones…without any guarantee of a better future for the survivors…
4. I keep seeing this Iran conflict framed as a “holy war”…that is a leap of faith I just can’t make…
5. I’ve been in and out of the hospital a bunch, which means I often had to watch tv to distract myself…and realized again that the people behind most tv news are a lot sicker than I am…
6. Turning off all the electronic device demands for attention is a spiritual discipline…
7. The Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas has spoken of his Christian faith often through his campaign. The Republicans say he’s not a Christian because he supports gay marriage… while they support a thrice married man civilly convicted of rape. Tell me again about the “Christian view of marriage”….
8. I’m busily moving my investments from this age to the age to come…
9. Just to pre-empt any questions…I think a Christian is someone who can affirm the Apostles Creed and has works to prove it…
10. I utterly reject the pre-trib Rapture, but wouldn’t mind if it was true…
1. I do have heroes but none of them are still around.
8. Me also.
This “war” is most certainly not a holy war. It is a form of amusement and power for a really and truly unhinged man-child psychopath. To see the videos of the bombings reduced to direct hits in a video game tells you all you need to know about Trump. Something he is incapable of understanding is that real lives were lost, families fractured, children killed . . . but he just shrugs it off. Now he says he’ll end the “war” when he “feels it in his bones”. Dear God, please wake people up and put an end to this horrific regime.
If Trump follows through on his threat last night to destroy the energy infrastructure of Iran Iran will still be able to retaliate and they will on a level that will make the current global oil crisis he has produced pale by comparison. He is not dealing with a powerful business opponent, but a regime he is threatening existentially that will continue to have the power to close the gulf down and turn the whole region into a firestorm even if he executes his threat. There is no possibility that this war will bring regime change or freedom to the people of Iran, it was never meant to; but it will bring abject destruction to the entire country, and disastrous repercussions to the entire globe.
The glee with which a part of the American populace celebrates the bombing of Iran is one of the most repulsive things imaginable; and the official videos that treat it like a video game are satanic.
A guy at work told another coworker that the Bible “says” that Iran will be destroyed in the end times. Of course, even if read “literally”, nowhere does the Bible speak in such terms. It speaks in terms of the Persian army waging war against Israel in the Holy Land being destroyed, but that doesn’t involve the current state of Iran or the ancient kingdom of Persia being destroyed. And I let the second coworker understand this; she checked the Bible and saw for herself. These people only know their Bibles as filtered through End Times word-of-mouth; it’s pathetic really. And all this to justify Trump’s immoral war against Iran, and to cheer for the obliteration of an entire country.
It is crystal clear the Iranian regime can prevent passage of traffic through the strait of Hormuz for many months if not a longer time even if Iran’s energy infrastructure is completely destroyed. Finally understanding this, Trump is asking nations of the world to send military assets to finish the war he started but can’t end by himself. But given the strategic realities of the placement of the strait, and the asymmetrical military strategy and weaponry that Iran has developed and acquired for decades all aimed at denying passage through the strait if it chose, almost no amount of global military presence would make a difference, short of the use of nuclear weapons, which would result in the strait being impassible for a very long time. The Iranian regime has control and neither Trump nor the rest of world can alter that for the foreseeable future as we plummet into a global energy crisis. Somebody should’ve thought this out, or listened to wiser experienced military voices, instead of acting on impulse.
Regarding heroes and antiheroes in American culture: Americans have always loved snake oil salesmen and gangsters, for confidence men. America has a not often spoken of love for lawlessness in figures like Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. This is not new, it’s just that one of those lawless characters is now president of the United States. The chickens are home to roost
9. A Christian is someone who has the Holy Spirit dwelling within them.
John Perkins has died. Blessed be his memory.
“Charles Marsh, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia who had written about Mr. Perkins, called him “one of the most transformative Black Christian voices in the years after the civil rights struggle.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/us/john-m-perkins-dead.html
How sad about Perkins, although I know he was quite elderly and God was glad to receive him. I worked for a Christian social service ministry back in the 90s and he came out to California to speak at a couple of retreats. Having grown up in the tail-end of the civil rights movement/black is beautiful as a white kid in a mixed race neighborhood, I appreciated his perspective and his ability to bring all kinds if people together.
Robert F,
I’ve found that you (generic you), can make the Bible say just about anything you want it to say.
“10. I utterly reject the pre-trib Rapture, but wouldn’t mind if it was true…”
LoL! Same here!