Yearly Archive: 2009

Obfuscate Me!

joe August 14, 2009 Political Healthcare

Don't let the big word confuse you. There is a definition, and that is "To make so confused as to be difficult to understand or to render indistinct or dim."

That's what the government is trying to do with the great all-American Healthcare reform known as HR3200.

If you think you are going to get better health care, just think about doing your taxes. Do you understand what all those blanks refer to or what the words mean or what exactly you should put there? I was so obsessed with all the retoric coming from Congress and Mr. Obama that I downloaded the entire 1017 pages of the bill.

Reading this bill is a joke!

They have sections that refer to sections that refer to sections that change other sections by leaving out words or paragraphs! If you don't believe me, get your own copy and try reading it.

If you want to know why our government is in such sad shape, this should give you a clue. No wonder the people who do the "Town Hall Meetings" are getting blasted. How could anyone know what is in the bill, when it is so convoluted!

Just because I am a "give me the facts" man, I wanted to check it out and see if the Right Wing Boogie Men were speaking the truth. Just checking out two of their "facts" got me to the truth. Here are two examples:

While citizens who do not have health care will be taxed (a penalty), non-resident aliens are exempt from paying the tax [Section 59B, Page 170, Line 1]
When you pay your taxes, you usually get some credit for taxes you have paid the government, but this bill says "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax imposed by this chapter for purposes of determining the amount of any credit under this chapter or for purposes of section 55 [Section 441, Page 203, Lines 14 and 15]

I don't know who Nancy, Harry and Barack think they are. They can continue to obfuscate who ever you want in Washington, but we the people are tired of being obfuscated on. We don't need any more laws that no one can figure out, much less that get passed off to a bureaucracy (like IRS) to write a bunch of rules that no one can change.

Oh, by the way. Have you noticed that of the eight – yes eight co-sponsors of HR3200 only one has the guts to hold a Town Hall Meeting. If the people who put their name down as being willing to sponsor this thing don't have the guts to go around the country and explain it, that ought to tell you something. Maybe they don't know what it says – "just sounded like a good thing to get my name on."

You can check out everything yourself by going to Library Of Congress. You can get the document from the Government Printing Office by following a link at the Library of Congress or HERE

Understand This!

joe August 14, 2009 Faith

That could well have been Elihu's loud cry in the preceding chapters, but as he continues in chapters 36 and 37, his words cut! They reach down to the common denominator that man is not in charge. We are just caretakers. What we have is not a right but a gift. What we are is not because of what we have done, but because of what He allows.

Elihu seems to have seen through the words that flowed back and forth between Job and his friends. The "old guys" had rambled on and on, and the kid reminds them again and again that they had turned into windbags. Almost as though "you were talking just to hear yourself talk – you weren't really saying anything!"

One of the things that Elihu makes clear is that God can only act justly – He cannot do anything else, because He IS a god of justice and righteousness. He urges Job to understand that yelling at and about God won't get an answer. Elihu's words must have weighed heavily when he said "He has the case, and you (Job) have to wait for Him to answer! Stop babbling on Job, because by doing that you make it look like you don't know what you are talking about."

For all his youth, or the fact that he was so much younger than Job, Elipahz, Bildad and Zophar, Elihu must have listened well to some wise old men. His vision of who God is and what He can do has to be the result of his listening well. Here is the student, so to speak, teaching the teachers. It many ways, it was throwing their words back at them. While Job and Company carried on about many things, it was apparent to Elihu that they were missing the heart of the matter.

One of the challenges he lays down is in chapter 36 where he capsulizes the very power of God as a reminder that "we are not so much." In effect, he says "He has done a lot of things – remember? Can you tell how old God is, or where He will make it rain? Can you explain how the clouds work or how seeds sprout into food? Why aren't you able to explain how His lightning strikes and where? We can't get our head around it, so why are we sitting here blaming Him for what is happening?"

Then comes 37:13 where Elihu says "Whatever happens, whether it is to fix something, or for His world, or just because He loves us, He causes it to happen." BAM! It's as though he has hit the four old guys across the head with the very book they told him in his youth to read and remember. He was repeating their lessons back to them. He was reminding them of "Who's in charge."

You can read it for yourself in chapter 37, but in the end of his words, Elihu repeats his message. "God will not destroy (do violence or make a mockery of) justice and all His righteousness."

The message from Elihu over and over is that God cannot do anything but love us and deal with us according to His plan of justice. His laws have not changed – they are not subject to interpretation. His justice is not "living", but set. God will not deal with us in different ways, for to do so would mean there is no justice.

Our God IS an awesome God!

The Kid Continues

joe August 11, 2009 Faith

Elihu wasn't finished. More like he was just getting warmed up to the challenge of pointing out the error of his "elders" words.

Remember, because of his age, he held back and let the older and wiser men speak, and then Job gave his rebuttal and they answered back. Here comes this young man who may not have had the years, but his truth quickly cut through the misinformation the old guys gave.

Here is something to which I can relate. While in general it can be said that "the older one is, the more one knows." But, the truth of the matter is that a really wise older person knows when they don't know, and consequently knows when to shutup and listen. Listening is the hard part, because all of us get set in our ways – young and old. Being set in our ways keeps us from hearing the truth.

The problem is that we get hung up on thinking we know more than the person talking, [more]and so we do not listen and actually think about what they are saying. It's not that Job was not listening, but that all that had been said up to this point was trashing or questioning God.

Elihu in these five chapters (32-37) makes it clear that the real issue was not that God was punishing Job, but rather that we (Job and his friends) don't have any right to question what God does.

Elihu's points probably sounded like fingernails on a chalk board to Job, Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar
[html]<ul><li>God does not do wickedness (34:10)</li>
<li>God will not prevert justice (34:12)</li>
<li>He cannot rule and hate justice (34:17)</li>
<li>Our righteousness is never more than God's (35:2 & 7)</li></ul>[/html]
As Elihu speaks in chapter 35, we see the might and power he attributes to God. His words are a reminder to Job and Company that God is in control, even if we don't want to acknowledge it. Elihu reminds us (even though he was speaking to them) that pride keeps us from hearing what God is saying to us or seeing what God has put in front of us. When we reach the point that we think we know more than God and want to order our own lives, then we are really in for trouble.

At the end of chapter 35, the Kid strikes with swiftness as he says "Job did not have anything to say – he just babbled words on and on. He talked about what he knew nothing about! A big fat waste of energy!"

Maybe the words of the Psalmist work better…"Let the words that I say and what I think about a lot be something that will make you happy God, for You are the rock upon which I want to set my life and You have redeemed me." (Psalm 19:14)