Religious Freedom
The Supreme Court is hearing a case right now involving whether or not private business owners can be forced to violate their religious convictions by the new ACA usually referred to as Obamacare. Businesses like Hobby Lobby and a few other privately held businesses (one of them is a woodcrafting business that is Mennonite owned), particularly oppose being forced to pay for the provision of the “abortion pill”, mifepristone, or if the mifepristone does not take, then an actual medical procedural abortion.
I am personally shocked that the current administration allowed it to come to this with the Supreme Court weighing in on the matter. It really makes no sense in the big picture. Obamacare is already one of the most distasteful and unpopular laws ever enacted upon the American people, and to date it has been altered, delayed, postponed, and tweaked in thirty-five different ways and occasions. Most of these delays and changes have been designed to push enactment of unpopular aspects of the law past upcoming elections to lessen the electoral fallout. How cynical can we get as a nation? We can tweak anything and everything about an unpopular law for the sake of someone’s personal or political gain, but we cannot make allowance for the small handful of companies whose owners will be cast into agonizing religious turmoil if forced to pay for abortions.
I am convinced that most Americans do not really understand the First Amendment. The great wall of separation of Church and State was established not to rid the people of their religious character and core but to protect any one religious expression from being perpetuated by government force. It is not freedom from religion, but the freedom to pursue our religious beliefs. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights says it this way, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
Come on, Feds… you have already changed major provisions of Obamacare, amounting to billions in its consequence to business, the job market and insurance companies, unions, etc… Is Hobby Lobby really the place where you draw the line? Why?
Hollywood goes Biblical… well by Hollywood standards
Have you noticed the rash of “spiritual message” movies lately? We have the amazing “Son of God” movie now in theaters. The movie, “God is Not Dead” is out right now and may be a bit hard to find, and I have not seen it yet, but I hear it is very good. And, of course, we have the big budget production of “Noah” with actors like Russell Crow and Emma Watson, two of my favorites.
I know the Noah movie is taking some heat and perhaps deservedly so. The director has gone to extremes to “de-biblify” his movie. I believe director Darren Aronofsky’s exact quote was that Noah would be ‘the least biblical biblical film ever made’. Imagine a movie about Noah in which the word God is not used. There is creative license and then there is simple stupidity. None the less, many Christians regularly watch far worse fare at the theaters and I for one am simply glad to see Hollywood willing to utilize the Bible to locate some ideas for new productions. Pass the popcorn and watch where you step, the ark is a little messy.
March Madness is Awesome
I look for spiritual lessons wherever I can find them, and March Madness is dripping with good stuff. The little guys like Mercer get to go toe to toe with the basketball royalty like Duke on neutral floors (was Raleigh a neutral floor). But my favorite image so far is anything involving Coach LeVelle Moton and his NC Central Eagles. Coach Moton’s son was hospitalized just before the tourney began after pulling a hot coffee cup off a table and spilling it onto his face. Thankfully, the child is fine and doctors assured Moton he could head off to the tourney. Moton is an awesome man who speaks of his faith often. You should follow Levelle Moton on twitter at @LevelleMoton. He says in his bio “Basketball is what I do, not who I am. Child of God…” That’s LeVelle Moton in a nutshell.
NC Central is in good hands.