A few posts back, I discussed the growing phenomenon called Casual Sundays, which I suggested shows a lack of respect in God’s house.

A fellow journal writer, whose own journal is on my list of regularly-visited sites, weighed in with an E-mail. I’ll share a single paragraph from it:

At 18, I was one of those people in jeans and a t-shirt. The only person in 10 years who didn’t quit going to my church after graduating from high school. When a visiting Pastor made me go home to change one day, I came back in shorts and a different t-shirt - and barefoot. After all, we were on holy ground. I didn’t own any nice clothes, let alone anything that wasn’t a third generation hand-me-down. I was the last of 8 kids whose mother stayed home to raise us. We weren’t raised in the church and I joined at the urging of my high school friends.

He goes on to say that when he was refused admittance by this Pastor, 100 or so of the Parishoners got up and walked out.

Good for them! In light of this response, let me amend my earlier comments to make sure I was being clear before: those who haven’t the means to wear the “Sunday best” but who come to church anyway are showing much more respect to God than those who have those $50 ties sitting there in the closet but who prefer — for convenience’s sake — to wear a polo shirt so that they’ll be one step closer to being ready for lunch at the steakhouse or 18 holes at the country club.

I don’t believe that church should have a dress code posted at the door, and that those devoted to God should be sent away…but at the same time, I still say that “Casual Sundays” shouldn’t be an excuse to “dress down” in church if you otherwise have the means not to.

Thanks for the response, fellow journal writer, and thanks to any others of you who wish to chime in on this one.

By the way, that church in which my reader was almost thrown out a second time now has a barefoot service inside once a year, to remind everyone that they are on Holy Ground! How’s that for getting straight to the point!!

Every now and then, things I hear in TV news really make me cringe. I try to stay as grammatically correct as possible in the scripts I write, and so I am particularly sensitive to bad writing when I hear it.

This morning on the “Today” show, two things stood out.

First, an anchor pitched to a reporter standing by live who would give us “the very latest.”

The latest means the recent events to unfold within a story since the last report we’ve heard. The very latest therefore, is redundant. Give us the latest and we’ll know what we need to know.

The other annoyance is the word meantime, not because it’s not a word, but because it is constantly used incorrectly.

How many times have you heard someone use the word “meantime” by itself in place of “meanwhile?” You can’t do that. It’s either “meanwhile” or “in the meantime.” You cannot use “meantime” by itself.

The next time you listen to a news report, listen for either of these. It shouldn’t take you long to hear both!

From Fox News: Rep. Corrine Brown (D, FL), issued an apology for comments made about the Bush administration’s Haiti policy. In those comments, she stated Republican leaders were “racist” in their policies toward the nation. She added that those leaders were “a bunch of white men.”

Taking exception to this was House Rep. Henry Bonilla (R, TX), who stated that he was a Mexican-American and deeply resented being called racist and white.

Her initial response, according to witnesses: “You all look alike to me.”

WHAT??

As Bonilla correctly pointed out, had that comment been made by a Republican about a group of Black lawmakers, a firestorm would have resulted! Bonilla complained that there is a racist double-standard in the Democratic party that is keeping this exchange rather quiet. “The current silence is deafening,” Bonilla said, in what has to qualify as one of the best soundbites of the week.

Brown later wrote an apology to Bonilla in which she stated that her comments came as a result of the fact that the State Department delegation involved did not include any “females or people of color.” As Haiti is mostly black, Brown felt their position was “callous and out of touch with the needs, (cultural and otherwise) of the Haitian people.”

As if she hadn’t given us enough material to work with, Brown added, that she was sorry “if what I said was construed as a personal affront.”

Where to begin??

How about this: you cannot condemn racism if you then use it as a point of argument. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. Her comment about “a bunch of white men,” was as racist. She shot her own argument in the foot before it ever took a first step.

And: is it truly impossible for lawmakers to represent all people? Can a black leader not represent white people? Is a white leader incapabale of serving the needs of black constituents? Forget Haiti for a second: If color is that big of an issue, does this mean that we need to segregate the country and divide up states so that black citizens are only represented by blacks and whites by whites? Is this not the logic of this position, when carried out to full measure?

I suspect that all races have a share of common sense…that given a balanced look at a situation, people of all colors can come to a conclusion that best serves the whole. I wouldn’t vote against a black candidate simply because he’s black. I would consider such behavior — by either race — extremely shortsighted.

Finally, the most ridiculous part of the story. That little line in her apology about being sorry “if what I said was construed as a personal affront.”

Dear readers, please indulge me for a moment: go back in time to a point in your life where you were discriminated against, because of your color, your gender, or even your looks. Is there any other way to take it?

Racism, after all, is a personal attack: the racist assumes that you aren’t worth getting to know on a personal level becuase you happen to belong to one group, and that you’re no better than the worst member of that group.

I’m sure Rep. Brown, when she has been prejudiced against at some point in her life, took it as a personal affront.

Her comments are inexcusable. Even if her concern about there being no black representation in the delegation is valid, her approach was completely inappropriate. A leader whose job is to represent all people should know better.

It’s opening day for The Passion of the Christ. Yesterday on the Today show, David Denby, film critic for the New Yorker was very critical of the movie, and his argument left me thinking he’d missed the whole point of the film.

He condemned the movie for depicting only the last twelve hours of Christ’s life and for doing so in graphic detail, “blow after blow.” He accuses director Mel Gibson of taking us on a “sickening death trip.” He takes exception to a ten-minute torture scene in which Jesus is scorged, pointing out that in the Gospels, “this is just a single line.”

Well, the purpose of torture is to inflict pain. Whether the Bible devoted one line or twenty to Jesus’s torture, does anyone honestly think he was struck just once with the whips then sent on to pick up his cross?

Did they torture him for two minutes, five, ten, or twenty? We don’t know. But to get wrapped up in the length of a movie scene in comparison to the length of a mention in the bible seems a bit silly to me.

Like some others, Denby calls the film a “hate-filled movie.” The physical dissentigration of Christ that is shown in the film, he says, “alters Jesus’s message of love into one of hate.”

Whoa…

If Christ went through all of this torture and pain in order to save our souls, does that strengthen the message of love? Doesn’t it reinforce the sacrifice that he made for us?

And if we’re responsible for his death (all of us!), then shouldn’t we have some sense of what he went through for us, rather than blindly skimming over the pain he endured?

The images, undoubtedly difficult to watch, show us what one man was willing to do for mankind. If we believe that what is depicted in the film (and/or the Bible) did happen, do we not have a responsibility to realize the scope of Christ’s suffering on our behalf and hold ourselves to be worthy of that unconditional love?

I passed a banner hanging across a church’s parking lot advertising “Casual Sundays” the same way a restaurant might advertise shrimp being added to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Apparently, putting on a tie is too much hassle for a visit to God’s house. Throwing on a t-shirt and shorts isn’t.

In the Bible, we are taught that to pray and really be heard, you must show your reverance to the Lord. You should kneel and show humble yourself before God.

I respectfully suggest that when we’re more concerned with wearing something “casual,” then we’ve lost the focus of what a church is and isn’t about. When we stop wearing our “good clothes” as a sign of respect to God, we’re no longer humbling ourself.

Think about it this way: if you were going to a dinner party at a friend’s house, where there would be both mutual friends and people you had never met, wouldn’t you dress up a little? (If your answer is “no,” I suspect you don’t get that many invites.)

Isn’t a visit to God’s house as important as some dinner party?

I realize that the main point of such “casual” services is to make everyone feel welcome in church. Some people don’t have a nice three-piece suit and silk tie, after all. But suppose there are two different people of different means: Tom, an upper middle class professional with a closet full of suits; and John, a struggling man who is between jobs who doesn’t even own a tie. When Tom throws on a polo shirt and shorts so that he can be comfortable, and John selects the nicest shirt and slacks he has in his closet, which man do you suppose is showing God the most respect?

I was reading the story about a young family missing for several days from their quiet town in Mississippi. Michael and Rebecca Hargon, both in their late 20’s and their 4-year-old son, James Patrick, vanished on Valentine’s Day from their home in Vaughan.

Officially, it’s a missing persons case. But police discovered a very disturbing clue: dried blood, shell casings and bullet holes inside their home. Oddly, their home was converted from a convenience store in which Michael’s father was killed during a robbery there. Three men are in prison for that crime.

The most compelling part of the story came in a quote from a neighbor who said, “We don’t worry about locking our doors.” It’s hard for many of us to imagine living in a place where people don’t worry about securing their belongings, although I suspect most of us grew up in such a place.

I feel sad for this family, because the evidence inside the home would seem to suggest that something bad has happened to them. I feel sad for the community, finding itself in the middle of a tragedy that will no doubt traumatize their neighbors for a long time to come. And I feel sorry for America…because we’ve lost one more innocent community in which residents never have to think about locking their doors.

Not that I really believe these things, but my horoscope tells me that I’m willing to strike up a bargain to please both sides. In that vein, perhaps I can tackle the hot topic of Gay Marriage versus Civil Unions.

As I understand it, (thanks to a few other journal entries), most homosexuals don’t like the idea of a “Civil Union” because it puts them in the position of being second-class citizens. (”Why can’t we have marriage the same as the ’straight world,’” I heard one gay man say.)

Many heterosexuals nix the idea of “Gay Marriage” because they believe the word “marriage,” by definition, implies a relationship between a man and a woman.

And meanwhile, while we’re all arguing over semantics, the issue goes on and on and on.

Perhaps it’s a sad truth of our society, but no problem is solved with a single piece of legislation or action. Personally, I don’t feel that I have the right to tell two homosexual people deeply in love and committed to each other, who happen to be willing to put that committment on paper and live a life as devoted to each other as a strong heterosexual marriage couple would that they don’t have that right.

If legislators are willing to pass “Civil Union” bills that at least give gays equal rights, isn’t this a good first step? Must it automatically be the end of the line? Does it have to mean that that the lawmakers are saying, “Okay, we’ll throw you this nugget, and you’ll never get anything else?”

The “all or nothing” mentality, it seems to me, can as easily alienate potential supporters as accomplish goals. Am I missing something here?

Oh, the things that offend us…

A writer consults “Miss Manners” today about the proper response to give someone who thrusts unsolicited sonogram photos at you with the expectation that you want to see the work-in-progress. “These photographs cause me to feel a little queasy,” the writer states.

Queasy? From a sonogram??

Maybe it’s been a while since I’ve seen one…maybe they’re using technology that’s worlds different than the last sonogram I saw (of a friend’s child) several months back…but in most cases, there’s not enough detail to make me queasy.

Once, I had to rely on the proud parents to “decipher” for me what was what. I wasn’t sure if I was looking at a high-tech medical photo or some kind of abstract artwork!

When Bill Clinton ran for President, the Republicans made a big deal about his lack of military service. The Democrats said this was unfair and didn’t mean that he would be an ineffective leader.

Now, George W. Bush’s military service is being called into question by many of those same Democrats, and it’s the Republicans crying foul.

This typical political skirmish leads me to wonder whether the Constitution should be adjusted to add military service as a qualification for becoming president. It seems to me that the other side is going to call one’s military record into question no matter who is running. And I can’t agree that it’s all that fair.

Part of the controversy lies in the argument that President Bush joined the Air National Guard to avoid being sent to Viet Nam. Thankfully, I’m young enough to have missed that draft, but if I had the chance to avoid going to Viet Nam back then, I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t have taken it. I understand why those who did so chose that route. It makes me respect those who did go to Viet Nam that much more, but I understand.

What about someone who has never served, even in times of peace? You never know when war will break out. Even when all seems right with the world, joining up could still put you in the middle of a conflict. Is someone like me who has never served in the military even when it was “quiet” less of a citizen? Am I less patriotic?

In the business sector, workers get promotions. They rise in the ranks, and the top man can very often find himself supervising large companies in which there are employees doing jobs he’s never done before. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a good leader…it just means he needs people around him who will help him make the right decisions.

I don’t mean to be the slightest bit disrespectful of our veterans: it is their very sacrifices that allow us today to write these silly journal entries in a free country. I just wonder where we draw the line on one’s responsibility as a citizen.

I was raised a Southern Baptist, and still consider myself one. I have no doubt that God is real and that he lives within me. I’ve watched with great interest and amusement the furor over Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ.

I find it more than a little ironic that it takes an R-rated film to make so many people ponder Jesus Christ. I wonder what Jesus himself would say to us if he took physical form to comment on this fascination. Would he be pleased to know that so many of us haven’t forgotten about him after all? Or would he be disappointed that it took Hollywood to make people say, “Oh, Jesus…yes, I remember him.”

If the movie hadn’t made headlines, I doubt so many people would suddenly be wearing their religion on their sleeve…but since this film has zealots coming out of the woodwork, I thought I’d drop a few points that need to be pondered.

First, I’m quite sick of the press making such a big deal about Mel Gibson’s outspoken father. The elder Gibson has made several statements that are divisive, including comments that the millions of Jews reported killed in the Holocaust weren’t killed after all, they just moved to other places.

Gibson’s critics, many of whom seem to want to portray themselves as Godly people one way or the other, want Mel to come out and denounce his father…to state plainly once and for all that his dad must be some kind of fruitcake. In that now-famous television interview, Diane Sawyer was unable to get him to criticize his father, which has only led to more controversy.

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought there was a commandment about honoring thy father and mother. Are the religious among us wanting Mel to break a commandment just to make a point?

What difference does his father’s views make? Did his father come up with the idea for the movie? Did his father write the script? Do you agree with everything your father has ever done, and do you expect to be held accountable for any mis-steps he has made?

Mel Gibson has stated that he does not share his father’s views, but that he loves him anyway. Jesus knows that all of us are sinners, but loves us anyway. What more do we need here?

The Passion of the Christ has also inspired a debate about who is responsible for Jesus Christ’s death. In our society, we need to be able to blame someone for everything that happens. Nothing is ever our fault, it’s always someone else’s. We just like to know who because when we can find someone to blame it on, it makes us feel better because we’re in a position of judging the “guilty.”

Much has been made about the Jews being responsible for Jesus’s death. Anti-Semitic groups have raised red flags that the movie will prompt violence against the Jews from those shocked by the images of Christ’s torture.

My bible has a relevant passage I’d like to point out. It occurs in Acts, Chapter 10, when Peter, a Jewish preacher spreads his message in the home of Cornelius, a Gentile.

Acts 10:45: The Jewish believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poired out even on the Gentiles.

This verse indicates that though we have differences, we are all part of God’s plan, and can actually benefit from those differences to help us piece together what our role is in that plan. Our differences shouldn’t be a source of conflict; they should be a source of open-minded dialog designed to help both sides understand how God works. No one has all the answers…but I’m sure we’ve all benefitted at some point from looking at things from a different perspective.

Who is responsible for Jesus’s death? Well, in a way, all of us are. We are all sinners, according to scripture, and it’s only through his death and resurrection that the believers will have eternal life. If we hadn’t sinned, his death would be unnecessary. No matter who led him to Golgatha, he laid down his life for us. If you’re so desparate to find someone to blame, I suggest that you begin with a visit to your nearest mirror.

Those who were directly involved in his physical death were merely instruments in Christ achieving his great destiny, and thereby, our own salvation. Let’s not point fingers…let’s be happy that we have this incredible gift.

I love this story!! The Associated Press reports that several authors were caught redhanded over the weekend unfairly inflating the reviews of their own books and those of colleagues and friends.

The glitch apparently happened on Amazon.com’s Canadian website.

Amazon’s online book store includes reviews of books, with space for Amazon customers to review the books themselves, either to agree or disagree with the “professional” reviewers. But the customer reviews are often not signed by their writers. So, a bad review could be shown to have been written by “A reader in Chicago,” for example.

Anyway, over the weekend, something happened to those anonymous tags, and suddenly real names appeared, revealing that some authors were posting glowing reviews of their own books while posing as enthusiastic readers.

One author who confessed to writing a review of his own book justified his actions by complaining that it is “absurd” to think that anyone can come in and trash a writer’s work anonymously.

Don’t quite understand that argument. How does requiring a name on a bad review remove the absurdity?

Like everything else, it’s really all in the eye of the beholder. Some of the greatest books ever written don’t hold my interest. And some of my favorites would never make a literary hall of fame. I feel sorry for anyone who bases his decision to buy a book solely on what a reader they’ve never met (whether they know the name or not) has to say about it.

In the Sunday paper, there’s a story buried on the back page of the “Business” section. (How I ever found it, I’ll never know.) Anyway, it talks about AOL’s fervent battle against direct marketers who send out all that spam.

Quoting the article:

“Now AOL is (reportedly) offering to sell large-volume e-mailers information that tells them whether and why their e-mail did or did not land in an inbox.”

The article goes on to say that AOL is considering a plan to allow “legitimate marketers who are known quantities to AOL” to be able to pay for status reports, according to Quinn Jalli from e-mail marketing firm Digital Impact.

If I block an E-mailer through AOL’s fancy-schmancy Spam blocker, I don’t expect AOL to go running off to the enemy to tell them how I did it. And if I set up my mail controls to block unwanted solicitations, I’d prefer to decide for myself which ones I might consider “legitimate,” thank you very much.

As much we pay for AOL, it seems to me that the least they could do is to pull the rug out from under the feet of spammers, not try to make a profit off of them by helping make their operations more efficient!

The President’s military records are getting big news this week, because of what they contain and what some say they don’t. Did George W. Bush serve all of the time he was supposed to, or did he get paid for service he didn’t render?

The military granted him an honorable discharge; one might think that would answer the question. His critics say that there is reason to believe he wasn’t really there when he said he was…and that the whole thing was swept under the rug. There’s talk of a special favor when Mr. Bush was the governor of Texas that removed anything potentially embarrassing from his file. A report of an alleged 1972 cocaine arrest has his opponents asking questions. Democrats comdemn the White House for not being able to provide someone who can verify his whereabouts for the length of his service. Republicans condemn the Democrats for expecting something so ridiculous. And when a fellow serviceman appeared out of no where to vouch for Bush’s presence at TANG, both sides began picking his story apart, wondering about discrepancies in the timeline. It goes on and on. But I keep coming back to this:

The military granted him an honorable discharge.

Allow me to switch channels for a moment…let’s switch to a completely different subject matter and set of characters for the sake of conversation. Let’s say that a private citizen commits a crime. Suppose it is a crime that could potentially earn jail time. But let’s suppose that said citizen agrees to working community service in exchange for having the event be excluded from his record. Said citizen accepts the offer, grateful for the opportunity to keep his name clear and right a wrong.

Is this fair? Perhaps, perhaps not. Does it happen? Sure. Is the citizen to blame for taking advantage of it? Certainly not. If you’re looking to blame someone, blame the legal system that would allow certain people to get favorable treatment over others. If you were in the same situation, and you were given that option, would you say, “No, your Honor…I’d like to be punished to the full extent of the law?” Somehow, for most of us, I doubt it.

Back to the original thought: suppose that the allegations — clearly political motivated at this point whether true or not — are true, and that the President’s records have been “cleaned up.” If the military gave Bush an honorable discharge, is Bush to blame for that?

Well, the infamous Super Bowl half-time show continues to get more press than the football game itself.

Today, in Washington, a senator had something to say about it, but he wasn’t addressing that “wardrobe malfunction” we’re all sick of hearing about. His comments were directed at a different performer.

According to the Associated Press, Georgia Senator Zell Miller is upset about the American flag poncho worn by Kid Rock during his performance.

Miller was quoted as saying, “The thing that yanked my chain the hardest was seeing this ignoramous with his pointed head stuck up through the hole he had cut in the flag of the United States, yelling about having a bottle of Scotch and watching lots of crotch.” Miller then went on about how this flag was the same one the rest of us pledge allegiance to, and the same one we drape over the coffins of dead soldiers who are “killed while protecting Kid Rock’s bony butt.”

Miller wrapped up his tirade by suggesting that Kid Rock — I suspect that isn’t his real name — should be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of the country on a rail!

Yeah!! Who does this guy think he is, defacing the flag? What’s the matter with him?!?

But hold on a second. I think we’re forgetting something here. While using the American flag in any way other than the official flag ettiquette would allow is naturally going to rile some feathers, the very soldiers Senator Miller mentioned are fighting for our right to do so.

We may not agree with using the flag in this way. But this is America, after all. We do have freedom of expression. We may not agree with what is being expressed or the method of expression. But when we start ordering in the tar and feather brigade, we’re facing a very different crisis with regard to our freedoms.

You’d think a senator would realize that, wouldn’t you?

A news story caught my eye yesterday. Producer Steven Bochco is against a proposal to cut a 15-second sex scene from an episode of NYPD Blue to create a “clean version” of the show to air in other time zones.

The show will air in the Eastern and Pacific time zones with the scene intact. The concern lies in the Central and Mountain time zones, where everything airs one hour earlier. According to the Associated Press, Bochco calls this a “hysterical knee-jerk response” to Janet Jackson’s breast-bearing wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl.

A similar argument arose last week on NBC’s ER, when producers didn’t want to cut a scene that showed an elderly patients bare breasts while she was being treated in the emergency room. ER got around the problem not by cutting the scene as expected, but instead by simply blurring that portion of the image.

I’ve worked in television for a good while now. And I’m a decent fiction writer as well. So perhaps it wouldn’t be unreasonable for me to suggest that if the 15-second scene in question isn’t appropriate to air at 9pm, it’s probably at least bordering on not being appropriate at 10pm, either. Our kids don’t go to bed exactly at 9pm like they did on Leave it to Beaver these days. And anyone who has screened the show that can honestly believe that the scene can be cut without destroying the story has probably stumbled upon another important point: the sex scene isn’t really necessary.

There are plenty of ways to convey a sexual encounter without nudity or simulating the act itself. If the scene is being defended this vigorously by the producer, my guess, never having seen the show, is that it’s supposed to be intentionally provacative.

That’s not good television…that’s just shock value.