Marginal Christianity

http://billmoyers.com/2013/08/27/a-plutocracy-ruled-by-self-centered-jerks/ August 27, 2013 by Joshua Holland Hassan Nemazee, the wealthy Manhattan investment banker, steps over a security chain as he leaves federal court in Manhattan after being sentenced to 12 years in prison for bank fraud. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister) Two studies released last week confirmed what most of us already knew: the ultra-wealthy tend to be narcissistic and have a greater sense of entitlement than the rest of us, and Congress only pays attention to their interests. Both studies are consistent with earlier research. In the first study , published in the current Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Paul Piff of UC Berkeley conducted five experiments which demonstrated that “higher social class is associated with increased entitlement and narcissism.” Given the opportunity, Piff also found that they were more likely to check themselves out in a mirror than were those of lesser m...

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2013/08/26/salt-earth/ August 26, 2013 “If you salt the water, you won’t taste the salt. But if you don’t, you’ll know something’s not quite right.” Sage advice about pasta water from Mr. Richard, one of my friendly cooking gurus. It’s the same with the bread we baked up today. If we’d salted it, it wouldn’t have been salty bread, it just would have tasted more like bread. Instead, it was just sort of flat. A floury delivery unit for the dip. Salt, rightly done, doesn’t make you taste the salt, it makes you taste more of what you’ve added it to. What if Jesus was after something like this? “You are the salt of the earth.” Too often those of us who live on the Evangelical side of the fence envision the message of Jesus as world-denying; or, worse yet, world-escaping. What’s our job then? To call people out of the world, to get them to leave it behind! What if, instead, our job as followers of Jesus is to make the world...

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/08/baseball-code-gentlemanliness.html The Baltimore Orioles, 19th Century by Stephen M. Klugewicz The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.  This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray.  It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.—  Terrence Mann, in “Field of Dreams” The National Football League recently announced that it would be more strictly enforcing rules against excessive celebrations during games in the coming season. Specifically, league officials are emphasizing the rulebook’s prohibitions against the following demonstrations: “sack dances; home run swing; incredible hulk; spiking the ball; spinning the ball; throwing or shoving the ball; pointing; pointing the ball; verbal taunting; military salute; standing over an opponent (prolonged and with provocation); or dancing.” The NFL’s enactment of this addition to its policy a few years back elicited ...