Watcher of Weasels for October 14th

Wallo World deserved his first place for this post, Controversy, Christians, and Condemnation. Elegant and diffident at the same time — not an easy combination to carry off (though James Madison certainly managed to do so in a different arena) — his meander through this thicket is well worth your time..

For me, at least, the real issue in that walk is this. God meets us where we are at the moment of salvation. He doesn’t necessarily expect or desire us to stay there. It becomes a question of whether we are overcoming temptation and growing in a relationship with Christ, or if we’re just paying lip service to our faith while we go about our merry way doing whatever feels good at the moment.

I’m not sure that any one of us is in a place to honestly or objectively judge another in that regard, although we can certainly question things that don’t seem consistent with the faith one proclaims. I mean, I’ve had people question my taste in films and my willingness to watch R-rated films. I try and explain my personal perspective - which, on occasion, is as muddled as anybody else’s when we might be torn between what we want and what we should. But there are certainly films that I won’t see precisely because I don’t want to put certain things in my head.

Then, there was a matching theme -- a synchronicity, perhaps? -- in the non-council winner’s post entitled Legion. The blog, Waiter Rant, is full of good writing; this man knows how to control his material, which makes him a pleasure to read. This particular post is about how the world values —or does not — the marginal people, the crazies. He uses for his story the possessed man in Mark’s gospel. Waiter’s interlocutor is Beth, a fellow waiter at the Bistro where they both work. They’re on a break from work, and have just seen a homeless guy, Claude, go by and it reminds the Waiter of the man in the Gospel story. This leads to a long, discursive dialogue:

	The world places no value in people like Claude and the possessed man,” I say, “What do you think they’re worth?”
	“I don’t know,”
	“To us they’re nothing. But to God they’re everything.”
	Beth is silent.
	“I think God’s sense of economy is very different from our own - so different it’s scary. To him the plight of one vagrant is more important than all the money in the world. And He’ll plunder our treasure to save him.”
	“That would piss people off,” Beth says.
	“You bet it would,” I reply, “But maybe we get pissed because we realize we’ve been investing in the wrong kind of treasure. If we all acted like human beings, if our treasure was compassion, people like Claude might have it a little easier.”

Never was it truer that you should read the whole thing to get the full flavor of the story as it touches on loneliness, the need to be loved here and now, in the flesh, and how we search for it. As an indication of the hot buttons he touches, the post had 256 comments last time I looked.

There are many more posts at this week’s Watcher's Council. You can pick up the links for the Education Wonk's disturbing account of a new "game" kids play; Rightwing Nuthouse's fisk of Dubya's moves of late; the Glittering Eye's stare at the Nobel "Peace" Prize; Dr. Sanity's comparison of the similarities between the jihadists' strategy and that of the American Left; Polipundit's dissection of the Meiers' nomination (makes you wonder whassup here); LaShawn Barber's excellent essay on how wealth insulates the rich from the vicissitudes the rest of us have to bear...

Do yourself a favor and go there. He has all the links to the posts above.