Tag Archives: Background

News

The top article on National Review is about Herman Cain

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Here’s the story on National Review. Everyone is going ga-ga for Herman Cain!

The first few lines:

‘How many of you think Herman Cain won the debate?”

Twenty hands shot up.

“Well, we can stop right there,” said Frank Luntz, a fast-talking political consultant, as he paced before a Fox News focus group on May 5. “This is unprecedented.”

Luntz pointed to the top row, looking for answers. One by one, South Carolina Republicans in trucker caps and business suits raved about Cain. After watching the 65-year-old spar with fellow GOP presidential contenders, many were itching to join his ranks.

“He’s a breath of fresh air,” explained one gentleman. “He is the godfather of business sense, and he can attack Obama well,” declared a middle-aged lady. Others nodded vigorously.

Luntz was stunned. “[Cain] was not a real candidate before tonight,” he exclaimed. “What happened?”

[…]Cain, a former corporate executive and talk-radio host, did more than that; he won over a slew of Republicans pining for a 2012 candidate. Though he was standing among better-known Republicans such as Tim Pawlenty and Ron Paul, Cain’s rich baritone, business smarts, and sharp one-liners connected.

It’s easy to see why: He was frank and refreshing. But more notably, on a stage full of state and congressional leaders, Cain used his outsider status to his advantage. “Most of the people who are in elective office in Washington, D.C., they have held public office before,” he noted during one exchange. Then, with expert comedic timing, he quipped: “How’s that workin’ for you?”

[…]Since the debate, Cain has seen his fortunes rise. The latest Zogby poll shows him trailing only New Jersey governor Chris Christie in popularity among GOP-primary voters. In Washington State over the weekend, Cain won a Republican straw poll.

Online, the buzz is palpable. He was a trending topic on Twitter during the debate; on Facebook, he has 84,000 friends, a number that’s growing every day. Conservatives may not know much about him, but they like what they are hearing. As Rush Limbaugh remarked on his radio show after the debate, “Herman Cain made me think I was listening to me in every answer.”

And my favorite part:

Cain’s thirst for self-improvement was evident at the start. He grew up in Atlanta, the son of working-class parents — his father a chauffeur, his mother a domestic worker. They had always dreamed of owning their own home, not living in a “half-home,” an attached unit. They achieved that goal. They wanted their two sons to graduate from college. Both did.

Cain saw his parents’ hard work as a simple, inspirational example: Work hard, trust in God, have no fear, and you can achieve the American dream. To him, it is more than a political idea; it is central to who he is as a citizen, and as a potential presidential candidate. Once he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Morehouse College in 1967, Cain was determined to map his own path to success.

The early motivator, and Cain says it unabashedly, was wealth. Working as a systems analyst for the United States Navy in Dahlgren, Va., Cain made $7,729 a year. At age 23, he made a personal goal to one day earn $20,000. As he settled into his position, he noticed that advancement — and an increased salary — would require a graduate degree. So he searched for the top computer-science program he could find, predicting that future jobs would require such skills.

Cain selected Purdue University in Indiana. He was not exactly eager to return to the classroom, but he knew that he needed to learn more and improve his résumé. After surviving a string of difficult courses and exams and earning his master’s degree in 1971, he returned to the Navy full-time and was granted a GS-13 position. His new salary: $20,001.

The rest of the article explains how he rose through the ranks at Pillsbury, Burger King, and Godfather Pizza. My goodness, this man is just an ordinary man who came from nowhere to achieve everything. He is everything that Republicans represent. His life reflects the American Dream. Please, let this man save us from the RINOs: Romney, Huckabee and Gingrich.

Notice the part where the article mentions that Cain is a Baptist preacher. He is not afraid to talk about his faith in public.

Here’s a 1-minute introduction to Herman Cain:

Also, here’s a 30-minute CPAC speech by Herman Cain. Here is video of the South Carolina debate, and the focus group response. My friend Robb posted the video of Cain beating up Bill Clinton, which is referenced in the article.

Commentary

Walt Russell explains how to read the Bible effectively

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Today we are looking at a four part series in Boundless, written by Biola University New Testament professor Walt Russell. The material below is almost the same talk he gave for the Stand to Reason Masters Series in Christian Thought. His book on the subject (which I LOVE) is called “Playing With Fire: How the Bible Ignites Change in Your Soul“. I highly recommend that you read the book, so you know how to read the Bible effectively. But these four articles will teach you most of what you need to know if you don’t want to buy the book.

Here is part one which talks about how postmodern relativism is at odds with discovering the original intent of an author.

Excerpt:

Twenty-four year-old “Janet” (not her real name) was angry at my emphasis on seeking to discover authors’ intentions when we read their texts. She was an evangelical Christian and a second grade teacher in a public school. She prided herself in helping her 20 students learn to love literature. She would read them a story as they gathered around her, and then ask each child, “What does the story mean to you?” She prodded them to come up with their own unique meanings. With such strong encouragement, the class of 20 would eventually have 20 different meanings for the one story. Janet sensed that I was a naysayer about such “love of literature.” Pouring a little emotional gasoline on the fire, I said, “Janet, you’re certainly doing your part to insure that these 7 year-olds will never recover from a radically relativistic view of meaning!” Now I had her full attention.

Here is part two which talks about the importance of knowing the genre of a text before you try to interpret it.

Excerpt:

“INDIANS SLAY TIGERS!” — the newspaper headline virtually screams out at you. The thought of something being slain is repulsive. You’re gripped by a mental image of southern India’s Bengal tiger. You imagine its beautiful face, its stripes and piercing eyes. Then your image is shattered by the sudden blast of a high-powered rifle. You see the exquisite creature writhe in pain, fall gracelessly in its tracks and die. Having read no further than the headline, you feel sick, as if you’ve witnessed something tragic.

But should you feel this way? The slaughter of an endangered species — especially one as magnificent as the Bengal tiger — is horrifying, no doubt. But suppose you failed to notice that the headline “INDIANS SLAY TIGERS!” appeared in the sports page of the morning paper. Clearly enough, it now refers to different Indians, different Tigers and a different manner of slaying than you originally thought. And is it really that tragic that the Cleveland Indians badly beat the Detroit Tigers in a major league baseball game last night? Not unless you’re a long-suffering Detroit Tigers’ baseball fan. But how do you now know that the headline is about baseball and not tiger-slaying in India? You look at the words “INDIANS SLAY TIGERS” and you know exactly what each word means. When you combine these words, how can they not mean exactly what you first thought they did — that Indians slay tigers? Answer: because their meanings are communicated (as the meanings of all words are) through genres!

Here is part three which talks about the importance of reading the context of a verse before you try to interpret it.

Excerpt:

“Never Read a Bible Verse!” That’s the title of a little booklet my friend and Christian radio personality, Gregory Koukl, has written to help people read the Bible well. What great advice. “That’s right, never read a Bible verse. Instead, always read a paragraph — at least.” But the current is flowing the other way in our popular sound-bite culture. Not to be left out (or left behind!), the Church has its own version of sound-bite culture: verse-bite culture. In verse-bite culture we take a sentence or sentence-fragment from a biblical paragraph, memorize it out of context, write it on a little card, put it on a billboard, a plaque, a rock, etc. Somehow we think that just because this little chunk of Scripture has a verse number in front of it, it was meant to be a free-standing unit of thought. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Apart from the fact that chapter and verse divisions weren’t added to the New Testament text until 1560 — long after the New Testament’s inspired authorship — there is a more important reason for never reading just a Bible verse, and instead reading at least the paragraph that contains it.

Here is part four which talks about the importance of applying the words of the Bible to your life.

One thing missing from the four articles that was in the STR lecture is the part where he talked about the promise “he who began a good work in you…” from Phillipians 1:6. Russell says in the lecture that this promise is specifically intended for the church in Phillipi, to whom Paul is writing. My understanding is that this promise applies just to the Phillipians, not necessarily to all Christians. He is giving them a promise just after directly referring to their good work in supporting him in his ministry.