Finally, if someone advocates an action that sounds a little bizarre take two steps. Look to see if such actions are advocated or demonstrated on a routine basis in the Bible. Secondly, if it sounds weird, it is most likely weird. Trust yourself a bit more.
Seriously: “Trust yourself a bit more” deserves some kind of prize for clear-headed common-sense; it would shut down the predatory side of religion overnight, which is too often about exploiting insecurities for the pastor’s gain.
The Feds are suing Quicken Loans — the mortgage company, whose advertisements are a television staple, is headquartered in Detroit — for being not-too-finicky about the people to whom the company lends money.
The U.S. Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Quicken Loans, alleging the mortgage lender violated underwriting rules, which materialized in “millions of dollars” of losses to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency.
“Those who do business with the United States must act in good faith, including lenders that participate in the FHA mortgage insurance program,” said Benjamin C. Mizer, principal deputy assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, in a statement Thursday.
Yes, I’m related to the Ryan Felton who wrote the piece; he is my nephew. Ryan has tracked Quicken for a while, publishing this profile of the company and its founder last November.
On a recent Saturday night, inside the Checker Bar & Grill in downtown Detroit, someone mentions the name of Detroit’s most recognizable billionaire. A thirty-something gentleman sitting nearby, nursing a PBR, lets out an audible sigh and shakes his head, again and again.
“I hate that guy,” he says, slowly.
That’s a view of Daniel Gilbert, founder of online lending giant Quicken Loans, the public doesn’t hear about too often.
As everybody knows now, the financial meltdown of 2008 began with bad mortgage loans, loans blithely waved through the vetting with everybody along the line knowing perfectly well that, long after they had received and spent their commission, the feds would be on the hook for the bad paper. Apparently, the feds think Quicken hasn’t learned the lesson yet.
This year’s winner of the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism links South Carolina’s high incidence of domestic abuse to the Bible — and the Southern Baptists are not happy about that.
Pulitzer winners tie domestic abuse to Christianity
The South Carolina newspaper that won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism has drawn criticism for linking the Palmetto state’s domestic violence problems with its residents’ belief in the Bible’s teaching about gender.
“Just because the Bible describes [gender] roles is not any excuse for any type of abuse,” Mike Hamlet, pastor of First Baptist Church North Spartanburg in Spartanburg, S.C., told Baptist Press. “To suggest something otherwise is to misinterpret or deliberately misuse the Scripture. I think that’s what [the Pulitzer winners] have done.”
Sorry, but the link holds. Consult any survey of family and social pathologies and, invariably, they are most intense where the churches are strongest: drug abuse, venereal disease, domestic abuse, divorce … on and on.
Christianity’s indispensable claim is that you’re no damn good, and so self-annihilation should be your goal — the absolute elimination of your self-interest and self-direction, because your self is innately evil and depraved. Why should anybody be surprised that, in a culture where this degrading nonsense is taken seriously, the subterranean struggle against it takes unwholesome and destructive directions?
Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
II: Criticism of Morality§284 The qualities and tendencies which are praised: peacefulness, equity, moderation, modesty, reverence, respectfulness, bravery, chastity, honesty, fidelity, credulity, rectitude, confidence, resignation, pity, helpfulness, conscientiousness, simplicity, mildness, justice, generosity, leniency, obedience, disinterestedness, freedom from envy, good nature, industry.
We must ascertain to what extent such qualities are conditioned as means to the attainment of certain desires and ends (often an “evil” end); or as results of dominating passions (for instance, intellectuality): or as the expressions of certain states of need — that is to say, as preservative measures (as in the case of citizens, slaves, women, etc).
In short, every one of them is not considered “good” for its own sake, but rather because it approximates to a standard prescribed either by “society” or by the “herd” as a means to the ends of the latter, as necessary for their preservation and enhancement and also as the result of an actual herd instinct in the individual; these qualities are thus in the service of an instinct which is fundamentally different from these states of virtue. For the herd is antagonistic, selfish and pitiless to the outside world; it is full of a love of dominion and of feelings of mistrust, etc.
In the “herdsman” this antagonism comes to the fore: he must have qualities which are the reverse of those possessed by the herd.
The mortal enmity of the herd towards all order of rank: its instinct is in favour of the leveller (Christ). Towards all strong individuals (the sovereigns) it is hostile, unfair, intemperate, arrogant, cheeky, disrespectful, cowardly, false, lying, pitiless, deceitful, envious and vengeful.
A guy who identifies himself as Dr. Don Boys instructs the Faithful that Jesus would certainly have disapproved of minimum wage laws.
Christ would not vote to increase the minimum wage, not because He does not want higher wages for everyone but because He taught true fairness. Moreover, it is not government’s prerogative to require social and economic equality only equal opportunity. He would not, yea could not, act contrary to what He has said and what the Scripture requires. The Scripture strongly supports proper authority, ownership, contracts, treaties, pledges, etc.
Dr. Boys, y’all should know, claims to have earned his Ph.D. at Heritage Baptist University.
According to this site [See update below], a school called Heritage Baptist College does-business-as Heritage Baptist University in Greenwood, Indiana; I am unable to find any other school by that name. But-but-but — that school’s mailing address is Franklin, Indiana, and it doesn’t offer Ph.D. degrees.
The school’s directory lists only six faculty members.
So I’m guessing Dr. Boys is one of those all-too-common types in the evangelical world: A fake with a doctorate to match. I should add that I don’t think a bona fide doctorate in Godliness counts for much, either, but I do have a problem with bona fide liars.
As it happens, I think ol’ Dr. Boys might have accidentally gotten it right.
The Jesus Movement began in the underclass, amongst the dispossessed losers. It wouldn’t have been in Jesus’ interest, as an ambitious cult-builder, that his followers end their hand-to-mouth existence; they might have begun developing ambitions for this world, instead of the next.
And didn’t He tell his followers to sell everything they own, and give the money to the poor(er)? According to the Inerrant Bible, He did.
And didn’t He tell his followers that the End was nigh, and they’d all be living in a mansion elsewhere any ol’ day now? According to the Inerrant Bible, He did.
And didn’t He tell his followers to give no thought for the morrow? According to the Inerrant Bible, He did.
So even on a charitable reading — pretending, I mean, that the Bible is actually true — Jesus doesn’t come across as a forward-looking, thinking-ahead kind of guy who would have wanted his followers preoccupied with a livable wage.
UPDATE: There appear to be multiple schools with similar names in the area, all of them somehow affiliated. It is Indiana Baptist College which also does business as Heritage Baptist University. Indiana Baptist College, d.b.a. Heritage Baptist University, is in the process of developing a Ph.D. degree program, according to its Web site. It does not presently offer the Ph.D.
