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A La Carte (4/26)
- 04/26/11
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Quote Mania - Mark Lauterbach reflects on our love of quotes (and I admit that I’m at fault here). “Citing favorite quotations has become epidemic among bloggers and facebookers and tweeters. Perhaps it is the media that determines the size of the message, but I have some concerns.”
What Jesus Did for You? - Jay Younts asks a valuable question in this blog article: Do your children know what Jesus did for you?
Chernobyl 25 Year Later - “On April 26, 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility in what is now Ukraine exploded. The largest civil nuclear disaster in history led to mass evacuations, and long-term health, agricultural, and economic distress.” Boston.com has a photo essay.
Rabboni - Carolyn McCulley reflects on the faith of Mary Magdalene. “Mary Magdalene must have been a brave woman to not only have witnessed the pain of Jesus’ crucifixion, but also to have endured both an earthquake (as recorded in Matthew 28:2) and angelic visitation at His grave (as reported by all four gospels). She was also a bold woman, as she did not shrink back from her sovereignly-appointed assignment to be the first witness to the resurrection of her Lord and Savior — even in a culture that considered the testimony of women to be worthless.”
The Water and the Blood - Sojourn’s new album The Water and the Blood releases today. They’ve got all the details at the link.
Lock Your WiFi - Because you don’t want this to happen. “Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of ‘pedophile!’ and ‘pornographer!’ stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn’t need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents.”
Christ Alone - Mike Wittmer has released the first book to critique Love Wins. I received an advance copy a couple of weeks ago and didn’t have opportunity to do much more than skim it. But even a skim showed that it is a good first response.
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I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (20)
Thanks for the heads up on Wittmer’s book. Just ordered it. Will be preaching a response to Bell over the next month. Grace and peace,
I’d rather reign in an over-zealous out of control government than have to lock my WiFi but given the chances of that happening, locking the WiFi seems good advice.
Just a heads up, if you want to protect your wireless router one step further, check out OpenDNS.com - the home service is free and gives you lots of control over where your internet connection is allowed to go. The most basic is called Family Shield, is a doddle to set up and should prevent anyone who hops onto your wireless signal from accessing adult and illegal content.
Why is everyone citing the this as a need to protect your wifi? This has nothing to do with protecting your wifi and everything to do with the militarization of police. The police with a little bit of investigation could have checked on it being an open wifi. But even if they didn’t do that, why not just knock on the door and arrest the guy. There was no need at all for a swat team. Why aren’t we citing this as a reason to rethink the way we do police instead of everyone saying we need to lock up our wifi?
Should cities of under 300,000 have Swat teams? The reason they do is because of federal anti-crime funds. If small cities have swat teams, they will use them. Every year there are people killed by swat teams because of home invasions in the wrong home or other mistakes. The police should not have military power.
“Every year there are people killed by swat teams because of home invasions in the wrong home or other mistakes.”
Adam, what are your sources on this? I’d be interested to see the numbers etc.
Good point. Wonder what happened to that presumption of innocence and due process Americans are so proud of.
That comment above was supposed to be a reply to Larry’s post.
Tim, would you mind posting a reference to where you find the quotes in A La Carte? There have been a few that I particularly enjoyed and would love to know what document/book they come from.
Alot of interesting links today. The pictures from the Chernobyl nuclear explosion are devastating.But I definitely enjoyed the article about What Jesus Did For You.Thank you for posting.
Locking your WiFi is good advice, but is grabbing the first guy who shows up in pajamas after you kick down the door, and throwing him down the stairs, actually considered “good police work?” They could well have been giving the real perp the chance to go out the window while they were busy threatening a guy who had nothing to do with it — even if it HADN’T been a case of an open WiFi.
I agree the police are over-militarized, but “under 300,000” seems like a pretty arbitrary cutoff. There’s plenty of bad stuff goes in on cities smaller than that, where a SWAT team might save lives. It’s more about training the police to be more interested in getting the *right* guy than in getting *somebody,* than about the size of the city, or the weapons and tactics available to a given force.
Re: New book—critique of ‘Love Wins’It is no surprise how much hype Bell gets as, year after year, Christians neglect basic discipleship.
I am less concerned about Bell’s teaching then I am about the everyday teaching for the average believer. If Christians have been equipped by their pastors/techers, then any confusion presented by Bell is no threat to them.
The situation today has deteriorated far beyond the point noted by Leon Morris, years ago: ‘In Testaments of Love, [he asked] “How do we harmonize the assurance that ‘God is love’ with the assertion that ‘our God is a consuming fire’? Most of us never think about such problems, and in the end our idea of love is indistinguishable from that of the world around us.”(from Love, Prayer and Forgiveness: When Basics Become Heresies http://tinyurl.com/y9p4vez )
Wonder what happened to that presumption of innocence and due process Americans are so proud of.
Well, you’re presumed innocent in a court of law. I think that the WiFi story raises Fourth Amendment issues.
300,000 is an arbitrary cut off. But SWAT teams can be borrowed from other districts. My issues is that prior to the 1980 almost no city under a million had SWAT teams. But as part of anti-drug federal dollars much smaller cities suddenly were able to receive money to get their own SWAT teams. But receiving money for equiptment (which is usually what the federal money is for) does not mean the officers are well trained. And even if they are well trained, there is not enough need in a small city for SWAT teams to keep them trained and experienced in the field. So since small cities have swat forces they use them. And often use them for inappropriate activities.
It is not that there are not times when SWAT teams are used properly. But the murder rate in the US hit tied for the high in 1991 (it tied with 1981) when these SWAT teams were just getting started. The murder rate is now just over half what it was in 1991, but there are 10 times as many SWAT teams as there were in 1991.
Here are a few recent incidents that I know of off the top of my head (but checkout online to make sure I had details right.)
2006- 92 yr old woman was shot and killed in Atlanta when the SWAT team used a no knock warrant and the woman shot at the officers who she believed were breaking into her home.
2007 - 37 year old optometrist was killed when a swat team invaded his home for illegal gambling. He did not own a gun, did not have a criminal record and lived in a very well off Fairfax VA. He was the victim of a sting operation where police think it was the first time that he had bet more than $2000 in a single day that would have met requirement for a misdaminor charge. After the sting police raided his home and then accidentally shot him.
2008 the mayor of a Virginia town was raided when 30 lbs of marijuana was mistakenly delivered by UPS to his home. It was unopened and on the porch. Swat team did a no knock warrant and ended up killing both of the family dogs (one of them that was running away). The mayor, his wife and mother in law were handcuffed and questioned for hours in their home while the dogs remained bleeding on the floor feet from them.
2010 A swat team in Columbia Missouri killed 1 dog, wounded another and held a 7 year old while attempting a marijuana bust. This one was caught on video and posted to YouTube. The police admitted there were multiple mistakes, not the least of which was the fact that the man was not a major marijuana distributor and only a trace amount of marijuana was found in a pipe.
2011 a swat team member in Charlotte was killed when he pulled one of his hand grenades (in violation of police procedure and before authorized to use it) and tried to incorrectly re-insert it. He had served 23 years on the Charolette SWAT team.
“300,000 is an arbitrary cut off. But SWAT teams can be borrowed from other districts. ”
Here’s the problem: my city, which is around 100,000, has had some legitimate uses of SWAT teams in the last ten years. But we’re three hours away from any jurisdiction that meets your criteria. That is, there’s one about three hours away — the next nearest ones are least six, eight, and ten hours away. Not exactly convenient “borrowing” there. Nor do I think it sensible to leave places like Cleveland, OH, without SWAT teams. Such determinations should be made more on the basis of the crime rates of the city and a demonstrated need for such a team, than an arbitrary population number.
Again, I’m not really disputing that too much police force is too frequently used, creating all sorts of dangers. I’m just saying that the right balance is somewhere between where it is, and leaving medium sized midwestern cities without any means to deal with certain kinds of crisis situations.
BTW, I do agree with your other point that there was absolutely no call for a SWAT-type response in this situation, even if they’d known for sure they had the right guy. Even someone who thinks it’s good to use SWAT teams regularly would probably wonder why they were tying it up catching a smut downloader instead of keeping free for, oh, I don’t know, hostage situations, armed guys with a long rap sheets, you know — stuff where the person presents an actual physical THREAT to the police.
I read that Wi-Fi story in a local newspaper yesterday, did anyone else read it in theirs?
Tim, would you mind posting a reference to where you find the quotes in A La Carte? There have been a few that I particularly enjoyed and would love to know what document/book they come from.
They come from all over. But the source I use most is John Blanchard’s The Complete Gathered Gold.
Yes, anonymous, it was actually front page, top of the fold in my local paper. It seemed a strange choice for something non-local and not exactly breaking news, but then my local paper does that a lot.
RE: Lauterbach and quotes….
It seems blogger-critics are out to INVENT offenses these days, I swear. Rather than criticize people for quoting, I’m glad we honor and respect the experience, views and insights of those who have gone before us. I’m no Spurgeon or Edwards, and I don’t have the brains of D. A. Carson, and I haven’t matured as J. I. Packer, but I can benefit from their wisdom, cited by Challies, Justin Taylor, Tullian Tchividjian and others who also have the same reverence for the great fathers of our faith.
If the quote cited causes us to think on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy (Phil 4:8) then such statements do not diminish or compete with the Word, but upload our reverence for it.
Good point. Wonder what happened to that presumption of innocence and due process Americans are so proud of.best wireless router