moderateBaptists.com

Between working full-time and going to school full-time, I'm a little behind the times. I read an article a few days ago the Richmond Times-Dispatch which impressed on me again that those who go without health insurance are not just the poor - they are the working poor.

I applaud the commonwealth for its efforts in trying to decrease the rate of uninsured children. Currently 1 in 11 go without health insurance.

I really don't know what the solution, if it feasibly exists, should be. However, I do know some things:

A. Again, this is a moral issue that receives short-shrift because the emotional gut-reaction is not widespread.
B. Healthy children grow up to be healthy adults, and thus can contribute more to society and have a better chance of attending college and obtaining substantial employment. The article mentions the risks of skipping routine check-ups.
C. This is not a class issue: 70 percent of uninsured children come from families where the income level is twice the level of poverty, or $33,200 for a family of three.
D. This is not a race issue: In Virginia, 27 percent are African-American and 17 percent are Hispanic - totalling 44 percent.

"These findings destroy some of the stereotypes that exist," Pollack said.

Families USA said that despite gains in enrolling children with insurance, the rate of uninsured children has increased since 1998. And there are wide disparities from state to state.

In Virginia, 9 percent are uninsured, while in Texas the percentage is more than 20 percent.

The figures suggest that uninsured children will represent a huge cost burden as time goes by. For instance, less than half experienced a well-child visit in the past year. Uninsured children are three times more likely to have unmet mental-health needs and nine times more likely to have other unmet or delayed medical needs.

How do we as Christians address this issue?

"It's vile," said Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach. "It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."

No, this wasn't said about himself, after resigning from Congress Friday because of improper emails with a 16 year old boy, this was in relation to President Clinton.

What happened to the Republicans? Have they no shame? Where did this whole 'we'll restore dignity to the White House and DC' go?

With Rep. Bob Ney's conviction regarding corruption and the whole Jack Abramoff scandal, not to mention Tom Delay's resignation, I was told that sort of behavior was impossible, for these were good Christian men.

Shame on those Christians who claim that Jesus would vote Republican, or for those who cast Democrats out of their churches.

How is this a Christian value?

How is justifying torture a Christian value?

How is lying to the country to justify war a Christian value?

How is corruption a Christian value?

How is ignoring American and International law a Christian value?

And for Virginia and the illegal immigration debate, how is racism a Christian value?

I guess this is what happens when you present yourself as holier-than-thou... anytime you set yourself up higher than humans and closer to God, gravity's humbling mechanicism kicks in.

Update: Just saw that Foley was the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. Nice.

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend a university wide gathering that welcomed all Christians to come out and worship together. There is a team of people from the different campus ministries that put their heads together to organize and advertise these events. These events have been going on every semester since the fall of my freshman year. They’ve been well attended and well done. There are a lot of people behind the scenes putting this together and it is easy to see how hard they work. I think the unique aspect of VT-One is that the idea to get all the campus ministries together to worship came from a student. God gave a student the idea to gather all the campus ministries to worship God together and repent of our sins.

What an idea.

I think that VT-One will make a direct impact on the campus of Virginia Tech because all the campus ministries are willing to put aside their differences. This is huge. Just like churches in the local community, there are similar differences and prejudices in the campus ministry community. We as campus ministries are just as competitive. I also think that the campus of Virginia Tech will also reap the harvest of Saturday night because the Christians humbled themselves and got ourselves together spiritually. VT-One is an attempt to refocus our efforts and open our eyes to the non Christian students around us.

My hope and prayer is that events like VT-One will show the greater church community that it is possible to work together. We’re all on the same team and we need to realize it. It would be neat to see that if the Christians of Virginia Tech will take the spirit of VT-One with them when they become full time members of their local churches. What a spirit to take. What a potential impact.

http://www.vt-one.org.vt.edu/?page_id=38

The anger exhibited by former President Clinton toward Chris Wallace this past weekend on a FoxNews interview has been news itself for the weekend and the first of this week. I can't really blame President Clinton for reacting angrily to what many of us perceive is a deliberate distortion of history in order to sway public attention away from the incompetence of the Bush Adminstration. In fact, the same idealogues who continue to attack the Clintons now (did you see Jerry Falwell's comment yesterday about Mrs. Clinton?) are the very people who have absolutely loathed them since they first stepped into the public arena in 1991. So, I don't really expect anything different from them. Ultimately, they will probably get their wish and Hillary Clinton will not run for president, or at least not be elected if she runs. She will remain in the Senate as a very powerful force for years to come though. And, if she ever becomes majority leader, watch out!

But, what President Clinton said in his anger with Chris Wallace must be kept in mind. Here's a quote from the transcript:

"What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we'd have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him. Now, I've never criticized President Bush, and I don't think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq. And you ask me about terror and Al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive thing? When all you have to do is read Richard Clarke's book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror. . . And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time. They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that's strange."

He tried to get Bin Laden and when he bombed Bin Laden's camp, Senators and Representatives from Ashcroft to Coats, to Specter blamed him for trying to take the national attention off of the Lewinsky scandal ("Wag the Dog"), a scandal created I might say by the extreme right wing in the country.

All that aside, let's assume Clinton didn't do all he could to get Bin Laden. Let's assume everything said about him is completely true. The fact of the matter is that when President Bush became president in January, 2001, the nation knew that Bin Laden was an imminent threat. They were getting daily intelligence briefings indicating that he was a dangerous risk. And, the one person in the govt. who knew more about it than anyone else was Richard Clarke, certainly not a partisan politician. And, they demoted Clarke and paid no attention to the Cole matter or to anything related to Bin Laden. When 9/11 happened, instead of embracing the world's compassion toward the U.S. and asking their help in going into Afghanistan to get Bin Laden, President Bush and his administration turned the nation's attention toward Sadaam Hussein, who had no direct ties to Al Queda. And, it as it turns out now, had absolutely no weapons of mass destruction. And, then after 9/11, even to this day, we have more troops in Iraq fighting a war that now the NIE says is creating more terrorists rather than less terrorists, and not nearly that many troops in Afghanistan trying to kill Bin Laden. So, who is the real incompetent president?

Go figure!

This past Sunday was Home Coming at First Baptist Church and the celebration of our 155th year as a congregation in the Des Moines metro area.

The sermon is preached by Rev. Duane J. Gibson, Pastor Emeritus of First Baptist Church. 

(Note:  The sermon in incomplete do to some technical issues with recording but well worth listening to even without the conclusion)