thoughts from the weekend

What are the odds that the Michigan-Ohio State game will start with a running clock?

Is it possible that Michigan is tanking on purpose to prevent the Buckeyes from playing a ranked opponent? Well played, Michigan, well played.

Watching David Axelrod explain why President Obama wasn’t lying when he said everyone could keep their health care is a lesson on how politics can steal one’s soul. It’s depressing.

The Chargers couldn’t punch it in from the one-yard line and deserved to lose to the Washington Whatchamacallits. Speaking of which, how come President Obama understands the moral objection of Native Americans to an offensive name but not our moral objection to paying for the taking of human life? Is it because we’re not a minority? I side with the Native Americans—it is hard to believe in the 21^st century that a team is named for the color of one’s skin—but we have an even stronger case. Which is worse, to offend someone with a racial slur or to kill them?

It is a gravely serious act to force someone to violate his conscience. At the very least, knowing that someone has a moral objection to what you are doing should at least compel you to slow down and reevaluate your position, not double down and threaten to shut them down with prohibitive fines. If anything, you only succeed in strengthening their hand, for they increasingly look like martyrs and you just look like a bully, which indeed is what you have become.

I don’t like to interpret current events this way, for who knows what God is doing?, but I wonder if the colossal failure of the government’s website might be God answering the prayers of his people. Might God be taking down the Affordable Care Act because of its refusal to attend to the rights of Christians? I am not saying that is what God is doing, I’m just asking the question, which as I learned from Rob Bell and Brian McLaren, is a way to make your point without going on the record.