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Does God Care About Football?

Today I finally received the answer to the question I’ve asked nearly all my life: Does God care about football? Richard John Mouw informs me [TU, Voices of Faith, 2/3/18¹] that “God cares much about how the game is played. And it is not simply about how the players treat each other.” Has Mr Mouw read the New Testament? I get that the Old Testament is quite football-worthy, what with all that smiting and so forth, but it sure seems that the NT becomes quite un-football-esque in places. But maybe that’s just me. It’s not as if Matthew 25, or the Sermon on the Mount comes down on the side of how we treat one another. Did not Jesus say it best when he offered us, "Do to others what you want them to do to you...and hit ‘em hard! Knock his block off. Role the replay!" No, he didn’t say exactly that, but one can imagine him saying it...if you pretend for a moment that you live in the universe of Richard John Mouw. I’d leave football out of the equation. No spectacle where...
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J. K. Rowling Manifesto

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I've just come across a piece by J. K. Rowling, she of Harry Potter fame, and I wanted to showcase it. It is from years ago, concerning an election in the UK but I think it still applies, especially in the current dawn of the neo-fascist Trump era. So... From  The Times Online , J.K. Rowling writes: I’ve never voted Tory before, but . . .” Those much parodied posters, with their photogenic subjects and their trite captions, remind me irresistibly of glossy greetings cards. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more general elections have in common with the birthdays of middle life. Both entail a lot of largely unwelcome fuss; both offer unrivalled opportunities for congratulation and spite, and you have seen so many go by that a lot of the excitement has worn off. Nevertheless, they become more meaningful, more serious. Behind all the bombast and balloons there is the melancholy awareness of more time gone, the tally of ambitions achieved and of opportunities missed. So...
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In the olden days if a Mafioso ratted on somebody he'd get thrown off a bridge or tossed off a rowboat wearing cement shoes. Nowadays nobody's ratting on nobody. And why's that? Because the new mafia has made it darn near impossible to rat anybody out, just because it's all so stinking complicated that hardly anybody knows what's really going on. But the end game is still the same: kill any bugger that gets in your way or costs you money. When somebody gets killed every half hour in this country you'd think it might just get noticed. Nah. First you'd have to know the links, how it all fits together. And with a body on the floor who's going to notice the dozen different things that caused it to happen in the first place? Nobody, that's who. Here, I'll give you an example. Say Johnny Walnuts starts to notice his crew isn't taking in nearly as much as it did last year. So he ups his premiums, say. Things start to look better, but not as much as ...
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