Deus Misereatur

Here's the link to the op-ed: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/opinion/31brooks.html?_r=1 I do believe he has hit the target in the 10! Mike

I highly recommend this work. I finished it yesterday and was impressed with the author's ability to keep my attention, and pull together the historical facts as well as ideological concepts. After reading the book I'm sold on Bonhoeffer's orthodoxy, courage, brilliance, and example for 21st Century Christians.

‎ 28 December is the feast day honoring the death of the holy innocents (the infants and toddlers slaughtered by Herod as he sought to wipe out the child Jesus-Matthew 2.16-18). It is a good day for remembering others (fellow human-beings, as well as Christian brothers and sisters) who have been forced to their deaths because of tyrants, malicious ideologies, evil, abortion, euthanasia and cowardice.   ‎"We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil powers, tyrants, and those who take the lives of others unjustly; and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen" (adapted and modified from the Book of Common Prayer-1979).

[Note: Here at the end of 2010, I felt it was appropriate to present to you some of the things I said at the Reformation Theological Conference on Nov. 6.] In what we are about to read, you must recognize what the people were doing. They are often pictured as following the dictates of their own heart (9.14), taking their direction from their own internal desires, to the point that they had made their own words divine oracles (23.36). The result was public pandemonium & ethical upheaval. Into this environment God speaks: Jer. 6.14-16. “They have also healed the hurt of My people slightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed; nor did they know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time I punish them, they shall be cast down,” says the LORD. Thus says the LORD: “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; t...