Jonathan's blog

1,476 homicides in Jamaica, an all-time high, with 37 days remaining in 2005.

From an article in USA Today, according to a recent UN study:

Hunger and malnutrition kill nearly 6 million children a year... Many of the children die from diseases that are treatable, including diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles... Diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, which kill more than 6 million people a year, hit the hungry and poor the hardest, according to the report's findings. Millions of families are pushed deeper into poverty and hunger by the illness and death of breadwinners, the cost of health care, paying for funerals and support of orphans. About 75% of the world's hungry and poor live in rural areas in poor countries, the report found.

Today was Midland's Santa Parade.  The boys got more candy today than they did at Halloween.  Tonight was Movie Night, and the film was Disney's The Sword in the Stone.  It seemed to a rather lousy version of King Arthur's story...all about goofy Merlin and his goofy magic and hardly about Arthur at all.

Since Iraq hasn't been in the news lately (ha, ha), I thought I'd reflect back on the last few years.  Admittedly, something positive has come out of the war: Saddam is no longer in power.  Was it worth it?

Here are the things that bother me most about all of this:

1. 2081 US troops and tens of thousand of Iraqi civilians (30,000?100,000?) have died.  How many Iraqi soldiers were killed in the war?  I haven't heard.  What do we have to show for it?  A country in shambles, a security nightmare.
2. $220 billion has been spent on the war and the rebuilding effort.  It's pretty easy to think of better ways to spend that money.
3. Administration officials like Rumsfeld and Cheney have been so terribly wrong on so many fundamental issues (they completely misjudged how we would be greeted in Iraq (is that how they treat liberators?), vastly misunderestimated the troop level that would be required and called Gen. Shinseki's estimation that several hundred thousand troops would be required for post-war Iraq "wildly off the mark," thought the insurgency was in its "last throes" in May 2005, etc.), yet they have not been held accountable for their poor job performance and apparent incompetence.
4. Despite thinking that an invasion was not the best way to deal with Saddam and his WMD's, many democrats made the political decision to support the invasion rather than risk doing the alternative.  Now they have to resort to calling the other side liars (for the most part, I don't think they lied, because they believed what they said even if they shouldn't have) because they abandoned the moral high ground long ago.

At Salt and Light, there's an interesting passage about leadership in churches from the recently-published book "Seeking A Lasting City" by ACU professors Love, Foster, and Harris.  It describes how leadership has transitioned from the "authoritarian" model to that of the corporate board, the "...careful decision-maker who seeks to be sensitive to the needs and desires of a constituency." 

The authors argue:

So now the question about potential leaders is not about quality of their strategic thinking ability, but about the quality of their prayer lives and attentiveness to God. People long for this kind of leadership. Today most people can make their own decisions and generally want to do so.....congregations can learn to self-govern....but we all desire the relationship with that person who can guide us into the depths of the heart of God. We all need that spiritual friend and guide...The time for a board of directors approach has passed. The key to leadership in our churches today is ethical, holy living; what we desperately need now are spiritual guides. Will our leaders hear the call?"