CHICAGO, IL (August 4, 2017) — Covenanters routinely share links to social media articles and videos that Covenant News Service believes may be of interest to others. Each Friday we post five of them. Following is a sample of those submissions—their inclusion does not represent an endorsement by the Covenant of any views expressed.
Worst Internet in America
Only 5.6 percent of adults in Colorado’s Saguache County have broadband internet access. The lack of access in some 24 percent of counties in the United States threatens to further divide the country, and that’s bad for everyone.
From the article: “This would be less of an issue if the internet weren’t so central to modern life. But taxes, job applications, payroll operations, banking, newspapers, shopping, college courses and video chats all are ubiquitous online. Saguache County’s students are expected to take their state assessments online even though an administrator at one school that houses K-12 students told me that until last year, the internet often went down for a couple of hours or even all day in the building.”
‘Serving God by Suing Others’
Courts have always been battlegrounds for forces who have differing views morality and the role of religion. What are Christian values and how we extend God’s kingdom are up for debate, but it’s clear that this movement is seeking to have the courts enjoin a rapidly changing culture.
From the article: “‘As Christians, we look at extending God’s kingdom and bringing his kingdom to bear on earth as part of our commission to make disciples throughout the earth,’ said Roger Gannam, assistant vice president of legal affairs for (Liberty Counsel.) We look at our legal work as an extension of that ministry. We seek to help Christians avail themselves of their First Amendment rights to live out a Christian life the way they want to live it.”
Prog Rock was Audacious, Innovative—and Awful
If you loved progressive rock – and if we have to define it, you didn’t – then you thought it’s experimentation was brilliant. But there is a huge segment of the music industry that said no to Yes. Were they fair?
From the article: “But prog’s doom was built in. It had to die. As a breed, the proggers were hook-averse, earworm-allergic; they disdained the tune, which is the infinitely precious sound of the universe rhyming with one’s own brain. What’s more, they showed no reverence before the sacred mystery of repetition, before its power as what the music critic Ben Ratliff called ‘the expansion of an idea.’ Instead, like mad professors, they threw everything in there: the ideas, the complexity, the guitars with two necks, the groove-bedeviling tempo shifts. To all this, the relative crudity of punk rock was simply a biological corrective—a healing, if you like.”
‘Is the Hot Dog a Sandwich?’ Controversy
It’s meat between bread – it’s a sandwich, though anyone who says they’d like a “hot dog sandwich” should not be allowed to have one. Of course, here in Chicago, the debate is whether ketchup should be allowed on hot dogs. Chicagoans say it is sacrilege. The rest of the populace wonders why anyone would put a salad on a hot dog.
From the article: “The debate started again recently when the Louisville, Kentucky, newspaper The Courier-Journal took a hardline stance, going so far as to run a correction for all the ‘erroneous’ instances in which the paper called a hot dog a sandwich.”
Finland has a Sports Screw Loose
There are plenty of strange world championships in other countries as well, but all the craziness hasn’t swept any country like it has in Finland.
From the article: “There’s something strange going on in Finland. Over the past few decades, as it has all but disappeared from the global sports stage, this humble Nordic nation has sort of lost its sports mind.
“More than 2,000 people ventured to the remote backwaters of central Finland recently for the 20th annual Swamp Soccer World Championships. If you and your spouse want to compete in the Wife Carrying World Championships, you must come to Finland. The Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships? Finland. The World Berry Picking Championship and the Air Guitar World Championships? Finland and Finland.”
