Classic City Rev

I have a love/hate relationship with much of today's technology.  In particular I have a love/hate relationship with the cell phone.  I'm not even sure the term cell phone is the correct term to use because the devices we call our phones are used for so many different things other than voice phone calls.   Two of the most common non cell phone uses are text messaging and picture taking.  We also use the phone to check e-mails, look at web sites, stream television content, play video games and keep our calendars.  I've only scratched the surface of what our phones can do.  There's probably an app that can cook an omelet. Cell phones are powerful devices as well.  According to Real Clear Science an i-phone has 100,000 times more computing power than the Apollo 11 spacecraft which first landed humankind on the moon.  I will admit that on the one hand I appreciate the device I use.  It has certainly provided me with a multitu...

A spin-off discussion that has reared its head in the aftermath of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmad Arbery has been the issue of speech or more particularly the issue of appropriate speech.  What words are we to use when we speak so as not to give offense to others and should that be our goal in our speech to be unoffensive? To begin this discussion we must have an understanding of what it means to have free speech in our society.  The First Amendment of the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law.....abridging the freedom of speech."  In other words, the government has no right to control what you or I say.  We are entitled, if we so wish, to say most anything we wish.   What the First Amendment does not say is that we have a right to exercise our free speech in every forum available.  For example, I have a Facebook page.  It is provided to me free of charge.  While I am given free reign as a rule to say wh...

If there is one thing that has  been made abundantly clear in light of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, is that we as a society still have a ways to go when it comes to settling our racial questions.  Thus, there is a need for greater conversations concerning racial matters, in our homes, in our communities and in our churches.   One of the things that hinders us from having these conversations is that the conversations are often short-circuited.  Things get said that we find offensive or things get said which don't fit our particular  paradigm and we withdraw from the conversation.   Perhaps if we had a set of ground rules to guide our racial conversations the conversations could be more productive.  I claim no expertise in this area but in the last few weeks I have done some listening. I have observed some stumbling blocks that have prevented productive conversations.  To that end I am going to offer some simple g...