A Lenten favorite, What Wondrous Love is This, sung here acapella, and a little faster than I would prefer:
Deborah Liv Johnson slows it down – hopefully you’re not missing the rich harmonies:
And Michelle Tumes’ perfectly sublime version:
Words: Attributed to Alexander Means. Music: From The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, by William Walker (New York: Hastings House, 1835); arranged by William J. Reynolds (1920-)
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul.
When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb Who is the great “I Am”;
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing;
While millions join the theme, I will sing.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on.
Nice Deb 
I find it amazing how many fundamental Christians Right Wingers can talk about Jesus and then talk about removing healthcare for millions of people by ending ObamaCare. They say ObamaCare is unconstitutional, but fail to realize that our standing military is unconstitutional as well and it spends billions of dollars. As a result the Christian Right Wing is hypocritical in their ideology and Christian values.
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PIck it up from 1.30 (after a few interviews) Blue Highway sings – and no one does it better.
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I find it amazing how many fundamental Christians Right Wingers can talk about Jesus and then talk about removing healthcare for millions of people by ending ObamaCare. They say ObamaCare is unconstitutional, but fail to realize that our standing military is unconstitutional as well and it spends billions of dollars. As a result the Christian Right Wing is hypocritical in their ideology and Christian values.
Everything you just said right there is a 100% backwards and a gross misunderstanding of Christianity, and an almost religious faith in the merits of ObamaCare, (which is no panacea, to say the very least)
It’s funny how lefties always believe in the “separation of church and state” except when it behooves them. Conservative Christians believe it’s every individual Christian’s responsibility to care for the needy, and there are various ways to do this. What they don’t believe is that it’s the responsibility of a secular government to provide for them.. To give that much responsibility to the state always leads to the diminishing of our own God-given rights and freedoms – as the Catholic church is only discovering, now.
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The thing is I am a Christian and I know and understand the Bible (almost become a minister). So whenever you say my statements are “100% backwards and a gross misunderstanding of Christianity” it is based on what? Your so-called Christian views not the teachings of Jesus, which healed the sick and helped the poor. Jesus didn’t say build large militaries and kill thousands of people, then ignore the sick and the poor. This is what America has become and is supported by the political Christian Right.
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It is immoral to steal money from our children to pay for any privileges. I would love to have have “free” health care for all. Currently we are borrowing 40 cents for every dollar spent and charging it to our kids. The constitution strictly limits the what the federal government can do. Why? Because the founding fathers were all to familiar with despots. Despots just want to give us free things. There is universal health care in totalitarian states. (Of course, party members always seem to get better care than the masses.)
“Fundamentalist Christian Right Wingers” have their eyes open. They see what a failure the welfare state has been. Despite trillions being spent on the war on poverty since the sixties, the poverty rate went from 14% to 14.5%. If the government had let the people keep that money, the United States would have been far richer. The African American family system has been destroyed. The government is working on other ethnicities’ family structures. No family. No morality. Societal collapse. Great going liberals.
Jesus commanded us to feed the poor and cloth the naked. This is a personal command. Voting to raise taxes on others to set up some horribly inefficient government bureaucracy doesn’t satisfy the command.
P.S. Deb, I really like Michelle Tumes, too. Keep the faith.
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It is immoral to steal money from our children to pay for unneeded wars and to give billions of dollars in foreign aid, while millions of Americans cannot afford healthcare and our schools are underfunded. –
The Christian Right wants to completely undo ObamaCare, not fix parts of the law they don’t like. The result will be millions of Americans losing health insurance. But that doesn’t seem to matter the so-called Right Wing Fundamental Christians. – Seems to me the Right Wing Fundamental Christians have a distorted view of what is Right and is Wrong, according to the what Jesus taught.
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I don’t disagree with the premise that we shouldn’t be spending money policing the world when we don’t have money for that either. However, what is driving the deficits is entitlements. Christians are called to be good stewards. “A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.” Proverbs 13:22.
BTW, Obamacare is causing millions to lose the health insurance. So far the CBO is estimating “only” 20 million will lose their insurance – to be put on very expensive, “free” government healthcare to be paid for by future generations. If you want to push through universal health care that is PAID FOR as we go along, fine.
I am a physician. I can tell you that Obamacare is a total non-starter. It is designed to fail. One cannot practice medicine under the bureaucracy set up by Obamacare. There are 2400 pages of dense legalese. This is being expanded daily by faceless bureaucrats that are generating pages of more dense legalese interpretive regulations telling what the original 2,400 pages meant. They estimated that each page of the bill would generate 10 pages of such interpretations. They revised this downward to 6 pages, supposedly. However, they just released 650 pages interpretations on accountable care organizations structure, so most likely the original estimate was low not high.
The fundamental fact is that health care costs are exploding. The inescapable conclusion is that the more the federal government has intervened in health care, the faster rate of rising costs. Obamacare ignores this obvious truth. The big lie, against all evidence and common sense, was that INCREASING government intervention would DECREASE costs.
I believe in the wisdom of the founding fathers. The Constitution, with its limited, enumerated powers of the federal government, made this country great. The statists have eroded constitutional checks on federal power and are literally destroying the country. Deb has a link to a great video of Rep Joe Walsh (unfortunately the video isn’t working now). Mark Levin’s book, Ameritopia, is a great exposition to how “equality” is crushing personal liberty.
There should be 50 health care reform plans. (Note that half of Romneycare’s financing comes from the federal government – this gives you an idea that it won’t work on its own.) The tenth amendment clearly says that the federal government has no business being a health insurance company.
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@tlipscomb555:
Jesus told us that if our neighbor doesn’t have a coat, give him yours. He didn’t say, anywhere in the Bible, that the state should make up for what neighbors don’t do, and He certainly didn’t expect the state (Rome, at the time) to feed and clothe Him because He was jobless and penniless.
I have no idea where you studied to become a preacher (as did I), but my bet is that it was somewhere that reading (especially reading the Constitution) wasn’t taught but feel-good theology was all the rage.
Sorry, Bud, but my Bible teaches me to take care of my family and neighbors instead of letting the state become the fount of all good things. That job belongs to my God, and the sorry sack of pig poo that calls himself president (yes, I know we’re supposed to honor our leaders, but what’s he done to earn that honor?) doesn’t even come close.
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Deciding whether or not a war is warranted is actually a legitimate role of government, and both the Iraq War and Afghanistan wars were overwhelmingly approved by Congress.
It’s not just “the Christian right” who want to repeal and replace Obamacare, it’s conservatives and libertarians of all religious (and non-religious) stripes. Your fixation on “the religious right” is sorta dopey.
Btw, you reveal yourself to be profoundly ignorant about what Jesus actually taught if you think he called for the government to provide cradle to (early) grave crappy government healthcare to its citizens. Methinks you are vastly over your head in any discussion regarding Christianity.
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To: tlipscomb554
I agree with the above comments taking you to task.
It has been documented that liberals contribute less to charity than conservatives. It seems as though they want to contribute through the government. Obama and Biden have contributed next to nothing. The government is monumentally less efficient than smaller organizations, e.g., Salvation Army and Catholic Charities. Get a grip!
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Deb, in response to your comment, there is widespread ignorance of what Christianity is all about. We are definitely not a Christian nation anymore. Have you taken Focus on the Family’s Truth project? It is a tremendous resource. One point that they made was how Christian tenets were learned by all at our founding. The second best selling book (the first being the Bible) was the New England Primer with which all kids learned to read. It began “A – A In Adam’s Fall, We sinned all. B – Thy life to mend, this book (picture of the Bible) attend,…” Nowadays, people don’t even know who Adam is. 50 percent of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were married. Christianity to the public is no more than the Golden rule and you aren’t suppose to judge. (The later is a misreading. You aren’t suppose to judge hypocritically. The next line is “Don’t criticize the speck in your brother’s eye if you have a log in yours.” But that isn’t to say that specks in eyes are good things. They hurt – a lot! But you can’t help you brother or sister take the speck out with log in yours.)
But…that is not to say there is not to say there isn’t some in what tlipscomb is saying. (All good untruths have some truth in them.) I definitely think that we Christians don’t do enough, though we do a lot, for hunger and sickness. Jesus tells us that this is how we will be judged! “Whenever you did this for the least of these…”
But tlipscomb is wrong that we Christians should support a program that will literally bankrupt the country. One of the lies that liberals self-deceive themselves with is the notion that they are “progressives” meaning that this country is progressing. We are not. We are teetering on the brink of financial disaster. Currently, our debt per capita (the debt that you, I and tlipscomb,..all owe) is higher than Greece’s. If we “default” in a Greece like fashion, many more people will be without health care. It is incomprehensible to the likes of tlipscomb that the country could implode or degenerate into despotism despite their continuous efforts to completely compromise or financial future and erase safeguards against despotism.
One irony that I am sure is lost on tlipscomb is that the organization – Catholic hospitals – that is responsible for more charity health care than any other is under attack. We Christians are also supposed to take care of orphans and widows, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” James 1:27 The liberals, in their “tolerant” fashion put the Catholic adoption agencies out of business in Massachusetts and Illinois. They are trying to do this with Catholic hospitals now.
Blessings to you and your (large) family!
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ND, tlipscomb555 would seem to be over his/her head in any discussion, except one involving “what’s my guvmint done for me today? – I can’t wait forever to get what’s owed me by them!”
Probably believes in “free” health care, “free” food stamps and “free” housing, too.
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Who would have thought that the thread would take such a tangent? I found another version on youtube with the Haverford acapella group and a remarkable soloist (and a slower beat):
I also found this one in the related videos. Selah performing How deep the Father’s love for us:
Do you read Zero Hedge? Kind of wonky, but worth it. There is a very interesting and relevant discussion just out: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/welfare-great-delusion . He quotes another author that addresses tlipscomb directly:
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Welfare has many antonyms, but “hardship” is particularly apt in this context. Wikipedia’s entry on “welfare” ends like this: “… this term replaces “charity” as it was known for thousands of years, being the act of providing for those who temporarily or permanently could not provide for themselves.” As usual, the defining characteristic is missed. Charity is voluntary. “Welfare” as practised by government is compulsory. This makes the two terms opposites. It also brings about the opposite results. Charity is a voluntary act made by those who have a surplus to assist those who do not. “Welfare” is a system guaranteed to end up in hardship for everyone but particularly for those who are forced to be “charitable”.
—
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Thanks for the additional videos, Orthocon. And sorry some of your comments have been going directly to the spam filter. I hear that other WordPress blogs are having the same problem.
Yes, I sometimes read Zero Hedge. Doug Ross links to him a lot!
I think “free will” is the key to everything. We accept God on our own free will. We serve God and our fellow man out of our own free will. When faith is compulsory, as with Islam, being an apostate is a capital crime, punishable by death. Islam despises other religions, and under Sharia law, Christians and Jews become second class citizens. To put it nicely – that is the opposite of Godliness.
Christians are called to help the poor, but not through through taxes imposed on us to help fund secular welfare programs (to which we may be morally opposed.) Putting people on cradle to grave welfare programs does nothing but foster dependence on Government, and give power to the politicians promising more handouts. It’s a sick system (like you said – the opposite of charity) and it needs to be rolled back incrementally.
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My point was the Right Wing is focus on cutting Government services to the poor, while ignoring the loss of Billions of dollars for needless wars and foreign aid. –ObamaCare is more than just providing health insurance to the poor. For example,it has elements such as allowing young people to be on their parent’s insurance longer (up to age 25) and people with pre-existing conditions to be able to get health insurance Then next year 2013, health insurance exchanges in to be implemented on the state level. These are elements of the law that help the middle-class and perhaps your own family. –By the way, I am a moderate, and believe in helping the needy for a short time and helping them move out of poverty. I don’t believe in enabling people for life. Furthermore, I am not an Obama supporter. – I know and understand how fundamental Christians think because I was one for years … I did not lose my faith, but gained an understanding of what Jesus taught. And the hate I see from Right Wing Fundamentalist is sickening (e,g, “… the sorry sack of pig poo that calls himself president” Carlos).
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That’s funny, tlipscomb555, I don’t see that as hate nearly as much as I see it as disgust over a person who promised to uphold the Constitution and abide by the rule of law and who has done the exact opposite.
It also embodies to me the immense disgust with the so-called “worthy opposition” that has failed to call him and his staff of minions out on the criminal treatment of established law, constitutional law and rule of law. The man is a criminal and has taken this once-great country back to the Stone Age of socialism.
As far as ObamaCare goes (or RomneyCare, as far as that’s concerned), I again ask you where in the Bible does it say it’s OK for government to steal from producers to pay for anything exclusive to those too lazy or too screwed up to produce? I know as a Christian I am to aid the elderly, widows and children, that I am to cheerfully give at least 10% of everything I make to those that run my religious affiliation or to other Godly enterprises (and more if I can), but nowhere do I find a mandate to get relief from those mandates by giving such jobs to the government. I am (as noted above) to give my coat to another if the other has none. But where in God’s name can you tell me the Bible says to give those functions to government? You can’t!
Unless all you want to do is create your own god (small “g”) and endow that god with the powers my God has reserved to himself exclusively, that he is the supplier of every good thing. Good luck with that.
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Most people understand by now that Obama just says what he thinks he needs to say to get through a given day, and sometimes he will contradict himself within the span of one interview because it’s so hard to keep the lies straight. Discerning Christians are deeply offended by brazen liars like the one we currently have in the White House.
Btw, it doesn’t surprise me at all that tlips was once a “fundamentalist Christian”. He seems to be wired to be a “fundamentalist” something.
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67% of the American people are “fundamentalist Christians”, who knew?
WaPo/ABC News Poll: 67% Of Americans Want Supreme Court To Invalidate At Least Part of Obamacare…
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/03/19/wapoabc-news-poll-67-of-americans-want-supreme-court-to-invalidate-at-least-part-of-obamacare/
The 25% who want to throw out the insurance mandate, and keep the rest are essentially voting to throw out the whole thing because it falls apart without the mandate.
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