Josh Benner

Tag: New York

  • Abortion rights activists increasingly radical

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    This week, the New York legislature voted 38-24 to expand the state’s abortion laws. Those in attendance gave this measure a standing ovation. Also this week, new Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker vowed to make the Land of Lincoln the most progressive state on abortion laws in America. States are competing for how radical they can be on abortion laws. Worldwide there were 41 million abortions last year.

    In 1996, President Bill Clinton said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.”

    And now, it is celebrated. (more…)

  • Miracle on the Hudson – 10 years later

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    I had just graduated from college and was driving back home to Columbus to take care of a few things. I heard a breaking news story on the radio that a plane had gone down over the Hudson River. “That’s really tragic,” I thought to myself.

    A little bit later, I heard another update that everyone had survived the crash. I was shocked. (more…)

  • Election of firsts – but you have to be the right first to get attention

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    Update: there have been chances in vote leaders in certain elections since the writing of this article. Martha McSally and Young Kim would go on to lose their elections.  

    I’ve seen a lot of posts and Tweets about the diverse candidates who were elected on Tuesday. Van Jones of CNN said the election didn’t turn out to be a blue wave but it was a rainbow wave.

    Many are celebrating that the first female Muslims were elected to congress, the first openly gay governor was elected, the first two Native American women were elected to congress, the youngest woman ever was elected to congress.

    Young Kim was narrowly elected to California’s 39th congressional district. I don’t see her on the list. But she’s the first Korean American elected to the US congress. She’s a republican so that doesn’t get celebrated with the others. I did a search on Twitter for these lists that also happen to mention the first Korean American woman. I found five. TOTAL. On all of Twitter.

    But that makes the celebration seem disingenuous to me. Diversity gets celebrated but only if it’s the right people, otherwise it gets ignored. Martha McSally was elected to the senate in Arizona. She was a pilot in the air force and the first female to fly as a fighter pilot. When she retired from her 22 year military career, McSally was a colonel and one of the highest ranking female pilots in Air Force history. A remarkable woman. But she’s a republican so she gets largely ignored.

    Essentially it doesn’t matter to people who celebrate it. It’s not about any of these diverse candidates who won. If it were, Young Kim would also be celebrated. What matters is people who adhere to a certain political ideology. And if they happen to check intersectional boxes, that’s great. If they check those boxes and aren’t progressive, they’re ignored.

    Also, why the need to front load things with a person’s race, gender, or orientation instead of their plans to govern?

    Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe! 

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

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  • The eve of infamy, and where I was on 9/11

    Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons
    Flickr Creative Commons

    Originally posted September 11, 2012

    As I write these words, the stresses of everyday life come to mind. I think of how busy I am between work and my other commitments. I’m so often short-sighted and allow myself to get frustrated. It’s getting late and I jot some thoughts down before going to sleep. On this night, my thoughts are on the past and with people I’ve never met. Seventeen years ago tonight, thousands of Americans went to bed, unaware that it was the eve of their last day on earth.

    For me, that’s surreal. Monday was an ordinary start to the work week. In the evening, people played with their kids, and watched Monday Night Football, and kissed their spouses goodnight. They prepared to go on flights for work, or vacation, or just to make it home. They thought about what bill needed to be paid and the home repair which needed to be completed. They went to sleep like it was any other night and woke up to a beautiful Tuesday morning. (more…)

  • Life lessons from baseball

     

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    Tomorrow is opening day of the 2018 Major League Baseball season. Between opening day and the end of the season in early November, more than 2,430 games will be played.

    Baseball’s regular season is the longest in American professional sports, nearly doubling the 82 games NBA and NHL seasons.

    I think about the baseball games that are blowouts. The 10, 12, 14 run wins. When a team gets behind by a huge margin in baseball, it’s very rare for them to comeback and win. And the later in the game a team is down by a big run-differential, the less likely they are to comeback. If you get to the bottom of the 9th down by double-digit runs, the incidence of a comeback is virtually unheard of.

    In a baseball game, you can go out on Thursday, and your team can get crushed. Starting pitcher might not have good stuff bats aren’t connecting, errors. It can be a horrible day, a 12 run loss.

    But the beauty of baseball is that, no matter what happened on Thursday, Friday is a new opportunity to go out and to succeed. No matter how badly you lost yesterday, it doesn’t matter with how you can do today.

    Life is the same way. We can have a really bad day. We can feel totally defeated. But tomorrow is always a new day.

    That metaphor works both ways. If you were the team who dominated on Thursday, you still have to go out and play well on Friday.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.