Guard Each One's Dignity and Save Each One's Pride

They'll Know We are Christians By Our Love is one of my most favorite songs.  If I had to pick a song that I try to live by and that I think would be a good one to describe the Christian life, it would be this one.  That is because of the lines, "and we'll guard each one's dignity and save each one's pride."  I just think that is what we need to focus on, in all times.  Missoula:  Rape and the Justice System in a College Town might not be the book that one thinks of when one is reminded of this song, but it should be.  Now Missoula isn't a church, it isn't "Christian" in name or in claim.  And I don't even know if any of the people who are written about in this book are Christians, but they are all God's children.  And we all have a responsibility to guard each one's dignity and save each one's pride.  And we all have a right to be treated with dignity and respect.  That didn't seem to happen in Missoula in these cases.  A very eye-opening book.  It didn't give me an iffy/icky feeling like Three Cups of Deceit.  It just made me very sad/mad/shocked to hear how often sexual assault and rape occur and how cases were handled in Missoula and that this wasn't really all that rare.  The other thing is, how the Missoula situation was tied into sports.  I am just not a sports person, so this was very hard to understand and reminded me of the Penn State horror, in which sports came first.  Sickening.

I Don't Know...

It's not so much that I don't believe Jon Krakauer's criticisms of the Three Cups of Tea guy, Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute.  Mortenson's antics have been well documented elsewhere and Mortenson himself has publicly confessed.  It's just that Three Cups of Deceit, I don't know...there was just something off about it.  I don't mean that it didn't tell the truth or that Krakauer lied or anything, no, not at all.  It was more like a personal attack or criticism or something.  Which I know it was, but the reviewer on goodreads who said, "the moral of the story is, don't f*&k with Jon Krakauer's money."  seems to have said it best.  Krakauer himself gave money to CAI and when he found out that there were lies in Three Cups of Tea he went on an investigation and did a piece for 60 Minutes and this ebook came out of it.  The good part of the book was that it was super short, unlike those that you need to listen to quickly to get through them.  I still sped this one up though.  I never read Three Cups of Tea, it is really not my thing at all.

Interesting

Under the Banner of Heaven is one of those books that everyone has been telling me that I have to read and so I finally did.  I listened to it, actually.  It was very good and I learned a lot about the LDS Church and the Fundamentalist LDS Church and things I didn't know about before, so that was cool.  As a Christian, I didn't find it offensive or evil or anything like that.  It was just a good history book.  I did have to listen to it in triple speed though, as it was long in a lot of places.  I don't skim books, and if I do I don't count them, so I wanted to hear every word, but I can't imagine getting through this without the triple speed.  I won't ever say, "You gotta read this book!" but if you get it on audible.com, like I did and you can listen to it quickly, then it is worth it.