From Bill Bennett's American Patriot's Almanac:
Until October 14, 1947, no one knew if a plane could fly faster than the speed of sound. Aircraft approaching Mach 1 shook violently, as if hitting an invisible wall. Only a year earlier, British pilot Geoffrey De Havilland had died when his plane broke apart flying close to the speed of sound. Scientists theorized that as a plane reached high speeds, sound waves piled up around it, creating a “sound barrier” that held it back.
After World War II the U.S. military and Bell Aircraft developed the X-1, a “bullet with wings” designed to punch a hole through the sound barrier. The test pilot for the rocketpowered plane was 24-year-old Captain Chuck Yeager. A decorated combat ace, Yeager had cheated death more than once. During the war, he’d been shot down over France but eluded the Nazis with the help of the French Resistance, made it back to his squadron, and returned to the skies.
By mid-October 1947 Yeager had flown the X-1 several times over the Mojave Desert, edging closer to the sound barrier. On October 14 he climbed into the plane with two cracked ribs from a fall off a horse—an injury he kept secret so he wouldn’t be grounded. A giant B-29 carried the X-1 to 20,000 feet and released it. The plane stalled and dropped 500 feet while Yeager struggled to bring it under control. He fired his rocket engines, climbed to 42,000 feet, leveled off, and fired a rocket again.
Then it happened. The shaking suddenly stopped. “I was so high and so remote, and the airplane was so very quiet that I might have been motionless,” Yeager later recalled. But the needle on the speed gauge jumped off the scale. On the ground below, engineers heard the thunder of a sonic boom. Chuck Yeager had punched through the sound barrier.
Every day, Bill Bennett provides via email--for free--a reading from his American Patriot's Almanac. You’ll read about heroes, their achievements, and key events that took place “On This Day” in American history. Click here to subscribe.
Welcome to the Intersections Blog, where I try to work out where politics, pop culture, and the Bible meet
So What's This All About?
In case you didn't know, I'm in the multi-year-long process of posting a Christian devotional at the TAWG Blog. The TAWG Blog is, and always will be, mostly apolitical. For the most part, Bible-believing Christians will find little to disagree with there. But I also firmly believe that God's word can--and should--inform everything in life, and this should include politics and popular culture. How should we vote? How should we respond to hot topics such as abortion, capital punishment, taxes, and other issues? Which party, if either, is closer to the Biblical ideal? Tony Campolo and Ron Sider, Evangelicals whose political leanings are on the Left, have made the case in several of their writings that God wants his followers to vote politically on the Left more than on the Right. At times, some of them have gone so far as to equate voting on the Left with obedience to Christ, either subtly or not-so-subtly contending that the converse is true as well: If you vote Republican, you're sinning against the Savior.
I don't agree. I think that to the degree they actually resort to the Bible, they're misinterpreting it. With a whole bunch of caveats, I think politically conservative positions are a lot more compatible with the Scriptures than the Leftist positions.
Just to clarify, I would never accuse people who disagree with me--especially siblings in Christ--of what they accuse me of. I don't judge my own heart, much less anyone else's, and I don't equate political disagreement with theological fidelity to God. I have no reason to doubt their love for the Lord and "for the least of these," but I believe that they're sincerely wrong.
Just to clarify, I would never accuse people who disagree with me--especially siblings in Christ--of what they accuse me of. I don't judge my own heart, much less anyone else's, and I don't equate political disagreement with theological fidelity to God. I have no reason to doubt their love for the Lord and "for the least of these," but I believe that they're sincerely wrong.
So there are two main purposes for this blog. One is to make a case for my political beliefs based on Scripture. The other is a bit more vague, basically to work out my political beliefs and figure out what's based on Scripture and what's based on my own biases. I certainly don't have all the answers. Some of this stuff I'm still figuring out. And I'm certainly open to correction. As long as you make your case civilly and based on Scripture, feel free to make a comment, and I promise I'll post it and consider your arguments thoughtfully and prayerfully. Who knows? Maybe we'll learn a little something from each other.
May God bless our common striving together towards both the "little t" truth and "Big T" Truth. Our watchword here is a line from C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle: "Further up and further in!"
P.S. -- Below on the left is "Topics I've Covered" which lists everything I've posted topically. It's come to my attention that some people would like to see everything just listed for them. If that's you, you can get it here. Thanks to my friend Stephen Young for the tip!
No comments:
Post a Comment