TURNER THEOLOGY: I just read an article about Ted Turner. Yea, he’s still around, still has some money although he’s not the major media player he once was. He’s busy opening up some restaurants that feature bison meat (didn’t seem like something that would get him back above the billion mark, but who knows, with mad cow disease it may turn out to be a smart play after all). One of his motivations in getting people to eat buffalo meat is that it will help bring large herds of bison back and assure their survival. Hmm, now imagine if some advanced creatures ever come down from outer space and determine that in order to save the human race they have to eat us — how would we feel about that? Guess it would solve the Social Security fiscal crisis.<\/p>\n
Anyway, the article described Ted Turner’s feelings about God. And they aren’t very positive. Mr. Turner came from a religious family, but his sister died at the age of 20. While she was sick, Ted prayed for her 30 minutes each day. And he expected something in return. But he didn’t get it, so now he’s an atheist. Well, I guess it’s not surprising that a successful businessman like Ted Turner would need a performance-based God.<\/p>\n
Maybe Ted Turner isn’t 100% sure that God doesn’t exist, but he sure wouldn’t give “him” a good grade. Quote: “If there’s a God, he is not doing a good job of protecting the earth. He’s kind of checked out”. OK, Ted, but maybe we humans shouldn’t talk much until we start doing a better job of protecting the earth. How has Mr. Turner done? Well, admittedly, not all that bad. The guy has put out real some money and effort for ecological concerns and world peace efforts. Back in 1996 he pledged a billion to the United Nations (back when that seemed like real money). But he still owes about 2\/3 of it.<\/p>\n
Other than suffering from an unsophisticated anti-theology (and still being filthy stinking rich, despite his huge losses on AOL Time Warner), Ted Turner is pretty much like the rest of us – a mixture of good and bad elements, driven by admirable and uninspiring motives. Turner’s biggest sin appears to be his ignorance of the fact that his success in life is greatly a function of incredible dumb luck. Guys like him really think they’ve built their castles through merit. They just can’t see that they were the lucky one out of a million who were “fated” to live lives where everything just fell together, right time, right place, right look, right message, right people, right deal, one after another. It had nothing much to do with their inner virtues. They kind of get confused between the purely random circumstances that made into pseudo-gods, and the messy course of seemingly-random events where the real God lurks and works.<\/p>\n
You’ve got to wonder what Mr. Turner would have done if God could have answered the prayers regarding his sister with a choice. Suppose God could have shown the young Ted Turner a feature length film about the man that he would grow up to become (obviously Jane Fonda would be in it!). Then God told him, OK, if you agree to give all of this up and live an average life as a garbage truck driver out in some sweltering little city down south (Macon, maybe), I’ll let your sister live. Wonder what he would have done. You might get a clue by watching what Mr. Turner does with the $790 million in cash that he recently freed up. Will he keep the balance of it flowing toward the humanitarian causes that he’s pledged himself to and fade away as an ersatz Jimmy Carter? Or will he give in to the temptation to get back into the spotlight by putting together a play for a big media corporation or sports franchise? Ah, the devil and Ted Turner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TURNER THEOLOGY: I just read an article about Ted Turner. Yea, he’s still around, still has some money although he’s not the major media player he once was. He’s busy opening up some restaurants that feature bison meat (didn’t seem like something that would get him back above the billion mark, but who knows, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}