Live With Bob And Cato!

Truth Itself is privileged to be anchored by longtime broadcast veteran, Bob Ditmer.Bob is currently the Director of Media at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and hosts the ministry’s radio and television programs.  He spent 14 years hosting and directing Family News in Focus, the public policy broadcast of Focus on the Family.  Before working in Christian radio Bob’s career was in secular broadcast journalism as a reporter and anchor at news/talk giants WWL in New Orleans and KTAR in Phoenix.  Bob comes from a radio family; his father owned several secular stations in Michigan and he started working in the industry at a very young age. He and his wife Denise have five children.

Cato the Elder (kāˈtō) [key] or Cato the Censor, Lat. Cato Major or Cato Censorius, 234–149 B.C., Roman statesman and moralist, whose full name was Marcus Porcius Cato. He fought in the Second Punic War and later served as quaestor (204), aedile (199), praetor (198), consul (195), and censor (184). He was renowned for his devotion to the old Roman ideals—simplicity of life, honesty, and unflinching courage. He inveighed against extravagance and new customs, but his policy was not aimed at repression but rather at reform and the rebuilding of Roman life. He sought to restrict seats in the senate to the worthy and undertook much building, including the repair of the city sewers. He was sent on an official visit to Carthage in his old age. Upon his return he expressed stern disapproval of Carthaginian ways and told the senate to destroy Carthage. He thus helped to bring on the Third Punic War, in which Carthage was destroyed. Probably his detestation of luxury and cultivated ways inspired the deep hatred that he had for the Scipio family. He himself deliberately affected a rustic appearance and rustic manners. However, he complacently accepted class division and treated his servants harshly. He wrote many works, most of which are now lost. Probably the most influential was his history of early Rome. His De agri cultura or De re rustica, translated as On Farming, is a practical treatise that offers valuable information on agricultural methods and country life in his day.

See A. E. Astin, Cato the Censor (1978).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Yes, the italicized portions are a little long today, but I felt it necessary to see what connects and what separates Bob Ditmer from Cato the Elder besides twenty-three centuries. The biography of Mr. Ditmer above comes from the Truth Itself website while Cato the Elder, who's called that by posterity to distinguish him from his great-grandson aptly titled Cato the YOUNGER, I lifted from the Infoplease website with accompanying copyright. I'd have gone with Wikipedia except the links I'd had to have removed would take too long.

Anyway, most mornings on my way in to work I hear Truth Itself on the radio and no matter what the topic is -- it could be about a conservative student's standards being attacked, this morning it was about a Syrian village being shelled and Christians there being singled out and you and I not caring, giving, or praying enough to help them -- at the end of the program Mr. Ditmer brings up the need for affordable health care and suggests Medi-Share, emphasizing that it's not insurance and that it's a pool of Christians sharing each others' medical burdens.

And I am hesitant to subscribe to it.

Besides a big question mark regarding how you check if people in Medi-Share are adhering to "Biblical lifestyles" (Ten Commandments et. al.) there's this apprehension I have of someone or several someone's ongoing illnesses wiping out the majority of what people pay into the program. With my family this is currently not an issue as Martha works for a medical provider and any services the kids, Martha, or I need we get discounted on. Paying ANYTHING is frustrating, but you get what you pay for. And Medi-Share might be paying for the advertising on the program, for all I know.

But it's still not available in Montana.

Carthage must be destroyed. I could give you the Latin version of that Cato would have used, but I'm pretentious enough today. But after an official visit there and in light of Rome's two prior and lengthy altercations with Carthage for dominance of the Mediterranean aka the First and Second Punic Wars, Cato stood in the Roman Senate and whenever he stood in the Senate, no matter what subject he spoke on, he would end his address with "Carthage must be destroyed". And it eventually was in the three-year Third Punic War.


From the Wikipedia article, "Salting the earth":

Starting in the 19th century, various texts claim that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus plowed over and sowed the city of Carthage with salt after defeating it in the Third Punic War (146 BC), sacking it, and forcing the survivors into slavery. However, no ancient sources exist documenting the salting itself. The Carthage story is a later invention, probably modeled on the [Old Testament Book of Judges] story of Shechem. The ritual of symbolically drawing a plow over the site of a city is, however, mentioned in ancient sources, though not in reference to Carthage specifically.

 
Ok, so I WAS willing to remove some links from another entry!


By the way, Punic comes from a Latin adjective used to describe anything related to Carthage. I guess "The Carthaginian War" wouldn't fit on a playbill, or it would have given more credit to the vanquished.  Lest you think that I take nothing seriously -- and I need to do so on this last day of Bible Camp for Sarah and Jeffrey -- I want you to know that I don't deliberately post to hurt others' feelings, nor do I claim any level of infallibility. Where I am right now I just have quite a bit of time to think and attempt to see others' points of view.


But I will ultimately act on mine.


David