Five years

Five years ago...

America was still reeling from 9/11.

We hadn't invaded Iraq.

Nobody had heard of Barack Obama.

And I had my last moments as a single man.

Five years later, I love her more than I did then. Both of us have grown up in ways I couldn't even imagine then. The road has been rough, but road trips are always more fun when you're on them with a friend.

So honey, here's to five years together so far, and a hope for many more.

On the Incarnation

This time of year, all Christians celebrate the Incarnation, or enfleshment, of Jesus the Christ. While my thoughts are amateur, one must start somewhere.

The Incarnation is an incredible miracle. One Who is infinite wrapped Himself in finitude, in a body that exists in three dimensions and had boundaries. The Omnipresent One was in a single location. The fullness of Deity Who spoke and worlds leapt into existence at His command could talk with people who didn't want to listen!

Is it that much of a logical leap from the Incarnation (which all Christians acknowledge) to the Real Presence at the Eucharist? The God who clothed Himself with flesh, making it holy, is surely capable of clothing Himself with bread and wine, making them holy, isn't He?

Fred Thompson Peels the Gloves Off

Fred Thompson's campaign is starting to throw some punches.

Individual and Community, Redux

Could it be that a good community provides good feedback to the individuals that make it up, and that the individuals, working harder at their community because of their individual development, make a virtuous cycle in a healthy, well-functioning community?

From the Noise to the Quiet

My church is having a fall gathering of adult classes. I attended "Come to the Quiet" tonight. We had a worship service in the style of the Taizé community in France.

The worship was very contemplative. The songs were repeated many times, almost mantra-like. While my understanding of mantras tells me that the goal is to empty the mind so as to become nothing and reach the void (which is antithetical to Christianity), this use is for a different goal: Not to reach the void, but to silence ourselves so that God may speak.

Experiencing that worship for the first time, I wasn't sure what to think of it. The usual worship at our church is not noisy in the sense of cacophony. It is orderly, but it is full of sound and music. It is rare when more than 30 seconds of silence happen, and in that case, the song leader starts a familiar song. In our world, we have music, news, and conversations available at the push of a button, and with shortwave radio, it can be anywhere in the world. The silence of the Taizé worship was unnerving. I am not accustomed to the quietness and the stillness. Noises from the electrical hum of the lights and voices from the classes next to us were almost unwelcome. They remind us of the passage of time while we try to be in the presence of One who is timeless.

The songs were a different experience too. Most of them were set in a minor key, which, raised in the traditions of Western music, evokes a different set of emotions than songs set in a major key. They were far, far away from our usual triumphant songs, but they are not defeatist either. They humbly ask God to come and listen to us. They don't demand, they ask. They also ask us to wait for God and to be here, in the present, for each other.

It was a remarkably different experience for me. It was difficult to keep the silence. I have not developed that discipline. I constantly seek something to read, something to think about, and something to listen to. What are your experiences and advice for slowing down and listening to God?

Boom!

So I'm sitting at work and hear this loud thumping and banging.

Turns out my building is getting a window-washing today. That's a relief.

Individual and Community

Lately (within the last two years), I've heard a new buzzword coming out of preachers' mouths:

Community.

Growing up in a church of Christ, it's not a word that was heard very often. The emphasis was on the individual, by far. There were token mentions of Hebrews 10:25 of course, but it was mostly to make sure that the individual was following what God said in His word.

Today, "community" is mentioned so often it is inescapable, as though once we establish it, it will fix what ails us and be all we ever need. Is it the same as what was previously called "fellowship" when I was growing up? It doesn't seem to be. When people speak of "community," there seems to be a heavily mystical attitude towards it. "Fellowship" was simply time together, not necessarily doing "church things" like corporate worship. Is it a matter of the new word replacing the old word so as not to be loaded with the usual definition, to try and get us to think about how we as a congregation relate to each other and redo it? Is it the influence of the 1970s in education (when social studies replaced the discrete subjects of history, geography, economics, etc.) flowering as those who are in charge of congregations' teaching come to influence in the church?

Please don't get me wrong--community (what is held in common) is essential and included in Christianity. We're going to spend eternity with these people, so what's wrong in getting started off on the right foot now? Accountability to each other, through usual friendships and other relationships with each other, strengthens the bonds that we have. My main question is why didn't we hear about community in previous years?

New Feed!

OK, so I know that not too many people read here, but anyway.

I use Google Reader to look over my news sources, blogs of friends, and so forth. One of their features is that I can share different posts on different blogs or newspaper pages. And now, you, yes, YOU can subscribe to them and see what I find to be interesting! Check out the new chicklet on the left to see what I'm fascinated by.

God bless!

I can't do NPR all the time

Lately, I've been trying to broaden and deepen my perspective on the world. One way I try to do this is by listening to National Public Radio. Well, I can't do this all the time. It makes me too angry. Yesterday, I heard just a bit of the Diane Rehm Show and a caller asked:

Which of the following are more closely modeling "family values?" A Senator who is apparently married and whose name is found in an escort service phone list, or a committed gay couple who have adopted children and are raising them?

The answer, of course, is "Neither." The caller was trying to set up a false dichotomy. I confess to tuning away as soon as I heard the question. I couldn't handle my anger. The caller was referring to Senator David Vitter from Louisiana. When Senator Vitter's name was released, he came forward, apologized, explained that he, God, and his family were working things out, and gave all indications that he had truly repented and was trying to get that part of his life back on track. That doesn't erase his past, but it certainly explains why the calls for Senator Vitter's resignation haven't been heard like they have been (and were answered for) Senator Craig of Idaho, who pleaded guilty, then dissembled, spun, and tried to shuck and jive his way out of an admission of guilt.

In the end, I don't like to hear sanctimony about what God has called sin, and when caught, repentance is always the best option whether you're a public official or not.

Kids These Days and their cartoons

Every generation has their bones to pick with the ones that come after them. We haven't completely gotten rid of our TV (though we did cut the cable and are relying on over-the-air transmissions), but we still get the occasional cartoon. My, they're different from when I was growing up.

The cartoons I remember most were Robotech and the Trans-Formers. When you watched those cartoons, there was a strain of Good vs. Evil going on, like in G. I. Joe. There was a strong sense of right and wrong, and it was shown to the viewers that they should be good.

Today's popular cartoons like Jimmy Neutron or Pokemon don't strike me as good versus evil, but smart versus stupid. Has anyone else noticed this? How does this influence our kids?

Abortion, Natural Law, and Catholic Politicians

The Pope recently issued a warning to Catholic politicians that they risk excommunication and denial of the Eucharist if they use their temporal powers to legalize abortion. The pro-choice crowd has been fretting about how terrible this is, and how this is breaking down the separation of church and state.

They're wrong.

Natural law is "written in the heart" of every man according to the Apostle Paul. This is usually demonstrated as general ethics with regards to how we treat each other. Laws against murder, lying in court, theft, and elder abuse all come from the natural law that is written on our hearts. Even people who have not had the light of Christ in their lives recognize that there are rules about how we should govern ourselves and our relations with others.

Christians generally view life as beginning at and ensoulment occurring at conception. This makes the killing of an unborn child a direct equivalent to killing one that has been born. If the child is innocent of any crime (or endangering the mother, such as with an ectopic pregnancy), then killing it intentionally is murder. Murder is, of course, against the natural law, not only against Catholic and Christian doctrine.

If you were to substitute "murder" for "abortion" in the statements about politicians ("The Pope said that politicians who did not legislate against murder risk excommunication and denial of the Eucharist."), it becomes much less controversial. But that is exactly what the Pope is doing. Through their actions, politicians who endorse transgressing the natural law are excommunicating themselves from the church and inviting their bishops to deny them the Eucharist.

There should be no controversy. You cannot endorse sin out of one side of your mouth (the "public" side) and condemn it with the other (the "faithful" side). If the politicians were forcing church attendance or forcing admission of the Host after consecration as being the very body of Christ, that would be forcing church doctrine by law of the state, but saying that the politicians separate themselves from their church for allowing state law to digress from natural law is nothing wrong.

Accommodating the Fall

We are more than human. We are fallen humans. The consequences of this go throughout our bodies, our spirits, and through them, the societies that we form. No family is safe from its ravages. No clan can be protected from it. No government is immune to its effects. When there is a human around, there are problems. Only one man, the Lord Jesus Christ, was born un-fallen. Through Him, we can all be redeemed and saved, but we're not there yet.

Most theologians view our salvation in three stages:

• Justification, wherein our records in Heaven are taken to be forgiven and accounted to Christ, which has been completed when you accept His sacrifice and obey Him;
• Sanctification, wherein we are made to "conform to the likeness of His Son," evidenced by our (hopefully) sinning less and less as we become more and more like Jesus; and
• Glorification, wherein we will be given new bodies in the Resurrection at the end of the age, full of glory given to us by God.

These undo the results of the Fall. Justification erases (virtually) our own individual records of the wrongs that we have done. Through it, the deeds that we have done were accounted to Christ Jesus, and our judicial record in Heaven is clean. Sanctification (which we do not complete until death) deletes our tendency to sin and disobey God's law. Most of us are sanctified slowly, but there are those who suddenly make a large turnaround in their lives, enabled by God. Our glorification will be part of the grand restoration of the universe at the end of the age. There, death and the grave will finally be defeated—we will no longer age, get sick, or die.

In the meantime, we are stuck with being un-sanctified and un-glorified. We still sin, we still age, and we still die. How do we deal with this? As far as not being glorified yet, the most obvious accommodation is that we have doctors and hospitals to try and heal our bodies. No one seems to have a problem with this interim solution.

But we still sin. Our greed, our lust, our anger, our gluttony, and all our other sins affect both us and the people around us. There is still something fundamentally wrong with us. Can we redirect our fallen nature to limit its consequences and even, in some cases, use it to provide incentive to do what is right and good?

In the next life, we won't need money. There won't be a curse, so there will be no more starvation, no food shortages (if we even need food), nor anything like that. In this life, however, we are greedy and want more of everything. Capitalism seems to allow the best of both worlds.

Under capitalism, human greed is redirected. No longer is the impulse to simply hoard what you've got, but to use what you've got to get even more. In the process, more wealth is created that you don't get your hands on, and this gets distributed to other people. I'm sure you're familiar with this aspect of capitalism, so I won't expound on it.

Many utopias have been written about. From Thomas More to Gene Roddenberry, with Karl Marx in between, they have all ignored some aspect of human nature. Most of them ascribe an altruism to us that we just do not have at our cores. They think that by making sure everyone is fed and clothed, nobody will want anything more.

I'm not going to go as far as Gordon Gekko and say that greed is right, because it's not. But I will say it must be accounted for.

Intellectual "Property"

Many people are uncomfortable with the idea of intellectual property. There are certainly some problems with some aspects of IP law in the United States. After all, whenever Steamboat Willie's copyright is about to expire, it seems like Walt Disney Company petitions Congress to extend the term that copyrighted materials are protected from entering the public domain. This is keeping other works of literature, where the author has long since stopped trying to disseminate his or her work, from entering the public domain. Another problem is the patenting of existing human genes.

There are other perceived problems too. How can "stealing" information (wherein the original owner still has the information) really be theft? While you don't deprive the original owner of posession of the information, you do deprive them of the compensation that the author wishes to obtain for that information. I think a great example is brand name versus generic drugs. When a company develops a new drug, they make a sizable investment in original research to first come up with the drug, then they have to go through in vitro trials, animal trials, and finally human trials before earning FDA approval (in the US). To provide independent researchers the ability to verify their data, they must publish the formula for the drug. To keep their competition from bring the drug to market at a lower price, they file for and are issued a patent. This gives them the ability to exclusively profit from their invention. They can then manufacture the drug and recoup their original investment. When the patent expires, other companies come in. These companies do not have to do any of the original research or run any extensive trials to make this drug. They just incur the cost of manufacture. For this reason, they are able to sell at a much lower price than the brand name drug. If the formula was used and the original developer had no way to reap profits from its development, what would the incentive be to develop it in the first place? Can you imagine the CEO and the Chief Science Officer in this conversation?

CEO: Let's spend millions of dollars developing this!

CSO: Sure! But will we be able to make a profit on it?

CEO: Not at all. The formula will be public information before we can sell any.

CSO: Sounds like a great idea!

Nah. Me neither.

The patent system allows innovators to profit from their innovations. Just as when a brickmaker bakes a brick, he can sell it to a user of a brick, shouldn't the creator of an innovation be able to profit from users of his innovation? Perhaps there should be a few tweaks to it, like, perhaps, extending the patent protection of products that must be approved by the government to have the clock start running after regulatory approval rather than after patent approval.

Copyright is another matter. As I said, many works that would have ordinarily gone into the public domain just a few tens of years ago now will not because of changes in the law. It is near impossible to obtain these works for research or even curiosity. After all, they're not popular, so they aren't being currently produced. Can you go out and find a new copy of Al Bowlly's music? It's copyrighted, but not very profitable, so it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to do so and do it legally. What do you think of this solution?

• When you initially get a copyright, you get it for 20 years.
• At the end of 20 years, you can extend the copyright for five years for a trivial fee.
• Subsequent renewals cost the same.

This should solve the problem of allowing Steamboat Willie to remain copyrighted so that Mickey Mouse doesn't pass into the public domain, but "dead" works that aren't being actively protected would pass into the public domain.

Intellectual property may not be physical or tangible, but it should still be protected. In the latest IP kerfluffle, my heavens. Patent the algorithm, not the number.

How powerful are the Libertarians?

Some comments on Rod Dreher's blog got me thinking:

I predict that the GOP will go more libertarian, a la Giuliani, because libertarianism is a more natural fit with autonomous individualism (in fact, it's the purest expression of it), and it offers no significant opposition to corporate interests.

How powerful are the libertarians within the Republican party anyway?

• Powerful enough to press for laissez faire capitalism, but not powerful enough to shut down corporate welfare.
• Powerful enough to reform welfare, but not powerful enough to end it.
• Powerful enough to make noise on a lot of issues, but not powerful enough to do much about them.

Many experts are predicting another shellacking for the GOP in 2008. I agree. It won't be pretty if you claim the elephant. I'm seeing the Republicans do two things wrong in their attempts to become relevant again. The first is denying the social conservatives a place to be. Like it or not, many, many people will refuse to vote for a candidate that is pro-abortion. If Rudy Giuliani is nominated, the GOP will lose a large chunk of their base to either not voting, or possibly the Constitution Party. The second error that I see the Republicans committing is what looks like a refusal to clean the house of even the most egregious offenders in the pork schemes. Would that all the Presidential candidates be like Dr. No. The combined result of these two errors is alienating the entire base, both fiscal and social conservatives. It doesn't matter how much reaching out you do, if you go so far as to lose the base, all is lost.

What can be done to fix it? I wish I knew. I do know that one thing that is needed is shoring up the base. When the President, the leader of the party, abandons a socially conservative primary challenger in favor of a seated Senator whose loyalty to the cause is dubious at best, it's not a good place for the party to be. Looking back on my experience with the grassroots, most of them (us?) have their hearts in the right place. Sometimes I wish for closed primaries. I wonder how that would affect things like this?

Update on my son

Thank you for your prayers, everyone.

My son is back home, and he has some anger management tools that are helping. It's looking like we will have a long road ahead of us. Please pray that he will open up and talk, and that whatever demons are tormenting him, whether they be literal demons or only figurative ones, will stop and that he will be a normal child.

Found another pet peeve

OK, so I found another pet peeve about songleading. When you're leading a crowd that isn't familiar with you, leading a song that you're changing the rhythm for, please, PLEASE, make the hand motions so that we can see what you're doing with the beat!

This message has been brought to you by the letters C, O, and C.

Training?

Much has been made of the VT shootings. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families and friends.

One of the questions that has come up is why didn't any of the students fight back? One of the usual answers is lack of training. That's acceptable--a good first response to danger is to try to get out of it. Going into battle is not a typical reaction.

It's not just training, though. One step could be simply visualizing what you would do in a worst case scenario. Those who take the initiative and hold CHLs have probably not only trained with their weapons against paper targets, they have thought through many "what if" scenarios. It's imagining "what if" that can sometimes turn "I think I can" into "I knew I could."

Pray for us

We took our younger son to a evaluation and treatment center for his bi-polar disorder. He will be there for a while. In the mean time we are going to put our world back together.

Sometimes it does make me wonder if my wife and I really are adequate parents, but then I remember that there are other situations. You wouldn't wonder if you could parent correctly when your kid comes down with appendicitis and you take him to a surgeon to get him fixed. In the same way, when it turns out your child has a recognized mental illness, you shouldn't feel guilty about taking her for professional help.

At any rate, keep my family in your prayers.

Speaking Truth to. . . Whom?

Of course I believe in speaking truth. There's a popular saying out there, "Speak truth to power." Hitting Google:

"speak truth to power": 324,000

"speaking truth to power": 367,000

"spoke truth to power": 27,200

"spoken truth to power": 985

Total: 719,985

One thing I've always wondered, though, is "Does all power need to have truth spoken to it?" Would the people who make use of this phrase speak just as much truth to power if it agreed with them? Or does power not need any truth spoken to it if it's on the right side?

As I've stated earlier, I am a Christian. What is the ultimate, final power in the universe? Would that not be God Himself? Does God need the truth to be spoken to Him? If the saying doesn't work in the ultimate case, perhaps it needs some re-examination.

"Speak truth to evil": 29

"Speaking truth to evil": 26

"Spoke truth to evil": 7

"Spoken truth to evil": 1

Total: 63

Only a few orders of magnitude difference.

Which phrase should we be using? Not all power needs truth spoken to it. Power that is used for good is on the right track already. Power that is used for evil most definitely needs a strong dose of truth. Even powerless evil needs truth spoken to it. When your child says, "I hate you!" his powerless protest is evil and needs to be countered with scriptural truth.

Let us be precise in our speech so that we may be best understood.

Hat tip to Mark Davis for introducing me to this phrase.

You Should... You Must...

Natural law is easy to legislate. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. These laws can be derived from the second greatest commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." They stop you from doing something wrong.

Positive laws aren't so easy to legislate. "If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother." While this and similar laws are also based on the second greatest commandment, instead of stopping you from doing something wrong, they command you to do something that is right.

I have no quibble with God doing so. He is fully within His rights to do so. I have an intellectual problem with a government of man doing so. Barry Goldwater once said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have." In the same way, a government big enough to force you to do good is also big enough to force you to do evil. We can see this in that while the government sponsors welfare, it also sponsors Planned Parenthood.

What is the intellectual justification for a secular government strong enough to force the doing of good? The libertarian in me screams that there really isn't one. The Christian in me, in some ways, wants there to be one. What are your thoughts?

A capella music

I go to a church of Christ that has inherited the a capella tradition of singing. Personally, I think it is a beautiful thing when hundreds of voices join together to praise God. It can really raise the roof when all the parts are being sung and the chords come together so wonderfully. I know the praise in Heaven will be even more excellent. When it's excellent, it's fun to participate in making that praise—even if your part in it is only a joyful noise.

Orthodox Christians use a capella music in their worship because "human voices are capable of uttering rational praise" and instruments are not. I can take the tune of "Salvation Belongs to Our God" and it becomes "I Like My Hamburgers With Cheese" without the words of rationality attached.

Over the years, I've come to have three rules for music in church so that I can not only be comfortable with, but trust that it fulfills what God ordained it for:

1. The music must have words.
   

   There isn't anything special about So-La-So-Mi-Do-La-So until you add "Rock of Ages, cleft for me" to it.
   

2. The words must be intelligible.
   

   "How will they hear without a preacher?" It is also difficult to hear without clear words. I once heard a rendition of "A Mighty Fortress" sung in a church where there were so many echos the words turned to mush. After one verse, the preacher who was expounding the hymn exclaimed, "Wasn't that a great verse?" I couldn't help but think that I couldn't know because I hadn't understood a word that was said.
   

3. The volume must be reasonable.
   

   I've been in church services where earplugs were required to stand the music service not because it was so bad you didn't want to hear it, but because it was so loud and you wanted to hear afterwards. This is not only offensive, but physically dangerous to the congregation.
   

One reason I stay with the church I do is because of the music. Hymn choice is another matter, but that is for a different post.

Until next time, may His peace be with you.

Introduction

OK, here we go. Like the world needs another ruminator, but I figure I may as well toss my own opinions out there.

I am a Christian. I am married with four children. See what that tells you when you read my perspectives.