daxology

Ron Paul is a modern day prophet

2012-01-06T15:31:00.000-08:00

Jeremiah 28: 9 "As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet."

Harry Potter isn't the witch you should be concerned about.

2011-12-30T23:59:00.000-08:00

Rebellion is as sinful as witchcraft, and stubbornness as bad as worshiping idols. So because you have rejected the command of the LORD, he has rejected you as king. 1 Samuel 15:23

Whenever I would read this verse I always had a hard time relating witchcraft to rebellion. What on earth do they have to do with each other? Not that it really matters anyway, because witchcraft is a pretty uncommon practice in today's world, right? I mean I know that witchcraft is bad, but quite honestly I couldn't see the difference between the sorcery in "Harry Potter" and the same in "The Lord of the Rings", the former being derided as an evil that is being thrust upon our children under the guise of literature and the latter being a magnificent work of Christian fiction. Witchcraft? Rebellion? Harry Potter, bad. Gandolf, good. Isn't it all just fantasy anyway? I just didn't get it.

Then I was reading a Christian author by the name of Derek Prince who said that witchcraft is basically any attempt to control another person by manipulation and intimidation with the goal of domination. Prince’s definition of witchcraft in a Christian context opened my eyes:

"Witchcraft is the attempt to control people and get them to do what you want by the use of any spirit that is not the Holy Spirit and if anyone has a spirit that he can use, it is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, and no one uses God."

It made much more sense when I realized that witchcraft does not consist of casting magical incantations and riding brooms, instead it is the setting one's self up as King in rebellion to God and demanding of others that YOUR will be done. Now I saw not only the connection between witchcraft and rebellion, but also that witchcraft is a very common thing.

As a student of liberty, and with my eyes now opened to the prevalence of witchcraft in our society, the controlling nature of witchcraft reminded me of the non-aggression principle. According to the non-aggression principle any unsolicited actions of others that physically affect an individual’s property, including that person’s body, no matter if the result of those actions is damaging, beneficiary or neutral to the owner, are considered VIOLENT when they are against the owner’s free will and interfere with his right to self-determination.

With this definition of witchcraft in mind please also pay close attention to how violence is viewed within the non-aggression principle. I typically thought of violence simply as brute force, but according to the non-aggression principle, violence is ANY unsolicited action that physically affects another person, even if we believe it may result in their benefit.

Putting these ideas together I came to this conclusion: The initiation of violence is witchcraft.

American Christendom is suffering from a dangerous delusion. We are ever so eager to applaud our own restraint as we abstain from Harry Potter novels in abhorrence of ungodly "witchcraft" while at the same time living (and voting) in such a way that condones statements such as this one:

"Don’t give me this idea — I hear this: ‘Oh, you’re a moralist. You’re trying to impose your values.’ Everybody’s trying to impose their values. That’s what America’s about." -Rick Santorum

The key word in the above quote is:

impose: to put or set by or as if by authority: to impose one's personal preference on others.

In order to impose you assume authority (set yourself up as king) and then demand that your will be done. This is witchcraft, and especially so when violence is justified in its application. For this statement not to be one of witchcraft the word must be changed to:

persuade: to induce to believe by appealing to reason or understanding; convince.

It must be understood that if violence is used then the persuasion is forfeited. With violence, the other party is not submitting because of an act of their will, but instead by an act of witchcraft.

The cartoonization of witchcraft via Harry Potter and the like have served as a convenient distraction and scapegoat to hide the blatant fact that we have become a nation of witches in rebellion to God. No longer do we appeal to reason and our respect for each person's individual humanity, freedom and personal responsibility when we desire to convince someone to change. Instead, like a coven of gaggling hags, we rally around a self-congratulating moral propaganda and in pursuit of our will have no qualms with resorting not only to unsolicited acts of “benevolent” and "preventative" violence, but even to the brutality of war.

We do not have a right to impose our beliefs upon others. It is witchcraft, it shows a disregard for human dignity, and it is also disobedience to the will and authority of God. When combined with a stubborn, prideful superiority what is created is a idolic doctrine that perpetuates itself through emotional appeals to patriotic platitudes as it marginalizes the “unrighteous” who become the target of its imposition. We may fool ourselves for a while by redefining words in order to create the illusion that we despise evil and that our actions are good, but sooner or later truth always becomes evident, and it also demands obedience.

Harry Potter is not the witch we should be concerned about. He, just like Gandolf the Grey, are sorcerer’s of fantasy, to be enjoyed within the realm of imagination. In reality our ignorance to the witchcraft we practice daily is wreaking havoc on our families, our communities, and the cancer of it spreads to affect even our nation’s polices toward other cultures resulting in bloody wars.

Jesus said in Luke 6:31, "Do to others as you would have them do to you." The Patriot and statesmen Ron Paul said, “If we believe strongly in our ideals, the best way to spread them is to set a good example so that others will voluntarily emulate us. Force will not work.” Have you been convinced that this statement is true? If so please do not let rebellion and stubbornness cause you to dismiss this sobering reality. Now is the time to really make a change, and the sooner we make it, the less painful will be the correction. Let us repent of witchcraft, turn back to our nation’s foundations, and from there emulate the goodness that is at the true core of who we are.

Questions.

2011-10-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

Before you speak disparagingly about all the people in your city who are not working and living off welfare, or about the financial bailouts, or national healthcare please first ask yourself some questions:

Have I taken someone under my wing and taught them how to work, or do I assume that everyone was raised in such a way to develop a good work ethic?

Do I spend my money in such a way that would support the jobs in my local economy, or am I motivated mostly by fashionable corporate trends and immediate savings?

Do I invest my money in such a way that creates business and job opportunities in my local economy, or do I only concern myself with tax sheltering and monetary bottom line value?

When I die will the wealth I have accumulated stay in my local economy, or will it be distributed to my children who have moved to urban centers in order to get the few remaining non-foreign jobs with the companies that my retirement investments financed and my spending habits support?

Have I taken political action to reform the welfare system that I speak so virulently about, or do I secretly love it because it provides a way that I don't have to spend my time and money personally helping to "those" people?

Does my argument against welfare come from a position of integrity or do I find myself supporting other forms of welfare without so much as questioning them such as agricultural programs, public schools, foreign military bases, government flood insurance, etc?

Do I go on and on about the evils of our government bail outs, but secretly breathed a sigh of relief because much of my retirement savings was invested in the Wall Street financial sector instead of in local enterprises?

Is my house, car, furniture, and church building nicer than it would have been if we would have had to help the poor in our community instead of turning that responsibility over to government and then griping about it?

Do I argue vehemently about how we cannot afford the banker bailouts and nationalized healthcare, and wax eloquently about how these programs will never work and will actually harm the very things they are intended to protect, but never question the expenses and harms of our undeclared wars, unpopular foreign policy and militarism?

Do I rail on about how big corporations should be punished and regulated and crooked politicians should be recalled or jailed but never question the glue that binds big business to our politicians' purses which is the politically motivated fiat money creating powers of the private Federal Reserve Bank?

Is my fear of radical islam rational or is my behaviour being motivated by means of a Freudian mind trick playing on my emotions? Why am I not as willing to give my government powers and why is my government not seeking power based on the fear of bee stings or lightening strikes considering that these events kill many more people than do radical muslim terrorists?

Why do I support the environmental regulation of businesses by the same system that created, by means of it's fiat money powers, our environmentally unsustainable consumption based economy from which it garners it's power?

Are the policies and actions I support with regard to the state of Israel born out of a faith that God will protect them from their enemies including from a disproportionately militarily ill-equipped Iran or are they born out of a fear that He won't, can't, or isn't real?

War or Ron Paul

2011-08-15T16:43:00.000-07:00

Usually I concern myself, especially in regards to these kinds of letters, with issues relating to our local community. I do believe, as did our country’s founders, that political power is geographic in nature and I believe that the most powerful way to manifest a local geography’s true political potential is for the church in the community to follow the simple command of Christ to “Love our neighbors”, including those that are “enemies”. Following this simple command compels us to take personal and collective responsibility over ourselves and the local resources we depend upon, and to resist giving up control over those things to distant bureaucracies. In fact to the extent that we give up responsibility not only for the resources that sustain our lives, such as our lands, roads, waterways, schools, hospitals, businesses, but even for the poor and suffering amongst us, we also literally give up the very source from which our political power receives its legitimate authority and therefore its ability to protect our interests in our system of government.

When electing a politician to represent our political power at the state and national levels we need to take into consideration first the scope of power of the office to which they are being elected and second their perspective of protecting our local political authority. For instance if we elect a Senator or Representative that promotes a popular state or federal entitlement program to care for the poor, we need to understand what we are giving up in the process. If we delegate some of our responsibility to care for the poor in our community, we do this in trade for a part of our livelihood in the form of taxation. This may be a good trade, but more often than not these big city bureaucrats tend to tie strings that don’t often make much sense in our local contexts. By giving up our responsibility to the poor in our community we also give the government a moral claim via taxation to the local resources that are needed to meet this need. Our state and federal representatives make the laws that direct these kind of social programs, but let’s consider for a moment the office of President.

Realistically, a Presidential candidate’s promises are often conveniently left impotent by the fact that most of these ideas as they relate to spending, taxation, and other change are really not within the scope of power of the President. The President of the United States has a limited and balanced role in our system of government. The veto power is a significant tool of the executive branch, however even this requires considerable exercise of political principle on the part of the President, and can be overturned by a supermajority of Congress. However one area where the President can exert significant power is the area of foreign policy, especially in regards to the disposition of our military forces. It is in this scope of power that Presidential power poses the most significant threat to our local political authority and the resources that provide for our livelihood.

War is a doubly destructive activity that requires each side to destroy men and resources to finance and facilitate the destruction of men and resources on the other side of the conflict. Unlike entitlement programs in which we trade the rightful claim to our resources but at least receive, albeit often discounted in value and ineffective in purpose, a social program that provides some relief to our fellow citizen; when a nation gives it’s government the authority to wage war we are quite literally granting the government a moral claim to our resources via taxation and debt so that they can destroy it in the process of destroying our enemy.

War is never a boost to the economy, not even the subsequent rebuilding benefits prosperity because the resources destroyed in the carrying out of the war could have been invested into creating new wealth without having to have been destroyed in the first place (google “broken window fallacy” for a better explanation of this economic principle). While the defense contractors and the bankers financing the war and reconstruction may profit individually from war, that wealth is still a second hand result of the wealth destroyed in the act of war, wealth, and let’s not forget lives, that have left the people for good. With this in mind it is obvious that the decision to go to war must be considered gravely and with much consternation. Because of this threat, our founders wisely put the power to declare war in the hands of the congress, the people’s representatives, and the power to direct the war to the citizen President in his executive position as Commander in Chief.

Over the past several decades our country has trodden down the dangerous path of relinquishing the responsibility of Congress to declare war, in spite of constitutional objections, to the President. In a real sense, just as we have done in the delegation of our responsibility to care for the poor, in our delegation of the power of war to our President we have given a single individual the moral authority to take and destroy our wealth and even our sons and daughters in order to pursue a militaristic agenda who’s benefits are left solely to his personally biased determinations, and its important to point out that these bias’s are often influenced by the very banking and defense lobbies that most directly profit from the President’s confiscation and destruction of your wealth and children for the purposes of war.

To make matters worse, taking your wealth and children cannot provide enough money to finance the continuation of a war-faring empire. Each new battle creates new enemies creating a new need to go into a new battle. In order for our current appetite for war to be satiated we have to use the counterfeiting power of the Federal Reserve to come up with the money to finance our military adventures. Because of this you are not only being taxed without representation on the front end of the war, through inflation your wealth is being taxed again through dollar devaluation. Also consider that in addition to this unfair taxation, that our government does not merely inflate the currency and devalue it, it's worse than that: for every dollar they create there is another dollar in debt plus interest owed to the private banking cartel we call the "Federal Reserve". So to pay for these wars they are literally demanding our wealth, the lives of our children, our wealth again via inflation, and then telling our surviving children that they have to pay it all back plus interest! War cannot happen without the means to afford it. So, just as it is with most things, at the root of war is money. Any president who wants to take on the issue of war must also deal with the issue of money.

This brings me to the 2012 Presidential election. Obama was elected in 2008 based on many things, but one of the big motivators for many people was his promise to bring the troops home. However, upon entering office it was clear that his intention has become to continue to expand our country's policy of preemptive, undeclared and illegal wars. Since Obama is as of yet not being opposed in the Democratic primary, the only hope is in the Republican candidate that will be challenging him. In the field of Republican candidates there is only one candidate, Ron Paul, who is promoting a platform of peace that is promising to use his power as Commander in Chief to direct the military to bring the troops home and end our expensive foreign policy of militarism and intervention. Ron Paul is also the only candidate that is openly calling for an end to the Federal Reserve system which makes the financing of our war empire possible. He is calling for a return to sound money as outlined by our Constitution. With the field of candidates limited in this way, in effect, the Republican primary IS the general election if you are for peace, because if Ron Paul is not on the ballot of the general election the only other option is war.

The choice is now clear. Do you want war or do you want Ron Paul?

I dreamed I was a rat in a cage.

2011-07-23T09:52:00.001-07:00

I dreamed I was a rat in a cage (must have been a flashback to my smashing pumpkin days), anyway, I was in a cage with other rats. There were 3 levers on the wall of the cage. We found out that we could get food from two of the three levers, one had a red sign that had a solid black icon of an elephant on it, one had a blue sign that had an icon of a donkey. Actually the images changed periodically, sometimes the red sign had an elephant on it, sometimes it had "Coca-cola" on it, and the blue one did the same thing with "Pepsi". Each of these 2 levers had a tube that went to the same vat so that when you pulled it food would come from the vat and you could eat. On the third lever was a yellow sign with a coiled snake on it. We believed that we should never pull that lever or we would die. It became clear to me however that the third lever was the latch to open the door on the cage.

John 3:14-15 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

When boys were men.

2011-07-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

Check out Historic American Prints and see some haunting and mesmerizing images of the men who fought for our country's independence.

It's amazing that these men were overthrowing their government, traveling the world, and leading troops to battle as young as 13, most no older than 17. We waste this time in men's lives by extending childhood into a made up thing called "adolescence".

Before adolescence was invented, boys became men at 12-14 that's because it's when it biologically happens to them. The ages of 18 and 21 are purely statutory arbitrations that don't have any real biological significance.

Today we'd shutter to consider loading a 13 year old with the responsibilities that these men obviously bore, however they bore them well enough to overthrow the most powerful military force on earth at the time and win their own country. What would happen if we began to encourage our young men to once again take on risks like these old patriots did? What if we spurred them on to take these kinds of risks not just for their country, but in Love and for the Kingdom!

To truly be free, we should all become cops.

2011-06-24T08:21:00.001-07:00

The cop is given the benefit of the doubt, the assumption of innocence, the freedom of individuality. When one officer does something outrageous, we are derided, ridiculed and scorned if we associate those outrages to the culture that the cop came from. We're told not to judge the group by the actions of a few individuals, but to allow the overriding principles of duty and integrity to shape our opinion of the society of police, and to give each officer the freedom to live up to those principles as an individual, free from the stereotypes brought upon by the an overbearing public wishing to exert their control over the police society as a whole.

The double standard is obviously in how the police policy is towards the public. One guy puts a firecracker in his underwear and we're all terrorists who have to be radiated and molested, because really "anyone could be a terrorist", in other words, "all of you are defined by the worst among you", which is exactly the opposite of how we all are expected to view the police.

So is this a double standard? Only if you believe that an average joe has the same value as an average cop. Double standards must be applied uniformly, it's not a double standard for a society to jail a man for stealing and then praise a dog for it's intelligence in accomplishing the same feat. Does an average Joe have the same value in society as a cop. Obviously not.

Joe can't have the same value as a cop. Joe hasn't gone through the training, made the sacrifices, nor taken the oaths. Joe is an untrustworthy heathen, he is not beholden to any authority except himself, and is a threat to the principles that are the foundation of the freedom of all officers.

The cop is granted rights and freedoms from the state. He is free to take any action he pleases so long as it does not harm another officer. In fact, even illegal actions, if not harmful to another officer, will routinely be overlooked by other officers in order to maintain the liberty of the police society. Only officers have this right, the rest of us must cower in fear as we see an officer approaching, we have not been granted power by the authority that the officer freely lives in.

Here is a pretty clear example of what this problem looks like in real life:

So how do we as the cowering public overcome this problem.

I see 3 possible solutions:

1. We all become cops. Then we would all have rights, and could be demanded to be treated as individuals and held accountable only to the law, and not to the perception of the group we belong to.

2. All cops become citizens. This could be done by overthrowing the state and removing the authority from which cops get their freedom.

3. Live in our freedom. Or in other words, appeal to a higher authority.

So let's say I decide to carry a weapon such as a handgun. This is a right only available to free people, not subhuman serfs or slaves. Our constitution in fact lays it out in one simple sentence, that my right "to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed".

Now, this right does not come from the constitution, it comes from God. The constitution is not granting me the right to keep and bear arms, the constitution is recognizing my right and then restricting the government from infringing upon it. The constitution is not a right-granting document, it is a government-restricting document. My right to keep and bear arms exists by the mere fact of my humanity.

Unfortunately this is not the view of the Federal culture that empowers police to mistreat average Joe's. The culture that has led to the militarization of the police and the tyranization of the average Joe stems from the misguided premise that rights are granted by government. This is why we are developing into a dichotomized culture where cops are given freedom, and average Joes are all suspect until proven innocent. So how do we combat this?

I guess I could buy a spy camera, protest loudly about my mistreatment, and have my constitution ready, to some degree this is necessary to expose the hypocracy within our system to the other average Joe's out there. The problem with this tactic is that I'm just average Joe. I haven't gone through the rituals that have granted me rights via the state like the cop did, so all of my protests will simply be seen as the antics of a wailing child who does not realize his place in society. My freedoms were given to me by God, but I live in a country that has ceased to recognize God as someone with the authority to grant freedom. Since, the state has not granted me any freedom, and as long as I operate within this context, I will remain an average joe, subject (read: slave, sub-human, serf) to the freedom loving cops.

The only way to get around this is to:

a.) live by means of my freedom, carrying guns, saying things, and going places as if my freedom to do these things was granted to me by God himself (because they were), and

b.) treat all other humans beings (including ones dressed up like cops) as equals and with love, abstaining from any use of force unless it is in direct response to force initiated against me.

So what would this look like in the case of my carrying a handgun. Well, what are registration, classes, permits, fees, paperwork, etc if not infringments upon my God given right to be armed?

If I am carrying a gun, do I have any obligation to inform the officer? It might be polite, but demanding that I do this upon every encounter with an officer first of all makes it seem like the police officer is somehow in control of me (and he's not, he's just another human like me), and second, it is an infringement by the state (who the officer is representing) of my right to be armed. The reason that cops are outfitted with guns isn't to protect them from people like me. As long as the cop doesn't approach me with violence, I'm not going to approach him with violence. Cops carry guns for the same reason that I do, to protect themselves from people who would initiate violence, without any concern for the law or for my humanity, and use it to force thier will. The only reason that I would not be as free as a cop to be armed would be that I am not actually free at all, and I simply don't accept that.

Bottom line, the solution is for me to live free and love. To treat everyone, including cops and TSA agents as humans first, and ask to be treated the same by them. If they choose to trample my rights, berate me, beat me, treat me as something less than human or even kill me for attempting to live as a free human being created in the image of God, then the authority they will be answering to, unfortunatly for them, is God, whether the state takes notice or not.

Helping the Poor without Love is Dangerous.

2011-05-09T09:38:00.001-07:00

When asked what is the most important commandment Jesus replied first with the answer that everyone expected to hear, "Love God", but he was not willing to leave it at that without mentioning "Love others". (Matthew 22:36-40)

Somehow we've changed this from loving God and loving others to loving God and "serving" others. This small change allows us to feel justified in using a secular government to feed the poor, care for the orphan and widow etc. However, all of this work, however noble, is nothing if it is done without love. In fact it's worse than nothing. It's destructive.

"If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:2)

Serving the poor without love perpetuates a mentality that tends toward the justification of war. I call it a "xenophobaholic superiority complex", which is the compulsion to feel superior to people that you fear because they are different than you. It's a necessary social complex to develop if your going to have a policy of incarceration and aggressive war. If people were to relate to each other based on their own humanity, and if Christians were to seek the love of Christ in order to expand their own ability to love the unlovable, then we would not tolerate the bombing of poor people in other countries or the jailing of them in our own.

Xenophobaholic Superiority Complex: The compulsion to feel superior to people that you fear because they are different than you.

Take for instance a food line. It generally consists of rich people on one side and poor people on the other. The poor people being humiliated in their poverty on one side and the rich people justified in their salvation and exalted in their wealth on the other. Then when one of these poor creatures get thrown in jail unjustly, or one of our bullets or bombs kill them, we can comfortably tell ourselves "Hey, we tried to help them." We say we do these acts of service out of a love for God, but that's not what Jesus said to do.

Loving God is the easy part. The more we come to know about God the more we love Him. The more we see His love for us, His mercy, when we consider the price He paid for our salvation we cannot help but to love Him more and more. This is why Jesus spend much of his time telling us: "This is my command: Love each other."(John 15:17)

Loving other people is hard, in fact Jesus said that if He is not within us it's impossible for us to do (John 15:5). What we tend to do when facing the problem of loving the unlovable is we resort to dutifully serving them without love. However, when we find ourselves dutifully doing "the right thing" without love we don't just need to be concerned for the success of our ministry, we need to be very concerned for our own salvation! (John 15:6) Serving without a desire for it promotes self-righteousness, division, and if promoted properly will lead a culture numb and even accepting of abusive practices toward the lowly and different.

The solution to all of this isn't to work harder at serving, or to develop better ministry tactics, or promote more social programs. The solution is to stop, go to Christ and ask for more love, and then serve out of nothing but that love. (John 15:4)

God prefers obedience over sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22). Obedience is doing something because you want to do it. Sacrifice is doing something you don't want to do, but you do it anyway because know it's the right thing to do. As a Christian, to live a life of sacrifice is to not believe the promises of God. When we believe the promises of God, remain in Christ for his love, and press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus, we live a life of obedience, our actions being fueled not by guilt or a quest for self-righteousness, but by the love of Christ for others that is within us.

Why does your church not feel like family?

2010-06-21T13:28:00.000-07:00

The short answer is that because it's not a family. Family is a relationship based in reality. If your church doesn't seem to have the relational bonds similar to those found in a family, it is most likely that your church relationships are not based in reality.

Most churches are ideological associations based on doctrine. If you depart from or question the doctrine then you can no longer be considered a part of the association. The ability to sever the relationship at will is evidence that ideological associations are not based in reality. Relationships based in reality are not sever-able. Family is a relationship based in reality due to genetics. The genetic nature of the relationship causes the relationship to exist despite the will of those in the relationship. There's nothing you can do about it, your father is your father, your brother is your brother, and your mother is your mother whether you want them to be or not. Now you can leave your family, but that doesn't change the reality of the relationship. When we look at the blood and the mud, your family is your family. God meant for us to relate to one another in real ways and in so much he connected us to each other in real ways. You are connected to your family by blood (genetics), you are connected to your community by mud (geography). The reality of these things is inescapable. So what is the real thing that connects us to our church? Doctrine?

Doctrine is ideological, it is words attempting to describe reality, and we all struggle to agree on what it all means. Doctrine is words describing something, but it isn't the something it's describing. For instance, my dad's name is Garen, but the name Garen is not my dad. There are other people named Garen, and they are not my dad. If I were to write "Garen" on a piece of paper and take it to lunch it wouldn't be the same as going to lunch with my dad, Garen. This is because my dad consists of more than the word that is his name, or even of many words and emotions that make up my opinion of him. That's because my dad is not merely my idea of him, he is real and exists independent of me or my opinion of him. Since my dad is real I can have a relationship with him based in reality. When my dad dies I will no longer be able to relate to him in this way. I will have to settle for remembering stories about him while looking at his name written on a tombstone. These words and stories will be a way for me to remember him, but in no way will it be the same as when I had a real relationship with him. When my dad dies I will only be left with a doctrine of him by which to remember him. If I were to begin to relate to my dad using only my doctrine of him prior to his death it would be a great offense to him, as he still wants to speak into my life new things as long as he can while we have a real relationship. Churches that associate based on doctrine are gathering to remember a dead Jesus, and not only does this offend Him but it also ignores the glorious truth that He lives and wants to speak into our lives!

Jesus is real and alive today and therefore cannot be appropriately related to just using stories about Him. Jesus didn't die to give us a book full of words so that we could associate with one another based upon our opinion of how he was, and then based upon those opinions to create ideological associations that fracture at every point of dissonance. The real thing that connects each individual to the church is what Jesus died to give us, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is alive and lives within the Christian, it can be related to in a way that is much more real than even the relationship that I have with my living father. Since our relationships with one another are limited by our ability to express ourselves to each other it is difficult, if not impossible, for one person to fully know another. However since God created us, and desires to dwell within us in the form of his Holy Spirit, we are able to be fully known by God. This relationship and the knowledge and experiences resulting from it are what draw us together as a church. If you have the Holy Spirit, when you get around other people with the Holy Spirit you will experience a connectedness similar to what you feel around people you are connected to by blood and mud. A commonality that is undeniable because it is real, and real because it is undeniable.

Our relationship with Christ and with each other is based on the reality of the Holy Spirit, not on the History of Jesus. Many Christians want to get together and talk all night about theology (I like to do this too). However the consensus arrived upon during these conversations about words is not the thing that is to be used to unite us. Our unification is to exist in the reality of the Holy Spirit that lives within us, and is, in fact, the evidence that Jesus is real and accomplished what he said he accomplished through his sacrifice.

The difficult thing about the association of the Holy Spirit is that although the spiritual is real, it is not visible. Because the spiritual is not visible and cannot be measured using physical means many people assume that it should be intellectually dealt with as we do ideological things such as doctrine. The problem with doctrine is that it consists of dead words. It can only speak what has already been said, and it must be interpreted in order to apply it to our own perceptions of reality. Liberals will use this shortcoming of doctrine as evidence of a freedom to change it to fit their every need. Conservatives will use this shortcoming to condemn every situation that the doctrine doesn't directly address. Both sides fracture within themselves as they exercise their living minds upon dead words and come to different conclusions. We all long to see dead words become real and alive, what we don't realize is that we see it all the time.

Families that maintain a personal relationship with those with whom they are genetically associated ultimately find their unity to be based upon dead words, a covenant. When two people who are not related by blood choose to covenant together in marriage, they become a family. This covenant is witnessed by people at the marriage ceremony, it is documented by a certificate filed with the court clerk, however even at this point it remains an ideal based on dead words, and the continued will of the individuals to remain together is all that holds the promise of the covenant in effect. The family of two they have created can only exist until one of them dies. At that point, if they remain without children, the mutual will to adhere to the dead words that sustain their covenant is no longer possible. However, through the offspring resultant in the consummation of the marriage children are created who by their very nature document into physical reality and bring to life the dead words of a covenant thereby creating a blood family out of two previously unrelated people. In fact this living genetic documentation is far superior in demonstrating the reality of the marriage covenant than are the words of a marriage vow, the marriage certificate, or even the recorded history of eye witness testimony to the marriage itself.

Now, two brothers will be brothers for life because they are dead words brought to life. By means of a dead covenant the offspring were created, and by means of the offspring the covenant leaves the tomb of dead words enters undeniably into the realm of the living. However, the reality of those words can only remain living as long as the genetic code generated by the consummation of the covenant is replicated into the future. The forces of nature, and the will of posterity ultimately all but guarantee that the dead words that were brought to life through our children will once again die. Our words will return to the tomb from where they originated and once again be found by the living to be burdened with the shortcomings of doctrine. We all long to see dead words become real and alive, and we long even more to find the word that will never die. Jesus is the word that will never die, and through a covenant with him, we can bring to life His word for us.

Since the church is called "the bride of Christ", a covenant is implied. One cannot be a bride, unless there is a covenant. What today we call "salvation" is in reality a covenant we make with Christ and Christ with us. When we make this covenant we do the same thing that people do when they make a marriage covenant, the bride takes the name of the groom and they become a new family. We call this "becoming a Christian" because we are taking the name of Christ. In the same way as the marriage between two people this marriage also is an act of will, God's will and our own. Also this marriage has an offspring that brings the words of the covenant to life, however the offspring of your marriage to Christ is you, re-born into his family. His spirit now lives in you, and is the evidence that the word of his covenant is alive in you. You have brothers and sisters in Him and they are evidenced by this same life in them. When you gather together as family, you are the church, His bride. Not associating based on dead words, but relating to one another and to Christ based upon a living word that is the evidence of his Covenant with you.

The Holy Spirit living in us as living evidence of the words of Christ’s covenant with us is what binds us together as a church. It is as real as the blood that binds you to family and the mud that binds you to your neighbor. Don’t settle for a church pushing dead words and ideals as the means for your association. Seek to marry Christ and look for his other brides. Let his Holy Spirit living in you bring to you home to your church family.

Some more ideas and questions to explore on this:

Explore the concept of “whatever is bound on earth is bound in heaven” as it relates to covenants.

Explore the statement made by Paul that the “eye cannot say to the hand ‘I have no need of you’” as it relates to the relationship of believers through the Holy Spirit. I.e. it is similar to saying to your brother “you’re not my brother”, it simply is not a statement that can be true.

Go into more detail as to the differences between the old covenant and the new covenant in that the new covenant comes with the promise of the Holy Spirit which is the result of consummation of the covenant as the new creation in Christ. The old covenant was a covenant of words and will. God's will was to remain in the covenant, and Israels will came and went. The new covenant is a covenant that is consumated with a spiritual rebirth. Example might be a marraige between two people who have no children, their marriage is a covenant of words and will. When they have children the covenant becomes flesh, just as the covenant of God became flesh in Christ and our covenant with him is then born into spirit...

Explore the necessity of Christ’s sacrifice in establishing the new covenant.

-Thanks to my facebook friend Melissa Simone for getting this thought process started via a Mark Driscol video with the same title as this post. I think the video is good, but I don't think he addresses the subject in it's entirety. Saying that serving is the key to making something feel like family simply isn't true. Either the relationship is real or it isn't and no amount of activity will change it.

Putting on the Armor of God

2010-03-06T22:21:00.000-08:00

Ephesians 6:10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, 19 and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

How does one go about putting on this armor?

Let's look at what we are "putting on" when we put on the armor:

The belt of Truth
The breastplate of righteousness
Shoes of the gospel of peace
Shield of faith
Helmet of salvation
Sword of the Spirit
Prayer

Now, should I say some words or sing a song to put on this armor? Is there some sort of daily ritual I can go through each morning that would entail the putting on of the armor, or is there more to it than an act of religious mimicry?

The armor of God is a lifestyle that one must lead and constantly maintain in order to protect one's self from the attacks of Satan. It is not a magic spell or just a simple metaphor, it is an inspection list of the points of vulnerability that Satan uses against each of us as we live out our daily lives as Christians, wives, husbands, children, slaves, and masters. You cannot put the armor of God on in a couple of minutes in the morning. Preparing to go into spiritual warfare and putting on the armor of God may take years to accomplish, and then each point is inspected and maintained daily.

1. The Belt of Truth:

Pray that God would reveal to you any lie you are believing, and allow you to expose it, turn from it, and walk in the truth. Satan is a liar and he uses lies to hold us in bondage and keep us from knowing God's will and doing the good work that God would have us to do. We cannot be effective for God if we are accepting a lie as truth. There are times when we will militanty be ignorant of the truth. We become comfortable in lies of victim-hood, conflict avoidance, and other shirks of responsibility. Even when the truth is presented to us by trusted people using the word of God as thier foundation, if we are not daily seeking to put on the "belt of truth" we will dismiss the truth and hold on to the lie in order to avoid the pain or humiliation of exposing the lie and repenting of the lifestyle or misconceptions the lie has caused us to embrace.

Without the belt of truth, which holds all the other armor together, we are completely vulnerable as none of our other defenses will be secured upon our bodies.

2. The Breastplate of Righteousness:

Satan uses sin to isolate and dominate a person. So we must pray that the Holy Spirit would convict us of any sin that Satan would use against us. When we put on the belt of truth we will see lies that we are believing that are causing us to sin. Once we see the truth, it is now necessary to put on the breastplate of righteousness by repenting of the sin that the truth revealed to us. Repenting of the sin means to recognize the sin, name it to God and to others in our Christian fellowship, and to stop doing it. Obviously any willful acts of sin must be eliminated from our lives. Public sin is obvious and if we are ignorant of it the fellowship of believers that we associate with should be able to point this sin out to us. Public sin would be like a gaping hole in our breast plate, it is very evident and it obviously needs to be fixed quickly if we are to be protected. Secret sin as well as habitual sin causes us withdraw from God and from Christian fellowship in order to continue in and hide the sin. Our withdrawal may be in the form of physical removal, or it may be in the form of lies or omissions used to cover up the sin. Secret sin would be like having a breast plate that from all outward appearances looks like a solid peice of armor, but upon closer inspection is found to be made of well crafted, but very weak tin foil. If we were to go into battle knowingly wearing a breastplate that is made from tin foil, we will be an easy target for the enemy.

3. Shoes of the Gospel of Peace:

Repentance of sin in order to strive toward righteous living is the beginning, this is the breastplate of righteousness. The gospel of peace is the Gospel of love and forgiveness. Sin often causes us to hurt others. When we repent of some kinds of sin it is not enough just to stop the sin, we may be required to make amends with another person that we harmed while we were in our sin. The shoes of the gospel of peace cause us to get up and go make things right with others, and also to actively extend forgiveness to those who have done us wrong. Satan uses our sin against God and against one another to divide our relationships and thwart our abilities to work together to further the Kingdom. The defense against this attack is two fold, first is the breastplate of rightesouness which stops the sin, and second is the shoes of the gospel of peace which go out and make right the wrong our sins caused to others and forgive the wrongs that others sins caused to us. Satan's attacks on relationships are neutralized by use of the Gospel of Peace, which is forgiveness.

4. Shield of Faith:

Satan only real power against us is the power to deceive us and in doing so convincing us to sin. Satan's deceptions will not vary much from the deception he used to cause Adam and Eve to fall. His basic question is this "Did God really say...?" These questions are the flaming darts that Satan shoots at us. Each one designed to have us doubting God's goodness, his love for us, his sovereignty, or even his existence. Standing behind the shield of our faith easily deflects these darts, however the shield of faith is not born easily. The shield of faith is built upon our proper use of the previous peices of armor. Truth, Righteousness, repentance and forgiveness are the support structures that build our faith, and these things are also what the shield of faith is designed to protect. If we continue to tolerate lies, sin, pride, hatred, and broken relationships in our lives then our shield of faith is of no use as Satan has already accomplished his purposes in us. There is really no need to hold up a shield if you have already been mortally struck. As we see the truth, repent of sin, forgive others and seek forgiveness we pull out the arrows satan has struck us with and hoist our shield of faith higher and higher until it is doing it's job protecting us from future sin.

5. Helmet of Salvation:

If we were to go into battle with all of the other armor, but were missing our helmet we would act just as if we had no armor on at all. Imagine a football player with all his pads on except his helmet. Will any of those pads matter to him if his head is unprotected? He will constantly be in a defensive state of mind as he does all he can to protect his head. He will be completely unable to make any offensive strategies. And if given the option the player will avoid the game all together, even though he is only lacking this one piece of equipment. The assurance of our own salvation is vital to our ability to move forward in taking the Kingdom of God to the world.

One of Satan's primary methods of removing our helmet (or "getting into our head") is to accuse us of sin that has already been forgiven, causing us to doubt that God has forgiven us. When Christ saves us he saves us from all of our sin, past and future, however as we strive toward righteousness we may stumble, and the Holy Spirit will convict us of these sins so that we can repent of them and not adversely effect our relationship with God. Once we repent and make things right our relationship with God is restored, however Satan would have us to believe otherwise, even to the point of doubting that we have been forgiven at all. The assurance of our salvation is the hope that causes us to remain in the battle. We would not be able to take the Gospel forward to others if we doubted that it had any power in our own lives.

6. Sword of the Spirit:

Our primary mission as Christians is to love God and love others and to teach others how to live the way that Jesus taught us. When taking on the world we will confront them with the word of God, this is our sword. The word of God is a strange sword because when you stab a dead man with it he comes to life! It teaches us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. When we share the good news of Jesus it pierces the dead flesh and brings them to a new life. The first peice of equipment a new believer receives is the shield of faith, this protects them from Satan's continued attacks while we are then able to move in and mend their wounds and fit them with the rest of their armor. The new believer will usually be to weak to hold up their shield on their own. We must help them hold up their shield as they learn the truth, repent of sin, and mend relationships. Once they have done these things are fitted with their armor they can bear their own shield and join us in the battle.

7. Prayer:

All of our armor is useless if we are not on the battlefield. A football player may learn all the plays, practice, and put on all his gear, but if he shows up on the basketball court it will be all for naught. As Christians we must go where the battle is, it is a waste of good armor to have it stay in the church building when the battle is out in the streets. Prayer is the means by which we communicate with God so that we know where the battle is, and what our mission is when we get there.

When Paul says "and having done all, to stand firm." This is when prayer comes in. When we are out taking the word of God to the world we will come to a point where we have done all we know to do. We have told all our stories, we have pleaded the Gospel of Christ, and we have arrived at the point where it is up to God to do the rest. At this point Satan will be working overtime to thwart us, but we must stand, and pray. We must hold the line and call in for air support.

Prayer for the lost is much more meaningful when you have expended all your love and know-how on a person and your prayers are being lifted up for that specific person. We don't have much invested in a general prayer like "God please save all the lost people", but when we can put a name and a face and when we have been battling for that person it creates and urgency and expectation and a desire to the see the prayer answered.

Paul also pleads that we pray for all the saints and for him. So prayer for each other as we are all out doing what God would have us do in the world. Getting together, talking about our struggles in taking the Gospel to the world, and then praying for each other that we would be supplied by God with what we need to see His purposed accomplished.

Conclusion:

The armor of is not a quick change of clothes, it is a lifestyle. Serving God should not be entered into lightly. It is serious business as there is a real enemy out there wanting to destroy us. When we come to know Christ we all have a strong desire to go serve him in many different ways, and by all means we should chase that desire with everything in us. But in chasing that desire we should do so as God has taught us. By putting on our armor, even if it takes years to do so, and going into the battle well prepared.

Jesus can change the past.

2010-01-27T09:16:00.000-08:00

The problem with sin (whether sin we committed, or sin committed against us) is that it happened in the past.

The past. It is said to be set in stone. What has happened has happened and there is no way to change it. For many people this fact becomes a prison. Whether it is something they have done, or something that was done to them, their past holds them captive, restraining them from any hope of a future, keeping them in an unchanging doldrum of quiet despair. It happens like this:

Q. "Why don't you get a job?"

A. "I can't, I just can't keep working because of what happened to me."

Q. "Why can't you just let it go?"

A. "I can't, what they did to me was to terrible."

Q. "You really should quit drinking."

A. "I know, but because of what happened to me, drinking gives me comfort."

Q. "The friends you keep are hurting you, maybe you should make new friends."

A. "Only the friends I have accept me, despite my past."

Q. "Come celebrate with us."

A. "I can't, the celebration reminds me of my past, it's to painful."

Past sin holds people captive.

We can understand that because of the infinite righteousness of God, no one who is living in sin could ever come into the joy of His presence with out causing a travesty of justice and goodness. The bible clearly teaches in passages like Romans 3:23 that "all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God". What about a repented sinner? One who has recognized the sin of their past, and turned away from it? Could a former sinner enter into God's presence, or better yet, would he? Past sin haunts and degrades us, forcing us to remain distant from God. God forgives us, Christ's death makes us righteous, and these acts of mercy provide to us by grace the right for us to enter into His Glory, however having the right to enter, by no means implies that we would find any joy in it.

Sin has consequences. I have a friend whose parents were murdered. She has forgiven the man who murdered her parents. Let's say my friend was hosting a grand celebration of the life of her parents, a joyful occasion meant to reflect on the lives of her parents, two righteous and wonderful people. There would be no way, even in accepting the forgiveness, even in the repenting of his deeds, that he could enter that celebration and not be overwhelmed with the pain caused by his past sin. The only way he could enter into this celebration and partake in the joy of it, would be to enter it without his past. And of course this is impossible for him. Sin has succeeded in forever separating this man from the fellowship with the people whom his sin was against. Even in the light of forgiveness, even in the light of repentance, the pain of the forgiven sin is only magnified in the light of the joy of the celebration. Imagine the celebration in heaven, now imagine the pain of even the smallest sin in the light of it. Heaven will be no place you would want to be, if it means being there with your sinful past.

If this man could travel through time and change his past, he would, freeing himself from it's tryanny. If somehow he could cut himself away from his past, he could enter into the joy of the celebration. Changing the past of course, is impossible. Or is there one who can do it?

Jesus Christ said in Revelation Chapter 21, that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Christ also says in verse 5 of Revelation 21 that he "makes all things new". The Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.

What does it mean? A "new creation", or "to make all things new"? There is only one way for something to be new. If I purchase a new car, and while driving it home someone stops me and says "hey that's my old car!", I will have realized that I have been lied to. The lie will be evident in the fact that my supposed new car has a past. To be new means to be absent of history, to have no past.

Is Paul exaggerating and Jesus lying to us, when he says that we are new creations, or that all things will be made new? The word being used is "new" not "renewed" or "refurbished" or anything like that. Something "renewed" would still have the problem of the man, carrying into the future his own painful history. The only way to facilitate the making new of something that already is, is if you change the past. So it is clear. Jesus says to come to him in faith and he will remove your past. He has to, if he doesn't you'd be saved, but you couldn't experience the joy of it.

So how does it work? You accept Christ and the past disappears? The consequences vanish? Well obviously not. I have put my faith in Christ, believing that he has made me a new creation, however my past is still clearly in view, the pain of it in many ways greater than it was before I knew Christ. What do I make of this? I would call this the burden of my cross. Just as Jesus carried his cross up the road to Golgotha, so to must we bear the cross of our past sin as we struggle through life. Our hope is in this, that everything that was not build upon the foundation of Christ will be burned away (1 Cor 3:11-15). The sin we have done, and the sin that has been done to us will not survive into heaven. However, while the sinful past will be thrown into the fire, so long as we are not clinging to it, we will be saved. So the burden of carrying our sin (instead of the comfort of clinging to it) BECOMES the hope of our salvation, because we are bearing this burden in order to carry it to Jesus, the only one who can dispose of it. If we persevere in carrying our burdens and laying them down at the feet of Jesus, he will usher us into his Kingdom, and relieve us of the burden of our past as we pass through His gates.

So if the past is destroyed will we forget the wonderful story of our own redemption? Absolutely not. Because our redemption happened as we heard the gospel in love from another person and as Jesus did his saving work in each of our hearts.. So while our past will be destroyed, our redemption will be remembered, but remembered through the eyes of that good friend who loved us enough to lead us to Christ, and most importantly, our redemption will be remembered by Christ (who did the redeeming), and we will marvel as He shares with us the story of how he saved us. Our past, no longer our own, but now belonging to Jesus, and only as He recalls it, will we be able to bear the remembering of it in the light of His Glory!

Eternal Communities, Eternal Work, and Worldly Risk

2010-01-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

Did you ever consider that Aquila and Priscilla created the job so that Paul could work for them and support his ministry? They would have basically hired him to work. They would have had the tent making equipment, and the market to sell the tents, and they hired Paul and paid him or had some arrangement where he could profit from selling the tents he made from their materials so that he could support himself in the area.

Acts 18:1 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.2 And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them,3 and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.

Also in Acts 4:34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold35 and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Transpose that with 2 Thessalonians 3:6Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.7 For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you,8 nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.9 It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate.10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.11 For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies.12 Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

So the ones who had need in Acts 4 were obviously not being enabled to maintain that need by relying on the charity of the fellowship. More likely they would have been lifted up, discipled and provided an opportunity or a direction to work and provide for themselves, so then they could be the ones helping. I think many people look on the Christian community in Acts as almost a communist one, however I don't think you can come to that conclusion if you take the whole council of scripture. For one thing, if the believers were selling all thier stuff and providing as everyone had need, pretty soon they'd run out of stuff to sell, it isn't sustainable, and definitely not an eternal mindset. However if they were selling thier stuff to lift people up and provide opportunities to work and continue in growing and enriching the community, then that is sustainable and tends toward eternity instead of toward nothing.

These people would have been seen as very strange, even crazy. They were putting everything they had at risk for the community, helping people, starting businesses, and instead of storing up treasures for themselves, they had faith that investing into the eternal community would not only provide for them now, but forever. Truly taking Jesus's advise in Matthew 6 not to store up treasures on earth but instead treasures in Heaven. They took their wealth out of their barns (Luke 12:16) and put it to work profitably in the eternal community. The believers in Acts had total unity in their fellowship which strengthened their faith to put their worldly wealth at risk, they saw the storehouse of their wealth, both physical and eternal, being in the body of Christ.

So from this and particularly the Acts 18 example we can see a 2 fold responsibility. The responsibility of Priscilla and Aquila to put their resources at risk in order to provide the opportunity for Paul to work, and the responsibility of Paul to show up and do the work. In our terms it would be the responsibility of those who have the means to use them to invest in the eternal community, and for those who need means to reliably show up and do the work.

I think it's obvious to see the implications in all of this at home and for our work in the rest of the world.

FYI, I don't believe in Islamic terrorism

2009-12-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

Muslims don't hate us. They are just people. Most of them living in the third world just trying to get some food on the table. They want to kill us in about the same proportion as anyone else on earth does. The idea that the world is being held hostage by Islamic terrorist is absurd. It is an idea that is put forth in order to divide people and to keep us fearful so that we will continue to accept a perpetual state of war and so that we will not attempt to create meaningful relationships with those who come from the Muslim culture.

Satan is at work in the world, seeking to divide and destroy people how ever he can. In a mockery of God's love for "honest scales" Satan has worked to create a global economy in which money has no real value and is based upon an ever growing need for debt. This is a great plan for Satan, because best way to ensure that there is a constantly increasing supply of legally enforceable debt is to ensure that there are nations willing to indenture their citizenry through taxation and inflation used to finance both the military infrastructure needed to wage war and the rebuilding that comes after the damage is done. The fancifully promoted myth of Islamic terrorism has provided a cover for the invasion and occupation of several sovereign countries expressly for the purposes of expanding this corrupt global monetary policy. The retaliation of the citizenry in those invaded countries is then used to support the myth of terrorism and continue the process. The combined death toll of these invasions and retaliations has sent untold millions of people straight to hell.

In order to break the cycle of violence it is necessary for us to consider the premise that has kept us living in fear. If you will consider the instances of violence committed against western nations that are carried out solely by Islamic fundamentalists for the express purpose of demonstrating their hatred toward our culture you will find that Islamic terrorism does not exist to a degree that it should be considered a threat to our way of life. As Christians if we approach the Islamic culture with a prejudice colored by the lens of the myth of Islamic terrorism we will find ourselves unable to create meaningful relationships that can lead to Gospel transformation (that's because we can't share Jesus with dead Muslims).

The true threat of Islam is that the more we fear it, the more that fear creates a chasm between us as human beings. As Christians desiring to love people and share the good news of Christ, we must not approach the Muslim culture as if it is to be feared, but to instead place all of our fear upon the Lord and approach Muslims simply as people, people who need Jesus Christ just like everyone else. Loving Muslims in this way not only removes a barrier to sharing our faith, but it also removes the motivation being used to cause us to support an evil monetary and warfare system that is the base of power for those promoting a Satanic one world government.

Check out this link for some good reading on this subject, or if you agree, join my facebook group.

More about two realities:

2009-11-09T21:43:00.000-08:00

OK first things first, since we have to deal in scripture let me address that. As for an explicit teaching I can show a few things that I think support my theory but mostly only implicitly. I think this is acceptable however, because if we are to require explicit teaching for every doctrine then we may have to ditch the Trinity along with my two realities theory.

So I guess my question is, if I can show that scripture implicitly supports my theory and that my theory is not explicitly negated in scripture, if it aids in my ability to reach and love the lost, then shouldn't I feel free to adopt and even promote this position? I'm not asking this question as a challenge, but really as just a question.

So for some inferences on the two realities consider Genesis. When Adam and Eve sinned God banished them from the Garden of Eden, out of His Holy Presence. "He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Gen 3:24" Now I believe that the purpose of Creation was to reveal the Glory of Christ. So it was by God's will that Adam and Eve sinned, God created them in a reality where this was possible, and he knew and even foreknew that it would happen. When the sin happened God banished them from his presence and from the direction of His will (they knew good and evil for themselves Gen 3:22), this banishment was a severe separation hence the cherubim and flaming sword. So God banished them into a reality where they would be left to decide good and evil for themselves. God created this reality for the express purpose of destroying it (Romans 9), but not until His redemptive purposes were accomplished. So God created this reality where we are allowed to decide what is good and evil on our own, the purpose he created this reality for was to enable us to marvel in the Glory of Christ as he saves us from the planned destruction. Is he still not completely sovereign over this reality? If I blow up a balloon for the express purpose of popping it to bring joy to my son, am I not still sovereign over the balloon and the air in it even if I allow the molecules inside to go where they will?

Next consider salvation: Can a sinner come into the presence of God? Can a former sinner come into the presence of God? No. (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, easy ones!) It would not be just for God to allow this to happen because of who He is. So if I live in a reality in which I am a sinner that is destined for destruction and I come to faith in Christ, the only way I can come into the presence of God is if my faith in Christ makes me absolutely new from the beginning of time. What about my past? Well at the revealing of Christ is when it will be destroyed along with the rest of the reality that was prepared for destruction. My new past is that I was unconditionally elected from before time began (because there would be no other way that I could enter into God's presence). So the blood of Christ literally makes us a new creation, not a renovated creation, a new one. So with two realities I can uphold unconditional election, and man's free will at the same time. I can read Romans 9 and go right on to Romans 10 and not see any kind of inconsistency or confusion. I guess that makes me a Calvinian, or an Arminivist.

I put some other verses on my blog post that I really think could be used to infer support of my two realities theory. Any reference to a new birth, new heavens, new earth, old passing away, kingdoms coming to nothing, etc. One interesting one is in Daniel 2:36-45. Daniel is interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar dream. In it he sees a kingdom coming: "41 And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay.42 And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle." Prior to Christ the Holy Spirit was not sent to us. God interacted with his people directly where he needed and through the priests and prophets in order to separate himself from the sins of the people. After Christ the Holy Spirit is among us. So we have the Kingdom of God among each one of us. And we each as individuals are experiencing the reality of Adam's banishment, and through the new Adam, the reality of God's Kingdom, at the same time. One of these kingdoms is strong and one is brittle, just like the interpretation of the dream in Daniel.

Now, let's talk about the will of God. Who can resist God's will? Nobody right? If someone could then they could dethrone him or otherwise thwart his purposes. So the logical conclusion of this from our perspective is that reality IS the revealed will of God, because it wouldn't have happened if it weren't. However I think I've shown how it could be possible for God to will a reality for the purposes of destroying it, and then allow for individuals within that reality to be "given over to their lusts" (Rom 1:24), with out those sins being against the will of God (because his will is that they are going to be destroyed with the reality anyway).

Two wills or two realities, which one makes for a bigger God? My argument is that saying God has two wills, one of which is constantly frustrated by our inability to live up to it, puts God into the same constraint of space and time that we exist in. If we say there are two wills and one reality then we have to do mental gymnastics to say that God willed the evil but is not responsible or accountable for it. We'll even go so far as to say that the evil is good because it accomplished God's purpose, but we should be careful because "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Isaiah 5:20" Clearly there is good and there is evil, clearly we sin, and clearly it is not God causing us to sin (James 1:13). So something has to give here. Either God wills that I sin and James is wrong, or I am free to sin against the will of God and Paul is wrong (Romans 9:6-18 ). I'm not willing to accept either one of those solutions.

However, if we say there is one will and two realities then it all makes sense. How can something be real and be against the will of God? It can't, but God could will a reality where man could live for a time outside of his will. So I'm not going against Romans 9, everything in that reality was "endured with much patience" and "prepared for destruction", for the purpose making "known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory". I see two realities here, one prepared for destruction, one prepared for glory. We are saved from the one into the other. When we enter His Kingdom we are made new creations, not refurbished creations, new creations. Something that is new does not have a history, it is new. So how can I be new if I am old unless my history is changed due to a change of reality? That's what I am saying. I think my theory sees a bigger God with a single will, instead of a God constantly frustrated by our disobedience to one of His 2 wills. I think my theory also affirms scripture more literally than I did prior to this theory (understanding kingdoms, rebirth, new heavens, etc much more clearly), and I think it solves some apparent paradoxes in scripture (which for obvious reasons can't be paradoxes).

So how do we apply this to real life? Well the story of Joseph is a perfect example. To do the will of God in the reality of Adam's banishment so that people will be saved from the coming destruction. Christ not only made it possible but also taught us how to live in two realities, to be "in the world but not of the world" (which isn't scripture but is also inferred from places like John 11:17, 1 John 2:15-17 etc).

Predestination, free will, 6000, 14 billion, or all of the above?

2009-10-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

I was reading about the theory that the large hadron collider may be sabotaging itself from the future, which is an interesting thing. Also this week I had a conversation with a guy who has a kind of deliverance/prayer ministry. This person prays with people about their past, and invites Jesus into the memories, he believes that since Jesus is Lord over time he not only can heal the memory but also can actually change the past. This is also an interesting thought. Lately I have also been struggling with what I believe in regards to the age of the universe and how to see the Bible as infallible while also not neglecting the realities of creation. Don't ask me why, but these questions have been troubling me.

It may seem unrelated but I'll try later to explain why its not. I've also always been struggling and praying for God to reveal to me more clearly the relationship between how the Bible clearly teaches that while God has predestined before time began those who would be saved, it is also clear that each person make a choice to repent and come to him in faith through the hearing of the Gospel (which is also an act of will on the part of those who bring the word). How can this obvious act of choice and free will also be an act of sovereign predestination? Clearly both principles are taught in scripture, scripture cannot be in conflict with itself, so the only logical conclusion is that both things are true, and I don't understand it, and I want to. Anyway this conflict is similar to the conflict I feel regarding the seeming paradox between the scriptural and scientific accounts of the age of the universe.

It is hard to read the Biblical creation account, the work done on Biblical Geneology, and not come to the conclusion that the earth and universe are not more than 6000-8000 years old. However, when confronted with God's creation I am presented with scientific evidence (laws of physics that God has also ordained) that the universe is upwards of 14 billion years old. It would seem that there is a great conflict here between the Biblical and scientific record. Why would God say one thing in scripture and present another in reality? He cannot be trying to deceive us, because He is God, so clearly I lack wisdom in how to understand this apparent paradox.

In my struggle with this I've been flip-flopping between being and old earth creationist, to a young earth creationist, to considering what is real and not about evolution, and really I've just been praying that God would give me wisdom, because I've not been able to hang onto a firm belief. I've really been double minded on this issue like the guy in James 1, and I'm praying and believing that God will reveal to me the wisdom to understand these questions. It's important to me for a couple of reasons: One, I don't want to be double minded and inconsistent on an issue of scripture, and two, because I want to know how to direct my family in our homeschooling especially when it comes to this subject. It seems you can go one of three ways with the material that is out there, old earth creationism, young earth creationism, and synchronistic evolution (ie God used evolution to create). What should I teach my children?

The story of the Large Hadron collider got me to thinking about time travel, and the nature of time. The guy with the deliverance ministry got me to thinking about the ramifications of Jesus actually being Lord over ALL, the ALPHA and OMEGA, the beginning and the end, and what that really meant in terms of forgiveness and healing. My struggle with reconciling predestination with free will helped me to accept (albeit without understanding) that Biblical contradictions do not exist and that if two opposing ideas are presented as truth in scripture then somehow they both must be true, and this idea then lead me to apply this way of thinking to the paradox presented in the age of the universe. The answer suddenly hit me that the universe is both 14 billion years old and 6000 years old at the same time.

Some ideas floating around in quantum physics and string theory are that there are multiple or parallel universes all happening simultaneously. Take in to consideration the ramifications of this statement: Romans 1:24 "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves," It says that "God gave them up", this was an action taken upon people by the creator of the universe who, when He spoke, all that we know was created. Something big happened here. How can God maintain His perfect will while people are simultaneously living in direct opposition to it? I'm proposing that when "God gave them up" it created an alternate reality such as what is described in string theory. A reality that is no less real than the reality which is in God's will, but at the same time in direct opposition to God's will. For God to be able to allow for his creation to rebel against His will He would need to create a reality in which His will was not, however He would still have to remain ultimately sovereign over that reality.

To me this explains A LOT! This means that faith does more than move mountains. It actually causes you to exist in a new reality where even history is and always has been according to the will of God. So after our rebellion in Eden God created a schism in time. In one fork of that schism there exists a universe where the reality of God being absent is present, in that reality the lusts of man are what define truth (Because God has given us up in our lusts) and as of now the truth is that the universe is 14 billion years old. And in the other fork of the schism the universe is 6000 years old, God is the sole standard for truth, and people find their joy living within His will. The forks of the schism don't diverge from one another, but by God's grace they overlap, so that both are clearly evident, giving the people lost in the Godless schism an opportunity to make the transition to the "Kingdom of God" which is the domain of reality in which God has established His will. It is a matter of faith which determines which reality you exist in. Both are real, both are true, we can experience the consequences of each one, however one reality is going to last for all of eternity, and one reality will "pass away" (read Rev 21:1)

Think about this, when you repent, God says he remembers your sin no more, puts them as far as the east is from the west, etc. How can God do this? Because our sin occurred outside his will, when we repent we move inside His will. What is outside the will of God is not even in the same universe as what is inside his will! When you are saved you clearly make a choice to live in the reality inside of God's will. In that reality you were always saved, however, in the reality outside of God's will you were always damned. So see how it can be both? One thing happens in one reality, one happens in the other, they both happen to you, both are real and both are true.

When God "gave us up" to our lust, when he kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden, it was not just a change in Geography and Relationship, it was a change in REALITY. We went from living in a reality that was within the will of God to living in a reality that was outside the will of God. Each one as real as the other, but the reality outside the will of God only being perpetuated in existence by the Grace of God (or by the Word of His power, Hebrews 1:3), for the purpose of saving those who He loved that still exist in that reality (John 3:16). At some point the reality outside the will of God will pass away only leaving the reality that is within God's will.

Here are some quick verses to think about along these lines:

1 Cor 13:9, For we know in part and we prophesy in part,10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. (The reality outside of Gods will will pass away, and we will be left only with the perfect)

2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (Moving from one reality to the other)

Rev 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (I'm saying that the old heaven and earth are passing away while the new heaven and earth are appearing, and they overlap in a time of Grace)

Mathew 16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (possibly talking about how consequences from the sinful reality rippling through to the redeemed reality, such as a marriage to an unbeliever, a child born out of wedlock).

Daniel 2:44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, (Kingdoms being rebellious realities that are in opposition to Gods will, God's will being all that will last)

Mathew 3:2 Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Right now we can repent and have the ability to move in to God's will, this will not always be the case, the kingdom of heaven will not always be accessible or knowable by those living outside the will of God).

John 18:36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world. (Hmm, the king of the universe is saying that he is not in his kingdom? This really leans toward a dual reality in my mind.)

Romans 14:23b ...For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (it is by faith we live in God's kingdom, and it is by will that we live in opposition to His, these are the 2 realities.)

[UPDATE]I was sent this article by John Piper (who I am a great fan of) about the "two wills of God".

Just reading through the Piper article (and I've read this line of thinking of the two wills before) and still it sits wrong with me. God has one will but allows things that are against his will to come to pass? The reason it sounds like double talk is because it is. The Bible clearly teaches that God's will is never frustrated. So we are left with a problem. That there is evil in the world that some how we must not attribute to God, while maintaining that it was not against his will that it happened. That's because we are obsessed with trying to discover what is "true" and what is "false", when it is possible that we should also be seeking what is "sin" and what is "righteousness". And in doing so we may find that there are cases where 2 mutually exclusive facts are in fact "true" however one is sin and one is not.

We are faced with paradoxes of free will vs sovereignty, 6000 vs 14 billion, is God a watchmaker or is he totally sovereign, could it be all of the above? The only way to reconcile these things is if we are currently experiencing more than one reality (ie the two wills of God). I don't think this violates scripture at all, in fact I believe it affirms scripture all the more, taking many of the verses we take as metaphorical and making them very literal (for instance, "new heavens and new earth", "this age is coming to nothing", "being born again", "behold I make all things new", etc). If there are (at least) two realities, then stuff starts making sense for me.

In one reality man is given into his own will, this happened at the fall of man in Genesis. This new reality HAD to happen because "God's will is never frustrated", so it would be impossible for man to have fallen and then continue to live in a reality where God will is not frustrated. Impossible unless it was God's will for there to be a time and place where we were allowed to live in opposition to God's will, a reality that God willed to be directed by man's will. Everything about the reality of man's will is sin. God is still sovereign over it because he created it, allowed for it, and in the end he will destroy it. However, during his time of grace (being allowed to live while in opposition to his will), he reveals Christ to us. While he allows man to live in opposition to his will, He still obviously intercedes where he sees fit in what we would call "miracles" and "providence". Simultaneously there is the reality that is the will of God. It will last for eternity, and it's most commonly referred to as "the Kingdom of Heaven". There are no miracles in the kingdom of Heaven, or you could as easily say that there are ONLY miracles in the kingdom of Heaven, miracles being defined as the physical manifestation of God's will.

Since God is who He is, it would be unfathomable to consider that a sinner could enter into his glory. Not even a former sinner, because any sin (even past sin) against an infinitely righteous being would be worthy of infinite punishment in order for God to be called just. Hence our desperate need for the work of Christ, in that he entered into the reality of man's will for the purpose of creating a way for sinful men to enter into the reality of God's will. When we claim the blood of Christ we are "born again" into the new reality. Since no sinner can ever live in the presence of God the history of God's reality is that we never sinned, we were elect from before time began, and God alone is the author of our salvation, so now, by the blood of Christ (who, don't forget is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end) we are made a new creation, literally, new from the beginning of time. While the physical consequences of our sin may continue after our rebirth (for instance damage to the body from abuse of drugs or alcohol), at death, or upon the return of Christ, we will diverge from the reality of man's will and we will be left only with what God wills for our bodies, our lives and this earth to be.

For those that reject Christ there cannot be any evil attributed to God. He allowed them to live in a reality where they were free to live by their own will. This in and of it self is an act of Grace that is beyond comprehension, a travesty of Justice that demands the work of the Cross in order to be reconciled. The fact that people rejected God is on them, no blame can be placed upon God because his Kingdom was evident, even to those living by their own will instead of by faith. They chose to stay in the reality where man's will determined truth. They were, as scripture teaches, created from the beginning of time for destruction, just as the elect were created from the beginning of time for God's Glory. Why? Because it would be an equally outrageous travesty of justice to allow a sinner into God's Glory, as it would be to allow a saint to be destroyed in hell. The logical conclusion of a reality where man's will is the ultimate standard for truth is death, because even though God gave us over to our own lusts (rom 1:24) he did not give our lusts power over death. So from the sinners perspective, the choice is theirs now to decide whether or not they are elect from the beginning of time, or similarly damned. But from God's perspective, and because of Christ, he only sees in what reality we exist in now, and when the two realities diverge, either by death or by Christ's return, then our course is set (and will have always been set) for all of eternity. This gives a new meaning to the phrase "once saved always saved", meaning you were always saved, from the beginning of time, not just from the beginning of repentance.

I like this idea of two realities. I'll leave it, if I can see in scripture where it cannot be true, but I think this idea neatly affirms scripture (using scripture as the standard), while also explaining the apparent paradoxes we are so often confronted with. It also helps to explain election to me, and makes it clear that while sin and evil are never God's will, it is by God's will that they are allowed to happen so that man can be saved. So we can very clearly see that no evil comes from God, but instead, even the evil that does come, comes because of God's goodness and because of His love for us (the alternative being that he could have just wiped us out instead of allowing us to live in sin for any amount of time at all).

German, Google, and Jesus

2009-10-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

German praises, Google translator, and Jesus:

Jesus is my joy,
My heart's comfort, the source of it's beat.
He sustains and keeps me,
He is my life force,
My eye's pleasure and light,
He's the treasure of my soul and gladness;
So I will not let Jesus from my heart and face.
It is well for me that I have Jesus,
oh, how strong I hold to him.
He gave me my heart,when I had fallen.
Now I will never relent to keep by his side.
It was Jesus who first loved me,
and He who gave me all that I am,
oh if not for Jesus,
I would not be but a dead and broken heart.

Health Insurance

2009-09-30T13:42:00.000-07:00

Here's my question, does your auto insurance cover oil changes? No? Do you know why? Because there is a 100% chance that you will get an oil change, there is no way to insure against it.

Insurance by it's nature is a transference of risk from you to another party. That party accepts payment of a premium calculated based on the likelihood of the incident being insured against actually taking place and the cost and frequency of the incident. If the likelihood of the incident is 100% then the premium would just cost the amount of the incident times the frequency of the incident over the time period being covered by the policy (plus overhead to operate the insurance company).

Most of us think that our insurance plans should cover everything, office visits, prescriptions, etc. well this is stupid. What you are doing in actuality is simply paying an insurance company to pay your doctor bill. just pay it yourself? Weird idea I know. Real insurance would only cover those events with a statistical likelihood of occurrence of less than one, all other expenses would come out of your pocket and be negotiated directly between you and your provider.

When you involve a 3rd party payor, you have paid to extricate yourself from the process of negotiating your healthcare costs. When you do this you have basically given the healthcare and insurance industries the permission to spend your money how THEY see fit. So prices get disjointed from reality, and it naturally creates a kind of "ponzi scheme" where as long as more people are paying in than are taking out then the system continues to work. Add onto this government manipulation of healthcare prices and procedures via the printing of fiat currency to pay for programs such as medicare and medicade (this causes price increases simply due to the effects of inflation), and government regulations such as those regarding emergency room treatment, and you have the perfect storm for an out of control fake economy and you and I the consumer get caught in the middle with no power no control it. And that's the idea, because then we turn to congress to fix the problem. More stupidity on our part.

The insidious thing is that the way the law currently exists just ENCOURAGES this to happen. Why? Because "they" want single payer healthcare. The same "they" that gave us the IRS. In order for our consumer based economy to work as many people as possible have to waste thier lives away toiling in some beurocracy so that they can earn fake money to purchase cheap junk made by slaves in third world countries. Naturally, as people who wish to be seen as moral, we would resist such an idea, but along comes our favorite government programs (most of which are only necessary because government intervention has priced the average consumer out of the market for whatever the government program is providing), the fear of going to jail for not giving the government YOUR money (the illegal and unconstitutional IRS), and the fear of getting sick and not being able to pay for it, add all this together and whammo, they've got you convinced to commit a excruciatingly long and drawn out form of suicide called the "American Dream".

The best thing to do about all this is to WAKE UP!

How to destroy a nation.

2009-09-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

(A thought inspired from this article.)

The destruction of the family is key to creating a population of adult children who are incapable of reasoning for themselves. These people must look toward "big brother" (if you will) to make decisions for them. Strong families raise children who are capable of entering the world as individuals, responsible for their own actions, and most importantly equipped with the mental and intestinal attributes that are required to take any independent action at all.

I believe we are preparing to enter a time of American history that has never before been seen. A time when most of the adults in society will have been raised in single parent homes, or otherwise in homes where the traditional family is non existent. Some exceptions aside, most of these people will be incapable of reasoning and will have a profound dependence upon the state for survival.

The tools used to destroy families, are:

materialism, a constant barrage of newly created needs and wants that drives the individual to consume meaninglessly;

debt, the method used to achieve the materialism, this includes fiat debt based currency;

an unnatural/unsatisfying work environment, meaningless bureaucratic positions that pay just enough to expand the personal debt but never enough to pay it off, this work environment provides little real satisfaction (satisifaction is a marketed good used to sell a variety of products, if the work place were to provide that it would be defeating its own purpose), most of these work environments will look very similar to high school in their social interactions and politics;

compulsory state education, both parents being occupied in their work environments in order to keep up with the demands of college, mortgage, and consumer debt, children will be educated by the state and taught how to accept the unnatural as normal (and this is also why the work environment so closely resembles the adolescent drama of high school, the purpose of the education system is to ensure that adult thought processes are inhibited prior to the person being released into society).

continuing education, "Education" (meaning the certifications provided by the state), will be believed to be the key to progressing in life. This will keep the public constantly and willingly indoctrinated, while at the same time burdening themselves with debt that not only has no asset but also is not subject to discharge due to bankruptcy, thereby requiring the debtor to use their "education" to enter into the bureaucracy and continue the cycle. Education is not inherently evil of course, however just like a hammer, you can use it to build something, but it's easier to use it to kill something.

television/entertainment media, any time that a family may spend alone where individual conversations may take place will be controlled by television or other media. In this way the nature of any conversation will be controlled by the subject matter of the tv program, video game, music, etc. Education, Television programs, and other entertainment will promote the unnatural idea that children are to rebel against their parents, and that strong family relationships are unnatural, this will be seen as normal. Children will be taught via television that parents are unreliable sources of wisdom, and that wisdom should be sought from education, and that education is always provided by the state. Then when the kids go off to "college" to be further educated to receive a beurocratic position to pay off debt and aquire more things in order to purchase satisfaction, the adults, who at this point may or may not be the biological parents of the child, will be relieved to see them go.

love = romance, television and media will be used to teach that love equals romance and that conflict is a sign of hatred. This, along with easy divorce laws, are important because if people were to realize that conflict is to be dealt with by remaining in relationships they would accidentally stumble upon a profound source of satisfaction in relationships that costs no money. This idea will be expanded to include churches, political parties, as well as families. Ideally no relationship will ever survive any conflict, the only relationship that will remain conflict free will be the individuals relationship with the state, that will be easily accomplished through marketing campaigns via the internet, television and other entertainment media. Any conflict that may occur with the state will be easily resolved by allowing the person to simply change political parties, the conflict being attributed not to the state but to the political party being left.

The ideal lifecycle for a modern slave would be this: Born, as soon as possible placed into daycare so mom can go back to work, watches television most waking hours, put in school as soon as possible (we don't want the kid to "fall behind" do we?), any time the kid is not at school he is either with peers or with parents, but only with parents or other adults under the supervision of the television to control the possible subject matter of the conversation, graduates high school, gets student loan, further rebels against any remaining moral standards while in college, graduates college, school debt is now due, gets a corporate or bureaucratic gig, goes to work 8 hours a day, goes home watches television at night, mows the lawn on Saturday, watches football on Sunday, repeats. Retires from job, becomes ward of the state (because kids are busy working to care for him, nor is their relationship sufficient to really care anyway), goes to adult version of daycare (nursing home), watches television most waking hours, dies.

Randy Brogdan For Oklahoma Governor

2009-09-18T09:03:00.000-07:00

Maniac Muslim Suicide Terrorists

2009-09-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

Where do they really happen? Maybe I'm not well informed, but it just struck me that I can't recall there being really a significant number suicide or terrorist attacks in the US or in Western Europe carried out by Muslim extremists. The only attacks I can think of are 9/11 and 7/7, the motives of both of which are seriously in question to say the least. Then there is the Madrid bombing, and I'm not to up on the legitimacy on that story. And the 1993 WTC bombing, which was probably the closest to being a real terrorist attack, and it was pretty much a complete failure in terms of what it intended. I can't really think of a whole lot more.

I mean, I can think of hundreds of scenarios that have been imprinted in my mind from shows like "24" and from movies, but I can't really recall actual factual attacks.

Seems like the main place that suicide and terrorist attacks take place are in places where we have occupying forces. Outside of that it seems to me like they are very very very rare, despite the fact that we're all expected to believe that at any moment some crazy jihadist is going to jump out of the bushes and blow us all up.

I just watched the movie "Traitor" with Don Cheadle, it's not bad, but it's premise is these Muslims blowing up crap all over the world. It actually has a nice balance of pointing out bad US policy and showing that Islam isn't just a seething cauldron of evil, but it still had this premise that there are these bad Muslims that are going to bomb the US and kill a lot of Americans at any moment.

The problem is that it never happens. 9/11 is the sole precedent of evil on the scale that would even come close to justifying the terror threat level, the Dept of Homeland Security, the war against terror, etc. And personally I'm pretty much convinced that Muslims in the caves of Afghanistan had almost nothing to do with 9/11, and I'm for sure that Muslims in Iraq had nothing to do with it. If you're not convinced you might want to do some googling on it and take a look at http://www.ae911truth.org/ and watch the documentary "Loose Change". I know, I know, it's a lot of reading, and the idea that 9/11 went down in any way contrary to the "official" story is an idea that you've been conditioned to respond to in a certain way. But it might do you some good to see what someone besides Fox News has to say on the subject.

We keep getting told that there is this enemy out there that hates us and wants to kill us. But really, unless I'm just mind blocked or ignorant of hundreds of acts of real terrorism, it seems like almost all suicide "terror" attacks are directed at getting foreign troops out of an occupied land, and almost none of these attacks are directed at killing evil, bacon-eating Americans.

It took me a while to come around, but Ron Paul finally convinced me how stupid our current foreign policies are even if we were under attack by terrorists. I guess it never occurred to me until now the extent to which we really just aren't.

It's actually an uplifting and relieving thought to realize that our supposed enemies are either totally incompetent, or really not all that motivated to attack us. Even better to think that maybe they don't even exist at all. I've had the privilege of traveling to several places on earth that are very poor by American standards. The people I met there didn't seem like they were sitting around plotting America's demise. In many cases the people I met led lives that were full of rich relationships and meaningful work, and were devoid of addictions to cheap materialism.

On that note here's another lie I just realized. That the rest of the world hates us for our wealth. I really think many of them are laughing at us, or maybe crying for us to change because they see that we've missed the whole point of life. Most of them don't even give us a thought, they're busy tending to their families, their farms, their God, and the few things they treasure.

The ones that hate us have a right. When we send our soldiers to contain and/or kill them, or when we send our corporations to enslave them. I don't like that about us either.

Suppose a foreign army came in an occupied your town. Supposed in their search for the "bad guys" they killed your wife and children. Suppose they wouldn't leave and treated you like the enemy and took away your liberties. How would you respond? I think I'd do what I could to get them to leave. Someone pointed me to the book "Dying to Win" which seems to support the hunch I'm having with actual facts and research, I'll have to check it out. When it comes to gauging how much the average Muslim hates me, I've come to the conclusion I can almost completely dismiss terrorist attacks in countries where there is an occupying foreign army, and that's pretty much the ONLY place where this kind of terrorism happens. With this aside, it seems now our differences are cultural and theological, things we can work through and discuss.

This realization is uplifting to me. I can now much more clearly focus on "sticking to the man", and not worry so much about the Muslim, except in gaining his friendship and assistance. It sure seems like it would make it easier for me to tell him about Jesus if I saw him as a human being and a friend, instead of a suicidal maniac.

My Recipe...for DISASTER!

2009-08-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

I was making a peach cobbler the other day with fresh peaches. So I was boiling the peaches and was left with this pink peachy liquid, and I thought to myself, mmm, this might make a good soda. So I filtered it, added some sugar, put it in a 2 liter pop bottle and added some yeast...then I forgot about it.

The next day I received a frantic call at work from one of my kids, there had been an explosion in the kitchen...I remembered.

Yes, the yeast consumed the sugar producing carbon dioxide (as it is supposed to), however I may have put to much yeast in and I might have let it go a little long. The results were spectacularly disastrous:

The explosion literally blew the cabinet doors in half, not just open, the wood splintered down the middle, both doors:

The bread machine was sitting in front of the cabinet on top of the fridge prior to the explosion:

Here is what is left of the bottle, the lid stayed on, that probably helped:

Well by God's grace no one was near the explosion, Julie and the kids were in the other room, studying the sun, right when they read about solar flares they heard a big boom!

I'm sure there is some deep lesson for me in here somewhere, but I'm still just reveling in the awesomeness of it all!

I will have to modify my recipe and fermenting procedures moving forward. I thought it was pretty cool. Julie, well, not so much...:)

My personal Revolution Flag

2009-07-29T12:28:00.001-07:00

I was having a conversation about the symbols of a revolution. It got me to thinking. When I talk about the Fed, about the NWO, heck even if I talk about the constitution I'm often accused of being a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. So I thought it would be fun and appropriate to take the object of my ridicule and transform it into the symbol of my individual liberty. Much like what Christians do with the cross of Christ. It was the object of our ridicule, a symbol of torture and death, of the power of the state and culture over us, after the resurrection it became the symbol of victory.

The tin foil hat is a moniker for a person who thinks outside the box and isn't afraid to discuss his or her thoughts, sometimes referred to as a "conspiracy theorist". The trend for labeling free thinkers as conspiracy theorists prompted me to put a twist on an old saying:

"Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it, those who do are doomed to be called conspiracy theorists."

However, this is neither something to be ashamed of nor to ridicule. Our free thinking minds are the most dangerous threats to all forms of tyranny, and if they want mine, well they can just try to come and take it.

So here's my flag:

It's loosely based on the 1835 come and take it flag:

When we win the fight for our individual liberties, I'm going to put on the most elaborate tin foil hat I can come up with to celebrate. I'm going to stand on the steps in front of the federal reserve and scream at the top of my lungs, "My tin foil hat is worth more than all the money you can print, it's not for sale!"

:)

If God is dead, then long live the Fed.

2009-07-15T13:51:00.001-07:00

God is dead. Moral absolutes have been wistfully done away with and replaced with the flexibility and convenience of a relativism that can change as we need it. Human intellect, our superior ability to interpret and define reality, has become the standard for truth.

God (may he rest in peace) had demands of righteousness, the chains of liberty, but these have finally been broken, we are now truly free. Our science, our industry, our technology are free to explore the vast expanse of our intellectual and creative prowess. However, even in this new found freedom we have found ourselves limited by nothing more than that which we use to symbolize our own wealth. Our money, restricted by an outside standard, gold.

Why should we allow our own wealth to be limited by a lifeless mineral over which we have very little control? We cannot create it, and the limited supply of it still requires that we exert mindless physical labor to acquire it. In many ways the supply and availability of this mere metal actually controls us! It limits our progress. It demands we modify our behavior, even against our own will. It violates our most basic doctrine, that we set the rules. How dare it! It is trying to be a God over us! We must kill it! It's really no big deal. We control TRUTH, money is trivial in comparison.

We know that any culture can choose whatever it wills as money, there is no law limiting us to gold, and if there was, we could simply change it. Our money should be a symbol of what is truly and most valuable to us. Obviously in a highly evolved culture such as ours the most valuable thing is our own brilliance. It would only be natural then, that the money with which we trade be symbolic of that which we value and esteem. A money system that will obey our every brilliant suggestion, in fact the very value of it will be derived from our genius in creating it. We'll be as rich as we are intelligent. No longer will our dreams be squashed simply because we lack money. NO! Now our dreams will be our money, our every wish will bear interest on our every increasing wealth! Even our dreams will be boundless, those chains of liberty no longer restricting us to that standard set forth by the late I am.

Resurrected?! Jesus, NO! We will it not

The humanist's dilemma

2009-07-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

God is dead and we are all just animals. There is no right or wrong, only what is necessary for me to survive. If I persuade, deceive, or force you into giving up your resources for my well being, then the only standard you have against me is to appeal to the herd and stampede me into submission, punishment, or death.

If the herd has been convinced that you no longer are of any value, then what right do you have to disagree? None. You can scream and struggle, wiggle and skwirm, but in the end you are just an animal backed into a corner. Your life and death are meaningless, unless your death frees up some resources for the herd to sustain itself, then your death is preferred. However you'll be forgotten as soon as you are consumed. Well maybe not that soon. Surely they'll be a post consumption conversation about how inadequately you served your final purpose.

Does this not seem fair? What about your rights? They can be found in the same sewer where ran the blood of your murdered God. You no longer have a higher standard to appeal to. The will of the masses is the standard, and today you have been measured against it and you've been found wanting. You eat to much, breath to much, breed to much, work to much, talk to much, care to much, love to much. You must be killed so that the resources you are wasting become available to those who are behaving. Submit yourself therefore to those to whom the herd have ordained, and marvel at least at the brilliance of the propaganda justifying your fate.

Your final breath screams for liberty and freedom, but your voice is lost amongst the monolithic braying of the highest power in a godless existence. Your liberty is a threat to the peaceful predictability of the system, your speech is an unintelligible annoyance distracting from the popular entertaining melodies, the property you claim is better disposed of placating the obedient.

This is the conclusion. We have killed God and in doing so we have slit the throat of our own liberty. Our only hope is in a resurrection.

A little Poem

2009-07-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

Came up with this in response to an argument. Thought I would share.

Our founding families explained
that our rights from God were ordained.
But Darwin came in
and got rid of sin
and freed us from liberty's chains.

catchy isn't it?

Here's another one:

I have a great problem with God's Holy law
in doing what's right and what's legal
but if God did not make me then I am not wrong
God Bless the HMS Beagle.

The Church Murdered Dr. Tiller

2009-06-02T07:04:00.000-07:00

You may have heard about the murder of Dr. Tiller (the killer). The Dr who performed the late term murders on children who could have as easily been delivered and lived. He was interestingly enough murdered while serving as usher at his church. Apparently Tiller was a professing Christian who even went so far as to baptize the corpses of his victims in the name of Jesus. There is a very sad commentary here about the state of the church in America where this kind of behaviour would be tolerated by a professing Christian. Doug Phillips has a good article about this tragedy called George Tiller is Dead, for whom shall we mourn?, I would only add to Phillips article by saying that we SHOULD mourn for Tiller, and also recognise the sin of Tiller's church in an effort to keep from this sin in our own churches.

In fact I'm sure in the twisted mind of Tiller's killer the hypocrisy of his being a welcome and professing participant in a Christian church only added fuel to the hatred that led to his murder. The Bible is clear that in our fellowships we must admonish one another in order to keep each other from sin. The bible even outlines specific steps to take to confront a fellow believer who is sinning.

Matthew 18:15 If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

So here is a clear command of Christ of how to handle a brother who has sinned against us, here is the way by which we reconcile ourselves to each other. The wisdom in this passage is profound. But Dr. Tiller was overtly engaged in a horrendous sin, countless people had obviously shared with him that what he was doing was wrong, yet he continued, even to the point of using his "Christianity" to somehow purify his evil deeds.

Paul says:

1 Corinthians5:1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife.2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus,5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Paul pleads with the church not to overlook overtly practiced sin and be arrogant about it. This man's eternity is at stake. Expel him! Do not allow him to somehow justify his behaviour by allowing him to remain in your fellowship while he persists in his sin unrepentant. This is for HIS good, so that his sin will work out it's course in him, so that his Spirit might be saved. He is to be delivered to Satan so that he may carry out his sin to it's logical conclusion, the destruction of the flesh. I believe that in this process the man may not die, but as he sows the seed of sin in his life, he will begin to reap the fruits of it, and see that it can only lead to death, and therefore repent and turn to Christ and be welcomed back into the fellowship.

Let's be clear, these actions are toward the professing Christians of your congregation. Not toward unbelievers. Unbelievers have NO POWER to overcome sin, they must hear and receive the Gospel so that they can repent. But once someone has proclaimed Christ and attests to being a Christian, then it is the loving duty of his brothers and sisters in Christ to hold him to that standard in love and out of fearful concern for his eternity.

If only Dr. Tiller's church would have done this. If only they would have, in love, said to him, "No sir, you are not welcome in our fellowship so long as you perform your sin, you proclaim Christ, therefore until you turn from your sin ,we must cast you out to be consumed by it." If they would have taken this stand Dr. Tiller may still be alive today, but because they didn't, the likelihood is that Dr. Tiller's eternity in Hell will be on the hands of the Reformation Lutheran Church and it's elders and teachers.

So do I feel sad for Tiller? Of course. He is most likely in Hell, unless somehow at this particular church service or sometime before then, he had repented and turned to Christ. He reaped what he sowed, and that is sad. He was a doctor, a bright man, possibly even a man with a misguided heart to help people. But he did not seek the council of God and was led away by Satan, with the blessing of the church, to his death. The church could have saved his live, and possibly his soul. We created a martyr for the cause of abortionists, when we could have created a repentant man who would have been powerful in putting an end to the wicked craft that he practiced.

Jesus or monkey bones?

2009-05-20T16:48:00.001-07:00

Well the athiest have picked their idol. Here is a picture:

Their saviour has finally been unearthed. Athiest all over the world are rejoicing, the triumphant entry of their monkey king proves that there is no God to judge them. Praise be to the primate prince, who died and was buried and 1,716,675,000,000 days later was found still dead hanging on the wall of an art collector, all to prove that there is no such thing as sin. Now when anyone tries to hold you to a higher standard just point to the proof (with your middle finger), there is no standard for truth (other than this monkey which serves as the sole standard that there is no standard).

Do you not understand? Are you intellectually unable to see the significance of this monumental monkey? That's ok, just submit your will and the lapses in your intellegence to those elite minds among us who will give you constant assurances that this monkey is infact as magnificant as they claim. Surely submitting to the sovereignty of an intellectual elite is preferable to the personal auto-determinination practiced in centuries past. Look at the monkey and marvel, hear the words of the PHD's and know with joy that there is no God.

"The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries." - David Rockefeller

Do you believe in God?

2009-04-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

The thing is, if you believe there is a God and if you believe that He is Good, then you have a great problem. By admitting His existence and his goodness you must condemn yourself. If God's goodness is not totally and infinitely good, then he is really just another being, higher on the food chain than us. Like a space alien or something. In His goodness are the ideals of all that man aspires for and at the same time readily admits he is unable to achieve. If God is good then He is also desirable above any other thing, and desiring anything other than Him would be a travesty of great ignorance. If God is good, then we MUST fall short of deserving Him, so the thing that is most desirable is also something that is not attainable by us, simply because He is God. If He is Good, then He MUST be just, and if He is just then we MUST be required to be worthy of deserving His goodness in order to fullfill our desire for Him. If God is not totally just or not totally good, then he must cease to be God and that which has the justice or goodness he falls short of must take his place as God.

This is why Christ is so important. Since we admit that we are not God, and He is desireable above all things, then we also must admit that any requirement laid upon us to make us worthy of His Goodness would be impossible for us to achieve simply because we are finite and He is infinite, it would never add up. And in His Justice we must demand that He require this of us, or we must abandon that He exists as God at all. We must either deny that He is God and work to ignore, manipulate, or destroy him, or we must accept who He is and realize that we can never be worthy of Him. Only something that could pay an infinite price could redeem a finite being to infinite goodness. Jesus is God, His punishment was able to pay the price of our shortcomings to His infinite goodness. God says that our simple belief in this fact is credited to us as HIS righteousness. So now our greatest desire can be fullfilled, not by our own works of righteousness, but by the righteous work of the very object of our desire, God Himself! Of course He alone could pay this price, because if the price could be paid apart from God, then, you guessed it, He would cease to be God and must submit to the being that could pay the price.

If there is no God who sets a standard for how we should live we all are forced to subject ourselves to the tyranny of the most persuasive or powerful amongst us. The existance of a God who is good is the existance of an objective moral standard. Without an objective standard, morality can only be defined subjectively. What this ultimately means is that the most persuasive group of intellectuals end up setting the moral compass for the masses. Truth, without an objective standard, can only be defined according to our own ability to rationally interpret reality. Since there are groups of individuals who are more able to convince people that they understand the complicated issues of economics, science, ethics, and other subdivisions of truth, those who are intellectually challeged in these areas must look to these groups for guidance. In the absence of a God who reveals truth to the individual, individuals must turn to the elite amongt themselves to find out how to live.

The simple fact is that there is a God, and He is Good. He created us and knows each one of us personally. He is so good that we cannot in any way earn him, however in His goodness he was able to be both just and the justifier of those of us who long to have our desire for Him fullfilled. Because of His work on the cross He is able to forever be with us and councils us, each and individually, daily on how to live so that we could live in this world the way in which He created it to be lived in. We can truly be dependent on no other human, as the source of all wisdom personally teaches us.

There can be no in-between. A god who is lacking in anyway is nothing more than another being in the universe, and he can be manipulated and possibly even destroyed. A god who did not create the world has no authority over it other than by force. And there cannot be a god who is evil, because evil can only be defined in light of good.

We can't say that there is no God and then demand that people live moral lives, nor can we say that there is a God and not come to terms with the desparity between His goodness and our lack of it.

My letter to Senator Coburn regarding the confirmation of David Ogden as deputy attorney general

2009-02-11T15:33:00.001-08:00

Honorable Senator Coburn,

Please vote against the confirmation of David Ogden to the position of deputy attorney general. His stance as to how UN treaties affect states rights is a threat to our national sovereignty. Most case law that I have read about has upheld that the intent of the constitution in regards to treaties is limited to trade, however there are many progressive who are pushing for the idea that by adopting treaties they can effect create law that is binding over every state. Putting our country under the thumb of an international court system that we as a people have no control over.

One treaty that Ogden supports is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is a direct assault on parental rights. The treaty basically puts the choices a parent would typically make for thier child in the hands of the child or the state, and takes the will of the parents out of the picture. This is immoral, unacceptable, un American, and people in support of such ideas must not be allowed positions of power within our governement.

Sadly, since our country has drifted so far from it's founding, the only real solution is to create a constitutional ammendment providing for the rights of parents. Our forefathers found this unecessary since it was obvious to them, however as a society we have drifted to the absurd and now must meticulously spell out even those rights our founders believed were so apparent they need not even be named.

Please use your power on the judiciary to protect the rights of parents and our national soveriegnty by rejecting Mr Ogden from this post.

Sincerely,

Dax Ewbank

This is why socialism leads to genocide:

2009-02-04T07:33:00.000-08:00

"Family planning services reduce cost [for the state]" -Nancy Pelosi.

Since socialists believe it is the role of the state to provide a persons basic needs, when the state's resources are limited the only logical conclusion is to begin limiting the amount of people in order to control costs. In a socialist and planned economy the state is the source of revenue, in a capitalist economy the people are the source of wealth. In a socialist economy with a fiat currency that is using that currency to pay for social welfare programs, when the currency inflation causes price increases the answer has to be to reduce the number of people, not the level of services.

Genesis1:28

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

SOCIALIST VERSION:

And the elite ruling class placated them and said to them "Have only one or two children so we don't fill up the earth, if you become to numerous we will have to kill some of you in order to be able to continue to feed you. Be sure not to infringe upon the fish of the sea or the birds of the heavens or upon any living thing that moves on the earth, as you are subject to the earth and you are to submit to it because it has dominion over you." And they also said "Behold, we have printed up some money and given you a small amount of it, you can use it to purchase food manufactured in factories that use industrialized and engineered crops grown by farms that we also subsidize and regulate with the money we printed. Oh and make sure you don't cut down any trees or make any attempts at forms of agriculture that are outside our regulatory mandates. Remember, food cost money, and it's not like it just grows on trees. If you have some cows don't feed them too much, or you will have to pay a carbon tax because the gasses they emit are harmful to the earth." And the elite saw everything and behold, it was managed and controlled. And there was evening and there was morning, and it was all the same the next day.

Liberia, Hope for the Ideals of Liberty

2009-01-02T12:08:00.000-08:00

There are some great things happening in Liberia, and I believe that are our founders principles of liberty at work as God begins to move through the nation. I am volunteering with a group that is working to change the nation of Liberia by bringing the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the message that God demands responsibility for liberty, and the message of love for your neighbors and community. Not only are we bringing a message, but there has grown a network of pastors and churches ready to put those words into action in thier own families and communities. I think God is ready to make a significant change in Liberia and possibly the world!

Here's a video to explain it more:

Many of you know I've been spending some time in Liberia, West Africa working with my church Fresh Start Fellowship and the West African Children's Support Network (WACSN) to try to help cause some positive change in that country. Truthfully we are simply trying to keep up with God as He moves to heal a nation, we want to be there to see it happen! For a small group of people I think we have been a part of some pretty big things up to now, we have delivered a container of food to help feed people, we have purchased a new generator to help power the compound where WACSN keeps it's base of operations, we have purchased a van that WACSN uses to help get people around town as well as provide a source of income for the facility, we're implementing an Internet connectivity plan to help aid communications and opportunities for business ventures, and most importantly we've been dedicated to helping the orphans in Liberia, by ensuring they are being fed and well kept, and by helping with the adoption expenses of some of our friends who have opened their homes and families to Liberian children. Our small church currently has 16 Liberian children as important members of our fellowship.

These are all great things. The people of Liberia need our support, their country is in ruins from years of war. If you think the American economy is bad, a look at the city of Monrovia will have you counting your blessings, they need our help, our money, and our time just to stay alive. However, I truly believe that the answer to the problems in Liberia lies within Liberians. This is why I am very excited about the "How Big Is God?" Crusade that we are planning March 27,28 & 29 at the soccer stadium in Monrovia, Liberia. This event will draw over 50,000 people per night to hear the Gospel, and the good plans God has for their nation if they will turn to Him and love each other.

I know, I know, you're thinking, "Great, ANOTHER big event to make people feel good, and then leave them holding their hats while the Americans fly home to the abundance that is their everyday life." And you'd be justified in thinking that way, we've all seen these kind of events come and go. I'm sure many Africans and Americans for that matter have come to a crusade or event and heard the word of God and maybe they even responded to it, only to go right back to the life they lived before once the crusade packed up and left town. But let me tell you, I think God has different plans for this crusade, I really believe in my heart that he is going to heal the nation of Liberia. It's not going to be through fantastic presentations of the Gospel, or the great music, or even the personal testimonies that will be given on that stage during the nights of the crusade. I think the difference here is that the Liberian Church is mobilized and excited about taking the opportunity of this event to reach out to and love the people in their communities.

When we went to Monrovia in August of 2008 we had the privilege of leading a pastors conference. To our amazement almost 200 pastors showed up for the 3 day event and listened to some no name Americans (Kris Ewbank and Bryan Bishop) tell them about their role as pastors. How they had to flee from the prosperity teaching that is so prevalent in Liberia and cling to the sufficiency of the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ. They talked at length about how the pastors had to reach out and know and love their people, going to their homes, knowing their problems, and encouraging and admonishing them to live a life pleasing to God. The response to this simple message was incredible. At the conference the pastors were very enthused, but it wasn't until after we had come home and received calls from Liberia a couple of weeks later did we hear that the Liberian pastors had organized themselves into a network that has grown to over 1000 pastors representing 800 Churches of every Christian denomination. They are excited about loving their people, and teaching them to love God and their neighbors. They are breaking down denominational barriers in order to pursue a vision of reaching their city for God's Glory and I think this will be the key part to the healing of the nation of Liberia.

The How Big Is God crusade is being completely organized by these pastors, they are meeting together, planning, even going door to door to promote the event. The vision is to come together as a unified church and worship God, and in doing so, connect the people of Monrovia with churches and pastors ready to receive, Love, and encourage them. Basically we will be jump starting a grassroots effort that will reach deep into every community in the largest city in Liberia. The message will be that each and every Liberian is empowered and responsible to change their city, by establishing themselves as Godly households led by men and women in Love with Jesus, by accepting the burden and responsibility of feeding and caring for their own families and their own communities, and by reaching out in love to the people in their communities, not because of their religion or lack of it, but simply because they see them as image bearers of their Creator and desire to love them as Christ who, while we were still sinners, died to save us.

The motto of the country of Liberia is "The Love of Liberty Brought us Here". It was founded by freed American slaves who had a vision to take the ideals of liberty to Africa. Many may believe that that dream was shattered long ago. I tend to think that the principles of liberty are always true and will always work, and to struggle for those principles will always be a worthwhile effort. Looking to America, or the UN, or even their own government to fix Liberia is a time proven exercise in futility. When Liberians look toward the One who gave them their Liberty in the first place and when they willingly take on the burden that God requires for that Liberty, then as God heals their land we will see a nation transformed. And that will be something to see, especially from the front row!

So here's the skinny. It's a known fact that America is inflating it's currency and the value is continuously dropping, However, the fact of the matter is that it still buys stuff. And for this crusade to be a success we need to buy some stuff. Sound equipment, bus rental, printing, advertising, training of staff, all kinds of things. The Liberians are doing great putting the plan together, in fact they have done most of the work and they have also provided the cost estimates for the things we're raising money for. At Fresh Start Fellowship we're all excited about giving because we've caught the vision of what God is doing is Liberia. I hope you have too in a small way. What we're doing is this, you simply buy one or more $10 tickets on ebay to help support the crusade, or you can go to the crusade website to learn more and be a part in other ways.

Even if your not a Christian, I'm sure you can see that what we're doing here is at least worth $10.00. I mean what could be wrong with people coming together in unity and taking personal responsibility to love ALL their neighbors and fix their communities? So dig deep, well not that deep, dig as deep as you would to go see the latest Hollywood mind drain, I'm sure this will be more interesting in the end than anything corporate America could throw at you anyway!

-Dax

http://www.howbigisgod.org/

PS: All donations go toward crusade expenses and to assist ministries in Liberia. Donations go to WACSN, Inc, a 501.3c non-profit and are tax deductible as no goods or services will be rendered to you for the donation. WACSN is also verified by Missionfish.org.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

2008-11-24T05:55:00.000-08:00

Ready for change? The fed has now pledged an amount of money equal to half the US GDP, that basically means the value of our dollar was just cut by a third. It works like this, the value of our currency is linked to our ability to produce and consume in our economy, last year that number was right at $14 trillion, so if the Fed prints up $7.4 trillion new dollars it means there will be about $21 trillion in currency for an economy of 14 trillion (it's hard to really know this number since the fed stopped reporting on the M3 money supply in 2006).

That would be like if we had 1000 ounces of gold, each with a certificate giving the bearer of that certificate the right to an ounce of gold. Then if we decided to just print up 500 more certificates without the gold to back it for a total of 1500 certificates backed by 1000 ounces of gold. It wouldn't give us more spending power, it would just make each certficate worth less gold, it's really pretty simple division. So get ready for some change, because that is what our government via the Federal Reserve (which is not our government) is doing:

Sounds like change:

Regulators hope the rescue will contain the damage and keep banks providing the credit that is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy.

Most of the spending programs are run out of the New York Fed, whose president, Timothy Geithner, is said to be President- elect Barack Obama's choice to be Treasury Secretary.

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

If credit is the 'lifeblood' of our economy (not real money), and it's dried up, that sounds like a problem. The new Treasury Secretary is the guy currently at the federal reserve bank running all the new spending programs. He's in charge of the people who believe the solution to the problem is to find more credit, instead of finding sound money.

After all the hubub about change I guess we will get it afterall, except it will be the change that comes with ignoring basic principles about money that have been with us as humans for thousands of years. This change includes inflation, price increases, loss of liberty, the disintigration of infrastructure... Hopefully we'll come to our senses.

Time is (the) money (of liberty).

2008-11-23T06:48:00.000-08:00

The true currency of liberty is time. Time cannot be counterfeited, it is only being continuously redeemed. How are your redeeming your time, what are you trading it for? On what do you spend your children's time? The tyrants of the world want you to spend your time toiling for them, and in exchange they provide a myriad of distractions to occupy your time until your eventual death. The redemption of time in service to an entity who is not sovereign over time is the equivalent to toiling for a bankrupt and dishonest employer, neither have the means nor intention to pay. They can only provide empty promises until you finally die.

Only God, who was and is and is to come, is the Lord over time. He councils us to buy from him "gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see". Only He can redeem our time (which was a gift from Him in the first place) and in exchange give us LIFE. Take some time and consider the value of your liberty, and of your time, the currency of your liberty, and resolve only to hand it over to Him who is capable of redeeming it!

Global Special-ed

2008-11-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

One of President Elect Barack Obama's new policies likely to be enacted quickly upon his assuming office would be the Global Poverty Act of 2007. This act will do some pretty dangerous things, particularly for the rights of Homeschoolers. This act would cause the US to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as an international Treaty. The "rights of the child", that sounds harmless enough, right? I mean aren't we all for helping the children? NO! Not like this. This act basically subjugates the welfare of all children to the supreme supervision of the (Global) State.

The globalist, due to a misinterpretation of Article VI of the US Constitution, mistakenly believe that treaties entered into by the United States make that treaty the supreme law of the land, where state courts and legislatures would have no power to overturn or limit the provisions of the treaty. There is precedence via supreme court rulings that dispute this belief, however this is part of the globalists' strategy and argument in order to progress their agenda of one global government and monetary system.

The alarming parts of The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for a homeschooling family are found mainly in articles 28 and 29:

Article 28
1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to education, and with a view to achieving this right progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity, they shall, in particular:

(a) Make primary education compulsory and available free to all;
...
(e) Take measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of drop-out rates.

Article 29:
...
2. No part of the present article or article 28 shall be construed so as to interfere with the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions, subject always to the observance of the principle set forth in paragraph 1 of the present article and to the requirements that the education given in such institutions shall conform to such minimum standards as may be laid down by the State.

This treaty, if adopted, would pretty much eliminates our right to home school by making primary education compulsory, enforcing attendance, and then making any alternative educational institution "conform to such minimum standards as may be laid down by the State".

The presumption is that the state can effectively create and establish even minimum standards for eduction. It can't. It doesn't work here, and it definitely won't work on a global scale. This is the opposite of liberty, this is the handing over of liberty to an elite group of distant experts so they can decide (for the whole world) what is the right and wrong way to raise and educate your child. The Federal mandates on our local schools are often ridiculous enough, and the people who created those mandates are at least in a similar culture as you are. Can you imagine the educational mandates passed down by a GLOBAL department of education? This is basically what this treaty creates (see article 43 of the UN text).

The preamble of the UN text states that they are "Taking due account of the importance of the traditions and cultural values of each people for the protection and harmonious development of the child".

I wonder if they'll take into account my tradition and cultural value says that the education of my children is one of the primary responsibilities given to MY WIFE and ME by GOD. Probably not. Why? Because they don't recognise the authority from whence I derive the right. And if they don't recognize that, then I can also assume they don't assign the same value to me that I assign to myself and to my family. My value is derived from the fact that an infinite God of infinite value was willing to lay down His life as a ransom for my life. However, I will only be as valuable to the globalist as I can be compliant to their dictates. My value to them is limited to the amount of my time I spend, willingly or not, laboring for the advancement of their self-serving purposes.

Another Liberia Update

2008-11-15T08:10:00.000-08:00

Maria Luyken is introduced by Kris Ewbank and Bryan Bishop. Maria leads the West African Children Support Network (WACSN) in Liberia. Maria speaks on the efforts in WACSN and its collaboration with FreshStart Fellowship and Delta Force. This event took place on the evening of Wednesday Oct 29, 2008 in Fairview, Oklahoma. Maria begins speaking about 7 minutes into the video after introductions by Kris Ewbank of Fresh Start Fellowship and Bryan Bishop with DELTA Force Missions. It's a very exciting talk.

My favorite part is about 47 minutes into the video Maria says: "When I go to Liberia I feel like I'm going into the past. When I come here I feel like I came to the future. So in my mind I think, wow, I see the future and I go back to the past. God has given us and opportunity to go back to the past. Knowing what we know today in the future, what would we change here? What would we do differently for the Lord? That's the charge we have. What are we going to do? Are we going to make the same mistakes here? What are we going to do?"

Money

2008-11-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

The true genius of our country is that it is based on a truth that all value flows from God, as ultimately He is the only valuable thing. God made it, God places the value on it, and only God is ultimately able to redeem it. God placed that value in each individual and it is expressed most vividly through our free and willing desire to enjoy our Creator. The problem of money is at the root of this issue. Any kind of large scale currency system must end up becoming a tyrannical control mechanism that manipulates and thwarts the liberty of the individual and that ultimately ends in chaos as the currency increasingly fails to redeem the value demanded. This failure is because there is no human endeavor that can redeem the true value placed within each one of us as image bearors of the Creator of the universe. This is the value we are chasing, God Himself, and the satisfaction of finding our own relationship with God is only fleetingly counterfieted by the satisfaction derived from the exchange of money.

Money, especially fiat currency (which is the only kind of currency in use in all the world), has to chase value since it has no value of it's own. It's a funny thing to serve mammon over God. Since money only chases value and must be traded for the thing that has the real value, and value can only be determined by calculating what a person who is capable of paying is willing to pay for the item being valued, it's strange that we would hoard and lust after money so much. No matter how much money you have you cannot trade it for yourself in order to give yourself value. That's because you are niether capable nor willing to pay for yourself what you are worth, only God is and he did by laying down the life of his son as a ransom, the only way to redeem the value in you. He did this not so much because of a flaw in you, but more because of the great value that He can provide in your being with Him. So it's true we cannot serve both God and money, because a service to money only leads to an insane attempt to accumulate more in a vain attempt to redeem the value in ourselves that only an infinite God is capable of redeeming.

If it's not capital it's not capitalism

2008-11-10T18:35:00.000-08:00

From the books and videos and blogs I've been consuming lately on economics, the Constitution, capitalism, etc I've come to a pretty simple understanding. Basically it's this: If your economy is based on fiat currency, then you are not in a capitalist system. Capitalism is just that, a system based on capital, if your money is based on nothing but the government's demand that it be accepted as money (as is ours) then it's not capitalism. When you have a central organization that has the arbitrary power to control the money supply for the purposes of funding their own imperialistic aspirations, placating the restless demands of their working masses, and manipulating the day to day lives of the people who depend on the money they create then what you have is tyranny.

Tyranny? you ask, isn't that a bit harsh, anyway the people in charge of creating all this currency would want to do it responsibly in order to maintain it's perceived value, right? I mean if they printed too much too fast then prices would increase and people would quickly begin not to value the currency. If people did not value the currency then they would find something else to trade with and the central power in charge of creating the currency would lose it's ability to manipulate the people. You're right, but you also must realize that tyrants understand economics as well as anyone.

This is basic economics: fiat money chases value, since it has no value of it's own, it rapidly flows to those things that do have value. This happens because people spend the money, which has no intrinsic value, on the things that they perceive to have real intrinsic value. An excess supply of money always results in the eventual increase in price as the devalued money is traded for less of the things of real intrinsic value. This is a problem for the tyrant, because it impedes the rate at which the currency can be inflated in order fund his tyrannical activities. The financial yoke of the tyrant has always been in the management of the currency, inflating it enough to perpetuate his power, but not so much that it devalues quickly and thereby losing his grasp on the people.

But what if you could control where that money flowed? So that the creation of the new money would not be evident to the masses in the form of price increases of day to day things (like bread, fuel, cable television, etc) because the money never or rarely flowed to those kinds of things. Instead what if you created a "bubble" to inflate the money into, and then controlled the rate at which that new money left the bubble? You could make your friends rich by buying stock in their companies, you could finance wars, finance political campaigns, you could have enough capital to facilitate the merger of gigantic segments of the economy and further consolidate power so that you could create more bubbles in which to place more inflated money and better control the rate at which the currency was released from those bubbles into the economy at large.

An example of this is the derivatives market. Derivatives are basically financial products that are "derived" from the existence of something real (for instance an insurance policy on a mortgage on a house, or an insurance policy on an insurance policy on an insurance policy on a mortgage on a house). The fiat money flows to these products basically because it is fooled into believing that these products have value. But it's a trap, a bubble to hold the new money in so that the creation of it only affects prices in certain parts of the market. Currency still has to be created in order for these products to be purchased. However, since the money stays in the derivative "bubble" and only slowly is released into the economy in the form of big time CEO bonuses Joe the plumber doesn't realize that his currency is being inflated at an alarming rate because the price of plumbing parts is only slowly increasing. So the people managing the fake money and trick products are actually benefiting from the inflation of the currency and the resultant price increases by skillfully keeping the new money from flowing to any of the real things of life, like electricity, twinkies, and orange juice, while at the same time allowing the money to flow to things like stocks and CEO salaries.

How much of this goes on? ALOT. Some estimate that the size of the derivatives market is over 1 quadrillion dollars (that's a trillion thousand, or a billion million, or a million billion, or a thousand trillion, or $1,000,000,000,000,000). And there are other bubbles. For instance someone may trap some money in a derivatives bubble, and then release some of that money to purchase stock in a company, which would in turn increase the price of that company's stock, if you just used this money to buy stocks then you could basically use the whole stock market as a type of bubble without having to worry to much about that money effecting the price of every day things.

So the question is obvious. What if the bubble bursts? What if all the new money comes rushing out and flows to the real things of life? All that has to happen is for for perceived value of the trick product that the fiat money is chasing to vanish, when this happens the money will seek new value. What if the derivatives bubble burst and 1 quadrillion dollars flowed out and say it all tried to go to a safe place like gold.

If there's just over 5.05 billion ounces of gold in the world and it's trading today at $745 per ounce, then all the gold on earth is worth about 3.76 trillion dollars. If 1 quadrillion new dollars went chasing that gold, then it would increase the price of the gold to about $198,500 per ounce!

You can imagine what it would do to bread, coffee, electricity, and bacon.

Anyway, that's all fun to think about, but the important thing to remember is that this is NOT capitalism, because at the heart of all of this is a politically motivated tyrannical organization called the Federal Reserve that is arbitrarily creating our counterfeit currency. They, not the market, are in direct control of the value of things. They manage the bubbles and direct the money where they wish to accomplish the agenda's they have set forth in order to continue their stay in power.

Don't let people fool you with arguments that this current economic crisis is the failure of capitalism, it isn't. Capitalism always wins because it deals in reality and not in abstracted trick products and fiat currency.

How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. Your silver has become dross, your best wine mixed with water. Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow's cause does not come to them. -Isaiah 1:21-23

Jack-o-lantern

2008-10-28T10:37:00.001-07:00

Tried carving my halloween pumkin different this year, it was pretty fun:

Halloween is fun, we always have fun making costumes and carving jack-o-lanterns. For some reason I really like pumkins. I have a dream to one day live on enough land that I can have a pumpkin patch and then sell the pumkins each year around Halloween at a roadside stand. I think that sounds fun.

Vote Third Party!

2008-10-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. "
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802) 3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)

That's a good quote, I don't know if anyone else noticed the bait and switch pulled on us. First the $700 billion "bailout", that apparently wasn't even needed since all the world banks got together and basically created a new global central banking infrastructure, so what to do with the $700 billion? Oh don't worry they had all that figured out up front, instead of using that money to buy the infamous "illiquid" mortgage assets, they'll just use that money instead to have the government take major ownership positions in the HEALTHY banks.

Well enjoy it, you are watching the nationalization of our economy a coup of our government. Don't worry, if it bothers you, just change the channel.

Vote third party, it doesn't matter which one, just pick one.

Where we're headed:

2008-10-06T08:27:00.001-07:00

I'm not quite as alarmist as this guy:

We face extreme danger. Unless there is immediate intervention on every front by all the major powers acting in concert, we risk a disintegration of global finance within days. Nobody will be spared, unless they own gold bars.
-Ambrose Evans-Prichard

...but he's probably smarter than me...

Here's a little powerpoint I made that tries to explain a few things. I might expand on it a bit later.

I was pretty shocked when I ran the linear regression from the peak of the 1987 boom and that simple math formula almost exactly predicted the bust that would follow it (it's about midway through the video). One would assume then that the crash we are witnessing today would only fall to about 9500 based on the linear regression, however that doesn't really take into account any other increases in prices that may occur as all this money leaves the stock market in an effort to find a safer place to live.

I guess the main thing I've come to realize lately is that the rise in stock prices over the past 20 or 30 years is primarily a result of the Federal Government inflating the currency. The reason we haven't necessarily seen such dramatic price increases as a result of the inflation in other parts of our lives is because the stock market was rapidly growing and able to create a demand for money that kept up with the inflation of it. But what we are getting ready to witness is a giant devaluation of the stock market. All that money will want to go somewhere, once that money leaves the "bubble" of the stock market and starts to enter into other parts of the economy we will begin to see prices rise, probably starting with gold.

If you want to read a good book on this subject read "Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?" by Richard Maybury, it will bring you up to speed pretty rapidly.

How to get your money back.

2008-10-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

So if this bailout cost $700 billion, and in 2006 there was an estimated 136 million federal tax returned filed, less 43.4 million with no tax liability (or get a refund). For the remaining 92.6 million returns each taxpayer would have put in $7,559.40 for the financial bailout. If you just divide it by the total number of all Americans (301 million) it comes to $2,325.58 per person.

How do we get that money back?

Here's what I say, with all the new credit that's been made available by the new bill, lets take out some credit cards and purchase $7,559.40 in gold coins with them.

And that's it...pretty easy huh?

Get in on the action now, because as people start buying the gold coins the price will go up. This is how inflation works. Generally the banks get to take advantage of the new money before it inflates, but now is your chance!

If your thinking "Gee, I probably can't afford to make payments on $7,559.40". Well that's ok, do your best, if you start running out of money because bread cost $15.00 a loaf for some reason don't worry about the credit card company, the government will bail them out. They really can't afford for the credit card companies to fail. It really is a win/win for everyone. Especially considering that when the government has to step in to bail out the credit card company you didn't pay (again) that will cause even more inflation and will in turn make your gold coins even more valuable!

Here's a link to get you started:

"The only Platinum card that pays in GOLD!"

Bush's Ransom Demands

2008-09-30T10:51:00.001-07:00

After the bailout failed the President gave a speech that frankly gave me the first impression that it was some kind of ransom demand. As if we're being held hostage and the kidnappers are demanding $700 billion in ransom.

"I assure our citizens and citizens around the world that this is not the end of the legislative process...it matters little what path a bill takes to become law, what matters is that we get a law."

Gee, I've always really kinda thought that it DOES matter what path a bill takes to become law, for instance, if the bill FAILS then it DOESN'T become law...seriously, is this some kind of a joke?

"I recognize this is a difficult vote for members of congress."

Um, maybe because the people they represent are wildly against it...could it be that? maybe?

"The consequences will grow worse each day if we do not act, ...it will have a direct impact on the retirement accounts pension funds and personal savings of millions of our citizens, and if our nation continues on this course the economic damage will be painful and lasting."

Are you threatening me? I'm sorry but it's the policy of the United States of America not to negotiate with terrorists...

"Our economy is depending on decisive action from the government ... we face the choice between action and economic hardship for millions of Americans."

I choose option b, economic hardship I can handle, but "decisive action from the government" frankly sounds kind of scary.

Where did all the money come from?

2008-09-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not an expert in the stock market, or in economics or anything like that, but this graph brings up a few questions.

The main question is regarding the large increase in value starting about 1982. The early part of this graph shows an almost flat line. It looks as if you were to have put money into the market in 1971 and pulled it out in 1981 you would have gained very little, in fact the DOW was priced at $810.67 in November of 1971 and ten years later it was $852.45, and increase of just 4.9% in 10 years. Compare that to the next 10 years and we see an increase of 257% (1991 the DOW was at $3045.62) and then another ten years we get an increase of another 206% (Nov 2001 DOW was at $9323.54). So from 1971 to 1991 there was over a 1000% increase in the value of the DOW. Where did all the money come from? How did people make money on the stock market prior to 1982?

Here's my theory. First the early part of the graph is misleading because in the past people invested in a company in order to receive a dividend. The price of the stock was not the most important aspect of the company you were investing in. You would buy stock in a company, if the company made a profit it would pay that profit out to its shareholders in the form of a dividend. Actual cash money. Then I suppose people would take that dividend and put it in their accounts at their local banks and those banks would in turn use that money to lend out and promote business in their communities. However, in recent history we have moved to a model that speculates on massive stock trading and attempts to gain value by being less interested in the companies profitability and more interested in how many of the companies shares were trading and at what price . Dividends are less common today than they were in the past as most people are more concerned with the price of a given share, than on the dividend the share pays. In other words the market became much more speculative.

I suppose part of this came upon with the onset of computers and the ability to rapidly place buys and sells onto the market and the ability to update the price of a stock in real or near real time. Whatever the reason, the difference is profound. The graph above clearly shows a shift in the way we relate to the market where share price became the more predominate factor. But the question still remains: Where did all the new money come from?

Initially anyway, the new money came directly from people's savings accounts and from the profits of businesses. It happened like this: "In 1978, Congress amended the Internal Revenue Code, later called section 401(k), whereby employees are not taxed on income they choose to receive as deferred compensation rather than direct compensation." The law went into effect in 1980, and according to the above linked reference, by 1984 over 17,000 companies were offering 401k's. So basically congress set up a system to discourage people from holding their savings in the form of cash or other investments and to encourage them to put those investments into the stock market. Now instead of saving their earnings locally people were placing their savings in 401K's which were heavily invested in stocks traded on Wall Street. This was provided further incentive because employers would match the contributions of the employees, providing even more money for Wall Street.

In my opinion it's basically why we only have Wall Street shops like McDonald's, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart in our neighborhoods, and the shops that used to be owned by our neighbors have closed down. Access to capital is vital for a business to thrive and lending regulations make it much more difficult for a small business to negotiate terms with a banker that can help him to achieve success. The small businessman can all but forget raising capital investment in his own town, not only has most of the incentive for his neighbors to financially participate in his business been removed by tax law favoring investment in Wall-Street stocks, but he would also probably be thrown in jail for some kind of securities fraud for even trying.

It's funny how much difference a law can make. With the 401k law the government basically took away our Main Streets and replaced them with the all to familiar corporate counterfeits we have become so used to.

Maybe this financial meltdown will help us get back to an older and more honest way of doing business. But we would have to do this by working together as small, self sustaining communities of people who can and are willing to defend themselves.

Hallelujah! our financial saviour has arrived!

2008-09-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

Just to show how much of a socialist scam our entire monetary system is, stocks SOARED today on NEWS that the all powerful Federal Government was going to step in and fix the banks.

Here's what Secretary Paulson said:

"What we are working on now is an approach to deal with the systemic risk and the stresses in our capital markets," Paulson said. "As we've said for some time, the root cause of the stress in the capital markets is the real estate correction. So again we're coming together to work for an expeditious solution which is aimed right at the heart of this problem." And, that is bad debts— or "illiquid assets" — on financial institutions' balance sheets, he said.

Translation: "A bunch of our banks made under collateralized loans to people who could not and will never be able to pay them back and now they don't want to carry those loans anymore, because...well they're worthless. For some reason, now they can't sell those loans to anyone and because of this they've lost a bunch of money. So obviously the Government should step in and help."

And our government responded:

"It will be the power — it may not be a new entity — it will be the power [for the government to be able to] to buy up illiquid assets," Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, said.

Frank said there was "virtually unanimous agreement" among lawmakers in attendance that such legislation was needed.

Translation: "We'll just use taxpayer money to purchase these worthless notes. We'd hate to see our biggest campaign contributors go out of business for something as silly as blind, militantly ignorant greed. So instead we'll make a law that allows the government to spend money on NOTHING!!!!!"

I think Glenn Beck also has a good explanation of it, check it out.

So I wonder how this will work?

Since the government is purchasing these assets, I would assume that the government would be trying to collect on them as well. With the new bankruptcy laws the stupid people who took out these bad loans don't have many options anyway, and now they are going to have to negotiate these debts with the Federal Government instead of with the business that loaned them the money. That sounds like fun, and it sounds fair too. I mean we had to do this to save the economy, we can just let it fail? Can we? I mean we can't just let stupid people be punished by reality for doing stupid shit? Can we? Our big brother has to protect us, we can't handle this on our own. Thank goodness for Congress and the Federal Reserve.

The more I think about this, the more it just seems like a tax on the people in an effort to fund big business. I mean the government purchases all these bad debts using tax payer money, and then goes after those same taxpayers to collect on the debts.

This is terrible. It's a condemnation on us as a population that we are allowing this to happen with out a revolt...our country is in very sad shape.

[UPDATE] Sept 19, 2008: WORLD Markets Soar!

More fed funny money

2008-09-18T05:18:00.001-07:00

Today the fed announced that they would be adding $180,000,000,000 to the money supply, two days ago they added $70,000,000,000 and don't forget they "loaned" AIG $85,000,000,000.

That right there is $335,000,000,000, or about 2.5% of our nations GDP in the last week! No wonder Gold and Silver prices are soaring! I guess people just prefer owning real money!

More fun fed figures...

2008-09-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

So the Fed is now going to bail out AIG by "loaning" them 85 billion dollars. Don't worry though, its all good because the Fed is watching out for our tax dollars by taking about an 80% equity position in AIG as collateral:

The interests of taxpayers are protected by key terms of the loan. The loan is collateralized by all the assets of AIG, and of its primary non-regulated subsidiaries. -The Federal Reserve

Doesn't that make you feel better? Never mind the fact that as of close of business today AIG's market cap was only $10 billion.

I wish I could get a loan like that:

Hey Mr Banker, I want to buy this $100,000 house, can I have loan for $850,000? No? Ok how 'bout if I give you an 80% equity position in the house? No? How about an 80% equity position in my neighbors house? Sweet!

Another thing I like about this is that the Fed "took" an 80% (actually 79.9%) ownership stake in the company.

The US government will receive a 79.9 percent equity interest in AIG and has the right to veto the payment of dividends to common and preferred shareholders.
- Federal Reserve

..what about the people that already owned AIG, you know those pesky shareholders? Did the fed "take" that from them, or did they buy it? If they did buy it, what price did they pay?

Did AIG own 80% of it's own shares?

85 billion dollars divided by 80% of 2.69 billion shares comes to $39.50 per share.

So basically AIG can buy the share from their shareholder at $3.75, or even better, NOT buy it and NOT pay dividends on it and then they can use that share as collateral on a loan (not sell it mind you) and receive $39.50. I wish I could collateralize other peoples property for a loan, that would be great, I could get all kinds of money and not have to worry about losing any of my stuff when I didn't pay it back...sounds like a sweet deal for AIG!

Ask for a raise!

2008-09-14T16:31:00.001-07:00

If the mortgage bailout is going to cost us $800 billion dollars then you must ask for at least a 5.6% raise this year or you'll be taking a pay cut.

Here's how I figure it:

Total US GDP in 2007: $13,543,000,000,000
Total US Population in 2007: 301,139,947
GDP per Capita (GDP/Population): $44,972.44

Cost of Mortgage Bailout: $800,000,000,000

The cost of the mortgage bailout is equivalent to the government printing $800 billion in new dollars. This is the magic and wonder of the Federal Reserve System, it can create new money whenever it wants since our money isn't based on anything real like gold or silver.

Now if you add the cost of the mortgage bailout to the GDP and then divide that number by the population you get $47,629.02. This means that after the mortgage bailout it takes $47,629.02 to purchase what $44,972.44 would purchase before the mortgage bailout. Your dollar is worth about 5.6% less because of the mortgage bailout.

So if you don't get at a minimum a 5.6% raise this year then you are basically taking the equivalent pay cut thanks directly to the mortgage bailout.

So to figure out how much of a raise you need, just take your current salary and divide it by .944, that's how much you'll need to make next year in order to afford living in a country who's government creates $800,000,000,000 in new currency in order to facilitate a mortgage bailout. And this doesn't even take into consideration the fact that our government also engages in massive welfare programs, expensive foreign entanglements, and is generally wasteful and bloated.

So don't go blaming the Saudis, oil companies, or anything else until you first look at the real reason why prices are so high. The real reason is because you vote for people who promise to buy you stuff without raising taxes, the only way they can do this is by printing more money and that has the effect I described above, I think it's called inflation.

Tell your boss...

Leveraging selfishness and looking at what is missing from Christian Hedonism.

2008-09-08T18:48:00.000-07:00

EDITORS NOTE: When I say "we" I generally mean "I", it just makes it easier when I can lump you into it with me...and BTW this is a big ramble towards the end, I'm still processing how to put many of these thoughts and ideas into words, but that's the fun part isn't it?

Belief in God AND service to others that one views as equal to or greater than self is vital for communities to prosper. This is true because people are completely self serving. There are no completely self-less acts. Even a man who "lays down his life for another" is doing so out of a sense of meaning either derived from belief in a higher being that rewards or is pleased by such activity, and/or a belief that serving others or service to the group to which a person belongs is a more meaningful expression of life that is the simple perpetuation one's own existence. I'll go out on a limb here and say that even Christ in that "while we were still sinners Christ died for us", and even while he was acting not out of his own will but that of God's, was ultimately seeking that which would bring himself the most glory (and thereby enabling for us the most satisfaction in the participation in that glory). Read John 17 and you'll see what I mean. Overall this service to self is nothing new, it's a complete rip off of John Piper who by his own admission is ripping off the Westminster Catechism, which was ripping off other stuff all the way back to what the Bible itself teaches on the subject. Piper calls it "Christian Hedonism" which is great, but I think that it only addresses half the issue.

Christian Hedonism accomplishes the goal of a). fulfilling our purpose to bringing God glory and b). doing so while still ultimately satisfying the self in the only way the self was ultimately meant to be satisfied. So in summing up the Law, Christian Hedonism perfectly addresses "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength", however it does not (directly anyway) address the second commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself". I think this is important because we can basically see the results of this omission from the rifts that exist in the church based on basically minor theological or doctrinal issues, and in the churches irrelevance and impotence in addressing the needs of our communities.

The problem is, that in service of our selfish desires to be satisfied by God we tend to get too wrapped up in the study of Theology. This is good and bad. It's good because much of the time it helps us to understand and relate to God better and thereby increasing our satisfaction in Him. It's bad because it tends to cause us to forget about the rest of the world. The study of Theology is very good because it is what enables us to be "of God" and not "of the world", however we must still be "in the world". Theology helps us to love God, but we still have to love our neighbors. It easy when we are with our fellow believers sitting around talking about Theology and exploring the wonders of God together, however what about non believers? How about people who don't like the church, or don't believe the Bible, or believe it differently than we do? Is there room to love others when we've figured out how to derive all our meaning from God?

So should we just grit our teeth and obediently start loving our neighbors?

Can you truly love someone out of obedience alone?
Is it really loving your neighbor when your acts of service are born out of a love for God and not out of a love for the person?
Is God pleased when we serve a person we despise in order only to be obedient?

It's easier to obediently reach out to "the least of these", especially when I see them as lower than myself. This is proof for me that my motivations in helping people have often been misplaced. I don't love the people I'm serving...I love God and I love to prove it to Him by lording my own greatness over all of the "least of these" in my obedient acts of self indulgence. I'm pretty sure it pisses God off. And it probably doesn't make me a very good neighbor either.

I keep mentioning "the least of these". It comes from the parable of the sheep and the goats. The most striking thing to me about this parable is that the sheep didn't know when it was that they were serving Him, they asked him "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?". They weren't really aware of their own good deeds, they just did them. I'm acutely aware and proud of my own good deeds...there is definitely a work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer that enables this kind of behavior. I pray that my good deeds would become less and less evident to me as they become more and more a natural expression of my true self in Christ.

Christ said that we have to make ourselves last to be first, that in order to be the greatest we have to be the least. I think I get it. I'm still not abandoning my premise that there are no self-less acts. If I can see everyone else as greater than myself, then I can derive great satisfaction by serving them...very selfish. Maybe others would see me as greater than themselves, and derive great satisfaction by serving me...still very selfish, but I could see how this could make for a great community...maybe Jesus was on to something there...

still rolling this around, more later...

Daxological solution for defeating tyrants and terrorists...

2008-09-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

I read a book called "The Different Drum", by M. Scott Peck and Ron Paul's book "The Revolution" and it got me to thinking, I came to the conclusion that the best defense against tyrants and terrorism is self sustaining communities of people that can defend themselves. It's really pretty simple,

Here are some definitions:

self sustaining: adequate locally available food, water, and energy needs.
communities of people: people who live close to each other geographically and who relate to each other in terms of meaning derived from their life together.
that can defend themselves: protect each other and their food, water and energy supplies from theft or other raiding.

Terrorism would be more difficult under this setup because it's a community, and in a community people know each other, even the bad things about each other, so locally born terrorists will probably be found out or tattled on, and foreign terrorist will just stick out.

Tyrants will have a hard time, especially if these communities can replicate themselves by evangelizing techniques and solutions that worked for them to other communities and then creating some limited interdependence on other communities for supplies and defense via simple and mutually beneficial trade. The only possible effective attack would be a massive air attack by a technologically superior air force...

A key point is that the community must have an identity of its own that the members of the community all buy into. The people of the community have to see it as a value to themselves, and they have to see the community as bigger than themselves. If a person does not accept the premise of the community then in service of their own self interests, the interests of the community will not be considered. They will likely "sell out" to any outside influence that offers an enticement that provides a momentary gratification greater than the perceived value of membership in the community.

The Acts 2 Church seems like a good model to promote and perpetuate this kind of community. It provides for the members needs, they protect each other, and the meaning of the community is based on a relationship with God who provides an infinite source of meaning greater than self, and on a relationship with the others in the community where the other members of the community are viewed as equal to or more important than the self (and in case you're wondering those seen as more important than self would include people who are not Christians as well as those who are, per the teaching of the Good Samaritan).

So, it also seems to me that this kind of community could also accommodate people of any religious persuasion even mixed religious persuasions, (ie Muslims and Christians, Calvinist and Armenians) without the two having to abandon their deeply held convictions.

Heck I could even see a community where Muslims, Christians, and whateverians (shoot, probably even homosexuals!) were able to live together, provide for each other, protect each other, and even argue with each other about who's right and who's wrong and who's a sinner and who's not without ever having to resort to violence against each other. In fact violence against each other would seem somewhat preposterous as it would be a threat to the health of the community.

If an aggressor were to attack the community, the community would respond in order to protect the lives of it's own people, and to protect it's life sustaining resources. It may choose to totally annihilate it's aggressing enemy in order to protect itself from future attacks, however I couldn't see it attempting to use force to perpetuate itself into other geographic areas. If membership in the community does not come from physical need AND individual intellectual will, then the community will be weak, so empire building would actually work against the strength of the community.

Imagine a whole nation built out of communities like this, independent yet interdependent communities of people that provide for and protect themselves. I hope to put some of this to practice in my own neighborhood, as well as in Liberia. I wonder why nobody has ever thought of this before?

Update on Liberia

2008-09-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

Hello friends and family,

I wanted to give everyone an update about what is going in with DELTA Force, Fresh Start Fellowship, and West African Childrens Support Network (WACSN) in Monrovia, Liberia.

As many of you know a group of us went to Monrovia, Liberia, Africa in the beginning of August of this year. While we were there we did a variety of things including a VBS, teen conference, and training. Personally I had the privilege to preach the Gospel to the teenagers and also helped to build a computer network and trained some of the guys there how to administer it, I also made some great friends in the process (click here for some pictures). Most importantly however, we put on a pastors conference where we had over 150 pastors from all over Monrovia attend. Kris and Bryan spent a great deal of time with the pastors teaching them and encouraging them to get out and to love, minister to, and serve their flock, and also to work together to rebuild their communities, putting the Cross of Christ ahead of any other differences they may have in order to repair their broken land.

Well since we've returned home much has happened. Our group of 150 pastors has organized themselves into a network of 1000 pastors all hungry to go OUT and into their communities and to reach them in Love for Christ. We are now planning to hold a conference at the soccer stadium in Monrovia in December, it seats 45,000 people (which means 65,000 will attend), and it may be several days of conference, so we're talking over 100,000 people reached. This in combination with a continuation of our effort to train and encourage the pastors will lead to a great move of God. Our intent is not to go and simply provide a "mountain top" experience at the soccer stadium, but to use it as a catalyst to get people connected to the pastors and churches in their communities. However it is coming upon us quickly and we have to move fast.

We are literally scrambling right now to get a high speed Internet connection (Via satellite) installed at the WACSN compound in Liberia, so we can have much better communication capabilities with the pastors in Monrovia, and so also we can provide to them the resources on the Internet that we all take for granted each day (they can't just go to the local bookstore or library and pick up John Piper's latest book, many of them could barely if even afford a Bible). We hope to have this completed within the next month. This connection will greatly help our ability to plan this conference and to keep the vision strong among the pastors there in Liberia, however we also have a plan to the future to turn this Internet project into a sustainable Liberian owned business that will provide connectivity to the churches and to the people, and also employ several Liberians with good paying jobs.

Through DELTA Force we are working on several opportunities to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a plan to also develop sustainable business and community projects. To date we have placed a new van at the WACSN compound that is used to securely transport guests around the city, we have placed a new generator at the compound so that we can have reliable electricity, we have shipped a 40 foot shipping container full of food and other supplies, and are planning another container now with medical equipment and supplies to equip WACSN's new clinic. Plans on the radar are to provide for a fishing boat, water filtration, solar and wind energy, and many other exciting projects.

God is blessing our activities, for instance, after we purchased the Van, the office of the President of Liberia contacted WACSN and is now renting the van and providing a nice source of revenue. Our purchase of the Van gave us some good relationships within the Lebanese business community in Monrovia, this greatly helped in the purchase of the generator.

DELTA Force Missions is the path through which we provide our support to WACSN in Liberia. To date Fresh Start Fellowship (a small church in Fairview, OK), has provided a great deal of the giving needed to get these projects where they are today, however they are now needing to reach out and gain the support others who have a similar vision to help the least of these in our world.

Here is what you can do to help:

Donate funds to DELTA Force, 100% of the money will go to support the activities in Monrovia. Many things in Liberia are expensive, Internet for example costs MUCH more than it does here, for you techies, a 128/128k dedicated connection runs $1400.00 a month. This kind of stuff is vital to build a foundation for sustainability, and the world does not want us to succeed, the world wants to continue to oppress the Liberian people, this is truly a battle.
Contact us to have us come talk to your church or organization about our vision for Liberia. Let us cast a vision to your friends and family to truly help the least of these as Jesus commands us to. I know that Kris, Bryan and myself will readily make ourselves available to come talk to your group.
Raise money to help pay for people's travel to Liberia, or volunteer and raise money to go yourself (but be ready to work!)
PRAY: Pray that our vision will be clearly from God. Pray that God will move in the hearts of the people and that pastors in Liberia, pray that personalities and minor theological issues won't impede the forward progress of the Gospel, pray that communities will be built up strong in Christ. Specifially right now we need prayer that our shipping container full of food will be released from customs without us having to pay ridiculous import taxes etc. Also that the internet service will be installed quickly and with no show stopping technical challenges (but with a few technical challenges just to keep it fun for me!)
Adopt a child through WACSN, You can literally save a life, and change your own life. Liberia has been destroyed by years of war, many families cannot afford to feed or care for their own children, when you adopt from Liberia, many times you adopt not only a child, many times you adopt a family, and as is the case with many of my friends who have adopted, they adopted a whole nation. Get in contact with me an I can forward you to many families who's homes have been blessed by adopting from Liberia.

If you are interested in this vision, even if you have the least bit of interest, please contact me. Heck, even if you HATE the vision and think it's a stupid idea, contact me and at least give me a chance to talk you into it. We are working hard now to build a network of individuals interested in supporting and serving Liberia. PLEASE forward this email along to anyone you might think is interested in helping. We are on the precipice of a powerful move of God in Liberia that will impact thier nation in a very good way, I want to have a front row seat to that.

Some stats on Liberia

2008-08-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

These stats come from the UN statistics website. and then I extrapolated some more information from it.

Average annual income per capita:

in Liberia: $192.00
in the US: $43,562 (we make on average 226x more money than the average Liberian), Most of us make more per day than the average Liberian makes per year.

There are 1,971,300 men and 1,970,900 women in Liberia
There are 152,004,400 men and 156,793,900 women in the US

147,834 people over age 60 in Liberia
62,501,783 people over age 60 in the US

Percentage of population below the age of 15 years:
Liberia: 47.2% (1,861,190 people)
US: 19.6% (60,524,467 people)

Percentage of men over 60 years of age:
Liberia: 3.4% (67,024 people)
US: 17.6% (26,752,774 people)

Percentage of women over 60 years of age:
Liberia: 4.1% (80,810 people)
US: 22.8% (35,749,009 people)

Number of people under 15 for each person over 60:
Liberia: 12.5
US: 0.98

Liberia is a nation of children with no older generation to teach them. What heritage is being passed to the next generation Liberia? The older generation is already pretty much dead. The only heritage that can be passed is whatever remnant of teaching the young people received before their fathers and mothers died, whatever meaning they can come up with amongst themselves, and then (and probably mainly) whatever influence a foreign culture has on them.

Another interesting fact is that Liberia has one of the fastest growing Muslim populations on earth.

In contrast to this, America is on the brink of becoming a dying culture, with less people under 15 than we have over 60.

Signing up on technorati...

2008-07-28T14:13:00.001-07:00

Technorati Profile

AHHHH...leadership and vision...

2008-07-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

It's refreshing...sigh...

The problem with invisibility.

2008-06-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure that if they could make a person invisible like they did in stories like "The Invisible Man" and "Hollow Man" that person would not be able to see.

If your body's cellular structure were modified so that light passed right through it I think that would make your eye's stop working because they wouldn't be able to detect the light that hit them in order to turn it into signals that your brain could turn into sight. The light would just pass right through your eyes. Also the light would not be properly focused because the light wouldn't be shaped by the lenses of your eye.

They would have to make some kind of forumula that left your eye's visible, which would be really creepy looking. just some eyeballs floating around with no body.

Don't have a cow man...

2008-06-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

The other day my family and I watched the movie "The Nativity Story" , it was great, I thought it was very well done. I didn't know how my kids would react to the scenes where the babies in the movie (John the Baptist, and Jesus) were being born, well I found out the next day.

We were going for a walk and on our way back to the house Zoe was skating really fast on her Heelys, she stopped for a minute and was really out of breath.

Xander turns to her and hears her gasping for breath and says "Man Zoe, you sound like Mary when she was having Jesus!"

WOW! I thought that was hilarious, "You don't only sound out of breath you sound like your giving birth to God"...only a 5 year old could come up with that one!

GOOD NEWS!!! : All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God!!!

2008-06-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

So I came across some good news in the Bible that I hadn't seen before. That news is this in a nutshell: "All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God." (Romans 3:23). There are a bunch of other versus with this same theme, basically the idea of Total Depravity and Orginal Sin. I always thought and was taught that this was the "Bad News" (especially when someone regurgitated the Bad News/Good News evangalism technique "I've got some bad news, you suck and your gonna burn in hell, the good news is that if you say these magic words about Jesus it will all be ok"). Here's a very uncomfortable video to demonstrate, not the good news bad news technique but just as bad, (I think Mitt Romney stars as the hero in the video, you'll have to watch to see what I mean).

The thing is that the bad news is not the bad news at all, it really is really really good news that we are totally depraved and that all of us have fallen short of the Glory of God, in fact it may be the best news.

If I'm correct in latching onto the idea that the whole purpose of my being is for me to seek and obtain a right relationship with God and that God Himself is all that can satisfy the longings of my soul, and if there is no way on my own I can come into a right relationship with God because of my sin, then that is just awesome! It's awesome because it means that God must be incredibly good and worth obtaining, so good that not even Christ "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" (Phillipians 2:6).

I was always shown Romans 3:23 to explain to me how I was destined for Hell and this is why I needed Christ to save me. True enough, but it does little to motivate me to love God. I'm just looking to save my own skin. But if I take the focus of this idea off of me and put it onto God, I can see something completely different. That God desires for me to have the very thing that will bring total, abundant, and even overflowing satisfaction to my entire being (a relationship with Him) and the even better news is that this gift of God is so good that there is no way I can be good enough to deserve it. I could work for the rest of eternity and not be able to earn or deserve it by any standard human or divine. Even if I lived a PERFECT life for all of eternity I still could not deserve a relationship with God that could satisfy me and Glorify Him simply because I had a beginning and He didn't (maybe another post on this idea later, maybe not). This relationship that God is offering must be AMAZING!

If I DID earn or deserve this relationship with God then the magnificance of being with God would have to be limited by my mortal ability to achieve the deserving of it and therefore God's goodness would be limited by my goodness and then God would cease to be God. In other words what I recieved could only be as good as me. And I am mortal, I had a beginning and I will die. This really limits the scope of whatever goodness I can provide for myself. So this new understanding of Orginal Sin and Total Depravity also brings about for me a new understanding of Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Through Christ I can recieve God who is so good that there is no way for me to deserve Him. And if I was not totally depraved then none of this would be possible!

Thank you Lord that mankind fell from grace through Adam, so that you could give us an inheritance through Christ that is infinately more than we could ever deserve on our own.

Getting ready for Christmas

2008-06-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

I was having a discussion with some friends about how we should celebrate Christmas this year, and maybe how we should start planning now to make it a Christmas with at least a partial message of non-consumerism, or at least bridaled consumerism. There was some discussion about how we need change hearts and minds and that maybe focusing on non-consumerism isn't really the right angle. I agree with this idea except to say that the only real way to change a heart and mind is to have that change to be manifested in behaviour. I believe that all of our good intentions at Christmas are generally cancelled out by our propensity toward hyper-consumerism. Not to mention that in many cases the simple living out our cultural norms (ie shopping at wal-mart, using lots of energy, eating lots of food) is actually contributing to the oppression of people all over the world, and although a "boycott" is not really what I think is necessary or effective, a change in behaviour would at least go along way to open the hearts of our church to the fact that our actions have a rippling if not tidal wave effect on people all the way across the world.

I definately agree that the non-consumerism message should not be the only message of the Christmas season, but never-the-less think about what would happen if we did just that. If people actually tried to live out a non-consumeristic Christmas, that would leave them with a giant void (where all the stuff used to be). I think that would be great, because even if nobody mentioned it, since it IS Christmas, Jesus would get some attention. It's not like Jesus is really the subject of the season now anyway, refocusing to to a message of non-consumerism could at least create the opportunity for Jesus to come up in a meaningful way.

Also, as one who has kids, I can attest that it is almost impossible to keep the focus of Christmas on Christ, family, and friends when there is so much time, money, and attention spent on stuff. (right around august we start getting hammered by our relatives to get our Christmas lists together, so basically the consumeristic stage is set very early)

Personally I am all for consumerism, but let's do it right. Here are some thoughts (I might cover some of these ideas in depth in future posts):

Take the time to find quality items that aren't made by slaves and pay more for them on purpose.
Since quality items cost more it may cut into your budget, that's ok, just buy less.
Don't cut out the middle man (he might be your neighbor), and if you cut him out he'll probably have to go to work at wal-mart.
Have a few awkward Christmas's with no or very few gifts, and let that time of awkward silence (when you'd usually be opening gifts) slowly be filled with conversation and the enjoyment of each other, it'll become normal and comfortable soon enough.
Tell someone you love them, and try to show it in a way that doesn't involve purchasing something from wal-mart.
Spend more money on food and eat it together.
Buy your food from a local farmer, have him tell you a story about it/himself/his family/his business, relate that story to your family.
Prepare the food with the people you are spending christmas with.
Buy gifts that aid in the preparation of the christmas meal.
It must be getting close to lunch because I am talking alot about food.

I'm pretty passionate about this for several reasons, one being that I am all for the resurrection of the small business owner in America and the small town and tight knit neighborhood in the cities. Two I don't like the new slavery, I think it's more cruel than even the slavery of the South in America, because at least those slaves were housed and fed and cared for to some extent because at least they were property (which was horribly wrong), but the slaves of today are less than property. They are simply an endless supply of hungry people, and if they can't care for themselves and thier families on $.13 an hour we'll just get another one who will try. And most importantly I think that one of our jobs as Christians is to redeem things for Christ. And the way we trade with each other is a very good thing to redeem for Him, it is really something that cuts right to the core of who we are.

That's my pocket full of change on this subject, there's probably some more in there somewhere, maybe i should check the seat cushions in my couch...

Speaking of incarnational living...

2008-06-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

There's a great Spurlock documentary out there call "What would Jesus Buy". It's about this group of performance artistist/activists. The lead guy is a character called the "reverend billy" who looks and talks like a stereotypical television evangelist, however his message is very different. They call themselve the "Church of Stop Shopping" and thier message is one against the rampant consumerism that is consuming our lives and our culture.

I don't know if these guys would call themselves "Christian" but you know what? I think they get it. When I whine and complain about not knowing what to do about living a life that honors Christ in this American culture these guys have a message that I think really gets me somewhere on this journey, the message?...stop shopping...hey that's a start, really it is.

Here's an interview with Morgan Spurlock at Imago Dei

Good intentions are keeping me from good works.

2008-05-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This post may not make a lot of sense, the ideas I'm working on here aren't as of yet fully developed.

That being said...I was thinking the other day about words like "incarnational" and "works" and general ideas about the evidence of salvation displayed through the way in which I live my life. Alot of this thought has been brought on by my new job. Although I am thankful that I have a "really good" job that pays well, I find it hard to cope with the fact that I must spend all this time at the office and much of that time is spend not doing a whole lot. Sure there are bursts of activity and sometimes its really busy with projects and problems and fun stuff like that. However sometimes there's really NOTHING to do, and yet I'm still kind of expected to waste my life away sitting at this desk. I know I know i should get creative and all that and put that time to better use. So we can get into the ethics of corporate life and my responsiblity as a christian and a father and a husband and how my corporate schedule pretty much sucks most of my time away, but that is for another post.

The thing is that I have this desire to 'do something' for Christ and for others, and integrating that desire into the monolithic nature of my work schedule is really a pretty daunting task. I keep coming to the conclusion that I'm serving two masters and one of them has got to go. Now you may ask why I don't do anything about this breach of integrity that has seeped it's way into my life, and I would answer that I do, and that what I do has created yet another little trap.

You see to cope with the fact that I feel somewhat paralyzed by demands of corporate life and the middle class american lifestyle I often resort to good intentions. What I mean is that I'll think good thoughts and have good conversations at church or at bible study. I'll talk about the starving people in china and all that, i'll watch the compassion international videos on TV and send them some money, and I'll even go and meet with a homeless man in my neighborhood and help him out in some small ways with food and money and whatnot. You might say, well hey, that sounds good, sounds like your doing some good things. And I might agree with you, but still something doesn't feel right about it. Something is a little off.

Now obviously all the talking at church and at bible studies is pretty blatantly shallow behaviour. It's just talk, and it's main purpose is to make me feel better about myself, and to help me to think that since i'm spending part of my free time considering the things of God then somehow that makes me a good person. Most of the time the main purpose is to make other people think I'm smart, so you can see that is pretty much just pure sin. But the actual activities, the giving the helping, that's real right? I mean I only have a little bit of time left at the end of the day, and my family would like to see me some, and well, by the time i've met my minimal expectations for the day its 10 or 11 at night and i'm pretty tired, and at that point I still have to get my entertainment fix (which is also a subject for another post). So if I can manage to scrape together and hour or two here or there to help out a homeless guy or maybe dig a little (a very little) deeper into my pocket book to send some money to Ghana or whatever then what else can be expected of me right? My intentions are good, my intentions are to serve Christ with all that I have. And by my very american standards I have about 2 hours a week to give to him.

I think I may be putting a little to much weight on my intentions. In fact I think I'm letting the intentions associated with my actions completely redefine and exaggerate the significance of my acitons. I even think that sometimes at church or bible study when I talk about the suffering in the world and come up with brilliant hypotheses about how to alleviate it, I somehow actually convince myself that I have done something good. It's like I have some kind of guilt-o-meter in me, but it doesn't work very good. You see it's supposed to go off whenever it has detected that I haven't done much good stuff lately, however I can fool it by doing some pretty menial stuff and having really good intentions (like helping out a homeless guy but not really having any kind of plan that would require me to really get involved in this guys life), or even better I can trick it by simply talking about doing good stuff.

All of this obviously is a result of a severe lack of integrity in my life. And by integrity I mean to use the meaning of integrated. Meaning that instead of having a compartmentalized life with the bulk of the time being completely meaningless and then that time is sparsely peppered with a few bits of very over glorified acts of "good works". And even though I'm using the word integrity with the idea of an integrated life, by not having my life in this way I am basically suffering from all the same symptoms that any man who lacks integrity in the more traditional sense.

What I want is a life that has meaning, and not only that but that all of the natural and God ordained parts of my life would build upon each other to enhance that overarching meaning. I mean from what I do for money, to how I spend time with my wife and children, to how I spend time with my friends, my free time, my spending, my reading, my entertainment, my acts of service...why can't it all be driving toward the sigular purpose that I know I was created for and that is the worship and glorification of Christ... I have to find out how to live my life (meaning how to spend my time) better. Maybe the corporate gig has got to go, I definatly have to change how I relate to it. Not to mention I just have to get some kind of vision for some kind of life that is different that anything I've seen. Hopefully I can do more than than to just talk about it and have good intentions...

Still here.

2008-03-03T08:06:00.001-08:00

I haven't posted in a while, been pretty busy. Generally my posts are a pretty spontaneous reaction to an "AH HA!" moment. I guess my brain is still percolating a new idea, and when it gets done I'll be sure to share it.

right now I'm reading Cryptonomicon , In Defense of Food, Ministries of Mercy, and Psalm...just in case your interested.

Total turn around

2008-01-02T07:17:00.000-08:00

Read this article . If this is how it all went down, then WOW...not only are my worries about Huckabee's integrity greatly eased, but I am very very impressed.

Basically the article says that Ed Rollins (Huckabees advisor) said that they had to go negative in order to control some of the damage being caused by the Romney campaigns attacks. Rollins knows what he is talking about, and knows how this game is played. Huckabee went along with it, made the spot, and then was praying about it the day the attack was going to begin and decided to pull the ad at 11:10am (they were going to release the ad at a press conference at noon).

They would have preferred to cancel the press conference and the whole thing at that point was done impromptu. Yes some mistakes were made, and yes probably some people were still trying to get a "swing in" amidst this whole thing. But the bottom line is that Huckabee made the call, and stopped the attack.

So it looks like we have a guy here who is really willing to take a personal hit in order to follow his convictions. Even against the advice of his advisors, even in the midst of adversity. That is truly unique in politics.

I'm back on the Huckabee express! ... for now anyway ... I must be bipolar or something...sheez...

Huckabummer

2007-12-31T18:45:00.000-08:00

Here's the article, apparently the Huckabee campaign created an attack ad against the Romney campaign and at the last minute decided to pull the ad in an attempt to keep the the campaign focused on the issues (so they're saying anyway).

Ok that sounds good, right? seeing your mistakes responding to them...the only problem is they had a press conference, where they told the reporters there what they were doing, and then they played the ad for the reporters...

There's no way to see this other than being cheap and childish and manipulative. I'm going to give Huckabee to the end of the week, but he may have just lost my support with this stunt.

All he had to do was stick to the message...he didn't even have to mean it, but he couldn't deviate from it, and now he has...

Looks like it's over for Huckabee. We'll see what happens. I think I might go on over to http://www.ronpaul2008.com/ and see what's going on there, I think they might still be on message....sigh...

[UPDATE]
There may be hope yet, here is an excerpt from another blog, quoting Mike talking to Wolf Blitzer. I like it...seems genuine...risky, honest, sincere...that is good...maybe it's just damage control, but he needs to do something...

Mike Huckabee’s comments to Wolf Blitzer a moment ago, about the ad he decided not to air.

“A lot of cynics are going to say this is all contrived and planned. I don’t care what they say.”

“If it costs me the caucus, it does.”

“I don’t want to run an ad where I feel like have to take a shower when I’m done.”

“We didn’t give out DVDs, which we were prepared to give out. We said ‘we’re just not gonna do it.’ …The video didn’t work, so it’s not usable anyway.

“If we’re going to wrap ourselves in the mantle of Ronald Reagan, let’s wrap ourselves in the tone of Ronald Reagan. Let’s remember his 11th Commandment, which said, ‘Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.’

Asked by Wolf Blitzer if he has a message to Mitt Romney: “He’s free to run his campaign any way he wishes. He can say anything he wants about his record, and.. he can say anything he wants about my record. We’re going to run a positive campaign.”

Smooth. I didn't see anything of the anger or wackiness in Huckabee that others described in his press conference appearance earlier today. And I think the "no negative ads" pledge will be catnip for exhausted Iowans. His rivals had better bring their A-game, because this guy isn't going to drop the ball as the clock winds down...

Here's some insight from Rick H:

Huck's stock is in his pragmatism. Unless he loses that, he will still attract voters. People are sick to freaking death of the bitter partisanship that has denominated American politics for so long. They want someone that can speak in a manner that people relate with and give answers that are at least defensible to the average person. I guarantee you that not every Huck supporter believes everything the same way he does. They support him because they LIKE him. If he continues to give well-thought-out responses, is honest (which he needs to be very careful about) and is positive in his vision for leading this country then he cannot fail.

I think he's right on, however I still think that integrity is key and that there is going to have to be some major damage control done here in order to fix this. Mike's gonna have to do some work to earn back my trust.

We interupt campaign coverage to bring you this garbage...

2007-12-06T10:17:00.001-08:00

The house of representatives just passed a ridiculously ignorant bill, HR 3791, that would fine free wifi internet providers up to $300,000.00 if a customer on their system browses porn or other illegal material. This is nothing more than a push by the telcos to basically "outlaw" free wifi because it is a threat to their ISP business. This could put anyone from a coffee shop to a hotel who offer free wifi to their customers at risk of this fine based on their customers activities, and probably just make it to cost prohibitive and risky to provide the wifi service.

The only way for free wifi operators to control or monitor what content their customers are accessing would be to implement content filtering software which is in general either costly or difficult to manage, and at best it is not very reliable anyway, especially the systems that a small business could afford to implement. Many of these free wifi operators are simply coffee shop owners and people who operate hotels or offer it in their businesses, heck it could even apply to a wifi router in a church. They generally don't have the technical expertise to do any more than set up the wifi router and offer the service to their customers, and with this bill the action of setting up wifi for their customers now opens them to the risk of a $300, 000.00 fine based on activity of a person on thier network that they have limited technical or economic way of monitoring, this is ludicrous!

The bill also gives the government sweeping powers to force ISPs and other businesses to hand over personal information of their customers. This is very big brother-ish and scary!

This bill is equivalent to prosecuting the owner of some property for a crime committed by another person on that property. How would you like to be fined $300,000.00 because some criminal mugged someone on the sidewalk outside your house or business?

You're not going to believe this but the bill passed the US house of representatives with only 2 votes against it! This shows how ignorant our representatives are about technology and how beholden they are to the Telco lobbyist. This kind of legislation can put the future of the freedom of the entire internet at risk as they continue to try to regulate and legislate the free transfer of ideas and connectivity over the internet.

I'm not advocating for pornography here, but we can't go after business owners and regular people who just want to use the affordable wireless technology that is available to offer wifi internet to their clients and customers. This is not the domain of the government, get them out of it and let them know.

Here is a news article about the bill:

http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9829759-38.html?tag=nefd.top

It is HR 3791
Contact you senator:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

and reprimand your Representative:

http://www.house.gov/house/MemStateSearch.shtml

This is a big deal, it is a direct attack at the freedom of the internet, not just for wifi but this will reach further into what information we are allowed access to.

Do something about it!, or at least forward it to a friend who will!

BTW, hats off to congressman Ron Paul, who was one of the only 2 congressmen to vote against this legislation. I'm not a Ron Paul supporter, but I do respect many of his ideas (I can't get over his views on the war however).

Do you believe the Bible?

2007-11-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

Watch the difference in how Gulianni, Romney, and Huckabee handle this question. It's amazing.

Who do you believe answered that question honestly. Obviously Huckabee knocked it out of the park, but I believe Gulianni answered it honestly, and Romney, well he really didn't know what to say.

Why I'm so hung up on Huckabee.

2007-11-28T08:14:00.000-08:00

So many of you are tired of my emails and talking about Huckabee all the time. You ask yourself, "man why is he so caught up in all this political stuff? All those politicians are crooks anyway, whoever gets elected, they're just crooks."

Well I can understand how you feel, years of this kind of experience have led you to think this way about the whole American political process. In fact I feel the same way as you. So why am I so excited by Huckabee?

Well there is of course the issues, I agree with him on almost every issue he puts out there, he even puts out the issues that I think are important (Faith, Fair Tax, Securing the border, Homeschooling, Sanctity of Marriage and Life, etc). Huckabee also seems to "get it" as to the importance and uniqueness of America, read my Get out the vote..or REPENT!!! blog post, Huckabee understands that this is a government of the people and by the people, and that our freedoms were given to us by God, and we relinquish those freedoms to our Government in order to have a civil society. This is a huge idea, unheard of in human history, however we have become so accustomed to it that we almost don't realize it's significance.

You might say, well sure, he SAYS he believes all that stuff, but really he just wants power like any other politician. My answer is this, I don't know the man personally, maybe your right. However, he is out there spreading a different message than all the other candidates, he's not afraid to tell you about his faith, he's not afraid to attack the IRS and support the Fair Tax, he's not afraid to say that the 2nd amendment isn't about hunting it's about killing tyrants etc...yeah maybe this is just a twisted strategy to get all of us Christian conservative types up off our seats and to the polling booth, but think about this for a second...

This message is motivating people, Huckabee has shot up in the polls based almost solely on how his message is resounding with his grass roots supporters. He has spent very little money on TV ads, mostly internet and word of mouth has spread his MESSAGE, and that MESSAGE has woken some people up.

My point is that it doesn't really matter if he is insincere (which, by the way, I think he is completely sincere), what matters is that Washington sees and understands the message that we the people will respond to. We are their boss, we own them, and through the message of Huckabee we are telling them how we want them to govern. If they choose not to govern according to the message they got elected by, then we the people must fire them. Huckabee has the message that makes me not only want to vote but to give, and fight and debate and get excited about the entire American political process. And if he wins you better bet I'm going to hold him accountable to the standard he set in his message.

So yes, I am asking you to get out there and support Huckabee with your time, and your money and most importantly your ever precious vote. But even more I am asking you to get out there and support the message that Huckabee is sending. We can change our government, we the people, really, we can. Support the message by supporting the candidate brave and bold enough to speak the message that you care about.

Here's the deal, you can't gripe about our government if you aren't involved in changing it. If you want to gripe about a government, move to a dictatorship where you don't get to choose who governs you, but wait, most of those take away your right to gripe as well...dang...I guess your best bet is just to get off your butt and get involved in getting behind the right message and setting the tone in Washington for what we the people expect of them.

Our candidates WON'T win unless they have our support. We have to understand the system, and participate in it. That means your time, your money, and your vote. If you leave any of these out your are crippling the chances that your message will be heard.

My time, my money and my vote are for Huckabee's message, join me.

Get out the Vote...or REPENT!!!

2007-11-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

One thing that I was thinking about the other day is how as Christians we are to be good stewards of what God has given us. Usually we prescribe this to how we handle our money and really "good" Christians apply that to their time other resources as well, and even to their whole life. I think it is good to look at what we have stewardship of and decide how we best can manage it for God's glory.

As this election year begins, I think if we will understand or remember how our government was founded we will find another area of our lives that we will be held to account for and of which we must be good stewards. The area of our life that I am referring to would be our God given freedom.

First some theory. As a whole, people can be governed in one of a couple of ways. People can be governed voluntarily, where they choose to obey the laws of their government and follow the biblical command to obey those in positions of authority and in doing so create a peaceful and orderly society in which to live and spread the Gospel. As Christians we are to love one another and do what we can to build a peaceful society in which we can work and support our families.

1 Thessalonians 4:9-11:
9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

The problem is that many times those in authority choose to persecute Christians or other groups and take their rights or otherwise force them to follow rules or to live in a way contrary to their beliefs. You could even extrapolate this to the example of a socialist welfare state that prevents people from living a life where they are "dependent on no one". This creates people stripped of their freedom and stripped of their dignity and makes them dependent upon the government for everything. Or worse, the government becomes hostile to certain groups and the people are forced to retaliate. So you have instances of people like Detrich Bonhoeffer who was a Christian pacifist involved in a plot to kill Hitler, the leader of his country, who the Bible commanded Bonhoeffer to obey (a command that Bonhoeffer in no way took lightly as he struggled through his plan).

If people won't be governed voluntarily, the other way to govern people is by force or manipulation. In this case a dictator or group has control of the military, police, or economic means and by force and manipulation they subdue the people to the point that they obey will of the ruling power or suffer prison, death, or economic hardship as a result of disobedience. Those who subscribe to Voice of the Martyrs can read about this kind of stuff in every issue, this is the kind of government prescribed by fascist and Islamic Extremists.

Most every form of government operates under the premise that power flows from the top town, and that personal liberty is a gift of grace from those who happen to be in power. In America our country was founded on a very unique premise. That all people are inherently free, and this freedom is a gift from none other than God alone. Our government was set up in such a way that, as citizens, we voluntarily choose to give up some of those freedoms in order to facilitate a orderly and peaceful society. The main conduit for that freedom to flow from the individual to the Government in America is through the individual votes for the political candidates that the people choose to govern them.

When we vote we are voluntarily "spending" our God given freedom. Because the outcome of the vote determines the people the Bible says that we are to obey. Our vote determines who will govern us, and sets up the situation where we will either be able to live peaceful and productive lives, or where we will have to choose to live lives of rebellion.

Therefore, as stewards of what God has given us it is of utmost importance that we not only vote, but we do so in an educated and prayerful manner, because we are spending something more precious than money, we are spending the freedom God has given us, and we must do so as "slaves" to Christ and His righteousness.

As Christians, our vote and our involvement in the political process is right and it is necessary. Not all of our forefathers were "super" Christians, and many were not even Christians, and many were, never-the-less they did know what they were doing when it came to creating a government that could rule primarily through the voluntary submission of it's people's freedom. This type of government suits Christians perfectly so long as we are active and thoughtful about how we cast our vote, and so long as we continue to evangelize and preach the good news of Christ and make disciples so that more people will also be good stewards of their freedom. If we loose this idea, or if we choose not to participate in this process, we are committing a terrible sin of poor stewardship of a God given gift.

We can already see the erosion of our freedom that happens when Christians don't lovingly and effectively participate in the American political process. This erosion of freedoms is symptomatic of the erosion of the values of the country as a whole and is caused by the failure of the church to properly disciple its people. It is caused by Christians living lives of low integrity, where we start to believe that our politics and our faith are two separate things. And if these freedoms continue to erode, we will see a day when we must choose between obeying our authorities and rebelling against them much like Bonhoeffer had to do, or worse, we will simply accept the stripping of our freedom and dignity and slip into mindless submission to a manipulating and controlling government. On the day of Judgement we will be held to account for allowing that situation to transpire, and for wasting the freedom God gave us, and trading it in for the risk-less life provided by a manipulative power hungry government that we substituted for God to meet our needs..

Some may argue that the Church thrives under persecution, and while that may be so, God does not call us to create that persecution by apathy, laziness, or rebellion, rather it calls us to love our pagan neighbors and live peacefully among them so that they will be able to see that God is real. And it calls us to be good stewards of what God has freely given to us.

My choice for president is Mike Huckabee. He is an unashamed Christian (like he's not afraid to say "Jesus is the only way") and he understands the how unique and incredible the American constitution is and how it relates to living a life of faith.

For those of you who don't like the name "Huckabee", check this out:

Educate yourself. Know what the candiates believe. Get a feeling for who they are and how they will rule. You are giving them your freedom, that was a gift from GOD to you! That's a big deal.

Now go vote.

1 Peter 2:12:

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

Romans 13:1-7:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

John Piper on Atlas Shrugged

2007-10-10T09:24:00.001-07:00

Here is an excellent article by John Piper reviewing Atlas Shrugged on it's 50 year anniversary.

If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged you should, I had a very similar reaction to is as Piper describes in his article.

In his perfect Piper style he very eloquently explains the truths and the major flaw in Ayn Rands philosophy, mainly that it rejected that God was real.

I can perfectly relate to Piper's reaction to the book:

I was attracted and repulsed. I admired and cried. I was blown away with powerful statements of what I believed, and angered that she shut herself up in what Jonathan Edwards called the infinite provincialism of atheism. Her brand of hedonism was so close to my Christian Hedonism and yet so far—like a satellite that comes close to the gravitational pull of truth and then flings off into the darkness of outer space.

Rand particularly impressed upon me the reality of Justice in the universe, yet she rejected God. Ultimately her definition of Justice was subjectively based, although she didn't see it that way because her premise for reality was wrong. Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged:

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

I wish she would have taken her own advise and checked her premises on her description of reality and realized that without a sovereign God to set the standard for Justice and righteousness then pure capitalism is as idealistic as pure communism. The ultimate stumbling stone in coming to this conclusion is that the only way for the justice of a sovereign God to be satisfied would be through the execution of an infinite punishment for sin. Since it would be impossible for us to bear this punishment and live, most simply reject the idea of a just God, or the idea of humans being fallen beings, instead of embracing the truth of the work of Christ on the Cross.

Radiohead, record companies, and ramblings...

2007-10-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

As you may know the band RADIOHEAD is releasing their latest album for free over the internet, and boy are they getting a lot of press about it. Now I think radiohead is a great band, there's no question there, it's just that with all this press about how they're sticking it to the record companies by releasing this album for free (actually the customer gets to set the price they pay), well I don't know if I really buy it.

Lot's of artist put out free music and work on the internet and accept donations for the work. This is also a very popular practice in open source software development. But you don't see these people making the news because of their charity, and bravery, and stick-it-to the man-ness, usually they just struggle to get noticed, no matter how good they may be.

The thing is that the only reason this is a big deal is because radiohead is a hugely popular band. And how did they become hugely popular? Could it have had a lot to do with major record companies promoting and marketing their material for the past X years? So now the band is just basically stabbing the people who financed their rise to fame right in the back by using that fame as a means to promote what their doing now with their "by donation" album. Not to mention the insinuation to up and coming artist is that "hey you can make it to, just be like us", when in reality, without some very inventive promotion no artist will make it, especially with this model.

I know that some think it's the essence of rock and roll, "sticking it to the man", but I don't really see it that way. I see it as exploiting the success that was the result of a system that they were happy to use to get rich but now that they are rich and popular they don't want to be a part of it. It's not that special, artist, authors, and software developers have been doing this for years and with alot more integrity...well I say integrity, I don't really know the hearts of the men in radiohead, all I'm really saying is that what they're doing is not all that special. Because of their major record label success they are able to do what everyone else has to do by default, and they're going to make alot of money at it, most good artist out there doing this very same thing are struggling even to make it. Why? it's basically because promoting the music is the hardest part of making a living at it. Getting in front of people, getting people to listen, and getting people interested. This is true for any good idea or product, not just music, anyway, radiohead got this service rendered to them with tremendous success by Capital Records etc... and now their being toted as some kind of "everyman's band" by the fact that their sticking it to the people that enabled their success in the first place.

Now I'm not sticking up for the record companies. I think that most of them are simply using copyright laws in order not to have to innovate and deal in a new digital marketplace. I mean the fact that we can still buy music on Compact Discs, which came out in like 1982 ... and there really has been no major progress in this technology since then...well that's just pathetic. By using copyright laws the record companies are able to artificially leverage the well returned investment they have in the compact disc technology way beyond it's market relevance, that's a good deal for them, but a bad deal for consumers who want instant access to the music they want through the medium we all share (the internet). No wonder the MP3 piracy revolution was so huge, and it scared the record company to death because they see that their ability to make money is threatened by losing the direct tie they have the CD product.

Maybe what the record companies should focus on instead is developing an industry standard file format for digital music, and then use their marketing might to promote the bands they want and digitally sell their content for them. Bandwidth and promotion are expensive, but it's easier to streamline and automate, and overall I can almost guarantee that the margins are alot higher than on manufacturing and distributing CD's. However it is different than what they have been doing for the past 25 years in marketing CD's, and besides, as long as they stick with CD's they can keep suing single moms for $220,000 a pop for using the technology of the day to get the music they want. Let's not even talk about the fact that the new digital economy makes it alot harder to sell really sucky songs by forcing people to buy an entire album just to get the one good song on the CD. Yes it's would be alot different for the record company to actually have to sell quality content in the format and method that the customer demands.

The whole copyright problem is a joke in itself. The problem is not a copyright problem is a problem with the ignorant lack of keeping up with technology. When the CD came out there was no broadband internet, file compression, or anything like that. Really there wasn't a whole lot of broadband internet until almost 20 years after the CD came out. Now that there are these technologies where a file of the same or better quality than a CD can easily and cheaply be transmitted over the internet, people naturally and rightfully want to use that technology to their benefit. Seems to me this is a problem with the record companies not innovating. People didn't have the equipment to reproduce records or 8-track tapes in their homes, cassette tapes were just bad quality, and when the CD came out the record companies had 15-20 years where people still didn't have or couldn't afford the technology to reproduce the music. Now we do have this technology, it's just the reality of reality, record companies have to deal with it or they'll go by the wayside as the bands with whom they DON'T Have contracts start to outnumber that bands with whom they do. It's like they're driving a horse drawn carriage down the interstate and screaming at all the people in cars for going way faster than they are.

What radiohead is doing may have this kind of "rob from the rich and give to the poor" ring to it, but I'd really rather see a band succeed at this from a ground roots level before I'll really believe that "by donation" content is really a good way for an artist or developer to make a living. But hey, it works for the church ok, maybe it will work here too. But wait even the church lets you partake of the content before asking for a donation, maybe radiohead should do the same. How can I decide how much an album is worth if I haven't heard it?

As for the record companies I hope they crash and burn, the destruction of the current system is the only way to make room for the new system (and that should have happened 10 years ago...)

Stuff I learned getting ActiveMerchant to work on Rails

2007-09-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

I'm an intermediate or less level user of Ruby on Rails, and I have been recently trying to get ActiveMerchant to work so that I can charge people's credit cards over the internet. The funny thing about software writing is that there really is no central repository of information on how to do it...well there is, it's called google, and when you run into a problem you just hope and pray that when you cut and paste the error message into google it will find some blog, bulletin board, or chat archive where someone had the same problem as you did, AND at the same time, one of these magical uber uber uber geeks will come out of the ether and arrogantly berate some idiot peon like me while reluctantly providing the "simple" solution thick with sarcasm. Yes these are the ranks one must bear as you climb your way through the muck of software mediocrity, but just think, once you get it figured out you'll be able to show your boss the cool app you built and hear gratifying accolades like "Um, ok, but can you make the letters green?"

Well just in case your trying to get ActiveMerchant to work on rails with authorize.net here are the main problems I ran into that took me a day or two to figure out because I nothing came up on google.

1.) when you install the gem make sure you go "sudo gem install activemerchant -y"... the "-y" makes sure all the dependencies get installed.

2.) in addition to putting "require 'active_merchant'" in your config/environment.rb file (right at the bottom of the file), you must also put "include ActiveMerchant::Billing" at the top of your controller within the class.

example your_controller.rb:

require 'money'
class YourController < ApplicationController
include ActiveMerchant::Billing

If you don't do this you will get an error that says something like "uninitialized constant ActiveMerchant::Billing::AuthorizeNetGateway" and you will pull your hair out trying to figure out how to fix it because apparently everyone else on the internet natively knows that you are supposed to do this and no one has ever needed to ask this question or no uber uber uber geek has felt generous enough to answer it when they did, so when you google the above mentioned error nothing really comes up (hopefully now it will though thanks to me).

3.) Finally, if you want the transactions on your app to run in test mode, but you don't want to set your entire Authorize.net account to test mode (like if you have another app using it and setting it to test mode might make you lose money), then what you need to do is NOT use the " ActiveMerchant::Billing::Base.gateway_mode = :test if RAILS_ENV != "production"" setting in your config/environment.rb like everyone else says to. If you do it won't work because apparently this is for some kind of "test" authorize.net account, and won't even work on your real authorize.net account (You'll get a response code 103 back from authorize.net which says something like your account is inactive or your username and password is wrong). To put the transactions from your app in test mode its easy (once you spend 3 hours googling it and finally figure it out), when you build the gateway in the action that charges the card just do this:

gateway = ActiveMerchant::Billing::AuthorizeNetGateway.new({:login => user, :password => pass, :test => 'true'})

And then just remove the ":test => 'true'" parameter, when you are ready to really get people's money.

So a typical payment submission action might look something like this in it's early stages:

def purchase

amount = Money.new('1000', 'USD')

creditcard = ActiveMerchant::Billing::CreditCard.new(
:first_name => Dax,
:last_name => Ewbank,
:number => 1234123412341234,
:month => 01,
:year => 2010,
:verification_value => 123,
:type => master
)

if creditcard.valid?
gateway = ActiveMerchant::Billing::AuthorizeNetGateway.new({:login => user, :password => pass, :test => 'true'})
response = gateway.purchase(amount, creditcard)

if response.success?
##do something if it all works out
else

raise StandardError.new( response.message )

end
end

end

So anyway, if your as dumb as I am about all this maybe what I figured out here will save you the 2 solid days of hair pulling frustration in making this all work.

I got it all working now, but I sure wished that I could have run along this post when I was doing it, it would have saved me alot of time. So here it is for your reference. uber uber uber geeks leave me alone, I know I probably screwed something up in here and your all laughing at me, but hey, I got it to work.

Glad I could help...

The Jesus you never knew...maybe...

2007-08-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

..except those of you who grew up in Sunday School, you might recognize him:

Julie and I are going to the Acts 29 Network Boot Camp in Raleigh, North Carolina in September. I have been going through their assessment process to become a church planter with their organization, the boot camp is where we will get to meet other church planters, learn a whole bunch about planting a church, and we will also get our final assessment as to whether we will be a part of their organization. We are planning now on planting a church right here in Elk City. The assessment process has been very meticulous and I appreciate that as it has helped me to focus on what God is calling me to do, and it has helped to confirm that call within me.

For a time this summer I was very aggressively considering moving to another city and getting another job, but God has put a stop to that. I decided that I was sinning by constantly looking to the next thing thing to do in life instead of being who I was where I was. I was lacking integrity.

I was reminded of this one day when we took our kids to the duck park. We went to ride the train, and the whole time they were on the train the kids kept complaining about wanting to ride the carousel, and then we went to ride the carousel and the whole time they complained about wanting to putt-putt, and then we went to putt-putt and they kept talking about wanting a snack. By the end of the evening they said "Man we didn't get to do anything!". It struck me that this was how I was living my life and I needed to stop.

The video above is from an Act 29 church plant in Raleigh, vintage21 church. This is were we will be going for the boot camp. We can't wait!

Securing Gmail on unsecure networks

2007-08-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

I found this article disturbing, and helpful:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33207/108/

This article shows a hack that if you are on a unsecured network where the packets can be sniffed, like an ethernet network or unsecured wireless network, then your gmail could be easily compromised as the hacker can easily sniff your session id out of the data stream and then basically clone your session on the gmail server using your session id and then having full access to your email account.

This pertains to other webmail applications as well and other general web applications that rely on session ids (which is almost all of them now)

To protect yourself from this (with gmail anyway) simply goto https://mail.google.com instead of http://mail.google.com (notice the https://) when logging into your gmail, if you are using google to host your email domain then you'll need to go to https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com.

Doing this (adding the https://) will make it so that your entire session is encrypted with SSL making it such that someone sniffing your traffic won't be able to get your session id's. As for you out there who don't believe that this really solves the problem, then you don't understand SSL, and that's ok just trust me.

You should get in the habit of doing this especially when you are using public wifi hotspots, or even if you are on an ethernet network where you don't know what else is on the network (like a sniffing computer or even a wireless access point connected to the ethernet network). Hotels would be a perfect example of a place where it would be easy to sniff out this kind of information.

Anyway, as an avid gmail user I found this helpful, and I thought I would pass it along.

Dax Ewbank - Mexican Food Consultant

2007-07-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about starting a new career as a consultant to Mexican restaurants. I think I have some pretty good insight into how exactly a Mexican Restaurant ought to be run. Years of experience eating Mexican food and yearning for all the perfect aspects of good service to be present in one place have driven me to consider what it would take to make the perfect Mexican restaurant.

First some general observations:

1. All Mexican food is basically the same - beans, rice, chicken or beef, and cheese in some variation or combination. Maybe some veggies here or there to give it some color.

2. People expect free stuff when they eat Mexican food, minimally chips and salsa, ideally chips, salsa, queso, pico, tortillas and relish.

3. Most people view the quality of service at a Mexican restaurant by whether or not their iced tea remained full and whether or not they ever ran out of whatever free stuff the restaurant offers. They also view the quality of the restaurant by the amenities provided to accentuate certain products. For instance, tea should be served in very large plastic cups with lots of ice. Beer should always be served in large frozen glass (never plastic) goblets with lime and salt on the rim. The only beers offered should be Corona, Tecate, and Dos Equis. You can offer weanie American beer but just serve it in the bottle.

Now some cognitive processing based on these observations:

1. Since all Mexican food is basically the same, the quality of the recipe is not the number one thing that brings people to a Mexcian restaurant. People go to Mexican restaurants because they already know what the food is going to taste like, kind of like McDonald's, most people are cowardly lemmings and are afraid of any kind of change. So advertising that your Mexican restaurant is different or even better (which implies different) is a sure way to keep people away. You should call it "Traditional Tex-Mex", which implies that the food is simply rice, beans, chicken or beef, and cheese, all arranged in the usual combinations and that won't freak people out.

2. Provide all the free stuff and keep it coming. People think they're getting a deal when you provide the free stuff, and they like that feeling. They will never put the fact together that the fajitas that cost $21.95 have the exact same ingredients as the quesadillas that cost $12.95 and require less work. It's a beautiful bit of marketing the in the history of Mexican food that makes the food that is not all the way prepared cost more than the food that requires more preparation, almost as clever as sushi, but it would be a little gross and possibly dangerous not to cook the chicken.

3. Training of the wait staff is vital in order properly provide the illusion of quality. I will get into this next, but the basics are pretty simple, make sure that the customer never runs out of tea, or any of the free stuff. Make sure that if the customer wants another beer, that he or she gets a new freshly frozen goblet, NEVER put another beer into an unfrozen goblet. For people who prefer "American" beer like Coor's Light or something you can just set a "sixer" next to the table, if you didn't already run them out of the restaurant for not wearing a shirt.

Service Considerations:

Being a Mexican Restaurant waiter or waitress is respectable and hard work, and one can make a good living at it if it is done right. As a member of the wait staff what you need to remember is one of the primary reason people are paying for food that they could very simply make at home is that they want to be served. Here are some guidelines to follow:

1. Shut up. People didn't go out to eat in order to talk to you so don't try to be overly friendly. If the customer engages you in conversation realize that he is either a) just being friendly but doesn't really want to talk or b) he is fantasizing about dating you because the only interaction he has with the opposite sex is when they are being paid to service him. Keep your conversations short, and very surface. If a customer asks how you are doing, don't tell them that your kid is sick or you've been on duty for 12 hours or anything like that, just say "Great, how are you guys". Notice you always address the entire table, never a single person in the table. This is very good wait staff etiquette as it helps the table to feel as a group and aids in their camaraderie.

2. Shut up. If you see an empty tea glass it is not necessary to ask "Would you like more tea?". It's free, just put the tea in the glass. This also goes for chips, salsa, tortillas, relish or any other complementary item. I think many waiters and waitresses think they are doing their boss some kind of favor by limiting the number of freebies they give a customer, as if they are saving their boss money by denying the customer a tortilla or an extra cup of watered down salsa. In reality what they are doing is ticking off the customer and their tip is rapidly decreasing every second the customer goes without any complementary item, not to mention they are creating a reason for the customer not come back the restaurant the next time they go out.

3. Take off the blinders. I've noticed that many waiters and waitresses walk around the restaurant and exhibit a very well developed but useless skill. They are able to peruse the entire restaurant without ever making eye contact with anyone at any of the tables they are in charge of. They do this on purpose in order to get out of doing their job. What they don't realize is that this ticks the customer off. ALWAYS MAKE EYE CONTACT with your tables anytime you are within eyesight of them. If you have been enough of a louse that they have to ask you for a refill, then you've already screwed up, don't make it worse by ignoring them.

4. Don't Freak Out. I find this often, I go to restaurants around 1:30 or 2:00 long after the lunch hour rush. It's just me and maybe one or two other tables, but the wait staff acts as if the place is full and there's a line around the block. This is because they are not good at being waiters or waitresses. They suffer from what I call "poor me waitress syndrome" where they are basically trying to shift the blame for their inability to do their job onto the fact that the restaurant is busy. The give away for this disease is that once the busy rush passes, these kind of waiters or waitresses never get out of "freaked out" mode, even if you're the only customer in the building. These kind of wait staff should be fired. A good waiter or waitress should never have to increase or decrease the speed of their service depending on how busy the restaurant is. If they do have to change the effort they put into the service of each table when the place is busy, it means they are slacking when the place is slow, and ticking off customers in the process. As a member of the wait staff, you should find the speed that you are able to properly serve your table, remembering orders and keeping the chips and tea full, and always work at that speed no matter how busy the place is. You will find that you will be much more relaxed at work, you will be able to take care of your customers better and they will give you much bigger tips. Like I said, people are mainly cowardly lemmings, and when they see someone who is calm and in control even in the midst of apparent chaos, they will feel loved and protected and they will reward you accordingly. However, when they see a freaked out waitress it triggers in them the "flight" response and causes them to associate your restaurant with fear and death.

5. Sell the freebies. Here's how I look at it. Your greedy capitalist boss is paying you $3.00 an hour and raking in the cash selling nearly rotten meat on a rusted pan for $30.00. However in the excess of his bounty your boss has given you something in addition to your $3.00 an hour, and that is the complementary items of the restaurant. In the eyes of the customer, your tip is directly tied to your generosity with your boss's complementary items. You will not get a raise if at the end of the month you boss saves $10.00 because you were overly stingy with the tortillas, because your boss will have lost several customers in the saving of that $10.00. However you will get a raise if the customer feels so well treated by the showering of tortillas you provided that he or she leaves an extra $5.00 tip. I actually calculate the tip I am going to give based on the number of tortillas I receive. When my family is out there is 6 of us, and I feel like it would be ideal if we all received at least 3 tortillas if we are having fajitas. So I just pay $.33 - $.50 per tortilla and then I deduct $.50 for every time I have to ask for more of any complementary items. Do you now see how you as a member of the wait staff, you are essential getting 100% of the revenue you generate in the form of tips by "selling" the free items to the customer? Your boss isn't so bad after all now is he? If you work at a Mexican restaurant that makes people pay for the freebies, then quit. This is a bad restaurant, and you as the hard working waiter or waitress will end up paying for your customers tortillas and chips because they will deduct the cost of them from your tip.

Imagine with me if you will a world where all the Mexican restaurants had this level of service. I know in heaven this is how it will be, because there won't be any cowardly lemmings or freaked out people in heaven, only people doing exactly what it is God made them to do and doing it with all their might as an act of worship. Whether they are thankfully eating a fajita to the Glory of their creator, or diligently serving their customer as if they were serving God Himself, in heaven the Mexican food will be the perfect combination of beans, rice, chicken or beef and cheese, the beer will be served in perfectly frozen glass goblets, and the tortillas will be as perfectly satisfying as manna from heaven, all served in perfect execution by a heavenly wait staff determined to do their best.

Until then however I hope that we can make some disciples that can give people a little taste of heaven in the flawless execution of their duties as a member of a Mexican restaurant wait staff.

The Gospel According to an Atheist -- Ayn Rand

2007-07-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in mater nor in spirit -- and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Pretty profound for an atheist who believed that man is an end unto himself. It's weird and sad that someone could have this kind of a grasp on justice and reject the work of Christ on the cross.

Here is Ayn Rand's philosophy in a nutshell (this is taken from www.aynrand.org):

My [Ayn Rand's] philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses) is man's only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.

4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man's rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Translated simply:

1. "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" or "Wishing won't make it so."
2. "You can't eat your cake and have it, too."
3. "Man is an end in himself."
4. "Give me liberty or give me death."

Rand states,

"If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life."

Let's look at this from a Biblical worldview:

Look at point one:

"Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears."

As Christians we know that reality is the revealed will of God, and that in Christ our very existence is maintained by His power.

"He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of His power." - Hebrews 1:3

Despite our feelings, wishes, hopes and fears that God not exist, or that Christ not be Lord, or that some other arrangement be made between God and humans, the facts are facts, independent of our feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. God is who He says He is in the Bible, we must deal with that.

Consider point two:

"Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses) is man's only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival."

For the man without Christ this reasoning is limited to his own cognitive ability. He is trapped inside His own mind and left to grapple with the heavy issues of life with ultimately only his own spirit to counsel him.

"For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. - 1 Corinthians 2:11

The company of many friends and advisers can offer little solace as he is left alone with his thoughts, unable to fully communicate them given the faculties naturally available to us.

So if our only means of perceiving reality is through reason, and reason is limited to our own cognitive ability, then we truly are each an island, and possibly and end unto ourself, but the Bible goes on to reveal to us something peculiar about our cognitive abilities within the body of Christ:

"12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ." -- 1 Corinthians 2:12-16

So we can affirm Rand's premise that reason is the means by which we perceive reality, however we must realize that as a Christian our ability to reason is supernaturally expanded by the work of the Holy Spirit enabling us to accept and understand the truths of God. And we can also see how a great mind like Ayn Rand could cognitively develop a very solid philosophy based on reason and yet totally miss the importance of the Cross and regard it as foolishness.

In her own words:

"Philosophy is the goal toward which religion was only a helplessly blind groping." -- Ayn Rand

Look at point three:

"Man is an end in himself."

From the viewpoint that reality is objectively determined solely based on your ability to cognitively interpret it (which is actually pretty subjective), then it only makes sense that this cognitive interpretation in its purest sense would and must seek to preserve and enjoy the self.

The Westminster Catechism says that the chief end of man is to "glorify God and to enjoy Him forever". John Piper in the book Desiring God would only change this to say that the chief end of man is to "glorify God BY enjoying Him forever". Both see man experiencing joy forever. Rand states:

"The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."

The key phrase being "rational self-interest". If we remember that the Christian has the cognitive ability of the Holy Spirit, it is not hard to see then that the rational self-interest of the Christian would be to pursue joy through the method that we have discovered to provide an infinite supply of it, the Glorification of God. It is what we were created and are commanded by our creator to do, there is no more reasonable rational self-interest than this.

"You make known to me the path of life;in your presence there is fullness of joy;at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." -- Psalms 16:11

Finally, to the politics:

"The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism."

This should be simple enough to understand, it's simply the Golden Rule,

"So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." -- Mathew 7:12

I still like reading Ayn Rand, and it is sad to me that she was not a Christian. I suppose that the comfort and logical soundness of her philosophical system can become a sort of trap because it seems to work so well, however it collapses on itself with the simple realization that the Bible is true.

[below added 03/30/2010]
I can perfectly relate to John Piper's reminiscing as he marked the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged:

I was attracted and repulsed. I admired and cried. I was blown away with powerful statements of what I believed, and angered that she shut herself up in what Jonathan Edwards called the infinite provincialism of atheism. Her brand of hedonism was so close to my Christian Hedonism and yet so far—like a satellite that comes close to the gravitational pull of truth and then flings off into the darkness of outer space.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

I wish she would have taken her own advise and checked her premises on her description of reality and realized that without a sovereign God to set the standard for Justice and righteousness then pure capitalism is as idealistic as pure communism. The ultimate stumbling stone in coming to this conclusion is that the only way for the justice of a sovereign God to be satisfied would be through the execution of an infinite punishment for sin. Since it would be impossible for us to bear this punishment and live, most simply reject the idea of a just God, or the idea of human beings short of God's glory, instead of embracing the truth of the work of Christ on the Cross.

Jebb Stewart -- Time Machine

2007-07-16T18:54:00.000-07:00

If you've come here to find where to get beer steins from the event click here. If you're wanting a T-shirt from the event click here.

I had a great time Saturday night. My friends put on one heck of a show. It was almost like a religious experience for me. It's funny how music can really just take you back in time. Most people have music that when they hear it just takes them back to a place in their past. In our case it's the music of Jebb Stewart, a little band that not many people have even heard, but to those that have it might as well be Aerosmith (the old Aerosmith).

I sat in the old padded flip down seats in the Royal Theatre and soaked in all the music and my mind just drifted back to the great times we had. Many friends showed up that I have not seen in a long time and it really made for an evening to remember. All in all I'd say that a couple hundred people showed up, I really wasn't paying attention to that. Jebb Stewart played until little after midnight and Jigawatt Box played till about 2:30 or 3:00. Both bands were excellent.

I wonder sometimes if the little town of Fairview really knows the kind of talented people that are floating in and out of their community. Many of them can't really get past the fact that people were consuming beer while enjoying the music, some people were even seen dancing (gasp!). Oh well, it's their loss, I'd hate to go through life and miss out on good friends, good music and good beer, all things I thank God for big time!!

For those of you who don't know Jebb Stewart consists of Rick Hudson (lead and vocals), Jeff Woods (drums), and Willie Adamson (bass). Rick and his wife and son are getting ready to move to Kentucky where his wife is going get her Phd, and where Rick is going to see what he can make of the music scene there. Jeff lives in OKC and is an electrician, he also plays in a really good band in OKC called Lemma, check them out if you are ever in OKC. Willie lives in Fairview and does oil field mineral leasing. He plays in the other band that played that night called Jiggawatt Box. They were excellent! These guys are so talented, it's really fun listen to and watch them play.

Here's some video I took so you can get a little taste of the evening. They recorded the show from the soundboard so as soon as I get a hold of that I'll point you to it. I think there were some other videos made, and I'll post them when I get them.

Postmodern Theology and Spurgeon on faith

2007-07-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

I have been commenting on a blog call "The Parish" over at typepad. I enjoy the conversations that happen there and the people there seem to be pretty open to argument without to much vitriol, they're actually all very thoughtful and seemingly considerate as far as I can tell from the virtual reality in which I have met most of them. The ongoing issues always seems to revolve around epistemology or how one comes to know what is true. I, being of the reformed persuasion, believe in the whole Bible as the standard for truth, but many of the people commenting there don't accept that premise. It makes for interesting debate. The other interesting thing about these debates is that they are pretty high stakes from a theological standpoint because in order for one "side" to win the argument the other side must abandon it's premise. Needless to say it can get pretty wordy.

I have found that engaging in these kinds of conversation really challenges me to know what I believe and it challenges me to attempt to see how the person on the other side of the argument are coming to their conclusions. It helps me to practice listening to what someone else is saying versus simply trying to come up with clever arguments to refute their points. I think this is helpful because I don't want to be one of those people that use the Bible as a club and arrogantly lord my position in Christ over all those "sinners" who haven't got it yet.

I've found some very very intelligent people who are sincerely trying to work out what they believe and I'm doing my best to not come off as condescending when I present my viewpoint. I think that a lot of the time we Christians do come off a little high on our horses and forget the part of our own theology that says that there must be a work of the Holy Spirit within the individual before they will be able to understand and accept the Bible as truth. And because it is only by God's grace and by Christs work on the cross do we have the privilege of understanding anyway, it leaves us with no grounds in which to boast in our position in Christ.

The subject of faith came up as it is essential in being able to accept the Bible as truth, here is some good CH Spurgeon on the issue of faith:

"What is faith? It is made up of three things — knowledge, belief, and trust. Knowledge comes first. "How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?" I want to be informed of a fact before I can possibly believe it. "Faith cometh by hearing"; we must first hear, in order that we may know what is to be believed. "They that know thy name shall put their trust in thee." A measure of knowledge is essential to faith; hence the importance of getting knowledge. "Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live." Such was the word of the ancient prophet, and it is the word of the gospel still. Search the Scriptures and learn what the Holy Spirit teacheth concerning Christ and His salvation. Seek to know God: "For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." May the Holy Spirit give you the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord! Know the gospel: know what the good news is, how it talks of free forgiveness, and of change of heart, of adoption into the family of God, and of countless other blessings. Know especially Christ Jesus the Son of God, the Saviour of men, united to us by His human nature, and yet one with God; and thus able to act as Mediator between God and man, able to lay His hand upon both, and to be the connecting link between the sinner and the Judge of all the earth. Endeavour to know more and more of Christ Jesus. Endeavour especially to know the doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ; for the point upon which saving faith mainly fixes itself is this— "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." Know that Jesus was "made a curse for us, as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." Drink deep of the doctrine of the substitutionary work of Christ; for therein lies the sweetest possible comfort to the guilty sons of men, since the Lord "made him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Faith begins with knowledge.

The mind goes on to believe that these things are true. The soul believes that God is, and that He hears the cries of sincere hearts; that the gospel is from God; that justification by faith is the grand truth which God hath revealed in these last days by His Spirit more clearly than before. Then the heart believes that Jesus is verily and in truth our God and Saviour, the Redeemer of men, the Prophet, Priest, and King of His people. All this is accepted as sure truth, not to be called in question. I pray that you may at once come to this. Get firmly to believe that "the blood of Jesus Christ, God's dear Son, cleanseth us from all sin"; that His sacrifice is complete and fully accepted of God on man's behalf, so that he that believeth on Jesus is not condemned. Believe these truths as you believe any other statements; for the difference between common faith and saving faith lies mainly in the subjects upon which it is exercised. Believe the witness of God just as you believe the testimony of your own father or friend. "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater."

So far you have made an advance toward faith; only one more ingredient is needed to complete it, which is trust. Commit yourself to the merciful God; rest your hope on the gracious gospel; trust your soul on the dying and living Saviour; wash away your sins in the atoning blood; accept His perfect righteousness, and all is well. Trust is the lifeblood of faith; there is no saving faith without it. The Puritans were accustomed to explain faith by the word "recumbency." It meant leaning upon a thing. Lean with all your weight upon Christ. It would be a better illustration still if I said, fall at full length, and lie on the Rock of Ages. Cast yourself upon Jesus; rest in Him; commit yourself to Him. That done, you have exercised saving faith. Faith is not a blind thing; for faith begins with knowledge. It is not a speculative thing; for faith believes facts of which it is sure. It is not an unpractical, dreamy thing; for faith trusts, and stakes its destiny upon the truth of revelation. That is one way of describing what faith is."

Team Chip Tae Kwon Do

2007-07-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

Triston and I are now both orange belts in Tae Kwon Do (it goes white, yellow, orange, green, high green, blue, high blue, red, red white, high red, recommended black, black, and then degrees of black). Both of us really enjoy it and we are learning alot and working hard too. The school we go to here in Elk City is called "Team Chip", our instructor is Steve Fischer. Here is a video of Chip Townsend, the "Chip" of "Team Chip", doing a demo for Century Martial Arts.

All of the black belts are fun to watch because they can do some amazing stuff. Chip is particularly good:

I'm working on a video for Steve (our instructor) now, I will put it up when I am done with it.

4th of July in Elk City

2007-07-05T07:46:00.000-07:00

Julie and the kids and I spent the 4th right here in Elk City yesterday. I heard that on the 4th it was OK to take some fireworks to the city park and set them off. I guess I really didn't properly envision the ramifications of that statement, because apparently in Elk City EVERYBODY goes to the city park with their fireworks, and it is pretty cool. Here are some videos I took with my cell phone while I was there. Notice the smoke, and all the firework sounds too:

Pretty cool huh? This was just the collective fireworks display of all the probably 2 or 3000 people that showed up to the park with their own fireworks, the city put on a $10,000 fireworks show as well.

Then to top it all off, right after the city's firework show, God put on a show with a thunderstorm to the east of us, and a spattering of rain that sent all the people at the park scattering for home.

I thought the fireworks were cool, my kids really loved it (however it did take about 30 minutes to get Evan to come out of the car, because it kind of freaked him out), it was like a 2 or 3 hour fireworks show. It struck me though that fireworks are like alot of things we become enamored with, up close they look beautiful and powerful, but in comparison to the simple little thunderstorm that provided the backdrop for the evening, they were nothing but smoke and sparks. I don't know that many people even noticed the awesome display of lightning, until the rain came and they were forced to deal with it.

Anyway, it was fun, and if you're ever around Elk City on the 4th of July, I would recommend checking this out, because it's cool, in a chaotic, communal sort of way, and I'm sure that they can't keep doing it for too long, some whiner is bound to put and end to it at some point.

JEBB HEAD

2007-06-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Jebb Stewart's Last stand promotional poster
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Get a commemorative beer stein for the "jebb stewart's last stand" event:

Jebb Stewart's Last Stand Beer Stein
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Royal Jebb Stewart
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I think I lit up all my lighten up

2007-06-28T21:17:00.001-07:00

Is it just me or do I take everything way to seriously? I think I need to lighten up a bit, but I don't really remember how to do that. I think I burned up all my "lighten up" brain cells in college and now all I have left is the cynical ones.

I am looking forward to a concert some friends of mine are putting on at the Royal Theatre in Fairview, OK on July 14th. It will be the reunion and possibly also the final performance of "Jebb Stewart". The best rock band ever in my opinion. This was the band that we all partied with and vicariously dreamed about stardom through while we were drinking our way through "college". It will be a bitter sweet time to hear all the music again and to ponder the past and the possibility that it is all coming to an end. My friend Justin even made some T-shirts that are pretty cool, you can pick one up at http://www.zazzle.com/stonefunk if that is something that interests you, you can also come to the show on the 14th of July, only $5.00 to get in, click here for a map to the Royal.

The band really didn't turn out the way we dreamed it would, but never-the-less it left and unforgettable impact on my life and on the lives of many others who were charmed by the music, who basked in the richness of the relationships developed because of the band, and who were also often seduced by the fleeting promises of the rock and roll dream. Sometimes I long to return to those days. When the ruts of daily life seem to repeatedly roll me over and the unrealistic expectations of everyone around me start piling up like manure at a feed yard, I'll admit I find myself day dreaming of the time in my life when I was totally satisfied with chasing that sweet smoky dream of the perpetual party.

I'm sure there are several theological statements in there, and several more statements as to my own failings as a person and as a follower of Christ, but once again I've found myself to be the cynic, even while reflecting on the glorious past.

It sucks that the empty promises of sex, drugs, and rock and roll are so very alluring, because they really are, and that the fullness of Christ is so repugnant in it's most common method of presentation (denominational legalistic religion). I read about missionaries and scholars and preachers who really seem to get it, and I really long to be able to live like they do, where I can take refuge in God, and not in the cheap gluttonous memories of my past jaunts of hedonism.

But instead I forge ahead in my quest to "make a living" while the living part of life sometimes seem to be relegated to the hazy memories of a rock band that never made it. The folly of chasing after sin, and the struggle of turning away from it, all while trying to be a good Christian, a good husband, a good dad, a real man...

Kentucky Fried Christian

2007-06-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

Julie and the kids and I went to the zoo in Oklahoma City a couple of weeks ago. If your familiar with Oklahoma City you know that the zoo is just off Martin Luther King street somewhere around about 50th or something. Anyway, as any kid raised in all white small town Oklahoma knows, this part of OKC is the "bad" part of town. I mean there are liquor stores and places to buy wigs and you'd better just scurry on through if you have to go there because your likely to get your Edmond-belonging-in butt robbed.

Oklahoma City Zoo:

During this trip we were pondering the possibility of maybe moving to OKC, which is something we would like to do at some point. Of course me being a missionary minded person with a real bad problem stereotyping people (see my previous story about Al the carny) I came to the assumption that maybe we should consider moving into the "hood", because "obviously" this is where they need the gospel the most right? Somewhere in the midst of this thought we drove up upon a KFC where there was a black Baptist church youth group having a car wash for a fund raiser. I thought it would be neat to stop and just see what this neighborhood was like, at least from the vantage point of this fund raiser.

We pulled the van in and handed our keys over to the lady in charge of the car wash. They were very friendly and let us know that we could go in and eat and when we were done eating the car would probably be ready. I stopped for a moment just to watch the people for a while. There were mostly young people (because it was a youth group function) but I noticed that several adults were there as well. It struck me that they all were really enjoying themselves, and seemed to be enjoying each other's company as well. I paid the lady in charge for the car wash and we headed inside to get ourselves some lunch.

The KFC was pretty busy that day, no noubt because of the car wash, so once we got our food we all found a place to sit. After we had taken our seats I noticed that there was only one empty seat left in the restaurant, and it was at our table. Just then another man came in and ordered his food and politely asked if we minded him sitting with us (as opposed to sitting on the floor I guess). He sat down and Evan (my youngest son) immediately sat up and reached for his food, the man thought it was funny. We engaged in some small talk, and I just felt welcome there somehow. We finished our meals and went out to check the status of the car.

When we came out we were again cheerfully greeted and taken to our car where some ladies were putting the finishing touches on the car. The car looked GREAT! I don't think it has ever looked so clean. I thanked them for a great job and started to leave, and upon doing so the church pastor's wife gave me a big hug and thanked us for coming to thier car wash and she told me a bit about the trip their youth group were saving up for.

Once again my sin of stereotyping was blatantly exposed as I realized that not only was the Gospel alive and well in this place, but the people in this neighborhood had something on many of the rest of us, they had a community. I walked away with some thoughts about the "bad" part of town. There are alot of good things about the "bad" part of town. I think they might just know about having and living in a community that is meaningful to them. I think they understand how thier church is a positive aspect adding depth to the relationships of the community. Sure they have problems like higher crime rates and more poverty, but I got to thinking about some stuff.

If you go to Edmond or the "good" part of town where there are nice houses with nice cars, do you experience this kind of community? It's been my experience that most of "middle class white" America live in housing developments where they have really nice stuff but have no idea who their neighbors are. They might have lived there for 20 years and never have met the people around them. When their neighbors die, they aren't sad, when their neighbor's kids get married they aren't happy, they might not even know. Sure there is less violent crime in these neighborhoods, but there has to be...the people never come into contact with each other. So they get a nice clean safe place to live, but they give up being a part of "neighborhood".

Is it possible that part of having that sense of "community" has to come along with some problems like crime? We do still live in a world tainted by sin, and for community to exist people have to be around each other, and interact with each other and get to know each other. This interaction is obviously going to cause some friction, and sometimes bad things will happen when tempers flair and sinful pride erupts. However, is it worth losing the community just to avoid the problems? It's sad that in our prosperity we've allowed our communities to die. It's more even more sad to see people that might live in an actual neighborhood doing everything they can to get to the "good" side of town, and the people on the "good" side of town do everything they can to keep from going to the "bad" side. Seems like both have some things to offer and some things to learn.

I realize that some of the crime stems from problems surrounding poverty or a lack of education, such as those crimes that stem from drug and alcohol abuse, and gang crimes that stem from fractured families. However the good neighborhoods are not immune from these problems. The alcohol or drug abuser on the "good" side of town can simply afford his addiction and he can also afford to keep it behind closed doors. Families are fractured by the drive for prosperity that leaves most middle class kids being raised by childcare employees. And as for education, this doesn't stop crime, it just tends to more sophisticated crime that most would refer to as "white collar crimes".

The point is that living in Edmond "may" be safer than living on "MLK", but at the expense of the richness of a real community with real neighbors. You may feel like you are better off in the newest housing development, but you may just be sacrificing community in order to gain prosperity.

That all being said, here's my test for if you are a good neighbor. If your neighbor were to move or die would you be sad? Here's a challenge, get to know your neighbors, even the dieing old man down the street who can't have but a couple of months left. Get to know him well enough so that when he dies you won't only go to his funeral but you'll also shed a tear. If you can't get your self motivated here's a tip, shut off the cable and the AC and spend your summer evenings on the porch where you might accidentally see another person and get the chance to talk to them.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, Jesus had to use the illustration of the good Samaritan to explain that our neighbors are anyone around us in need, even those people on the "other" side of town. But before we get to worried about loving the ambiguously imagined person in desparate need, we might want to consider at least finding out the name of the guy that lives 20 feet across the yard.

Internet Super Highway Patrol

2007-05-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

Thought you might like to see my cool rig on my city issued ex-police cruiser. I have outfitted my car with high speed wireless internet. It connects to one of the many internet access points that I have been busy installing around Elk City. I can pretty much get internet anywhere in town now.

The chief of police saw the car the other day and he wasn't to thrilled about the prospects of all his cop cars being outfitted with Martian looking antennas. I told him that this was just the prototype, the actual finished product will hopefully have much bigger antennas thus making it much cooler in my eyes :)

Here's the inside. You can see my laptop and my massive power converter (1500 watts) I can probably run a small town from my car. My goal is not to ever have to leave my car. The end product will report it's GPS location to a central server that I am writing software for, and it will also be it's own access point so that you can take the laptop from the car and the car will act as a relay to the wider wifi network.

This is my signal splitter that takes the signal from the two antennas on the roof and combines them for the radio to interpret and magically turn into data. The range is really good on this, and the unit that is in my console is very good about switching from access point to access point as I drive down the road. Because of my brilliant network design I have uninterrupted communication as I roam from AP to AP.

Just in case some of you may have thought that I had ceased being a geek...

Making God in our own image

2007-05-03T08:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a good article on the Resurgence about seeing Jesus for who he really is:

http://www.theresurgence.com/ab_blog_2007-05-02_jesus_in_a_pink_dress_part_2

It goes along with the "Where is the wise man?" post I posted earlier.