Circles and Strains

2003-04-14T00:46:00.000-04:00

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2003-04-07T00:34:00.000-04:00

NOTE: I wasn't sure if I wanted to make this my first real post on MT, so I'm posting it here.

From a Heartbroken Fan

Eddie Vedder is a hypocrite.

In case you're wondering, Vedder is the aloof lead singer of alt-rock band Pearl Jam. You may or not recognize him, but after striking radio gold in the early 90's, he and his fellow tradition-buckers decided that the mainstream wasn't good enough for their "high art," and beat a hasty retreat – self-righteousness and furrowed brows intact – to the sidelines of the Seattle and alternative music scenes.

If it weren't for their juggernaut status with a few thousand rabid fans who salivate over every minor release, Pearl Jam would have been booted into obscurity by the laws of supply and demand. Until recently, I was glad that they hadn't.

First of all, let me assure you that this is not a neocon rant against an angry leftist who happened to make his opinion known at a concert, so let us put the infantile free-speech arguments to bed. Second, this is not even an angrily patriotic rant against a hypocrite who sees nothing contradictory about impaling President Bush's head in effigy while protesting violence. This is the fed-up rant of a kid who grew into adolescence thinking that I actually had a band that I could identify with, and was proven wrong.

A couple of years ago – my social status firmly cemented into the lower quadrants of the totem pole, and my rope at the end of its tether – I discovered grunge. Harsh, abrasive, and rebellious, it was both the reflection of and the inspiration for the mess that my life would eventually become. Despite the tropical heat, I donned a flannel shirt, left my hair unkempt and unwashed, furrowed my brow deeply, and developed a snoblist of who's "real" and who's not. Others thought me stupid and unrealistic, a cultural anachronism. (After all, grunge is 10 years removed from the nexus of cultural relevancy.) I didn't care. For the first time in my short life, I was part of something. I felt like the bands there more or less shared the same values that I did. After all, we shared the experience of being picked on, being taken for granted, and we were all depressed to boot. Young, angry white males. How different could we be?

Boy, was I naïve!

Most of those bands were/are composed of rabid left-wing anarchists. They preach, advocate, and breathe a stifling form of spiritual deadness and social morbidity that is oh-so-appealing, but quickly sucks the life right out of you. They are mostly dark and brooding – Vedder and rival Kurt Cobain made names for themselves by selling themselves as Byronic anti-heroes. To an ailing, wounded Generation X full of latchkey kids sprung from broken homes, they must have seemed messianic. Finally, on Top 40 radio and MTV, were bands made of ordinary people, and not the glossy, over-hyped bathos of singers with gutter-cat vocals and Metallica-lite guitar riffs. Sure, if ordinary people spend an entire album railing against the establishment on a record recorded, pressed, marketed, and sold by Sony Music.

Most of the aforementioned bands sprung out of the eddies and backwaters of the Pacific Northwest music scene, and most eventually imploded under the rigors of maintaining outsider ~~snobbery~~ status, while basking in the limelight of public favor. While some have succumbed to fatal drug addiction (Alice in Chains' Layne Staley), the darker angels of their nature (Nirvana's Kurt Cobain), the timeless "artistic differences" (Soundgarden), or the sheer weight of their own egotism (grunge-wannabes Bush and their ridiculous forays into electronica), one band has made it into the 21st century. That band would be Pearl Jam.

Unfortunately, Pearl Jam – for all their strong points (low ticket prices, a strong commitment to the fans, etc.) – have ridden to the top on a wave of blood. Founders of Rock for Choice, the nation's first rockers-only club devoted solely to the slaughter of unborn children, the band has been tireless in its support for and devotion to pro-choice causes. (I hope you're beginning to see why I have a serious problem taking anti-war and anti-Bush bloviations from a group that on the one hand, disdains the taking of life on the battlefield, but sees no harm in crushing an innocent infant's skull and sucking its lifeless corpse out of the womb with operating-room efficiency.)

Since my days as a grunger wannabe, I have realized many things – that flannel can give you heatstroke when worn in 90 degree weather, that people will never be what I want them to be, and that Eddie Vedder & co. are hypocrites, and will never hold my respect again. It is one thing to disagree with foreign policy, and to protest the taking of life abroad – those are all legitimate aims within the boundaries of debate. But to deliberately stain your hands with the blood of millions of children in the name of me-first "choice," to treat your president with the kind of contempt and disrespect usually reserved for men with real evils to their name, like oh, I dunno, Saddam Hussein – not to mention to have the audacity and hubris to make us suffer through an album like Riot Act – makes your message fall on deaf ears.

Mr. Vedder, on the odd chance you ever read this – I think you're within your rights to protest the war on Iraq. I think you're out of your mind to say that we're "losing our free speech," as you did on stage, when you're allowed to impale a replica of your president's head onstage. (In my view, though, you are once again within your rights.)

It sends shivers down my spine, however, to think of what has happened to so many of my generation thanks to your tireless propagandizing. I can only imagine what might have happened to me or my siblings had my mother been poor, single, hopeless, and influenced by people preaching the same self-centered gospel as you. Consider me unconverted.

From a heartbroken fan,
John Adams

P.S. If you'd stop knocking Christianity, you might find what you've been looking for. I sincerely hope that you do. God bless.

2003-04-04T23:32:00.000-05:00

Done!

Well, I'm done. The new template hasn't been installed yet, but I've begun posting at the new site. Please update your favorites, and your links on your websites. If you don't link to me, shame on you. :)

In any case, the new site is right here, so take a look. I'm having a little trouble importing my Blogger archives into MT, but once I've got that fixed, you should be able to read all the way back to August without surfing back over here.

2003-04-02T23:40:00.000-05:00

Almost Done!

I've got Movable Type installed and ready to go. All I'm waiting on now is a snazzy new template to spice this thing up. If you want to see a preliminary version of v.2 dressed up in one of MT's default templates, click here. (The new domain name hasn't been validated yet.)

Update: The domain name has been validated, the account paid, the archives fixed, and right now I'm going to import the archives from this site onto that one. Now all I'm waiting on is the template.

I'm really impressed with MT so far. The new site loads really quickly, and no ads! If the template's done by then, I should start posting Monday. My one caveat with the new system? I really like the entries page on Blogger. The colors are sharper, and it makes it really easy to think. I guess the new system will grow on me. Cheers all!

2003-04-02T15:07:00.000-05:00

The Master's Pen

Sorry for the lag in posting - I am in the process of installing Movable Type on my server. Part of this process is uploading the files to the server via FTP – a maddeningly tedious affair, due to the fact that it's been raining like cats and dogs the last few days. That makes my Internet signal (I connect via satellite) drift in and out depending on the arrangement of clouds in the sky. I hope to have my site up and running on MT by the end of the week. The URL will be www.themasterspen.com

Why The Master's Pen? Well, I don't know, it just came to me. Today, I glanced over at that little picture of Snoopy and Woodstock that has been my site's mascot since December, and I had an epiphany. All this time, writing my little blog posts, thinking thoughts, and making judgments, I've been under the impression that I was Snoopy, sketching out the outline of my life as I willed it. It stroked my ego to think of myself as the larger partner in my "deal" with God, composing a masterpiece with occasional input from my trusty sidekick. But that's not the way it works. God is the one sketching and drawing and writing and composing until He has made out of me what He wants me to be. I am (meant to be) Woodstock – dwarfed in size by the Master, with occasional input here and there.

All this time I've fashioned myself the author when, in reality, I am nothing more than the writing instrument, if not anything more than the ink, for a grand composer who has a much broader storyline than the confines of my life in mind. I can only thank Him that He's allowed me to look over his shoulder, and is making me a part of His purpose for this earth. Hence, TheMastersPen.com. Hopefully up and running by Friday!

In the meantime, I'd appreciate your prayer and suggestions/comments for installing/working with MT.

2003-03-31T15:09:00.000-05:00

Not much time to post today, but I wanted to ask a question of you, the reader. I'm going to be revamping this site considerably over the next few days, but I have to decide on a cool domain name first. Any suggestions?

2003-03-28T18:10:00.000-05:00

Soulmates

I'm kind of liking the ads Blogspot's been sticking at the top of this page recently. It seems that they're content-sensitive, so that banner's been hawking a lot of end-times books to satiate those who just didn't get enough out of the Rapture series last week. One of these days, I'm going to blog about something really absurd, like monkeys with purple spots or things not to say when you're Saddam's pet weasel, and sure enough, there'll be a children's book, self-help guide or New-Ager of the week who's written a book about that very subject that "will change your life. No...seriously."

I love those little dividers. I call them "dingbats," because that's what the file name says. Peggy Noonan uses them to divide trains of thought in her column, and I guess I use them for the same purpose. Except in my case, I usually lose my train of thought, stick a dingbat in there, and start a new one. That's how I blog.

OK, on to what I wanted to blog about today.

Lately, it seems like it's all the rage to speak of "fate" in Hollywood. "Can't Hardly Wait," "Serendipity," and even Chris Rock comedy "Down to Earth" have based their plots around the existence of fate. It's as if Americans are finally realizing that the 60's, what with its "God Is Dead" refrain, left a giant gaping hole there in their soul just begging to be filled. Thus, we have an abundance of spirituality and syncretistic religion in pop culture. My generation speaks flippantly of finding their "soulmate." Everybody's fine with sleeping around, but nobody wants to settle down until they've found their soulmate.

The word "soulmate" is an attractive concept, but also one that is somewhat loaded in its implication, because it implies that two souls, no matter where they are born, are struggling against time and across the cosmos to meet each other. Watch pop culture for awhile, and see how often this idea turns up. This idea isn't necessarily a bad one; after all, Christianity affirms that God created one man for woman, and since God created Eve especially for Adam, and vice versa, it may be assumed that God does the same for us. The trouble is that in an amoral, Godless culture, people have no compunction about not waiting for the one. In typical postmodern abdication of all personal responsibility, they figure that their souls are somehow magnetized to find the right partner eventually, but in the meantime, why not bounce around aimlessly instead of waiting? It's spirituality wiped clean of a Creator. A master plan without a Master Planner. Some sort of cosmic destiny without anyone to control it. And it's astounding, if not distressing, just how many people have bought into it.

People were not created to be sexual free agents striving to get the highest tally possible before they hit their stride, meet someone's eyes across a crowded room, and live happily ever after. They are meant to live happy lives in obedience to God, putting His wishes before theirs, trusting that God will eventually bring about the one. There is nothing honorable about meeting the one if your history is crowded with almosts, maybes, and backups. There is nothing romantic about meeting the one if the one is actually number forty and one. And how are we supposed to know if the one is the one after all, if there's no Supreme One to let us know? I've known people who've gone through 3 or 4 the ones, and still counting.

Instead of pining for the one who was made just for you, fix your eyes on the One who made you just for Him. Why scour the earth for a soulmate, when the One for whom your soul was made is a breath away? Chances are, if you've been out picking and choosing from the opposite sex, that One hasn't been on your mind in a good, long while.

These people are trying to solve dating. (Link via e-mail.) A daunting task if I ever saw one. Good luck, guys. :)

2003-03-27T21:34:00.000-05:00

In Nothing We Trust

The long arm of secular education is at it again. Elementary students in Greenville, NC, had made a large sign imprinted with the words "IN GOD WE TRUST" in a show of support for U.S. military fighting overseas in Iraq. The sign was taken down, with the usual "separation of state" and "freedom of religion" defenses cited. Strangely enough, after a little Googling around, I could not find any news article pertaining to this situation, although fellow blogger and personal friend Matthew Lilley reports that the local schools have been flooded with calls from concerned parents.

The eradication of God from the public arena was kickstarted in 1963, when the Supreme Court kicked prayer out of public schools. The reasoning behind the decision was a) The Founding Fathers explicitly said that there was to be no state religion, b) Public schools reflect the "doctrine" of the state, therefore c) Public schools cannot be anything other than neutral towards matters of religion, since the state is clearly supposed to be a secular entity.

The Court, in truth, did nothing to prohibit private prayer or religious expression, and has indeed upheld in recent years the right of students to form after-school clubs that involve Bible study, prayer, or praise and worship. The thing the Court was worried about was that teachers would use their highly influential platform to indoctrinate students and proselytize their own personal convictions. So, this stupid decision most likely will be struck down by a court if the school board does not bend to parental pressure first. The Court's decision in 1963 seemed like the reasonable and egalitarian thing to do. Don't want to squish anyone else's beliefs, right?

The problem with the decision was that neutrality on issues of faith is impossible. The public education system has spent 40 years now weaving around and purposely avoiding the mention of any God so as not to offend the students. Imagine for a moment if the school system spent time avoiding every issue that may cause controversy – biology, for instance. The world's origin has been a hotly debated issue for more than a century, with students holding a diverse array of beliefs. Some believe in evolution, some theistic evolution, others the Christian idea of Creation. (Even that camp is split into long-age and young-age factions.) So, judging from the Court's decision that since not everyone thinks the same, no one should be hurt, the logical thing to do would be to skirt the issue of biology altogether, would it not? Who needs nettlesome details? I'm just as free to be a kook, and believe that we're the descendants of superhumans from planet Zortron, as you are to believe in evolution or creation.

Who's to say I'm wrong? No one cosmological hypothesis has been proven completely wrong or right. Nobody holds a monopoly on truth, and nobody can say they were there when the world began. So who's to say you're any more right than I am? Have the schools practiced that kind of fair, egalitarian approach towards science? Absolutely not. In fact, the schools have been rather intolerant in their promotion of evolution as a reliable and relatively flawless theory. So, while we're imagining that the schools avoided any mention of biology whatsoever, the logical thing for students to assume would be that it was either a bunch of false stuff, or stuff not relevant enough to life to be of any significance. What a tragedy that would be!

So, if students go to schools where the issue of God's existence is consistently ignored or treated as irrelevant, chances are, students will either assume He does not exist, or that His existence is incomprehensible (a throwback to the Dark Ages), because if He does, that would obviously bear huge social ramifications for all of us. The removal of God, the Bible, and prayer from public education do not reflect the neutral position of the state. They serve to send a silent message, year after year, that the state endorses atheism.

One particulary weak response to the plea for freedom of religion in public schools is the argument that "if one religion is let in, all will have to be let in." So what? It would not bother me in the least to have Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian clerics praying at schools. It would be a throwback to the days of Elijah, where he invited – no, encouraged – the worshipers of Baal to pray and whip themselves into a frenzy imploring their gods to come down. I think what the secularists are really afraid of is that if they let people start being free to express their religious beliefs in all corners of society, that they will have nowhere left to hide from the truth that has been gnawing at their hearts ever since they reached the age of understanding. They needn't run. There is great freedom to be found in what they despise. Indeed, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32)

Update: WNCT, a local TV station, now has an article up on the incident. However, it is the results of an online poll held by the same station that are most telling. Asked the question, "When it comes to the separation of church and state, how is the United States?", a whopping 95% said we've gone too far. A meager 3% said we need more, and 1% said we're about right.

Another Update: Greenville's local newspaper, the Daily Reflector, published a medium-sized article about the whole affair. In the face of criticism from their district's congressman, Walter Jones, Wahl-Coates Elementary School reversed its decision. Shows what a little outrage can do.

2003-03-26T21:59:00.000-05:00

Broken Hearths, Broken Hearts

The demise of the nuclear family in modern culture is a subject that could fill – and has filled – thousands of pages in print and pixels. Most people acknowledge this phenomenon – which overarches the individual issues of divorce, abortion, and homosexuality – to have had a negative effect on culture in general, and on the generations of children coming up in this brave new world in particular.

I do not know if this is a phenomenon unique to the area of the world in which I live (Haiti) or not, but it seems that all the talk of divorce ripping kids in half has had some effect upon parents with foreign commissions. In typical postmodern fashion, they come to Haiti with their careers in mind, and negotiate a kind of terse agreement with their spouses that infidelity and all other sorts of travesties will be permitted under the guise of "doing the right thing." In other words, mommy and daddy can turn the home into a mutually exclusive singles' club if they tell each other it's OK. Everyone seems to be happy with the arrangement. Everyone except the children, that is. It is really on their behalf that I am writing this.

The children are always the victims of their parents' moral indiscretions. I recall very vividly one night at youth group – a father had come to pick up his daughter. She peered over the balcony and caught a glimpse of a strange woman in the front passenger seat of their car. Realizing what had happened, she proceeded to give him the verbal lashing of his life at high decibels in front of the whole group. The venom which she spewed that night flowed freely from a deep source of enmity nurtured by her scorned mother, and nursed by her own self for many days and nights spent fatherless. Some wounds never heal.

The same girl's little sister picked up on the growing friction within the household. One afternoon, at nine years old, she'd had enough. Spying her father flirting with a woman that was not her mother on a beach trip, she proceeded to walk teary-eyed down the long dirt road back to the city. All the words meant to console had no effect. Her heart was hardened at an incredibly young age, and she will probably never heal, either.

The wounds of childhood are not limited to those with cuckolded fathers, or forced to live in homes that are nothing more than revolving doors for their fathers' various mistresses. Nay, I have seen the deepest cuts in children – especially girls – who have wanted nothing more than a close personal relationship with their fathers, and have been denied that basic right since childhood. I will never forget one Saturday – a friend of mine made the mistake of inebriating herself, since it seems that honesty flows forth most freely from drunken lips.

Sitting on the beach, I was assigned for a little while to watch her while her brother ran off to seek help. She began to ramble about sundry things, before spontaneously bursting into a flood of great, round tears. What was the cause of such deep-seated grief? Caught in between her drunken non sequiturs, a buried hurt came forth crystal clear – "I put on my brand new prom dress, and went in to show it to my dad, to ask him what he thought. I wanted him to tell me I looked beautiful. But he just muttered, 'looks nice.' He didn't even turn around, it just 'looked nice.'"

A summer at two charismatic youth camps confirmed that the greatest, deepest need in the youth of America (and the world) today is a filler for the emotional void left by broken homes or negligent parents, or both. When testimonies were called, about 3/4 of the kids that came forward admitted to relinquishing bitterness held against deadbeat dads, resentment because of their parents' divorce, and a million other combinations of such wounds.

About half of all American marriages will end in divorce. The percentage is the same inside and outside the church. The great foundation of Christian society has been severed in half, and children are feeling the strain of growing up in a society that considers it kosher for marital partners, sworn to fidelity, to experiment with other partners, and still be deigned responsible for not divorcing. The pain children feel when their parents fall out of love is not soothed by the absence of a legal document severing their marriage. It is the result of the tiny little fibers of security – being tucked in at night, eating at the same table, parents sleeping in the same bed – being ripped apart one by one. That shatters the hearth and the soul just as much as any court-ordered separation.

2003-03-25T21:19:00.000-05:00

Black Tuesday

I'm not sure if I've written about this before, but our maid's daughter lost one of her fingers in a strange incident a couple of months ago. She was out after dark with some of her friends, despite having been told not to go by her mother. The details are sketchy, but it appears that the man of the house attempted to manhandle her, and she rebuffed his advances. She was standing in the doorway, her hand on the embrasure, when he slammed the door on her finger in anger. The ring that she was wearing caught in the doorway, and the skin sloughed off. Without applying a bandage, the girl – Santhia – made her way to the church, where service was just letting out, to meet her parents. They, of course, rushed her to the hospital, where her finger was later amputated.

Since that time, Santhia and her parents have been wrestling with a corrupt medical establishment that gives false diagnoses to compensate for the hole left in their pockets by the absence of their long-overdue government paychecks. After two operations, they finally decided as a last resort to head east to the Dominican Republic, a nation which is light years ahead of their own, to seek treatment. What the Dominican doctors told them was devastating. It seems that their Haitian doctor had needlessly amputated Santhia's finger out of sheer greed. Needless to say, the tone was very dark in the house today. I greeted Angeline (our maid) today, and she muttered back a brief, melancholy greeting. I could see the lines of worry and anguish etched into her face. It is one thing to endure hardship yourself. It is quite another to watch your child suffer needlessly. They are in my prayers tonight. Could you just include them in yours, too?

This site is getting more and more traffic, and is, to be honest, poky and quite unattractive. I've been thinking for a while about upgrading to Movable Type and getting my own domain name. (It worked out quite nicely for Ben Domenech.) But I don't have much money to spend. If anyone knows of some cheap and reliable web-hosting services, or if Blogger Pro is worth the money, please e-mail me.

2003-03-24T21:20:00.000-05:00

The Gospel Is Peace

Picking up where I left off Friday...

Saturday in my world means youth group. Well, not exactly youth group. (In Haiti, it seems that every assertion is followed by a 'well, not exactly...') It's more like one missionary couple agrees to play host, another decides to teach, and voilà, instant youth group.

The history of youth leaders in our little community is long and sordid. We've been through four different youth leaders/visions for radical new youth programs already. The first let us do whatever we wanted, and drew the ire of our parents. The second – whom we loved and who professed to love us – came, saw, went back to Nebraska, and was never heard from again. The third was only here for a month, and had to deal with a bunch of depressed kids. The couple that's doing it now are likeable and open to new things, but they still have the daunting task of somehow moulding a group of 10-15 kids, representing in itself four different nationalities, speaking three native tongues, and comprising an age span of 10-18 years old.

In any case, this couple seems to be sincere and warm-hearted, and we appreciate their efforts, so we attend youth whenever they have it. As the only person in the group who can both play guitar and sing, I always get stuck with leading worship. As usual, I was asked to lead worship, and as usual, nobody but my brother and I sang. Plans were made for the umpteenth time to do bigger, grander, and more exciting things than ever a youth group dared to do before! And as usual, I disregarded them, because in the end, the only people who will ever come through on their promises are the ones that don't promise anything. Color me cynical, but so far, I have a 100% success rate. :)

In any case, let me back up a bit, to the ride to youth. Remember that slippery prominence I mentioned in the last post? We had just come down that prominence, where the road curves slightly to the right, when we saw it. My mom and brother, sitting in the front seats, saw it first. My mom gasped, so I craned my neck over my brother's shoulder, my mind ablaze with imagination. What I saw wasn't pretty.

A red Ford Explorer had apparently come whipping down that prominence, its left tires dipped down into the drainage ditch on the left side of the road, no doubt cruising at breathtaking speeds. The speeding projectile then took out a rusty sign directing motorists to "Shakespeare English School" before flipping completely over onto its roof, where it was resting when my eyes fell upon it. There was already a fairly large group of rubberneckers there, and a crane had been hooked up to the vehicle, so we didn't linger. I meant to get pictures of it, but by the time we came back, the vehicle was gone. Truly, man knows not his time to die, or to do anything else, for that matter. But in a few hours, life had carried on, and everything was gone. The road was clear and ready for another unsuspecting and ego-ridden motorist to take the plunge.

Today my family took a day of respite, and headed out to the beach. At first, I was a little disappointed, since it seemed like it would be overcast, but the sun made a good show. Dragging one of those white plastic lounge chairs out onto the sand, I slipped my headphones on, and listened to music while staring out at the horizon. The sky and sea melded into each other where the earth curved, and my vision failed. It was a slow business day for the small resort. The maître d'hôtel said that he hadn't had any visitors in two weeks – everyone's afraid to travel. There was a small French group there, but they were visitors from the local Alliance Française, not the tourists such enterprises need to survive.

Rachel Cunliffe posted some U2 lyrics, from the song "Peace on Earth." I never cared much for that song, but I downloaded it tonight. The words are powerful, even if the music is nowhere near what U2 is capable of. In the same post, Rachel posted a picture of a little girl lying in a Baghdad hospital, a piece of shrapnel embedded in her spine. You never realize how precious peace is until it's yanked away from you. Indeed, it was kind of ironic that I ended up downloading the wrong version of "Peace on Earth" – I got the "WTC mix," in which the song is played in the background to quotes taken from people during the September 11 tragedy.

I never really gleaned much consolation from anything U2 has written. Much of their work is just too overtly political to be as winsome as Bono apparently intends it to be. However, I do remember some lyrics from the Smalltown Poets' "The Gospel Is Peace."

Pour the oil on troubled waters
Come around lay down arms
Rest between the pure in heart and persecuted
Sound alarms to make calm
Mend the fence convincing some
The Spirit's sense of mercy
Live the Gospel and the Gospel is His peace

Heal the breach and reach out
With the olive branch, allay fear
Live the seventh blessing and expect
To be an heir of God
Meet halfway to pacify
The longing with an answer
Live the Gospel and the Gospel is His peace

For a kiss from Holiness
Discovering the dove lights only when our hearts agree
There is reverence in this
The offering of heart's ease for a spiritual wave of peace

Whatever is in store for this world, one thing all Christians can agree to pray for is that the Gospel will penetrate hardened soil everywhere. No social program, "great idea," or diplomatic solution can replace it. Pray for the Gospel to take root in a society, and you will simultaneously be praying for peace, because the Gospel is peace. Peace in its purest state is the Gospel, as well. Preach the Gospel, and peace will follow.

2003-03-21T22:51:00.000-05:00

La vie est encore belle

Today was a tiring day. I woke up unrefreshed and exhausted, presumably because I spent most of last night finishing The Comedians (excellent book, I daresay). I tried to do school, but ended up falling asleep, and got absolutely nothing done. I woke up at noon, with a page full of math problems still waiting to be filled in in front of me, sticky with perspiration, my head still pounding. I don't know what it is about napping in Haiti - I always wake up with a headache and the dry taste of tepid saliva clinging to the roof and walls of my mouth.

Friday is lady's prayer meeting, so I drove my mom a few miles outside the city, where she joins with the other missionary hens to pray. The little red Nissan pickup behaved as horribly as ever, cutting off and peeling out (the tires are incredibly bald) and reeking of stale air and gasoline. There is a little prominence in the mountain road that leads to my house that dips down rather steeply. It was then that I discovered I no longer had reliable brakes. Throwing the vehicle into first, the tires screeched and locked and finally gripped onto the earthen surface of la route Bel Air. Arriving safely at the bottom of the hill, I assayed to pump the brake pedal into submission. After three or four pumps, the resistance was built up, and I could safely continue. My mom and brother, sitting right next to me, and preoccupied with a combination of their own thoughts and the ungodly noise of the little engine that couldn't, never noticed a thing.

I dropped said family members off at the meeting, and drove off to buy gas. Halfway down the "road," which is no more than a glorified cattle path, I pulled over to allow oncoming traffic to make its way by. I was too considerate - the pickup's front tires lodged in a small ditch, and its back tires were too bald to power me back out. Another missionary ended up rescuing me, pulling me out with his pickup, and I continued on to the gas station. My mom had kindly endowed me with $12 (Haitian), and I went on to the Elf (station d'essence, aka gas station), where I had to pay for the fuel out of my own pocket. Forty dollars, and the needle indulged me only a little, sojourning from just west of the 1/4-full mark to just east. Darn government and its retrogressive economic policies. Pulling back onto the main highway, a black Toyota 4-Runner suddenly whipped left into the station without so much as a signal. Muttering loudly to myself, I shook my head in amazement of the stupidity of the driver's actions, the stupidity of other drivers in general, and finally the grace of God at the unnaturally quick response of my brakes at the urging of my frantic foot.

The only reason I go to ladies' meeting is to hang out with the few missionary kids left in this little city, the sum of whom can easily be counted on both hands. A young Canadian boy is going through the jurassic stage of his adolescence, and annoyed me mightily by squirting the contents of a Windex bottle in my direction. I seized the bottle and returned the favor, but, true to his sex, his pride hasn't yet caught up with his impudence. He returned my amicable gestures with a nice wallop from a rather heavy plastic bottle he had apparently concealed in his right hand. I never saw it coming, and for the first time since childhood romps around the parents' bedroom that usually ended in bumped noggins, I experienced that brief shot of electricity, before being jolted back to my senses by the sound of his laughing.

Laughter! Such insolence must be not allowed, my wounded ego reasoned. Clutching my spray bottle, I proceeded to batter the poor sap over the head. As luck would have it, the top came off, and the contents gushed out over the bed. To make matters worse, the battering hadn't had the desired effect. He was still healthy, and now I felt guilty. When will I ever learn to turn the other cheek?

I drove home, my shifting and footwork a choreography of coaxing a performance out of the brakes, swerving to miss cars that stopped abruptly in the middle of the street, and missing potholes. Driving kept my mind on the surrounding madness, and off the nice little shiner on the left side of my cranium. It was all I could ask for. Back home, I flipped on the TV, and saw what looked like ten square blocks of Baghdad ablaze. Sheesh, who wants to see that? Flip on the computer - a small, cloying window pops out of nowhere THE MOST-WATCHED WAR COVERAGE ON THE WEB! Sigh. An online friend IMs me. Somehow the conversation gravitates to war - at first, it's the usual anti-war rhetoric. Bush is selfish. The world is damned. Etcetera, ad infinitum. "Don't go there, I will talk too much," is the gist of what the other is saying. I've heard enough, and I gladly oblige. I'm tired of war. I am reminded of a line from The Comedians: "There were no heights and no abysses in my world – I saw myself on a great plain, walking and walking on the interminable flats." Again, I sigh.

Fatigue, failure, violence, guilt, remorse, incompetence, fear, gratefulness, nostalgia, and weariness. I was musing over this strange, dissonant melody that composed my day, when my mom called me over to the computer, her voice tinged with excitement. I'd been accepted into college. The worries of the present immediately gave way to anticipation of the future. Today was a tiring, nettlesome day. But tomorrow is the nascency of the future. I have walked the interminable flats, the end is nigh, but la vie est encore belle. It's all I can ask for.

2003-03-20T22:01:00.000-05:00

Puerile Impulses

The website that did my traffic management, Blogpatrol, has abruptly called it quits. I liked Blogpatrol because of its simple layout and no-brainer site statistics. The one I'm using now, CQ Counter, is much more thorough and complex. Josh Claybourn uses it, so I figured I'd give it a go. (The ones Blogpatrol referred me to mostly have questionable links and advertisements for "adult toys" on their homepages.)

I've been wondering lately if I'm becoming more or less mature with the passing of time. During my early and mid-teen years, I shunned and hated punk rock of any kind. Those were the days when Blink 182 was one of the hottest bands on the planet, and "All The Small Things" was rocketing up the charts. I couldn't stand the simplicity, the repetition, the shallow topics pursued. Now I've downloaded a few songs, and I can't stop listening. They're on constant repeat in Winamp whenever I'm on the computer (which is way, way, way too much).

They say that children have a golden period of happiness where all is bliss, and then they grow up and realize everything sucks and morph into complex, brooding adults in constant need of affirmation and counseling. I'm going the other way - when I was 14, I listened to Nirvana, wore a certain set of clothes, despised "shallow" people, and was the most miserable creature alive. Now I'm 18, listen to once-reviled Blink 182, wear the first thing I see in my drawer, have become one of those "shallow" people, and am pretty happy-go-lucky and ambivalent about almost everything. Life is weird.

2003-03-19T23:43:00.000-05:00

Chosen

On Wednesday, March 19, the second Gulf War was launched. This is the moment we've been hearing about for months. The moment the hawks are hailing as the beginning of Iraqi freedom, and the peaceniks are bemoaning as the beginning of, well, war. Let's have a moment of prayer for the troops as well as the innocents who are caught in between the world's most powerful military, and the Middle East's most draconian dictator.

I watched the movie Schindler's List today. It's 10 years old, but this was the first time I'd ever seen it. In the film, of course, Oskar Schindler employs Jews at his factory, saving their lives from concentration camps. It begins as a simple ploy to make money. (The Jews cost less to employ than the Poles.) Schindler eventually grows a conscience, to the point of sacrificing his fortune for every last human life he can save. He puts his life on the line for the people he once despised. Near the end of the film, as "his people" are thanking him for his good deeds, a line from the Jewish Talmud is quoted:

"He who saves one life saves the world entire."

This so convicts Schindler that he looks at his car and his ring, astonished at the remainders of his own greed. "That could have bought 20 people," he moans, pointing to the automobile. "This," he cries, removing a gold ring from his finger, "This was worth one person. One person that I could have saved." Eleven hundred others converge on Schindler to embrace him, and thank him for saving them. Others might have been saved, but they were the chosen ones. They went on to have lives, spouses, and children, thanks to Schindler.

Flash forward 58 years to an era of smart bombs and high-tech everything, and we're still stuck with the same moral dilemma. Are we right in risking lives through diplomacy to prevent the taking of Iraqi lives? Or would we be right in risking Iraqi civilians to save many more Iraqi civilians? It seems to me that people are going to die either way. That method which can most expediently save life, and guarantee a better quality of life for all sides must be chosen. I hate to say it, but that way seems to be war. You can say what you will about the tragic loss of civilian life due to our bombs, and you'd probably be right. But when those holed up in prisons, cowering in their homes, and wasting away in exile are able to feel the sunlight of their homeland burning warm on their faces again, they will have only one thought running through their minds: "We are the chosen ones. We will go on to have lives, spouses, and children, thanks to Bush. We don't know why God has chosen to spare us and not others, but He has, and that's all that matters." (OK, so that's several thoughts. Bear with me.)

Years from now, when the Iraqi people finally have their stories told to the world, I don't think there will be too many tears shed for Saddam Hussein. None of the survivors of Auschwitz said, "Oh, that the Americans had not ruined my hometown fighting Hitler." They were thankful to be alive, and they would rather have had their relatives die in American bombing raids than in Hitler's death camps. I think the people of Iraq—already the forgotten victims of this conflict—will feel the same way. They will not be lucky to be alive. They will have been chosen, from before time, and that is all that will matter.

2003-03-19T14:26:00.000-05:00

Finally!

Ben's response, for some reason, wouldn't post to Blogger, so I created a Xanga account, and published it there. Click here to read it. (Please ignore the HTML tags, I was too lazy to go back and delete them.)

2003-03-18T14:04:00.000-05:00

Amillennialism

I never intended for the discussion to come this far, but apparently the Rapture and eschatology (the study of the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy) are hot topics. In the first post, published last Thursday, I expressed my doubts about the pre-tribulational Rapture theory that is currently all the rage in evangelical circles. The second post, published yesterday, showed why dispensationalism bases its entire view of the Rapture on incorrect presuppositions of God's ultimate plan. From what I have read in the comments box, it seems that a few people are wondering, "If you don't believe this and this and this like we do, then what do you believe?" Good question. I will attempt to answer it as clearly and explicitly as I know how in this post.

First, a quick summary of the main eschatological camps in Christian theology is in order.

Premillennialism

Premillennialism is defined by Atomica as "the belief that that the Second Coming of Jesus will immediately precede the millennium." Dispensationalism falls entirely within this camp, although not all premillennialists are dispensationalists. Dispensationalism, in my view, is an erroneous theory, since it starts with the biblically indefensible premise that God has more than one people. I found a website that says premillennialism contradicts the Bible in 14 ways. I haven't read it yet, so judge for yourself.

Premillennialists usually believe that the Rapture is imminent, so their strength is evangelism. They have become the dominant view in American eschatology by publishing thousands of books, videos, and magazines declaring Christ's imminent return.

Postmillennialism

Postmillennialism is defined as "the doctrine that Jesus's Second Coming will follow the millennium." Postmillennialists are generally more optimistic than the premillennialists, who view the Rapture and the ensuing time of Tribulation as foreboding. Postmillennialists believe that Christianity will "conquer the earth" and set up a golden age of humanity—the Millennium—before Christ's return. Where the Tribulation fits into postmillennial eschatology, I am not sure, but suffice it to say that postmillennialists are strong on government. America's Founding Fathers were primarily postmillennial in their outlook on the world, and so they labored to create through the government an environment conducive to the Millennium.

Amillennialism

Also known as nonmillennialism, this theory was introduced by St. Augustine, and is defined by BasicTheology.com as "the belief that the millennial kingdom is indeterminate in length and fulfilled by Christ currently ruling in heaven." Augustine took the Millennium literally, but amillennialists changed their minds when Christ did not return in 1000 A.D. John Calvin and Martin Luther were famous amillennialists. Indeed, the theory was a central part of the Reformation and its creeds. The Catholic church is also amillennial due to Augustine's influence.

If one is honest, one will admit that there are holes in every one of these theories. (Dispensationalism, a subset of premillennialism, sinks itself due to its false assumptions.) I do not believe that any one group of Christians has the full light on events that have not yet happened. There are many ways of reading the Bible, and that is why I am not dogmatic about being amillennial. I do, however, believe that amillennialism has the least amount of holes. Therefore, it is the position that I will assume and try to defend.

According to BasicTheology.com, "Amillennialists use a combination of literal and figurative hermeneutics. They tend to interpret much of prophecy figuratively. They believe that a prophecy cannot be fully understood until its fulfillment, which is why we should not be quick to affirm a literal 1000 year earthly kingdom."

Now, for amillennialism to be right, one has to believe that the Bible cannot always be read literally. (Dispensationalism takes the opposite tack, and tries to append a literal meaning to everything in the Bible.) Can the Bible always be read literally? Let's take a look, courtesy of David L. White:

[Prominent dispensationalist theologian Charles Ryrie] puts it this way, "Consistently literal, or plain, interpretation indicates a dispensational approach to the interpretation of Scripture....To be sure, literal/historical/grammatical interpretation is not the sole possession or practice of dispensationalists, but the consistent use of it in all areas of biblical interpretation is" (Ryrie, p.40). Elsewhere he reiterates this claim, "What, then, is the difference between the dispensationalist's use of this hermeneutical principle and the nondispensationalist's? The difference lies in the dispensationalist's claim to use the normal principle of interpretation consistently in all his study of the Bible" (Ryrie, p.82, italics are Ryrie's). It is my intention in this section briefly to challenge this assertion.

The first thing I would like to point out is that it isn't true. Dispensationalists have not consistently applied this principle; their application has been selective. I won't labor this point except to make three brief comments. First I would direct you to Hoekema's discussion of Hoyt's inconsistencies in Clouse, pp.105-107.

Secondly, I recall a particular dispensational interpretation of Rev.4:1. In this passage a voice speaks to John and says, "Come up here..." The author I was reading saw this as representative of the rapture of the church; hardly a literal or normal interpretation! (Incidentally, Walvoord--to his credit--rejects this interpretation.)

Thirdly, I would like to quote from Blaising and Bock. In their book Progressive Dispensationalism, Blaising says, "When we read Ryrie's claim that consistently 'clear, plain, normal' hermeneutics is the essence of dispensationalism, we have to interpret the remark historically. It may have been true as an ideal or goal for revised dispensationalism, but the statement is not true as a comprehensive principle inclusive of classical dispensationalism....The remark is not true of revised dispensationalism's actual practice...although it did function as a stated goal" (pp.36-37).

This book has much to say about the development of dispensationalism's hermeneutic from the "classical" approach up to the current "progressive" approach. A key point that one ought not to miss is that it has never truly been consistently literal.

Having suggested that dispensationalists are selective in applying their alleged interpretive method, I'll now move to a problem I see in Ryrie's argumentation for this method. He says, "A...reason why dispensationalists believe in the literal principle is a biblical one: the prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the first coming of Christ--His birth, His rearing, His ministry, His death, His resurrection--were all fulfilled literally. This argues strongly for the literal method" (Ryrie, p.81). It is my contention that this line of reasoning assumes the very point to be proven and is false.

The point at issue here is whether or not some OT prophecies are fulfilled in non-literal ways in the NT. Ryrie and other dispensationalists--seeing that some prophecies are fulfilled literally--automatically assume that the prophecies that have not been literally fulfilled refer to the second coming. But, Ryrie must prove that only the literally fulfilled prophecies--and no others--refer to Christ's first coming. Rather than offer this proof, Ryrie simply assumes this point and argues from it.

To see that Ryrie's assertion is false all we need to do is to consider some passages that demonstrate that the NT does not always interpret OT prophecy in a literal way. The first that comes to mind is Hosea11:1 "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." This oracle goes on to describe God's love for Israel, their apostasy, and God's continuing love for them. Applying a strictly literal method of interpretation to this passage would lead one to conclude that there is no reference here to any event in Christ's life, rather it is simply referring to Israel's exodus from Egypt. Yet, Matt.2:15 applies this verse to Joseph's, Mary's and Christ's flight to Egypt. So here we have a prophetic section of the OT that an apostle applies to the life of Christ in a non-literal fashion, contrary to Ryrie's assertion.

Another such passage immediately confronts us in Matt.2:17-18 which sees Herod's murder of infant boys as a fulfillment of Jer.31:15. The Jeremiah passage--set within a context of messianic deliverance--is a picture of Rachel weeping for the Israelites who have gone into exile. Again, we have something less than a strictly literal fulfillment in view here.

No doubt much can be said about these two passages (and in fact has been; see the standard commentaries such as Gundry, Carson, Hagner) to reconcile the interpretive difficulties many have here. But the point stands that the OT prefigures events in Christ's life in non-literal ways. So Ryrie's contention that "the prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the first coming of Christ--His birth, His rearing, His ministry, His death, His resurrection--were all fulfilled literally" simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

I will finish off this all too brief section with yet another citation from Matthew; Matt.1:22-23 which cites Is.7:14 as being fulfilled in the virgin birth of Christ and His designation as Immanuel. This passage has stirred up much controversy for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons has to do with Matthew's use of the very specific Greek word parthenos (virgin) found in the LXX which translates the more general Hebrew term `almah (maiden). I'll not enter into that part of the debate here. Rather I want to call attention to the contextual literal fulfillment of Is.7:14 within Isaiah itself.

The passage has to do with a sign God would give to Ahaz in connection with an attack against Jerusalem by a coalition of Syro-Ephraimite forces. The sign was to indicate that this coalition would not succeed (7:7-10). Ahaz refuses (v.12). Isaiah says God will give the sign anyways (Is.7:14-17), "The virgin ["maiden" in Hebrew] will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel. He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right. But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah--he will bring the king of Assyria."

The oracle continues with a further description of God calling Assyria and events to follow. Now notice Is.8:2-4, "Then I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. And the Lord said to me. 'Name him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. Before the boy knows how to say 'My father' or 'My mother,' the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off by the king of Assyria.'"

It is interesting to stop here and notice that already we have the prophecy literally fulfilled within Isaiah itself. The maiden (Isaiah's wife) has conceived and given birth to a son and before this son will become very old, Damascus and Samaria will be defeated by Assyria. In other words, the son born to Isaiah and his wife is the literal fulfillment of the Immanuel prophecy of 7:14.

There are further clues that this is so. Immediately after the passage I just cited, Isaiah describes Assyria's coming dominance (8:5-10). In two places he relates this to the Immanuel prophecy of 7:14 by using the term "Immanuel" (8:8 & 8:10, [note that both the NIV and the NASB transliterate it as "Immanuel" in v.8 and translate it as "God is with us" in v.10, the expression is "Immanuel" in both places in Hebrew]). Also note 8:18 where Isaiah refers to himself and his sons as signs and symbols in Israel, etc.; remember what started this, God offering a sign to Ahaz.

Now my point in all this is to point out that the literal fulfillment of this Immanuel prophecy took place in Isaiah's own day with his own son. As we all know, in chapter 9 Isaiah goes on to prophesy the birth of another child. This son will reign on David's throne (9:7) and will have various titles of deity (9:6). As I see it, the Immanuel prophecy refers to Isaiah's own son in its literal sense and in a non-literal sense to this later son described in chapter 9 (note that this theme continues in chapter 11 as well). Matthew, it seems to me, understood this and applies this passage (7:14) to Christ, even though it is not a strictly literal fulfillment. Again Ryrie's position crumbles under the weight of contrary evidence and we haven't even gotten past the second chapter of Matthew!

I said that was to be my last example (these examples are just way too easy to find), but the author of Hebrews also uses Is.8:18 in a non-literal way. Note Heb.2:13 where the author applies this verse, not to Isaiah and his literal children, but to Christ and His children, i.e. believers.

Ryrie's assertion that the literal fulfillment of OT prophecy in the NT indicates that all prophecy is to be interpreted literally simply does not stand up. It does not even begin to explain the evidence of the text; so we must abandon it along with the theological system that is built upon it.

It seems to me that rather than insist on a consistent application of a literal hermeneutic (something the dispensationalist himself does not do) we should enunciate some principles of interpretation that better reflect the evidence of the New Testament. As a preface let me say that I do affirm literal interpretation. In using this term I am contrasting the literal method with the allegorical method of the middle ages. But this method is not a consistently literal method as dispensationalism claims for itself.

So, not all passages can be read literally. Critics of amillennialism have correctly brought the fact up that if not all passages are to be taken literally, the Bible becomes a guessing game which can be made to say pretty much anything. White suggests a system known as dominical/apostolic interpretation:

By [dominical/apostolic interpretation] I mean that Jesus Christ and the Apostles are to be our authorities in biblical interpretation. If they say something is fulfilled, then it is fulfilled even though it may not be strictly literal. When they give us an interpretation of something, we are duty bound to accept their interpretation.

For example, Jesus identifies John the Baptist as the fulfillment of Mal.3:1 and as the Elijah who was to come (Matt.11:10, 14; the latter an allusion to Mal.4:5; see also Matt.17:10-12 [I can't help pointing out that once again we have a less than strictly literal fulfillment of OT prophecy.]). It seems pretty straightforward, the OT predicts the coming of Elijah; Jesus says John the Baptist is the predicted Elijah. Or in the words of Luke, John came "in the spirit and power of Elijah" (Lk.1:17). We are to accept our Lord's interpretation and not to expect another coming of literal Elijah.

Seems like a good plan to me. If Scripture cannot always be interpreted literally, then it makes sense to call fulfilled what Christ and His Apostles have called fulfilled. From here we can explore the amillennial doctrines concerning the Millennium and the Tribulation. Premillennialists, and therefore by default dispensationalists, argue that the Millennium is a literal 1,000-year period that will follow the rapture and tribulation. Here's what Kim Riddlebarger, a member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals had to say about it:

First, the "last days" began with the coming of Christ and will continue until Christ returns (Acts 2:17; Heb 1:2). This period of time, "this age," is destined to pass away, and is characterized by war, famine, environmental distress, persecution and even the martyrdom of God's people (Rv 20:46). While there is every likelihood that this distress will increase in the period immediately before the return of Christ, no one knows the day or the hour of our Lord's return. Further, Jesus' birth pain imagery most likely means that we should expect alternating periods of peace and intensifying evil that will cause many to unduly speculate about the immanent return of Christ. These are sharp, stabbing birth pains, but not they are not the birth itself. Therefore, our preoccupation should not be with signs of the end, but instead we must be consumed with the task assigned to the church in the last days: the proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom.

Second, the return of Christ clearly marks an end to the temporal nature of life as we know it- "this present evil age." At his return, Jesus will raise the believing dead, judge all men, and send the wicked into the fires of Hell. The elements of this Earth burn up and the new heavens and earth will be established. This scenario completely destroys much of contemporary evangelical prophetic speculation, which advocates a "secret" coming of Christ and the "rapture" of believers (and what text can be adduced to argue that Jesus comes back secretly?) a full seven years before the final judgement at Christ's bodily return. Does Jesus come back once or twice, with one of them being secret? Such speculation is nonsense when viewed in light of the clear gospel texts cited above, which universally describe the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead and the judgement of believers and unbelievers as parts of one event. This senario also destroys the idea of a future earthly millennial reign of Christ after he returns in judgement. Since this supposed thousandyear reign occurs after the eternal destiny of all men and women is forever settled in the judgement, the very thought of Jesus ruling over a world wherein there are still men and women in natural bodies repopulating the Earth is simply not supported by clear texts (remember the one about no marriage?).

If the millennial reign described in Revelation 20 is actually referring to a future period of time, another even more significant problem arises. At the end of the one thousand years, John tells us that there is a great apostasy (a second fall if you will) while Jesus is ruling the nations with the rod of iron (Rv 20:7-10). This sounds much more like something that would happen in this age, and when viewed against (2 Thes 2:1-12) an often overlooked parallel passage where a great apostasy occurs before the man of sin is revealed (v. 3), the case for a present millennial age becomes even stronger. Since there can be no people on earth in natural bodies after the judgment (which occurs when Christ comes back according to the clear texts we have seen above), these apostates can only be those same believers that Jesus raised from the dead at his return. In other words, if premillennialism is correct, then it is glorified saints follow Satan and revolt against Christ! But are we really to believe that evil is not finally conquered at Christ's return-even where Jesus is physically reigning and judgement has already occurred? Of course not, and this is self-evidently refuted by the analogy of faith, which expressly tells us that Jesus will destroy all of his enemies and hand the kingdoms of the world over to his Father (1 Cor 15:24) at his second coming. On closer investigation, we see that the events in Revelation 20 do not take place on the Earth at all, for the thrones described in that passage are in heaven, and not on the Earth. Furthermore, in a book such as Revelation, where numbers are always used symbolically, it makes much more sense to argue that the one thousand years are symbolic of the period of time between the first and second comings of Christ, rather than see them as a literal future period with a second fall during Jesus' kingly rule after the judgment. Thus the existence of evil and the supposed apostasy of glorified believers in a future millennial age poses a very difficult problem for all forms of premillennialism.

Third, and most importantly, the two-age model places its entire focus upon Jesus Christ and his second coming and not on idle speculation regarding world events. In the classical Protestant model, the next event on the prophetic calendar is the return of Jesus Christ to Earth. In fact, Jesus may even return before you finish reading this article! The eschatological cry of Protestant orthodoxy has always been, "Maranatha Come quickly Lord Jesus!" As with many other things in life the simplest approach may be the best. The two-age model is clear, biblical, and Christ centered. It refuses to allow undue speculation about current events to overturn the clear teaching of Scripture. It is a shame that it has been lost to so many Christians.

Therefore, if a) the Bible cannot always be read literally, and b) it makes more sense to believe that the Millennium is a non-literal period, then the two major points we still have to disprove are the idea of a 7-year Tribulation and the pre-tribulational Rapture. Here's what Dr. J. Rodman Williams had to say on CBN.com's theology section. (CBN, ironically, is run by Pat Robertson, a man with premillennial leanings.)

According to the New Testament, Christians will go through tribulation. Tribulation (Greek: thlipsis) is the lot of all true believers. For example, see John 16:33-"In this world you have tribulation"; Romans 5:3-"We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance"; Revelation 1:9-"I, John, your brother and fellow-partaker in the tribulation." The word "tribulation" is used three times in Matthew 24: verse 9-"Then they will deliver you up to tribulation"-which unmistakably refers to tribulation throughout history; verses 21-22-"Then there will a great tribulation" so intense that "unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short"; verses 29-30-"But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened…the Son of man coming on the clouds." It is apparent from this sequence in Matthew that Christians (the elect) will go through tribulation, including "great tribulation" (often called "the Tribulation"), just before Christ returns. There is no place in these verses for a pre-tribulation rapture of Christians. (See Renewal Theology, 3: pages 360-70, on the "Great Tribulation.")

In a comment to my last post, "CT" mistakenly equated "tribulation" with "punishment." She was correct in assuming Christians will not bear the brunt of God's wrath, as Romans 5:9 indicates. ("Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!") We are saved from God's wrath through Jesus' blood, not a rapture. That indicates to me (I could be wrong) that the wrath being spoken of is God's final judgment of the unbelieving wicked. We are spared from God's wrath by Jesus' blood, but we are not spared from tribulation. First Thessalonians 5:9-10 further supports my belief:

9For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. 10He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

This most likely refers to God's final judgment on the unbelieving wicked. There is no reference to a "Great Tribulation." One site I ran across supported this view from another angle:

1 Thessalonians 5:9 contains ample evidence for the view that "wrath" doesn't refer to the great tribulation. Paul is speaking directly to the church in Thessalanica in 51 A.D. and says to them that they will not suffer wrath. But they were not in the great tribulation (and never would be) so this verse would have no application for them unless they understood it to mean final judgment ...

First Thessalonians 2:16 ("In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.") is fatal to the premillennial idea that the wrath of God is the great tribulation. Paul says that the wrath of God has finally come upon the ungodly Jews who killed Jesus and persecuted the true church. Therefore, this word "wrath" is not equal to the great tribulation of the Premillennialists ...

Note that the "wrath" is a result of their "heaping up their sins to the limit" which is an ongoing occurrence. Paul is merely saying that God will even judge the sins of Jews. They are not exempt from judgment based on national identity but must receive salvation the same way as everybody else -- through faith in Christ.

I am getting tired, and would post many more ideas about the Rapture, but I need to get this off before the day is over. There are three main problems with the idea of pre-tribulational Rapture:

Proponents of the Rapture often read too much into Biblical passages.

The Bible doesn't really support the Rapture in its clearest sense.

The rapture is part of premillennialism which also has its problems.

To summarize, I do not believe in a Rapture divorced from the return of Jesus Christ. When Jesus comes back, the dead will be raised, and will be judged together with the living (Jn. 28-29). The righteous will be "raptured" or more specifically "caught away" (1 Th. 4:16-17) to meet with Christ in the sky. All of this will take place within the same short timeframe. The millennium, the tribulation, and the wrath of God are moot issues, since the first two have been happening during the entirety of the church age, and since the third is not specifically applicable to the end of time. That is amillennialism, so far as I understand it.

Please understand that my opinion is still incomplete. I have much more reading, study, and prayer to do before my grasp of the issue is complete. The point of this series was not so much to convince you of the rightness of my position, but to increase the hunger for knowledge in you, the reader. Please conduct your own research, and hold an open mind to other theories. (One aside: Please keep in mind that people who fall into a different school of eschatological belief as you are not heretics, and should not be branded or treated as such.)

Now, in the tradition of 1 Thessalonians 5:21, "Test everything. Hold on to the good." Take this article apart. Ben's will be up tomorrow.

Resources
Covenant Theology and Amillennialism
Reformed Christian Eschatology
Links to Reformed Theology
End Time Prophecy

2003-03-17T13:51:00.000-05:00

The Rapture — Part Deux

Well, in the last post, I managed to stir up a hornet's nest of people who either agree or disagree with my position on the Rapture. First off, a few things need to be clarified about my own position, as many questions were raised:

I believe in the Second Coming of Christ Jesus.

I believe in the "catching away" of the saints as described in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17. That means that I believe that those who are in Christ will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. You can believe that without believing in a pre-tribulational Rapture.

I do not believe that the Rapture, as depicted in dispensationalist books, will actually occur.

Why not? Well, I've been doing a little reading on the subject, and to get the whole scope of the doctrine, we have to "zoom out," and take ask ourselves the question, "What is dispensationalism?" Once we have answered that question, we can move on to an even bigger one, "Why is a pre-tribulational Rapture necessary?"

According to Keith A. Mathison's book, Dispensationalism: Rightly Dividing the People of God?:

``Dispensationalism may be defined as that system of theology which sees a fundamental distinction between Israel and the church. This distinction is the cornerstone of dispensational theology. Other doctrines, [like the pre-tribulational Rapture] which are often considered to be distinctly dispensational, rest upon this doctrine of the church. With this definition of the church in mind, much of the confusion that often surrounds this topic may be avoided."

So what does this mean? Back to Mathison:

Though the dispensational doctrine of the church is complex, its essential features can be summarized under seven propositions:

1. God has two distinct programs in history, one for Israel and one for the church.

2. The church does not fulfill or take over any of Israel's promises or purposes.

3. The church age is a "mystery," and thus no Old Testament prophets foresaw it.

4. The present church age is a "parenthesis" or "intercalation" during which God has temporarily suspended His primary purpose with Israel.

5. The church age began at Pentecost and will end at the pretribulation rapture of the church before Christ's Second Coming.

6. The church, or body of Christ, consists only of those believers saved between Pentecost and the rapture.

7. The church as the body of Christ, therefore, does not include Old Testament believers.

The author goes on to refute these points. As I do not have the time or the will to include these refutations in this post, I recommend you purchase the book. However, what I see in these seven propositions is this: The essence of dispensationalism boils to one question—How many peoples does God have? The dispensationalist is forced to say two or even three. (OT Israel, the Church, and the post-tribulational remnant.) Is this Scriptural?

Romans 11:11-24 describes the salvation of the Gentiles as the ingrafting of wild olive branches into a single olive tree. Some of the natural branches (unbelieving Jews) were cut off, and others (believing Gentiles) were grafted in, but there is only one olive tree. God has only one people. The dispensationalist view maintains that Christ will rapture all the "spiritual" Christians first, then the carnal Christians as well as the unsaved will have to endure a 7-year tribulation (the length varies), after which Christ will return again and set up His kingdom on earth, where He will rule from natural Israel. Now do you see why the dispensationalists' view of the end is suspect? The supreme irony of this belief system is that Abraham, an Old Testament figure, according to the dispensationalists is not even a member of the body of Christ of which he is natural progenitor and patriarch. Think about that for a moment.

On to the Rapture

The entire doctrine of pretribulationism rests on the shoulders of that faulty theory we just looked at—the dispensational doctrine of the church. According to Mathison's book, "John Walvoord, the most influential and best-known defender of the pretribulational rapture, openly admits that this doctrine is entirely inferential ... Walvoord himself admits that if the church includes the saints of all ages, then it is 'self-evident' that the church will go through the Tribulation. He also allows that even if the dispensational definition of the church is true, pretribulationism is only 'possible' or at best 'probable.' That is not a very strong foundation for a doctrine considered vital to dispensationalism. And since the dispensational definition of the church is biblically indefensible, it is no foundation at all. The person who believes in the pretribulational rapture needs to wrestle with this question: Why believe in a doctrine that originated in 1830 [it was not endorsed by any church figures or leaders before this time] and is not based on any clear teaching of the Bible, but instead rests on another doctrine that is plainly unscriptural?

Author Gary DeMar, who in his book Last Days Madness titles an entire chapter "No Evidence for a Rapture," shows how dispensationalist thought is based on loose reasoning:

John Walvoord, an ardent believer in the pre-tribulation rapture, imports an already-constructed pre-tribulational rapture theory into texts that say nothing about the church being taken to heaven. His exposition of Revelation 4:1 is evidence of this:

``It is clear from the context that this is not an explicit reference to the Rapture of the church, as John was not actually translated [raptured]; in fact he was still in his natural body of Patmos. He was translated into scenes of heaven only temporarily. Though there is no authority for connecting the Rapture with this expression, there does seem to be a typical representation of the order of events, namely, the church age first, then the Rapture, then the church in heaven."

If one takes Walvoord's position, then Rosenthal [an ex-dispensationalist] is correct: There is no verse that explicitly teaches this doctrine! All of the texts used to support the rapture theory presuppose the validity of the theory, a theory that does not have a single text to support it. The doctrine has been constructed before texts have been evaluated.

This unsound approach to Bible interpretation has done little to dissuade the adherents of the various rapture theories. Grant R. Jeffrey, for example, begins with Revelation 4:1 as one of the "five definitive indications supporting the pretribulation Rapture." Here's how the argument goes for those who see the rapture of the church in this verse:

The voice that John heard was "like the sound of a trumpet speaking."

When Jesus returns to rapture His church, He will do so "with the trumpet of God." (1 Thess. 4:16)

Since a trumpet is used just prior to the rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, we should assume that a rapture is in view when "a door [is] standing open in heaven," presumably to receive the raptured church (Rev. 4:1-2).

The church is no longer mentioned in the Book of Revelation; therefore, the church must have been raptured.

John's being directed to "Come up here" is a depiction of this rapture in the same way that the church will be "caught up" at the time of the pre-tribulational rapture. Jeffrey writes, "When John was 'in the Spirit'... he was 'Raptured up' to Heaven...."

This is absurd exegesis to be sure, but it is standard dispensational teaching.

So, in this post, we have seen that a) dispensationalism has no historical precedent, b) dispensationalism rests on a faulty view of the church and natural Israel, c) the dispensationalist view of the pre-tribulationist Rapture has no solid Biblical foundation. This post has been spent dismantling the premillenialist, and more specifically, the dispensationalist view of the end of the world. I realize that I have as yet offered no viable alternative. Tomorrow, I will attempt to delve into my own beliefs with a critical eye. Until then, let us remember the wise words of Augustine, "In essentials unity… in non-essentials liberty… and in all things charity."

2003-03-13T16:40:00.000-05:00

The Rapture

I am going to make a simple, and to some, startling statement. I do not believe in the Rapture. Please keep in mind that I fully believe in the return of Jesus Christ. I also believe that the goats will be separated from the sheep, etc. But I don't believe in the Rapture.

I am certainly open to discussion—I don't really have my facts together on my position, and I know many excellent Christians who believe in it wholeheartedly. But after seeing ridiculous films like The Omega Code, and hearing all the ballyhoo over book series like Left Behind, I am thoroughly unconvinced. Why? Christians who buy into this theory of all the good Christians suddenly disappearing in the blink of an eye tend to be escapists, at least from my own limited experience. They mix a deep distrust of our secular culture with the time-honored tradition of watching CNN with their Bibles open to Daniel and Revelation.

If I understand correctly, this end-times hysteria has been blazing since the advent of the Industrial Age, when increasing wickedness and encroaching globalization began to make people long even more for the Second Coming of their Savior. Not there's anything wrong with that. I, too, long for the day when nature will be set at ease, and sin will be done away with. But these people have often gone a step farther by trying to predict the exact date of Jesus' return based on obscure Biblical prophecy. They are called "dispensationalists," and they generally believe the return of Christ to be imminent, and that the Jews are God's other chosen people. This gives their evangelism an urgency, and their hearts a soft spot—at times even a blind affection—for the nation of Israel.

Dispensationalist thought is at best a mixed bag. On the one hand, it may increase evangelistic zeal by stressing the imminence of Christ's return. On the other hand, it may breed eschatological ignorance. (It has produced a plethora of "the end is nigh" books, some so arrogant as to predict the exact date.) It gives Christians a long-overdue love for the Jews, and a compassion for the plight of the Israelis, but it can also blind Christian eyes to the plight of the Palestinians.

I am not sure how indicative of the whole movement this personal experience is, but I once had lunch with a friend who wanted to join the Navy SEAL's. His dad, a dispensationalist, thoroughly disapproved. He asked him, "What if Jesus comes back, and you're on the wrong side of Armageddon?" With a liberal dose of sarcasm in his voice, my friend responded, "That's just a chance I'll have to take, dad!"

That's my opinion, too. Christians should not need the threat of a sudden mass disappearance to spur them into evangelism. (After all, atheists and liberals probably want us to disappear just as much as the dispensationalists.) They shouldn't withdraw from politics or retreat from society because of their fear that they have become irredeemable. On the contrary, we should continue to be salt and light. If I am wrong about the Rapture, I can live with that. While the dispensationalists may deride me as one of those Christians trying to believe in the least amount of scary things possible, I know that I don't have to scare myself into irrelevance to serve God.

2003-03-12T19:22:00.000-05:00

Thank You Jesus!

After 8 1/2 months, she's finally home!

2003-03-11T17:42:00.000-05:00

Peace, Love & Empathy

Every once in a while, you come across something that gives you a whole new perspective on things. I had one of those moments the other night. I pulled up the AIM buddy info for my friend who I've known for years, but never really talked to. Here's what it said:

This is about a girl who has two sides to her life, the one that everyone knows and sees, and the other no one knows is there. She has lots of friends doesnt do too bad in school, her life just seems great! Some people wonder if there is another side to her. Others know it is there but cant grasp it. She has feelings that run deeper than your veins, some so strong that not even stone could crack. Others...most...more fragile than fine china. She has thoughts,opinions,wants,and needs. And no one knows.

People tell her they know what she is going thru but none can fathom the intensity of her pain. No one can see the hurt inside her. She feels all alone, like she has no sanctuary, no safety, only pain and sorrow. Her only outlet is thru her writings. There she explains to the blank pages how hard life can be. But yet again no one knows this other side exists.The only thing they know is a girl named (use your imagination).

I've known this girl for years, but never really talked to her. She was always really quiet and kind of removed, her parents have religious beliefs that don't resemble mine too closely, and I found myself sucked into the trap of trying to be like the cool kids. Reading her words made me remember all the nights I cried myself to sleep because I couldn't find acceptance. I used to crave the acceptance that she seeks now. Why is it that even those who have spent years on the outside looking in betray those left outside once they are admitted to stand by the communal fire? Is it so much to open the door every so often? To share another's pain? By and large, from what I have seen, and felt myself, most would say yes. It is too much effort to reach out. But for Christians, it is not an option.

The world is full of hurting, lonely, depressed people. I should know, I used to be one of them. We as Christians do not have a choice between reaching out and not reaching out. Our lives should be nothing but reaching out, empathizing, and sharing in one another's joys and pains; in short, being like Christ. As a society, Americans tend to be a people absorbed with themselves. I ask you to examine yourself, and see if there is any way you could better serve those around you. As for me, I have failed my friend for the last 2 years. I implore you not to make the same mistake.

Rock star Kurt Cobain, after a lifetime of rejection, wrote on his suicide note a summary of things he had never seen - "Peace, Love, and Empathy." Don't let another Cobain pass you by.

2003-03-10T15:47:00.000-05:00

Divine Comedy

I've been reading Graham Greene's The Comedians lately. In the book, Greene muses that life in Haiti would be Shakespearian in its tragedy, were it not inflected with enough absurdity to make it bearable and, at times, even comic. Hence, the title. I believe Greene was onto something. Life is tragic and full of suffering, yet the goodness of what God originally created shines through just enough to make it bearable, even pleasant at times. Sometimes, it seems as though in the grand scheme of things, we are but players in a divinely scripted comedy. We are each born to assume our roles as free agents, who make choices that turn us into angels, villains, or wallflowers. The analogy breaks down, however, because unlike actors, human beings are incredibly self-aware. We all know, deep down, why we were made, what we are here for, and where we are going. We just choose to accept or deny the facts in different fashions.

So here I stand, on the cusp of adulthood, less than 24 hours from being recognized by the state as a man. Over the next few months, I will be making the final and definitive break with my parents, thrust onto the stage of life to assume the role I was destined to play from before time. The time of rehearsal is no more - it is time to live.

I woke up to another typical Monday - nothing out of the ordinary. Ate breakfast, made my regular round of blog-checking. Some people quibbling about the war, others about economics, plenty of fiskings handed out both ways. Was kind of sad to learn that my friend Katie, who authored the first blog I ever laid eyes on, is calling it quits. Finally dragged myself away from the computer screen, and drove downtown with my mom and siblings. We bought some drinks down at the local haunt, the Hotel Roi Christophe.

The sun was out, and the bay was gleaming, but everything seemed a little slower-paced today. The streets were a little more dusty, the cyclists a little more oblivious to the frantic horn-blowing and cars swerving all around them. The Christophe waiters moved a little slower - the manager's out of town on his holiday. (While the cat's away...) In typical Haitian fashion, the resident horticulturalists have taken to the bushes that line the poolside with gusto (and machete blades), leaving their skeletons bare and unprotected against the sun's fury. The dust stirred up from this little foray has drifted down into the pool, giving it a sickly, milky look that matches the bleakness of the sun-baked bricks and denuded foliage.

In a way, they reminded me of an old neighbor I saw today for the first time in 7 years - he looked exactly the same, but his mannerisms were different. He seemed a little more bent by life, possibly the result of spending over a decade being beaten down by the abusive tyrant he has for a wife. There is no longer a spring in his step, his wary approach and quick departure reveal a hint of diffidence, even his once jet-black hair is betrayed by a strand of gray here and there. It was disappointing to see the man who once seemingly had everything under control so...trodden down. His star is fading, and the youthful good looks that once made him the catch of the town are fading with it.

Come to think of it, I don't have all that much time left to be young. I have already crossed one border - from innocence into adolescence - but that one was undefined. I can't even recall a specific moment when I stepped across the boundary and embraced the pains and insecurity of adolescence as normalcy. It was only years later that I could look back and remark that I had clearly and unambiguously left childish things behind. This frontier is altogether different. While the exodus from childhood is marked by advice to "not grow up too fast," and a genuine longing to disregard such advice, the passage into adulthood is often accompanied by a longing for the innocence and simplicity of childhood, offset by the excitement of finally becoming one's own person. It is a time where definite breaks with the past are made, and yet it is a time of confusion. Childish things are put away, the mind is put to work, and nests are vacated for the last time. It is an age of excitement, of new beginnings, and peril. There is much to miss, still more to look forward to, but I cannot help but wonder if, in 15 years, I will look as weary and trodden upon as my neighbor did today.

Will I wind up as a protagonist, an antagonist, or a jester in this divine script? I am at the Rubicon, and only time will tell.

2003-03-06T21:02:00.000-05:00

'Ultimate Reality'

I apologize in advance for violating copyright laws, but every once in a while you spy a column so powerful that it would simply be wrong not to publish it. I can only hope that perchance some tragic soul tottering on the brink of eternity will read it, and find eternal life. (For full effect, read while listening to Switchfoot's latest album, The Beautiful Letdown, tracks 8 and 9.)

DURING MY BRIEF SOJOURN AT SWISS L'ABRI IN 1973, a truck one day came careening down the scenic mountainside. When it reached Huemos-sur-Ollon, the driver lost control and plunged with his vehicle into the backyard of the chalet on the tier below. A guy named "Red," who ran the main student house of Schaeffer's commune, pronounced in my hearing the laconic epitaph, as a cluster of us stood considering the truck where it lay in silent finality: "Ultimate reality," he said under his breath.

I thought of the incident again several weeks ago when a pyrotechnic display gone bad in West Warwick, R.I., (25 minutes from where I grew up) claimed the lives of almost a hundred Thursday-night revelers. As providence—and Providence—would have it, the whole thing was caught on camera, WPRI-TV having chosen that entertainment spot on that evening to do a piece on nightclub safety, in the aftermath of a fatal south Chicago club fire of four days earlier. The carefree raised glasses and inebriate bravado, the obtuse bewilderment at the spark's first igniting of soundproofing behind '80s band Great White, the herd panic and piling of trampled patrons in the last minutes—all preserved on video.

One morning in 1973, a man wakes up and pulls on his trousers one leg at a time as usual, downs his coffee, snarls a leave-taking in the direction of his wife, settles himself into the cab of his truck and drives off to a destination appointed for him from of old. One evening in 2003, 97 people, all with a rendezvous with God (but under the impression of moving under their own volition) make their way to The Station club for what they expect to be a night of merriment; it is in truth the day of reckoning. The jar of beads that has spilled out, one with every turning of the earth upon its axis, has reached the last bead in the jar today. You envisioned, in your folly, an endless supply, and found instead a finite number.

What is "ultimate reality"? Every man behaves according to how he answers that question in himself. If we could have focus groups of the dead, say, as they do for blue jeans and toothpaste, what would the Station patrons tell us now? And would we listen? Would their unique perspective puncture the modernist miasma of "merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream"?

It seems not. "Almost every natural man that hears of hell flatters himself that he shall escape it.... They trust to nothing but a shadow.... If we could come to speak with them ... one by one, whether they expected, when alive ... ever to be subjects of that misery, we, doubtless, should hear one another and reply, 'No, I never intended to come here: I had arranged matters otherwise in my mind.... It came as a thief; death outwitted me" (Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God).

The wrath of God is a furnace stoked to the seventh degree; a pent-up storehouse of fire, with here and there one lashing tongue that breaks out and licks a spot clean. Fools mock the fear of God. Or they debate it in convivial conversation. I have seen men mill around open caskets and discuss the weekend's ball game, unmoved by their own mortality. What scales have you put on our eyes, Lord, that the ordinariness of sensory experience oft seems more real than questions of eternal destiny, with millions lulled to death by their complacency?

"Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen.... The unseen, unthought-of ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable" (Edwards).

Were the patrons of The Station any worse than you or me, that they should be cut down so early? "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way?" (Luke 13:2-3). Jesus replies, "No," lest we take false comfort to ourselves, and then essays the part that bites: "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

"O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in.... Let every one that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, whether they be old men or women, or middle aged, or young people, or little children, now hearken to the loud calls of God's word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, a day of such great favor to some, will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to others."

- Andree Seu

Originally published in World Magazine, 3/15/03

2003-03-05T21:24:00.000-05:00

Lingering Questions

Today is my last day of freedom before my parents come back and make me go to bed at fixed hours, and knock on my door to demonstrate that they're being polite by knocking on my door. (Don't ask - these are my parents, they're meant to be loved, not understood.) I'm enjoying every last minute.

I was going to write a long post about my friend, and what she has written in her AOL Instant Messenger info, but she's offline for the moment, and I can't retrieve that information. Come back in a few hours, or tomorrow, and I'll have that written.

I've had a question burning my mind up lately, perhaps Dr. Byron can help me out again. I've been thinking a lot about the war lately, and I must say that I admire many people from both sides of the argument. Pacifist Rachel Cunliffe once advocated carrying out Christ's command to "love our enemies" to the extreme. Although I can certainly see the pitfalls of it, this is a very appealing and romantic notion to me. It would also require a lot more faith than I currently have at my disposal, which brings me to my question - would such an alternative require more faith in God or less? And was the command to love our enemies only personal, or applicable to all spheres of human relationships? Because, like Rachel, I really, really, really want to do the right thing by humanity and by God, and it would be the most awful shame to get into a war to which there is a better alternative.

I know some of my recent posts have been downright hawkish. That is because I am afraid of the repercussions of Saddam acquiring weapons of mass destruction, and I feel extremely sorry for the plight of the Iraqi people, and see this as their last great hope. But is America really God's tool to liberate the Iraqi people? And does God expect us to place our first priority on national security, or treating others with the respect that they deserve as human beings? Would staying out of Iraq even demonstrate that respect?

I think it is utterly simplistic to advocate peace based on your disdain for war. It is equally simplistic to advocate war based on your disdain for a dictator. I do not want to be caught in either camp. So let me reiterate my questions: Would loving our enemies to the extreme work? Is this the government's responsibility? If so, should we do this instead of bombing them? I await your responses in the comment box.

2003-03-04T22:27:00.000-05:00

Today on the Web

Every time I begin to tire of the Internet, I find something that makes it worth my while.

I found Cynical Rantings as a result of a screw-up at Blogger - the recently updated list hasn't been recently updated in 10 hours. It is not really as cynical and jaded as the author thinks it is, but rather warm and funny. It's a between-the-lines look at life that just might make it the Seinfeld of the blogosphere. The writer finds inspiration in small and quirky things. (As of now, the most recent post is about the wily tactics of Girl Scouts to sell cookies at the local supermarket.) Who knows? It might have been a stroke of fate, and she'll wind up with her own syndicated column whilst I toil away with my small readership. Eh, whatever. She's fun to read, and that's all that matters to me.

Way to Blue is the first photoblog to make its way onto my Favorites menu. It has some really great pictures and a minimalist design, so as not to bog down your precious bandwidth.

Peggy Noonan ruminates this week on the future of the Democratic Party, and comes out swinging. Her columns read like miniature books—they're considerably longer than your average syndicated columnist's—but then again, this is Peggy Noonan. She provides a balance to the "just the facts, please" attitude of most male writers, adding a sentimental and distinctively female touch to conservative punditry.

The DC Metro Blog Map is a neat idea—it takes the colored Metro (subway) map familiar to DC-area residents, and allows DC bloggers to add their names to the various Metro stops. Perhaps someday I'll be on there, as I plan to live in the DC area at least once before I die.

William Luse of Apologia has a burgeoning poet for a daughter:

Jealousy

Jealousy is bright red.
Jealousy sounds like screeching tires.
Jealousy tastes of a bitter lemon.
Jealousy smells like burning wood.
Jealousy looks like a bolt of lightning,
Striking at everything in its path
And destroying all.
Jealousy makes me feel
Detached from everyone.

She said it better than I ever could, and in fourth grade, too.

For anyone who still cares, Britney Spears is apparently not a virgin. Big surprise.

The Truth Laid Bear is neat. It ranks blogs by how many other bloggers link them on their home pages. Where does yours truly stand? Yipes, I'm an insignificant microbe at #856. The Truth hurts.

I had one more thing to say—I really admire all the people who give things up for Lent, and I think I'm going to try to do the same this year. Happy Mardi Gras everyone.

2003-03-03T18:02:00.000-05:00

Monday's Thoughts

If you are at all familiar with Catholic countries, you know that the time just before Lent is Carnaval time. That means floats, bizarre costumes, and lots of loud music and drinking - almost the Latin American equivalent of the American rock concert. In Haiti, unfortunately, it usually means debauchery, random acts of violence, and people dressed up as policemen who stop your car and give you fake "tickets" as well.

The festivities inevitably begin early, and Friday night, on the way to eating out, my friends and I hit a small procession of people who looked like they were dressed for Halloween, all decked out in black capes, horror-movie masks, and fake knives. I'll admit that they were a bit strange, but my friend's mother overreacted, and forced us to take the long route all the way around the city to the restaurant. Meanwhile, the kids, seated in the back of the pickup, yelled things like "I love your work!" to guys in Scream masks.

I took the weekend off from blogging to catch up on, well, having fun. (I went to the beach Saturday, and burned myself nicely.) But somehow fun always gives way to reality, and I found myself asking others about their positions on the upcoming war with Iraq. One friend, a Haitian, responded that he supported it wholeheartedly. I then inquired as to whether his neighbors felt the same way. He responded that they did, but they wished that America would take out their country's president first.

Another friend responded that he opposed the war—he doesn't think America should be sticking its nose in others' business. I asked him how national security failed to be America's business. He conceded that I had a good point, and the discussion tapered off into more trivial things. I was content to let it go.

Getting back to the war—every time I begin to consider the "peace" position, some new information comes along that solidifies my position. Today I found myself watching The 700 Club, of all shows, and they had a guest, Khidhir Hamza, a man who used to be "Saddam's bombmaker." He confirmed that Saddam is seeking nuclear weapons, was very close before the Gulf War, is very close now, etc.

Originally published in November 2000, the New York Times Book Review called it "gripping and unsettling...a rare account of privilege ...with big houses, expensive cars, glittering restaurants..." (It should be made required reading for Maureen Dowd.) The downloadable version's description hits it more squarely on the head: "The defector once responsible for Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program reveals for the first time what the CIA and Iraq desperately want to keep hidden -- that Saddam Hussein is devastatingly close to manufacturing nuclear weapons and has every intention of using them."

Enough about war. In my mind, the debate is over. The course is set. One can only hope and pray that Saddam will have a last-minute change of heart. I have often wondered why the anti-war crowd is so vocal about what they most likely cannot change, while ignoring atrocities within their own countries that they can. One such atrocity is abortion. I've written about this topic before. On January 22, I wrote about the need for more grace in many evangelical circles when they touch the issue. I haven't completely settled the issue within my own mind, so I e-mailed Emily Peterson, who maintains a great new blog, After Abortion.

Here's what Emily (in italics) had to say:

We do need more grace, kindness, humility, and tender heartedness. Jesus gets angry not at us sick sinners, but at the prideful hypocrites who say they are of God. I think we need to turn our hearts that way.

Now that we have such beautiful, glowing, life-affirming full-color photos of beautiful little pre-born babies--beautiful and human even at 6, 7, 8 weeks--wouldn't we do better to stand at the side of the road and in front of abortion clinics, waving those wonderful pictures on our signs?

I agree. I guess what I was trying to get at, though, was whether you think the people who carry posters with pictures of dead, aborted babies are doing the right thing. Do you favor this approach, or would you rather stress the beauty of life rather than the horror of the procedure, or are both necessary?

I really have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I recognize that gut-level feeling plays an important and respectable part in how we develop our moral view of the world. And certainly our gut-level instinct about abortion is appropriately informed by these pictures.

On the other hand, I think that we make ourselves look like the mean, bad guys when we display those pictures.

One of the reasons the pro-life movement has stagnated at times is because people who have soft opinions one way or the other see us as hard-hearted, cold, mean bullies. Displaying those pictures plays into that stereotype of us.

We don't want to do things where we come off as the opposite of life-affirming.

I think that by displaying the beautiful, glowing photos of young life, we look life-affirming. I also think that they would do just as much good. People who look at one of those photos can imagine, without seeing it in living color, what happens to the baby in an abortion.

We've had our say. I leave the debate to the comment box. (Hopefully, someone will actually comment.)

2003-02-27T14:59:00.000-05:00

The Great Debate

Josh Claybourn recently posted a list of 10 misunderstandings Europeans have towards Americans. The response he got, mostly from anti-war Europeans was white-hot. When the smoke had cleared, the post had 90 comments. The Europeans swooped down on Josh's site to make their point, whatever that was. Along the way, they fired off an astounding number of clichés, rattled off an alarming amount of anti-Americanism, and eventually proved to me through their incoherence and badgering condescension that Josh was right—Europeans either don't have a clue, or don't care enough to understand where Americans are coming from.

Among the allegations made in the comments by Europeans were:

America is bad.©

America is run by right-wing crazies (despite the fact that a vicious liberal caucus threatens to undermine the presidency by filibustering all his judicial nominations).

America is not a real democracy (to read more about the electoral college and why it works, click here).

Americans are stupid, and don't know the first thing about European history, European politics, or European feelings. (The same Europeans couldn't figure out the electoral college)

America is bad!©

Americans are a bunch of bloodthirsty Christian apes who are rushing into war! (Despite the fact that it's taken us 12 years.)

And then you have this:

We were very pleased to see recently the destruction of nasa shuttle Columbia over Texas, as this another setback to these Anglo-American lackey's of International Zionism! By the way, the reason many yanks are upset with the French is because they are jelous of FRENCH CULTURAL SUPERIORITY!

Posted by Strago at February 25, 2003 06:10 AM

And this:

How can you claim it is right to go after Saddam because "daddy" did it 12 years ago anyway?

Nobody's claiming that.

How can you claim that USA is not somewhat controled by Israel?

That's risible, but how can you claim Franco-Germany isn't controlled by Iraq?

How can you claim that USA is afraid of Saddam and his missiles, since they can barely reach Israel (thats all he wants/needs).

How can you claim to know the mind of Saddam so well?

How can you claim that Bush or honestly, the average American, really cares about the average Iraqi.

How can you claim that you do? You probably didn't think twice about the average Iraqi until Bush's name got involved.

How can you deny that USA government is sick and tired of having their precious black gold being controlled by Arabs and want to change that?

If we wanted oil, all we would have to do is lift sanctions on Iraq. But how can you claim that France, Germany, and Russia aren't controlled by their oil interests in Iraq?

How can you claim USA really thinks about the common good of everyone?

I don't think we ever did. Our obligation is not to the universal good. It is to the good of the American people. Letting Saddam acquire weapons which he could then sell to terrorist groups would not be in their interest, now would it?

No, you cannot answer ANY of these questions. You know why? Because you are a simple narrow minded citizent, like the rest of us, who has no real say on what is going on. If the American people REALLY did have a say, then George Bush would not be the "president" at the moment. That is because i have faith in the average American, that they arent redneck gunhos who can only think about how to take over the world.

So, first I'm a simple, narrow-minded citizen, but you still have faith in me? Well Lukas Hoyle, I'm speechless, and I don't know how I can ever thank you.

Anton Dravoski had this to say:

Go to WallMart with lots of breadline paid employees, buy a cheap semi-automatic and some bullets which your government considerately allows you to buy, put then gun under your chin and pull the trigger. Alternatively give it to a troubled teenager and let him do the job for you.

Your name sounds Russian, so I'll assume you're assuming America has breadlines like your home country does.

Robert enjoys using pejoratives:

i wont even bother to comment on your remark JFKarr. It is pretty evident that unfortunately, you do happen to be one of the gun-ho, narrow minded, arrogant [expletive] that think they know all.

who is WE you fool? You???? The American People???? give me a break you idiot, you have no say in what is going on, neither have i. We are voicing opinions here, at least try to be half decent with your approach of life. YOU are doing nothing and are incapable of doing anything. If you were as half smart as you think you are and half as informed as you believe you are, then USA WOULD be a better place and Bush would not be "president".

And "lifting" the sanctions from UN? That is typical arrogant american thinking, that your selfish interest always comes first and that you can get it, just mask it behind something else (eg a dictator in Iraq is going to kill us all!!!!!). You foolish boy, you have no concept of history, no concept of the terrible practices of war. All you people think about is "patriotism", which that you confuse with Bush's interests. He is playing with your fears, your paranoia, telling you nothing is safe, "we are all going to die unless we attack first", attack them before they attack us. And little stupid kids like you believe it, believe it is righteous to go to war because you are told to. A large proportion of the american population has tunnel-vision, Bush is playing with 9/11 in order to further promote his daddy's interests. Hell, you stupid [expletive] actualy think that Bush RUNS the country, that he is responsible for the decisions. Go away you little idiot, you give americans a bad name.

Posted by Robert at February 25, 2003 07:33 AM

Thank you, Robert. Your shimmering intellect has astounded us all. After your anger-management classes, you can get back to the important things in life, like riding a bike without training wheels, or coloring inside the lines.

There's plenty more, so go check it out. Some thought Americans to be ignorant of all foreign affairs. (Somewhat true, but what do Europeans know about Haiti?) Others cut into America for not caring about their neighbors. (A post that was nicely decimated by J.F. Karr, I might add.) Still others sniffed that the notion of Europeans being jealous of America's freedom and bounty was preposterous, even going so far as to suggest that Americans were jealous of Europeans. Sweden, the quintessential welfare state, was pointed to as the bastion of equality. America was said to have "an astounding percentage of people under the poverty line." Sweden may distribute its wealth more equally, but in doing so, has created a state with much less wealth to distribute.

The war of words on Josh's site really reflects a war of ideologies, a clash of the titans between European secular socialism and American Christian free-market capitalism. As former radio host Dennis Prager wrote in a column published yesterday, the future will either be Muslim, European, or American. There will be no meeting of the minds with Europeans, or those secularists within our own country. It is simply the role of Americans to keep on demonstrating why America works. No welfare state or cynical secular vision can accomplish what Christian ideologues did in America—a free state that, despite its imperfections, offers the best chance at life as yet known to man. It is a state that desires to clean up its mistakes. It is the only country on earth that understands that people were created to be free, and that that freedom comes at a very steep price.

If the European chimerists ever figure this out, I'll be listening. But they can't expect me to embrace their failed ideological pipe dreams as wisdom. If they want to make a more reasoned debate, they should drop the "America is bad, just look at its failures" histrionics, and show me their own successes. Come to think of it, that's really all I ask of the anti-war crowd. I agree that war is bad, and I would love for it to be avoided. But until I hear some suggestions other than "Send in more inspectors!" I really have no other choice but to support the war.

2003-02-26T22:41:00.000-05:00

Fulfilling the Great Commission

Last year, inspired by a camp that we both attended, my friend Matthew set out to create an environment for youth in his hometown of Greenville, NC. From the looks of this report in a high school paper (written by a self-proclaimed atheist), he's succeeding.

Matthew is a talented guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and a passionate Christian. I believe that he and others like him could be laying the foundation for the next spiritual awakening in America. Give his sites a visit:

6:22 Worship
Matthew Lilley
Band of Apathetics (his own musical venture)

2003-02-26T20:55:00.000-05:00

Time for a Name Change

John Mills, a reader of WORLD Magazine from Fredericksburg, VA, recently mailed in a letter that suggested the ideological monikers of our political spectrum have become anachronistic. Back in the days of yore, "liberal" and "conservative" applied to groups who favored looser standards and bigger government, and conservation of tradition and smaller government, respectively. Nowadays, with "conservative" President Bush coming under fire from his own party for his big-government programs, and with the "liberals" pushing programs that restrict personal freedom in favor of supposed communal bliss, the titles don't exactly apply.

The word "liberal" implies an ideology that is the opposite of authoritarianism. However, the liberals of today seem to be intent on intruding into the life of the individual as much as possible, what with restrictive gun laws, opposition to school choice, and ever-increasing government regulation. The word "conservative," on the other hand, implies an adherence to traditional standards. But today, conservatives are the ones trying to reverse the status quo that liberal legislation and ideology has put in place. Abstinence programs, faith-based schooling, and pro-life causes are just a few of the goals most conservatives support that, if accomplished, would change the norm rather than conserve it.

So if liberals are becoming more authoritarian, and conservatives are the ones fighting for social reform, maybe it's time we gave the old names a break. The aforementioned WORLD reader had his own suggestions: activists and realists. WORLD's editor-in-chief Marvin Olasky commented, ``Activists actively seek power, while realists know the dangers of social engineering and the law of unintended consequences."

Personally, I think the word "activist" gives liberals too much credit—it is usually used with positive connotations to describe people pushing a certain cause—although the word "realist" sums up modern-day conservative positions nicely. In general, liberals seem to plug holes, while conservatives set to the task of fixing them. Take the education battle, for instance. The best idea the Democrats have for educating inner-city children who are victims of failing schools is to pump more money into said failing schools. This method has failed time and time again, and the Bush administration is trying to solve the problem by supporting private schools that will give the kids a better education at low cost.

The more I use the new terms, the more I like them. Activists stir up lots of controversy, without any real solutions. Realists see the problem, and work quietly to fix it. Just take a quick look at liberal policy, and you will notice a pattern of hole-plugging:

The War: Send in more inspectors. Contain Saddam. Whatever happens, don't invade. Saddam might get angry.

Teen Sex: Teens, take responsibility for their own sex lives? Haha, you rube. What we need to do is encourage teens to have sex with condoms, despite the fact that they don't work. Throw caution to the wind—tell them to use contraception. If these methods fail, there's always abortion.

Affirmative Action: Racism was a problem in the past. Therefore, we must always vigilantly beat the drums of racism and discrimination whenever those silly citizens suggest they're mature enough to carry on their affairs based on their merits rather than their color.

Education: Public schools are failing. The only reasonable thing to do is to pour more money into them. Still failing? Well, since the alternative may involve letting religious people educate the kids, we're opposed to it. Parents should see our deep concern for their children's future. They may not be able to read, write, or work basic math problems, but by the Cold, Impersonal Universe, they will grow up under separation of church and state! (The alternative would allow parents to send their children to faith-based schools. Quel horreur!)

So maybe I'm oversimplifying things a bit. But when you get right down to it, liberals are trying to preserve the status quo of social policies that failed decades ago, and are trying to resurrect foreign policy that applied to a different war in a different era. When you look at it that way, liberals are not so much activists as they are, to coin a word, chimerists. (Meaning: pipe dreamers.)

2003-02-24T22:57:00.000-05:00

Au Revoir

Another blogger has said farewell due to time constraints. Ray Garraud, who was first led to my other blog, the Cap-Haitien Times, because of his Haitian heritage, is moving up in life and has decided to call it quits. Hopefully, he'll be back before long. If the shower of comments over at his site is any indication, he will be sorely missed.

2003-02-24T13:18:00.000-05:00

Night at the Movies

Well, as I mentioned yesterday, I had a night at the movies Friday, and wanted to post reviews of them.

The Tuxedo is an action film that I watched only because Jackie Chan's in it. One thing I have picked up from living in Haiti is a passion for good karate films. Unfortunately, this isn't one. It isn't even close. First of all, the whole premise of the film is Chan is an ordinary guy, who is made extraordinary by a secret-agent tuxedo packed with goodies. If you've seen some of Chan's better work, such as Who Am I?, Rumble in the Bronx, or even Rush Hour, you know full well that Jackie Chan needs no expensive gadgetry to inflict pain and suffering on baddies.

One person suggested that Chan's action side was downplayed to try and bring out the comedy in this film. In that case, it flopped. Jennifer Love Hewitt provides the necessary eye candy present in all of Chan's films, but loses the endearing innocence that made her a star in the first place, presumably to toughen up her image. All in all, this is only worth seeing if you're really bored.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the dark-horse comedy hit from 2002, seems to be a train that just won't stop rolling. Starting off slowly, it has become a big enough hit to spawn a television series on CBS (My Big Fat Greek Life), making it the first film in a while with a rating under PG-13 (PG) to capture the public's imagination. Although it was relatively well-acted, I found most of the humor rather dry, especially considering the gushing reviews the commercial for its DVD release cited.

Although none of these problems are a big enough bump in the road to attract a negative review, I found three problems with Greek Wedding. First, it has a couple of moments of scatological humor. Second, it is soft on premarital sex, despite the lead characters' marriage at the end of the film. Finally, its depiction of Christianity, as practiced by the Greek family is malleable to personal standards, and mainly serves as a cultural vestige rather than a life-altering power. Unfortunately, all three of these problems are commonplace in nearly every movie put out these days.

That said, MBFGW has some touching moments that speak volumes about the importance of family, and one cannot help but feel for the groom, who as an only child, has only his parents to attend his wedding, while the bride has a huge family. Such is the case when one supplants the God-ordained blessing of the family with the human "wisdom" of family planning and deification of the career.

Can't Hardly Wait, although definitely not recommended for the under-16 age group, unintentionally speaks volumes about the effect of loneliness upon adolescents. Teenage outcasts come to a raucous party seeking something, anything, to define their worth. Two clingy characters speak repeatedly of "memories being all we have." Even lead actress Jennifer Love Hewitt's character, Amanda Beckett, voices her lack of self-esteem and regrets allowing herself to be defined by her relationship with the high school jock.

This movie tries, with mixed results, to bring out the humanity behind the tired old clichés. It works when portraying outcasts, who eventually become the life of the party, but fails to do justice to Ethan Embry and Hewitt, whose characters are not nearly developed enough to justify the romantic ending. Granted, this is a party film, but it had the potential to be much more, and is still, as the Amazon review says, "an agreeable waste of time."

Update: I wrote a review of Can't Hardly Wait on Epinions.

2003-02-23T13:27:00.000-05:00

BBL

Well, it's been a long week. I haven't posted because I was getting posts ready for my day at Josh Claybourn's, and every idea I had to post here, I ended up posting over there. I wrote three articles, all of which were decent:

Give me your tired...
Would Jesus own a gun?
Signing off

I had a friend over to spend the night Friday, and we stayed up late watching movies (The Tuxedo, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Can't Hardly Wait), finally crawling into bed around 3 am. Consequently, I'm behind on about 2 or 3 hours of sleep, so I'm going to go catch up.

Expect some commentary on the movies. In the meantime, my apologies for not posting for a while, and thanks to everyone who read my posts and linked me.

2003-02-17T22:02:00.000-05:00

A Tale of Two Cities

Peggy Noonan has an interesting column—and fellow blogger Ray Garraud has said as much—about the tense state of affairs in New York City. In a way, the blizzard may be a blessing—a diversion away from the jitters of a metropolis that has been at war, ahead of the rest of the nation, for a year and a half now.

In Haiti, whose inhabitants stroll an entirely different avenue as far as current events are concerned, there is also unrest, albeit for a different reason. It could be said that when one lives with a smaller set of priorities, one's struggles and objectives are also smaller. In New York, the ordinary American has seen terrorism of epic proportions, and is preparing for even more. He or she will probably send off a relative to fight for the preservation of world security, or at least know someone who is. In sleepy, squalid Cap-Haitien, on the other hand, the average Haitian has seen poverty of epic proportions, and in the light of his government's insouciance, is bracing for even more. The Capois' battle is a microcosm of his northern brother's—a battle as much against his own fears as it is against the daily intake of bad news.

One constant reminder that human nature never changes, no matter what heights we may scale, is the ordinary citizen's response in the face of adversity. There is the initial shock, the absorption of reality, and finally, depending on one's character, either the despondent concession or the resolute determination to plow through. New York's fate has yet to be seen, and New Yorkers, as much as they have already suffered, have yet to taste hardship such as their forbears did during the Great Depression—hardship that no government program can alleviate. In that sense, the Capois has the edge over his American counterpart. He lives day-to-day, praying for simple blessings—that the exchange rate won't go up, that his kids will still be able to go to school, that the streets won't be blocked with flaming tires today, that the blizzard up north won't translate into torrential rain that will, in turn, put his living room underwater. With his gutty assault on life, the Capois daily proves himself to be greater than the foe that surrounds him on all flanks. He has taken it all; he has survived, and he will survive once more to see another day, bring what it may.

Of course, there will always be those who long, unrealistically, for the easy way out. New York has seen those who march in order to prevent a war that cannot be avoided. There are those in Cap-Haitien who accept government bribes to terrorize their neighbors, hoping that eventually they will receive some lucrative kickback to propel them out of the slums and into the concrete mansion on the side of the hill whose roof doesn't leak. But I think that eventually the better angels of both cities' natures will come forth, and lift wartime and fourth-world spirits to a new plateau of determination and resolve, based not in an idealistic or utopian vision of harmony, but in a stark acceptance of the world's sinful condition, and a level-headed attempt to make the best of a worst-case scenario. In the meantime, God grant me the quiet strength of the Capois, the boundless vision of the New Yorker, and the wisdom of Jesus Christ to put both to good use.

2003-02-16T23:49:00.000-05:00

Random Thoughts

Inspired by Thomas Sowell's most recent column on TownHall this week, I've decided to commit to cyberspace a dip from the stream of my own consciousness.

- I saw my old friend Smith this morning. He and I used to be on the same ill-fated soccer team together, and had the responsibility (him as goalie, me as white boy) of taking the blame for every goal we conceded. His mother died Friday night...so much death in this country. For no apparent reason, she was fully healthy, she kicked the bucket in middle age.

- Smith's cousin, Patrick, was with him, and made a joke about Smith's mother that would have been inappropriate in any other culture. Either they don't feel pain the same way I do, or laughing is just a natural reaction to sadness. I find the same personality quirk creeping into my own life...I laugh at the strangest things. Like the other day, someone mentioned a girl in my church who lost a finger. He said, "Santhia has 9 fingers now." For some reason, we all laughed, not out of any glee that Santhia lost a finger, but a strange mix of bittersweet defiance of the hardships life heaps upon us, and gratitude to God that Santhia is still alive.

- Why do anti-war protestors insist on demonizing Bush? It seems to me, if they were really concerned about peace, they'd be calling for the only surefire method of attaining it: Saddam's self-deposition. Think about it - millions of people around the globe united in their righteous opposition to a brutal tyrant who obstructs peace and scoffs at justice. That would be a beautiful sight to behold.

- Why is it that Trent Lott got pummeled (and rightly so) by media pundits across the board for statements that hinted of racism, but faithful Democrat Robert Byrd, who has KKK skeletons in his closet, doesn't even raise an eyebrow when he attempts to lecture the nation on its upcoming war on terrorism?

- Why is it that my letter to rightist homosexual blogger Andrew Sullivan concerning his participation in the media's near-libelous treatment (here and here) of Jerry Thacker (Bush's Christian nominee to the AIDS council widely slandered for his supposed "gay plague" comment, more on that here) was never published? Furthermore, why hasn't Mr. Sullivan conceded his mistake? Even furthermore, why does Mr. Sullivan jump to the conclusion that homosexuality is a perfectly normal and indisputably biological practice, when so many Americans—and scientists—have yet to be fully convinced?

- Man, Theophilus is good.

- Do some of the aspects of the Pentecostal movement and its progeny strike anyone else as odd? I believe in speaking in tongues, and I can understand being slain in the Spirit. But I went to a camp last summer where everyone was "getting drunk" in the Spirit and laughing uncontrollably at anything and everything, and it kind of weirded me out. I don't flatter myself as being an authority on anything Biblical or spiritual, but I couldn't quite reconcile the calm and collected Jesus of the Gospels or the spontaneously beautiful acts of the Spirit in Acts to a few of the things I saw at camp—a few of which, fanned on and encouraged by the pastors on staff, bordered on ridiculous. Maybe, like one of said pastors insinuated in a conversation with yours truly, I think too much, but wouldn't God be able to move regardless? Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

- I'll be posting on Josh Claybourn's website Friday. Many thanks to Josh for actually considering a 17-year-old with little to no writing experience.

- One of my friends thinks I should write a book about Haiti—from the average Haitian's point of view. I think my friend is right. I wish I could say I understood all the goings-on inside the average Haitian's mind, though. He's a tough nut to crack.

- My eyes feel like they have particles of dust trapped in between the eyelid and the eyeball. I'm wondering whether this is a medical condition, or a sign from my body that I need to yank myself away from this computer screen...methinks it's the latter. Goodnight all!

2003-02-15T19:44:00.000-05:00

Give Peace A(nother) Chance!

Anti-war demonstrators rallied in major cities across the globe in significant numbers to protest the likelihood of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Turnout was remarkably high - 200,000 in New York, 750,000 in London, and between 300,000 and 500,000 in Berlin. In Athens, protesters went over the edge, breaking windows and rioting, effectively protesting violence against Iraqis with violence against fellow Greeks.

At least one dissenting voice (dissenting from the peaceniks, that is) was heard today. National Review Online's The Corner had this to report:

One immaculately dressed old man, watching the proceedings from his wheelchair, was not impressed. “Neville Chamberlain,” he announced to no one in particular, “peace in our time,” he jeered at the demonstrators.

Intrigued, I went over – it’s not often you hear the names of mid-twentieth century Tory prime ministers being shouted out in a Manhattan street. The heckler turned out to be Hungarian, a survivor of that other Europe’s hideous past. “I’ve seen this, I’ve seen this before” he explained, “the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. You can’t negotiate with Saddam. You can only negotiate with real countries, with Canada, with Mexico. Not with Saddam. You can’t negotiate with a cockroach.”

Also, Time has an article indicating that Middle Eastern support for Iraq is much lower than before the first Gulf War, an encouraging sign.

From the turnout, it looks as if opposition to the war is greater than I had previously thought. It seems that many people are just plain opposed to violence - any kind, really - no matter what the costs of non-involvement may be. I could sit here and type out an enormous post full of reasons to go to war, ways that Iraq has breached every agreement they've ever made, and horrific accounts of Saddam's human-rights abuses, but I won't.

Instead, I only have a few questions to ask those who simply will not be swayed from their "no blood for oil" rhetoric:

1. What if the U.N. suddenly jumped on the bandwagon? Would you support the war then, or is this about more than gaining multilateral support?

2. What if the Bush administration produced irrefutable evidence? Would you be more concerned about national security then, or was this never about the need for—or lack thereof—national security in the first place?

3. What if you actually succeeded in halting the war, and later on, terrorists equipped, funded, and—God forbid—nuclearized by Saddam leveled six city blocks in insert metropolis of choice here? Or would that be Bush's fault, too?

4. A prominent Christian blogger, Rachel Cunliffe, asserted that "Waging war on oppressed, weary, sick, tired people is wrong." How would leaving them in the hands of the dictator who dragged them into their present condition be right?

5. Anti-war demonstrators are fond of stressing the urgent need for two things: U.N. support and irrefutable proof that Saddam is developing and planning to use WMD's. The first is presumably impossible because of Security Council members' oil interests in Saddam's regime. The second is next to impossible because terrorists don't announce their plans with a megaphone. Colin Powell confirmed Saddam's link with al-Qaeda, though. There is also a moral precedent - Saddam does not hesitate to try out the most horrible means of warfare on his own people. Given this knowledge, would Jesus really be calling for foreign policy that ignored these issues?

The thought of impending war that may kill, maim, and traumatize innocent civilians is heart-wrenching and disturbing, to say the least. But the eventuality of continued atrocities in Iraq, and another terrorist attack on American soil with weapons purchased from Iraq would be even worse. In my mind, war on Iraq is the lesser of two evils if Saddam will not capitulate. With the knowledge that he has, President Bush is obligated as President—and, more importantly, as a Christian—to remove the threat and preserve innocent life. The way things stand now, both the burden of proof and, ironically, the chance for peace rest in the hands of the one cheerfully ignored by the peace-at-any-costers today: Saddam Hussein. Saddam, this is your last chance to do something good for the world - what'll it be?

Update: Here's a great article on the morality of war. If the peace crowd and I cannot agree on the morality of this particular war, can we at least agree that God warrants it in some cases?

2003-02-12T20:56:00.000-05:00

On Morality

I recently read an article about the hit TV series The West Wing. On the show, Martin Sheen plays a liberal's dream—a popular, moralistic president who also happens to be in firm favor of gays in the military and abortion rights, and staunchly opposes gun rights. In short, he's Bill Clinton without the baggage. On one of the early episodes, President Bartlet (Sheen) accosts a Dr. Laura sound-alike named Jenna Jacobs, demanding answers on the treatment of slavery in the Bible, as well as Old Testament rules for stoning those who break the Sabbath, when Jacobs defends her view that homosexuality is immoral with Scripture. Apparently, NBC likes their Bible-thumping right-wing zealots to be quite ignorant of the Book they consider infallible—Jacobs is left mum by Bartlet's forceful secular "morality."

This exchange left me thinking: If I can trust the Bible as the ultimate source of truth, then why does the Bible seemingly look the other way for a lot of people who do things that would be terrible by today's standards? For example, many men in the Bible marry several different women and hold slaves.

Obviously, as a person who has already accepted Christ, I do not approach the Bible with a mandate to prove it right. I crack the cover under the assumption that it is correct, and that anything that I cannot explain can be explained later on by someone more knowledgeable than I. (For instance, my father.) When I open the Word of God to read, no matter how much some of the things that I read may grate against my modern, Western sensibilities, I have to believe that God knew what He was doing. After all, if I cannot even control the present, who am I to judge the past?

In search of knowledge, I went and asked my father the question that had been puzzling me: why slavery is not outright rebuked by the man who had the easiest opportunity—Paul in his letter to Philemon. In the letter, the great Apostle is writing to a slave-holding Christian, and yet, he addresses him as a "dear friend and fellow worker."

4 I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers,
5 because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints.
6 I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.
7 Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints.

Did Paul condone slavery? I doubt it. He was, however, doing something that the fictitious President Bartlet, if placed in the same situation, would never do. He was trusting Philemon to do the right thing. He knew that if Philemon had really been redeemed, his conscience would motivate him to do right by his slave, Onesimus. Turns out Paul was right. Christianity would gradually blossom into the moral conscience of a Roman Empire desperately and wickedly jaded to myriad forms of sin. In the years to come, it the young faith would become the driving force behind the elimination of infanticide, incest, and the gruesome gladiator events in which the people had formerly reveled. Paul trusted the power of the Gospel, because unlike the works and religions of man, the Gospel does not need to insist on reform in order to be effective. It bypasses telling the person what he ought to do, but makes it so attractive to him that he ends up doing it of his own free will.

What of Onesimus? Having only heard his side of the story, Paul focuses more on his responsibility to right the wrongs that Onesimus has committed. (Here is displayed another hallmark of the Christian redemption: When one is truly redeemed, one ceases to notice that one has been wronged, yet works feverishly to right the wrongs that he has committed.)

But on to the second part of this essay: Morality legislated in a society will only go as far as the redemption of the national conscience. The hideous practice of slavery would rear its ugly head once again among European nations with Columbus' discovery of the New World, and its legacy would become a stain on a nation whose Constitution declared the human right to liberty to be self-evident for all men, and then proceeded to declare its black constituents to be worth only 2/3 of a human each. In this case, like countless others before it, the national conscience had to be awakened before reform could take place. In the post Civil-War South, immense evil was stirred up among whites, who having never had the requisite change of heart, found other ways to carry out their hatred toward blacks. The aftershock caused by the sudden imposition of morality into a gruesome situation reverberates to this day.

This is by any means to agree with the postmodernists, and declare obsolete the place of objective law in a society. In recent years, civil rights groups have succeeded in legislating away the more obvious trademarks of racism - Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination - but have not had much success in reforming the root cause of those problems, which is sin. That's where Christianity comes in. Jesus came not to abolish the law, but He did come to fulfill it; that is, to make it possible to abide by it, instead of striving in vain to obey it flawlessly. His blood washes away the sinful tendencies that we were born into, and replaces them with His perfect nature.

The Word of God, the Bible, is not a rigid index of do's and dont's to be referred to in every situation. It is, however, a road map that sets us on the right track to come to the correct conclusions. Some things it says very clearly. On other things it leaves us the scent of the truth so that we will seek and find. Others still, it leaves to our discretion. (I've found it amazing how these issues tend to be the most vociferously debated in the church.) If you spend any amount of time reading the Bible, however, you will quickly discover that it has very little to say in the way of what we should and shouldn't do, and a whole lot to say about having a relationship with the Creator, a relatioship that will affect a heart change in us that will change us inside and out, if we choose to let it. (After all, 66 books' worth of information yielded only 10 basic commandments for moral living.) Jesus Christ narrowed it down to two that make it impossible to disobey the rest:

1. Love the Lord Your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

2. Love your neighbor as yourself.

As the late, great C.S. Lewis put it in his Mere Christianity,

"Our Lord is like the dentists. If you give Him an inch, He will take an ell. Dozens of people go to Him to be cured of some one particular sin which they are ashamed of (like masturbation or physical cowardice) or which is obviously spoiling daily life (like bad temper or drunkenness). Well, He will cure it all right: but He will not stop there. That may be all you asked; but if once you call Him in, He will give you the full treatment.

That is why He warned people to "count the cost" before becoming Christians. "Make no mistake," He says, "if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other than that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push me away, understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect—until My Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with me. This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less."

Update: Those interested in reading a fictional account of Onesimus' story will enjoy Patricia St. John's Twice Freed. Although directed at the Young Adult reader level, it is a great story with a great level of imagination: it builds a whole story around a simple letter. Highly recommended.

2003-02-11T20:44:00.000-05:00

Marriage in the Kingdom of God

Andree Seu, my favorite columnist, as usual writes to my situation this week, offering this wise counsel on marriage:

I have learned only one thing about marriage that I didn't know 23 years ago when I first tied the knot, and here it is: People get married for reasons. That would seem to be a truth too banal to mention. Nevertheless, it has been for me a paradigm shift, with subsidiary shifts all over the place: Your child is never angry for no reason, no one just drops by without a purpose, and there is never an insult in jest that does not conceal deep waters of discontent.

(snip)

...there are other realities in the world besides endorphin surges.

Dare the Christian be less intentional, less practical, less reason-driven, than the Korean matchmaker? Will he follow God's law in every other sphere of his life ("Do not murder," "Do not steal"), but then mumble vaguely about "Christian liberty" when it comes to the biggest decision of all? For even liberty must have reasons, and if it doesn't, Satan will be happy to suggest some. "Christian liberty does not mean 'do whatever you feel like because the Bible's muddy.' It does mean careful consideration not just of the Bible, but of the particular situation you happen to be in" (Dr. D.C. Davis, professor of history).

(snip)

First, know the kingdom of God. Second, know the situation. Third, know yourself. Go the entrepreneurial marriage-broker one better and lay all on the table: What is clear in Scripture? What are the goals of the kingdom of God? How would the kingdom be advanced by our matrimonial union? What are my gifts and ministry? What are hers? Would we be more together than apart?

Then down to the nitty-gritty: Does he like to pray? (Don't tell yourself what great prayer times you'll have together once you're married if you never get around to praying now.) Does she see her role as to "do him good and not harm all the days of her life"? (Behold the high and low calling of the wife—neither vaingloriously self-exalted nor lacking in nobility.) Your beloved wants to get married for a reason; find out what it is. You have secret reasons too; find out what they are.

And about triangles, have you configured yourselves in that geometrical form—with God at the top, the primary relationship of each of you, the One who makes the center hold, the One alone to whom you look for fullness when you disappoint each other, as you will? For if there be any other at the apex—whether chungmae economics or Roman Holiday infatuation—they will surely go bad on you. "Love ... begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god" (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves).

People get married for reasons. You can learn that now before you're married, or you can learn it after the fact—take your pick. Marriage calls for more, not less, hard-nosed examination up front, for sterner stuff than even that possessed by hard-boiled Korean matchmakers. And for my money, the reason must be the kingdom of God.

My friend who called was on that wavelength. We may agree or disagree on the particulars, but we understand each other's language. Young child of God, find someone who speaks that language too, who has good reasons—and marry that person.

Read the whole thing (requires registration).

2003-02-09T13:46:00.000-05:00

Capital Punishment

Pen, aka the Gutless Pacifist (his choice of words, not mine) have been engaged in an interesting debate over the last few days over the morality and efficacy of the death penalty. There are many ins and outs, technicalities, and dangerous pitfalls to the issue, but for the most part I've found myself (previously undecided) emerging in favor of it, and Pen, of course, takes the pacifist track that it is wrong under any circumstance. I have greatly enjoyed the opportunity to debate an issue as controversial as this with a knowledgeable opponent, equal parts passionate and gracious.

I would also very much appreciate it if you, the reader, would weigh in with your own opinion, as I intend to write an article on the issue before long. I will try to be as balanced as possible, so I welcome comments from all sides of the table.

2003-02-09T13:36:00.000-05:00

Simple Economics - Part Deux

Well, Josh Claybourn, at least one conservative is of the same mind as you. Prominent Fox News anchorman and author Bill O'Reilly finally wrote a column I agree with today on TownHall.com, calling for President Bush to reign in out-of-control federal spending. Hopefully, more conservatives will follow suit.

Oh yeah, and I'm back. :)

2003-02-07T12:56:00.000-05:00

Taking Off

Due to unexpected personal circumstances that have arisen within the last couple of days, the blog will be neglected for a few days, maybe weeks. Thank you for reading, and I will still respond to e-mail.

2003-02-06T11:08:00.000-05:00

Christ and Cobain

Matthew Lilley starts off his article with an interesting premise - that Jesus Christ and Kurt Cobain rose to fame in much the same way, and that there are a lot of similarities between the Savior and rock band Nirvana. Before you jump to any conclusions - read the article.

I would just add one thing to his essay - Nirvana and Jesus both rose to fame because people could relate to them in one way or another. The difference was that people identified with Nirvana, primarily because the band stayed in the mire with them. People identified with Jesus because He identified with them, and offered them a way out. As Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said in a TV interview, "Nirvana didn't come to the mainstream; the mainstream came to Nirvana." Conversely, we, as sinners didn't come to Jesus; Jesus came to us. That is the beauty and uniqueness of the Gospel.

Good essay, Matthew. :)

Update: King's Kid linked me again today. I am now putting up a long-overdue link to King's Kid on the sidebar.

2003-02-04T18:57:00.000-05:00

The Unasked Question

I recently read an article by a man named Harry Browne on a website claiming to be non-partisan, begging for the unasked questions about the looming war on Iraq to come to the fore. This is my take on the article. (Thanks to Ray Garraud for the link, by the way.)

The other evening Connie Chung on CNN interviewed two Iraqi women living in the U.S. One hoped for peace, the other wanted the U.S. military to unseat Saddam Hussein — thinking, I suppose, that whoever takes his place will be a kind, benevolent statesman (like all the other kind, benevolent leaders of the world)

Ah, it's still the first paragraph and we're already cynical, are we?

The woman who wanted war maintained that Hussein would never disarm voluntarily. I waited in vain, as I so often do, for the interviewer to ask the obvious question:

"Why should Saddam Hussein disarm, when no other country is disarming?"

Because no other nation with weapons of mass destruction to divest itself of, with the obvious exceptions of North Korea and Pakistan, is threatening to use them in an aggressive way against other nations. Besides, do you really expect me to believe that the U.S. and other Western nations are on the same moral plane as a man that poked childrens' eyes out in front of their parents to get them to talk? Please.

The article then lists a series of pro-war assertions and anti-war rebuttals. I follow each of these with my own comments.

Assertion: The Iraqi people will be far better off after we unseat Saddam Hussein.

Question: On what do you base that expectation? Have you noticed what's been going on in Afghanistan since the U.S. government lost interest and turned its attention to Iraq?

Have you? Let's recap: Within a matter of months, the U.S. military nearly singlehandedly dismantled one of the most oppressive and medieval regimes in the world. Granted, the United States could do a much better job of rebuilding Afghanistan, but I think, considering America's history of rebuilding nations since WWII, we've done pretty well. Germany, France, and South Korea are a pretty impressive hit list. Haiti and Somalia aren't, but that's only because in the first case, Americans unseated a corrupt, violent rightist dictator and replaced him with a corrupt, violent leftist demagogue, and in the second case, Clinton pulled our troops out before they could even complete their mission. The solution isn't to give up on rebuilding, the solution is to do a better job at it.

Whichever way it goes, it would be impossible to argue that Afghanistan is not already a better place to live. Over the course of a few months, they've gone from an idolatry-suppressing jihadist theocracy to a fledgling, unstable republic. Between the two, I'd pick the latter any day. Think about it Harry - over a few months, we've already paved the way for a generation of Afghan women to grow up educated and able to walk down the street without a burqa. Or are we already skittish about imposing our imperialistic Western values on those poor Afghanis?

Assertion: Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. You can't allow such a dictator to have such weapons.

Question: If that's the case, why didn't the America threaten Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union the way it's threatening Saddam Hussein now?

Because Brezhnev already had weapons of mass destruction, ran a superpower, and had us deeply engaged in a cold war. That's what we're trying to avoid in this case.

Assertion: You can't do business with dictators.

Question: Then why is George Bush enlisting the support of dictators in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Pakistan, and other countries to make war against Iraq?

First of all, the assertion is illegitimate because I haven't heard anybody actually say that. Conservatives like to pitch the war from a national security standpoint, not one of manifest destiny. Second of all, these nations have been practically running to us after 9/11, hoping to be on the right side of the war at the end of the day, so they can get more oil for themselves. Third of all, Iraq poses a security threat to all of these nations and they'd all like to see him go. Finally, are you suggesting we go to war with all of these countries? Calm down, Mr. Browne, you're sounding more and more like a hawk.

Assertion: When the war is over, Saddam Hussein must be prosecuted for war crimes.

Question: Since the war hasn't even started yet, how can he be accused of war crimes already?

Because we already fought a war with Saddam, called the Gulf War, during which he did commit war crimes. Maybe we should demand Iraq pay reparations to families of innocent, Israeli and Saudi civilians killed when he decided to launch Scud missiles at those countries.

Assertion: Saddam Hussein even tried to assassinate President Bush's father. Our national honor demands that we unseat this evil man.

Question: Are you aware of what happened when the Austrian government tried to avenge the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the Serbs in 1914? The world was plunged into World War I — a holocaust that caused the deaths of millions of innocent people. How do you know that won't happen in the current situation?

Well, we've come a long way since World War I. I presume you were one of the people that said Afghanistan would be a bloodbath last year. The reason all of Europe got embroiled in WWI is that there were a bunch of secret, under-the-table alliances already formed that dragged the continent into war once Austria-Hungary announced its intentions to blow Serbia off the face of the map. Although we do have blowhards like France and Germany that try to drag the world into their own "give-baby-Saddam-a-pacifier" version of peace.

Assertion: President Bush is right, but he hasn't made his case to the American people. He needs to make the evidence against Hussein public.

Question: Since President Bush has been claiming for over a year to have evidence that he hasn't revealed, why are you so sure there is any evidence?

First, there is the possibility that this may be very sensitive information. He has to be careful about compromising his sources. Second, his State of the Union address said that there was not a day when new evidence was not revealed. His next few speeches will seal the deal if he really does have any proof. Judging from Iraq's track record and proudly outspoken support of al-Qaeda, I don't think this will be much of a problem.

Assertion: I trust my President and my government.

Question: After the Gulf War, it turned out that all the reasons for going to war had been false — no Iraqi troops massed on the Saudi Arabia border, no babies ripped from incubators by Iraqi troops in Kuwaiti hospitals. Most of the same people who were in charge then are in the current administration. Why should we trust them again?

Well, I don't fully trust my President or my government, because they're human. There is certainly a lot of disinformation that goes in every war, and I'm not saying that's right. While some of this may have taken place, it is indisputable that Iraq infringed upon the sovereignty of Kuwait, and jeopardized the state of the international petroleum industry, on which our national economy is reliant. As for whether we can trust the present administration, understand this: I am not particularly eager for war, either. I would much rather see Hussein step down than have American soldiers come back in bodybags. I will wait until Bush has assembled all the pieces, and not a moment sooner, to call for war. If Bush does make his case, which I believe he will, and Hussein does indeed pose a threat to the security of my country, which I believe he does, I cannot agree with any naïve call to appeasement that would allow him to become North Korea, the sequel.

Assertion: We know Saddam Hussein used chemical and biological weapons during the war against Iran.

Question: Then why did the Reagan administration support him so wholeheartedly in that war?

Michael Medved answered this question this way: "Not true, and not even vaguely relevant. During the Cold War, Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union, not the United States, and Saddam has always been outspoken in his Marxist, anti-Western fulminations. It's true that the U.S. foreign-policy establishment tilted toward Iraq in its bloody war against Iran, but only because the Islamic fanaticism of the Iranians represented a more direct, immediate danger to the United States. Suggesting that fleeting cooperation some 20 years ago means that we have no right to oppose Iraq today makes no sense whatever. We provided massive military and financial support to Stalin during his desperate battle against Hitler. Does that mean that we had no moral right to oppose the aggressive designs of the Soviet Union when it turned against us within months of the conclusion of the world war?"

Assertion: We've waited for two years for Saddam Hussein to come clean. It's obvious he's not going to. We should go into Iraq, remove him, and destroy the weapons.

Question: But suppose he doesn't have such weapons. How can he prove this when whatever he says is branded a lie by George Bush? Given what's happened so far, we can assume that even if Hussein said, "I give up; here are my weapons," George Bush would claim Hussein is still lying, is still hiding more weapons, and must be disarmed by force. So how can Hussein possibly satisfy George Bush?

He could start by making any effort whatsoever to aid inspectors in their search for these deadly weapons—the majority of which were found as recently as 1998—that still have not been accounted for. It is not our job to drive all over a country that large looking for areas that "definitely maybe might possibly" have WMD's stowed away. It's Saddam's job to lead us to these sites, account for WMD's he had 5 years ago, show that they've been destroyed, and explain how. He's the one on trial here, not us. If Hussein ever really did say, "I give up; here are my weapons," the first answer would not be, "Good boy Saddam! Let's pack it up boys, we're going home," it would be, "Show us the proof." And that's essentially all Bush is asking for. If Hussein cannot even do this much, then his word is completely worthless. This doesn't go so far as to mention all the treaties he's broken since 1991...

Assertion: We must all make some sacrifices for security in this awful War against Terrorism.

Question: What sacrifices are you making?

Well, once I join the workforce, I'll be funding the War out of my own pocket. If they reinstate the draft like the Democrats are clamoring to do, I'll go fight. If the war lasts until I have sons old enough to fight, I'll be sending them into the field to risk their lives for their country. Would you do as much?

He closes with an argument for greater skepticism of the government. I agree wholeheartedly, but there was one question that he neglected to ask in his tasty little essay: What if the government's (gulp) right? Would you acknowledge your mistake and support them then, or retreat even further into your relativistic, peace-at-all-costs foxhole?

2003-02-04T15:17:00.000-05:00

Q & A

It's been a slow day, so I got these questions from BlogIdeas.

What makes you laugh?

A lot of things. I laugh at politics. I laugh at little kids. I laugh at absurd things, and absurd people - namely Ben. Most recently, though, I laughed at this.

What should we do with stupid people?

Live and let live. Just don't give them any responsibility. Cut people some slack, though - every once in a while, they're right.

What's the weather like?

Balmy as usual. The sun is shining, the room is warm, and I actually need the fan again. It's great!

When was the last time you said 'I Love You'?

Well, I say 'I love you' to my family all the time. It's been a right good while since I said it to anyone in a romantic sense, though. Probably about 4 months now.

Who do you blame for your mood today?

I blame the government.

Who is your hero?

Jesus. I mean, so intelligent, compassionate, Godly, completely in harmony with the Father's will at all times. I definitely want to be more like him. And also, Matthew Henry for writing incredible Bible commentaries. The phrase "getting blood out of a turnip" comes to mind...

Who would you want to be tied to for 24 hours?

No one.

2003-02-03T15:03:00.000-05:00

Simple Economics

Josh Claybourn has an interesting post today, criticizing President Bush's huge $2.2 trillion national budget, which is set to cause a record $304 billion deficit this year, according an AP article. He calls for conservatives to keep the White House accountable, noting that leading conservative papers and bloggers have been M.I.A. about Bush's increasingly big-government conservatism.

I expressed concern in my State of the Union critique about the $400 billion set aside for Medicare alone. It must be noted that I don't really know enough about economics to be of any use to this debate. Josh usually knows what he's talking about on other issues, though, so I'm behind him.

2003-02-02T21:37:00.000-05:00

Sunday Extra

One more reason the Saddamites need to go:

Immediate popular reaction in Baghdad on Saturday to the loss of the U.S. space shuttle Columbia and its seven-member crew -- including the first Israeli in space -- was that it was God's retribution.

"We are happy that it broke up," government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi said.

"God wants to show that his might is greater than the Americans. They have encroached on our country. God is avenging us," he said.

Full article at Reuters

Quotes for today:

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." - Winston Churchill

"AN EXPLOSION is reported at Indonesian police HQ. Current theories as to who might be responsible focus on four main groups:

Muslim extremists
Extremist Muslims
Muslimist extremers
Extremist Muslimers"

(from Tim Blair)

P.S. In case you haven't noticed yet, you can now get Circles and Strains in your e-mail box! Just enter your e-mail address and click "Subscribe" to get every post in your e-mail, guaranteed.

2003-02-01T23:13:00.000-05:00

While You're Still Alive...

Read Andree Seu's latest column.

There is great relief with repentance. There is much lightening with the words "I did wrong. No excuse," uttered first in the heart, and then out loud to another sentient being. At once, the simplicity of it, the accessibility of it, will astound you. All the psychic reserves that were invested in the round-the-clock enterprise of keeping truth at bay are dismissed, freed up for better purposes. "Is this what I have spent so long avoiding and protecting myself against?" you will say, "this little bump, when I expected a train wreck?"

It's all about confession and repentance. Fantastic stuff!

Update: Man, while you're at it, read 'Why I'm Pro-Choice', too. It's incredible.

2003-02-01T17:32:00.000-05:00

Death and Resurrection

Today was a sad day. I suppose you think I'm going to opine on the space shuttle tragedy. You're wrong. Although I think it's appropriate to pause for a moment of silence now for the seven astronauts aboard the Columbia.

::moment of silence::

OK, but that's not what brings tears to my eyes. My dog Casey was put to sleep today. I had the pleasure of knowing Casey from the time I was 6 years old. Ironically, we saved her from the needle in 1991. That's how she came to us. Back then, she was known as Babe, and was owned by a kindly older missionary by the name of Amos. He had a whole menagerie of dogs donated to him by others who were leaving the country to escape the embargo. Since Amos was leaving too, they all had to be put to sleep if he couldn't place them in homes. We got Babe, a beautiful, diminutive border collie, and brought her home. I renamed her Casey, after one of my best friends from Port-au-Prince. She was pampered royally, but didn't get along very well with our other dog, Flash, because Flash had been spayed at an early age, and would get very jealous of Casey's litters. So they would fight horrendously, clawing and biting each others' necks until I thought they would both die of sheer exhaustion.

But both dogs survived. Shortly after we moved across town in 1996, Flash disappeared, presumably wandering off into the mountains behind our house, sensing it was her time to go. We never found her. Casey kept bearing pups, and her health gradually degenerated. The vet came a few days ago, and said he could probably save her. He was wrong, and he ended up putting her out of her misery. I didn't even know until today. My mom told me if I wanted to say goodbye, now was the time, so I went outside, and found her, hair matted up, barely able to breathe, those affectionate brown eyes communicating the unconditional love that made me love her in the first place. She was staring back at me, completely devoid of judgment, despite the years that I took her for granted. I may be overdramatizing this a bit...it's my nature.

I guess the lesson in this is that life blooms wild for a season, surging forward like the tide, and then gradually slips back out. It leaves its mark for a while, but inevitably another wave will wash over it, and erase that mark. The thing is, we hardly ever notice that gradual recession. It's so quiet, so unassuming, that we never notice that life is pulling away from us whether we like it or not. Things always change, but one day things will stop changing, and we will stop living. As the Nissan commercial said, "Life's a trip. Enjoy the ride."

C.S. Lewis said in The Problem of Pain that just as man's existence finds its ultimate redemption in God, so the dog's existence finds its ultimate redemption in man. This redemption is not from sin, but from the confines of a strictly sentient existence. I believe that is why God allows us to take so much pleasure in animals, to care deeply for them, and eventually, to mourn their passing on. The Bible also gives us hope for a better day:

"Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

- Revelation 21:3, 4

To put it as John would a chapter later, "Come, Lord Jesus."

2003-01-30T16:30:00.000-05:00

The Long Road

If ever you, wandering soul, stumble upon this little country, make sure not to deprive yourself of one of the most unique car trips in the world. I am talking about the 6 hours and 180 miles between the northern coastal city of Cap-Haitien, and the bustling, crowded capital city of Port-au-Prince.

As a child, I was absolutely enamored by the trip, since it usually meant something special was happening. I got to go see friends I hadn't seen in a couple of years, eat ice cream (a luxury in embargo-era Cap-Haitien), and go shopping. Port has always been much more modern and developed than Cap, and it was exciting as a kid to hear jet planes, see "big" stores, and eat out at fancy restaurants. But as I've grown older, the city of Port-au-Prince has not remained etched in my mind so much as that long, lonely road.

The trip would inevitably begin at 3:00 in the morning, since my dad thought it wiser to brave mountains filled with bandits, murderers, and thieves under the cover of darkness rather than risk braving the plains further down the road, incidentally also filled with bandits, murderers, and thieves (or so they say) in broad daylight. Escaping the North under the shroud of darkness, we speed down the road (then in top condition) to where it sloped sharply upward and began wrapping itself around the jagged and awkward peaks of the island's Northern Range. Verdant hillsides and lush green forests passed by my window as the car's engine strained to clear the hills and escape the towns whose names have now become familiar—Limbe, Camp Coq, the beautiful mountain village of Plaisance, and finally...Pilboreau. Once you hit the peak of Pilboreau—the highest you go on Nationale 1—you know the easy part of the ride is over. Marchandes (merchant women) and people aspiring to sell every sort of merchandise known to these parts crowd our vehicle, hoping to distract someone's eye before we clear the curve that leads down into the Artibonite Valley.

Dad wasn't ever much for buying things from these people, and so with the sun rising, we would make our way down into the dusty, barren, treeless landscape that was the city of Gonaïves. Birthplace of murderous Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and political tinderbox ever since, Gonaïves is one of those rare towns that actually have the power to make you gasp in awe at its desolateness. Not a real desert town (the trees that once dotted the valley have disappeared due to ceaseless deforestation), the rocks and cacti that frame the narrow strip of pavement and earth running through the town look somewhat out of place next to the occasional remaining coconut palm. Subtract the saloons and gunslingers, and add the pounding of voodoo drums and tattered flags signaling witch doctors' haunts, and Gonaïves has the look and feel of a 19th-century desperado hangout on acid. Its streets are crowded with noisy motorcycles that dart and dash all over the road, weaving in between cars and lumbering camions, dodging the gaping potholes, ducking into the rapidly disappearing roadside canals long enough to pass you on the right, before lurching back onto the macadam to cut you off and inexplicably, against all odds, make a left turn.

Gonaïves always had terrible roads, terrible weather, and a terrible economy, so we would always catch sight (and smell) of burning tires, stacked in the center of some sidestreet to protest their government's complete lack of knowledge of their existence—or perhaps just their sheer boredom. Who knows? We were only passing through, and didn't really care to stop and ask. After Gonaïves, the road disappears and gives way to the earthen craters—donkeys make better time on this road than cars at this point—that pass for a national highway. This valley stretches on, and on, and on... The sun is up at this point, beating us down, taunting us with the knowledge that we have 2 more hours before the road rejoins the coast, and the seaside breezes cool our sizzling skin. (We didn't have air conditioning back then.) To the left loom large, imposing mountains that no doubt harbor great secrets of revolt and treachery and tourists getting ripped for "wan dalla." I, for one, am not concerned at learning any of them at this point. The huge buses and semis that treat Nationale 1 as a racetrack between the two cities succeed repeatedly in passing us on the narrow strip of earth between our left side and a deep canal, only to stop directly in front of us to unload passengers. This annoys me mightily.

This valley is incredibly mysterious, more so in the evening hours (when everything really comes to life here) than in the daylight. I roll down my window...the throbbing of the voodoo drums can always be heard at any hour of the day. If you time it right, you might hit some sort of procession. People will hit your car with their hands, but they usually won't do it out of spite or meanness, just curiosity. (If it is out of spite...floor it, you're in trouble.) Eventually, if you're smart enough to enjoy the ride while it lasts, you'll hit the pavement again, and enter the once-swanky, now-decrepit little respite of St. Marc.

This town saw its heyday in the 1950's when people actually still came to Haiti as tourists. It has some old, colonial-style buildings and a pretty coastline. Not too many people come here anymore, though. The government finally had enough political killings and highly publicized executions to where those savvy foreigners, they decided Haiti might not be safe. Things started picking up again in the late 70's, but then they discovered AIDS, and the first scapegoat was Haiti. Things have never been the same since.

No matter what the history of this place, how much blood has been shed, or how many lives have been lost due to sheer hopelessness, things have a way of drifting away from you when you lay eyes on the ocean. The sea here is so calm, so serene, so mesmerizingly tranquil and blue, my thoughts are lulled away from the squalor and bustle of the street, and onto the water, the waves, the horizon. Straining my eyes to make out the silhouette of Ile de la Gonave (Gonave Island) in the distance, my thoughts drift away to spiritual things. God at age 9, (or at any age, for that matter) is much like the silhouette of that island in the bay. Clearly visible some days, barely discernible on others, always there, whether we see Him or not. For those few minutes alongside the ocean, underneath the shade of mango trees and palm trees and tall mahogany trees that hang over the road, my thoughts are captive to something greater than myself.

But all good things must come to an end—at least while we are still living—and so it is with my oceanside musings. The road veers to the southeast, carrying us inland to harsher, more barren terrain, taunting us with the outline of Port-au-Prince, so visible across the large horseshoe of a bay that lays between us and the capital, but the form of the land forces us to go through a desertic area not useful for agricultural exploits. The coastline here is too rocky and coral-laden to attract beachgoers, but its proximity to the capital makes it an ideal area for enterprises that require neither working utilities nor arable soil. Namely, shooting ranges, satellite links, and missionary endeavours. There is a center for the deaf on this long, seemingly endless strip of road, that I would visit later on in life. I would be shocked a few years after that to learn that the land directly adjacent to the center was once used for political executions and massacres by the fierce Duvalier regime. The high dunes and thick, semiarid shrubbery make it an ideal place for concealing such actions, even at very close distances. Of course, I'm not sure anyone would have tried to stop them, anyway.

After a few more minutes, we hit the outlying reaches of Port-au-Prince, greeted by the sight of Cabaret's (formerly Duvalierville), ugly "modernistic" buildings lampooned in Graham Greene's The Comedians. Traffic creeps at a snail's pace through what used to be small, outlying towns, now all enveloped in the squalid metropolis that Port-au-Prince is becoming. As we enter the city, we go through a minor industrial development, numerous slums, and thousands upon thousands of houses packed in next to each other. The heat, as well as the layer of smog that hangs over the capital of the world's most polluted country, are sometimes unbearable. The city is a flaming contradiction, with the grinding poverty of waterfront slum Cité Soleil (Sun City) juxtaposed by the cultured affluence and posh manors of Pétionville, owned by the fraction of Haitians that can afford to think past their next meal. Downtown, the National Palace and its newly landscaped Champ de Mars city square stand in stark contrast to the ramshackle tenements a few blocks down, near the national cemetery. The international schools, owned by first-world governments that line the outskirts of the Champ de Mars, are filled with both Haitian and international students who, seemingly oblivious to the plight of their neighbors and servants and even the yardkeepers at their schools, ramble on about things like whose car is flashier, whose girlfriend is prettier, and whose father is richer. I feel like screaming.

The adults, whose hubris is more mature but no less obvious, are no better. Making their fortunes off the backs of their proletarian countrymen, they chat ceaselessly on mobile phones, as if their lives depended on the next transaction, or the next deal, or the next...Mercedes-Benz. Strangely enough, after a while listening to them, you get the feeling that they do. There are a great deal more of these insufferable businessmen and women in Port-au-Prince than there are in Cap-Haitien, and by the end of the first day in the capital, I am already feeling perhaps a primitive yearning to return to the open air and scrub of the valley, for the simplicity and gritty resolve of the common Haitian, and a refuge from the incessant, lifeless bleep of cell phones. I yearn for the smell of the ocean's salt spray to fill my nostrils, replacing the endless trail of carbon monoxide that wafts into the atmosphere from the tailpipes of thousands of motorized beasts. Now I know why the Capois (native of Cap-Haitien) refers to this city derisively as the "Republic of Port-au-Prince." It is a self-imposed hell. I suddenly understand the common desire—one that has been largely lost in America—to live modestly and feel the bare earth beneath one's feet. From what I have seen of this place so far, a great many people here share this yearning, but cannot satisfy it due to their economic condition, a prison that keeps them locked in the concrete jungles of the capital, scrounging and scavenging, hoping for something better.

When the trip is over, and I am once again in the shade of the mahogany that overhangs my room, I take a moment to thank God for how truly blessed I am in this life, and a vow forms in my mind—a vow to help things change for those still trapped back there in the tangle of false promises and shattered hopes, disillusioned and depressed, 180 miles to the south. With college and career looming, that is a vow I intend to keep.

NOTE: Pictures taken by Adam Jones. Pictures are not intended to be in the order of the text, but are merely presented as visual aids.

2003-01-29T15:57:00.000-05:00

State of the Union Finesse

Due to my educational obligations as a high-schooler, I'm probably the last person in the world to put my $0.02 in on President Bush's SOTU. (The entirety of which you can read here, or watch at the White House's site.)

The first part of his speech dealt with domestic policy. Tax cuts, spending cuts, social security, Medicare, *yawn.* Economics doesn't interest me, and neither does rearranging bureaucracies.

Jobs are created when the economy grows; the economy grows when Americans have more money to spend and invest; and the best and fairest way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the first place.

Whee, less taxes. I can't really get excited about this one yet, as I don't have an income. Bush's big-government conservatism sounds scary in some ways, though.

My budget will commit an additional $400 billion over the next decade to reform and strengthen Medicare.

WHA? That's a lot of moolah! I mean, sure, healthcare may be worth it, but it seems almost hypocritical to mention reduced spending and a monster initiative such as this in the same speech. As Sullivan puts it, "...the domestic ambitions of this president strike me as immensely expensive and clearly liable to saddle us with at least another decade of deficit spending."

Instead of bureaucrats and trial lawyers and HMOs, we must put doctors and nurses and patients back in charge of American medicine...

To improve our health care system, we must address one of the prime causes of higher cost: the constant threat that physicians and hospitals will be unfairly sued.

Because of excessive litigation, everybody pays more for health care, and many parts of America are losing fine doctors. No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit; I urge the Congress to pass medical liability reform.

Hehe, talk about a jab at John Edwards. (He was one of those trial lawyers.) None of the Democrats applauded on this part. They must really enjoy spending taxpayers' money.

My ears started to perk up when he addressed the environment. I have always considered myself something of an environmentalist, and Bush surprised me on this one. Perhaps cutting some of his ties to Big Oil, he called for a $1.2 billion program to develop hydrogen-powered automobiles. Absolutely wonderful!

He also called for the federal government to donate funds to privately run community and faith-based outreach programs, using Christian terminology along the way ("heart and soul"). Perhaps some of the most touching lines were uttered in his appeal for mentorship programs and help for people with addictions.

Tonight I ask Congress and the American people to focus the spirit of service and the resources of government on the needs of some of our most vulnerable citizens: boys and girls trying to grow up without guidance and attention, and children who have to go through a prison gate to be hugged by their mom or dad.

One mentor, one person, can change a life forever, and I urge you to be that one person.

Addiction crowds out friendship, ambition, moral conviction, and reduces all the richness of life to a single destructive desire.

'God does miracles in people's lives, and you never think it could be you.'

Sullivan commented, "And when he spoke about addiction - a problem I also see all around me - I also felt a genuineness in his words that surprised me. I shouldn't be surprised, of course. Bush was an addict. And he came this close to saying it. But this aspect of the drug problem is one too many have either spoken about glibly or not spoken about at all."

Following up on the Sanctity of Life movement, Bush called for bans on partial-birth abortion and cloning. The first appeal received applause mostly from the Republicans, the second nearly universal acclaim.

The second pleasant surprise in this speech for me was the allocation of $15 billion to help abate and eliminate the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. Mark Byron called this a "boondoggle," but I think this is an excellent use of America's vast wealth to help the poor and disenfranchised. As Bush put it:

Today, on the continent of Africa, nearly 30 million people have the AIDS virus, including 3 million children under the age of 15. There are whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection. More than 4 million require immediate drug treatment. Yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims--only 50,000--are receiving the medicine they need.

Because the AIDS diagnosis is considered a death sentence, many do not seek treatment. Almost all who do are turned away.

A doctor in rural South Africa describes his frustration. He says, ``We have no medicines, many hospitals tell people, 'You've got AIDS. We can't help you. Go home and die'.'' In an age of miraculous medicines, no person should have to hear those words.

Boondoggle or not, to whom, much is given, much is required.

Finally, the speech turned to the war on terrorism, at first expressing a resolved optimism...

There are days when our fellow citizens do not hear news about the war on terror. There's never a day when I do not learn of another threat, or receive reports of operations in progress or give an order in this global war against a scattered network of killers. The war goes on, and we are winning.

...then a line that sounded like something out of a Western. I could even picture the cowboy hat as Mr. Bush leaned to one side:

And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.

Money quote:

Our war against terror is a contest of will in which perseverance is power. In the ruins of two towers, at the western wall of the Pentagon, on a field in Pennsylvania, this nation made a pledge, and we renew that pledge tonight: Whatever the duration of this struggle and whatever the difficulties, we will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men; free people will set the course of history.

Nice jab at France and Germany:

America's purpose is more than to follow a process. It is to achieve a result: the end of terrible threats to the civilized world.

All free nations have a stake in preventing sudden and catastrophic attacks, and we're asking them to join us, and many are doing so. Yet the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others.

After some cold hard facts about Iraq's regime, and another money quote, the President shifted gears with a personal address to the Iraqi people, an excellent strategy in my view.

The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured.

Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained: by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape.

If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.

And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country.

And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.

Then a solemn address to the armed forces, as if preparing us for war.

Sending Americans into battle is the most profound decision a president can make. The technologies of war have changed. The risks and suffering of war have not.

For the brave Americans who bear the risk, no victory is free from sorrow. This nation fights reluctantly, because we know the cost, and we dread the days of mourning that always come.

We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended. A future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all.

If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means, sparing, in every way we can, the innocent.

And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military, and we will prevail.

And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies and freedom.

And, in my mind, he saved the best for last:

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity.

We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life and all of history. May he guide us now, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

Amen.

Overall, I think I give him an A. His economic policies are questionable, his social policies are terrific, and his foreign policy is solid. The resounding message throughout the speech was faith—faith in God, and faith in the American people. President Bush trusts us with our own money, he trusts in our compassionate nature, and he trusts in us to defend freedom and win the war. He also expressed faith in humanity, voicing his sympathy for the homeless, fatherless, and futureless around the globe, his empathy for the addicted (after all, he once was an alcoholic), and his solidarity with the oppressed in Iraq and Iran. In so doing, he embodies the principles and ideology that comprise compassionate conservatism. More importantly, he is fulfilling his role as a Christian leader.

More Commentary
Andrew Sullivan Gets Emotional
Lileks Rambles (What Else Is New?)
Oliver Willis Pans Both Sides
Peggy Noonan: Few Soundbites, Many Thoughts
George Will: Enough Said About Inspections

2003-01-29T01:08:00.000-05:00

Useless Information

I have a site monitor that tells me how many hits this site receives, but it also catches all kinds of weird stuff. In an ultimate act of self-indulgence, I think I'll post it.

- The top referrer to this site is Josh Claybourn (25), followed by blogs4God (15).

- Site attendance almost quadrupled when Josh linked my post "On Blogging," producing 36 hits on Sunday.

- People have found my site searching for very weird things. Among the search terms used: "Pictures of Condoleezza Rice in Dresses" (as opposed to...?), "michelle malkin sexy", "skinnydipping at camp pics" (?).

Other things people have surfed over here for, and have mostly been disappointed not to find, are Sixpence lyrics, Counting Crows lyrics, a speech by Anna Quindlen, Haitian Creole sentences, Max Barry's Jennifer Government Book, NationStates reviews (fun game), economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and a quit smoking program. Alright folks, I'll be back with a real post tomorrow.

2003-01-29T00:20:00.000-05:00

Filthy Lucre

Hey look! Free money! Hehe, works every time... No seriously, this is a valid link. The recording industry got sued for selling its CD's at excessive prices. They decided to settle on paying between $5-20 to each claimant, depending on how many people got wind of it and signed up. As of now, only about 30,000 people have signed up, so everyone might be getting paid.

2003-01-27T21:54:00.000-05:00

Artist of the Week (Finally!) — Damien Jurado

OK, so by now I should be halfway to writing next week's artist profile, but I've had other things on my mind as of late.

Damien Jurado is a very new entry to my collection, having just been introduced to my eardrums around Christmas. Stylistically similar to Pedro the Lion and Death Cab for Cutie (he's from the same batch of homegrown Seattle indie rockers), he recently traded in his electric alt-rock sound for a more accessible acoustic folk.

This change of genres turned out to be the best thing he could have done. Whereas the indie-rock scene was already cluttered with worthy contenders for the throne, indie folk was wide open, and the softer, more pensive style suited his voice perfectly. Jurado writes lonely, melancholy songs about lonely, melancholy people, but never stoops to the calculated weariness of fellow indie singer/songwriter David Bazan (Pedro the Lion). Unlike Bazan, his lyrics follow no particular theme, and seem to be written mostly according to his own whims, giving his albums a pleasant unpredictability from track to track.

To sum up this little essay: Not for the faint of heart, or the short of attention, but highly recommended.

Bonus: Jurado's site has a blog, and I must say, he's not too bad. Here's an excerpt from the most recent post.

there is allot of tension in the air. all this talk of war and protests... i don't need good advice or a remedy, i need a pepsi. what in the h--- am i talking about? what am i getting at? oh, war and protest. right. do me a favor, pack up your signs and save your energy. you sound like a broken record. you've never stopped a war and you never will. go home. get a pepsi, visit your lonely neighbor and put on a good reggae record. you owe it to yourself. you owe it to your country.

There's more, too, so here's the link.

2003-01-26T16:28:00.000-05:00

On Blogging

First of all, let me say that I'm well aware I never put a band up here. I may do so later today, I think I have my artist picked out. I don't think the handful of people who read this site will mind if I delay a couple of days, since they're all my friends.

But I want to write a little bit about blogging. I have been enamored with the thought ever since I read John Leo's article on it last summer. Although my friends Jacquie and Katie (both of whom read this site) actually beat me to it, I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. My blog gives me the opportunity to say what ordinarily would find no place to be said in e-mails, conversations, and even discussion boards. Its informality provides a perfect forum for both the random thoughts and reveries that float around my cranium, and its increasing air of legitimacy and universal access make it terrifically simple to churn out a highly opinionated rant on an issue, and then self-promote by commenting on likeminded bloggers' sites, providing a link back to my own piece.

This blog originally started as a journal, a way to keep a couple of friends informed about what was going on in my life, and gradually developed into a place for me to flex my writing muscles, mouth off about current events, and link to professional writers and fellow bloggers I deemed talented and inspired. In the last month or so, my blogging has become considerally more political, coinciding with my interests and the inevitable evolution from self-obsessed adolescent to socially aware and politically motivated adult.

I have done a considerable amount of perusing and reading others' blogs, and I am always on the lookout for new and insightful additions to the field. The left side of this page contains a large and growing list of columnists and bloggers that is being maintained and frequently revised to reflect my reading habits. I have thus far made no effort to balance the scales—the list is undoubtedly skewed right, and that in itself is one of the beauties of blogdom. The sites are personal. They reflect the ideas and ideologies of their owners. If you don't like it, fine. Start your own blog.

In a completely unscientific and highly subjective survey of blogs that I have read so far, I have noticed that conservatives seem to have the upper hand. The best and most-read of the bloggers, Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit), Andrew Sullivan, James Lileks, and the online news service National Review Online, are all markedly conservative. That's not to say that the left doesn't have its own voices. Feisty Boston resident Oliver Willis, TalkLeft, The Daily Howler, and sinking blogger portal Salon.com even things out for the lefties. But one has to wonder how easy it is for a Democrat/leftist to find truly fresh material to write about, since all the major news media are so biased his way to begin with. (The New York Times is already as opinionated as most bloggers and reaches a wider audience—why blog?)

Although initially heartening, the conservative upper hand in this new quickly disappoints the Christian when one realizes how secular most of these rightist bloggers are. Most of them are libertarians, strong on war but squeamish on abortion. A considerable amount of them are ex-liberals, disgusted with the polemical and anti-democratic tactics of the Democratic Party, but as dead as a doornail to the things of God as well. Many, including Sullivan and Lileks, make valid points as to the legitimacy of the impending war against Iraq, but most of the time their bursts of enlightenment are followed by pro-war rhetoric that gives credence to Oliver Willis' recent assertion that "Krauthammer (a prominent rightist columnist) would invade Canada if it looked at him funny."

The problem with this is that most of these conservative bloggers are politically savvy, and, at times, philosophically strong, but they are morally empty. Their rhetoric sometimes equals the left's in its ferocity of condemnation of "right-wing Christian fundamentalists" or "anti-gay zealots." Witness Sullivan's recent thwacking of Bush nominee Jerry Thacker to the HIV/AIDS council. (CT's Ted Olsen sets the record straight on this one.) Naturally, though, one cannot expect much in the way of moral light or aptitude from those who have not been born again.

So are Christian blogs really that much better? Well, yes and no. Stronger on moral issues, but weaker (in general) in readership and publicity, Christian blogging is still in its infancy. Martin Roth, Josh Claybourn, and Rachel Cunliffe are my top three so far. (Even in these three, the diversity of blogdom is reflected—one is an Australian author, the second an Indiana law student, the third a web designer from New Zealand.) Within the Christian blogosphere, from what I have seen, there are more Catholics than Protestants. (Just for the record, this blogger is a Protestant who does not consider himself to be an estranged child of God, nor does he think the Reformation was in vain.) This could, in part, reflect the fact that Catholicism, no matter what its numbers, is very much the minority religion of America. Many of these fine bloggers have exhibited in words the saddening toll that the recent sex scandals have taken on the Church of Rome.

All that said, I think the blogging revolution taking place has become and will continue to become an important part of our society. While serving as a useful tool for exposing and balancing out the media's bias and mendacious tactics, it also reflects an enormous spiritual vacuum left by the saturation of our society with postmodernistic thought, and the coinciding jettisoning of morals and personal responsibility. Christians can and should use it as a moral and spiritual barometer, and continue to pray that the Holy Spirit would breathe new life into the aching rickets of our society's bones.

2003-01-24T19:52:00.000-05:00

Speaking Between The Sighs

Well, it's Friday, and once again my life has come full circle. Last Friday I was miserable and spent the whole day (and night) on the computer. I had a horrible weekend, but by Monday I was alright. I was fired up again politically, and posted some highly opinionated things on here, some of which I later removed. Come mid-week my fire was burning out a little, but I still managed to get one decent article in before the whole week was declared a failure. Now I'm tired again. It's been a long week, life is a long trip, and I think Friday could quite possibly be the longest day of the week.

I miss my friends. I haven't seen Ben for ages because he's always with teams. I haven't talked to Jacquie since Tuesday. I need social contact, I crave it, but the best I could manage today was a trip to OMS, a missionary compound where nothing ever goes on, and everyone is too consumed with their own boredom to hear a word you say. Cody—armed with the same reservoir of bad jokes but now, more hair—and I passed the time by watching Jackass on his computer. Parts of it, anyway. Some of it was too obscene. The rest stopped at being stupid and went no further, although I must admit a few of the skits were actually so stupid it was impossible not to laugh. Finally, it was time to go, and Gabe drove us home without incident or damage to the vehicle. Kudos to Gabe.

Sigh. I had a huge post typed down, but I changed my mind. I'm too tired to make any coherent point tonight. I'll be back later with the band of the week.

2003-01-23T16:07:00.000-05:00

Site Primer

If you would like to...

- Link to this site on your own page or in your profile, feel free.

- Bookmark this page so you won't lose it, hit Ctrl + D. (Internet Explorer)

- Link to a specific post, right-click the time posted after the entry of choice, click "Copy Shortcut," and use that as your link address.

- Comment on the site, click "Comment" under the most recent post. If you have a specific comment, leave it under the post you're commenting on. I'm removing the link to the guestbook, as it could potentially cause some confusion. I hardly ever check it.

- Print something out, e-mail it, or share it, go ahead, but please include my name and this site's address.

- Send me a message that isn't about the site (unless you want me to add a link to your page) or something I've blogged about, e-mail me.

2003-01-23T00:33:00.000-05:00

AIDS in Africa

This is embarrassing. According to World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, only 3 percent (!) of evangelical Christians said they would be willing to donate money to a Christian ministry helping AIDS orphans in Africa.

In the last 24 hours alone, 5,500 Africans have died of AIDS; 13 million children have been orphaned, and the number is expected to rise to 40 million by 2010. In some sub-Saharan African nations, life expectancy has dipped as low as 37.

Groups that are helping out include World Vision, DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa), and Bono's Jubilee project, all of which I've added to my mushrooming Causes list.

2003-01-22T16:06:00.001-05:00

Grace

Today being the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand throughout the nation, I was planning on writing some torrid, impassioned case for the pro-life cause. I could have done an expose on the horrors of the process (of which there are many), or perhaps listed some of the perjurous arguments pro-aborts have brought to the table in recent months (ditto), or maybe even demonized Planned Parenthood (a very popular option). But after a quick scan of Christian and conservative commentary, I decided there was ample fire and brimstone to go around for a long time to come.

To all the pro-lifers around the world who pound the pavement, make their voices heard, and vote with their conscience, I salute you. As recent polls have indicated, you are on the road to winning the battle, in the U.S. at least. You have conducted rescue missions, opened crisis pregnancy centers, passed legislation, started abstinence programs in public schools, and with the advent of the Web, you have a powerful platform from which to communicate your message to the public. And that's great! After all, I'm one of you. But we can never forget that for every pamphlet you pass out, and for every speech you give, there's a hurting woman out there.

Since 1/22/73, over 40 million abortions have been performed. Many of them are repeats, so I would estimate about 25 million women have done the deed. Considering the U.S. has a population of about 292 million, that's a sizable minority. Sitting in church services the last few summers, hearing preachers give rousing sermons about the wickedness of abortion and America's declining respect for the sanctity of human life, I couldn't help but wonder if there was a lonely soul who was pricked to the heart, desperate in the mire of her own guilt to hear the simple message of grace that never came? She'd found out firsthand that all the promises of a happily-ever-after-the-fetus story were lies. She'd discovered on her own that the men who told her they would love her if she did it were pathetic excuses for human beings. She burned with the searing knowledge that what she did can never be undone. As the preacher fires up, gesticulating and reacting to the affirmations of "Amen!"s and "Say it, Preacher!"s that evangelical crowds are prone to give, I can envision her leaning forward, longing for any glimpse of redemption, any sign that what she did could be forgiven...but the preacher dismisses the congregation, who rise from their plush seats, drive back to their tract houses in affluent suburban neighborhoods, hang up their Sunday-best suits and dresses, go out to the affordable buffet restaurant a couple blocks away, comfortable in the litany of their own "Christian culture." Commenting affably on the sermon in the car, they never even wonder if they had perhaps entertained "one of them" among their midst that day.

I can imagine that forlorn young girl standing in the parking lot, shaking her head, still alone, still tired, but now wondering where the forgiveness part of the Gospel went. This is not to say that all pastors get carried away with their own righteousness, and this is not to say that all post-abortive women are repentant. The point is that, no matter how right we are when we say that abortion kills a life, we've got to remember that it essentially does the same thing to the mother. When that young, unborn child is torn from his mother's womb, a piece of the mother's soul goes with him. The damage left is so severe that it can only be undone through the healing blood of a 33-year-old carpenter that hung on a tree 2,000 years ago.

It is His blood that pays for that unborn child's destruction, and that longs to wash clean the mother that so carelessly agreed to destroy it. It is as potent in its redemptive qualities for murderers as it is for self-righteous preachers, as powerful and cleansing for abortionists as for the picketers outside the clinics. It covers child molesters and churchmen, terrorists and televangelists, pro-aborts and pro-lifers, you and me. It cleansed the worst of sinners—myself—a year and a half ago, and knocked me flat on my back last summer at camp. It is the grace of Jesus Christ, Who is willing to save you, no matter what you've done, where you've been, or how you got here. He loves you—so much that He came and died for you—and He wants to change you from the inside out. The only question left is: Will you let Him?

If you said yes, pray this prayer:

"Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be."

If you just prayed that, He will come into your life, as He promised. From the bottom of my heart to yours, God bless you this day, no matter who you are. One day, we will have reason to celebrate January 22, instead of mourning it. As Isaiah 61:4 says, "They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations." Amen.

2003-01-21T18:35:00.000-05:00

Clash of the Columnists

I found it interesting that Peggy Noonan and Anna Quindlen wrote antipodal columns on abortion yesterday.

UPDATE: Decided not to mess with the Quindlen column. Lileks will probably get to her sooner or later.

2003-01-21T01:01:00.000-05:00

Friendly Bombs

Would you ever welcome the bombing of your own country? Andrew Sullivan found Iraqis so desperate for change that they welcome the war, in this exceptional post.

2003-01-20T16:25:00.000-05:00

MLK Day

As you probably know, today is the federal holiday commemorating the life and works of Martin Luther King, Jr. Joshua Claybourn has a good post honoring King but also containing a little healthy criticism, namely that King plagiarized a large portion of his speeches.

Oliver Willis, whose site motto is "Like Kryptonite to Stupid," has King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail."

I saw King's son on Fox Wire with Rita Cosby last night. I found it odd that he would take advantage of the perfectly good "I Have a Dream" speech, in which King longed for a day in which his children would not be sized up by the color of their skin but rather the content of their character, and use it to support affirmative action. I could be wrong, but I see his remarks as incredibly contradictory. Whether used to protect or ostracize, race should not play a part in a person's eligibility for a job or anything else. His defense was that we have not yet reached the day when affirmative action will no longer be necessary to protect African-Americans seeking work. I disagree.

There are more blacks in the middle class now than ever. They are also more likely to come from the suburbs rather than inner-city ghettos. Watchdog groups permeate every level of American society. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others are ready to rush to the aid of any African-American discriminated against. In recent years, African-Americans have been selected for the highest levels of responsibility, including Secretary of State (Colin Powell) and National Security Advisor (Condoleezza Rice).

If education continues to be a problem in the inner-city areas, it is in large part due to large welfare programs that keep minority males out of the workforce and settled comfortably into apathy. It is also because of long-since failed urban public schools, which remain open only because Democrats, who have strong support in urban areas due to their near-monopoly on minority voters, fight tooth and nail to keep poorer Americans from having the same school choice options as the wealthy, despite their high success rates.

On August 28th of this year, it will have been 40 years—4 decades—since King shared his dream with America. Since that day, we have made great strides toward our goal of civil liberties for all Americans. The great temptation that must now be avoided is to attempt to quiet our guilty conscience by admitting people to colleges, universities, and professions, with no other merit than that of their race. This type of reverse discrimination is the product of either a profound misunderstanding or a flagrant disregard for the intentions of our Founding Fathers. The Declaration of Independence lists among our unalienable rights life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness is not a right, but the chance to attain it is. Judging people by the talent of their work and the content of their character is therefore acceptable. Judging them (whether favorably or unfavorably) by the color of their skin is therefore egregious. It lowers our moral standard for equality in the present, it lessens our expectations for racial harmony in the future, and it is ultimately deleterious to our educational system, our workforce, and the African-American self-image.

2003-01-19T23:45:00.000-05:00

Voice of the Martyrs

"Leprosy is a disease without pain. No remedy is found because the nerves don't work. Lepers lose their fingers and toes in accidents because they cannot feel any pain... When the Church does not feel pain with those that are a part of them, the Church's nerves also become dead. Then the Church loses part of its body. It loses power to touch souls. The Church loses its credibility before the world. On the other side, the suffering Church gives the whole Church strength to fight for Christ. Suffering makes the soul to cry out and look for help, to draw strength from the source of help—Jesus Christ."

How could I possibly have forgotten this cause? Voice of the Martyrs speaks for those whose stories will most likely never be told. Christians persecuted around the world. Its founder, Richard Wurmbrand, spent 14 years in the dark in a Romanian prison. Please, at least take a look.

Phone: 800-747-0085
E-mail: thevoice@vom-usa.org
Web: www.persecution.com

VOM will now be a permanent link on the sidebar under "Causes," the social awareness segment of this site.

Read More

New Foxe's Book of Martyrs
Jesus Freaks

2003-01-19T08:24:00.000-05:00

A Couple Quick Notes

- I added 14 new pictures to my Shutterfly account. Click "Photos" on the left to see them.

- I know I mentioned High Fidelity a while back. The edited-for-TV version plays tomorrow night at 8 on Comedy Central.

2003-01-19T00:48:00.000-05:00

C.S. Lewis on Love

Excerpted from the excellent Josh Claybourn:

"When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disinterested', because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect', is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know....We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest 'well pleased'. To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled, by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable. We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities."
-- C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis on Pride

2003-01-17T21:33:00.000-05:00

Band of the Week

This is a neat idea that I got from my baby sister, Spunky. Every Friday I'll have a band on here, with their pics and some lyrics.

And this week's band is...Counting Crows.

This picture (one of many beautiful shots available on their website) probably represents what they do the best. They're a fun band, but in a folksy, artistic way. Lead singer Adam Duritz (with dreads) has the appearance of a starving artist on the banks of the Seine trying to paint Paris, even if his voice and music are more closely related to the great folk singers like Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, or Joni Mitchell. (Their latest single, Big Yellow Taxi, incidentally is a resurrected Mitchell piece.)

Even if Counting Crows never move beyond mixing somber, morose lyrics with bright, jangly guitar hooks and Duritz' patented whine, they will go down as having contributed something important to the alternative revolution: life. While Kurt Cobain was busy shooting heroin and eventually himself, and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder was growling about other people's problems, Duritz chose to write simply and eloquently about his own experiences. His lyrics are often ethereal and difficult to understand, but one can always sense a subliminal humanity in all that he does. He's not into politics, he wasn't beat up by bullies in the schoolyard, and he, unlike most others in his genre, at one point actually wanted to be famous. Despite his celebrity status, he's always been about one thing - relationships. Duritz' creativity thrives off the everyday conversations, the hopeful relationships, and the inevitable breakups that many of us either ignore or avoid due to past experiences and present hangups. And that's why in a sense, he's become my hero. Unlike Vedder or Cobain, he gets it: life is for living. And it ain't over till it's over.

2003-01-17T00:08:00.000-05:00

Insert Clever, Witty Title Here

I had a nice nap today. I haven't one of those in a long time, and I slept for about 3 hours, so it was great! Except now I won't be able to go to sleep. I haven't updated this thing in 3 days, so hang on, here goes. (God knows my life changes a lot in 3 days.)

I can't remember anything I did Tuesday, but Wednesday I passed my Algebra test. I think I might have a record for the most 80's ever made in a single Math course. I made an 80, which is the least amount of points you can make without failing, so I'm happy. I only have 3 more PACE's (books) to go until I'm DONE FOR LIFE!!!!

I've been downloading movies like crazy the last few days. I've downloaded Mallrats, (deleted it--it was a lot worse than I remembered) Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Serendipity, Antitrust, and Signs. I think Serendipity was my favorite. It just amazes me how much one film can change your perspective. I usually think of life along terms of success and failure, happiness and sadness, amount of time spent enjoying life. This movie changed all that—I think life is all about the relationships and friendships you have, and how you affect people. I mean, sure, you have a mission and a predestined pattern that your life will follow, I'll hand you that much, but I think in the long run, those who enjoyed life more will enjoy Heaven more, too. I mean, think about it. If you devote your life to caring about people and listening more than talking, and cultivating friendships and caring for people, then you sure will recognize a lot more people up there, won't you? It's important to do the work of God, and lobby hard for political change, and push for world peace, and all that other good stuff. But in the end, I believe the greatest changes will be wrought by people who had the time to listen, a buck to spare, and a word of kindness.

Anyways, today my mail actually went out. I didn't get any of my CD's or the DVD that I ordered around Christmas, though, which was disappointing. The newsweeklies were rather dull this week as well, especially since I read them online 2 weeks before they ever get here. U.S. News always has the worst cover stories, and this week's is about drugs for cancer patients. Interesting to some, I'm sure (particularly, cancer patients) but not my thing. Besides John Leo, they also have the worst editorials. World had a story about Lord of the Rings, also not quite my cup of tea. Maybe next week, things will pick up, since January 22 is "death day," otherwise known as the 30-year anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision of the Supreme Court, which legalized abortion on demand.

Just checked Andrew Sullivan, check this quote out. "No one has inspired more blacks for hope in America than I have." - Jesse Jackson, MSNBC. Really? Nobody? I mean, I know Abraham Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s feats pale in comparison to chasing big corporations with lawsuits and suing black filmmakers for making a movie with the n-word in it. Jackson never freed the slaves, never established an institute for young blacks to learn trades, never made any astounding scientific discoveries, and never led a nation to embracing civil liberties for all human beings, but he fancies himself inspiring. I would be mad, but it's saddening to see such a self-deluded poseur suddenly finding himself this irrelevant. I Have a Dream? More like I Have an Ego the Size of Texas.

I finally found a decent French blogger, on Xanga no less. (He writes in both English and French, don't worry.)

12:16 am...finally starting to get tired. Night all.

2003-01-13T19:59:00.000-05:00

Hi-Ho Silver, Ride!

Started watching The 51st State and Swordfish. Turned them both off cause they're so darn macho, and I hate films that employ the 'f' word once every five seconds. It gets old real quick. I'm downloading Kevin Smith's Mallrats, a true classic. Now I'll admit that critics panned it and it hasn't exactly become the cult classic that most other Smith films (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma) have, but I like it. It stars Jason Lee (nobody recognizes the name, but he turns up quite often) and Claire Forlani (Meet Joe Black). It's basically just about a whole bunch of suburban losers trying to find fun and love and not exert too much energy or sacrifice too much hubris in the process. I can certainly relate to that. I think most of you readers would like it, although I'm not sure I have very good taste when it comes to movies. (I liked the Comedy Central staple Kissing a Fool, starring David Schwimmer from Friends, and incidentally, Jason Lee's in that one, too.)

I do trust my taste in music, however. Gabe and I have been making a list of every band and every song we've ever downloaded. It's far from done, but I think I'll post all of the bands on here.

Aerosmith
Aimee Mann
Alana Davis
Alice In Chains
All Together Separate
Audio Adrenaline
Avril Lavigne
Band of Apathetics
Beck
Beatles
Beethoven, Ludwig von
Ben Folds Five
Ben Harper
Big Tent Revival
Billy Gilman
Bleach
Blind Melon
Blink 182
Bloom
Blur
Bob Dylan
Bob Marley
Brenton Brown
Built To Spill
Bush
Caedmon's Call
Carly Simon
Cat Power
Cat Stevens
Chantal Kreviazuk
Chris Rice
Chris Tomlin
Cohen, Jonathan & Stephen
Coldplay
Considering Lily
Counting Crows
Crash Test Dummies
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Damien Jurado
Dave Matthews Band
dc Talk
Death Cab For Cutie
Deftones
Delirious?
Dinosaur, Jr.
Dismemberment Plan
D.N.A.
Duncan Sheik
Eddie Vedder
Edie Brickell
Eels
Elton John
Elvis Presley
Everclear
Everlast
Fastball
FFH
Filter
Fono
Foo Fighters
Freedy Johnston
Fuel
Geoff Moore and the Distance
Get Up Kids
Gilberto Gil
Gin Blossoms
Gomez
Goo Goo Dolls
Grammatrain
Green Day
Guster
Hayden
Hives, The
Hole
Holy Soldier
Incubus
Insyderz, The
Jaci Velasquez
Jack Johnson
James Taylor
Jane's Addiction
Jars of Clay
Jason Wade
Jeff Buckley
Jennifer Knapp
Jimi Hendrix
Jimmy Eat World
Joan Osborne
John Lennon
John Mayer
Kathryn Scott
Keith Green
Kevin Max
KJ-52
Kostars
Lauryn Hill
Leigh Nash
Lenny Kravitz
Lifehouse
Liz Phair
Mac Powell
Marcy Playground
Matt Redman
Meat Puppets
Michael W. Smith
Moby
Modest Mouse
No Doubt
Neil Young
Neutral Milk Hotel
Newsboys
Nichole Nordeman
Nick Drake
Nirvana
Norah Jones
Oasis
O.C. Supertones
Old 97's
Otis Redding
Our Lady Peace
Passion Band
Pavement
PAX217
Pearl Jam
Pedro the Lion
Pete Yorn
Plankeye
P.O.D.
Polaris
Police, The
Radiohead
Rage Against The Machine
Red Hot Chili Peppers
R.E.M.
Robert Schumann
Rolling Stones, The
Ryan Adams
Sarah Masen
Sarah McLachlan
Saves The Day
Semisonic
Seven Day Jesus
Shawn Colvin
Sheryl Crow
Sigur Ros
Silverchair
Silver Jews
Sister Hazel
Sixpence None The Richer
Skillet
Smalltown Poets
Smash Mouth
Smashing Pumpkins
Sonic Youth
Sophie B. Hawkins
Soundgarden
Stephen Malkmus
Stereophonics
Steven Curtis Chapman
Sting
Stone Gossard
Stone Temple Pilots
Strokes, The
Sugar Ray
Suzanne Vega
Switchfoot
Tears for Fears
Temple of the Dog
The Tragically Hip
The Verve
Third Day
Third Eye Blind
Three Fish
Tom Petty
Train
Travis
Turnbull
Twothirtyeight
U2
Van Morrison
Vaselines, The
Verve, The
Vines, The
Vineyard
W's, The
Waiting, The
Wallflowers, The
Weezer
White Stripes, The
Wilco
Wyclef Jean

This list is far from complete. As you can see, the artists' songs haven't even been filled in, and a lot of artists need to be added. But when it's completely done, I'll finish it off, and post it back up here.

Now for some lyrics. This is probably my favorite song right now. Sorry Jacquie, I forgot to put it on your CD.

Pavement - Stereo

Pigs, they tend to wiggle when they walk
the infrastructure rots
and the owners hate the jocks
with their agents and their dates

if the signatures are checked
you'll just have to wait

and we're counting up the instants that we save
tired nation so depraved
from the cheap seats see us
wave to the camera
it took a giant ramrod
to raze the demon settlement

but high-ho silver, ride
high-ho silver, ride

take another ride to see me home
listen to me! i'm on the stereo stereo
oh my baby baby baby baby babe
gave me malaria hysteria

what about the voice of geddy lee
how did it get so high?
i wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy?
(i know him and he does!)

and you're my fact-checkin' cuz
(Aww...)

well focus on the quasar in the mist
the kaiser has a cyst
and i'm a blank want list
the qualms you have and if they stick
they will drown you in a crick
in the neck of a woods
that was populated by
tired nation on the fly
everybody knows advice
that was give out for free
lots of details to discern
lots of details

but high-ho silver ride
high-ho silver ride
takes another ride to make me
oh, get off the air
i'm on the stereo stereo
oh my baby baby baby baby baby babe
gave me malaria hysteria

-- From "Brighten the Corners" (1997)

I think this post is long enough already, so cheers, and have an awesome day. Even if, by some odd twist of chance, you happen to be named after a frickin' panda. ;)

2003-01-13T00:54:00.000-05:00

Midnight Screed

It's two minutes shy of midnight. I feel an urge to compose some unreasoned, illogical screed right now, but unfortunately, I don't have the energy. I talked to Jacquie for an hour today...ran out the card again. Hey Jax, I know I never gave you a straight answer, but suffice it to say, my letter will say it all. In the meantime, I hope your dad doesn't ground you from the phone.

Quick recap of the day:

PERSONAL -- Talked to Jax for an hour. Ran card out. Met evangelist Walter de Sousa, who preached at our church. Had a long talk with dad after dinner about the future of the church. Finally got my application form out of his office.

NEWS -- It's yet another sad day in the Middle East. The strain between Israel and the Palestinians has been become even tighter, as nine Palestinians and two Israelis lost their lives in shootouts and bombings in and around the tiny Jewish state. Read the Washington Post report. For what it's worth, my prayers are with the bereaved on both sides. May God comfort you and may you find an end to this horrible situation.

THE BODY POLITIC -- President Bush renominated Judge Charles Pickering for the federal bench, to serve on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Senate Democrats prevented his nomination from even reaching the floor last year, ``in a way that would make Joe McCarthy blush," according to David Horowitz. Those were better times for the party of the left. November's Republican sweep changed the political landscape, leaving Daschle in the minority, and his cohorts with filibustering as their only option--one that also happens to be decisively unpopular with the public.

ENTERTAINMENT -- Thank Heaven, HBO's horny pseudo-porn drama "Sex and the City" will be cancelled after next season. Described by one belligerent blogger as ``a woman's idea of what a sexy woman looks like," (I decline to comment) the show's death is apparently in reaction to waning interest in a show set in Manhattan about the libidos of middle-aged socialites. Synopsis: After a few laughable attempts at solemnity, this one finally bit the dust and went to TV hell.

LINK OF THE DAY -- Without a doubt, Lileks' dissection of a snobby British journalist's take on America - from the viewpoint of an Alabama Olive Garden patron. It's a classic.

2003-01-11T18:32:00.000-05:00

Saturday

I woke up this morning and the cloud was gone. The cloud I'd been living under for the past week. It's nice not having it there anymore. This is probably a gross understatement, but I'd say I'm a moody person. Temperamental even. My spirits can be raised or crushed at the slightest development. Nothing happened today, though, so I'm not sure why I'm back to normal.

*Sigh.* I long to think something brilliant that I could insert here...nothing came. I want to blog like this guy. Man, if I could think like that guy, I would be a happy man.

Check this out! It's hilarious! (For full effect, turn your speakers all the way up.)

On NationStates, these guys have been having a debate. First, a guy posted asking why more liberals don't admire Hitler, considering his socialist policies. Of course, this provoked much heated debate. Fun stuff to read. The game is really fun, too. It's odd, though. My political meter has been steadily swinging left ever since I began a week and a half ago, for no apparent reason at all. For example, just today, I allowed the death penalty to be introduced (seeing as how I'm a republic, I didn't see fit to override the peoples' wishes), but I went from a Democratic Socialist to a Liberal Democratic Socialist. Strange. I thought liberals were against capital punishment. Heck, the liberals are against most every other form of punishment. (Unless, of course, the perpetrator is a Republican.)

I'm dead, dead tired, so I'm going to give my poor eyes a break, and sign off. Cheers.

2003-01-09T19:45:00.000-05:00

Quotes

Here are a few quotes gathered from odd corners of the Web through casual browsing over the last few months. I just found the Notepad file I kept them in, and decided to post them.

"Correct me if I'm wrong - the gizmo is connected to the flingflang connected to the watzis, watzis connected to the doo-dad connected to the ding dong." – Patrick B. Oliphant (editorial cartoonist)

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." – John Kenneth Galbraith (economist)

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." – C.S. Lewis (author, philosopher, university professor) [from Mere Christianity, he is referring to the intense spiritual desire inside every human being.]

I think Karl Marx got it backwards when he said that religion was the "opium of the people." [from Boundless, it is referring to the fact that many drug users use drugs for spiritual reasons, making drug use a religion in itself.]

"None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it." – Richard Chenevix Trench (clergyman, author)

Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you'll be a mile away and you'll have their shoes.

"To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad." – Oliver Wendell Holmes (author, physician)

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." – Ayn Rand (novelist, philosopher)

"We look to Mr. Bush to be Solomonic when the baby is already sawn asunder, as it were. For the Rubicon was crossed decades ago, in the quiet and creeping collective assent to the stowing away of superfluous microscopic human beings, while we all looked elsewhere down the river." – Andree Seu, writing in World Magazine, September 1, 2001 [referring to the fact that modern man's obsession with playing God (cloning) began when human embryos began to be stored in vials]

"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions." – Susan Sontag (author, film director)

"In three words, I can sum up everything I have learnt about life. It goes on." – Robert Frost (poet)

Don't wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it. – Anon

2003-01-08T17:14:00.000-05:00

The Voices in My Head Dislike You

There's a really fun game on the Internet right now called NationStates. Look at my nation, the Republic of Dover, by clicking here. Some author named Max Barry created it as a way to promote his new book, Jennifer Government. It's a little slow-loading, but it's really fun! You form your own nation, and mould it according to your political ideals. You get one or two issues every day for your parliament/congress/dictator to vote on, and you can join the United Nations and pull weight for various bills. It's heaven on earth for a Civics geek like me. :) I'm imagining what kind of state an independent woman would create. Maybe a leftist dictatorship where only women could vote and war was outlawed. (jk)

If you ever watch CNN during the day, especially after an important event, you'll probably see White House spokesman Ari Fleischer doing his thing. That is, giving one or two answers in varied forms to several different reporters. It's great, since Ari happens to be the complete master at what he does. His admirers credit him with grace under fire, the rest hate his guts cause he's so slippery. Whatever your opinion, it's fun to watch when you have absolutely nothing to do, like me.

I have one of those little plastic penguins that squeak when they're squeezed that sits atop my computer monitor. His name is Squeaker, he's cool. The table my monitor sits on is rather flimsy, so whenever music's playing or I'm typing, or anything's happening that causes vibration, Squeaker bobs and shakes and nods his approval to the rhythm of the drums and/or my fingers tapping away. Squeaker has a purple back, a white belly, and a yellow bill. His eyes are always tilted to the right, as if keeping an eye on something, and his bill has this silly, contented grin on it all the time. I just picked him up, and realized that he needs a bath. Yeah, Squeaker's definitely going with me to Portland.

Another friend I have is Babs. Babs has been with me since I was old enough to talk. He's this goofy clown some artistic soul made out of a whole bunch of different parts. They took one of those balls people who sew stick needles in when they're not using them, sewed a piece of a sock around it, and made his head. They took some furry yellow who-knows-what to make a scraggly little tuft of hair. He has blue eyes, a blue ball for a nose, and a blue mouth with yellow lining. (Yellow and blue are his favorite colors, of course.) He has long, gangly arms and legs that have overly flexible joints that collapse whenever any sort of pressure is applied to them. Because of this, Babs sits all the time...he can't stand. He has yellow feet that curl like tobacco leaves back over themselves, and some joker decided to give him skin-colored hands, pried from some hapless baby doll. (The other stuffed animals teased him mercilessly about being half-girl because of this.) Those hands still have small nail marks from when yours truly, inspired by the Jesus film, decided to crucify Babs. The plan was halted when yours truly's mother assured him that Jesus only had to die once, and that clowns didn't need their sins atoned. Maybe that's why he's always smiling...

Enough for now. I think I'm going to go sleep, it's a terrific day for it. :)

2003-01-07T01:23:00.000-05:00

Articles

Here are a couple of excellent articles I just read: one from conservative WorldNetDaily and the other from liberal Newsweek.

- Joseph Farah's scathing indictment of the ACLU as American Taliban.

- Wes Carter's terrific "My Turn" piece on how every day kindness is healing the scars of racism in America.

2003-01-07T00:49:00.000-05:00

Midnight Ramblings

I should be in bed. Even if I fell asleep right now, I'd wake up with less seven hours of sleep, and that's never good. But sleep has eluded me thus far, so here I sit posting to my blog. My Snoopy picture disappeared. The site that was hosting the image must be down, because it won't load, which sucks bunnies. Hopefully Snoopy will be back in his usual place at the top of the sidebar soon.

I created another blog today. Well, I actually I created it the day after Christmas, but today I updated it and changed its name. It's called The Cap-Haitien Times. Quite a pretentious title, since I don't suppose or even desire to know everything that goes on in this dusty, beat-up little town. Still, I like the idea of having an interactive blog where shooting off my big mouth doesn't hurt people. Who knows? It might even help somebody. Instapundit started the whole idea of posting fresh links several times a day to tons of sites, and now other guys have become Web legends by copying off his idea, notably The Volokh Conspiracy and my favorite, Freeside.

In any case, my site is about the news and happenings of Haiti, mostly Cap, but also national news. I plan to update it several times a day with news, analysis and editorials. Spread the word.

I've been reading a lot of Andrew Sullivan and Peggy Noonan lately. Noonan especially impresses me. She's a conservative—a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan—but she has a grace and eloquence that no doubt stem from a Godly life. Whether musing on matters of the heart, defending her ideas, or confronting the ideas of others, she always seems to carry out her task with a profound love and respect for her reader. I suspect that she could have been the factor that endeared Americans to their president during the 1980's. Reagan, a hardline conservative, notorious anti-Communist, and much-derided governor of California, was given speeches that made him seem like the tall, brave, affectionate grandfather you always used to love. Whatever punches his opponents would swing his way, whether his age (oldest president in history), his stance on welfare (firmly against), or his attitude toward the Soviet Union (suspicious and antagonistic), he came out on top because when he spoke, people listened, and when he said he cared, people believed him. It gives credence to the old aphorism that "behind every great man, there's a great woman." Noonan certainly fits the profile. I would love to see her run for president someday, and become the first female president in history.

In closing, I added a whole bunch of new links to the sidebar (look to the left). Good night all!

2003-01-05T23:49:00.000-05:00

Jacquie's Visit

She came. She saw. She went back home. Jacqueline Ackerman graced our little clique with her presence for four days this weekend, and we're all the better for it. I don't think I'll republish the last post since things have changed, but I'll type a brand spanking new one right now.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, where did they go? Everything seemed to rush by in a blur while Jacquie was here. We had some fun, quickly exhausting everything this pathetic little town has to offer within a few hours. We did the circle at the tourist market, raced down the Boulevard, jumped the A St. Bridge, climbed the water tower, went to the beach, and even made a nighttime run to Limbe while the wind numbed our faces and coarsened our hair.

I gave Jacquie her Christmas present. She gave me a Santa hat. :) I like it a lot. If you've ever seen or read Little Women, you know how Jo March wears that stupid hat for inspiration when she writes? Well, I think I'm developing the same habit with my Santa hat. It's good luck, and it sort of smells like girls' hair. Yes, I smelled my hat. So sue me. :) Thanks, Jax. I think I know how you felt last summer now, but I couldn't ask for a better best friend than you.

Chantal Kreviazuk - Leaving on a Jet Plane

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye

But the dawn is breakin', it's early morn
The taxi's waitin', he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go

'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, baby, I hate to go

I'm ...

There's so many times I've let you down
So many times I've played around
I'll tell you now, they don't mean a thing

Every place I go, I think of you
Every song I sing, I sing for you
When I come back I'll wear your wedding ring

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go

'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, baby, I hate to go

Now the time has come to leave you
One more time, oh, let me kiss you
And close your eyes and I'll be on my way

Dream about the days to come
When I won't have to leave alone
About the times that I won't have to say ...

Oh, kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go

'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, baby, I hate to go

And I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, baby, I hate to go

Well, I don't have anything else to say, so I'm gonna go. Love you all, drop me a comment or two. Cheers.

2003-01-02T01:37:00.000-05:00

Good Reads

I could be the happiest man alive tonight, as I seem to have found my kindred spirit in the founding father whose name I bear—John Adams. I received as a Christmas gift his biography, written by David McCullough, and I have just started reading it. It is fantastic! Using journal entries and letters, McCullough gradually introduces the reader to the marvel that was Adams's mind. In his writings, I see the same mercurial disposition that I struggle with. At times brazenly optimistic, at others sullen and melancholy, at all times genuine, honest, and sincere, Adams became the man that I desire someday to be.

I identify wholeheartedly with his endless quest for self-improvement, and his relentless criticism of his own liabilities and faults, as I explained in a recent post. The inclination to be better than you are must run deep within Adams blood. I know that it burns like a fire in my own heart.

If you want to get a taste of the book for yourself, click here. Amazon.com has a terrific sales technique that allows you to read the first few pages of a book online, just click the book's cover when you get there.

I also read This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti over the last few days. It is truly a classic Christian novel, and holds it own in the secular arena as well. Once you begin to turn its pages, you are held captive by a plot that becomes ever more complex and enthralling. The only objection I had was that at times it paints an overly generous picture of the demonic side of spirituality as being extraordinarily powerful, even more powerful than the saints of God in certain instances. I believe in giving credit where it is due, and the Bible in no place credits the devil with anything more than utter wickedness and rebellion. It is apparent that he has a certain amount of intelligence, but even this is a product of God's creative work, and will be revoked in due time. I think Peretti sacrificed a little bit of ground to the Dualists—who claim that good and evil are separate and mutually independent entities at work in the universe—in order to keep readers glued to the page a little bit longer.

My eyes are yearning for sleep, so I shall end this post, and release you back to your day.

With a poet in your pocket, you shall never be alone on those solitary days on the road. (John Adams)

2002-12-31T23:08:00.000-05:00

The Lord Is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want

To everyone I have wounded this past year: I am truly sorry. I love you all, and I can only beg your forgiveness. God bless you all. I pray that He will give everyone peace of mind, success, and joy that defies the imagination. Katie, I think I will make a New Year's resolution after all. I resolve that I will stay in the Lord's will for my life for the rest of my days, whether He lead me to green pastures or scorching deserts, quiet waters or raging torrents. "For better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere..." (Psalm 84:10) I realize that the New Year's resolution is an American tradition that are often made to be discarded within a few days. But if I could lose all else, and keep this simple promise, I should be the happiest man alive.

I am of the firm opinion that 2003 will be a wonderful year. I will see Jacquie for the first time in a year, I will finally be emancipated from the shackles of high school, I will begin a new phase of my life as a collegian, and I will revisit camp and Katie Ragsdale. I will go places I have never been before, meet people I never could have imagined, and attain new spiritual heights previously unimagined with the Lord. Without a doubt, it will be a great year.

With less than an hour remaining to 2002, I think it would be fitting if I spent it in prayer thanking my Father for the blessings that He has lavished upon me, and praising His name for the changes that He is making in me.

Happy New Year everybody!

2002-12-30T23:32:00.000-05:00

A Prayer from the Dead of Winter

These last few winter weeks have brought dark, damp, gloomy days into town with them. I have always believed that the weather is a great factor in peoples' dispositions, and today proved me right. Ben's down, Carrie's down, I'm down, even Carlo's down. I don't really have the time or the will to go into everyone's problems, although they all seem to be interrelated.

Ben went to Labadee today, to meet his old flame Kami. She came in on a cruise ship with her new flame Andrew, who's quite similar to Ben, from what I hear. I think Kami still likes Ben, but it's the distance that kills, as always. The whole thing is eerily similar to another situation I'm familiar with. I think my dilemma is all but over, if not by choice then by circumstance. My heart feels like it's bleeding over the whole thing, but in all truth, I asked for it. I've been pretty upbeat lately, but tonight it's killing me. I wish I could set things back the way they were. Maybe, like you said, it never really was and now I'm paying the price for it. Whatever the case, my heart is broken, and I can honestly say that I'm responsible for breaking it, which makes it all the worse.

In an effort to forget my present mirthless condition, I will recount the day's happenings. I got a haircut. It looks exactly the same as before, just shorter. My mom was cutting it, when Ben and Carrie bounded into the room. Ben and I decided to go downtown to see Francesca, knocked on her door, and the maid said she was sleeping. I haven't seen her in a year, almost didn't go, and she was sleeping. Man, life hurts.

From there, we went joyriding around town a little bit. We went to the tourist market and did some tricks in the car, and gave a French group a ride to their home on 18th street. They seemed completely taken aback that we would give them a ride without asking for some kind of compensation. But we did. Then we made our way home, and the day ended. And there my tale ends as well.

So as I sit in this familiar old revolving chair on this penultimate day of 2002, I can't help but get the feeling that time is one big circle. History repeats itself endlessly. One year ago this time, I was reeling from an abrupt and bitter breakup of a relationship that never technically existed, nursing a wounded ego. On the eve of New Year's Eve 2002, much to my chagrin, I find myself in the same pattern of wistful sighs and winsome glances that time has lavished on me with such openhanded generosity.

Here's hoping my broken spirit will yield great and ripe fruit for the Lord in 2003, now that all self-imposed spiritual blockades have been systematically removed. In the words of Christ Himself, "not my will but Yours be done." If Scripture is accurate, which I am convinced that it is, this formula should prove quite successful. Judging from the repertoire of past mistakes from years spent living solely for myself, I couldn't do any worse.

2002-12-27T22:58:00.000-05:00

The Long Day Is Over

Today was a long day. I could have helped myself out by going to bed earlier last night. (I didn't hit the sack until 2:30 this morning.) I had to wake up at 8:30 to go meet Brunel. I drove the pickup from the church to the beach. Cormier was as beautiful as ever, but I think I've had about enough beach for another week or so. The committee and all their families were a lot less people than I thought they would be. (A lot of people were missing.) The whole beach day was my parents' idea to thank the committee (like a church board) for being such great people and all that. It was a first for most of the Haitians cause they had never been to an upscale resort like Cormier before, and it was nice doing something special for them.

We spent a lot of time in the water, and I got a pretty bad sunburn. I took one of those blue lounge chair cushions beach resorts always have out into the water. I made a makeshift floating device/surfboard out of it, and caught some pretty nice waves. (Well, for Cormier anyway.) Haitians have very different modesty standards from us. Don't get me wrong, I've known this since I was born, but it's surprising when even conservative Brunel's daughter jumps in the water in a wifebeater. As often happens with thin white clothing, the water made it transparent in no time. She didn't seem to mind. For that matter, neither did anyone else, even when the waves knocked the shirt halfway off. The culture gap is still enormous, though. It strikes me as odd that girls who have no problem splashing around in the ocean with their chests on full display act like third-graders when it comes to talking to boys. I was tempted to ask them if they thought I had cooties.

Tomorrow is Saturday. Hopefully I will see Francesca. Hopefully is the key word there. Five and a half days till Jacquie comes to town. We're going to have an awesome time. I probably won't recognize her, and vice versa. It's been 11 months, after all. The last time I saw Jacquie I was:

- 16 years old.

- Down on my luck.

- Lonely, sarcastic, unhappily single.

- Into Pearl Jam and all my old bands.

I've changed a lot since I last saw her, and I'm sure she has, too. A lot of that change has to do with her. She's at the beach right now, hopefully getting as bad of a sunburn as I got today. I can't wait to see her. Well, I think I'm gonna go. Cheers everyone.

2002-12-25T22:03:00.000-05:00

No Joy in Mudville

This post is dedicated to everyone who didn't have the chance to do anything this Christmas. So I dedicate it, first and foremost, to myself, and then to everyone else in Mudville (Cap-Haitien). Empathy shots all around.

I'm thinking back a few Christmases, and I always seem to end up having good 24th's, followed by boring, meaningless 25th's filled with brooding music. Christmas 2000 was filled with Bush's Razorblade Suitcase, Christmas 2001 was filled with Counting Crows' Across a Wire, and Christmas 2002 so far has been filled with Death Cab for Cutie's We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes. Let's see: the first one's from England, the second from San Francisco, and the third from Seattle. Yay for Prozac-dependent people across the whole wide world.

I know I've said this before, but Death Cab for Cutie is the absolute best band in the whole world. "Stability" has got to be one of the most beautiful songs ever written. So is "Company Calls Epilogue"...and "Lowell, MA." Nevermind, just buy all their albums, EP's, singles, etc.

I bought a CD (Lauryn Hill's Unplugged 2.0) for Deb and a DVD (Jars of Clay in concert) for myself today.

God, I hate it when people leave! Now I have to...bye.

2002-12-24T23:21:00.000-05:00

Happy Anti-Santa Day!

Swiped that line from Ben, hehehe. Just wanted to post some quiz results.

Which Peanuts Character Are You Quiz

2002-12-23T00:42:00.000-05:00

Let My Love Open The Door

This has been a long weekend. I guess I can say my weekend really started Friday, since I spent the whole day shirking school and installing Windows XP on my computer. (I had forgotten how freakin' fast this thing used to be...it's back to full speed now!) Muchas gracias to Ben for staying on the phone Friday night helping me network our four computers.

Saturday was beach day. I'd been looking forward to it for two weeks (since it was cancelled last week), but I came away somewhat unfulfilled. There's this strange hole inside of me that won't be filled with anything except a very select few things. It didn't help that I ended the day feeling guilty on two counts (not worth mentioning here). Despite the yearnings of my soul, the sun, surf and sand had a very calming effect on me, and I feel about 10 times healthier now than I did before I went. I love the beach.

I may be going back next Saturday, too! After three months of having completely forgotten about her, Francesca popped back into my memory by signing onto MSN today. I can't believe it's been almost a year since I've seen her. She's in town, will be till the sixth, presumably wants to see me, and (hopefully) will go to the beach with us next week. The plan (and the excuses for the parents) are still in the developing stage, but it would be absolutely fantastic to see her again. (And for those of you whose thoughts might be leading to some conclusion...forget it. She already turned me down once, and our relationship has always been more platonic than most.)

The week after that, wonderful human being (and faithful reader of this site) Jacquie will land in Cap-Haitien for the first time in ten months. She'll be spending four days with Ben, and presumably wants to see me as well. I should hope so, anyway. We'll probably take her to (Guess where?) the beach on a Saturday. That'll make three weeks in a row, and if everything goes as planned, I can exchange my vampirish shade of white for a more human-resembling skin tone. Self-deprecation on a public blog. Gotta love it.

Moving on...to answer the question—"What the heck are circles and strains?"—once and for all. I got the site's universally misunderstood title from a Sixpence None The Richer song. ("Anything") The song is about their band being down in the dumps, haggard with the writing and recording process. They're tired, depressed, sick of seeing each other, sick of singing the same songs over and over, sick of hearing their songs over and over, sick of wondering whether or not they still have it, etc. The only thing that keeps them together, ironically, is pain. The pain inside them that fueled the creativity to write those songs in the first place. The pain that is reflected in every melancholy note the guitar plays. The pain in every percussive note missed due to sheer exhaustion. The pain that drove the pen to write words that sear the conscience with their honesty. The pain in taking the risk to bare their souls in order to record an hour's worth of music. Most of all, the pain transmitted in every breath the singer breathes, struggling to relay with honesty and conviction the battle going on inside her. Those feelings that drive us to our wit's end—seemingly on a quest to be exorcised—are our circles and strains.

It sounds like nonsense, and in a scientific sense, it is. Our feelings don't have shapes or personalities of their own. We simply give them names according to what they most nearly resemble. To me, the circles are the doldrums of life that make it seem like time is an endless merry-go-round of failure and defeat. The strains are the trying circumstances that tug downward on the heart. Disappointment, lost love, the pain of rejection, guilt. So when Leigh Nash croons, "We're all told to dance, but we never pick the tune / Hanging like puppets, they feed us from bent steel spoons / But we're sealing our lips for the someday when the needle and the vinyl play / All the songs of the pain, songs that explain all our circles and strains," I know exactly what she's feeling, because I've been there, too. It's exactly what I spent a year and a half trying to do before I realized I wasn't, and never would be, a musician. I saw Kurt Cobain define in three minutes what I'd been trying to say since I got old enough to get my feelings crushed. I wanted the world to care about my feelings, and how it had trampled them, and I hoped that if a scrawny nobody from Washington could be taken seriously and treated as an artist and a poet, perhaps an even scrawnier nobody from Haiti could as well.

These days, I still try to do the same thing with the written word, which is one of the reasons I started this blog. Prose does not have the same emotional potency as music, and never will, but bleeding-heart ballads have never been my forte anyway. I'm probably a more cerebral person, not quite as analytical and disengaged as I'd like to be, but not quite as sensitive and perceptive as I'd like to be, either. I'm a work under construction (or procrastination, knowing me).

I seem to have a penchant for long, self-obsessed ramblings. To give a more concise, less self-serving explanation for the site's title, circles and strains are the feelings that drive us to change what we don't like about ourselves. And posts like this one demonstrate with exceeding clarity why such a title was absolutely perfect for this blog. Because, the more you read, the more you'll discover, most of my life consists of adjusting, readjusting, and demolishing sections of my life, reconstructing them into something altogether different, then demolishing them again. My life is like a city lot that just can't seem to attract business long enough to prosper, so tenants come and go like the seasons. It is constant chaos drowned out occasionally by the odd distraction. And you know what? I'm not completely convinced that that's a bad thing. :)

2002-12-17T22:13:00.000-05:00

Spread the Love

Show your love and appreciation for this site by clicking here, and reviewing it favorably in the Blog Index.

UPDATE: You can also go rate this blog and other blogs at Is my Blog HOT or NOT? If you'd rather rate people than websites, click here.

2002-12-16T13:49:00.000-05:00

The New Conservative Bias

Alex Dent from Avon, Indiana, apparently felt the need to express his concern over the ``new conservative bias taking hold of the media." Amusing. If you can call having one out of seven television news networks (Fox News Channel), a handful of printed publications, and a few scattered webheads (like myself) express your point of view fairly an industry bias, then you may as well have harbingered a bias in favor of African-Americans when Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was published the same week, no doubt, as dozens of slanted, racist articles. Here is the letter in its entirety, published on Newsweek's site:

I enjoyed your article on the supposedly slanted coverage by The New York Times. However, it seems that what is really going on is the continuing carping by conservatives about how the Times is biased in favor of liberals. I hope you’ll write an article about the liberals who complain that papers like The Wall Street Journal are biased toward conservatives. Any attention devoted to how media organizations decide to run stories is important and interesting. There is a new conservative bias taking hold of the media that deserves attention.

If you go to the homepage on this site, evidently not yet a victim of the "conservative bias," you will find a cover story aspiring to make closet racists out of all Republicans. I quote, ``Trent Lott and the GOP grew up together in the South. They both have a painful secret." The article itself isn't so bad, but the implication that the entire Republican Party has xenophobic skeletons in its closet is ludicrous as well as hurtful. (Never mind that the Democratic Party tolerated Ku Klux Klan member Robert Byrd, and retained him as one of their senior congressmen.)

But hey, why stop at calling us racists, when you can yarp about our supposed predisposition against women as well? (Note the recent New York Times hullabaloo over Augusta National Golf Club's refusal to admit women.) We pesky conservatives are misogynists as well as racists, in the opinion of America's most influential newspaper. A prominent female conservative (I can see the liberal heads being scratched now), Ann Coulter, has written a scathing column on the state of media bias. Turns out if Augusta, and conservatives for that matter, really had it in for women, we could learn everything we needed to know about effective discrimination from the liberal media itself.

The truth is that objectivity is impossible, for liberals or conservatives. Journalists report the news not only as they see it, but also as their worldview has taught them to see it. Only God, who is detached from the heat of the issues and the quandaries of right and wrong, can be objective. But until the Times, Newsweek and other likeminded periodicals can figure this out, they will continue to promote themselves as towers of objectivity and reason in a world in dire need of some good ole liberal indoctrination and condescension.

2002-12-14T22:44:00.000-05:00

Even Flow

Today was a long day. I woke up pretty late, watched a documentary on punk rock on MTV2, then took a bath, and decided to go downtown. So Gabe and I drove down to the Christophe, and sat there for an hour and a half, waiting on Deb and Carrie to show up, cause I was supposed to run them home after they were done shopping. They never came, so me and Gabe just ran around town a little, and then came home. The pickup has about 101 new things wrong with it, most notably that the AC now emits only hot air, and the horn doesn't work. It is extremely frustrating--not to mention parlous--to drive anywhere in Haiti without a horn. Fortunately, I emerged from my day victorious and unscathed, although I still have a headache because now gasoline fumes leak into the cabin. I believe in the long run, that could be equally deleterious to my health, so I will recommend Brunel gets that fixed, before he gets us all lung cancer or something.

I learned some new words today. Seems like, because of Atomica or my English course, or reading C.S. Lewis, I've been expanding my vocabulary daily. For example, deleterious (which I just used in this post) means harmful or injurious. Did you that the word nexus can mean either "a means of connection; a link" or "the core or center"? Or that aegis means "protection; sponsorship; patronage; guidance; direction; control"? But here's my favorite: macadam. It means, quite simply, pavement.

Enough with the English lesson. I've been posting a lot of links on here lately. Here's another one: Andree Seu is quite possibly my favorite writer. She's a columnist for a rightist publication called World Magazine. She's a rarity in that magazine, since her political views don't seem to taint her writing at all. Not that political views aren't important and shouldn't be expressed, left or right, but it's nice after a magazine full of political squabbles, ideological statements, and endless debates to find an island of individualism, where the contents of the spirit are brought under scrutiny instead of the contents of Congress' political docket. Her column has been a source of inspiration for me, since she seems to share a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses I do. But don't take my word that she's brilliant--read it for yourselves.

Check this page out, too. It tells you how old you were when certain events happened, certain songs topped the charts, and certain movies were popular. Cool stuff.

Welp...that's all folks! Must...get...sleep.

2002-12-13T13:15:00.000-05:00

Food for Thought

Here is an excellent treatise on pride by that great thinker, C.S. Lewis. It is actually a chapter excerpted from Mere Christianity.

Also, Charles Colson wrote an interesting piece on whether or not the invasion of Iraq could be justified according to Christianity.

2002-12-11T21:46:00.000-05:00

On The Reading List

Past...

- Chain Reaction by Darrell Scott, Steve Rabey. Thomas Nelson.

- Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco.

Present...

- Little Men by Louisa May Alcott. New American Library.

- The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco.

Future...

- City of God by Augustine. Cambridge University Press.

- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Constance Garnett. Bantam Classics.

- Thinking Straight in a Crooked World by Gary DeMar. American Vision.

"There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile: He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse. And they all lived together in a crooked little house."

2002-12-09T00:15:00.000-05:00

A Redder Shade of Neck on a Whiter Shade of Trash

I think Jacquie and I share a magnetism for those with whom relationships of the romantic nature would never work out, as well as a repulsive force for those with whom they would. This has got to be one of the strangest situations I've ever been in, so I've done what anybody in dire straits should do: I left it all in God's hands. If anything, this crazy weekend has proved to me how much I really do care for her, and how completely capable I am of screwing my life up without God's guiding hand. So I decided to lay off relationships, and give the Lord the last word on what happens to me, even if that means I end up celibate. But I seriously doubt that's God's plan for me, considering the generous helping of hormones He's endowed me with.

Some nebulous lyrics courtesy of Pavement:

Pavement - Shady Lane

Blind date with the chancer
we had oysters and dry lancers
when the check arrived we went dutch, dutch, dutch, dutch
a redder shade of neck on a whiter shade of trash
And this emory board is giving me a rash
I'm flat out
You're so beautiful to look at when you cry
Freeze, don't move
You've been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation
of the sequel to your life.

A shady lane -- everybody wants one
A shady lane -- everybody needs one
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god
Oh my god, oh your god, oh his god, over god
It's everybody's god, it's everybody's god, it's everybody's god, it's
everybody's god
The worlds collide, but all that we want is a shady lane

Glance, don't stare
Soon you're being told to recognize your heirs
No, not me -- I'm an island of such great complexity
Stress surrounds in the muddy peaceful center of this town
Tell me off in the hotel lobby right in front of all the bellboys and the
over-friendly concierge

A shady lane -- everybody wants one
A shady lane -- everybody needs one
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god
Oh my god, oh your god, oh his god, oh her god
It's everybody's god, it's everybody's god, it's everybody's god, it's
everybody's god
The worlds collide, but all that I want is a shady lane.

I like that song. I hate it when Gabe turns out all the lights, and the only thing left is the computer screen. It's such a huge strain on my eyes.

Carrie's been making a documentary for Jesse, the guy she has a crush on, with Christian's video camera. We watched some of it yesterday at the pool, and man...we are some funny kids! She had some footage of last week's Thanksgiving meal, and most of our song on there, as well as our excursion to the Elf, in which Ben entered the store in his boxers. We taped a "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" style game we played. Each person could say one word. We didn't get too funny, but it was fun.

I grew up hearing that God worked miracles, but let me tell you, the biggest miracle He's worked in my life is Carrie and I actually getting along! I actually think she's really cool now. Who knows? We could end up being really good friends! God works in mysterious ways...

Well, I'm going to bed. I've been working on this post for a couple of hours, and my brain deserves a break. Love you all, and God bless! Ciao.

2002-12-06T23:21:00.000-05:00

Air of December

It's Friday night, Ben and Gabe are in the next room listening to music, and I've stolen away for a few moments to post. I want a ring from Lord of the Rings. That's what I want for Christmas, no doubt. I watched part of the Fellowship of the Ring DVD tonight, and those rings are awesome! I know I'll never get one, but it would be nice.

I downloaded A Beautiful Mind today, and watched most of it. It's pretty good, and I like Russell Crowe (and Jennifer Connelly is nice, too), but it severely lacked in the action department. Were it not that Crowe's last major film was Gladiator, this could easily be forgiven, but alas, such is not the case. I was a little bored during the film, and Ben walked in about 3/4 of the way through, so I turned it off.

I have really been digging Edie Brickell lately. She's been on SNL 3 times...quite a feat for someone hardly anyone's ever heard of. Best cuts: "Little Miss S.," "He Said," "What I Am," and "Good Times." I decided to wrap up this lovely little post with some of Edie's lyrics. Oy, to be back in the 80's...

Edie Brickell - Air of December

Thursday afternoon you cast a shadow 'round my room.
The breeze moved the curtains and lifted my perfume
into the air and danced with lazy curls in your hair.
The sun was in the sky like pink champagne
and it glistened in your eyes all day.
I remember you put a chill across my face like the air of December.
I swear I remember it that way.
I swear I remember it.
Where are you now?

You stood by the lake - I wanted to take you for granted.
The grass was thin and high.
The water mirrored tiny sparkles to the sky.
I remember you put a chill across my face like the air of December.
I swear I remember it that way.
I swear I remember it.

Where are you now?

In the by-myself mornings the birds windchime.
The treelimbs crackle and the sunshine climbs up the sky
Like pink champagne that glistens in your eyes all day.
I remember you put a chill across my face like the air of December.
I swear I remember it that way.
I swear I remember it.

Where are you now?

2002-12-04T23:12:00.000-05:00

A Rainy Day

Today was a blustery, overcast day in Cap-Haitien, Haiti. Oddly enough, it's days like this that let me know I'm still alive. You can have a thousand sunny, picture-perfect beach days in exchange for one rainy, windy, soggy day. For one thing, the rain makes people quieter. The wind and water drown out the meaningless conversations we would have had erstwise. It has a sobering effect on my peers that I can appreciate being a serious person. All to say, if there was any doubt left, I love the rain! I hope it rains for a hundred years!

I've been in a reading mood lately. I've been meaning to post my reading list, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe later today. I read a book about Rachel Scott, one of the girls who died at Columbine a few years ago. It talked about how she performed acts of kindness and reached out to people every day, and started a chain reaction of good deeds before she died. After she was killed, people wrote her parents tons of letters and e-mails from all over telling them how wonderful and kind their daughter had been, and how they had passed it on. I'd like to do that. If anything, the book has inspired me to be nicer. That's something I definitely need work on...

Well, I was but now I'm not. (I guess if that's the case, then I never was.) Life throws you curveballs sometimes. Questions provoke unintended answers, and change things around a little bit, but I still think it's going to be a good December. I was just thinking back to a year ago, when I was down in the dumps. I can't even believe I was like that now, because life's really not that bad. I mean, I don't want it to get any worse, and it could stand to get better, but I'm pretty content. I just wish my indecision about college would go away.

Thought for the day: One of my favorite music videos of all times is Edie Brickell's "Good Times." I wouldn't have ever found out about it if it hadn't been included on the Windows 95 CD. Microsoft allegiances aside, Edie's awesome, and the video is a black-and-white take on a rainy day in New York City. The album version of the song loses its appeal, because it leaves out the rainy sounds that made the video version so great.

Well, that's my thought for the day. You should have some of your own...it's healthy. Oh, and by the way, "Serving Sara" was actually not half-bad.

2002-12-02T20:41:00.000-05:00

If Life Had Teeth, I'd Be Shredded Sushi By Now

Man, I have been in the worst mood ever today! I think it's my bed...it's so dang hard! Anyways, Ben came over today to return our CD's, and locked himself out of his car, so I had to drive him all the way back to his house to get his spare keys. Then our family went out to eat, which was nice. I was just in a horrible mood this whole afternoon, though, and I'm not sure why. I helped my dad hook his computer up to the network, and my dad always gets on my nerves, but I don't think it was that.

Ay, living in Haiti definitely has its disadvantages. I'm not going to say anything further. Don't really have anything else to say anyways. I'm gonna go watch "Serving Sara" now.

Ciao.

2002-11-30T21:30:00.000-05:00

Reincarnated Squirrels and Hindu Cows

Today was the day of the annual missionary tradition: Thanksgiving service. Now of course this isn't Thanksgiving Day, but since it's nearly impossible to get all the missionaries in the region together in one room during the work week, we had it on Saturday. Gabe and I played "August 30th" by Delirious. It went well, or so they tell me.

Ben was even more hyper than usual today. He told everybody that in his past he was a squirrel and went "nibble nibble nibble." He was a flying squirrel, pardon me. I am a Hindu cow, for no particular reason. As Cody would say, "You guys have far too much time on your hands." Cody and Jake left, by the way.

Things are heating up politically. Aristide's in trouble, and the town of St. Marc had a political demonstration yesterday. That makes them the fourth city to have trouble. Usually political unrest corresponds with individual anarchy. This proved yet again to be true the other night. Ben stopped at a side-of-the-road place to buy some groceries, and left his windows down, since Carrie was sitting in the car. Some idiot walked up, and stuck his hands in the window, and began grappling Carrie. Ben pulled him back, and yelled at him. He got off easy, if it had been me, I would have rearranged his facial features. But I digress.

Today's the last day of November. Tomorrow's the first day of the last month of the last full year I'll spend in Haiti. I filled out my applications to the colleges, but I still haven't done the essays or sent them in. I'm just not sure if I want to go to either of them. College choices are scary. It's strange to think that in a country where life is so incredibly because of a lack of choices that I would be daunted by a plethora of choices. Or maybe I'm not afraid of the choices, I'm afraid of the finality of those choices. Once I choose a college, I'm going to be locked into a set of people and ideas and professors that I'll have to endure for at least one year. It's particularly daunting to choose a college based solely on credentials or brochures or other things that can be put down on paper, when I've never chosen anything based on something I've read on paper. I always make a choice based on my gut feeling when I visit a place, after I interact with its people. People are far more important to me than the diversity of a student body or class sizes or field trip options or professor qualifications. And unless I know what kind of people I can look forward to, I'm not going to completely commit to any one place. So there. And I'll probably go out and do the opposite next week. *laughs* Ay, me.

I played guitar for Jacquie on the phone the other night. I didn't play very long. Just a couple of chords, but that was neat. I have no idea what it sounded like 200 miles away, but just having the experience of transmitting man's universal language across the wires was awesome.

I fumbled around trying to speak Spanish to Leomer (the new kid from Venezuela) today. It was kind of fun. I tried my best to speak what little Spanish I know for about ten minutes, and then he pulls out his Creole. Man, that was kind of embarrassing, but I like trying to speak Spanish.

Well, Katie, I tried to think of things to say to make this nice and long, but I'm plum out of ideas. So I guess talk to all of you later. Love you all, and God bless. Ciao.

2002-11-21T21:20:00.000-05:00

What A Wonderful World

I deleted all the mean things I said about my friends in the last post because I don't think Jesus would have posted them or even thought them. So they're gone.

My eyes are hurting pretty badly right now. Note to self: never wear strong prescription glasses if you're not the one they were prescribed to. I finished my Life of Christ course today! Now I'm starting New Testament History. It looks kind of interesting. I have a Math test tomorrow, too. I hope I pass that.

My connection actually worked pretty decently this afternoon for the first time in eons! But it's back to normal now, don't worry.

I'm the one assigned to share at youth group Saturday afternoon. I've got a message all worked out. I'm going to speak very plainly, and tell the kids that, quite frankly, we are nowhere near where God wants us to be. We aren't affecting anything for Christ. I'm going to list five things (bad relationships, unforgiveness, consuming bad entertainment, neglecting prayer life, and unconfessed sin) that can come between us and God. I'm going to ask everybody to take a serious look at their own hearts, and change what needs to be changed, and to get serious about Him. Hopefully we can start a revival! Here's the Scripture passage I'm using:

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator...

...Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity. -- Colossians 3:5-14

See, Katie? I posted just for you! I would've IMed you earlier, but I had to go to church. I will talk to you later, though. Much love to you all. Ciao!

2002-11-18T00:06:00.000-05:00

Sunday Boring Sunday

Wow, what an uninteresting weekend! It all kicked off Friday, and found something even more dull than Algebra--hanging out on the compound! After ladies' meeting (my mom went to it, which is why I was hanging out at the compound), Ben invited me to spend the night at his house. My mom complied, so I did.

We watched a lame movie, too. The Omega Code 2: Megiddo. The Omega Code 1 was lame enough as it was, I was hoping that the dispensationalistic folks at TBN would give it a rest and quit preaching their particular interpretation of the cryptic amalgamation of prophecy and symbolism that is the book of Revelation, but I hoped in vain. According to TBN, Satan looks like a cross between a goat, a harpy, and Jesse Ventura, and the Antichrist is a dapper fellow with a British accent. In the end--in typical conservato-Christian fashion--American soldiers battle about everyone else on the plain of Megiddo to decide the world's fate. (Like most Americans are on the winning side.)

Ben did very strange things with a cigarette lighter, repeatedly burning himself in ways previously unimagined by human minds. Cody refused to listen to any music but his own, and ambushed my selection of CD's until I finally gave up. We finally went to sleep.

In the morning came the firecrackers. Making the early-morning trek to my house to meet Carlo, we made the mistake of throwing firecrackers at public-transport vehicles as they were loading and unloading. I regret this, not because I have any problem with firecrackers or pranks, but because it is just not my personality to be in a constant state of frenzy and perversion. I really wish I had some friends who were sensitive and artistic and everything that my current compadres are not.

Today both pro- and anti-government demonstrators took to the streets to make their voices heard. The anti-government demonstration was peaceful and went off without a hitch. The pro-government required police and tear gas. You tell me which argument has reason on its side.

I'll close with some really great quotes. Matthew Lilley has all the greatest soundbites.

- If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced
in it. People in disguise speak freely.

- If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?

- "Preach the gospel everyday; if necessary, use words." -St. Francis of Assisi

The following quotes demonstrate the intelligence of our society:

- "I think that the film Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it's true lightness." - Alicia Silverstone, Actress

- "The Internet is a great way to get on the Net." - Bob Dole, Republican presidential candidate, 1996 aka horndog in Britney Spears' infamous Pepsi ad.

- "I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada." - Britney Spears, Pop "Singer"

- "Solutions are not the answer." - Richard Nixon, former U.S. President

- "Every relationship I've been in, I've overwhelmed the girl. They just can't handle all the love." -Justin Timberlake

'Nuff said. Peace out.

2002-11-15T00:22:00.000-05:00

Quick Update

- I just found out that my buddy Mike's ex-girlfriend is five months pregnant...not by him, though, thank God. She has an artery problem of some sort that could endanger her life when she has the child, too. I'm going to keep her in my prayers, that sounds serious.

- Ben's dish is up and running, so he's online again! I'm sure that makes him happy beyond imagination.

- Katie's got a sizzlin' pic on her site of a friend of hers that looks exactly like this girl I met at camp.

- I am dead tired, so I'd better go. Katie, I'll reply to your e-mail tomorrow...God bless you all, and g'night!

2002-11-13T16:46:00.000-05:00

Daylight Fading

I read an excellent article last night on Boundless about atheism and its link to bad dads. In fact, that's what the article's called. It seems somebody did a study on prominent atheist and Christian figures. It seems that most of the prominent atheists or anti-Christians (Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Freud, Voltaire, Nietzche, Madalyn Murray O'Hair) had terrible relationships with their fathers or father figures. It got me thinking about my relationship with my dad. We haven't ever really been that close. We're completely different people. The only area we're similar in is we think a lot, so the only things we ever talk about are politics or philosophy or religion. Sometimes I wish I was closer to my dad, and others, I'm just anxious to leave.

For anyone who actually clicks on those sites in the "10 Most Recently Published" bar on Blogger.com, watch where you go. I clicked on one of those not knowing what it was, and up popped a topless girl. I tell you, stuff like that is dangerous. Just about every sex addict or child molester or rapist has started out with porn. Girls, guard your bodies, too. Once you do stuff like that, you mess up our minds, and you can't ever take that back. Plus, God created you the fairer gender, and your bodies are just way too special to let just anybody see whatever they want to. Internet porn...God help us all.

I had a fairly good day of school today. This new Health course I'm taking is pushing me to get my body in shape. One of the things I read today was that when a person doesn't exercise, they become constantly sluggish. I am always feeling a little drowsy, so I need to get out there and play basketball or do push-ups instead of sitting in here typing on this blog. I hope I actually stick to this resolution. So many have gone down the drain.

I'm terrible at keeping resolutions. I resolved just this morning to spend only an hour a day on the computer, and I've already spent almost two, so I'd better go. God bless you all, and leave a comment for Pete's sake!

2002-11-10T21:59:00.000-05:00

Kermit The Frog Here!

I think Kermit's pretty close to my personality. For any of you who have ever watched The Muppets, that thing he does where he opens his mouth, throws his head back, and shakes his body vigorously from side to side is hilarious!

	You are Kermit! Though you're technically the star, you're pretty mellow and don't mind letting others share the spotlight. You are also something of a dreamer.
*Take the What Muppet Are You?* Quiz!**

2002-11-09T21:31:00.000-05:00

On a Political Note...

Here are links to some very good articles I read today: (TIP: Hold down the Shift key while you click to open a new window. That way, you can keep reading this fantastic work-of-art blog and the article simultaneously. There, isn't multi-tasking so much better?)

They Got What They Wanted by Peggy Noonan. (On the current state of the Democratic Party.)

The End of an Era by Victor Davis Hanson. (On the bankruptcy of anti-Americanism.)

Other articles to read or reference:

Ruining the Race by Dinesh D'Souza. (On racial politics, from a minority point of view.)

Spread by the Sword? by Mark Hartwig, Ph.D (On the history of Islam.)

2002-11-09T21:20:00.000-05:00

Sitting on the Dock of the Bay

In case you didn't already know, that's the best 60's song ever. Otis Redding has a magnificent voice, and the guitar work on this track is especially creative and spontaneous. Great song! I just thought of it since that's what I did today: I sat on the dock of the Bay of Cap-Haitien, and I fished. I didn't catch anything, but I sat on the dock of the bay, I fished, and for a few hours, all was right with the world.

Ben spent the night last night. I returned Jacquie's call, and talked to her for a little bit before Ben almost lit my face on fire with a lighter and a can of insect repellant. He had a huge flame going with that thing...scared the crap out of me! We took a bunch of quizzes at The Spark, and talked about many interesting things. Many interesting things indeed.

We woke up fairly early this morning since Carlo came over. We all piled into the pickup and ran out to Ben's house, where we switched to his monster of a vehicle: the Suburban. After a trip to Christian's and back, we headed to the waterfront to do some fishing. We didn't catch anything, but there was a nice little area we could drive up to, and then there was a footbridge across the water to the loading dock, and another one to the mooring platform, where we fished for about an hour. We didn't catch anything, so we headed out to Bas-Limbe, a much nicer area 45 minutes southwest of the city. We found this little one-lane dirt road that headed to the coast, and met some nice people that agreed to take us out on their boat should we provide the cash. From the shore I spotted a little island out at the fringe of the bay. I'd love to take a boat out there, and spent the night there camping out. That would sort of a fulfillment of a Robinson Crusoe fantasy of mine.

It was a tiring day, though. Ben's Suburban doesn't have air conditioning, so the heat really wore us all out. I was really dehydrated by the time I got home. So with all that said, I bid thee farewell.

2002-11-07T23:40:00.000-05:00

High Fidelity

High Fidelity is a great movie I saw awhile back starring John Cusack, one of my favorite actors. (I mentioned that earlier when I talked about watching Serendipity.) In it, Cusack plays an apathetic, juvenile record-store owner in Chicago who gets dumped, and deals with it by visiting his Top Five Worst Breakup girls, and trying to figure out what went wrong. Jack Black does a great job of being a smarmy, self-righteous music aficianado (sort of like I used to be). You just have to see it, I guess, it's way too late to convey how good it is at this hour. (11:22 and about to collapse on the keyboard.) Oh, and speaking of Serendipity, is Kate Beckinsale magical or what?

I will officially be done with Chemistry tomorrow! I made a 98 on the self test today, and I can't wait to put the nail in the coffin! Now if I can just knock out Algebra II early, I'll be set!

I read a great article on dating today on Boundless. It's almost the exact same thing as a situation I had, but I don't have the resounding peace. I think I can, though, if I can just have enough courage to spill the beans. And no, nobody knows what I'm talking about, so don't even try to guess.

I'm so far from God right now, it's not even funny. I was surprised at myself that I sat during Bible study tonight and read a book instead of listening to the teacher. God, if you read my blog, please give me the courage to admit I'm wrong. I still love you.

I guess I'll close with some lyrics. This song is off Sixpence's newest album, Divine Discontent. This has got to be one of the most romantic songs I've ever heard. The music is anyway. The lyrics don't quite capture the majesty of the music, but they're not too bad, either.

"Dizzy"

I'm like Thomas doubting fingers
running the scars Your wrists and side
touching flesh will make my mind believe

I want to be like David throwing his clothes to the wind
to dance a jig, in my skin
to be re-made by your cleansing again

[Chorus]
I gave you myself
it's all that I have
broken and frail
I'm clay in your hands
and spinning I can see all
I'm dizzy on this wheel
for you my love

I want to be like David throwing his clothes to the wind
to dance a jig, in my skin
to be re-made by your cleansing again

2002-11-06T20:07:00.000-05:00

Good Day for Fish, Good Day for Sunshine

Today we went fishing! Ben and Gabe and I went out to Rival Beach, and then hiked from there to Fort Picolet. We fished a while on the rocks there, but the lines kept getting snagged on the rocks, and we didn't catch anything. We climbed this rusty 300-year-old lighthouse that the French built during the colonial days. It was missing steps inside, and we were all afraid it was going to collapse under us, but it held. Fort Picolet is pervert central, it turns out. Vaudouisans go out there and have orgies on voodoo holidays, and they leave behind the evidence. There were a lot of shoes and other articles of clothing left out there. There was a lot of cow crap, too, people let their cows graze out there. Anyways, next time, we're going to Labadee. We'll definitely catch something out there, and we won't have to endure the stench of old ship parts, rusty lighthouses, or cow feces. Heaven on earth, baby.

Ben wants to take a camping trip up to this concrete cross the Catholics built 3,000 feet up on this mountain. It would be awesome, if my parents let us! We're going to start doing more stuff together, just us three, since it's my senior year and all. It gets cold up there at night, too, so we'd need warm clothing. Ben's got a tent for four. Cool beans and chili.

Cheer up, sunshine! It hurts me to hear that you're down like this... To quote U2, though, "It's just a moment, this time will pass" ("Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of")

Well, that's it for today. E-mail, comment, call, write me letters, let me know I'm still alive...please! Haha just kidding. Love you all, and God bless.

2002-11-05T22:06:00.000-05:00

Election Day Blues (Resolution)

For all my pessimism, Norah Jones is still good. These lyrics are written from a female perspective, so I altered one line. I hope someday I get to sing it to someone, and I hope I mean it with all of my heart.

Come away with me in the night
Come away with me
And I will write you a song

Come away with me on a bus
Come away with me where they can't tempt us
With their lies

I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high
So won't you try to come?

Come away with me and we'll kiss
On a mountaintop
Come away with me
I won't stop loving you

And I want to wake up with the rain
Falling on a tin roof
While you're safely in my arms
So all I ask is for you
To come away with me in the night
Come away with me

2002-11-05T20:10:00.000-05:00

Election Day Blues

Had I logged in and edited my somewhat neglected blog earlier, I might have persuaded some wayward Web browser to make the right decision and vote for the moral, spiritual, and otherwise decent candidate in his or her congressional district. But I did not, sorry to say, and now only those out west have the chance to hurry to the polls to participate in their democracy. I am but a year away from gaining suffrage myself, and I swear that I will vote in every election I can get into. Presidential, congressional, mayoral, statewide, countywide, citywide, nationwide. I think that voting is an important responsibility of every Christian. Living in Haiti my entire life has given me a great perspective on what a unique and profound privilege it is to have a say (however small or seemingly insignificant) in your nation's leadership, without being menaced, threatened, or outright prevented from exercising your democratic duty. (Note that I said duty, and not option, for not exercising the right to vote is, in essence, passing on the cup of citizenship and decision making to another, most likely a bureaucrat with personal aspirations of making a name and towing the party line.) So the point? Vote. Inspire others to vote. Make a difference, instead of being an unplugged defibrillator to the galvanized arteries of modern politics.

In other news, I'm a blue fruit loop, and so is Katie. We're two of a kind! I got my Sixpence CD in today, and it's really good! I'm in the middle of my third listen, and I'm not tired of it yet, so most likely it's a keeper.

Florence, Italy...sounds like a trip and a half! I'd gladly go should someone invite me... *whistles inconspicuously* I'm so mad at my connection for being the constipated monkey that it is! I can't have a decent conversation with anyone anymore! I typically get to type one message, and have it answered, before getting knocked off by the friendly folks at AOL's "We-Think-You're-Stupid" Department. The most annoying thing is it gives you 3 minutes to reconnect automatically, before pulling the plug, and forcing you to spin around in your chair and stop playing guitar, doing homework, or whatever else you may be doing to click the little green guy (go little, green guy, go little green guy, go little green guy, go!!!) and wait for AIM to tell that alas, your connection still blows like a flat tire, and that you won't be having a good afternoon after all. Man...stupid life nowadays!