Tagged: faith
The Gays Will Save Us?
I discovered Douglas Murray by accident. He was openly and authoritatively denouncing Islam—and still breathing.
On the other hand, a friend shared a Bari Weiss piece with me. I assumed Bari was a man. Funny. She just started a new university—who does that?
Neither of them utter nonsense. They both seem to pick the most relevant fights. But they’re gay.
They’re not dead, so it’s possible that they see the light before too long. I don’t want to discourage anyone who fights for truth from fighting. So keep it up! Keep writing and podcasting. Please do.
But I have been thinking about these two figures for some time now and I just cannot conclude that being gay doesn’t matter. Sure it does. Of course it matters. All sorts of historical figures, so we’re told, were gay, and they may have even done good for Western civilization. But being gay isn’t a binder for us.
Something is amiss. The being gay is not going to work for the same reason that there eventually is just one straw that breaks the camel’s back. One cannot rebel in every instance, at every turn.
Put another way, why can’t we (sober, reasoning mankind) just have one celebrity level, A-lister who is married with kids and boring. Why is that so repulsive and stigmatized as inherently uncool and unintelligent?
In the end, my point is simply that the fact that that last question resonates tells me that no, no the gays (Murray and Weiss) will not save us. Whether this is because 1. We don’t need saving, or 2. They are not fit for the work of saving, I do not yet know. (I’m leaning towards option 1.)
A Rooster Crowed
And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant-girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.”
But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you are talking about.” And he went out into the entryway.
And when the servant-girl saw him, she began once more to say to the bystanders, “This is one of them!” But again he was denying it.
And after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are also a Galilean.”
But he began to curse and swear, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” And immediately a rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said the statement to him, “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.”
And throwing himself down, he began to cry.
****
On this day, congregation, I ask you, “Did you hear it?”
What I Would’ve Told Myself About Getting Married a Second Time Had I Known Then What I Know Now
Besides the Vindictive Little Hussy Tamar from Genesis story, during our last spat, my wife also asked if I knew what a “Phrase” was and recommended that I read about “the prostitute women bring her to Jesus.”
Again, you have to really want to understand the speaker—it’s my wife; I do—in order to figure out what the hell they are saying in moments like these, but if you work within the given context, “Phrase” can be a heavily accented “Pharisee”.
Unlike the account of VLH Tamar (which is on the whole depressing and kinda embarrassing to the patriarchs of our faith—let alone Scripture itself), I could imagine why my wife would think the LORD in heaven would use the infamous “cast the first stone” story to convict a wretched sinner like me (America’s Husband) and hope that, in so doing, she will create marital bliss in the form of an unquestioned matriarchy.
My wife states plainly that “I accuse her” all the time. (I would say that I speak with truth. Can I get a witness?!)
Naturally, then, she reads about the “Phrases’s” bringing a woman caught in adultery to Jesus (keep in mind, I am not 100% that this is the correct passage. But I think it is. Also informing my guess is the international megachurch’s absolute love and reliance and incessant preaching of this account) and sees the action of accusation and puts two and two together and here we are.
A careful, objective reading of the story, however, does not persuade me (and does not include) that it has anything to offer humanity as regards interpersonal communication or family dynamics or nation building.
After the accusation (apparently uncontested), the text has:
They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have evidence to accuse Him.
If there is one aspect of the Gospel that preachers and teachers looking to cherry-pick “scriptural applications” from the text miss whole-heartedly all the day long, it is that the Pharisees wanted Jesus dead!
How these men (and now women, #metoo) always miss this, considering the Pharisees did get their way and have him killed, is incredible, but miss it they do! And when you don’t teach what the Bible says, when you don’t do your job and help people to focus on the text, you end up screwing up a whole lot more than just one little pericope (that’s “purr-i-co-pee”, long o). You end up messing with my marriage! Marriage supposedly based in the Judeo-Christian worldview, no less.
Yes, yes. I am currently accusing. I am doing the very thing I am defending myself against.
But I am right.
How can I be sure? Because I have some special power? Not special in extraterrestrial or mutation, but yes, I have a special as in precious or rare power. I can read!
And literacy leads to other things, like answering relevant questions like,
Does Jesus, Lord of Lords and King of Kings, want humans to stop “accusing” each other of mistakes and wrongdoings?
My answer is, “How would we determine such a thing? I mean, for example, I can imagine that we could read up and discover whether he ever forbids the making of accusations. (He does not.) Then we could, if we cared to, read with an eye out for whether biblical authors themselves accuse or offer stories where the protagonist accuses—and are lauded for it. (Text doesn’t have much to offer on either side of this perspective, but Titus 1:6 hardly makes sense if all accusing is to cease.)”
Over and above my literacy power, though, is something simpler. We could simply ask, “What are your intentions, my wife? Because mine are to be head of the best family I possibly can. And yours do not seem to align with mine.”
****
But this post is truly about warning myself regarding a second marriage and especially a second marriage that makes new babies.
The warning is this: Pete. You have had the worst divorce in human history—your ex steals your money daily and has kidnapped your daughter. I’m not telling you “don’t do it”. But please consider that this “felt experience” is going to feed into a heavy dread of the same thing happening again. And this means that there will be informed and resultant overreactions to the normal(?) downs of associating with the weaker sex. In short, you are entering into what may, at times, feel like a hostage situation, your kids as the leverage. A veritable, “Want to keep seeing your children? Then do as I say!” Only this time, you know all too well that everyone, including the guys (and gals, #metoo) with guns, will take her side against you.
Consider yourself warned.
****
And had I known this, I would’ve proceeded as I have, optimistically, perhaps blindly, because, as the story goes, Jesus did not come to condemn people. If my wife has the Holy Spirit inside her, as she professes and I believe to be the case, then Jesus isn’t coming for me.
Want to take my kids (#metoo)? Good luck! You won’t find any fight from me. Instead, you’ll find yourself fighting the living god.
Wait, what? It’s not about the kids? What’s this? You merely want me to change my thinking? Good luck! All you have to do is remove my ability to read (or burn all Bibles—better make it all books), wipe my memory of scripture, and drop me off anytime after, say, 1900 AD when women have decided they are head of the family. I think if you pray real hard for that, the LORD will give you that good gift. (And you’ll also get that book deal and your “healing” and “blessing” along with the thousand other attendees at your “church”.)
Lord, if you’re listening (I know, I know), do not tarry.
Christian, You’re Wrong About the Rainbow Flag. It Is Wholly the Alphabet Mafia’s Symbol. Let Them Display it Proudly.
I put My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. And it will be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud…
So the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.
(The above should be thought of as “axioms” or “definitions”.)
What is most curious, to an Eagle Scout/combat veteran’s mind like mine, is the use of the word “bow”. It really drives home how early man was always struggling to find analogy for their language. They saw in the sky something new and in the shape of, well, what object would ancient man have had to analogize from? The shape of…hmm. Oh, I know. It looks like the bow and arrow’s bow! Perfect.
But more importantly, for you, Christian, is that nowhere is fabric or any tangible good mentioned.
If this doesn’t add divine peace to your life, something is wrong with you and you should use this moment to align yourself with some truth.
The Living God is not messing around, nor ever has, with his creation or his plan.
If you see a bow in the sky, like an archery bow, then be thankful that Yahweh is God (and a faithful one at that), and not some other punk deity.
If you see a colorful flag, then…do whatever conscience dictates. It really doesn’t matter and shouldn’t disturb you.
Real Fears of a White Step-Dad
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me today. I want to talk to you about something that is generally taboo, but especially given the details (often in footnotes) of the recent Supreme Court case on affirmative action and university admittance, it is important that we chat.”
“Um-”
“I’d ask you to not interrupt and I request this indulgence because I am the one with something to lose here—not you. Thank you.
“I see the supposed excellence of your school. While I am fully persuaded home school is the best way to educate a child, a future citizen of America, I am also fully persuaded that a charter school like yours is far superior to public school.
“I struggle to believe that the way my step-son was admitted to your school was fair. You have exceedingly few black students as is, and while regular demographics of our city account for it, there is some sick love/hate relationship with educated—do not hear intelligent—educated whites and what they see as possible black success.
“If you enroll too many black kids, then no whites will find that school desirable. If no black kids, then whites will be painted as racist. So ya’ll are stuck in a pickle, the way I see it. Precisely just how many blacks can you afford your school to enroll and still keep the whites coming?
“Here’s the rub: A- is not black. I have already made it clear that I suspect we disagree on this matter. So let me repeat myself. A- is not black. You all let him in to your school. I believe it is because you saw him (especially as he is an immigrant, not the really difficult American black) as able to help keep the whites happy. Whether your gamble was well-informed or not, we will all find out together. But he is not black. Do you hear me?
“For the last four years I have watched and listened to educators get run over by, ignore, and turn a blind eye to A-, all because they see a little black boy they can use to fulfill some twisted quota. Everything has been graded on a curve and relative to other students. The calendar hasn’t existed. Endless ability to retake and correct assignments and tests has been proffered. In a word, he has been in “schools” which have absolutely zero accountability for A-. He has a grand total of no understanding of where he stands in relationship to his fellow man, and worse, he seems to think he hasn’t ever failed. This has to stop.
“Did I introduce myself? Apologies for that oversight. Here are the vital stats. I am A-’s step-dad, not you. Second to that fact, I have and will always perform better than any of you here on every mental subject and assessment you can develop. And I have used all my brain power to decide that it is worthwhile to give you the benefit of the doubt to start.
“But I am watching. And if I start to get even the slightest feeling that A- is receiving special treatment because you can’t shake the feeling that he is some little black boy available for use in atoning for your perverse understanding of life, then we will be done here. I will pull him from your school and you will know why.
“To be clear: I am not asking for fair treatment. This isn’t funnel cakes and ferris wheels. I am asking for you to teach him to know he has failed where he has failed and for him to know he has learned where he has learned. No more “stars” for effort, or on time work, or completed assignments.
“Maybe I am asking too much.
“To conclude then, I put the choice in your hands. What do you say? Can you do this for me? Will you agree, no matter how this relationship started, that A- is not black, that he is not some project?
“Will you agree that he will fail if he doesn’t perform appropriately? I can pull him right now if you won’t. There is no need to waste anyone’s time. So what do you say?”
One One-Liner Heard Inside Mardel’s and Why Seminary Costs Money—and Should
Here in Colorado Springs, the “Sierra” store is in the same spot as a “Mardel Christian and Education” store. I needed Mother’s Day gear, so after perusing Sierra to price compare “Expert Voice” “deals”, I took the kids across the lot to Mardel. (Sierra seems to be winning on every level, if curious.)
While perusing the Bibles (specifically interested to learn the LSB has made it to retailers yet), I passed by a couple of ladies (the types which strike everyone as just as permanently affixed to the spot as the bookshelves behind them) who were putting on a show of “enjoying” some restful repose inside a great store.
I made eye-contact with the elder and listener as I heard the other one say, “I am done reading theology. I tried for a while but, honestly, just give me Jesus.”
It’s a fairly trite and common assertion among under-achieving wives and over-achieving baptist ministers, so I cannot say for sure whether she was the echo chamber or in earnest. But it called to mind a conversation I had with my mom the other day about church.
Sunday School was the topic, or the setting of the topic. The real topic was the morons who lob terribly uninformed opinions about terribly vague and uninteresting parts of scripture at all comers.
I told my mom, “Remember when Charlie Sheen was in all that drama and his show fell apart? At one point he said, ‘You don’t pay prostitutes for sex, you pay them to leave.’”
“Oh, yeah. I remember. Ugh.”
“Well, with that nature of flip-sided perspective in mind, as I get farther and farther from my time at Seminary, I believe that is how the money part works. If churches aren’t doing it for ya, you finally decide to pay money to try to find meaning in silence. The nicest way of putting this perspective being that seminary students want to be around other people as serious as themselves (calling or no), but the truth (and cynical perspective) is that seminary students want to be around people who are able to keep their mouth shut when they don’t know what they are talking about. And the money has something to do with segregating those two groups.”
Oh Give Thanks Unto the LORD. Six Figures is Enough.
If you happen to run into me while we’re out and about, the conversation—after weather—will likely turn to cost of living. It may be me, it may be you, who brings it up. But if we’re out and about, then we’re probably spending money and so the topic is at hand regardless.
A common refrain you’ll hear me utter, “My whole life six figures has meant, ‘You made it,’ and, ‘That’s a good job.’ But the truth is in 2024, while six figure jobs are still hard to find, it isn’t enough.”
(Forgive me, Father. It is enough is the biblical sense. But you know what I mean. The amount isn’t enough to live like six figures has allowed others to live.)
****
I remember one of the first times I heard six figures was from a knucklehead kid, probably in middle school. He said, “Well your dad makes six figures doesn’t he?”
It seemed like so much money. Six figures.
Most of my time in the Air Force I made six figures but I never knew it. I always guessed I was around $70k for some reason. I think it just seemed so out of reach for a measly military member, and I never really cared about money so I never totaled it up.
****
But something funny happened to me the other day as I had time to consider my life. I support myself and my wife and her son and our two toddlers. (That’s five.) Then, I support my ex wife, her husband, our daughter, and their daughter. (That’s four more, for a total of nine.)
Six figures in 2024 can support nine people, four adults and five kids. Maybe six figures is enough. Maybe I need to shut my pie-hole and stop complaining.
****
For he is good. Yes, he is good.
Some Days Are Dark
H- hasn’t spoken to me since boldly declaring to me on a random phone call (why don’t kids know how to use the phone?) that she wasn’t coming to Christmas and didn’t understand why I wasn’t “getting it”.
I don’t stop believing in Jesus on dark days. Yet I cannot deny that there is an appeal to giving up on god and all–that is part of the darkness.
But I will unashamedly confess that on dark days, days when I take inventory of my life only to realize more fully that there has been a general lack of support (social, financial, or emotional) from anyone ever remotely falling under the umbrella of “family”, I do conclude god is unknowable.
I Am SOAD Toxicity, A Review of Toxicity (Full Album), by System of a Down.
Wired (not “wide”) were the eyes of a horse on a jet pilot, one that smiled when he flew over a bay
My voice can sound most like Serj’s out of all Rock front men, if I do say so myself. Even at the age of 42. What can I say?
In seminary I used to put music on while writing and editing my papers, but I have recently fell away from the habit. Yesterday, however, I was feeling good (been lifting weights again for the first time in 5 years) and while the post-workout euphoria was in effect, I decided to put on music as I resumed some editing. I hadn’t heard Toxicity in a while, but I remembered loving that album and so searched it up.
One thing that I will never forget about the album is how seamless the entire thing is. One song flows right into the next. Whatever the actual production process felt like to the band, the Muse was clearly running the show. With my adult brain, I am very aware that these things are completely controllable, but in my child brain, I am to this day awestruck by how even the changing track on a CD, on every CD and every player, can happen at the right moment and in the correct and desired tempo. If you haven’t listened in a while, take the required 11 minutes to feel the special delight from the effect of the transitions from “Needles” to “Deer Dance” to “Jet Pilot” to “X”. Is it really four songs, guys? Be honest.
Whatever it is, it is perfectly sublime rock.
I remember being so enraptured by this album when I first heard it that I tried to have my dad listen to part of the album on our cool Bose speakers (like how I said “our”?) as a college kid, still living at home between semesters. But as is normal with spontaneous listening parties, he was not immediately impressed.
Over two decades later, the impression I gladly couldn’t shake at the completion of the album was how formative that album was for my current perspectives. One example should suffice.
In “Prison Song”, one lyric states, “All research and successful drug policy show that treatment should be increased/And law enforcement decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences.”
Now, I can imagine that some folks might want to take this as a prescription. IE, some folks might say that, “the band is using its platform to call attention to the need for prison reform” blah, blah, blah.
No! I say again, H to the E-L-L’s No!
What they are saying is, “Burn it all!!”
The fact that the lyrics seem to make an argument is not to be interpreted as the band’s own intent to make that argument, no! The correct interpretation is to add the music and voice and realize they are calling out the entire system’s evident incongruence. Put another, less effective way, they could have sung, “You know it’s broken. You, yes you, know it’s broken! And you still are impotent. Even your supposed self-correcting design doesn’t work. It’s time to go!”
In a word, they “rock.”
And by giving us definitive boundaries to the meaning of Rock music, they help us fans understand that life doesn’t have to be a dog, which we train to stop eating our shoes by replacing them with a chew toy—no. Life can just simply be messed up. And the proper response sometimes is to call it out for what it is—period. Those in charge of the prisons, most immediately, and the rest of us in the society eventually, are forced by SOAD’s work (among others) to be uncomfortable at the least. And at the most, we find our calling and do something with our indignation. (Admittedly, this hasn’t yet happened for me, but after yesterday, I feel like it could any day now.)
In a glass-is-half-empty way, SOAD manifests the adage, “misery loves company,” but only if you also think any agent who forces you to consider that you are not almighty god does.
For the rest of us, SOAD’s contribution Toxicity extends life. Well done.
The White Devil
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made…And the serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“Come on!” he smiled mischievously, “Come on, just tell me. It’s not like we don’t know the nickname. I just want to know it in your language.”
“Oh, no,” the brown mohammedan said, head-shaking, embarrassed and uncomfortable. “It is not right.”
“Seriously, just tell me. How much have we shared with each other so far? I only want to know it to make people laugh. It’s not like I mean any harm to anyone. It would make me betam yetek’eburu if I could whip out that phrase when appropriate. Ehbakahin? Please?”
The mooslims are different in this respect. They are Old Testament in their belief in the power of utterances. The man wouldn’t budge.
“Oh well. Here comes another,” he said to himself. “Hey!” Pointing back down the hall towards the man he just left, the same smile still on his face, he said, “Abdi there won’t tell me how to say White Devil. How about you? I need it for purely social reasons. Please?”
Stonewalled again, and this time by a Christian no less.
That was six years ago.
Today, he knows the real meaning of White Devil. He had always assumed it had to do with brown people being more “spiritual” on the whole and white people being less “spiritual” on the whole. There also was the ever present, at least in recent centuries, technological advantages inherent to the (renowned as white) West that surely must have bedazzled outsiders into believing them to be derived from the dark arts.
Wrong on both points.
His own culture lauds literacy and learning. The greatest shame is an unexpected and unavoidable public display of illiteracy. If one can’t read, they hide that fact from everyone—and if it happens that they come to a moment when they decide to learn, upon taking that step, the choirs of the West rejoice more joyfully than the heavenly hosts when a new believer is baptized. Who, then, wouldn’t want to learn how to read?
But that is the White Devil describing itself, the White Devil marveling at its reflection in precious stones. As described by illiterate cultures, the ones who are lauded today for having “oral histories”, the White Devil is the absolutely ignorant and unfounded fear of what these cultures do not yet understand.
The truly ignorant are not the West’s unwanted newborns put outside to die by exposure like our own illiterate, no. He now sees that the truly ignorant are Adam and Eve, shortly after getting the boot from the garden. They know something is different. They know there is another power. They know they don’t have the power. And like Adam and Eve, they conclude those that do possess the power must be the enemy, the adversary, ha-satan. Or, plainly, the White Devil. And the only idea that populates the uninhabited landscape of their brain is to tell their children the story of the crafty serpent.
Captain’s Log 