We’re Going to Miss the Frying Pan

Looks like the Dow is poised to open way down. Another victory for Obamanomics.

This is shocking. You can hear the fear in the voices of the hosts on CNBC.

Sometimes being right is not pleasant at all.

Now pundits are talking about inflation. Where do you go in an economy in which stocks are dead, your wages are depressed or gone, and your savings are under attack from inflation?

Frankly, I hope the anti-deflation measures bomb. At least, I hope they fail badly enough to protect responsible people who saved money and didn’t get caught up in the sleazy, ill-fated housing orgy.

My clever and sophisticated survival plan is to trust God. I think this recession is his punishment for slicing up Israel and turning away from him, and if he can punish a nation, he can protect people within that nation.

The Bible says, “The Lord knoweth the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine, they shall be satisfied.”

Hold on tight.

Be Glad When Someone Puts the Smite to You

Let me pose a question to my Christian readers.

Suppose you communicate from time to time with another Christian. And you and this person agree that donating to the church and to charities is very important. But this person has a habit of telling you exactly how much he gives.

Imagine also that this person has represented himself as financially comfortable, and has expressed a belief that the money was a reward from God. Then this person admits having financial problems.

It worries you that this person tells you the amounts of the donations, because you believe a Christian’s generosity will be rewarded in one way or another, and that disclosing the amounts of one’s giving will cut off or reduce whatever blessings may come of it. After all, Jesus said not to let one hand know what the other was doing. You worry that this is the reason the person needs money.

Finally, out of concern, you tell the other person you are concerned about learning these amounts, for the above reasons. And this person tells you that you are impossible to communicate with because you are judgmental.

Is what you’ve done okay, or is the other person right?

I think the other person is completely wrong. After all, both testaments of the Bible are full of examples of believers giving each other advice. We’re expected to do it. Most people wouldn’t even know what the word “rebuke” means, were it not for the Bible. Everyone makes mistakes, and we need other believers to warn us, for the same reason you’d warn someone who was walking toward a minefield. Psalm 141 says, “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness. And let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head.”

I’m sure I have the punctuation wrong. The KJV has very weird punctuation.

I think it’s fine–not just acceptable, but important–to talk about the importance of giving, because you don’t talk about it in order to glorify yourself. You do it to help other Christians realize there is a blessing they may be missing out on, and you talk about it for the sake of the church, and for the sake of the needy. And it’s fine to mention organizations that deserve donations. How else are people supposed to find them? That’s why I have charity links on my site. And if you read this blog regularly, you know that I don’t just recommend charities. I also ask for recommendations.

I also think it’s fine to say you feel you’ve been rewarded for giving. That’s called “testimony.” It’s helpful to others.

At the same time, I think you harm yourself when you talk about how much you give, or what an empathetic or generous person you are.

I’ve gotten all sorts of great advice from other Christians. I take it very well unless it’s offered in a snotty way. Sometimes I manage to take it well even then, but I’m not nearly saintly enough to do that consistently.

Sometimes people are clearly self-righteous when they tell you about an error you’re making, or something you missed out on. But most of the time, they’re trying to help.

I think it’s important not to get mad when someone throws a fit over advice you’ve given them. Anger and division are just what the enemy wants, and they waste time, make you miserable, and interfere with God’s ability to grant the things you ask in prayer. Sometimes people get really mad when you give them advice, and then a week later, they’re taking the advice and either thanking you for it or pretending they thought of it themselves. Either way, it’s a positive result, and it’s less likely to happen if you start whacking each other with your giant leather-bound designer Bibles.

If I were to break character and give to charity or the church I would tell NOBODY but the IRS, and I would even be tempted to keep it off my tax returns. Not because I’m a wonderful person (although I am) but because I would like to get some sort of worthwhile reward. Let’s be honest; unless you’re a complete martyr, a lot of what you do as a matter of faith has a big element of self-interest. That’s perfectly reasonable. You won’t find Biblical figures saying things like, “O Lord, increase my leprosy, give my enemies victory, make me fight with my family, and keep me in poverty.” And God wouldn’t have given us tons of promises regarding rewards, had he not expected us to try to get the benefit. God always says, “Do this and get a reward, or do that and suffer.”

Hello? I didn’t make the rules. God isn’t a socialist. He realizes that even good people act out of self-interest.

I don’t agree with prosperity preaching. It’s wrong to tell people God has a magical machine in the sky that automatically turns every ten-dollar donation into a hundred-dollar return. But I do believe giving to God and the poor is crucial to a blessed life. We’re supposed to be like God in our character, and God is generous. I think it is literally impossible for a person or a family to have peace and prosperity and harmony without being generous. Sooner or later, you will find corruption in whatever good things you receive. You’ll make good money, but you’ll get a divorce and your kids will end up on drugs. You’ll get a nice business going, but you’ll be too sick to run it, or a lawsuit will destroy it. Something like that.

I also think God probably respects every donation made in the right spirit, but he may reward you with something other than money, because sometimes money is not what you should have. Maybe you can’t hold onto it. Maybe it will lead you to do stupid things with it and end up like one of the many wealthy celebrities who died by thirty. Not everyone can be counted on to do the mature thing and buy expensive machine tools.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with pointing out dangers other people may be courting with their behavior. The Bible actually says that if we don’t correct people, we share responsibility for their sins. The people who can’t stop parroting “judge not, et cetera” need to learn that there is more than one verse in the Bible. And I can tell you this: if people had not pointed my own sins out to me on occasion, I would be in a real mess right now.

Did I Just Feel a Sprinkle?

Am I the only person who has noticed these two inconsistent facts? 1. Since taking office, Barack Obama has consistently made stupid and obvious mistakes with regard to both major and minor issues, and one thing he has done may turn out to have catastrophic results. 2. Obama worshipers are more convinced than ever that he is The One.

Odd.

I thought I would expand a little on yesterday’s post about the real estate deal. Without bogging down in details, it goes like this. I inherited an interest in a little piece of commercial property. Some relatives with shares in the land need money; some don’t. Some really like to sell property; some don’t. There have always been conflicts regarding the disposition of pieces of property we own in common. There has never been any possibility that we would keep all the land and manage it and profit from it; it’s not even worth discussing. It would clearly be the intelligent thing to do, but you can’t herd cats.

When talk of selling this piece started, I was disturbed. It generates a little income. It’s in a great location. It’s in a place where flat land is rare and valuable, so it’ s not like there are a lot of properties like it. And I was concerned about the motivations and judgment of family members who wanted to get rid of it.

Nonetheless, I think the US is headed for a depression or deep recession, followed by a permanently lowered standard of living. We have never had the problems we face today. We have never had hungry, capable competitors like China and India, with their own vast internal markets and an endless supply of cheap, well-educated, grateful, eager labor. There is no reason why we should continue to lead the world economically. And we have aborted millions of babies, and we are getting into all sorts of disgusting religions, and we are proud and downright gross, and we are helping cut up Israel, so unless the Bible is nonsense, we should expect serious economic problems.

So while I like the idea of holding onto good land, I think unemployment is going to shoot up, businesses are going to close, commercial properties are going to be vacant, and we may continue to experience deflation. It’s hard to say, because the Fed needs to print money to cover the insane Bush/Obama Incompetence and Laziness Encouragement Plan. On the whole, however, I think cash is going to be a great thing to have over the next few years, and it’s probably a good time to sell commercial real estate, unless you have it leased to someone solvent.

There was disagreement about how to handle the sale. I thought it would be smart to divide the property. There are no comparable sales to speak of in the area where the property lies, so you can inflate the price of a piece of land by selling one part at a high price and then using the high price as leverage when you negotiate the prices of remaining pieces. But no one else in the family thought this was a good idea. They wanted to sell, period.

I was afraid that if I pushed my viewpoint, I would cause such conflict that relationships would be damaged. As a Christian, I realized this would be wrong. When you are confronted with obstinance and bad thinking, you may have to give way and trust God to fix it. For example, say your daughter wasn’t elected captain of the cheerleading squad, and the girl who got the position is a fat skeeze with no talent, not that you are judgmental or envious. You can’t firebomb the other girl’s house. You have to accept what happened and attack with prayer and faith.

So I restrained myself and did not push. I was afraid the other partners would jump at a crummy offer, just to get the cash, but I resolved to trust God rather than get in their faces. And I reminded myself that I might be wrong, and they might be right.

Well, the negotiations have taken place. We wanted X as a minimum price for the whole thing. The buyers can’t pay X. But they can pay a nice sum for part of the land, and they want an option on the rest, and if they buy it all, we’ll get about 1.6X. That’s just crazy. The most logical expectation was a miserable offer for the whole package. But the buyers are happy, and we’re happy, and unless there is some catch I don’t know about, I’m all for the deal.

So look what appears to be happening. I managed to control myself, and in the end, aren’t we getting the result I wanted in the first place?

Here’s another thing. One thing I prayed for was that my interest would be separated from everyone else’s. Why? For the same reason I would not date a non-Christian. Because partnering with people who don’t believe is a bad idea. They lead you into acts that are contrary to God’s will. They interfere with your blessings. So a sale is a good thing, because it separates my money, so I will be free to dispose of it as I see fit. I don’t have to worry about my relatives voting to rent the property to a whorehouse or something.

We’ll see if it works out. I’m assuming I understand the facts correctly.

Incidentally, some people think my gloomy assessment of the future of our country is unjustified. Some guy linked to my blog, called me “asshat,” and suggested I move to China. And his intelligent argument for the continued prosperity of America was the well-known title of a song made famous in a South Park movie featuring puppets. It’s always good to hear an opposing view which is clearly based on logic.

Some people think I’m unpatriotic for pointing out that God may be judging our nation, and that we may well be on our way to Second World status. They think pumping their fists and yelling “USA! USA!” will somehow put us back on top. But that’s exactly the attitude that put our economy in the toilet. When people said UAW workers were paid too much, and that the auto industry would fail, the autoworkers said, “USA! USA!” Now they’re saying “SOS! SOS!” and “OMG! OMG!” And soon they’ll be saying these things at the welfare office. The handouts are not going to save them. When your rowboat has a hole in it the size of a basketball, you don’t bail. You take it out of the water and patch the hole. The Big Three still have all the problems they had before two of them chose to become charity recipients, and they will continue to fail. Why would anyone expect them to succeed?

It’s just like Pajamas Media. I said it was a stupid idea, and people said I was a jerk, and they said I was too dumb to appreciate the genius of the PJs, and they quit talking to me, and they quit linking to my blog. Then PJM failed, exactly as I and the other non-sheep predicted, and Roger Simon sent all the member bloggers an email telling them they were off what he later described as “the dole”! Yes, yes, I was the enemy of conservatism. I was “the evil in the periphery”; that’s the funniest thing I was called. But who was right? Me or the cheerleaders?

Anyway, to get back to the economy…let’s get it through our heads. We didn’t become rich and powerful because we’re the master race. We are not better than foreigners. If we were, they wouldn’t come here penniless, out-compete us, and end up owning our businesses. There is nothing special about Americans. Absolutely nothing. Our educational system is second-rate. We are not the world’s hardest workers. The Bell Curve guys claim Asians are smarter than we are. We only did well because God helped us, and when he stops, we will stop doing well. That’s not unpatriotic. It’s truth. And once again, as it was in the PJ story, people like me are not the problem, any more than spots on an X-ray are the problem when you have cancer. Touch up the spots; the problem remains.

In the Bible, there were prophets who always said Israel and Judah were going to prosper. The kings and the people did all sorts of horrible things, and then the true prophets told them they were in deep trouble. So they called on the false prophets–the “patriots”–and the false prophets beat up the real prophets and said everything was going to be fine. It was after an episode like this that the king of Babylon took the king of Judah captive, murdered his sons while he watched, had him held down while his eyes were gouged out, and took him and a bunch of other Jews to Babylon in chains.

I’ll bet there were Jews listening to the false prophets, pumping their fists and yelling “JU-DAH! JU-DAH!”

As for moving to China, I don’t think it will be necessary. China is coming here. About half of it is in my garage. And I’m typing on some of it right now, while I read the words on yet another piece of it.

I wrote that without checking, and then I turned over my keyboard and looked. Sure enough: “Made in China.”

While I’m walking down this path, I’ll mention one other thing. A commenter scolded me for thinking the success of my gardening efforts was connected to my behavior as a Christian. I can’t figure that out. Open a Bible. See what it says about people who behave. Your crops will do well. Grapes, wheat, corn, whatever. “Running over.” “Abundance.” “Plenty.” It’s not figurative language, either. Not exclusively. It really does refer to things you plant. And you can look at Joel or Numbers 28 to see what happens to the things you plant, when you aren’t living right.

I bring this up because I checked on my yard today. For a long time, I could not get anywhere with fruit, and it didn’t seem to matter what I did to help things grow. Today I was shocked by what I saw. A ponkan tree which I thought I had wiped out sprouted blossoms unexpectedly, and I’m going to have tangerines. My older tangerine tree, which I nearly killed, has little fruit on it. My key limes are sprouting blossoms which I did not foresee. My cara cara has so many tiny fruit on it, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut a bunch off to keep them from killing it. My lychee is covered in blossoms. Even my pathetic tangelo tree is getting ready to bear. And get this: I found fruit on a MALE papaya tree. Is that even possible? I think my tree is gay. The other trees have produced one papaya after another, and this one has just generated doomed blossoms, but now it has fruit on it. And I have all sorts of little Persian limes on the way. My sole surviving tomato plant has no blossoms, but suddenly it’s very healthy, which is a near-impossibility here.

My lantana bushes, which I bought because they reminded me of Israel, are exploding with flowers. Even the weakest one, which I was worried about. I think it’s going to do well from now on. And my mango trees are lush and healthy, and there are a lot of little mangoes on them.

I think when you say God doesn’t affect little things like this, in effect, you’re saying God doesn’t do anything at all, which is what most Christians really believe. But if God is God, he does things, right? Isn’t that common sense? I think people develop a weird, hands-off picture of God because it enables them to keep believing in him when their prayers consistently go unanswered. You pray and pray, and nothing happens, and you say, “That’s okay, because God is really more of a big-picture guy, and he’s very busy running the world. It’s only natural that he would have no interest in my problems.”

Whatever. When I pray, I want to see some action.

Incidentally, I would be interested in knowing whether I’m the only one who has the impression that a lot of Christians are getting interested in guns, tools, and growing things. It’s crazy, but I keep running into people who have these interests. I have to wonder if we’re being prepared for something. Maybe when times get really bad, it will be good to have a bunch of tools, plenty of firearms and ammunition, and food growing on your land.

Here’s something crazy: my grandfather left me a big heavy bag of silver. He was a judge, and there was a toll road through the counties he served, and when we went off silver coins, he used his clout to get the toll collectors to save silver for him, and he bought it. Very odd thing to do; he was not a big metals investor. And now here I am, with bad times probably on the way, sitting on a hefty pile of silver coins. Is there a reason for it?

That’s all for this morning. I have to buy some steel and some welding gas, and I have a bunch of ideas for mounting tools on roller carts. Time is wasting.

Technorati Profile

“Time is an Illusion; Lunchtime, Doubly So.”

I want to thank everyone with regard to the post I put up the other day about the property sale my family is negotiating. I asked for prayer. I come from a family in which people don’t do a very good job of structuring their estates. This is a tremendous evil to thrust on your kids. I have a cousin who was cut out of his father’s will in favor of his brother. He cornered his brother in the front seat of his truck and blew his guts out with a deer rifle and one or two other weapons. You really need to set your estate up, if you have anyone to leave money to.

It looks like the deal is working out much better than expected, and if it goes through, it will get a big source of conflict out of our lives. This, more than the money, is what concerned me. I give credit to God. I have to; it’s not like we’ve done anything shrewd or even competent in managing what was left to us.

I learned something amazing tonight. I have always said my family was cursed. Today I found out that someone in my line of descent–the last person you would imagine, if you knew my family–used an occult method to plan investments. No wonder we have had problems with the property. I can’t tell you how shocked I am.

I keep thinking about machine tools. I know you will think I’m nuts, and you probably do, regardless, but I keep feeling as though big tools are part of God’s plan for my life. I wish I also felt that way about Pop Tarts.

The Millrite I looked at was very nice, and I am tempted to jump on it. But I keep reading about the various ways in which it is inferior to a Bridgeport. And you have to see what someone mentioned to me. Click this link.

That is the business of a man who “scrapes” machine tools. Don’t even ask me to explain. Science will allow you to build a nice machine tool, but to make it accurate, you have to resort to art. Scraping is a bizarre process that prepares metal surfaces to work properly together, and people do it with hand tools.

Anyway, he takes old mills apart, scrapes them down, and rebuilds them. They are gorgeous. And the prices are very good. I’m so tempted.

This guy has a great reputation, for ethics as well as skill. I picked that up from reading the forums. That makes the deals harder to resist.

I contacted Plaza Machinery about a lathe. People say great things about this company. The owner says he’s in the hospital. Has a lathe I might want to buy, but it may take time.

Speaking of time, it has been on Mish Weiss’s mind. Her doctors seem to be debating about how much time she has left. The truth is, they don’t know. I hope she realizes that. And even if doctors were able to make predictions with any accuracy, in the end, God is in charge.

Please keep praying for Mish, and while you’re at it, throw in the guy from Plaza Machinery. Can’t hurt.

Three Hundred Million Blind Mice

I am somewhat leery of the practice of opening the Bible at random and asking God to tell me what to read. But sometimes I do it anyway, because I can’t decide what to look at. And I have to admit, it seems to work. Usually my eye lands on something very useful or appropriate.

Here’s something I stumbled on a few days back. It’s from the 12th chapter of Job:

9 Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?

10 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.

11 Doth not the ear try words? and the mouth taste his meat?

12 With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.

13 With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding.

14 Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again: he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.

15 Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth.

16 With him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver are his.

17 He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the judges fools.

18 He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth their loins with a girdle.

19 He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty.

20 He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged.

21 He poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the strength of the mighty.

22 He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.

23 He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.

24 He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.

25 They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.

This stuff is true. Job said some things that were wrong, and God corrected him, but much of what he said is consistent with the rest of the Bible.

Naturally, I thought of the current economic mess. Barack Obama is doing everything wrong, and leftist cheerleaders are issuing shrill but unconvincing screams of approval. Before Obama came along, liberals in our government screwed up by coercing banks to lend money to people who clearly could not pay. The people who ran our lending institutions made the bad loans, which is really astounding, if you consider what an obvious mistake it was. And George Bush made a bizarre eleventh-hour dive into the cesspool of socialism, rewarding those who helped put us in this mess and encouraging others like them to continue eroding our economy.

Electing Obama, in and of itself, was a remarkable mistake. He’s a career academic and politician with virtually no experience, and his only “qualification” is that he did well in law school. And the more time passes, the more inadequate and immature he appears.

How can you look at a string of boneheaded mistakes like this and not ask yourself if something beyond the natural is at work? The stupidity of the things we’ve done is powerfully evident, and to many people, it was evident before we did them. Can mere human error explain it? I find it hard to believe.

The world is like a rat maze, and we are like the rats. We can’t see over the sides of the partitions. We can only guess at the locations of the cheese and the electrodes that deliver electric shocks. When we find the cheese, we take the credit. We declare our superiority over the rats who have no cheese, and we say our success was due to a combination of hard work and extraordinary ability. Those things matter, but they are worthless unless someone who can see the maze from above gives us guidance. And if you don’t get that guidance, or, worse, you are guided toward the shocks, all your wonderful efforts and attributes amount to nothing.

It looks like Netanyahu is going to win the election in Israel. I am told he has his faults, but surely he will be an improvement over his naive land-ceding opponents. With any luck, he will work to rebuild Eretz Israel, and he will manage to get Obama on board, and our fortunes will improve, because we will no longer be working to undo God’s promise to Abraham.

Of course, if that happens, we will be told that the great genius Obama saved our hides.

Prophecy tells us nations that help divide Israel will be punished. I believe it wholeheartedly. I hope we change course before times get so hard Americans end up smuggling themselves to China in shipping containers.

Keep up the Prayer

Mish Weiss’s liver has improved, which is very good news, but overall, she is not feeling optimistic.

Don’t forget her.

No More Autopsy Photos of Che

Cafepress can be a nasty place. But it doesn’t have to be.

Check it out.

New stuff is going up over time.

Dance 3, Faith 10

I used to belong to an Assemblies of God church. That ended in 1989. The pastor said some things that gave me the impression that he hadn’t put his criminal past completely behind him. He had been a petty criminal in his youth, and he told a story about how he and two friends had picked up a hitchhiker and beaten him and taken his money. And the way he told the story suggested he thought it was funny.

That disturbed me, and there were other problems with the church. For example, we often had services that lasted three hours, for no clear reason. It seemed as if the paster were out of control and out of touch with our needs.

I tried to find a new church, but I didn’t try very hard, and procrastination eventually led to years on my own. And one reason I stayed away was that there were problems with the churches I knew. For example, the charismatic churches seemed obsessed with getting God to do stuff for people, and they didn’t teach all that much about our duties to God. And the non-charismatic churches seemed like a waste of time. I was convinced that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was real, and the churches charismatics referred to as “dead”–the places where the gifts of the Holy Spirit were criticized and “debunked”–were pretty awful. Those are the places that now have gay pastors and even bishops, and which call God “she,” and which tell us Jesus was kind of a benevolent mental case who hallucinated a lot but gave us a lot of useful teaching about being nice and thinking positive.

I found clergymen disappointing. Some were clearly grifters. Others were, at best, hypocrites. Many had gigantic egos incompatible with Christian teaching. I don’t have to tell you the ways in which ministers let us down. Open a newspaper; it’s all there.

This weekend, I watched a DVD of a charismatic preacher, and I was disappointed again. Something about this guy bothered me. I finally nailed it down. First, he kept talking about his amazing respect and devotion to various highly spiritual people he had known, and he talked about how he “sat at their feet” and asked them stuff. It was a little like listening to a Michael Jackson fan talking about how he once touched a chair in which the Gloved One had sat. It seemed like this guy was praising himself for loving these people so much, and for knowing them personally. It’s a very bad sign when a Christian tells you how amazing his faith and devotion are, as if he were telling you something of real value, while expecting you to applaud. It’s not the same thing as giving your testimony in order to help other people’s faith, even though it may seem similar.

Also, he kept talking about amazing miracles he had seen or heard of. Now, miracles happen. People get healed and so on. But bad things happen, too. Sometimes you pray for people and they drop dead anyway. I’m sorry, but it happens. And there was something about the way this guy talked that seemed to suggest that we should always expect to get exactly what we ask for. I felt like he was pumping people’s hopes up, just to make them happy and raise his own profile and get him more preaching gigs.

And he was pushing people to dance and yell and sing. I resented that. I find it extremely annoying and presumptuous when a preacher tells people they have to make fools of themselves in church. I have felt God’s presence, but I have never felt like hopping up and down in a church aisle, and I prefer not to scream or sing really loud. And I don’t think I have to do those things to make God happy. I’ve always hated dancing in clubs and so on, because I was only doing it in order to gain acceptance; there was never anything sincere about it, except when it was real dancing, like salsa and merengue. Jerking around like a monkey always made me feel stupid, and let’s be honest, virtually everyone you see in the floor when you go to a disco looks like an idiot. It’s not just me. I always resented being told I had to participate in this degrading ritual in order to be normal. And I don’t want to hear the same shtick when I go to church. I don’t recall reading about Moses or Elijah or Jesus break-dancing in the street, and I see no need to do it, myself. If I decide I feel like it, I’ll do it. Until then, leave me alone.

A lot of flamboyant closeted gays choose to deny their impulses and go into preaching, and they have certain extroverted tendencies with regard to performing and singing and dancing, and they think the rest of us should share them. I don’t want any part of that. The Bible does not require me to moonwalk, so leave me alone. The fact that I’m not jumping up and down like an attention-starved XTC-popping pinhead at a rave does not mean I’m “ashamed of God” or that I’m less spiritual than you are. And your ostentatious display of passion and devotion may have more to do with pride than faith. If you’re doing it for the wrong reason, save it for Soul Train.

I’m not knocking these guys for their nature; it could be worse. They could be working as female impersonators, singing at bathhouses. They’re apparently controlling their urges. They marry and so on. But still, they are different, and they should realize that not every compulsion they feel is shared by other people.

Maybe I’m completely wrong about this man. That’s not the point I’m getting at. Here’s where I’m headed: I have been very disappointed in many, many clergymen, and I’ll bet you have too. And we’re often right to be disappointed. You don’t have to be a genius to know when a preacher has severe failings.

There is a famous “Word of Faith” preacher out there who appears to have gone completely around the bend. I mean, Colonel Kurtz territory. He says no end of nutty things, and he’s obscenely rich, and he tells people, essentially, that their lives should be perfect. If they’re not, it means they’re not sending him enough money, or they’re not praying enough, or they’re not wearing the right color socks when they pray, or SOMETHING is wrong, and it’s their fault. Critics are now claiming that a lot of his stuff is plagiarized directly from the works of a man named E.W. Kenyon, and some of it is just gnosticism painted up to resemble Christianity. And this man and his crew don’t take criticism well. His daughter compared a Senator’s request for information to Kristallnacht. I am not kidding. And it’s funny, these guys never–NEVER, as far as I know–tell people they need to give more money to charity. If they’re mentioning charity, they’re not mentioning it very much, because I’ve been looking for it, and I haven’t seen it. No, you’re supposed to send your money to the ministry. Because yachts need diesel, and it’s not free.

Hmm…God helped Cornelius the centurion because of his prayers and ALMS. Not because he bought Jesus a ridiculous private jet. Something to think about. “By their fruits,” right? And God didn’t send Cornelius a big check, which is what the prosperity preachers would have told him to expect. No, he and his house were saved and filled with the Spirit. I guess they weren’t believing for the right kind of miracle.

This weekend, I realized something. Jesus said the first would be last and the last would be first, in the kingdom of God. I always thought that meant there were poor or unknown people out there who would amount to more in the kingdom than prominent Christians who were not as righteous. And I think that’s true, but I think it also means that the strongest Christians are usually found in front of the pulpit, not behind it. The guys with the big churches and the big names are making a splash now, but generally they will not be as special or prominent after the judgment. Life can be like high school. Sometimes the quarterback ends up pumping gas in his forties.

This is a useful thing to know. Back when I belonged to that Assemblies of God church, the pastor disappointed me. But the congregants never did! I mean, never. I’m sure there were people there who were hypocrites or who had bad intentions in one way or another, but I never saw any of that. I saw sincerity and real effort. In this life, congregants have less honor than preachers. But many ordinary churchgoers are people of very great virtue, and many perfectly adequate pastors are not.

Here’s something else that occurred to me. There is a big difference between preachers and congregants. Preachers get paid to be in church. They benefit in lots of ways. People give them cars. People tell them how wonderful they are. But what about congregants? They pay to be there! No one praises them. No one knows who they are. So it naturally follows that you should expect to find stronger, more trustworthy Christians in the pews. Not on the platforms. The fact that a man is leading a church doesn’t mean he’s the most virtuous person there.

History is full of insincere clergymen. But how many people will attend church, and pay for the privilege, out of insincerity? The percentage has to be much lower. Why would you waste your time and money, if you don’t believe? Tithing and alms are expensive. And it’s a pain, spending a fourth of your weekend on church, when you don’t believe. You’d have to be a masochist, if you didn’t think what you were doing was right.

Of course, there are people who get venal rewards from church. Some people want attention, and they see to it that they get to sing solos and lead choirs. Some people just like to feel like they’re better than the rest of us, so they buy really big Bibles and carry them around and tell the rest of us what we’re doing wrong. But in all likelihood, churchgoers are probably more sincere than ministers and other church leaders.

If you keep this in mind, maybe it will be easier to accept the problems you’ve discovered in your church. Every church has flaws; you have to find the best one you can and stick with it. If your experience is like mine, you’ll find that the people you meet make your church’s little imperfections worth putting up with. They will bless your life as much or more than the guy up front. If I had thought about that back in ’89, I would surely have found a new church.

Prayer May Also be Helpful

Today I have fantastic news. Mish Weiss says her SOS or VOD or whatever you call it–the dangerous side effect she is suffering from the chemotherapy drug Mylotarg–is moderate, not severe. Whew.

Yesterday I got on the web and read up on this condition, and I found out a treatment had been discovered. A drug called defibrotide can be very helpful. So I mentioned it in Mish’s comments. Never be afraid to make a suggestion about someone’s medical treatment. By the time you reach middle age, you will have known a number of people who died because their doctors missed something that was obvious to lay people.

As you may know, Mish is a recovering vegan. Okay, I put “recovering” in there with no real basis in fact, but I have hopes for her. She finally agreed to drink Ensure, a dairy-based product that puts weight on people. Here’s what she says about defibrotide:

The irony of it being derived from cow lung or “other parts” was not lost on me. Still not eating a steak though. :p

I’m a good influence, even when I don’t realize it.

In her comments, I told her someone was clearly trying to tell her something. And I noted that Solomon’s Temple was basically a barbecue joint with priests. Think she’ll buy it? Maybe not.

Anyway, this is great news. The problem she is having can be very, very bad, so it’s a relief to hear that it’s not as severe as it might have been.

Mish has all sorts of people praying for her. When she beats this thing, it will be obvious that God did the work.

In other news, Heather’s mom begins radiation treatment for cervical cancer today; I figured you would want to know.

One more thing: Dennis the Peasant’s mother-in-law is going into a hospice, and the estimate is six months. Put that on your list.

Remember Mish Today

Please don’t forget about Mish Weiss. She is still fighting the life-threatening side effects of her treatment with Mylotarg. She needs your prayers more than ever.

I got an interesting email from a reader named John. He has been trying to change his life. He says:

Unfortunately, I have trouble improving my personal habits and they are slowing my progress to Christ. I would greatly appreciate it if you would ask your readers to pray that God gives me the grace and strength of will to change.

Consider it done.

“Renewal” Should Mean Something

I have been getting links from other blogs because I wrote some critical things about Pajamas Media and some of the people who are involved in it. I wrote one remark which has gotten a lot of attention; at the time I wrote it, I thought it was mild and relatively inoffensive, but re-reading it, I think it was unnecessarily harsh.

I’m taking down the posts I wrote. I’ve been trying to change my life, and I don’t want to let my faults drag me back into the pool of smoldering invective and gossip which is the political Blogosphere. I apologize to those I made fun of, not for their sake, but for my own.

There is nothing wrong with pointing out the problems with PJM, but it’s possible to do it in a more constructive way.

I also apologize for those things I wrote in the past which were really over the line.

Pay Six Figures to Memorize Cliff’s Notes

I got an obscene comment today. Here’s the unbelievable part. It was from a liberal. No, it had to be a GOP fake. Liberals always take the high road, right? Darn that Karl Rove. For a minute, he fooled me.

The funniest thing about it was that it came from a university. Obviously, someone’s parents’ money has been well spent!

We live in a time where people gladly pay institutions over twenty thousand dollars per year to teach their kids to take drugs, fornicate, give up their belief in God, bring curses on themselves and their families, read Cliff’s Notes, and absorb creaky, discredited leftist notions that bring mankind only suffering. Don’t ever try to tell me God wasn’t right on the money when he described us as sheep. When it comes to judgment, just about any mammal you can name is superior to man. Find me another animal that would base jump or smoke cigarettes.

For the most part, universities are gigantic wastes of money. In two weeks, a smart person who doesn’t watch TV all day can absorb everything a school can offer in a liberal arts course, with none of the bias and BS. At a cost of maybe a hundred bucks, if he buys his own books. Gas money, if he uses a library.

Seriously, how much time did you have to put in to get a B+ in a literature or history course, or in a nonsense course like sociology or black studies? Be honest. Two or three days of cramming, at the end of each semester, unless you had to write a paper. I had to take anthropology to “balance” my physics and math courses when I was in school. I studied for about a day, and I got an A. Try that in multivariable calculus and see what happens. If you’re Norbert Wiener, you can do it. Otherwise, expect to fail. Most college courses are a tremendous ripoff. And strangely, we don’t care. All over the US, there are people who don’t mind paying several thousand dollars for a child to study a course like the history of comic books or–here’s a good real-life example–the textual appeal of Tupac Shakur.

Man, think about that. What does a course cost at a private college? About four grand, I’d say. Would you invite someone into your house and pay them four large to teach you about Tupac Shakur? If not, why would you pay it to a university?

If we really cared about educating kids, we’d have accredited tutors who visited them twice a week. “Here’s your assignment. I’ll be back in three days. Know it, or your parents will take away everything that makes your life bearable.” That would work for any course not requiring special equipment. It’s how kings used to educate their kids. These days, we just shove them into the pen with the rest of the livestock and send them checks.

A lot of people think one of the best things about college life is that it gets kids away from their parents. Nothing could be further from the truth. Contact with our elders is an essential source of strength, guidance, and knowledge. This is why drug abuse and fornication are so big on college campuses. Mom and Dad and their values are a thousand miles away. If we really wanted to have a society with strong values, we’d go back to living in extended families, like people in the Bible did.

For decades, professors have been telling us our parents are idiots. Guess what? Your parents are treasures. They know a lot of things that can help you, and unlike your professors, they care more about you than they do about themselves. Your professors, on the other hand, probably ARE idiots. How do you think they ended up in academia? It wasn’t because their mad skills had the private sector chasing after them. Tenure used to exist because academic pay was too low, and job security was supposed to make up for it. Now it exists in spite of astronomical pay and benefits, simply because many academics can’t survive without it. Put an English Literature Ph.D. on the street, take away his cradle-to-grave benefits, and see what happens to him. I can tell you what WON’T happen to him. Private firms won’t offer him big money to teach them about The Canterbury Tales.

Here’s another bit of bleak news for academics. Now that we have DVDs and the Internet, it is easier than ever to completely replace professional instructors. Do you really need to subsidize an old hippie’s artificially grandiose lifestyle in order to learn college material? I’d rather buy a couple of disks.

I often say that the only people who get their money’s worth from universities are those who study things like languages, science, math, and music. Things that can’t be taught via cramming. But truthfully, you can learn all these things without instructors (or at least without costly institutions). When I studied physics and math, very often I had bad teachers and bad books. I solved these problems by buying other books and reading on my own. While I was studying first-semester calculus, I had a good teacher, but I had no background, so I studied algebra at the same time, from a book which probably cost fifteen dollars. My first mechanics teacher was so arrogant and incompetent, he nearly qualified as mentally ill. I survived by dumping Fetter & Walecka (the execrable text he liked) and buying Schaum outlines. Now that I think about it, there were a number of times when my teachers and their chosen books did me no good whatsoever. What was I paying them for? The grades, I guess. Everything else, I got on my own.

We spend too much money on secondary education. Maybe we should be working to develop a better system. Many, many courses could be replaced by tests. Show up, prove you know differential geometry, get credit, move on. Cost: $150 for proctoring and grading. Wouldn’t that make more sense than spending four thousand dollars? We already have a lot of tests to help us avoid unnecessary study. Maybe we need more of them. It’s insane to make someone spend a big six-figure sum and waste four years, just to become a member of a cubicle farm. Do you really have to spend three hundred grand to produce the Pointy-Haired Boss? I don’t think so.

Now that I think about it, I still don’t know differential geometry. I got an A in graduate mechanics anyway, but I think that was because only four students survived to take the final exam. I would really like to go back over that stuff and learn it. It’s one of those mathematical disciplines that requires memorization as well as reasoning ability; I didn’t work hard enough at it to memorize the little details that make it work.

It would never be of any use to me, but it irritates me that I never got a grip on it. I wonder if my memory problems would permit me to learn it.

I added some filters to the comment system today, so hopefully, juvenile, unintelligent remarks like the one I received this morning will be filed appropriately before I have to deal with them.

Another Chance to Help

Reader Wormathan says:

If it not to much of a bother would pass along one more prayer to your circle of readers? My sister has just been diagnosed with breast cancer at the young age of 41. She and her family are strong believers and her attitude is one of peace, but of course she needs strength to battle this.

It’s no bother at all. Thanks for asking. Usually it’s best not to do this on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, because fewer people see it. If you mention it on Monday, I’ll put it up again.

Chemo Drug Causes Liver Problems

Because I was offline all day, I had no idea what was going on with Mish Weiss. There is a very ominous post on her blog. The new chemotherapy drug, which just about everybody encouraged her to take, is causing liver problems.

Here is my bad, third-hand, lay explanation. The drug causes cancerous material to be flushed out of the body, and it can collect in the liver, where it forms obstructions and generates a great deal of pain. Evidently, this can be life-threatening. There is concern that Mish may not survive the next few days. You might as well read it yourself.

I don’t know what to do. Pray, obviously. Maybe fast.

By the way, reader R. sent me a thank-you email. I asked people to pray for her daughter-in-law, who was having a painful recovery from aneurysm surgery, and whose marriage was under stress. R. says:

Thanks for the prayers. They worked. At noon she looked like she had been run over by a Mack truck, eyes so swollen she could barely open them. And nauseated very badly from the pain meds. At five she could open her eyes and was sitting in a chair but was a pretty big shock to the girls when we took them in to see her. She was also still very nauseated, but they changed to a pain patch and my son called about 7 and said she was so much better, had got up and walked twice, the Foley was out, plumbing was working, and when she talked to the girls to say good night, they thought she sounded normal.

She also requests continued prayer.

I Set Them Up; You Knock Them Down

Here is some serious stuff before I begin my day of frivolous activities.

Reader R. says her daughter-in-law has had an operation for a brain aneurysm. She is now having a lot of pain. R. asks that you pray for relief from pain and a swift recovery, and that God will help her daughter-in-law with her marriage, which is under great stress.

At last check, Leah Friedman had come out of her post-operative coma, but she was having trouble recognizing people, due to the stroke she suffered during the aortic valve replacement.

Mish Weiss sucked it up and decided to try Mylotarg. As you surely know, she is suffering from leukemia, and she did not respond well to a bone marrow graft. Mylotarg is a chemotherapy drug. It can cause liver problems, including pain.

I hate to say this, because I don’t believe in making claims on God’s behalf, but as long as you understand that I’m not predicting anything, I want to say that when I included Mish and Leah in my prayers last night, I felt a tremendous sensation of power and faith. It was very unusual.

That’s the sick list. Pray if you are willing.