Prayer Solicited

Leah Friedman had a blood clot recently, and she has had pneumonia, and she has sustained some damage to her heart. Now Mish Weiss says Leah has received some “bad news.”

I don’t know what could be considered “bad” after all that, but I know prayers would be welcomed.

Low Prices Sometimes Result from Pain

I appreciate all the helpful tips on the table saw. I hope it works out. I believe the main reasons for the good price are that nobody around here wants a big saw, and very few people have a circuit which will run a 5-horsepower motor. I guess the good Lord had something on his mind when I went crazy and put three 220 circuits in the garage.

I don’t want to miss the more important issue here. The seller no longer needs the saw, because his business went under. That is a very sad reason for a bargain. And he is not alone in these tough times. The other day I learned that a family I know has been under great financial strain.

In the past, when I prayed for people, I just prayed that God would fix their problems. I now think that’s wrong. Aaron informed me that one of the Jewish words for prayer really means something more like “self-examination.” Problems are often the result of the way we live. Virtually everyone has something in his or her life that needs to be made right. These days, I pray that God will help people with their adversities, but I also pray that he will help them search themselves and change and come to serve and know him better.

Maybe you could join me in praying for those things today, for the guy with the saw, and for my friends.

Today my sister and I are going to Wayne Cochran’s church. She’s disappointed because they’re putting on a Christmas play. She wanted to hear him speak. Oh, well. It sure beats what we were doing on the Sunday before Christmas last year.

Now This is a Church

I gave up trying to write music; I’ll pick it back up tomorrow. Software issues aggravated me for so long, I didn’t really have time to write anything. My computer’s audio circuits must have had corrupted drivers or something; I had to go to Asus’s infuriating site and download things. I think it’s okay now.

I got the birds out and listened to a disk I got in the mail. It came from Wayne Cochran. He and his crew are good about communicating with people who visit their church. They send emails and snail mail.

The thrust of the sermon was that we needed to set aside more time to spend with God. And he also talked about a couple other things that surprised me. He mentioned the book of Enoch, which I’ve been writing about, and which I bought recently. It seems like a lot of Christians are taking an interest in it these days. And–I think this may be the best part–he talked about pork. I am not kidding.

Toward the end of the sermon, he started talking about the kind of food he liked. He said some of the best eating he had ever had was cheap food. He mentioned fatback and biscuits and red eye gravy. You think I’m bad? He said he used to eat fatback and biscuits with Karo syrup. I loved hearing that stuff. My sister is anxious to visit his church again, and she has given up pork, and she wants me to give it up. I guess she has a surprise in store.

He also said he had a .357 by his bed and a Chinese assault rifle. And he has a motorcycle.

I don’t know if Wayne Cochran has the best doctrine, but I know this: as long as he keeps his accent and talks about pork and guns, I’ll be comfortable sitting in his church.

You Can Help

Yesterday, I somehow came upon a commercial blog (owned by the Chicago Sun-Times) written by a newspaper reporter and Baptist minister. The man’s name is Lacy Banks. I don’t know him from Adam, but I read what he wrote, and he says he has a brain tumor and prostate cancer. The brain tumor is benign, and the prostate cancer is in remission, but the treatment is unpleasant, and he is worn out. I forgot to mention, he also has congestive heart failure. He hasn’t been able to get a transplant because of the cancer issues.

When I started writing about God, I learned I had a large number of Christian readers who were always happy to learn of a chance to do someone a good turn. Maybe you would like to read what Mr. Banks wrote and offer up a holiday prayer for him.

His determination is inspiring; he is bent on serving God until the final second of his life. So many of us give up on God as soon as the wind changes. It gives me strength to see someone who can hold on while dealing with life-threatening disease in the autumn of his life.

While you’re at it, Mish and Leah can always use a mention. Mish is still battling her way back from a bone marrow transplant, and Leah–as if she hasn’t had enough problems–is fighting pneumonia.

Back to Finale

A few years back, when I first got interesting in writing music, I got a program called Allegro, which was the wimpy version of a program called Finale, which was a piece of composing software. I could not make heads or tails of it. Everyone on the web said Sibelius was the way to go, so I tried that, and it was not fun. When I sat down with the computer keyboard, the MIDI keyboard, and the manual, I was able to use it, but it was counterintuitive, and after a certain amount of time away, I forgot everything I had learned.

Today I decided to check out another Finale product: Finale Songwriter 2007. They have a fully functional demo you can try. It takes a month to download, but once it’s set up, it seems to work extremely well. It appears to be a very easy-to-use notation scratchpad, with MIDI playback and printing. Hard to complain about that. I have seen comments about it, saying it’s hard to do musically sophisticated things with it, but if you can print with it, presumably you can then scan the music into a more complex program.

Seems like a good choice so far.

Sibelius = Ulcers

I am totally determined to write some music. I have never been able to make much sense of Sibelius, but then I didn’t really try all that hard. I have moved it back to this computer, and I’m going to give it another shot. I’ll have to get the manual out. It’s like 9000 pages long.

I was probably stupid to buy Sibelius. The reviews said “Intuitive!”, and I believed them. There is nothing intuitive about it. Computer users don’t start with notation software. They start with word processors. Therefore the people who write notation software should fix their programs so they work like Word. Things like cut and paste should be available, and you should be able to put a cursor wherever you want and enter a note or a rest. Sibelius isn’t like that. It won’t let you copy notes at random and paste them where you want them; you can only put them where Sibelius thinks they fit. You can’t put more notes in a measure than it will hold, with the intention of removing the extra notes later. You can’t easily copy a measure and paste the copy where you want. You have to learn a bunch of weird rules that are hard to remember because they go against common sense.

I’m sure that if I used Sibelius every day for eight hours, at the end of a week, I’d be able to use it, but the pain of the first two or three days is pretty bad.

I used to have a cheap program called Rhapsody, and it was easy to use. As I recall, you could pretty much put notes where you wanted them. There must be something else like that out there. I used Rhapsody to create this soon-to-be-Grammy-nominated piece of music:

loobner4

I realize this is the most annoying non-Kenny-G. song ever written, but I had a reason for writing variations on it.

If I could write music that simple and add lyrics, I’d be thrilled. Maybe Sibelius is too big. I think you can use it to create orchestral scores.

I’m going to root around on the web and make sure there’s no better software out there, and then I’m going to get to work. I can’t take this any more. I have to make this work before my head explodes.

Deus, Yes; Ex Machina, No

I went to the mall with my sister to buy stuff for Christmas and my dad’s birthday. If you think God doesn’t work miracles, the fact that we manage to shop together without bloodshed is proof that you’re wrong.

Like most men, I go to stores mainly when I realize I need something. Usually I know which store has it, and which aisle it’s in, and I can often tell you which shelf it’s on. I walk in, I grab it, I pay, and I leave. Once in a while I walk around and look at stuff I want but will not buy, but that takes five minutes, tops. My sister, on the other hand, enjoys being in stores and needs no other reason to enter one. I have to keep telling her, “There will still be stuff here next week.”

We accomplished our mission, and my old man has some good stuff headed his way. Now I am exhausted, and I have missed my bedtime for the third day in a row.

I got a call from Mike today. He wants to collaborate on The Armageddon Cookbook. He figures the US is tanking, much as I do, and he is really enjoying maxing out the power of his food dollars by shopping at Costco. His new thing is baking bread. Everyone should be doing this. It’s ridiculously easy, and you get a great loaf of bread for something like fifty cents. He just bought a fifty-pound bag of flour. He already gave a lecture to some lady he knows, who has to buy bread for five kids every week.

I honestly think I could feed myself very well for ten bucks a day, without even growing food. Maybe five bucks. I might get bored after a while, though. You can only cook beans and rice so many ways, and even pizza gets monotonous after about three months.

Okay, six.

Mike is really glad I’ve become more religious, and he wanted to talk about it. That’s fantastic. No one ever listens when I try to share what I’ve found. No one who hasn’t already found the same thing. Mike is a Christian, but he doesn’t go to church, and he wants to get more serious. I suggested he tag along to church the next time he’s here, and he was all for it.

When we were kids, he lived on the southwest corner of a busy intersection, and I lived on the northeast corner. Our neighborhood was full of successful professional people with extremely messed-up families. No one we knew attended church seriously. My mother dragged me and my sister to church sometimes, but you need a father to get that job done consistently. And she could never settle on a denomination. Depending on the month, we might be Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Catholic. My mother was always drawn to Catholicism by the pageantry, and like a lot of women, she was mesmerized by the Pope, as if he had all the answers.

Mike says his family attended church on Easter.

Most people think God is smart. That’s obvious, but what I see in God’s work is more like talent than intelligence. When a talented person starts a creative project, it may not be clear what his plan is. He himself may not be sure. But something inside him remembers where all the loose ends are, and somehow, they wrap themselves up. I believe God always knows what he’s doing, but other than that, watching him work is very like watching a person engaged in the creative process.

Mike disappeared from my life. I thought he was gone. Now he’s back, and he has an interest in God, and it just so happens that I’m a few steps ahead of him in the same direction. When we got back together, I think we were both surprised how much we had in common. I had written a cookbook. Mike had become an amazing cook, and he fixed the same kinds of things I did. When we were kids, Mike got me interested in motorcycles, including Moto Guzzis. When we got back in touch, I had a Harley and a Moto Guzzi in my garage. Mike missed shooting. I had guns. Mike lived in New Hampshire, but he happened to have a new company with an office an hour away from me, guaranteeing he would get to come down and visit fairly often. On a couple of his visits, we talked about God, and each of us learned that the other had had supernatural experiences. Now we’re probably going to go to church together.

My sister and I were estranged. There was no way we could ever hope to get along. It just could not happen. It was not a possibility. That’s what I thought. But one day she saw a copy of God’s Smuggler on my table, and we started talking, and I found she had gone to a church two years earlier for baptism, and she was earnestly seeking God. Now we visit churches together and talk about our faith. And we pray our father will eventually join in.

There has to be a reason for all this. For the way the loose ends are coming together. I have to wonder. How many other people from my past will be brought back into my life, and what will the reasons be?

I guess before I go to bed I should share an experience I had today. I was trying to find more stuff to give my sister for Christmas, and I remembered that she said she really liked a Christian band called Third Day. While we were at a bookstore, the proprietor recommended their Christmas CD to her. I got on the web today to see if they had any more stuff she might like. Was I surprised! These guys are shockingly good. They’re not just good by Christian standards; they’re good by any standard. I can’t think of any country or Southern rock group currently working, which approaches their level. While I was checking out their music, I came across Brooke Fraser. Have you heard this woman? She’s so good, people who have no interest in God whatsoever buy her music.

It made me wish I could master Sibelius. I would give my eye teeth to write and publish really excellent Christian music. What better thing could you do with your life? Isn’t that better than being a lawyer or teaching people to overeat? Even with the dramatic improvement we’ve seen in Christian music, a lot of the stuff they play during worship is just not good. And it could be sublime.

In the past, I’ve always been able to write musical variations at will, but I’ve always had a hard time writing original melodies. I don’t know why; it’s really the same skill. Recently, though, I’ve been hearing the most wonderful tunes in my head, and I know I need to transcribe them. Maybe some of them have value. I shouldn’t let them disappear. I’ve always had a tough time writing lyrics, but maybe that will change, too.

I try to remember that I am now part of a plan, and that my life is being guided. I am sure I’m going to begin harvesting things God has been waiting for me to be ready to accept. Things are going to work out. That is what I believe. And the seemingly random or pointless or wasted events and experiences in my life will turn out to be meaningful and useful. God knows where all the bodies are buried, and he also knows how to bring them back to life.

I think that is true, and I try to keep it in my mind when things don’t seem to make sense. To me, more than a far-off promise of eternal life, this is the real magic of belief in God.

I Love a Nice Hypodermic in the Gums

Today I go back to the dentist. What a lucky, lucky man I am. He is going to pry out one of my Nixon-era fillings and replace it with something which, hopefully, contains a little less mercury and arsenic and plutonium. I can’t complain. Thirty-plus years on a filling is a good long run. And the mercury vapor has been most enjoyable.

After that, I suspect I will be shopping with my sister. My dad’s birthday is practically on Christmas Day, so every year, I have to come up with two bang-up gifts at once, and this year, it has been hard. I came up with one idea: pricey German waterproof panniers for his bike. But it looks like he may be getting clothes to make up the deficit.

In the past, buying for him was not hard. Cigars and expensive liquor. But I feel a little funny buying booze for him these days, and cigars, while appreciated, are in a moral grey area for me.

I also have to come up with his gift for my sister. I sort of wonder if he has ever bought a gift in his life. He always asks someone else to do it. Actually, that’s not totally correct. When we were small, and he went on business trips, he always brought each of us a gift when he came back. We got so we felt entitled to that stuff. That was a long time ago. Things have certainly changed. It has probably been three years since my sister has been involved in our Christmas.

I can write about his Christmas and birthday gifts all day without worrying that I’m spoiling the surprise. I am positive he couldn’t tell me the name of my blog if I asked.

I can’t help being full of hope these days. There has been a miraculous transformation in my relationship with my sister. It wasn’t just a matter of being touchy-feely and having a California-style group hug and making a decision to try to get along. It didn’t come from Oprah or Dr. Phil. It came from God, as an answer to prayer. It was impossible–not hard, but impossible–for us to get along in the past. You would have to have seen it to understand. You may not believe it, but I have always been an easy person to get along with, and I just could not make it work, and I eventually gave up, except for prayer. We got along so badly, family members didn’t want to be around us. Sometimes they visited Miami and didn’t tell my sister.

Fast-forward to today, when I look forward to hearing from her, and I enjoy spending time with her. We sit in church together. We talk about how God is repairing the family. We exchange thoughts on religion. We do things for each other.

It’s so strange, how different things are when you make peace with a person. Before you make peace, that person is a source of misery. They drain your strength. They fill you with dread. You wish they would disappear from your life. If you lack maturity and character, you may seek to harm them. After the change, that person becomes a source of strength. An asset. Someone you value. It’s like turning rat poison into penicillin.

I’ve reconciled with people before, but never with someone for whom I had so little hope. It gives me faith that there is almost no one I can’t make peace with.

I suppose shlepping around a mall while my sister looks at Christmas ornaments and overpriced dog toys is a small price to pay.

Unexpected Gift

A week or so back, I received an unexpected package. It was from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and it contained a plate. In the center of the plate was the text “My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”

I didn’t know about these plates. They put a new one out every year. They always feature quotations from the Old Testament. And unlike a lot of religious decorations, they look very nice.

I am not a collector-plate kind of guy. Not many men are. But this one touched my heart, and I plan to put it on the wall. I have a surprising number of reasons.

For one thing, it reminds me that I was chosen to be included in something wonderful: a history-making, prophecy-fulfilling organization that is forming a remarkable bond between religious Jews and Christians. We used to be brought together by things like disputations and pogroms. Now we are confounding unbelievers by working together to build and protect the nation of Israel. Many Christians are actively seeking religious instruction from Jews, in order to understand our own faith better. American Christian support of Jewry has grown to the point where it angers some people, especially those who want to slice Israel up and feed her to her enemies as a futile peace offering. It’s exciting to be part of that. How can you not be excited, when you see yourself mentioned in the book of Isaiah?

It also reminds me that God has helped me to look outside myself and consider the needs of others. I will never publicly say what I have done for ministries and charities; I believe that is wrong. But I can tell you that the small amount of giving I have done has blessed me more than anyone who received any of it. I am not referring to God’s promises to look out for the generous; I mean that giving brings emotional healing to the giver and helps him feel a closer bond with God. It helps clear away the hard layers of cynicism which, in this modern world, can accumulate so quickly on a person’s heart. To a great degree, innocence and faith can be restored, and giving is a powerful tool to achieve that end.

Another nice thing about the plate is that it opened my eyes to the importance of surrounding yourself with reminders of your faith. I’m going to put it over my monitor. It’s easy to get away from God while you sit at a computer; the ways are too numerous to name. It can’t be anything but helpful to have an object by your screen that constantly reminds you what you are and how you are supposed to behave.

Incidentally, I have been reading about poverty in Israel, and it’s very bad. I knew it existed, but I didn’t understand the extent of it. One statistic cited by the IFCJ: 29 percent of Israeli families live in poverty, and the figures for children are worse. Capable, industrious Israelis are making the desert bloom, but it hasn’t been a picnic. And Jews in the former USSR and Ethiopia are in dire straits.

Israel’s population keeps exploding. It must be very crowded compared to the time when I was there. I guess it’s a challenge, trying to find jobs for the constant flow of immigrants.

I might pick up one or two other items to remind me of my faith. It’s surprising, how few choices there are. I just assumed there would be an endless variety, but the list isn’t that long, and a lot of the things I’ve seen aren’t very tempting. Someone should make a line of unobtrusive and tasteful plates, plaques, and dishes with Bible verses on them.

Some of the things I’ve seen aren’t too bad. One small plaque quotes Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord… plans to give you hope and a future.” Another quotes Joshua 24:15: “Choose this day whom you will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

I’m glad they sent that plate. On my own, I would never have realized how helpful items like that can be.

Plus Random Ruminations

My sister and I attended Calvary Chapel of Kendall today. She heard about it from a friend. I got on the web and looked it up. Evidently, there is a body of something like a thousand churches under the Calvary Chapel umbrella. They are charismatics, but they are a bit fed up with charismatic excesses, such as barking and holy-rolling. They don’t permit speakers to speak in tongues while teaching. They also deny the authenticity of the phenomenon of being “slain in the spirit.” This is something believers claim happens when the Holy Spirit is present in such intensity that it causes their knees to buckle. I’m inclined to believe it happens. I think the Bible mentions people feeling weak in the presence of God, but I’m too lazy to look it up. As I have written before, I have had unexpected moments of mild dizziness in church.

I don’t think it’s a big enough deal to drive your church of choice. I’m always surprised to see Christians fall out over things that seem fairly trivial. Is the Rapture before the Tribulation or after? Do the dead go to heaven or merely sleep until the Resurrection? Who cares? I don’t think the little things matter.

The musicians were spectacular today. In particular, a singer/guitarist and a man who played the electric guitar. I’m not fond of high-distortion rock-and-roll-style guitar in church, but whether or not it’s a good idea, he did it extremely well.

The pastor was very good. He told about the birth of Christ.

They didn’t harp about money. They don’t take a collection. They have boxes at the rear of the church, and you can also donate online. I liked that. I get tired of hearing preachers pray over offerings, asking that they be “multiplied back” over and over. It’s as if they’re trying to assure the congregation that donating isn’t a stupid thing to do, because the money comes back. I think it does come back, in one form or another, but you should give because it’s right, not because you’re counting on God to make you rich.

I can’t say I felt much of that familiar “God’s presence” sensation, except at the end, when the pastor made an altar call. That was when he really shined. Or shone.

According to web sources, some people have criticized the Calvary Chapel bunch for insisting that members feel more joyful than they really do, and for being somewhat fanatical. I don’t know if these things are true. They seemed fairly tame compared to the other two churches I’ve been to recently.

I got home and felt like watching Perry Stone. He’s unbelievable. I am not endorsing him; he talks so fast, it’s impossible (for a lazy person like me) to keep up and check his scriptural references and make sure everything is kosher. But my instincts tell me he’s the real thing.

Charismatics believe in something called “the word of knowledge,” which simply means they believe God tells people things. I have gotten into it with my sister for saying God had never told me anything. When I say that, I don’t mean I don’t get urgings and so on. I mean I have never had an explicit message from God, delivered supernaturally. I have never heard a voice giving me news. I have never seen letters floating in the air, spelling out a message. To me, that’s the kind of thing you should hold out for before you confidently state “God told me something.” If you haven’t had an experience like that, you should say, “I THINK God is telling me…” This could save the church a lot of embarrassment. Didn’t some big-name preacher claim God told him McCain was going to win? I’m not sure, but I think that’s correct. God didn’t tell him that.

Perry Stone says he got a word of knowledge once, and it was in April of 1998. He awoke from sleep, and as he was waking, a voice told him the governor of Texas was going to be the next President. He told a few friends, and later that year, he happened to be leading a tour at the Western Wall when he ran into George Bush, and he encouraged Bush to run. Stone claims he has this chance meeting on video. Supposedly, Bush has said he decided to run a few days later.

I found that interesting, because he said he heard the voice as he was waking up. I have had a couple of very strange experiences as I was waking. One was unquestionably supernatural. The other, I have never been sure about. I always figured that if you were a prophet and you had a vision, you would probably have it while you were wide awake, because that would distinguish it from a dream. However Aaron recently told me that the vast majority of prophets received their information in dreams. And that information has turned out to be sound. I suppose I was wrong. I know of a lot of prophetic dreams in the Bible, but I didn’t realize they represented the standard method.

I’ve written about the first experience. I was trying to sleep, and I kept feeling a beam of energy playing over my body, like an invisible spotlight. Wherever it touched me, I felt loved and optimistic and at peace. Seriously. When it touched my foot, my foot felt these things. I was convinced it was the presence of Jesus. Sounds crazy. I was completely awake, but I fell asleep while this was going on. You would think I would have been too freaked out to fall asleep, but I was used to having supernatural experiences, and I didn’t know what to make of this one, and I guess I was sleepy. I awoke with both hands in the air, and I heard a crackling sound, and I felt energy arcing into my palms. Eventually it stopped.

I assume it was a supernatural experience, because the things that preceded it happened while I was still awake, and because it seemed to continue even after it woke me up.

I have never figured out what it meant.

The experience that made the deepest impression on me–this is not the second experience I mentioned above–took place while I was awake and the sun was shining. I was sitting on the couch, and I happened to look at the wall. And up near the corner of the room, I saw a creature. I’d say it was about five inches long. It seemed similar to a cockroach in its general shape. It was a long oval shape, with a line across it near one end. The line appeared to define a head. That was the only feature it had. You could draw it perfectly in ten seconds with a pencil. It had no color. It was clear. I can’t describe it well; it didn’t look like glass, because it was not in this world and it didn’t look like things that belong to this world. The outlines were not clearly focused. It was as though I were seeing it through the distorting effect of the physical universe. You might think of the creature in the movie Predator, or maybe one of those clear network logos at the bottom of a TV screen.

This thing was about four inches from the ceiling, clinging to the wall. Its head faced away from the corner. Its body was parallel to the ceiling. It was just sitting there. I had no trouble seeing it. It was as obvious as a table lamp, and I got a good, long look at it.

I kept staring at it, because…well, who wouldn’t? Eventually, it appeared to realize I could see it. I don’t think it liked this. It detached from the wall and floated away from it, and as it did, a line appeared down its back, defining two wings which parted and peeled up toward the head. The wings then began spinning around the head like a propeller, except that they seemed to merge into a smooth disk perpendicular to the axis of the body. As this happened, it began to rise, and it rose toward the ceiling. When it reached the ceiling, it passed through it and disappeared.

The smoothness of the motion was beyond anything I have ever seen in the physical realm. It had an idealized quality to it, as though its spiritual nature permitted it to be simpler and more elegant than a physical object.

This was a spirit. That much, I’m sure of. But was it a good spirit or a bad one? My guess: bad. It took off when I spotted it, which is not what you would expect a benign spirit serving God to do. It acted guilty.

It made me think of phrases like “lord of the flies” and “prince of the air.” Some people say there are foul spirits that are like flies, flying around from place to place to cause trouble. And I also thought about Christians who claim foul spirits inhabit houses and have to be commanded to leave. Truthfully, though, I am not sure of its exact nature. Sometimes I wonder if it was here to bring a specific type of trouble to the house, like bugs, which it resembled.

I used to keep the story to myself. I’m not sure why. These days, I don’t care who knows it. So here it is. Maybe someone else out there has seen something like it, and they’ll be relieved to know they’re not alone.

Today the pastor mentioned something remarkable, and I also heard it on a Perry Stone video. They talked about the 400 years the Jews spent without hearing from a prophet. The pastor called it “radio silence” and compared it to hearing a favorite station go off the air. I thought it was kind of scary. Imagine having prophet after prophet and then four hundred years of silence. How did the Jews cope? And how did they find the strength to continue trusting in God?

People make fun of Christians for believing Jesus will return after 2000 years. But the Jews have been waiting…what year is it? I believe it’s 5769 to them. They don’t believe Jesus was a prophet, so to them, the prophetic dry spell has been running since Malachi. It has been going on for 2400 years. I don’t know when they began believing a messiah was coming, but it was at least that long ago. So they’ve been waiting considerably longer than we have. Talk about perseverance. It’s amazing that they’ve held out this long. No temple, no state until 1948, no priests, no king, no sacrifices, and still, there are observant Jews.

Maybe I’m getting this wrong. I know they believe there were miracles after Malachi. Anyway, it is remarkable that any of them still believe. That is a special kind of faith.

I have heard that Perry Stone thinks God is shaking up America right now, trying to drive us to repent. I hope that’s true, because my own take is that we are finished as the preeminent nation on earth. He believes the prophesied outpouring of the Holy Spirit is upon us, and that after it reaches its fullness, Jesus will return. He certainly knows more than I do.

Interesting stuff. But at the end of the day, the thing that really matters is trying to lead a life that pleases God. All this other business will become clear eventually.

Two Kinds of Things That Suffer Blights

I keep harping on the notion that my family is afflicted because of bad things our ancestors did, such as growing and selling cigarette tobacco. And I often cite the misfortunes we’ve suffered. On reflection, I have realized that we’ve had more problems than I thought.

I used to cite my mother, my aunt, and my uncle, who died from cancer. And I have said that my grandfather’s cardiac surgeon opined that the death of my aunt contributed to the heart attack that killed him a month later. But there’s more to it than that. We have had other atypical problems, some clearly caused by addiction or drug or alcohol abuse.

This week I realized none of my grandfather’s four daughters had been spared. I have two aunts left. Both are smokers. One has problems I would rather not go into. The other has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. So two are gone, one has terrible problems, and another has a terrible disease. And most of the grandchildren have failed to prosper as they should have.

That is four for four. Out of four families, not one has turned out as hoped. All families have troubles, but it’s not exactly rare for a man and wife to grow old and die together, with children who are healthy and happy, and who have fairly healthy families of their own. My grandfather had four daughters. Three divorced, and the fourth is a widow. Most of the kids have had serious setbacks. I’m sure many people who read this blog have families with statistics that are considerably brighter.

I am told that the Parkinson’s is getting worse. My aunt is complaining about the dementia that goes with it. She forgets things, for example. I’ve been looking around on the web for helpful information. They say coconut oil, vitamin D, and omega 3’s may be helpful.

I’d appreciate it if some of you would offer a prayer for her sake. I believe my family faces special challenges, but I also believe in deliverance by faith. Almost anything can be turned around and made into a blessing. I think I’m out of the woods, personally, and I hope I can help the others get out.

I asked Aaron what the Jewish position on curses was, and he said a subsequent generation can suffer for the sins of its predecessors, if they don’t disapprove of those sins. That is pretty consistent with what I believe. If you go on in blindness, not realizing wrong has been done, that’s nearly equivalent with approval. I think that describes our situation.

By the way, don’t forget Mish Weiss. She continues waiting for her bone marrow transplant to have the desired effects.

Thanks.

I Would Kill for an Attention Span

I am all bummed out today. I completely forgot about the Pacquiao-de la Hoya fight. Boxing is the only sport I have the attention span to watch, and Pacquiao is someone I wanted to keep track of. Last night he pounded de la Hoya to bits, and I found out about it by reading an Internet headline.

De la Hoya is an interesting figure, because last year, a stripper released doctored photos of him, in which he appeared to be a transvestite. Ever since then, he has had to deal with the nickname “Oscar de la Homo.”

According to TMZ, when de la Hoya pointed out that the photos were fake, the stripper sued him. Knowing they were fake. They should have a Nobel Prize for gall.

Incidentally, can someone tell me why stripping is called “exotic dance”? What’s exotic about disrobing? Another thing: if you have to disrobe to make money dancing, aren’t you admitting you don’t really dance well? I assume women put the “dance” in this business, because women generally like to fantasize about being dancers. When women go to the gym, what do they put on? Exercise clothes? No, they put on dance costumes. Weird. You don’t see men at the gym, dressed like ballet dancers or the cast of Breakin’. Not heterosexual men, anyway.

The truth is, men would still pay strippers, even if they just stood there.

It’s a pretty sad way to make a living, especially after your kids (or grandkids) get old enough to realize what you do.

Yesterday, I had lunch with my father and my sister. That’s pretty remarkable. Things continue to improve. Eventually, my sister and I went to a Christian bookstore.

I guess I am not as good a Christian as I thought, because I could not help chuckling at the “Happy Birthday Jesus” lollipops, which were shaped like little birthday cakes. I still have some work to do. I thought of Ned Flanders.

The store had a little aisle labeled “Charismatic Interest.” I told my sister you weren’t allowed in that section unless you brought your own snake. I guess charismatics still don’t get much respect. The movement has had too many kooks and crooks.

I just checked, and it turns out Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker are charismatics. Great. I didn’t know that. If you don’t actually see a minister pray in tongues, it can be hard to figure out whether he’s charismatic.

It can be tough figuring out where in the church you belong. The charismatics seem to have a lot going on; they seem to experience God’s power daily, in a very direct way. On the other hand…Jimmy Swaggart. I don’t want to make a list of charismatics who are really embarrassing, but it’s not a hard thing to do. There are too many of them focusing people’s attention on how God can satisfy our earthly desires, and ministers like that don’t give nearly enough time to our obligations to God. On the other hand, the non-charismatic Bible-believing churches appear to understand duty very well, but compared to the charismatics, they seem sort of comatose.

Then there are the assimilated churches, where they ordain gays and tell us Jesus was just a positive thinker. If I only wanted positive thinking, I’d buy self-help books instead of Bibles. You can think positively and still enjoy all the sin you want. That’s not for me. Those churches aren’t churches. I want a living God who helps me when I’m in trouble and improves me and helps me help others and gives me eternal life. I don’t want Tony Robbins.

Finally, there are the old churches with saints and lots of structure. I cannot pray to another human being. I just can’t. Saul did that, and look what happened to him.

My hope is that the denominations will grow closer. Surely the charismatics can let go of the private jets and ridiculous prosperity preaching and hold onto the power of the Holy Spirit. I know many people from more traditional churches are opening up to the notion that God is among us, and that through the Holy Spirit, he is active in the lives of individuals. Maybe their numbers will increase.

I saw an interesting book about breaking curses. I didn’t read it, but the cover listed things that will ruin your life. I remember a few. Gossip, racism, failing to honor your parents, profiting from the mistreatment of the innocent, withholding tithes and offerings, and witchcraft. I can’t recall the others. The ones I remember seem pretty sound. I think my own family is screwed up largely because our cigarette tobacco killed so many people. That is profiting from the mistreatment of the innocent. You may claim it’s not, because smokers know what they’re getting into, but that wasn’t true before 1963, and even afterward, cigarette companies made sure their products were available to minors. They deliberately addicted kids, before they became mature enough to make wise decisions. And anyway, a pusher is many times more culpable than a drug addict, just as a prostitute is more culpable than a john. One party to the transaction acts out of weakness, in response to powerful temptation; the other acts in cold blood, purely for profit. Cold-blooded misdeeds are worse than misdeeds committed as a result of compulsion or external influences. That’s why contract killers get the death penalty and people who stab other customers in bar fights get two years.

I get so tired of people claiming johns are as bad as prostitutes. They’re not. The levels of guilt go like this, in increasing order: john, prostitute, pimp. That ought to be obvious. The same people who equate buying sex with selling it would never agree that we should punish casual drug users as badly as we punish dealers. There’s some fine logic for you.

In the cigarette guilt hierarchy, my family was somewhere between prostitute and pimp.

I bought a book. Josephus. He wrote about history, from a Jewish perspective. The book contains his complete works. I look forward to digging into it, although I will probably limit myself to bits that seem relevant to my religion. The book is huge. It would take a month to read it.

Maybe I’ll go crack it open. Seems like good reading for a Sunday.

I Have no Faith in Lizards

I am kind of stuck, with regard to new writing projects. That is a rare situation for me. I have been blessed with an ability to generate ideas prolifically, and I manage to get up almost every day and write something I’m pleased with, but for a while now, I have been idling.

I would like to do something worthwhile with my time. Humor is fun, but I wouldn’t say I’m improving the universe with it. If I could come up with something useful to a Christian audience, I’d like to do it, but ideas like that don’t fall in your lap three times a day. And there are so many people doing Christian writing well; I don’t think I’m needed. Humor is different. Virtually nobody does it well. Maybe five people in the US. Oddly, humor is still very hard to sell to publishers. Maybe it would be easier to sell serious writing, in spite of the law of supply and demand.

I considered trying Christian humor. I foresee two problems. First of all, who would publish it? It’s very easy to get yourself in trouble when you’re a humorist, by writing things that turn out to offend people. Inadvertently crossing the line must be much easier when you write Christian humor, and I have to wonder if editors have the stomach for dealing with the problem. Second, it would be a harder thing to write, because I would have to go over and over it, looking for things like doctrinal and factual errors. I would have to write it with references sitting in front of me, and it would be best if everything were run by a minister before going to print. Sounds like a nightmare to me. I’d have to find someone willing to read this junk, and then I’d have to deal with him before publication.

Maybe it would work for books. A column would require weekly or monthly interaction, but books would work out to two or three times a year, which would be easier to manage. Imagine trying to write a weekly column another person has to review before publication. You’d kill four days every week, trying to get it ready, emailing back and forth.

Yesterday at church, the pastor mentioned Charles Templeton, a person I had never heard of. Templeton used to be one of America’s greatest evangelists. As an adult, he had “a religious experience,” and he became a Christian. I don’t know what kind of experience he had; I can’t find a description of it. He toured the country with Billy Graham, filling football stadiums with believers. Later on, he started to have doubts. At one point, he watched a newsreel of Holocaust victims and decided he could not believe a loving God existed. He ended up studying theology at Princeton, which is a bit like studying stripping at a yeshiva, and he eventually proclaimed himself an agnostic. He turned hostile toward Christianity and devoted a lot of energy to attacking it. Funny thing for an agnostic to do; maybe he was unclear on the definition of the term.

What a wretched story. How does a thing like that happen to a person? How does a person know God and then decide God doesn’t exist? My best guess: he never knew God to begin with, and instead of learning to use God’s power and guidance, he had a forced ministry based on his own desires and efforts.

The Holy Spirit is the biggest difference between effective believers and believers who fail. The Apostle Peter is the evidence many people cite. Before being baptized in the Spirit, Peter was a worldly disciple who sought glory for himself, he was not reliable enough to stay awake for an hour while Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, and he didn’t have the courage to stay with Jesus after he was taken captive. He was not impressive by any standard. After the Spirit entered him, he wrote wonderful inspired scripture about the way in which a Christian is supposed to grow and develop, and he accepted crucifixion instead of renouncing his faith. He became an amazing person. A marvel.

My guess is that Templeton never experienced the baptism, and that he did his best with his limited human abilities. When his little human brain told him God existed, he believed. When it could not generate the faith to overcome doubt, he ceased believing. A Christian who hasn’t been baptized with the Holy Spirit is like an electric toothbrush that never gets recharged. He has no external power source to sustain him.

Many people think every Christian is baptized with the Holy Spirit immediately upon believing or being baptized with water, but that didn’t happen to the disciples or to other believers in their time, and two millennia of history show no evidence that it happens, generally. On the contrary; the general rule is that Christians are not fundamentally changed by belief alone. They retain their old nature, although many fight to subdue it. They don’t understand scripture any better than nonbelievers; they get little insight from God. They don’t have a greater capacity for faith. They don’t become prophets. They don’t exhibit the character improvements known as the fruit of the spirit. They develop truly silly ideas about God.

Sincere Christians raped and pillaged during the Crusades. They turned Jews over to the Nazis. They exterminated the Indians. They participated in the slave trade. I find it hard to believe that these people had experienced anything resembling the infilling of the Holy Spirit. You can have the baptism and still sin, but you aren’t likely to live like a vicious, ignorant animal, as millions of Christians have. It seems pretty clear that while you can receive the baptism simultaneously with salvation, it is a separate thing, and you don’t get it automatically. And being baptized “in the name” of the spirit is not the same thing. It’s not even equivalent grammatically. If it were the same thing, then being baptized in the name of all three parts of the trinity would mean you have been “baptized with the Father” and “baptized with the Son” as well as with the Holy Spirit. And of course, that is not what happens. Those baptisms don’t exist; I just made them up.

I think people who deny that the baptism is a separate item are sometimes trying to excuse the poor spiritual condition of their denominations. “Not Invented Here” is the phrase. If it didn’t come to their church first, it must be wrong, because surely God would give all the good stuff to the best and only correct denomination. And admitting you’re not full of the spirit, and that lots of other people in the one perfect denomination are not…that’s just unthinkable!

Human effort is great, but if it were sufficient to make you an effective Christian, the baptism of the spirit would never have been provided. The Bible is full of references to God helping us to grow from within. Helping us to obey. Giving us faith. Illuminating the scriptures so we understand them correctly. We still have free will, but he helps us to want better things, and he gives us the strength to do what our better inclinations tell us to do. You can find it in both testaments.

Spirit-filled believers allowed the Romans to kill them and turn them into torches to light Nero’s gardens; that is how brave and full of faith they were. Charles Templeton couldn’t even withstand a newsreel. My best guess is, he was limited to his own strength, and he was doing his own will. He built his house on sand.

I have seen too much, not to believe. The obstacles to my faith are vastly outweighed. Templeton got all excited by the fossil record. That’s great, but when I put my reasons for believing on one side of the scale and the fossil record on the other, the fossils don’t amount to diddly. We live in a universe created in a series of miracles. I have seen supernatural phenomena with my own eyes, so I have ample reason to find the creation story plausible. If the supernatural exists, there is no reason not to believe that God can create space and matter and do what he wants with them. There is no reason to think other spirits can’t manipulate matter; they did it to the staffs of the magicians when Moses confronted Pharaoh. Who can say ancient physical evidence is irrefutible or even trustworthy, in a universe where physical laws are clearly trumped by supernatural forces? I can’t see giving up a dramatically improved life and the assurance of a better life to come, in exchange for a cold, unfulfilling life of depravity and the remarkable belief that God’s existence is disproven by the bones of a dead lizard.

The Templeton story made me very sad. It is frustrating to read about someone discarding something beautiful and precious and vital. And to learn that he spent the latter part of his life encouraging other people to do the same thing is even worse.

Don’t Forget the Founder of the Feast

Tell me you don’t love America. It’s Thanksgiving morning, and the kitchen smells like oranges. And it’s not because I’ve been making cranberry relish. It’s because I used Flush-Out to clean one of my rifles on the dining room table. Are there scenes like this in homes in Europe? Not many, I’ll bet.

I think things are going okay on this end. The turkey is odd-looking, but I think the brining will fix it up. I considered adding baking soda to the brine, because the dark meat of organic hippie turkeys is said to have a fishy flavor that needs to be killed. I changed my mind because I didn’t want to take the flavor out of the white meat.

Because our nation is a mess and we have just elected a socialist President, who will exacerbate things if he succeeds in implementing his policies, this is a very important Thanksgiving. People don’t think of Thanksgiving as a religious holiday, but it’s a day dedicated to thanking God. We have been very ungrateful, and we have insisted on doing our own thing, and my belief is that our current problems are caused by our foolishness and rebellion.

The purpose of this day is to thank God for the abundance and security with which we have been blessed. I hope everyone who reads this will join me in remembering who gave us families, homes, and all this glorious food.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Go Read the Paper

I wrote a big long post about the lack of Mexican food in England, and then I realized it wasn’t good Sunday material, so I had to save it as a draft.

Dang it.

Now I can’t think well enough to write a second long post, because Marv is behind me yelling, “Can I rub your snout?” over and over.

I paid for this bird. That’s the bizarre thing. I wasn’t forced to accept it as part of a plea bargain. I took perfectly good money and exchanged it for this creature.

Today, my sister and I will be going to Rich Wilkerson’s church. I hope it will be like last week’s visit. I physically felt the presence of God there. That’s a hard experience to turn down. I think any atheist or agnostic who claims to be open-minded should visit a church like this one. If you can experience this and continue to claim there is no god, you are beyond reach. I believe most people who claim there is no evidence of the existence of God are very determined not to look for it. You can find it if you try.