Let’s not Oversell It

The other day I said some religious people were fasting and praying, in hopes of securing a McCain victory. And a reader criticized the effort, believing that the existence of free will made it pointless to pray for an election outcome. Votes are cast by people with free will, so it makes no sense to ask God for victory. That is the theory.

There are a lot of things wrong with that theory. First of all, the Apostle Paul pointed out that secular authorities are placed over us by God. And the Bible is full of leaders who were chosen by God. David, Saul, and Moses are obvious examples. Gideon, Noah, Jeroboam…you could list such leaders all day. Second, if you’re God, you don’t have to control voters and take away their free will in order to change an election. You can discourage people from voting at all. You can send rain to keep people from the polls. You can make cars break down. You can make voting machines malfunction. You can cause damaging news about candidates to be released. Third, free will is way overrated. Our sovereignty over ourselves is very limited. If you think free will is inviolable, ask a recovered crackhead what he thinks. Ask him why free will didn’t prevent him from becoming addicted, and from using crack even after he tried to change. The truth is, people yield to persuasion and temptation, regardless of free will. And sometimes external influences (including God’s) are so powerful, it is almost as though free will did not exist. Think of Pharaoh, whose heart was hardened by God himself.

So, yes, it makes sense to pray that God will change the outcomes of elections. And it makes sense to pray that God will change people’s ways, and that he will help you to be good.

I am thinking about this because I read Psalm 119 this morning. It’s a whopper. In my King James it runs several pages. I had heard that Psalm 119 somehow summarized all the psalms, and I wanted to see for myself. I didn’t see it, but I did notice this: the psalmist kept asking God to help him refrain from sinning. He didn’t say, “I have free will, so let me fix it myself.”

Here are some excerpts.

10 With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.

11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.

12 Blessed art thou, O LORD: teach me thy statutes.

28 My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto thy word.

29 Remove from me the way of lying: and grant me thy law graciously.

35 Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight.

36 Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness.

37 Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way.

93 I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me.

94 I am thine, save me: for I have sought thy precepts.

95 The wicked have waited for me to destroy me: but I will consider thy testimonies.

132 Look thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name.

133 Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.

For that matter, Jesus told us to pray that we would not be tempted. Why did he do that? He could have said, “You have free will, so don’t ever sin, regardless of temptation.” Obviously he did it because he knew that even good people are subject to influence.

The above verses also underscore the importance of memorizing scripture. The psalm talks a great deal about learning God’s law and word and testimonies.

I remember studying physics. Instructors always said it was bad to memorize laws and equations. They were completely wrong. When these things are imbedded in your mind, they are available for use at all times. You understand them more deeply. It’s easier to apply them, because your conscious mind is like a box with a limited capacity, and you can only hold so many things in it at once. If you’re thinking about quantities and measurements while you’re also trying to keep a complicated equation in mind, you will not think as well as a person who has the equation memorized. Doing physics with equations you haven’t memorized is like trying to speak French out of a dictionary and grammar book, without putting the words and rules in your heart.

The Bible is the same way. It’s good to run to it and open it when you need information. But it’s better to have the information inside you, so it comes to mind instantly. Many Christians call this “the sword of the Spirit.” Satan comes to you with a problem, and you remember an applicable verse, and you pull it out and throw it at him, and you win. This is what happened when Jesus was tempted in the desert. Satan told him to turn rocks into bread, and Jesus remembered his scripture: “It is written, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Deuteronomy 8:3.) Satan finally started using scripture, himself. He told Jesus to jump off the temple, saying, “For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone” (Psalm 91:11). Jesus responded, “It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 6:16).

If you read the Bible a lot, you’ll find that it has the answers to many modern questions. For example, convenience abortion is very clearly wrong. John the Baptist moved in his mother’s womb when Mary approached (Luke 1:44). And the Bible speaks of God consecrating a prophet who is yet in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5).

I know abortion supporters will claim I am citing “talking points,” but I came up with these citations all by myself, on the spur of the moment. I simply thought about the issue, and they came to mind.

One of the unfortunate things about Christianity is that we cheapen it by making it an easy religion, involving no study. It will probably never be as cerebral as Judaism, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn as much as we can, and try to understand.

I used to know a little bit about the Bible, but when I stopped going to church and fell away, I forgot a great deal. I see now how I cheated myself.

Anyway, don’t let anyone tell you free will is the whole story. God is a motivator and persuader.

We Cannot Risk Damaging the Self-Esteem of Thousands

I am reading up on the GM/Ford mess. It seems to me that the US economy is running into landmines and booby-traps we put in our own path in years past, and now there is very little we can do to prevent them from blowing us up. And what’s going on at GM and Ford seems typical.

There are a number of economic time bombs that are now going off and blowing us in the direction of socialism. The most obvious one is the mortgage crisis, which was caused by a government policy of coercing lenders to give money to unqualified minority members and people who were just plain poor or irresponsible. The carmaker problem is another example. Social Security is still plugging along on imaginary money, but it will eventually fail unless we go completely socialist and enslave the young to pay the old.

If GM and Ford go bust, they will have a hard time paying their pensioners. They are supporting 600,000 people who no longer work. If it happens, the federal guarantee program will kick in, and that’s where the pensioners will get their checks. I have seen analysts say that we should bail out GM and Ford because if we don’t, we’ll end up paying off the pensions anyway. But is that true? I’ve been reading about the guarantee program, and apparently, it seizes the assets of failed companies to pay off pensions, and it has other funding sources, and it isn’t funded from general tax revenues. If that’s correct, then you would think letting these companies fail would be the smart move. We would lose 450,000 jobs in the short term, but that’s not catastrophic. And we would gut the parasitic UAW, which apparently drove us to this crossroads. If you include benefits, unskilled autoworkers pull down about $75 per hour, according to web sources. That’s insane. That’s as much as SEVERAL prosecutors, who go to college for seven years and then have to pay off student loans. Many doctors earn less than that.

And who is to say that if GM and Ford die, someone else won’t swoop in and buy the plants and start making cars people actually want and can afford? We don’t know that. Without the UAW, you could pay people what their skills are worth, which is what GM and Ford should have been doing all along.

My dad is a labor lawyer. When he was a student, he used to work in Detroit during the summers, to get money for school. This was in the Fifties. He was shocked by how lazy and overpaid the workers were. When a new hire worked at a normal pace, that person would be taken aside and ordered to slow it down. My aunt worked up there, too, and she said she eventually ended up taking her knitting and sewing stuff to the plant, because she finished her quota in half a day.

In those days, the Big Three had no competition, and America was prosperous, so the carmakers paid the UAW pretty much whatever they asked. Then the Japanese came along, and the UAW still had the Big Three by the throat, and you know the rest of the story. It has been about 38 years since Datsun and Toyota invaded, and we still pay unskilled workers five times what they deserve. On top of that, the management is corrupt and inept, and the people who design the cars simply can’t compete with foreign talent. Many American models are very nice, but overall, we are in fourth or fifth place.

The best thing is probably to let these companies fail. If we need cars, someone else will come along and build them correctly. Haven’t Toyota and Honda already done that in their US plants? Overpaid workers and incompetent executives will have to take one for the team, but that’s what they deserve. On the whole, they will come out way ahead, because we have been subsidizing their ineptitude and laziness for decades.

If what I say makes you angry, relax. You’re going to win. These companies will be bailed out, and others will follow. Pelosi and Reid and Obama will take care of it. And you’ll pay the bill.

I am extremely optimistic about my own life, but my gut tells me the country is going socialist, and it will happen very quickly. The landmines we buried are going off, one after the other. The stimulus didn’t work. The interest rate cuts didn’t work. The bailouts we have seen so far have not worked. We still haven’t seen the full extent of the mortgage mess. We are setting precedents by bailing out the irresponsible and the dishonest, and we will have to honor those precedents in the future, with more bailouts. It might even be possible to force the government to pay up, using an Equal Protection argument. That kind of thing flies in Florida state courts, to some extent. Economies are tanking all over the place, and that means a bad market for our goods and services. Obama is going to be a very powerful President, and he is going to do everything he can to expand entitlements. Taxes are going to go up, and if you think it’s going to stop at 39%, well, you’re probably the kind of shrewd customer who believed Obama when he said he was going to rely on public campaign funding. Obama knowingly says things that are not true. Why would that change once he’s in office?

This is how the supernatural works. You do something bad, and you think everything is fine, and then after a while, things start going wrong very quickly, and you can’t do anything about it. You do the smartest things you can, but it doesn’t help, because there is more to success than human effort and human ability. You have to be blessed, and you can’t be blessed when you do as you please.

I think America is washed up. I really do. God just looked at our report card and cut off our allowance. Tens of millions of abortions. Gay marriages, officiated by gay clergy. Arrogance and cruelty and greed celebrated as virtues. Increasing anti-Semitism, even among so-called Christian churches. A warped Republican-conceived plan to achieve Mideast peace by carving up Israel and passing it out to barbarians. With our eyes wide open, we elected a new President who sat for twenty years in an anti-Semitic church, approving of everything his pastor said. And the God-fearing among us haven’t done a very good job of winning souls; we don’t seem to work very hard at making people understand the peace and blessings of Christian life. We’re better at turning people off by telling everyone we’re more righteous than they are. I’ve certainly done my share of that, whether or not that was my intention, and whether or not I realized I was doing it. I helped bring us here.

We flunked, by any sane measure. And we flunked consistently, over a period of decades. What possible reason could God have to help us now? “Give us more money, so we can take more drugs and have more extramarital sex and flaunt our wealth and have more abortions!” Who would listen to that? “Give us more money, so we can buy tickets to Urinetown and The Vagina Monologues, while we stiff charities and the church!” Crazy.

I suppose we can make a difference if we change our ways, but I don’t see that happening. I think we’ll be lucky if we only end up as messed up as Europe. I think our enemies are going to push us around with ease, our standard of living will plummet, and when the nations of the world have a problem, they won’t come to us any more, for the same reason they don’t try to get help from India or Mexico. We’ll be just another second-rate nation, trying to be heard at the UN.

I think our only hope lies in the individual. Change your ways, let God fix your life and your family, and hope the effect will spread to your community and the rest of America. Or go rent East of Eden and have a look at our future.

Let the Socialist Looting Begin

What happened last night is a reminder that human beings are less powerful and capable than they think. Civilization is very complicated. There are millions of very slippery and unpredictable factors that influence its function. Although we try, no one–especially not voters–really understands how it works. Voters are incompetent; they always have been. They vote based on things like looks and charm, or because of crazy, discredited ideas they refuse to let go of, or because they make conscious choices to believe proven lies uttered by dishonest candidates. We often talk about the common sense of the American voter and how it will save us, but the truth is, that’s pride talking. We are just as clueless as people in hellholes like India and Haiti, when it comes to choosing leaders. Think about it. SOMEBODY elected Cynthia McKinney and David Duke. If people like that can be elected, Americans are capable of electing the next Hitler or Castro.

We are not prosperous and safe because we’re smarter than Europeans and Africans and Asians. It’s not because we’re a mongrel master race, although we tell ourselves that all the time. We do well because God guides us and watches over us. Last night, we saw how stupid we can be when he withdraws his influence. We elected a nobody with very poor qualifications. A man who was largely sponsored (and openly supported) by our enemies. It was one of the dumbest things ever done by voters in a democratic nation.

Why did this happen? It’s obvious. We begged for it. We are proud and venal and rebellious. We have killed millions of our children in their mother’s wombs. We think sexual morality is obsolete. We are greedy and cruel. We like to go to church, but many of us only feel that way as long as pastors tell us Jesus is more or less like Oprah; a warm, maternal, fawning, obsequious presence who wants us to have tons of self-esteem regardless of our immorality. We are exhausting God’s patience.

Obama’s election is a bad sign. If God can permit us to choose a flashy liar over John McCain, he can also permit us to have an economic depression. He can permit us to be conquered militarily. He can allow Al Qaeda to explode nuclear weapons here. He can take his blessings elsewhere; maybe to Africa and South Korea. We could end up like Greece or Italy. Or Cuba. This may be the beginning of our decline into true socialism and the misery it always brings.

I feel pretty good today, but it has nothing to do with the election. I am not optimistic about America. We may have jumped the shark. This may be our Samson moment. Our divine protection may be gone, and we may be entering into a new age of mediocrity and humiliation.

Obama will get to appoint a large number of federal judges, and they will reinterpret our laws, including the Constitution, to advance Obama’s Marxist notions. Maybe he won’t get to appoint Supreme Court justices. So what? Non-lawyers never seem to realize that the district and appellate judges are much more powerful in the daily lives of Americans. What if he does appoint a couple of justices? Kiss the second amendment goodbye. Forget property rights. And the first amendment will be gutted.

Obama’s underlings will work to bring back the LBJ era. Look forward to higher taxes, more handouts, more damage to our national work ethic, and soaring deficits.

I’m not depressed, because I know my welfare is not directly dependent on the welfare of the nation. I know where the good things in my life come from. But I hate to see America get a spanking like this.

My advice for the next four years is to be astute and zealous in your dissent, but to keep it respectful. Don’t permit the existence of Obama Derangement Syndrome. We have to try to win people over; we’re not going to do it by mimicking Ann Coulter. Pray that God will guide Obama and his administration. Pray for America. Try to be good. Be a witness for God, to increase the number of his people here. And look out for yourself and your family, because very hard times may be right around the corner.

I am Sitting This One Out

I am getting ready to turn off the computer. Not because I am too nervous to watch cable and read websites and blog the election, but because I am tired and I have things to do before bed, and I have no interest in what is happening at the polls. Once again, I have to say how grateful I am. I don’t understand it at all, but I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth. For years I have not slept well, so I am very sensitive to my need for sleep, and I resent anything that keeps me up late. I am extremely pleased to know I won’t be getting out of bed to check the TV at 3 a.m.

It has occurred to me that this could mean our prayers for a McCain victory are going to be answered in the affirmative, and that somewhere inside me, I know better than to worry. On the other hand, it could be the result of a deep realization that I am becoming separate from the world, and that my security comes from God, not politicians.

I would say I have been conservative since about 1980. But since the mid-80s I’ve been more of a religious conservative than a political conservative. I mean that I’ve been conservative mainly because Christianity is inherently conservative. A lot of confused liberal Christians think the personal generosity and forgiveness taught in the Gospels is somehow supposed to be applied through government. That’s crazy, because forcing the government to practice virtue for us, and to take our money to practice it, deprives us of the ability to decide to be virtuous on our own. It takes the virtue out of virtue, by making it compulsory and not heartfelt. It also deprives us of money we could direct to God’s work. Jesus would not have approved of drug abuse, homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, civil disobedience, immodest dress, profanity, high taxes, or socialism, and he encouraged his disciples to go about armed with swords. He would have fit in better in Texas than in Massachusetts. His respective influence and presence in those states probably reflects that.

I think that in the past I worried too much about man’s efforts to influence the world through politics, and not enough about getting my own life in order so that I would not rely so much on our government to protect me. It’s very important to vote for politicians whose policies are least offensive to God, but in the end, the only way to take care of yourself and your family is to put your religious duties first and exercise faith. So I voted and cajoled and prayed and fasted, but I am not going to worry. I am going to be all right, and I will have the power to help others get in the lifeboat with me, over the course of my remaining years. I wish I could be sure I would continue to live in a nation blessed with prosperity and security; a nation which nurtures Christianity and protects the Jews and pleases God. But other nations have fallen and lost their blessings, and I accept the fact that America may be beginning to deteriorate at an accelerated rate. Maybe we’ll end up like France. As far as I know, Israel is the only nation destined to endure forever. I’m glad I got to see America in its glory. If the destroyers and wasters and barbarians manage to loot her until she falls, at least I’ll have memories of an America that is beyond their reach.

My advice to you is to turn off the TV, turn off the PC, pray, and go to bed early. And if you can’t do it, maybe you need to ask yourself where you can find the strength next time.

It’s a MADDDDDDHOUSSSSE!

I have always loved Bible movies. This was true even before I became more religious. I don’t know what it is about Bible movies. I love watching Victor Mature beat on Philistines. I like watching Charlton Heston race chariots. How can you beat this stuff? It’s like superheroes and Jedis, only the miracles are based on truth.

Today a package arrived from Amazon. A Chuck Heston double feature! The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur! I can’t wait!

I just put a Costco rib roast in the oven at 250. It should be ready right when my McCain/Palin fast ends. What could be better than slow-cooked rib roast, a baked potato, garlic butter, horseradish, and Charlton Heston? Not hardly anything I can think of.

I also made a horrible impulse buy. Sarah Lee now makes little cubes of cheesecake in an ice cream carton. I know it’s not as good as homemade, but fasting has a way of altering your standards at the grocery store.

I’m not nervous at all about the election. In fact, I’m having a great day. Does that mean God is going to answer our prayers, or just that he helps Christians relax right before their countries go socialist? Hard to say. Whatever the explanation is, I’ll take it.

I think I’ll do the Ten Commandments tonight, with my rib roast. Oh, YEAH.

I Need a Standing Eight Count

Here’s a tip for people who are fasting and praying for McCain. Do NOT work with food during your fast. And don’t do yardwork.

You can guess how I came across these bits of advice.

I moved a huge planter full of wet dirt, from one end of the yard to the other. Then I salted down a rib roast and applied minced garlic to it. It’s obvious why doing manual labor was a bad idea. The food thing is harder to explain. I’ve noticed this before. If you fool with food during a fast, your blood sugar will drop. I knew better.

I plan to enjoy the hallucinations while they last. And I’m satisfying my hunger with a delicious glass of iced water! MMM…tasty water! What a treat!

Hurry up, sundown.

I am not an Authority

I am encouraging people to fast and pray for McCain, or at least for an Obama loss. Democrats are praying for Obama to win; don’t worry about that. You can’t expect God to pay attention to prayers for a pro-abortion victory or a far-left, anti-Israel, anti-Christian administration. Just pray for McCain to win, and that he and his Vice President and administration will rule in a way that pleases God.

People are asking how to fast. I used to think a fast meant bedtime to bedtime, 24 hours minimum, no calories. Then I learned that a lot of people fast differently. Jews often begin fasting one evening and break the fast the following evening. I think. Some people will skip one meal. Some will eat only fruit. It’s up to you, I suppose.

As for me, I won’t be having any calories until an hour after sundown. Today that’s 6:38 p.m. Hmm…that’s pretty easy. And as luck would have it, I have a nice rib roast aging.

I am taking Communion every morning now, early. I did that today; it’s too important to skip. But it doesn’t amount to much, as food goes. And I took vitamins and fish oil.

Incidentally, I got up at 5:30 today! Amazing! You will never fully understand what an achievement this is for me. I am not a natural morning person. When I was in college, sometimes my roommates would get me up at 1:00 for lunch. And in the past, when I got up early (or late), I felt miserable for at least an hour afterward. I’m not having that problem now. I get up, and I’m ready to go. I look forward to it.

Here is something Christians are very familiar with. Circumstances arise that seem to be unfavorable or inconvenient. And you feel as if things are going wrong. Then you find out that these circumstances lead to a pleasant surprise. That’s what happened to me, with regard to getting up in the morning.

The funny thing is, no matter how long you believe, and no matter how many times things like this happen, it’s always a big surprise.

My TV’s clock has been failing to work, so I’ve been relying on a backup clock radio set to go off five minutes later. On Sunday, I forgot about Daylight Saving Time, and I also forgot the backup, which I had set to 6:20 because I got to bed late on Friday. So the TV was set for 6:00 (which was actually 5:00), and the clock radio was set for 6:20. The TV failed again. I woke up at “6:20” and felt like I had blown it. Later I realized it was an hour earlier than I had realized. So I had actually gotten up at 5:20.

I have been trying to force myself to get up at 5:30 for quite a while, but it has been hard getting to bed early enough. Thanks to DST and my mistakes, I ended up doing it unintentionally. So here I am, on the schedule I wanted to begin with.

I already mentioned this, but no one reads anything I write on Sunday, so I thought I’d mention it again.

I got a comment from Carl the pagan, on yesterday’s post. I wanted to publish it, but there was so much pagan content, I didn’t feel right about it. Sorry, Carl. Like Hebrew National, I have a higher authority to answer to. I don’t want people reading my comments and thinking, “Wow, paganism looks swell.”

A year or two ago, I went to see furious atheist Christopher Hitchens speak, at a reformed Jewish synagogue. I was disgusted with the rabbi, for bringing an atheist in to proselytize and to condemn God, in a house of worship. I was fairly disrespectful to the rabbi in my post; that was wrong. Anyway, I can’t allow myself to make the same mistake the rabbi did. Does this make me close-minded? Yes, absolutely. On this issue. I’m proud of it; it’s the right position to take. G.K. Chesterton said, “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” I am open-minded by nature, but continuing to entertain clear error once you know the truth is the worst kind of foolishness.

I am close-minded on many issues, such as whether the sky is blue and whether two plus two equals four. This only proves I’m not an idiot.

I guess now I’ll get comments from people who think two plus two equals five, calling me Eurocentric and intolerant.

Believe it or not, there are people who actually feel that way. Read Robert Bork’s book. There are far-left wackos who believe logic is a Eurocentric, patriarchal construct used to…I don’t know…legitimize rape or something. I know many of you will think I’m kidding.

Get out there and fast. God decides who wins elections.

Pull Out the Stops

I was IMing with Aaron tonight, and he mentioned his plan to fast tomorrow, in hopes of helping McCain win. I had been thinking of doing the same thing. He’s going from one hour before dawn until sundown.

I say we go for it.

WHO’S WITH US?

Pray too, of course. Otherwise you’re just dieting badly.

We’re not Alone!

Look!

Was Not Arrayed Like a Banana Flower

Here is intesting Bible stuff.

Lately, from time to time, I have thought about the fact that Jews pray toward Jerusalem. I figured it was one of those things that don’t apply to Gentiles. Maybe it was hyper-religious super-observance rooted in the Talmud, or maybe it was one of the many commandments which only apply to Jews. That was my guess.

Today I read from the books of Chronicles and Kings. Look what Solomon said as he prayed to dedicate the temple:

41 “As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name- 42 for men will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when he comes and prays toward this temple, 43 then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.

That is from 1 Kings 8.

Incidentally, earlier on, he said this about his own people:

33 “When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you, and when they turn back to you and confess your name, praying and making supplication to you in this temple, 34 then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them back to the land you gave to their fathers.

I guess I’ll catch a lot of flak for recommending praying toward the temple, but come on. This isn’t Elmer Gantry’s prayer. This is SOLOMON. How can you not take him seriously?

When I was on the kibbutz, I had something like a vision. I won’t call it a vision, because I wasn’t completely awake. It happened in the funny state between sleep and waking. I found my bed turned sideways, and at the foot, I saw an angel in a white robe. It was a female angel (some believe all angels are male), and she had grey hair, and there was a wide silver belt around her waist. She had her hands raised in worship, and she was praying and looking up. The bed had a quilt I did not recognize (I didn’t have a quilt over there), and there were arms and legs attached to the edges of the quilt, and they were flopping frantically as she prayed.

Now, here is something I can only tell you because Google Earth now exists and permits me to view the building where I lived, from the air. My bed was parallel to a wall, but in the vision, my feet were pointing at Jerusalem, and I was facing it. The angel, on the other hand, faced the other way. She was facing me.

I think it probably means something; I think it was about something stupid I did years later. But I won’t go into that. Of course, it may have been the tail end of a dream. But I’ve had a few of these things in my life, and they don’t feel like dreams. There is a kind of turbulence to them, as if I were being thrown around. Makes me think of Jacob and his dream of wrestling the angel.

In other news, I have some plant photos. A commenter was asking for them.

First of all, you have to see my prik ki nu bush. This is the pepper the Thais call “bird’s eye,” among other things. This is one bush, I swear. A tiny bit of the lime tree behind it is visible at the top, but there is only one pepper bush in the frame. To establish scale, let me point out that it is against the fence behind it, which is standard chain link.

I know it’s incredible.

Here are some of the peppers.

Now some other stuff. Here is the key lime tree I planted the other day, with the little wire string-trimmer shield I made:

The older tree is behind it. I am now getting limes. It’s yellow. I’m not sure why. Many things can cause this, and only one of them is fatal.

Here is one of my banana trees, with smaller “pups” around it. The big tree is around fourteen feet tall, which is about twice what I expected.

Now take a look at the bananas. the flowers haven’t dropped off yet.

When you say “banana flower,” it can refer to one of at least two things. One is the giant purple blossom which gives rise to all the fruit and blossoms. Another is an individual blossom, which turns into a banana.

Here are the “petals” which have already fallen off. I’m going to use these as mulch for the new trees. These things are actually called bracts. They are not real petals.

The flower or bunch or whatever you call the entire fruit/flower thing drips with sweet fluid all day. It’s always full of bees. It turns out you can eat the last bit of the main flower (bracts) which remains on the plant after it quits producing hands of bananas. Eventually you end up with several hands plus a knob at the end of the bunch, and the knob, made up of bracts, is the part you eat. You soak it in something or other and then chop it up. Asians dip it in sauce.

I won’t show you my smaller pepper bushes, which look awful. They’re in the same bed as the prik ki nu, and I expect them to grow very well once they get used to the dirt. They used to be in pots, which they outgrew.

Let’s Call Things What They Are

I have a reader named Carl. Today Carl announced in a comment that he is a pagan, and he explained the pagan significance of Halloween.

Take a look at what Carl said in my comments, back in August, without mentioning his religion:

I am not going to comment anymore on your blog because you have become way too crabby and intolerant since you found religion.

You have lost your sense of humor. I wish the old Steve would return!

You tell me. Is it ethical for a person who believes in a religion which is inherently hostile to Christianity to complain about a Christian’s turn to God, without identifying his own religion? I’ll give you my opinion. It is not. To a cynical person, it would appear that Carl was trying to discourage me from telling about my faith and experiences, for the benefit of his own religion. And that he didn’t want me to know why he was doing it. Of course, that’s just a possibility. Maybe he just didn’t think it was important to tell me his beliefs.

I have lost my sense of humor; in other words, I no longer write R-rated posts or write in an approving way about things like lust or drunkenness. In the old days, I was harmless. Now I am a problem. That is true of any Christian, but it’s especially true of a happy Christian who sees the power of God working in his life. People like that can make nonbelievers jealous and cause them to consider accepting salvation.

If you’re a Christian and people are giving you a hard time about it, think about their motives. Thanks to Carl, I’ll be a lot more wary for the rest of my life. It’s hard to believe there are Americans out there who seem normal, yet who worship demons or trees or other strange “deities.” But they’re among us. Might as well keep it in mind.

I hope some of you will pray for Carl. He probably means well; I doubt he became a pagan in order to ruin his life. Funny thing; I was much crabbier before I turned around, and it’s very obvious in my writing. Life seems brighter every day, and I say so, over and over. What is it that causes Carl to perceive things differently?

I have to wonder what kind of kooky, evil rites and prayers I have inspired by blogging about God. For all I know, there are lost people out there trying to cast spells on me or praying that various spirits will thwart me or help me see how “wrong” I am.

This morning I was thinking about the rotten things that have happened to me all my life. Some people can slide through life without too many obvious problems, regardless of whether they worship God. My life has never been like that. My family has been under constant attack since before I was born, and I have always felt that I was especially hated. When I was a kid, my life was completely miserable. Until I was maybe eight years old, I had nightmares nearly every night. Many times, I dreamed of a white, hairless demon who came out of a sort of manhole under my bed and tormented me. The manhole was the mouth of a long tube that led down to hell, and there were other demons like him there. Once I dreamed I was outdoors at night, and I looked up at a star, and it was actually a hole, and I could see his eye through the hole, watching me. When I didn’t dream of him, I dreamed I was in Kentucky (my favorite place at that time), and that relatives I loved were approaching me to greet me; as soon as they got close, they began to twist and deform and melt into grotesque shapes, and I couldn’t stop it. It happened over and over. Many times I would wake up, and I would see giant lizards and insects and centipedes crawling all over the walls and ceiling, and even over the bed.

The days weren’t much better; my family was a mess. My father always made good money, but other than that, nothing went right for us.

Christians take prayer seriously, and I know that those who oppose Christianity take their faith seriously, too. They use supernatural means to try to harm and distract Christians. I’m sure I’m on their radar; I wonder how long that has been the case. Two of my great-grandmothers were heavy-duty Christians. Who knows whose attention they attracted back in Kentucky?

For a long time, I think my family has been punished for growing cigarette tobacco; we killed a lot of people that way. We might as well have sold crack. Apart from that, my great-great-grandfather was supposedly a witch. That’s just about the worst thing you can do to yourself and your family and descendants.

I guess none of this matters; God is God, and compared to him, all other spirits are powerless and insignificant. The Bible shows this over and over. In Egypt, God humiliated the gods of the Egyptians by attacking the things they supposedly ruled over, and showing his complete and effortless control over them. He turned the Nile to blood, he darkened Ra’s sun, and so on. He gave the Hebrews victory after victory over the heathens and drove them out of Israel. He continues to help a few million Jews defeat over a billion furious Muslims. I am on the right team. The team that has already won.

Here’s something crazy. I have been up for four hours. Am I the only one who forgot the time change?

I have been getting up at 6 a.m. lately, and I’ve been enjoying it tremendously, because it cuts the crummy part (the nights) out of my day, and it lets me get a head start on my relationship with God. Over the last week, though, my TV (which I use as an alarm) has been failing to turn on; I’ve had to use a clock radio as a backup. And because I got to bed late the other day and re-set the TV and radio to compensate, the clock radio was set for 6:20 this morning. I forgot to change it back. And the TV did not go off.

I woke up and saw the clock radio, and I was angry, because I thought I had blown it. I have been trying to arrange my evenings so I could get to bed at nine and get up at 5:30, and when I thought I had gotten up twenty minutes late, it seemed like a setback. Later in the morning, I turned on the Weather Channel for a couple of minutes, and I saw “6:20” on the bottom of the screen. Suddenly I realized two things. Not only had I not failed to get up on time; I had managed to succeed in getting up earlier than usual. Fantastic. Maybe tomorrow I’ll manage 5:30.

Enjoy your Sunday.

I am Relaxed

I think we are going to win this one.

John McCain is ahead of Obama in Zogby’s latest poll. Republicans almost always do better than the polls suggest. Republican turnout will be great, because we are more afraid of Obama than Democrats are of John McCain. And I can’t believe God would give us a socialist President who has announced his willingness to divide up Jerusalem. And the pride and smugness we’re seeing from Obama and those in the media who unethically supported him and smeared McCain and Palin…is it even possible that God would reward these people with victory? Such things happen, but to me, it looks like a humbling moment in the making.

I have been feeling relaxed about the election for quite some time. It’s strange, considering how I felt in 2000 and 2004. And it doesn’t mean I’m sure McCain will win. I generally have more serenity in my life these days, and I guess the effect applies to politics. That makes sense. After all, security and prosperity come to each individual from God, not from Uncle Sam or from the individual’s own efforts. So I am not afraid that my life will be difficult if Obama wins.

Obama is really exposing his inner socialist these days. First there was the Joe the Plumber moment. Now he’s calling people who want reasonable taxes “selfish.” Unbelievable. As Mike Huckabee says, wanting to spend your own money on your family is not selfish. It’s normal and healthy and righteous. It’s what human beings are supposed to do. Socialism, on the other hand, is clearly evil and cannot be implemented without a move toward totalitarianism.

When a government decides to take wealth from productive people and pass it around, it has to give itself new, unnatural powers in order to get the job done. It has to be able to locate wealth, and it has to be able to identify what it perceives as need, and it has to decide who deserves the money it has forcibly confiscated from working people. A small, limited government can’t do those things. To get those things done, the government will have to diminish our privacy and our property rights, and it will have to employ a lot of bureaucrats to stick their nose in our business and decide who gets what. A socialist America (truly socialist, I mean) will be like Cuba or any other socialist state. There will be boards and agencies manned by cronies of the chief executive, and they will funnel loot and power to their buddies before thinking about the public good. That’s how socialism works. Jesse Jackson has a history of going to meet CEOs and saying, “We have to get rid of this meritocracy.” That is literally the way he says it; no paraphrasing. Under socialism, government bureaucrats by the tens of thousands will be paid to say the same thing, as policy. When merit no longer determines compensation, other measures have to be used. And that means empowering bureaucrats to decide what the measures are, and to do the measuring. That’s the Obama plan.

I know these things already happen in our government, which is somewhat socialist in its present form. But it can get much, much worse.

By the way, let’s not forget: prior to 2005, Obama and his America-bashing, handler-muzzled wife gave less than one percent of their income to charity. When he got a ridiculous advance for the race-baiting book Bill Ayres probably wrote for him, they went up to between five and six percent. And those figures are deceptively favorable to Obama; they include donations to his church, which are not charitable at all. Church donations and charitable donations are different things.

When it comes to giving, observant Jews and Bible-believing Christians typically START at ten percent; that’s a baseline. And they make up a big portion of the “selfish” hordes that support John McCain. Obama doesn’t begin to measure up. Joe Biden is also incredibly stingy in this regard. So was Gore. So was Clinton. Then there’s Dick Cheney, who gives a colossal, multimillion-dollar portion of his income to charity. Bad, evil Dick Cheney. Giving more per month than the Obamas, Bidens, Clintons, and Gores do, combined, in a decade. Once again, I have to ask: isn’t he supposed to be greedy and full of hate? If he is, how come Al Gore’s giving amounts to a tiny fraction of one percent of Cheney’s? Pope Prius I is not living up to expectations.

We all know conservatives give more than liberals, as a general rule, even as we complain about high taxes. We’re not complaining because we want to hoard our money. We’re just asking for the right to decide whom to give it to, instead of putting the decision in the hands of godless bureaucrats who reward laziness, perversion, dishonesty, and other evil traits. We know that private citizens do a better job of just about everything, and that includes giving.

Call me crazy, but to me, it seems like selfishness when you vote for a candidate because you want him to take other people’s money and give it to you. Am I missing something?

I think every conservative should learn to give. There have been years when I’ve been a real miser, and I am ashamed of it. Federal Express’s Fred Smith used to say no company got a union unless it deserved it. Countries are probably the same way. If we don’t give on our own, maybe we’ll be punished with a government that does it for us.

Anyway, I am optimistic and relaxed.

Don’t forget to vote, and make your friends vote, too.

And Stay Off my Grass

Today is Halloween. Hooray, hooray. My plans? Business as usual.

I used to think that Christians who refused to participate in Halloween traditions were going way overboard. Now I’m not so sure.

Halloween got its start as a pagan holiday. A Catholic Pope moved a Catholic holy day, All Hallows’ Eve, to October 31, and that’s where we get the term “Halloween,” but October 31 was already sacred to people who worshipped vile spirits. And it still is. They claim it as their most “sacred sabbath.” And they are especially active on that day, even now.

On Halloween, we encourage our kids to commit vandalism. We don’t tell them to do it, but we laugh about our own stupid childhood acts, as if we approve, and kids hear, and they imitate us. A single egg can damage a car to the tune of a thousand dollars. It can take weeks to get toilet paper off of your trees or house and out of your yard. I am personally familiar with the nasty job of cleaning up splattered jack-o-lanterns. Yet the vandalism tradition continues. In some places, they even refer to the night before Halloween as “Mischief Night,” and young idiots are expected to go out and commit arson.

As for dressing up, we tend to dress as evil supernatural beings, which is surely not a good idea. A big percentage of girls and women dress as sluts, and they often live up to the appearance.

Here in Miami, there is a publicly owned mansion called Vizcaya. They have a Halloween party there every year. Most people who go are between 21 and 30. Everyone gets good and drunk, and you will see a lot of exposed female flesh if you go. I’ve seen women wearing nothing but body paint from the waist up. After the party, people drive home drunk. Liquor companies put up tables and serve their products.

In Key West, they’ll put on a festival they call Fantasy Fest tonight. If you want to see nude, painted gay men walking down a major thoroughfare, this is where you need to be.

Every year, I have to make sure my car isn’t outdoors, because of the vandalism. That ought to tell you all you need to know about the wholesomeness of Halloween.

This year I’m not getting involved. No pumpkin. No candy. Trick-or-treating is nearly dead in Miami anyway, because people think their neighbors will poison the candy. Maybe the best thing is to help the tradition die. If it were just costumes, I would be thrilled to join in. But the pagan connection and the crime and the sex and the drunkenness and drug abuse put it over the top. People point to pagan influences on Christmas and Easter, but no objective person would draw a serious comparison. Let me know when someone eggs your house on Christmas. Whatever it used to be, it is now a Christian holiday. As for Easter, it has never been much of an event for me, and given what I know now, I would rather celebrate it on Passover and call it by its right name.

Some churches sponsor Christian Halloween activities. To me, that’s sort of like Christian heavy metal. You imitate something negative, and by doing that, you maintain your connection to it and keep the door open for more of the associated negativity to enter your life. People eventually become what they imitate.

Anyway, no candy tonight. And hopefully, no vandalism. I have done a lot of hard work in the yard, and I don’t want punks ruining it.

It Will Pay

Man, do I have stuff to do today. I have to spray things with copper to kill fungus. I have to make some effort to get started on the soffit. And I have to kill an electric eye on a garage door.

I have had lots of problems with this electric eye. Its purpose is to detect objects in the path of the door and stop the door so it won’t close on them. That’s its ostensible purpose. Its actual purpose is to protect the garage-door-opener company from lawyers.

You would have to be brain-damaged to let yourself be injured by a garage door. And the door has a second sensor which stops it when it hits stuff, so the electric eye is superfluous even for the brain-damaged. Obviously, somebody has sued over this, because there is no other explanation for all this safety junk.

I am wondering if I can fool the electric eye by putting foil over it, so the foil reflects the light back into the sensor. If the door crushes me and I die, I will take full responsibility.

I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to disable it sooner. Maybe I’m brain-damaged, and I need the sensor to save me.

I put arsenic on some of my St. Augustine grass yesterday. Still waiting to see if it dies. I sure hope it does. I love that fluffy, bug-free, weed-free Bermuda grass.

Over the last two days, I have gotten so much done, it’s hard to believe. Yesterday I filled the trash heap with an enormous pile of hibiscus and other limbs. I gave a new hedge its first trim. I’ve been moving my old tomato pots off the patio and dumping the dirt in areas that need it.

I feel full of hope these days. Am I the only Republican who can say that at this time? I’m sure I’m not, although I doubt there are many non-Christian Republicans who feel this way.

Amen, Bubba

I feel like God and gardening are all I write about these days. I guess it’s monotonous for a lot of people. Can’t seem to do anything about it, however.

I think the physical condition of a house reflects the spiritual condition of the people in it. If you have filth and crud around your doors and on your walls, for example, I think it means malevolent spiritual beings go in and out freely and hang out inside and on the grounds. Just as the blood on the doorway of a Hebrew home during the Passover was a sign that a hostile spirit was not to enter, mildew and rust and mold and bug cocoons are signs that say, “Everybody come in and party; you will be welcomed here.” I can’t say I know of a biblical justification for this idea, but it still makes sense to me. So I can’t help thinking that the compulsion I feel to correct the neglect and decay on this property comes from God and reflects the turnaround I have made.

My mother was a realtor. In addition to selling property, she found tenants for condominiums. I used to paint empty condos for her, and sometimes I helped clean them.

In Miami, the presence of drug dealers and the necessity of doing business with them are facts of life. And it was worse back when my mother was alive. It was not unusual for her to rent properties to people she felt sure sold or transported cocaine or other drugs. I was often disgusted by the things I saw when I entered the places they had vacated. Very often I could smell the roach feces as I opened the front door.

Many of these people were involved in Santeria and other occult practices. Sometimes they left big black candles behind, which had become fastened to counters by wax that had melted. They had revolting shrines. If I recall correctly, sometimes they had photos of their children around the areas where they kept their religious items. Innocent-looking school photos framed in construction-paper borders. Imagine involving your child in Santeria. Why not just inject him with AIDS while you’re at it? Looking at those photos was like looking at photos on milk cartons. No hope for those kids.

The tenants kept liquor around, ostensibly to be used in worship. And they had so many roaches, their cabinets were littered with tiny brown pellets of reeking manure. For some reason, they had German roaches, which are much filthier than the bigger and scarier American roaches. German roaches are unusual in a clean home in Miami; it has been years since I have seen one. Avoiding American roaches is impossible, because they live in the trees and don’t need filth to survive.

I remember sponging out those cabinets and throwing out that disgusting Santeria trash. I wondered how anyone could be foolish enough to worship demons in their own home. Of course, this stuff still goes on here, and it’s not just among drug dealers. But with drug dealers, you can pretty much count on it.

These people welcomed demons into their lives; they spent money and worked hard to attract them. And their homes were like neglected animal pens. They stank. If you were to buy one of these condos, the only way to make them right would be to install new cabinets and replace the carpeting and blinds. The filth works its way into the particle board and fibers.

Santeria, spiritism, and voodoo are among the reasons I want to get out of Miami. These evil religions are the reason life in countries to the south of us are so miserable. In a country where Santeria is popular, no one should be surprised when a communist revolution erupts. You should expect things like that to happen; it’s the logical result. When you worship demons, a punishment like the Castro regime should be considered mild. And Haiti, where voodoo is practiced, is worse than India.

And here we are in the US, flirting with socialism, at a time when sick religions are more popular than ever. Coincidence?

I keep thinking about getting a truck. At first, I wanted one because I realized it was impossible to pursue my interest in tools without a decent vehicle that would hold things like dirt, bricks, scrap metal, and sheets of plywood. But lately, I have begun to think that every responsible person should have a truck these days. At least those that don’t live in cities. Hard times may be on the way; when they arrive, practical things will be a blessing, and Bentleys and Porsches will lose a lot of their appeal. And a person who has a truck can do things for other people, which can’t be done with a roadster.

Today I have to put poison on my mamey tree, which has termites. I have to trim a hedge. I should trim a tree that is getting a little close to telephone and electrical wires. Sooner or later I have to get real and fix the soffit where the bees were removed. I also need to remove a dead strangler fig from a cabbage palm.

Before too long, things will look presentable. I may celebrate by barbecuing every day for a week.

It’s Freezing

Mish Weiss has an infection. According to her blog, this is normal, after a bone marrow transplant. It happens because marrow recipients endure a period during which they do not produce white blood cells. Still, it’s upsetting to read about. Her fever was over 103 today.

Keep praying.

Also, don’t forget to check out Agent Bedhead’s blog. As stated yesterday, John Malkovich mentioned her in Esquire magazine! Bloggers are the new media! Resistance is futile!

It’s a beautiful day, at least compared to the mess we’ve been having lately. It’s BELOW 70 DEGREES! That will probably change in the next half hour, but it’s still encouraging. I’m very tempted to get a second Key lime tree and plant it.

Key limes are essential, if you live in Florida. In fact, if you have room to grow them indoors, they are probably great to have, no matter where you live. They bear fruit practically all the time, and the fruit is very useful. And if you make pies, you can go through a whole lot of limes. I think Persian limes are better for many jobs, but store limes tend to be dry and unripe.

Persian limes are supposed to bear fruit about ten months out of the year, but that has not been my experience.