Turns Out Socrates is Unavailable

If you’re not near a TV, let me give you the news. John McCain hasn’t picked a running mate yet, or at least he won’t say who it is. He was supposed to tell us today at 11 a.m. The problem? Barack Obama made his announcement by text message. John McCain chose Pony Express.

The waitresses and bartenders appreciate your tips, folks.

I couldn’t resist.

I’m completely creeped out by Obama’s weird Acropolis stadium set. Have you seen this thing? They put phony Greek columns up at Invesco Stadium, and I guess Obama is going to come out with a bronze sword and slay Polynices.

Does anybody remember Wag the Dog? I don’t. But I recall this much: it was about a President in trouble, who tried to save himself by hiring movie people to fake up the news. Do you get the feeling the Obamas may own the DVD?

I guess it makes sense that Obama is promoted like a movie star, and that he’s surrounded by actors and musicians all the time, while McCain is lucky if he can get Pat Boone to send him a non-alcoholic beer on Facebook. We are gradually learning that there is a conservative entertainment counterculture with more than a few prominent members. Problem is, if they go to Minneapolis, they’ll all end up unemployed. Because Hollywood and the music business want to be diverse, and as we all know, “diverse” means “free of conservatives and Christians, regardless of color.”

As I have noted before, if you take a group of white male liberals and add a black female conservative, the group actually becomes less diverse. It’s like conservatives and Christians are the antimatter of diversity. Or something.

Condi Rice is a white man. Get used to it. Colin Powell used to be white, but since he turned on the Republicans, he has browned up nicely.

As a Christian, I continue to be bummed out by two things. The right’s abandonment of Christian (or Judeo-Christian) values, and the anti-Christian undertones of the Obama phenomenon. This guy runs around with an idol in his pocket, and the idol just happens to be a demigod which has been characterized credibly as the Hindu Antichrist.

For a long time, I’ve believed there are people who succeed beyond reasonable expectations, simply because dark spiritual forces help them. Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Oprah may be examples. Also Hitler and Castro. By the way, if you think I’m picking on Oprah, find out what she’s up to. She has hitched her wagon to a pop-culture faux Messiah named Tolle. And she says there are all sorts of paths to salvation, not just the one which Christians accept. That’s anti-Christian. Take the hyphen out, and what do you get? Furthermore, “anti-Christian” contains the letter “T,” which rhymes with “P,” which stands for “pool.”

I never saw an obscure reference I could resist.

We usually use the term “antichrist” to describe a unique person we think will rule in the future. But I believe there are lots and lots of people who are “anointed” by evil to prosper in this world and influence people negatively. Is that crazy? I know I’m not the only one who believes this. And I worry that Obama may be one of these people. He’s a nobody, with no qualifications for the job he wants. And he had very powerful competition for the job, in the form of Hillary Clinton. But he squashed her effortlessly. On top of that, the press is so giddy over him, you can’t help but wonder if something spiritual is clouding their judgment. Chris Matthews said Obama made a tingle run down his leg! Is that something a person says, when he’s in his right mind? THREE network anchors went on a press tour with Obama. How can a thing like that happen, without generating a wave of firings? It’s inconceivable. But we all saw it.

He also spent twenty years at an anti-Semitic church. I don’t differentiate between anti-Christian and anti-Semitic. To me, it all seems to come from the same place, whether you’re talking about Pharaoh killing the Hebrew firstborn or Muslim fathers murdering their sons for accepting Christ. Increasingly, events bear out my impression. The same people who hate Jews, now hate Christians and America. Like I always say, these days, we are all Jews.

Even Christian churches are anti-Christian now. Many of them tell us to divest from Israel. Many say God is just a pleasant idea that will help us behave. Crazy. We have moles in pulpits.

The Greek Obama motif is bothersome, because in the past, the struggle between Jehovah-worshippers and the rest of the world has often been characterized as a struggle against Hellenism, or against Rome. To a person like me, who sees everything as a symbol, the Greek set is like a punch in the face.

Of course, we have to be fair. When the actual Parthenon was built, John McCain cut the ribbon.

Sorry. I see why Jay Leno does this. It’s so easy.

I don’t think people who are promoted by evil know what’s going on. I don’t think Oprah wakes up every morning and thanks Satan for a chance to send more people to hell. And I would be amazed if Obama had bad intentions, beyond the usual desires for wealth, adulation, and power. I doubt that religion means much to him. When he was young, he knew he wanted to be a politician. So he did two things politicians have to do. He got married, and he joined a church. Much as many conservative politicians have done. But his meteoric and unmerited rise to prominence is freakish, and I don’t think things like that happen without supernatural action.

I am afraid Obama will hurt Israel, by weakening support. I am afraid he will strengthen judicial attacks on Christianity by appointing far-left freaks to the federal bench. And I fully expect him to push us in the direction of socialism, which is a system that has always been anti-Christian. He’ll probably do what he thinks is best, most of the time, but he’ll be completely wrong.

Sometimes I get the impression that this is a pivotal election. It’s as if God is giving us a choice between a fairly normal politician with relatively old-fashioned values, or a guy who represents humanism, immorality, and pride. More obviously than Bill Clinton did. It has the smell of a test.

I think John McCain will be President this time next year. I don’t think we’ve gone crazy enough to elect a man who has never held an executive position, and who pals around with anti-Semites and unrepentant terrorists. My guess is that once the ads start running full-force and people learn what Obama is all about, McCain will be in position to win by four or five percentage points.

But it disturbs me that Obama could get this close to the Oval Office.

I pray for the McCain campaign. If this is a spiritual battle, we have to fight it on a spiritual level. That’s how I see it. I would suggest you do the same. The Bible says God chooses the king. So cast your vote.

Some New Species of Barackteria

It’s not Sondra, but it’s on her blog.

This is exactly what I thought of when I saw the Greek columns.

Hard to Believe my Luck

A while back, I revealed something I thought would benefit people. I mentioned one of the reasons I believe in Jesus Christ. It was something I had kept to myself, except for few times when I mentioned it to people close to me. I used to think it was a waste of time to tell people about it, but that was before the Internet. It may be a waste of time to tell people one-on-one, but if I put it here, it might reach someone who will get something out of it.

Again, as I have said before, the best reason to believe me is that I don’t profit by telling the story. If a TV preacher tells a story about a supernatural experience, you know he’s getting paid to do it. I don’t receive a thing for my trouble.

I’m thinking about this, because I happened to flip to a religious channel tonight, and I saw a guy interviewing people, asking if they had seen or otherwise sensed God. They all said no, and even though he appeared to be some sort of clergyman, he said he hadn’t, either. I thought that was a little weird, since so many people say they have physically sensed God’s presence. It occurred to me that maybe I had a duty to talk about the things that had happened to me. If such experiences are rarer than I once thought, maybe people who have them are supposed to tell other people about them.

Last time, I told about an incident that took place while I was driving. I was on my way from Milwaukee to Kentucky, in the dead of winter. And I had a terrible feeling of dread come over me. I was positive I was going to die that day, and I had no explanation. My life was okay. I hadn’t suffered any emotional trauma. But I still felt that way, and I couldn’t shake it. I pulled over and prayed, and suddenly, I felt a warm, loving presence in the car with me. It was just to my right. It was full of peace and reassurance and love, and these attributes seemed to have a pressure that drove them against me like a hug. It wasn’t visible, but it occupied an identifiable space on the seat next to me. After it showed up, I was okay. And I was sure it was a visitation from Jesus.

I have had that same experience on at least one other occasion. It was in the mid-Eighties. I was becoming more religious. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the best role models or teachers I could have asked for. But I was improving, compared to what I had been in the past.

One night I was lying in bed, fully awake, about to drift off to sleep. And I felt the strangest sensation. I can describe it in a way that will help you to understand it, to some degree. Imagine you’re wearing a blindfold. You can’t see any light at all. And someone across the room from you trains a spotlight on you. If they moved the spotlight so the beam played over your body, you’d feel the beam as it moved over you. Where the beam struck, you would feel warmth, and the rest of you would be cooler. I felt something like that, in that dark room. I felt a warm beam playing over my body, but it wasn’t a beam of light, and it wasn’t physical warmth. It was emotional and spiritual warmth. And of course, powerful love. The same thing I felt when I had the experience in the car, except that instead of a more or less ball-shaped presence, it seemed more like a beam, coming from above.

This will sound crazy, but it’s absolutely true. Everywhere this beam touched me, I felt happy and secure. The crazy part is that when it hit my legs, for example, my legs felt warm and safe and content, and the rest of me felt less so. The same applied to my arms and my chest and the rest of me. You may not believe you can feel emotions in your legs or your arms, while the rest of you feels something different, but you can. You can probably have one toe that is happier than the rest of your body.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. If it happened now, I think I’d get out of bed and worship, to be on the safe side and show respect. But that didn’t occur to me. And I had had a few other supernatural experiences, so I didn’t get all that excited. Besides, the nature of the beam was such that it was impossible to be disturbed by it.

I was sure this was a manifestation of Jesus. Just as I was sure the first time, in the car. I don’t know why I was sure, but I was. I expressed my gratitude and so on, but beyond that, I didn’t know what to do. And I fell asleep, believe it or not.

People tend to think that if they see or hear or feel something miraculous, they’ll run up and down the street proclaiming it, but the truth is, you may take such things calmly. I think most people convince themselves their supernatural experiences didn’t happen, so they won’t have to react to them. That’s the easiest thing. I didn’t do that, but I was calm enough to sleep.

As soon as I drifted into that funny state between sleep and waking, I woke up, and I found myself flat on my back. My arms were extended in front of me, with the palms up. They were just there; I have no memory of raising them or of turning onto my back. And I heard a sound like arcs of electricity pouring into a pair of electrodes. And I felt a buzzy sort of sensation in my palms, as if some kind of energy was pouring into them, from a place beyond the ceiling. I didn’t see anything. I just felt it. And my arms stayed up for a little while, and then the sound and the sensation disappeared, and that was the end of it.

I would love to tell you that when I got up the next morning, I ran around the neighborhood using my magical palms to heal people of cancer, but nothing like that happened. I never did figure out the significance of the event. But it happened; that’s a fact.

Sometimes I think it was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. There was another event in my life which I had taken for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but maybe the encounter with the beam was the real thing. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know, during this life.

I don’t know why I was the person it happened to. It didn’t happen because I’m a wonderful guy who deserves such gifts; I can swear to that. I didn’t earn it. Do me a favor and don’t even suggest it happened because I’m a good person. I know better than that. And no one I have told about it has ever become a Christian as a result. In fact, at least one person has completely forgotten it, as though I had never mentioned it.

I sometimes wish things like that would happen to everyone. But then I remember the parable of Lazarus and Abraham. And I remember the Hebrews following Moses, unwilling to trust God even after they saw Him in a whirlwind and saw the Red Sea stand up in vertical walls so they could pass. People believe what they want to believe. If Jesus came down to earth in person and took people by the shoulders and ordered them to believe, most people would say he was a fraud or decide it had never happened or assume they had hallucinated. That’s the truth. That’s no exaggeration. If you’re alive when He returns, you will see people try to explain Him away. Our ability to believe what we want is one of the great mysteries of human nature. Even though the things I reveal here happened to me, and I’m positive they happened, sometimes I have to remind myself I didn’t imagine them. And I’ve spent a lot of time living as though they had not happened. I never pretended they hadn’t, but I didn’t act the way a person of faith should.

I’ll tell you another strange thing about my experience in the car. You may remember that I’ve been reading Brother Andrew’s books about evangelizing Muslims. I also took a look at some online testimonies, including Youtube videos. If Brother Andrew and a whole slew of Muslim converts are to be believed, many Muslims are coming to Jesus because of visions and dreams. The other day I watched a video which was supposedly about a true story. A young Muslim man had had an experience very much like what happened to me in the car, only his experience was more vivid.

He said he was lying in bed, awake, and he felt something pin him down, and he saw a figure approach him. And it somehow communicated the knowledge that it was going to kill him. Although he was a Muslim, he had been learning about Christianity from his brother, and he began wondering if Jesus could save him. And when that thought entered his mind, he was released and the figure left. But he was delivered, just as I was, from something that had convinced him he was about to die. Later that night, he sensed the presence of Jesus in the room, and he felt a sensation he described as “aggressive peace.” Much like what I felt that day in the car.

The parallels are remarkable. I realize this guy could be a complete charlatan. In the past, I’ve been burned because I believed other people’s stories of supernatural experiences were as true as my own, so I don’t assume anything. But it sure sounds like he and I got a dose of the same thing. I wish everyone could feel it. It’s really something, being exposed directly to God’s true personality. You would not believe how much He loves us. I know life is full of suffering, but I felt that love, physically, as surely as I feel the keys I’m using to type this entry.

Here’s the video:

One message I have derived from my reading and study is that I have to quit being so obnoxious to Muslims. It’s fair to say they’ve shown great cruelty and bloodthirstiness and ruthlessness, but I shouldn’t insult and antagonize them gratuitously, just to express my anger and frustration. I criticize Ann Coulter for being so nasty to liberals she prevents them from hearing the conservative message. Well, if everyone is as nasty to Muslims as I have been, there is no hope we’ll ever succeed in acquainting very many of them with Jesus. And Jesus is the only force that can change them. It’s fine to send the military to hold them back by force, but I remember what Paul said: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” That’s from the book of Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12. While we have to resist evil with physical strength, the truth is, human beings are not the primary enemy, and any earthly effort that is not supported by spiritual effort is wasteful and likely to fail. I’m not saying God will turn all the Muslims into Christians, and there will be peace on earth and free cupcakes for everybody. But things would be better than they are now, and countless people could be turned into friends and saved from destruction. It really happens.

I think I’ve said this before: I wonder if we pray for Muslims as much as we pray for cheaper gas.

The world is like a Japanese bunraku play, in which black-garbed puppeteers stand on a stage and manipulate dolls that represent characters. We see the people in the world, and we see their actions. But the dark forces that drive them are more obscure, as they desire to be. And often we attack the puppets and ignore the puppeteers. That is what I’ve been doing.

I did not make my stories up to get attention. I will never earn a dime from them. They will not help my writing career. I’m telling the truth. I almost hate to ask people to believe, because we have all believed so many things, only to find out we’ve been lied to. I hate to ask anyone to try one more time. But I hope someone out there will consider the possibility that I’m not lying and will be inspired to pray that God will help him or her find her way. I can’t defend God or tell you why life isn’t easier. I can’t explain the fact that you can’t have Him the way you want Him. I’m not a preacher. I do not have the answers. But I can promise you that He exists and that He cares, and that sometimes He takes dramatic steps to prove Himself to people. If the deal seems unfair to you, try to have faith that God knows better than you do. You better take what’s offered and be teachable and make the most of it, because if God is really God, there is no Door Number Two.

Not Everyone has a Gift Like This

Last night a commenter took me to task for being supercilious, suggested it was inconsistent with my religion, and implied that bad Christians like me had helped him on his way down the road to atheism.

I don’t want to reflexively defend myself. I have plenty of crabby moments. I try not to be rude these days, but sometimes I still offend people. There is no doubt about it. I am what Christians kindly refer to as “a work in progress.” Sometimes I embarrass myself. What can I tell you?

On the other hand, as I noted in my response, it’s impossible for a Christian to be righteous enough to make an angry atheist happy. It can’t be done. Just as Christians look for reasons to believe, many atheists look for reasons not to believe. History shows us that angry nonbelievers may remain angry even after the Christians who make them angry are torn apart by lions or roasted alive. They even got angry when martyred saints forgave them, or when they refused to renounce God during their torments. It’s always good to try to make peace, but you can’t expect too much cooperation. On top of all that, the less atheists know about Christianity, the easier it is for them to find reasons not to believe.

Some atheists think that if you go to church regularly, you are a Christian, and if you don’t, you are not. I don’t know where that idea comes from. Christians should go to church, but attendance has no bearing on whether or not you’re a Christian. Some atheists think that you have to be good to be a Christian, and that if you’re a well-behaved atheist, you are just as well off as a Christian, with regard to eternal life. Clearly, Christians should be good, but you can behave pretty badly and still be a Christian. And if you think being good buys you eternal life, that’s swell, but Christian doctrine contradicts that notion very clearly. No Christian denomination says you can work your way into heaven. Only heretical post-Christian sects say that.

Being a Christian isn’t like belonging to AAA. It’s not like you get a card and pay dues and therefore belong. That kind of thinking may apply to some denominations, but it’s not universal. Overall, the church isn’t an earthly organization, like a bar association. You belong because you have faith. And hopefully, you try to behave in a way that reflects your faith. And you should have a personal relationship with God, which you maintain by prayer and study. I guess it’s a very hard thing to understand, from outside.

I can tell you another thing. If you want advice on how to be a good Christian, one of the best ways to get it is to disagree with an atheist. They are extremely generous with instruction. It’s not the greatest instruction available, because a lot of it is completely wrong, and most of it is motivated by self-interest, and very often, it’s just an attempt to manipulate you. Sometimes they’re right, though.

If you’re curious about Christianity, my advice to you would be to avoid judging it by the behavior of believers. Sooner or later you’ll see a Christian give someone the finger, or you’ll see some other act or attitude that is inconsistent with the Bible. Bishop Desmond Tutu once told people he disagreed with to go to hell; that had to be a dark day for the church. Human beings will always let you down, and I am a human being. The point of believing isn’t to become as wonderful and perfect as I am.

The depressing thing about all this is that I have never succeeded in persuading a single person to become a Christian, but it looks like I have pretty decent luck turning people into atheists. I must be an even worse Christian than I thought.

Help a Nervous Dad

Aaron’s daughter and niece are leaving for Jerusalem, where they will spend a year studying at Jewish seminaries. Say a prayer for their safety.

Torturer of Countless Christians

I watched part of Gladiator while eating dinner. And it made me think of Marcus Aurelius.

When I went to my first college (I was in Obama’s class at Columbia, two years before Obama transferred in), we had a compulsory class called Contemporary Civilization, in which we read authors like Macchiavelli and Epictetus. I don’t think Marcus Aurelius was on the list. I wouldn’t know, because I read virtually nothing. I felt bad about that tonight. After all, Hannibal Lecter referred to Marcus Aurelius, and he was a very smart, albeit fictional, guy.

I grabbed a copy of the Meditations, which is the book Aurelius wrote. It seemed to espouse such wonderful values; I had to marvel that a pagan could be so moral. Maybe I had been wrong to skip all those classes.

I got on the Internet and checked him out. And here is what I learned. Under his reign, persecution of Christians increased dramatically, and they were often tortured to death. Some of the more popular methods included putting Christians on iron stools which were then heated over fires, and throwing them into the arena to be torn apart by hungry predators. And sometimes various tortures were inflicted consecutively, until the victim died and ruined the festivities.

Marcus Aurelius was an evil man. He didn’t have a particle of compassion, as we know it. He considered himself moral, but he wasn’t troubled by human suffering. So much for Ridley Scott’s version. I shouldn’t be surprised. Mary Poppins wasn’t real, either.

Marcus Aurelius wasn’t even a good pagan. He didn’t believe in an afterlife. No wonder he didn’t think suffering was significant. It doesn’t really matter how much pain you endure, if in the end, it’s fleeting and has no lasting repercussions.

I can’t understand why the Romans hated Christians so much, but then I can’t understand why leftists hate us, either. A lot of misguided priests and pastors are hardcore leftists.

I don’t see any reason to finish the book. This man was clearly a hypocrite and maybe a bit of a psychopath.

He Didn’t do so Bad, for an Amateur

I did something I hate to do, today. I marked up a Bible. I know the Bible is a tool, and you have to mark it up if you want to make good use of it. But the notion of defacing books makes me uncomfortable.

I was reading the book of Proverbs, and as usual, I thought to myself how great it would be if I didn’t have to read the stuff that wasn’t particularly useful. Proverbs is full of valuable things, but not everyone needs every verse. For example, I don’t plot against the righteous and seek to pull them down to the pit. I don’t even know where I’d find a pit in my neighborhood. And I don’t have diverse weights and measures. You can’t be guilty of everything that is condemned in Proverbs. You would be busy all day, every day.

I decided to put a little box around every verse I thought was helpful. Now when I read Proverbs, I can avoid re-reading the things that take up time but don’t carry much benefit. I was thinking I might take an online version, do a cut-and-paste job, and create my own tailored edition.

Of course the big down side to this is that I would lose all those verses that confirm my greatness. For example, I would no longer be able to say, “oppressing the widow? I never do that! I’m fantastic!” Instead, I’d have a book full of reminders of all the reasons why I’m a hopeless idiot.

It would be a lot like having a wife.

I think it was a good idea. I have been reading the book of Romans and then comparing it with The Jewish New Testament Commentary, and the going is incredibly slow. The chapter 11 commentary goes on forever. I needed something with a faster pace, to keep me from going crazy. Now I have it.

Not Fond of Tents

Since beginning my practice of observing the Sabbath, this may be the first weekend when I didn’t feel completely prepared for it. Yesterday I beat the garage into shape again, and it would have been great to devote today to other areas in need of organization. I have parts for shelves I haven’t put up. I have a sick pest tree I need to chain to a bumper and rip out of the ground. I also want to try my ant remedy on the bees. I know bees will slurp down sugar water if you give it to them, and I’ve been annihilating ghost ants successfully with a syrup of sugar and boric acid, and I think I would be smart to put a dish of it up where the bees can find it. But it’s Sunday. I have other obligations.

Almost every Sunday, I think a little about things I could be doing. Trips to the gun range. Barbecuing. Fishing. Contacting radio stations about the book. But this weekend is worse than usual. Doesn’t matter; Sunday is Sunday. I’m going to behave.

I’m not sure how strict to be. I’m not bound by all the Jewish commandments. I don’t get hysterical if I find myself running an errand in the car, or buying something I need. But I want the main purpose of the day to be clear.

Sometimes I just plain get tired of reading the Bible and so on, and I do something else for a couple of hours. I don’t think that’s a problem, although I won’t do anything business-related.

I’ve been reading more of Brother Andrew’s books. I’m very impressed by this man, but I can’t help suspecting that his version of Christianity may be too demanding for most believers. Or maybe I misunderstand his message. On the one hand, he talks about giving without reserve, and he encourages former Muslims to stay in countries where they are likely to be martyred (some of them are already dead), and he writes about crossing borders with contraband Bibles in plain view in his car. On the other, he seems to have had a fair number of Christian friends who led normal lives and didn’t live in tents. I can think of more than one who were well-off, although some of them lived modestly in order to support evangelism and charity. And he seems financially secure, personally. His organization has a big, reliable income, as it should. He lives in a house, not a cell. The president of Open Doors makes $135,000 per year, which is a reasonable but substantial salary.

It is possible to be overly proud of your faith, and of the things you do because of it. It is possible to show off, as a Christian, and to hold yourself up as an extreme example for other people to follow, when in reality, they’re probably doing fine already. It’s a danger that has to be considered. You don’t want to be a fat worldly slob who only pretends to believe, and who never denies himself anything. But poverty is bad, and being martyred is only a good thing if God demands it, and the super-righteous can be extremely tiresome and hypercritical.

One of the things that drove me away from the church was the constant repetition of the claim that if Christians didn’t have perfect lives, it was because they weren’t doing it right. TV evangelists said this all the time, and the message made its way into a lot of churches. If you were sick or poor, or if your family was a mess, you weren’t praying enough. Or you weren’t praying the right way. Or you weren’t giving enough. Or you were giving enough, but with the wrong motive. Or you were giving enough, with the right motive, but you were giving it in the wrong way. Or you weren’t claiming what you wanted and “maintaining your confession.” Or there was sin in your life! Apparently, God only helps people who are totally free of sin. When God failed to back the somewhat heretical promises of the TV evangelists, they had more defenses than O.J. Simpson, and they all boiled down to, “It’s your fault.” What they really meant was, “We want to keep taking your money so we can live in luxury beyond Solomon’s wildest dreams, so keep blaming yourselves and writing those checks.”

I have no doubt that some people are called to lead lives of austerity and deprivation, but there were plenty of Jews and Christians in the Bible who had good jobs and lived in nice homes. And you can’t call yourself to be an apostle or a martyr. It doesn’t work that way. And making Christianity overly burdensome discourages other believers, so it’s counterproductive. That’s especially true when the person making religion burdensome is a hypocritical TV evangelist with his own jet. “Keep cutting coupons and patching your kids’ clothes, so my Gulfstream can have a better home theater.”

It’s hard to know where to draw the boundaries. All I know for sure is this: you have to be in the world, but the world shouldn’t be in you. I suppose that if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll know which earthly things pose a danger to you and which don’t. For example, some people can be warped by modest wealth, and others can have millions and be uncorrupted.

I want to be clear; I would never compare Brother Andrew to the TV guys. Not based on what I know now. I started out writing about him, and then I went off on a tangent.

Anyway, the books are good reading.

Free!

Here is another cool thing that redeems the Internet. I have written about online Bibles. Well, it turns out you can listen to an audio version. The people at Bible Gateway have posted an audio edition of the New International Version, read by someone named Max McLean. You can find it at this link. They also have other versions.

It’s really neat. Reading the Bible is great, but there is a special value in hearing the words. And sometimes hearing is just more pleasant than reading.

I looked into audio Bibles at Christianbook.com, but the problem with their NIV is that there is no software interface that allows you to pick the verses you want to hear. You have to use fast-forward and rewind. That’s bad.

Still, it’s great to see technology used for a worthwhile purpose.

More

Now I’m confused. One DVD reviewer says you can’t skip to the chapters you want, and another reader says you can.

Impending Tragedy

The cable news says some guy took off in a stolen plane, and that he’s flying around in Virginia, threatening to commit suicide by crashing in a populated area. Send up a prayer that he changes his mind and lands safely, and that no one is hurt.

Thanks

For the last three weeks or so, I’ve been highly distracted by a personal issue, so blogging and book publicity have suffered. But it looks like that is over with for the moment–probably for good–so hopefully I’ll be able to get back to doing what I enjoy. Thanks for your prayers. Don’t let anyone tell you they don’t work.

Give her a Hand

Via Sondra: Linda SOG has been having problems with a benign brain tumor. And you know how medicine is. You go to one doctor, and he tells you one thing, and then you go to another, and he tells you something else. She just found a guy who says he can destroy the tumor, using a gamma knife, without much risk. That’s a considerable improvement over the treatment she was offered by her other physicians.

Linda is requesting prayers, so you know what to do. Here’s a link to an entry she wrote, explaining her situation.

Sondra said something about raising money; Linda is on the hook for part of the cost, because her insurance won’t cover it all. I’ll let you know when I know more.

One more thing. Linda’s dad is a Messianic Jew, and they have had friction because of it. You might pray that they come to a peaceful and fruitful understanding.

I Can’t Stop

I appreciate the positive comments on last night’s post regarding the miraculous wart. I only got one negative remark, and it came from someone who seems to think I just became a Christian. Anyone who has been reading this blog for more than two years knows that is not the case. I’ve certainly been making improvements over the last couple of years, but if you were to look at entries from 2003, you would see that I occasionally mentioned my beliefs back then. I’ve written a lot about the stupidity of sex outside of marriage, for example. How anyone who had seen those posts could refer to me now as a “reformed whore” is a mystery.

I’ve gradually come to realize that some of my attitudes were wrong, and that I wasn’t doing enough. I have made some changes. But the change hasn’t been anything like as dramatic as the commenter suggests.

Back when Huffington’s Toast was up, I got friction from guest contributors because I wouldn’t publish R-rated content. I’ve discarded a lot of material I’ve written because I thought it was over the line. I have opted out of romantic opportunities because of religious conflicts. I have turned down offers of promotion. So I may be sticking closer to the path these days, but I was never completely lost, and I never pretended to be part of the non-Christian world, except in jokes.

Am I bumming people out by writing about religion? When I think about it, I remember what it was like to be uncomfortable when people discussed God. But most of the time, I forget, and I write what I please. If it makes you uncomfortable, you have a problem you need to address. Hearing about the best part of life–the reason you exist–shouldn’t make you uncomfortable. Think about that. Are you uncomfortable when people write about other types of self-improvement? Do you get embarrassed when people write about exercise or therapy? Of course not. That ought to make you wonder.

I don’t care. I’ve always written about the things that interest me. This is my personal online journal. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. When has that not been my attitude? I’ll probably write about God less, in time. Or maybe I won’t. Whatever I do, it won’t have anything to do with trying to please readers.

Perhaps I Exaggerate

Somehow or another I ended up searching Google for documented cases of what non-Christians call “faith healing.” And I couldn’t find much. Maybe I shouldn’t have Googled that phrase; almost no one who believes in God uses it.

In any case, I thought it was depressing. The main reason it depressed me is that I saw a number of sites where people claimed alleged healings had been proven false. One example cited involved a man who got on the stage with Kathryn Kuhlman, claimed he had been healed of cancer, and dropped dead a week later.

The sad truth is, televangelists are generally extremely similar to politicians. The truth isn’t in them. If you get on the stage and stand before the cameras and claim you’re healed, that’s good enough for them. They don’t want to be around a month later, because you might still be sick, and that would threaten their income. I don’t know if Kathryn Kuhlman was for real or not. Nothing would surprise me.

Nonetheless, God does heal people. It happened in the Bible, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t happen now. And it makes sense that documentation would be hard to come by. What percentage of people who receive healing would take the time to have it studied and documented? What percentage of doctors would spend their time doing the exams and writing the reports? If you have a bothersome physical problem, and you pray for healing, and you get it, is your first impulse going to be to go to the doctor and pay him a thousand dollars to prove you’re okay? And what if you can’t prove you were sick to begin with? What if you were healed before you were diagnosed? You’d look like an idiot, going to your doctor and claiming to be healed, when he had never witnessed your illness.

Another problem with healings is that sometimes they’re so trivial, it would be embarrassing to talk about them. If God miraculously heals you of a cavity, are you going to run and tell your atheist neighbors? Of course not. They’d laugh you out of the house.

I’ve had a few healings that were clearly miraculous, but they were so minor, no one would be impressed. I can give an example. I had a flat warty thing on my jaw. My dermatologist didn’t care enough about it to suggest removing it, but it annoyed me, and it was getting bigger. I did all the Christian things, praying and claiming healing and taking authority and so on. And it went away immediately. I don’t mean it instantly disappeared, but it began going away immediately, and in a few weeks it was gone. Who wants to hear about a healing like that? It’s a wart. Nobody cares. No one is going to become a Christian because of my wart.

It’s a funny thing, but little skin problems seem particularly easy to heal by faith. I’ve had more than one. Try it yourself. I realize how silly it sounds. But it’s true. It may not boost your faith to the point where you’re ready to quit your job and become a missionary, but it beats paying to have your warts burned off.

It seems like some problems are easier to heal by faith than others. Don’t ask me why.

I had another healing people will find ridiculous. Twenty years ago, I made a decision to find a church, and I very quickly got a cold. But it was no ordinary cold. It refused to go away. It stayed with me for weeks and weeks. I think it was literally the cold from hell.

My head was full of things I had heard from charismatic preachers; I figured that since I had had supernatural experiences, they were telling the truth about theirs, too. You have to marvel at the naivete of youth. One of the things I believed was that you would be healed if you persisted in prayer and faith. So I attacked this cold and refused to give in. I refused to accept it, day after day, week after week. Finally, one day in November of 1987, I went to the fridge and looked in the freezer, and while I was looking, I saw a dark shape fly from me into the freezer and then out and through the slats in the back door, which was nearby. It was just a dark place in the air. I didn’t know what to make of it. And when I walked out of the kitchen, I realized my symptoms were gone. Instantly. And they didn’t come back. Two people witnessed it. I know it sounds crazy and unimpressive, but it happened.

Sorry, it’s not documented. Benny Hinn wasn’t there. No cameras. But I sure felt better.

Over the years, I’ve had all sorts of problems that have gone away without treatment, while I used my faith to fight them. But I can’t prove the healings were miraculous. Sometimes things get better on their own. Of course, sometimes they get a hell of a lot worse, too. I haven’t really needed a doctor since…actually, it’s hard to remember. I went to a doctor for my first kidney stone, and I was very glad to get the painkillers, but when I got my second stone, I got mad at my doctor’s receptionist and decided to stay home, and I was fine. I think the last time I really needed a doctor was when I was in law school. I had two disgusting spider bites full of pus. They probably would have gone away on their own; there was no bacterial infection. But having them lanced made life a lot easier.

Obviously, you should go to a doctor if you need one. But there is no way I’d rely on medical science alone.

God exists, and He works miracles. I’ve seen things stranger than healings, and I’ve had prayer after prayer answered, and there are many other reasons why I believe. He’s there. It’s very sad that greedy preachers discourage people with bogus healings that are later paraded in front of the public by TV journalists, but that doesn’t change the facts. You can be a Christian and go blind. You can be a Christian and die of cancer. But on the whole, your life will be better if you develop and exercise faith, and sometimes, you’ll get some wonderful surprises.

My stories may not be thrilling, but on the other hand, I have absolutely nothing to gain by telling them, so maybe you’ll find them easier to believe than the stuff you see on TV.

Weakest Link in the War on Terror

I have almost finished Brother Andrew’s book, Secret Believers. I would recommend it to any Christian who supports the war on terror.

The book is about Muslims who convert to Christianity in Muslim-dominated countries. They face horrible persecution. In a Muslim country, a Muslim can do just about whatever he wants to a Christian, and the police will either help the Muslim or do nothing. They burn homes, commit murder, kidnap and rape and enslave Christian women, and steal from Christian businesses. No one cares; the only restraint is in the hearts of the Muslim aggressors. They only refrain when they get tired of aggression.

Remarkably, many converts choose to remain in their native countries. They want their compatriots to have what they have, and they risk their lives to offer it. American conservatives often talk about the concept of dhimmitude, in which non-Muslims are tolerated but treated like second-class citizens, with reduced rights and privileges. What most of us don’t realize is that dhimmitude is substantially better than what most Muslim nations provide in practice. Dhimmitude would be an improvement.

The cruelty with which these Christians are treated is amazing. Fathers try to kill their own children. Christians are ruthlessly beaten by their own families. And the change from loved one or friend to enemy takes place instantly. One day you may be a pampered rich Muslim girl with expensive clothing and pricey creature comforts, and the next day you may be a prisoner in your own room, covered with bruises and cuts and aching from broken bones.

And it’s not rare; contrary to what naive leftists tell us, it’s normal in Muslim society. Compassion and understanding are unusual. In fact, many Muslims are afraid to refrain from persecuting Christians.

I saw a video of a convert on the web. He said something strange. He said Muslims were good people, but they had no love in them. Clearly, the comment doesn’t make sense. He was trying to be charitable. How can an entire society be that cold? Is it possible that this religion takes the baseline compassion which is normally present even in atheists, and somehow depresses it?

It looks like we’re right when we say Islam is dangerous and results in horrific suffering. The testimony of converts confirms that. We haven’t slandered anyone by saying Islam is cruel. On the other hand, Secret Believers confirms something else. It confirms that we have to keep trying to reach these people. Many of them are miserable because of their unrewarding, demanding religion, and when they get a glimpse at what Christianity really is, they jump at the chance to convert.

These people are so hard to reach, though. How do you do it without being martyred? It looks like one way God is solving the problem is by direct action. A surprising number of converts say they became Christians because they had visions or dreams of Jesus. If you Google this phenomenon, you’ll find all sorts of unrelated, independent reports of such events. That tells me God can find a way when Man lets him down, but it also tells me we’re not doing our job. If we’re going to drop bombs on these people and depose their leaders and send terrorists to Guantanamo, we should also be working to put them in touch with God. Military action without a corresponding spiritual offensive is immoral.

There are things we can do. Muslims are able to receive Christian broadcasts, and they work. And we can send Bibles overseas, and we can donate money to ministries that reach out to Muslims.

Many converts say the Bible is what got them hooked. One convert in Brother Andrew’s book said he was a member of a fanatical organization called the Muslim Brotherhood, and his leader told him to read the Bible so he could refute it, using the Koran. And he was expected to confirm the 26 (I think) alleged Biblical references to Mohammed. Instead, he found that the references either didn’t exist or applied more naturally to Jesus. He was finally driven over the top by a vision of Jesus, but the Bible is what drove him initially. He ended up working inside his country, helping spread the Gospel. He was eventually kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. That’s how strong his devotion was.

You can’t depend on the stick to do everything. I think that’s the point. Somewhere in the process, you have to offer the carrot. Military action is invaluable, but compared to conversion, it does a poor job of turning enemies into allies. I have to wonder if our Guantanamo results would be better, if we sent missionaries in before resorting to waterboarding. Experience has shown that many Muslim fanatics are fatigued by their faith, and they are surprisingly susceptible to the Gospel.

Maybe the best thing is to ease off on the venom and ridicule and to try to offer encouragement instead. Muslims are fanatical about pride and repaying insults, so we probably aren’t doing ourselves much good by humiliating them. I am going to keep that in mind in the future. It’s unfortunate that it took me so long to come to that conclusion.

Not Surprising

I would appreciate a couple of small favors.

First of all, as I said Friday, a TV executive has expressed interest in the rights to my cookbook. I don’t know if there is any point in pursuing this or not; I am now told that the idea is for me to sell the rights to them, and they’ll hire a professional chef to do the show. You can see the problems with this. I’d get a little check for the rights, and then I’d be gone. The show wouldn’t be very good, because I’m what drives the concept, and I wouldn’t be there. The show would probably have little relationship to the book, so it wouldn’t be very helpful in terms of sales.

The obvious concern here is that if I don’t go along, someone will take the idea without paying for it, and they’ll do a bad show, and I won’t get squat.

So I would appreciate it if you would include me in your prayers, to prevent that from happening. This idea has a lot of potential, and I’ve worked very hard on it for a long time, and if it is taken away from me, I’ll be at square one.

Second thing: someone I know has been harassing me for a while, and it has been very distracting. I won’t go into details, but it’s basically a hopeless attempt to squeeze money out of me. And this person has done a number of risky, wildly self-destructive things in the process. Help me out and join me in praying that this person has a change of heart, accepts salvation, and learns to use God’s power to be a positive and healthy force in this world. And of course, please pray that the situation is resolved without harm.

If you could help me out here, I would truly be in your debt.

More

This, from reader JeffW:

Praying here also. If anyone finds time, my wife could also use some prayer. Due to cancer in an ovary, she just had an Oophorectomy (like a hysterectomy except they remove the ovaries too). She is “clean” now, but we’re in the recovery stage (1-week down, 5-weeks to go).

Just when I think my problems are important.