Plus More Food Network Fail

I had a fine day of pizza-making at Trinity Church.

Today I decided to go Hawaiian. I made pizzas with pineapple, onions, ricotta, and ham. They were very good, but for some reason, Hawaiian toppings seem to work best on thin pizza. And the people at my church are addicted to pepperoni. I had a hard time getting rid of the Hawaiians, except for the few highly cultured people who knew the score. They were thrilled.

I also made pies with kalamatas, onions, green peppers, and ham. I am told a lot of people at Trinity have problems with ham, because it’s “slave food.” Arrggh. Where did this myth come from? Slaves ate pork. No doubt about it. So did their rich masters. In the South, pork is not considered poverty food. Everybody loves it. So giving someone pork to eat is not a sign of disrespect.

The crazy thing about the “slave food” idea is that Muslims like to push it. And who treats black people worse than Muslims? They were big in the slave trade. Still are! And Mohammed was a red-headed white man.

Whatever. I’m not going to quit putting pork on pizza. I wonder if people realize pepperoni is pork.

There is nothing like pork. No other readily available meat can begin to do what it does. Pork is magical. Pork means ribs, bacon, country ham, prosciutto, serrano ham, chicharrones, biscuits, cream gravy, redeye gravy, salt pork, lechon asado, and ham hocks. We’re talking about some of the finest eating available. I love a good prime steak, but other than that, beef isn’t in the same league.

I wish I hadn’t brought this up. I’m planning to start a fast soon. Ordinarily, I don’t like to talk about fasts with much specificity, because Jesus cautioned people about passing themselves off as hyper-righteous while fasting. But since I admit I’m fasting for purely selfish reasons, and because I don’t pretend to feel spiritual while I’m doing it, I have no problem mentioning this fast. I plan to whine pretty much continuously. That’s just how I roll.

I’m fasting because I want more power and freedom in my life. And I want God to help my dad and my sister. To me, it’s like taking a flea dip. It’s all about me and my needs. I got some good stuff when I fasted before, and I want more. How’s that for asceticism?

We still have no slicer at church, so I took my $10 Chinese cleaver. Don’t be foolish and buy a Shun or another high-end Japanese vegetable cleaver until you’ve tried the Chinese carbon-steel jobs. This thing has nice hard steel, it sharpens fast, and it will take an edge so fine you can hold a paper towel in front of you and wave the cleaver through it like a light saber. Okay, not quite like a light saber. But it will cut all the way through in one easy pass.

A lady volunteer thought it was a spatula, and she pried a slice of pizza off a pan. Later, when I realized this, I told her to watch out, because it was actually a razor-sharp knife. Then she showed me the cut on her hand. She was lucky; it was tiny. You could easily cut your self to the bone with this thing before you realized you had a problem.

It’s frustrating, having sharp kitchen knives around women. They never expect knives to be sharp, and it seems like whenever a woman picks up a sharp kitchen knife, the blood starts to flow. You have to watch them and hide the knives. I tried to keep mine to myself today, but she found it anyway.

My mother used to get mad at me for sharpening knives. Can you imagine?

The Chinese cleaver has mysterious powers. For some reason, you can mince with it, much faster and better than you could with a regular knife with an edge of the same length. You can load food on it and move it. You can cut food–even big food–in slices so thin they’re transparent. It’s sturdy enough to cut meat. It’s thin enough to cut potatoes and yuca without being dangerous. It adds iron to your food. And when you use it, you look like Bruce Lee.

I’m getting one for the church. But where will we store it to keep women from killing themselves while using it to flip pancakes? I’m also getting a smaller cleaver for myself. Six bucks. I mean COME ON. How can I not? You can find them at Wok Shop.

I have a Shun and a Tojiro. The Shun is worthless. Alton Brown is a fine person, but the Shun is still worthless, as is my Shun santoku, which chipped badly from the terrible stress of sitting in a dishwasher. The Shun cleaver is the wrong shape and size for anything you will want to do with it. I’ll bet I haven’t used mine in three years.

The Tojiro is a nice cleaver for big jobs, but it was very expensive, and I’m afraid to use it, and you can get a Chan Chee Ki for like $25.

The down side of Chinese cleavers is that they rust, IF you can’t figure out how to use a paper towel. However you don’t have to worry about big pieces falling out of them because the dishwasher is just too stressful for their dainty constitutions. Alton Brown hand-washes his Shuns, handling them as though they were booby-trapped hemophiliac burn victims with painful fractures that needed to be set.

No wonder. If you let one drop into your sink, you would find chunks of it on the bottom later.

The crazy thing about Brown and his washing technique is that he demonstrates it in a video intended to sell Shun knives. “Look what a pain it is to take care of these! And a set only costs three thousand dollars! Buy a bunch of them! Wait, come back!”

My Shun bird’s beak paring knife is also worthless. My $5 Forschner holds a better edge and sharpens faster, and it’s a more useful size and shape. And it’s tougher. I’m not quite sure what it is about the Shun that’s supposed to make it desirable.

If you like cool knives, buy Shuns. If you like to cook, buy Chinese.

No, don’t buy Shuns no matter what. They are the beige minivans of Japanese knives. There are far cooler knives available on the web. If you’re going to buy cuteness instead of functionality, do it right. Go to Japanesechefknife.com and look around. Check out the Mr. Itou knives. You’ll wonder why anyone ever bought a Shun.

I wonder why I did.

God is really something. Imagine a being who could give me something so wonderful after a fast that I would come to look forward to fasting. I am determined to move forward and build on what I have.

I better have some pie.

More

Turns out my Japanese bird’s beak knife is actually a Tojiro, not a Shun. Whatever it is, it does not hold an edge, and the rest of my comments still apply.

Low Discount Prices!

Earlier this week, I read a familiar Bible passage and got something new from it.

Every charismatic or evangelical Christian knows Ephesians 6, with its description of the armor of God:

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

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.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints . . .

I think this passage was intended to encourage us to seek God’s righteousness. In other words, the righteousness you can only have after the Holy Spirit works in you.

It says, “be strong in the Lord.” The phrase “in the Lord” is one of those expressions Christians toss around without making any effort to understand what it means. But it must mean something, or it wouldn’t be in the Bible. And “be strong in the Lord” must mean something.

I think it means, “Use the Lord’s strength.” The New Testament often reminds us that we can’t be good on our own. Why would it do that, if there were no other hope of being good? I don’t think that would make sense.

In Galatians 5, we are told that the Holy Spirit will supernaturally provide us with the following positive characteristics, known as “the fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. Oddly, faith is listed as a fruit of the Spirit and also as a gift of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12).

Notice that these are not known as “the fruit of hard work.”

Galatians 5:16 says, “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” What does “walk in the Spirit” mean? I don’t believe it means “think of spiritual things” or “try to be spiritual.” That would be silly, because that’s what the Jews had to do before the New Covenant. They had to rely on their own efforts. We are supposed to have a different deal with God.

I believe it means “develop God’s character and power supernaturally, through the Holy Spirit, and walk in your new nature.”

It would not make sense for the Bible to tell us to do something we can’t do. But refraining from sin is, for all practical purposes, impossible. This is especially true for addicts and other people living in demonic bondage. What good does it do to tell such a person, “Walk in the Spirit, bro!” It’s not very helpful. If you have a bondage you hate, you’re already trying to get rid of it. Being reminded that you need to quit, and that you’re not being spiritual, is not a great blessing.

We are told God will give us ways to escape temptation. Does that mean every time you feel tempted, you’re going to find a practical, useful way to get out of it, in the moment of temptation? It does not seem to work that way in practice. It has not worked for me, and I have considerable faith in God. The promise must be true, however. So what does it mean? Maybe it means that over time, through fasting and prayer in the Spirit and casting out demons, you’ll be given the supernatural power to beat temptation. Maybe the failures are okay, because they serve to remind you that your own efforts were useless.

That’s how it worked for me. I stuffed myself all the time–a chronic sin–and I could only quit for finite periods, and then I went back to it. Then God delivered me from the problem. Now I’m still tempted, but I can say no, on a consistent and prolonged basis. I’m down about 26 pounds. I can move. I can wear some of my “real” clothes. I feel comfortable.

Drug and alcohol addicts who have cried out to God have had the same experience. At 3:07 p.m., you’re hopelessly addicted. At 3:08 p.m., you’re free for life. It happens. It’s not even rare.

God gives people supernatural character. He runs off the demons that tempt them. Put it together, and you get freedom.

One of the big problems with evangelicals and charismatics is that we tend to demand God’s blessings without building the right foundations. You can say, “no evil shall befall me, neither shall any plague come nigh my dwelling” all day, but if you’re in line for a dose of chastisement, you should not expect it to work all that well. If your behavior and faith are wrong, you will have problems. You can’t leave the screens off your windows and then complain about flies. Although salvation is free, power and protection and other blessings are partly contingent on good behavior and clean motives and thoughts. To receive them, we need to put on the armor of God. But it appears to be impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’ll tell you right now, there is no possibility that I’ll succeed at it in my own strength. It’s not even worth trying. I know myself. I can’t change my behavior permanently or thoroughly, and even if I could, I can’t change my attitudes and desires. I have iniquities, which are persistent evil inclinations. I procrastinate. I am contentious sometimes. I am often lazy. I tend to ridicule people and get angry for no good reason. I have problems with lust. These things don’t rule every second of my life, but they pop up and cause problems. I can’t get rid of them just by thinking happy thoughts. The human mind doesn’t work that way, and even if it did, some or all of these things have their roots in the presence and activity of hostile spirits. Stuart Smalley can’t help you with those. You’re not good enough, and you’re not smart enough.

What does Paul expect us to do, then? It looks like he gave us the answer at the end of the passage, which is not often quoted: “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.” Pray always in the Spirit. Pray in tongues, in other words. That make sense, because we are told elsewhere that it will build us up.

For centuries, we have denied the validity of the baptism with the Spirit, we have refused to perform and accept it as an act separate from water baptism, and we have condemned prayer in tongues. And Christianity has been very disappointing during this time. We tried to convert people at the edge of swords. We tortured Jews. We turned the Papacy into Tammany Hall, at least in the past. We gave anti-Christians ammunition they still use against God today, as though the Inquisition had ended last week. And the flow of miracles was nearly cut off. Healings were considered so extraordinary, people traveled to places like Lourdes instead of expecting healing in their own churches. In January, I got healed in a church parking lot in Miami Gardens. Saved me the price of a ticket to France.

Without the Spirit, we acted like animals, and prayers did not get answered, and God’s power was not manifested much. No wonder the church isn’t bigger today. The wonder is that it survived at all.

Paul believed in prayer in tongues. In a letter, he said he did it “more than you all.” In Ephesians, he tells us to keep doing it. Nowhere in the Bible does it say this gift has stopped, or that it will stop before Jesus returns. There is a passage which says spiritual gifts will stop, but it does not mention a time, and it clearly refers to the future, either in the Messianic Age or after death. Eventually, there will be no need for the gifts. That time has not come.

Aside from all that, millions of Christians are praying in tongues, and it’s pretty clear we are not imagining things or under the influence of demons. And it would be extremely odd for God to allow a demon to enter into a person asking for the Holy Spirit to come in. If God does things like that, we have no chance. The Bible says, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” How can anyone think God would go back on his word and let us be filled with demons, at the very moment when we are seeking his righteousness?

Here is what Paul said about our fleshly efforts at righteousness, in Galatians 3:

Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain.

He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

That’s not about water baptism. It’s not about being baptized “in the name” of the Spirit. It’s not about thinking spiritual thoughts. It’s about the baptism with the Holy Spirit and the miracles that follow. Converts thought they could observe the Jewish law and perfect themselves. Paul corrected them. Many Christians think they can perfect themselves by obeying Christian law. If the Jews were wrong, how can Christians who believe the same thing be right?

Obedience takes strength, and strength comes from the Holy Spirit. That’s what I believe.

I know of four main things that will get you free, supernaturally. First, prayer in tongues. Second, prayer with your understanding. Third, fasting. Fourth, casting out demons. Put those things together, and you get power. You get freedom to control your behavior. That improves your obedience. That closes doors the enemy can come through to get at you.

I’m planning some fasting. I have some issues to work on. Overall, I’m getting more and more free, but sometimes things I’ve beaten come back to try me again. I’m not going to sit around promising to be good and begging for relief, impliedly telling God (in pride) that I can fix myself. I’m going to invite God to do what I can’t do. It has worked in the past. I have no reason to think it won’t continue working.

I want the screens up and the doors closed, and I want to be free to devote my energy to helping other people instead of myself. To mature as a Christian, you have to love, and love is not just internal. It is manifested in actions. I am not doing a great job, and I’ll be better at it if I’m free of the distraction of my own failings.

The Spirit Moves Me

I had a good day at church, although looking at it superficially, it would not seem so.

Last night I forgot about the time change (or rather, I didn’t know the date in the first place, because I don’t watch TV). I went to bed at the usual hour, thinking everything was swell. Then a neighbor’s unbelievably loud party woke me up at what I thought was 11:00 p.m. I was not too happy about it, but I try not to make trouble for my neighbors if I can avoid it (Psalm 15), so I did not call the cops. Besides; this party had a loud emcee who was yelling in Spanish between salsa numbers, and from the sound of it, the party was quite a distance away. That usually means a fundraiser with a permit. Unbelievably, Coral Gables–the city which will prosecute you for painting your interior walls without permission–will allow you to keep your neighbors up until three a.m. if you get a permit.

While I was lying there awake, I remembered that the time change was in the news, and I checked to see if it was upon me. It was. That was fabulous. I had thought I was being kept awake until 1:00, on the night before rising at 6:00 to make pizza at church. In reality, I was being kept awake until 2:00.

Drove to church and got things moving. Things get more and more efficient; these days I try to make big batches of everything. I started by making about a gallon of yeast mixture, and as soon as I could, I began making dough with the woefully inadequate and messy Kitchenaid mixer.

I managed to get ten batches of dough done, and then I started making pizza, and things went great, except that very few people bought any. Apparently, I was not the only one who forgot the time change.

Things looked better after the second service, but then I realized the pizza wasn’t getting cooked. We had the same problem on Tuesday. The burner in the big convection oven refuses to turn on after a while, so it gets cooler and cooler, until you’re warming raw pizza instead of baking it.

We had a guy look at it this week, but evidently, he did not look at it hard enough. I managed to make a few pizzas in the smaller oven, but eventually, I gave up, and I had to throw out a gallon of sauce and four portions of dough. Orders were cancelled. Depressing.

He’s going to look at it again.

I wandered around looking for things to do, and down the hall, through a glass door, I saw what appeared to be part of an EMT truck, with a flashing light. I got to the end of the hall, and there were three EMTs working on a girl on a table. One of my fellow armorbearers was there. I helped with crowd control. Church was emptying, and half of the crowd had to leave through those doors.

The girl was about 15 and thin. I could see her bare feet at the end of the table, beside the paramedics. Her feet were shaking, as though she were jerking or seizing. Someone had found her unconscious in a bathroom. She was conscious when I saw her, but only barely. They were trying to get her to answer questions.

Prime opportunity to pray. I always pray when I see an ambulance. It’s a rule I have. If I tried to break it, I think I’d be unable to sleep later. Usually, I don’t know who I’m praying for. But here was this kid, on the table. Three feet away. Lucky for her the oven pooped out. Lucky, or something better than lucky.

While I was herding and praying, I saw a homeless guy I talk to on occasion. I say “homeless” because that was what I had suspected. I hadn’t really known. He’s a thin guy who often shows up wearing fatigues. He has a lady friend who sometimes appears with him.

The first time I met him, he was standing in the parking lot, trying to get people’s attention. I pulled over and rolled down the window, and we talked for a minute, and I gave him some assistance. You can’t turn someone down while you’re driving out of the parking lot after church. He appeared to be what is known as a street person. That gave me something to pray about on the way home.

I thought maybe he was someone who showed up at church on rare occasions to ask for favors, but he turned up again not long after that, in a TV audience at the TBN studio. My pastor was hosting Praise the Lord, so I decided to drive to Hollywood and check it out, and there the guy was. So he does go to church when he’s not after anything.

A few nights back, I saw him again, standing in front of the Wal-Mart across the street from the church. I was there to get olive oil and other pizza supplies. He did not look good. I wondered if he was on something. I did not speak to him on the way in, and he didn’t see me. I felt like I should have talked to him, so I decided to look for him on the way out.

He was still there. He looked almost ill. I don’t know what the problem was. I can’t judge. It could be a legitimate medical thing. I asked how he was, and he said something like, “not too good.” He said he was waiting for friends to give him a ride home. He asked which was I was going. I thought I should turn that around for my own sake, so I asked where he needed to go. He said he needed to go to Opa-Locka, which was out of my way. I said I was going south. I did not want to be in Opa-Locka after dark with a guy with this kind of troubles. I didn’t drive him, but I gave him a little help getting home.

Today I saw him leaving the church while we helped the EMTs, and I felt like I should say something, but he and his girlfriend drifted out with the crowd. I thought that was the end of it. I was glad to see him in church, after the way he had looked in front of Wal-Mart.

I went with a pastor and an armorbearer friend while they carried off the linens the girl had lain on; she had been vomiting. We all washed our hands, and I asked my friend if we were having any post-church meetings, and he inquired via radio while I waited. This all took a while. There was no meeting.

I left the building and turned toward my car, and walking toward me, five feet away, were the guy and his girlfriend. Like someone had dropped them there from a hidden chute. Okay, this time we were going to acknowledge each other. We shook hands. Danged if he didn’t need a ride again.

I had turned him town twice in the past, so I figured this was my day. The three of us got in my truck, and off we went to Opa-Locka.

They were thrilled that someone was giving them a lift. It was as if I had bought them the truck. What was I going to do? Drive off in comfort while these people roasted in the parking lot? His girlfriend was so grateful, she gave me a CD. She’s a Christian rapper. I did not see that coming. I thought it was very nice of her to give it to me, in view of their financial outlook, and I said I would listen to it.

We got to know each other a little. When they learned I was a writer, he said he was interested in doing a Christian book. I said it was a great idea, if he had a good testimony. He said he had one. He said he had been hit by a train and nearly blinded in one eye. He didn’t get around to the Christian part, but I admit, I’m always impressed when an able-bodied person tells me he has been hit by a train.

I asked how they found Trinity. His girlfriend said she had seen the church’s big white emblem over and over, on the side of the building, and that she had wanted to check the place out, so she decided they would go. He said they couldn’t always get a ride, and that on one occasion, they had walked.

That was sobering. I would guess they live six miles from the church.

I asked if they belonged to GAP (God Answers Prayer) groups. They did not. I told them it would make them feel more at home in church, and that it would help them get more out of it. He asked when my group met. I told him it met at 8 a.m. on Saturdays. He said that was right up his alley. So now I had that to think about.

She said she was good at teaching kids to sing. I said they probably needed people to do that at Trinity.

I told them about the bus ministry a friend of mine runs. He picks people up in a van and brings them to church. I said I didn’t know if it ran in his area, but that I could find out. I don’t think it does, but I haven’t worked with the bus ministry for a while. I could be wrong. They wrote their names and number on a scrap of paper, and I kept it. He said I should let him know if I knew of any little jobs he could do. Nothing strenuous, because of his condition. I nodded. I don’t really know a lot of people who need odd jobs done, but you never know.

I let them out in front of their house and went on my way.

The first time I met this guy, I was celebrating a victory in my life. That was one reason I had gone to the TBN taping. I wanted to get out of the house and go do something unusual and related to God, and the taping presented itself to me, so I went.

Does it mean anything that he’s suddenly back? Is it a reminder that another personal victory is in the making? It has to have significance. It’s just too weird, otherwise.

I don’t know what to do. I am not an outgoing person, and that is the main reason I don’t do much hands-on charity. When you deal with people who need help, bits of them tend to stick to you. It’s not a clean business. On the other hand, I think the lost are a huge concern to God, and very few people are willing to give them the time of day. Some people sink to the bottom of life, like leaves in a teacup, and they tend to stay there, and we were sent to pull them back up. Only Christians have the means to do it. I have been very conscious of this lately. I think it probably means a lot to people like this, just to be treated with common courtesy and respect.

I am not writing about this to portray myself as a saint. I’ve done almost nothing for these people, and I am not planning to give the man a kidney any time soon. I’m just writing this to document the strange events that took place today, and my impressions of them.

Things are going to get better. God has a good future planned for me.

Latest Development

Man, this is bad. I’m making pizza all the time, and now I’m getting so fat I’m going to have to go back to the clothes I was wearing last year.

NOT!

Had you going, I’ll bet.

Until recently, I had two pairs of jeans I found comfortable. I put my size 36 jeans in a bag for Goodwill a long time ago, and I’ve been wearing smaller ones. Last week I wore a pair while I made pizza for my church, and while I was there, I made the mistake of pulling on a belt loop because my jeans were sliding. I ripped the ancient denim below the loop. And jeans are cheap cotton. They don’t mend well.

That left me with one pair of jeans to get me through the winter, which has been surprisingly cold so far.

Today I got up, and it was about 50 degrees outside, so I started looking for my remaining pair of safe jeans. I couldn’t find them, but I remembered another pair. A while back, I tried on several pairs of jeans that had been moldering in my closet, and one pair almost fit. I set them aside in a drawer, so I’d know where they were when I got small enough to put them on.

Today I decided to take another crack at them. I showered and dried off, held my breath, and pulled them on. They FIT.

I’m not claiming they’re the ideal size. I’m an inch away from true compatibility with these jeans. But they work. I can walk. I can breathe. I can bend. I can tuck my shirt in without going critical and showering the neighborhood with slow neutrons and gamma rays.

Let’s hear it for God! Richard Simmons has nothing on my weight loss expert. A lot of diets can give you a temporary reduction, but who can fix it so you slowly slim down while perfecting pizza recipes? Only one guy, as far as I know.

One of the worst things about being fat is that you will have several wardrobes. You’ll have your fat wardrobe, your one-month-into-your-doomed-diet wardrobe, and your thin or “real” wardrobe, which you will only be able to wear about one month out of every three years. You’ll call it your real wardrobe because you want to think your lowest weight is your natural weight, and that your fat is a temporary aberration. But your real wardrobe is probably your fat wardrobe.

I want to have one wardrobe. Period. Two wardrobes are one too many. I could not do this on my own. I was able to keep fat off for a year or so, and I was able to avoid truly overwhelming obesity, but that was about it.

When I ate, I felt something pushing me. “One more bite.” “You can do it.” “Starve yourself later to make up for it.”

Now that voice is very weak. And something else–something new and unearned–rises up in me and says, “Push the plate away and enjoy tormenting your enemy.”

People keep using the word “diet” to describe what happened to me. I get sick of it. I’m not on a diet. I’m just not a fat person any more. “Diet” robs God of his glory. He did this for me. A diet is something you do for yourself. I’m middle-aged. If I were able to control my weight through strength of character, don’t you think I’d know it by now?

God willing, I’m going to drop another 13 pounds or so. Then people who meet me won’t even suspect I used to be fat. I’ll have to show them photos.

Yesterday I wrote about the stuff God is generously doing in my life, and someone left a nice comment suggesting I have a brain tumor. It left me wondering. Why do people have such a powerful desire to deny God’s work? We’ll do almost anything to find an alternate explanation for a miracle. We’ll make idiotic claims. We’ll say a cure for cancer was psychosomatic, for example.

Give that a try, if you have cancer. Seriously. Sit on your couch for an hour a day and say, “My body has cured my cancer.” You’re still going to die, believe me. I apologize if that makes you feel bad, but you know…you’re still going to DIE, if this is your approach.

And why is a near-magical psychosomatic cure somehow easier to swallow than a miracle? We know of no physical mechanism by which this can occur; there is no direct connection between a positive mindset and a cure. Science has shown that a good attitude is good for your health, but it won’t destroy a big tumor. Psychosomatic cures are a fantasy just as dubious as the fables the lunatic Charles Manson used to make up for his followers. Just as groundless as L. Ron Hubbard’s fairy tales about Xemu and the Thetans. If you can believe something like that, with no evidence at all, why can’t you believe in the power of God, which is supported by the testimonies of countless credible individuals?

A while back, I was instantly healed of a kidney stone, while praying about it in my church’s parking lot. I had no idea a brain tumor could do that! It’s amazing what a brain tumor can do!

FYI, regardless of what you may have seen in B-grade John Travolta movies, brain tumors do not make you brilliant or inspired or cause you to see miracles. They give you headaches. They blur your vision. They make you vomit. You become incontinent. You lose the power of speech. They cause dementia. Look it up. I know someone who is at a high risk of developing brain tumors, so I’ve checked into it. And I saw miracles over twenty years ago. If I have a brain tumor, it’s the slowest-growing tumor in history.

I can think of some reasons why people deny God’s power.

For one thing, people like to sin. Fornication is tremendous fun; let’s admit it. Drugs are a blast. Stealing and cheating bring you great things you otherwise could not get. Violence is cathartic and relaxing. Abusing and dominating other people make you feel strong and important. Selfishness takes a big load off your mind, because you don’t have to worry about other people’s problems.

Sin is enjoyable. And if God exists and has power to act in this world, sin has to be minimized and shunned. No more clubbing and taking a different honey home every night. No more cocaine. No more weed. No more drunkenness. No more materialism. You even have to give up revenge. It’s only natural that people will look for ways to avoid believing in God, with all that at risk.

People also deny God’s power because they don’t see him working in their lives, and they want to convince themselves that this is how it’s supposed to be. It’s not that they’re not doing what’s right in God’s eyes. Their stale denominations and their unproductive doctrines are just fine. The problem is that people like me lie about our supposed miracles. We’re holy rollers and kooks. Christians (or Jews) are supposed to suffer and be defeated in this life, and we’re supposed to be grateful for it and not question it. Nuts like me will be judged for our heresy! Oh, we’ll get ours! We’ll suffer, big time! Hopefully!

Our healings and blessings are either demonic or somehow stolen from God. The real servants of God are the ones who are strong enough to admit that miracles and prophecy ceased permanently a long time ago.

If you admit I’m telling the truth, you may have to admit that some of your doctrine is wrong. I can understand resisting that. I don’t like admitting my doctrine is wrong, either, but sometimes it is. And here I am, losing fat and getting my prayers answered and becoming better able to be a blessing to other people. Am I supposed to quit? Seriously, am I? Are you insane?

I recall the story of the blind man Jesus healed, in the ninth chapter of John. People with bad, man-made doctrine tried to make the blind man condemn Jesus as a magician and a sinner, and instead, he heaped ridicule on them, saying, “Why, this is a marvelous thing, that you do not know where He is from; yet He has opened my eyes! Now we know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He hears him. Since the world began it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind. If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing.”

The book of John also says, “Then they reviled him and said, “You are His disciple, but we are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses; as for this fellow, we do not know where He is from.”

Look, perhaps it’s possible for a charlatan to perform self-serving miracles that offend God, yet which are somehow derived from God’s power. Fine. But when that happens, there is an element of sin involved. There is an evil purpose. Someone makes money from it, or someone steals God’s glory, or man’s will is exalted above God’s. Where is the evil in what happened to me?

1. I made no money from it, nor did anyone else, nor did anyone receive any type of earthly advantage.

2. I credited God and admitted I couldn’t do it on my own.

3. It happened outside of my will; it wasn’t my idea, and I didn’t even ask for it. I’m not like the rabbis in the Talmud who created a calf golem because they were hungry. I didn’t do this. It came as a surprise.

4. I’m trying to help other people get the same thing, even though my only likely reward is contempt.

It’s dangerous to see every ostensibly good thing as a gift from God. You can harm people badly by doing things for them. Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light, and he works miracles. Satan blesses people in order to ruin them, and sometimes false doctrine gives impressive short-term results, like the dark side of the fictional force. I know all that. But sometimes you have to apply a little common sense and think for yourself. If Abraham hadn’t thought for himself, he would have taken over his dad’s idol-making business, and the Jews would not exist.

Call it a tumor. Call it schizophrenia. Say aliens did it to me. Sit up nights violating Occam’s razor, constructing elaborate explanations to make it go away. I can’t stop you. But don’t expect me to listen to your nonsense.

Grace and Grease

Yesterday I tried my jug of cheap blended olive oil. I slapped some rolls together without kneading the dough. My only fresh garlic had mold on it, so I used garlic powder. Good enough for an experiment, I figured. And no one would ever know.

Oops.

The rolls were surprisingly good. In fact, it’s surprising that they were good at all. I let them rise for a total of 45 minutes, which is ridiculous. But they worked.

The oil blend is not good. There’s nothing offensive about it, but the olive oil content is so low, you can barely taste it. It reminds me of corn oil. It would be okay for pizza, which doesn’t require as much flavor as rolls, but it would not be as good as extra-light olive oil.

I’m going to add olive oil to it, to create a 50/50 blend. If that works, I can save the church cash by buying olive oil and some other oil at Costco and mixing them. I’m pretty sure I can beat the price of the GFS 50/50 blend. Costco sells extra-virgin for about five bucks a liter. I don’t know what they charge for their other oils, but I can get corn oil for five bucks a gallon. I think corn oil would be a little heavy.

Someone is selling a nice commercial slicer on Craigslist for $200. I may snap that up and lend…ow…ow…ow…okay, GIVE it to the church so they can save money on food.

Sometimes when God pushes me to do something, I feel like Cliff Clavin getting zapped with his psychiatrist’s electric behavior modifier. But I’ve mentioned that before.

I had a remarkable experience this morning. At church this week, my pastor mentioned Psalm 127. I guess I might as well publish the whole thing, since it’s short.

Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

He was talking about children, but the part that interested me was the first sentence. This is a belief I hold very firmly. The things you do in this life, no matter how worthy they may seem, are of no value unless God is behind them. You can build a big company, raise successful kids, help the poor, support the church, and still fail to please God or accumulate wealth in heaven, because the things you did were not part of his plan.

The things God builds stay built. Even if the things you do for him don’t last in this world, the reward will be eternal. And he is the only force that can permanently set you free from your problems. Jenny Craig and Betty Ford can set you free for a time, but only God can make you “free, indeed.” To accomplish anything of eternal value, you have to find out what God wants you do to.

That first sentence would be great on a T-shirt.

I decided to look that up today, in my King James Bible. The only King James I have belonged to my mother; my main Bible is the New King James, and I also like The Complete Jewish Bible. I opened her Bible to the 127th psalm, and in the margin next to Psalm 128, I saw my mother’s handwriting. It said “Steve, Dec. 12, 1987.” And she had bracketed the following verses:

For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.

In this life, I will never know why she put brackets around that language. She died in 1997.

Now that I think about it, this happened at about the same time I received a miraculous healing. Late in 1987, I decided to find a church, and I got sick immediately. I developed something resembling a severe cold, but it refused to leave me. It hung on for weeks. I prayed and exerted my faith, never relenting. One day I saw a dark shape fly away from me and out through a closed door, and I was instantly healed, and my mother witnessed it.

Strange things were happening to me back then. Maybe when I left the church, I put off receiving the blessings that caught my mother’s eye.

Olive plants would be children who are full of the Holy Spirit. That’s what olives symbolize in the Bible. A vine produces fruit; maybe that’s the significance of the reference to a wife, who bears children.

If you do what God intends for you to do, you will be blessed. That’s what Psalm 127 says, by telling us what happens when don’t seek his will. And one of the blessings is named in the second verse of Psalm 128. You will eat the labor of your hands. The things you do won’t be futile. You will profit from them, in a lasting way.

It was encouraging to read that. I’m old, but I still have enough potential in me to get a few things done before I die.

I’ve written about my trip to Israel. I traveled there in 1984 and lived on a kibbutz for four months. I have written a lot about the way God guided me on that trip. Things were put in my path. Doors were opened. I never had to worry about what would happen the next day, or where I would go. This, I thought, was “walking by faith” in a very pure form.

Now I find that my current experiences exceed my experiences in Israel. It’s getting downright strange.

My prayers are being answered, right and left. And I don’t just mean stuffy prayers about God increasing my holiness or whatever. I mean even mundane prayers. I pray for the neighbors’ dogs to shut up while I’m praying, and it happens, every time. If you don’t think a thing like that will freak you out the tenth consecutive time it works, wait until it happens to you.

I was instantly healed of a kidney stone in my church’s parking lot. I have been permanently delivered from overeating; I can work on pizza recipes all day and not gain weight. My church had to fire its cook, and suddenly, I make the best Sicilian pizza I’ve ever eaten. I went to church to make it, and people unexpectedly appeared and started moving equipment around, and in a few minutes, I had the perfect pizza prep station.

There’s more to it than that. I physically feel things taking place during prayer. And it doesn’t always happen during the most intense moments. Sometimes I’ll pause, and I’ll literally feel something happening inside my head. I’ll feel something touching me; lifting tension off of me and easing my mind. I think this may be the “peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” because I definitely don’t understand it. A couple of nights back, I prayed about my gallbladder, which seems to resent my weight loss, and I felt my gallbladder open up. Once you’ve had pain in your gallbladder, you know exactly where it is, and you can feel what happens to it. From time to time, with increasing frequency, I feel something dropping over me, and I believe it’s the Holy Spirit.

I think I can physically feel faith going up from me to God. Seriously. I think it’s a substance. I believe it rises up to him, and I believe this may explain why the Bible describes our prayers as incense and so on. The 141st psalm says, “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” That’s just one of many examples.

I just remembered: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Perhaps “substance” has a literal meaning.

I’m starting to wonder exactly how much power God will allow a human being to have. And whether I should have it.

If I’m right about these things, this is a wonderful way to live. Maybe I won’t have a yacht and a mansion and a fleet of limousines and a herd of eager-to-please consorts, but I’ll have the ultimate power on my side. I will be able to lose battles from time to time, but it will be impossible for me to lose a war. Can it be that this is what we’re intended to have?

I’ll tell you my secret. It’s not complicated. You don’t have to buy a DVD or get a ticket to a seminar. I pray in tongues a lot. At least an hour a day. As far as I know, this is the fundamental thing that changed my life. Everything else flowed from it. And it’s consistent with what Paul said. He told us this would build us up. Few of us, even among charismatics, pay any attention. But the Bible does not contain idle words, so it must be true. I think it’s like working out or watering a plant. And Perry Stone says it will bring you revelation. Robert Morris, I believe, compared it to going to the gym.

Believe me or don’t. I am not a scholar; I don’t study the ancient church fathers, I don’t speak Hebrew or Greek, and I don’t pretend I can decipher the entire Bible and provide perfect doctrine. I’m just telling you what worked for me. I’ve believed this since about 1990, and now other people are confirming it.

It’s not from hell. I’m not getting the base desires of my flesh satisfied. I’m becoming more disciplined and mature, without turning into an ascetic heretic. I’m not spreading hate or telling people God wants them to give me money so they can drive Bentleys. I think this is the real thing.

If you really want to give me money, however, don’t let me discourage you. Think of it as a seed gift, which I will plant in order to harvest a nice spray-on liner for my truck bed. Or some more expensive tools I will rarely use. Godly stuff, I assure you. God probably won’t give you a hundredfold return or anything, but my truck will look swell. “How beautiful is my truck with Vogues and a hood scoop.” That will be my slogan.

I’ll give myself a plug, here. If you give money to a TV minister, he’ll just blow it on stupid things like orange Rolls Royces or bad hair transplants. I’ll get cool stuff, like a two-deck pizza oven. Think it over. I don’t want to be a pest. But you’ll feel really good about it. I’m sure of it.

I promise not to send you a miracle prayer cloth or dirt from the Holy Land. I will refrain from praying over your offering, and I assure you, I will blow every last penny on myself. That’s integrity, right there.

I better put up a Paypal link.

You’ll Still Need a Tray

Thanks, any and all who assisted with prayer this morning. Things went very well.

I have nothing to do for the rest of the day. What now? If there is one thing I hate, it’s idleness.

Shut up.

Can I bore you again with my supernatural weight loss? I made pizza over and over again for a month, and depending on how accurate my scale is, I either gained no weight or a pound and a half. Because I ate tons of pizza and God made it magically nonfattening? No. I mean, I ate plenty, but I’m pretty sure my permanent increase in self-control kept it down to a harmless amount. I don’t think angels are hovering around my maw, destroying calories miraculously as food gets caught in the gravity well. Although I rule nothing out.

I love pizza more than just about anything on earth, but once I got Sicilian figured out, I no longer had an overpowering urge to make it. That is completely bizarre. I never got tired of pizza in the past. I ate it every day for long periods. I had no problem with eating it twice a day.

As long as I had sauce, cheese, and flour, I had to make pizza until the supplies ran out or my arches collapsed. But I’m sitting here right now with no idea what I’m going to have for lunch, and I have delicious Costco cheese and two kinds of sauce handy, and the only thing I’m sure of is that I’m going to have something boring and healthy. This is like a crackhead turning down rocks in favor of Sanka.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to help anyone else get what I got. Nobody cares. When I talk to people about it, they start telling me all their diet secrets. That’s a completely different subject. No relevance at all. I’m not on a diet. I have diet secrets, too, but they don’t work. This is a different thing. I just eat less. No one understands. God just dropped it on me. I don’t even know why. I hope he shoves a few more presents off the back of his sleigh. Or chariot or whatever.

I’m right down here! Look me up on Google Earth. I’ll paint a big X on the driveway. Or maybe a yud.

Imagine Moses talking to someone about parting the Red Sea. The other guy would say, “Yeah, you can build a caisson with lots of slave labor and spend about ten years pumping the water out,” and Moses would go, “Dude, I just waved a stick.”

After a few minutes, Moses would throw up his hands and say “whatever.” Or “oy.”

Sometimes I feel like I’m talking Chinese. “God fixed me so I don’t overeat!” “Yeah, I’m thinking of doing Slim-Fast.” “No, GOD FIXED ME SO I DON’T OVEREAT.” I feel like Lego Darth Vader trying to make people understand he’s not Jeff Vader or Mr. Stephens, the head of catering.

Obscure reference. See Youtube. Search under Eddie Izzard.

I have to watch that now.

Smell That Fresh Air!

This is an amazing day.

Steady readers will recall the post I put up at the end of August, announcing that after a fast, I found that I had been supernaturally delivered from compulsive overeating. It had been a problem for me all my life. It wasn’t one of the issues to which the fast was dedicated, but afterward, I found I didn’t feel the overpowering urge to stuff myself. I lost 20 pounds, pretty effortlessly.

That has stayed with me over time. The holidays worried me, and after that I got sick, and I spoiled myself. The illness dragged on interminably, and I was afraid that when it was over, I’d be huge. I still have little traces of symptoms. But today I got on the scale, and my gigantic weight gain amounts to 1.5 pounds. And now that the symptoms are virtually gone, I’m back on my routine, so I expect progress to continue.

I still can’t believe God would do something this nice for me. This is just as miraculous as being healed of cancer, even if it’s not as dramatic. I feel like I’ve been freed from a slavemaster. And in my opinion, I have. Either God increased my discipline throught the Holy Spirit, or he drove off something evil that was goading me.

No one cares. I know. No one wants to hear about a guy whose big miracle is a drop from a 36″ waist to 33″. But if you’re fat, and this happens to you, believe me, you’ll be as amazed and grateful as I am. You won’t think it’s a small thing. You ought to listen to me and see if you can get the same kind of deliverance. Maybe your problem isn’t food. Maybe it’s cocaine or booze or women. I don’t think it makes any difference; it’s not like one thing is a bigger challenge to God than another. And he wants everyone to be free.

When I got freed from gluttony, I also found I had better self-control in a couple of other areas. I was less crabby, which was a big blessing. Being annoyed requires energy, and it’s an unpleasant state in which to live. After I got my miracle, I felt peaceful. My mind was quieter.

Unfortunately, the food thing lasted, and the peace did not. I eventually found that some of the irritability had returned. Maybe that was because of some sin I committed. I don’t know. I can’t see the supernatural world. I can’t hear God’s voice or the voices of the angels. I can only guess.

Today during my morning prayers I felt anxious for no good reason, and I took it before God, and I kept praying about it, hard. I exerted my faith. I prayed in the Spirit. I stuck to my guns. I felt as if something foreign was pressing into me, in the region of my sinuses. I know that sounds nutty. But I’ve felt that many times. It’s an oppressive, annoying sensation. I think it’s something that has been with me for decades, and I suspect that it’s a supernatural being.

After I had been at it for forty-five minutes or an hour, I felt that this thing had been pushed back. The anxiety left me. I felt peaceful. There was no hostility or irritability in me. I felt as if something was holding it back, like a bodyguard fending off an autograph hound. The peace I found back in August returned. I felt like I had been released from a stuffy room. And to make it even stranger, my breathing had improved. I generally get some nasal congestion in the early morning, and last night was no exception, but suddenly, everything was wide open.

As I went about my morning routine, over and over, the magnitude of the change came home to me. As it hit me, I would grab things for support and hold on. It’s like I’ve been released from prison. It’s incredible.

I hope I don’t do anything to mess it up. I don’t know what I did wrong last time, but I’m going to watch it. This is a tremendous gift. When you’re under psychological oppression, and it leaves, you resume your normal state, and in comparison, it almost seems euphoric. The difference is wonderful.

It may be that giving in to hostility, out of habit, caused me to lose my freedom. I will try to keep that in mind.

Here’s what I think. Over time, prayer in the Spirit fills you with something that overpowers and displaces hostile beings that affect your life. It fills you with something that “binds the strong man” so his house–you–can be spoiled by God.

Every person on earth has demons assigned to him; it’s not just people who bend steel bars and live naked in graveyards. These creatures warp our judgment. They cause diseases. They prevent our blessings from getting to us. They compel us to do evil. They addict us. They give us depression and other mental illnesses. They even cause wars.

These ancient things are far more powerful than unaided human beings. We can’t get rid of them in our own strength. For that matter, our own flesh can be more powerful than we are. It can be impossible to control. The answer is God. He “grows” us, like mustard seeds, to be more powerful than our enemies. He increases our faith. He improves our character so we do more good and less evil, which leads to fewer chastisements and more blessings. He gives us the gifts of the Spirit to fight the enemy supernaturally. And in the Bible, he provides the Sword of the Spirit: his promises, which we can cite, whether in defense or offense. God gives us the tools to get free.

I think we’re going to see a lot more teaching in this vein over the coming years. This is what Satan is afraid of. It’s why he worked so hard to get the church to deny and even ban the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. The best way to get rid of God’s servants is to get religious people to crucify them and excommunicate them and burn them alive, and that’s what Satan got the church to do. He even got the church to ban possession of the Bible, which was the Satanic equivalent of gun control (unless gun control is the Satanic equivalent of gun control). But he can’t repress God’s work forever. He’s the weak, limited one, after all.

I don’t know if anyone will believe me, but I got something great, so even if I’m alone here, I have cause to celebrate.

I am Now Self-Actualized

I think I have the pizza-pan situation figured out. I need thin steel, not cast iron. And I need three sizes. First, 12 x 18, to serve more than one person. Then 12 x 12, for a serious meal for one person or a small meal for two. Then 9 x 9, for a normal meal for one. Cast iron is out. Steel works, so there is no need to look for another answer.

I don’t know what to do with all this power. I pretty much have pizza under my thumb, so I can’t continue eating it every day with research as my excuse. I guess the smart move is to bag and freeze the cheese and sauce and have pizza maybe twice a week.

I’ve reached a point where it’s hard to think of anything new I want to learn to cook. I guess cheese poori and certain Indian appetizers and entrees would be good, but I can get a good cookbook for that; I don’t need to be original. Same for Chinese.

It’s unbelievable, now that I think about it. I can make the best pizza in Miami. I can make the best cheesecake anywhere, as far as I know. My barbecue is the best I can find anywhere near me. Prime rib is a joke. Aged steaks are simple. I can cook everything I really care about. God has really blessed me.

If only I could eat this stuff every day.

I guess now I should focus on small, healthy meals that are easy to fix. To me, that means meat or fish, plus non-starchy vegetables. Dull, but cheap and fast.

My dinner menu is embarrassing. Here’s the kind of thing I fix: two tiny pork chops fried in olive oil with no breading, half a can of greens, and Brussels sprouts with salt and butter. I really can’t eat more than that without fattening up. My current routine (admittedly derailed by pizza research) is one serving of oatmeal at breakfast, a sandwich and some pickles at lunch, and a little-bitty dinner. I’m changing that now; the small, sad-looking dinner, which is the largest meal, will come in the middle of the day.

I like vegetables, so eating things like greens and sprouts is not a problem. As far as I know, all Southerners like vegetables. I don’t know why. I always hear about people who won’t eat vegetables. They hate broccoli. They hate spinach. I don’t get it. No one in my family is like that. One of the best Southern meals is hot cornbread, soup beans, and fresh, raw vegetables. Southerners aren’t fat because they don’t eat vegetables. They’re fat because they also eat Moon Pies and chili-cheese-slaw dogs.

I’ve been watching Ken Burns’s Jazz for a few days. I love this documentary. I own a copy. Sometimes the BS can be hard to take; I don’t know why so many successful young black men talk crap, when their achievements stand for themselves. But generally, it focuses on the music, with a surprisingly fair approach to race relations.

Actually, I do know why so many successful young black men talk crap. It’s because Martin Luther King died and Jesse Jackson lived. They pattern themselves after the sideshow act, instead of the greater man who preceded him and died without leaving a substantial video or audio record. King didn’t live long enough to make the kind of impression Jackson has. That’s truly unfortunate. Slogans and chants and doggerel and transparent sophistry are no substitute for character, brains, and dignity.

Now that I think about it, Malcolm X was about fifty times the man Jesse Jackson is, and he died young, too. He had a weakness for slogans, though.

Anyway, I keep watching these videos and marveling at the music. Louis Armstrong is astonishing. He’s like Mozart. He was so good, it didn’t even make sense. Greatest jazz instrumentalist who ever lived. Arguably the greatest vocalist, although you would never know it from garbage like What a Wonderful World. I think THC had pickled his brain by then. They say he smoked every day. Some defend his later work, but far as I can tell, he said all he had to say before he hit middle age.

And people say dope won’t hurt you.

I’m glad I never cared for drugs enough to stick with them. I have never understood the appeal of pot. Sometimes I think other people smoke dope to be more like people like me. Some people have no sense of humor and no creativity and no ability to relax unless they’re high. If you have those things naturally, maybe dope seems pointless. People take drugs to compensate for shortcomings, so my theory makes sense to me. I admit, I’d love to have natural self-confidence comparable to what stimulants provide.

To get back to jazz, Bix Beiderbecke was another superhuman talent. Seems like he could do absolutely anything except quit drinking. He didn’t consider himself a pianist; his instrument was the cornet. But I have a couple of his piano recordings–stuff he played on the spur of the moment, almost as a lark–and the things he did are like nothing anyone else was playing at that time. It’s like a fusion of Debussy and Thelonious Monk.

He was never able to get it together, and he drank himself to death before he turned thirty. Maybe some people are too talented and too creative to lead happy, successful lives. Maybe the human body can’t contain them.

As I listened and watched, I wondered why Christian music couldn’t have this kind of quality and creativity. It’s not as if musical creativity didn’t exist before jazz. Stuffy classical musicians killed it, out of ignorance and misplaced worship. In the times of Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin, a classical musician was required to improvise. It’s virtually forbidden now, but the greats used to sit and make up melody lines on the spot, just like jazz musicians do now. Liszt could take sheet music for an orchestra and play it on the piano, at sight, while making suggestions and criticisms as they occurred to him.

American popular music was pretty weak (Turkey in the Straw, heaven protect us) before jazz and the blues, and improvisation in classical music was essentially banned, so it’s no wonder most popular music, including the Christian variety, is second-rate. Why can’t a Christian pianist sit and improvise brilliantly during a worship service? No reason at all. They used to do it. Maybe blue notes and certain jazz rhythms would be somewhat out of place, but those things aren’t essential to spontaneous music.

I keep banging away at sight-reading. Yesterday I amazed myself by playing a triplet correctly, while staying in time. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before. I used to break measures into twelve beats and practice slowly, I think. I need to start journaling my progress, so I don’t get discouraged. I still can’t play anything, but I’m making substantial headway.

I should thaw out some tiny pork chops. I hate to miss out on a fine feed like that.

Pizza is a a Lifelong Pursuit

My church is going crazy these days. Unlike the major news outlets, which will be gone from Haiti in a week, we are engaged in a long-term effort, and because of the earthquake, it’s going to be ramped up. All sorts of stuff is happening. They even have me writing copy for them.

Trinity Broadcasting is all over this, and our church is going to be their main resource in the Haiti campaign. I suppose that makes sense, since most of the people who attend are Haitian. On top of that, our pastor has hooked up with Friend Ships Unlimited, and they have a boat on the way from Lake Charles. It’s going to dock in the Port of Miami and go back and forth between Miami and Port au Prince. The people making this stuff happen are working late hours and going without sleep. It’s pretty impressive.

The services this weekend were largely aimed at Haiti. The Saturday service was converted to a time of prayer, and we heard a lot about the crisis in the other services. Attendance was heavy.

One of the church’s pastors–an older gentleman of Haitian descent–was in Port au Prince when the earthquake came. He spoke to us. He said the ground shook for four or five minutes. Ordinarily, he would have been some distance out of town–he only goes to Port au Prince when he’s on the way back to Miami–but on this occasion he was in Port au Prince a day earlier than usual.

He said he was in a hotel, on the second story, when it hit. The ground moved vertically as well as horizontally. He had to hold onto a doorframe. When it was over, he went out in the short street where the hotel was located, and six people were already dead. One was a little girl whose head had been severed. He also found a woman whose hand had been amputated when her fallen ceiling pinned her wrist against her refrigerator door. She was trapped for six hours like that. The hand was severed, but the arm was still trapped. She had to stand and wait while rescuers freed her.

The neighborhood was white with concrete dust. It must have been like 911.

When the quake was over, no one at church knew whether this man was alive or dead. He managed to hitch a ride to Miami on a military flight, and he arrived in the sanctuary without notice, much to everyone’s relief.

We work with Mission of Hope. They have a big campus outside Port au Prince. It was far enough to be spared significant damage. I suppose now it will be bursting with people who need help.

I don’t know all that much about our involvement, because I have never participated in it. I guess that will change. I don’t know what they’ll want me to do.

There are tons of good charities working on this. I doubt it matters which one you help, as long as they check out. If you want to find out about our organization, you can find it at this link.

I still don’t know what’s going on with their plan to put me to work in their cafe. I hope they follow through on their plan to get a pizza oven. I don’t know if it’s practical, though. I rarely eat anything more complicated than cheese pizza, but most people want a lot of toppings, and that makes the whole business much more complex and bothersome.

My flour education never stops. This weekend, I learned some people use flour made from durum wheat, which is the same stuff used to make coarse semolina. You can’t get fine semolina flour around here, as far as I know. Whole Foods doesn’t have it. I’d like to try it. I’ve also learned that Gordon Food Supply sells a brand of flour that’s very high in gluten. That would be fun to try, although if I don’t like it, I’m stuck with a huge bag of useless flour. I’m sure it would be great, but these days, I tend to lean toward low-gluten flour, and by that I mean 3 grams per “serving,” as defined on the label.

I had read that Caputo 00 flour was low in gluten, and I repeated it, but this weekend I found an “expert” website bearing a claim that 00 flour is actually high in gluten. I don’t know what to believe. I guess I could look for a Caputo label, online.

Man, I love the Internet. Apparently, it’s 11.5% gluten, which is high.

I had read that it was low in gluten, and that the things that made it special were its purity and the fineness of the grind, but apparently I was deceived. I don’t like it in pizza, so it doesn’t matter, but I don’t like being wrong, either.

You can get flour that’s 14% gluten. That must be interesting. Sometimes when I make pizza, I add gluten with a spoon, so it’s not like you’re limited to what you get in the bag. Gluten is easy to buy, and it beats working yourself to death trying to find the ultimate flour.

Costco cheese continues to exceed expectations. I have learned that a lot of the things I do to make pizza work are actually necessary only to compensate for bad cheese.

I put white vinegar in my sauce. It turns out the reason I need that is that most cheese has no flavor. With Costco cheese, I can reduce it or omit it. I also add olive oil to my sauce. I didn’t think it had much effect on the cheese, but it does. If I go over a tablespoon in two ounces (weighed as it comes from the can) of Super Dolce sauce, the oil rises up into the cheese and makes the pie too oily. This doesn’t happen with Gordon Food Supply Primo Gusto cheese, but it’s a problem with Costco mozzarella, so I have to drop the olive oil down to a teaspoon or two. It’s good to be able to reduce the olive oil, because the oil I have degrades the taste of the sauce a little. Oil oxidizes in the bottle before you buy it, and I think that gives the sauce a slight cardboard taste. Mike says the answer is lighter, cheaper olive oil, but if the olive oil is reduced, I don’t have to worry about it.

Someone advised me to add cheddar to my cheese. This pumps up the fat content and adds sourness, which you need. Works great with Primo Gusto, but there is no need to do it with Costco cheese. It might be nice to cut it with a good provolone or scamorza, however.

Mike advised me to underlay the mozzarella with grated Romano. Again, it depends on the mozzarella.

I’ve noticed that Costco cheese has a smoky smell. I was afraid I had gotten something on the bag, but it turns out the smell comes from the cheese. I guess it has a fragrance because it’s quality cheese.

I have read that Gordon Food Service will special-order Grande Cheese, but you have to buy a whole 30-pound case. I don’t think it’s worth it. I know it’s fantastic cheese, but things are going so well now, what’s the point?

I may run up to GFS and get more sauce to freeze. I plan to make more frozen dough portions. They don’t save time, because it takes a couple of hours to turn frozen dough into a pie. But they do minimize the mess and the work. If you can plan a meal three hours ahead, frozen dough will work for you. If you have to have pizza faster than that, because you can’t anticipate the need, forget it.

You’re better off planning ahead and freezing dough or refrigerating it for a day, because the flavor and texture will improve a little as the dough sits. If I could manage to make sourdough portions, I’d be in paradise. You can’t do that on the spur of the moment. Freezing and sourdough crust go together naturally. I should order some starter.

I could also freeze dough for garlic rolls, although I don’t know if I’d ever use it. A small pizza is a reasonable meal. It won’t make you fat. Add two garlic rolls, and you’re way over budget. Maybe on rare occasions I could fix myself three or four rolls, but it’s risky.

Freezing entire pizzas would be great, but you need a very big vacuum sealer. I don’t see it happening.

The major breakthrough that made all this possible was the decision to use the food processor to knead dough. If I had to use my hands or a mixer, I would never have been willing to make pizza often enough to learn anything. The food processor turns it into a three-minute job, from kneading the dough to putting the food processor parts in the dishwasher. The actual kneading is a little over a minute, and the dough is perfect.

Sooner or later I need to get my Sicilian working. I never found a steel pan I liked. Maybe the best thing is to use a big cast iron skillet. If I dedicate one to pizza, I’ll be able to develop a finish that will assure stick-free crusts. I can make excellent thick-crust pizzas just by using more dough in my regular recipe, but I like the pan-baked crusts they make in New York. They’re a little oily and very crunchy on the outside. My thick crusts are plain old pizza crusts. Wonderful, but not Sicilian. Ordinary pizza crust is like baked bread, which must be why you have to use a stone. A stone lets the crust dry as it bakes. Sicilian is sort of fried on the bottom.

This stuff never ends. But it’s okay. I remember a time when my pizza was disgusting. Now it’s always great; the only issue is whether it has the precise characteristics I imagine before I make it.

Beware of Imitations

This weather is cracking me up. People like me are only now finding out whether the 3s in the tens columns on their digital thermometers will display. Last night on the way home from church, my truck’s gauge read 39. The last time it read below 40, it was probably being driven onto a truck at the plant where it was manufactured.

I feel great this morning. The illness is lifting. I can breathe. And I probably slept ten hours, which doesn’t hurt. Viruses affect your brain chemistry. I’m sure of it. Sometimes I get depressed or tense when I have a virus. When they go away, you get a natural lift. Your normal state returns, and it seems like euphoria.

I was able to go to church last night. On the way, I started feeling God’s presence again, the way I did before I got sick. I felt him moving during the service and afterward, too. Man, I missed that. What an incredible gift. It amazes me that God saw fit to let me have that, because what I deserved was to be abandoned.

These days I spend half an hour praying in the Spirit before I get out of bed, and I have to admit, I sometimes turn on the tube for a few minutes while I’m doing it. Today I saw a popular preacher in a giant stadium, preaching about self-love. He said you should never insult yourself, because to do so is to insult God’s creation. You know the spiel.

I don’t disagree with messages involving positive thinking and behavioral change. My own pastor talks about these things a lot. But I wouldn’t stay in a church where that was the main thrust. It’s not what Christianity is about, and we aren’t the people to go to for this kind of instruction. Frankly, the Scientologists are probably the masters of positive thinking. If that’s all you want, go to the best.

As for self-love…I am not a fan. We now know that men in prison tend to have very high self-esteem. What does that tell you? It tells you self-esteem is not where growth comes from. In fact, it can prevent growth and cause you to become more evil. If you think you’re just dandy the second you pop out of the womb, why would you want to change?

Look at the Bible. Do we see example after example of God telling people, “Hey, stop beating yourself up. You’re WONDERFUL, just the way you are!” Of course not. Over and over, he knocks people to the ground and tells them to remember their place. Job. Paul. Various kings. Nebuchadnezzar. How long a list do you want? What was the first sin? Eating a piece of fruit? No, it was pride. Inappropriate self-love. Satan committed it.

If you’re a person with good values and good intentions, low self-esteem can be an obstacle. You should not hate yourself. You should not be crippled by the projection of your own self-loathing onto other people. But a certain amount of shame is essential. It’s the warning mechanism God built into your soul’s immune system. It tells you something is wrong. It brings people to altars. It causes us to change course when we’re headed for trouble. It keeps people humble.

The Bible makes it clear, and Christians teach, that God works best though humble people who seek his help constantly and give him credit. Moses and Jesus were humble, and God repeatedly reminds us that he is humble. What better role model could you want? How can anyone question the wisdom of aspiring to have a character trait possessed by God himself? If criticizing yourself is criticizing God’s work, criticizing humility is criticizing God.

What is humility? It’s an attitudinal expression of the knowledge that you are not perfect. What does “perfect” really mean? It didn’t originally mean “flawless.” It meant “complete” or “finished.” If you know you’re not a finished work, you will continue improving yourself. Isn’t that what we’re here for?

Paul had problems with pride, so what did God do? He allowed Paul to have an unpleasant disease (or some other painful problem) Paul referred to as a thorn in his flesh. I don’t enjoy being chastised with misfortune. If I can avoid it by criticizing myself and changing, I will do so, every time. With deep gratitude. I think I’ve been hammered and hindered for crediting myself too much. I don’t want that to continue until I’m 80, because I’m too thick-headed to get the message.

The self-love message is just one example of worldly thinking which can be useful, but which should not be part of Christianity’s primary emphasis. You don’t have to be a Christian to learn worldly wisdom. A Buddhist or a Mormon can teach you about discipline, organization, exercise, eating right…all the worldly wisdom you can imagine. Only a Christian can show you how to humble yourself, obtain eternal life, and receive the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Those are the important things. This is a supernatural faith. The changes God makes in us are, essentially, magical. We have to learn worldly wisdom, too, but it can’t come first. It can’t save you, any more than your own righteousness can get you into heaven.

The Bible tells us we receive power when we are baptized with the Holy Spirit. It says the Holy Spirit does two things for us. It changes our character by giving us the fruit of the Spirit. It changes our abilities by giving us the gifts of the Spirit. These are the things that make us like God. These are the things that make us powerful. This is what Jesus died for. He himself said it was better that he should die, so we could receive this. This is more important than looking in the mirror every day and giving yourself a Stuart Smalley talk. Positive thinking is a human effort. The power of the Holy Spirit is the work of God, in you. It’s better. That’s all there is to it.

This is what “grace” means. It means we receive things directly from God, and that they are things we can’t and don’t deserve. Salvation is the first gift. Then the other stuff comes along, if you know how to receive it.

Grace is the reason I’m not doomed to be a fat person any more. I was instantly delivered from overeating. It wasn’t even on my mind when it happened. God made the decision, and it happened without warning. Other people have been delivered from drug addiction, anger, covetousness…you name it. And it happens supernaturally; it’s not the result of hard work. If God took this deliverance away from me, I’d be as fat as ever in two months.

I think what happened to me may be an example of the fruit of the Spirit. One of the fruit is self-discipline. When it came to food, I never had any. Or at least I didn’t have enough. I always gave out after a certain amount of time, and then the fat came back. Now it just stays off. I picked up a couple of pounds while I was ill, because I was inactive and I spoiled myself and I had two holiday meals. But that weight is gone, as of today. I have a closetful of smaller pants I expect to be wearing in March.

The other day, reader Ed sent me a testimony from Norm Miller, the Chairman of the Board of Interstate Batteries. This man is an alcoholic. One morning, after he had been an alcoholic for a long time, he realized he needed God’s help. Here’s an excerpt:

At the very instant I realized I had become an alcoholic, I blurted out in a half-yell of desperation, “God, help me! I can’t handle it!” I’ll never forget those words, because He took the compulsion to drink away completely. It was over right then. I realize it doesn’t happen that way for everyone, but it did for me, and I’m eternally thankful. The weird thing is that if you’d asked me the day before if I believed in God, I would have told you that I didn’t know—that I hadn’t given much thought to it.

It’s wonderful if you can complete a 12-step program and force yourself to stay clean until you die. But what Norm Miller got is better, and he’s not the only one. This is what God wants us to have. It beats being a drunk with lots of self-esteem.

Worldly people have no faith in their ability to improve, so often, their answer is to tell you that you should be happy as you are. Fat is beautiful! Homosexuality is diversity! Having your genitals hacked off because of sexual confusion is a glorious breakthrough! A little screaming in a marriage is healthy! Falling off the wagon twice a year and losing your job is no big deal!

That’s no way to live. Never accept defeat. Don’t call surrender victory. If God is God, there is a way out, and it’s not something you achieve by trying hard. Look at the people Jesus healed. Did he tell the lady with the issue of blood to try real hard to stop bleeding? Did he tell the dead girl he raised she could get up if she just believed in herself? Please. Elijah didn’t incinerate any bulls, and Moses didn’t part the Red Sea. God did. When things are as they should be, God does the work.

I’m not saying you’ll overcome every problem you have (or that you won’t). But God’s supernatural power is for everyone. We are supposed to have it and use it. It will allow you to beat things you could never handle on your own.

I don’t need to go to church to hear about self-love and positive thinking. I can get that from any bookstore. It’s great stuff. But it’s not what Jesus died for. It’s not God’s great gift. It’s not the pearl of great price.

More and more, I feel myself changing. I see old problems melting away. The overeating thing happened instantly. Other things improve slowly but steadily. I could think positive all day and never have this happen to me. I knew all about positive thinking fifteen years ago. I can tell you which books work. Only God was able to put me on a permanent positive trend. The other stuff was like Band-Aids for hemophilia.

I’ll point out one other thing. God gives you favor, and he fights your supernatural and natural enemies. Will Scientology do that? Will Tony Robbins do that? Of course not. These things happen outside of you; changing your attitude has no effect on them. You need supernatural beings out there working to change things. God supplies them. He sent ravens to feed Elijah. Think positive right now and see how many ravens you can conjure up. He sent an army of angels to fight on David’s side. Tell yourself you’re beautiful and successful for a while, and see how many angels show up to kill your enemies. Probably not many.

Pray in the Spirit, pray with your understanding, fast, and walk by faith. That’s where the power is at. This other stuff has fleeting value. If you put your faith in it, it will only misdirect you and slow you down.

Bedeviled by Sean Connery’s Catchy Mantra

Here’s a near-paradox. I love sleep, but I hate rest.

I felt pretty cruddy when I got up today, so I decided to do two things: rest, and stay warm. I think it was a mistake to be active yesterday. And the hotter I get, the better I feel. Except for smelling and sticking to things.

What do you do when you rest? I hate lying around watching TV. I don’t have enough character to do something productive while I rest. This is one of those times when the Internet is actually good for something.

What can I blog about? Here’s something fun. I never, ever redeem my credit card points, and they keep expiring. The stuff you can buy with them is usually not very interesting, so I forget to redeem them, and I lose them.

This year I decided to redeem them for a Sears gift certificate and see what I could find. I decided to get a Fein Multimaster.

This is one of those tools no amateur buys for himself, because they’re insanely expensive for what you get. But when you have a pile of old credit card points and nothing else to do with them, putting them toward the price of a Multimaster seems almost justifiable. It beats not using the points at all.

I have no use for it, as far as I know. Detail sanding, I guess. Cutting things in awkward spaces. That’s about it. I think it’s one of those tools that come into play at random moments, when nothing else works. Like a Dremel.

Maybe I should go lie on my back and listen to religious CDs. I actually enjoy that. If you’ve never had an experience you considered supernatural, this kind of thing can be boring or silly, but when you’ve seen a few kooky things, it’s comforting to hear other people talk about their own manifestations.

What else can I do? No cooking. I’ve gained two pounds. Was it the holidays? Partly. Mainly, I’ve been eating too much because I feel sorry for myself. If I can’t do anything or go anywhere, I should at least be able to eat ice cream, right? That was my line of reasoning. But I am not willing to gain weight, so I had to quit.

I could practice sight-reading, which is like studying Harry Reid speeches while eating liver and waiting in line to have your driver’s license renewed. I’ve decided I’m going to do one of two things: learn to sight-read and give keyboards another chance, or give up the whole keyboard dream. A cousin of mine is married to a famous trombone virtuoso, and she suggested sight-reading as a way of compensating for my deteriorating musical memory. Can’t hurt to try. If I can make myself do it, I might at least be able to compose efficiently, even if I never become a good pianist. Composing was my original goal.

I’m working on improving my memory. I memorize scripture and I am fanatical in my efforts to get enough sleep. And I’m losing weight. I have this idea that being fat is bad for the brain. I’m also taking B1 again.

God gave me a big pile of gifts, and so far, my biggest achievement has been creating the world’s best cheesecake. I realize that’s a major feat which, on its own legs, justifies my elevation to sainthood. But I can’t help thinking I should be accomplishing more. “Cheesecake” makes for a short resume. I hear such beautiful music in my head; surely I was intended to write some of it down.

Christian music was great for a few years, but it seems to be in a slump. Some of the songs they play at my church are so monotonous, you wonder why anyone bothered paying for the copyright registration. If I wrote a song like that, I’d delete it from my hard drive without telling anyone. Christians ought to have quality music again. We don’t want to spend eternity busing performers in from hell whenever we have a party.

I could practice. Or I could go look at YTMND.com for six hours.

How Charismatic Christianity Looks From Inside

Today I got a comment from a longtime reader who is considering looking for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I thought I should write a few things, because I’m sure other people are curious.

There are a lot of people who claim the baptism and tongues are demonic. If that is the case, every believer in the New Testament who received the baptism was a demon-possessed heretic, because every Spirit-baptized believer in the New Testament spoke in tongues. Some spoke in earthly languages others recognized, for the purpose of glorifying God before potential converts, but others spoke words no one understood and which were never intended to be understood. This is clear from Paul’s writings.

If you don’t believe in charismatic Christianity but you read this blog and applaud the changes in my life, maybe you need to ask yourself why you’re enabling a heretic who may be on his way to hell. I have had the baptism for almost a quarter of a century, so if it’s a demon, he has had a long time to corrupt me and turn me into Satan’s tool. With that in mind, let me say this: BOO!

Prayer in tongues has been a big part of my life over the last couple of years. If you have been reading this blog for a long time, think about the difference between 2009 and 2005. Do I seem MORE evil now? Do I seem LESS free? Less happy? More tormented?

Please. If this is the devil’s doing, maybe he’s not such a bad guy. Surely you don’t believe that.

Back in the Eighties, I grew a lot in the Spirit. But I quit going to church, and I quit praying, both with my mind and in the Spirit. So I atrophied as a Christian. The result was a highly critical, angry person who wrote very funny but unproductive things. Over the last couple of years, I have spent more and more time praying in the Spirit, and I think the improvement in me is hard to miss. I did not do this myself. It offends me when people say I did, because whether they know it or not, they are tempting me to deny God. Christianity is not about changing yourself to make God happy. It’s about allowing God to change you. It’s 90% him and 10% you.

I don’t believe you will get a demon if you make a proper effort to get the Holy Ghost baptism. As I said in a comment, if Satan is powerful enough to do that to you, he is stronger than God. God requires us to do a lot of things, and he expects us to have a fair amount of knowledge, but every once in a while, you have to trust him and count on him to cut you a little slack. If you think he’s going to sit around and watch a demon jump into you while you beg in earnest for a gift that will help you serve him in humility and gratitude, I’m not sure why you think he would ever do anything good for you. What kind of God would he be, allowing himself to be tortured to death for us and then looking the other way as we filled ourselves with demons while begging for his help? Does that make sense to you?

You already have demons. Face it. If the Holy Spirit moves in, they will not get up and leave instantaneously. They will stay as long as they can and do whatever they can to hinder the Spirit. They may lead you to do stupid things while claiming the Holy Spirit is controlling you. This has happened to other Christians. It does not mean you got a demon at the moment of baptism.

A Spirit-filled believer is like Joshua and the Hebrews, just after they crossed into Israel. The land was full of heathen strongholds, just as a newly baptized believer has powerful spirits affecting his life. The Hebrews had to go forward, submitting to God and attacking the strongholds supernaturally as well as physically. You have to do the same thing. You are supposed to clear out every stronghold you can discern, leaving no room for a metaphorical Amalekite remnant to build back up, the way bacteria build back up in a wound that hasn’t been cleaned thoroughly. The more strongholds you break, the more you will resemble Jesus, both in power and in character. But you are going to make mistakes, and for some people, that means barking like a dog or even kicking another believer on stage and claiming God said it was okay.

As you progress, you will develop the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). This means you will have positive traits like self-control, kindness, patience, and love. You will develop the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, such as the ability to heal others or the ability to give with supernatural generosity, or the ability to learn hidden facts directly from God (1 Corinthians 12). You won’t get all of this stuff at once, and you won’t be like Superman, wandering around working miracle after miracle and reading people’s minds. But these things will begin to become apparent in your life. You need these things in order to succeed. The fruit of the Spirit will make you a good person in all respects; you can’t do this just by trying. The gifts will give you power when you need it.

Jesus walked in the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit. He worked no great miracles before he received the baptism of the Spirit. Afterward, he was different. He knew things about people, with no natural explanation. He healed people instantly. He walked on water. He had supernatural bravery. I know of no evidence that he prayed in tongues, but since the purpose of that gift is to build you up, I don’t see why he would have needed it. He was perfect. The rest of us are fixer-uppers, so we have tongues as one of the tools that help us grow.

If you want to see an obvious manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit, consider my problems with overeating. They’re gone. They disappeared in one day, along with some other behavioral problems. I’m sorry I don’t have something more dramatic to give you, but to me, this gift is priceless. No man on earth could have given me this. Not for a billion dollars. No one…NO one…has ever solved the problem of compulsive overeating. We cut people’s stomachs up. We suck fat out of them. We give them amphetamines. We put them on regimes that fail when their willpower gives out. But nobody can do what God did for me. It’s a completely legitimate miracle. I know it would be more impressive had I followed up by putting up a Youtube of me break-dancing on the surface of the swimming pool, but I have what I have, so make the most of it.

Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire, and she’s promoting a false messiah named Tolle, and she knows every diet guru on earth, and if that’s the best help she ever gets, she’s going to die overweight, not to mention single, childless, and unsatisfied. When a demon leaves, it tries to return, and if there isn’t a bigger, tougher spirit waiting to drive it back out, it will succeed (Matthew 3:23-28; Matthew 12:43-45). This is what the secular world calls “the Yo-Yo Effect,” and it defeats Oprah about once a year. If man had the answer to compulsive overeating, wouldn’t she be free by now? If not, how many more dollars does she need to spend? Millions aren’t enough. Will a trillion do it? Of course not.

My freedom cost me nothing.

As for spiritual gifts, I have seen at least two spirits, and I saw one of them very clearly, and I got a good long look at it. That is “discerning of spirits.” God has explained incomprehensible scriptures to me as I’ve read them; that happens every day (Acts 8:30-34). And I know I’ve received wisdom when I’ve asked for it. I wish I thought to pray for it more often! Wisdom is one of the gifts. I believe I’ve seen five of the nine spiritual gifts in my life. And I’m nothing special. Jesus said we would surpass him in our miraculous works; do you realize that? Look at the Bible and see (John 14:12).

I think I should add one more thing. The Spirit will help you get answers to prayer. One of the gifts is supernatural faith, and faith gets prayers answered. On top of that, a clean, righteous life will help get prayers answered. You’ll be more likely to ask for the right things, and you will be giving the enemy less power to oppose you. The enemy is like a rat or a roach. He feeds on the garbage we leave in ourselves, and he gains power from it. Remember the man Paul turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh? That was the result of bad behavior. God expressly approved of Satan’s efforts to harm that man, because the man needed the pain in order to be corrected. A better life means weaker enemies and more protection. See what I wrote about Joshua, above.

A month or two ago, I was driving along, praying about something, and a wave of faith hit me, and it was so strong, I grabbed the truck’s center console and held on, to keep from being blown over. The same thing happened to me again, while I was lying in bed. I dug my fingers into the mattress and clung to it like a climber trying to keep from being knocked off a mountain. Call me a heretic if you want. I think that’s a wonderful gift.

I have explained charismatic (or “Pentecostal”) Christianity as well as I could. Maybe I can’t make you want it, but perhaps after reading this you will at least be willing to tolerate it. At worst, you could spend some time praying God will free me from my heretic, white-trash, holy-rolling demons. I’ll take prayer no matter how it comes.

Ammo Stacks Make Nice Furniture for Profiteers

Outdoor Marksman has Federal 9mm ammunition for $11.95, if you buy a scant 20 boxes. Not too bad. To me, ten bucks a box is reasonable. We are getting closer to that point. Sellier & Bellot is down to $13 per box at Natchez Shooters Supplies.

It seems like commodities prices aren’t the problem. Copper is getting more expensive, in spite of the bad worldwide economy, but ammunition prices keep dropping. That leads me to suspect that profiteering is the big problem. Obama created an artificial ammunition market by threatening our Constitutional rights, and the people who make and sell ammunition may have been cheating us since it began.

I know there has been a lot of profiteering, because only a fool would believe there was any market justification for a $30 box of FMJ 9mm rounds or a $50 box of primers. But can it really be that greed is responsible for most of the price increases? People are basically evil, but ordinarily, they exhibit some restraint, especially when bad behavior offends their customers.

The folks who tried to corner the market seem to be starting to bleed. I see GP11 480-round battle packs selling on Gunbroker for $259. That’s only $30 above the market price. And a search of completed auctions shows GP11 is not selling. Great. I’m all about capitalism, but cheating people in a time of national upheaval is wrong.

Let’s see what else I can learn.

Hornady 17 HMR V-Max is failing to sell, at $10/50. That’s good news. That would have been an okay price before the Obama crisis.

I’m checking 9mm prices. The prices are a shock to the conscience, and I haven’t found one lot that has sold.

I’m checking 7.62x54mm 7N1, and apart from some sucker paying $285 for a case, it’s not selling.

Maybe the vultures are finally getting caught with excess inventory, as they deserve. Who on earth would pay $15 for Sellier & Bellot? This stuff is one step above throwing rocks. I’ve never had any problems with it, but it’s among the cheapest factory ammo around.

Gunbroker is such a ripoff. It’s virtually useless.

In other news, I had an interesting thought this week. I was thinking about the strange freedom God has given me from overeating, and about my church’s request that I get involved in making food for their cafe.

Back when I was working on my cookbook, I had extraordinary luck with recipes. It seemed like one dish after another was a startling success. I made some stupid things that didn’t work, but I had bizarre victories. For example, I made my coconut flan recipe up in one try, with very little experience to go on. I don’t like baked beans all that much, but I put together a recipe so good, I couldn’t quit eating them.

I got fat, especially after I got pizza under control. I could not stop making and eating delicious food. I couldn’t take the weight off.

Then God took away the compulsion to overeat, and the weight started coming off by itself. I can even resist pizza. And suddenly, my church needed help with their kitchen.

We always want God to give us stuff, and I’m sure he wants to do it. But would he be a good god if he gave us things that hurt us? Of course not. If I had been asked to work in the cafe before I got power over what I ate, it would have been a real problem. There is no way I would have been able to resist stuffing myself. But now I can go in there and cook anything they want, and I know I won’t get fat.

I got the blessing, and I was spared the danger inherent in getting what you wish for. That’s a big deal.

It makes me think about other things I’ve wanted, as well as things other people have wanted. I look at these things and see how they could cause harm if they were suddenly dumped on us.

I strongly suspect that God changes people, through the Holy Spirit and miracles as well as through work and scripture, so that when they get what they want, it will only bless them. I think God is cleaning me up so the good things I want can come my way, without making me rebellious or proud or ungrateful or fat.

We are told that he will give us the desires of our heart (Psalm 34), and that he only gives good gifts (Matthew).

I suppose, then, that if you want a thing, you have to want the power to avoid being harmed by it. If you want money or possessions, you have to want to be freed from greed and covetousness and selfishness. If you want power, you have to want compassion and generosity and gentleness. And if you want to cook for God, you have to want the ability to eat moderately. God doesn’t want to give us new idols or new masters. Doesn’t that sound plausible?

I’ve noticed that the less things control me, the more I enjoy them. I enjoy food a lot more, now that I’m not shoveling it down at every opportunity. I enjoy the things I own, now that they aren’t as exciting as they once were. I wonder what’s next.

The more you surrender, the more you win. That’s how it seems to work.

Maybe this is why many people who give to ministries and charities have little money. They overspend, they default on debts, they borrow at outrageous interest, and then they expect God to give them cash because they max out their credit cards to support missionaries and charities. How can God possibly repay them in kind, before he makes them fit vessels? Would you pour water into a reservoir with holes in it? And besides, what if these people gave money God never asked them to give, because they didn’t ask for his guidance? And if you give to a ministry while you cheat a creditor, whose money did you give? Not yours; that’s for sure. You stole from another person in order to give to God. Is he supposed to encourage that?

I think the charismatic “word of faith” crowd needs to think about these things. I don’t doubt that God wants to do stuff for us, but you shouldn’t ask him to be an enabler.

So once again, I have more to be grateful for than I realized. That’s the bottom line. If you can’t be grateful for discipline and instruction, you are utterly lost.

God Freaks me Out Again

I was supposed to have dinner with my dad and my sister tonight, but it did not work out, and I had no backup plan. I decided to make myself a small pizza. I was worried, because back in August, I experienced a miraculous delivery from the compulsion to overeat, and pizza is something I have never been able to eat in moderation.

I ate three pieces and threw the rest out. Didn’t feel a thing.

Don’t ever try to tell me God is not real or that he does not deliver people from their problems. This is incredible.

In other news, I am losing my touch. Less salt and oregano, next time. And Costco cheese. This Gordon Food Supply cheese is very good, but Costco mozzarella is pure magic.

Aftermath

I can’t move.

Let’s see if I can critique the meal.

The Showtime turkey was very good, but I found it dryer than a roasted turkey. I got the internal temperature up to 161°, and I knew that wasn’t enough, so I hit it with another half-hour. That came out to about 17 1/2 minutes per pound, which is way above the recommended time. Maybe I did something wrong. The skin was magnificent. It was very dark and loaded with browned-bird flavor. I’ll probably do my next turkey this way, even if it’s not perfect, because it frees up the oven for other things.

Mike told me the texture of a Showtime turkey would be way better than that of an oven turkey. The one I cooked today seemed like every other turkey I’ve roasted.

My dad loved the turkey, so I guess the rotisserie flavor offset the dryness.

I was not thrilled by the mashed potatoes. I tried the ricer again, even though I didn’t like it the first time I used it. I thought it gave the potatoes a heavy texture. I guess that could have been the microwave, though. The microwave makes very good baked potatoes (when I’m in too much of a hurry to do it right), so I don’t see why it would adversely affect mashed potatoes. I guess I could boil a test potato and then use the ricer to peel and moosh it up.

I ate way too much. I guess I can’t be a crusader against gluttony every day. I made a whole bunch of dishes, and a small serving of each would make for a big meal, so there wasn’t much I could do.

Marv and Maynard seem to be enjoying their share. You can always tell when Marv likes his food, because he buries his snout in it and grunts like a small pig.