Worse Than Fool’s Gold

Today I saw someone talking about creativity on the Internet. I get so sick of this. It’s always an uncreative person, talking about something he or she has not personally experienced.

People talk about creativity as though it’s the answer to all of life’s problems, and they have the insane idea that it can be taught. They even pay people to teach it.

I’m creative. I’m so creative, it’s a problem. That means I can speak with authority here. Creativity is nearly worthless. It generally does not bring success. In fact, it usually produces distractions and tends to keep you from pursuing your goals.

It’s fun to be able write music or throw great recipes together or write things that impress people. It’s fun to be able to throw out clever things in conversation. But this isn’t what puts money in people’s bank accounts. A small percentage of creative people get rich from their gifts. Most are ignored or put to work and cheated by noncreative people who spent their lives learning practical things.

Creativity makes people jealous. It annoys them. It makes them resent you. It causes them to scheme and plot to prevent you from succeeding, or to get the benefit of what your mind produces.

If you’re not creative now, you never will be. Accept it and be glad. I don’t care what some idiot motivational speaker told you at a seminar your employer forced you to attend. Maybe you got all excited because your horizons were expanded to the point where you considered wearing brown shoes with a blue suit, or maybe you decided to get really crazy and put mustard on your scrambled eggs. That’s about as far as you’re going to get, barring a brain transplant, and it’s not real creativity. True creativity means a constant bombardment with original ideas that seem to come from outside your mind. You can’t get that at a seminar.

Don’t try to be creative. Work on things like self-discipline instead. Develop skills that generate income. Learn good manners; they will take you far. And of course, get right with God and develop a strong prayer life. Walk by faith, with God’s favor.

Whatever you do, don’t listen to teachers who encourage your kids’ creativity. Can you imagine a creature that is less creative than a teacher? They live secure lives, doing the same thing over and over for decades. They have no idea what life is like for creative people. If your kid is a really good fingerpainter or whatever, tell him to do that as a hobby while he works at a bank.

It amazes me that employers force people to try to be creative. Nothing could possibly be worse for your career. The way to succeed, in a typical office environment, is to make yourself indispensable and develop a reputation for making your superiors look good. If you’re creative, you will unbalance the machine, and it will try to expel you.

Remember Jerry Maguire? That was a pretty realistic scenario. You have a moment of creativity and lucidity, you point out the systematic flaws in your company, and the next thing you know, you’re fired. Jerry would have been much better off keeping his mouth shut. In the movie, he started a new company, and everyone loved him. In real life, he would have ended up waiting tables. No athlete would have gone near him, and employers would have considered him poison.

I’m grateful to God for making me creative, but I envy people who are steady, disciplined, and dependable. They’re the ones who make it big. Van Gogh’s brother was a rich art dealer. Van Gogh himself died a one-eared suicide. Who would you rather be?

Get over the notion that creativity will save you. On the whole, it should probably be considered a disability.

To Kill the Tree, Poison the Roots

I’ll tell you what. It’s time to renew my decision to avoid sinking into the septic tank that is political discourse.

Things are heating up now, and the left has gone even crazier than it was to begin with. Their methods and words have become so vicious, it is now easy to believe that we could see things like concentration camps and killing fields in the United States.

The right, on the other hand, is having an internal battle. Do we acknowledge God and risk alienating gays, atheists, Jews, and other people who are put off by Christianity, or do we turn from God and rely on earthly tools? Suddenly, Republicans like Donald Trump, who is about as worldly as they come. Do we like him in spite of his worldliness? I don’t think so. I think we like him because of it. We look at him, and we say, “Here is a man who is highly capable and understands capitalism, and who is so able, he has a high likelihood of succeeding, and he won’t bother voters who find Jesus offensive.”

Of course, the problem with that is that there is no such thing as a man who succeeds in spite of God or without God’s help. We could elect Superman, and it wouldn’t matter, unless God backed him up. God uses foolish things (and people) to confound the wise. He is not all that interested in our earthly talents. We would be better off with a moderately capable Spirit-filled President than a genius who thinks he creates his own success.

The left hates everything about God except for the phrase “Judge not.” The right basically likes God, but we don’t want him coming in the house and disturbing our guests. We want him to wander around in the yard, blessing us and watching over us, but not freaking people out or telling them to quit sinning.

I get caught up in the nonsense a lot. I know high taxes are stupid. I know government handouts are stupid. I know we need a real immigration policy. I know we borrow too much. And I get upset about it. But these are not fundamental matters. When you focus on the economy or our debt or our immigration problems, you’re looking at symptoms. The diseases are pride and rebellion. That’s where the problems come from.

If you don’t attack the root, you don’t cut off the things on which the sickness feeds. You run around putting out fires, when you should be bulldozing the headquarters of the chief arsonist.

We don’t pray enough. We have no interest in a holy lifestyle, because sin is–let’s be honest–a blast. We don’t try to get close to God on an individual level and talk to him, because we’re afraid he might tell us to do things for him and change our lives for him. So we lack God’s guidance and power, and we lack the transforming energy of the Holy Spirit. And therefore, life stinks. It stinks for individuals, and it stinks for the USA.

Leftism is unquestionably Satanic. It’s all about human beings taking over for God. Doing what he would do, if he were real and politically enlightened. But that doesn’t matter. Attacking leftism is like putting an antibiotic on a sore without cleaning it out first. Leftism’s support is supernatural, and if we attack it supernaturally, it will fail. Fifteen minutes of daily prayer will do more good than five Tea Party rallies a week.

Look at the Bible. Moses showed up at the shore of the Red Sea, and God opened it for him. Elijah prayed, and it didn’t rain in Israel for months. God held the sun still for Joshua. Prayer is not a joke. It’s the most powerful thing we do, far and away. When we get caught up in slogans and verbal abuse, we waste time, we accomplish little, and we risk grieving the Holy Spirit, who is our link to all power.

With all this in mind, I am trying to avoid getting sucked into the mud wrestling arena. I don’t want to be a puppet any more. I want to be one of the puppeteers. God gives us that authority and that power, but not if we fool around with earthly tools. If you want to use a rounded-off screwdriver and a hammer with a broken handle, God will pull back and let you. I prefer God’s power tools.

Today I was reading John Bevere’s book, Extraordinary: The Life You’re Meant to Live. He talks about the power of faith. Old-time Christians like to tell us faith means suffering like a whipped dog and sticking with God even though we will always lose. As John notes, that’s not what faith is about. Jesus told us we could literally command mountains to be thrown into the sea, and John also reminds us that Jesus is not a liar. Faith is power. It’s the power God used to create suns and planets. It’s the only real power we have, and we have to learn to use it and rely on it.

I don’t plan to stand around at political rallies until November of 2012. I know that Christians have the power to bless and curse; I’ve seen it work. I just curse the careers of the politicians who are destroying this nation, and I pray for revival and intercession, so God will see fit to give us good leaders. I pray God will humble Americans and put an end to our spoiled, self-indulgent decadence. When I start messing with harsh words and silly Internet movements, I accomplish nearly nothing, and God does not have my back. The supernatural approach is the way to go.

I also pray for God to help secular, anti-Christian politicians accept Christ and get filled with the Spirit. I think it’s wrong to pray for anyone to fail, unless you also ask God to change them and help them succeed on his terms.

There is nothing wrong with cursing someone’s actions. People I respect do it. Jude said some people need to be put in fear. I have cursed lawsuits filed against me. I have cursed the things my enemies have tried to do to me. I have asked God to bring them failure and despair, and to take the evil they intended for me and give it to them, as the Psalms say he will.

Here is what Jude said: “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” It seems obvious to me that the part about fear applies to people who are too proud or depraved to be reached with kindness. I pray for God to knock such people flat on their rear ends, terrify them, and fill them with worry. I ask him to do this for me, and for their own good.

I forgive; I don’t take up earthly tools to fight people, and I don’t hold onto anger. I never take revenge. I ask God not to keep my enemies out of paradise or the kingdom of heaven because of the evil they do to me. I pray for God to change them and help them make peace with me and get free of his enmity. But forgiveness doesn’t mean you don’t ask God to oppose your persecutors here on earth. At least I don’t believe it does, because the Psalms are full of references to God hammering our enemies for us, usually with their own weapons. I believe forgiveness means you only fight your enemies in a constructive, supernatural, godly way. God humbles and afflicts people all the time, and I see nothing wrong with asking him to do this in our defense. Otherwise, we might as well go on and die, because we are defenseless here on earth.

If we’re defenseless, why does the Bible keep telling us God is our refuge? Why does it call him a fortress, over and over?

We have to start admitting that the Bible is not full of idle talk. My grandmother used to say my grandfather liked to talk just to hear his head rattle. God is not like that. His words are chosen for well-thought-out reasons, and they are true. It’s not just Middle Eastern puffery. God’s words tell us what he will do, and we have to learn to rely on them and take them seriously.

To become absorbed in worldly spats and tiffs is to believe that Jesus’s kingdom is of this world. Jesus did not come to save the entire world. The book of John makes that clear. He kindly chose certain individuals to become his flesh and to partake in his power and deliverance, and the rest of the world is on its own, no matter how pitiable things get. We should not be expending excessive time and energy trying to perfect civilization. We can’t do it, and God does not plan to help us. That may sound harsh, but it’s what the Bible says.

Modern clergymen who rewrite the Bible like to tell us all human beings are God’s children, and God never judges. All I can say is, I wish those things were true. I live with the rules God made, and I do not question them, because I realize the one who wrote them is perfect in every way.

I hope I can avoid sinking back into this mess. To say I have better things to do would not even scratch the surface.

History Will Call Him Snidley Becklash

Glenn Beck is turning out to be an embarrassment to conservatives! It’s unimaginable! It’s inconceivable! WHAT KIND OF FREAKISH CLAIRVOYANT COULD HAVE FORESEEN THIS?

*cough*

On my tombstone, I should put a long list of stuff I predicted publicly, to responses of catcalls and sneers. I said Pajamas Media would amount to nothing, and it would divide the Blogosphere. I said Arnold Schwarzenegger would turn out to be a black eye for the GOP. And I said Glenn Beck would turn out to be a major embarrassment.

Everyone said I was an idiot. Maybe I was, but 1) that’s irrelevant, 2) I was still right, and 3) all the loyal, right-thinking, team-spirit-oozing sheep were wrong.

Beck is plagiarizing, on a grand scale, as policy. He is earning millions, partly off of other people’s work, and he is actually having his staff exert extra effort to CONCEAL sources.

What on earth is wrong with him? Who even thinks like that? How can a person be that petty? It’s like a cheap soap opera villain. It’s so venal, its hard to believe it’s not fiction. It’s like someone modified his genes using material from Erica on All my Children.

The story I linked says Beck took a video shot by a blogger and EDITED OUT THE WATERMARK. Geez. Isn’t life hard enough for bloggers without conservative pundits actively sabotaging their work? We struggle to succeed, and we do the media’s work for them, and we fully accept the fact that we will not get the fame and money we deserve. We know they won’t help us (unless we look good in tight sweaters and have no original thoughts). But we don’t expect them to make a special effort to keep us in the dirt! This is like LeBron James, holding ghetto kids at gunpoint and stealing their basketballs. Earth to the famous: “succeed” just means “to do well”; you are not also required to prevent others from making it.

Neglect used to be considered sufficient. Now they’re proactively cheating us. What’s next? Are Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes going to go house to house, shooting bloggers in their beds? “Here’s a hollowpoint to the sternum, and then I’ll give you the last word.”

I am reminded of the movie Coma, where they gave people brain damage and then hung them up in a big warehouse, on life support, while they whittled parts out of them and sold them on the black market. I’m not saying bloggers have brain damage (I prefer not to address the issue), but even without that, the parallel is pretty accurate.

Honest to God, what’s the use of trying? Twelve or thirteen years ago, the lamest writer imaginable could (and often did) become a recognized megahit Internet pundit. The gold rush was on; all you had to do was stake a claim. The little guy had a chance. Now corporations operate websites they pretend are blogs, and they suck up all the traffic, and Glenn Beck is bringing up the rear, making absolutely sure the media leaves crumbs much to small for the other Whos’ mouses.

I guess the Tea Partiers have replaced bloggers. We used to be the grassroots, but Fox and the conservative “haves” have blasted us with Roundup and replaced us with artificial turf, like Red Eye and Malkin. Much like Rachel Marsden, we have been escorted off the premises by security, and the locks have been changed behind us, and Glenn Beck is making sorties out of the Green Zone to steal what little eclat we have left. If you want attention now, you have to go stand at a rally holding an AR15 and carrying a stupid sign, and if you really want to be noticed, make sure it’s misspelled.

I hope I don’t sound angry. I’m cracking up as I write this. It’s a Giraudoux play brought to life. It’s like Ionesco having a waking dream on national TV. I left this nonsense behind a couple of years ago; even Tantalus eventually gets a clue. But I can’t help remarking on it.

One of the funny things about growing older is that you come to understand how base human nature is, and then you are sentenced to see your conclusions confirmed over and over and over and over. It’s unbelievable. People are so venal, you just can’t hold the understanding of it in your mind. It’s so incredible, your left hemisphere will try to explain it away. “He’s not going to do that. Real human beings aren’t that shallow and predictable. It’s like something a character from the Simpsons would do. It’s impossible. It’s two-dimensional. AND NOW HE’S DOING IT. OH YES, HE’S DOING IT. I SAW IT COMING, AND SMOKE IS STILL COMING OUT OF MY EARS.” I feel like one of those Star Trek characters who burst into flame when Spock whispered puzzles into their ears.

You know what George Santayana should have said? “Those who learn from history are doomed to watch a whole bunch of idiots repeat it.”

I do stupid things, too, but it’s still funny watching the true masters of idiocy. To paraphrase Ty Webb, I don’t want to shortchange myself. When it comes to idiocy, I’m no slouch. But Darth Maul stands up and salutes when the Emperor walks by.

I believe supernatural forces run the world, and when I look at inexplicable successes like Glenn Beck, Obama’s Nobel, and Cher and Marissa Tomei’s Oscars, I assume they’re in play. They can make you succeed when you should fail, and they can keep you on top when you should go down in flames. Look at Qaddafi. So I won’t predict that Beck will take a huge career hit. But he should. Ordinarily, this would put an end to any career in journalism or academia.

I’m sure–I don’t have to check–that the success-worshiping sheep of the right wing are already defending Beck. We love circling the wagons and going down with the ship. Anyone who has made it must be God’s anointed. Anyone who criticizes deserves the same kind of treatment the herd gave famous malcontents and critics of the past. People like Socrates and Jesus. Troublemakers.

Mindlessly defend prominent conservative. Press lever. Receive food pellet. That’s how it works.

Here’s a prediction. Beck will get in trouble, but not as much trouble as Don Imus. Conservatives will all look like idiots, but not enough of them will care, so there will be no massive “Becklash.” Beck will be damaged, and he will never be quite as prominent as he is now, but he will still be a big player, and people will call his show (if he takes calls) and tell him he got in trouble because he was just too wonderful for this world.

And if his career gets in real trouble, maybe he’ll make another video about how he was almost killed by his hemorrhoids. I still can’t get over that.

Feminism = Recipe for Celibacy, Cats & Ice Cream

Today I caught a few minutes of He’s Just Not That Into You while I was eating lunch. MAN, is that movie on target. There is nothing sadder than a career girlfriend a few years away from menopause. If you’re over 35, you’ve never married, and you still get introduced as a girlfriend, you need to wake up. Your situation is not healthy. A middle-aged girlfriend is like a thirty-year-old man who rides a skateboard.

One of my college buddies lived with a girl until she was 38, and then I noticed she wasn’t around any more. I asked what had happened, and he said, “I MADE her LEAVE.” This is not a rare scenario. Men will let you waste your youth on them, especially if you’re on your best behavior because your life is a perpetual audition for marriage.

I actually laughed when he said he made his girlfriend leave, because she was annoying. I was an idiot. He helped her ruin her life. That’s not funny.

After that, he dated a stunning young Asian girl from a rich family. He was ecstatic. For all I know, he married her. I have a feeling his ex did not go on to date a stunning alpha male.

The other day I was talking to a friend from church, and I said I knew a lady I thought had potential, but she was so much younger than I, I felt it was inappropriate to do anything about it. Then he reminded me that if you expect to have kids, you pretty much have to get the woman started by the time she’s thirty. After that, things get much harder. So while I still feel that dating someone that young is a dubious idea, I now realize that a woman who doesn’t start husband-hunting when she’s twenty is taking a big chance.

As usual, the oldest wisdom is right, and the young punks are wrong.

Another thing the movie makes clear: if a man doesn’t want you today, he almost certainly never will. I’ve known women who thought I would come around if they refused to go away. It doesn’t work. Most of the time, you know instantly whether you could ever force yourself to have a romantic relationship with a woman. Sometimes it takes a month or two to figure it out. But once you know, you know. It won’t help if she loses weight. It won’t help if she does nice things for you. If she increases the amount of time she spends with you, it will probably make you take her for granted, and it may just creep you out. She should move on! The Bible says God pairs people up, and if that’s true, you’re slowing things down by trying to force a match.

Now I have to go outside and put another coat of paint on the screen for my tube amp head.

Far-Left Whitewash Brigade Smells the Kapitalist Coffee

Pride is a terrible thing. But I will indulge.

The news says Arianna Huffington is being sued by the people who write for her website. Apparently, one of them finally realized the obvious truth: they’re providing a valuable product for nothing!

Where are the Real Men of Genius people when you need them? Someone call the Nobel committee.

I was saying this back in 2005. I compared Arianna to Tom Sawyer. Remember the story? Aunt Polly made Tom whitewash her fence. Tom hated the work, so as kids walked by, he told them it was an exclusive gig, and that it was a great privilege to be involved. After a while, he had a whole bunch of envious morons doing the whitewashing for him.

I could draw other obvious comparisons, to creatures like tapeworms, but I’ll pass.

I think one reason Arianna got away with this for so long is that she was working with writers. Everyone cheats writers. It’s accepted practice. After all, writing isn’t work. If you’re a writer or artist or musician, people will say unbelievably stupid things to you. They’ll come up to you and say, “Could you come to my house and wait for the cable guy for three straight days? It’s not like you have a job.”

Mind you, it doesn’t matter what great services these people are providing for humanity in THEIR lynchpin-of-the-universe careers. The most mediocre, fungible person on earth thinks his job is more valid than Ernest Hemingway’s. Crazy. They should ask themselves why there is no Nobel Prize in Project Management or Sales or Kitchen Remodeling.

It’s funny; if you have no education, and you literally dig ditches for a living, no one questions your right to a paycheck. But if you go to Juilliard and then play local gigs for ten years and THEN manage to sell a few songs, everyone thinks you’re a parasite when you complain about MP3 theft.

It’s insane. I’m a lawyer, and when I work on a case, what I do is writing. I look at statutes and cases, and then I write my conclusions. I can charge $400 per hour for this, and no one will blink. But if I write a 10,000-word short story, people will think it’s okay to republish it word-for-word on their blogs. And which skill is rarer and more valuable? Lawyers are a dime a dozen. Writing talent is comparatively rare.

Royalties are not charity. If you use a person’s work, you owe them money. I’m not making an argument here. I’m not stating an opinion. I’m pointing out a fact. The law backs me up. You can be sued for stealing artistic works. People are rotting in jail for it. Open a restaurant and play music without paying for it, and BMI and ASCAP will come to your door and threaten you with lawsuits. And if they sue, they’ll win.

Trying to tell this to reasonable people is like talking to people with severe brain damage. “Okay, but if I buy the CD, and I COPY it, then I can give the copy to anyone I want, because I PAID for the CD.” No, Justice Cardozo, that is not how it works. You don’t get eternal, unlimited rights when you buy a book or an album. You get the right to personal use, with all sorts of limitations. If you burn a CD for a pal, you’re a thief.

It’s amazing how greed and stinginess warp the mind. It’s like addiction. Rationalization kicks in, and rationalization is one of the strongest things in the universe. “I can admit the truth, OR I can have 100,000 free songs on my Ipod.” The truth loses.

The public’s ignorant view of royalties is what leads to problems like the one Arianna is having. Even content providers–the writers themselves–start thinking their work is worthless. That’s why Arianna was able to get her site going in the first place. People thought they were lucky to be asked to work for nothing!

I had this happen to me a few years back. I wrote a piece that was picked up by Real Clear Politics. When they asked about republishing it, I was offended that they didn’t want to pay me. In the end, I gave up and let them use it. That was stupid. It did me no good whatsoever, and I was entitled to payment. They never bothered me again. So what? Do I need nonpaying jobs? Is there some hidden blessing in donating your work to other capitalist enterprises? Of course not.

People who don’t pay for content love to talk about “exposure.” If Vanity Fair or Time Magazine prints your piece, you shouldn’t ask for money, because you’re getting EXPOSURE!

Go to the grocery, fill your cart up with steaks, and tell the cashier you deserve them because you got EXPOSURE. Tell her to make a withdrawal from your EXPOSURE account. Folks, you can’t eat exposure. It won’t buy medicine for your kids. It won’t keep you from sleeping on a park bench in February. It’s worthless, unless it’s so huge it leads to bigger things. Being republished on a blog is not that kind of exposure.

Let me use my magical translating skills. “You’ll be getting EXPOSURE” really means, “I am cheap and greedy, and I think you’re an idiot.”

Here’s what my exposure on Real Clear Politics (and websites that have stolen my material) got me: nothing. It was flattering, but you can’t put flattery on bread and make a peanut butter and flattery sandwich.

When I ran Huffington’s Toast, I wanted everyone who wrote for it to make money. I wanted everyone to be credited for their work, so they would benefit from the thousands of hits we got every day. We were going to sell stuff. We were going to have ads. Most of the other writers wanted no part of it! One of them actually called me a filthy name because I wanted to run the site correctly.

These were supposedly conservative capitalists, yet they thought I was nuts for trying to run a business like a business. They didn’t want the public to know who wrote what. I don’t know what they expected to live on while the site generated no income and no one knew the names of the writers. The friction that developed over the disagreement is what killed the website. People just quit writing. If conservative writers can be this wrong, what hope is there for the rest of humanity?

I will note that none of us went on to greatness. Allahpundit, for all his talent, is still an obscure blogger. I managed to publish three books, and only one was even moderately successful, although becoming a religious nut and interrupting my promotion campaign played a big role there. Moxie and Jeff are history. Noel…I have have no idea what he’s up to. Aaron doesn’t even have a blog. This is the great victory our socialist ideals bought us! Comrades, I salute you! The folks at The Daily Kos should get a good belly laugh if they read this. We face-planted so beautifully.

We should have been the conservative Onion (only funny). Instead, we decided our work had no value, and in the end, the free market agreed, and I deleted the website. The Onion is on TV now, and it’s still not funny, but people are getting paid, because someone, somewhere realized that writing is a product.

I should have become what I was lampooning. I should have become Arianna. I should have accepted free work and made no effort to promote or credit anyone other than myself. Maybe I’d be getting sued now, but I’d be rich. Arianna will still be rich when this is over. A lawsuit is a small price to pay.

Of course, I don’t mean that. Losing yourself and becoming what you contemn is worse than failing at an enterprise. And every bad thing that has happened to me happened for a reason. God has swept in and picked me up, and things are better now than I could ever have imagined. If I had become the anti-Arianna, I wouldn’t have God’s powerful presence in my life every day. And I would be surrounded by a lot of sour, unfulfilled, grasping, treacherous people. I’m not referring to the other HT writers. I’m referring to political media figures, generally.

It’s funny; when I look back on this stuff, I temporarily forget how I’ve changed and how much I love life. I feel like I’m the same bitter person I was six years ago. But I’m not. So many wonderful things are happening to me. I trust happiness now. In the past, it was always a rug I knew would be pulled out from under me. I’m on a positive trend that will still be unfolding ten thousand years from now. The things I wanted back then were worthless and even poisonous. Thank God I didn’t get them.

Funny coincidence: yesterday I got a notification that the registration for huffingtonstoast.com was up for expiration. I kept it in my name so no one would try to rip it off. Now the corpse is beyond hope of resurrection, so I guess I can let it lapse.

Cabinet!

The amp is taking shape. It’s about 10 1/2″ long, in case you can’t judge.

I’m sorry I chose to form a chassis from sheet aluminum, because the aluminum is so flimsy. It will work fine in the plywood cabinet I’m building, but I think it would have been better to make the whole thing from wood. I am told the fire risk is pretty low with tubes this small, and I think it would be easier to fireproof the wood than it is to drill and bend a chassis with precision.

It’s funny; sometimes precision woodworking is easier than precision metalworking, but usually, it’s the other way around.

I’ve learned a few things about holes in thin materials. I stupidly figured I could cut nice holes in thin aluminum, using metal bits and Forstner bits. The Forstner holes aren’t too bad, but some of the metal-bit holes are triangular. No one will ever see them, but still. Another thing: I should have pre-punched the metal to keep the bits from wandering. Even on a drill press, bits roam.

Apparently, I should have used knockout punches. These are chisely sort of things that cut round holes in metal. They’re usually used on electrical boxes. I found an incredible tool while researching this. Harbor Freight sells them for $90. It’s a hydraulic pump that attaches to a device that pops holes out of metal. You drill a guide hole, attach a die to the metal and pump, pump the handle, and pop out holes up to 3″ in diameter, in steel up to 1/8″ thick. That’s astounding. And the reviews say the tool WORKS. Think of the hilarious pranks you could do with a tool like that.

I’ve also discovered step bits, and I bought a set of 4.

I’ve been using scrap wood to make the cabinet. I can see why Doug Stowe (the box guy) uses the table saw so much. If you can rout, resaw, and thickness on the table saw, you can save a ton of time and get extremely precise results. The only problem is that there are limits to the types of cuts you can do. And anyone who knows his stuff will realize instantly that you used the table saw.

I cut dadoes inside the plywood to hold the screen and wood panel, as well as the divider between the screen and panel. I also put dadoes in the top and bottom of the divider, which, itself, was created on the table saw. I plan to run a 1/4″ radius router around the whole box when it’s done.

Someone just suggested Tolex to cover it. Maybe I’ll do that. But the wood panel will be lacquer or solid paint. I’ll hose the screen with grill paint. I have to get the rust off somehow. Maybe naval jelly.

I don’t know how to install Tolex, or if it will work with this front panel. I guess I can look at my Fenders and see how it works.

I should be able to get this thing finished and running tomorrow. The speaker hasn’t arrived, but I can use my Super Champ as a cabinet.

This is so much easier than making guitars. I can’t even tell you.

Next amp: a submini I can put in the pocket of my cargo shorts.

Ps. 37:4!

More

Something I forgot to post: if you’re trying to fab an aluminum electronics chassis, don’t bother with the souped-up foil they sell at Home Depot. Buy a pizza pan for four bucks. It’s much more rigid, and it will make a fairly big chassis. You can find them at Gordon Food Service or other restaurant supply stores.

Self-Help Preachers Deliver Believers From Their Cash

All sorts of amazing things are happening in my life. All the things I started to suspect about the Holy Spirit about 20 years ago are turning out to be true, and I’m also learning that many conventional notions about God are wrong.

It can be frustrating, seeing things work for me and then being unable to convince other people to try them. But at least I’m getting mine! I would rather see everyone move forward, but if I can only help myself and a few others, I’m still doing something worthwhile. Fixing one life is a major achievement, and that’s especially obvious when that life is your own.

The Jews say that if you save a life, you save a nation. That’s a reference to the descendants who could have been erased. But when Christians interpret that saying, they take it a step further. We believe a person can have spiritual descendants who are not related to him genetically. We believe we are spiritual descendants of Abraham. I suppose if I help two or three people, they may go on to help a lot of others. So I should not be concerned.

Jesus managed to get through to 12 primary spiritual heirs, and then he added Saul of Tarsus. He did pretty well with that small group.

This morning I started thinking about the fatherless. Who are they? I’ve always taken this term to refer to people whose fathers have died. But is that right? I don’t think so. Biblically, it refers to something else.

Generally, human parents do a bad job. They don’t pass on useful knowledge or habits. They would rather watch TV and waste time in stupid, worthless, selfish pursuits than get involved with their kids. They don’t know who their children’s teachers are. They squander the money they should have passed on. They provide horrific examples. And the things we inherit from them–their legacies–are corrupt and disappointing. Some of the things we inherit are addictions and filthy character traits. Instead of being blessed by what they pass on, we may be poisoned.

Proverbs 13:22 says a good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children. But what does that mean? If you don’t pass on a big pile of money when you die, are you unrighteous? I don’t think so.

What is an inherited fortune? Is it money and possessions? Is this what you really want to inherit from your parents? It shouldn’t be the main focus. Because if you receive these things, without receiving the ability to make use of them, they will be a curse to you. You’ll lose your money. You’ll be surrounded by people who contemn you and take advantage of you. You’ll spend on things that bring you no advantage.

On the other hand, what if your parents raise you correctly? What if they put you in touch with God, teach you good habits, force you to become educated, and show you how to earn and handle money? What if they pack you with useful wisdom that blesses you every day of your life? You’ll be blessed all the time, regardless of what you possess at a given moment.

Miami is full of rich Cubans. Almost none of them were rich when they got to America. Many were rich in Cuba and lost everything when they left. How did they get it back? The answer is simple. They took their inheritances with them. Their real fortunes were inside them. They had the skills and knowledge and habits of successful people, so as soon as they got away from socialism, they began to succeed again. This is why charity is so frustrating. Take a thousand random people, separate them from their money, turn them loose in a foreign country, and in ten years, the poor ones and their kids will generally still be poor, and the rich ones will be rich again.

This explains what the word “inheritance” means to me, in Proverbs 13:22. It means things of lasting value, accumulated over time. If you have a real, lasting inheritance, the other things–money and possessions–will come to you in time.

This is the essence of conservative thought. Liberals think they love the poor because they throw other people’s confiscated money at them. Conservatives know that mindless charity is harmful. You may look righteous and feel wonderful about yourself when you give a bum twenty dollars, but then you’re not around to see him smoking the crack you bought for him. You don’t see the junkie aspirate the vomit you bought for him.

Conservatives know that the best thing you can do for a poor person is to motivate and empower him to care for himself. We know that money plus poor people equals more poor people, unless the money is spent correctly.

Christianity goes beyond mere conservatism. Spirit-filled Christians know that merely thinking about the best way to help the poor will not get us far. Only the Holy Spirit can tell us what to give and whom to give it to.

On Saturday, a bum waved a cup at me while I was driving. I don’t just look away from bums. That’s cowardly. I looked right at him and shook my head. He needed to know that his guilt trips weren’t fooling everyone. He needed to have that knowledge inside him after I drove away, so he would question his choices. Shame is the beginning of growth. It is spiritual penicillin.

Later in the day, I had an opportunity to help someone out, not just in the natural, but with prayer and practical, applicable knowledge concerning how to get blessed by God. When I shook my head at the guy with the cup (who was probably a drunk), it was done in public. The things I did for the other person were done privately. Only three people will ever know what I did. That’s how Christianity is. It’s not about grandstanding and winning approval. It’s not about singing in a charity video, which drives millions of people to your concerts and makes you even richer. It’s not about performing in a telethon and crying and hugging babies for the camera. It’s about doing what the Holy Spirit tells you to do, and counting on God to decide what the proper reward is.

Our parents raise us poorly. They don’t give us the tools we need to become blessed and stay blessed. Only God’s transforming power can keep us prosperous and happy. Parents can’t do it. They fail as a matter of course. So in a sense, we are all fatherless.

The Psalms say that when our mothers and fathers abandon us, God will take us up. They say he will guide us with his eye (this is a gift of the Spirit, which comes through prayer in tongues). They say he will deliver us from our enemies and teach us his ways. I now believe this is what God means when he says he will be a father to the fatherless. He has a magnificent inheritance prepared for every one of us, and we are supposed to receive a huge down payment right here on earth, but we can’t get it as long as we expect other people to take care of us, or as long as we expect to be able to take care of ourselves.

God gives advances. Read Paul’s writings, and you’ll see it. Think in terms of earnest money and down payments. The language is there, right in front of you. The fruit and the gifts of the Spirit are advances on the inheritances we will receive, in their fullness, in paradise. With them come earthly blessings like health, peace, and success. Jesus said we were to seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and that then the other things would be added to us. “Kingdom” refers to the gifts of the Spirit, which are God’s power. “Righteousness” refers to the fruit of the Spirit, which are God’s righteous nature. These things will come into us as we drink the “living water,” which means praying in tongues.

God is our GPS, and like GPS, he works through signals that originate outside us. If you don’t turn on the receiver, expect to keep driving in circles.

In my church, some people are getting this, and many are not. We are distracted by intinerant teachers who give great speeches but don’t know anything. We have a real problem with self-help gurus coming in, disguised as holy men. These guys come in and pump us up with positive thinking and material stolen from Werner Erhard and the Landmark Forum and Dr. Phil, and they try to tell us it’s Christianity. And we buy their expensive DVDs, books, and seminars.

They always give some stuff away, because that makes them look generous. Give away a nickel in order to make a dollar. But they sell, sell, sell. And we buy.

Real Christianity cannot be learned in a seminar. I think Tony Robbins is great, and you will probably get some benefit if you pay him money. You will probably benefit from any positive-thinking coach, to a limited extent. But Jesus is FREE, and his path is SIMPLE. You don’t need a ridiculous seminar. You don’t need to think positive. You don’t need stupid slogans. You don’t have to run around shouting, “My SINKING is caused by my THINKING,” or, “My bank account will RISE because my EYES are on the PRIZE,” or whatever.

I just made those up, by the way, so don’t bother Googling them. We hear things that are just as dumb, so I felt entitled to make up a couple on the fly.

Here’s how real Christianity works. Here is real power that will save you and your descendants and fill you with power. Admit you sin. Admit you can’t help yourself. Accept Jesus. Get baptized in water. Get baptized with the Holy Spirit. Then pray in tongues as much as you can stand, every day. THAT’S MY SEMINAR. I will not charge you a thousand dollars a day to sit in a smelly hotel ballroom and be emotionally abused by cynical “trainers.” I will not tell you you’re not allowed to get up and pee. I will not sell you a $2 DVD for $50. I will not torment you for four days and THEN TELL YOU THERE IS ANOTHER SEMINAR YOU HAVE TO TAKE, IF YOU REALLY, REALLY WANT TO MAKE JESUS HAPPY AND SEE YOUR WARTS FALL OFF.

I used to wonder if God would give me a ministry that would make me money. I wondered if that would be my job. But there’s just no way. Everything I know, I just gave away in six sentences. There’s nothing left to charge for! I’m totally serious! Take those six sentences and RUN! Don’t ever read this blog again, unless you feel like it. You know every truly useful thing I can teach you. Do what I say, and God will do the rest.

You want a Proverbs 13:22 inheritance? You want wisdom other people have accumulated over the courses of their lives? Here’s a juicy piece: anyone who calls himself a life coach or motivational speaker is almost certainly useless. The true goal of a life coach is not to help you change your life. The true goal is to CONVINCE YOU TO OVERPAY HIM FOR BAD ADVICE.

Take that to the bank. It’s gold. I will gladly repeat it while they’re lighting the wood to burn me at the stake.

You want proof? Pay a life coach thirty grand, attend his seminar, and then fail as a human being. See if he comes to help you, while you’re holding the razor to your wrists. Obviously, he won’t. Your misery will mean absolutely nothing to him, in the unlikely event he ever learns of it. He’ll be busy nailing other suckers. Now, pay a life coach thirty grand and then cancel the charge on your credit card. WOW, will he spring into action! Lawyers! Collection agencies! Credit bureaus! The works, baby! Where his treasure is, there his heart will be also!

Here’s what the con artists say: change your thinking, and you will change your circumstances. Here is what God says: “Not by power, nor by might, but by my SPIRIT.” Positive thinking never healed anyone of anything. It never raised a single dead person. It never got anyone God’s favor. Those things come through faith, and faith is not positive thinking. Faith is a supernatural belief that pours through you after you’ve been baptized with the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit himself, believing and letting you share in the sensation. It is not the same thing as ordinary belief.

Positive thinking just helps you to do better with your natural tools. Faith activates God’s supernatural tools. Positive thinking didn’t part the Red Sea. Supernatural forces did, in response to one man’s willingness to walk by faith.

If your parents blew it, forgive them. You shouldn’t have relied on them in the first place. At their very best, they could not have done what only God can do. God will be your father, for real. He will fix. He will repair. He will restore. He will be with you–inside you–moment by moment. God is all about the present and the future, so don’t glue yourself to the past and blame the people who let you down. Move on, as you were born to. This is the single best reason to forgive people. Living in resentment, bitterness, and unforgiveness is like trying to drive while looking out the rear window. Every good thing God has planned for you is in the other direction, and unlike the things behind you, they can be changed.

If you want to send me thirty grand, I would sure appreciate it. After all, I saved you airfare and a nasty hotel bill. But if you choose to be stingy instead, I forgive you. Mr. Holy; that’s me.

& Someone Slap Biff

Okay, here is my tube amp.

That’s a Firefly PCB I bought on Ebay. In retrospect, I wish I had used a generic PCB, so I could arrange stuff however I wanted. But this is much faster and less intimidating.

Here’s how it looked when I started.

Here it is a day or two later.

The white thing is a sheet of aluminum with a template glued to it with 3M spray adhesive. The Internet is amazing. I printed out a Firefly build guide and glued this page to the metal. After that, it was just a matter of drilling and cutting. As of this moment, the paper is off, the holes are drilled, the power cord hole has been cut, and the adhesive has been removed. It turns out the adhesive doesn’t REALLY come off all that well with denatured alcohol or acetone. Brake part cleaner is the way to go.

Cutting out the sheet on the table saw was pretty terrifying. Perhaps I need to rethink that method. You need fingers to play the guitar.

I’m already unhappy with this amp! It turns out you can make one that’s even less powerful. It’s called a “Murder One,” and the designer put the schematic on the web, so any idiot (not naming names here) can download it and make the amp.

The Murder One is about the size of a miniature cereal box, with a tube or two sticking out of the side. THAT is small.

I’m only starting to realize how badly most guitarists get ripped off. They go to Guitar Center and see 40-watt tube amps, and they think, “Man, is that the biggest I can afford?” Then they take them home and find out they’re so loud they can literally cause partial deafness. Not only that; they can’t make good sounds at comfortable sound levels. So people end up with big, expensive amps that are nearly useless in a home setting.

The market for small amps should be huge. Every guitarist needs one, except for those who are already deaf. I guess people are just too ignorant to want them. I certainly was.

I’ve read that you can drive two 4×12 speaker cabinets with one of these tiny amps. Can that possibly be right? The term “4×12” means four twelve-inch speakers.

I love working on this thing. It’s so much easier than building a guitar. Making electronic devices is not hard, if you have a schematic. Making the wooden parts is what sucks.

It should be up and running by Tuesday. I receive the remaining electronic parts tomorrow, and I should have the wooden stuff done sometime Monday. I’ll let you know how it works.

I am well on my way to becoming a mad scientist. I feel like I should build a guy with scissors for hands. Or a Delorean that will take me back to 1985, so I can somehow prevent Lady Gaga and American Idol from happening. Or maybe I could go back to 1975 and abort rap. And disco.

I’ll tell you how bad it is. I accidentally ordered two pineapple-sized 0.22mF Orange Drop capacitors for this thing, instead of 0.022mF. Looking through my capacitor collection, I found I had THREE spares. Same brand. Same everything. I thought I had failed to order 1N4007 diodes, so I looked through my diode drawer. Yes, I have a diode drawer. I managed to find a 1N4007 in there before realizing the new ones were in the stuff that’s coming Monday.

If civilization collapses, my garage will be a pretty good place to hole up. Unfortunately, it’s taken. And I have enough ammunition to create a very discouraging crescent of bodies around the doors. Not that I would do that. On account of I am all holy and whatnot.

Ps. 37:4!

I Know Very Little

Thought I’d update people on my musical progress.

I now have…I am too lazy to count…maybe six electric guitars? I got three Japanese jobs, which are very slick, quality items. I got my Chinese Epiphone Riviera P93. I got a Telecaster American Special. Plus my older instruments.

I got them all for different reasons. None were expensive. I planned to get myself a really sweet high-end guitar on January 8 (Elvis’s birthday), as a reward for studying for 6 months, and I got various affordable instruments to simulate the expensive guitars I was considering. The Japanese Les Pauls are sort of like Gibson Les Pauls. The Riviera and the Japanese ES335 clone are sort of like ES335s. You can see what I was trying to do.

I stuck a Stetsbar vibrato on the Telecaster. You’re not really supposed to do that, but you can imagine how much I care about tradition. The Stetsbar is made by an entrepreneur named Eric Stets. It’s very nice, but it doesn’t really fit a Telecaster without substantial grief. The bridge pickup hole presses against the pickup wires and shorts them out, and it prevents you from raising the pickup to the correct height. And you have to shim the neck to make it work, and the shim he provides is real garbage, so you have to make one, using your garage full of expensive woodworking machines. Which you probably don’t have, but I do.

I had to put the Stetsbar on my milling machine and hollow out an area on the underside to provide clearance for the pickup wires. How many people, realistically, are going to be able to get something like that done? Finding a machine shop is a real pain for most people. For me, it amounted to walking five feet across the garage.

Now it fits, but I would not recommend it to anyone else. Unless you know me or someone like me, you may have serious problems putting one of these on a Telecaster. Hopefully the manufacturer will find the time to make the needed changes. Everyone gives the vibrato rave reviews, so it appears to be worth the effort.

I have not completed my walnut Telecaster clone. I got to the point where it was nearly ready to finish, and and there was a problem with the grain matching where I redid the neck pocket, so I procrastinated for months instead of deciding what to do. I promise I’ll get it done.

My History Les Paul clone sat idle for a long time, because I could not get the Harmonic Designs Z90 pickups to work. For some reason, the bridge pickup gave me a resistance figure of 0Ω, which was something like 10,000Ω short. In other words, a short. I got them to agree to look at it, but before I packed it up to send it in, I checked the resistance, and it was back to normal. So I must have caused the problem. Now it’s installed, along with big American potentiometers and Orange Drop capacitors. The neck pickup is really nice. The bridge pickup is not quite as wonderful, but that may just reflect my love of neck pickup sounds. The guitar looks magnificent. I bought tortoise-shell pickup covers, which have a pretty severe pimp quotient.

I stuck Pearly Gates humbuckers on my ES335 clone. Very nice. I think I have the action a little too low, however. That can adversely affect the sound. Seems a little thin at the bridge.

The surprising winner, out of all the instruments, is the Epiphone Riviera. If you like the blues, BUY one of these things. Don’t fool around. Just buy it. Make sure you get one that has a good neck and no major QC problems. Then put Lollar P90s on it, and change the tone capacitor. You won’t believe the sounds that will come out of it. Just beautiful.

You’ll have to learn how to work the knobs and switch. This thing has three pickups, which seems like a dumb idea, but it works. To isolate the end pickups, you have to turn the middle volume down to zero. To isolate the middle pickup, turn the end pickups down. The selector switch will not mute the middle pickup, so you have to do it with the knobs. Once you get this straight, the guitar starts to make sense.

I’m taking lessons now, from a guy at church. He’s one of the Armorbearers. He’s a fantastic blues guitarist and vocalist. Just a blast to listen to. I took the ES335 clone to him, and he liked it a lot. Keep in mind: this is a top-quality instrument, put together better than a Gibson. A week later, I let him try the $500 Chinese Epiphone, and he said it was better. I have to agree. It plays a little easier, and the tones are sweeter. All told, I have about $1000 in it, which isn’t bad for a semihollow with a Bigsby, three boutique pickups, and a great SKB case.

I have a pile of amps. I got a Vox AC4TV with a 1/4-watt setting, figuring it would be good for low level play. It’s not bad, but it’s not phenomenal. I also tried a Bugera V5, which attenuates to 1/10 watt. Again, nice, but not amazing. At the moment, I really like my Blues Jr. and my Super Champ XD. Between the two, I’d probably keep the Super Champ. It’s easier to work with at low levels, and it has built-in effects which are useful when you have to go somewhere and you don’t want to carry pedals. But the Blues Jr. is also very good.

My lesson guy wants to build amps. I told him about my insane tool collection, and we made a decision. Free lessons for me; free tool access for him. We’re going to try to build a Super Reverb clone, if he ever gets around to buying the parts. It won’t be very hard. It’s just soldering and turning screws. You don’t have to build anything from scratch.

As preparation, I’ve decided to build a Firefly amp. This is a well-known DIY design. It puts out less than a watt, without attenuation. I’m hoping it will give me improved sound at low levels. I’m going to put a crappy, insensitive 12″ Weber speaker on it. The description on the Weber site gives me hope that this speaker will strain the amp and improve the sound, and that it will have the kind of coarse sound a blues amp should have. If not, it will still be fun to put together. The only hard part (far as I know) is building the external cabinet, and I’ve already designed it and roughed out the wood. I want to use a separate cabinet so I can take the Firefly head with me and use it on different cabinets.

The junk to make the amp is on order. I hope to have the cabinet basically finished before anything arrives.

Zach (lesson guy) has me working on F scales, which will make my left hand work better. The scales have all sorts of hideous stretches in them. My finger joints are actually sore these days. I hope this stuff works out.

On the music side, I’m practicing “I Know a Little” every day. Steve Gaines was an incredible guitarist, and the intro to this song is murder. I thought I would never get it. He plays at 220 beats per second, and the moves would take some effort at a third of that speed. I’ve been pounding on it for weeks. I think most people would have given up by now, but I remember two things. First, I went back to school at age 30 and got a physics degree, after failing math in high school. That makes almost anything look easy. Second, when I learned to flatpick, I was convinced it would never work, because after several months, I still could not do it. Then it came together, showing me that the body and brain can develop brand new abilities over time. Flatpicking is a totally unnatural activity. It took me about 6 months to grow the right neurons or whatever. Fretting works the same way, so I know I’ll eventually overcome the left-hand challenges in this song.

I have changed the way I hold the pick twice, which means I’ve done it three different ways. This is irritating, because every time I change it, I have to get new muscles to work, and I have to get the brain connections going. But I think it was necessary. I played for years, not realizing I was making very dumb ergonomic choices.

I’ve also tried different picks. I started out with the rubbery black and grey nylon Dunlop picks I used for bluegrass, and I’ve tried other things. I bought some stubby Dunlop jazz picks, decided they were worthless, and gave them to Zach. He went off to college, returned after a number of months, and came back and thanked me for the great picks. Naturally, I had to try them again, and it turned out they were very well-suited to my new way of holding the pick, and to playing fast passages like the ones in the Skynyrd tune. Live and learn.

I keep trying new picks. This week I received some Greg Koch instructional DVDs, and I noticed he was using a giant triangular pick. This guy can REALLY play, so I dug through my mountain of unused picks and got out a hard green Dunlop triangle. Sure enough, it works. Don’t ask me to explain this, but it’s just as fast as the tiny stubby pick, but it’s much, much easier to hang onto, so my hand feels more relaxed, and I get more “swing” in the music. I have other picks which are physically much more like the little pick, but the huge Dunlop is the only one that gives similar performance. Weird.

For SRV tone, Koch uses a Super Reverb with a Tube Screamer and a Clyde pedal. The tone is perfect. That got me thinking about my Tube Screamer, which I had given up on, and I started rooting around the web. I learned something strange. To get SRV-type grit, you turn up the volume and turn down the drive. Isn’t THAT special? What could be more irritating than finding out the knobs don’t do what their names say they do? I started turning up the volume on my distortion and overdrive pedals, and now I’m in a whole new world of tone. Even my Pork Loin is doing great things.

Tonight I got the Epiphone out and fired up the Super Champ. I used the big green pick and various pedals, and I worked on “I Know a Little.” The picking started to work correctly. The swing kicked in. Finally, I got some expression into it. And I was even able to throw in some filler notes to make me happy. I started to realize this was eventually going to work, and that it wouldn’t be long. I began hearing wonderful variations in my head. I just have to keep working on sight-reading, so I can write this stuff down.

I’m trying to avoid working on my only other tune, “Tube Snake Boogie.” I just don’t like working on a song about cheap sex. I had a breakthrough tonight, so I guess I’ll be able to put that song behind me and replace it.

I keep finding myself thrown together with musicians at church. I’ve gotten to know the two main guitarists pretty well, and I do what I can for them. They give me a lot of great tips. Zach is an Armorbearer, and he’s also a fan of my pizza. One of the other Armorbearers plays twelve instruments and writes arrangements. He’s supposed to be a brutal talent. I talked to him the other day about his future, and about the frustration of putting up with bad Christian music, and I suggested he and some of the people he knows come to my house to work on music. I have a big piano, five guitar amps, and a big living room. And my dad would love to meet some good musicians. So we’re planning to do that. We have a world-class vocalist. Guy from Haiti. Maybe we can drag him into this. I keep telling him he’s going to be famous. He’s so humble, I’m afraid he’ll underestimate his gift and end up doing something else with his life.

So to recap, I’ll be making guitars in the garage. The guys will be jamming and writing music in the living room. And Zach and I are going to build an amp. Crazy.

Psalm 34 says God gives us the desires of my heart. My dream has always been to make music. I know that sounds wrong, to anyone who thinks of me as a writer or a cook, but those are my second and third choices. And building things I design has also been one of my dreams. I wonder where God is going to go with this.

He definitely knocked a bunch of frustrating barriers out of my way. I have the right instrument. I have the time and wherewithal and tools to do the things I want to do. I even learned which pick to use and how to hold it. The little bricks are arranging themselves into a coherent structure. I could not have done that on my own.

I have a feeling things are going to start moving for me in a little over two weeks. I’ll be passing a major milestone in my life, and for reasons I don’t want to go into here, I think it will be a pivotal time. Things are being cleared out of my way. I believe real progress is going to start toward the end of the month. I’m just mentioning it here so that if I talk about it after it happens, no one will be able to accuse me of faking a prediction. Not that it’s a prediction. Just a strong hunch, based on certain facts.

Forget Wind Farms; This is the Real Thing

I want to thank everybody who commented on the last piece I wrote. It shocks me to learn that God has managed to impact people through this site. It’s very encouraging, and it makes me feel that my effort has not been wasted, even with the drastic dropoff in traffic.

It’s funny; whenever I mention my lack of enthusiasm for blogging, people seem to get the idea that I’m threatening to quit. I don’t have any reason to quit, and the piece wasn’t about quitting. Maintaining this site at the present pace requires virtually no effort, and the hosting bill is paid, so I have no plans to disappear.

All sorts of stuff is happening in my life. It’s hard to decide what to write about.

Here’s something good. Maybe from a selfish standpoint, this is the most important thing that has happened. I think I now walk in the spiritual gift of joy.

As readers know, I am a big Holy Spirit man. I don’t believe human effort amounts to much. Human beings can’t even diet successfully, yet somehow, we think we create our success and our blessings. Does that make sense? I think it’s stupid. I believe every good thing–every breath–comes from God’s generosity. I think we are powerless to affect our circumstances in meaningful, lasting ways. I believe that only the transforming power of the Holy Spirit can improve us. And I think this comes through the baptism with the Spirit and prayer in tongues.

In the first letter to Timothy, Paul said, “For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” He was talking about self-denial and hard work. He was talking about the things we do for God in our own strength. And he didn’t say these things were “pretty important” or even “a little less important than prayer and faith.” He said they profited little. He used a word meaning something like “puny” or “disesteemed.”

Think about that. “Puny”! That’s you, driving the church bus for 20 years. That’s you, swearing off all forms of alcohol. That’s you, becoming a nun or a priest and giving up normal, healthy sexual activity. That’s you, making a ridiculous pilgrimage on your bloodied knees, carrying a cross you made in your garage. This is what your extraordinary effort and self-sacrifice amount to, when they’re not initiated by the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, Paul could cure someone of cancer and lead him to eternal life by obediently handing him a handkerchief.

Seriously, think about it. What do you think God prefers? The hard work you do after trying to GUESS what he wants, or the easy jobs you do after you wait for him to guide you?

Mainstream Pharisees–oops, I meant “Christians”–will never agree with me on this. People love to punish themselves. They love to feel cleansed by suffering. They love to think they earned God’s forgiveness, and that they’ve obligated him through their wondrous works. And they like doing what they want to do for God, instead of the scary things he might tell them to do, if they listened!

They hate to give that stuff up. The sad (he said facetiously) truth is, that stuff is all “dung,” to use Paul’s expression. Worthless. You can’t earn anything. You are a welfare recipient. God owes you nothing, nothing, NOTHING. You will never be able to make up for the evil you’ve done, and you will never be able to stand in God’s presence without shame. Not in this lifetime.

The up side of this is that good things come from shame. We give shame a bad rap, but it’s really a blessing. It gives you perspective. It helps you not to get carried away by your own super-amazing holiness. It reminds you where you came from. It keeps gratitude and humility alive in you. Never criticize shame. It’s like criticizing penicillin.

Anyway, I keep seeing my understanding of the Holy Spirit and tongues confirmed. Now that I think about it, I have never seen it disproven in even the smallest way. I get confirmation after confirmation. I believe that the more you pray in tongues, the more God makes you similar to him, if you are willing to be changed. Part of the change is the fruit of the Spirit, and one of the fruit is the gift of joy.

I don’t think “joy” refers to bizarre religious ecstasy of the type that leads to you becoming the inspiration for gaudy concrete statues people put on their lawns. I don’t think it means you stand around with your hands spread out, staring at heaven with goofy look on your face. I think it means you feel like you’re winning. You have energy. You have gratitude. You have positive expectations which flow from a supernatural source inside you. You constantly sense the too-wonderful things God is doing for you. And this makes you strong. Like Nehemiah said (or like Ezra said, depending on who wrote the book), the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Let’s see what the Greek says. In Galatians 5:22, it’s something the Greeks call “chara,” and it is defined as something like cheerfulness, or being calmly happy or well-off. In Nehemiah 8:10, the Hebrew word is “chedvah,” which means “gladness” or “rejoicing.” This works for me. When I feel what I believe to be supernatural joy, I feel calm and assured, and I feel that the reason for the joy is God’s generosity. In other words, I feel sure God is at work doing great things for me. That makes me “well-off.” Therefore I have the sensation of rejoicing. The word “rejoice” is like “celebrate.” It suggests happiness that comes after something good occurs. That’s what I feel. It’s a reaction. I react to the good things God has done for me, and the good things my faith says he is DOING for me (and for others).

I feel this a lot of the time. I highly recommend it. It’s much better than caffeine, cocaine, Ritalin, or even (this is high praise) a good steak followed by cheesecake. It’s better than the hypomania I used to feel as a result of my peculiar brain chemistry.

I have often said that I believed drug abuse was a sad effort to fake the sensations God wants to put in us supernaturally, and now I believe it more than ever. I’ve tried antidepressants. I’ve tried alcohol. I’ve had those wonderful pills dentists give people after they pull their wisdom teeth. This is better, and it doesn’t come with a crash or a rebound. It’s like a stock market average that keeps going UP and UP and UP. It’s clean. It’s safe. It’s beneficial. It’s hypoallergenic, gluten-free, low in carbon emissions, and organic. It IS addictive, but that turns out to be a plus.

When you read the Bible, you see some pretty ridiculous examples of happy behavior. For example, Paul and Silas got flogged, which is a horrible, bloody, scarring torture, and then they were thrown in a filthy jail. Instead of venting and whining, which is what I would have done, they started singing and praising God, even staying up late to do it. And then God released them from jail, and the jailer and his house got saved, and everybody REJOICED. They must have been nuts. When I see things like this, the only explanation that makes sense to me is the supernatural gift of joy.

To most people, joy is…well, let’s be real. To many people, joy is a rumor. Something they will never experience. Everyone experiences misery, but not everyone knows joy. Anyway, to people who occasionally have happiness, joy is generally linked to circumstances. You land a great job. You find someone to have sex with on a given night. You manage to get a high enough credit limit to charge a $2000 Chanel purse. Stupid things like that. To a Spirit-filled Christian, joy is different. It wells up inside you. It isn’t external circumstances, reaching inside you and transforming you. It’s your Spirit-given understanding of your circumstances, seemingly reaching out from inside you and transforming THEM.

Our perception of the world around us changes because of the work of the Spirit within us. We know that all things work together for our good, regardless of how they look at a given instant. And the scripture that confirms this is about prayer in tongues! See for yourself! Some preacher on TV or a disk pointed this out to me the other night. It’s in Romans 8:

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

We are to be conformed to the image of Jesus. How do we do that? By gaining his power and his character or righteousness. What is his power? The gifts of the Spirit. What is his character? The fruit of the Spirit. How do we get these things? Prayer in tongues! “The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us.” Incidentally, the Spirit is actually a “he,” not an “it,” but still. We are the little brothers and sisters of Jesus, and we are expected to grow to be like him, and tongues make this happen.

The older I get, the better I feel. Life gets better and better and better, and it won’t even stop when I die. Good things keep happening to me. My enemies can’t get at me, because as a member of God’s team, I now have reason to expect to be defended. My dreams are coming true. I’m not swimming in oatmeal any more. Life is no longer one step forward followed by five steps back.

I don’t understand non-charismatics who claim to be full of joy, just because they’re forgiven and somewhat cleaned up. I am suspicious of them, truthfully. I think sometimes Christians exaggerate their happiness. They feel like they SHOULD be happy, so they pretend. Maybe they think that admitting they’re not happy is insulting to God. Or they feel that they have to claim to be happy, in order for their faith to bring them happiness. I don’t know how other people feel, or whether their joy is real, but I know I’m telling the truth. I believe this is a supernatural gift, so I am here to testify. See if it works for you.

You Can’t Make Your Own Waves

I’m amazed that anyone still comes here to read this blog. I rarely show up these days. I keep in touch with my church friends via Facebook, and I have had to take up texting and Twittering, but I don’t have a lot of time for blogging, and aside from that, blogging died in 2005.

If you want to understand how dead blogging and personal websites are, start a forum and try to get people to show up. I started one for the armorbearers at my church, and even when the leaders push, getting people to log in is like pulling teeth. And we really need it! It’s not for fooling around. We use it for scheduling and so on. So it’s not like they don’t have motivation.

Personal sites are dead. Texting has taken over. People used to sit around glued to the TV all day. Then they sat around glued to the Internet. Now they walk around staring at their phones, ignoring everyone around them. I have predicted that someone will eventually invent a device that plugs into the brain, and after that, we’ll just lie on our sides, drooling.

Last night I dreamed that a reader named Chang (I think) emailed me and begged me to keep blogging, because the religious stuff was helping him. I don’t know nobody named Chang. Some other reader wrote, too. That made me feel like writing today.

I got an email (real, not dream) from a reader saying that my writing on Christianity speaks to him, and that it makes Christianity seem logical. He asked for more input. That’s sobering. I hope I’m not writing anything stupid or dangerous.

I am not a Bible scholar. What I am is a witness. I feel I’m on solid ground with my accounts of what has happened to me, because testimony, unlike teaching, can’t be wrong. If you personally observe something, it happened. I know the things I say are happening really are happening. As to whether I’m right on the interpretation, all I can say is, God answers prayer, and you should ask him to tell you.

I don’t believe God can be analyzed with the unaided mind. Ninety or so generations of Jews have tried. Jews are the most scholarly people on earth. If they can’t do it, what chance do you have? Seems stupid to try, or at least to claim success. The Bible tells us its truths are discerned spiritually. That tells me that the Holy Spirit explains the Bible to us, and that the mind’s role is to understand and retain the explanation. The mind is the student, not the teacher.

This comports with my experience. When I read the Bible now (as a Spirit-filled person who prays in tongues a great deal), stuff jumps out at me, and I see how it connects to other parts of the Bible. I’m a smart guy; no doubt about it. But that’s not where this understanding comes from. It’s handed to me, free of charge. I can’t take any credit. If I were stupid, I would still receive this understanding (see Isaiah 35).

I believe God wants to prevent us from thinking we figured these things out for ourselves, and that’s why he gives it to us instead of letting us puzzle it out with our little monkey-like brains. God gives alms, not salaries. A salary is something to which your work entitles you. God gives us things on which we have no claim. Through the sacrifice of Jesus, he discounted these things tremendously, to the point where they are nearly free. To get them, you accept the covenant, and you focus primarily on spiritual matters. God handles the material concerns. You have to make an effort, but if you’re working really hard, something is wrong.

Capitalism is right for earth. Governments belong to man and Satan, and all systems other than capitalism give man and Satan too much power, and they limit the exercise of free will, which is essential to God’s plan. But the kingdom of heaven is socialist. I would go beyond that. I’d say “kingdom” is a well-chosen word, because in the kingdom of heaven, everything belongs to the king. It’s a welfare state run by a monarch. God owes you absolutely nothing, even though he created you, and you can’t earn anything. The fact that he created you does not make you his child. What you deserve is the absence of God’s blessings. But he rewards faith (not need or self-justifying works) and gives us things we could never earn.

Earthly socialism limits free will and therefore virtue. When you have to do a thing, there is no virtue in doing it. And under earthly socialism, the rulers are stupid and misguided, so when they direct our actions, they tell us to do things that are sinful or just wrong. In the kingdom of heaven, God allows free will, and he makes all the major decisions, so they’re always right. Usually, it’s hard to believe how right they are. So God’s system doesn’t have the problems the earthly imitations have.

I believe we are to be filled with the Spirit, and that we are to live by faith. We do things for God, and he rewards us, but when you do a thing because of faith, it’s not purely “works.” It’s faith expressed in action. The faith, not the action it produced, is what God really rewards. On the other hand, if you do something that seems good, but God isn’t behind it, you get nothing, or punishment. Sometimes killing a man pleases God, and sometimes feeding the poor makes him angry. You have to be hooked up to the Holy Spirit in order to know what to do at a given moment. You have to progress from the general to the specific.

This shows why mainstream churches are so awful. They took all the “be nice” material in the Bible and made it law, regardless of the circumstances, and they took out all the chastisement, punishment, and sin. They think Jesus was a really nice gay man, just like Buddha, who showed people they would get eternal life if they were warm, loving, pacificst blobs of Jell-O, who never criticized or even acknowledged the existence of sin or hell.

Jesus was not that nice. The Bible says he will personally show up on earth and make his garment red with the blood of his human enemies. Jesus told the ancient Hebrews to slaughter women and children. Jesus told the disciples to carry arms, and he let Peter cut a man’s ear off (a symbolic act which had purpose), even though he discouraged him from further violence. The Holy Spirit (whose will is in line with that of Jesus) killed Ananias and Sapphira for lying. Jesus told us about the horrors of the Tribulation, in which he would participate. Jesus told us hell existed, and that it was a place of suffering. If hell exists, he created it.

And Jesus was not gay. Perry Stone has pointed this out: had Jesus married and had kids, the children would have been worshiped. The wife too, probably. Letting Jesus marry would have been like letting Satan have the body of Moses. Satan wanted the body to become an idol. Besides, Jesus is married to the church. Scripture says it over and over. We are the Body of Christ. It’s even shown in the structure of the Temple, which resembles a female body.

Jesus lived the way he did for practical reasons. For example, he had no house. Because poverty is holy and pleasing to God, we are told. Does that make sense to you? The Bible promises people material blessings over and over.

I can give you two reasons why he had no house. First, it would have become an object of worship. Chunks of it would sell on Ebay for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Second, his house is our physical bodies. We are the Body of Christ, and Jesus made it clear that a body is a spirit’s house.

Mainstream churches don’t preach Jesus. They preach Richard Simmons with nail holes. Look at all the horrors God inflicted on people in the Bible and tell me that makes sense. Jesus was a carpenter (“tekton”), not an interior decorator. Carpenters build houses and tools, not wedding cakes.

We’re supposed to do what the Holy Spirit tells us to do, in the moment. Mainstream churches tell us to live by the very general guidelines of the New Testament, as bowdlerized by committees of emasculated and faithless jellyfish. So when the Holy Spirit says one thing and the traditions of the mainstream churches say another, the Holy Spirit loses, and so do you.

This all seems right to me. I don’t believe I came up with it myself, and it has the virtue of tying seemingly unrelated and apparently contradictory parts of scripture together, without rationalizing.

It’s working for me. I have enemies, and God keeps defeating them for me. God keeps providing for me. My prayer life gets better and better, and I get answers to very specific prayers. My overall happiness increases continually, and I am being allowed to do things I’ve long dreamt of doing (Psalm 37:4). My character gets better and better, too, which is a relief. I’m getting great results, and I hope people who come by this blog will try the Spirit-filled life and have similar success.

Wine is a Mocker, but There are Those Who Need to be Mocked

I really can’t keep up with my testimony. There is so much, I can’t write about it and still have time to live.

Today I got a very moving email from Aaron, my friend of 31 years. It included a link to this Youtube video.

That’s Ohr Somayach (“Happy Light”), the yeshiva in Jerusalem where I ambushed Aaron in 1984. I arrived in Israel on the eve of shabbat, on the weekend of Purim. I had to spend the night in Ein Harod, but the next day, I made it to Jerusalem and found Ohr Somayach. I knew I was in the right place when I saw Aaron’s horrifying plaid boxers hanging outside a dorm room, on a clothesline.

Aaron was in shul, davening. But he was not dressed like a yeshiva bucher. He was dressed like one of the thugs in A Clockwork Orange. I didn’t know Jews were supposed to wear costumes on Purim. I guess I figured his twig had finally snapped.

I ended up joining in the celebration you see above. What a privilege.

When I got the email from Aaron, I realized what the video meant.

In 1984, before I had any idea what my destiny was, God took me to Israel to celebrate the holiday on which Jews commemorate their victory over their Gentile enemies. Haman, who represents the spirit of anti-Semitism (same thing as antichrist, to me), was hanged on the gallows he built for his Jewish enemy, Mordecai. Haman’s sons were hanged along with him. Centuries later, Hitler’s top men were hanged on the same day.

God put me in Israel, to celebrate this holiday, because he knew that my destiny was to participate in the rebuilding of Israel. Today I am privileged to help, through the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and other means. I am even helping a messianic synagogue develop an armorbearer team.

I didn’t know why I was in Israel, but God knew, and he didn’t tell me the reason until this morning.

Choose your side. You will be for God and Israel, or against, and God will reward you accordingly, in this life and the next. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

As for Aaron and me, we will eventually agree on the Messiah’s identity. Maybe one day we’ll toast him in Jerusalem. On Purim, you’re supposed to drink until you can’t tell the difference between blessing Mordecai and cursing Haman. If El Al permits, I’ll bring the homebrew.

Sparrow, Parrot…Same Basic Idea

Here’s a wild story.

In 2009, Dave Rodenborn’s parrot Splint flew off. Dave let Splint’s feathers get a little bit too long, and Splint shot out the front door and got away. Parrots have no desire to obey, and you can’t rely on them to do the things you’ve trained them to do, so you can’t just call them back. If they feel like coming back, they come back. If not, tough. And once they’re a few dozen yards from your house, they have no idea how to get back. The general rule is that they stay lost, and they die. They don’t know how to cope in the wild, the North American climate can kill them, and hawks love them.

At the time, I was highly distressed. I know how it feels to lose a parrot due to my own mistake. And I thought about Splint, out there in the wilderness, lonely and starving.

I put in some prayer time for Splint, and when I did, I felt a powerful flow of faith, telling me he was coming back.

After months had passed, I figured my faith had been wrong. Non-spiritual teachers are always telling us not to trust what we feel, which is a little bit crazy, considering how obvious the Holy Spirit’s power and presence can be. The fact is, most teachers don’t get good results from prayer, and they assume anyone who claims to have a better experience is a kook or a liar. They don’t want to set people up for disappointment, so they actually tell people NOT to trust God! How crazy is that?

These days, when I pray, I can literally, physically, mentally feel faith pouring through me. I don’t have to feel it in order to believe, but experience has taught me that when I do feel it, it’s real. I believe it comes from praying in tongues. When you pray in tongues, you deposit power in your supernatural bank account, and it’s there when you need to make a withdrawal.

Last night, I got an unexpected response to a Youtube comment in a thread in which Dave was participating. In the thread, Dave said Splint had returned! Someone yanked him out of a tree near Dave’s house, and it took them a year to find Dave! How do you like THAT?

So here is the position I’m in: I had faith, and God rewarded it, even after I decided my faith was wrong. Is that possible? Apparently so. It has happened to me before. I think your best bet is to hold onto what faith tells you, no matter what, but God may come through regardless of your foolishness.

Faith is a crazy thing. Sometimes you will pray for a thing and be sure you’re going to get it, yet you’ll still be amazed when you see it come to pass.

Connection?

Interesting news.

Japan just got hit by an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale. This is 100 times as strong as the Haiti earthquake. The Japanese earthquake took place at about a quarter to three on the afternoon of March 11, 2011.

That same day, presumably earlier, the Japanese government put out this announcement. You can find it on the website of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

1. The Government of Japan deplores the decisions of the Government of Israel to give permission for the construction of 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem in addition to 112 units in West Bank just after the Israeli and Palestinian leadership’s acceptance of the start of indirect talks. The Government of Japan does not recognize any act that prejudges the final status of Jerusalem and the territories in the pre-1967 borders. Japan demands that the plans should not be implemented.

2. The Government of Japan continues to request strongly that both parties will act in a way that enhances mutual confidence. Japan sincerely hopes that the indirect talks in the peace process will swiftly develop into the resumption of direct talks between the two parties.

Perry Stone believes that when nations attack Israel, disasters tend to follow quickly. In this case, it appears to be true.

The Kingdom of Heaven, on the Monthly Minimum Payment

Today I feel like the Holy Spirit is just SITTING on me. Not every minute, but from time to time. It’s a very odd sensation. I think we’re supposed to live like this all the time. I hope that’s true; it’s extremely pleasant.

This happens to me a lot, and I always wonder why God doesn’t do something spectacular while it’s in progress. Why not let me hear an audible voice, or give me a vision, or–I don’t know–something involving special effects. I mean, he’s RIGHT HERE. Maybe he could instantly make me a better person. I know a lot of people who would appreciate that.

But that does not seem to be his style. Maybe God is careful about handing out overly abundant displays of power, because he prefers faith to knowledge. If God does enough wild things in your life, sooner or later, you have natural knowledge of his power, in addition to supernatural faith. He does not seem to like that. Not if his reaction to Thomas’s doubt is any clue.

I think I got a pretty decent revelation today, even if nobody parted the Red Sea.

As people who read my blog know, I’m a charismatic, but I have a very dim view of many prosperity preachers. They teach people that God has to give them money if they give him (via the prosperity preachers) money, and that he will multiply their offerings back to them. This is not true. At least, it’s not true the way they teach it.

For one thing, about one in a thousand of these guys talks about charity. It’s always, “send ME your ‘seed gift.'” I am reminded of what my great uncle said. He said he would love to give money to the Lord, but he could not find anyone he could trust to take it to him. Many of the prosperity guys blather endlessly about blessing their self-exalting, personality-cult ministries. That’s just wrong.

The other thing…they whine and manipulate. You’re supposed to have the Holy Spirit inside you, telling you what to do, and that includes giving. If all you have is the Bible, you obey that, but it’s very general. The Holy Spirit is specific. It will tell you who to give to, and how much. Nowhere does the Bible (or the Spirit) say to obey the voice of a whining, manipulative person. These guys go on the air with apocryphal, undocumented stories about people who gave them cash and then received money, and they tell us we’re going to “miss out on the blessing” (like God is a package of cheese with an expiration date), and they try to make us feel guilty for not putting fuel in their private planes. If you have to beg me for money, clearly, God is not blessing you. So go away.

Shouldn’t we realize something is wrong, when a man of God uses time-tested, notorious methods commonly used by car salesmen?

The Bible says we should support ministries, and it even gives specific promises for people who give to the poor. It says we lend to the Lord, and he will repay. It says we will be blessed on the earth. It says God will keep us alive and heal our diseases. It says God will not let our enemies defeat us.

Where does it say we should buy rich whiners more stuff?

Why should I support some character who does nothing but teach people they should give him money? How is that a ministry? I can move poor Jews to Israel. I can pay for air time for ministries that teach people how to connect with the Holy Spirit. I can buy vaccines for people in Sudan. I can pile my money up and burn it. Even that is probably less offensive to God than giving money to a lying weasel who begs in God’s name.

I feel the same way about bums. Come to think about it, they’re about the same as greedy preachers. They’re living in sin, and they want us to finance it. The bum’s iniquity is addiction. The preacher’s iniquity is greed. You don’t subsidize iniquity. This is why people throw their drug addict sons and daughters out in the street. Rewarding sin is not a good deed. It’s evil. And if you reward sin so you can look good to others…wow.

So I guess it’s obvious that I find many prosperity preachers irritating. I think they take God’s name in vain every time they ask for money, and I believe they will be judged for it publicly when they die. They waste the resources of God’s people, and they turn us bitter and drive us to shut off our generosity, which is essential to our own growth. They cause us to offend, and we all know what the reward for that is.

That being said, today I realized three ministries I support have brought me real, obvious benefits. God is definitely rewarding me for being associated with them. I’m not getting UNEXPECTED CHECKS FOR EXACTLY THE AMOUNT OF MONEY I NEEDED or INCREDIBLE JOB OFFERS THAT CAME IN THE NICK OF TIME or TUMORS THAT MAGICALLY FALL OFF AND RUIN THE CARPET, or any of that other nonsense we always hear about on TV, but I’m getting some wonderful teaching, I’m making fantastic connections with other believers, and I am helping advance God’s plan.

That’s my big revelation. I think God has told me who he wants me to help, and I believe I will be rewarded even more handsomely now that the Holy Spirit is aiming the bombs.

If you think I’m too hard on prosperity nuts, try this. Send ten thousand dollars to a hardcore prosperity preacher who rarely mentions the poor, and see what happens. Just try it, observe the result, and make up your own mind. TV preachers like to tell us that Malachi said to test God with your offerings. Okay, fine. Test the TV preachers.

To see the other side of the issue, pray about good religious charities to fund, try to determine God’s direction, and give. Then remember Psalm 41 in your prayers. Different story. I think I can say that with confidence.

Two of the ministries I like don’t ask for money. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. The third is a charity, and they do ask for money, but they do it politely and discreetly, without a lot of whining and guilt-trip laying.

I think Robert Morris would back me up on this. He wrote an interesting book on giving. He does not beg for offerings, and in his book, he said he gave nothing to whiners who tried to play him. He waits for the urging of the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t consider the Bible’s admonitions to give to the poor and the church to be operative in an aimless, general way. He waits for specific requests from God.

You may be poor. I don’t care. Maybe God made you poor because you have an iniquity you refuse to confront. The Bible says he does that. When I decide whether to give, your suffering is not the main issue. What matters is my perception of what God wants me to do. It’s easy to give money to miserable-looking people, especially if someone is watching. What’s hard is giving the right thing to the right person. Sometimes the right thing is nothing.

I recently saw Charlie Sheen on TV. The news said he was preparing live shows where he intended to present his drug-warped tirades. They were selling out. Is that a blessing? I looked at him and realized where I would be, had God not hit me with punishments and failures. I would not know God, and I would be making a fool of myself as a way of life. I would think very, very highly of myself, even as I was destroying myself. Failure helped save me. Poverty is the best thing that could happen to Charlie Sheen.

For some people, everything that should be a blessing is a curse and an opportunity to hurt someone else. People like that can only be blessed by what appears to be harm. To such a person, a blessing is a curse.

I have learned that it is just about impossible to curse a good man, and it is equally difficult to bless a bad person. A bad person is like a bag with holes; the blessings run right out. A good person–a person who lives by faith–will invoke God’s power to turn any adversity into a blessing, or to reverse it entirely.

Interesting thing: Perry Stone’s gigantic ministry has ZERO DEBT. How many preachers can say that? It always disturbs me when I hear preachers talking about the projects they’ve started “on faith,” using borrowed money. Show me an example of that in the Bible. Did Noah borrow? Did Solomon? Job? The only example I know of is Obadiah, who mortgaged his house to feed a bunch of prophets. Other than that, as far as I know, the Bible condemns debt. It says the borrower is the servant of the lender. It says a wicked person borrows and does not repay, but a righteous person gives. One of the signs that you are blessed is that people owe you money, because you end up helping less-blessed people from your abundance. Oddly, if you’re paying someone else’s bills, it may mean that you have God’s favor. Owing, on the other hand, is a sign that you’re cursed.

I’ve told God that if he wants me to do stuff for him, it will have to be debt-free. I’m not going to make a mockery of his power by relying on man. I’m not going to make myself man’s slave in order to serve God.

Perry Stone’s ministry is one of the three I plan to put at the top of my list. He says he believes the reason he has no debt is that he blesses Israel and the Jews. It certainly isn’t because he begs. He briefly mentions the need for donations and book sales, but that’s it.

So to sum up, things are going extremely well, and God amazes me more and more, every week. I hope you can read this and pick up some of the same blessings I’ve received.