Another Church, Another Bad Slogan

Roadside billboards work.

With all due respect to the late Lady Bird Johnson - who tried to ban them in her crusade to beautify our nation's highways - people really do read billboards.

More's the pity.

Not just for those interested in freeway aesthetics, but for Pastor Frank Moore of McElroy Road Church of Christ in Mansfield, Ohio.

Don't Believe Everything You See

Seems that Moore had the idea to purchase a billboard emblazoned with "There is No God" followed by, in a smaller font, "Don't believe everything you hear."

Turns out, an organization in Mansfield called Mid Ohio Atheists has fielded several calls of support from people who think the group sponsored the sign.

Not a church.

Oops.

Handing free advertisement to your opponent is what I think kids today call an "epic fail."

Church Marketing 101

Now, if Moore had read my essay last year on Wolves in Shepherds Clothing, about two other pastors who also tried whipping up some attention for their respective churches with half-baked - and therefore, bad-tasting and possibly lethal - marketing slogans, he'd have understood how wildly such a stunt can backfire.

But sometimes, like the rest of us, preachers have to learn these lessons the hard way.

According to the church's website, their rationale behind this particular billboard seems noble enough:

"The design of this sign is (to) get people to stop and think! We took a common statement that is being said in our culture: "There is no God." We added this thought: "Don't believe everything you hear." It is similar to telling someone, "To break a mirror means 7 years of bad luck." To which the response would come, "Don't believe everything you hear." Because someone says something does not mean it is true! The Apostle Paul says the equivalent in 1 Thessalonians 5:21."

Actually, in context, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 says this:

16 Be joyful always; 17 pray continually; 18 give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not put out the Spirit's fire; 20 do not treat prophecies with contempt. 21 Test everything. Hold on to the good. 22 Avoid every kind of evil. 23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

OK? So, let's test this idea of Moore's.

First, should we risk the appearance of blaspheming the very God we claim to adore by prioritizing a false statement denying His existence on a billboard? Of course not: God will not be mocked. (Galatians 6:7) The fact that people have called an atheist organization congratulating them on the billboard proves how off-base this idea was.

Second, since we're risking the appearance of blaspheming God, we're not "avoiding every kind of evil," are we?

Third, Whose is the process of sanctification anyway - ours, or God's? According to verses 23 and 24, it's God. That means that we don't have any authority to go outside the teachings of scripture to try and accomplish discipleship, which includes evangelism (ostensibly the purpose of this billboard).

Are believers ever instructed to casually deny our Creator in the process of discipleship? Assuming he's happily married, would Moore use a billboard to deny the existence of his wife? Then why would he do so regarding His Lord?

Christ even provides a parable which proves my point: bad soil does not yield good fruit, does it?

What Does This Road Sign Tell Us?

It's not even like the billboard was well-executed, and simply the target of anti-religious journalists.

If you're going to put up a billboard, you're going to want it to look professional, in addition to communicating what you intend for it to communicate. So in this instance, if there was any merit in putting up a billboard with this particular message, you'd want to put quotes around the first phrase about God (I can't even bring my self to keep typing out that sentence) to indicate that it's a phrase that people say. Using quotes indicates, among other things, that the phrase may or may not be fact, so it needs to be proven.

You also need to evaluate your text to ensure readers get your point. Particularly when readers of billboards are usually in vehicles zooming by, which doesn't afford too much time for pondering tricky wording. Obviously, Moore thought he knew what he wanted to say, but his audience didn't. As proven by the kudos atheists are receiving.

I'd also get a better logo than that confection of layered clipart and wording nobody can see, but that's just me. This church is the one seeking to market itself, after all. The public isn't asking for that bad artwork to be inflicted upon them.

Meanwhile, McElroy Road Church of Christ has spent several thousand dollars to send a message endorsing atheism. To not only the Mansfield, Ohio community, but to readers of websites based from California to Connecticut, where news organizations have picked up the story and run with it.

Yeah, I think "epic fail" pretty much sums it up. At least in terms of how productive we can fail to be when we try to get clever with the Gospel.

We're to "preach the Word," right? Not a catch-phrase, or what we think looks good on a billboard. Especially not a viewpoint endorsed by our culture. Especially since the inverse of the Gospel is, uh, NOT the Gospel.

Why even play around with false claims? Why rely on how the world does things to market your church? Why not rely on the truth in God's Word instead?

"There IS a God" should be what our lives shout out to those around us.

If we believe it, people in our spheres of influence won't need a billboard to know it's true.
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No, Really: That's Life

Her mother is nearly blind.

And her father, already blind, has other, even more debilitating ailments.

Talking with friends at church yesterday, I understood once again how caring for the aged poses challenges with which many families struggle privately.

Another friend is going up to Arkansas this week with her husband to get some answers about her aunt's deteriorating mental condition, which they suspect involves Alzheimer's. They've already moved her aged mother to a nursing home here.

All this news, just after my own family has been dealing with somber care issues regarding my 83-year-old aunt.

My friend with the blind parents has been struggling herself for almost a year to endure professional therapy on her back so she can avoid potentially dangerous surgery. This means that she cannot physically care for her parents like she used to, which just adds to her frustration and sadness as she watches, daily, their health fade more and more.

"You look at what they used to be, and all that they used to do," she confided to me, "and then what they are now, and you wonder, 'how does their condition today honor God?'"

And that's the question, isn't it? As modern science has allowed us to live longer lives, the quality of those lives hasn't been able to keep up.

Or at least, what we consider to be quality.

We look at our aging loved ones, who raised us and cared for us, and now we're propping them up in chairs, bathing them, speaking in simple sentences to them, planning their days, managing their finances, and watching helplessly as frailty consumes them. I don't do half of what these friends do for their parents; I'm not even involved in the oversight of my aunt's accounts, nor did I move a stick of her furniture from New York City to suburban Miami. But even from the distance from which I have viewed all of these changes, I find them to be gravely unsettling and fear-stoking. What about when my own time comes? I'm not afraid of death, but I have to admit: I'm afraid of the process of dying.

Aren't most of us?

So as my friends and I commiserated yesterday about the plight in which our families have found themselves, we naturally came to describe how the flickering flame of old life, like the wick in a spent candle, can seem so feeble and perilous.

Yet... the glow is still life, isn't it? It's not something we can turn on and off like an engine or a light bulb. Yes, parents conceive life, but even conception isn't a guaranteed result of intercourse. And murder is as heinous as civil law maintains it to be because nobody has the right to arbitrarily end another's life. And those who end their own we consider to have been mentally imbalanced.

Perhaps moreso than anything with which we come in contact on a daily basis, life serves as a constant reminder of God's gift of creation. Only God can give and take life. Which also testifies to His sovereignty over all His creation.

Even lying in bed, as a friend of mine days from death was doing several years ago at the end of her quick fight with cancer, and as I saw the skin and bones of her frail body slightly rise and fall with each slow breath, I had to marvel at how life remained even when all of her vital functions were shutting down.

Sure, she was comatose, unable to do anything except the basic, involuntary mechanics of breathing. Yet even in what we would consider to be a woeful state of existence, God had a purpose for my friend's life that day.

Maybe not climbing a mountain, or finishing a novel, or winning an election, or anything else we consider to be productive behavior.

Despite everything she could no longer do, my cancer-riddled friend honored Christ by simply being alive.

The teenager plunged into a semi-conscious state by a car wreck last year, about whom I wrote for Crosswalk, honors Christ even though his family and loved ones have to do almost everything for him.

The blind parents of my friend who herself is suffering from back pain honor Christ even though they can no longer see His creation. And the mother and aunt of my friend traveling to Arkansas this week honor Christ, along with my aunt now in Florida, because even though we don't think it's of a desirable quality, they have life.

I'm not saying that any of this is fun, or pretty, or comfortable. In most of these circumstances, both the infirm and their loved ones suffer pain, grief, frustration, and plenty of other miserable afflictions. Believe me; I know. If any of us could turn back time on our loved ones' physical disorder, wouldn't we?

But in terms of the way a life lived with dementia or another disabling condition can be honoring to God, might we find rest in the fact that God is still glorified in our body's use of His gift of life?

It's as Job declared: "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

If what I'm saying sounds trite and negligible, then maybe it's because our society has purged life's intrinsic purpose from our consciousness. We're taught to pursue and achieve and acquire in the name of dominion and productivity. Which aren't bad things if we maintain a proper perspective regarding Who really gives us any of them to begin with.

Those things we accomplish during our time on this planet vary from person to person, but the "force," or the "subtle energy," or élan vital that generates the reality we experience in and of ourselves is something that we cannot produce, generate, store, reduce, or multiply. It either is or isn't. The only way we see one as being better or worse than another is through our own culturally-conditioned lenses of relational hierarchy.

Maybe when our loved ones become stripped of all that we habitually consider life to be, and we're left with looking at life in its most basic form, God wants us to remember that it's all His to begin with anyway. And end with.

And all that we've done in between has no significant bearing on either.
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Gained in Translation?

First night. New season.

You'd like things to go smoothly.

Yesterday evening, I went to church for the start of my sixth season singing in our Chancel Choir. We'd been on a break since June, and although I enjoyed my unhurried Sundays these past couple of months off, it was time to dive into a new year.

Not only was the Chancel Choir back in session, but our principle director, J. Marty Cope, had returned from a year-long educational stint in England, earning his second Masters degree, this one from none other than Cambridge University.

You know; "pip-pip, cheerio, and all that rot."

That Cambridge.

So all things considered, it was a big night. For a bunch of Presbyterian choristers, anyway.

As I approached an open doorway, a number of my fellow choir members were milling about the steps in Texas' relentless August heat. After a couple of hugs and "welcome back's", I walked through the open doors into a dark hallway, with dozens more people just milling about in... the heat? It was only marginally cooler inside than outside.

And dark!

"Yes, the power's out!" one lady informed me. "Didn't you notice the streetlights aren't working?"

Actually, the street by which I'd come had functioning stoplights, so I hadn't noticed anything amiss.

About that time, J. Marty, our resident anglophile, appeared, just a little agitated that the power had gone out on our first rehearsal of the new season. Not only was the church dark and hot, but its fully-automated key and security system had shut and locked all of the exterior doors and interior fire doors, meaning nobody could get upstairs to our rehearsal hall. Or our music.

Several of our church's sextons appeared, but none of them had anything to override the non-functioning electric locks. One of the church's security guards had inadvertently closed the only remaining unlocked door on the other side of a fire grate which had rolled down automatically, so all we had to ourselves was a long hallway in front of Fellowship Hall.

Thinking quickly, J. Marty recruited a couple of other people and myself to go with him to one of the old sanctuary doors that still had a manual lock. If we could get in that way, we might be able to figure out how to get back around and open up some more doors. Yet alas, although a key he possessed fit into the lock, a non-functioning electronic override still refused to let the door open.

Foiled again!

By this time, about 75 people had gathered, everyone joking about how inauspicious a circumstance it was for our first rehearsal back from summer break, and for J. Marty back from England (where, he told us later, they suffered a heat wave in the low-80's before he left... poor guy!).

Just when it looked like we'd run out of options, a joyous holler erupted from inside the hallway, as the lights came back on! Doors unlocked themselves, the air conditioning came back on, and we were back in business.

"Praise the Lord," I exclaimed to J. Marty, who looked at me with a wry, stressed grin.

"You know, that always sounds so trite," he chided, nevertheless aware that I probably didn't intend it to be.

"Hey, after the month I've had, I've said it a lot," I replied, referring to the struggle my family has endured dealing with my aunt's health problems. "And meant it every time!"

Yet his point remains a valid one that I've thought about a couple of times since last night. It's true that a lot of people - some who aren't even saved - use the phrase as a perfunctory response to good news of all types. Whether it's learning the price of a gallon of gas just dropped four cents or somebody's cancer has gone into remission, we use the same three words so often that many of us have blunted their meaning.

Maybe having the electricity come back on just at the last minute isn't earth-shaking enough in some peoples' estimation to say "praise the Lord!" But we were all grateful, and rehearsal was only delayed for about 10 minutes. So even though our situation ranked somewhere between the price of gas going down and somebody getting a great medical diagnosis, I'd say it was appropriate.

But, still...

We're supposed to praise the Lord, obviously. We're commanded to in Scripture, and through basic social etiquette, we're to affirm our appreciation appropriately.

But how do you avoid stripping "praise the Lord!" of legitimacy? Not the most burning question facing evangelical Christendom at this moment in history, perhaps, but considering how often we risk invoking our Lord's name tritely, isn't it something nonetheless worthy of contemplation?

Technically, Biblically, we should be thankful for everything God gives us, but just as we didn't go around thanking our parents for every blade of grass they cut or sock they laundered when we were kids, God doesn't expect us to use our time that inefficiently, or treat our relationship with Him as if it depends on our cataloging His blessings.

So how about if we feel the urge to say something like "praise the Lord," we say it in a way that denotes a particular declaration on our part; not something that sounds like it rolls off the tongue without our even thinking about it.

Which brings me to Latin. Don't words in Latin have a certain prestige or officiousness to them? Medical terms and scientific names always sound more convincingly important when we hear them in Latin.

For example, doesn't "perussi duos aspirin quod contactus mihi cras" sound a lot more impressive than "take two aspirin and call me in the morning"?

Or maybe that's just me.

In any case, I looked up some suitable Latin phrases to replace the English "praise the Lord" wording, and came up with the following list. One of them might sound familiar to even the least-fluent Latin speaker:

Laus Deo = Praise to God

Gloria in excelsis = Glory to God in the highest

Deus est regit qui omnia = There is a God who rules all things

Deo gratias (D.G.) - Thanks be to God

So, what do you think? Can you see yourself substituting any of these Latin phrases for "praise the Lord" during the course of your day?

Maybe I'm making entirely too much of this idea, but I think I'm going to try for the "Deo gratias" version (which is pronounced "DAY-o GRAHT-see-us"). For one thing, our Chancel Choir has an anthem in our repertoire by that name, with the phrase repeated throughout it.

It may not be the king's English, as they'd see it at Cambridge.

But I'm sure Christ, my King, will understand.
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No Noble Gestures May Cost Us

Right-wingers may not like admitting it, but noblesse oblige is a Biblical concept.

According to Merriam-Webster, noblesse oblige can be defined as "the obligation of honorable, generous, and responsible behavior associated with high rank or birth."

Or, in other words, "to whom much is given, much is required" (Luke 12:48).

Personally, I'm not a fan of the term "noblesse oblige." Maybe because it's of French origin, or maybe because it implies that only incredibly wealthy people have disproportionately greater civic obligations to the less-economically-endowed. If you read the Scriptures carefully, you'll note that Christ doesn't let anybody off the hook just because they may not be top income earners. Just about all of us have more stuff than somebody else - whether it's money, status, privilege, education, health, or material goods. To people who have less than us, the things we have more of than them is "much."

So Christ expects more from just about all of us than the French would.

But then, that probably doesn't surprise many people.

At any rate, the term "noblesse oblige" has recently been used in reference to American billionaire Warren Buffett and his bold assertion last week that Congress should raise taxes on fellow citizens in his income bracket. He called it "shared sacrifice."

As could be expected, some liberals have championed Buffett's call, pleased that such a highly-regarded capitalist would support such a political hot-potato in our rhetorically-charged financial climate. At the same time, some conservatives have chided Buffett for pandering to the masses, dropping a surprising admission of weak economic integrity on his part.

To be frank, I don't understand why, if Buffett himself wants to pay more taxes, he doesn't voluntarily step up to the plate. Every year, a smattering of taxpayers already send the United States Treasury unsolicited checks, ostensibly to help pay down our national debt, even though the amounts they send - generally totalling a couple of million dollars annually - don't even begin to put a dent into our outstanding balance. I doubt a few million extra in taxes from Buffett - or even the rest of our top income earners - will, either.

Let's be realistic: What's necessary isn't more taxes, but a wholesale overhaul of the way government runs and what it spends our taxes on. So conservatives are correct in portraying Buffett's suggestion as ignoring the real issue.

But can conservatives sputter, as they usually do in the same breath, that raising taxes on the rich will actually cost our country jobs?

If, for example, the choice was between making the companies these wealthy people run hire more employees, or raising their income taxes, would these wealthy folks hire more employees, or just pay the taxes?

Wouldn't it still be cheaper in the long run for the uber-rich to just pay higher taxes than hire enough workers to lower the unemployment rate? Because they'd need to hire a lot of people, wouldn't they?

How likely is it that the money these wealthy folks would supposedly pay in higher taxes could increase employment to the point where the economy could noticeably improve? Our debt is in the trillions, and growing every day.

We can't tax our way out of this mess. So no matter how you look at it, giving more money to the government will neither lower unemployment, nor pay off much debt. As far as more taxes for the rich is concerned, conservatives appear to have logic on their side.

Speaking of logic, however; after Buffett's statement last week, some of France's wealthiest taxpayers have taken up the gauntlet, calling on their government to raise their taxes. The world's second-richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, joined 15 executives of French companies to petition their Parlement français for the opportunity to pay a "special contribution." Their spin on Buffett's "shared sacrifice," and a way of modeling noblesse oblige, I suppose.

For some Americans, such a grand gesture by the French elite means very little. I'm reminded of one of General Norman Schwarzkopf's funniest quotes, when, upon learning the French refused to join coalition forces in the first Gulf War, he purportedly scoffed, "going to war without the French is like going duck hunting without an accordion!"

Of course, having American conservatives blasting a tax on the rich might have more credibility if Standard and Poor's hadn't lowered our government's debt rating to AA+ from AAA. France still has their AAA rating. But then, the French still seem to have more faith in government's ability to find financial fixes than we do.

If we're going to prove that private industry drives economic prosperity, and not government policy, wouldn't now be a good time to do it? Although Buffett has seized on the wrong approach, he does have one thing right: America's richest are in the best position to make positive economic changes for our nation.

As long as they sit on their cash during tough economic times like these, somebody's going to get inordinately jealous. Either the government, or lower-bracket taxpayers, or the welfare class that pays no taxes at all.

The more affluent a person becomes, the greater the expectation that they contribute more to society. That's not just a social phenomenon, or a socialist manifesto; it's a Biblical mandate.

And the longer we try to pretend that isn't true, the worse things may get for all of us.
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Human Link to Rabid Rules

There are two types of R-and-R.

One is pleasant and enjoyable: rest -and- recreation.

The other is onerous and tedious: rules -and- regulations.

It's the R-and-R of the onerous variety that tends to rub many Americans the wrong way when it comes to our government and the many ways we perceive bureaucrats are trying to control our lives.

And in our current political climate, rules and regulations have become ripe as targets for ridicule and overthrow as the specter of Nanny State control seems to have sent its tentacles into every aspect of modern American life.

Yet, as I've said before, how many of these rules and regulations have actually been codified because a group of people originally abused something that used to be free and unregulated? How many times has the government been called to step in when somebody has crossed the line between respectful compliance with normative - albeit non-regulated - behavior, and pushing the line into something unsustainable?

Take, for example, the longtime sport of coon hunting in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Not that I have anything against hunting. Or any particular affection for raccoons.

But did you know that the entire East Coast of the United States, from Maine to Florida, has been infested with a severe raccoon rabies crisis?

And it all started when some enterprising hunters broke the law.

The Lacey Act, to be specific.

Trafficking in Raccoons

Back in the 1970's, Florida found itself with a burgeoning population of raccoons, who were spreading rabies amongst themselves at epidemic proportions. Meanwhile, back in Virginia, a group of raccoon hunters feared they were running out of their favorite prey, and learned of Florida's extra supply. Whether they also learned of Florida's rabies plight is unclear.

Let's assume that the coon hunters from Virginia didn't know about the rabies, since that will help out their side of this sordid tale. The Virginia coon hunters traveled down to Florida, caught thousands of the ring-tailed critters, and hauled them back to ol' Virginny so their coon dogs could have a field day chasing them through woods and, well, fields. And grown men could go a'hunting and bond over the slaughter of innocent animals.

Like I said, I'm not anti-hunting, but there has to be a point to it for it to be worthwhile. Hunting raccoons to help control their population is a legitimate pursuit. But doesn't trapping animals and trucking them to your own patch of forest so you can hunt them again seem woefully unsportsmanlike?

At any rate, enough of the raccoons either never got shot - or had plenty of time between being released in Virginia and getting killed for sport - to infect the indigenous raccoon population with rabies, a little souvenir from their Florida days. And, thanks to some naturally-occurring environmental conditions, particularly in Virginia's Loudon County, the rabies epidemic took off like a scared varmint out of a trap. It sprinted up the East Coast to Maine and into Canada, and all the way back down the Carolinas to Florida. And within a decade, rabid raccoons were everywhere. Even more than those Virginia hunters could ever hope to kill.

Don't believe me? How about England's Twycross Zoo, and it's WildPro website of wildlife experts? In a study on raccoon rabies along the East Coast of their former colonies, Wildpro made the following assessments:

"Long-distance translocation of raccoons for hunting is considered to be the method by which raccoon rabies reached the mid-Atlantic states... Deliberate translocation of raccoons from the south-eastern USA is considered to be the most likely source of mid-Atlantic/north-eastern USA rabies epizootic in raccoons... Thousands of raccoons have been imported into the mid-Atlantic area for hunting purposes yearly."

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, several thousand of these raccoons purportedly had proper inter-state shipping documentation and health certificates. But many of them were held in cages with other raccoons - which were rabid - at different stages of the shipping process, invalidating the legal paperwork. In 1992, after it was obvious the situation had gotten out of hand, Virginia began putting some teeth into its enforcement of the Lacey Act, which had originally been written to help prevent similar types of man-made wildlife imbalances. Shippers of nearly 3,000 raccoons worth almost $57,000 were fined, and one was jailed, before it was all over.

But the damage had already been done.

Just One Bite

You're probably aware that rabies is a fatal disease for most household pets. Thanks to effective wildlife control and vaccines, of the tens of thousands of Americans who get bitten by a rabid animal every year, "only" two or three die. In 2003, the first American to die from rabies contracted through a raccoon was a 25-year-old from, of all places, Virginia.

Some people may say that's an insignificant ratio of human death compared to years and years of hunting enjoyment. How many other people accidentally have gotten shot while hunting, for example (which, of course, depends on whether Dick Cheney has a Virginia hunting license)?  So I'm not going to peg the death of this poor young Virginian on the coon hunters who violated the Lacey Act thirty years ago.

And who's to say that having raccoon-born rabies consuming the eastern seaboard hasn't kept the region's veterinarians and vaccine suppliers busy?

But how much of this was necessary? Is coon hunting that valuable to the human race? Don't the government and wildlife experts have a legitimate reason to regulate the interstate transport of animals for the protection of society? Aren't we just making life that much more complicated by pushing the boundaries of rationality? After all: if you add up all of the rules and regulations intended to counteract things like disease disbursement, don't you end up with the lethargic bureaucracy we keep lamenting our government has become?

At some point, Americans are going to have to come to the realization that in a society, very few personal actions take place in a vacuum. Don't underestimate the interconnectedness of one person's inability to take personal responsibility for their actions and the government's need to protect everyone else from those people.

Not that innovation and entrepreneurialism need to come to a screeching stop because we might risk causing something bad that we can't think of yet. Like I've said, coon hunting as a sport is one thing, since people who find it fun also help control the population of a varmint that can wreak a lot of havoc. Yet isn't violating interstate wildlife transport laws - which were designed to protect us - simply further proof that government regulations tend to exist for a reason?

Not all of them, certainly, but enough of 'em.

If we'd all think beyond our own interests, one person's rest and recreation has less chance of becoming somebody else's rules and regulations.
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Playing Games with Brain Injuries

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I'm not a sports fan.

Yet I sometimes play one when watching TV!

Last night, after a stressful week of family issues, my father and I watched the Dallas Cowboys (that's football, to all y'all laymen out there) play the San Diego Chargers in their nationally-televised pre-season game.

Normally, if I watch sports, I watch baseball, where you can get some genuine intrigue and the athletes have skills I can appreciate. In my estimation, however, there's no better way to let your brain vegetate than watching professional football. I clarify the level of football because, I have to admit, college games can be far more interesting than watching multi-millionaires pushing each other up and down a field.

And last night's game was no exception. The Cowboys still seemed to be back at training camp, only managing to put seven points on the board to San Diego's 20. Actually, Dallas could have had at least 13, if the touchdown by Phillip Tanner had counted for anything.

A running back, Tanner scrambled to extricate himself from a pile of Chargers during one down and in the process, lost his helmet. But he managed to escape and make a crowd-loving run to the end zone for some badly-needed Dallas points.

To the home crowd's chagrin, however, a new rule in the NFL designed to address the rising awareness of brain injury in the sport meant that when Tanner lost his helmet, the play was over. In fact, not only did the touchdown not count, Dallas was penalized 5 yards for a separate infraction they committed on the play.

Up in the broadcasters' booth, however, announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth were lavishing praise on Tanner, gushing about his enthusiasm and stubbornness, being so eager by running the ball even after losing his helmet. That kind of driven, goal-oriented athleticism makes a great player, they crowed.

All this adulation, ironically, even after some long-winded comments earlier in the same game about the NFL's new concussion-risk rules when San Diego's Malcom Floyd was taken out in the first half after suffering one. And even despite Collinsworth's reputation as an advocate for brain-trauma prevention in the NFL.

Last year, the New York Times quoted Collinsworth, a longtime youth league coach, as questioning the suitability of football as a sport for children:

“'This is a league that we’ve always celebrated the biggest hits and the bone-jarring blows, but you can’t hide from the evidence anymore,'” Collinsworth, in a telephone interview, said regarding the short- and long-term effects of football head trauma. “'We’re talking about the very essence of the game. I’d be less than honest if I said I didn’t have my doubts as to whether my children should be playing football.'”

What a curious thing for a football announcer to say!

After decades of phenomenal popularity, America's lionized football industry has begun to face a dark reality that the physical brutality for which it is so celebrated can penalize its players with irreversible brain injuries. The trauma players suffer despite state-of-the-art helmets and other protective gear can return to haunt them in the form of mental illnesses later in life. Speaking as a person who's watching a loved one lapse into the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, I would think the NFL would want to do everything it can to help its players avoid anything that could precipitate a similar diagnosis.

Broken bones are one thing. A damaged brain is something else entirely.

So to hear Collinsworth and Michaels cheering Tanner for his tenacity in running the ball even without a helmet sounds disingenuous at best. We saw live video of Tanner's teammates congratulating him for what medical experts would say was a stupid move. Upon losing his helmet, Tanner should first have known that the play was over, but even if instinct had compelled him to make a run for the end zone, his own awareness for his physical safety should have been equally strong, urging him to let the play end.

Is it good enough that Tanner kept going, risking injury to a naked head when everybody else on the field still had their helmets on? Is such bravado in the face of such risk worthy of admiration? Should sports writers, commenting today on the play, be casting the NFL's new rule about helmets in such a somber tone, considering how helpful a touchdown would have been for the Cowboys?

How herioc does Tanner's success at reaching the end zone become when you realize that everybody else on the field likely assumed the play was over the minute his helmet came off? How strenuously did the Chargers try to stop him after that? Even though, admittedly, the chances of Tanner getting walloped in this short run and suffering a head injury weren't great, is this really something anybody can brag about or uphold as an example of gritty determination?

I hope that today, Tanner has reconsidered his impetuousness and at least resigned himself to a rule that could, in some future game, save his life. Or at least his mental health. Hopefully, other players and coaches are using last night's incident as a teachable moment today, reminding themselves of the important protection that helmets provide, even thought that protection isn't failsafe.

On the topic of head injuries in sports, NBC sports writer Gregg Rosenthal wrote an opinion column on July 4, 2010, pontificating that "Americans, by our very nature, take risks. And if we didn’t take risks, we wouldn’t be celebrating 234 years of independence today."

With all due respect to sports lovers, taking risks for establishing a democracy, building the Hoover Dam, and engineering the Space Shuttle can hardly be compared with playing football without a helmet.

Let's have some real-life perspective here, people!

It's this type of blind, consuming reverence for sports that keeps me from taking much of it too seriously.

Although meanwhile, I'm saddened that too many people don't take brain injuries in sports more seriously.
_____

Are Christians Doing Less With More?

It never ceases to amaze me how many professional Christians we have running around North America, busy with professional Christian stuff.

And I'm not just talking about ordinary senior pastors and church staffers.

I'm talking about the people of faith who write books and blogs and magazine articles, who guest-preach and teach and hold seminars, who pontificate on nuances in doctrine and theology, establish non-profit ministries to advance their viewpoints, market their radio and TV programs and websites, and generally contribute to a vast religious subculture of ways to propagate faith among the world's wealthiest Christians.

Not that it's all bad, wrong, ill-intentioned, or even new. It's been going on for at least half a century, and probably only now seems overwhelming since the Internet and social media make it so easy for anybody to set up a website, blog, or Twitter account. Granted, some individual participants in this mass-marketing of Christian ideology may not present the best expressions of faith-based ministry, but as a whole, I cannot dismiss the potential efficacy and sincere intentionality of many of these professional Christians. After all, we're promised in the Bible that when God's Word goes out, it does not return void.

But I have to look at all of this professional Christian activity, and then at our country, and wonder: God's Word may not return void, but how productive are all of the efforts of these professional Christians? Judging by the evangelical church's impact on our modern society, it looks like rain falling on fields of netting: the nets get wet, but most of the water just drains right through.

Or, perhaps what we see today in our world would look far worse if we didn't have this massive religious marketing machine churning out new books, paradigms, formulas, growth models, CDs, and opinions?

I look at my own blog, and question its relevance and necessity in the North American church culture. As I mentioned almost two years ago when I started, this blog primarily is supposed to be serving as a living resume for me to secure a writing job. Of course, I've been pleased at the feedback I've received along the way, and it has been helpful as I've tried to hone my writing craft and provide readers with a better product that's more respectful of their time and attention. But at the end of the day, isn't it up to the readers who are willing to invest that time and attention - especially to stuff by far more eminent people than myself - to make this material worthwhile?

Doesn't it seem like those types of readers, perhaps even instead of we bloggers, writers, teachers, and ministry leaders, are the people upon whom the legitimacy of this massive Christian publishing and marketing industry rises or falls?

Because I have no real reason to do otherwise, I'll take on face value that most of the personalities and material that North American Christendom is churning out these days has some benefit to Christ's kingdom. Every generation has people upon whom God has provided an impetus for writing about aspects of His glorious character, and any of us who squelch the honest calling of God in this way is to be pitied.

But let's face it: very little of what any of us write or teach is actually new. Everything we NEED to know about God is provided in His Word, while a lot of what the Christian marketing industry produces these days addresses materialistic, hedonistic, and narcissistic issues God never intended His people to prioritize in their lives anyway.

Good and insightful Christian writers and teachers inevitably rise to the top in every generation as people blessed with more skills and gifts than others, and I try not to be jealous of those people, like the Al Molher's, Tim Keller's, and Tim Challies' of our day. Besides, my purpose isn't to pick apart some leaders and ministries as inferior to others. To the extent that people believe they are being led of God to participate in His work on Earth by writing and teaching, I pray that they are indeed glorifying God with the talents they believe they've been given. Remember, what makes me question this whole industry is the apparent lack of impact this massive confection of professional Christianity is having on our world, not the likelihood that some participants in this industry have more integrity than others. The stronger one's faith, the easier it should be to discern the better messengers of God's truth.

Think about it: more resources are available to North America's believers than to any other cohort of believes at any place at any time in the history of the world. And to whom much is given, much is required, right? Yet we evangelicals still burn through our marriages at rates equal to the society around us. We still bicker, squabble, and gossip in churches like they're more country clubs than houses of worship. Most of us even center our lives around our careers, instead of Christ, and that's reflected in the choices we make regarding how much time we spend teaching our children about Christ in our homes.

Perhaps most telling, I'll point out to the consternation of most Christians, is the amount of energy we spend trying to emulate the things of the world rather than the Son of their Creator.

After all, careers, nice homes, vacations, technology, sports, education, and even politics and church have been created by a God Who loves us. None of them are bad in and of themselves, and there's not one verse in the Bible which tells us to flee any of these things. Yet in our society, they all add up to a culture of urgency, necessity, and consumption which inevitably distracts us from what should be our overarching aim in life: to worship God and enjoy Him forever.

So to many people of faith, it makes sense that consuming books and seminars and blog entries presenting concepts and ideas and opinions of urgent necessity plays a legitimate part of faith. In fact, technology has widened our access to all of this media and our natural inclination to feel behind the curve if we're not up on the latest popular preaching series propels us to continue feeding the obligation to continue consuming more and more of it.

Whew!

Along the way, of course, a number of people actually do get fed, and people of faith do encounter gems of truth presented in novel ways that help them capture God's Word in a fresh relevance. If none of this stuff had any value, the market for Christian material wouldn't be running rampant with new content all the time.

But at what point should we be seeing a credible impact by the way we live our lives and believe in God on the society around us? Rather than having a Christian subculture that would be sorely missed in North America if it disappeared tomorrow, how many of us would be mourned if our spheres of influence were denied our presence? Remember the early church in Acts, which actually found favor in Jerusalem at large by fellowshipping and worshipping with each other in counter-cultural ways?

Let's fact it: we are not influencing our culture in North America as much as copying it. And the volume of material cascading over and generated by the Christian community appears to be concealing that fact.

But is that the fault of the people and ministries producing this material?

Or the people who are supposed to be consuming it and letting God use it in them to live for Him?
_____

Bare Heads and Bears

Recently, a single female friend of mine made a joke about dating bald guys.

(BTW, she's dating a guy with a full head of hair.)

After realizing what she'd said - and acknowledging, well, the fact that I'm bald - my friend rushed to apologize, fearful she'd accidentally insulted me or something.

But no, she hadn't insulted me, and I assured her there was nothing for which to apologize. Quite frankly, I've gotten used to having very little hair. Yes, I know I'm bald. No, I'm not convinced I look better now than when I had hair. And yes, I realize baldness doesn't look compelling on most men.

Or women, for that matter.

But we cope, we victims of denuded scalps. There are bigger problems on this planet than a lack of hair, even though this particular one can bother some of us more than others.

And in the most peculiar ways.

Hair Apparent

For example, when I used to ride New York's subways, it never ceased to amaze me how desperate some men were to re-grow hair. Standing smushed in a packed subway car, holding on to the railing, and gazing down at the head of a guy seated below you, it became common to see neat rows of little red dots in the wake of mens' receding hairlines, where hair follicles had been transplanted. It looked like Farmer Jones was growing corn on the guy's forehead.

I'm not vain enough to have ever even considered hair transplants, but I'm reminded of my baldness whenever we recite, of all things, the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism and its answer. I always tend to grin with an acknowledgement of God's sovereignty - and humankind's attempt at quantifying it - as expressed by a particular line. See if you can pick it out:

Question: "What is your only comfort, in life and in death?"

Answer: "That I belong - body and soul, in life and in death - not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of His own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that He protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit His purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him."

Obviously, since God protects me so well, not one of my hairs has ever fallen from my head without His approval, and I can appreciate the theological significance of that fact. While that analogy portrays an incalculable comprehension and repository of knowledge and data on God's part, and helps describe how intimately familiar He is with all of His creation, since I'm bald, my mind has sometimes wandered into the far more trivial aspects of this truth.

For example, might the people who drafted the confession with this example about balding have been follicly- challenged themselves? Why didn't they pick some other fascinating factoid to describe God's attributes? And since God has ordained my personal baldness, is it wrong for me to wish that he kept count of changes in my life by some other method than my rapidly declining hair inventory? Or, might having less hair on my head for Him to count make up for all of the other benefits and graces He needs to bestow on my fragile, mortal existence?

Bald-acious

After my friend's joke earlier this week, then, imagine my delight in finding this passage from 2 Kings in my devotions this morning, concerning the prophet Elisha after Elijah was taken to Heaven in a celestial chariot:

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!"  He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.  And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.  2 Kings 2:23-25

Good grief! I've read this account before, but it's certainly not one of the Bible's epic narratives, like Daniel in the lion's den or Christ's feeding of the multitudes. Have you ever heard a sermon on Elisha's retaliation against mockers of his baldness?

Actually, Elisha likely was less perturbed that the youths were making fun of his apparent lack of hair then he was their insolence at his position as a prophet of the living God. He'd just taken up the mantle of Elijah the prophet - literally, even - so maybe these kids still had no idea who he was. But it better fits the character of God for Him to zealously protect His prophet's status than to be so bothered when somebody taunts a believer's physical characteristics.

Nevertheless, it's one thing to "call down a curse" on malcontents, and then for bears to come out of the woods and kill them! Although the NIV takes a relatively wimpy stance on the translation of this account with the word "maul," other translations get far more graphic. What chaos must have ensued as two bears tore apart 42 teenagers!

Several years ago, walking down a lonely Maine road through some woods one evening, I saw several yards ahead of me, a roly-poly black ball trundle out into the roadway. This country lane was lined with tall trees, and this cub just rolled out of one wall of trees, scurried across the pavement, and into another thick bank of trees on the other side.

It was so cute, and regular readers of my blog know I don't say that tritely.

By that time, I had reached the spot at which the cub had crossed the road, and - unwisely, in retrospect - I crept to the tree I'd seen him dart in behind.

As I slowly approached, I could hear the little bear, likely frightened out of it little wits, start to instinctively climb the tree, whose bark was old and crusty. Displaying remarkable acumen for such a young animal, the bear scooched itself around the other side of the big, fat tree to keep itself out of my sight. Yet alas, the crusty old bark gave way in its claws, and the cub dropped from the tree, about three feet, to the leaf-cushioned ground below.

As adorable as ever, it let out a muffled, painless grunt when it hit the base of the tree. I could practically hear it go "oof!" After catching its breath, and figuring it was now or never, it picked itself up quickly and scampered into the thick forest, by now rapidly descending into dusk's deep darkness.

I stood there for a minute, reveling in what I'd just witnessed, and so impressed at the bear's dexterity and human-like grunt when it fell. Then I remembered something: There is no such thing as a cub on its own! Certainly not in this part of coastal Maine, at least. Wherever there's a young bear, its mama is somewhere close by.

I didn't run, but I turned around and walked very quickly back the way I'd come, glancing over my shoulder every other step to make sure I wasn't about to become dinner for a family of bears. Thankfully, mama bear knew I wasn't a threat, and was probably more interested in giving her offspring a lecture that went along the lines of, "See what happens when you don't follow me closely?"

I've been called worse things in my life than "baldy," and nobody has to worry about me cursing them to death if they use that term towards me. Still, I take some comfort in knowing that God responded aggressively to the sensitivities of His newly-christened prophet, Elisha, who lived in a time when long hair on men was culturally significant.

"I'm Also the President"

God could have sent a pack of wild dogs to scare away the kids who were mocking Elisha. But no; He sent two bears to kill 42 of them.

For making fun of His chosen prophet's apparent lack of hair.

God used Elisha's baldness to demonstrate His own power, as well as validate Elisha's holy mandate.

Hmm... I wonder if that means hair restoration remedies are unBiblical?
_____

Flash Mob Flashback

Mayor Nutter has had enough.

Philadelphia will not tolerate flash mobs any more.

You may recall that flash mobs are roving bands of troublemakers summoned to a meeting point by text messages and tweets, who depart their meeting point and embark on an aggressive, threatening romp through city streets, and maybe inflict some violence and mayhem along the way. These petulant expressions of faux gangsta bravado have been staged in cities around North America, but seem to have been particularly popular in the City of Brotherly Love for over a year.

Two weeks ago, a relatively sparsely-attended flash mob of less than 40 people still managed to attack and injure two unsuspecting people at random in Pennsylvania's largest city.

Of course, not all flash mobs are violent. Perhaps not coincidentally, the old Wanamaker's Department Store in Philadelphia's Center City - now branded by Macy's - hosted a marvelous choral flash mob performing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus this past Christmas season. Last year, this same Macy's was vandalized by a flash mob which tore through its main retail floor.

But impromptu renditions of the Hallelujah Chorus aren't the type of flash mobs Mayor Nutter wants to squelch. It's the hoodlum kind, the ones with mostly black teenagers who seem to get a kick out of assaulting passers-by, smashing store windows, gridlocking traffic, and terrorizing shoppers.

"If you want to act like an idiot - move," Mayor Nutter, who is black, announced this past Sunday. "Move out of this city. We don't want you here anymore."

Making his comments from the pulpit of the church he's attended for 25 years, Mayor Nutter received enthusiastic support from his equally-weary fellow parishioners.

"Parents, get your act together," he ordered the adults in his city, as church members applauded. "You need to get hold of your kids before we have to."

And to continued applause, the Mayor made a gutsy analysis of the situation.

"A particular problem in the black community is we have too many men making too many babies that they don't want to take care of. We end up dealing with your children."

Wow - a sermon on personal responsibility! And Nutter isn't even a pastor, although he ended up sounding like one.

"The immaculate conception of our Lord Jesus Christ took place a long time ago, and it didn't happen here in Philadelphia. So everyone of these kids has two parents who were around and participating at the time. You need to be around now."

Mayor Nutter's reference to Christ made me think back to the crowds of people who followed Jesus when he walked the streets of Jerusalem in Biblical times. Those days, before social networking had its technological sophistication, the mere sight of Christ would attract throngs of people, to the envy and consternation of religious officials threatened by Christ's teachings.

But unlike modern flash mobs in Philadelphia, even though Jerusalem's streets must have become jammed with humanity, the people were all straining to hear what Christ was saying, and see what He was doing.  After all, He preached a Gospel they'd never heard before, and performed miracles as demonstrations of His Father's power.  They knew He was different.  And indeed, Christ's presence among them proved to be utterly historic, and His life the most pivotal in world history. Our calendar is set by His birth, and our faith by His resurrection from the dead.  No other Person can claim such eminence.

But Christ didn't ask for civilization's calendar to be oriented around His birth, and He even pleaded with God if there was some other way for the salvation of sinners than His death.  He had no swagger about Himself, nor anything humanly attractive about His appearance.

Still, to this very day, people like you and me - who He has called to Himself through the Holy Spirit - follow Him.  We don't maraud through neighborhoods, depending on strength in numbers to intimidate others.  In fact, we often find ourselves fewer in number than those who would seek to turn us away.

Too bad Philadelphia apparently has a generation of young people who can't even get the flash mob concept right.
_____

Allowing Peace

Due to some continued strife in my family regarding my aunt's medical condition, I've been unable to spend the time necessary to craft an essay.

But I would like to say that in the flurry of phone calls, texts, and e-mails that I've been sending and receiving regarding this issue with my aunt, the Lord drew my attention to the Greeting of Peace which we always recite in my church on Sundays.

Right after the offering, the minister says "'Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful.' The peace of the Lord be with you always."

And we in the congregation respond, "And also with you."

You may recall that the verse comes from Colossians 3:15, and its immediate context involves harmony in the congregation of believers.

However, this morning, the Lord drew me back to the first word in that verse, the word "let."

As in, "allow."

Do I let, or allow, the peace of God to rule in my heart? After all, God's peace won't do much good to any of us if we don't allow it to permeate our beings. Both for the benefit of our fellowship of saints, and for ourselves individually.

So as the news today has gotten progressively worse regarding my aunt, I've tried to allow the peace of God to rule in my heart.

Maybe "letting the peace of God rule in your heart" is helpful for you to hear today, too.
_____

Shocked, Shocked by Holland's Atheism!

Of all the timeless lines from one of cinematography's greatest films, it's become one of the most iconic:

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

As you'll recall, it was spoken by the duplicitous Captain Renault in Casablanca, just before he was handed his own winnings.

Well, after reading a troubling BBC News article on Christianity in Holland, I felt like uttering a paraphrase of Renault's feigned incredulity myself:

"I'm shocked, shocked to see such liberal theology in Holland!"

Of course, I'm not shocked at all. In fact, the BBC article is hardly news-worthy. After all, most Americans know how atheistic Europe has become, with the Netherlands smack dab in the middle of the heresy.

Now, I'm hardly Christendom's best apologist, but the following statements quoted in the BBC article are so nihilistic that even I can't resist responding to them in faith. Indeed, I feel compelled to do so.

So... here we go:

Quotes and Comebacks

- "Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death... No, for me our life, our task, is before death."

Obviously, nobody has a "talent" for believing in a true Heaven and Hell without the working of the Holy Spirit in their lives to convince them that they're true. Technically, for people who are not saved, it's a fact that the only shot they get at making something useful out of their lives is during the time before they die. But for believers in Christ, life provides the briefest of prologues before we arrive in Heaven, where we will spend a literal eternity with our Savior. Eternity isn't something any of us - saved or not - can fathom, so expecting there to be a "talent" for doing so is unrealistic. That doesn't mean that life after death, however, is equally unrealistic, does it?

- "God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience."

Pardon my frankness, but that's just a stupid thing to say. The Bible is replete with scriptures regarding the deity and personhood of God, and just because the term "Trinity" isn't in any of the sacred texts, God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is pretty well established. To say God is not a being either betrays woeful ignorance or willful blindness, neither of which is hardly an admirable quality for any religious leader.

- "A lot of traditional beliefs are outside people and have grown into rigid things that you can't touch any more."

Well, yes and no. To the extent that some people of faith rely on legalistic practices and classifications by which they can sort fellow believers, then yes, traditional beliefs can be harmful to communities of faith. However, if by "traditional beliefs," we're talking about orthodox principles like original sin, the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, and salvation through faith, then no; these facts and facets of God's purposes on Earth are rigid, fixed, and closed to existential interpretation. We should find peace in the fact that God does not play a shell game with redemption. He doesn't change the rule about or make different people jump through different hoops to please Him. He doesn't have one door to salvation for one group of people, and another door for another group. He's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow; not because He can't change, but because He knows his people can, through His strength! It's a good thing the Gospel has its rigid parts.

- "I think it's very liberating. [One of the heretical teachers] is using the Bible in a metaphorical way so I can bring it to my own way of thinking, my own way of doing."

The Bible's purpose is not so you can think about it however you want to. It's not a beta version of some incomplete religious system. It's not open to revision or editing. It's not a Microsoft Word document; you can't cut and paste parts you like out of it for your own satisfaction, or delete parts you don't like. It's the holy, infallible, unchanging Word of God. Yes, it contains some metaphors, but it's not metaphorical. If the whole book isn't true, how do you know any of it is?

- "Here you can believe what you want to think for yourself, what you really feel and believe is true."

Ahh, the same deadly trap Pilate asked Christ before the crucifixion. What is truth? Truth is what exists whether you think it does or not. Truth is what rules our universe, gives you the ability to read these words, and breathe while doing so. Truth is life and grace and reliance on God. Truth is what you deny when you think it's open to interpretation. Quite simply, God says through the Christ that His Word is truth. Period.

- "The Church has to be alert to what is going on in society," he says. "It has to change to stay Christian. You can't preach heaven in the same way today as you did 2,000 years ago, and we have to think again what it is. We can use the same words and say something totally different."

How very contemporary. In fact, this line of thinking is quite old, at least in terms of how even some evangelical churches have aligned themselves with popular culture. People of faith cannot resist the temptation to think that they play a major role in God's work on Earth. Many church leaders have become convinced that they need to re-interpret the Gospel to modern audiences because our societies have become so sophisticated and sensory-driven. To the extent that technological advances have changed how the Gospel is proclaimed, these "relevance" arguments have validity. However, when the Gospel itself becomes the target of relevance overhauls, then we run into major problems. The Gospel of the Bible remains as true and perfect as it ever was, and the working of the Holy Spirit as vital and convincing. Personally, I believe that for people to be saved, a monotone reading of the Scriptures is all that's necessary. The reason I don't necessarily advocate for that is because God gifts His people in a variety of ways to serve His church. The point remains, however, that the Bible is what's relevant. It's our cultures which are dissonant with the Gospel.

- "People have very strict ideas about what it means [for Jesus to be considered the Son of God]. Some ideas I might agree with, some ideas I don't."

If by "strict ideas" it's meant that Christ Jesus is the literal Son of God, born of a virgin, and the only pure sacrifice for the sins of the entire world, then I can agree with those ideas, even though they're more accurately called "facts." You can decide NOT to agree that these ideas are true, but that doesn't mean they're not true, does it? You can decide that the law of gravity isn't true, but you're not going to automatically float around into space by doing so. Gravity will still keep you anchored to this planet, whether you want to believe is will or not.


Meanwhile, going back to Casablanca for a moment, consider Victor Laszlo's classic line to Rick Blaine, regarding striving for what's right:

"You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't believe in his heart."

Kinda sounds like he's talking about our contemporary Dutch heretics, doesn't it?

More's the pity.
_____

Coming to Terms with Toddlers

Watering some plants in the front yard, I had gotten lost in my thoughts, mesmerized by the glistening water as it splashed about the azaleas and ivy.

"Hi, Tim!" a cherubic greeting suddenly rang out.

It was the sing-song voice of my 5-year old next-door neighbor, Daniel.

His father was in their yard, watering some plants just like I was. Here in Texas, with our summer heat, it's what many of us find ourselves doing in the evening whether we want to or not.

Except Daniel. He and his sister had gotten bored with their yard, and had decided to visit mine. A thick swath of mondo grass runs along the line where our yards meet, so Daniel and his two-year-old sister, Charlotte were kicking their short legs high with each step to navigate the terrain.

"HAAA!" Charlotte yelled, having already mastered her Texas twang, but not the accompanying southern lilt. "WHY DA HAVE A DOG?"

Clueless as to what she had asked, I turned to her brother, who immediately translated "why don't you have a dog?" in the bored intonations of a big brother who always has to tell people what his sister is saying.

What an odd question, I thought! What two-year-old cares about the reasons why people do or don't have a dog?

But I had hardly enough time to answer. Charlotte was already babbling another question, which her brother didn't even understand.

"See?" she asked, changing the subject yet again. Charlotte held out the hem of her pink shirt emblazoned with a cat's face. By now, she'd gotten closer to me and didn't have to yell.

"I'm 'Hello Kitty!'"

"She always dresses like that," her bored brother immediately informed me, as if he gets embarrassed because his baby sister always wears pink Hello Kitty clothes.

Then Daniel spotted the dry, empty shell of a cicada, the flying insect that sheds its outer skin in the summer.

"Look what I found!" he announced triumphantly.

"Oh, it's a cicada's shell," I dutifully observed, assuming he'd already seen plenty of them around his own yard, but perhaps wasn't familiar with the name of its former owner.

Except that Daniel looked up at me quizzically, like I was some sort of idiot. A frown rippled across his lips.

"That's not a shell," he scoffed, almost incredulous that I didn't know the correct terminology. "It's an exoskeleton."

Did I mention that the kid has been attending nature camp all summer?

By that time, Daniel and Charlotte's father had meandered down the street to see if he needed to save me from his children.

But I was laughing out loud at Daniel's vocabulary, completely caught off guard by his mastery of what exoskeletons are. I pointed to the dry, crusty shell in Daniel's hand and asked his father, "Daniel has corrected me. This is an 'exoskeleton,' not a 'shell.'"

"Oh, yeah," their father grimaced. "He's correcting his mom and me all the time!"

I mean, when you were five, did you know what an exoskeleton was?

When he was about three or four, my eldest nephew was riding with my father and me as we drove past a construction site with a large machine parked near the road.

"Look, Andrew! A backhoe!" my father exclaimed from the driver's seat.

My toddler nephew, strapped into his carseat, turned casually to glance out the window, and in the bored, level brogue of a wizened foreman, corrected his grandfather.

"That's not a backhoe," he observed, "That's a 'dozer!"

Which it was, of course.

Mustn't it be some sort of hopeful spark regarding the competence of younger generations when they follow terminology better than we do?
_____

Remembering Rain

I'm racking my brain, trying to remember what rain is like.

Here in north central Texas, we're burning through the 33rd day straight of 100-plus degree days, and our last measurable precipitation was in June.

And I got to thinking about the time when I was living in New York City and we got our first thunderstorm after an unseasonably long summertime dry spell.

You see, both hot and dry aren’t the usual descriptions for New York City summers. Usually, the humidity hangs like a sticky, soggy blanket, while the air punishes every move with drenching heat that can suck away your breath. But this particular summer was hot yet atypically dry, dry, dry.

Rain isn't always welcome in the City, especially if you’re a subway commuter. Draining rainwater pours through cracks and patchwork asphalt down to the tunnels below, and waiting passengers sometimes open their umbrellas underground as dirty runoff sprinkles from overhead.

Not that even above ground, you can keep clean in a New York rainstorm. Standing by a curb, you're bound to be splashed with oily water as cabs and buses charge past next to the sidewalk. Standing water around clogged drains can create miniature lakes across crosswalks through which pedestrians must wade.

Yet that summer, as weeks went by without rain, those problems melted away in the relentless heat. Layers of dusty grime eventually coated just about everything. The city desperately needed a good washing-down.

So as usually happens in New York’s predictable unpredictability, the first rain in a long time came during an afternoon rush hour. When people who had dressed for work with leather shoes, silk blouses, and hand-made silk ties - all completely inappropriate for exposure to rain - were leaving their office buildings eight hours later.

Yet here we were, walking on the newly-slick concrete and granite sidewalks to subway stations, bus stops, to our apartments, to our reserved black cars, double-parked and idling: All getting wet.

If this was just another thunderstorm, and this was just another day of rain after many other days of rain - meaning the rain was not special or particularly novel - the wetness would have been greeted with disdain, a sea of umbrellas, and stretched legs as pedestrians dodged puddles.

But as I walked home from the 28th Street subway station, rushing under my umbrella, and jumping over puddles, I noticed a curious phenomenon.

People were walking briskly, yes, as is normal for New York; but not in an agitated manner, like pedestrians usually walk when its raining. People were not treating the rain as if it was their enemy. They didn't hustle along with their shoulders hunched, squinting as if it helped keep the rain off their eyebrows. Puddles weren’t obstacles or destroyers of leather shoes. Umbrellas were neatly folded. Drenched hair was dripping over faces and ears, but not to the consternation of their wearers.

As people enjoyed the rain!

So I closed up my wet umbrella and folded it, realizing the rain was truly refreshing. And I walked along, my starched dress shirt first speckled with wet spots, then soaked. My necktie became a soaked strip of silk dangling from my throat.

Granted, Manhattan has no Elysian fields of grass or hay whose idyllic, seasonal aromas can be unlocked by a nice rain. Still, the bouquet of that rain, that day, held an urban sweetness and a promise of freshness as trees were rinsed, sidewalks were scrubbed, and building facades were washed.

And we walked home, we relieved urban dwellers, reveling in the wetness.

Leather shoes will dry out, shirts will be cleaned, and there are plenty of ties in the city. Those are prices we willingly paid for the beauty of rain after a long, hot, dry spell.

Although here in Texas, if and when it rains again, since the temperature has been so high, it probably won't feel as refreshing as it did in New York City.

Probably not as bad as a scalding hot shower. But to tell you the truth, I wouldn't even mind that at this point!
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Four Lessons from a Wet Frog

It's not exactly been America's finest hour, has it?

These last few weeks during Washington's epic squabble over the country's debt ceiling.

What started out as just another hike in our country's borrowing capacity suddenly turned into an ideological war over how money gets spent in Washington. To the extent that today's compromise, hashed out between the White House and partisan leaders, actually represents a fiduciary accomplishment, our country has been saved - however briefly - from insolvency. And that's a relief - or, more accurately, a reprieve.

But not much of either.

Tea Partiers have been howling "foul" ever since this debate began, and although I don't subscribe to their tactics, I have to admit that in substance, they're more correct than even traditional Republicans want to admit. Big changes to the way government is done - and paid for - still need to be made.

Lesson 1: Pick Your Fights Wisely

However, this was not the fight to pick with the expectation of solving America's problems. After all, Washington's wasteful policies have been nurtured by decades of cronyism, sleazy lobbying, partisanship, earmarks, and political patronage. This debt ceiling measure, as what would otherwise have been an innocuous - albeit damaging - formality, never provided an opportunity to construct a new framework for spending and taxing, which seemed to be the Tea Party's objective.

It could even be said that the Tea Party itself is simply another lackey in Washington's grand tradition, only this time a puppet of libertarian autocrats like the Koch brothers. If that is indeed the case, as many politicos suspect, Tea Partiers represent the same duplicity of which they accuse the two main political parties. No small wonder, then, that some traditional Republicans appear to tolerate their Tea Party brethren more than they respect them.

This means Tea Partiers need to be logical in their pursuit of meaningful change.

As I've said, I don't disagree with a lot of what Tea Partiers claim to champion: small government, lower taxes, and personal responsibility. I differ from Tea Partiers when it comes to funding our military, because the same wasteful spending so easily identifiable in programs like welfare and Medicaid can also be seen in our defense budget. It's just that since we currently have military personnel being killed in two active wars, we have to use surgical strikes on the Pentagon's budget instead of cluster bombs.

I'm also hesitant about wholesale changes to entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and welfare. Wiping out government programs won't put people to work or erase their medical bills. Yes, I'm convinced widespread fraud exists in these programs which must be weeded out. But taking away safety nets cold-turkey will only dump more impoverished people on the streets and likely increase crime. Personally, I also suspect that the reason most Tea Partiers so loathe these programs is because they don't understand all of the economics of poverty and how extreme practices of capitalism don't do the middle class any favors.

But I digress.

Lesson 2: Don't Dilute Noble Objectives with Vitriol

Where I distance myself from Tea Party rhetoric comes at the point when their noble objectives of fiscal austerity and accountability become infested with an irascible, petulant, and downright nasty mentality. The expectations of many Tea Partiers seem woefully unrealistic, and they seem surprised and easily abrasive when they find the mechanics of downsizing government don't function at warp speed.

These unrealistic expectations may be due to a poor understanding of American history and a lopsided view of political science. I'm not just criticizing American public education, of which many Tea Partiers are a product. A considerable number of neo-cons have taken to personally studying selective bits of American history and developing assumptions supporting preconceived nostalgia which tend to wither under wholistic review. History cannot be accurately perceived when viewed through the microscope of dogma. Not for liberals who want to distort the legacy of Christopher Columbus, for example, and not for self-taught conservatives who insist orthodox Christianity governed our Founding Fathers.

Indeed, for many Tea Partiers, I suspect that a threadbare Christian theology has been woven into the downy quilt with which they so desperately want to cradle their perception of America. Not just in terms of our government, but our economy, with rose-colored glasses lingering over Biblical passages condemning slothfulness yet ignoring many more passages commanding us to love our neighbors.

But I digress yet again.

Lesson 3: Revisionist History Runs Both Ways

Granted, the complexities of history and politics can make almost anybody glassy-eyed, but if conservatives really expect to be taken seriously, we're going to need to put more effort into justifying our exasperation at the status-quo in Washington.

For example, consider this brief collection of sound bites culled from a cursory review of websites sympathetic to the Tea Party movement (each is followed by my own response):

- From TheHill.com: We pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities.

Ten years ago, September 11 hadn't happened yet. And we weren't in two wars simultaneously, both started by a Republican, and both in Islamic countries where insurgencies have helped re-define modern warfare.

- From Mark Meckler, a Tea Party leader:  We have compromised our way into disaster.

But aren't politics all about compromise when you've got different political parties controlling different mechanisms of the legislative process? At most, the Tea Party could claim 40% of voters in 2008, which basic math tells you does not equate to "political capital." Until Tea Partiers control the Executive and Legislative branches, compromise will be essential to getting anything changed for the better.

And this debt ceiling legislation isn't the end of the road. We won't know if this leads to disaster until our government hammers out more details on how these problems will be comprehensively addressed.

- From RedState.com: It’s times like this that I wonder “Is the GOP in cahoots with the Democrats to destroy freedom in this country and make this a police state?”

How has this admitted fiasco over the debt ceiling contributed to the destruction of freedom in the United States? When Republicans voted for George W. Bush's seven debt ceiling increases with nary a blink, how was that not destructive of our freedoms? When he crafted the Patriot Act, how did that not contribute to America becoming a police state?

- And from Glenn Beck: Isn’t it curious that when Democrats wanted to push through a $1 trillion stimulus plan that enriched every social engineering project in the country they got it done? Isn’t it amazing that Democrats had the willpower to ram through health unpopular Obamacare which changed
our entire health care system without any compromise whatsoever? Why can’t Republicans find a similar backbone? Why can’t they fight for the people who elected them? Are you telling me they can’t find significant waste and fraud in the Federal government right now?

If you had bothered to pay attention in your high school civics class, Mr. Beck, you'd have learned that when one party controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, a lot of stuff can get done without compromising between parties. Democrats were in control of Washington during most of the stimulus frenzy, and for all of the Obamacare debacle.

Lesson 4: Politicians Aren't the Only Problem

If there's anything on which I can truly sympathize with Tea Partiers, it's how discouraging it can be for a republic to end up with the politicians it deserves. We usually end up voting in the people we deserve because they're the folks who most effectively play on our desires, our fallacies, and our indulgences. Very few politicians actually get to change society - don't give them that much credit! Almost all politicians reflect the people who put them in office. That means our problems don't lie so much in Washington as they do in the suburbs, farms, and cities of the United States.

We need to remember that for all these years, it hasn't been some vagabond, rogue band that's been dragging America down the gritty path of overspending, bloated government, and over-regulation. It's been a majority of Americans who've been approving, through incremental rationalizations, the festering stew of dysfunction we see today.

Kind of like killing a frog in a boiling pot of water. If you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put a frog into a pot of cool water, it will stay in it, even as you slowly turn the water up to a boil.

At which point, the frog dies.

Hopefully, the bubbles we've started to see in the water means its still just simmering.
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