Creepy internet image of the day.

Creepier if he was still holding the knife he used to carve it.

Notice that the rest of the family isn't in the picture. What’s up with that? …Oh yeah.

Cool video of the day.

It was impossible in Vacaville to keep up with the podcasts I usually listen to. Trust me, you don’t want to download a simple 11MB show over dial-up. So I figured I’d wait until I got back to Santa Cruz, and hopped back onto the high-speed. Man, a week’s worth of podcasts is a lot to catch up with.

One of the cool things is this video from RocketBoom. It’s of someone who went a little nuts with the Xmas lights this year. Very cool-looking… but it’s gotta annoy the neighbors. Download it here.

Update, 12/7/2024: Carson Williams of Mason, OH synced his house’s lights to Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards in Winter,” and after the video went viral, TSO made it their official music video. So now you can watch it on YouTube. Or, of course, right here:

Back from Vacaville.

Vacaville was fun. Good food, good family. As I’ve said before, I don’t tend to rant when I’m on vacation because I’m enjoying myself too much.

I did avoid the Friday Xmas shopping, which most of the family decided to put up with anyway. So while they were out, I watched the news and some movies, ate leftovers, and polished off the rest of the pumpkin ice cream. Then the others showed up to eat leftovers too.

Saturday I came back so that I could go to church and do my part to keep the service going. With all the Bethany kids missing for Thanksgiving, I was also curious to see how much the service would shrink… but we actually had a decent turnout, and it’s nice to have Willy Snow back.

He preached today. I don’t know that I agree with his interpretations of Jesus’s parables; I’ve been studying them myself for my devotional blog (which I’ve also not been posting to). He made the common presumption that Jesus was speaking in code; fr’instance when “seed” means “the word of God” in one parable, it means “the word of God” in every parable. Thus, since in the parable of the seeder [Mt 13.3-9] “the birds of the air” represents the devil [Mt 13.19] if we follow the code, “the birds of the air” in the parable of the mustard seed [Mt 13.31-32] also represents the devil, which nests in the mustard tree’s branches. Thought-provoking; it’s quite true that when a church reaches a certain size, the devil tries to tempt its members to apathy. But I don’t know that this is what Jesus was trying to say in that parable. I think, rather, he was pointing out how a tiny plant from the herb garden can get big enough for birds to nest in it.

I’ll tell you though; I see plenty of apathy in small churches too. But that’s another rant.

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 wasn’t the way to stop global warming.

Just some more evidence that causehead entertainers don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

Over the weekend I watched Earth to America, a celebrity-filled special on TBS about global warming. ’Twas another example that celebrities really don’t know what the hell they’re doing when it comes to big causes. They only know how to entertain, so in this special, they entertained. The song-and-dance number at the beginning of it was stupid; the stand-up comedians were funny; the actors did some announcing (except Tom Hanks, who also played guitar)… and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came out to talk about how you, too, could get involved.

How? With a “virtual petition.” Hop on the internet and add your name to the bloody thing, and people will therefore know that you are against global warming. Even though you still drive a car that gets 12 miles per gallon, still use incandescent lights (and those ever-popular halogen torch lamps), run the heater whenever the temperature drops below 60° and the air conditioner whenever it’s above 80°. (And I won’t even talk about the overuse of Christmas lights.) Add to this that the special was taped in Las Vegas, a city that uses so much electricity that the sun becomes irrelevant. The irony wasn’t lost on a few of the comedians.

The reason it’s called a “virtual” petition is because it’s not a real one. And even real ones are worthless. Honestly, nobody cares that a lot of people have signed a petition for something… unless it actually carries political weight, like a recall petition or signatures to put a proposition on the ballot. I’ve covered many a government meeting where petitions were presented and subsequently ignored. Besides, everyone knows that talk is cheap. Internet talk is even cheaper. (Including, and perhaps especially, this blog.) So I’m not linking to it.

If celebrities actually want to do something against global warming, I would recommend a few things they could do. They have the money, so they can afford to do all these things. But they won’t, because they’re hypocrites.

1. If a Las Vegas hotel can’t show that its electrical output is decreasing every year, boycott it. Do no shows there. Don’t stay there, don’t go to events that are staged there, don’t even gamble there. And tell everyone why.
2. I don’t care that they drive expensive stretch Hummers; but they should customize every last car so that the engines get at least 45 miles per gallon. And carpool. It makes no sense to have your entourage follow in a caravan when your limo seats 12 comfortably, even in the hot tub.
3. I don’t care that they have giant houses. In fact, that makes it more effective to install solar panels on the roof. And if they get cold, wear sweaters, dangit. Bill Cosby shouldn’t be the only sweater-wearing celebrity in America.
4. Stop heating the pool. Move it indoors.
5. Stop using private planes. Part of the reason why the airline industry isn’t doing well is because too many rich people are switching to private planes. That’s the worst form of not carpooling. I don’t care if your precious schedule is inconvenienced; talk the airlines into more direct flights, and offer them more money to do it. They’ll accommodate you. (And what’s with the idiots who gave John Travolta his own personal 747?)
6. Stop using drugs. You realize how much energy it takes to produce a kilo of cocaine? And that all the money is going towards a drug lord who pollutes more than you do? (Notice how polluted their countries are.) Unless the drug lords cut down their own electrical and gas output, boycott them too.
7. Scientologists need to get audited less. E-meters use electricity, people.

Joking aside, one of the interesting bits in the special was where Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (really, Robert Smigel with a terrible French accent, with his hand up a rubber dog’s ass) interviewed a bunch of Republican congressmen who weren’t big on this global warming idea. They described it as questionable science. However, none of them being scientists, I think they perceive the difference between good science and bad science is that “good” science contributes a lot of money to their political campaigns, and “bad” science asks them to do inconvenient things without paying them to do anything. Or at least giving them a free vacation disguised as a symposium, like the pharmaceutical companies do.

Ever hear of Pascal’s Wager? It’s a bit of logic that Christians try to use on non-Christians, forgetting that humans aren’t logical:

• If God exists, and hell is for those who don’t follow him, then you should follow him.
• If God doesn’t exist, and there is no hell, then you don’t need to follow him.
• But since you don’t know for sure, it’s better to act as if God exists, since following him is a good way to live anyway. Because if you don’t, and you’re wrong, you’re going to hell.

I bring this up because I think these congressmen need a version of the Wager for global warming.

• If global warming exists, and chaos is the result of pollution, then you shouldn’t pollute.
• If global warming doesn’t exist, and there will be no chaos, then you can pollute.
• But since you don’t know for sure, it’s better to act as if it does, since not polluting is a good way to live anyway. Because if you pollute, and you’re wrong, there’s going to be chaos.

Since some of them think of themselves as Christians (which is odd, because Christians are required by God to take care of His planet) this argument might work on them. Or it might not, in which case they’ll realize how ineffective Pascal’s Wager is. It’s worth a shot.

Back in Vacaville.

I had no pressing responsibilities at school this week, so I went to Vacaville. May as well start Thanksgiving early.

This means, unfortunately, that I am back to using dial-up. Ah, dial-up, how I loathe thee… let me count the ways.

• Gmail has gone from being instantaneous to a thirty-second wait between screens.
• A five-minute podcast now takes 25 minutes to download. Forget about the half-hour ones.
• Oh, yeah, I started subscribing to a video podcast. The latest episode is available tomorrow. Guess how many hours that one’s gonna take?
• Forget using Skype, my internet phone service.
• Forget multitasking on the internet: Reading news sites while downloading news podcasts.
• The news sites likewise take 30 seconds. Unless I open more than one page at the same time. Then they’re longer.

All the minimal wait times that I used to ignore… now are multiplied by 50 or more. Dial-up sucks. Guess I’m going to the coffeehouse a lot this week.

But that is my only real complaint about being in Vacaville. Thanksgiving should be fun… except they’re talking about playing board games as part of the Thanksgiving entertainment. Games? A nice idea, but I expect to do what I usually do for Thanksgiving: After eating three desserts and telling the family and assorted guests what I’m thankful for, I get to sit in a big armchair and watch a few movies in a L-tryptophan-induced stupor. Oh well; maybe my brain will be active enough to answer a few low-intelligence trivia questions.

On freedom of speech... in the church.

Pastors should be able to talk politics without outside retribution. (Inside retribution is kind of up to you.)

“If Jesus debated Senator Kerry and President Bush” was the title of George Regas’s sermon on Oct. 31, 2004. I don’t care for the premise.

Both Kerry and Bush claim that Jesus is Lord. The idea that Jesus would debate them implies that Jesus is on the same level as they are, and that either Kerry or Bush could refute, critique, or oppose his comments. You have not accepted his Lordship if you tell him no. I think American Christians tend to forget what the title “Lord” means. Well, that got the mini-rant out of the way up front.

Regas is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, CA, and in his sermon he critiqued the then-presidential candidates two days before the election. As is his right as the shepherd of a church. Pastors should critique the wider culture we live in. I wish they would do it with as much fervor as they critique their Christian subculture… or that they’d even do it in the first place. In my experience, they either preach about the nature of God, or they exegete a passage and don’t bother to relevantly apply what they’ve learned to anything that’s currently happening. Regas’s sermon is a proper critique of the attitudes behind the candidates. True, he’s coming at it from the position of the Religious Left, but so what? The Religious Right has said worse… and said it with much less compassion.

I bring this up because the IRS is threatening the church’s tax-exempt status because of that sermon. Supposedly Regas endorsed Kerry in that sermon. I read it; I don’t see that he has. Most of Regas’s critiques have to do with the Iraq war and the fact that neither candidate discussed poverty in their elections. Regas is pro-choice, but if you consider that an endorsement for Kerry by default, then you’re a single-issue voter, and out of touch with reality by default. (Besides, though I don’t agree with all of Regas’s positions on abortion, I do agree in this: This nation’s poverty rate and its abortion rate are connected. If we do something to decrease one, it decreases the other. And it is much easier, and more Christian, to help the poor than to change people’s minds about abortion. Save the born children, not just the unborn.)

Churches preach on politics all the time, and pastors regularly endorse candidates in everything but the literal words, “Vote for [CANDIDATE] this Tuesday.” I say since freedom of speech and freedom of religion are in the same amendment, pastors should be able to say the literal words. If Regas thinks Jesus would vote for Kerry, he should be able to freely say so.

The argument is that pastors shouldn’t be able to do so because they unduly influence their congregations. This idea obviously comes from someone who doesn’t attend church. My pastor has been preaching on evangelism for the past month, and how many people showed up for the evangelism outreach last Saturday? Five. Including him. The rest, including everyone else (but one) involved in the church’s leadership, didn’t show; and some are actually grumbling that he’s been preaching about evangelism too much. If that’s their attitude about something that Jesus obviously makes a priority, does anyone seriously thinkthat a pastor’s interpretation of Jesus’s politics is going to sway anyone?

Well, the IRS does. And I hope this thing goes all the way to the Supreme Court, and the IRS’s gag rule on churches is declared unconstitutional.

Read the sermon yourself here. Listen to it here.

Stupid Internet Survey: Which revolutionary am I?

What Revolutionary Movement Leader Are You?

Nelson Mandela. You are Nelson Mandela. Your rise from prisoner to President in the long struggle against South African apartheid is an inspiration to the world. You prefer non-violent methods like boycotts, marches and other direct action, but you will use sabotage and other acts of violence when forced to do so.

What Revolutionary Movement Leader Are You?
created with MyYearbook.com.

Phooey. I was shooting for Gandhi. Oh well. Mandela’s not bad.

Errand running.

This has actually been the first time I used the local bus system since the strike was over. The service hasn’t improved any; the bus to downtown Santa Cruz was a half hour late. Missing the bus back was entirely my fault, so I’m killing time in Borders, typing this entry for upload later since the evil T-Mobile pigdogs have taken over their wifi.

I finally got access to the church’s host, but the school’s network won’t let me FTP anything. (In English: The school’s computer system will not allow me to see or alter the contents of the server where the church’s web pages are.) There are a lot of things the school’s network won't allow, simply because the school doesn’t want to be liable for anything illegal that hackers might do with unlimited access.

So the school has a Net Nanny site-blocker to filter out the porn (which I actually appreciate, because it’s frighteningly easy to stumble across the stuff; every unrestricted Google or Altavista image search inevitably brings up something). It won't allow file-sharing. It won't allow BitTorrent. And, I’ve discovered, it won’t allow FTP, anonymous or otherwise. Yet it will allow iTunes sharing; probably because the IT guys don’t yet know how to block it.

So that meant I had to go to a coffeehouse to upload to the server. I had to go to a coffeehouse. (For those of you who know me, you know that’s not much of a hardship.) I didn’t have to buy the egg nog latté, but since it was there…. God bless the holidays.

Starting 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 blog.

I already have a blog. Actually, two of them: this one, and my devotional blog. And now I have a third. My small groups blog.

Exactly why I now have three blogs is because I was trying to talk Sojourners Church into recognizing the value of blogging. In fact, I thought it would make the church’s site a whole lot more interesting if they simply turned it into a great big blog and let people post things to it that way. It was a cutting-edge idea, and I definitely believe the church as a whole should be on the cutting edge of every society God puts it in.

Except if you’re too cutting-edge, you scare people. And that idea did. “Who,” they said, “is going to maintain that thing?”

Well, that’s part of my job, isn’t it? …Actually, not really. Once they realized that there was no guarantee that I’m going to be around after May 2006, it feels like they’ve been slowly phasing me out. So my replacement will have to maintain the thing, and it’s a little hard to find people with my skillset that won’t charge them a lot of money. (Unless they’re teenagers.) Plus pastors, by and large, are control freaks, and there’s just enough control-freak behavior in our pastors to make them wonder how they could ever regain control of their website if it joins the blogosphere.

Phil Keaggy rocks.

If you’ve never heard of him, it’s not surprising. Talent doesn’t rise to the top in the Christian market.

My friend James introduced me to Phil Keaggy about 10 years ago. Not literally. This was when I first met James, and he was (and still is) a huge Phil Keaggy fan. And at the time, I was completely uninterested in Christian music because it was (and still is) predominantly crap.

“Oh, you gotta hear him,” said James, and proceeded to find me some Phil Keaggy to listen to. And when Phil came to Santa Cruz later that year, James dragged me to the concert.

Ten years and 21 compact discs later, I am still not as huge a fan as James is (because I don’t know if that’s possible) but I’m up there somewhere. So when I found out he was playing in Los Gatos tonight, I got the tickets as soon as I could find out who was selling them.

My sister emailed me afterward to inform me of something that the Phil Keaggy website hadn’t—that there was a jam session with Phil, before the concert, for aspiring guitarists. I told James about it, and he had to be there.

To get in, you had to raise funds for the Christian Guitar and Bassist Conference, so James did that. He got a lot of sponsors. I wound up being one of them—of course, I didn’t offer to sponsor him; he just put me down on the list, so I shrugged and ponied up the dough. Turns out he raised the third-largest amount of money. So he was a shoo-in for playing with Phil, in case of time constraints.

We fans sometimes overestimate crowds. That’s why I got my tickets early; I expected a sold-out concert, but the building was only half-full. At the jam session, there were actually only seven guitarists out of the 10 expected. (And maybe four or five spectators, including me.) Each of the guitarists got about 10 minutes apiece with Phil, playing either one of their own songs with him, or one of his, or Phil would just make something up and off they’d go.

So I watched that for about two hours. Then we took a dinner break and went to the concert, where Phil was brilliant as usual. And I wound up buying another Phil Keaggy CD. Really, I can’t afford to keep up with his output. The guy cranks out about three CDs a year. He says he’s slowing down; good, I might actually have a chance of catching up! But you’d never know it from the amazing stuff he can do with his guitars.

No, I didn’t get his autograph. I stopped asking for them years ago, when I realized there was no real point in owning them. My memory is more than adequate… but they did make a DVD of the jam session, so I suppose I could borrow James’s DVD when my memory gets faulty.

Update, 11/30/2024: Back in 2008 I borrowed James’s DVD, extracted the bit where he and Phil played together, and stuck it on YouTube. Wanna watch it? Here ya go.

Phil’s entire discography, plus outtakes and concert recordings, is on sale on his Bandcamp page, which lets you listen to everything. Can’t find an out-of-print disc? It’s there. And now I’ve lost count of how many albums of his I own.

Picking on “Victory is Mine.”

♫ Victory is mine

♫ Victory is mine

♫ Victory today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For victory today is mine

Should we even have a worship song where Satan gets mentioned a whole bunch of times and Jesus doesn’t ever get mentioned once?

♫ Love is mine

♫ Love is mine

♫ Love today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For love today is mine

For that matter, I'm not in the habit of praying to Satan either. I already ranted about that.

♫ Joy is mine

♫ Joy is mine

♫ Joy today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For joy today is mine

For that matter, the bit where Jesus tells Satan to get behind him [Lk 4.8] is a textual variant. The other instances, in which he’s calling Peter “Satan,” is better translated, “Fall in behind me”; in other words, “You follow me and not vice-versa; otherwise you cause me to stumble.” [Mt 16.23/Mk 8.33] If Jesus did ever actually say that to Satan, it would mean the same thing. Those of you who have read the Old Testament understand that Satan is supposed to be working for God, not rebelling against him and trying to trip him up. I ranted about that here.

♫ Peace is mine

♫ Peace is mine

♫ Peace today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For peace today is mine

Likely this is another one of those worship songs that aren’t well thought-out, but they’re catchy, so people sing them. Maybe it’s meant to be sung by Jesus. (Except for the bits where we switch the word “victory” with other things.) Considering that Jesus promised us persecution, maybe we should likewise sing about that:

♫ Persecution is mine

♫ Persecution is mine

♫ Persecution today is mine

♫ I told Satan

♫ “Get thee behind”

♫ For persecution today is mine

Except that’s not as catchy, and a bit of a downer. But more biblical.

Happy holidays?

In order to not single out any one religion, many advertisers have decided to say “Happy Holidays” so that they don’t single out Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, or whatever winter religious holidays happen to come up outside of Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. (This is also in order to not exclude any one religion. God forbid they advertise Christmas shopping so much that they miss out on any of that sweet Hanukkah-gift action.)

The silly part is that there’s a lot of unthinking behavior that goes along with this “Happy Holidays” behavior.

Case in point: I was watching TV this evening when a Lowe’s commercial came on the air. Not once did Gene Hackman (who does the narrating) mention Christmas; it was all, “For your holiday decorations, shop at Lowe’s.” Followed by images of Christmas trees, Christmas greenery, Christmas lights, Christmas baubles and trinkets. You don’t decorate your house with this stuff for Ramadan; you don’t decorate your house with this stuff for Hanukkah. It’s all Christmas stuff.

Even so, Lowes wishes you a happy holidays.

Now, I’m not offended by this as a Christian. I could care less if Christmas gets mentioned, because all this commercialism and greed has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus. But if I were Jewish or Muslim or pagan, I would—and should—be offended. The bloody stores claim they’re inclusive, but aren’t carrying any other holidays’ stuff. Where’s the Hanukkah menorahs? Ever found one at Walmart? I haven’t. Where’s the Ramadan ornaments?… that’s right, Ramadan doesn’t have any. Where are the pseudo-African flags for Kwanzaa, at least? Does anyone sell that stuff other than specialty shops?

Inclusive, my pasty white arse.

Illogical apologetics.

It’s much easier to argue in favor of Christ when you’re actually composing both sides of the debate.

I was listening to Chuck Colson’s “BreakPoint” show this morning and he was plugging a book, written by Art Lindsley, called C.S. Lewis’s Case for Christ. In it, Lindsley discusses Lewis’s viewpoint about Jesus. How he does it is by making up a fictitious book club, and the members of the club represent all sorts of non-Christian individuals with different viewpoints. The club leader, John, then responds to those viewpoints like C.S. Lewis would. And the non-Christians all respond to Lewis in positive ways.

That’s how you know it’s fiction.

In logic, we call this “the fallacy of the straw man”: When you want to prove your point, you don’t debate a real human being. Real human beings aren’t logical.

Seldom do we have opinions because we’ve thought things through, and come to a rational conclusion. We have them because our opinions appeal to our emotions. We want to believe they’re true.

• Rich people want to believe the poor are inferior; this makes them feel better about not doing anything for them.
• Stoners want to believe using drugs is a victimless crime; that way they can justify their selfish behavior.
• Christians want to believe God loves us; God would suck otherwise.

Whatever logic we might use to back up our arguments comes secondary to that original desire. No debater starts with the logic; they start with the proposition they like, then find any logical arguments available to prove the proposition.

So when you’re dealing with non-Christians, you’re largely dealing with people who want to believe

• Christ is a hoax;
• his followers are either suckers or con artists or total hypocrites;
• Christ’s teachings might be good but are ultimately impractical;
• Christ’s commands aren’t realistic, and there are other, easier paths to God or enlightenment;

and so forth. You aren’t dealing with purely rational humans. There is no such animal. (And not even God is purely rational: He regularly allows his love to supersede his sense of justice.)

Now, apologists—people who like to use logic to prove the truth of Christianity—are regularly quick to point out when a non-Christian isn’t being logical. So I think it’s only fair to point out when Christians are doing likewise. I figured I’d email Colson’s show and make that point.

By creating fictional characters whose questions are countered and rebutted by “John’s” referrals to Lewis, isn’t this book simply a variation of the “straw man argument”?

We Christians get on non-Christians’ cases all the time about how their arguments only appear to hold up because their hypothetical opponents are not real human beings who, in all fairness, would phrase their questions in different and unexpected ways. However realistically a fictional character might be written, the fact is that they exist simply to be set up and knocked down by the apologist.

It seems to me that if it’s not right for the non-Christians to argue in this manner, it shouldn’t be right for us Christians to do likewise—even if it’s in the support of truth.

Colson doesn’t write his own commentaries; no one with his busy schedule could. It’s written by ghostwriters, and he just reads it for the radio. So it’s somewhat appropriate that one of the ghostwriters responded to my email.

There is a resource available that puts this scenario into a framework where real individuals with different worldviews meet for nine different discussions on many of life’s greatest questions. The story is set behind the back drop of the lives of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. The title of this resource is call The Question of God. It can be ordered on VHS or DVD at the link below. Thank you and God bless.

Yeah, I watched The Question of God off the PBS website. It’s interesting; and the discussion groups that are part of the show are real reactions to Lewis’s views, not just some artificial made-up versions as Lindsley put together. I’d recommend the video over the book.

The response, however, still doesn’t deal with the fact that a book-length straw man argument isn’t appropriate. But here’s where the logic comes in. If the ghostwriter disagreed with me, her job would make her free to say so. If, however, she agreed with me, her job doesn’t make her free to say so—you have to stay loyal to the boss, you know. Therefore she said nothing in defense of the book, and instead provided me with a resource that fulfilled my requirements.

Logic can be fun.

You want more ranting?

The following is specifically to those people who emailed:

What do you mean, you want me to write stuff? I’ve got tons of old stuff on this site that should take you several hours to get through. Plus I’ve got the new blog, and I think you’d benefit more by reading that.

Besides, what you seem to have forgotten is that I write this blog for me. Not you. Not for your entertainment. I write it to entertain myself, or to get things off my chest. Me, me, me. That’s why I don’t ask for comments. I warned you I was an egomaniac. So piss off.

Sloppy curriculum.

Calvary Chapel Christian Schools, in Murrieta, CA, is suing the University of California because the UC won’t accept their high school units towards admission.

I don’t find this entirely surprising.

Not from a First Amendment point of view, which is what CCCS claims this is about. They say they’re being discriminated against because they’re Christian. I think it’s more likely because their classes are sloppy. UC rejected the classes because they lack content. The literature classes don't read enough literature; the history classes don’t contain enough history.

I taught for four years at Christian Life Center Schools in Vacaville, and saw firsthand how easy it is for Christian schools to teach nothing and make it look like you’re teaching something significant.

Our textbooks were garbage. They were produced by two different Christian textbook publishers, both of whom were more interested in perpetuating Christianity than in providing educational content. A history book is supposed to teach history, not Christianity. Yet our history book regularly left out valuable historical perspectives in order to talk, for example, about the strong Christian faith of Christopher Columbus (a greedy, genocidal maniac), George Washington (a deist, not a Christian; yes he prayed, but not to Jesus), and Stonewall Jackson (a Christian, true; a brilliant general; nevertheless a traitor against the United States, who fought for the right of Virginians to own slaves).

A science book is supposed to teach science, yet nearly a fifth of the book was spent refuting the theory of evolution. I deliberately skipped the section and taught a unit on logic instead. Then there was our Science Fair, which according to ACSI rules had to have a bible verse included with the project—which encouraged kids to take scripture out of context because they constantly found there aren’t any verses you could quote in context. So in the interest of science, we teach sloppy hermeneutics. Yep, Christian schools often won’t even teach the bible right.

Ah, bible classes. At CLCS most of those classes consisted of a weekly memory verse (or a whole bunch of memory verses), and a daily sermonette from the teacher. One of them in our junior high consisted of the teacher saying, “This week we’re going to study love. Find out how many times the word ‘love’ is in the bible. Use a concordance.” It’s better than nothing, but not by much!

You should have heard the uproar when I announced my bible classes were going to have textbooks (which I had to write; the curriculum we were provided was Sunday-school crap, and John Drane and Millard Erickson don’t write at a sixth-grade level) and tests.

Now, this was that school. It was still, by most standards, a good school. Mainly because we had good teachers who recognized the curriculum was crap, and worked around it. I spent half a year avoiding the science textbook until my principal ordered me to use it. I was trying to teach the State of California's standards, not creationism pseudo-science that ranks somewhere with UFO sightings and the search for the Loch Ness monster. Half my history classes were spent refuting the textbooks, which the students greatly enjoyed; and I had to take away the books while teaching the Protestant Reformation because the book was written by rabid anti-Catholics—and half my students were Catholic.

Unfortunately, not every Christian school is going to think like I do, and they’re going to feed the students the crap we find in those textbooks. As a result we’re gonna create a lot of undereducated students. They really won’t be prepared for the UC. In their very first history class, they’ll be astounded by how evil all these “great Christian founding fathers” could be towards their slaves. In their literature classes, they’ll be horrified to discover there are a lot of classics which contain naughty words, adult situations, or double entendres that must be interpreted as such. In science—well, don’t get me started. I’m pretty sure we Christians can’t screw up algebra much, though.

Oddly enough I am in favor of school vouchers. I think parents should be given alternatives to the public schools. But I think the private schools should be required to at least meet the same standards that public schools are (which I found easy enough to do); and I think it’s more important that teachers demonstrate Christianity with their actions, not through Christian propaganda inserted into fourth-rate textbooks.

A whole lot of downloads.

I was poking around Myspace recently because someone had told me they posted something on my page. I never look at it, so first I had to go through about five different emails and passwords before I finally remembered which one I had registered under. And even then, I couldn’t find my bloody page. So I had it search for “kwleslie.” It didn’t just search Myspace; it searched everywhere.

Sometimes it’s a scary thing to find out how many people have been reading or listening.

One of the top responses was to a podcast I had done some months ago. I had never really kept track of how many listeners I had on the thing; I always assumed it was about five or six, because that’s all the emails and comments I got about the show. So out of curiosity I decided to actually find out how many people had downloaded the show. The lowest number of downloads: 9 (from a show I had re-posted once I discovered a sound glitch.) The highest: 24,717.

That’s a lot of losers!

As I’ve said before: I don’t have a lot of respect for the fans of my dumber stuff. I don’t consider my yammerings worth getting all that excited about. They’re mildly entertaining, perhaps, but that’s all. Even so, there have been people who have indicated to me that the stuff I write is the greatest stuff ever, and the only reasonable response to that is they must not read much. Or they read crap. Okay, compared to crap, I’m amazing.

24,717 downloads? That’s gotta be a glitch or something. The next most downloaded show was only 4,045 times; and maybe by that point people realized the show wasn’t really any good and stopped paying attention to it.

Well… there’s no figuring people's tastes. If William Hung can produce a Christmas album, I suppose people may as well listen to a podcast of my rehashed rants. At least they’re free. People have to actually pay for Hung’s tone-deaf, barely intelligible moaning. Thirty seconds on American Idol was amusing; two CDs is like getting a colonoscopy with a toilet brush.

Same with my rants—after a point, I can’t read any more, and I’d hardly expect you to.

Amusing Comic Strip: Gifts quiz.

Electrocuted pastor.

Electricity and water don’t mix. Even when you’re doing the Lord’s work.

I had heard about the death of Kyle Lake over the weekend. Lake, a pastor at University Baptist in Waco, and one of the contributors to the emergent church movment, was electrocuted when he grabbed a microphone while standing in a baptismal.

Of course I’m sympathetic to his family, friends, and church, and the 800 people who watched him die. It’s a tragic loss. But lets face it: He was standing in water and he grabbed an electrical device. Am I the only one who recognizes the utter stupidity in this? I would never touch a mic if I were hip-deep in water. I’ve been shocked too many times to not have a solid respect for electricity. Lake obviously didn’t think a thing about it, and… well, sometimes we can teach people the most through our mistakes.

I remember in the early days of Macintosh computers, when the new computers had their on-switch built into the keyboard. It was a good idea; previously the on-switch was in the back of the computer, which makes no practical sense. But the trouble with those first computers is they weren’t well-grounded. One fellow employee accidentally spilled a Pepsi into the keyboard and the resulting fireworks display was spectacular… and ruined the computer, blew out the circuit breaker, and shut down every computer in that section of the building.

This was in the days before we’d heard of “surge protectors” for the computers. So not a single computer was plugged into any such thing. When we got the power back on, they worked just fine; the only data lost was the stuff people had been working on when the Pepsi got spilled. So I suspect the whole surge protector deal is a giant scam, especially since if a spike is powerful enough (like a lightning strike) that computer’s getting fried, surge protector or no surge protector.

Microphones, of course, have no surge protector.

Christianity Today has posted, ironically enough, an except from Lake’s book on God’s will in which he discusses how “everything happens for a reason” is a misinterpretation of Paul’s statement, “We know that everything works together for good—for those who love God, those called for his purpose.” [Ro 8.28] People like to drop off that second clause and forget that stuff happens for our benefit. But you can read his except yourself.

Starting the devotional.

Another distraction from posting here.

So now I have another weblog: my daily devotional, which I've titled “Towards a fuller understanding of God.”

It’s not that I won't occasionally give my interpretation of the scriptures in this weblog, but that one is going to be nothing but interpretations. So if you want to understand my thought processes as they pertain to scripture, check that on a regular basis.

Where do I have the time? Well… I already do daily devotions; I just haven’t posted them on the internet in the past. Now I do. Maybe you’ll find them valuable; you obviously waste enough time reading my weblog, so reading my devotional wouldn’t hurt you either. Go check it out.

Update, 11/30/2024. There was a link to it in this article, but I took it down ’cause all it’ll do is redirect you to “Christ Almighty!”, and you’ll just go, “Wait, I wanted the other blog,” and try it again, and get redirected again, and get frustrated, and… yeah, let’s just not.

’Cause I decided to blog more than just my devotional stuff. So I created a new blog, “More Christ,” and the “Fuller Understanding” stuff began to overlap too much, and I decided to just consolidate them—and this blog—into “Christ Almighty!” Everything redirected there. Until I decided to turn this blog into a publicity site… then put my old blog back online. And here we are.