The recovering atheist?

Kirk Cameron has a new movie coming out, called Unstoppable. Facebook tried to test how accurate that title was, by blocking its users from posting any links to Unstoppable’s website. Apparently the site set off Facebook’s spam detectors.

I’d better insert this disclaimer. I’m not a Kirk Cameron fan. I’m not talking about his acting; I think it’s okay. (Not award-winning good, but way better than, say, the kids in high school drama. When he’s in a lousy movie or sitcom, that’s the writer’s fault, not his.) I’m talking about his evangelism and outreach efforts.

When Cameron first got mixed up with Ray Comfort’s “Way of the Master” apologetics ministry—playing Comfort’s goofy sidekick in his training videos—he was okay, ’cause his job was basically to look on in awe as Comfort talked condescendingly about atheists and skeptics, and complain about how their intellect and critical thinking skills were getting in the way of the gospel. (No, really.) But now he acts like Comfort: Too confrontational, too arrogant, too dogmatic, and I hate the underlying philosophy of “You need to bypass your intellect and just believe.” It’s what the Mormons teach, and it violates Jesus’s command to love the LORD with all our minds. [Lk 10.27] Comfort’s problem has always been that his evangelism lacks patience, among other fruits of the Spirit. It’s too interested in winning arguments, and getting results—intellectually bankrupt results. Cameron, as his disciple, is just as fruitless when we see him in the press: Too little patience, kindness, gentility, and graciousness. Too little love. Too reminiscent of that “twice the son of hell” statement Jesus made to describe the Pharisees’ converts. [Mt 23.15] ’Cause while your average pagan knows nothing about Ray Comfort, they’ve heard of Kirk Cameron: He’s that kid who became a Christian, then became an a--hole to all his coworkers, on Growing Pains.

Fruit-free water, please.

I’m gradually developing a new peeve: Fruit-infused water.

Somehow or other, it’s become popular to chop up bits of fruit, put it in ice water, let the fruit decompose just a bit into the water, and serve it to people as if they want their water flavored that way.

As I understand it, the point is that the water have a subtle taste of strawberry, melon, cucumber, or whatever it is you’ve thrown into the water. But people don’t know how to do subtle. So they throw half a pound of fruit into the water—sometimes jumbled up, as if that makes it any better—and add a little sugar. This makes it taste like a really weak ade, like limeade with way too much water in it, or cherryade where the kids only had five cherries and figured they’d stretch the fruit as far as it could go. But it’s neither ade nor water. It’s some sad hybrid, and I don’t want it.

Ah, but if someone’s made it, they didn’t have a pitcher of water on the side. Their tainted water is the water. And they’re a little put out that you don’t want their fruity water. After all, it’s only just a little mango, or kiwi, or watermelon they’re floating in it. Why, you can hardly taste it. (Which begs the question, “So what was the point in adding it?”) But of course I can taste it, which is why I want water.

It never used to be any trouble to ask for only water.

Anywho. You wanna make fruit-infused water, go for it. Have fun. Get creative: Throw a chopped tomato and a sprig of basil in a pitcher of water. Somebody oughta like it. Not me, but somebody. But don’t forget to provide actual water on the side, for those of us who like our water without pulp.

Homecoming, 2008.

The year is 2013, meaning it’s now been 15 years since I graduated from Bethany College, later Bethany University, which closed its doors in 2011. Now all that’s left of it is a campus which isn’t selling, a giant debt left over from years of mismanagement, and a really hostile alumni page on Facebook where people bitterly yell past one another about how the school should never have closed, and “who’s offered to buy the campus? Why, they’re not orthodox enough. Stop the sale!…” ad nauseam.

Well, that and some really awesome alumni, myself included. So there’s that.

Since nobody bothers to make much of a to-do of five-year and 15-year reunions, there’s not one for my graduating class. There wasn’t much of one for my 10-year reunion. I went to it in 2008, and I decided to resurrect some of the old posts I wrote about it.

Independence Day, 2013.

Happy Independence Day.

Haven’t done much for it yet. Ordinarily we might hit up the Fourth of July parade in Fairfield, but my favorite vantage point from which to watch it, the air-conditioned Alpha Pregnancy Resource Center office, is no longer available, since Mom doesn't work there anymore. We’re in the middle of a heat wave: It’s before noon, and already 93 degrees in Fairfield, and 103 in Vacaville. I'm spending it indoors if I can help it, and only venturing outside for fireworks. And barbecue.

I did go outdoors briefly. My sister Shannon and her family are visiting from Spokane, and since she’s so seldom in California, my brother Chad wanted to gather us Leslie siblings together and have coffee or something. We compromised: Kerry and I went to Peets Coffee & Tea, and Chad and Shannon went to Jamba Juice; the stores are right by one another in the Nut Tree shopping center. (Kerry took the selfie at right.) The temperature was already climbing by then. But I’ll still drink coffee. Forget energy drinks; coffee is the original, and as far as I’m concerned, still the best of them.