Money Well Spent

A fellow ponderer got me thinking about time the other day.

He was referring to all of the additional time that it now takes people to get through airport security, and how this is being done solely in the name of saving lives. The question then, was how many millions of additional hours has this now totaled the American people, and how many “man-lives” does it equal to?

That’s kind of an abstract concept. After all, even if hundreds or even thousands of additional “man-lives” have been “lost” at airport security, each individual passenger has only lost a few of those hours themselves. For most of us, if a concept doesn’t affect us personally, we either have a hard time grasping it or it simply doesn’t matter to us all.

Five years ago I left Orlando, FL and moved to a tiny little town called Liberty, KY. The change was dramatic; a population of half a million people to less than 2,000, a 6-figure paycheck to hovering around the poverty line, and, for this example, a 45 minute commute traded in for (quite literally) a drive of less than 2 minutes.

I should clarify to say that my 45 minute commute was one-way; I spent fully 1-1/2 hours in my car every day, 5 days a week, just going to and from work. By comparison, the 4 minutes I spend now isn’t even worth mentioning.

It was this 1-1/2 hours that I no longer spend each day that I started to think about in earnest. 90 minutes a day doesn’t necessarily sound like a lot until you consider that it equals over 16 days each year.

Think about that! I used to spend 16 days each year just sitting in my car.
Usually frustrated.
Usually stuck in traffic or sitting at a stoplight.
Talk about a waste of time!

To take it further, what that means is that in just the past 5 years I have gained almost 3 entire months of time – 3 entire months of my life – that I was able to use for anything I wanted!

How many times have you heard someone lament that they wish they could have had “just one more day” with a loved one? How would they react if they learned that they could have had days, weeks, months – even years – simply by getting rid of one or two of those things that we waste our time on every day?

Each of us has a finite amount of time on this earth, and yet so often we spend it without even thinking about it, as if there was an unlimited supply.

There’s not.

And the cruel twist is that none of us even knows how much time we have left on our own personal lunch ticket. In light of that, how could we ever waste it as if it means nothing?

To look at it from another perspective, if we could buy time, how much would we pay to get an additional 16 days of life each year? For that matter, what is a single day worth in monetary terms?

I would imagine that if you needed one bad enough, it would be priceless.

Why I Believe in God: Part III - The Church of Evolution

(to start at the beginning of this series, click here)

If there is one single overriding factor that gives evolution presumed validity over creation, it is that evolution is based on science, whereas creation is based on superstition and ignorance.

In ancient times, it is supposed that people didn’t understand the things that happened in the world around them. They knew that things did happen, and they also knew that they were not the ones that caused those things to happen, and so they assumed that someone or something had put those events into motion. They called these unseen – and obviously very powerful – things “gods”.

Science, on the other hand, establishes fact based on cause & effect, not wild speculation. Science is non-judgmental. It is unbiased. It is rational. It seeks the truth.

“Creation” says that the earth, stars, mankind – everything – was created by an unseen entity of incomprehensible power. “Evolution” says that it all came about through natural causes, random chance, and progressive evolutionary growth. Religion is based on wishful thinking; Science, on the other hand, is based on fact.

It certainly sounds like evolution – backed with the authority of science – has a legitimate argument. Until you realize that science doesn’t really have any facts at all, and evolution is, like Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc., merely another religion.

How could I believe that?

Well, start with the concept of evolution, or more to the point, the theory of evolution, because despite all of the pomp & circumstance, that’s really all that it remains – a theory.

While evolution is “widely believed to be true” by the scientific community, it has not been proven by any stretch of the imagination. If it had been, you can bet the very first thing scientists would have done would be to trumpet that particular fact to the world.

But they haven’t. All they have done is to simply stop referring to evolution as a theory and forge ahead under the assumption that it is true.

Personally, I have never been presented with any “proof” of evolution, only a “preponderance of evidence”. The problem with that is that there is also a “preponderance of evidence” for the existence of God – a creator – as well, though, like evolution, there is no “proof’ of God either.

People believe in God by faith, and faith, by definition, is belief without proof. That poses a big problem for evolutionists, because evolution is based on science, and science is supposed to be based on fact, not speculation. But regarding evolution, there are no facts and there is no proof, and without those, evolution is just as surely a faith-based religion as any other.

Make no mistake about it, evolution is a religion. It all boils down to which church you choose to enter; the church of God, or the church of man.

In fact, the only thing that even remotely resembles “proof” of evolution seems to be time, or more specifically, the dating of fossils and artifacts.

Looking at the Biblical record, there certainly appears to be roughly 6,000 years from the time of Adam to the present date. Scientists, through several different means, have dated things back millions of years. How to account for the huge discrepancy?

Some people fault the methods that scientists use to date objects, saying that they are loaded with assumptions (which they are) and that their results cannot be validated (which they can’t). But though there may be some anomalies with the various different dating methods used, I have no doubt that they are essentially correct. Even if they are not 100% exact, I would have to guess that they are at least “in the ballpark”.

The “time” issue is without a doubt a massive hole in the argument for creation. It’s a huge disparity, and it is that disparity – from all that I see and hear and read – that seems to be the one single horse upon which almost all information about evolution is riding. If there was ever anything at all that provides legitimacy to the theory of evolution, “time” would have to be it.

But what if “time” was not an issue? What if there was no disparity? If “time” were taken out of the equation entirely, is there anything left that would truly lend any sort of factual, scientific validation to evolution?

Those were some of the questions that I asked myself, and once I started looking at time as a separate entity, I realized that there could actually be a very plausible explanation to account for it. Not proof mind you, but certainly something that I think casts plenty of “reasonable doubt” on the issue.

If you’re following my train of thought, I’ll need you to humor me at this point and suspend your belief about the disparity of “time” as I did; I’ll address it at a later date. And please remember, I’m not trying to convince you of anything; I’m only trying to share how I came to believe that God is real. You can believe whatever you want. You will anyway.

But if you have followed me to this point, let me summarize where I found myself:

1) There either is a God or there isn’t, and I either believe in Him or I don’t.
2) Evolution is just as much of a religion as Christianity.

Once I truly understood what I was dealing with, I was finally able to get down to some real searching.

Why I Believe in God: Part II - Pascal's Wager

(to read Part I click here)

Back in the late 1980’s my brother and I had an in-depth discussion in my sister’s kitchen one day. The topic: Did God exist or not? I must have been 23 or so, because I’m four years older than my brother and he was in college at the time.

It was not an antagonistic conversation, but it was most certainly a debate; I was making the case for the existence of God, while my brother – who was a philosophy student – was taking the opposite stance.

(Some might question at this point which “god” I’m referring to; there are, after all, more than a few to choose from. At this point, simply understanding God as a “higher power” (i.e., the antithesis of evolutionary doctrine) will suffice. Explaining why I believe in the Christian God of Abraham as opposed to others is another discussion entirely, though there is certainly a reason for that too.)

As we went back and forth, each presenting our “evidence” for or against the existence of God, I wound up stumbling upon (and verbalizing in my argument) a realization that I have never forgotten: There either is a God or there isn’t, and you either believe in Him or you don’t.

I’ve always thought of this in my mind as the “Four Outcomes”, because it lays the groundwork for understanding that there are only four possible paths – and therefore only four possible “outcomes” – that are open to us.

Outcome #1: God does NOT exist / You do NOT believe in God.
If you are an atheist, this would be the outcome that justifies your existence. The big “win”, if you will. You were right all along. But it’s an interesting “win” if you dig into it a little.

First of all, you would never even know that you were right. Upon your death, consciousness would abruptly end and you would simply cease to exist. No thoughts, no realizations, no “I told you so”. Certainly no parades or celebrations. You would never even know.

And before that, what kind of life would you have “knowing” that there is no God? “Knowing” that when someone that you love dies, that’s it for them; too bad, so sad, they’re simply gone? “Knowing” that you are completely alone, with no one to talk to, no one to listen, and no one to help? Your life is an accident, and it has absolutely no meaning or purpose whatsoever.

And hope? Hope in what? It’s just you. Hope for what? There is nothing else.

It’s important to know that if you are an atheist, this is the best case scenario for you. This is as good as it will ever get; your “value proposition” for denying God, if you will. And this is what you’re telling other people that they should want as well.

I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t sound all that good to me, especially when you consider the alternative . . .


Outcome #2: God DOES exist / You do NOT believe in God.
I don’t think there needs to be a whole lot of elaboration here. As before, your life would be just as meaningless and hopeless as if God did not exist, only this time, the end of it would be very different.

You wouldn’t just “fade away” into nothingness at your death; instead, you would have thoughts, you would have realizations, and you would understand that you were terribly, terribly wrong.

Not a situation I wish upon anyone.

Outcome #3: God DOES exist / You DO believe in God.
Again, not a lot of elaboration is necessary. If you’ve ever been to church, you’ve heard the message: no more tears, no more pain, just an eternity in heaven.



Outcome #4: God does NOT exist / You DO believe in God.
This one is a little more interesting, and it is the scenario that a lot of atheists seem to get very upset about; that people would believe in a God that does not exist. How foolish and silly. But look a little closer.

Again, just as in the “best case” for an atheist, if God does not exist, I would never even know. I’ll go through my life believing in God, and then, when I die, I would simply cease to be. I’d never know that I was wrong.

But before then, what a difference! A life filled with meaning, purpose, and hope. Facing my own mortality without fear. “Knowing” that when someone I love dies it is not the end, and being able to hold that hope in my heart for the rest of my life. “Knowing” that I am not alone; that there is someone watching over me, listening to my pleas, and helping me when necessary.

“Knowing” that I am loved in this world.

I have to ask, even if it turns out that I’m deluding myself, so what? Why should that bother anyone?

What’s interesting to me too, is that this would be the worst case scenario for a Christian, and yet, it seems to me that it is a far better outcome than the best case scenario for an atheist.

And, of course, all of this assumes that I'm wrong, which I don't believe I am.

This was all pretty deep stuff for me back in my early twenties, and I’ve carried it around in the years since thinking that I was pretty wise for being able to lay it all out like that. But you know what they say about pride, and as you might imagine, I eventually wound up eating a couple slices of humble pie when I discovered several years ago that – big surprise – I was not the first person in the history of the world to unearth this concept.

Solomon wrote that there is nothing new under the sun, so it wasn’t really a big shock for me to find out that Blaise Pascal outlined the same thing in almost the exact same way back in the 1600’s (and undoubtedly so did many others before him). The concept is commonly known as “Pascal’s Wager”, and there are some very interesting viewpoints & discussions on it if you should choose to run it through a search engine.

And if you do read some of the commentary about Pascal’s Wager, you’ll eventually see (roughly) the same “fatal flaw” that my brother made to me over 20 years ago in my sister’s kitchen: You can’t just decide to believe in God the same way that you would make a business decision.

My brother was absolutely right. Belief is not something that you can turn on or off with the flick of a switch. But if that’s true, then why even mention this at all, whether you call it “Four Outcomes” or “Pascal’s Wager” or anything else?

In and of itself, Pascal’s Wager proves nothing. It’s not a foundation to build anything on. It won’t make you believe or disbelieve anything.

But for me it was incredibly important because it was the first time I realized what the “playing field” looked like, and I was able to understand with all clarity that there are not an infinite number of possibilities available to us.

There are only four: There either is a God or there isn’t, and you either believe in Him or you don’t.

Once I understood how simple the playing field was, the search for the truth became a whole lot easier.


Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. – Matthew 7:7

(to read Part III, click here)

Why I Believe in God: Part I - Introduction

One of the things that I’ve struggled with on this blog is what to write about.

In the beginning, my main purpose was to use it as a means to help market the books I had written. Over the past few years, I’ve made more than a few posts relating to What So Proudly We Hailed, especially in instances where I’ve seen the reality of the world following the fiction of the story. I’ve also posted half a dozen or so of the stories from Finding Liberty to give people an idea of its subject matter and style.

To date, I’ve witnessed no “Harry Potter” type of mass hysteria for either book, but that’s okay; while hopeful, I wasn’t really expecting that anyway.

But the blog remained. What to do with it? What to write?

At first, I tried to differentiate myself from the approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000 or so other blogs on the web. Right.

I tried posting funny stuff. Nothing.
I tried some “thoughtful” posts. Nothing.
Political: Nothing.
Historical: Nothing.
Etc., etc., etc.,: Nothing, nothing, nothing.

This eventually led me to ask myself, “Why do I bother doing this at all?” It’s not like my “fame” & “renown” is growing (15 to 20 hits a day has been about the average), I don’t make any money from doing it, I’m certainly not saying anything that can’t be found on more credible sites, and – as previously stated – it’s not driving the sale of my books.

So, other than being a questionable use of time and maybe even becoming something of a burden, what was the point?

I settled on the answer of continuing to post simply because I like to write. I like to think, I like to speculate, and I like to ask questions, and writing posts has helped me to do that in a concrete, visible way. For myself.

If I had – or have – any other agenda to my writing, it would simply be that maybe, just maybe, I could encourage someone else to look at a particular topic in a way that they never had before. To question conventional wisdom, shun the “experts” of the world, and think about things for themselves and, subsequently, arrive at their own conclusions.

There is an unbelievable freedom in thinking for yourself. That much I know without a doubt. But I would also suggest that it doesn’t even make any difference what it is that you think about; even if you’re wrong, you’re still right, because in your mind, whatever answer you arrived at is the correct one.

It’s what you believe. It’s yours. It belongs to you, and no one can take it away without your consent.

One of the “answers” that belongs to me is the fact that I believe in God.

I know that puzzles some people. Makes them angry in some cases. After all, “God” is nothing more than a fairy tale for the ignorant, right? Haven’t we settled this already?

How could I be so archaic in my thinking? How could I ignore the “preponderance of scientific evidence” that supports evolution? How could any reasonable, educated, intelligent person – humor me here – actually believe in God?

Those are good questions. They deserve answers. And I’m going to try to answer them, because I know that there are a lot of my friends (and some of my family) who think I’m just being simple. That I walked into a frenzied church service one morning and left as just another brainwashed, hand-waving basket case.

I can see how some people might think that, but, in my case at least, it’s just not true. I have real reasons. I’ve given it real thought. I have real life experiences. I was told that the “debate” was over; I simply decided to open it back up again and take a look for myself. I’m like that sometimes.

So if you care to know, I’m going to share with you why I believe in God. It will take awhile, because there’s a lot to it, but my plan is to add posts over the next few weeks (or months), providing as much explanation as I can put into words.

Why would I do that, and, more importantly, why would you care?

First of all, understand why I’m not doing it; I’m not doing it to change anyone’s mind. If you don’t believe in God, that’s fine. I respect that. I’m not evangelical; it’s not my job – nor is it in my power – to make someone believe in God.

Christians may be shocked at that statement; “What about the great commission?”

What about it?

If you’re already familiar with God and the story of Jesus then the purpose of the Great Commission – spreading the word – has been satisfied. The way I read it, there is nothing in the Great Commission about “convincing” people to believe in Jesus Christ; just making them aware of Him.

I think the fact that Jesus Himself did nothing to “convince” people bears that out. When He sent out the disciples to spread the word, He told them that if people didn’t want to listen, the disciples were to shake the dust from their feet, leave town, and go find people who did want to listen. Not a word about staying around and preaching until people were badgered into submission.

So if you already know about Jesus Christ and choose not to believe, then that’s your decision.

My purpose then in doing this is simply to let you know why I believe in God, because I have real reasons and I don’t think most people understand what they are. Interestingly enough, I’ve never had anyone - Christian or Atheist - ever ask me why I believe in God. I find that very odd.

And I think it’s important that you understand why I believe in God, because I can absolutely understand why you may not. I grew up in the same public school system. I see the same TV shows, commercials, and movies. I read the same news articles. I hear the same disembodied voice on the Discovery Channel.

I was – and continue to be – inundated with the same continuous barrage of evolutionistic messages that serve to reinforce the concept as everyone else. I just see them differently.

I feel the ridicule and condescension of non-believers, but I choose to ignore it.

I see the hypocrisy of so many people who wear the label of “Christian”, but I try to let my own life be an example of my faith since that’s the only thing I have any amount of control over anyway.

I am well aware that “religion” can be – and often is – used as a self-serving tool for control, power, and wealth, but I focus on what it should be rather than what mankind has turned it into.

My question is: Are you curious as to why?

If so, check back from time to time and I’ll tell you. I can’t promise any sort of time frame, but I will eventually put it all down in words. If you're not interested, that’s okay too. Just skip anything you see that has “Why I Believe in God” in the title.

Comments along the way will be welcome, but please remember: I’m not trying to convince you that God exists, so please return the favor by not trying to convince me that He doesn’t. It would be a waste of your time anyway.

(to ready Part II, click here)

Nation of Children

Back in April, the Chinese movie star Jackie Chan caused a little stir with some comments that he made:

"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," Chan said. "I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic."

He went on to say: "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

Source: Jackie Chan: Chinese People Need To Be Controlled

As you might imagine, Chan took a good deal of flak for those comments. But was he wrong? And could his comments be expanded to include all people, not just the Chinese?

If you’ve read my posts over the past couple of years, you know that the majority of what I’ve written has dealt with the erosion of our civil liberties. What you haven’t necessarily seen is my frustration that so few people seem to care.

Like Jackie Chan, I too have often wondered if the American people even deserve freedom. We don’t seem to handle it very well, and these days we certainly don’t seem to value it very much either.

Years ago I had a revelation of sorts. I was thinking over my life and trying to determine at exactly what point I had become an “adult”.

1 Corinthians 13:11 says this: When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

When do we become men? And what are these “childish things” that we should put away?

In our materialistic culture, “childish things” would seem to be toys and other playthings of our youth. But I don’t think that that’s what Paul is talking about at all.

Children are immature (no one would argue that), and adults are supposed to be mature. But what is maturity anyway? Knowledge? Wisdom? I don’t think so. I think it’s simpler than that.

Children are selfish by nature. Their whole world revolves around themselves; what they want, when they want it. They don’t think of other people because at that point in their lives all they can focus on is themselves. The world beyond that is too big for them to comprehend.

When a child acts in a selfish manner, we call it childish behavior. Immature behavior.

But if the dominant characteristic of immaturity is selfishness, then it would stand to reason that the dominant characteristic of it’s opposite – maturity – would be selflessness, and if that is true, than the “childish things” that Paul speaks of doing away with are not toys at all; they are selfish behaviors.

There is a ring of truth to that. Think of all the people you know that you consider to be “mature”. My guess would be that they are very selfless people.

So where does that put us? When I look at our society today, I see what I believe is the same thing that Jackie Chan sees; an entire nation of people who have never matured. A nation of people who have been trained from the beginning of their lives to think of no one other than themselves. A nation of children.

And we are spoiled rotten.

The danger in this is that children cannot care for themselves. They are entirely dependent on others to care for them, set boundaries for them, and discipline them.

If this line of reasoning makes sense to you, then consider where that puts us as a culture:

Throughout history, all nations have followed the same cycle: a rise and a fall. Some of these nations lasted for centuries, while others only a few short years, but none have ever endured indefinitely. All of them started, rose in power & wealth to varying degrees, and then eventually met their demise.

It’s very similar to life itself; we’re born, we grow, we decline, we die.

For every nation that has completed this cycle – and they all do eventually – there is an accompanying chain of events that each has followed:

1. People in bondage gain spiritual faith
2. Faith evolves into courage
3. Courage brings about liberty
4. Liberty results in abundance
5. Abundance progresses to selfishness
6. Selfishness turns to complacency
7. Complacency devolves into apathy
8. Apathy leads to dependence
9. Dependence delivers us into bondage

So I would ask you: Where do we stand as a nation today?

Personally, I would have to think that our best days appear to be behind us. And though it pains me to say it, maybe that’s the best thing. It’s certainly what we deserve.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Last weekend, as we’ve done for the past 3 years, our church youth group participated in World Vision’s “30 Hour Famine”.

The program has two main objectives: 1) to raise money to help feed starving children, and 2) to raise the awareness in our youth of what “hunger” really is, or, at least to give them a vague idea of it.

From noon on Friday until 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, the kids (and the adult volunteers) don’t eat anything. We can have as much water or Gatorade as we want, but no food. We take the kids out to a nearby camp where they build boys & girls shanty-towns out of cardboard boxes. Then they sleep on the ground in their cardboard shelters.

To pass the time, we keep the kids busy with exercises and activities. We have devotions and read scripture. We sit around a campfire with no hotdogs or s’mores. We share the statistics:

26,000 children dead every day from hunger & malnutrition . . .
1,100 children every hour . . .
1 child every 3 seconds . . .

It’s a worthwhile exercise, and by late Saturday afternoon everyone is feeling the effects from the activity, heat, and lack of food & sleep: Fatigue. Headaches. Stomach cramps. Hunger.

Just a taste of what it feels like. A few little sprinkles on the tongue.

The difference is, we know it will all end at 6 o’clock. We know there will be a buffet of food waiting for us to gorge upon. We know that a cool shower, clean clothes, and Tylenol are right around the corner. We know we will sleep in our comfortable beds in air conditioned luxury.

And we know that in a few days, we will forget all about it for another year.

Every time we do this I’m reminded of the photograph below:



If by chance you’re not familiar with it, the photo shows a starving Sudanese girl trying to make it to a United Nations food camp. The vulture is waiting for her to die so it can eat her. The photographer, Kevin Carter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for the photograph. He committed suicide a few months later.

I think we can accept the concept of starving children because we don’t have to see them suffer or bury them when they die. Thinking about them interferes with our lives and what we want to do. We don’t like that. It’s uncomfortable.

But what if we did have to see them? What if we did have to bury them? Would we feel any differently then?

1 child every 3 seconds . . .

I think we can accept war because it is not us who has to die. We can accept a million abortions a year because we don’t have to see the mangled bodies of the infants. We can accept torture because it is not us who feels the pain.

We can accept all of these things – and a host of other atrocities – simply because we don’t have to deal with them ourselves.

But what if we did?

I make no judgments except against myself.

In Defense of Fort McHenry

In 1814, British forces captured Washington D.C. and set fire to much of the city, including the Capitol building and the White House. President James Madison was forced to flee.

The British then advanced to Baltimore, knowing that the loss of both Washington D.C. and Baltimore would be a demoralizing blow to American troops.

In September, a young lawyer named Francis Scott Key sailed out to meet the British commanders to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. Although the negotiations were successful, Key was not immediately allowed to return to land because of the imminent British attack, and he was forced to spend the next several days on a ship behind the British fleet.

At 7:00 a.m. on the morning of September 13, the British attacked Ft. McHenry from both land and sea. The battle raged all day and throughout most of the night, and Key was a witness to it all.

Early in the morning, the bombardment suddenly stopped; the battle was over. But who had won? In the darkness, Key could see nothing, and for the next few hours he waited with anxiety to see which flag would be flying above the fort when the sun arose.

Key was so moved by the experience that he wrote the poem which we know today as the American National Anthem. However, the lyrics we sing are only the first of four stanzas to his original poem, and though we sing those words with boldness, pride, and conviction, it becomes very clear in the context of the entire poem that they are actually words filled with the anxiety and fear that Key felt during the hours of darkness following the battle.

Although I had 12 years of public education and served 8 years in the U.S. Navy, I had never read the original poem in it’s entirety until about 3 years ago (shame on me). In fact, I never even knew there was more to it than what we sang as our National Anthem (shame on them).

It has haunted me ever since, and I still have a hard time reading it without my eyes welling with tears.

Happy Memorial Day.

“In Defense of Ft. McHenry”
By Francis Scott Key

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?


On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!


And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!


Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Just Like That

About two weeks ago there was a bad automobile wreck on Hwy 127 about 10 miles south of Liberty. It was a gorgeous, sunny Spring day; good weather on a good road.

A southbound car had slowed to a stop in order to make a left hand turn into a driveway. A second southbound vehicle directly behind it also slowed to a stop. A third vehicle didn’t.

Instead, it hit the second stopped car and went airborne, directly into the northbound lane.

In the northbound lane was a 17 year old girl from Michigan who was driving home with her family from Tennessee, where she had gone to visit the college she planned to attend in the fall.

She was a beautiful young girl.
She won’t be going to college.

Last Friday, I drove southbound past the site where the wreck took place. A flowered cross was all that remained to mark what had happened.

Later in the day, as I was driving back home, I realized that I was taking the same path this young girl had on the day she died. The same road. The same direction. The wreck site was about 5 miles ahead of me.

I couldn’t help but imagine her taking this same route two weeks before. Seeing what she saw, taking my car through the same meandering turns as she had. I felt like I was looking at it through her eyes.

She has no idea that she only has 5 minutes left to live. What conversation was she having with her family? Was she smiling? Laughing? What song was playing on the radio?

A feeling of sadness follows me as I retrace her final steps.

She could have never known when she got dressed that morning that it would be the last time she would ever do that. What did she eat for breakfast? Was she excited about getting home? Was there a young man she was looking forward to seeing again? Girlfriends to celebrate with?

I can see the cross up on the hill now.
She has less than 10 seconds to live, and she still has no idea.

I imagine that she sees a car coming towards her now, slowing down with it’s turn signal on. It’s waiting for her to pass by. Perfectly normal. What is she thinking about? Is she speaking or listening? Does she see the second car coming to a stop behind the first? Does she see the third car at all?

A fraction of a second.
A moment in time.

I pass through the spot marked by the flowered cross. She never does.
My life goes on unaffected. Hers ends instantly.

I glance up and see the cross in my rearview mirror, slipping away behind me, then disappearing altogether.

Singular Choice

Several months ago I read an article in one of the major news magazines – Time or Newsweek; I can’t remember which one – dealing with religion.

This particular article dealt with morality, and the author was trying to make a point that while it’s nice to say that there is such a thing as “good & evil” and “right & wrong”, the reality is that it isn’t so cut & dried as it may appear. The “reality” (according to the author) is that morality is actually a very gray area, and subject to interpretation.

To help prove his point, he listed out several scenarios that were all very similar in their presentation. One of these scenarios was that you are part of a group of people – a dozen or so – who are hiding from armed men. These men are looking for you, and if they find you they will kill you. You know that.

One of the people in your group is a woman with an infant child. The baby starts crying, and it’s only a matter of time before the men hear the child and find you.

So the question is this: What do you do? Do you – because of your deep sense of morality and belief in the sanctity of human life – do nothing, and thereby allow the men to find you and kill everyone? Or, do you sacrifice the child – kill it – in order to save the lives of the rest of the people in the group?

It certainly sounds like a difficult dilemma. Until you realize – if you realize – that it’s a trick question. It’s loaded. It is a question specifically designed to illicit an incorrect answer. It’s no different than asking someone “What’s the answer to 2 + 2? Is it 5? Or is it 6?”, even if it’s not quite so obvious.

The author is counting on a couple of things here. For one, he’s counting on the fact that you’ve never seen this question before, and that, unlike “2 + 2”, you won’t notice the fact that both answers that you are given to choose from are incorrect.

He’s counting on the fact that you’ll be concentrating so hard on the question that you’ll never stop to think about who’s asking the question or why they’re asking it (which in this case is a secular humanist who is trying to discredit Christianity and reduce the concept of morality to a pile of rubble).

And he’s also counting on the fact that you’ll be so focused on trying to pick the best answer that you’ll never realize that they are not the only options available to you.

Who is to say, for instance, that if I were in that situation, I couldn’t leave the group myself and lead the armed men away from the others and thus save their lives by sacrificing my own?

Sounds perfectly plausible to me. As plausible, at least, as the original scenario itself. Funny, though, that it wasn’t listed as one of my possible choices. Can you think of any other possible courses of action that someone could take in that situation? I can.

So why write an article like that?

Well, I can’t be sure of the author’s intentions, but realizing that a world in which morality can be defined (and redefined) at will is definitely part of his personal agenda, I can take an educated guess.

In my opinion, the article serves 3 purposes.

First, it is meant to initiate the uninitiated. To influence the thinking of those who really haven’t given morality much thought one way or the other and guide them to the author’s point of view.

Second, it provides reinforcement to those who already subscribe to the author’s philosophy by presenting a series of seemingly concrete examples which prove his point.

And third, it is intended to sow seeds of doubt in the rest of us – Christian or otherwise – who are already well grounded in our understanding of right and wrong. It serves to make us second guess ourselves; to think that maybe morality isn’t quite as black & white as we originally thought.

Whether you agree with that analysis is entirely up to you, but I’ll leave you with one question of my own: If what the author of that article says is really true – that morality is open to interpretation – then why does he have to resort to deception in order to prove his case?

Real truth can stand on its own. It needs no lies to prop it up.

Amortals Among Us

The March 23 issue of Time magazine included a list of “10 Ideas that are Changing the World”. The list ran the gamut from such ground-breaking concepts as the #1 listed “Jobs are the New Assets” (i.e., you make money from working – insert collective “ahhhhh” here) to more disturbing things like #8 “Biobanks” (facilities that collect and store blood & tissue samples from as many people as possible so that they may be available for use in unrestricted scientific research).

Huh.

Also included in the list at #5 was something entitled “Amortality”. You read that right; not "immortality", but "amortality". What does that mean? Here are some selected passages from the article:

[Amortality] is about more than just the ripple effect of baby boomers’ resisting the onset of age. Amortality is a stranger, stronger alchemy, created by the intersection of that trend with a massive increase in life expectancy and a deep decline in the influence of organized religion – all viewed through the blue haze of Viagra.

The defining characteristic of amortality is to live in the same way, at the same pitch, doing the same things, from late teens right up until death.

Amortals don’t just dread extinction. They deny it.

“We are in serious striking distance of stopping aging,” says De Grey, founder and chairman of the Methuselah Foundation . . .

It is “bleeding obvious,” he adds, that it is possible to extend the human life span indefinitely. “Most people take the view that aging is this natural thing that is going on independently of disease. That’s nonsense”.

To sum it all up then, to be “amortal” is to be Peter Pan: To refuse to grow up; to pretend you will never die; to believe that science will save you; and to make no plans for – and indeed, to deny completely – your own eventual demise.

How sad. And yet, how entirely predictable if we’d given it any forethought.

We have taken God out of our society and our culture, which means - by logical default - that we have created a godless society and a godless culture. Is that really what we wanted?

Put it this way: When you hear the term “godless society”, what do you think of?

Do you think of things like utopia, happiness, fulfillment, and light?
Or do other words come to mind, like mayhem, pain, hopelessness, and darkness? "Godlessness” is, by definition, “evil and wicked”.

Funny that we would ever want to create a world like that. Funny too, that once we created it, we would then have the desire to live in it forever.

Sorry, but I’ll pass.

Here There Be Monsters

* Yesterday a man in North Carolina went on a killing spree at a nursing home.

* Last week another man went on a murder rampage in Alabama.

* A man in Austria imprisons his own daughter in his basement for 24 years, raping her repeatedly and fathering 7 children over that time (His wife claims she knew nothing).

* A 17 year old boy guns down his former classmates at a school in Germany . . .

* A student kills over 30 at Virginia Tech . . .

* A mother drowns her 4 children in the bathtub . . .

* A man enters an Amish school in Pennsylvania and murders 5 little girls . . .


What kind of people do these things? What could possibly be going on inside of their heads to think that doing things like this makes any sort of sense?

The Book of Mark is the shortest – and probably the least “popular” – of the four Gospels. It contains only 16 chapters. That’s not a lot of real estate to write down everything you would want future generations to know about the life of Jesus.

So it’s interesting to me that the author would devote fully one half of one of those precious 16 chapters to relate a story about an encounter that Jesus had with a man possessed by a group of demons that called themselves “Legion”.

Why devote so much space to this single encounter with this one particular demoniac? I have to believe the author did it because the encounter left such a profound impact on those who witnessed it. Could we, for instance, describe 9/11 in one or two sentences? Probably not. We would devote some additional time to relate what happened on that particular day.

I think that’s what happened with Legion. Although the Bible is full of demons and demon possessions, the magnitude of the encounter with Legion apparently stood well apart from the rest.

We don’t believe in demons anymore, do we? Even Christians don’t really take them seriously. We still use some of the catch-phrases that have been handed down to us through the years. We say things like “He's struggling with his demons” when we talk about addictions & vices, and we frequently still wonder “What possessed you to do such a thing?”. But let’s face it, nobody saying those things is seriously talking about demons or possession. We don’t believe in those things anymore.

Why not?

Because our modern world has explained those things away. People are not possessed by demons; that’s silly. We know now that they have “chemical imbalances” and are “mentally disturbed”. Scientists have researched these things for us.

We have psychopaths, sociopaths, psychotics, and neurotics. People suffer from anger complexes and bi-polar disorders and chronic depression and suicidal tendencies. We have split-personalities, multiple personalities, full-blown schizophrenics and the terminally insane.

Not a demon in the bunch!

Funny that we should believe what these scientists tell us without a second thought, because these are also the same people who tell us that there is no God either. The logic is easy to see. I mean, if God doesn’t exists, you certainly can’t have a bunch of demons running around. That would be kind of like telling people that automobiles don’t exist and then having to try and explain what all of the gas stations are for.

Curious too that although our venerable scientific community has now “explained away” all of these conditions with fancy names & diagnoses, they still have no idea why any of them occur in the first place, why they affect some people but not others, what is really going on inside of these people’s heads, or how to cure any of them.

Does that really sound any less ridiculous than the thought of demons?

Maybe that’s the real issue here; that we just don’t like the thought of demons, so we are more than ready to accept any other explanation that appears to put a sense of control in our hands. After all, an unseen, malevolent demon that can possess our minds and manipulate our actions is a whole lot scarier to think about than a sterile, clinical diagnosis.

I don’t know much, but I know this: Ignoring something because we don’t want it to be true doesn’t make it go away. Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so quick to relegate demons to the rubbish pile of myth and superstition. Maybe, just maybe, we should give them a little more thought.

Meanwhile . . .

* Yesterday in Massachusetts, a man stabbed his 17 year old sister to death and then decapitated his 5 year old sister before being shot to death by police . . .

* A Kansas man binds, tortures, and kills 10 people over a twenty year period . . .

* A sleeping passenger on a bus in Canada is stabbed to death, beheaded, and partially consumed . . .

Laughter Speaks Louder Than Words

Just a little bit of humor for your Monday morning . . .

Every Sunday morning I sit next to a man named Bill in our Sunday School class. Bill was a lifetime Marine; he served combat tours in Korea and his body bears the scars. He’s old and has some trouble moving around. His body has its good days and its bad days. But Bill’s mind is still sharp as a tack, and he’s never lost his sense of humor.

Yesterday we were studying Nehemiah; specifically, the problems that the people of Jerusalem were confronting Nehemiah with as he was leading them to rebuild the city. Their problems sounded much like our own today; the fruits of their labor were overtaxed, their lands were mortgaged, their families were hungry and struggling.

Our Sunday School teacher then made a reference to Joseph by asking “What did Joseph do when hard times hit Egypt?”

Without the slightest hesitation and in perfect dead-pan form, Bill said, “He passed a stimulus package.”

The entire class erupted in laughter.

Blaine, Inc.

Years ago when I was a sales manager I had to deal with a lot of problems that my team would present to me. Most of the problems brought to my attention were from sales reps who were not meeting their goals. No surprise there; salespeople who are doing well are usually the first to claim all credit for their accomplishments, while those who are not are quick to shift the blame away from themselves.

What was most frustrating to me, however, was that the majority of the “problems” that were used to explain away sub-par performance were also things that I could do absolutely nothing about, anymore than I could change the color of the sky.

“See, it’s that blue sky, Blaine. It’s killing me. I need the sky to be green.”

“But the sky is blue. I can’t do anything about that.”

“Yeah, I know. But if it was green; man, I’d be rocking. You’d see some sales then.”

In my efforts over the years to coach, mentor, & encourage, I came across an article that I shared with my sales team called “Ten Things Successful People Know That You Don’t”, by Marta Kagan.

I’m not sure how much of an impact it had with them (sometimes we only want the excuses, not the solutions), but I liked the bluntness of the article, especially the very first thing on the list:

You are the CEO of your own life.
You are completely responsible for the level of success that you experience personally and professionally. You are equally responsible for the lack thereof. Your success will be defined by the vision you create and the choices that you make to support it. There may be no such thing as "control" in this world, but there certainly is "responsibility." Take responsibility for your actions, your choices, your future.

You are the CEO of you own life. I’ve never forgotten that. I have, however, had to give it some additional thought in the years since I first read it, because although it’s easy to see how that statement fits into the secular world, I couldn’t help but wonder if it also fit into a Christian one. After all, if I’m the one in charge, where does that put God?

What I discovered is that not only does that statement fit into a Christian worldview, it actually applies to Christians even more than those who don’t believe in God at all.

There a lot of similarities between us and the CEO of a company. For instance, most CEO’s (not all, but most) have been placed in charge of an entity that they themselves did not create. They didn’t start the company, but they have been selected to run it.

I too, have been placed in charge of something that I did not create. My body, my mind, my soul; all of these things that make up “Blaine, Inc.” were created by God, not me. I’m not sure why God did that, but I would suspect that He had a reason.

A CEO makes decisions and sets the course for his company. What they’ll do, where they’ll do it, who they’ll do it with, etc. I too make those very same decisions about my own life, or at least, I have the opportunity to make them myself, even if I sometimes shy away from them. And I know that I can make any decision I want and God will not interfere. He has never once stepped in and said, “I’m sorry Blaine, but I’m not going to let you do that.” If that isn't full decision making authority, I don’t know what is.

A CEO has to be prepared to deal with things he did not expect. Natural disasters, a downturn in the economy, labor disputes, new regulations, a competitor that didn’t exist the year before; maybe even a new technology that will make his entire product line obsolete.

When these things happen, no one wants to hear an excuse from the CEO. People want to know what kind of forethought the CEO had done ahead of time, what contingency plans were put in place, or, at the very least, they want to see how his leadership will pull the company past whatever obstacle they are currently facing.

We too, have to deal with the unexpected. The death of a loved one. The loss of a job. A tree falling on the house. A bad car transmission. But this is also where we as individuals really do a pretty bad job of being a CEO, because how often do we face these problems and push through them, and how often do we instead embrace the excuse, pity ourselves, raise the white flag, and lament about what might have been?

If only my parents had been rich. If only I could have gone to college. If only I hadn’t married so young. If only the sky were green . . .

I would suggest that if we ran a company the way most of us run our own lives, we would have been fired a long time ago.

A CEO has customers that he must please. So do I. I have a wife and children. I have friends and family. People I work with, people in my community, people in my church. All of them depend on me to do certain things. When I am successful, they benefit, and when I fail, they suffer. It’s just that simple.

A CEO has shareholders. Ah, yes, shareholders. Thousands and thousands of shareholders who are the real owners of the company and who all have a vested interest in how well the CEO is running this company that they own.

I don’t have thousands of shareholders; I just have one. I may be the guy running Blaine, Inc., but make no mistake, God owns the company, and I have to believe that like any other shareholder, He too is also very interested in what I’m doing with it.

Finally, a CEO has to make a report. Every quarter he has to get on the phone with his shareholders and tell them how well the company did, and what the company will be doing in the next 3 months.

We too, also have a report to make to our shareholder, but this is where the similarities between an earthly CEO and us as individuals start to break down, because we only get to make one. There will be no “next quarter”. We will not have the opportunity to say, “Well God, you know it was tough down there, and I know I wasted a lot of opportunities, but I’ll tell you, I got a whole new plan this time. This time it will be different.”

It’s not going to happen.

I don’t know how Judgment works. I know that as a Christian – as someone who has accepted Christ as his savior – a place has been reserved for me in Heaven when I leave this earth. The Bible is very clear about that. There is no fine print. As for everything else? Well, I just don’t know.

But I do know this: On that day when I’m standing before God with my whole life spread out before Him, and all of the good things I’ve ever done are displayed on Table #1, and all of the bad things I’ve done are stacked up on Tables 2 through 67, I have to tell you, I sure would like there to be something worthwhile on Table #1. Something that would show God that, however much of my life I may have squandered, His investment in me was not a complete waste of His time.

You are the CEO of you own life. What have you done with it so far? More importantly, what are you going to do with it in the time that you have left?

One life. One report.

The Shining

(from the book Finding Liberty)

I’ve always liked a good name. Names for people, names for places, names for things; and as someone who loves to read (and tries to write), names for stories.

My favorite book title of all time is Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes”. I like it not because it refers to something evil, but because through a thoughtful arrangement of five normal words, the title, all by itself, invokes a very deep (though ominous) feeling. Compare it as he wrote it to, say, “Here Comes Something Wicked”, which sounds more like the name of “a delightfully witty” Broadway musical.

Snore.

If book titles were paintings, to me, that particular one of Bradbury’s would be a Renoir.

Another of my favorite book names is “This Far, No Further”. The book was forgettable, but even after ten years, its title still lives with me. It just feels powerful, like something God would say (Author's Note: in fact, I found out later that God actually says something very close to that in the book of Job).

Back in the 80’s, Stephen King wrote a book called “The Shining”. Without regard to the subject matter of his novel, this is another title that I really like, simply because by taking an adjective and using it as if it were a noun instead, he created a whole different meaning. No longer are we using the word “shining” to describe something else, we’re treating it as if the description itself is the actual thing in question. Something that is not static, but in motion. Something that simply “is”, even if there is no good definition or rational explanation for it.

In the Bible, Joseph is a fascinating person. Genesis gives a lot of history and stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but if you go through the post-flood history starting with Abraham, Joseph is the first one who actually starts doing things that really have an effect on a very large number of people. It’s almost like God chose Abraham specifically because He needed him (as well as Isaac and Jacob) just so that He could finally get around to Joseph.

Joseph was different from his ancestors in a lot of ways, but the most interesting difference to me was that he seems to be the first person mentioned in the Bible that people could just look at and know he was a man of God.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were righteous men also and were treated as such, but they were also powerful men, and it could be argued that some of the reverence they received from others could have been influenced by that. Joseph, on the other hand, was a nobody, a slave. And yet, without hitting anyone over the head with a Bible or preaching the Gospels or shouting the name of Jesus Christ (and we know that he didn’t since none of those things would be around for quite some time) people simply knew he was with God.

In Genesis 39, both Potiphar (the captain of Pharoah’s bodyguard) and the chief jailer (who oversaw Joseph when he was imprisoned) knew that Joseph was with God. So trusting were they of Joseph that they let him run the whole show. Potiphar made him overseer of his house and “all that he owned he put in his charge.” The jailer “committed to Joseph’s charge all the prisoners who were in the jail; so that whatever was done there, he was responsible for it.”

This is pretty amazing if you think about. Both of these guys worked for Pharoah, one as the captain of his bodyguard, and the other as the overseer of the jail reserved for the king’s prisoners. From what I know about Pharoahs, they didn’t have too much of a problem putting people to death if they felt like it (as the baker in Genesis 40 would attest to if he could). If either Potiphar or the jailer messed something up or displeased Pharoah – and they were both close enough to Pharoah for that to be possible – they probably could have expected a rather blunt and unceremonious end to their lives, and yet they both put Joseph, a Hebrew slave, in charge.

What did they see in this guy? How could they be so sure of this man’s integrity and godliness that they would (in all likelihood) put their own lives at risk by entrusting him with everything? We have the luxury of having the Bible to tell us that God was with Joseph, but how did they know?

I recently read a book called “The Irresistible Revolution”, by Shane Claiborne. (I personally think it would be a good idea for this book to be mandatory reading for every Christian, but the vast majority would hate it, because the author does not even try to validate the comfortable routine that mainstream Christianity has become.) Shane lives his life in Philadelphia in what you might call an “inner city mission” located in a very bad part of town. It’s a commune of sorts, though its focus is on Jesus Christ rather than “free love” & drugs.

One of the stories he told was about a trip to the grocery store he took with another member of their little mission. As they walked down the street they passed a disgustingly dirty woman in an alley, who, crutches and all, offered “her services”. They declined, hurried to the store, and then hurried back home, giving the woman little more than a nod on the way back. When they got home, however, they found out that the bread they had bought was bad; they would have to go back to the store, and they didn’t want to because they knew that they would have to walk past the woman again. (Is that the way God works in our lives or what? “Sorry pal, you’re not getting off that easy. Don’t ignore Me. Go back and do My will.” Just my thoughts anyway).

On the way back from the store the 2nd time, they finally stopped and started to talk to the woman, just to let her know that they cared about her. They invited her back to their house where she could warm up a little and have a snack.

Back at the house, the woman started weeping and said, more of a statement than a question, “You’re Christians, aren’t you?”

The author was surprised that she had asked this because they had not said anything about Jesus or God or anything else, and their house didn’t have any Christian paraphernalia (crucifixes, Bibles, plastic fish, etc.) laying around to tip her off.

She said, “I know you’re Christians because you shine. I used to be a Christian. I used to shine like that, but the world is cold and dark, and it’s beaten me down and taken my shine away.”

Several months later, the author answered a knock at the door and found a woman he didn’t recognize standing in front of him who obviously knew who he was. Before he could say anything she spoke first, “I know you don’t recognize who I am. It’s because I’m shining again.”

In 40 years I have never impacted someone’s life in that way. It must be an amazing feeling. They changed this woman’s life! And they did it without hitting her over the head with a Bible or preaching the Gospels or shouting the name of Jesus Christ.

They talked to her.
They let her sit in their house and get warm.
They gave her a snack.
They shined.

I think that’s the same kind of thing that Potiphar and the jailer saw in Joseph. I think he simply shined. Maybe not in a physical, “visible aura around the head” kind of way, but some kind of inherent light that came from within him that people could just sense. He might not have even realized he was doing it, but because he was in such a close relationship with God, I don’t think he could have turned it off even if he had wanted to. It was just “there”, and anyone who looked at him could see it.

When Catherine & I first got married, we attended a church in downtown Orlando for several years. The church building itself was made of stone, constructed sometime in the early 1900’s, and it gave off a little of that “majesty” that older structures with stained glass windows can impart. You felt a little humbled in that building – like you were really, truly in God’s house – and the pastor was just incredible to listen to.

The congregation, however – the real church – left a little something to be desired. Most of the congregation was made up of successful businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, and we never did feel a lot of warmth during our time there. In fact, I think that when our family showed up on Sunday mornings in our 10 year old Grand Marquis that looked like it was worth every nickel of the $1,500 that we'd paid for it, a collective sigh went through the more well-to-do crowd that drove up in their new BMW’s, Mercedes’, and Cadillacs (which was just about everybody else).

In the 5 or 6 years we went there, I can only remember 3 people who ever treated us like, well, people. One was a sweet older lady who worked at the church, another was the man who ran the Sunday Schools, and the other was a young lawyer about my age named Pete.

When I think back, I was always a little curious about Pete. At the time, I was just some schlep working for a company that made sewer equipment, but Pete, he was a lawyer. Like many other members of the church, he had money, he had a prestigious job, he was in a different class altogether. And yet, he would always say hello to me or even come up to me and start talking like we were best friends.

Sometimes, I used to even wonder if he was patronizing me; you know, like that one popular person at school who’s nice to the geek because they feel sorry for them. But at the same time, I could tell – I could just tell – that that wasn’t what he was doing at all. The older lady and the Sunday School superintendent and Pete were all for real, they were simply shining. This “Jesus stuff” wasn’t just words on a page to them; they believed it, they lived it, they walked it. I imagine that they would have been surprised that I was surprised, because to them, it had to seem like the most natural thing in the world. How could they not shine?

Three people out of a church of a couple hundred. I’m happy to say that the percentage is a little higher at the church I am a part of now, but it still makes me wonder; how come we all aren’t shining? If we’ve really accepted Jesus Christ as our Saviour, if we’ve really made a true commitment to attempt to walk in His footsteps, and if we really believe that the light of Christ is in each and every one of us, how come we’re not all shining? I realize that the world can be a cold, dark place, and we all go through trying times where it wouldn’t be surprising that our shine might dim or flicker or even go out completely, but why are there so many Christians who don’t shine at all? Ever?

Do they really believe all of the “Jesus stuff” that they profess, or are they just going through the motions of superficially “accepting” Christ as a logical business decision because they heard salvation was free anyway and Hell sounded kind of scary?

I know that we cannot “buy” our salvation; it is given to us as a gift. I know too that “our works” will not get us into Heaven. But I wonder sometimes if we don’t preach those things a little too much, because knowing that I don’t have to “do” anything as a Christian to get to Heaven (since my salvation is free) sure gives me a good excuse not to do anything. But while my works will not get me into Heaven, I have to believe that they might help someone else get there.

I wonder sometimes if we, as Christians, don’t tend to focus on the parts of scripture that we like to hear, and ignore the parts that we don’t. We do read the parts that we don’t like of course, and when we do we nod our heads and say things that we know God & everyone else will like to hear like “Yes, yes, oh absolutely, without a doubt!”, but then we promptly forget what we read and go back to the parts that make us feel all warm and fuzzy, or the parts that we think justify our actions.

Funny that we should gloss over and downplay the role “our works” have in the big scheme of things, because Jesus sure does talk about them a lot. In fact, He spent a lot more time telling us what we should be doing than He did about how we get into Heaven, and though we seem to treat “our works” as optional, I can’t find anywhere in Bible where Jesus gave us a loophole.

Which comes back to the original question: Do we really believe this Jesus stuff? We say the words, we sing the songs, we speak with much reverence, but do we really believe it? Because if we do, how could we not do the things that Jesus has instructed us to do? If we have truly accepted Him as our Saviour instead of just making a superficial statement to cover our butt from the damnation of Hell, doing the things that Jesus told us to do wouldn’t be annoying burdens that we were trying to avoid, they would be natural expressions of our love – of His love – that we couldn’t stop doing even if we wanted to. We’d be shining. Whether we liked it or not.

Since I seem to have so much to say about this, you may be wondering if I shine. To be honest, I’m not really sure.

The movie Schindler’s List was brought to my attention recently, and as it had been 10 years or so since I’d originally watched it, I decided to check it out from the library and watch it again. (If you haven’t seen Schindler’s List, please know that while it is an incredible film, it earns every single bit of it’s “R” rating; definitely not for the kiddies or faint of heart).

What impressed me was that Oskar Schindler was not trying to be a hero. He was an opportunist, looking to exploit the war – and the Jews – for his own personal gain. His plan was to make as much money as fast as he could and then leave Krakow with his suitcases loaded with cash, and his plan worked to perfection. But he never left with the money. Instead, something happened to this self-serving, gold-digging womanizer that made him do something that would make him the most unlikely of heroes. Over the years, something happened to him. Something happened inside of him. But it took time.

I do believe that some people are “born again” in an instant, that one day they are “who they are” and the next they are someone completely different, but I know too that there are other people who never experience that sudden “bolt of the Holy Spirit” striking their souls in a sudden flash of righteousness. For some people, like Oskar Schindler, it takes time. I fall into this latter category.

I’ve always been a Christian, but I haven’t always lived it, and because of that fact, I have to think that I haven’t always really believed it. About 4 years ago, I really started to openly question what I was doing with my life and how I was living it. There was no specific day or time that I can put my finger on, just an approximate period when things started changing. I started changing. All of those things, those little clues, that I had been ignoring my whole life finally started getting some traction. I started to think about them; to think about what I valued, what I was doing, and how I was doing it. Even so, I still stubbornly refused to let go.

In late 2005, my career had reached newfound heights, with room yet to grow. No longer a schlep working for a sewer equipment manufacturer, I was now a sales manager at a global software company. I had a six-figure job, a title, status, respect; all of that good stuff. I drove to work in a red Corvette, crossed marble floors to a mahogany covered elevator that took me to a 4th floor office with a view of a manicured private golf course. I ate in some of the most expensive restaurants, attended conferences in luxury Las Vegas hotels, and vacationed with my family at our own cabin in the Georgia mountains.

And then one morning, quite unexpectedly, I blurted out something that I’ll never forget, something that surprised me as much as it did my boss, because even after the words had left my mouth I still couldn’t believe I had actually said them: I don’t think I want to do this anymore.

And everything changed.

So here I am, a “struggling writer” (oh! I’ve always wanted to be a “struggling” something!) living in a little town in the middle of nowhere. No big job, no fat paycheck, no marble floors, no vacation cabin in the woods.

I eat at McDonald’s now, or maybe Shoney’s or Cracker Barrel if I’m really upscaling it. I drive a 6 year old Ford Focus, if I drive at all. (In fairness, I have to confess that I do still have the Corvette. It’s currently sitting in a barn at my mom’s house, an unwanted relic of a past life. Hey, what can I tell you? When you’re running a little fishing empire the size that mine was, it takes awhile to cast down all of your nets. I had a lot of nets, and though the main warehouse has been cleaned out, there are still some back rooms [and a barn at my mom’s] that I still need to purge).

I know some people here think I’m crazy for leaving “all of that” and coming here instead. I can see the look in their eyes, their longing to break free of the “shackles” of a small town, to experience the “excitement” and “opportunity” of a big city. I can tell that many of them think they’re missing something. They are missing something, but it’s not what they think, and they probably wouldn’t believe me if I told them.

I’m not crazy, I’m finally sane. I’ve never felt so free. I’ve never been so happy. I’ve changed a lot.

But do I shine?

Well, I like to think that I do, but I’m not sure. Hopefully I have at least a little glow about me (or at least a persistent flicker) but even if I am shining, I also know that there’s still plenty of room yet to jack up the wattage. As much as I like looking in the mirror at the man I have become today, I still yearn for the man who I will be tomorrow.

God will take me there. I’m doing a better job of following now.

I think a lot of goofy thoughts sometimes. For instance, since I started bouncing ideas around in my head about this particular topic, a silly thought kept coming back into my mind, over and over. I kept thinking how cool it would be if we turned on the evening news at night and saw that all of the major networks were following a story that nobody could explain.

A new story, something no one had ever seen before, something that had started fairly recently but was showing no signs of slowing down; in fact, seemed to be growing as more and more people were attracted to it like moths to a flame. A trend that had all of “the experts” baffled as they continued to witness hundreds of millions of Christians around the world all acting like the Christ they profess to believe in. A trend in which the sheer number of “insignificant” acts of Christian charity, love, and kindness going on in the world were causing supercomputers to melt down as they tried to keep track of them all.

A trend in which all of the people involved somehow looked – as incredible as it may sound – almost as if there was a light coming off of them.

Instead of seeing all of those tired, old headlines on the TV screen like “The War in Iraq” or “Decision ‘08”, each night the world was looking at a new headline regarding this worldwide phenomenon that, for lack of a better name, they simply referred to as “The Shining”.

I don’t know. Maybe I am crazy.

“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” - John 1:4

The Greatest Gift

My mother is an interesting person. Some people might go as far as to call her “eclectic”. Some might go a little farther. She is, after all, a woman who finds joy in the strangest things; one of her greatest pleasures is to push her shovel into the ground and turn over fresh earth. I kid you not.

Her garden is made up of 20 raised beds, each about 4’ x 16’, and she turns them all by hand. No roto-tillers or plows for her; just her shovel and her foot. She has worn out 2 shovels in the past 10 years, and when I say “worn out” I don’t mean a broken handle, I mean that the shovel head has literally been worn away.

Her mind is still wonderfully curious. She got it in her head at age 60 that she wanted to try beekeeping, and she has experimented with her hives ever since – sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing – and we have been the recipients of the honey from those hives on many occasions.

She is intrigued with solar power, wind energy, composting toilets, and other such things. No chemical fertilizer has ever touched her garden, and though she has lived most of her life with the conveniences that we have all come to take for granted, she now hangs her clothes on a line to dry, heats her home with a woodstove, and – though she has city water – prefers to gather her drinking water in buckets from a hand-pumped well just outside her door or from the spring several miles down the road.

It’s her choice.

I’ll admit, some of her choices make me laugh, some of them make me shake my head in wonder, and some of them make me hold up my hands and say “Now Mom, let’s talk about this first.” But there is one choice that she made long ago – a conscious choice – that has been a blessing on my life. I look at that choice as the greatest gift she could have ever given me, because she didn’t have to do it, but my life has been made better than it ever could have been otherwise simply because she did.

It’s not that she carried me for 9 months and then brought me into this world. It’s not that she loved me and always did her best to provide for me as I grew up, nor is it that she always forgave me when I did something wrong. It has nothing to do with money, or discipline, or advice, or material things that I could hold in my hands. I have been the beneficiary of all of those things and more, but they all pale in comparison to this one single thing that she has done for me:

She loves my wife.

Absolutely, unconditionally, and without question.

She understood long before I did what my priorities in life must be: God, my wife, my children. In that order. She understood that she was not in this “top 3”; that she was no longer “the” woman in my life, and that for the sake of my own young family, she had to step aside and accept a new role in my life: That of a friend, a confidant, an encourager, and a mentor. Not for her son, but for the woman her son married.

My mother loves my wife. Absolutely, unconditionally, and without question. What a wonderful thing. It is – by far – the greatest gift she has ever given me.

And her son rises up and calls her blessed.

"Friend, move up higher"

I had quite an amazing experience the other day. One of the ladies at our local library emailed me to say that a lady had checked out “Finding Liberty” and that she now wanted to purchase a copy of it.

Now, “Finding Liberty” hasn’t exactly been flying off of the shelves. I understand why; it’s a collection, and collections of any kind – whether essays or short stories or articles – generally aren’t the biggest sellers, even when they are penned by very well known authors, of which I am not.

I’m just a man. An ordinary man no better and worse than anyone else who wrote down some thoughts about various things and put them together in a book. Not many people are looking for a book of thoughts & reflections written by somebody they’ve never heard of, especially when he has no lofty credentials and the book he has written doesn’t apply directly to any specific problem in their lives that they are trying to fix.

I knew all of that before I published it, and in truth, because of those reasons I almost didn’t even bother. But, I had the stories already written, and some people had commented favorably on them, and I wanted to have at least one offering available from Linear Wave Publishing, so I figured, why not? I’ll burn a thousand copies and have the rest of my life to do something with them.

One of the things that I did a few months ago was to donate a couple copies of “Finding Liberty” to our local library. Since then – what with the new book and everything else going on – I had pretty much forgotten about them.

And then I get this email from the library regarding this lady who wanted to buy a copy of it. So I gave her a call. As it happened, the very next morning I was going to be down at the library annex at 9:00 a.m. to work my 2-hour shift for the book sale that our library holds twice a year. I told her if she wanted to, she could drop by and I’d bring a book for her.

Shortly after nine o’clock the next morning, Rosia (pronounced “Rosa”) walked into the annex with her son, a man about my age, and what happened over the next 20 minutes absolutely blew me away.

She said the most wonderful things to me. I can’t even begin to describe the words she used, the manner in which she treated me; even the way that she looked at me. It was incredible. She – and her son – treated me like I was some sort of celebrity or something; like I was important. She even brought her camera because she wanted to have her picture taken with me. Nobody has ever asked to have their picture taken with me before.

And she didn’t buy a book from me either; she bought five. To put that in perspective, our library sells books at these sales for 25 cents each. For the same $60 that she gave me that morning, she could have walked out with 240 books written by proven, best-selling authors.

But she didn’t do that. She walked out with 5. Of mine.

I was high all day. I still am when I think about it. And as I reflected on that amazing experience, I couldn’t help but think of the parable that Jesus told of the wedding feast:

“When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him, and he who invited you both shall come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then in disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place. But when you are invited, go and recline at the last place, so that when the one who has invited you comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will have honor in the sight of all who are at the table with you. For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” - Luke 14:8-11

In my corporate life I had a lot of opportunities to praise myself, and I often did exactly that, many times only to suffer a predictably humiliating aftermath. I’ve also been the beneficiary of my fair share of legitimate awards and commendations, and yes, those do still hold some amount of pride for me.

But it was not until a lady named Rosia walked into my life to share a brief 20 minutes with me that I truly knew what it actually felt like to be exalted. I’ll be honest, she didn’t just move me up higher at the wedding table, she all but kicked the groom out of his seat just so that she could give it to me.

What an absolutely amazing, wonderful feeling. I wish that experience on everyone.

And that’s kind of the point to writing this today; not to put in a subtle plug for “Finding Liberty”, and not to say “hey, look what happened to me”, but to show yet another example of how living our lives in accordance with God’s instructions – however backwards they may seem in our world today – are truly the best things that we could ever do.

I think sometimes we look at God’s word as being limiting. We see these commandments and rules and obligations and we don't like them because we view them as unwanted restrictions which hold us back in our lives. But that’s the incredible irony of it all, because they’re not. They don’t restrict us at all; they free us.

They allow us to understand, for instance, what real joy actually feels like. Not the momentary pleasure that we get from constantly participating in our materialistic culture, but the kind of happiness that penetrates to the very core of our spirit and never goes away. All we have to do to experience that is to trust God and let go of everything else. He won’t let us fall.

Because of this experience I now know firsthand what Jesus was really talking about with this particular parable. What I have to do now is to remember that while many times in my life I will be a guest at the wedding feast, there are also many other times where I will be the host, and as such, I need to be vigilant and aware of who is seated at that table, so that I too can approach someone with a smile and an outstretched hand and say to them, “Friend, move up higher.”

A Few Good Questions

I don’t have a whole lot of wisdom to share with the world (some might argue that I have none at all), but I’ve collected a few questions over the years that have helped me immensely in living my life, and I think that that’s important, because regardless of what promise I will receive upon my passing from this earth, I’m continuously impressed by the fact that I’m not dead yet. I’m still very much alive, still living this life that God gave me, and I have to think that He would be much more pleased with me if I actually did something with that life rather than just sit around waiting to die so that I can receive my eternal reward.

I’ve come to love figuring things out for myself rather than relying on – and trusting in – someone else’s worldly “expert” opinion (the same experts who told me for years that Pluto was a planet and who now tell me that it’s not; the same ones who once said eggs were bad for me before recanting years later to say that they are in fact actually pretty good for me; the same ones who have a scientific law that says matter & energy can neither be created nor destroyed and yet have no explanation for where all of the matter & energy that exists in the universe came from [and whose very existence would seem to be a direct violation of this particular “law” because, well let’s face it, it’s all here and it came from somewhere]).

I realize too that for anyone reading this, I myself fall into this category of “someone else”, so I won’t even attempt to force my advice on you, because it would probably be wrong anyway. But I will offer these questions to you in the hope that you may find them useful in coming to your own conclusions:


What would you do right now if you weren't afraid?

I used to have this question taped to my monitor at work years ago so that I would constantly see it during the day, and it helped me to face certain aspects of my job that I would rather not do and would often put off until later (returning a call to an irate customer, dealing with a personnel issue, etc.).

But fear hasn’t just compelled me to shun “negative” things, it’s also stopped me from doing things that I would actually have liked to do. How many questions did I not ask in school because I was afraid? How many girls that I really liked in my younger days never knew that because I was afraid to tell them? How many sports, activities, plays, etc., did I not participate in because I was afraid? I have no idea. But there was a bunch.

I still have fears, but asking myself this question helps me to face whatever it is that I am afraid of at the moment and push through it. Would I do it if I wasn’t afraid? Yes? Then do it. And you know what? No matter what it was that I was dealing with, it was never as bad as I feared it would be. In addition, I’ve also learned that regardless of appearances, just about everybody else is afraid too, so I’m always in pretty good company.


Are you pretending not to notice YOUR part of the problem?

I’ve known dozens and dozens of people who are divorced – friends & coworkers, men & women - and many of them have shared the details of their pain and the “sins” of their ex-spouse. What I’ve learned is that one person always seems to be a villain and the other a helpless victim. But you know what? Of all the divorcees that I’ve talked to in my life, never once have I ever talked to the villain. Isn’t that funny?

You’d think that sooner or later – marriages being made up of only two people after all – that at some point I would have met one of the villains. But everyone I’ve ever talked to has always been the victim in the relationship. On top of that, I’ve never met anyone else who has ever talked to the “villain” either. I find it very interesting that we should all defy the law of averages in that way.

You see where this is going. My mom once told me, “There are two sides to every story, and both of them are lies”.

Catherine & I don’t argue much, but it does happen, and when it does, sooner or later I always get around to asking myself this particular question. After all, I always know what she did wrong - that’s why I’m arguing with her in the first place, right? - but what was my contribution to the problem?

I don’t like stepping out of my shoes to stand instead in hers, because then I am forced to see what she saw and what she heard, including the tone of my voice, the look on my face, and the words that I used. And I have to tell you, I have never once been able to look into that mirror and absolve myself of all guilt. In fact, what I usually find - to my own shame – is that I contributed more to the problem than she did, or, in more instances than I would care to admit, I was the one who actually created the whole problem in the first place.

Sometimes, just to summon up the courage to ask myself if I’m pretending not to notice my part of the problem, I first have to ask “What would I do right now if I wasn’t afraid?”, because looking into that mirror can be a little scary.


In what way will this move God’s Kingdom forward?

As a Christian, this is a question that I try to hold close by at all times. It’s pretty similar to the little question that was popular years ago, “What Would Jesus Do?”, but I find that I’m able to use it a little more effectively. The problem for me with the question “WWJD?” is that I don’t know what Jesus would do. I mean, Jesus blew people away with some of the things that He said and did, and I think it would be rather arrogant of me to assume that I could somehow know His mind when I’m still trying to figure out what half of the things He said & did actually meant. But if I can’t claim to know the mind of God, I have no problem at all understanding my own; my thoughts, and my desires.

This question is very deceptive because while answering it honestly isn’t usually that hard, taking the appropriate action based on what the answer is can be excruciatingly difficult. Everything we say and everything we do has an impact. Sometimes it’s big and sometimes it’s small, but it has an impact, and it makes no difference whether we like it or not. And all of it – whether we like it or not - is going to move God’s Kingdom in one direction or the other.

Sometimes, in my own selfish desire, I feel an overwhelming compulsion to say or do something out of an adamant belief that I am right to do so. But so often, when I take the time to stop and ask myself what the result of my words & actions will be, I find that I have to stop myself from doing what I wanted. And it can be SO HARD to bite my tongue or stay my hand when I feel that I am justified but the answer to the question still comes back as: “It won’t move God’s Kingdom forward at all, Blaine. In fact, it will actually push it backwards a step or two”.

I’ll be very honest; I don’t like it at all when I get that answer, because it means that I can’t do what I want to do. But if I guide my actions with the answer that I receive, even though I won’t be able to do what I want to do, the possibility exists that I might be able to do something that Jesus would.

And wouldn't that be something?

My 2nd Favorite Christmas Story

My favorite Christmas Story is, well, the Christmas Story, but I’d like to take a moment to share my 2nd favorite Christmas Story with you. I've only heard it one time - about 12 or 13 years ago – as it was told by the now retired Pastor Ronald Fink during a Christmas Eve candlelight service held at Trinity Lutheran Church in Orlando, FL. If you’ve never heard it before, I hope it blesses you as much as it did me. If you have heard it before, please forgive me if the retelling is less than perfect; all I can do is write it the way I remember it. If you do like it, please feel free to share it as much as you wish; a story has no value if no one hears it, and this one doesn’t belong to me anyway.

The story is about a man who doesn’t believe in Christmas, and he doesn’t believe in Christmas because he doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ. It’s not that the man has a hard heart, it’s just that he’s given this a lot of thought, and the whole concept of an "all-mighty, all-powerful" God sending His Son to earth in the form of a man (and wasn’t that convenient) just didn’t make any sense at all. If there really was a God, he thought, and He really was all-mighty and all-powerful, why would he do something like that? It just didn’t make any sense. If God really did exist, He could have just opened up the heavens Himself and told us directly what He wanted us to know. The whole “Jesus thing” was just too ridiculous and convoluted, and since it didn’t make any sense to him, he had long ago decided that Jesus was just a fantasy created by mankind to give ourselves hope when there really wasn’t any hope at all.

And so, as yet another Christmas Eve came upon him, the man did again what he did every year; he went out to a party at a friend’s house and enjoyed some good company and holiday cheer. He arrived back home at around 11:30 that night, and he was glad that he did, because it had just started snowing as he pulled into the driveway and he was thankful that he had gotten home before the roads turned treacherous.

He went inside his house and started going about the business of preparing to turn in for the night when all of a sudden he heard a loud thump! He paused for a moment and then heard it again: thump! Curious, he started walking through the house, looking for the source of the strange noise. Upon entering his living room, he heard it again – thump! – and he could instantly tell that something had just hit the large plate-glass window facing out to his front yard.

Thinking that there might be some teenagers roaming the streets throwing snowballs at his window, the man rushed outside, intent on giving them a piece of his mind. But as he made his way out the door and into the front yard, he immediately noticed two things: The first thing he noticed was that the snowfall had gotten much, much heavier; heavier in fact than he had ever seen in his entire life. Huge snowflakes were literally cascading down from above, and the night was alive with intense motion and yet eerily quiet at the same time.

The second thing he noticed was that there were no kids in his front yard throwing snowballs; instead, there was a flock of birds, and even as the man stood there watching, he suddenly saw two of the birds shoot away from the others and slam into the plate-glass window on the front of his house - thump!, thump! – hitting it so hard that their bodies fell dead to the ground below.

The man instantly knew what was going on. The birds - confused and frightened by the heavy, swirling snow - were fluttering and flying around in a panic, and they could see right inside his house to a place of light and shelter, and they were trying to get inside. But what they didn’t know – what they could never know – was that no matter how hard they tried, they would never be able to get in through the glass.

Thump! Thump! Thump! Three more of the birds slammed into the glass and fell lifeless to the ground.

Now, the man didn’t believe in God or Jesus Christ, but he wasn’t a bad man; he had a good heart, and it crushed him to see what was happening before his very eyes, and he was determined to put a stop to it.

He quickly ran back inside his house and turned off all of the lights, thinking that if the birds couldn’t see inside, they would stop killing themselves trying to get in. But even though the birds could no longer see inside, the now darkened window still held the appearance of shelter – a cave opening, perhaps – and the birds continued to fly into the glass, and their bodies continued to pile up in the snow underneath.

The man then ran to his garage – only 30 feet away - and threw open the door to give the birds a real place of shelter that they could enter without harm. But the birds just continued to fly into the window. Kicking himself, the man ran back into the garage and turned on the lights. Now, he thought, they’ll be able to see that the shelter they need is right over here. But the birds were so focused and intent on getting through the window that they simply didn’t see him at all.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Becoming increasingly panicked himself, the man started shouting at the birds. “Hey! Over here! Over here!”, he yelled, trying to get their attention. But still, the birds did not come.

Finally, the man rushed out right into the remains of the flock, yelling and shouting and waving his arms, trying to herd what birds were left towards the garage. But if the birds had been confused and frightened before, they were now absolutely terrified at this new apparition in their midst, and faster than ever, they hurtled themselves into the glass: Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

Not knowing what else he could do, the man stood there in the cold darkness, snow falling all around, and watched the birds die one by one. With helpless tears flowing down his face he thought to himself, “If only I could be a bird for just a few minutes . . . I could talk to them in their own language – they wouldn’t be afraid of me; they would understand me, and I could tell them what they needed to do to save themselves.”

At that very moment the man heard bells begin to ring; It was midnight, and church bells throughout the town were ringing to usher in Christmas morning, this day set aside to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

And as he stood there he thought about what had just happened, and about the words that he had just said to himself, and all of a sudden, the concept of an all-mighty, all-powerful God sending His Son to earth to be with us - to be one of us - for just a little while, didn’t seem like such a crazy idea after all.