iPandora

Following the philosophical traditions of western culture which err towards stoic and unemotional worship and dry preaching our current culture is fleeing that dryness of deep thought and lofty words towards a wetness in our belief and especially in our outward and corporate worship of our God.

Songs of worship sung most often in modern evangelical churches tend towards emotional validation of our faith. “Let me lose myself in God. We want to feel your Holy Spirit moving inside us.” Demands for emotional validation. We want to feel good worshiping God.

Why?

We have had a bad week. We are feeling down and beginning to feel our own humanity and lack of ability to surmount the troubles of life. In other words we are right where God wants us and right where He can can work most effectively in and through us. And instead of thanking our loving and caring Father for placing us right where we need Him most we whine and complain and demand God validate our existence by making us feel good so we can scrabble through another week feeling capable because God must love me because He made me feel good last Sunday.

Emotion, the soul and feeling parts of our person are important and necessary and God delights in filling us with feelings that spring from Him and His love. God made sex and love and delicious food and warm spring rain and brisk fall winds and summer afternoons and swimming and friends and good stories and fireplaces and warm blankets and everything else good and enjoyable and pleasurable and beyond all these He has promised heaven will be beyond anything we can imagine even in our most lofty dreams and visions and there and back again experiences.

I am not discounting the importance of emotions. I’m challenging forgetting the mind, that necessary organ of thought and rationale and sense and consideration, in our schema of worship.

Any love worth holding is a love that begins with the mind, or one that quickly enlists and persuades the mind not of how it feels, but of whether or not it is sensible.

Your first crush in love is a wonderful thing. the sun shines brighter when your love smiles at you and darkens whenever you are apart.

But time passes, usually quickly, and our sensible and kill- joy mind gets through the delirium of ecstasy with warnings and cautions, eventually getting the better of our wayward heart.

In love and worship of our Lord and Savior there will never be a time of honest thought finding factual and substantive purchase in any thought contrary to the words of truth of our God. However, the senseless worship and blind love of our God leaves one vulnerable to attack in so many more ways. Emotions ebb and flow according to the prevailing winds inside and out. And when our love is based on the shifting sands of emotion, and that emotion changes, our love can fade as quickly as shadows in the morning.

When love is based not on mercurial emotions but is rooted in fact and sense, that love is not a feeling but a foundation. On that foundation I can build the flowery feelings of romance and the steady feelings of deep friendship and the protective feelings when the winds of trial blow. This steady and reliable love is based on fact and decision, not feelings. Feelings flow from it and are built upon it but because they are results and companions and not sources and causes this love lasts and is more worthwhile and substantial. And the feelings, because they flow from something resolute and sure are that much stronger for the trust you can truly put in them.

This is the love our spouse deserves. How much more does our God deserve such a love?

In the songs and stories of our church in the West we are seeking a selfish and unholy emotional gratification rather than a complete and utter trust in God birthed of our own inability and weakness illumined by His complete and utter ability and strength, and His love in sharing these abilities so freely with us.

To see that gulf between inability and ability and to accept His act bridging that gulf. To cross that bridge in His strength relying on Him to support us through the rest of our mortal life. To do this is to choose, first with our mind, and following with the love of our heart in belief, in Christ and experience salvation of our entire self, the mind, the will, and the emotions.

And then as we continue to live for Him, our mind, our will, and our emotions are each called upon individually and in concert to give themselves up before Him in abject worship of His ability. No longer are we prostituting our emotions to gain support for our will to tough it out a week at a time. We can rest sure, seeing His working in our past and trusting His plan for our future.

The heart of worship includes our mind.

First thoughts on the 8.8 quake that just struck Chile: Is this it?

The earth is heaving as if it is in labor.

The quake hit about 100 miles from Santiago, the capital of Chile. But reported death toll right now is only 78 people.

My thoughts and prayers are with those on the ground in Chile.

But back to the initial thoughts.

How long ago was it that seismologists were screaming the world was heading towards “the big one”. A massive quake level 9 or higher on the Richter Scale that would decimate a significant area of even highly developed and well constructed buildings.

A disaster of biblical proportions, it would be called, even by atheists and agnostics and dont’-careists.

I don’t know if this is it. I don’t have a crystal ball or special word from God that the end is here. But I know that God wants us to be vigilant, ready, always choosing our next steps based on His greater glory and with the continual awareness of the impending end of days.

The constant reminders in the New Testament, especially, though they are the words of men expecting a return of the Christ within their lifetimes or very shortly thereafter, are included nonetheless at God’s behest. God wanted us living between Christ’s first and second comings to live always in the hope of His imminent return, both as a justification for the struggles we deal with on earth as His ambassadors, and as a guide to our thoughts and actions.

Christ is returning, of that we are sure.

Whether He comes through the upheaval of earthquakes shattering the sure footing of this earth we each trust too much, or through the twisting terrors of tornadoes scarring the skies, or hurricanes or typhoons or the soft, sweet winds of a summers’ afternoon, He will still come.

And for the people in Chile now dealing with the aftermath of such destruction and ruin, I pray their succor will not just be of their physical homes, but also include a rebirth in their own lives in the salvation of Christ.

As a musician I’m dismayed by the cookie cutter melodies, simplistic harmonies, poor production values, and overall less-than-the-world’s quality of Christian music, overall.

There are notable exceptions, and today I found another.

In a dark, forgotten corner of my music library I found DC Talk’s Red Letters.

Musically interesting, regardless of the words. And then add the words and you have a shining example of quality music played by skillful musicians with passion and conviction that only come from singing the truth and singing it for God.

Enjoy Red Letters by DC Talk, from their album Supernatural.

A Century Turns: New Hopes, New Fears is Bill Bennett’s latest book of current American History in a series that loosely includes the more formal series America: The Last Best Hope.

A Century Turns chronicles the last 20 years of American socio-political history from the perspective of a proud, cautious, involved, and hopeful American.

When picking up history books one expects to find events with which they cannot relate. I didn’t live during the Battle of the Bulge any more than I did the War of 1812. And there is a significant disconnect which makes study of history a true study, and not just an experience.

A Century Turns tells history, but the one telling is one who was there, one who was involved in the choices that shaped our country and the world as we know them today. And the story is one I lived through.

Perhaps my earliest memory of political affairs was the inauguration of George Bush, the senior. I remember watching on television as he spoke and watching him ride and walk in the parade from the Capital to the White House. I was 6 then.

When I started working at 14 I spent a lot of time listening to Rush Limbaugh on his original station, News Talk 1530 KFBK out of Sacramento. I was aware of events and began to be involved in them on a local level, writing letters to the editor of our local rag, speaking at City Counsel meetings. The events of the last 20 years are all memories to me. And Bennett wrote about them as history.

From the LA Riots to the OJ Simpson debacle. From the home grown terrorist acts of the 90′s to the growth of Islamic jihad to it’s breaking point over our shores and on our peace-seeking psyches. From the dalliances of politicians in the Democratic party to the indiscretions of politicians in the Republican party. Bennett chronicles the currents that have shaped our world so severely and significantly in the last 20 years.

I get the sense, reading old history, that the world changes slowly. It’s massive weight fighting change with inertia. And yet, in just my own brief lifespan so much has changed. From the dominant social theories to the scrappy upcoming ideas, change is coming fast.

One thing the book lacks, but not from purposeful omission, is the sense that history is perhaps always like that. While it is true that the more things change the more they stay the same, it is also true that things change. And some that is lost in that change can never be brought back.

A Century Turns is an excellent book for contextualizing the history of the lifetimes of me and my peers. It helps to see how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go.

Bennett ends with the election of then Senator Barak Obama to the office of the President of the United States of America:

There was a deep recession in the land. There were unfinished wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were still alive. Russia was flexing its muscles. And a new president, with a new approach to the country and the world, would take the reins of power with new hopes and new fears on many sides of him and the country he was charged to lead.

I was raised in the kitchen, thanks to my parents.

Peter and David and the author of Hebrews each used the word “taste” to describe experiencing the divine.

Psalm 34:8 Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

Hebrews 6:4-6 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to contempt.

1 Peter 2:2-3 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Taste and see that the Lord is good! Tasting implies an up close and personal involvement in the act of experiencing the Lord. You may be able to see from a distance but you cannot taste remotely.

A danger for those who have been raised and lived their entire lives in the kitchen of the church and God’s word is that they may assume they have experienced the full extent of God’s experience and life when in fact they have only been seeing and hearing and observing from afar what they ought to have been tasting from their privileged place beside the stove and under the counter.

At the same time, being raised in the kitchen is a singular and increasingly rare event pregnant with benefits and possibilities that are available to those who do take advantage of them. To those who do taste the smorgasbord, the buffet of spiritual delicacies which may be eaten from a young age, a great blessing has been given.

While those who come later to the table often value the food at the Lord’s table more, the blessings of early exposure to the table are many, so long as we don’t content ourselves only with the smells of that feast.

I’ve noticed an uptick lately in spam Akismet and IntenseDebate are not catching, but not approving either. Some of the comments appear legit, as in they are written by a real human for this specific post, but the websites included by the commentors are selling things not related to their comment.

So here’s a new policy: If your link is spammy, I delete your link. If you comment is spammy, I delete your comment and flag it as spam. If your link and your comment are spammy… what do you think this is? A democracy?

I’ll leave your comment if it applies to the post, just because I feel lonely sometimes out here in my little corner of cyberspace without people commenting. But I reserve the right to delete your link and change your name to Jane Doe or John Doe, as the situation is appropriate. Or Robby the Robot if it’s difficult to tell.

So you’re desperate, but I’m desperate too. Only difference, I’ve got the power here on I, Pandora, and you don’t.

Hey all.
I’ve been hired by a company, full time, and am now working on my second week of work. The company restricts internet access much more than previous employers. I feel like it’s my first “real” job.
At home the internet is down pending a new provider, so I’m enjoying attenuated access for now.
I’ll resume posting once the home internet gets back up and running.

A small village in Nepal

Barb posted a letter written to a grandson explaining and illustrating the principles of the free market and the benefits of that system over systems more concerned with equality of outcome rather than equality of potential. She got the original article from the Free Market Foundation of South Africa.

More people need to read and understand this.

April 1942

Mr dear grandson:

I will answer your question as simply as I can. Profit is the result of enterprise which builds for others as well as for the enterpriser. Let us consider the operation of this fact in a primitive community, say of one hundred persons who are non-intelligent beyond the point of obtaining the mere necessities of living by working hard all day long.

Our primitive community, dwelling at the foot of a mountain, must have water. There is no water except at a spring near the top of the mountain: therefore, every day all the hundred persons climb to the top of the mountain. It takes them one hour to go up and back. They do this day in and day out, until at last one of them notices that the water from the spring runs down inside the mountain in the same direction that he goes when he comes down. He conceives the idea of digging a trough in the mountainside all the way down to the place where he has his habitation. He goes to work to build a trough. The other ninety-nine people are not even curious as to what he is doing.

Then one day this hundredth man turns a small part of the water from the spring into his trough and it runs down the mountain into a basin he has fashioned at the bottom. Whereupon he says to the ninety-nine others, who each spend an hour a day fetching their water, that if they will each give him the daily production of ten minutes of their time, he will give them water from his basin. He will then receive nine hundred and ninety minutes of the time of the other men each day, which will make it unnecessary for him to work sixteen hours a day in order to provide for his necessities. He is making a tremendous profit – but his enterprise has given each of the ninety-nine other people fifty additional minutes each day for himself.

The enterpriser, now having sixteen hours a day at his disposal and being naturally curious, spends part of his time watching the water run down the mountain. He sees that it pushes along stones and pieces of wood. So he develops a water wheel; then he notices that it has power and, finally, after many hours of contemplation and work, makes the water wheel run a mill to grind his corn.

This hundredth man then realises that he has sufficient power to grind corn for the other ninety-nine . He says to them, “I will allow you to grind your corn in my mill if you will give me one tenth of the time you save.” They agree, and so the enterpriser now makes an additional profit. He uses the time paid by the ninety-nine others to build a better house for himself, to increase his conveniences of living through new benches, openings in his house for light, and better protection from the cold. So it goes on, as this hundredth man constantly finds ways to save the ninety-nine the total expenditure of their time – one tenth of which he asks of them in payment, for his enterprising.

This hundredth man’s time finally becomes all his own to use as he sees fit. He does not have to work unless he chooses to. His food and shelter and clothing are provided by others. His mind, however, is ever working and the other ninety-nine are constantly having more time to themselves because of his thinking and planning.

For instance, he notices that one of the ninety-nine makes better shoes than the others. He arranges for this man to spend all his time making shoes, because he can feed and clothe him and arrange for his shelter from profits.

The other ninety-eight do not now have to make their own shoes. They are charged one tenth the time they save. The ninety-ninth man is also able to work shorter hours because some of the time that is paid by each of the ninety-eight is allowed to him by the hundredth man.

As the days pass, another individual is seen by the hundredth man to be making better clothes than any of the others, and it is arranged that his time shall be given entirely to his speciality. And so on.

Due to the foresight of the hundredth man, a division of labour is created that results in more and more of those in the community doing the things for which they are best fitted. Everyone has a greater amount of time at his disposal. Each becomes interested, except the dullest, in what others are doing and wonders how he can better his own position. The final result is that each person begins to find his proper place in an intelligent community.

But suppose that, when the hundredth man had completed his trough down the mountain and said to the other ninety-nine, “If you will give me what it takes you ten minutes to produce, I will let you get water from my basin,” they had turned on him and said, “We are ninety-nine and you are only one. We will take what water we want. You cannot prevent us and we will give you nothing.” What would have happened then? The incentive of the most curious mind to build upon his enterprising thoughts would have been taken away. He would have seen that he could gain nothing by solving problems if he still had to use every waking hour to provide his living. There could have been no advancement in the community. The same stupidity that first existed would have remained. Life would have continued to be a drudge to everyone, with opportunity to do no more than work all day long just for a bare living.

But we will say the ninety-nine did not prevent the hundredth man from going on with his thinking, and the community prospered. And we will suppose that there were soon one hundred families. As the children grew up, it was realised that they should be taught the ways of life. There was now sufficient production so that it was possible to take others away from the work of providing for themselves, pay them, and set them to teaching the young.

Similarly, as intelligence grew the beauties of nature became apparent. Men tried to fix scenery and animals in drawings – and art was born. From the sounds heard in nature’s studio and in the voices of the people, music developed. And it became possible for those who were proficient in drawing and music to spend all their time at their art, giving of their creations to others in return for a portion of the community’s production.

As these developments continued, each member of the community, while giving something from his own accomplishments, became more and more dependent upon the efforts of others. And, unless envy and jealousy and unfair laws intervened to restrict honest enterprisers who benefited all, progress promised to be constant.

Need we say more to prove that there can be profit from enterprise without taking anything from others, that such enterprise adds to the ease of living for everyone?

These principles are as active in a great nation such as the United States as in our imaginary community. Laws that kill incentive and cripple the honest enterpriser hold back progress. True profit is not something to be feared, because it works to the benefit of all.

We must endeavour to build, instead of tearing down what others have built. We must be fair to other men, or the world cannot be fair to us.

Sincerely,

Grandfather

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

Lax credit and easy spending policies are products of both Democrat and Republican leaderships in years past. The conservative movement has recognized the failures of this more so than their compatriots in the liberal movement. Calls for the privatization of Fannie and Freddie, two of the main contributors to the whole system of easy credit, are not likely to be heeded by the current elected leadership in Washington D.C. And Fed Chairman Bernanke believes such easy credit is the best policy, despite it’s contribution to the economic failures of the last several years.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

Political correctness is losing favor across the ideological aisles. This false equality of outcome which relies on enforced restrictions on true equality, that is, the equality of potential, has been a pernicious evil in our country. But other perniciously evil policies continue to thrive here. Policies that drag down those who have achieved in order to not unnecessarily burden those who will not achieve with that natural and good desire to become something other than the abject failures. Except that’s not right, you can only fail if you’ve started at something. Many of these haven’t started anything and therefore aren’t failures but worse. Any system that encourages people in any way to remain nothings is evil for it robs them of their humanity as surely as Nazi extermination program robbed so many of their humanity.

You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

In that iconic moment when Joe the Plumber’s question drew out then Senator Obama’s statement that we need to spread the wealth around, it revealed a misunderstanding of economic systems that time has not changed. If you want to grow jobs, you make it easier for companies to make and keep money. If you take what they make for your own wealth redistribution programs and to “spread it around” you hurt not just the business you wanted to stick it to, but all its employees and potential employees as well. This isn’t rocket science.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.

Ever since FDR, liberal leaders have been adept at pitting class against class. There is no inherent nobility in the individual man whose mind and heart must be won. There is only the group, the LGBT, the blacks, the whites, the lower class, the middle class, the upper class, the “them”, the “us”, the hispanics, the wage earners, the corporations, the haves, the have-nots. Targeted fiscal policy meant to assuage the ire of a particular class are unconstitutional as they do not benefit every American equally, which is a requirement of federal policy. It’s vote-buying and favor peddling. And the result is a torn and fragmented society beset by such tensions within it cannot unify to address situations without.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

The poor will always be among us. This doesn’t free us from a responsibility to assist them. Instead it requires we develop consistent and repeatable patterns of assistance with several criteria. There must be a filter that prevents moochers and freeloaders from taking resources that would be better appreciated and taken advantage of by those deserving poor. And the money for such charity must be given willingly, not taken without recourse. A rich man who does not give to charity only illumines the shallowness of his own soul. He does not deserve theft of his goods, only the scorn of society.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

This is a failure of nearly everybody in leadership in Washington D.C. and a result of an uncareful electorate who do not take real pains to determine the true character of the candidate or who believe that character doesn’t matter.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.

Just as by helping a butterfly escape it’s chrysalid prison you doom it to a short, painful life and quick, ugly death, by taking away the responsibilities of a person or natural societal group, you end up with stunted and immature people who will continue all the ills aformentioned.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

There are few things more evil than to do for someone else what they are capable of doing themselves. Particularly when they are not in dire need and what they need to accomplish is a task that would encourage or build in them traits of character not already full-fledged in their being.

With an accompanying facebook status of “Yay for accidental success” this recipe began as something else.

It was an attempt at making a hearty, chunky pasta sauce inspired by an advertisement for Philly Cream Cheese that went awry, and in a good way.

The advertisement showed the couple stirring cream cheese into what appeared to be a simple tomato sauce and then enjoying it over spaghetti. The cream sauces I’d enjoyed previously tended to have a thick flavor that was not necessary enjoyable to me.

So I tried my own hand at it, and it ended up a bit too hearty for sauce, and just right for a really good soup. In my opinion.

1 medium onion(diced)
4 cloves garlic (crushed well into a near-paste)
2T olive oil

1 green bell pepper (chopped finely)
1 yellow bell pepper (chopped finely)
1 red bell pepper (chopped finely)

small handful cilantro (diced)

2 10oz cans Tomato sauce

4oz cream cheese (softened)

2 cups fresh tomato (chopped into 1/2 inch cubes)
1lb ground beef

Sweat the onion and garlic in olive oil over very low heat until the onoins are translucent.

Increase heat to medium-low until onion begins to brown lightly.

Add bell peppers and saute just until bell peppers are soft. If you over cook the bell peppers or they’ll not add texture to the soup.

Add cilantro to pepper and onion mixture for last minute of sauteing.

Brown ground beef and drain.

In soup pot warm tomato sauce over medium low, add softened cream cheese and stir until there are no lumps of cream cheese.

Mix in fresh tomato chunks, browned ground beef, and pepper and onion mixture.

Heat, stirring sparingly, until bubbling.

Serve immediately.

There aren’t pictures because we ate it all before I thought to take a picture.

If the sauce were thinner it would probably work OK as a pasta sauce. But as is it is a thick and hearty tomato soup. It even works for dipping grilled cheese sandwiches, though the extra chunks do require their own spoon for finishing the bowl.