American parents tend to feed their children bland foods to avoid potential allergies or just because that’s what Dr Spock or the latest parenting magazine told them. Easy on the stomach, and the poop ain’t so bad.

Parents in other countries tend to feed their infants whatever they are having, and their children experience the full gamut of cultural flavors from very early ages.

And yes, I’m advocating for American parents to be more like foreign parents. Look out the windows, there be pigs in the air!

First, bland doesn’t necessary mean easier for the stomach. Take ginger, for instance. A very sharp and strong flavor, nobody would call it bland. But is the natural and effective remedy for upset stomachs? Ginger. No citations here, just try this: Purchase a bottle of Reed’s Ginger Brew. If you can handle the Extra Strength, get that. Then fast, and when your stomach is most uncomfortable, usually just after the normal time for the next meal, drink the Reed’s. Instant stomach relief.

Second, you’re limiting your child’s future ability to eat and enjoy wide varieties of food, including many foods you and I take for granted.

This article chronicles the embarrassment, the worries, the challenges of being an adult picky eater. One telling comment?

Amber Scott, of Enon, Ohio, has eaten only about 10 different foods since she was 3 years old.

Not that exposing your children, when young, to significant varieties of food will totally preclude such problems, but they would take a significant bite out of them.

The Office

Empty office space keeps rising. This is not a good sign for the economy that is on the mend, according to certain people whose grand plans are fully in swing here. Corporations are using less and less office space, which means they aren’t hiring.

The really scary part?

Job growth and office-space use are closely intertwined. While some major users of offices, such as federal regulatory agencies, have been expanding, big banks and corporations have lagged behind in increasing their real-estate footprint, according to some analysts. That is a sign that these larger companies have been slow to return to their pre-recession staffing levels, a contributing factor to the persistently high U.S. unemployment rate.

Yea, that’s a sure sign of a growing and recovering economy. Regulators are gearing up for more business. Only one problem, regulators business is to keep real businesses out of business.

My Buddy Hugo

The ones really benefiting from the drilling moratorium? National oil companies. That means President Obama’s marxist buddy Hugo Chavez is loving us right now. Was this a quid pro quo? Or was it yet another unintended consequence of a short sighted and dishonestly supported policy? I’d say the latter, but wouldn’t be too surprised at the former.

Oh, and this would be the same Venezuela that just stole oil rigs from US corporations and we heard nary a peep in protest for this thuggish thievery from the government that is supposed to be supporting US interests abroad.

Muhammed In Space

Perhaps a new round of “Let’s Draw Muhammed” is in order. It would probably improve our chances of NASA actually being less irrelevant than it already is going forward.

NASA has apparently been ordered to reach out to Muslim nations in an effort to improve goodwill. And NASA is the right agency for this why?

Former NASA director Michael Griffin says sympathetic nations will be drawn to us when NASA succeeds at great things, not when they’re given an inflatable space shuttle and commemorative plaque.

Griffin said Tuesday that collaboration with other countries, including Muslim nations, is welcome and should be encouraged — but that it would be a mistake to prioritize that over NASA’s “fundamental mission” of space exploration.

“If by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that’s wonderful,” Griffin said. “If you get it in the wrong order … it becomes an empty shell.”

Griffin added: “That is exactly what is in danger of happening.”

And the coup de’ etat?

He also said that while welcome, Muslim-nation cooperation is not vital for U.S. advancements in space exploration.

“There is no technology they have that we need,” Griffin said.

Once again, why is it NASA’s job to reach out to any nation?

I’d draw Muhammed in space alongside the Muppets.

Just A Reminder

Some people still claim that Liberals are the bigger and better givers, both of time and money. They’re wrong. Badly wrong.

People who said they were “very conservative” gave 4.5% of their income to charity, on average; “conservatives” gave 3.6%; “moderates” gave 3%; “liberals” gave 1.5%; and “very liberal” folks gave 1.2%.

And this cannot be explained by religious versus secular giving:

The 2008 data tell us that secular conservatives are now outperforming their secular liberal counterparts. Compare two people who attend religious services less than once per year (or never) and who are also identical in terms of income, education, sex, age and family status — but one is on the political right while the other is on the left. The secular liberal will give, on average, $1,100 less to charity per year than the secular conservative. The conservative charity edge cannot be explained away by gifts to churches.

Or by giving of time versus giving of money:

Q. Monetary giving doesn’t tell us much about total charity, does it? People who don’t give money probably tend to give in other ways instead, right?
A. Wrong. First of all, there is a bright line between people who give and people who don’t give. People who do give time and money tend to give a lot of it. According to the Center on Philanthropy, the percentage of givers donating less than $50 to charity in 2000 was the same as the percentage giving more than $5,000. Similarly, the same percentage of people who only volunteered once volunteered on 36 or more occasions in 2000.

Second, people who give away their time and money to established charities are far more likely than non-givers to act generously in informal ways as well. For example, one nationwide survey from 2002 tells us that monetary donors are nearly three times as likely as non-donors to give money informally to friends and strangers. People who give to charity at least once per year are twice as likely to donate blood as people who don’t give money. They are also significantly more likely to give food or money to a homeless person, or to give up their seat to someone on a bus.

And it is not offset by political giving either:

Perhaps you suspect that the vast political contributions given to the Obama campaign — $742 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, versus $367 million for the McCain campaign — were crowding out charitable giving by the left. But political donations, impressive as they were this year by historical standards, were still miniscule compared to the approximately $300 billion Americans gave charitably in 2008. Adding political and charitable gifts together would not change the overall giving patterns.

Conservatives continue giving more in economically difficult times, decreasing their giving by less than their liberal counterparts:

Economists measure the “income elasticity of giving” to predict how much people change their giving in response to a particular percentage change in their income. It turns out the response in 2008 was dramatically different for left and right. For instance, a 10% decrease in family income for a conservative was associated with a 10% decrease in giving. The same income decrease for a liberal family led to a 16% giving drop. In other words, if this relationship continues to hold, the recession will almost certainly exacerbate the giving differences between left and right.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: Modern liberal ideas are selfish ideas.

How much more so if He were given his rightful place, the throne of each of us.

In Jesus Manifesto, authors Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola cast about for a way to impress upon Christians the necessity of being more than Christ-people. We ought to be Christ.

Not that we have any part in His redemptive work or in His place in the God-head, but that rather than seeking to follow Him, or model Him, or be like Him, we ought to BE Him.

For me, I found this a useful understanding of my role as a Christian. It’s difficult always playing catch-up with Christ. When we’re following, we’re always behind. But when out identity is in Christ and He is in us, there is a much closer association than if we are simply being like Him.

Among other problems, this further pushes our own self down, humbling our position in our own body, and this is a difficult and unnatural thing for people who, like me, are quite content in our nearly-Christ-like Christianity.

At times it seemed the authors resort to platitudes and Christian-isms, bumper-sticker theology. However, it became clear as the book goes on that the memorability of the phrases was clearly chosen to make this potentially unpalatable ideal more memorable and less easily dismissed out of hand.

I highly recommend this  book for anyone seeking to have a clearer picture of what is expected of us as Christians.

As I’ve been neglecting I, Pandora of late, I hope you enjoy this passage as much as I do.

The setup: Iluvatar, God, has created the Ainur (angels) and taught them music. Iluvatar has gathered them all to reveal a new and mighty song for them to accompany and build upon. Tension builds as Melko the devious weaves his own counter melodies, not in harmony with Iluvatar’s greater themes but for his own glory. The following is from the Book of Lost Tales, volume 1. It is the earliest of the forms of this great tale which may also be found in more well-read form in the Silmarillion.

Then said Iluvatar: “Mighty are the Ainur, and glorious, and among them is Melko the most powerful in knowledge; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Iluvatar, those things that ye have sung and played, lo! I have caused to be – not in the musics that ye make in the heavenly regions, as a joy to me and a play unto yourselves, alone, but rather to have shape and reality even as have ye Ainur, whom I have made to share in the reality of Iluvatar myself. Maybe I shall love these things that come of my song even as I love the Ainur who are of my thought, and maybe more. Thou Melko shalt see that no theme can be played save it come in the end of Iluvatar’s self, nor can any alter the music in Iluvatar’s despite. He that attempts this finds himself in the end but aiding me in devising a thing of still greater grandeur and more complex wonder: – for lo! through Melko have terror as fire, and sorrow like dark waters, wrath like thunder, and evil as far from my light as the depths of the uttermost dark places, come into the design that I laid before you. Through him has pain and misery been made in the clash of overwhelming musics; and with confusion of sound have cruelty, and ravening, and darkness, loathly mire and all putrescence of thought or thing, foul mists and violent flame, cold without mercy, been born, and death without hope. Yet is this through him and not by him; and he shall see, and ye all likewise, and even shall those beings, who must now dwell among his evil and endure through Melko misery and sorrow, terror and wickedness, declare in the end that it redoundeth only to my greater glory, and doth but make the theme more worth the hearing, Life more worth the living, and the World so much more the wonderful and marvellous, that of all the deeds of Iluvatar it shall be called his mightiest and his loveliest.”

Mighty is the terror to the terrible that his strutting and strong words may come to naught and vanity. Mightier still is the terror to the terrible that all their vanity may be turned against them, working from the greater glory of one greater than them. The despots and tyrants of this world fear their life being meaningless, and the fear even more that their work will have been for another.

And yet that is the way it is. And of all the tyrants, Satan, the most vicious and terrible and vain and haughty and the one who will most assuredly come to naught and that without remedy. And all his vicious and terrible and vain and haughty works will come only to the greater glory of the one true God to whom is all glory and all honor, and all worship forever.

Don’t you just love Tolkien?

Is America a Christian Nation?

Among those brothers and sisters who claim the name of Christ as their redeemer and Lord there are as many social ideas and political persuasions as there are sequins on a glam rockers vest. Or more.

Anybody who thinks all professed Christians believe a certain way about nearly any subject, even many subjects central to the faith, is misinformed or worse. They may be correct in believe that professing Christians ought to believe certain ways, but they are sadly mistaken if they think they actually do.

Especially in recent years, as traditionally more professedly secular ideologies have come to recognize the power and persuasion of faith-based arguments, no one political party or social movement or cultural idea can claim to be leading most Christians in it’s way.

However, there are many social ideas and political ideologies that Christians ought to agree on, and at least basically agree on their importance in the grand scheme of ideas.

First, we must agree that all aspects of life are related. That words mean things, that ideas have consequences, that actions are the outward manifestations of inward ideas, though they can be easily controlled and manipulated to give a wrong impression, positive or negative. We must agree that out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks. We must agree that what one does in private is the truer measure of who they are than what they claim in public. We must accept that dishonesty in one part of a life will mean that person cannot be trusted in other ways either. This doesn’t mean we only accept perfection. It means, more than anything else, that we only trust God for those things that are rightfully His to do.

Second we must agree that there are standards of right and wrong, and they are not situationally or culturally defined. When Jesus said He was the only way to the Father, He wasn’t leaving options open. If you don’t believe Jesus is the only way, you’re very welcome to call yourself anything you please, except a Christian. We use labels to mean things and allow useful and necessary classification in order to function as a normal, healthy society. Co-opting a label that has meant one thing for centuries to mean something completely different is to no ones benefit except the deceiver. And referencing to point 1, such deception in more indicative of your own heart issues than any intolerance true Christians may or may not hold.

The same goes for other truths that are defined in human nature and through the Word of God. Killing of innocents is always unjust and immoral. It doesn’t matter if you’re all in a life raft and starving and the weak ones wouldn’t survive anyways. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to live with the consequences of your actions. It doesn’t even matter if the choice was taken from you and forced upon you by evil people doing evil actions. Taking a life never expunges the memories or heals the wounds. It only adds to the pain and grief and lays actual and real and deserved blame on yourself. Abortion is murder. There is no argument that can change that plain and simple and very obvious fact. And to subscribe to and support any ideology that holds otherwise is to accept a huge burden of responsibility for the ugly truth that is our societies acceptance of this hideous and unconscionable act.

Third, we must agree that in order for God to justly judge the actions and intentions of each and every person, each and every person must be allowed the maximum use of their own abilities to do with as they please. Acting according to conviction or spite, or duplicity or compassion, or cynicism or malice or justice or pleasure, it is each and every one of our prerogative what we shall do with our own resources, got by our own hand, multiplied by our own skill, maximized by our own discipline. If the government or any other group takes from the able to distribute to the needy, they are removing that able person’s ability to show their own character and quality to God and man. And they are, more often than not, removing a powerful motivator for the needy to raise themselves up through honest and accountable charity and use of those resources they do have. A system of mutual dependency removes the onus of responsibility both from those who have and those who need.

I subscribe to conservative social and political beliefs not because I want America to return to its roots as a Christian nation. I don’t hold to my standards and ideas because I hope to create a wondrous theocracy here in the United States of America. Useful theocracies perished with the coming of Christ. At that point the theocracy moved to the heart of each and every man and woman and child. The responsibility is no longer with the nation but with the individual how they will go and who they will serve. The nation bears responsibility for maintaining an atmosphere most conducive to individual expression of their own faith, preventing such beliefs from infringing on others beliefs, and punishing where such infringment occurs. The individual bears the responsibility for using what freedom they have to serve whom they will in what manner they deem best.

The philosophies and ideas our Founding Fathers used to build such a nation were predominantly those derived from the Christian worldview. Because God does not want automatons but people who have freely and willingly chosen Him, He give to us complete choice and builds a framework, a worldview that is most conducive to such freedom while accounting for the human predilection for sin. It is the Christian government that is most conducive to all religions coexisting as peaceably as they may.

I am not Christian because I am conservative. No, political ideas can only at best be results of deeper things. I am a conservative because I am Christian. To be Christian is a deeper thing.

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.

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.

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.

The Gospel According To Lost

The Gospel According To Lost is not an explanation on how to use the stories and characters and ideas of the hit TV series Lost to witness to people. It’s so much more than that.

It’s a relatively short read for the size of the book. Clearly written considering the depth of the subjects it deals with. And it makes me want to finish the series.

Readers of this blog and friends know that I’m deeply concerned about the deeper things in life. Actions and externalities interest me, but intent, thought, background, worldview and philosophy hold my attention far longer.

The Gospel According To Lost is a book exploring the deeper things of that TV series from an explicitly Christian perspective.

From Hurley to Locke to Ekko and everyone between and beyond, The Gospel According To Lost explores the characters beyond their surface. Jack’s super-hero complex. Sayed’s assurance that he is beyond redemption. Kate’s inability to get beyond her terrible past.

And then it shows how the growth in each character embodies a growth we can empathize and sympathize with. We’ve either been there ourselves or we can see it as normal to the human condition. And it all revolves around a redemptive process. Some experience redemptive change, some cannot make that leap and so are left grasping in futility.

I recommend this book for anyone who loves the TV series Lost, for anyone who enjoys great literature for it’s character depth and wants an exploration of characterization in a newer medium, and for anyone seeking to understand an icon of our popular culture which has with such strength and depth provided this intriguing and complex look into each of our hearts and lives.

Or if you just want to see how the grand scope of the Bible can be effectively applied to our modern lives in a constructive and informative way, The Gospel According To Lost is for you.

Scott Brown casting his vote

Republican candidate Scott Brown is now Senator-elect Scott Brown, filling the vacancy left when Senator Edward Kennedy shuffled off his mortal coil.

Winning with 52% of the vote so far (as of 9:30 CST), Brown will deny Senate Democrats they’re 60th vote for health care. Now if we can shore up the ranks by shaming Ben Nelson (D – Nebraska) into coming back to his real principles.

While health care has passed the Senate already, the bill in the House must be reconciled with the bill passed by the Senate in conference. The big vote sold to Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson was only to settle the Senate’s version. House Democrats don’t like the Senate bill as it stands, but because of the loss of the Massachusetts seat, their only chance of passing any health care socialization is to accept the Senate bill as it stands. Any edits they make would require the Senate to reexamine the bill and vote on it again.

So the Tea Party movement and the backlash to President Obama’s, Harry Reid’s, and Nancy Pelosi’s ugly ideology have won this battle. The problem is, there is still a war to be fought.

We have won this battle mainly due to a strong upheaval in the populace continuing from the waves of the Tea Parties. But if there’s one thing I know about people who live conservatism, it’s that they just want to get back to their homes and families and work and lives.

Will this victory last? Will we dance back to our houses, clapping each other on the shoulder and then go to bed and sleep the sleep of a clean conscience and then awake and forget what has transpired?

I hope not.

What needs to happen now is education.

We need to talk in our workplaces, in our social clubs. Get in discussions at church and in restaurants. During the half-time shows and at the bar.

We need to cash in on those myriad relationships which make up our broader lives, using the fact that we have credence with our friends based on our friendship to cause them to think. Even a little thought, properly motivated and directed, can go a long way towards straightening out the skewed thinking of so many.

We need to strike at the cult of celebrity which surrounds our current President and demand substance and truth in candidates along with their rhetorical skills.

It’s not that we need to talk politics, we need to talk ideology. Ideology is much easier to talk about because it applies to so much more of life. Politics is just one small corner of the extent of our lives. Politics wants to control more of life, but it belongs in the corner.

Ideology is the big “Why?” of our life. Our worldview informs our entire perception of life, and as such, you can talk about it from any perspective.

How do you respond to a medical emergency? Do you call the government or do you drive to the hospital?

If you see a promotion opportunity at work, do you try to make yourself the better candidate?

Is the government the best source for your pursuit of happiness?

Would you rather the professor gave some of your high grades to the slob in the back row of class so he can pass too?

And most important: Is Jesus a liar, a lunatic, or our Lord?

After all, if our friends haven’t got the bedrock of their life philosophy connected and rooted in the most accurate explanation for the entirety of life, nothing they believe will really match reality. And that’s what conservatism is, the most political philosophy that most accurately corresponds to the true nature of humanity and the world.

So congratulations America, you’ve forestalled oblivion yet again. But what happens tomorrow? And the next day?

Do you forget and go on with life, accepting the tranquil bonds of servitude until you awake yet again and find you’re no longer allowed to amass political power to right the ship again?

Or do you start making changes on all fronts, attacking the lies of our world at every turn. Each time maneuvering, like a chess master always circling the opponents king, to touch the heart of the matter.

We’ve been harmless as doves long enough, now let’s become shrewd as serpents.

The Bible tells us that when we accept Jesus into our lives we must be willing to count the cost.

You have to watch the whole video to get the payoff.

Forgiveness, it’s what Christ offers that no one else can and does.