iPandora

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.

Grandfather's Love

I’ll be away from computers most of the rest of this week.

My grandfather died last Saturday. He will be missed.

A veteran of the Korean War, father to a large family, including my mother, and kindly grandfather who made many memories with his many grandchildren.

He was a devout Catholic.

God has made it possible for me to drive down to San Antonio Texas to attend his funeral and see my extended family again. Though it will only be me, and not my wife, Grace, or our child, William.

So I’ll not be around here to post, likely.

Though I’d appreciate your prayers of safety for myself on the road, and for my wife and child as they stay up here in Chicago.

Update: My grandpa was a veteran of WWII, not the Korean war as noted.

Looking through the eastern window

I looked outside my window west, across the broad horizon.
My dreams and hopes from years gone by glowed golden in the light.
The setting sun of all my past fell surely to the lip of the hills, shedding the last light of the days of my youth on the things I valued then.

But looking out the other sill towards the glowing East, the light of breaking day, already growing steadily stronger as in repose I lay.
This newly born light, of the sun of new hopes and new dreams, rises strongly upward, bringing to my watering eyes in dazzling relief new dreams and new joys before unknown.
Toward this new light I rise to my feet, walking with strong step and sure, forgetting what was behind and pressing on I keep my aim true.
I am not without questions, and foreboding too, but when the dream and goal is sure as the wind, I know what I am to do.
To take hold of the wind and grip it tight as into it’s teeth I fly, I ride this beast, this roaring beast and follow it where it will.

I’ve been playing around with technical stuff on the site lately.

IntenseDebate was good as far as comment management goes, but there were some comments that seemed to slip through the cracks, and the RSS feed started showing REALLY old comments.

A few people had mentioned Disqus, so I switched yesterday.

It has been a pain. Poorly done, a lot of tedious cut and paste and copy and edit stuff I didn’t have to do in IntenseDebate, And their help is hard to find. so I’ll be switching back shortly.

And then Windows Live Writer.

I’m writing this post on Windows Live Writer.

First impressions: it’s ambitious. Very ambitions.

A familiar but simplified interface that allows easy posting to a blog of multiple forms of content.

And they even try making the edit window look like your blog live, which is a cool feature. Except it didn’t work.

I need to piece through my blog theme code to see why, but the white background which takes a little longer than the rest of the page to load only shows up as a white bar across the top of the Writer window, and I’m stuck writing all this content on a dark grey background.

Not an optimal situation, to be sure.

But, if I had a white background or otherwise more compatible theme, it would be a pretty cool setup.

Now to see how well it posts this to the actual site…

UPDATE: It worked pretty well. I must say. Impressive Microsoft. Now if only you could make a web browser that’s actually worthwhile…

UPDATE: Sorry Ben, Arne, and KOR, your comments were lost in the inability of Disqus to manage an export and a 500 error or two caused by my hosts limitations (hear that 1and1?). Feel free to add the comments again…

UPDATE: Found your comments. Everything should be up to date, and I found the latest comment widget and it works better than the RSS.

Monty captured the media’s paltry attempts at balance just right:

And Non Sequitur captured the spirit of the media coverage of Obama’s transition team:

Meanwhile, in the world that still travails under the weight of sin, current United States President George Bush’s policies dealing with AIDS are being praised as some of the most successful while remaining deferential to local support structures in affected locations. By working with churches and existing on-site humanitarian organizations the Bush Administration’s policies have sidestepped the bureaucratic bungling which destroyed the efficiency of other relief attempted while allowing the AIDS vaccines and treatments to reach the affected people much more quickly and cheaply.

So what does Obama plan to do? Change them of course. After all, we can’t expect those evolved animals to refrain from sex, can we?

After all, even some Americans are unable to even solve the moral equation containing Walmart deals and a horrific death.

Scanning the headlines on Google News this morning I was struck with how anxious the media are to cover the minutiae of every act of Obama as though he is their President already and worthy of the highest words of praise.

Instead of the sufficient and clear “Obama Selects Security Team”, the Washington Post writes this headline full of pathos and shining leadership “Obama Names Team To Face A Complex Security Picture“.

Bush was the bozo clown, the dimwit, the accidental accident.

Obama names his teams to face complex security pictures, he is brilliant and compelling.

Meanwhile, God is apparently Pro-Choice.

Meh.

Perhaps it’s the heat, as summer has finally decided to arrive in Chicagoland.

Perhaps it’s the plans, as I will be getting married in a few weeks.

Perhaps it’s the shows, as I’ve found Chef Gordon Ramsey to be as astute a judge of character as he is of food and business acumen.

Perhaps I’m just being lazy.

Meh.

As y’all have no doubt noticed, there has been a bit of spam making it through iPandora’s Akismet filters this last week.

I’ve been deleting them as I see them, but they keep coming. A few more each day.

What do y’all use to block spam on your blogs?

Just a question.

Romans 1:18-32 (ESV):

(18) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (19) For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. (20) For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (21) For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (22) Claiming to be wise, they became fools, (23) and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

(24) Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to (25) because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

(26) For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; (27) and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

(28) And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to what ought not to be done. (29) They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, (30) slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, (31) foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (32) Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

This passage is contains the litany of sin from it’s roots, to it’s inception, to it’s fruition. Of particular importance is the fact that this litany is particularly applicable to a lifestyle of sin.

The process of temptation described in James 1:14-15 (ESV) is more universal in it’s application:

(14) But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. (15) Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

James’ process applies to all in that even we as Christians are prone to temptation, lustful desires, sin, and spiritual death or dormancy.

Paul’s process and description is more applicable to the sin of lifestyle. From a consistent denial of God and His attributes, God will cast them down into degrading passions. If they will not exalt Him, He will deny them even ‘human’ decency.

But in our sinful state, the heart of man seeks approval, approbation, and acceptance. As our sins have crawled out of the closet and been accepted by others, they have gained courage and through courage, further acceptance. Eventually, and this is the state of our nation today, sin and acceptance reach critical mass and breaks out into the mainstream, demanding recognition as something other than what it is.

But how do we deal with this? The lines have been drawn, the gauntlet thrown down, our children are being indoctrinated in school and our cities are being cajoled into hosting sex-fests in their streets in the form of “gay pride parades”.

We’ve confronted them, attacked their ideology, beaten back their growth at times, but bit by bit they seem to be winning as people stop caring and say to themselves: “what’s so wrong about it, they aren’t hurting anybody”.

A key fact in any war is that those fighting FOR something have a distinct advantage over those fighting AGAINST something. A positive goal inspires confidence and wins allies, while a negative goal works against the human spirit bringing discouragement and desperation.

So far in our culture war, we’ve been fighting against the encroaching forces of multi-culturalism, sexual deviancy, and other forms of social decay. At times we remind ourselves that we’re fighting for our families and children and nation, but overall, it is a war of defense.

We have lost the high-ground though. The momentum is with the enemy. We are being backed into walls in nearly all fronts of this war. This is a good thing.

Yes, this is a good thing.

We now have something to fight for.

But what are we fighting for, and how do we wage that battle most effectively.

In the last year of blogging here at I, Pandora, I’ve come to realize the futility of forcing political change. Bringing about a political change may bring temporary gains, but we have to compromise. We force ourselves to accept less-than-optimal options in our leaders.

Political change is still important, very important. Those who stand in the gap for us are heroes who ought to be protected, and prayed over, and supported. But unless the hearts change, the same people will keep coming back with the same goals: to wipe out the influence and effectiveness of God’s word in the world.

Don’t be misguided, the people who champion the wrong ideas’ personal goals may be the forced societal acceptance of some deviance. But they are only the faces, they are not the enemy. They need true love, God’s love, as much or more so than any other.

No, the enemy is Satan. The deceiver. And it is in his impending and sure doom that we have our strength.

His goal is not acceptance of homosexuality, it is destruction of individuals in any way possible.

Our counter is the reaching of individuals in any way possible. And just as when Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and it brought healing to those who saw it, and as Jesus, when He was lifted up on the cross, drew all men to Himself. Lifting God’s standard once again will draw men and women to Him.

The root cause, according to Paul, of the sin lifestyle is a refusal to recognize God, His attributes, and His truth. So we need to place God, His attributes, and His truth before them in an unimpeachable, undeniable, and undeniable way.

This is not done necessarily with posters and signs, slogans and shouts. But with lives lived wholly for Him.

The mission field is not just in Zimbabwe or Zambia, China or Croatia, or India. It may be in Indianapolis, or Sacramento, or Dallas, or Boston. For you it is wherever you are, whenever you are there. And if you’ve not started yet, it starts right now.

Your mission: to live your life wholly for God.

This does not mean perfection or even the illusion of perfection. God’s law and God’s love balance each other and provide guidance for us through our struggles and our triumphs.

The family is under assault, so shore up the breeches. Starting with as solid a foundation as can be found, Christ’s love, build your family with hard work and constant prayer. Grow it as large as God will give, and share and spread.

It is humorous, but conservative, loving, Christianity enjoys a distinct advantage over all alternate and deviant lifestyles even if only through the “Rabbit Method”: where we out-grow the deviant by means of procreation. (Soberingly, this is exactly how Muslims are taking over much of the world, by having large families).

Large families are not required, and I know many good people who choose a single life of service, or if they cannot have children, use their additional freedom to free energy to wage mighty war against the enemy.

The important thing is not that we have large families, but that we follow God’s call for our lives.

In our stable and strong, God-fearing, and God-glorifying relationships, we have something the rest of the world, including every religion and worldview and mythos, envies: peace.

Not a hypnotized, brainless, mind-numbing peace. But an despite-the-world-falling-around-us peace which comes from having the Master and Maker of all creation caring for us and promising that He’ll work everything together for our good.

That peaceful life, lived on ever lane and at each corner, in the car and on the roads. Lived in public and in private, at the grocery store and the lumber mill and the cannery. And yes, even on the battlefields around the world. Will draw all people.

So don’t beat your plowshares into swords or your rakes into Uzis. Using your plowshares and rakes to God’s glory will bring a far greater, far more lasting, and far more effective harvest.

American evangelicals are the wests best hope (American Thinker).