Anthrocide

I have taken the plunge and signed-up on Facebook. I read somewhere that the number of people had reached over 150 million although I don’t know how factual that number is. Based on the number of “Friends” I have accumulated in just over a week I could see how that is true, though. I’m up to 38 but I heard of one teenager who accumulated over 150 in one day!

Facebook can be a bit of a challenge, though. I’m a person who really wants to understand something thoroughly before I use it. I used to drive my sons crazy when they’d want me to play a video game with them. I’d start asking all kinds of “why” questions about what the point of the game was, why I would want to have Mario jump up and touch a coin, what each button was supposed to do and when I’d want to use it, etc., etc. Their response was always, “You don’t have to know all that, you just start playing it!’ Sorry, boys, not my style. I’m finding that there is a lot of stuff in Facebook but knowing how to get to it can be difficult. There are also features that you can only find if you click enough places from enough pages and such. I don’t see quite enough logic to why one thing is accessible from my Home page but something else I get to from Profile. Still, the basics are kinda fun and it’s amazing how closely it tends to suggest that idea about six degrees of separation between any two people on earth might be to the truth.

That said, I can see that Facebook could pull one in to spending a lot of time on it. I, on the other hand, am more of a once-a-day-if-that user at present. As internet accessibility via cell phone becomes more and more common, one of these days I may well be on it throughout the day if I ever switch out my little freebie flip-phone. Anyway, be seein’ you on FB…

Fourth of July weekend Rebecca and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary (actually July 7th). While, for our 25th we went on a cruise, as my son Scott put it, we have become totally Mid-Westernized: we went to Arkansas.

Eureka Springs, Arkansas to be exact. For the uninitiated it is home to The Great Passion Play which is a depiction of the final days of the life of Christ.

It is performed in an amphitheater whose “stage” covers close to two acres, part of which is on a hillside opposite the audience. There are several sections of the stage area and speakers have the dialog emanate from the area where the action is focused. Across the hillside is the tomb of Lazarus, Gethsemane, Golgotha, the mount of ascension, and the garden tomb. At the bottom of the hill—the main stage—there is a wide street running in front of the Praetorium, the Temple, the upper room, and various other building facades. This outdoor setting enables realism that an indoor stage could not pull off. For example, in a couple of time-of-Christ street scenes two boys run a flock of over a dozen sheep across the stage. Another time a Roman official rode in on a chariot. Very cool.

But more about the play later. The grounds on which the play is performed have several other items of interest. First, they provide a “holy land tour.” They have set up various venues showing what life would have been like in both Old and New Testament times including a full-size replica of the Tabernacle and various scenes from the life of Jesus. I sort of half expected it to be rather cheesy, but for the most part it was both realistic and informative. They had people in costume portraying various Bible characters who described the various points of interest. One oddity was that the very nice woman portraying Mary Magdalene had a pronounced Arkansas drawl, rendering “the time of the Passover” as “the tahm of the Pace-over.” Definitely worth seeing. Next, there is a “Bible Museum” for which I again had low expectations. To my surprise there were some incredible treasures in there: A genuine Gutenberg Bible (not the very first one, but one from his actual press), a copy of a King James Bible from the first printing of 150, copies of original Tyndale and Wycliffe Bibles, a fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and on and on. I’m thinking, “In Arkansas?” I finally asked how historic documents worth hundreds of thousands of dollars ended up there. The tour guide said the people who established the Passion Play and all the rest were well-off, a lot of the books came from a specific donor, and a lot of the money came from none other than Henry Ford. We also toured their “Sacred Arts Center” on the grounds, a gallery of mostly contemporary Christian paintings and sculpture, many of which were quite fascinating.

When it came time for The Great Passion Play itself, 8:30 p.m., the sky was threatening. An hour into the play lightning began flashing all around. We were on metal baseball-stadium-style seats; not the best for a lightening storm. We had rain ponchos (still around from our last trip to NYR) but they wouldn’t be much use against lightning. At 10 p.m. the play had progressed to the crucifixion scene and, amid the lightning and thunder, it began to rain. Becki and I had spotted an apparatus with wires that looked like what they would use to do the ascension but could not imagine any actor being foolish enough to use it during such a storm. As “Jesus” spoke his final words, “It is finished,” from the cross, the downpour came in buckets. They had special lighting and sound effects to mark the moment of Jesus’ death but they were totally upstaged by the real thing happening then and there. At that moment the lights all came on and an announcer said the performance had been canceled and to please exit. Even covered by the ponchos we got soaked, literally wading to the car. We later got rain-checks for our tickets good for any time in the next two years. We are told the resurrection and ascension scenes we missed are quite spectacular so we definitely plan to go back, maybe this fall.

Our hotel room was very large and quite nice including a heart-shaped Jacuzzi tub. It had an attached German-Czech restaurant with excellent sauerbraten. The next day we poked around in some antique stores and wandered through the “historic downtown” which is where all the hippies from the 70’s ended-up. There are row upon row of little eclectic shops many of which sold tie-dyed items and incense. There were also a ton of bikers in town and many hotel marquees claimed “bikers welcome”; one even said “bikers only.” I wore my Mizzou cap the entire time, daring anyone to comment and ready with my comeback: “I have only two words for you… Cotton - Bowl.” The only person who took the bait was a woman in the Sacred Arts Center who, it turns out, was a closet Nebraska fan. No matter, I rubbed her nose in Mizzou’s shellacking of Big Red too! (Graciously, of course.) However, there were a couple of guys around town wearing Oklahoma Sooner caps whom I, ahem, sort of avoided.

On the way home we stopped at the historic home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie series books. I found it odd that throughout the homes, the museum, and the tour itself not one mention was made that the books had been made into a long-running TV series. Not a single picture of Melissa Gilbert, Michael Landon, nothing. The only reference at all was a DVD or two of some episodes in the souvenir store.

Not Cozumel or Jamaica perhaps but we enjoyed our little anniversary trip immensely. But then, with such a marvelous wife, how could I not?

As we approach Independence Day I would like to address the growing trend of some to try to divorce our nation and its system of government from its Christian roots and make it more and more atheistic.

It is as simple as this: The fundamental concept upon which the United States is founded is stated clearly in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Notice: “…created equal and endowed by their Creator…” This is not just poetic language. The cornerstone of our nation and its system of government is that we are all equal because God says we are equal.

Yet, aside from Christianity, in what sense is that true? I am not “equal” to anyone reading this. There is a 50% chance I am not the same gender as you. I am probably not the same age as you. I am not the same size, the same looks, the same IQ, the same skills, the same experience, the same health, the same value to society, the same attitudes, accomplishments, aspirations, relationships, background, heritage, likes, dislikes, and on and on. I am not equal to anyone else reading this. Or anyone else in this nation for that matter, and neither are you! So in what sense are we equal?

Apart from the teachings of Jesus Christ in NO sense are we equal! Let’s get real here. From an atheistic perspective, the severely handicapped person who is utterly dependent on others for survival is of far less worth than a famous surgeon who saves the lives of countless people. How then can they be said to be equal?

Within Christianity the answer is simple: Our Creator endows every human being with infinite intrinsic value. That is, “God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son…” It is God Who has established that the severely handicapped person is exactly equal in value to the famous surgeon.

But to the atheist the claim that we’re all equal is clearly and demonstrably false. So the atheists are basically saying, “Well, let’s all just pretend we are equal.”

Are you kidding me? The basis of our country and our whole concept of government is “let’s pretend”????

If the forces that would eradicate the God of the New Testament from our nation’s roots succeed, like the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, someday someone will simply say, “We’re not all equal. Who says we are?” And in the silence that follows, our nation will collapse like a house of cards.

But do not misunderstand. It is not religion in general that establishes our equality but only Christianity. Nearly every other religion on earth establishes the worthiness of its adherents based on their achievement whether spiritual, physical, or relational. This ranking of people is a basic tenet of Hinduism. Other religions such as Islam and even Judaism consider those outside their ranks as unworthy (or even as undesirables whose elimination is laudable). Genuine New Testament Christianity alone acknowledges the infinite worth and equality of every individual. To be sure, those who commit their lives to Christ have an eternal advantage over those who do not, but even the unbeliever is equally loved until and unless, to the end, they are determined not to spend eternity with the Savior Who died for them.

We are equal, because we are equally loved. Because, “…God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

The use of clichés in writing is considered a poor practice, but in everyday speech they are, of course, common—that being what makes them clichés. Few people critique casual conversation (mercifully) so their use in that venue is largely ignored. But some clichés have gotten tangled. What these fractured clichés actually say becomes a nonsensical version of a phrase that at one time was somewhat intelligible.

A common one that has mysteriously engendered some debate is “I couldn’t care less” which has been twisted by many people into “I could care less.” A friend of mine was notorious for this one. The obvious meaning of the original phrase was that the speaker’s level of concern about the matter under discussion was at absolute zero, hence there was no possible way that he or she could have any lesser amount of concern. That is, the speaker cared nothing about the matter or, “could not [possibly] care [any] less.” To leave out the negative makes the statement the opposite. To say “I could care less” communicates at least some degree of concern, similar to saying “I’ve tasted worse” regarding a food item—it suggests more positive than negative. I’ve actually heard people argue over which is the correct version but the answer is obvious.

Another twisted cliché is used when a person is said to have done something just for the sake of chalking up another victory, most often as a rather derisive statement. The phrase is, “He [she] just wanted another notch on his [her] belt.” This usage is nonsensical. The actual phrase intended here is “…notch on his gun.” Anyone who watched movies in the ’40s or movies/TV in the ’50s or ’60s saw plenty of westerns. A common element of westerns was the gunslinger or bad guy who was proud of the number of opponents he had slain in gun duels. For each kill he would callously file a mark somewhere on his pistol. Thus each conquest merited “another notch on his gun.” Since these villains seemingly killed just to prove they could, the saying matched its general usage. Somewhere along the line, however, the result of dieting wherein sufficient weight loss could require one to need a new notch (or hole) farther up his or her belt got intermingled with the saying. Hence, people who score another victory are incorrectly said to have put another notch on their belts, when in fact there is no connection whatsoever between being victorious and belt-tightening.

One other case of mixing two clichés into nonsense is when one says something to the effect of, “When I heard that, a light went off in my head,” the intended meaning being that something dawned on the person. This is an unfortunate mix of “a light came on (or dawned)” and “an alarm went off in my head.” Light as a representation of sudden realization or “enlightenment” undoubtedly goes back to ancient times. For decades cartoons and comic art have used a light bulb glowing over the head of someone as representative of an epiphany or an idea. But in every case it is the light coming ON that indicates someone “getting it.” In an entirely different vein, something—especially something seemingly inconsequential—that suddenly puts one on the alert for trouble is said to have caused “alarm bells [or an alarm] to go off in one’s head.” Although perhaps a bit ironic, it is perfectly normal to refer to the sounding of a siren or an alarm bell as “going off” when it might be more proper to say it came on. Nevertheless referring to a sounding alarm that way is commonly understood and accepted usage. A lamp or bulb going from unlit to lit, however, is NEVER said to have gone “off.” A light that goes “off” is always one that was lit and has gone dark. Thus one who says he or she encountered something that made a “light go off” in his or her head should properly be understood to have suddenly gone stupid in that respect.

Hopefully none of this will be interpreted as me being pretentious. It’s just that I read one of these in a newspaper quote today and, well, a little light went off in my head and I just had to put another notch in my belt even though probably most of you could care less.

You should give a listen to the song “You Gave” on this music site. It’s the fourth song down and my son Scott was not only the composer but truly a one-man band. I was listening my way down the songs on the site and enjoying them while reading something else when, about halfway through “You Gave” I stopped and listened more closely. When it finished I went back and re-listened to the whole song again and have many times since. The simple but profound lyrics along with the hauntingly beautiful vocal and instrumental arrangement still grab me even after repeated playings. It’s 5+ minutes long but stay with it to the end. I think you’ll really like it.

Click the Books link in the upper right section of this page. There you will find 5 full-length novels, 2 of which were not previously available, and 4 of which you can download for free! They download as PDF’s which almost all computers can open. When you open one, you can then save it on your computer and read it at your leisure or even print it out if you’ve got plenty of paper.

I’m actually quite pleased with each and every one. I especially like the book-and-sequel combination Hidden in a Field and The Way of Escape. Take a look at the synopses and excerpts you can see by clicking the books’ titles. If one sounds even mildly interesting, go ahead and download it and give it a try. It costs you nothing and if I haven’t hooked you by the second chapter, you can always delete your downloaded copy.

There is nothing more frustrating than doing what I love, writing, and not being able to convince people to even try reading it. Like the proverbial tree falling alone in the forest, a book unread is meaningless. A more apt comparison is a singer alone on an island with no one to hear. I really don’t mind so much if someone says, “Meh, tried it but not my cup of tea.” It’s when people won’t even give one a try that drives me nuts.

Although they are all fiction, each one has something to say. So how ’bout it? Take the plunge, help out a fledgling author and, who knows? You might be entertained and perhaps given some food for thought! Thanks and God Bless!

I shall be brief. To handle software development projects for the State of Missouri where I work, one must have completed a Missouri certification course in project management. A few years ago I went through the course and am Missouri-certified. During and since that training many have alluded to the more prestigious–and more difficult to attain–international credential from the Project Management Institute. The certification is as a Project Management Professional or PMP. I have shrugged at the PMP since I had achieved enough to do my job and saw no need to go through the grueling process required to get the more noteworthy credential. Then, a few months ago, a co-worker told my boss that there was a special lower-cost opportunity to take a “boot camp” preparatory course designed to help one pass the PMP exam, all paid-for by the State. So my boss enthusiastically signed-up and strongly urged me to do so. When I balked he insisted that this was something I really, really needed to do. Since he was the boss and it was free, I caved-in and signed-up. Not long after, my boss resigned!

I went ahead and took the course (and so did he). But naturally, there’s no value in taking an Exam Prep course and investing 4 full days of my life in it and not taking the exam. So, I also arranged to take it Saturday, June 23. The course instructor was a PhD meaning he had taken plenty of tests in his life and he said this was the toughest he’d ever taken. As it turned out, what the course taught was only directly applicable to about a third of the 200 questions on the exam. The rest was part deduction and part guesswork.

Bottom line: I did not ace the test, but I did pass it. So now I am a credentialed Project Management Professional. That means that, if I want, I can put the letters PMP after my name. However, that looks too much like a word for a very different occupation so I won’t be doing that.

If you’re one of those people who cannot resist forwarding those 12th-generation forwarded emails because of the amazing things they reveal that you never knew, here are my

TEN TIPS FOR PEOPLE WHO FORWARD EMAILS WITH SHOCKING NEWS, SAD TALES, PETITIONS, OR MEDICAL CLAIMS FROM SOME AUTHORITATIVE-SOUNDING PERSON:

1 - Assume it is a lie. This assumption will be correct 99.999999% of the time.

2 - Realize that the truthfulness of the email has nothing to do with the trustworthiness of the person who sent it to you. You may receive it from your most trusted friend, but the question is not your friend’s character, it is the character of the person who ORIGINATED the email. Since virtually all of them are lies, hoaxes, and misrepresentations these originators are lying con-artists. I, personally, have no use for people like that and refuse to be one of their patsies who spread their lies to others. Anyone who creates a phony email like “the American Cancer Society will donate money to help sick little Jimmy every time an email is forwarded” is nothing but a liar and a sleazeball. If he will lie and make a fool out of people over something like this he is probably a greasy, egotistical, child-abusing creep. Why in heaven’s name would I want to forward something created by a slimeball like that to others just because his idiot email tells me to?

3 - Assume it is a hoax. If you have a means to check whether it is true, do so before you forward it. If you cannot positively confirm it as true or if you do not have any way to confirm it, do not forward it. Of the thousands of these types of emails I’ve seen, I found one (yes, exactly one) that appears to be actually true via this technique. Apparently they really did find chariots from the time of Pharaoh at the bottom of the Red Sea. Anyway, if you do not have access to do verifications or don’t seem to have much success with them, ask someone who does before forwarding such emails.

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Since probably any readers of this will have already heard most of this story I will make it extremely brief. Our musical-drama, More Than Just a Man, was everything we were praying for. I did indeed have a coworker go on and on about the production. Several have asked for DVD’s of it. Becki’s coworker was moved to tears by the touching drama. The fellow who played Joseph of Arimathea in the production also works where I do. He later told me that a woman stopped him in a fastfood parking lot the Monday after the production and said, “It is Joseph, isn’t it?” These are the exact words Mary Magdalene says to J of A just before the play’s finale. The choir and drama directors talked about it on local radio and it got a huge picture feature in the paper. People were touched by Jesus’ love and power through the performance. God was praised by the performance. I grew closer to many, many members of our church through the rehearsals and performances. But I must say, rather selfishly, that best of all I grew so very much closer to my Lord through the rehearsals and performances. It has reawakened in me the realization of what an incredible privilege it is to belong to Christ; to have a vital relationship with the God of all creation, the God of unlimited power, the God of unlimited love. I look back amazed at how easily I allowed myself to neglect this marvelous treasure and get bogged-down in the world of the profane, the mundane, and the meaningless. How my heart aches for those who, by ignoring the free gift of glorious salvation that waits unopened, live every day in that same tired, hopeless, lifeless world. For to know Christ is to really live.