Anthrocide

Below is an essay written by my son Scott. Although it might sound like I’m just being a proud dad, I really think this is incredibly insightful and written from a unique perspective. Enjoy.

Real love is stupid. It’s illogical. It’s a bad investment. To love someone – really love them, like where you are putting their needs ahead of your own; self-sacrificial, unconditional love – seems like a terrible idea on the surface. Why? There’s just too much risk. If you love someone, you are intentionally exposing your heart to them, in full view of the fact that they now have the power to break it. Risk is an inherent part of love. So why would anyone do it?

The answer is simply that the reward – being loved back – is greater than the risk.

If you have a relationship where neither of you risk anything, how close can it really be? Conversely, the greatest intimacy comes from the abundance of vulnerability, because we are forced to be honest in our vulnerability. We let down our guards, take down our walls, open our arms, and bare our hearts, screaming through gritted teeth, “THIS IS WHO I AM!”

The possibility to be known is never more real!

But at the same time the possibility of being rejected is never more real. Now, all of our carefully crafted defenses are laying around our feet; our weakest spot is exposed, and the other person is allowed time to prepare whatever attack they might want to deploy. We risk so much when we love, when we become vulnerable.

And the worst part is that the person on the other side, the one we are offering to love, will sometimes choose to hurt us. Sometimes they won’t; sometimes they will respond in kind and let down their own guard, and it’s in those sacred moments that something from earth connects with heaven. Or perhaps more accurately, it is when the bit of heaven in us all is most clearly seen. It is the reward we are all seeking, the greatest joy to be found in this life. But that moment of exposure is the antechamber with two doors – one leading to heaven and the other to hell. To be accepted and for love to be returned is the truest happiness, but to offer love and be shown contempt instead is the truest sorrow and heartbreak, that which we all have learned to fear above all other feelings.

These truths are well-known by the poets, the musicians; the feeling of a broken heart has inspired countless songs and works of art. It is a feeling that is frustratingly common, shared amongst the human species.

Yet the one who knows heartbreak the best is One who isn’t human.

Think about this: God created humanity, and had the power and the authority to make them however He wanted. He could have made us with two heads, or made us centaurs, or mer-people, or slime monsters. It was all up to Him. But more to the point, He could have made us unable to choose. He didn’t have to give us free will, to choose to love Him or reject Him.

But He did.

Why would he have done that? That seems like an awfully dumb idea in retrospect. If it were me, it would have been awfully tempting to just prevent the pain.

But remember that real love carries risk inherently. And the most defining characteristic of the God of the Bible is love – you could also say that the most defining example of love is the God of the Bible. And He knew, from the very moment that the idea of humanity was formed in His infinite mind (just roll with me, don’t worry about the metaphysics of that statement), that He was going to love them – and that they were going to break His heart.

We have already discussed that one of the riskiest things a person can do is to choose to love another person, because there is every reason to believe that they will break your heart and few things are more painful than that. But imagine having a choice in the matter – not just the choice of whether to be vulnerable to someone, but actually being able to control their response and avoid having them reject you. This was an available option to God! But incredibly, unfathomably, He chose to take the risk of allowing us to choose; He gave us freedom, all the while, in His infinite knowledge, knowing without doubt that we would to a person fail to reciprocate this love, and every single one of us would break His heart.

Why? What could have motivated Him to choose this way?

Isn’t it obvious? It’s because He loved us that He let us choose to reject Him.

If I don’t love someone, I won’t make myself vulnerable. I won’t give them the power to break my heart. I’ll keep my guard up, fortify my defenses, and make sure that I protect myself from being rejected by just not letting them in. Love, it has been said, is a two-way street; the idea of unrequited love is actually just a representation of the rejection we’ve already discussed (I love someone, make myself vulnerable, and by indifference or ignorance they reject me and my heart is broken).

Look around you. There are so many people whose hearts have been broken and have never found a way to heal that wound. They keep searching for the healing; this is another concept that the poets and musicians have known for ages, although many don’t know what the answer is. They (it should probably be “we” since this is basically common to humanity) look for the healing in money, or power, or sex, or popularity, or approval. What we really need is to find someone that will never reject us, that will always choose to love us – that is what will heal our broken hearts.

God’s offer of love to mankind was baffling; He offered to give unlimited, perfect satisfaction of our soul’s longing for acceptance, fully knowing that His love would not always (or even often) be returned, and that His heart would be the one being broken. But how could He not offer this? It is His very nature to love. It is only through His greatness, the infinite nature of His being, that He could withstand so much heartbreak.

But there is still a greater heartbreak; God had a plan to bring us home, and it would cost Him everything.

By breaking His heart, by turning away, the relationship was cracked. We were offered what our souls longed for, and for one reason or another we decided to pass on it, content to search around for a pale imitation. We, temporal beings as we are, accepted the short-term high, the fleeting pleasure, over the steady, faithful satisfaction of God’s perfect love, and His heart was broken. It was not without consequence, either.

It isn’t because God is unfair or unfeeling that the relationship was damaged, or that He is petty and holds a grudge against us for hurting Him. The problem is that He simply can’t coexist with sin – everything that comes near to Him has to be cleansed, free from stains, or else it is consumed by the glory of His perfect holiness. Holiness simply means that it has a wholly different nature, one without taint or stain. This requirement is evident in the Law, which showed above all that God is holy and must be treated as such.

So, since we have all at one point or another been guilty of breaking the heart of God, we found ourselves separated from that closeness, that communion that we were designed for. God’s heart was broken, our lives were damaged. But as I said, God had a plan.

In order for us to be cleansed of our sin, a price had to be paid – and it was no small price. God is so different, so holy, that anything that didn’t reach the standard had to die. Or at least something had to die, either us or something in our place. The thing that died in our place had to be spotless, without blemish, because it wouldn’t do for us to give something we didn’t want in the first place. But an animal that we owned was not sufficient to truly deal with the problem of our sin, and for ourselves to give our own lives didn’t work either because, well, then we’d be dead and that ruins the whole thing. So what was God’s amazingly brilliant plan to deal with this conundrum?

He decided to send His Son, a part of Himself, to die on our behalf.

And not just to die on our behalf but to live first – even to be born into our world and grow up in poverty, to be potty-trained and go through puberty and deal with parents and siblings and friends and all the other things we all deal with on a daily basis. Jesus spent 33 years or so among us, living a life that was free from wrongdoing and as perfect of an example of God’s love as could ever be. He even demonstrated the risk inherent in love by making Himself vulnerable to heartbreak and pain – nowhere more evident than on the cross.

As if it wasn’t enough for Jesus to be killed as a sacrifice, it ended up being a horrible death, being tortured and beaten and rejected. And it was all on completely bogus charges that the government sentenced him to this awful fate and carried it out the same night. Jesus, who was entirely innocent, hung on a Roman cross, suspended by nails piercing His hands and feet, in our place.

And this, of all things, was how God saved the world.

He opened His heart to us and we rejected Him. He went a step further and brought His heart down to us so that we could get a closer look, understand it better, and we not only turned it away but beat and scourged and nailed it to a cross, calling for the blood to rest on us and our children.

And this was the plan.

How could this have been the plan? How is this a plan at all? He is God, He knows everything! He had to have seen this coming! How could this have possibly been the best that He could come up with?

This is the genius of the story of Jesus – it’s pure foolishness to a human mind. There is no way that people would have come up with such a tale. God didn’t just have it in mind to solve the problem of sin, to address the price that needed to be paid for our wrongdoing and allow us access to His glorious presence – He had a plan to finally defeat the great enemy Death.

This is why the plan didn’t end on the cross – there was also a tomb; one that would wind up gloriously, impossibly, marvelously empty on the third day!

There is a correlation of sorts between risk and hope – they are almost like opposites. Risk is what makes you hold back, not try, because something bad might happen, and hope is what makes you press on and believe because something impossibly good might happen. It has become clear through this discussion that there is a great deal of risk involved with any act of love, but keep in mind when deciding whether to love or not that there is such a beautiful hope wrapped up inside as well. Best of all, the risk does not cancel out the hope!

With that in mind, I posit that we are at our best when we push past the risk and embrace the hope that love holds. All of the best examples of humanity occurred when a person chose hope over risk, vulnerability over defensiveness, love over fear.

Choose hope. Choose vulnerability. Choose love. This is how the world changes.

Scott Hamilton
Psalm 37:3

I realize that in writing this I am admitting to participating in one of the least manly exercises of the human species: watching Hallmark romance movies. Yes, instead of movies with car chases and explosions like real men watch, I have sat through a number of Hallmark movies. However, for those with enough common sense not to have done so but who might fall prey to watching one at some point, I offer this Guide to assist your expectations. Indeed, armed with the information below, you probably don’t even need to watch the movie. Anyway, here is a list of truisms that can be applied to ALL Hallmark romances:
1. If, at the beginning of the movie, you are the leading lady’s boyfriend or, heaven forbid, her fiancé, you are doomed. There is zero chance that you and she will end up together. Absolute confirmation of this is established when you kiss her, because you do so on her cheek, not on her lips. There is also a 90% probability that you will prove to be a self-centered jerk before the first commercial.
2. Big cities are evil; rural small towns are good. Big city people (including the leading lady at the beginning of the film) lead harried, miserable, hollow, stress-filled, shallow lives where their main concern is money. Rural small town people lead relaxed, meaningful, contented, joyful lives that focus on The Things That Really Matter.
3. Similar to the above, big city careers are evil; rural small town jobs are good—especially those where one works with one’s hands. Evil “city” occupations include: movie actor, up-and-coming corporate executive, anything related to advertising or public relations, real estate/land development, assistant hospital administrator, and worst of all, lawyer. Honorable rural small town occupations include, for the leading lady: owning/managing a bakery, restaurant, or dress shop; running a family farm/ranch/vineyard; country doctor; or, best of all, small town veterinarian. For the leading man they include: handyman, house construction, some form of arts and crafts; running a family farm/ranch/vineyard; country doctor; or, best of all, small town veterinarian.
4. The next-older generation were, apparently, terrible drivers. Invariably one of the leading characters’ parents died “some years ago” in a car accident.
5. If either lead character is a single parent, the child/children will become deeply attached to the other lead character within a week of first meeting him/her—long before love blossoms between the adults. The same holds true for a pet if there is one.
6. All rural small towns have an annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in the town square (they all have a town square) that the entire town not only attends but “eagerly anticipates all year.” If it happens to not be Christmastime, then they have an annual Harvest Festival.
7. In every Christmas movie there is a scene with the lead characters together in a Christmas tree lot. No one EVER has an artificial tree.
8. In every Christmas movie there is a scene at an ice skating rink in which one of the lead characters is a skilled skater and the other is an inept rookie. If it is not a Christmas movie, substitute dancing for skating.
9. Regardless of how lucrative the “big city” character’s dream job is, he/she will readily abandon it (since it was evil anyway) and downgrade to live a subsistence-level life in the rural small town with his/her new-found love.
10. The one exception to the above is if the leading lady is vacationing in the tiny European kingdom of Contrivia only to discover that the seemingly ordinary guy she has fallen for is actually the crown prince. In that case, marrying him upgrades her to a princess.

In trying to lend justification to the President’s delusional assertion that there were millions of votes cast illegally during the most recent election — and therefore that election reform is needed — his defenders cite the presence on voter rolls of registrants who are dead or are registered in more than one state. I worked for the Missouri Secretary of State’s office for 12 years and was very much involved in the processes used to keep voter rolls as clean as possible. So, are there deceased people on voter rolls? Absolutely. Are there voters on the rolls of more than one state? Certainly. Does this mean that the entire system is flawed, needs an overhaul, and that voter fraud is rampant because of these circumstances? DEFINITELY NOT.

Let us apply a bit of rationality to all this, and take a practical look at each situation, shall we? First, dead voters. Believe it or not, the very first thing that happens when a person passes away is NOT for someone to notify the deceased’s Local Election Authority (LEA) that he or she needs to be removed from the voter rolls. Except where a rural county’s clerk actually knew the deceased, or where the LEA checks the obituaries against the voter rolls, they usually are unaware of a voter’s death. Then how do these voters get removed? Missouri used several methods. First, we did computerized matches against death records from the Dept. of Health & Sr. Svcs. This is not foolproof, however. If the individual died out of state, DHSS would not necessarily be informed. Next, there were matches against the Social Security Administration’s master death database. This helped but, since the decedent’s address may have been different when he/she died than what was on their registration, and we have only the last four digits of SSN, matching could be problematic.

Indeed, automated matching is not as slick as you might hope. A person who registers to vote by filling-out a registration card by hand simply gives or mails it to the election authority and leaves them to enter their data into the registration system. Oops, there’s a few stray marks on this card. Is that birthdate 1/8/1990 or 7/8/1990? Is that Ken Smith or Kim Smith? Our registration software ran SSN and Driver’s License checks against the data when entered, but if the SSN and/or DL was left blank the law requires the assumption to be that the individual does not have one. If the DL was from another state, no matching was done. And, of course, if “Kim Smith” was short for “Kimberly Smith” automated name matching would be less than exact. Furthermore, even SSA’s data can often be many months late in reporting a death. Add to all this that the matching, etc., did NOT remove voters. For safety’s sake, the match created lists that were sent back to the LEAs who then were to verify the matching data and then mark the registrants as deceased in the system — a task that becomes secondary during the crunch of preparing for an election. After a voter misses two federal general elections, they “age off” the voter rolls, so even a record that slips through the cracks will eventually be disabled. Nevertheless, at any given point in time even the most diligent LEAs will have a fair number of deceased voters on their rolls and, statewide, that number could be in the thousands. Does their presence mean voter fraud is occurring? Not at all.

Suppose you read a random obituary before an election and decide that, despite the risk of being convicted of a federal crime, you’re going to vote both as yourself and the dead person. Was he even registered? What polling place would he have voted at? Can you be sure the LEA hasn’t already removed him from the rolls? You have to sign the precinct register (or electronic equivalent), will your signature match? A wrong guess on any of these and you’re in danger of time in Leavenworth. All so you can vote ONE extra vote? And people are claiming this equates to MILLIONS of illegal votes? Give me a break.

But, what of multi-state registrants? When my wife and I left California for Missouri with two cars, a dog, and the few odds and ends that didn’t go on the moving van, we did not stop off at our LEA and notify them that we were moving to another state so they could remove us from the voter rolls. Nobody does. There is a place on the Missouri voter registration form to tell where you used to be registered, but if you leave it blank nothing happens — they just assume you’re a first-time voter. Even if you fill it in, the result is a list that eventually gets sent to the old state’s State Election Authority who then, hopefully, forwards it to the appropriate LEA who, when they get around to it, will mark that registration disabled. Then, there are multi-state automated matches that produce lists of suspected duplicates that the LEAs are given to process, but not all 50 states. Only those nearby. Since Drivers Licenses are subject to the same issue (obtaining one in the new state must cause the old state to be notified and nullify the old license), matching was done against DMV records. Still, all these matching efforts suffer the same uncertainties as described previously. Once again, what is the likelihood that a significant number of people are moronic enough to risk conviction of a felony so they can vote once in their old state and a second time in their current state? If a person tries to vote in the old state and they’ve already removed him, he’s busted.

Could a given state have a few hundred people gutsy and/or dimwitted enough to vote via one of these illegal methods? Perhaps. But even if each state had 1,000 people do so, that would not have changed the election results. If there was any significant voter fraud, it was not because of multi-state registrations or deceased people on the voter rolls. So any hair-on-fire demand for an election process overhaul in response to the existence of deceased or multi-state registrants will be a huge waste of time and money solving a non-problem.

It has been a LONG time since I did a post here, but in honor of my wife and I celebrating our 43rd wedding anniversary, I felt it necessary to address something I ran across recently. I sometimes look at a website called quora.com. It is a forum where people can ask questions and get answers, some of which are from “experts.” As a fiction writer, it gives me a place to ask how to handle a certain situation in writing or, for example if my story needs it, how long a person can be marooned in a small spacecraft before the air becomes unbreathable. That sort of thing. Recently, someone asked the question: “What is the creepiest thing that society accepts as a cultural norm?” There were dozens of answers provided, many of which you would expect: things like female circumcision, India’s caste system, and even child beauty pageants. But I found one answer not only shocking, but quite disturbing. The thing this contributor thought was “the creepiest” was: Marriage for life.

According to this contributor: “…committing to another person for life is not that different than committing to the same job for life… I think it’s odd and creepy that society uses the term ‘failed marriage’ and still questions divorce as a way to pursue individual happiness. There’s no such thing as a failed marriage; just a marriage that ran its course… You can’t be assured that your feelings will always stay the same when you marry…”

Holy moly. There is so much wrong with this perspective/attitude that I scarcely know where to start. I could write a book, but in the interest of time and space, I will try to keep this concise by bullet-pointing a few of the fatal flaws in this viewpoint:

And none of this even addresses God’s slant on marriage as eloquently expressed by His Son: what God has joined together, let not man separate. Of course, sometimes, as in the case of spousal abuse or unfaithfulness, separation or even divorce becomes necessary. And, sometimes those subsequent marriages work out well. But I’m willing to bet that those subsequent marriages that succeed nearly always do so because the partners were determined that, though a past marriage did not make it, this one would be “till death us do part.”

For someone to think that marriage for life represents the creepiest thing that society accepts as a cultural norm is, to me, the creepiest viewpoint I think I’ve ever heard. I can only hope that those who hold such an inane view are the tiniest of minorities within society. If not, I believe that it represents a far greater threat to the continuation of the human species than fanatical terrorism, pollution, or even nuclear weapons.

For those of you who don’t use Facebook or who may have missed Becki’s posting, I have finally taken the plunge and put a series of my novels out on Kindle and Nook as ebooks. If you have a Kindle or Nook Tablet/Reader you can, of course, download and read them there. Or, if you have an iPad, iPad Mini, iPhone, or probably any other smart phone or tablet device, you can get a free Kindle or Nook app and use those devices to read them. I’ve read entire books on my iPhone and, though you might think it’s too small to read on, it’s really not bad at all.

The books are in a series called Ever Increasing Glory. The first book is Hidden in a Field, the second is The Way of Escape and the third is Canceled Debts. Although they’re classified as Christian romances they include an attempted murder, a car wreck, a foiled rape attempt, and a guy getting worked over with a rubber hose so they’re not all just romantic fluff.

You can use the links below or search the Kindle or Nook sites by the series (Ever Increasing Glory), by the titles or by “D. L. Hamilton” (Don Hamilton won’t work).

Kindle:
•Book 1: Hidden in a Field
•Book 2: The Way of Escape
•Book 3: Canceled Debts

Or, for the more graphically-oriented, click on the cover image below:

Nook:
You can view the whole Ever Increasing Glory series.

You can read the first few chapters for free and the books themselves are pretty inexpensive. Hope you find the stories enjoyable as well as inspirational.

God’s blessings,

Don

A newspaper “advice” column that I read regularly (although I honestly do not know why–I do know that I find the questions/problems far more interesting than the answers) had a reader submit a complaint a while back. The complaint was how that today’s modern society, with all its young whippersnappers, had lost its last vestige of civility by the use of the phrase “no problem” in response to a thank you. The reader was incensed that this generation has ceased to use the proper response of “you’re welcome.” Somewhat surprisingly the columnist and several others all agreed. The implication was that saying “no problem” was akin to the President addressing a press conference with “‘Sup dogs?” instead of “Good morning.”

Personally I believe it to be a non-issue and the complaint completely bogus. Consider: Person A says “Thank you” to Person B. One must assume that Person B had done something for Person A that evoked the comment. Truthfully the so-called kosher response of “You’re welcome” does not make a great deal of sense. You are welcome… to… What, exactly? Let’s recap: Person B does something for Person A, Person A thanks Person B, so Person B is obligated to tell Person A that he or she is welcome. Sorry, I don’t get it. The best I can come up with is that “you’re welcome” is shortened for “You are welcome to request (or expect) me to do the same for you anytime (or at least again).” I guess that’s sort of okay if Person B opened the door for Person A or something, but what if Person B saved Person A from drowning? Is Person A really welcome to try that again? “You’re welcome” has been the common response to a thank-you for decades if not centuries, but it nonetheless seems borderline nonsensical.

Much superior, to me anyway, is the less common but still acceptably formal “My pleasure.” At least that makes straightforward sense. It means basically that the person being thanked was happy to do whatever he or she is being thanked for. Once again, it is more applicable in some cases than others. If I changed a baby’s ripe, messy diaper, and the baby’s mom thanked me, to say it was my PLEASURE would be a lie, pure and simple.

Now, is the phrase “No problem” any better or worse? Actually I see it as slightly superior to the others. In the diaper scenario, it indicates that I was perfectly willing to do it–to say it was NO problem may be an exaggeration but far less of a flagrant lie. In the drowning person scenario, certainly the rescuer went to some–perhaps considerable–trouble, but “no problem” says the result was sufficiently positive to offset the effort. Interestingly, in Spanish the response to “Gracias” is “De nada” which means “It’s nothing.” In other words, “I do not consider it an inconvenience” or put another way, “No problem!”

Occasionally people have used the alternate phrase, “Don’t mention it” in place of you’re welcome. The intent is to say, again, it was a small thing, it was nothing, or “No problem.” However, it has a slightly negative edge that, if taken literally, means I prefer that you not do the very thing you just did–mention it.

So, I’m afraid all the pretentious types who consider any phrasing newer than the 1920’s uncouth will have to stifle themselves on this one. To the rest of you, no need to thank me. But if you do, hey, no problem.

That same advice column once had a reader complain that someone who had offended them said, “I owe you an apology” but then left it at that. The issue was that the offended person felt an apology had not happened until the person stated directly, “I’m sorry” or “I apologize” (or, I suppose, “Please forgive me”). Again, the advice columnist agreed. I, however, do not. In this world of entitlement and victim-mentality it is a rare person who will buck up the courage to volunteer any sort of apologetic expression to someone else, regardless of the offense. To admit, “I owe you an apology” is a pretty big step for most people. To skewer them on a technicality because they didn’t reconstruct the sentence properly is to look for a reason to hold a grudge.

All of which brings to mind a bit of irony I heard once. A distraught person recounting a difficult encounter with someone: “Maybe what I said sounds harsh but, I’m sorry, I’m just not going to apologize.”

Here’s an oddity that leaves me puzzled: hymn lyrics–or more specifically the use of King James English therein.

Now, I do realize that from the early 1600’s until the early 1970’s the KJV Bible was used by 99.9% of the English-speaking Protestant world. People somewhat understandably associated the use of King James lingo with all things sacred and often felt compelled to use that same mode of speech in any reference to the Lord, including prayers and hymns. This was especially reasonable where scripture was contained in a hymn since it would necessarily be the KJV that was used. The result is that many hymns are laden with “Thee,” “Thou,” “Thy” and “Thine.” Typically King James verbs were also used surrounding those pronouns–for consistency one would assume–giving us “art” instead of “are,” “loveth” instead of “loves,” “hast” (or “hath”) instead of “has,” etc. So, we end up with song lyrics like: “My Jesus I love Thee I know Thou art mine…”

Okay, whatever. What gets weird is that the use of King James parlance is so often random and inexplicable.

As noted, references to the Lord in KJV make sense for the day in which these songs were composed. What I have a harder time understanding is why references to you and me are done that way. For example, the song “Is Thy Heart Right With God,” as the title suggests, refers not to the Lord with KJV but to the listener: “…Dost thou count all things for Jesus but loss?” Why address ME in King James English? Other songs such as “Take Time to be Holy” do the same thing.

Then there are those hymns that can’t make up their minds. Notice how the hymn “His Way with Thee” switches between modern and King James for no apparent reason as it refers to the listener alternately as “YOU” (modern) and “THEE” (KJV):

“…His love can fill YOUR soul, and YOU will see / ’twas best for Him to have His way with THEE.”

Actually the only explanation is a pathetic one. “Thee” was used purely because it rhymed. Now that’s sad.

Even more random are those songs where only one word is KJV. An example is “All the Way My Savior Leads Me” where it says: “…For I know whate’er befall me Jesus doeth all things well…” Notice that at the beginning of the song it does NOT say “All the way my Savior LEADETH me…” but later He “DOETH” rather than He does. Again the unfortunate evident explanation is that the lyricist resorted to KJV in order to maintain the meter of the song–rather than rewriting the lyric (sorry, Fanny Crosby, but that was the cheap way out).

But it gets even more random that that. In the hymn “Count Your Blessings” there is a line in one verse that goes, “…Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold…” Notice, “Christ HAS”. But in the chorus the lyric is “…see what God HATH done.” Unlike the others, this helps neither rhyme nor meter. The only possible explanation is that the lyricist developed a lisp between writing the verse and the chorus (maybe he lost a tooth or something).

Some hymn lyrics are pretty odd regardless of King James usage. This one for example from “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”:

“Do thy friends despise, forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer…”

Now, first of all it doesn’t say A friend or SOME friends but strongly implies that it refers to ALL your friends. It is not unheard of for a so-called friend to forsake a person, proving to be no friend at all. But to have ALL your friends forsake you? What situation could cause that? The only thing I can think of is if you did some heinous, repugnant, disgusting thing that sent all your friends scurrying to get away from you–like becoming an Amway representative.

But even that is not the strangest part of the phrase. It asks if all your friends DESPISE you. How on earth could a group of people who despise you be classified as “friends”? Aren’t those who despise you–by definition–your enemies?

Or how about this lyric from “I’ll Fly Away”: “…Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I’ll fly away…” Who keeps birds in prison? Unless they’re referring to the Birdman of Alcatraz or something but in that case HE was the one imprisoned in Alcatraz; the birds could come and go as they liked. Of course, it might be referring to a “JAIL-bird” who has flown from prison–but doesn’t that mean an escapee? Is that what we want to be favorably compared with? In a hymn yet?

Another oddity among hymns is the use of what I call “Yoda-speak.” You may recall that the little green Jedi dude in the “Star Wars” films had a characteristic mode of speech in which he sort of spoke backwards. For example, instead of saying “He is strong with the Force” Yoda phrases it this way: “Strong with the Force is he.” Notice how the following hymns do the same thing.

From “Power in the Blood”: “Would you o’er evil a victory win?” Shouldn’t that be “Would you win a victory over evil?” Unless, of course, you have pointy ears and use a light-saber.

From “You Never Mentioned Him to Me”: “…You helped me not the light to see.” I think us non-Jedi’s would say “…You did not help me see the light” wouldn’t we?

From “Give of Your Best to the Master”: “…You from sin’s ruin to save…” Translation: “…To save you from sin’s ruin…”

Not that contemporary Christian music is immune from odd lyrics. Consider the song “My Glorious”. The chorus of the song has this first line:

“God is bigger than the air I breathe”

That is a truly weird figure of speech. Comparisons of the Lord to “the air I breathe” have been used before but always in reference to absolute necessity, i.e., we need God as desperately as we need air. Referring to air in terms of size is beyond strange. Someone suggested that perhaps the reference was to the whole of earth’s atmosphere–sort of a convoluted way of saying He is “bigger than the sky.” However the addition of the phrase “I breathe” tends to negate that since I don’t inhale the entire atmosphere. I think I read somewhere that a breath is about two quarts of air. Saying that God is bigger than that is faint praise indeed. Truthfully it is either using the wrong attribute of “the air I breathe” or the wrong attribute of God. Whatever, it is pretty much nonsensical. Sort of like saying Superman is “faster than a red, red, rose.” One’s natural reaction is “Eh? How’s that again?”

But that’s not the only issue with the song’s lyrics. Here is a verse:

The world’s shaking with the love of God
Great and glorious, let the whole earth sing
And all you ever do is change the old for new
People we believe that

(Then back to the Chorus: God is bigger than the air I breathe…) The first line of the verse–as does the chorus–refers to God in the third person, that is, talking ABOUT God to the audience. But the third line apparently has abruptly switched to speaking directly to Him (“…all YOU ever do…”). But then the next line is back to addressing the audience, this time in plural (“WE believe”) then immediately back to the singular in the Chorus (“I breathe”). I think the lyricist should have gone to bed earlier and taken a fresh look at this in the morning.

Perhaps more sleep would also have helped in the writing of the David Crowder Band’s “How He Loves.” The opening line or so about how God “loves like a hurricane” makes me scratch my head a bit, but then it gets really weird: “…all of a sudden, I am unaware…” I’m sorry but, by definition, it is impossible to SUDDENLY be UNaware of something. You could suddenly become AWARE of something, but how can one suddenly be unaware—unless one passes out or has a stroke or something. In another verse there is a reference to how “…heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss…” Eh? I’m not sure how, even poetically, heaven can meet earth like a kiss, but an unforeseen kiss? Does that mean it forgets to pucker or close its eyes? I don’t get it but it could be that I’m biased against the song because Crowder’s rendition of it makes my skin crawl.

Christmas songs are certainly not immune from lyrical oddities. Among the more bizarre is “The First Noel.” The tune is tolerable but the lyrics are, well, the only word to use for them is: lame. What earns a set of lyrics the designation of “lame”? For one thing, lyrics are lame when what they say is nonsensical or just plain wrong. For another, they are lame when there are superfluous words thrown in just to rescue the tune or poetic rhythm. And, as previously mentioned, “Yoda-isms” in lyrics (used primarily to force the rhyme scheme to work) make me crazy. An example of a Christmas song that uses one is: “God rest ye merry, gentlemen, / Let nothing you dismay.” Non-Yoda-speak would be, “…Let nothing dismay you” but that wouldn’t rhyme with “…born on Christmas Day” so, again, the songwriter took the cheap way out.

All that said, “The First Noel” is so bad it almost boggles the mind. To set the stage for the discussion, here is the first stanza along with the refrain:

The first Noel the angel did say
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay;
In fields where they lay tending their sheep,
On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.

Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,
Born is the King of Israel.

Now, granted, poems and songs frequently butcher or completely omit relevant punctuation, but this one defies knowing what punctuation is appropriate. In the first line the phrase, “…the angel did say…” just dangles there out in space. The angel did say… what, exactly? One could presume that the next word or phrase would represent what the angel said, but that would be the word “Was” (ostensibly spoken “to certain poor shepherds”). As far as I know nothing in the Christmas story has an angel just saying, “Was.” This is fortunate, because if it did that would be mind-numbingly inane. As if that isn’t bad enough, even the phrasing of it is dorky. Using “the angel did say…” instead of “the angel said” is a case of a superfluous word thrown-in to try to stay on beat. Unfortunately the lyrics and “beat” really never do mesh in this song. What I think the lyric is trying to communicate is just that the angel spoke to some shepherds.

This, then, brings us to the next example of dippy-ness: “On a cold winter’s night….” Now, the evidence is marginal at best that Jesus was born in the winter but there is no hint in scripture that it was cold. Israel is a mild climate but admittedly it could have been cold—the odds are about as good that it wasn’t as that it was. Maybe slightly more toward the “wasn’t” side since had the birth taken place in the cold there’s a strong chance that Luke would have mentioned it—but he didn’t. The crowning touch is the final phrase: “…that was so deep.” Okay, what does that mean? It could be that I’m just not poetically-astute enough, but I have no idea what distinguishes a deep night from a shallow one. As near as I can tell, that phrase is there purely because the lyricist needed something that rhymed with sheep. How dumb.

But as bad as it is, the first, and most commonly known, verse is pure genius compared to some of the other verses. Get a load of this one:

Between an ox stall and an ass,
This Child truly there He was;
For want of clothing they did Him lay
All in a manger, among the hay.

There is so much wrong with this verse I won’t even attempt to critique it. I used to think that “The First Noel” was a French song that simply lost a lot in the translation. Turns out it is not French but Olde English—most think from the 16th century—making it contemporary with Shakespeare. Believe me, brother, this is about as far from Shakespeare as one can get!

Shortly I will have lived 60 years, and in that amount of time I have encountered literally thousands of people’s political views. I can honestly say that not once in all that time have I ever witnessed anyone reversing someone else’s political slant by outwitting, out-arguing, or out-insulting them. Yet, baiting and demeaning those of a differing political viewpoint goes on relentlessly and has now become a favorite pastime in the social media venues, notably Facebook.

Due to its futility, I generally, with rare exceptions, steer clear of political debates or venting my political views. However, although I have yet to see anyone’s views change dramatically from political discussions, I have seen honest, open-minded people moderate their views a bit. So, with that goal in mind, I now present some of my take on things.
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Before I continue my narrative, a few words about New York City drivers. First there is the rumor that they drive less with turn signals than with their horns. This is true. Most vehicles in downtown (or even uptown—there is a distinction) Manhattan are taxis. They honk their horns frequently for two basic reasons which I observed first hand. The first reason is illustrated by the following. Our tour bus was at a stoplight on a 4-lane one-way street. In the lane beside us was a row of taxicabs. Exactly one nanosecond after the light turned green, the cab that was fourth in line honked for the line to get moving. I have no explanation for that behavior except that it is New York. To describe the second reason for honking horns I must provide what I observed to be the philosophy of driving in Manhattan, which is: If I am directly beside you in my lane and wish to be in front of you in your lane, I simply go there. It is your problem whether there is room for me to do so or whether you run into me or not. With that said I provide the next illustration. Again, our tour bus was at a stoplight on a 4-lane one-way street. At the instant the light turned green, a cab in the second lane from the left turned left in front of the cab in the first lane. Not to be outdone, a cab in the far right lane also then turned left across in front of all the other lanes, giving a little thank-you wave as he did so. In return there was a cacophony of honking horns and, I would have to admit, justifiably so. Cars, cabs, and buses zip and slither in front of each other willy-nilly in a random pattern of turns and lane changes. Do accidents occur? Certainly. In fact, our tour bus bumped into the back of an SUV at one point, to the surprise of no one. What was a tad surprising was that a cop who happened to be near by took a quick look at the situation, told the SUV the damage was insignificant, and then told both SUV and bus to move on. Read more

On Saturday we headed to New Jersey which would be our home base for our excursions in NYC. Although it was too early for check-in at the hotel in Edison, New Jersey, we wanted to go there first to sort of get our bearings and take whatever transportation to NYC was nearby. The hotel was a Comfort Inn that we could see on the left side as we drove down the multi-lane street past it but since the street had a tall cement divider and allowed no left or U-turns we could not get there. Matilda would tell us to turn right now and again but that made little sense (rather like Columbus sailing west to get to the east). After a mile or two we took her advice at a street with a sign pointing right that read “All Turns.” What one did was turn right and immediately swing around an island to the left, went over an overpass and then navigate onto the desired road going the desired direction. This did not bode well for us finding our way around.

Rick had heard somewhere that one could take a subway into New York City from nearby locations in New Jersey but if that is true we never found it. One thing we were sure of is that we did not want to drive in New York. Now that we’ve been there that was truly one of the most intelligent decisions of the whole trip. The hotel clerk told Rick he could go two stoplights down, turn right and take a commuter train into NYC (this was on Saturday). Despite Matilda’s protests Rick followed the clerk’s directions and we wandered around in a residential area for a while before realizing that he should have said three stoplights down. Anyway we parked at the New Jersey Transit station in a numbered place. A sign saying “Pay for Parking” pointed to a machine that had Rick put in our space number and $4. The question was, did we need to put a receipt or something in our car window since we were warned that unpaid parkers would be towed? Inside the station the person running the little snack kiosk, when Rick asked that question, curtly replied that she had no answers. Period. We shrugged and set about buying tickets for the trip into NYC. Penn Station, New York City, was the final stop, so we had the right train. But unlike some low-cost subway ride, the fare was $12.50. Each. One-way. If you do the math that means $50 per couple round trip. Oh well, this was a once in a lifetime event, so we bought the tickets. A train arrived promptly and the ride in was quite comfortable. In about 50 minutes we arrived at Penn Station beneath the streets of New York City. Read more