NEW CAR FEVER

This is to confess that I have developed a case of new car fever.
This is strictly an emotional malady because there is no logical reason for me to NEED a new(er) car.
I lay the blame for my illness on the designers at Hyundai and Kia – sister companies, based in Korea.

I never thought I would be lusting after any Korean car brand, but I am.
It started with the 2010 Hyundai Sonata.
The previous version of this car looked okay.
I liked it.
It was conservative but had no bothersome traits.
I liked it enough to think positively about it without wanting one.

But when I saw the first pictures of the 2010 Sonata, I was stunned.
I loved it.
It looked sleek and swoopy and daring.
MUCH better-looking than the Honda Accord or the Toyota Camry.
And since then, I have seen several driving around and they look even better in person.
They did an excellent job on this piece.

Then came the 2010 Hyundai Tucson.
They swooped it up, too, and I liked it also.
Then came the 2011 Hyundai Elantra.
They turned this rather bland vehicle into a junior version of the Sonata.
And I liked it also.

Then Kia released the 2011 Optima -their version of the Sonata.
It looks like a big BMW – only sleeker, and cleaner.
Wow.

Then I saw the 2011 Kia Forte line.
They generally match the Honda Civic in size and performance, but look WAY better.
AND... they make a 5-door hatchback model.
I very like hatchbacks.
I have had two and have been very happy with them.
(Honda no longer makes Civics in a hatchback configuration.)
Although Honda makes good (read: durable) cars, no hatchback Civic models and dorky looks have them at the bottom of my wish list.
(the Honda Fit is a hatchback, but is too small, gets only average gas mileage, and looks like the Pope-mobile.)

THEN (ta-da) I saw the 2011 Kia Sportage compact SUV (or cross-over or whatever they want to call it).
To my eye it looks even better than the Hyundai Tucson (its corporate cousin).
And the more I saw of it, the more I wanted one.
It looks WAY better than the Honda C-RV and gets WAY better gas mileage.
That pretty much did me in.
I wanted a new car.
One of THESE new cars.

So here I am, stewing in new sheet metal envy.
There is just one problem....
I don't need a new car.
The one I have is doing just fine.
I even still like the way it looks – sort of.
But it is eleven years old.
It has 104,000 miles on it.
It might break some day.
(my last Honda was 13 years old and had 250,000+ miles on it when I sold it. Still ran like a top.)
I still like it - sort of, but I am tired of it.
Actually, I was not tired of my present car (a 2000 Honda Civic hatchback, BTW) until I saw the new Hyundai's and Kia's.
And I like the 2012 Ford Focus hatchback, too. (never thought I would like a Ford...)

Then there is the financial issue.
I could afford a new car payment – but I don't want one.
I will not be able to pay cash for a new car like I did my present vehicle.
My investment decisions have not been blessed with the increase that they were in 1999.
So I will have to encumber myself with a car loan and its associated monthly payments.
Most likely, this is doable, but I do not like the idea of having another large debt.
And Dave Ramsey would frown on this transaction.
But I want a new car.
Certainly it will be my last.
I may not live to see the final payment. (sorry, kids....)

So, what to do?
I am still arguing with myself and playing with EPA numbers and annual costs to try to logically justify such an illogical, un-necessary purchase.

The Lexingtons

[the following is a chapter from my still-in-progress autobiography.]

The Lexingtons

For about three years I was a member of a small musical group. Given my shyness at that time in my life, this is still amazing to me. First, some background:

In 1958, a new musical group called the Kingston Trio had the number one-selling song in the nation, “Tom Dooley”. This song was not a rock and roll tune as was typical for the times. There were no electric instruments in it. In fact, there was a banjo in it. It was the beginning of a wave of popularity for a simple style of music called “Folk Music”. It was played with acoustic instruments and simple vocal harmonies and much of the material was old songs written in the 1700’s, 1800’s or early 1900's. The person most responsible for the popularity of “folk” music was Harry Belafonte who had several popular songs in the late 1950’s. They were a mixture of folk and calypso styles of music. Calypso is a style of music common in the Caribbean islands. End of background.

I first learned of the Kingston Trio while visiting my natural father, Frank. He had their first album. We played it and I liked it. A few weeks later I bought a copy for myself. From then on, every four to six months a new Kingston Trio album came out and I bought a copy as soon as I could. Interestingly, I had heard “Tom Dooley” on the radio but never liked the song. It was often requested by our listeners, and we sang it for them, but I did not like doing it.

The evening that changed my life came when me and several friends (male and female) went to see the Kingston Trio and the Dave Brubeck Quartet at the Hollywood Bowl in 1962. I came away from that evening with a desire to learn to sing and play that kind of music on the guitar. A neighbor kid, Terry Parker had received a cheap Stella guitar a year or so before for Christmas and seldom played it. I offered to buy it for ten dollars. He agreed, and I had a guitar. It only had four strings on it, so before I could learn to play, I had to buy a new set of strings. I did and the journey began.

I practiced almost every afternoon or evening, learning to place my fingers on the strings in just the right places to make the chords. Pressing on the strings was a bit difficult and after an hour or two the ends of the fingers on my left hand were purple from the abuse. But I kept at it. And after a few months I could play along with many of the songs on the Kingston Trio records I owned.

(the following is based on a history of our group I wrote around 1965)

In the spring of 1963 a folk singing club was formed a Canoga Park high school, in response to popular demand. Shortly afterward, a small group of volunteers was requested to sing at an upcoming Friday night “Sports Night” (a school social event of games, music and dancing)

A group of seven from the club performed. It was a sloppy performance in my opinion. The material was well-known generally to accommodate the limited rehearsal time for the performers, rather than to please the audience. I was embarrassed by the poor quality of the performance.

Among these seven was the son of Mrs. Shank, the teacher/sponsor of the folk singing club, Erik Shank. Though he had graduated the year before, he was included in the group because he could play the banjo. (an almost “required” instrument for playing folk music at the time.)

In spite of the sloppy performance, the group was well received and was asked to sing again a couple of weeks later at another Sports Night. For various reasons, the group diminished to four members, all of whom had participated in the previous performance. Me, Jim Sinclair and John Gretzinger played guitar, while Erik played the banjo. We sang four songs.

Whereas the first group of seven had been a hastily formed association with divergent musical interests and motives, the latter group of four had more in common. John and I went to the same church. All of us had similar tastes in folk music.

(the reader should understand that the folk music audience in those days had two factions – the “purists” and the “commercial” patrons. The purists, the smaller of the two factions, insisted that old folk songs be performed exactly as they have been since they were written, with the most simple chord structure and harmony. They disliked the more commercial form of “folk” music, and openly criticized those who performed it. The common features of most “authentic” folk music was bad singing, boring arrangements, and long songs that told a story. The commercial fans cared less about “purity” of performance or arrangement and just wanted to hear good acoustic music, even if the “folk” song they were listening to had been written a few months earlier by a commercial writer and only sounded like it was an old song.)

We in the group were all of the commercial persuasion. And we all liked the Kingston Trio – the leaders of the commercial folk music fad.

I may have been the first one of us to seriously suggest that we form a permanent group. This was done after the group of seven had performed but before the foursome had played. This is a strange desire from someone so shy as myself at that time, but I enjoyed singing and playing this kind of music. (I must have really enjoyed it to overpower my shyness!)

It was agreed that the group would be only a hobby. We never expected to earn any money and no one was going to quite his job to become a “star”. The goal was to become as good, musically, as possible and perform in the local area. The group started out as a foursome but Jim soon dropped out because of his busy schedule. This left the trio of Erik, John and me. We briefly discussed finding a replacement for Jim. But we reasoned if the Kingston Trio was successful as a trio (duh) then we could be successful as a trio.

If you were going to be a group in this field, you needed a name. Finding a name for the group at this time was difficult. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of wannabe folk groups in the area, as well as professional groups springing up all over the country to capitalize on the folk music tidal wave.

For one of our early engagements in November 1963, we called ourselves The Chanteymen. The name was my idea, taken from a type of folk music called a “sea chantey” – songs sung by sailors as they worked. None of us was too taken by the name. It was in January 1964 that we settled on the name, The Lexingtons. I was the one who came up with the name, I think. Again, we were not completely happy with the name but it was the best we could find in the blizzard of folk groups at the time.

If I was going to play in a folk group in front of people, I needed a better sounding guitar than my plywood Stella. I saved up my money and soon bought a Martin D-18. It was not the model I really wanted (I really wanted a Martin D-28 but they were very expensive) but it was a Martin – the same brand that the Kingston Trio played.

It may be difficult for you to imagine what it was like back then. Imagine going into a music store to buy an acoustic guitar only to find just five or ten acoustic guitars in the whole store. Most of them were cheap “learners” like my Stella. Some stores we went into had none! Zero. (The waiting time for some models of Martin guitars was over six months. For certain Gibson and Epiphone guitars it was three months.) The fad-driven demand for guitars was so strong that Martin had to build a new factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. There was a world-wide shortage of rosewood – used in making some guitars.

Unfortunately, I soon found that my D-18 sounded too loud and bright with weak bass. I wanted a more mellow sound. I tried all sorts of things to modify the sound of my Martin – different picks, different strings, stuffing the sound box with foam or cloth - but nothing worked.

We worked all summer of 1963 putting together a one hour program of songs. Most of the material was from the Kingston Trio but there were a few songs from other similar groups. Our first engagement was at a Hootenanny (the term for a gathering where folk music was performed) at the Lutheran church that John and I attended on September 1, 1963. We did nineteen songs, twelve were from the Kingston Trio. [I should point out that we did not use sheet music or notes to help us remember the words of our songs during our performances. We sang all of our material from memory.]

This endeavor was so important and satisfying to me that I started a scrapbook – something I have never done before or since - and recorded most of the events and songs that we sang. I even saved the little three by five cards that I taped to my guitar to remember the program. Somehow this scrapbook has survived forty-four years of storage and moving. Somewhere late in this process, I wrote a narrative about our little folk group, from which this article is based.

On September 15, just two weeks later, we performed again at a church function. This time it was the Annual Ice Cream Social. We sang three songs as well as three “sing along” songs requested by some adults to better engage the audience. The following month, on October 30, 1963, we played at the Annual Father and Daughter Funfest at the Lutheran church where we played four songs.

A few days later, on November 3, 1963, we played at a special Hootenanny for the youth group at Saint Luke’s Lutheran church. We called ourselves the Chantymen and did seventeen songs for the mostly female audience. I was beginning to like this idea of mine even more than I thought I would.

The following month we played at the Canoga Park High School French Club dinner, doing thirteen songs for the mostly female audience. About this same time we played at a Jewish Temple social event, a dance and dinner, if I recall correctly. We played five songs. The dates of these two events are not recorded. They were to be our last gigs with John.

John was forced to drop out because his parents thought there was too much difference in our ages. John was still in high school while Erik and myself were now in college. None of us were happy with this situation and we parted on good terms.

It was during this time of hunting for a new member that an important relationship was formed. A young man from the Lutheran church I attended expressed his interest in playing in a folk group. He about my age and his name was Dave Griffey. During some casual playing we found that he was a good guitar player (better than me) and a good singer (also better than me). We would find that he had a sense of stage presence that added more energy and sparkle to the more laid-back nature of Erik and myself.

He and another guy, Mike Lanphier, joined Erik and I to practice for a performance at the 1964 Cleveland High school Talent Show on January 3,1964. This was the first time we billed ourselves as “The Lexingtons”. Being a new group, we were nervous and because there were four of us, the technical people decided to give us two microphones. This spread us out on the stage and made us look like two groups. We sang two songs. Afterwards, word from friends in the audience ranged from they “could not hear” us, to “we sounded bad”. After the performance we found that only one of the mikes was turned on. We were not happy with this performance.

On February 3, 1964, the four of us played in a small club called The Pump Room. I do not know how we found out about this venue. It may have come through Mike. I have only vague recollections of this place (somewhere on Ventura Boulevard with blue lights shining on the building and a water fountain/pool outside?). We sang three songs. After this Mike left the group. He had a new girlfriend and between school and other activities, he did not have time to practice with us.

I should point out here that we were very serious about practicing. We tried to practice two or three times a month, and several times during the week just before a date. Each rehearsal session would last from two to four hours. And we sang most of that time. We worked at it. We had fun and laughed a lot, but we were serious about our sound. We wanted to sound as good as the professionals. We worked on our harmonies. We also spent a lot of time on beginnings and endings – starting and stopping together. These were exercises in timing – critical to a polished sound.

At the same time, we did not want to sound exactly like our mentors, The Kingston Trio. We wanted to develop our own style and sound. Basically, we used the material we borrowed from the professional groups as a base on which to build our own sound. This rather rigorous schedule put off our less motivated members who had other things going on in their life. I add this to dispel the possible impression that the guys that left our group were less talented or capable than those of us who stayed. Not necessarily so. Erik and I just worked them too hard.

On May 22, 1964, The Lexingtons – as a trio – performed at the Lutheran church Pot-luck Dinner. For reasons now forgotten (job?), Dave could not join Erik and I for this engagement, and John Gretzinger filled in. Blast from the past. We sang three songs.

On June 14, 1964, Dave rejoined Erik and myself at the annual Lutheran church Bar-B-Q dinner. We sang five songs that evening. Then Dave, busy with a summer job and other personal business (perhaps there was a girl in there somewhere) left the group. But this was not the last we would see of Dave.

The search for a new member began with a newspaper ad and several three by five cards posted on bulletin boards in area music stores and colleges. One ad for a new member paid off. A young man named Tom Drosman called me one evening. The interview was brief and we made an appointment to audition him in my back patio. We found that Tom knew some of the songs we sang, could sing okay, play guitar passably and he liked the Kingston Trio style of folk music. He was “hired” and we started to practice to get him up to speed on our arrangements.

Our first engagement with Tom was at the annual Ice Cream Social at the Lutheran church in September 1964. We sang four songs. Soon afterward, Tom introduced Erik and myself to a friend of his, Bill Botticher (pronounced “bettiger”), an acoustic bass player. After a rehearsal wherein Bill joined us to see if we could work together, he became the sometime fourth member of the group. Bill was an excellent bass player, had a good sense of humor, and had a good ear for music that provided valuable input to our arrangements as we worked on new material.

The new group of Erik, Steve, Tom and Bill played at the Canoga High School French Club Christmas dinner, on December 21, 1964, doing 12 songs and two encores (!).

My quest for the “perfect” sounding guitar culminated in my buying an Epiphone guitar from a music store called Zepp’s. This was done by violating the golden rule of guitar buying - never buy a guitar without hearing and playing it first. I did this because he had the best price I could find for this instrument model in a seller’s market. With no guitars in his store, the store owner took my money and ordered it from the Epiphone factory. The delivery date was from sixty to ninety days. After a couple of months, I called Zepp’s every Saturday morning to inquire if my guitar had come in. Finally, one Saturday the answer was, yes. Erik and I drove over to the store and picked it up. Finally, I had a guitar that I liked. I sold my Martin to Tom. He was thrilled and I was too.

On January 15.1965, we played at a Canoga Park High School Sports Night, doing nine songs, and again, two encores.

After this last event, Tom became increasingly preoccupied with a new female companion and it was difficult to schedule our long practice sessions. Finally, we told Tom we had to have someone we could count on. Unable to promise this, Tom left the group. The breakup was amicable but disappointing. Erik and I began – again - look for another, more dependable - and available - member. Bill agreed to stay with us, much to the delight of Erik and I.

The replacement for Tom was a familiar person – Dave Griffey. His schedule was different now and he wanted to get back with us. After a couple of practice sessions, this new/old group (including Bill on bass) played another Canoga Park High School Sports Night on March 19, 1965, singing seven songs plus an encore.

On April 11, 1965, Erik, Dave, Bill, and myself played at a little folk club in Hollywood called The Garret. The program was open (only) to amateurs on Friday or Saturday night, and each person or group was limited to a maximum of three songs. Most of the acts were solo kids singing dreary Bob Dylan antiwar dirges, or their own whiney compositions of similar ilk. Knowing that this crowd was composed of many “purists”, we wondered if The Lexingtons would be booed off the stage.

After putting our name on the program list, we went out in the back parking lot to tune up and practice one last time. Big mistake. The weather that evening was unusually cold for southern California – about 40 degrees. Our breath turned to fog as we sang. After bringing our instruments in from the cold to the warm little club we waited for our turn to play.

When our name was called and we crowded onto the little six by six stage and hit our first chord we realized we were badly out of tune and spent the next minute or so in front of the restless crowd re-tuning our instruments. (steel guitar strings are very sensitive to temperature. Tuning our instruments in the cold and then going into a warm club caused the strings to warm up and stretch out of tune. It was a lesson we never forgot.)

We did three songs (two of them Kingston Trio covers) and, to our surprise and delight, we brought down the house. The crowd called us back for two encores. The owner/manager of the club was not happy. She evidently felt that we were professionals that had crashed her little amateur program. We knew better and left the club elated. It was the greatest of compliments to be accused of being a professional group.

On May 22, 1965 we played at the UNICO National Dinner at the invitation from, of all people, Tom Drosman. (UNICO is an organization that celebrates the heritage of Italian Americans) We played four songs to a huge crowd of several hundred. I was terrified at the ocean of people sitting at the dozens of tables in the big auditorium. We were largely ignored but received several compliments from a handful of attendees after our performance.

Our next gig came on September 14, 1965 when we played at the UCLA Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity rush party. We did three sets of six songs each. In between sets we visited with some of the college guys and several of our girl friends who came along. Back stage, we sang along with some of the rock and roll songs that were played as background music for the party.

We sang two or three songs at a talent show at Canoga Park high school. I did not record when this event took place, but it seems that it was late in our short career. The highlight of the event was when we were singing “Hard Ain’t It Hard”. I was supposed to sing the second verse as a solo, as usual on this song. It was a fast song and the group was getting into it, I was pumped and ready to do my part, but when I stepped up to the microphone, my mind went totally blank. I could not remember any of the words I was supposed to sing. I had been listening and singing this song for four or five years. I knew all of the verses by memory, yet, at this moment I stood there looking at the packed auditorium, helplessly strumming my guitar along with the rest of the group, wishing I could disappear under the stage. At the end of my blown verse, Erik looked at me with a murderous expression as he joined the group in the chorus. I had no problem remembering the chorus as I sang along. In fact, as soon as I stepped away from the mic, I remembered my verse – too late. It was the only time in all of our performances that something like that happened to me.

Our last engagement as a group was on October 1, 1965 where we again played a Canoga Park High School Sports Night. We sang five songs and did one encore.

The Vietnam war was raging and my student deferment had been changed to 1-A – prime meat for going to war. At the suggestion of my dad, I paid a visit to the local Army recruiter and enlisted in the United States Army. I was scheduled to go in on February 14, 1966. The Lexingtons were finished.

During the three years that the group had been together, popular folk music had changed. It had evolved from re-done mountain tunes and pseudo folk compositions played on acoustic instruments, to a blend of contemporary/political songs performed with electric instruments and drums. This shift in “folk” music is widely credited to Bob Dylan, and he surely had some influence on the evolution of the genre. But he was not the first to employ an electric instrument to folk material. The first to do it was a southern California club singer named Trini Lopez, who released a version of “If I Had A Hammer” on his album “Live At PJ’s in Hollywood”. We heard the song many times and disdained the sound of electric instruments and drums on “our” songs. That was rock and roll. We liked rock and roll, but we did not like the blending of folk and rock and roll instrumentation. Unfortunately for us, most everyone else did.

The effect of this release, and others, was to sweep the base of popularity for acoustic folk music out from under the style of music The Lexingtons played, leaving them (and hundreds of groups like them) with no one to play for.

And so, through the rising din of electric music, Steve, Erik, Dave, and Bill played their last engagement together in the same building where the group had started. Their last notes, and the group, drifted away and were quickly forgotten by all but a handful of people, scattered by the winds of time and circumstance, never to be resurrected again.

(Pretty poetic, huh?)

New Picture for my blog

Since I was able to visit my sister in Portland over the Christmas holiday, and we were able to go to the coast one day during my visit, and we were blessed with a beautiful (if cold) day at a famously picturesque spot, and the weather was excellent for picture-taking, and we were blessed with a beautiful sunset, and I was able to take over 150 pictures of the area in various shades of bright sunlight, and I was able to take several pleasing pictures of the sunset, I thought I would replace my previous heading picture of the Oregon coast with a new picture of the Oregon coast.

So I did.
Hope you like it.

This is also my new desktop image.
The location is Cannon Beach.
And, yes, I did tweak the colors a bit, but not as much as I did on the picture that was here previously.

By Request - Some Thots on Romans 5

The following is a response to a request by Chad and Jamie.
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WARNING! Some of what you are about to read is considered heresy by many Christian theologians. Consider carefully what you are reading before you accept any idea presented herein.
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The following is a portion of a larger Bible study on why all people are sinners. In the course of this study, using only the Bible as my source material, I came to a conclusion that I was told later was heresy. This paper is currently under review by a minister and will be published on the internet later. Your comments and questions are welcome.
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Let us examine one of the most extensive passages of scripture on the subject of sin.

Romans 5.12-21

12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.
13 (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
15 But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.
16 And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification.
17 For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)
18 Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.
19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.
20 Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more,
21 so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

From these verses we see that:

1 Sin (disobedience to the known commands/law/will of God) entered the world through Adam. (v 12)
2 (Spiritual) death entered the world through this act of disobedience. (v 12)
3 Death has spread to all people because all people have sinned. (v 12)
4 God does not charge people with sin where there is no law (standard of behavior). (v 13)
5 Spiritual death exercised an oppressive influence over people from the time of Adam to the time of Moses. (v 14)
6 It did not matter if people committed sins different from that of Adam, death still was the result. (v 14)
7 Adam is a pattern of Christ. (v 14)
8 The gift (of salvation from sinning) is different (the opposite) from the first offense (sin). (v15, 16)
9 The first offense caused many to die. (v 15)
10 The gift and the undeserved favor of God covered many. (v 15)
11 The one offense of Adam caused condemnation. (v 16)
12 The free gift (of salvation from sinning) brought justification (judicial innocence, acquittal) to many people. (v 16)
13 The actions of Adam caused death to exercise a dominant influence over many others. (v 17)
14 The actions of Christ caused an abundance of undeserved favor to be available to those who choose to receive it. (v 17)
15 The actions of Christ caused the gift of righteousness to be given to those who choose to receive it. (v 17)
16 The actions of Christ will allow those who choose to receive it to reign in this life. (v 17)
17 Because of Adam's offense, condemnation (judicial guilt) came upon all people. (v 18)
18 The righteous act of Christ caused the free gift (of salvation from sinning) to be available to all people. (v 18)
19 The righteous act of Christ caused those who receive it to be judged innocent before God. (v 18)
20 Adam's disobedience caused many to become sinners. (v 19)
21 The actions of Christ caused many to be judged innocent. (v 19)
22 The purpose of the Old Testament law is to expose, define and measure disobedience. (v 20)
23 The undeserved favor of God more than offsets the effects of sin. (v 20)
24 Sin exercised a dominant influence through/with death. (v 21)
25 The undeserved favor of God has reigned in righteousness resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ. (v 21)

Note that, according to this passage, sin did not spread to all men, death did (v 12). It says, sin entered the world (v 12). Obviously, the term “world” does not mean the dirt and plants and water of the planet, it means the people living in the world. Logic tells us that "sin" was not simply floating around in the air. The concept or principle of sin entered the world for Adam and Eve when they decided to commit a single act of knowing disobedience to the command of God.

Here is a point to consider: when did “sin enter the world”? Was it when Adam and Eve committed their first act of disobedience, or when Adam and Eve were created and given the ability to make moral/spiritual choices? Was “sin in the world” only after the incident at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or was “sin in the world” prior to that event in the form of potential? Are not all children potential sinners from the day they are born? The answer is yes. But this is not the same thing as an inheritance of a “sinful nature” as many espouse. It is simply the result of bad moral/spiritual choices that will inevitably be made.

And verse 12 says that all people have sinned. From this we understand that other people committed acts of disobedience after Adam and Eve did. And because all people have disobeyed God, spiritual death has spread to all of us. Sin and death are linked, but not as some have presented it. The concept described here is the reverse of what many Christian ministers teach. We must be careful to read what these verses say (and do not say). It is easy to interpret these verses as saying what we think they should say to support a preconceived concept.

What this passage does not describe is a cause of why or how all people after Adam sinned. Nowhere does this passage say that anything sinful was inherited or passed on genetically or spiritually. That all people are or were sinners is not at issue. The key question is WHY. And why all people are sinners is not described here.

Verse 15 is of special interest. It says that many died because of Adam's sin. Does this not teach that the spiritual/moral choice of Adam and Eve affected all people? Be careful. Paul is presenting a logical moral comparison. Read the rest of the verse. It says that “...the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.“

Does this mean that just because Jesus died as the complete sacrifice for all sins of all people that all people are automatically saved? No. We know from other scriptures that each person must engage with God/Christ/the Spirit in an act of repentance and conversion for the benefits of Christ's sacrificial death to be effective in our individual case. In the same way, just because Adam and Eve were the first sinners, they did not affect you and me directly. It is only when we participate in the same sort of activity that they did (disobedience) that we receive the same consequences that they did. So, in copying Adam's transgression we all die, just as he did.

The Greek word translated "reigned" in verse 14 is "basiluo". It means, to rule, to exercise authority, to influence, to force compliance.
The term "sin" is translated from the Greek word "harmateeah", and means, an offense, sin, to miss an intended mark, to err, to miss a prize or reward.

SOME RANDOM THOTS ON ORIGINAL SIN AND HUMAN DEPRAVITY

WARNING – Some of what you are about to read is considered heresy by many Christian theologians. (I don't care)


Those who study the Bible with the motive to codify its facts, themes, principles, and doctrines – theologians – have generally settled on a few basic teachings about God and people.
One of these has been named “Original Sin” after the first act of disobedience of Adam and Eve, the first people on the planet.

Related to this is the popular notion among said theologians of the spiritual/moral Total Depravity of humans. Meaning, that all people are totally and helplessly sinful, rebellious and morally bankrupt. They are incapable of thinking or doing anything good (as defined by God) and, thus, are hopelessly doomed to go to hell when they die. That is, unless God himself, intervenes in some way, with some mechanism/process/person to provide an escape. This concept includes the requirement that people are so completely unspiritual and devoid of moral will, that God must give them the impulse to recognize the workings of God, the will to repent and the faith to believe that God even exists and will do what he has promised.

These two basic concepts are supported by various and numerous scripture passages, some providing more lucid validation than others. The link between Original Sin and Total Depravity for many students of doctrine is basically that the sin of Adam and Eve changed them spiritually and, thus, their offspring and descendants, including you and me. So, stated another way, you and I are Totally Depraved because Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden of Eden 10,000 or so years ago.

This is like you being held liable for a car wreck because someone stole your grandfather's car and hit another car. Even though you were not in the car, you were related to the owner of the car and, thus, you are responsible. So, Adam and Eve messed up way back then and now you and I are Totally Depraved. Too bad. This is believed by many Christian theologians in spite of the absence of a single scripture verse that specifically supports this association.

To be clear, there are many scriptures that support and/or describe the Original Sin. And there are many scriptures that support and/or describe the Total Depravity of people. But there are no scriptures that link the two concepts. Despite this, the invisible link is commonly believed.

But I began to ponder this link of Original Sin and Total Depravity. There is no doubt that the first – or Original – sin took place. Genesis 3 describes it in detail. It even describes some of the ramifications of the act, both implied and actual. Other scriptures refer to it or are phrased as if it happened. But the Bible does not specifically state that all the descendants of Adam and Eve will be Totally Depraved – or even partially depraved. In fact, it states nothing about this. Nothing. Anywhere.

In fact, Genesis 3 clearly states that the “first” sin was not committed by Adam or Eve. It was committed by the snake, almost universally understood to be the devil. He told a lie to Eve to entice her to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All the theologians seem to ignore this detail. If they did not, they would be referring to the sin of Adam and Eve as the Second Sin. But I digress.

How or why does the Original Sin result in my Total Depravity? It would be so if God said it was so, but he does not. This is not to say that I was (prior to my repentance and conversion) not a sinner. Or that I was not Totally Depraved. Or Partially Depraved. Or 37.925 percent Depraved. The key question is, why was I Totally Depraved? Was it because of Adam and Eve or because of something that I had done?

The Bible provides some help here. It is rich with scriptures that portray people as being sinners, sinful, rebellious, “stiff-necked”, undone, as wandering away, etc. But there are a few verses that indicate that people are not completely sinful or guilty of sin in all circumstances.

Romans 2:14-15

14 for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves,
15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them)

Romans 5:13

13 (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. )

Even though both of these references are fragments of sentences, a full reading of the context of each will prove that I am interpreting them accurately.

Basically, both of these references state that guilt for sin is relative. Said another way, there are two types of sin – that which we are charged with by God (imputed), and that which we are not charged with by God. Technically, both actions are sin (the violation of a law or command or will of God). How can we sin and not be charged, you ask? Because God says so. It is when God knows that we are ignorant of a command (“law”) for that particular act/thought/emotion/motive. Morally or spiritually, innocence is simply ignorance. Here is another scripture on this concept:

James 4:17

17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.

So, culpability for sin is related to knowledge of the will/commands/law of God. Still skeptical? Lets take the logical reverse of this statement and see how it reads:
“Therefore, to him who does not know to do good and does it, to him it is not sin.”

The concept holds up both ways.

How can this be? This is one way the grace – undeserved love and favor – of God overrides a spiritual/moral law of God. This makes sin relative. Not by our human measure, but in God's omnipotent view of justice mixed with love and grace. You doubt this?

Consider the following scenario: You are a saved person, doing your best to obey all the will/commands/law of God you know about. You know that you do not know all of God's commands, but are trying to obey all that you know of them. While in church service one Sunday morning, a point is mentioned during the sermon that speaks directly to you. You learn that the Bible says that a certain matter should be handled in a specific way. You know that you have not been handling this matter in this way. You realize that all this time you have been committing a sin by handling this matter in this way. You may or may not be condemned by the Spirit of God to repent, but you are urged to change the way you handle this matter from then on. This is a common scenario. It has happened to me several times. I know of many others who have had this same experience.

Some questions -
Was handling the matter in a way not prescribed by the Bible a sin?
Yes. The Spirit of God clearly pointed this out to you.
Was it a sin before the believer (you, in this case) found out about it in the church service? Yes.
Was it a sin after the believer (you, in this case) found out about it in the church service?
Yes.
Why were you not bothered by the way you handled the issue before you went to the church service?
Because you were ignorant of the Biblical command/law on the matter. You were innocent. Not willingly ignorant. You were not trying to avoid certain knowledge to ensure your ignorance/innocence. On the contrary, you were seeking to learn as much as you could about the will/commands/law of God because you loved him and wanted to please him as much as possible. Part of you welcomed this new information, even though you felt badly that you had been violating God's law/command in this area. Because of this, God did not charge you with sin in this specific area. However, from this point on, if you fail to obey this new knowledge, you will feel condemnation because God will charge you with transgression of a (now) known command. From now on, you will have to repent for violations of this command.

Some refer to this as “walking in the light” (1 John 1:7), or “progressive revelation”, or “sanctification”. It is the process of growing progressively more holy, or more like God. This comes, first by more knowledge of the law/commands of God and, through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, the ability to obey this new knowledge. While it is more than just new knowledge, knowledge is part of walking in the light/sanctification.

Here is another way to look at this principle: God knows what every sin is. Let's say there is a total of 100 different sins any person could commit. That is all the sins any human can be guilty of. When someone comes to God to repent, they may be guilty of 50 of the 100 sins. God knows exactly what these 50 sins are, when they were committed, how often they were committed, etc. But because of the imperfect memory of this person, they can only repent of 10 of the 50. They either have forgotten that they committed some sins or they did not know that the things they did were sinful in the first place. One cannot repent of something they are not aware of. But when God forgives this person, he forgives them for all the 50 sins that he knows the person is guilty of. They now have a clean slate in the view of God. No sins. None. Zero.

But as this new Christian goes about living his/her new life, they unknowingly repeat some of the 40 sins they were forgiven of. These are not part of the 10 sins that they repented of, these are part of the 40 that they did not repent of because they did not know about or remember them. This is not because they are willingly disobedient, it is because they are ignorant of the law/commands of God in this area. Because they are ignorant/innocent of these sins, God forgives them through his grace. He does not condemn them or charge them (impute) with these other 40 sins. Yet.

Over time, as the new believer reads the Bible, goes to worship services, builds new relationships with other believers, God through the Spirit brings these other 40 sins to the attention of the new believer, one at a time, and instructs him/her to stop committing them. Not only does the Spirit of God instruct the new believer about these 40 sins, he gives them the spiritual strength to overcome them. Over time, the 40 unrepented sins will become 39 and then 38, and so on. Thus, God only charges a person with sin he/she has knowledge of, even though God knows all 100 possible sins, and the 50 sins he/she had committed, and the 40 sins he/she has not yet repented of.

It may be that a person may never repent or stop committing all the sins that God sees. Again, this is not because the person is rebellious or actively disobedient, it is just because they are ignorant of the law/commands of God in these areas. This is where the grace if God comes into play. This is why all of us need the undeserved love and favor (grace) of God, even after we are saved. The grace of God covers the sins we are not aware of.

Does this mean that people cannot live holy, as God commands?
No. But it does mean that the holiness of believers is relative, just as sin is. This issue is not whether holiness is commanded or achievable – it is clearly taught in the scriptures. The issue is, what is the nature of human holiness.
Can a human be as holy as God?
No.
Can a human live a holy life as commanded by God?
Yes. But that is not the same as being as holy as God is.

God is holy by nature, humans are not. Humans are holy by regeneration. We must be born again. But people are still subject to temptation; God is not. People are still subject to failure, temptation and sin. God is not. So, even though people can live in a holy way according to the commands of God, they are not holy by nature, as God is. Thus, holiness is relative just as sin is relative..

Professor Calvin and his students are both correct and overly protective of the concept of the moral depravity of people. Their fear, it seems, is that someone will (incorrectly) read in the scriptures and/or believe that some people can, by their own moral strength and will, do enough good, in either quantity or magnitude, to earn eternal salvation with God. Thus, the Calvinists exaggerate the magnitude of human moral depravity beyond what is pictured by the scriptures.

I understand their concerns and sympathize with them to some degree. But I will not tie my logic, and my theology, into unscriptural knots defending a principle that the scriptures do not support to the same degree.

To say that humans are capable of doing some good is not the same as saying that humans are capable of earning sufficient merit in the view of God for salvation from sin. There are numerous and clear scriptures that specifically disallow this. Given the strong scriptural antagonism for salvation by works, the fear of this concept should not be reason to distort the doctrine of human Depravity.

So, the sins of Adam and Eve did not cause the moral/spiritual depravity of all people, just their own. People caused their own depravity by their own acts of sin. And, conversely, even though people are capable doing some good, this in no way allows then sufficient merit to earn salvation from sin and entrance into God's heaven for eternity.

Class dismissed.

Thots on Lonely

It is Saturday evening.

My life is good.
It mostly has been good.
Good meaning, few problems.
My health has, and is, good.
My wealth is sufficient for my modest needs and virtually all of my wants.
Not bragging here, just saying.
These blessings are because God has been good to me.

But tonight, for no reason that I can discern, I am feeling lonely.
Very alone.
Feeling no connection to anyone.
All the people I know and love seem so very far away.

It is a feeling that comes to visit me from time to time.
Maybe it is my hormone time or something.
No matter.
I am feeling it tonight.
Strongly.

I remember nights like this 11 years ago when I was still married.
She was at one end of the house (or gone) and I was at the other (or gone to visit some friends).
She was struggling to figure out how to live with a man she did not like and who did not like her.
I was wondering if anything was ever going to change between us, knowing she did not like me (she told me this plainly with her mouth very calmly one day).
I had no feelings of “love” for her any more.
Ultimately, I got tired of waiting for something to happen.
I suppose I should have given the relationship more than 30 years to work itself out.
But I did not know what else to do.
The answers to my prayers seemed to be delayed longer than I could wait for.

The key thought that moved me out of that situation was that I would/could not be more lonely if I lived by myself.
And it turned out to be true.
I suspected that there would be nights like this.
And it has proven true.
And tonight is one of them.

The words of a song come to mind.....

“This is for all the lonely people
thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up
until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky”

I don't think of this song much.

I don't normally mope around.
This is a relatively rare event.
This is partly my fault.
I am not a social person.
Most of the time I like to be alone just living my little life.
But I don't hate people.

But I also know that I am not like most people.
I see things differently.
I believe differently.
I think differently.
Some of the things I see are things some other people do not see at all.
Some of these things are visual, physical things, but many other things I see are patterns of behavior or spiritual in nature.
I am not saying I am better than other people, I am just different.

I have felt this all of my life since I was in grade school.
In my teen years I was typical in that I tried to fit in the my pubescent peers.
But I found that it was easier to just be aloof.
I did not catch on to many of their fads and customs.
And, even then, I saw the emptiness of much of it.

I know that I could call someone now and connect with them.
But I also know that they will only be a voice on the other end of a phone line.
A disembodied electronic reproduction of the voice of the real person.
And they will be busy living their life which I will have interrupted to force them talk to me.
Interrupting the routine that kept them from connecting with me on their own.
And in the end, it will only magnify the distance between us.
It will only demonstrate how very far apart we really are.
So I won't.

I also know that tomorrow I will feel differently.
This mood will pass.
If only because I will be preoccupied with other things.
And all of this mopey dreary stuff will just be a faint memory.

Thots on Dirty Words....

As I was raking my leaves today in my front yard, a high-decibel argument erupted several houses down the street. I stopped to listen to be sure that no physical violence was taking place.
Apparently, the incident involved strictly verbal weapons.
As one teenage person walked away from the residence he yelled the supreme expletive to announce his disapproval and disrespect for those left behind.

This provoked a brief thought process within me.
It is interesting, amusing, and bothersome that in our society, the most common term to express one's most supreme negative feelings regarding a person or situation is an obscene term for sexual intercourse.
Sexual intercourse is, contrariwise, generally regarded by this same society as one of the most pleasurable, if not THE most pleasurable experiences one can partake in (right up there with eating).
Is this not odd to you?
It is to me.

So how is it that many in this society take a word that, though crudely and monosyllabicly, describes one of the most pleasant activities a person can engage in, and turn it into the penultimate descriptor of the most unpleasant?
It is totally illogical.
And, no doubt, confusing to the space aliens among us.

Which leads one to ponder, what would be a more logical expletive or phrase to express one's disapproval of another person or situation?
What word does the Esperanto language use? (Esperanto was a language invented by L.L. Zamenhof, a diplomat, to allow precise grades of agreement or disagreement in diplomatic negotiations.)
I don't know; I do not speak Esperanto.

Most of my thoughts on negative opinions revolve around kinds of refuse or excretive bodily functions.
Which quickly takes us to another popular – and equally offensive term – common in our society.
While this word is generally more appropriate to the expression of negative feelings/opinion, it's all-to-common usage often overstates the degree of alignment with the actual situation.
Overuse of a term dilutes its effectiveness.
I am still working on this.

Perhaps the most logical and descriptive negative phrase was created by Coco, the gorilla who was taught sign language for scientific research.
When asked by her trainer (in sign language) what she thought of the male gorilla that had been sent in to (hopefully) mate with her, she described him as a “devil-toilet”.
Fortunately, the male did not know sign language, so, other than being physically rebuffed, his monkey ego remained largely intact because he did not know the degree of his projected mate's rejection.

I continue to ponder this....
.

What is the basis of morality?

The United States is at a point in its history where it will continue to be a great nation or decline into a nation among nations and eventually be taken over by another nation.
But by then, there will not be much left to take.
This could happen in the next 10 years or within the next 50.

While this issue appears to be political, it is not.
The political manifestations we are seeing are only symptoms of its underlying source.
The true foundation of this struggle is moral and, ultimately, spiritual.

Some people will argue that we are, indeed, in a moral struggle, but see Christianity as a cause of the problem, rather than a solution.
To them, a “rational morality” (my term) needs to be the basis for all government policy, societal customs and economic policy.
They have been working to this end in this country for over 100 years.
And one of the prime tenets of this new morality is the suppression or removal of all things Christian.

Standing against this “rational morality” is the Christian community.
It is a community more in name than in organization or structure.
The one thing that nearly all groups and individuals which align themselves with this side of the debate have in common is division.
Very few of them have a working relationship with more than a few of the other members of the community.
The reasons for this rampant division can be summarized in two terms – doctrine or methods.

Some groups may “believe the right things” but put them into practice in ways that some other groups disapprove of.
Other groups do not believe the “right things” in the Bible, and thus, are not truly “Christian” to some degree or another, in the eyes of some other groups.
And those groups that emphasize “correct” doctrine, are accused of being “Bible thumpers”, closed minded, bigoted and divisive, by some of the other more liberal groups.
From this diverse expanse of views, some groups cannot even agree that there is a moral crisis.
Others are so distressed as to be almost to the point of despair of any remedy.

Those who support the “rational morality” have their own issues in that they have no single basis for their standard of “morality”.
They do not have – or need – a Bible.
This leads to a rather messy – and even conflicting - variety of standards on which to base their moral codes.
This is less of an issue for them than it is for the Christians, because the rationalists do not have to claim allegiance or conformity with a pre-established code.
They have the convenience of moral relativism to make some, if not many, of their pronouncements fit various untidy circumstances.
Christians, after all, have to adhere to some degree, to the person and/or teachings of Jesus Christ to claim the title.

But Christians, have a serious problem.
If we cannot comfortably accept the fact that God is the creator of the universe, in spite of constant “scientific” claims to the contrary, we have a problem.
It is a moral and spiritual problem.
If God is not the creator, as his book says he is, then, who is he?
And if God is not our creator, what else is he not?
And if the spiritual principles that were the foundation of the Old Testament law and the New Testament are no longer valid, what, then, is the basis of our moral conduct?
What do we use to guage right and wrong?
Are we individually responsible to God, or not?
(This question is, in fact, the basis for all rebellion, sin, and alternate moral codes.)

If some “Christians” cannot bring themselves to accept the Bible as the basis of their morality, they are destined to ride the same slippery slope of moral relativism as their opponents.
(And if a person cannot subscribe to all of the Bible, what is it that makes them “a Christian”?)

If we cannot depend on the Bible to be essentially the word of God, then we are wasting our time pondering Christianity.
We might as well sell all the church buildings and hit the links, the lakes or the couch in front of the big flat-screen.
By “essentially” I mean, its fundamental basis, logic, facts, principles, and concepts accurately present what God intended for people to know.
I know there are some minor errors in the texts here and there, like the two accounts in Acts, of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, and others.
There are some differences between some older texts and newer texts.
But these errors/differences do not materially alter the important facts or principles of the document as a whole.

And if moral relativism is not a valid basis for our morality, then moral absolutism must be.
There is no other choice.
And if moral absolutism is THE basis for our morality, then we need to make peace with the Bible.
We need to put to rest our doubts and concerns about some parts of it, and its inconvenient precepts that cramp our worldly, selfish living practices.

The natural state of people on this earth is chaos suppressed by totalitarian power.
People are naturally rebellious against restraint.
The entire history of the world can be summarized in a cyclical pattern of,
1 general social/economic chaos,
2 gradual local consolidation of political/military power (manifested as social/economic influence and voluntary or forced allegiance/conquest),
3 larger military conquests/subjection,
4 rebellion,
5 go back to number 1.

It is only the enforced rule of law that causes people to build stable societies.
Even then, enforced rule of law only restrains about 80-90 percent of the people.
Of this minority, about 10 percent commit occasional minor robbery, damage to the property of others, or assault on others.
The remaining 10 percent prey regularly, if not constantly, on the other law-abiding citizens, stealing anything they can, damaging property, and assaulting or killing anyone they can/need to.
These in this last group are essentially outcasts of the society at large and have little or no interest in conformity.
This group is either killed or isolated from the rest of society in confined living facilities.

The main group of our society chooses to conform, more or less, to our Christian-based moral code.
The two minority groups conform even less or not at all to the general moral standards of the society at large.

The founders of the United States recognized that a stable society required the willing cooperation of its citizens to survive.
For this to work, each citizen had to subscribe to a common fundamental philosophical perspective.
For the early nation this foundational perspective was Christianity.
There were several variations of belief throughout the colonies and early states.
But nearly all of them accepted the Bible as the basis for their moral code.
Some more strictly than others, but still, it was the basis for their society.
And the local, state, and national economies were based on this same foundation.

Why are the new moralists trying to change the United States?
Why do they not just move to some other country that already operates the way they think we should?
It surely would be easier for them.

I think it is because they are impressed with the massive wealth of the United States.
Some of them may not even realize this.
They think they can harness this gigantic wealth-producing machine and mold it in a way that it will finance the massive expense of their “moral” economy, government and society.
But that is the flaw in their thinking.

The incredible wealth-producing machine of the American economy works precisely because it is unencumbered by the innumerable constraints of other, more “moral” nations.
To impose the same constraints on the American economy that other nations put on their mechanisms of commerce would produce the same lumbering, near-stagnant economy here.
These new moralists do not understand this.

The new moralists also need a “moral” cause to fight for.
This is their substitute spirituality.
They have no moral tradition to defend.
They have no reason to exist.
They have no spiritual foundation.
For them, Vishnu is as valid as Buddah (but not Jesus Christ)

So they see the ills of society as being caused by Christianity, rightly or wrongly applied.
The economic ills of America are caused by the greed of businessmen.
Since the basis of the free enterprise system is the individualism promoted by Christianity, the free enterprise system must be brought under the control of the new morality also.

To put their plan in place will produce the same massive governmental economic/social dependencies that we see in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Greece.
And when they find that such social/economic/governmental arrangements are unsustainable, we will experience the same financial crisis we are seeing in these other nations.

And yet, while we write of social, economic, and governmental policies, these are only the symptoms of the underlying moral foundation.
We must return to our common moral foundation – the Bible.
The basis for a national moral concensis is individual moral integrety.
Every one of us must behave ourself.
All the time.
The measure for our morality must be the Bible.
This may not work for Mexico.
Or Canada.
Or Greece.
Or Iraq.
But it must be for the United States of America.
If not, we are doomed for collaps.

So, where are you?
Is the Bible your sole basis for your moral standards?
Do you believe God is our creator, just as the book says?
Is your conduct in conformity with what is written in the Bible?
If not, how do you justify your conduct to God?
We are saved by grace, not by works, but that is not an excuse for sloppy, disobedient living.

In God we trust.
.

Thots on the Hurting

It is Sunday evening.
Church is over.
I am home dealing with the after-church letdown.
For years, I have often felt a bit sad or pensive after church on Sunday evenings.
I am not sure why.
It could be because I have been in heavenly places, being challenged by the word and Spirit of God.
Mindful of fresh insights into the workings of God.
Encouraged to control myself more diligently so as to conform more fully to the will of God in the coming days.
And knowing that I must face the devil and his society tomorrow.
Maybe it is some of all of this.
No matter, here is that feeling again.

Tonight, I am aware that there are people hurting.
Right now.
All around me.
While we were in church doing our usual churchy thing there are thousands sitting home hurting.
Needing God but too ignorant or angry or afraid to seek him.
Dealing with problems, mostly because of the selfish actions of other people.
Or themselves.
Or with circumstances that seem overwhelming.
With children who are rebelling for reasons that are unclear.

There are women – wives, mothers – who are hurting because of selfish, unfaithful men.
Or they have their own demons or passions that they cannot contain.
And they are dealing with the repercussions.
And the guilt.

There is the military wife who has just lost her husband in battle.
She was dealing with the separation and looking forward to his coming home.
But not this way.
In a box.
She is angry and frustrated.
While she has seen some of her friends and neighbors suffer marriage problems and divorce, she and her husband were working through their problems.
She felt like they were doing well, and was looking forward to working on their relationship more when he got back.
Not now.
And she asks, why?
Why him?
Why now?
If that bullet had only been six inches farther to the left or right....
Why was it not so?
How could a loving God.....?

There are others, dealing with their problems by hiding in chemicals.
Some use alcohol.
Others use pills.
Still others use needles.
I cannot even relate to these people even though I have known some.
I do not know where to begin to help these people.

And here I sit, warm, cozy, comfortable, without any real problems.
And God has said, who will go?
And on one level I say, here am I.
But we both know I am scared and doubtful and hesitant.
So, while I am so aware of the needs around me tonight, I am also useless as an instrument for God to use.
All I can do I pray in intercession for these nameless people.
None of whom I really know (at least I don't think I know any of them).

And so I have prayed.
Prayed for the invisible hurting who are all around me.
They may be in the house next door, or across the street, or just two doors down.
Who knows?
I prayed that somehow God would minister to them.
That somehow he would arrest their thoughts.
That he would somehow comfort them.
That he would cause them to think of him or Jesus or some church.
Or to think of someone they know that could tell them about Jesus.
How he can heal the broken hearted.
How he can make a dreary life new.
How he can save them from sin, and sinning.

I know this is true but sometimes I doubt it myself.
There seems to be so few that have any interest in things spiritual these days.
I wonder if anyone even cares about heaven or hell anymore.
I do.
Some at church do.
But not even everyone at church seems to care sometimes.
Or at least, care as much as I think they ought to.
Only about half of the people who come on Sunday morning come Sunday night.
Why?
And I wonder what they see when they look at me.
Do I seem to care about spiritual things as much as they think I should?
And what does God think of me?
Is all he sees is a scared little old man?

In God we trust.
.

RANDOM THOTS

I have had a few thoughts lately that I expected to become worthy of a blog post.
But, alas, that has not happened.
So, in the interest of keeping this blog alive, I will post these random thoughts just for the sake of public information.
Knowing that once I publish them, the world will take notice and will follow the trends that I create.

CARS

It may come as a surprise to some but I pay attention to the automobile business.
I follow who owns what companies, who builds what cars, what cars are selling the most (or not), etc.
I also form opinions about automobile styling.
So here are my latest pontifications on automobiles.....

Best looking cars - almost any built by Hyundai or Kia (really)
The 2011 Sonota is the best looking sedan I have seen in years.
The 2011 Kia Optima is a close second (basically the same car underneath).
I like the new Kia Sportage and its cousin the Hyundai Tucson.
I like the soon-to-come 2012 Ford Focus hatchback.
Can't wait to see one in person.
Regarding styling, Honda HAD some of the best looking cars around.
No more.
They have lost their way.
Toyota - the same.
Though, in Toyota's defense, they never have had any nice-looking cars after the early Celecas.
Instead, Toyota has one of the ugliest cars on the planet - the Scion xB (B as in BOX).
This is followed by everything made by Mazda in the last three years or so.
What were they thinking?

THE DEATH PENALTY

Easy segway, right?
It occurred to me the other day that there is no logic is sentencing a criminal to life in prison.
Basically, his/her punishment for committing his/her crime is a cozy heated and air conditioned room, three free meals each day, free health care, for the rest of his/her life.
That punishment costs the rest of us about $30,000 a year.
40 years @ $30,000 = $1,200,000.
That is a million dollars to babysit this bum.
Multiply that times several thousand prisoners and you have a few billion dollars tossed in the toilet.

Alternate suggestion - KILL THEM.
In fact, there should be no prisoners in the state or federal penal hotels with a sentence longer than 30 years.
All the rest of these long-term lifers need to be gently and quietly put out of our misery.

The logic is simple.
Look at our society as a large version of a small, local community; like a small rural town.
The citizens at some point decided that they needed to hire one of themselves to watch out for all the rest of them on a full-time basis.
If one or two of the local folks got out of line (meaning, violating the rules/customs of behavior accepted by the majority of the group), the local, full-time appointee would have the authority to arrest the violators and restrict their interactions with the community.
For most violations, a few days in the community interaction restriction facility (jail) would be enough to inspire the violators to modify their behavior to the satisfaction of the community at large.

But every once in a while, somebody does something really nasty/destructive/harmful such that a slap on the wrist is not considered sufficient punishment by the community.
In this case the violator deserves more severe/lengthy restrictions from future interactions with said community.
Thus, the community has the right to protect itself from all future interactions with such an individual by killing him/her.
As our nation has matured, it has drifted away from some of this basic logic of punishment for criminals.
We need to get some of it back.

We need to kill a few thousand criminals in this country who are of no value to themselves, to our society, and are living off of our dime.
It is time to cut the budget.

Un-Christian, you say?
You reap what you sow, Bubba.

And there is another class of criminal all too common in this country - repeat offenders.
I have a simple solution for these anti-social individuals, too.
Kill them.
My solution is simple - Three Strikes And You're Dead.

The third conviction for ANYTHING gets you a free ticket to your very own hole in the dirt.
If a person proves that they cannot conform to the values and customs of their neighbors then they need to be removed from society - permanently.

Rapists need to be eliminated.
Child molesters need to be eliminated.
Petty thieves need to be eliminated.
This will greatly reduce our crime rate and jail population.
And it is cheap.

In God We Trust.
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Another Fun Run

It appears that I just cannot stop running.
As I have stated many times - I love to run.
LOVE it.
If I could stand it, physically, I would run every day.
Note the "if" above.

I am fully aware that I am violating a rule of running promoted by nearly all running coaches.
Run every two or three days to maintain your cardiovascular fitness.
Running less often can cause injuries as well as sub-par performance.
I don't run often enough.
And I don't warm up (contrary to what the running magazines say...)
And I have never been injured from/while running.
But I know that I ignore the professional's advice at my risk, so I am careful.
Especially at the beginning of a run.

My running course of choice lately is mile three and half of mile four of the six mile Cotton Row course, which contains two of the steepest hills of the course.
Most of this territory is along the first, or bottom mile of Bankhead parkway.
It proved to be adequate again this morning.

I had been toying with running this route again for a couple of weeks.
Last week I wimped out for some reason now forgotten.
I usually leave my options open on Saturday morning when I wake up, just to keep from feeling like I have failed in some way, if I do not choose to run.

Today was different.
I woke up ready.
As I was getting ready, I noticed my right ankle was hurting as I put weight on it.
Not good.
This was the same foot that shut down my walk last Tuesday near the beginning of mile three.
So even though this pain was a one or two on a ten scale, I was wary.

Thus, mentally prepared for a physical catastrophe, I motored off to my course of choice in the early dawn darkness.
The temperature was a near-perfect 65 degrees and the sky was mostly clear with a few thin stratus clouds and no wind.

I parked the car, got out, and walked to Pratt Avenue (about 75 feet) and started trotting.
No foot/ankle pain. (grins...)
But this is no guarantee of a trouble-free party.
Remember the ankle problem during Tuesday morning's walk did not present itself until mile three.
With all of this parked safely in my brain, up the increasing incline of Pratt I went.

It was dark, and I took my time.
There are several street lights along this road (though there is about a half mile of near darkness), but they do not always reveal drop-offs, bumps or unevenness on the chosen path.
So, I ran carefully, picking up my feet a tad more to prevent stumbles.

I managed to keep my breathing in my comfort range all the way up Bankhead, which pleased me.
Even so, I was glad to make the right turn onto Tollgate which is essentially flat.
It was here that I encountered five male runners coming at me.
They seemed to be in their mid-late twenties and were talking and having a good time.
We exchanged monosyllabic greetings and kept going our respective directions.
After a quarter mile or so I came to Mountainwood - the dreaded hill.
At this point I stopped running and walked down this very steep road - all 600 feet of it.
As you regular readers may recall, the bottom half of this street is as steep as the roof of a house (about 15 degrees) and is paved with grooved concrete instead asphalt.
Anyway, I walked to the bottom, turned around and started back up the hill.
Still no foot/ankle problems.

I walked up the first half of The Hill, then began running again, as has been my habit for several years on this patch of American real estate, where the pavement changes from concrete to asphalt, and the pitch changes from 15 degrees to about 10.
Back up on Toll Gate I was looking forward to the flat/downhill jog.

It was during the journey down Bankhead that my mind drifted (a sure sign of a great run) and I began to ponder something, which now I cannot recall.
The last running-related thing I remember thinking about was the long, straight downhill sidewalk ahead of me, and the next running-related thing I remember was coming to the end of the long downhill straight and going around the long curve and wondering how I got here so fast.

Near the bottom of Bankhead Parkway is a painted marker indicating the end of mile four of the Cotton Row course.
The sky was lighter now and I was looking for it just for fun.
But as I glanced over to my left to locate the marker, I saw a lady runner.
She was trotting silently along the uphill lane of the road, her brown pony tail wagging behind her head.
Even though I was running downhill, she had caught up to me and was passing me.
As I divided my attention between the sidewalk in front of me and her, I noticed she had excellent running form.
No sissy-girl half-strides for this mama, her strides were eating up the real estate in big gulps.
I was impressed.
Any pain in my right foot/ankle was far from my mind.


At the bottom of the hill, Bankhead changes pitch and becomes Pratt Avenue.
The gentle decline (now) of Pratt is one of my favorite patches of pavement on the planet to run on.
Often I can pad along this quarter-mile route in full abandon almost as if I am floating.
This was not to be this morning.

As I moved from the sidewalk to the road, as is my habit here, I was about 20 feet behind Miss brown ponytail.
After a few seconds she pealed off to the right and turned onto a side street.
I don't know if that was her plan or if I made her nervous, but she left the party.
So I had Pratt to myself.
Not.

Then came the cars and trucks.
I don't know what was going on but a lot of people had to be up on Monte Sano early this morning.
So I had to spend about half of my time running in the gravel next to Pratt instead of running ON Pratt.
*$%^&*

Anyway, I turned off of Pratt and stopped reluctantly near my car and walked a few hundred feet to cool down.
I would have loved to go farther.
But that was not the plan and would have required some logistical/time problems.
This would have to be good enough.
I had a great run.
And no foot/ankle pain.

In God we trust.
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