Insense

Miracles as Parables: Encountering the Love of God Through Jesus' Miracles

2007-12-07T22:30:00.000-05:00

A striking thought occurred to me tonight while viewing Thomas Road Baptist Church's Virginia Christmas Spectacular for the second time. It dawned on me during the portrayal of Jesus' life and ministry here on earth.

A scene in the production displays several classical New Testament stories. It begins with the woman who touched Jesus' robe in order to be healed from her bleeding. The action on stage then switches to include the confrontation between the Pharisees and Jesus over a woman "caught" in adultery. The scene closes with the portrayals of a leper being healed, a dead girl being raised, and if I remember correctly, a blind man being restored his sight.

The aspect of all these miracles that really stirred my heart and mind, however, came through the dialogue being spoken in each instance and the physical (yet also symbolic) nature of what was taking place. I'll begin examining these as I come across the actual texts in Scripture, so bear with me if they're out of order from what I mentioned above. There are two in particular on which I wish to focus.

Firstly comes the cleansing of the leper. Leprosy is a disease that, as quoted from the production, catches a man "between life and death." Matthew 8 contains the story of this leper. Notice that the leper first came to Jesus after hearing about what He was capable of doing, and that the leper had faith in Jesus' power. He did not ask Jesus if He could cleanse him, Matthew 8:2 reveals that the leper stated matter of factly, "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean." The leper had complete faith that God could make Him well. What was Jesus' reply? Verse 3 records it as being, "I am willing; be cleansed." So what's the important point here? The leper came to Jesus with faith, and God was willing to cleanse him.

The second instance I wish to investigate is found in Luke 8:40-48. In this portion of text, a woman experiencing prolonged, severe hemorrhaging forces her way through the crowd in order to touch Jesus' robe and be healed. Again, notice that she had faith in Jesus' power to heal her. She knew that all she had to do was touch Him. Notice also the contrast here between the leper: the leper asked Jesus to touch him and heal him, and the woman shoved her way through the crowd and reached out to touch Jesus herself. The one asked Jesus to touch him and cleanse him, while the other just reached out and touched Him herself.

I think these two miracles in particular reveal something deep about seeking God. I need more time to think about it, but I wonder now if all of the miracles Jesus performed in the New Testament almost serve as "real life" parables to illustrate other deeper concepts besides just physical healing or restoration.

It seems that these two instances of healing reveal truths about salvation and spiritual cleansing. Each of us is infected with a disease -- a disease of the soul. Like leprosy, it catches us between true life and true death. We also suffer internal bleeding. Blood is often associated with the heart, and most of us have experienced at least one traumatic heartbreak in our lifetimes. If not, it's on the way. The point is, the only way we can be cured of our spiritual leprosy and our hemorrhaging hearts is by Jesus' touch.

There seem to be two ways of accomplishing this end, however. As illustrated by the woman, we can just force through the crowd that represents everything in our lives holding us back from Jesus. Sometimes, though, we reach places in life where we need to earnestly approach God and ask for His cleansing touch. Either way, Jesus' power is greater than any disease we have of the body or soul. We need Him to heal our spiritual infirmity and loneliness. No scientist or pharmicist in the world can develop a medicine to cure the sickness of sin. Like leprosy, it rots away our souls catching us between life and death. Like hemorrhaging, it makes our hearts bleed with no end. The only thing that can cure us is to experience Jesus, to either reach out or let Him reach out to make us whole.

~Tribal~

Brokenness, Harlotry, and the Example of the Glowstick . . .

2007-10-15T22:43:00.000-04:00

Lately, I have been broken. My barely alive heart has been driven through with a knife and twisted in circles again and again and again. I have gone more emotions and feelings than I knew existed. Most of you know this from either just conversations with me or from the last post I wrote. Regardless, in the matter of two days, my brokenness and weakness have turned into being my greatest source of joy, peace, and comfort.

I'd imagine most reading this post have experienced some varying degree of brokenness in life. Sometimes one comes to a point where he or she emotionally and spiritually cannot go on . . . it literally becomes impossible to do so alone. That is exactly how I felt for most of this past month and a half. A verse to the new Demon Hunter song "Fading Away" illustrates exactly how I felt throughout this nightmare:

"It’s in this wake that I find myself
Losing the will to resume this hell
When every breath is a dying wish
It’s harder to follow the point of this . . .
This broken place that I call my home
Is deep in the sorrow that I have sewn
And I can’t erase what is in my heart
I want it to finish before it starts."

I had never seriously entertained suicide, but there were definite moments in this past month and a half where my "every breath [was] a dying wish." I just prayed for God to take me home and end all my pain. Obviously, I am still here, and I am now thankful that He did not answer those despairing prayers.

Johnnie Moore just finished a series a couple weeks ago in Sunday morning Campus Church about the book of Hosea. I have never had a sermon or a series of sermons so impact my life and so directly speak to me as this one on Hosea has. I won't get too much into the details of the book, you can read that yourself, and I highly suggest that you do.

The basic premise of Hosea is that Israel as a nation goes astray from God and literally prostitutes herself to other gods. So in an attempt to woo back His wayward beloved, God appoints the prophet Hosea to deliver a message. It begins with listing everything Israel has done to offend God's perfect love, but goes on to fully display God's perfect love in His taking her back as His bride once again. Ultimately, God displays His love for His people in the only way He can. Since Israel wants to prostitute herself to other gods, God lets her have her way, and reap the consequences of her own decisions. God allows Israel to self destruct in order to draw her back unto Himself again. Hosea 2:6-7 entails God speaking to His chosen prophet:

"Therefore, behold, I will hedge up
Her way with thorns,
And I will build a wall against her so
That she cannot find her paths.
She will pursue her lovers, but she
Will not overtake them;
And she will seek them, but will not
Find them.
Then she will say, 'I will go back to
My first husband,
For it was better for me then than
now!'"

Verses 14 and 15:a go on to further explain:

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
Bring her into the wilderness
And speak kindly to her.
Then I will give her her vineyards
From there,
And the valley of Achor as a door of hope."

God is saying that He will lead His wayward people into the desert in order to offer them hope - even hope from the valley of Achor! The valley of Achor was the place where adulterers were led to be stoned to death by their people. It was a place of no hope for the sinful. It was where they were taken to meet their end. God is saying that He will even use the valley of Achor, a place of absolutely no hope, as a very door of hope to His adulterous people. He will show them mercy and love.

God then goes on to proclaim in verses 16 and 19-20:

"'It will come about in that day,'
Declares the Lord,
'That you will call Me Ishi (my husband)
And will no longer call Me Baali (my master) . . .
I will betroth you to Me forever;
Yes, I will betroth you to Me in
Righteousness and in justice,
In lovingkindness and in compassion,
And I will betroth you to Me in
Faithfulness.
Then you will know the Lord.'"

God seeks to have such a relationship with us where we can call Him our husband. He wants that intimacy with us, and that is the true relational intimacy we were created to exist for. If we rebuke that intimacy, turning away to other lovers (anything else that we allow to take God's place in our lives), God will break us in order to save us. Hosea chapter 5:14b-15 declares:

"I, even I, will tear to pieces and go
Away,
I will carry away, and there will be
None to deliver.
I will go away and return to My place
Until they acknowledge their guilt
And seek My face;
In their affliction they will earnestly
Seek Me."

So how does this relate to my brokenness and suffering, and how does this practically apply to the life of you the reader? I fully realize now how much I had prostituted myself to other lovers. I had exalted God's creation above God Himself, and had replaced His space in my life with something else. I was also involved with some things I should not have been involved in. In order to save me from the sinful road of bad consequences I was following down, God had to take me into the wilderness. I was led through a spiritual desert. I was in the valley of Achor, but God took me there in order to provide me with a door of hope. I was taken to a place of no hope in order to arrive at an opportunity for new life. God had to break me and tear me apart, and then turn His back on me in order to grab my attention until I acknowledged my guilt. That was the missing element. And now that I know and acknowledge, for the first time in a month and a half, I have hope and joy. Not happiness, mind you, but joy, which is even more encompassing and more lasting. C.S. Lewis once wrote that pain is "God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world." The book of Hosea stands as illustration of this principle, and my life now exists as a testimony to this concept.

Sunday night I attended a 10:30 prayer vigil on the lawn in front of the little campus chapel called Glowstick. I did not really know much about it prior to going, and I really had no clue what to expect. I was invited by a co-worker, but had heard my SLD mention it before. So I went just to check it out.

Glowstick is a group of students who meet weekly to pray for brokenness of hearts for the things of God. As soon as I was told this, I knew it was where I needed to be. Firstly, we prayed for a student Robert who's grandmother was just diagnosed with cancer, who's best friend just died in a car accident, and who on top of all that is shipping to Iraq in a week for a second tour of duty. I felt so selfish after meeting this young man. Why was I of all people complaining so much. I felt like I almost did not have a right to ask for prayer after hearing that.

Anyway, the name Glowstick comes from, ironically enough, the concept of a glow stick. You need to break a glow stick in order to make it shine. Not just a little bit either, you must totally twist and turn and break that glow stick in order to get it to glow. God breaks and bends and twists our hearts, if we earnestly seek Him, so that we may know our own weakness apart from Him. It truly is when we are weak and broken that God gives us strength beyond what we ever dreamed possible to endure. He prunes us so that we can grow out into an even more beautiful vine - He breaks us so that we can brightly glow with His message of hope, love, and salvation to a dying world.

~Insense

Existential Despair Revisited

2007-10-08T22:31:00.000-04:00

Sometime ago I wrote a post on existential despair and what Albert Camus has termed to be the "absurdity" of life. I was at a point in my life where I was just fed up. Life seemed dull, mundane, and bitterly painful in the area of relationships.

Things have now come full circle, and I again am experiencing the same troubles and hurts. Life really is absurd. Unlike a year ago when I visited this topic, I did not have to stand and watch a good friend walk down the street as he ran away from home, but I nonetheless am becoming familiar with life's absurdity once again.

I'm 250 miles away from home on the side of a remote mountain with no really close friends or family within a five hour drive. I'm alone in a strange new world where I wake up every morning, go to classes, go to work, go to classes again, then do homework, then finally sleep, only to repeat the cycle all over again. My university learning experience has reduced from a starving hunger for knowledge to a boring drudgery in order to maintain the necessary honors program 3.5 gpa (which might not be possible thanks to BIO 200).

My friends from home and high school are now scattered all across the country, some never to return to sleepy Dallastown, PA. There are some very friendly peers here at Liberty, but I have yet to connect with anybody in a deep, long lasting friendship. Many students here already know others that they spend time with and stay in their own little "cliques."

Worse than anything I have experienced thus far in my life, however, is how I still cannot seem to find that one meaningful relationship with a young lady that I so desperately crave. I thought I had it. I thought my future was secure, my life set in place, and the perfect best friend that anybody could ever ask for by my side. I turned out to once again be sorely wrong.

I expected that when somebody made a promise, they'd keep it. I kind of had this thing where if somebody said something, I kind of took it for granted that he or she actually meant it and would abide by it. I never in a thousand years imagined that everybody is the same. I sincerely thought that some people were different . . . one person in particular.

Now I'm left with all the shattered pieces of my broken heart on the floor. I'm left with a soul merged and fused with the soul of another person who is through with me. Like a festering wound in an arm or a leg, I need to amputate that part of me out before I'm wholly infected with a disease that can kill me. The hard part is, I cannot do it myself. The universe was created in such a fashion that something about a deeply attached relationship actually does fuse the souls of two people together. The process was created by God Himself, and it was never meant to have to be torn apart. Man cannot do it himself. It takes the strength of God to undo something He created to be.

It's so hard amputating that wounded part of soul out of me, because the only way it can be done is if I allow God to work at it over time. It can't come overnight unless there was never anything fused together to amputate in the first place. God is the only one that can do it, and all I can do is sit back like a helpless, wounded soldier in war and watch the Master Surgeon work. Like an infantryman who must just lie there and endure the pain of a limb being sawed off, all I can do is sit back and endure as God is at work sawing a festering, wounded part of my soul off.

Healing is going to take some time. It is a slow, gradual crawl towards normalcy. I find that my problem, though, lies in actually letting God do the healing. My heart is in pieces on the ground. I try to gather the fragments up in my hands to lift them up to God to let Him work, but my hands are too weak. They shake so much that all the pieces quickly slip out of my hands and spill back onto the floor again where they came from. When I can actually get all the pieces and lift them to God, some part of me at the last minute wants to hold on and do it myself. I know it will never work, but I can never seem to make my head knowledge apply to my heart and my actions.

I do not change my originally presented view a year ago that absurdity and pain are meant to stir us to search and desire something deeper. In the long run, all I can hold onto in my loneliness is that any earthly relationship is ultimately merely a Platonic shadow of God's love for me. It's the only thing that keeps me going and the only reason I'm still here.

I have, however, finally realized after a year of thought, reflection, and experience what exactly it is that causes life to be so absurd and painful in the first place - sin. It is like a disease that has slowly worked its way through the cosmos. Everything it touches turns to dust and crumbles to the ground in decay. From dust we are made and to dust we return. It has even left its damaging impact on earthly romantic relationships. No earthly relationship is ever going to equal or substitute God's love and desire for us His creation.

One thing I have come to realize about God more than anything in this past year of ups and downs is the nature of God's relationship with us. I credit this discovery almost wholly to the genius of Mr. Cleary, but I am sure he would say (and probably correctly) that the idea existed long before he was aware of it. The idea is this: that God's relationship to each of us is like a romantic love relationship.

In Eden, God and man were in perfect unity and fellowship - God and man were quite literally married to one another (in fact I would argue that the earthly version of marriage between a man and a woman is another Platonic shadow of this original form). When man sinned, he was unfaithful in marriage, and was forced into divorce from God. The rest of scripture then is the love story of God trying to woo back His unfaithful bride once again. Israel is His chosen people, the group through which He would work to eventually woo back the entire world (or at least try to). Christ's death on the cross is the ultimate show of romantic love ever experienced in the created universe. Indeed, it is the greatest possible display of romantic love ever, everywhere.

His bride spit in His face, cursed Him, exalted herself above Him, and He does the last thing one would expect of an abused husband - He gives His life in order to provide hope of reconciliation to His wayward beloved. He is that obsessed and in love with humanity that He paid the ultimate price in order to restore a degree of union and fellowship once again.

That is what's keeping me going anymore. I have nothing else. I'm alone on a mountain with 10,000 people who mostly don't even care that I exist. I've been left by the one person who had meant everything to me, my absolute closest friend; my family and other friends are a five hour drive away (providing I don't get lost in the dark woods again with a dead GPS and a dying cell phone - there's some absurdity if you're interested in that story). I have nothing or nobody except for God Himself. At least I can say that there is no better lover, and there is nobody who has done more to show me His love than God Himself.

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"To live without hope is to cease to live." --Fyodor Dostoevsky
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~Insense

Funny Little Story

2007-07-19T17:55:00.000-04:00

Alright, so perhaps fun little story is a misnomer....the story's not really that fun...but I thought it was pretty cool. So with my summer job, I get to go to a lot of cool places and see a lot of cool things and hear a lot of cool talks. Today was a talk that I was not especially looking forward to. It was one on the Big Bang given by a recent Nobel Laurette who happens to be the very first NASA civil servant to receive one. Woopty do. For someone with a degree in astrophysics, I really don't like astrophysics talks...they're fundamentally boring....especially ones on things I don't think hold any water...such as the big bang. I disagree with it on both scientific and theological grounds, but that's another topic for another time...would make this short story into a very long winded story. Anyway, so not really lookin forward to this one...and true to form, I struggled to stay away through it. Anywho, so it's over, and it's question and answer time...someone asked a question about the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope, the telescope that will replace Hubble....After the speaker answered the question, the director of the National Space Science and Technology Center, the place where the talk was being held, told a little story that was clearly anti-Christian...I'd heard it before, was offended before, and was offended again. It goes something like this. The principle investigator for Hubble was trying to convince Congress to fund it and was explaining how far it could see. The head of the committee, who was an ordained minister, asked, "Now hold on just a second. You're saying that Hubble can see creation?" To that, the PI replied, "Oh no no no Senator, you misunderstood. Hubble will be able to see the universe one nanosecond after it left that hand of God." (you see, the person telling the joke put special emphasis on the fact that the man asking this question in committee was a minister in order to show just how incredibly dumb and gullible he thinks Christians are for believing in Creation...hence the reason I'm completely offended....cause it's not a fair joke...and well, I think he's the fool for not believing in Creation). So the director than said that the James Webb Telescope would be able to see the hand of God itself (again, clearly poking fun at the notion of creation...not so much in words, but in the way he said it).

So here's where the cool part comes in. The speaker, a man who won the Nobel prize for his work in studying the Big Bang then replies, and I quote, "Well, anyone who has eyes can see that Hand all over the place."

I don't know if many of the people in the room got it or heard it, but it was awesome. Quite the come back, and not from the source I would have expected. I don't know what the faith or background of the speaker is...but he very clearly believes that the universe was created...he sees it being created through the big bang, but he, a man who has devoted his life to studying the universe says plain as day, "you're clearly a fool if you believe that this all just happened on it's own."

Anyway, that's it. Keep the faith!

~AndyJams~

Encouragement

2007-06-27T22:34:00.000-04:00

Those who know me know I'm a runner. Always have been. Well, not always. But in first grade, we had a track meet, and I ran in the 100 meter dash..and won! From that day on I was a runner. Granted, that was the last time I've ever gotten first place...but I still run. Round about 7th grade, my first year of junior high track, I learned sprinting wasn't the sport for me...too slow off the blocks...I'd been running cross country since 6th, so long distance it was. There is a point to all this, I swear. Just giving you a bit of background for kicks and giggles. So basically, I've been a runner in some capacity for most of my life. I really do love it. It's especially great this summer. After a long day I'm able to go back to my room and then go pound out the troubles of the day, both professional and personal. The pain, exhaustion, sweat dripping in my eyes (especially in this climate where it's customarily in the mid to upper 90s every day), and cotton mouth replace any emotional troubles with easily manageable physical troubles, leaving all of my mental, emotional, and spiritual capacities open to focus on God, to pray, and to listen to what He has in store for me (the future is going to be fantastic, I'm sure of it!)

Anyway, so to the point. I was running around the pond this evening when I made a realization. Another runner passed me going the other way, and without thinking we both made eye contact at the same time, I waved, he gave me a thumbs up, and we went on our separate ways. I've never seen him before, and I very well might never meet him again. Complete strangers with completely different backgrounds, histories, beliefs, ideologies, everything, and yet without a second thought or pre-determined notion or bias we each gave each other encouragement. It seems inconsequential I understand. What's a thumbs up? I'm not running a marathon, I'm not lost or stranded. Never once in my run did i stray more than a mile from my room, and never once was I more than a shout away from help if necessary. I wasn't disheartened or thinking about quitting early. So sure, in this particular case, I was in no need of encouragement. But I received it none the less. It made me smile quietly to myself because this isn't a singular occurrence. This happens whenever I pass a runner whilst I'm running. I assume that most every runner everywhere knows this same feeling. It's a brotherhood. We're all in the same boat and we all support each other without a thought. Isn't that great? Shouldn't that be the case everywhere with everything?

It made me think of something else remarkable. I'm a great giant space nerd, and I follow each space shuttle mission closely. This summer I've had the ability to spend an especially large amount of time following the STS-117 mission, spending most of the day with NASA TV on in the background. If you listen in to the communications between Houston and the astronauts on orbit, most especially during space walks. They are always positive, always complimenting each other, even on the minor things. "That was a great job there on tightening that restraint bolt." "That's an excellent camera view you're giving us." "Thanks for the wonderful support today from the ground crews." "Thank you so much for playing that song for our wake up. It's especially meaningful for me." "Excellent job on the thermal protection system inspections today." It's constantly like that. I honestly don't know if they do that because they do that or if they do that because they've been trained and instructed to communicate that way. Does it really matter either way though? When push comes to shove, there is constant support, nary a negative remark, and because of that (or at least largely because of that) the crews come home safely every time with a successful mission every time.

I'm not sure what all that means, or even what the point of me writing about it. It just occurred to me and it made me happy, so I thought I'd share it. Do yourselves a favor. Interact with those around you in a positive manner, no matter what. I can guarantee you'll be happier for it.

~AndyJams~

Leading with Soul

2007-06-26T14:54:00.000-04:00

I'm a reader. Didn't used to be, but I love it now. I'm reading a book right now that my father recommended I check out called Leading with Soul by Bolman and Deal. The idea behind it is that in order to be a good leader, you need to explore your own spirit and soul, and include those elements of your being intimately in every facet of your life, be it love, hobbies, and your work. A lot of people make the mistake of taking their work and sealing it off from the rest of their life. They can be open and free enough at home around friends and family, but when they show up for work it's all business. After all, it's inappropriate to talk about such things at work, right? WRONG! If you want to be a good leader, if you want your organization to succeed and grow, you need to include this. You and those who work for you must share yourselves, share stories, share legitimate caring. A lot of evangelicals refer to this as "being real." Show up to work ready to care, not just to yield power.

I'm not doing a very good job of describing it, but trust me, it's fantastic. It's basically a parable that follows the spiritual growth of Steve under the mentorship of Maria. As you follow the events and stories you learn from their example. Every now and then there will be an interlude where the authors delve deeper into the mysteries they writing about. It's not exactly the lightest reading, but it's quick reading, and it is definitely meaningful. There are a lot of great things to quote, but there was one that I just read that I think is particularly worth mentioning here. It's a excerpt that describes what Kierkegaard refers to as a "knight of faith."

This figure is the man who lives in faith, who has given over the meaning of his life to his creator, and who lives centered on the energies of his maker. He accepts whatever happens in this visible dimension without complaint, lives his life as a duty, faces his death without qualms. No pettiness is so petty that it threatens his meaning; no task is too frightening to be beyond his courage. He is fully in the world on its terms and wholly beyond the world in his trust of the invisible dimension. The knight of faith then represents what we call an ordeal of mental health, the continued openness of life out of the death throes of dread.

That is a powerful description of what I feel a Christian should be. I argue that a true follower of Christ is a Knight of Faith in Christ. If you call yourself a Christian, ask yourself, does this excerpt describe you? Probably not. That's a lot to live up to! I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit me. I'd like to think I have a pretty good faith, and I've had a lot of personal experiences and chances to learn and see that have helped me to grow closer to God then I ever dreamed possible, but still...I fear, I complain, and quite frankly death makes me uncomfortable (even though I'm confident I'll be spending eternity in Heaven). I often fall victim to pettiness, and I often find myself not trusting God...I mean, I trust Him, don't get me wrong...but then sometimes, I'll try to take over. "Sorry God...I gave this to you to take care of...but I don't especially like the way that's going for me...so I think I'll take the helm again if you don't mind." I'm not proud of the fact, but it's true. Is that true for you?

I'm not worried though. I may not be the ideal Knight of Faith...but I'm at least a Page Boy of Faith...maybe even a Squire of Faith if I might be so bold. That's what rocks about God...well, one of the many things that rocks about God (a lot of people also make the mistake of focusing only on the salvation of Christ and base their walk with Christ on that, when there's so so much more to our Savior...salvation is just the first baby step...but the love, the friendship, the warmth, the sweetness, in other words, the Spirit, the "Walk with Christ"...that's where it's really at for me, that's what it's really about...salvation was just part of the love Christ has for us, not the only facet of Christ as many people make the mistake of thinking). Anywho, I went off on a tangent again...and I forget where I was going. Um..um...oh yeah. That's one of the things that's awesome about our God. Perfection never was a requirement. I think truly Christ is the only Knight of Faith, the only man who has achieved such faith and trust...granted...He's God, so maybe He cheated...but the fact remains. The greats of our faith, the saints, many of the popes, the apostles, the martyrs...those approach being a Knight of Faith...definitely Squires. The rest of us...those who are trying, who are reading, learning, growing in our faith, we're the page boys. All are essential for the jousts to go forward.

I suppose a better question is this. Are you trying to be a Knight of Faith? Are you at least on the road to becoming a Knight of Faith? Are you doing your best? Then you can safely call yourself a follower of Christ. God never asked that we be perfect. He only asks that we try. Not on the path? On the wrong path? Want to be on the path to becoming a knight? I highly encourage it. It's well worth the effort. Talk to your friends. I'd like to think that you know at least one Christian to talk to. If you don't, fare enough. Find a church. I know you can find a church. Talk to anyone in that church. I assure you that they'll be more than willing to talk to you. If they're not willing, well, God save their soul, because they are in spiritual trouble.

So that's kind of rambling and twisting and turning...but that's the best I can do with the topic...tis how my brain follows ideas. But yeah, Leading with Soul. Read it. It's good.

~AndyJams~

The World's Best and Brightest

2007-06-24T05:37:00.000-04:00

Here's a short one.

I have the great privalege of working at Marshall Space Flight Center, one of the NASA centers most inimately involved in the current and future manned space flight programs. One side effect of living and working so closely with so many people who are so invested gives me an interesting vantage point. The Space Shuttle Transportation System is the most complicated machine ever built by man. It takes thousands and thousands of people giving of themsevles to keep these machines working perfectly. The visible point of these people include the corps of Astronauts, made up of our nations best and brightest: scientists, engineers, soldiers, and even high school teachers (keep an eye on STS-118 launching in August!). On Friay, June 22nd, the space shuttle Atlantis touched down safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California, brining an end to the very successful 14 day STS-117 mission. So who cares? Besides me that is.

Every morning of a shuttle mission, a special song is played for one of the members of the crew. The morning of flight day 11 was "Reedemer" by Nicole C. Mullen, selected for Pat Forester by his family. Pat Forester is an astronaut. Pat Forester is a Christian.

The crew took up a new space station expedition member and brought home Suni Williams, who first joined the space station crew in December. She now holds both the female endurance record in space, the first person to run the Boston Marathon from space, and also the female record for most hours in space walk. During her stay on station she wore a necklace which could be seen floating about her. It's medalian? A cross. Suni Williams is an astronaut. Suni Williams is a Christian.

I don't really think this needs any more explination. These are just two stories of many of the members of the Astronaut Corps, made up of the very best and brightest our nation has to offer. The majority of them are active Christians. What does this mean? I think it speaks volumes.

Who taught the sun where to stand in the morning?
and Who told the ocean you can only come this far?
and Who showed the moon where to hide 'til evening?
Whose words alone can catch a falling star?

Well I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
All of creation testifies
This life within me cries
I know my Redeemer lives yeah

The very same God that spins things in orbit
runs to the weary, the worn and the weak
And the same gentle hands that hold me when I'm broken
They conquered death to bring me victory

Now I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
Let all creation testify
Let this life within me cry

I know my Redeemer, He lives

To take away my shame
And He lives forever, I'll proclaim
That the payment for my sin
Was the precious life He gave
But now He's alive and
There's an empty grave

And I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
Let all creation testify
Let this life within me cry
I know my Redeemer,

I know my Redeemer
I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
I know that I know that I know that I know that I know my redeemer lives
Because He lives I can face tomorrow
I Know I know
He lives He lives yeah yeah I spoke with him this morning
He lives He lives, the tomb is empty,
He lives I gotta tell everybody

~AndyJams~

Easter Meditation

2007-04-07T12:16:00.000-04:00

With so many challenges these days being leveled against the Resurrection of Christ, most recently the resurgence of interest in the finding of "the Jesus family tomb," I think it worthwhile to take some time to outline the reasons why Christians should, and do indeed, believe in this essential miracle. Most non-believers treat the subject as a matter of faith, but in reality, believing in the Norman conquest or the death of Socrates requires no less faith. How do we know about Socrates? We know of him because of his writings, other people's writings about him, and the oral passage of information about him between generations. How do we know the Norman conquest happened, and that it happened like it did? We rely, again, on writings about it and by people who were a part of it, as well as the oral tradition. One hundred percent of scholars believe in Socrates and in the Norman conquest of Great Britain. Why is the Resurrection somehow different?

The key piece of evidence that Christians cite for belief in the Resurrection is the testimony of Scripture. Most non-believers shun such proof, but it remains proof nonetheless. Not only did the disciples see the resurrected Christ, but so did hundreds of others. There's also the small issue of all the dead who were resurrected and entered the city of Jerusalem, and of all the people who saw that take place. Again, the temple curtain was split in two, and people saw that as well. The temple curtain being torn is no little deal. We are talking about a rather large and rather thick piece of cloth. So, in spite of the first hand accounts, the numerous written records, and the oral legacy, some people still refuse to believe, even though it is as historically proven as the Norman conquest!

Conspiracy theorists will argue that Christ's body was stolen from His tomb to merely give the appearance of a Resurrection. I don't know how they could explain the eyewitness accounts and the other events detailed above, but it is very illogical to come to the conclusion that His body was moved. After all, who would benefit from it? The Jews of the time certainly would not have done it, because they wanted to discredit Christ's claim as being the Messiah, remember? Relocating His body would not help to discredit their claims, it would work violently against them. The Romans would not have stolen His body. For a long time the Roman empire viewed Christianity as a dangerous sect that needed to be controlled and squelched. If they had Christ's body, they could have openly destroyed the church's foundations before the early Christians even got started. The only group of people remaining is the apostles themselves. Most of the apostles died very painful and shaming deaths because they would not denounce their faith. If they had known Christ really was not resurrected from the dead, why would they be so bold about their beliefs in the face of an oppressive empire and suffer such painful deaths over a lie?

The only logical conclusion that anyone can draw from all of this is that Christ really did raise from the dead like He said He would. If this is the case, He really is who He said He was, and everything He said is the truth. If everything He said is the truth, then, why do we treat it as something that is not important? C.S. Lewis argued it best. Either He is who He said He is, He is just some mentally crazy man (on the level of a "poached egg" I believe Lewis says), or He is a liar. Many praise Him with, "Well, I believe He was a good moral teacher, but I don't believe He was the Son of God." There can be no middle ground. A man cannot be a liar or a lunatic and be history's greatest moral teacher. He would either be crazy, an absolutely evil person, or God. If He is God, doesn't that mean we should devote one hundred percent of ourselves to Him? I pray that each and every one of you has an amazing Easter, and that we can all reflect on our faith and take it a little more seriously.

~Tribal

Swindle Of A Lifetime

2007-03-23T19:38:00.000-04:00

For those of you who have read my article "The Real Inconvenient Truth," here, in its entirety, is the documentary that I referenced. It is entitled The Great Global Warming Swindle and features many prominent scientists who disagree with the "church of global warming" (the co-founder of Green Peace is even interviewed in the film). Only a day or two after I discovered that this documentary was on the web, I came across a NASA article that essentially backs up the main theory proposed by Swindle's director (interestingly enough, this documentary has a very sound scientific basis -- unlike the documentaries that some make about global warming for purely financial and political gain). I have not yet had time to watch the full video, but just by watching the first segment (approximately six minutes long) one's attitude towards the subject certainly is forced to go up against some new perspectives. Lastly, here is the article where I first heard about this documentary. It provides a more compact summary of the new theory as well as snippets of interviews with the director. All of this is well worth your time to check out.

~Tribal

A Take on the Truth of Love

2007-03-14T17:30:00.000-04:00

I’m going to talk a little bit about love today…I’ve talked about it before, and I’ll talk about it again, for I am a hopeless romantic and am therefore dominated by love. This was brought on by Sunday’s sermon at church (March 11th). My pastor is doing a Lenten sermon series on loving one another, and in this entry I’m going to talk a little bit about what I got out of it.

Let’s agree on something straight out…our culture hard core overuses the word love. Raise your hand if you’re guilty of saying one of these…”I looove chocolate,” or “I love my job” (equally appropriate for our overuse of hate, but that’s another topic all together…and since I don’t really care for hate, I probably won’t talk about it anytime soon…sorry to all the hatemongers out there). I certainly am…guilty of the first at least….I dunno about the second….but there are people out there who are I’m sure. What’s this got to do with anything? Good question I just asked vicariously for you.

What about this one? “I feel like I love [insert significant person of said feelings here].” Hmm, tricky tricky. Let’s get to that later…I’m not really fully prepared to answer it now, but hopefully by the time I get to the end of the entry I’ll have figured out how to address it.

Let’s first take a look at what love is. Where shall we look? Why, to God for guidance silly billy, that’s where we should always look…although if any of you are like me, that’s easier said than done…why consult God first and then act when you can act first and than maybe when it’s convenient for you ask God, or just…um…well, just keep on acting? Something we all should be working on methinks, me included. (By the way, when I say we, I mean we Christians…if you’re not a follower of Christ, you should be…Jesus loves you and wants to be your friend, so you’d best wise up and make friends with the Creator of the Universe pronto, lest you are caught in a freak gasoline fight accident or something…but I’m way off topic now, and this parenthesis is way to long, so I’m going to stop it). It’s really tough giving stuff to God...and I don’t understand why. We’ll be quite quick to trust our lives to something made by man…I’ve flown on an airplane four times in as many weeks, and I’ll be on an airplane again in two more weeks….trusting my very life to the maintenance workers, the pilots, and the airplane….and I do so without thinking twice….so shouldn’t I trust God all the more, who certainly won’t ever fail me? I think so…but it is tough.

Now you ask a Christian, “What is love?” and the Sunday school answer is “Love is patient, love is kind, etc, etc, etc.” I Cor. 13 would have been my first answer too. And all that is very very true, and quite honestly beautiful…one of the most beautiful versus in all of the Bible, but I’m not entirely sure that that particular chapter addresses the question at hand. Let’s take another angle.

Jesus told his disciples that they must love one another. Can you just up and love someone? I would argue yes, with Christ, you can. Love is not just an emotional response, but something you must want, you must will, and to which you must say yes! Love is not about what you prefer, or what I prefer, but about subordinating yourself to the will of the Savior Christ. Here’s where I think I’m comfortable addressing that ever hairy, “I feel like I love him/her!” I certainly believe, and know from experience (some wonderful, some painful) that love can grow from just plain pure feelings (I don’t want to sound like I’m saying feelings are stupid…feelings are awesome, and I’m very glad that God decided to invent them…what I am saying is that love transcends what feelings are…love is so much higher, so much bigger, so much stronger….it’s like comparing a musical on Broadway to a musical at a local theater…the local theater’s great fun, but can it really touch what’s possible on Broadway?) Romantic love more often than not grows out of attraction or admiration. It doesn’t have to be physical attraction either, though that is a leading starting point of love and indeed is also often a feeling mistaken for love. Let’s look at Robin Hood (I prefer the animated Disney version myself) where the pretender Prince John appears to be the lion in power, but the true king is Richard the Lionhearted. In this analogy, Prince John is physical attraction, and King Richard is love…one is pretending and indeed mistaken for holding the power of the other. Nothing wrong with physical attraction…God made it, and in the words of a pastor at a Christian youth festival I attended many man years ago, “It’s a great ride”…but it’s not love. Physical attraction is not the only culprit. Emotional attraction or even spiritual attraction can grow into love, just as they can be mistaken for love. We must be careful to choose love over lust, to make sure that our feelings of attraction form into love, and not into lust, for the former is the way of God, and the latter is the way of the world.

So I ask you, can you truly actually love without God? I say no. Perhaps I’m wrong, and I welcome discussion…for discussion = fantastic…but in my experience and from what I’ve learned from the Bible and the Holy Spirit, you can really only truly ever love someone, be it parent, child, brother, sister, friend, or significant other, if you love them through Christ. What do you think about it?

~AndyJams~

Heroes, Pirates and Talking Donkeys

2007-03-14T16:56:00.000-04:00

The following is an excerpt entitled "Heroes, Pirates, and Talking Donkeys" from a recent Stand True E-News update written by founder Bryan Kemper. It's worth a read in my opinion and addresses some good points. For those of you who do not know about Stand True's Christ-centered pro-life ministry, you can check them out under our links section, but we highly encourage everyone to pay them a visit.

"I usually try and sleep when I fly, but this last week I could not sleep for the life me on the flight to the west coast. I picked up a newspaper and read about three movies coming out this May, all of which are the third movie in their respective series.

The article really intrigued me as it talked about the amount of money each of the movies' preceding installments had made, and how much they expected the new ones to make. All three are to be released over a three week period, and they are expected to make over a billion dollars combined in US box office totals alone.
I guess when you combine the exhilaration of a half-man, half-spider superhero flying around New York with pirates and zombies terrorizing the high seas, and a sarcastic animated talking donkey, it should be quite an exciting month.

So, millions of people will start lining up in May to spend about $20 a person on a night at the movies. They hope to be taken away in the story and thrilled by the action. Two hours later they will probably leave wishing that there really was a great hero that could always be counted on to save the day. Kids will be begging their parents to buy hundreds of dollars of toys, just so they can reenact the story, until their parents have a headache.

Just another average weekend in America. Of course, they could have gotten even more action, adventure, and drama, even a hero that saves the day, for free if they wanted too. They could have gone to church. That's right, church. Where we learn from the ultimate adventure book with the most amazing stories. Where we learn of a hero that truly does save the day, and offers us eternal salvation.

So why do we spend so much money on movies to take us away when we have such an amazing resource at our hands already? Maybe it is because so many churches have replaced the Bible with light, fun, fluffy stories. Maybe it is because, at so many churches, you end up hearing more about the pastor's weekend than the Gospel of Christ.

I have heard reports that teach us if we truly want church growth then we need to follow certain formulas for success. We need to keep the sermons under 30 minutes or we will lose everyone. We need to keep the sermons light and mellow so we don't offend anyone. We need to make church modern and relevant or no one will want to come.

Since when do we need to make the Word of God relevant? Maybe if people were offended by hearing the Gospel, they might see that they need repentance. Maybe we need to think about the things that we are willing to sit for hours to see before we complain about the length of church (football, concerts, movies).

I am not saying that we should not go to movies, although I will probably get a dozen e-mails telling me that there is nothing wrong with movies and I need to chill out. What I am trying to say is that maybe if we brought the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ back to church then we would not need gimmicks or special books and reports on how to keep churches relevant. The fact is the Word of God is just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago.

So have fun this summer and go see a movie, I know I will. But, when you are calling all of your friends to ask them if they want to see a guy in tights fly around the city and save the day, ask yourself if you have invited them all to church to learn about a man who died to save us for eternity."

~Tribal

1 Kings 3

2007-03-09T23:55:00.000-05:00

This has been featured in my aim profile for a while now....and I decided it was Insense worthy, so here it is.

I learned an interesting truth recently as I was reading in I Kings 3. In vs 5, God says to Solomon, "Ask! What shall I give you?" Solomon asks not for riches or fame, but for wisdom to judge as God is just. In vs 12, the LORD says, "behold, I have done according to your words; see, I have given you a wise and understanding heart, so that there has not been anyone like you before you, nor shall any like you arise after you." Why is this special? God gave Solomon a wise and understanding heart, not a wise an understanding brain...true wisdom, Godly wisdom, comes from the heart, the source of Love. In that way, I propose that Love is true widsom, and all else is folly.

"Love is a many splendid thing! Love lifts us up where we belong! All you need is Love!"

A high five goes to the first person who can tell me where I got that from.

~AndyJams~

The Real Inconvenient Truth...

2007-03-08T21:13:00.000-05:00

I was recently confronted by former Insense writer ice-t (who also happens to be the "Opinions" editor of our school newspaper, The Beacon) about doing an article to be published in The Beacon over the heated issue of global warming. It is slated to be featured side by side with an article of a more liberal persuasion in the forthcoming issue, but I find it worthwhile to post the piece here in the meantime. I will be sure to pass along my opposing colleague's work as well when the issue is actually released. Until then, enjoy my half of the special:

By now I’m sure that anybody who even remotely pays attention to the media is aware of Al Gore’s Oscar success with his recent documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Global warming seems to saturate political and scientific discussions everywhere, but is the theory that man is responsible for such climate changes scientifically sound? Is the earth really undergoing “global warming” as a result of human civilization’s increased industrialization?

While Al Gore and the environmentalist crowd in America are busy counting their political and monetary gains, a group of eminent scientists and climatologists are set to air a television special in the UK entitled The Great Global Warming Swindle. Proponents of global warming claim that increased atmospheric CO2 levels are responsible for the temperature increase, but Swindle’s director Martin Durkin argues, among other things, that temperature increase is actually responsible for increased CO2 levels. Studies of ice age temperatures show that increases in CO2 levels come, on average, 800 years after major increases in earth’s temperature.

No students here at Dallastown High School would remember this, but ask any teacher: the big scare of the sixties and seventies was global cooling. Between the 1940’s and the 1970’s, the average temperature of the earth actually decreased. Ironically enough, CO2 levels were consistently increasing. In 2003, NASA’s Global Hydrology and Climate Center released a graphic which shows the changes in the earth’s climates spanning back to 1979. While some areas are observed to have grown progressively warmer, other areas of the earth have actually grown cooler since 1979. Once again, however, CO2 levels were and are continuing to rise everywhere, meaning that temperature change should have uniformly risen all over the globe as well if that is the true cause for global warming.

So since some serious holes have now been punched in the classical interpretation of global warming as a result of man, what other theories exist to account for these undeniable changes in earth’s temperature? Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark claims in his book The Chilling Stars that cosmic rays cause clouds to form and thus block the sun’s most violent rays, reducing global temperature. Former New Scientist magazine editor Nigel Calder has recently released a book in which he argues that this theory is at the true core of the global warming controversy. He argues that since solar winds bat away many of the cosmic rays responsible for cloud cover, and since our sun is currently in the most active phase it has been in for a thousand years, this is the real reason behind the earth’s temperature increase. The change in climate is a direct result of a double knockout delivered by the natural life cycle of our sun: increased amounts of solar winds result in less cloud cover on earth, while at the same time the sun’s increased intensity means even more harmful rays penetrating the atmosphere. The undeniable result is an increase in global temperature.

What goes up must come down. The earth has undergone many temperature changes in its long history, and it is sure to undergo many more. It is the natural cycle of things. Leave it to man to think that he is powerful enough to be the cause of every single change in creation. While some may spend all of their time and effort trying to stop the earth’s temperature from rising another degree in the next one-hundred years, I think my focus is better placed elsewhere in a country where 1.6 million babies are annually slaughtered by abortion and where terrorist organizations can freely and illegally cross our borders.

Check back later to read the other side of this debate as carried out courtesy of The Beacon...

~Tribal

High Calling

2007-03-04T18:05:00.000-05:00

Tis spring break, and for the first time in a very very long time I have some free time to rub together. I've got time to read again, and time to write somethin...which I haven't gotten to do for months. On the flight home from Florida I began reading a book I got for Christmas, High Calling, The Courageous Life and Faith of Space Shuttle Columbia Commander Rick Husband, written by his widow, Evelyn Husband. I'm halfway through, and I gotta say it's faaantastic. For those not in the know, Rick Husband was the commander of STS-107, the fateful space shuttle mission ended in flames and debris as the orbiter Columbia broke apart and burned up over Texas skies on the morning of February 1st, 2003 during re-entry.

Perhaps you don't, but I remember exactly where I was, what I was doing, and how I found out of the tragedy, and it effected me deeply. I'm a certified space nerd with aspirations of one day being an astronaut myself. For those of you who are not quite so interested in the manned space program as I am, I'll give you a little refresher on what went down that terrible winter day. During launch in late January, the extreme forces involved ripped off a small piece of TPS (thermal protection system) foam from the external fuel tank. This was a regular occurrence and even occasionally ripped off tiles from the shuttle, but it had been happening for over one hundred launches without any problem. This time however, the chunk of foam smashed a large hole in the leading edge of the left wing. During re-entry, the hot ionized plasma that surrounds the speeding orbiter flowed into the wing, vaporizing the superstructure and breaking the wing off. Columbia was reduced to a fireball breaking into pieces within the blink of an eye just minutes before it's scheduled touch-down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Anywho, so why am I talking about all this space mumbo jumbo? Well, the book is the biography of the commander of that incredibly successful mission that ended in such tragedy. But more than facts of his life, the biography is about the spiritual walk of Rick Husband. It is a wonderful book. I've been reading it for two and a half days and I'm half way through it...which for me, a slow reader, is pretty good, and shows how good a book it really is....I can't put it down.

I'm rambling, and I'm not really coming across as eloquently as I would like, so I'll get right down to it...read this book. If you are a Christian, read this book. If you love space flight, read this book. If you are a Christian who loves space flight, then you absolutely must read this book. If you are struggling in your faith, read the book. If you're struggling with love, read this book. It's amazing. One of the things that's so appealing to me is that Rick Husband was not a perfect Christian. I read the biography of Rich Mullins a few years back, and it was inspiring, but Rich Mullins was always a fantastically strong Christian, which for those of us who struggle and stumble, that's actually pretty discouraging. Rick Husband came through struggles and a weak relationship with God and through the prayer and help of friends and a great deal of study of the Word, he began to walk closer and closer until he started to really have a fantastic relationship with Christ. It's really inspiring and quite frankly, helpful. It's encouraging. It gives me hope in a good many areas. Again, I digress. The point of all this is to say that YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!! Every now and then, when I read something especially cool, especially meaningful, or something that strikes me, I'll write it in. I'll start it off here with something on page 97, a transcript of an interview he gave shortly after his first flight to space in 1998 on STS-96.

Many people, reporters especially, have questioned Rick concerning the argument of science versus religion. When he came back from the Discovery [STS-96] mission, he was more than ready to answer their questions. In a taped interview Rick said,

"Even if you look at the universe and all the stars, our solar system--all the order that there is there, and the fact that the planets orbit around the sun, and the way that the different galaxies behave, all the different interactions that are there....I don't believe that's something that just happened by chance.

"Nobody can explain where everything came from and how it all got here. You just take a look around and you see the complexity in so many things and the detail in so many small things; how the simplest cell works, up to a tree, the human being; just the miracle of seeing our children born; and you say, 'This just didn't happen by chance.' If you even take a look at a system like the space shuttle--that is the most complicated and complex flying machine in the world and it didn't happen by chance and it doesn't approach the complexity of a human being. It took a lot of people a lot of time to sit down and think and put together that space shuttle and the entire system. Then to sit and think that the entire universe could have happened just by accident, it doesn't make sense to me.

"It'd almost seem you have to have more faith to accept that it happened by chance than to accept that God created the universe."

[page 97-98 of High Calling by Evelyn Husband, published by Thomas Nelson, Inc, 2003]

This is for you naysayers out there, those who say that only fools and the simple believe that God created the universe, that no thinking man can honestly believe in anything other than the Big Bang, that no person with an IQ greater than that of a pea could think that our world came about by anything but chance...well, Rick Husband did, and he was an astronaut. Perhaps it sounds trite, but he is among the best of the best that our great nation, the best of the best, has to offer. To become the commander of a space shuttle, Rick Husband must be among the very best humanity can offer. And if Rick Husband's strong faith in the Lord makes you think anything less of him and his memory, than you are the fool, and I pity you, and I pray that God have mercy on you.

Anywho, I say read the book, it's fantastic, but I'll put the cool stuff I see in every now and then.

~AndyJams~

100th Post

2007-03-01T16:20:00.000-05:00

In honor of our 100th post, I would like to pass along to you this hilarious bit of political comedy that my AP Government teacher shared with us in class today. It is good to see that our president can laugh at himself, even in spite of the viciousness with which he is often attacked on a daily basis by the news media. We thank all of our readers out there and all of those who help support and promote us. God bless.

~Tribal

Oh, Brave New World...

2007-02-25T20:05:00.000-05:00

My sociology teacher daily cuts out magazine and newspaper articles to display on the front whiteboard for a variety of her classroom discussions. Usually they are about local issues such as the Harley Davidson strike or political issues such as elections. Last week, however, my senses were affronted with a glossy magazine article topped with a full color photo of a girl in her pajamas lying on a bed with a guy in a t-shirt and jeans sitting next to the bed on the floor. "What could this article be about?" I pondered to myself, but upon looking down at the title of the article itself, I was shocked to find it read something along the lines of: "College Freshmen Get Ready...For Coed Dorm Rooms."

You read that correctly -- not coed dorms, coed dorm rooms.

Our teacher did not read the entire article to us, but she ran through some of its main points. "Many" colleges and universities allegedly now offer these coed dorm rooms to students (the only one I can recall her mentioning by name was the University of Southern Maine). When completing housing registration for these universities, all one needs to do is check a box if he or she feels comfortable rooming with a member of the opposite sex. The students who were interviewed for the article were really thrilled with the "opportunity" provided to them, and the article painted the whole situation in a generally positive light.

My teacher's next step was to ask if anybody in the class would be okay with living in a coed dorm room. The classroom turned into a forest of raised hands. She then asked who would absolutely, one hundred percent not live in a coed dorm room. Only two hands went up other than my own. I was in a state of complete and total awe. There are probably somewhere around twenty six or twenty seven students in my sociology class, and only three took a stand against the article's content. Several other students who I have known to be Christians said that they would be absolutely okay with living in a coed dorm room. I was nearly experiencing trauma -- I had no clue that so many people had become so blinded and fooled by "progressive" thinking. I was called on to explain exactly why I felt the way I did on the issue, and all I could manage to blurt out was, "It's just wrong, it just is not right," before I reduced myself to fumbling around like an idiot.

Have we really allowed ourselves to be so poisoned by "free thinking" and liberalized ideas that we no longer even recognize some of the most basic wrongs in our world? Have we finally been conditioned into accepting such things that we now fail to recognize sin in our sexually charged environment? One Christian girl in my class argued against me, "It's not like it promotes having sex. If people want to do it, they'll find some way to do it anyway." That is such pathetic rationalization that it makes my stomach turn. It is brainwashing on behalf of the society in which we live. How can any intelligent, heterosexual person past puberty possibly argue that a college guy and a college girl living together does not help lead to sexual activity? Even if the two do not end up physically engaging in such activity, the mental aspect will most definitely still be there. The temptation will still be there as well (provided one's roommate is not highly unattractive). Why even put oneself in the position to be tempted in such a way?

All physical and sexual aspects of this debate aside, there is still something fundamentally wrong with a guy and a non-related girl living together outside of marriage. Even if the two students never remotely let their minds wander into sinful areas (which is impossible) and always refrain from such practices (which is highly unlikely), it still is not "okay." It just is not the way things are. Part of the joy and pleasure of marriage is being able to finally get to live with your spouse/a member of the opposite sex. That feeling -- that happiness -- would be much less fulfilling once one finally would get married. Think about it. Even if you raised your kids with the utmost moral decency, and you were absolutely sure they would never have sex before marriage, would you still allow your kid to live with a member of the opposite sex through college? I asked one girl who said she'd be okay with coed dorm rooms this very question, and her reply was basically, "It's not the same thing." She said her parents would not approve of her living with a guy in college, and she would not let her kids live in a coed dorm room, but for her it's just "different." Please...

If I only had my copy of Brave New World with me that day in class, I would have probably stood up and threw it at some body's head. Then I would have gone and picked it up and repeated the process until I threw it at every one's head. We are constantly being conditioned by society into thinking of women like "meat" (as Huxley frankly puts it). Women themselves are being conditioned into accepting it and thinking that if they do not succumb to acting like a piece of spare rib, they will not be accepted. Look around at all the people who get plastic surgery and breast implants. Look at all the girls who wear shirts and jeans so tight that no anatomical feature is left to mystery. Look at the skirts so short that -- well, we won't even go there. We are also conditioned to perceive sex as no big deal. It's all over TV. Not only in programs, but in advertisements. The Internet is just absolutely filled with it. Even if you don't go out searching for it, it often times comes looking for you in the way of spam. Sex saturates everything around us. They tell us we are just animals with "primal urges" that we cannot control. They say we can't help ourselves. That really is all that many people think we are: a line on a graph -- something you can measure and predict.

That is simply not the case, however. You can control your impulses and urges. Unfortunately, we believe them when they tell us that we cannot. I know I have gotten somewhat off topic here from my original subject, but the point is that some things are just fundamentally wrong. We do not realize they are sinful, though, because we have been conditioned into accepting them. In the world we live in, Christians do not only need to be careful about what they accept and what they don't accept -- Christians need to be actively fighting against what they know is wrong. I believe that God would agree -- the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

~Tribal

Against The Flow

2007-02-15T18:56:00.000-05:00

My youth pastor recently started a blog for our youth group, Against The Flow. You can check it out here.

~Tribal

God - 1, Random Chance - 0

2007-02-12T19:53:00.000-05:00

Sitting in physics class today, I was reminded of a concept learned in philosophy last year and on which a large part of the cosmological argument rests. Our physics teacher had us working on the infamous "interactive physics" packets, and we were running a computer program that simulated the orbits of three planets around a star. Our current unit of study deals with the theory of gravitation. In this computer simulation, it was necessary to adjust the distance of each planet from the sun and each planet's velocity (these being the two factors which affect gravity and the way a body orbits another). The usual result of our attempts to make the planets perfectly orbit the star was that they would either collide with the star and burn up or fly off into the vastness of space. No matter how many combinations we tried, we could not find the perfect one that would make all three planets perfectly orbit the star. Eventually the bell rang, and we needed to close the program and continue on with our school day.

So, no matter how many times we tried, we could not find the perfect combination of a.) distance from the star and b.) initial velocity of the planets to get them into orbit. We had problems getting three planets to rotate around one star without them either suffering a fiery death in the sun's flaming brilliance or freezing in the cold grandeur of space. There are nine planets in our solar system alone (ehh, well, give or take a few depending on which position you defend). I can tell you with much certainty, it would have taken us a very long time to figure out how to get nine of those things to orbit. There is certainly more than a single star that has planets rotating around it in our universe. Stars and planets removed, even stars and some galaxies orbit other celestial bodies. So pretty much there are probably billions and billions and billions of perfectly orbiting bodies in existence.

Now the question posed by all of this is that am I supposed to believe that all of these rotating bodies just happened to be the right distance away from the source of gravity pulling on them? They just all happened to be traveling at the exact speed needed so that they neither get sucked in by gravity or fly off again randomly into space? I think that takes a little more faith than I am willing to provide. If that is the result of random chance, I would sure hate to play poker with the universe.

There is a set of approximately 21 different numbers that govern the laws of the universe and that are so finely tuned that if they had been any different, either the universe would not exist or life in our universe would not exist (the anthropic principle). The atomic weight of the proton and the gravitational constant are just a couple examples of these highly important but often overlooked features of existence. The above example also illustrates this well. If earth were moving any slower than it is now, it would fall into the sun. If earth were moving any faster, it would fly off into space. Of course earth's distance from the sun plays a crucial role in this as well. Any closer to the sun and we would likely all burn up from heat (man, that would be what I call global warming). Any farther away and we would all likely freeze. Everything so perfectly exists as it does for no other reason than because it was made that way. The chance of the universe existing randomly and so it could be capable of supporting life at the same time is somewhere around the ballpark of one in ten billion...to the twenty-fourth power (now I really don't want to play the universe in poker). How anyone can claim to be a sound scientist and yet claim that existence exists by random chance is beyond my understanding. It takes more faith than I am capable of possessing.

The more rational and more factual understanding of the order of things must include some sort of intelligent designer. It is much more reasonable to believe in an omnipotent God whose ways and thinking are beyond our own than to claim that everything is an accident of near infinitely impossible proportions. So when it comes down to teaching faith versus science in school classrooms, I am pretty sure I know which side is which now. They need to stop teaching faith and start teaching some real science.

~Tribal

Searching For Charity

2007-02-11T11:51:00.000-05:00

My girlfriend recently passed this site along to me, and I feel it worthwhile to share it with all of you as well. It is a search engine just like Google or Yahoo, only for each search you make on it, the website donates one cent to the charity of your designation. While that may not sound like too much of a deal at first, imagine all of the times you have used a search engine to find something -- in your entire life. Now imagine you telling all of your friends about it, and they all use it as well. What if they tell all of their friends about it? You get the picture. You can eventually raise some serious money for the charity of your choice just by using this website to make your internet searches. I personally recommend donating to the American Life League if you would like a suggestion, but the decision is yours. Please pass this along to as many people as you can.

www.goodsearch.com

~Tribal

Racial Profiling Quiz

2007-02-11T11:48:00.000-05:00

A fellow groupmember on Facebook posted this website in our racial profiling forums. As funny as it is, it is the truth whether people like to hear it or not.

http://www.mideasttruth.com/profiling.html

~Tribal

Existential Angst

2006-12-16T15:51:00.001-05:00

I have recently read The Stranger by Albert Camus, and in fact have even done an oral presentation about it for AP English. To aid in the presentation, I rummaged through my notes from last year's philosophy class to find everything I could about Existentialism. Most of you reading this are probably very aware of the main tenants of the worldview, so I won't really go into detail.

Up until tonight, I have never fully experienced the "absurdity of life" that so permeates the existential view. I now know what the absurdity of life is. The absurdity of life is the fact that everyday you wake up, you go to work or school, and you go to sleep. The absurdity of life is the fact that, at least for me personally, I strive to create meaningful relationships with other people, specifically members of the opposing gender, but cannot find them. They fail -- almost all the time. Absurdity in life is standing on the sidewalk in front of your house while one of your best friends walks down the hill out of view with a plastic bag of clothes as he runs away from an overbearingly sadistic home. The absurdity of life, for me at least today, is a depressingly sharp reality.

Why go on? Seriously, why should I go on? That is the question posed by Existentialism. The only reason I can see to go on is that life was created to be absurd. We are born, we live, we die. We follow the same daily routine for ninety percent of our lives. We get turned down again and again when seeking a relationship. The most absurd things happen to us and our few friends throughout the course of the grind of life. Why does all this happen?

This happens because our focus is not meant to be on this absurd life. Why are we born, we live a short life, and then we die? Because we are meant to be motivated by this fact into searching for some other life. Why do our, especially my, relationships fail? Because we are meant to search for some higher relationship. To be quite honest, that knowledge is the only thing that is keeping me going.

Perhaps Plato's World of Ideas aptly fits this situation. Everything in this life is just a shadow of something else in some other plain of existence.

I now realize, to a very large degree, that Plato is more of a genius than I ever imagined, and that Existentialism hits the nail on the head much more squarely than I thought. The only road that I take that both of the aforementioned schools do not is that I believe in God. God is the only thing keeping me going right now. This life is absurd. Things in this life are just a shadow of some other plain of existence -- but I know that plain of existence is paradise. The one who made life absurd is God -- He did it so that we would search for Him. Why would a happy, content man ever want to seek God? All it would do is add suffering and responsibility to his life. We must be made not content, so that eventually we can become happier than we could ever imagine. I've seen that more clearly this weekend than ever before in my life, and I'm hoping and praying that I indeed can get back on track and be content in God.

~Tribal

But...I AM right

2006-12-16T15:51:00.000-05:00

"You think you're right and everybody else is wrong. You're so arrogant." -- these are the words that are spoken to me on an almost daily basis by a good classmate of mine. We often end up in lunch table discussions over political or philosophical issues (rarely started by me, might I add). It seems like the two of us have entirely different views on absolutely everything ranging from belief in God, to whether or not the school's hotdogs really are made out of green fungus. It also seems, however, that everytime I try to defend my views against his, the above quote gets thrown at me out of anger, often accompanied by some mild profanity or obscene gesture.

So, I think that I'm right and that everybody else is wrong? Well, quite frankly, "duh." I mean, if one did not believe that one's opinions were correct on an issue, why hold any opinion at all on an issue? My response to my friend's often angry semi-relativism often runs something along the lines of, "Well, you think that you're right too and that I'm wrong, otherwise we would not be here discussing this." It is true. If a person did not believe himself to be correct, why would he have a firm opinion on anything?

There are some things that I know to be absolutely, one-hundred percent correct. For instance, I know that there is a God who created the world and created me, and has an ultimate plan for my life. I also know, though, that I have free will -- I have the ability to chose between right and wrong, following God's path or not following. I know that abortion destroys an innocent life, and is very comparable to the Jewish Holocaust. In addition to this, I also know that homosexuality is wrong -- it is not an "alternate lifestyle" and it is not how people are born. I know many more things that are absolutely correct as well, but this is just a small sampling of them.

So what's the point of all this? I think that the world is trying to tear down our beliefs and our moral foundations by throwing out labels like "arrogant" or "intolerant." They try to make us feel bad. If you say that it is wrong for gay people to be involved in a homosexual relationship, you are labeled a "hatemonger" -- "hate is NOT a family value" as one bumper sticker reads. In response to this, Christians tend to back away from such "controversial" issues because they want to be loved by everybody. Might I remind you that God's word tells us we will be hated for His namesake. It's not being "arrogant," it's merely recognizing the sin that is present in the world.

I do not exempt myself from any of this, however. I admit, at times I can come across as very overbearing. It is something I am trying to work on. However, we should not back away from what we know is right and wrong merely because some other human tells us he or she is offended at what we are saying. GOD says that homosexuality is wrong, not me -- I didn't make that rule, go read the Bible. If people are offended by the very things that God Himself says, why should we in any way attempt to appease their "hurt feelings" -- who are we to go out and apologize to them?

The band Demon Hunter has an amazing song off of their album The Triptych about this very subject. The title is "Relentless Intolerance." The name pretty much says it all. The song calls for Christians to stand firm for the things they believe in and not give in when "the foundations that we used to uphold" are "regarded as the madness of old." Right is still right and wrong is still wrong. Who are we to change that?

~Tribal

The Moron Files

2006-12-03T15:23:00.000-05:00

Once there was a conservative (me) who got into an argument with a bunch of very liberal people who joined my facebook group "Non-racist Americans FOR racial profiling of Arabs" for no other reason than to harrass me. This is the bulk of that little back-and-forth. I post it here in it's entirety -- exactly the words that were said with the exception of editing out the obscenities. This is definentaly worth a read, as it illustrates the lunacy that has taken hold of some in America...an excellent example of liberal fallacy.

Pouria Almassi: oh yes, of course, this makes perfect sense, screen all the Arabs, because Arabs are always the ones who commit acts of terrorism, Oklahoma city? Thed Kaczynskiwait aka the "Unabomber" , wait a second, those were Americans!

Daniel Marchant (me): Absolutely correct, those were Americans! However, those were 2 isolated incidents. The attacks on September 11, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and the numerous thwarted attempts by other Muslim Arab terrorists (shoe bomber, liquid bombs) were committed, as I said, by Muslim Arabs. Oh, that's not to mention all the groups fighting us in the Middle East in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh, and even that's not to mention all the extremist Islamic groups that hate us and want to see us dead...

Shawn Singh Tucker: racial profiling arabs will make the situation even worse. so many people already hate muslims because of us media, and making it ok to profile gives people more of an excuse and an incentive to commit hate crimes. also, muslims come in so different races-black, white, brown, yellow,red purple everything u can think of, so to racially profile people who "look" muslim makes no sense. to a majority of americans even i look muslim, even though i am not. we need to unite and be together rather than profile and segregate. last thing-if you support racial profiling, you ARE RACIST whether u realize it or not. sorry

and daniel...i think white people kill more people in the US than arabs do, don't you? why doesnt the police racially profile you on the streets if it's just?

Daniel Marchant: We're still dancing around the issue here. Sure, more murders probably result from white people than they do from Arabs, but that is not taking into account the fact that there are more white people in America than Arabs. However, the number of murders and attempted murders commited on airplanes by Muslim Arabs far outweighs the number that have been committed by white people. Turn on the TV lately and hear about the latest KKK airplane rampage? No. Turn on the TV lately and hear about another threat by Muslim extremists? Yes. The issue is merely that you do not hear about five year old kids hijacking jetliners, and you don't hear about 90 year old grandmas flying planes into buildings, so why waste time and resources screening such people? It is absolutely rediculous to overlook the fact that the one thing that connects every major terrorist threat against our country is religion and ethnicity.

...as far as being racist? If there comes a day when white male Christians start blowing up airliners and flying them into buildings, I would hope that I would be stopped at an airport and examined with extra security measures...

AB Omar: "religion and ethnicity" so now it's not just muslims, but also ethnicity meaning. . . . . all arab looking people? Daniel, since you're so blindly ignorant, let's go with your line of reasoning and see if you can justify the means. when you see on fox news that 'a muslim bombed .....' do you ever stop to ask yourself, i wonder what made him/her strap on a bomb and die? just for kicks? don't think so. so there had to be a catalyst? . . . . . ok you know what, i'll make it simple for you since you seem to be too logically challenged to follow any thoughtful argument:say someone, a complete stranger, came into your house and took everything you had and insulted your very existence upon robbing you and then slapped your little sister around for no reason, would you sit there with your hands and head stuck up your fat racist a** or would you actually try to resist? all this fighting and 'bombing' and blood shed is a resistnce mechanism. people are resisting being occupied.

all they want is what was theirs back. all they want is a normal life that was taken away from them. and then stupid, unaware and ignorant people like YOU are made to believe that phalestinians and muslims are the problem. SINCE WHEN DID THE OPPRESSOR BECOME THE VICTIM????

Daniel Marchant: I actually have stopped and asked myself why these people do what they do, and interestingly enough, the conflict runs far deeper than you think it does. Do you honestly believe that they strap bombs to themselves and blow up innocent men, women, and children because they are being "occupied?" If by occupation you mean a free, Democratic Iraq replacing a murderous, dictatorship, then of course they are being "occupied." But these extremists hate us because they believe GOD tells them to hate us. Why would you try making up your own little excuse and defense for their actions when they themselves are very forthright about it? "Great Satan," "Little Satan," "Infidel" -- ring any bells? They attack us because they believe their religion tells them to attack us, and that they will be rewarded in the afterlife for it. Bush propoganda? -- no, the truth -- listen to any terrorist speak about why he does what he does.

Jessica Warner: So this "normal life" you're referring to....Your're criticizing Americans, claiming that we CAUSED the terrorism on our nation by going into other nations.Might I point out that we went into their nations in order to help them dispose of a tyrannical dictator who was killing, torturing, and mutilating their people?And, by the way, if you disagree with the group, DON'T JOIN IT! Joining a group for the sole purpose of dissing it is childish at best and (since you brought up this word) ignorant in all actuality. So either leave the blasted group or stop insulting those who are willing to diplomatically and legitimately stand up for their views.

AB Omar: Jessica, let me remind you because you seem to have conveniently forgotten the facts, WE the United States of America MADE Osama who he is now. US made Saddam Hussein who he turned into. So before you point the blame finger, stop and recount the facts. That's the least you can do. And Daniel, you speak of "Democracy". If you knew anything about history, you'd realize that the same form of government does NOT work all over the world. We tried it in Vietnam. Secondly, what's the difference between Saddam's regime and FORCING democracy on Iraq? They share a common denominator. They're both forced and unwanted. Let the people of Iraq decide what kind of government they want instead of shoving your politics down their throat. For both of you, if you honestly believe that the US's presence in the middle east is solely to 'liberate an oppressed people', look at the projected map of the gas pipleline and the current position of US troops in the middle east. too good to be true?

Daniel Marchant: Vietnam? Please...Democracy failed in Vietnam because the NORTH VIETNAMESE wanted it to fail, and the United States did not have the stomach for a fight. They "cut and run" as the saying goes, and left a fledgling government to fend off a much more powerful Communist force. Democracy will work in Iraq as well as long as we do not cut and run and leave them to face the terrorists alone just yet. It worked fine in Israel. In addition, what about all the elections Iraq has had since the removal of Saddam? Have you seen their voter turn out? It puts the United States to shame, so it looks like they love their democracy over there even more than some Americans do over here. Maybe I'm not the one who must examine the facts.

Hmm, U.S. troop deployments around gas pipelines in Iraq...go figure. I seem to remember that in the Gulf War, Saddam tried to burn the oil fields...American troops are there to guard the pipelines against such another action by the terrorists. Oil is the biggest player in the Iraqi economy -- if the oil and gas burns, so does Iraq's economy and democracy. Drive a car? Buy any gas lately? Realize that gas prices are higher than they were before the war? If we went into Iraq for oil and if we really wanted to take their oil, why is there still a shortage and why are we still paying insane amounts?

AB Omar: hahahaha. Daniel, please tell me you didn't just make those arguments? especially the one about oil? Please tell me you aren't THAT dumb?

Daniel Marchant: Well I'm glad no one here has resorted to the elementary school "I've run out of things to say therefore I am only going to hurl insults" -- I was worried there for a second that I was actually debating against somebody with nothing factual to say...

Jessica Warner: Okay, may I suggest that the fact that you are no longer reporting FACTS (as Dan happens to be.....) probably means that you're out of legitimate arguments? Sorry, AB, I think you're done on this one. Better luck next time!

AB Omar: try this one for facts
http://www.rense.com/general70/deathmde.htm

by the way Daniel and Jessica, i would like to see some of your FACTS? something credible. meaning FOX News doesn't count. i'm honestly interested in finding out what your source of information is.

here is an independent research for you. see for yourself. http://www.umrc.net/pdf/quantitative_analysis_afghanistan.pdfgoogle the paper if the full text doesn't pop up. that is you're interested in FACTS.

Shawn Singh Tucker: seriously...this group is just here to make people mad. why are people terrorists in the 1st place? bc they are upset abt something. by creating this group ur not helping anybody, just making things worse.seriously, think abt things before u do them. and if u think ur right in this group, express your views face to face to a muslim, arab, even another minority and then ull get a real responsealso, this group means jack s***. just cuz u made a group that has 20 members--half of which are here to help you realize how ignorant u are--doesnt mean that ur stupidity will become a reality. racial profiling goes against everything this country was founded for. i bet yall dont even give a d****cuz u think im an arab or a muslim. sayin that "oh i believe they are equal, but they should be searched" is b*******. dont force people to be treated as second rate citizens and separated and then say, "yea, they are equal." f***** nazis. im outta this lame a** group

Sunny Mummaneni: i joined this group not to criticize it in any way but to inform a few uninformed people, i am not a muslim but to say that Islam is telling these people to act out these horrible terroristic acts is completely ludacris, if you would just take a couple of weeks and read the Koran you would learn that Islam is probably one of the most peaceful religions in its true PURE form, these people that yell out Jihad and enact these terrible deeds are misinterpreting the religion completely and in all reality thats not their fault, a lot of them aren't educated enough to comprehend or they were forced to believe that is the true Islam since the day they can comprehend anything. We as Americans shouldn't put these people down, moreover we should embrace them and if we really wanted to help then help them learn the true meaning of their own religion, not convert them to the majorities belief. We as American are very lucky to have a good education system (no matter how awful some people think...

... it is) we are definately luckier than they are over there and for that we should be thankful and not full of hate for another religon, what ever happened to freedom of religion? seriously people i can't walk down the street without someone talking about "those damned muslims", alright there is a few groups of misinformed extremists, but in reality every religion has those groups of people. Hinduism is supposed to be peaceful but in India there are mosques getting burned down by Hindu extremist, during slavery Christians used to hold slaves and beat them (sometimes to death) in the name of their god, all these people were misinformed, and there are still some that are...now we shouldn't be arguing here or hating on all muslim arabs but we should be trying to figure out a DIPLOMATIC way to help these people because they are suffering from the worst disease that man knows of and thats HATE because of IGNORANCE..don't join them by saying arabs should be the only ones looked out for..

Daniel Marchant: Hmm, try this one for facts? Ironic that a few babies are born horribly deformed, and the blame automaticaly falls on the United States. Of course the small amount of uranium that is contained within these weapons so horribly used by U.S. troops would be enough to deform entire bodies such as those shown in the pictures *sarcasm*. As far as your other source, I think you conviently overlooked the last sentance of the paper..."The cause of our findings is currently being evaluated as part of our ongoing research." Sounds awfully conclusive to me.

...and actually, umm, if FOX News is the only one who reported the attacks of September 11, the bombings of the U.S.S. Cole, as well as the endless wave of terrorist violence committed by extremists in the Middle East, then sure FOX News is my source...but it's kind of shocking to me that you actually NEED to see some sort of proof for all of this. Have you been living completely out of touch with the world for the past, oh, 30 years? I don't care if you think this group is "jack s***" or not, I honestly do not care what anyone thinks about my group or my opinions. It's called having a backbone and not giving a crap what other people think of you. If all you are going to do is criticize the group, why join?

Sunny, I agree completely with your view on Islam. It is a peaceful religion, and Muslims are generaly peace loving people. However, those who have commited and want to commit terrorist attacks against the United States are very bold in their wrongful proclomation that God wants them to do this. Don't believe me? Turn on any TV channel or read any newspaper the next time a terrorist releases a propoganda tape. They are doing it in the name of their religion, even though their religion does not teach that. I do not hate muslims, I do not hate Arabs, but I do hate acts of terrorism committed in the name of God. Those are the people I do not like. Oh, and P.S., yes, since Christians are still beating slaves to death I think we should change this group's name to "Non-racist Americans FOR racial profiling of Arabs and Christians."

AB Omar: Sunny, i appreciate your point of view. however, i think you have been misinformed. you said that 'muslims are suffering from the worst disease ...." i don't think you're seeing the whole picture. if you look at one of my earlier posts, i posed the following scenario to Daniel and got no response. so here it is again:say a complete stranger came into your house, uninvited, and took everything you had. he/she insulted your very existence upon robbing you IN YOUR OWN HOUSE and slapped around your little sister for no reason, would you sit there and watch them absue everything you have and you are or would you at least try to resist? for one minute, let's forget about our biases as westerners and look at it from a humanistic point of view. Look at the progression of the map of Israel from 1946 to now. What was almost entirely Palestine once has now been reduced to little dots on the map. and none of this land was voluntarily given to Israel by the Palestinian people.

Israel has taken the palestinians homes away from them. when everything one has has been stolen from him/her, he/she has nothing more to lose, so death by means of straping ona bomb is a natural progression in order to retaliate. so you see, while killing other people can never be justified no matter what the reason, scrutinizing the facts can help better explain these actions.

Daniel Marchant: Interestingly enough I've directly responded to your post all along, apparently you just never were able to figure it out. If you think that is the reason why the extremists are doing what they are doing, then you really are out of touch with reality. The extremists themselves do not say "well I'm doing this because people came into my land" they say "Allah be praised, kill the infidel, kill the great satan." Excluding Western bias as you said, that land does rightfully belong to Israel. The Kingdom of Israel once ruled an area of land much larger than what is there for them now...look on any ancient history maps.

AB Omar: Daniel, how many ways do I need to say it so it'll ring a bell in that empty head of yours. Read my post again about your sources of information. The government IS the media. So they give you what's on their agenda, not what's actually happening. Think about this, all the reporters that went to Iraq to cover the war, they stayed with US military, they wore US military apparel, they ate with US troops, they were protected by the US troops and they were transported in US humvies and they reported mostly from US bases. Have you heard ANYTHING from a reporter that stayed with the Iraqi troops, ate with Iraqi troops, was transporterd around by Iraqi military, and reported from Iraqi bases? didn't think so. come back when you have something worthwile to say.

Jessica Warner: C'mon, Dan.....Every time a civilized person is wronged, the immediate, natural reaction is to blow oneself up. Everyone knows this, Dan.What's your problem?

AB Omar: oh and your reply to Sunny's comment, saying that you don't hate arabs or muslims..... if that's so then why did you create this group? i mean look at the first sentence in the intro to this group, "This group is for every American who supports racial profiling against Muslim Arabs. "you really have no clue what you're talking about do you?

Daniel Marchant: LOL, this is really rather comical. Obviously the Republican controlled government (soley controlled by Bush of course, that ultra evil conservative) is secretly behind the incredibly liberal news media controlled almost exclusively by very vocal Democrats. How can you not acknowledge that? Turn on any news channel and you hear "Bush is a failure, Bush got us into a quagmire, impeach Bush." Yeah, government propoganda...o-kay. I like how news reporters being protected by troops and staying with troops is conclusive proof of your position lol. Of course, if the troops would not have protected them, you'd be outraged over that and condemn the military for not regarding innocent life. I can't believe you are still here arguing. Everything that you are saying is making you look worse and worse in the eyes of the intelligent people of this group.

Umm, Omar, look at the very FIRST part of the TITLE of this group...

I will continue to post this all as it unfolds further.

~Tribal~

Call for Prayer

2006-11-10T03:12:00.000-05:00

I'm coming to you guys in desperation. A good friend of mine here at school has decided it is his duty to "convert" everyone he can to athiesm. I don't understand his motivation because there is nothing to gain from it, other then damning the souls of Followers of Christ. His goal is not merely to destroy individuals, but to tear down religion itself. My friend is very intelligent, and I fear for a great many Christians who may not be extra strong in their faith, or in their knowledge of the Word. Friends, I'm sure many of you think of angels and demons and things of the spiritual world as something that belongs in the Old Testemant and not in todays world. Whether you want to accept it or not, there is a spiritual domain in this physical world, where angels and demons battle over souls in vast array. Satin's hand is in this, I know this for certain. I am asking for you to join me in prayer. Pray for my friend's soul, because he needs it, desperately. Pray for me and my fellow Christians here that we might break through his delusions. Pray for all those who have, are, and will come in contact with this friend of mine that he will not be a stumbling block in their path, that they instead be a stumbling block to his misguided ignorance. Pray that God show himself in a very real and powerful way to him. Thanks, and God bless.

~AndyJams~

Voting Party Lines

2006-11-08T21:34:00.000-05:00

Well, the Democrats won. Worse than that, Nancy Pelosi is now third in line for the presidency (pray very hard that Bush and Cheney don't decide to die in the next 2 years). Hey at least I got to go party at Heritage Hills with Todd Platts! One thing that annoys me almost more than anything regarding the election, however, is the deal that people are making over voting "party lines." Everywhere I go and hear people talk about the election, I hear someone being criticized for voting a "straight ticket" (hey, it's better than a gay ticket). I even had a teacher in school today talk about his mother always voting straight up Republican. He said he asked his mother one time who she would vote for if God ran as a Democrat and Satan ran as a Republican. Her response, obviously, was that God would never run as a Democrat -- and this teacher criticized his mother for saying that. But I submit to you, what is wrong with what she said? What is wrong with voting for only one party?

People often talk about voting for "the best man for the job." But why would anyone with any form of a backbone on any issue at all vote on anything BUT the issues? As a general rule, Republicans are pro-life, pro-war, and pro-tax cuts. Democrats are typically pro-abortion, anti-war, and for repealing the tax cuts and imposing higher taxes on the wealthy. Gee, do you think they're a member of the party they are a part of because they share common views on the issues? Therefore, if when you voted, you were mostly concerned about the war in Iraq, why would you not vote straight Republican? What is wrong with voting straight Republican? Now I can see why someone would not vote straight lines if a candidate differed from their party's views on an issue, but come on people -- if you're going to criticize someone for voting the way they did, it's almost more accurate to criticize those who did NOT vote straight lines. NOT voting straight party lines shows that you really do not care about the issues (unless of course, as I said, the candidate differs from his or her party). Grow a backbone! Take a stand!

~Tribal

John Kerry's View Of Our Fighting Men And Women

2006-11-01T16:20:00.000-05:00

''You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.''

-- Sen. John Kerry

~Tribal

Iraq: The Real Story

2006-10-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

Glenn Beck created an interesting video that details some of the more overlooked victories in Iraq. With the terms "Vietnam" and "quagmire" still being thrown around, I think it's worth a minute to see what else has been accomplished (as if destroying a murderous regime that tortured thousands of its citizens and then tossed their corpses into mass graves is not enough of a victory for some). Here's the link for the video. In addition to this, a while back Fox News had posted a series of articles regarding Saddam and his possible terror links. These are also worth a look for those who continue to be "nay sayers" (I won't even get into the Sarin nerve gas shells that troops found, but you didn't hear about that one in the Tokyo Rose media either). The links for these articles are as follows: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

~Tribal

One Nation Under God

2006-09-08T20:10:00.000-04:00

Many people in America today do not realize the moral and religious foundations that their country was built upon. They blindly insist that our founding fathers intended for such things to exist as "separation of church and state." My personal favorite is "Oh, well the founding fathers would have meant for same sex marraige to be legal." In Brad Stine's words, "Yup. That was their master plan!" Citizens today have absolutely no concept of what the founding fathers believed in, and the majority of them won't even listen to the historical facts. It does not take much research to break through the swarm of BS that surrounds this situation. That is the purpose of this post: to tell all of our readers out there what it is the founding fathers believed...using their own words. To begin with, however, I would like to refute some pretty popular claims concerning the founders. Most people I talk to on a regular basis believe that the founding fathers were all either deists or masons...but yet no one can conclusively tell me what either one of those is. Classical deism holds that God created the world but takes no active part in its day to day operations -- He essentialy made creation and then stepped back to let it take its course. Freemasonry is, despite some wild claims, not an anti-religious group. It is, in fact, very closely tied to religious belief. They do not force their members to accept a certain set of religious principles, and the organization itself states that freemasonry is not a replacement for religion. Whether one agrees with freemasonry or not, one cannot coherently argue that freemasonry was or is anti-religious. While a certain number of founding fathers were definentaly involved with freemasonry, only a small percentage truly believed in deism. To much of the relief of many reading this, I am now going to shut up and let the founding fathers speak for themselves on the issue. These quotations can all be found here and here. Enjoy...

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John Adams

“ The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

"Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell."

"It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence."

Samuel Adams

“He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all… Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.”

“Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity… and leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.”

Benjamin Franklin (wow this sounds like one hardcore deist)

“God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel”

“In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered… do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?”

In Benjamin Franklin's 1749 plan of education for public schools in Pennsylvania, he insisted that schools teach "the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern."

In 1787 when Franklin helped found Benjamin Franklin University, it was dedicated as "a nursery of religion and learning, built on Christ, the Cornerstone."

Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton began work with the Rev. James Bayard to form the Christian Constitutional Society to help spread over the world the two things which Hamilton said made America great: (1) Christianity (2) a Constitution formed under Christianity. “The Christian Constitutional Society, its object is first: The support of the Christian religion. Second: The support of the United States.”

On July 12, 1804 at his death, Hamilton said, “I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy; pray for me.”

"For my own part, I sincerely esteem it [the Constitution] a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests."

"I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion, and if I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity I would unhesitatingly give my verdict in its favor. I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man."

John Hancock

“In circumstances as dark as these, it becomes us, as Men and Christians, to reflect that whilst every prudent measure should be taken to ward off the impending judgments, …at the same time all confidence must be withheld from the means we use; and reposed only on that God rules in the armies of Heaven, and without His whole blessing, the best human counsels are but foolishness… Resolved; …Thursday the 11th of May…to humble themselves before God under the heavy judgments felt and feared, to confess the sins that have deserved them, to implore the Forgiveness of all our transgressions, and a spirit of repentance and reformation …and a Blessing on the … Union of the American Colonies in Defense of their Rights [for which hitherto we desire to thank Almighty God]…That the people of Great Britain and their rulers may have their eyes opened to discern the things that shall make for the peace of the nation…for the redress of America’s many grievances, the restoration of all her invaded liberties, and their security to the latest generations."

Patrick Henry (my personal favorite)

"This is all the inheritance I can give my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed.”

“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

“The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed.”

"It is when people forget God that tyrants forge their chains."

Thomas Jefferson

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

“Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern which have come under my observation, none appears to me so pure as that of Jesus.”

“ The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.”

James Madison

“ We’ve staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all of our heart.”

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

In 1812, President Madison signed a federal bill which economically aided the Bible Society of Philadelphia in its goal of the mass distribution of the Bible.

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Madison proposed the plan to divide the central government into three branches. He discovered this model of government from the Perfect Governor, as he read Isaiah 33:22.

Noah Webster

“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed...No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”

“The Bible was America’s basic textbook in all fields.”

“Education is useless without the Bible”

George Washington

"...reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle..."

“ It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and Bible.”

“What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ.”

During his inauguration, Washington took the oath as prescribed by the Constitution but added several religious components to that official ceremony. Before taking his oath of office, he summoned a Bible on which to take the oath, added the words “So help me God!” to the end of the oath, then leaned over and kissed the Bible.

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This is just a sample of the fully documented information that can be found here. Please take a look at all of it and stop being stupid about "separation of church and state." It was meant to protect the church from the state's involvement (i.e. Church of England). I may post more about this topic sometime down the road.

~Tribal~

"Army Recommends Death Penalty for 4 Soldiers Accused of Murder"

2006-09-02T20:04:00.000-04:00

Stories like this really eat at me. I personally have not heard too much about this individual case, but I have heard the details in other cases similar to this, and for the most part these are attempts to dishonor our soldiers and disrupt the war in Iraq. It is sickening. How can we expect our soldiers to win the war on terror when we keep trying them and jailing them for killing? Isn't that their job? If these soldiers really were told that the raid was on an al-Qaida base, of course they would have shot at people who were attacking them. That's what you do when you're in the Army and you get attacked! You attack back! What gets me with this particular story is that they're actually accusing the one soldier of stabbing another to make it look like they were attacked by the "civilians." If that actually is the case, these are some very mentally ill soldiers. Have we forgotten the enemy we are fighting? We are fighting against enemies that disguise themselves and walk around like civilians! If these soldiers were told before they went in that this was a terrorist base, and they were attacked by these men once they got there, how can anyone say with certainty that they were not terrorists? So why are we putting them on trial for the freaking death penalty??? Is this how America treats our soldiers, by telling them to do a job and then executing them for it? This story is absolutely outrageous. If I hear anything more about it, I will keep you all updated as to what is going on. If you have anymore information about this story other than what is in the link above, please leave a comment.

~Tribal~

The World Hates Christians and Americans - Part 2

2006-08-06T21:36:00.000-04:00

Well now that the fury over me supporting Mel Gibson has died down, I think it's high time I publicly support another popular recipient of the world's hate: Tour de France champion Floyd Landis! I won't say much about this topic, I will let Floyd speak for himself. I fully believe that Floyd is innocent of the doping charges, and this is why:

"In the past week, I have gone from the 'Top of the World' to the depths of scandal. I have been thrust into the international spotlight and am being asked to defend myself against something that I did not do, for reasons that I do not understand. Although this has been a hard time for my family and me, we are confident that I will be vindicated. I am innocent of any wrongdoing and want to take an opportunity to clear up some misconceptions that exist regarding the situation.

It is widely known that the test in question, given as a urine sample after my victorious ride on stage 17 of the Tour de France, returned an abnormal T/E ratio from the 'A' sample. I want to be entirely clear about one point of the test that has not been fairly reported in the press or expressed in any statements made by international or national governing bodies; the T value returned has been determined to be in the normal range. The E value returned was LOW, thus causing the skewed ratio. This evidence supports my assertion that I did not use testosterone to improve my performance. I emphatically deny any claims that I used testosterone to improve my performance.

Much has been speculated about the presence of exogenous testosterone in the 'A' sample. Together with some of the leading medical and scientific experts in the world, we are reviewing the documentation about the 'carbon isotope ratio test.' All I can say at this time is that I did not take testosterone, so there must be another reason for the result, as leaked by the UCI.
Beyond the specifics of the testing, however, I am particularly troubled by the actions of the UCI. Information about an 'adverse analytical finding' was prematurely released by the UCI in order 'to avoid a known leak' within the lab. A direct statement followed from UCI President Pat McQuaid that left little to infer as to whose test was in question.

I was notified of the 'A' sample results while attending post-Tour criteriums in Europe. As a result of these breeches in protocol, confidentiality and disregard for due process, I view this as a clear violation of my rights as a professional racer licensed by the UCI.

I became the center of media attention with little time to understand the nature of the 'A' sample results, possible causes or explanations. As I tried to come to terms with the situation, my statement and attempts to understand the results were interpreted as 'excuses' before I had time to fully grasp the facts of the case. The inappropriate actions of the UCI has caused undue, and potentially irreparable, harm to my reputation and character. I feel I am being prosecuted without regard to my basic rights.

It is now my goal to fight to clear my name and restore what I worked so hard to achieve. I am a fighter. I did not give up during the Tour and I won’t give up now, no matter what the results of the 'B' sample are.

Keep the Faith,
Floyd "

Our prayers go out to Floyd and his family as they put up with all this crap. The world just cannot stand Americans winning, and they will do everything they can to see us lose. The same accusations were brought against Lance Armstrong multiple times, but multiple times he was able to prove that he fairly beat the competition. When will it end?

~Tribal~

Wallace! Wallace! Wallace!

2006-08-04T11:05:00.000-04:00

Over the past few days I have grown very sick of hearing about Mel Gibson's DUI and "anti-semitism." Flipping through the channels on TV last night alone (a full two or three days after Gibson's incident) I passed three separate channels talking about nothing but Mel Gibson. One channel I passed had some Hollywood hotshot going on about how he would never work with Gibson again over this terrible outrage. In fact, many in Hollywood are saying just that. Ironic, because many of these actors have probably been charged with DUI themselves. Dr. Phil is probably the only person so far that I've heard support Mel. It's just ridiculous. You go on any news website and there's half a dozen stories about Mel Gibson. The world loves to hate Christians when they slip up and fall.

I have been a Mel Gibson fan for a good bit of my life. Braveheart is probably my favorite movie of all time next to the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings films. The Patriot and The Passion also would make an appearance in my top 10 list if I indeed made a top 10 list. The point is, I am not going to stop watching these films because of this one DUI incident. Mel's actions that night were deplorable, but I still support Mel. I will continue to go see his films, and I accept the many apologies he publicly issued. I hope he faces the same punishment as everyone else in his situation would face, and I hope he overcomes his alcoholism. But that really is the only issue here to deal with. Despite what Mel may have said that night, he is not an anti-semite.

Like Dr. Phil said, you can't judge a man by what he says in a drunken stupor on the side of the road. Now granted the man is still in a drunken stupor, but for that see the above paragraph. Many like to point out how Mel's father reportedly said things about the Holocaust never happening. They then like to draw the connection that since Mel's father may have been anti-semitic, that obviously means Mel must be. Personally, I find any argument accusing Gibson of anti-semitism rather baffling. If Gibson "hated the Jews," why would he make a film about Jesus Christ, the most famous Jew in history? Why would he be working on a tv mini-series about the horrors of the Holocaust? Why would he himself repeatedly say that he does not hate Jews? Here's a bit of interesting information many of you may not have known: Mel's bodyguard is a Jew! Mel's publicist is even Jewish! Let me tell you, that is one hardcore anti-semite. I wish people would just shut up and let this man get on with his life of making great movies. I also wish that someone would videotape some of these people bashing Mel when those people are drunk -- it probably happens many more times and with harsher things being said.

~Tribal~

Congratulations Steve!

2006-07-22T20:31:00.001-04:00

It is my pleasure to announce that Steve is finally going to graduate Army Boot Camp. It has been a rough road for him at times, but our best wishes and prayers go out to him and his family as he begins his career. I do not have any other information at this time, but keep him in your prayers as he graduates and progresses to his next stage of training. Congratulations Steve, and thank you for your service.

~Tribal~

Jungle Jump Off

2006-07-22T20:31:00.000-04:00

Since last Sunday I have been on a journey..."A Journey to the Center of Christ's Heart." Every two years our church sends a group of youth to the Wycliffe/JAARS center in Waxhol, North Carolina, for a program that is known as Jungle Jump Off. For those of you who don't know a thing about Wycliffe or JAARS (a good bit of you), Wycliffe is a Bible translation organization comprised of missionaries from around the country. JAARS originally was an acronym for "Jungle And Aviation Radio Services," and was/is an essential support group to translators overseas in difficult areas. Jungle Jump Off itself is run by JAARS and is pretty much a week long simulation of missionary camp life, culminating in a realistic experience that spans from receiving the call to actually beginning translation for a foreign people group. Along the way, we had an opportunity to explore the different aspects of missions, the different roles of missions, the support that missionaries need, and we all grew closer as a youth group as well.

Among the things we did while there, we actually served JAARS itself by doing various tasks around the compound. We also had class room sessions about Bible translation and missionaries, and we watched numerous movies. One such movie we saw was called something like "Ee-Taow: The Next Chapter." It chronicled the life of a native people group before missionaries arrived. It then traced the evolution and development of the Word of God written in this group's native tongue. When the translation was complete and the people received their Bibles, the response was overwhelming to watch. The entire village of thousands repented of their ways and turned to Christ. Celebration broke out in the streets, and for hours the natives sang, jumped, ran around, and praised God. It soon gave way to hysterical weeping, however, as the people realized that everyone from their village who already passed away were living in a dark, Christless eternity. About an hour later, the celebration resumed as the people would not let the new hope they had found be smothered. Keep in mind that this was not an acted out movie. This entire film was shot by camera men as these events actually unfolded. Nothing was scripted. Later on, the missionary was teaching these people out of God's word, and they were all sitting under their grass huts. The missionary got to a part in his Scripture reading about God sending a great earthquake as a sign, and the entire village was actually suddenly hit with an earthquake. The missionary ran around in a panic trying to get people away from the huts, but the people remained as motionless as statues without a shred of fear on their faces. The earthquake soon subsided, and the natives never flinched once. They knew it was their God showing Himself to them, and they knew they had nothing at all to fear.

Now I could tell you hundreds of stories from this week, either things I experienced or things missionaries told me in conversations, but I chose this specific story for a purpose. I think we have alot that we need to learn from these people groups. I am not trying to bash that missionary and I am not trying to criticize the church in more developed countries like America, but how come in America there isn't mass celebrating when people get saved? How come we don't cry for those who have died without Christ? How come the natives had the faith to remain calm and see the earthquake as a sign of God while the American missionary feared for the lives of those he was teaching to? It's just kind of heartbreaking I think to see these people who have never heard about God until just recently have such a strong faith and such excitement and dedication while we really couldn't care less in most circumstances. I'm not excluding myself from anything I'm saying here, I would probably have run during the earthquake and I really don't get as excited as I should when people get saved. It's just kind of ironic that sometimes the ones we go to teach can teach us more than anyone thought. We're so comfortable where we live that we really don't need God or faith...at least that's how it seems to us. We have an abundance of food everyday, we have electric, we have running water -- most of these tribes have to find their food to survive everyday, they have no modern conveniences, and most of their water sources are contaminated and unfit for consumption. Like C.S. Lewis says in The Problem of Pain, it's not when we're comfortable and content that we seek God -- it's when we're hurting, lost, and miserable. These natives have lived in constant fear of witchcraft, evil spirits, starvation, dehydration, and natural disasters all their lives (all of these things do exist). Our culture naturally makes us closed to God's Word, and it's time that we took a stand for God and for the Bibless people groups in the world.

~Tribal~

Love

2006-07-19T00:51:00.000-04:00

I've been absent for quite a while, and there's been quite a lot on my plate, but I thought I'd throw this up there....love is a funny thing. I'd even say that love is a many splendid thing. Why, love lifts us up where we belong! All you need is love! Alright, so I didn't come up with that, and anyone who knows anything about any good music should know that. Hmm...but love's complicated and confusing...can bring you extreme happyness and extreme sadness. It drives people to do crazy things. Some people take their lives, others take others' lives. Love doesn't always drive people to murder though, cause if it did the world would be a pretty sucky place. Love can drive someone to work harder, to become better at whatever it is they do. Afterall, girls like guys with skills, right? That's my experience at least. So what's this all about? The mistake people make is they devote they're all and everything to another person. I can understand it. I've made that mistake before. Well, maybe mistake's a bad word for it...but whatever you want to call it, I've certainly been guilty of making a girl the most important thing in my life. Don't get me wrong, love is wonderful, and I for one am in favor of it. I'm a hopeless romantic, and there's no two ways about it. Whenever it is I finally am able to find that one girl who makes me sigh like listening to the Great Gates of Kiev (if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's an absolutely amazing piece of music that, well, makes me sigh because it's so beautiful), she's going to be the most important thing to me here on Earth. The point is, that out of this amazing love I keep dancing around, Jesus let Himself be slaughtered for us. He loves us more than I could possibly ever love a girl, and you know what? Jesus gets to have the number one spot. He's got to. There's just really no way around it. If He's not, then what's all the rest of this stuff worth? I don't know if any of this makes sense. Just something I thought about this evening while I was running.

Flag Burning and Free Speech

2006-06-28T13:16:00.000-04:00

A few years ago when credit card commercials of the same format were popular on television, my uncle told me a joke:

"Lighter: $2. American Flag: $10. A**hole catching his shirt on fire while trying to burn the American flag: priceless."

I honestly can not understand why this whole flag burning issue is even an issue to begin with. I can't believe the amendment banning the burning of the American flag didn't pass, and I fail to recognize its controversy. In what way would such an amendment be a restriction of free speech? How is speech even related to the physical, non-vocal action of burning a national symbol? In case you all forgot what exactly our flag is, here's a refresher. Our flag is not made out of a piece of fabric with some artificial dyes that probably come from China. Our flag is made of the blood of every soldier who died while defending this country since its birth. Our flag is made of human lives -- hundreds of thousands of human lives to be more specific. Burning the American flag is not merely destroying a rectangular piece of cloth, it is desecrating the memory of hundreds of thousands of dead American soldiers. No man has the right to do that, no matter how much he think he does. Not only is the flag made out of blood, but the flag represents American freedom -- it is the definitive symbol of liberty. When one burns the flag, he essentially burns the symbol of his freedom -- he burns and desecrates his own rights to free speech, free press, etc. If someone wants to burn up the symbol of their own freedom, why should they be given any of the freedoms associated with the symbol? It makes no sense. One can think of it as a contract. Burning an American flag is essentially equal to rejecting America and America's freedom -- therefore one rejects his freedoms when he burns a flag, so lock him up and throw away the key! This is a sickening debate that shames our soldiers living and dead, and I pray that the government will stop toying around with the issue and do something.

~Tribal~

Who's Going to Hell?

2006-06-23T18:33:00.000-04:00

A recent poll was taken among Beliefnet members that showed some...well quite frankly...not so surprising results:

"Conservatives are more secure in their beliefs that they will not go to hell and that they know someone who also won't suffer eternally, according to a June poll of 10,000 Beliefnet members.
Liberals expressed less confidence in their chances of escaping the underworld and in their ability to identify the damned, the poll shows."

Let's be honest folks, is this honestly some sort of breaking news headline? If i supported the gross murder of millions of babies, I would be pretty worried about where I was going after I died as well. If I supported banning God from schools, science, and oh, I dunno, even the freaking pledge of allegiance, for kicks and giggles, I would be very worried about being eternally damned to hell too. Why is this poll such a surprise? What should be surprising, or at least revolting, is that if liberalism has all of the answers, why are they the ones who think they're going to hell? Isn't that kind of a surefire sign that you're on the wrong path, you know, if you think that you might be going to hell and all? Oh well. You can read the full Fox News article about the poll here.

~Tribal~

BREAKING NEWS: WMD'S IN IRAQ

2006-06-21T21:41:00.000-04:00

From FoxNews.com:

"WASHINGTON -- The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

'We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons,' Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: 'Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.'"

More can be read of this article here. The site also contains a link to the declassified portion of the NGIC report detailing the weapons. I guarantee you that this story will never make the front pages of any major liberal news outlets, so pass this article along to everyone you know. I can hear Murtha and Sheehan and Kennedy now: "This is an outrageous piece of government propaganda! How dare the president lie to us again!" Oh well, maybe Ann Coulter is right about liberals being traitors. Or maybe Michael Savage is right and liberalism really is a mental disorder. Who knows for sure the insanity of the leftist mind?

~Tribal~

Red Fridays

2006-06-06T16:11:00.000-04:00

I got this in an email today and thought it was very worthwhile to pass this on to all of you in a slightly modified form:

RED FRIDAYS -- Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing red every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the "silent majority". We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or over-bearing. We get no liberal media coverage on TV to reflect our message or our opinions. Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar will wear something red. By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of red much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in RED. And it will let our troops know the once "silent" majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked "What can we do to make things better for you?" is...We need your support and your prayers. Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example; and wear something red every Friday. WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE, ONLY BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE. THEIR BLOOD RUNS RED---- SO WEAR RED! --- MAY GOD HELP AMERICA TO BECOME ONE NATION, UNDER GOD.

This sounds like a very worthwhile effort and I encourage you all to wear red on Fridays in support of our troops. Pass this on to everyone that you know, as well.

~Tribal~

Da Vinci Code Cracking 5/25/06

2006-05-25T19:14:00.000-04:00

The first topic I wish to discuss in my Da Vinci Code series deals with a statement made at the beginning of the novel itself. Page 1 of Dan Brown's book reads as follows: "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." With a little research (mostly cited from Josh McDowell's research) one will find, however, that this is not the case. For starters, there are not 666 panes of glass in the Louvre pyramid as Brown says on page 21, but rather there are 673. On page 131 of the novel, Brown says that "Madonna of the Rocks" is a 5 foot tall canvas painting. In reality, it is 6.5 feet tall and is painted on wood. Now, at this point, most of you have probably lost interest in this all together because there is no point in bitterly arguing about little details such as the height of a painting or the number of glass panes in the Louvre. Normally, I would agree with you, but this is actually an issue of importance. The problem arises because Brown uses these pieces of incorrect information to support his theory and storyline. It would not be a problem if he would not have included the "fact page" at the beginning of the book, but he did. He sells these untruths as fact and then uses them as actual, "historical" proof for his flawed viewpoints. Any respectable historian in the art world would also tell you that Da Vinci did not go by "Da Vinci," but rather his name Leonardo. Vinci is the town Leonardo lived in, "Da Vinci" literally means "of Vinci." No art historian or museum curator would ever refer to him as Da Vinci. It is basically the equivalent of referring to me as "of Albuquerque." That's just splitting hairs, however. An interesting aside. Check back soon for more updates about the artwork the book is centered around as well as some organizations that make an appearance in the novel.

~Tribal~

Da Vinci Madness

2006-05-18T20:50:00.000-04:00

We all knew it was coming; we all knew -- okay, maybe just those of you who read this blog with some regularity (all 2 or 3 of you not on the writing staff) -- that I would eventually write a post about The Da Vinci Code spouting off my radical, intolerant, racist, biased, sexist, unfeeling, cruel, pompous, fundamentalist viewpoints on this holy work of fiction that no one can DARE to question. So, I'm gonna pull a one up on all of you. Rather than do just one post about this excellent, infallible, sacred, GOD INSPIRED novel by Dan Brown, I will take the pleasure of mercilessly ripping it to shreds in (hopefully) daily segments! This series, however, will most likely not begin until early next week, so make sure you check back then for some updates.

As for this post, I would like to explain the purpose behind why I am doing this, as well as inject my own thoughts about the work and Dan Brown himself. To start, I recognize that The Da Vinci Code is indeed a work of fiction. I am not one who is going to go lead marches down the streets of D.C. to get the book banned, because I know that our soldiers die to protect our freedom of speech -- no matter how false, slanderous, inaccurate, historically flawed, or RETARDED that speech may be, I know that if I expect people to not silence and ban my works, then I should not do the same to them. It's a matter of freedom as well as simple politeness. So, to get on with it, why would a recognized work of literary fiction be such a hot topic of debate anyway? Up until recently, I was under the impression that the author himself only professed it to be fiction. After reading several quotes from Brown's website, however, I am now under the very evident impression that he does believe in his theory, and he does claim that the theory "may hold merit." In addition to this, he makes a statement at the beginning of the text saying that all information about art, architecture, and the like is indeed fact. After a little research, that proves to be incorrect as well, and he uses these "facts" as evidence to his theory.

The problem with The Da Vinci Code starts when uninformed, unchurched, or unschooled people pick up the novel and begin to read it. It goes from "Wow, what a page turner!" to "Whoa! I never knew that about Jesus and Christianity!" People do not realize that in addition to being bad philosophy and bad theology, it is just horrible history. Hardly anything in the novel proves to be true besides maybe the occasional "Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa." People read this book and then suddenly absorb the inaccuracies with it, thinking that an overnight success author knows all the secrets to the universe. Now before I go further, I will admit that I have not read the book. Our family has a copy, however, and I intend to read it at my earliest opportunity. In addition, I will be going to see the film sometime in the near future. However, I have read very much about the book, and fact remains fact if I read the story part or not. I specifically know of claims the book makes (in the form of actual quotations from the book) and in what context it makes them. I can comment and research the correctness of these claims without having to have read the book itself, and not having read the book makes me no less of an "expert" than if I had read it. So check back often for updates on this issue. At the most, I have about 24 posts planned out, but I may end up condensing a great deal of those for time's sake. I will also turn on the comment feature of this site so you may leave me your love letters, hate mail, and anything in between. Feel free to leave us a message if you wish. Everything you say is welcomed here, even if you are an off the deep end liberal. We will still listen to what you have to say before we laugh. So, check back often and please leave comments! I hope this subject will prove to be a valuable weapon for those who know the truth.

~Tribal~

"Ethical Decision Making"

2006-05-11T16:17:00.000-04:00

A few Fridays back, the junior class at the Dallastown Area High School embarked on what is known to be Ethical Decision Making day at the Penn State York campus. Now, when I first heard of this, I thought it might actually be something to look into, and it might actually be something good. Then I began to think...what is a public high school doing teaching young people about morality? These are the same public high schools that banned the longstanding tradition of morning prayer and rejected the scientific validity of intelligent design. These schools are trying to push God and religion out the back door while at the same time trying to keep a hand on the values that coexist with such belief. Well, their efforts are definentaly in vain. Rather than hearing what IS right or IS wrong, we were enlightened with the "truth" that the ethical code of conduct varies with every job or career. Kind of amazing what some of these "educators" can come up with.

~Tribal~

Conservative Insanity

2006-05-08T20:04:00.000-04:00

Tonight marked the premier of Glenn Beck's nightly television show. It runs every weeknight at 7, 9, and 12 ET on CNN (though make sure you have the right CNN, there are multiple CNN channels -- with Suscom cable the one should be channel 40). The TV show works basically like his radio show. It's a "fusion of entertainment and enlightenment" -- very commical and entertaining while retaining its informational nature. You should all watch it...TONIGHT.

~Tribal~

Well, You Don't Look Christian To Me...

2006-05-05T19:46:00.000-04:00

I would like to start this entry by saying that I am sorry if I come across has edgy or aggressive with this post. This is something that has been pent up inside of me for a long time. It all started when the P.O.D. promo team (of which I am a member) sent me a free copy of Risen magazine. This issue happened to have a picture of Sonny (P.O.D.'s singer) on the front cover, in all of his dreadlocked/tattooed glory. Well to get on with it, the first thing I heard when I pulled the magazine out of the box of promo materials was, "That does not look like a Christian man." This is actually a very old subject of tension between me and several elder members of my church, but this incident just happened to revive the fight. I deal with this kind of thinking on a regular basis. I am also criticized by many for "having friends that look like bums" and for even "dressing like a bum off the street" myself. Christians (and it is often the older generations) tend to have a problem with how people look, which is ironic if you ask me. We as teens are always taught by our pastors and parents to not be caught up in the aesthetic and shallow things in life. Yet at the same time, these same people often condemn others merely for looking a certain way.

Now let me continue here with some very relevant ancient history. You know, the funny thing about history is that it always contains a lesson for future generations. Well, enough rambling, I will get on with my point. In New Testament times, was Jesus wearing a tie and a suit? Well maybe that's a bit overdoing the question because ties and suits did not exist back then, but did Jesus wear the best of the best in clothing? Did he own several sets of "synagogue clothes" for His Saturday morning excursions to temple? Why, the answer to that question is a more than resounding NO. Did Jesus "hang" with the well dressed, "well groomed," clean shaven and fair faced people? Well, okay He hung with everybody, but if you look, He spent most of His time with those considered unclean and godless by the standards of the time. Did they have several sets of Saturday clothes? No. Now the interesting part is if you look at the ones who did insist on dressing well and being well groomed and keeping good hygiene. I'll give you a hint, they're the ones who wanted to crucify Jesus. Yes I'm talking about the Pharisees. They were too shallow to see through people's appearances and into who each person really was. Jesus, on the other hand, cared about the people, not how they looked or dressed.

The Bible says that God will not judge by how one looks, so why should we? If Christ does not judge by one's clothing or one's tattoos or hair, then what makes us think we have a right to do so? Do we honestly think we are that much better than God, that we know how to judge and He doesn't? As Montgomery Gentry sings in one of perhaps the coolest country songs ever, "you do your thing and I'll do mine...who are you to judge me? My Judge is going to judge us all one day." Did you hear that? MY JUDGE IS GOING TO JUDGE US ALL ONE DAY. Not Pastor so and so, not Deacon him, and not our parents. Someone with tattoos and dreadlocks can very much be a Christian man. There is no such thing as "looking Christian." That is such a shallow, plastic form of Christianity that I can't believe it.

While I am on the issue, I would like to comment on some similar issues. People have this concept that when you go to church you must wear a dress shirt and tie and nice dress pants and shoes. HEAVEN FORBID that you even think about wearing shorts or jeans. That is a cardinal sin that will condemn you to hell forever. Okay, well this is the part where I tell you that what I just said was completely sarcastic in case you could not pick up on it. So, the main argument for dressing up for church happens to be that is shows respect for God (although I also hear a lot that it's just not good to show up looking like a bum...gee wonder what Montgomery Gentry would say to that). So, this would imply that not dressing up would be disrespecting God's holiness. As the father of a friend of mine has said, "Does that mean when I'm sitting at home in an undershirt and shorts that God doesn't like me praying or doesn't hear my prayers?" This man holds a high position in our church might I add. Anyway, his point is 100% correct. Does God care what you look like in church or does God care about what your heart looks like in church. "Come just as you are."

If any of these people that condemn for looking "unChristian" actually spent time with people on the street, they would realize that their actions actually drive people away from the church. I have prayed with numerous people on street corners in York city who tell me they go to very casual churches. Most of these people do not even have enough money to buy their food for the next week, so how in Christ's name are they to buy an overpriced, made in Indonesia, piece of fabric suit? I have had people tell me that people all decked out in suits with slicked back hair scare them away. No lie. They honestly feel not welcomed by churches because of HOW THEY DRESS. I have also held conversations with a very steadfast atheist who almost turned Christian at one point. This girl would be described by many as a "goth," and she said that the first time she walked into a church, they all kept away from her and cast very askance glances at her. So, for this reason she will probably forever see Christians as an exclusive group of people haters that are so blinded and narrow minded by their ignorance that they stop caring about people. Please tell me this is not Christ's church, because I feel it is. PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE PUSHED AWAY FOR THE SOLE REASON OF THE WAY THEY LOOK. If by the end of this post anything looks "unChristian," it should be those who are too set in their ways to see Christ's love. Wake up, people.

~Tribal~

The Mighty Face of Terror

2006-05-04T20:49:00.000-04:00

American troops have recently recovered some new tapes that al Zarqawi was trying to film for propaganda purposes. The only problem, however, is that in the video, Zarqawi has trouble being able to correctly operate the machine gun he is using. He fires a few times, and it jams. An underling minion must fix it for the great warrior, though, because Zarqawi himself apparently appears too incompetent to understand the firearm he is using. To make matters worse, one of the terrorists who grabs the gun manages to land his hand right on the barrel...which is of course searing hot after Zarqawi's play time. As if that is not enough of a comedy, Zarqawi is wearing New Balance tennis shoes -- made by an American company. Hmm, I thought he was part of that little coterie that hated America. Here's the link where you should be able to access some of the video. You can't make this stuff up.

~Tribal~

Nuclear Jihad

2006-04-25T20:51:00.000-04:00

A disturbing article pointed out by Glenn Beck on his website:

"A terrorism symposium featuring leading experts will begin with presentation of 'tangible proof' al-Qaida not only has developed an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons but also has begun to deploy them for use in its jihad against the United States and Israel. "

You can access the entire article from the above link, and I highly recommend reading it. This is a terrifying situation if indeed al-Qaida has obtained such weapons. I will definentaly update on this scenario as more news becomes available.

~Tribal~

Happy Easter Everyone!

2006-04-16T13:57:00.000-04:00

The Lord is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed!!!! Ok, so Jesus has been in a cosntant state or risennesss for close to 2000 years, but it's still wonderfully exciting to celebrate and remember that wonderful first Easter morning when the angels proclaimed the news that He was not in tomb but was risen! It makes me super excited and to smile loudly just thinking about it. Man oh man. This is my favorite day of the year...I'm just so happy and excited. Anywho, just wanted to wish all of you a happy and wonderful Easter, and may the Lord and Savior of us all bless you and keep you and bring a loud toothy smile to your face!

~AndyJams~

The Gospel of Deception

2006-04-11T16:27:00.000-04:00

Being initially informed of the current "gospel of Judas" quagmire while at Liberty, I decided I should write a post regarding the issue. I did some research, and found it to be more beneficial to the reader to just post exactly what I found. Got Questions has the best explanation that I have thus far found. Here is the entire article about the false book.

"Sometime in the 1970's, in a cave in Egypt, a copy of the 'gospel of Judas' was discovered. The circumstances of the discovery have been described as shady, with those who possessed the copy asking for exorbitant amounts of money for the codex. For decades, no institution was willing to pay for the purchase due to its dubious origins. Eventually the codex of the gospel of Judas was purchased by a foundation in Switzerland. The existence of the gospel of Judas codex was made public in 2004, but the actual release of the content of the codex has been repeatedly delayed, with the now expected release date of April, 2006. The dating of the gospel of Judas codex is likely the 5th century A.D. Up to one-third of the codex is missing or illegible.

Prior to this discovery, the only reference to the gospel of Judas was in the writings of a 2nd century Christian named Irenaeus. Irenaeus essentially wrote that the gospel of Judas was the 'invented history' of a long line of heretics and rebels against God. The essential message of the gospel of Judas is that Jesus wanted Judas to betray Him because it was necessary to fulfill Jesus' plan. If it was Jesus' plan for Judas to betray Him, why would Jesus label Judas the 'son of perdition' (John 17:12), and state that it would have been better if Judas had never been born (Matthew 26:24). If Judas was simply following Jesus' instructions, why would he commit suicide once he saw that Jesus was condemned (Matthew 27:5)?

The gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel, espousing a Gnostic viewpoint of Christianity. The gospel of Judas is simply a heretical forgery, much the same as the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Mary, and the gospel of Philip. Just as Judas Iscariot rejected Jesus and betrayed Him with a kiss, the gospel of Judas rejects the true Gospel and truth of God with a fraudulent appearance of validity."

Honestly, would God really allow His church to continue on for two thousand years with an incomplete instruction book? A respectable manufacturer would include the entire manual with his product -- at least everything that a consumer would need to operate that product. Certainly God is more than a "respectable manufacturer" when it comes to creating humans, so would it not follow that a truly loving God would not lead us astray by allowing a book of the Bible to be excluded from the cannon of scripture for so long? The gospel of Judas is a lie, and Christians need to keep a closed enough mind that our brains don't fall out in matters of such importance.

~Tribal~

Politically Incorrect Since 1971

2006-04-10T21:02:00.000-04:00

Well, I have returned from my long awaited College For A Weekend (CFAW) visit to Liberty University, and I must say I am quite impressed with what I have seen. I was able to get a very comical t-shirt with the title of this post written underneath LIBERTY. We also saw a car with a bumper sticker reading "Totalitarians for Bush" -- funny stuff. On a deeper level, everything on that campus really is for the spiritual edification of the students and the glory of God.

The first class I sat in on was the honors section of the philosophy department. We walked in and I expected a harsh, cold professor who did not care for individual students and their wellbeing, but rather merely for their academic qualifications; I was very gladly proven wrong. The first matter of business was PRAYER. The professor even asked if any students had specific prayer requests before he began. I knew Liberty was one of the nation's most outstanding Christian higher education centers, but I seriously was not expecting this. I later learned from a student that they actually pray before every single class, and that the teachers care for the wellbeing of students even if it does not involve the class! A guy like me could get used to a place like that.

Despite some shortcomings in the content of the philosophy class (although perhaps it is not appropriate to judge by only one class period), everything else I involved myself in this past weekend was highly enjoyable, informational, and uplifting. Each hall in the dorms has a sort of prayer/devotional time Thursday nights where students go into someone's room to talk, pray, read scripture, and just share what's on everyone's heart. The other class I shadowed while at Liberty was Terrorism. It sounded very interesting and proved to be highly intriguing. The class analyzes reasons for terrorism, forms of terrorism, and the history/current events of terrorist groups in the world.

The highlight of the entire weekend though had to be the time spent with friends, the Casting Crowns concert, and surprisingly enough, the campus church service in the Vines Center. There was lots of singing! And people weren't complaining! And people were actually into worshipping!!! Including myself, might I add, and I learned volumes about myself and my life from the pastor. I really felt conviction this weekend, and I felt God's presence on campus. The whole University was just amazing (despite a few less than kind students, but everyone has a bad day). I highly recommend a visit to this school if you or someone you know is about to enter college. Their website can be found here, but the campus is so much better than anything on the website could show you. I hope Liberty is able to continue its tradition of excellence in areas of academics and spirituality, and I hope to possibly one day add to that atmosphere by attending myself.

~Tribal~

"Movie Star Jesus" on a Hillside

2006-03-27T00:52:00.000-05:00

What I’m about to discuss is neither controversial nor terribly exciting in nature, so be warned. So I’m taking this History of the Catholic Church class…strange for a Protestant I know, but the subject fascinates me and for the first 1500 years or so the history of the Protestant church is that of the Western Catholic church, so it’s relevant, and hey, we’re all Christians, right? So anyway, each week in class we talk about a different aspect of Catholicism. It’s cool because the class is really a course in Catholic theology with a little bit of history thrown in here and there. A few weeks ago a guest speaker from Wisconsin was talking to us about Christology…the development of our ideas of Christ and how He has been different things to different people in different circumstances. All of this was told so you could understand what follows

A large question was inspired by a picture that the speaker had set up on the screen to act as “eye candy” in case we got bored with his speaking. It was a gorgeous picture of Jesus sitting on a hillside with the sunset in the background. Everything was glowing, everything was beautiful, looking very much like the way I would be sitting and how I would look reflecting upon creation sitting at a summit on the Appalachian trial. It makes me wonder....when Jesus sat and looked at creation, His creation, did he think, “Wow, Creation is beautiful and wonderful!” or did he think, “Wow, this is beautiful…I’m goooood!”

Just something to think about…

~AndyJams~

Final Afghan Convert Update (Hopefully)

2006-03-26T11:25:00.000-05:00

Once again, from Fox News:

"Afghan Court Dismisses Case vs. Alleged Christian Convert

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released soon, officials said.

The announcement came as U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai faced mounting foreign pressure to free Abdul Rahman, a move that risked angering Muslim clerics here who have called for him to be killed."

You can also read some of Rahman's comments on his situation before he knew he would be released here -- brave and inspiring words.

~Tribal~

Seussical the Musical

2006-03-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

Just in case any of you do not know about the current Dallastown High School musical, we are doing Seussical this year. It really is a very good show and I highly reccomend everyone to come see it. The showtimes that are left are tomorrow (Saturday) at 7 and Sunday at 3.

~Tribal~

Afghan Convert Update

2006-03-23T15:59:00.000-05:00

New article at Fox News:

"WASHINGTON -- Concerned about the fate of a Christian convert in Afghanistan on trial for his life, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday seeking a 'favorable resolution' of the case.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack reported that Rice underlined to Karzai the 'fact that the United States stands forthrightly for principles of freedom of worship, freedom of expression, and that these are bedrock principles of democracy around the world, these are principles that are enshrined in the Afghan constitution and they're principles that are enshrined in the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights,' he said."

Attaining the support of the U.S. government is a big stepping stone in resolving this situation. Still keep this man in your prayers however, as there is much that still must be done.

~Tribal~

America's Self-Indulgence

2006-03-21T18:04:00.000-05:00

Americans take a certain pride in their material possessions. Just think about our fascination with cars, movies, and food. Self-indulgence is widespread problem in America, and until we realize it, the problem will never end. And if we do realize it, what would it take for Americans to find a solution to this conflict?

It first struck me in phiosophy. Mr. Rojahn, my philosophy teacher showed the class an existential movie about the extreme sides of life. The movie showed Indian women picking through a garbage dump trying to find edible scraps of food. Then it showed the highly technological view of developed countries such as Japan. There has to be something wrong with this picture.

I want to stress that material possessions theoretically are not bad. But when we cover up personal problems with these possessions, then it is a disease.

Advertising is part of the problem, because it has a way of gripping the general public and manipulating the people to confuse what is necessary and what is not. John Miller, a sociologist, wrote an article in The San Jose Mercury News attacking American indulgence from an environmental and advertising standpoint. Though my focus is not on environmental problems, he does raise relevant points, including the notion advertising and littering go hand in hand. For example, one could argue that advertising promotes love for material possessions. Everywhere an American turns, he is confronted with ads telling him what to buy. Miller writes, “[Graffiti and littering] are all manifestations of the anti-social egoism that unites corporate advisors and attention-seeking individuals in an orgy of excessive self-indulgence.” Americans have nothing left to do but to feel the need to have these possessions.

In American culture, the individual is at the center. Miller goes on further with, “Billboards, litter, and graffiti signify the decline of civility and the ascension of the in-your-face school of corporate marketing and personal individual behavior” (italics mine). It is essential not to blame just corporate advertising for indulgence. Individuals must share the responsibility of this moral calamity. “Litterers and defacers do what they do because they have been brought up in a society in which obligations to others take a back seat to infantile self-indulgence,” he writes.

Theologian Ron Sider brings up a hypothetical situation in which a United States senator creates a bill that would increase grain production in the U.S. so more can be shipped to poor countries. When the Indian prime minister hears about this, he decides to plant nuclear bombs in New York and Boston if the bill does not get passed. Sider writes, “Hopefully, the United States will agree to save the hostages by shipping the grain to India and other starving countries. But still he [the prime minister] hesitates. What if the U.S calls the bluff? The momentum of events could force her to explode one of the bombs.” What Sider is trying to convey is that U.S. could be more considerate in its trade patterns. We have the manpower, so why not use it?

Why can’t we put our money toward something more useful? We really don’t have an option but to aid the hungry and fight the poverty problem.

~ice-t~

Present Day Martyrdom

2006-03-19T12:46:00.000-05:00

From Fox News:

"KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan man who allegedly converted from Islam to Christianity is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death, a judge said Sunday.

The defendant, Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family went to the police and accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told the Associated Press in an interview. Such a conversion would violate the country's Islamic laws."

Please keep this man in your prayers. This situation is a sad reminder that Christians are still martyred today just as they were 2,000 years ago. If I hear anymore about this case, I will share what information I have.

~Tribal~

National Security

2006-03-10T16:40:00.000-05:00

I am very sick of having to listen to the whole UAE port deal issue. What annoys me the most, though, is that those who support the president's take call those who oppose it racist. As far as my stance on the issue, I wonder why anyone even allowed foreign countries to control such valuable access onto our soil. Specifically when it comes down to the UAE, I guess I would have to side with the Republicans opposing Bush. Europeans did not attack us on 9/11; Europeans are not fighting us in Iraq; Europeans are not seeking to violate United Nations resolutions in pursuit of nuclear proliferation; Middle Eastern Muslims are.

Now before you label me a racist in the typical democrat campaign fashion, I do not hate Muslims, I do not hate Arabs, and I willingly recognize that not all Muslims are terrorists. I also recongize that there have been white, western, caucasian men who have committed terrorist acts in the past. The point is, however, that the biggest threat to freedom lies in the middle east, the "Axis of Evil." In World War II, what ethnic group was sent to prison camps for fear of internal attack? Mexicans? Of course not, the Japanese were. Our enemies in today's world have a unique identifying factor that stands out as well...they are Middle Eastern and they are Muslim. How easy would it be for terrorists to get a job working at one of these U.S. ports controlled by other friendly UAE members? What if this terrorist has shown no past signs of militant involvement? What if the only talk of jihad he has uttered has been in the privacy of those he supports? Such a man would be absolutely unidentifiable in a working group of innocent Arabs.

I am in no way promoting racism and I am in no way supporting concentration camps with this post, but I believe the United States needs to strictly control all routes of possible access into our country. We need to get all of our ports back into our hands and we need to better patrol the Mexican border before we find ourselves with a smuggled suitcase bomb killing our people in our cities. If we are to make the world a safer place to live, we absolutely must start at home.

~Tribal~

Announcement

2006-03-08T17:21:00.000-05:00

Sometime this evening, our fellow writer and friend Steve (Fiat volvntas tua) will be leaving for basic training. He made the final decision to join the Army just a couple of weeks ago. He hopes to be able to pass airborne training and ranger school as well, and we hope that he succeeds in all that he sets out to do. Please keep him in your daily prayers as we are. Godspeed Steve.

~Tribal~

Be Aware of Technology

2006-03-06T20:11:00.000-05:00

I have been looking forward to reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. This book is relevant in many ways to today’s culture. For instance, the underlying message is that science and technology will destroy society. This is true in many different ways. An example of this is that a majority of Americans spend their time more with technology then whatever else is really important.

Existentialist philosophers believe that humanity does things to hide its insecurity in this world. People will often watch movies, play music, play videogames, and so on to avoid existential questions that plague them when they are not busy “wasting” time. Before computers, books were widely read. In books and reading, a person is able to get the universal themes of it and dwell on it. Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” If this is true, many people’s lives are futile. Whether they realize it or not, technology has gotten its hold on them.

Pick up Huxley’s book and remember to try to balance out time between entertainment and philosophizing about life’s big questions. The Rev. Boice said at a conference that Huxley’s books is mainly about humanity being so entertained that they will not even think about reading. It is important to think about your life and evaluate it.

~ice-t~

Let's Play Dominos

2006-03-01T16:03:00.000-05:00

Once again, from Fox News:

"JACKSON, Miss. -- A state House committee voted to ban most abortions in Mississippi, which already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.
The bill approved by the House Public Health Committee on Tuesday would allow abortion only to save the pregnant woman's life. It would make no exception in cases of rape or incest. The bill now goes to the full House, which could vote next week, and then to the Senate."

We as Christians need to be praying earnestly for this state to take a prolife stance as well. Obviously, Planned Parenthood will protest this too and take it to court, but taking it to the Supreme Court might be a blessing in disguise for us. While the courts in the recent decades have been of questionable wisdom in their decision making, Bush's new appointees may make a difference. If this case would wait a few years to roll around, Bush might even have another opportunity to appoint judges if some retire or pass away. An America that appreciates the value of infant life may be just around the corner. We need to keep working to get this done.

~Tribal~

Worldviews III

2006-02-28T21:04:00.000-05:00

Welcome to our next installment of the much anticipated worldviews series. I hope you have all had time to ponder over the things we discussed in the previous two segments, and I hope you take them to heart. Today we will discuss a worldview that is dominant in America today, especially among scientists and philosophers. Of course I am talking about modernism. Let's begin with a little history. During the Enlightenment Era, people began to tire of the constant religious warring between Catholics and protestants (much as we here at Insense are today). This conflict between the two different sects caused many people to believe that if Christianity had so many internal struggles, how could it possibly solve the world's problems? This kind of thinking gave rise to an age of science where materialism ruled.

The first belief that the modern worldview holds is called naturalism. Naturalism basically says that everything in the universe can be explained in terms of physical processes. As a result, modernists tend not to believe in a soul or life after death. They also do not believe in God in the sense that premodernists believe in God.

The second part of modernity holds that there should be a "sacred/secular dichotomy" (as Mr. Rojahn puts it). Sacred is viewed as everything faith and values based. Secular is obviously viewed then as everything "factual" and scientific. Modernists believe that the two should never mix. The premodernists believed that everything should be centered around and contained within God in one's life, whereas the modernists believe that religion should only occupy one small area of one's life...if one so chooses.

Since the modern worldview believes in naturalism, it is only logical that it also states that truth, morals, and meaning in life are grounded in human reason. This is best exemplified in the works of Kant (Deontological Ethics) and Mills (Utilitarianism). As Protagorus said, "Man is the measure of all things."

The fourth point under modernism is positivism. Positivism is the belief that through reason, science, and technology the world can be made a better place for those who live in it. Modernists believe that through secular means, man can be relieved of his misery and suffering and brought into a state of utopia.

Individualism is the last point that the modern worldview emphasizes. Individualism is pretty much an excuse to be self centered. It says "I have rights, I think of the world in terms of me, my happiness, my goals, my desires, etc" (straight from Mr. Rojahn's notes).

There are obvious problems with this worldview. To begin with, it brushes off the existence of God as merely imaginary. It states that truth, morals, and meaning are all based around human reason, but human reason cannot account for truth, morality, and the like. C.S. Lewis writes about this topic extensively in The Abolition of Man and the beginnings of Mere Christianity (we highly recommend both). If there is no God and no ultimate judgment, then what makes an action wrong? Suppose I was on a desert island in the middle of the ocean, why would it be wrong for me to lie or kill someone with me if no one will ever find out? Another problem is encountered in relation to positivism. The world has taken a turn for the worse since modernism came in full force. We have been through two world wars, a nuclear arms race, a present day terrorist situation, the Vietnam war, the Korean war -- all stemming from the belief that the answer lies in science and technology. Advance in technology is what allowed the Nazi army to roll across Europe and raze it to pieces. I am not condemning technology, but technology, science, and reason in exclusion from God can lead, and has led, us down dark paths. Modernism is not the key. It reduces humans to merely graphable data; it says you are nothing more than a few cells clumped together by random chance. The next worldview we will discuss is postmodernism, and that is even scarier than modernism. Check back often for more updates and for Worldviews IV.

~Tribal~

A Call for Prayer

2006-02-24T22:52:00.000-05:00

Woot for South Dakoda! I recommend some celebration for the result of this battle. I do implore that each of you continue to pray for our representatives and court justices. Planned Parenthood has pledged to challenge this decision and so it has a very real posibility of going into the national spotlight if it is eventually brought before the Supreme Court. This is positive because it will force our often wishy woshy politicians to finally face such a controversial issue that they have often been more than glad to ignore. This is also positive because it can very possibly cause the eventual adoption of similar laws in more states and in the federal government. The possible negative outcome is that this new law is in danger of getting shot down in the courts. Please pray for wisdom for our politicians and court justices. Pray for their guidance towards what God wants for our nation. In the meantime, celebration!!

~AndyJams~

Hope is Not Yet Lost

2006-02-24T15:51:00.000-05:00

A front page Fox News article:

"PIERRE, S.D. -- State lawmakers voted Friday to ban nearly all abortions in South Dakota and sent the measure to the governor, who said he is inclined to sign it.

Under the legislation, doctors in South Dakota would face up to five years in prison for performing an abortion unless it was necessary to save the woman's life."

You can read the entire article at the above link, and we strongly suggest that you do. This is an unbelievable victory for life. We at Insense wish to thank all who had a hand in bringing this about, and we pray that more states will continue to follow in South Dakota's footsteps. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" -- hope never fails.

~Tribal~

A Truly Great Movie

2006-02-23T19:02:00.000-05:00

Last week I watched Hotel Rwanda. Before viewing it, I had the notion it would have a preachy anti-American, anti-western perspective. However, I found this was wrong. Instead, the movie provided strong support for the Rwandan people and gives a fair view of the West, especially of the journalists who stayed as long as possible.

It concerns the real-life happenings that rocked Rwanda in 1994. There were two main groups that inhabited the country. The Tutsi, the minority, and the Hutu, the majority, always seem to fight each other because of social and political disagreement. Now these two ethnic groups are vying for power. Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu, houses Tutsi refugees in the hotel he manages. Why would a Hutu shelter Tutsi refugees? He understands it is pointless to kill innocent people. Outside of his five-star hotel, there is madness going on.
What I love about this movie is it shows a strong family relationship. Throughout, Paul is constantly concerned about his family, always making sure they are safe. He and his wife always make decisions together, but there is a great scene where Paul’s family is able to leave. Paul stays behind without telling his wife. His wife and kids almost get killed at a roadblock caused by the Hutu. However, they are able to escape. When his wife gets back, she shouts at Paul, claiming, “we always make decisions together.”

When viewing the movie, one wonders why Europe and America did not feel the need to help resolve the situation. We, as rich nations, have the manpower and money to help these countries develop. Watching the movie opened my eyes. Hopefully, more people will watch so other hearts will be changed.

~ice-t~

Love and Live

2006-02-13T20:49:00.000-05:00

"Love God and do as you please" -- so says Saint Augustine in Homilies on Saint John's Epistle (A.D. 407). Many Christians would initially take offense to such a statement, but upon further examination, it actually embodies the whole of Christian doctrine.

Loving God is the core to the theology of every main religion. It is no different with Christianity. We are told numerous times in the Bible to love God "with all our heart, mind, and soul." It is not so much the first part of Augustine's statement as the second part that some Christians may take offense to.

Saint Augustine said to live as we please. This can indeed by itself be a huge fallacy in Christian doctrine. Combined with the "love God" half of the sentence, however, it becomes merely an addition to the first part. That secondary half of the phrase does not stand on its own, it depends upon the "love God" prerequisite that precedes it.

When combined, the entire sentence makes very much sense and is indeed a good description of how a Christian should live his or her life. Saint Augustine said to "Love God and do as you please." If you really, truly love God, then you will choose to do what is right in His eyes. If you choose to live a life of sin and choose to not attempt to overcome it, then do you really love God? Is He the most important thing to you, or is your sinful nature the most important thing to you? If you truly love God, then you can do as you please; but how you live is a result of your loving God and depends a great deal upon the amount of importance you place upon God in your life.

~Tribal~

Terri, Meet Haleigh

2006-02-13T20:30:00.000-05:00

This was recently posted on Rock For Life:

"What's the deal with Haleigh Poutre? Haleigh is an 11 year old Massachusetts girl who was beaten severely (into a comatose state) by her stepfather and her aunt (who adopted her after her biological mother was deemed an unfit parent by the state). On January 17, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court granted permission to the Massachusetts Department of Social Services to remove Haleigh's feeding tube, effectively starving her to death in a matter of days. However, the day after the verdict was received, Haleigh began to show signs of improvement. She began to breathe on her own, the first time in four months that she did not need to use a ventilator. Other forms of improvement have since been observed, but the hospital officials have remained tight-lipped on most aspects of Haleigh's condition. Denise Monteiro, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, stated that the decision to stop feeding her was the 'best diagnosis that we thought we had at the time.' The DSS has since rescinded that decision, and has not removed the feeding tube.

Haleigh's case is a perfect example of the faultiness of a 'persistent vegetative state' diagnosis. The British Medical Journal has reported that PVS is misdiagnosed almost 43% of the time! That alone should allow for serious questioning of any attempt to take the life of someone who has been diagnosed as PVS. Even with this, we now know that Haleigh has shown signs of recovery, and full or partial recovery may very well be possible; that is, if she's given the chance. The easy thing to do would be to let the government, courts, and hospital decide what her life is worth. The harder road would be to fight for this innocent little girl's right to life."

It is interesting to note that almost half of the people diagonsed as being in a vegetative state are in reality not. This could raise new questions about the unfortunate Terri Schiavo situation, and hopefully it will. Maybe if her husband would have actually allowed her treatment over all of the years she was in the hospice, Terri would have also showed such signs of life and would have been saved...as if active eye movements and grunts and moans debatedly resembling "I want to live" were not enough...

~Tribal~

A Book Every Christian Should Read

2006-02-13T18:09:00.000-05:00

Not many books have tackled the phenomena of man and the universe more effectively than the book I have most recently read. Books often focus on the relationships among humans, and this can become repetitive. G.K Chesterton creates this man vs. universe scenario in his 1908 classic, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. Chesterton gives insight on his dislike for anarchy, and his Christian worldview becomes apparent.

To begin with, it is important to understand the basic plot. Two poets encounter each other one day in a fictional land. Lucian Gregory is an anarchist, and Gabriel Syme is a Christian policeman. Syme is not convinced that Gregory is a true anarchist. After frittering around in a secret place that Gregory leads him to, Gregory asks, “Well, you have said that you were quite certain I was not a serious anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?” The fact that Chesterton chooses to have the anarchists in the bowels of the Earth shows his disdain for these misled people. Syme represents the last spark of hope in this secretive room.

Following this incident, Syme accidentally gets involved with the anarchists, for he promises Gregory he will never tell Gregory’s friends he is a police officer. Syme actually beats Gregory at his own game and becomes “Thursday.” Now it is important to get to the irony Chesterton uses. The reader finds out that the head of the anarchists, Sunday, is in fact a policeman. This means, as Chesterton put it, “the mysterious master of both the anarchy and the order was the same sort of elemental elf who had appeared to be rather too like a pantomime ogre.”

Chesterton goes on later to say, “This logic led many to believe that this equivocal being was meant for a serious description of the Deity.” But this is a crucial mistake on the reader’s part because it is important to look at the full title. “A Nightmare” is crucial to understand. Chesterton, as some might conclude, does not make God out to be an anarchist but says if he is it would be a nightmare. Irony like this is what makes this novel unusual until the end.

Along with irony there is one last point to be made. The “anarchists” are named after every day of the week. For example, the leader is Sunday, and Syme accidentally becomes Thursday. As the reader finds out later, these names symbolize each day it took God to create the universe. Sunday, being the first day of the week, means that he comes first in the posse.

It is near the end of the book that the reader finds out what the days of the week represent. However, I will not give away the ending. I highly recommend this book to be picked up. It offers humorous critiques against anarchy and provides intelligent reasons for the Christian faith.

~ice-t~

Let's Kill Some Stereotypes....A Call for Christians to Love One Another

2006-02-11T21:37:00.000-05:00

I’ve got a bone to pick with Christians all across the country, nay, the world even. (Overdramatic perhaps? I’m never overdramatic!) If you’re a Christian, you and me have to have ourselves a little heart to heart. If you’re not, well, I highly recommend that you and Jesus have a little heart to heart cause He loves you bunches and as a fellow who’s been gone from Christian to atheist to agnostic back to Christian, I can tell you life is poop without Him.

Let’s pretend you’re in your favorite coffee shop ordering your favorite caffeinated beverage to sit down in front of a fire to have all manner of intellectual banter with the other coffee-feigns who frequent this establishment (If you don’t like coffee…well, just work with me here.) Got it? Alright, so I come and sit in the overly comfy chair across the chessboard from you and ask you a socially taboo but very common question.

What kind of church do you go to?

Gasp! How could I ask such a thing? Well, stay tuned in the relative near future and I’ll explain briefly why some socially unacceptable questions should be asked (Are you a Christian? Wanna hear about Jesus? Winter or Summer Olympics? ….but I digress.)

Alright, so honesty time. What was your answer? United Methodist? Episcopalian? What about Charismatic Episcopalian? Hmm. I bet some of you put on your thinking caps real hard and pulled out some great Sunday School answers. Many of you were thinking, “I’m a Protestant and fiercely proud of it! Go Luther!” Most of the rest of you were all like, “Catholicism for life baby! The pope’s my boy!”

What’s the correct answer? (Uh oh, he’s about to call one right and the other wrong…two to one he says Catholics are dumb dumb heads.)

Alright, so here’s my answer (and indeed what I believe with all my heart to be correct). I go to the church of God, and all of you who are Christians, you do too (and those who aren’t Christians, God’s been leaving messages on your voicemail for years and wants you to return His calls).

So finally I return to what I started talking about…finally. I’m sick and tired of Christians hating other Christians because of some sort of stereotype or pre-determined bias they have against them.

I’m mostly signaling out Protestants here because thanks to the Vatican II council, the Roman Catholic church now does indeed recognize that other Christian denominations are indeed Christian and important to the Body of Christ. Catholics are no less Christian than Protestants! What follows is why I can say something so outrageous to many of you.

For a very very long time (most of my life actually) I thought Catholics were nothing better then pagans, worshipping all manner of saints and Mary and that none of them actually believed in God and Jesus as Christ. You know what changed my mind? What could cause such a drastic paradigm shift? What else could so drastically cause a teenage boy to re-evaluate his perspective on life but an amazing girlfriend? My freshman year of college I had a short relationship with a Catholic girl, and discovered that amazingly enough, she was Christian! Gasp!

Suddenly, for the first time in my life I was forced to sit down and actually think about the stereotypes I’d held for years. I discovered that both she and her mom (also a Catholic) had very strong and developed faiths.

(I realize just now that perhaps this was God’s purpose for putting this girl into my life. You who know me personally know who I’m talking about, and know that the breakup was rough, but you know, as I’m writing this I realize that I can be thankful because God used this girl to eliminate all the stereotypes about Catholics I had and to cause me to want to learn more about the orthodox doctrine and dogma. Crazy how I live with heartache for a very long time until I realize that it was all God’s will. So if you’re reading this Catholic girl, thank you.)

My story of discovering the truth about Catholicism doesn’t end there. During that same freshman year (what a year for me) I became good friends with a fellow astrophysics major when I gave her first aide for a nasty skin avulsion in her hand and then rushed her to the hospital (kids, please don’t stick an exacto-knife in your hand by accident whilst cutting holes in trashcan lids…it never ends well). When we took a sailing class together we began going to this friendly little diner for breakfast before class and spent our time discussing things mostly of a physicsy and religious nature. In case you couldn’t figure out where I was going, this good friend of mine is Catholic. She’s probably the first person of a different denomination who I’ve spent serious time discussing faith and religion with, and so she’s the first person who I’ve actually gotten to see grow and develop in her faith and theology over an extended period of time.

By this time I was shocked to realize that I actually began defending Catholics. I started to see real Catholics in their real faith. I also started to formulate why exactly I believe so many Protestants have this idea that all Catholics have dead faith.

Let’s think about this. Most of us have had the misfortune of watching a close friend lose their once strong faith. Yeah, it sucks, and yeah, keep workin’ on ‘em cause God misses them. So when a Protestant becomes an atheist or agnostic, do they keep calling themselves Protestants? In most cases they call themselves atheists or agnostics.

Now let’s think about Catholics. Catholicism, unlike Protestantism, is more than a faith. Catholicism is history, community, heritage, much like Judaism. If a Catholic ceases to believe the tenants of his faith, he usually still thinks of himself as a Catholic because he sees his being Catholic as his heritage and nationality. The same is often true of Jews.

So here’s where Protestants have Catholics wrong. It seems as though there are more false Catholics than Protestants just because more Catholics retain their “title” of Catholic even after they cease being Christian than do Protestants.

If this seems mildly questionable to you, just sit and think about it for a minute. I think if you’re being open minded and honest with yourself and with me you’ll see that what I’m saying is true.

Alright, so now for the night that forever changed my view of Catholics. Down here at school I attend a wonderful church pastured by a man with a great gift for Bible teaching. I like to think of it as a party in God’s house and everyone’s invited. Great praise, great Bible teaching, great just about everything. It’s pretty much your stereotypical charismatic new age Christian church. One Sunday in mid November I overslept both morning services. I told my good friend (who I still frequent the friendly diner with) when we went to see a movie, and she suggested I come with her to her church that evening. I was skeptical. Before this day I’d been to two Catholic services in my life. What I saw at this lovely church amazed me.

I have been to all sorts of services at all sorts of different denominations all over different parts of the country. I have seen, heard, and felt amazing things in these churches. This Catholic mass was one of the most spirit filled and amazing services I’ve ever worshipped in. God was very much present here. You see the teenagers praise and worship with tears and hands raised, dancing and singing like any charismatic youth Christian conference. The best part for me though was the prayer during the Eucharist. (Communion time). Amazing wonderful awesome prayer. I discovered that in this place I was able to be more vulnerable and more broken before the Lord than anywhere else. In this love filled, spirit filled parish I was able to truly bring my hopes, fears, wants, and needs before the Lord earnestly and faithfully. This church completely blew away what remained of my biases and stereotypes. I still go to my protestant charismatic “mega-church” Sunday mornings because it’s great for Bible teaching and praise, but I now also go to this Catholic mass on Sunday nights because it is so good for prayer.

The priests in their sermons have been encouraging seemingly very Protestant things: joining a small group is important for Christian growth, being with God more than just on Sundays is a must to build a relationship with Christ, reading the Bible is necessary so you know what God wants of you.

Wait, did he just say Catholics have small groups? They have personal relationships with Christ? They raise their hands in praise?! This is unheard of! I figured they just prayed to Mary and rubbed some rosary beads! This guy is off his rocker!

At school I study science. All day all I do is science and math. This semester I had the opportunity to mix it up a bit with a class in the history of the Catholic church. To be honest, my biggest motivation was the fact that at the end of the class we all get to go on a pilgrimage to Rome….and that would be kickin awesome. As a result I’ve started to actually learn about a lot of what makes up Catholic dogma and doctrine (and yes, there is a difference between dogma and doctrine). I want to say right now very plainly and simply that true Catholics (when I say true Catholics I mean Catholics who are Christians, not just Catholic by birth) do not worship Mary, they honor her. And you know, I kind of think Mary deserves a bit of honor. She’s the mother of our Lord and Savior. She gave birth to the God-Head made flesh. Isn’t that something pretty amazing, especially when you consider that she had a choice in the matter? She could have said no to God. She could have said, “sorry God, but my people will stone me because no one will believe that I didn’t “know” a man to have this kid, and that’s punishable by death in Your law…so I think I’ll pass.” (For those who might be new to this whole Bible-ese, “to know” someone is not learning about who someone is….this is Bible-ese for sex, so get used to it.) Think about what kind of faith that required her to have to trust in God. So yeah, Mary gave birth to Jesus, so although she does not disserve worship, she does disserve honor. The arch-angel Gabriel called Mary “most honored among women,” and I think we can trust the angel who was in charge of delivering God’s messages.

The rosary is not required to pray to God, it is merely a particular form of prayer. This isn’t any different then when different people say different graces before they eat (I like the Johnny Appleseed Grace myself, but that’s just my personal preference) I won’t go into details just now cause it’ll take a while to explain, but just realize that the rosary is one prayer and is actually pretty cool for reflecting on the mysteries and glory of God.

What about confession? Yeah, that was a big issue I had with Catholics for a very long time. Let’s learn about its history though. In the Bible we as Christians are called to confess our sins to each other as well as God. People did this for a while, but a problem developed. Although we are called to forgive everyone of their sins against us, this is often very hard to do (as I’m sure you all know as well as I). So imagine you’re a farmer in the early church, and a fellow Christian confesses of cow tipping at your farm and causing the death of you’re favorite, Betsy. Would you be real happy with him? Would you be tempted to hate him? Maybe just dislike him a lot. Maybe retaliate? So yeah, this whole confessing our sins to each other is good and important I think, but there are potential problems that arise just because of our human nature. So to keep this whole “confess your sins to fellow Christians thing” goin the early church started having the people confess to their religious leaders. Confession seem as blasphemous to you now? Didn’t think so.

Alright, so let’s bring this thing up to the present. This Thursday evening in History of the Catholic church class there was a visiting speaker to teach about the Old Testament. This man has an STD (Stop laughing! Yes, I did too) which is basically the Catholic equivalent of a doctorate. He knew the Bible through and through. He could probably quote you any verse you wanted. The cool thing is that because he knows Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic (among several other languages) fluently, he has actually read the Bible in its original un-translated form. You know what I think was neat? He compared today’s charismatic Christians to the Old Testament prophets. But wait, aren’t Catholics supposed to see charismatic gifts as foolish and crazy? Turns out no. Turns out that charismatic Christians are seen as present day prophets. How amazing!

Most Protestants are very familiar with the “alter call” (especially if you are Baptist). This is basically the time when the pastor calls all those who are not Christians to come to the front of the church and to invite Christ into their lives. So what’s this got to do with a college class on religion in a very very very (did I mention very) secular church? At the end of this priest’s teaching on the Old Testament while he was discussing the importance of wisdom and what God viewed as wisdom he all but did an alter call. Woa! In a college class?! I was amazed (especially because there’s at least one atheist I know of in that class. He was talking about Jesus as the wisest of all men because he is indeed the Word of God made Flesh (read the beginning of John if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and that although you may be wealthy and viewed as successful by the world without Christ, you truly are foolish. Only with Christ in your life can you be wise in the eyes of the Lord. This is especially crucial because when you die, your wealth and earthly positions are worthless. Yes, a Catholic priest (an upper ranking priest no less) talked about heaven and hell! How strange, right? Apparently not.

You’re going to have to trust me when I say this (because I happen to have a gift in discernment of the spirit) that this guy was the real deal. He was a true Christian with an amazing faith. As a side note, I want to tell you about what he told me after class when I went to talk to him. I introduced myself as a Protestant who had never had any exposure to the Apocrypha (the Catholic Bible includes more books than the Protestant Bible, but in the scheme of things, I really see this as not a real big deal because regardless they are good historical sources….when I learn more about that I’ll share it) and I wanted to know what translation of the Bible he would recommend for me to read if I wanted to check these books out. As we were leaving the classroom he commented on the fact that as a Protestant I have a great advantage because we’ve read the Bible. Want to know when someone is really in tune with reality? If they recognize the fact that there are problems and flaws in themselves they know what’s going on. If they try to pretend that they are perfect, be wary of them. This priest recognized the fact that Catholics as a whole don’t read the Bible nearly enough. He joked that before Vatican II as a child he was told not to read the Bible because if he did, he would become Protestant. (Please take this as a joke, because that’s what it is). Also, don’t get me wrong. It was not the Catholic church’s position that the Bible shouldn’t be read. The church’s view was that the lay person should not read the Bible because they might not interpret it correctly; they should rely upon their priest to interpret it for them. This was all changed though in the decisions of the Vatican II council (Read about it everyone! It was groundbreaking!). I like the fact that he could talk about the problems in the church with a light heart. This just shows how real he is. Just think, the Catholics see Protestants as great Christians.

Alright, so let’s get straight with this. Catholicism is not perfect. There are problems. Many Catholics misunderstand what the church teaches and so a lot of Catholics get wrong ideas about the importance of saints and Mary and confession and such. There are some bad priests out there who believe questionable things and consequently teach it. This is however now different then Protestantism. The Word of God is perfect, and God is perfect, but sometimes humans get things wrong and are dumb. That’s just an unfortunate side effect of sin. You don’t doubt that Protestants are Christians, so then why do you doubt Catholics when they are really truly no different.

What’s the bottom line? Worship preference really. God made us all different, and thank the Lord for that. It’d be boring otherwise. Different people pray to God, worship God, and see God in different ways. This means that different people require different types of worship, which calls for different types of churches, which is the whole reason why there are so many denominations of everything Christian. But it’s really just worship preference.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that everyone in the world is right. Here’s how you know if a church is right in the eyes of God.
1.) Is God sovereign and singularly the only deity?
2.) Is Jesus Savior and the only way to God?
3.) Is the Bible the infallible Word of God?
If it’s yes, then it’s Christian. The way to check to see if a church, a person, or a thing is holy in the eyes of the Lord, look in the Bible (yes, this means you need to read it, and I guarantee it’s a good read). If a church or a priest teaches something that conflicts with the Word of God, it is wrong. If a church or a priest teaches what is right in the Word of God, then it is right. Simple as that.

So please, stop hating each other! All Christians need to come together to bring the world to God. The in-fighting of Christians is doing nothing but hurting the kingdom and prevents countless millions from seeing the truth. Love one another!!

~AndyJams~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 02/11/06

2006-02-11T13:25:00.000-05:00

Today's EFD is about the missing trunk of the evolutionary tree. Life was supposed to have evolved gradually over time, if scientists are right. However, the earliest parts of the fossil record (the lowest sedimentary layers of Cambrian rock) show abounding diversity of life. Variations among species abound, and life appears suddenly, full-blown, complex, diversified, and dispersed -- worldwide. Many times more phyla of organisms existed in Cambrian times than exist today. Such complex species as fish, worms, corrals, trilobites, jellyfish, sponges, mollusks, and brachiopods appear suddenly, with no sign anywhere on earth of gradual development from simpler forms. In fact, every plant and animal phyla in existence today can be found in the Cambrian layers. The tree of evolutionary progression has no trunk, and once again it is found that the fossil record clearly does not support evolution.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/09/06

2006-02-09T16:09:00.000-05:00

Today's EFD is about fossil gaps. If the process of evolution unfolded as modern scientists say it did, then there would obviously be a gradual transition between organisms in the fossil record. The species found at the bottom should start out very simplistic. As one observes the fossils higher up in the layers, the types of species should grow continually and gradually more complex. This is not the case, however, and even evolutionists will begrudgingly admit this. To quote from the book In the Beginning by Walt Brown, Ph.D.:

"Fossil links are missing between numerous plants, between single-celled forms of life and invertebrates, among insects, between invertebrates and vertebrates, between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, between reptiles and birds, between primates and other mammals, and between apes and other primates. In fact, it is not links that are missing; it is chains. The fossil record has been studied so thoroughly it is safe to conclude these gaps are real; they will never be filled."

It is obvious that there are gaps in evolutionary theory. Maybe it is poetic justice that many of those gaps are in fossil record. Check back tomorrow for discussion on the missing trunk of the evolutionary tree.

~Tribal~

Foiled Terror Plot

2006-02-09T15:54:00.000-05:00

This is a bit of a story from Fox News that I doubt you will hear on TV or in the newspaper:

"Bush Details Foiled 2002 Terror Attack

WASHINGTON -- Al Qaeda planned to hijack a commercial airplane with shoe bombs and fly it into Library Tower in Los Angeles, President Bush said Thursday, describing just one of many foiled terror attacks on the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

The plan, similar to the successful hijacking and flying of planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon that killed more than 3,000 people over four years ago, was stopped with the help of coalition partners who arrested key operatives, Bush said."

That's interesting because I thought, according to the far left, that Bush's policies to deal with terrorism were ineffective. We are told by the media that the Patriot Act is used to gain information about and arrest political opponents of the president. Their slander also continues when they try to push on us that the president spies on innocent American civilians, even though many key government leaders have denied this. It is interesting that the ones farthest away from the knowledge of what is actually happening are the ones trying to tell the American public the "truth." They are nowhere close to being on the "inside circle," but they pretend to know exactly what is going on even when those on the inside deny it. I would rather take the word of a man who is a Christian, opposes same sex marriage, and is against the killing of the unborn than the word of a man who left his girlfriend to drown after driving off a bridge, the word of a woman who's husband committed adultery in the oval office and then lied under oath about it, and the word of a man who doesn't know where he stands on any issue at all.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 02/08/06

2006-02-08T21:14:00.000-05:00

I extend my apologies to you all for being delinquent in my updates. This past week has been very busy, but more will be posted this weekend. The next installment in our worldviews series will also be posted in the very near future, so check back often. Today's EFD will be about parallel strata. The sedimentary layers observed in such locations as the Grand Canyon are typically parallel to adjacent layers. Now this raises an interesting environmental question. If erosion cut layers into the soils in times past as erosion does today, then would it not be reasonable to presume that there should be observable erosion evidence, carved by "millions and millions" of years of depositing? This is not the case, however, in almost every place in the world. This leads to the conclusion that the layers of sediments were deposited before they had a chance to erode enough to cut deep grooves. As a result, it did not take millions and millions of years to deposit the layers, meaning that the earth is not as old as modern scientists like to think it is. A big hole in evolutionary theory? I'd say so.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 02/03/06

2006-02-03T21:21:00.000-05:00

Starting today, and continuing for the next week or so, our EFD's will focus around fossilization and fossils in general. Today we will deal with rapid burial of those fossils. Many fossils that have been found over the years show signs of a very rapid death and burial (possibly by a flood?). Quite a few fossil specimens were buried before their flesh even had a chance to decay. Prime example of this? -- jellyfish. Many jellyfish fossils show the details of their soft, fleshy portions as well as their more stable and rigid components. If it took as long as scientists say it did to fossilize these creatures, then their flesh would surely have rotted away before all the layers of sedimentary debris could have piled up. Is it not likely then that a cataclysmic event, oh let's say a flood, for example, almost instantly swept all this material on top of the creatures and fossilized them under tremendous pressures of rushing flood waters before their flesh could rot? In addition, many animals found buried in mass graves are twisted into contorted positions. This hints at nothing other than a rapid and violent burial under immense amounts of pressure (flood waters higher than mountains maybe?).

These observations, in addition with the occurrence of compressed fossils and fossils that cut across two or more layers of sedimentary rock, are strong evidence that the sediments encasing these fossils were deposited rapidly. How could a fossil transverse two or more layers of sediments if it took millions of years to form these layers? Furthermore, almost all of the sediments were sorted by water. On top of all of this information, comes even more interesting and bizarre fossils. There exists fossils in which a fish is caught in the act of swallowing another fish. What happened to cause this I wonder? A flood? "Of course not," the evolutionists say, "he just choked on his dinner and died with it shoved into his mouth to make it look like it was rapidly buried." Seeing has how fish breathe from their gills and not their throats, I think my theory is more scientifically acceptable. The fossil records all across the world show evidence of a rapid death and burial. This is clear evidence of a flood, which strangely enough, is told about in the Bible! Wow, I guess the Bible really did get history right!
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 02/02/06

2006-02-03T21:14:00.000-05:00

Today's EFD is about embryology -- the study of embryos. Evolutionists like to claim that as an embryo develops, it follows an evolutionary sequence similar to that of other organisms. This is absolutely, 100%...false. What did you expect me to say? The belief in this theory is outdated and based on old information. For instance, scientists often claim that the tissues resembling "gill slits" on an embryo are just what they look like: gills. They really have nothing to do with breathing. Instead, the tissues are formed there because they develop into other parts of the face, the bones of the middle ear, and endocrine glands. In fact, Ernest Haeckel, by deliberately falsifying his drawings, was the source of this incorrect but widespread belief. Many modern textbooks continue to spread this falsification as factual information even though it is not.
~Tribal~

Your Taxes Hard at Work

2006-02-03T16:31:00.000-05:00

Did you know that every year, over 250 million dollars of your tax money goes to fund America's largest abortion provider: Planned Parenthood? If you think this is as disgusting as I do, go here to sign the American Life League's petition to our government. Here are some quick facts from the American Life League website about this sickening institution:

"--Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion chain in America and has killed more than 3 million innocent children at its facilities."

Sad, but true. Three million is really a small number when compared to the combined casualty rate of 530 million in the U.S. alone, but Planned Parenthood leads all other organizations in surgical abortions.

"--Planned Parenthood's top goal for the next 25 years is to push its agenda of promiscuous sex everywhere in our society"

Don't believe it? Planned Parenthood goes around to schools and sets up displays to promote the use of condoms. They literally tell kids it's ok to have sex as long as they are protected. In addition, the day they visited my friend's school, they had staff members talking all about the latest rave drugs.

"--Planned Parenthood puts minors on birth control without parents' knowledge or involvement"

True again, and of questionable legality...

"--Planned Parenthood has demonstrated a willingness to cover up for rapists and child predators"

Very unfortunately true. Planned Parenthood's most recent example of this was trying to conceal the rape of an 11 year old girl by her 17 year old boyfriend.

"--Planned Parenthood pushes pornography onto children with shocking and offensive websites, books, and literature"

This was recently brought up again in Vermont. You can read about that case here.

"--Planned Parenthood is openly hostile to Christianity, and regularly mocks people of faith"

Around Christmas time, Planned Parenthood released a Christmas card mocking Christ's birth. The card read, "Choice on earth," and had a picture of Jesus in the manger. In addition to this, there has recently been an outrage over a keychain Planned Parenthood tried to mass produce that had a condom inside it. The outside of the key chain had a picture of God's hand reaching out to give a man a condom.

"--Planned Parenthood hurts women with misleading and dishonest medical information"

They support abortion and tell women it might be necesarry to have one to save her life. In reality, abortion is never necessary to save a woman's life. Enough said.

"--And Planned Parenthood does all of this with over $265 million dollars a year of your tax money!"

Are you going to let them continute to do this without a fight? Will you let your tax dollars go to pay for all of the above mentioned activities? If you are as fed up with Planned Parenthood as we here at Insense are, sign this petition.

~Tribal~

More Theological Lessons from the Childrens' Reading Section

2006-02-02T15:44:00.000-05:00

C.S. Lewis writes the following in his Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair:

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things -- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."

These lines were spoken by the Marshwiggle character Puddleglum upon meeting the Queen of Underland. She tried to enchant the four main characters of the novel into forgetting all about the trees, sun, moon, stars, grass, and even Aslan himself. Prior to this event, three of the main characters (including Puddleglum) had fallen through a hole in a cave to enter Underland. This is where they met the fourth important character, the Prince Rillian, who had been enchanted. They freed him from the enchantment, and then they tried to escape back to the "Overworld," or above ground, when they were caught by the witch. She played music from an instrument and used an inhalant drug coming from the fireplace to carry out her sorcerous intentions, but the brave Puddleglum had resisted her trickery and fought back.

This is basically a primer to Pascal's Wager. Atheists and materialists claim there is no meaning to life, there is no God, there is no heaven, and there is nothing to live for besides the indulgence of selfish pleasures. This is represented by the witch trying to keep the travelers locked into the "Underworld," or that sect of worldly thinking that is naturalistic. In fact, the witch can even be viewed as Satan himself. When the witch tries to enchant our protagonists, Lewis writes that often the person being enchanted does not realize he or she is being enchanted. This is such a clear picture of what happens in everyday life. Those who reject God are totally unaware that they are being lulled to sleep by the forces of evil in this world. They think they are perfectly in the right and that Christians are the ones who have it wrong.

Ultimately, Puddleglum comes to state that it is better to believe in Narnia even if it does not exist than to believe soley in the dark, dreary, and hollow world of Underland. After all, if the witch was right, then Puddleglum and his companions would not have wasted their lives on anything because their is no meaning to life. If Puddleglum was right, however, then there would be severe consequences for the witch. This is Pascal's Wager in a nutshell. Pascal said that we put faith into one line of thought whether we realize it or not. Pascal argued that it was more beneficial to believe in God for the same reasons Puddleglum believes in Aslan and Narnia. Pascal says that if the atheists are wrong, they will go to hell and be eternally damned. If Christians are wrong, who cares? Life would be meaningless anyway, so what was wrong with wasting it on religion if that is what a person wanted? It is therefore beneficial for an individual to believe in God, because the greatest rewards come if you are right, and the worst results come if you are an atheist and you are wrong. C.S. Lewis truly was a literary genius. All of his works, even his novels, are deeply interwoven with the faith that drove him on. Another good job by Christianity's greatest apologist.

~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 02/01/06

2006-02-01T15:59:00.000-05:00

Today's EFD is about two-celled life, or rather the lack thereof. If everything came from single celled life, one would expect to see gradual growth and development in organisms over time, resulting in species of two-celled life. However, the organisms with the next largest cell count besides one occurs at six. Oddly enough, organisms with 6-20 cells are parasites. First of all, where are all of the organisms with 2-5 cells? If macroevolution occurred, one should find many forms of life with 2-20 cells as transitional forms between one-celled and many-celled organisms. However, as noted above, those organisms with 2-5 cells are nonexistent, and those with 6-20 are parasites who need the existence of much larger organisms to feed off of. A hole in evolutionary theory? You bet it is.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/31/06

2006-01-31T20:35:00.000-05:00

Today we will discuss organs. According to scientists, the human body contains some organs whose functions are currently unknown. Evolutionists agree that they are clearly "vestiges of organs inherited from our evolutionary ancestors." They point this out as undeniable proof of their flawed theory at work. However, with a little research, one will find that the appendix was at one time considered to be a useless remnant of our "evolutionary past" as well. More modern studies have shown that indeed the appendix does have a use. It plays a role in antibody production, and it also protects part of the intestine from infections and tumor growths. Ladies and gentlemen, science at one time firmly believed that the earth was flat. Science at one time also firmly believed that the solar system rotated around the earth. Those who were right back then and boldly stated that in fact the earth is round and it rotates around the sun were cast out of the sphere of legitimacy just as creationists and ID'ers are today. Just because science believes something today does not mean it will believe the same thing tomorrow; new discoveries are being made all the time. Perhaps in the future scientists will recognize that they were wrong about evolution as well. On an aside, it is interesting to note that the Bible is the only true source that has been consistant throughout the centuries. Maybe scientists will someday also recognize that the answer for everything lies in God alone.
~Tribal~

Iran -- Iraq?

2006-01-31T20:16:00.000-05:00

Fox News is reporting the following:

"VIENNA -- A document obtained by Iran on the nuclear black market serves no other purpose than to make an atomic bomb, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday.

The finding was made in a report prepared for presentation to the 35-nation IAEA board when it meets, starting Thursday, on whether to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose economic and political sanctions on Iran."

Has the precious and holier-than-thou United Nations forgotten what just went on with Iraq? We have learned that sanctions do not work against tyrannical dictators who wish to destroy the likes of America and Israel. Did the IAEA forget that, even with sanctions, Saddam refused to let them into his country for inspections? Here is a nation whose president has called for the complete annihilation of the Israeli people and publicly supports terrorism, and the U.N. wants to put sanctions on them. What a ludicrously flawed way of solving the problem! You cannot negotiate with terrorists bent on the murder of every "infidel" walking the earth. What is a sanction going to do? If Iran cuts off their oil supply to the world, the sanctions will hurt the rest of the world more than it will hurt Iran. The only rational solution to the problem is military action to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions dead in their tracks. While the world wastes time deliberating whether or not to impose sanctions (oh no, scary sanctions), the madmen who have the plans for these weapons are putting them to use and actually developing these weapons. Military action is required immediately; not in a month, not in a year, right now. If America does not have the decency to do it, then I am sure Israel will, and I will stronglyapplaud their efforts. Call me a warhawk if you must, but we will see what terrible war will result if nothing substantial is done. Mark my words.

~Tribal~

Legalized Murder

2006-01-31T19:54:00.000-05:00

Fox News recently published a story. Here is just a little of the outraging news contained within it:

"SAN FRANCISCO -- Two federal appeals courts on opposite sides of the country declared the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional Tuesday, saying the measure is vague and lacks an exception for cases in which a woman's health is at stake.

The first ruling came from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Hours later, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a similar decision, affirming a 2004 ruling by a judge who upheld the right to perform a type of late-term abortion even as he described the procedure as 'gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized.'"

This is an utterly unacceptable defeat to the prolife movement. Just in case you may have forgotten the evils of partial birth abortion, here is a direct quote from the American Life League's Rock for Life website:

"4. Dilation and Extraction (also known as D & X or Partial-Birth Abortion): Used to kill babies well into the third trimester (as late as 32 weeks old), the abortionist reaches into the mother's womb, grabs the baby's feet with a forceps and pulls the baby out of the mother, except for the head. The abortionist then jams a pair of scissors into the back of the baby's head and spreads the scissors apart to make a hole in the baby's skull. The abortionist removes the scissors and sticks a suction tube into the skull to suck the baby's brain out. The forceps are then used to crush the baby's head and the abortionist pulls the baby's body out the rest of the way."

It doesn't matter if you think life begins at conception or not (even though it indeed does, concluding from most scientific information), the fetus when aborted using D & X has a functioning brain and heart. It can feel pain, and the procedure is clearly murder. How on God's green earth can such an operation be protected by the Constitution of the United States of America? What happened to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness gaurunteed to us in the Declaration of Independencee? Oh wait, now I remember, the courts these days do not enforce the principles our founding fathers cherished, nor do they recognize our nation's Christian heritage. Hopefully our newest addition to the supreme court (yes, Alito got confirmed today) will not twist the Constitution like many other are doing. Only time will tell.

~Tribal~

It Might Be Ok to Hate Doing Laundry

2006-01-30T21:06:00.000-05:00

I warn all of you looking for a serious commentary on anything, because this is not serious commentary....just the random thought of a college kid. So I'm doing laundry for the first time this semester, which means I've got a few loads in the machines and a few hours of folding ahead of me tonight, and I thought to myself, "crap, I hate doing laundry...laundry is the devil." That made me think. Gee, Satan tempted Eve to eat the fruit, who, consequently, got her hubby Adam to try it, and well, most of you know the rest, and the rest of you, read the first few pages of Genesis and it'll all make perfect sense. So yeah, for the first time in the history of humanity, Man put on clothes cause they realized they were naked and didn't like it....so it's Satan's fault that we wear clothes....and clothes get dirty so clothes need to be cleaned....so it's Satan's fault that clothes get dirty because without his temptations we wouldn't be wearing clothes to get dirty in the first place. So it's Satan's fault we have to do laundry! Crap, laundry really is the devil!!! So um yeah, that's my random thought for the evening....

~AndyJams~

Worldviews II

2006-01-30T21:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to our second installment of the worldviews series here at Insense. This article will deal with a worldview that is a particular favorite of mine: premodernism. Premodernism was the dominant view held by people up until about the 18th century. In today's world, it is not so common unfortunately. There are four main points under premodernism. The first one is that the premodern worldview is theistic. Premodernists believe in a personal God with whom one can have a close relationship. As a result, the followers of this particular worldview tend to be Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.

The second point under premodernism is that God is the basic foundation for all truth, morality, and meaning. Each of the three religions mentioned above all have very similar ethical codes which were derived from their respective "holy books." Each of these books (the Bible for Christians, the Torah for Jews, and the Q'uran for Muslims) were supposedly inspired by God or a prophet of Him. As a result, everything contained within them is viewed as perfect and infallible by each member of each respective religion. The writings in these books therefore were viewed to be the highest authority as they had come from God.

The third point is that everything should be viewed in relation to God. More contemporary philosophies (even within the Christian church) teach that God has His own little bubble on the multi-circled Venn diagram of life, but premodernism teaches that God's bubble is bigger than all the rest and, in fact, should encompass every other sphere of life. In today's world, this is viewed as a very risky thing, for reasons that will be explained when dealing with modernism. Premodernists believe that everything in life should be about God and revolve around God -- which is precisely where it should be.

The final point that premodernism believes is that all art and music should be created for the glory of God. Before the 18th century, this belief actually was carried out for the most part. Most classical music composers wrote music soley for churches or for the magnification of God. Since everything in life should revolve around God, it only makes sense to make and dedicate all art and music to God's glory. This seems to be a more preferable use of talent in comparison to making art and music to glorify oneself. It would also keep lyrics cleaner, and there would be no talk of "American Idiots," gangstas doin' drugs, or promiscuous sexual relationships. There would be no need for music censorship. Sadly enough, a day may be fast approaching when God glorifying music itself may be censored for the offensive messages of peace, love, and moral decency.

If I had to give this worldview a grade, I would without a doubt give it an A+. I would also venture to say that the others here at Insense would agree with me. One cannot be a true follower of God and be a scientific modernist or a subjective postmodernist. One can be an existentialist, however, and we will get into that delightful worldview a bit later. The only really major critique that one can bring against the premodern worldview is the existence of God. Obviously if you do not believe in a supreme being, then it would be quite difficult to accept the beliefs of the premodern worldview. The premodern worldview is definentaly a solid one to hold. Next time, we will discuss the worldview of modernism. Be sure to check back often throughout the coming month for more updates in this series

~Tribal~

Complexity of Life

2006-01-30T20:48:00.000-05:00

Viewpoint has recently posted the following regarding the complexity of life:

"Isn't it amazing what blind, unguided, purposeless forces can accomplish when they put their mind to it? Here's just one example of the astounding abilities of random mutation and natural selection to create marvels of complex engineering."

Very comical but very true. How can anyone with a trace of a brain cell believe that humans, in all their complexity, were accidentally created by an explosion? On top of that, how could something this orderly and systematic evolve from a single celled organism? Why do we even listen to scientists these days? After all, they came from monkeys, and what does a monkey know about biology?
~Tribal~

*Edit: Make sure you click on some of the individual blocks on the chart to take in the full scope of reality.

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/30/06

2006-01-30T20:35:00.000-05:00

Today's EFD will deal with a common designer. Many scientists in today's world maintain that similarities between organisms are proof of a common ancestor. However, is it not likely as well that these similarities could show efficient design by a common designer? This is clearly an example of the atheistic trends in science today. It is assumed that the naturalists are the correct ones and the creationists have to give observable proof to back their claims. One will notice, however, that no one requires the naturalist to back up his speculation. Tomorrow we will discuss vestigial organs. Be sure to check back.
~Tribal~

Worldviews I

2006-01-29T18:25:00.000-05:00

I wish to begin a series about worldviews. This will consist of approximately five parts spread over an undefined amount of time. It will entail the beliefs of the four main worldviews (premodern, modern, postmodern, and existential), as well as contradictions and problems pertaining to them. To get started, you must first understand what a worldview is, what it tries to answer, and how it can be "rated" so to speak. A worldview is kind of like a set of glasses through which one views the world. Whether they will admit it or not, everybody has one, because we all have opinions of the people and events that make up this world. More technically, a worldview is a set of assumptions, held either consciously or unconsciously, that help to make sense of the world in our experiences and that help us to direct the way we live our lives.

Worldviews generally try to answer the following four questions, and the way you answer them is your faith commitment:
1.) What is the origin and nature of the world and the universe we live in?
2.) What is the nature, task, and purpose of human beings?
3.) What are the obstacles that keep people from finding fulfillment?
4.) How is it possible to overcome these hindrances to fulfillment?

There are three keys to evaluating a worldview. The first of these is plausibility. The fundamental beliefs of a worldview need to be rational in order for the worldview to properly function. The second is comprehensiveness. A worldview needs to adequately address all aspects of life, not merely one or two at the expense of others. Whatever a worldview leaves out of its scope will ultimately be its downfall and obviously its biggest critique. Success is the last key to evaluating a worldview. When evaluating a worldview in regards to success, ask this basic question: Does the worldview make life flourish or does it destroy life? The worldview needs to be something that is livable for an individual, because it dictates everything about the world to the holder of the view itself. For instance, a Nazi worldview is not successful -- it destroys life. Likewise with a terrorist worldview. Sometime this week I hope to get into the first worldview to be discussed here (and also my favorite): premodernism. Until then, think about your own worldview and how it stacks up.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/29/06

2006-01-29T18:09:00.000-05:00

Today's EFD is about information. All isolated systems contain specific amounts of imformation. This information has never been observed to significantly increase its own number through soley natural processes. In fact, natural processes, without exception, damage or completely destroy information systems. Only outside intelligence can create new information.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/28/06

2006-01-28T14:35:00.000-05:00

The problem with evolution that I will point out and expound upon today (with some help from In the Beginning by Walt Brown, Ph.D.) deals with codes. We need a definition here to get ourselves started. A code is defined by dictionary.com as "a systematically arranged and comprehensive collection of laws." All of the information necessary for life (reproduction, regular functions, etc.) is contained within an organism's genetic code. Now, this is interesting, because a code is "systematically arranged" and "comprehensive." The genetic code controls every aspect of life on every level, so it has to be very specific and orderly. If something is systematically arranged, there is a purpose for everything present within it -- just like within genetic code. Is it possible that random chance and gradual natural selection could produce such complexity within human life? Absolutely not. Genetic code is even accompanied by elaborate transmission, translation, and duplication systems, without which the genetic material would be useless, and life would cease. Accidents do not produce highly complex and systematic life forms. It has never been observed. It takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in creationism. God marked His signature on everything He created, but shallow and simple minded scientists are blinded by their own philosophical folly.
~Tribal~

"The Problem of Pain"

2006-01-28T13:54:00.000-05:00

Many atheists in today's world like to use a certain philosophical theory to try and disprove God. This theory I am speaking of embodies itself in three different forms. The first of these is this: If God exists and God is all good, why does evil exist? I will not explain this because a certain young man who you may be familiar with answered this already. Read my previous post entitled "Does Evil Exist?" to learn about this flawed school of thought and about how the young man was able to counter it.

The second form of the theory states, "If God is all loving, why does He send people to hell?" This train of thought is a big misunderstanding of Christianity and the Holy Scriptures. God sends no human being to hell; they essentially send themselves. Hell was a place prepared for the eternal punishment and captivity of Lucifer and his fallen angels. God did not intend for His earthly creations to have to endure it. However, when man fell in the Garden of Eden, it created a chasm between the holiness and righteousness of God and the sin and depravity of mankind. Even then, God did not disown His creation. If one committed sin, a blood offering was needed to atone for it and restore communion to the Father. If man, in his arrogance, refused to do this, then and only then would he go to hell if he died. It is not of God's doing but of man's blindness. God reached out His hand to offer a way to eternal life, but if man rejected it and spat in God's face, it is of the man's own doing. As predicted through prophecy, God the Father later sent His Son Jesus (100% God, 100% man) to permanently bridge the gap that sin had created. Jesus had to be fully God and fully man to bridge that gap, and He had to lay His divinity aside when he inhabited human flesh. Jesus died so that no more blood offerings had to be made. His was the last and final sacrifice to secure man's salvation. However, it is a gift from God. One must accept the gift to make it one's own, and without accepting it, it is worthless to the individual. Again, God does not send people to hell when they die, they go there themselves of their own free choosing. God lovingly held out His hand of forgiveness, but if man rejects it, the blame is upon the failure of the man to secure his own salvation.

The third area of thought within the theory is this: If God is all loving, then why is there pain and suffering in the world? This is, again, a very shallow understanding of the way things work. The counter to this last argument against God's existence is a mix of the last two. Pain is present for two main reasons: pain evolves from a lack of God in one's life, and pain is a choice people make. God is all loving and all merciful, but if men do not go to God, it is their own fault that they experience pain. Such things are of the devil, and if one does not submit to God, one is already submitting to the devil.

Together, all three of these fruitless attacks on Christianity derive what is known as the problem of pain. In reality, however, the only problem with it is people's lack of desire to end the pain and suffering. God does not promise His children an easy life, but in the long run things always work out for the better. It's curious that atheists always tend to label the Christians as the foolish ones, but in reality, the atheists are the naive and shallow minded thinkers.

~Tribal~

Liberals in New Orleans

2006-01-28T12:46:00.000-05:00

I have become tired of hearing everyone blame the federal Government for what happened after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Apparently it is the federal Government’s fault that people were not evacuated and it’s their fault that adequate food and water never made it to the Superdome for the evacuees. It amazes me though at the amount of people who can take a tragedy the magnitude of Katrina, and turn it around to make it political. The people I would be talking about are our left-wing liberal friends.

While President Bush is accused of not evacuating New Orleans because, as Kanye West claims, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Has anyone actually taken the time to view how the local and state Governments royally screwed up? Let’s just start with the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin. Upon the evacuation of the City of New Orleans, Mayor Nagin placed a call out for fleets of Greyhound tour busses to drive to the city and pick up the people that could not get themselves out. A fleet of Greyhounds that size could never be assembled in time, but the Mayor happened to “overlook” the fleet of hundreds of school and public transportation busses already in the city. When questioned about this by Tim Russert (World Net Daily), of NBC’s Meet the Press, Mayor Nagin gave an argument about how drivers for those vehicles could not be found. Now honestly how hard must one think to figure out that there were people who can drive still in New Orleans? Sure, it may not have been text book, perfect “school bus driver” style, but it sure would have saved a bunch more people. Lets stop kidding ourselves the ball was dropped way in the beginning with the local Government, “depending upon our state and federal officials to move them out of harm's way” Those were Mayor Nagin's exact words to Mr. Russert about the situation -- “plop” there went the ball.

Now, I know everyone heard about the horrible conditions of the Superdome, but we never heard about why it took so long for the food, water, blankets, etc. to get to the Superdome. The American Red Cross had truckload after truckload of those supplies sent down to the evacuees, but we never really heard the reasons as to why it took so long for them to get there. The Louisiana state Government held those trucks at the state border for days! They held the trucks full of vital supplies, going to people who needed them badly, at the state line because they did not want the Superdome to become a “magnet point.” I don’t understand this, we will say that President Bush doesn’t care about black people, but yet lets hold food from evacuees because we don’t want the Superdome to become a magnet point. Doesn’t make sense to me.

~ Fiat volvntas tua ~

A Call for Prayer

2006-01-28T01:50:00.000-05:00

I'm asking all Christians to please pray for our nation, schools, politicians, courts, and scientists. This is something that God has placed in my heart in response to a very suddenly and devistating realization that in today's world "God" and "Jesus" are dirty words reserved for the simple and foolish. Today's world looks to academia for truth, and academia as on the whole adimately rejects the truths of God. In a world where anything goes, Christians are persicuted for their beliefs, and any idea in any way related to Christianity is shrugged off with extreme bias. I am afraid for our culture. Please pray fervently for the Holy Spirit to make itself known to our world and for guidance for those in power. I'll describe more in a day or so.

~AndyJams~

747 Drag Racing

2006-01-27T19:52:00.000-05:00

We here at Insense highly reccomend this humorous video clip. There is nothing offensive, risque, or vulgar in it, and we present it to you with two thumbs way up.
~Tribal~

Does Evil Exist?

2006-01-27T17:55:00.000-05:00

This came from an email sent to me a while back:

A university professor challenged his students with this question: did God create everything that exists?

A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!"

"God created everything?" the professor asked.

"Yes, sir," the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists. According to the principal that our works define who we are, God is evil." The student fell quiet before such an answer. The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more than the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and inquired, "Can I ask you a question, professor?"

"Of course," replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is that? Of course cold exists. Have you ever been cold?" The students too snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Everybody and every object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have too little heat." The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong, sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is, in reality, the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact, we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present." Finally, the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course, as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love, that exist just as light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

The young man's name -- Albert Einstein.

~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/27/06

2006-01-27T16:34:00.000-05:00

Today's EFD is about speech. As discussed previously, speech and language are unique to humans alone. We as a species have a "prewired" brain for learning and conveying abstract ideas through the physical body. Humans can produce a wide range of sounds. In fact, it is such an advanced capability that few animals can produce any sounds remotely similar to those of humans. Due to the human larynx being rather low in the neck, a long air column lies above the vocal chords. This feature is a necessity to vocalizing vowel sounds. Apes lack this distinguishing characteristic, and consequently, they are not capable of producing vowel sounds. In addition, the back of the human tongue extends deep into the back of the neck, and it can modulate airflow to produce consonant sounds. Apes have flat horizontal tongues that are incapable of making consonant sounds. Even if a species of monkey could evolve the physical requirements needed for speech, it would be in vain without a "prewired" brain for learning language skills. Speech is undeniably and uniquely human, and just as with language, could not have evolved.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/26/06

2006-01-26T21:12:00.000-05:00

Today's exposed flaw in Darwin's evolutionary theory is about language. Because I'm very tired right now from working on a project, I am merely going to post an excerpt from the book to start this with:

"...studies of 36 documented cases of children raised without human contact (feral children) suggest that language is learned only from other humans. Apparently, humans do not automatically speak. If this is so, the first humans must have been endowed with a language ability. There is no evidence language evolved."

This is an interesting point, and it delivers a very hard hitting, fatal blow to the illconstructed armor of materialism that Darwin created. Evolutionists like to respond by saying that language had to evolve because other animals can communicate. The fact that other animals communicate is undeniable, but this level of communication is not defined by oral speech or written language. Over countless years, professional trainers have tried to teach apes to understand certain words, as a dog can, and some of these apes even understand written symbols. However, no such thing has been observed in the wild. It is also true that when a trained ape dies, so does the ability to understand speech. Offspring that the monkey produced after the point it learned such traits are not gifted with the same traits. It takes the efforts of another trainer to teach another monkey. There is absolutely no evidence to support the hypothesis that language evolved, and in fact there is a copious amount of evidence to prove that it did not do so.

In addition to the experiment with feral children, there is more proof that language did not evolve. If Darwin was correct and language did evolve over time, that obviously has to mean that the earliest languages were the simplest, just like the animals that supposedly spoke it. Consequentially, as time went on, languages should have grown to be more complex in nature. Ironically, though, the exact opposite can be observed. The most ancient languages (Latin, 200 B.C.; Greek, 800 B.C.; and Vedic Sanskrit, 1500 B.C.) are the ones that are more complex in regards to syntax, case, gender, mood, voice, tense, and verb form. As Walt Brown writes, "The best evidence indicates that languages devolve..." Most linguists even reject the idea that simple language evolves into more complex language. Check back tomorrow for a continuation of this topic, only tomorrow we will focus more on the subtopic of speech.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/25/06

2006-01-25T21:24:00.000-05:00

Today's Evolutionary Flaw of the Day regards Extraterrestrial Life. If one were to believe the big bang theory and evolution and all that jazz, one would expect that at least simple microbes and the like would have been found on other planets. Mars even at one time had water because of its immense ice cap. However, in all of the elaborate experiments sent to the Moon and to Mars, not even a simple, single celled organism has been observed. While it is true that this argument only deals with expeditions to two solar bodies, is it not likely that if circumstances were right to produce the exact specifications needed to support life on earth that the two closest solar bodies would at least be able to support microbes? It's just so coincidental that our world is perfectly suited for our existence to believe a random explosion created it all. Check back tomorrow for an interesting look into language and how it contradicts evolution.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/24/06

2006-01-24T19:32:00.000-05:00

Today's Flaw is very philosophical in nature but holds just as much of an argument as everything else posted to date. Today's EFD is about Altruism. Throughout the course of human history, there have been numerous occasions of a human (or sometimes even an animal) risking its very life to save that of another. Such tales inspire great stories of love and war and turn many into heroes. The problem that evolution has with altruism, however, is that it has no place in the evolutionary scheme of things. In light of natural selection, the selfless virtue of altruism should have been wiped out ages ago. Such "risky" behavior tends to prevent the altruistic individual from passing on its genes for altruism. If evolution is correct, selfish behavior would have eliminated unselfish behavior because the number of unselfish organisms would have slowly decreased over time. For example, say there were two species of dog. We'll call them dog species x and dog species y. For this illustration, let's say that dog species x was altruistic and would risk its life to save other dogs from predators, and that dog species y was completely selfish and would think of no such thing. As time went on and members of dog species x died to defend other dogs (including those of dog species y), the number of dog species x would decline. Those who gave their lives to save others would not be able to pass on the genes that make one altruistic. As a result, dog species x would gradually die out because dead dogs of species x are unable to pass on their genes. Meanwhile, dog species y will continue to flourish because they are not the ones being killed by the predators. Their genetic lines will continue to grow in number while those of dog species x die. Eventually, there will be no dog species x left because they will all have died in defending other dogs, including dog species y. Their altruistic genes will never be passed on to any more generations of dogs. Altruism would become extinct, and yet it survives to this day. Altruism contradicts evolution and natural selection.
~Tribal~

Viewpoint

2006-01-24T16:24:00.000-05:00

An acquaintence of ours has recently made a mention of our blog on his site. I strongly encourage each of you to check out his site often, as it is very insightful in areas of politics, religion, and science. It is usually updated daily and contains interesting tid bits of news, opinions, and analysis.
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/23/06

2006-01-24T16:05:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this is the first time yet that I have not posted an EFD on the day it was supposed to be posted. My mistake, but I will try to keep up with them in the future. For those of you who are recently joining us, all of my information for this column comes from the book In the Beginning by Walt Brown, Ph.D. Anyway, today we will discuss Distinct Types. To begin with, I wish to quote part of the book because the way it was written is excellent:

"If evolution happened, one would expect to see gradual transitions among many living things. For example, variations of dogs might blend in with variations of cats. Actually, some animals, such as the duckbilled platypus, have organs totally unrelated to their alleged evolutionary ancestors."

The author then continues to point out discrepancies with the platypus and its supposed ancestors. To begin with, it has fur, it is warm blooded, and it suckles its young. These are all primary characteristics of a mammal, as anyone can see. However, the platypus lays leathery eggs, has a single ventral opening, has claws, and has a shoulder girdle. These are all characteristic of reptiles. Like a fish, though, it can detect electrical currents, and like a bird, it has a bill. To get even more specific, it possesses the webbed forefeet of an otter, the flat tail of a beaver, and can inject venom like a pit viper. Where on the evolutionary tree does such an oddity of a creature exist? Surely it holds no logical place in Darwin's theory. Organisms with such varied characteristics are known as mosaics and are certainly an exception to the evolutionary theory. To finish off this EFD, I will again post a quote from the book:

"There is no direct evidence that any major group of animals or plants arose from any other major group. Species are observed only going out of existence, never coming into existence."

~Tribal~

Goodbye to "The Book of Daniel"

2006-01-24T15:37:00.000-05:00

The American Family Association recently sent me an email regarding the victory over NBC's controversial show The Book of Daniel. The main body of the message was composed of the following:

"NBC's anti-Christian program The Book of Daniel has been cancelled! Your efforts, combined with those of hundreds of thousands of other AFA Online supporters, had an impact. NBC's decision to pull The Book of Daniel shows the power of the pocketbook. NBC didn't want to eat their economic losses. Had NBC not had to eat millions of dollars each time it aired, NBC would have kept The Book of Daniel on the air. Because of your efforts, the sponsors dropped the program. NBC then decided it didn't want to continue the fight. Even an impassioned plea by Daniel's producer Jack Kenny could not match your participation. 'Ordinarily, I would never ask anyone to do this, but the AFA (American Family Association) and bullies like them are hard at work to try and prevent you from seeing these beautiful shows, and that is censorship pure and simple. And that is both un-Christian and un-American,' Kenny wrote. His attitude is typical in today's society. Non-Christians telling Christians what is Christian. People like Kenny don't want people like you to have a voice. They want to deny you the right to get involved. You are supposed to sit back and take the trash. And when you do speak up they call you names. This shows us that we don't have to simply sit back and take the trash, but we can get involved and fight back with our pocketbooks. I want to thank the 678,394 individuals who sent emails to NBC and the thousands who called and emailed their local affiliates. Thanks for caring enough to get involved!"

For those of you who do not know what this show was about, it was a sitcom that gave the American public a warped and perverted view of Christianity. It was simply immoral and untruthful, but now, thank God, the people that have stood up to it have made a difference. I think this should be a rallying call to the rest of the Christian church to stand up for the important social and political issues that need to be reformed. Abortion has killed 48 million people and counting, and embryonic stem cell research is fast approaching that mark. It has been proven that a handful of individuals, with God's blessing, can overcome any obstacle as long as they have faith. If everyone unites and focuses on what makes the church the same rather than what divides us, we can accomplish goals like this, and I believe we must.
~Tribal~

Lights in the Darkness

2006-01-23T15:47:00.000-05:00

Being on the P.O.D. promotions team and e-mail list, I recently received an email about the release of their new album Testify tomorrow. Part of the email contained a quote from the band about the name of their album. The host of the show asked them "...So what are we testifying to with this album?" Sonny, the band's singer, replied with the following: "Fourteen years P.O.D. has been around. We been saying the same thing since we first started: that there is a God out there that loves you. We have that faith, and I believe that keeps us strong, and even though we been in this business and industry you see so many fakes and phonies, and one of the lyrics on our album says if you don't stand for something, then you don't stand for nothing. We have been the same way for 14 years, no changing no gimmicks." Here is one of the most up front bands in the history of Christian music talking openly about their faith in one of the biggest centers for moral depravity in the world: center stage of MTV studios. MTV promotes sexual promiscuity, foul language, objectification of women, and abortion. I guess this post can be taken as a supplement to my previous one discussing music, because it definentaly takes a strong faith to stand up for God and what you know is right when you know that the majority of the people you are speaking to think you are a hypocritical, narrow minded "church boy."
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/22/06

2006-01-22T19:05:00.000-05:00

Today's EFD deals with the questionability of evolution in light of highly complex molecules and organisms. Many molecules necessary for the development of the human body (DNA, RNA, proteins) are so complex that it is impossible for them to have evolved from single celled life. Once again, as well, this development of complexity has never been actually observed, rendering it "unscientific" as things of the supernatural are supposed to be. The human eye, ear, and brain are so highly detailed and function in ways so specifically that there is absolutely no reason to believe that mutations or natural processes could ever produce these organs. The adult human brain itself contains over one hundred thousand billion electrical connections (that is a 10 with 14 zeroes behind it), more than all the electrical connections in all the electrical appliances in the world combined. The heart is another divine engineering miracle. It is a ten-ounce pump approximately the size of a fist that will continue to beat many times a minute for about 75 years with absolutely no maintenance or lubrication. How could all this have been brought about without an intelligent designer?
~Tribal~

Evolutionary Flaw of the Day 01/21/06

2006-01-21T14:51:00.000-05:00

Okay, so according to evolution, as generations upon generations are created, an organism is supposed to become more complex and variable. Over the course of 100 years, however, there was an experiment dealing with fruit flies. Three thousand consecutive generations of fruit flies were bred to determine if over that large span of time there would result any genetic changes. You must keep in mind that fruit flies produce offspring at a much higher rate than humans, so just because the experiment only lasted 100 years and complete evolution from monkey to man supposedly took many times longer than that, that does not render the experiment invalid. If this experiment would have been carried out using humans, the amount of time it would take to reach three thousand generations would drastically increase. Anyway, the results of the experiment were not what the evolutionists had hoped for and this is why the carrying out of this experiment was never highly publicized. The results showed that no clear genetic improvement took place, even in spite of unnatural efforts to increase mutation rates. Shocking, isn't it *sarcasm.* Once again, it is proven in a scientific laboratory setting that evolution is an invalid and non-provable theory.
~Tribal~