judas' motivation

Why did Judas betray Christ?

• Evil needs no motive
• He hoped to force Jesus to lead a revolt against Rome
• He hoped to spare Judea a futile revolt against Rome
• He didn't realize the Sanhedrin's intent to have Jesus executed
• There was no choice involved; it was the role God had chosen for him
• Because he loved Jesus and wanted him to be remembered at his height
• He needed the money
• The Pharisees or others had been threatening him and the others
• He had decided that Jesus was a false messiah
• He chose to betray Christ in order to see the prophecies fulfilled

Vote

It's actually a serious question. Judas has fascinated me for years, mostly because we know so little about him. Dante puts him in the lowest level of hell, calling him the worst of all sinners, and Christians often depict him as someone who doesn't really fit in with the other Twelve Apostles, someone who doesn't quite belong with Jesus, who is on the outskirts of the group rather than an insider.

That doesn't sit well with me. For one thing, he was eating at the same table as Christ during the final Passover seder, which isn't exactly a seat of dishonor. For a second, one of the messianic psalms bemoans the betrayal, saying, "If it had been an enemy who had done this, or even a stranger, I could have dealt with it. But it was you, a friend of mine." For a third, he was someone who had seen the miracles right from the beginning: the resurrection of Lazarus, the healings, the demons being cast out, the feeding of the five thousand -- heck, he even performed healings and other miracles when Jesus sent the disciples out.

And yet he betrayed Christ anyway. That makes him a compelling figure to me because it means he probably was doing what he thought was the Right Thing, or at least a Good Thing. I see more applications there for me as a believer, when I've duped myself into believing that I was doing was good and right when it was obvious to everyone else that it wasn't. And after all, "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me."

Of course Judas could be forgiven, and so could Hitler, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and even me, but whether any of the others are forgiven of their sins is none of my affair to decide. My own sins, black and horrid as they are, I accept on faith that they are no more in the eyes of God, even though their memory haunts me some times.

From the textual descriptions we have of Judas and the betrayal, it doesn't seem that he reached the point of understanding what Jesus offered. His suicide seems to me an act of supreme despair, where he thought himself too horrible and too hardened in his heart to turn and seek forgiveness.

It's an interesting question, and one we'll never know the answer to until a lot of other things are made clear too, but I don't think it's likely the answer is yes. John the Evangelist writes that Satan entered into Judas and led him to betray Christ, which would indicate his heart wasn't right with God.

Another intriguing character from the Passion, of course, is Pilate. I posted an interesting essay about Pilate at CHRefugee last year, and (not surprisingly) there are old traditions about his salvation as well. In the Ethiopian church, there is even a St. Pilate's Day and an accompanying feast.

And as long as we're talking about the supporting cast, I have a drama I started working on but never finished, about an old priest who is remembering a time when he was younger that he met the messiah, still a child at the time, in the Temple courts. The priest at the time walked away, his pride hurt, and when he returned the next day, realizing who the boy was, found he had gone. That part is based on a song by Mike Card, but the part that's completely mine is what comes next -- the priest is Caiaphas and he's about to go out and make sure the Sanhedrin sentences Christ to death.

It's one of my projects. I really want to finish that.

i'm a liberal

Consider the following points:

• I've been a registered Democrat since I turned 18.
• Although I voted against Gore in 2000, and against Clinton in 1996, I can honestly say I've never thought the Republicans put up a viable candidate either time. Unfortunately, no one else did either.
• I've been a professional journalist for seven years, and frequently have been criticized by the local Republicans for favoring Democrats.
• I have problems with tax cuts that target the rich.
• I oppose the war in Iraq.
• I listen to NPR.
• I see no problem with gay and unmarried heterosexual couples getting the same benefits from employers that married heterosexual couples get from their employers.
• I think newspapers generally do a good job at being fair.
• I think hate crime legislation should include gays and lesbians; actually, I think it should be expanded to include any crime where hate based on "otherness" was a motivating factor.
• I view deficit spending as irresponsible.
• When I taught science at a Christian school, I made sure my students understood evolutionary theory.
• I believe that the poor and disenfranchised have a special place in the economy of God and that it is incumbent on those of us with wealth to take care of those in need.
• I view unregulated capitalism as a bad thing that leads to the aggregation of wealth and power in the hands of a select few while leaving the masses exploited, poor and powerless.
• I'm all for racial integration and interracial marriage.
• I would say that many social ills exist because the church has failed to live up to its calling.
• I oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and would like to see more done to develop alternative fuel sources.
• Bush has really embarassed me as an American with his environmental record, rejecting the Kyoto Protocol; with his unilateral approach to foreign policy; and his strong pro-industry stand on just about everything.
• I not only eat organic food, I grow my own organic vegetables.
• I would have bought a hybrid car last week if we could have afforded it.
• Lastly, as a liberal, I accept wholeheartedly the creed "It's all my fault."

academy awards highlight

ACTOR KILLED DURING ACADEMY AWARDS CEREMONY
Show's host injured by CGI-driven character gone bad
By Jocko Grinn

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (Grinn News Service) -- Disaster struck the Academy Awards last night when Chris Cooper, winner of the Best Supporting Actor award, was strangled as he accepted the award.

"Sweet Mother of Pearl!" host Steve Martin cried as a small manlike creature leapt up and tore the statuette from his hands, biting off one of Martin's fingers in the process.

"It's ours, ours!" the creature cried before scurrying across the stage and out the door. "Our Precious-ss!"

Security footage shows the creature is manlike with overlarge feet, large blue eyes, and a single lock of hair that hangs from its head. Security guards tried to stop the intruder as it left the building but said they were unable to, due to its prodigious strength.

Guards added that the creature's eyes glow in the dark and that it made a retching noise as it talked that sounded like "column."

"We think it's a disgruntled writer for 'Variety' magazine," said Los Angeles Police detective Brick d'Fortunato.

Anthony Serkis, who made a name for himself as Gollum in last year's "The Two Towers" was not available for comment.

In the meantime, officials continue their manhunt for the creature, which they consider likely either to fall into a volcano or to be cast in Ernest Borgnine's role in a remake of the 1970s horror film "The Devil's Rain."

"Either way, it's a bad way to go," said D'Fortunato. "Personally, I'd take the volcano."

Martin was listed as being in stable condition, although nurses at the hospital report he keeps cradling his hand and moaning, "It's gone."

Gulf War II: Day 5

FRENCH, U.S. RELATIONS IN LE TOILETTE
Chirac tells Bush: Give us back the Statue of Liberty
By Jocquo Le Grinne

(Grinn News Service) -- Tensions between France and the United States continued to deepen Saturday as U.S. officials heightened their restrictions on French terminology and France asked for the immediate return of the Statue of Liberty.

The latest actions reflect a widening rift between the two nations, begun when Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, ordered the word "french" dropped from menu items served to members of the U.S. House of Representatives March 11, because France would not back a U.S.-led war against Iraq.

At the time, French officials downplayed the significance of the change, noting that french fries come from Belgium.

But by March 19, French officials had changed their tune, and it wasn't "Frere Jacques."

"It has come to our attention that many English words are derived from the French language owing to the Norman conquest of 1044," a letter from French President "Blaque Jacques" Chirac stated. "Such use is expressly not authorized, and request is made forthwith for you to remove all French influences from American English, or we will be forced to seek legal action against you."

The letter also stressed the deep love France has for America, and expressed a desire that the two peoples continue to walk forward in harmony once America realizes its idiocy, stops being so arrogant, and removes its head from its posterior.

Chirac's letter triggered an avalanche as the American Kennel Club renamed the French poodle breed to the Liberty poodle — making it an even more annoying breed than before — and American pet stores began refusing to sell frogs.

Under the direction of Homeland Security Adviser Tom Ridge, the FBI and CIA began investigating for suspicious activity some 10,000 Americans on Thursday who still play the French horn and prefer French bread to Italian and prefer French wine to German beer.

France retaliated by ordering its embassies to pretend not to know English when answering the phone or communicating with American officials. The reprisal ultimately was deemed ineffective as American dignitaries were unable to detect a change in policy.

Relations continued to deteriorate when House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said if it hadn't been for the United States, France would be a part of Germany. France responded by ceding its sovereignty to Germany and asking the German military to resume the occupation it ended when driven out by Allied forces near the end of World War II.

By Friday, relations between the two nations were at their lowest since a first-season "Simpsons" episode in 1990 sent Bart Simpson to France and revealed the secret role antifreeze plays in French winemaking.

Chirac's request that the United States return the Statue of Liberty, given by the French in 1884, came late Saturday, after President Bush accused the French textile industry of supplying Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with a steady supply of berets during the past 12 years, despite an official trade embargo with Iraq.

"If they want the Statue of Liberty, I say we should make them take back the entire Louisiana Territory and all the Democrats who live there," DeLay retorted during discussion on the House floor. "And we want a refund, with interest."

Chirac agreed to take title to states in the former Louisiana territory at France's first convenience, but insisted his nation would pay no money for the land until it was restored to its pre-American state.

"It was bought from the Emperor Napoleon under duress anyway," Chirac said.

In a strongly worded resolution, the United Nations warned France and the United States to start behaving nicely or risk another strongly worded resolution.

rapture

I've gone from believing in a pre-Trib Rapture to not believing in a Rapture at all. The entire doctrine is relatively recent -- it stems from "revelations" and visions a woman in Scotland had in the 19th century, and connects verses that have very little bearing on one another.

If this really were the "blessed hope of the Church," as Assembly of God doctrine holds, I think Jesus or one of the New Testament writers would have talked about it at more length. The closest we get is Paul's "We shall not all die" passage in 1 Thessalonians, but that seems to me like a Second Coming passage, not a "Last train out of here" passage.

Saying you don't buy into the escapism of the Rapture and consider it a phony-baloney doctrine is like professing to be a liberal in an evangelical church. It's enough to get you run out of many churches and to get people praying for your eternal soul.

You should have been there when I told my students several years ago that Jesus probably had zits when he was their age. And when I said he probably hit himself on the thumb with his hammer from time to time, even as an adult ... woo-HOO! Not knowing Aramaic, I have no idea what he would have said. I don't doubt the equivalent of a few four-letter words could have been in there. (One only wonders what they would have thought if I had said that Jesus probably was a social drinker.)

I've watched the fascination and cultic devotion the "Left Behind" books have sparked with a morbid fascination. I've read a few End Times novels before -- Dave Hunt's "The Archon Conspiracy" and Michael Yousseff's "Earth King" are two that spring to mind, although my all-time favorite has to be Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens" -- and I mostly see them as harmless, if badly written.

Note I said "mostly." The books do feed a tendency at least among American evangelicals to escapism and to a bit of self-righteousness. Readers who take the Rapture seriously get a kick of seeing all that they won't have to go through from the books, which isn't healthy.

Beyond that, I don't think the books' eschatology is sound, I think the writing is fairly atrocious, what I've read of it, and I think it also reflects a conservative Protestant American view of things rather than necessarily a biblical one. Notice the Antichrist is going to be Russian; if the books were influenced by a more contemporary theologian/scholar type, the Antichrist probably would be an Arab. Fifty years ago, the books probably would have made him Catholic.

Then there's the sects of Christianity are taken up. The pope is included, but mostly as a token Catholic, meant to widen the book's appeal. The pope in the books is a fairly Protestant pope. This is more just the writers' biases, I think, than actual eschatology resulting from Bible study. (Yeah, I know I'm treading on thin ice there, since Jenkins is a scholar of sorts, though probably not much more credible than Hal Lindsay when you get down to it.)

I also don't get the fascination with the Second Coming in Christian writing. The Bible says the Day of the Lord will not be a day of rejoicing, but one of terror; and while it's a day we're told to pray for, we're also told to keep our feet firmly planted in the now, sharing the gospel with those around us and ministering to those in need.

For some reason, though, the Second Coming ranks what I would consider disproportionately high on what we like to read about. There are far more books on prophecy and the End Times at the Evil Christian Bookstore than about feeding the hungry or missions.

Anyway, I've probably shot my mouth off enough now. I'd recommend looking at the book of Revelation in a different way if it helps you get past the poison. Mike Card once described the book as a series of hymns in praise of Jesus Christ; that is, it's a revelation not of the end but of Christ in all his glory. That's a good approach; another is to say "Never mind the prophecy, what lessons can I draw that apply to the here and now?" I've always found that one makes sense.

Then there's the preterist view of Revelation, but I don't really hold with that either; it's a fairly recent doctrine too, growing out of the notions of the Great Century 100 years ago, and doesn't really square with what I understand the views of the early church were. It holds that the events of Revelation all have been fulfilled.

Interesting tangent: Apokalipsis is a Greek word that means "unveiling." We usually think of Apocalyptic literature as being about tremendous calamity or disaster -- Apocalypse is synonymous with Doomsday in the common parlance -- but the whole idea behind the word is that it's making plain something otherwise considered mysterious.

Our problem is that we lack the cultural clues to properly understand the writing, so we often get rattled by stuff like the thirty-headed beast of Jehoboazarrihim and the seventh moon of Timbuk Two, but a lot of the clues to understand it all are found in the Tanakh and the imagery it uses.

the dictates of a 3-year-old

Just wait until your child gets to be 3 years old and you have to deal with all of THAT.

No, not the "tyrannical threes" -- the explosion of personality and the obsessive compulsive behavior that will drive you nuts in record time. Evangeline has acquired the moniker "Kissing Bandit" because every time she sees Rachel, she wants to give her sister a kiss. And kiss her she must, whether Rachel is nursing, sucking her thumb or sleeping. Everything must be done just so, according to the ritual Evangeline has developed, or reality will disintegrate.

I guarantee you, when your baby turns 3, you will find it impossible to love her any less than with all your heart, but there will be times you will wish you lived in a zoo.

u.s. conquers kuwait

U.S. OVERWHELMS KUWAITI DEFENSES
Official: 'We were holding the map wrong'
By Jocko and Smirkov Grinn

KUWAIT CITY (Grinn News Service) -- The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq got off to a bad start Thursday night when a coalition of British and American troops headed east instead of west.

U.S. tanks plowed through the ruins of Kuwait City after a heavy aerial bombardment had reduced the Kuwaiti capital to rubble, demolishing power plants and bridges, and severely disrupting the transportation infrastructure. The Kuwaiti populace offered little resistance, allowing American troops to sweep across their countryside with astonishing speed.

It was not until military personnel reached a border guard at Saudi Arabia that they realized their mistake.

A Saddam Hussein body double sporting a double chin confessed himself "shocked and awed" by the American military might.

"We were holding the map wrong," said U.S. Army Gen. Stephen Bloomers. "Once the Saudi guard showed us the way back to the highway and we had stopped to grab a sandwich at the local Kwik-E Mart, we turned back."

Other soldiers were quick to defend the error, which they said was one anyone could have made, even with the latest military technology.

"It's kind of hard to navigate off landmarks when all you have to work with is sand, sand, and more sand," said a corporal.

In Baghdad, the scene was one of utter chaos as thousands of Iraqi troops milled the streets in confusion looking for someone to surrender to. An enterprising Reuters reporter offered to accept surrenders at $10 a head until American TV crews could arrive to accept the surrenders properly, and reportedly was doing well enough that he was considering opening a franchise.

Iraqi missile strikes into Kuwait prompted U.S. troops stationed at Camp New Jersey, situated near the Iraq-Kuwait border, to put on gas masks and chemical protective gear before the all-clear sirens were sounded.

"I was grateful for the opportunity to make myself feel at home," said Lt. Ron Bittner, a Linden, N.J., native. "The oil refineries also lent an air of authenticity -- it was just like driving on the Turnpike. Except that the E-ZPass transponders don't open up the secured gates."

In a related issue, American citizens who had flown to Iraq and positioned themselves in front of designated targets in an attempt to prevent the United States from attacking hospitals and elementary schools with no strategic value, fled to the safety of a nearby Howard Johnsons and watched the attacks from the lobby.

"We never actually realized that we could be killed," said Shaun Pensecola, an aspiring actor from Los Angeles. "I mean, 'human body shield' sounds glamorous until you realize it means people will actually be shooting at you."

earrings

I was the first person in my family to get an ear pierced, and therefore had the unusual privilege of reassuring my mother -- in her mid-50s when she decided to get hers done -- that it wouldn't hurt, and letting her know ahead of time what sort of reactions she could have, from infection to allergic reaction. (I discovered that I'm allergic to yellow gold when my earlobe started turning odd colors.)

My mother got her ears pierced when my father bought her a pair of earrings that would have to be modified so she could wear them. As she had never had her ears pierced, all she wore were clip-ons. She has had no problems that I am aware of, except perhaps the occasional ear infection.

My earring hole closed up years ago, to the best of my knowledge. I can still see the divot where I had the piercing, but haven't had the urge to get it repierced or to see if the hole is still open.

No one has suggested we get Evangeline or Rachel's ears pierced. Natasha hasn't worn earrings for even longer than I have, and since she got her earring caught on somebody else's backpack once, she has even less of an inclination to wear them than I do.

We figure that if the girls want to get their ears pierced, they'll let us know. I also figure that if they're nervous, I can get my ear pierced again to reassure them it doesn't hurt. (A father-daughter bonding experience of increasing frequency, I'm sure.)

Of course, since Natasha wears neither earrings nor makeup, I really wonder how much inclination the girls will have to try either of those things as they get older. I suppose it depends on their friends.

saddam quits

SADDAM HUSSEIN STEPS DOWN
DEPOSED LEADER: 'New horizons beckon, and I must go'

Saddam Hussien, responding to an ultimatum issued by U.S. President George W. Bush to flee Iraq in two days or suffer the fury of American military, nonchalantly stepped down on Tuesday morning.

"I've had a great run, accomplished a lot, but now it's time to move on with my life," the Iraqi leader told the few remaining Western journalists in a speech delivered from his new RV. "Everyone dreams about being a powerful despot in one of the most volatile regions of the
world, but few get an opportunity to live the dream. I am one of those fortunate few."

Saddam credits his five wives, both living and dead, for giving him the courage and compassion to go on, even when he felt misunderstood or betrayed by U.N. inspectors.

"Still, I think I made a real difference for my country," he said. "Good night, and God bless the USA!"

Saddam already has made some plans for the future, which he plans to fulfill once he gets past border guards inspecting the bunk beds in his mobile home for weapons of mass destruction.

He recently appeared in an episode of The Anna Nicole Smith show, where she wanted to do a scientific study on sand, and network executives are considering him to be a potential mate on an upcoming season of The Bachelor, where 25 women vie for one man's hand in a casual dating relationship not likely to outlast the season, let alone actual engagement or marriage.

Saddam has expressed disappointment in not making the cut for "American Idol," after being told by one of the judges that he has a powerful stage presence but his singing was a bigger bomb than a Scud-2 missile. Simon Cowell, a BMG record executive, disappeared two weeks ago while walking to his car in the parking deck behind the building where "American Idol" is taped. Too many suspects exist, however, to trace the disappearance to the Iraq regime.

"Sometimes life throws you a few kinks," said Saddam, as the eyes of his hired goons misted up around him. "But there's power to positive thinking, and you just can't afford to give up. After all, I'm just a nobody who's managed to waste a lot of time of the most powerful nation in the world!

"It reminds me of the words of that immortal song by Mike Post:

"Look at what's happened to me,
I can't believe it myself;
Suddenly I'm up on top of the world,
Should've been somebody else!

"Take that, Simon, you dirty rotten scoundrel."

If his current television plans don't work out, Saddam plans to open an Italian ice store or, if that fails, take up professional landscaping. His son Uday reportedly feels cheated by his father's decision to head in a solo direction when he was hoping to market a new book of
inspirational material, "Chicken Soup for the Terrorist's Soul" and "Chicken Soup for the Petty Despot's Soul."

"Just kidding, Patty," a spokesman for Uday Hussein said. "Chicken Soup for the Soul is a copyright of Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises, and we would never dream of infringing upon it."

marketing strategies

I've never tried telemarketing myself, and I don't know what all the various newspapers have done to boost visibility. I do feel my current employer grossly underuses its web presence. One of the newspapers I edit is The Quakertown Eagle, for example. The chain is WCN Newspapers. I would expect something like www.quakertowneagle.com and www.wcnonline.com./ Instead, the web sites are www.myquakertown.com and www.localnewssource.com. Bad name choice, no gain in name recognition.

My impression overall is that they do precious little to promote the papers aside from telemarketing and word of mouth. A previous employer used to use targeted mailings, followed up by phone calls, and experienced a pretty good new-subscriber rate as a result. Many newspapers are employing "Newspaper in Education" programs, but I'm not entirely sure how they work.

quality sells

Quality is the most important part of any product; that's why I work hard to make the newspapers I edit be good reflections, voices, watchdogs and forums of the communities they serve.

I've also made it a point from the beginning to solicit columns from local leaders and other residents with a view in order to boost the community involvement in the paper. That's an unending struggle, and it's not one I'm likely to stop until I finally leave the news business and get a job that pays a living wage.

I can't speak for other businesses, but my experience as a weekly newspaper editor has been that the circulation department often has a good sense of what our communities think of our papers, and that's in no small part to the on-staff telemarketers. Readers complain when we neglect their segment of the population, and they also let us know when we've hit the nail on the head -- and again, that's usually done through the telemarketing.

You don't need to convince me that most telemarketing calls are annoying. We've been getting two or three a day ever since Alan Greenspan lowered the interest rates to -5 percent, offering to refinance our mortgage for us.

The problem is that for good or ill -- I would be inclined to say for ill -- telemarketing has become an important and relatively affordable way for small businesses to boost their visibility over a prolonged period. With no-call registries growing in popularity, I'm hopeful business will find less noxious ways to promote themselves, which of course, was the entire point of starting this thread.

The question, of course, is whether quality will be enough for a small business like The Quakertown Eagle in a landscape dominated by The Newark Star-Ledger and The Home News and Tribune, or for a Jazams toy store in an industry overrun by Wal-Marts and Toys "R" Us box stores.

prayer on the eve of war

I'm still praying that Saddam or enough other people in Iraq will see the light in time to prevent a war.

I'm also praying that:

1) God will break the necks of the terrorist organizations plotting attacks on the United States, Britain and our allies. I've been praying this for some time now -- and yes, in pretty much that language -- and was glad when God answered our prayers with the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. I read one analysis today that al Qaeda now has more to fear from us than we do from it.

2) For religious freedom in Iraq and its neighbors, and for a revival of the church there. I hear many evangelicals whine about minor problems with sharing the faith here -- and about piddly stuff like schools no longer being allowed to require the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance -- but believers in much of the Middle East believe at the risk of their lives.

3) That the damage to our standing in the international community will be minimal, and that Bush's determination to push for war against Iraq will not fuel a new frenzy of anti-Western, anti-America or anti-Christian hatred in that region of the world.

Let's pray for peace, even as we recognize that sometimes peace is only found on the other side of war.

no to war

After reading about 5 gazillion comments, editorials and columns on the subject, I'd have to say that I'm coming down on the side of the doves on this one. How strongly do I feel? Not very. I'll probably change my mind again once I hear a really good argument for war, at least for a few minutes, but I will support the president if he decides to go to war.

My reasoning:

• Does Saddam have to go? No question. The man has gassed his own people, he has enriched himself while starving the masses, he is every bit as ruthless as Stalin was, and if he's allowed the chance, he'll probably invade Kuwait or another neighbor again. If memory serves, his official map of Iraq includes Kuwait as part of its territory.
  
• Does Bush have a reasonable legal argument that the U.N. is within its rights to remove Saddam Hussein? Yes. Resolution 1441, as has been pointed out many times, gave Saddam another "one last chance" to disarm or face the consequences. The U.N., however, appears to be unwilling to follow through on that ultimatum; I'm not quite clear on how it becomes our prerogative to act on behalf of the U.N. when the U.N. won't authorize us to. It makes the U.N. into a joke when it won't enforce its own resolutions, but isn't that a matter for the U.N. member nations to address within that body?

• Would we win? Again, that seems to be without question, but an almost-guaranteed victory should not be the overriding factor in whether we invade.
  
• Do we have the moral right to invade? This is the critical question for me, and it's here I think we fail the test. Saddam Hussein lacks the moral right to rule Iraq, but at this point I don't believe there is any strong moral argument to remove him. Connections to al Qaeda and Sept. 11 have been tenuous at best, from what I can remember, and at this point he neither has attacked or nor threatened us nor any of our allies. In the original Gulf War, he attacked Kuwait and was threatening Saudi Arabia. That was the time to get rid of him, and the elder Bush and our allies failed to do it. Twelve years later is a little late.

If we're predicating our moral authority to invade on the way Saddam Hussein treats his people, then there's a long list of other countries we have to invade: China, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Cuba among them.

I also don't believe we're within our rights to invade simply because of Saddam Hussein's record or his current weapons of mass destruction. They are both cause for concern, but at the moment -- again -- there are no indications he is actively plotting or working toward the destruction of another country, is there? Maybe I've blocked out that part of the news, but until there is an actual threat, rather than just the potential for one, I'm not sure what grounds we have for invasion.

On a side note that does not have any bearing on whether we should go to war or not, is anyone else a little unsettled by Bush's strident unilateral approach to foreign policy? First the Kyoto Protocol, now he's telling longtime allies that they're going to hurt their relationship with us if they don't back us on the war effort. Silly me, I thought sometimes friends were supposed to tell us things we don't want to hear. You might agree, you might not, but you shouldn't let that get in the way of your friendship.

tired of iraq

You know how some people just LOVE politics, and can't get enough of it? You know how some journalists get a thrill out of being in the thick of things where all the big political fish are swimming and eating people alive? I'm not one of them.

I have a mild interest in politics -- the big fish, for all their self-important buffoonery, *do* have some effect on the real world -- but it's not enough to sustain my interest in a conversation that covers every forum on the Internet, idle chatter at the office and at home, every front page and op-ed page in the newspaper industry, and even the music on the radio.

I am concerned about the impending war in Iraq, and do pray that it will be averted, and that God's people will rise up in faith across the Middle East, but there are other things that occupy my attention too, besides the war.

god of abraham

Hang around evangelicals and fundamentalists enough, and you may hear a belief expressed that seems a little bizarre: that Jews do not worship the God of Abraham because they do not believe Jesus is God. In this opinion, they worship either a false God or "nothing." Got that?

It's actually a very common belief, but one I consider misguided. It often ties in with the idea that God broke his covenant with the Jews and Christians are the new chosen people. I thought Paul said something about being grafted onto the vine, but maybe I misunderstand, and what he actually meant was the exact opposite.

As I understand the argument, it's that Judaism changed when the decision was made as a people group to reject Christ; i.e., Judaism became something like the Democratic Party, known for what it is not. Passages like Isaiah 53 have been reinterpreted to apply to Israel and not to the messiah, beliefs about what the messiah will do have altered so that they are inconsistent with Jesus' teachings and actions. There's other small stuff too, like the matzoh during the seder. One of the pieces of matzoh is taken away and hidden for the children to find, a practice that some scholars believe was originally a Jewish way of saying "See? The body really *was* stolen."

The argument also goes that much of Judaism as it is practiced today is spiritually dead. That's why temples sponsor seminars on alternative spirituality, like transcendental meditation, and est and what have you. The religion has become encrusted with tradition and extra teaching (the Talmud, the Mishnah, and so on) that keep people away from experiencing the Tanakh as it was intended by God.

Invariably when this discussion surfaces, as it has before I made this post, it soon turns on issues of salvation. Since Paul says point-blank that Christ came first for the Jews, then for the Gentiles, many evangelical Christians argue that contemporary Judaism lacks saving knowledge of God. After all, if someone doesn't need Christ to be reconciled to God, but can be drawn near through faithful observance of the Law, isn't Christ's sacrifice negated?

Paul essentially says, "If there a law that could have brought you to God, this one would have done it." But he hammers home the point that following the law only brings death, because sin increases where there is law. ("I would not know to covet if the Torah did not say, 'Do not covet.'")

It's been a while since I wrapped my brain around Paul's reasoning and the arguments set forth in Hebrews, but isn't the idea that the thrust of the Tanakh was to show us our need for a savior, an intercessor between God and man, and to get us to anticipate the coming of that savior and to accept by faith what he would do?

Based on that reasoning, I would have to say that, yes, you can worship God in a sense but not in full knowledge and not in saving knowledge either, by trying to draw near to him through faithful observance of the Torah's requirements. Paul also talked about this in Romans, regarding the hardening of the Jews' hearts so that the full number of Gentiles could come in. (And that's when he also stresses that the Jews remain God's chosen.)

I think it is clear that no one who lived before Christ was saved by keeping the dictates of the Law. They were saved the same way that we are today, through faith in God's promise. For them, the promise had not yet been realized. For us, we can see the realization of the promise in Jesus Christ.

Now, that brings up the question of the Jews who, for whatever reason, don't see Jesus as God's promised Messiah, but still do believe in the promises of God for redemption and for a Messiah. Does their faith in God's promise and in the coming Messiah count for nothing now that Jesus has already come? I don't know. God will have mercy on whomever he chooses, and they could be part of the group. I leave it up to God. I'm making no attempt to discern the mind of the Almighty on this or any other matter.

As to who worships the God of Abraham, my own thesis is pretty simple: There is no God but one. Anyone who acknowledges the God who created the heavens and the earth, the uncreated Supreme Being, is worshiping that God, though sometimes with essential (not minor) differences in understanding his nature and his character. I usually compare it to the faith of the Samaritan woman. She and other Samaritans worshiped God, but the Jews worshiped him in knowledge. So I'd go a step further and risk offending other people, by saying that Muslims also worship the same God that Christians do. In an Arabic-speaking country, I would refer to God as Allah and to Jesus as Isa, the same way I don't mind appropriating the English noun "god," and that Paul didn't object to using the pagan word "theos."

Islam of course denies the divinity of Christ. It accepts the virgin birth, but insists that Jesus was a prophet and no more than a man, making it fundamentally incompatible with Christianity and its teachings about God. I say that because Christian doctrine teaches that God is revealed through Christ and through the silent testimony of creation, and that he God does not tabulate our works and judge us based solely on our obedience to what we perceive his will to be.

But like Christianity, Islam describes God as the creator without beginning. Its depiction of God is incomplete in the Christian understanding -- and it certainly lacks the grace given through Christ -- but the Arabic word "Allah" is no worse a substitute for the Tetragrammaton than the English pagan word "God," the Greek word "theos," or the Kali word "kembu."

The dilemma within a Christian framework of what happens to anyone who has not heard the gospel but was trying to serve God is one that I'm sure we've all spent a lot of hours pondering, discussing and reading about. I generally don't say any particular group is headed to hell, or individual people for that matter. It's not my call to make, thankfully.

But it is an interesting theological question. With pagan peoples who hear the gospel for the first time, one often can see a dividing line once the gospel arrives. The segment that responds favorably to the gospel exhibits a marked change in behavior as they embrace the new revelation as the fulfillment of a cultural concept or religious belief they've long had. (Check out "Peace Child" or "Eternity in their Hearts" for some examples.)

The catch is that the segment of the population that doesn't embrace the gospel also demonstrates marked changes in attitudes and behavior, often toward the darker side of life and often as a societal or spiritual repudiation or rejection of Christ and Christianity.

Skip forward 100 years or so, to a person in the latter population segment. Under the scenario I've just presented, that person will have been raised in a culture with an ingrained bias against Christianity, even if he or she has never actually heard the gospel personally.

foreign languages

Natasha and I have started talking about getting our children to learn at least one -- I would prefer two or three -- languages other than English. The best time to start, of course, is now -- Evangeline is only 3, so her language-acquisition skills are in high gear. She's perfectly suited for developing fluency in multiple languages, even if it's done largely passively, through children's songs or videos, and engaging her probably will draw us in as well.

Among the languages I've been toying with:

1) Spanish. This is a no-brainer. After English, Spanish is the most commonly spoken language in this corner of the nation. It's also a standard foreign-language option on many DVDs, which means we'd have access to quality movies in Spanish without having to spend any more money. It's also spoken throughout Latin America, much of the United States and in Spain.

2) Haitian Creole. Not a commonly spoken language, but there are Haitians around New York and New Jersey, in Florida, parts of Canada and -- of course -- in Haiti. Advantages are that it's a language I already speak, which would give her someone to converse with and allow us a measure of privacy in public places; it could serve as a bridge to learning French later on; and it's a language other than English. Even if no one in the area spoke it, it would still have value in that sense. Chief drawback is that there is very little in the way of popular entertainment like songs and videos that I have ready access to in Creole, which means I would have to hunt it down so she could enjoy it.

3) Esperanto. I'm afraid this is mostly for the novelty of it, and for the privacy measure, although I understand there is a wealth of literature for esperanto speakers. And it even has speakers all over the world.

4) Arabic. With political lines and alliances drawn the way are right now, I imagine Arabic will continue to grow in importance as a world language. Knowing how to speak some variant of it would be an asset for Evangeline as she gets older. The drawback here as well is that I don't know where to get the music or videos (or storybooks, for that matter, though I can't read and understand any of these languages except Creole) that she can enjoy, and I also would have concerns about getting her music that espouses religious views widely different from our own. (True of any foreign language, actually; it just looms larger in my mind with Arabic.)

I've always been fascinated by linguistics, and a manmade language like esperanto is intriguing for obvious reasons. It's not tied to any one nation or culture, it has no irregularities in its verb conjugations or other parts of speech, and it does have some credibility when it claims to being a good way for people of different languages and backgrounds to meet in the middle, where neither has the cultural or linguistic advantage.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what languages we should be looking into, or suggestions on where we might be able to find quality children's music in those languages? If they're songs we're likely to know in English, so much the better. That would help us learn the language too.

Also of interest to me are the various Englishes that have been springing up around the globe. There's Spanglish all along the U.S.-Mexico border, Singlish over in Singapore, and other daughter Englishes like Russlish, Crenglish and what have you. Some of them have even begun developing their own literary voices, which is all the more intriguing.

In many ways I'm reminded of the influence of the Greek and Latin languages as a result of the spread of the Roman Empire. You see the influence even in lands that Rome never conquered, like Germany (kaiser), Russia (czar) and even India (Qasir, a name). Now English has become the dominant world language, with the result that every modern language has gained English roots, at least for technical terminology if not for more mundane uses, and many languages have adopted other aspects of English writing, such as the English punctuation marks now used in Chinese. I don't know where I'm going with this, it's just mental meandering, but it is intriguing to think about how our entire world's communications have been Anglicized to varying degrees.

One also wonders about the ramifications of that, since the Bible records that God explicitly confused human language at Babel in order to keep us from growing altogether wicked ....

privacy and the patriot act

Worried about losing your privacy because of the Patriot Act? I shouldn't worry if I were you. You don't have as much privacy as you think.

If I had a little time to kill, here are just a few of the things I can find out through open public records, just by knowing your name and generally where you live:

• Your address;
• Your phone number, even if it's unlisted;
• Your party affiliation;
• When you last voted, and how often you have voted;
• How much your house is worth;
• How much you paid for it, and when;
• Your entire driving history within this state, including tickets you pleaded guilty to and how much you had to pay in fines;
• The make, model and year of any cars registered in your name, as well as the license plate numbers;
• Your driver's license number;
• Your credit record, for a modest fee;
• If you're a government employee, I also can find out how much you earn, and get a copy of your employment contract if you have one;
• When you were married;
• Your wife's maiden name;
• The names of your children and your licensed dog or cat, and when and where your children were born;
• Your birthday; and
• Your parents' names, marriage date and the names and birthdates of all your siblings.

And that's just off the top of my head. Presumably I also could get your Social Security number, which would grant me access to other things not normally in the public record if I'm devious enough to know where to look. If you ever have been divorced, forget it: Your entire life is mine for the asking -- and all this is without the benefit of a single court order.

As a journalist, I get information like this as a matter of routine. Once I have your address, all I have to do is call your municipal clerk for your party affiliation. He or she will tell me if you're a registered voter, what party you belong to, and again how often you've voted. If they don't have that information -- as sometimes is the case in New Jersey -- your county clerk will have it.

If they don't give it to me, I read them the riot act over public access, and their attorneys will agree with me that they have to give it to me.

Privacy is an illusion in a free society. The government has had access to all these things, and many more, for years.

All the same, I do agree: The security bogeyman can be used to justify a lot of thought policing and other unsavory policies and practices. You don't need to look to Nazi Germany to see that, though: Just check out America in the 1950s and thank Senator McCarthy for bringing the dark side of the American psyche out into the open.

The problem isn't an erosion of privacy -- because that, frankly, doesn't exist except as an illusion -- but the genesis of an atmosphere of suspicion. And suspicion, once it begins to grow, starts finding balrogs in every innocent woodpile. In some Christian circles the fact that I have a translation of the Quran on the bookshelf near my Bible would make my faith questionable; in the hands of an overzealous guardian of our freedom, it could be the first nail in my coffin.

on and off

Evangline lately has been playing with the on/off concept. When I start singing, whether to her, Rachel or just on general principles, she sometimes will announce that she's turned the music "off" as a way to stop me. She even presses a button in the air to visually signify her turning it off.

(Sometimes we really get going, and I'll turn it back on, prompting her to unplug it. We'll go through a whole regimen of arrangements, from pulling out the batteries to ultilmately smashing the radio with a hammer. It's quite a lot of fun, really.)

This morning Evangeline decided to apply the on/off principle to kisses. I went to give her a kiss before I left for work, and she told me to kiss off.

my job is now more bearable

Well, we had some good news on the job front this week.

After remarking to Natasha Sunday afternoon that I really didn't want to go into work on Monday, I got a call Sunday night from my boss. It turns out that my Crane's Ford reporter came in sometime over the weekend, cleaned out her desk and left a written resignation, effective immediately.

I could feel the crimp in my back and neck loosen as Tim broke the news.

Apparently my ex-reporter is disgusted with the flagrant disrespect I show her, the way I butcher her stories, expect her to write about things other than the Crane's Ford Township Committee and was especially put off by the way I deliberately have removed her bylines from several stories ever since we got a new computer system and the way I messed up the IPA awards announcements where they listed her awards.

She's also horribly upset that the editor in chief didn't drop everything Thursday afternoon to listen to her unending litany of complaints, and can't continue to work where she's not appreciated.

I haven't said it publicly, but good riddance. She's been nothing but unprofessional the entire time I've worked with her. She's subjected me to an endless barrage of verbal abuse, and not just me but every one of my predecessors as well. She even went as far this weekend as emptying her Rolodex, dumping a bunch of papers on my desk, and knocking over my family pictures as well. The company has sent her a letter demanding the Rolodex contents be returned since the resource belongs to the company and not to the reporter, and even threatened legal action against her if she fails to provide it. I understand she's also barred from passing the foyer at the front of the building.

I'm sorry it had to work out this way, but I'm glad it's finally over. She probably doesn't realize it, but she in all likelihood has saved the company a lawsuit I was considering for when I find another job. (There was a little problem of the company being aware of a hostile work environment and failing to do anything to remedy the situation, see, but now it's been resolved.)

I still hope to get another job -- I don't like the hours this one requires, and the pay isn't enough to provide for my family -- but at least the wait will be a little more bearable now.

The sad thing is, my ex-reporter is probably waiting for the newspaper to call her and beg her to come back. I don't see that happening any time soon. Her unprofessional conduct has been a longstanding problem at the company, and I believe it has caused us a few problems in the community as well. We've lost her knowledge of the community as a result of her decision to leave, but a new reporter who knows what she's doing can get into the community quite well within three months or so -- and probably do a more balanced job covering it.

i hate my job

I long ago gave up trying to read God's mind. I'm convinced that's not how he works and not what a life of faith is about.

Things are building to a head right now, and I'm honestly not sure how much more I can take. I've started to send out resumes again, and am hoping to get something before I explode. I'm also mulling my legal options. My employer has allowed a hostile work environment to develop and has done virtually nothing to remedy the problems when they've been brought to management's attention. I don't approve of the litigious nature our society has developed; on the other hand, I don't like being treated like a doormat.

I sent one resume to a newspaper down in Central Jersey a couple days ago for an editing position there, but I'm also looking to possibly leave the newspaper business for other writing opportunities. Magazines would be nice -- and would pay better -- and I could stand doing media relations for certain groups as well.

I'd appreciate prayers for patience and grace during these next few weeks. Yesterday Cheryl accused me to my face and in the presence of the rest of the news room of purposely deleting her bylines and marring the press release about her flarking awards just to embarass her. She also wants to start backreading her own news copy after I edit it. I need to display the character of Christ, and if I get angry I'd rather it be a righteous anger than the kind I usually have. (I'm a patient sort, but I can be pushed too far.)

Thanks for your concern.

disingenuous bastards

My beef with the local Board of Education in Quakertown is that I've been busting my hump to cover stuff in the schools -- classes, special events, extracurricular activities, special achievements -- and yet they had the gall at their last meeting to claim it was my fault there wasn't more in the paper.

I told a couple board members what I thought of that sort of disinenguity, and have found that they're a little more willing to see that the district sends me things to run in the paper on a regular basis.

A clarification for those who need it

I guess I wasn't very clear, was I?

I work too many hours a week doing something that has become so familiar to me that it's ceased to be interesting except for times I'm able to do something really creative and fun with it, like the big spread I got to do last month on the Canada geese problem in Quakertown.

The product that we put out is inferior, and I can't stand having my name attached to it. My Crane's Ford reporter has been writing for 14 years and still can't write worth crap. Her stories are incomprehensible, which means I have to spend as much time editing them as I do writing my own.

She's obnoxious and condescending, thinks nothing of berating me in front of the rest of the newsroom but won't take criticism in private, and refuses to learn new ways to do her job. I've caught her plagiarising not once or twice but three times and she still works there, and her bias is so thick I could choke an editor with it. Actually, I have choked on it several times.

We're given no real support in terms of the job we do. Until November our terminals were 30-year-old MycroTech machines that lacked even an oops key or spell check. Our phone system is antiquated and now that it's starting to die on us, reporters are being left without phones of their own.

I'm asked to do essentially two jobs: Edit two newspapers and report for one of them. That raises questions in my mind about journalistic credibility within the community since everyone knows I'm writing editorials about the stories I'm covering, but no one up above seems to care.

The pay is low and apparently done without regard to a salary scale. I've been with the company since June and make $35,000 a year. I discovered a co-worker of mine has been with them for four years and is now an associate editor -- he outranks me -- and makes only $28,000. Our chief photographer makes only $24,000 a year.

Quality apparently doesn't matter. As I said, my reporter overwrites and writes badly, but has been here for four years despite her problems, which are readily acknowledged by higher-ups. Another reporter has been here for seven years and all she does is rewrite press releases from the Union County Prosecutor's Office.

Another reporter, new to the business, has discovered he can get by with writing four stories a week about two towns -- barely enough to fill the front page. We have two photographers who take absolutely pathetic shots. A few of us care, but the company's apathy is driving us nuts. As I told a new editor last week, after a few months, you give up, and then something inside you starts to die a little more each day.

If I had a viable job offer doing something other than journalism, I would take it in a heartbeat. I believe in what I do, I just can't stand where I'm doing it.

God doesn't promise us happiness, nor does he promise us self-actualization or career contentment. He does promise us suffering galore if we follow him, but I don't believe this is what he meant. This is drudgery -- the sort of thing promised after the Fall, as part of a curse we're not obliged to live under if we live a life of faith.

I want out. I need out, before I go crazy and sell Girl Scout cookies made from chopped-up imitation Girl Scouts (like I want to go through that again). The economy sucks, and no one's hiring.

Bleagh.

I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.

This has been a self-pitying public service announcement. Thank you.

selling the paper

How to go about boosting circulation at the paper? This becomes especially important as do-not-call lists grow in popularity. Without telemarketing, newspapers are going to have to be increasingly creative in reaching the community and attracting and retaining subscribers.

I'd say this is particularly true for community weeklies, which usually lack the name recognition of their metro daily counterparts and rely on healthy circulation numbers to give them clout with advertisers, who of course pay the bills.

Heck, you don't have to convince me that telemarketing calls are annoying as can be. The mortgage companies haven't stopped calling us to refinance our mortage even though we already did more than six months ago. We usually get one a night.

Most small newspapers use telemarketing in conjunction with other means of promotion. For example, a new family moves to town. Their Realtor alerts the local newspaper, which gives the Realtor a discount on advertising, and sends the newcomers a free subscription for their first four weeks. Then, after that four-week period is up, a telemarketer from the newspaper follows through with a call asking if they would like to subscribe for an entire year.

That sort of applied telemarketing is nowhere near as bad as the spam telemarketing most people are familiar with, when a computer dials your number and then connects you with a live person. It's targeted, it's to people already familiar with the product, and it also has a much greater success rate.

No-call lists affect both forms of telemarketing, and for a small-circulation weekly, where every new subscription is important, no-call lists are potentially crushing to the subscription base. I'll be curious to see if there's a First Amendment challenge to the lists. I doubt it would win, in wake of things like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and court cases like the one involving the Hillsborough (N.J.) Beacon about 10 years ago, but I'm sure someone's planning a case against it.

In the meantime, I'm still curious to know what tricks newspapers (and other businesses) have found to get subscribers without using telemarketing. A quality product and word of mouth often AREN'T enough for products with a purely local appeal, especially in a society as disconnected as today's.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that banning door-to-door solicitation is an unwarranted restriction of people's First Amendment rights to free speech. Restrictions on telemarketing also have been struck down for similar reasons; what has been upheld is the public's right to be left alone when they request it, hence the no-call lists and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which guarantees you money if a company fails to honor your no-call request.

On a somewhat unrelated note, after being visited at my house for the fourth time by a cable TV salesman, I called their headquarters and told them the next time one of their representatives came to my door I was suing for harassment and pressing charges for trespassing. They've left us alone ever since.

There are a few regional weeklies with good success rates -- I can think of two here in Central Jersey -- but they're the exception, not the rule. A business succeeds to the extent it defines and fits its niche; I like watermelon, as do millions of other Americans, but AT&T would be crazy to enter the watermelon business. People generally don't buy community weeklies to read about towns other than their own, and when a weekly starts running news about neighboring towns, circulation starts to drop precipitously. I've seen it happen.

And, no, radio and TV ads generally are ineffective for businesses with a local-only appeal. It works for a car dealership, because they can draw customers from all over the broadcast area, but why would someone in Penn Hills, Pa., really care about the local property taxes or schools in Monroeville, Pa.? It has no relevance to them, even though those two municipalities are next to each other.

editorial and circulation

The barrier between circulation and editorial is nowhere near as bad as the barrier between editorial and advertising. I figure at least you people have a clue what the readers want. Advertising just tells us what we have to put in the paper because they already promised it, and these people pay so-o-o-o much, and besides, it really doesn't matter that the writing is crap and deals with something 50 miles outside our coverage area.

As a consumer I'd welcome do-not-call lists in our state. Right now all we can do is use caller ID or a telezapper to get rid of the annoying telemarketers, but I can see what you're saying too. I'm sure someone's going to issue a constitutional challenge to these things since they abridge free speech.

One of the things our circulation reps used to do back at The Packet was they would target parts of the community with free copies of the newspaper, and then would call after a few weeks to see if the readers would like to subscribe. The other interesting idea I heard was getting Realtors to give free copies of the paper to new residents and give us their addresses and phone numbers in exchange for reduced ad rates. Then there's the give-aways and in-school promotions.

Of course, as a circulation director, you've probably come across these ideas already, along with other approaches.

The best I've seen that I can do as an editor is to promote the schools heavily. I'd like to have at least one school feature a week, and I'll run any submissions I get from the community, even if they look like utter trash. People always love to see their own work in print.

AAAAIIIIGGGGHHHH!!!!

I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
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I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.

This has been a public-service announcement. Thank you.

ha ha, it is to laugh

God has a sense of humor, but why does it always seem like I'm the butt of his jokes?

The Iowa Press Association announced its awards for 2002 tonight. I collected four awards -- my best year yet -- including second place for column-writing, second place for First Amendment reporting, third place for something else I can't remember, and first place ... for writing headlines.

DOH!

I was fired from The Times because they didn't like my headlines. And here I win my first-ever first-place award for them.

Some days I think I should just stay in bed ....

heinlein

To call "Friday" trashy is to insult trashy works. Personal deity, this is a book about a woman who gets gang-raped on Page 2 and her only complaint is that it wouldn't have been so bad if one of them didn't have bad breath. And it just kind of went downhill from there.

I didn't like "Fifth Column" either; although it avoids the have-sex-with-everything-that-moves mentality that pervades Heinlein's other works, I really can't think too highly of its depiction of Asians, or its use of a weapon that kills people based solely on their race.

I think I read four Heinlein novels in all. In addition to the two aforementioned books, I had the misfortune of reading "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" and the good luck to read a book the name of which I can't remember. It's about a university course where students are required to survive on an alien world for the entire semester in order to pass. There's a supernova, though, and the school can't get them back because of the resulting distortions in space/time. The book is also the source of "dopey joes," which Niven, Pournelle and Barnes used in "Legacy of Heorot."

Actually that's another good book. I'd also recommend:

• "Inferno" by Niven and Pournelle
• "The Magic Goes Away" by Niven
• "Crashlander" by Niven
• "Playgrounds of the Mind" by Niven
• "N Space" by Niven
• "Limits" by Niven
• "Inconstant Moon" by Niven

I didn't care for "Footfall." Part of it was that I was starting to recognize the stock characters and stock plot devices I've seen in other Niven/Pournelle works, part of it was that for all its hype as an alien invasion story that was done right it was still a weak story in that sense, but mostly it was because it was written from the same notes and ideas as "Lucifer's Hammer," which was a better book.

Actually, "Lucifer's Hammer" started out as "Footfall," but the editor found the idea of a meteor or comet hitting Earth (the weapon of choice of the Snouts) so intriguing that he told them to make it a natural disaster instead of an alien invasion.

"Ringworld" and "Ringworld Engineers" are good, as are "The Integral Trees" and "The Smoke Ring," but Niven was starting to fall into the Heinlein trap at that point in his career and gratuitious sex was starting to crop up more and more.


By Arthur C. Clarke, I'd recommend "The Fountains of Paradise," "Songs of Distant Earth" and possibly "Rendezvous with Rama" (though not its sequels), and the short story he based "Childhood's End" on).

personal update

As I start to write this, snow is falling outside for at least the sixth consecutive hour. It started around 3:30 p.m., and is not supposed to stop until we've had anywhere from one to two feet.

Natasha and I got back about a half-hour or 45 minutes ago from a dinner with another couple and the pastor of the church we've been attending for the last month or so. The church unfortunately is named Cross Pointe — I say unfortunately because the last church we were involved in was named Crosspointe, and the associations are not positive ones — but we are considering joining the church and settling in for the long haul.

On the plus side of the church is that the church has a solid basis in Scripture. Sermons are at once practical and insightful — last Sunday, the pastor preached on Psalm 23 and actually gave me something to think about, which is pretty rare on a passage as popular as that one — the worship is contemporary, and the people seem friendly enough. Their goal is to reach students at the nearby university and seminary, actively engage the surrounding area and, oh, all kinds of other neat stuff.

The downside, of course, is that while they have these really nifty goals and have a few rough ideas on how they hope to accomplish them, the impression I got from talking to the pastor tonight is that they're really not entirely sure about that middle part, of how to get there. I'm sure you can see why I feel right at home in such a place.

More practically speaking, the church is located about 25 minutes south of here, and has virtually no children's ministry in place. That's a bit of a disappointment for us because Evangeline and Rachel are both children, and Evangeline in particular would benefit from a regular Sunday school or children's church experience. The distance also could be a barrier of sorts since it could limit our regular involvement in the church and the larger community. Not sure, though. We'll have to see. Certainly I've known elders who have lived farther than that from their church.

I'm fairly keen on the idea of settling in here. I left Crosspointe back in the late spring or early summer, and am ready to settle into a new place. Despite the name -- I really wish they would change it -- I do like Cross Pointe, and would like to be involved with it. I've been doing a little, by suggesting and providing video clips to accompany the sermons, and spoke earlier today with somebody who hopes to start a church drama ministry (something I helped to do back at Crosspointe), so we'll see. I also mentioned to the pastor that I have an idea for a Sunday school class I'd like to run by him, but we'll have to see how things go.

The Sunday school class would be a little different from most Sunday school fare. My thought is to look at a different popular movie or TV series over a one-month period, and engage the class in literary criticism; i.e., what sort of message is this show sending about authority, morality, God? How does it act as a springboard for sharing the gospel?

"The Lorax" video, for example, has the Lorax rise into the air near the end of the special, with the promise that he could return with the hummingfish, Barbaloots and others if only someone will take care of the environment better than the Onceler has. In other words, the Lorax has Christ imagery attached to him, which makes him a point of contact with Christianity, as Christians can then talk about our own hopes of renewal and environmental stewardship.

I think it could be a fun class, but it depends on the interest and the resources I have available, as well as how much latitude I'm given in what to discuss. I doubt many churches would want their members watching "Sex and the City" or "The Sopranos" for a Sunday school class, for example, even though there's probably plenty of stuff to discuss there. (I don't know what, though, since I've never seen any of it.)

That's church stuff. Work has kind of sucked lately, and I'll be glad once another job surfaces that I can take. I started working at WCN Newspapers in June 2002, mainly because it was a job I was offered that I knew I could do in my sleep and because I had been unemployed since October 2001.

I had hoped I could stick it out a little longer, and I may have to, but the job is driving me nuts. The hours have been closer to 50 a week than to 40, the pay is only $35,000, and I've been working out the wazoo on Mondays and Tuesdays with the result I've often missed seeing Evangeline while she's awake on those days. Not a good deal.

I finally reached a breaking point of a sorts this past week. I decided that if I know I have a late meeting, I am not leaving until after Evangeline has been awake and we've played a little. I modified it later that week to work out a regular schedule I'm hoping I'll be able to stick to without failing to do my job or blowing off my family. My goal is to work 40 hours a week only, with something like 10 each on Monday and Tuesday, four on Wednesday and nine each on Thursday and Friday. In the meantime I'm praying hard for a new job and looking to see what turns up.

The good news professionally is that the state press association awards are due to be announced next weekend. My editor in chief got some advance notice of the awards when the association people called to confirm a few bits of information, and apparently I'm one of a few people at the company who "did well." I don't know if that means I won first place, or anything down to third place, but I'm hoping it means I've won a few awards, if for no other reason than they'll look good on the resume.

On a personal note, Evangeline started preschool this past week. We decided to enroll her to expand her social horizons a bit and expose her to skills and ideas that don't occur to us as quickly as they do to other people.

I wouldn't exactly say she likes it. Apparently she gets upset when it's time to leave and goes as far as sitting down in the parking lot because she doesn't want to go home. Preschool is every Tuesday and Thursday, and she has asked every other day of the week as well if she can go to preschool. She might inform us when she gets older that home-schooling is not going to be an option.

If that happens, we'll have to look into private schools since there's no way I want her going to Nova Bastille's public schools. (Among other things, the schools here have over a 50 percent drop-out rate, there's the gang activity, and plenty of other problems besides. Not the sort of thing I want to send Evangeline into.)

Evangeline took another big step this week. If you think I wasn't ready for her to attend preschool, you'd be right, but that's nothing compared to how I felt about this: Natasha and I have stopped being mommy and daddy. With a few exceptions, Evangeline has been calling us mom and dad. We still use the longer forms to refer to ourselves, but she seems to have decided she's too big to call us mommy and daddy. I'm not ready to be dad yet. That's not supposed to come for another two or even three years.

Also on the subject of Evangeline, her hair finally is long enough for her to do something she's been trying for over a year: put it into a ponytail. It's short -- about 3 inches -- and most of her hair doesn't tie back into the tail yet, but she's very proud of it. After all, daddy has a ponytail and mommy has a ponytail — maybe I should have said mom and dad have ponytails, but like I said, I'm not ready for that yet — so now she has one. She's a Big Girl, after all.

Rachel is starting to become the little babbler. She's about 3½ months old now, and has started making the neatest cooing and trilling noises. Naturally I've thrown all sense of self-image to the wind, and I coo and trill right back at her. She's got the neatest little smile, and her blue eyes sparkle whenever she sees me imitating her. People give me strange looks, but I really don't care. I'm in love.

We didn't see Lumpy this weekend, to my disappointment. On the other hand, he was here for a birthday party last Sunday with his father, grandmother and two of his cousins, and that went well. I'm sure we'll see more of him again soon, just not this weekend. Rats.

This past week was also the week I hit the books again. I've been reading Tolkien's "The Hobbit" for I think the fourth time, but I also just read Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" for the first time. Gaiman is the author of "The Sandman," an award-winning horror comic DC Comics published several years ago as part of its Vertigo line. "Neverwhere" isn't as groundbreaking a work as "The Sandman," probably because novels traditionally have had looser boundaries than comics have in the past forty years, but it's still one heck of a page-turner.

Probably the best way to describe "Neverwhere" is to say it's a dark, postmodern "Alice in Wonderland." The story centers on Richard Mayhew, a fairly ordinary fellow who's got the standard life and is going pretty much nowhere, and is content with it. Because it's a Gaiman novel, Mayhew ends up being swept into an otherworldly London that exists alongside the London in our world, but underground and generally accessible only to people who live there.

The book plays with a number of the historic names in London, particularly along its subway, and gives them literal meanings. "Blackfriars Station," for example, is a station where a sect of friars live — though again, you can only discover them if you happen to live in this unseen shadow world.

It's a good book, and has Gaiman's trademark motif of mixing the utterly fantastic with the utterly mundane in a way that makes them both novel.

I also recently read the first volume of "Rising Stars," a comic book by J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of "Babylon 5." I've seen a few "Babylon 5" episodes, but never liked them enough to watch the show on a regular basis. This comic might actually change that.

"Rising Stars" uses the major conceit of comic books, superpowers; but it treats them in what seems to me to be an original and well-thought-out manner. Its explanation of how the superpowers came to this group of people is about as contrived as any other explanation — a mysterious ball of energy hits a town and affects the fetal development of about 70 children there — but that's about where its conventional treatment of the superhero trope ends.

Powers range from the standard "Hey look, Ma, I can fly and I'm super strong!" to the unusual "Everyone sees me as what they imagine the most beautiful woman in the world would be" to the dull "I can levitate and make pretty sparkles in the air."

What really makes the comic unique is that these are people, not superheroes. One or two of them do do the costume thing, but they're generally regarded as flakes or opportunists cashing in on the idea of superheroics by the rest of the "specials." One uses his ability to enter people's dreams to become a psychologist; another, blessed with the power of invincibility, grows obese, and eventually becomes an indestructible gas station attendant.

Since none of the powers came with a how-to manual, each of the affected children had to figure out naturally what their powers are, just as real-life children have to figure what they can and can't do. A couple, even as adults, have no idea what their powers are.

That's the setup. The comic gets really interesting when a few of the specials start realizing their powers are wearing out, that the more they use them, the less potent they are. Where it gets ineresting is that if any of the others die, their untapped power spreads to the rest of the pool. The first volume in the series ends with some of the specials capitalizing on that, and all hell breaking loose as everybody grows more powerful, as old personality conflicts and feuds start to erupt.

That's all I've been up to this past week. I've been stuck on the book I've been writing with my best friend; I have ideas, but I'm having trouble writing them due to a lack of time and a lack of concentration. Sleep would probably help with the latter but not the former. I really want to get this done, especially since I'm the one who's held the book back so long.

It's almost time to go to bed. I just looked out the window, and it's still pouring snow. You can tell that I shoveled the walk when Natasha and I got home by the indentation in the snowdrifts. One of the nice parts about having all this snow is that I can pile it on each side of the end of the driveway and make it impossible for people to park there and block us in even partially. I'll be doing that again tomorrow, since we have Presidents Day off from work. (I still can't figure that one out.)

editorial contest

I'm not sure why I feel compelled to share this, but today I initiated a contest among several editors and writers at WCN Newspapers.

As we write our editorials and columns this week, we are making an effort to use the names of as many comic strips as we can without forcing it. A sample might read: "For better or for worse, the county has chosen to initiate this program. The $3 million of seed money might seem like peanuts compared to the overall budget, and to be fair, it surely will jump start the recovery process for this sector."

And so on. The winner is the one who gets the most comic strip names into print next week, meaning they'll have to pass through the review process of our higher-ups, who know nothing about the contest.

Somehow I doubt we'll see references to strips like "Get Fuzzy" or "Apartment 3-G."

Reports of progress Isaac has made

Isaac has visited us twice in the last month.

The first time he came to visit, he recognized me immediately, but kept his distance for a while, as if he was angry at me. That eventually passed, and he couldn't keep away from me. I'm guessing he did not appreciate being uprooted, and in some sense is angry at me for "abandoning" him. That was true before he left as well; he often was surly and unruly when he returned from overnight visits with his birth parents, which suggests to me that he wasn't enjoying being tossed around so much.

Since he left, I discovered that one of the court's requirements for his parents to regain custody was that he and his sister be enrolled in day care.

The day care has been fantastic for him. He has begun to use simple sentences and is trying to speak more frequently, and a number of areas where he had regressed, he has regained much of the lost ground. In one or two cases, he has passed where he was when he left us.

He was barely verbal when he left us, and still is for that matter. As for how much he understood, I really have no idea.

Isaac's parents were ordered to attend parenting classes and to receive counseling/therapy for a number of other issues. To my knowledge, they eventually began to comply with the court order and attended these things.

Hopefully one day Isaac will understand what he means to us.

whom to blame for your faith?

It's an interesting question, and not one I'm sure I can qualify an answer to adequately. As I've written about elsewhere on the forum, I became a Christian in 1988 "on my own" while listening to the music of the then-controversial pop/metal band Stryper.

I received nothing of value spiritually from my parents. We attended a Presbyterian Church while I was growing up that was about as alive as the onions in my garden are right now. That taught me pretty much that God and religion were boring and to be avoided if possible.

There were Christians I had known before 1988 who had some impact on me, I'm sure. One was a customer on my paper route who although she was over 60 was one of the few friends I had as a teen. Others belonged to the high school youth group I attended while I was an afs student in Rotorua, New Zealand. That was where I first saw a living faith, primarily among the adult leaders of the youth group -- Christian Pilaar and John Thornton.

I've been influenced by the music of Keith Green. It was because of his no-nonsense example that I decided to enter the missions field after college, where I would say my faith was stretched and grew the most. Probably the most signifiacnt mentor type there was Phil Murphy, a Church of Christ missionary who made me stop to think about what following Christ means in terms of our commitment to other people and to the poor specifically. If it weren't for Phil's influence, I probably never would have become a foster father to Christian.

My college fellowship and the Assemblies of God church I belonged to for much of college and afterward, while I enjoyed them at times, had a negligible impact on my growth spiritually, I think. If anything I think their effect did more harm than good and I've had to unlearn a number of the attitudes, beliefs and habits I picked up there.

And then there's my wife. Like many people, I have some secrets that I do my best to keep for various reasons. The beauty is that Natasha knows these scerets but loves me anyway. I've learned more about love from her -- and from our children -- than I have from anyone else.

pushy s.o.b. telemarketer

I had an experience with a telemarketer Thursday night I still don't believe.

This fellow called at 7 p.m. from some travel agency in Princeton. As soon as he identified himself I gave him my standard line: "Please take our name off your calling list."

He launched into his sales pitch anyway, saying, "Well sir, if you'll just hear me out, I'm sure you'll be very happy --"

"I'd be happier," I said, "if you take my name off your calling list."

"Of course, sir, but I wanted to let you know that you've been selected for a free --"

"I said I would like you to take my name off your calling list."

"Well, if you'll just hear me out --"

"Get me your manager," I said. The blockhead kept going on and I had to say "NOW!" to get through to him.

I've never had a more unbelievable experience. It's bad enough their business is annoying, and even worse that they call during dinner time. As I told the manager, this guy's willfully ignoring me three times was unprofessional, way too aggressive, and just plain rude. I'm guaranteed the right to have my name removed from a calling list under the Telephone Consumers Act, which is supposed to be a signal for them to end their call.

The manager removed my number, and I told her I wanted disciplinary action taken against the caller. She said she would take care of it, but I doubt anything happened beyond "Don't do that again. You never know when one of these people is going to be oversensitive and freak out."

Sheesh.



Copyright © 2003 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'the sorcerer's stone'

Imagine discovering that someone loved you so much they gave up their own life to save you. Now imagine that in so doing, they also broke the power of the most evil entity ever known and left that being a shattered remnant of his former self. This is of course, the basis for this, the first Harry Potter novel, but it is also a very direct reference to the Christian faith and its foundational beliefs in Jesus Christ.

The parallels continue with stunning force that it's amazing public schools actually encourage children to read this and other books by J.K. Rowling, especially given the absence of other blatantly religious literature by men like John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe. As Harry becomes aware of his mother's sacrifice and what it meant, he also becomes aware of a much deeper reality that he has existed in all his life even though he has never known of it until now.

Following this "conversion" experience, Harry is whisked off to Hogwart's, where he learns more about the deeper reality he now is aware of, particularly the power of love to drive out evil and to redeem. This is religious allegory on a level not seen since the days of C.S. Lewis and his "Chronicles of Narnia."

Still, if you can put aside the overt religious themes of the book, you're in for a very pleasant experience. Although "Sorcerer's Stone" is by no means the strongest of the four Harry Potter books published so far -- it spends a long time on setup, and develops neither plot nor characters as well as Rowling's later novels -- it's no slouch either.

While at Hogwart's Harry encounters pretty much every variety of menace and friend known to early adolescence: there's the teacher who doesn't like you, the know-it-all girl, the bully, the best friend, the class clown, and of course the stern and loving teachers like Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore.

Although the menace Harry ultimately must face is worse than any bogeyman I can recall from my middle school days, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is a magical fantasyland romp through the world of a teenager, told through the eyes of a teenager. Read it with your teen or preteen, and you'll have plenty of chances to talk with them about their own problems and the people they have to contend with at school each day.

And if you want to talk with them about matters of eternal nature, this book presents the chance to do that as well.

vote for me

I've been writing reviews over at Amazon.com, but so far my ranking is pretty low. Below 15,000, actually.

I'm hoping everyone here can find it in their hearts to read my reviews and say that they were helpful to you.

They'll certainly be among the most unusual reviews you'll have read for these products. Thanks.

mustard seed

You know that teaching of Jesus' that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can tell a mountain to jump into the lake and it will? We usually refer to the faith that can move mountains as a big thing, even though Jesus indicated it's actually pretty small.

I have a good example.:

When Isaac left us to return to his parents, you don't have to be the most observant person to know I took it hard. In addition to the stuff I posted, like this poll, and the personal contact I had with a few people via e-mail and on the phone, I'd say I went through a rough period spiritually. I didn't stop having faith, but I'd be a liar if I didn't admit to giving God a piece of my mind more than once for an hour or more at a time. Still believing, I wondered if it was worth it to.

Essentially the situation was that I had poured my heart and soul into a foster child who for two years had been neglected by his parents and left in an emotional wasteland, only to see him be returned to a situation that hadn't changed at all. It was devastating, it was horrible, and it is still not something I really want to talk about.

Essentially, I had reached a point where I had been walking more in Christ's footsteps than I think I ever had in my life. I found myself in an area that was utterly void of light, and it was impossible to see any way out, in any direction. There was no road, no guiding hand, no hope. Just a voice that said, "Follow me," and no reason given why I should.

I did anyway. That's faith the size of a mustard seed. Now look what God has done with it:

On Wednesday night, after wanting to it for three or four weeks, I called Isaac's father. Isaac's mother a few weeks ago had realized she really can't take care of her children, didn't want to, and didn't want to live with her husband anymore, and walked out on them.

Craig -- that's Isaac's dad -- was not only pleased I had called, he was relieved. See, he's been feeling a little overwhelmed, and had been wanting to call us for the past three or four weeks, but was afraid to do so because he didn't know what sort of reaction he would get.

We talked. I told him that if he needed help with anything, to let us know and we would help out however we could.

That was Wednesday night. On Thursday night, he called back, and asked if we could watch Isaac for him Friday night over into Saturday afternoon. I had to check with Natasha, but I knew our answer would be yes. He needs the help, and Evangeline has been asking about Isaac every day since he left. (We were admittedly a little apprehensive. Isaac was a handful and a half his last two months here, we don't want to be taken advantage of, and we don't want to reopen old wounds for Evangeline.)

As it turns out, the visit with Isaac went rather well. He and his dad showed up around 7:30 Friday evening with a big hullabullo on Evangeline's part. For the next hour-and-a-half she and Isaac ran all over the downstairs, screaming and carrying on and generally having a good time.

I finally got the kids settled down and in bed last night around 9:30. It was an hour-and-a-half past Isaac's regular bedtime, but we figured we could make an exception for something like this. Isaac slept in until 7 a.m. -- and yes, given his history here, that is sleeping in late -- at which point I got him dressed and we went to walk the dog.

The morning went well as the two children played not always together but generally in the same room. You should have seen them in the kitchen just before lunch. Isaac was sitting one the chair, and he and Evangeline were talking to each other through the gaps in the back. They kept it up for about 20 minutes. We finally put Lumpy down for a nap at 1 p.m., he slept until well past 3:30 p.m. Isaac showed up around 4, when I took them both home, Christmas presents and a picture of the two kids included. (Craig doesn't have a car, and I'd like to spare him the taxi fare if I can. Plus this way I know Isaac's in a car seat.)

It went well. I'm looking forward to doing it again. Craig says he would like to do this more, since he thinks we can play an important role in Isaac's life and because he saw how much his son missed not only Evangeline but us as well. We also had one of those connection moments when we realized how much Isaac means to each of us, and had to turn away so we didn't cry in front of one another. (Craig also said he has no problem if Isaac calls us eemah and abba, the names he used for us while he was living here, or if we call him Lumpy. Nice points all around.)

As expected, Isaac has regressed in several areas that I'd have rather he didn't -- the most visible and annoying ones are his tendency to drool incessantly and his steady application of the art of Whining to Get Your Way.

The good news is that Isaac has progressed noticeably in several other areas. He's walking better than ever and not being distracted so easily, although he still employs the fall-down-for-attention tactic; he's developed a longer attention span; and best of all, his vocabulary has increased to a 2-year-old's level. (He's almost 3.) He can even say "dinosaur" when he sees a picture of one. I'm very happy with that.

He also recognized me. Although it took him a little while to warm up, he gave me several unsolicited hugs today, which I'm sure you can understand I've appreciated immensely.

It looks like this will be the start of something long term, relationshipwise.

I hope everyone else's weekend goes as well as mine has been.

chamber of secrets

The fight with the basilisk was, to me, a tremendous disappointment. Overall, the movie was decent, but it still felt kind of rushed, and I found myself wondering why they cut some of the material they did.

I'm really hoping the new director has more imagination than Chris Columbus. A movie that tries to adhere too closely to the book is never going to be all that it could.

'wizard of oz'

Before Voldemort, before the Dark Lord Sauron, there was Glinda the (so-called) Good Witch of the North. Watch this movie, and see her masterful manipulation of naive Dorothy as she catapults herself into ever-increasing power.

It all begins when a mysterious tornado brings Dorothy to Oz, landing her house on top of the Wicked Witch of the East. Glinda, for no apparent reason, gives Dorothy the deceased witch's slippers, earning Dorothy the enmity of the Wicked Witch of the West (masterfully played by Margaret Hamilton), and sends her beyond the Yellow Brick Road to the Wizard of Oz.

It's all a ploy, though, as we discover at the end of the movie, when Dorothy learns all she had to do to get home was click her heels. So why does Glinda do it? Watch as the wizard sends Dorothy to steal the broomstick of the wicked witch and destroys her in the process, only to go and expose the Wizard of Oz himself as a clever con man pretending to have great powers.

In other words, Dorothy unknowingly creates a tremendous power vacuum in Oz. And who do you think is going to move into that vacuum? Glinda, obviously. (The Good Witch of the South is mentioned but never appears. One can only imagine how Glinda dispatched her other rival before dropping a house on the Wicked Witch of the East.)

Brilliantly directed and stunning in its storycraft, "The Wizard of Oz" remains a frightening and disturbing movie in the way it tries to diminish terms like "good" by masquerading evil in so pleasant a form. While this should come as no surprise, given MGM's history of addicting child stars like Judy Garland to speed and other drugs, it should be enough to make any parent think twice before allowing their children to watch such a movie before they are old enough to weigh the themes for themselves.


Copyright © 2003 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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