What if you were forced to answer for your actions this very day? Just pretend with me, if you will. What would you do if an eclipse cast an eerie light around the world, and everyone who was living apart from Christ reflected red, while those who were covered by his grace reflected blue? How would I look? How would our nation look?
Today I was praying with a friend of mine. We were telling God how upset we were with the state of our culture, church, nation, etc...
I asked Him if He would rip out the tares, expose them for what they are, and make them choose. Of course, that's my need for instant gratification. The easy way out. I guess I'm sick of the wicked getting their way. Getting honored among themselves, and causing further destruction. I'm also bitter that I'm sort-of a product of all that junk. I don't mean to be judgmental. I know I'm not better than anyone else, nor do I deserve grace more.
But we as a nation are at risk. We've exchanged truth for lies, and turned our backs on our loving Father. We've spit in His face and declared our independance from purity. We've forsaken His love, and scoffed up our own vomit like a sick dog that can't remember why he got so sick in the first place. We've played the harlot, making idols of everything by worshipping a god that would allow us free access sin with no cost.
Again, I'm not perfect. I sin. I repent. I struggle. I'm just sick of the abundance of sin among Christians. I think it's time we all step up a couple of rungs on the purity ladder, and declare our freedom from sin. Try harder. Is it so hard? Jesus didn't die an agonizing death on the cross so we could have an all day pass to the theme park of lust, self-indulgence, and depravity, only to walk into the pearly gates and hop on a cloud with no conscience of our previous life. Enough with the oversimplified view of Christian salvation. I've heard all the sentiments about salvation, and I know that NOTHING can take me from His hands.
But the truth is glaringly obvious. If 80% of our nation were truly faithful lovers of Christ, there wouldn't be a demand for even half the sick twisted stuff we have today. Those who invent ways to defy God would be out of business.
My challenge to you is this... Ask yourself...
"Which do I spend more money on, loving others in Christ or substance to induce a good feeling in myself?"
"Which do I spend more energy on, pleasing God or pleasing my friends and family?"
"Which do I devote more thought to, meditating on scripture or making money?"
"What do I gaze upon more, my spouse or an illusion created to ensnare me for profit?"
"What do I get emotional about, seeing a young adult find the Lord or the outcome of a football game?"
Examine yourself, and when you see who you are today, decide who you will be tomorrow. Decide this daily.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I wrote this earlier this year (July 2010?) and left it unpublished until today. I still feel the same way, but I admit this entry was fueled by some pretty legalistic zero-tolerance attitudes I was having at the time. (Mostly stemming from frustration with my own failures while drowning in the sea of depravity around me.) I am now reading Every Man's Battle, a book about going "all in" for Christ, and not settling for a "C" in purity. This book has helped me understand the battle that rages without and within, and is training me to fight.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Take Out the Trash
Every now and then, something gets to stinking under the sink, and you gotta tie that bag off and dispose of the offensive material! Leave it alone long enough, and it begins to foul up your clothes and your furniture. Your friends begin to bolt when they see you coming.
The same thing is true of entertainment, only it has more far-reaching consequences. Last Friday I was on my way home from work, and decided to tune in to talk radio. I hit the "band" button on my radio, and the station landed on my secondary FM tuner, dialing in 101.9 (KNOE). A song from my college days was playing, so I hung around to hear it finish.
The next song was not so innocent (pardon the expression) and was from none other than Britney Spears. Now, this song "3" may not be new to you, but it was to me! I listened curiously, thinking, "I wonder if she's reformed since her fallout last year (head shaving, drunken stupor, public shame...)." Boy was I wrong!
I didn't catch on to what it was about until near the end of the song. In case you haven't heard it, the lyrics describe intercourse with multiple partners. During the bridge, she comments that "what we do is just for fun, innocent, not hurting anyone, etc..." Then she goes back into the chorus which is drilled into your head 5 or 6 times! I won't put the lyrics on this website. You can Google them if you need to see them yourself.
Sneakier still is that there's really no "bad words" in the song for the FCC to jump on. It's just alot of innuendo and euphemism. But it did give me a mental image, which in my mind is basically audio porn! The lie that is pornography, is that what they are portraying is acceptable and everybody does it. It creates in the psyche an attachment that perverts what God intended to be pure. It produces habitual tendencies (like a drug) in it's viewers. This song has all of these elements.
In case you were wondering, Britney did not write this. She doesn't write ANY of this stuff. She's just a puppet. So who's teaching our kids that 3-ways are good and fun and innocent? You can thank two guys: Max Martin and Shellback (Karl Johan Schuster). These Swedes not only wrote this dirty ditty, but are also responsible for another raunchy lyric that Britney sang-"IF YOU SEEK AMY." (You have to say it 3 times fast to get the hidden meaning-I suggest you do that when nobody's around.)
This song definitely fails the court's 3-prong test for offensive material:
-An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient (arousing lustful feelings) interest;
-The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and
-The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Now, we can't ban all such music due to our First Ammendment right to free speech. But we CAN limit the broadcasting to hours when our kids are likely asleep: 10PM-6AM. This song's been out since September 09, and nobody's done it yet!
Here's how you can help: Click the link below to file an FCC complaint through the Parents Television Council website. Takes about 2 minutes, no kidding! This should be open and shut folks, so let's do something! It's time for good people to stand up, not just ignore the problem. According to one website published last year, 107,000 people have already bought her song digitally. I heard it on top 40 radio. Britney's demographic has always been age 10-25, and I don't know about you, but I don't want my kids hearing a song that even hints at such acts!
https://www.parentstv.org/ptc/fcc/main.asp
Also, call your state representative. Ask them to get tougher on indecency laws! Mine is Rodney Alexander. (318) 445-0818 in Alexandria, LA. You can find yours on the Parents TV Council link above-very easy to use, and I highly recommend it, as there are several bills up for vote.
A friend of mine last week told me there are 3 kinds of people. Those who watch something happen, those who make something happen, and those who wonder what happened. (Thanks Stuart!) I know which one I'm gonna be. Which will you be?
The same thing is true of entertainment, only it has more far-reaching consequences. Last Friday I was on my way home from work, and decided to tune in to talk radio. I hit the "band" button on my radio, and the station landed on my secondary FM tuner, dialing in 101.9 (KNOE). A song from my college days was playing, so I hung around to hear it finish.
The next song was not so innocent (pardon the expression) and was from none other than Britney Spears. Now, this song "3" may not be new to you, but it was to me! I listened curiously, thinking, "I wonder if she's reformed since her fallout last year (head shaving, drunken stupor, public shame...)." Boy was I wrong!
I didn't catch on to what it was about until near the end of the song. In case you haven't heard it, the lyrics describe intercourse with multiple partners. During the bridge, she comments that "what we do is just for fun, innocent, not hurting anyone, etc..." Then she goes back into the chorus which is drilled into your head 5 or 6 times! I won't put the lyrics on this website. You can Google them if you need to see them yourself.
Sneakier still is that there's really no "bad words" in the song for the FCC to jump on. It's just alot of innuendo and euphemism. But it did give me a mental image, which in my mind is basically audio porn! The lie that is pornography, is that what they are portraying is acceptable and everybody does it. It creates in the psyche an attachment that perverts what God intended to be pure. It produces habitual tendencies (like a drug) in it's viewers. This song has all of these elements.
In case you were wondering, Britney did not write this. She doesn't write ANY of this stuff. She's just a puppet. So who's teaching our kids that 3-ways are good and fun and innocent? You can thank two guys: Max Martin and Shellback (Karl Johan Schuster). These Swedes not only wrote this dirty ditty, but are also responsible for another raunchy lyric that Britney sang-"IF YOU SEEK AMY." (You have to say it 3 times fast to get the hidden meaning-I suggest you do that when nobody's around.)
This song definitely fails the court's 3-prong test for offensive material:
-An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient (arousing lustful feelings) interest;
-The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and
-The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Now, we can't ban all such music due to our First Ammendment right to free speech. But we CAN limit the broadcasting to hours when our kids are likely asleep: 10PM-6AM. This song's been out since September 09, and nobody's done it yet!
Here's how you can help: Click the link below to file an FCC complaint through the Parents Television Council website. Takes about 2 minutes, no kidding! This should be open and shut folks, so let's do something! It's time for good people to stand up, not just ignore the problem. According to one website published last year, 107,000 people have already bought her song digitally. I heard it on top 40 radio. Britney's demographic has always been age 10-25, and I don't know about you, but I don't want my kids hearing a song that even hints at such acts!
https://www.parentstv.org/ptc/fcc/main.asp
Also, call your state representative. Ask them to get tougher on indecency laws! Mine is Rodney Alexander. (318) 445-0818 in Alexandria, LA. You can find yours on the Parents TV Council link above-very easy to use, and I highly recommend it, as there are several bills up for vote.
A friend of mine last week told me there are 3 kinds of people. Those who watch something happen, those who make something happen, and those who wonder what happened. (Thanks Stuart!) I know which one I'm gonna be. Which will you be?
Monday, January 4, 2010
2010-THE FUTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember 1987? I do. I was reminded of it last weekend when I unearthed a relic of that year in my garage--A like-new JC Penney brand color TV! (Not just ANY color TV, an ALL CHANNEL UHF/VHF TV!) There's this button that says "AUTO COLOR" near the bottom, which simply changes it from a black/white to color TV! I laughed when I thought of how I would have KILLED to have a TV in my room like this when I was 10!
What were you doing in 1987?
(Think... really, THINK!)
At this point Margie is thinking, "I was in the 7th grade...I'd be dating a 3rd grader if we were together back then." Heh heh heh! Of course, I'd have been bragging to all my Garbage-Pail-Kid card-trading friends that my girlfriend was already well into puberty.
Ah, 1987! That was the year we got our nintendo and stayed up all night playing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. That's what came with the game system. A new gaming system today does a lot more and costs about the same after adjusting for inflation. Get this: In 1987, gas was 98 cents a gallon, stamps were 22 cents, minimum wage was $3.35/hr, and Starship's No One's Gonna Stop Us Now was blasting through someone's "boom-box" that had a TV on it that couldn't pickup anything. You could still watch Family Ties on TV, and Jenga and PogoBall were the hot new toys to stick under your tree. I remember getting one of those neon NASH skateboards, which was like a sled with wheels. So we would just practice riding it in a straight line and ramping over something. I never did get a SWATCH watch, let alone 3 or 4 of them I could wear at the same time.
Here we are--really no different than we were back in 87! Until you look at the amount of change in the last 23 years versus the prior decades. 1987 is to 2010 as 1964 was to 1987. Some of the changes are only superficial. (We do the same things only the toys are alot better. 1964 was the year of LBJ, Mary Poppins, The Beatles-I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Andy Griffith and Easy Bake Oven!)
But back then we really thought we had something. If you had asked anybody in 1987 what 2010 would be like and youda gotten some outlandish Star Trek-ish description complete with flying cars and teleporting devices...and don't forget lasers! I'm laughing now thinking about a video I watched (probably on reel to reel) in the 1st grade that depicted life in the future as people living in capsules and getting all their dietary needs met by little pills instead of real food. (How off base was that! I mean we live in huge houses with 12 foot ceilings and the average meal at Burger King is enough food for 4 people if you Biggie Size it, or whatever they have. We think we need a Hum-V just to take our kids to school and dance class!)
Maybe I'm just getting old. Even my 1-year-old knows how good life can be in 2010, and her experiences today will one day be yesterday's bygone attempt at technology. She can't even TALK yet, and she already walks around the house with a block over her ear jabbering like she's commisserating about a diaper rash. One day, she'll look at my iPhone and laugh. "You mean you actually had to touch the screen," she'll say. About CD's, she'll ask "What did you use these shiney discs for?" And my personal favorite "I can't believe you actually had a computer in your house, instead of hosted on the web!"
I don't think flying cars and capsule gobling spock-ish futurians are what we have to look forward to in the next decade. I think we'll look and act virtually the same, but with an even better grasp on technology, science and medicine. Okay, so here are a few strange predictions for 2020:
1. People will talk 20% faster on average, due to the barage of information available and also the urgency of their days.
2. Fossil fuels will give way to hydrogen, propane and electricity as our main source of energy (or at least 50/50), but global warming theories will lose popularity as we begin to plot climate cycles that fluctuate over centuries at a time.
3. Conventional telephone and print ad usage will drop by 60% as we become increasingly wireless and digital!
4. Computers (CPU's) will become obsolete, as web-hosting gains footing in household usage. (Plug your tv or monitor into a recepticle and get all the software, datastorage and entertainment you want for one monthly fee).
5. No more paper and pencil in school. Kids will use touch sensetive tablets to do their assignments, and will wi fi connect to upload to the teachers' station. Conventional schools will become less frequent, replaced largely by digital environments and self-teaching computer based formats. This will cut teaching staff in half or more in some states.
6. Aging childred will have to undergo special surgery due to pain and joint stiffness caused by excessive use of video game controllers.
7. A human will live to see 130, and health insurance costs will go down as carcinogens are blocked and deadly diseases are managed or cured.
8. Space exploration will be cut due to it's expense and futility. A few unmanned crafts will still go up for maintenance, defense and weather, but no more astronaut crews, shuttles, etc...
9. The evergrowing explicit entertainment industry will be shunned by many, as a movement away from degenerate behavior, immorality and the like will erupt from the Christian church and other "civilized" organizations.
10. Large families will become less and less common. Government will encourage and even incentivize smaller families with tax credits and caps on financial aid, welfare and health care. Watch for government subsidies on abortion and euthanasia as well.
That's it for now! Chime in if you have your own predictions for 2020.
What were you doing in 1987?
(Think... really, THINK!)
At this point Margie is thinking, "I was in the 7th grade...I'd be dating a 3rd grader if we were together back then." Heh heh heh! Of course, I'd have been bragging to all my Garbage-Pail-Kid card-trading friends that my girlfriend was already well into puberty.
Ah, 1987! That was the year we got our nintendo and stayed up all night playing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. That's what came with the game system. A new gaming system today does a lot more and costs about the same after adjusting for inflation. Get this: In 1987, gas was 98 cents a gallon, stamps were 22 cents, minimum wage was $3.35/hr, and Starship's No One's Gonna Stop Us Now was blasting through someone's "boom-box" that had a TV on it that couldn't pickup anything. You could still watch Family Ties on TV, and Jenga and PogoBall were the hot new toys to stick under your tree. I remember getting one of those neon NASH skateboards, which was like a sled with wheels. So we would just practice riding it in a straight line and ramping over something. I never did get a SWATCH watch, let alone 3 or 4 of them I could wear at the same time.
Here we are--really no different than we were back in 87! Until you look at the amount of change in the last 23 years versus the prior decades. 1987 is to 2010 as 1964 was to 1987. Some of the changes are only superficial. (We do the same things only the toys are alot better. 1964 was the year of LBJ, Mary Poppins, The Beatles-I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Andy Griffith and Easy Bake Oven!)
But back then we really thought we had something. If you had asked anybody in 1987 what 2010 would be like and youda gotten some outlandish Star Trek-ish description complete with flying cars and teleporting devices...and don't forget lasers! I'm laughing now thinking about a video I watched (probably on reel to reel) in the 1st grade that depicted life in the future as people living in capsules and getting all their dietary needs met by little pills instead of real food. (How off base was that! I mean we live in huge houses with 12 foot ceilings and the average meal at Burger King is enough food for 4 people if you Biggie Size it, or whatever they have. We think we need a Hum-V just to take our kids to school and dance class!)
Maybe I'm just getting old. Even my 1-year-old knows how good life can be in 2010, and her experiences today will one day be yesterday's bygone attempt at technology. She can't even TALK yet, and she already walks around the house with a block over her ear jabbering like she's commisserating about a diaper rash. One day, she'll look at my iPhone and laugh. "You mean you actually had to touch the screen," she'll say. About CD's, she'll ask "What did you use these shiney discs for?" And my personal favorite "I can't believe you actually had a computer in your house, instead of hosted on the web!"
I don't think flying cars and capsule gobling spock-ish futurians are what we have to look forward to in the next decade. I think we'll look and act virtually the same, but with an even better grasp on technology, science and medicine. Okay, so here are a few strange predictions for 2020:
1. People will talk 20% faster on average, due to the barage of information available and also the urgency of their days.
2. Fossil fuels will give way to hydrogen, propane and electricity as our main source of energy (or at least 50/50), but global warming theories will lose popularity as we begin to plot climate cycles that fluctuate over centuries at a time.
3. Conventional telephone and print ad usage will drop by 60% as we become increasingly wireless and digital!
4. Computers (CPU's) will become obsolete, as web-hosting gains footing in household usage. (Plug your tv or monitor into a recepticle and get all the software, datastorage and entertainment you want for one monthly fee).
5. No more paper and pencil in school. Kids will use touch sensetive tablets to do their assignments, and will wi fi connect to upload to the teachers' station. Conventional schools will become less frequent, replaced largely by digital environments and self-teaching computer based formats. This will cut teaching staff in half or more in some states.
6. Aging childred will have to undergo special surgery due to pain and joint stiffness caused by excessive use of video game controllers.
7. A human will live to see 130, and health insurance costs will go down as carcinogens are blocked and deadly diseases are managed or cured.
8. Space exploration will be cut due to it's expense and futility. A few unmanned crafts will still go up for maintenance, defense and weather, but no more astronaut crews, shuttles, etc...
9. The evergrowing explicit entertainment industry will be shunned by many, as a movement away from degenerate behavior, immorality and the like will erupt from the Christian church and other "civilized" organizations.
10. Large families will become less and less common. Government will encourage and even incentivize smaller families with tax credits and caps on financial aid, welfare and health care. Watch for government subsidies on abortion and euthanasia as well.
That's it for now! Chime in if you have your own predictions for 2020.
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