Monday, May 23, 2011

Open Letter to Mr. Camping

An open letter to Harold Camping, doomsday predictor.

Harold,

So we're all here still on Monday eh?

I don't think anyone is surprised. You're supposed to release some statement today but all I've heard you say to the press so far is that "“I’m looking for answers,” and that you are “flabbergasted.”"

Look, Harold, the other day were were all hating on you a little bit and poking fun. I'm actually sorry. You did right by your beliefs and that's all one can do. Today, though, I really feel bad for you.

Not so long ago my friend Dungy asked me if there was anything that could occur to disprove my faith. (For the record I'm a Catholic) I said there wasn't.

One reason there isn't is that my faith can only be "proven" should we learn to contact the dead or should some kind of crazy miracle occur. Subsequently, it cannot be disproved because I don't believe those signs need to occur for validation. It's a tough spot.

But Harold, you believed truly that you were right, and you got handed incontrovertible evidence that you were not.

To put that in perspective, that would be like God's voice booming from the heavens that Joseph Smith was his prophet, and only the Mormons are his people. In that unlikely event, and were I convinced it was God's voice, I would have incontrovertible that my faith was wrong. It would be crushing.

That has to be hard to take. If you're like many Christians I know, and are sincere as people say, then you just found out up is down, black is white and short is long.

I sympathize, I do.

I'm sure over the next few weeks if the disappointment doesn't kill you, you're mind will backtrack and you'll decide it was just another miscalculation or something to that effect.

But I hope not Harold. I know it's beyond unlikely that you ever see this letter but let me throw this at you.

I believe you are a sincere follower of Christ. I believe you want to serve and please the Lord. You've read your Bible in earnest, and you have seen what happens when the wrong people, in this case you Harold, make interpretations.

God didn't leave it to us to figure it all out by ourselves with each new generation Harold. He gave us the Church.

Knowing your Bible as well as you do I urge you to consider the position the Ethiopian that Phillip meets in Acts Chapter 8. The Ethiopian is reading scripture, Isaiah to be specific.

Phillip asks the Ethiopian eunuch “Do you understand what you are reading?”

To which the eunuch replies “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?”

Harold you've been wrong about the Big One twice now. You said the Church age was over but now you've shown again how important the Church is. Come on home.

Best wishes Harold, and God bless.
Yours,

John Stegeman


---
UNRELATED
From Peta's website, stuff they actually believe.
What’s wrong with eating honey?

Unfortunately, like factory farmers, many beekeepers take inhumane steps to ensure personal safety and reach production quotas. It’s not unusual for larger honey producers to cut off the queen bee’s wings so that she can’t leave the colony or to have her artificially inseminated on a bee-sized version of the factory farm "rape rack."

Friday, May 20, 2011

ITEOTWAWKI bitches, but if it isn't I'm starting a new blog policy for the forseeable future about PETA

That fun little acronym means it's the end of the world as we know it. In case you haven't heard, some fun old man named Harold Camping, who runs a Christian radio conglomerate, says that the end of days starts tomorrow.

Specifically, Mr. Camping (Not Rev. because he claims all Churches are apostate and has hence not been ordained by any) has said that the rapture will occur at 6 p.m. local time on May 21, sweeping the world time zone by time zone.

This will begin the tribulation that will end Oct. 21, 2011 when God destroys the world. About 200 million will go to heaven, everyone else will not go to hell but will cease to exist.

When 6 p.m. hits each time zone there will also be earthquakes.

Got all that?

Let me say Mr. Camping may be right, but if he is it's by coincidence. I've read how he interprets the no man knows the day or the hour bit from the Bible and he's kooky about it.

Jesus Christ will return to earth. There will be earthquakes and tribulation. There will not be a magic rapture. The damned will be damned and those saved will be saved at the end of the age. There will then be a new heaven and a new earth and we really don't know much about what that will be like.

And it could happen tomorrow at 6 p.m. I'm guessing God doesn't want to validate this guy so probably not but it could happen before you finish reading this blog.

President Kennedy allegedly once asked Billy Graham "If Christ is coming back, why do we hear so little about it?"

A fair question Mr. President.

There are four sets of people when it comes to the end times. Those who eagerly want it, those that hope to avoid it, those that don't care and those that don't know.

The ones who are eager come off as too eager or even crazy, and the rest don't talk about it.

I fall into a mix of group 1 and 2. I know Christ will come again but aware of my failures and frailty and sinful ways, I can't say the final judgment excites me.

So while I don't believe I've got a little more than 24 hours left to talk to any saved people I know, I'm going to run down some things I might just do if I really believed the end was that close.

1. Remind my wife I love her and...you can figure it out.
2. Swing by Church for a confession.
2. Call Friends, family, quick goodbyes though, time is of the essence.
3. Slap everyone I don't like right in the face.
4. Spend every dime I could on the best night out ever.
4a. As part of said night I buy patrone tequila, exquisite cigars and possibly rent a fast car.
5. Burn down something
6. Since I know the exact hour of things, work in one more confession

Now say the rapture comes and I get all "Kirk Camerony" and left behind.

1. Loot. Anything. Always wanted to join a looting mob.
2. Make quick inventory of which people I slapped are still here.
3. Kill those people, I'm damned anyway at this point right?
4. Burn down all kinds of things.
5. Spend time until annihilation doing things I wouldn't have had the balls to do (Skydive, punch a pro boxer etc.)

This is an incomplete and hasty list of course.

I assume tomorrow night Kelli and I will be just getting home from mass or maybe still there when 6 p.m. rolls around. If I gotta go out then, it's been fun world. If not, see soon when I blog about his reaction to the world not ending.

------
New blog policy.
All blogs will end with "The stupid thing PETA actually believes"
Today's Entry
"Are there spiders sharing your home? If you must evict them, carefully trap them in an inverted jar and release them outside."

All PETA info taken from their web site.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Journalism: Beyond Objectivity

News broke today that a guy who says things on TV said something....ignoring the obvious, I'm talking about the fact that Chris Matthews called Sarah Palin "profoundly stupid."

Focusing first on this story itself, anyone who expects objectivity from anyone on a cable news network is sadly naive and anyone who assumes objectivity at all is also a little sad.

Chris Matthews is known for saying things that will bug people...that keeps him relevant. Otherwise he's just another ass in a suit playing journalist. And that's fine, he is what he is. And his politics are no secret. He served with four or five democratic congressmen as a staffer and even ran once as a democrat. Democrats call him right wing....I digress.

Palin is going to have fun with this. This plays into her idiot following's love affair. It's another example of the "lamestream liberal media" keeping her down instead of worshiping her as they rightly should.

The whole affair is stupid.....and here's why.

Chris Matthews is barely a journalist but even if I considered him as such, I don't think he did anything wrong.

If you ask me, journalism has three goals. To inform, expose and entertain. To appeal to a widespread audience as newspapers once did, a reporter needs to maintain an air of objectivity. On matters where the nation is divided or the facts aren't all there or when 100 percent certainty eludes, the journalist must keep their opinion out of their work. It's key to factual reporting.

But facts are fine because more paramount than objectivity is TRUTH. And Sarah Palin IS profoundly stupid.

If the Pope says tomorrow that all priests have the power to fly because of bla bla latin bla, the AP will need to report the claim, talk to dissenting scientists and get a comment from the Vatican.

The first report may look like this:

By Vegatibli Soupi
Associated Press

Though the Flying Nun may have been fiction, it was closer to the truth than you might have thought.

Pope Benedict XVI announced Wednesday that among the powers to forgive and retain sin, priests can also — fly.

Vatican spokesman Cardinal Peachizi Slicez said, "Through divine authority and from the Seat of Peter the pope has decried that flight is within the power of all priests."

Leading physicist Dr. K Soda said in an interview that the Vatican's claims were unscientific, and unlikely to be true.

"People do not possess the power of flight," Soda said.

Many faithful though are convinced.

"I think it's really cool that Fr. King can fly, I mean I knew he was cool but that's really cool," Clementine Orange said.

Slicez said the Vatican stands by it's claims, and added that no demonstrations are scheduled.
--------

Ok, that's a fair objective story. And the first one should be, even though it seems crazy.

Once the facts are out, a TV reporter/commentator on the evening news has every right to read a script like this.

BEGIN
The Flying Nun? Not quite but how about the flying priests?

Pope Benedict and the Vatican announced today that is is the belief of the Church that that priests can fly as a result of apostolic succession.

Local priest Fr. Bla Blablabla was seen tripping when exiting the rectory to answer questions and did not address why his power of flight didn't keep him upright.

The claims of flight power have been refuted by several scientists but it was not yet known if any specific priests may have developed other powers as a result of a bite from a radio active spider.
END

See that wasn't "fair" and "objective" in the traditional sense because it made some jokes but we all know people can't fly. That is the realm of science and they even had an observable event.

Sure some crazies will believe anything no matter the evidence, its the dark side of misplace faith/psychosis.

Objective journalism has a place but above objectivity needs to be the truth.

Priests can't fly, and Sarah Palin is stupid. Consequently people who believe that priest can fly or that Sarah Palin would make a good president are also likely, though not certain, to be stupid.

Journalists, start trafficking in truth, not perceived fairness. That is all.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

How you can't live, and what we must do

I realized near the conclusion of this blog that it was stupid. It's all over the place, doesn't really make sense and it a little depressing despite it's claims. I recommend that you ignore it but I am posting it anyway since its been a while since my last blog.

--------
Never apologize, never explain.

Those words are often attributed to my favorite author, the late Hunter S. Thompson. It was allegedly some kind of credo of his and by all accounts, he lived that way.

Unless you are very much like HST, and as a matter of policy let's assume you are not, you cannot live by the same process.

The purpose of today's blog is twofold. First, I wish to obliterate a few romantic notions of how to live, and second I want to explain how we must.

There will be noted some clear inconsistencies between this blog and the way I write on theology. This is because I'm not a very good person at combining different facets of my personality and also because I am wildly inconsistent.

Be it from TV, other media, our parents or grandparents, we've all gotten certain ideas into our heads about how things could be. Most of us understand that not all boys will be knights and not all girls will be princesses but we still cling desperately to my favorite statement.

"Wouldn't it be cool if..."

That statement defines my life, and I'm sure many others. Wouldn't it be cool if I had an MLB beat writer job? Wouldn't it be cool if I lost all this weight? Wouldn't it be cool if I could recite Dante's Inferno in Itallian while riding a unicycle in my underwear showing off my newly sculpted calves?

Well, yeah those things would be cool. But to really go after dreams, to really chase down what you think you want, you need a Never Apologize kind of attitude. Most of us aren't all that gifted so relentless persistence coupled with a disregard for others is our only hope.

So forgive the pessimism here, I promise an alternative at the end.

Here are things people say about how to live, and why you can't, or at least why you can't take them seriously.

Seize the Day
Ah yes, better known as Carpe Diem, this phrase has plastered high school chalk boards for generations. There is nothing wrong in premise with this idea, but taking it to heart seems to mean abandoning the shit you need to be doing to go off after something fun or rewarding.
Seize the day if you like, I'm going to work on time so I don't get fired.

Dream big
Also bad advice that isn't wrong in principle. No tangible harm comes to those who dare to dream, but I submit that a path to a happier life comes from avoiding this piece of advice. Dream fun, would be a better bit of advice. Dream of whatever you want if you can, but couple it with the fact that dreams are just that.

Rules are meant to be broken
I don't think your local cops feel that way about speeding, your boss won't feel that way about long lunches and your wife won't feel that way about smoking a cigar in the house. Get over this one fast kids, rules are meant to be followed.

I could go on but I'm finding this tedious to write so it has likely lost your interest already... I'll move on then.

So am I saying aim low, be a sheep and give no thought to opportunity when it knocks?

Almost.

I say aim reasonable, follow shepherds but step aside if they fall off a cliff and keep an eye out for the rare and mysterious opportunity balloon just in case.

I'm choosing to settle from here on out. With the exception of going after my wife, not much of "reaching for the stars" has worked out for me. On the other hand, say giving up on dreams as a reporter for a paycheck and stability has worked out. So from here on out, I settle.

Pioneers and trailblazers are great and society won't move forward without them. But if you want to be one know this.

Pioneers die.
Settlers prosper.

I want enough money to pay my bills. I want a place to live and sleep. I want to continue loving and being loved by my wife, family and friends. I think that's about all.

And this isn't depressing, it's freeing. Adopt this view and be free from the pressure to succeed or attain. I'm not saying cast off your cloaks and cover yourself in ash, I'm just saying take a look at your situation.

Right now.

Is it ok?

Then why push it. We have a finite amount of resources in this world and not enough to go around. If we continue in this economy with the idea of more more more, it just means someone else will have less less less.

Slavery is freedom, war is peace, settling is success

If we all get back in our pods before the robots know we're awake, maybe they'll leave us alone.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Can't you see the sunshine, can't you just feel the moonshine...

"In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina
Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moonshine
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
It hit me from behind
Yes I'm gone to Carolina in my mind"

- James Taylor

And with those fine words dear blog readers I must bid adieu for a week or so. The Company has me going to a week-long training seminar in Winston-Salem, N.C.

I'll be flying from Lexington to Atlanta (which makes little sense to me) and then Atlanta to Greensboro and then someone will pick me up I suppose for the 36 minute drive to the hotel.

I'm not super excited about this but we'll try and turn the negative (leaving Kelli and home for a week) into a positive (maybe we learn something).

Anywho, sorry to bolt mid debate on a couple issues but I'll get to them when I get back.

Until then,

"The young folks roll on the little cabin floor
All merry, all happy and bright;
By 'n' by hard times comes a knocking at the door
Then My Old Kentucky Home, good night!"

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Rapping with Yoda, part deux

So yesterday I answered a question for a friend wishing to be anonymous and we named him Yoda.

Yoda responded as you can see on the comments of the blog before this one.

But there was a follow up portion of his original question that I think presupposed a different answer than the one I gave. Nevertheless, we'll take a crack at it.

Yoda wrote:
"The other question: are you saying that God is a father who will allow his child to be brutally slain, just to prove a point? What kind of barbaric god is this? How could you worship such a savage figure or practice such a bloodthirsty belief? Anyone who has been a loving parent should shudder at the thought of allowing or sacrificing their own child for a demonstration of any kind at all!!"

The last part of this question I think was sufficiently addressed yesterday but we'll address the rest.

These are questions to call out the concept of the three O God. God is traditionally accepted in Christianity to be: Omnipotent (all powerful), Omniscient (all knowing) and Omnibenevolent (all good). Some do argue these tenets but I know Catholicism and most Christianity roles with them.

So if God is those three O's, we move forward. If he is not, they are valid questions that lead one to believe he wouldn't be worthy of worship, which is false.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, then worship of him pretty much a good idea regardless of whether he does good or deplorable things. A being of inconvenience power that knows everything would be a better friend than enemy. But it is the goodness of God that makes worship of him truly right.

A being with those three O's who is also the creator of all things is of course worthy of worship.

Now to his actions in the world, they are by nature good. (Here I have no idea what the Church teaches so it's just me talking). If God is those three O's, anything he does is by nature good and just. Having all the folks in Jericho killed? Good. Killing first born in Egypt? Good.

Dying and suffering as Christ on the cross? Good.

Now as to Christ and the cross. Yoda calls this a demonstration. This was in some ways a demonstration of God's love but it was also a very real sacrifice that actually accomplished something.

Shoot I went and ran out of time again. Ok, don't consider this blog complete yet. I'll come back to it at lunch tomorrow and flesh it out more. SOrry.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

We're doing a mailbag, answering heresy

Ok so today's entry is a response to an email from a devout Catholic who wishes to remain anonymous.

We'll call him Yoda, since today is national Star Wars day or something.

Yoda writes this long bit:
-------
"So here’s God, a father of multiple children. He has a child (humans) who continually disobey him. He gets angry with them. He even kills a bunch of them off in a flood before deciding that’s not right, maybe they’re aren’t ALL bad, but he’s disgusted. So he tries again, this time putting a part of himself into one of them to bring forth Christ. This child is perfect. He is without sin. He has done no wrong and obeys all that his Father says and wishes.

…and the Father knowingly allows his disobedient first child (children) to torture and murder his good obedient child, willingly and in order to prove he will love and forgive regardless of what they do.

Does that make sense?"
--------

Thanks Yoda.

To start we need to address some fundamental flaws in the question's wording.

1. The question says after the flood, God decided his actions weren't right.
This is not possible. The book of Numbers tells us God does not repent or change his mind in this fashion. "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?" Many passages in the bible do talk about God being moved, or hearing prayers but there is a difference there between that and regretting an action or changing his mind after the fact. This debate on this one matter alone could take weeks of blogging.

2. It says God put part of himself into a human to make Christ. This is a biggie. In the third and fourth centuries there were heresies abound about Jesus. Namely the Arian and Sabellianism heresies. Arainism taught that Christ was a creature made by God, and Sabellianism taught a more confusing concept that I don't even want to try and summarize.

I don't know which Yoda is ascribing to here but it is heresy (the post-baptismal rejection of revealed truth) to believe that Christ is anything but God. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all God and are all one. In the beginning was the word and the word was made flesh. God is Jesus, Jesus is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is God, the Holy Spirit is Jesus etc. That said, the "persons" of the Trinity also maintain a distinctness. God exists as three persons but is one God, meaning that God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have exactly the same nature or being as God the Father in every way.

3. The question implies a lack of omniscience of God. Yoda is much too smart to believe that God didn't know how all this was going to go down in the first place. God's plan for salvation predates the need for salvation. Why God created the world the way he did is something we don't know, but as Catholics we trust there is in fact a plan.

Now that those are out of the way, let me try to answer.

Does it make sense?

Not from a human perspective. If we were dealing with human fathers and human sons, it would not make sense at all. But we aren't are we?

God sent his Son/became man for this very purpose. It was his love for all mankind that he would suffer and die on the cross.

But this wasn't the foreshadowing incident of Abraham and Isaac. This is the real deal. God did not send an unwilling or unknowing participant to the slaughter. Rather God became the lamb himself, making Christ's sacrifice one he completely accepted.

So if you take the right understanding of the Trinity here, along with a proper understanding of God's omnibenevolence and love, you can see it does make sense.

Come back tomorrow when if I have time I'll tackle part 2 of Yoda's question which is really an extension of this one but I'm out of time.

Yoda feel free to respond via email and I'll share your response with the readers on here.

May the force be with you!

Monday, May 2, 2011

Obama got Osama and other thoughts

Last night US forces found and killed terrorist Osama Bin Laden. The orders were to kill, not capture the Saudi-mastermind of 9-11 and they accomplished their mission.

We all remember where were were on September 11, 2001. I was between Mr. Mauer and Ms. Thole's classrooms at West High when Jon Richardson told me about a "plane or chopper or something" that hit into the twin towers.

After enduring algebra our more reasonable teachers let us watch the event unfold on TV for a while before trying to get us back to business.

By 2001 I already knew I wanted to be a sports writer, but it was the events of Sept. 11 that taught me I wanted to be a columnist. I can't remember the name of the story I wrote but I remember how some of it went. I remember real emotion while I wrote it and I really remember how person after person came up to me to compliment it and tell me it made them emotional in one way or the other.

I didn't know it then, but their reactions had little to do with my prose or skill. The best columnists are really the people with the best material who get out of the way and let the situation speak for itself. They just guide it along.

We were all emotional in 9-11-01. Some of us were scared, others were sad and I think most were angry. How could this happen here? In America?

While we mourned, half a world away a lanky Saudi smiled, his plan went pretty well.

I don't know if we'll ever know the solider who put the bullet in Osama Bin Laden's head, but I hope before Bin Laden died that something I wrote that day came true. I hope that before we ended his life, he saw in the eyes of that soldier "a reflection of each human being whose life was prematurely ended at their hands."

I don't support capital punishment most of the time. I'm not even sure it was right to allow this man martyrdom. But I know that President Barrack Obama acted swiftly and rightly to protect this country and bring justice to a tragic situation.

This won't end anything, or change much. It raises more questions about our "ally" Pakistan than it answers. There is only one less terrorist in the world today than there was yesterday and his influence had waned considerably. But that wasn't the point.

President Bush spoke for the nation and said we would go to the ends of the earth to find and bring to justice those responsible for that attack. President Obama made it happen.

Thank you Mr. President, and well done to you and your team.

These blogs sadly don't get the time and attention that I used to put into columns when I worked at a newspaper, but if I were writing one today, I think the material speaks for itself.

I don't know exactly what I would say but it would probably end with something like this.

"For every enemy of freedom that our soldiers have silenced in attrition for what happened to our nation, for every fallen or deposed dictator we've eliminated, there was still a hole in our hearts. We were making someone pay for the crime, but it wasn't the same. We were taking out foot soldiers, not their commanders.

Now we have justice. Now we have our revenge. The hole in our heart will always be there, irreparable damage to our strength in a reminder that we're not untouchable. But we take can take solace now in the knowing that the one who wounded us will wound no no one else. Bin Laden is dead, and while there is still much work to do, justice has been done.