Exploring the good news of the kingdom of God
Seinfeld, they say, is life.
The other day I was thinking about that episode where George Costanza,while working late one night, has sex in his office with the cleaning lady. I know, I know, this is not the stuff of Sunday School lessons, but I’m assuming my audience is mature, and I am headed somewhere with this.
So George’s boss finds out, and George has to come up with a strategy to avoid the inevitable end game of all of George’s employment. Continue reading “Seinfeld and Secular Hypocrisy”
I didn’t want to write the typical Thanksgiving blog post, you know, the one about how we should be thankful for what we have and how fortunate we are.
Those are good things, and we should be that way all the time, not just on Thanksgiving, but I wanted something fresh, from a different angle.
I thought about writing a little teach about thankfulness from the Bible with super-relevant, Andy Stanley-like contextual relevancy that would be daring in its brevity and stunning in its insight.
But I couldn’t think of how to do it without sounding religious. It’s just so expected, like chocolate on Valentines Day, I couldn’t imagine how it could be fresh.
Then I thought of writing something about American colonial history as a segue into addressing American Christians’ penchant for looking at the past through idealistic glasses rather than looking forward to what the Lord will do in the future. Continue reading “A Thanksgiving Blog Post…Sort Of”
I had decided maybe I was just dumb, but the more I read about the “quantitative easing” our government has been involved in of late, the less it made sense.
You see, I’m a saver and I hate debt. When the Bible says to owe nothing to anyone except to love them (Romans 13:8), I take it literally. We have lived well within our means for years so we could save and avoid debt.
So, when I read about quantitative easing I get confused. They say quantitative easing is necessary to avoid deflation and that deflation is bad, but deflation means prices go down and people who have saved can buy things cheaper.
They say they would rather have inflation, where the money you have today is worth less tomorrow. This means people who are in debt today can pay back their debt tomorrow with cheaper money. Inflation rewards people who are in debt and punishes people who aren’t and who have saved.
I thought the government was to support virtuous conduct (saving and moderate, frugal living) and discourage profligate and presumptious conduct (debt-driven lifestyles). I decided maybe I was just dumb, until I saw this video, and now it all makes sense.
Well maybe not, but it’s better to laugh than cry. GS
I have to admit, I’m probably like most other American Christians. I recognize Halloween is the celebration of death, fear and the occult, but we still give out candy to the kids who come by. We don’t hand out Bible verses or preach to them. We just play along and are glad when it’s over.
But I got to thinking. I wonder if witches and others who are into the occult (notice I didn’t say “who dabble in the occult”–I don’t know what it is about the occult that prompts dabbling, and I’m not even sure what dabbling is) are upset that Halloween has become so commercialized.
As I mentioned in the post yesterday, Halloween is the second biggest holiday in the United States in terms of money spent. Just two years ago, Americans spent $5.1 billion on Halloween, more than Easter, Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving.
So, I wonder, do the witches and occultists long for the days when people celebrated Halloween for what it really is: the glorification of death, fear and the occult?
Do they complain that pumpkin farmers and companies like Hallmark have taken the true spirit out of the holiday? I wonder if they talk about the good old days when people didn’t even bother with giving homeowners the option of “trick or treat” but went straight to the vandalism and property damage.
Or maybe they boycott Halloween completely and instead hold all night vigils with their covens where they break out their Ouiji boards and Dungeons and Dragons, while listening to the backmasking on Stairway to Heaven.
I don’t know, I’m just guessing, but it seems plausible. GS
It all started about a year and a half ago, when I began to notice some of the people I knew and really respected had iPhones. Their love of Apple irritated me a bit at first. They seemed almost arrogant, like they thought they were better than me; later I realized they didn’t think they were better than me because I had PCs, they just really loved Apple. I also noticed they shared an affinity with other Apple-lovers that seemed based on a knowledge, like they all knew something PC people didn’t know that drew them together.
When it came time to buy a new phone, I debated between a Blackberry and an iPhone. The Blackberry seemed safe; the iPhone a risk. I wasn’t sure I was ready to depart from the security of being like most of my lawyer friends with their Blackberry’s and PCs. How could they all be wrong? Finally I decided, “What the heck?” I took the leap.
Almost immediately I knew I’d made the right decision. I never knew a simple piece of technology could meet so many different needs in my life, and I wondered how I could have been so stupid to wait this long to make this decision. I also began noticing more Apple people. I wondered how I never noticed them before. I began to notice every iPhone, Macbook Pro and iMac, like they had suddenly appeared in people’s hands, laps and on their desks.
It wasn’t long before I began to tell others about the iPhone. I told them how it had changed my life, how it had made me more organized, productive and creative. I told them they needed to get an iPhone. I had to avoid the tendency of thinking them stupid and close-minded for continuing to use an obviously inferior phone, but it helped when I remembered that not long ago I was like them.
When the iPad came out, I bought one, the 64 Gig model with 3G capability. When it came time to buy a new laptop for my wife I bought her a Macbook Pro. A few months later I bought one for myself.
I held on to our two old PC laptops, thinking I might need them in the future if I needed to run software that was PC based. And I still had my new laptop PC on my desk in my study functioning almost like a desktop computer, but as the time passed, I found I didn’t even want to use it.
Then, in church last Sunday, I had an epiphany. My brother and his family were in town and my niece and nephew needed laptops for school. It occurred to me I could give them my two PC laptops and buy an iMac for the desk in my study. My wife and I could then network our Macbook Pros with the iMac and be completely Macified at home. After church, I purchased the iMac and I’m writing this post on it right now.
I still have to go in to work every day and use PCs, but I think my love of Apple is strong enough now that I won’t be persuaded to ever switch back. GS