Me the Cynical Christian.

Last weekend we celebrated Independence Day here in the states.  Our family joined a bunch of friends who camp every year at the state park just up the road.  They bring their boat over and spend a week on the river dragging the kids around on inflatable toys.

When we arrived, the boat had just pulled up to the dock and we noticed the father carrying his son up the hill to the picnic area.  Come to find out, they had been dragging kids behind the boat in a tighter and tighter circle when the inflatable hit the wake and the boy went flying, landing awkwardly on his back.  You could tell he was in a lot of pain but was brave enough to hold back the tears.

What was interesting about this scene was what happened next.  Several of the women in the group huddled around him in prayer calling for Jesus to heal him.  This went on for quite some time.  Meanwhile, the men were also huddled saying stuff like, “Give him a few minutes, he’ll shake it off and be back on the river in no time.”

Sure enough, he was fine after resting for a while and was back on the inflatable in no time.

Later, I heard that same group of women commenting on how fast Jesus had healed this boy.  They kept using words like miraculous and super natural to describe the event.  It was as if the kid would have been bound to a wheel chair for the rest of his life if they hadn’t called for healing.

This was where I had this really uncomfortable cynical feeling come over me.  My first thought was, “Wait a minute, if the atheist kid in the next campsite had this happen to him, would he have been in a wheel chair for the rest of his life?”

I kept my mouth shut and nodded in agreement.

I’ve talked about this healing thing before on this blog and am still wrestling with it.  My scientific mind wants double blind tests and lots of data before coming to any conclusions.  I’ll admit it, I’m the Thomas in the blog world.

I can see God sitting on his throne like Darth Vadar, pointing a finger at me and saying, “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

So please set me straight on this healing thing if you have any insight.  The only thing God promises in the Bible is that he will be with us if bad stuff happens.  But does that mean we’ll have healing on demand?

You’ve Got Malware!

So I’m sitting at my desktop computer this morning, surfing the web and up pops this warning that my browser isn’t safe and that I need to click here to install some software to protect me.  Ugh, I thought.  This doesn’t look good.  So I did a little research only to find out that it wasn’t from Microsoft or Mozilla, but in fact was malware.

Some child, who shall remain nameless, decided to download some software through a bit torrent and that let in the bad guys.

The clever little bug didn’t allow me to go to my virus protection website or install any kind of malware remover.  It also wiped out the drive partions so I couldn’t do an restore from XP.

So here I am waiting for a low level format of my C: drive to complete before I restore everything.  The computer is only three years old, but it was loaded with tons of stuff; it took hours to back it all up.  I’m thankful for a laptop that I can hide in a drawer.

Now is the time I usually make some kind of connection to the Bible or something God said.  But this week, I’ve got nothing.  If you want, you can do your own connection like one devil leaves and 100 come back.

So happy Independence Day weekend (if you live in the States).

Jon and Kate; It’s Not Too Late!

While I was taking a class in the big city last week, I had the chance to watch a TLC marathon of Jon and Kate Plus 8.  I hadn’t heard of this family until a month or so ago when they started showing up on the tabloid rags at the grocery store.  I watched this marathon in amazement as they would go about their days, totally disconnected from each other and trying to manage eight kids in the process.

When word of their divorce came down this week, I felt only sadness that they had, as Kate put it, become another statistic.  You could tell she was sad, that Jon was sad, and I can only imagine how confused those kids must be by now.

The dynamic that I saw on the marathon was interesting.  Kate is a control freak.  Jon is a wimp and tries to avoid conflict.  He can’t take care of himself much, so you can imagine that the marriage started out with him wanting a mommy, and her wanting to raise a boy.  Dynamics like that can only last so long before everyone gets tired.

After years of putting him down both in private and on camera, Jon I’m sure came up with more than one excuse to cheat on her.  And Kate, wanting a man that she didn’t have to raise, gave up control of her life to money, fame and supposedly her body guard.

And TLC along with their advertisers, watched the whole thing implode.  To their credit, they pulled the plug on the show so we wouldn’t have to witness this train wreck any more.

So who won and who lost?  If you count selling soap, the only winners were TLC and several marketing departments of big companies.  Who lost?  This kids.  The parents always talked about how the show saved their lives by allowing them to thrive financially and how they could now afford to care for this big family.  If you were to ask the kids if they’d rather have a new bike or a mommy and daddy that loved each other, I think they’d choose family.

The sad part is this could have turned out so much better.  How cool would it have been if last week instead of the divorce news, we would have heard something different.  How Jon and Kate took their wealth and hired the best marriage counseling money could buy.  How they were going to go into individual counseling too; Jon to work on his avoider and pleaser issues and Kate to work on her control problems.

How cool would it have been if they had gathered the whole family together and told them that mommy and daddy were having troubles, but that nothing couldn’t be fixed.  That they would do everything in their power to make their family better.  That the cameras would go if that’s what it took; that all of the celebrities, fancy parties and vacations would stop so that they could concentrate on being a normal family without all the distractions.

What if their testimony could be broadcast again on TLC as a witness to the power of being humble instead of selfish.  What if they could have been a light of hope for couples with kids who are struggling to make it and instead have sought comfort elsewhere.

I’m still hoping for a reconciliation, but the statistics are not in their favor.

Authority Figure

This week, I sat down with one of our new student hires to explain to him the big picture about how the power system works and how each piece fits together.  After my so called speech, I was amazed by what had come out of my mouth.  I actually talked with authority!  It was interesting how stuff came out that just a few years ago I hadn’t a clue as to what the names of the equipment was let alone how it worked.

My boss is the master of authority.  He has the best short and long term memory that I’ve ever seen.  He can recall with great detail how a piece of electronics works that was built in the 60’s.  Now even though he’s in his mid 40’s like me, people all over the west coast call him to ask for his wisdom on any give subject.  From making Japanese swords to troubleshooting a telephone network, they’ll call and sit at his feet while he explains in sometimes excruciating detail how stuff works.

Have you ever bumped into someone who you knew had authority on a given subject; especially one you were interested in?  You’ll ask a question or two and then just sit and listen in awe as they recall stuff you’ve never even thought of or knew existed.  Your excitement will grow as they pass this new found knowledge on to you.

The opposite can also be said.  Have you ever sat and listened to someone who you thought had mastered a subject only to soon find out that they were a poser?  At our annual engineer’s meeting, people will present on different subjects, and you can tell almost right away if they are bluffing or a real authority on the subject.

You can imagine where this post is going, can’t you?  When Jesus spoke, people listened.  Mark 1:22 says;

“And they were completely astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching as One Who possessed authority, and not as the scribes.”

Why was Jesus a master of scripture?  Because he was into it.  I’ve come to believe that you can only become an expert on something if you really enjoy what it is you are learning.  If you watch the Antiques Road Show, you can tell the appraisers are really into their work.  They can open up something that is 200 years old and find an obscure signature that tells who make the item and when.  Then they’ll give the history behind the object and with excitement let the owner know how much it will bring in auction.

People like sitting at the feet of an authority and that’s why they liked listening to Jesus.  He knew his stuff.  He also loved passing it on.

Who’s Pushing Your Buttons?

Videos of tech journalist Leo Laporte has become quite the memes lately on Youtube.  First, his ball burst, then he ends up in a fight with Mike Arrington on a live feed of the Gillmor Gang.

See it here; NSFW language.

Now if you follow Leo on any of his shows, you know that he is the most polite mild mannered talk show host there is on the internet.  Even if people are rude, he’ll go out of his way to draw them back into civility.  So when he lost it, there must have been a button pushed that brought out the wrath.  For him, it went right to how he makes his living.  The unbiased review of technology.  When someone comes along to question that, the claws come out.

When I was in college, my future wife and I, along with a male friend of hers, were watching TV together one night.  Now this guy rubbed me the wrong way.  He would always make snide comments about her in my presence and I would always deflect them or try to change the subject to keep the peace.  Well this night was different.  My future wife was talking and he interrupted her by saying, “Shut up little girl” while looking directly at me.

That was it.  I leaped off of the couch and reached down under the recliner he was sitting on and flipped both him and the chair over.  Now this guy was twice my size, so it’s amazing what adrenalin can do.  I got him into a choke hold and only let go when she jumped in between us.  I’ll have to say, it felt pretty good, even though he would have killed me had it gone on any longer.

I learned that night what my button was.

Jesus is shown in the gospels as a pretty mild mannered man.  Sure he got into it with the Pharisees sometimes, but for the most part, he kept his cool.  Except for that one time;

“Jesus went straight to the Temple and threw out everyone who had set up shop, buying and selling. He kicked over the tables of loan sharks and the stalls of dove merchants. He quoted this text:

‘My house was designated a house of prayer;
You have made it a hangout for thieves.’”

You could spit in his face and humiliate him in every way, but his button was people disrespecting his father’s house.

For some reason it’s all about the disrespect when it comes to pushing buttons; at least for men.

Disrespect of your livelyhood.  Disprespect of your wife or family members.  Disrespect of your father or mother.

So what is your button?  Has anyone ever pushed it?

Push Over or Softie?

It’s official.  The Ranter is now the father of a college student!  I can still remember as if it was yesterday, my wife and I walking around the Loma Linda Hospital campus trying to induce labor by foot.  Oh the memories.  Our littlest one starts Kindergarten next year, so we’ve got dozens of graduations yet to go.

This spring, I told our “graduate”, that I wanted her to either get a full time job this summer or complete a quarter at college.  The thought of moving out of town for a few months sent her into a panic and she started looking for a job in earnest.  She finally settled on working for a daycare during the times different staff members would be on vacation.  It ended up being about two thirds of the summer.

She asked if that was good enough to meet the full time requirement, and looking around at the job prospects, I agreed.  Then I got to thinking.  Did I just get manipulated or am I being a softie?

Where do you draw the line between letting something pass without incident or becoming someone people take advantage of?  People pleasers get taken advantage of all the time.  No one ever mistakes them for well balanced people who offer good doses of grace.  It’s as if they want to be manipulated into giving everything of themselves and getting nothing in return.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites pushed God to the edge again and again.  Was God being a push over when he blessed them with the land of Caanan?  He had to have known that they would be distracted by the blessings of this plentiful land and end up following other gods.  So why did he do it?  I believe that God is a softie.  He really wants to give us the best of everything.  Just like a grandparent wants to spoil those kids, God wants to spoil us.  His only request is that we still honor him in the process.  If we walk away from doing that, then he views us as children who think he’s a push over.

In Matthew 7, it goes like this;

“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?”

God desires to be decent with us.  He’s not going to be a jerk and refuse us if our requests are sincere.  He wants to bless us.  He wants to offer us grace.  The only reqest he makes of us is to love him for it and offer those things he gives us to others.

Am I an Antique?

So here’s some random thoughts from the week.

We will have had two graduations in as many weeks.

Our two baby chicks got eaten by something.

It was painful to see my youngest daughter sad over that.

I went to an antique mall for the first time in my life.  This place was huge and it took over an hour to walk through at a brisk pace.  What was kind of sad was that each section was basically someone’s life in a 6 x 6 foot space.  I got to thinking, what will they put in my 6 x 6 foot space when I die?

I was concerned when I recognized stuff from my childhood at the antique mall.  Brownie cameras aren’t that old are they?

I want to attend the MIT swap meet before I die.  A geek garage sale.

Back to the list.

We’ve got 5 slide shows to finish today before HS graduation.

The relatives are driving in.

I’m getting sick.  Seems like since last November.

Sheep poop, sharp teeth and river water makes a pasture look like a golf course.

I’m reading through Romans in The Message Bible.  Paul seems confused no matter what translation.  He must have waved his hands a lot.

Me in Captivity.

Last week, I promised to try to speak more positively around the people I contact regularly.  So here’s an update on my progress.  The day I wrote that post, I came home to find my oldest daughter sitting on the lawn tractor in our back yard.  I thought to myself that this would be a good time for some positive speak.  I had my speech all written out in my head about how great it was that she was mowing the lawn without being asked and what a good job she was doing.

What was strange though was that the mower was stopped up against the fence.  As I was walking over to investigate, I tripped on what used to be the head of a garden hoe; which now looked like a piece of shiny shredded wheat.  My first thought was, ugh, I had just sharpened those blades.  When I came upon the mower scene, she had bumped into the fence causing the front bumper to hook itself into one of the links.  She had attempted to back up to free herself causing the lawn mower to free itself from its hood.  As I walked around to see how to put it all back together, I noticed the mower sitting at a weird angle.  More investigation discovered a gaping hole in the side of the rear tire.

So now I’m thinking about how I’m going to make something positive out of this situation and the text, take every thought captive, came to mind.  I could get a new hoe and tire.  I could sharpen the blades again, but could I mend a relationship if I were to do the natural thing for me which would be to get really sarcastic and angry?

What I didn’t do was to try to cover it all up by saying everything was ok.  But the difference was that I took captive every word that came out of my mouth.  Speak the truth in love actually worked!

So that has been the phrase constantly going through my head this week.  And I’ve come to broaden the application to other areas of life.  Take every look captive when some underwear commercial comes on TV.  Take every listen captive when programs on the radio get my blood boiling.  Take every taste captive when I’m tempted to get seconds at dinner the third time.  Take every word captive when I’m tempted to grumble during the times things don’t go as planned.

Yikes, I didn’t know so much stuff needed controlling!

What in your life needs to be taken captive?

Positively Parallel Parking

A few weeks ago I was musing about bringing out the best in your kid by focusing on what they do well instead of what they do poorly.  This week it hit me that I need to speak in a more positive way to them.

After spending an hour with my oldest daughter practicing parallel parking, I began to notice that what came out of my mouth was way more negative than positive.  I almost never told her what she was doing right, mostly what she was doing wrong.  Later that day we got into a discussion where I said something negative and she stormed out of the room saying that I thought she was a failure at everything.  Yikes!

What got me thinking were some photos of a wedding that a friend of mine posted online of his oldest son’s wedding.  This family moved away several years ago, but I remember one time when they came over to play baseball.  Every word out of the parent’s mouths that was directed at their kids was something positive.  Most everything out of mine was some kind of criticism about how my kids weren’t quite doing it right.  Yikes again!

What is strange though is that my older kids seem to get the brunt of the critical talk while the little ones get mostly encouraging talk.  Maybe it’s an issue of learning from the mistakes of the past that causes this, but it isn’t right.

So here’s the deal.  I’m going to watch what I say to each one of my kids (and spouse) for the next seven days.  My goal is to even out the balance between critical and encouraging speak.  They say if you do something for 40 days, it becomes a habit, so I’d like to eventually get to the place where positive talk outshines the negative.

You may be asking how a guy who calls himself The Ranter be Mr. Positive?  If this experiment works, then maybe I’ll be in for a name change.  Then again, maybe not.

What Happened to Spring?

It’s been a strange spring in the northwest.  Typically we get all of our rain and snow in the winter and then spring comes to melt everything away with a few weeks of heat wave temperatures.  This causes the farmers to panic as they watch their irrigation water for the summer flow down stream in a matter of a few days.  This year was different.

Winter brought us tons of snow in December that was melted away in January by those darn Hawaiians and their tropical jet stream.  People around these parts went on to plan for drought conditions this summer; then spring came.  It’s been nothing but cold temps and rain with lots of snow falling in the mountains.  The long range forecast is for more of the same.

So what does this have to do with anything besides less time on the bike and more time on the treadmill?  I got to thinking about what it must have been like for people close to retirement this time last year.  They looked at their savings and investments and probably thought everything was cool and that shortly they’d be living the good life.  In a matter of a few months, a major portion of what they had saved was gone and they had to start the painful process of deciding to live without or keep working.  The season that they’d expected would be there didn’t arrive and something completely different showed up instead.

When young parents have children, they think of the future in idealistic terms.  Junior will get his masters degree and become a successful leader in his field.  When Junior turns out to live at home and go in and out of rehab, the season that they looked forward to didn’t appear.

What is it about expectations and disappointment that keeps us on this merry-go-round of emotional ups and downs?  When I was in my early 20s, I thought that when I got older, my kids would be recruited to attend good colleges, that I’d still be running marathons, that I’d have the ideal marriage and that I’d be comfortably set up for retirement.  After all, didn’t the Farmer’s Almanac of life predict this?

Let’s just say that winter has come when it should be spring.  I think that when people go through their proverbial mid life crisis, it has mostly to do with the seasons getting all mixed up.  What was expected from Santa, doesn’t arrive under the tree.

Then when you stand back and look at it from a Kingdom of God viewpoint, the perspective changes.  If everything we expected to happen happens, then there is no need for a relationship with God.  In his world, it’s better for us to be disappointed than comfortable.  If life were perfect, wouldn’t we be in heaven?  His purpose is to get us there and that doesn’t happen with a bloated retirement package.

Maybe storing up treasures in heaven means to admit making mistakes in parenting, marriage, stewardship, and treating my body as a temple.

Sorry for the wandering rant this week, I’m distracted by trying to stay warm.