A Thought Experiment: Confession, Part Two

Hello! I hope the weeks have been treating you well. For me, they’ve been lots and lots and lots of work as my wife and I prepare for our trip to Europe (actually, she does most of the preparing while I do most of the working, as it’s apparently still the busy season). Before I continue last week’s thought experiment on confession, I want to say that this is the last time you’ll hear from me for a month or more. I won’t be able to blog while abroad, and when I get back, I’ll be putting a lot of thought into why it is I write this blog, and considering whether or not it’s worth continuing. I know it’s a small thing to consider, but please pray for me on this decision.

Anyway, last week I explored the concept of deathbed confessions, and whether or not they constitute real, true atonement. Once a person is beyond all earthly consequence for their past sins, are they confessing because they’re wracked with guilt, or because they’re ashamed of what they’ve done and truly seeking God’s forgiveness? Or are they simply trying to avoid the eternal consequences of their sin the way they successfully avoided the earthly ones? I don’t know the answer, and it may very well be sometimes the former and sometimes the latter. But where that leads into salvation or damnation, I won’t dare to venture.

What I arrived at last week was, I believe, a very critical juncture: fear. Too often, it is out of fear of eternal consequence that we repent of our sins, rather than out of a sense of legitimate guilt. So we repent, or we confess Christ because of our overwhelming fear of Hell. But if fear is the overriding factor – if that is, in fact, the driving force behind repentance – then it leaves me with certain doubts as to whether or not that is true repentance. Should repentance not be borne instead of a desire to grow closer to God, to be made right with him? By that paradigm, the active agent behind repentance is not fear, but love. We confess our sins to God because of our love of him. In a similar manner, I confess my sins to my wife out of love, out of a desire to not let those sins become a barrier between us.

Oddly enough, the idea of confessing one’s sins is strongly debated in the Church today. Despite the command in James 5 to “confess [our] sins to one another so that [we] may be healed,” many Christians reject the idea of confession. And why is this? Because it’s a powerful symbol in the Catholic faith, and those objecting Protestants don’t want any of those Catholic traditions. But one thing is certain: whether you agree with Catholicism or not, the passage in James 5 is there, and there’s not much nuance to it. If we are practicing followers of Christ, we are to confess our sins to each other.

When I was living in Texas, I got into a disagreement with a fellow Christian (an awesome guy with a powerfully deep faith, mind you, so don’t think I’m just putting him down here) over this very idea. His objection to the confession of sins revolved around the idea of laying shame upon the confessing person. “If you confess your sins to a brother in Christ,” he argued. “Then it becomes all about shaming you, and that’s not what the Christian walk is supposed to be like.” I fully agree with him in this perspective. When we confess, we are not to be shamed, nor are we to shame those brothers or sisters who confess to us. That should never be the purpose behind the practice.

But to lay out my view effectively, let me compare it to my opinion on the purpose behind the prison system. Today, there is the overwhelming idea that if you commit crimes, you are to be quarantined, punished and then released when you’ve been punished enough. I have a problem with that. You see, this view of the prison system is just like the shaming that my Texan friend rejected. We imprison the criminal, shame him, then let him go his merry way and dumbly hope that he’s learned his lesson. Contrary to this, I believe the prison system should be a reformative process. We lock up prisoners to keep the regular population safe from them, sure, but the purpose behind it all shouldn’t be to bring the hammer of justice down on them. Instead, the purpose should be to guide them through the process of decriminalization, to radically transform them into non-criminals. A prison shouldn’t be a place of shame and derision; it should be a rehabilitation center.

That’s how I view confession. It’s not to bring us shame, or to provide eternal insurance. Rather, it should be a way of helping each other become better than we are. I used to be in an Accountability Group (which I often sorely miss), and the purpose of confessing our sins to one another was to help each other through our struggles, to offer forgiveness when we failed and provide the helping hand to pull each other up out of the mud of our temptations.

Confession is not a heaping of shame, or a method of punishment. It’s a process of improvement, and if you really want to take it seriously, you need a brother or sister in Christ to help you through it. That’s why God gave us each other.

Until next time, friends…

What is a Leader’s Purpose?

Good day, all! I hope that this month has been treating you well. Now today I’d like to take a look at the question of what a leader’s purpose is, but from a Biblical standpoint. My purpose here is not to argue for politics, but to explore the role of leaders in the context of the Bible. Then, maybe, we can take a look at how we can apply that to modern day.

A few years ago, when the Refugee Crisis was in the news, one of the potential U.S. presidential candidates of the time sent out an article describing the Biblical responsibility of the ancient king. His purpose, of course, was to draw a parallel between the ancient Israelite kings and our current president in order to establish the proper and Biblical course of action. Now in this article (which I was unfortunately unable to locate), the writer claimed that the purpose of the Biblical king was to protect his people first and foremost from those who wish to do them harm. Thus, this writer was arguing that it was Biblical to deny asylum to modern refugees on the grounds that such refugees could be potential threats to the American people. This sounds like perfectly reasonable logic, case closed.

That is, if it were true. This article I read was a fantastic example of how this potential presidential candidate – while likely a God-fearing Christian – was about the furthest thing from a Bible scholar. So speaking as someone who’s actually read the Bible, let me explain the Biblical role of the ancient king.

In ancient Israel, as we find in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, there was not initially a plan for a king. The people were to be led by the prophets and the priests, and when the occasion called for it, sporadically anointed political leaders called Judges. However, the ancient Israelites decided that they wanted to be like the other nations who had kings, and so God relented and gave them King Saul. Saul, while initially charismatic and faithful, proved to be both brash and unstable, and so the kingdom was given over to the ever-famous King David, and thereafter to his son, Solomon. But afterward, Solomon’s unfaithfulness to God resulted in Israel being split in half during the reign of his son, Rehoboam. The secessionist half chose their own king, Jeroboam, and the rival kingdoms persisted for centuries before being destroyed, one by the Assyrian Empire and the other two centuries later by the Babylonians.

Within that history, there is a great deal of activity by many dynasties of kings, but if you look closely, you’ll find an interesting strain of truth that persists throughout it all: a kingdom is blessed when its king leads the people in being faithful to God; a kingdom is destroyed or harmed when its king leads the people away from God. Jeroboam refuses to take down the “High Places” (small altars and places of worship to other gods), and his kingdom is badly beaten, his dynasty destroyed after only a few kings. This is a pretty standard story which repeats itself over and over in the Northern Kingdom over which he ruled.

But then take King Josiah. As a very young king, he discovered a lost book of the Bible (suspected to be Deuteronomy) laying in the wastes of the Jerusalem Temple. As a result, he renovates the Temple and tears down the local High Places, and as a result God blesses his reign with peace and prosperity. His son does not follow suit and brings the kingdom to ruin. King Ahab, husband of the notorious Jezebel, acts cruelly and corruptly, and he worships foreign gods with his wife. They – and the kingdom around them – come to tragic fates. And just before the advent of the Babylonian Exile, we find King Zedekiah seeking an alliance with Egypt despite God’s commandment to give in to the Babylonians. The alliance collapses, Zedekiah suffers horribly and his kingdom is left in ruins, its Temple burnt to the ground.

So what pattern do we see here? It’s actually quite simple. When a king leads his people to God, God becomes their protection. When he turns away from God, or tries to protect the people by his own power and ingenuity, destruction surely follows. The role of a king, therefore, was not to protect his people at all, at least not physically. Instead, his purpose was to model to the people how they should live, and to lead them in the right relationship with God. Oftentimes, this seems counter-intuitive, like letting into our country the refugee who may be a terrorist in disguise. But think of the great Judge, Gideon. He had a great army to lead against an enemy, but under God’s orders, he whittled that army down to three hundred men, leaving them far outnumbered. But because of his loyalty to God, he and his three hundred won a decisive victory. Is it too farfetched to think that if he had retained his army against the command of God, they may have suffered a catastrophic defeat?

So the king’s role is to lead his people in faith, modelling the commands of God. Protecting his people, as bizarre as this sounds, is secondary to that, but the reason is natural: because if the people are faithful to God, then God will protect them. If we do as God commands, there will undoubtedly be difficult times (as there always are), but we will be secure in the knowledge that God is protecting us. If our leaders – and yes, even our president – will lead us back to the ways of faith in God, then we won’t need a powerful military to protect us. We’ll have the Creator himself on our side. That is the true purpose of a king: to put us on the side of God, however that may be.

Until next time, friends…

Can We Protest?

Okay, it’s been awhile, but I think it’s finally time for another one of my conspiracy theories. This one is relevant to our current times, however, so bear with me. It’s about protesting!

“Oh, no!” many of you may be thinking. “He’s throwing in his lot with all of those violent protesters!” No, I’m not. At least, not directly. Instead, I’d like to talk about the difference between a protest and a riot.

The right of the American people to peaceably protest arises from a number of different rights found in the First Amendment, the beginning of our national Bill of Rights. (Have I used the word “right” enough times yet?) These rights are, namely, freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble and the right to petition the government to address national grievances. A protest is, therefore, a culmination, a melting pot, of these different freedoms. When you go out and protest, you are combining these freedoms into something which every American citizen is guaranteed and allowed to do. This is called “protesting.” However, when such an assembly becomes violent, when they begin burning vehicles, throwing rocks through store windows and aggressively attacking police officers, then this has ceased to be a protest and has, instead, devolved into what is called a “riot.” We the people have the right to protest, but not the right to riot.

We can see examples of both of these throughout American history. During the era of Civil Rights, there were peaceful protests led by Martin Luther King, Junior and his associates, and there were riots encouraged by Malcolm X and the Black Panthers (not the superhero). Only a few years ago, we had the Occupy Movement, which was mostly peaceful (except for a few hiccups here and there), followed shortly after by the Ferguson Riots. And most recently, we had the riots which occurred on the day of President Trump’s inauguration, followed only a few days later by the peaceful protests of thousands of women in places like Washington and Indianapolis.

Protests and riots, riots and protests. One is good, the other not. But with this in mind, I’ve begun to notice something peculiar, something actually quite unsettling, and it first became apparent to me when hearing about the Occupy Movement. When I look at the media’s representation of protests, more often than not, they  are being portrayed as riots. Yes, there are still riots out there, don’t get me wrong. But the media seems to be portraying all protests as riotous. Is it just that violence gets more attention from potential viewers? Is the media doing this simply to sensationalize what’s happening and, in the process, attain a wider viewership?

That was my first thought, and then a darker hunch began to grip me. Is it possible that the media, under the direct control or indirect influence of political parties, is actually trying to convince the American people that all protests are violent? With this thought in mind, I find myself probing further: if this is so, then what’s their endgame? Why would the political parties want us to think that all protests are violent?

Because if we think that all protests are violent, we’re less likely to make a fuss when that right is taken from us. If the political leaders convince us on the one hand that all protesters are childish and immature, and the politically-controlled media convinces us on the other hand that all protests are inevitably violent, then would we really argue when the right to protest is taken away from us? This is why I support the protesters of today. It’s not because I actually agree with anything they’re saying, or with what they’re really protesting, but because they’re exercising a basic American right, and if we demean them for that, then are we not paving the way for that right to be stripped from us? Honestly, I’d like to join a protest sometime, just to see what it’s like. Maybe someday, we’ll see. I don’t exactly have the political passion, only the curiosity, and, for now, the freedom.

Until next time, friends…

Christian Zealotry

Greetings, and welcome to the new year! So far, we’ve discussed the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and what we can learn – both good and bad – from each of them. But now it’s time to explore one of the sects of Judaism which is much less publicized to regular Christians, one whose name is far too often misconstrued. I am talking about the Zealots. The Zealots were less populous than the prior two, and their origins are not nearly as well-known due to some of their more shadowy misadventures. But, interesting note, one of the Twelve Disciples was actually a Zealot. He is named in Luke’s Gospel as “Simon the Zealot.” Additionally, there are some theories that Judas may have been somehow related to the Zealots, but more on that later. First, who are the Zealots?

When we think of Simon the Zealot, we often think of him as being very excited and borderline fanatical about Christ. Unfortunately, the Zealots of Jesus’ time were not simply “people with zeal,” but, rather, a militant anti-Roman group. They defaced Roman property, organized protests and riots, and oftentimes even carried out assassinations and ambushed Roman soldiers. They were, in fact, a terrorist cell operating in order to drive out the Roman overlords. You heard me right: one of the Twelve Disciples was a former terrorist. The Zealots were sometimes popular with the common Jews, although their popularity would often dwindle when they unintentionally instigated Roman crack-downs which, more often than not, resulted in the deaths of many, many Jews. It was the Zealots, in fact, who instigated the Jewish Rebellion of 66-73 A.D., after which the Romans burned down the Jerusalem Temple and crucified tens of thousands of Jews all over the country. Some ancient historians claimed that, at the end of the Jewish Revolt, there was a Jew crucified on every street corner. This is likely an exaggeration, but it does explain how the Zealot sect eventually died out alongside the Sadducees.

I also mentioned Judas may have been related to the Zealots, and this comes from the confusion surrounding his last name. If you haven’t noticed, Judas Iscariot (the disciple who betrayed Jesus) is the only one with a last name. Now why is that? One leading theory is that it’s actually “Is-Kerioth,” indicating his birthplace in a place called Kerioth. If this is the case, then it establishes him as the only disciple not from Galilee. However, it could also be a variant of the word Iskarii, a sub-sect of the Zealots who were known for carrying concealed weapons out into crowds and then engaging in random, frenzied stabbings. A terror cell if there ever was one. So was Judas simply a non-Galilean? Was he a terrorist, too? Or, as the gospel of John suggests, was he simply the son of a non-Galilean or terrorist? Unfortunately, we simply don’t know.

I’m sure many of you reading this are immediately thinking that there’s nothing positive which we can learn from a First Century terrorist group. Well, if I can just scrape the surface with a metaphorical approach, I think we can learn from them that we can’t sit idly by as Christians and hope the world gets better. We need to get up and actually start to instigate these changes ourselves. I’d recommend the peaceful Martin Luther King, Jr., approach, mind you, rather than the assassinations and stabbings. I’ll be a little more clear on this, just to be safe. DO NO go out and stab people for God. DO NOT throw in with terrorists, even if they define religion in such a way as to justify their cause. DO NOT DO THESE THINGS.

Now this does bring to mind an issue with our Christian culture today, something which a former Methodist bishop referred to as the “Nationalism Gospel.” We seem to believe that our country is a firm Christian country to which we owe our absolute allegiance. To be a proper Christian, we’re told, you need to be a true-blue patriot, stand for the National Anthem, say the Pledge of Allegiance every day and look down on foreigners. But how odd would it be to realize that in Heaven, with God, in that great multitude worshipping throughout eternity, there will be no America? To know that we will not be Americans, or Texans, or Hoosiers, or bear any sort of nationality other than “of the kingdom of God and his Christ”? There may be no Constitution, no Declaration of Independence in that realm, for God and his Word shall be all that matters. Does this blow your mind? So how does modern patriotism, or nationalism, hold up in light of that eternity? The Zealots committed murder and wrought death due not to their devotion to God, but because of the nationalistic fervor which overcame them. How often do we do the same, letting politics or nationalism cause us to forget our true allegiance to a God of love? This is what I suggest, my friends. Honor the country in which God placed you, but not at the expense of your devotion to Christ and his commandment to love others, even the foreigners.

Until next time, friends…

Rigid Traditionalism

Good day and welcome back! Yesterday was Christmas Day, a joyous time that I’ve always loved. Well, almost always loved. It was often difficult to endure during mine and my wife’s engagement, as I had so little time with her. But we persevered and now here we are! Hopefully you celebrated this special time by attending a Christmas Eve service with a church, officiated by a priest, pastor, minister or even a lay-person who had spent a good deal of time studying the Bible. In any case, there were such people even as far back as Jesus’ time, running the core of Jewish faith, and these individuals were called the Sadducees. The common phrase goes that they “didn’t believe in angels or demons or life after death, and that’s why there were sad, you see” (say the last three words really quick and it produces the same sound as “Sadducee”). If you can believe it, this ancient priesthood really did hold to such beliefs (or non-beliefs), but their reason actually makes sense in their own context. So let’s dive in.

The Jewish sect of the Sadducees predated the Pharisees by roughly three hundred years. During the Babylonian Exile, when the leaders of the Jews were deported from their homeland, the great Temple in Jerusalem was left in the care of unlearned farmers, peasants, the poor and pretty much whoever the Babylonians deemed to be not worth deporting. These people – many of them descended from the priestly tribe of Levi – did their best to continue running the Temple, destroyed as it was. Fast forward forty-nine, fifty-five or sixty years (the timeline’s a little fuzzy based on which deportation at which you begin counting; or seventy years if you want to be poetic) and the descendants of deported Jews were suddenly allowed to return home and rebuild the Temple. But uh-oh, there were people already running it! Well, the returning Jews fought and succeeded in kicking the Levites out of the Temple so that they could run it themselves, and they sought legitimacy by claiming they were descended from ancient King David’s own high priest, Zadok. Thus, they became the Zadokites, which eventually became the Zadokies, then on and on and eventually, the Sadducees. Words change over time, don’t try and fight it. And now you know the origin of this group.

The Sadducees differed from the Pharisees in a number of ways. First, while the Pharisees accepted the entirety of the Old Testament, including prophets, poetry and writings, the Sadducees clung rigidly to the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy) and excluded all others, including the prophets (which is why they never had any messianic beliefs like the other three sects did). Since the Torah never makes any mention of the afterlife, or of demons, and only makes scant mention of angels in such a manner that those angels could, in fact, be regular humans, the Sadducees denied belief in any of these things. They did not believe in the coming end of the world, nor of life after death. What they did believe in was running the Temple in order to please God. They did the prayers, the sacrifices, the reading of the Torah. The Temple was their domain, and it was in that manner that they were extremely strict in matters of purity, sacrifice and worship. They took these duties very seriously.

But it’s an awful truth that power so often corrupts, and he who controls the seat of Jewish belief holds an awful lot of power. As a result, the priesthood was very often riddled with corruption and shocked by scandal. At other times, seemingly righteous Sadducees had to compromise the integrity of the Temple in order to ensure its survival, for the Jews were so often ruled by outsiders, whether they be Persians, Macedonians, Seleucids, Ptolemies or Romans. Some of these allowed the Sadducees to run the Temple unimpeded, but others required that the Sadducees make terrible compromises in worship and culture. The Pharisees, on the other hand, more often than not refused to make such compromises, and so the Sadducees were rarely able to gain the popular support that the Pharisees enjoyed. But they had the Temple, and that held its own power, at least until the Temple was burned by the Romans in 70 A.D., at which point the sect of the Sadducees was lost forever to the pages of history.

The Sadducees stand as a warning to us in ways both obvious and hidden. Of course, we must hold our leaders accountable for the directions which they take. This isn’t just our political leaders, but our religious leaders as well. If our pastors and ministers and priests are leading us closer to God and Christ, then they by all means deserve our respect and following. But if that power becomes too great, if sin and corruption enter into their hearts and set up camp, if their wealth becomes too extravagant and their preaching too far from the love preached by Christ himself, then we must not follow them, for in those days they have sacrificed the spiritual authority with which God has entrusted them. We must not let politics or culture define our faith, but rather, let it be the other way around. If we sacrifice love for purity of worship, then we have lost both.

But secondly, we must not do as some do and regard our faith as something casual. Our faith, our worship, our conduct and our scripture must be approached with a sobering truth. Worship services require ardent preparation, for we are not merely entertaining our fellow man, but we are engaging in worship directed at the divine himself. As with the Sadducees, we must approach our communal worship with powerful purpose and devotion. And we must be willing to sacrifice even that which we hold most precious for the glory of our God in Heaven. These are difficult proclamations, I know, but they are worth the effort, I can assure you.

Until next time, friends…

8 Ways to Stay on the Good Side of Your Carpet Cleaner

Hello and good day! I hope you had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving, eating good food but, more importantly, enjoying time with the people you love. Now if you did these things, I want you to take a quick look down memory lane and think about the home in which you dined. Did it have clean carpets? Clean furniture? Nice decorative rugs?

I ask this because I am, if you’re not aware, a carpet cleaner, and we are smack-dab in the middle of the busy season for carpet cleaning, which usually runs from the beginning of October to the end of December. This is the time of year when everyone wants their carpets, their furniture, their rugs and sometimes even their tiles and grout looking nice and crisp for all of the company they’re expecting. In these busy, hectic, borderline chaotic days, I’ve picked up on a number of…shall we call them “pet peeves” that I share with my coworkers, and, in the interest of keeping you as well-informed as possible, I’ve assembled these into a list. So sit back and enjoy these eight ways to stay on the good side of your carpet cleaner.

1. Be There

This may seem like a no-brainer, and yet it’s something we run into quite a lot. I can’t say how other companies operate, but a few days in advance, you (the customer) will be told a 2-hour window in which to expect my arrival. Then, about 20-40 minutes before I arrive, I’ll give you a call to let you know I’m on my way. This doesn’t mean that you’re welcome to come meandering in half an hour after I tell you I’m going to be there. Be there to let me in, please, because the longer I wait on you, the longer my next customer has to wait on me. And speaking of letting me in…

2. Let Me Inside

Another no-brainer, and yet I can’t tell you how many times I see a car in the driveway and hear people moving about inside, and yet…no one answers the door. And when you finally do, I’m not standing frozen on your porch because I’m lost in the deep depths of your eyes. It’s because it’s rude to shove my way into a house without being invited. But in the wintertime, it’s cold out here. Lately it’s been raining. Stop staring at me and please invite me inside. I’m not a vampire, I’m just here to clean your carpets.

3. Don’t Tell Me Your Life Story

Yes, I’m sure you have some fascinatingly beautiful or tragically sad life story. I’m sure your dog is the best dog in the world, and your rescuing him was the greatest thing to ever happen. If I had more time, sure, I’d love to sit down and have a chat with you, but you’re not my only customer today, and the more time you spend telling me things irrelevant to your carpets, the later I get to those customers, and the later I get home to my wife in the end of the day. I just need to know what’s up with your carpet. Speaking of which…

4. Know Where Your Stains Come From

It helps me do my job better when you point out what I call “areas of concern.” These could be those black spots behind your couch, or that big yellow stain beside the coffee table, or those pink spots in the closet. But there’s something else I need to know about these stains: what made them. You see, different stains clean up in different ways. Grease stains need to be attacked in a way far different from makeup, and markers are different from either of them. If you don’t know what made a stain, then I can only take an educated guess on what to use on it, and the chances of me getting that stain out diminish significantly. So if you’re going to leave spilled milk sitting in your carpet for two months before you call me out there, at least remember that it was, in fact, milk. Otherwise I might try and sell you a pet urine treatment and then your wallet gets just a little emptier than it should be.

5. Don’t Ask Me to Move Your Furniture

This is, by far, where our greatest frustration lies. I am a CARPET CLEANER, not a MOVER. I know the difference may be subtle, but it carries a lot of weight (see what I did there?). You see, there are actually two reasons why we try not to move small furniture and why we refuse to move large furniture, and they both have to do with liability. First, if you ask me to move your china cabinet and things start to fall and break in there, I’m willing to bet you’ll want me to pay for those priceless treasures. I don’t want to do that. Secondly, it may not be anything in the cabinet, but my own muscles and bones that break. You see, I’m what you call a “human being-person”; that means I’m breakable, so I’m not moving your 480-pound armoire, and I certainly won’t move your deluxe, 600-pound, 4-poster, solid oak and granite bed.

So you may think to yourself, “okay, I’ll only ask him to move small stuff, like tables and chairs.” But this falls back to the fact that you’re not my only customer, and the longer I spend moving all of your furniture from one side of the room to the other, the later I arrive at the next customer’s house and the later I get home to my wife. Additionally, the longer I spend at your house, the less money I’m actually earning per hour. So the next time you leave out your eight side tables covered in fifteen porcelain knickknacks each beside your nine pretty lamps which barely illuminate your twelve decorative chairs, each with three throw pillows atop it…man, I totally just got lost in that sentence. Between you and me, whenever you leave the room, I’ll most likely clean around all those things while secretly cursing your name.

6. Don’t Ask For Free Services

I’m not a very stingy guy. I’ll almost always clean your closets for free. And if you’re nice to me, I may even clean a hallway without charge. But don’t ask me to clean extra rooms for free. What, you’ve moved all of your furniture for me before I arrived? Thanks for doing what you’re already supposed to do, but no, I will not show my gratitude by cleaning your 100 square foot, $4,000 wool oriental rug for free. Not going to happen.

Now before I continue, I need to let you know about an odd phrase I’ve been hearing. When people are pointing out various spots in their carpets during our initial walk-through, sometimes they’ll tell me “oh, you can just pre-treat that spot.” Here’s the thing: I’m not going to do that. It’s not because I’m being a stubborn jerk or anything, but “pre-treating” isn’t actually a thing. It’s gibberish. It’s like “pre-sleeping” before I go to bed or “pre-watching TV” before I turn on the television. I’m not doing it…because the word holds no meaning.

7. Don’t Expect Your Carpets to Look Like New

Oh, you want your carpets to look like they were just installed yesterday? Well, I can’t say this never happens, as this miracle has occurred on rare occasions. But if you haven’t had your carpets cleaned since you slaughtered a sacrificial bull on it twelve years ago, I can guarantee you that those stains aren’t coming out. Oh, you tried cleaning it with bleach last year? Yeah, there’s no coming back from bleach. You have officially ruined your carpet.

But by and far, the worst damage I’ve seen on carpets is what’s called “traffic patterns.” Essentially, in those places which get the most foot traffic (doorways, hallways, the edges of stairs, in front of couches and chairs and beside beds), the fibers of your carpet have been worn down and scratched. Dirt and particles fill these scratches and cause your carpet to look black. So I clean your carpet and pull out all that dirt, but unfortunately your carpet fibers are still scratched, so they don’t reflect light nearly as well. This is what we call “fiber damage,” and it’s permanent. If a carpet cleaner says he can get rid of them, you need to get rid of him because he’s playing you. You also need to take your shoes off when you walk on your carpets. Speaking of which…

8. Keep Your Carpets Clean

Yes, this carries so much weight with it, so much responsibility. Take your shoes off when you walk on carpets (the difference in carpet between houses where the family keeps their shoes on and the family which takes their shoes off is, quite frankly, mind-boggling). If you spill something on your carpet, or your dog goes to the bathroom on it, clean it up immediately. Teach your children to clean the carpets in their bedrooms. Because I’m telling you now: if you wait three years, or even three months, the chances of those stains going away are drastically reduced. A professional clean once a year will make a huge difference, and I highly recommend it, but no difference can be greater than what you can do in that house every day. Vacuum. Clean up spills. Use cleaners with natural ingredients. Not only will you be happier with your carpet year-round, but you’ll be happier with what I’m able to do for you, too.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I begin a series about what we can learn from each of the four Jewish sects of Jesus’ day!

Who is to Lead?

Hello, and good Monday! Almost a week ago were the elections, so can you guess what it is I’m going to be discussing today? Correct: frogs. No, I’m just joking. I have nothing against frogs, but I would like to talk not necessarily about the elections, but about the ramifications of last Tuesday’s national decision.

Next year, we will see the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Some people are overjoyed at this. Someone from mine and my wife’s new Sunday School class sent out an email praising it, even going so far as to say that “Every American needs to get on their knees and thank our Heavenly Father!!!” Yeah, there were that many exclamation marks. While I agree with her statement, I don’t necessarily agree with her sentiment, for on the other side of the divide are those who are devastated by Trump’s victory, those who believe he will set up concentration camps for Muslims and non-whites, bankrupt the economy, start WWIII, etc. Every time I go on Facebook, I see people slamming and being slammed by others over the outcome of this election, and an equal number of people begging to know why everyone is being so vicious (hello, it’s the internet; it trolls people and names exploratory vessels “Boaty McBoatface”). So with this in mind, the question boils down to: what will be the real, true ramifications of Donald Trump’s presidency?

If anyone says they know the answer to that question, they are likely making huge assumptions based on powerful biases. I can’t tell you how many people believed that Barack Obama was the Antichrist set to bring about the end of the world, and yet we’re still here. So what changes to our country WILL be effected in the forthcoming reign?

I think the biggest danger lies in the very core of that question. What changes will HE make to our country? How will TRUMP change our nation’s culture? The problem is that this question totally removes us, all of us, from the equation. It puts us in a mindset of total passivity, where we have to sit down, shut up and let the changes to our homeland flow down from the big wig at the top (see what I did there?). But we have so much more power than that! You, person who’s reading this, YOU have the power to change this country for the better. Together, we can bring about the changes we want to exact upon our culture. We create the shifts, the transformations, the growth and progress that our country really needs to better itself. All social responsibility shouldn’t be left up to our leaders; it should be up to us!

In the 1960s, the government was oppressing, denying and oftentimes even lynching a large segment of the population, and Washington was doing nothing to address the issue. Then that population, those oppressed people, began to rise up and fight for themselves. Others joined the fight and formed great solidarity in an effort to fix a great evil in our country, and today that evil is waning. It wasn’t the president, or the governor, or the senators who broke this evil’s back: it was the people. It was the preacher who spent so many years in prison. It was the boy whose mother forced the world to face its own darkness. It was the college students who peacefully protested for their rights. It was those on the bottom who rose reverently and shook the world around them.

Is your neighbor a Democrat while you’re a Republican, or vice versa? You may think that this creates an irreparable rift between the two of you, that your neighbor has their sights set on the destruction of the country, but take it from this Libertarian: if you take the time to get to know that person, those differences typically don’t amount to much. Yes, my candidate lost the election, but am I falling into a despairing hopelessness because one of the opponents won?

There is still hope. The gap between poor and rich can be bridged by us. Much of the debt in our country can be addressed by us. The social issues of racism, ageism, crime and poverty are our responsibility to face. There are so many ways that we can positively improve our culture. We shouldn’t rely on our leaders, or our president, to make those changes. We need to be willing to fix this world, to rebuild it one brick at a time, one homeless person’s meal at a time, one bridge between opposing parties at a time.

There is still hope, my friends, and it lies in you and me.

Until next time, friends…

Warring for Peace

Today is Memorial Day. It’s a day to remember our fallen soldiers. It’s also a day to avoid Facebook (I have already failed in this regard), which is bound to turn into a hotbox of political agendas and judgment of those who don’t profess uber-patriotism. So while I could spend my time online sharing all manner of good and bad articles, some of which are written with a suave mastery of the English language and others in the telegraphic speech of a caveman, as soon as I finish my necessary writings and such, I am instead committing to avoiding Facebook for the rest of the day. It’s simply to keep myself from getting angry.

Anyway, it being Memorial Day, I do want to talk about war. In America, we have this notion that war is either good or bad. You have pacifists who say that all war is evil, and you have people on the other end of the spectrum who say all wars are justified. We’re told that if we disagree with a war, then we’re dishonoring the sacrifices of those soldiers who put their lives on the line for our freedom. Sounds deep and powerful, however manipulative that language may be. But in truth, I myself believe that war exists in a sort of gray realm, where it is sometimes justified and sometimes not, and whether or not it’s justified depends entirely on the humane compassion which underlies the declaration of war.

You see, ideally, a war to protect the freedom and lives of those who cannot protect themselves should be justified. If an evil force threatens the lives of innocents, it is the duty of the strong to protect the weak (I read that on a Magic card). But too often, things become twisted by the notion of patriotism, where we find ourselves fighting not for the protection of the weak, but for the interests of our own nation. And since patriotism is lauded as one of the highest qualities, we’re convinced that supporting that war or this war is justified purely on that basis. The issue here is that the war in question becomes entirely relative and subjective. After all, in World War II, the Germans believed they were fighting for what was right and good…though in reality it was just for what was right and good for the German race. During the Hundred Years War, everyone believed they were fighting for what was right, even if it was only for the benefit of their own monarchies. During the Crusades, Christians flocked to Jerusalem in droves and committed horrible atrocities along the way under the belief that they were doing what was right, even if in reality they were only doing what was right for Catholicism and its ally, the Byzantine Empire. You may think that I’m pushing a purely pacifistic notion, but trust me, I’m not. During World War II, the Allies were, indeed, fighting for what was right in liberating Jews and conquered nations, freeing the oppressed from the tyranny of the Axis Powers. That was a good and justified war.

But what about the war we call the Red Scare which was waged in the 1950s and 1960s? Was communistic belief really oppressing and killing people here in America (it was in the Soviet Union, but I’m not getting into that right now), or were we simply afraid of that which we deemed “un-American”? People were blacklisted, arrested and beaten, some even dying in tremendous poverty simply because we couldn’t tolerate that which was different from our patriotic ideals. Is a war like that justified, a war in which no one is being oppressed but in which we feel our patriotic values threatened? And therein lies the true danger, for in trying to destroy a supposed evil, history shows that we merely destroy its vessel, and the true evil lives on, having scarred and scorched our own souls. When the town leaders of Salem hanged or burned over a dozen people as witches, they inadvertently stained their own innocence. When Southern racists during the Civil Rights Movement murdered activists and people of color, they stained their souls with their dark acts, and evil became manifested in their own hearts.

So what is the solution here? Do we remain pacifistic unless we’re actually protecting the weak and defenseless? Well, that’s part of it. No declaration or act of war should be committed unless it’s backed by a heart of compassion for those in harm’s way. But there’s also another way to solve this issue, a way which may deter both sides on the path to war before war itself becomes necessary. That way is compassion itself: love. Rather than reacting to those who are different from us – who may, in fact, be wholly contrary to us – with hostility and hatred, we should instead respond to them with love and compassion. In Romans 12, the apostle Paul reiterated King Solomon’s advice that, by doing good to those who mean you harm, you will “heap hot coals upon [their] head.” Does this mean that you’ll do them harm? No. Instead, this means that your act of kindness just may jab at their conscience in an way which will ultimately bring them closer to you, rather than putting them in opposition to you. And if we can do this to those supposed enemies in and outside our society, then perhaps we won’t even need to wage a war of compassion.

A war of compassion, my friends, is all that I support, and only as a last resort. Any other type of war is a dishonor to the lives of my two veteran grandfathers. But a life of compassion, in seeking for peace, is the greatest way to honor them.

Until next time, friends…

Heroes Turned Against Each Other

Good day, all! I hope you had a good weekend. I enjoyed mine, for it was my birthday, and to celebrate, my wife took me to see the new Marvel film, Captain America: Civil War. It was a very enjoyable movie, but it brought to mind (my wife’s mind, that is) an interesting concept that we’ve recently seen in the new DC film, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. In both of these films, we see superheroes who should be united instead pitted against each other, ultimately revealed to be due to the machinations of an enigmatic third party. In Captain America, this third party was (spoiler alert) a man named Zemo, and in Batman vs. Superman, it was Lex Luthor.

A Politico-Cultural Shift

After the film, my wife’s mind went back in time a little bit, discussing something she’d recently read in a book suggested by our pastor. The author of that book claimed that in post-WWII America, the general population had a deep trust in our nation’s political leaders. However, during the Vietnam War era (approximately 1955 through 1975), America’s political leaders made many decisions with which the population in general strongly disagreed, and this resulted in the government losing the trust of the American population. We can see the results of that paradigm shift today in that politicians are still trying – quite unsuccessfully – to regain our trust.

And to make matters worse, we have government leaders who cannot help but disagree with each other in an attempt to gain that trust, as if by throwing the opposite party under the bus, they think they can get the American populace to side with them. I don’t think I need to go into great detail on the Republican/Democrat War in Congress, other than referencing this old blog post I wrote in September of 2014. In any case, this seems to be worsening as the years progress. In 2012, we saw Barack Obama face off in a political campaign against Mitt Romney, with many people expressing the sentiment that choosing between them was “like choosing the shiniest of two turds.” This year, however, we’re seeing two presidential nominees who are not only mistrusted, but downright hated by the majority of Americans. Yes, I’m speaking of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It seems the polarization of our society is epitomized in the competition between these two, and the people of our society are growing weary of it.

The Reflection of the Films

So what does this political despondency have to do with the two superhero films I mentioned at the start of this blog post? Well, what my wife pointed out was that those films both seem to reflect what we’re seeing in the political arena: those who should be helping us are far too busy fighting each other, having been turned on each other by some unknown force. Is it the devil? The Vietnam War? The general passage of time? Who knows? But it is peculiar that, as we see this great clash between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, a clash with origins going back to the Vietnam War era, we just happen to see two films from the two largest comics franchises covering the same topic. And these films were released just over a month apart from each other. Is this a coincidence? Can this be a coincidence?

For the sake of being fully informed, I’d like to point out when the storylines for each film were written. Batman vs. Superman is based in great part on the 1986 four-part comic book series, The Dark Knight Returns, though it also borrows heavily from the ever-popular 1992 storyline, The Death of Superman. Captain America: Civil War is based on the 2006-2007 comic book series, Civil War. Looking at these dates, I think it would be a mighty stretch to say that they are immediate reflections of the post Vietnam War era political situation. More likely, they reflect the eventual aftereffects of that political climate after it’s had a few decades to mature. Essentially, both of these films reflect different stages in the political change our society has undergone, and they both reflect a pessimistic view of our governing forces.

I married a brilliant woman, who notices things that go right over my head.

Until next time, friends…

The Exterior Battle

Hello. This is a follow-up to last week’s blog post, in which I discussed the battle raging between darkness and light inside each of us. Sometimes we may have what I would call “resting periods,” times when we’re not tried and pulled between the forces of good and the forces of evil. But in time, the battle will erupt again and our souls will be tested, tempted, forged, broken and reshaped by the struggle. There may be times when we fall, we fail and we give in to the darkness, but the war is not won in those times, and there will always be some light left to guide us back, so long as we strive hard enough for it.

Now what is both unfortunate and quite fascinating is that this battle isn’t limited to our interior selves. With every choice we make, we create ripples out in the world, affecting our neighbors, our friends and even our acquaintances. Thus, the world is shaped by these ripples, and when the combined souls of humanity turn toward the shadows, we can see the gloom that hangs over the Earth. But when humanity again turns back to the light, then we see the liberation of prisoners and the destruction of dark camps. Thus, our battle becomes the war of the world.

I found an interesting example of this in the novel, Lord of the Flies. To be wholly honest, I’ve never read the book; rather, I watched the summary and analysis of it by an ingenious YouTube series called Thug Notes, which I highly recommend. Anyway, in Lord of the Flies, a group of boys survive a plane crash on a tropical island, and they quickly begin to form a system of governance. However, this steadily disintegrates in a struggle for power and dominance, and as the boys give in to the darkness within themselves, they pursue their former leader in an attempt to kill him. But at the last moment, the boys are discovered by a British soldier who found the island, and it’s suggested that this halts the dark impulses of the boys.

What this seems to suggest is that civilization is what will bring the boys back from their darkness. Thus, one could argue that civilization (i.e. the exterior world) is what banishes away our darkness and encourages our light. However, Thug Notes points out that the soldier who rescues the boys is, himself, engaged in a similar war, only on a much grander scale. Therefore, it’s not that civilization or the exterior world will help us to banish the darkness, but instead that these exterior realities are a reflection of ourselves. As we war with ourselves so humanity wars with itself. As we allow ourselves to fall into the interior darkness, so too do we spread that darkness across the world through violent conflicts and self-righteous intolerance.

So can we change the world through systemic alterations? Do we save this planet by trying to change our culture, or our policies, or our political systems? Or is the world instead saved by changing ourselves? Perhaps by giving in to the light within us, we can shine in this world and change it one person at a time. If we let our lights shine, then we will dispel the gloom and change the world. It all starts on the inside.

Until next time, friends…