I have mentioned before that I always want things now, or yesterday if possible. My lonely vision of the clearest path to love has, in the past, to be a speed demon and figure things out now or never. Accordingly, my guess is that God will do just the opposite, and bring me the person He has picked out for me much more slowly than I might have preferred she arrive. My reward for patience, faith, and trust in Him if He chooses to take me down that path to finding earthly love is happiness and bliss beyond everything I have known so far, combined, if only I will let Him.
I once read in a book that God often heals our wounds by taking us back through them, and in so doing forces us to confront those fears and hurts, to conquer them and remove their sting, and to allow for future growth in the process. That seems so backward from prevailing human logic, which says to wall off your hurts, push them down, and/or just keep pressing forward without dealing with them. That in turn reminded me of how God always shows up in our lives and how He loves to come through for us, but just like in the Bible, He never does it the same way twice. In fact, much like He takes us back through the wound to heal it, He also helps us conquer our weaknesses by confronting them head on, often in a way that makes no sense at the time and seem opposite of everything we think we know and want. Anything worth having is rarely obtained easily or by the most direct method we see to get there...my prayer every day of my life is that when it comes to me, I can recognize something special, and instead of questioning it to death and letting it die on the vine in the process, that I step out in a huge show of faith, seize it, and go after it with all my heart, soul, and might...I can think of very few things better than that. :)
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Back to Sleep Everyone
Back to sleep, everyone
"We've all said it, and some of them have denied it, but its the truth. Call them what you will left, liberal, Democrat, antiwar, progressivist, cowards, fools, appeasers but it all adds up to the same thing: they do not believe there should even be a war on Islamist terrorists, much less have any real concern for winning it, and they wish that 9/11 would just go away so we could all get back to our 9/10 state of soporific complacency while the threat represented by Islamist terrorists and the states that sponsor and support them festers, suppurates, and metastasizes.
They are, in truth, as I've said so many times ostriches, so frightened by the realities of life on this planet as to be completely dysfunctioned by that fear, and their only response to it is to bury their heads deeper in the sand. They do not want to fight Islamism and jihadism; they think the only enemies we have are those we've created ourselves, the only attacks well ever suffer are those we deserve, and there are no enemies out there who cant be made friends through yet another round of UN-managed negotiations or more foreign-aid bribery. They do not understand absolutism or fanaticism, and the only religious fundamentalists they're willing to firmly confront are those they know will never do them any real harm anyway. (Christians and Jews-- ed.)
If you want our national defense to be supervised by such people, vote Democrat. I know lots of people Bill Quick and Al Maviva, two people whose opinions I deeply respect and almost always agree with, come immediately to mind, but there are others who say they're done with the Republicans. I sympathize greatly; I'm pretty pi$$ed at them myself. Al and I have tossed some e-mails back and forth about all this, and I simply can't say he's wrong; I share his frustration, and I think it's more than clear that the Republicans do indeed need a damned sharp reminder of what they're supposed to be all about.
But every time I'm just about to the point of joining Al and Bill and tossing off a long goodbye-and-good-riddance letter to the Republicans here, I run across something like this...and the marrow-freezing thought of the Dems running our foreign-policy and national-security strategies stops me dead in my tracks.
Its no use to say that this guy only represents a fraction of the Democrats, or that the Kossacks dont represent the mainstream. That's crap, and we all know it. The Daily Kos, no matter what the small, beleaguered handful of Lieberman supporters out there may wishfully think, is the face of the Dems today. And even if it wasn't, anyone who can raise that much money for the principle-bereft, poll-driven swine that the Dems have become is guaranteed to have a voice in their agenda. Sure, forget 9/11 isn't official policy for the Donks, yet. But once the inmates of the Kos asylum decide it should be, then the Dems will obligingly consider it. Taxi drivers don't get to decide who rides and who doesn't; they take on whoever pays 'em, and they go where they're told...and so do whores.
And this is how their core supporters, whose voices will be heard, think. They, in their foreign-policy enlightenment, are over 9/11. They think we all should share their myopic wisdom. They want to take us back to 9/10. If allowed to, they will guarantee repeat performances of the most devastating attack perpetrated on American soil since Pearl Harbor, over and over again, until we either learn they're not only incapable of defending our country but disinterested in it, or we submit to a dhimmitude they self-servingly refuse to admit the existence of, one small, Cartoon Jihad-like step at a time...
And they're too damned blind and/or stupid to see that we already traveled the road they want to put us on, and its last mile is a gore-smeared stretch of concrete with American corpses strewn across it crushed from having fallen over a hundred stories to a gruesome death that could have been avoided but for our own wishful thinking, our own blissful ignorance, our own fear of confronting the harsher realities of the war were in a war we'll either win or lose, but don't have the luxury of opting out of, and never did. Apparently, the road they want us on runs in a circle, and the law requires that we travel it blindfolded.
Compare: the Islamists will never give in, and you can bet that they aren't eager to forget their great triumph on 9/11; theyre in this for the long haul, for a thousand years if necessary, and anyone who doesnt believe it is cordially invited to just ask them. Alternatively, you could consult the history books for a refutation of that untenable disbelief. On the other hand, the LLL/MSM/Dem Axis is exhausted, and ready to move on after less than five years. If were so foolish ourselves as to let them run the fight, guess who's going to win it?
There must not be another Democrat President until this sort of delusional, irresponsible thinking is stamped out root and branch. The Democrats and their feckless policies are an indulgence, proffering a risk we cant afford to take. Theres simply not much else to be said."
The above text is via Mike at Cold Fury...my thoughts are and have been along the same lines for a while now. It blows my mind how a party as skilled at winning elections the past decade and has enjoyed such smashing success in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the GWOT in general (yes there are mistakes and messes, such is the nature of warfare and cleaning up years of neglect and policy incompetence from decades past in the Middle East) is equally incapable of communicating those successes. Even worse than that, outside of foreign policy, the Republican Party of today has dissolved and devolved into a spineless, squishy version of what its constituents elected it to be (see McCain, Specter, Graham, Hagel, Chafee, Snowe, etc. ad nauseam).
They have abandoned even the pretenses of conservatism on everything from fiscal responsibility to illegal immigration and seem to be unable to handle prosperity by governing like the majority they actually are...and for what? They want to be seen as nice and compassionate and understanding, not mean-spirited...to be liked, stroked, petted, their egos inflated by the Beltway press corps and the MSM, and the only way to do that is to run headlong as fast as possible away from anything remotely related to conservative principles. (Disclaimer: my idea of conservative principles can be summed up in fifteen words, via Hugh Hewitt, which don't cover everything but which would be a fine start..."Win the war. Secure the borders. Cut the taxes. Control the Spending. Confirm the judges." If this happened, the GOP would easily have a filibuster-proof majority in both houses of Congress by the end of the decade.)
*deep breath* All that said, not a single bit of any of this matters if national security is not taken care of. As sad as it is, there are two political parties in this country right now with any power, and to borrow the phrase from South Park, it is the choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. I wish more than just about anything that I didn't have to be a single issue voter, but for now I do. The only issue for this generation that really matters, the question that will have to be answered over the next several elections is: Do we want to live in dhimmitude, and do we want that for our children and grandchildren? I certainly don't, and the Democratic Party, being run by the inmates of the asylum these days, it will take us there one appeasement, one surrender at a time. The GOP is the only party right now who can offer at least a possibility that maybe we don't have to be dhimmis at any point in our future. Because of that, I hold my nose and vote for the GOP, working within the system for change where possible, in part by supporting candidates in primaries and elections who are actual conservatives (not just someone with an R behind his/her name) at the grassroots level where possible. Oh how I would love some variety in my political diet, but until there is an opposition party who is both loyal to this country rather than to the reacquisition of power and which can be taken seriously on national security/foreign policy matters, I won't get it.
"We've all said it, and some of them have denied it, but its the truth. Call them what you will left, liberal, Democrat, antiwar, progressivist, cowards, fools, appeasers but it all adds up to the same thing: they do not believe there should even be a war on Islamist terrorists, much less have any real concern for winning it, and they wish that 9/11 would just go away so we could all get back to our 9/10 state of soporific complacency while the threat represented by Islamist terrorists and the states that sponsor and support them festers, suppurates, and metastasizes.
They are, in truth, as I've said so many times ostriches, so frightened by the realities of life on this planet as to be completely dysfunctioned by that fear, and their only response to it is to bury their heads deeper in the sand. They do not want to fight Islamism and jihadism; they think the only enemies we have are those we've created ourselves, the only attacks well ever suffer are those we deserve, and there are no enemies out there who cant be made friends through yet another round of UN-managed negotiations or more foreign-aid bribery. They do not understand absolutism or fanaticism, and the only religious fundamentalists they're willing to firmly confront are those they know will never do them any real harm anyway. (Christians and Jews-- ed.)
If you want our national defense to be supervised by such people, vote Democrat. I know lots of people Bill Quick and Al Maviva, two people whose opinions I deeply respect and almost always agree with, come immediately to mind, but there are others who say they're done with the Republicans. I sympathize greatly; I'm pretty pi$$ed at them myself. Al and I have tossed some e-mails back and forth about all this, and I simply can't say he's wrong; I share his frustration, and I think it's more than clear that the Republicans do indeed need a damned sharp reminder of what they're supposed to be all about.
But every time I'm just about to the point of joining Al and Bill and tossing off a long goodbye-and-good-riddance letter to the Republicans here, I run across something like this...and the marrow-freezing thought of the Dems running our foreign-policy and national-security strategies stops me dead in my tracks.
Its no use to say that this guy only represents a fraction of the Democrats, or that the Kossacks dont represent the mainstream. That's crap, and we all know it. The Daily Kos, no matter what the small, beleaguered handful of Lieberman supporters out there may wishfully think, is the face of the Dems today. And even if it wasn't, anyone who can raise that much money for the principle-bereft, poll-driven swine that the Dems have become is guaranteed to have a voice in their agenda. Sure, forget 9/11 isn't official policy for the Donks, yet. But once the inmates of the Kos asylum decide it should be, then the Dems will obligingly consider it. Taxi drivers don't get to decide who rides and who doesn't; they take on whoever pays 'em, and they go where they're told...and so do whores.
And this is how their core supporters, whose voices will be heard, think. They, in their foreign-policy enlightenment, are over 9/11. They think we all should share their myopic wisdom. They want to take us back to 9/10. If allowed to, they will guarantee repeat performances of the most devastating attack perpetrated on American soil since Pearl Harbor, over and over again, until we either learn they're not only incapable of defending our country but disinterested in it, or we submit to a dhimmitude they self-servingly refuse to admit the existence of, one small, Cartoon Jihad-like step at a time...
And they're too damned blind and/or stupid to see that we already traveled the road they want to put us on, and its last mile is a gore-smeared stretch of concrete with American corpses strewn across it crushed from having fallen over a hundred stories to a gruesome death that could have been avoided but for our own wishful thinking, our own blissful ignorance, our own fear of confronting the harsher realities of the war were in a war we'll either win or lose, but don't have the luxury of opting out of, and never did. Apparently, the road they want us on runs in a circle, and the law requires that we travel it blindfolded.
Compare: the Islamists will never give in, and you can bet that they aren't eager to forget their great triumph on 9/11; theyre in this for the long haul, for a thousand years if necessary, and anyone who doesnt believe it is cordially invited to just ask them. Alternatively, you could consult the history books for a refutation of that untenable disbelief. On the other hand, the LLL/MSM/Dem Axis is exhausted, and ready to move on after less than five years. If were so foolish ourselves as to let them run the fight, guess who's going to win it?
There must not be another Democrat President until this sort of delusional, irresponsible thinking is stamped out root and branch. The Democrats and their feckless policies are an indulgence, proffering a risk we cant afford to take. Theres simply not much else to be said."
The above text is via Mike at Cold Fury...my thoughts are and have been along the same lines for a while now. It blows my mind how a party as skilled at winning elections the past decade and has enjoyed such smashing success in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the GWOT in general (yes there are mistakes and messes, such is the nature of warfare and cleaning up years of neglect and policy incompetence from decades past in the Middle East) is equally incapable of communicating those successes. Even worse than that, outside of foreign policy, the Republican Party of today has dissolved and devolved into a spineless, squishy version of what its constituents elected it to be (see McCain, Specter, Graham, Hagel, Chafee, Snowe, etc. ad nauseam).
They have abandoned even the pretenses of conservatism on everything from fiscal responsibility to illegal immigration and seem to be unable to handle prosperity by governing like the majority they actually are...and for what? They want to be seen as nice and compassionate and understanding, not mean-spirited...to be liked, stroked, petted, their egos inflated by the Beltway press corps and the MSM, and the only way to do that is to run headlong as fast as possible away from anything remotely related to conservative principles. (Disclaimer: my idea of conservative principles can be summed up in fifteen words, via Hugh Hewitt, which don't cover everything but which would be a fine start..."Win the war. Secure the borders. Cut the taxes. Control the Spending. Confirm the judges." If this happened, the GOP would easily have a filibuster-proof majority in both houses of Congress by the end of the decade.)
*deep breath* All that said, not a single bit of any of this matters if national security is not taken care of. As sad as it is, there are two political parties in this country right now with any power, and to borrow the phrase from South Park, it is the choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. I wish more than just about anything that I didn't have to be a single issue voter, but for now I do. The only issue for this generation that really matters, the question that will have to be answered over the next several elections is: Do we want to live in dhimmitude, and do we want that for our children and grandchildren? I certainly don't, and the Democratic Party, being run by the inmates of the asylum these days, it will take us there one appeasement, one surrender at a time. The GOP is the only party right now who can offer at least a possibility that maybe we don't have to be dhimmis at any point in our future. Because of that, I hold my nose and vote for the GOP, working within the system for change where possible, in part by supporting candidates in primaries and elections who are actual conservatives (not just someone with an R behind his/her name) at the grassroots level where possible. Oh how I would love some variety in my political diet, but until there is an opposition party who is both loyal to this country rather than to the reacquisition of power and which can be taken seriously on national security/foreign policy matters, I won't get it.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Courage to Lay the Smack Down on Idiots
I have been accused in days gone by of being too harsh on and re: people who do mind-blowingly foolish things and then suffer the altogether too predictable slings and arrows of their choices. I prefer the perspective that I am a realist who does his best to call things as they truly are, free of spin and excuses. This is not to say that I have never messed up or chosen a poor course of action, because I have done so more often than I would care to admit. The point is that I acknowledge the old saying "But for the grace of God go I", and that I attempt to correct past foolishness moving forward. More than that, whether society likes it or not, people who have been there and done that and who then try to advise others against it are not being "judgmental" or "hypocritical", but rather trying to prevent someone else whom they likely care about from going through any given situation learning things the hard way. I am glad Ann Coulter and Steve from the blog "Hog on Ice" had the courage to call a spade a spade and lay the smack down on PC junkies making excuses for people who, while they did not "deserve" what they did, were at a minimum substantial contributors to the calamities the befell/are befalling them...I normally just link to things, but this is important enough to repost almost in its entirety, and pay special attention to the stuff highlighted in bold and/or underlined, because those were the thoughts that had me nodding my head and saying "Amen!"
Money quotes from Ann's column, "LIE DOWN WITH STRIPPERS, WAKE UP WITH PLEAS" from April 19, 2006
"However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money. Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money. (Does anyone else detect a common thread here?) And if you are a girl in Aruba or New York City, among the best ways to avoid being the victim of a horrible crime is to not get drunk in public or go off in a car with men you just met. While we're on the subject of things every 5-year-old should know, I also recommend against dousing yourself in gasoline and striking a match."
"Everyone makes mistakes, especially young people, but the outpouring of support for the victims and their families is obscuring what ought to be a flashing neon warning for potential future victims. Whenever a gun is used in a crime, there are never-ending news stories about how dangerous guns are. But these girls go out alone, late at night, drunk off their butts, and there's nary a peep about the dangers of drunk women on their own in public. It's their "right." Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake, or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation and I don't care who knows about it! But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky."...
The liberal charge of "hypocrisy" has so permeated the public consciousness that no one is willing to condemn any behavior anymore, no matter how seedy. The unstated rule is: If you've done it, you can't ever criticize it. In no area except morality would a sane person believe he can't criticize something stupid because he's done it. How about: If you've ever forgotten to fill up your car and run out of gas, you must forevermore defend a person's right to ignore the gas gauge. Or if you've ever forgotten to wear a coat in cold weather and caught a cold, henceforth you are obliged to encourage others not to dress appropriately in the winter.
This deep-seated societal fear of being accused of "hypocrisy" applies only to behavior touching on morals, but we're all sinners, incapable of redemption on our own. The liberal answer to sin is to say: I can never pay this back, so my argument will be I didn't do anything wrong. The Religion of Peace's answer is: I've just beheaded an innocent man I'm off to meet Allah! I don't know what the Jewish answer is, but I'm sure it's something other than, "therefore, what I did is no longer bad behavior" or the Talmud could be a lot shorter. The Christian answer is: I can never pay this back, but luckily that Christ fellow has already paid my debt."
And for dessert, Steve, from "Hog on Ice" blog:
"The basic message of Ann's column is: Don't be a dumbass. And the corollary is: it's okay to tell someone else when he's being a dumbass, even if you're not perfect."
"The Duke players may be guilty. Or not. But one thing is for sure. They wouldn't be in this situation if they hadn't hired a sleazy, gutter-trash woman to come to their house and drop her pants. And the stripper may or may not have been raped. But she would be a lot less likely to be raped if she didn't show up alone in buildings full of drunken idiots and remove her clothing and do her best to get them sexually aroused. That's what Ann says, more or less. And she's obviously right. And she also says something no one in the press has the cojones to say. Referring to the Holloway case, she says it's a bad idea for a weak little girl to get drunk in casinos with horny young men she doesn't know very well. I'm paraphrasing loosely, but I am giving you the essence of the column."
"Why isn't everyone on the news saying these things? Why isn't Bill "Who's Looking Out for You?" O'Reilly pointing his finger at the camera and saying, "Do NOT go to foreign countries and get drunk alone with horny morons"? Maybe he is, but I haven't seen it. Isn't that the single most important lesson of the Holloway case? Morons are always going to be morons. You can't change them. You can whine and PMS about your rights all you want. They'll still rape you if they can. And if you're a weak, defenseless woman, they CAN. People on the news should be saying, "Look what happened to this girl! You could be next!"
Maybe the authorities will find her. Maybe someone will be punished. Who cares? She's still DEAD, and her parents are torn apart, and they'll never get over it. Obviously, the situation would be better if she had never gone out alone with a bunch of hormone-driven assholes. See if you can complete this sentence: "An ounce of prevention is worth _ _____ __ ____."
Natalie Holloway died because she did something unbelievably dumb. She wasn't struck by lightning while she sat in her hotel reading the Bible. She went out alone with three lust-crazed idiots and got drunk. Other girls are doing the same thing this very second. Some of them are going to be raped, or worse. I think it's okay to tell them, "Look what happened to Natalie Holloway when she did what you're doing." Who could be against that?
Ann is right about hypocrisy, too. We live in a country where mouth-breathers and slackjaws accuse people of hypocrisy whenever they criticize any action they themselves have taken in the past. It's sad that the average person has a tiny brain, and that such stupidity passes for logic. Ann tears that argument apart pretty well this week.
An accusation of hypocrisy is a tool a sub-par mind uses to excuse bad or stupid behavior. If I jumped off the Empire State Building, does that mean I lose the right to tell other people not to jump? Of course not. It may seem otherwise to you, if you move your lips when you read and you find butterfly ballots confusing, but to an intelligent person, it's obvious that it's ALWAYS okay for ANYONE to advise you to avoid stupid behavior.
In 2006 America, only Jesus Christ is allowed to criticize a person's immorality or stupidity. He alone is perfect. The rest of us have to grin like primitive apes and say, "Oooh, I don't want to be JUDGMENTAL." You know what? I've done a lot of stupid things, and many times, I've paid a price. That doesn't make me a hypocrite. That makes me an AUTHORITY on what not to do.
True hypocrisy involves an element of dishonesty. Falling short of perfection does not make you a hypocrite. If you want to do something stupid or immoral, don't be a whiny little boy and say, "You're not perfect, either." Be a man and say, "I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm doing it anyway, because I don't care if it's right.", or "because I'm weak.", or "because I'm an addict." Don't hide behind a child's favorite lame argument."
Money quotes from Ann's column, "LIE DOWN WITH STRIPPERS, WAKE UP WITH PLEAS" from April 19, 2006
"However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money. Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money. (Does anyone else detect a common thread here?) And if you are a girl in Aruba or New York City, among the best ways to avoid being the victim of a horrible crime is to not get drunk in public or go off in a car with men you just met. While we're on the subject of things every 5-year-old should know, I also recommend against dousing yourself in gasoline and striking a match."
"Everyone makes mistakes, especially young people, but the outpouring of support for the victims and their families is obscuring what ought to be a flashing neon warning for potential future victims. Whenever a gun is used in a crime, there are never-ending news stories about how dangerous guns are. But these girls go out alone, late at night, drunk off their butts, and there's nary a peep about the dangers of drunk women on their own in public. It's their "right." Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake, or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation and I don't care who knows about it! But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky."...
The liberal charge of "hypocrisy" has so permeated the public consciousness that no one is willing to condemn any behavior anymore, no matter how seedy. The unstated rule is: If you've done it, you can't ever criticize it. In no area except morality would a sane person believe he can't criticize something stupid because he's done it. How about: If you've ever forgotten to fill up your car and run out of gas, you must forevermore defend a person's right to ignore the gas gauge. Or if you've ever forgotten to wear a coat in cold weather and caught a cold, henceforth you are obliged to encourage others not to dress appropriately in the winter.
This deep-seated societal fear of being accused of "hypocrisy" applies only to behavior touching on morals, but we're all sinners, incapable of redemption on our own. The liberal answer to sin is to say: I can never pay this back, so my argument will be I didn't do anything wrong. The Religion of Peace's answer is: I've just beheaded an innocent man I'm off to meet Allah! I don't know what the Jewish answer is, but I'm sure it's something other than, "therefore, what I did is no longer bad behavior" or the Talmud could be a lot shorter. The Christian answer is: I can never pay this back, but luckily that Christ fellow has already paid my debt."
And for dessert, Steve, from "Hog on Ice" blog:
"The basic message of Ann's column is: Don't be a dumbass. And the corollary is: it's okay to tell someone else when he's being a dumbass, even if you're not perfect."
"The Duke players may be guilty. Or not. But one thing is for sure. They wouldn't be in this situation if they hadn't hired a sleazy, gutter-trash woman to come to their house and drop her pants. And the stripper may or may not have been raped. But she would be a lot less likely to be raped if she didn't show up alone in buildings full of drunken idiots and remove her clothing and do her best to get them sexually aroused. That's what Ann says, more or less. And she's obviously right. And she also says something no one in the press has the cojones to say. Referring to the Holloway case, she says it's a bad idea for a weak little girl to get drunk in casinos with horny young men she doesn't know very well. I'm paraphrasing loosely, but I am giving you the essence of the column."
"Why isn't everyone on the news saying these things? Why isn't Bill "Who's Looking Out for You?" O'Reilly pointing his finger at the camera and saying, "Do NOT go to foreign countries and get drunk alone with horny morons"? Maybe he is, but I haven't seen it. Isn't that the single most important lesson of the Holloway case? Morons are always going to be morons. You can't change them. You can whine and PMS about your rights all you want. They'll still rape you if they can. And if you're a weak, defenseless woman, they CAN. People on the news should be saying, "Look what happened to this girl! You could be next!"
Maybe the authorities will find her. Maybe someone will be punished. Who cares? She's still DEAD, and her parents are torn apart, and they'll never get over it. Obviously, the situation would be better if she had never gone out alone with a bunch of hormone-driven assholes. See if you can complete this sentence: "An ounce of prevention is worth _ _____ __ ____."
Natalie Holloway died because she did something unbelievably dumb. She wasn't struck by lightning while she sat in her hotel reading the Bible. She went out alone with three lust-crazed idiots and got drunk. Other girls are doing the same thing this very second. Some of them are going to be raped, or worse. I think it's okay to tell them, "Look what happened to Natalie Holloway when she did what you're doing." Who could be against that?
Ann is right about hypocrisy, too. We live in a country where mouth-breathers and slackjaws accuse people of hypocrisy whenever they criticize any action they themselves have taken in the past. It's sad that the average person has a tiny brain, and that such stupidity passes for logic. Ann tears that argument apart pretty well this week.
An accusation of hypocrisy is a tool a sub-par mind uses to excuse bad or stupid behavior. If I jumped off the Empire State Building, does that mean I lose the right to tell other people not to jump? Of course not. It may seem otherwise to you, if you move your lips when you read and you find butterfly ballots confusing, but to an intelligent person, it's obvious that it's ALWAYS okay for ANYONE to advise you to avoid stupid behavior.
In 2006 America, only Jesus Christ is allowed to criticize a person's immorality or stupidity. He alone is perfect. The rest of us have to grin like primitive apes and say, "Oooh, I don't want to be JUDGMENTAL." You know what? I've done a lot of stupid things, and many times, I've paid a price. That doesn't make me a hypocrite. That makes me an AUTHORITY on what not to do.
True hypocrisy involves an element of dishonesty. Falling short of perfection does not make you a hypocrite. If you want to do something stupid or immoral, don't be a whiny little boy and say, "You're not perfect, either." Be a man and say, "I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm doing it anyway, because I don't care if it's right.", or "because I'm weak.", or "because I'm an addict." Don't hide behind a child's favorite lame argument."
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Where Hope and Faith End
I am speeding down the road of my life toward year 27, and I have found but one place faith and hope dare not tread because they can not...and that's in a relationship, friendship or romantic, and sometimes even family, where trust has been irretrievably lost.
While I do believe that God in His omnipotence can fix anything He pleases, human beings are not like God, because we have been gifted/cursed with this thing called memory. Like Elton John said in "Sad Songs (Say So Much)", "Ironing out the rough spots, is the hardest part when memories remain." Unlike God, who washes away your sins and never remembers them again, people can and do remember. Forgiveness, faith, and moving onward, upward, and forward is possible in any hurtful situation I can think of except where someone no longer enjoys your trust or the sense that they are credible. If you have reached the point with someone where you no longer believe what they say or have serious doubts when they say it, then the best thing you can do is just move on, because that can never be fixed. As the saying goes, once that happens, it truly is all over but the wailing and the gnashing of teeth.
While I do believe that God in His omnipotence can fix anything He pleases, human beings are not like God, because we have been gifted/cursed with this thing called memory. Like Elton John said in "Sad Songs (Say So Much)", "Ironing out the rough spots, is the hardest part when memories remain." Unlike God, who washes away your sins and never remembers them again, people can and do remember. Forgiveness, faith, and moving onward, upward, and forward is possible in any hurtful situation I can think of except where someone no longer enjoys your trust or the sense that they are credible. If you have reached the point with someone where you no longer believe what they say or have serious doubts when they say it, then the best thing you can do is just move on, because that can never be fixed. As the saying goes, once that happens, it truly is all over but the wailing and the gnashing of teeth.
Monday, April 3, 2006
I Step Out, He Steps Up...Only Makes Sense
In thinking about an earlier post I wrote about "fear of the known" and how especially true that is of my own walk with God, in whom I purport to believe, I wonder sometimes why I find myself stuck in the present by fear at all. The good news is that I can change my perspective and actions with each new moment and not stay there, but the bad news is that it still happens. Another factor in that fear is well summarized in a sermon I heard last weekend: "People are often so afraid of doing something wrong that they end up doing nothing at all."
Well, that hit me square upside the head I have to admit. It is so easy to take my eyes off the ball and focus on the problems in life, the obstacles to what God has for me to do. If I am honest with myself, it is even more often out of selfish fear (i.e., what will people think of me, what will this cost me, etc.) that I don't do things and refuse to step out in faith...by worrying about the problems I missed the possibilities, and did nothing. I know God is bigger than those problems, and the interesting thing to me about Him is that he never comes through the same way twice. In the Bible, He created one of the greatest men of the Bible (Paul) by making him lame, used three lepers to defeat an entire army, and healed a crippled man by telling him to get up and walk. Those are just three examples, and they are all radically different.
The common thread in these stories and many others is that no matter the method, the people who trusted in the Lord and His strength and plan saw Him come through in ways they could not even imagine. That is exactly how it has unfolded in my life and situations of late...things I knew I had to do that God had laid on my heart but I didn't want to, and so I chickened out for a time. When I finally mustered the courage, however, God came through for me and worked in those situations in ways I could not foresee, all of them different and all of them great.
It's times like this that I am truly happy and content to serve the Lord. :)
Well, that hit me square upside the head I have to admit. It is so easy to take my eyes off the ball and focus on the problems in life, the obstacles to what God has for me to do. If I am honest with myself, it is even more often out of selfish fear (i.e., what will people think of me, what will this cost me, etc.) that I don't do things and refuse to step out in faith...by worrying about the problems I missed the possibilities, and did nothing. I know God is bigger than those problems, and the interesting thing to me about Him is that he never comes through the same way twice. In the Bible, He created one of the greatest men of the Bible (Paul) by making him lame, used three lepers to defeat an entire army, and healed a crippled man by telling him to get up and walk. Those are just three examples, and they are all radically different.
The common thread in these stories and many others is that no matter the method, the people who trusted in the Lord and His strength and plan saw Him come through in ways they could not even imagine. That is exactly how it has unfolded in my life and situations of late...things I knew I had to do that God had laid on my heart but I didn't want to, and so I chickened out for a time. When I finally mustered the courage, however, God came through for me and worked in those situations in ways I could not foresee, all of them different and all of them great.
It's times like this that I am truly happy and content to serve the Lord. :)
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