A month of thankfulness, Part Four

I want to share these posts with you, to help you consider what you are thankful for. Perhaps some are identical, perhaps some are analogous, perhaps some are completely foreign to you. But the thing that should stick with you is having an ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE, always. Just this one simple change in your life, on its own, can transform you.

Some of the details of these posts are rather personal; obviously, I'm not revealing anything i don't want to reveal. At this late stage, my life is an open book for reading and enhancement of others. But it also means there may be things which don't make sense because you don't know my background. Hopefully it will be clear enough in context, but leave a comment if there's something that's unclear, and I'll clarify. May God bless you in this season of thankfulness. 

A month of thanks. No different than any other month, except the thanks are on here as well as in my prayers.

Nov 15. I am thankful for the mother of my children. Although in the last eight years she has tested the requirement I have as a Christian of "love thy neighbor as thyself" more often than anyone else, I was married to her for almost fourteen years, most of them successfully. She always had my back during those years, and was unwaveringly supportive of my career. We shared virtually all of our child-rearing philosophies, made a great team when it came to money, social life, and the like, and I've got to say, when the two of us were both in a good mood, we made the most uproarious comic duo in public or private. She was smart, funny, attractive, and with the exception of shoe purchases grounded.

And it's because of her that we have five living children who are unfailingly praised for every imaginable characteristic. Hamilton, Sutherland, Rutherford, Dorothy and Charlotte are as wonderful as I could imagine having for children; our late Emerson was just as beautiful and undoubtedly would have been everything else his siblings are as well. Her pregnancies were ferocious; she bore them (and the children) more bravely than I would have. Thank you, Wendy.

A month of thanks. It’s no different than any other month except that it’s on this blog.

Nov 16. I am thankful for the field of music education in America. Across thirty years, I was privileged to work with some of the most dedicated teachers and students the nation had to offer. Perhaps more than any other field today, music ensembles require a level of delayed gratification unseen in America. A concert, a marching show- heck, just to sound decent on an instrument takes months of practice before you can see the results. And so does success of any real kind in life.

My best friends were made through that career. Students from the 1980s are still on my FB feed. And the memories I have are many of the most treasured I have.

A month of thanks. Just like any other month, except that the thanks show up on here.

Nov 17. I’m thankful for modern medicine. I’d be dead long ago without it.

I would have gone to my grave a century ago, not knowing that conserving my exercise was the key to survival: TAM increases when the skeletal muscles are used, so unlike most doctor advice, I am NOT to stay fit to fight this disease. But without the muscle biopsy going into the electron microscope at the U of U five years ago, I’d never have known that.

And without the medicines available today to fight the pain and other symptoms, I’d be dead. Even a few days without the venlafexine knocks my gyroscope out of whack; if I’m out of pramipexorale, the spasms overwhelm my ability to sleep, and I can barely go a day without the pain meds before life is unbearable for me. It’s getting unbearable anyway, but I’d’ve been long gone without the morphine, gabapentin, and oxycodone which combine to fight the pain now.

A month of thanks. Just like any other month, except this month is sponsored by the Russians on Facebook.

Nov 18. I am thankful for all the students I’ve had the privilege of working with in my career. When I was twenty, I was helping my mother teach her band classes in Newcastle. One afternoon, she was too sick to be there, so I covered her class. (What goes around comes around - now I’m the one too sick to be in my classroom so my assistant covers for me. Funny, God. Funny.)

That particular afternoon, every child was of their father the devil - even sweet little Brandy. I was still young and terrible, not to mention a type A personality. I did a terrible job that afternoon, and it was the most miserable experience I’d yet had teaching.

As I drove home, still fuming, I felt ... really ... ALIVE. Puzzled, I went to where my mom lay in her bed, told her about the class and how I’d felt.

Her explanation has stuck with me: You feel alive because what you did *mattered*. Succeed or fail, at least you get to have the feeling that what you’re doing matters.

Which is NOT what I’d thought about working as a chemical engineering graduate from Caltech for a SoCal oil company, my assumed destination had I chosen to return there instead of staying home to care for my mom. That afternoon, after asking one question to each of my teacher-parents (“knowing what you know now, would you still have gone into teaching?” Yes.), I chose my lifelong occupation.

And it rewarded me no end. I don’t mean the handful of plaques for my work, or trophies from band contests, or even salary. I mean the literally thousands of young men and women who it has been my pleasure and privilege to instruct in life basics 101, Smith style. Oh, and an F# is second finger.

To all my kids who are no longer kids, thank you. (And I know we aren’t supposed to have favorites, but I’d take my Kuna class of ‘99 back in a heartbeat....)

A month of thanks. No different than any other month, except that it’s on this blog for a change. It’s November. Go figure.

Nov 19. I am thankful for the Internet and the worldwide media connections it creates. Because of such, I developed an interest in Japanese marching bands, the Canadian CFL, Brazilian music (and occasionally women), and most importantly Australian Rules Football (hereinafter referenced as “footy”).

Footy has been my sporting life blood for about 5-7 years now, although I’ve watched it for more than fifteen, thanks to getting Fox Soccer channel for a couple of years in Payette. Wendy and the boys would go to sleep, and I’d watch the game of the week at 11 pm or so Saturday nights, and then the highlights show on Wednesdays. Developed my first taste during the Brisbane Lions’ three peat in 2001-3, had an enforced hiatus for a few years, and re-caught the bug a couple of years later, watching the Swans/West Coast grand finals, Geelong’s three titles, and when live radio of every game became a thing about six years back or so, I began spending my Fri/Sat over nights for six months a year sleeping with the Internet radio on softly, so as not to wake Melissa first and later any children who might be up. (Dana swears she sleeps through anything, but it stays soft just in case.)

And having followed it semi-religiously, I’ve become enough of an authority that I write opinion pieces about footy for Australian readers! The Roar is an online sports mag down under which I write for (footy AND American college football), and the major footy source in the country, afl.com.au, is considering bringing me in as a “foreign correspondent for next season! Can you imagine any of that happening in the pre-Internet world?

(The funniest part of writing for Australia is that my editor has to correct my Yankee spelling! Think about the way the British spell, and you’re not far wrong.)

The Universe and God in Twelve Dimensions

This is the opening chapter of my upcoming book, A Step Sideways: The Universe And God In Twelve Dimensions, and the primary purpose of the book will be made obvious very quickly. I hope you enjoy the premise, and that you'll be intrigued enough to want to read the book when it's finished. Enjoy! 

Dimension 0

A point.

A single point has no length, width, or height. It has no size whatsoever, no dimension. When we exist in one solitary point, we exist in Dimension Zero.

            Waxahachie, Texas, was a quiet enough town in 2017, when those four private investors decided that their way of “making America great again” was to finish the Superconducting Super Collider underneath the town – heck, underneath a good chunk of Ellis County, if you think about it. Dang thing’s over fifteen miles in diameter, fifty-four miles around, you know? And I think in their good ol’ boy Texas hearts and wallets, they’d’ve made the dang thing even bigger if more than a quarter of it hadn’t already been dug, just sitt’n there waiting for them to finish the job.

            But even now, thirteen years later, with the population doubled thanks to the SSC, Waxahachie’s still a pretty peaceful place. It’s still somewhere that you would feel good raising a family, you know?

            Too bad I don’t have a family to raise here.

            I’ve only been back here for a year, almost two, since they opened the SSC in late ‘28. I say “back” here, because one of my three degrees came from here, from the Southwestern Assemblies of God University, class of 2018. (Go, Lions!) Even played a little football there, like I did back in Burkbuckett – heck, you can’t be six-foot-anything in Texas and not play football, you know? Nothing special: NAIA-level lineman, was never going to start anyway, not even in the Central States League. But I got to play some, and I learned about teamwork on the field while I learned about God and a ton of other topics in the classroom.

            So, to fill in the missing years in my resume there, insert a second bachelor’s in mathematics from SMU – guarantee I wasn’t going to make the team there, even though I did have a year of eligibility left! – and my doctorate in particle physics from UT-Austin, knowing what was coming down the pike back there in Waxahachie.

            Because, see, here’s the thing: I’ve been a Christian all my life. Raised in the Assembly of God, went to church every Sunday, spoke my share of tongues, took enough communion to have eaten Christ’s entire arm off. (Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…) But even after being ordained, I knew there was something missing, something fundamentally wrong in the way I was connecting to the Lord. I was twenty-two years old, bachelors of divinity in hand, ready to go find me a nice church population to tend – and yet, I knew I wasn’t quite ready yet, you know? There was something… well, I don’t want to keep using the word “fundamental”, but that’s what it was: something foundational that was missing. A brick lacking in my cornerstone that would topple the entire structure one day through its absence.

            And as I was starting my senior year at SAGU, the news came out about the four oil men who had decided to take President Trump’s slogan to heart. They’d made a killing in the resurgent oil market that year, and wanted to do something significant. (I keep using the fundamental; they kept using the word significant. Guess we’re all a bit semantically fixated sometimes.) And they’d been looking into what the situation was with the Super Collider that was mothballed back in 1994 (I wasn’t even alive back then!), found out the tunnels that existed were still in great shape, that a chem company called Magnablend had bought the site but not done anything with it yet, and decided over beer and ribs to buy the thing and “to run them CERN folks into the ground.” (Their words, not mine. I’m a team player, remember?)

            So they did. Buy it, I mean. The CERN Large Hadron Collider’s done some amazing work in the fifteen, twenty years it’s been smashing particles, and its reputation is safe from us. But it wasn’t “us” back in 2017, of course; it was “them”. As in, “Them oil men are going to make fools of themselves, reinvesting in that white elephant! Don’t they know it got shut down for a reason?”

            They did, in fact, know. Cost overruns. Mostly the cost of the magnets they needed, not so much the tunneling, which it turns out isn’t as big of the budget as you’d think (and even less in 2018, when they’d already had fourteen miles in place before day one!). And the magnets? Well, twenty-five years is a loo-oong time in technology years, and those magnets were much more easily produced, more powerful, and a tenth of the price they were in 1992. So when the original was shut down, the government had spent two billion dollars already, with an expected ten more to spend, before Mr. Clinton reluctantly signed off on its shutdown. By the time these four dudes finished the project in 2028, it had only cost them eight billion, and that’s in today’s pesos! Someth’n to be said for private management and a lack of government bureaucracy, but a big chunk of that savings was the improvement in tech since the nineties.

            And it flicked a switch in me. I’d gotten hooked on science from our chem and physics teacher back in high school, over my mother’s objections. At the time, the big thing in particle science the search for the “God Particle”, the super heavy boson that Peter Higgs and Francois Englert theorized, and CERN found before I graduated from Burkbuckett High School, up on the OK border. When I heard about the Superconducting Super Collider project starting up again in 2017, it renewed that love in my gut for the physics I’d set aside in my devotion to God.

            And it was then that I realized what the missing brick was in my foundational belief system:

            How can I believe the literal translation of my Lord’s Word, as He has given it to us through the prophets in the sixty-six books of the Bible, when the scientific world was making discovery after discovery that seemed to put that Scripture in question?

            Which was right? The Bible, or the Universe?

            Mind you, it’s not like they’re really as contradictory as some people make it sound like they are. Most people don’t realize, for example, that the Bible always assumed the earth was a sphere, unlike most of the societies alive fifteen hundred years before Christ. I was just reading Isaiah 40, which happens to be where I am in my yearly reading straight through of the Bible (and like any lifelong college student, I take such copious notes that I have to work to remember to listen to what God is telling me with his Word each day, not just read and digest it untested). In verse 22, he casually throws in this verse:

It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers…

            The “circle of the earth”? The actual Hebrew word means “sphere” – so they called it a globe for hundreds of years before the Greeks and Romans watched sailors disappear below the horizon and famously realized the earth is round. (Yes, there were backwards stragglers who thought Columbus and Magellan would fall of the edge, but they were just stupid, not the norm.)

            We could go on and on… Do you know why God told man to circumcise male Hebrew babies on the eighth day of life in particular? Scientists have recently ascertained that the combination of wound coagulation (which increases over time as babies live their first month) and comfort of the surgery (while babies do feel pain, despite calls to the contrary by fools, it is less at birth than down the road) makes the eighth day the ideal date for circumcision for the health and well-being of the baby! And God knew that already and ordered it for His People from the very beginning!

            Many of the food restrictions of the Old Testament were obviously designed to keep the nomadic Israelites healthy and alive, and that’s partially why some of them were rescinded in Christ’s time – they were no longer medically necessary. The most obvious of these is the restriction on eating pork, a meat that turns deadly when it starts to go unrefrigerated. God chose simply to forbid his nomadic people the deadliest meats (there are long lists of animals that are ‘unclean’, although some of those are designed to keep up away from animals that the idolatrous pagans around them worshipped).

            There are literally dozens of these “coincidences”, and all of these things add up. I was certain that there was more method than madness to the Bible’s many rules, statutes, commandments, and so forth. But I couldn’t put my finger on it.

So I decided, two months before graduation, that I needed to find an answer to that all-important question if I was to become a true servant of God, and certainly before I could shepherd anyone else. So I applied to and got accepted at Southern Methodist University in Dallas (Go, Mustangs!), majoring in mathematics with an engineering specialization, with the sole intent on going on to graduate work in particle physics. Three years later, I was working with amazing physicists like Willy Fischler and Duane Dicus and Jacques Distler at the University of Texas at Austin (Go, Longhorns!), learning everything I prayed I would need to get on at the SSC when it opened in a few years.

            Four years there left me just enough time to get some practical experience at one of the National Accelerator Labs (the one out in the South Bay, near where the 49ers played. Even got to see a couple of NFL games there, including seeing my beloved Cowboys play!), plus a trip to Switzerland as a “visiting scientist” (sounds like I was some high-fallutin’ hotshot!) for three months to study what the folks at CERN were doing now, before I landed the cherished gig back here in Waxahachie, studying and working on whatever our calling would be.

I had no idea what projects I’d be working on, but I knew it would have importance. And I knew it would bring me closer to my goal – the understanding of the relationship between God and the Universe he’s created.

            So, there’s my life and career in a nutshell up until now. And all of it was aimed at answering one question, reconciling one conflict in my world’s paradigm. For example, in all my years, I’ve never had a serious girlfriend. Why? Well, before I left high school, it was mostly because I was a math geek, and afterwards, my studies always took precedence. And today, thirty-one years after birth, I’m still lost in those studies, in the question that supersedes all other questions:

            How do I reconcile what the Bible says with what modern science says?

            Amazingly, I got the chance to find out.

            And now, I get to share that knowledge with you.

Glorify the God Who created the sun and the moon

In the middle of the day today, August 21st, there will be a total solar eclipse in the United States. Here in Idaho, it will pass through the center of the state, just north of my location, around 11:30 in the morning.

And we will stare at the sky through the welder's glasses, and marvel at the miracle that the moon is both 400 times closer to the earth than the sun is, and 400 times smaller than the sun is, and therefore is capable of exactly covering the sun.

But if you choose to marvel at the spectacle in front of you, don't forget to marvel at the Creator of both the sun and the moon.

Don't forget to marvel at the One Who someday soon will blacken sun, moon, and stars in His Coming to rapture His People from the earth.

Don't forget to praise GOD for the miracles He provides.

Don't Believe In God Yet? You Probably Believe in SOME-thing...

     We are fundamentally drawn to understanding that there IS something greater than us "out there". The Holy Spirit will make Himself known to everyone at some point - just because you choose to reject Him, to reject Christ and God the Father, won't quench that feeling that there IS a greater Truth. You'll put another name on it - aliens, Mother Nature, the majesty of science, the Illuminati - but we are driven to that knowledge for a reason.

     This article came from the New York Times - the link goes to the entire article, but I want to share parts of it here. This is written by a NYT author named Clay Routledge:

     Are Americans becoming less religious? It depends on what you mean by “religious.”

     Polls certainly indicate a decline in religious affiliation, practice and belief. Just a couple of decades ago, about 95 percent of Americans reported belonging to a religious group. This number is now around 75 percent. And far fewer are actively religious: The percentage of regular churchgoers may be as low as 15 to 20 percent. As for religious belief, the Pew Research Center found that from 2007 to 2014 the percentage of Americans who reported being absolutely confident God exists dropped from 71 percent to 63 percent.

     Nonetheless, there is reason to doubt the death of religion, or at least the death of what you might call the “religious mind” — our concern with existential questions and our search for meaning. A growing body of research suggests that the evidence for a decline in traditional religious belief, identity and practice does not reflect a decline in this underlying spiritual inclination.

    I felt around the edges of it for decades before He finally smacked me in the head a few times and I couldn't ignore Him any more despite my best efforts. I was the biggest "there's always a scientific explanation" guy there was - and I still see God using modern science to work His wonders more often than most Christians - but eventually even I had to admit the Truth. If my sweet late wife Melissa were here, she could tell you how hard I fought it. My son Hamilton still fights it just as hard, even when he admits the Truth grudgingly on occasion. I see my near-step-daughters going through the question stage now.

     Dozens of studies show a strong link between religiosity and existential concerns about death and meaning. For example, when research participants are presented with stimuli that bring death to mind or challenge a sense of meaning in life, they exhibit increased religiosity and interest in religious or spiritual ideas. Another body of research shows that religious beliefs provide and protect meaning.

     We search for this meaning because it's instilled in us from before the beginning. It's the old joke about becoming a Christian on your deathbed because that's the only time it matters to you. Quite often, however, it IS the only time we actually ALLOW ourselves to slow down and consider the matter objectively and seriously. We crowd out these critical thoughts with the noise of the world and society and distractions that the fleshly world culture forces on us, that the devil encourages specifically to keep us from listening to the whispers of the Holy Spirit, telling us that feeling of longing for the Holy Father's comfort the same way we long for our parents as children. 

     Furthermore, evidence suggests that the religious mind persists even when we lose faith in traditional religious beliefs and institutions. Consider that roughly 30 percent of Americans report they have felt in contact with someone who has died. Nearly 20 percent believe they have been in the presence of a ghost. About one-third of Americans believe that ghosts exist and can interact with and harm humans; around two-thirds hold supernatural or paranormal beliefs of some kind, including beliefs in reincarnation, spiritual energy and psychic powers.

     These numbers are much higher than they were in previous decades, when more people reported being highly religious. People who do not frequently attend church are twice as likely to believe in ghosts as those who are regular churchgoers. The less religious people are, the more likely they are to endorse empirically unsupported ideas about U.F.O.s, intelligent aliens monitoring the lives of humans and related conspiracies about a government cover-up of these phenomena.

     We all know there's Something Up There. If we've rejected the Holy Spirit's invitation to come to Christ, then we transfer that knowledge to something else. If we're into that sort of thing, we fill that hole with "aliens/time travelers from the future", or "government conspiracy/Big Brother is watching you", or "the Illuminati/secret society" that's supposedly running the world from secret. (You don't NEED a secret society to bring about the signs of the End Times. Economic efficiency demands integration of business practices, monetary policy, government procedures, and so forth. It's in our very nature to create what the Bible says will be the Devil's playground.)

     When people are searching for meaning, their minds seem to gravitate toward thoughts of things like aliens that do not fall within our current scientific inventory of the world. Why? I suspect part of the answer is that such ideas imply that humans are not alone in the universe, that we might be part of a larger cosmic drama. As with traditional religious beliefs, many of these paranormal beliefs involve powerful beings watching over humans and the hope that they will rescue us from death and extinction.

   

      I plead with you - we are fast approaching that moment when every person will have to choose a side: either you're ON God's side, WITH Jesus...or you're AGAINST Them. If you choose poorly, God can't help you anymore beyond that point.

How does the climate change argument connect to the impending Second Coming?

Amid all the bickering induced by the US President withdrawing his administration from the Paris Climate Accords, something which has been nearly universally condemned given America's prior approval of the pact, the fact that all of its goals and targets are set voluntarily by the nation involved, and the 97% consensus that the man-made aspect of climate change is not only real but to some extent reversible, and that those man-controlled aspects are indeed a significant part of the problem...one Congressman said something that made the Christian in me stand up and listen.

Representative Tim Walberg of Michigan told a town hall meeting in Coldwater the other day that while climate change is real, he isn't concerned about it because God is in control of the universe and will take care of the problem.

“I believe there’s climate change. I believe there’s been climate change since the beginning of time,” Walberg is seen saying. “Do I think man has some impact? Yeah, of course. Can man change the entire universe? No.”

Walberg added, “Why do I believe that? Well, as a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us. And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”           


Now, as a Christian, I am virtually compelled to agree with Rep. Walberg. God IS much bigger than us. He IS in control of the universe. And if HE chose to, He COULD take care of the problem.

But here's the issue we must always take into account. God's hands and eyes on Earth are His Church. We are His Hands. If God is going to take care of the problem, don't you think He would use the people of the earth to create some means of doing so? Like, say, the Paris Climate Accords?

It's not unlike the joke I used to tell on stage about the man who refused the two police boat rescue attempts in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, even as the water rose around his home, because "God Will Provide". Even when he was on tiptoes on his roof, he refused the helicopter rescue attempt because "God Will Provide". So, he drowned. 

When he arrived in Heaven. he was furious. "God! Why didn't You save me?"
God looked at him, incredulous. "What are you talking about? I sent you two boats and a helicopter, didn't I?"

Rep. Walberg and other fundamentalist Christians seem to forget that God's Hands are our hands. The Republican-led Congress often cuts the government help to the needy with the excuse that "God will provide". a la Matthew 7's "He cares for the birds and flowers; don't you think He will care for you, too?" But that government help is part of what He uses to help those people!


There's another element to this conversation as well, and it goes back to the word of Christ when He talked of the End Times. In Matthew 24:36-39, Jesus tells us how life will continue unabated before that moment when He returns...

36“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. 37For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark,39and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

The implication is that we are to continue about our business as normal until He returns to bring us Home. We are to keep "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage", and so forth. Despite the increasing likelihood that we will see the Rapture in the next two years or so, we cannot depend on that fact and stop living our lives. God will delay His Return until He is satisfied that we have done  Just because all the signs are here, the "day and hour no one knows."

We must continue to live our lives as if we have all the rest of eternity here on planet earth. We cannot assume that Christ will return in our lifetime, no matter what the signs point to. After all, just about every other generation in history has believed the same thing! And every other generation was wrong! So we may not be any different!

We must go on trying to save the planet because that's what we're supposed to do. You cannot use God's omnipotence as an excuse. That's like saying because God could stop me from stabbing these thirty-seven people, I don't have to stop myself - after all, if He wanted me to stop, He'd stop me, wouldn't He?

No. No, He wouldn't, dingbat. And no other act of yours is going to get excused that way, either. And neither will destroying our planet.

Postscript: Rep. Walberg, have you actually read Revelation? Do you understand the condition the planet will be in very quickly once the Great Tribulation starts? Why should the poisoning of the earth bother God, when He's going to be raining Hell-fire down on it almost immediately anyway?

Dingbat.

Even the expression "Boys will be boys" doesn't work here...

Let's start by sharing an article about a huge incident at a high school near where I live, in south-central Idaho. Twin Falls High School holds an annual "Spirit Day" each year, one which by my meager understanding has gone off harmlessly for years as a Boys v Girls event.

In the spirit of the 21st century culture of inclusiveness, and trying to make everyone feel more comfortable, the powers-that-be at TFHS chose to adjust the teams slightly. It turns out that "Blue v Pink", despite seeming to be a safer arrangement, actually set the stage for a disastrous turn of events when the bigots and zealots both came out to play. Here's the article:

Spirit Day Sparks Backlash At Twin Falls High School (MagicValley.com - the Times News)

The TL:DR version? When a group of students who felt marginalized by the "blue v pink" (presumably because they didn't feel either blue or pink) chose to come to school wearing purple, the battle lines were drawn. To be fair, there was a "wear purple" campaign done in advance, so this didn't come out of the blue, for students OR staff. 

My immediate reaction was one of shock, with a side helping of the haughtiness groomed from thirty-three years of teaching this age group. The adults should have dealt with this situation better. 

Then I read the comments following the article.

Holy frijole.

desertman10 May 3, 2017, 8:13am

"Sounds like a simple case of having a bunch of hypersensitive snowflakes in close proximity to a bunch of insecure a-holes. If you go looking for a reason to be offended, you're probably going to find one. At the same time, shame on those students who said vulgar and despicable things. Thicker skins and decent manners could save these kids a lot of unnecessary drama. I'm not saying they need to have a big group hug everyday, but good grief, just live and let live (on both sides)."

DanE May 3, 2017, 7:04pm

"Oh please, there are multiple generations of American snowflakes who couldn't handle black people using the same bathroom as them. Rural folks in Idaho stutter when I tell them I'm an anarcho-communist. White cis/het insecurity is a vital part of conservative American identity."

Jarrik Varizen May 3, 2017, 8:18am

"Yawn. Get the gender dysphorics help, instead of forcing the world to accept insanity."

Ramsey May 3, 2017, 11:57am

"Or, you could just go ahead and worry about things that actually affect you. There's a thought."

confucius57 May 3, 2017, 2:04pm

"I promise that most of these kids you claim to be insane are smarter and have far more potential than your sad, pitiful life has likely amounted to. Must be rough to hate yourself as much as you do. Of course, ignorance to the degree you exemplify must be somewhat comforting. Quite the conundrum. A conundrum you'll never fully understand. Ironic, isn't it?"

And it goes on and on like this, getting progressively meaner and cruder in undoubtedly the same way that the arguments at Twin Falls HS did that day. It would be hard for us to hold the teenagers to a higher standard than the adults in the community who are at equally immobile loggerheads on this topic.

So, let's look at some basics about the whole situation (and please, read the article before you continue here) - 

The "Spirit Day" tradition of boys v girls had not been a problem, but there was a hope on the part of somebody that switching to non-gender specific sides would allow the students more freedom to choose how to participate. If you want to be right-wing Christian about this, then that fact alone was the catalyst, because the argument that gender is not something that should be "chosen" immediately comes into play. It's hard to know from the outside whether the change was made because of some sort of top-down mandate, or if it really was something student-driven. The article says, "But in response to student concerns, student leaders changed it to “blue versus pink” this year in an effort to be more inclusive." When I read the article, and see the emphasis on certain parents' comments in the writing (the woman in charge of the "Mama Dragons" in particular), I suspect that those "student concerns" were more "parental concerns" than anything else. If true (and I have no other evidence that it is), the whole thing was a set-up to begin with to allow the students wearing purple to have a day to make a statement. Right or wrong, that becomes the issue, not the ramifications of the set-up, at least for starters. 

But let's assume that the change was innocuous, for argument's sake. What happened first?

The lead-up to the day was already tense, and the only reason given in the article for this was the "wear purple" campaign itself. One student is quoted as saying that even though he hadn't announced his intent to participate, he was getting harassed ahead of time. An objective reader's presumption would be that the student is either openly LGBTQ or publicly assumed to be at least in strong support, if the common assumption was that he would be in the "protest" group. Does that make harassment right? Never, of course. But it's the problem with sticking your neck out, either as an individual or as a group: crossfire will come your way.

The backlash began almost immediately, it seems. Those students who objected to either the LGBTQ students' agenda or existence (depending on severity) fired back at what they saw as an assault against what they believed. Were they right to harass anyone because of their beliefs? Of course not. But to say it was unexpected by anyone even tangentially familiar with the gay-rights battles of the last forty years would be naive at best, a falsehood at worst. You knew it was coming.

At this point, before Spirit Day has even arrived, as a school administrator I would have cancelled the event.

If you see what seems to have been apparent to these people in advance - the torn down posters, the tension in the student body, the campaign in advance to buck the system on Spirit Day - you have the obligation to protect both sides of this conflict as the adult in the situation. There are teachers and administrators on the ground in that facility - I've taught in similar sized schools my entire career; I've walked the halls of TFHS during school hours; I know whereof I speak. If that was what was going on, there were adults who knew this would be a disaster.

Be that as it may...too late now to change it.

The issue is one of tolerance versus acceptance. Those are two different things. 

To tolerate is to allow something to continue because it isn't infringing on your rights; you do NOT have to agree with their position; you do not have to accept their position; you do not even have to speak neutrally about their position. You DO, however, have to "live and let live". You cannot infringe on THEIR rights, any more than they can infringe on YOURS. 

To accept is to come to an agreement that their position is an appropriate position, lifestyle, belief, etc., to have. You do not have to adopt that position yourself, but you are allowing them to do so "with your blessing", in a manner of speaking. They STILL cannot infringe on your right to hold a different position: they must also be accepting of YOUR position, presumably.

(There is a third rung on this ladder, which would be to regulate their position into everyone's life. That's saying that they no longer will accept OR tolerate YOUR position or lifestyle with regard to the subject at hand. That isn't the situation here.)

In essence, the "purple" group is insisting that everyone else on campus should accept their lifestyle, because requiring the use of purple to accommodate their circumstance implies that the rules needed to change for them. It did NOT mean that the third rung was being used - nobody else had to join them - but they were demanding acceptance, not merely tolerance. 

In contrast, the backlashing people (and I'm reading people's thoughts here - I don't know this for sure - but the logic holds up with the evidence) were retreating from their previously held position. Follow me here: If they knew that kids on campus were indeed LGBTQ, as the one child implied, but never 'sought them out' to punish them or pick on them (and we don't know they didn't, but you'd think that would have come up in the article were it true), then they had already chosen to tolerate the position/lifestyle of the LGBTQ folks. 

But when those folks wanted to push the envelope towards acceptance, they started to back away from even tolerance, going to the extremes of vandalism and social media assaults against those they'd long known were homosexual or trans, but had left alone until now. 

And so the war begins anew. An uneasy truce is disrupted when one side pushes for more ground than the other side was willing to surrender. None of this is meant to address the "right" or "wrong" of the sides; as a Christian, my argument should be obvious to anyone who's truly accepted the Lord into his/her heart. God loves the sinner but hates the sin. We tolerate all sinners, because we are sinners ourselves. We accept all sinners, but we do not accept their sins. They, like us, have issues which they must work out with God in their own time and way. It is not our place to punish them for sin - it's God's. 

We are NOT a Christian nation - we cannot demand all laws align with God's commands. But we have enough Godly men and women in this nation, including in positions of authority, that we can make a strong campaign for such laws, and if the majority of our nation believes those laws are worth enforcing, so be it. As we are granted grace by our Lord, we must also grant grace to the sinners among us, for that number includes ourselves in all situations. No sin is unrepentable.

And we have a responsibility to demand that no laws CONTRARY to God's commands be enacted. We will unquestionably be forced to choose between God's Law, the laws of our permanent home in Heaven, and that of the nation we temporarily reside in while on sojourn here on earth. The choice should not be difficult to make, but it will be stressful on our human bodies as the punishment is enforced by the ungodly who reside here with us until they are cast down below. Rather than be forced into that situation, we must do whatever we can to avoid seeing such laws passed. 

We want to tolerate all people in all actions that do not infringe upon our rights and obligations as Christians. (Leave punishment of sins to God. Leave punishment of earthly breeches to earthly police and judiciaries.) We want to accept all people, but NOT all actions, because we are told to guide all the world's people towards Christ, the only Way to the Father and to eternity in Heaven and not Hell. We never harass, we never pronounce judgment on others - that is for God to do. We gently guide with love in our hearts and words.

In Twin Falls, the situation will resolve itself. Tempers will die down. Protagonists will move on to other situations, often other situations to violate God's commandments on tolerance and acceptance. And we will watch all this, and wonder when God will bring His people Home, where sin does not exist.

Can you find God in a pill?

What about through a neuroscientist's electrodes? 

Or, perhaps, is God simply in our genetic makeup?

Research is being done in all these areas, believe it or not. I was reviewing an old issue I'd saved of Mental Floss magazine (alas, it has to be old, because they've stopped printing, although you can still go to the website. It's worth it.), and evidence of all three possibilities reared their heads in the article by Judy Dutton (Nov/Dec 2011).

Her article starts with the work of Dr. Michael Persinger, who created a helmet (think motorcycle or, since he's Canadian, snowmobile) that uses electrodes to stimulate different parts of your brain. Interestingly, certain types of electric stimulus of the right temporal lobe triggers what most patients called "a presence", as if they were in the presence of God. Others saw it as an "out-of-body experience", still others decided it was a ghost. Whatever they saw this second "presence" as, it was life-changing for many of the patients, and Dr. Persinger continues to research this possibility (as of four years ago) at the Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada (about 100 miles east of Michigan's Upper Peninsula), despite protest wars both for and against his research at one point.

His research now focuses on the benefits of this type of lobe stimulation for both pain relief and depression, rather than seeking God through a helmet. But ask yourself this question: wouldn't it make sense that you might have certain parts of your brain that are 'hardwired' to link up with the Creator of the Universe? When we pray, does the act of prayer trigger extra activity in a certain part of the brain, our "God-Center", perhaps? And doesn't it make sense for an intellectual activity like prayer to the Living God would take place in a frontal lobe? I have no evidence whatsoever of what I'm suggesting - I'm just making the argument that there's nothing about this that's non-Biblical. 

Similarly, behavioral biologist Roland Griffiths did quite a bit of work that touched on some traditionally taboo ingredients (psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs) to trigger a "spiritual awakening" in patient volunteers. Like Dr. Persinger, Griffiths had some success with his methodology in more verifiable forms, in this case anxiety relief for cancer and other terminally ill patients in particular, which has allowed this research to move forward. Many claim to have had "a direct experience with God", and 89 percent reported "permanent and positive changes in their lives" after fourteen months beyond the completion of their treatments. There were patients who had "bad trips" - really adverse reactions to the psilocybin which was the base drug Griffiths administered. (My favorite quote is from David Shurtleff, then the acting director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse: "Hey, don't try this at home.") But these drugs seem to do something vaguely similar to the electrodes - they stimulate certain functions and portions of the brain, which as we said earlier may be exactly what earnest prayer does: Open up access to the inborn communication station to God. 

A third avenue of exploration which Dutton's article brings up is the possibility that there is a genetic predeliction towards belief or faith in God. The possibility that the gene in our DNA known as VMAT2 has a specific variant that only appears in people with very high levels of "religious faith" (a phrase that sounds too inclusive to me  - it implies faith for any religious belief, not just faith in the Living God Jehovah).

Needless to say, this is the one which provoked the most outrage from Christians of all sects - the idea that their experiences with God are not truly of God's doing, but simply genetic happenstance did not sit well with many. But let me make a suggestion: one of the most difficult concepts for many of us who study God's Word is the idea that there are a body of elect Christians who will be saved, and others who are not among the elect, who will NOT be saved from Hell. It gives us the impression that no matter what one does, that person cannot reach salvation, and that strikes us as patently unfair. In earlier posts, I've discussed my thoughts on what God may mean by His "elect", but consider this: is it possible that being one of His Elect is 'hardwired' into our genetic structure?

The truth is, I don't have ANY idea what's true and what's illusion when it comes to our feeble scientific attempts to communicating with God, to connecting with God, to being one of His chosen elect. But before we reject any of these possibilities out of hand, I would warn the reader that God invented science. Science should never be opposite of faith. 

As we speak (write, type, whatever),I'm writing a book called The Universe In Twelve Dimensions detailing a man's journey through every dimension: from zero - inside his own mind - to twelve - the realm of God. The primary theme of the book is simple: God wrote the Bible. God invented science. Therefore, don't you think the two of them will agree in the end on what reality is? On how the universe was formed, on where we come from, and so forth? I believe the answer is yes, and I've been working through many of the supposed conflicts by comparing what the Bible actually says, not what we assume it says, to where modern scientific research is and what its newest position is on those pivotal questions. So often, we see the scientific viewpoint coming towards the Biblical truth. (A side note here: the New Earth Creationists tend to make up plenty of "evidence" for their version of events, but that's not necessary - the true age of the earth is indeed in the five billion year range, and that does NOT contradict the Bible's actual text. If you're not sure how that could be, you can read my book when I've completed it around the end of the year.)

Can you find God in a pill? Or from electrodes, or in your genes?  Probably not - but that doesn't mean it's impossible. "All roads lead to God" is a dangerous fallacy: the Bible clearly states that Jesus is the One Way, the Only Truth. But there may be multiple ways to reach Jesus Christ, and if flipping on the communication center in your brain to do it is the best option for you? I can't tell you no based on what I know. Whatever you do, however... BE SAFE.