Pay it Off

"I had always thought that Christians were supposed to stop sinning and attend church, so they could then donate money to the pastor so he could lead people into a relationship with God. Some of these radical college students I met actually wanted to be a part of serving others personally rather than paying someone else to do it." Eric Bryant, Peppermint Filled Pinatas.

A little bit cynical maybe, but Eric makes a very good point here. He's talking about when he was in college and met some people who went to Baylor who acted out their faith differently than some people he knew who were cultural Christians who seemed to attend church and live, we can assume, in hypocrisy.

This is one of the most frequent charges I hear against the church and her people. They say one thing on Sunday, and live another way the rest of the week. There are hypocrites everywhere because there are people everywhere. People are human and will always fail you in one sense or another, so finding some hypocrisy in a group of people should not be surprising. Also, it's much easier to dismiss a message that is difficult to hear if it requires changes and action by you, not just criticism. It something that Christians should be very aware of and should work to change if they can.

It's even more challenging once you've accepted the basic tenets of Christianity. This personal charge to change the way you operate is not just one that requires you keep your word to fix your hypocrisy, it goes to every part of your life. God doesn't want to just selectively pluck the obviously diseased leaves, he's ready to give a wholesale pruning. Jesus said it was like being reborn.

Once you're ready for that he'll work on upkeep, too, and present you with new challenges to make you grow. One of the big areas he's given us is with telling others about him, and going out into other cultures to do this. He tells stories of hurt people who are helped and says go and do likewise. He says, "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?"

He tells his followers to "go and make disciples of all nations", but it's easier, as Eric put it, to pay someone else to do it. When you say, "The cost of going there and doing the work myself would be better spent if I just sent them the money," you are saying that you would rather pay someone else to do what God is asking you to do. God would rather have your time and work than your money.

The benefit of doing the work is experience, and the journey, and the change you will make in someone's life. The chance you would have to do that is what God is after, not the chance to click a donate now button. You can alleviate some guilt, I guess, by donating to the cause or paying someone else to "go and do likewise," but you're really cheating yourself. He wants you to help the widows and orphans, and to care for the sick and help those who are unloved. You're his proxy while you're here.

It wasn't easy for him while he was here, and if you are feeling like you've done your job by giving to the shelter, you're only half right.

You are missing the hardest, yet most fulfilling part.

Herbert Bayard Swope

The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor | Illustrated Guide to Familiar American Trees by Charlie Smith: "It's the birthday of journalist Herbert Bayard Swope, (books by this author) born in St. Louis in 1882. He said, 'I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure — which is: Try to please everybody.'"

J.M. Barrie Quote

"When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on."

This is from the book Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. It was written in 1911, and contrary to the Johnny Depp version in the movie Finding Neverland, Barrie was actually a hot dog vendor on the streets of Cleveland, Ohio, when he wrote that. His inspiration was a not a young boy with a sick mother, but a mean old landlady who berated him for his rent at least three times a day. He ended up spending his life in prison for her murder, when he threw her into Lake Erie with an old fashioned ice hook through the chest.

It must be bedtime.

Garrison Keillor Quote

That's the thing about Christianity -- it goes right straight to the hard part. Jesus didn't lay out a twelve step program, sort of a gradual step up. He just said love your neighbor as yourself. There are no incremental steps that lead up to this. Love cool people, love young people, love your grandchildren, love people who give you nice gifts, love Cary Grant and Betty Davis, love old blues singers who are dead, love some of your neighbors. It just goes right straight to it -- love your neighbor as yourself, give all you have to the poor and follow me. To Wham! The impossible. You start with the impossible.

Johnny Cash Quote

I'm still a Christian, as I have been all my life. Beyond that I get complicated.

- Johnny Cash

I don't know if I heart Huckabee, but I am certain about the rest

Mike Huckabee is getting flak for possibly showing something covertly Christian in the background of one of his pre-Christmas ads for Prez. Of course it's ridiculous, but shouldn't the critics of this one be embarrassed a little, too? From Reuters:

Huckabee, who has come out of nowhere to lead Republican polls in Iowa and challenge Giuliani for the lead in national polls, took criticism from Republican candidate Ron Paul on Tuesday for a "Merry Christmas" advertisement that included a book shelf behind him that looked like a Christian cross.

Hey Ron, he used to be a preacher. What do you expect? Maybe he could preach a
sermon and get Patti Labelle's choir to sing backup.

At least he's more up front about what he believes than Mitt Romney. A message board I occasionally visit had a question about whether or not Romney was a Christian. The answer to me seems obvious -- no -- but that's because I have more than a cursory interest in what it means to be one.

Ron Paul has a lot of internet buzz but I think you'd be hard pressed to get anyone to vote for a guy who is more wooden than Al Gore, hero of American environmentalists.

There's Freddy Thompson, who unfortunately, looks half dead. McCain always sounds like a normal guy until he's pressed on one issue or anther, then sounds like he's a populist. The rest don't seem to have half a chance.

There are the Democrats to consider but let me give you half a dozen reasons why I can't seriously consider one of them for the job:

• Anti-Christian. Not only that, but anti-God.
• Gun control. I'm agin' it.
• Abortion. I'm agin' it, too.
• axes. I'm agin' 'em. They ain't.
• Socialism and Big Government. I'm agin' it.
  

That's a short list, and nothing to do with the individuals running. Obama's church attendance has made the news, and that seems better than the psuedo-religion that worships State that most candidates have. If these guys were serious about their faith, and could convince me of it, I would take a look around at different parties, and I've been a Republican since 1980.

Of course, you would think that would mean they would have to change their stance on a few key issues.

Or they could go the RINO route, like Arnie. It worked for him.

What the heck is this for anyway?

The following is a bit of self indulgent vanity and should be disregarded. For the time being it is kept as personal mockery and negative motivation.

So almost four years ago I started this blog, and of course there were a few people who read it in the beginning. However, those people have wisely ignored it, and now it sits here, rusting away, taking up server space, unfocused as ever.

Recently I thought it would be cool to put my thoughts on books I've read up, but again, since I'm the only person who bothers to look at this little darling, it's more of an archive for nobody. There are a million opinions on books, and I earn nothing for this, along with the fact that nobody reads it anyway makes it a pointless endeavor.

Then recently I was tracking an online argument between a couple of blogs. Phil Johnson basically called my friend Dan out on the carpet about his theology, and his minions at team pyro jumped on the bandwagon. I wrote something about it, cleverly disguised as a meeting between two dog owners. Of course, I thought it was clever, but anyone who wasn't tracking the little spat would just think it useless drivel. Again, it was mostly for my own fun, so it didn't really matter.

I look back at the variety of posts, and some of them were funny to me, but I run into a sort of glass wall with many of the posts here. That is a glass wall made of and invisible audience. Here's what I mean, and I had the same issue when I wrote a column for a daily rag in college. I have definite opinions on things, but I tend to think of every counter argument, and worse, either evade offense or curb the directness of what I want to say. That weakens the impact, and makes a potentially good story come with a very weak ending.

A perfect example, other than probably the majority of the posts on nerdbilly.com, was a story I wrote once on the previously mentioned college newspaper. It was about a time a friend and I were fishing and I caught a seagull. I just cast a long one out toward the ocean and some dumb seagull decided to turn my fishing line into kite string. Instead of the humor that I saw in real life, I ended the story with a mamby-pamby feel good ending about how nice it was to see the bird fly to freedom. I still am embarrassed by that, even though nobody in the world but me remembers it and in all likelihood, wouldn't remember it if it had been written in the New Yorker. The funny part is that's been closer to twenty years ago than ten, and the bird is dead by now anyway.

So what is the point of keeping this little site on life support? Well, it's personal edification, and practice. In my little world, I am a writer. I hear others called writers, and deep inside, I think to myself, "I'm the writer." I know I have the ability to write, but get sidetracked by life. It probably stems from a story I wrote when I was ten about a monster that ravaged Watsonville that I was able to whip single handed. I got an A+++ and a star, and my Granny (an English professor) made copies on the ditto machine and sent me twenty duplicates of it. I was ten, and published. It was all gravy from there, except I seldom bothered writing any more stories, and new stories I kept to myself.

What I want to do, starting with this ridiculous rant, is to write, not for you, the invisible or nonexistent audience, but for me. That should have been the point from day one. I think once or twice I succeeded in doing just that, but as often have written with the notion that some invisible person was ready with a criticism.

There must be an intended audience, I guess, but I am narrowing my audience to one, and I think that will appeal to more people than trying to justify every other sentence. I enjoy writing, and I have my opinions, so I will put my paper firmly against that glass wall and scribble for myself.

So with that in mind, let me venture a few opinions, that if you happen to read, you can agree or disagree with, but you are entitled to your own opinion.

- I love Jesus. He died on the cross for me and I am indebted to Him, because he saved me from myself.
- I love the United States of America.
- I love my wife and my daughter, and I try my best to be a good husband and dad.
- I can't understand why anyone would want to be a hippie, but I know and like a few of them. It's not my bag, though.
- I like cowboys, westerns, and country living.
- I like good American music. You would think that when someone says music they would mean that the people who produce the music would actually know how to play their instrument. Talking doesn't count, even if it is rhythmic. Singing by itself doesn't necessarily count, either. Just because you have a good voice doesn't mean you are a musician, although Frank, Dean, Bobby, and Ella all were. So my top three musicians are Charlie Daniels, Ricky Skaggs and Brian Setzer, in different order depending on the week. They can all play at least three instruments each, and can all sing. So throw in some blues, some Skynyrd, some bluegrass and some jazz and you are getting closer to what is good. "In my humble opinion" is implied.
- I like a good book. Some of the best are by Thomas Hardy, PG Wodehouse, and Cormac McCarthy. Some of the worst are by Nicholas Sparks, Dan Brown, and most of the stuff on posters in Borders. I'm still trying to figure out the Bible and its central character, but at least I have a head start on most of the people I interact with on a daily basis.

There's a snapshot, but is just that. A partial picture, but hopefully a more honest one than I've ventured before. And hopefully not the most honest one yet. It's been said by musicians and writers that unless it's honest, it will come across as false. Whether fact or fiction, I hope these posts, irrelevant as they may be, come across as honest.