I once saw, on one of those websites offering politically-oriented bumperstickers, one that was specifically written with the avowed Atheist in mind. It read something along the lines of “If you’ll stop trying to make me pray in my classroom, I won’t try to make you think in your church.”
I’ve noticed that a good deal of the problems people have with “traditional” Christianity isn’t that they haven’t been exposed to it. It’s that they’ve been exposed to it, and they loathed what they saw because it was not (at least in my opinion) a true representation of the message of Christ.
I stopped regularly attending the Baptist church I was raised in, when I was in high school. Some jackass of a Sunday School teacher twisted some random bible verse into supposedly being a commandment against “mixing with the mud races”, and claiming that white women being married to “non-whites” was supposedly sinful. That would mean that my cousin (half black), as well as my little brother and sister (half Hispanic) were somehow the product of sin, even though all three of their parents were married. Needless to say, it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
For the better part of a decade, I went through a tremendous issue with my faith, and had stepped away from God as I attempted to “do it my way”. I ran through a tremendous amount of grief with some of the most difficult times of my life occurring between the years of 15 and 25, and I now have no doubt that these times were complicated by the fact that I was looking at everything from an agnostic and/or borderline atheist point of view. Toward the end of that time, I was in college…and, believe it or not, it was one of those “dirty hippie liberal” college Humanities classes that brought me closer to God.
One of our major assignments for the class was to select a book off of the very long list our professor provided us, read it, and write a report. I found the most anti-establishment-looking title I could find on that list, and decided to go get it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one thinking this way, as the college library had loaned all three copies and the bookstore was sold out…so I went to the next title on the list. It just so happened to be a book by Bruce Feiler (sp?), about Abraham and his covenant with God…and how that relationship between God and Abraham gave birth to the three major monotheistic religions of the modern world.
Along the way, it gave great insight into God’s relationship with man, and how truly awesome God really is. It expressed what I believe to be the true message of Christ, which is that we should all strive to be tolerant and forgiving of our fellow man. After all, isn’t that the basic tenet of Christianity? When you think about it, what was the purpose of Christ willfully accepting death on the cross, if it wasn’t to accept the consequence of the debt of our sins? Reading this book brought me closer to my bible, which in turn brought me closer to God.
As a young man, I was a member of the “Royal Ambassadors” (or, “R.A.”, the Southern Baptist equivalent of the Boy Scouts), and part of the R. A. Pledge we recited every week alongside the American Pledge of Allegiance was to have a “Christ-like concern for all people”. To the best of my understanding, we are to follow in the footsteps of Christ and not be judgmental. When Christ said to the crowd, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, he did not command the crowd not to throw any rocks…but he made them all think about throwing one, and not a single stone was chunked at that woman’s head.
That brings me back to my original point, which was the idea that “mainstream” Christianity simply turns a lot of people away from their message of Salvation through the acceptance of Christ, with their judgment of others. My grandmother once jokingly told me a story about a Baptist “revival” she went to, in which the preacher began to condemn country music as leading to drinking, drugs, and immoral sex. She told me that she never did drugs, she’s never drank liquor, and anything else she’s done certainly wasn’t on behalf of country music! If you’ve ever spent more than half an hour around my grandmother, you know she’s one of the most upstanding Christian women you’d ever meet, and was a Sunday School teacher for longer than I’ve been alive.
Mainstream Christianity turns so many people off, in my opinion, because it spends far too much time focusing on the “enemy of the moment”, instead of focusing on how we as mankind should strive to be more like Christ. Lest we forget, that is the goal of a Christian…to accept Jesus as the savior of mankind, and to lead a more Christ-like life.
We all have our faults, and I’m certain that my own put a serious stain on my soul…but isn’t it time we started worrying about our own faults as Christians, both personally AND as a church/religion/what have you, before we start denouncing our enemies?
In the past week, I’ve heard evolutionary theory ridiculed by a Sunday School teacher who apparently had no clue of what evolutionary theory was. I’ve heard a man tell my uncle that he should boycott a particular hardware store, because they supposedly “support homosexuals”. I’ve heard a preacher lump most churches that weren’t small-town congregations into the “coffee and donuts Mega-Church” category. A Protestant preacher in Florida wants to revive the old Nazi tradition of burning books in three days, because America allows burning books and he disapproves of people reading religious texts that don’t suit him.
I’m not a homosexual, a denier of God’s creation, or a Muslim…and I’ve got a metric shitload of my own faults (a “metric shitload” is 1.1 times as large as a standard “shitload”, in case you’re wondering…it’s a lot!). As a church (I am speaking in the sense of Christianity as a whole, not on behalf of any particular congregation), our faults far outweigh those of “outsiders”, because they are our own faults. In the 60s, our enemy was country music and communists. In the 80s, it was Heavy Metal and the “Satanist” scare. Today, it’s “mainstream homosexuality” and scary brown people on the other side of the world that supposedly hate us for our Christianity and our “freedom”.
In my not-so-humble-as-it-probably-should-be opinion, it is a serious mistake to demonize our fellow man, instead of reaching out to them. If Christ were here today, would He be pointing fingers at others and telling them they were wrong? Would he shun a sinner, or would He engage him in dialogue and persuade him via the peace He represents? Would He scream and yell at a pulpit while delivering His message of repentance, or would he persuade a sinner to repent of his sins by providing him a way to think about the pain those sins are causing?
Have you ever heard the old saying about being able to lead a horse to water, but you can’t MAKE him drink? Well, that’s because horses happen to be a lot like men, in the sense that they don’t really like being FORCED to do anything, even if it may be good for them. A forced faith is not a true faith…and even if it’s being coerced by fear, it’s still being forced.
This is the biggest problem I see with Christianity today, and I even recognize it in my own life. It is, in short, simple arrogance. Even as I write this, I wonder if it’s just my own arrogance taking hold of me again, when I point out what I see as a grandiose mistake on the part of my fellow Christians. Regardless of that fear, I see far too much condemnation of others within what is supposed to be a congregation of Christ-followers, and not nearly enough love for our fellow man.
Isn’t it time for us, as a church, to look at where we are going and focus on our own paths, before we start trying to block off the roads of others? The gates of Heaven are narrow, and the path to Hell is wide. Like it or not, we aren’t able to block off all of the detours.
Look at the path to Heaven as if it were a county road in East Texas, running through those beautiful Piney Woods. The road leads directly to “Heaven Ranch”, with all of the surrounding area being “Hell’s Forest”. Everyone and their uncle wants to go there on that great permanent vacation from the world when they die, and most people are driving a Honda Civic. There are lots of private driveways running off of this county road, and very few people have a map…but most people know that Heaven is somewhere in the area. What’s going to have a better effect on keeping people out of hell? Will it be putting gates on the driveways, posting some “no trespassing” signs on the trees, and hoping people will stay on the path to Heaven because you said it was wrong to go any other way?
I can’t help but think it would be far more effective if we kept the road well-paved, provided fuel along the way, and offered encouragement. If we spend our time telling people what shortcuts not to take, instead of maintaining the road, are we really doing our jobs as traffic coordinators?
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
An Open Letter to my Sunday School Teacher
Brother Ricky:
I’m writing this because we really didn’t have a chance to discuss the issue in the short amount of time I had to spend this weekend, but there were a few issues that I’d like to clear up regarding the Sunday School lesson on 9/5/10 over the subject of evolution and the supposed conflict it has with the Judeo-Christian bible.
First and foremost, I’m going to come right out and say that I am a firm believer in the Almighty God of Abraham, creator of the universe and all life found within it. I also firmly believe that the greatest gift God has allowed mankind to have is the human mind. Not only does the mind provide us with the basic knowledge necessary to survive on this planet and become productive servants of Him, but it is also the mind which allows us to make the decision to accept Him as the Lord of our lives.
Along that line of thinking, I feel it does a great disservice to Him, if we make a habit of practicing willful ignorance instead of attempting to better understand the world He has created. Obviously, the Word is a great many things to a great many of His believers. It is a book of law, a provider of comfort, a vessel for the message of Christ, and a great number of other things…as well as being a book describing the history of the world, according to the book of Genesis.
With that being said, Genesis does tell us a great deal about the things He has done, but it also leaves out a great deal concerning HOW he did them. To give my own insight into this idea, let us look to the instruction of Jesus when He tells us to care for the sick. We’d all love to go around performing miracles for everyone we see, but even the most pious man knows it would be much more efficient to use the brain God gave us, and to allow doctors to use their God-given gift of medical knowledge to help an ailing man get well.
In all likelihood, it’s not going to do me any good to spit on some dirt, rub it together, put it over my eyes, pray really hard, and have faith that my blindness will be cured. In all likelihood, I’ll not only be blind, but also very irritated by the dirt in my eyes. God has already provided me the means to go see an optometrist, who has fitted me with the glasses I’m wearing as I write this, and I view the knowledge of my optometrist as a modern-day miraculous cure for my blindness that came as a gift from God. Sight is a gift from God, and for many of us, it comes in the form of knowledge gained through people attempting to understand the life He has created.
In the third verse of my bible, God spoke and created light. It does not say HOW he created light, it does not discuss how many eons may have passed for the billions to the Nth power of molecules were necessary to create the star we know as the “sun”, or if he just whipped them up in some huge cosmic blender and poured it out into a huge ball. My bible tells me spoke it, it happened, and that’s it. Light is a gift of God. The bible didn’t say how He created light, but He did provide Edison with the gift of knowledge that allowed him to invent the incandescent light bulb. That light bulb is how a good many people lit their churches prior to the invention of the fluorescent light bulbs most use now. Light is a gift from God, and for those of us on this Earth lucky enough to have electric light bulbs, it comes in the form of knowledge He has allowed us to gain by studying the creations He has made.
I think of the many people who have lived to pray another day, through the scientific knowledge He has bestowed upon us, and it truly warps my fragile little mind. Imagine how many people were allowed by God to escape starvation and disease, because of Dr. Pasteur’s invention of “pasteurization”. How many Christians wouldn’t be alive today, if it weren’t for the pioneering work of Dr. DeBakey in relation to the human heart?
I can personally bear witness to the awesome and miraculous power of God, via a vessel known as Dr. David Herndon, every time I look down at the scars that engulf my right arm. The next time you see me, take a good long look at it, I likely won’t be wearing long sleeves. You’ll see scars that look like a road map, twisted all around it from the backside of my thumb to the top of my bicep, where the seams of those skin grafts were stapled together. Through the miraculous power of God, I was lucky enough to be the son of a man whose employer offered no health insurance coverage, which in turn kept my local hospital from amputating my right arm after suffering a severe burn at the age of 12 when they found out my father couldn’t afford it. As a result, I was sent to a charity hospital for burned children, where Dr. Herndon was busy pioneering his award-winning methods of grafting the skin of pediatric burn patients. It not only saved my right arm but, potentially, also saved my life due to the infections I would have undoubtedly been dealing with.
Dr. Herndon’s healing ability was not something that simply popped into his head, but was given to him by God in the form of knowledge gleaned from hours of work, research, study, more research, and much more work. He didn’t anoint my head with oils, and he didn’t lay his hands on me. He shaved five strips of skin from my legs and stapled them to my right arm. Tonight, the right arm the local doctor wanted to cut off is now responsible for half of the 65 words per minute I am capable of typing. In addition to that, the index finger of my right hand pulled the trigger on my first buck last year. My right hand was capable of producing several drawings in my art classes that provided for scholarships, which in turn paid for a portion of my education. My right arm reaches down to shift gears in the Jeep you see me driving. It throws darts and regularly allows me to hit my mark, when my father and I are able to spend time together. Tomorrow, it will allow me to utilize the ratchets, screwdrivers, crimpers, and numerous other tools necessary to provide me the means to travel to Ozias Missionary Baptist Church when I’m able get up there so I can hear you give a Sunday School lesson. If that right arm is not a gift from God, I don’t know what is.
Interestingly enough, skin grafting technology is mentioned nowhere in any of my many translations of the bible…nor is optometry, the study of electricity, or any of the myriad other sciences God has granted us the ability to study…but it is no less real, and it is no less a gift from God.
The same holds true with the study of evolutionary theory. I’m not absolutely certain how much formal education you’ve had on the subject, but I know so little about it that I wouldn’t even think of going beyond the mere basics. I was but a mere art student in college, and my experience in the field evolution was yet another gift from God. I know so little about chemistry that it should probably be illegal for me to pump my own gasoline, but was required to take a science course as part of my degree plan. I chose “Biology for Non-Science Majors”, as that was the one available class that semester that was lecture-only and didn’t require a separate lab course!
However, I feel blessed that my professor was not only an award-winning geneticist that has already forgotten more about evolutionary theory than you and I will ever imagine knowing, but also happened to be a very devout and faithful Southern Baptist. We began study of evolution theory about half an hour into the first class, as it is the basic building block of understanding the scientific principle of life. Roughly three seconds into this discussion, a young woman got up to leave, and Dr. Schneider asked where she was going. Her response was something along the lines of “evolution is against my religion”, to which he replied those eight words which have stuck with me ever since that evening.
“God gave you a brain. Start using it.”
One of the other very important things he stressed, that I had heard countless times before (from people as diverse as an astronomer named Carl Sagan, to a rig welder named Rocky Rhodes) was the idea that the more a man learns, the more a man learns how much he truly has to learn.
Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone identifying himself as a “Christian”, yet disagreeing with the notion that the bible is the inspired word of God. Yet still, I can instantly find twenty one DIFFERENT translations of the Holy Bible, in English…and that’s just the protestant versions!
In my high school years, I studied both Spanish and Latin, and did more translations than I’d ever like to have to think about again. In my three years of Latin studies, one of the main things I learned was that in addition to various rules (and the little quirks) of both the origin and destination languages, there were also many cultural variances that will drastically affect the manner in which a translation ends up. To add to these issues, the King James Bible often utilized by protestant churches is the third translation commissioned by the king of England (King James, obviously!), after King Henry VIII broke with Rome over the issue of an annulment of marriage from one of his various wives.
The original version of the Old Testament was not only written in ancient Hebrew, but was then translated into either ancient Greek or Latin, depending upon which version the English translators were going by. With this in mind, also remember that the original Hebrew was written hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of years after the events of Genesis actually happened.
The Word of God is infallible…but the scribes of God’s word were fallible men, which was personally witnessed by my uncle Sam on Sunday night when he, myself, and my girlfriend read the bible verse he was to memorize. The three of us had three different translations. Sam had a KJV, Tabatha had an NIV, and I was using a St. Joseph’s that belonged to my grandmother’s recently-deceased sister. For the majority of the encompassing passage, all three versions offered the identical conceptual idea, albeit with slightly different wording…except for the latter half of the one particular verse Sam was to memorize. These are three different Christian bibles, being read by three different people, in the same room at the same time. The difference between these versions of what is supposed to be the same work were not contradictory, and neither offered anything that hadn’t been discussed elsewhere, but the concepts were completely different when translated into English. If my memory of Latin class is correct, you can have several different English translations of the same sentence that are all “technically” correct with the applied rules of both languages…but only one will be correct with the intended meaning of the original statement in the original language. Does that mean that Sam’s bible or Tabatha’s bible was incorrect, simply because the Catholic church predates the Anglican church?
Keep in mind, all three versions of Proverbs 11:30 stated things that were teachings of Christ himself, none contradicted the other, but the SJV was different from both the KJV and the NIV. This doesn’t even get into the fact that the original ancient Hebrew of the Old Testament was written long after Abraham’s covenant with God, and had been passed down through oral tradition that predates man’s invention of the written language.
When the Torah was written, mankind was still in the early stages of the written language. The Egyptians were still using hieroglyphics long after Moses led the Israelites through the parting of the Red Sea. “Fire” was relatively old news at the time, and we as a species had already discovered simple machines such as the wheel and the wedge…but it’s silly to say that man was “technologically advanced” in the myriad scientific disciplines when Genesis was first scribbled onto an animal skin using pigment made from plants. DNA was about as foreign of a concept as a cellular telephone…or, for that matter, even a telegraph. At the time of Genesis, the moon was merely a big bright thing in the sky that no one really had a clue about…and yet, through the wonders of the knowledge that He bestowed upon mankind, some very famous words were transmitted via a radio (another unknown idea at the time Genesis was written). It may have been a small step for a man, but it was a giant leap for mankind.
I’m not certain how old you are, but I’m not quite 32 years old. In my short time on God’s green Earth, it hurts my head to think of the numerous things mankind has discovered. Keep in mind that the words “discovered” and “invented” aren’t the same as “created”, for mankind has created nothing. God created everything we see, smell, feel, taste, and hear…as well as everything we think. Even today, our limited understanding of God’s creation is leaps and bounds above what they were as recently as the day I was born. I can still remember seeing a cellular telephone for the first time in real life, one of my uncle’s friends had an old Motorola “brick” phone like you saw in early rap music videos and episodes of Miami Vice. The computers used to put a man on the moon that at the time took up entire rooms, now take residence in our back pockets…and are also capable of simultaneously taking photographs of our families as we take boat trips on the river, and sending them to relatives and friends on the other side of the world. These advances are here because of mankind taking advantage of the gifts that God has given us all.
I am not persecuting or prosecuting you for the lesson you gave yesterday, I am merely hoping that you open your mind a bit. Your mind is a gift from God, and I would be ashamed of myself if I didn’t challenge you to use it as much as possible. However, I do feel that it is insulting to those who have studied evolutionary theory, as well as the countless many who have made it their lives’ work to better mankind through the multitude of scientific advances gained via the knowledge of evolution, when people ridicule it without understanding it. Out of respect for Ozias Missionary Baptist Church (and more importantly, my uncle and aunt), my tongue was on the verge of bleeding from biting it so much during your Sunday School class.
Evolutionary theory is one of the most misunderstood, and most misused, theories found within the realm of science and brought into a church. Throughout your entire lesson, you made two statements dealing with the theory of evolution, with the remainder being your thoughts on certain theories of origin.
Many “evolutionists” such as myself firmly believe that the universe was created by THE Almighty God, end of story. However, I know of at least one of these “evolutionists” (yeah, that “evolutionist” would be me!) that happens to think my God has a plan and a purpose for everything. Every single one of those little atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen that make up the essential building blocks of human life has its purpose, and this plan has existed since before God commanded the plants to sprout forth from the earth…and absolutely NOWHERE in the various translations of the Judeo-Christian bible (your version, or mine, or any of the other two dozen), does it say how He went about making it happen.
You choose to believe He spoke it, and it “poofed” out of the earth. I choose to believe that He decided to speak it, and had it planned out for longer than you or I can fathom…and He allowed those atoms to form the building blocks of particular species of vegetation that had been extinct since long before the beginning of recorded history, and have since evolved into the Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, and Washington Red apples I see at the grocery store today.
Our bibles say He spoke it, and it happened. It does not go into detail as to how it happened, and I feel that it does a disservice to God if we do not investigate to the best of our ability HOW our Almighty God weaved his various creations, in order to provide a better life for our fellow man. We will never understand completely, but He will allow us a bit of knowledge as he has done for thousands of years.
Your discussion of the “Big Bang Theory” is, as I said earlier, one scientifically possible theory of “origin”. It deals with the origin of the creation of the universe, not the origin of life…or the first organism’s evolution into other organisms. To lump them together is either scientific ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. Ignorance of science is certainly no character flaw, as I am personally very ignorant in a great many scientific disciplines…including the majority of evolutionary theory.
If memory serves, you work in the area of hydraulic energy transfer, and in all likelihood you understand how much more of that area there is that you could learn. I know very little about that subject, but I know a bit more than the average bear when it comes to building a computer…and, in fact, I built the computer I’m writing this letter on. Daily, I must glean knowledge from those more knowledgeable than myself in order to do my job, simply because I did not create computers and don’t know all there is to know about them.
Is it is not only an insult to those who have made it their lives’ work to improve our lives through scientific advancement, but also an insult to God when we deny the gifts that He has bestowed upon them (and also, by extension, ourselves)? To recognize the evolution of species as a work of God is not, in my opinion, a contradiction of God’s word or His works. To me, it is a praise of God’s glory, a recognition of His awesomeness, when we truly realize how little we really understand about it but attempt to do our best to use the minds He gave us so that we may help our fellow man.
With love from a Brother in Christ,
-Barry H. Rhodes
I’m writing this because we really didn’t have a chance to discuss the issue in the short amount of time I had to spend this weekend, but there were a few issues that I’d like to clear up regarding the Sunday School lesson on 9/5/10 over the subject of evolution and the supposed conflict it has with the Judeo-Christian bible.
First and foremost, I’m going to come right out and say that I am a firm believer in the Almighty God of Abraham, creator of the universe and all life found within it. I also firmly believe that the greatest gift God has allowed mankind to have is the human mind. Not only does the mind provide us with the basic knowledge necessary to survive on this planet and become productive servants of Him, but it is also the mind which allows us to make the decision to accept Him as the Lord of our lives.
Along that line of thinking, I feel it does a great disservice to Him, if we make a habit of practicing willful ignorance instead of attempting to better understand the world He has created. Obviously, the Word is a great many things to a great many of His believers. It is a book of law, a provider of comfort, a vessel for the message of Christ, and a great number of other things…as well as being a book describing the history of the world, according to the book of Genesis.
With that being said, Genesis does tell us a great deal about the things He has done, but it also leaves out a great deal concerning HOW he did them. To give my own insight into this idea, let us look to the instruction of Jesus when He tells us to care for the sick. We’d all love to go around performing miracles for everyone we see, but even the most pious man knows it would be much more efficient to use the brain God gave us, and to allow doctors to use their God-given gift of medical knowledge to help an ailing man get well.
In all likelihood, it’s not going to do me any good to spit on some dirt, rub it together, put it over my eyes, pray really hard, and have faith that my blindness will be cured. In all likelihood, I’ll not only be blind, but also very irritated by the dirt in my eyes. God has already provided me the means to go see an optometrist, who has fitted me with the glasses I’m wearing as I write this, and I view the knowledge of my optometrist as a modern-day miraculous cure for my blindness that came as a gift from God. Sight is a gift from God, and for many of us, it comes in the form of knowledge gained through people attempting to understand the life He has created.
In the third verse of my bible, God spoke and created light. It does not say HOW he created light, it does not discuss how many eons may have passed for the billions to the Nth power of molecules were necessary to create the star we know as the “sun”, or if he just whipped them up in some huge cosmic blender and poured it out into a huge ball. My bible tells me spoke it, it happened, and that’s it. Light is a gift of God. The bible didn’t say how He created light, but He did provide Edison with the gift of knowledge that allowed him to invent the incandescent light bulb. That light bulb is how a good many people lit their churches prior to the invention of the fluorescent light bulbs most use now. Light is a gift from God, and for those of us on this Earth lucky enough to have electric light bulbs, it comes in the form of knowledge He has allowed us to gain by studying the creations He has made.
I think of the many people who have lived to pray another day, through the scientific knowledge He has bestowed upon us, and it truly warps my fragile little mind. Imagine how many people were allowed by God to escape starvation and disease, because of Dr. Pasteur’s invention of “pasteurization”. How many Christians wouldn’t be alive today, if it weren’t for the pioneering work of Dr. DeBakey in relation to the human heart?
I can personally bear witness to the awesome and miraculous power of God, via a vessel known as Dr. David Herndon, every time I look down at the scars that engulf my right arm. The next time you see me, take a good long look at it, I likely won’t be wearing long sleeves. You’ll see scars that look like a road map, twisted all around it from the backside of my thumb to the top of my bicep, where the seams of those skin grafts were stapled together. Through the miraculous power of God, I was lucky enough to be the son of a man whose employer offered no health insurance coverage, which in turn kept my local hospital from amputating my right arm after suffering a severe burn at the age of 12 when they found out my father couldn’t afford it. As a result, I was sent to a charity hospital for burned children, where Dr. Herndon was busy pioneering his award-winning methods of grafting the skin of pediatric burn patients. It not only saved my right arm but, potentially, also saved my life due to the infections I would have undoubtedly been dealing with.
Dr. Herndon’s healing ability was not something that simply popped into his head, but was given to him by God in the form of knowledge gleaned from hours of work, research, study, more research, and much more work. He didn’t anoint my head with oils, and he didn’t lay his hands on me. He shaved five strips of skin from my legs and stapled them to my right arm. Tonight, the right arm the local doctor wanted to cut off is now responsible for half of the 65 words per minute I am capable of typing. In addition to that, the index finger of my right hand pulled the trigger on my first buck last year. My right hand was capable of producing several drawings in my art classes that provided for scholarships, which in turn paid for a portion of my education. My right arm reaches down to shift gears in the Jeep you see me driving. It throws darts and regularly allows me to hit my mark, when my father and I are able to spend time together. Tomorrow, it will allow me to utilize the ratchets, screwdrivers, crimpers, and numerous other tools necessary to provide me the means to travel to Ozias Missionary Baptist Church when I’m able get up there so I can hear you give a Sunday School lesson. If that right arm is not a gift from God, I don’t know what is.
Interestingly enough, skin grafting technology is mentioned nowhere in any of my many translations of the bible…nor is optometry, the study of electricity, or any of the myriad other sciences God has granted us the ability to study…but it is no less real, and it is no less a gift from God.
The same holds true with the study of evolutionary theory. I’m not absolutely certain how much formal education you’ve had on the subject, but I know so little about it that I wouldn’t even think of going beyond the mere basics. I was but a mere art student in college, and my experience in the field evolution was yet another gift from God. I know so little about chemistry that it should probably be illegal for me to pump my own gasoline, but was required to take a science course as part of my degree plan. I chose “Biology for Non-Science Majors”, as that was the one available class that semester that was lecture-only and didn’t require a separate lab course!
However, I feel blessed that my professor was not only an award-winning geneticist that has already forgotten more about evolutionary theory than you and I will ever imagine knowing, but also happened to be a very devout and faithful Southern Baptist. We began study of evolution theory about half an hour into the first class, as it is the basic building block of understanding the scientific principle of life. Roughly three seconds into this discussion, a young woman got up to leave, and Dr. Schneider asked where she was going. Her response was something along the lines of “evolution is against my religion”, to which he replied those eight words which have stuck with me ever since that evening.
“God gave you a brain. Start using it.”
One of the other very important things he stressed, that I had heard countless times before (from people as diverse as an astronomer named Carl Sagan, to a rig welder named Rocky Rhodes) was the idea that the more a man learns, the more a man learns how much he truly has to learn.
Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone identifying himself as a “Christian”, yet disagreeing with the notion that the bible is the inspired word of God. Yet still, I can instantly find twenty one DIFFERENT translations of the Holy Bible, in English…and that’s just the protestant versions!
In my high school years, I studied both Spanish and Latin, and did more translations than I’d ever like to have to think about again. In my three years of Latin studies, one of the main things I learned was that in addition to various rules (and the little quirks) of both the origin and destination languages, there were also many cultural variances that will drastically affect the manner in which a translation ends up. To add to these issues, the King James Bible often utilized by protestant churches is the third translation commissioned by the king of England (King James, obviously!), after King Henry VIII broke with Rome over the issue of an annulment of marriage from one of his various wives.
The original version of the Old Testament was not only written in ancient Hebrew, but was then translated into either ancient Greek or Latin, depending upon which version the English translators were going by. With this in mind, also remember that the original Hebrew was written hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of years after the events of Genesis actually happened.
The Word of God is infallible…but the scribes of God’s word were fallible men, which was personally witnessed by my uncle Sam on Sunday night when he, myself, and my girlfriend read the bible verse he was to memorize. The three of us had three different translations. Sam had a KJV, Tabatha had an NIV, and I was using a St. Joseph’s that belonged to my grandmother’s recently-deceased sister. For the majority of the encompassing passage, all three versions offered the identical conceptual idea, albeit with slightly different wording…except for the latter half of the one particular verse Sam was to memorize. These are three different Christian bibles, being read by three different people, in the same room at the same time. The difference between these versions of what is supposed to be the same work were not contradictory, and neither offered anything that hadn’t been discussed elsewhere, but the concepts were completely different when translated into English. If my memory of Latin class is correct, you can have several different English translations of the same sentence that are all “technically” correct with the applied rules of both languages…but only one will be correct with the intended meaning of the original statement in the original language. Does that mean that Sam’s bible or Tabatha’s bible was incorrect, simply because the Catholic church predates the Anglican church?
Keep in mind, all three versions of Proverbs 11:30 stated things that were teachings of Christ himself, none contradicted the other, but the SJV was different from both the KJV and the NIV. This doesn’t even get into the fact that the original ancient Hebrew of the Old Testament was written long after Abraham’s covenant with God, and had been passed down through oral tradition that predates man’s invention of the written language.
When the Torah was written, mankind was still in the early stages of the written language. The Egyptians were still using hieroglyphics long after Moses led the Israelites through the parting of the Red Sea. “Fire” was relatively old news at the time, and we as a species had already discovered simple machines such as the wheel and the wedge…but it’s silly to say that man was “technologically advanced” in the myriad scientific disciplines when Genesis was first scribbled onto an animal skin using pigment made from plants. DNA was about as foreign of a concept as a cellular telephone…or, for that matter, even a telegraph. At the time of Genesis, the moon was merely a big bright thing in the sky that no one really had a clue about…and yet, through the wonders of the knowledge that He bestowed upon mankind, some very famous words were transmitted via a radio (another unknown idea at the time Genesis was written). It may have been a small step for a man, but it was a giant leap for mankind.
I’m not certain how old you are, but I’m not quite 32 years old. In my short time on God’s green Earth, it hurts my head to think of the numerous things mankind has discovered. Keep in mind that the words “discovered” and “invented” aren’t the same as “created”, for mankind has created nothing. God created everything we see, smell, feel, taste, and hear…as well as everything we think. Even today, our limited understanding of God’s creation is leaps and bounds above what they were as recently as the day I was born. I can still remember seeing a cellular telephone for the first time in real life, one of my uncle’s friends had an old Motorola “brick” phone like you saw in early rap music videos and episodes of Miami Vice. The computers used to put a man on the moon that at the time took up entire rooms, now take residence in our back pockets…and are also capable of simultaneously taking photographs of our families as we take boat trips on the river, and sending them to relatives and friends on the other side of the world. These advances are here because of mankind taking advantage of the gifts that God has given us all.
I am not persecuting or prosecuting you for the lesson you gave yesterday, I am merely hoping that you open your mind a bit. Your mind is a gift from God, and I would be ashamed of myself if I didn’t challenge you to use it as much as possible. However, I do feel that it is insulting to those who have studied evolutionary theory, as well as the countless many who have made it their lives’ work to better mankind through the multitude of scientific advances gained via the knowledge of evolution, when people ridicule it without understanding it. Out of respect for Ozias Missionary Baptist Church (and more importantly, my uncle and aunt), my tongue was on the verge of bleeding from biting it so much during your Sunday School class.
Evolutionary theory is one of the most misunderstood, and most misused, theories found within the realm of science and brought into a church. Throughout your entire lesson, you made two statements dealing with the theory of evolution, with the remainder being your thoughts on certain theories of origin.
Many “evolutionists” such as myself firmly believe that the universe was created by THE Almighty God, end of story. However, I know of at least one of these “evolutionists” (yeah, that “evolutionist” would be me!) that happens to think my God has a plan and a purpose for everything. Every single one of those little atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen that make up the essential building blocks of human life has its purpose, and this plan has existed since before God commanded the plants to sprout forth from the earth…and absolutely NOWHERE in the various translations of the Judeo-Christian bible (your version, or mine, or any of the other two dozen), does it say how He went about making it happen.
You choose to believe He spoke it, and it “poofed” out of the earth. I choose to believe that He decided to speak it, and had it planned out for longer than you or I can fathom…and He allowed those atoms to form the building blocks of particular species of vegetation that had been extinct since long before the beginning of recorded history, and have since evolved into the Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, and Washington Red apples I see at the grocery store today.
Our bibles say He spoke it, and it happened. It does not go into detail as to how it happened, and I feel that it does a disservice to God if we do not investigate to the best of our ability HOW our Almighty God weaved his various creations, in order to provide a better life for our fellow man. We will never understand completely, but He will allow us a bit of knowledge as he has done for thousands of years.
Your discussion of the “Big Bang Theory” is, as I said earlier, one scientifically possible theory of “origin”. It deals with the origin of the creation of the universe, not the origin of life…or the first organism’s evolution into other organisms. To lump them together is either scientific ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. Ignorance of science is certainly no character flaw, as I am personally very ignorant in a great many scientific disciplines…including the majority of evolutionary theory.
If memory serves, you work in the area of hydraulic energy transfer, and in all likelihood you understand how much more of that area there is that you could learn. I know very little about that subject, but I know a bit more than the average bear when it comes to building a computer…and, in fact, I built the computer I’m writing this letter on. Daily, I must glean knowledge from those more knowledgeable than myself in order to do my job, simply because I did not create computers and don’t know all there is to know about them.
Is it is not only an insult to those who have made it their lives’ work to improve our lives through scientific advancement, but also an insult to God when we deny the gifts that He has bestowed upon them (and also, by extension, ourselves)? To recognize the evolution of species as a work of God is not, in my opinion, a contradiction of God’s word or His works. To me, it is a praise of God’s glory, a recognition of His awesomeness, when we truly realize how little we really understand about it but attempt to do our best to use the minds He gave us so that we may help our fellow man.
With love from a Brother in Christ,
-Barry H. Rhodes
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Being a spoon...more about the "terror mosque".
So the chapter of Romans 13 (specifically, verses 1-7) has always been a serious item of contention amongst me and a certain cousin of mine, namely because he wants to be a cop and I generally can't stand the mere thought of them.
It reads as follows:
"1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. 7Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor."
The United States Constitution is, like it or not, the highest law of the land as far as our worldly legal system is concerned. Within the first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights, we have the Fifth Amendment.
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Pay close attention to the specific clause of "due process of law", and then read the First Amendment. It reads:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Our founding fathers recognized that those who first migrated to America from their native England did so out of a desire to escape religious persecution. Not for a disbelief in Christ, but for failing to believe in Christ as those in government said they should. As such, they installed a freedom of religion as the very first amendment to the United States Constitution.
Now let's revisit the idea of suggesting that "someone" should do "something" to stop the building of a mosque a few blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center towers. Honestly, what do you think is going to happen, if you can't convince the planners of this mosque to move elsewhere?
Will you sign petitions and forward them to your congressman, in hopes that they will violate the constitution and prohibit the building of a Muslim community center on private property, knowing that doing so violates the commandments of the bible?
Like it or not, we DO live in America. You may disagree with the Muslim religion. You may think it's "insensitive" to build such a thing within a few blocks of "9/11 ground zero"...and three strip joints and a Burger King. You may think that an Islamic community center shouldn't be allowed because that particular religion preaches as much violence as the Old Testament.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING can be lawfully done to stop it, and demanding that something actually be legally done to stop it is in direct conflict with both the United States Constitution and the Judeo-Christian bible.
Welcome to America. Love it, leave it, or attempt to change it through a constitutional amendment.
That being said, please allow me to leave you with another piece of scripture, from Matthews 7, as it also happens to be one of the many passages often quoted by my cousin.
1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
It reads as follows:
"1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. 7Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor."
The United States Constitution is, like it or not, the highest law of the land as far as our worldly legal system is concerned. Within the first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights, we have the Fifth Amendment.
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Pay close attention to the specific clause of "due process of law", and then read the First Amendment. It reads:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Our founding fathers recognized that those who first migrated to America from their native England did so out of a desire to escape religious persecution. Not for a disbelief in Christ, but for failing to believe in Christ as those in government said they should. As such, they installed a freedom of religion as the very first amendment to the United States Constitution.
Now let's revisit the idea of suggesting that "someone" should do "something" to stop the building of a mosque a few blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center towers. Honestly, what do you think is going to happen, if you can't convince the planners of this mosque to move elsewhere?
Will you sign petitions and forward them to your congressman, in hopes that they will violate the constitution and prohibit the building of a Muslim community center on private property, knowing that doing so violates the commandments of the bible?
Like it or not, we DO live in America. You may disagree with the Muslim religion. You may think it's "insensitive" to build such a thing within a few blocks of "9/11 ground zero"...and three strip joints and a Burger King. You may think that an Islamic community center shouldn't be allowed because that particular religion preaches as much violence as the Old Testament.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING can be lawfully done to stop it, and demanding that something actually be legally done to stop it is in direct conflict with both the United States Constitution and the Judeo-Christian bible.
Welcome to America. Love it, leave it, or attempt to change it through a constitutional amendment.
That being said, please allow me to leave you with another piece of scripture, from Matthews 7, as it also happens to be one of the many passages often quoted by my cousin.
1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
6"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.
While some may refer to verse 6, and suggest that the bible commands us not to discuss things with those who are incapable of understanding, I prefer to invoke verses 7-11. Feel free to read them on your own, and come to your own conclusions.Wednesday, August 25, 2010
In response to a critic, and a monopoly on Salvation...
Oh, there are just so many things running through my mind right now. Where to start?
First off, let's get something straight right now. Like it or not, you have said that you feel my mother should be executed, regardless of whether you meant it (or even realized it). While true, you did not use those specific words, you most certainly did express this opinion...and have done so numerous times.
You see, I live in a world of "black and white" when it comes to "right and wrong", I do not accept any notion of a grey area. Either it is what it is, or it simply isn't. If action A is tantamount to action B, and action B warrants response C, then committing action A warrants response C.
Numerous times, I have heard you (as well as both of your sons, and even your own mother!) say they are in full support of capital punishment as the natural and justified punishment for the act of murder. Believe it or not, I actually agree with this, albeit only in theory...simply because of the way it's carried out, but that's a different story.
However, where I differ from the four of you would be the notion that a soul can exist within a human body in the absence of the ability of basic cognitive self-awareness. Everyone knows that a human person's life starts out as a fertilized egg, otherwise known as "conception". I hold a seriously different opinion as to what constitutes a "person". A fetus without a mind is, in my not-so-humble opinion, an "incomplete" human being. It has no mind, therefore it has no soul. As such, it is not a person in my eyes.
The act of murder, throughout the course of written history, has consistently been defined as the unjustified killing of a living person (or, "individual"). In fact, until the lobby funded by religious zealots hijacked our state legislature a few years back, an "individual" was defined as a "human person that has been born and has breathed". For more than a hundred years (essentially, since the time of our state's penal code first being written), this was the accepted view...and the people of the State of Texas accepted it not only because it has a longstanding tradition in the English Common Law that our laws are derived from, but also because it is alluded to in the Old Testament of our bibles that much of English Common Law is derived from.
As Christians, you and I both know that there is no sin greater or worse than another before the eyes of God. However, when we blur the lines between the eyes of God and the laws of man, we begin to run into problems. Personally, I feel that abortion is a sin of irresponsibility before God, but does not equate to the crime of murder before the laws of man. You have expressed a drastically different view, when you have expressed the opinion on numerous occasions that a fetus is a "person" and abortion is "murder".
If you express that opinion, as well as the opinion that the death penalty is a just response to a murder, you are by default expressing the opinion that those who have abortions should be put to death for the crime of killing a fetus. It's simple logic. If A = B, and B warrants C, then A also warrants C.
I am, however, not truly offended by your expression of this opinion. What did (and honestly, still does) offend me is the fact that you have acted like you haven't expressed this opinion. It truly feels like you're saying that you don't (or, at least, didn't) feel this way when you said these things. Our family has always prided ourselves in being straight-shooters who tell it like it is, and yet, I personally feel like there's backpedaling when it deals with a discussion amongst a relative when it involves someone close to him. That, honestly, offended me more than the thought of you thinking my mother was worthy of execution...the fact that the rules could be bent if it was someone we knew, because such thinking lends itself to the idea that one person is somehow "more equal" than another.
I do not intend to quit attending a baptist church, as one of the basic tenets of the Baptist church is the "Priesthood of Believers". As Baptists, we are not defined strictly to the dogma of the Southern Baptist Convention, nor are we defined strictly by the opinions and message of our church leadership. We are free to have our own opinions. The church may choose to express their affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention and, by doing so, adopt their official positions...but the individual is still free to worship God as we see proper. However, this does not mean I won't necessarily stop going to a Baptist church, in the event that the particular church preaches a message my conscience does not agree with. There is a reason I won't set foot inside First Baptist of Angleton, TX unless it's for a wedding, funeral, or a special occasion for my grandmother. The moment I hear a pastor calling my mother a murderer, you can bet dollars to donuts that my happy ass is walking out the door.
Moving right along, let's move on to point #2. The notion that you and Habib Q. Muslim somehow don't worship the same God. As much as I'm sure it pains you to read this, you actually do. The three major monotheistic religions are based upon the agreement between God and Abraham...and all three pray to the same One True God.
In Judaism, you have the beginning. Abraham gave rise to the nation of Israel, via his son Isaac. In Christianity, a Jewish carpenter is worshiped as the son of God. In Islam, the bastard son of Abraham was cast out of his father's home, along with his mother, and this gave rise to the Muslim religion.
In reading the Koran, I have come across three basic points.
A) Jesus was a messenger of God, was the only sinless man to have ever lived (not even Muhammad claims this title!), and ascended straight to heaven.
B) Mary is a revered figure, and actually has an entire book in the Koran devoted to her.
C) The One True God of Abraham is to be worshiped.
So yes, "they" worship the same God as you do, "they" simply have a difference of opinion.
Now, on to point three. I must say, what really pissed me off more than anything I've ever heard you or any other member of my family say (and that's saying a lot, considering that a person's opinions honestly don't really bother me that much and never truly have, and we've had some serious disagreements about very fundamental things) is the notion that maybe, if I'm really lucky, I can have the same salvation you have.
Seriously, do your personal opinions give you a greater insight into God? Do I not get to enter the kingdom of Heaven, because I don't hold the same feelings you do? Will God damn me to hell, because I don't stand in condemnation of certain brown people who wear towels on their heads and pray to Him in a different manner and a different language than you and I do? My God did not teach me to hate, stand in judgment of others, or condemn those who don't pray to Him like I do.
I will, until the day I die, defend your right to make such statements. However, I also reserve my right to express my utmost disapproval of what I feel to be extreme intolerance, toward not only myself, but to so many others. Speaking with the most definite seriousness imaginable, I cannot imagine a greater curse upon another human being, than telling a person that he will not enter Heaven because he does not share your opinions. Our opinions vary, and yet, I do not feel it necessary to question your relationship with God. I hold my own opinions based upon my personal life experiences, and where religion is concerned, my own limited understanding of God. No better, and no worse, than you. I will always love you, but I cannot condone such a curse.
First off, let's get something straight right now. Like it or not, you have said that you feel my mother should be executed, regardless of whether you meant it (or even realized it). While true, you did not use those specific words, you most certainly did express this opinion...and have done so numerous times.
You see, I live in a world of "black and white" when it comes to "right and wrong", I do not accept any notion of a grey area. Either it is what it is, or it simply isn't. If action A is tantamount to action B, and action B warrants response C, then committing action A warrants response C.
Numerous times, I have heard you (as well as both of your sons, and even your own mother!) say they are in full support of capital punishment as the natural and justified punishment for the act of murder. Believe it or not, I actually agree with this, albeit only in theory...simply because of the way it's carried out, but that's a different story.
However, where I differ from the four of you would be the notion that a soul can exist within a human body in the absence of the ability of basic cognitive self-awareness. Everyone knows that a human person's life starts out as a fertilized egg, otherwise known as "conception". I hold a seriously different opinion as to what constitutes a "person". A fetus without a mind is, in my not-so-humble opinion, an "incomplete" human being. It has no mind, therefore it has no soul. As such, it is not a person in my eyes.
The act of murder, throughout the course of written history, has consistently been defined as the unjustified killing of a living person (or, "individual"). In fact, until the lobby funded by religious zealots hijacked our state legislature a few years back, an "individual" was defined as a "human person that has been born and has breathed". For more than a hundred years (essentially, since the time of our state's penal code first being written), this was the accepted view...and the people of the State of Texas accepted it not only because it has a longstanding tradition in the English Common Law that our laws are derived from, but also because it is alluded to in the Old Testament of our bibles that much of English Common Law is derived from.
As Christians, you and I both know that there is no sin greater or worse than another before the eyes of God. However, when we blur the lines between the eyes of God and the laws of man, we begin to run into problems. Personally, I feel that abortion is a sin of irresponsibility before God, but does not equate to the crime of murder before the laws of man. You have expressed a drastically different view, when you have expressed the opinion on numerous occasions that a fetus is a "person" and abortion is "murder".
If you express that opinion, as well as the opinion that the death penalty is a just response to a murder, you are by default expressing the opinion that those who have abortions should be put to death for the crime of killing a fetus. It's simple logic. If A = B, and B warrants C, then A also warrants C.
I am, however, not truly offended by your expression of this opinion. What did (and honestly, still does) offend me is the fact that you have acted like you haven't expressed this opinion. It truly feels like you're saying that you don't (or, at least, didn't) feel this way when you said these things. Our family has always prided ourselves in being straight-shooters who tell it like it is, and yet, I personally feel like there's backpedaling when it deals with a discussion amongst a relative when it involves someone close to him. That, honestly, offended me more than the thought of you thinking my mother was worthy of execution...the fact that the rules could be bent if it was someone we knew, because such thinking lends itself to the idea that one person is somehow "more equal" than another.
I do not intend to quit attending a baptist church, as one of the basic tenets of the Baptist church is the "Priesthood of Believers". As Baptists, we are not defined strictly to the dogma of the Southern Baptist Convention, nor are we defined strictly by the opinions and message of our church leadership. We are free to have our own opinions. The church may choose to express their affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention and, by doing so, adopt their official positions...but the individual is still free to worship God as we see proper. However, this does not mean I won't necessarily stop going to a Baptist church, in the event that the particular church preaches a message my conscience does not agree with. There is a reason I won't set foot inside First Baptist of Angleton, TX unless it's for a wedding, funeral, or a special occasion for my grandmother. The moment I hear a pastor calling my mother a murderer, you can bet dollars to donuts that my happy ass is walking out the door.
Moving right along, let's move on to point #2. The notion that you and Habib Q. Muslim somehow don't worship the same God. As much as I'm sure it pains you to read this, you actually do. The three major monotheistic religions are based upon the agreement between God and Abraham...and all three pray to the same One True God.
In Judaism, you have the beginning. Abraham gave rise to the nation of Israel, via his son Isaac. In Christianity, a Jewish carpenter is worshiped as the son of God. In Islam, the bastard son of Abraham was cast out of his father's home, along with his mother, and this gave rise to the Muslim religion.
In reading the Koran, I have come across three basic points.
A) Jesus was a messenger of God, was the only sinless man to have ever lived (not even Muhammad claims this title!), and ascended straight to heaven.
B) Mary is a revered figure, and actually has an entire book in the Koran devoted to her.
C) The One True God of Abraham is to be worshiped.
So yes, "they" worship the same God as you do, "they" simply have a difference of opinion.
Now, on to point three. I must say, what really pissed me off more than anything I've ever heard you or any other member of my family say (and that's saying a lot, considering that a person's opinions honestly don't really bother me that much and never truly have, and we've had some serious disagreements about very fundamental things) is the notion that maybe, if I'm really lucky, I can have the same salvation you have.
Seriously, do your personal opinions give you a greater insight into God? Do I not get to enter the kingdom of Heaven, because I don't hold the same feelings you do? Will God damn me to hell, because I don't stand in condemnation of certain brown people who wear towels on their heads and pray to Him in a different manner and a different language than you and I do? My God did not teach me to hate, stand in judgment of others, or condemn those who don't pray to Him like I do.
I will, until the day I die, defend your right to make such statements. However, I also reserve my right to express my utmost disapproval of what I feel to be extreme intolerance, toward not only myself, but to so many others. Speaking with the most definite seriousness imaginable, I cannot imagine a greater curse upon another human being, than telling a person that he will not enter Heaven because he does not share your opinions. Our opinions vary, and yet, I do not feel it necessary to question your relationship with God. I hold my own opinions based upon my personal life experiences, and where religion is concerned, my own limited understanding of God. No better, and no worse, than you. I will always love you, but I cannot condone such a curse.
Monday, August 23, 2010
About that mosque at "Ground Zero"...
I still find it funny and just a bit ironic, that people all over America happen to be up in arms over the building of an Islamic "community center" a few blocks away from what used to be the twin towers hit by airplanes on 9/11/01 (and WTC 7, which wasn't actually hit by anything at all, yet still managed to be demolished...but that's a different discussion).
What's really ironic that those who are the most angry about the issue are those who love to raise hell at "Tea Party" events, in response to government infringement upon their private property....and yet, they are more than willing to keep in lock-step with the O'Reilly Factor, when the subject of strange brown people with towels on their heads want to worship God in a manner they don't agree with.
Regardless, this is still America, and we still have certain freedoms. One of them happens to NOT be the right to be "offended" when you find something "insensitive". However, we still have the right to freedom of religion, freedom to own property, et cetera.
While I was born in Texas and baptized in a church belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention, you do not see me raising nine kinds of hell when I hear about a new Baptist Church being built. I don't start protesting when I learned that the church I now attend, which happens to claim being "Baptist-based", says they will be breaking ground on a new Church location so they don't have to worry about renewing the lease on their current space inside a strip mall center. I don't complain, because I go to church to learn about God via the Judeo-Christian bible. The God I choose to worship is a compassionate God, and I have learned this through the reading of my bible.
You see, the only thing my God has ever asked of me is to believe in him, accept him as my God, live my life according to his commandments, and ask his forgiveness when I fail him. Through that, I am granted eternal salvation. Some day I will meet my death and tremble with a fear I have never known before, when I am forced to face the sins of my life, knowing that I knew full-well the difference between right and wrong when I committed those sins. With that being said, God is my judge.
Just the same, God is also the ultimate judge of every man who worships him. You see, my God is the Almighty God of Abraham. He is the same God worshiped by the Jew and the Muslim. Who am I to say that they are wrong, when their holy scriptures say otherwise?
Regardless, let's look back to the building of a mosque a few blocks away from "ground zero", and the fact that there are baptist churches in just about every neighborhood in Brazoria County.
First off, let's not forget that the motivations of "Al Qaeda" were not religious but POLITICAL. Second, let's also remember that the "ground zero mosque" is several blocks away from the location of where the Twin Towers once stood...and in that general area, there are several strip joints and a Burger King. It's not exactly what I'd call "hallowed ground!
Now, let's get back to the fact that this is AMERICA. Last time I checked, the First Amendment doesn't just go away because our country wants to fight an undeclared war on people who pray to God like you do.
Remember when I said that I don't protest Baptist churches being in my near vicinity? You may ask, "why would you be upset about a baptist church being in your neighborhood, if you are a Christian?". Well, I'll tell you.
As of 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention released a resolution declaring death by lethal injection, firing squad, hanging, or any other legalized method of execution in America to be a "legitimate form of punishment". The SBC also declares a fetus to be a human person at the moment of conception, through resolutions dating back to more than six years prior to my birth. If a fetus is considered a "person", and the killing of a "person" is considered murder under Texas law, and the Southern Baptist Convention condones capital punishment, that can only mean one thing.
They support the execution of those who have had abortions.
Considering that my own mother had several abortions between the birth of my younger brother and myself, that makes her a "murderer" in the eyes of the Southern Baptist Convention. Not just a "murderer", but a "serial killer"!
The Southern Baptist Convention wants to kill my mother. I am, believe it or not, deeply offended by this. And yet, I do not stand outside the church I was raised in, holding picket signs because they want to see my own mother strapped to a gurney.
Keep in mind, the planners of the "blocks-away-from-ground-zero mosque" are claiming to promote tolerance amongst various religions, and to steer people away from hatred and violence.
It is sheer ignorance of the utmost kind, to claim that 9/11 had anything to do with "Islamic Extremism", while denying that it was purely politically motivated by a response to our government's foreign policy. It had as much to do with "Islam" as Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah building had to do with Christianity.
I don't protest about your church wanting to kill my mother. Why do you raise hell about someone wanting to build a church that claims to want to promote tolerance, while saying that Islam is evil, when your own church publicly says they are okay with killing those who go against their religion?
What's really ironic that those who are the most angry about the issue are those who love to raise hell at "Tea Party" events, in response to government infringement upon their private property....and yet, they are more than willing to keep in lock-step with the O'Reilly Factor, when the subject of strange brown people with towels on their heads want to worship God in a manner they don't agree with.
Regardless, this is still America, and we still have certain freedoms. One of them happens to NOT be the right to be "offended" when you find something "insensitive". However, we still have the right to freedom of religion, freedom to own property, et cetera.
While I was born in Texas and baptized in a church belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention, you do not see me raising nine kinds of hell when I hear about a new Baptist Church being built. I don't start protesting when I learned that the church I now attend, which happens to claim being "Baptist-based", says they will be breaking ground on a new Church location so they don't have to worry about renewing the lease on their current space inside a strip mall center. I don't complain, because I go to church to learn about God via the Judeo-Christian bible. The God I choose to worship is a compassionate God, and I have learned this through the reading of my bible.
You see, the only thing my God has ever asked of me is to believe in him, accept him as my God, live my life according to his commandments, and ask his forgiveness when I fail him. Through that, I am granted eternal salvation. Some day I will meet my death and tremble with a fear I have never known before, when I am forced to face the sins of my life, knowing that I knew full-well the difference between right and wrong when I committed those sins. With that being said, God is my judge.
Just the same, God is also the ultimate judge of every man who worships him. You see, my God is the Almighty God of Abraham. He is the same God worshiped by the Jew and the Muslim. Who am I to say that they are wrong, when their holy scriptures say otherwise?
Regardless, let's look back to the building of a mosque a few blocks away from "ground zero", and the fact that there are baptist churches in just about every neighborhood in Brazoria County.
First off, let's not forget that the motivations of "Al Qaeda" were not religious but POLITICAL. Second, let's also remember that the "ground zero mosque" is several blocks away from the location of where the Twin Towers once stood...and in that general area, there are several strip joints and a Burger King. It's not exactly what I'd call "hallowed ground!
Now, let's get back to the fact that this is AMERICA. Last time I checked, the First Amendment doesn't just go away because our country wants to fight an undeclared war on people who pray to God like you do.
Remember when I said that I don't protest Baptist churches being in my near vicinity? You may ask, "why would you be upset about a baptist church being in your neighborhood, if you are a Christian?". Well, I'll tell you.
As of 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention released a resolution declaring death by lethal injection, firing squad, hanging, or any other legalized method of execution in America to be a "legitimate form of punishment". The SBC also declares a fetus to be a human person at the moment of conception, through resolutions dating back to more than six years prior to my birth. If a fetus is considered a "person", and the killing of a "person" is considered murder under Texas law, and the Southern Baptist Convention condones capital punishment, that can only mean one thing.
They support the execution of those who have had abortions.
Considering that my own mother had several abortions between the birth of my younger brother and myself, that makes her a "murderer" in the eyes of the Southern Baptist Convention. Not just a "murderer", but a "serial killer"!
The Southern Baptist Convention wants to kill my mother. I am, believe it or not, deeply offended by this. And yet, I do not stand outside the church I was raised in, holding picket signs because they want to see my own mother strapped to a gurney.
Keep in mind, the planners of the "blocks-away-from-ground-zero mosque" are claiming to promote tolerance amongst various religions, and to steer people away from hatred and violence.
It is sheer ignorance of the utmost kind, to claim that 9/11 had anything to do with "Islamic Extremism", while denying that it was purely politically motivated by a response to our government's foreign policy. It had as much to do with "Islam" as Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah building had to do with Christianity.
I don't protest about your church wanting to kill my mother. Why do you raise hell about someone wanting to build a church that claims to want to promote tolerance, while saying that Islam is evil, when your own church publicly says they are okay with killing those who go against their religion?
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The problem with speaking your mind...
So, today, I was reminded of that one problem which will inevitably occur when a man speaks his mind. He will, naturally, offend someone somewhere...even if it's unintentional.
This happened to me today (again). Those who know me know that I'm not the kind of person to sugar-coat my words, and that I'll simply not say anything if I disagree with someone but think that speaking my mind will offend someone.
Well, the subject matter in question today happens to be the issue of police officers in America, specifically in Texas, and more specifically right here where I live and work. I joked about having a gun in my truck, "because a cop takes up too much space"...not knowing that one of my friend's friends happens to be married to a cop. I feel the way I do about those who wear a badge for several reasons, some personal and some general.
As you read these, please remember that one of my friends that I grew up with happens to be a deputy for the local Sheriff's Office. It was in her bedroom that I sat and watched Full Metal Jacket the night before I shipped off to basic, sipping the beer purchased by her mother at the corner store because I was only 18 years old at the time.
Another good friend of mine also happens to be a deputy, and he's the man who taught me how to shoot. Not just how to take aim and squeeze, but how to really shoot "when it matters". If you've spent more than a week around me, you know how I feel about this, and how grateful I am for this man's instruction. He's been a friend of my family since before I was born, and is one of the few non-relatives in this area that actually knew my mother. Giving a bit of insight into my point of view, he also happened to be the deputy that pulled me out of a holding cell in the Brazoria County Jail to ask how I was doing and if I needed him to call anyone for me, as I was waiting to see a judge after being wrongfully arrested on criminal charges that were later dropped.
I do not automatically have a lack of respect for people that wear a badge, I have an automatic lack of respect for the badge itself due to reasons which will be explained below. My friends run the gamut from preachers to plumbers, convicted dope dealing felons to criminal attorneys who have represented confessed killers, bartenders to missionaries, and yes...even a cop or two. Your chosen profession does not necessarily shape who you are, or determine whether or not I consider you to be a respectable person.
Anyhow, I'm going to state a few things here, and do my best to keep my personal experiences out of it, so that my point of view can be looked at from an objective manner...namely, so that it can't be said that such a point of view is skewed by my personal experiences. That being said, I will list only facts pertaining to police officers, and leave you to form your own opinions after being slightly more educated on the matter.
1) A Law Enforcement Officer's ("LEO") only power is derived from a lawful authority to utilize physical force or threat of physical force, to deprive someone of life, liberty, or property in order to enforce a particular law. Like it or not, there is simply no other power that a police officer possesses, when you get right down to the heart of it. In fact, he is required as a condition of his employment, to use exactly these two methods in order to perform the duties of his job.
2) An LEO's job requirement, as a matter of basic logic, requires him to enforce laws that have criminalized acts which have no actual nameable "victim". While a person may claim that drugs, gambling, prostitution, et cetera are "sinful" or "bad for society", there is simply no natural right for any man to persecute another man for engaging in such acts. Yes, there is a legislated authority for those wearing a state-issued costume and firearm to stop those engaging in such acts, but there is no natural right allowing for the forced compulsion of a man to conform to the moral standards of another, provided that man is not depriving another man of his life, liberty, or property against his will.
3) An LEO's paycheck is derived, much like his powers, from either the use of physical force or the threat of physical force. Granted, he does not go shaking people down for "protection" money like a mobster in order to get paid. Rather, the Law Enforcement Agency (or "LEA") he works for is funded by taxation. Taxation is money taken by force, or threat of force, by those who oppose the payment of taxes for things they do not agree with (obviously, those who agree with taxation pay it voluntarily!). If I work for money, and do not give a cut of this money to the government under their proscribed payment schedule, I will be given one of two punishments (or, potentially, BOTH!) if/when caught by the taxation authorities. Either I will be imprisoned, or I will be told that I must pay the tax I "owe" plus interest penalties. If I refuse to pay taxes, I will be imprisoned. If I resist, I will be forcibly imprisoned. If I resist hard enough, I will be injured or even killed, depending upon the level of resistance I offer.
4) An LEO is not, according to the law, required to enforce the law equally upon all people. The legal concept of "discretion" applies to the majority of the LE professions, including but not limited to police officers, prosecutors, and judges. An LEO may decide to "overlook" a criminal offense, using his "discretion", which is essentially his own personal whims. His "discretion" to act in certain instances is determined by many things, including the actual harm being done to society by a particular act.
Unfortunately, it can also be determined by the LEO's personal prejudices, which are most certainly not limited to the subject's race. They may also include the subject's demeanor, apparent financial status, age, clothing, or even his choice of bumperstickers.
Let's use a few examples, shall we?
A) A 21 year old man gets pulled over for not using a blinker in a dedicated turn lane, 150 yards away from a high school. After he gets pulled over, the officer is looking in his car for items which are in "plain view", and notices a small tablet of a prescription muscle relaxer in the passenger-side floorboard belonging to his wife, who recently underwent surgery. The driver was not under the influence of any intoxicating chemical at the time.
B) An adult male and his adult girlfriend are on a very public, yet otherwise very vacant, beach at 10:30PM on a Tuesday evening in January after celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary at a local seafood restaurant. One thing leads to another, and there are "adult activities" occurring that involve a topless wife and a husband with his fly unzipped. A local patrol officer driving up and down the beach stops to investigate, after seeing this one single car parked on his beat.
C) A small group of well-to-do friends gathers in someone's garage, for a game of quarter-ante poker over a few beers. All five men are well-to-do professionals, homeowners, and otherwise upstanding members of the community. The man hosting this garage poker party took contributions for beer and other refreshments, and those contributions exceeded the costs of those refreshments by four dollars and seventy three cents...but the remainder of the donations was not redistributed amongst the players, because none were concerned about less than a dollar going to "the house". A call to the police station is made when the drinking goes on and the game gets a bit too rowdy, and a policeman is sent to investigate. Upon speaking to the poker-players, he gets the skinny upon the arrangement about everyone chipping in $15 for beer and hotwings every Tuesday evening, and further investigation leads to the officer learning that the homeowner is guilty of "promoting gambling" because he didn't spend the entire $75 on refreshments.
Now, let's look at the possible outcomes of these events, and they may vary depending upon what particular municipality you live in. In every circumstance, NOT A SINGLE NONCONSENSUAL PERSON was "harmed" by any of the actions perpetrated, but all three were violations of the law. In every single instance, the officer could very easily determine that the actor was not engaging in a harmful act, and simply disregard the act. However, depending upon the whims of the officer, the actor could also potentially be in a very bad legal position. Here are the possible outcomes...
A) The person could be charged with Possession of a Controlled Substance in a "Drug-Free Zone", which could not only result in a dope conviction, but also an "enhancement charge" for being within a thousand feet of a school that will potentially double the monetary fine and add an additional five years to the sentence. In addition to this, he would be branded as a "felon", prohibited from ever voting or purchasing a firearm from a licensed dealer, or even owning a firearm until five years after the date of final discharge from incarceration or community supervision.
B) Both the husband and wife could be charged with "indecent exposure"...even though the only person seeing them happened to be a random beat cop that pulled up stealthily with his headlights off, on a deserted beach. If either of them had ever had a past conviction under the same statute (say, for instance, he was seen urinating on the side of a highway 30 miles from the nearest town, or she was arrested for baring her breasts at Mardi Gras, and either of them had plead no contest to the charge so he/she could avoid the time and monetary expenses of a jury trial), they would be required to become REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS...even though the officer intentionally turned his lights off to avoid detection by the couple in the car, and there was no one else present on the beach at the time.
C) The owner of the home could be charged with "promotion of gambling", as well as a third party who may have purchased the refreshments, merely because they didn't spend the entirety of the money given for refreshments and did not equally redistribute the leftovers.
Each of these occurrences are but random possibilities, but they remain possible as long as we have such a thing as "officer discretion". Again, the discretion of the officer is essentially left to his personal whims. He may decide to pursue charges based upon his personal prejudices, his past dealings with the actors, et cetera. I personally do not feel that such power should be left in the hands of a man merely because he completed a six-month course at a local community college. Honestly, I don't think that power should be left in the hands of ANYONE, when the actors have harmed absolutely no one.
Remember, these are extreme (and yet, very possible) repercussions of "officer discretion".
4) An LEO has absolutely ZERO right to tell another man how to live his life, if in doing so, the actor does not harm another without consent. An LEO may have "legal authority" to do so, but he has no natural "right" to do so. "Authority" is a concept based upon force, whereas "right" is a concept based upon a natural assumption of Free Will granted by our birthright as members of the human race.
5) An LEO is not required, under force or threat of force, to live by the same set of laws as everyone else. The courts have ruled, in the case of Garrity, that an officer cannot be held criminally liable for admission of crimes made to investigating officers, if he is threatened with termination for not cooperating in the investigation of said alleged crimes. The Garrity case involves a "ticket-fixing" scheme, in which officers where threatened with termination of employment for failure to cooperate with an investigation into the corrupt and illegal acts. Under the 5th Amendment, a person is not legally required to answer questions from a police investigator, if his answers are criminally incriminating. If you do cooperate with any investigation involving crimes committed on duty, any evidence you provide cannot be used against you in a criminal proceeding, provided certain criteria are met.
This differs from those of us in the "real world". For instance, if I am being investigated for stealing from my employer, or offering free goods and services in exchange for sexual favors at the expense of my employer, I may be terminated from my employment AND prosecuted for criminal acts, REGARDLESS of whether I cooperate with a police investigation, as both acts are simultaneously criminal AND grounds for lawful termination of employment. However, if I were a policeman being investigated for stealing cocaine from the evidence locker or ignoring traffic violations in exchange for sexual favors in the backseat of my patrol car, I have the option of accepting termination for admitting to these acts, and invoking my Garrity privileges to avoid criminal prosecution based upon any statements I may make to an investigating officer if my job is threatened for non-cooperation.
With that being said, I cannot respect the action of becoming an LEO in Texas. I respect the person as an individual, giving him/her at least a modicum of basic human respect (and will likely provide much more respect, provided you have proven yourself worthy), but I do not respect the person's chosen livelihood. To become an LEO in the Great State of Texas, you must assume a legal authority to assert your will upon others using either physical violence or the threat of physical violence, while simultaneously asserting a legally-authorized privilege of immunity from the same laws we live in.
This happened to me today (again). Those who know me know that I'm not the kind of person to sugar-coat my words, and that I'll simply not say anything if I disagree with someone but think that speaking my mind will offend someone.
Well, the subject matter in question today happens to be the issue of police officers in America, specifically in Texas, and more specifically right here where I live and work. I joked about having a gun in my truck, "because a cop takes up too much space"...not knowing that one of my friend's friends happens to be married to a cop. I feel the way I do about those who wear a badge for several reasons, some personal and some general.
As you read these, please remember that one of my friends that I grew up with happens to be a deputy for the local Sheriff's Office. It was in her bedroom that I sat and watched Full Metal Jacket the night before I shipped off to basic, sipping the beer purchased by her mother at the corner store because I was only 18 years old at the time.
Another good friend of mine also happens to be a deputy, and he's the man who taught me how to shoot. Not just how to take aim and squeeze, but how to really shoot "when it matters". If you've spent more than a week around me, you know how I feel about this, and how grateful I am for this man's instruction. He's been a friend of my family since before I was born, and is one of the few non-relatives in this area that actually knew my mother. Giving a bit of insight into my point of view, he also happened to be the deputy that pulled me out of a holding cell in the Brazoria County Jail to ask how I was doing and if I needed him to call anyone for me, as I was waiting to see a judge after being wrongfully arrested on criminal charges that were later dropped.
I do not automatically have a lack of respect for people that wear a badge, I have an automatic lack of respect for the badge itself due to reasons which will be explained below. My friends run the gamut from preachers to plumbers, convicted dope dealing felons to criminal attorneys who have represented confessed killers, bartenders to missionaries, and yes...even a cop or two. Your chosen profession does not necessarily shape who you are, or determine whether or not I consider you to be a respectable person.
Anyhow, I'm going to state a few things here, and do my best to keep my personal experiences out of it, so that my point of view can be looked at from an objective manner...namely, so that it can't be said that such a point of view is skewed by my personal experiences. That being said, I will list only facts pertaining to police officers, and leave you to form your own opinions after being slightly more educated on the matter.
1) A Law Enforcement Officer's ("LEO") only power is derived from a lawful authority to utilize physical force or threat of physical force, to deprive someone of life, liberty, or property in order to enforce a particular law. Like it or not, there is simply no other power that a police officer possesses, when you get right down to the heart of it. In fact, he is required as a condition of his employment, to use exactly these two methods in order to perform the duties of his job.
2) An LEO's job requirement, as a matter of basic logic, requires him to enforce laws that have criminalized acts which have no actual nameable "victim". While a person may claim that drugs, gambling, prostitution, et cetera are "sinful" or "bad for society", there is simply no natural right for any man to persecute another man for engaging in such acts. Yes, there is a legislated authority for those wearing a state-issued costume and firearm to stop those engaging in such acts, but there is no natural right allowing for the forced compulsion of a man to conform to the moral standards of another, provided that man is not depriving another man of his life, liberty, or property against his will.
3) An LEO's paycheck is derived, much like his powers, from either the use of physical force or the threat of physical force. Granted, he does not go shaking people down for "protection" money like a mobster in order to get paid. Rather, the Law Enforcement Agency (or "LEA") he works for is funded by taxation. Taxation is money taken by force, or threat of force, by those who oppose the payment of taxes for things they do not agree with (obviously, those who agree with taxation pay it voluntarily!). If I work for money, and do not give a cut of this money to the government under their proscribed payment schedule, I will be given one of two punishments (or, potentially, BOTH!) if/when caught by the taxation authorities. Either I will be imprisoned, or I will be told that I must pay the tax I "owe" plus interest penalties. If I refuse to pay taxes, I will be imprisoned. If I resist, I will be forcibly imprisoned. If I resist hard enough, I will be injured or even killed, depending upon the level of resistance I offer.
4) An LEO is not, according to the law, required to enforce the law equally upon all people. The legal concept of "discretion" applies to the majority of the LE professions, including but not limited to police officers, prosecutors, and judges. An LEO may decide to "overlook" a criminal offense, using his "discretion", which is essentially his own personal whims. His "discretion" to act in certain instances is determined by many things, including the actual harm being done to society by a particular act.
Unfortunately, it can also be determined by the LEO's personal prejudices, which are most certainly not limited to the subject's race. They may also include the subject's demeanor, apparent financial status, age, clothing, or even his choice of bumperstickers.
Let's use a few examples, shall we?
A) A 21 year old man gets pulled over for not using a blinker in a dedicated turn lane, 150 yards away from a high school. After he gets pulled over, the officer is looking in his car for items which are in "plain view", and notices a small tablet of a prescription muscle relaxer in the passenger-side floorboard belonging to his wife, who recently underwent surgery. The driver was not under the influence of any intoxicating chemical at the time.
B) An adult male and his adult girlfriend are on a very public, yet otherwise very vacant, beach at 10:30PM on a Tuesday evening in January after celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary at a local seafood restaurant. One thing leads to another, and there are "adult activities" occurring that involve a topless wife and a husband with his fly unzipped. A local patrol officer driving up and down the beach stops to investigate, after seeing this one single car parked on his beat.
C) A small group of well-to-do friends gathers in someone's garage, for a game of quarter-ante poker over a few beers. All five men are well-to-do professionals, homeowners, and otherwise upstanding members of the community. The man hosting this garage poker party took contributions for beer and other refreshments, and those contributions exceeded the costs of those refreshments by four dollars and seventy three cents...but the remainder of the donations was not redistributed amongst the players, because none were concerned about less than a dollar going to "the house". A call to the police station is made when the drinking goes on and the game gets a bit too rowdy, and a policeman is sent to investigate. Upon speaking to the poker-players, he gets the skinny upon the arrangement about everyone chipping in $15 for beer and hotwings every Tuesday evening, and further investigation leads to the officer learning that the homeowner is guilty of "promoting gambling" because he didn't spend the entire $75 on refreshments.
Now, let's look at the possible outcomes of these events, and they may vary depending upon what particular municipality you live in. In every circumstance, NOT A SINGLE NONCONSENSUAL PERSON was "harmed" by any of the actions perpetrated, but all three were violations of the law. In every single instance, the officer could very easily determine that the actor was not engaging in a harmful act, and simply disregard the act. However, depending upon the whims of the officer, the actor could also potentially be in a very bad legal position. Here are the possible outcomes...
A) The person could be charged with Possession of a Controlled Substance in a "Drug-Free Zone", which could not only result in a dope conviction, but also an "enhancement charge" for being within a thousand feet of a school that will potentially double the monetary fine and add an additional five years to the sentence. In addition to this, he would be branded as a "felon", prohibited from ever voting or purchasing a firearm from a licensed dealer, or even owning a firearm until five years after the date of final discharge from incarceration or community supervision.
B) Both the husband and wife could be charged with "indecent exposure"...even though the only person seeing them happened to be a random beat cop that pulled up stealthily with his headlights off, on a deserted beach. If either of them had ever had a past conviction under the same statute (say, for instance, he was seen urinating on the side of a highway 30 miles from the nearest town, or she was arrested for baring her breasts at Mardi Gras, and either of them had plead no contest to the charge so he/she could avoid the time and monetary expenses of a jury trial), they would be required to become REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS...even though the officer intentionally turned his lights off to avoid detection by the couple in the car, and there was no one else present on the beach at the time.
C) The owner of the home could be charged with "promotion of gambling", as well as a third party who may have purchased the refreshments, merely because they didn't spend the entirety of the money given for refreshments and did not equally redistribute the leftovers.
Each of these occurrences are but random possibilities, but they remain possible as long as we have such a thing as "officer discretion". Again, the discretion of the officer is essentially left to his personal whims. He may decide to pursue charges based upon his personal prejudices, his past dealings with the actors, et cetera. I personally do not feel that such power should be left in the hands of a man merely because he completed a six-month course at a local community college. Honestly, I don't think that power should be left in the hands of ANYONE, when the actors have harmed absolutely no one.
Remember, these are extreme (and yet, very possible) repercussions of "officer discretion".
4) An LEO has absolutely ZERO right to tell another man how to live his life, if in doing so, the actor does not harm another without consent. An LEO may have "legal authority" to do so, but he has no natural "right" to do so. "Authority" is a concept based upon force, whereas "right" is a concept based upon a natural assumption of Free Will granted by our birthright as members of the human race.
5) An LEO is not required, under force or threat of force, to live by the same set of laws as everyone else. The courts have ruled, in the case of Garrity, that an officer cannot be held criminally liable for admission of crimes made to investigating officers, if he is threatened with termination for not cooperating in the investigation of said alleged crimes. The Garrity case involves a "ticket-fixing" scheme, in which officers where threatened with termination of employment for failure to cooperate with an investigation into the corrupt and illegal acts. Under the 5th Amendment, a person is not legally required to answer questions from a police investigator, if his answers are criminally incriminating. If you do cooperate with any investigation involving crimes committed on duty, any evidence you provide cannot be used against you in a criminal proceeding, provided certain criteria are met.
This differs from those of us in the "real world". For instance, if I am being investigated for stealing from my employer, or offering free goods and services in exchange for sexual favors at the expense of my employer, I may be terminated from my employment AND prosecuted for criminal acts, REGARDLESS of whether I cooperate with a police investigation, as both acts are simultaneously criminal AND grounds for lawful termination of employment. However, if I were a policeman being investigated for stealing cocaine from the evidence locker or ignoring traffic violations in exchange for sexual favors in the backseat of my patrol car, I have the option of accepting termination for admitting to these acts, and invoking my Garrity privileges to avoid criminal prosecution based upon any statements I may make to an investigating officer if my job is threatened for non-cooperation.
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Keep in mind, these are just basic generalized facts regarding the institution of Law Enforcement in America, and more specifically the particular area of Texas that I happen to live in. These issues do not even begin to delve into the deep-seated disregard for "mundanes" that we citizens happen to see on a daily basis at the hands of LEOs.
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With that being said, I cannot respect the action of becoming an LEO in Texas. I respect the person as an individual, giving him/her at least a modicum of basic human respect (and will likely provide much more respect, provided you have proven yourself worthy), but I do not respect the person's chosen livelihood. To become an LEO in the Great State of Texas, you must assume a legal authority to assert your will upon others using either physical violence or the threat of physical violence, while simultaneously asserting a legally-authorized privilege of immunity from the same laws we live in.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Honestly, what is worse?
When you think of what is more "morally destructive", would it be a photo of a severed left arm left from the blast of a bomb in a mideast warzone, or would it be a pornographic photo of interracial midgets engaged in a threesome that included some garden-fresh produce?
I'm asking, because I think it's an important question. I'll explain why I think so in a bit, but first, I'll go off into a slight tangent about the history of the internets. Circa 1985, the "internet" as the public now knows it, was set loose upon the world. Approximately two minutes later, the first pornographic website appeared on the internet. Today, roughly 1/3 of all internet web pages are pornographic in nature. Everyone and their uncle knows where to look for free porn on the internet.
Now, with that being said, I shall direct your attention to a particular website known as www.nowthatsfuckedup.com. You can click the link all you want, but it won't take you to the website.
You see, this particular website (run by Polk County, Florida resident Christopher Wilson) was overrun by the Polk County Sheriff's Office in 2006 after Mr. Wilson was charged with over 300 misdemeanor counts and one felony count of Florida state "obscenity" law violations. The website's servers were not actually based in Florida, but in the Netherlands, where many such websites are based to get around certain legal restrictions in the "Land of Free Speech" known as America.
NTFU.Com was quite original with the manner in which it operated. It boasted itself on being an "all-amateur" pornography website, and offered a 90-day subscription to its photo galleries upon either the payment of ten US dollars or the uploading of one amateur nude photograph.
Somewhere along the way, a US serviceman overseas got word to Mr. Wilson that it was rather difficult to provide secure payment via credit card from Iraq, as well as being EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to upload amateur pornographic material from a warzone where the government doesn't allow women to participate in combat. Mr. Wilson decided a change was in order, and waived the requirement for payment consisting of nude girlfriend photos or money, in lieu of morbid photos of mangled war casualties.
Typically, internet porn entrepreneurs go untouched in this nation, even when their wares violate existing "obscenity" statutes. That is, until they manage to piss off someone in a position of power. When this occurs, the hand of (in)justice strikes quickly and mightily.
If you happen to be Christopher Wilson, and you've pissed off the Pentagon, you'll be facing more than 300 misdemeanor counts and maybe even a felony charge.
Regardless, I must ask you, what is worse? Is it staring at some chick taking it up the tailpipe while her boyfriend snaps photos, or is it looking at the mangled face of an Iraqi child whose body has been strewn across the street in seventeen different directions because a 40mm grenade detonated against a wall directly behind him?
As I type this, HBO is airing an episode of a "Reality TV" show centered around a whorehouse in Nevada where lonely truckers, virgin geeks, and random old horndogs go to score hookers and booze. The gas station around the corner sells low-budget porn movies from a display next to the beer trough and the beef jerky display. I can find pornography in any flavor I might want, and it's all just a few clicks away...
But God help you, if you decide to trade access to pornographic photos in exchange for uploading images of dead bodies caused by US-made and US-deployed bombs on the other side of the world, because someone might think that gallery of Asian anal midget porn is obscene!
I'm asking, because I think it's an important question. I'll explain why I think so in a bit, but first, I'll go off into a slight tangent about the history of the internets. Circa 1985, the "internet" as the public now knows it, was set loose upon the world. Approximately two minutes later, the first pornographic website appeared on the internet. Today, roughly 1/3 of all internet web pages are pornographic in nature. Everyone and their uncle knows where to look for free porn on the internet.
Now, with that being said, I shall direct your attention to a particular website known as www.nowthatsfuckedup.com. You can click the link all you want, but it won't take you to the website.
You see, this particular website (run by Polk County, Florida resident Christopher Wilson) was overrun by the Polk County Sheriff's Office in 2006 after Mr. Wilson was charged with over 300 misdemeanor counts and one felony count of Florida state "obscenity" law violations. The website's servers were not actually based in Florida, but in the Netherlands, where many such websites are based to get around certain legal restrictions in the "Land of Free Speech" known as America.
NTFU.Com was quite original with the manner in which it operated. It boasted itself on being an "all-amateur" pornography website, and offered a 90-day subscription to its photo galleries upon either the payment of ten US dollars or the uploading of one amateur nude photograph.
Somewhere along the way, a US serviceman overseas got word to Mr. Wilson that it was rather difficult to provide secure payment via credit card from Iraq, as well as being EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to upload amateur pornographic material from a warzone where the government doesn't allow women to participate in combat. Mr. Wilson decided a change was in order, and waived the requirement for payment consisting of nude girlfriend photos or money, in lieu of morbid photos of mangled war casualties.
Typically, internet porn entrepreneurs go untouched in this nation, even when their wares violate existing "obscenity" statutes. That is, until they manage to piss off someone in a position of power. When this occurs, the hand of (in)justice strikes quickly and mightily.
If you happen to be Christopher Wilson, and you've pissed off the Pentagon, you'll be facing more than 300 misdemeanor counts and maybe even a felony charge.
Regardless, I must ask you, what is worse? Is it staring at some chick taking it up the tailpipe while her boyfriend snaps photos, or is it looking at the mangled face of an Iraqi child whose body has been strewn across the street in seventeen different directions because a 40mm grenade detonated against a wall directly behind him?
As I type this, HBO is airing an episode of a "Reality TV" show centered around a whorehouse in Nevada where lonely truckers, virgin geeks, and random old horndogs go to score hookers and booze. The gas station around the corner sells low-budget porn movies from a display next to the beer trough and the beef jerky display. I can find pornography in any flavor I might want, and it's all just a few clicks away...
But God help you, if you decide to trade access to pornographic photos in exchange for uploading images of dead bodies caused by US-made and US-deployed bombs on the other side of the world, because someone might think that gallery of Asian anal midget porn is obscene!
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