Author: Tim

Posted on

It Looks Like Iran has Been in the News Lately

Lots of big stuff is happening in the news. I’m going to take a little time and just explain a bit about Iran. If you’re already familiar, my apologies, but I thought it would be good to just give a basic overview of the situation.

So, where to begin? The Iranian Government has been behind much (not all) of the turmoil of the Middle East over the past few decades. The Government which was in place a week or two ago hates two countries: Israel and the United States. Iran is the classic state sponsor of terrorism; if it can’t directly engage in war with its enemies, it funds terrorist groups that do. It funds Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Israel knows this, and every time it gets attacked by Hamas or Hezbollah, it knows Iran’s really behind it all.

For a long time, Iran has had a nuclear program, claiming it’s for peaceful purposes (power generation, nuclear medicine, etc.). The problem, though, is that it’s spent a lot of time and effort enriching Uranium to a very high level, and there’s no purpose to going through so much trouble other than for the construction of a nuclear device. A nuclear reactor used for generating electricity does not require such highly enriched fuel, and there’s no point in stockpiling so much Uranium for medicinal purposes. It’s bomb material, pure and simple. You can see how this, along with advancements to Iran’s ballistic missile program, makes Israel very nervous. Leaders in the U.S. and/or Israel may have received some intelligence about pending developments on this, prompting the recent action against Iran.

Strategically, Iran is physically located at a very important spot. It has the ability to shut down a maritime bottleneck (the Strait of Hormuz) through which a very large percentage of the world’s oil gets shipped. Tanker vessels carrying oil from Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, and others transit this bottleneck every day. Iran can try to shut down all traffic transiting the Strait and hold the oil hostage until it gets what it wants, or until somebody forces the Strait back open. Iran’s navy has taken a beating since hostilities commenced, but even without large vessels it can still launch missiles from shore at ships that try to transit the Strait. Incidentally, China needs a lot of oil, and it previously got a large percentage of its oil imports from Venezuela and from Iran at discounted rates. Now that both of those gravy trains have stopped flowing and nobody wants to send oil through the Strait of Hormuz, China’s going to start making a lot of noise about opening the Strait back up again.

The United States has a history of involvement in Iran’s internal affairs. In the 1950s the CIA helped pull off a coup that installed a leader friendly to the United States and its interests (mostly regarding oil and oil infrastructure). This led to an uprising among the younger generation a couple of decades later, when the U.S.-installed Shah was sidelined and Iran’s recent government model took power during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It established a Theocracy, with an Ayatollah in charge of the nation. A president is also present, but the appointed-for-life Ayatollah makes the decisions.

Over time the demographics in Iran have worked against the Government. Although the religious enthusiasm of the revolutionaries in 1979 swept them into power, today’s under-45 population is much less interested in the morality police and would rather not deal with the crippling sanctions their government’s policies have incurred from the international community. Uprisings have sputtered to life, only to be put down by a sophisticated and brutal security apparatus. Networks of secret police, informants, morality police, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) put down uprisings through fear, violence, and intimidation.

President Trump is keenly aware of Americans’ distaste for another multi-decade conflict in the Middle East. He appears content to remove the nation’s current rulers to give the general population an opportunity to rise up and establish its own version of government. I don’t have insight into the President’s actual plan, but a major sticking point here is that everyday citizens in Iran do not have access to firearms, and that makes it very tricky for them to overthrow the armed security apparatus. In all likelihood, the theocratic element of Iran’s Government will come to an end (the role of Ayatollah and clerics will be greatly diminished), but the apparatus put in place to maintain the theocracy’s survival will likely take charge in some capacity. If that’s true, Iran will trade a religious authoritarian government for a secular authoritarian government. We’ll see just how willing President Trump is to continue remotely disrupting the power of the establishment in Iran. Eventually, the theory goes, they’ll have enough of the struggle, and they will surrender. An opposition must emerge somehow, either organically within Iran or the descendents of the Shah who was ousted in 1979.

This is a pretty fluid situation and I’m sure things will change by the time this entry gets posted, but President Trump said he expects this operation to last four or five weeks. War Secretary Pete Hegseth stated the objectives of the operation to be threefold: 1. destroy Iranian missiles/missile production, 2. destroy Iran’s navy and other security infrastructure, and 3. they will never have nuclear weapons. Destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, no nukes. All three of those goals have been brought much closer to reality, but now we have an Iranian military and IRGC who are armed with missiles and are scared and/or motivated to take action. A lot of missiles seem like they’re getting launched, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a strategy behind the launches other than lashing out at anyone who doesn’t help them.

Like I said, it’s a highly fluid situation. There are a lot of articles and a lot of TV coverage about this story, but there’s not always a lot of information to report, so you’ll see and hear a lot of words that aren’t really telling you many concrete facts. Be on the lookout for how Russia and China play this one, what governments in neighboring nations do, and what kind of opposition groups start emerging as serious contenders to take part in a new government. Obviously, there’s much more to come on this topic, so keep an eye on big developments.

Posted on

When Was the Last Time Most Americans Agreed on Anything?

When was the last time the majority of Americans agreed on anything?

I’ll get to that in a moment. I have to start wading through some controversial territory to get there; I’ll try to lay it out in a neutral way so you can be better informed.

Whether you call them illegal immigrants or undocumented workers, the topic has been in the news quite a bit lately. Our nation was built on the backs of immigrants, certainly, but there’s a very large difference between the legal and illegal versions of migration into the United States. I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole; suffice it to say Democrats are widely in favor of encouraging vast numbers of undocumented workers into the country, and Republicans are widely opposed to it. What’s the rationale here?

Every 10 years, the U.S. performs a census. We want to see how many people live in our country, where they live, and as much demographic data about age, income, household size, ethnicity, etc. as we can easily collect. Ok cool, that sounds reasonable. One of the things the government does with that data is re-apportion congressional representation among the states according to population. Every state gets two senators regardless of how many people live in each state, but aside from that, the more people reside in a state, the more representatives they’ll have in Congress. For example, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming don’t have very many people living there, so they barely have any representation in the House of Representatives. Each of those states gets two electoral points for each senator, plus one point for a congressional representative, for a total of three Electoral College points each. California, Texas, and Florida, on the other hand, have very large populations. Accordingly, there are a lot of congressional districts, and a lot of Electoral College points, associated with those states. I’m sure you’ve watched as the Electoral College map gets filled in on presidential election nights. The states with the largest population are worth the most electoral votes.

California is the single most important state on the Electoral College map. It’s worth more points than any other state. A presidential candidate has to win 270 points in the Electoral College, and right now California accounts for 54 of them. That is, until the next census occurs.

Contrary to the best interest of the American electorate, it turns out congressional representation is not based on how many American citizens reside in a given state; it’s based instead on how many people, including non-citizens, live there. Due to its policies that result in a high cost of living, American citizens have been leaving California for years. They can leave California, but if additional people, citizen or otherwise, move in, it will mitigate the loss of electoral points. If your party normally wins California but people are leaving it in droves, what’s one possible solution to maintaining population levels? Facilitate the arrival of undocumented migrants in areas otherwise losing populations. Doing so tinkers with the census results, which subsequently affects the electoral math.

So what is it the majority of Americans are agreeing on?

It’s a slightly different, but still related topic. What’s your view on having to prove your identity and eligibility when you register to vote? Do you think you should be able to just show up and state your name and address, or should there be something a little more stringent where you have to prove you’re eligible to vote in an election?

According to a recent Pew poll, this is not a controversial topic at all. Overall, 83% of Americans (71% of Democrats and 95% of Republicans) are in favor of having a requirement for voter ID. The numbers are also high when broken down by race. Harry Enten of CNN has been quoted as saying “The bottom line is this: Voter ID is NOT controversial in this country. A photo ID to vote is NOT controversial in this country. It is not controversial by party and it is not controversial by race. The vast majority of Americans agree.”

Why, then, is there so much opposition to it by members of one of our two major political parties on Capitol Hill? Because it reduces opportunities to operate in the margins. When voter rolls are pretty slim, it’s fairly easy to ensure there isn’t any funny business going on regarding fraud in an election. When the voter rolls are swollen, it increases the opportunity for voting shenanigans. Election officials are just like any other job…there never seems to be enough hands to cover the basics. As long as everyone’s acting in good faith and playing by the rules, it’s wonderful to have high percentages of eligible voters participating in their civic rights. Not everyone plays by the rules, however, and fraud is more difficult to catch when it’s hidden among extensive numbers of registered voters in an understaffed voting location.

It may not be a 100% solution, but there’s a bill which has already passed the House, called the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act,” which aims to make it mandatory to be able to prove citizenship when registering to vote in elections. Again, only American citizens are eligible to vote in American elections. The various states are allowed to run their elections how they want, but they’re all supposed to have a process that ensures only American citizens can cast votes. Not all states have a stringent process. It might be a stretch to say there’s widespread fraud, but fraud does exist. The SAVE Act would establish minimum requirements for registering to vote (strict photo ID requirements and proof of citizenship). The downside is that even American citizens who are eligible to vote may not have easy access to the required proof (not everybody has a passport, for example, and there are plenty of people who wouldn’t be able to easily find their birth certificate). The requirements aren’t particularly onerous; you usually need to provide similar proof when starting a new job. While you don’t always need to have citizenship to get a photo ID, the SAVE Act would mean you must prove citizenship to register to vote. In theory, the combination of secure voter registration and legitimate photo ID should help minimize fraud at the polls.

This doesn’t quite cover everything related to election controversy these days (numerous states are looking at redrawing their congressional districts to manipulate which party wins the district), but hopefully it will help keep you informed as you hear about the SAVE Act in the coming days/weeks. Remember that it’s not the news media’s job to keep you informed on all sides of an issue; it’s the news media’s job to get high ratings and sell advertising space. Straightforward, honest reporting doesn’t draw an audience, but controversy and outrage do. Hopefully this will help you keep the facts straight as you keep an eye on the latest developments.

Posted on

Let’s Go as Fast as We Can Down This Icy Death Chute

The Winter Olympics are coming to a close this weekend. I’ve always enjoyed the Winter Olympics more than the Summer games, maybe because even though Summer Olympic events represent the more classical competition, the Winter version has at least one of the following: snow/icy tracks/sharp blades/high speeds/people soaring through the air. Nobody gets broken bones in sprinting or swimming, but you can break a bunch all at the same time if you fall the wrong way in Super G or have a bad day on the luge track. Aside from javelin, there’s not a whole lot of danger in the Summer games. The winter exception is curling, where even middle-aged athletes can earn a medal. Somehow though, even though I don’t understand the scoring and it’s not fraught with danger, it’s still strangely entertaining to watch.

I’ve shared multiple times in the past about how, when I was in college, my roommate and I drove out to be spectators at the 2002 Winter games in Salt Lake City. It was a lot of fun, for sure, but these days I’m seeing the games through different eyes.

One thing that was lost on me 24 years ago was just how young everybody is! I look at today’s athletes and wonder if some of them are old enough to shave. It’s interesting to see that the “senior” participants, the ones who have been to three or four Olympics already and are the elder statesmen and mentors in their discipline, are only in their late 20s or early 30s. When you see the human interest pieces on them, you find out they competed in their first Olympics when they were 13 or 14. That’s insane to me! I’ve got kids older than that!

The people I watched back then (or even since then) are now commentators or interviewers for today’s events. Picabo Street (women’s downhill skiing), Bode Miller (men’s downhill skiing), Apollo Ohno (short track speed skating), and Shaun White (men’s snowboard halfpipe) all took or are taking a turn behind the microphone.

I can’t watch some events the same way I used to. I watch moguls and think “Ow! Ow!” over and over in my head until each skier crosses the finish line. Then I kick myself for sounding like an old man when I find myself thinking “this will probably be the only Olympics that set of knees competes in.”

The sports themselves evolve over time, too. Rules change, innovation occurs, and the stakes get raised. Norwegian cross-country skier Johannes Høsflot Klæbo employed a new tactic when skiing up hills, more or less running up the hill at full tilt while wearing skis instead of skiing in the classical style. Ilia Malinin, the American figure skater, pulled off not only a one-legged backflip (which hasn’t been allowed in previous competitions) but a quadruple axel…a stunning four and a half rotations in the air. Snowboarders routinely execute tricks that seemed impossible not long ago. The people that win are the ones who risk the most and manage to string together a series of tricks or a couple of runs that barely avoid catastrophe. Competing at the absolute edge of control, it’s at once awe-inspiring and death-defying.

I now find myself rooting for the “old people.” In Olympic terms, if 30 is old, 40 is ancient. Lindsey Vonn (41) sustained injuries that ended her downhill bid during a training run. A Canadian pairs figure skater (Deanna Stellato-Dudek, 42) made history as the oldest woman to make an Olympic debut in figure skating. She and her partner were crushing it, too, until a fall took off too many points to be competitive. While showing her back story, the piece detailed how intense her regimen is; training at 40+ is much different from training at 24.

The Winter Olympics will always hold a bit of a special place in my heart. While I recognize not everyone’s into watching the Olympics, it’s been nice to have a little bit of the usual anger and division take a back seat. We can just be Americans (or wherever you’re from) and enjoy the fruits of thousands of hours of each athlete’s practice. Hopefully you can enjoy a similar break from the normal noise that’s out there.

Posted on

Reaching A New Audience

I’ve got some exciting news about DareGreatlyNow.com! A ministry partner has volunteered his services to make audio recordings of past blog entries, and the intent will be to make them available on the site for listening on the go!

I say “ministry partner,” but the truth is…he’s an ordinary guy who followed through on the Holy Spirit’s prompting to make use of his talents, time, and resources. He doesn’t represent a professional organization. He’s an example of what God can do with a willing heart. Thanks to his efforts, blog entries will start becoming available through a different medium, hopefully reaching a wider (or different) audience, spurring them on with the goal of encouraging others to step into the roles God made for them.

In all honesty, it’s probably going to be a long time before even a tenth of the blog’s past posts are available to listen to. Neither of us does this full time. We’re just guys who love God and said yes to different versions of a task He laid before us, and we do this on the side. The beauty of it, though, is that we’ve begun working a project that once didn’t exist, and years after it first started, there are hundreds of God-honoring posts that have collectively been read thousands of times across the globe.

Here’s where I’d love your input. In light of a limited capacity to produce audio files of past entries, I’d love to hear from you to help shape the prioritization going forward. Which past posts stand out in your mind as something that spurred you on, or as something you think others need to hear? Leave a comment or let me know at tim@daregreatlynow.com.

Big things that honor God and build His kingdom don’t usually start out big. They start with a single person being open to God’s leading. Later, other people bring reinforcements and additional depth to the project. What are you being led to do? What’s holding you back? Who will you be a ministry partner to?

Posted on

It’s Still Under Development

I like stories with twist endings you don’t see coming. The director M. Night Shyamalan is famous for putting together some movies with great twists.

One of those movies, Unbreakable, has a lot of parallels to the Christian walk. Everyone who’s received the Holy Spirit has also received custom-designed talents and abilities from Him for the purpose of serving Him and His kingdom.

I’m not going to give away the movie ending, but it’s about an ordinary guy who finds out he’s got some special powers which enable him to be much more than an ordinary guy. Amazed but confused about how to use his gift and what to do next with it, he asks a mentor of his, “What am I supposed to do?” Knowing the nature of the gift involves interactions with people, the mentor gives it to him straight: “Go to where people are. You won’t have to look very long.”

Sure enough, he followed the advice and went to a public place, where his interactions further brought out his special abilities. That practice helped him improve his ability to harness his talents and use them productively.

If you want to serve the Lord by using your God-given abilities, you might have trouble getting started. It can be frustrating to know you’ve got something special but not know what to do with it. The most important thing? Start using those abilities. God’s not going to be mad at you for not getting it perfect the first time. Even if you’ve only got a faint notion of how they can be employed, give it a go…each experience will help you get a better sense of how to put them to good use. The practice and familiarity gains you proficiency and confidence, and that’s when things really start moving.

“Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you’re here.”

Posted on

What do Freezing Temperatures and God’s Love Have in Common?

I’m guessing most of the people reading this at the end of January have recently been dealing with some very cold weather, along with some snow/ice. This past weekend there was an enormous storm that dropped snow, ice, or rain in something ridiculous like 40 states.

I’ll be honest with you, I was disappointed as the forecasted amount of snow kept dropping. At one point we were supposed to get 21 inches of it. As the models kept updating though, eventually we were projected to get less than half that.

Well, when you live in an area that’s not accustomed to more than a few inches of snow, and then you see warnings about nearly two feet of it, things start to get a little crazy. The snow wouldn’t be so bad, but then forecasts started talking about some ice mixing in. Cue the panic. Power outages mixed with some of the coldest temperatures in several years spells trouble.

I started making preparations here at home. I have electric heat, so my worst-case scenario was to lose power during the season’s coldest temperatures. I have a few batteries I use for power tools, and I charged them all up so I could use them to power lights or recharge phones. I have some firewood we could use in the fireplace, but not nearly enough to keep the whole house warm for any significant length of time. If we lost power, we’d lose heat, and that would probably mean we’d have pipes freeze and we’d lose water, too. We bought some bottled water to have on hand.

I started thinking about how I’d try to make the most of the fireplace. I came up with a plan to hang up blankets over the entryways of the room where our fireplace is, sort of enclosing it so the heat from the fireplace would mostly stay in the room rather than being dispersed throughout the house. We could use a lot less wood if we moved everybody into that single room and all slept there.

We have a big blanket that I had in mind for this; it’s probably big enough for a King- or Queen-sized bed, and it’s heavy enough to keep a lot of heat in. It’s not a little rinky-dink blanket, and it’s thicker than a curtain. As I started thinking about turning this blanket more or less into a giant curtain to help box in our living room, I’m not sure why, but I thought of the temple veil mentioned in the Gospels.

The temple veil was a big, thick curtain (probably multiple inches thick) that was used to separate the innermost sanctuary of the temple, the “Holy of Holies,” or the Earthly dwelling place of God’s presence, from the rest of the temple that was otherwise accessible to men. The veil was meant to illustrate the fact that sin separates humanity from the Lord’s presence.

In the New Testament, the veil is most famous for what happened immediately after Christ’s death. His passing was such a momentous event that it literally rocked the world and caused supernatural phenomena. Matthew 27:50-52 says And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks splitand the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.

There’s no way I’d be strong enough to rip the blanket I was preparing to use, and it’s much smaller and thinner than the temple veil. The fact that the temple veil was torn apart from top to bottom, which could have been as much as 60 feet tall, is amazing! It’s symbolic of the idea that Jesus’ death provided a way to overcome the sin-caused separation. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, no longer are believers separated from the Lord’s presence. Only God could have torn the veil apart so completely while illustrating the symbolism so richly.

Well thankfully we still have electricity and we haven’t had to MacGyver any emergency heating arrangements. Even so, this exercise helped serve as a reminder of just how significant and powerful Christ’s death on the cross was for us.

I hope you’re all safe and warm, that you’re dug out of any frozen precipitation you may have received, and that you’re living confidently in light of what Christ’s done for you. God bless!

Posted on

How Dare You Remind Me of Something I Hate!

To me, little kids are fun. They say stuff with brutal honesty, they come out with some funny things, and they still think my lame party tricks are cool. When we were trying to figure out some kind of way to serve as a family in our church, we settled on volunteering in the child care area, which is chronically understaffed.

A little truth in lending here…I don’t mind getting down on the floor to play with kids, and I don’t mind holding a crying kid for a little while, but I’m not real great at leading a lesson or singing songs with them. I can commit to keeping them (mostly) safe during the worship service, but that’s pretty much it. If they have a hard time focusing on what I’m saying, my go-to is to distract them with bubbles. Well, all those factors collectively led to my assignment in helping out with the really young kids.

One Sunday some parents dropped off a little girl, and she was pretty tentative about the situation. I’m not sure if she had separation anxiety, or if she was just having a bad day, but as time went by, she became less and less able to hold it together. What started out as a general detachment and a barely audible “I want Mommy” turned into a full-blown meltdown. This kid was screaming. I normally try to give kids a lot of leeway to get settled down so their parents can come to church and have a bit of a respite while listening to the sermon, but this was not working out. We eventually paged her parents, but they took a long time to show up. In the meantime, the little girl got so disruptive that I had to take her outside the room because other kids were looking at her and starting to have their own lower lips quiver. I just walked back and forth in the hallway and held her until somebody showed up to get her. Nothing made her stop screaming, man. Finally her dad showed up to take her off our hands.

Now…I told you that story so I could tell you this one. Weeks later, I was working there in that same room again. Kids started coming in, and they got comfortable and started playing with the various toys around the room. Sure enough, the dad showed up with that same little girl. She looked hesitant as she peeked in. She looked around the room, looking for some kind of upside to what Daddy was asking of her. Once her gaze fell on me, that sealed the deal. She lost it and started crying right away, face turning red, tears falling down her cheeks, and starting with the yelling. Just the sight of me was enough to make her remember the screaming session from last time, and that set her off.

For better or for worse, sometimes you’ll remind people of someone or something which will be counterproductive to your goals. It may or may not have anything to do with you personally; you might just remind somebody of a person they have bad memories of. Even if they say or do offensive things to you, recognize that it’s not necessarily you they’re reacting to. Be open to the idea of taking a step back, swapping roles with someone else, or coming at the problem from a different direction. Your ability to let it roll off your back and take a different approach could mean the difference between success and failure.

Can you relate to a time this has happened? Leave a comment and share your experience!

Posted on

Provoking on Purpose

When I was a kid we played “Capture the Flag” in our youth group at church a lot. Our church’s yard had a sidewalk running right down the middle, and it made a great “no-man’s land.” We’d have people from both teams come right up to, and even walk along, the sidewalk. If you were standing on it you could set one foot into the other team’s territory without fear of being tagged out. As soon as you left the safety of the sidewalk, though, you were fair game.

We’d try different tactics to try to get an advantage over the other team. We’d have one or two people charge the boundary but stop before crossing it, drawing attention while someone further down the line raced into enemy territory. We’d swarm the boundary, but then have all but one or two people stop before crossing. The idea was to provoke the defenders to jump after these people, and then others from the horde would see their chance and join the assault while the defenders’ attention was diverted.

Usually there’d be a small handful of people on either team that were focused on strategy. You also had a portion who didn’t much care for strategy, but instead just looked for opportunities to start trouble. Then finally, you had what I’d call the “reluctant participants.” They didn’t really want to play this game, so they were just sort of enduring it until it was over.

Most of the provocative tactics involved coming right up to that line and ratcheting up the tension. The strategic thinkers didn’t intend to cross it, but they also knew that in the heat of the moment, there would be enthusiastic teammates who would take it upon themselves to muster up the extra zeal to do what others didn’t seem willing or able to do. For the strategists it was partly manipulation, but it was also partly to see if they could get anything useful out of the unplanned developments. If a teammate was able to grab the flag and get back, so much the better…the team won. If, on the other hand, they got hurt somehow during the assault, the rest of the team got to grandstand and point fingers at how aggressively and unsportsmanlike the defending team was playing. The manipulators of the group were able to crank up the tension, inspire others to “cross that line,” and if any of their teammates got hurt in the process, they’d be able to say “well this wasn’t my fault, I never told anybody to do anything like that.”

We’ve got the same kind of thing happening in protests all around the country. Right now the hot-button issue is whether to interfere with ICE operations. I’m not sure how to state this any clearer: the law is the law; if you have an issue with a given law, you should focus on getting it changed. Interfering with law enforcement operations is illegal; if you interfere, you’re guilty of a crime. You’re an accomplice. It shouldn’t be a surprise that you’ll be treated like a criminal during the response. When you resist or provoke law enforcement officers, they have no idea who you are, what your intent is, or how violent you are. Since they have zero insight into those things, if you get into a confrontation which looks to be escalating, they’re forced to assume you’re willing to escalate further and faster than they are. It’s a failure of common sense to ratchet up the tension with someone who’s legally authorized to use deadly force if they feel threatened.

Where I take issue is the politicians’ intentional manipulation of the masses. Did you ever see the classic movie “The Sting” with Paul Newman and Robert Redford? They were two con men trying to pull off a big score, and they had a large cast of supporting characters. They had a visual signal among those in the know…kind of a brushing of the finger along the nose. It was sort of a wink and a nod to others who were in on the con. Politicians seem to be intentionally cranking up the pressure on the issue, stopping just short of calling for violence. Their winks and secret signals tell the organizers to set the stage. The mob mentality which comes along with protests takes it from there, and those who are a little more enthusiastic than others end up crossing the line of safety.

This persistent state of elevated hostility is how we get assassination attempts and fatal confrontations with law enforcement. Then, after something tragic has occurred, people blame the other side of provoking the situation. This foments more tension and hate, further perpetuating the problem.

How do we stop the madness of this cycle? I’m not sure there’s a simple answer to that. First and foremost, don’t contribute to an angry environment. That goes for discussions at work, discussions among your most trusted inner circle, anywhere you go…attack ideas, not people. Squash or redirect discussions that focus animosity on people. Ideas, not people, should be the subject of criticism. Secondly, hold your elected officials accountable. The people you voted for shouldn’t be out there stoking an atmosphere of violence and be able to avoid responsibility for it. Let them know you don’t approve. This is an uphill battle, because hot-button issues are good for fund-raising; it’s often not in a politician’s best interest to tone things down or actually solve problems, because if you solve problems, you can’t run on them in the next election. You may need to call your elected officials’ office so often they start recognizing who you are by the sound of your voice.

As Americans, we enjoy a lot of freedoms. Not every country allows its citizens to criticize the government, or to assemble in protest. I think we’ve taken some things for granted and pushed things too far. We’re still fellow countrymen (and neighbors), even if we don’t always agree. Don’t buy into the idea that if someone disagrees with you, you have to write off everything about them. We can still get along with each other even when we see things differently, and that’s one of the hallmarks of being American, and one of the things that makes our country great.

Posted on

Ever Think You’d Be a Teenaged Millionaire?

I’d guess I was somewhere in the range of 12-14 years old for this one. Out of the blue, I got a letter in the mail from Publisher’s Clearing House or something similar. Whoever it was, it was a sweepstakes business, and the letter implied that I’d be winning a million dollars!

Of course I know years later that this was too good to be true, but back then, in the 1990s when things were simple and I was young (and a million dollars went a lot further than it does in the 2020s), I was completely taken captive by the idea. I set about planning what to do with all that money.

I decided my largest purchase was going to be a house that was for sale in the neighborhood where we lived. It might have even been right next door, I’m not sure. Once I figured that out, I broke out the JC Penney catalogue that came in the mail every year. Remember those? They were bigger than a phone book (hopefully you remember those, too). The catalogue had all kinds of home furnishings. I picked out a living room set with black leather couches, I think. I remember I also wanted to pick up a hot tub for the back yard. I dog-eared a whole lot of that catalogue’s pages. I don’t remember how I mentally got past the problem of being too young to make legal transactions like buying a house, or figuring out taxes, or being too young to even be able to drive a car. All that little stuff would surely get taken care of for someone with money!

I got pretty deep into this whole thing. Eventually my parents had to break it to me: “you’re not winning this money.” I think they showed me the original letter I received, and pointed out the fine print or the way the words for the announcement were chosen very carefully to make me believe I’d already won. Looks like I was going to have to figure out some other way to pay for the latest Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman albums.

Hopefully reading from the Bible is a regular occurrence for you. If it’s not, try to make that a habit starting this year. Here’s something to watch out for though. English is not the language the Bible was originally written in. As you can imagine, not every word in the original languages directly translate to English. There’s a reason “lost in translation” is a common saying. Folks have been translating the Bible for quite a long time and they’ve put a lot of thought into this, but sometimes the reasons translators chose particular English words or phrases aren’t evident or explained. That’s where a study Bible can really come in handy. It explains some of those word choices, along with the context of why actions were so meaningful in light of the days’ traditions, and it often links related passages.

While a scripture-only Bible is wonderful, a study Bible typically brings much more understanding and context. In much the same way that I needed to have someone who understood the reality of “you’ve won a million dollars*” explain the asterisk to me, I find it to be enormously helpful to have a study Bible that breaks things down for me or explains it to me in an understandable way so I don’t make my own erroneous assumptions and accidentally sink my beliefs into something that’s simply not true.

Lord, thank You for giving us the written word. Help me find the right translation of the Bible I can readily understand, and the right tools to grasp the significance of what I’m reading. In Your name, Amen.