We need to see more than just Christian movies

     Recently there have been a large amount of new Christian movies that have hit the scene.  Most of the movies are the product of Kirk Cameron who grew up on TV's sitcom "Growing Pains".   Starting with the movie "Fireproof" Cameron has capitalized on a small group of evangelical Christians who feel their views are not emulated well in Hollywood.   As a Christian I feel compelled to see these movies and support these artists and producers.   But I don't see it that way at all.  Most of these movies follow a common and almost predictable plot line.  First there is the main character who is either a coach (Facing the Giants) a fireman (Fireproof) or a policeman (Courageous) whose family life is falling apart while their work life is in shambles   Next comes their pastor who challenges them to return to God's word after which everything thing changes. Their wife returns back to them, their children do better in school and their work becomes amazing. In the end everything works out gloriously and even the villains are saved. 

     But that is not how life really works nor is it guaranteed by God in his word. Jesus often even showed quite the opposite when he talked about being hated and being chased from town to town on account of him.  While I appreciate people trying to reach a dying world, the problem is that almost 100% of the people who see these films are already saved and therefore don't achieve their goal. 

    Another reason I don't support Holy-wood is because I am sick and tired of seeing Christians cloister themselves off like a bunch of monks so they don't have to touch the world they walk in.  We have christian music, schools, movies, radio stations,TV stations, bookstores, gyms, coffee shops, dating sites, businesses, and even cruises!   How can you relate to your neighbor if you have NOTHING IN COMMON WITH THEM!!  Here is how your conversation will go with them if you cloister yourself off and only see Holy-wood movies

Jim:     Hey Bob have you seen that new movie The Matrix?
Bob:     No.  I only see Christian movies. Did you see Fireproof?
Jim:     No.  Too religious (alternative:  "Never heard of it")
            (End of discussion)

     This is not how Jesus intended for us to live.  Instead he said exactly opposite when he told us to:

                    "Be in the world but not of the world".   

     How can you be "in it" if you don't participate "in it"?   Granted that doesn't mean I am free to go to strip clubs and the like, but it doesn't mean I sit at home and watch re-runs of  "The Walton's" every night on DVD either.   We have to find a happy medium here and for my Holy-wood is not where the line should be drawn.  To me, it's like saying that you can only discuss your faith if you are inside a church building and since your neighbors never want to go to church with you then ....oh well...guess you never will have that chance to share your faith then.  Of course we see that as an absurd path of logic but often that is exactly what we do.

    St. Paul exhorts his readers to "Always have an answer for the hope you have inside you"

    Translation: Find answers to questions as they arise as we live in this world

    Let's take the conversation earlier and see how it "might" play out differently

Jim:     Hey Bob have you seen that new movie The Matrix movies?
Bob:    Yes I did.  I saw all three.Pretty intense movie I must say.  I wouldn't take my kids to it but I found it interesting
Jim:     Yeah. me too.   I liked the story line
Bob:    Yeah I did too.  I found it very biblical in nature
Jim:     How?
Bob:    Well the names for example.  Trinity is the name of our Christian God. Father,Son and Holy Spirit.  Then their is Neo, which is Greek for NEW so he is kind of like Jesus.   He has the amazing powers no one else has.  Smith is sort of like the Devil that he has to fight.   In the end, when he is connected to the matrix and laid out in a cross formation and is fighting Smith its just like Jesus.  The Bible says of Jesus, "He who knew no sin, became sin for us, so that the power of sin could be destroyed once and for all".   That is just like Neo turning into Smith at the end and then destroying Smith from the inside.  Then their is Zion, which is also a biblical name for Jerusalem, and they cry out at the end "The war is over!".  We as Christians believe too that the war with God is over.  We are no longer enemies but his children now.

Jim:  Wow!  I missed all of that.  Do you think the writer intended that?
Bob:  I don't know.  Maybe.  It just seems all to coincidental to be an accident.  I think he is trying to get across a deeper message of salvation possibly.

And the conversation goes on from here....

I am not saying that every movie we go to has a direct application of the Gospel, but we should try to look and find ways of using our culture to reach out to a dying world.   Take for example St. Paul when he visited Athens.   Did he only go to the synagogues?   Apparently not.   When he visited Mars Hill to talk to the philosophers of his day, he mentioned their temples and even gave them credit for being very religious.   He also quoted one of their poets which means he either read their writings or attended their plays.   He uses this as a spring-board to the Gospel.  A way to connect to them.  In other writings Paul talks about athletes running with no clothes on which could mean he attended these competitions personally (something most Christians today would avoid like the plague).

    We, like Paul, might not agree with all of our world's "poets" but we must take want God gives us and use it wherever and whenever we can.  Who knows maybe a rap-artist might even have some social commentary that we can use to talk up our faith.   We must be more like Paul who even though he doesn't agree with all the greek poets writings, takes what he can and even gives credit to them.   We miss these chances when all we have to say is bad things about our culture and nothing good.  How do you think these Greek philosophers would feel if Paul approached them like this instead

Paul:  Hey I have been here for a week but could only hack walking around your city for a day because its covered with these shameless nude statutes of these "so-called" gods which really aren't gods at all but are stupid idols you guys think are so great.   I was also invited to go to a poetry reading but because I heard the poet was a heathen who has no religious background I told my friends that it would not be good for me to ingest that tripe.  But hey!  While I am here let me tell you about this man I follow named Jesus of Nazareth who is the Son of God and was crucified by you gentiles and was raised to life 3 days later.

How many do you think would have stayed around to hear?   None.

Yet that is how we sound too.


    

Future of personal computing

   The old phase of "What is old is now new again!"  is a phrase that repeats itself if you stay around long enough to witness it.  

    When I first started out at college PC's were just starting to come on the market.  Mostly used by
geeks who liked to tinker with soldering irons and ohm-meters they made their way into regular homes through the IBM-PC, Apple-II or Commodore-64 (my personal first computer).    Before this only people with degrees in computer-science could touch one and they were "time-shared" either through handing in a deck of punch-cards or through "dumb terminals".   No one really liked the time-share process.   You were at the mercy of the computer operator and you had better make good friends with him if you wanted your work to go through in a timely manner.

     But with the advent of the PC came the issues of you being your own computer operator.  You were now responsible for

• Software updates
• OS updates
• Disk backups
• Anti-hacking software
• Hardware upgrades
• Network management
• Password protection
• Disk defragmenting and performance issue fixing
• and more...

    The more PC's you added to your home the more time and money you seemed to spend on these
issues (when my kids were still in the house I felt like a 24/7 IT professional).   If the issues were beyond your pay-grade you were at the mercy of either a friend or family member who did understand the problem or you spent 100's of dollars at places like Geek Squad to do the work for you.   You may have also been forced to spend 100's of dollars on a yearly basis for other "automated" Internet support through companies like PC-matic or Carbonite to take care of laborious activities like disk management and performance management.   But these solutions are only piece-meal and are by far from automatic.

     Maybe this whole PC revolution needs to take another look at the idea of time-sharing again as its solution to these problems.   But unlike the days of "dumb terminals" which did only text based data (no graphics or sound), these would utilize "smart-terminals" similar to Netbooks which have very little computer/storage power but can connect in with larger servers running Virtual PC's which are nothing more than simulated PC run by higher speed processors.   The PC can now be whatever you want it to be.   A company hosting these Virtual-PC's would sell you time on your computer and charge you for the amount of time and space your system consumes

   Need more disk space?                                             No problem.   Request it.
   Need more processing speed?                                  No problem.   Request it.
   Need a different OS version?                                   No problem.   Request it.
   Need a new version (or old version) of software?   No problem.   Request it.

    The hosting company (most likely a cable-company provider) would manage your disk space (encrypted).  Provide you with more disk space simply by carving up a bigger partition for you.  They could also do auto-backups and even do auto-compression of files not accessed very often.   They could provide auto-scans of files to insure you are virus free.   They could also line you up with certified software suppliers who are proven to be the real McCoy and not some look-a-like company from Russia so your software is protected.  They could also allow you to try out new software or even new operating systems for a period of time to see if you like it or not.   You don't like it?  It simply disappears or you go back to the old version.

   Another benefit is they could give you a choice when you log in if you want a brand-new-out-of-the-box system or one of your last 10 log-in-exits so you can pick up where you left off at.   More complex users (businesses) could keep their projects separated by this method as well so there is no possibility of one project dirtying another project.   These capabilities would allow users to keep their sensitive data from being tampered with.  Take for example you just want to log in and do some on-line shopping.   You would choose the brand-new session that has no access to the project data at all (because it doesn't exist in that Virtual-PC) and therefore no nefarious hacker could possibly delete it or download it while you are shopping at "RussianLowCostShoppers.com".  

   Such a system would allow you to access your system wherever a high-speed internet connection can be found.   Your smart-TV could now become your smart-Virtual-PC with the addition of a wireless keyboard and mouse.  Your phone or 4 year-old laptop could also be your smart-terminal as well if you don't want to purchase a low cost netbook computer.

   This brings another nice feature of this system.  Hardware familiarity.   If you look at most people looking to buy a new computer they spend a good amount of time trying out one thing: the keyboard.  Why?  Because no one likes to learn a new keyboard layout.  It's frustrating to re-learn where the delete key is or the backspace key.  It's also frustrating learning the feel of the new keys and how hard or light you can press them.   Many people choose their new laptop solely based on how it feels.   With the Virtual-PC your keyboard can stay the same (as well as the monitor etc) and all the changes are the insides where you don't see them.

   Lastly this system also saves on power and weight.   With most of the "real components" being simulated on the high-end server, your physical system can be made as light and low power as necessary.   With no need to have a physical hard-drive or a high-speed processor requiring a heat-sink your system can be extremely light and with a very long battery life to boot. 

   For most computer users today this system is a dream come true as it would have:

1. An almost infinite disk space  
2. An almost infinite memory space
3. A Simple way to migrate to new OS's
4. An Automatic backup and data encryption
5. A Protection from hackers and viruses
6. A Secure software installation
7. A Low power and Low weight
8. Ability to access to system anytime and anywhere

 Who won't like this system?  

  Laptop and PC manufactures

Pro-Life's "Frederick Douglass Moment"

     In 1845, Frederick Douglass wrote his best-selling autobiography titled, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave".  His book lifted the vale off of the public's eyes as to what black slaves had to endure under the hardships of slavery.  He detailed how he had limited contact with his mother and how he watched other slaves being whipped to keep them under control.   He showed how slaves were in constant fear from their "masters" and prevented from learning how to read and write in order to keep them ignorant of their true condition.   As humans we often cover our eyes to the truth of how brutal we can be as humans.   In the 1800's the public had adopted a humanitarian view of slavery in which slaves were well taken care of, fed well and given opportunities that they would not have had if they had been left back in the African jungle.  Like the Germans of the Holocaust who had pretended that the Jews were simply being moved to other locations in the railroad boxcars and not to their certain death and destruction in the cremation ovens so we too kidded ourselves as to how horrible slaves were treated on a daily basis and how families were torn apart and treated like cattle for breeding purposes.  Douglass's biography blew the lid of that lie and made the American public come to grips with the reality it was willing to live with so it can have cotton to make their clothes, curtains, bed sheets, towels and other necessities of modern life.

    Now today, a series of videos of Planned Parenthood doctors has emerged showing them to be heartless bargainers of human tissue and organs for their own profit.   We are horrified to see these woman doctors talk about the details of their work as they enjoy salads and glasses of wine.  As they crunch on their salads they discuss how they can use "less crunchy methods" in order to harvest larger amounts of tissue for the buyers to purchase as if the product they are providing was apples or tomatoes and not human beings at all.

   The vale has been pulled and many wish it was put back in place.   Many wish they didn't know what they do now know.    It was easier to pretend that the service rendered was that of removing a cancerous growth and not something with "hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers" which can be utilized for human medical research.   Those who want us to feel "good" about these harvests would have us pretend that its for OUR good.   They tell us, "Think of all the good these woman are doing!  Think of all the countless lives they might save by offering these organs for medical research!".

    Does that sound familiar?   Did America not use that same argument for why slavery should be kept in place?   Were our ancestors not given the same bull-shit lines of the economic necessity of slavery and how we were doing these uneducated brutes a better life here in America?  Were they not told to "Turn away. Nothing to see here"  as we are?

    But thankfully our ancestors did not turn away.  They faced their atrocities and went to war to end it all.  They sought to correct their error in judgment and repair their humanity that had been lost.  For you see,  both the slave and the slave-owner were damaged by slavery.   The slaves damage was to his body and his mind, but the slave-owner was damaged in his soul.   Through the atrocities he inflicted he chipped away at his own soul and humanity until there was nothing left.   By his mistreatment of another human being, he himself became less of a human being himself.

    Likewise, in the abortion industry, there are 3 people being harmed at the same time: the mother, the child and the doctor.    Do you think that Dr. Gosnell (the now infamous late-term abortion doctor who treated his female patients with such lack of medical care that he is now behind bars) went in to the medical profession to abuse woman the way he did?   I don't think any person who goes into the field of medicine does so with the intentions of becoming a medical monster.   But somewhere in the story of Dr. Gosnell, he went from a doctor wanting to help others to a doctors who cared for no one but himself.   When and where  that transformation occurred, only Dr. Gosnell knows, but now we see that abortion takes a toll on the human soul as well.  Like the pounding waves of the ocean wearing away at the coast and turning the largest of rocks into pebbles and sand, so also aborting human life and disposing of arms, legs, feet with tiny toes, hands with tiny fingers, heads with eyes and ears developed chips away at your humanity until nothing is left.

    I do not hate these woman on these videos who see nothing wrong with what they are doing.   I feel sorry and lament for them as much as the little children they seek to sell to the highest bidder.   I pray that they regain their humanity and see what they are doing as wrong.   But now the question remains for the rest of us.   Will we seek to regain our humanity and our soul or will we turn away and try to pretend that it never happened.   Will we go on pretending that what is being extracted is just a gob of tissue that only turns into a live human being seconds upon entering the birth canal and exiting outside the mothers body or will we admit to ourselves that that miracle happens seconds after the joining of sperm and egg?