Everyday new people begin to use WordPress for the first time. Since I joined in March the number of WordPress blogs has gone from 2.5 to 3.6 million. I imagine there are also those users who have used WordPress for a while now, but do not take advantage of all the features. I would like to share a few tips and tricks that have made my use of WordPress more useful and enjoyable. Continue reading
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Independence Day
Happy Independence Day.
Now get off the internet and go spend time with your family. Was that a little preachy? I guess it’s my nature.
Immigration: fact and fiction
I am a history teacher. There is no denying that fact. My degree is in political science. If you break out in a rash or have difficulty breathing when exposed to a history lecture, look away from this window slowly and click on something else.
This morning I heard someone say that Mexicans are taking over our country. It’s an old argument, only it used to be the Chinese. Same song, different verse. Chinese immigrants basically built the American railroad from the Mississippi to the west coast. Some railroad companies had as much as 90% of their workforce made up of Chinese immigrants. The argument back then, get this, was that Chinamen were taking American jobs. No they weren’t. Continue reading
Gone Fishin’
Actually, I’m not a big fan of fishing. But we are going to be traveling for the next couple of weeks, so blogging may be sporadic at best.
Over AMP’ed
Watchman 146 brings up a good point. In response to my remarks on pizza, he says “Thank goodness I never got into the Mountain Dew thing.” I asked if he knew about Rockstar, Monster, AMP and Full Throttle. Kids have contests where they see how many in a row a person can slam. For anyone that doesn’t know (and I can’t imagine who that is), energy drinks are loaded with sugar, caffeine, ginsing, gurana, B vitamins, and who knows what else now. Drinking one is probably bad for you. Three in three minutes could give you a heart attack, or at least a bad case of the shakes. We’re going to start seeing teenagers admitted to the ER with massive heart failure.
Now, to be fair, I happen to like AMP. I’m not trying to bring down the industry. I have had, on occasion, say… one at a time. But as kids continue to abuse these things, big time, the industry is going to take heat, and sooner or later the FDA will probably ban energy drinks just like they did Ephedrine. Why is there an FDA in the first place? Because the American people have to protected from… themselves.
Now if we’re already eating pizza, I have been known to drink 2 or 3 Mountain Dews and stay up all night playing ping pong. But that’s another story.
Do you love pizza?
If you love pizza, and I mean love it so much you could never get tired of it, consider becoming a youth minister. I’m only half kidding. I’ve been involved in youth ministry for about 16 years, and have reached a point in my life I think I’ve had enough pizza. My profession is working with high school age youth, and the favorite meal of teen age students, especially if it’s an informal gathering for some occasion, continues to be pizza. In addition to what we get once a week in the cafeteria, I spring for pizza once or twice a year in BCM (Baptist Campus Ministry, formerly BSU). We’re also involved in drama, and I drive the bus for a couple of sports teams. At church, we’re sort of leaders for the youth leaders, who are upper level high school to mid-20’s. So after Back-Yard-Bible Club, planning for VBS, get together with the mission team, we go for a round of pizza. For that matter, one of our church deacons OWNS a local pizza establishment, and his daughter is one of our leaders. There’s no escaping it.
I’m not complaining; not really. I’m just trying to share from my experience. If you’re crazy about pizza, find a position doing what I do. It’s like perpetual college student diet (assuming you went to a Baptist college that didn’t allow beer).
Religion and Politics
Remember the 2000 Presidential election? The final results of that election day took weeks to become clear because the American public was so nearly evenly split between Democratic and Republican voters. Each vote in Congress is split nearly even because the Congressional leaders we select are nearly evenly divided, and very few are willing to “cross the aisle” in favor of the other party’s legislation. The word in politics these days is polarized. There is rarely middle ground that the majority of people can agree on.
This is the exact same thing I’ve been describing in the debate between theists and atheists. Atheists are no longer content to just not believe in God, but have launched attacks against faith itself. It’s like a war is being fought between people of faith and what now amounts to the enemies of the faithful. Becky Garrison suggests that we once all just played in our own sandbox, but the “New Atheists” want to throw sand in the face of believers.
It seems on almost every issue, everyone takes one extreme position or the other. There is no such thing as common ground anymore. We want hard lines on right or wrong, with zero tolerance for shades of gray. Life is not that simple. Sometimes there are no good guys or bad guys, there’s just guys. Historically, a few people on any issue took an extreme position, and the vast majority fell somewhere in between them. A bell curve suggests the probability of this phenomenon. I don’t know exactly when this changed, but the bell has been hammered out flat, more like a coin with 2 sides and no middle.
3 Stooges?
Which Stooge will you vote for?
I couldn’t help it. It’s not theology, but it’s pretty cool huh? This was a big hit on my classrooom wall.
Hermeneutics quiz
This is kinda’ fun is you have a few minutes. Click here to take the hermeneutics quiz, which gives a score between 20 and 100 based on how you interpret the Bible. Thank you Brian Evans for the link. By the way, I scored a 61.
Disciple the Nations
“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” is how the Great Commission is recorded in Mark’s gospel (or “preach the gospel to every creature” for those brought up KJV). Jesus says elsewhere to “Make disciples of all men,” but I can’t put my finger on that verse right this second.
I LOVE MY JOB. Let me begin by saying that. Some days I forget, but on those days God gives me the grace to keep my big mouth shut until I remember again. Working at a Christian boarding school, with an average of 15 – 20% international students at any given time, allows me to minister to the nations without ever even getting in my car. I can see my house from the window in the Campus Ministry Center. It’s about a 10 minute walk. I didn’t create this site to be about me, but that I could share with others my thoughts on the Gospel message and living the Christian life. I tell this story for the glory and honor of God: in our small group Bible study (Sunday school class if you must) I was the only White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male in the room. My wife is a W.A.S.P. female, and the only other person that came close was a white anglo-saxon Roman Catholic male. The other students were from Guatemala, Nigeria, and China respectively. Like anything else, when you see that type of thing happen everyday, you don’t notice any more. I’m not kidding. Every once in while, God blesses me by letting me realize how special that is, and to remember that the Kingdom of God will be made up of people from “every tribe, every tongue, and every nation.” Hallelujah!
The Master's Table 