According to this AP report, someone shot a child and a couple of workers at a day-care center in Michigan. I find this hard to believe, because in Michigan it is illegal to be in possession of a firearm on the premesis of a day-care center. Surely this couldn't have happened!
Even law-abiding citizens who have jumped through the hoops to obtain a Michigan Concealed Pistol License are legally prohibited from carrying a firearm into a day-care center. So how in the world could this crime have happened?
As your kids would say, "Well, DUH!" Of course criminals don't obey the law; only law-abiding people obey the law. Which means that the real-world effect of the Michigan "gun-control" laws is to control law-abiding gun owners, not criminals with guns. Which means that the state legislature has disarmed law-abiding folks in, for example, day-care centers, so that they are at the mercy of any armed criminal that walks through the door. Never mind the fact that Article 1, Section 6 of the Michigan Constitution clearly states, "Every person has a right to keep and bear arms for the defense of himself and the state."
It sounds to me like the good people of Michigan need to rethink their voting choices.
Public Schools No Place For Teachers' Kids
Quick Exit From Iraq Is Likely
Every Vote Counts! Well, Sometimes
OK, I confess. I ran into a post. Driving my Jeep through the parking garage the other day, I came around a corner (at least it looked like a corner) and ran head-on into a concrete support column. Folded the bumper back, sheared an engine mount, punched a hole in the oil filter. Oh, yeah, and put a big black-and-blue mark on my pride, too.
It worked out all right, though. The Jeep was overdue for its yearly inspection, so the repair shop is going to fix it all up and get it inspected for me. Vehicle inspections over here aren't anything like in the States. They don't merely consider whether or not the vehicle is in good working order--lights, signals, brakes, horn, emissions system, etc.--but they also look at oxidized paint, scratches, small dents, body rust, and any other cosmetic blemish you can imagine. They'll fail a vehicle over a small dent, or a hood with bad paint on it. It's really quite ludicrous.
While having some keys made at a key-cutting souq, we met a Qatari named Mubarak (which means "blessing" or "blessed"). He asked us where we were from, and we said Texas. He wanted to know where in Texas, and told us that he lived in Austin and in Houston for awhile, but left after 9/11. Then he looked at us rather sheepishly, and in a confessional tone of voice, informed us that he hadn't been run out of town or anything after 9/11--"nobody was following me around or anything"--but he was doing very poorly in school, and 9/11 gave him a good excuse to cut out and go home.
I find Mubarak's story to be fascinating on several counts. First, it's a great example of the importance of saving face to an Arab. When an Arab is confronted about something he's done wrong, it helps tremendously if he has some way to save face, something to blame it on. Many Arabs will flat-out lie in order to save face, etiher for themselves or another Arab. Direct truth takes a back seat to personal honor in the Arab world, whereas in the West, truth is the holy grail, a man's honor be hanged. I'm not necessarily making a judgement call, just stating the fact. Understanding the significance of personal honor is one of the keys to getting along with Arabs.
The second interesting aspect of Mubarak's story is that he seemed to be apologetic about using 9/11 as an excuse for going home. Perhaps he blamed his return on post-9/11 anti-Arab sentiments in America at the time, even though, in reality, national crime statistics show that crimes against Arabs did not increase after 9/11. He was simply manufacturing a plausible lie in order to save face--but how many other Arabs did the same thing? How did their stories affect the perception of America in their homeland--and do those perceptions continue to have a significant effect today? Perhaps Mubarak has an idea how to answer these questions, and perhaps that's why he seemed apologetic.
I can't hold his actions against him, or anyone else who was in a similar position--I very well might have packed up and headed home after 9/11 if I were an Arab--but it is certainly an interesting phenomenon, and certainly something we should bear in mind when we hear media reports of nebulous "anti-Muslim sentiments" in America. Our soldiers are fighting for the freedom to, among other things, worship God as each individual's conscience dictates. Very few places in the world outside the U.S. truly recognize that freedom.
You know you have the right candidate when Focus on the Family, ACLJ, NRA, etc. are supporting him, but the Log Cabin Republicans aren't.
The Log Cabin Republicans talk a good game about "inclusion," "fairness," "equality," and that sort of thing, but what do they really mean? They want sodomy to be included in our public life. They want to teach our children that it's unfair to demand that unhealthy, morally abominable activities be called "sin." They would have us believe that, in order to guarantee sodomizers equal treatment under the law, we must grant them special legal privileges and protections in our society.
The fact is that homosexuality is sin, similar in many ways to adultery. Just like adulterers, homosexuals have the liberty of practicing their lifestyle in private, but they have no reason to expect the public at large to appreciate, much less endorse, their lifestyle. But public endorsement is exactly what groups like the Log Cabin Republicans want.
They want the general public to endorse their destructive behavior. They want you to pay for their increased health care costs: statistics show clearly that HIV and AIDS are expensive consequences of homosexuality, and homosexuals tend to have more serious psychological problems (which, by the way, they like to blame on our "discriminatory" culture--as if the rest of us are somehow responsible for their choice of lifestyle). They want you to ignore the fact that the homosexual community molests children at a much higher per-capita rate than the heterosexual community. In short, they want you to ignore the fact that homosexuality is a deviant lifestyle that is dangerous not only to those practicing it, but also to the society that endorses it.
To those who say, "You can't legislate morality," I ask why, then, do we legislate that theft, perjury, murder, and speeding through school zones are illegal?
The dividing issue is not "inclusion." Homosexuals have the same constitutional rights and responsibilities as everyone else in our society. It's not "fairness" or "equality" either; the law doesn't care about one's sexual habits. The dividing issue is all about special protections and privileges. The Log Cabin Republicans want to eliminate marriage, because marriage is all about one man and one woman. They want to create a new kind of "marriage" that has no gender requirements, which is to say they want to take something that is not, cannot be, marriage, and call it "marriage." They want to place a couple of (maybe several?) sodomizers on a pedestal and hold them up as the model relationship.
They want to call good evil, and evil good. I, for one, am grateful that George W. Bush says "no" to that idea.
Have you ever been so surprised and overjoyed at some wonderful thing, that you laughed out loud? Have you ever been so overwhelmed by something that your knees went weak, and you had to sit or risk falling? I experienced both this week, but in what might be considered a controversial place. I went to a prayer meeting.
It began innocently enough. I was leading music for Friday morning worship, and a couple of friends were helping me on piano and bass guitar. After we finished singing, about halfway through the sermon, the bass guitarist--a young man in his late teens--suddenly leaped up and shouted, "STOP! Just stop! I need everyone to pray for me RIGHT NOW!"
You need to know that this is an international, interdenominational church. Organizationally, it is affiliated with the Oklahoma Baptists, but its membership consists of people from many places in the world, and as many different types of churches. Australians, South Africans, Arabs, Germans, Swiss, Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Russians, British, and others. Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Anglican, and who knows what else. In overall operation, this church is pretty much an "average" of several mainstream Protestant denominations. If we err in our worship, we err toward 1 Corinthians 14:40 instead of 2 Samuel 6:14 or all the shouting in the Psalms. To my knowledge, nobody has ever come out of their seat shouting in the middle of a sermon.
Everything stopped, and everyone stared. The young man continued his diatribe, and as best as I could understand, he was simply desperate to draw nearer to God, and he was frustrated by what he perceived as the staid ritual and cold order of the service. He was not antagonistic or hateful at all; he just wanted to feel the presence of God in his life, and I guess he felt trapped by the trappings of the church. Several of us gathered around him, laid our hands on him and prayed. After the service, we gathered in another room and prayed over several more people in the church who came in with deep needs.
It was a wake-up call, and it gave us new eyes to see the needs of our body. We need to bear one another's burdens, hold each other up, pray over one another. We need to worship our Lord, openly, unashamedly, and at times loudly. As a worship leader, I need to do whatever I can to bring the body into the presence of God. No small task, especially when I am typically more comfortable with quiet order than expressive shouting.
That evening, a group met in someone's home to pray over this young man, and to pray about whatever it was that had driven him from his chair. About a dozen people attended, including his parents. Most I knew, others were new to me. I had never been to the house, so a friend talked me in via mobile phone. As we talked, he informed me that other churches in town had experienced similar out-of-the-ordinary occurrences in their services that morning--miraculous healings, that sort of thing. I hardly knew what to expect.
When I walked in (fashionably late, to my chagrin), I found myself in a large candlelit room. Worship music played from the sound system, and everyone was quietly worshiping--standing, sitting, kneeling, as they were most comfortable. Most people were singing, hands raised. Some were quiet, some were speaking in tongues, some would occasionally speak or shout something to God. I picked a spot at the back of the room, strategically located around the corner from the restroom. I wasn't planning on ducking out, but I've been in a few places where I needed an exit. It never hurts to have one, just in case.
I've always been a little nervous about charismatic manifestations, because it seems to me that emotional highs are relatively easy to counterfeit. In my head, I know that the pitfalls of too little emotion are just as dangerous as the pitfalls of too much emotion, but I am more likely to stay on the "safe side" of controlled emotions--which is to say that I am probably out of balance. The Spirit sometimes asks people to do weird things, but not around here, right?
The music was very worshipful, and I closed my eyes, forgot about everyone else--the fact that I was able to do that was evidence enough of the presence of God--and just worshiped Jesus. I sang, raised my hands, and tears began to roll down my face. It had been so long since I had been able to worship, without any concern for where I was or who was around me, to completely focus on Christ and pour out my heart to Him. After probably fifteen or 20 minutes of uninterrupted worship, I had become so overwhelmed that I felt myself getting weak. I tried to remain upright, but I ended up falling to my knees, and finally on my face, in worship, my body too weak to move. It wasn't like a paralysis; I could turn my head and move my arms, but I had neither the strength nor any desire to get up.
People fall face down all the time in the Bible. Jesus did it, the disciples did it, the people did it. Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Balaam, Joshua, David, Ezekiel, Daniel, John, all fell face down before the Lord at one point or another. They were all so overcome with the presence of God that was before them that they hit the dirt. It wasn't an everyday experience, but it happened, it was real, it was powerful. And, I discovered, it still happens today. Some people call it being "slain in the Spirit." I don't particularly care for that term, because I think it is abused, and it is too flippant a description of what is actually happening. I prefer to simply refer to it in Biblical terms: falling face down before the Lord.
I have no idea how long we worshiped, or how long I was face down on the floor, but at some point we moved into a time of intercession. Everyone gathered around the young man in the middle of the room, some standing, some kneeling, some bowed down. I was still incredibly weak, but managed to gather enough strength to drag myself up and stagger over to the group. I propped myself up by putting one hand on the young man, one hand on my knee, and leaning against the guy behind me. We began to pray, and after several minutes I began to feel weak again. Again, not an uncomfortable weakness, just a feeling of being overcome by God's presence. Then the guy behind me shifted, and I fell away from the group onto the floor.
A good friend was bowed down on the floor near my feet, and when I fell, we both started laughing--it was funny, and wonderful, and joyous, and powerful, all at the same time--as if God Himself had just told the best joke in the world. I suppose that's what people are talking about when they speak of "holy laughter," but that's another term that I think is abused and misunderstood.
We serve a God of laughter. Sarah named her son Isaac, which means laughter, because the very thought of having a son was so unbelievably wonderful that it made her laugh--first in disbelief, then in joy. The Psalmists laughed a lot. Jesus Himself had a great sense of humor--consider his nickname for James and John, the "sons of thunder"--and I have to wonder if He didn't laugh with joy whenever the disciples finally caught on to a particular teaching or parable. What better way, then, for the Spirit to manifest Himself through us than an uproarious fit of laughter?
When the evening finally ended and I was heading out the door, my friend asked me if I had had fun. I answered to the affirmative, although "fun" didn't even begin to describe my experience. I don't pretend to fully understand it, but it happened. I was there, and God was there, and it was beyond wonderful.
If you are a believer, I exhort you to allow yourself to worship the Lord freely, whether with a group or all by yourself, because you need it and God desires it. If you are not a believer, I encourage you to seek this Jesus who can so overwhelm you with His joy and power and love, that all you will be able to do is fall on your face, and laugh, and cry...and live.
It is common practice in Doha to dig a trench across a street, even a freshly-laid street, and fill the trench almost to the top with dirt. This results in what can best be described as an inverted speed hump. Hitting one of these trenches at speed will do interesting things to you, both physically and mentally. It's a good test of your spiritual walk. I like to have a Methodist along with me when that happens, so he can cuss for me.
While trying to make my way to someone's house downtown one night, I took a wrong turn and ended up on a side street. There, lurking just below the headlights, was a trench--left there, no doubt, by some al-Qaeda wannabes who were hoping that a hapless American infidel would hit it. I hit it. The Jeep promptly died, and wouldn't start again. I pushed, Danna tried to start it. Danna pushed, I tried to start it. The only result was that we were both dripping with sweat. So, we got up enough momentum to pop it up onto the curb, right next to a stone wall, where it would hopefully be out of the road enough to avoid getting smashed. We then called Russell, who rescued us. Supper at A&W, topped off with a root beer float, helped us put things into perspective.
The next day, I called Abdullah at the American Automotive Center, and he gave me the number of a wrecker service, or more accurately a guy with a beat-up old Nissan Patrol and flatbed trailer. I called, met Jobi at the AAC, found the Jeep where we had left it, and trailered it back to the shop. Cost me all of 40QR (about $12.50) for Jobi's services...too bad the repairs were not as cheap. Turns out the fuel pump had shorted out, and burned up a wire or two and a few fuses. It took them a couple of days, but they got it fixed. Now the fuel gauge doesn't work. Proof positive that, yes, this is a genuine Jeep. Maybe one of these days it will be dune-ready....