My Audition for The Glenn Beck Show (or anything on Fox News for that matter)

President Obama is at it again. Everything that he is doing is somehow storming up a flurry of controversy, and the latest is something that hits very close to home - a speech given directly to our school children. I was skeptical of the controversy at first, the right-wing critics who were outraged and declared that Obama was taking this opportunity to indoctrinate our youth with socialist ideology. I dismissed it as no more than an overblown media/political circus. But that was until I did a little more crack... research...

I read the original speech as it was posted on whitehouse.gov. Everything seemed fine on the surface. It was just stuff about staying in school and working hard, which appears harmless. Not to be outwitted by whitehouse.gov, I actually posted the speech in Google's socialism calculator* and I was shocked at the results.

Just take this excerpt from the President's speech as it appears on whitehouse.gov:

"I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things."

Pretty normal, right? But this is what came out when I pasted the same statement into the socialism calculator:

"Ich weiß, dass manchmal, Sie bekommen das Gefühl aus dem Fernsehen, dass man reich und erfolgreich sein kann, ohne harte Arbeit - das ist Ihr Ticket zum Erfolg wird durch Klopfen oder Basketball oder eine Realität TV-Star, wenn die Chancen sind, Sie werden doch nicht zu jedem dieser Dinge."

Are you shocked yet? Or are you afraid? Maybe you should be, because this statement reeks of socialism. Notice the word "reich." Hmm... that sounds familiar. 3RD REICH maybe???? Also notice the character ß as well. What is that? You would probably have to be a socialist to know.

Here is another example written in free market capitalism:

"The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best."

But how does it come out in the socialism calculator?

"Die Geschichte von Amerika ist nicht über Menschen, die beendet werden, wenn es hart kam. Es geht um Menschen, die laufenden gehalten, der versucht, härter, liebte ihr Land zu viel, um nichts weniger als ihr Bestes zu tun."

HOLY SWEET MOTHER OF GOD. It says "Die... Amerika." And somebody better warn Beendet Werden and Laufenden Gehalten as well, if they're not already dead.

How can we allow this in our great nation? Obama must be stopped. We should all boycott the speech. If this gets into the minds of our children, it may be the end of the world as we know it.

Glenn Beck, please let me be on your show.

*By socialism calculator, I actually mean that I used the Google English to German translator.

The Road to Glory

Fantasy Football Draft Picks:

QB: Drew Brees
WR: Anquan Boldin
WR: Chad Ochocinco
WR: Vincent Jackson
RB: Brandon Jacobs
RB: Clinton Portis
TE: Anthony Fasano

Bench:
Eli Manning
Lance Moore
Lendale White
Le'Ron McClain
Michael Vick

I'm a little disappointed I didn't get Brady this season, even though I won without him last year. Still, Drew Brees slings the ball around with the best of them, so I'm happy with him. I really like my running backs. I like the guys who score lots of touchdowns, so I'm pretty happy with all four of them. I took a chance on Chad Ochocinco, hoping he'd have kind of a comeback year, and I got Lance Moore because I always like to have a receiver on the same team as my QB for double points. Also, I know I'm going to take a PR hit with Michael Vick but he was my last pick in the draft and I figured, What the heck?

I've been waiting for fantasy football to start for weeks now. I have a 2 year championship win streak going in my league, and I'm pretty excited to defend it. It should be a fun year.

D-bag of the Day

At work, one of the things that my coworkers and I have invented to deal with the stresses and frustrations of working in retail is invent an award for the one person who has seemingly gone out of their way to make us have a crappy day. Whether that person is a customer, fellow employee, doner, or some schmuck on the radio, if they turn a good day into a bad day or a bad day into a worse day, they are considered a serious candidate for this award. This unique individual, if chosen, is cemented forever in history as that day's douchebag of the day.

It's the guy who comes in the store 5 minutes before close and buys a set of sofas and a large desk to go along with it. It's the person who takes a slam in the toilet and throws in too much toilet paper, thus clogging it for one of us to fix. It's the couple who brings a trailer load of pure and utter junk that has been rained on to us as a reasonable donation and then puts $1,000 on their tax receipt. I could go on and on.

But today, the d-bag of the day award goes to a person who went especially out of his way to earn this honor, and his name is: Guy-Who-Stole-My-Dog.

Ok, so I don't know his real name. But his name doesn't really matter. Guy-Who-Stole-My-Dog essentially waited until night time to pick up one of our family dogs, Bilco, and apparently take him away to his own house just a few miles down the road. In other words, he stole him. Now, the dog may have wandered off, but he never goes far, and he doesn't resemble a stray at all. He even has a collar. So, GWSMD took Bilco to his own house, put him in his fence, and removed his collar (because of course without his collar we wouldn't able to identify him). At this point, I suppose the man assumed that Bilco was his dog.

But it gets worse. My dad actually had a friend who noticed our dog at this other guy's house, and when he ran into my dad at a gas station, brought it up. They went over to GWSMD's trailer and found Bilco laying on the front porch. It was obvious by the poor dog's looks that he wasn't being fed. His ribs were sticking out more than normal, and his fur didn't look quite as healthy. No one actually came to the door when they knocked, probably because they knew they deserved a beatdown, and so my dad and his friend took Bilco and brought him home.

I guess the moral of the story is, don't mess with a person's dog. I don't know what would make any sane individual see a healthy dog with a collar out somewhere and immediately think he had a right to take it for his own and then not even go as far as to feed it, but it happened. And it makes me mad, because we've had the dog since he was a puppy. I mean, that's the dog that sits beside me every day when I go in out in the front yard to read a book. That's the dog that Stephanie and I ran through a freaking lightning storm to rescue from our dad's shop. It's the same dog that gets scared to death every year when we shoot fireworks on the 4th. And it's the same dog that wouldn't stop jumping on me once, and so I tossed him into our pond. And you're just going to steal him? Douchebag...

But I am glad that Bilco is back. Even if he is a stupid dog, he is our stupid dog. Last night when I was going to bed, I really hoped that I hadn't seen him for the last time. You can imagine how relieved I was when I pulled into the driveway and heard his familiar bark (the same one that wakes me up in the middle of the night because he is barking at a leaf or something).

A Quick Life Update

If you happen to be out driving tomorrow, and if you happen to pass Mission Possible and see a red S-10 in the parking lot, don't bother asking whether or not that's my truck. Between 12 and 6, you will be right in assuming that it is. And you will probably think, Hold on a second... he is living in Huntsville now. What is he doing back here? Well the explanation is very simple: I came back.

Manny Ramirez cuts off throws to the infield from his own position in outfield. He goes (went) into the Green Monster to use the bathroom between innings. He does (did) steroids. They have a saying for this, that it's "Manny being Manny." Regarding my coming back from UAH, I guess you could say that it's "Matt being Matt." I go to college, I take classes, I transfer, I change my major many times, I transfer again, I drop out for a year, I go back, I transfer again... this is in essence my college years crammed into one sentence. And so if you are shocked right now at the fact that I stayed at UAH for a few days and then dropped out and returned, you really shouldn't be. A pig returns to the mud, a dog returns to its vomit, Gomer returned to the street corners and well, I could probably have chosen better examples, but I returned to my habit of not sticking to the plan.

Seriously though, the best explanation I can give is that I got up there and stayed a few days only to realize that living on campus is not for me. It might have been good right out of high school, and there are definitely people out there who love it, but not me. I withdrew from all my classes, gave back my financial aid money, loaded up my truck, and came home. Not once have I regretted it since, and immediately the next day I went to register for whatever I had left to take at Jeff State. Even though I changed colleges, I still fully intend to finish my degree in History and Education and get a job as a teacher. This hasn't set me back or discouraged me one bit.

The one thing I am going to miss about Huntsville is the church that I had the pleasure of attending once. It was called Weatherly Heights and I found it on the Faith and Justice directory on the Sojourners website. At its surface, it was a Baptist church that didn't seem very Baptist at all. Ministers wear robes during the service, the sermon was about 20 minutes long, and women are permitted to be in positions of leadership. During the worship, I couldn't hear the music minister over the voice of the entire congregation, which is always great for worship. Also, the prayers, the sermon, and the entire order of the service were deep and very well-thought out. The pastor preached from Leviticus, and actually provided historical context for what he was talking about. It wasn't some watered down self-help message repackaged for Christians, but actual rich, bare, Biblical theology presented in its context.

I really liked that church, but a minimum 1 hour commute is too much for me to be able to attend now. I'm back in the B-ham area and I'm on the market for a new church. Some might be wondering if I am going to go back to Hilldale, but I'm going to have to say here that I'm not. I like Hilldale, and I really like the people there, but I'm sorry to have to say I'm going to be moving on.

You see, things get a little complicated when I talk about church. After the crap that happened at Hopewell, my take on church changed. Not that it was all Hopewell, but more or less that situation combined with observations on several different fronts (not least of these being WDJC). And somewhere along the line, I lost my faith in church. Church as usual doesn't work for me anymore, but the problem is that I don't know of any churches here that aren't church as usual.

Because I want to start believing in churches again. I want to start believing in God's people to be more than people who simply listen to a different kind of music and don't cuss. But the solution to that is not just more modern worship music. It's not a bunch of lights or the obligatory hip pastor-with-fohawk. It's not wrapping yourself in a watered down Christian subculture where you cut yourself off from the world and wait on Jesus to steal you away to heaven, or at least that's not the way I believe it should be.

But anyways, I did say this would be quick. That's essentially where I'm at now. Peace.

"Heaven and earth, I repeat, are made for each other, and at certain points they intersect and interlock. Jesus is the ultimate such point. We as Christians are meant to be such points, derived from him." -N.T. Wright

Don Miller told me to do this, so I did

The Mentoring Project - Elephant Musth Cycle from The Mentoring Project on Vimeo.

A couple years ago I read this great book by Donald Miller called To Own a Dragon. In it, Don details his life growing up without a father and his experiences with several different mentors, or male role models in his life. Growing up without a father, or with a bad father, can wreak havoc on a young boy's emotions and mental state. In fact, an overwhelming majority of men in jail grew up without fathers. This is no coincidence. The family is supposed to work the right way only if a mother and father are both present, but sadly our generation is seeing a crisis in fatherhood. Men aren't sticking around to raise their kids. Some dads are abusive towards their kids or wives, and this leaves the children with what we like to call "issues."

Fortunately there are people out there like Don who are undertaking the daunting task of trying to fix this fatherhood mess. His organization partners with churches so that they can start a mentoring program to give young kids good role models. Their efforts are going to help lots of kids grow up with positive influences in their lives, and that is something that will make a huge difference.

Also, speaking of Donald Miller, I am getting extremely excited about this.

Bible Questions Are Fun

I get so frustrated with the Bible sometimes. It's such a complicated book. It seems like I can't read a chapter without at least one question coming up about something that doesn't seem to make sense or something that contradicts something else. Tonight I decided I would read Jesus' sermon on the mount. So I read it and, as always, something jumped out at me that doesn't really make sense. Unable to come up with a satisfying answer on my own, I thought I'd try to put this question up on the blog and let anybody who feels like it weigh in.

My question comes right after the Lord's prayer when Jesus says, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:14-15). What I am wondering is this: Is Jesus putting another condition on salvation when he is saying this?

I noticed that when I was reading through the sermon on the mount, Jesus seems to be warning people that they need to watch what their actions are, or they may be in danger of hell.

"But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire" - Matthew 5:22

"If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell." - Matthew 5:29

This is where it gets tricky for me because I have learned that it doesn't matter what we do, it matters that we accept and believe in Jesus. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," as it says in Romans. So if I insult somebody, look lustfully at somebody, or even kill someone, I can still be saved by God's grace and forgiveness. But Jesus says that if I do these things, I will be "liable to the hell of fire." He doesn't say that "if you don't believe I am the Son of God you will be liable to the hell of fire." And it gets even more confusing when he says that if I don't forgive others for their trespasses, God won't forgive mine.

It's kind of like that old formula for becoming a Christian, the A, B, C's - Admit, Believe, and Confess. Does that mean it's Admit, Believe, Confess, and Forgive? Jesus did say I won't be forgiven if I don't forgive others. And if I'm not forgiven, how can I be saved? (By the way, I don't really believe that salvation is something that can be confined to an ABC formula - a three step process that gets you automatically a place in heaven. But that's another blog entirely.)

I guess it's just odd how the Bible actually treats the idea of "going to heaven." Like it sometimes is treated like a "how to get to heaven" book, but when I dive in the book it doesn't actually read that way. For instance, if I was someone who knew nothing about the Bible, but I wanted to make sure to get into heaven, I would be completely confused by it. Like I would open up to the first page and there is this poem about the creation of the world and a story of the fall of man, and then it goes into this guy Abraham who had a baby even though he was really old and his wife was barren. And then it follows the lives of his family. Finally, I would realize this wasn't what I was looking for, and I would flip through the book. Stories of slavery and wandering around in the desert, history, poems praising God, words of wisdom, writings of prophets, the story of Jesus, letters to different churches. I'm not saying that how to get to heaven is not in there, I'm just saying that it's really hard to find. And it seems like that is a very critical part of our faith, which is why this is so strange. You would think God would put it in there, highlight it, and make the ink glow on the page. Or that there would be a table of contents at the beginning that would say "For information on going to heaven, turn to page 1142." But that's not in there. Even the Romans road, which many Christians are taught to use to lead people to Christ, is several separate verses ripped out of the book of Romans and made into a formula of salvation. Not even Paul actually put them directly together, step by step.

Anyways, this has confused me lately. Is there more to salvation than simply believing and accepting? Can I go to heaven without forgiving others, even if I do believe? And why doesn't God make the way to heaven more obvious?

Any thoughts?