Archives for October 2006

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
— Edmund Burke

I wish I was a better Christian. I wish I was a better husband. I wish I was a better employee. I wish I was a better churchman. I wish I was a better son and brother.

AND, I WISH I WAS A BETTER FATHER.

Parker came in this evening and headed straight for his room. I did not realize that he was crying until Susan stopped him on the stairs and asked him about it.

“I just got beat up.”

He had been at a neighbor’s house playing.

I called him into my study. I call it my Ward Cleaver asylum.

As he plopped sideways into a recliner and tears began to run faster, I prompted, “Son, tell me what happened.”

“I got beat up.”

“By whom?”

“By a ten year old.” (Parker just turned eight.)

“Well, how did this come about?”

“He kept irritating me, and irritating me, until I went furious on him.”

“You went furious on him?”

“Yeah, he kept knocking me down and I kept getting up and going after him. He knocked me down twenty-four times but I just kept going after him.”

And, that is when I made my first mistake. My feelings had been making rapid transitions. First, I had been concerned when I had heard he was crying. Then, I was angry at whomever would go after a member of my family. Then I was concerned again when I saw Parker examining his wounds. But before I could stop the emotional swings I got slapped with pride over the courage he had shown.

“Well, good for you son!”

— Oops! I just got THE LOOK from Susan. — “KEVIN!”

“That’s right! Good for you son. You went up against a ten-year old bully and didn’t give up. That took courage.”

— More of THE LOOK coming my way. —

I guess Susan thought my parenting skills non-existent and it was best for her to take over at that point.

“Parker, you should have just come home. It is best not to fight.” Susan counseled.

I quickly sought cover, “Yeah, Yeah, what your Mom says, son.”
________

Well, Susan was actually right. We spent about 20 more minutes talking it all out, exploring options and such. Seeing as how we watched “The End of the Spear” last night I guess I should have been a little more spiritual in my response.

HOWEVER, I still think that it is much easier to learn to act civilized, and even easier for the Christian to learn to show God’s love for the unlovely, than it is to learn courage. I am pleased that when confronted with a bully two years older, eight inches taller, and twenty pounds heavier, Parker defended himself and “kept getting up.”

I wish I was a better father. I have trouble knowing when it is best to affirm my child’s courage, and when it is best to nourish an attitude of peacemaking. Tonight I tried to do both. I guess I won’t know if I was right until I get to Heaven.

These are quotes that I came across over the last two weeks. Last week I just didn’t have time to get up my regular “It’s Monday Night and Time For Quotes.”

Who can refute a sneer?
— William Paley, in Moral Philosophy, vol. 2, bk. 5, ch. 9

A moral life is perfected by practice more than by precept; children are not taught so much as habituated.
— James Wilson, in The Moral Sense

Let thy Child’s first lesson be Obedience, and the second may be what thou wilt.
— Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack

Time makes more Converts than Reason.
— Thomas Paine, in Common Sense

A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through government” to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all to protect our freedom.
— Milton Friedman, in Capitalism and Freedom

A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter; you can find a hole in your opponent’s argument through which you can drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out of bloody dialogue–which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands.
— William F. Buckley, Jr., in The Unmaking of a Mayor

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
— George Orwell, in Animal Farm

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.
— George Orwell, in Looking Back on the Spanish War

Love is a kind of Warfare.
— Ovid, in Ars amatoria, bk. 2, line 233

“The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation that its wealth.”
— Dwight D. Eisnehower

35 Reasons Not To Sin
by Jim Elliff

1. Because a little sin leads to more sin.
2. Because my sin invites the discipline of God.
3. Because the time spent in sin is forever wasted.
4. Because my sin never pleases but always grieves God who loves me.
5. Because my sin places a greater burden on my spiritual leaders.
6. Because in time my sin always brings heaviness to my heart.
7. Because I am doing what I do not have to do.
8. Because my sin always makes me less than what I could be.
9. Because others, including my family, suffer consequences due to my sin.
10. Because my sin saddens the godly.
11. Because my sin makes the enemies of God rejoice.
12. Because sin deceives me into believing I have gained when in reality I have lost.
13. Because sin may keep me from qualifying for spiritual leadership.
14. Because the supposed benefits of my sin will never outweigh the consequences of disobedience.
15. Because repenting of my sin is such a painful process, yet I must repent.
16. Because sin is a very brief pleasure for an eternal loss.
17. Because my sin may influence others to sin.
18. Because my sin may keep others from knowing Christ.
19. Because sin makes light of the cross, upon which Christ died for the very purpose of taking away my sin.
20. Because it is impossible to sin and follow the Spirit at the same time.
21. Because God chooses not to respect the prayers of those who cherish their sin.
22. Because sin steals my reputation and robs me of my testimony.
23. Because others once more earnest than I have been destroyed by just such sins.
24. Because the inhabitants of heaven and hell would all testify to the foolishness of this sin.
25. Because sin and guilt may harm both mind and body.
26. Because sins mixed with service make the things of God tasteless.
27. Because suffering for sin has no joy or reward, though suffering for righteousness has both.
28. Because my sin is adultery with the world.
29. Because, though forgiven, I will review this very sin at the Judgment Seat where loss and gain of eternal rewards are applied.
30. Because I can never really know ahead of time just how severe the discipline for my sin might be.
31. Because my sin may be an indication of a lost condition.
32. Because to sin is not to love Christ.
33. Because my unwillingness to reject this sin now grants it an authority over me greater than I wish to believe.
34. Because sin glorifies God only in His judgment of it and His turning of it to good use, never because it is worth anything on it’s own.
35. Because I promised God he would be Lord of my life.

http://kevinstilley.com/1142/

Has MySpace peaked? Some think that it has not only seen its best days but that it is now headed the other direction.

From the other side of the classroom, E.J. Kim chimes in that in the past three months, she’s gone from slaving over her MySpace profile up to four hours a day — decorating it, posting notes and pictures to her friends’ pages — to deleting the whole thing.

“I’ve grown out of it,” Kim said. “I thought it was kind of pointless.”

Such is the social life of teens on the Internet: Powerful but fickle. Within several months’ time, a site can garner tens of millions of users who, just as quickly, might flock to the next place, making it hard for corporate America to make lasting investments in whatever’s hot now. (MORE HERE)

It is hard for me to understand why anyone would hurt an animal as a “prank” but there is no overestimating the evil that can be found in the hearts of me.

A black cat won’t cross your path this Halloween, not if a northern Idaho animal shelter can help it. Like many shelters around the country, the Kootenai Humane Society in Coeur d’Alene is prohibiting black cat adoptions from now to Nov. 2, fearing the animals could be mistreated in Halloween pranks – or worse, sacrificed in some satanic ritual.

The shelter’s executive director, Phil Morgan, said that while the risk may be remote, the policy will remain just in case.

“It’s kind of an urban legend. But in the humane industry it’s pretty typical that shelters don’t do adoptions of black cats or white bunnies because of the whole satanic sacrificial thing,” Morgan said. “If we prevent one animal from getting hurt, then it serves its purpose.” (More HERE.)

I admit to enjoying reading the ubiquitous memes of the blogosphere once in awhile. However, I have only ever answered one. You may remember that I ended up spending way too much time on it (See HERE and HERE.)

However, today I saw a meme on Sage’s blog that I have seen several times elsewhere and thought that I would give it a shot.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet!

I’m not going to tell you where this four sentence passage comes from. Read it and see if you can tell me where it comes from.

Hii autem sunt qui circa viam ubi seminatur verbum et cum audierint confestim venit Satanas et aufert verbum quod seminatum est in corda eorum. Et hii sunt similiter qui super petrosa seminantur qui cum audierint verbum statim cum gaudio accipiunt illud, et non habent radicem in se sed temporales sunt deinde orta tribulatione et persecutione propter verbum confestim scandalizantur. Et alii sunt qui in spinis seminantur hii sunt qui verbum audiunt, et aerumnae saeculi et deceptio divitiarum et circa reliqua concupiscentiae introeuntes suffocant verbum et sine fructu efficitur. Et hii sunt qui super terram bonam seminati sunt qui audiunt verbum et suscipiunt et fructificant unum triginta et unum sexaginta et unum centum.

Everyone has imagined what it would be like to be invisible. (And, some of us are more invisible than we would like to be.) Now, scientists are in the process of bending light rays to make science fiction reality.

Scientists are boldly going where only fiction has gone before – to develop a Cloak of Invisibility. It isn’t quite ready to hide a Romulan space ship from Capt. James T. Kirk or to disguise Harry Potter, but it is a significant start and could show the way to more sophisticated designs.

In this first successful experiment, researchers from the United States and England were able to cloak a copper cylinder.

It’s like a mirage, where heat causes the bending of light rays and cloaks the road ahead behind an image of the sky.

“We have built an artificial mirage that can hide something from would-be observers in any direction,” said cloak designer David Schurig, a research associate in Duke University’s electrical and computer engineering department. (Read more HERE.)