Why I would vote for Hillary Clinton

I'm a republican, a real one, not a McCain, Bush, Cheney, et al neo-con republican. I'm conservative. I would vote for Hillary Clinton over John McCain, and after this recent comment, I'd vote for Hillary Clinton over many other candidates too.
Read.
I firmly believe that the willingness of our leadership to back Israel is one of the most important topics we need to discern before an election. God said he would bless those who bless Israel, and curse those who curse Israel. This is the kind of backbone I want in a leader. Obama is a pansifist (hat tip to Miss O'hara for that word) of the highest degree, and far to weak and ideological to be the President during this stressful time. We are being held hostage at the pumps by middle-Eastern countries with questionable ties to terrorism. We have to know where we draw the line, how far OPEC can push us. I think Sen. Clinton knows that line, after reading that she will NUKE Iran if they attack Israel. Bravo, Mrs. Clinton. We disagree on many things, but you won me over on what matters most.

Ubuntu 8.04 Coming Soon!

I'm not a fan of Microsoft. I loved my old Apple Powerbook, but got rid of it awhile back, and hope to get a new Apple MacBook Pro some day soon. In the meantime, though, I've fallen in love with Ubuntu. I've played with Linux distros for 5 or 6 years now, and Ubuntu is the first I've seen that truly gives that polished, pretty, Consumer GUI feel that Mac or Windows does.
And I'm geeking out over the new version of Ubuntu being released in just 3 short days! I've been playing with creating my own LAMP server for several months for hosting this very blog, and even wrote about it at my blog's old homepage (which is, by the way, where you can read my older stuff). Although I haven't found the time or the patience to learn how to finish my setup, I plan to one day. :)
Even if you think Windows is the best thing in the world, I strongly encourage you to give Ubuntu 8.04 a try. This is first linux brand that I heartily recommend to non-ubergeeks. Even my wife uses Ubuntu with great ease. It's secure, stable, and FREE! You can't beat free, in my experience.

No news is good news

I have a store of news and issues that I'm very excited to discuss, but I spent the majority of my weekend installing Central A/C in my house. And my girl had her very first SoftBall game. So, new material will trickle in, and I do plan to get something up for the Christian Carnival by tomorrow.
As far as Home Repair goes, I highly recommend paying someone else to do it. Attics and crawl spaces are not where I like to spend my weekends. We did, however, save a few thousand dollars, and drastically increased the resale value of our home. But, if you can afford it, I definitely recommend sitting in the house and sipping some lemonade while someone else gets hot and dirty.

Church of Oprah?!?!?!?!?!

If Barack Hussein Obama turns out to be the antichrist, Oprah would be a great false prophet.
Just a thought.

Christian Carnival 220 is up!

Well, as part of my return to the blogosphere, I have participated in this week's Christian Carnival, up at Imago Dei.
I'm always looking for some new interesting reading, and I found a bit this week. Parableman always interests me, even if I disagree with him from time to time. Bounded Irrationality was a refreshing read this week, and I've added it to Google Reader. I recommend you do the same.

Live, Laugh, Give

For this first installment of "Live, Laugh, Give" I'm going to keep it rather simple, with some ideas that I live by as often as possible. Every week, here, I'll discuss one practical way to live your life by the Bible, and Jesus' example, one way to enjoy the little things, even in the midst of hard times, and one way to give back to those around you.

Live:

Jesus teaches us the value of children several times through his gospels. But he demonstrates it in such a great way in how he reacts to them in Matthew 19. With all the "adult" stress and cares in the world, it can be so easy to look over the children in our lives and rush through evenings and weekends in a flurry of all the things that we just really need to get done. If we don't take the time while they're young to teach them the important things in life, they'll miss out on how great a lifetime of joy and serving God can be. Let's encourage our little children to come to Jesus . . . and us. In doing so, I think we can learn more about who Jesus really is, when we see him through their eyes. Plus, we get to enjoy time with them that we'll never have back.

Laugh:

In a family of 4, everyone is busy with something all the time. It's really difficult to find the time to spend with your spouse you both deserve. The not-so-laughable part of this tip is this: make a schedule for evenings and stick to it. Kids in bed at the same time every night. I myself, at this time, am usually tempted to kick back and unwind playing video games or surf the net. I'm sure you all have your own vices like this. This lifestyle makes it really easy to forget why you fell in love in the first place. Turn off the TV at least one or two nights a week and just talk. You may rediscover a romance that you thought had been replaced by soccer games and 2 am feedings.

Give:

Everyone of us has been touched by cancer. 1 in 7 people will die from it. Local communities across the U.S. will be having the Relay for Life next month, and typically do various types of fundraisers for cancer victims and research. Find your relay event here, and ask what you can do to help. This is a great cause, and one that benefits all of us directly or indirectly. With the amazing advances in science we're making recently, I can't believe that a cure for cancer is that far off. Maybe the few dollars you spend sponsoring a walker, or buying a cake will be the final straw in defeating this disease.

Extreme Measures

I was reading Jesus' sermon on the Mount recently, in Matthew 5, and noticed something I had never seen before. We use his words on adultery and lust as an example of why you can't live by the letter of the law, but by the spirit of it. It also shows us what the Law was originally intended to do: show us our sinful hearts. We can see that if we keep the commandments of God, and live a seemingly holy life, that's all the matters, but our heart must be changed.
I found it very interesting, then, that as Jesus makes this point, he segues into this:

"And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
-- Matthew 5:29-30

I don't think it is a coincidence he says this directly after telling us that lust in your heart is the same as committing adultery through God's eyes. I actually think the allusion here is as purposeful as it is blunt. Before you get all hot and bothered, I don't think we're being instructed by Jesus to actually borrow our neighbor's hatchet and start whacking away at body parts. I think what we're being instructed to do here, is to take whatever measures are necessary, no matter how extreme, to prevent ourselves from falling into sin.

This is a bit of a foreign concept, I think, in today's age. We tend to be told by our friends and churches that many sins are okay, or are understandable, God understands, and as long as you're giving it your best shot, he'll save you a spot in heaven. Clearly, Jesus sees sin differently. Not only is it not good enough for you not to sin outwardly, but evil, carnal thoughts in your heart are also enough to condemn you.

Jesus is telling us here that sin is so foul, so destructive, that you must do whatever you can to make sure you don't sin. I know someone who found it incredibly difficult to keep themselves from looking at pornography on the internet. It was their last resort to maintain their relationship with God, to sign up for XXXChurch.com's accountability software that emails an accountability partner of your choosing if you go to sexually themed websites. That way he knew he couldn't sin in secret anymore. As far as I know, this has worked for him.

But each of us have an area in life where we are most easily tempted, and our instructions are equally as clear as Jesus' teachings on lust: get away from sin in any way possible. Perhaps friends, acquaintances, people we have lunch at work with, TV shows, movies, etc are problems drawing us back into sins we want desperately to be out of. Maybe you can't stop yourself from drinking when you're with a certain crowd of people. Maybe you have uncontrollable habits or thoughts because of what you fill your mind with on the internet or TV. No matter the cause, the solution is the same. It may take extreme measures to ensure you stay away from sin. People may think you're silly, and that it doesn't take all that to be Christian. I've even known Pastors who got on to church members for being too extreme in trying to avoid a sin. I know of a man who came out of gangs, drugs, and prostitution, who, when he found himself tempted to look at a woman lustfully, would actually make himself leave wherever he was at to get away. He was in a mall with some friends, and actually excused himself and left the mall! I know that some of you are chuckling self-righteously right now, and saying things like, "Well, obviously he has a problem he needs help with if he can't even be in public without lusting." Obviously he does, Pharisee. Obviously we all do, we just don't take our sin seriously enough to do something equally as extreme about it. Or maybe we enjoy it too much?

Either way, our calling is clear. Just not murdering someone, or hopping into bed and committing adultery, is not enough. Our hearts must be pure. And if we can't find a way to keep them pure, and still go to the same places, be with the same friends, or watch the same things, we must take extreme measures.

Faith and Finances

Just mentioning God and money in the same sentence typically draws very impassioned responses from many different belief systems. And that's really too bad, because if there is one thing that Jesus taught quite a bit about, it was money. If there is one thing that has the ability to move and shape our everyday life (or at least our perceptions of it), it is money. Even Solomon recognized this, in saying, "money answereth all things. (Ecc 10:19)"

It seems like money is mistreated in Christian teachings universally. IF it's taught on at all, it seems I hear that we should hate it, and accept a life of poverty, because the prosperity people are loonies, and God doesn't want us to be filthy rich; or I hear that God does indeed want us to be filthy rich. We also should never be sad, have problems, or have to save up over time to buy stuff we want...and if we do, we just don't have enough faith. These two diametrically opposed viewpoints have led to many Christians having a financially abusive relationship with their checkbooks.

There's a lot to address on this topic, and I plan on exploring many aspects of wrong thinking in Christendom on money. However, I'd like to just tell a bit about what I think and why in this post, and explore such things are the Giving and Receiving (Sowing and Reaping), the Prosperity Gospel, and poverty in separate posts.

The question at the center of this is, "Does God really want us to prosper?" For which the answer is a resounding, "YES!" Let's read 3 John 1:2, "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." Now before you go all Calvinist on me, I do admit there are many different ways to prosper BESIDES making lots of money. But we, at least, must all agree that if we are prospering and being in health, as our soul prospers, it is conceivable that one way we prosper will be financial. Not the only way. Not filthy, stinkin' rich (Although I'm not opposed...so be unto me, my Lord!). But just financially prosperous. Bills paid. We're able to afford all we need, and at least a moderate amount of what we want occasionally. We're not worried day to day how make ends meet. And we have the money to make sound financial decisions, such as saving and investing. That's what I think of when I think of prospering financially. And I think that this is something that we have every reason to believe that God will do for us. I'm very excited about exploring all the reasons why in the weeks to come.

Non-Mac Macs?

There's a lot of talk today coming over my Google Sidebar New widget about a (lawsuit waiting to happen) company called Psystar, which I would link to, but I'm hearing that their site is already down. They've made a cute little PC, and are installing OS X on it for people, and violating the EULA in the process.
I am a Mac Fanboy. The day I parted with my Powerbook was a very sad day for me, and ever since I've been saving up for a new Macbook Pro. I own an iPhone. I use those white apple logo stickers on everything. And this machine is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen.
I suppose the question is, "What makes a Mac a Mac?" Is it just the OS? We've been trained to believe by Windows that computers and their components are inconsequential . . . what matters is the Windows OS. But crashes, freezes, slow downs, compatibility errors, dll errors, conflicting IRQ's, improperly installed video cards, and the slew of drivers that must be manually updated outside of the normal Windows Update process would tell us a different story.
The Mac experience is as much about the beautiful hardware as it is the OS. . . maybe moreso. Oh, I do prefer OSX over Windows any day, but I suppose part of that affection is due to the fact that it rarely crashes, and is much more stable. But I have a sneaking feeling, much of that stability is due to Apple's control over their components and hardware manufacturing. Either way, I'm going to pass up this freak of nature, and keep salivating over the MacBook.

Losing God

I've lived and been a Christian long enough to notice a disturbing pattern. And while I see it in my own life, I can see that it's a pattern that is widespread, and not confined to my own...idiosyncrasies. I've noticed that every time I have a significant experience with God, overcoming some area that I've struggled with, a breakthrough, some would call it, I get extremely lazy in my prayer and bible study. This, after I've devoted prayer and time to seeking God for some period of time, and I practically run back to a self-centered lifestyle, and lose what God has done in and for me.

It's a curious occurrence. Jesus said that when a spirit leaves a man, it wanders about, then returns, finding the house clean, and bring seven other spirits with it to reoccupy the house. I'm paraphrasing of course, but it seems to me this is a very strong warning against just such activity, and maybe an explanation of why it is so difficult to keep ourselves deeply committed shortly after God has done a work in our life.

My question, really, is why? I should be (and generally am) ecstatic about having an experience with THE God. It's an honor above all others. So why do I want to just "rest" from prayer, and indulge my flesh afterwards? Should my flesh not be much more subjected to the Spirit after such an experience than before? Thankfully, recently, as God helped me see his will in a very trying situation, I noticed myself the very next day being drawn into this temptation, and was able to observe my reactions to the seduction of lethargy, and to seek God to contain its effects in my life. I believe I also realized how, and why this is an issue for us who are earnestly seeking God in our...most of the time, at least.

Jesus said, in the parable of the sower, (Mark 4, I suggest you read the whole thing, as I will only quote two verses) that some seed falls on thorny ground, some on stony, and some on the road. I think that this probably falls under the "thorny" category.

"And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful." Mark 4:19

It would seem that, if we receive our word, whether it be the initial revelation of saving knowledge of Jesus, or perhaps any word, deliverance, or instruction we receive from God for our lives, if we allow thorns to stay in the same ground, it will choke out God's work, and make it unfruitful. This certainly differentiates from the seed on stony ground, or on the road, which died, leaving the person in the original desolate sinful state they began in. This is a condition of receiving what you want or need from God, and then keeping the other cares of the world, fleshly appetites, worries, the scheming for money, etc, which take up so much room in our lives that it makes that work of God unfruitful. Seeing this makes me truly understand the words of Paul: "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24) But the death in this body, that renders the miraculous delivering power of God unfruitful, is present because of my obstinacy in wholly surrendering my life to God. The fact is, I enjoy many things in life that offer zero spiritual benefits. There are shows on TV that I enjoy so much, that I overlook sometimes overtly anti-christian, even occultic themes to watch them. On top of that, who can totally ignore the deceitfulness of riches? Money makes this world go round, so the world says, and without it, we can't survive. It's very difficult to not seek it as the deer seeks after water. However, it's with that fervency that we're instructed to seek God. The desires of decadence, entertainment, and fleshly pleasure are contrary to God.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that many times when God blesses us, it is temporally as well as spiritually . . . but if that is what we are seeking after, even that blessing will end up unfruitful. Let us then all take the warning to seek after God's holiness, to seek to purify our lives of all that is worldly and unGodly, and therefore not allow our experiences, blessings, and gifts from God to be made unfruitful and useless.

Live, Laugh, Give

I'm going to attempt a weekly feature here...beginning next Wednesday, called Live, Laugh, Give. Every week, I'm going to discuss a way to take time to enjoy the little things in life, a way to give back to those around you, your church, and community, and a way to live...applying Bible lessons in your life, finances, and family. I'm pretty excited about it, and have ideas for the next few weeks. Please check back, and let me know about things that you do to take, give, and live.

Also, check out new sections that will be appearing over the next few days, most of which will help generate revenue for the site to keep it going. I'll be outlining my favorite books and movies, products and tools that I've found to be useful in work, parenting, or leisure. Please let me know any ideas that you have as well!

Green Idea #1

Work this week has been absolutely crazy, so I haven't had time to discover what is going on in the world or politics, but I have made the time for a little project of mine: going paperless.
Paperless offices are a huge buzzword, these days, and mine is so far from it, I feel that we actually are responsible for at least 3 rain forests being hewn down in the last year. But I decided it was time for my home to be.
I hate mail. I hate filing bills. I really hate bills. And I don't care for most other paper things in my home...they just clutter things up. We've made the switch to E-Bills with our bank, and have started using Microsoft Money for keeping up with our finances. Now, before this, our "method" for tracking our finances was a notebook with scribbles and corrections all over it, a checkbook registry that rarely got updated with anything besides what cleared the bank that day in our online account, and my adamant avoidance of everything to do with figuring out a budget. Our bills got put into piles of varying degrees of organization, and eventually lost. At least one day per week, the wife and I would panic and try to remember what was due, frantically search for the bill, or find it online, and pay it (typically 1 day late).
Needless to say, organizing our life has turned out to be a monumental, but incredibly rewarding process. Most of our bills can be billed directly to our online bill payment account with our bank. Everything gets put into Microsoft Money, with pop-up warnings starting 5 days before a bill is due. Best of all (for me anyway), is that many of these, I can pay simply by clicking a button in Microsoft Money. We download our statements daily to reconcile them with our registry.
Our switch to paperless not only helps the environment, but actually makes our lives very much easier, and vastly more organized. It was quite a bit of work to get set up, in my opinion. However, once it's done, I find it to be well worth the time invested. MS Money basically asks for every piece of information about your entire life. And somewhere in the switch, our registry got out of sync with our bank account, and we can't find our lost money. But other than a few such hiccups, I'm calling Operation Paperless House a rousing success.
Note that Microsoft Money is not the only program that works such wonders (and we have not even begun to touch the surface of...Deluxe edition can help set up a budget, provide cash flow reports, help control spending, plan for the future, and invest!), I understand that Quicken is also quite good. We chose Money because the interface is prettier, and I like to look at pretty shiny things. It seems more user friendly to me as well, but this is based solely on casual and biased observation.
If your bank doesn't offer online bill pay, or online bill presentation, MyCheckFree.com offers a scaled down version of their Bank services for free. They don't seem to have a whole heck of a lot of bills available (Sadly, AT&T Wireless is missing), but Entergy and other utilities abound there. I have looked at it, and it also is pretty easy to use.

Going Green

As Kermit the Frog once said, "It's not easy, being green."  But it certainly is better.

I'm a closet fan of such programming as HGTV, and home improvement  shows on TLC.  Since becoming a homeowner, I've become enamored with improving my house, making it more comfortable and efficient.  Now, I own a turn of the century (last century, not this century) home, and this is sometimes nothing short of a Herculean feat.  We make changes when/where we can.  Like choosing an energy efficient central A/C unit.

The wife and I recently watched HGTV's Green Home Special, and were inspired.  I'd love to add Solar Panels to my house one day, especially when I get that ginormous tree out of my front yard that rains branches onto my roof.  But we're attempting to "go green" in the little ways right now.  I must be honest, I have absolutely no idea where to start.  Recycling?  Is this even possible in Crossett, AR?  I know there is a recycling plant about 45 minutes from here, but is for metal and such things.  Plus, taking a bag of plastic bottles and cardboard box 45 minutes in my non-fuel efficient truck probably does more to harm the environment that just throwing said bag and box to wind in the middle of a national park and allowing animals to choke on the contents.

That being said, we are making smarter choices in the meantime as to what we buy to operate our household.  Buying green cleaners with environmentally friendly chemicals, pesticide free cotton clothing, taking reusable fabric bags to the grocery store instead of using disposable paper or plastic bags there, etc.  Our future remodeling / redecorating projects are going to be green as well (green paint FTW!). 

What I'm really looking for is ways to be greener.  We're starting somewhere, and I'm sure that if everyone did just a little like us, the world would be much better off.  But how do you stay green?  Any ideas for recycling is a small town with no facility?

Also...what do you make of this?  How do you know what green products are actually green?