Projects Of Mine

I'm publishing this blog post for the purpose of sharing information about several projects in which I've been particularly involved, especially since moving from Chicago to Bellingham, WA in November 2010. The following is a summary of those projects:

THE CHRISTIAN ARTS INITIATIVE

The Christian Arts Initiative is an ambitious multifaceted project pertaining to my desire to help to start a "righteous Renaissance" by empowering and encouraging artistic Christians such as myself to more effectively use our various artistic talents and skills for the purpose of bringing glory to Jesus Christ, thereby making this world better, and more beautiful, than it was before we came here.

Admittedly, that's a pretty vague "mission statement", but if you'll contact me with an e-mail message, I'll gladly answer any questions you might have, and I'll also send you some relevant links which will enable you to better understand my vision, in terms of some specifics.

My e-mail address is currently mwp1212[AT]gmail.com.

I especially recommend that you visit the Artistic Christians' Network, which I created slightly less than two years ago. The ACN is an online social network which currently has roughly 30 members. Its name is pretty self-explanatory, to some extent, but you'll learn more if you visit the site for yourself. The web address for the ACN is: http://artisticchristians.ning.com. I invite you to visit that web site, check out the numerous blog posts I've written, and otherwise investigate the web site in order to get a better idea of what it has become, and what I hope that it will become once people have begun to use the site more fully.

Keep in mind, when you visit the Ning.com site, that any references to www.ArtisticChristians.com are references to a web site which is currently out of commission due to financial difficulties which caused me to fall behind on the web hosting fees for that site. But I hope to get a new version of that site back online again, once I've addressed various issues I'll need to address in order to bring that site back again.

In addition to developing the Artistic Christians' Network, site, I hope to start local fellowship meetings and planning meetings in the Bellingham, WA area, in relation to the local chapter of a group to be known as the ACE Fellowship of Artistic Christians. (ACE is an acronym, in this case, which stands for Artistic Christian Endeavors.) With the help of the members of the ACE Fellowship, I believe that it's feasible to achieve great things in the Pacific Northwest! If you like that idea, please e-mail me in order to discuss the idea of having such a meeting soon.

THE NEED MEETERS' NETWORK

More recently I created a second online social network which, like the Artistic Christians' Network, is focused on a specific objective. In this case, the objective is to create a Christ-centered network specifically for the purpose of empowering people who have a wide variety of urgent and not-so-urgent needs, such as the need for employment, the need for adequate and affordable housing, the need for medical and dental care, the need for friendship, and much more. The idea behind the Need Meeters' Network (NMN) is that many of those needs can be much more effectively met if needy people can become part of a "caring community" in which they are encouraged to openly share their various needs more clearly with one another. People can't usually meet the needs of others if they don't know what they are! That's just logical.

The Need Meeters' Network (NMN) only has two members so far, including myself, because I only created it a few weeks ago, and I'm still tweeking its design and developing the concept, not to mention the fact that I'm dealing with other issues in my life which are in some cases quite urgent. Based on feedback I've gotten from others when I've discussed the project with them, however, I think that the project has huge untapped potential, especially when one considers that I also hope to use the NMN to similarly empower various nonprofits, social service agencies and churches which are regularly involved in helping to meet the needs of others in various ways. The interactive nature of the Need Meeters' Network will enable various "need meeters" to develop active partnerships and alliances with people and organizations whose agendas and missions overlap to some extent. I'm committed to the goal of maximizing the usefulness of the NMN to such organizations, especially if they in turn will help to publicize the Need Meeters' Network.

Now, I'll openly confess (because I see it as no cause for shame) that I myself have a vested interest in the success of the Need Meeters' Network. Specifically, I have often found myself in situations where I needed a more effective way to communicate my own needs with people who might be both willing and able to meet those needs, or at least to help to meet those needs. One such need (which I'll discuss more in future blog posts, unless the issue is fully resolved before it becomes necessary to do so) is my own need for emergency housing, if my current housing situation should become even more unstable than it already is.

[As I said once in this blog post already, my e-mail address is currently mwp1212[AT]gmail.com.]

Time limitations often prevent churches and other traditional institutions from offering adequate opportunities for people to share their needs with others. Fortunately, web sites such as the NMN are usually accessible 24/7. So there's really no reason for failing to use such communication options, other than not caring about the needs of others. I'd like to think that most people (especially Christians such as myself) do care about people in this world who are hurting in various ways. So I invite you to visit and join the NMN (for free), in order to help make this world a better place, while simultaneously making it more likely that your own needs will be met in the future.

MY CURRENT JOB SEARCH

Ever since moving to Bellingham from Chicago, I have known that I needed to procure employment so that I could be relatively independent, instead of relying upon the help of  Everett Barton, who generously invited me to stay with him when I lost my room at the Lawson House YMCA in Chicago on account of having fallen behind on my rent. I've spent some amount of time in pursuit of that goal. But probably not as much time as I ought to have spent, since I was preoccupied to a great extent with the other projects listed and described in this blog post.

Part of the reason, I must admit, was that I found it very discouraging to have to try to find a job in this economic climate and this job market, especially when I considered the impediments I faced when seeking employment, particularly in terms of my age (of 54 years), and when I considered how long it had been since I'd even had a part-time job, to say nothing of how long it had been since I'd worked full-time.

While it would be accurate to say that this has been a "crisis of confidence" to some extent, I want to emphasize that the crisis pertains to my ability to persuade someone to hire me for the type of job I need, and for which I'm qualified. There is no crisis insofar as my ability to actually do such a job, if I can procure such a job. I'm a skilled worker, with a strong work ethic, and I merely need a chance to prove that that is the case. Ever since I first entered the job market in 1972, I've worked in a number of restaurants, retail establishments and offices, and I've also worked in other positions, such as the time I worked as a news announcer at KSOZ, a 20,000 watt FM station at College of the Ozarks (or School of the Ozarks, as it was known at the time in late 1977). Also as a telemarketer, a telephone surveyor and more.

Any assistance I could get with regard to my current search for a suitable job would be greatly appreciated, because my ability to achieve the other goals discussed in this blog post is contingent first and foremost on my survival! If you believe in the value of those other goals, then please help me to achieve them by assisting me in finding employment in the meantime. I'll be happy to furnish you with my resume if you'll e-mail me at mwp1212[at]gmail.com and ask for the resume. If you have any questions related to my job search, I'll try to answer those questions as well.
 
MY OWN ART, MUSIC, POETRY AND PHOTOGRAPHY

For years, I have been forced by my circumstances to rely for my financial support on the income from a variety of jobs in a variety of work environments, from restaurants to retail businesses to various offices. I would never claim that I was "too good" to do so, but even when this country was not afflicted by its current economic woes, it was more than a bit frustrating for me to have to support myself in this manner, because it always felt like something of a compromise, when I gave serious consideration to what I believed to be God's vocational calling on my life.

This fact would not and will not detract from the quality of my work, if I find myself employed in a "normal" job again, nor will it cause me to seek to end such a job as soon as possible. Once hired, I generally do my best to keep that job as long as possible. In this economy, it would be foolish for me to do otherwise. Besides, I don't plan to rely solely on an outside job in terms of the totality of my income. Rather, I hope and plan to spend a lot of my "free time" when I'm not clocked in by focusing on the goal of raising additional funds, by means of entrepreneurial efforts involving the online sales of various high quality products of my own creation, such as greeting cards, fine art prints, books of my poetry, CDs of my music (once I have adequate time and equipment with which to create those music recordings) and more.

That has been my goal for many years, but it's only been recently that it was feasible. I now have the ability (and at least some of the equipment) with which to implement a plan to sell art-related products online. Every online sale of such products will take me closer to achieving my other financial goals, in a manner which will be consistent with my overall agenda, and which in fact will help me to achieve those other vocational objectives. So please visit this blog page (and other, newer posts at http://markpettigrew.blogspot.com), and check out the links I plan to periodically add to this blog post, in order to learn about my progress in terms of setting up an online storefront and/or selling various products in other easy-to-implement ways (some of which may involve income-earning opportunities for individuals, churches, etc. who are willing to help me to market my products)

If you're visiting this blog post as a result of being directed to the post by materials connected with another artistic expression of mine (such as a piece of my visual art), please consider putchasing a copy of that work of art so that I can spend more of my time developing the Christian Arts Initiative and the Need Meeters' Network, and less time trying merely to survive. Thanks!

Hell and Popular Music

Over the years, I've heard a number of popular songs which have referred to hell. Often, they've made it sound as if hell is a marvelous place to be. For instance:

"You know you got to go through hell, before you get to heaven"
... from "Big Ol' Jet Airliner" by Steve Miller

"If you wanna' get to heaven, you've got to raise a little hell"
... Ozark Mountain Daredevils

And who can forget the songs "Hells Bells" and "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC? ("YEAH! Party on, dudes," said the embarrassingly drunken frat boy.)

In my opinion, there is no better way to demonstrate one's ignorance (or, dare I say it, utter stupidity) than to write songs that make hell sound as if it's a vacation paradise (or as if it is a stepping stone on the way to heaven).

I believe that hell is very real, and it's not a place where any sane person would ever want to be. Jesus died an excruciatingly painful death on the cross precisely so that we could avoid hell, if we would only make the simple choice to follow and obey him.

The fact that we live in a culture which treats hell as if it's a big joke says something really sad about that culture. People who have bought into the lies promoted by such songs can look forward to a very unpleasant wake-up call when they die.

That's one extremely compelling reason why we need to invest in turning our culture around, by helping to finance the creation of Christ-centered works of art and music.

Wise Words from Dale Pollard

In the past several months, I've been involved with a Christian men's group, here in Bellingham, WA, known as Prodigal. Some of the Prodigal men meet weekly, on Thursday nights, at Hillcrest Chapel, where I attend church.

I just got an e-mail from Dale Pollard, who leads the Prodigal group. The e-mail ended with the following statement, which I found to be quite astute:

Mostly we think of people with great authority as higher up, far away, hard to reach. But spiritual authority comes from compassion and emerges from deep inner solidarity with those who are "subject" to authority. The one who is fully like us, who deeply understands our joys and pains or hopes and desires, and who is willing and able to walk with us, that is the one to whom we gladly give authority and whose "subjects" we are willing to be. It is the compassionate authority that empowers, encourages, calls forth hidden gifts, and enables great things to happen. True spiritual authorities are located in the point of an upside-down triangle, supporting and holding into the light everyone they offer their leadership to. Peace, Dale

It can be difficult, in many churches, to find leaders who exhibit this kind of a Christ-like mentality. Peace to you, too, Dale.

Should I Say Goodbye to Facebook?

For the past week or so, getting into Facebook has been an incredible pain in the neck, thanks to what I just learned is known as the "Koobface" virus. In articles I've read online about the virus, it talks about messages one should not open. Well, I can't recall having received such messages, much less clicked on links in those messages. But it appears that the problem may even affect people who haven't been lured into the scheme, since the ability to reset one's password isn't currently working at Facebook.

Facebook had better fix this problem pronto, because even though I've benefited from participation in Facebook to some extent, there was a time when I had never heard of Facebook, and I got along just fine without it. If necessary, I can do so again.

Abortion, Environmentalism, Morality and Public Policy

This week's issue of Cascadia Weekly, a free newspaper distributed in grocery stores and other outlets in the Bellingham WA area, has an article about a forthcoming visit and book reading, by author Kathleen Dean Moore, of her book Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril.

I only just now heard about the book, so I wouldn't presume to be qualified to make any kind of definitive judgment of the merits (or lack thereof) of the book. But the article contained the following thought-provoking quote from Ms. Moore: "Clearly, information is not enough. A piece is largely missing from the public discourse about climate change; namely an affirmation of our moral responsibilities in the world that the scientists describe. No amount of factual information will tell us what we ought to do. For that, we need moral convictions."

I'm all for the idea that people need moral convictions, but I find presumptuous the implied idea that all people with strong moral convictions about global warming will by definition agree with one another about what we should do about it. That idea seems to stem from the debatable idea that disputes about factual aspects of the issue have already been resolved, and that we can now dismiss any arguments to the contrary as "crazy talk" (to use a phrase which seems to be especially popular amongst the progressives at MSNBC, whenever they'd rather engage in subtle ad hominem attacks than in actual refutations of beliefs with which they disagree). I've seen enough evidence, in the form of books seen at major bookstores, to suggest that such is not the case.

Could it be that arguments on behalf of the idea that something needs to be done have failed because people have found the premises on which such arguments are based to be unconvincing? Could it be that it's unreasonable to expect people to be so bowled over by the academic credentials of the people making such arguments that they will willingly ignore the contrary evidence in the form of their own senses and intuitions, as well as the evidence presented to them every day by their local meteorologists? Could it be that a year in which record snowfall paralyzed large areas of the continental United States does not constitute the sort of physical evidence one would expect when seeking confirmation that the global warming alarmists know what they are talking about?

When it comes to the subject of global warming (and more importantly, its causes), the trendiness of the issue seems to have created an atmosphere in which people are often persuaded to join the cause just so that they won't be branded as "out of touch" with their peers. What that has to do with the actual truth about the issue is anyone's guess. Truth is what truth is, and one's desire to be perceived as "hip" ought to be subordinate to one's responsibility to believe things which, first and foremost, are objectively true.

Not all scientists have acquiesced to the dogma currently being promoted by the majority of the scientific community; and lest we automatically reject the opinions of the the dissident minority members of that community solely because they are in the minority, we ought to humbly remember that scientific dissidents have sometimes been vindicated by subsequent discoveries. The so-called experts once believed and taught that the world was flat, and they ridiculed people, such as Christopher Columbus, who dared to think for themselves instead of being intimidated into agreeing with the majority solely for the sake of doing so.

The majority is not always right. So if you want to persuade me that something is true, even though it seems to fly in the face of the kind of evidence which ordinary people can experience with their own senses, you're going to need to show me evidence which is a lot more persuasive than what I've seen so far from the global warming "true believers", especially if I'm being asked to make major changes in lifestyle on the basis of a belief in the truth of a particular premise.

I bring this up, not because I possess enough scientific expertise to be able to know with certainty that one side or the other is factually wrong, but because it seems to suggest to me that there are those who fear genuine debate over those factual issues, and who therefore prefer instead to engage in name calling as a means of effectively silencing dissident voices. Specious argumentation of that nature seems to have become a fact of life when it comes to the subject of global warming, and that in itself helps to explain, in part, why I am suspicious of the motives and agendas of those who claim that the dispute over the facts has been resolved.

Second, even if it's true that we are suffering from unnatural climate changes which can be blamed almost entirely on man-made carbon emissions from transportation and manufacturing (and not on other factors such as bovine flatulence), it's noteworthy that some liberals understand that the facts alone are not enough to automatically cause people to agree with them insofar as their analysis of what we ought to do is concerned. So they invoke "morality" as a means of spurring people to take action in accordance with their agenda. That's not particularly rare. Many of the issues nearest and dearest to the hearts of political liberals are basically matters of morality, although it is in some cases a type of vague squishy brand of New Age morality rarely to be found in the Christian tradition or scriptures.

Why is it OK or even admirable for liberals to impose their morality on others when it comes to issues pertaining to global warming, but evil for conservatives to impose their morality on others when it comes to the subject of abortion? As I see it, this kind of hypocrisy is the very essence of irrationality.

If political liberals and progressives can't even grasp the simple principle that people should practice what they preach, then why should I trust that they are any more rational when it comes to their ability to intelligently debate the merits of arguments which hinge on sophisticated analyses of scientific charts and graphs?

None of this is to say that I oppose efforts to limit carbon emissions or to otherwise take our responsibilities seriously when it comes to stewardship of the earth's natural resources. In fact, I am greatly pleased to learn that Christians (such as Peter Illyn and the members of his group Restoring Eden) are doing their best to remind Christians of their moral responsibilities to take care of God's creation. I don't think that one has to believe in man-made global warming in order to believe that we should do everything to reduce pollution or to reduce American dependence on foreign oil. Both of those needs existed prior to the relatively recent time in history when the phrase "global warming" became part of America's lexicon.

It is not for the sake of protecting the vested interests of the oil companies that I express my reservations about the global warming movement. Rather, it is on account of my aversion to ideological propaganda and intimidation, regardless of whether it comes from the political right or the political left.

My advice: If you genuinely believe that global warming is an objectively real problem, and that users of internal combustion engines are largely to blame for that problem, then by all means, say so (and back that up by actually living as if you actually believe what you claim to believe). But try to show a little civility and courtesy towards people who have reached different conclusions.

2/12/11 Update

I'm currently sitting in the dining area at the Haggen grocery store (in the Barkley Village shopping center in Bellingham, WA), accessing the Web with the new Toshiba L655 laptop PC I bought late last week at the Office Max in the Sunset Center shopping center. (It was on sale, enabling me to save $100, compared with what I'd have paid the previous week.)

It's likely to take me a little while to get used to the quirks of this machine (such as the upgrade to Windows 7, and the fact that the Synaptics touch pad has a bunch of features which I regard as somewhat superfluous and not entirely predictable). My new Toshiba doesn't yet have any major software applications other than the basic edition of Microsoft Office (not the version which includes Access database software). But it's still much better than being limited to one hour of computing time per day at the Bellingham library. That's only half as much time as I was getting from the Chicago library (or even less if one considers that the Bellingham library is closed on Sundays, unlike the Chicago library). 14 hours per week at the Chicago library was insufficient for the work I needed to do each week on the computer, and being limited to 6 hours per week at the Bellingham library later on was even worse. It scarcely gave me enough time to check, read and respond to my most crucial e-mail message, much less do all of the work required to adequately deal with my needs in terms of job applications and so forth were concerned. Now, having finally gotten my own PC again, things are looking up again for me to some extent, though I haven't yet been hired.

Unfortunately, I also caught a cold late last week, so I've been coughing and sneezing a lot for about two days. But I've asked God to heal me, preferably sooner rather than later, so I'm confident that he has already answered that prayer, even though I haven't yet experienced the manifestation of that healing. Meanwhile, I'm keeping the napkins handy, to wipe my runny nose.

The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse

Want to read a very good book about the subject of spiritual abuse (and more importantly, how to avoid it)? I highly recommend the following: The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse

The book does an excellent job of addressing various problems which can occur within Christian churches.

A Moving Experience

After 19 years of living in Chicago, I recently made a significant change in my life, by moving to Bellingham, Washington, which is just about as close to Canada as one could get without actually living there.

I don't know how long this change in location will last, since my living situation here is currently very unstable. But I didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter. My residence at the Lawson House YMCA ended involuntarily as a result of finding myself in a situation where I'd fallen behind on rent, and where I'd found myself in eviction court.

I'd raised a significant amount of money towards the goal of paying back all the money I owed, by appealing for help from my Facebook friends. In fact, I thought that what I'd raised ought to be more than enough to satisfy the management at Lawson House. But what I didn't take into account was that Lawson House would tack on a huge charge for their legal fees. They wanted me to agree to an additional payment plan (not counting the $2,000 I was prepared and willing to pay to them) which they themselves agreed was untenable in light of the amount of money I was currently receiving on a monthly basis.


Consequently, I followed up on an invitation, by another one of my Facebook frinds, to visit him in Bellingham, Washington, in order to share my vision for the Christian Arts Initiative with Christians from his church and from the Bellingham region.

Since the $2,000 I'd raised online had not been adequate to keep Lawson House from proceeding with the eviction anyway, I decided to use that money instead to make the move to Bellingham, operating on the premise that the aforementioned Facebook friend from Bellingham would offer me hospitality long enough to enable me to procure employment and my own apartment in Washington.

I left Chicago last Wednesday morning, so I've been here for a week so far. It was a fairly enjoyable trip, considering that I was on various buses for slightly more than two solid days, without any sleep other than the sleep I got on those buses.

Staying here has certainly been more pleasant than it would have been if I'd been forced to resort to life in a homeless shelter in Chicago. Nevertheless, whenever a person procures emergency housing by appealing to another person for such help, it's a bit of a touchy situation. It's different from just coming as a visitor, because there's no certainty with regard to how long it's going to be before one is in a position to move into one's own place. There's a level of fear that the host will require that one leave before one has adequate resources with which to do so. And even if that doesn't happen, there are sometimes rough spots in such relationships, caused by different expectations pertaining to how guests and their hosts ought to behave.
 
I've already experienced such situations here, but God seems to be helping me and my host to get along with one another in a manner which, if not perfect, is at least sustainable for a relatively short period of time. Even so, I strongly desire to get my own place as soon as that's financially feasible for me, so I plan to do everything I can do to procure employment in the area and to begin saving money which will be sufficient for the purpose of paying the first month's rent plus a security deposit for a reasonably decent apartment which has adequate proximity to public transportation. Bellingham's public transportation is not by any means as extensive as Chicago's. It's more like the public transportation in Sioux City, Iowa, where I lived during the late seventies. But I've seen hints to the effect that I might be able to procure a basic, relatively affordable used car more easily than I might have thought, once I procure steady employment.
 
It's been extremely cold here in the last several days, particularly on Monday, when the weather could have been aptly characterized as brutal, and certainly as atypical for this area of the country, which is normally warmer than areas which are further east. But I will have a friend with whom to celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, and for that, I am indeed thankful.

A Strange Color Combination

Years ago, when I read about Blackfoot Indians (or the members of the Blackfoot Nation, for those who are more current and politically correct), I wondered what the basis of the name might be. It seemed to suggest the existence of people whose feet were black even though the rest of their bodies were not black.

I thought, "Surely that can't be right." I had never seen such people with my own eyes.

Regarding the name of the Blackfoot "Indians", Wikipedia says, "The name is said to have come from the color of the peoples’ leather shoes, or moccasins. They had typically dyed or painted the bottoms of their moccasins black, but one story claimed that the Siksika walked through ashes of prairie fires, which in turn colored the bottoms of their moccasins black."

O.K. That makes sense. But here's what's weird. A few years back, I met a resident of the building in which I lived, and in which I still live, although the other resident has subsequently moved to another building. (I still see him occasionally when riding the bus.)

If you saw him fully dressed, you'd think nothing of it. He looks like any other white man, unless you see his feet, which I did on a couple of occasions, because he lived on my floor, and I sometimes saw him, in the shared men's room, with his shoes off. They were as black as the feet of any black man I've ever met! I kid you not. And I don't mean that they looked as if they'd been artificially turned black (e.g., with tattoos). They looked completely natural.

Now, of course, I've always known that there are numerous people of mixed race. But I always thought that it only manifested itself physically by creating people whose skin color is a single color which is a middle tone (usually about the color of coffee with cream), neither "white" nor "black". A lot of people who identify themselves as "black" would actually fit that description because they have white ancestors or parents. If not for the historic "one drop rule", it would be deemed ludicrous to call them black. For instance, I've seen white people, with a good tan, who are about the same color as Halle Berry. But she still calls herself a "black" woman.

At any rate, this was something altogether different. It was as if they'd surgically performed a foot transplant. Either that, or the guy had used the same kinds of chemical treatments and/or dyes that were used by John Howard Griffin, the author of "Black Like Me".

The second idea seems more plausible than the first one, but even if it was possible to do such a thing in a manner which only affected certain parts of one's body, it's hard to imagine why anyone would deliberately do so to his or her own body, especially if other people almost never saw the body parts in question. So I have to assume that his feet were just naturally black.

Did I ever ask him what the explanation might be? Are you kidding? Talk about an awkward question to ask! So I was left to ponder the mystery.

Has anyone else out there seen or heard of such a thing? Is there a name for the phenomenon?

Facebook Just Crashed

It appears that Facebook is currently experiencing some very serious problems which prevent account holders from even being able to access most of the features of their accounts. Bummer!

God Has No Grandchildren

One of the trickiest aspects of evangelism is explaining to unbelievers who have been harmed by people they've met in various churches that they shouldn't assume that church folks are necessarily genuine followers of Christ. That's not to say that true Christians don't ever sin against other people, but that isn't always the explanation for such things.

A lot of folks consider themselves to be Christians just because they "grew up in the church".

In some cases, no one ever even bothered to present the salvation message to them, because they grew up believing that anyone who's been baptized as an infant is automatically a Christian (which is just one of the reasons I oppose the practice of infant baptism, although I know that the folks who do that usually mean well).

We even have pastors and other spiritual "leaders" who have never repented of their sins or accepted Christ as lord and savior! Maybe they went to Bible school or seminary just to please their parents. Practically every church-related school can tell stories about certain students who were known for partying and for blatantly disobeying God when their parents weren't around.

That's one reason I am disinclined to treat pastors as if they are somehow infallible on account of their job titles. When a pastor or someone else from a particular church blatantly claims that church leaders are beyond criticism (as I've seen at multiple churches here in the Chicago area), I take that as my cue to continue my search for a church led by a truly godly person.

Some would call me a "church hopper" on account of that fact, but I'd rather be a church hopper than a mindless syncophant who has abdicated my biblical responsibility to test the spirits.

A position of church authority is a stewardship, not a blank check for a pastor to do whatever the pastor wishes to do. The Bible says (Luke 12:42-48) that people who abuse positions of church authority will be cut in half and assigned a place with the unbelievers!

People who fail to speak out against abusive pastors are enablers, as surely as they would be if they failed to speak out against other types of sin. They will be held accountable for their silence on Judgment Day. So frankly, I don't care if someone chooses to slander me on account of the person's inability to recognize a prophetic voice. What God thinks about me on that day is the only thing which ultimately matters.

Do Not Disturb Sign

I'm posting this article (on a very temporary basis) as an easy means of enabling me to easily send a file to a local copy shop (by means of a link) so that I can print it in color on card stock (since the printers I currently at the Harold Washington Library don't enable one to print in color or on special types of papers or card stock), without knowing whether or not sending such files as e-mail attachments is an option.

Here's the link.

The Boy in The Barrel

There are those who identify themselves as "pro-choice" because they freely acknowledge that there is a lack of complete consensus about when human life begins. Since such a consensus is lacking, they seem to believe that it's purely a matter of personal choice, and that one choice is as good as another.

I freely acknowledge that such a consensus is lacking if one is talking about the nebulous concept of "personhood" (although it is an utterly disingenuous and falsifiable claim if one is talking about biological life of the type which is genetically different from the parents of the fetus), but I disagree with the premise that since there is no perfect consensus, there therefore is no fundamental principle which would enable us to resolve the dilemma of what should and shouldn't be allowed.

Simply put, I believe that when there is a doubt about whether or not one is involved in the deliberate destruction of an innocent human being, one owes life the benefit of the doubt.

I tell a story I like to call "The Boy in the Barrel". One day, a man on his day off was out in his rural back yard, shooting at empty barrels just to kill time. (This was back in the days before video games and other diversions!) After an hour or so, his wife called him in for lunch.

He decided to resume his shooting after lunch, but just as he was raising his high powered rifle in order to take another shot, a man from next door ran into his yard and loudly shouted for him to stop. Puzzled, the man with the gun asked why he should do so. His neighbor said, "I know that you think that what you're doing is just innocent fun. But what you don't know is that while you were eating lunch, a neighbor boy wandered into your yard and decided for some inexplicable reason to climb into that barrel you're aiming at. If you shoot now, you will most likely seriously injure or kill that boy."

The man with the gun was conflicted. He'd seen no boy in his yard, and he remembered a time long ago when his neighbor had even lied to him. Nevertheless, it was a chance he dared not take. If there was even the slightest chance that he might be killing an innocent human being in the process of resuming his barrel shooting, he would regret that decision for the rest of his days. So he lowered his gun, walked over to the barrel and looked inside. Sure enough, there was the boy, just as his neighbor had claimed. He breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that he'd listened to his neighbor.

My point? Due to the gravity attached to the act of taking a human life, the burden of proof belongs to those who would argue that a particular action will most definitely NOT take an innocent human life. It does not belong to those who would disagree. If pro-choicers can't even agree about where to draw the line about when human life or "personhood" first begins, whereas most pro-lifers believe that the moment of conception is where one should draw the line, then the logical place to draw the line (for all people with consciences) is the moment of conception.

The above line of argumentation, by the way, does not rely on religious doctrine in any way, shape or form for its legitimacy.

Financial Update as of 8/23/2010

As you know if you read my blog post from last Friday, I didn't get the unemployment insurance check (via direct deposit) which should have been deposited in my bank account on that day. So this morning, I checked with the bank, hoping that it would have been deposited over the weekend or this morning. No such luck. I was beginning to feel really desperate, inasmuch as I had a total of $7, consisting of $1 and change in my pockets, plus $6 in my bank account.

The 7 day CTA bus pass I'd bought last week hadn't yet expired (although it did later in the day), so I went out to the IDES office at 3500 W. Grand once again, to see if I could figure out what was going on, and to try to expedite the deposit. But when I got there, all they could tell me was that their records showed that the money had been deposited, just as they'd told me on Friday. They couldn't do a "trace" on the payment until Wednesday, when I'd have to go back to their office in order to initiate that process. Even if their trace did show that the payment had failed to go through, they still would have to issue a new payment, and it seemed likely to me that I wouldn't get that payment until Thursday or Friday at the earliest.

Needless to say, the return bus trip was not pleasant, because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how I was supposed to buy food (and pay for the round trip I'd need to make there on the bus on Wednesday) with just $7 to my name. (Plus, if I'd withdrawn everything from the bank, they'd have considered that I was closing the account, which I very much needed in order to receive future IDES payments!)

I decided to visit the bank once again and see if by some remote chance the $118 I was expecting had been deposited in the last several hours subsequent to my first visit to the bank. As it turned out, IDES had indeed made a deposit, but they'd deposited $108, not the $118 I'd been told would be my weekly benefit.

At least I have a bit of money with which to pay for food for a little while. But it would seem that the phrase "a day late and a dollar short" should be updated, in my case, to "four days late and ten dollars short". It's bad enough that they're expecting me to live on $118 a week (or to live on that amount for two weeks, since I won't get another IDES payment until September 3, assuming that things go more smoothly the second time around). On top of that, I will now have to revisit the IDES office in order to show them the bank statement which documents the fact that their payment was $10 short.

Being poor really stinks.

Financial Update as of 8/21/2010

In my last post, I shared some very specific details pertaining to my urgent need for financial help. I then placed a link to that blog post on my Facebook page.

Two people responded to that post. One person offered practical help, in the amount of $200 sent by wire to my bank account. (What a blessing!) The second person offered implied promises of help, but as far as I can tell, she did nothing of any consequence. She did say that she'd pray for me, but given the fact that her lengthy e-mails to me seemed to suggest that her real agenda was to find fault with me and with my manner of communications, I feel that it's reasonable to question whether or not she even did that. And while I certainly need prayers, prayers alone will not pay my bills.

Oh, well. When one is as transparent as I was in that blog post, that's to be expected, I suppose. But when one is as desperate for help as I've been lately, it's annoying to have to respond to such people, hoping that one is not wasting one's time in doing so.

Not long after posting my previous blog article, I bumped into a guy in my building who had worked on the census team with me. He said that I should visit the IDES office again and present them with evidence (in the form of pay stubs I'd received) of my having received income from the census. So I did that last week.

It turns out that when I applied for those benefits the first time, they hadn't yet received financial information from the census bureau, despite the fact that I'd applied for benefits fairly late in the game. That's why they'd initially made a determination that I wasn't entitled to any benefits.

This wasn't just an issue with the census bureau, by the way. IDES had received such information pertaining to my previous job with Screenz Computing Center, but only for the first quarter, not for the second quarter. And it had been at least four months since I'd quit that job. That should have been more than enough time, it seems to me, but apparently not.

The guy I spoke with last week checked his computer, and it turned out that they'd subsequently received new information from both jobs, and that I was now eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. So he updated their information regarding my application, and told me to go online in order to set up a direct deposit arrangement, and to call in for certification for benefits on Wednesday, all of which I did. He told me I should have my first payment on Friday. That turned out to be incorrect, probably because some banks are faster than others in terms of posting their payments. Consequently, I've really been scraping by this weekend, with only a few dollars left! But I have reason (based on my second visit to that office on Friday) to believe that there will be money in my account when I check on Monday. I pray that I'm right about that.

That's the good news. The bad news is that they awarded only $118 a week to me in the way of benefits. That's considerably less than they awarded to me last time when I applied for unemployment insurance benefits. If that were my only income source, it would be enough to pay my current monthly rent, but only barely. I'd most assuredly be reliant on DHS (the Illinois Department of Human Services) for food stamps. And that wouldn't help me at all with other necessary expenses, such as clothing, phone bills for my cell phone, and transportation related to my job search. More troubling is the fact that it wouldn't even come close to helping me to get caught up on the rent I already owe to Lawson House YMCA.

Also, the payment I'm currently expecting is only for one week, not two, thanks to the fact that IDES has a "waiting week" when one first starts getting benefits. Payments only come once every two weeks, so it's really going to be touch and go for a while, I suspect.

I do have one small additional source of income, but it still isn't enough to meet all of my living expenses while simultaneously enabling me to get caught up fairly quickly in terms of the back rent I owe. (And unless I'm mistaken, the payments pertaining to that additional source of income are currently late, which means that I'm going to have to nag that person, once again, to get caught up on her payments to me.) So the bottom line is that I still need financial help, or (if worse comes to worst) someone willing to offer temporary housing to me in the event that I am unable to satisfy Lawson House YMCA and in the event that they should evict me.

I've been in worse spots before in terms of back rent, and God has provided for me in the form of help which might be regarded as semi-miraculous, so I am trying to remind myself that such things can happen, and not to lose courage. But such things still do not come easily to me, so I could use both your support and your practical help, whatever that help might be.

A PLEA FOR HELP

Over the years, I've experienced several crises in terms of my finances, and this is one of those times. In some respects, this is the worst one yet. I currently have no income (since the census bureau stopped handing assignments to my group of NRFU enumerators), I owe rent for both July and August (approximately $900 total), I have a negative bank balance of almost $200, and to top it off, I just received notice from IDES (Illinois Department of Employment Security) that my application for unemployment insurance benefits has resulted in a "benefit" of exactly zero dollars. Plus, the bank is currently charging me an overdraft fee of about $32 per item. (They have a feature which allows one "credit" for overdrafts of up to $250, but I've pretty much used up that option at this point.) I do still have a few dollars in my wallet, but that may not even last until the end of this week. I also have a few canned foods, but again, those will be gone before you know it.

I therefore solicit your prayers, and (if feasible) any material help you might care to offer. I'm pretty close to the end of my rope. and my depression over the situation is almost palpable. I've been a Christian since 1969, but things like this still put a huge amount of stress on me. I do not want to have to move into a homeless shelter, or to have to throw my numerous books, personal writings, etc. into a dumpster because I have no place other than my room at the Lawson House YMCA in which to store them.

Mark W. Pettigrew
Lawson House YMCA
30 W. Chicago Avenue, Room 1212
Chicago, IL 60654
312-420-2609
mwp1212@gmail.com

The above is the information which appears on my checks, except for the zip code. (It hadn't yet been changed by USPS from 60610 to 60654 when those checks were printed.)

For anyone wishing to wire money directly to my bank account:

My Bank Account Information:
North Community Bank
3639 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL 60613
Account Number: 11-13-007262-0222
Routing Number: 071001533

It might seem imprudent for me to post this personal financial information online, but I've been helped this way once before (by a fellow Christian from Australia!), and I checked first with my bank manager to see if the information could be abused by someone wanting to rip me off by taking money out of my account. I was told that I'd have to authorize any such withdrawals in writing. Directly wiring money would negate the need for a check or money order to clear.

I know some of you are also hurting for money, but every little bit helps. If you can't help materially, I would nevertheless appreciate your prayers.

For those of you who don't know me very well, I think you'll get a better feel for whether or not I am trustworthy by reading my many blog posts here at http://markpettigrew.blogspot.com. I can also furnish references, and I'll try to honestly answer any questions you might have to the best of my ability.

The Importance of Album Cover Design

Recently, I learned by reading a fellow believer's blog post, that Roby Duke, a talented Christian musician from the West Coast, passed away several years ago. I left a comment there, but I'm not 100% sure that it actually went through because of some funky aspects of how Blogger responded when I attempted to post the message. So I figured that I'd store it here just as backup in case it didn't go through; and I also figured that I might as well post it here, too, since it pertained to my belief in the importance of good graphic design for packaging of Christian books, CDs, etc. Here's the comment I left there:

You write, "I got the opportunity to design his album covers including 'Blue Eyed Soul', 'Down to Business' and the CD re-release of his 1st album 'Not the Same'. It was an honor and a blast to be part of that. If ever there is a greatest Hits album, sign me up!"

Born Again? Or Burned Again? Try Both.

When I first became a Christian in 1969, and for quite a few years thereafter, I was so gung ho about my faith and about church-related activities that my father (who had earlier preached from two separate pulpits for a total of six years) accused me of fanaticism. Of course, part of that was motivated by the fact that he had begun to abandon his own faith in Christ, as demonstrated by the fact that he committed several sins which no pastor should ever commit, including adultery and alcohol abuse. Still, it says something about my attitude towards church at that time, I think.

Unfortunately, even though I remain committed to Christ (as seen by various attempts of mine to serve God with my diverse talents), a series of extremely unpleasant incidents in various churches has had the effect over the years of making me ambivalent when it comes to the Christian church. I know that my transparency and honesty about such matters has the potential to make it harder for me to find support for the ministry to which I believe that I've been called, but I've already had my fill of hypocrisy, and as I see it, pretending to be something one is not is a form of hypocrisy. I don't claim to be perfect, but I do try not to be a hypocrite; and when I perceive what appears to be hypocrisy on the part of Christian leaders with whom I am in communication, I am rarely inclined to bite my tongue, although I do try to temper my judgment with mercy.

It Takes All Kinds

Earlier tonight, at the Internet cafe where I currently work, I had a strange encounter with a customer who seemed to have issues with the manner in which I was dealing with his account with our company. Or at least, that was my perception. So when he turned to the guy who'd come into the cafe and whispered something which seemed to be directly related to me, I figured that he had whispered that he thought I was incompetent. I said so, and he said nothing at the time to refute the idea.

It turns out that I was wrong. Hilariously wrong.

He called the store just now to say that I'd misconstrued his intentions. He said that he'd actually whispered to his friend because he'd noticed the fact that I had a particularly hairy chest (presumably because he saw a very small amount of hair peeking out of the top of my T-shirt). He had called to tell me that he was turned on by men with hairy chests! He therefore wanted to know if I'd just like to "hang out" sometime. And when he used the phrase "hang out," I suspect that he meant the phrase literally.

I declined his invitation, but I didn't want to cause problems for my employer or to blow the incident out of proportion, so I was polite about the manner in which I did so.

Is that how gay guys proposition men in whom they have an interest? I have no idea. I'm most definitely not gay, which he would know if he'd ever read this blog. In fact, this is the first time anyone has ever expressed that type of interest in me directly, although I do recall one other instance in which a guy told me that he thought I was attractive, in that lispy way that gay men often use in order to make their intentions fairly clear without actually coming out and saying what's on their minds. On that first occasion, and on this one as well, I think that I handled the situation gracefully, in a manner which made it clear that I didn't swing that way, without acting as if I felt threatened. To act that way would be to confirm the false stereotype about people who oppose homosexuality, which is the idea that we do so because we feel that our masculinity is somehow threatened by the perverse inclinations of others. That would be every bit as irrational as it is to think (as many gays and gay apologists do) that people are incapable of controlling their sexual thoughts and actions. One irrationality doesn't justify another.

I thought that it was particularly funny that tonight's caller was turned on by my hairy chest. (Imagine what he'd think if he saw my very hirsute back, arms, etc.) Why funny? Because there seems to be a sizable part of the population, both male and female, which thinks that anyone with a hairy chest, back, etc. must be a brute with the intelligence and social skills of a large ape.

My, how things have changed in that regard! When I was an adolescent and young teenager, in the early and mid seventies, getting a hairy chest was seen as a positive thing. It meant that one was becoming a real man and leaving childhood behind. During the disco era, it was even fashionable for men with hairy chests to ostenstatiously display those chests, which were often adorned with gold chains and pendants. (Burt Reynolds was particularly well known for that look!)

That was much more logical than the current fashion, it seems to me. But now there are people who look down on men who don't look like prepubescent children. People even sell an electric groomer, with an extremely long handle, precisely so that men whose genetics have not "blessed" them with hairlessness can conform to other people's ridiculous expectations.

It's nice that there is someone out there who recognizes how ridiculous those expectations are. Now if I could just find an intelligent, reasonably attractive single WOMAN who has similar insight, and who wouldn't hold it against me that I'm also bald, with bad teeth attributable to years of lack of money with which to pay for adequate regular dental care. But frankly, at age 53 (soon to be 54), I'm not holding my breath. I've come to accept the fact that it's highly improbable that I'll ever have any sexual partner, regardless of gender; and while I admit that that thought has sometimes caused me to experience a certain amount of frustration and depression (inasmuch as I am by no means asexual), I've also come to accept that my value as a human being is independent of whether or not I conform to other people's expectations in terms of what constitutes so-called normalcy. After all, there are now a lot of people who seem to think that it's "normal" for men to have sex with as many women (or men, or people of both genders) as possible, without any regard for the possible consequences. Personally, though, I'd rather be deprived than depraved.

Even though I'm not gay, I suppose that my relative indifference to other people's opinions about me gives me something in common with people who are gay. The significant difference is that I actually care about what God thinks about the choices I make in this life. While I admittedly do so imperfectly, I therefore make an effort to think and behave accordingly.

A Momentary Money Crisis

Just now, I went to the grocery store to buy some food. I tried to pay for it on my debit card, only to be told that there were insufficient funds for the purchase. I ended up leaving the two bags of groceries there and walking ASAP to the ATM to find out just what my actual balance was.

Why wouldn't I know? Well, even though the ATM is right around the corner from where I live, I often find that when I need cash, I just go to Walgreens and buy something I needed anyway (such as cereal bars for breakfast), and get $20 or $40 cash back. I'd been doing that for the past couple of weeks or so, and I therefore hadn't checked the actual balance (which Walgreens doesn't give to you on your receipt, unlike the ATM).

The last time I checked my balance via the ATM, it was to make sure that after I paid my rent, I'd still have a couple of hundred dollars in the account for food, transportation to work, etc. I thought that what I'd left over would last me until my next paycheck. And it would have, if I'd deposited the check when I got it! Or to be more accurate, if my employer had done so. The trouble is that until fairly recently, Screenz Computing Center, where I work, had been paying me via direct deposit, just as I'd requested when I'd first been hired. But then the last time I got paid, they didn't pay me like that for some reason. I thought, mistakenly, that it was just a temporary glitch, and that they'd go back to paying me via direct deposit for the next pay period. I was wrong. Apparently, they'd switched to a new payroll company, and I'm just not getting paid via direct deposit anymore, period.

I wish they'd told me that, or that my manager had mentioned that my paycheck had arrived when it did, because my paycheck for April 8 has been sitting here at work for the past two weeks, when all along I naively assumed that it had already been deposited into my account, and that I had $440 more in the account than I actually had there. I'd have realized that it hadn't been if I'd used the ATM and checked the actual balance each time, but because of the way I was getting my money from occasional trips to Walgreens, it never caught my attention.

I now have a copy of the check, for $440.35, and I'm expecting another similar check in just 3 days, on Friday (assuming that it arrives on time). But here's what stinks. I not only didn't have enough money to cover all the transactions I'd done for the past couple of weeks, but I into the negative figures in a serious way. My bank "generously" covers the actual cost of overdrafts when they're attributable to payments made to places like Walgreens. But naturally, they charge an overdraft fee when that's done. So when I finally did get around to checking the balance via their ATM (thanks to the incident at the Potash grocery store, which made me aware that there was a problem), I discovered that I was about $250 in the hole!!! I won't know until I check tomorrow, but I'm guessing that a substantial amount of that amount can be attributed to overdraft charges. Those are charges I'd never have had to pay in the first place if a.) My employer had continued to pay me via direct deposit, as agreed, and b.) My bank had taken the time to make me aware (via e-mail, phone call or whatever) of the fact that I was currently in the process of ringing up overdraft charges because I erroneously thought that there was money in the account to cover those purchases.

I don't mind taking responsibility for financial errors attributable to my negligence, but the way I see it, this was not my fault, and the bank should therefore reimburse me for those overdraft charges, or else my employer should do so because of the fact that the mistake was attributable to the failure to continue to pay me via direct deposit as he had done in the past. We'll see. I know that I am definitely going to go to the bank first thing tomorrow when they open up, and plead with them to refund any overdraft charges attributable to the aforementioned snafu. Meanwhile, it will probably be at least a couple of days before the check which I just picked up tonight clears after depositing it in the bank, and meanwhile, I'm going to need some money, since I'm down to six dollar in my wallet. So I guess that I'm going to have to do the Walgreens thing once more in order to get another $40 to last me until then. Of course, that will mean yet another overdraft fee.

Life really stinks sometimes, especially when one is just barely scraping by financially as it is. When I paid my rent last time, I was still $200 or so behind on the rent after making that payment. What I'd paid was just enough to keep me out of court temporarily. This latest incident just increases the pressure on me and the difficulty of getting caught up on my rent.

Abortion and the New Math

One of the sad effects of the 1973 legalization of abortion in America has been the introduction of a new level of tolerance for incoherent, self-contradictory rhetoric.

A great example can be found in recent news headlines from Chicago, where I've lived for the past 18 years. I'm referring to the story about James Larry, who is accused of murdering four family members by shooting them all at point blank range (ostensibly because his wife wouldn't convert to Islam).

Or was it six family members? It depends, I suppose, on how one defines family, and on whether or not one learned how to count when one was in kindergarten.

Here's a link to a relevant story written by Don Babwin and published online by the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/15/man-in-custody-after-ramp_n_538810.html

Pay particularly close attention to the second paragraph, which reads as follows:

James Larry, 32, of Madison, Wis., was charged with four counts of first-degree murder, four counts of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of intentional homicide of an unborn child. Officials said both his wife and teenage niece were pregnant.

I find the preceding paragraph interesting in light of the headline of the article: "Man In Custody after Rampage: Killed a Woman and Three Children".

How many children was that, again, Mr. Babwin? Three? I think not. Read your own article again, doofus. There were six people killed altogether: One adult (the killer's wife, Tawanda Thompson), plus three children who'd already been born (named Keyshai Fields, Keleasha Larry and Jahod or Jihad Larry), plus two unborn children still residing in their mothers' wombs.

They wouldn't call them unborn children if they weren't children at all, now would they? Nor would they charge James Larry with "intentional homicide of an unborn child" if, as abortion advocates claim, the entities in question were merely lifeless "products of conception" or lumps of "fetal tissue". Why file such charges, as the Chicago police or detectives apparently did, if you don't think that the charges will stick?

This level of cognitive dissonance and Orwellian doublespeak exhibited by the aforementioned story would be hilarious if not for the fact that it's so common, even (or perhaps especially) among ostensibly serious journalists, and if not for its tragic effects on our collective reasoning abilities with regard to the fundamental principles of justice. There's something bizarre about admitting that there were six homicides altogether (all of which resulted in the filing of legal charges) and then turning around and saying that only four people were actually killed. I wish I could attribute the discrepancy to bad proofreading, but I think that something more fundamentally disturbing is going on here. In an effort to please everyone involved in the inherently divisive abortion debate, journalists end up sounding like idiots who can't even count to ten.

And why is it that James Larry gets charged with homicide if he kills an unborn child he has fathered, but if his wife had decided to kill that same unborn child by visiting a local abortion clinic, she'd have been celebrated as a "liberated" woman who was merely exercising her constitutional rights? If that isn't gender discrimination, then exactly what is?

Isn't it a bit ironic that such gender discrimination is regularly practiced and encouraged by the very people who tell us that gender discrimination is evil, or at the very least socially unacceptable? If they cannot live lives which demonstrate integrity, why should we regard them as people who have any credibility?

Kate Harding and Constance McMillen

Recent media attention was focused on a girl named Constance McMillen. Here's a link to the relevant story:
http://www.shewired.com/Article.cfm?Section=1&ID=24635
I was made aware of the issue when I read a related commentary by Kate Harding, in the March 13 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times.
In response, I sent the following Letter to the Editor at the Sun-Times:

Regarding Kate Harding's 3/13/2010 commentary ("School cancels prom to keep out lesbians"), please allow me to remind Kate of some relevant facts. First, Itawamba Agricultural High School is a private school, operated by a Christian church which has the right to operate that school in accordance with its own doctrinal precepts, whether she agrees with those doctrines or not. It's called religious freedom. Even though liberals such as Kate would just love to obliterate that particular constitutional right so that they could impose their own ideas on everyone, that right still exists nevertheless.

High schools have no constitutional obligation to allow students (whether gay or straight) to have proms at all. (A lot of conservative Protestant schools oppose dancing, so they've never had proms for anyone.) Having such an event a privilege, not a right, and while I don't doubt that the kids at that school were disappointed that they could not attend a prom, they'll survive that disappointment, just like Constance McMillen's parents will undoubtedly survive the disappointment of learning that Constance couldn't accept the fact that she'd been born a girl. Constance was almost certainly well aware of the outrageous nature of her desire to pretend to be a man while attending the prom, thereby effectively giving the finger to the church which provided the economic and administrative support whch enabled her to receive an education at that school. If her parents forced her to attend such a school in spite of her wishes to attend a school which would condone her lesbianism, then Constance's issue is with her parents, not with her school.

Gays and lesbians love to spout off about "tolerance," but their unwillingness to tolerate people who disagree with their beliefs pertaining to sexual behavior shows that their use of such seemingly benign rhetoric is deceptive. They're hypocrites and bullies, and they'll get no sympathy from me.

Sleepless in Chicago

Imagine working a 12 hour double shift at a retail job after not getting a wink of sleep the night before.

That's the position in which I currently find myself. I went to bed at midnight, which should have been early enough for me to get about 6 hours worth of sleep or so, under normal circumstances.

Unfortunately, I live in the Lawson House YMCA, on a floor where two of my closest neighbors just happen to be psychotic, unemployed individuals whose idea of fun is to talk loudly to themselves in-between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. Since they're unemployed, they apparently think that everyone else on the floor is always as free to sleep until noon as they are.

I've been unemployed on a number of occasions during the past decade, but unlike the aforementioned individuals, I know that the entire world doesn't revolve around me, and I know that those particular hours are primarily designated for sleeping, or at the very least, for showing respect for one's neighbors by being reasonably quiet so that others can sleep.

A Suggestion for Dan Coudreaut

I recently saw an article, in Newsweek, about Dan Coudreaut, whose job title at the McDonalds Corporation is Director of Culinary Innovation. There's also an article about him in Chicago Redeye (2/22/2010, pages 6 and 7). He's been called the most influential chef in America, inasmuch as he helps McDonald's to develop new menu items which meet that company's standards. I suppose it depends on how one defines the word "influential". If it's a matter of serving more people than almost every other restaurant or restaurant chain in the world, then the word definitely fits. But that can be a good or bad thing. When it comes to McDonald's and its effect on the health of Americans, the record is decidedly mixed.

Here's a suggestion for Dan: I think that it would be nice if McDonald's would offer a green vegetable other than iceberg lettuce.

Blogger Pages

Blogger.com has long offered an easy way to create websites, without the need for any knowledge of HTML or other web design layout languages or web design programs, simply by design one's own blog and filling it with content. But it used to be that Blogger blogs were very different from regular websites. Specifically, Blogger blog sites really only had one page: The home page. One could move forward or back in order to read different blog posts, but one couldn't easily set up "static" web pages which were always easily accessible, in order to furnish visitors with basic information without requiring that they search the entire site in order to find that information.

Truth In Advertising

Andersonville Wine & Spirits, located just across the street from the Internet cafe for which I currently work, has signs in the window advertising the various brands of booze the store carries. Judging from one of those signs, one of those drinks appears to have the charming name of Delirium Tremens. The sign features a picture of a pink elephant on a blue background. Presumably that's a reference to the fact that Delirium Tremens is the technical name of the hallucinations suffered by alcoholics.

Since they've decided to be honest, perhaps they'll come out with a full line of alcoholic drinks named after additional symptoms of alcohol abuse, such as hangovers, ruined marriages, children abused by their drunken parents, people killed by drunken drivers, women raped by their drunken dates, and folks whose idea of a good time involves incoherent speech, disgusting personal hygiene, and frequent vomiting.

Thinking and Speaking

Recently I was exposed to some posters, on the subway trains and buses here in Chicago, and while the subject of those posters was ostensibly common courtesy and tolerance, it was clear to me that the real agenda was altogether different.

In response, I sent the following letter to the folks who had placed those posters:

I've seen your advertising posters, and I've visited your website.

While you're on the subject of thinking before one speaks, you might want to give some serious thought to the pejorative and frequently inaccurate nature of the "homophobic" label which is often mindlessly applied to any and all opponents of homosexuality and/or the liberal gay agenda. There are many reasons for opposition to such things, and some of those things (such as sincere beliefs about the nature of biblical revelation regarding homosexuality) have nothing whatsoever to do with fear.

You might also want to give more thought to the idea that a phobia is not just any fear. It is, more specifically, an irrational fear, according to most dictionary definitions. Some fears are both rational and justifiable (and are therefore not phobias), on account of the fact that they motivate us to take preemptive measures to protect ourselves against known dangers. We put smoke detectors in our homes because the threat of fires is a real, documented threat. While it is true that any legitimate fear can become a phobia if it's exaggerated beyond reason, a specific fear itself may nevertheless be rational and justifiable.

Some Thoughts About Suicide, Salvation and Compassion

Recently, I read a brief post at a Facebook page for one of my Facebook friends. The original post had stated that one of that person's Facebook friends was experiencing depression and "suicidal tendencies" in response to the recent death of a friend. Prayers for that person were solicited.

A guy named Pat Taylor responded as follows:

To Claire: Suicide solves nothing.. it is not an end to pain. It is not a solution, but a lie. Hang in there... please...get through this. Your friend is in good hands; the hands of a merciful and loving God. I know it's His will that you stay around for a while because people love you and you're important to them. I know the gut wrenching pain that seems to only be healed by unconsciousness. I've been there, really.... Please, the Lord desires you to stay on earth, and for good reason. If at all possible, don't doubt our Father, but call on Him.... reason with Him... He knows what's going on, and He loves you and He loves your friend who's passed on.

I was frankly curious about how Pat or anyone else could authoritatively say that suicide solved nothing.

The Deceptive Nature of At Will Employment

In most job application forms used in the United States today, there is a legal clause stating that the job consists of "at will employment" which can be terminated "with or without cause" at any time, by either the employer or the employee. Sounds fair, right? After all, if the employee is free to quit at any time without cause, then why shouldn't the employer be equally free to terminate the arrangement?

Here's the trouble: Regardless of whether or not an employer had just cause for termination of the employee, it's generally assumed in the course of most job interviews (and even prior to those interviews, when potential employers are looking over job application forms to determine who to interview and who to ignore) that the employer had just cause for terminating the employee.

If the employee terminated the arrangement, on the other hand, the employee is once again assumed in most cases to be the one at fault. It's presumed, especially if the employee was only at that job for a very short time, that the employee quit the job because he was flaky and unable to commit to anything, when in fact the employer may have been a complete jerk whose abusive treatment of the employee drove the employee to quit even though the employee badly needed the job.

Free Fundraising Thermometers

If you've read other blog posts of mine, here or at the Artistic Christians' Network, you know that the Christian Arts Initiative is the name of a project of mine, designed to empower artistic Christians to make the most of their talents in a variety of ways, some of which will require substantial fundraising efforts in order to be transformed from great ideas into realities.

Online fundraisers often require high quality "thermometer style" graphics in order to help give their supporters some idea of how things are progressing vis-a-vis fundraising. So I did a Google search just now, and found a site which offered an online generator for code which could be adjusted in order to show one's current donations in comparison with one's monetary goals. Here it is. The numbers shown here are somewhat arbitrary, but in the future, I plan to plug in some more carefully conceived numbers, along with explanations (or summaries) of what the money would be used for and why it would be needed.

Fundraising Ideas

Fundraising Thermometer Generator

My Favorite Type of Art

Ever since I was in high school, I've always admired a type of hyperrealistic art which was often seen on album cover designs in the late seventies, and which often involved the use of an airbrush (although that wasn't always the case).

One illustrator who is particularly good at that style of art is Jerry LoFaro. Another similarly talented artist is Frank Ordaz. The two artists aren't identical in style. Jerry's images are sometimes less realistic in terms of subject matter. Frank's images are influenced by his Christianity, and by his previous employment with Industrial Light and Magic (where he worked on films such as ET).

Both artists are extremely talented. To be candid, I admire their artistic styles and skills a lot more than some self-proclaimed "fine artists". If I had to choose a style of art I'd love to be able to create myself, I suppose that this style would come closest to my own aspirations.

Interestingly, LoFaro now creates his art mostly with Photoshop (and possibly other digital software programs). The same could also be said for the vast majority of illustrators currently specializing in fantasy and science fiction imagery. It shows how far digital art has come in the past few years.

Mimic HDR with Topaz Adjust

HDR is an awesome technique which produces photos which capture a much wider dynamic range than standard photos, and which can in many cases look more like very expertly done paintings than photos. It does this by combining multiple photos which are taken sequentially with different exposure settings. (This is known as autobracketing.) So one photo might be exposed for the highlights and another for the shadows, and the HDR software would then combine the best of the two photos (or more than two) to create an image which looks better than either of them alone.

The main problem is that HDR really only works well when there aren't subjects which are moving substantially in-between the different shots. Some HDR software can help to "erase" such subjects to some extent, but HDR is still more of a technique for still life and landscape images than for action photos.

Fortunately, I've found a software program which seems to do a superb job of mimicking the look of HDR photos, without the need for multiple exposures. It's called Topaz Adjust. Needless to say, it's a real boon for action photographers, but also useful for older photos for which there are no bracketed exposures. Or for modern photographers who possess cameras which lack autobracketing capabilities. Here are some very impressive links regarding the program:

http://www.topazlabs.com/adjust/

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=567653

Topaz also makes some other cool programs, such as Simplify. Furthermore, their website has an aweseome online gallery showing just what the software can do in the hands of photographers and artists who know what they're doing. Check it out!

So Much for Choice

Whenever one talks about the subject of abortion with someone who opposes the legal prohibition of that practice, one is likely to hear the "choice" buzzword. After all, it sounds so much better to say that one is in favor of "choice" than to say that one is in favor of allowing women to chop up their unborn children in utero, or to destroy them by scalding them in a saline solution, or to destroy their unborn progeny in other ways. The word "choice" is sometimes repeated obsessively, almost as if it's a magic mantra which is capable of answering any and all moral objections to the practice.

Hope Versus Optimism

On his Facebook page, the highly talented and perceptive Christian author Jim Belcher wrote the following on 12/5/2009:

"Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair." Richard John Neuhaus (via Scotty Smith).

Here's the comment I left in response to that post from Jim:

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Too many modern churches are what I like to describe as "happy face churches," in which folks think the best solution to serious problems is to pretend they don't exist, and to hope that doing so causes them to go away. ("Positive confession" churches are especially prone to this kind of thing.) To me, that sounds more like Neuhaus' definition of optimism than his definition of hope.

The Bible commands Christians to bear one another's burdens. But I can attest from painful personal experiences that it's next to impossible to find anyone in a "happy face church" who will even allow one to tell him or her what one's burdens are in the first place. Pastors are sometimes the worst offenders, because they want to project an image of success, and the honesty of some believers can threaten that image.

How people are supposed to bear burdens when they're unaware of the nature of those burdens is anyone's guess. Meaningful problem resolution and healing is almost possible in such a superficial, uncaring environment.

Far fewer Christians would yield to despair if we had far more hopeful Christians (who therefore offered genuine help to hurting believers) and far fewer optimistic, heads-in-the-sand Christians.

A related and time-relevant note: I've heard that more people commit or attempt suicide during the Christmas season than during any other time of the year. Maybe what exacerbates their despair is their increased awareness of the huge discrepancy between what the church is and what it should be.

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NOTE: Jim Belcher is also pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (http://www.redeemerpres.com/) in Newport Beach, California.

A Long Way Gone

Here's a link to information about a particularly fascinating book which has captured my attention lately.

Ghosts? Oooh, scary. (Not.)

Do you believe in ghosts? If so, you might be wary of visiting cemeteries. Personally, I'm not, because I've just never seen any evidence to support such silly claims.

I just came across a web page which stated the following, with regard to a cemetery in my home town:

The Springfield National Cemetery is also host to more than a few lingering spirits as well, according to some people. Late-night visitors to the cemetery have reported seeing gravestones that appeared to glow in the dark. Yet others have reported finding strange anomalies in photographs they took while inside the cemetery grounds. On occasion, some photographs even show what appears to be an apparition or form of some long-dead solider standing amongst the tombstones.

As it so happens, I grew up about a block away from that cemetery when I was a kid living at 2137 S. Delaware. Even then, I seem to recall walking through the cemetery on at least one or two occasions. Later, after my parents' divorce in 1972, my mother moved to 1520 E. Seminole, where she still lives today. I remember that when I was still in high school, my mother, my grandmother, my brother and I would sometimes walked through the National cemetery (where my father was buried when he died in 1999) as a shortcut on the way to the Battlefield Mall. It seemed safer than walking along the side of Glenstone Avenue, which didn't really have a decent sidewalk for that purpose.

I wasn't particularly spooked by the grave stones. To me, there wasn't much difference between that walk and a walk through one of the local parks. As often as we made that trip, I think that one of us would have noticed something if there had been glowing gravestones or apparitions of dead soldiers!

But hey, whatever it takes to bring more shoppers to the Battlefield Mall, I always say. Whatever's good for the economy of the region is likely to be good for the residents.

Forgive? Maybe. Forget? Never!

When one attempts to talk about past incidents which have negatively affected one's life, one is sometimes likely to be told that one should "get over it" and "move on with one's life" and "forgive and forget." Such glib and uncompassionate advice, which I've heard from Christian pulpits from time to time, treats regrettable past events as if there is never any logically or morally defensible reason to want or need to discuss such incidents with others.

That is simply false. As the southern novelist William Faulkner once wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past"

Traumatic events sometimes cause deep wounds and scars which can take a lot of time to heal. Yes, there are instances in which God miraculously heals painful memories instantly, but it's both insulting and presumptuous to assume that such exceptional incidents are or ought to be the norm. Counselors who don't give wounded people adequate time in which to heal from such events ought to be regarded as professionally incompetent.

Furthermore, even when complete healing has been achieved, it doesn't follow from that fact that remembering past events serves no other valid purposes. Prevention of similar events in the future, for instance, is a particularly valid purpose.

What did Faulkner mean when he said that the past wasn't even past? I believe that he meant that present realities are inextricably connected to past events, and it's naive to think that one can adequately address existing problems without a willingness to honestly examine and discuss the events which caused or led to those problems in the first place. Ignorance may be bliss, but only in the short term. In the long term, ignorance can lead to enormous problems. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," said the philosopher George Santayana. If one is unable or unwilling to learn from past mistakes, how can progress ever be achieved? It is immature and idiotic to equate spiritual maturity with self-imposed amnesia.

It's important to discuss and remember horrific tragedies such as the Holocaust. That's why we have a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Many people would like to just forget or deny that the Holocaust ever took place. But we need to be periodically and graphically reminded, so that such things will never happen again. We also need to be reminded of our great capacity for evil, so that we will better understand our moral depravity and our desperate need for God.

Writing about the Holocaust, Ellie Wiesenthal wrote, "For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time."

The same could be said about other large-scale tragedies, such as the terrorist attacks in 2001; and also to individual tragedies, such as the extreme child abuse to which author Dave Pelzer and many other children have been subjected.

If we took literally the advice of those who say that we should instantly forget the sins and crimes of the past, it would be impossible to seek justice in our nation's courts. Vicious predators would forever prey on innocent victims, and we would be partly to blame for subsequent crimes which they committed, on account of our moral cowardice. Remembering is essential if we want to be a society of laws, not anarchy.

I find it ironic that some Christians say that one ought not to ever "live in the past," inasmuch as the entirety of the Christian experience is based on a willingness to regularly remember and reflect upon incidents which took place more than two millenia ago. Jesus specifically told us, regarding the eucharist, to "take these in rememberance of me". Rememberance can be both good and necessary.

Yes, it's true that it can be unhealthy to continually wallow in sorrow, without making an effort to balance things out by thinking about positive things. But it's equally unhealthy to live in denial and to live a life which is devoid of authenticity and honesty. Pastors and other spiritual leaders who insist that the members of their congregation live in denial are guilty of abdicating their fundamental moral responsibilities towards the people in their care.

This is not a trivial matter. If our pastors insist on promoting simplistic ideas about forgiveness which make it impossible to adequately address problems or to hold people accountable for wrongdoing, then they are unworthy of our continual allegiance, no matter how many other good things we may be able to say about them.

Poverty and Dignity

The November 16, 2009 issue of Newsweek features an article entitled "Seeing Dignity in Poverty: Dorothea Lange's Politics of Respect". It's a thought-provoking article pertaining to the idea that poverty-stricken people need more than just material help; they also need to be treated with respect, in a manner which instills them with hope for the future, and which doesn't presumptuously and self-righteously assume that the poverty which afflicts them is necessarily their own fault.

Some Christian charities and churches seem to understand the aforementioned concept. Others, sadly, do not.

NOTE: The aforementioned article argues that Lange demonstrates the dignity of her subjects by showing their stoicism. I agree that Lange's photos portrayed her subjects (such as the famous "Migrant Mother") with dignity. But I think that it's wrong, and potentially harmful, to think that overt demonstrations of understandable anguish, sadness or anger in response to adversity are undignified. After all, the scriptures teach that Christ's strength is made perfect in our weaknesses. There is nothing shameful about genuine tears or other intense negative emotions. Even Jesus wept and expressed anger from time to time. As Christians, we ought, above all, to be authentic and honest. There is nothing dignified about being treated in a dehumanizing manner, as if one's feelings are of no importance.

Doctrines Have Consequences

During the early days of the Jesus Movement, there was an attempt to get away from a vision in which people defined their Christian experiences primarily on the basis of dry intellectual doctrines which were considered to be devoid of life and vitality. Consequently, doctrines were often disparaged as unimportant. This was a symptom of the slow shift from modernism and its excessive emphasis on rationality to postmodernism and its excessive emphasis on mystical experiences. It was in some sense related to things going on in the larger culture, particularly in terms of the increased proliferation of hallucinogenic drugs. Jimi Hendrix's question, "Are you experienced?" seemed to emphasize subjective experiences, and was related to a simultaneous increase in the number of philosophers who questioned the existence of objective truth. Truth with a capital T was replaced by phrases such as "your truth" and "my truth". Multiculturalism and moral relativism can also be said to be related to the emphasis on subjective experiences over objective facts.

This made it very difficult to debate with unbelievers when comparing the relative merits of Christianity with the merits (or lack thereof) of other belief systems. Critical analysis of various belief systems was seen as passé, and being "tolerant" of various belief systems was equated with refusal to engage in such analysis.

Churches which emphasized personal subjective experiences, such as Pentecostal churches, were therefore more attuned to the new mentality than older, more established denominations, which I think helps to explain their rapid growth during that period and during subsequent decades. Jesus People sometimes adapted their evangelistic appeals to that mentality, using phrases such as "get high on Jesus" and "turn on to Jesus" in an attempt to connect with the youth subculture in a relevant way.

To be sure, there was more than an ounce of truth to criticisms of churches which appeared to have been sapped of their vitality by an excessive reliance on tradition and intellectualism. Some churches had clearly chosen to ignore large sections of the Bible which supported the idea that the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit were still available to modern believers. Many good things happened, in terms of church renewal, during the Jesus movement. But when the pendulum swung towards subjectivism, it sometimes swung too far.

Personal experience and doctrines are to authentic Christianity what yeast and flour are to the art of making leavened bread. Neither element is sufficient, but both elements are necessary.

Ironically, the idea that doctrine is unimportant is itself a doctrine. The manner in which we define our beliefs, in the form of written or unwritten doctrines, is vitally important, because it shapes our actions for better or worse.

Take, for example, the prosperity doctrine which has recently become popular in many Pentecostal churches, and also in some other large evangelical churches.

There's an interesting article in the December 2009 issue of the Atlantic magazine. (Here's a link to that article.) That cover story asks the provocative question "Did Christianity Cause the Crash?" But really, when you read the actual article, the author isn't claiming that Christianity itself caused the crash. Rather, Hannah Rosin argues that a particular subset of Christianity, consisting of people who subscribe to the "prosperity doctrine," was responsible in large part, because they had eschewed the historic Christian emphasis on thrift and fiscal responsibility in favor of a new doctrine which equates faith with undisciplined lifestyles which some others might rightfully regard as foolish.

As a committed Christian, my initial inclination when I saw the cover of that issue of the Atlantic was to think that it was just another example of how the secular media frequently seeks to find fault with the church in order to disparage Christianity itself. But after I'd read the article, I had to admit that the author had made some good points. (I was also pleased to see a separate article, in that issue, pertaining to Dave Ramsey and his attempts to call Christians to practice fiscal self-discipline.)

The article by Hannah Rosin didn't address every possible reason for objecting to the "prosperity doctrine". My own reasons for doing so include the ones listed in her article, but they also include the observation that such a doctrine diminishes an appreciation of the sovereignty of God, by treating God as if he's a cosmic vending machine who is obliged to deliver prosperity to anyone who follows a few simple principles. In that sense, the doctrine is insulting to God. (Admittedly, the insult is probably unintentional, but it's real nevertheless.)

That doctrine is also insulting to people who struggle with poverty, inasmuch as it implies that such struggles are invariably the result of lack of obedience to God. Since poverty is ostensibly always the fault of those who suffer from want, the doctrine becomes a convenient excuse for failing to offer meaningful and compassionate help to such people. Words such as "community" may be used with great frequency in such churches, but when you look beyond the attractive rhetoric, their pastors and other leaders rarely consider that they have any responsibilities to engage in traditional acts of charity in order to help people to overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles which hinder them from experiencing true prosperity. Rather, such pastors seem to believe that their responsibility begins and ends with teaching the principle of sowing and reaping, in self-serving ways which conveniently happen to expand the size of their offerings from week to week. If unbelievers see this as a form of exploitation, we should hardly be surprised, because it is.

None of this is to deny that we reap what we sow to some extent, but things are often more complicated than that. The story of Job teaches us that people are unbalanced in their views when they adopt simplistic explanations for situations which can conceivably have multiple causes. Job's "friends" blamed Job for his troubles, assuming presumptuously that God was punishing him for some sin. But those who have read the entire story know that that wasn't the case at all. If anything, Job was tried precisely because God was proud of Job's faith in God, and sought to demonstrate the depth of that faith to Satan, who had suggested that Job would serve God only as long as Job continued to prosper. In the end, God's faith in Job was rewarded.

The "prosperity teachers" say that God wants us to prosper, citing scriptures in support of that view. I don't disagree with them on that point; but the question is, how is that prosperity supposed to come about? The Bible teaches that when one member of the Body of Christ hurts, all members hurt. It logically follows that when one member prospers, all members prosper. In other words, we all have a vested interest in relieving the suffering of fellow Christians, and in doing everything possible to help one another to succeed and prosper.

Rather than blaming the victims whenever we're presented with evidence that some of our fellow believers are suffering, we ought to see that as God's voice calling us to take action to help those believers whenever we have the means with which to do so. Whereas individual Christians often lack the means, the church collectively has the means more often than not, provided that they're more interested in helping people in need than in empire building.

One might describe this view as the "new prosperity doctrine" since it replaces the "old" doctrine which has caused so many problems in the church in recent years; but really, theirs is the newer of the two doctrines, since it has a shakier foundation insofar as scriptural support is concerned. The traditional biblical view promoted an understanding of the crucial role which believers individually and corporately play in meeting one another's needs, not just with specious rhetoric and spurious self-help theories, but with real acts of charity which promote human dignity.

When our doctrines deviate from the truths presented in the scriptures, the church suffers insofar as credibility is concerned. The history of the church is one of refinement in terms of our understanding of what is and is not biblical. In past centuries, bad doctrines have been used to rationalize the existence of monarchies (using the doctrine of the "divine right of kings") and slavery, just to name two examples of doctrines which we have now largely discarded as a result of deeper reflection on the requirements which can be found in God's word. We are fallible human beings, and we make mistakes, and we sometimes realize only in hindsight that our doctrines have had unintentional negative consequences. Maturity entails showing the humility to acknowledge one's mistakes and to do what is necessary in order to correct those mistakes. I pray that we will do so insofar as the prosperity doctrine is concerned.

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Maine Voters Get It Right

For those of you who haven't heard the good news from Maine, here's a link:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/maine-gay-marriage-law-repealed/story?id=8992720

Virtually every time voters have had the opportunity to speak their minds about the issue of gay marriage, they've lost, even in some of the most liberal states in the union. It seems to me that that ought to mean something, but I'd be the last person to argue that political victory is invariably tantamount to legitimacy. If that were the case, Obama wouldn't be where he is today.