Prophetic Musings

This is the first of my weekly series about what I believe. Some of the things here will be theological concepts, some will be simple common sense. In these articles, I want to examine my core beliefs and try and find out why I believe what I believe. I'm inviting everyone who reads this to come with me on my journey. I want to try to bury misconceptions I might have and dig into the truth of what I think I know. I'll try to apply it to everyday life, but sometimes I might not be able to. I welcome any discussion of what you think about it in the comments. Let's get started.

So, are there things that you know to be true? We know where north and south are. We know what is up and what is down (at least in relation to where we are on Earth). We can list a hundred things that we know, but what if those things changed? Here's a quote from Men In Black, where Kay is trying to comfort Jay, who just found out aliens existed.

A person is smart. People are dumb. Everything they've ever "known" has been proven to be wrong. A thousand years ago everybody knew as a fact, that the earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, they knew it was flat. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we humans were alone on it. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

What would life be like if we knew that whatever we believed was subject to change at any moment? I'm not talking about subjective truth, I'm talking about the preconceived ideas that we have. For example, on September 10, 2001 I knew that terrorists would never try a big attack on the United States. Our security and intelligence were too good. September 11, 2001 what I knew was wrong. They could and would attack us on our own soil.
Before reading a post on Cerulean Sanctum about failure, I knew that everything I had screwed up in my life was my fault. Everything that had not turned out the way I wanted it was because of something I had done. Now I understand that sometimes God doesn't want things to work out the way we want them to.

Through this series, I want to analyze things that we believe, things that we see everyday, current events that happen. I want to find out the reasons why we think we know what we know. I'll look at things that I believe and sometimes present positions on why I believe differently. And maybe, just maybe, sometimes I'll discover something that we thought we knew is wrong.  

So, what was the final count on the story that got linked by Instapundit? My blog software says that over 4,500 unique visitors have clicked on the story. That's roughly equivalent to three times the population of my hometown. So, what has it done for me?

Next to nothing.

Nobody at my job knew or cared about it. I'm sure my wife is getting tired of me talking about it. It didn't make me a better husband or father, nor did I make any money off it. So, what did it do for me?

This experience gave me some much needed self-confidence in my writing. 4,500 people read the article and about 35 or so decided to leave comments on the site. Of those 35 I would say that about 80% were positive. A couple were blatant trolls, and some disagreed with me. However, the discussion was civil and nothing bad came of it.  It made me feel a little better knowing that I had an article that was well-reasoned enough to merit a law professor linking to it and the population of a small town reading it. So, knowing that I'm a little more willing to forge ahead.

And on the heels of this, I would like to announce that I'm going to have an article published on the Youth Ministry Exchange in May. When the article goes up I'll link to it (I'll post it here a month or so after it goes up there) and would welcome any comments about it.  

BANDS OF HEAVY RAIN AND THUNDERSTORMS WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE

  WESTERN HALF OF NORTH TEXAS...OR GENERALLY ALONG AND TO THE WEST

  OF THE I-35 CORRIDOR. 1 TO 3 INCHES OF RAIN IS POSSIBLE THROUGH

  TONIGHT WITH THIS FIRST WAVE OF ACTIVITY. ANOTHER WAVE OF HEAVY

  RAIN AND THUNDERSTORMS WILL DEVELOP AND TRACK ACROSS THE REGION

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND EVENING. THIS SECONDARY WAVE OF ACTIVITY

  WILL PRODUCE ADDITIONAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF 2 TO 3 INCHES...WITH

  ISOLATED STORM TOTAL AMOUNTS EXCEEDING 5 INCHES POSSIBLE.

My last post was by far the most read article that I've ever done. Many thanks to my web host, ASPnix, and the Community Server software for staying up through the Instalanche.

So, what do I follow that up with? Nothing. I was just in the right place at the right time to get the link from Glenn. Hopefully he comes back and checks me out again, but if he doesn't it's no big deal. I'm still starting my series this weekend and I'm going to continue down the theological path. I'll still do occasional posts like the one from last night though. Especially when it gets my back up like that one did.

And finally, to Dr. Dobson. Please don't misunderstand me. I think that Focus on the Family has done some great things in the world, both inside and outside the Christian community. However, I don't think that what you did by making the unsolicited phone call about Fred Thompson was right. It reflects on all of us as Christians when things like that occur. It hasn't diminished what God has accomplished through your ministry though. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

UPDATE 12:17 PM - Wow, currently 3,071 hits today, most all of them on the same link. I've had more readers in the last 12 hours than I've had in the last six years. The Internet is a crazy place.

UPDATE 3:00 PM - I think it's starting to die down, but I'm still getting more hits per hour than I usually do in an entire day. Up to 3,575 now. Crazy for a quick article I threw up before going to bed. No idea it would do this. 

UPDATE 2: Scroll to the bottom for some further thoughts. 

UPDATE 3: Thanks to everyone who has commented. Also, thanks to ElephantBiz.com for the link as well, though if you don't mind, please correct my name. It's spelled wrong. 

(h/t Instapundit) James Dobson is at it again. While I think that Dr. Dobson has done great things in the past and that he continues to do great things, he really needs to shut up about this.

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson appeared to throw cold water on a possible presidential bid by former Sen. Fred Thompson while praising former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is also weighing a presidential run, in a phone interview Tuesday.

"Everyone knows he's conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for," Dobson said of Thompson. "[But] I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression," Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party's conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.   

Let me get this straight. Because Fred Thompson is not a Christian, that makes him a bad choice for president? I totally disagree with this line of thinking. Yes, I would prefer someone who is a strong Christian and a strong candidate, but you do realize who else is out there, don't you? (I'm using the list from Wikipedia for possible Republican presidential candidates)

• Rudy Giuliani - He was great during and after September 11, but I don't understand how he cuts it as a Republican candidate. Yes, he's hard on crime and more fiscally responsible than the current administration, but he's incredibly liberal on social issues like abortion. Not interested.
• Newt Gingrich - Great mind, great statesman, terrible candidate. The guy is completely unelectable. He's got too much baggage from the mostly unfulfilled "Contract with America" in the early 90s. Too many people have too many bad vibes about him. (Roughly the same is true about Hillary Clinton as well, but we're not covering Democrats now.)
• Mitt Romney - Seriously? We could have a president named Mitt? I honestly think that the guy has good values and would make a decent president, but that's not what we need right now. We need a statesman much like Ronald Reagan to restore some self-confidence in this nation. Plus, I don't think that Romney can overcome being Mormon. It was a big enough deal for Kennedy to be elected being Catholic, but I don't think Mormonism is mainstream enough to make Romney electable.
• Sam Brownback - Despite my desire to support him simply because he is from Kansas, nobody knows enough about him to elect him. I'm sure many said the same about Bill Clinton when he was the unknown governor of Arkansas, but Clinton had something that Brownback doesn't have. Charisma.
• John McCain - He's too divisive. Eight years ago he might have been a good choice. Today, not so much.
  
• Duncan Hunter - Who?
• Ron Paul - Who²?
• Jim Gilmore - Unless his nickname is "Happy", it's not happening.
• Mike Huckabee - President Huckabee? To borrow a phrase from the linguistically adept Glenn Reynolds, "Heh".
• Tom Tancredo - Not likely.
  
• Tommy Thompson - I've never known anyone who kept the name Tommy into their adult life and was up to any good. Nice guys, but none I would trust with the Presidency.
  
• Chuck Hagel - Simply because of his stance on the war, he won't win. Republican nominees need to be able to get a sizable portion of military votes, and he won't get them.
• George Pataki - He has some of the same issues that Giuliani has. Too liberal in most areas. Doesn't have Rudy's strength though, which hurts.

Yes, I mailed it in on some of those. Sue me.

This brings us back around to Fred Thompson. He may or may not be a Christian. I'm willing to overlook that in an election. We aren't voting for Senior Pastor here, we are voting for President of the United States. Fred Thompson has a good background as a lawyer and Senator. He's a strong conservative on most all issues, and is an extremely good speaker. We need a statesman right now. Someone who can make the American people feel comfortable with the Presidency. He's connected to Hollywood through Law and Order. And since he was the head of air traffic control when John McClane killed all those terrorists...oh wait. That wasn't real was it? Never mind. (But, if it was real, we could call in John McClane to be the real-life Jack Bauer.)

I think he's a good, viable candidate and would be happy to vote for him, Christian or not. Dr. Dobson needs to realize that he's not the conscience of the entire Christian community. We can make our own choices for president.

UPDATE: Some good points in the comments. I must be honest and say when I wrote this, I wasn't expecting the traffic, but now that it's here I want to address a criticism pointed at me. I want to clarify why I feel the way I do about Dr. Dobson's comments. I realize that his views on Thompson are much the same as my views on Romney. What bugged me the most was that he made an unsolicited phone call to a senior editor to make his comments known. That would be like me taking out a full page ad with this article. I feel that he's making an effort to submarine any possibility of a campaign from Fred Thompson. The fact that he's putting himself into the equation without being asked about it makes it news. I didn't point that out in the original article and I should have.

Long time, no post.

Seems the last time I wrote anything substantial was back in February. It's been kind of crazy around the house with the youth group starting up, school really getting into gear, and some changes at work. What I would like to try to do is get on a more regular posting scheduled. I've noticed that some of the sites I read have regular articles that are posted on a daily or weekly basis. Wizbang has the weekly caption contest, Evangelical Outpost has the Yak Shaving Razor, and so on. So, what can I do?

I've moved more into the arena of the theological the last few posts, so I'm going to start out there. This idea first started on my original site but I never followed through with it. I'm going to reintroduce the idea here and see if I can build up a good set of posts so that if I know I'm going to miss one, I can schedule it to show up anyway. All that being said, what should my title be? The original idea was going to be Take A Stand, but I'm not sure if I still like that. I want something a little more meaningful. Post in the comments if you have any suggestions. The articles will begin on Saturday and will run weekly.

In other news, I've realized a few things about myself. These are little things that have popped up from time to time the last few weeks, but taken as a whole they do bother me a little. What are they?

•  When playing guitar or singing by myself, I have zero self-confidence. When I'm playing behind someone then I do pretty well. Is it because deep down I believe that I'm not that good of a guitar player, and that playing by myself makes me realize that everyone will hear my mistakes? Well, yes. I'm not terrible, but I'm not great either. I wish I was
• Same goes for being in front of people. I don't like small groups, even though I've found myself teaching plenty of them. If I had an audience of several hundred, I can really cut loose. Less than 50 and I tense up. It's a strange thing to be me.
• I feel completely unprepared most of the time. I've got time management issues that I've know about for a long time. Some of them have been dealt with, but there are still others out there. I spend too much time goofing off and not enough actually working. Things (especially school) came too easy early in life. I don't work as hard as I should.
  
• I don't understand enough of the Bible. Sure, I can grasp some concepts fairly well, but I don't know details of important passages of the Bible. I'm working to correct this.
• I don't pray enough. I'm sure many can say this, but it's really weighing on me right now. This is vital to me in my new role at the church, but even more so as a father and husband.

Just look at the picture.

I saw this image this morning and read the accompanying story and was amazed by it.

This is the moon passing in front of the sun during a lunar eclipse. However, this image was taken 1.6 million kilometers (~1 million miles) away from Earth by one of NASAs two STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) cameras. One of the passages in the article caught my attention.

By pure coincidence the relatively tiny Moon, when seen from Earth, looks exactly the same size as the much bigger and far more distant Sun.

So, during a solar eclipse our only natural satellite can block out the solar disc, bringing darkness in the middle of the day.

But STEREOB is about 1.6 million kilometres from Earth, so to it the Moon looks 4.4 times smaller than it does to us.

It's not pure coincidence, it was divine placement. There is a reason that the Earth, moon, and sun align the way they do. I don't know why or what that reason is, but there is one. Cool stuff.

I really wish whoever is coming by my house and slapping my webcam around would stop it. I can't fix it until I get home and it's stuck on a mesmerizing view of my dead front yard. Maybe when I get home I'll switch it to a more flattering view of our pathetic shrubs. That sounds like a good idea.

(Nobody is doing this, I'm sure the kids or even my wife are probably accidentally hitting it and moving the thing. The dogs could be responsible too, who knows.)