Mad Hatter

They call me the Mad Hatter. Most of them anyways, a few of them call me Soren. No one calls me by the name I was born with, no one calls anyone by that. The Boss we call a lot of things, not all of them nice, but Hotaru Maniac is how we all knew him first. Forgetting the "Maniac" in his presence will earn his displeasure. Hotaru's some Angel of Death from some anime. Never saw it, barely remember the title. Maniac is not Hotaru, he's a Maniac for Hotaru.

Anyways, I've never quite understood why they call me the Mad Hatter. It may have something to do with the fact that even around here, I'm considered crazy. I'm one the only religious folks here. Oh, we all have our gods and rituals, probably 95% of us have a good-luck charm, almost everyone has something they do to stay sane. I'm one of the very few to stick with an actual religion from the outside world, though.

I used to be a Christian missionary pilot. No, seriously. I'd fly missionaries into jungle villages, bring them supplies, medicine, that sort of shit. I had that job for about 3 years. I had a wife, too.

That was supposed to be a career. Me and my lady (Ex-wife, but I don't tolerate people insulting her) had our courses plotted, man. We loved the job, we loved the people, we loved each other. We were committed, like you read about. We were the elite, well-respected in the community. One of the best pilot-mechanic teams in the org, etc, etc.

Of course, such things don't last. I had this family I was supposed to drop into a village in Colombia. Nice folks, mom, dad, teenage kid. They were legit, I'd actually known the mother when I was in flight school. Lovely lady, almost dated her when we first met.

Anyways, my wife and I drop this family off, and as is our custom, we started to make a loop around the airfield before we turned back home. Only this time, apparently some drug lord had decided that a missionary might cut into his profits. As we're circling the airfield, we saw an 8-man kill squad leave one of the huts.

I was 500 feet in the air. I never had a chance to prevent the bastards from killing the son and his father. They never saw it coming, but I did. Slow-fucking-motion, man. My friend was next, we all knew it. Only, the squad leader brandished a rope instead of a rifle when he turned to her.

Missions pilots never carried a weapon. Guns, I mean. We all had knives, but that's a tool, we were told. Guns would have gotten us thrown out of countries where we were needed. It never occurred to the death squad that an unarmed 10,000-lb. airplane flown by an unarmed pilot is a weapon. It occurred to me.

Standing in a group to watch the leader, none of them avoided being run down. The plane ended up inside what was once this village's spirit lodge or something. The leader was covered in what used to be his buddies, so was my friend, the plane, and most of the village. I don't know what he thought had happened, but he didn't think fast enough. He died hard, some totem-carved spirit pole went through his chest. Several times.

Of course, that sort of shit doesn't go down well in the missions world. We praised martyrs, people who died for the faith. Having smashed a half-million dollar aircraft into 7 men, then murdering the last man with a stick kinda made me a target. I wasn't loving, merciful, or kind enough. My friend from college was about to get raped, I'm the bad guy.

The org was thrown out of the country. My family was thrown out of the org. I was thrown out of my family.

I don't blame my ex. I still love her, I think. But all the time we'd known each other, she'd never suspected I was capable of that. I never really knew that I was capable, either. What she saw that day was too much for her to handle. What she saw in me. The guy she loved, always nice, smiling, loving, tender, shoving a wooden spear into a man's chest with nothing but a grim smile on his face.

The man she saw that day was not the man she married. I understand why she left.

The casting call for PBE came two weeks later. If that's providential, I don't want to know what God has in mind. But it's amusing, you know? The hardest, most bat-shit insane band of kill-for-money people on the planet, and I'm one of the pilots. I still pray for these people daily. Only, unlike most of the world, I pray for their continued existence.

We sell death. When we show up, Death comes with us, and when we leave, we generally leave a quiet area behind. The outside world hears rumors about us, we're fine with that. Somehow we became popular, we don't really understand, because the outside world doesn't get it. We're the dogs of war, barely.

We kill evil men. We show up, we don't target civilians. I've heard some of the other groups have had mishaps, civvies got splashed. That happened once on my plane. Some fucker thought it'd be fun to have target practice, shot a lady doing laundry as we flew past. I shot him, threw him out of the plane, and started laughing. For the record, I think he died on impact with the ground. The record itself said he took fire from the ground and fell out. No one argued with me.

"Mad Hatter" started going around some time after that.

I haven't stopped laughing since I got out of training at PBE and realized exactly what I'd gotten myself into. We're rock stars in the world of death-dealing psychopaths. The polo could get me laid in 15 minutes if I wore it to a bar. The same girls would scream in terror if they saw us in our work clothes. I fly a plane that the org I used to work for would have scrapped, only I get shot at in it. The whole situation is so absurd, it's hard not to laugh.

Some Days, Part Three.

We didn't end up having to wait around for nightfall. Wut's boys did a fantastic job of walking onto the highway and pointing a lot of rifles at the first bus to drive past. I don't think driver knew what the hell was going on, but we paid him for the bus.

In gold coins, which has been one of Maniac's more genius ideas. I like not having to dick around trying to get some third-world mud eater to take American currency. Small gold coins are accepted in places that VISA just doesn't cover.

Everywhere we'd want to be. Except no one ever wants to be here, so we pay in gold.

Turned out to be a fairly nice one. Air conditioning, a radio (which of course couldn't pick anything worth listening to), and enough gas to get us well into Iran.

After we smoke that AAA. That's personal.

One of the benefits of working with PBE is that we have a fairly good intelligence group. Not perfect, obviously, but we've got a pretty good reaction time. Considering our recent work in Afghanistan, we still had air assets in the area. 18 hours after the shootdown, there was a drone circling the area at 20,000 feet. It took the drone controller another two hours to find the gun. By that time, we'd eaten, acquired a bus, driven off the beaten path and gotten some sleep.

It was on.

The gun was situated on a mountaintop. Someone had at some point build a small villa up there, featuring a low wall, a pair of adobe-looking buildings, and a vehicle gate. The gun was in the courtyard, which was maybe 50 yards on a side.

A PBE tactical team should never be mistaken for a US Infantry team. We're not going to charge up the hill, waving a flag and shouting battle cries, fighting for glory, honor, and liberty. We fight for money, and we've got to be alive to spend it.

Tactically, that means we generally try to be as lethally efficient as possible. We're not going to be concerned with taking things intact, or trying to hold a certain building. Which, in this particular case, meant that at precisely 0230, Sageless and NSWG took out both gate sentries. Suppressors are standard issue with PBE, the only real rule for choosing a personal rifle is that it must accept a suppressor. We're not big fans of being heard, and it wasn't any different this time. Both men went down silently.

At the same instant, OCG threw a ten-pound block of Semtex in a window of the taller of the two buildings. For lack of a more precise term, the building exploded. Pieces of it showered the area, along with pieces of the men who'd been sleeping inside. Mud brick buildings have one beneficial attribute: Hit hard enough, they collapse completely. The four-man team tasked with taking the building simply ran over it.

The other building turned out to be an outhouse. A frag grenade in through a window eliminated anyone who may have been inside. None of us wanted to look anways, a spray of shit and piss came out the single door when the grenade went off. I hate third-world countries.

I wish I could give a better account of the battle. I never remember much of the few infantry jobs I've helped on. Too frantic to ever get a good idea of what's going on. We came over the walls from two directions, four men each. Athanasius and I had the job of making sure no one came in or out of the front gate. Not glorious, but we're not grunts.

The whole thing took less than five minutes. There were 22 men in the compound. I personally only killed one of them, a man returning from the village in a truck. 3-round burst, in through the windshield. He never saw it coming, but he wasn't meant to.

The AAA turned out to be some old Soviet cannon, a single-barrel repeating thing probably left over from the Cold War. We sabotaged it, the next idiot to fire the weapon was going to be in for a nasty surprise, it'd probably take out the whole crew.

Back at the bus, I noticed that someone had spraypainted pedobear on the back door. I started laughing, some things never change. Ten armed men, trying to infiltrate one of the most hostile countries on the planet, and we're still making jokes.

"What the hell is this for?"

"Panda Force, Soren. A super-scary bear."

"Pandas don't even eat meat, you retard."

"Yes, but these idiots don't know that."

Some days.

Some Days, Part Two.

As usual, the plan was to wait for nightfall, enter the city, steal something that can hold 10 armed men, and get out of Dodge. We could wait for the angels, but as the ranking officer, I had to get us moving before whoever shot us down found us, and there was no excuse for staying put when no one was hurt.

PBE troops are good in the woods. We're really, really good in the city. However, we're just not top-tier desert warriors when the plane carrying the toys gets shot down. We didn't have a lot of food, we didn't have a lot of water, and we didn't have a lot of that most precious of commodities, ammunition.

Much as I want to find the fucker that shot me down and return the favor, we're getting out of here.

Anything that can put a small artillery shell a mile into the sky can put one into a mountain. I knew what the Germans used to do with their 88mm AA gun, and it wasn't pretty for Allied tanks. Also, AAA guns aren't small, aren't cheap, and can't be used solo...

Who? Who's got the balls, the funding, and the actionable intel to shoot down...oh, fuck me.

"Guys, the timetable just got bumped. We're going NOW. Wut, move these boys out, we are not going to have time to jerk off and wait for a rescue."

"Rescue? Why...yeah that makes sense. No one else around here."

It took us the better part of two hours to reach that village. That was probably the longest two hours I'd ever marched. Every PBE employee is regularly qualified on several different weapons, but I'm a pilot. I work for a living in a seated position, and while I'm damn fit compared to most pilots, I'm just not up to the level of PBE troopers. Furthermore, I just don't have the level of Infantry training they have.

Some days, I go from valuable asset, relied upon to deliver death to the enemy and bring salvation to the troopers, to a liability.

And I hate that.

Wut's boys managed to find an empty hut on the outside of town. Of course, it was empty because it had once been part of a much larger mud hut, which had at some point been exploded. Still, it got all of us under one roof. How one of the trooper had the presence of mind to grab a camp stove was beyond me, but they had chow on.

Then my cell phone rang. I knew from the ringtone that it was the Boss, so I stepped outside to take the call.

"OK, so from what we can gather, you got shot down by Quds Force operators."

"Shit, I didn't want to hear that confirmed."

"Yes, well, it gets better. They got the Prince."

"No."

"Yes. Want to guess the next step?"

"Not really. Iran is a big place, and you want us to invade it with ten men, eight rifles, and two machine guns?"

"You guys left your sidearms in the plane?"

"Fuck you. We are not prepped for that level of engagement, we have no intel"

"Actually, you do. We know where the Prince is, but you're going to have to get him. You'll be reinforced as soon as possible, but that won't be tonight. Oh, and Soren?"

"Yes?"

"He's got some data they'll tear the country down for. They're not going to play nice."

"This mysterious data had better be something other than his porn stash."

I walked back inside the hut.

"Guys, you're not going to like this."

Some days

Some Days, Part One.

That's it, accounting is now officially out of excuses for making me keep flying this piece of shit.

It's odd what goes through my mind when I should be panicking. After all, I had a cargo hold full of pissed-off PBE troopers, and something had just blown three feet off my left wing. There wasn't supposed to be any trouble on this mission, either. Hell, it barely qualified as a mission, all I was doing was picking up an off-duty squad from some shithole town in Azerbaijan before they got themselves in actual trouble.

For the record, it's a really bad idea for some dive brothel owner in a dive town in a dive country to post proof that he's got some absurdly hot women working at his establishment. Perhaps especially when it's within a 72-hour pass distance of some off-duty PBE troopers. They will show up. They will try to have sex with all of the women in the area. And some of the men.

And that will piss off the locals.

Some days, I go from combat jungle-owning aviator to airbourne taxi-driving wet nurse. Pay's the same either way, benefits of having a rare skill, but it's more fun to get shot at.

Except when something comes right out of fuckin' nowhere and kills my plane, I reminded myself.

This was going to be one of those days.

"GET THEM OUT OF THERE, WUT!!" I screamed over the intercom. I'll give the mudmarchers credit, half of them hard already jumped out. I mean, they're still just grunts, but at least they know when to get the fuck out of an airplane. I hope they got parachutes on before they jumped.

OK, fuel pumps off, the wing's not on fire, and I've got enough altitude to glide for a ways...we were on course, right?, which means that patch of sand down there should be...fuck.

I know we were on course. That's Turkmenistan. I know for a damn fact that's Turkmenistan, I've flown this way on more than one occasion in the past few months.

The glorious US gov't has a habit of paying off local gov'ts to ignore Air Force birds. PBE does something similar, only I've heard that our payments come in denominations like "horsepower", "kilogram", and "vintage". Our way is far more efficient, we generally get the stuff from the last warlord we knocked over.

Who the fuck just shot me down? I know we delived the payment, I was the fuckin' delivery pilot that time.

I hadn't been painted. Accounting doesn't normally spring for things like paint, performance upgrades, or seats that are younger than I am, but they do pay to make sure that the plane can alert the pilot to SAMs. Of course, it could have been one of those shoulder-launched heat-seeking types, but we were flying in a prop-driven plane.

I glanced at the wing again. That explosion was way too small for a Stinger, too small even for an RPG, even if it could have gotten up to 5,000 feet.

Flak? Of all the fuckin' things.

I checked the hold. More credit to the grunts, they'd exited the plane in under a minute. The plane had about five left, less if the mysterious enemy started shooting again.

Land now, stay alive, ask questions when the bodies are cold.

"Ace, call the Boss. Tell him we've been shot up, and we're about to crash on the Turkmen side of the Iranian border."

Accounting had finally assigned me a door gunner a while back. Athanasius used to do combat demo work for PBE, took a leg injury that keeps him from running, but he didn't want to leave the company, so they gave him to me. "Now you finally get that door gunner", they told me. Worked out well, too. He's just amazing with an M-60, would've made my Nam-era grandfather proud. My grunts were happy, too. It's amazing what CAS is worth, even when it's just a GPMG and the occasional satchel charge thrown out the door.

"They're sending help, but it'll be a while in coming."

"Of course", I muttered. "Wouldn't want to make this an easy we-just-lost-a-plane-full-of-mercs mission. Grab your chute, we're jumping."

I knew the plane was done for. The sooner we jumped, the safer we'd be. The kid was already out, so I threw the switch on the ceiling marked "FUCK YOUR SHIT", and jumped after him.

Maniac has this thing about not letting the enemy getting a look at our hardware, especially some of the more sensitive stuff that's on our planes. Exactly 181 seconds after I threw the "Fuck Your Shit" switch, four precisely-placed charges blew that plane into pieces. Both wings just fell right off, and a fifth charge, about 75% thermite, completely obliterated anything resembling a flight computer.

And the picture of my ex that I had taped to the window. God I miss her.

Of course, that switch was intended to be used while the plane was on the ground, preferably close to something that would feel bad for my plane...and explode along with it in a sympathetic fashion. Not all of the troopers realize it, but I have fairly strict orders to never let a PBE plane fall into enemy hands. The last thing we need is anyone getting our decryption gear.

I'm a pilot. I hate jumping out of airplanes. Even so, I've done enough jumps that I landed just fine. The troopers were already on the way over.

Good boys. We get out of this, they need a bonus.

"So where are we, exactly?"

"Wut, we're about 100 miles short of Asgabat, Turmenistan, which was supposed to be a pit stop. Nearest town is just north, named Geok-Tepe."

"And you just had to get us shot down. Near Gook-Tape, on our way to Asshat?"

"Dude, don't even blame me. Something blew a large chunk off our left wing, not a rocket, not a SAM. Had to be a flak cannon left over from some old war, and they did it without tracer rounds or radar assist. Also, the city's named Asgabat, but at this point, I just don't care."

Some days.

Why I Am Not A Calvinist

I figured I'd type this up, since it occasionally comes up in conversation. This is a codification of what I've come to generally agree with, it is not an attempt to start a debate. No such attempts shall be suffered kindly.

Obviously, both Wesley and Calvin have verse support for what they espoused. That's not even up for debate. What is up for the debate is the interpretation of those verses, which I'm sick and tired of debating, but to do that is to miss the point entirely.

I prefer Kierkegaard over Wesley, and Wesley over Calvin.

Soren Kierkegaard was a 19th-century Danish Philosopher. His early life can best be described as unpleasant, and he didn't handle it very well for the most part. However, his treatment of Christianity is brilliant.

What Kierkegaard did for me, when I read his works and innumerable summaries of them, was to remove the tendency to treat Christianty as an academic exercise. That's what Existentialism does for me, most of all. It gets rid of that tendency to have a list of things I "believe" that in no way matches the way I live.

After reading some of his works, I basically threw away the entire concept of "following a human interpretation of the Bible that has been deemed 'official Christian doctrine'", and replaced it with a much simpler idea: "If God exists and I exist, what does that mean for me?"

Anyways, back to Calvin and Wesley: It comes down to the lives of those two men. Whether or not they have verses to support their interpretations is irrelevent, if I'm going to follow a man's teachings, I must follow the man as well. If the man doesn't live out what he taught, then he's a fraud, and his teachings are worthless.

So, when I first ran into Calvinism, I researched the man himself. Here's what I found:

Calvin was French lawyer, broke with the Catholics after experiencing God as something more than a ritual, went on to write a crap-ton of books, and ended up running Geneva when his influence in the Reformation gained him political power. While there, he accused a man (Micheal Servetus) of heresy. Servetus was convicted in absentia.

Here's a direct quote from Calvin about Servetus, c. 1547:

"for if he came, as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive."

(Source)

In 1553, Servetus showed up in Geneva, attended one of Calvin's sermons, and Calvin had him arrested. Servetus was then burned at the stake, although Calvin tried to show mercy and have him beheaded instead. Yeah, "merciful".

I've held grudges before. I'll even admit to wishing a slow painful death upon someone, and yeah, it lasted longer than that. But hey, I'll also admit that I wasn't walking with God at the time. Calvin kept that hate going while he preached sermons on a near-constant basis.

That's jacked up, yet that's the reality of the situation. He may have been completely right in everything he ever wrote down about the Bible, but when it came down to it, he completely failed to live it out. 1st John has some interesting things to say about people who hate, I'm not in the mood to copy/paste them.

He did have an epic beard, though. I'll give him that.

Now, why Wesley?

John Wesley was born in England and was an Anglican Cleric. During what was essentially a missions trip to Georgia, he had an encounter with some Moravian missionaries. That encounter led him to realize that they had a much more personal relationship with God than he did, and that influenced Methodism to be a much more personal faith than Anglicanism.

He did much of his preaching in the open air, which was revolutionary at the time. The vast majority of the money he made he then gave away to various causes, and was one of the first to speak out against slavery. He approached social issues as something to be influenced towards God, not legislated against sin.

When his friend George Whitfield, a Calvinist that he'd had several arguments with, died in 1770, Wesley said the following:

"There are many doctrines of a less essential nature ... In these we may think and let think; we may 'agree to disagree.' But, meantime, let us hold fast the essentials..."

He coined the phrase "Agree to disagree", by the way.

In short, he lived it. He wasn't perfect, but instead of cooping himself up in a library and writing about what Christianity should be, he went out and lived it to the best of his ability. He didn't just write books about Christ's Love, he attempted to demonstrate it.

I could probably write a book on various doctrinal issues I have with Calvinism, but then I'd be doing exactly what I hate about Bible-thumping anybodies. I'm not writing this to convert people from one denomination to another. I'm writing this as an explanation, which I'll simply summarize like this:

I'm a Wesleyan, not a Calvinist, because Calvin wrote about Christianity but didn't live it, and Wesley lived it.

Placing faith in proof?

The more I think on it, the more it bothers me that I heard a professor talking about "proving God's existence" (i.e. Christianity) to an atheist.

It cannot be done. Christianity requires faith. Even the little steps in the life of a Christian are done on faith, not proof. The proof is in the hindsight. Everything I know of that a Christian takes as proof is in fact something very different: It's confirmation.

Proof is a type of knowledge. No one has ever had their knowledge reckoned to them as righteousness. We use proof all the time. Proof is a great thing to have *when both sides agree on the veracity of the proof offered*.

Faith doesn't work on proof. I don't have faith that a thrown ball will land, it can be scientifically proven that it will. Faith is the opposite: It's the belief, acted upon, that the ball will not land. Even a reasonable act of faith is in effect an act of unreason.

When we act in faith, we're stating that we're going to start a process that will completely and disastrously fail without God picking up the slack. We are NOT acting on proof. Not if we're honest about the situation.

Why, then, would we attempt to prove God? If we could prove God, we'd be denying the essential nature of Christianity, namely that it requires faith.

Nevermind the outright foolishness of attempt to outscience people who have placed the entirety of their reason in science.

SLACking Off.

I have now been accused of being a bad influence on other students at Moody Bible Institute, Spokane Campus. I'm not going to say that I'm a good influence on people...I just didn't want to be an influence at all. The great irony is that I knew all this was coming. My old pastor warned me in April that I would probably be expelled from Moody.

I have a class called Spiritual Life and Community, commonly referred to as SLAC. This is, word-for-word, the course description from the syllabus:

"A foundational course focusing on the nature of discipleship and an introduction to the foundational principles of the spiritual life. It will examine the nature and obligations of the spiritual life and thr principles and practices that nurture it. It will explore the relationship between grace and effort in spiritual development and introduce the student to the disciplines of spiritual life with the goal of developing *lifelong patterns and practices*. It will also explore the relationship between spiritual life and the local church."

That doesn't sound all that bad. And I don't want this to be a hit-job on the teacher, the rest of the students seem to enjoy his class. I've almost universally heard good things about it, which tells me that the problem lies with me.

My path here is probably unique. I don't mean coming from Idaho, I've met others. Single-parent kids, not alone. I'm not even the only 27-year-old, 6-foot-plus, blonde-haired guy.But I'm the only one up here, that I know of, that turned to Christianity primarily to give his life meaning in the Existential sense. I don't serve God because it's fun, I serve God because it's the only thing that makes existence worthwhile. God has worked miracles in my life, none of them served to convert me. I'm not a Christian to avoid Hell, I'm not a Christian because I want to get into heaven.

I am a Christian because it's THE answer to Nihilism. What Nietzche went mad looking for, I have. The French Existentialists were rehashing King Solomon's experiments in the book of Ecclesiastes, but refused to look at the last chapter. When faced with the absolute meaninglessness of a life without God, the only answers are to either choose to believe that there is no god, and kill oneself, or to choose to believe in God, and swear fealty.

That's a pretty important concept to me. Christianity to me isn't about me serving a God I love, although I dearly love Him. Christianity is me accepting that since God exists, I have the choice of either spitting in His face and denying Him, or obeying to the very limit of my ability, and praying for forgiveness when I screw up. Everything else comes as a result of that choice, and that choice is remade on a frequent basis. Every time I pray for guidance, every time God answers, I have to again choose to follow it. The battle is fought every time, and will never end. On the one hand I have God, on the other, nothingness.

This teacher, that thinks I'm too arrogant, doesn't know much of my life. He's worried that if I don't learn his lessons, I'll leave the faith, or the ministry. I succeed in not laughing at him. I've been there. I've seen what's down that road. I have known at times, to a moral certainty, what God has wanted me to do, and I know what life is like when I deny that.

Of course, this teacher doesn't know any of this, because he's never asked, and I've never had an opportunity to put it on one of my assignments. Instead, I have to study a list of" dynamics of spiritual formation." Spiritual formation isn't a bad thing, I suppose, if that works for people. And I'm not saying that God isn't making me into something entirely different from the person I am now, I certainly pray that He is.

But that has NEVER been the way my life has worked. God didn't give me a shot in the arm of joy-joy-happiness before I quit Flying J. I remember the decision quite clearly, and it sucked. I made that leap in absolute terror, and the only benefit at the moment was the feeling of absolute freedom. Hell, I drove up here with enough money to buy groceries and pay the first month's rent. I had no job, no savings, and no plan other than to sleep in my car if shit went sour. I was obeying God, and reveling in the terrible freedom that grants.

There are two considerations, and only two, when dealing with what God is asking of me: 1, is God saying it, and 2, will I obey?

It's not that I'm beyond this class in terms of growth, I've simply walked a path so alien that I cannot understand it. This teacher is trying to teach kids how to grow closer to God before they hit the mission field. Jesus didn't even teach his disciples to pray before He sent them out.

The aforementioned pastor doesn't have the gift of preaching. My highest spiritual gift, when last I took the test, was Service with 45%. Why are people so obsessed with finding out their "spiritual gifts"? If they'd just trust God to work them over, or use them in unforeseen ways, and would just run where God is sending them, God's not going to let them down. He sure as hell hasn't let me down, and I'm not even close to what a good missionary should be, but I'm going to obey to the extent of my abilities, and let God do all the work.

And I guess that's my point. This class is a human attempt to do divine work. Like if I just keep a journal, or figure out my precise spiritual gift, or figure out which dynamic of spiritual formation works best, then I won't have to ask God. I won't have to face up to an Almighty God that's normally pissed off at my misbehavior, I won't have to apologize and ask for forgiveness, I won't have to deal with God at all. I'll be really good at preaching, and I'll know all sorts of tricks to growing closer to God, but I'll never have to really grapple with the tough questions.

Or we could all do things my way. Throw away the textbook, go back to the Bible, and realize that the only thing in this entire world that matters in the slightest is what God is asking me. The most important thing a human can ever do in their life is ask God for direction. Why would we ever assume that a Christianized self-help book, written by a human and read by a human, can provide a more accurate direction than God himself?

I consider myself an existentialst. The great irony is that at the core, existentialism is a series of questions. It does not provide a single answer. If one starts to consider the existential questions in life, "What am I here for", "What does it all mean", etc... there is no chance of an external answer apart from God.

That's what this teacher doesn't get. It's not that I'm perfect in my walk with God, or older and more experienced with life, or more learned than the authors he quotes near-incessantly. I just have my answer, and nothing in the world can replace it. My answer is so perfect, so precisely what I need, that I have trouble comprehend something as clumsy as what this class tries to teach.

I know it's not the answer for everyone, which is why I don't try to explain it to everyone I meet. I'm not up here to share Existentialism as the new way to get closer to God. I just wish I didn't have to spend a semester learning the wrong answers so I can regurgitate them on a test, then I hope to God I forget.

I don't want to be a great spiritual author like C.S. Lewis, or a theologian like Wesley. I don't want be "like" anyone at all. I don't want to be a great anything, I don't care if my life inspires anyone, I don't care if I live or die. The only thing in my life that gives it meaning is where God is calling me, and that is the only thing I care about.

I am me. I want to be a better me. If I wanted to be someone else, I'd be a candidate for an asylum, not a flight school student. The only entity that can make me into a better me is God. Not this teacher, not a dead theologian, not a dead philosopher, and certainly not a Christfag from the internet. Just God.

I guess that makes me arrogant, and a bad influence. Haters gonna hate.

Wish List.

I wish I didn't know where God was sending me.

I wish I didn't have to hear other people beg for knowledge of where God was sending them.

I wish I didn't know how desperately I want to succeed.

I wish I didn't know exactly how little my friends matter to me compared to that.

I wish I didn't know how much worse it's going to get.

I wish I didn't have to watch other people be happy.

I wish I didn't know who God is telling me to date.

I wish I thought she cared about me.

I wish I saw her more than once every other month.

I wish I didn't know how brutally I'll push myself.

I wish I didn't know how brutally I'll push everyone else.

I wish I'll get to build my rifle one day.

I wish I felt respected for what I am.

I wish I knew how to talk honestly with people without pissing them off.

I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off.

I wish I knew how to function in society.

I wish I could be nice to people.

I wish I could stay clean.

I wish I wasn't alone in every possible way.

I wish other people could see the world the way I do.

I wish no one ever had to see the world the way I do.

I wish I actually thought I'd succeed.

I wish I was who I need to be.

I wish I didn't have a list of dead people.

I wish I didn't need the list.

I wish I could just go Home.

I wish I'll get a viking funeral.

I wish that didn't seem odd for a devout Christian.

I wish I had more faith in what I believed.

I wish I didn't laugh at other people.

I wish I cared more about people in need.

I wish I wasn't just following orders.

I wish it meant something more than a job.

I wish it didn't hurt.

I wish churches didn't preach a pain-free life.

I wish churches never taught that Jesus was the way out of pain.

I wish I wasn't so scared.

I wish I was as fearless as my actions say I am.

I wish I wasn't so important.

I wish I was confident.

In My Darkest Hour

Megadeth: In My Darkest Hour
(Music by Dave Mustaine, Lyrics by Dave Mustaine/Dave Ellefson)



In my hour of need
Ha you're not there
And though I reached out for you
Wouldn't lend a hand

Through the darkest hour
Grace did not shine on me
It feels so cold, very cold
No one cares for me

Did you ever think I get lonely
Did you ever think that I needed love
Did you ever think to stop thinking
You're the only one that I'm thinking of

You'll never know how hard I tried
To find my space and satisfy you too

Things will be better when I'm dead and gone
Don't try to understand, knowing you I'm probably wrong

But oh how I lived my life for you
Still you'd turn away
Now as I die for you
My flesh still crawls as I breathe your name
All these years I thought I was wrong
Now I know it was you
Raise your head, raise your face, your eyes
Tell me who you think you are?

I walk, I walk alone
Into the promised land
There's a better place for me
But it's far, far away
Everlasting life for me
In a perfect world
But I gotta die first
Please God send me on my way

Time has a way of taking time
Loneliness is not only felt by fools
Alone I call to ease the pain
Yearning to be held by you, alone, so alone, I'm lost
Consumed by the pain
The pain, the pain, the pain

Won't you hold me again
You just laughed, ha, ha, bitch
My whole life is work built on the past
But the time has come when all things shall pass
This good thing passed away

**********************************
There's probably a lot of reasons to call this one of the best songs ever. From Megadeth's solid riffing and intricate fretwork to Mustaine's powerful vocals, it has all the usual hallmarks that makes a good metal song. But the reason I can call this my favorite song is that it speaks to me like no other song does.

See, I've spent all of my adult life, and most of my life before that, depressed. In darkness, as it were. No one cares for me more than they care for anyone else. Not that I've ever known about, anyways. So I'm fairly familiar with having darkest hours, and there's never just one. I think a lot of people have this vision of a day they'll see their friend in need, and they'll swoop in, hug them, and save their lives.

Isn't that how the story goes?

Reality doesn't always make for an inspiring story. That moment that people ride in to the rescue happens after, never before, the damage has been done. No matter what it took to wake up the rescuers, it was a betrayal to the rescued that it happened in the first place.

See, as Mustaine points out, loneliness is not only felt by fools. Most the times I'm depressed, I don't want someone to swoop in and give me a hug, I want to not feel lonely. To feel kinship with someone, that would help out more than a trusted friend or a pretty girl giving me a hug. That's not a one-time event, it's something else entirely.

There's never been a "one moment" to save me. I scoff at the thought, actually. That kid I knew in HS who killed himself, sure, someone could have "saved" him if they'd come at the right moment, but it'd have been far more effective to just be friends with him. Folks that are hurting don't need a rescue on the cliff's edge if people take the time to prevent them from wanting to jump. Every time you see someone explode, and the aftermath is shown on TV, and stunned people say "X was so quiet", well, what do you expect? People sit in their pain for a very long time before they can't take it anymore.

The time to help is before that, not after, and not during.

Now, obviously it's a suicide song. If it's odd that someone who's never attempted suicide calls this his favorite, take a note of what Mustaine's singing about: Leaving his misery on Earth and going to Heaven. Kinda odd for a secular thrash band, I think. But there it is. And that line, more than ones speaking of heartbreak, or suicide, speaks to me the most.

I walk, I walk alone, into the Promised Land.

I'm alone. I'm surrounded by people, yet I have no peers. Not that I'm arrogant enough to think I'm unequalled, it's just that I have no one around me that I feel a kinship with. I haven't identified with any of the people around me in years, and it always seems to get worse. So I walk alone, to wherever God is leading me.

So please, God, send me on my way. Make me what You need, send me where You need, and when You don't need me, take me Home. Don't leave me here for a minute longer that You absolutely must. But, Time has a way of taking time, and I understand that it won't be tomorrow. I'm not a fool for feeling lonely, it's not a defect that I'd rather have someone at my side. I'm calling You to ease the pain, and I yearn to be held by You alone. Alone I'm lost, and consumed by the pain.

Well, that's almost inspiring. Which is the other reason I like it. A slight reinterpretation of the words of one of the most down and depressing songs I know, and I feel inspired by it. Because it's honest. There're no magic words that someone can say that will make me enjoy life. I simply don't. I'd rather not be here, I've yet to find an activity that can withstand depression. And yet through all the misery that makes up my life, I've found a way to survive, and in a sense thrive, and it's entirely independent of good moods and uplifting melodies.

So to all the people that I asked for help, and didn't get any...Ha, Ha, Bitches. I'm not so sure I *need* other folks in my life. I don't like being alone, but it's better to be alone than to call for much-needed help from a friend and have it not show up. It's happened. Friendships are a good thing, but they pass away.

In our darkest hours.

On another American Civil War. 1 of X

Occasionally I hear people gloriously talking about a second Civil War, and I shiver inside. I don't know what they think will happen, but I don't think they understand exactly how such a war will be fought. Looking at the US Military, the gov't, the US transportation network, and various wars around the world, I'll explain exactly why I think that a civil war should be avoided at all costs. I won't attempt to predict a winner, God only knows who would "win".

(For the purposes of this article, I'll be ignoring Hawaii. I don't think they'd be involved in a war between states; while they'd probably mourn the loss of tourist dollars, but it's highly unlikely that they'd launch an invasion force or suffer an invasion.)

First, it must be understood that a second American Civil War (henceforth 2ACW) will not be fought between states like the first one. It will be ideological at heart, and while certain states will largely go one way or another, the first battles will be inside cities, not between them. Since the political rhetoric in the US has shifted from "I disagree and will vote against you, my friend" to "crazy *bleep* (political orientation buzzword) are destroying the country and (another buzzword)", I'm inclined to believe that we'll largely be split along political lines. It should be noted that "split along political lines" doesn't mean two groups, it means dozens. Left-authoritarian groups won't like left-liberarian groups, and won't cooperate with them any more than they will right-authoritarian groups.

Regardless of who starts shooting first, or why, the 2ACW will start with pro- and anti-gov't forces fighting each other. Likely, this will escalate from protests to armed protests, with the trigger being a police or military intervention in a large protest that turns violent. In most countries, this sort of thing is commonplace, but America is a unique situation in that not only would it be broadcast live on all channels, but groups around the country are waiting for this with baited breath.

But that's the trigger, and while it is my fervent hope that if such a thing happens, we'll all wake up, I'm here to talk about the war.

Any rebellion starts with pro- and anti-gov't forces fighting, and by default the gov't starts with the military equipment. It is inevitable that the military would split and fight between itself, but regardless of how that ends, the militias will be fighting the military at the start. For the simple reason that at first, the military will be tasked with suppressing the rebellion, and will only start splitting and defecting as the soldiers deal with the ethics of what they're doing.

And that is where things would go from bad to Biblically bad in a hurry. Prior to WW2, an army lived on its stomach and moved on its feet. 70 years later, the US military lives on its stomach, and moves on its fuel tanks. Soldiers in the modern world do not, as a rule, use their feet to get to the battle, they drive tanks, humvees, APCs, and helicopters to the battle, then dismount and fight.

The modern US Infantry soldier's combat loadout, just the gear that's worn to fight in, weighs around 60 (1) pounds. That's comparable to what a Roman Centurion worn, by the way. He is a logistical nightmare in every way. He must be daily supplied with food, water, and ammunition, ferried to and from the battle, and unlike his Roman predecessors, he cannot be reasonably expected to march to the battle or resupply himself along the way.

Putting those two facts together, any reasonably intelligent guerrilla commander will realize that if he does not want to lose men fighting the military, the best way to simultaneously defeat the military and avoid fighting it is to starve it of fuel. Any refinery, pipeline, or tanker truck becomes a highly valuable target, and while refineries are hard targets and will be guarded by soldiers, the weakest point of the chain is the transportation.

Oil comes into the US in several locations, a couple pipelines from Canada, ports along the Gulf coast, and any number of domestic production sites. There are refineries of magnitude in multiple states, and further distribution pipelines ending in every state. The ports and refineries would be heavily guarded, and are often in fairly urban terrain, while pipelines and truck routes are only defended in spots, and necessarily go through rural terrain.

It is the pipelines that would be struck first. Any exposed portion could be blown up with a satchel charge, and the delay from the destruction of the pipeline to continuation of use can take weeks under ideal circumstances. Next, the guerrillas would strike at supply convoys. These would be guarded, but lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned the roadside bomb from a nuisance to an art form. While the Iraqis and Afghanis did not have the domestic industrial base to make weapons, American insurgents would, and are capable.

With time, any country that sees civil unrest also sees an influx of foreign arms. Where there is conflict, and money, there is trade in weapons, and there is no reason to expect that 2ACW will be any different. As the insurgents gained access to mortars and rockets, even smaller Katyusha-style rockets, the refineries and ports would go up in flames. An infantry squad cannot stop rockets once they're in flight, and Katyusha rockets have a range of several miles.

If the focus on destruction of oil supplies seems odd, consider the US military in combat in Iraq/Afghanistan: The soldiers arrive in-country in airplanes. They, and their equipment, are then either flown or driven to whatever base they are deployed to, and from there are driven or flown to the location of combat operations. On a combat mission, a US Infantry Soldier will only carries 210 rounds of 5.56 NATO ammunition, plus a day's worth of water and food. Resupply is absolutely critical, and is done by vehicle. If the enemy force requires it, armor is brought to bear and air support is called in.

If the fuel supplies were cut off, a soldier would be limited to the distance he could walk in a few days, and the amount of ammunition he could carry on his back. While this distance could obviously be increased by carrying additional weight, additional weight means slower travel, increased risk of injuries, increased water consumption, and fatigued soldiers. The ability to arrive at a destination after a day of marching means little if the soldier cannot fight upon his arrival.

Now, in the course of a war, even a just war against oppression, oil production and transportation facilites would be targeted as legitimate military targets. However, what people who promote the 2ACW don't seem to realize is that as much as the US Military depends on fuel, so does the rest of the population. And that's the really scary part.

The cornerstone of civilization is the farm. In America, that means the ubiquitous John Deere tractor. Which runs on gas. Without gasoline, the tractor does not move, which means the field is not planted, which means no food is produced. And that, in a nutshell, is the single greatest byproduct of the 2ACW: Famine. There's a reason one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is named Famine. and follows War: When people are fighting in the area, no one works a field.

Even if there are people alive, in the area, with the expertise to productively grow crops, there is no way for them to actually grow the crops without fuel for the tractors, no way to get the crops, if cultivated with animal labor, to the processor without fuel for the trucks, and no way for the processor to get the end product to the starving without fuel.

On the surface, animal labor seems like the answer, but that's a two-fold question of scale and specialization:

First, scale: An ox-and-plow system can indeed cultivate a field, but only one furrow at a time, at a pace of two or perhaps three miles of furrow per hour. Compared to a tractor plowing twenty furrows at five or more miles an hour.

Second, specialization: Crops in American are grown with a nationwide transportation network in mind, and the vast fields of wheat and corn in the Midwest, even if productive are useless to Californians and New Yorkers without a method of getting the food to them. LIkewise, the fruit grown in New England and California is useless if they cannot be transported to the people who normally eat them.

And again, while animals seem the answer, goods transported by oxcart cannot be refrigerated. Surrounded by food, people will suffer from malnutrition, and the cities will empty as starving civilians flee warring groups and search for food.

But that's just my take on it. Zombies will seem like a pleasant fantasy compared to a civil war. I haven't even started on the isolation-fueled fantasy that is "reunification".

Sources:

1: http://thedonovan.com/archives/modernwarriorload/ModernWarriorsCombatLoadReport.pdf