Hookers, Blow, And Christianity

So, it bears mentioning that the only thing I hate worse than being depressed is making the mistake of telling someone why I'm depressed. If I ever make that mistake, one of two things will happen 95% of the time. The first outcome is if I told a non-Christian that I'm depressed, to which the near-inevitable reply is that I ought to take up a vice, such as smoking or drinking, to take the edge off of life.

I don't actually have a moral problem with smoking or drinking, they're just not for me, because of a family history. So it's pretty good advice, I just can't follow it.

If I tell a Christian, though, then I'm nearly guaranteed to get a checklist of reasons that I shouldn't be depressed, which always culminates in "God has a plan, and you should be at peace with it" or something very similar.

I hate dealing with Christians when I'm depressed. Everything problem that happens in life is apparently supposed to be greeted with a smile, every hardship with light-hearted jokes, and failure to do this is the direct result of not being content with God's Plan. Apparently, if I'm Christian enough, then I won't follow Jesus' example and ask God to change The Plan.

Let me explain a few things: Depression is like having 150 pounds of sand draped over your shoulders. It's not pain, precisely, it's just a feeling of heaviness about life, and it's hard to keep going. To borrow an old phrase, "Life is heavy, man." It's like I'm struggling not to break under the heaviness of life, and I'm weary, and the journey isn't over yet.

Nine days out of ten, I'm also pretty lonely. I always figured that I'd end up married, and maybe I will, but for now, I'm still alone in life. I have lived in three states in the last 26 months, every time I move, I have to make an entirely new list of friends, because I can't hang out with any of the old ones again. It is depressing, I wish I had just one person that would always be with me, just for consistency.

I keep meeting nice girls, and I'm pretty sure that I would make a half-decent husband, but it never seems to work out, and that's kinda depressing as well. I've wanted to be a family man for as long as I can remember, otherwise I've have probably given up.

OK, so there it is, depression and loneliness. Simple enough, I'm hardly the only man in history to feel this way. But can anyone explain why this is such a bad situation that it automatically means I'm not trusting God's plan? That depression is somehow sinful? Can anyone even pull up some Bible verses to defend that position?

I have this opinion that if I've struggled with depression for the last quarter of a century, but have never once tried to self-medicate with alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes, than I'm doing just fine. Nor have I ever tried to commit suicide, written a suicide note, or even planned out a suicide.

And yeah, while I'm lonely, and pray daily that God will provide a wife, neither am I drowning my sorrows in a different girl every Saturday night at a dance club. I'm not out cruising Tulsa's hooker district, paying for sex, and I'm not spending my days or nights looking up porn.

So, I'm still curious, why is such a bad thing to be lonely and/or depressed? Is it causing me to wallow in sin and depravity? To blow my money on chemicals? To chase temporary highs and disposable thrills?

I've struggled with depression for twenty-five years now, and have been hospitalized once. At some point I realized that as long as I'm functional (and I think my 3.9-something GPA proves that I am), then it's simply an inconvenience. At no point has "happiness" ever been a requirement for proper conduct, and being depressed is not a predication towards being evil. Jesus wept, Paul said that he'd rather die than keep on living, and David was a fountain of depressed poetry, so why is my being depressed bad?

Likewise with my loneliness. Am I such a bad person for wanting to not be alone in life, when the Bible itself says that man wasn't meant to live alone? Am I a bad person for saying "Hmm, I want to be a husband, and a good one at that, so now, before I'm even dating anyone, I'm doing my best to have my life squared-away by the time it happens?"

I have no illusions that my depression will ever cease to bother me, but I simply do not care. I will not allow Life to keep me from doing what I feel I should do, and if I'm not grinning ear-to-ear while I'm alive, that's just too bad. Happiness was never promised to anyone in the Bible, nor in the American Dream, so I'm pretty sure it's not a requirement for this life.

What Must Be Done

I, like many other (probably most or all) philosophers, have coined short phrases that have vast amounts of thought put into them, and have a great deal of meaning, but lose most or all of that meaning when translated. Yet these short phrases are how we express our philosophies, because to us they serve as a way of expressing a philosophical point in a sentence, and to fully explain them would require a book.

The Greeks, for example, would say that "All Is Fire", and there was a lot more to that phrase than a simple statement that everything was made of fire. One of these phrases, for me, is "What must be done, can be done, because it must be done."

On the face of it, it sounds either absurd or like a sport-clothing marketing gig. Oh, sure, because something needs to be done, that makes it possible. It sounds like I'm saying that anything is possible, and that anything can be done by anyone.

Yet, that is rather far from the truth, and thus I need to unpack the phrase.

The first step is to examine the word "must" in the first section. "What must be done..." is a very specific clarifying statement. "Must" is an imperative word, and it is important to understand what the word really means, and also what it doesn't mean. That something "must" be done implies that there is a philosophical imperative that it be done, not simply a causal imperative.

An example of this distinction: For an airplane to fly, there "must" be gas in the fuel tanks. This is a scientifically-proveable statement, and cannot be argued with. However, simply because there "must" be gas in the tanks for the airplane to fly, there may be other reasons for the fuel tanks to be empty, and thus the the causal imperative does not become a philosophical imperative.

A philosophical imperative only comes into being when there is something that transcends simple causality and becomes a philosophical matter. When the explosion aboard Apollo 13 destroyed the oxygen tanks, it became a philosophical imperative that the men on the ground solve the matter of providing a solution to the problem of asphyxiation. The "must" of the situation wasn't simply causal, but philosophical ("We are not going to let them die. We are going to bring them back alive."), and the philosophical nature of the situation demanded a solution be found.

Which brings us to the second part of the sentence. "Can be done" should not be taken to imply that the solution is simply possible. If it became a philosophical necessity that I climb Mt. Everest, or get hired as a doctor at Johns Hopkins, that it must be done does not simply make it possible for that to be done tomorrow.

It "can be done" might mean that I spend the next five years training to climb mountains, working out six days a week, and taking every possible measure to ensure a successful outcome. If something becomes a philosophical necessity, then anything that can be done to make it happen should be done. There isn't even a real question of doing otherwise, because of the philosophical imperative nature of doing it demands an extreme level of commitment.

That level of commitment makes things possible that would not be otherwise. People who are totally committed to doing something will find it far easier, in many cases making the impossible possible, than people who are only casual about it. If I casually approach training to climb Mt. Everest, I will find it to be an excruciatingly hard endeavour, and will probably die in a failed attempt. If I am totally committed, then after several years of training, I will be in excellent shape, and will be able to handle the trip.

Which brings us to the final portion of the phrase. "Because it must be done."

Although it is ultimately up to the individual to know why they must do this or that, and I suspect that many people have never bothered to wonder why they do anything, it is the "Why?" that creates a philosophical imperative out of a causal imperative. "Why?" questions are the ones that create the high levels of commitment that make the impossible possible.

Returning to the Apollo 13 example, the "why" the oxygen system needed to be jury-rigged was obvious, and the philosophical necessity of fixing it created an extreme commitment in all of the engineers that approached the problem. Instead of wondering if it could be done, they started with the presupposition that it could be done, and from there worked to find the solution.

Now, it bears mentioning that the "Why?" of a situation is not always known to the individual, and doesn't truly need to be. There have been a great many people who have done great things without knowing why they were so driven to do them. However, the fact remains that because they believed that it must be done, they went out and did it.

To put it all together, what must be done (because there is a philosophical imperative to do it) can be done (because the high level of commitment and effort put towards doing it will make it possible), because it must be done (the philosophical imperative that it must be done requires that high level of commitment).

Freedom

"If you really want to understand freedom, spend a week without wearing a coat in the dead of winter. By the end of the week, you'll understand freedom a lot better."

Of course, that sounds insane. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to not wear a coat when there's snow on the ground?

Well, because they have the freedom to, and they're exercising their freedom. Obviously, there are uncomfortable side effects to exercising one's freedom, and that's the point. They're free to do something, and they did it, accepting the cost of their freedom.

Everyone, everywhere, is free. You *are* free, totally free, to do anything you want, at any point, as long as you have the logistical and physical capabilities to pull it off. Want to climb Mt. Everest? Just do it. Want to rob a bank? Feel free to try. Want to resist a tyrannical government? I wish you the best.

But, you say, "I can't do that! Someone will stop me!"

No, someone will try to stop you. Someone will pressure you, someone may threaten you, but like a man without a coat, you're only capable of being threatened if you care what sorts of discomforts you'll have to deal with. If you don't care if you're cold, does the lack of a coat threaten you?

Being free is simply a matter of not caring what you lose. As the singer said, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." If you're not concerned with creature comforts, you'll never be subservient to the people who control them. The people who are worried about losing their electricity, and their plentiful supply of new clothes, and their bargain-bin junk foods at the local grocery store, those are the people who are slaves.

If you're willing to pay the price for it, you can do anything, absolutely anything, that's within your power to do. Freedom should never have been defined as the level of control someone else has over you, because you're only as controlled as you let yourself be. The men with guns, who "control" other people through the threat of violence only have control because people are afraid of them. If someone stands up to them, and says "Hell, go ahead and kill me, but I'm not going to move unless you do", strange things may happen.

Like a column of tanks stopping for one unarmed man.

He was free. 

The rest of his country isn't.

Freedom is a state of mind, not a political situation.

A few (ANGRY) thoughts on the Eucharist

I was once refused the Eucharist at an Orthodox service I attended with a friend. He's Orthodox, I'm Methodist (mostly), and because I'm not Orthodox, I wasn't allowed to partake of the Eucharist. I've been refused the Eucharist at Catholic services, too, for the record. I don't know the exact reasons they have for excluding me, and personally, I couldn't be made to care.

The reason I don't care is that if we really get down to what Jesus was saying, and who He was saying, there isn't a single person who has the moral authority to refuse to serve the Eucharist to anyone. This is Biblical. Disagree with me? Please refer to Matthew 26:25-29, Mark 14:22-25, and Luke 22:14-23.

Let's take a real close look at who was at that table, shall we? Eleven trusted disciples, and one guy that Jesus knew in advance would betray him. Eleven believers, one traitor. Judas. Neither Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke depict Judas leaving before the Eucharist was given. So we can say, for certain, that nothing says Jesus refused to serve Judas the Eucharist.

So where, exactly, does anyone in the church get the balls to refuse a believer from a different denomination the Eucharist? Jesus served someone who sold him out for a bunch of coins, but the man with the funny clothes won't serve someone who goes to a church in a converted ice skating rink building?

For that matter, where does anyone even get the balls to refuse to serve a non-believer? Tell me, learned one, if Jesus served Judas, what right do you have to refuse to serve the guy that just walked in off the street? Do you know something Jesus didn't? Do you have more authority than Jesus to choose who can partake of what Jesus called HIS body and HIS blood?

Alright, so they don't have the authority, after all, but a better might be, why do they even want to exclude anyone in the first place?

I mean, if we really think about it, what possible reasons could we have for not wanting a sinner or *GASP* one of those heretical (other denomination inserted here)-types taking communion?

"...this is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."

Just think of all the people we could exclude from being forgiven for their sins! We don't want God saving any of those dirty hippies, and certainly none of those commies, either. That guy with long hair definitely shouldn't be forgiven. That girl wearing clothes that are too revealing obviously needs to be excluded. If we start extending Christ's forgiveness to just anyone, what will happen to our church?

(Father in Heaven, please forgive the previous paragraph. I don't mean it.)

One of my best friends is a stripper. We've been friends for years, and yeah, I've told her on more than one occasion about what I believe, and what Jesus can do for her. Trust me, there is no one in the entire world I want to come to a knowledge of Christ more than her.

I desperately want her at that table. 

Or would they exclude her, because it's wrong to want her seated at Christ's table if she hasn't already been saved?

Do I think that just because she might take the Eucharist, she'd automatically be forgiven? No, of course not. It's not a magic ritual, nor a metaphysical equation. On the other hand, she might just spend the next hour pondering what exactly Jesus meant when He said that it was his blood, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins, and what that meant for her. 

God has worked in stranger ways.

Then again, maybe the long-haired guy and the stripper may just be waiting for a chance to be disrespectful. They'll eat too many cross-stamped communion wafers, they'll take TWO of those single-ounce clear plastic cups we serve the non-alcoholic grape juice in, and then they'll go back home and fornicate without being married in a church, by a preacher. They'd offend God! They'd disrespect our precious traditions!

Which, of course, everyone reading this has done. We've all offended God.

Or maybe they forgot what the Eucharist was really about? It was Jesus explaining to his disciples what He was about to do on the cross. He was pouring His blood out to make a new covenant for us, and He wants us ALL to be a part of it. (1 Tim 2:3-6)

All of us. Not just people in my denomination, but everyone.

Orthodox. Catholics. Calvinists. Methodists. Jews. Gentiles. Pharisees. Pagans. Atheists. Drug users. Homosexuals. Porn addicts. Alcoholics. Strippers. Metalheads. Assholes. Bitches. Jerks. Retards. You. Me.

Everyone. 

My church calls it Communion. Come on in. Grab a cup, and let's partake of the meal Christ has offered us. No matter what you've done, He's willing to forgive you of all of it. It's not really complicated, you just need to humbly ask for forgiveness. It's not easy, I know, but I've been there, and trust me, I'll be there again. I'm not better than you, and if I look down on you, please remind me of what Christ did for me.

None of us are perfect here, but you're more than willing to join us. We'll eat tasteless wafers that we've stamped a cross on, and we'll drink grape juice out of comically small cups. We'll remember that it's got nothing to do with bread or wine, and that it's got a whole lot more to do with us being sinners, and Jesus dying for us.

And when we see someone walk in the door that doesn't look like they belong in a church, we'll know that they're definitely right where they belong, and we'll make sure to offer to share our feast with them.

After all, it happened to us once.

AAR: Buffalo River camping trip.

Situation:

A single-night, 15-mile backpacking trip. CRT taken from Kyle's Landing to Steel Creek Campground first day, returned via ORT second day. Pack weight was about 30 pounds, including water. Temperature was moderate, highs in upper seventies, lows in lower sixties. Slept directly on the ground. Food cooked over a small camp stove.

Notes:

Waist belt on pack too high to provide much support. Majority of weight carried on shoulders, leading to pretty serious fatigue. Pack then suffered a structural failure, and a frame rod started protruding into back of left arm. Replacement mandatory.

Boots/socks combination worked beautifully. The socks stayed fairly dry, and kept my feet dry enough that I had no blisters. Additional pairs of socks recommended for longer operations.

Toenails need to be trimmed more completely before the trip. Attention needs to be paid to the little toes. There was some pain by the end of the trip, but nothing debilitating.

Sleeping provisions adequate, but misused. I should have slept on the rain poncho, which would have kept the moisture from leeching heat out of me. It was a cold night, staying dry would have prevented that. I slept well, given the circumstances, but it would have been a problem on a multi-day operation.

Handgun regarded as sufficient for all non-bear problems. However, it was stowed in the pack, since OC not legal in state of trip. Workaround necessary.

Ticks found in unpleasant areas after trip. Research required, and some method of prevention needs to be found. Long pants tucked into boots regarded as sufficient for most hikes, perhaps they crawled in at night.

Meal arrangement satisfactory. More protein recommended, but hot meals for breakfast and dinner, with protein or granola bars for lunch more than sufficient. Double calories when estimating requirements.

Pack loadout was minimal, but still tiring. Sadly, sole conclusion to be drawn from this is a lack of fitness. Recommend strength-training exercises, additional cardio, and weekly or bi-weekly hikes to force body to remember how to hike. Hills required, we really slowed down on those.

100-oz Camelback more than sufficient. AO had sufficient water that resupply was possible multiple times per day. Rate-of-consumption drained bladder in about six miles or so of walking.

Additional t-shirts required. To be changed at each long break in hiking. Possible alternate to this is a tshirt of different construction that wicks away moisture.

Recommendations and changes:
Replace pack. This is an absolute necessity.

Strength training of legs required. Short hikes with intentionally high weight loadings recommended to keep operational weight loadings relatively low recommended.

Reorganization of loadout recommended to keep handgun within two movements of reach. Stuffed into a pocket on the back of the pack doesn't work if there's an angry animal around.

Neither Would I

As the movie opens, a grim man looks at the barbarian chieftan, and scoffs. "People should know when they are conquered." The grizzled veteran next to him looks at him and says "Would you, Quintus? Would I?"

If some country, one full of Red Star-wearing commies, invaded us, kicked the crap out the US military (stay with me, here, I know it's an absurd example) and then told us that they'd stay in our country until we forgot about our heroes like George Washington, George Patton, and John McClane, about what time do you think we'd be cool with it?

If you're unsure of the answer, let me explain it for you:

I'd be cool with it at some point after my body had assumed room temperature. There is literally no point at which I'd give up, no point at which I'd back down, no point at which I'd forgive the offense given when people tried to bury my way of life, my history, and my heroes.

There's about a million other people like me.

Now, think about trying to pacify, with bombs, tanks, and infantry, a million people who absolutely refuse to back down, because there's no point at which they'll accept the terms of surrender. They'll never accept not being Americans, they'll never accept being commie scum, or whatever, because to do so would force them to betray everything they've ever believed in. Every last one of them would have to be killed, and fast enough that they couldn't inspire others to fight off the invaders.

You all know the type of people I'm talking about. If you're not one of them, you know one of them. Course, you might not know that you know one of them, but I digress.

Now, I'm sure you can understand that the sort of people who created the Gadsden flag are not unique to America. They've been part of every country, at every point in history. They're the patriots who've kept every country free from foreign control every time any pissed-off neighbor invaded them. They're the people who crawled out of the hills and said "No, fuck you, Russia, we're not going to lay down and die just because you've got Hind helicopters and we've got cast-off Kalashnikovs."

Afghanistan is the single most-invaded place on earth. I know that America likes to forget that the world existed long before the Declaration of Independence was signed, but honestly, we need some perspective here.

The Afghan people will never stop fighting us because they never stopped fighting anyone else. The United States (Oh, sorry, NATO) is simply the latest invader in a long list of invaders that goes back to before Alexander of Macedonia.

Is there any reason, any reason at all, that anyone can think of that will simply convince the Afghan people to give up, when they've never given up before?

So, now, let's get to the applicable portion of this:

We need to convince the Afghans that they should stop fighting us, and start telling the Taliban, and Al Qaeda, and all the rest of the militant durkadurkas to fuck off all the way out of their country.

On Sept 12, 2001, a pundit named Ann Coulter said that in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." It was not exactly well-received at the time, since the idea that Christianity will ever stop war and violence is a politically incorrect thing to say, both now and then.

But, after nearly eleven years of warfare, I wonder if perhaps it's not time to move to step three of Coulter's plan. For eleven years, we've dropped bombs, killed leaders and driven around in armored vehicles. A scientist would say that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing twice, expecting different results.

Is it time to try something else?

Perhaps, in a way, maybe spreading Christianity can be viewed as an extended PSYOPS campaign. We want these people to stop fighting us, to throw off the shackles of radical Islam, and to stop living in a feudal society. We're not going to pull that off just by dropping another round of JDAMs on their houses, I think it's clear that Plan A isn't working anymore.

The nice part of creating religious converts, stepping outside my usual True Believer viewpoint, is that they're absolutely fanatical. They're more apt than anyone else to tell their friends and family what they just became. If we really want to tear down a Muslim country, is there a better plan than to simply start converting Muslims into Christians?

Of course, I am very much a True Believer, and I am at war. Let me assure you that, just like if my country was to be invaded, I will not stop fighting against my enemy, and I am extremely well-armed.

Somewhere, A Child...

On Sept 11, 2001, 19 Al Qaeda terrorists trained in Afghanistan hijacked four commercial airlines, and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvannia. It was the worst terrorist attack in US history, and provoked a US-led invasion of Afghanistan, which toppled the Taliban from their position as a religious dictatorship in Afghanistan.

For the past eleven years, the US has continued to pursue remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in an attempt to pacify Afghanistan so that the people who were oppressed by the Taliban can have a chance to decide their own fate as a country. Most of the country is populated by tribes, the vast majority of whom have no interest in world politics, or even national politics. They care about their families, their cousins, and survival.

The majority of them are unable to read. Even if they had access to it, they couldn't read a newspaper, a local political blog, an internet news website, or even Hamid Karzai's twitter feed. They have no functional contact with the outside world. It is not unheard of for them to be unaware of the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, or the precise reasons for the US invasion.

Somewhere, a child in Afghanistan is nearing his eleventh birthday. He has no idea why the US military occasionally drives through his village. He has no idea why a bomb was dropped on his neighbor's house, only that a different group of foreigners had asked for hospitality for the night, or had pointed guns at the family that owned the house, or had given a great speech about fighting off the infidel hordes. He doesn't care about any of the reasons the foreigners give, all he cares about is making sure it doesn't happen again.

Slowly, or perhaps no so slowly, he is beginning to hate foreigners, and the West in particular. He lives in a country that has been invaded more times than any other place on the map, and his tribe has been fighting invaders from one place or another for most of history. By the time he becomes an adult, he will still not be able to read, but he will be well-versed in the usage of a Kalashnikov, and may have even had training with other heavy weapons.

There will come a time when he has seen enough bombs dropped on his country, has seen enough foreigners marauding through his village, has seen enough war, that he will be pushed across the line and will never stop fighting. Eventually he will be killed in the same war that he hated as a child, for he will become the very thing that the war was started to stop.

I have an idea that perhaps, somewhere, a child in Afghanistan needs to be introduced to people who believe in Jesus. People who forgive violence, not seek revenge. People who know what it's like to live in peace with their neighbors. People who know what Mercy is, and Grace, because they've experienced it.

For eleven years, that child has known only war.

It's time to teach him the Peace that comes from knowing Christ.