Month: April 2013

No, I’m not going to write about the basketball player “coming out” as a homosexual and being lauded as if he were Jackie Robinson, Neil Armstrong, and Joan of Arc rolled into one. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin just about covers that, don’t you think?

Instead, I’d like to introduce you to the Cardiff Giant, now residing at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, NY (see http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2172 ).

The creation of an atheist who wanted to make fools of rural Christian fundamentalists, the Cardiff Giant was dug up in 1869 by workmen, after being planted by its maker. He made a lot of money showing it around the country. P.T. Barnum got jealous and fabricated his own Cardiff Giant. When both giants turned up at the same place at the same time, the hoax imploded. Very soon, it was hard to find anyone who would admit he’d ever believed the giant was real.

People are easy to fool. Always have been, always will be. It’s part of our heritage from Adam and Eve, who started the trend. Election results show that it’s easy to fool people very badly.

Folks wanted to believe in the Cardiff Giant, and they let it get the better of whatever sense they had. I don’t think that’s changed; do you?

 

And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.

(I Timothy 5:13)

I have a neighbor whose chief delight is to search out damaging information about her various neighbors and pass it on to others. She claims to have relatives in law enforcement who help her out by consulting police computer records. “Did you know that so-and-so was in jail for embezzlement?” And if there’s no data forthcoming from the cops, she can always fall back on, “I saw/heard/heard about so-and-so doing this or that reprehensible thing.”

My wife and I have received many of these communications, although we’ve never asked for them. I shudder to think what she’s telling other people about us.

You know what really mystifies me? I can’t imagine why this turns her on. I mean, some of it is to get back at people who have problems with her thirtysomething waste-of-space of a son. She treats him like he’s six years old, with predictable effects on his behavior. Gee, I yelled at him for playing loud crappy music all day. I wonder what she’s dug up about me.

When Our Lord said, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matthew 6:34), He was teaching us something important–a lesson that hardly anyone has ever listened to. Most of us have enough trouble without being inundated with our neighbors’ misdeeds. I know I do.

Nevertheless, the Internet is packed these days with websites offering to fill you in on everything bad or illegal that anyone in your town has ever done. I guess it’s something to do while waiting for the Apocalypse.

 

I’ve just gotta get some rest this weekend. My wife tells me the little grey cells seem to be running on empty. I think I ought to smoke a cigar or two, and watch some fanciful movies, and get myself in the mood maybe to start writing Book #7 next week. It has a super title, but I’m not ready to reveal it yet–mostly because I haven’t yet discovered what it means.

Meanwhile, let me leave you with this thought.

John Dewey (1857-1952) is widely considered to be the all-time greatest American philosopher ever–the man who, more than anyone else, is responsible for the nature and the results of public education in America. That alone ought to be enough to get him chucked out of a high window. He also helped write The Humanist Manifesto I, penning the immortal words, “The universe is self-existing and not created.” Atheist knucklehead.

Among his other talents, Dewey preached the doctrine of radical uncertainty. According to him, we can never know anything for sure. Now according to me, no one can say “We can never know anything for certain”  (but knowledge is always for certain, or else it isn’t knowledge) without necessarily implying, “I can never know anything, either.”

That being the case, old sport, you not knowing anything, why in the devil’s tobacco pouch has anybody ever listened to you??? Why are you, a self-confessed stunata, America’s greatest philosopher?

P.S.–How to Order My Books (in case this is your first time here and you don’t know, and maybe haven’t noticed that I’ve even got books I want you to read): It’s very simple. Just go to the top of the page and click “Books,” and you will be taken to the  online store, where you can order one of my books from amazon.com with a few easy clicks of the mouse. It occurs to me that I’ve posted so much other stuff here, someone might easily fail to notice I have books available.

 

At home yesterday, Patty and I received two lessons on the limitations of the human mind.

I was playing a chess game on line–a kind of correspondence chess, in which you get three days in which to make your move. Because false modesty would defeat the purpose of this essay, I must say that I’m really rather good at chess: probably as good as anyone can get without professional coaching, an awful lot of work at chess, and a lot of chess software to help me along.

I was patiently working toward a clear win, when suddenly I lost! Zap–checkmate! I was so focused on my own plan that I got careless; and my opponent seized on the one little mistake I made, and that was that.

How can that happen? In chess, there’s no element of luck. All the information is right in front of you–nothing is hidden. But anyone who studies the history of chess, as I do, knows that even the greatest masters occasionally make a disastrous blunder or play just a downright lousy game.

Meanwhile, my wife set aside a pack of needles which she needed for a certain project; and when she sat down to work on that project, lo and behold, the needles were gone! We turned the place upside-down looking for them. Of course the cats got blamed. We both looked in the drawer that the needles came out of–looked more than once, both of us, and no needles.

And finally my wife looked in the drawer one more time, and there they were. Duh!

What do these incidents tell us about the human mind?

That it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be!

So, please–before we claim to be able to make decisions for millions of other people, and solve world hunger, and direct the course of human evolution, and abolish poverty, blah-blah… could we first find the bleeding needles? Could we get the blooming chess game right? Could we come to terms with the truth that, in addition to being sinners, we are nowhere near as clever as we think we are?

 

I just noticed I have 999 comments on this blog, which means that the very next one will be No. 1,000–a milestone! So who’s it gonna be, and what’s he or she gonna say?

I know what I hope it’ll be:

“Dear Lee, I just ordered all 4 of your books and I forced all my friends and family to do it, too!”

I can dream, can’t I?

So I walk into a bank this morning, and I see this guy sitting in front of a desk, talking to a bank officer. Let me describe him to you, from the top down.

He was wearing a top hat, a la Fred Astaire, with a big long feather sticking out of it. His brown hair was long and bushy. His beard reached down almost to his navel, and he had carefully sculpted it so that it was shaped like a dagger–and had dyed it a dull black, maybe with shoe polish.

From what I could see of the rest of him, he was covered with tattoos from the neck down. I don’t know what it costs to turn yourself into the Illustrated Man. Probably a lot. And he was wearing a black leather jacket festooned with a multitude of metal things, trinkets and such.

He presented a bizarre visual experience. I can’t say I’m used to seeing characters like this in a bank. Hardly the place for it: this was definitely more like Walmart chic. And I couldn’t help wondering, “What the flaming dickens is he supposed to be?” It also crossed my mind, “Am I all right? Am I really seeing this?”

Not to judge by appearances, and all that–but it’s obvious this man went to a great deal of trouble to create that appearance. For what conceivable purpose? What message was he seeking to convey? I mean, is this what Western civilization looks like when it’s finally turned into a total pile of drivel? And can I please wake up now?

We have a wild rabbit who hangs out with us. Sometimes when we’re sitting in our lawn chairs, the bunny sits with us, nibbling the grass. One of the neighbors provides her (or him–we can’t tell) with sunflower seeds. Often if you whistle to the bunny, she’ll come bouncing across the yard to get closer to you.

Most years, we get baby bunnies. Once there were a couple of them frolicking in Patty’s garden. Another time I was standing in the parking lot and a few of the babies chased each other around and around me where I stood. Eventually the babies move away, but the big bunny stays.

All right, so I sound sappy–so what? We love these little beggars. They are a testimony that God’s stuff still works, even if man’s stuff doesn’t. The bunnies, the woodpeckers, the doves, and the squirrels around here just go about their business, even as our  civilization’s business melts into a corrupted mess.

We have our Lord’s promise that eventually He will put everything to rights, regenerate His whole creation. The date for that is already marked on His calendar. He will not fail to do it. Amen!