Grain Bin Ruins A Thanksgiving

I guess this falls between news and what-in-the-world. A family in Iowa lives next to a brand new grain silo. What could happen?


Astounding. I wonder what the girl is thinking. "'Move to Iowa!' they said. 'It's safer here,' they said." "Well, if we ever find the turkey..."

How could you possibly explain this to your friends or out-of-town family coming for Thanksgiving? A grain bin fell on our house? I wonder if their grandkids would even believe this story. "We were watching TV and then a half-million bushels (17,619.5 cubic meters) of corn came into our living room, knocking our house off it's foundation and putting us in our neighbor's yard." Their progeny would think them senile.

Another Handy Google Tool

Hey there, folks! Just checking in on my blog. I have been working on some pieces, but they're not flowing out as easily as I'm used to. I'm beginning to wonder if they should even see light on my blog. Something to pray about anyway.

In the meantime, as everyone's turkeys are thawing in savory anticipation of this Thursday, I'd like to introduce a tool I just discovered today. Google Notebook seems to allow anyone with a Google account to copy snippets of text to a private data collection on the web. This is a big deal for researchers working from more than one computer. Instead of toting the data with you, why not simply log in and pull it down when you need it?

Unplanned Round Up In Utah

I can't say I blame the cows...

The Two Income Trap, Or How I Stopped Worrying And Learned to Love E-Z Credit

This is a bit dry and academic, but trust me. When it comes to your pocketbook, this is probably the most valuable hour you will ever spend. I believe we're coming to a financial crunch point and it's going to hurt.



Did you catch the part about people valuing better public school districts and how that drove up home values too high. Yes, there is such a thing as too high just like there is such a thing as too low. Spending too much on the basics is doing damage to our economy that we may now realize all too late. We need a housing market correction or our economy will bear an even bigger shock very, very soon. The best way to do that is deregulate public schools and giving parents vouchers. Unlike the guest author, I don't think that re-regulating the banks is going to help. That's tinkering too much. Undo the bankruptcy laws of 2000 and deregulate schools. That will save our bacon by bringing things down slowly. It's either that or everyone should start homeschooling.

The Yoke's On Me

It's an odd thing, really, but I find that the only time that I have the energy and a cooperative body, I need to do work that God has lined up for me to do. I never have the energy for all of my self-initiated projects, efforts and plans. It's almost as if I am being micromanaged by God. "Yes, you may do this. No, you may not do that." On the other hand, micromanagement is such a negative term for what I've found to be a truly meaningful process.

When I was fresh out of high school, I started attending a small congregation with Karen, who was then my girlfriend. The church was pastored by Fred Wright, a very good teacher. One of his most memorable sermons had to do with the passage in Matthew 11 where Jesus said,

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Pastor Wright had brought a yoke, which most people have never seen in person before. A yoke is a long, heavy beam designed to lay across the necks of two oxen or other beasts of burden. Two U-shaped brackets are put under the necks and locked into place. Both animals are forced to walk at the pace of the other. Otherwise the yoke twists their necks, causing significant pain for both. An ill-fitting yoke would cause blisters and make the animal useless. So when Jesus said for us to take His yoke, he meant for us to be fastened to him, side by side, moving together. He goes further to correct what most farmers would have thought about yokes by saying that his is easy and light. It was no small deal for oxen to take a load across the neck and pull against it. Most religions I have seen traffic in heavy burdens, all except biblical Christianity.

On one hand, I can look at my situation and say "I'm screwed!" I could say it the old way, "Woe is me!" I've been on that road, and it doesn't lead anywhere I want to go. On the other hand, I could look over at Jesus and do what He's doing. He gets the glory, and I learn how to walk with God in my heart. That’s my hope, my one true way and the only chance for my survival. He came that I could have life, and have it to the hilt. I find it by walking with Him, not wandering project to project. When I die, I don’t want people to say, “Boy, that Steve sure worked hard and got a lot of stuff done!” I want them to say, “He loved his God, his bride and his family, and he loved them well.”

Halo 3 and Youth Group - A Toxic Mix?

When I was growing up, video games were more or less a novelty. Pac-Man, at right, made a lot of money in the arcades, mostly in quarters (remember cash?), but no one really considered a home gaming market, mostly because the technology didn't exist. Today, a wildly popular game such as Halo 3 grosses $170,000,000 in the first week of sales, out-pacing the figures for Harry Potter books and film releases. It is cultural currency of the highest order. It's also rated M for mature by ESRB, and with good reason. According to the experts, it's a violent, gory first-person shooter.

This game is a boon to anyone looking to train skilled commandos willing to dispatch their targets with extreme prejudice. It's not so helpful for parents who are trying to raise normal, healthy human beings. What's even more troubling is the fact that some churches are incorporating this game into their youth activities. I realize that some times that youth leaders are using some unusual tactics to build community with the kids, but some ideas are not worth pursuing, like bobbing for goldfish (wasn't that an old frat trick?). I have to wonder at the wisdom of incorporating WWJBA? into any program (What Would Jesus Blow Away?). Whose decision is it to expose any child to the violent imagry in this game?

If the questions thrown at youth ministry seem unfair, you should probably know that I was a youth leader for a few long years, meeting success and failure week in, week out. What I didn't realize until long after my work with youth was over was that Sunday School and youth programs started off not to minister to the youth of the church, but as an outreach effort to bring in new believers at young ages. It was an overt, deliberate attempt to bring about child evangelism. No wonder it's doing a poor job raising our children! When I was serving as a youth leader, I had a dramatic insight as to why youth ministry is so tough today. Parents, nominal pillars of the church community, would foist their kids on me and directly or indirectly say, "Here you go. Teach them about God." How is any youth group leader going to undo in 2 hours what the teen has been up to the other 164 hours that week? Parents are the rank and file defenders of their children, something most parents seem to have forgotten or summarily abandoned. Any youth or children's pastor needs to focus on child evangelism and parents need to lead their children into the deeeper waters of biblical Christianity, not abandoning them to a youth leader.

In the case of Halo 3, I find myself agreeing strongly with Paul Asay of Plugged In Online. I have a hard time convincing myself that it's a valid tool. There's a reason M ratings are handed out and parents of teens, Christian or secular, would find their parental rights undermined by the church leaders in such a tactical blunder. Sorry, but Halo 3 should be dropped like a sack of potatos for use in Christian youth evangelism or any youth program.

Why Renegade Teachers Kidnap Their Students - A Social Reckoning

I think I'm beginning to understand what's going on here. As most homeschooling parents know, teaching fosters a sense of intimacy. For a lot of professional teachers, they keep it cool by distancing themselves from their students or putting it in a pseudo-parental relational context. Unfortunately, there's a lot of folks out there that mistake these feelings of intimacy for love and it manifests itself in an adult relationship with a non-adult student. The teacher is unable to distinguish these feelings from real love, a commitment to the better good of the beloved, and makes choices that give them short term gratification while bringing the long-term destruction that no sensible person would choose.

What continues to bother me is the alarming frequency of these incidents showing up in the news. I suspect that many more of these incidents go unreported or under-reported. My heart questions why our society places adults in a non-familial role that produces such strong feelings of intimacy in the first place. I don't want to hit this too hard, but the Bible instructs parents, not teachers, to teach their children. Although most parents won't admit to as much, I believe that when we drop off our kids at church or at school, we are rolling the dice and hoping our children won't be exposed to this abuse. We're better off keeping them with us at both places. Putting parents back in the classroom is a good start. Keeping the kids with us at home is better.

On a related note, Tia Linscheid blogs on Home Where They Belong about what else students are being asked to keep from their parents.

My Bio

Here's a little bit about me, in case you're wondering.

I am 6 foot even (usually) and I battle my weight a lot. I'm currently near my maximum of 370 lbs. although a lot of that is left over from my body building days in high school. So I don't look that heavy, but I sure do feel it. Please don't recommend a diet because I can't lose weight if I'm not able to exercise that much. Has my weight contributed to my disability? Absolutely, but it's hard to know which was the precipitating factor, the cause for the other.

Ok so far? All right. I was born in Colorado and first lived on a mountain pass west of Denver. I don't remember a whole lot, except being told I couldn't go outside to play because there were bears in our yard. Another unwelcome guest at this same house was the lightning. Two houses I have lived in have been struck by lightning, but the one on the pass was struck multiple times, usually taking it through my mom's stainless steel kitchen sink, although we had ball lightning a couple of times according to my dad. My dad calls me Sparky because of my tendency to find thunderstorms in the mountains.

Education was difficult for me. I was "gifted and talented," although they never clarified which of the two I belonged to. I went to public and private schools. I've tested above average on raw intelligence--this doesn't mean I'm wise--and I was diagnosed with what came to be known as ADHD. These factors practically guaranteed that I would not fit in with the crowd and when you go to a private school with only one or two cliques, this means you're alone in your outsider's world. Rejection stinks, and it was one of my motivating factors in deciding to homeschool my children. College was better both academically and socially, but I ran out of money before I was able to complete my degree. Based on my experience, I don't recommend college for anyone until they are sure they know what they want to do for the rest of their lives.

I've made a lot of mistakes in life but here's what I consider my biggest that if I had it to do over again, I would. I started dating girls around age 13. I broke a lot of hearts and had my heart broken a lot in those next five years. I got emotionally and physically involved where I had no right. This isn't a recrimination on any of the girls I dated. I simply should have not been in those relationships in the way I was involved and I often wonder if I made any positive contribution to any of them. I probably did, but it's hard to see it looking back.

God is amazing, and he allowed me to start over. I realized my mistake and repented, promising myself I would let God direct me to my wife when He judged I was ready. A few months later, I found myself falling in love with my friend and future wife, Karen. We were engaged far too long, but even then, God helped us and kept us from messing things up. Our wedding was a simple, church ceremony by our pastor and God was a big part of the ceremony. Our honeymoon was in Silver Creek, a beautiful, smaller ski resort.

Making the adjustment to married life is never very easy, but we made a good decision in getting good counseling before getting married that saved us a lot of grief. We found ourselves being drawn to youth ministry and that defined our role in our church for years.

Eight months after our wedding, I was involved in a car accident that didn't seem too terrible, but it was the pebbles that started the avalanche towards my disability. I rear-ended another car and found myself folded around the shoulder strap of my seatbelt. The injury to my throacic part of my spine was treated, but it never really healed. In five years, I made a career migration to an office job that was less demanding and allowed me to earn more. I ended up working for ministries based in Colorado. That's what I did for a day job, but my wife and I began to find ourselves moving from youth ministry toward young marrieds and families.

Our family began growing in 1996 with the birth of our first daughter and grew again in 1999 with our first son. Our introduction to parenthood was traumatic with our daughter requiring a crash C-section and cardiac surgery 40 hours afterward. God was amazing and walked us through the first days and years of parenting.

My wife and I first began feeling our long-term calling in our first year of marriage, but it didn't really hit home until our realization that we were burning out on youth ministry. We took a very low cost retreat and it had a deep impact in our lives on all levels. We began to see that performing as servants of God is a distant second to being His children and that we needed to plug into God as the source of our strength instead of relying on ourselves. The retreat was a key moment in our lives where God allowed us to reconnect with Him and with each other.

Our vision now is to see God use this in more people's lives, especially those who are in ministry themselves and needing to make adjustments. We believe that despite my limitations, God can do great things in us. We are eager for what he wants to do in us and through us.

Comic Relief

I did some figuring today and realized that by this Friday, I will have seen seven (VII) different doctors in the last month for everything from my eyes to my feet. My wife and I both have writer's cramp in our hands from filling out form after form. (Who is this Hippa person anyway?) I'm glad to have all these checks, but I've got to space them out more! I now have the most of the easy listening music as well as the morning talk show programs rolling around in my head, followed by the voice of Judy Tenuta yelling, "Boy, gettin' cured will kill ya!" I think this is the most unique side-effect of the medications that I've experienced...so far, anyway.

In honor of, or perhaps because of, all these doctors, I'm putting on some much-needed comic relief. I now present (via YouTube) Tim Conway and Harvey Corman in The Dentist Sketch.

Using the Wrong Compass

Would you let your kids visit a site that offers them their own personal familiar spirit based on a creature of nature and they called it a "daemon?" What if they made a movie about it? What if in the end of the stories it told that the children killed God and did as they chose?

The stories I'm talking about are part of a series called His Dark Materials and the movie is called The Golden Compass. The author, Phillip Pullman set out to literally invert Milton's Paradise Lost by becoming one of those on the side of darkness. He creates a strawman of God by making him a feeble old angel and his church to be the real center of evil power needing to be overthrown.

Although Pullman has taken exception to it, his trilogy is compared as the antithesis to The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Pullman levels charges at Lewis, finding him contemptible. Pullman also lumps God with all religions, an error committed by most atheists, and judges the church a corrupt and repressive regime.

New Line Cinema is producing the film, the same that produced The Lord of the Rings trilogy. My admiration for producing such a work based on Tolkien's books is now turned to revulsion for producing Pullman's gnostic daemons. Don't expect me to buy any of New Line's work for a while unless they drop the film.

Pullman's strawman Authority (by any other name) is no match for my very real God Who created the heavens and the earth. The same God who created us gave us brains for seeing through strawmen and for grasping the laws--natural and spiritual--that He created. While Pullman would say that God's laws are repressive and harmful, I have found the opposite to be true. God's laws, like those of any good parent, are to help us avoid injury and stay in fellowship with him and with each other. Anything else is simply fantasy.

Pullman is one of the people that Peter wrote to us about, warning that their claims of special knowledge and real truth are empty and self-destructive. Why have anything to do with them? Know the truth: God made you and He loves you as His child. There is nothing better than to accept His offer of a redeemed, full relationship with Him and eternal life, enjoying that relationship and his creative beauty forever. The Bible is the true golden Compass. It is not any special interpretation of the truth by one man, but a letter written through many hands by the same God. It will be a great day (hopefully not the last day) when Pullman wakes up to that reality.

Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted. He demands our worship, our obedience, our prostration. Do we suppose that they can do Him any good, or fear, like the chorus in Milton, that human irreverence can bring about ‘His glory’s dimunition’? A man can no more diminish God’s glory be refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell. But God wills our good, and our good is to love Him…and to love Him we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces. If we do not, that only shows that what we are trying to love is not yet God — though it may be the nearest approximation to God which our thought and fantasy can attain. Yet the call is not only to prostration and awe; it is to a reflection of the Divine life, a creaturely participation in the Divine attributes which is far beyond our present desires. We are bidden to ‘put on Christ’, to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little.

- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Tia from HomeschoolBlogger.com wrote about this a few days ago. The comments alone are worth your time.