Kethuvim

I was sitting at home watching a show on TV that doesn't suck, when a commercial for one that does suck came on. It was a commercial for the new Survivor show. I think it takes place in Panama (or at least a Hollywood set that looks like Panama) or something. The new "twist" (please notice the quotes) is something called "Exile Island." Apparently one "castaway" at a time will have to stay on this island alone (which is due punishment for them agreeing to be on such a mind-numbingly crappy show in the first place), and try to survive. The commercial was hilarious because as it was describing this new facet to the game, it said something like, "On this island, they can find the key to winning the game...IF THEY SURVIVE!" This obviously begs the question, "Survive what?" Can they survive not being eaten by the camera crew, production team, and the team of medical doctors on the other side of the island? I'm sure the show would just let someone die off on screen.

Here's the reason I hate this show. These people aren't surviving anything. All it means is that the winner is the one who can go the longest eating worm larvae and rat pelvis or something. Who cares? Millions of people around the world have to endure that everyday and no one gives a crap. This has to be the most anti-climactic and boring show on television. There's no drama whatsoever. No one is going to die in this show, everyone will survive. If they want to do this show right, they need to drop 10 frumpy ignorant white supremacists in the middle of Compton, California with nothing more than their beer guts, and the clothes on their back and see how long they last. The last one standing wins...until he gets shot in the face. This format would solve a couple of problems. One, the name "Survivor" would actually mean something, and two, it would get rid of 10 morons. Maybe I should write to the network and make the suggestion.

I came across this prayer in a book titled, "The Book of Jesus." It is a collection of writings by numerous authors concerning Jesus. I think this would be a good prayer to incorporate daily. What do you think?

"O God, who has proven your love for all humanity by sending us Jesus Christ our Lord, and has illuminated our human life by the radiance of his presence, I give you thanks for this your greatest gift.
For my Lord's days upon the earth:
For the record of his deeds of love:
For the words he spoke for my guidance and help:
For his obedience unto death:
For his triumph over death:
For the presence of his Spirit within me now:
I thank you, O God.
Grant that the remembrance of the blessed Life that once was lived out on this common earth under these ordinary skies may remain with me in all the tasks and duties of this day. Let me remember--
His eagerness, not to be ministered unto, but to minister:
His symphathy with suffering of every kind:
His bravery in the face of his own suffering:
His meekness of bearing, so that, when reviled, he reviled not again:
His steadiness of purpose in keeping to his appointed task:
His simplicity:
His self-discipline:
His serenity of spirit:
His complete reliance upon you, his Father in heaven.
And in each of these ways give me grace to follow in his footsteps.
Amen.

I swear that I'm not obsessed with suffering. I don't like it anymore that anyone else, but for some reason, I keep happening onto these different passages concerning suffering. I can't get away from them. I come across them in the Bible, I come across them in other readings, I can't help it. I guess these passages stand out to me so much, because they fly in the face of the American Prosperity Gospel that is so prevelant today. Actually, most American Christians are raised on this type of thought and theology. It isn't all as overt and satanic as Joel Osteen's message or anything, but it's there nonetheless. For example, none of my preachers growing up ever claimed that God wanted you to be rich and powerful, but they still taught that, overall, God wanted you to be happy. So I grew up thinking that God wanted all to be happiness, and when something didn't make me happy, it was Satan's fault.

I've been studying Isaiah for quite awhile, and he touches upon this idea many times. I came across one I couldn't ignore this morning. These words I'm about to show you come from the King Hezekiah. He had been struck with an illness and then healed by God, and his words here are commenting on his situation.

"But what can I say? He [God] has spoken to me, and he himself has done this. I will walk humbly all my years because of this anguish of my soul. Lord, by such things men live; and my spirit finds life in them too. You restored me to health and let me live. Suely is was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back."

I wonder how these prosperity guys handle a passage like this. My guess is that they skip right over it because there's no way to refute Hezekiah's words and change them to mean something else. They sure as crap don't preach a passage like this. Hezekiah not only says that God was directly responsible for his suffering, but he say that "by such things men live." He is essentially saying that we cannot be whole and alive without suffering and anguish. He then has the audacity to blame God for his anguish then turn around and talk about God's love. This is just beyond fascinating to me, because it goes against our natural human reactions to adversity. Our first reaction is to blame God for his absence and then say things like, "God has a plan in all of this," although we know when we say it that we're full of crap. We never think of God sending suffering our way as his way of loving us. We feel punished. Yet Hezekiah (and it seems everyone else in the Bible) see it as a loving Father desiring growth from his people. I could go on forever with this stuff, but I want to hear what you all (3 of you) have to say.

I was studying in "Five Cities of Refuge" again this morning and came across something I had never thought about. To be honest, it made me feel a little bit better about something that has bugged me about God for a long time. The passage of study was the "Akedah" or "Binding of Isaac." This is the story where God inexplicably tests Abraham and tells him to go and sacrifice his son on Mt. Moriah. Just as an aside, "Moriah" in Hebrew means "awe-ful."

This story has always bugged me. Why couldn't God choose a test for Abraham that didn't include the near-slaughtering of his child? Why not have him walk to the nearest watering hole and tell him to walk across it? Why not tell him to spit a loogie in the air and tell him to make it, by faith, levitate in the air? I've never understood it until I studied this morning.

Abraham is standing on a mountain with a knife raised in the air, ready to drive it through Isaac, when a messenger of the Lord stops him. In order to understand the full depth of what is going on here, you have to look at all of the other cultures around at that time. Every other culture had "gods" that required infant or child sacrifice to appease them. God had to do this to show Abraham that he was a different god. He was the true God because he was so merciful and wasn't going to require this horrific act of his people. Sacrifice animals, not people.

For me, this helps me to see more of God's true nature. He isn't sick, he's merciful. I understand that he sent his only Son to be a sacrifice for the universe, but Jesus had the choice to go to the cross. He was human and could have backed out, but he didn't, so the argument that God sending his only Son to die being proof of God's sickness is irrelevant here.

This study this morning just reinforced my love for God and his mercy. Hopefully it does the same for yours.

I'm currently picking my way through a fine book by the title "Five Cities of Refuge." It's written by two Jewish guys, Lawrence Kushner and David Mamet. It's basically comprised of their reflections on weekly Torah readings. I'm using them as a supplement to my daily study. I was reading this morning about the Creation account of God's rest. I always assumed that God created everything in six days, got tired (if the Almighty can in fact tire), and rested from his labors. However, the Jewish understanding of this passage is that the creation and the rest are inseparable parts of the creation. Kushner says this, "We bless God's work, and ours, by quitting. The work and the rest, together make the world. They are inseparable."

Another interesting thought has to do with the name of God. God's most intimate name is yod-hey-vav-hey in the Hebrew. We know it as Yahweh. The sixth day of creation ends with these words, "...and there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day." I won't try to explain this next point, I'll let the text of the book speak for itself.

"The Hebrew for "the sixth day" is yom haShishi. The first letter respectively of each word is yod and hey, which, when joined with the first letter respectively of 'And they (the heavens and the earth) were finished...' is vav and hey, together spelling yod, hey, vav, and hey, the ineffable Name, the Name of the One who brings into being all that is, the Name of God. At last the sweat and the sigh inseparable."

Our time has to be spent with the sweat and the sigh. Without both elements, God's work is incomplete, making us incomplete. People don't rest anymore. When we cease to rest, we do a dishonor to God's creative work by stating through our actions that the Sabbath rest isn't really a part of life. Take a break. You will not be whole without it.

I like darkness. I don't know why. Light is actually much better, but for some reason I am drawn to it. Darkness is scary, everything bad in life is associated with darkness, but for some reason I can't get away from it. Jesus says he's the light, and as such, his followers are to live in the light as well. He has a good point, but at this point in my life, I still choose darkness more than light. I wonder why?

Why is it that so many of us "light-bearing" followers of Jesus shun the light and dwell in the darkness. Why is it so freakin' hard to live constantly in the light? Could it be that we are born with a propensity for darkness? Think about it. Do you have to teach a child how to be bad? Heck no, they manage that just fine by themselves. You do, however, have to teach them how to be good. If we born into light, we wouldn't have to be taught how to be good. I think it's Adam and Eve's fault. God laid a choice in front of them. Choose light, or choose darkness. They, of course, chose darkness and the rest is history. I think something cosmic happened at that point. I think the very fabric of God's creation changed. From that point on, we would still have the same choice to make, but it would be much harder to choose light.

So I think that the reason it is so hard to be good and to choose light and follow Jesus is because it goes against the very fiber of our beings. There is something in us (call it the Devil or whatever) that bends us toward darkness. Paul called it the "sinful nature." There is no way outside of God to be good. There is no way, outside of God's grace, to continually choose light. It has to be from him, because he is the light. May we trust in that light and follow it forever.

I stumbled upon a really great bookstore yesterday in our mall that sells a ton of really old hardback books. I happened upon a great book by Kahlil Gibran entitled, "Jesus, the Son of Man." It was written in 1928 and it tells the story of Jesus from the viewpoint of a bunch of people surrounding Jesus. It shows how each of these people may have viewed Jesus. I started reading it today, and I was instantly intrigued. I read the Mary Magdalene chapter today and I was fairly moved by it.

As the Bible states , Mary Magdalene was a "woman of ill repute." In other words, a prositute and slut. Her chapter in this book speaks of her first encounter with Jesus. Before I recount the scene from the book, I want to give you some context. She has already seen Jesus from afar and spoken with him some, and she is now trying to lure Jesus into her house.

And I said, "I beg you to come into my house." And it was all that was sod in me, and all that was sky in me calling unto Him.
Then he looked at me, and the noontide of His eyes was upon me, and He said, "You have many lovers, and yet I alone love you. Other men love themselves in your nearness. I love you in your self. Other men see a beauty in you that shall fade away sooner than their own years. But I see in you a beauty that shall not fade away, and in the autumn of your days that beauty shall not be afraid to gaze at itself in the mirror, and it shall not be offended.
"I alone love the unseen in you."

I have a couple of observations about this passage. First, it gave me the chills to think about Jesus' words and the fact that he utters the same words to us. We're all prostitutes, we all have other lovers besides Jesus, and yet, he is the only one who loves us as we really are. He's the only one that loves the unseen in us. Second, does anyone else wish they could see everybody through the same lens as Jesus? I noticed myself people-watching at the mall yesterday and I became shamingly aware of how quick I am to pass judgment on those I see. I make judgment calls based on the outside "seen" things in a person. How ridiculous. We're called to be like Jesus, and part of that is to see people as he sees them. I suck at it, do you?

There's been a great deal of debate over the lat couple of weeks pertaining to many "mega-churches" cancelling their Sunday services on Christmas. I think I'll weigh in on the issue with the full knowledge that no one gives a crap what I think anyway. Here goes.

I've done a great deal of thinking about this, and I've tried to look at it from both points of argument and I've come to the conclusion that cancelling Christmas service makes about as much sense as me being employed at a modeling agency. I understand that "mega-churches" require a lot of people to run their average service, I totally understand. My question is then, why can't you scale down your service and just have a sripped-down approach to worship without giant bands, Sunday school, dramas, and all the other superflous bullcrap that goes along with your normal Sunday? Why can't people just show up and worship God together, even if the attendence is 1/3 of what it normally is? My feeling is that, as a church, you worship with whoever decides that Jesus is important enough in their lives to show up to church, and if people want to stay home instead, so be it.

I know that these churches are having multiple services leading up to Christmas day, which is fine. However, somewhere during the last 2000 years of the Church, someone thought that the birth of Jesus was importnat enough to set aside a special day each year to celebrate it. Why wouldn't people want to worship together on this day? Personally, I'm looking forward to being with my brothers and sisters on Christmas day to worship together. I'm looking forward to singing, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" together and all of the other songs pertaining to this special day.

The greatest argument that I've heard from these churches who are cancelling is that Christmas is a family day. I'll certinaly be doing family things on Christmas day as are most people. My question in return is, what better way for a family to spend Christmas together than acknowledging the birth of our Savior? What can be more family oriented than that? The truth of the matter is that this whole argument is just a sympton of a greatly diseased North American Church.

For most American "Christians," Jesus is just something else that you do. So when Jesus gets in the way of our family time, we just cast him aside as another inconvenience to our plans. "I just don't have time for church with our Christmas schedule." "I just can't fit church into today, because we have to go to Aunt Mabel's house, and then go to Grandma and Grandpa Jones' house." The fact is that most people want Jesus in their lives until following him becomes inconvenient. "Give me Jesus, just don't let him get in the way."

I think presents can wait until a little later in the day this Sunday. After all, God's gift of his Son might just trump your new Ipod.

I'm still studying Isaiah. In fact, I'm pretty sure that God keeps adding new chapters every day. I'm on chapter 134; I thought there only used to be like 6o some chapters. Anyway, in 26:3, I came across a great passage.

"You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you."

"Steadfast" is a poor translation, because no one even knows what the crap it means. The Hebrew word is samak and it means, "confident." So the passage basically says that God grants perfect peace to those whose minds are confident. Confident in what? Confident in our God. Confident that he is good, and that he provides. Confident that he is loving.

Think about the correlation between confidence in God and having peace. What in the world could bother you if you have complete trust and confidence in God? What a sense of peace that would be!

A couple of things come to mind with this passage. First are the words of Paul, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, bring your requests before God. And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." In other words, stop freaking out about stuff and give it to God. Easier said than done, I fully realize. However, if we had confidence and trust in God, this would be easy, then we would have peace that surpasses all understanding.

The other thing that comes to mind is this quote from Thomas Merton. It's so good, that it deserves a bigger font.

"For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling off the edge, we find ourselves walking on the air."

Will you all now join in one big rousing "freakin' a"? Thank you. Now moving on, how many of us in tough times find ourselves falling off the edge instead of floating on air? I know I do most times. All of these things are connected. Faith, trust, confidence, and hope. It's all intertwined and it all leads to peace.

May God grant you peace in any circumstance.

No...I didn't say that St. Augustine was on something, I said that he was on to something. Anyway, at the ministry conference I recently attended in Nashville, I had the privilege of taking in a great seminar with Tony Campolo. In it he used a quote from St. Augustine which said, "The Church is a whore, and she is my mother."

I have a tendency to be a little skeptical of the Church and, yes, negative about the Church at times. I think that it is a natural part of being a minister. I don't know of many ministers that aren't cynical about the Church because we've all experienced the same stuff. We've heard guys who call themselves "leaders" suggest and say things in meetings that aren't even remotely biblical. We've seen the Church sell out to the very things that Jesus couldn't stand. We've been verbally attacked by people who don't think we have feelings. We've heard people call themselves by the name of Jesus and then turn around and spit on his memory by the things they do and say. We have every right to be cynical.

However, this quote has haunted me since I heard it. I can't get it out of my head. Every time I start griping about the Church, this quote pops into my head in an almost phantasmic way. It whispers to me things like, "The Church has been worse off than it is now." "You may be mad at the Church, but that's the body of Christ you're mad at." I can't shake it.

This quote, to me, basically means that the Church is always going to be a mess because it is made of fallible human beings. Even if I demanded its perfection, which I (subconsciously) do at times, I'm just as messy as everyone else. I certainly don't have it all together. This means that I injure Christ by what I do just as much as other people. I seem to remember Jesus saying something like, "Why worry about the speck in someone else's eye, when you have a plank in your own?"

The fact is that the Church is a whore. The Church continually runs after other lovers that can't give what our bridegroom can give to us. However, this whore is my mother, and it is my duty to love her as Jesus loves her.

Something sruck me today as I was studying. It wasn't a particularly revelatory moment or anything, just something I found interesting. In Isaiah 21:11-12, I read this,

"Watchman, what is left of the night? Watchman, what is left of the night?" The watchman replies, "Morning is coming, but also the night."

Morning is coming, but also the night. That seems to be a fairly enigmatic statement, yet one that drips with truth if you really let it soak in. That's how life works isn't it? Everything is bright and sunny, and yet, evening and darkness is inevitable. Every bit of daylight must be balanced equally with the same amount of darkness. When God created everything, his recipe read, " one part light, one part darkness." If you look at the creation story, at the end of every "day" it reads this, "And there was evening, and there was morning..." It seems that from the beginning, God wanted to get the point across that there had to be equal parts light and darkness for the universe to function as it should.

In the verse from Isaiah the watchman lets everyone know that morning was here, but darkness loomed in the distance. This would seem a good warning for us to all heed. Maybe when we're going through crap and times of night and darkness, it would help for us to realize that this is how the world is. It isn't that God delights in our suffering, maybe our suffering is just part of the created order of the universe. For every light, there must be darkness as a counterbalance.

Perhaps what we really need isn't another Joel Osteen self-help book to show us how to always be happy, maybe we should embrace the darkness (doesn't mean we have to necessarily enjoy it) as God's natural creative work in us to bring us to the perfection he desires from his creation. May we embrace our times of darkness as necessary parts of life, and may God say of us, "and it was good."

I woke up this morning ina slight panic. Panicked about what, you ask? I had these thoughts of, "I have no freaking idea how to be a father." Don't get me wrong, I'm totally stoked about being a dad, but how in the world do you parent in such a way that you don't end up on the Maury Povich show listening to your kid blame all of the world's problems on you? Not everyone with a problem child is a bad parent (at least I don't think so). I don't know of many parents who really want to raise a drug addict or a porn star. I look at some of the kids at the junior high and high school and think, "Good Lord, if my child is like that, I will kill them." How do I keep my child from being completely sucked into the world without sheltering them to the point that they can't cope with anything? How do I keep a daughter (if I have one) from ending up on Maury with her three boyfriends waiting for a paternity test to find out who the father is? How do I keep a son (see parenthetical statement on daughter) from being a sex-crazed maniac with a tatoo of a woman's rack on his arm?

I know that the easy answer is, "Look at God, he's the ultimate father," but last time I checked, I didn't create the freakin' universe either. I understand unconditional love, I just suck at it. I think I need a heaping helping of God's grace to get me through this one.

I never thought a fuzzy blob on an ultrasound could be so cute. This is baby Polley. He/she is 8 weeks old and the size of a blueberry. The important thing is that he/she is healthy and doing well right now. Please pray for continued health for baby Polley and mommy. I personally think he/she looks like Mandy, but has my eye sockets.

Over thanksgiving I went to my in-laws. This isn't the real story though. At some point we passed a church in their area and I saw a sign that made me do a double-take. They had a sign out front that was adverstising their coming Christmas dinner theater. The name of the dinner theater? Extreme Christmas. No wait...X-treme Christmas. After I finished laughing, I thought, "What exactly is extreme (x-treme) about the Christmas story?" Then I thought, "Didn't the "X-treme" marketing thing end like 10 years ago?" Apparently not.

I started perusing the Christmas story in the Bible and I didn't find the part where the baby Jesus burst from the womb on a snowboard holding a Mountain Dew. Perhaps I missed it. Wasn't the first beatitude "Blessed are the gnarly, for they will inherit the surf"? Anyway, I really wish I could get tickets to this dinner theater to watch the angels and wise men doing 360s and fakies. Good stuff.

In Isaiah 11, we read of the Branch from Jesse. This is a prophecy of the coming Mashiach (for those of you Hebrew speaking types), or Messiah (if you prefer to stick to English). At the tail end of verse three it says this about this man who is to come:

"He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears."

As Christians, we believe that this passage obviously speaks of Jesus. If we're going to agree that the point of being a disciple of a rabbi is to be like the rabbi, then I believe we need to pay serious heed to this statement in Isaiah. It says that Jesus did not judge by what he sees or hears about someone. This means that Jesus used some other way to make his calls about someone's character. Jesus looked at the heart of a person to determine who they really were. See his statements to the religious leaders when he calls them dirty cups, whitewashed tombs, etc. He basically told them that on the outside they looked great and together, but on the inside they were filled with death.

Does anyone else suck as badly at this deal as I do? I think it's human nature to see someone and immediatey make a judgment call on their personality. To be like Jesus in this area takes a tremendous effort of our wills with the nudging of the Holy Spirit. It takes a constant prayer of, "Lord, let me see people as you do."

I want to be the type of person that doesn't judge by what I see or hear about a person. I want to be a person that can see past all of the superficial crap in a person, and see their heart. I guess I want to be like Jesus, but I know I have so far to go.

I was listening to The Wall by Pink Floyd tonight because, well, it's awesome, and I got to thinking about the implications of the famous line "all in all you're just another brick in the wall." I'm a big believer that all truth is God's truth and that God co-opts little bits of truth from the world and makes them his own. Look at Paul's words to the men of Athens in the book of Acts, look at Paul's words to Titus, "as the pagan poets say..." Anyway, back to Pink Floyd.

I got to thinking about this phrase. I decided that you can look at this line in a couple of different ways. There may be more ways to look at it, but my limited cerebral capacity can only handle so much. You can look at this line from a negative viewpoint (which, incidently, is probably the way it was written) or a positive viewpoint. Let's look at the negative first (that way we can end on a happy fun note, because we know that Jesus hates sorrow right?).

On the negative, the line, "all in all you're just another brick in the wall" means that, at the end of the day, everything is hopeless because you're nothing special. You're no prize, no one is. We all share the same fate as being just bricks in the wall of life. What's the point in striving for anything if you're just another brick in the wall? What's the point in thinking you can make a difference in the world if everything is pointless? It's an almost nihilistic viewpoint of life ("We believe in nussing. Yeah, nussing Lebowski"). About two of you will get that joke.

Now for the positive. You can look at this from a Kingdom of God point of view. By the way, save the comments concerning my overstating the song and it's meaning; remember the God co-opting truth thing. We may be bricks in the wall, but bricks in God's wall. We're all a small part of something infinitely larger than we are. A wall that has no beginning and no end. A wall that goes on forever. As bricks in this wall, we are created with the ability to do great things. It's more of a teamwork thing. We can all, as bricks, do what we can to build the wall of God's Kingdom. Just a thought. Totally random, but it made sense to me, so back off.

Howdy everyone (read: "all four of you"). I just returned from Nashville with 25% of my reading audience. We went to the Youth Specialties convention and "learned more about youth ministry" (read: "watched a great deal of football"). It was a good convention I suppose. There were 7500 youth ministers there, which meant that we had to hold the main sessions in the Gaylord Entertainment Center (I'll let you stop laughing before I go on)...which is where the Nashville Predators play hockey. My brother and I noticed something quite funny during the main sessions. Did I say "funny"? I meant "damning."

They sold concessions at the main sessions. I'm not just talking about Testamints and Jesus-flavored fruit drinks, I'm talking about popcorn, hot dogs, and the such. So we're standing there "worshipping God" while the guy next to us is masticating a tube of faux meat on a bun. I asked myself, "Self, what would a non-Christian think if they came in and someone was singing to Jesus while cramming their gullet full of popcorn?" Has our consumerism become such a problem that making ourselves more obese can't be put aside for an hour or so of worship? I was slightly perturbed, because if you were an outsider looking in, you would think it was just another concert. I'm pretty sure if we were living in the Old Testament times, the entire arena would have collapsed on us all. Thank you Lord for your mercy and patience. Any thoughts?

"Out of the adundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." - Jesus

Isn't it amazing how words that were spoken by Jesus so long ago still apply today? It's obvious that Pat Robertson's heart is filled with hatred and war, because this is the type of language he uses. Jesus' statement is pretty straight-forward; if you speak hate, you're filled with hate, if you speak love, your heart is full of love. The buck doesn't stop with Pat Robertson though. It isn't really about Pat Robertson at all, it's about us. God will deal with Pat Robertson in whatever way sees fit. But, in turn, he'll deal with us in the same way.

It's easy for us to sit back and throw stones, but what are we doing to change the perception? Whether we realize it or not, whether we like it or not, guys like Pat Robertson are the mouth pieces for "Christianity." They are the loudest and most vocal, therefore, they are the ones who shape people's opinion of Christ and his Church. Obviously with statements like Robertson's, people's opinion of Jesus and Christianity is marred and not necessarily positive. So what are we doing differently? It's easy to sit back, piss and moan about this guy, and wish curses upon him, but are we throwing our voice out there (however small it may be) to change the way people see Jesus? Are we feeding the poor? Are we loving unconditionally, even our enemies? Are spreading peace wherever we go? If not, then we're in the same boat.

These are some things I've been thinking about...man, I hate it when the Spirit convicts me.

Televangelist warns of evolution doomsday

WASHINGTON - Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting “intelligent design” and warned them Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.

Robertson, a former Republican presidential candidate and founder of the influential conservative Christian Broadcasting Network and Christian Coalition, has a long record of similar apocalyptic warnings and provocative statements.

Last summer, he hit the headlines by calling for the assassination of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, one of President Bush’s most vocal international critics.

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected him from your city,” Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, “The 700 Club.”

“And don’t wonder why he hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for his help because he might not be there,” he said.

The 700 Club claims a daily audience of around 1 million. It is also broadcast around the world, translated into more than 70 languages. (People for the American Way provided a video file of the 700 Club statement.)

In voting Tuesday, all eight school board members up for re-election in Dover, Pa., lost their seats after trying to introduce “intelligent design” to high-school science students as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

Adherents of intelligent design argue that certain forms in nature are so complex that they are best seen as the handiwork of a designer rather than the result of natural selection. Opponents say it is the latest attempt by conservatives to introduce religion into the school science curriculum.

The Dover case sparked a trial in federal court that gained nationwide attention after the school board was sued by parents backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The board ordered schools to read students a short statement in biology classes informing them that the theory of evolution is not established fact and that gaps exist in it.

The statement mentioned intelligent design as an alternate theory and referred students to a book that explained the theory further. A decision in the case is expected before the end of the year.

In 1998, Robertson warned the city of Orlando, Fla., that it risked hurricanes, earthquakes and terrorist bombs after it allowed homosexual organizations to put up rainbow flags in support of sexual diversity. (End article)

This guy has to be stopped. How did the peaceful message of Jesus get turned into a threat-based, hate-filled message. I hate the fact that God loves Pat Robertson too. He is the type of person that Jesus had no tolerance for. I love drug dealers more than I do Pat Robertson. He has done more damage to Christ in his 110 years of being on TV than anyone else. The church has to unite and put an end to this guy's television career.

Holy crap, I'm in the process of applying for a passport to go to Africa...and I'm failing miserably! Since 9-11, apparently our "government" has decided that they will make it just a fraction under impossible to aquire a passport. I'm printing off the application as I type this and I'm hoping it will be done printing in three hours. I didn't have to fill out this much stuff when I bought my house. On top of the application, you have to bring in approximately 300 documents proving that you're alive and not a terrorist. Because we all know that if you weren't born in the United States, you are, without a doubt, a terrorist/communist/fascist/anarchist. I'm guessing that before Bush is out of office, we will probably have to undergo a rectal scan in order to obtain a passport.

I think on line 37 I have to provide the date of my last bowel movement, as well as a sample in a petri dish. On line 1,230, I have to provide a test tube full of my mother's afterbirth in order for them to test it for American patriotism. Once this is all completed, I will hopefully be declared an American citizen worthy of traveling to some less free country.

The best part of the application is I have to provide two "recent" photos of myself. This is quite interesting. If I didn't think I would spend the rest of my life eating stale bread at Guantanamo Bay while a soldier hooks up electrodes to my nipples, I think it would be hilarious to submit a picture of myself holding a grenade with a t-shirt on that says, "slaughter the infidels." I laugh just thinking about it.

Anyway, wish me luck as I try to prove that I'm patriotic enough to want to leave the country for two weeks in February.