Change of plans

So things aren't all that comfy after all -- the temperature has been much higher than initially forecast. They're saying that it will be in the 90s for the next two days, with obviously ultra-high humidity.

We're packing to head out of Houston. Plan is to start out going west where the roads are open and the storm impact was smaller, then head north, through Waco and eventually into Kansas to see my parents.

It's an odd route but a much safer one than trying to go due north or northeast out of Houston. Those areas were hit too hard and probably have road issues.

Power is almost sure to be out for quite a while here, so it's not like we'll drive for a day then find out Samantha has school on Tuesday. I doubt there'll be any school next week at all around here.

The adventure continues!

The gang's all here

We made it just fine. It was definitely a loud, loud night, but Jamie displayed her genius once again and found a battery-powered noisemaker machine that she cranked up on the "white noise" setting. It drowned out much of the lower-level wind sounds, although nothing can drown out the palpable impact of the biggest gusts.

We slept on and off all night, with me and Samantha in the master bed and Jamie/Jack on the inflatable mattress on the floor. It only took about an hour before I turned over to look at Samantha and saw two little feet. She had already turned upside down.

It's warm but not swelteringly so. The rain has slowed enough so that we can open up a couple of windows and get some air moving in the house. We turned the circuit breakers off last night so that no power surges would hurt our appliances/computer/TV/etc...

We don't anticipate power being restored for quite a while. Over the next couple of days we'll eat our food/water, check the radio for news and check on the neighbors. Best case scenario would be to be able to leave the city on Monday and head north somewhere, but that will require confirmation of clear roads and available gas.

I'm on a national wireless network card that I just got at the office last week -- good timing! My battery power is limited on the laptop so I don't plan on posting again today. Just wanted everyone to know we're fine and the intense storm-phase is over. Now it's time to take it easy, try to be as comfortable as possible, and wait to see the timeline for the city's restoration of basic services.

Later!

Ready as possible for Hurricane Ike

Several people have called/emailed wondering if I am in an evacuation zone of Houston as Hurricane Ike approaches.

We are not in an official evacuation zone as we're about 50 miles inland from the coast (our zip is 77035 for you map geeks out there). It's 11am on Friday right now and starting to get pretty breezy, but it's still hot and sunny. Scheduled time for the hurricane to hit our area is about 1am Saturday, although from this afternoon forward we'll have constant winds over 50mph. So our prep needed to get finished by now, and fortunately it is.

The exposed windows of the house are boarded up with plywood. We have plenty of food and water to last several days. The storm itself will be intense tonight but my family will all huddle together in our bedroom and sorta have an indoor campout. Total psychological manipulation to make it as fun as possible for the kids, but that's what parents do! :)

If I had to guess I'd say the recent turns of the storm help us out in Houston. It looks to me like we won't be on the east ("dirty") side of the hurricane's eye. If anything we'll be dead center although there's a slight possibility we'll be on the west side of the eye, which is much better.

Yes, it'll be a night of howling wind and lots of sideways rain, but we've followed all the recommended steps to get ready. We're almost certain to lose power for at least a day or two, and possibly even a week, so don't be alarmed if I don't post again for a while. Cell phones will be my way to keep in touch with people.

Ike will speed up as it hits land, so by Sunday it will be in Arkansas, and by Monday it could be in Indiana. This means that if we lose power and get uncomfortable, we can always head out of town on Monday. Both vehicles are full of gas and we've got family in east Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas, and we have no qualms about inviting ourselves over to see any of them.

Hopefully pretty soon things will be back to normal and I'll be posting deep thoughts once again. This blog has now come full circle -- some of my very first posts revolved around the chaos from Hurricane Rita three years ago. Most of that chaos was due to our attempted evacuations, not the storm itself. We're not repeating that this time.

For everybody else out there in the Houston/Galveston area -- stay safe!

Where religion and politics collide -- intro

I've been posting a lot lately about religion and politics, but not together. Yet of course they're very linked. Look at how many things they have in common:

1) People get very emotional about both
2) Both are polarizing issues, creating an "us vs. them" dynamic
3) Both are subjective, creating a system where endless debate can take place with no one ever definitively "winning"

Here in Texas we have a very specialized style of religously political worldviews, where people blend their faith with politics in an amazing way. I think that if Jesus came back tomorrow, many Texans would assume that he:

1) Would be a staunch Republican and would denounce liberals
2) Would get heavily involved in the political system
3) Would be American-centric, naturally, because we are the Christian nation
4) Would bring along George Washington, team up with Chuck Norris, and blast the Muslims into the fires of hell, ushering in a golden age of American rule through the power of God

Okay, so I went a little far with that last one. But it's not far from the kinds of things I hear down here. What I want to address, though, is points 1 through 3.

Jesus lived in a time of political oppression. The Romans weren't the worst rulers in the history of the world but they weren't perfect either. The murder of Jesus, the stoning of Stephen, the jailings of Paul... all of these happened under forms of Roman law. Slavery was legal, as was prostitution -- two things we have outlawed in our country.

Yet Jesus made a fuss of none of that. Rather than appearing staunchly conservative in his political views, he appeared to be utterly apathetic about politics. He focused on the small, the local, the personal, and said the government serves its purposes but it can't fix problems of the heart.

Fast forward to today. I often hear it said, either directly or indirectly, that to call myself a Christian must automatically mean I'm in a certain political party, with certain political views. I struggle to see the basis for this. For example:

-- Benevolence and giving to the needy are good, biblical principles. Yet somehow the very idea of governmental wealth redistribution (a.k.a. tiered taxation, welfare, etc...) is anti-Christian and it just coddles lazy people.

-- Killing and murder are bad things, and human life is highly valued in the bible. Yet somehow if a government official speaks about peace and troop withdrawals, he or she is a weakling and doesn't have the guts to fight evil and kill our enemies, the way a good Christian would.

-- The bible says we should speak in loving truth to one another, yet somehow today it's okay to spread vicious rumors and even outright lies about people if it's for the greater good of getting "our people" elected into office.

I think some of these things can be traced back to our picture of America and its roots. Some people of faith seem to think that we have always been a conservative Protestant country, with the founding fathers almost being a roomful of Baptist ministers, invoking Christianity into the very fabric of our union.

It's just not true. Here are a few tidbits, but my next post will cover our nation's heritage in more detail:

-- "In God We Trust" didn't appear on our currency until 100 years after our country began
-- The pledge of allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist preacher, but even he didn't include the words "Under God" in the pledge. Those words weren't added until 1954.
-- Francis Bellamy was a Socialist.

Several weeks ago at work I received an email describing the many ways we are a Christian nation. I took some time and debunked the entire email, showing point-by-point how it was filled with falsehoods. I will show that email in my next post.

I do not do this purely as a critique or an attack -- my intentions are positive. I ultimately want to focus on some of the things Christians may be able to rally around and support, and how they can be a force of unity in a politically-polarized time. And I want it all to be based on historical truth, not fiction.

Stay tuned!

Forgiveness (continued)

I've been thinking more about the topic of forgiveness. My last post mentioned how shocked I was that my opinions, and my experiences, of forgiveness were so different than many of the members in my bible class at church.

Eventually I realized that their opinions were exactly what my own would have been a few years ago. And that the way we feel about forgiving each other is inexorably tied to how we think God forgives. Jesus said that the two greatest commands were:

1) Love God with all you've got
2) Love your neighbor as yourself.

He said everything hangs on these. And they're melded together. Whatever I think about God will inevitably shape how I treat my fellow man. If I think the God of the Old Testament is waiting to send fire on the sinners, I might forcefully protest at a solider's funeral or a gay wedding and get the warning out. I become a smaller, flawed extension of the God I perceive. That's what many Christians mean when they quote things like Ephesians 3 and say that God is "at work within us".

So I considered that if I think God will send the vast majority of people to eternal torment, how will that impact the way I forgive other people here on earth? Can I truly "give it up to God" and offer pure, total forgiveness to people if I think that the creator of the universe is going to punish? Or am I merely waiting on them to "get theirs" when judgment day comes?

I can't answer for anyone else. I don't know where my bible class participants sit on this issue. But for me, when I thought God would punish in eternity, I could never really 100% forgive people here on earth. Couldn't do it.

Then I thought about some biblical examples of forgiveness, from Jesus himself. This isn't an exhaustive list, but it got me thinking:

#1 -- The Adulteress

In John chapter 8 Jesus is teaching in the temple courts when the religious leaders bring a woman to him. They claim the woman is caught in adultery, and according to Mosaic law she must be killed by stoning. Jesus responded at first with silence and started to write in the dirt, but eventually he uttered the famous "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Everybody left, ashamed. Later he looked up and the woman was still standing there, surely shocked that she was still alive. The scene ends with this exchange:

Jesus: "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
Woman: "No one, sir."
Jesus: "Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin."

#2 -- The Murderers

In Luke 23 we see the death of Jesus. Correction -- the murder of Jesus. He was in his early 30s and was apparently healthy until being severely beaten and hung on a cross to suffocate. And here was the Messiah, the son of God, the blameless one, being brutally killed for no justifiable reason. Surely if there was an unforgiveable sin, this would be it. The God of thunder would come charging in. Retribution would be swift and brutal. Justice would be served. So what did Jesus say?

"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

#3 -- The Doubters

So Jesus was killed. And in the events leading up to his death, his disciples, his closest friends, disappeared from the picture. Most we just don't hear about during and immediately after the crucifixion, except that John was near the cross while Jesus died. And that Peter was elsewhere in the city, denying that he even knew Jesus.

In John 20 we get a glimpse of the disciples three days after Jesus was buried, and they're noted to be locked in a house, fearing for their lives. Not exactly a stirring tribute.

Jesus appears to them multiple times and the final time he asks them to meet him on a mountain in Galilee. Matthew 28 notes that even now, when they saw him, they doubted.

These men had every possible advantage of belief. They'd been with Jesus 24/7 for three years. They'd seen him face-to-face and heard his direct teachings. They'd seen him alive again after being killed. Yet still they doubted.

And if there was any sense of repentance necessary here, any requirement to make things right, Matthew 28 doesn't have a record of it. Jesus just asked his friends to get to work.

Conclusion

One thing strikes me as a common theme across these stories -- none of the screwed up people actually asked for forgiveness. They just received it. Yes, Jesus told the woman to leave her life of sin, but after he said he didn't condemn her. Forgiveness came first, then a new life could begin.

My former picture was that I had to repent and follow the steps to salvation, in order to receive forgiveness. That was how I saw God interacting with me. So in turn, when it was my time to forgive someone who had hurt me, they had to ask for it first. My forgiveness was conditional, naturally, because I thought God's was too. How could I hold myself to a higher standard than what I thought God would provide?

I admit that this might be merely my own personal weakness. Others may be able to forgive others ceaselessly in this life, even if they think God will condemn them in the next. But for me, I had to remember those greatest commands, and that above all I am to love my neighbor as myself. To forgive them without ceasing. And if my treatment of people depends on my picture of God, I chose to picture God providing forgiveness without ceasing. They my own forgiveness flowed to others naturally.

I may be wrong about all this. Other bible verses can surely be cited to conflict with the three stories noted above. But my perspective has helped me better fulfill the greatest commands, and I think that is a good thing.

Bottom line: When the most heinous act in history was being accomplished, even though the murderers showed no sign of remorse, Jesus said to God, "forgive them." I believe God said, "Done."