Andrew.Sterling.Hanenkamp.com

I started a new job last week and visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the second time ever. This was the first time I got to actually see Pittsburgh since I was busy traveling or interviewing last time. This time I tried to sample some of the shopping and restaurants since I’ll be coming back from time to time for work. Nothing about Pittsburgh has really wow’d me yet other than the tunnel/bridge intro to the downtown area.

Now that I’m home for a week, I’ve started whipping my office into shape. I’ll have more to share regarding my new office in a couple weeks or so, I guess, when I have it in a better place. Right now I’m looking into some shades for the skylight to keep the sun off my head during the afternoon and might need to come up with an interim solution while I wait for those to be fabricated. I’m also doing a much needed culling of all the junk I’ve been collecting since I really don’t need a bunch of empty CD crystal cases (many of them broken) and other miscellaneous crap I’ve built up in my office.

Finally, while I was out, I got a package from Waste Management containing the truck you see pictured above. Gabe has already destroyed it somewhat more than is pictured there since it’s a very intricate truck not really intended for him, but it’s really cool. Apparently when I filled out a survey for them in the past few weeks I suggested they send text messages warning to set out your trash the day before they pick up (since I often forget). Apparently, they liked the idea and I got a hand-written note stating, “Look for ‘Green Alerts’ coming soon.” I thought that was pretty cool and probably obliterates any thoughts we were having about possibly switching to Howie’s Trash Service, which is a new local service with purple (Go State!) trash cans (and Howie’s being a company I’ve liked for some time for various reason).

Anyway, it’s been quite a week for me. I’m now off to do some more organizing in my office.

Cheers.

As we see fuel prices reaching all time highs and milk, meat, corn, and even rice now reaching new records in price, when will we start seeing the truth about how dangerous ethanol is? Ben Lieberman’s article at the Heritage Foundation titled Time for Second Thoughts on the Ethanol Mandate should be required reading for Congress. Lieberman outlines recent research finding the ethanol mandates implemented by Congress in 2005 to be responsible for high costs of living because of increased food and fuel costs and to be an increased danger to the environment rather than a reduction as original promised. New policy in Washington is needed.

It’s too early to be picking candidates. The primaries this year have been just irritatingly early in starting and irritatingly long to end. However, I can tell you, as I intend to in this post, how I will make the decision of which candidate to choose.

I base my voting decisions upon three primary factors: Qualification, Character, and Policy. These three factors are not exclusive and do not override one another, but I would place them in that order from most important to least important.

Qualification. The first factor I must consider when choosing a candidate for any office is how qualified that person is for office. Does that person have a history that indicates that he or she can handle the rigors of the appointment? Does he or she have a series of positions that lead up to or provide a history that helps to validate the abilities of the candidate? Has the person ever committed so heinous a mistake that his or her qualification is in question? A candidate that has little or no background in running a business or politics has little or no basis for qualification as far as I’m concerned. While I consider this to be the first point to consider, it’s not the only one. The point here is to determine whether or not the person I am voting for can even do the job.

Character. The second fact I must consider is the candidate’s character. Unfortunately, this is not a very popular way to judge a candidate these days, so finding issues that define character require careful examination of the facts that are known. Everyone is trying to spin the candidate they like one way and they despise the other. This is also a fuzzy and subjective measurement. Does a divorce 20 years ago or the fact that a candidate is a dry alcoholic reflect badly on that person today? Or does the fact that he’s remained dry and married since reflect well? A certain amount of discernment here is required. The people with whom the candidate associates with, offers support for, and gathers support from are also indicators in this area. The point is to evaluate how well I can trust the man or woman for which I am voting.

Policy. The final important fact I consider is policy. Does the candidates policy mesh with issues that are important to me? Will he or she keep taxes low? Will he or she avoid classist/racist/sexist/etc. politics? Will he or she keep our borders secure and manage the war on terrorism appropriately? Does he or she see creating laws based upon the inalienable human rights and God’s moral law? I’m being very generic here, but these are the policy issues that come to mind as important when making this kind of decision in the generic case. The main issue I want to know is if this candidate will try to move politics in the direction I think will benefit the United States best.

Finally, I must state one factor I avoid entirely. I do not pay attention to identity politics (at least when I don’t get sucked in to them because I’ve failed to be vigilant). It doesn’t matter what label the person picks for him or herself. I don’t vote for someone because he’s an “evangelical” or not for him because he’s a “mormon.” I will not vote for someone because she’s a woman or he’s a man. I will not vote for someone because his or her skin color is a certain hue. These are irrelevant. To base your voting decisions on such is simply racist, classist, sexist, or any other form of bigotry you are choosing to make your decision by.

Anyway, that’s the key factors for me. I am chiefly interested in a candidate’s qualifications, character, and policy. I may consider other things as well, but not his or her race, sex, or creed.

Cheers.

In seventh grade, I still lived in Lawrence, Kansas. I know. Poor me. However, my English teacher’s name was, strangely enough, Mrs. Lawrence. Mrs. Lawrence was an interesting person. I remember that she once bragged that she had been committed to an institution and was literally certifiable. She also once told a story about how the US government was experimenting with monkeys and robots and had actually grafted a monkey’s head onto a robot’s body and the monkey was able to control the robot for several minutes before the head died. I actually believed that one for quite awhile.

However, despite the fact that she was so very strange, I really liked her. She was definitely my favorite teacher. Other than those facts and that I had a crush on a girl named Ashley in the class, I only remember one other thing about Mrs. Lawrence. She gave me one life lesson I will never forget: “You are only given five exclamation points to use in your entire lifetime. Once you use up those five you don’t get anymore. God will pop your head off like a pimple when you get to heaven if you do.” Okay, so I added the last words to her originally statement, but I do remember her saying that she wanted to pop the heads of students like a pimple when they annoyed her… Did I mention she was really strange?

Anyway, I most certainly agree with her assessment regarding exclamation points. Perhaps the limit to five per lifetime is a little extreme, but it makes the point.

Don’t use so many exclamation points people! It’s really annoying! You don’t have to be so excited about it!!!!!

Okay. So, to make the point, I’ve now used seven. Crap!!!!! I hope having my head popped off won’t hurt too much!

Cheers.

Okay, so just about every time I start to get to know someone new this question inevitably comes up. The basic confusion is that I like to use my full name on things, Andrew Sterling Hanenkamp, and sometimes I use Andrew and sometimes I use Sterling and things get really confusing. I'm writing this blog post to try and explain the history of my name and the basic issues involved with its multiple uses.

I was born, Andrew Sterling Hanenkamp. I'm not exactly sure where "Andrew" came from other than my parents liked the named. I like it because it means "manly" and "strong," which I hope reflects on my character some, since it doesn't at all reflect my physique. My middle name, "Sterling," comes from my dad's dad, Delmont Sterling Hanenkamp. His response to having me named after him was basically, "Why'd you give him that name? I hate it." Grandpa Del didn't much care for his name, though I can't say I blame him with Delmont as his first name.

When I was a wee short person, I went by the name "Andy" and my surviving grandparents, who are in their 80's, still call me that to this day. About third grade, I got tired of Andy and started demanding that everyone call me a serious name, "Andrew." (No offense to the Andy's out there, I was a third grader and didn't know any better.) The name "Andrew" lasted through the end of high school and into the first week or two of college.

Problem. I lived in an all guy's dorm on Manhattan Christian College's campus. Not only that, but women weren't allowed up the stairs to our hall. In general, this meant that folks, especially girls, were yelling up the stairs whenever they wanted someone. There were three Andrew's on my floor. One was a sophomore, he got to keep his name. One decided to go by his last name, Medlen. The last, me, decided to go by his middle name. I'd halfway considered doing it anyway, so this was the last bit of motivation that carried it through.

Now, fast forward about 10-12 months and I started chatting with this girl online named Terri. We exchanged emails. We chatted. We talked on the phone. We met up in person. This was in 1997, when Internet dating was still one of those naughty no-nos for creeps, but we only lived a couple hours apart and somehow managed to keep our relationship after she moved up to Manhattan. Most of you probably know that we got married had a kid, etc. But I digress. When she asked me what to call her, I decided that it would be "cool" for her to have a special name for me that happened to line up with what my parents called me, "Andrew." So, know I have two names. One familiar and one for my colleagues.

This became further confused when she moved up to Manhattan. She wanted me to be known as Andrew in the contexts we shared, which mostly included church. Therefore, many of my friends here know me as Andrew. Some know me as both and pick whichever they prefer. Thus, I pretty much always signed email and such as "Sterling" and that lasted up until about 2 years ago.

At that time, I switched jobs and started working for Boomer Consulting. When that happened, one of my new coworkers new me from church and insisted that I be called "Andrew" at work. This was against my preference, but since it's only a minor preference I gave in. Had I to do over again, I would have said, "Nope. I'm Sterling." It would have led to less confusion. Now, I sign emails as Sterling and Andrew and sometimes forget which context I'm in as I'm typing so sometimes I sign it as one or the other in either context. Argh!

Therefore, if you have any doubt, just call me "Sterling." That's my preference. The only folks that should be calling me "Andrew" are those that already do (don't change what you call me just because you read that I prefer "Sterling," it's not that important), my neighbors, those that go to my church, and family. Everyone else should go with "Sterling."

Anyway, I hope that clears everything up. :-p

Cheers.

Now, I’ve done it. I’ve relaunched my blog using a design I’ve been building on for a few months. (I don’t have much time for such things, so it takes some time to build anything out for this site.) Anyway, there’s more bits and bobbles to tweak out, but the basics are now there. It’s quite an update since I haven’t really dinked with either the overall design or platform running my web site for a few years. The big technical change has been that I am now using Movable Type rather than Drupal to serve my blogs. I’m going to start by explaining why and then I’ll delve into how I made the move.

Why Movable Type?

The main reason for the switch from Drupal to Movable Type is because I wanted to try something new. I’ve been on Drupal for a long time and am familiar with it. I’m also likely to maintain that familiarity for quite sometime since we use Drupal extensively at work. To paraphrase The Matrix Revolutions, “You do not truly know an application until you fight it.” In this case, I’m running Movable Type and getting a feel and we’ll see how long it lasts. In the past, I’ve had similar short runs of Blosxom, WordPress, and a few experiments in creating my very own brand of blogging software for kicks and giggles. Drupal has outlasted them all. If I decided I don’t like this experiment, I may go back.

Movable Type is written primarily in Perl. I like Perl and think it beats the pants off of PHP as far as languages go. Drupal is written in PHP. I have written some plugins for Drupal in PHP, but I’d rather be writing Perl. So, if I’m going to dink around with something at home for fun, I figure it ought to be in something I enjoy.

By using Movable Type, I have been able to vastly improve the performance of my blogs. I host on Dreamhost, which is great for the price, but performance is an issue from time to time since it is a shared hosting solution. Movable Type publishes most of my pages as static HTML (the ultimate page caching system!) and then updates them as needed when new posts or comments are added. My web site is much zippier now since it doesn’t have to what for PHP (or even Perl CGI/FastCGI) to load for every page.

Movable Type does blogging with a lot of subtlety and nuance. If you look at how everything works, there are a lot of teeny details that it does just right. Drupal does general content management pretty well, but blogging is done just alright. For example, Movable Type provides Atom and RSS feeds out of the box, Drupal provides just RSS unless you add a module on. Movable Type provides RDF and other summaries as part of every post to make it easier for bots to understand my site. The widgets (similar to Drupal’s blocks) are geared towards blogging and seem to make more sense overall. It’s a tool tailored to the specific job rather than a tool tailored to a larger job. I’m not at all knocking Drupal. But even a really great Swiss Army knife isn’t the best screwdriver, it just has a pretty decent one available.

Those are the main reasons for moving to Movable Type. Now, on to how to do it.

Migration from Drupal to Movable Type

Most of the information I was able to find on moving away from one platform to another was, unsurprisingly, Movable Type to Drupal. I found some folks looking or information on going the other way, but nothing definite. I’m going to explain the process I used in hopes that someone else might find it useful if they decide to make a similar move.

Database Conversion

The first and most complicated problem is moving the data. Movable Type helped to simplify this process by providing a standardized import tool. If you go into the back-end MT interface and look on the home page, there’s a link in the right sidebar labeled “Import Content”. If you follow that you can see a form that lets you import data in Movable Type import format or WordPress Import Format. Since I couldn’t find any information on the WordPress format and since I didn’t use WordPress, I left that alone.

The documentation for the Movable Type format is readily available here. That’s not actually the whole story, though. I discovered, by experimenting with the data export function, that there are some additional fields, such as “TAGS,” which allow you to import tags and such as well. Getting the Drupal data out was relatively easy since this is a very simple text format.

I have a little trick I do whenever I need to perform a one-time script on a Drupal instance. The trick is that I write a PHP script that does whatever I need, go into Drupal to create a new page, paste the code into that page, and then switch the input format to PHP. Then, instead of creating the page, I click “Preview,” which executes the script and does whatever I want. I wrote such a script for this occasion.

Here it is:

<?php
header('Content-type: text/plain');
$nids = db_query("select distinct n.nid from {node} n inner join {term_node} t on t.nid = n.nid where t.tid = 360 or t.tid = 362");
while ($node = node_load(db_fetch_object($nids))) {
  print "AUTHOR: ".($node->name=="Andrew Sterling Hanenkamp"?"zostay":$node->name)."\n";
  print "TITLE: ".$node->title."\n";
  print "STATUS: ".($node->status?"Publish":"Draft")."\n";
  print "ALLOW COMMENTS: ".($node->comment>0)."\n";
  print "CONVERT BREAKS: 1\n";
  print "ALLOW PINGS: ".($node->comment>0)."\n";
  print "DATE: ".strftime("%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S %p", $node->created)."\n";
  $tag = array();
  foreach ($node->category as $category) {
    $tag[] = $category->title;
  }
  print "TAGS: ".implode(",", $tag)."\n";
  print "-----\n";
  print "BODY:\n";
  print $node->body."\n";
  print "-----\n";
  print "KEYWORDS:\n";
  print "/node/".$node->nid.",".url('node/'.$node->nid)."\n";
  $comments = db_query("select * from {comments} c where c.nid = %d", $node->nid);
  while ($comment = db_fetch_object($comments)) {
    print "-----\n";
    print "COMMENT:\n";
    print "AUTHOR: ".$comment->name."\n";
    print "EMAIL: ".$comment->mail."\n";
    print "IP: ".$comment->hostname."\n";
    print "URL: ".$comment->homepage."\n";
    print "DATE: ".strftime("%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S %p", $comment->timestamp)."\n";
    print "SUBJECT: ".$comment->subject."\n";
    print $comment->comment."\n";
  }
  print "--------\n";
}
exit;
?>

This script takes all the nodes belonging to the categories with IDs 360 or 362 and outputs the files in the Movable Type export format. If you change the first query to use a different set of terms or remove them you can export everything or some different subset. I did this because I had 4 web sites served from one Drupal database and the terms determined which site they appeared on. I then condensed two sites together, which is which site this is.

The export script applies all terms as the tags. The script could be customized to narrow that down for your site, if needed.

The script had two basic flaws, which I fixed after the export and reimport (rather than doing everything over again). First, the “SUBJECT:” line from the comments didn’t look as good as I wanted. I’d recommend changing that to “Subject:” or removing it all together. I used the Search and Replace feature of Movable Type to correct it. The script also added “————” at the end of some of the comments, which I also removed using Search and Replace.

The other nice thing I did here (at least for me) is that I added the main “node/123” URL and also the main URL alias to the keywords. Which I take advantage of next.

Fixing up the URLs

Drupal provides URLs as just the identifier into the node table, like “node/123”. I had used some modules (i.e., “pathauto” and “URL Alias”) to provide nicer URLs that looked like “2008/03/30/drupal-to-movable-type”. Movable Type provides URLs as “2008/03/drupaltomovable_type”. This works well to allow me to provide some redirects to the new URLs. To do this, I’ve imported the URLs as keywords (as mentioned above) and then added the following lines to my .htaccess files in my new blog sites:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(node/\d+)       /mt/mt-search.cgi?search=$1 [R,L]
RewriteRule ^(\d+/\d+/\d+/.*) /mt/mt-search.cgi?search=$1 [R,L]

Now, whenever someone hits one of the old links, they are redirected to a search, which will find the post they were supposed to hit. This worked out pretty well.

Moving the RSS Feeds

In the process of moving to the new server, my RSS feeds changed names. I had five different feeds. One for each site and then one that summarized all of them. I’ve decided to start using FeedBurner to host my feeds. So, after I switched to Movable Type and setup my feeds, I then setup more rules in the .htaccess file to redirect anyone who might be reading my feeds.

RewriteRule ^rss.xml            http://feeds.feedburner.com/TildeSterling [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^frontpage/feed     http://feeds.feedburner.com/AndrewSterlingHanenkamp [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^contentment/feed   http://feeds.feedburner.com/Contentment [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^openscripture/feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/AndrewSterlingHanenkamp [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^gabe/feed          http://feeds.feedburner.com/GabrielScottHanenkamp [R=301,L]

Now, all my feeds are permanently redirected to their new locations at FeedBurner.

The Design

The rest was the design work. I’m not going into detail here. Just look at it. I did it. That’s me and my shoddy Gimp/Photoshop work.

That’s It

That’s pretty much it. I’ve got some other stuff I’m planning, but that will probably take months more to get there.

There is a strange fact about the world, which few will agree with: there are no good people. Years ago, I had a friend who once told me that she thought she would go to heaven because she was a "good person." I knew how to counter this same strange fact then and tried to explain it to her, but she could not hear me because of this very fact: she was not a "good person." What do I mean?

Let me clarify the concept of "good." In some ways, I cringe away from the contrast of "good versus evil." While these are opposites in principle, they are not opposite in essence. A thing can be perfectly good, but it is impossible for something to be perfectly evil. Why? Because no matter how evil a thing is, it still has some good in it.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28 (emphasis added)

If you go to your local Christian bookstore, you can find a half dozen or so books written to answer common questions about Christianity. If you examine each, you will probably discover a few very common questions. One of these will certainly be something to this effect, "Why would a good God allow bad things in the world?" This question is interesting in that it reveals one truth everyone with a conscience realizes. It also reveals a common lie that many people believe to be true---it happens to be the same lie that causes them to think there are good people.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. — Romans 1:19

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. — Romans 2:15-16

The truth is: we all know, on some internal level, what is good and what is bad. There may be some exceptions where someone's conscience has been damaged or destroyed. There may be some disagreement about some of the details, but, ultimately, everyone has a little nagging sense of good and bad. We have two choices about this "voice" that whispers within our skull. We know from this voice that "bad things" happen. People commit crimes and atrocities. Natural disasters strike down many. Lives can be destroyed in millions of different ways and everyone has felt some amount of harm due to some of these things.

The lie is that the presence of good automatically cancels the power of evil. That is completely false. That isn't to say that an act of good cannot help in the face of evil, but good cannot undo evil. If a man commits murder, no amount of good is going to bring the victim back to life. God is the ultimate good. However, He has not chosen to stop evil from occurring altogether because of these very facts.

If I wash myself with snow water, And cleanse my hands with soap, Yet You will plunge me into the pit, And my own clothes will abhor me. — Job 9:30-31

If a person does evil, that person cannot undo that evil with any amount of good behavior. If you lie to a friend, that lie continues to exist. If you punch someone in the nose, the nose may heal with time, but the pain that was caused cannot be taken away with any amount of kisses in return. Evil is a contamination that persists despite whatever good a person may do. The smallest amount of evil corrupts a person completely and that corruption is what prevents the existence of good people. Every person has succumbed to this corruption. There are no good people.

For there is not a just man on earth who does good And does not sin. — Ecclesiastes 7:20

How did this happen? Well, in the very start of things, this was not the state of the universe.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ... And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. — Genesis 1:26-27,31a

Almost everyone knows the rest of the story. The first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve, had one rule. That rule was that they must not eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This rule provides the test of man and proves man's free will from God. Man is given the choice to either obey God or to turn aside from God and choose to rule himself. At this point, the devil came in and tempted Adam and Eve to disobey and Adam and Eve chose the exhilaration of rebellion over the contentment of obedience. Every man and woman since that day has been born into the corruption that has resulted.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. — Romans 15:13

This, then, begs the question, is there no hope? If good cannot undo evil what hope is there for us that desire to be good people? The good news is that there was exactly one man who was able to live on this planet and yet be free from the corruption of evil. He was able to do this because he is the Messiah, Jesus Christ. He is God in the flesh. He came to earth to invoke the "deep magic" C.S. Lewis allegorizes in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The "deep magic" is this, that if one who committed no sin is sacrificed on behalf of those who do sin, the power of sin will be turned backwards for all who are covered by this sacrifice.

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, "everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." — Romans 10:9-11

I said that good does not undo evil, but when the Good Creator chooses, he can make it as if no evil ever occurred through this sacrifice. The evil exists, but God has provided a way for it to be forgiven. If you choose to submit to God, accept this sacrifice, and honestly pray for forgiveness for the evil you have committed, you too will be covered by Jesus Christ's sacrifice. You too can hope to follow Christ into the resurrection and life in heaven.

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? — Mark 8:35-36

The wicked shall be turned into hell, And all the nations that forget God. — Psalm 9:17

Yet, if you choose not to consider or accept this, I will not lie to you or gloss over reality. It would be better for you to have never been born than to die. The evil you have committed requires some amount of compensation. You will experience the forever torment of hell because evil demands an answer.

Amen.

The longer I have been a Christian, the more I have been convinced of the preeminence of the Word of God as revealed in the Bible. In Psalm 19
, David tells us, "The law of the Lord if perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." I think much of this passage is forgotten today in many churches today.

Each and every Christian should see it as his highest priority in life, above work, above family, above children, above spouses, above home, above fellowship, above politics, above hobbies, above all things to search the Word of God and pray to know Jesus Christ more. Some of scripture is hard and beyond understanding, but nearly all of it is able to "1 Peter 4:11

Do not mishear me. I am not saying that the Bible is the only thing. In fact, by saying the Bible is most important, I am unable to say it is the only thing. To read and apply the Bible with guidance from the Holy Spirit demands that we work hard, we fervently serve our children and wives, we manage our home well, we seek fellowship, we influence others, and we maintain our bodies and health. The Bible holds an impossible standard to follow, but by making it our chief focus we hope to attain something of the prize it describes.

I have, unfortunately, heard Bible study referred to as a "toxic" environment. I have seen it said that Bible study alone can be compared with the filling of the Dead Sea: without an outlet the water becomes toxic and no life can survive in it. In theory, I can suppose that it is possible for Bible study to degenerate in this way, but since this contradicts the clear teaching of scripture I must assume a contradiction has occurred in such "Bible studies."

A Bible study may be a Bible study in name only. If the true purpose of a gathering is actually to share personal experience or fellowship or prayer or singing or acts of service (all good things, I do not malign them) with a Bible present in the room: This a "Bible study" does not make.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. — 2 Timothy 5:16-17

If you have a "Bible study" that does not engage in teaching the Word but focuses on experience or personal beliefs or fellowship or anything else, you do not have a Bible study. If you have a "Bible study" that does not use the Word to reprove false teaching but merely provides positive applications, you do not have a Bible study. If you have a "Bible study" that does not use the Word to expose error in personal belief and behavior but elevate individual experience over the Bible, you do not have a Bible study. If you do not use the Word of God to train believers as if they were studying hard for the most important final exam of their lives, Final Judgment, but just have a "holy huddle," you do not have a Bible study.

Let us not confuse terms here. A Bible study is focused on the Word of God. Anything else may be excellent, but Bible study must be greatest among all the pursuits of Christians. Everything else may fall into place when this pursuit is realized. Sharing our lives will become an outpouring of our wish to show God's glory exposed in our failures and His miracles. Fellowship will become an opportunity to build one another up. Prayer will become ever more important as the Bible exposes our shortcomings and the Spirit convicts us more and more. Evangelism will become the natural mode of our speech and actions as the Word fills us and breaks down the dams of comfort and convenience we build up in this modern society.

Any attempt to develop programs or man-made systems to enforce rigorous Bible study will ultimately fail. Men and women of God will either pursue scripture and apply its precepts to their life, as difficult as it is to do so, or they will not. The Spirit will lead this process, not men. Men may provide guidance and wisdom to others, but only the Spirit changes lives and attitudes. It is not an easy standard to live by and its teachings work against many modern innovations in psychology and social behavior and science that seem improve our lives, but the truth is the truth and these things will be found to be man's folly sooner or later. Attempting to use these modern innovations of strategy and community building will prove to serve as a false hope that replaces the true hope found in scripture.

I ask that any Christian that reads this and agrees with it, do not allow compromise on this issue anymore. I pray that God will harden my resolve in this matter so that I will not compromise as I have unfortunately done too often, to the detriment of myself, my family, and those within the realm of my influence. I have gone with the flow of liberal doctrine and allowed man's experiences and learning and "wisdom" to cloud my understanding. I must not allow this disease to persist in my life. I recommend the same in yours.

The Word is the Word and the truth of Jesus is always good and satisfying to those who know Him. If we only take it and use it to its full advantage, there is no task that God can set us to that we will fail. Though, we might find ourselves doing tasks that we would not have sought ourselves. Yet, if we are doing God's work and building up eternal treasures it will be worth it.

Amen.

There is a popular scientific hypothesis right now that has taken on extreme political and religious overtones in the last few years. I am, of course, speaking of the current obsession with climate change and global warming, particularly humanity's hand in these issues. However, I don't put much stock in the evidence to support the hypothesis that climate change over the past few years has been the direct (or even indirect) result of human interference with the atmosphere. I find that, after examining the evidence, I must side with the unconvinced against the so-called "consensus of scientists" that Al Gore has referred to regarding this hypothesis. Furthermore, I believe the current political and religious fervor that have glommed onto this theory demonstrate three forms of hubris that make it difficult for many of these proponents to think objectively on the subject.

Statement of Hubris #1: Humanity can manipulate climate. If we consider the small weather events that happen every day on earth we find that the amount of energy involved in some of the minor events to be well-beyond what humans are able to produce across the entire planet. In face, we use these forces to capture very small amounts of the power via wind turbines and hydroelectric dams. These human machines capture a minuscule portion of the energy produced by the earth's weather to power entire cities.

The claim is that very small changes in the chemical make-up of the atmosphere can yield huge differences in climate because of the massiveness of the system and that humans are making such changes. However, this doesn't really fly in the face of facts. Many natural disasters actual alter the chemical make-up in greater quantities than humanity does and yet the climate does not change very greatly. The sun has been closely linked to changes in climatic conditions here on Earth and on Mars with greater accuracy than many of the simulations run by the computers.

In short, I find that the hypotheses of climate change being lifted up here appeals to our sense of greatness and achievement in a perverse sort of way. We humans are really powerful, like gods. We are so great, we can destroy the earth just by releasing a few chemicals into the oceans and atmosphere. This is a sick kind of pride.

Statement of Hubris #2: Humanity knows how the climate works. This is a flat lie. I've been very careful to refer to humanity's influence in climate change as a hypothesis because that is all it is. We don't yet have a proper scientific framework for even handling the climate to any certain degree. In order for science to work properly you must first be able to create a testable hypothesis and then run repeatable tests that either help to validate that hypothesis or not. For example, one such hypothesis for climate change is that the massive hurricane Katrina was just a precursor for things to come because climate change would cause greater and greater weather disturbances as more energy was held in the system. Yet, the past two summers have not shown this hypothesis to be accurate.

Even so, this is still far to broad a hypothesis to be truly scientific. Science is about eliminating superfluous variables through precise and systematic procedures. Medical science has found double-blind clinical trials to be very useful in providing accurate tests for finding if a particular drug is useful for treating a particular disease. Chemistry uses controlled lab experiments to repeatedly attempt to provide explanations for how chemicals form and release bonds. Every branch of science develops procedures that when followed create reproducible results that either validate or invalidate a particular hypothesis.

Climatology finds much of its basis in computer models based upon other sciences, but the computer models aren't experiments of the real system. They merely predict what will happen if the climatologists hypothesis is correct. It doesn't prove anything scientific regarding reality. In fact, these models leave out huge amounts of important data because there are certain measurements that are difficult to take. For example, one of the most important greenhouse gases is water vapor, but there's no current way to measure water vapor amounts globally. Until there's a way for climatology to really test hypotheses on a scale that is reproducible and useful, climatology has no real support for the hypothesis for human factors in climate change.

When textbook writers summarize scientific research, they tend to say things like "X goes here and Y goes there." Yet, what the scientist actually said was more complicated, "X usually went here even though a statistically insignificant amount didn't in our experiments and same for Y." We don't know if those statistically insignificant things are truly just caused by extra insignificant variables we couldn't control or actually significant factors that we aren't aware of yet. That's why science is never finished, but textbooks give the false indication of the subject being closed. Yet, how often have standing theories been thrown out to be replaced by new and more accurate ones? It happens all the time.

This is an example of humans thinking that because they have answered some questions that we as humans know everything or at least everything important. Pride. In reality, we should realize that every question answered produces three more questions we don't know. Humility. Those questions might have very important answers that could change everything that came before.

Statement of Hubris #3: Humans are worth saving. This is the one that starts to get me laughing. The same people who get upset that humans are harming the earth are either the same folks or those causing a different group to panic and figure out how to save ourselves from this disaster. Part of the rhetoric is that humans need to take action to solve this problem before it destroys our economy, kills millions of people, or completely wipes humanity from the face of the Earth.

My laughing quickly turns cynical because this is the most significant factor in all of this. Politicians and wealthy men across the globe stand to gain a great deal if we listen to this rhetoric. Scientists are corrupted by a desire for influence as well. By controlling what we can buy or by providing new products that we must buy (e.g., taxes to pay for carbon credits), these powerful men can place themselves in a position to be the money handlers.

I've often heard the proponents of climate change theory attacking opponents by claiming that studies countering their view point were funded by corporations trying to save themselves against the truth. That may be. Yet, I can say the same thing about state funded institutions. Anyone who things that
state money is free from the same kind of corruption is completely fooling themselves. Anyone with half a brain knows governments are corrupt, but these people would like to indicate that only corporate funding is corrupt and that government money is pure. Hah. Politicians who desire more power for themselves control the delivery of this money just like corporate tycoons who desire more power for themselves control the delivery of private grants.

We have to go by the facts as they are found and try and discern which are right despite these corrupting influences on all sides.

Back to the point, humanity thinks very highly of itself when we think that we are really worth saving. Spiritually, I believe that humanity is precious because every man and woman is created in the image of God, but physically humanity is completely worthless because every one of us has rejected God despite the goodness of his plan for our lives. We'd rather have our own way than the best way. As such, Christ came to save everyone that would believe in him and his sacrifice for our sin. We each must pay the price of physical death once because of our sin, but that is the only price left to pay for those that believe in Christ. Therefore, as far as humanity is concerned physically, we can all die and the Earth won't be worse without us.

Of course, I don't believe humanity will die because of global climate change that we caused and I don't believe the evidence exists yet to properly support any hypothesis of the sort. Yet, people, in in their redoubtable pride, will continue pushing this hypothesis up as if it were fact to support our pride in power, knowledge, and self-importance until some other event, activity, or hypothesis takes up our fancy to help us do it again in a different form.

This is one of those issues I get annoyed with conservatives over: "Let's make English the official language of the United States." I strongly disagree. My reasoning is very simple: Do we really need another bureaucracy controlling how and what we speak?

I believe that every person coming to the United States should learn English. I believe they should do this for their own benefit. If I moved to Mexico or Spain, I would want to learn Spanish. If I moved to Japan, I would want to learn Japanese. If I moved to Australia or Great Britain, I'd want to learn as much as I could about the differences in dialect. Why? So that I could succeed as much as possible by communicating as clearly as possible with others. Good communication skills are a major key to success in any culture. Those skills start and end with language.

On the other hand, if we make English the official language of the United States, what will happen? Obviously, we'll need a special department to define what English is and how it must be officially used. How may it be taught in schools? When and how may other languages be taught? It will define rules as to when and where English must be used and have a list of possible exceptions (airport signs, traffic signs near the Mexico border, certain literature, etc.). Then, it will have to start defining penalties for violating those rules. Otherwise, what difference does it make if English is "official or not? I don't want to see any such thing happen.

If someone can show me how we can make English a requirement for learning without the bureaucracy to define the rules and enforce them, I'm not interested in seeing English become "official" in the United states. I believe it is in the best interest of each individual and society as a whole to learn English in the United States. yet, legislating such will certainly come at a higher than intended cost.