Ambushing and Manipulative Speech

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English is a difficult language to master, and in the wrong hands it's a deadly weapon. Many of our phrases are manipulative in nature. When you start a sentence with "everyone knows" but someone in your audience doesn't or knows something else, it is intended to create consensus where none exists. When women ask me if I want to get them dinner or do a favor, it's meant to emotionally manipulate me into compliance with the assumption that if I decline I do not like them at all. This kind of reducto ad absurdium abounds because that's how they have been taught to ask. "Consider if you will" invites people to imagine or join your thoughts; "will you" invites a man to respond without a matter of personal preference. These phrases are linguistic upgrades that are inefficiently and sparingly utilized. Turned the wrong way, the pen is mightier than the sword and words can wound much more than anything else we do to one another. Most of us do not know how to communicate because we do not know anything about the people around us. This means we do not consider our audience, we do not respect them for their individual variances, and we do not consider that they may see something completely differently than we do.

While learning English in High School, my teachers impressed upon me the necessity of communicating effectively with your audience. Some of the people who try to sound smart do not use words the way we do. At a political town hall in Vegas once, a federal congressman once told the audience in response to my inquiry that they intended to "fix" the healthcare system. When I asked them, "Do you mean fix as in to repair or as in to make permanent?" they looked at me with abject horror as if to say "Oh no, he's on to us!" They meant it the latter way while allowing the audience to assume they meant the former (incidentally, as late as 1914 the OED defined fix as "to make permanent" without any denotation of repairs). I see this all the time that people say a word one way knowing people will assume it means that while they intend some other connotation or denotation. Recently Nancy Pelosi described the illegal immigrant children on the border as some of God's precious creatures, but apparently she only feels that way about children who manage to survive birth since they don't feel the same about the aborted fetus. I regularly want people to beware when leaders of any sort speak in sweeping terms about things of faith because they do so, not because they mean it, but because they know it resonates with you. Of course there's also the possibility that people don't know they made a speaking error. It took me many years to decide if the producers of Star Trek IV intended to mock my Faith when they had Kirk say Spock did too much LDS in the 60s or whether it was meant as a faux pas. Whatever the reason, most of us who speak English do so poorly, and so I don't know that we're actually communicating as well as we like to think. More and more I agree with Inigro Montoya that far too many people use words that do not mean what they think they mean. I love my dog, I love chocolate cake, and I love to watch a sunset, but those kinds of love are not the same, and they are not how most men use the term love. Language is often used to manipulate.

Since English, and speech in general no matter the language, seems so complex, many people manipulate the stage so as to seem the better person. I detest politics and law, because they deal with rhetoric. This means that the person with the best argument is perceived as victor, not the person who is right. Recently, I read an article on twitter that reported a link between how loudly and how frequently someone said something and its perception by the audience as truth. In other words, the louder and more shrill you argue, the more people think you are an authority. Wow, how bizarre! At other times, they come prepared to a fight, having planned one with planted questions, prompts, etc. to help their side and then draw an equivalence between the strength of their preparation and your extemporaneous rebuttal. It's a common ambush tactic for someone to approach you with something on which they've spent hours, days, or even weeks thinking and expect a cogent and coherent and rational response from you in seconds. When you fail to approach the skill and persuasion they demonstrate without advanced notice, they persuade the audience that you must be a dolt, a nit-wit, and a heretic. Even when the respondent is of superior linguistic ability, they place the burden of proof on the respondent when in reality it's always on the part of the person who broaches the subject to defend his position.

Besides the fact that men and women see the same thing different ways, members of society at large do not always see things the same way. I remember as a younger man my sister describing her friends, not on the normal demographics described by men but on how she knew them. It is for this reason that I refer to my friends with similar names as Brother Tom, Philadelphia Tom, Professor Tom, etc. (I also program them into my phone this way), because that describes which one in a far more accurate way than the more common sobriquet. However, most people don't communicate that way. They choose words that convey emotion rather than simply description so that you know how they FEEL about a thing or a person. Often, they see the same thing differently depending on how it stacks up to them. They insist that "someone should do something" but insist that it be someone else. When they do it, it's a transgression or mistake, but when others do it those people deserve lynching or death. It's a very diabolical way to see the world that unjustly ascribes virtues to their MyFaves while concurrently villifying those with whom they happen to disagree. When the Supreme Court decides a case 5-4 in favor of liberal ideology, the media in particular describes it as settled and the law of the land. When they lose 4-5, they describe it as divisive, an error, etc. Usually people compare their strengths with the weaknesses of others. The late Bishop Krister Stendahl said, "Most people think of their own tradition as it is at its best and they use caricatures of the others", and that means that you must take things that are said with a word of salt.

If you want to know the truth, go to the first source. I know better than to find out about a woman I like by asking the opinions of her former boyfriends. I don't know what you want me to tell you about people who aren't me, so you should ask them yourself. I only know that tiny sliver of truth to which I am privy, and even as fits my own part I know I don't know all the facts or if the "facts" I have are reliable. Tonight I will bring up to my students the paradox of them simply accepting me as the teacher. How do they know I am qualified or who I claim to be? They won't ask my credentials. Yet, a few semesters ago I heard about a student who, when the professor was late the first class period, got up and started teaching. We assume that people who are speaking have a reason to talk. We assume that when they do it's because they care about us. When they do not know us, how can they possibly care about us? When they do not care about us, how can they possibly respect us? We all spout the adage that people don't care what you know until they know that you care, but then we project virtues onto "our guy" and see our opponents as villains (reasons for villainy may vary). I contend that I know you, not because we've met, but because I learned to see my fellow men as who they really are- the Family of Man. This is why I write the way I do and think the way I do and live the way I do, to show familial piety towards my Father God.

Which is Not Like the Others?

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My hiking buddy was interviewed at the gym today. I laugh because he hasn't been to the gym for weeks, and when he does, he gets chosen for an interview. I cry because of why they chose to talk to him. They're doing a story on "freaks", and he qualifies because he doesn't have a single tattoo. In my circle of friends, that's pretty common, but apparently in the society at large, we have become freaks, because we don't do what everyone else does, and they think that's newsworthy. It strikes me as odd that WE are considered odd because to my knowledge a short while ago, it was people who had tattoos who were the minority.

I suppose that's how it works. Just like other fads and fashion trends that change with the vicissitudinal winds what was once common now becomes passe, and what was once acceptable becomes bigoted and vice versa. Only once in my life, during my second year of college, was I "in fashion" and it was because fashion changed to what I was already wearing. I do not change to please the jury because that's neither genuine nor fiscally feasible, and the only way I want to keep up with the Joneses is if I'm running from a bear and they're in front of me. I think most trends are about validation- that the more people who join in with you on a thing the more comfortable you feel, the more you convince yourself that you did the right thing. Paradoxically, history often validates the standout, the standalone, and the steadfast singleton who resisted the urge, the pressure, and sometimes the threats to conform or die.

In putting up my friend as part of an ersatz circus freak show, they act as if it's grotesque for a person to stay clean and unadulterated. However, that's how most people really are. Much of the news I see constitutes nothing more than editorials meant to create the impression that something is true or common or acceptable when you probably disagree. Particularly with those who hold long-held beliefs, this is about consistency. People know where we stand, and even if they don't like it, they do know where to find us and how they will find us when they get there. I will be true for there are those who trust me.

For my own part, I never took a shine to tattoos for any reason. I maintain that people who feel the need to say things about themselves are probably trying just as hard to convince themselves they believe in those things as they are to convince us. In a way, that's all tattoos are really is a pictographic or scrawled depiction of what matters to you. I don't believe that those things tell the truth any more than it makes you a jerk if someone scrawls "jerk" on your front porch with chalk. Stereotypes and other sweeping gestures do not tell you the whole truth even if they are true, and we have a hard time reading what's written on people's hearts, on their souls, and in their minds. Most of what you actually see is costumery; most of what you see is a play.

Also paradoxical, the rising generation seems deathly afraid of being "the same old thing". They portend fascination with standing out from the crowd as they all do the same things to separate themselves from what they term "the shades of a decadent past". All the more as they do this, those of us who do not follow like shrupshire sheep seem the more unique and independent as we quickly and apparently become the last vestiges who do differently from the rest. When everyone has a tattoo, they won't be cool; they won't be trendy; they will be "conservative" and "traditional". Perhaps that's how they fell out of favor in the first place as a generation sought to be different from their tattooed ancestors. Whatever the case may be, we are certainly not freaks as they chose to connote. More and more I agree with Inigro Montoya, that people use words that do not mean what they think they mean.

In closing, I leave you with some advice. Be you. Do what you do. Have your own opinions. Live your own life. Anything else means that you subjugate yourself to the decisions and opinions of others and live their life rather than your own. If you truly want to be unique, be true to yourself. Be loyal to the royal within you. You have to live with the decisions that you make, so become the best person you can be by inscribing on your heart things worthy of remembrance.

Gratitude With Hindsight

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Like most of you, sometimes I look back years later at something that didn't work out and thank God that my will was thwarted by a greater wisdom. Several years ago, I fought rather vehemently to get a job with Customs and Border Protection. Due to circumstances at which I can only speculate, I had to escalate this to a Congressional Inquiry through Senator Ensign's office (Senator Reid's office never acted on my request) and was ultimately rejected. During the intervening years, I found several occasions for which to be thankful that things didn't work out as I hoped.

I find the locale to which I would have been assigned unattractive for several reasons. Having helped my brother move to Dallas two summers ago, I don't really care much for their weather. While it gets hot in Vegas, it's not ALSO 80% humid, and so I prefer it to the conditions for summer in Texas. Additionally, my ex wife lived outside Dallas last I heard, and I would not have enjoyed much running into her or being forced to interact with her more frequently due to proximity. Despite bumper stickers encouraging people to "drive friendly" I found the traffic to be worse than that in Vegas, at least for my part, and so I am not sure I would have enjoyed living in Texas.

More to the point, I don't think I would have enjoyed the job. Ever since Obama took office, he has done everything possible to neuter efforts to actually protect American sovereignty. I don't think I would have been ALLOWED to act in the office to which I was appointed with due diligence. I know I would not have enjoyed changing diapers, acting as a babysitter, or putting up with assaults either via molotov cocktails or from gunfire across the border. I would have found it exceptionally difficult to not verbally slander my commander in chief when actions of his administration undermined my responsibilities as a government agent. Drug dealers are sneaking in during the chaos, leading to more crime and risk for CBP and ICE agents, and I would probably found it not worth the risk. Maybe you remember the agent who went to prison for shooting a man who turned out to be a known cartel member.

As you know from reading my blog, I speak my mind without reservation. My father long warned me about the dangers of going on the record with strong opinions, and although I think he esteems me for it, I don't think he would support me going to jail for speaking out about the administration's lawlessness. I would not have tolerated the notion that the nation's future rests in the descendants of foreigners rather than my own, that their children are somehow more virtuous than any I might have. I would not do this for the descendants of foreigners; it would be for mine. The liberals like to claim it's for the children while their actions lead to unexpected lasciviousness. Virtuous ends cannot come from means that lack virtue. What is virtuous about importing hordes of uneducated, illiterate poor into this nation? How are takers more virtuous than makers? Is the grasshopper somehow more noble than the ant? How will this help with jobs?

In short, I would not have enjoyed the job and it would not have ended up making for a good career. Given all of the recent developments as well as my own penchants to mouth off at malversation, I think I would have either been fired for insubordination or resigned in protest. I stand against illegal immigration for the same reason I stand for the rule of law: because of love, for my own family and for my country. This is about MY children. I am compassionate towards my own children, to the children of CBP officers, to the children of citizens who do not have access to a governmental silver spoon and who have to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. I protest the notion that unless I give away everything I have to people who defy the laws of civil society that I'm a bigot, particularly when those who level those accusations do little to get dirt on their lily white gloves. At the same time they preach shared sacrifice and community, they do everything they can to shove cash into their pockets. Their children are well off, and to hell with yours.

Ironically then, I may one day count it a blessing that I lack posterity. When people tell me I should procreate so that when I die someone survives me who understands and appreciates and supports the high-minded ideals to which I aspire, I tell them that the best revenge I can take on a world that despises virtue is to leave it to figure out its own problems. Why should I burden my children with the work necessary to clean up the mess made by people who "mean well" but never shoulder responsibility? Why is that my problem or theirs? How would that be compassion towards my children? I can only impact a handful of children and touch hundreds of other lives briefly. How will that poor effort stem the tide of lawlessness and licentiousness? I don't know how to prepare them to live in the world that is. I eschew gadgets and live in the past, and I'm in my 30s. I tell people routinely that the things I know are not much use in the real world. I know more about what ought to be than what is.

Consequently, when I pray, which is frequently, I thank God for unanswered prayers. I know that many things would not have turned out as I like. I don't think CBP would have been a career. I would probably be back searching for a new job now, and as much as I would have liked the pay, I think ti would have frustrated me, and I doubt I'd be working as a professor. However disappointed though I may be by the path of the last few years, I think this one worked out better for me. I hope that other aspects that remain as yet unclear and unsatisfied also resolve themselves into similar clarity so that I can appropriately thank God for protecting me from what I want when it is otherwise.

Days of Ignominity

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After lab one night, one of my students wondered at my recollection. I told her that it’s not the panacea she feels it to be because in addition to all of the impressive things I remember, I also remember things that no longer matter and are no longer true. I can recollect conversations I had with people verbatim, but they would flatly deny ever saying those things, even when I can produce transcripts in some cases attesting to the contrary. So many chapters of my life opened and shut that if not for pictures there’s no actual physical evidence that those things ever happened. Days that once held meaning to me hold none at all today, and other days that are meaningful to me are not meaningful to anyone else I know. Most of my days pass without comment, vanishing ignominiously into the ether of the past where they stay only until my brain decides to recollect them.

Regular readers know that last summer gifted me some unique and difficult challenges. Enough time passed that now I feel the sting of loss without mourning. I would really like to call my dead friend just to chat, about anything and everything really, just to hear her voice. From the scrimshaw she left me when she died, I kept a few pictures, but even the smell attached to her belongings faded to where I no longer register it. If not for her ex husband’s periodic harassment because he thinks I have things of material worth on which he’d like to lay his grubby hands, she would be dead to almost everyone who ever knew her.

Sadly she’s not the only person that I used to know. I realized last week and wrote about how due to my military childhood I have “friends” who no longer are friends due to distance in space and in time. While I am happy to celebrate in the next few weeks four years of zero contact whatsoever from my ex wife, there are other people who used to do things with me who no longer even acknowledge that they know me, and so large swaths of my life fade into obscurity until and unless I mention them in class as an aside. Back when Gotye’s catchy ballad first came out, I remember someone asked me if “Somebody That I Used to Know” was a tale of my life, and last week a former student contacted me thinking she’d run across one of my ex girlfriends randomly. Apparently my story is not rare, which should comfort me, but it kind of makes me more sad. How many of you are stuck in days of ignominity?

We think that things and people are important in our lives, and sometimes they are. All too often the people who we desire to keep a station of importance are the ones who depart while the persistent ones leach away our time and talents. We think that days are important, and then other days overshadow them. Sometimes this coincides with the passage of time as others are no longer around to remember them with us. Thanks to ProFlowers I am reminded annually of everyone to whom I’ve ever given flowers when they give me an offer to save if I do it again. Most of those people are gone from my life and don’t think about me much if at all as far as I know. I used to celebrate days that have meaning to me that mean nothing to anyone else as far as I can figure because other people made choices and left me alone with my thoughts on those days in lieu of their companionship. However things have come to be, today was supposed to be an important day in my life, and now it will probably pass ignominiously into the ether aside from the fact that I wrote an article today drawing attention to it. Very few people would even know why, and it’s possible that none of those who know will even care. That’s sad to me because I did and I do. It was a great day for me.

Today will be a great day too. Although I don’t really smile all that much and since I don’t have a Facebook you might not know, but I regularly travel and go on adventures. I’m living the life I like the best I can with the company available to me. Sometimes I go hiking or kayaking or shooting, and sometimes I leave town or even the country. Those days might seem ignominious, but they have made me who I am, and so you can see them when you watch me even if you weren’t there when I went.

Enough Without It

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I love the movie Cool Runnings for many reasons. One of my most favorite parts is when the team leader is talking with the coach about when coach cheated to win a medal. The coach tells him that if he’s not enough without a medal, he’ll never be enough with it. I find a great truth in that principle. Many people think that when they achieve something or own something or conquer something that it makes them worthy. However, as the coach points out, if you’re not a good person, a valuable person, without such accouterments, they will never suffice to get you there.

Far too many couples I know got together less for love than for advantage. Beyond the traditional combination of families for mutual benefit, many couples I know are together to save on expenses or because they like to do the same things or whatever. A lot of young men I know link their worth as a man to the woman they are currently dating, a notion that, were I to follow, would render me mostly worthless if not completely. Some of the best advice I have received as regards relationships revolves around improving yourself. You first need to love who you are by becoming someone worthy of your own love before you can love someone else or expect others to love you too. This is why improving works if and only if you improve because you want to be better. Efforts to woo someone else by changing yourself frequently lead to disappointment when the other person leaves because you have changed, either generally or in some way for which they do not care.

Many of my friends like to brag about their job. Whether it’s about the pay or the title, our society likes to equate the value of a person with his relative position in society. This is probably why good people shy away from teaching and why many good people elect to go somewhere other than manual labor because sweat isn’t sexy or swarthy or swagger-worthy, and it doesn’t make for bragging rights like being a lawyer or doctor. The paradox in this is that many doctors are lousy, many lawyers are corrupt, and many of the richest or most influential people in this world don’t have enough morality to fill a thimble. If we are paid what we are worth, then the most worthy among us are ENTERTAINERS, which is a notion that most people find absolutely preposterous. However, many young people still hang posters of these “heroes” in their rooms and aspire to be like them. The funny thing about wealth is that it can vanish. I’ve been homeless for a week and completely bankrupt because of my ex wife, and a woman I know once chose another man over me because he earned twice as much. Well, now I have money and that man is unemployed, which is the funny thing about employment. It’s not guaranteed. If you are not a good man without it, all the money or titles in the world will not make you a better person.

One of the things I detest most about members of my faith is how interested they seem to be in appearances and in keeping up with the Joneses. If you drive through Utah, you will see opulent houses, a plethora of personal motorcraft, and all sorts of one-upmanship. They buy boats and cabins and take fancy vacations. They compete for awards and attend fancy soirees and hobnob with elitists in society, even when those elitists obtained their ends through unvirtuous means. Even in dating, they try to outdo the last person, either with more creativity or with a more attractive mate. Members of my faith tend to marry attractive people and then let themselves go. Their achievements are wrapped up in things of no worth and which cannot satisfy because they are things rather than traits.

When I think of the Jamaican Bobsled Team, I stand in awe of their reaction to loss. They realized that getting to the Olympics was a great feat. They learned to work as a team. Even though they finished dead last, they finished strong, and I think they all realized that they were enough even without a medal of any kind. Although the movie is largely fictionalized, this line makes the salient point. YOU must be what you value or the things you acquire will not make you more valuable to yourself. No matter how much others may value you, unless you love yourself their love will not matter. Your own self-loathing will eat at you as you seek happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the law and to reality.

One of the greatest benefits of my trip to Alaska last summer was that I realized that I enjoy my own company. People who are not good enough do not like their own company. They will attempt to surround themselves with the best of things, the best of people, and the best of experiences without defining a reference in the vain hope that those things will rub off on them. Like I said on Twitter, people who are better people, who are different, will not tell you that they are better or different. Other people will say it about them. People who feel the need to boast are usually small, and since they are not enough without it, they can never be enough with it.

Ultimately our relationships and possessions do not amount to much. The greatest of men are usually the smallest by the metrics measured by men. We remember Mother Theresa not because of her wages, her opulent living, or her physique. We beatify good people because they were good. I think most people surround themselves with pretty things, pretty people and pretty titles to compensate for personal inadequacies. We’ve all heard the jokes about why the guy next to us is driving a HUGE truck, but I think in some way there is truth that he may feel he needs it to be worthy. The funny thing is that he IS worthy because of who he is. God loves you for who you are. For God so loved you that He gave His only begotten son that whoso believeth should not perish but have everlasting life. God loves you because you are you. He doesn’t really care if you are Olympian or President of the USA or the Dean of the College of Science and Math. None of that matters. What matters is that you are you. I close with this quote from Abraham Lincoln: "I do the very best I can, the very best I know how. And I will keep doing it until the end. If the end brings me out alright, what's said against me won't mean a thing. But if the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right will make no difference." What other people think should never make a difference. One definition of hell I heard recently was that on the day you die the person you become will meet the person you could have become. You are the one who must live with the person you become.

After All We Can Do

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Life is full of disappointments and episodes when we console ourselves that we've done the best we can. Sometimes, it surprises me that God, knowing pretty much everything about what we're actually going to do, blesses us and protects us and guides us anyway. I stand particularly amazed when He blesses people who turn and rend Him. Then again, it's actually pretty simple. There is really only one choice that we make in this life that really matters. We can choose to believe Him or to look at life with our own eyes. Choosing to believe God comes with certain consequences and obligations. In this choice are found a series of additional oath- and honor-bound obligations concomitant with choosing faith. Perhaps this is why so many opt against believing, preferring to dedicate their time and efforts to anything other than what a being they have never seen may ask of them. What God asks is actually fairly basic if you get down to it. That's one of the beautiful things of Christ's message among man. The mission of the Messiah explains how we are saved. We love God, love one another, and repent.

There is very little that God could ask of us that He could not do better than we. The things He asks are things He cannot do for us. He cannot force us to follow Him. He cannot prove that we mean it when we follow. We evince our status as believers because being leads to doing. The true believer repents and changes his ways. The true believer does what God asks of him. The true believer helps other people reach a point in their lives where they can choose to follow God. The true believer doesn't do this to be seen or just for a time. He makes it stick.

The best we can do is to be our best and turn to Him who is best. When I decided to accept God and follow Him, that choice came with a sacred obligation that I promised to do. We recite it every week in our worship service, attesting to our willingness to be and do all that we can be and do so that God will be with us. There are many people even in my own congregation who do not understand this, and there are many whose minds are so filled with the distracting din of the Deceiver that they do not know they are not on the road less traveled. For this reason, we preach, teach, expound, exhort, and invite all to come to Christ. You see, life is all about turning to the Savior, and when we do, we feel a desire to turn others to Him so that they can find peace in this life and hope for a better world in the life to come. We promise to act like Christians so that people will desire to know more about Him because they know about us. I don't know how well I do at that, but I do what I can here and in all as many of my interactions with people as I remember so that I will be a good example of the believers as Paul admonished us to be (I Tim 4:21).

Sometimes because of circumstance, people are unable to see their way from where they are to a life of faith. I believe this is why God asks us to minister to the sick and the afflicted, to comfort the mourners and the old, to give of our time and treasure to the naked and hungry. When we alleviate their current distress, we free them to spend more time on the things of eternity than they do on things of the moment. When our physical needs are met, we can turn from things of no moment to things of eternal consequence. Also, it helps us to act as Christ would if He were among them, and sometimes we are the answers to their prayers. God does not need our money or our hands. He allows us to help Him bless the lives of His people, and it gives us the opportunity to prove that we really do intend to follow Him. You see, the fullness of the gospel as James wrote in his epistle to the church involves first tending to those with physical affliction and then keeping ourselves free of spiritual wickedness (James 1:27).

Ultimately, we are the most important person we can turn to Christ. Ultimately, the disposition of your soul is the most important work to which you can attend. For this reason, Christ came to forgive sins, to admonish us to repent, and to show us the way to walk that would please His father. During His carnation, Christ quoted Isaiah 61: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord". All of this means that He came to invite sinners to repent, to invite the captives to come forth, to bind up the spiritually wounded. This is why He called prophets then and in our day, to continue the clarion call to change our hearts, to change our direction, to change our aim, by repenting and turning to Christ. All of these things, including weekly worship and the commandments, exist to teach us how much we need a Savior and to give us encouragement and opportunity to turn to Him. Repentance and change are difficult because they ask us to acknowledge our own nothingness and turn to a being we have never seen to rescue us from ourselves. I find that funny because we think nothing of turning to Doctors when we need surgery to set us right, but we don't really know if they really did go to medical school or just printed their diplomas from the internet. Why do we trust them more than Christ? He also wore a white coat. The Master Physician invites us to turn to Him and be healed.

Our lives are carefully orchestrated to help us realize who we are and what we ought to be doing. We have opportunities to speak with people we meet about what we believe and how it helps us. We have myriad opportunities to be the miracle in the lives of those around us, even when they don't know it. We constantly make mistakes that require recompense, reminding us that repentance renders us remedied. We suffer afflictions so we will remember Christ. We alleviate the suffering of others so that they can see Him in our actions. We teach of Christ so that people can understand that we are saved by grace after all that we can do, that Christ is He who heals. We repent so that we can remember that all we can do is to repent, and then Christ makes us whole again.

Life is pretty simple then in its execution. You choose to believe in God or to believe in something else. If you choose something other than Christ, it matters very little what you believe. If we choose to believe, we repent, we reorient, and we rededicate ourselves to evince that our belief is real. If we believe in Christ, we turn to Him for answers and for rewards. All we can do is know that He is God, that He has all power and all knowledge, and that He loves us for who we are. He knows we are children of God. He volunteered to be sent here to save us from our sins, from our circumstances, and from ourselves. All we have to do is repent and turn to Him with everything that we are. If we desire to completely heal, we must completely commit to what the Master Physician asks of us and then go act like we do.

My Traditional Family

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My father originally worked as a professional photographer when I was born. However, since it was more of a commission arrangement than a salaried career, he soon found it necessary to change his vocation and joined the USAF. Fortunately for all of us, we were the exception to the rule and maintained a stable and strong nuclear family structure to this day. Most of the other military families I know didn’t have real or stable family relationships, and it shows in how their children turned out. The joke is that army wives are usually not faithful, and in truth I think that military marriages all too often end in divorce. If not for my parents making a real home for us, I’m pretty sure that being a military brat might have ruined my life. For this reason, I remain a staunch proponent of the traditional family structure, having seen it give me the best chance possible to become something better than I would be by default.

Until I came of age, I thought the nuclear family was common. I was blessed to have parents who committed to each other and stayed together even though my father joined the military. Our lives were and continue to be about family. We always joke about “the cabin” because my parents planned it for reunions but haven’t started construction on it yet. However, we do still get together as frequently as money and distance allow, like we did when we were young. As soon as the military started to transfer us, we became the only people we knew wherever we went, and that helped us pull together. Fortunately for us, my father’s deployments were brief even when they were frequent, and he was able to come home most of the time and be a dad. I have already written about how my desire to be a dad comes because my father inspired me to want to share with my children what he shared with us.

From the time my father was young, a strong core family mattered to my grandparents. Every two or three years, we had a family reunion. Even today, my grandmother writes letters and tries to teach us grandchildren. This became a source of strength for our family. When we moved to places far from family, we had each other. Making friends was hard because everyone knew we were only going to be around for a few years, and to this day I have exactly zero close friends from my boyhood days. I talk to a few folks I know from high school, but since I haven’t seen any of them for a decade, our lives have grown apart, and we are no longer close friends like we once were. I do still have my family, and we do things together whenever possible. Once a close acquaintance chastised me for turning down an invitation from the woman I was dating at the time to keep a prior commitment to my sister. Well, I know now that I made the right choice because my sister and I go to “sibling bonding” activities to this day while I haven’t heard from that woman for more than four years. In truth, that was also the reason why I never bothered to date in earnest until I went to college. I knew that I wasn’t going to be with any of these people for any length of time because we would be moving in a few years, so I saw no point. Only when the duration of my stay was up to me did I ever consider seriously dating.

Many people suggest that I skip to the chase and adopt or go to foster care and have children since women don’t seem to want to start a family with me. One of my students a few years back worked for child services and told me that if I came in she would make sure I got a foster kid because I was better than the applicants. Years ago, I had a coworker who had eight foster kids just for the money the state paid him. I am not sure that I would have the time to dedicate to raising a child on my own. Thursday night after lab, one of my students told me how much it meant to her that she could trade off and get a break sometimes and leave the kids with her husband while she goes to class. I decided thus far to not adopt because if the children can find a normal family with both parents, that could be better. It was for me.

Today I work to fill my days. I sometimes tell students that if I had a family I’d be home with them rather than in classes that last far into the night. As it is now, I come home exhausted and disinclined to do things that are urgent and important, but with the right motivation I know that I can find strength and time to care for those I love. I sometimes turn people away because I’m not that desperate. The culture of our day encourages us to select our mates from the most prodigious of possibilities rather than partners with whom happy and healthy marriages are possible. Proponents of “alternative families” point to the failed outcome of poor matches while they ignore all of the ones that are strong. I know that even in my lineage this kind of family is rare, but the legacy of my late Grandpa John is that it’s not only possible, it’s likely if the parents are dedicated first to their union and family before other competingg interests. You cannot serve two masters well. If you want a good family, you must feed it.

Many families fail, whether military or not, because the partners are absent. Far too many people I know, including students, are in marriages that are nothing more than roommates who are physically intimate and reproduced. Just as having sex doesn’t make you an adult, having a child doesn’t make you a parent. It just makes you a DNA donor. I can happily say to any who read this that I have no bastard children. The nuclear traditional family may not always work, but it offers the best chances possible for healthy children and familial relationships. This is why I advocate chastity and fidelity. If my parents can make it work despite deployments, disappointments, moving, war, financial duress, distance from home, and the stress of military demands, then it can be done by any two people who are truly committed to God and to each other. You must be present to win.

Hurting to Heal

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When we hurt, the pain is sometimes more than we can bear or handle well. At those times, sometimes we are tempted to hurt others as a way to heal ourselves. Like the bullies of our youth, sometimes we feel we can lift ourselves on the backs of others or hold ourselves up by making others low. However, there is no virtue in using the adversary's methods to achieve the Father's plan. I know it can be taxing and of long duration to wait to heal, but when we try to rush miracles, at best we get rotten miracles and sometimes we hurt ourselves more than if we just let it go. I know sometimes we are tempted to do this because people we love become our biggest antagonists, but even if they are agonists it does not have to be an adversarial relationship. The Christian thing is to let Christ handle it. That's not the common thing or the natural thing to do, at least as far as our wills are concerned, but ultimately it yields the best chance to heal.

These past few weeks, one of my friends has been counseling with me about how to handle his impending divorce. He wrote three different versions of his feelings to share with his wife: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Some of the things in the ugly letter are very scathing, even if they are true, and I can understand the temptation to lash out when wounded at the source of your pain. Wisely, this weekend, he told me that he sent an affirmative and peaceful version instead and let some of the things that wounded him stop there. There is no need to wound others in order to heal yourself. I remember while I was married how my ex wife would complain to her coworkers about me. I knew this because they all stared daggers at me when I would bring her lunch. As far as I know, they thought I was lower than pond scum. They were her friends, and they were supposed to be supportive, but you don't need to lay all of our problems at my feet.

Once someone tried to justify this behavior by telling me that healing, like surgery, sometimes starts with a cut. Well, even though that's true, the surgeon doesn't cut open someone else to heal you. The person in pain is the one cut open, not to cause extra damage, but to accelerate the chances for proper and lasting healing. Additionally, it's not the person who injured us who cuts us but a third party who is interested only in our recovery and the continuity of our life. The person who hurt us is not involved at all, because hurting them never can heal us.

That's the bully mentality. I suck, so if others suck more then I suck less which means I'm better than they are. On a relativity scale I suppose that holds some logic, but we're all still pretty much irrelevant on a galactic scale, and so all of these efforts are ephemeral and transitory at best. Bullies are never better people. They enlarge themselves by making others small. They don't spread happiness, they destroy it. When everyone is injured, that doesn't mean anyone is healthy. It just means that we're equal, which is not always a good thing.

For many months now, I've been waiting and praying and hoping for Christ to heal my heart. Other injustices arose and piled on top of the first, and I was tempted to lash out and bring others down. I realized that since nothing has actually harmed me that I am not justified in taking any action whatsoever. Just because others are advanced doesn't mean I am restricted. Just because I feel hurt doesn't mean it was on purpose. Even if it was, that doesn't justify me to take justice into my hands. I'm not qualified to be the dispensary of justice because I am not blind to emotions or passions or pleas or even people. I favor some over others, and I am not the choice to decide what anyone deserves. In truth, even when people tell me I deserve lofty and noble things, I am careful knowing that since I have sinned even an iota I deserve to be cast out of God's presence.

Ultimately there is only one way that hurt will heal. That hurt took place on the hillsides of Jerusalem as Jesus first suffered at Gethsemane and then was executed on Golgotha. Through His hurt we are healed. In chapter 53, Isaiah writes: "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." For this reason, it is through Christ that we are healed. We can't really do anything to hasten it or force it or make it happen. We must wait for Him to heal our hearts, to deliver on His promises, and to bestow on us His blessing. The things we do might make us feel better for a moment, but those hurts hurt us as well. The only Man ever hurt that heals another is when we allow Christ's atonement to make us whole again.

I don't pretend to be good at waiting. I don't pretend to be healed. I hurt a lot, and I shake my fist in the air and throw rocks in anger and pepper targets with lead in frustration waiting for God to make me whole. It's not the Master Physician's fault that I'm wounded. He wants to help me. Sometimes it hurts and sometimes it cuts, but I know that I can only heal correctly when He makes things right. Since I don't know enough about my own physical anatomy let alone the anatomy of my own peace, I trust in His masterful hand to suture shut such that I will heal and live again.

Family of Man

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People make me sad. My hiking buddy and I spoke at length about some of the people we have lost this weekend. In some cases, we saw it coming. In others, it happened without warning, in an instant, and without recourse. Some of them are dead. Some of them are dead to life. Some of them are dead just to us by their own choice. Some of them saw so little point to living or to living well. Some of them really wanted to find a better way but didn't know how to find one or couldn't summon up the courage to strike it out on a new road. Others might have only desired a better way with words. We miss them because we love them. That's exactly how we should feel. Joseph Smith Jr. wrote that the closer we come to Christ, the more we feel the urge to help others, to cast their burdens on our backs. It's because that's what family is supposed to do.

I look at the world with a different perspective than most that regards other people as members of the Family of Man. God is our Father. We are all His children, and consequently we are brothers and sisters even if we have never met. For this reason, the two commandments given by Christ make sense: love God and love one another. In essence, Christ commands us to be a good family. We are to love and honor our Father God and love and respect our spiritual siblings. Yet, we do so many things that are not love and, like Reuben and Judah did to Joseph, sell our brothers into tribulation for a handful of silver coins.

When we truly understand and believe our relationship with one another it changes our behavior. Just as Levi and Simeon did not tolerate the abuse of their sister, we have no desire in us to offend the virtue of our sisters in Christ. Just as later Reuben insisted that he be held as hostage rather than Benjamin, we sacrifice for our brothers. Just as Joseph demanded that Isaac be brought to Egypt, we long to be with our families. We behave as siblings do who love each other, and the commandments begin to deal with things that would never cross our minds. We don't need to worry about stealing, coveting, lying, adultery, idol worship, idle worship, irreverence, blasphemy, murder, or any kind of sin. Looking out for our siblings constitutes the same thing as looking out for our own welfare.

This is not just a concept of the clergy or Christianity. In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins explains altruistic behavior in a sibco of family units. Even aunts and uncles without children sacrifice to aid the survival of their own families. The rest of the animal kingdom looks out for the family of their own species. Only humans go to war with other members of their own species. Cutting a member of our own herd down weakens us against predation by other species or illness or calamity even when inorganic in nature.

For a long time I struggled to explain why I do the things I do. Understanding my relationship to my fellow men helps me understand why I should live as I do. I would not want my siblings to reign over me, so I don't exercise hegemony over others. I would not want another man to mistreat my sister, so I try to treat women with respect, reverence, and requisite virtue. I would not want my brother to rob me of anything, and so I deal fairly with men that I meet. I treat others as God would have me treat them. Sometimes people ask us to treat others as God would, but God is a parent, and His behavior is different. Parents can punish. Siblings cannot. Parents can guide. Siblings can only encourage. Parents have perspective. A parent would ask me to do different things with my siblings than they would do. At times, and under the right circumstances, some things normally forbidden are permitted. God would have our family persist, but only under His direction. Ergo the family and His permission to have sexual relations with certain of our spiritual siblings if and only if we are married and committed to the success of the family unit.

Violations of these sins wins us wrath from God the Father. He has a plan. He asks us to do certain things at certain times and in certain places under certain conditions because He's trying to vouchsafe and secure the Family of Man. Those who refuse to comply with His efforts to secure the survival of the family suffer the same fate as Cain. They continue to live, but they are cast out of the presence of the Father, doomed to wander on their own. This is why God hates war, lasciviousness, licentiousness, abortion, drugs, and crime in general. It weakens the family ultimately. He does not want the family of man to fail, and only He can banish or punish or decide to terminate the life of a member of the family. Only He knows what He wants His family to be.

During our third hour at church Sunday, I reread the account of the creation. God starts His family with Adam, a man after His own heart. Then He gives Adam a help meet for him, a woman, who was after the heart of the man. He commands them to multiply and replenish the earth and to take good care of the garden. In essence, He asks all of us to take care of what He created. Sometimes, there are things to cut. Sometimes there are things to plant or dung or prune. It is not up to us to decide whom to hurt or snub or ostracize or favor. God alone directs how the family operates. He asks us to love our families even when they hurt us, betray us, feed us fruit from the adversary or cause us to be cast out. It's not an easy thing, but it's impossible until you try. Some of us don't treat each other like family. Some of us treat each other like enemies and enemas, to be cut off or cut down in order to advance ourselves. Paradoxically, we hurt ourselves when we do this.

I have been watching the CW's dramatization of Kass Morgan's novel about The 100. The more they fight each other, the more they weaken their prospects to survive. Although they are more related than they know, they decide on criminal behaviors over Christian behaviors only to weaken themselves against their enemies. Like those woebegone survivors, we came down to this earth to live, and we are all we have. Either we hang together or assuredly we will hang separately. We may not like each other, but we are a family, and when we behave inhumanely towards man, we evince that we hate ourselves most of all. These two laws above all the others- love God the Father and love one another. That's all we really have to do. If it's not love, abstain. Doing nothing means at least doing no more harm than already exists. In the worst case when we ignore others we at least don't make it worse. In the best case, when we try to help maybe we help our own survival.

The tale is told of a wealthy man on a journey to a distant country. Along the way, he comes across a man begging for money in the cold who has no coat. He gives the man some coins as well as his cowl and tells the beggar, "I have money and you have need, and perhaps the day will come when you have money and I have need". Sure enough, one day the prospects were reversed, and the first man, now brought low to poverty from his once lofty station receives beneficence from the beggar he once met. "Now I have money and you have need, and what I have literally is yours." In saving our lives, in saving each other, ultimately we may indeed save ourselves. We believe in Karma, in the Law of the Harvest. If we want to survive, to thrive, and to live, then it behooves us to help other members of our own family do so, even if we don't know or like them. Maybe the soul we save will ultimately be our own.

War is "Always" for Oil

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Patton complained to his superiors that a lack of oil meant he was ill equipped to win the war. He also observed that the Germans were licked when they started using horse-drawn carts. Oil gives people an economical and technological advantage. It has always been an important part of economies, although the type of oil changes frequently. In fact, Patton was stopped only because his forward units ran out of gas. The person who controls the oil essentially controls the world.

Before the advent of fossil fuels, nations went to war over special kinds of oils. From perfumes to olive oil to other kinds of fatty acids and derivatives, men waged war over natural resources, in particular the fats they could extract. Tribes fought over food, chiefly for the fat with which to subsist during winter or with which to line clothing and shelter against the elements. Traders fought over routes on which spices and oils were shipped or on the sources themselves. War seems to always pit organic organisms against each other over organic materials.

Unknown to many people, Japan went to war against the west in 1941 over oil. Japan has very few natural resources, being a series of isolated volcanic islands relatively young in age, and so her imperial ambitions intended to extend her reach to the mainland in order to access the raw materials there. Interested chiefly in fossil fuels, Japan knew that industrialization depended at least at that time on access to coal, oil, and natural gas, which China had in plenty but had not developed. This is why the western nations reached industrialization earlier, because they developed their organic fuel resources and belched carbon into the air.

After the second world war, expansion chiefly depended likewise on access to organic carbon fuels. The first time gasoline spiked near $4/gallon in the USA it was blamed on China’s industrial revolution. Our electricity prices in Vegas vascillate widely despite the presence of Hoover Dam because most of our electricity comes from Ried-Garner coal rather than from hydroelectric or solar plants (which are a paltry 0.2% of the total energy generated). The oil embargo prompted shortages in the 70s leading to 55mph limits, and the liberals constantly blame Bush for going to war in Iraq for oil. It was probably one of the reasons he went, but I don’t think we got the price reduction we should have.

In our modern day, war remains about oil. I am convinced that President Obama opposes the Keystone pipeline as a means to justify continued war. As long as we cannot access Canada, which has never really been at war with anyone, we have to deal with dangerous nations adverse to our way of life. He wants us to have to deal with our enemies rather than rely on ourselves. For this reason, they continue to disenable raw materials in ANWAR, oppose fracking, delay refineries, ad infinitum, so as to keep the USA from access to its own organic carbon sources as a means to control us. Recent EPA edicts for cap and trade are aimed at rolling back American industrialization so as to weaken us and make us more dependent on him and his ilk to save us.

Whether the war is waged on industry or against nations, war seems to really always be about oil. From the time when Cain slew Abel because his sacrifice had better oils to the present day to memes about other planets proven to have oil suggesting the US invade, control of oil hinges on control of the world. We go after oil as a lubricant, as an insulator, and even for plastic. This is why London and China have such desperately abhorrent pollution levels, because London was the historic center of the industrial revolution, and China has become the modern equivalent. They are not subject to restrictions on pollution, meaning anything we do in America is irrelevant. Our world revolves around products we make from oil. If you want to control the people, you control what products they have, meaning you control the oil. For all their ignoble talk about protecting the environment and promoting peace, Obama could be called the Polluter in Chief and the Warmonger in Chief, titles his supportive sycophants conveniently choose to ignore. Like the oligarchs before him and those yet to succeed him, he is out to control the world by controlling your access to oil and its derivatives.

Oil gives you options. Oil made the computer, shoes, bottles, Styrofoam, and a whole host of other products possible. They want to control the money, the power, and the people, and they know that to do so they must control the oil, even if all they can manage is deny your access to it or dictate from whom you must buy it. Our progress depends on this very strange organic substance. Until we can find a substitute, the course of events and our prospects to succeed in the world will continue to hinge on access to, control of, and products made from oil.