Random Ramblings

Shooter purchased gun accessories from same company as college shooters

Why this should be a non-story:
1) I’ve purchased firearms from an online distributor and picked them up in a local, federally-licensed gun shop to have all the necessary checks and such done. That doesn’t automatically mean I’m going to find a reason to shoot someplace up.
2) He bought ACCESSORIES online. ACC-ESS-OR-IES. Last time I checked, one doesn’t go shooting up a place with a glock magazine and a glock loader. You’re kind of missing an integeral part of the formula: The gun itself.
3) From the article directly:

Pennsylvania law has no requirement for a permit or license to purchase a handgun. However, it does require a license to carry a concealed weapon or carry one in a vehicle.

Not having a concealed handgun license doesn’t put some magical force-field around you that prevents you from concealing a handgun on your person. That’s why Rob Gordon (Washington County’s esteemed sheriff) said that concealed handgun license holders “are some of the best citizens in the county, they pay $65.00 to carry a firearm hidden from view while the bad guys are all doing it for free.”

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I heard a sermon while I was driving down to Medford today with Amanda, one of the illustrations was that during Moses’ time, a majority vote left Israel wandering in the wilderness for 40 extra years, of the 12 spies that went out, only two wanted to obey God, the other 10 made excuses for why it couldn’t be done. Never thought about it that way before, but it’s a great insight.

Tags: Religious // Add Comment »

“Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is…”

–C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity”

I think through the times of trial is when the content of our character is revealed. At that point, we must consider long and hard whether what we do is glorifying to God, or giving place to the devil. My prayer is that in adversity, my characther is glorifying to God.

(Amanda’s probably laughing to herself right now, since she saw firsthand what I’m capable of when I’m too competitive, which makes that statement truly ironic. =)

Tags: Personal, Religious // Add Comment »

I haven’t written a blog post in a while. Why? Well… I haven’t had a lot of time, nor have I really had a lot to say. But I’ve kind of felt the Spirit moving me tonight, as I get the feeling there are a lot of people hurting tonight and something needs be said. I’ll preface this by saying, I’m neither a terribly gifted preacher, nor an altogether dynamic layman, so don’t expect something the caliber of what you might get out of any one of the pastors at church.

A vote took place tonight at church, the results of which affect the very course of our church’s history. Some are heartbroken, others upset, and most are bewildered at this point. The expressions on the leadership team’s faces when they walked up on the platform said everything that needed be said: “What are we going to do now?”

I won’t go into the details of the situation, most who need to know the situation’s details already, but in short this vote decided whether or not Pastor Lindsey would be restored as our pastor. This great man, who shepherded us through the first seven years of being, seemed a shoo-in to return to the pulpit. Yet somehow, the vote slid below the required 75% mark required to pass. And now the congregation, too, is left wondering what just happened.

It’s incredible to view how God used the messages Pastor Lindsey preached to prepare us for it, even if we didn’t realize that’s how we were being preached to. The sermons that were intended, at the time, as a reasonable defense for why he was acceptable to return to the pulpit, wound up being some of the deepest spiritual truths imaginable for the time we were approaching – God sometimes has to teach us deep spiritual truths in the darkness.

In Isaiah tonight, Amanda and I were discussing the situation, and I let go with the comment that God makes in Isaiah 55-

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts
Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV)

What interesting about that (which I didn’t notice until Amanda pointed it out), is what all else was in that chapter of scripture. Further down the page:

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Isaiah 55:11-13 (KJV)

God’s words will not return void, but it shall accomplish that which he pleases… This verse, among many others, gives me comfort tonight.

The reactions of some is with great zeal and fervor, wondering what could possibly have possessed the 28% to vote that way, I’ve even seen some turning it into an “Us vs. Them” mentality, thinking that those who did not vote with the majority were somehow traitors that hated Pastor Lindsey. Paranoia starts to set in, people start wondering what someone else has against them, why would that 28% want to ruin it for the rest of us.

I think everyone needs to take a big step back, take a deep breath, and chill for a moment.

After tonight’s vote, there was no joy. There was a lot of weeping, red eyes, downcast faces. In looking around the room, there was no one who looked particularly happy. Think about it, folks. Who there was prancing around singing “Ding, dong, the witch is dead?” Who walked up to Pastor Lindsey and shouted “HA! You lose!”? Nobody. I didn’t see anyone gloating. What I saw was a room full of hurting people, people who didn’t understand what just happened, some looked angry, others shell-shocked, but when it came right down to it, no one looked like it had been an easy decision. I think that for the last several weeks a lot of prayer has gone in for everyone involved for God to reveal his will, and God did just that in a way that none of us truly expected.

God’s ways are not our ways. We aren’t always going to understand why things happen the way that they do, and God’s in no way going to be forced into revealing it to us right away. But we are still to be one body, and move forward with one accord. God revealed his will to us, what are we going to do with it? Are we going to strive together to continue on in his will, to discover what God DOES have planned for us? Or are we going to be, as Jared brought up in a recent sermon, like Jonah, and say “See God? That’s not how I would’ve done it. You really messed that up, if we would’ve just done this my way, this ALL could’ve been avoided!”

I’d like to put my vote forth – Let’s move forward and see how God can work. Like the children of Israel, he didn’t lead us to the edge of the Red Sea to watch Pharaoh’s chariots barrel down on top of us and utterly destroy us. He led us to the Red Sea so that we can witness HIS miracles, and HIS glory.

For those who had the majority vote – Don’t become bitter about it. The vote, even with the people involved, was still in God’s hands the entire time. God works in the hearts of the people, and to become bitter at those who you may not have agreed with is simply giving place to the devil. Paul wrote in Ephesians,

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
Eph 4:31-32 (KJV)
I don’t think a decision like the one that was made tonight was made lightly by any of the parties involved, nor do I think it was a personal attack on our pastor. I think everyone there tonight had approached it with much prayer and supplication, and – as I said before – the entire process was in God’s hands, not ours.

Additionally, those who voted with the minority – don’t gloat, or make it seem like those who were voting with the majority were wrong in voting how they did. This is a time where we’re being broken as a congregation, and now more than ever we need to strengthen ourselves for the trying times that are coming. We need to move forward and face the future, not spend time dwelling on the things of the past.

If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.
Phil 2:1-2 (KJV)
We can ill afford to sit back and do nothing, friends. We cannot begin to let bitterness seep in, or to think that God in some way has abandoned us. God was here before this time came, God’s still here now that the time is upon us, and God will remain with us in the future. Never lose sight of that!

As I think about all of the ways that I’ve grown under Pastor Lindsey’s teaching, there’s one thing that I think always stood out about his salvation story – When he talked about how the deacon who led him to Christ fell away, he began to question why he was even in it any more, and considered quitting. His pastor told him to get his eyes off of the man and get his eyes on Christ.

That, if you take nothing else from this, is going to be the big thing. Stop focusing on what men are doing, start focusing on what God wants us to do. The world is watching us, how are we going to handle the coming darkness?

Andrew
Psalms 84:11

Tags: Personal, Religious, Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

I haven’t blogged since March. I’ll try to get more on top of that folks. In the mean time, you can check me out on Twitter as I’ve just joined. =)

Tags: Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

I think life should be more like TV. I think all of life’s problems ought to be solved in 30 minutes with simple homilies, don’t you? I think weight and oral hygiene ought to be our biggest concerns. I think we should all have powerful, high-paying jobs, and everyone should drive fancy sports cars. All our desires should be instantly gratified. Women should always wear tight clothing, and men should carry powerful handguns. Life overall should be more glamorous, thrill-packed, and filled with applause, don’t you think?… Then again, if real life was like that, what would we watch on television? -Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes

Growing up I loved Calvin and Hobbes. Bar non, it was my favorite comic in the newspaper. I to this day still remember the words in the last frame of the last comic in the series; “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy… Let’s go exploring!” (Impressive, since the final comic was published almost 15 year ago).

What did I like about it? I think it was part that Calvin had an imagination. I was an imiaginative kid, and I always loved the strips where Calvin was having a daydream, like Spaceman Spiff or Stupendous Man. I grew up like that, using my imagination (video games weren’t huge in my life at this point, I didn’t get my first system, a super nintendo, until 7th grade, and my first computer until my sophomore year of high school). I’d hang out with friends (or, sometimes, by myself) imagining all sorts of adventures to keep myself occupied and/or amused.

Calvin was also incredibly smart. I don’t think I was aware of it at the time, but I think the 11th grade vocabulary I had in third grade was mostly due to Calvin’s waxing philosophical in some of the strips. He’s the only first grader I know who can use the words “vicariously” and “mediocre” in a complete sentence.

Mostly, I remember Sunday mornings before church, getting up and having my dad read the comics to me and my sister, with us on either arm of his chair, and every sunday Calvin and Hobbes was there, in all its half-page glory.

Just something I found amusing for the day, call it reliving my childhood. =)

Tags: Humor, Writing // 1 Comment »

Wow… It doesn’t feel like it’s been almost four months since I last blogged… I apologize for my apparent lack of drive to actually blog, I’ll try to get something written in here and there from now on. In the mean time, here’s a little rant I’ve had on my mind for a couple weeks.

Myspace and Facebook are great tools for keeping in touch with friends, if that’s what you’re actually using them for. See, interestingly enough, I’ve noticed more and more that people are using them for their intended purpose (social networking) less and less, and are using them more an more to try and live in their own little fantasy worlds. This is a culmination of those observations.

1) The popularity contest – The more people I have as friends, the more popular I clearly must be, so you all must bow down and worship my awesomeness. – Really? you base your entire social status on how many people you don’t talk to at all but you claim as friends simply to get your friend count up? Seriously?

Here’s a hint, kiddies. You’ll never have more friends on your friends list than Tom does on Myspace, the man’s your default “friend” on Myspace. And do you seriously think Tom actually knows all 2 million “friends” he has? Heck no! If Tom wasn’t the founder and forcing his way into your friends list, chances are you could seriously care less about the guy, and he’d have a “normal” friend count like the rest of us. Simply because you have 200,000 friends on your Myspace page doens’t mean I think you’re cool. It makes me think you have too much free time.

2) The riddler – I’m going to send you 30,000 quizzes a day and think that you hate me if you don’t respond. – We all know that one person, you know, the one who responds to every quiz that’s sent out in a day, sends it out, and then gets mortally offended if you a) don’t bother to read their quiz because you read the last 10 variations of the same basic quiz and don’t really need to know about how much they like corn or b) don’t repost your relatively useless factoids about yourself because you don’t spend all day camping out on Facebook waiting for something to repost. And let’s face it, the most annoying ones are “If you don’t resend this to at least 10 people, you’ll never fall in love, your dog will die, your pickup truck will break down, and the rest of your life will be a twangy country song.”

If you want to send out quizzes, fine. Heck, I’ll respond to some of them once in a while, even! But for the love of crackers, I don’t have time to read every single one you send out in the course of a day! I have a job, just because you’re unemployed and bored and haven’t run out of money to pay the internet bill with, doesn’t mean we all have that kind of free time! Seriously!

3) The poser – Sure, I was a dork in high school, but look at how cool I am now! – We all know him, the one guy who tried to play it off like he was cool in high school, but he was a dork, tragically uncool, and we all knew it. And reminded him constantly. Somehow, despite our best efforts in high school to cut him down, make him realize he was a dork, and that he needed to stop acting like a tool, somehow he developed this hyperinflated ego since graduation and in his own grandiose fantasy world, he’s now trying to convince the rest of the world that he’s made it and he really is as cool as he thought he was in high school.

This is the guy who posts pictures of himself with his arms around random women (who, oddly enough, all seem slightly bewildered and are holding alcoholic beverages). Or the classic group shot of about ten women with him just sort of hanging out in the back (completely out of place, it’s like he set one of his poser friends up with a camera and “nonchalantly” walked into the shot just as soon as the girls friends got posed for their picture. You know EXACTLY who I’m talking about, don’t you?

Seriously, these people are some of the funnest, simply because they’ve not changed since high school. They’re still delusional enough to think that they’re cool, and we’re still sane enough to remember they still aren’t, they need to get women liquored up just to get a photograph with one. You’re not fooling anyone, so stop trying. It didn’t work in high school, it still won’t work now!

4) The emo-kid – No one likes me, everyone hates me, why don’t I kill myself? – Last, but certainly not least, is the person who has to find a stormcloud in every silver lining. Their job sucks, their life sucks, their friends suck, why are they even living, blah blah blah. This is the one who finds a reason to complain about how much life sucks to everyone in the world willing to read it. Most of us don’t bother reading their blog posts unless we’re abnormally happy and want to depress ourselves. Additionally, this person convinces themself that the rest of us actually care about their hangnail that’s ruined their mood, when in actuality we realize if there’s a new blog post from that person, it’s probably a dead skunk ruined their morning and they have to gripe about how it affected their entire day and are sick of the whining.

Okay, I’m done. This has been another fine episode of Andrew nonchalantly ranting…

Tags: I Just Don't Understand... // 1 Comment »

So today I wound up in town with nothing to do. I showed up to help out with the Christmas skit video, only to find out that the reason I thought they needed me they didn’t need me for, and we wound up being done in 30 minutes flat. So, I decided to go see the new 007 flick, “Quantum of Solace”.

Now anyone who knows me knows I’ve always enjoyed the Bond franchise. Maybe it was the gadgets, maybe it was the guns, maybeit was that part of me as a child that always thought how neat it would be to be a spy (this is the glorified spy, the one that doesn’t have to do things of questionable nature to accomplish his tasks but gets all the fun of sneaking around and doing secretive stuff… You know, before you realize that occasionally they have to hurt people). But I’ve always enjoyed them. And I did truly enjoy the first of the Daniel Craig-era bond films, Casino Royale (See my previous review).

Quantum, on the other hand, I have to say I had a hard time watching.

It started out well, Bond in a high speed car chase in his Aston Martin, fleeing an Alfa Romeo full of guys with automatic weapons, without really any explanation as to why (although, the way Bond goes through $300,000 Aston Martins, it’s a wonder that MI6 can even stay in business…). Then we find that the movie picks up almost exactly where Casino Royale left off, as after the chase, Bond opens the trunk to reveal… You guessed it! Mr White, the guy he shot in the leg at the end of Casino Royale. Complete with leg wound. Seriously, it’s been that short of time.

As the movie progresses, you get to see Bond basically hammer his way through Quantum, the organization behind Lechiffre, leaving a fairly nasty body count in his wake. And there’s a few moments where the absolute ludicrous nature of the fight scenes makes you kind of wonder why the producers had to go there (Seriously, out of the belfry, through the skylights, and, by good twist of fate, onto scaffolding, where they have an epic fight whilst dangling from ropes and pulleys? I’m all for over the top action, but this was over the top fake looking action… I’m not sure, but the whole scene seemed like some of the CGI fights you see in Spider Man 3 where things don’t look quite right as they fly through the air). Casino Royale had, for the most part, an air of realism to it. Quantum? Not so much. Bond went from being a real, vulnerable person to being a high-flying superhero with a gun again. I don’t think I’d have minded so much if he’d had Q back with his hi-tech gadgetry to save his skin, but no. Bond punches, kicks, stabs, andshoots his way through the movie.

Dominic Greene was a decent villain, I liked Lechiffre better, but Greene was enough of a slimy dirtbag that I still hated him enough to cheer when he got what he deserved. And, admittedly, the friction between him and Bond in their scenes together was pretty good. Favorite line had to be:

Greene: My friends call me Dominic.
Bond: I’m sure they do.

It was just the perfect, Bond-esque pithy comeback you’d have expected, and I loved it. There were still moments of the movie that I thought were great, Bond in a boat, Bond at the Opera, Bond evading capture, and Bond in a plane. But I don’t think it was enough for me to just have the big action set pieces. I wanted details. Where did Quantum come from? Why the heck is Vesper’s boyfriend working for them? What did Bond get out of him in the end?

There were some parts that were just disturbing, mostly centered around the military dictator that Quantum is helping to install in Bolivia and his sadistic tendencies. And then there were the parts that just left you wondering how the producers expected you to suspend your disbelief so much, such as the random, almost totally abandonded (save for the bad guys, Bond, the girl, and the staff) high-tech hotel with its solar panels and… Hydrogen fuel cells? In the middle of a country that we’ve established over the course of the film is mostly third-world? Seriously, who builds a hotel in the middle of the desert?! (Okay, outside of Las Vegas, that is…)

Was it a terrible movie? No, like I said, I liked parts of it. But I felt like there were parts it could’ve done without, and other areas I wish would’ve been better fleshed out. And I’m grateful that someone decided to abandon the idea of putting Bond and Leiter into a sexual relationship like was talked about in the earlier stages of pre-production (glad to see even Hollywood has some sense, albeit not much). I just don’t think it lived up to its predecessor due to the amount of hype. And, lets face it: Bond has changed. It’s no longer quite as “fun”. Sure, the chintzy naming of female characters made a (brief) comeback (although Agent Fields, we don’t find out her first name is “Strawberry” until the end credits…). But this was a considerably darker film than the others, it reflected Bond’s mood in his quest for vengance. Maybe now that he has that, we can get off of the brooding feel that Quantum gave and get back to the action-packed, still somewhat upbeat Bond we all know and love.

Tags: Movies // 3 Comments »

Well, we’re at the end of the political season, and as of 8:00 Pacific time, for all intents and purposes, we have a new president. And it’s thanks, in no small part, to my generation that the new president got elected.

My generation just made what will probably go down in the history books as the dumbest mistake we’ve ever made as a country for the sake of idealism.

We’re sick of war, sure. We don’t like that the economy’s in trouble, fine. We don’t like high gas prices, okay. We want renewable energy, whatever. But seriously, how is Obama going to help?

The catch phrase of this election has been “change”. If I were a drinking man, and had decided to make a drinking game out of the news coverage, I would’ve been shlockered since last November from how many times I’ve heard the word change. But you know what? for all that Obama talks about change, I’ve found very few of his followers who know what that “change” is, aside from “someone other than Bush”.

Seriously? And they call Republicans uneducated hicks? At least I can tell you what my candidate stands for without blasting his opponent for his party ties.

I have to agree with McCain’s comment in the final presidential debate: “Mr. Obama, if you’d wanted to run against President Bush, you’re four years too late.” McCain isn’t president Bush, despite all of Obama’s best efforts to portray him that way. The argument that McCain votes with president Bush 98% of the time became a catch phrase used by the democrats to attack republicans in every other battleground, making them sound like a broken record (When I heard Merkley use it on Smith, I thought “Can we not come up with something that doesn’t sound plagarized from Obama’s playbook?”). It’s become guilt by association instead of anyone actually paying attention to issues, REAL issues.

Additionally, Obama talks about how he’s going to “get more jobs in America”, but at the same time talks about only cutting taxes for the middle class.

Economics lesson, kids. If you make it more expensive for a corporation to do business, the business will generally move to where it can be done for cheaper. We’ve already got corporations moving overseas for the cheap labor, how exactly does Obama think raising corporate income taxes is going to help stem the proverbial tide of our jobs being sent overseas? It IS cheaper over there, after all. Pretty soon, we’ll have to call our orders at the McDonalds drive through in to some guy in India who’s getting half as much as the lazy teenager that McDonalds couldn’t afford to keep on with the tax hike.

And furthermore, the “Bush gives tax cuts to the wealthiest one percent of taxpayers” argument is a crock. Can I be totally frank? Yes, they got a tax cut. Yes, they got more back than we did, simply because they paid more in to begin with. The wealthy tend to be a little more mobile with their funds, though, they can afford to hide their money in offshore tax shelters from the IRS so they can get out of paying their taxes if they want to make the effort.

I found the most helpful illustration on Scott Adam’s Dilbert Blog:

Sometimes politicians, journalists and others exclaim; “It’s just a tax cut for the rich!” and it is just accepted to be fact, without questioning it But what does that really mean?

Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, the following might help. Let’s put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. What about the other six men, those paying the tab? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!” “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!” “That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!” “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

The sad mistake is, most people think just because someone’s working for a corporation at an executive level, that they’re not as hard working as the middle-class guy who’s working at the low pay grade job. Can I tell you something, though? No one just walks into a corporation and is handed the reigns. Most of these guys had to work hard to get where they were, and while a few have made poor decisions (See: Enron, Arthur-Andersen, MCI Worldcom), the men who make it to the top in these corporations have worked just as hard or harder than the average guy working the lower level. As Vince Lombardi once said, “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of will.”

Obama wants universal health care, but he wants to tax the wealthy and corporations to do it. I watched Obama trying to justify taxing more to the people earning over 250,000 to even out the break he was giving to the middle class to a man’s face, and his argument was less than convincing. Can I just say, the government’s not going to do any better with the health care than the private corporations are? I’m completely content with my health care system as it is, I’d rather the government didn’t take it over, because honestly, I don’t think they’re competent to make that kind of decision for me.

And that, dear reader, is precisely what’s gotten us into this mess: We want the government to do it for us.

The fact that Obama’s gotten elected is a nod towards socialism. We want everything to be fair for everyone, we want to be able to not have to think about things. That’s why Obama’s so popular amongst our generation: He doesn’t make us think. He’s essentially said “Don’t worry about how we’ll pay for it, I can sort that out, just vote for me and I’ll give you hope.” However, in an ironic twist, by making things more “fair” for the middle class, we’re actually making the whole system unbelievably unfair for everyone else. We’re making the people who are motivated to actually work pay for those who aren’t (in other words, welfare). I do not bust my tail end at work 40 hours a week to support some lazy nit-wit who’s sitting at home collecting unemployment checks while watching Judge Judy. Do you know, dear reader, what socioeconomic system gives everyone “equality” and doesn’t make them think? Communism. Why work hard when you’ll get the same pay as everyone else? Sadly, that’s what we’re making a long, slow slide towards with what we as Americans are voting for these days. Letting the government do our thinking for us and letting them hand what they deem we “deserve” to us on a silver platter, like universal health care and a turkey in every pot.

And to close this out, before anyone starts calling me a racist or a change-phobe, let me assure you, dear reader, I am not a racist. If McCain and Obama had swapped ideologies, I would’ve voted for Obama. If a white man was spewing this and I spoke out against it, I wouldn’t be considered a racist, so the race card really does not come in here. And I’m all for change, but I’d like to know what kind of change I’m getting myself into before I blindly vote for it.

And when my mother said, “Yes, we’ve voted for change, but will we like the change we’re getting?” my only reply was, “That’ll depend on how much change he leaves in our pockets.”

Signing off for the 2008 political ranting season…

~Andrew

Tags: News, Politics // 3 Comments »

This weekend, as I went to starbucks before church, I passed Sherwood Ice Arena to a disheartening sight: Harmony Christian Books & Homeschool, a former competitor when I was in Christian retail, is going out of business and liquidating its store. It doesn’t come as a complete shock, though. It’s no surprise that small Christian stores are struggling, in part due to the economy and in part due to inability to compete with big box stores like Best Buy and Borders.

Harmony’s not the first retailer I’ve seen struggling: Shortly after I got out of the game, the Greatest Gift in Wilsonville had shut down, another small, family-run business. Rainbow West in Tigard, to the best of my knowledge, has closed down again (unless they’ve moved, which they have a nasty habit of doing without telling anyone) And the signs advertising space for lease in two locations of Christian Supply stores, one in Tanasbourne and one in Lake Oswego, don’t bode well, either, a clear indication that even the chain stores are feeling the pinch.

Part of it, clearly, is the inability to compete. Let’s face it: When Best Buy can sell Veggietales for 7.99 on release, and Christian Supply has it for 12.99 but gets it the Saturday before the secular market, particularly now, an extra three-days wait is easily accepted for the 5.00 savings. And Best Buy can afford that, as we’d had drilled into us countless times while I was still in Christian retail, they have larger ticket items that allow them to take such hits on their smaller purchases. However, I don’t think that’s entirely it, either. I think, to an extent, Christian retail brought it upon itself.

At this point, I’m sure many of you are kind of shocked at my hypothesis. “Brought it upon itself? How can they be to blame?” I don’t think Christian retail set out to deliberately sabotage itself, but I think by a process of decisions its made over the last couple of decades, it’s gotten into the mess it’s in now.

Christian retail used to be just that – Christian. It catered to an audience of born-again believers, looking for music that was uplifting, books that were inspiring, and Bibles that were… well.. Bibles. And it was good, people could find all of those items together in one place. However, over the years, things changed. Sales didn’t seem to be as good in the Christian markets as they were in the secular markets, and someone, somewhere, began to ask, “Why?”

They began to compare what was selling in the secular markets with what was selling in the Christian markets, and you know what they found out? What was hot in the secular markets didn’t really have a counterpart in the Christian market. Clearly, though, if it was that popular in the secular area, it would also be popular in the Christian area as well. And thus began Christian retail’s struggle to become “relevant” to the changing times.

Before I launch into this too far, a disclaimer: I am not going to get on my soap box and say whether or not certain types of music or books are more Godly than the other. We are, after all each given a different measure of faith, and while some may find certain things okay, others won’t. But I will point out a few different cases in which I saw something that struck me as seriously wrong in the Christian retail markets that I think stemmed from the problem of trying to be everything the secular market is without being the secular market.

That being said, Christian retailers began to bring in more things of what was popular: Christian rock bands that sounded just like the secular artists that were popular on the radio. In some cases, it wound up being a secular band trying to get its break. Take, for instance, Evanesence. Few people will remember, but they started their life as a “Christian” band on Wind-Up records. I remember we had the CDs up for about a whopping two weeks while I worked at Christian Supply just starting out. Then, one day, my manager told me that we had to pull them all. Puzzled, I asked why (the only thing I knew was the girl on the cover scared me). Come to find out, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, one of the band members had said “We’re really popular in the Christian markets, but we’re not a Christian band. What the [bleep] is up with that?”. There was an apology issued almost immediately from the record label, assuring us all that they would do a better job screening their artists before release. One two different occasions, I had to pull CDs by 12 Stones because of language/inappropriate comments in the CD liners. At the time, they seemed like trivial things, but looking back, they were things that never should have happened in the first place.

Music isn’t the only thing that became popular. An almost constant stream of “self help” books became the next big thing. It amazes me looking back at how many of the “next big things” were, in fact, big until they came out, then no one cared. And the number of ones that came through that had almost no theological foundation was appalling. The vast majority of the books in the “Christian Living” section were books based on pop psychology with scripture thrown in to make it look more spiritual. I remember vividly a book titled “Get a Life! It IS all about you”, which offered almost nothing from a Christian standpoint, but relied heavily on what’s popular in the psychology world. That’s frightening, folks. As Christians, God’s word is supposed to be our source. Not popular psychological theories.

And then Bibles. Let me say, when I was a kid, we had two kinds of bibles: NIV and KJV. (there were probably more, but those were the only two that anyone cared about). Now, there’s a bible in every shape, size, and kind. And some of them are borderline sacrilegious. For instance, the Bible as a Seventeen-style girl’s magazine. Because, clearly, the best way to get girls to read the bible is to make it look like a secular magazine that they’d rather be reading.

Regardless, things still weren’t booming in Christian retail. There were still things that were more popular in the secular market that the Christian markets couldn’t replicate. So, most recently, I’ve noticed a shift from strictly “Christian” items to items that are “Family Friendly”.

“Family Friendly”? Seriously?

It first hit me the day I entered the Lake Oswego Christian supply and found, prominently displayed, Disney movies. Disney movies with no discernable spiritual messages (Well, that is, unless you find one of the many books that specifically tries to draw spiritual themes out of secular movies), no real connection to what Christ came to do on earth. Then, a few weeks later on a trip to Vancouver Mall, I found in Crown Books & Gifts carrying Hannah Montana and High School musical CDs. The clincher, however, was reviewing the Easter sales flyer I recieved from Christian supply that had, in fact, no mention of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. At this point, it occurred to me that Christian retail has lost its collective soul.

Isn’t Christ supposed to be the focus? If we turn “Christian” into a synonym for “Family Friendly”, what has Christ done? Christ died on the cross, but for what? So we can use his name in vain attempts to promote a business that we’re running under man’s power with man’s logic?

Allow me to be counter-intuitive: Christian retail lost its soul and, I believe, is losing business because it fails to differentiate itself from the secular market anymore. If you walk into a Christian retail establishment, odds are you’ll probably get a similar level of service to a Borders or a Best Buy, a lot of the same products, but with higher prices. And since Christian retail’s moved to try not to invoke Christ as often, what’s differentiating them from the competition? Higher prices. It’s sad, but true.

I would love to see a Christian retailer let God build the house for once, live by faith, and see what happens. Stop trying to please the secular markets, but trust that God can provide the business if they try to run a business that’s pleasing to God. Christian retail shouldn’t have to change everytime the secular markets catch onto a trend that’s popular. Christians SHOULDN’T be keeping up with the Joneses, we were called to be set apart from the world, not to try and be like it but still maintain our identity as Christians. We should be seperated, and I just wish one retailer would decide “Okay, that’s the business plan. We’ll see how God can provide.”

Alas, I doubt I’ll see it in my day unless I open it myself… And that’s a market I don’t really want back into.

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