Analysis of a Robbery
A surveillance video records the words exchanged by a would-be robber and a MetroPCS store clerk in Florida. This is the transcript of the clipped video that ABC has up:
Robber: Don't get scared.
Clerk: I'm not.
Robber: OK, Stay nice and calm.
Clerk: You can do whatever you what. I'm going to talk to you about the Jesus I have.
Robber: What?
Clerk: The Jesus I got, before you leave.
Robber: God bless you for that.
Clerk: I'm Christian and...
Robber: So am I. I absolutely hate doing this.
Clerk: I don't know if you have family.
Robber: That's why I'm doing this.
Clerk: You know what? I can try to help you find a job. I have a lot of friends at church...
Robber: I have a job.
Clerk: You do? Why are you doing this?
Robber: Because I'm going to be evicted if I don't come up with $300.
...
Robber: Then I wouldn't be hurting you. I'm sorry. I have to take every cent, I'm sorry.
Clerk: They will charge me for it.
Robber: They'll charge you for it?
Clerk: I'm the one responsible. No one comes here[?].
...
Robber: You know something? The gun's not real. It's a BB gun.
He left without taking the money. Overall, I’m fairly impressed with the young woman. An offer to help the guy find a job is fantastic. Even though she knew the consequences of what she was going to be required to do, she didn’t panic the same way he did.
On the part of the would-be robber, we have someone who claims to be a Christ follower while he is in the act of taking money by violence. Like so many thieves, he thought that by taking money from a corporation that it would not hurt anyone. This is the same mentality that our government has, so it should not surprise me that it continues to rub off on people. (I say it in that order because most of the proponents of this in government have high education levels. They should know better.)
Luke 3:14 records the words of John the Baptist to soldiers who asked what they needed to do, if they were to live right:
And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.
This man had a job. Why wasn’t it enough? I don’t know the exact circumstances but I really doubt they are as bad as he seemed to think.
I admit that I did not have a family to look after when I was evicted but it was not the end of the world. Sometimes you just need to reevaluate your priorities.
EDIT: Incidentally, the thief was supposedly arrested this morning after he robbed another store: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/31/1755216/deputies-apologetic-would-be-robber.html
Geek Stuff: Bizarre PHP Code
I won’t incriminate this project’s coders, but they do sell their work that is based on vBulletin. One of their free projects contains a function that has three arguments passed to it. The first argument is immediately overwritten by a global. Here is a stripped down example:
<?php
$hello = 'hello';
$world = 'world';
function test(&$hello) {
global $hello;
echo "$hello\n";
}
test($world);
echo "$hello $world\n";
?>
And the output of my function:
$ php test.php
hello
hello world
$world is passed by reference as $hello. It is promptly ignored in favor of the global $hello variable, without even overwriting $world. They should remove the required parameter $hello.
The Ordination of Women and the Historic Church
The Catholic church reminded us on Thursday that the ordination of women is a “most serious crime” (ignore most of the media reports, the reporters don’t know what they are talking about). Some Presbyterians, such as Tim Bayly on Monday, have said such things as:
[It] came to me that churches that hide the Biblical doctrine of sexuality by putting women forward as officers over men ... [are] placing stumbling blocks before women, denying them the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, defended John MacArthur on Wednesday against an appeal to Galatians 3:28 for the ordination of female pastors:
But this is the kind of sloppy and agenda-driven exegesis that reveals the desperation of those who would reject the New Testaments limitation of the office of pastor to men. In Galatians 3:28 Paul is clearly speaking of salvation not of service in the church. Paul is declaring to believers the great good news that in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith [verse 26]. He concludes by affirming, And if you are Christs, then you are Abrahams offspring, heirs according to promise [verse 29].
That seems like a consensus of the learned. We have well-known Protestant seminary presidents (John MacArthur is president of Master’s College and Seminary) in agreement with the Catholic church.
I’ve heard this topic argued about in pentecostal churches and among conservative homeschoolers. The dissenters seem to be largely liberal and argue like the woman Al Mohler was attempting to correct:
Heres the question: Is God permanently committed to the kinds of social hierarchy that existed in the first and second millennium B.C.E. and continued until recently, when education and voting were opened to women? Or does the vision of Paul in Galatians 3:28There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesustake precedence?
Mohler was right. That’s a horrible argument. Unfortunately I have read the extreme side of his view, from other authors who have taken an extreme view, and it has made me wonder exactly what the Bible does say. In that quest, I have now read several more works and discussed this topic with a number of people. I think some of them have gotten a little frustrated at my questions.
One famous passage in this debate is found in Paul’s first epistle to Timothy. I wrote a small muse about it last year and a few people contacted me with their concern that I was going off into la-la land. This post may confirm that for some of you. I Timothy 2:11-15:
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearingif they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
The argument goes that the woman is not to teach a man because her purpose in the world is functionally subordinate to that of man. This is because of the Creation Order where woman was created second, and Paul continues in the next chapter to instruction Timothy to appoint male bishops and deacons.
As one friend (who still maintains that women should not teach men) has pointed out, the “Creation Order” idea is bunk. God made the animals before Adam. There must be another reason Paul brought up the issue that man was made first.
The command for women to be silent is interesting. Paul says in another epistle that women should keep quiet in church. I Corinthians 14:34:
the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says.
This adds something new. Paul is not attributing this command to his own authority but is specifying a reason. Did you notice that capital “L” on “Law”? At least the KJV, NASB, ESV and NIV have it. Which law is Paul referring to?
Out of the 20+ commentaries that I have access to, more than half of them say one or both of “Genesis 3:16” and “all of Moses’ law, taken as a whole.” To make Genesis 3:16 say this is a stretch, and it seems odd that nobody can pinpoint an exact reference for this “law.” A few modern commentators are willing to admit that nobody can say which OT passage Paul was referring to.
Suppose for a moment that Paul wrote this command because Roman law prohibited women from speaking in assemblies. Does that sound obscure and far-fetched? Even though John Calvin still believed that women should not teach in churches, take a look at a part of his thoughts on the passage:
And unquestionably, wherever even natural propriety has been maintained, women have in all ages been excluded from the public management of affairs. It is the dictate of common sense, that female government is improper and unseemly. Nay more, while originally they had permission given to them at Rome to plead before a court, the effrontery of Caia Afrania led to their being interdicted, even from this. Pauls reasoning, however, is simple that authority to teach is not suitable to the station that a woman occupies, because, if she teaches, she presides over all the men, while it becomes her to be under subjection.
I don’t believe Caia Afrania was entirely responsible for women lacking a voice in assemblies, but it is well-known that this “right” was removed from Roman women in at least some situations.
The Catholic church stands on its tradition that Jesus appointed male apostles and there have never been female pastors in the historic church. Tradition stands against it.
In I Timothy 3, as mentioned above, Paul gives the requirements for bishops and deacons. Those requirements aren’t as distinct as some people would have you believe. For instance, Paul says that the Bishop must be the husband of one wife. He does not say what the character of the Bishop’s wife must be. The deacon’s wife is scrutinized, however.
Does this mean that if I marry poorly, I can only be a bishop instead of a deacon?
It seems that these two lists are very similar, and I want to write a fuller explanation soon. The word that Paul uses for “deacon” is very interesting. Most of its occurances are translated as “servant,” including Romans 16:1:
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae,
Of all the translations that I have checked (nearly a score), only one (The Amplified) has dared to translate the word as something other than “servant” because it describes a woman.
The order that I see here is:
-
Probable reference to Roman Law prohibiting women from speaking publicly
-
Paul commended a female deacon
-
Similar requirements exist between a deacon and a bishop
I think there is at least a good reason to question the “male headship” order.
Earlier, I had said that there was probably another reason Paul mentioned the creation of men before women. There were several religions in Paul’s day which taught a virgin birth in a chicken-and-the-egg style argument. Woman had to come before child. (Does that sound like the modern Catholic church teaching? hmm.) I think Paul’s explanation to Timothy was a reminder of how to address converted Zoroastrians or people with similar backgrounds.
Another line of argument for the subordination of women is that they are allowed to teach younger women and children (ie. “children obey your parents”), just not men. Paul instructed Titus to have the older women teach the younger how to love their husbands and children. Paul then told Titus to instruct the young men. Did you notice the dichotomy in who Titus was not told to teach?
There are some things women do better at teaching each other, and there are some things men do better at teaching each other. That does not mean that one sex cannot teach the other.
This post is not an attempt to explain everything, but it is enough that you can hopefully read these passages with a fresh pair of eyes. Nowhere am I arguing that women are not to submit to their husbands. Neither am I saying husbands do not have to lay down their lives daily for their wives.
Let the flame wars begin.
Why Does the Bible have 66 Books?
Most of my posts lately seem trite or computer-oriented. Work has been keeping me busy and what study I have been doing is on topics that I have written enough on already. There are plenty of spare thoughts but those are not formulated enough to write about.
I was asked by a Muslim today how we can claim the Bible is divinely inspired when Catholics have more books in their Bible than Protestants have in theirs. It is a good question and many people do not know how the books of their Bible came to be collected together. Here is a good, concise explanation from Charles Hodge (Systematic Theology, Volume I, Introduction, Chapter VI, “The Canon”):
<p class="normal" id="iii.vi.i-p7">Before entering on the consideration of these points, it is necessary to answer the question, What books are entitled to a place in the canon, or rule of faith and practice? Romanists answer this question by saying, that all those which the Church has decided to be divine in their origin, and none others, are to be thus received. Protestants answer it by saying, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, that those books, and those only, which Christ and his Apostles recognized as the written Word of God, are entitled to be regarded as canonical. This recognition was afforded in a twofold manner: First, many of the books of the Old Testament are quoted as the Word of God, as being given by the Spirit; or the Spirit is said to have uttered what is therein recorded. Secondly, Christ and his Apostles refer to the sacred writings of the Jews the volume which they regarded as divine as being what it claimed to be, the Word of God. When we refer to the Bible as of divine authority, we refer to it as a volume and recognize all the writings which it contains as given by the inspiration of the Spirit. In like manner when Christ or his Apostles quote the Scriptures, or the law and the prophets, and speak of the volume then so called, they give their sanction to the divine authority of all the books which that volume contained. All, therefore, that is necessary to determine for Christians the canon of the Old Testament, is to ascertain what books were included in the Scriptures recognized by the Jews of that period. This is a point about which there is no reasonable doubt. The Jewish canon of the Old Testament included all the books and no others, which Protestants now recognize as constituting the Old Testament Scriptures. On this ground Protestants reject the so-called apocryphal books. They were not written in Hebrew and were not included in the canon of the Jews. They were, therefore, not recognized by Christ as the Word of God. This reason is of itself sufficient. It is however confirmed by considerations drawn from the character of the books themselves. They abound in errors, and in statements contrary to those found in the undoubtedly canonical books.<p class="normal" id="iii.vi.i-p8">The principle on which the canon of the New Testament is determined is equally simple. Those books, and those only which can be proved to have been written by the Apostles, or to have received their sanction, are to be recognized as of divine authority. The reason of this rule is obvious. The Apostles were the duly authenticated messengers of Christ, of whom He said, He that heareth you, heareth me.
You can certainly delve deeper, but the rules that have guided what books are in the Bible are simple and easy to understand.
A Vuvuzela for Schwarzeneggar
Beneath the latest “weekly address” by California’s Gov. Schwarzeneggar, I see a button that turns on a vuvuzela overlay:
Do you see that too? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_E5ofSb6mw
As much as I hate the vuvuzela, can we do this with all political speeches?
New Age Follow-Up
I posted a couple days ago about yoga and transcendental meditation in the church. A friend mentioned a podcast he had downloaded from last month, where the effects of drugs were deemed similar to the effects of yoga and meditation.
After some digging, I found the full audio of that hour:
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wosu/.artsmain/article/11/1172/1659306/Radio/TTBOOK.Psychedelics
This segment contains interviews with several hallucinogen researchers and the bits with mysticism are not the complete focus. It is interesting to see the full force of what we are inviting into the church.
QOTD: We Don't Have Debt
QOTD, after cutting off the family’s land line:
I'd almost be willing to pay $15 per month just to avoid the terribly obnoxious middle-of-dinner debt consolidation sales calls. However, come to think of it, I'm going to kind of miss getting to answer their _How much debt do you have?_ question. The response, _We don't have debt_ always completely threw them off-script and it was quite amusing to hear them fumble around trying to figure out what to say next. More often than not, there was silence and then a click on the other end.
The New Age of the Church
I did some reading a few weeks ago on yoga. People from my former churches have been doing it for years and there are “Christian Yoga” teachers.
We have been assured that it is either “not spiritual” or “centered on Christ.” Right. Everything that I found talked about energy and respect. The motions were designed to transmit that energy through different portions of your body.
This afternoon a clip was posted of an interview between a Lutheran and a woman who had formerly been involved with transcendental meditation. Everything that she described reverberated with what I read about Yoga, from a serpent-like energy working its way up your spine to bad dreams (spiritual?) following years of use.
The most disturbing part of the interview was that the talk show host played a sermon clip from the associate pastor of a very well-known church, known as Mars Hill Bible Church (not to be confused with Mars Hill Church, which has its own fun). The clip is of him leading the congregation into transcendental meditation.
If you can spare an hour, I would recommend listening to the interview:
A Flying Car by 2011?
A start-up, Terrafugia, has received an important approval from the FAA for its version of a flying car. They hope to release sometime next year.
Yay! This will still be expensive – in the neighborhood of $150,000 for a 2-seater – but it is movement. If only aviation rules weren’t so much harder to learn than road rules. ^_^
When Warned...
Oil: 3; Politics: 0
ABC News reported on Friday:
Sixteen barges sat stationary Thursday, although they had been sucking up thousands of gallons of BP's oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.
"These barges work. You've seen them work. You've seen them suck oil out of the water," said Jindal.
So why stop now?
"The Coast Guard came and shut them down," Jindal said. "You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, 'Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.'"
A Coast Guard representative told ABC News that it shares the same goal as the governor.
"We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer.<div><script type="text/javascript">adsonar_placementId=1280609;adsonar_pid=59750;adsonar_ps=-1;adsonar_zw=165;adsonar_zh=220;adsonar_jv='ads.adsonar.com';</script><script src="http://js.adsonar.com/js/adsonar.js" language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.
"It's like this huge committee down there," Riley said, "and every decision that we try to implement, any one person on that committee has absolute veto power."
The coast guard needed to confirm the presence of fire extinguishers and life vests? Wouldn’t a visual inspection work?
Or even better. Do you remember the political wranglings in 2004 after the Tsunami in Asia? India did not want foreign aid for a while and some people maligned them left and right. Well, we are doing the same thing now (from last Monday):
Crucial offers to help clean up BPs oil spill came from Belgian, Dutch, and Norwegian firms that . . . possess some of the worlds most advanced oil skimming ships. But the Obama administration didnt accept their help, because doing so would require it to do something past presidents have routinely done: waive rules imposed by the Jones Act, a law backed by unions.
"The Obama administration declined the Dutch offer partly because of the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from certain activities in U.S. waters. During the Hurricane Katrina crisis five years ago, the Bush administration waived the Jones Act in order to facilitate some foreign assistance, but such a waiver was not given in this case."
Obama is now using BPs oil spill to push the global-warming legislation that BP had lobbied for. Obamas global warming legislation expands ethanol subsidies, which cause famine, starvation, and food riots in poor countries by shrinking the food supply. Ethanol makes gasoline costlier and dirtier, increases ozone pollution, and increases the death toll from smog and air pollution. Ethanol production also results in deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution. Subsidies for biofuels like ethanol are a big source of corporate welfare: BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels . . . that cannot break even without government support.
I like the due process of law, but I also like to have a clear map of what is happening. Are we cleaning up oil or starving people?
And, finally, a friend shared a link to a clip from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show:
Geek Stuff: Evolutionary Clock Problems
Linux can sometimes be every bit as obscure as Windows. Thankfully we have our own hacker community too. There was a new release of Slackware (my preferred Linux distro) and the GNOME desktop for it, so I performed a full, automatic upgrade. In the process, at least one package was left out and it caused my clock to go poof.
This was the error message that was displayed:
The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_ClockApplet". Do you want to delete the applet from your configuration?
Hmm. Most of the people who reported this issue had uninstalled part of the Evolution mail program but that was not my problem. Someone on the SUSE (LQ) forums signed up and posted exactly once. That post held a couple of great hints for how to track down my problem.
It seems that GNOME panel applets have configuration files that end in “.server,” so to find those in Slackware I could issue:
grep '\.server$' /var/log/packages/*
All the .server files were under /usr/lib/bonobo/servers/ and the exact file name that I wanted turned out to be “GNOME_ClockApplet_Factory.server.” From there we want the location of the binary (program) that is displayed on the panel (this is three lines, the command and two results):
grep location /usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_ClockApplet_Factory.servern location="/usr/libexec/clock-applet">
location="OAFIID:GNOME_ClockApplet_Factory">
/usr/libexec/clock-applet – aha. Now we can find out which library (similar to a DLL, for you Windows users) the clock applet is missing:
ldd /usr/libexec/clock-applet|grep 'not found'
libeggdbus-1.so.0 => not foundn libeggdbus-1.so.0 => not found
libeggdbus? That turns out to be the DBus bindings for GObject. What a name… anyway, after I installed the eggdbus package, my clock works again. Yay!
Even the Map...
San Antonio’s River Walk looks very strange after a hike in the mountains three weeks ago. The water is a cloudy green and all of the vegetation has been landscaped. The wild life around it has convinced me that I was wrong when I argued that it was possible that some men needed to wait to marry. The way that everyone dressed does make it obvious that they are quite desperate.
On the amusing side, half of the maps did not know where I was even though the legend claimed that they did. You mere humans are not the only ones who have a hard time of it.
Also, I bumped into the guy who created IllBeHonest.com. Had a great time talking to him.
So I’ll be back home tomorrow night… and back online the next day. See you then!
Discovered: How to End a Drought
Found on a website that covers coding errors, we have finally discovered how to end a nasty drought:
The news stations are a never-ending wealth of information. No, that isn’t sarcasm. Really.
A Couple Questions for you Married Folks
I do not mean to cause any discomfort. Ignore this post if you wish. My mind is a little overactive at times for what some people are willing to consider.
Death is a reality because of our sinfulness. We were not originally designed to have our body and soul severed as they are.
Many times life slips away amid a flurry of activity in a hospital room. Sometimes the person is quietly let go. Movies like The Last Samurai depict the glory of death in battle while demanding that the life up to that point be filled with honor.
Whenever we marry, we face the probability that one spouse will die before the other. It is rare that both will die at the same time, unless you live in a viking culture. I know several people who lost a spouse while still “young.” You can translate that as you wish; the older you get, the younger everyone else seems.
Here are my questions: When a husband remarries, why does our society expect him to put away the pictures of his first wife? How is this “normally” dealt with when the wife remarries? The marriage bond is an intimate one that was designed to be between one man and one woman. Have you read anything that deals with this in a second marriage? If so, is it anything you could recommend to me?
If they deal with it adequately enough, I’m quite willing to read secular sources. This won’t be a topic that I intend to devour in the next week or two but is on my to-ponder list. Thanks!
Geek Stuff: When Object Oriented Code Goes Bad (vBulletin)
My first vBulletin project was sometime early last year. The code base was horribly outdated and spammers had littered the board with tens of thousands of posts. I managed to clean out most of those and turn on the built-in CAPTCHA in about three hours. Ultimately we failed to keep the spammers out and vBulletin was replaced with another forum software.
Another customer has recently decided to power their forums with vBulletin. The newest release has a built-in CMS and some other novel features. The problem is that they guard their “trade secrets” jealously and you have to go through a review process in order to gain access to their forums. Since my customer ordered vBulletin himself, I gave up on trying to figure them out.
One of the requirements for this project was a custom theme, complete with several special links and featured articles. If you are not familiar with vBulletin, here is the default layout:
Their template system has the ability to search for specific items. None of the links (mouse over or view source) showed up like I expected them to, except for the “What’s New?” link and that appeared in a number of template elements. That should have been my first clue about this modification.
A grep through the code base turned up an XML file that seemed to contain defaults for the database. includex/xml/product-vbcms.xml holds a reference to “content.php” (the “Home” link):
<setting varname="site_tab_url" displayorder="30">
<datatype>free</datatype>
<defaultvalue>content.php</defaultvalue>
</setting>
Sure enough, it was stashed in the database:
Interestingly, they keep a copy of the original value as well. In this case I have not changed anything so it is a duplicate of the current value.
A search for “site_tab_url” in the template returned a hit in the “vbcms_navbar_link” element.
Isn’t that great? No color coding and we have to use their administrative interface to edit the templates because of its complexity. Copy and Paste are friends.
This is where things go from bad to worse. The template is built on true OO principles, so each element of the theme does exactly one thing. The portion above decides whether or not to hilight the “Home” link as selected. There are no other navigation links in this section, which means that another theme section should reference this – right?
Wrong. No other theme elements reference vbcms_navbar_link. Back to searching the codebase. The linux “grep” command found the next step:
That .= operator is a string concatenation for PHP. The code from this XML file is a plugin and gets stored in the database. It will be eval()’d on page load by vBulletin. Yikes. Anyway, it looks like “vbcms_navbar_link” is tossed into the “navbar_start” variable and that one does appear in the template:
“navbar,” in turn, is directly referenced in a number of other template elements with the directive “{vb:raw navbar}.”
Whew, we have managed to trace a single link. For something as common as creating or modifying a theme, you would think that they could come up with a better way to manage the data. I’ve themed Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. The appearance of a website should not be this difficult.
Any thoughts?
More Twilight
The book New Moon was frustrating with all of the silly teenage antics. After seeing the movie adaption, I have to conclude that it is a soap opera with acting on par with Kirk Cameron’s.
Next time someone complains about the quality of Christian acting, show them this movie.
Do Your Own Thinking
Just to offer a warning, this post may be uncomfortable to read.
A friend pointed out an old news story that has made my blood boil. ABC’s 20/20 reported on the events that transpired one evening during the dinner rush at a McDonalds in Kentucky. Someone called and claimed to be a police officer who had the store manager on the phone. It was claimed that 18-yo Ogborn had stolen a purse from a little girl:
Ogborn was told to empty her pockets and surrender her car keys and cell phone, which she did. Then the caller demanded that Summers [the assistant manager on duty] have Ogborn remove her clothes even her underwear leaving her with just a small, dirty apron to cover her naked body.
Summers says she never second-guessed what she was being asked to do, as she firmly believed the person she was talking to was a police officer. Ogborn says she trusted her manager to do what was right.
Because it was so busy, the “police officer” told the manager to call her fiance in to watch Ogborn. When he arrived:
Nix, a 43-year-old exterminator, began following the caller's commands, ordering Ogborn to drop her apron, bend over and stand on a chair.
This was the beginning of two hours of torment that involved Ogborn being struck and having to perform sexual acts. McDonalds was sued – read the full article for more details, I’m skipping to the end – and in defense was this:
In one of the most explosive moments from the trial, a psychologist hired by McDonald's testified that Ogborn had "grown in some way" from the horrific incident. Forensic psychologist Alan Friedman, who was paid more than $50,000 by the fast food company, acknowledged that Ogden experienced post-traumatic stress, but asserted that she has grown from the experience and is more assertive and self-reliant than she was before the 3½-hour humiliating ordeal.
Why are you still reading this? Go out and get raped. It will be a growing experience for you.
What happened to the caller, you ask? They found him by tracing phone cards and surveillance videos, but…
In the end, there apparently wasn't enough evidence to convince the jury. After two hours of deliberations, Stewart was found not guilty on all charges.
The article has an analysis of why this could be made to happen. Fast food chains try to have everything “by the book” and the moment that you introduce someone into a unique situation, they are at a loss for what to do.
If you want to see this happen sometime, walk through the drive thru after one of the chains has closed the dining room area for the night. Try to convince them to sell you food. The employees quite literally freak out (I walk late at night and sometimes get hungry).
The friend who pointed this article out was trying to make the point that wives and daughters should not be allowed to work outside the home. I have to disagree. In the article was an example of a strip search ordered on a male employee by his female boss. Incidentally, Summers said she trusted her fiance. She has since broken off the engagement. This was not a gender-specific problem but nobody had the backbone to hang up on the caller.
There is nothing wrong with questioning authority. Some times and places require you to blindly obey someone who has already proven themselves. Try not to let others decide when those times are.
Camping Trip
The last week has been pretty quiet around this blog. A couple people had asked for updates. Several friends and family members had a camping trip planned half-way across the country and I joined them on it.
A friend and I flew out and promptly had a flight cancelled at our only layover. Our pilot was sick and they were unable to get another. The poor airline workers tried to reroute everyone. The woman who helped us was more than a little relieved that we could be routed to an airport that was about three hours away from the destination of everyone else that had tickets on the flight (moving a lot does have its benefits).
We hit the campground the next day. There was a lull in work to be done after some of the preliminary setup so I took a hike in search of river water that was clean enough to drink. I failed and was told when I returned that we were forbidden, by the park, from walking the river bed because of the large quantities of poison oak. Maybe I should learn how to identify the plant.
That night I slept a full twelve hours (the preceding two nights had been rather short). A twelve-mile hike was planned the following morning and a three-mile hike to visit caves that evening. Groups travel too slowly so I took the liberty of hiking a few extra trails and lost track of mileage somewhere after twenty.
The hike was fantastic. I have been sitting far too much lately and needed a good, long walk. Come to think of it, the lack of an internet connection was great too.
Quite a few other events transpired over the weekend. I watched my sister climb one-third of the way up a rock face – her first attempt at rock climbing. Several other friends made it all the way up.
Someone spoke for a few minutes on Sunday before we broke camp. He used Matthew 6:25-34 as his reference:
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
This was a topic that I had already mulled over several times during the course of the weekend. Worry can be infectious.
To make a long, rambling story into a short one, I had a blast and even survived it (lest anyone had any doubt).
The Adventist and Sunday Worship
Seventh Day Adventistism teaches that the Catholic church is the antichrist and that Sunday is the mark of the beast spoken about in the Revelation of Jesus, ie. 13:17:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
The prophesies of Ellen White include predictions of a law that will once again require men to worship on Sunday. Here is one of her more famous statements:
I saw that the Sabbath commandment was not nailed to the cross. If it was, the other nine commandments were; and we are at liberty to break them all, as well as to break the fourth. I saw that God had not changed the Sabbath, for He never changes. But the pope had changed it from the seventh to the first day of the week; for he was to change times and laws [Daniel 7:25].<p style="text-align: right;"> Ellen White, _A word to the Little Flock, _page 18, paragraph 3, and _Early Writings,_ page 32, paragraph 3.
I do have a couple books from the Christians of a few centuries ago who regarded the Catholic church as Antichrist. I even agree with them to a certain extent. There are true Christians within the Catholic church but anybody who would withold the words of God from the individual has placed themselves in a very bad position. There are some possible fringe exceptions but as a general rule you do not want to be the one separating the people from God’s words.
Back to Sunday worship. According to Adventist apologetics, Pope Sylvester I (between 314 and 335 AD) overrode God’s decree that the 7th day of the week (Saturday) be the day of rest:
The Sabbath [Sylvester] commanded they call by the ancient name of the law, and the first [day] the Lords day, because the Lord rose on that day. Moreover the same pope ordered that the rest (otium) of the Sabbath would better be transferred to the Lords day, so that we should leave that day free of worldly works in order to praise God.<p style="text-align: right;"><span class="title"><font size="2">Rabanus Maurus, _De Clericorum Institutione_ (On the Institution of the Clergy), bk. 2, chap. 46, in _MPL_, Vol. 107, col. 361. Trans. from the Latin by Frank H. Yost.</font></span>
There is a lot more rhetoric at the link above, if you are interested. They make a big deal out of this decree by Pope Sylvester but then they cover their back by allowing that he simply made official what the church had already begun to do:
It should also be noted that Pope Sylvester did not invent Sunday worship, and neither did Emperor Constantine, and Adventists do not make that claim. But, it is evident to everyone that a change did happen to keeping Sunday instead of the Saturday Sabbath. Adventists have been well aware that celebrating the resurrection on Sundays predates the 4th century, though there is no biblical proof that the Apostles ever sanctioned a change of the Sabbath to Sunday or practiced it themselves.
No Biblical proof? Hmm. One Bible commentator by the name of Jamieson Fausset Brown points out John 20. In it you have the resurrection of Jesus and his talk with Mary Magdalene. That evening (explicitly the same day), Jesus appeared to the disciples as a group. This is the infamous moment when Thomas was absent. Verse 26 says:
And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
This eighth day is reckoned the same way that Jesus’ resurrection was reckoned to be after three days. It was a common counting practice among the Jews and meant that Jesus came to visit them again on the first day of the week. Even if you discount this explanation and were to believe that Jesus appeared to the disciples on the following Monday, verse 19 holds special interest:
Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.
The Greek word for “week” is derived from the Hebrew language and literally means “Sabbath.” In the context it takes on the meaning “the first day of the week,” or perhaps “the first day from the sabbath.” Even the Adventist “Spirit of Prophesy Bible” (Luke 24:1, John is incomplete) translators agree that this word denotes the first day of the week in this context. It is universally accepted.
The reason I make this point is that the phrase appears again in Acts 20:7:
And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight.
Paul also encouraged Christians to set aside money together on the first day of the week in I Corinthians 16:2:
Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.
It was certainly not uncommon to meet on Sunday. By the end of John’s life (Revelation 1:10, circa 96 AD), it had become common to call the first day of the week “the Lord’s day.”
Justinus (~114-165 AD; also known as Justin Martyr) began his life as a disciple of Socrates and Plato. As a philosopher, he had dedicated himself to truth and this pressed him to argue the case of the persecuted Christians to the Roman rulers. The first Apology, or explanation, to the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius contains these words (all of chapter LXVII, emphasis mine):
<font face="none" size="-1">And we afterwards continually remind each other of these things. And the wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together; and for all things wherewith we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost. **And on the day called Sunday**, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. **But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly**, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration. </font>
There is not much with which to date this letter, but it was certainly written at least a century and a half before Sylvester became a pope. Sunday was already in widespread use by the Christian church. Clement of Alexandria (~150-215) even made mention of “Sunday School.”
Justinus lived in Rome. Clement lived in Egypt. This sort of discussion may well be what Paul meant when he wrote Romans 14:5,6:
One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. [...]
Whatever the case, I do not see any evidence that Sunday is such a mark of Satan’s work.