here’s life

I’m pretty annoyed right now. While I was in church this evening, someone stole my radio. Out of my car. They messed up my dash some too. My CAR! The one that I work on making better and fixing up—it’s messed up! Part of me wants to find them and throttle them. Part of me wants to go buy the nicest radio, a grenade, and a little string. Or made a device that calls fire down from heaven whenever anyone touches my car. Then there’s the response that says, “Just make sure you never have anything that anyone would want, and they won’t take it.” I’m pretty close—I’d need to get rid of my…I don’t know, maybe my bread maker, my linksys router, or the butter in my fridge. People hate me when I have more stuff than them. If I didn’t have more stuff, they wouldn’t want to hurt me, and we could all be friends. By having a nice radio with an MP3 player, I deserve to get my radio stolen—it was just a kindly Robin Hood helping out the poor that I am oppressing by having nice stuff.
But it’s just annoying. Stealing radios is not a profession. It’s something bad. It’s not just “Well, he can’t make money any other way, so who can blame him?” No, he is a person who does bad things. Am I allowed to say he’s a bad person? It make me mad at the type of people who would do this sort of thing, the people who don’t have jobs, the people who can’t seem to “make it”. I kinda don’t want to help people who can’t make it because they do things like this.

Maybe I’ll get another radio. Maybe I’ll pull one with a tape deck out of my closet and install it. Maybe I’ll stick a little amp in there and just buy an MP3 player. Maybe I’ll just cover it up, and install switches and dials for my diesel/vegetable oil system. Maybe I’ll fix up the dash best I can, buy another radio, and behind the face, tape a $50 bill and a note asking the thief to please just take the money, and leave the radio…because it is wired to a grenade!
I’m sure there is a Christ-like response that I’m missing. Something about praying for the bad person who did this, and not storing up treasure on earth. Is there a fundamental difference between turning the other cheek and rolling over and playing dead?

Tenor:
Treasure in heaven
Treasures in he-ea-ven!
Lay up for yourselves,
Treasures in heaven.

Soprano:
Ask and you shall receive
Seek and you shall find
Knock and it shall be opened,
Be opened unto you
Be opened unto you.

I was hanging out with some friends the other evening, and something came up about international events, and Israel and Bush and peace in the Middle East. It was generally agreed that it was a bad idea for Bush to work for peace in that area, because peace wouldn’t happen, or Bush would be flirting with becoming the Antichrist. I have a tendency to challenge anything that is held as Orthodoxy, but doesn’t immediately commend itself to my reason, and reasonable understanding of the Bible. So, I challenged them on it, and then the discussion passed on while I dug through Revelation for a verse I thought maybe I’d heard about the Antichrist bringing peace. I didn’t find it right away. I did a quick search on the topic and came up with a couple articles. This one is rather critical of the Dispensational view that peace will heralded in the coming of the Antichrist. It also attempts to show that it’s scriptural support is nebulous at best. It seems that this connection between the Antichrist and peace is built on this verse in Daniel 9:

26″Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.
27″And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”

See, by “week” it means “seven years” and the “prince who is to come” is the Antichrist in Revelations, and the “firm covenant” means “Peace in the Middle East”. That was the NASB version. The NIV uses “’sevens’” but with a note that an alternate reading is “weeks”.
So, there is some room for different interpretations, just from the Hebrew to English. But, it doesn’t say “And the Antichrist will bring peace between the Jews and the Arabs, and then will break off that peace” Not is so many words. And, if you read the chapter, this is a direct answer to Daniel’s cry to God about the devastation and destruction and disaster that came upon Israel as a just consequence of their sin. I really get the feeling that what Gabriel is talking about has to do with the destruction that Daniel is currently praying about. Not some event still in our future.

What does this mean for us? It’s not like I’ll try and egg on Hamas if I believe that only the Antichrist brings peace (albeit fake peace). We all want peace in the world, in our neighborhoods, and in those of the Jews. But, if Bush can’t be a peacemaker without us worrying about the sinister implications, something may be wrong. But we don’t have to interpret it that way. In this article, the author holds to the Peace==Antichrist view, but he sees peace as a good thing—if the Antichrist is coming, the Real Christ can’t be far behind.
I think it is safe to work for peace. Jesus says “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God”. And even if you somehow fulfill some prophecy in Daniel, that doesn’t mean you are THE Antichrist—-there is more to earning that title than just helping some people stop lobbing rockets at each other. We can work for peace for quite a while before we are in “danger” of bringing peace. Right now, “uneasy diffidence” would be way better than what we’ve got, and it still isn’t the dreaded “strong covenant” that we are supposedly warned about.

So, don’t believe that “peace is of the devil”, and therefore subconsciously (or even consciously) sabotage any efforts to make the world a better place. And go ahead and read the passages before agreeing with theology that doesn’t fit with themes like “Love your neighbor.”

I was listening to a recording of “This American Life” a radio show that usually shows up on NPR. In the second Act, a guy in advertising tells about an ad campaign he worked on, with the State Department, trying to sell Americanism to the Muslim world. PR for democracy and freedom. The story is pretty funny, but depressing as well. From their focus groups, trying to determine what would work, a recurring theme was that Muslims can’t be free or at peace, because of the Jews. The Jews have Jerusalem, which the Muslims need. According to this radio show, until Islams control Medina, Mecca and Jerusalem, there won’t be peace.
Of course, if there was no Jerusalem, then there wouldn’t be any fighting over it. But our current foreign policy does not include turning the Middle East into a glass parking lot. It does include giving aid, arms and aid to buy our arms. And I hear that it is common for us to help both sides. That way, everybody is happy, killing each other, in a careful balance determined by the US government, taxpayers, and defense contractors. As a taxpayer, this doesn’t seem like a good use of the money I could use to, say, buy more pipe fittings (I’ve been doing that a lot lately). And it doesn’t look like it’s really helping either. If it’s not the Jews and Arabs, it’s Eritrea and Somalia, Or the Turks and the Kurds. The North Koreans and the South Koreans. The Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears. The Serbs and Croatians. We can continue to send men and money and missles over to try and keep people from killing each other. People who have been trying to kill each other for centuries, and don’t plan on stopping. Or, we could break up the fight. Send them to their rooms.
Here’s the plan: if there is a chronic war going on, we take one side, and send them to a space colony, built on the Moon, Mars or Australia. Which side? Well I’d leave the side that is less likely to turn on us. With their rivals gone, they’ll have more free time, and excess weapons. So, keep the side that will turn to more useful pursuits. But what gives us the right to arbitrate between two people groups, and send one to exile, away from their homeland? On the other hand, is that worse than giving guns to the other side? Besides, what if you had the choice: stay in your war torn homeland, probably a desert, and covered with unexploded ordinance…or, get to start over in a state-of-the-art housing facility, that produces everything you need, with a whole new planet to spread out on? Then there is the question of whether we could afford it—isn’t it expensive to build rockets? Yes, but war ain’t cheap either, and if we didn’t have to finance it in so many countries, we could devote more money to some new technologies that make space travel much cheaper. Some people are already working on it—these weekend space enthusiasts are making good progress with balloons. And I have a feeling, that once we started taking drastic measures like exporting a nation, the others would be encouraged to find ways to get along while they have a chance. Oh, and it would give space travel a purpose—right now, it’s a nifty idea, but there aren’t many practical reasons to waste huge amounts of effort to leave our quite livable sphere. But, if it could stop a war, that’s a financial impetus. I’m sure there is a place on Mars that looks just like Jerusalem.

If you ever wondered how your cells find an infection, and what is going on, this is a complex video that shows the amazing work that happens:

http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_innerlife_hi.html

In other news, I keep buying plumbing parts for my car. It is surprisingly hard to find some parts—like a 3/4 by 3/8 NPT bushing. I changed how I’m going about it, so now I need to return some stuff.

Is it better to buy good tools (like pliers) or cheap ones for 1/4 the price? I don’t use them much.

As usual, my house is cold, I’m hungry and it’s time to head to bed.

Did you know that it is a common misconception that microwaves heat water by vibrating their bonds with a resonant wave? You don’t get much resonance from liquid water with all the molecules bumping into each other. Actually 2.4GHz was chosen because it wouldn’t interfere with existing radio transmission. At least so says this guy, among other things:
howthingswork.virginia.edu