Geeky Bob

A few years ago, my wife and I were fortunate enough to visit Rome, and among the thousands of photos that I took during our stay, this seemingly insignificant image of a nun walking through the remains of the Circus Maximus stands out for me.

Despite Hollywood's common depictions, the Romans did not typically sacrifice Christians in the Colosseum. On the contrary, the infamous martyrdoms of Christians were usually carried out in the Circus Maximus. With that in mind, when I saw a solitary nun crossing the empty field, I couldn't help but reflect on the irony of the scene. This stadium had once played host to the barbarous spectacle of martyring her predecessors, usually by beheading, or burning at the stake, or being fed to myriad wild animals. Yet on this day, many centuries later, there were nothing but ruins where the mighty empire of Rome once stood, and this nun could walk with impunity through the remnants of Rome's demise.

Anyway, these are the kinds of things that run through my mind when I'm visiting areas of historical significance. (Perhaps there's something wrong with me.)

Several years ago I discovered the following excerpt from a sermon by Alistair Begg, and the parable that is contained within this short snippet has become one of my favorite Easter stories.

Giving full credit to its original author, I would like to include this short apologue for your benefit on this Easter.

This story is © 2021 by Truth For Life, a teaching ministry of Alistair Begg.

Someone whom I've known for decades and greatly admire recently posted the following series of statements from Reverend James Martin, SJ:

Every statement that Mr. Martin makes is factually correct, however, I typically do not like comments like these nor the memes they become because they are abusing the love of Christ in a not-so-cleverly veiled way that implies Jesus said something that He did not. I will expound on that concept in a moment, but first I'd like to share a recent experience from one of my neighbors.

This is a true story: a couple weeks ago, one of my neighbors awoke shortly past midnight and walked downstairs to find a complete stranger sitting on his couch in his living room and eating his food. Think about that for a moment: a person whom you do not know has broken into your house while you were sleeping. You don't know whether they're dangerous, and yet this person is making themselves at home and helping themselves to your possessions. Imagine how terrified and how violated you would feel.

Now let's re-examine Mr. Martin's statements within the context that I have just shared: it was not my neighbor's responsibility to feed/clothe/house this intruder, regardless of whether she was legally in the country (which she was), or whether she was poor (which she probably was), or whether she looked like my neighbor (which isn't remotely relevant). In the end, all that matters is that the burglar was trespassing - she had no right to be in my neighbor's house, sitting on his couch, and eating his food. Despite Mr. Martin's specious pontifications, if he had been in my neighbor's shoes he would have done the same thing my neighbor did - he would have called the police.

Bringing this back to my opening statement, that is why I don't like it when people like Mr. Martin arrogantly twist the words of Christ to make a cheap political statement, and I don't believe that Jesus would like being misquoted, either. What Mr. Martin is attempting to do is to cram his political views about immigration and other subjects down others' throats by hiding behind a series of grandiose proclamations that he's disguising as our Savior's intentions, which - quite literally - makes Mr. Martin a false prophet.

Today marks the 46-year anniversary from Van Halen's multi-platinum debut album. To celebrate this occasion, I thought I'd share the following story from my youth.

In the fall of 1978, I was starting out in Middle School, and I made friends with another student, Gene, who was just beginning to play guitar like I was. We met because Gene was carrying a notebook emblazoned with the KISS logo, and at the time I was a big KISS fan. (Hey, no judgment.) Gene and I eventually played together in several bands throughout our Middle School and High School years, and we've remained in touch over the years. I visited Gene and his wife recently, and Gene recounted the story of when I came up to him during our 7th grade year to say, "Dude - you've got to hear this new album I just bought!!!" The album in question was Van Halen's debut offering, which had been released earlier that year.

When Gene came by my house after school, the track I immediately dropped the record needle on was - of course - "Eruption." Gene's mind was completely blown, as mine had been when I first listened to the album end to end. I had a reel-to-reel deck at the time, and we recorded "Eruption" on tape so we could slow it down, and yet it was still so @#$% fast. Neither of us had seen Eddie's signature two-handed tapping yet, so we had no idea what EVH was doing to play at such a mind-numbing tempo.

By my Freshman year of High School I would play "Eruption" at the backyard parties and other gigs that typical High School bands would get, though never as cleanly as EVH. (And these days I probably couldn't pull off playing the bulk of "Eruption" without some serious practice.)

Nevertheless, EVH turned my world upside down - but in a good way. To this day I phrase a bunch of chords on the guitar in ways I learned from playing Van Halen's assorted catalog of songs, and my efforts to learn what EVH was doing on each of Van Halen's albums made me a much better guitar player. There are few albums that I can literally say altered the course of my life, and if you read my blog from a few years ago titled My List of 20 Most Influential Albums, you'll see that I listed Van Halen's debut album at #3.

As he boarded his venerable longship, the mighty Viking warrior, Rudolph the Red, readied his sturdy craft to sail the turbulent waters of the North Sea. Once again, the fierce leader and his men would reign terror over the poor, unsuspecting villagers of the British Isles as the Vikings pillaged their way through farms and fields of Scotland and England.

As the crew completed their final preparations for the perilous voyage, the rugged chieftain leaned over the bulwark of his vessel to kiss his wife goodbye, and he said to her, "Tomorrow, we shall be victorious in battle. But today, we sail forth into a storm."

As she cast her gaze toward the sun as it slowly rose above a clear horizon, she asked her husband, "How can you be so sure?"

"Because," he replied, "Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear."

POSTSCRIPT:

I will admit that I saw the punch line from this brief bit of humor several years ago, and I chuckled when I read it. However, I couldn't find the source of the original pun, so I decided to write my own story, albeit with some AI-generated artwork. This illustration of Rudolph the Red was generated by the application at http://bing.com/images/create, where I asked it to create "a 3d image of a viking with red hair on a ship that is sailing through the rain." I think the image fit my story rather well.

The following video from the National Archives shows what Hawaii looked like in 1924, which was 100 years ago this year, and by way of coincidence was the same year that my grandfather arrived in Hawaii to begin his four-year tour of duty in Oahu with the U.S. Army. Hawaii was a radically different world back then; Queen Lili'uokalani and the Hawaiian monarchy had been overthrown within a single generation prior to this film's creation, and much of the hills and valleys were still overgrown with acres of vegetation that are sadly missing now.

PS - the following photo is of my grandfather, Abner Dechant, as a young, Army Private standing on the beach in Hawaii back in the late 1920s.

No one expects the Muppet Inquisition! Amongst their weaponry are such elements as surprise, farce, ruthless puerility, and an almost fanatical devotion to Jim Henson!

Always remember to double-check that your microphone is muted before you start brushing your teeth during a meeting.

I have spoken before on how Rush has been the soundtrack of my life, which reminds me of the following story. "Dreamline" was the first song that I heard from Rush's Roll the Bones album, and in those pre-Internet days I didn't know that the album was being released, so my first hearing of that song caught me entirely by surprise. My wife and I had recently returned to the United States after having lived in Germany for the past 3½ years, and I had picked up our car in New Orleans and was making my way westward along I-10 toward Fort Huachuca (which is 90 miles south of Tucson).

As I was driving through the vast, empty expanses of Texas, I was channel surfing on my car's stereo to find the best rock stations in each town I passed through. When I made it to El Paso, I was passing by Sunland Park Mall as I tuned to a local station where the DJ said, "Here's the latest single from Rush," and those famous notes of Alex's epic intro came blaring over the car stereo's speakers, which were quickly joined by Geddy's bass and then Neil's thunderous drums. I cranked the car stereo to 11, and I was so immediately enamored with the piece that I could've wrecked the car if I wasn't careful.

That brief, specific moment in time is frozen in my consciousness; I can still see exactly where I was as I literally drove headlong down the highway into an uncertain future. My wife and I were closing a major chapter in our lives and opening another, and "Dreamline" will forever be tied to that memory.

But then again, how could it not when the song's lyrics are:

I have hundreds of stories just like this, which is why - as I mentioned earlier - Rush has been soundtrack of my life. I occasionally sit back and watch any of the live videos that Rush released over the years, and the feeling that best describes each viewing experience is "nostalgia." I know that sounds trite and simplistic, but I have countless memories that are emotionally connected to all of Rush's songs. The live videos are an added plus, because I saw Rush on many of those same tours, and the videos bring back memories of the times in my life when I went to those concerts. Some of those shows were when in was high school and I attended them with my older brother, some shows were when my wife and I were newly married and the tickets that cost a pittance by today's standards were a fortune for me at the time, and in recent years I attended several shows with my older brother and a group of close friends - and every time was a mind-blowing event. Rush never "phoned in" a gig - they always brought their "A Game" and killed it on stage. (Which, of course, is why Neil had retired prior to his untimely death; he knew he couldn't continue playing at that level forever.)

[Deep Sigh.]

I miss Rush.

FOOTNOTES:

1. See https://www.rush.com/songs/dreamline/ for the song's full lyrics.

I recently read the essay Sometimes reforming: Martin Luther, the church and the rest of us, and if it had ended with "Sometimes the most we can do is 'give a witness' by our dissent and hope for reformation when future generations take up the cause for social and spiritual transformation," I would have thought that essay was a brilliantly-worded treatise on why Christians should reflect on Luther's words and actions this October 31st. Unfortunately, the essay didn't end there, and its author, Bill Leonard, spent the succeeding paragraph lashing out at non-Baptists and pro-Trumpers. (And just to be clear - I am decidedly NOT pro-Trump. I have publicly spoken out against Trump on many occasions, but that's another story.)

Throughout the "On All Hallows' Eve 2023" paragraph, Leonard doesn't mince words when he equates the actions and attitudes of those with whom he disagrees with the 19th-century pro-slavery crowd and suggests that evangelicals are on an equal footing with the rest of today's sin-obsessed society. (Note that from a historical perspective, Leonard's pro-Baptist sentiments conveniently overlook the pro-slavery views held by the Southern Baptist Convention that upheld slavery and helped pave the way toward Civil War. Leonard also fails to mention that it was largely evangelicals from the Second Great Awakening who opposed slavery, and he makes no mention of Methodists who referred to slavery as the "execrable sum of all villainies," but I digress.) Leonard's entire "All Hallows' Eve 2023" paragraph is nothing short of "denomination bashing," which is a behavior that ultimately portrays all of Christianity in a bad light, and for which people have said to me on numerous occasions: "That's why I wouldn't want to become a Christian: you Christians are always fighting each other."

When viewing this essay as a whole, what started out so well as a history lesson about Martin Luther and a call for contemplation on the role of dissent within our Christian lives quickly descended into a veiled attack on those with whom the article's author disagrees, and in so doing Leonard completely negates his opening quotation from Luther: "I will constrain no one by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion." With that in mind, I would suppose that some form of sarcastic kudos are warranted for the essay's author; his dissertation on Luther is so misguided that he completely misses the meaning of Luther's original prose, and he manages to publicly humiliate the church in the process. So I offer a brusque "bravo" to Bill Leonard for his essay; his opinions are exactly what the church needs today, but only if the church intends to fail miserably in modern society.