Live Fire with Chuck Holton

Many churches have as a part of their bylaws a prohibition on the sale and use of alcohol – including, until just recently, my own. My beef with this is not that I think drinking is a basic tenet of Christian Liberty, but that this kind of covenant departs from Biblical mandate by singling out one particular behavior (or, like this church, several behaviors) and introduces a modicum of legalism into the charter.

I’m all for groups of believers making covenants with one another that they feel will be beneficial to the body of Christ, but as I told my pastor, I have a much bigger problem with gluttony, which is also condemned in the Bible. So if we’re going to go after drunkenness, by heaven let’s throw in some things that I need help with – like greed and the tendency to eat too much ice cream.

looking around the churches I visit, it appears that maybe we should make a bigger deal about the lack of discipline that is apparent in our church body (or bodies, in this case).

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-zz1HwxIjg]I recently watched a very disturbing documentary on the state of American Universities. It’s called “Indoctrinate U” and I highly recommend you take a look. The movie shows how American Universities were once respected institutions that espoused critical thinking and higher education – But today have become respected institutions that enforce leftist dogma and environmental theology. Even worse, they routinely persecute anyone who disagrees with a liberal worldview to the point of having them censured, expelled or even arrested.

One thing I found interesting with the movie, which I’ve noticed in my own reporting with CBN, is that people today are deathly afraid of video cameras. They see it and immediately think “liability!” But I digress.

It’s a very disturbing trend, but there are more and more alternatives to college coming along all the time. I highly recommend the Alert Academy for young men. Then there are Bible colleges like ABC in Beckley, WV. Or even courses like the Focus on the Family institute and the Worldview Academy that exist to help solidify your worldview before you head off to college and have it lambasted.

Not that having one’s beliefs challenged is a bad thing – I attended a public university and saw many of the same trends detailed in the movie.  At UW-M there was a women’s studies course titled “Lesbian Techniques.”  But I had a strong faith foundation, and the attacks I encountered only served to strengthen my faith.  Unfortunately, that’s not always the case when young Christians go to college.

The bottom line?  Be careful.  Just because you spend $120,000 on an “ivy league” education doesn’t mean you won’t find yourself being immersed in liberal mind-mush.  Because if that’s what you wanted, you wouldn’t need college at all.  You could simply watch television, which is free.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfs3BJZxKkc] If you’re not familiar with the comedy of Tim Hawkins, you’re in for a treat. This guy is hilarious, and clean.

The video above is a spoof on Carrie Underwood’s huge country hit song, “Jesus take the wheel”

Be sure to watch his video about homeschooling. Hey, you have to be able to laugh at yourself once in awhile. Enjoy.

“As Christians, our central concern should be to have our worship of God pervade everything we do” -Douglas Wilson, My Life for Yours

Life Hacking refers to the concept of tinkering with one’s life to make it more efficient – whether it be moving the phone out of your office to cut down on distractions or using an RSS Reader to cut down on the amount of websites you travel to each day. The idea is to not only become more productive (in whatever way you want to measure that) but to do it in less time and with less effort.

I like the quote above because it expresses very simply the objective of the Christian life as it relates to our everyday existence. With that in mind, Christian Life Hacking would necessarily include looking for ways to make the difficult task of Priority Managment easier. To wit: I want to actively pursue a strategic life – not just react to whatever happens every day.

Now that I have another outlet for my military-related posts, I’ll be exploring the concept of Christian Lifestyle Design more on this blog.

Sound like an interesting idea? Leave your opinion below, I’d like to hear it.

photo by flickr/ foreversouls

California continues to redefine the term “progressive” to mean something akin to “ignorant” or downright “totalitarian”

Here’s the scariest quote I’ve heard in a looong time.

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.” said Justice H. Walter Croskey, a California appeals court judge.

READ THAT AGAIN. What the man said is that the school system’s main priority is not to teach kids things like English and math. It’s to disseminate state-sponsored propaganda and keep a wary eye on parents. And in case you didn’t click the links:

1. California’s rate of juvenile homicide is significantly higher than it’s Adult homicide rate.

2. Juvenile arrest rates for violent crime have exceeded those for adults since 1980, except for three years

3. See the post below this one for a reminder of how patriotic California’s liberal legislators are. These are the type of people who set the public school curriculum, folks.

The state of California believes that it has more of a vested interest in your children than you do. That’s a very dangerous belief – and wrong, to boot.

In reality, the judge is only saying publicly what many homeschooled parents have suspected for years. The public schools aren’t about making your kid smarter, they’re about filling their little heads with a particular worldview. A religion, as it were.

We’re just surprised he admitted it outright.

I just hope, (please, God!) that hundreds of thousands of California parents continue to set fire to the phone lines leading to the governor’s office, but I would love to see a mass exodus from that state. Leave the “progressives” to their debauchery, and go raise wise, well-balanced children elsewhere. Hey, the cost of living and quality of life is better in Missouri, West Virginia, and lots of other places anyway.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is also about money. It can’t be about the quality of education – California schools suck – ranking 46th in the nation according to data I found. And the more people vote with their feet (note to California liberal legislators – it’s called ‘choice.’ You’re familiar with that term, right?) the worse California schools get. It’s true “lowest common denominator” schooling – and many public school teachers are sending their kids to private schools instead of subjecting them to the danger, debauchery and dumbing-down that is on the menu in California’s public schools.

Hard to blame them, you know?

This children’s commissioner in Simi Valley, California (big surprise!) has ruled that a seventeen-year-old foster child cannot join the United States Marines under the Delayed Entry Program.

Why?  Because the judge does not support the war.  Unbelievable.  This has nothing to do with law, only with personal bias.  The Commissioner should be ashamed of herself.

There are plenty of other people ranting about this around the web, so I won’t spend too much time on it.   Suffice it to say that California is a hotbed of dishonorable conduct these days.  Keep this in mind when you read what I’m posting tomorrow.

I recently read “The Four Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss. Simply put, the book is about lifestyle design – the art of structuring one’s life instead of being structured by it. Get it and read it if you think you would like to live a little differently than most people. Ferriss will stretch your thinking as to what’s possible.

What surprised me is that the book could have been written about me. Ferriss didn’t know it, but he was describing exactly the journey I’ve been on for the last six years or so…experimenting with working from home, living by strongly defined priorities and making my life more meaningful. What Ferriss did is simply give definable terms to what I’ve been doing – Geoarbitrage, Low-information diet, etcetera.

The difference, of course, is that Ferriss is advocating lifestyle redesign for the express purpose of having more enjoyment. I’m into it to have more meaning and more time to serve my commander – any enjoyment that comes is ancillary to the real REASON for making any changes to my life.

I’m going to begin blogging more regularly on the various facets of Lifestyle design for Christians, sharing some of the lessons that I’ve learned and exploring what the Bible has to say about living intentionally. I think there’s a lot of meat there to chew on.

Stay Tuned. And if you’ve read the book, I’d like to hear your comments.

John Rambo in Burma
Thanks to chang9158

Last night I went to see John Rambo stagger and grunt back into the limelight as he cut a swath of gore across the north Burma mountains. The (almost nonexistent) plot had him machine gunning and disemboweling hundreds of Burmese soldiers in a bid to rescue some hapless and helpless Christian missionaries. He told them not to go, but nooooooo, they didn’t listen.

Even sadder than Stallone’s acting is the reality of the situation on the ground in Burma. Almost exactly a year ago, I visited that war-torn country reporting for CBN on the bloodshed. And unlike most hollywood movies, where the gore is added for pure entertainment value, this movie was anything but entertaining. That’s because in this case, the bloodshed, though incredibly graphic, was not overstated. Glorified, perhaps, but not overdone. And that’s saying something, since I believe people who watch these kinds of movies on a regular basis could easily fall victim to Post Traumatic Spectator Disorder.

And it was really sad how the Christian missionaries were portrayed – somewhat noble but clueless with a touch of holier-than-thou arrogance. The real unfortunate part is that this was also accurate. According to aid workers I interviewed who live in the region, these “short term missions trips” often do more harm than good. In any case, it would almost always be better if these groups stayed home and sent the money they would have spent looking for an adventure-in-missions warm-fuzzy.

While I was in that area last year, I had the distinct priviledge of meeting the closest thing to a Christian Rambo I can imagine. He’s an American living in that area who runs missions into Burma to bring aid (medical and otherwise) to the displaced mountain tribes of Burma. This guy, who will remain nameless due to security concerns, is without a doubt the biggest stud I’ve ever met in my life, and he can speak in complete sentences, unlike John Rambo.

What makes this friend of mine such an incredible man is that he’s not driven into harm’s way by some deep-seated need to prove his manhood like so many guys I know (even myself, sometimes.) This guy makes evident by his words and actions that what drives him is simply the desire to serve out his calling and make his life count.

I want to be more like that. Hat’s off to you, D.E. and company. You motivate me like crazy.