Live Fire with Chuck Holton

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=rWFL24zYUj4] “I could have got one more person.  And I didn’t…”

Tonight I found an old .mp3 of a speech I gave a couple of years ago at a church in Columbus, Ohio. I’m including it here in case you want to listen. I recommend skipping to the end – the clip I played from Schindler’s list ALWAYS brings tears to my eyes. It’s the part at the end of the movie where Oscar Schindler realizes that he could have saved so many more…that even though he saved 1100 jews, he “threw away so much money!”

I already feel that way sometimes.

I think it’ s the most powerful movie scene ever…not just because it’s about the holocaust, but because it reminds me what it will be like about five minutes after I’m dead – when I see all the eternal things I could have done with the resources God gave me – but used them instead for my own comfort or pleasure.

There’s a man in our neighborhood here in Panama – his name is Felix.  I met him months ago, and found out that he is 74 years old.  Every once in awhile I would see him walking along beside the road…then one day I realized that he was picking up aluminum cans – that this was his living.

It gets really hot here – and Felix totters along beside the road picking up cans.  Something about that punched me in the gut, and I started giving Felix a little money every time I saw him – about once a week.

This served to soothe my conscience – I even felt proud of myself that I was being so generous.

Then tonight I found out that Felix sleeps on the ground under a tree every night – about a hundred yards from my back door.  I’ve lived here for a year and never knew that.  I never knew because I never bothered to find out.

I could have done so much more. 

American Heroes in the Fight Against Radical Islam is now hitting shelves across the country.  Time to get yours!
It’s a book I edited, written by Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North – Currently a Fox News correspondent.

The book takes readers through the history of the Global War on Terror, told through vignettes of American servicemen and women who, for the past seven years, have been writing the pages of history with their blood and sweat.

I love projects like this – it makes me so proud to write about such heroes and it’s a good exercise to reflect on their sacrifices. I encourage you to get a copy.

The book hits stores this month, and here’s the deal: Buy it on Amazon.com on May 5, and send me a copy of your receipt, and LtCol North and I will mail you an autographed book plate to put inside – FREE.

Chuck Holton – Meltdown from Chuck Holton on Vimeo.My publisher called the other day and asked if I’d make a video introducing myself and my latest novel for the salespeople at Random House. This is what I came up with – a compilation of some of my adventures paired with a discussion about the setting for the third in the Task Force Valor Series, titled “Meltdown.”

I recently finished the first draft of the manuscript. It’ll undergo a few revisions before it’s ready to print, but the story rocks!

The setting is Chernobyl – and really bad things are about to happen. Unfortunately, the book won’t be out for another YEAR – I’ll never understand the reason things take so long with publishers unless THEY are in a hurry, then things get done in no time. So while you are waiting, check out American Heroes – my recent book with Oliver North.

Ray Kurzweil wants to live forever.

Okay, well, who doesn’t. But this inventor, musician and futurist is serious. Really, really serious. He’s pulling out all the stops to ensure that he makes it to what he calls “the singularity.”

The singularity is his idea, too. It’s the name he’s given to a future point in time when technology will be so advanced that we will finally be able to “upload” our consciousness (Ray doesn’t believe we have souls) to a computer, and therefore live forever. Yipee. If that happens, I want to be a toughbook laptop. Can’t wait to try kayaking.

You might think this is all a bit kooky. But lots of people are (pardon the pun) dead serious about living forever. This article in Wired magazine recently reported:

There are singularity conferences now, and singularity journals. There has been a congressional report about confronting the challenges of the singularity, and late last year there was a meeting at the NASA Ames Research Center to explore the establishment of a singularity university. The meeting was called by Peter Diamandis, who established the X Prize. Attendees included senior government researchers from NASA, a noted Silicon Valley venture capitalist, a pioneer of private space exploration, and two computer scientists from Google.

You know, if you think about it, almost everyone feels, deep down, that we should live forever. I’ve been reading Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven again recently, and I think Randy would assert that’s because we will. All of us. We are not our bodies. That’s why when a soldier loses his legs in Iraq, he’s not relegated to only two-thirds of a vote in the next election. He is still a person, albeit in a mangled and slightly smaller package.

Consciousness comes from more than just neurons firing inside the piece of meat called your brain. In fact, Scientists still can’t quite figure out what makes you yourself, or even where, exactly, that consciousness resides. To quote another Wired article, “Current brain maps are of little use in explaining awareness.”

But while Ray Kurzweil is busy consuming almost 200 pills daily to try and cling to life on this earth – a place beset by wars, famines, plagues and really nasty winters – Randy Alcorn points out that the Bible tells us we’re created for another place – Heaven. And when our “earthly tent” wears out, we’ll have a “mansion” waiting for us there.

There’s only one catch. Heaven being perfect and all, YOU must be perfect to enter. What? Made a few mistakes in your life. Oops. Sorry about that. I guess allowing you in as-is, even though you are probably better than most, would introduce a little speck of imperfection into Heaven, and it would no longer qualify as a ten-star paradise.

What to do, then? Well, here’s some good news:

Romans 5:8

But God showed his love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And so:

…If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

The result?

…though your sins are like scarlet, they will be made as white as snow.

Get it? You can be made perfect, in God’s eyes. You can enter heaven.

You WILL live forever, one way or another. Earth is a bridge between two countries, and allows us to sample, for a short time, a little bit of both destinations, then choose one or the other. Obviously, the source of all goodness is better than the place that is void of anything good. But nobody is going to force you to go to heaven. You have to CHOOSE.

Kurzweil’s ascetic choices may, indeed, prolong his existence on this earth, (though you never can be sure), but that will actually do nothing more than give him a short time longer to decide where he wants to spend eternity. I hope he has given that one some thought.

While I’ve already made my choice, I’m all for taking common sense steps to stay alive on earth as long as possible. But my motivations are different. I don’t want to stay here forever, but rather I take care of myself so I can be useful to the Master for a long time to come.

Related Reading

Should a Christian Pump Iron?

Life Hacking for Christians

Christian Lifestyle Design – How to Affect Serious Life Change

The Future of American Culture

This video from John Piper exactly expresses my own feelings on the topic of not only the prosperity gospel, but on suffering in general.  Too often I make my own comfort my goal, rather than sharing in God’s glory.  We shouldn’t just accept hardship when it comes, we should go looking for it.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTc_FoELt8s]

grandma holton 2008-02-17 007

Originally uploaded by ChuckHolton

These are my paternal grandparents, Warren and Betty Holton. This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago when grandma was in the hospital after breaking her arm in a WWE tournament.

Okay, so she fell at home, but anyway, last week she and grandpa celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.

Let me say that again. THESE TWO HAVE BEEN MARRIED FOR SEVENTY YEARS!

To call that quite an accomplishment would be like calling the Panama canal a drainage ditch. I couldn’t find any statistics on how many people stay married that long, possibly because not too many people stay ALIVE that long.

Warren and Betty lived in Astoria, Oregon, and got married on a dare during an outing with some friends one weekend. But several days later, Betty found out that the marriage was legally binding! When she told her parents, they marched her to Warren’s house and said, “We’ve come to bring you your wife. Have a good one.” Or something to that effect.

The relationship has seen its fair share of trials – Warren spent years away in heavy combat as a top gunner in a B-17 during WWII. In the Korean war he went away again, this time in a B-25. Somehow in between his military deployments the couple managed to have five boys – which Grandma raised almost by herself. To this day, she has a steely-eyed look that would freeze molten lead. Don’t mess with Grandma.

I’m so incredibly grateful for the legacy that my nearly ninety-year-old grandparents have given me, not only of faithfulness to each other, but of faithfulness to God. Not many people can claim that kind of heritage.

My prayer is that when my grandchildren are almost forty, they’ll look at my wife and I and say the same thing.