Hooligan fishing

I have been hooligan (eulachon) fishing a couple of times this week. Hooligan, as they are called in the Pacific northwest are small fish, members of the smelt tribe. The fish I caught were about eight inches.

These fish appear in enormous numbers in late May and early June in some streams, but not others. Most of the run appears to be males, according to what I have read. That was true for me; of the 14 fish I caught, only one was a female.

To fish for hooligan, one stands on the bank or in the water with a dip net and just sweeps until catching the fish. I caught 14 in an hour's work, but when the run is strong 14 fish can come much more quickly. Others were fishing there, too. During the run, there can be dozens of people dipping.

They were tasty little fish. The fourteen we ate were enough for four of us. We'll go back for more!

Disguised Antisemitism?

The Jerusalem Post reported today that "A day after the British Union of Colleges and Universities (UCU) voted to consider imposing a boycott on Israeli academics, UNISON, the largest labor union in Britain, threatened to impose a boycott of their own on Israeli products."

This is part of an international fabric of such boycotts wrapped in a mantle of solidarity with the cause of the Palestinians. Could that rotten smell be in reality just a less lethal brand of Hitler's antisemitism rising up again?

What a strange reaction this is: constant aggression against the people and nation of Israel -- like rockets raining down on Israeli towns -- and trade unions want to boycott Israel???? Is it possible they meant to boycott the Palestinians and some poor fool just reversed the names by accident?

This reaction by UNISON and others who want to condemn Israel is evil. It is unhelpful to the cause of Mideast peace.

Free Speech Nightmare

I awoke this morning with a nightmare still fresh in my head. The grief of the confiscation of my Swedish Bible was still fresh.

The gist of the dream was this: my Bible was banned because it contained text that was not approved by the government, even in a language other than English. It had the New Testament in it.

The specific offensive text was that condemning homosexuality. It was deemed hate speech.

When we lived in Sweden in 2003 a mild mannered pastor named Åke Green was arrested by the police for violating the nation’s laws against saying that homosexuality was wrong in a sermon to his small church in Borgholm. Pastor Green did not preach hatred of homosexuals, but condemned the sin – something that Christians have done since the days of the early church. Disciples are called to love people, but to hate sin.

At the time it did not seem so surprising in the overwhelmingly secular nation of Sweden. What is surprising is that we are so close to this today in the United States. Legislation passed the US House of Representatives just a few weeks ago that could have had a similar effect in this country if signed by the President.

President Bush has signaled he will not sign the legislation, but it is certain to come up again, and with a legislature and presidency controlled by the democratic party, it could become law.

We’re not really so far from the scenario in my dream.

Sinner or Saint?

I am a disciple of Jesus. Am I a sinner or a saint? The answer seems almost obvious, but to hear the talk of other believers one could be led to wonder.

For example, I often hear other disciples say this: “I’m a sinner saved by grace.”

I understand what this little bit of Christianese means: “I am a person who sometimes sins, and the grace of God has saved me through Jesus Christ.” I certainly agree with this, but just because a disciple sins, does that make him a sinner?

Paul called the believers in Rome saints (Rom 1:7). Luke reported that when Peter raised Dorcas from the dead (Acts 9:40-41), “he called the saints and widows, presented her alive.” (KJV). There are many other such usages in the New Testament.

We have become culturally accustomed to using the word “saint” in the sense of some exceptionally holy person. Wikipedia explains:

“Saint is a term used to describe a person who is perceived of being an example of exceptional holiness. It is predominantly used within Christian religions, which have specific usages for the term depending on the denomination involved. The word is derived from the use of the word "hagios" (Greek άγιος meaning "holy" or "holy ones") in the New Testament, where it is used to describe the followers of Jesus of Nazareth.[1]

As Christianity developed, the word "saint" became to be used more commonly to designate specific individuals who were held to be exemplars of the faith, and who were commemorated or venerated as an inspiration to other Christians. Within the Roman Catholic tradition, a formal process of canonization developed for identifying individuals as saints. Within Protestant traditions, "saint" is also used to refer to any born again Christian.”

I suggest that the writers of scripture made no such distinction. From the usages of the word in the New Testament, it is clear that they are referring to believers. While there have been some towering examples of faith in Christ, I and they are alike in that we are both saints.

Well, isn’t this just a trifling matter, a question of semantics?

I don’t think so. It is a matter of identification. I sin; although by the grace of my Master, I sin less today than years ago, and I believe I will sin less in the future as I grow in Him. But I am not a sinner. Sinning is not the trajectory of my life.

My identification is that of a saint.

Spam Costs You Money

Spam is more than an irritant. It costs you and me money.

I well remember the days when spam was just a sort of meat. It wasn't that great a sort of meat, but it was edible and quick.

Today, most of us think of the unsolicited commercial email (UCE) that increasingly floods our mailboxes. I certainly do. I estimate 95% of the email that enters my system is spam. Other reports suggest 70-90% of total email on the Internet is spam.

Spammers are robbing from us all. They rob us of time and they rob us of money.

Think of the time you waste deleting spam. Even if it is only one minute per day, after a year's time, the spammers have cost six hours of your life.

The money part isn't as obvious, but it is real. Internet Service Providers and others in the Internet industry are working to reduce the level of spam that comes to you. These businesses are employing technicians for the work, and paying them real money. That money comes from somewhere, and in this case, it comes from you and me. This work is paid by increasing ISP rates, or at least rates that do not fall with reduced costs.

We create web marketing solutions for clients. Naturally we want to minimize the spam that comes to them. Recently, I spent most of one work day dealing with a problem that resulted from spam.

There are some solutions to this, but they will require some fundamentally different ways of using email.

First, it would help a huge amount if we just...don't....look. If we purchase products or services from spammers, we're part of the problem. The reason these people continue churning out millions of emails is that people buy their stuff. It may be only one in a million, but it's enough to keep going.

Second, if everyone signed their email with a verifiable signature that would allow anyone to trace a message to its source, I believe spam would slow to a trickle and we would once again own our email boxes.

Until we demand effective steps be taken to stop them, we're going to continue paying small amounts of money to the thieves called spammers.

Marrieds With Children Proportion Shrinking in American Society

MSNBC News reported recently that "married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census."

It's an American tragedy unfolding before our eyes. Not only are unmarried couples shunning the institution that will serve them best, most are dooming the children of their union to second-best status. A great weight of social science evidence is piling up that far from liberating Americans, cohabitation provides few of the benefits of marriage at a much higher social cost for both adults and their offspring.

Lest I sound like a pharisee, I'll point out that earlier in my life, I was in a not-so-different situation. Marriage is the best physical thing that ever happened to me.

Not only is this a tragedy, it is acting to widen the divides between social classes. MSNBC again: "As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock."

Children of married parents do better in school, socially, and economically later in life than the children of unmarried parents.

The sexual revolution has truly shot our society in the foot, and this is just one more part of the infection of that wound. We can do better than this -- we must do better than this if our civilization is to last and prevail against the competitors now gathering strength around us.

We can start by changing our laws and tax structures to make marriage more economically beneficial. In our churches and other social institutions we can work to lift up marriages and come alongside those who are struggling.

Somehow, we must change our culture back again to one that is friendly to life-long marriage. The life of unborn millions in this land depend on making right decisions now.

ND Repeals Anti Cohabitation Statute: Progress?

North Dakota's legislature recently repealed a statute on the books since statehood that made it a crime for a man and woman to live together without marriage, Time Magazine reported recently.

At first glance, one is tempted to think that progress has been made. How could it be in 21st century America some state or locality could be so benighted as to have such an antique law still on the books.

But social science is demonstrating that our forefathers knew what they were doing in firmly placing such arrangements outside the fences of legitimate society.

Cohabitation hurts people. As I wrote earlier "counter intuitive as it might seem, social science has demonstrated that couples living together before marriage suffer a 50 -100% higher divorce rate when they do marry. And it’s not just higher divorce rates that hurt: as a group those who live together are statistically less equalitarian, more violent, less successful in remarriage after divorce, more depressed, and less caring of children than their married peers, to name a few.

The reality is that while living together may be popular, it most often diminishes rather than enhances quality of life. For the sake of future happiness for millions, this misbegotten approach to relationship belongs in the dustbin of history along with other failed social experiments."

It is in the interests of our civilization to legislate morality. We hear it all the time that "you can't legislate morality," but even the most casual inspections of our national and state laws show that we do it constantly. In this case, North Dakota is taking a step further into moral darkness that will damage its citizens, not free them.

Amazing Grace

I knew something of the story of William Wilberforce, and the movie, Amazing Grace, made his story all the more moving.

It's a story of a man's passion, and how his unrelenting drive to abolish slavery has changed the West from a civilization that employs slavery to one that abhors it.

While we don't often think of it, slavery still exists even in modern America, where tens of thousands are believed bound by economic bondage, particularly those who have been trafficked into the country.

It's worth seeing.

Be Transformed by the Renewing of your Mind

Paul of Tarsus wrote "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind....." (Romans 12:2 NIV)

Science has recently learned that renewal of our minds really can transform us. It really is true that what we think determines what we are. Prevailing dogma among neuroscientists until recently had been that brains were hardwired upon reaching adulthood, and that little change was possible. Recent investigation has demonstrated considerably more possibility for change, or neuroplasticity.

In the January 29, 2007 issue of Time magazine, in an article entitled "How the Brain Rewires Itself", Sharon Begley wrote "Mental practice resulted in a similar reorganization" of the brain, Pascual-Leone later wrote. If his results hold for other forms of movement (and there is no reason to think they don't), then mentally practicing a golf swing or a forward pass or a swimming turn could lead to mastery with less physical practice. Even more profound, the discovery showed that mental training had the power to change the physical structure of the brain.

In other words, the brain can actually be transformed, and not just through external stimuli or activity, the transformation can occur through our own mental training, or "renewing of your mind," as Paul put it.

Begley again: "The brain can change as a result of the thoughts we think, as with Pascual-Leone's virtual piano players. This has important implications for health: something as seemingly insubstantial as a thought can affect the very stuff of the brain, altering neuronal connections in a way that can treat mental illness or, perhaps, lead to a greater capacity for empathy and compassion. It may even dial up the supposedly immovable happiness set point."

Here's the take home message: we can train our minds far more than we have thought. If our minds are caught in negative patterns that are self-destructive or that diminish our potential, we can change those patterns by thinking new thoughts. If our desire is to be more like Jesus, we really can be, by training our thinking to be like His.

How do we do this? It has been possible all along, as Paul wrote: "by renewing our minds."

Letting My Soul Catch Up With My Body

On our return from a quick trip to Louisiana earlier this week, I realized that "my soul had not yet caught up with my body."

If soul consists of mind, will and emotions, it was clear to me that my soul was still down south with family, green grass, and warmer temperatures. Just because I was physically located in south Anchorage does not automatically mean that my soul adjusts right away to that reality.

I don't have a brilliant observation or action plan for this. It's an issue for anyone who travels. I've felt it time and again over the years, but not really understood it.

Perhaps the simple reality is that it...just...takes....time.