The problem with Fred Phelps (as though there were only one) can be found in his own FAQ (not surprisingly). But most particularly, I find this to be telling (taken from his site):

Have any homosexuals repented as a result of your picketing?

Yes, but this doesn't matter.

He's obviously never read Romans 13. The man is a freakin' gong. Or, "... sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Peacekeepers, huh?

"When I see people being tainted by the actions of those who've committed abuse, it demoralizes the mission, it destroys the trust that the Congolese have in the U.N'.s peacekeeping mission in Congo and in the effort of the United Nations. It is a big stain on us," Guehenno said.

It seems to me that if the UN peacekeepers wanted the trust of the Congolese, they should have been behaving in such a way as to deserve it. And what's more, while I agree that "it's a big stain[...]," ignoring it doesn't make it go away. The refusal to "name and shame" the parties and countries involved is a large part of why this sort of thing happens -- and not just in the international picture. It's symptomatic of a far more localized problem that's made repeat debut on the international stage.

If it were the "bad guys" who'd done this, we couldn't name them fast enough. We'd plaster their pictures all over national news and people would talk about "those evil [insert particular nationality here]" for decades. But when WE or any of "our guys" do it -- "shhhhh. This sort of thing is ... demoralizing to the mission."

I'm sure it's slightly more than demoralizing to the 13 year old girl who's forced to sell herself to some anonymous UN "peacekeeping" troop for a couple of eggs or a dollar in order to live.

And what's more, this is a problem that will endure and only worsen. It's a pattern that's been set in motion. This won't simply go away once the UN peacekeepers have withdrawn. This has set up an entire mentality and "acceptable" course of action for these girls -- and the adolescent boys (some as young as 8) who've played the pimp.

Thank you, U.N. You've given an already sickened area yet another cancer.

2 Corinthians 5

Last Sunday at the home group Bible study, we studied 2 Corinthians 5. And it's a great passage on the new creation and longing for our eternal dwelling and living the life that the love of Christ compels us toward. It's a chapter on our transformation into the representatives, coworkers, and ambassadors of Christ to the world being fully aware that we're not "at home" here.

This, of course, led to a discussion of living Christlike lives. Boiled down, it can be expressed in the trite-but-oh-so-marketable slogan "What Would Jesus Do?"

Darn good question for a Christian to ask -- except it dawned on me that so many of us can't answer that because, as Phillip Yancey points out, so often we don't know who this Jesus is.

Too many of us have an image of an upper middle class white guy who wore a suit and his best pair of sandals to synagogue (on Sunday) and quoted strictly from the King James. This Jesus doesn't drink, doesn't hang out with "the wrong crowd" and looks down his nose at common sinners. This Jesus is an idol and a sham.

Jesus went to parties. Jesus hung out with smelly fishermen -- who were not on Miss Manners' A+ etiquette list. They flunked out of charm school. Jesus probably had stinky feet and B.O. This was, you know, before deodorant. Jesus likely heard more than his share of Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew curse words -- he did hang around with "those people."

And he loved them. Hated what they did, sure, when it was a sin. But, too, we get sin and "something I don't like" all screwed up as well. If I don't like it, if I'm not comfortable with it or if it makes me flinch, it's obviously sinful. NOT. Several of the commandments, when followed, will put one into often uncomfortable and flinch-worthy situations. "Love thy neighbor" ain't that stinkin' easy -- especially if he's a smelly Samaritan.

I guess before we start acting like the Jesus we hold in our heads, we should probably figure out whether that Jesus agrees at all with the Son of God we're told to emulate, to have this mind in us "which was also in Christ Jesus." Sometimes our Jesus looks a lot like ... us. A reflecting idol.

Nothing much...

Now that I'm feeling a little more perky, I think I might try to keep both this and my livejournal updated a little more regularly. Insanity abounds on LJ -- as it will here, only (I hope) to a slightly less degree.

I think I've decided that depression and that sort of thing (i.e. mental illness) is more like cancer than I'd noted before. In fact, if leukemia is a blood cancer, depression is (and its ilk are) chemical cancer.

Like other cancers, it's part biology, part environment, part lifestyle and part random, unapologetic and impartial luck of some cosmic draw.

And in the same way cancer used to be stigmatized and nearly always fatal, so too are many mental illnesses. But as education and research increase, so also do opportunities and options for care, treatment and even (someday) a cure.

There are ways in which one can live to reduce one's risk of cancer (and mental illness), but despite best efforts, some will fall prey to it anyway. Like most disease, it possesses a malignant pathology -- but knowing it exists and having hope is half the battle. Ignorance and apathy are part of its arsenal. It, like cancer (a body's cells against themselves), like AIDS (the body's defenses against itself), mental illness (the body's self against itself) thrives in ignorance.

Ultimately that perspective opened up the subject for me in a new way, gave me a greater understanding of mental illnesses --including my own --*as* illnesses and lessened the almost instinctual fear I have of certain types. I may someday lose my mind to mental illness, sure. But I may someday lose my leg to bone cancer or my life to lung cancer, too. I don't worry unduly about that, though, so why should I about this? Anxiety only increases my risk factors, after all....

Just been thinkin' bout random stuff lately, that's all.

Remember me?

That's the question Blogger asks as I log in. Funny, I guess, in that it works on several levels. Yes, I want it to remember my password so that in the traditional lazy geekoid way I don't have to type it in each time (and no, you can't borrow my computer until I've logged out, thanks). But I've checked that box before, yet if I go too long without posting (which is apparently some arbitrarily assigned number of days; my blog is finicky) it will forget, guilting me into typing once again the magic words that open my account: username, password. It ceases to remember because I've ceased to make my presence known. It waits patiently here slumbering cybernetically in its small virtual corner of blogland while I go about my small circle of the 3D world, living my life with whatever significance it's got only thinking of this page in passing.

But the links to the left I think of often. I visit them often, browse the archives often, though I comment less than I'd like. I browse pages I haven't made myself sit down and link yet (in much the same way I've not updated my "current reading" since... August. My "current reading" changes every 2 - 3 days, tops.).

Of course, I somehow manage to talk my head off here. (Ooh. Did I really just point that link out? Hrm. Am I lucid at the moment? Maybe I'm wagering that no one reads this page anymore... ^_^) There I feel compelled to talk about pretty much everything and a lot of nothing. Including, of course, important life lessons gleaned from commercials, my absolute lack of knowledge of anything related to pop culture and... well, my old college roommate and I interact a lot there, too, so it's psychoses on parade some days.

No real point to this post. I just got to thinking about this spot in cyberspace.

I'm slow to pick up on things most days.

There's been a lot of discussion about suffering and evil lately. I don't have anything like all the answers. But all I can think, at least as far as evil that can be linked to sin, is that if all sin is equal before God - sin is sin is sin - and man has free will, then for the sake of that choice God will allow the pedophile to commit his sin in the same way he will allow the liar, the thief and whatever I am when I am my worst to commit ours.

And it is that thought that makes me consider the awesome gift and responsibility of choice: an arena wherein God has taken a step back and asked, not forced, us to do his will.

His will will be accomplished, but he asks us to choose to play a part.

Should it really surprise me that a great God has such great faith?

I'm being pathetic this week, apparently. And not by choice.

I don't like being sick. It bugs the snot out of me -- sometimes literally, but that's a mental image I could do without. I don't like when my body, apart from my brain, decides that it will spend the day in bed, thankyouverymuch and there's no changing its.... mind?

It's weeks like this I'm reminded I have leukemia. For the most part, particularly since it went into a partial remission, it's been possible for me to forget that nagging fact. There are days I can even deny it. I mean, I feel fine therefore I must be fine, right?

Today, and for the past few days, I've been extremely aware that my body doesn't work quite the same way anymore. Sometimes I joke and say I'm very old for my age -- and then some days I really feel it. (Usually that line refers to my mental state, but there are days when I might as well be a permanent resident of the local geriatric ward if the way I feel is any indication.)

These are the days it's sometimes hard to believe Paul, because while he addresses the days wherein we are aware that outwardly we are wasting away, he's oddly silent about the days in which it doesn't really feel like an inward renewal. Some days it feels like whatever part of me is immortal -- soul, spirit, whatever -- is feeling the wear (and the weary), too. So far, I think the thing that annoys me most about CLL is that even though sometimes sick is sick, sometimes sick is just tired. And not just any tired -- achy, bone-sore, limb-heavy, eye-drooping, slow-breathing, thought-thickening, joint-stiffening, will-killing, soul-sucking tired. Leukemia doesn't bite -- it just kind of gnaws. Well, and punctures, but that's mostly the result of blood draws and bone marrow aspirates. Y'know, the things that are intended to help, the cures that are worse than the disease.

Ooh. I sound pouty. I'm really not. I'm just thinking about the this because I happen to be at home dealing with the tired sort of sick (well, and a couple of other sorts, but they're hardly postable) and writing is more interesting to me than daytime television, so I write. And e-mail copiously. And drink Dr. Pepper. And eventually succumb to the horrors of daytime television, but such is life. We all have our bears to cross.

I had a good conversation with Dr. Alan Black this afternoon re: this whole "women in the church" thing.

No, we didn't come to any sort of conclusion. It was good if for no other reason (though there are plenty of other reasons) than that it forced me to better articulate my questions. I am indebted to Dr. Fortner for proposing and arranging the meeting.

I've got a lot of reading to do and a lot more thinking and praying. But it was good. It was good to have a cordial discussion feeling free to ask questions, knowing I am also free to disagree with the proffered answers and not be thought belligerent or simply stubborn -- and not to be automatically assumed to be a left-of-center heretical feminazi. That was, I think, my favorite part. I enjoyed very much talking to Dr. Black and hope to do so again in the future. I've respected him for quite some time but have never had opportunity just to sit and talk with him. It was nice.

I also had a double dose of Fortner today which is good for me theologically, insofar as it remains a discussion of our thinking about God. It's a little hard in that it reminds me of my love for the subject and the degree to which I'd hoped to pursue it. Bittersweet, I guess.

Bev Dowdy is brilliant.

Rambling 'bout the election -- just like everybody else.

No one at church has said explicitly "real Christians will vote for Bush."  It's just been an atmospheric sense.  Not just at church, though:  everywhere.  Everywhere in this part of "the Bible Belt," at least.  Real Christians here vote for Bush -- because he's anti-gay marriage, pro-life and willing to continue bombing Iraq.  At least, those are the only reasons that come up when anyone asks why.

I think "real Christians" are going to vote (if they vote) for the person who or party that most accurately represents their views on government -- kind of like "real people" will.  Seriously:  not all "real Christians" believe that the government should be used as a vehicle for achieving Christian ideals.  Regardless of what I think about that, I don't believe that a person's opinion on it determines his or her Christianity.  Not all "real Christians" think that choosing a pro-life candidate is all that important in light of other issues.  Not all "real Christians" are for (or against) the war in Iraq.  Not all "real Christians" are even going to vote.  And some may vote for Nader or any number of other third party candidates, write-in or otherwise.  Because real Christians are real people and when Christ was calling followers, he wasn't calling them to a political party:  he called them to a way of life.

Does that way of life impact how one votes?  Of course.  It'd be stupid to say otherwise.  But I'm no more a Christian if I vote for Bush and no less a Christian if I become an expatriate and cast off everything that makes me an American.  Because at some point, some of us got the idea that to be Christian in the U.S. and to be a patriotic American are inextricably linked.  I dunno.  I don't think it was necessarily the Christian's duty to be a patriotic Roman in the first century.  A responsible citizen, sure, of wherever one happens to reside -- but patriotism, while it can be a nice attribute, should hardly be binding as a matter of faith.  Sometimes it's my Christian conviction that makes me a lousy patriot -- and sometimes it's the Christian conviction of others that lead them to be very patriotic. 

Last time I checked, though, "real Christians" were those who really belong to Christ.