Love, Honor, and Obey

Imagine that you were working as a server in a restaurant, and a customer came in and was seated in your section. You look over at the table, and it occurs to you that the man is familiar. You ran across him just last week in a parking lot. He had made an illegal turn, and broad-sided the car your spouse was driving. Only instead of admitting the mistake, or even being half-way polite about it, the man jumps out of the car, pulls your spouse out of their car, and starts screaming at the top of his lungs, and then, just for good measure, spits in your spouse's face before driving off without waiting for the police to show up.

Now imagine that not only were you prevented from taking any legal action against this person seated in your section, but you were required, by law, to serve them their lunch. No swapping sections, no breaks, no going home sick. When you try to explain the situation to your boss, he informs you that anti-discrimination laws prevent you from refusing to serve the customer. If you do, you can be fined or imprisoned.

I know that there are a lot of people out there who couldn't make heads or tails out of this story, or relate it to the current battle over religious rights if their lives depended on it. I suppose that's the point really. The secularists, the judges making the rulings, even a lot of the more "casual" Christians do not understand because they cannot understand.

My "religion" is not a hobby, a philosophy, or a means of giving to charity. It isn't a place to go on Sunday morning, with occasional picnics. My "religion" is a relationship. Specifically, my religion is my relationship with God. It doesn't stop Sunday at noon, and it doesn't end at the church parking lot. I take it with me everywhere I go, 24-7, 365 days a year. It's how I worship, how I live, and what I aspire to become over time. It is my inspiration, love, and loyalty. It is my purpose and strength. And through Christ, it is my salvation and my hope. It is the gift that I do not deserve and can never repay, and yet have been given.

And it is personal. That's something that is missed in the discussion of rights. How does God compare his relationship with his followers, his care for those who trust Him? He compares it to a marriage. Over and over in the scriptures, the metaphor of marriage is used to show God's love for his people. The church is his bride. Christ loved the church so much that He died for us, and later, through Paul, commanded that husbands maintain that standard, that they too should be willing to die for their wives, if need be. Arguably, that is the reason that God instituted marriage from the beginning.

In the short space of a few years, we have gone from a nation with a clear and unanimous definition of marriage, one that has been the basis of every successful civilization for thousands of years, to a nation at odds with itself. In many cases, the change was not accomplished using the legal methods, but forced by unelected officials deciding by their own will what was right. Soon after that, people of faith, the same ones who accept that marriage symbolizes the relationship between Christ and forgiven Man, were not only required to accept a perversion of the sacrament, but they were then told that they must participate in the perversion if their job duties would normally provide service to a Christian service. If not, they could lose the ability to work, or be fined, or imprisoned.

And the gay activists have no idea why we seem to believe our religious liberty is being threatened...

Last night, the latest round in the battle for religious liberty was lost in Arizona. An amendment that would have given a little bit of help for people of faith in discrimination cases was defeated. That wasn't surprising, considering that its opponents painted it basically as the return of Jim Crow via the Spanish Inquisition. There are likely to be more losses as well, but the battle will continue.

In the book of Acts, Paul was given the choice of obeying God or man. He chose God. I think the modern secularists might be surprised at how many Christians are still willing to do the same. The times may have changed, but some things haven't. In a world were more marriages end in divorce than not, some of us are determined to keep our word, both to our spouse, and our God.

Love, honor, and obey.

We Need More Hypocrites in Church

As I prepare for worship this morning, I come here to post an odd petition. It is a bit of a prayer, something of a rant, a complaint against those who constantly complain about people of faith: Lord, this Sunday and every Sunday, please send more hypocrites into your church.

As someone who has discussed the value of the church and matters of faith with many people over the year, the subject of "hypocrites" seems to be a recurring theme. I use the scare quotes because at some point in time my concept of what makes a "hypocrite" seems to have diverged from most of the people I encountered.

I always considered a hypocrite to be a person of double standards, as in someone who preached morality for everyone else, but always found a way to justify their own conduct no matter how outrageous. This was the father who took his son to task for going to bar with friends and having a beer while insisting that his own three-case-a-week habit was perfectly fine, or the mother who insisted her daughter dress "appropriately" while reveling in her own immodest attire. In more modern times, I tend to think of congress, who insists that the laws they pass are so beneficial for the people and yet they always seem to have a perfectly good reason for exempting themselves.

The modern definition of a hypocrite that I ran into the most, at least where churchgoers were concerned, was "someone who said one thing, but did another." If you said it was wrong to lie, but had lied in the past, you were a hypocrite. If you said it was wrong to steal, but had stolen in the past, you were a hypocrite. If you believed that anything was "right," but had fallen short of that standard at any time for any reason, you were a hypocrite.

I have to admit, I was taken aback. Under that definition, the church was certainly full of hypocrites. In fact, using that definition, there were nothing but hypocrites in the church. Now personally, I had never considered that type of behavior hypocrisy. I pretty much considered this to be the human condition: flawed, imperfect, fallen, sinful. I could only think of two ways, again using this definition, to avoid being a "hypocrite." The first way was to be perfect, and I knew that perfect people were in pretty short supply. The second way was simply to proclaim no standards. No right. No wrong. Observe, consent, affirm. Go along.

Over time, I came to realize that much of the use of the term "hypocrisy" with regards to the church was less about describing the members than about justifying the critics. This is not to say that there are not hypocrites in church. There certainly are. And there are liars, and thieves, and drunkards. There are men who beat their wives, and wives who cheat on their husbands, and all manner of unpleasant people.

And that's right where I want them. Not in charge, hopefully, at least not until Christ has gotten into them enough so that they can be faithful servants of others, but I want them there. Christ remarked that it was not well people that needed a doctor, but the sick. For all of these "illnesses," and many others, Christ is the cure, and a God-fearing, faithful church is the best treatment center available. It's the emergency room, the hospital. Hopefully, it's also the long-term rehab therapy afterward.

Churches are anything but perfect. They are filled with people. The two don't go together. But the church is generally the one place where people can go when they need help finding their way back to God. And God loves the hypocrites, just the same as he loves all the rest of us sinners, so that's my prayer for this Sunday.

"Lord, please send more hypocrites into your church, that they may see your face which holds nothing false. And give the rest of your believers the spirit of your love, that bears all things and points to a better way. Let us not seek to turn away those whom we find unpleasant, but welcome them into your grace. Let us remember that it is not our church, but yours. Amen."

You Have to Respect the Writing, Especially from the "Good" Book

I still remember leaving the theater after seeing the Stanley Kubrick version of "The Shining." As a fan of horror in general and Stephen King in particular, I had been looking forward to the movie. I loved the way King had developed the story in the book, all of the power, the nuance. I loved the way that his characters drew you in and helped you experience the madness that was the Overlook Hotel. And for similar reasons, I was thoroughly disgusted after the movie was over.

The cinematography was fine. I thought the performances were okay. A lot of other people have always seemed to have had a much higher opinion of Jack Nicholson than I, and Shelly Duvall had was fine for what they gave her. My problem was that it wasn't the story that I had read, so it wasn't the story that I had come to see. Expectations play a big part in a movie. That one did not meet mine.

Hollywood is roughly a month away from the release of "Noah," a fairly pricey piece of movie-making that they bought into a while ago, and the nerves are starting to get jangly among the money-men. They may have some very good reasons to be nervous.There have been leaks about the storyline and how it doesn't quite follow the expected plot line for some time.

I can still remember when NBC did a made-for-television mini-series about "Noah." I went into that one with high hopes. I don't recall why, but they didn't last very long. I made it until just after Noah and his wife fled the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and event strangely absent from my translation of the Bible, and that was it for me. I don't recall whether I changed to another station or switched off the set entirely, I wasn't watching that.

I am not going to apply any religion-laden tirades to entertainment corporations. I am pretty much a free-market capitalist, and as long as they are risking their own money, and people are not compelled to invest or watch against their will, I believe they should be pretty much free to make what they want. I do believe that the people responsible for that kind of treatment of scripture may very well pay a penalty some day at the hands of Higher Authority, but that isn't up to me.

I will give a bit of a rant against the entertainment corporations for fighting so hard against their audience in some regards. It has been shown time and time again that good family entertainment makes money. Respectful, well-done treatment of the Bible in film makes money. Despite those truths, the corporate studios are willing to spend millions ($125 million in the case of the latest version of Noah, or so the rumor goes), and then sweat as to whether or not audiences will accept it. Of course, if they do, then they have other costs that they have to start worrying about.

Hollywood is not a friendly place to Christian or conservative values. Some people working there deny it. Others don't bother. The ones that do are about as convincing as the official in "The Sound of Music" proclaiming that "nothing has changed in Austria." It's becoming a great deal more common today, but California has long been a state where Christian values were largely mocked and Hollywood excess celebrated, where vice is celebrated and virtue shamed, at least as defined throughout much of history. A studio that appeared to be making too many friendly gestures toward a Christian audience would be at risk of offending a good percentage of the labor pool, and possibly getting cut out of a few key networks.

Either way, it's a risk. And as I said, it's their risk to take. To me, it seems like a foolish one, though. Hollywood, by it's nature, deals in make-believe, and that's fine. But some things, even when faked, have to at least appear genuine. That's because some things are sacred. If it doesn't mean anything to the studios, they should at least respect the customers. And though many there don't believe it, a final review is coming, and The Critic pulls no punches. If He doesn't like it, there'll be hell to pay.

Can You Stand Alone?

Our church is presently emphasizing "community" as a part of spiritual growth. I can recognize the value in a lot of areas, though I have to confess that it doesn't mean as much to me as it does to a lot of people. My personality is such that I tend to seek quiet and solitude, the eternal introvert, content with family and a few close friends. I must confess, the friends that I believed to be closest placed a lower value on the relationship than I did, which is a sadness for me, but not a crippling one. I'm sure the reasons disappointed them as well, and we'll all survive it physically. Our spiritual health may be another matter.

Though a loner by nature, I recognize the power of community. Growing up as a "nerd" I went through my period of longing for acceptance. I think it lasted about twenty years, give or take. Part of my particular flavor of nerdiness is a near complete inability to read what people want or expect from me in social interactions, you see. So sooner or later, I would show them an honest aspect of my character that they just couldn't deal with, and that would be that. I might not be banished totally, but I was definitely off the Christmas card list.

I will try to be as honest with you and myself as I can. I certainly have my annoying tendencies. A lack of tact in discussions is one of the more prominent ones, but not the only feature that others can find off-putting about me. I tend to see many things as "black and white" that most feel a good deal more comfortable casting in shades of grey, and I can rightly be called injudicious about picking my battles. Some have been worthwhile. Some probably have not. I am neither a crusader nor a martyr, nor do I feel there is a grand conspiracy out to get me. I guess you could just say that they were part of a community where I was not welcome. It happens.

There is much to be gained by strengthening the bonds of community within the church. Small groups can be a great place to start local projects and ministries, and a great way to build relationships within the church. The one thing that we must always look carefully at is building the most important relationship of all, the one between God and man.

It's discipleship, spiritual growth, that will really show the value of this emphasis for me. I say this because it appears to me that we are entering one of the more challenging times in the church's history. There has already been a great deal of persecution of believers overseas, and more testing all the time of believers in the states. I think that will continue, and as it does, more and more of those who claim Christ will have to stand and give account before men. And they will not stand as a community. They will stand alone, at least as far as the eyes of unbelievers can see. They will stand and answer in a manner that will either bring glory to God, or the illusion of escape, suffering in public or torment in private.

Many have already had to make this choice recently. Some have had guns pointed at them. Some have been faced with prison sentences. Some have been faced with firing, or loss of their job. Some have stood their ground and spoken for Christ. Some have recanted. Whatever the case, they have not faced charges as a "community." They have faced them as an individual. Alone.

Can you stand alone?

Revisiting a Parable: The Workers in the Vineyard

In Matthew 20 Jesus tells the story of a land owner who hires workers for his vineyard, presumably at harvest time. Needing many, the owner checks back frequently at the place where day laborers gather, and hires whoever he can find. The ones that he hires first, he agrees to pay the standard amount for a day's wage. As he continues to hire people later in the day, the man promises to pay a fair amount for the work, the assumption being that some kind of hourly wage would be used.

At the end of the day, the owner has his paymaster call all of the men forward to be payed, starting with the ones who were hired last. These men, who were hired only an hour ago, receive a full day's wage, as do those who worked three hours, and five hours, and the whole day. Human nature being what it is, the grumbling begins. The men who were hired first complain to the owner that they worked harder than everyone else, and yet received no more, a blatant case of unfair labor practice if ever there was one. The land owner listens, but remains unmoved, pointing out that those who worked the full day got everything they were promised, indeed what seemed perfectly fair just this morning.

The parable has always stood as a beautiful testimony to the loving grace of God through Christ, that through Him it doesn't matter whether we find salvation early in life or in our last moment. The salvation is just as secure, just as eternal. We are placed in the Father's hand, where no one can snatch us, because no one is powerful to separate us from the the love of God through Christ. When we breathe our last on earth, our home in heaven will be waiting.While the main purpose of the parable was to describe God's kingdom, however, there is no reason to ignore the other lessons that can be learned, and heed the warnings while we may.

I think most of us have identified with the grumbling workers from time to time. A certain flavor of "buyer's remorse" might be a common example. We pick up a new item that we are really thrilled with until we find out that a friend got the same item, or perhaps a better one, at a lower price. Or maybe you were the kid who couldn't wait to show off the really great ten-speed bike that you got for Christmas until you ran into your best friend who was showing off his new twenty-speed?

A simple fact of the human condition is that not only do we want more than we have, we want more than the other person has. And if we can't get more, we feel entitled to at least as much. These aren't particularly nice feelings, and they describe a not particularly nice mindset. In the past, it might have been called envy, greed, or jealousy.

Christ, I believe would have called it sin. As in "You shall not covet anything that is your neighbor's."

It goes by a different name today: Discrimination. And the really odd thing, the label isn't applied to the person doing the griping, it's applied to the person causing the fuss. In an age of entitlement, it's no longer good enough to pay a person a wage that they agreed to. Employers are now scrutinized to see if they paid the same wage to the last male, or the last white male, or the last white male who could be traced back three centuries to a slave trade, or whatever the disfavored oppressor of the month happens to be, as they now pay to the minority holding the job. If not, mutual consent seems to be no defense. Discrimination is the assumption of the day. No evidence is required.

Not that it makes much difference now, but I believe that this is exactly the kind of situation that the tenth commandment was given to warn about. While looking into the business of others may distract us from our troubles, it will solve none of our own, and getting angry at the wealth of our neighbor will not add a penny to our savings. And it will not give us peace, or prosperity, or anything else that we so desperately need as a nation right now. The only thing it will do is give us a reason to continue to resent each other, and if you haven't been exhausted by all the resentment by now, you have more stamina than I do.

In a fantasy world, it would be great if everyone made a million dollars a day. In a real world, if everyone made a million dollars a day it would take three million a day to live. That's the way of the world. When we got thrown out of paradise, God told us it would be by the sweat of our brow from then on. That isn't going to change because some fast-talking politicians have a good line of bull. There hasn't been a phone or pen yet that could override the law of supply and demand. If you really want a better life for yourself and your family, it's time to start looking to yourself, your family, and God, and get to work building it.

Time for Women's Advocates to "Man Up"

I remember a time when the "women's movement" was about equal opportunity, the chance to compete with men on an equal footing. There was an idea I could get behind. For that matter, it's an idea I still could get behind, if I had the chance. Between the government and the gender feminists, that chance seems slimmer and slimmer all the time, at least as far as public policy is concerned.

This evening as I rode home, I was treated to a news story about Mary Barra, the new CEO of GM. The tenor of the story seemed to be outrage that, as a woman, her compensation appeared to less than that of her male predecessors. A follow-up to the story, with GM disclosing full details of her compensation appears to contradict that earlier report, which is completely irrelevant as far as I am concerned. The questions I find far more pressing are 1) Why is there so much upset over a difference in salary, and 2) Why is it any one's business outside of the GM and Ms. Barra?

I am making a few assumptions here. I am assuming, for example, that no one was holding a gun on Ms. Barra or members of her immediate family during the salary negotiations, or that no other nefarious means of corporate duress were employed. That being the case, I would have to guess that anyone, male or female, capable of being CEO of a multi-national corporation would be capable of negotiating an equitable salary for themselves. If they were not, I can't see why the company would want them in the first place. Claiming that GM conspired to reduce compensation in the offer because Ms. Barra is a woman is not only insulting to GM but insulting to Ms. Barra as well. As we acknowledge that she is capable of looking after GM's best interests, let us acknowledge that she is capable of looking after her own as well.

For those who believe that publicizing such incidents benefits women, I disagree. Each time a case such as this arises in the media, it once again raises the specter of doubt with regards to the ability women to compete equally. Men have always worked with the assumption that they were responsible for negotiating their own salaries in professional positions. While calling attention to disparities might win sympathy for women in some quarters, women professionals don't need sympathy. They need respect. They won't get that if they are cast as victims incapable of speaking up for the compensation they deserve.

It's time for the gender feminists to take their belief in female competence past the "lip service" stage. You can't claim that they are fully capable of taking care of billion dollar companies but unable to look after themselves, and you can't expect people to see them strong if you constantly cast them as victims. Man up, ladies.

Horrible Opportunities

I can still remember my first full "real" job, as in one that I drew an actual paycheck. I worked part of a summer at a grocery store in North Carolina. I was visiting my father that summer. My mother and father had divorced years earlier, and he had made the arrangements for me to be hired. For various reasons, we hadn't got to spend very much time together when I was growing up, but we did that summer. I got up when he got up, I ate when he ate. I worked when he worked, and that man worked.

My recollection is that we worked six days a week, ten to twelve hours a day that summer. There might have been a few days that we knocked off after eight. Most of the work areas were hot. The work was hard. For my labor, I was paid the marvelous sum of $1.50 per hour (or about $1.12 after taxes and deductions).

I can't say that I really enjoyed it. I was never big or muscular, or coordinated, and grocery stock work required a skill set that I was dismally lacking. I'm sure my dad knew that before he arranged for the job. We hadn't spent much time together when I was growing up, but he had seen me do enough. He knew my strengths and weaknesses, and he knew I was way out of my element. I kept plugging along.

Time has wiped away a lot of the specifics of that summer. There were some times with my dad and I joking on the job. I think were probably times when I was tired on the job, and I would grumble the way tired fifteen-year-olds do. And I think there might well have been a point when my father looked at me when at told me to either quit or stop grumbling, and that's the point I would have shut up real quick.

Just prior to that trip to North Carolina, my father had purchased a new car, and he had talked to my mother about giving his old car to me as present for my sixteenth birthday. My mother said that she would agree, but that I had to find a way to pay for gas and insurance. As I said, the two had divorced some time ago, and while both had managed that was about all. Money was tight. She had no money to get me set up. There weren't any jobs available for fifteen-year-olds where we lived, and none for sixteen-year-olds either, if they didn't have a car. It was summer stock-boy, or spend my junior year at high school as the walkin' dude. I kept sweeping and placing cans.

I really disliked working as a stock clerk, and that's the truth. It was hot, boring, and I have little to no talent for the job. I am also grateful to everyone involved, from my father who patiently worked with that summer, to the store owner who hired me at that pitiful wage. In the brief span of six weeks in my fifteenth year I got lessons that have lasted the rest of my life. I learned about responsibility, follow-through, working in difficult conditions. I learned the kind of work that I don't want to do in life, which can be almost as important what kind of work you do want to do. I learned I was capable of more than I thought. And I was able to earn enough to by my initial car insurance and have gas until I could get a job at home.

I was able to do all of that because I had the opportunity to work.

Today there are so many people at every level of government and out of government that are trying to protect people from "bad" jobs. If these same people had been around when I was growing up, I would not have had a summer job. That would have meant no car, at least not then. Life lessons would have been put off. I can't really say how things would have ended up. I do know this: I would not have thanked them then. Nor do I thank them now.

The current administration is not the first to shrink the ability of Americans to work or start new businesses, but it certainly has accelerated the process. The White House is now cheering the ability of people to be "free" of the need to work to meet the expenses of health care as the rolls of the long term unemployed and disabled grow. The path is clear, grim, and unsustainable, which leaves us a rather stark choice: we must either return the nation to a land of opportunity largely free of government interference, or resign ourselves to having no opportunity the government does not provide.

The Limits of Euphamism - Part II

Euphemisms  have always had their place in polite society, but like any tool they are best employed in the correct situations and used appropriately. Whereas once the substitution of a palatable term for an unpleasant one was the province of diplomats and barely restrained argument, we have seen the practice form a major part of our social policy for decades. Where once terms such as "negro" and "Indian" were once accepted, they are now frowned upon in "polite" conversation at best and considered evidence of bigotry at worst.

Several words have gone through several replacement iterations, with predictable results: The attitudes about the groups referred to haven't changed for the better. If anything, relations have deteriorated as demands for use of such terms have become more shrill. The shifting terminology was not the only reason for the deterioration, nor was it the worst. Given the frequency of the shifts, however, it remains one of the more obvious symptoms in a culture that has come to emphasize demands for respect with no accountability for actions that are worthy of it.

The failure of euphemisms to result in any tangible change in attitudes may account for part of the reason why gay advocacy groups were so insistent in classifying gay unions as "marriage." The recent history of other term substitutions show that people really aren't fooled for any length of time by similar words. Advocates may have recognized that there would be no chance for lasting acceptance of the unions under any other title than "marriage."

Eventually, all forms of verbal deception will fail as they collide with truth. While words have great power, they cannot alter reality. People will think no more respectfully of "older people" today than they did "the elderly" yesterday. Attitudes towards minorities haven't changed by adding hyphens, and gay "marriage" is not marriage. Until the groups involved are willing to understand that true tolerance goes in every direction, it will take a lot more than a Newspeak Dictionary for things to improve.

The Limits of Euphamism

I read a recent post describing some recent policy changes at a retirement home in England. The subject was a style manual that was being used to guide the staff on how to address the residents. Apparently, "elderly" is now on the ever growing list of words that should not be used. The approved booklet lists the preferred term as "older people." There were a host of others. The booklet was 31 pages long.

Considering the government relationship with health care in England, neither the changes nor the fact that someone thought it was worth a 31-page booklet is particularly surprising. Positions for bureaucrats grow, and are filled, quite readily in a well-funded organization like the British National Health Service, far more readily than positions for people who actually care for patients. And with the increase in officials, there is the steady pressure to issue new laws, rules, and guidelines, to justify those positions. I still have to wonder about the mentalities that thought this type of project worth the time and expense of producing a style manual of this size.

I would never want to minimize the idea of courtesy and respect to the elderly, or older people for that matter, but in what particular frame of reality is this type of change supposed to make a difference? I have to assume that any patient or client capable telling the difference between the two is already aware of their age relative to society. Regardless of the intention, I don't think that this clever ruse is actually putting anything over on the grandparents, nor do I suspect that they will find their standard of living improved by this type of change. The only logic I can seem to find in it is the shrinking of an already diminished language by declaring another word "out of bounds" for no good reason. That's hardly a new occurrence. At the rate we have been going the last few decades, I imagine there will come a time when the list of banned words outnumbers the ones that approved for use.

As with older people, I am also big fan of  addressing other people respectfully. I sincerely try to do so. I find that it seems to make them feel good, if only a little, and that makes me feel good. It costs nothing, except a bit more time on occasion. Few things in life bring so great a reward with so little output. I simply cannot accept, however, that the precise form that courtesy has to take is so important that it justifies the time, effort, and expense of promulgating lists of words and phrases that may or may not be used. I always thought that type of training was covered along the same lines as washing before meals and potty training.

I also despise the impact on both liberty and societal relationships that such lists have had. While I fully support the right of any employer to maintain a standard for on the job behavior, I also feel that such standards to should be kept to the minimum to keep communications as clear and open as possible. This is especially true in government positions, where small policies have a habit of spreading into large programs with far reaching consequences. I am completely horrified that some words have been pretty much crossed out of the language as unacceptable regardless of circumstances, that property and lives can be completely disrupted by passing remark.

Some words are ugly. No doubt about it. They have ugly meanings based on ugly histories. They are used to convey ugly feelings. That's part of the human condition. We can't escape our failings of the past with the stroke of a pan, or a deletion in a file. The history, all of the incidents that inspired such words to begin with, remain. It puzzles me, really. There are times when I think that some people believe that if we can just get rid of the words that are used to make people feel angry or weak or afraid or uncomfortable, that those feelings will go away with the words, that all we need for harmonious living is a properly adjusted dictionary.

Whether people believe that or not, there are enough who act as though they do, going after everything from words, to books, to flags. To stars and crosses, too. Like government regulations, the list of things that make people uncomfortable enough to attack keeps growing as well.

I still remember coming home as a child and complaining to my parents about the teasing and insults I got at school. Some was spite. Some I deserved, no doubt. Most of it was kids being kids. I'd like to think that most of us have grown out of it. The advice I received from my parents was pretty much the same advice that I have given to my own children: Toughen up. There will always be someone, somewhere that gets their entertainment from tormenting others. If it doesn't work on you, they will move on.

It was hard advice to take. I got my feelings hurt a lot growing up. And then I didn't. That's the payoff that makes all the pain worthwhile. Sooner or later, you have the ability to go where you will without worry of an unkind word, whether ugly or racial or sexist, or any new description likely to be invented. With the right attitude, and a knowledge that your worth comes from God, then you will know that ugly words are still just words. They have no power over you that you do not give them.

Words will never hurt me. That's what I was taught growing up. I find that sometimes that isn't the case. A harsh word from a loved wound can still wound. When you give your love, that's giving a power over you on a whole new level. That's how it should be. Where we are going now, where have been going for years, is giving the easiest to offend power over all. I hope we can change direction soon. Frankly, I can't think of a more frightening place to end up.