Always Reforming

    Stories about national anthem protests are becoming ubiquitous.  Whether sitting, kneeling, or raising their hands, more and more athletes are showing their disdain for police violence against blacks by refusing to embrace the traditional posture taken during the anthem.  Here are some thoughts on the issue.     First of all, I mostly find this phenomenon to be annoying.  Is it an important topic?  Certainly!  I don't want to draw away from that, but the news coverage and the attention-grabbing that have resulted are mostly just annoying.  What's it really about, Colin?  Are you genuinely protesting something or are you just mad you suck now that Harbaugh (#JimHarbaughforpresident) is gone?     Secondly, being free means you're allowed to protest injustice in non-treasonous, non-seditious ways.  If you want to kneel and pray for our country during the anthem, go ahead.  If you want to raise your fist to d...

    So, there was a debate last night.  If you have a TV or the internet, you already knew that.  If you don't, consider yourself lucky.  Anyway, the debate.  It was significantly less interesting than I had hoped.  As a millennial who has no loyalty to either party (read: I can actually think for myself), I switched over from the Falcons/Saints game merely hoping a more exciting clash.  It wasn't that interesting.  Trump said Trumpy things.  Hillary is still good ol' Hillary.  It was, however, no less a game than the one on ESPN.  Nonetheless, here are 10 thoughts on the debate. Donald Trump has bad hair.  This is a truth that needs no fact checking.  This is a principle upon which this country can be united.  Why, Donald, why?!  Certainly he can pay someone a yuuuge amount of money to correct this, right?! It's weird when Hillary calls Trump "Donald."  I'm not sure why.  It just is. Trump i...

    American Christians continually get caught up in the talk radio/Fox News cycle of worry and doubt.  What if Hillary gets elected?  What if the Supreme Court is irrevocably liberalized?  What if Obama parks his rear in the oval office and refuses to abdicate?     You know what, worse injustices have happened in the history of the world.     But, they continue, the liberals are and will continue to target Christians!  We will have to bake cakes and hire people we don't want to!  We will, Heaven forbid, lose of 501c3 status!     Oh, the humanity!     Now, don't get me wrong.  Christianity is losing favor increasingly in this country.  As that favor goes, so our religious freedoms will go.  Christianity is really an exclusive religion, meaning that those who don't like us usually hate us.  The abuses of our religious freedom are injustices and we are right to combat them.  However...

    My place of employment (one of the two) offers me the unusual opportunity to see in people's backseats and trunks on a daily basis (we sell bottled water and salt, which I sometimes load into customers' cars).  Besides the expected junk, things like clothing, sports equipment, and other oddities, I often spot Bibles in these cars.  Now, before I proceed any further, let me mention that I work in Green, Ohio, which, as with Northeastern Ohio as a whole, is pretty religious, Roman Catholicism being especially strong, so Bibles are not exactly unexpected.  Let's proceed.  These Bibles are usually lying placidly on the backseat or hiding in the seat pockets, that is, they're usually somewhere that does get much attention.  When I first started working at this employer (five long years ago), I had a wide array of reactions to seeing these Bibles.  Sometimes I was surprised, like, "They have a Bible in their car?"  Sometimes there was no surpr...

    Okay, folks.  It's getting pretty hard to ignore the apparent health issues that former first lady and current Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is experiencing.  Let me be clear about one thing.  I do not wish these health problems upon her.  I don't believe that it is my calling as a Christian to rejoice in her suffering.  However, that doesn't mean that we can ignore what is happening.  Several reports of Clinton having health issues have come out and they have been unequivocally shot down as the ramblings of paranoid conspiracy theorists.  That dialogue can no longer be maintained.  When major news outlets run stories about it, you know it's bad.  After all, we all know they'll cover up things as long as possible.  It's to the point that it cannot be ignored.  The latest reports are that Clinton has pneumonia, which must have produced a collective sigh of relief from the media.  Pneumonia is bad enough to ...

    Ah, politics.  It dominates the headlines.  It makes us want to pull our hair out.  It epitomizes the term futility .  It reveals the good in men, but also divulges their basest instincts.  It brings us together in ways that few other things can, and yet, it tears us apart.  Those united by blood, faith, nationality, and ethnicity find themselves at each others' throats when it comes to politics.  More money is spent and blood spilt over politics than nearly anything else in this world.  People love money.  They love power. They want to control other people.  These are inescapable realities of human nature.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  At the end of election season (is there an end?) it's easy to find yourself wondering what use there is in participating in the political process at all.  We're told that we have to vote.  We have to voice our opinions.  We have to [fill in ...

    There has been a topic on my heart lately that I can't seem to shake.  Call it an observation.  Call it conviction.  Call it what you will.  Of late it has been impressed on me lately just how disrespectful we really are of each other.  Appearance.  Education level.  Political views.  You name a subject, and we'll make fun of each other because of it.  Any disparity between us becomes fodder for ridicule.   It's like the world is an 8th grade classroom!       How did we get to the point where we mock each other so flippantly?  Why do we feel that it is okay to make fun of each other?  Is it just human nature?  Is it something more?  I'm sure psychologists would give you all sorts of answers, but if I had to take a stab in the dark, I'd say a contributing factor is the fact that the internet makes it so quick, easy, and painless to deride others in our modern era.  The internet is ...