A Lion From 50,000 ft, Is Serious Business

The accuracy and debatability of biblical languages often give me pause to think and, as it were, those thoughts ended up here where I often rant and ramble. This blog.

Much of the problems we face in the divisions between our denominations could be settled in one fell swoop of biblical literacy.

Or put another way, If all Christians had to learn Hebrew and Greek before they could confess their saving faith in Yeshua and a thorough understanding of every iota. But even biblically we see that this is far from required as no reading is required. The thief that thieved and hung beside the lamb that was slain should show us the lowest if not the most hopeful bar of entry into the kingdom Christ left to prepare for us.

Still, I wonder if alongside the barrier these languages present in the following God in a simple way, is there a recognition that God knows about southern drawls and received pronunciation all the same.

For the highest of overviews like a plane at cruising altitude, we have to come to a comfy business class enjoyment of assumptions when it comes to language. There are compounding variables that will continue to compound in the nuance of language and the translation of God's word to what we speak and listen to.

The debate eventually boils down to this. Do we take the text literally or do we take it figuratively and how much of a swing does the pendulum have. Because secretly we want it both ways.

We want the parts on fun stuff like sex and sin to be literal so we can know what's up where to get down. And we want the un-fun parts we want to be about sex and sin to be figurative. We want control, like any man with a leash, wants control.

But as Chuck Spurgeon famously said.

"The Word of God is like a lion. You don't have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself."

Perhaps we instead could find a third method. Not a leash for control, with an end we want to be on and an end we don't. Perhaps there is a way to see the scriptures as something to behold not own, to learn from not understand. To be wary of and depend on, A dichotomy of faith and promise, of justice and grace.

What if we took the bible seriously first and delved into the minutia of detail like the hairs in the lion's mane as the situation demanded. We have no need to debate the sharpness of its claws or teeth but a great deal could be spent on the sharpness of its stare. or its tenderness and affection towards those it loves.

Similarly, the word of God has plenty of black shall not's and white shall's that need no debate or cultural analysis. But has plenty of grey areas where we shouldn't assume one or the other and need a thorough understanding of both to make an informed decision on what the text says.

A lion trainer would not gleefully and without regard, approach a wild lion he did not know. A lion enthusiast would not just approach a perfectly trained lion because he liked their aesthetic and powerful appearance. A man afraid of lions would flee from the most cowardly of big cats with friends named Dorothy that fit his fears description. The angles from which we approach this cat can be as varied and nuanced as the languages we translate its features into from an original encounter.

But like the big cat we're comparing it to we have to know that the bible is not simply trustworthy, it's entirely trustworthy. We can not trust it like we could our own truths that we can craft and mould as we see fit and thus simply understand. Those truths are weak and we can trust them about as far as we can throw them. But we can trust a lion to be a lion. To be wild and majestic, powerful and cunning, warlike and tender, a king in its realm and a thing above all else to be taken seriously when we encounter it.

Whether by the trusted roads laid down by the Greeks and Romans, or the paths wandered in the desert by the Hebrews. How ever we find the word of God it must be taken seriously. Because it is by our relationship to it that others will learn of how to interact with God's word. If we take it only literally we will give people the impression that they could never approach such a dangerous and unpredictable text. People will seek ivory towers of theological degrees and pastoral interpretation to interact with the cat and never get close enough to experience it themselves. Always having an experience with God's word that is watered down by a middleman, no matter how well-intentioned and well-educated.

If we take it too figurately we can lend a lassie fair nature to the dangers the lion, like the law projects. People can get too close to the dangerous parts of the text because they assume an air of comparative ignorance. That like a small cat this big one can be domesticated and compliant with their whims and sins.

But if we take it seriously, approach the sensitive and dangerous parts with a willingness to be cautious. With a recognition that we are not the best source of understanding lions, lions are the best understanders of lions. Then we can learn to live with them, befriend them even be taught by them. because we no longer let our ignorance keep us away or let it warrant us getting too close too fast.

We can see how it prowl's, how it growl's and how it roars, and slowly get closer as we learn to trust it and learn what it's all about.

Finding The Hidden Authors In High-Schools

So on a scale from salt to good old fashion black coffee, I'm just a little bitter about my memories of high-school. Not the fun I had or the girls I dated or the injuries I sustained or the fights I got in.

But on the fact that my joy of reading and imagination for stories was never picked up on, by the school system and the great teachers I had a chance to learn from.

They had no time!

We spent so much time teaching the basics and the mandatory and cheaply acquired essentials that we never got to the best part of English class, Writing!

I can remember covering creative writing as a two-week module in any high school English class I ever took. One where we learned for the fourth time in a row by grade twelve how to write a haiku and the elements of a 3 act play. Only as a set up our Shakespear unit the next month.

But I can't remember for the life of me ever being told that Author, was a job you could be out of high-school. That Writer was even a profession. These two titles were nowhere during the career fairs. On the long list things, you learn in school but never use, was the type of writing we learned in high-school that for the most part left us unprepared for the real writing, we were expected to complete in college let alone in life.

No one explained the difference between the novel and the novella or what a sourcebook was and why they are essential to writing non-fiction as research sources. How to write a proper essay, what a footnote was and how to format an essay.

No one dared give the idea of pouring your imagination and heart into a story with the intent of publishing it, in grade ten, and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why.

It's because the gatekeepers of literature were big, strong, and picky back then. and now they are not.

The desire and nostalgic envy I have for my former self sits squarely in the shed light of this new era of self-publishing. One where Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords and a host of others allow anyone to publish their work with no gate and no keepers other than your self and your ability. That light didn't exist for us millennial parents back then like it does for our kids now. So the approach we took to literature and making it need to change.

Is your kid a book worm devouring novels of any genre and length by the 9th grade?

Get them a copy of "The Elements of Style" and turn them on to the idea that they could write the next Harry Potter, Percy Jackson or Katniss Everdeen, into existence

Get them a copy of Stephen King's "On Writing" to give Pennywise a run for his terrifying sewer clown money.

Pressfield's War of Art,

Lamott's Bird by bird.

Any number of toe-dipping dives into the world of being a writer because unless the government who runs our schools have suddenly become fantastically good at preparing youth for the world they will enter post-secondarily, they will never hear the call of their own pen's and keyboards until they are 26 and working a dead-end job with more commitments than motivation.

So this year, for Christmas. if you know someone who fits that bill. don't let them go another day without knowing it's at least possible now to Write. and give them the gift of dream chasing.

On College Degrees And Libraries

There is a good chance you have heard the sentiment shared, from the red-clad stage of a TED talk or from a YouTube video staring a now millionaire that left theirs all behind them.
I'm talking about college degrees. Your BA. MA. And any other string of letters you care to put behind you the last name on a business card
But before you assume too much I'm not here to tear down the institution or convince your teenager to take a gap year that turns into a passion for making minimum wage. I think higher education has a place but it has lost its meaning. I wouldn't want a doctor or a nurse who did not graduate with sufficient grades to become one anywhere near me with a scalpel and a needle, but there is something magical about someone who left college to become a massive success by mastering their life and circumstance.
From the ever polite and pleasant Bill Gates to the inspiring Ryan Holiday. There are dozens of examples now of people who are experts and stars in their field that never walked across a stage to receive a piece of paper saying they knew what they know. In this new age of internet and information, the value of a college degree is becoming a thing of the past.

But then there are guys like me. People who spent 6 years and a lot of my parent's money striving for a degree I finished 95% of just to land a job and later career that was unrelated aside from proximity to the degree and then found my life's purpose in writing which is a third type of different from those first two directions.

It seems like a big waste and for writers at least, where I find my deepest passion, the money I spent on a degree is something I can't help but wish I spent it elsewhere.

The 40,000 to 80,000 a BA in arts cost these days at your average college can pay for so much more valuable things than a piece of paper that says your a writer. Every book and article and poem already does that. The degree just says an institution, instead of a fan, agrees with you. And last time I checked my College never purchased one of my books but I've sold all of them so far to fans. The thousands of dollars spent on a degree could be spent on book covers and editors and of all things a writer truly needs these days, a library of books.

John Green said it best that " Book are the only apprenticeship most writers have."

I would trade my degree in a heartbeat for the shelves and books that would fill them if I could have spent even half of what I spent on college. But alas I did not and can not but hopefully, you reader of this tragic blog post, a hopeful writer in your own rights still might be able to.

Fear And Banning On The Internet As A Christian Writer

I have been a writer on the internet since early 2008. And as such, have seen plenty of change in the landscape of what can and can't be authored online.
I surfed a web before trigger warnings and declarations and tragically before the NSFW label on posts. Way before blue checkmarks and the ever-mysterious shadow banning wielded by their outrage.
But as of late the ideologies that pilot the social networks the web became, have been active. Deplatforming people because of what they believe the same way I would boot a porn channel if I ran the world.
These sites are only doing what they feel is right to things they objectively own. The problem is that sites like youtube don't make the content they promote and host the content. Google doesn't blog on blogger, bloggers do.
And as the death grip of a left staggering thought pattern chokes the social out of these media companies, I feel like any step in defiance will have me blocked, banned or worse de-platformed.
The freedom of the internet is now tangled with a snake of compromise. We can post and write whatever we want so long as we do it to fit inside the community guidelines and political affiliations of who builds the servers and keeps the lights on in silicon valley.
To boldly host my own site on my own server so these measures can't be used means more hardware than most writers can afford. To rank on Google on an opposing platform of my own would mean means to an unreachable end.
But maybe that's the point.
Persecution never works. It only breeds martyrs and sympathy. And right now alongside orthodox believers are orthodox biologists, lawyers, politicians and teachers. People willing to stand and be shot or at the very least blocked and banned.
Ages before these internet debacles a man took sights on an opposing empire that was ideologically driven as well. One that viewed sex drugs and communications standards drastically different than that missionary. But Paul staked a claim on Rome that brought Christianity to the world. Maybe not at first but by his courage and conviction, evidently at last.
I don't want to be afraid to post an article about binary gender or theology all the same. But to have convictions alongside your websites ideologies means at least entertaining those jitters before the plunge.

Still.

I think of a lot of articles and book ideas that I know will get banned and removed from the sites I use to spread my attempts at spreading the gospel.

To let that fear decide when my pen writes and when my keyboard types is cowardice. And the scriptures have little to say pleasantly of cowards.

So here goes.
To Rome or bust.

The False Freedom And Nature Of Online Censorship

The internet itself is the true social egalitarian aspect we look for, based on the freedom that we seek as posters and searchers on the web.

The problem with that is that each website and app on our phones belong to private people as intellectual property on physical servers.

There is no free place on the web like the freedom we have in our lives like there is public land or public property. The right to speak in these places concurrently must be fitted to a website owner's preferences in their own speech. In the same way, they can not tell you what to type on your keyboard, you can not tell them what the terms and conditions of their website's use are.

Unless the internet becomes an unowned place or an all owned place. One that can be contributed to like society but not possessed like private property. The internet will always be a false freedom.

That is the nature of the internet as it now hints at this possibility of freedom while being nested in the possession of billion-dollar companies.

Each one wanting the allure of freedom of use to attract users. Each one needing the benefits of private ownership when their personal or corporate preferences are challenged or opposed.

This is why and how anything is censored on the internet. Not because its a violation of free speech or expression. But because a website hosted by an individual crashes when it becomes too popular so the websites with more resources to host more visitors foster the communities we want to join and be with. These large infrastructures of storage and servers come with a price tag, that price tag gets paid by people with ideologies. These ideologies need to be placated to or the money disappears and with it so does the ability to have a popular site. The reality of the internet is that while connection is available through your personal phone. It's all stored and server via massive infrastructure in Silicon Valley and other info centers around the world.

These are not as free as the sign up's you fill out to tweet and snap.

This is power plain and simple. Power over another smaller service, your own computer hosting your own website to be exact. It is not evil in itself but it's present nonetheless.

If power corrupts at all. Then the size of your websites hosting ability is proportionate to your potential of tyranny in tandem. If you own a web domain or app or social media platform, it is only a matter of time before your freedoms are challenged or opposed by the users, or you oppose the user's freedoms

The tech that the internet is made of. The servers and data centers and electronic storage that hold every tweet, Instagram story, blog post, and video is fundamentally opposed to freedoms, as owned things cannot be free.

No matter how they are marketed as such.

On Masculine Writing And Soup

While the research and political discourse might be conflicted and ostensibly up in the air, men and women write differently. I will never have the descriptive grace that Anne Frank or J.K. Rolling had. Conversely, these excellent and passionate writers in completely different fields of fiction and journaling, will likely never have the hold on terror the way Stephen King does.

There are aspects of the written word that are tied to our minds and mental tendencies that are not as transferable as the ink to the page. Aspects of what it means to be distinctly male and female, I dare say how God intended.

These aspects are like the aroma of a good soup, simmering on the stove of creative's muse's kitchen. Noticeable from the mere entrance of the audience to the work but not identifiable without a taste of the subject matter.

A mother can not write of the violence of war the way a soldier does, from the perspective of a soldier. She may empathize and sympathize but the soldier will know what it feels like for a man to kill a man.

The soldier, conversely, can never, no matter how versed and researched, speak with any of the authority of the mother in childbirth on childbirth.

These perspectives are not lines to be drawn in distinction but rather lenses and filters to observe the world better in. For there is a desperate need in this world for soldiers to be willing to understand the birth of children and mothers to be willing to understand the horrors of war.

If nothing else the written word gives us this unassuming table where both sexes can sit and lends itself more to understanding than spoken words tend to.

As Anne Frank said, "Paper is more patient than people." And our written words can be sipped and spooned through like the noodles of a soup. rich in its composition and varied in its ingredients.

As for the men who write. Your masculinity is part of the body whose hand holds that pen and hovers over that keyboard. Your aggression, your stoicism, your logic, pride, and honour all blend as the muse stirs your pot. You do not write with these aspects as to overshadow or replace the aspects of feminine authors of which I am not fit to adequately describe. But instead to compliment them.

Neither is better, both are needed.

The way you need a bowl and a spoon to eat soup.

Some thoughts about writing because of the internet

I don't know when I noticed but it's finally a clear enough thought in my mind that I figured I'd put it down. If not permanently in a book, then in the ink of our modern lives, the Internet.

Men and women seem to be pursuing writing differently online.

I write both fiction and non-fiction. I try to get between one and three novella-length fiction works down on paper in the span of a year. That's 100000 words and I enjoy every part of it.

But I also keep track of non-fiction ideas that enter my head and write non-fiction books. They are easier to clarify and clean up and as a result, I have 5 non-fiction books published and one fiction book published. All the while I have 4 fiction books drafted and one non-fiction work in draft.

As I try to get all these works published I spend a lot of time looking at other writers' careers, reading a lot, and listening to the endless slew of writing-based podcasts and youtube channels online.

This is where the difference showed up.

When I look for help or advice or even opinion on fiction works, online. I find the field predominantly filled with female perspectives. Type in Nanowrimo, the annual celebration of writing a novel in a month, into Youtube, and you will find roughly 8 female videos to every 2 male videos.

Now type in Self-publishing and you find the same disparity of genders reversed as most self-publishing videos find themselves with male perspectives.

One grouping is almost entirely focused on the feel of the narrative. how characters are constructed and perfected. How to craft an enticing plot and setting.

The other groups seem to focus on the material gain of the environment of online publishing. thousands of videos on how to write to market and maximize sales through sales channels and funnels. How to find productive niches and get other people to do the work for you through online services.

There is overlap in both genders and both topics but there are noticeable preferences.

A writer needs both of these perspectives to succeed these days but I couldn't help but notice the pattern and unique nature of the environment as it has presented itself.

All my favorite authors are men. Tolkien, Lewis, R.A.Salvatore, Christopher Paolini, John Green and Brent Weeks, Ryan Holiday and Malcolm Gladwell.

But, arguably the most successful author in the world to date is a woman, J.K. Rowling.

Her books are fantastic, even though I don't enjoy them I can't argue that they are not well written. they are great stories that people enjoy.

So the people who seem to be findable online, as looking for success, are predominantly men but as of right now they are being surpassed by a woman.

Yet the people who are findable online, as looking for the richness of narrative or story, are predominantly women. Yet some of the greatest works of narrative instruction are authored by men. Stephen King's "On Writing" and "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White to name a few.

There are noticeable differences and correlating competencies that outline the writing world today, that doesn't exactly fit into a black and white, male-female framework. They also don't provide the egalitarian perspective on writing that might be assumed these days. It would be hard to find a person so enthralled with their own gender that they only enjoy male writers or to find someone who prefers only writers of the opposite sex.

In my own writing, the perspectives available have been invaluable to me developing my craft. I can't place a higher value on King's book than I could on the numerous videos and podcasts I've listened to and returned to time and time again. Gender plays no discriminatory roll in my pursuit of learning to be a better writer. My reading is similarly as agnostically diverse as possible. I can not put down a John Green book but "I heard the owl call my name." by Margaret Craven remains the only book that has ever made me cry.

Writing is something any conscious person can do. But to do it well, to learn the craft itself means knowing enough of yourself, to find a place and a set of hands to begin typing your work into existence. But also enough of others to see that excellence and advancement in the field is something human, both male and female.

This still leaves us in a world where there are noticeable differences in writers because of, if not related to, one's gender. But not so solid a set boundaries in those differences as to imprison the male or female author to their gender stereotypes.

The genders can stroll across these lines of distinction like our eyes meander on the page. looking for meaning in the one thing that we all hold dear.

The written word.

Or rather dance on a floor made of mosaic glass tiles, each tile different, fearfully and wonderfully made. Fragile in isolation but strong enough for the most boisterous rowdy crowd of the dance. Each one doing the exact same thing.

Being the foundation thought of which we all need.

Writing.