Category Archives: Opinion

Being a Christian Does Not Mean Being Self Righteous

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Reading this article “Foes, soldier’s mother counter protesters at funeral” made me sick. As a Christian I find the actions of some who call themselves Christians (and undoubtedly some of them are, grace covers all sins, even those yucky ones you don’t want to talk about or that offend others) to be repulsive. If they think that God is striking this country down because it politically tolerates homosexuality then they can move to another, more righteous, country! But instead they insist that they will turn it around through mockery, insults and what could never be described as evangelism. Speaking of which Evangelism means ‘spreading the good news.’ How on earth do they present the good news at a funeral wherein they insult the decesed, the mother and all those attending? “Jesus doesn’t love you,” seems the wrong message to me.

So, I’m glad to say that the truth of the Christian message is that we all sin, but that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Even those of the homosexuals, those of the sickos who drag His name through the dirt at funerals, those who speed 5 miles an hour over the speed limit and those who rape murder and steel. Christ came to love – these people need to learn that.

The HD Boycott Begins Now

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I’m not a huge fan of TV, I don’t like the content that’s often shown (which makes Personal Video Recorders handy because I can record shows on at all hours of the night). Recent announcements show that High Definition Television (HDTV) will include massive Digital Rights Management (DRM) features that will prevent people from manipulating the content on their devices or moving them to other devices. Please read: The HD Boycott Begins Now

Sex Sells

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This post will probably be the downfall of this blog. I will probably be marked by the search engines as a spawn of spam and all that is evil on the web. That being said I’m going to be teaching about Sex for an adult Sunday School class and I’m requesting that the readers of this blog help me out. What I need is for you to email me privately (randy@randypeterman.com) or leave a comment with what you think the Bible or Christianity teaches about sex (except my parents, who are requested NOT to send me anything of the sort). If you leave a comment it will NOT be published publicly, pretend its an email. I don’t care if you’re a Christian or not, in fact if you’re not a Christian I’m particularly interested in what you have to say. I may read quotes from your emails in the class but I will do so anonymously so that your name, age, height, food preferences and spelling mistakes stay private.

I’m particularly interested in the following questions:

  1. Is sex considered bad by the Bible/Christians?
  2. What does the Bible/Christianity say about sexual morality?
  3. How should cultural shifts between the times of the Bible (granted we’re talking about thousands of years just between Genesis and the writing of Revelation) and our modern culture be considered? That is does the change in culture and cultural attitude about sexuality nullify the Bible/Christian view that you understand?
  4. Anything else you can think of that you’d like to tell me, even if its something you strongly disagree with that I’ve said 🙂
  5. This does not have to be heterosexual or homosexual only, it can be any type of sexuality as long as it addresses your opinion/understanding and Christianity.

Thanks for any and all help that I may (or may not) get. It would be handy if you have a blog or email that you might post a link to this so that I might get a wider result set for my minimal research. If in your email you specify that I may later blog parts of your email I might do a posting that tabulates some of the data, but only if I’m given explicit permission to do so.

Thanks!

Uh-lympics

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After the first week of half-heartedly keeping up with the Olympics I’ve got the drive of a jellyfish to watch this week’s athletic feats [and feets]. Is it just me or do they just have too many olympic events? Do they have to have so many side stories and announcers that are so lame that you just can’t watch more than a few hours of athletics in combination of some of the mind numbing drivel that comes out of their mouths? I imagine that the human interest angle of the Olympics is important now due to several reasons:

  1. Sesame Street – The Children’s Television Workshop has been putting together short video montages since MTV was the twinkle in Satan’s eye (that’s a joke, not a Rock is from the devil comment).
  2. MTV – We’ve been having short videos played to use for several decades now. We can’t handle an hour long televised event unless the commercials are so stellar that we actually watch the event for the commercials (see: Super Bowel Sunday)
  3. The Women of Wisteria Lane – If there’s no drama involved wherein scandals, knee surgeries, single parents with one kidney who nearly died of a gangreen in their pinky-toes from the Olympics in 1611 then the Olympics are just not exciting enough.
  4. CNN – OK, so this ‘news network’ is more like a snooze network. We’re bombarded by twenty-four hour television news feeds which are loaded with human interest stories because gosh darn it: there is not enough really critical news to cover. This is also why the media spent thousands of man hours researching Dick Cheney’s hunting accident.
  5. Dick Cheney’s Hunting Accident – If you’re going to compete with the media frenzy that is the walking medical unit of our Vice President of the United States you have to have something more attention grabbing than ice prancing. 11 out of 8 guys who are flipping through the channels are going to see a man that they presume is homosexual lifting up a woman who’s not as naked as her skin tone outfit initially indicates and keep going until they see that someone that is in a sub-level-power has had an accident with a gun. Who hasn’t had an accident with a gun? Or who hasn’t been related via six degrees of separation to a person who had an accident with Kevin Bacon’s gun?

Clearly the Uh-lympics should be amazing, but I’m amazed by the coverage being so heavy in hours yet so light in content.

Phoneme

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Jessica and I got new cell phones last night. We’re dumping our land line shortly (I’ve got to switch to cable for ISP) and I’m thrilled that I should be able to get much better service from cable for speed (I need speed for work something fierce), so this should be good. We’ll have more minutes than we know what to do with due to the fact that much of our extended family is on Cingular (there are a few not on Cingular, but we’ve got more hours in this plan than I ever want to be on the phone for). My old phone would work with one bar in the basement… sometimes. The new phones work well in the basement so we shouldn’t run into any issues with reception. Yes. One more step in breaking free from Qwest and we get to operate like we’re in the 2000’s 😉

Oh, and yes, I’m aware that phonemes are the smallest syllable in a language that the language speakers can recognize 🙂

Race Card Drivers

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No, the title is not a typo. In fact its a play on words. If you read this site normally that will be as surprising as waking up in the morning and discovering that your breakfast cereal has indeed not changed into a leprechaun. My friend Robin just sent me a link to a new reality series called “Black. White.” wherein families of (wait for it…) black or white ethnicity go under the not so careful eye of makeup artists to look the opposite color. What the heck? Why do we need this on television? Why do we need to see if people can cope with being in a different environment? Who is driving this issue of racism and segregation so that it will not die?

Sure, it is convenient for marketers to be able to use demographics to discover white or black or hispanic or Hawaiian or Japanese or Chinese or purple dinosaurs [with inordinage influence on children] neighborhoods so that they can sell racially targetted products, but do we need to further the concept of American inequality? This is just more postmodern drivel wherein we will discover that many people don’t know what other people go through and that someone somewhere is putting us all down so that we can be in perpetual victim mode. But not me, I’m done. I’m not going to watch this show or any of the other shows that make a big deal out of race. In fact I will go so far as to say that if more shows come up I may start writing the networks and let them know that the only thing that is real about reality television is that it really stinks.

Girls of MySpace or I Just Want You For Your Bloggy

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As I have been in practice of doing in the past I like to highlight the morally corrupt practices of Playboy seeking out possible pornographic material in the marketplace that is today’s culture. In the past they’ve looked for ‘women’ [I think they redefine it to mean purely gender and have no moral conotation] at Home Depot, McDonalds, Starbucks and Enron. Now they’re after women on a blogging service. My Space is the place for people to find blogs, but over time has also gotten its share of adult content. Why Playboy continues to operate is clear: most men are willing to look at naked women most of the time. Why women continue to pose for Playboy is beyond me. Women are special and should not be treated like so much skin and fatty curves and instead should be treated with respect.

Yes, I’m a huge fan of marital sex, yes I think that sex is healthy, no I do not think that men should be searching for pornographic material, whether its on a blog or on a site dedicated to adult content.

EmOverload

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There is a style of ‘rock’ music called ’emo’, which is short for emotional. It is a label used to describe rock music that is emotional in contrast to rock musical that is not emotional. I suppose that you could make that contrast if you were comparing Britney Spears to Nine Inch Nails, but I generally equate music with emotion. Anyway, I bought an album by a band called “House of Heroes” due to hearing a few of their songs. Unfortunately the album drones on after a while. But what I’ve noticed is that all emo bands tend to wear me out. By the time things are over I’m ready to listen to something else because the sound never changes on the album. I used to think country music was like that, but I was wrong, Emo out monotonizes other music that I’ve exposed myself at present with the exception of some of the electronica that I’ve heard.

However, with iTunes shuffling my playlist I don’t get burned out on too much anymore. Other than some of the goofy clips I’ve got on there.

Splinter

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While in Washington [state!] over the holidays I helped install a beautiful wood floor at my in-laws. I got one splinter in my left ring finger tip. That little piece of wood has been in me for more than a month and it has been irritating me. This morning if finally came out of me and it was like a limp noodle when I pulled it out. My body had had enough of its craziness and decided that playing the guitar was way more important than hurting.

Sure, I could have pulled it out earlier, but I’m not a big fan of needles and tweezers digging into my flesh for a small piece of wood. Heck, it wouldn’t even help start a fire let alone be worth doing anything else but throwing away! So, I just let my body do its thing until they come out. Yes, I could get an infection and lose my finger. Yes, I could have the splinter work its way through my body and come out of my head 30 years down the road. But most of the time, to my knowledge, my body just rejects them and pushes them back out.

And I’m OK with that.