Geeky Bob

A few years ago, my wife and I were fortunate enough to visit Rome, and among the thousands of photos that I took during our stay, this seemingly insignificant image of a nun walking through the remains of the Circus Maximus stands out for me.

Despite Hollywood's common depictions, the Romans did not typically sacrifice Christians in the Colosseum. On the contrary, the infamous martyrdoms of Christians were usually carried out in the Circus Maximus. With that in mind, when I saw a solitary nun crossing the empty field, I couldn't help but reflect on the irony of the scene. This stadium had once played host to the barbarous spectacle of martyring her predecessors, usually by beheading, or burning at the stake, or being fed to myriad wild animals. Yet on this day, many centuries later, there were nothing but ruins where the mighty empire of Rome once stood, and this nun could walk with impunity through the remnants of Rome's demise.

Anyway, these are the kinds of things that run through my mind when I'm visiting areas of historical significance. (Perhaps there's something wrong with me.)

Several years ago I discovered the following excerpt from a sermon by Alistair Begg, and the parable that is contained within this short snippet has become one of my favorite Easter stories.

Giving full credit to its original author, I would like to include this short apologue for your benefit on this Easter.

This story is © 2021 by Truth For Life, a teaching ministry of Alistair Begg.

Someone whom I've known for decades and greatly admire recently posted the following series of statements from Reverend James Martin, SJ:

Every statement that Mr. Martin makes is factually correct, however, I typically do not like comments like these nor the memes they become because they are abusing the love of Christ in a not-so-cleverly veiled way that implies Jesus said something that He did not. I will expound on that concept in a moment, but first I'd like to share a recent experience from one of my neighbors.

This is a true story: a couple weeks ago, one of my neighbors awoke shortly past midnight and walked downstairs to find a complete stranger sitting on his couch in his living room and eating his food. Think about that for a moment: a person whom you do not know has broken into your house while you were sleeping. You don't know whether they're dangerous, and yet this person is making themselves at home and helping themselves to your possessions. Imagine how terrified and how violated you would feel.

Now let's re-examine Mr. Martin's statements within the context that I have just shared: it was not my neighbor's responsibility to feed/clothe/house this intruder, regardless of whether she was legally in the country (which she was), or whether she was poor (which she probably was), or whether she looked like my neighbor (which isn't remotely relevant). In the end, all that matters is that the burglar was trespassing - she had no right to be in my neighbor's house, sitting on his couch, and eating his food. Despite Mr. Martin's specious pontifications, if he had been in my neighbor's shoes he would have done the same thing my neighbor did - he would have called the police.

Bringing this back to my opening statement, that is why I don't like it when people like Mr. Martin arrogantly twist the words of Christ to make a cheap political statement, and I don't believe that Jesus would like being misquoted, either. What Mr. Martin is attempting to do is to cram his political views about immigration and other subjects down others' throats by hiding behind a series of grandiose proclamations that he's disguising as our Savior's intentions, which - quite literally - makes Mr. Martin a false prophet.

I recently read the essay Sometimes reforming: Martin Luther, the church and the rest of us, and if it had ended with "Sometimes the most we can do is 'give a witness' by our dissent and hope for reformation when future generations take up the cause for social and spiritual transformation," I would have thought that essay was a brilliantly-worded treatise on why Christians should reflect on Luther's words and actions this October 31st. Unfortunately, the essay didn't end there, and its author, Bill Leonard, spent the succeeding paragraph lashing out at non-Baptists and pro-Trumpers. (And just to be clear - I am decidedly NOT pro-Trump. I have publicly spoken out against Trump on many occasions, but that's another story.)

Throughout the "On All Hallows' Eve 2023" paragraph, Leonard doesn't mince words when he equates the actions and attitudes of those with whom he disagrees with the 19th-century pro-slavery crowd and suggests that evangelicals are on an equal footing with the rest of today's sin-obsessed society. (Note that from a historical perspective, Leonard's pro-Baptist sentiments conveniently overlook the pro-slavery views held by the Southern Baptist Convention that upheld slavery and helped pave the way toward Civil War. Leonard also fails to mention that it was largely evangelicals from the Second Great Awakening who opposed slavery, and he makes no mention of Methodists who referred to slavery as the "execrable sum of all villainies," but I digress.) Leonard's entire "All Hallows' Eve 2023" paragraph is nothing short of "denomination bashing," which is a behavior that ultimately portrays all of Christianity in a bad light, and for which people have said to me on numerous occasions: "That's why I wouldn't want to become a Christian: you Christians are always fighting each other."

When viewing this essay as a whole, what started out so well as a history lesson about Martin Luther and a call for contemplation on the role of dissent within our Christian lives quickly descended into a veiled attack on those with whom the article's author disagrees, and in so doing Leonard completely negates his opening quotation from Luther: "I will constrain no one by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion." With that in mind, I would suppose that some form of sarcastic kudos are warranted for the essay's author; his dissertation on Luther is so misguided that he completely misses the meaning of Luther's original prose, and he manages to publicly humiliate the church in the process. So I offer a brusque "bravo" to Bill Leonard for his essay; his opinions are exactly what the church needs today, but only if the church intends to fail miserably in modern society.

A friend of mine recently posted the following quotation from G. K. Chesterton, which caused me to step back for a moment and reflect on some recent discussions about how my life turned out...

Just a brief bit of honesty - I played guitar for several bands in my younger days, and I was particularly obsessed with "making it" as far as that industry was concerned. I focused on performance, songwriting, technical skill, etc., and I had a STRICT no drugs/alcohol policy; those things ruined musicianship and relationships, and unless you could be totally sold out for music, then you didn't belong. In short, anyone who wasn't as 110% passionate about being a success got booted from my band. I abandoned that form of obsessive pursuit when I became a Christian, and I briefly played in couple Christian bands before I eventually gave it all up and joined the Army.

A lot of time has passed since then, and my wife was recently commenting that it's too bad that I didn't have my "chance" to become a successful musician when I was younger, for I am admittedly far too old to be packing up a guitar and headed out on career-starting tour. I countered her condolences with the following self-observation...

No, it's a great thing that I didn't chase my "dream." The entertainment industry ruins people, as Hunter S. Thompson once observed, "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

I have no misconceptions that I would have failed miserably as a human being the closer I got to "success" in worldly terms. Sure, I may have continued to avoid drugs and alcohol, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't have succumbed to other vices - perhaps something seemingly acceptable as materialism. (e.g. I still own 20+ guitars.)

But the pursuit of success - at least in the way that my brain was wired to pursue it - was a form of idolatry, and I have no misconceptions about that. Even in the Christian music business, most people get destroyed by the industry. So I have no illusions about missing my "chance" when I was younger. I became a husband, and a dad, and more importantly a decent human being; those are far better legacies in my estimation. Don't get me wrong, there are a handful of people who can balance "success" and basic human decency, but tens of thousands of people cannot do so, and I'm one of them.

Some Observations of Atheists

Throughout my life I have known my fair share of atheists, all of whom have fallen into two categories:

• Genuine Atheists - these people truly do not believe in God, and in my experience they have typically been polite people with great attitudes, and with whom anyone might want to be friends.
• Faux Atheists - these people actually believe in God, despite their protests to the contrary, and they have typically been awful people with whom most people would hate to associate.

Faux Atheists are interesting character studies, because their professed disbelief does not actually match what they appear to believe behind their gruff facade. Every Faux Atheist whom I have known is actually a believer, but they are mad at God for some perceived cause that is too severe for them to reconcile with the image of a loving, benevolent Creator. Here are the primary justifications that I have encountered for these atheists:

• Most often the source of Faux Atheists' hatred is the death of a loved one - usually an immediate family member, (e.g. a parent, spouse, sibling, or child). These atheists believe that God is the direct cause of their loved one's death, and their only recourse is to curse God incessantly.
• Fairly often the source of Faux Atheists' hatred is self-condemnation for a lifetime of bad life decisions that they have made. These Faux Atheists generally lack self-reflection, and blaming God is much easier than learning to consider their contribution to their current situation.
• Less often the source of Faux Atheists' hatred is a vain attempt to justify a lifestyle that they know is objectionable, and therefore a disbelief in God gives them the 'freedom' to do as they please. However, these atheists know deep down that they are doing something wrong, so they lash out at God in an effort to rid themselves of the guilt that they feel.
• The least often source of Faux Atheists' hatred that I have seen is the perception of persecution; these atheists believe that society is 'too religious,' and all of the 'religious' people around them are oppressing them. I am almost ashamed to admit it, but I find these atheists extremely amusing to converse with, because their claims of being a 'victim' and taunted mercilessly by the Christians around them are almost-always the by-product of a pre-existing victim mentality. These atheists invariably encounter situations where they already believe that they are being persecuted, and therefore they misinterpret everything that does not go their way as additional persecution. (Quite often a little reasoning with these atheists will deflate a situation, but sometimes they are too convinced of their misfortune to see clearly.)

All of these Faux Atheists create an interesting paradox, for despite all of these atheists' hatred and never-ending rhetoric about how terrible all the 'Religious People' are, it is usually the atheists who are behaving badly. (Please do not misunderstand me, there are plenty of 'Christians' who are also terrible people; being a terrible person is not a prerequisite for being an atheist or a Christian.) The Faux Atheists that I have known seem to make it their life's mission to publicly ridicule every Christian (and most of the Jews) they know.^[1]

All of this discussion brings us to Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

To put it bluntly, Ms. O'Hair was a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. She was addicted to the acclaim that she received as a champion of radical causes. She relished her title as the 'Most-Hated Woman in America.' She founded the American Atheists (AA) organization under the guise of educating and supporting fellow atheists, but the simple truth is that she was a megalomaniac who was embezzling from her organization. There were several dramatic ironies in her life, and her erratic, abusive and paranoid behavior eventually became her undoing.

Madalyn's Earlier Years

According to a book^[2] that was written by Madalyn's son, William J. Murray, Madalyn was born into a family with an alcoholic father as the patriarch, and she often fought viciously and vociferously with her father. Before entering public life, Madalyn had:

• Married young just before the onset of WWII
• Joined the Army after the war started (while her husband joined the Marines)
• Had an affair with a married officer that resulted in an out-of-wedlock child (at a time when these actions were cause for public scorn)
• Divorced her first husband hoping the officer would marry her (which he didn't)
• Had another relationship that resulted in an out-of-wedlock child

According to Madalyn's son, each of these poor decisions were the source of countless family arguments.

Madalyn's children subjected the extended family to additional financial strains and care-giving necessities, which were largely ignored by Madalyn. Adding insult to injury, Madalyn could not keep any job for longer than a few months; she was continuously forced to leave one job after another because she felt that everyone above her was stupid, and she needed to be in charge. Her attitudes may have angered her bosses, but some of Madalyn's proclamations of her superiority found welcome recipients among her coworkers, which led to Madalyn embracing Socialism and Communism. Meanwhile, Madalyn began to work her way through law school by taking classes on the side, and even though she graduated, she never passed the bar exam. As a result, she remained in a long line of dead-end jobs, and her extended family was forced to live in decrepit, low-income housing.

According to William, it was during this time period that Madalyn formulated her special brand of atheism, and it was shortly thereafter that she would infamously enter public life.

The 'Most-Hated Woman in America'

In 1963, Madalyn sued the Baltimore public school system, where her son William was a student, over the fact that students were required to listen to daily Bible readings and recite prayers in class. Madalyn's lawsuit was eventually elevated to the Supreme Court of the United States, where it was decided that mandatory prayer in public schools was unconstitutional.^[3] This catapulted Madalyn into the public arena, and she used her new-found fame to create the American Atheists (AA) organization, over which she presided (and from which she profited) for the rest of her life.

Throughout the ensuing decades, Madalyn filed numerous lawsuits in attempts to prevent NASA astronauts from reciting Bible verses or prayers during the space program, to remove "One Nation Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, to remove "In God We Trust" from U.S. currency, to remove nativity scenes from government property, etc. All the while, Madalyn relished the attention that was showered on her publicly. However, her paranoia continued to grow in private, no doubt from an ironic sense of betrayal when her son, William, the boy for whom prayer was outlawed in American schools, became a born-again Christian and abandoned her. Madalyn summarized her feelings on the subject when she said of William, "One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times. He is beyond human forgiveness." However, as if this irony wasn't already sufficiently palpable - William's daughter, Robin, rejected him and was subsequently legally adopted by Madalyn.

In the mid-1990s, things were not going well for Madalyn. By that time, AA was being run from its headquarters in Texas by Madalyn, her younger son from her second pregnancy, Jon Garth Murray, and her granddaughter, Robin. However, many AA employees complained of vicious arguing and constant profanity between the three family members, as well as abuse of the employees. Adding insult to injury, Madalyn's paranoia was increasing, so in addition to doling out abuse and profanity, she had chain-link fencing with barbed-wire coverings installed to keep out her imaginary 'persecutors.' All of this was far too much for several employees, many of whom eventually quit. Because of the toxic work environment, Madalyn tended to hire ex-convicts, because they were desperate for work, and therefore a little more willing to tolerate the profanity, abuse, and low wages.

Over the years, Madalyn had gone through a spate of legal woes, all of her own doing, and while she was away from town settling the details of another harassment suit that had been filed against her, the AA was robbed. The anonymous thief had stolen several thousand dollars' worth of computer equipment, and police determined that the thief was probably an AA employee. Shortly thereafter, the AA office manager quit, and Madalyn promoted David Waters, a two-year veteran at AA, to office manager. While the Murray-O'Hairs were away settling legal disputes again, Waters laid off the entire AA staff, and stole 12 bonds worth around $5,000 apiece.

Waters was brought to trial, where he cut a plea bargain for a single count of theft, and was sentenced to several years' probation, with no restitution to be made. In order words: Waters walked away from the crime with no jail time and no fines. This did not sit well with Madalyn, who used the AA newsletter to publicly expose Waters' long criminal record in a six-page article, which included tales of attempted murder and domestic battery against his mother. Waters had been attempting to put together a new life in the community after his trial had ended, and Madalyn's article effectively killed any chances he had to do so.

Madalyn's fiery temper had finally gone too far.

Disappearance and Theories

In August of 1995, one of the AA employees arrived at work to find the building locked and a note on the door staring the Murray-O'Hairs had left town for a family emergency. This seemed more than a little odd to the AA staff, and the mystery deepened when staffers visited the home that was shared by the Murray-O'Hairs; they discovered an unfinished breakfast, Madalyn's diabetes medicine on the counter, and Madalyn's three dogs had been left unattended. Two of the board members were eventually able to reach Jon Garth via his cell phone, and Jon tried to assure everyone at AA that nothing was wrong. Robin also spoke to a few people, but despite her similar assurances that nothing was amiss, those who spoke to her could tell that something was seriously wrong. Over the next few weeks, the Murray-O'Hairs' credit cards were slowly maxed out, and Jon and Robin occasionally spoke to various members of the AA staff, but all calls ceased near the end of September.

A few weeks passed, and AA was in full denial mode. One of the AA board members, Ellen Johnson, had assumed the presidency at AA, and despite mounting public opinion that the Murray-O'Hairs were dead, Johnson assured the public that nothing was wrong. In the meantime, AA staffers continued to put the business back in order. As the AA staffers continued to go through the business records, they found that Madalyn had been greatly exaggerating her membership numbers; 2,400 instead of her claims of 50,000. In addition, the Murray-O'Hairs were in trouble with the IRS, who questioned whether Madalyn had been using the organization's finances as her personal account.

One of the staffers had discovered that the Murray-O'Hairs had been funneling money to a bank in New Zealand, and it was easy to suspect that Madalyn might have other offshore accounts as well. Because of this, one theory emerged that the Murray-O'Hairs had simply taken the money and ran. One of the largest problems with this theory was, however, the fact that the Murray-O'Hairs had left all of their personal belongs, their pets, and their personal bank accounts.

Another theory was that Madalyn had left town to die. She had often remarked that she didn't want Christians making a fuss over her death. (And by that she meant that she wanted no Christians to pray at her funeral.) That left Jon and Robin, who might have tired of the life they were forced to live in Madalyn's shadow, and they might have taken their newfound freedom to do something a little more private with their lives.

The most-prevailing theory was - of course - that the Murray-O'Hair family had met with foul play. It was no secret that Madalyn had made a large number of enemies throughout her life - many of whom would have had sufficient cause to seek retribution; as William stated, "She was just evil. She stole huge amounts of money. She misused the trust of people. She cheated children out of their parents' inheritance. She cheated on her taxes and even stole from her own organizations." Madalyn's entire life would have provided more than enough motive for many people. Several people bought into Madalyn's paranoia and believed that Christians or operatives of a Christian-backed, theocratic governmental agency had silenced the Murray-O'Hair family.

Stalled Investigations

As the months passed on into years, nothing was found of the family members. A month after the disappearance of the Murray-O'Hair family, a body had been found by a river in Dallas with its head and hands missing, but the authorities were able to determine that it did not belong to anyone from the Murray-O'Hair family. Madalyn's remaining son, William, eventually filed a Missing Persons report, but since the police found no actionable evidence of foul play, there was nothing that they could do. In their estimation, "It's not against the law to be missing in Texas."

A San Antonio reporter, John MacCormack, picked up the story around the one-year anniversary of the family's disappearance, and he discovered that AA had covered up the fact that Jon Garth had withdrawn $600,000 before his disappearance, and then sold his Mercedes through a classified ad. All of this amounted to an enormous amount of money, which had put AA in a difficult position financially. However, such a large sum of money cannot remain unnoticed for long, so MacCormack teamed up with a private investigator, and the two of them were able to determine that Jon Garth had used the $600,000 to purchase 1,500 gold coins (at $400 apiece) from a local jeweler. Jon had picked up the coins in person, which was the last time that anyone saw any member of the Murray-O'Hair family alive.

Solving The Crime

Several years after the disappearance, Waters - the former AA employee - was living in a run-down apartment and cooperating with authorities by providing documents from AA that he had kept with details from the Murray-O'Hairs about their financial misdealings, and he had been enjoying a recent spate of popularity with reporters as a former associate of the missing family. Around that time, MacCormack received an anonymous tip from someone who knew a con artist named Danny Fry. The anonymous tipster claimed that Fry had disappeared around the same time as the Murray-O'Hairs, and at the time he had been working with Waters. Even more revealing was that the anonymous tipster stated that Waters had kidnapped the Murray-O'Hairs and was afraid that Fry had shared their fate.

MacCormack was able to piece together a prison association between Waters and Fry that refuted Waters' statements to the authorities that he barely knew Fry, and MacCormack was able to trace Fry's last whereabouts to a hotel in San Antonio by using the phone records from Fry's calls to family members. MacCormack was also able to discover that Waters had purchased a Cadillac with cash around the time that the Murray-O'Hairs' credit cards were being maxed out. But the most-important item that MacCormack was able to uncover that motivated the authorities to re-think their investigation was when MacCormack was able to have the anonymous body found near the river in Dallas tested for Danny Fry's DNA - which was a match.

The authorities raided Waters' apartment, wherein he had another former prison mate staying with him named Gary Karr, and the two of them were quickly behind bars. Karr's ex-wife and Waters' ex-girlfriend provided the authorities with their knowledge of the kidnappings, about which they had remained silent for years. Once all of these primary actors were talking to authorities, a picture was pieced together about the fate of the Murray-O'Hair family in their final month.

What Happened To Everyone

I will keep this section sparse, because it's not a pretty picture. Madalyn and her family were kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to the hotel from where Fry had called his family members, and they were held as prisoners there for an entire month. Madalyn and Robin were sequestered in their room for the duration, whereas Jon was allowed to travel around with Waters' accomplice, Karr, in order to drain all of the bank accounts to which he had access, and then he gave all of that money to Waters and his group. However, Madalyn and Jon did not reveal all of their accounts, ostensibly in the hope that they would survive their ordeal. This was - of course - hope in vain.

At the very least, Waters and Karr killed the entire family: Jon and Robin by strangulation, and Madalyn by blunt force trauma, which was undoubtedly part of Waters' revenge. Waters had hatched the entire plan - as many suspected - in retribution for Madalyn's article in the AA newsletter. Waters' ex-girlfriend stated that Waters had described his fantasies about torturing Madalyn in various ways, and whether he fulfilled any of those fantasies is open for speculation, because the reality of their situation required a fair amount of logistical planning: the three ex-convicts needed to get three people (alive or dead) from a public hotel without arousing suspicion, then take them somewhere else either to be killed or simply dismembered, then their body parts were loaded into 50-gallon barrels, driven over a hundred miles to a remote ranch, and buried. Then Waters and Karr killed Fry, and dumped his partially-dismembered body in Dallas.

What happened to the money is an interesting story by itself: of the $600,000 in gold coins that were purchased by Jon Garth, only $500,000 were collected. The balance was on order, although they were never picked up since Waters and his associates had already killed the Murray-O'Hairs by the time the jeweler received the second lot of gold coins. Waters and Karr took $80,000 from their heist, and they stashed the rest in a storage locker. After that, they spent the next several days partying in town - buying fancy suits and Rolex watches. But in a quirky twist of fate - when Waters returned to the locker at a later date, he discovered that the rest of the money had been stolen. (Police eventually tracked down those thieves, who had spent all but one of the gold coins.) In the end, Waters had taken out his revenge on Madalyn, but profited very little from his crimes, and he died of cancer in prison a few years after his arrest.

Final Thoughts

I mentioned in my opening paragraphs that - in my observations - atheists generally fall into two categories, and Faux Atheists seem to be the most-violent in their opposition to those of faith, which is usually due to denial or blame-shifting. Madalyn Murray O'Hair spent a lifetime cursing God and Christians for situations that she believed were unfair, yet she failed to realize that fairness is subjective. Madalyn never took ownership for her plethora of bad decisions; it was her choices and her actions that left her single and poor with two fatherless babies to care for. Madalyn's lot in life was not God's fault - it was her fault - and by her example we see what will happen whenever every vestige of a moral compass is removed from society.

Footnotes

1. Atheists tend to avoid ridiculing Muslims, because that might get them in trouble. More often than not, antagonistic atheists only attack Christians.
2. From the book My Life Without God, by William J. Murray. (See the bibliography.)
3. In principle, I agree with the SCOTUS' decision; I do not believe that anyone should be required to pray. However, the consequences of this landmark decision cannot be understated; the fabric of American society has been indelibly damaged by the removal of God - and thereby a concrete moral standard - from our schools.

Bibliography

• My Life Without God, by William J. Murray, 2016, https://amzn.to/2Emtrd5.
• Son of America’s most famous atheist became a pastor, by Kayla Armstrong, God Reports, https://bit.ly/2OZnWVP.
• The Murder of Madalyn Murray O'Hair: America's Most Hated Woman, by Lona Manning, Crime Magazine, https://bit.ly/2AcssYR.

UPDATE: This post is one of several that I had written that I later discovered had never been set to "public."

It was on this day 20 years ago that Rich Mullins was killed in a car accident on his way to a benefit concert in Kansas. At the time of his death, Rich was only moderately popular and had never won any awards - not even for his internationally-famous worship songs that are still sung in churches throughout the world.

The exact cause of the crash that took Rich's life is still unknown, although you can read the details about the crash online. That being said, I will never forget how I learned about Rich's untimely death. My daughter and I were driving through the empty deserts of west Texas on our way home to Dallas after attending a youth conference in Tucson, AZ. I had been channel surfing on the radio and trying to find something to listen to, which was rather difficult since we were out in the middle of nowhere. I discovered a radio station that was playing a song by Rich Mullins, whom I had always admired, and I remarked to my daughter that we needed to see Rich in concert whenever he came through Dallas.

After the song had ended, an announcer came on the radio and delivered the news that Rich Mullins had just been killed in a car accident. My daughter and I were both stunned, and for some reason I found myself crying a lot over the next several hours as we continued our drive home to Dallas. (This has always been a mystery about myself for which I have yet to find an acceptable answer: why was I so upset about someone whom I had never met? It has been 20 years, and I think that part of my emotional makeup will remain unsolved, but to be honest - I'm not too worried about it.)

Nevertheless, I often wonder where Rich's career might have gone if he had not passed away at the young age of 41. He tended to be openly blunt about sin and judgmentalism within the church, which is one reason why he was largely overlooked and often ostracized by the "Contemporary Christian Music" industry until after his death, (when the establishment was suddenly forced to deal with the reality of their hypocrisy). With that in mind, if Rich were alive today, he would probably still be living in veritable obscurity in a hogan on the Navajo reservation in northern New Mexico, where Rich was working as a music teacher in self-imposed destitution after taking a voluntary vow of poverty.

If nothing else, Rich Mullins was certainly unique; I still miss him and his music.

I used to live in the Dallas Forth Worth area, which helps form the lower band of the Bible Belt. While we were there, my wife and I were fortunate to have a wealth of local Christian radio stations and concerts to choose from. It didn't matter which subgenre you preferred: pop, rock, gospel, praise, etc.; there was always a radio station for you to listen to.

However, after moving away from that region, we have been forced to suffer through the following syndicated options:

• Air1
• Family Life Radio
• K-LOVE

All three of these syndicated radio stations continually spew never-ending streams of utterly forgettable music. The playlists for these stations often consist of unimaginative and trite originals, or generic attempts at copying secular music genres (yet falling several years behind what is current).

One of the most-common problems the Christian music genres face is endemic to Christian music in general, and this is the constant insistence that "the lyrics are more important than musicianship." This mindset is, of course, a ridiculous proposal. Not only does it completely ignore Psalm 33:3, but it means that the bulk of Christian music cannot be taken seriously; because if the people who are creating Christian music cannot take their craft seriously, then no one else will.

That being said, the Christian music industry is just that - an industry. And like it's secular counterparts, the Christian music industry attempts to crank out hit after hit in an effort to prolong their revenue stream. Let me be clear: I am a capitalist at heart, and I have no problems in principle with anyone who chooses to make their living by sustaining a successful product line. However, those responsible for producing Christian music fail to realize that by turning out an endless torrent of pedestrian drivel, they are putting themselves out of business. I guarantee that fewer and fewer people are buying Christian music because - to put it bluntly - most of it is crap.

While the Christian music industry is afflicted with serious problems with regard to a general lack of musical inspiration, a willing accomplice to Christian music's crimes against itself are the syndicated radio stations who continue to cycle through hideously short playlists of repetitive melodies and prosaic, middle-school rhymes. I ask anyone who listens to Christian music to answer these questions honestly:

• How many times per hour does someone really need to hear Chris Tomlin?
• Couldn't the lyrics to "Good, Good Father" have been written a heck of a lot better? (Yes they could, yes they could, yes they could.)

In closing, there are thousands of wonderful Christian musicians around the globe, but chances are good that you'll probably never hear them. The people at the helm for charting the course of the Christian music industry are not interested in talented musicians; they are far too preoccupied with trying to produce next year's crop of bland and predictable "hit makers." In a like manner, if you tune into any of the syndicated radio stations that I listed above, then you'll have to endure hours of songs from Chris Tomlin, Matthew West, tobyMac, and something from MercyMe or Casting Crowns, (who are secretly the same band anyway... yes they are, yes they are, yes they are).

UPDATE: The following comedy video from John Crist perfectly illustrates a lot of what's wrong with contemporary Christian music these days:

HOW IT'S MADE: Christian Music
https://youtu.be/bwwhkKPEieE

I stumbled across the following article recently, which briefly discusses an issue that our family has struggled with:

How to Forgive When It's Hard to Forget

Without going into too much detail, someone in our family hurt my children; and by that I mean this person really hurt my children - in life-altering ways. When someone injures your children, you want that person to be punished; you want them to suffer for the years of pain your children have had to endure. And yet for reasons I cannot explain, this person has never faced justice. We cut this person out of our lives as you would with any other cancer, but unfortunately that is the most that we can do.

That being said, our family is predominantly populated with Christians who want everyone and everything to be "forgiven," and for all of us to get along as one big, happy family. However, since the person who caused all of this pain and suffering has never changed, any semblance of restoration is probably never going to happen, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who loves their children. But seeing as how it was only my children who were hurt, my wife and I have received countless comments from other family members asking whether we have "forgiven" the pernicious person who is the source of our family troubles. We have assured everyone that we have, which then leads to the questions about why can't our "lives go back to the way they were before all of this started."

First of all, the way our lives were before "all of this started" does not mean that the guilty party wasn't hurting other people; it was just happening to people outside our immediate family, and being swept under the rug because people chose not to see that it was happening. But that is a different problem for a different day.

The problem that currently faces our family is: what does it mean to forgive someone?

For some of our family members, "forgiveness" means a complete and total restoration. But that is a totally naïve sentiment, and it completely ignores or trivializes the suffering of those whose lives were damaged. My wife and I have tried to explain time and again that we have "forgiven" the person who wounded our family, but we have no desire to rekindle a relationship with the guilty party. To other family members this looks like "unforgiveness," whereas to me this looks like "common sense." One should not willingly subject their loved ones to a harmful person in the name of "forgiveness."

This is why I enjoyed the article that I mentioned earlier; in that piece, Dr. Cloud did a great job of summarizing the different parts of a restoration process, which I will paraphrase and adapt to our family's situation:

Forgiveness: This is letting go of what you believe is your right to punish someone for how they hurt you. My wife and I have done so; it was difficult, but holding onto unforgiveness is more harmful to yourself than it is to others. Or as a popular idiom states, "Holding on to unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

Reconciliation: This is when the other person apologizes and accepts forgiveness; this has not happened within our family. In fact, the guilty party is still asserting that he or she has never done anything wrong, and recently demanded an apology for the years that he or she was denied access to our family. With this person's attitudes in mind, any hope of reconciliation is currently impossible.

Trust: This is when you allow a person whom you have forgiven back into your life. This may be a long, slow process, because it involves re-establishing your confidence that the person who hurt you will not do so again. In our family's situation, the person responsible for all of the suffering still insists no wrong-doing, so there can be no reasonable assumption that this person will not hurt someone again. Perhaps he or she will not wound someone in the same way as before, but still - I do not trust this person around my spouse or children.

Bringing this discussion to a close, we need to make a clear distinction between "forgiveness" and "reconciliation" in our lives. When we confuse these actions, we may subject ourselves to further injury. We certainly need to forgive those who harm us, but it is up to the other person to reconcile the situation and to re-establish trust. If the other person is unwilling to do so, then you are far better off without them in your life.

By the way, the following book by Jerry Cook is a good resource for anyone who is faced with difficult life situations and questions about forgiveness:

Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness: Being Christian in a Non-Christian World

UPDATE:

This blog originally pointed to the article How to Extend Forgiveness and Set a Boundary, but that article has been removed from Dr. Cloud's website and the Internet Archive does not have a cached version, so I replaced it with the article you now see.

I mentioned to my wife the other day that the question of ecological conservatism is backwards from a political perspective.

The typical definition of Liberals versus Conservatives is that "Liberals" (who are often called "Progressives") are rushing forward in the name of what they think is progress (sometimes foolishly) while "Conservatives" are fighting hard to preserve what is already there (sometimes like a stick in the mud; just as stubbornly and just as stupidly).

These two points of view will often fight vehemently against the other on issues simply because they feel that they "have to disagree," and not because they actually disagree. Preserving the planet is one such example - I think that most of the arguments that I hear from one side or the other are more often about disagreeing with the opposing position than about the actual issue.

But here's where it gets really strange: when it comes to saving the planet, somehow it is the "Liberals" who want to conserve, and it is the "Conservatives" who are rushing forward in the name of progress (often foolishly) and irrevocably damaging the planet.

But there's an interesting wrinkle in this debate that is often overlooked within the church: many Christians are Conservatives, and as such they join their fellow Conservatives when it comes to fighting issues like ecology. But according to Scripture, Christians have been charged with taking care of the environment, so they should really be trying their best to preserve the planet. So why do most church-goers seem to be fighting against environmentalism?

As I mentioned initially, this whole situation is inexplicably backwards; it just doesn't make sense to me.

I'll get off my soapbox now...