A Pastor's Thoughts

Many years ago, during the dot.com boom, I worked at a company called Freeworks.  They were trying to get an online payroll company going.  Their goal was to provide limited payroll for free and then add on a “per client” basis.  Alas, they could not get anyone to sign up to try it and they were bought by Quicken and all the employees were terminated.  The CEO of Freeworks was a staunch atheist.  He made that clear and informed the employees of his disdain for the things of God quiet often.  He had the money to send his children to the finest private school in the land.  Because he did not want to send them away, he sent them to a local private school.  The highest rated private school was Redwood Christian which is a Christian private school. Every night he would sit down with his daughters and tell them that the story of Noah and David and Goliath were moral fables.  My prayer during my time at that company was that his daughters would get ...

At the end of World War II, Russia and America were basically on the same side fighting Germany.  When Germany was finally defeated, the question of what to do with Germany remained.  Some idiot committee decided to split Germany into East and West and to split the capital, in the eastern side, into East and West.  Famously, August 13, 1961, the East Germans built the Berlin Wall.  Even though this was terrible for the German people, it finally gave a fishbowl view into the two opposing ideologies:  Capitalism and Socialism.  The same typography, population, economic status, military status, governmental status, and birth rate would be split into two.  One would be allowed to be capitalistic and the other would be socialistic.  Since Germany was basically destroyed after World War II, both sides started from zero.  Berlin would be a microcosm of that experiment.  Nationally speaking, America supported the west and Russia controlled the e...

The progressive, socialist, communist, left are as religious as the religious right, even more so.  I say this because during hurricane Harvey was dumping massive amounts of rain on Houston, people were being evacuated by thousands of volunteers.  The various news shows interviewed some of those rescued.  Many said that the government did not warn them sufficiently and that if the government had told them to evacuate, they would have.  Considering all the massive amount of information that is at the fingertips of everyone in Houston, they could have turned on their local news on TV and seen the recommendations.  They could have made a discussion for themselves. That is the crux here.  For the most part, we Americans have lost the ability to make decisions on our own.  I am not sure if it is fear of consequences or lack of training or maybe we have just gotten used to letting someone else tell us what to do.  At its core, giving someone/something...

As a Christian, I hold the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God.  I believe that God exists and as the creator of all that is, his will, his statements, his commands on how his creation operates is of utmost importance.  The other day I was listening to some supposed atheists.  I say “supposed” because they had not done much research on what atheists believe.  They simply said that they did not believe in God.  Since they did not believe in God his rules for living, his commands to follow his Son, do not apply to them.  They concluded that they were free from any threat of hell or wrath of God because they simply do not believe in God. As the discussion advanced, one of the atheists said that he was not going to hell anyway, because God is love.  God is love and this atheist did not consider his criminal behavior any worse than the next person, and since God is love, God was not going to send anyone to hell. The problem with this is clear.  An...

“The past is history, the future is a mystery, but today is a gift—that’s why they call it ‘the present’.”  This is a random quote stated by someone and I took it from the internet.  However, it is true.  The past is gone.  It cannot be changed, moved, modified, or rewritten.  The future is also a mystery, although plans can be loosely made.  Today is all we have. Yet many people,  these days live in the past.  They want the past to change somehow.  This is especially clear with the various riots over historical statues.  In America, the Civil War is an important part of our history.  It made us what we are as a country.  Slavery is also a vital part of our history.  To understand how inhuman some people can be to others is important to know and study, so that it does not happen again.  Yet, there are those who want to sanitize the past, somehow.  Statues of General Robert E. Lee remind of a time that we do not...

...specifically PowerBall.  Every once in a while the national lottery gets over $100 million and people get excited and buy more tickets and the pot grows and grows.  This last winner won more than $700 million and everyone in the media predicts that her life is now ruined.  People say that winning millions of dollars will ruin a persons life because it usually does.  There was even a TV show called “The Lottery Ruined my Life”.   Why is that? Mostly is is because everyone who knows the winner, everyone who thinks they know the winner, and everyone who wants to know the winner will harass them for money.  The world will consider the latest winner undeserving of the millions and because people think that they deserve it more, they will come to the winner with every need and want and desire.  The more the winner helps people, the more people come out of the woodwork.  Eventually the winner is out of money, losing everything because the greed and ...

True wisdom is defined as the godly use of knowledge .  The world has forms of wisdom.  Confucius wrote some wise saying.  Benjamin Franklin was famous for his pithy sayings and Aesop’s fables are supposed to teach clever, wise things to children.  Most people today will call people who see through the spin and hype a wise person.  It is also accepted that age produces wisdom in many cases. True wisdom, however, come from God.  It is a free gift to all believers.  The idea here is that a person who truly believes in Jesus Christ now has the privilege of asking for wisdom.  James 1:5 states “ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him .”  The only caveat is that the person requesting the wisdom must believe God will give it. God has provided wisdom books for his people as well.  In the Bible, the books of Job , Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are called wisdom book...

Everyone has suffered, and most will suffer.  Suffering is any prolonged or chronic pain, disease or discomfort.  Using todays panty-waist logic, we must also include emotional suffering and metal suffering, I suppose.  Suffering is part and parcel of the human condition.  That is sad and it is not desirable, but it is the case.  Bill Clinton in his progressive wisdom promoted a pain free America.  He said that any and every doctor needed to give enough pain relievers to stop suffering and pain.  The result, of course, is the suffering of the opioid epidemic. Because suffering is built into the human condition, built into our hearts and minds, probably built into our very DNA, the only thing left for us is to figure out how to handle it.  The buddhist religion is built on the fact of suffering.  Their first, foundational, noble truth is that all existence is suffering.  Not some things cause suffering, but ALL EXISTENCE is suffering....

In the movie First Blood, Sylvester Stallone comes to a small town looking for a military buddy.  Stallone is a highly decorated veteran, but since he has long hair and dressed shabbily, the sheriff picks him up, drops him at the county line and tells him never to come back.  The rest is Stallone’s revenge.  Stallone was a vagrant in that movie.  He was considered homeless, a bum, a hobo. In the San Francisco Bay Area we have many, many, hundreds, maybe thousands of such vagrants.  They exist because the policies and the programs of various cities.  In places like San Francisco, it is a crime to accost or speak roughly to a beggar.  People live on the street, dump their trash on the street, accost and threaten people and the police are powerless to do anything. There is a space between our church and the fence of the next property.  We store some equipment there.  Recently a many decided to make that his home.  He built tents between...

Many years ago I was a coin collector.  From that time, I was put on many mailing lists for coin sellers.  From time to time, even today, I get physical mail from coin and stamp distribution firms.  I got one today.  The offer was for a complete collection off the President Barak Obama’s stamps from all over the world.  The brochure was multiple pages, very glossy and colorful, showing examples of what stamps would be included.  I looked and I looked and nowhere was there a price listed.  Finally at the very bottom of the last page, in 9 point type, I read that the cost was $9.98.  In the next paragraph, it stated that this price was per sheet.  There would be three sheet sent every month for 36 months.  So, the total cost, assuming there is no tax or shipping, is $1,077.84.  That total was never listed anywhere, and my belief is that they do not show it because they are ashamed of it.  If they put the cost of $1,077,84 in 72 p...

John 20:11-16 is the story of Mary.  Mary loved Jesus and Jesus loved Mary as one of his followers.  Mary had lost faith.  Jesus had been killed and she just wanted to perform the proper Jewish burial rights and say her final goodbyes to Jesus.  The one problem is that Jesus’ body was not in the tomb.  This was very upsetting to Mary.  Mary wanted to do what she felt was right.  Mary wanted to do what was right according to her religious tradition.  But Jesus is not about religious tradition. When Jesus met with Nicodemus, Nicodemus could not understand the spiritual truth of being born again.  His thinking was stuck in the physical world and religious tradition.  When Jesus met with the woman at the well, he was talking about spiritual living water and she was looking for indoor plumbing.  She was stuck in the physical world and her version of religious tradition.  Nicodemus, the woman at the well and Mary all had a faith pr...

Hate is part of the human condition.  Every person has hated at least once in their lives.  The trouble with the concept of hate is that the government has no clue what it is.  They invent hate crimes and hate groups and declare that these things must not exist.  Recently in Virginia violence erupted when a hate group clashed with another hate group.  No, that is not what the government and news are saying.  They are saying that the Nazi’s are a hate group because the are exclusive and hate gays.  They were attacked by ANTIFA, which is a what?  A love group?  ANTIFA hates everything that they disagree with.  So they are a hate group too, I guess.  It gets confusing when the government and news takes sides picking winners and losers in two violent groups. What we need to do is get back to the basics.  Violence is a crime.  Arrest those who are violent and let their ideology be damned.  If someone shoots another in an...

Someone in our church accidentally took some keys home and apologized and said they would bring them right back.  That was three weeks ago.  When I ask them where the keys were, they tell me that they are so busy.  My response was “so what, give me my keys.” Being busy is a choice.  Everyone has the same 24 hours.  Until someone invents a time machine, we are stuck in time and we all have the same amount of it.  Daylight changes with the seasons and map location, but with artificial lighting we can work 24 hours straight if we want.  So when a person says they are busy, it means they they, not someone else, have chosen to do more than there is time for.  When I was in the military, I was told to do more than there was time for, and I was told it built character.  Apart from the military or prison, people are free to choose what fills their day, and if they are too busy to do the right thing or to meet with someone, then they are out of cont...

I am sure when Alexander Graham Bell first spoke those immortal words, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you” He never expected Mr Watson to put him on hold.  Fortunately, that did not happen.  That took many years for the hold button to be invented.  Then for years and years, when a growing company was called, people would be put on hold.  They would be put on hold to transfer a call or until a human was available.  Hold times became insidious when robots started answering the phone and trying to understand English speakers would always mess up.  Phone trees are the demonic end of the hold button. There was a movement recently of companies that claimed they would never put a person on hold.   Hover.com was one such company.  Sadly they have become so popular, they don’t put people on hold, they call them back.  I have seen many companies using the call back option so that people do not have to stay on hold.  Being called back is ...

From the dawn of time people have worked.  When Adam and Eve were created, the first thing God told them to do was to work.  When they sinned, Adam’s labor became difficult and challenging.  He still worked, however.  After they were kicked out of the garden, God did not start a welfare program for them.  They worked and they ate by the seat of their brow. When I was growing up, my father let me live in his house for free.  I had chores to do, as a way to learn work.  When I graduated from High School, I was told that if I went to college, I could stay for free, if I got a job or became a bum, I would be charged rent.  I went to college for a while, then went into the military.  When I mustered out, I found employment and have been working ever since. After a time as a security guard, which is easy work for those fresh out of the military, I got work at Seagate in Scotts Valley.  I continued as a computer programmer, a skill I learn...

America is the most diverse, inclusive, anti-racist nation that has ever existed in the history of the world.  Anybody can come and do anything and be anything (for the most part).  Back in the day, America was called the great melting-pot .  On our money it states e pluribus unum which means, “ out of many, one .”  We are so inclusive that there are federal laws against discriminating on the basis of skin color, country of origin, religion, marital status, health, disability and now gender in all its flavors.  If there is one word that describes America, it is inclusive. Are there evil individuals who have racist tendencies and thoughts?  Of course.  Evil exists in all its forms in every country on earth.  Some of these evil people become policemen, firemen, politicians, pastors and teachers.  It does not mean that the entire police force is racist everywhere because there is one racist cop in Mississippi.  No police force has racist...

The California Redemptive Value was invented in 1986.  This act was developed from the old practice of paying a deposit  for glass bottles.  Back in the day, people would go to the corner store and buy a glass bottle of soda.  The vender might charge a 1 or 2 cent deposit on the bottle.  If the bottle was returned, the deposit was returned and the bottle could be washed and refilled. In 1986 Sacramento weenies believed that there was too much trash, so the put a bounty or a deposit on glass and plastic bottles.  The CRV would be charged by the grocery store.  When the container was emptied, it could be returned to the grocery store and the CRV would be returned to the customer.  The container would then be given to a bottler or a recycler and used again. In 2010, the California EPA (that is Environmental Protection Agency) took management of the CRV program.  The California Department of Resource Recycling and Recovery, which is part of ...

Passwords are the key to internet security.  People need one to log into their bank, their email, their computer, their phone, any website where they can buy things and any website where companies want to track them.  Email address and password is the standard to get access and it is useless.  It is useless because emails are public.  Everyone knows everyones email address.  Any app, like Facebook, has access to the contact list, so it knows all a person's friends emails.  Passwords are difficult to remember, difficult to create and so people just use something simple or use the same password everywhere. Many websites give requirements for passwords, like “1 capital letter and 1 number and 1 symbol,” so people take normal dictionary words and remace letters with numbers and then promptly forget what they created.  Companies have to store passwords somewhere and when they are hacked,  and some Russian gets 2 million user names, passwords and cr...

Yesterday the developers of Ulysses, this supposed amazing writing app took their app subscription.  They pulled their "full price" app from the IOS and Mac App Store.  They now want $39.99 (Can't round up to $40 or no one will buy it) a year to use their app.  One price for all platforms.  As a previous owner, I get a lifetime 1/2 price of $29.95 (wait, that is not 50% off) per year.  I have written the developer, and they have not responded yet, is that their math is wrong.  So I won't buy it if there price is wrong and there offer is a lie. My comment, which I have made before, is that subscriptions make the price of an app infinite .  I am simply renting an app, that when I stop paying it stops working.  People can rent cars, homes and other things like TVs, and when they are done, they return them.  But renting a program that does not have any ongoing service, just features, seems odd.  Also, I know it is an impossible task for a ...

Way back in the day, like the 1500s, people, men, specifically, would go to their work, maybe in a factory or on a farm, then they would go home in the evening.  This continued into America and on into today.  Work and home would be considered their first and second place.  It seems that people are wired to be able to have three places, however.  Back in the 1500s and up to the 1900s, church was considered the third place .  Especially in early America, the church building would be the center of the town.  It would be the social gathering place as well as the place for worship.  If a person got news or gossip, it was gained at church.  For most people, they saw the people they worked with at church.  Women who stayed at home, found and befriended other women and they helped each other. In every society, there would be those who would not attend church, even as a social place.  They would find another third place , whatever it may be. ...

During the summer of 1969, my family lived in a duplex.  My father had worked out a situation with our neighbor where the neighbor would bring his TV over to our side and we would hook both TV’s up.  Their family would come over and on July 20, 1969, both families on two different broadcast networks,  watched Neil Armstrong take his one small step .  Four adults and five children watched history being made as did many, if not most of the people in America watched that event and as people returned to school, work, church and other social gatherings, would talk about the moon landing.  News programs for weeks afterward would speak of the moon landing and what was happening and what was learned.  Sociologists call that a Common Cultural Experience . As cable TV took over from broadcast TV and everyone had 150+ channels to watch, the Common Cultural Experiences became fewer and fewer.  With the advent of Netflix and YouTube the choices for what to wa...

Secrets are the American way.  Kids keep things secret from their parents and parents keep secrets from their kids.  Many of the secrets are harmless, like a surprise birthday party of a Christmas present, but today, even in the political realm, secrets need to be kept.  When I was in the Air Force, I did burn bag duty before a transfer.  This consisted of dumping millions of pages of secret documents into this super shredder that basically turned things into powder.  We then scooped the powder into bags with red strips that had BURN ONLY printed on them.  We then loaded them into a truck and drove them across base to huge incinerator.  We had to remain until the burn was done then stir the ashes to make sure no readable paper remained.  That is because the military has to keep their secrets. Another area of person secrets is religious beliefs.  People usually learn about religious beliefs through a meeting or a book or, today, an online ...

Every religious system has in its teaching something about what happens after a person dies.  Some have said that the only purpose of religion is to give hope so that people do not despair during this life but hope for something better.  Some have said that this is how religious leaders manipulate and trick followers into serving them.  The teaching of existentialism is that there is nothing after this life.  When you die, that is it, you are done. Existentialism is the belief that all that matters is existence.  When you hear politicians talk about an existential crisis, they are saying that certain events might stop America from existing.  This does not seem likely, but it makes for good sound bites. John Paul Sartre is the father of modern Existentialism.  He believed that there was nothing after this life.  Most religions say that the things we do in this life will be judged and will determine the disposition of the dead.  Sartre say...

One task that I must complete with  my technology is writing.  I write notes for sermons, I write details for tasks that must be completed and I write emails and letters.   Ulysses is a writing app that exists on all Apple products.  Ulysses also syncs via iCloud and Dropbox and most any other external location I want to put in.  In many ways, this writing app is a database of documents.  It can store, sort and maintain a huge number of documents.  So to maintain a history off prayer requests, visitation activities or blog posts, I can use Ulysses and it is equal to the task. When I beginning to write with Ulysses, the screen empties and all I have is a blank slate and a keyboard.  From that black slate I can write in Markdown .  Markdown is a simply method of adding bold, italic, images and links to a documents in plain text.  There are a variety of programs that know how to read Markdown and convert it to HTML or rich text for publi...

My first computer was an IBM PC with 2 floppies, no hard drive and a TV for a screen.  From that moment, I wanted a portable computer I could carry in my hand.  As computers evolved, there were offerings of small windows computers for $3,000 or more.  The PDAs like the Palm device came around and I knew they were onto something.  I could finally carry my calendar and Bible in my pocket.  When I got a Sony Clie , I was able to play music. Sony Ericsson made the first smart phone I owned.  It ran the old version of Windows Mobile.  I could have my calendar, Bibles, music and movies on that phone.  I kept that phone until it died, then I upgraded to the iPhone 3GS. The iPhone allowed me to have a calendar, Bible, music, video and they added the Internet.  Other phones had web access, but it was terrible.  Apple had created a web browsing experience that was phenomenal. As the power of the iPhone grew, application developers stepped ...