• Leadership Politics Video

    Please, Church, Reject Trump (Transcript)

    Today, I posted a video to my YouTube Channel imploring Christians to stand in opposition to Trump even if you choose to vote for him as the “lesser of two evils.”

    Here is the full transcript of my video.

    Good Morning Church!

    In today’s video, I’m calling on Christians to give up on Donald Trump.

    If that’s going to make you mad, turn it off right now.

    If that’s going to make you cheer, double-check your motives.

    If you are willing to seriously consider whether God is pleased by you voting for Trump, I invite you to stay and hear me out.

    The Church in America is at a major crossroads.

    It is a racial crossroads. An economic crossroads. A cultural crossroads. And it has become a political crossroads.

    COVID – AHMAUD ARBERY – GEORGE FLOYD

    But preparing for Sunday in 2 Peter 2… I was overcome by the character traits of the false teacher

    • v.1 Secrecy • Do you know anyone who hides damaging information? They just might be a false teacher.
    • v.1 Denying Jesus • Do you know anyone who uses Christian language without any Christian substance? They just might be a false teacher.
    • v.2 Shameful Ways • Do you know anyone who has engaged in shameful behavior and is leading others? They just might be…
    • v.3 Greed • Do you know anyone who indulges in the accumulation of wealth through any means? …
    • v.3 Exploiting • Do you know anyone who takes advantage of others for his own benefit? …
    • v.3 Stories they Made Up • Do you know anyone who tends to have his own version of the truth? …
    • v.10 Despising Authority • Do you know anyone who is unwilling to let any authority have say over him? …
    • v.10 Bold and Arrogant • Do you know anyone who has no filter and is supremely confident? …
    • v.12 Blaspheme in Matters they don’t understand • Do you know someone who pretends to be an authority on everything? …
    • v.13 Carousing in Daylight • Do you know anyone who flaunts in public his own adulterous exploits? …
    • v.14 Adultery • Do you know anyone who is a repeated adulterer? …
    • v.15 The Way of Balaam • Do you know anyone who will say anything so long as it benefits them? …
    • v.17 Springs without Water • Do you know anyone who makes grand promises that turn up empty? …
    • v.18 Boastful • Do you know anyone who talks about how great he is? …
    • v.18 Enticing • Do you know anyone who appeals to individual human desires and entices immature believers? …
    • v.19 Promising Freedom • Do you know anyone who promises people freedom while himself living in depravity? …
    • v.22 Dog returns to vomit • Do you know anyone who will not learn from previous mistakes? …

    I didn’t mention names. You might have thought I was talking about Pelosi, or Trump, or McConnell, or CNN, or FOX, or another politician, public figure, or media outlet… Well, one reason I didn’t mention names is that I was talking about perhaps all of them.

    Signs of false teaching have risen up in all of the politicians and the media around us, and we have done so much finger-pointing and blaming that we have come to accept the false teachers who are on our side because they oppose the false teachers on the other side.

    But following a false teacher because they are saying what you like to hear is the definition of following a false teacher.

    You can’t trust them, and since they are saying what you like to hear, you can’t trust YOURSELF either.

    I was probably going to leave that topic alone, until I saw this photo on the news yesterday.

    PHOTO OF TRUMP HOLDING A BIBLE

    And I realized that I could no longer remain “ambiguous” about this topic.

    So Good Morning Church, as in Wake Up. President Trump is a false teacher, and I beg you to end your allegiance to him.

    Listen, I have heard many Christians give Donald Trump a pass because they voted for a president and not a pastor. But then, those same Christians have been unwilling to speak up loudly against all the things he has said or done to denigrate the name of Christ.

    Can he be a false teacher if he isn’t claiming to be a Christian teacher?

    Well, I’ll just read one verse…

    (18) For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. (19) They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” — 2 Peter 2:18-19 NIV

    Does this passage sound like Trump? Does he boast? Does he appeal to your desires? Does he entice people? Does he promise freedom? Is he himself a depraved individual? Does this sound like Trump? If so, you must conclude that he is leading people into slavery. And his enticement of Christians is that much more insidious.

    And if you still don’t believe me that he is a false teacher, consider this:

    PHOTO OF TRUMP HOLDING A BIBLE

    This man holding a Bible is secretive.

    He has paid people off to keep his personal life secret and is going to court to prevent the country from seeing his tax records.

    This man holding a Bible is denying Jesus.

    Because he is holding this Bible right after declaring that he will send out the military to help governors “quell” the violent protests.

    (A President may have the right to use military force at times, but to do so while holding a Bible is to completely deny what Jesus stood for.)

    Allow me to make this point just a bit more clearly:

    (15) On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, (16) and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. (17) And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’ ? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’ ” — Mark 11:15-17 NIV

    EXPLANATION OF THE TRUE MEANING OF THIS PASSAGE AS AN ACT OF JESUS’ OPPOSITION TO RACISM

    This is Jesus deploying violence because the forces of the Jewish majority had been displaying racism against the Gentiles.

    Again, Jesus was violently protesting the racism of his day.

    So, I’ll say it again: This man holding a Bible is denying Jesus.

    This man, holding a Bible, has indulged in shameful behaviors.

    Access Hollywood Tape, and his own Twitter Feed!

    This man, holding a Bible, has lived a life of greed and exploitation.

    He is donating his Presidential salary, but his fraudulent school and Trump Foundation along with his practices as an employer continue to bear this out.

    Further, he fires people as soon as he is done with them even if that means the firing comes a day before their pension is secured.

    This man, holding a Bible, is addicted to false stories and his own version of the truth.

    This man, holding a Bible, despises authority unless he wields it.

    He rejects the notion that Congress or the Courts have any authority over him.

    This man, holding a Bible, is bold, arrogant and boastful.

    NOT A SOUL can deny that.

    This man, holding a Bible, is a blasphemer in matters he doesn’t understand.

    Listen to his speech during and after the 2020 National Prayer Breakfast.

    This man, holding a Bible, is an adulterer.

    This man, holding a Bible, promises greater freedom…

    … while also declaring an unwillingness to consider the freedoms of George Floyd or any other oppressed people in our country.

    This man, holding a Bible, is a purveyor of the Way of Balaam…

    … because he will SAY ANYTHING as long as it is advantageous to him.

    “But 2 Peter 2 doesn’t apply to him!”

    But, wait, I hear you say. So what if he meets all 27 characteristics of a false teacher. If he hasn’t claimed to be a religious teacher, then Peter’s passage doesn’t apply to him!

    And I counter back, but he’s standing in front of a church, holding a BIBLE as if he is a Christian leader.

    His appeal to Bible believing Christians is part of his central claim to the Presidency, and if you want to defend his policies at least have the Christian courage to decry his abominable and oppressive personality.

    If you think Conservative policies are the way to go, and if you think the only way to get them is to vote in this election for Trump. Then go ahead and do so, but please, SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE MAN and those who ENABLE his abusive, dangerous, and blasphemous behavior.

    Some Christian Defenses of Trump

    Now, some Christians I know will defend Trump with one or more of the following statements:

    1. But Trump has appointed Pro-Life justices.

    Listen, that’s great from a certain perspective. I want to live in a country where abortions never happen, and so it makes sense to me that abortion should be generally illegal.

    However, making abortion illegal does not make us a pro-life society.

    • We are still a country that uses the death penalty.
    • We are still a country that will not provide universal health care or day care.
    • We are still a country that makes adoptions expensive and difficult.
    • We are still a country that treats refugees as illegal aliens.
    • We are still a country that treats black people as threats.
    • We are still a country that blames homeless people for their homelessness.

    Are conservative policies moving us toward a pro-LIFE society that sees an end to any of these things?

    And is Donald Trump doing anything to move us toward a pro-LIFE society other than trying to overturn Roe v Wade?

    2. But Trump is improving the economy.

    There was a time, when I could have believed that. The past three years SEEMED to be economically strong for America. However, the wealth gap, the national debt, the scourge of homelessness, and the incidence of medical bankruptcies have been skyrocketing through all that time.

    Additionally, the 40 million who are currently unemployed prove that our great economy was an illusory bubble. It was an economy of corporations not individuals. Once the lockdowns happened, the corporations ensured their own survival by laying off millions.

    And, anyway, since when did Christians start using the stock market to determine if a society is just?

    3. But Trump supports my freedoms.

    Hey, promising freedom. That sounds exactly like something Peter said in his second letter.

    Usually when people mention this, they are talking either about religion, guns, taxes, or required public health measures like mandatory vaccines or wearing masks.

    “My body, my choice” say the protesters in Michigan forgetting that the same slogan has been used by pro-choice advocates for decades.

    Okay so now, I’m really going to make some people mad. Because speaking as a conservative myself, I have come to the painful realization that the conservative / Trump notion of freedom is terribly, illogically inconsistent:

    a. You can’t be pro-life and against mandatory vaccines (or against any other public health measure).

    Pro-life says the government should regulate the medical establishment to ensure the life of every child.

    And mandatory vaccines have been demonstrated conclusively to reduce infant mortality.

    Therefore, if you believe the health of every child is precious, you will be against abortion, and you will be in favor of mandatory vaccines.

    b. You can’t be pro-life and against gun regulations.

    Pro-life says the government has a vested interest in controlling the means of ending a life.

    Well, if that’s so, the government has a vested interest in controlling ALL the means of ending a life.

    People say, “Guns don’t kill people.”

    The truth says, “People holding guns kill people all the time.”

    Can I say, Ahmaud Arbery? How would he have been treated if he had been running down the street of that white neighborhood with a gun strapped to his waist? Giving Ahmaud a gun wouldn’t have solved anything, but taking the gun away from that white man would have kept Ahmad alive.

    If you claim to be pro-life, you must also be for limiting access to weapons.

    c. You can’t be pro-life and against sensible taxation that provides health, housing, and welfare to people.

    Pro-life says the government should spend extra money to enforce new laws against abortion and thereby allow the population to increase especially among the poor.

    If you believe the health of every child is precious, you will also support government interventions that ensure that child’s HEALTH and WELLBEING even if it costs you more money in the process.

    So pro-life Christians who talk about personal freedoms in these ways are not being consistent with their own beliefs.

    And icing on this cake, since when did “my personal freedom” become a Christian value?

    And now, religion. The main reason I have heard people recently declare that Trump is a great man. They say…

    4. But Trump supports religious freedom!

    Does Trump support religious freedom? Let’s take a closer look.

    1. In the midst of a dangerous pandemic, Trump just told Christians they should go back to church… because hey, Christianity can’t exist unless it’s happening with lots of people singing and talking in small buildings with poor ventilation for over an hour at a time… and because hey, if more Christians die, that’s not a problem right? That’s religious freedom right?
    2. Trump’s first act as President was to outlaw travel to the US from predominately Muslim countries even if the traveler was a US citizen. That’s not supporting religious freedom. Nor is that supporting national security. That’s supporting Christian bigotry.
    3. Trump is threatening to attack social media companies, has already issued attacks on peaceful protesters, and demonizes anyone who ever says anything against him. And wouldn’t you know that the First Amendment to our Constitution, the one that ensures the right of religious freedom says this:

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

    Granted, this is directed to Congress and not the President, but it is the President’s sworn job to uphold the Constitution which means to recognize these rights.

    Freedom of religion is connected to these others:

    • Freedom of speech, press, assembly, and…
    • Freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances — that is, protest

    These words were written by men who participated in or endorsed the Boston Tea Party!

    Good Morning Church. It’s time to wake up.

    Trump and all who enable him are false teachers for while they pretend to support the Christian agenda, they are actually appealing to the lustful desires of Christians who are willing to dispense with moral integrity for the sake of earthly power.

    Again, I read the words of 2 Peter.

    (18) For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. (19) They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” — 2 Peter 2:18-19 NIV

    No matter what good you think Trump has done for this country, I declare that he has enticed you by appealing to your lustful desires.

    He appealed to your desire for influence and exploited your pride by offering anti-abortion rhetoric.

    And I fell for it! Even though our narrow-minded emphasis on anti-abortion policies is actually naive, unsympathetic, and illogical when considered in combination with other conservative policies.

    He appealed to your desire for security and exploited your fears by offering pro-Christian rhetoric even though he cares nothing about real religious freedom or freedom of speech or any Christian values at all.

    He appealed to your greed and exploited your bigotry by enacting policies that disproportionately helped the predominately white educated class to the detriment of the poor, the immigrant, the refugee, and people of color.

    And he takes photo ops with a Bible he doesn’t read in front of a church he doesn’t attend after gassing a crowd of people he doesn’t love.

    Since I recorded this video, the official record is that tear gas wasn’t used on that crowd. Video footage shows that some type of gas was used, so if it wasn’t tear gas, perhaps it was only smoke bombs that were thrown. Nonetheless, in the video footage, the people present obviously fled when the canisters started smoking indicating that they at least thought it was tear gas.

    Conclusion

    I don’t care if he makes America “great.”

    The America he’s making is not the country I want, but more than that, the man he is fails to qualify as a man I should follow.

    Trump and his enablers are false teachers.

    I implore you to stop enabling them.

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  • Explaining the Bible

    On the Textual Reliability of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35

    Before I talk about the issues with 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, I want to give a brief bit of information on the overall reliability of the text of the Bible.

    One of the fundamental truths about the text of the Bible is that we don’t have a 100% complete copy of the original text.

    However, a second fundamental truth about the text of the Bible is that we have so many partial copies that are so old that we can reconstruct the original with an extremely high level of confidence.

    How do we do that? We use a process called textual criticism.

    Let me illustrate:

    Let’s say you play the game of telephone 100 times with 100 different groups of intelligent adults. Let’s say you play the game using an original statement that everyone in each group thinks is important. That is, the people really care about the accuracy of the original statement. In such a case, you are likely to get a high degree of accuracy when it comes to the transmission, but you will still find some errors.

    Now, let’s say that the person who started the game has forgotten what the original statement was and all we have is the 100 final statements that were written down by the people at the end of each game.

    Here’s what you have:

    • 60 groups ended up with, “When Abraham Lincoln died, the United States swore in Andrew Johnson as President.”
    • 20 groups ended up with, “When Abraham Lincoln died, the United States swore in Johnson as President.”
    • 10 groups ended up with, “After Abraham Lincoln died, the United States swore in Andrew Johnson as President.”
    • 5 groups had, “When Lincoln died, the United States swore in Andrew Johnson as President.”
    • 3 group had, “When Abraham Lincoln died, the US swore in Johnson as President.”
    • 2 groups had, “When Abraham Lincoln was shot, the United States made Johnson President.”

    This accurately describes the kind of variations we have in the different texts of the New Testament, and if you apply a few simple rules, you can begin to put together what the original statement probably was.

    The most fundamental rule is this: Which statement can most logically lead to the existence of all the others? In this case, even though the top statement has 60 groups that support it, the statement supported by 5 groups is likely the original, because people who care about this subject are far more likely to add the word Abraham before the word Lincoln than they are to remove it. Also, each of the other changes can be easily explained by starting with the statement of the 5 groups.

    Scholars employ a few rules based on this one:

    • When transferring information, people who care are more likely to simplify something difficult than to make difficult something simple.
    • When copying information, people are more likely to accidentally leave something out than to accidentally put something in.
    • When copying important information, people are more likely to intentionally add something explanatory than to remove something undesirable.

    There is one other rule that is a bit complicated, but if there is a section of text that stays intact but moves around in the various copies, that section of text is likely not original.

    That’s the case with 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.

    There is one strong textual tradition that puts those two verses after verse 33, but there is another strong textual tradition that puts those same two verses after our verse 40. Nearly all the ancient texts from the Eastern church tradition have the text after our verse 33, but nearly all the ancient Western texts have these verses after our verse 40.

    The question for scholars is this: which placement explains the other one? If the verses were originally in one spot, what would make a scribe shift the verses intact to the other spot, and then what would make all the other scribes following that scribe in making the same mistake?

    One possibility is that these two verses were originally in neither spot, that Paul didn’t actually write them in the original letter to the Corinthians. Does that explain anything?

    Well, interestingly enough, Paul wrote something very similar in 1 Timothy 2:11-12. If you compare 1 Timothy 2:11-12 with 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, you can see the similarities immediately. However, where 1 Timothy has Paul advocating for the women to be respectful students, the passage in 1 Corinthians seems to tell women simply to keep their mouths shut and to never say anything when the church is gathered. Given the ancient world’s distrust of women, it’s easy to see how someone familiar with 1 Timothy might interpret it to be saying the same thing as 1 Corinthians.

    In other words, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 sounds a lot like the words of someone who didn’t really understand 1 Timothy 2:11-12.

    Additionally, it is well established that ancient copyists weren’t just making copies for public consumption. Frequently, they were making their own personal notes in their copies just like we make personal notes in our Bibles today, and in a very few cases, those marginal notes actually ended up in the text of Scripture itself. (See 1 John 5:7-8 in the KJV and compare to any modern translation like the NIV, and read the footnotes)

    Finally, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 simply doesn’t fit in with the rest of 1 Corinthians 14 (the whole chapter is talking about tongues and prophecy, not gender roles); it doesn’t fit in with chapter 11 where women are encouraged to pray or prophesy in the gathered assembly so long as they look like women; and it demonstrates some curious linguistics in the original language that don’t fit the grammar and syntax of the rest of the book.

    Therefore, I have very little confidence that it is something Paul wrote. If Paul did write it, I would have to interpret it in light of 1 Corinthians 11 and the softer tone of 1 Timothy 2 to mean effectively the same thing as 1 Timothy 2, but based on the textual evidence and the internal evidence, I conclude that it wasn’t original.

    What’s my theory for how it made it into our text? Well, I think that some early copyist of the letter to Corinth was familiar with 1 Timothy but didn’t have a copy at hand. In the margins of his copy of 1 Corinthians, he wrote down his paraphrase of what 1 Timothy 2 said, and early on, some copyists put it in the spot after verse 33 while others thought it fit better after our verse 40.

    What difference does it make?

    Understanding all this is important for the following reasons:

    1. You need to know that you can trust the text of the Bible. Yes, I just spent a bunch of words writing about how these two verses probably shouldn’t be in the Bible, but the only reason I can say such a thing is that a giant amount of archaeological and scientific study has shown the incredible accuracy of the rest of 1 Corinthians! These two verses are questionable because the rest of 1 Corinthians is not! Every now and then, some research shows up that helps us refine our understanding of the Bible text, and every time that research shows up, we should thank God that he is using modern science to help us get closer to the original content of his Holy Word!
    2. You need to know that God doesn’t want to prevent women from ministering and using their gifts in the context of Christian worship. They are not singled out as people who must keep their mouths shut. Yes, there are passages about women being submissive to men and being respectfully quiet during times of instruction, and those are important to understand, but God is not laying down a blanket prohibition against any woman ever speaking in the context of worship.
    3. You need to know that I care about Biblical accuracy. The question I ask people all the time is this: What does the Bible actually say? I’m convinced that if something is taught in the Bible it should be followed wholeheartedly, and I’m convinced of that so much that I desperately want to know what actually is in the Bible as opposed to what people think the Bible says or what some historically accepted version of the Bible once said!

    If you want to interact on this topic or to ask me any questions about it, I warmly welcome them!

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  • Front Page Geekery

    Flat/Round Earth Experiments

    Apparently, something like 200,000 people in the USA believe the Earth is flat. I’m personally quite bothered by this, but rather than rant on and on about Flat Earth theory, I decided I would just simply put down here absolute definitive methods for how a person who is skeptical of all scientific authorities can prove to him or herself what shape the Earth really has. None of them are easy. Most of them would be quite fun. Some of them are expensive. All of them would be clear and definitive based entirely on your own observations. Pick one and try it!

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  • Geekery

    ffmpeg compilation script for Ubuntu

    Ubuntu doesn’t provide the latest ffmpeg or include the modules I use all the time, so I wrote a little script to automatically compile and install my own version:

    
#!/bin/sh

# https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/CompilationGuide/Ubuntu

# SERVER COMPILATION SKIPS ffplay AND A X11 DEPENDENCIES

echo 'THIS SCRIPT USES SUDO, SO IT MIGHT ASK FOR YOUR PASSWORD'
sudo apt-get update -qq

sudo apt-get -y install \
	autoconf \
	automake \
	build-essential \
	cmake \
	git \
	libass-dev \
	libfreetype6-dev \
	libtheora-dev \
	libtool \
	libvorbis-dev \
	mercurial \
	pkg-config \
	texinfo \
	wget \
	zlib1g-dev \
	yasm \
	libx264-dev \
	libvpx-dev \
	libfdk-aac-dev \
	libmp3lame-dev \
	libopus-dev



cd ~/src

# DO WE NEED NASM?
# wget http://www.nasm.us/pub/nasm/releasebuilds/2.13.02/nasm-2.13.02.tar.bz2
# tar xjvf nasm-2.13.02.tar.bz2
# pushd nasm-2.13.02
# ./autogen.sh
# PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" ./configure --prefix="/usr/local" --bindir="/usr/local/bin"
# make
# sudo make install


# DO WE NEED x265
if cd x265 2> /dev/null; then hg pull && hg update; else hg clone https://bitbucket.org/multicoreware/x265; fi
cd x265/build/linux
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/usr/local/" -DENABLE_SHARED:bool=off ../../source
PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" make
sudo make install


# ACTUAL COMPILATION
cd ~/src
wget -O ffmpeg-snapshot.tar.bz2 https://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-snapshot.tar.bz2
tar xjvf ffmpeg-snapshot.tar.bz2
cd ffmpeg

PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig" ./configure \
  --prefix="/usr/local" \
  --pkg-config-flags="--static" \
  --extra-cflags="-I/usr/local/include" \
  --extra-ldflags="-L/usr/local/lib" \
  --extra-libs="-lpthread -lm" \
  --bindir="/usr/local/bin" \
  --enable-gpl \
  --enable-libass \
  --enable-libfdk-aac \
  --enable-libfreetype \
  --enable-libmp3lame \
  --enable-libopus \
  --enable-libtheora \
  --enable-libvorbis \
  --enable-libvpx \
  --enable-libx264 \
  --enable-libx265 \
  --enable-nonfree

make
sudo make install
hash -r
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  • Geekery

    WordPress Development Behind the Scenes

    After doing some research into how to develop a WordPress site in a “staging” area behind the scenes before going public, I have finally stumbled upon an elegant and simple solution:

    • Using a plugin like simply-static, convert all wordpress-generated data to static html files.
    • Tell nginx to try those files first (unless there is a logged-in user) falling back to the normal wordpress generation when they can’t be found.
    • Now, public viewers will bypass wordpress entirely, grabbing all the static files while you happily do your coding in the background.
    • When you are ready to go public with your modified design, either regenerate the static files for a super-fast site or delete the static files. Without the html files, nginx will simply hand the requests over to wordpress for dynamic generation.
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  • Front Page Lafayette Leadership

    Is it Discrimination to Discriminate against Discriminators?

    My church office received an email today that called me out for what was printed in the local newspaper reporting on my involvement in the City Council meeting last Monday.

    A woman named Kathy wrote this:

    Dear Pastor Mikels,

    Reading the newspaper Tuesday morning, I felt quite sad to read about your objections to our community protecting the rights of transgendered people and your positioning yourself as one who should judge them. I do not believe discrimination against anyone is right. Your suggestion that transgendered people are not submitting to nature or nature’s God–and therefore subject to discrimination–is highly and inappropriately judgmental and hurtful.

    I hope you will refrain from this line of speaking about others.

    The irony of our current social climate is that a person can say in one sentence, “I do not believe discrimination against anyone is right,” and then in the next sentence call someone’s behavior “highly and inappropriately judgmental and hurtful.” Not only is the first sentence pragmatically impossible, the accusatory tone of the second sentence invalidates the claim of the first.

    Nevertheless, now that I have entered into this world, I’m committed to this dialogue. I don’t feel a burden to defend myself, but I feel a deep burden to help all of us think through these issues lovingly and rationally even if we can’t discuss them biblically.

    It took me 45 minutes to craft a reply, but this is what I wrote:

    Hi Kathy,

    Is it okay for me to give you a phone call?

    I’ve been working for months to build a dialogue with the Lafayette Pride office to express my love and concern for people in the LGBT community, and to have conversations about how the faith community can do a better job of showing that love even if we disagree with their lifestyles. They haven’t replied yet, but I’m still working on it.

    Furthermore, I have friends in the LGBT community, and I think if you gave me a few minutes of human-to-human time, you would see me in a different light.

    After all, that’s really what all of this debate is about between “religious freedom” and “tolerance.” I think it all really comes down to the fact that people aren’t treating each other as humans but as categories.

    For example, you have categorized me as someone who believes I should judge transgendered people, and yet I do not judge them nor do I want to. You have also categorized me as someone who thinks it is right to discriminate against transgendered people, and yet that too is inaccurate.

    Sadly, I don’t think you see me as a human being who cares deeply for the people around me both those who are like me and those who are different from me, and in that regard, I think you might be discriminating against me.

    If we had a chat over a cup of coffee, I think you would discover some things about me.

    1. I don’t buy into statements that are given to me by other Christians without wrestling through them personally. As a result, I don’t buy the statement that some Christians throw around that gender confusion or transgenderism is a sin. Additionally, I don’t believe that granting civil rights protections to transgender people will suddenly endanger women in our society and increase the chances for sexual exploitation in our bathrooms. I firmly oppose both the fear-motivated statements and the naively traditional statements.
    2. I also don’t buy into statements that are given to me by the secular media or by the modern “spirit of the age.” As a result, I don’t buy the statement that the only way for transgender people to live is to fully express their “true gender identity” as opposed to the one they were “assigned at birth.” The reason I don’t buy that statement is that I have known VERY effeminate men who were able to find great joy in just being really sensitive men. I have also known at least one woman who lived for many years as a transgender man only to later realize that there was great joy to be found in embracing her biological femininity. She has since completely turned around and embraces womanhood as her “identity.”
    3. I DON’T oppose anti-discrimination laws for any category of people. In fact, I think there are many categories that are underrepresented. Our laws say nothing protecting the rights of people who cannot work on a Holy Day. Sure there are “religious” protections on the books, but at least in Indiana, an employer can fire an employee who refuses to work on Sundays. Furthermore, I think it is wrong for an apartment complex to refuse to rent an apartment to a biological man who is dressed as a woman.
    4. Finally, I DO realize that there are some forms of “discrimination” that are allowable (and encouraged) in a pluralistic society. For example, Hollywood is allowed to discriminate in hiring when it comes to personal appearance. More attractive people make more money. Should we outlaw that discrimination? I don’t think so. It’s sad that it exists, but it should not be illegal. Additionally, a college whose declared purpose is to educate students in the Islamic faith should be allowed to discriminate in hiring when it comes to a person’s adherence to the Koran, and I don’t think Purdue should be forced to hire professors who deny Darwinian Evolution. In other words, SOME discrimination in our society is necessary, and SOME discrimination in our society is healthy. In fact, in order to live in a pluralistic society, we CANNOT outlaw every single act of discrimination as if it were even logically possible to do so.

    In conclusion, the reason I opposed the amendment was not because I want to encourage “discrimination” against transgender people but because I think the issue in the amendment is ill-defined and unclear in two ways:

    1. The scientific understanding of “gender identity” is unclear. Psychiatrists are still trying to wrestle with what the DSM-5 calls “gender dysphoria” and the right way to treat it. As a result, the societal implications of fully embracing “transgender” as a category of human being are unclear. Some good science indicates that transgenderism is actually a birth defect of sorts resulting from low incidence of androgens in the body during gestation and infancy (see my blog article for the link). However, there is other good evidence that gender dysphoria is a condition that can be remedied either through psychological counseling or religious experience. Therefore, to categorize transgenderism as a protected class would be to completely ignore the science indicating transgender people might actually be better off if they could find joy in their assigned gender.
    2. The religious exemptions in the proposed Lafayette HRO only cover issues of employment. If a church-run school or homeless shelter wished to have sex-segregated bathrooms, showers, or locker rooms, according to the letter of the HRO, those organizations could be found guilty of “discrimination” against transgendered students. I grant that Target should have the right to desegregate its bathrooms. Much of Europe already has only unisex bathrooms, and people live there just fine. However, I think churches, mosques, church schools, and yes, businesses run by conscientious religious people should have the right to create sex-segregated bathrooms if they wish.

    The media tends to always put people in two camps. Either you are pro-choice or pro-life. Either you are conservative or liberal. Either you are for love or for hate. The problem is that no one is ever one or the other. We are all real people with pains, hurts, loves, and passions.

    And if we all stopped calling each other names, we might be able to understand each other. Luckily, we now live in a society where the vast majority of Christians no longer use rude and offensive language when speaking of LGBT people, but we now live in a society where people of religious conviction and a social conservative perspective are labelled as bigoted or hateful.

    No matter what you believe, I will show you respect and hear you out, so again, I ask if you would share a cup of coffee with me.

    Attempting to live with Grace and Truth,
    Jeff Mikels

    P.S. If you are interested to read my statement to the City Council in full, I posted it to my blog here: http://jeff.mikels.cc/posts/my-statement-to-the-lafayette-city-council-on-gender-identity/

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  • Front Page Lafayette Tough Questions
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    My Statement to the Lafayette City Council on Gender Identity

    Last night, the Lafayette City Council met to consider putting an amendment into the Lafayette Human Relations Ordinance. Some time ago, the city codified a “Human Relations Ordinance” to fight against discrimination in our town. It created a Human Relations Commission tasked with the job of investigating cases of discrimination in our city and offering suggestions and education to individuals and businesses found to be discriminatory.

    Continue reading

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  • Geekery
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    Solving MMS Problems on Cricket Wireless

    I have an android phone running on the Cricket Wireless network. I followed all their recommended settings, but I still had a major problem. The phone would not send or receive MMS messages when I was connected to Wi-Fi.

    Well, my solution was found on reddit, but I will just give you the quick summary here if you have found the same problem:

    Do everything like Cricket suggests on their APN settings page, but instead of using proxy.aiowireless.net where they tell you to, use the IP address of their servers directly. Pick one of the following numbers and use it instead of the proxy.aiowireless.net.

      <li>192.168.196.78</li>
<li>192.168.196.79</li>
<li>192.168.196.117</li>
<li>192.168.196.118</li>

    That should allow you to continue to use your favorite SMS app but still send and receive MMS regardless of your Wi-Fi settings.

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  • Spiritual Health

    PG-13: Benefits of Eliminating Pornography

    The views expressed in this video are not my own, but the scientific research is fascinating nonetheless. The video is not explicit, but it is not appropriate for children unless you use it as a teaching tool.

     

    As a pastor, I hear the stories all the time.

    One more guy is hooked on Internet Pornography. One more wife is struggling with the feeling that her husband is cheating on her.

    There are so many proposed solutions especially among Christians. We vilify the behavior and try to convince men that they are doing something wrong in the hopes that their internal sense of good and evil and a good dose of teaching about the Holy Spirit will give them the willpower to say “No” to wrongful clicking. If that doesn’t work, we might try support groups and accountability groups and book studies.

    I don’t have time today to analyze these different approaches, but there is one approach I haven’t yet seen—Science. In the video posted above, you can watch a TED talk that includes scientific research into the deleterious effects of Internet Pornography and the benefits of avoiding it. The speaker is clearly not taking a Christian perspective on sexuality, but the research is fascinating nonetheless.

    Especially for men, I want to keep the conversation open on this topic so that guys who struggle with this can find strength to put it behind them once and for all.

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  • Spiritual Health
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    The Ethics of Superintelligence

    Today, during my lunch, I watched a very interesting TED presentation from Nick Bostrom regarding machine intelligence and the difficult questions surrounding it. What I didn’t realize at the time was that Bostrom is a Philosopher more than an engineer. As a result, his talk ended up being about the ethical questions brought on by the potential of computer superintelligence.

    Now, if you don’t have time to listen to the whole talk, I’ll just put the main points here for you: Continue reading

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  • Geekery

    Bash // Create or Attach to Screen Session on Login

    I use GNU Screen for everything I do in Linux… perhaps you do too, but perhaps you are annoyed that every time you log in to a terminal session on your Linux machine, you have to go through the one extra step of reconnecting to your screen session or checking to see if one is already running and then maybe creating a new session.

    Here’s a way to make sure whenever you SSH into your Linux server, you always get right back where you were in your previous screen session just like you left it. The added bonus of this is that whenever you detach from your screen session, you are also automatically logged out of the server.

    Simply add these lines to the bottom of your .bash_profile (watch out for word wrapping).

    # start screen session if not already started
# or connect to screen session if not already in it
echo ''
echo '----------- WE LIKE SCREEN ------------------------------'
if [ ${TERM:0:6} != "screen" ]
then
    echo "Attempting to connect/create screen session."

    # We don't want to forcibly disconnect other sessions if they are
    # Attached, so we check for Detached sessions first
    HAVE_DETACHED=$(screen -list | grep Detached)
    HAVE_ATTACHED=$(screen -list | grep Attached)

    if [ -n "$HAVE_DETACHED" ]
    then
        echo "Attaching to existing screen session"
        exec screen -r

    elif [ -n "$HAVE_ATTACHED" ]
    then
        echo "Existing screen sessions are all attached"
        echo "use 'screen -rd' to detach and attach here."
    else
        echo "There are no running screen sessions."
        echo "Creating new screen session."
        exec screen
    fi
else
        echo "Already in a screen session. Cool."
fi
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  • Geekery
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    Hide Desktop for Distraction Free Writing

    Distraction free writing is all the rage these days, and I’m a huge proponent of the movement because I am very prone to distraction. Why right now, I should be doing something else, but I got distracted with this!

    Anyway, one of my essential tools for a distraction free environment is a totally black desktop with no icons showing. Each operating system has techniques for making this happen, but I have found a solution that works on all operating systems equally. The only requirement is that you have Python installed (tested on 2.7).

    This code runs as an app, so you don’t have to change any operating system settings to get it to work, and as soon as you want to see your desktop again, just double-right-click on the black background and it will exit!

    Here’s the python code to make it happen (watch out for word wrapping).

    #!/usr/bin/python

from Tkinter import *

class App():
    def __init__(self):
        self.root = Tk()
        self.root.overrideredirect(1)

        screen_width = self.root.winfo_screenwidth()
        screen_height = self.root.winfo_screenheight()

        self.frame = Frame(self.root, width=screen_width, height=screen_height,
                           borderwidth=0, relief=RAISED, background="#000000")
        self.frame.bind("<FocusIn>", self.unfocus)
        self.frame.bind("<Button-1>", self.unfocus)
        self.frame.bind("<Double-Button-1>", self.unfocus)
        self.frame.bind("<Double-Button-2>", self.quit)
        self.frame.pack_propagate(False)
        self.frame.pack()

        self.root.geometry('%dx%d+%d+%d' % (screen_width, screen_height, 0, 0))

        self.root.lower();
        # self.root.call('wm', 'attributes', '.', '-topmost', True)
        # self.root.after_idle(self.root.call, 'wm', 'attributes', '.', '-topmost', False)

    def quit(self, event):
        self.root.quit()

    def unfocus(self, event):
        self.root.lower()


app = App()
app.root.mainloop()
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    A Different Question about Gender Differences

    This past week, I tried an experiment.

    I posted a couple images to my Facebook timeline that I thought had the potential to become somewhat viral. That is, I thought these images would be shared around Facebook, and I wanted to see how widely they would go.

    Well, my little experiment took me in a different direction than I thought it would.

    So here’s the back-story. Continue reading

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  • Front Page

    Why are church people so strange?

    Why do church people do . . . ?

    There are a lot of things that church people do that are different from the way the rest of the world lives:

    • Church people go to a church gathering nearly every Sunday while most people in the world rarely do anything “every week” except for weekly obligations like school/work or entertainment choices like eating out, seeing movies, etc.
    • Church people not only attend church gatherings, but they often are actually doing things at those gatherings like playing music, teaching a class, or greeting people.
    • Church people get together in smaller groups for “Bible Study” or “Service Projects” or things like that while most people might have a periodic game night with friends, hang out at the bar, or just stay home watching TV.
    • Church people volunteer their time to do things for church-owned buildings and grounds like cleaning, fixing, and upgrading while the rest of the world looks with apathy, frustration, or even disdain on church buildings taking up valuable real-estate.
    • Church people give money to the church, some even give more than 10% of their entire household income, while the rest of the world generally gives only 3% of their income to all charitable causes combined.

    Why do church people do such weird things?
    Continue reading

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