Global Warming

It's always warmest just before it starts to cool off.

The Comic Books

During the Ohio years we had very little money. My brothers and I were fascinated by comic books, but we could not afford to buy one very often. My mother seem to think that comic books were useful in getting us to read more, so she would allow us to buy one from time to time. We had a stack of them that we kept in a cabinet in the dining room. We would read and reread them a lot. Superman was one of my favorite comic book heroes. I would also marvel at the big "Charles Atlas" muscles that the ads at the back of the comic books would guarantee for the price of a paperback book. At other times my mother would yell at us to stop wasting time reading that junk and get outside and exercise, or pull weeds.

Comic books generally cost about 5 to 10 cents each. There were also some special 3-D comic books that came with special glasses. One lens of the glasses had red clear plastic, the other lens green plastic. These comic books looked very blurry with red and green ink displaced in the picture, until you put the glasses on. Then the pictures looked three-dimensional! It was fantastic. But where were we to get a whole quarter? We could weed the garden for 5 cents an hour. It didn't seem worth it.

Between our house and the center of town was about 1.5 acres of dense, dark woods. We use to roam around in there, exercising, I suppose. One time when I was about six years old I was exploring the woods when I stumbled upon a cache of several dozen comic books. Wow, what a treasure! How could these comic books have come to be there? My first thought was that I had to let my brother James know about this discovery. Quickly I ran to tell him.

I was rather surprised at my brother's cool reception of the news. And when I said that we should take the whole box of comic books into the house before the rain ruined them, James seemed hostile to the idea. Finally he told me that the comic books belonged to my three older brothers, and they wanted to leave them out in the woods to read them at their leisure. But something seemed fishy to me. Where would my brothers get the money for all these comic books? Mom possibly could have given them enough money for a couple of comic books, but Dad would have never permitted her to give them enough money to buy dozens of comic books.

"I think I'll go ask Mom about this," I announced.

"All right, I'll tell you. But you better not tell Mom or Dad. We stole the comic books from the store." I was stunned.

"How did you do it?"

"I'll show you." So we proceeded to the one and only store in Solon. Inside the store it was rather dark; so much stuff was piled up along the walls that the only light came from the top of the windows. "Just act natural and relaxed." But I was very nervous and excited. “You just pick up a comic book, look at it for a few seconds, then put it down. After a while, when no one is looking, you put the comic book under your shirt, like this." James deftly put a comic book under his shirt, and I tried to do the same, but I fumbled badly. "Hurry up. Hurry up! Okay. Then you just walk out casually."

James forgot to tell me that it would not be a good idea to take the comic book back to the house. A little while later I was reading my new comic book in the dining room. For some reason my mother stopped what she was doing and asked to see what I was reading. I showed her.

"Where did you get this?" she asked me point blank.

I tried to avoid the question every way I could, but my mother kept at it. I didn't want to lie, but I sure didn't want to tell her the truth. Finally I confessed to what I had done, leaving my brother out of it. My mother was mad. I had seen my mother angry almost every day of my life, but it quickly blew over. I didn't remember having seen her this mad before. I was a pretty good judge of my mother's anger; so much of my life depended on being able to judge just how mad she was, and how much further I could push it.

"All right,” she said, calling me by my full name so I really knew I was in trouble, "we are going back to the store. Go get a dime from your piggy bank."

Going back to the store was the hardest thing in the world for me. I would have preferred the most savage whipping. But I knew I didn't dare refuse my mother just then, and she didn't look like she was going to cool off for a long time. I had to go.

When we got to the door of the store my mother said that I was to go up to the counter and tell the man that I stole a comic book and was going to pay for it. She was going to wait at the door.

"Oh please, don't make me go by myself! Please go with me!"

"No!! By yourself! Now go!"

I looked up into her eyes. I could see that there was no appeal. Slowly I trudged to the store counter. I felt like a condemned man on the way to the gallows. I hung my head in shame for the crime I had committed. I would have to call myself a thief, losing my good name forevermore.

The store counter was a table no higher than our dining room table, but I was so small that the top was only about eye level. The man who owned and ran the store came over to the counter. I could see his belt above the counter. He seemed to tower over me. I placed my dime on the counter, and mumbled, "This is for a comic book I took." My throat seemed to have something stuck in it.

"What? Whad’ya say?"

I had to say it again, louder. He looked confused. Then he looked around and saw my mother standing in the doorway with the outdoor light streaming around her. Her arms were folded across her chest. Finally he understood. He turned back to me and frowned. "Do you mean to tell me that you stole a comic book from my store?" I nodded my head. For a moment I thought he was going to call the police. "Well, thank you for paying for it. Don't let it happened again."

"I sure won't!" I was crying now, and ran for my mother. It felt so good to have that over with. I was never going to steal anything again, and I never did. My mother put her arms around me. She wasn't angry anymore. Together we walked out into the sunshine. And it rained hard the next day, ruining all the comic books my brothers had in the woods.

The Lake House

I just returned from a short trip to the East Coast. On the flight home I watched the movie "The Lake House," with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. I liked it a lot. I'd call it sentimental, and maybe a chick flick, but it still gets to me. It is very romantic.

Part of me objects to things that don't make intellectual sense, or contradict my view of reality. But you are supposed to suspend disbelief in any movie. I'm getting better at appreciating the emotional truth of something, and ignoring the small stuff - like how could this possibly happen?

Some More Thoughts on Banning Books

I don't mean to be controversial, but sometimes I just feel that itch to express myself on a certain subject. Here are some more thoughts on banning books.

To hear some people talk, we have an unlimited right to read whatever we want to read, without any kind of restrictions at all. Absolute positions permit simple slogans, but thinking people will agree that we need to make choices. What about child pornography? Should that be freely available to anyone? What about classified information? Perhaps not everything that is classified should be classified, but surely reasonable people can see the need to restrict some information that could be damaging to the safety and well being of the country. What about your personal health and financial information? Should everyone, including potential identity thieves, have free access to it?

It would go a long way in an intelligent discussion if all of us who love our First Amendment rights would make explicit recognition that there needs to be limitations to what we should be permitted to read. Then we could get down to the serious business of determining where the line should be drawn.

Reading a well crafted book can be a life changing experience. Those of us who love books experience vicariously what is written. A well written book is so much more than dry facts and information. Such books have power because they touch our feelings, and because we live for a while a life different from our own. We experience joy and sorrow, enlightenment and confusion as we participate with the author in the experience.

That is the wonderful blessing of a good book, but it is also the danger of the wrong kind of book. Not because of "harmful ideas" in the book, but because the method in which the ideas are presented works on our feelings, not on our intellect. One book that is often challenged as unsuitable for children contains a vivid rape scene. This book can have a powerful effect on an individual. By reading the book some may gain a greater appreciation for rape victims. They may have a good life-changing experience.

But for others of us, particularly the young and inexperienced, reading such a graphic description can actually be similar to being raped. I've known a few rape victims, and I've read about a lot more of them, and the experience has always been traumatic and damaging to the individual. Trust and peace have been shattered, and frequently normal male-female relations become difficult or impossible for the rest of their life. While it is conceivable that a rape victim might learn something good from the experience, I think all responsible adults would like to protect the women in our community from becoming a rape victim. Sometimes, too, such books make some men think that rape might be an acceptable activity.

It is up to parents, teachers, and the school board to spare our children from experiences which may be harmful to them. This isn’t always easy to determine. We recognize that many experiences may be good in a way, or that they may not be harmful to all of the children. Children differ in their susceptibilities. What may be laughed off by one, will cause nightmares and lifelong trauma in another. What might be wonderful and moving to an English teacher who has seen it all, might be a horrible experience to a youngster.

Some believe that the sensitive youngsters are adequately protected if the parents are permitted to work with the teacher in selecting a less objectionable book to study. In an ideal world, where every parent is closely involved with their children, where every parent is fully informed of the dangers of certain books, and where there is no peer pressure to read whatever everyone else is reading, this might work. We assume that no parent would allow his child to be raped in class. But I wonder how many parents would actually make a formal objection to the teacher or school board if real rape was a required school activity. It is not an experiment I want the school to conduct.

Each of us should show restraint in what we read. If we find that the material is unsuitable for us, we should put it away and not finish reading it. We should be our own censors of what we read, and we should vigilantly protect ourselves from harmful material. Children should be taught when they are young to distinguish between good and bad material, and how to exercise self-restraint. Unfortunately, in their youthfulness and inexperience children are not always wise, nor have they all been adequately instructed. How can we expect our children to be self-disciplined when they don't see such an example in the home, or in the schools? If all they are taught is that those who challenge books are the enemies of freedom to read, will they restrain themselves? If they believe that books are only restricted because someone doesn't want them exposed to the ideas in the book, as though a book were merely an intellectual source of data and information, how will they learn to make good choices in what they read?

What is Evil?

Recently I've been involved in a discussion regarding Swedenborg's ideas. That discussion has taken place on a blog of Whistler. The blog is http://ltexperiences.blogspot.com/ and the name of the subject was "The Sun," posted Tuesday September 26, 2006. Here are some of my thoughts about the nature of evil, in comparison to Swedenborg's ideas, as I understand them.

It was in an email that I first heard about the theory that evil is just the absence of good. It was one of those stories passed around the Internet of how a humble Christian boy completely put to shame an old, experienced, and arrogant atheist professor who for many years had successfully shaken the faith of his students in his class. I didn’t know it might be called the Swedenborg principle.

While I thought the argument was brilliant and clever, it didn't seem quite right to me. It did a nifty job of explaining how God, who is all good, could create evil. The fallacy of the argument is a little subtle. There is some truth in the idea. I do agree with the scripture, "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (James 4:17.) But is a failure to do good all there is to evil?

It is true that darkness is not a physical thing, in itself. It is the absence of light. Cold also is just the absence of heat. Darkness and cold are just mental concepts, the physical reality is light and heat. Are good and evil like that, a monopole, or are they a dipole? We can measure light and heat, but how do you measure goodness?

It is possible to construct a box such that there is absolutely no light in the box. Complete and utter darkness is attainable. There is a zero point of light in a space. You can't get darker than completely dark. There is also a zero point of temperature. You can't get colder than absolute zero. It is physically impossible. This seems like an essential consequence of Swedenborg's theory of good and evil; there is a finite, definite lower limit to evil. If something has no good in it, then it is as evil as it can get. Do we really believe this?

Well, how do we judge between good and evil? All things which are good come from God. That which is of God invites and entices you to do good continually, love God, believe in Christ, and serve him. We have the Spirit of Christ to know the difference between good and evil.

To my way of thinking the zero point of goodness would be the complete lack of desire to do good, love God, believe in Christ, and serve him. According to the Swedenborg theory absolute evil should be complete indifference to God. Yet it seems to me that man is capable of sinking much lower in evil than mere indifference.

Evil, according to the LDS theology, is that which comes from the devil, for the devil is an enemy to God, and fights against him continually, and invites and entices to sin, and to do that which is evil continually, and teaches you to not serve God and to not believe in Christ.

The first recorded example of evil on the earth is when the serpent
(Lucifer) came to Adam and Eve to tempt them to eat of the forbidden fruit. It doesn't seem to me that Lucifer is merely indifferent to the well being of Adam and Eve. He is actively trying to bring them to harm. Lucifer wants them to die. He wants them to be disobedient to God. He wants them to suffer. If he merely lacked goodness he wouldn't care, one way or the other. Instead Lucifer or the devil is miserable, and he seeks to make all men miserable like himself. The devil is anything but indifferent.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan we read that a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. A priest came by, who ought to have helped him, but passed by on the other side. A Levite did the same thing. Now, the priest and the Levite apparently had no good in them, because they did nothing to serve God. They were guilty of the sin of omission; knowing to do good, but doing it not. It seems to me, then, that by Swedenborg's principle the priest and the Levite should be at the extreme of evil. But weren't the thieves even worse? Had the thieves merely had no good in them they would have had no desire to harm the man; just no desire to do him good. Yet they seem to have had a very definite desire to take the man's money, which by itself would hurt the man.

It could have been worse. The Samaritan could have been a person who hated the Jews and wanted to hurt them. He could have seen the helpless Jew on the road and decided to go over and pour salt on his wounds. He could have tortured the helpless man, perhaps telling him how he was going to find the man's wife and kids and torture them as well. In fact, it seems to me, that there is no end to the depth of depravity that we are capable of imagining the Samaritan might have done. Where is the zero point of evil? What is the absolute worst thing a person could do in the situation? The sad thing is, that whatever evil thing you think of, someone can imagine an even more evil thing.

I do not see that hate is merely the lack of love. When we go in a direction of desiring to inflict pain and suffering on another, to glory in wickedness, we sink to greater and greater depths of depravity that seems to have no bottom, and we are in a place much worse than the complete absence of goodness.

If evil is a negative, destructive enticement to pull us away from God, we might ask, "So where did evil come from? Surely not from God." The LDS theology has a somewhat unique answer to that. There are some things that God did not create. For example, matter has always existed. God organized that matter when he created the universe we know. Creation for God is much the same thing as when we take paint, paint brush, and canvas and create a picture. We don't create the paint in the picture; we just organize the paint into a beautiful painting.

We like to think that everything had a beginning. Our finite minds have trouble contemplating anything else. Yet, some things have just always existed. You cannot logically question why they exist, because a reason makes sense only if someone or some force of nature brought them into existence. Then you can ask why. I believe that God, matter, good, evil, the light of truth, and the relationship between good and evil have always existed.

The difference between the Swedenborg principle and LDS theology may appear subtle, but I think there are significant ramifications. As I see it, for Swedenborg good and evil are states of being, not forces. If the universe were such that there is a pole for infinite goodness, but no opposite poll for evil, then the devil would be just a convenient abstraction for the lack of God. He could not be a physical being, but only the absence of everything good. He would be nothing. Evil could neither attract nor entice if this were the case. Evil could not fight against goodness, nor drive it out. In the physical world darkness does not fight against light, cold does not drive out heat. Cold things always absorb heat to a lesser or greater extent, and dark places accept light without active rejection. But in reality I believe we are active agents, and can be enticed by both good and evil, and we have the freedom to choose the direction we will go.

The Dance Dress


On her 16th birthday Rebecca was asked out on a date -- Homecoming, a formal dance. She has less than a week to find a dress, or have her mother make a dress. The pressure is on. Rebecca is so excited.

Why we date.

Rebecca turns 16 on Saturday. She will then be able to date. She has heard some rumors that a certain boy is going to ask her to the homecoming dance. She thinks that would be okay. She likes the boy, she likes to dance, and she gets a new pretty dress to wear. I think the pretty dress is the most appealing part of the deal.

I’ve noticed that frequently young women secretly want to date in order to get a new dress, as an excuse to dress up, or as an opportunity to wear something new they bought but haven’t found the appropriate occasion to wear it. This is not something I realized when I was in high school or college. Back then I just thought the young woman was excited to go out with me.

On the other hand, many of the young men I knew when I was in school frequently just wanted someone, anyone suitable, to go with them to a certain event. It wasn’t that they had studied long and hard to determine which young woman they wanted to get to know and to whom they wanted to begin a relationship. The guys weren’t looking for a relationship at all, but it seems that this is the idea the young women had about why they were being asked on a date.

Maybe it is just as well we have these illusions.