Am I a heretic? Maybe. If believing that God is all powerful, all loving, wiser than His creation and perfectly willing and capable of saving all of His children makes me a heretic, sign me up.
Three years ago (almost to the day) I took the picture above. Shayna and Kayla began what they called their "Sister Sleep Over". Since that time Shayna has hardly spent a night in her own room. Kayla would never admit it. But, I think one of the reasons the Sister Sleep Over began was Kayla was scared to spend the night alone. She would never close her door at night unless Shayna was in there with her. The girls would wake up every morning and read together. They also would lie in bed at night and talk for way too long. But, time passes and everything must change. A couple of nights ago, the girls decided to go back to their own rooms for the night. Just another sign they are growing up (sniffle). Ty was trying to prepare Shayna for the day when Kayla would decide she wanted her room back because she (and I thought) Shayna would be crushed when that day came. But, Shayna is in agreement with the decision since Kayla was telling her to stop snuggling her and to keep her feet off of her. Now Shayna can go back to sleeping in the exact center of her bed like she did before the Sister Sleep Overs began.
Ah.... good times... good times.... Why do they have to grow up?
On Friday, Tiger Woods, one of my favorite athletes/celebrities of al time issued an apology for his affair. In fact, I'd say Tiger is my favorite athlete of all time. I, rather hastily, posted that I was "not impressed" by his apology- probably a poor choice of words on my part. As I said in an earlier post, I think there are some valuable lessons for all of us to learn from Tiger's unfortunate situation- Why Tiger's Downfall Is A Good Thing Anything that doesn't kill us makes us stronger. We're going to learn from someone's mistakes. It's better and less painful if we can learn from others' mistakes. In the case of Tiger Woods, while he's learning from his mistakes, we have an opportunity to do the same.
I want to make this very clear though. I am not "judging" Tiger. I am not angry with Tiger. I want to see Tiger "restored". I want to see Tiger back better and stronger than ever. I want to see Tiger happy. I've been watching Tiger since he was 13. I've been on the golf course with Tiger and seen him hit one of those monster drives. I am a fan.
I want to clarify my earlier remark about Tiger's apology not "impressing me". It's not that Tiger needed to say the right words to gain my forgiveness. Tiger's done nothing personally to me and there is nothing for me to forgive him for. Sure, I'm disappointed in him, but for him not for me. I don't think he yet truly appreciates how much his behavior has impacted his fans, his family, his wife, his kids and his legacy. I think Tiger is still compartmentalizing, still controlling, still wanting to have things in just his own way. While he took the blame for the affairs, he doesn't seem to want to see that that's what has led to the media circus that now engulfs his wife and his kids. In that sense, I don't think Tiger really gets how truly interdependent we all are.
When a man has an adulterous affair, it's not just his own business. When we are in a family everything we do has a real and direct impact on those in the family with us. When you have kids, an affair is not just cheating on your wife, it's cheating on your kids. When you are a public figure you can multiple this effect. Tiger, when he had his affairs, was not only putting his own reputation at risk, he was putting his wife's and his kids' emotional well being at risk. I understand why Tiger pleaded for the press to leave his wife and kids out of this brouhaha. But, unfortunately that is not the way it works. Even for us mere mortals, when we screw up it usually hurts someone else close to us. This is something we have to keep in mind as we make our decisions on a day-to-day basis. None of us can do it perfectly. Most of us don't even do it very well. But, part of the path of Buddhism is working to attain that kind of insight- understanding interdependence, karma, action/reaction and making wise decisions. Tiger must have been sleepwalking through his life not to realize the path he was on. Not only did he had an "affair", he was having multiple affairs in such a way that it's not surprising that he got caught, it's amazing he didn't get caught sooner. Obviously, something was missing from his life. It's hard for most of us to imagine that you could be Tiger Woods and need something else. But, clearly he did. Unfortunately, he could not see that grasping for that thing that was missing was perching him precariously over a very long fall- risking almost everything he already had.
Tiger Woods is now learning and teaching us all about interdependence. His actions have cost his family, his business partners, his sponsors (estimates are that some of his sponsor companies have lost billions of dollars in market capitalization over this) and his fans. Some tell us we shouldn't care about our "heroes" or celebrities or put our faith in them. And, they are right. We shouldn't. But, we do. We pay them millions of dollars a year in exchange for being able to live a little vicariously through them. Some parents use them as role models. When they accept that money, they make a social contract with us and when they fail so miserably, they break that contract and we all suffer.
I truly hope that Tiger and Elin can work through their difficulties. He's a fellow human being and I hate seeing any human being suffer. I hope that his kids will one day see how their parents worked through a very difficult time. I hope that Tiger comes back, owns every record there is to own in golf and leaves the kind of legacy he and his father hoped for. I hope that Tiger truly realizes that even though he's the most famous athlete in the world and could buy anything he wants, he still has to live by the rules we all have to live by. I think that his press conference on Friday was a good start on his road to recovery. As much as I miss seeing him on the golf course, I am glad that he is taking time to reflect and hopefully to grow and to learn. I can't wait to see him back though. The Masters wont' be the Masters if he isn't there.
My entire life has been wrapped up in theology one way or another. Being given the scary image of God I was given as a child made me realize at a very early age that what we think about God has a very real impact on our lives. I know most of us go through life quite nicely ignoring theology and God. Nexus (the church I attend) has the slogan- Faith. Life. Connected. as we commit to making a conscious effort to bring faith and our real lives together. Events in recent days have reminded me that the results of bad theology can bring real, serious and even tragic consequences right here in the real world.
The conviction of Scott Roeder who shot George Tiller the "abortion doctor" as the doctor worked in church was a natural extension of a world view that views abortion as murder (which I'm not 100% convinced is a theological position). I hate the term "abortion doctor" by the way. It makes him seem less than fully human. George Tiller was more than an "abortion doctor". The idea it was good and right to shoot George Tiller stems from the idea that it's good to do "God's work" even if God's work involves premeditated murder. Roeder is now facing mandatory life in prison with the possibility of parole when he's 76. Just motives or not, Scott Roeder is a murderer.
And, we have the missionaries in Haiti caught smuggling children out of the country. when I first heard the story, I thought it was a misunderstanding, that they simply didn't have the proper paperwork and were on a humanitarian mission. But, it appears they knew they didn't have permission to get the kids, may have even lured them with promises of living in riches in the United States and may have known some of the kids were not orphans. Their justification it seems comes from a theology that says God only loves Christians, God will only "save" Christians and anyone who is not a Christian will go to eternal torment. If you believe that, it's certainly logical and justifiable to do anything to save someone, including kidnapping them. I am also guessing there is a certain amount of American arrogance there thinking the children are better off with white strangers in America than with their own families in Haiti since Haiti is such a poor (and maybe accursed) place.
As the missionaries went to court yesterday, what may have been their arrogance and their misguided theology showed up again. They were all smiles thinking they were headed home. They had chartered a flight. They said (in the same sentence) that they hoped God's will would be done and that they would be headed home soon. Apparently, in their minds God's will was for them to be exonerated. No such luck. They were sent back to jail and are facing the possibility of life in prison. Just motives or not, the missionaries were trying to kidnap children.
May God bless the missionaries, their families and the Scott Roeder, his family and the family of Dr. Tiller (his victim). What tragedies we create when we do whacky things in the name of G-d. Murder , kidnapping, flying airplane into buildings. And Americans have the gall to criticize Islam because it supposedly produces terrorists. What does our Christian theology produce? Murderers and kidnappers?
I explained to the girls last night that the plight of the missionaries is a natural consequence of their theology. A theology that says God only loves a certain group and, will torment everyone he doesn't love for all eternity is one that justifies any means to "save" people. As a Christian singer I used to love to listen to sang "You don't ask a drowning man if he wants to be saved.". Kayla told me she didn't like that view of G-d. Neither do I Kayla. And, more importantly, I don't believe it anymore.
Every other blogger under the sun has given his opinions about the new iPad announced by Apple a couple of days ago. I'm no technology expert. But, I thought I might as well join in also.
I was just reading an article about "confirmation bias" which is basically we'll look at something from the point of view that confirms what we already believe. Apple lovers will love pretty much anything they announce. Likewise they'll often hate anything Microsoft. I'm not immune to this. I know it exists for me. But, since so many people were saying this would be a Kindle killer, I have confirmation bias on both sides. I just became a Kindle owner a month ago after waiting for a couple of years for the right time. I'm both an Amazon freak and an Apple freak. I buy tons and tons of stuff from Amazon. I have 2 iMacs, a MacBook, an iPhone, an iPod Touch and about 8 iPods in the house. I was nervous because I heard Apple would be announcing their tablet and knew I'd want one. I think I made the right decision though.
1.) The iPad is not an ereader- the Kindle 2 is just about the perfect form factor for reading. It weighs in at just under half the weight of the iPad. It uses eink technology which, while not really great on contrast, is much easier on the eyes for long reading sessions. It includes "Whispernet" technology so I can buy and download a book in less than 60 seconds. It includes this over 3G for life, for free. The cost is $259 now. It does not include WiFi (and I couldn't care less). It has a lousy browser (but I have an iPhone). It doesn't have much storage. But Amazon's model allows me to keep my books on their servers and I doubt I'll be reading 1,500 books on my Kindle before I replace it anyway.
2.) I already have a MacBook- the iPad is a great device for people who want to couch surf the internet. But, at 16 GB of RAM on the base model I couldn't even fit my entire music and picture libraries on it (forget about video). If I didn't have the MacBook, I'd probably spring for one of these instead because, for me, the laptop is something I only use when I travel or if I get tired of the little screen on my iPhone. Add 3G and a decent amount of memory to this thing and it's really close to laptop prices where you can get a real hard drive or even Netbooks that have a reasonable amount of storage.
3.) No camera- what??!!! Every cellphone in existence has a camera now and Apple didn't put a camera on this?
4.) No great new input technology- it was rumored it would have a keyboard you could touch type on or voice recognition or even handwriting recognition (like the Newton did years ago). Nope. Zilch, zip, nada. Just an oversized keyboard similar to what's on the iPhone. I wonder if people will be able to type any faster on it than they can thumb-type on the iPhone.
5.) Price- I'm torn on the pricing issue. The $499 entry sounds very attractive. But, with no camera, no 3G and only 16 GB of RAM, you're going to be upgrading probably within two years. In my family that doesn't mean it would be disposable. But, it would probably get handed down. Pretty expensive considering I bought my MacBook about four years ago and it's still going strong. I don't think I'd invest in the $830 model because even it's going to be "obsolete" relatively soon as machines with more memory inevitably become available. Heck, I have 32 GB on my iPhone. Another problem with the pricing of this is everyone who buys one already has a cell phone (many of us iPhones on AT&T). And you want another $30/month for unlimited data for the iPad? I think not. I'll just use it where WiFi is available, thank you.
Now, what does the iPad do well?
1.) Web surfing- I think it's the perfect web surfing device. Pages would come up full screen. It's a PAIN surfing the web on a 3.5" iPhone screen. Multitouch surfing of the web is so cool, kind of like the computers in Minority Report. Swish, swipe, pinch. I love it.
2.) E-mail- the email interface looks really nice.
3.) Address book and calendar- looks like Apple finally got this right. Hope they bring those to the desktop.
4.) Games- I don't game much on my iPhone or my laptop. But, this would be cool for games.
5.) Pictures- great way to show some pictures.
6.) eReader- I wouldn't buy it as an eReader. But, if I had the choice of reading on this, my laptop or my iPhone, I'd choose the iPad.
7.) Doesn't multitask- I can see why multitasking was left off of the iPhone and I like the fact it was. It would slow performance as people leave multiple apps running in the background and it would suck battery life. My iPhone can barely make it through a day without multitasking. These are meant to be limited use devices, not desktop replacements. I don't need to multitask on my tablet. Good move, Apple. Don't screw it up by offering multitasking on iPhone OS 4.
Bottom line, the iPad is not the second coming the hype said it would be. It's a very large iPod Touch. I wouldn't even compare it to the iPhone since it doesn't have a camera, can't make calls and you have to pay more than $100 to get the capability to connect 3G (and you still won't be able to text on the thing, presumably since it won't have a phone number). It's certainly no "Kindle killer". It's a cool toy and yes I want one. But, I'll probably have to "accidentally" drop my MacBook before I can get one.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ca74f408-6617-447e-82fd-2a707f5034aa)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=47d77e4c-beb5-449f-80c3-ceda6388383e)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6beb7fc7-fdde-48ba-a0ad-bf9d91d7efca)