Monday, December 22, 2008

Censoring Global Warming

Dec 18, on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers said:

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant.Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”


Meyers is the 2nd CNN meterologist to challenge the indea that global warming is a result of human activity. In 2007 Rob Marciano said that Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth had inaccuracies and that he didn't think global warming caused Katrina. He got such flak for it, he recanted the next day. Hmmm.

You can read the full article here. In it you'll find links to another equally interesting report from the Business and Media Institute on how reporting on Global Warming has been censored in the media. No big surprise there, for those who've been paying attention, but BMI took a look at the numbers, noting both how many times the MSM reported from the side that Global Warming is universally agreed to be true, versus how many times they reported a dissenting view. The ratio is horrendously lopsided (only 20% of stories even suggested there might be differing views on this issue.)

It's also lopsided with regard to their so-called experts and interviewees. For every 13 proponents, there was one skeptic on average. And among proponents, only 15% were actually scientists. The other 85% were politicians, celebrities, journalists or unidentified people on the street. You can read that report summary here: Global Warming Censored

~~~

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Failure

"Some of the very best lessons that God has to teach us are often missed because they come in the back door of our lives. They are sprung on us and we are not ready to take them in the particular package in which God delivers them, and it's easy to miss them. However, when we learn to wait upon the Lord and His timing, then we will begin to see things from the divine perspective. For example, FAILURE. That's one of the back door experiences in life because we are so success-oriented. It is our interpretation that every failure represents a waste of time, or a setback. When in reality, failure might very well be the avenue to teach us that special lesson which could never be learned without it: waiting upon God."

~From Tree of Lifes for 2000...

The last time I read this lesson, I applied it to large failures -- failure to sell the book, stay in print, acquire readers (none of which, I realize now, I have any control over). But this time I'm seeing it on a small scale: a daily occurrence in my life. That's what's been going on for some time with writing. I measure success by writing something that I will keep -- good, solid, material. Anything else is a degree of failure. I'm not producing! Me. I. But shift it on to Him: I'm to be waiting on His timing, not my own. And every day there is a failure it reminds me I have to go back to Him.

If the book was just writing itself, flowing onto the page smoothly, I'd not be learning a thing.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Waiting

Remember that in a period of waiting, when the door is closed, that doesn't mean you're out of the will of God, it means you're right in the will of God. The open door is the exception in life, and the rest is filled with red lights. Our problem is often not our weakness, but our competence. Our professional expertise, our brains; we are highly capable, we don't really need Him... [Except He'll make sure we eventually see that we most certainly do need him.]

We're to wait in stability and confidence. Silently.

Waiting on God is resting, not worrying.

--From Tree of Lifes for 2000, Robert R. McLaughlin, p82

Reading these concepts I can see the purpose in what I'm experiencing. The approach of the deadline makes those waiting periods that occur in the midst of the rewriting process harder. There is always the temptation to look into the future and try to put it all together, to see how much work there is and how I'm going to do it all -- delusional for sure, since I really don't know at this point. (I'm actually thinking that I'm not going to have to go through all the events that I set down in my first draft, that things are going to be cut out and consolidated, but right now, I don't know which ones)

But in waiting under these conditions, and doing it confidently and in rest, I would truly be giving it to him. I can trust Him to handle it all in accordance with His plan, not mine. Trust Him to move me to work when it's time and relax while I wait. If I was waiting for someone to arrive at the house, I would consciously dink around with unimportant tasks so that when the time comes and the arrive I could drop it all and be ready to visit with them...

Some of the things I turn to during the blank, waiting periods really are no different from the dinking around one might do while waiting for a guest to arrive.

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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Let Him Do It

Today I thought I'd set down some recent thoughts I've been grappling with, spawned as much from our daily Bible classes as from what I'm dealing with in my life.

It's a little bit confusing. Or seems so. I know I'm to live in peace and relaxation in the Lord. He has won the victory already, and in Him so have I. His burden is easy, His load is light. I am not called to torture myself with guilt and fear. I'm not supposed to be occupied with my performance, neither how bad it is, nor what to do about it/how to improve it. I'm already holy in His eyes and am to live one day at a time, focused on Him.

But when I get stuck in the writing, as I have been repeatedly of late, instead of waiting patiently for Him to move in me, I get antsy and restless and anxious. As I'm flitting around from thing to thing (reading email, or Drudge, vacuuming, writing in my journal) the anxiety and condemnation mount.

"You have no self discipline! Get to work! Your time is running out! Here's a vision of the disaster that awaits you!"

Now the anxiety swells into panic as I contemplate the vision... This is NOT living in the Royal Family Honor Code. This is sinning. Guilt and panic are not conviction. They are sins, spawned by arrogance. There is now NO condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Cease striving and know that I am God. He will do all He has assigned me to do. When I am afraid I will trust in Him. Stand still and see the deliverance of the Lord.

Condemnation and panic are how the world motivates. They are how I in my old nature have long motivated myself. They are in fact, my flesh's most powerful and oft-used motivators, so when I hit the lulls when my mind is not actively engaged with production, when I hit the blank spaces, that's when the flesh begins to seek control.

But I think, since God has said He is the one doing the work here, since He knows the whole story and could enable me to write it all at once, any time He wishes, but has not ... I think perhaps it is so I will back off this function of me trying to control my output and really just have to trust Him. Accept fully that I might miss the new deadline and trust Him to handle that.

Stop trying to predict or control what will happen and let His plan unfold and let Him take care of you. He loves you. He is for you. He really could give you the story in one complete download, or step by step with no gaps, no closed door periods. But He's not doing that, and you have to stop trying to blame yourself and trying to get yourself to do something. Stop looking to yourself and some improvement of your performance to solve the problem. You KNOW that's wrong. Relax and let Him parcel it out in HIS timing. Our lessons have repeatedly been about us stepping aside, that it's His work, not ours...

You must concentrate on recalling those concepts and believing them.

~~~

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

650 Dissent on Global Warming

Wow. Today I discovered an article on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Press Blog titled, UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

The subtitle is "Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History' "

You can imagine how pleased I was to find this! It's coming out of Poznak, Poland where the UN global warming conference is going on and which "is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN."

650 international scientists now claim there is no man-made global warming. That number is 12 times the 52 scientists who authored the UN's 2007 Summary for Policy makers.

Here are some quotes:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

I especially like this one, because it says exactly what I believe, that is that Global warming is a hoax, created and sustained for the purpose of gaining control of a large group of people:

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

In fact, I read another article about how for the first time in all of our history is is finally possible to actually have a one world government and that global concerns like the energy crisis and stopping global warming may just be the forces that will overcome our natural inclination toward national identities to bring about this one world order...

Other reports excerpted and linked to:

Sea Level rise 'has stumbled since 2005'

Recent worldwide land warming NOT a result of increasing greenhouse gases

2008 will be the coolest year of the decade..

And here we have President-elect Obama and the Democrats promising all this green activity and "change," our government looking at forcing the auto industry to make green cars -- should they actually be able to get their hands on those businesses and nationalize them -- so we can "save" the world. It's jaw-dropping. Wonder what will happen next!

(I can't believe the media would not report on this, but just now I did a quick scan of MSNBC and saw nothing about it. Of course the full report has not yet been released, but this, to me is huge news....

Having found nothing on the main page of MSNBC I clicked on weather and discovered the main article was "Warming Seas cited as World's Reefs Degrade". Hmmm

Then I went to CNN and they at least had an article on the Poznak climate talks with these "story highlights:"

"Climate experts hopeful politicians will agree a clear strategy at U.N. talks in Poznan."

"CEO The Climate Group: "We are moving towards a robust global framework"

"Global Climate Network urge leaders to focus on rolling out technology and finance"

So it sounds like they're full steam ahead over at CNN...Well, maybe tomorrow there will be something)

If you want to read the entire article on the 650 dissenters at the U.S. Senate Committee for Environment and Public Works, it is HERE.

~~~

Sunday, December 07, 2008

The Grinding Wheel -- Part 2


Wheel of Pain photo from the Conan the Barbarian

I got several responses to my blog of last Tuesday, the one with the nonstop, from kind readers offering comfort, encouragement, counsel and prayer. Thank you. I do appreciate your concern, your words and your prayers.

However, I felt quite foolish in realizing I'd created in some a sense of undue concern because I'd failed to communicate the fact that the crisis had been largely resolved by the time I got to the end of the nonstop. Or rather my thinking had been adjusted.

That's probably a shortcoming of the nonstop form, where you just set the timer and write whatever comes to mind for the designated period of time. Since I often start nonstops precisely because I'm stuck and frustrated or feeling like I can't write, it's common that the beginning of them is the ranty, gripey outpouring that appeared in Tuesday's blog. It's in the process of setting all that stuff down, that I see the lies for what they are, and inevitably get around to thinking truth instead. Sometimes that change doesn't always make it clearly to the page, because once the light has gone on and the struggle has ended, the pressure to keep writing goes away. (Or the timer went off... )

Since I had traveled through my frustration and despair to the metaphor of the grinding wheel and found that concept helpful, it seemed to me others might benefit from reading of my progression, moving from sinful, frustrated, self-absorbed, doubting thoughts, to the solution to any problem, which is always to remember who we are in Him, and get our eyes back on him. I also believed He was nudging me to post it, even though, raw and disjointed as it was, I wasn't sure anyone would even want to read it.

The crying jag did not come because I felt bad, though I see now that that was not remotely clear in the nonstop. It was more an expression of a deep and powerful emotion closer to appreciation than anything. The way God just breaks into the middle of your thinking and says the most increadible things. The fact He's there hearing it all, knowing exactly what silly path his child has taken for the moment and then exactly what it takes to get her back under His wings.

The point where the Lord said to me, "That is what made Conan strong" was what it took for me then. And I was amazed at how He had taken the bitter, frustrated direction of my thoughts (it's hard work and I'm walking around in circles) and in a second transformed the entire metaphor into something wonderful. Something encouraging, but something true. He showed me the truth of the situation, when I was looking at it through lie-tinted glasses. That blew my mind.

To be specific: the grinding wheel involves hard work, pain, and the perception of purposelessness, all of which are made more intense when you think you shouldn't be in it. But when you back up and realize that you have been put into it deliberately by God for His glory and your growth, that He in his perfection has chosen this very thing for you in all its specific detail, then you realize there is purpose. And wanting above all else to be conformed to His image, no matter what it takes, then the grinding wheel becomes not only acceptable but a thing of strange beauty.

That's what I was hoping to convey in that last post...

~~~

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

The Grinding Wheel

Nonstop from earlier today:

I’m out of fellowship. I don’t know why. I think it’s because… I don’t know. I’m feeling very small and insignificant. Things are hard. The book is hard. It’s not going right. I think about the criticisms sure to come, the fact people just aren’t going to like it because it’s not what they are expecting.
They like those short stupid books I don’t like. So I’m not going to write one of those short stupid, nondoctrinal books that I don’t like. I’m going to write a book that’s not short, but still stupid and hardly any doctrine because I don’t know what I’m doing. This is frustrating. Is it because I’m not writing what I care about? No. Because I had this same problem with …

It was reading that article by Koontz yesterday! Now I’m down in the… no there’s tons of stuff besides that. The hope has fled. The book sucks. I can’t get it to be better than sucky. So I don’t want to do anything.

Father I need help. What do I think about? You called me to do this. You are, in fact, doing it through me. Then let me see something. Let me see...

I got distracted and now I’ve used up my time playing with my keyboard and I can’t type and…

Where was I? God has assigned me this task. To write this book. He will do it through me. I can only do the best that I can do and if it seems terribly lame, oh well. It’s got to be what He wants because He chose me and assigned me to do this.

Thinking about what others are going to think is totally wrong. Caring what people think of what I’m doing is wrong. And that’s what I’ve been doing here. Caring what people think. Thoughts of critics of Koontz come in. I don’t feel safe. I fear the criticism and … yet…. Of course. It’s in man’s nature to be critical and to find fault. You have been told that you are foolish to care what people think. You have to capture those thoughts.

Father, I need a clear path. Jesus… you didn’t care. You didn’t entrust yourself to them. How? What’s the line of thought I need here?

Feel bad because you're worried about what people think? Name that. I’ve been told not to do that. I’ve been told to care what God thinks. And what does God think? That I’ve already won it all. I already have everything in Him. He is seated at the right hand of God, master and ruler of the universe and I am in Him. So… why do I care what a grasshopper thinks? Which is pretty much what we all are compared to God.

The master of the universe, the creator of everything loved me so much He sent his son to die for me, so I could have everything, so I would not have to concern myself with what people think. For me to do so anyway… is gross.

Yes, the battle is intense. Sometimes I’m right in there. Sometimes I can see it clearly. I can see the reality of the word, the substance of the truth. But other times... I doubt.

What did Scott say about my work? NEVER DOUBT YOUR GIFT!!!!!!

And here you turn right around a week later and you’re doubting it. Totally. You think you’re all done, all washed up. That nothing is going to happen. That everything is going to crumble into nothing. RotGK is going to go Out of Print, and then the rest of it is a waste and… no one cares, no one likes it, it’s so hard, it’s not making any sense, I can’t even see the importance of it.

All I seem to hear in my head now is that it’s irrelevant. Why am I messing with Nephilim? The book should be about mystery doctrine! I’m not getting any good spiritual stuff in it at all, because the … because I can’t… because…

I think that’s what’s bugging me the most. There’s no spiritual value here. It’s hard. It seems wrong. It’s frustrating. I don’t know why. Why is it so hard? Shouldn’t it be easy? Lord you said you’d do it, so why aren’t you? Or if you are… could you give me a glimpse or something? If you want me to keep slogging in what seems to be a circle of going nowhere. Hard, hard work that’s just going to be eaten up, taken away. I’m just a slave in one of those pushing wheels. Where you go round and round and it grinds the wheat or whatever it does. I’m thinking of Conan the Barbarian in that wheel of pain thing. And…

And the Lord says, “But that is what made Conan strong.”

[Silence. Wonder. Amazement.]

Then I had a big crying-jag meltdown. Because I don’t feel strong. I feel like all I’m doing is blowing it. I’m doubting. I can’t make application. I can’t make myself work. The time shortens. I’m failing constantly. What I want to do, I’m not; what I don’t want to do, I am.

There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. My yoke is easy, My burden is light. Why are you condemning yourself all the time? Why are you finding fault with the work and yourself all the time?

Didn’t your pastor just say, hasn’t he said repeatedly, "Stop focusing on your performance and what you’re doing? Stop trying to do better and focus on HIM. Stop looking at the problem. Look at HIM. The solution. What He did." He died so I would not have to live in bondage and condemnation. There is now no condemnation. Who is he who brings a charge against God's elect? Who is he who condemns? God is the one who justifies. Why are you condemning, when God has pronounced you justified and righteous?

No one really understands what you're going through. Well, God, yes, but not ... And look what happened to you this weekend. All the stuff that went on, the problems, the difficulties. The mishaps. You serve and wipe yourself out, are all beaten and battered and sore from standing and Quigley, and all that… and there is this… deadline. This task. This thing…

Ah. Yes. Don’t think of that. When you are at the grinding wheel you are just moving around in a circle. It’s hard, you can’t stop, but there’s not a lot of distraction.

So correct thoughts here are… I am already one hundred percent accepted in Christ. God sees me as perfect, as righteous, as justified, I’m living with Him forever. He sent his son to die for me – so I can live in freedom and peace and humility NOW. It’s arrogance that thinks you should do better.

Grindstone. You can’t see what you’re doing. You are putting out all this effort and the wheat is being ground, but you can’t see it. You don’t know what’s happening. And then the flour is taken away. And you don’t know what happens to it. It’s used to make all sorts of different things, that feed people, nourish them, make them happy, satisfied, build them up, give them strength…

But even that doesn't matter. My job is to focus on Him. To do this task with my eyes fixed firmly on Him. Maybe I am walking around and around in a circle. But I have to trust that this is where He’s put me, and that He will make something beautiful out of it in His time. He will do it.

I know I can’t see if the book is any good at this stage. I’m way too familiar with it. So just stop anguishing about it all and keep pushing forward, around and around and around... Til it's done.

Monday, December 01, 2008

The Black Swan

"Before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists (and others extremely concerned with the coloring of birds), but that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single black bird."

~Opening paragraph, Prologue, from the book The Black Swan (The Impact of the Highly Improbable) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007)


I love this encapsulation of human viewpoint. Of life by sight. It's unreliable. Everything we think is true, by sight, by what others tell us, even by what science tells us, is unreliable. It can be changed by a single observation or experience.

Not so the Word of God. Our lessons of late, as I mentioned, have focused on challenging us to live in the truths of what the Word of God says we are: spiritual royalty, in union with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, possessors of everything He possesses. God is for us, so who can be against us. At salvation God made us new creatures and crucified the old man on the Cross with Christ. We have His perfect righteousness. God sees us as perfectly righteous right now, and He is perfectly satisfied with us Right Now because of what His son did on the Cross.

We don't have to overcome sins and failures, merely rebound them. They're already judged, already removed. It just doesn't always seem like it. None of what we are in Christ "seems like it" while we are living in this fallen world. But our position in Christ, the reality of His word and of His promises, are the only really reliable things we have. We must learn to live in those and not in the kind of knowledge that can be nullified with a single new piece of information...

~~~