Wandering Elder

I recently heard a story on the news about a school in Idaho that was considering teaching its faculty to use and carry guns.  The idea was that the teachers, now apparently to all be armed, would be the defenders of the school in the event of some attack.  As one administrator said in the interview, "We're taking back our school." I had to wonder: taking it back from what ?  Had this school been under siege?  Were they oppressed or in grave danger of invasion or of an imminent threat from evildoers?  I didn't get to hear the entire story so I don't know if something had happened in Idaho that I missed - with shootings and the like becoming more common we, as a culture, have lost the ability to keep track as well as, it seems, the ability to be shocked or truly outraged. If there was no direct threat, then the idea of "taking back" sounds more ominous than comforting.  Because to take something back means to re-establish control or order onto a situa...

A few years ago, I proposed a theory to a few friends of mine which was this: chosen predestination.  By that I meant that it could be that we have free will, but can voluntarily choose to set it aside and accept a path structured and laid out by another. In the conversation in which I proposed the idea, I was speaking in particular about a journey of faith in which one might select to stop living the life as they have been and selecting instead to accept a path set out by God - or a path that it would appear God had set out. The argument was this: Perhaps God lays out the path a follower is asked to take.  Accepting that path means to abdicate free will and follow the prescribed, perhaps predetermined path.  It isn't that free will doesn't exist, but that one is setting it aside for something else.  I would suppose, however, that at any time one could again return to free will, exiting the path laid out. I believe we see Jesus wrestle with just this idea, espe...

There has been some buzz on the Internet about a debate...no that isn't the right word.  Neither is discussion because that implies civility.  Let's just say there has been a 'back and forth' between the rapper B.o.B and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson over whether or not the earth is flat.  B.o.B. claims that it is.  Tyson says it isn't. Tyson is correct. It is distressing to see anyone still professing the world is flat.  Though I have to admit that I know people who might  think so.  This particular page in the flat-earth debate (who would have believed it would even be a debate any longer) points to the fact that there are plenty of people who are scientifically illiterate. Yet we reveled in that illiteracy for years by denying global warming or that smoking has negative effects on the body.  Like, you know, death.  I am sure that at some point persons like Tyson and the EPA want to throw their hands up and say, "Fine.  Live...