Random Ramblification

G'day, ladies and gents!

So, for our summer reading this year, we've been assigned The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and, to be quite honest with you, I'm not quite sure what to think about it. I'm reading on a Kindle, so I can't give you page references or anything, but I'm 30% of the way through it and the Joads just packed up and left for California. One extremely annoying factor about this book that actually, in my opinion, is detrimental to its use as assigned reading material is the uncomfortable splicing of the plot. For every chapter he writes of actual plot, Steinbeck also writes a chapter of "filler", usually details about the condition that the Midwest was in at that time. I'm not a huge fan of this type of writing, though I understand that the purpose is to convey certain emotions and explain the situation. And it does--I understand the farmers of those days now, and I understand the relationship between a man and his land, and how that relationship is broken when machines enter the equation. But I don't need twenty chapters to explain that--I got it after the first three or so!

ShayCarl & Katilette, you guys inspire me. SHAYTARDS FTW!!!

This is an amazing shirt design.

I got Fable 3 in the mail today. I hope to play it over the summer. It looks like an amazing game, even though I haven't really played much of the series. I also ordered some books on music theory and composition, so hopefully I'll actually be able to write some good songs.

Speaking of music, I didn't realize until now how cool playing the guitar feels. I know I sound terrible at it, but after a few months I'm sure I'll be much better. Hoping to eventually lead in worship with the guitar as well.

Yeah, I'm sorry this isn't really a coherent or cohesive blog today--just me rambling about stuff in my life. I promise Thursday will be better, though!

Love and poodles,

--CommanderSnowball

Sunday Special: The Bible is NOT Subject to Interpretation

Hello again! Welcome to the Snowball Effect, the blog that addresses things relevant to your life!

Seeing as recently a lot of attention has been given to a certain Harold Camping and his "Rapture Movement", I thought I'd use my Sunday Special to help clear out this really annoying issue.

If you haven't already heard about this, or the name Camping doesn't ring any bells with you, let me summarize the news part of the story before I get on to the spiritual and biblical part of this: around the beginning of the year, Harold Camping, a Christian radio-show host, predicted that the Rapture/Judgement Day/end-of-the-world would take place on March 21st, 2011. Naturally, this caused some stir among the Christian culture--some people labeled him as a blasphemer, others blindly accepted his false teachings, but the majority of us just kept going as if nothing had happened. Surprisingly enough, that's exactly what happened on March 21st: absolutely nothing. And when our beloved prophet Camping was questioned about his failed prophecy? Well, he did two things--he covered himself by saying that the world would actually end on October 21st, and he actually congratulated himself on being humble enough to admit his mistake. He also said, in this ridiculous interview, "I can't be responsible for anybody's life; I'm only teaching the Bible!" in response to other news stories about people who attempted suicide and even murder because they feared the Judgement that he "prophesied".

Now, I'm assuming that my readers understand that Judgement Day is not on anyone's calendar--only God knows when that day will be, not even Jesus knows. We will know when it happened, and we will certainly be able to tell when it happens, but we will never have advance knowledge of any specific "day" of Judgement. Jesus even says it quite clearly in Matthew 24:36 "But concerning that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." If that's not clear enough for you, I don't know what is. "No one" clearly includes all forms of life except the Father, that being God the Father. But as I said, I'm pretty sure everybody reading this already understands that idea.

Now let's move on to something a little more pressing about this whole matter: how Camping is "figuring out" the day of Judgement.

Interestingly enough, a search of Camping's radio show's website showed absolutely nothing about how one finds the specific date and time of the Rapture. You'd think that if one had figured out the secret, they'd want other people to be able to figure it out as well. A search of the world "rapture" in the handy-dandy "Dynamic Bible Query" tool lead to absolutely nothing useful. The funnies thing I found was that there was a document explaining Matthew 24: 37-41, but nothing about the verse right before, wherein Camping's argument is torn to shreds with a single sentence from the Savior. Coincidence? I think not...

I did, however, find a video of Camping talking about why the knowledge hasn't come about until now. The interesting thing is that he talks about how God had to "hide" the facts in the book of Daniel until 1988. First off, why would God "have to" hide anything from us? If God didn't want us to know about it, then why would He put it in His Word? Secondly, while in this supposed Daniel interpretation, one has to search long and deep into the words and stretch the meaning to the point of misinterpreting the Scriptures, in the afore-mentioned verse in Matthew, the point is quite clear: no one but God Himself knows the day, so you can stop guessing, cuz you're going to be wrong.

We can't think of the Bible as some secret code that we have to decipher. The Bible is not malleable; it is not bendable to man's interpretation. That's why it's the absolute truth--as spoken by God. Whatever God says is Truth in the most definite sense. No matter what man does to it, we can't change the Truth. I will admit that there are many passages in the Bible that are hard to understand. To interpret those passages, we must rely on other Scriptural sources as tools. And when we find the meaning of those passages that we don't understand at first, we must check ourselves and see if the meaning contradicts anything in the Bible. For example, if someone says they've found a combination of verses that show what day Judgement will happen on,  you can say, "But Matthew 24:36 clearly states..." and so on.

Until next time,

--CommanderSnowball

P.S. Sorry for being so monotonous referring back to Matthew 24:36 so often. Just trying to get a point across, that one verse is all it takes to find the truth sometimes. Of course, there are other verses in the Bible that refer to the day of Judgement. A couple are:

• II Corinthians 5:10
• Revelation 20:11-15

Just to name some. Of course, these aren't the only verses that talk about the Final Judgement. If you want more references about these things, talk to your pastor or (even better!) research it yourself! Cheers!

New Schedule and Such

Why hello again!

I was brainstorming a bit about the schedule for this blog, and here's what I came up with:

• Tuesdays: These will be my personal days, where I rant about whatever's been going on in my life, or I talk about interesting stuff that happened to me today, or I just tell jokes, or whatever. I'll think of something.
• Thursdays: These will be more serious days, when I address things I have seen in the news that concern me or just make me laugh, be it from cynicism or just plain awesomeness.
• Saturday/Sunday: On one of these two days (probably subject to study time or other responsibilities) I will post a Biblical sort-of-devotional deal, where I give my opinions on subjects that I choose. Eventually, I hope to be able to choose subjects that you guys give me, but until then, I'll just pick the material myself.

As today is a Thursday, that makes it a News Day. And of course, being an Okie boy at heart, the one big news story of today is the family of tornadoes that seem to be hell-bent on tearing the dickens out of the Midwest. All up and down Tornado Alley, we've been getting smacked by the wind, and it's got quite the powerful smack. Anyone reading this who doesn't know what a tornado is (though since most of you are probably from Oklahoma anyway), imagine a hurricane, except smaller and more concentrated. This is good in some cases, except that you can fit more tornadoes in a state than you can hurricanes. Tornadoes are also much faster than hurricanes, and more powerful; and when you've got an F5 tornado barreling through your town, chances are there won't be much of your town left, as seen in Joplin, Missouri. Please keep the people of Joplin in your prayers, as well as everyone in Tornado Alley right now. We're getting hammered.

In other news, apparently Oprah, on her final show of the same name, gave a shout-out not only to her studio workers, but to God, claiming that Jesus was the reason her show has been on the air for an astounding 25 years. Now, I have to say--huh? Since when has Oprah been a Christian? Last I heard, she was denying that Jesus is the only means of salvation! It's kind of hard to be a Christian and believe that your Savior didn't really save you! Now, does this mean Oprah's not a Christian, or she's the Anti-Christ, or she's just trying to throw us off her trail? Is this just a publicity stunt, a way to appease her critics? Or maybe she's figured out that she was mistaken, and this is a sincere attempt to make up for her spiritual blunders in past years? Either way, it's not for me to judge. I do, however, find it interesting that, in the case that this is a sincere turn-about for her, she announced the most important change of her life at the end of her career, possibly to avoid flack from many of her New Age philosopher fans.

Finally, China has officially stated that they have a cyber-SWAT team. This unit of hackers known as the Blue Army is supposed to protect China against "cyber invasion". For all the rest of us who don't speak tyrannical dictator, that means these guys are a calling card for any country China has a grudge against and a way of keeping any tech-savvy rebels there may be in line. U.S. owes China big in debt but won't give any money back? A simple virus will nestle itself in the Treasury records and divert money to Big Red every so often. Japan gets mouthy about injustices from the Chinese government inflicted onto the Chinese civilians? Next day, a WikiLeaks style website is launched about how Japan's been doing the same thing for hundreds of years. I'm just saying--if you give a person more power, nine times out of ten he'll use it for himself.

Anyway, that's all I have for today, folks. Remember to eat your veggies!

Until next time,

--CommanderSnowball

Hi, There!

Well, howdy-do, y'all!

Just kidding, I don't really talk like that. If I ever do, it is meant in jest.

But seriously, what's up? I've had a blog before for Bible assignments at school, but I think I'm going to start a more regular, more personal blog. The purpose of this blog will be to provide my honest opinion on subjects that my readers provide (assuming, of course, that I even have enough readers to do so). I'll mostly want to deal with subjects from a Christian perspective, providing the viewpoint that I think bests fits biblical values.

Why is this called "The Snowball Effect"? Well, I'll tell you! You see, when I was about ten I read the George Orwell novel Animal Farm, a commentary on communism. Without explaining the plot of the book too much, in the beginning, two pigs lead a rebellion of animals against their oppressive farmer, one of these pigs being Snowball. Snowball was, and has always been, my second-favorite character in the book, second only to Boxer, the horse. I chose to name my blog after Snowball because throughout the book he is a champion of freedom, an extremely important (though not the most important) quality of human life. I hope that will translate into my writings on this blog. Of course, who knows? My outlook on life may change. You may see me become a favor of tyrannical dictatorships. (I'll just say right now that while tyrannical dictatorships have their advantages [e.g., more efficient], I doubt I'll be supporting any anytime soon, mostly because most tyrannical dictators nowadays are buttholes.)

Who am I? I am a (currently) sixteen year-old guy in good old tornado-rampant Oklahoma with opinions to share.

Why am I doing this? Please read the first paragraph.

Why should you read this? Because you're bored enough to be searching around blogger for a Christian blog, and this might waste some time. Or you're family or friend, in which case you're kind of obligated to, and I'll take it personally if you don't. Just kidding, I won't. I don't like you.

Except you. You're special.

But the rest of you are jerks.

......
...anyway...

How often will I update? That might be kind of screwy for a little bit, due to semester tests starting tomorrow and everything (GAAAAAAGGGGH!), but rest assured, I'll get into the swing of things eventually. I'm thinking of twice a week, with a "devotional" on Sundays.

So, yeah...peace out!

--CommanderSnowball