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Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? (2.5 minutes to read)

9/23/2014

As usual just my opinions especially when I mention the character of God as none of us will know until we actually see him.

The above question is probably asked by millions of people each day. Atheists certainly use it to try to shake our faith. If you were asked this question could you provide a good answer? As Christians shouldn’t we have a decent answer?

A lot of people don’t understand why a loving God would allow such pain especially with Christians who are his children. First of all they are confused about free will and why it’s so important. If you had a baby and had the ability to program your child to be perfect would you do it?

The fact is we want our children to make their own choices including telling us they love us on their own not because they were programmed to do so. It’s not rewarding when a child doesn’t make the decision to love you but your programming did. Isn’t it rewarding when you see your child do something nice for someone else…once again not because of your programming but because you raised a good child?

I believe God is like a parent in so many ways. He could’ve programed us to do whatever he wanted (i.e. loving, kind, unselfish, etc.), but he didn’t. I’m sure like us he loves seeing the choices we make and the outcomes.

Haven’t we told our children what they should do and they do just the opposite? We know the long-term implications but they’re living in the moment. I believe God sometimes cringes when he watches us but this is much more enjoyable than if he already programmed us for success…the bottom line is how much joy is in that?

I think a lot of people don’t understand that God has feelings. It’s written all over the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. David was a man after God’s own heart. Jesus pleased him when he was baptized. God has also gotten mad numerous times like with the Children of Israel complaining after he freed them from slavery…thus the 40 years of wandering. He flooded the earth because he was angry. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorra for turning their backs on him. God has feelings and I believe it’s critical we understand this.

I have a friend who lost his 16 year-old son (Brandon) to cancer. We prayed and prayed but he didn’t recover. Why did God let Brandon die when there were so many people praying for him? This is a very tough question. Not all our prayers are answered…well they are but not always in the way we want.

Scott and his family said they would’ve never have made it if it weren’t for the help from a woman who lost her little girl to cancer. She was with them from start to finish (she was there as Brandon passed away). She brought them an enormous amount of comfort and knowledge and she’s still helping other families now.

I couldn’t have helped Scott because I don’t have a clue how to deal with the terrible things he and his wife experienced. So if it weren’t for the woman who jumped in and helped I don’t know what would’ve happened. Why was she so qualified to bring comfort? The reason is she had the same awful experiences but something good has come from it. I don’t know how many families she’ll end up helping because she lost her daughter so good can come from bad.

What if God did heal everyone? If he’s going to do that then why wouldn’t he have placed us on earth without us ever having any medical problems? How would we treat our bodies if we didn’t have any worries about becoming ill; as for me, probably not good. How could we handle the population explosion because everyone was being healed?

It would be boring (another emotion he has), just like with any parent he hopes that after all is said and done we make our way back to him…that we return home. More importantly that we choose to go home…this is rewarding to God (the prodigal’s son).

The choices we make in all things including who we hang out with direct our lives. The education levels we pursue impacts our lives. How we treat other people affects our lives. I could go on and on; the reason I mention this is there are so many variables in everything we do so the outcome of our lives isn’t completely controlled by us; so when should God step in? Should God always save us from bad things that happen to us thus changing the direction of our lives? The only way he could do it is to take away our free will.

So why do bad things happen to good people? It’s because bad things happen to all people. Whether you’re bad or good is a free-will choice and that’s the way God wants it, once again because he wouldn’t want to program us just like we wouldn’t want to program our children. He’s our father and he acts this way.

Free will also means someone else can make a bad choice that negatively impacts you so there are things we can't control no matter how good our personal choices might be.

There’s way more to it than what I just shared but I hope it gives you directional insight. Like I said this question is probably asked by millions of people each day so as Christians I think it’s our responsibility to have an answer to this very important question.

Common Core Education Model (Three Minutes to Read)

9/1/2014

I think the name of this educational program fits as it makes our students common. It’s common because our Federal Government created it with no insight into the unique needs of each community. They think they know better than the local boards of education as to what students need to learn. A cookie cutter approach to something so critical to the success of our country is dangerous. Fortunately the majority are now saying Common Core should be discontinued.

I lived on a farm in Quapaw, Oklahoma and there were no white collar jobs available; I needed to know those things that would help me gain employment where I lived…common core would’ve ruined me and my community.

I was a member of FFA (Future Farmers of America), and VO-AG (Vocational Agriculture). I took courses in welding and surveying all of which made me valuable where I lived and our department of education knew the curriculum necessary to get me there. Our Federal Government didn’t have a clue as to our local needs.

A few things to think about:

·        There are courses like geography that could be much shorter than they are now. Why don’t they break some of the classes into two different courses; have the curriculum spent on one area like geography in the first half of the school year and the second half of the year spent on another course; this would be extremely easy to accomplish and students would love the variety.

·        I think Calculus and Trigonometry doesn’t need to be taught in high school. If someone decides to be an engineer then he or she could take these courses in college which is by far a better place to learn because students would know they need it. Probably 95% of a high schools waste time with it when their time could be better spent on getting students extremely proficient in subjects like American History, Civics, U.S. Constitution, English, Excel, Project Management, Statistics, and Writing.

·        These are two things that might be totally ridiculous but I can’t help but wonder. 1) With how important the areas above are does it make sense to continue band? I know a child in band generally have better character than average students but is it worth the time spent? 2) Does it make sense to have high school students start school at 10:00 a.m. and run until 5:00 p.m.? These kids often use their computers until mid-night because of social media. It doesn’t matter when they go to bed they’ll still end up staying up late. This causes a severe case of sleep deprivation which means their ability to retain information in each class goes down dramatically; they can be in class but not get anything out of it. There are reports galore about the negative impact of sleep deprivation. I do understand these ideas are way out there and I’m not committed to them; I just threw them out to get people thinking.

American History is critical for young people to know where they came from…this will help them appreciate our country more.

Civics gives ground work to how our country is supposed to operate and each of our responsibilities to be good U.S. citizens.

Our U.S. Constitution (101 & 201) should receive a massive amount of attention for obvious reasons including how they can get more engaged in politics…they need to become watchdogs in order to help protect our freedoms. They can’t help protect us if they don’t understand the laws.

English is critical as it seems like young people no longer care about it and it will dictate their success.

Excel and Statistics play a huge role in most companies so being extremely proficient at them would help young people make a great difference as soon as he or she enters the job market.

In one way or another every employee in white collar jobs will be involved in project management. Learning communications, critical thinking, establishing priorities, etc., could make or break someone’s career.

Let’s face it the way kids are writing now isn’t how they’ll need to write when they get into the real world.

What it boils down to is we need to prepare our high school students for their futures and ours; what we’re teaching now with courses like Calculus and Trigonometry doesn’t do this. With this in mind the above areas are critical so it only makes sense to give them added focus.

There are more courses that could be considered to remove and even add but it would be up to local school boards. The fact is we don’t need students who are common. We don’t need an educational system that is geared towards the Teachers’ Union because nothing is more important than preparing our kids to compete in a global economy and to do this we need a system that is geared towards helping our students succeed period.

Let Your Light Shine (Three Minutes to Read)

9/1/2014

I was preparing for a Bible study one day and decided to do it based upon Matthew 5:16 where Matthew wrote: “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

In contemplating the topic, I started thinking about how we can’t generate darkness. Meaning if someone asked what tools you’ll need to create darkness there isn't anything you can use to generate it. The only way we can contribute to darkness is to take something away that already exist, and that is light.

This thought process intrigued me because in order for us to affect darkness we can either shine a light on it which would make it disappear or we can pull our light away and allow darkness to show itself because it’s already there…we didn’t create it.

Then I thought about our responsibility to let our light shine and realized that Matthew didn’t say make your light shine; these words have different meanings. “Let” means you already have it and just need to release it; while “make” means to generate something yourself. So I thought about these words and realized I couldn’t “make” my light shine because I wouldn’t be able to light things up so to speak. I hate to say it but me without God is evil. I promise you that no one would like me if I succumbed to those dark sides of me. So how in the world could I be a light when everything inside of me is dark? Once again when you’re dark you can’t generate light.

Now here’s the good part…it’s not just me in my body anymore. Jesus told his disciples to not worry about him leaving because he was sending the Holy Spirit (John Chapter 14) to dwell within them; to guide and teach them according to the teachings he shared with them. When we become Christians we too get the Holy Spirit to reside within us; we become a Holy Temple. This is quite a responsibility so I’ll write about it another day; needless to say I’m often very embarrassed at the way I keep my temple up.

With the above in mind, we certainly have more light we can shine because of the Holy Spirit being within us but the problem is that we do exactly what I just mentioned and that is we don’t do a good job of keeping our temple clean. We try to hide things in the closet and close doors to certain rooms in an effort to limit the impact the Holy Spirit would cause our lives if we were to let go of the world and turn ourselves over to our Father.

This is why we can’t generate enough light to make the difference we should be making. When we limit the Holy Spirit’s impact on our lives we’re no longer effective ministers. The scary part is when you think about what God said about bearing fruit and what happens to a tree that doesn’t.

I was giving a bible study at work one day and there was a buffet table in our conference room and it had about a foot of space on the bottom and it was completely dark underneath it. I had a few people take a look to verify. Then I took a small mirror and bent down next to the table and held the mirror to where it was facing the ceiling lights and then I tilted the mirror a little bit and it completely lit up the bottom of the table. Once again I had a few people verify. Some others came up as well just to see how much light it generated.

I then went on to explain a few things to consider about my demonstration. One is that we don’t have a mirror unless we have the Holy Spirit. Without the mirror we’d probably just absorb some of the light but not be able to do anything with it.

Another thing to consider is that God doesn’t want us holding our mirror right back to him because he doesn’t need the light; he has plenty! All he wants us to do is reflect his light in those dark places…this glorifies God. This is why Matthew 5:16 says “Let your light shine.” We don’t have to create the light because we don’t really have anything to offer without the Holy Spirit being our mirror. The light we’d generate on our own would be about as effective as pointing our flashlights at the sun.

One last point, if we turn our mirror completely towards the world, we’d have the back of the mirror facing towards God so we’d have no light to share. We have to be in the world (tilting your mirror) but we can’t be of the world where the mirror would only reflect darkness to an already dark place.

So get out there and LET your light shine!

Warren Buffet's Love for Democrats (One Minute to Read)

9/1/2014

Buffett is a major player for Democrats not only in what he gives but in how much money he raises for them. So the question is why? I mentioned on several occasions that if you’re trying to figure out what’s going on follow the money.

In this case the Obama Administration is dramatically increasing Buffett’s wealth through stopping the keystone pipeline. Buffett’s company (BNSF - Railroad), has the contract to move oil from Alaska down to the U.S. When the pipeline is built it will pretty much shut down his operation. Would you support the Democrat Party? For us the pipeline would mean a 2/3 percent decrease in costs which would be a huge savings at the pumps.

I don’t know about you but I’ve heard that Buffett is good example of how the Democrat Party is supported by the business community; now you know why.

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? (2.5 minutes to read)

Common Core Education Model (Three Minutes to Read)

Let Your Light Shine (Three Minutes to Read)

Warren Buffet's Love for Democrats (One Minute to Read)

Author: John Mann

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