Where To Find Me

I owe you folks an explanation as to where I've been these past few months. I announced a while back that I was starting another blog and wrote:

I've been busy getting together a second blog, and there is usually a large initial time investment in setting things up. I'll be back to posting about every other day here.

...or so I thought! The blog really took off like a rocket and has been a driving force of political activism in ways I never expected.

In the meantime, it has given me the opportunity to start working for a liberty-oriented political action committee, so things are going to get even busier for me in the short term as we undertake massive fundraising efforts to get the PAC (website still under construction at the time of this update) financially viable and equipped to start supporting candidates for 2010 that will change the dangerous direction this country is headed.

Feel free to subscribe to the Humble Libertarian if you want to stay caught up with my updates and political commentary (or follow me on my new Twitter account), and I will be sure to let you know as soon as I'm ready to start things up again here at Slaying Dragons (which is something I plan to do!).

Anti- Shallow Christian Fads

I found this last week and had some good laughs:

Pro Life Merchandise

I was reading Tim Kurek's blog, The Evolution of God, and in the sidebar, I saw an image that made quite an impression on me. It was a picture of a fetus bearing a crown of thorns and the same wounds that Christ suffered on the cross. A rough paraphrase of Matthew 25: 40 came to mind, "As you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me."

I immediately opened up Photoshop and started working on my own version to put on merchandise and sell in my shop. I cannot imagine a more powerful image to rally the Pro-Life Movement into action. We must act to defend and protect all of humanity from needless death and suffering because of our love for Jesus Christ, who joined himself to our human nature and suffers for all humanity, especially "the least of these."


For more information on the Pro-Life issue and an airtight argument to defend the Pro-Life position, read my article- The Abortion Issue: A Reasoned Pro-Life Approach. And Tim, you've got to tell me where you found that amazing graphic.

2009 New Year's Resolutions

Photo from RepublicDomain

Here is a list of common New Year's resolutions with links to tips and strategies to help you achieve them. I've also mentioned friends on the blogosphere who are personally resolving to do some of the following:

1. Get fit. Lose weight. One of the most common New Year's resolutions is to get in better shape physically, to eat better, to exercise more, and to live healthier. Amy, over at Amy's Humble Musings has resolved to get in better shape, and I love her attitude. She says:

"It’s not about looking great; it’s about feeling great. It’s not about being able to prance around in workout clothes; it’s just about being able to fit into your regular clothes. I’m all about practicalities."

One thing you can do to make this resolution happen for you is join Amy. She invites all her readers to join her on her 12 week challenge to get healthier (with a cash prize to whoever does the best), but you've got to hurry up and e-mail her your weight and measurements (see the blog post for details). She's also blogging her progress.

If you're not interested in joining Amy and her readers, there is still a lot you can learn from them to help you achieve your goal. 1) Losing weight and getting fit with friends makes it easier to stay motivated, keep each other accountable, and have fun doing it. Find a friend and do this together! 2) Writing down your goal makes you way more likely to achieve it. Be specific too! 3) Logging your progress also helps you to achieve your goal. You might want to start a blog to track your progress. You can post measurements, weight, photos, your feelings, what you're eating, how much exercise you did, etc. Try it. You can even set it to private so no one sees but you. 4) Extreme goals and unrealistic expectations will dog you down. As with all things, seek out moderation to help put this goal within your reach (but make sure that you will have to stretch for it!).

2. Advance your life's goals. This is an important one. It's exciting to read how much progress is happening in this area for another Aimee, whose blog I read. One of her goals this year is to get a book written:

"And one more great piece of news: for those who like my writing, there is another major writing project in the works – my first book! Tons of research notes have been taken and all organized by chapter, and I’ve taken my first stab at the actual writing. It will probably take months before I have an actual manuscript (because I’m going to be very busy with all my teaching responsibilities), but this is really exciting for me, the whole reason why I went to school to get my degree: so I could write, with credibility, about the Faith. And also teach, and speak, and evangelize."

This one hits close to home for me because I share very similar goals. Whatever your deepest, most heartfelt passion is for your life and your life's impact on the world around you, I heartily suggest that you make 2009 the year that you go for it. It's inspiring to see Aimee really living her dream. You can learn a lot from her. 1) It helps to know what your dream is and to have clearly defined goals for living it. 2) You have to orient your mindset to plan for success. You have to believe that you can and will live the life of your dreams. 3) If you want to sustain your life and manage your expenses entirely by living out your passion (what can be better than making money doing what you love?), blogger Steve Pavlina explains how you can make a start by earning your first love dollar.

3. Get closer to God. In the busy mess that is our lives, it's easy for us to push God to the side. Blogger, unfinishedperson over at Journeying With The Saints has resolved among other things, to get back to regular attendance at church services and regular daily prayer, morning and evening. Here are a few practical tips to help make this resolution happen for you:

1) Struggling with church attendance? Do what I did: find someone in the congregation who needs rides to church and start taking them. Because someone else is depending on you, you'll have a strong reason to get up on Sunday mornings.

2) Daily prayer a problem? It often seems tedious to pray. We get a mental image in our head of sitting uncomfortably on our knees for hours. To destroy this image, just commit to praying for only 5 minutes when you wake up and 5 minutes before going to sleep. If you keep this habit faithfully and regularly, it doesn't take long for you to start looking forward to it and to start lengthening it to connect more deeply with God.

3) Want to read the entire Bible this year? Try the Christian Discipleship Journal's Bible Reading Plan. You'll be done with the whole Bible in just one year. It coordinates readings in a really cool way, and the pace is not grueling at all.

The Meaning of Christmas, The Nativity and Incarnation of Christ

Photo from RepublicDomain

As the Nativity or Christmas Season comes to a close, it is important for us to reflect on the significance and meaning of the Incarnation of Christ as a human being, including the implications it necessarily has for how we view everything else. The Creator's birth of a virgin woman is a great light that illuminates everything. There are many truths that are revealed in this great mystery.

For He became man that we might become divine; and He revealed Himself through a body that we might receive an idea of the invisible Father; and He endured insults from men that we might inherit incorruption

-St. Athanasius (which means "no death"), On The Incarnation

What do Christians believe about the Incarnation, which they celebrate at Christmas?

First it is important to lay out clearly what Christians believe and the best, mostly widely-used and respected summary of Christian belief regarding the Incarnation comes from the Nicene Creed, which says of Christ:

"And I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten, not created; of one essence with the Father; by Whom all things were made; Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from Heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man; Who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried; And rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures; And ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father; And he shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end."

Theological Truths: The Nature of God

As we can see from the Creed (which summarizes the truths clearly expounded in Holy Scripture), Christ was not created. He is the very fullness of Divinity and Godhood and shares in one essence with the Father. The Incarnation bears significance because it is the moment in history (at the "fullness of time"), when God revealed Himself to us. He did not reveal things about Himself. He revealed Himself. The Council of Nicaea was called in AD 325 to combat Arianism, a heresy that taught Jesus was not of one essence with the Father, being instead, a creation of the Father. It is still important and relevant today to emphasize and defend the orthodox view, that Jesus Christ was and is the Eternal God, a Person of the Holy Trinity, with Whom He shares the Divine Essence.

Philosophical Truths: The Nature of Reality

This is one area where 21st-century Christians had better pay particularly close attention. A false idea crept into the Church from Plato and from the Gnostic heretics and that false idea remains alive still today: the idea that there is something inherently bad about the material world and that the spiritual world is entirely good. If you ask many contemporary Christians, it seems very popular to believe that our salvation consists of becoming disembodied angels living on a spiritual plane. In this view, Heaven is where our perfect, redeemed souls go to be with God after shedding and leaving behind our imperfect, fleshly bodies. This is patently untrue, unvalidated by Holy Scripture, and unrecognized by the centuries of orthodox Christian thought. Scripture affirms over and over the inherent goodness of the created, physical universe. Christ's Incarnation affirms it once and for all by joining Divinity to the physical world, redeeming it and purifying it forever. All created things, physical and spiritual, are inherently good, but through sin have become corrupted. Salvation consists not in divorcing spirit from flesh, but in healing both.

Eschatological Truths: The Human Condition and The World's Fate

The Incarnate Christ came to suffer. That was clear from the beginning. The three gifts brought to honor the baby Jesus were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold to recognize his royalty as heir to the throne of Israel and the house of David, frankincense to recognize his divinity as the Incarnate God, and myrrh to honor his humanity and recognize his purpose, to suffer and die, and through his suffering and death to destroy and overcome all suffering and death. Christianity does not gloss over reality. It does not say, "Don't worry, everything's just fine." Christianity is a religion that sees and recognizes that the world sucks. It is filled with evil and suffering of all kind. Christianity's acknowledgement of that comes in its answer: God, being incorruptible, joins Himself to the corrupt and thereby removes its corruption, triumphing over death and suffering. Though the world is filled with evil, Good has and will win.

Anthropological Truths: Our Fellow Human Beings

As an Incarnate human being, Christ joined his Divine Nature to our human nature. This is the reason why Christ says that what we do to "the least of these" we have done to him. He is not being figurative or poetic. He means very literally that what we do to others, we do to him, because he has joined himself to human nature, partaken of it, and made it his own nature as well. What we do to worsen the human condition by hurting others, using others, thinking badly of them, refusing to help them, hoarding wealth to ourselves, or by any other means, we do these things to Christ who took on himself the fullness of the human condition's pain and suffering. When we ease the suffering of others, likewise we ease the suffering of Christ, because in easing the suffering of another human being, we remove that much burden from Christ, who took all burdens on himself. If we want to worship God, we must start by loving each other.

The Conflict in Israel, One American Christian's Perspective

Photo from RepublicDomain

Over at SimplyEcclesia, I have published a short editorial piece with the aim of examining a few of the common claims made about the modern nation state of Israel and the United States' alleged obligation to pursue an active, interventionist policy in the political and military affairs of the Middle East in order to defend Israel's interests. You can read my editorial here.

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Additionally, as promised in the previous post, I still have some upcoming material relating to the mystery of God's Incarnation, which we just celebrated on the 25th of this month. Traditionally (and still today in predominately Eastern Orthodox countries and many parts of Europe), the Christmas season was the time from the 25th of December until the 6th of January (the Feast of Theophany), not the time in December leading up to Christmas. That period was called "the Advent Season" and the 12 days following Christmas were the Christmas season (hence the origin of the phrase "the 12 days of Christmas").

I'll be doing my part to keep the tradition alive (or to bring it back from the grave where it lies here in the United States) by reflecting on the mystery of Christ's Nativity over the coming days.

December 2006 Movie Review of The Nativity Story

An icon of the Orthodox Church (Source: Fr. Stephen's Glory To God For All Things)

As Christmas, the Feast of the Nativity of Christ approaches, I have some writing in the works to share my reflections on the significance of this holy day. Today I just want to refer you to a review I wrote in 2006 of The Nativity Story, a film that chronicles Mary's betrothal to Joseph, conception by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, and perilous journey to Bethlehem where she gives birth to the Savior of the world.

Dad Beats Up His Kids (Just For Pretend)

Someone from my church e-mailed this to me a little while back and it is one of the funniest YouTube videos I've seen in a long time. I wonder why it hasn't had more views: