A Christian's Duty to face martyrdom when pressed upon him

I was commenting on the post "Four Months Ago" on Ann Althouse's site, when I realized that the original article she's quoted had a horrible mistake.

In the article, they quote a cardinal of the Catholic Church:

“You can’t condemn people who are afraid of dying and so don’t show themselves as Catholic,” Cardinal Amato said. “A Christian is not obliged to be a martyr.”

This is so very wrong, I can barely contain myself.

Our human nature wants to hold on to this life with both hands. We want to avoid pain, to avoid suffering, to keep out of trouble. However, Christ didn't say we would avoid these; He said that people would bring all of these upon us because of Himself. We were to pick up our crosses and follow Him.

No Christian is obligated to seek out martyrdom from a standing stop. There are millions upon millions of Christians alive today who will never see any opportunity to be a martyr, and will not be called to it. However, there are those who are called to it, and there are those to whom it is thrust upon. Once you are in the position of either being a martyr or rejecting Christianity, any Christian MUST choose martyrdom, or risk losing his eternal soul. Christ makes it clear that those who reject Him in front of men will be rejected.

These little baby Christians being allowed to roam the hinterlands with their Sunday School understanding of God and no connection with the Holy Spirit are being done an eternal disservice.

Music Monday: Pentatonix

The Pentatonix crew is at it again, with an amazing video: Daft Punk.




As a music rewind, the following is one of their better 2012 videos. I love a bunch of their 2012 songs, but a lot of the videos were 5 people and a tripod. This one has a little more:

Why DestroyFVKeyOnStandby and hibernatefile don't mix

Work has moved me off my beloved MacBook Air to a 2011 MacBook Pro. Switching back to the Pro feels like going from a light laptop to a brick. However, I am doing a LOT of new stuff, including learning the NetApp and DS3500 storage units. The 2011 MacBook Air maxes out at 4G, and I need 8G of memory and all 4 i7 cores in this Pro to run a lot more Java programs and VMWare VMs.

To keep work files secure, I turn on FileVault 2 to encrypt the disk, and I turn run pmset -a destroyfvkeyonstandby 1 hibernatemode 25 to make the Mac sleep securely. However, my Mac still wasn't forgetting the FileVault key.

Then I realized that I'd made a different action causing a problem. I have a Samsung 840 Pro SSD and a Toshiba 1T platter disk in the CD drive spot (thanks to the OWC DiskDoubler). To get writes off the SSD, I moved the sleepimage and the swap files out to a partition on the Toshiba. Ends up, when pmset says "keep the sleepimage on the root drive", they mean it. If the sleepimage is on an external disk, the computer really won't go to sleep.

If you have an SSD and FileVault 2 on, just get in the habit of shutting down instead of sleeping.

This won't last

Lextran has upgraded the seats on one of the newer busses:

It will take less than six months for the mysterious stains and spots to appear. 

They are comfortable chairs.

Hania's Free song for Monday. Go buy some more stuff or check out her YouTube channel.

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Heidi Yewman gets the Vapors

One of Ms. Magazine's authors got the vapors trying to carry a gun. I commented on her inability to handle basic gun safety in a comment not likely to get posted:


My dear Ms. Yewman, you are showing the whole world why the Victorians thought women had the vapors and were too delicate for any activity more involved than needlework and cucumber sandwiches. Your entire article is “I am too scared to do this right and too proud to admit it.” If you believe that you’re a good feminist, you should turn in your card right now and go join the local Sarah Palin fan club (although those ladies could at least help you learn how to handle that gun better).

Our history has been full of people who refused to treat others like children. Some of us enslaved an entire set of people because they were “not capable” of personhood, but then the entire country shed blood to prove that set wrong. Women rejected the concept that they were too delicate to participate in the political process, and finally got the vote.

And now, at the pinnacle of personal capability, you spend an entire article basically whining that the entire country, including Tony, didn’t stop you from being too stupid to read a simple manual. This is on the order of a parent screaming “No one told me that I shouldn’t let my kid drink lye and pour it on his face” or “but the store SOLD me that rat poison”.

Yes, I said a manual. All guns sold in the US have them. Every problem you’re having is entirely caused by failing to read the instructions. If you don’t have it, call Glock at 770-432-1202 or go back to Tony and have him get one for you.

IMHO, you should revoke your own right to vote, break out the corset, and make sure not to be seen out in strong sunlight. You don’t deserve a single privilege of “women’s lib”.

At the risk of sounding like Seinfeld...

I am riding the bus yet again, and I noticed something terribly confusing. A large number of Muslim girls and young families have moved into the apartment complex near our neighborhood. That means I am riding the bus with them a lot.

What confuses me is the nice lady across from me in her head scarf, designer clothes, open-toe shoes, and enough perfume to drop a moose at 100 yards. The head scarf is supposed to help prevent temptation by us weak men, yet the au pew is belying any attempt to divert attention.

No matter where legalism comes from, people will always find a way to obey the letter while flouting the spirit.

Now if I can just get through this bus ride without chucking from the fumes....

My coins are in! My coins are in!

Being an Amazon addict, it's not that uncommon for strange packages to come in the mail. When I had a padded envelope in the mail, it was a bit surprising, since I didn't think I was due anything.

Then I saw this in it:

I absolutely love this saying, and this coin reinforces it. The saying is a Polish idiom for "not my problem". The coin is dual-purpose: as a show-off you can use it to point out to someone that their problem isn't yours. If it is your problem, you can sacrifice the coin, call it "not my circus, not my monkeys", and you're outta there. (Not that I will ever give up the coin to quit...)

The British Have No Men Left

The newest story up on the wire is that two Muslim men slaughtered a soldier in the streets of London. The two men then stood in the street for minutes, talking with people and preventing any attempts to aid or comfort the solders.

There are no men left in London. Had this happened in Conan Doyle's time, multiple gentlemen would have shot the attackers down like the dogs they are. Now, scores of men sat there and watched "helplessly" while two attackers bragged, chatted, and waited for their martyrs' death.

I have no respect for the British nation any more.

Oh, SNAP

As much as I dislike Mitch, his staff absolutely PWNED Harry.

A story in there somewhere

It is 6pm in Gulf Shores. I am sitting on the beach, waiting on Milady to get back from her walk with Little Miss.

One mostly-drunk fellow walks by at the waterline. He is carrying an almost empty gallon jug of whiskey of some sort, and dragging a white plastic tabletop missing all of its legs but covered in Sharpie signatures.

I have no idea what his story was, but I would sure love to know it.

Why Standard and Poor's?

Why is Standard and Poor's being targeted for a ratings lawsuit?

Lesson to be taught: don't downgrade the US government.

My favorite Super Bowl Commercials

Baltimore isn't playing well (and worse, I'm wanting Baltimore to win...), so here's my favorite commercials from this year:
Number one, the Red M&M singing "I won't do that":

I also like Taco Bell's Viva Young.

Since I'm a dad of a Little Miss, this one tickles me too.

As an honorable mention, the Ram commercial about farmers. Having grown up on a farm, I am prone to be sentimental about it (until I remember the work, at least....)

I am NOT linking to the Samsung "Next Big Thing" commercial. It was bad.
(And Baltimore just won. Time to figure out if I'm happy about that or not. Oh well, next year for the Bungles. I'm sure of it....)

I Am A Gun Owner

My Contributions to I Am A Gun Owner:

I post pseudonymously, for several reasons (explained before), but my stand is public and firm.

Mr. Obama, Mrs. Feinstein, if you want our guns, YOU COME AND GET THEM.

Responding to Dawn, the post that won't go there.

At this article at Clareified, Dawn talks about gun control.

I posted two comments earlier that I'd posted there successfully. This one was unsuccessful.

Lets look at the NY Times article you quote. It's already a crime to transport a gun into Chicago from the rest of the state. If you don't have an FOID in Illinois, thats also a state crime. It's already a federal crime to buy a pistol in one state when you live in another state, and it's nearly impossible to buy a long gun in one state and take it to another. It's already a federal crime to buy a gun for a person who is themselves ineligible to buy a gun (a "straw man" purchase), or for a gun dealer to sell a firearm when he knows it's a strawman purchase or that the buyer is ineligible to purchase a firearm. It's also a felony for an individual to sell a gun to a person when you know they're ineligible to own a firearm legally.

Basically, the article boils down to: "criminals are acting criminally to get guns". Wow, who would have thunk it?

Real strawmen purchases are fairly easy to prosecute, because they're part of a pattern. The problem isn't the law, it's the prosecution. The federal government has cut back drastically on prosecuting under current gun laws, and that's not the laws' fault.

Your Georgia example, Phillip Sailors, is worse. He is in jail facing murder charges, which is exactly where he should be. However, he's also a veteran and former missionary. Absent some obvious signs of dementia or desire to kill, I'm selling a gun to him any time he wants to buy. If there's someone cleaner than a whistle legally, I want to meet him. There is no reasonable way that a gun seller could know that Phillip Sailors intended to be a murderer (barring unknown information), yet you're using it as an example of a bad gun sale.

Based on this standard, you would effectively be criminalizing gun sales. No person could sell a gun, because they could never be safe from prosecution for other people's actions outside of their own control.

I’m sure there are many drugs and treatments that would on balance save 100x lives, but we don’t have a governmental guaranteed “right” to them.

You have the analogy backwards. You are arguing that penicillin kills some kids through allergies, so we should ban penicillin for their sake. This is of course absurd; penicillin saves many multiples of lives compared to those it harms.

If the laws you propose would hurt more people than it helps, then "doing something" is worse than doing nothing.

At this article at Clareified, Dawn talks about gun control.

I responded in two comments, and tried to post #3. #3 won't apply, so I'll post it here in the next article.

Comment 1:

But what do I know, the framers of the constitution would argue I’m not even a whole person.
I know you know this (or at least should), but for the peanut gallery: The House of Representatives was set up for 1 representative per X people in the state (and was originally meant to grow without limit). The South wanted to count slaves as a person, and that way they would have an immediate majority in the House. The North wanted slaves to not count, so that they would have an immediate majority. The Founders had to compromise, so that the North and South would have a balance. (Immigration, especially of the Irish, quickly tipped the balance to the North, so the compromise wasn’t needed, but that’s in hindsight…)

We can make too much of our heroes, and too little. Washington was generally kind to slaves, and regularly allowed them to “escape” or buy themselves out. He also chased some down and kept some from being able to leave legally. Jefferson was the strongest thinker against slavery, and probably helped bankrupt himself buying up slaves who couldn’t work. OTOH, he made little effort to free slaves at his death (again, probably because he was broke), and certainly someone in his family was sleeping with Sally Hastings.

Like a certain “I didn’t inhale/what does ‘is’ mean?” politician, they aren’t gods among men, they’re men who had good ideas and mediocre execution.

Now, if you want to talk about “not a real person”, go read Dred Scott v. Sandford. One of Taney’s key arguments against recognizing that Scott could be a citizen was the horrors of black people (like Scott) having the right to own firearms. Even the justices who agreed with Taney’s legal reasoning wouldn’t agree with his opinion for the racism and the overreaching.

We cannot appeal to “King would own guns” or “King would NOT own guns”, because Dr. King isn’t here to tell us what he’d do now (this is the real call to authority fallacy). We can look at history, however. Dr. King DID own guns, and did attempt to obtain a concealed carry permit at least once. OTOH, he also believed that Christian martyrdom requires passive resistance(*), and towards the end of his life he ceased to act in personal defense AND believed that his violent death would be an act of martyrdom(**). Both are consistent with a single self-defence theory, and are consistent with changing one’s mind. I’ll leave the listener to decide which.

(*) Luther wasn’t the only person ever to describe the principle, but he did it clearly. A Christian may defend himself and others when faced with violence not targeted because of the person’s belief. You may defend yourself from the robber or the base murderer, for example. However, injury faced because of your faith must be endured without violent reprisal.

(**) I AM implying causation here, but I won’t strictly hold to it if pushed.

Quote 2:

This is the first time I have ever heard the argument that Dr. King committed suicide by assassin, but okay.

*blink* OK, let’s try this again, slower and with fewer run-on sentences.

Dr. King believed in Christian passive resistance throughout his life. At the beginning of his struggle, he also believed in defending himself with guns. He owned them. He employed armed bodyguards to protect him. He even attempted to obtain a concealed carry permit (and was denied it for racist reasons).

Towards the end of his life, he ceased to take steps to defend himself with firearms (no bodyguards, etc.) while simultaneously believing that he would probably die a martyr’s death for his beliefs and actions.

I personally believe that the latter (believing he was going to die a martyr’s death) caused the former (ceasing to defend himself with firearms). This would be consistent with Luther’s Christian self-defense theories. However, my saying so is a “correlation means causation” fallacy: we only know both occurred at the same time. As far as I know, Dr. King never explicitly spelled this out. (If he did, feel free to correct me on this.)

Now that we’re past that, I’ll come back to the point I actually was going to make before getting distracted. (Yes, the entire post above was me being distracted. With so many ideas packed into one post, it’s easy to get distracted. I could have even called it a target-rich field, but I’m trying to avoid those evil shooting metaphors. Only liberals are allowed to use shooting metaphors, after all.)

Let’s assume for the moment that possessing guns is a right. (Based on your post, I don’t think you really believe that it is, which is why I will make this an assumption.) Now, you are calling on the rest of us to take significant limitations upon our right for everyone’s safety, by saying that we don’t need said right.

That seems fair and proper. Excluding the potential of a self-defense situation(*), then I as a city dweller have very little need at all for the firearms that may or may not be in my possession.

However, you are opening a very dangerous precedent here. People don’t need any rights to live, and rights cause governments all kinds of inconveniences and difficulties.

Imagine how much easier prosecution will be if we can identify the bad guy *because* we have his urine in a cup. You don’t have anything to hide, and you trust the government, so there’s nothing wrong with peeing in the cup on demand, right? The government has the technology to listen to your phone calls, but you’re not a criminal. They can listen to you, right? The FBI will never ever stoop to using intelligence like this for blackmail, so you’re fine. Oh, and let’s throw in governors on cars so that no car can ever go over 70 MPH or 4000 RPM. Speeding and high torque are dangerous, after all. How about swimming pools? More kids (not in gangs) die in swimming pools than die from gunshots in the US. They’re death traps; the federal government should demand their immediate filling with concrete.

Why should we not do any of these? By your logic, we the people have every obligation to restrict these rights too, to make things easier on the government or safer for ourselves. What is the difference?

One final aside: We have a National guard, a coast guard, an army, a marine, an air force, police forces, FBI, secret service, sheriffs, marshalls, private security firms, mall cops. We’re good on regulated militia.

You forgot the Inspector Generals office of the Department of Housing and Human Services. They just put in an order for a couple thousand guns and several hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammo. 43 different federal agencies or departments have people with badges, real assault weapons and machine guns, and lots and lots of ammo.

You need to go read the Federalist Papers. These government agents are not the regulated militia. They are the standing armies that the Revolutionary War people fought against. Standing armies were bad, and would inevitably lead to the loss of rights and tyranny. The well-regulated militia, a standing army of the entire citizenship (barring only the conscientious objector and the infirm) was considered necessary so that the people could both defend themselves from external enemies and rise up and defeat the standing army when a tyrant turned them against his own people.

(History quiz for the house: General Gage sent out soldiers to secretly take what items from the colonists at Lexington and Concord?)

(*) Considering that between 10x and 1000x(**) more people defend themselves every year using legally owned firearms than are shot without justification in the US, this is a BIG gift to you. I can prove that firearms are a net benefit to US society WITHOUT considering the rights issue at all (John Lott already has).

(**) Depending on whose numbers you believe and how you count a justified shooting. 10x is if you believe the smallest number of defensive gun uses (the DOJ’s non-anonymous survey) and everyone being shot as unjustified (even those shot in said defensive gun uses). 1000x weeds out gun suicides and shots that are neither homicides nor accidents, compared to Kleck’s 2.1 million per year count. The truth of course is somewhere in the middle.

How can we expect mercy?

Our country kills other people's children without mercy, while sitting in the comfort of air conditioned buildings. We destroy our own young in the name of choice and convenience. The young we do have are either born on drugs or are fed them as young adults.

Why should we expect any mercy from God when our children are put to risk?

New Comment over at Vox Day

A link to The Post, and a link to my comment. Now the contents:

Even though Wheeler said it today, I always take issue with anyone who says they know when Christ is returning/the end of the U.S. (or the West, in general) = the Second coming. Only God knows that (it's in the Bible).

I have completely quit listening to Hal Lindsay because of his tendency to say "and X is why Jesus is coming soon!!!".

The USA has no place in end-times prophesy, and we as a society have no desire to obey God first, so we're leaving the picture. I don't think we're dying out or going to cease to exist; we're simply leaving the grown-ups table and heading back to the kiddy table. It could be as simple as the first major oil trades in Euros, or it could be a generation or two out (or more). I won't pretend to set a date, and I won't pretend to say that it's a prerequisite to the Tribulation; it's just part of it.

I feel like the prophets must have sometimes; praying for revival like Ninevah but kinda wishing that God would go on and give us that final kick over the cliff so we could get it over with. However, He is merciful and wants every possible person saved, so He waits until His time.

What hurts me the most is not that God might be punishing us, but that He doesn't have to do a darn thing to punish us; He just has to pull back His protection. Our society is happy to tear itself apart from the inside.

The (true) Church in Africa and Asia (especially China) gives me heart that the Church is still healthy, and that it can be revived in America and Europe. The saints there are quite right to pray for us to be tested; Churchianity in the West desperately needs cleansing. I just hate that it's going to hurt...

A new song from Hania Lee

I have to share a song from Hania Lee, originally posted on Hania's Blog:

Go buy some songs from her. She's on iTunes or her own store. Pay up, people. 

A post over at Roger Ebert's

Roger went anti-gun again. Of course, I had to comment....

If only someone had a gun in the theatre! This is ridiculous and comes from watching too many action movies.
When you take a few minutes to look, there are people who have done exactly this. Google "Charl van Wyk" for one; he disrupted a 4-person attack very similar to the Aurora incident with a single revolver.
In addition, how many of you have black market contacts? I don't have any and I would suspect that would be for the majority of the population.
No friends who can find weed? No one who always seems to know someone who knows someone? Sorry, don't believe it. In college, I didn't drink, didn't smoke (tobacco or "wacky weed"), was mister Squeaky-Clean, and I knew at least 2 drug dealers and one fellow who had access to military-grade explosives and guns. I'm now well into middle age, upper middle-class and still mister Squeaky Clean, and I still know people who know how to get weed. If you can get drugs, you can get guns.
I have had at least three acquaintances who have saved their own lives because they owned and used a handgun. I also have had a relative murdered using one. I have also lost relatives to drunk drivers, yet none of us will attempt to recreate prohibition or ban guns.
In the United States, more people use legally owned firearms to prevent deadly attacks upon themselves or others than are seriously injured or killed by the use of guns (whether owned legally or illegally). More people use firearms to defend themselves against a crime than commit a crime with a firearm.
Firearms, like gasoline, alcohol, and prescription medications, are a net positive benefit to society.