Category Archives: Essays

It’s All In My Head, Right? – Crazy-Humored Vulcan Monster

Crazy Humor

“David, you’re crazy.” I have been told this on more than one occasion. And so as not to disturb my family, friends and colleagues, this accusation has always been in good silly fun. At least I think it was always meant that way. If not I probably need to tend to my garden of friends on Facebook that I hardly talk to. (Friends List gardening is such an art you know. My technique is quite simple in fact. All one needs to do is roam the newsfeed wall and look for unappealing profile pics then delete them post haste before you feel guilty about having “unfriended” them. It is quite effective until you run into one of those friends you deleted from your list. *cringe* Just in case let me say that I am joking, mostly.)

Anyway, in the past when I have ever felt comfortable enough around any person to deactivate my usual disposition of Stealth Fortress Vulcan mode and allow myself to open up to people, sporadically I may go into a compulsive episode of seemingly disorganized word-vomit, much like this blog post. And so I would like to take this time to say to everyone and to you (the reader) that I am so sorry for what you have and/or will read here. But there is nothing you need to be concerned about. Pinky promise.

You see, the claim that I am crazy would have elicited from me a response of defensiveness in my early twenty-something years in the form of passive giggling followed by squinty eyes of contempt. But now whenever someone says, “David, you’re crazy,” I retort that I wouldn’t deny it, and for some reason I get some strange fascination out of the looks I get back after saying it. One time I said it to one of my students after I jokingly called a child a “chicken nugget,” in good fun. (Please don’t think I’m some verbally abusive teacher, as I promise you, the students and I were having fun during school dismissal. Then again, these days someone would try to take me to court and have my job over the words chicken nugget. That’s the litigious country we live in now people. smh *that means “shaking my head”*)

After calling Sam–fake name to protect one among the many wild, yet innocent souls I teach–a chicken nugget, tickled red, he said, “Mr. Moore you’re so crazy,” to which I said, “This is true! I wouldn’t deny it.” The kid stopped mid-laugh and looked at me with such wide-eyed incredulity, that it was as if we did a visual eye-to-eye Vulcan mind-meld transfer of his laughter and to which I engaged my fake maniacal villain laugh. And so everyone was laughing. (Look, if you’re serious with kids 24/7 then eventually they will actually not take you seriously because you’re too unrealistic, aloof and legalistic. You have to cut loose and let them know you watched Despicable Me too.)

Truth is I am not crazy, but I love to play games with people, within reason and right timing, for those I joke with and for my own amusement. I am for equal opportunity where no man, woman or child is left behind, no matter their title, position of power or authority. Everyone is entitled to my God-given quirky abuse. Therefore my crazy humor, if I were to qualify it in a phrase, is characterized by snarky statements so absurd and opposite reality that it humorously (usually) leaves a person in shock-turned-laughter at what I am truly meaning. Okay. That was a long phrased characterization, but I think my point is made abundantly clear. Or if not, maybe if I type it in all CAPS PERHAPS IT WILL NOT BE MISINTERPRETED AS YELLING RUDELY IN WRITING, LIKE WHEN SILLY AMERICANS SHOUT THEIR WORDS AT IMMIGRANTS WHO DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH. CAPS WILL CERTAINLY BETTER ARTICULATE MY MEANING IN EXPLANATION OF MY HUMOR…I THINK. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? ME…CRAZY…JUST HUMOR. BUT NOT REALLY.

Okay. Maybe that isn’t really helping explain anything. How about my mom brought home some steaks from the store once and told me not to touch them. I then asked, “So what you mean is go ahead and cook these delicious steaks for my personal dinner delight, right? Sounds good. Thanks mom!” My mom: “Okay pig! Act crazy if you want to.” And then we both laughed. At least my mom gets me. Then again that’s like getting your first blog comment from your parents, which doesn’t really count as a epic WIN in follower-ship. Anyway…

Vulcan Monster

Recently I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness this past weekend and I liked it. But in the middle of the film in a scene specifically about Commander Spock, I realized something that had never occurred to me until recently. I am like Spock. Here is the thing. I am often left standing perplexed and lost by normal to extreme expressions of emotion, and totally late most often to “getting” the punchlines in the humor of most other people. In fact, I have very low tolerance for a person’s expressed exuberant excitement or depressiveness. A sneeze might even be grounds for a confrontation by me. As for humor, I’d sooner laugh at the simple hearing of “Two guys walked into a bar and said ouch. Get it?” (Hereon, may be things where Spock and I are different or things he never exhibited.) I live in a land of logic and reason, albeit imperfect, and have a sore mistrust for systems, authorities and subject matter experts that make truth-claims of any kind–even those made by people of my own faith–hence why I’m such the self-proclaimed amateur philosopher and Christian apologist now in my adult years. In my childhood, were I not so shy and naive, but still dangerously armed with the sharp logic I possess today, in addition to a sheer boldness, I would have said what was on my mind by being the kid at Sunday School who would openly ask hard questions. “If human beings screwed up so royally in the Garden of Eden, why didn’t God just start over? ‘Adam, Eve you are the weakest links and it is a poor reflection on me. Good bye!’” But for at least my own sake, I’m glad God did not do that because then I would not exist, nor would awesome Apple products exist, namely my iPhone. It almost goes without saying that wiping out iPhones, iPads and such would have been totally unacceptable. That’s logic I don’t want. Makes you “think different.”

(Truth: People like me are least likely to put stock into God and religion, and we definitely share a hyper-distrust for governing authorities and bureaucracy. But oops, here I am having stumbled into the hands of the Big G, and by the “G” reference I don’t mean Google. I have a gut feeling employees at Google are hell-bent on world domination and internet worship of a god named Android. I’m so not serious when I say that.. *digression* And it is odd that I work in two forms of public service in light of my personality: public school education; presently being subjected to the legislative terrorism of politicians and the cyclical semantic reincarnations of past approaches in education packaged as new discoveries by professors in higher learning. And I am annoyed to no end by rank/power-tripping obsessed soldiers of all echelons in the United States Army. I guess I don’t even get my own punchlines because I non-coercively chose both occupations! Yeah, I know. Cue the dog head-turns of confusion. I promise I am not a glutton for personal punishment. That would be weird. But all that being said, I actually deeply love what I do within both occupations and I believe it is nothing but God who molds me into what He knows will make me a better productive human being and Christ-follower as a teacher and soldier.)

Emotion for me is sometimes a help and often times an absolutely HUGE annoyance that can bring a great deal of confusion into my inner encyclopedic world and consequently the chaotic mess of a planet on which we live. People are highly illogical (including me due to my emotional tugs, as said earlier) and it frustrates me. About two months ago I had a friend call me a robot. Actually, he said that I switch between two modes: one of rare occasional jovial openness and then another of cold roboticism (I made this word up just now). I promise I am not a Vulcan monster, but if I am to live in the world and be happy within it, then the world needs to make sense (even though it will never make sense). Nevertheless, it is people like me who are probably more likely to say, “I need to wrap my brain around this,” or I cannot seem to wrap my mind around the awesomeness of Grey’s Anatomy now in its 9th season or the amazing taste of pizza with pineapple on it!

As an educator my weekly work life will bring at least two or three moments in my mind of the “spinning beach ball of death,” the Mac-user equivalent of the “blue screen of death” on a Windows (any version) operating system. In other words, there will be days where nothing my family, colleagues, or the students say or do that will jive in any coherent way no matter how clear I am in my dealings, instructions, requests or idle conversation with them all. Sometimes I do not understand what on earth is going on with the people around me, or is it all in my head? But at the end of the day it is nothing a warm Krispy Kreme donut cannot fix. Who’s with me? Let’s march to our local Krispy Kreme to demand our rights for rationality, one dozen of glazed donuts at a time. One dozen per person. Buy your own! No hand-outs here buddy!

Coming way back to Star Trek… I am like Spock, but with greater oddities and I don’t like folks like Ohura. (In real life they are meddling wicked people.) But it just so happens that the following characters were the ones that I have always believed I share similar personality traits, and whom I simply find appealing and most rational among the cast. In their roles they seemed to bring a kind of peace to the whirlwind of episodic challenges.

  • Spock, Star Trek
  • Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation
  • Tuvok, Star Trek: Voyager
  • Seven of Nine, Star Trek: Voyager

And these are characters who also fascinated me for their daring spirit and/or wisdom:

  • Captain Kirk, Star Trek (brazen, daring stupidity and occasionally exhibiting wisdom)
  • Deanna Troi, Star Trek: The Next Generation (wise)
  • Guinan, Star Trek: The Next Generation (wise)
  • B’Elanna, Star Trek: Voyager (daring)
  • Captain Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager (daring and wise)
  • Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation (daring tinkering-demi-god)

Notice in the first list they are either robotic, computer enhanced or highly logical persons and all but one are male. In the second list, notice that the majority are (assuming you’ve seen all the shows and films) are females with strong aggressive and passive personalities. Outwardly, I am often described as cool, calm and rational or this is sometimes misinterpreted by impatient extroverts as aloofness and incompetence. *squinty eyes* But inwardly, I am on fire, logical, organized, brazen, powerful, calculating, ever discerning, highly intuitive, daring and admittedly rebellious at times. I don’t think I am this way, I know I am actually made up all these things in personality because time, people, circumstances and the course of meticulous self-examination have shown me these things.

I have accepted all of me and the Lord Jesus has done the same, and is working to bring me to a better place through further knowledge and relationship with Him.

Welcome to my mind. How many? And would you like a booth or a table?

Are you a fox or a fighter?

If you carry even the very scent of exclusive claim that Christ is the only way to heaven (and I do believe he is the only way; John 14:6), expect slander and challenge from the world.  No revolutionary or reformer was not counter-cultural.  For me to say that Jesus is the only way to heaven is to go against the present grain of life and culture in America and the world.

“For in Scripture it says:  ’See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’  Now to you who believe, this stone is precious.  But to those who do not believe, ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,’ and ‘A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.’  They stumble because they disobey the message–which is also what they were destined for.”  - 1 Peter 2:6-8

He is the center of my life and defines everything that I am!  It was the pagans that gave the early church believers the name Christians, first at Antioch because of how the apostles behaved, which was like Christ (Acts 11:26).  Hence the name Christian stuck.  I am a Christian.   I will fight to follow!  I don’t care what laws are passed in this country despite my best prayers and hopes.  I refuse to compromise.  I will not bend or break.  I will not water down my faith.  No!  I will fight to conduct myself as Christ did on earth.

However…

The fiercest and deepest wounds to be inflicted will come from those who claim to be from among the camp of Christ’s followers.  This trend has not stopped, but increased.  The Gnostics showed up within the first four centuries of the faith writing hymns that denied the deity of Jesus Christ.  Surely enough the fruits of their labor have not faded; to de-Christ Jesus of Nazareth and thereby defang him as God in human form.

“And if Christ is not raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”  (1 Corinthians 15:14)

Christian, are you prepared to fight in the paradigm shift, which has already begun?

The paradigm shift is this, simply put:  The time has come where people who were called to share the Gospel and to discern and declare evil as evil, will call evil as good.  The world has always called evil as good, but not so for the Christian.

“For a time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.  Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want them to say.”  - 2  Timothy 4:3

In more practical terms it is the choice of church versus the club and drunkenness, blessings over your enemies versus profanity and cursing of them and their name, providing for the physical need of those of lesser livelihood versus passing them by, telling someone why you hold the convictions you hold to and why, despite their possible hate-filled response and loving them anyway versus caving to the ebb and flow of culture and relative personal morality.  Breaking with and/or moving out of the place in which one is co-habitating with his/her girlfriend/boyfriend versus shacking up.  It is not the world that I’m describing in the negative here, it is other so-called Christians!

The worst evil and greatest reasons by which I have been tempted to abandon my faith were not from things non-Christians have done and said, but from what so-called Christians have chosen to say and do in front of me and to me.

C. S. Lewis had this to say about hypocrisy:

“When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. The war-time posters told us that Careless Talk costs Lives. It is equally true that Careless Lives cost Talk. Our careless lives set the outer world talking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself.”

We don’t need to be a repugnant offense due to our actions that counter our claims of having been redeemed.  Mahatma Ghandi, a Hindu, said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”  If Christianity is a reasonable and logical faith, then it should be coherent, and thereby natural tangible evidence in the lives of its adherents should be evident of its claims.  No one likes to be lied to or taken for a fool.  Hypocrisy is lying!

Christians are admonished to not be offensive, but not through compromise by any means–social, cultural, political, greed, nothing whatsoever.  Rather, Christ compels us through obedience, in spite of living in a pagan society, that we are to pose no offense in the defilement of the truth of the Gospel’s affect in our lives!  If you struggle, then fight, kick and buck to show why, and then overcome.  As you do tell people why you fight not to conform to the ways of this world.

“Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.  Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us”  - 1 Peter 2:11-12

The truth of the gospel is offensive enough all its own, as it is why Christ was killed.  He claimed to be what the world, Jew and Gentile, refused to believe was true.  The Pharisees had him killed and mocked him, and the Romans carried out the action and mocked him along the way.

“Look at you now!” they yelled at him. “You said you were going to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days. Well then, if you are the Son of God, save yourself and come down from the cross!”  - Matthew 27:40

But there is one radical truth that sobered me before I made any further stupid decisions to defect from what I once perceived as a hypocritical faith and religion.  Yes, while there are hypocrites in churches, there are hypocrites in the the grocery stores, amusement parks, movie theaters, schools and at our jobs, but we don’t stop going to those places on account of them.  Moreover, if hypocrites have shown up in church, well it is exactly where they should be and it is also high time they heed the words of the book they don’t live by and the God and Man they claim to follow and obey.  I chose to stay in church and in the faith by fighting for the truth of the Gospel through obedience to Christ Jesus, despite what wrong I saw and still see happening among Christians, by Christians.

Watch and pray lest all the little foxes that lurk among us come your way.  ”Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyard, our vineyards that are in bloom” (Song of Solomon 2:15).

The foxes will compel you to compromise then will slander you.  And to follow slander (2 Timothy 2:17), comes the revised “religion” of the foxes; pseudo-spirituality, social gospel, sensual-centric gospel, appetites gospel, watered down gospel and so on.  ”Jesus knows sex is natural, so I should be able to do what I feel, you know what feels good.”  ”I can’t help it.  Jesus understands.”  ”Everybody does it.  Who really follows everything in that old book?”  ”I’m a good Christian.  I go to church with my girlfriend, and sometimes I pray and open my bible.  God knows my heart.”  ”My parents are Christians and I would go with them to church.  So I’m good to go.”  The one I dislike the most is, “God is love and understands that I have needs.  So ya know, I dabble bit here and there to take the edge off.”

I once heard it said that sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.

“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse.”  (Galatians 1:8)

Stand your ground and do not run into fear and isolation, for that is where compromise and then shame takes hold and weakens your resolve (which comes by faith and reading of the Word of God) to stay the course and fight the good fight of righteousness in Christ.  ”For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline”  (2 Timothy 1:7)  Rather, “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).

When I fall and fail, I will not fail to get up nor give up on my resolve to overcome what causes me to stumble.  The world is fallen and refuses to accept God’s help, and get up.

I will fight to follow.  I will fight for love.  I will throw my life forever into the triumph of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Are you a fox or a fighter?

I am a fighter!  And this is how I fight:

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

On Love – Part 1

Love is not matter, is not freezable, not microwaveable, not textable, not for purchase with any tangible currency, it cannot be sidelined or put in park like a car, nor is it dead.

Love is the supreme ethic that informs every inch of life–it even defines what it means to be human. Without love, truths like purpose, meaning and value are mere words, if that, and as vacuous as the proverbial vacuum they would come from.

Love abhors a vacuum, and so do I. Rather, love debunks the vacuum itself and gives meaning to more than words but gives meaning to life itself with words. So to borrow from Shakespeare, Love “is the star to every wandering bark.”

Love is the star to every wandering heart, and it rejoices and claps its hands when even a single heart is found by it.

All consuming fire that you are, Oh love, steal my heart over and over again and never let me go.

On Freedom

In this postmodern age many espouse a rash skepticism to any ancient narrative for its dogmatic and all too exclusive explanation about the origin and meaning of life and of this world.  Yet we all fall prey to the temptation of our own authoring in the throes of vilifying the older narratives with their so called chain-linked hold over our freedom to choose what is right for ourselves.  However, I think narratives in general get a bad wrap the way iron gates and bars do.  Some would only view an iron fence surrounding a building as an attempt to keep a person from getting out or only from getting in, which is a fair assesment.  But all too often many will assign a negative connotation to the simple thought of barracading anything, when all the while they were built to protect, providing a safety of sorts for the one within and/or without the gates.  The point here is that one should invest greater time upon purpose, and not just the reality of separation.  With narratives, like a gates or anything that contains, comes purpose for the people within them, and with purpose also comes imperatives and conditions for well-being and flourishing.  Of course, this would assume that what the narrative has to say about reality holds to be true.  But most narratives aren’t pondered and studied long enough to determine their legitimacy.

Even more interesting however, it appears that this present generation does more authoring than any before it by denying the earlier narratives for their restrictions upon “freedom of choice”.  They exchange one set of shackles as too exclusive, as most rational skeptics would have it, for another shinier pair on the basis of pragmatism (pragmatic being what just works or fits one’s lifestyle from mere passions and desires as opposed to an objective framework within which human beings are obliged or ought to live their lives), all the while having convinced themselves that they have found liberation.  But how does a character within the story author his own narrative without first being a character?  If in fact it is only man that is doing all of the authoring of these narratives, then clearly it is only the conclusions of other men and women–to also include the secular humanist narrative with all their ideals and conclusions–from which we are running.  But if at least one of these narratives is not the mere product of human authoring, then greater questions loom large over the whole of humanity which is:  If it is not mere fables and myths made by men we are running from, then what, or better yet, from whom are we running?  And is this mysterious narrative-giver desiring to communicate with us in a personal way if at all?  After all we live on a small planet in a big universe where we have not far to run, especially if we consider that the earth is spherical.  So we are doomed and bound to run into this narrative-giver at least once at some point in our lives–some even repeatedly.

So to come back to the liberation that seemingly comes from shaking off the old narratives, freedom and agency actually entails limits and many people today get this wrong.  In the place of one explanation for human flourishing, another will have to replace the former.  So hating the confinement of the former definition, many have sought their liberation by re-writing the narrative through a war on words, starting with freedom.  Freedom has become entitlement to act on anything one desires.  Or better put, freedom is the limitless entitlement to satisfy any and every human craving.  Legislative bodies, particularly in the West, are giving into this cultural redefinition even now.  So those that buy into this defintion tend to reason why not tap those appetites ad infinitum until they die, especially if the narrative-giver is believed to only be penned by the characters themselves.  It should be unsurprising to the reader that this belief is old as man’s existence, this holy mantra-bell of hedonist philosophy, having come in all shapes and sizes of human tribute to their makers or to themselves.

I would submit that mere freedom inherently carries an objective warning or fine print, as it were, that allows one to do any and all things, but fill in the consequence here accordingly, whether good or bad.  There is no such thing as anything coming to be without a cost; something must be spent.  Freedom itself has no meaning unless there were conditions and constraints from the beginning.  Moreover there is also an intentionality to the inherent restraint infused in freedom.  Freedom implies room for something to flourish within that which binds, envelopes, refines, and/or restrains everything therein.  But again, it is for each person to determine if gates and bars are for keeping one in or something or someone out, or both.   If it is both, then this reveals something dark lurks outside the gates from which one is being protected, and that something dark within the individual drives him to tear down the fence so that he may wander outside the limits of safety into the darkness, that from within, appears to promise more outside, than what is already inside.   Before tearing down a fence, one must pause long enough to at least consider why the fence was put there in the first place, and most importantly, by whom the fence was built and why.

One final sharp thought arises among all the previous questions at this juncture.  If human beings are allegedly inherently good, as most would say of themselves and all other people (contrary to the verifiable existential evidence for the evil of which human beings are capable and history has shown), why then are laws, governments and prisons necessary?  Before we give birth to children, do we think up all of the rules and punishments first, or all of the wealth of comforts and enjoyments we can afford to lavish upon our little ones?  Surely the latter is always the ideal despite our better judgement about young human’s proneness for finding trouble to get into.  On a much grander scale, it was not hell God had in mind, but rather a paradisiacal dwelling in which He placed us to have perfect unity with Him through His Spirit on earth.  This is an old narrative that is rejected today, but it explains the present reality very well.  Clearly, from all the evidences around us, from the eating of the fruit of the tree of good and evil to this day, a conflict between life and death developed.  Someone was allowed to step into human gene pool and run amuck of what was intended in our nature since then. Here is a hint:  first humans messed up our heritage.  The choice to do what was freely possible on the day of the fall of man was enticing, pleasurable and blindingly promising of power.  But with the clear advantage of 50-50 hindsight, freedom itself was not the virtue, the word of God was the source of our virtue and protection–the narrative-giver gave us a message that was actually by no means fine print conditions for living and loving Him in perfect unity for all eternity.  He spoke and Adam and Eve heard God and understood clearly how they were to live and be satisfied.  It is within the bounds of God’s word that we find ultimate and endless freedom and joy.  Anything that would promise life, health, joy and prosperity outside of God is counterfeit goodness, illusive and leads only to death.

So we can understand why the Psalmist said, “To all perfection I see a limit, but your commands are boundless.”  Psalm 119:96