My Uncle David

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Steve Picray

My parents divorced when I was four or five years old, and for several years I lived with my mom in a single parent house. This post is not about that.

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My Uncle Dave, my mom, my Uncle Danny, and my Grandma Colleen (seated).

At various times my mom’s two younger brothers lived with us for short periods. My Uncle Danny was a guy I looked up to almost like an older brother, and when I was a teenager, he became my friend as well as my uncle. My Uncle David was someone that I also respected and shared things with: our love of computers and video games, Star Frontiers, fishing, and other things. As kids, whenever we saw Uncle Dave grab his car keys, we would ask , “Where are you going, Uncle Dave?” He would jokingly reply, “To hell if I don’t change my ways.” Just like Danny, Dave is something of a comedian. I got part of my sense of humor from both of them. So now you know who to blame.

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Uncle Danny, Me, and Uncle Don displaying our particular brand of humor

My Uncle Don had a conversation with Dave this week and he seems pretty sure that Dave has trusted in Christ, and so will indeed go to heaven when he dies, no matter what Dave told us as kids. That is welcome news, as it means that when Dave does die, it will only be a temporary separation.

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This is the 1976 Camaro that David and I restored. He did the body work and I helped with the interior.

About ten or so years ago my Uncle Dave was in the hospital for a cardiac procedure. I visited him, and we talked for a while about nothing much. Then he fell asleep. I think it was the pain medication. But here I sit in his hospital room again. A different room this time, and his condition is such that we can’t really have a conversation. And that’s a shame.

I wish I could tell him how much I love him. I wish I could tell him how much I’m going to miss hearing his voice and his sense of humor. The doctors seem pretty sure that Dave doesn’t have much longer to live, but I know that since he has trusted Christ, he will never truly die. We will just be separated for a while.

Danny and David used to tease me when I was a kid as only uncles can do. I think that when Dave dies and they have time to put their heads together up there, I may have some surprises waiting for me when I arrive. But one thing I will not be surprised by is the joy of being with my two uncles again who have gone on before me.

John 11:25-26 “I am the resurrection and the life. He who who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

EDIT:  Here’s another photo of David working on the same car: David2

Posted in Family, God | Tagged | 2 Comments

Election and the Flood

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Steve Picray

noah_ark_people_drowingThe doctrine of election is a sticking point among evangelical Christians in theological circles.  The doctrine of election as it applies to salvation, for those who don’t know what I’m talking about, can be defined as the act of God whereby he chooses certain people to be saved. This doctrine has been debated over what exactly is included, but it cannot be denied that election means “to choose” and the Bible says that certain people are referred to as “the elect” (or “the chosen”).   The debate about exactly what this means is not the purpose of this blog post.  For a good explanation of what I believe about it, read Dr. Charles Ryrie’s “A Survey of Bible Doctrine,” pages 71-73.

Election is where God chooses certain people to be saved out of the entirety of humanity.  Obviously this means He does not choose everybody. Some people take this to mean that He chooses certain people to be condemned to Hell, but I do not believe that.  Every single one of us, without God, would choose Hell, and so it is a mercy that He chooses any of us.   How do we know who is chosen?  We know after we die, and we meet that person in Heaven.  “Oh,” we’ll say, “Evidently you were chosen as well!”   There’s no way to know here on earth.   This is an error that some Calvinists fall into when they say “Well, if all the people that God chooses WILL be saved no matter what, then what difference does it make if we witness to others?”   Why should we witness?  For two reasons (in reverse order of importance:

1. We should witness because we don’t know who is elect and who isn’t. You miss out on a great blessing if you don’t tell someone how they can avoid eternal punishment in Hell.
2. We should witness because God told us to witness. This should be enough for anybody.  If someone looks at the doctrine of election and says “It doesn’t matter if I witness or not”, they are in direct disobedience to God’s express commands.

This brings us to Noah.  I wrote a post about Noah before, and it is still one of my most popular posts.  A few weeks ago I realized that the story of Noah may very well be an example of the doctrine of election.

Did Noah warn the people about the flood?  The Bible doesn’t say. But let’s assume that, because 2 Peter 2:5 says he was a “preacher of righteousness” that he DID warn the people.  So it’s possible that he did warn people. It is also possible that, through his witness the people of earth could have repented just like Nineveh when Jonah said, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”  Jonah warned the people about their impending destruction, they repented, and God stayed His hand. But the people of Noah’s time did not repent, and God sent the flood to destroy all but those He chose. First Peter 3:20 actually says that God was patient with the people while Noah built the ark, but only eight people were saved from the flood.

We hear Sunday School lessons where people say, “Noah pleaded with the people to join him on the ark.” They may have been warned about the destruction, but the question that occurred to me was this: was anybody but Noah’s family invited onto the ark?  I believe it can be shown biblically that the answer is “no.”

Genesis 6:13-21 records God’s initial instructions to Noah where He tells Noah exactly what is going to happen and what Noah needs to do. In verse 18 God says, “But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall go into the ark—you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.” Those eight people were the only people that God elected to salvation from the flood. Verse 17 says everybody else would die. There is no place in Scripture that says that anybody except those eight people specifically were elected to be on the ark.

Did their election absolve Noah and his family of their responsibility to actually set foot on the ark?  No.  But did anybody else get saved from the flood?  No.

Just as Noah and his family was elected to salvation from the flood and yet they still had a part in it (building the ark, actually getting on board), we too must respond to the Gospel and ask God to forgive our sins so that we can be saved.  I hope and pray that all of my loved ones are elect, but I know that not all will be saved.  I would echo Paul’s statement in Romans 9:3, “I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren…”  Paul was willing to go to Hell if it meant that all of his fellow Israelites could be saved.  God doesn’t work that way, but it’s the principle Paul was trying to get across:  Love is sacrifice.

It breaks my heart to think that there are people that I love who will not join me in heaven someday. It pains me to think that my loved ones will suffer for eternity in Hell. And that is why I talk about Christ: not to offend, but to warn.  I don’t want any of my family and friends banging on the door of the ark, so to speak, because they chose Hell over God.   I don’t know which of them God has elected to salvation, and so I warn as many as I can.

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Football Players Make More Money Than Soldiers and Teachers

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Steve Picray

Several times in the past few years I have seen people on the internet complaining that players in the NFL make more money than the soldiers and sailors in our military. I’ve also seen the variant complaining that players in the NFL make more money than schoolteachers.

Now before I get into numbers, let me say that I support the military. Their job is very dangerous, and they sacrifice much so that we can live free. Also, the thought of spending seven hours a day alone with thirty children five days a week for nine months makes me shudder. God bless all those of you who do it.

On to the numbers. In the NFL there are 53 players per team. If we multiply that by all 32 teams times the league minimum salary of $405K, we get a total of $686,880,000. When we divide that by the total number of active duty personnel the United States currently fields (1.43 million), we get $480 per year for each soldier or sailor. I think they would pass.

Or, to look at this another way, we could pay each active duty soldier/sailor the same that the poorest football player gets: $405K, and that would total 579 Billion dollars. That’s 20% of our federal budget. And that’s just the league minimum. What if we paid these soldiers the league average salary of $1.9 million? That would amount to $2.7 trillion dollars, which is just short of our annual national income of 2.9 trillion. That doesn’t leave much money for anything else.

If we substitute teachers for soldiers, it gets even worse, because while there are 1.43 million soldiers, there are over seven million teachers in the United States. That would total thirteen trillion dollars, if we wanted to pay these teachers as much as the average football player makes. People, our country only takes 2.9 trillion from us citizens every year, so this is obviously untenable.

So why do football players get paid so much more than soldiers? Because we live in a free market society, and fans are willing to pay admission to the games, they buy licensed products, they watch the games on TV, and they CHOOSE to spend their money on football. Is there anything wrong with this? Absolutely not. Teachers and soldiers are paid by the government. The government only has one source of income: YOU. So the next time you feel it necessary to complain that soldiers or teachers (or anybody really) makes less money than NFL players, stop spending your time and energy on football and send that money to your nearest army or navy base. Ask the base to divide the total among the soldiers. Anything less is hypocritical.

You can either be part of the solution, or you can be part of the (perceived) problem. You make the call.

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Syria

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Steve Picray

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the situation in Syria is none of our business. Are people dying?  Yes.  Were chemical weapons used?  Evidently.   So why wouldn’t we do something about it?

First of all, Syria is a “sovereign nation.”  That means Syria has the right to control its own destiny, make its own decisions, etc, insofar as these decisions don’t harm other countries directly.  That’s actually a tricky one, since one country could sovereignly decide to withhold a needed resource from another country, thereby harming the country, without breaking sovereignty.  But I digress.  The basic facts are that the government of Syria has been fighting a civil war for the past two years. There have been approximately 120,000 people killed in this war, with approximately 30,000 of these dying this year.  To restate, we have Syrians killing other Syrians. Sovereignty applies.

People think we need to “do something” in Syria because people are dying or because they are using chemical weapons.  Do these people think our military is going to walk in there like a mother grabbing her fighting children by the ears, ending the killing?  No.  Our military is good at two things:  breaking things and killing people. So tell me which is going to solve the Syrian civil war:  Americans killing Syrians, or Americans breaking Syrian buildings?

Sovereignty is important to countries.  Here in the United States we have certain laws that apply to when we may or may not legally kill our citizens. Two examples come to mind:  death penalty and abortion. It would be just as wrong for us to bomb Syria because of their recent actions as it would be for another country to bomb the United States because they don’t approve of our policy on capital punishment or abortion. And we would be justifiably upset with that country.

Secondly: Syria is not the only place where people are dying right now.  Here is an incomplete list of places in the world where people are currently dying in armed conflicts (with 2012 fatality numbers, but the conflicts are ongoing):

  1. Colombia (4692)
  2. Afghanistan (8398)
  3. Somalia (2620)
  4. Yemen (2321)
  5. Pakistan (6211)
  6. Mexico (18,161)
  7. Sudan (4319)
  8. Iraq (4573)

There are some thirty other places where people are also dying in armed conflict, but in smaller numbers.   Which ones of these should we go solve?  Who gets to pick which of these wars we should attempt to end?  The only difference between Syria and any of these is:  Syria had chemical weapons.

I will say it again, the United States has no business getting involved in this conflict.  I get the feeling from listening to the news that President Obama is bound and determined to get involved.  I weep for those American servicemen and women who will die in this conflict, because “something had to be done.”

Sometimes the thing that should be done, Mr. President, is nothing.

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