That all being said, let’s take a look at The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Claire.  I’ll try to do this without massive spoilers.

This series follows a teenage girl as she discovers what and who she is.  This is basically what all teenagers are trying to do, but hopefully without demons trying to kill them in the physical world.  The books are artfully written and Claire is VERY good at both action scenes and character development.  I never found anything heavy-handed like I did in Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay.

The key to this book is, parents need to use their discretion.  If you don’t know what your kids are reading, you should.  I must admit I don’t always know, but when I read YA I am looking at it as something for my kids to potentially read.  Perhaps I’m looking at it wrong though.  I believe that yes I, as a parent, have the obligation to keep some things from my children until they are able to handle it.  In some cases my responsibility is to make sure they aren’t exposed to certain things at all while I am in control.  In the case of this series, I think it may open up some avenues to talk about certain issues if the child is mature enough for it.  I think that determination has to rest with the parent.

There is very intense romantic tension between some characters in this series.  There is some intense making out that is completely in character and it adds to the story instead of taking away from it.  The real problem I have with this series is that there are main characters who are homosexual.  No I am not a homophobe.  I do however know that homosexuality is antithetical to a holy life.  Therefore I can’t condone it in this book.

I may yet let my son read it.  He’s 15 and I think the discussion might be worth it.  I will NOT be letting my 11 year old daughter read it yet.  I also won’t let her watch PG-13 movies.

So, I guess I recommend this series with some serious reservations.  It is not for the children of lazy parents, but well worth it if you are willing to know what your kids are reading and willing to discuss it with them.

I was completely wrong.  The story connected immediately.  I was immersed in the life of Katniss Everdeen and her problems in the far distant post-post-apocalyptic future.  Her character is well developed as is the background of the nation of Panem.  Ms. Collins does a great job of exposition through dialogue and introspection.  She gradually lets us know that Panem is the former site of the USA.  The Capitol is somewhere near modern-day Denver.

I won’t give a synopsis here.  Wikipedia seems to have a good one, but beware spoilers.  My 10YO daughter loved the first book and can’t wait to get her hands on the second.  I just finished the last book.  After really enjoying the first 2 books, I excitedly began the third and final book in the series, Mockingjay.  Read more if you don’t mind spoilers.

Just as in the first two books the character development seems on track at first.  The book starts where the second left off.  I do see that the premise of this book was probably a little challenging to the author compared to the other two.  Books one and two followed the same pattern in a way.  Book three departed from that.

I tried to enjoy Mockingjay. I really did.  I couldn’t get past some problems I had with it:

1.  Magic weapons.  The contrivance of all bad fantasy novels (Oh look, a magic sword!) comes into this series in a big way.  It isn’t a magic sword per se but as all Scifi aficionados know that any technology sufficiently advanced seems like magic to those with less.  In this case, the weapons Katniss and Gale get in district 13 are kind of ridiculous.  If the scientists can make these for Gale, Katniss, and Finnick why don’t they make them for all of the soldiers?

2.  The lack of growth for the protagonist.  It seems that everything in this novel just happens to her and she reacts to it, never changing really.  At least at first.  Throughout the entire first part of the novel, Katniss vacillates between crying and being strong, between thinking she loved and had lost Peeta and wondering if she loved Gale.  Overall I felt as though she had a really selfish bent throughout the first part of the book.  This didn’t fit with the Katniss from the first books, the girl who stepped in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games.

Real spoilers below……

Are you sure?…….

Okay then.  I warned you.

3.  The abruptness of the change in Katniss when Peeta is rescued.  Peeta was rescued by district 13 and when Katniss tries to go to him he tries to kill her.  He has had his mind altered by the Capitol.  Katniss, for her part, ran and hid and cried some more.  She refused to deal with the situation or come to grips with it emotionally.  She wrote him off and was cold and somewhat cruel to this man she thought she loved.  While the argument could be made that some people react this way, I found it unbelievable in Katniss.

4.  Ms. Collins gets rather preachy in this book.  I think she seems a bit like an anti-war activist in parts of the book.  War is never pretty and I think she  conveys that quite well.  I felt as though the whole series had kind of a class-warfare feel to it, but it especially came out in the final book.  She did temper her message some in that even the benevolent dictator does some terrible things, too but I think that part goes along with the anti-war message of the story.

Now I did not HATE this book, regardless of all the problems I had with it.  I just didn’t like it as much as the first two.  I think some things worked out a little too conveniently.  Some terrible things happened without a lot of explanation.

I liked that fact that Ms. Collins had the guts to kill Katniss’s sister Prim though.  I did not like when it happened.  I did not react quite as viscerally as I would have in either of the last two books but I hated it nonetheless.  The fact that I was attached to this character means that I was, at least to some extent, emotionally invested in the book.

Overall the series was very good.  The final book detracted from the total effect.  I would suggest The Hunger Games and Catching Fire to anyone.  Mockingjay is on my read once and forget list.

Now it sits abandoned and forlorn.  The sounds of 6 generations echo through the now empty rooms.  I pass the french doors, hanging open and curtainless, leading into my grandparents’ bedroom off the living room.  I walk past the spot in the dining room where I used to lay my sleeping bag when too many grandchildren spent the night.  I take the two-inch step up  into the kitchen that used to be filled with the smell of bacon and hotcakes (Grandpa said pancakes were cold,  hotcakes were hot) in the morning when I spent a weekend here.  I remember sitting at the table for breakfast and Grandpa telling me I needed to go run a comb through that rat’s nest on my head before I ate.

The white gas stove sits in the same place, months have passed since it knew the heat of preparing a meal.  Years have passed since it has been put to use for a large family gathering. The kitchen seems so much bigger without the old breakfast table where we took most meals here.  It reminds me of when we were remodeling the old place when my grandparents moved into it.  I was all of 12 years old.  My Grandma paid me to kingly sum of $100 to come work on the house with my Grandpa all summer.  It was months before Grandpa knew I had been paid.

Missing in the kitchen was the rack where Grandma used to hang her coffee cups, one reading #1 Grandpa with a mustache guard across one side of the cup, one reading #1 Grandma.  The kitchen cabinets stood open and empty, as did the pantry in the corner.  So many good things came from that pantry: homemade red plum jam, home canned sweet pickles and pickled beets.  My stomach remembers too, with the ghost of a sympathetic hunger pang.

I continue onto the back porch, a closed in room that housed the washer and dryer, the lopsided-ness of the century-old house more evident here than anywhere else.  I continue on into the back room.  This is the room where I almost died a couple winters after Grandma and Grandpa moved in.  I had turned the gas space heater too low and the fire went out.  Grandpa smelled the gas from much further away than he should have been able to and came in and saved my life.

The room now sits empty where it had been crowded with 2 beds and a multitude of blankets, boardgames, and dolls, antiques now that had been purchased new for my mother and her seven brothers.  Even my uncle’s hunting trophies of buck heads and his arrow shafts are gone.  The room now looks more like a lean-to attached to the house than a bedroom.

I re-trace my steps through this alien landscape that was once my home even more than where I lived with my parents and sisters.  I look out through the back door into the empty part of the lot where Grandpa had his garden every year.  He kept it until just a few years before they had to go to the nursing home.   The gigantic and beautiful crepe myrtle tree is in bloom in bright pink blossoms.  I remember so many games out in that yard: hide-and-seek, freeze tag, football.  I know that my cousins also had those memories.

I pull myself away from the back door and continue back through the Old Home Place, as Grandpa used to call it.  I head back out the front door, having re-lived enough of my childhood.  I see that Grandma’s rocks are still in the front of the house.  She used to get rocks from everywhere she went.  I still have three Oklahoma rose rocks.  Oklahoma is the only place in the world where sandstone forms in a shape reminiscent of a rose in full bloom.

I walk out the front gate, laughing out loud at myself as I check to make sure Grandpa’s long-dead golden lab, Daisy, doesn’t get out when I open the gate.

Here, then is the image of the rose-rock in case you have never seen it.

Peter talked about it in  I Peter 1:16, quoting from Leviticus.  “Be ye holy for I am holy.”

God demands righteousness from us in order to enter heaven.  Not just compared to others, compared to himself.  Mother Teresa herself couldn’t enter Heaven based on her own righteousness.  She could not have stood in God’s presence during her life and lived through it.  The Apostle Paul would have been destroyed by facing God in his own righteousness.

Romans 3:9 says “There is no one righteous, not even one.”

Paul is saying that though there is value in being a Jew, even being a Jew doesn’t make you righteous.  The Law came through the Jews.  The Savior came through the Jews.  God treasured the Jews but He used them to show the world that we can’t possibly be good enough for him.  The law was simply to make us “Conscious of our sin.” (Rom 3:21)

If the Law wasn’t given to make us righteous but to let us know that we aren’t righteous, how can we be righteous enough? Ah!  That is a fantastic question.

Paul answers it in Romans 3:21 through the end of the chapter.

God made his righteousness known outside the Law by showing us through Jesus Christ how it can be lived.  However, ONLY Jesus was capable of doing so.  Romans 3:23 says “For ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”  Very clearly every one  of us is guilty of sin.  No one deserves to go to Heaven.

We know that there is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood (Hebrews 9:22).  Therefore Jesus, the only one not deserving death and destruction, was sacrificed in our place.  His blood met the price demanding ours.  God did not punish the sins that went before the sacrifice of his Son as they deserved because his Son would die for them.

This sameness, resulting from all mankind being fallen and unworthy, and all of man’s sins being forgiven means that no one has the right to boast about his spiritual heritage.  The Law, not meant to save us, is not worthless.  Jesus did not set the Law aside.  He fulfilled the Law.  He showed all of  us Righteousness.  Because of Him, we now are justified (made just) through faith, not the works of the letter of the Law.

On this Thanksgiving Day here in the USA, I thank God for His Son.  I thank Him for His forgiveness.  Most of all I thank Him for giving me a way, in my unrighteousness, to be able to put on His righteousness and be able to one day see Him face to face.

Romans 2 also talks about judgement.   It tells us not to judge there, too.  Paul is telling the Roman church that they are guilty of many things they judge pagans for.  It isn’t for them to judge anyway.  God will judge everyone and use the same measuring stick on all of us.  Guess what?  Not one person in this world will measure up on God’s Measuring stick.  You must be this Holy to enter Heaven.  I know I don’t come up anywhere close to the line.

The first part of Romans 2 talks about Christians behaving as badly as anyone else.  Paul asks the Christians if they expect to be spared the judgment they pronounce on the pagans.  “Or do you presume upon God’s patience and long-suffering and kindness?”    God is kind.   God is long-suffering.  God is also holy.  God’s kindness is intended to draw you to repentance, not further into sin, presuming upon His kindness even more.

Everyone will be judged equally (v. 11).  It doesn’t matter whether you are in church every Sunday.  God will judge all men according to their works (v. 6).  This is not to say that what we do earns heaven, but if we can judge an apple tree by its ability to produce apples, God can look at the life of a person and will know whether or not they are truly Christians.

Paul ends the chapter talking about circumcision.  It is not physical, but spiritual.  He says the physically uncircumcised will judge the physically circumcised because the Law-quoting and judgmental Jews were giving lip service to Godliness.  The uncircumcised in this passage will follow God, rather than following the letter of the law and infringing as far as he thinks he can.  He lives by the spirit of the law, which is to say, a holy life.  Not according to man’s rules, but according to God’s principles.

I hope to be part of that uncircumcised group that follows God’s principles.  Lord, help me to be truly changed in you.

One of the reasons I have not written this entry is that the subject is somewhat tough.  Romans 1:18 -32 talks about the depravity of man and his rejection of God.  It lists some of the many ways we reject Him and attempt to make ourselves wiser than His foolishness.  In a world marked by advances in science and technology like we have seen over the past 100 years, who would believe that there is a  God who created the world?  It is easier to believe that this is it.  There is nothing after this.  We should live for the moment.  We should grab every pleasure available to us right now.

Romans 1:18-20 says that men suppress the truth with their unrighteousness.   Their behavior is meant to cover the evidence God has made obvious since the foundation of the world.

Psalm 19:1 says that the Heavens themselves declare the glory of God.   The hearts of man bear witness to God’s truth.  I have heard of missionaries  in Africa and South America that came upon tribes of people in the deepest wilderness who, having never met a Christian missionary, were worshipping God and his son.  They knew that the son had died on a cross for their sins.

They had sought after God and He had revealed Himself to them.    We here have no excuse (Rom. 1:20) for not following God.  Romans 1:22 says, “Claiming to be wise they became fools.”  How many people use science and humanism as an excuse to cover their own sin?  Do we claim to be wise, thereby becoming fools?  Only if we deny the existence and power of God, I think.

Romans 1 ends with a listing of several things that people give themselves over to in order to keep from admitting God has power over them.  They exhange the Truth of God for a lie.  They give themselves over to unnatural lusts.  I find it interesting that Paul writes about homosexuality and gossip with the same judgment here.  He also writes about being disobedient to parents.  These things culminate in this final verse.

Romans 1:32  “Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but look at our world today.  What immorality is approved of by our culture?  Not only is sin not decried, it is publicly supported.  I’m not saying that we should take homosexuals out and stone them.  What I am saying is that we must call sin what it is.  We cannot condone the behavior of ANY sinner.  Does that mean we attack them and turn them away from the church?  In the words of Paul, “God forbid it”.  Notice malice murder and maliciousness are included in Paul’s litany of sinful behaviors.  We approach them in love and help them to establish that cognitive dissonance that will allow them to see what they are missing.

In the words of Psalm 19:14  Now let the word of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Well, I hope to have my next Romans post up later this week.  Wednesday at least, I hope.

Till then…

So what does it mean to believe?  Many people express a belief in God.  Many people express a belief that Jesus is His Son and that Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of sin.  They believe that he rose on the third day and ascended into Heaven.  Many believe but what does that get them?

Look at the most well-known verse in the Bible, John 3:16.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believed in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  There’s that word again.  Believe.

Romans 1:16 “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.”  Belief.

What does believe mean?

Belief in God is not the same as believing in God.  Let me explain.  No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.

When we believe in God, it is a function of faith.  It is far from an intellectual pursuit.  The Amplified Bible clarifies what is meant in Roman 1:16.  “With a personal trust and a confident surrender and firm reliance” these words follow “everyone who believes” in that translation.  Is that how you believe?

A personal trust and a confident surrender and a firm reliance on God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit.

Do the lives of those “believers” out there reflect this?  I daresay they don’t.  Mine sometimes doesn’t.

Believing in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, is different from believing in anything else.  Ghosts, Santa Clause, the Great Pumpkin or the Tooth Fairy.  None of these beliefs offer you eternal life.  Believing in God is more than an intellectual exercise.  You show your belief.

As for the intellectual side, James puts it this way.  “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”  Yes.  They, too, believe in God.  They cannot be saved by this belief.

A friend once said to me, “Why do people think they will spend eternity in heaven with the God they rejected so often on Earth?”  Why would they want to?  Is it just that they believe Hell will be bad so they pay lip service to belief in God thinking that will save them?  I don’t think it will.

Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 say, “There is a way that seems right to a man but the end thereof is death.”

Pay attention to that I plan on coming back to it before I finish with Romans Ch 1.

Just like I earlier pointed out here, many are in the church who can’t be told apart from the world.  What is the difference, other than the fact that they attend church and claim Christ?  They are, as Paul put it in 2 Timothy 3:5 “having a form of godliness but denying its power”.

I want my belief in God to mean I believe “with a personal trust and a confident surrender and firm reliance” on Him.

When we were considering what movie to see we considered seeing Sorcerer’s Apprentice but my wife and girls really had no desire to see it, even though my son and I kinda did.  Yes, we were going to the cheap movies.  I can’t afford to see new release movies anymore, but that’s another story.  My wife said my son and I could go see Sorcerer’s Apprentice while she and the girls went to see Ramona and Beezus.  We had approached the whole idea of going out as a family date, so I took a big breath and said, “No.  Let’s be together.  I want to see Beezus and Ramona, too.”  Yes, I even talk in italics.

So we got to the theater and watched a terrific movie about a little girl and her struggles with her sister and her rivals and her father losing his job and her mom going back to work and on and on and on.  I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.  My adrenaline pumped just like in an action movie.

I remember liking these books when I was in grade school.  I knew Beezus, Ramona, Henry and several others I have since forgotten.  The story is not at all what I remember, but it caught the spirit of the books beautifully, if I recall correctly.

I was sitting there thinking about this movie and thought, action and adventure movies have nothing on being a dad.  And to me, that’s what the movie was about.  It was on being a dad from a little girl’s perspective.  As I said before, I teared up at several points in the film.  The world’s longest picture was one of those places.  Dad sat down in the floor with this little girl (sometimes a holy terror, but not on purpose) and drew a picture with her help.  It had all of her classmates in it.  It had the cat.  It showed the school.  I think the purpose of the picture was to show dad’s talent as an artist, but to me it showed a loving father taking an interest in his daughter.

That is something I have to work hard on.  I am soooooo tired from working all the time.  I sometimes just want them to leave me alone a few minutes when I’m at home.  But the need me soooooooo badly.  A little girl (or boy) needs her father’s love.  A touch, be it sitting on his lap and cuddling in the recliner, or a hug, or a pat on the head, is absolutely vital to the proper development, both emotional and spiritual, of a child.  Sure.  I’d sometimes rather be reading a good book.  But there will come a day when they would rather be reading a good book than hang out with Dad.  It will be those times when I can look back on what I did or didn’t do when they were little and see whether my contact with them and my life before them made the impact I hope it did.

My youngest daughter talks so much I sometimes think my ears will bleed.  I am guilty of not really listening to a lot of what she says.  I have two other kids who still like to talk to me, too.  I hope they don’t lose that desire to just sit and talk with me.  Moreover I hope I don’t pull that desire out of them.

Being a dad is not some boring chick-flick.  It is more exciting than all action-adventure movies put together.  It is more moving than anything ever nominated for best picture.  It is funnier than Abbott and Costello (or Jim Carey, take your pick) ever thought about being.

Kids, I love you more than words can ever express.  I hope over the course of my life to be able to not just tell you that but to show you that…and listen you that…and hug you that.

But I digress.  I generally use this as a dumping ground for my brain.  Today I had two ideas I thought were brilliant.  I shared one with my wife and started writing on the other one.  I may eventually post a teaser here.  We’ll see what develops.  The first one wasn’t about writing and I may never share it.  Again, we’ll see.

Regardless, I’ve had many thoughts about things I’d like to put here and just never took the time.  For instance, I went with my family to see Ramona and Beezus.  Man, I am such a sap!  I teared up two or three times in that movie.  It inspired me to think about action and adventure in a different light.  I plan on making that my next blog entry.

Anyway, until I make time to come write in this space again, (perhaps Monday or Tuesday) I bid you adieu (or however you spell it.  I’m not French.).