Never Tire in Doing What God Says is Right

Yesterday (August 4), as widely expected, the 9th Circuit Federal Court in San Francisco dealt supporters of traditional marriage a major blow by declaring Proposition 8, the voter-approved amendment to the California state constitution that defines marriage within the state as between a man and a woman, was unconstitutional on the grounds that it discriminates against same-sex partners and violates equal accesss and due process rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.

While it's a devastating blow to the protection of marriage, to me it's not surprising. The 9th Circuit is based in San Francisco, the traditional heart of the gay-rights movement and a longtime liberal stronghold. The court and its judges have a long history of leaning heavily to the left in rendering its decisions, and even judges appointed by conservative presidents like George Bush Sr. surprise us by going to the other side in strategic decisions.

However, this is not the end of the matter; it's far from over. The Prop 8 supporters plan to ask for a stay of the decision at the 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals to keep the gay-marriage ban in place for now, and hope to ultimately bring it back to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled a few years back that the decision of marriage must be decided by the states rather than the federal government. It's like an out-of-control pendulum on a clock that swings violently from one side to the other without stopping, stressing and freaking out everyone who watches the clock itself.

No matter how a judge decides on the legal definition of marriage, I don't expect it to hold for very long before it's thrown back to the courts yet again. I'm only 40 years old, but I've observed that since my college days that politics is as double-minded and insane as the weak believer James, the brother of Jesus, writes about in his epistle (James 1). Federal programs, incentives and laws enacted and passed by one presidential administration or session of Congress are axed or eliminated by the next ones in power, then reinstated by the Presidents and congressmen after them, and back and forth. It almost makes one want to throw their hands up in defeat and stop standing up for God's truth because truth itself is always subject to the interpretation and revision of the political party currently in power, not to mention the judges sympathetic to their worldviews.

And as a conservative, I feel further alienated with each passing day by the leaders of the movement. I will have nothing with the Tea Party Movement because it feeds on anger, resentment and belligerence, as well as ravenously eating their own if there's even an iota of disagreement. Just as MoveOn.org, Hollywood and liberal activists shamelessly hit the gutter in attacking then-President George W. Bush, Tea Partiers are attacking President Obama in the same way, thinking fighting fire with more fire will win the day.

And sadly, I have even withdrew my support of the supposedly nonpartisan Presidential Prayer Team last month because its new leadership seems to think that turning up the heat on anti-conservative, anti-biblical political leaders while smugly bragging about being faithful to our Christian heritage will win back supporters they lost when Obama took office.

Now don't think for a second that I am advocating that we just roll over, just let the bad guys win every time and give up on doing good because the Rapture's gonna happen real soon and all this don't really matter anyway. Jesus told us to "occupy until He comes" through his Parable of the Talents in Luke 19. In the King James Version, the master tells his servants to "occupy until I come"; the English Standard Version renders it "Engage in business until I come", and in the NIV it reads "Put this money to work until I come back."

We're not just to hold our ground against an unbelieving world hostile to the Good News of Jesus Christ, nor circle the wagons and retreat to our church buildings. We are to actively go out and engage that world the same way the early church did in the New Testament. The apostle Paul engaged with the intellectuals of the Areopagus (Mars Hill) in Athens, sharing the Gospel in an academic and logical way that they could understand. And while there were no wholesale conversions as we would like to see, the Holy Spirit moved a handful of the people there to commit themselves to Christ, while a seed was planted in yet others.

It is my conviction that the American culture we live in today is no different than the Roman culture of Paul's day: hedonism, decadence, in moral decline and in political crisis. Christians were hounded, arrested and executed for the name of Christ, and many ultraconservative Christians think that may happen on our shores in the near future.

But there are also countless multitudes of people who have lived only for pleasure and gratification to the max, only to find it wanting and empty as they struggle with addiction, disease, broken families, depression and suicidal thoughts. They have sought "alternative religions" and Eastern spirituality and found the many rituals and deeds they had to do in order to have peace was a crushing burden, and what peace they did find wasn't lasting or worth the effort. They put up a front of cynicism, indifference and mean-spiritedness, but inside they are scared of having nothing to believe in and live for.

Those are the people Jesus loves, and for whom He died. They were the same people He met in His earthly ministry. And even when the government or prevailing culture tries hard to stamp out our message, we must realize that America is not unique in this spiritual battle. Anywhere the Gospel has been preached, there has been opposition and always will be. And there have always been people whom the Holy Spirit has moved to accept Christ as their Savior.

As a college student at Chapman University, I had a cynical, agnostic attitude and embraced the free-thinking bohemian lifestyle of my fellow art and communications students because it seemed so cool and grown-up. But I was actually rebelling against the disgusting legalism, coldness and hypocrisy of my evangelical upbringing. It was strongly grounded, patient Christian students and intellectual pastors at a local Lutheran church who demonstrated the Christian life in their everyday doings who convinced me that I was to follow Jesus, not his fallible people, and give my life back to him.

So if you guys were used by the Holy Spirit to bring me, a snarky college brat, back to the faith of my youth, who is to say the next seemingly hostile person you witness to may be your future brother or sister in Christ? Never tire in doing what God says is right, and it is right to bring this Good News to all nations.

The Death of Air America

As of 6PM local time here in Los Angeles, Air America Radio, the liberal talk radio network that sought to be the answer to conservative talk superstars like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, will have aired its last program and will permanently cease operations. After years of struggling to find audiences, pay its bills and gain financial backing, the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and will liquidate its assets to pay off its debts.

The official statement from Air America's chairman Charlie Kireker can be found here at the company website and it was covered in the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.

I am not surprised that Air America finally bit the dust. Actually, I am surprised that it was still around.

I listened to Air America on KTLK-AM in Los Angeles occasionally to see what was going on over there. Personally, I heard better rants and snarks from the DJ's back at my old college radio station--and they were drunk. Air America as a whole loved to attack NPR as liberals without backbone. Its single purpose was to bash George W. Bush, then move on to slamming Barack Obama for not being liberal enough, expanding the war in Afghanistan and not bringing "change" as quickly as hoped. Many hosts acted like bratty 45-year-old mean girls who refused to grow up or accept the consequences of their actions because big daddy liberal activist George Soros would always bail them out no matter what.

Yes, they had two shining stars in Al Franken, who is now the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota in the U.S. Senate, and in Rachel Maddow, who now has her own show on cable network MSNBC. But Air America was pretty much doomed from the very start because in their business model, program content and expectations, they didn't know what the heck they were doing. It originally tried to buy its first stations outright, then switched to leased time, then bumped off those stations for not paying its bills. In 2005 it signed a deal with radio giant Clear Channel to carry Air America programs on "progressive talk" format stations, but then got cleared off the dial when the format died in several cities and Clear Channel replaced Air America with its own liberal personalities on the remaining stations.

The impression I had of Air America was that they wanted all of the USA to be just like San Francisco, Santa Monica, Minneapolis, Austin, Miami's South Beach, New York's Greenwich Village, Boston and Washington, DC, and would violently beat us into submission like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if they could. Heck, they were just as deranged. But the far-left fringe they catered to is actually so small and radical an audience that advertisers wanted no part of it.

NPR, on the other hand, is just as liberal but everything Air America wasn't--mature, calm, open-minded and reasonable, such as the hosts of talk shows "Fresh Air", "Marketplace," and "Talk of the Nation". There is actual news and information talked about on NPR, whereas Air America would make a frat-house prank or joke about the conservative whipping boy du jour and extend it over three hours. And as a result, NPR receives support from corporate donors, foundations and individual subscribers who appreciate the difference.

I used to be a liberal myself in college, and used to love the snarky low-brow humor Air America reveled in. But then two things happened. First, I felt betrayed by President Bill Clinton over his broken campaign promises and steamrolling an agenda far more radical than I voted for. Second, I grew up. Such cheap shots and insults get old after a while, and I have largely given up talk radio altogether because the bulk of it, liberal and conservative, consists of such mean-spirited humor at the expense of others.

Some of my fellow conservatives are complaining that Air America's demise means nothing because liberal talk continues on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC et al, and that even right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Clear Channel are really puppets of a sinister conspiracy to keep "true conservatives" ideologically stoned while "the insiders", under the influence of Satan and the Freemasons, bring us into a one-world goverment and make war plans to defeat God's fundamentalist Christian army in the Battle of Armageddon before President Obama leaves office, since it failed to come about when President Clinton was in office. Sigh... 12-step groups teach us not to even bother arguing with such people, since like alcoholics, they are not in their right minds and speaking under the influence.

Air America is dead, long live NPR. Yay! :D

Jay, Conan and a Double-Minded NBC

It was an experiment that failed, and was apparently doomed to failure from the start. Yesterday NBC confirmed that it was cancelling "The Jay Leno Show" with the start of its Winter Olympics coverage from Vancouver in February and moving Leno back to his old 11:35pm (10:30pm Central) late-night slot, bumping his "Tonight Show" successor Conan O'Brien up to 12:05am and "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" to 1:05am. And while it tried to keep a brave face, the Peacock Network admitted that trying to save itself some money by replacing scripted dramas with a cost-effective prime time talk show was a mistake.

And in trying to burn the candle at both ends, NBC's hands still got burned.

The NBC brass had planned for years to replace Leno as host of "The Tonight Show" with O'Brien, who was pulling in the younger, disposable-income viewers that advertisers covet. After flirting with a move to ABC or Fox, Leno decided to stay loyal to the Peacock and agreed to a new prime-time program set aside just for him. He said it was an experiment for himself and NBC and knew it could either succeed or fail. NBC bragged that even though the ratings were not stellar, its bean counters confirmed Leno's new gig was turning a profit and doing as well as predicted.

NBC's affiliates, however, didn't see it that way, complaining that they lost large audience lead-ins for their local late-night news and threatening to go public with their problems. That would have been another PR nightmare for the network, which is known for its iron-fisted approach to making affiliates run the entire NBC schedule without pre-emptions. Just ask Boston NBC affilate WHDH, which almost lost the Peacock when it threatened to replace Leno's 10 o' clock slot with local news because it rightly feared lackluster ratings.

Poor Conan is the odd man out in this real-life soap opera. After moving his family and entire production staff to Los Angeles, making a heavily promoted and anticipated June debut, and establishing himself on a custom-built soundstage at Universal Studios Hollywood, he's suddenly being snubbed and abandoned by the same NBC that groomed him for "The Tonight Show" for several years. So it doesn't surprise me that there are reports Conan is talking with Fox, for whom he a staff writer on "The Simpsons", about starting a late-night show there and that he may let NBC buy out his long-term contract if he says no to the bump-up to midnight.

NBC has exercised a double mind in trying to keep both Leno and O'Brien in the network fold. And like most other double-minded ideas, it collapsed on itself. It tried to placate a jilted Leno and keep him from moving to the competition, while trying to stop its hemorrhaging fourth-place ratings, save as much money as possible and hype O'Brien as the new king of late night. Sounds a lot like Miley Stewart trying to keep her Superman-like Hannah Montana popstar identity a secret until it collapsed on her private life and she finally came clean with it to her family and closest friends. (My apologies if you haven't seen the Hannah movie yet as I just gave away the plot.)

But where the fictional Miley made peace with herself and continued Hannah like a stage name, the real-life NBC has seen its Leno-O'Brien-Jimmy Fallon trifecta collapse in dramatic fashion and fears losing one of its comics to a rival network, all the while claiming that everything is well in Peacock-land. And CBS' David Letterman has been laughing all the way to the bank, routinely pummeling Conan in the ratings and picking up Leno's former audience.

I'm not too keen on much of Conan's comedy style, which is essentially PG-13 on up and at times borders on the dirty. I don't get the popularity of either Triumph the cigar-shomping Celebrity Insult Hound or the bear who does stuff that can't be described on a family-audience blog like this. And then there's Conan's gravity-defying pompadour, but that's something totally different. But I still feel sorry for a guy who was courted and led on by NBC to make a cross-country move to "The Tonight Show", a program he grew up with, always dreamed of hosting, and was virtually guaranteed to him... then have the network go psycho like Britney Spears and dump him like nothing ever happened when it realized it wasn't going like the bean counters wanted.

In the Bible there are at least two warnings about trying to have your cake and eat it too. In Matthew 6:24 Jesus told his disciples “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money" (New Living Translation). The apostle James warns that a double mind is "as unsettled as the wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind... They can't make up their minds. They waver back and forth in everything they do" (James 6b, 8).

A few years out of college I had a night-shift job at a local newspaper proofreading ads. One year into that job I applied for and got a weekend DJ job at a local radio station. The demands of both positions, especially the last-minute substitute shifts for other DJ's who called in sick, collided with each other and I ended up losing both. Instead of sticking with a stable job albeit with strange hours, I had to have more and have the dream job I always wanted. In trying to have my cake and eat it too, I tripped Chevy Chase-style and my face fell into the cake on the floor. The current NBC debacle is a similar situation.

I learned from my experience to let my yes be yes and no be no, and not take on more than I could handle. I also learned not to compartmentalize my life in the sense that I hold one worldview or personality in one area of my life while being a polar opposite in another. As a Christian I try to follow a biblical worldview in all I do, not just at church but at work (when I am working), with my family and friends, and online. Because I have a sinful nature, there are and will be times when I stumble and fall, admit my sin and then carry on. But life is a lot less complicated when you're not putting up a menagerie of fronts and lies to this person or that.

I believe that NBC will lose Leno or O'Brien to Fox, which hasn't had a late-night show of its own since "The Late Show with Joan Rivers", which launched the fourth network in the late 1980's. The Winter Olympics will be a money-making bonanza that may cover NBC's losses, but the Peacock will still have to live with the consequences of its double-minded, and possibly double-dealing, prime time experiment.

Mele Kalikimaka 2009!

This is my Christmas greeting card for 2009, which I drew in pencil, scanned into my computer and colored with GimPhoto (a variation of the freeware graphics program GIMP).

"Mele Kalikimaka" is Hawaiian for "Merry Christmas". In this cartoon, the family has a Christmas tradition of the youngest member topping the tree, which in this case is a miniature palm.

This is my second Hawaiian-themed Christmas card. It all began at my church: my pastor's mom grew up on Maui, is proud of her Hawaiian heritage, and her aloha spirit is joyfully contagious.

You can view and download the full-size version of this cartoon at this link:
www.immanuelfirst.org/images/kalikimaka09.jpg
You can also download other Hawaiian-themed Christmas cards at: www.immanuelfirst.org/xmas09.htm

I hope you enjoy the toons, and Mele Kalikimaka to you and your ohana (family).

Why I (Still) Love the Good Ol' Atari 2600

On my birthday in 2006, my mom gave me an Atari Flashback 2 Classic Game Console, a miniature version of the classic Atari 2600 video game console with 40 built-in period games (plus 2 more via a secret game key) and two replica joysticks. She knew that I always loved Atari games, and in the midst of the retrogaming craze of the mid 2000's she bought one at the Wal-Mart she worked at. And maybe my already owning the Flashback 1 was a hint. :)

I love that Flashback 2; right now it sits on top of my analog TV, the joystick parked on top of the digital converter box. Most of the classic Atari games are on the console--Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Lunar Lander and the Activision icon Pitfall.

Unlike the first Atari Flashback, which was built on a recreated Nintendo NES game chip, the Flashback 2 was a faithful recreation of the 2600's internal hardware, all the way down to the tiny memory chip. And it continues to amaze me that even with its blocky, flickering graphics, the original 2600 was on the market for just a little over 14 years, from the end of the Pong era into the beginning of the Sega Genesis and Nintendo's Super NES.

Released in the fall of 1977, the Atari Video Computer System was one of the first cartridge-based gaming consoles. It was originally called a "Video Computer System" to gain a marketing one-up from the Fairchild Video Entertainment System, another cartridge-based game console at the time. It was later rebranded the Atari 2600 after its manufacturing model number, CX-2600. Its processor, nicknamed "Stella" by the Atari development team, was a modified 8-bit Motorola 6502 processor running at 1.6 MHz. Its game controllers initially consisted of two joysticks and four paddles, but later grew to a pair of keypads, a "driving controller" (a full-360 paddle without stops), a light gun, wireless remote joysticks, a trackball and even a third-party attachable keyboard with added RAM which turned the gaming console into a simple home computer. The latter add-on, called a CompuMate, allowed users to create simple programs in the BASIC language, compose songs with a built-in synthesizer and save them all on a cassette for reloading later.

Because memory chips were expensive to make back in the 70's, the 2600 only had 128 bytes of onboard RAM. That's right, 128 single bytes, far less memory than it takes to make this sentence. The modified Motorola processor could only accept a maximum of 4K of instructions burned onto a cartridge's ROM chip. It had no frame buffer, no video memory, no preset graphics sprites, and could only display a maximum of two single-colored player sprites, two ball sprites in the same color as their corresponding players, and a missile sprite. Any more sprites would cause the screen to flicker. It was already obsolete the moment it first rolled off the assembly line because better, more powerful game consoles and home computers were in development, including Atari's own PC line.

But oh, what great games were made for that pea-brained processor. The 2600's first breakout hit was the home port of the arcade game Space Invaders in 1980. Millions of consoles were sold just so that people could play Invaders at home, and in color--the arcade Invaders was black-and-white. Due to pressure from competing and technically superior consoles, particularly Mattel's Intellivision, Atari and third-party publishers began pushing the 2600 to the limit of its technical capabilities and beyond: a technique called "bank-switching" allowed additional 4K and 16K ROM chips to be built into a cartridge and the extra game code to be called upon like a wireless router. Clever coding tricks like multiplexing graphics with one sprite, redrawing sprites in midscreen and exploting the lack of a preprogrammed character set made the Atari 2600 ultimately play complex games its creators never intended it for, and it was fun.

But despite its long run, the 2600 had its share of flops and misses, some of them remembered to this day. The infamous home port of Pac-Man, rushed to market for the 1981 Christmas season and reportedly only a demo version of a much better game in development, simply stunk, and many disgruntled Atari fans fled to the competing Intellivision, ColecoVision and Odyssey 2. Atari redeemed itself with a much better port of Ms. Pac-Man, but the damage to the 2600's reputation had already been done. Nevertheless, the 2600 stayed on toy store shelves well into the 1990's, helped with an official relaunch in 1986 as a budget gaming system. And even long after it was officially retired by Atari in 1992, individuals continue to make new games and apps for the old faithful 2600, called "homebrews" because of their small independent creation process.

Via emulation on modern Windows PC's and my Flashback 2, I continue to enjoy those old 80's games and the new homebrews. And as I have already said, I continue to be amazed at how programmers used the 2600's simplicity to their advantage. Because it is so ancient and primitive, the 2600 is considered one of the toughest computers to program for. You have to write code for every single scan line for the console's analog TV screen output. Ironically, its simplicity equals flexibility. Creative backdoor routines that exploit the hardware's quirks make possible complex games made for a console designed really for no more than Pong-like titles, and successfully creating a killer app for the 2600 like Ms. Pac-Man, Defender II or Solaris is considered worthy of a Purple Heart. I've tried creating simple 2600 programs using a free developer kit called Batari Basic; it's not easy at all and I have a lot of respect for those who have gone before me. :)

But aside from its limitations, the 2600 had a lot of really cool games despite the blocky graphics. They are as addictive and entertaining as they ever were back in the 80's, and continue to be available for playing on emulators for cell phones, modern gaming consoles and of course the real 2600 itself.

So much more could be said, but these and more are the reasons I (still) love the good ol' Atari 2600, even 32 years after its launch and nearly 18 after its official well-earned retirement. And like a retiree who gets bored as hell staying home and eventually returns to some kind work (usually volunteer), the 2600 continues to enjoy a long, robust second life with new games from a new generation of programmers (usually volunteer too).

So, "have you played Atari today?" I have. :)

Just Another Christian Time-Travel Romance Novel

At Christian bookstores and websites in recent years I've noticed an increasing amount of Christian romance novels sold alongside the devotionals and study Bibles. Written mostly by women authors, they are often historical novels set in the early American frontier, colonial New England, on the mission front or New Testament times like the new novel "The Centurion's Wife". Another new title, "Escaping the Vampire" by Kimberly Powers, is apparently aimed at teenage girls caught up in the wildly popular "Twilight" franchise. According to a blog I read today, Christian romance is one of the fastest growing book genres in the industry, and the proliferation of such titles in the marketplace attests to its growth.

One popular subgenre is the time-travel romance, where neglected women travel back in time to either have secret affairs with "the man who understands" or change history so that the man they REALLY wanted to marry becomes their husband back in the present. One novel, "The Time Traveler's Wife", was adapted into a very successful feature film earlier this year.

Just to humor myself, I decided to google "Christian time travel romance novels" to see what I could find. To my surprise, there are such things. One forthcoming title, "Seasons in the Mist" by up-and-coming author Deborah Kinnard, is a time-travel romance set in 1353 Cornwall that will hit bookstore shelves around the spring of 2010. A science fiction blogger wrote that "The cutting edge in Christian publishing may well be books about time-travelers who fall in love - and find Jesus along the way."

Joan Shoup of Sheaf House, the Christian publisher who will print "Seasons in the Mist", said in an interview that:
"Christian sci-fi and fantasy are growing markets... [and] Christian romance is most definitely a growing genre, as is romance in general. It never seems to shrink, just to grow. Historical romances have been around for a long time, and now we're seeing combined genres springing up all over the place-romantic suspense, mysteries with a strong romance slant, sci-fi and fantasy romances, and so on are becoming increasingly hot. I personally feel the growth potential is huge as long as publishers put out excellent stories that really engage readers."

Again, the above info was from a sci-fi blog, and a secular one at that. Mrs. Shoup says that combined-genre romance novels are becoming increasingly hot. My question is this: what do "hot" Christian romance novels have to do with bringing people to Jesus?

Maybe I am a little old-fashioned because I am a Lutheran, but when I go to a Christian bookstore I usually go for Bibles, devotional books, magazines or a CD from my favorite worship artist. I have seen comic book novels of the Gospels drawn in the Japanese manga style which are biblically accurate and quite good. I still get a kick out of the latest Veggie Tales DVD's and marvel how the quality of the computer animation continues to get better. But I'm not sure where romance novels fit in with edifying the saints.

Some women have admitted to becoming addicted to romance novels to the point that they pull away from their husbands and act out the steamy fantasies they read about. They have affairs, abandon their husband and kids to "find themselves", plunge into sexual addiction, and wreck their lives. They later find themselves in therapists' offices and 12-step groups wondering how it ended up so bad.

I am not saying that the Christian romances engage in such steamy plotlines; they wouldn't be Christian if they were. But it bothers me that we have to create a parallel Christian universe or bubble that creates the same books, the same movies, the same music that the non-Christian world puts out, but OURS is better because it's CHRISTIAN, it's all to the glory of Christ! My experience has been that a big chunk of such "Christian entertainment" is of poor third-rate quality compared to Hollywood. Many evangelical friends of mine were very disappointed that the "Left Behind" movies had such cheap special effects and weren't visual blockbusters like "Independence Day" or "The Matrix".

But worse yet, having a so-called Christian or biblical alternative to everything actually isolates and shields us from the world we are commanded to go into by Jesus Himself in the Great Commission, to make disciples of all nations. Giving your daughter "Praise Ponies" instead of My Little Pony or your son a Bibleman action figure may make you feel good, but I believe it only adds to the isolationism. And Christian romance novels, time-travel or otherwise, are guilty of the same bubble mentality.

I believe we need not shun secular fine arts or entertainment altogether. Rather, we need to exercise discernment in everything we see, hear or read, whether it's the bookstore, the movies, radio, TV, YouTube or our iPod. Speaking for myself, there is so much schlock on TV, even with the new free digital subchannels, I hardly watch anything beyond the news and weather. But in making our leisure or entertainment choices, let us not engage in a circle-the-wagons, us-against-them mentality that isolates us from being useful witnesses for Christ. For if we do, we become a stooge for the devil without even realizing it.

Reformation Day

Do you know what happened on Halloween back in 1517?

It was on that day nearly 500 years ago in Germany that an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther gave a corrupt and apostate church its worst nightmare.

In the German town of Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, Luther went to the front doors of the Castle Church in the center of town and nailed onto it what we know today as "The 95 Theses". Luther was at the time a professor at the University of Wittenberg, and he wrote down 95 points of contention and rebuke with the Roman Catholic church over issues such as purgatory, works righteousness, and the selling of indulgences. It was written in Latin, the language of the intellectuals and scholars, and he wanted to enter into a debate with his colleagues on the theses.

The church was in the center of towns and of life at that time, and the church front doors served as a community bulletin board, where townspeople could nail on it news and announcements of all kinds, much like a newspaper or internet message board today. The theses caught the attention of some of his students, and thanks to new inventions like the Gutenberg printing press the document was mass-produced and read all over Germany, prompting like-minded individuals to also question the church's corruption and decadence. It ultimately led to a series of events that shook the church to its very core and restored the biblical understanding of salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone. Those events are known as the Protestant Reformation, and are dramatized in the 2003 motion picture "Luther". While the secular world celebrates witches and goblins on this day as Halloween, the Lutheran church and many other denominations celebrate October 31 as Reformation Day.

In other Protestant churches, particularly evangelical ones, I have perceived a love-hate relationship with Martin Luther. I hear pastors on the radio complain that while Luther went far in reclaiming the truth of the gospel and reforming the church, in their eyes he didn't go far enough. The one thing they get tripped on the most is that Luther supported infant baptism. While Mark 16:15-16 was among Luther's Bible verses to support the practice, pastors like Chuck Smith and Pat Robertson consider that a flimsy excuse for an unbiblical ordinance. Luther wanted to reform the Roman Catholic church and bring it back to a biblical understanding of salvation by grace; why didn't he simply break away to begin with if the Vatican was already so entrenched in and defensive of its heretical practices? Temperance-minded Christians like myself may also be disturbed that Luther loved his beer, and wrote proudly about it being part of good fellowship and fun with his fellow students and scholars. And then there was Luther's sometimes coarse sense of humor, like joking about flatulence in his "Table Talk" series of books and bluntly referring to one of his critics in the Vatican as a donkey's rear end.

In living a life led by the Spirit as it is understood today, Luther fails on all counts, so how and why could the Lord use such a worldly man to bring about the reformation of Christianity? And why, pray tell, do we celebrate this beer drinker who has a denomination named after him?

We celebrate Martin Luther because despite his flaws, this was a man the Lord chose to shake up a church that had been corrupted with money and power, which had cast aside salvation by grace for good deeds and indulgences, which jilted its followers with the man-made concept of purgatory and asked for money to spring their souls out of it, which rarely taught from a Bible many of its own priests could not even read, which replaced God's Word with relics and venerated objects. And at just the right time in history, Luther was so outraged that he stood up against such formidable opposition with the very Bible the church claimed to believe in but had long ago betrayed.

It led to other men joining Luther against the corruption, men such as John Calvin, Philip Melanchthon, Ulrich Zwingli and Prince Frederick the Wise of Saxony. And it ultimately led to a breakaway from Rome in the declaration of the Augsburg Confession in 1530. Luther translated the Bible into his native German so the masses could read and understand God's Word in their own heart language instead of in Latin. The flames of reformation spread across Europe, later giving rise to the Church of England, the Puritans, John and Charles Wesley, and so forth. Despite our differences in secondary doctrinal issues such as modes of baptism, eschatology (the end times) and styles of worship, the various churches and denominations we are all a part of today ultimately had their start with the Protestant Reformation.

I personally find a lot of comfort in hope in the example of Luther. Here was a man with many flaws and shortcomings like all of us. He didn't clean up his act or try to be as righteous as possible in the sight of God before he nailed those 95 theses; he tried doing that for several years and went insane because he realized he could never be justified on his own power. But he discovered from the Bible that righteousness is not by good deeds or works, but solely by faith, and that is faith in Jesus Christ and what He did for us on the cross. While that today does not absolve us as believers from living a life that is guided by God's Word and his Spirit, Luther's life is a prime example of how liberating the Good News really is. We cannot earn our salvation, nor can we keep it, by going good deeds, for "No one is good--not even one" (Romans 3:10). But the good news is that "God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins... We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus Christ shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us" (Romans 3:23-25).

That is the gospel in a nutshell, and the driving force of the Reformation. And that is why what happened in Germany on Halloween 1517 was so important.