Remember this guy, young Timothy Hornor, whom I interviewed in Interview With an Actor in an Upcoming Bud Superbowl Commercial ?:

But of course you remember. You have a mind like a steel trap. That’s why I love you.

I said then that Tim would become wildly famous—and (as always) I’m right. At the absolute bare minimum, Tim’s fast becoming That Guy You Saw in That Commercial. Check out his riveting star turn in this Major (if, it must said, childishly crude) National Ad Campaign.

Boy’s gettin’ paid! (Tim: If you read/see this, stop by and say hello. Your fans need you, Tim. Need!)

God designed us with absolute and inviolate free will so that we could choose to be in relationship with him; the fidelity of a person who has no choice but to give it is worthless. God desires a real relationship with us, not one of zombie automaton to controlling master.

Granting us absolute and inviolate free will means granting us absolute and inviolate autonomy. That’s why God arranged for us to come into this world from nothing, and to leave it again into nothing (that we know of). That’s the only way for us to remain truly, permanently, organically autonomous.

It’s also why God doesn’t ever, in any objective, empirically verifiable way, “prove” he exists to anyone. Because then whomever he proved that to would have no choice but to believe in him—meaning their free will had been severely compromised. Which would render them unsuitable for a relationship.

Again, we’re meant to choose to be in relationship with God.

People are forever getting their relationship with God backwards. It’s supposed to be brain first, and then emotion.

You would think, with all the attention the environment’s been getting lately, that God wouldn’t just fling huge wads of junk out of heaven. But as I was walking through San Diego’s Balboa Park the other day, I found this disturbing proof that that’s exactly what he’s done.

Doesn’t God care about us??

We all struggle with too often or habitually doing or thinking things that we know are bad for us and/or those around us.

Our dysfunctional behavior is fueled by anger and resentment deeply rooted within us. We are angry at the fact that, somewhere along the line of our lives, our core emotional needs were not met.

Like so much anger we manifest, that which fuels our dysfunctional behavior is a reaction to fears we hold.

What we fear is that our core emotional needs cannot be met.

That enduring, fundamental human fear is two-fold: that God (or something/someone like it) is not in control of things, and that we are not lovable.

Those two fears—the one which looks to the outside world, and the other which looks to the inside—are complementary aspects of the same fear: That we and the world at large are not grounded in love.

The deep and abiding fear that the system in which they live and operate is not ultimately defined by love has always made everyone, in one way or another, crazily insecure.

The conditions necessary for the reality of human free will—being mainly our absolute autonomy—means that it always will, too. The cost of our ineradicable uncertainty is our free will.

(Note: While its assertion that God is love automatically renders Christianity a perfectly comprehensive answer to the one great human fear, being Christian does not inure anyone from the acute, ongoing angst of existential doubt. Every Christian remains, after all, a human—free will and all.)

Mmmmmm … delicious water meter honey.

I came across this extremely busy hive (bees were zooming in and out of there like it was Christmas at O’Hare) in an alley running between some businesses and homes in downtown Encinitas, CA.

Did the bees think, “Who cares if it’s a cement hole in the middle of the street? It looks just like a hive! Let’s do it!”?

Here’s a picture I took this weekend in some mountains four miles from our home. I haven’t slept since.

Be afraid.

I feel sorry for God. It can’t be easy creating and sustaining the universe. What happened here, I think, is that He thought, “Well, it’s time to make a new plant. I sure do like orangutans.”

Image courtesy of my little camera as I was walking around downtown Encinitas yesterday waiting for my car to get fixed

Posted in Misc. Humor Tagged: creation, God, humor, organgutans, plant kingdom, plant life, plants, plants and animals ]]> http://johnshore.com/2009/06/24/proof-that-god-confuses-plants-with-animals/feed/ 10 johnshore orangaplant http://johnshore.com/2009/06/22/has-god-finally-lost-it/ http://johnshore.com/2009/06/22/has-god-finally-lost-it/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:27:21 +0000 John Shore http://johnshore.com/?p=4064 ]]>

Yesterday my wife Cat and I hung around uber-snazzy La Jolla, CA, which is just down the coast from where we live. As you can see from this one shot I took, La Jolla (city motto: “Having a Love-Hate Relationship with Tourists since 1905″) is ridiculously beautiful:

Here we see, along the same walk on which the above shot was taken, some random sea birds hanging out and wondering when someone’s going to come clean their rock:

And here, along the same oceanside promenade, we have proof that sometimes God gets bored, and decides to design something so crazy that all regular people can do when they see it is take a picture of it, post it on their blog, and hope anyone believes they didn’t make it up in Photoshop. (Just to be clear, in case the picture isn’t: the two parts of the tree that look like they’re both coming out of the ground are. The thing just loops back into the ground; or, actually, comes out of the ground in two different places, and then somehow seamlessly merges to become one …. root-branch-tree/optical illusion thing that if you weren’t a good Christian would totally make you want to go get a drink somewhere.

Related post o’ mine: Evil Tree!

And on his way down there, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will slip and slide on  the blood of all the Iranians whose slaughter for tomorrow he has now green-lighted. Thousands will be beaten and murdered for wanting nothing more than a fair count of their vote.

Will we ever see an end to these kinds of tyrannical, oppressive, power-crazed, viciously brutal dictatorships? Must we always suffer yet another monster who dares proclaim to the world that his pure and incomprehensible evil is sanctioned by God?

This is a dark day for anyone in the world who cares about freedom and truth. Tomorrow will be a good deal darker. Say a prayer tonight for the God of sanity and compassion to protect and have mercy on us all.