Reflections on the Sabbath

As a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, I observe the 7^th day Sabbath which is technically from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.    The name Seventh-day Adventist combines two central beliefs of the church:  the second coming of Christ, and the importance of the 7^th day Sabbath in the time just before that second advent.  The church teaches that Sabbath observance will be of primary importance in the last days and, in fact, is one of the distinguishing signs of God’s true church.

When I first joined the church in 1979 I strove to observe the Sabbath even though none of the rest of my family observed it.  This wasn’t always easy but I more or less managed.  Everyone knows Jews have observed the 7^th day Sabbath for thousands of years.  You are not supposed to do any work on that day.  The Sabbath is a day of rest.  When I first joined the church I was a student so the Sabbath was kind of cool because it meant I could refrain from doing homework on that day.  But far from turning this into a day of relaxation, I believed that in order to keep the Sabbath day holy, I needed to continually think about God.  I strove not to have any thought stay in my head that wasn’t related to religion.  I never entirely succeeded in this, but I tried.  We think about 90,000 thoughts a day so to eliminate all non-religious thoughts is an exhausting exercise.  And indeed, once sundown came on Saturday night, I was pretty exhausted.  My true day of rest – if I define rest by having the feeling of restfulness – was on Sunday when I relaxed somewhat but also did some things which needed doing.  I felt restful on Sunday, however, because I wasn’t trying to force my mind to think only about God and subjects related to God.

Then when I entered Pacific Union College, my definition of rest changed once more.  I worked three jobs for the most part, and had to study hard the rest of the time.  I don’t see well so this was very wearying for me.  My eyes were constantly tired and the strain of working and studying took its toll.  When I first began to keep the Sabbath, I used to spend much of that time studying the bible.  Now, I simply couldn’t do that any more physically.  My brain and eyes were literally worn out.  I therefore started to do other things which would have horrified me in previous years.  What I needed was to run around outside and just enjoy life.  So I started to do things on the Sabbath which official and unofficial church doctrine said I should not do.

It is inevitable that whenever you have any rule like you must rest on the 7^th day, you will begin to define what that means in detail.  One of the things I was criticized for in college – Pacific Union College is a Seventh-day Adventist college – was that I swam on the Sabbath.  Since I was actually raised a Roman Catholic, little nuances such as the one that said it was OK to go for a hike on the Sabbath, but it was forbidden to swim on the Sabbath, were completely unknown to me.

I am and always have been an excellent swimmer, able to swim long distances without difficulty.  I take after my father in this regard.  For me, swimming was and is far more relaxing and restful than hiking.  When a legally blind person hikes, there are things which normal people don’t realize.  It is easier for me to trip over rocks and roots.  Overhanging braches scratch my face because I often don’t see them.  And hiking over boulders is a nightmare.  In short, although I enjoy hiking, I do not find it very restful because I have to work extra hard not to fall on my face.  Hiking downhill is especially difficult for me because I lack depth perception.  When I am in the water, I just swim.  I don’t worry about tripping over anything.  So swimming was and is way more restful.  When I swim a long distance I feel refreshed and rejuvenated.  There was a big lake near the college and I would swim all along it, relaxing and enjoying the view, as much as I could see of it, of the shore from the water.  There were a couple of islands in the middle of the lake too and I enjoyed swimming to those.  I sometimes dove down to check things out near the bottom.  And for this I got into trouble because the powers that be considered swimming a form of strenuous exercise.  But I knew in my heart that I was doing something more restful for me.  All of this made me consider the idea that what is restful for one person may not be restful for another person.

Today I work as a Business Analyst in IT.  This involves a lot of brain work and sitting at the desk all day.  I find it therefore far more restful on the Sabbath to get some exercise and fresh air, and not to use my brain too much.  If I were a dock worker, I might find restful contemplation and study more rest than exercise and fresh air.

So within the Seventh-day Adventist church, you have questions about what is right or what is wrong to do on the Sabbath and so on.  We ask what it means to rest or to work.  If I work in a hospital on the Sabbath saving lives, is that OK or not?  Should I get paid while I do this or should I donate my salary to the church or some charity organization? 

While I could talk about my perception of what is right, and what is wrong on the Sabbath, I think a better approach is to explain what rest actually means from a biblical sense and then let people make what they will of it.

So what does rest mean in the bible?  That sounds like a silly question because rest means rest doesn’t it?  One thing people should know about the bible is that every word is precious.  We are supposed to think and meditate on the bible because there are layers of meaning which we might miss if we read over things quickly.

According to Genesis 2:2-3 god rested on the 7^th day from all his creative work, and consecrated the 7^th day because of this.  In Hebrew, the meaning is much deeper than in English.  When God rests in the Hebrew language he calls his spirit back to himself.  Thus on the surface, God stopped working in terms of creation, but on a deeper level, God called his spirit back to himself.  What does this mean?  According to Genesis 1:2, before God said “Let there be light” the spirit of God hovered or swept over the face of the deep, depending on what translation you read.  I believe the Hebrew supports intense action by the spirit.

In other words, the Spirit of God, what Christians call the Holy spirit, was apart from God creating the world.  God said the words, but the Holy spirit was physically on the earth doing whatever needed doing.  The bible does not explain this process, but the spirit was busy doing things and when God rested on the 7^th day, God called his spirit back to himself, thus making himself whole.  That is the concept of rest, as much as the cessation from work is.

Let me employ another image.  In the Hebrew language, the word spirit is the same for wind or breath.  Thus, some English translations, such as the NRSV – my favorite translation – use the term “wind” instead of spirit.  Thus in Hebrew, the Holy Spirit is the divine wind or breath.  So another metaphor I can use to explain the Hebrew concepts at work here is that on the 7^th day, God took a breath.  That is, he breathed in.  I stress this is a metaphor.  God drew his breath back to himself.  In fact even in English today we use the expression, stop, take a deep breath and relax.  This is essentially what God did on the 7^th day.  He took a deep breath.

But what does all this mean?  We are created in the image of God so we can understand this process easily enough.  When we are busy, our mind is occupied with whatever it is we are doing.  Thus today, we don’t necessarily use the word “spirit “but instead we use the word mind.  Let me illustrate.  Suppose I am worried about something at the office.  Perhaps I am wondering how to design some software properly.  I don’t need to be physically at my desk.  I could be lying on my couch at home fretting over the design.  In biblical terms, my spirit is brooding or moving over the software.  My mind is elsewhere.  In fact, for most of us, our mind is scattered all over the place.  What’s going on at the office?  What’s going on with my football team?  What about this, and what about that?  Are the children learning properly?  I need to get the car serviced.  I need to make sure we have a present for our friend’s birthday.  And on, and on, and on.  Our mind is sweeping over the things of this world and our mind is quite occupied.

Thus it is that on the Sabbath day, like God, we call our spirit back to us.  We take a breath.  If I am at home but my mind is at the office working on the software problem, I have not gathered my spirit to myself.  Part of me is elsewhere.  And of course, we also have this expression in English.  We say to someone, “Your mind is somewhere else.”  Let’s say I am brooding over something that happened in the past.  Then I “snap back to the present.” So even in English we understand this concept well, though we may use different words.

So when I call my spirit back to myself, my spirit or mind leaves the office.  It clocks off, so to speak, and comes back home.  In modern terms, this means I am whole.  My spirit is not scattered here and there.  It is back with me and I am in one place, concentrating on the now and the here.  My spirit returns to the body temple.  It comes home.  And of course, Paul tells us our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) so if I call my spirit home to my body temple, hopefully that means it communes with the Holy spirit or christt which is within me.

And this lies at the heart of the Sabbath.  The word Sabbath in Hebrew has the word “house” within it.  Jews speak of “going to temple” on the Sabbath day because of this.  So on an individual level, I call my spirit back to temple.  In this case, it is the body temple.  I say to my spirit, time to come home.

The word Sabbath also has the word Father as part of the word.  Thus, Father and Home are part of the word Sabbath.  Of course, this metaphor is easy to understand even though in the modern context, both the husband and the wife work.  But back in the day, the woman generally stayed home or very close to it, while the husband went off to work.  So in Hebrew, stopping work is very much tied in with the concept of returning home.  Daddy comes home to his family and stays there on the Sabbath.  He doesn’t go away from his home on the Sabbath.  That is, he doesn’t go away from his family.

In Hebrew, the word house also can mean “woman”.  They have the same root.  Thus, the meaning is even deeper.  Daddy comes home and spends time with Mommy.  This is why in Judaism, the Sabbath evening is a time of intimacy between husband and wife.  After all, when God created Eve on the 6^th day and told Adam to join with his wife, he probably didn’t mean for Adam to wait 24 hours before any fun stuff.  But in Hebrew, the man enters his house, or his wife, and I think we all know what I’m getting at there.

In Hebrew, the husband is the priest of his household, responsible for teaching his children, or making sure his children are taught the Torah etc.  So the priest enters the holy place of his home on the Sabbath, and also enters his wife on the Sabbath.

So we have two circles.  The first circle involves the individual calling their spirit back home to themselves or their body temple.  The second circle is when the husband comes home and stays home for a day.  Then the next day the husband can go back out into the world to work.  So just as God drew in his breath, we draw in ours.  The home draws in the husband or in today’s world, all of us who go out into the world.  Then at the end of Sabbath, we can exhale again and get busy once more.

The third circle of the Sabbath involves the community.  During the other six days, the community of believers are scattered throughout the world, doing worldly things like working, studying and so on.  But on the Sabbath day the community “goes to temple”.  We gather together as a community.  So think of the community as exhaling during the week, and taking a deep breath on the Sabbath and drawing all its members to one place, the temple.  Thus we have the temple of the individual, the temple of the home, and the temple of the church or synagogue.  The individual takes a deep breath.  The family takes a deep breath.  And finally, the church takes a deep breath.  Then, at the end of the Sabbath, all three exhale and go back to being busy.

So the Sabbath day is a process of breathing in, then breathing out, breathing in, and breathing out.  Since in Hebrew the word spirit is the same for wind or breath, then just as the Spirit of God goes out from God into the world, so the Spirit of God goes out into the world in the form of his people.  The spirit of God goes out into the work place from the home.  And of course, our spirit goes out from us to be occupied with the things of this world.

The book of Hebrews tells us that ancient Israel never did enter into God’s rest.  We should be able to understand this better now.  True Sabbath rest is spiritual, as well as physical.  Israel wanted the physical, but they did not want the spiritual.  Israel fought among themselves.  They did not come together as a community.  They never stopped to take a deep breath, bringing their minds into focus on the here and now.  They continually worried about this and that.  In short, the Promised land, when viewed purely materially, was never going to be paradise.  When Israel got there, things went downhill and they were eventually tossed out.  Paradise is only paradise when we know how to rest.  That is, paradise is only paradise when we call our spirit back to appreciate paradise, and when we appreciate paradise with our family, and with our community.

This metaphor also applies to Christ.  Today his spirit is in all of us.  It is therefore scattered.  It is worrying about this and that.  God’s people are fragmented today but the day will come when Jesus will call his spirit to himself and make all of the fragments one.  There is only one bride, and one body, not many brides and many bodies.  At some point, there will be one, and only one church; one, and only one bride of Christ.  Christ is the last Adam and he will have one, and only one Eve.  Then we shall all have rest and the true Sabbath will begin.

One mistake people make today is to concentrate purely on the individual and their role in the Sabbath.  In other words, they ask, how should I keep the Sabbath?  Is the Sabbath necessary for my salvation?  It is difficult for non-Jews to remember that the Sabbath is as much a communal commandment as it is an individual one.  Back in the day, people cried out for days off.  They didn’t have weekends like we do now.  The Sabbath came in to make sure people had at least one day off from work.  But if this company allowed Wednesday off, while this company allowed Thursday off, then Israel would still be a busy place seven days a week.  You would not have the opportunity to take a deep breath and return your mind to yourself and enjoy your home because your spouse might have to go to work.  The only real way to ensure rest, was if everyone rested at the same time.  That way, everyone in the family and in the community were guaranteed to have at least one day off together.  So you could draw together as an individual, a home, and a community.

And as we know, if you don’t breathe, you don’t live.  Today we have many denominations.  Most observe Sunday and only a very few observe the Sabbath.  If I just look at the Sabbath as an individual, my idea of rest differs from yours.  This is why I prefer to swim instead of hike.  But the bible tells us when redemption comes, all flesh will gather before God on every New Moon, and on every Sabbath.

From new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord.  (Isaiah 66:23 NRSV).

We may be scattered and fragmented today.  And perhaps today as people live in different circumstances, Sabbath keeping is sometimes uncertain and lines are blurred.  When I was on my own with a family who were not Seventh-day Adventists, it was often difficult to keep the Sabbath.  It is different when you live in a community.  Thus, we may be scattered and fragmented today, but one day, we will be brought together.  God will draw breath and we will all meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) and when we do, we will be whole.  We will be one.  There will be one Adam, and one Eve.  And we will all rest together.

So is it necessary for me to keep the Sabbath today?  In today’s world I stand with Paul who says in romans 14 that we should not judge one another if one person thinks one day is more holy than another or if a person thinks all days are the same.  But what I am really asking here is “Do I have to keep the Sabbath in order to be saved?”  That is really the wrong question.  After all, if I ask “Do I really have to refrain from murdering in order to be saved” the obvious answer is yes.  And since the Sabbath is one of the ten commandments it seems obvious to me anyway, that if this principle applies to the other nine, it should apply to the Sabbath.

But this is the wrong question to ask.  Why?  Because what I am really saying here is “I’d rather be able to kill, but if it means I can’t be saved then I’ll refrain.”  That is, of course ridiculous when applied to the 6^th commandment.  The right question is “Don’t I want to refrain from killing?”  And if Christ dwells in me and I in him, and, well, you know, the usual Christian stuff we talk about, then the answer is “Of course.  I don’t want to hurt anyone.”  And so it is with the Sabbath.  When I understand what rest really means, and how all pervasive the concept really is, the question of “Do I really have to” is irrelevant.  It’s like me asking “Do I really have to see the new Star Wars movie?”  It never occurs to me to ask that question.  I simply want to see it.

The basic problem is this today.  People ask “Do I really have to” instead of “Do I really want to.”  And if you are asking “Do I really have to” then you have missed the point altogether. 

Now I know man always messes things up.  When a community keeps the Sabbath it tries to punish a blind guy for finding swimming more relaxing than hiking through the woods.  But that is an us problem, and not a God problem.  But I hope that if people really understand what it means to rest, then they will stop asking “Do I really have to”, and start asking “Do I really want to.”  And if the answer to that question is no, well, that’s where a relationship with God comes into it.  You and God can work it out from there as far as I am concerned.  Otherwise, if the answer is yes, then stop and call your spirit back to yourself on the 7^th day and join with others who do likewise.  Enjoy your spouse and your family if you have one, and enjoy your church.  There is always enough work to do.  It’s time to rest.

Santa Denies Cyber Attack rumors

Santa Claus Denies North Pole Hit by Chinese Cyber-Attacks

Washington – The Dow Jones plunged 368 points on a wild day of trading Friday on rumors the Chinese had hacked into Santa Claus’ computers to obtain names and addresses of children all over the world.  Experts in Intelligence and cyber security both agreed that if this were the case, China could have major leverage over the rest of the world.  Fearing the plunge would continue during Christmas week, President Obama made a special plea to Santa Claus to confirm or deny the reports “for the good of the world economy and the world in general.” In an extraordinary gesture of good will, Santa Claus granted President Obama’s request and scheduled a press conference on Monday, the 21st.  While Santa did not attend himself, a spokeself  made an initial statement, then opened the floor to reporter questions.

To say the press conference was explosive would be an understatement.  Santa’s spokeself began by denying that there had been any breaches into the North Pole data center, as he called it.  “NPDC has never been breached by anyone,” the spokeself said.  The spokeself went on to explain this is because the North Pole Data Center exists in another dimension of space/time meaning the most sophisticated hackers in the world could not even begin to come close to hacking the North Pole systems.  The spokeself, who did not identify himself, went on to say that the North Pole had used Chinese government information systems to verify the location of some 150,000 children as there was some ambiguity in that regard.  This news erased the 5.5% gains the Chinese market experienced on Friday and Chinese markets plunged a further 2.6% on the news.

With his opening statement concluded, Santa’s spokeself was asked a number of questions relating to the NPDC and the extra dimensional nature of the data center.  The spokeself’s response will keep physicists occupied for decades.  The spokeself explained that before Bishop Nicolas became a saint, he was limited to the three dimensional world we take for granted.  He was also subject to time, which is the fourth dimension, just as all humans are.  However, when Bishop Nicolas became a saint, he was given access to extra dimensional space/time so he could visit the courts of heaven.  This is consistent to what Santa Claus told Oprah in 2013. 

Ïf you were a two dimensional being and you were placed inside a square,” the spokeself explained, you would be trapped inside that square.  But a three dimensional being could simply lift you up out of the square and place you outside that square.  To you as a two dimensional being, this would seem like magic, but in fact, this is a simple matter of being able to function and exist in three dimensions instead of two.”

The spokeself went on to explain:  “People have puzzled over how Santa Claus can deliver all those presents so quickly.  They have also wondered how all of those presents fit into his bag which is on the sleigh.  The simple truth is that both Santa Claus and the sleigh operate in extra dimensional reality.  So Santa Claus does not rely on speed to traverse the globe in 31 hours.  Santa is able to do this because he and the reindeer operate in more than three dimensions.”  When pressed as to how many dimensions Santa operated in, the spokeself did not divulge specific details. 

It should be noted that in 1997, noted writer and physicist Marc Breault calculated that if angels relied solely on speed to move between heaven and earth, they would have to travel at warp 16.4 which is far beyond the speed of any USS Enterprise ship.  Referring to Breault’s ground breaking article, physicist Jean-Pierre Thibaut of the University of Paris said that the spokeself’s explanation was consistent with the laws of physics as we currently understand them.  Other noted physicists agreed with Professor Thibaut. 

The spokeself also cleared up another common misconception about Santa Claus.  Öbviously, most houses today do not have chimneys so there is no opening for Santa to slide through,” said the spokeself.  “But because Santa operates in extra dimensional reality, he does not need an opening, just as a three dimensional being can enter a two dimensional square without a break in the square.  Thus, there has never been a need for Santa to have a chimney in order for him to deliver his presents.  However, chimneys were convenient and meant Santa did not have to employ the Hyper-door, as we like to call it.”

The spokeself explained that Santa entered houses through an extradimensional opening which the reindeer made for him.  “We keep to tradition, though,” said the spokeself, “in that the hyper-door is shaped like a chimney.  Santa likes to preserve the old ways as much as possible.”

Thanks to Santa’s denial of the cyber-attack rumors, The Dow bounced back from its Friday losses leaving the doors open to a genuine Santa Claus rally to end 2015. President Obama thanked Santa Claus and said his efforts to calm the markets were a good beginning toward thawing the strained relations between the United States and the North Pole.  “while we are not willing to take Santa off the terror watch list just yet,” said the President, “and while we still have the 2014 copyright infringement lawsuit decision against Santa Claus to deal with, Santa’s efforts on Monday are a good first step to mending relations.”

And so with all the physics out of the way which explains, at least in part, how Santa Claus actually does manage to deliver all those presents to all those children, the children of the world can once again rest easy in the knowledge that Santa Claus will come through for them once again, as he has for nearly 2,000 years now.  And with that, may you all have a very Merry Christmas.

2014 Santa Article

Technology May Cost Elf Jobs

From the Wall Street Journal

Washington D.C. – Yesterday Federal District Judge Francis Talbot imposed an emergency injunction forbidding Santa Claus or anyone affiliated with him from distributing presents to children.  The injunction was granted on behalf of a consortium of large corporations including Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Mattel and Samsung.  In 2012 this consortium launched legal action against Santa Claus and the North Pole government claiming massive violations of patents and copyrights owned by these corporations.  In the intervening years, other corporations joined the lawsuit against Santa so that now, over 25 large corporations are involved. 

Jennifer Chang, a lead attorney for the consortium said yesterday:  “We are pleased that Judge Talbot has seen fit to uphold our point of view.  We stress, however, that we do not oppose the distribution of gifts to children in principle.  We believe this is noble and highly beneficial to everyone.  What we do oppose is the fact that Santa’s Elves continuously manufacture our products without our permission.  Distribution of these products on Christmas Eve has caused large monetary damage to the companies represented in this lawsuit.”

Apple has estimated it loses over $3 billion a year in revenue due to North Pole manufactured iPhones and iPads alone.  In a statement released to the press last week Apple affirmed its right to distribute its own goods.  The statement points out that “A lot of time and money goes into R&D and we funded the costs for all of that.  Therefore we deserve to profit from all our hard work.”

This lawsuit has been further complicated by speculation and rumours over Amazon’s unwillingness to join the consortium against Santa Claus.  Last month noted physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out that the ever increasing population means that Santa’s Reindeer must distribute presents to an ever increasing number of children in the same roughly 31 hour period of Christmas Eve when you take the earth’s rotation into account.  “Think about this,” said Mr. Hawking.  “When you consider Santa must attend all those shopping malls and deal with all those children’s requests for presents, it’s a wonder he has any time left for anything else.  Given this and the workload increase on the poor reindeer, it makes sense that Santa might consider online ordering and outsourcing some of the presents distribution.  A company like Amazon would be ideal for Santa.”  This comment might have passed merely as the whimsical musings of a brilliant mind were it not for Jeff Besos’ – founder of Amazon.com - unexpected unwillingness to respond in any way to these comments.  This silence on his part gave momentum to the idea that Santa is indeed exploring an arrangement with the world’s largest internet retailing company.  It is believed that Amazon’s world-wide distribution and warehousing capabilities could nicely complement the one sleigh Santa traditionally employs.

Judge Talbot’s injunction is unlikely to have any effect on Christmas Eve since Santa Claus has made it very clear in the past he does not recognize the jurisdiction of any US court in this matter.  But Hawking’s comments and Jeff Besos’ silence brings up an interesting question.  Noted Economist Dennis MacKenzie speculated that while technology may assist Santa, it may also hurt Santa.

“If you look at it from the angle of reindeer workload, a partnership with Amazon makes perfect sense, assuming Santa can negotiate the fact he does not employ money in any way in his operation.  But you have to look at it from other angles as well.  What effect, for example, will the growth of 3D printing have on the whole North Pole operation?  Traditionally, elves have toiled away in workshops manually creating toys and other items children desire.  While the elves have obviously kept up with the times as is demonstrated by their ability to manufacture their own iPads and PlayStations, we also know that manufacturing based economies have taken a massive hit of late due to the fact that technology renders many manufacturing jobs redundant.  In short, will Santa soon have unemployed elves on his hands?”

More children means more presents.  If Santa continues to employ a highly manual labor intensive mode of operation as he has done in the past, either he needs a corresponding increase in the elf population, or he needs to radically increase technologically based manufacturing methods and this inevitably leads to the loss of jobs.  “3D printing and robots will and have dramatically changed the landscape of manufacturing,” said McKenzie.  “At least it has for us here in the USA.  It is hard to imagine how Santa could be immune to such changes himself.”

Critics of this view point to last year’s admission to Oprah by Santa that in the late Middle Ages, he obtained vast supercomputers from the courts of heaven itself.  He did this, according to Santa himself, to help him keep track of who was naughty and who was nice.  Is it really a stretch to imagine that if Santa employed such vast computing power hundreds of years ago, that he must also have long used highly advanced manufacturing techniques?  Perhaps Santa already has nanotechnology and perhaps the image of elves toiling away in fireplace heated workshops was simply an image given to relatively primitive humanity.  Perhaps Santa does not need many elves at all and that, in fact, the North Pole population is very low.

The North Pole has to date made no comments on Judge Talbot’s injunction nor on any pending agreement with Amazon.  This leads the Journal to believe Christmas present distribution will continue on schedule as always.  While last year’s candid interview with Oprah was revealing and shocking – theologians are still coming to grips with some of his revelations – many mysteries remain and perhaps that is what makes Santa Claus and his elves so special.  Fortunately for Apple and the other companies in the lawsuit, people buy their products the other 364 days of the year and, of course, adults do not receive presents from Santa and they like tablets and PlayStations almost as much as children do.  So perhaps in the long run, a bit of charity and good cheer caused by Santa and his Reindeer is not such a bad thing.

Note:  The Judge and economist mentioned here are completely fictitious.  And of course, it goes without saying that Stephen Hawking made no such comments as represented here.

2013 Santa Article

NEW YORK  In light of President Obama’s comments comparing the activities of the NSA with those of Santa Claus, MR Claus agreed to an extraordinary interview with Oprah Winfrey, who hosted a popular talk show for many years.  Oprah has given interviews to a number of people in need of cleaning up their tarnished image.  She recently interviewed disgraced cyclist lance Armstrong.

A US Federal Judge recently ruled that the NSA’s spying activities on American soil, which included recording phone conversations and extracting internet usage data from Google, Microsoft and Apple,  were unconstitutional.  Many believe Obama’s comments were designed to deflect criticism away from his administration and put pressure on Santa Claus who has had tense relations with the United States ever since he was placed on the Terrorist Watch list in 2007 for possessing stealth technology which could be used in a hostile action against the United States. 

Below is the full transcript of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Mr Claus, which will air on Christmas Eve across the nation, and which will be carried live in 38 countries.

Oprah: Mr Claus thank you very much for consenting to this interview.

SC: No problem Oprah, and please, just call me Santa.

Oprah: Ok Santa.  I’ll try.

SC:  You know my wife used to watch your show religiously.

Oprah:  Did she?  If you don’t mind me asking, what does Mrs Claus do?  I mean, you and the elves make toys and I assume you are involved with the general organization and administration of Christmas.

SC:  Yes that’s right.  Well, Mrs Claus does a lot of work with the reindeer.  You know, you have to train the little ones, teach them how to fly properly, take care of their medical needs.  So really there is plenty for her to do.  Plus she also organizes the housekeeping and keeps me fed.

Oprah:  Some might call that a bit too traditional.

SC:  Maybe, but we’ve been around for over 1700 years and we have always divided things this way.  Ho h oho, after all, there is no way Mrs Claus wants anything to do with my cooking?

Oprah:  So you are not a good cook?

SC:  Goodness no!  I’m lucky if I can turn on a microwave, let alone do any cooking.

Oprah:  That is very interesting.  What is your favorite food?

SC:  As you can see by my healthy paunch, I like all kinds of food.  You know when we first started out at the North Pole, our food was mostly highly salted fish and sea food, kind of like what is eaten in the traditional north.  But over time as we have been exposed to the world, other types of food came in slowly and ho ho ho thank goodness for that. 

Oprah:  And your favorite type?

SC:  probably Italian I’d say, that and Chinese.  You know, pretty much like everyone else.

Oprah:  and Mrs Claus cooks all those different types for you?

SC:  pretty much.  Ever since she has been able to get the life style channel, the sky’s the limit as you say.

Oprah:  Well this is very interesting and it is wonderful to get some insight into your private life, but you know we are here to deal with some very contentious issues.

SC:  Yes I know.

Oprah:  Let’s start with Barak Obama’s latest comments concerning what he termed “an invasion of privacy on a scale that dwarfs anything the NSA has ever done.”  How do you respond to that given how the revelations of NSA spying have angered the American people and indeed the people of the world?

SC:  Well I think Barak Obama is a good man and he is under a lot of pressure.  He knows the revelations of NSA spying has hurt his popularity and weakened his ability to get policies enacted so I think he is trying to deflect scrutiny off of himself and the NSA on to me.

Oprah:  This might be true, but, I mean, if you truly know when we’ve been sleeping, and know when we’re awake, doesn’t that constitute a massive invasion of privacy?

SC:  The answer here is complicated Oprah.  On the one hand, yes, the NSA are amateurs compared to me.  I’ve been able to see who has been naughty or nice for centuries, as well as know who is sleeping and who isn’t.  Even the NSA with their vast computing power can’t lay claim to that capability.

Oprah:  So you admit to spying.

SC:  yes I suppose speaking technically, I am guilty of spying, but as I said earlier, this is a more complicated issue than simply spying.  Look, the NSA justifies their spying by saying they are hunting for terrorists and only look at individual phone conversations, for example, when there is a high degree of suspicion.  We’re pretty much the same really.  But we’re not looking for terrorists, just little terrors, if you know what I mean.  Ho ho ho.

Oprah:  Well I think I know what you mean but puns aside, this isn’t really a laughing matter.

SC:  Perhaps not.  But you see, most children are not naughty, not really.  They might do naughty things once in a while, but they are not naughty per se.  So in actual fact, we really have very little need of individual data.  I mean, ask yourself, have you ever heard of a child who did not receive a Christmas gift because he was too naughty?

Oprah:  Well---

SC:  No, you never have. 

Oprah:  In that case, why keep tabs?  Why not give gifts to all of the children?

SC:  Well it’s becoming that way.  You see Oprah when I first started out, I was pretty much a Christian saint and my duties involved giving gifts to only Christian children.  At first that was pretty simple because the world was pretty much divided into religious sectors.  You had Christendom, and then you had the non-Christian areas of the world, what we called the Pagan world back in those days.  In those early days, if a child was baptized he was nice.  If not, he was naughty.  But then you see Islam came along and swept over areas which were once Christian.  Now you had Christians and Muslims living together, and sometimes even side by side.  You also had the spread of Buddhism in the east which in some parts of the world collided with Christianity.  Scholars are just now understanding this.  Thus, aside from Western Europe which remained predominantly Christian, the world ruled by Islam was not so simple to navigate.  In many cases, Islam tolerated diverse religions as did, by the way, the Mongols.  This made it necessary to start to keep tabs on individual children because children who were baptized lived next to children who were not, and in many cases, single families consisted of both types.

Oprah:  But surely it doesn’t matter what religion children are?

SC:  Well that is pretty much my thinking now, but back in Medieval times, we all were, well, you know, Medieval.  I remember having some discussions with St. Augustine about this but he insisted on the importance of baptism and he was the preeminent scholar of the church so I deferred to his wisdom.  And I admit I was also a product of Medieval times.  You realize though that we did not consider ourselves Medieval.  Medieval is a concept of historians.  Back then, that was our present.  We thought we were logical and pretty advanced.  Indeed, we considered ourselves the apex of God’s creation.

Oprah:  This is fascinating.  So you’re saying you didn’t snoop as it were until the geographical boundaries of religions became blurred.

SC:  Absolutely.  That’s right.  I mean, we could fly over France, for example and know they were all Christian children.  But when flying over Spain before 1492 before The Catholics drove out the Jews and Muslims,, you had Christian, Muslim and Jew pretty much coexisting together.  The situation in what you call Turkey was a mess because you had Orthodox Christianity everywhere mixed in with Islam and it was very difficult to sort out the naughty children from the nice ones.  And then, truth be told, Mrs Claus kept insisting that non-Christian children could be nice as well.

Oprah:  And what was your response?

SC:  Well after having given presents to children for centuries I agreed.  Then the Reformation came along and the one big church split up into lots of fragments and suddenly you had the idea of hundreds of true churches, and the invisible church which spanned multiple denominations and oh, it was a real mess.

Oprah:  Surely you could see that your criteria for naughtiness and niceness had to change.

SC:  Oh absolutely.  But don’t you see, this meant our criteria became much more subjective.  Before things were pretty binary.  You had Baptized Christian, not Baptized Christian.  It was basically on and off.  But with the breakdown of social and geographical boundaries to religion, we had to look at many factors such as behavior, attitude, whether someone had a good conscience, and we also had to take into consideration their environment and make projections.

Oprah:  Projections, what do you mean?

SC:  Well at first we still had the Christian or not Christian dynamic.  So if we examined a Muslim child, for instance, we had to observe his or her character and project what that child might have been like if the child had the opportunity to embrace Christianity.

Oprah:  I see, so this meant much more observation.

SC:  Exactly.  We couldn’t just rely on church records.  We had to observe and record information about each individual child.  As our criteria for determining naughtiness and niceness became more subjective, our need for data increased exponentially.

Oprah:  I must admit I am surprised to hear you say words like exponential and data.  Somehow I don’t associate you with high tech.

SC:  Ho ho ho!  Of course I’m high tech.  All of this increased observation meant terabytes of data storage.

Oprah:  Wait a minute.  Let’s back up a little.  How do you observe all the children?

SC:  Well since I’m here to clear up some misconceptions I might as well explain this as well as I can.  You see we use magic to observe the children.  This is why you do not see North Pole cameras everywhere.  But there is no magic that makes me remember all the children and the data associated with them.  so I need computing power for that?

Oprah:  So you’re saying you had computing power long before the rest of us?

SC:  Ho ho ho.  Yes of course.  Think of it like this.  We are often told to picture Judgment Day with God opening books and pouring through names.  But you wouldn’t rely on books of names to go through billions of people.  Well, neither does God.  But Daniel and John and those guys who wrote about Judgment Day did not know anything about computers, let alone what you call quantum computing so they spoke in terms of books.  With the changing criteria, I spoke to the Archangel Michael, no I think it was Gabriel.  Anyway, I spoke to one of them and even to Christ himself and they basically gave me some of their technology.

Oprah:  Wait, I mean wait.  Just wait a minute.  So you’re saying you spoke to angels and to Christ.  You mean they exist?

SC:  Ho ho ho.  Of course they exist.

Oprah:  But how, I mean, how is it that you can talk to them and can you prove this?

SC:  First of all, I’m a saint.  And being a saint, I get special access to the throne.  But as for proving anything, well I doubt I can prove anything to your satisfaction.  Even if God showed up and wrote I am the Lord your God in letters of gold across the sky, people might simply say she, oh wait, you insist on calling God he.  Well, uh, anyway, they would say she, sorry I meant he, was an advanced alien, not necessarily God.  I think the only proof I can offer is that I give presents to kids every year and have been doing so for over a millennium now and that is something outside of what you call normal experience.

Oprah:  Oh my goodness you have just opened yourself up to hundreds of questions, but sadly time is limited.  Can you briefly explain what you mean by what you just said, and is God a she!

SC:  Well God is above gender but she loves to be our Mother as much as he loves to be our Father.  I mean, just think of the trinity.  You have God the father, God the son, and whose missing?  Ask any six-year-old kid and they will immediately say “Mommy.”  But basically, I do this because Christ gave us the greatest gift of all, the gift of salvation, and while I could talk about this theologically until the reindeer come home, I’ll simply say that I give gifts to children because I myself received the greatest gift anyone could ever have, and I want children all over the world to know what it is like to receive a gift, because so many have no idea.  I want to give them a little ho ho ho in their lives.

Oprah:  That is very touching.  So then, given all this, how do you feel about being compared to the NSA and being accused of spying?

SC:  Well it is hurtful but I understand it.  But you see the problem is that all this fear about an invasion of privacy stems from mistrust and fear.  It hurts me that people are starting to fear me.  As I explained earlier, I needed a way to differentiate naughty and nice children.  You know I meant what I said before.  We don’t really look at individual children as much as hot spots of naughtiness to see if we can make any demographic correlations that will help us.

Oprah:  That sounds like NSA justification.

SC:  Yes I suppose it does.  But as I keep saying, things are more complicated than a black and white scenario.  You know children come into this world and generally accept others for what they are.  They only hate because they are taught to hate and I believe that where there is much hatred, there ought to be much kindness.

Oprah:  Explain.

SC:  What I am saying is that children who are, for example, forced into armies to fight and forced to kill their families in order to survive, well they are technically naughty, but they need extra niceness.  So we have to analyze the naughtiness of the children so we can target them with more gifts or with the right kind of gifts.

Oprah:  Surely you don’t expect us to believe all of those poor children in Africa are given nice presents at Christmas.

SC:  No they’re not because these war zones are too dangerous.  And sadly, if we dropped in presents of toys and food, the stronger would take them from the weaker.  Children have been killed for food they obtained.  But we would like to help.  This is why starting in the early 1920’s, we looked into automated sleighs which could pilot themselves.

Oprah:  What?  You mean like drone sleighs?

SC:  Yes.  We started the project to find a way to help the poor children who were stuck in war zones.  I admit I took things too slowly.  Then one foggy Christmas Eve, my mind changed.  It was ridiculous that we had to rely on a single red nosed reindeer to navigate, especially when you consider we’re in the North Pole and that is notorious for its poor weather.  Here we had terabytes of data capacity and computing power that makes your super computers look like an abacus, but we were relying on visual navigation.  So while I was grateful to Rudolph, I knew changes had to be made.

Oprah:  What did Rudolph think?

SC:  Well he got to play his reindeer games so he was cool with it.  He was young so didn’t understand the profound changes which were coming.  Rudolph was in the 40’s and we tried all manner of navigational technology.  There was no GPS system back then so we tried stuff Tesla theorized and other things as well.  Progress was slow.  In fact, it was one of our drone sleighs that crashed into what you call Area 51 and well, ho ho ho, I don’t need to go into that.

Oprah:  Wait.  Are you saying you are responsible for what happened in Area 51?

SC:  Yes, and some enterprising elves.  You see, my elves are artists, and it wasn’t enough for them to have a sleigh with no physical pilot. Also, we were having trouble with navigational technology.  So the engineers hit upon the idea of hooking up navigation to a reindeer through implants.  The reindeer brain is superior to any computer and we thought this would solve some of our technical problems.  Dancer’s grandfather was a test pilot and he volunteered.  We implanted sensors that could pick up small variations in earth’s magnetic field to navigate like we think some birds do, and things were going smoothly, but something went wrong and he and his drone sleigh prototype crashed.  Your US government had never seen a flying reindeer before and this combined with the implants led some to think there were aliens involved.  Then things just sort of snowballed from there.

Oprah:  And you only come clean now?

SC:  Sure now that Area 51 documents have been declassified.  I mean, ho ho ho, not that they tell you anything of substance.  But I kept quiet because your government classified everything and I did not want to alert anyone to our drone program just yet.  I knew that eventually someone would figure things out and drones would be used to kill, and I wanted to delay this as long as possible, so I did not say anything.

Oprah:  This is amazing stuff you are telling us.

SC:  Well I am here to clean up my image.  That’s why many people talk to you isn’t it?

Oprah:  Yes, I suppose so, and because people say I go soft on them.

SC:  yes, people say this.  But actually, I find I wish I had more time to talk more.  I want people, and especially children everywhere to know that someone is interested in their happiness.

Oprah:  I think we can all appreciate that, but there are still issues of privacy.

SC:  True.  But you know, humanity is entering a new age, an age in which information is not only abundant, but easily shared.  Privacy as you knew it is a thing of the past.  I’m not saying privacy isn’t important, but just as the train and plane transformed global communications and travel, this is transforming humanity.  You don’t know the right balance yet.  How could you?  When railroads began to dominate you had ruthless monopolies who controlled those railroads.  Germany used their superior railroads to nearly Conquer Europe in World War I.  But they also opened up vast new possibilities hitherto undreamed of for millions of people.  For the first time, supplies could be brought to remote places quickly.  Those railroads improved thousands upon thousands of lives.  So you have good internet and bad internet.  Good surveillance and bad surveillance and you are scared and frightened because you don’t know what to do with the bad, but you want the good.

Oprah:  So you’re saying we’ll figure it out?

SC:  yes, if you don’t blow yourselves up first you will eventually figure things out.  You know, people are becoming more and more connected with one another.  We’re striving to do with technology what we would have liked to have done with telepathy.  Of course, we are not telepathic and so we misunderstand one another, hurt one another and so on.  The Tower of Babel story, whether you believe it or not, has a lot of wisdom.  When the one language became many, we became confused.  Confusion breeds misunderstanding and that breeds hatred.  Sure there is a sinister side to all of this interconnection, but maybe, just maybe, the more connected humanity becomes with one another, the more empathy humanity will feel for one another.  And the more empathy we feel, the less likely we are to hurt one another.  So yes, there is good and bad and just like I changed my naughty and nice criteria over time, you will change your opinion of things over time and find the right balance.

Oprah:  I guess that is what we have always done.

SC:  Yes, eventually, humanity figures things out.

Oprah:  Santa, I wish we had more time, but I would like to thank you for taking the time with us this morning.  I suppose you are very busy now.

SC:  yes, very.  Mrs Claus has me doing hard exercise as well because of all those cookies I’ll get in a few days, but yes, I am very busy.

Oprah:  Well, thanks again.

SC:  Thank you.  Ho ho ho and Merry Christmas!

My Force Awakens Review

This article has spoilers for The Force Awakens so if you have not seen the movie yet, then this isn’t the review you’re looking for.  You should go about your business.  Move along.  If you have seen the movie, then reading a recap of the story is pointless so I’ll get right into it.

The story is basically Episode IV with different characters.  I was surprised the story takes this route  It isn’t exactly original.  You have a secret that is stored in a droid with the Empire clone organization, complete with a Vader clone and an Emperor clone looking for it.  Meanwhile you have a hero stuck on a desert planet going nowhere until circumstances put her in the center of it all.  So we have a Luke Skywalker clone.  In this movie, Han Solo is the Obiwan clone.  He introduces our heroes to The Force, and even has is own death scene in which the Vader clone kills him.  We have a Death Star clone although this one is truly badass, as if the first version wasn’t, and we even have a few cloned characters from The Empire Strikes Back thrown in.  This includes, if not quite a Yoda clone, a character who resembles Yoda in function.  By the way, the alien Reggae at the castle was awesome!

Normally, if I see a movie with such an unoriginal story, I would can it.  I do like originality.  In this case, however, I will give it a pass.  In fact, I quite enjoyed it.  The only part I didn’t like was Solo’s death.  That sucks.  Hopefully he’ll somehow come back in the future.  But I’ve got a bad feeling about this.  OK, warning.  I’m going to rant just for a minute because I’m feeling really sorry for myself.  First Jon Snow dies!!  And now this!!!  Come on!!!! It has been a really bad year for beloved characters!!!!  All right.  I’m OK.  I have calmed down. . .more or less.

The heroic characters are likeable even if they are somewhat underdeveloped.  Star Wars does have a lot of action so you will always sacrifice some character development.  For example, Luke Skywalker sure became a badass Jedi in a short time without much training.  You have to accept a lot of gaps in character development in favor of a story told quickly. 

The movie has enough interesting unanswered questions to keep me wanting more.  For example, who is Supreme Leader Snoke?  He must be pretty powerful.  In my view, the answer to this is fairly straightforward.  I think it is Darth Plagueis.  Plagueis was Palpatine’s master whom Palpatine murdered in his sleep.  However, Darth Plagueis had mastered The Force to such an extent he was either able to bring people back to life, or was close to it.  He told Palpatine as much.  This is what Palpatine used to lure Anakin.  That is, Palpatine told Anakin that if Plagueis could get that close, there had to be a way.  Given that Qui-Gon-Jin figured out a way to continue on after his death, and that he taught Yoda and Obiwan, it stands to reason that someone as powerful as Plagueis figured this out as well.  We also see from the original movies that Obiwan and Yoda could manifest themselves in their own likeness and Anakin pulled it off as well.  In fact, in The Empire Strikes Back, Dead Obiwant has a normal conversation with Yoda and Luke and he does so in his own likeness.

Plagueis may have been able to go one step further and reanimate his own body, but even if he doesn’t do that, there is no reason to believe Plagueis could not manifest himself just as the other Jedi have done.  I would also point to Obiwan’s last words to Darth Vader in Episode 4 that if Vader struck him down he (Obiwan) would become more powerful than Vader could imagine. 

Given Dead Obiwan’s extensive interactions with Luke, there is no reason to suppose Plagueis couldn’t do the same with Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren. 

The book contains a very telling scene not present in the movie.  I’m assuming it was part of the original screen play but which did not make the final cut.  In this scene, Snoke has an intimate conversation with Ren in which he tells Kylo Ren he has never had a student like him before made of such strong and pure Force material.  He then states this is because he has both light and dark within him.  This shows that Snoke has trained students before.  This, in itself, doesn’t mean he is Darth Plagueis, but when you combine this with all of the other clues, Darth Plagueis seems the most likely candidate for Snoke.

Another question is who is Rey?  I subscribe to the Luke’s daughter theory which is already popular among fandom.  The timeline needs to be worked out, something Lucas did not do well for Revenge of the Sith but I think it fits.  Assuming Han and Leia got busy after the fall of the Empire, and given The Force Awakens occurs 30 years after Return of the Jedi, let’s say Ren is 28 when the movie takes place.  For Rey to be a little girl when Ben Solo did his act of betrayal, as the flashback scene indicates, then Ben Solo could have been 19 or 20 when he did his evil act and Rey could have been nine or 10.  That would fit.  So we’ll say Rey is nine years or ten years younger than Ben Solo.

Since Luke did not have a love interest during Return of the Jedi, this would give Luke time to acquire a love interest, and perhaps have a child.  The problem with this theory is you would think Han and Leia would know of Luke’s daughter.  There is a scene in the movie, though, where Leia and Rey have a long embrace.  So there may be something there which they know, that we don’t.  Everything else points to Rey being Luke’s daughter.

As for Finn, we don’t know his family.  He could be an entirely new character without any ties to the past.  It does seem, though, that he might have Force powers too.  What if he is related to Mace Windu?  Now that would be really cool, and it could be the case.  He was taken from a family he will never know.  He was somehow different from all of the other Storm Troopers.  So who knows, maybe he is a nephew.  Keep in mind that Mace Windu would also have been separated from his family at a young age so it’s not like the Empire would have tracked the family. 

I only had one annoying plot problem.  In the final fight scene between Rey and Kylo Ren, even when using The Force, Rey should not have been able to best Kylo.  Kylo had some training after all, presumably from a Sith.  His Force powers should have been stronger.  Perhaps he was distracted with trying to figure out who she really was.  He does seem to have held himself back.  But he wouldn’t have allowed himself to be at death’s door by her hand regardless.  I am no master swordsman, but I have trained with the sword for a number of years and I know for a fact that a trained person has a massive advantage over an untrained one.  I remember once at college demonstrating this point by taking on five guys at once.  One of the five had just started learning sword fighting, while the others had never held one before.  We had practice swords.  The five guys surrounded me and I took them all out in about 10 to 15 seconds without any difficulty.  They couldn’t believe it.  One minute they were hacking at me with practice blood lust.  The next minute they were on the ground nursing some bruises. Thus, Kylo Ren’s sword play does not reflect well on Snoke’s training.  But then, maybe the light saber is not his thing.

Otherwise, the movie was fast paced.  It had a lot of action, and it had some great dramatic moments.  When Han and Leia see each other again after their breakup, I had a lump in my throat.  By the way, aside from Solo dying, the fact he and Leia broke up sucks too.  It’s perfectly understandable, but Return of the Jedi left us with a happily ever after romance which I liked, being a softy romantic at heart.  But now we know they didn’t live happily ever after.  Given what their son did, it makes sense they had to deal with things in their own way.  They did hug before Solo died though, so it was nice to see they still loved each other. 

Also, the father-son reunion between Han and Kylo Ren (Ben) was a powerful scene as well.  I remember thinking that Kylo Ren’s plea for help was too easy and even though this movie copied so much from A New Hope, I was surprised when he stuck the light sabre right through Han.  As I said before, that really sucked. 

BB-8 provided just enough cuteness.  We didn’t see the over-the-top Jarjar Binks attempt at cuteness.  BB-8 provided just enough.  The special effects were fantastic and the good old tried and true good versus evil was simple but effective.

If someone had leaked to me that this storyline would be Episode IV with new characters, I would have reacted with trepidation.  But I came out of The Force Awakens quite satisfied and wanting more.  Part of me wants Kylo Ren brought back to the light.  Another part wants someone to wring that brat’s neck for what he has done. 

And I think that’s the way I’m supposed to fee about him.  With the Republic home world destroyed, thanks to the whatever this latest planet killer is called, there should be enough chaos and adventure for any diehard and new Star Wars fan alike.  And I’ll be there to see it all.

One final thing.  Anyone who has read the books will know there is a substantial departure from the basic plot.  Han and Leia don’t seem to have had three children as in the books.  But they did borrow from them in that their son goes Dark Side on them.  I’m OK with this.  Some of the books are really good, while some are pretty bad.  There’s no way they could or should have followed the books exactly, but so long as they have Luke start a new Jedi academy and keep the story interesting, I’m fine with the departure.

In a word, I loved The Force Awakens and it’s not just because Hayden Christensen wasn’t in it.  The story was good, if somewhat unoriginal.  The action was great, and I’m interested in what happens next.

Trump's Ban on Muslims, or Islam's Garbage Problem

Well surprise, surprise.  Trump is at it again.  This time he wants to ban Muslims from entering the United States.  Anyone with half a brain should realize immediately there are two obstacles which will prevent this from happening anytime soon.  The first is the Constitutional issue.  Banning Muslims would violate the US Constitution.  The second problem is one of implementation.  How do you ban Muslims?  Passports do not state a person’s religion.  And even if they did, could we trust them?  How would we know someone is a Muslim.  You would have to enforce the ban based on countries, and not based on religion.  The problem with that is, of course, that many countries with a predominantly Muslim population also has a significant minority who are not Muslims.  Coptic Christianity in Egypt, for example, accounts for around 25% of the total population.  So the only realistic way to enforce Trump’s ban would be to ban entry from a number of countries.

Having said all this, Trumps political grand-standing resonates with the American people and it is high time the media, as well as those presently in power realize this.  Why does Trump’s call for a Muslim ban resonate?  It does so because anyone with half a brain realizes there is a problem and the American people want that problem fixed. 

Meanwhile you have John Kerry saying “ISIS is not Islam.”  That sort of statement is the height of stupidity though in fairness to Kerry, he has to say things like this because he is a diplomat.  ISIS is part of Islam and everyone knows it.  People also know that most of the present conflicts involve Muslims in some fashion.  So what exactly is going on with Islam?

The answer is really a simple one.  A religion consists of a group of people.  A large religion consists of many groups of people who hold some beliefs in common.  Take Christianity for example.  Protestants do not believe in the supremacy of the Pope while Roman Catholics do.  Orthodox Christians differ from Roman Catholics on the issue of the Filioque, something most people have never heard of.  But Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox believers, are Christians though they technically belong to different groups.  You can think of a religion as a corporation with denominations representing departments within a corporation.  Sometimes one department fights another department and that is usually not good for a company or for a religion.  My point here is that any religion is at its core, a group of people.  In fact, the word religion means a binding together of people. 

Whenever a group of people engage in anything, it is inevitable that garbage within an organization will accumulate.  The organization has two options.  They can either take out the trash themselves, or wait for someone else to do it for them.  The first option is definitely preferable because once you move to the second option, the people taking out the trash might just take you out along with it.

Take FIFA for example.  It is obvious to everyone that FIFA accumulated a great deal of garbage in the form of corrupt executives.  Instead of taking out the trash themselves, the Justice Department is now doing it for them and more and more governments around the world are joining in taking FIFA to the tip (that’s what Australians say when you take garbage to the land fill).  I’ll bet there are a number of people in FIFA who wished they had taken out the trash themselves.

The Roman Catholic Church has serious garbage in the form of paedophile priests.  Here in Australia, the Church is currently taking a hammering because of what we Americans would call a Congressional Investigation.  The Church knew about the trash piling up, but decided not to take the trash out themselves.  So now, people are doing it for them and the Church is paying for this in declining attendance and revenue.

When trash accumulates, it eventually becomes intolerable.  When I was a senior in high school, there was a garbage workers strike.  School continued for about two weeks, but with piles of garbage spilling out on to the grass and school environs in general, the state government eventually had to close all schools down until someone could take out the garbage.

So just as the Roman Catholic Church has garbage, Islam also has a serious trash problem.  When Kerry and others make silly statements like “ISIS is not Islam” they deny the truth.  ISIS is Islam or, rather, ISIS is Islam’s garbage.  ISIS is not America’s garbage.  It is not Christianity’s garbage.  It is not Buddhism’s garbage.  It is Islam’s garbage.  Muslims have two choices.  They can either take out the trash themselves, or wait until we take it out for them.  Because make no mistake, eventually, WE WILL TAKE OUT THE TRASH and when we do, we might just take a lot of other things to the land fill along with ISIS. 

Islam’s garbage problem is much worse than we think because there are a lot of Muslim’s out there who are kind of OK with what ISIS is doing.  That couple who killed all those people in San Bernardino, a place I know well because I lived there for a while, were not radicalized in Syria.  They were radicalized in Saudi Arabia.  And in many ways, Saudi Arabia is ISIS with an embassy. 

We can talk about how at one point Islam were the enlightened ones and we westerners were the barbarians and that is certainly true.  Modern mathematics, astronomy, optics, and geography came to us through Islam.  That’s just a fact.  We can also thank Muslims for being tolerant enough to accept zero from India so they could eventually pass the number zero on to us.  Where would we be without all these things?  We can also reflect on the hospital and other charitable works Muslims do.  Charity is after all, one of the pillars of Islam.  Bin Laden funded and built hospitals in Yemen.  So yes, we can say all those politically correct things about Islam and also acknowledge many of those politically correct things are true.  Just as there are hospitals and orphanages sponsored by Christian organizations, there are hospitals and orphanages sponsored by Muslim ones. 

But none of these things matter much.  The simple truth is that Islam has accumulated too much garbage and it’s time to take out the trash.  Muslims and politicians can talk about how good most Muslims are all day long, but the garbage is piling up and eventually, we’ll have to close down the schools.  Anyone with half a brain can see the garbage is piling up.  Time is running out for Muslims.  If they do not want to suffer reprisals, they need to take out the garbage themselves.  Otherwise, we will.

There’s a joke about different parts of the body fighting over who is the most important.  The brain and heart make good cases.  But in the end, the anus wins because it decides to go on strike and eventually, the rest of the body can’t take it anymore. 

Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the country may not be practical, but Trump is one of the few powerful people with the balls to publically acknowledge Islam’s garbage problem.  Earth to the Republican Party.  It’s about time you did too.  Trump resonates because he is trying to address a real problem and a real issue.  He has correctly identified the problem and isn’t afraid to articulate it.  He doesn’t allow political correctness to get in the way of expressing what anyone with half a brain realizes.  I may not agree with Trump’s solution – and I admit I don’t know if he has any details of how he would implement it – but I do not believe he is crazy.  Rather, I believe he understands there is a problem.  He acknowledges the problem, and he is trying to solve the problem.  Maybe that is why he is so successful at business.  Good executives do those three things: they understand that garbage exists., they acknowledge that garbage exists, and they take out the trash. 

Wake up politicians.  It’s time to take out Islam’s garbage.  It’s not a question of whether Islam needs to change, or whether we should take steps against Islam.  Rather, it’s a much simpler question.  Who will take out the garbage because someone will eventually.  It’s the way of nature.  It is time for Islam to realize that shit happens and you just have to flush the toilet.  It’s that simple.