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Barry Bonds*

A cure for AIDS.

My wife and I watched Frontline: The Age of AIDS tonight on PBS. Having been just a child in the '80's when HIV/AIDS came on the scene in the United States, I was amazed at the way the disease was politicized. I will try to say this as sensitively as I can, but with every individual story they told and every protest they showed, I couldn't get past the fact that the disease is completely preventable through simple, common sense practices.

As I understand it, the best way to "cure" AIDS is to not get it.

According to an article on the program's website, President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) allocated $15 billion to AIDS prevention, treatment, and care. The program requires that 20% of its funds go toward prevention, with a third of that money going toward abstinence-until-marriage education. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas points out the obvious, that abstinence is an extremely successful technique to prevent the contraction of HIV. The critics claim that this approach forces morality on people, but Brownback counters that we can "take all morality out of it, and then let's just deal with it on a biological basis." He's got a point.

We tell kids not to drink and drive. Why? Because it is dangerous and can destroy their lives, or even kill them. We tell kids not to smoke because they could get cancer and die. But why would anyone think that telling kids to not have sex would be a problem? According to the CDC, more than 425,000 Americans were living with AIDS. According to the statistics, the majority of the people who have the disease contracted it through sexual contact.

I can't remember where I heard it, but someone has said that one singe generation of monogamy would completely wipe out all sexually transmitted diseases. Think of it… billions and billions of dollars are being devoted to diseases that we already have a cure for.

As a Christian, I think that we should be leading the charge in compassion and care for people with HIV/AIDS. The Church should be known for its kindness toward the people who have this disease, regardless of the social stigmas attached to it or the lifestyles of many of its victims. However, I think we also need to push for unbiased, unpoliticized education about the risks associated with the behaviors that would expose a person to AIDS.

Jesus or My Girlfriend?

Several years ago, while listening to a soft-rock station (don't ask… long story) I realized that just about every monster ballad love song from the 80's could also serve as a "praise song" in many churches.

Then, on Fide-O yesterday I found this post, which is part of a new weekly feature called "Jesus or My Girlfriend?" in which the reader is supposed to guess whether or not the song is a modern "praise song" or a secular love song. Here's this week's installment, let's see how you do:

I needed the shelter of someone's arms, and there you were
I needed someone to understand my ups and downs,
and there you were with sweet love and devotion
Deeply touching my emotion

I want to stop and thank you Jesus
I want to stop and thank you Jesus
How sweet it is to be loved by you
How sweet it is to be loved by you

I close my eyes at night
Wondering where would i be without you in my life
Everything i did was just a bore
Everywhere i went it seems I'd been there before
But you brighten up for me all of my days
With a love so sweet in so many ways

I want to stop and thank you Jesus
I just want to stop and thank you Jesus
How sweet it is to be loved by you
How sweet it is to be loved by you

You were better to me than i was to myself
For me, there's you and there ain't nobody else

I want to stop and thank you Jesus
I just want to stop and thank you Jesus
How sweet it is to be loved by you
How sweet it is to be loved by you

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Jihad in its current manifestation

Keith Ghormley sums up the current "insurgency" in Iraq very well on his blog:

Cartoon Without Pictures
Frame 1: Angry Islamic men holding AK-47's over their heads and shouting "WE ARE MIGHTY MUSLIM WARRIORS!"

Frame 2: Continuing their noise: "WE WILL FIGHT JIHAD! WE ARE BRAVE AND STRONG!"

Frame 3: Losing some vigor as large tanks and soldiers labeled [U. S. Army] enter the frame: "WE WILL … uh … we will … uh …"

Frame 4: Slinking off meekly: " … we will blow up defenseless Muslim women and children …"

(click here for his original post)

I am getting tired of hearing O'Reilly types wonder if we're going to win the war in Iraq, as if anybody thinks there's a possibility that the terrorists/insurgents will be able to defeat the U.S. military.

The only way we will "lose" is if the milquetoast liberals in this country lose the war for us in the papers and on the college campuses. I'm glad that these same people weren't successful in derailing our efforts during WWII or this blog would probably be written in German.

Finally, when you hear the network news anchors telling you about "another soldier killed in Iraq today," remind yourself that 51 million people in Allied nations lost their lives during WWII, with more than 400,000 of these deaths being American soldiers (wikipedia). While each and every soldier lost is truly tragic, I think we need to get a little better frame of reference when discussing the current war in Iraq. Even an anti-war site lists the current American death toll at just 2,439, or roughly .61% of the American deaths during WWII. Frankly, I am ashamed at how much of our backbone we've lost in just a couple of generations.

Singing with Pete at 4:00 in the morning

16On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:"Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak. 17The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah 3:16-17

For the last four or five nights, my two and a half year old son Pete has been waking up crying around 3:30 in the morning. The first few times we just let him sleep in our bed with us for the rest of the night, which was probably a bad idea. Now it has almost become habitual, so we decided yesterday to take a "tough" stance on our son's mid-night melodrama.

As expected, Pete began crying uncontrollably at 3:31 last night. He strolled into our room and I firmly told him to return to his bed. He objected at first, but then retreated to his room as ordered (side note: spanking works… Pete understands that we expect him to obey the first time we ask him to do something, even at 3:31 am). He went back to his bed but just kept crying. After 10 minutes or so I went in there to try and figure out what was going on. He calmed down while I was in there, but when I got up to leave he freaked out again. I told him to stay in his bed and to stop crying, expecting that he might wear himself out and find himself asleep once he realized that we weren't coming to get him no matter how much he screamed.