Background check

LOST has been on for almost three seasons now and, thanks to the acronyms "DVD" and "DVR," I've seen every single minute of every single episode. I know the name of Desmond's girlfriend's father. I know "What Kate Did," and how Jack got his tattoo. I can identify Goodwin, Ethan, and "Henry Gale" when I see them on screen. I know what the French chick's message was, who translated it, and how long it has been playing. In other words, I know the whole story.

I watched LOST this week with a friend of mine who hasn't really been a big fan of LOST. He has always thought it was a little too "out there" and never really understood why Amanda and I would rush home from AWANA on Wednesday nights and slip the kids some Benadryl (kidding, just kidding…) so we could watch the show without the slightest distraction. But all of that changed a week and a half ago when he, for some unknown reason, sat down and watched the entire episode, entitled "One of Us." I got an e-mail from him next morning disclosing that he had been surprisingly entertained (It was a great episode!).

With Amanda and the kids out of town for the week, I faced the prospect of watching LOST by myself, which isn't nearly as fun as watching it with a "LOST buddy." So, I called up my newly converted friend on Wednesday and asked if he was planning on watching it again. He was, and we made plans for him to join me.

As we watched, there were frequent references to events from previous episodes, and some things just didn't make sense without knowing the back story. Several times I paused the DVR to explain why Desmond can see glimpses of the future (which rabbit trailed into a discussion about why the hatch imploded, which rabbit trailed again and again and again), who the girl in the picture was, why Charlie must die, and so on. It became very clear that he and I weren't watching the same episode.

My friend could enjoy the show on one level, as it was entertaining in its own right. Still, he missed out on all sorts of subtleties, details, and even inside jokes, because he had no idea what had come before. I, on the other hand, was able to catch all of those things and enjoy the episode on a much deeper level.

This whole encounter reminded me of our approach to the Bible. As modern-day Christians, we pay a lot of attention to the New Testament, as of course we should. However, many of us (myself included!) all but ignore the Old Testament. We may dabble in Psalms or Proverbs, or quote a verse out of Jeremiah to make us feel good about ourselves or our pro-life campaign. But, by and large, we are woefully ignorant about the history of God's people, the messages of his prophets, and the people, events, and symbols that foreshadowed the coming Messiah.

By majoring in the New Testament (at the expense of the Old), we are able to learn quite a bit about Jesus, and about how we should live our lives. Yet, without knowing the back story we miss out on many of the subtleties and "inside jokes" that would make perfect sense to a reader who had a well of O.T. knowledge to draw on. We may even completely misunderstand a passage because we are unaware of the events or principles that serve as its foundation.

Amanda and I started watching LOST with the first episode of Season 2. All we knew was what we had seen in promos during football and baseball games. We got a taste of that first episode and were hooked. I rushed out to Blockbuster and rented the entire 1st season on DVD, and we got caught up as quickly as we could. Oh, that I would show such ambition for "catching up" on the Old Testament!

From twenty-some years of Christian education, I have a pretty good idea of what happened in the books of the Pentateuch. Beyond that, my awareness drops off considerably. I've started reading the book of Joshua, and I hope to continue to become more informed about what God has to say to us through what is recorded in the rest of the Old Testament. My hope is that I will gain a better understanding of who Jesus is by reading the Scriptures he grew up with, that also point to his coming on every page. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm hooked!

Climate craziness

Only one shopping day left before Earth Day! If you haven't already heard, the hottest Earth Day fad is purchasing "carbon offsets." The way it works is simple. All you have to do is send some of your money to companies like Carbonfund.org who will use it to plant some trees in your honor. The trees will then filter CO₂ out of the air for years to come, helping you to approach the ideal environmental goal of becoming "carbon neutral."

For example, if you are going to take a round trip commercial flight from New York to Los Angeles to, for example, promote a documentary about global warming, the per-passenger carbon output of the flight would be 1,920 lbs.¹ (calculator here), or just shy of one ton. According to Carbonfund.org's donation page, a donation of $14.96 will take care of 6,000 lbs of CO₂, or roughly three round trips from LAX to NY La Guardia. Fifteen bucks seems like a pretty good deal for a green conscience. Too good to be true? Yep.

A single mature tree can absorb approximately 50 lbs. of carbon dioxide per year (source). If we assume trees cost $5 each², your donation would purchase three trees. These trees would, in turn, pull 150 lbs. of carbon dioxide from the air per year. Assuming these trees remained healthy, it would take about 40 years for these trees to eliminate the carbon dioxide produced by just three round trip flights from LA to NY.

In other words, you can achieve carbon neutrality, as long as you can afford to wait four decades.

If that's not good enough for you, then you might want to consider switching to gasoline with ethanol added to it, which results in a net reduction of carbon emissions by 30%. Of course, it takes "about 74 units of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuel energy to produce 100 units of ethanol" (source) . In The Rough Guide to Climate Change, Robert Henson notes that growing enough corn to have an impact on greenhouse gas emissions would require "covering 15% of the world's agricultural land — a country the size of India — with nothing but corn, solely for ethanol." Considering that such a solution would lead to massive starvation around the planet, we probably need to keep looking for other alternatives.

By now you're probably starting to get the point; the reason I don't believe in man-made global warming is because the people who are predicting an impending apocalypse don't really believe what they are telling us. If they did, they wouldn't be bothering with carbon offsets that don't really accomplish anything or bio-fuels that will are more likely to lead to starvation than salvation. These supposed solutions may be powerful symbols for the global warming movement, but symbolism accomplishes very little when trying to stave off the supposedly cataclysmic effects of global warming.

Furthermore, as Greg Koukl noted today, there is "an inherent contradiction in the underlying convictions that drive annual "Earth Day" celebrations" since most environmental activists are also Darwinists. If we are all involved in a survival-of-the-fittest world, why should we waste valuable resources on conservation efforts? You'll have a hard time convincing me that the survival of our species is somehow directly linked to that of our polar bear neighbors to the North.

As Koukl points out, we all have an obligation to be good stewards of the planet. We should certainly adopt measures that save energy, reduce waste, and provide protection for God's creatures. However, our environmental stewardship should be rooted in reality and motivated by a worldview that revolves around Christ, not the sensationalism of Hollywood celebrities and over-hyped and radically expensive solutions.