Are you smarter than a preschooler?

Daddy: Peter, do you know what today is?

Pete: Is it Sunday?

D: Did we go to church this morning?

P: Nope.

D: Then I guess it isn't Sunday.

P: Well, I have Cubbies tonight. Does that help you?

If you've seen one…

Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot

They could have also done a parody of primary election coverage, but the "real" news networks seem to be doing a fine job of that themselves.

Red is the new white

One of the basics you learn early on in the Christian life is that the way that God's economy works is usually the complete opposite of how we expect things to work. The Scriptures are full of examples of this. If you want to save your life, you have to lose it. If you want to inherit the earth, be meek. A king, the Son of God, is born in a stable. The scarlet blood of Jesus makes us white as snow. A boy who will eventually rule Egypt has to first be thrown into a cistern. The kingdom of heaven belongs to babies. On and on and on it goes.

So, it doesn't take long to grasp this concept and, by the grace of God, to employ it in your life. But it struck me today that I don't really understand why there is such a huge discrepancy between the way I think things should "normally" work versus how God says they actually are. Maybe it's that the things of God are foolishness to those who are perishing, and that he has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. Or, maybe it is because we are so radically depraved that we call darkness light, and light darkness. We see the things of death (worldly riches, gratifying the lusts of the flesh, etc.) as attractive signs of abundant life.

How is it that we can get our thinking corrected so we are accustomed to valuing things the way God does? How can we finally begin to see life as life and death as death?

Stop before you start

It starts when you take a job loading trucks at UPS in the morning to keep bread on the family's table and the guy (kid?) a couple trucks down tunes the radio into the local Top 40 station. At first you find yourself gravely concerned about how far "music" has fallen and wondering if Akon and Sean Kingston are the same person (and thinking the two of them added together might equal the same musical talent of an average karaoke singer).

After awhile the lack of creativity and quality doesn't bother you so much. I mean, it's better than working without any music at all, plus the beats are kind of catchy.

Next thing you know you're doing dishes in the kitchen and you're singing along with Kanye's latest hit and calling your wife "Shorty" when she comes over to help you dry. You know you've hit rock bottom when she picks up a plate and you tell her to drop it like it's hot, at which point those who really love you sit you down for a loving "intervention."

From that point on you join an accountability group that asks you if you listened to any FM radio that week, and you install a program that checks your internet and iTunes traffic on your computer. Sure, it's a long road back, but the alternative is a life of misery and musical disappointment… with Soulja Boy as the soundtrack.

Best laid plans

The Setting: During Day 1 of Amanda's trip to St. Louis:

Me: Uh, Pete. Why don't you have any pants on?

Peter: Because I'm taking my second pair of underwear off.

Me: OK. Why did you have two pairs of underwear on?

Peter: I thought it would be cool, but… it wasn't.

Me: Fair enough.

Don't worry. She'll be back Sunday night.

Yours, mine, and ours

Amanda and I broke into the new millennium this Christmas when her folks got us matching 4gb iPod Nanos. I've never been a huge audiophile, but this little musical wonder has me all motivated to get my digital music collection in order. I'm well on my way to having everything tagged with the right artist, album, genre, and so on. One thing I've realized as I've been working on this is that I have lost a ton of music over the years. Everything from the Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch CD that I got for Christmas in 7th grade, to most of my sweet "alternative" discs from high school, to a bunch of the Christian albums I picked up in college.

Typically I agree with the "file sharing is stealing" crowd. If you are listening to someone's music, the artist should be compensated (however indirectly) for their work. It just seems fair to me that way. However, my once-was-bought-but-now-is-lost music collection has me thinking. In this day and age there are plenty of outlets that I could go to in order to try and rebuild my music cache without paying a dime for it. Aside from the risks of downloading a virus to my computer, and risking getting sued by the hyper-active RIAA, I am wondering if downloading my lost Sixteen Stone album would be morally wrong.

In most cases stealing is pretty easy to identify. If I steal your car, you can no longer drive it. I am depriving you of the use of something that you have paid for. If I have it, you can't use it. If you have it, I can't use it. Digital audio files don't work like that. If you have a copy of Metallica's black album, you can duplicate the files and give them to me. Now you and I can both sing along with Lars and the boys on our iPods. So, if the owner of the item being shared isn't being deprived of its use, is it really stealing?

You could argue that the one being stolen from here is the original artist, but I'm not sure I agree. They were fairly compensated for their work when I bought the CD. What difference does it make to them if in the course of a dozen moves since high school I lost the CD on which the audio files were available? Do they deserve to be compensated again just because I'm retrieving those exact same audio files that they've already been paid for?

I'm curious to hear what others think. Is this a gray area? Am I rationalizing? Are the RIAA cops going to come break down my door ten minutes after I publish this? What do you think?