Trump, Evangelicals, and Wealth

One thing you cannot escape is Trump in the news daily. The former president finds himself swamped in criminal charges. Even with all of his legal problems, people love and support him, especially Evangelicals. How can this be? Christianity teaches against sin which includes lying, corruption, mistreatment of your fellowman, adultry, and many more actions Trump has been accused of doing. Yet, the religious community continue to support him and seemingly even encourage his antics. Trump's potential to be elected president once again has many people on edge and scratching their head wondering who would want a "criminal" (illegedly) for a president?

While I was attending Seminary, we quickly glossed over a parable which seemed to imply it is okay to use your wealth in a way to gain favor from people even if its unethically done. WHAT? I couldn't believe what I was reading and all the professor could say was, "This is seen as a controversial passage scholars have been unable to agree on its true meaning." But what was clear was this one sentence, "I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:1b-9)." 

Scholars cannot agree exactly what was taking place in the parable. Was the manager decreasing the amounts the master's debtors owed their master gaining favor from the debtors so they would welcome him when he no longer had a job? Does the parable teach to use your position in life to gain personal favor from people even though the way you do it is wrong? Time to look at the parable in the Bible.

In Luke’s Gospel, many of Jesus’s parables are grouped together. In chapter 15, we find the “lost” parables, where Jesus talks about misplaced coins, lost sheep, and wayward sons. In chapter 16, Luke puts two parables together: the Parable of the Shrewd Manager and the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.

The parable of the shrewd manager reads like this:

“There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

“The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg- I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

“So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

“‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied.

“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’

“Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied.

“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

“The master (Jesus) commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:1b-9).

There it is. The manager was cheating his boss out of money to gain favor from people he soon would be on the same level with as far as economics were concerned. The parable is specifically talking about using position, authority, and MONEY, to gain favor from people.

Many are confused how and why Evangelicals support and encourage Trump. There is no doubt Donald Trump uses his position, authority, and money to gain favor from people. He has been likened to a mob boss in doing a favor to get a favor. While campaigning for president, he makes favorable, sometime obsurd, promises to his base of supporters. Donald Trump not only uses his worldly wealth to gain friends, he uses threats too.

Some Christians choose to interpret this parable as meaning it is fine to use shrewd tactics to gain godly outcomes as evidenced by the verse in the parable, "For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.," They see Donald Trump, a sinner, doing bad to bring about good. He is backed by Evangelicals with a clear heart because of his overturning of Roe v Wade, and favoring other causes dear to them and their Christian faith. He doesn't have to be good or use ethics to bring about desired Christian outcomes in their minds. He is crooked for Christ.

The above parable seems to show that OUTCOMES are more important than means one uses to achieve the desired outcome. This is a parable many are not familiar with and you can see why. When I first read it I could not believe cheating was being sanctioned, making friends held as important in such a way, and self gain at any cost being encouraged. Even if the passage is trying to say it is more important to have friends than to worry about money, it wasn't the manager's money to use to gain friends. The Bible is clear, greed is a sin and the love of money can impede your entrance into heaven, but this is a parable about dishonesty.

It is evident Trump's wealth is his value in his eyes. He lies about his monetary value all the time and is currently standing trial for inflating at times and deflating his monetary value at other times. Every chance he gets he asks his followers to contribute to his defese or campaign even when they have no idea how the millioaire is going to use the money sent to him. Maybe they believe they are giving their money to a kingdom cause and when it is gone, they will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. But Evangelicals support Trump. Go figure.

Sowing Your Seed not Wild Oats

All human beings are blessed with a special gift from their creator, the ability to reproduce. While thinking about humans reproducing, I began to wonder why the male sperm is called a "seed" but a woman's egg is not called a seed and the significance of that distinction. I also wondered why men had a longer window to sire children than women. Sperm is the male reproductive cell and is derived from the Greek word sperma (meaning “seed”). A sperm cell is the male sex cell. The word sperm is derived from the Greek word σπέρμα, sperma, meaning "seed". This sperm is a very minute cell present in all men. 

In animals, female gametes are called ova or egg cells and male gametes are called sperm.  When an egg cell and a sperm cell unite, the two combine to form an embryo or an unborn, developing organism. Approximately 200 million to 500 million spermatoza (also called sperm or spermatozoans), produced in the testes, are released per ejaculation.

It may come as a shock but sperm can survive within the female reproductive system for a week! There is a strong desire of the seed to produce life. Sperm are tenacious. The female's egg is viewed as passive. Just hanging out for a while waiting for a sperm to come along. In early reproductive thought, the female's contribution to the formation of life was seen as minimum and downright dismissed.

Four centuries before Christ, Aeschylus wrote: “The woman you call the mother of the child/ is not the parent, just a nurse to the seed. …The man is the source of life — the one who mounts.” The general idea was that the womb provided merely a soft field in which the male seed was sowed. Then in 1672, a Dutch physician named Regnier de Graaf found ovaries full of eggs in a number of mammals, and although he couldn’t find any eggs in humans, he was convinced they must be there somewhere. It would take 150 years and a microscope before anyone would confirm the notion. 

It is unimaginable now to believe people thought only a man could create life. People in past history believed the man alone with his ejaculation at the end of the sex act put a baby inside the woman. The newly formed child was 100% his own creation because he mounted the woman, entered her, and made a deposit. In all honesty I can see it being a plausable assumption before the advancement of science. MEN CREATE LIFE ALONE. Not arrogant at all.

It wasn’t until Antony van Leeuwenhoek sprang up from his marital bed to spread his semen on a microscope in 1677 that anyone saw them. Sperm were first observed in 1677 by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek using a microscope. He described them as being animalcules (little animals), The first person to discover where babies come from, strictly speaking, was a German biologist named Oscar Hertwig. In 1875, working at his microscope in a Naples, Italy laboratory, Hertwig dabbed a drop of sea urchin semen against the gelatinous surface of a sea urchin egg. “Moments later,” according to science journalist Edward Dolnick, “the nucleus of the sperm cell came into view, inside the egg…and then—before Hertwig’s eyes—the two nuclei fused into one. No one in history had ever seen the process of fertilization play out.” 

It was not until 1875 that a German scientist finally put the sperm and the egg together conceptually.

So why then is sperm seen as a "seed?" In farming the land is prepared for the seed to be planted and eventually grow. The seed has to be placed into a forvorable medium and environment to sprout and grow. Even though a woman has an egg, half and the same cell containing DNA to create a totally new human, her "egg" isn't placed into anything by her to sprout and grow. The sperm penetrates the egg. This is one thing (seed) going into another thing (egg) like a plant "seed" must go into the "soil." 

You may say the egg is planted within the uterus which can also represent fertile soil. But the egg just being IN the uterus does not generate or grow. The female egg is more so the representation of fertle soil and the uterus is the enviromental condition condusive for the seed to sprout and grow. Women do not plant seeds. The female egg is singular like a large field would be singular while the male's sperm is numerous just like a farmer would plant several seeds in the hope at least one (or several) will germinate. The man has millions of seeds and a long time to sow the seeds. His potential to reproduce on a large scale is assured by his daily sperm count. Thus the saying a man is sowing his seed and a child is his seed, meaning from his seed (sperm). Women do not refer to their children as their seed.

With the sperm being half of the miraculous ingrdients needed to form life, it is important for men to have healthy viable seeds. Studies have found men who ejaculated 21 or more times per month had a  lower risk of prostate cancer compared to those who ejaculated 4–7 times a month. Researchers theorize that frequent ejaculation clears the prostate of irritants or toxins that cause inflammation and contribute to prostate cancer.

A healthy lifestyle and diet are important. Foods to increase sperm production are dark chocolate which is a powerful aphrodisiac. Dark chocolate contains L-Arginine, an amino-acid which works by increasing nitric oxide, which essentially dilates blood vessels and promotes blood flow to your sexual organs, enhancing sensation, satisfaction and desire. Oysters which contain zincan essential mineral that plays an important role in improving testosterone levels as well as sperm production. Also on the list of foods good for sperm health are eggs, bananas, spinach, asparagus, garlic, and carrots amongst others.

A WRITER'S LIFE: Tim Cagle

 

Have you heard the saying, Indecent Proposal? Well, author, Tim Cagle, had an "Indecent Rejection." Tim is the first of hopefully many writers I will be featuring on my blog in a segmaent tiltled, A WRITER'S LIFE, in which I interview writers and how they deal with the hills and valleys that come with a writer's life. 

Even though Tim is one in a million in his writing, he is also one of thousands of writers who have received the dreaded rejection letter from agents and publishers. But thankfully, he was not deterred from creating magic with words. What he did after reading the rejection letter is probably something some of us would love to do also (Or has done?).

I hope you will be inspired and encouraged in your writing journey after reading his interview. Make sure to check out his contact information at the end of the interview.

1.  I have been a writer since the 1990’s.  I was a medical malpractice, products liability and wrongful death attorney for decades and began to write as a way to share stories about clients I could not help because the law or the facts were against us. Unfortunately, at that time, I was working 100 plus hours a week and did not have the time to bring my books up to publishable standards until I retired.

2.  I have written two medical/legal thrillers, Unexpected Enemy and Class of Two, as well as one book about songwriting, Whispers from the Silence, based on the time I shut down my law practice after I passed the bar and went to Nashville to write songs. My big break never broke and I learned I would always be a songwriter trapped in a lawyer’s body.

3.  I have lost count of the number of rejections I have received. Most of the time, agents did not even provide the courtesy of a reply, and I consider that to be a form of rejection.

4.  The worst rejection I received was from an agent regarding my most successful novel to date, Class of Two. It is the story of two lawyers, one black and one white, ex-college roommates and football All-Americans, who reunite in Boston to go to trial against the country’s leading heart surgeon. They were the first black and white teammates to live together in Texas in 1964, during the height of the Civil Rights movement. It highlights what the turbulent 1960’s were like, and how the friendship of two men could overcome the evils of society.

I sent my manuscript to an alleged agent who wrote me back a scathing review. It was highlighted by the words, “I never knew one football player who was smart enough to go to law school, let alone two!” I was at my fiery, trial lawyer, take-no-prisoners, litigation self and wrote back to him the following, “Thank you for pointing how naïve I was to think that football players could have two separate IQ points to rub together. I am now on a quest to inform the following individuals that they are too stupid to survive, 1. Byron “Whizzer” White, J.D., University of Colorado and Pittsburgh Pirates (now Steelers) running back and US Supreme Court Justice, 2. Pat Haden, Rhodes Scholar, former USC and Los Angeles Rams quarterback, 3. Dr. Frank Ryan, PHD in Mathematics, former Cleveland Browns quarterback and considered a genius in geometric function theory, 4. Alan Page, JD. Former Minnesota Vikings defensive lineman and now Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, 5. Kris Kristofferson, Rhodes Scholar, Army Ranger, Pomona College end and prolific songwriter, and 6. Nick Buoniconti, J.D., corporate attorney and a graduate of Suffolk University Law School, my alma mater. I told the agent I would inform the foregoing individuals he considered them too vapid to exist and they should immediately withdraw from societal interactions.

5. The best way to bounce back is to keep writing!  This is the most subjective business I have ever seen. It is mostly based on guesswork and despite their frequent and multiple failures, even a bad agent occasionally guesses right.

6.  My best advice for writers is to be careful to whom you listen. Many writers consider agents to be god-like figures and all-knowing gurus, when in fact, they are often self-appointed pseudo experts. I once had an agent tell me a scene I wrote about a lawyer’s first meeting with a new client lacked form, originality, scope and substance. I told her that I was at a significant disadvantage because I only had twenty-five years of law practice and trial work upon which to base my descriptions, and would do my best to imagine how a Hollywood lightweight would write the scene.

Also, never forget that most agents have twenty-something year-old assistants whom they rely on to screen a writer’s work. I was also an Evidence professor for 25 years and have some insight into how the twenty-five-year-old mind works. Most consider someone of my maturity to be an irrelevant dinosaur and consider Taylor Swift to be a goddess songwriter. I have had conversations with them about GIFTED songwriters like Smoky Robinson, Jim Webb, Norman Whitfield, Jim Croce and John Fogerty and always ask how they would have handled Taylor’s insightful lyric about how “he didn’t like it when I wore high heels”, and wait for them to look at me with the same insipid glance as the agent who told me football players were too dense to do anything but run through a wall.

Finally, do not get discouraged. My success came after I abandoned the search for an agent as I can read and interpret my own contracts. Also, when it comes to agents, always consider the source. If the chance comes to become the next J.K. Rowling, Toni Morrison or John Grisham, make sure you have a top-notch advisor by your side. If success never comes, pull out every drop of fulfillment you can because you were able to so something few people can, finish writing a book.

Above all, keep writing and stay safe,

Tim Cagle, J.D.,  an ex-linebacker who made it through law school so I could deal with arguing with expert witnesses, after I finally stopped trying to run through walls.

PLEASE take the time to visit Tim's platforms, check out his work, and share with friends and family 

Twitter and Instagram:  @timcagleauthor

Facebook and LinkedIn:  Tim Cagle 

UNEXPECTED ENEMY https://goo.gl/joxZLH woman has interracial child after clinic gives her STRANGER’S SPERM;

CLASS OF TWO https://tinyurl.com/y2bsfgkt 2 lawyers, 1 black, 1 white, ex-roommates and football All-Amercans vs ELITE HEART SURGEON!

WHISPERS FROM THE SILENCE https://goo.gl/EVvYQZ two songwriters fall in love in Nashville & write songs by waiting for silence to whisper the lyrics....

***WANT TO BE FEATURED?*****

It's simple. Contact me at: rizerfall@yahoo.com

 

Rejection Letters

Everyone is familiar with the "Dear John Letter." A letter sent by a woman to a man madly in love with her who has found someone else. Dumped via a letter. These letters were usually sent to soldiers off fighting in wars on foreign soil. Their love, who promised to wait for the man's return, found someone new and was ending their relationship. These letters were viewed as the cruelest letter to receive. Many will argue in this new age, "text" breakups, are just as painful.

Writers will tell you the "rejection" letters/e-mail from potential agents and publishers are excruciating also. After writing what they believe to be the best book ever, writers send out their query letter letting agents and publishers know they have a manuscript the world needs to read. With hopes high and fingers crossed, writers wait for a reply of acceptance. To their dismay, "rejection letters" roll in quickly.

Some refusals are polite, instructive, and encouraging. Some rejections are brutal, insensitive, and cold. But writers know this is part of the process to become a published author and they continue sending their work out into the world to be rejected once again. Don't become dismayed. You are in good company. Many famous authors survived being rejected multiple times and we are forever grateful they did not give up.

• Margaret Mitchell was rejected 38 times before she published Gone With the Wind.
• Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen were rejected 144 times before they published Chicken Soup for the Soul.
• Robert Pirsig was reject 121 times before publishing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
• James Joyce was rejected by 22 publishing houses before Dubliners was published.
• Joseph Heller was also rejected 22 times before publishing Catch-22.
• Frank Herbert was rejected 23 times before publishing Dune.
• James Patterson was rejected 31 times before publishing The Thomas Berryman Number.
• Alex Haley received 200 rejections before seeing Roots in print.
• Jack London received 600 rejections before publishing his first story.
• J. K. Rowling was rejected by 12 publishing houses in a row before Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone saw the light of the day.
• Louis L’Amour, whose books have sold 330 million copies, was rejected 200 times before he could publish his first book.

I am currently sending out queries for my book, When Will Eve Be Forgiven?, and I'm hoping not to become discouraged from the many rejection letters I'm expecting to receive. For my mental health I decided to try to engage with my fellow writers/authors as I obsessively check my e-mails for the wonderful ACCEPTANCE lettere-mail.

I enjoy INTERVIEWING people from different walks of life on various topics. I would love to share with others on my blog the agony of rejection letters and how writers find the courage to continue putting their work out there. I would love for my readers to be able to read some of the more INTERESTING rejection letters you have received.

AUTHORS!!! Participation appreciated for interviews regarding manuscript rejections. Answer the below questions, e-mail answers to rizerfall@yahoo.com, include your photo, state/country you live in (optional), work, book, links, and please share your rejection letter story. 

I need encouragement and I know other writers new or old to the querying process needs support and encouragement as well.

QUERY REJECTION INTERVIEW

1.    How long have you been a writer?

2.    Genre?

3.    Estimate your number of rejections so far in your career.

4.    Worse rejection letter received.

5.    How or what do you do to bounce back from rejection of your work?

6.    Best advice for writers regarding submitting their work to agents/publishers?

Help me spread the word about this offered insight and support for writers.

Thank you all so much for your participation and good luck in your journey.