Educational Folleys

The Story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41744061/ns/nightly_news/

The idea that our over emphasis on testing being harmful is not a very new one. Both of my parents were teachers, and they were some of the best. I don't say that gibly though I do say it with bias. There are dozens of others who share my assessment of my parent's teaching prowess. In addition, my parents shared some of the resources and classes they found helpful with me. I didn't actually realize at the time that I was fairly privileged to be able to to participate in 500 level courses as a teenager, but the things I learned stuck with me.

Unfortunately for many of the teachers I have had since then, I learned how to tell a good teacher from one that just puts in the requirements. The problem with assessing teacher's performance is that teachers are generally the people that were comfortable in schools. They tend to enjoy boundaries and outright expectations. Checklists and syllabi are their bread and butter. Because of this, if you give a teacher a method to assess their teaching, they will unwittingly "cheat" the system. How can this be? How would a teacher cheat?

Teachers cheat the same way the "smart" kids cheat. They go through the expectation list, and find a way to fulfill each one. They then perform and document how they fulfilled each expectation and they assessment will show them as a five-star teacher. The problem is that if your assessment is trying to tell you if they are a GOOD teacher, they just cheated.

You see, a really good teacher will already be doing the things in your assessment, and all your assessment will teach poor teachers is how to complete your assessment, not how to be better. Across America people act as though the educational system were racist, catering to white males, not caring if the others drop out. Truth be told, our current educational system appeals more to the way girls learn, and the testing methods students are exposed to are advantageous to no one at all.

Standardized testing at first appears to be a good method for finding out how teachers are doing. All it really does is give a snapshot of the general knowledge of a classroom, and highlights who are good at taking tests and those that don't deal well with high-pressure high-stakes testing. There are people out there who are extremely intelligent who don't work well in boundaries, and the moment they are given a piece of paper labelled "Test" they freak out and their mind goes blank. They may know all the answers, but for the duration of the test, stress defeats them, they are overcome by events, and the test will say that they are much less intelligent than they are.

Beyond this, standardized testing doesn't reveal the raw materials the teachers had to work with, and the way they are compiled rarely gives opportunity to highlight the true places of individual excellence. Furthermore, some countries even cheat the entire standardized testing system by disallowing students below a certain level of achievement to participate in the next testing. The reason some countries look so successful at education by means of standardized tests, is because by the end of 12th grade the bottom third of the classes are working at fast food restaurants and in other menial jobs while the top two-thirds actually take the test. Yet another example of educators being "Test Takers" and not actual improvers.

We've lost the basic idea of education. I have heard university administrators speak of "Survival of the fittest" as though red in tooth and claw, "good" institutions will weed out of "bad" institutions thus resulting in better students. This is a fundamental educational error. Education itself goes against survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest says "If you aren't fit, you don't learn the lesson!" Education says "We will teach you the lesson so you will be fit" True education actually seeks an increase in the quality of the materials it is working with.

Instead we have competition, with scorn and ridicule if a student gets held back. As a result, parents pressure schools to shuffle their kids through the system, ready or not! This is often out of fear of ridicule with no though to the fact that they are setting their child up for failure of higher stakes with each advanced grade. What started as Timmy not fully grasping phonics and being too afraid to ask a question out of fear of peer ridicule turns into utter apathy and abandonment in by his senior year. The parents insist on moving Timmy from grade to grade so he doesn't get "left behind" In the mean time he is getting left in the dust because he didn't ever learn to read properly. Or worse, straight A Billy doesn't get to reach his potential because the teacher has to stop and re-teach Timmy every concept three times while Billy stagnates.

Testing is important. It is a valuable tool when used correctly, that can actually accelerate everyone's learning. Unfortunately, more and more price tags get tied to standardized testing, leading teachers to say "Screw teaching them! Lets just train them to get the right multiple choice pattern on standardized test!" Testing should separate kids out into classes that meet their needs, not give a rank of students where this one is the best and gets six figures per year while this one is the worst and goes on SSI and welfare.

Trying to fix the system of tests that can be beaten by clever test takers, more and more systems are designed, by people who love tests, and are participated in by people who love tests, and are subsequently, inadvertently, cheated on. Everything from Accreditation to Trade Guilds is just an attempt to ensure quality instead of people just fulfilling a list of requirements, and yet they can't get away from the list of requirements. There are lots of teachers out there that look great on paper and terrible from the seat of the student.

I've observed one teacher in particular bragging about how he gets high marks on all the teaching assessments that his university performs during class tell a student after class that if they didn't understand the material it wasn't his job to teach it to him. I'm unclear to this day what the hell this man thought his job was. Apparently it was some combination of filling out assessment paperwork and telling inappropriate jokes to his students while on tenure.

At the end of the day what a test cannot do is ensure that a person is competent. At the end of the day I would rather have a mechanic that can and will treat me fairly and actually fix my car than one that has a hundred certifications and only really knows how to pass tests really well. Too bad our current education system is only interested in the certification. That's probably why it's broken.

New Direction:

I've decided to take this blog a slightly new direction, don't worry, I will still endeavor to unpack, line up, and repack ideas and waterfowl (ie Ducks) but I've decided I will begin to draw these ideas from the press, who have, of late, been irritating me with extremely one-sided coverage of many issues and who, I feel, need to be called out on it!

For example, I will begin with the news story from MSNBC who apparently doesn't believe at looking how a story affects both parties involved: Literally.

The Story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41935496/

I find it interesting that this article picks specifically on Republican lawmakers, it seems to me this should cause a dilemma for both parties of lawmakers. And actually to be a dilemma for the Democrat majority in the Senate. The Republicans are supposedly being asked to weigh their stance on abortion against the fiscal ramifications of expensive government, yet they make no mention of the Democratic law makers which must have the same dilemma. The Democratic side of the Senate actually COULD vote the bill through if they held fiscal balance above their views on abortion, but the assumption made is that the Republicans would compromise their abortion views for money but that the Democratic law makers wouldn't.

Isn't it just as much an issue for a Democratic law maker to decide that perhaps a nearer balanced budget is worth denying a few underage girls the ability to kill their fetus for free? The one-sided interviews and title of this story reveal an underlying bias both against the GOP and pro-life legislators in general as MSNBC seems to expect only Republicans to compromise on the abortion issue. While Democrats are depicted as dedicated set-in-stone leaders who would not compromise this important issue.

This approach actually reveals yet another bias of the writing reporter, they seem to believe that, in fact, the right to have an abortion is more important than balancing our national budget: They thought it was important enough to ask several Republican legislators if they would compromise their stance to balance the budget, but they didn't mention asking a single democratic senator if they would do the same. The underlying moral orientation seems to be that the Republicans "Ought" to compromise to balance the budget, that they "ought" to allow federal money to be used to kill fetuses. In the name of fiscal responsibility, no less. But yet Democratic law makers aren't even questioned, it's as if they "ought" to oppose cuts to funding abortions and they "ought" to place this priority above balancing a national budget.

On the subject of abortion funding, people seem to forget that there are dozens of other organizations that both help reduce unwanted pregnancies and provide free support to mothers who do wind up with an unwanted pregnancy without resorting to abortion. Financial support of these organizations seems like a no-brainer because the money would not be used in a way that many taxpayers view as funding murder. Yet again and again we see planned parenthood lobbying as though they were the only group in the world that cared about reproductive support of women without so much as a passing mention of the other groups which do much the same work they do but without causing un-natural deaths to fetuses which get involved in their organization.

Why is it more important to pay for a teenage girl who finds out she is pregnant, panics, goes secretly to a clinic, and has the fetus forcibly removed than to use that same money to, say, help defray the cost of delivering or adopting said child.

In fact, why pay for the abortion or delivery at all? especially for underage girls? The idea that abortion is such a sacred right that even parents ought have no say in it is ludicrous at best. Parental consent is required to even provide traditional and routine healthcare options such as ibuprofen for a headache at school, or Acetaminophen for a fever. However, once you get the reproductive tract involved all of a parent's beliefs go out the window, even if it is THEIR insurance that is paying for the procedure they may be morally opposed to in the first place! Shouldn't there at least be a passing comment there? "Hey dad, I got impregnated at homecoming, so I'm seeking a physician to destroy the blastocyst developing in my tween uterus! B.T.W. you're picking up the tab!"

Having a child is a huge decision for someone to make, and yet destroying that potential child is treated in policy as a triviality on par with deciding between hagen das and dippin dots! Of course women everywhere should be free to have a government funded ice cream cone, I mean abortion, and Democrats know this so they will choose to partially shut down our government rather than suspend government subsidized feticide all over the world, while the Republicans are expected to compromise and allow the government to pay for what they view as murder while they cut other less critical programs like education and interstate maintenance.

Individuality

This is one of our society's highest values. How can you tell? Look at how we swear. There are several categories, Casual swearing, where we throw out expletives to add seasoning or expression to our speech, and we don't usually think of others being offended. For the average American, words like "Crap" "God" and "Oops" fall into this category. The next category is Vulgar. These are words we use with the intention of offense. The side effect is that when a person agrees with you on your words you affirm one another's values, and in strengthens relationships. This is where most commonly considered "curse words" fall including F*** S*** and D***. The last category is the True Offense category. These words are not generally considered curses by society, and they rarely consist of unique words. They are an idea that people find offensive to the degree that these curses become unutterable. The values these True Offense curses offend are our highest and most dear values, an example is "the 'N' word" which will ruin your career. It reminds our country of slavery, an idea and value we've been so deeply taught to be ashamed of that we don't even mention of it. In fact my guess is that by social standards it has been trained to bring more shame in African Americans than it does in white people, because their society highly values respect and action, two values which were stripped from them during slavery and possibly were instilled in them upon emancipation. So from a society viewpoint it's okay for African Americans to call one another "Niggers" because it is perceived culturally to be an admonishment to be proactive, be respectful, or it is used as a jest to one who is so successful that the idea of them being stripped of their respect and power is laughable. However when a white person who has been presented as the aggressor in the slavery debacle, uses "the 'N' word" it is culturally perceived as a threat of oppression and furthermore often seen as an active stripping of power and respect from the target.

However, even worse than "the 'N' word" are slanders against our individuality. It is socially unacceptable in our culture to reject a person regardless of their personal qualities unless they have committed a sin which strips others of their individuality. For a church to hold a view that people who do not believe in Jesus will go to hell is unmentionably offensive in our society. If you don't believe me I ask you, when was the last time when religion was brought up did you point out that unbelievers are not heaven-bound which through compassion is the believers primary motive for evangelism? You'll notice that even my culturally trained language patterns lead me to say "not heaven-bound" rather than "going to hell" We simultaneously try to hide our cultural insecurities by placing the direct terms somewhere between Casual Cursing and Vulgarities. When told to go to hell people do not take it seriously at all, they may be offended by the minor rejection or laugh about it if it is between friends used as jest, but if the topic were ever seriously approached, the offense would be so deep and swift it would justify nearly any retaliatory act. In fact the more culturally "individual" the person whose individuality is slandered, the more harsh the penalty.

We have a cultural scale of individuality that values difference from the perceived normal, which is actually a call into our quasi-Judeo Christian roots. People who are more "normal" have less individuality and are therefore fair game. People who are less "normal" (minorities, differing religions, varying lifestyles) are highly individualized according to our culture, and therefore merit special protection. There is a traditional threshold for the individuality at the point of legality. Our legal system is built on the solid values that we articulate loudly, so when a persons individuality crosses the point of legality, we have a cultural agreement that these people are to be ostracized. What I've observed, however, is that as laws have begun to be created to protect individuality (hate crimes, for example) the legitimacy of our solid values degrades, because our values openly conflict. A person who has sex with others of his own gender is deserving of special protection, but a person who has sex with animals is an offender. Their individuality is expressed in the same realm: their sexuality, and they can claim the same rationale for their personal choices, but one is deemed legally protected and the other is legally offensive.

The thing that makes individuality corrosive is that every person can perceive themselves as an individual, and everyone can defend themselves against their sins. If they tie their sins to their person-hood, they can leverage your own individuality against you: "how can you persecute me for the way I am? it would be like someone putting you in jail because you have brown eyes!"

Since affordance leads us to only consider options presented to us, we say "That is offensive! How insensitive of me!" When we could respond "My brown eyes are not a part of who I am, they are a trait I have. If it was a sin to have brown eyes, I could have them removed, replaced, or cover them with contact lenses" The charge of offense against individuality becomes even less certain when it becomes based on traits or qualities you have a choice about, if they tried to leverage your weight, you don't even have to sacrifice a sense in order to rectify the issue. Often the complaint against being called fat is that it is genetics, and we have all been taught by "science" that genetics make us who we are. Our DNA is the physical embodiment of our individuality! Yet even this is not scientifically true. Our choices actually modify our DNA, the things we choose to expose ourselves to can actually turn certain traits on and off, and finally, we have programmed into all of our DNA the option to deny our natural cravings in order to benefit us. Evolutions should herald this fact as it is one of the best adaptations the human animal has: That when hungry we can choose to not take the meat out of the trap, that we can walk by and wait to find a different food source to avoid harm. And our DNA is not who we are! It determines our bodies, perhaps even plays a large role in our demeanor, but we are not just our physical bodies or our demeanors.

What is further interesting to me is when you get engulfed deeply into a unified group with common values, the group as a whole becomes an individual. Looking at the roots of the word literally, Individual means a unit that cannot be further divided. A unified church that agrees and truly believes their doctrine is, as a whole, an individual. So each person can tolerate offenses against the individual when made by people with no ability to threaten their organization, because they return to the individual they are a part of and they have healing and support, yet when the group as a whole is threatened, they have the resources of hundreds or thousands of people to stage a defense of their values.

This is the great benefit of nationalism, and it's a benefit that we mostly miss out on as Americans because we have divided ourselves to such a large degree that we need the support of other single people who consider themselves autonomous from us to survive. So in order to survive, we separate our morality from our individuality, because if we can "tolerate" their drug use, and they can "tolerate" our lifestyle choices, then we can work together even though we are two separated entities. We can mimic the benefit of a group without actually becoming a true believer of anything. The problem is that this social contract breaks down when more than a few people become involved.

In the end we have forgotten (or rather, refuse to teach) that individuality is a decision. We are made who we are by our choices even moreso than by our propensity to this action or that action. We further fail to teach that there is a pattern of person we are supposed to be, that we were purpose-built to perform a task, and that there are qualities that lend themselves to this task better than others. Since we've forgotten our task, and our purpose, we believe all qualities are the same, and so we tie the qualities and habits we find convenient into our definition of "self" and use a false excuse that "you have no individuality in organized religion" when the fact of the matter is you have a bigger individuality in organized religion, and when that religion is based around a relationship, your purpose becomes your self and from then on dictates every quality that is useful and every quality that is unuseful to you.

The endgame of this affirming self-giving relationship is that it ultimately defines you and brings you a personal security you could not find as a single individual, and sharing what you love with others is highly affordable within the complete love relationship with Jesus. While everyone else is quibbling about offending individuality, we ought to be filled with compassion and a desire to present the love-relationship with Jesus to everyone so they can unify their individuality around the security of self found in living out our purpose of loving the only God.

When we talk about Jesus, we are not concentrating on heaven and hell and offending their individuality, our goal is to bring them into the bigger individual: the body of Christ, and share the awesome gift we have in order to bring purpose peace and security to them in their obvious state of purposeless personally-divided insecurity which forces them to accept things they would abhor if their survival didn't depend on it.

Don't Judge me!

Judgement is one of those things the world has put on it's universal black list. In this day in age, the only person allowed to judge anyone must be seated on a pedestal, wearing black robes and holding a gavel. Unfortunately we still don't really let them judge anyone, we expect them to read off a paper: "You get this sentence because of this law, and a jury decided that legally we're bound to do this to you."

Anyone caught judging is immediately labeled as the worst in society: they are prejudiced, racist, bigoted. If you mention sin, the world has begun to learn a single Bible verse to use on Christians who will tell them that what they do is wrong: Luke 6:37 "Do not judge and you will not be judged, do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven." Alternately, they also like to use Mat 7:1 "Do not judge or you too will be judged."

Interestingly you find yourself stuck in a conundrum to use this verse, because usually the tone is spoken with "You're going to hell because you judged me!" Unfortunately for the unbeliever these verses are grossly out of context when used this way, furthermore, the person who is concerned over their sin is most likely not judging them at all.

Judge, unfortunately, has several meanings, and the greek is no clearer than the english on this one. Too bad it's not like the greek "Love" having five different words. Judge in english should really be like snow to an eskimo. We need a bunch of meanings.

Judge can mean:

To form an opinion through careful weighing of evidence

To sit in judgement on

To determine or pronounce after deliberation or inquiry

To form an estimate or evaluation

To hold as opinion.

Too often I see people actually using opinion number one.

I judge that you are behaving sinfully because of careful weighing of your actions and my perception of your intent. And you immediately say "Don't judge me!" I haven't sat in judgement on you. I just compared your action to a list of actions and said "They look the same!" I haven't told you that you're going to hell, that you'll get herpes, or declared any punishment on you for your actions, to be honest I haven't even really ascribed any quality to you personally by noting that the actions you take are sin.

In essence I believe it is not our place to condemn another by placing our estimation of them as the final say in their eternal value and worth. I do not nor will I ever believe that we ought not carefully observe and weigh evidence to form an opinion, that's called foolishness, but this is what the world wants when they say don't judge.

They say "Just let them alone, they aren't hurting you" "What does it matter?" Basically they are saying that I ought not form my own opinions by weighing the facts. Of course, they came to this conclusion by weighing the facts of their discomfort over being called out on their sin. And they hypocritically tell me I shouldn't judge, then they go a step farther and sit in judgement over me because I dare to call sin sin.

I would ask that men do judge me. Weigh carefully, observe what I do. Form an opinion, and odds are this opinion will show more about you than it does about me. And should you decide you're big enough to sit in judgement and tell me my value, I will kindly disregard, because I judge you inadequate compared to the creator of the universe to estimate my value.

I'm gonna be an awesome parent. I know I'm tooting my own horn here, and the first response from everyone who actually has kids is something along the lines of "Just you wait..." or , "You want mine then?" You are all despicable! I'm going to be a great parent!

How do I know? Well, for starters they're on purpose. Now this is NOT to say that accident children can't have good parents, what I'm saying is that most of the people running around on the planet do things totally capriciously and with absolutely no fore thought. They live completely on accident, and then they wonder why they wind up old, overweight and bitter. My life has not been accidental for a very long time. My marriage was not a marriage build just on a passionate desire to have a hot chick. My marriage was thought out, planned, pursued with the single-mindedness of one running an Olympic sprint, and I still pursue it with that same determination. I can proudly say that I love my wife more than the day I married her, and we grow closer with each day we spend together.

There are principals I have been striving to model for my child from before I asked his mother to marry me. There are further principals we have developed together that we want to raise up in him, and for all the nay-sayers who will tell me "It'll start that way but you will get tired" You are thinking of when you try to instill principals in your child that you don't believe in. I am of the opinion that if the principals are worth instilling in my child they had better be big enough and robust enough to stand up in "real world" adult life. These principals challenge me on a daily basis, and my struggles to live them instill character in my life. Unless you are willing to live the principals you're trying to beat into your children, you will fail. This is because the degree your life matches your rules will give you the degree your child can respect you as a person. This is respect garnered completely separate from your position to them or even your relationship with them, this is respect that is completely for the person you are and live as, this is what will make the difference when your child is struggling with obeying you and having fun with his friends.

Perhaps the biggest of all that makes me assert I will be an awesome parent is this: I will uphold my children's actual needs above their perceived needs. This means rather than working over time at a job to get them new fancy gym shoes so they can fit in with all the cool kids wearing Adidas, I'll buy them pay less, and be home with them, teaching them through my life how they are to treat women and others by the way I treat their mother and them.

I don't know how many single moms I've seen in communications and counselling classes who get to the part where your actions reveal your actual values, and they have a crisis that "Do I really value my child? I'm putting them in daycare so I go to class!" and they quickly justify it with "But I'm getting this degree to provide for them better!" And they are usually lying! Often they have a degree they pursue as a status symbol, usually to prove something to an abusive first husband. They've told themselves that the degree will get them a better job, something that anyone who has gotten a degree in the last five years can tell you, is nothing to be assured of, and meanwhile their child gets raised by strangers. If I were to be utterly and brutally honest, I'd say to put their child first they should find a good, godly man who is desperately passionate about God, and children, get in his way, get married, and raise their children with someone who can help them model a healthy life of principal and character while they raise them and he does whatever he can to put food on the table.

I know it's not popular, but honestly, what is better for their children? Saying "Mommy makes 5 thousand more annually than she did when I was born, hey can I go to your house, there's no one at my house for three more hours" or "I can't wait to go home to mommy and daddy, they love me so much!" This is the difference I want to make for my children. Be there, love them, and help them discover and grow into whatever God intended them to be. This is why I'm going to be an awesome parent.

You Deserve It!

I find it amusing that people are all into what they "Deserve". They like it when they've earned something, when someone else has a legal obligation to them. This American infatuation with deservedness has pierced even into our emotional and personal lives, and has for a long time, to the point where I find songs in The Sound of Music claiming boldly "Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could; so somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good." and songs like Butterfly Kisses declaring "With all I've done wrong; I musta done something right; to deserve hugs every morning, and butterfly kisses at night."

My short, easy, simple response is NO! Lets just start by exploding the idea of exactly what you do deserve. People get all bent out of shape about their freedoms, but all they will do is bitch about them, they won't actually TAKE them. People will complain when you tell them they can't pray in school, but they don't act like it's really their liberty. People will say "Why should you deserve to practice your religion when it offends the beliefs of Agnostic Johnny over there?" The answer is that practicing my religion by praying over my meal is not something deserved. It's (if you read the constitution) an inalienable right. That is, you can make a rule, but I can actually flip you off and do it anyway. In all truth I can pray and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It is a part of making me human, and while little agnostic Johnny will go bitch to the school board, the fact that I pray over a cup of peaches asking God to bless it neither indoctrinates Johnny nor does it prevent him from unbelief in God, any god, or the idea of a universal power, or, hell, even the power rangers or sunlight, or conservation of energy and matter! Johnny has the inalienable right to unbelief in all of these things, even if this unbelief is illogical, stupid, and will get him docked a grade.

What we feel however is that we deserve to practice these things without anyone making life difficult for us. Let me just clear this up right now:

You Deserve Nothing (except punishment for the bad things you've done)

Even if you write up a contract with someone, if that person is at root dishonest, you don't actually deserve the money, you were stupid enough to make a contract with a dishonest person. The courts can even side with you, but you will still at base level have agreed to do something for someone who makes it a practice to give no one anything, therefore it should be assumed going in that you're essentially doing this for free plus the cost of court fees and a lifetime of frustration that you'll be unwilling to collect on this bill.

You don't get love from your children because you deserve it, and you don't give them love because they deserve it.

You don't practise your religion because you deserve it.

What you do get off of deserving are things like traffic tickets and hell. You agreed to the rules of the road when you hopped in the car, you agreed to the rules of the country when you moved in, and you agreed to the ticket when you parked in front of the fire hydrant. It's pretty simple to grasp.

You are made to worship God, You are made to be like him, God's nature precludes sin from his presence, guess where sin by definition deserves to wind up?

Furthermore, people in this country have the audacity to believe that buying a girl a meal and a movie entitles them to sexual favors.

We even go so far as to believe that because you have received it in the past you were deserving of it to begin with, or because you meet qualifications to receive charity that you deserve the charity. Note well-fare.

I hope that in my life I can get through life with little I deserve dropping into my life and much undeserved charity and grace (like getting a good paying job, and having a healthy family) and that I can be correctly thankful for these gifts rather than implying to myself that "Well Gee, I must have been really good somewhere in my life to get a good paying job and healthy kids, and that slob over there with the mentally handicapped child was just a jackass growing up."

What's the Difference?

A friend of mine posted a great, intelligent question that I feel I'll qualify my response for, but I LOVED the question. His question: What is the difference between Christians and Non-Christians?

Furthermore I loved the variety of responses he garnered from the question. Everything from "No one really knows, even the Bible doesn't really say" to "I'm sorry you feel challenged in your faith." There was even a few run of the mill "Well if you don't believe in Christianity they are wrong and stupid and hypocritical and judgmental and mean and jerks and....." It was even suggested that the real Christians are the ones that live like the Jews did. You know, the ones Jesus pissed off to the point they tried to stone him several times and finally manipulated the government system into allowing them to crucify him. They were mostly pissed at him btw for his disregard for their laws and the ways they showed off their holiness.

My friend said, almost in conclusion to the variety of posts "There is no observable difference"

So, when you walk into a church, how do you play the Where's Waldo? game of finding the real Christians and setting them apart from the posers? Considering the mass confusion of what exactly makes a Christian on the inside that came off of just this post, and the much larger confusion I see in the general public, I can understand how Christians get labled "hypocrites" and "judgmental" and "Jerks" and so on. Most of the people addressed Ideologically what makes one a Christian and many of them appeared to be answering from outside the camp, and a couple from inside a church building.

What I want to tackle is actually the much stickier "When you walk into a church building in US of A, how do you tell who is really a Christian" Who gets the doctrine the evangelical, trinitarian, Christian church pulls from the Bible? (which is, by the way, according to the JW magazine the view you would adopt if you read the Bible apart from their SPECIAL insight into it)

It's tough, you walk in, there's usually a greeter who hands you some booklets, and smiles at you, shows you a seat, and everyone seems to look at you a little funny. Somehow you manage to feel both like an unwanted intruder and a piece of meat at the same time. The pastor rambles about stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense, church breaks, and people split off into their pre-designated groups that don't include you. On your way out the door people invite you to come with them to a restaurant you didn't plan on going, so you head off, they talk about stuff that isn't relevant in your life, they ask you very few questions about yourself, and you wind up paying for more than you intended when you showed up. If you continued going the invitations to do other things would quit coming, and getting involved in small groups very often could make you feel more and more of an outsider because anyone that doesn't just thoughtlessly swallow their particular denominational dogma gets the cold stare until they shut up and let the "grown ups" talk which consists of stupid rhetoric like this "When the Bible says 'not even a sparrow falls to the ground unnoticed' what's it saying, put it in your own words" and it's answered with "Well I think it's saying that if a poor little sparrow falls to the ground God knows about it, and we're a lot bigger than sparrows, so God's gonna pay attention to us!" And everyone nods with glazed over eyes as thought the verse really was talking about God's attention to seismic disturbances across the face of the earth.

What I find truly amusing is that those who clearly do not affiliate with the church will look at me wondering why I go to church and how I know such things, and those who are always at the church will shake their finger at me for saying it.

I find a LOT of fakers in the american church, I find it truly amusing that in the JWs, Mormons, and Catholics, there's actually a decent number of people who misunderstand the religions preached there for Christianity and will likely wind up in heaven because they were not correctly taught the false teachings being pushed by others. Though I'd push this is not the ideal way to get into heaven.

First I want to make a clear-cut internal distinction between a Real Deal, True Blue, covered in Christ's blood Christian, and the guy that no one is sure about. The real Christian has absolutely no doubt in his mind that Christ is the only answer for sin, that sin is so severe, so crippling, so cancerous that without Christ, death, the second death, is the only option and direction. I often find the guy that is questionable see-sawing. I find him saying "Well if you don't believe in hell you won't go there." Really? that's the answer? The only people who will go to hell are the ones who believe in it? Well then the solution is not Christianity, it's repression of the knowledge and idea of hell, ultimately in my mind, the solution would be to redefine hell as like Heaven, but with weed and sex. You'll often find them claiming the "blessed are the peace keepers" in the beatitudes, and saying things like "You can't just pick a sin and tell people they'll go to hell for it" they will also say stuff like "Oh, if you read the Bible literally like that, you should sew four tassels on your coat and grow a beard!"

Externally, Cory is very close, at first glance there is absolutely no difference between the Christ-following and the non, between those who are daring enough to take the Bible at what it says, dive into the difficulties, and let it change their lives, and those who use select portions of the Bible as a beating stick to make everyone play nice together.

What I find is as you get to know a person, the truth leaks out. Unfortunately, not many in the world, and, hell, even in the church get close enough to tell the difference, and I believe I know why: Being around a real Christian is a little like getting sunburned all the time. They are gracious, they don't condemn you, and yet, at the suggestion that sin isn't that big a deal, that it'd be okay to sleep with your boyfriend, or tell them about what so and so did the other night, and a sudden hardness appears. They might not even say anything, they certainly won't tell you that you're going to hell for it, but it's like you crossed some invisible line in the sand, and they are extremely uncomfortable about it and are watching you from the other side of the line. You'll resent this because often it is mistaken for them being morally superior. If you looked closer you'd detect concern and sadness, not superiority. Indeed an analysis of your feelings would show that the anger at their 'moral superiority' is actually emanating from your own attitudes. It also irks you that when you chastise them for doing things you don't approve of (like not congratulating your gay friend on his recent move-in with his boyfriend) You feel that same sad hardness like they are pitying you from across the line, rather than them feeling bad for offending your ethics.

If you're a Christian, or close to becoming one, their presence becomes a little like a soothing balm you dread to open. You'll find yourself asking their opinion on questions that are none of their damn business, because somehow if they say it's okay you can shut your conscience up about the whole issue, and you know what they'll say, and when you say it, you blame them, but at the same time the fact that they will always let you come back, they will not bring up your past offenses over and over, gives a stability to the relationship that you'll often begin to crave. They aren't too hot on the rules, they let people do a lot of things their own way, but they are rock solid and can seem downright mean on what they say the Bible says. But there's something immovable under there. They genuinely believe in this Jesus, that him dying on the cross changed something fundamental and relevant to their lives, and you find them tying it into unexpected things, but they won't tie it into others you might expect them to.

They'll talk of love, but their love is weird. You'll go off on love and sometimes you run against that sad resistance to your words when you thought you were trying to lift up love just like them. Most of all, perhaps most frustratingly of all, when you ask them questions, they'll irritatingly explain in terms of a relationship to Jesus. I'm not talking "what do you want for lunch" questions. I mean questions that start off almost as jokes and then they start to take a serious turn. "Do you have regrets?" starts with telling about a bad haircut, and somehow you wind up listening to a story of them doing things you didn't think they could ever have done, and they smile with relief as they talk about Jesus removing their shame. Unfortunately usually the non-believer will walk away confused, feeling like the person they've been getting to know is a hypocrite or a liar. Either they never did what they say they did, or they aren't the good person you thought because they have done some of the things that they look at you sadly for doing.

I think the big miss in this is that Christianity is a completed belief. It's not a "try harder" or "Do harder" or "Live better" philosophy, it's a "Jesus did it, and I'm free" that when embraced, and once set loose in your life, attacks you on a personal level, and dynamically alters your perception of your self and the world, and will work this alteration in you until the day you die.

So it becomes vastly confusing to a non-christian and I don't mean someone who doesn't go to church, I mean someone who has never just trusted Jesus act of salvation and trusted and allowed the Holy Spirit to literally beat the hell out of them. It is confusing because this person has done wrong, and still condemns it, most importantly, condemns it in themselves.

One of the most effective witnesses I ever gave was to a person who challenged me that if I had never been where she was I should shut up because I don't know what it was like. When she found that I HAD been there, she got quiet for a moment and told me "Well, it's okay" and I had the incredible opportunity to look at her and say "No, it wasn't and it isn't, and I can't change it." that THIS is why Jesus is the necessity.

So yah, when you walk in the door and see the greeter, you have to go in understanding that entrance, and a name on the membership roll and knowing all the songs, being in the praise band, shouting Amen, wriggling on the floor, and raising your hands do not define you as Christian. Further you need to be aware that many of them ARE Christians mechanically and on technicality, but they are dysfunctional, and like a dysfunctional family, they kind of work, but they damage themselves and those around them as they do. and finally that even if you walk into a church without a single real functional Christian, this does not negate the truth of the Good news that Jesus completed our righteousness and provided what we are dually undeserving of: salvation, that is the privilege and ability to abide in him, to be with him, to talk to him, to walk with him, and this is not just getting what we pray for, it's not the performance of miracles, it's not miraculous healing, it doesn't put a halo on our heads, or make us sprout wings, it doesn't make us rich, or give us nice houses, it doesn't end our pain, it doesn't remove our disease, it doesn't eliminate our sadness, it doesn't liberate us immediately from the curse, it opens the door for us to go and enjoy the relationship we were built to have. That in the end, the Gold in the streets of heaven is there because we all dropped it when we were able to enjoy the relationship with the God in heaven. Heaven is where Jesus is, and if you aren't into just Jesus, heaven will be significantly different from what you'd desire it to be.

How do you spot a Real Christian? I'd challenge you to stop trying to spot one, and just become one.