The Dawn Treader

There was a death in Roanoke this past week.  A soft-spoken man, aged 45, quietly died.  His life, and his death, have touched many in the Roanoke valley.  His funeral was held on Friday and attended by hundreds of people.  The church could not hold all of the attenders.  Overflow rooms had to be opened.  He was not a famous person.  He was not a great statesman or an outspoken community leader.  He was a humble man.   A quiet man.  A husband.  A father of four children.  A son.  A brother.  A physician.

I had spoken to Tom on a few occasions.  We hardly found two words to say to each other.  Just a smile and a comment about the weather.  Being shy myself, I have a hard time conversing with other shy folk.

So how does a shy, unassuming person like Tom touch thousands of lives?  How does his life and death bring hope, encouragement and meaning to so many?

The simple answer is, Jesus Christ.

Two months before Tom's passing, he wrote down something to be read at his funeral.  It was read in its entirety to a large church that was packed and overflowing.  Those who were there will never forget it.  I have posted it below.  It is long but powerful.  What is it like to face your own death?  Let Tom tell you.

What can I add to the upsurge in blogging about this unbelievable storm?  Not much. In terms of meteorology, the most amazing quote I heard was that Katrina was like a 30 mile wide F3 tornado.

Ever been through or close to a tornado?  I have.  An F1 tornado nearly thumped our house in North Carolina.   I saw the swath of snapped trees cut by that "little" F1.  Trying to comprehend a 30 mile wide F3 is unthinkable.

We lived in Jackson, Mississippi from 1990 through 1992.   We have many friends in that area still.  My father's parents were born and raised near Meridian.  Those communities (in between Jackson and Meridian) took a direct hit.  I don't know how they fared -- news out of Mississippi is sketchy.

In terms of the human tragedy, what can be said other than we need to support these families in prayer and their communities with our money.

UPDATE: I received an email from my aunt in Natchez, MS (175 miles from New Orleans).  Power is out in parts of Natchez, all of Meridian, all of Jackson, all of Tupelo ... you might as well say most of the state is out of power.  Natchez was  around 100 miles from the path of the storm.  It knocked down trees all over the city.  My cousins in Jackson are fine although there is a lot of tree damage.  One of them dodged three tornado touchdowns on his race home from where he works.  I have a cousin named Scott Hawkins who lives in Biloxi.  He is one of the editors for The Sun Herald.   Scott chose to ride out the storm and cover the story.  If you've seen pictures of Biloxi ... the devastation is mind-boggling.  My aunt and uncle just heard word that Scott is alive.  The news from Biloxi is grim -- they are beginning to  collect corpses.

UPDATE: Brian warned me that this story (about the death of the Korean man) is likely an urban legend.  It is very similar to an urban legend floated three years ago.  If it is an urban legend, then many news sources from CNN to BBC will have to retract the story.  The information on South Korea and video gaming is accurate: 30% of the entire nation is online and are registered gamers.  Think about that statistic.

In Are We Amusing Our Kids To Death With Video Games? I raised the issue of the danger in video gaming.  Then I read Man Dies After Gaming Binge.

After a non-stop 50-hour computer-game bender, a South Korean man died from exhaustion at an Internet café in the city of Taegu, revealing a dark side to the booming gaming industry.

The 28-year-old man, identified by his last name Lee, reportedly finished the game session and several minutes later suffered from heart failure, local police said Tuesday.

Over three days, Mr. Lee had left the computer screen only to go the bathroom and take a few brief naps on a makeshift bed, local police said.

Even more surprising, turns out it’s not the first computer game-related death in a country where online video games rule entertainment habits and the national industry leads the world.

In the same article ...

There are more than 20,000 Internet cafes in South Korea dedicated to online video games, where gamers spend hours playing massive multiplayer online role-playing games, called MMORPGs.

South Korea’s gaming industry can thank the fact that it has the world’s highest household broadband penetration rate of more than 75 percent for the big revenues. At the same time, the U.S. had a broadband penetration rate of only 29 percent per household last year. Fewer than 2.5 million Americans play MMORPGs.   

South Korea has a massive problem on its hands.  The country's addiction problem is mammoth -- in more than one way.  The players are addicted to the games -- and the industry is addicted to the massive revenues it generates.

This past week, our family has been out and about  a tad more than usual.  One thing I have noticed is how many Christian kids are seriously into video gaming (x-box, game cube etc).  Then I read Al Mohler's post.  It struck a chord with me.  The college students he interviewed indicated that video games represent the most difficult temptation they face from technology – second only to internet pornography.

We are only beginning to realize the effect of raising a generation of video game addicts.  Research on the impact of the video games is still in its infancy.  What will the long-term effects be?  Why do Christian parents seem willing to gamble and let their kids play video games for hours on end?

I am saddened to hear about the passing of Shelby Foote.  Made famous in the Ken Burn's series on the Civil War, Foote is best appreciated by reading his .  I realize that stacked on top of each other, the combined spine width of these books is over six and half inches.  It is still an excellent narrative account of an important part of our nation's history.  I enjoyed all three books and intend to read them again.

My favorite Shelby novel is ... which, coincidentally, is my favorite Civil War battlefield to visit.

I remember the chapel service like it was yesterday.  I was a student at Covenant College.  The year was 1983.  Franky Schaeffer, the son of the famous Francis Schaeffer, was our speaker.  It was the most electrifying chapel service I had ever been to.

Franky [now he goes by Frank] talked about the evils of abortion.  He spoke with fire and passion.  I was convicted beyond description.  He lit a fire underneath me that has never been extinguished.

What a difference twenty-three years makes.  Schaeffer has moon walked so far, that I wonder who was that person that spoke with such zeal those many years ago.

"I hope there is still room in our polarized country for Christians like me, who don't subscribe to any one-dogma-fits-all. It seems to me that life is too short, sweet, and mysterious for us to be able to exhaustively "explain" anything much, let alone explain everything with certainty."  Frank Schaeffer.

Here is the modern Frank Schaeffer in his own words: Fundamentalists to the Right, Fundamentalists to the Left; and With God on their side.  Here is David Mills trying to make sense out of the modern Frank Schaeffer.

If we could only clone this public school biology teacher from Seattle, then we could really see some progress in science education as well as critical thinking skills.

"I push them [his students] to behave like competent jurors - not just to swallow what some authority figure tells them to believe - not even me - but rather to critically analyze, with an open mind, the evidence set before them."

Doug Cowan, Public School Biology Teacher, Seattle

May his tribe increase.

Did you realize the Terri Schaivo story is not the first "food and fluids" end of life story which involved a bitterly divided family?

"The big question is why. Why did this story, of all stories, reach such a critical mass; why did Terri Schiavo, of all people, ignite such a deep, visceral emotional response in so many of her fellow citizens; why have so many people devoted so much energy and commitment to this case--some utterly intent upon keeping her alive, others adamantly believing she should be left to die as quickly as possible?

After all, hers is hardly the first "food and fluids" case to have bitterly divided a family, and it won't be the last. Nor is it at all uncommon in America for patients who are Terri's age and younger to be deprived of food and water so that they will die, even when there is doubt about what they would choose in such circumstances, and even though they are neither brain dead nor terminally ill."

The answer?  According to Wesley Smith, the internet.

Update #1:

William Meisheid  has a similar post called  Butterfiles And Tipping Points .   He references a post from the  Belmont Club called The Butterfly Takes Wing.

What is up with the buttefly metaphor?

"Butterfly effect" is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. The idea is that small variations in the initial conditions of a dynamical system can produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system.

Edward Lorenz first analyzed the effect in a 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Sciences. According to the paper, "One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever." Later speeches and papers by Lorenz used the more poetic butterfly, possibly inspired by the 1952 Ray Bradbury short story A Sound of Thunder. In that story, a time traveller accidentally steps on a butterfly in the distant past, causing broad changes in the present. A common description of the effect says that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas months later.

My own particular angle for this post on the Schiavo story is how a small, not very unique story, turned the nation on its head.  One family was able to move all three branches of government into action, and get the nation to focus on its story and meme ("Terri is a person who is alive and can recover") ... even in the midst of a war on terror, tectonic shifts of power in the middle east, and a sick pope approaching death.   Without the internet, it does not happen.

Meisheid agrees but takes it a step further (quoting him from his comments):

"My point of observation is that the Internet and the blogosphere is what makes this different and self-reinforcing. The printing press ushered in the Enlightenment and the Reformation, both of which caused titanic and bloody shifts in Western Civilization. Yet even those moments of change were moderated by time and limited distribution. Our instant access and the immediate feedback loops of blogstorms don’t always allow enough time for us to digest rather than react.

Absolute freedom of action and expression can be like nuclear fission, uncontrolled and potentially distructive, especially when it occurs in a critical mass. We have not yet learned, at least from my perspective, to balance this freedom with the necessary restraints or even yet defined what they should or could be."

Update #2

David Opderbeck suggests conservative talk radio deserves a lot of the credit for the "Terri is alive and can recover" meme taking hold.  He is right about that.  But without the internet, would talk radio have ever heard of Terri Schiavo?  Why did they not pick up on all of the other dramatic family feud, "food and fluids" cases?

Please read the press release from Joni and Friends.  Joni Eareckson Tada is the founder of Joni and Friends, an organization accelerating Christian ministry in the disability community.

To uphold the God-given dignity of life – especially those whose lives are impacted by significant disabilities – we are asking society to stop using the term “persistent vegetative state.” Too many people with severe disabilities have been called “vegetables” – this is not only demeaning, but dehumanizing. When severely disabled people are stripped of life-dignity, the discussion too easily turns to death or the warehousing of that individual in a hospice. 

Very good point indeed.  What dignity and rights should a *vegetable* have anyway, right?

We have observed that media discussions have centered around whether or not a severely disabled person is “going to get better some day” as though that fact is a criterion for life.  However, for millions of Americans, disability is a fact of life; many will “never get better” by society’s standards.  We assert that the quality of one’s life should never be a criteria to put them to death.   Life is the most irreplaceable and fundamental condition of what it means to be human and it is an express gift of God, the Author of life. 

I. Could. Not. Agree. More.

Wow.  For those following the story of Terri Schiavo,  read this.