The thoughts and messages as expressed in these articles are products of much prayer, study, and self-searching, and do not reflect only my thinking, but that of many other Christians who long to see genuine growth in the Body of Christ, especially here in the U. S. It is impossible for anyone who cares about this to say nothing while the church in America denigrates herself by faltering from her original purpose and becomes increasingly weighed down with unnecessary bureaucracy and ecclesiological superfluity while many of the forces in the realm of government attempt to relegate all religion to the lunatic fringe. I hope that the fact that I have chosen styles that use various pop culture references and diverse forms of presentation, sometimes humorous and occasionally sarcastic, will merely add to the readability and relatability of the things that I have to say to an audience who sadly loses its line of thought too easily.

The issue here is really one of effective communication; the point is to get the point across. In a world where we find increasingly short attention spans and a maddening tendency to jump to conclusions, clarity becomes all the more important. So for those who thoughtfully consider the points made here, these liberties will pose no problem.

As for me personally--I don't take myself too seriously, which is why I put in these pictures of my potential demise. The package is disposable, but whatever truth you find therein may be indispensable. So as long as you look seriously at the message, whatever you happen to think of the messenger is of no importance. Hopefully, most of you will accept the old maxim "don't shoot the messenger;" but if you don't accept it and wish me silenced, at least the artwork is already here.

So should we even be reading this?

Maybe not—if you have no intelligence, no sense of humor, or a closed mind toward out-of-the-box thinking. Don’t bother if you’re some anal-retentive theological egg-head, some cultist with a specialized theology to try to prove, or a critic who is masquerading as a saint. Go away if you have a specific partisan agenda or a reliance on historical development and precedent to justify variant readings of a plain thought from the original writings. Don’t waste time here if you’re the kind who is swayed by every opinion that comes down the road, or who tends to blindly follow anyone who sets themselves up as an authority. Please save us both the anguish—just get out of here now.

What are your qualifications?

When I decided to express some of my potentially controversial ideas in a public forum such as this, I was aware that there would be a lot of readers who might ask what makes me feel as though I’m qualified to make these statements. Of course, my first impulse as an American is to bring up freedom of speech and of ideas. But this doesn’t really cover it; if anyone can say anything, why should anything that I might have to say command any respect beyond merely the expression of one more opinion? In order to have any validity, I knew I would need to heed the old maxim, “The only good opinion is a well-informed opinion.” Therefore, allow me to give three characteristics in my defense, not so much to only explain where I’m coming from, but also to describe the type of reader who will be genuinely engaged by reading this blog. As Charles Darwin once wrote to his son George: "... remember that an enemy might ask who is this man ... that he should give to the world his opinions on the deepest subjects?"

The first thing you need is a working brain. This should go without saying, yet it amazes me how many self-obsessed people prove to be incapable of genuine well-balanced thought. After watching the X-Men movies, I have to wonder if the possession of normal cognitive ability qualifies one to be a mutant. (Magneto: “What’s your power, boy?” Blogger: “Common sense.” Iceman: “Wow!  A level five!”)

Next you need keen and accurate powers of observation. Many tacitly refuse this merely by allowing life to make them scatter-brains, and many more who think they possess it are really only listening to other people and eschewing independent thought. Some actually practice the art of ignoring everything around them, as though either to say that they are afraid of others, or that they just aren't interested in anyone but themselves. The capability to scrutinize various ideas side-by-side with unprejudiced observation skills is necessary to distinguish genuine intelligence from mere commonness of thought. Only then can one clearly see what is really there.

Where did you get the name?

It took a long time and a lot of searching to figure out how I could sum up in a name exactly what I was trying to do in this blog. Since I wanted to deal with both the Christian and political realms, I thought of “Two Taboo Topics.” That could have been a bit awkward, especially if I had tried to abbreviate it somehow. And even though I have some pretty bombastic things to say, I became less and less enthralled at the sound of it as time passed. Another cumbersome idea was “Respect the Written Standard,” even though it was the right idea. “It is Written” was already taken in several forms, so I moved on. But then when I decided on this as the theme I wanted to portray throughout, I looked into some Greek words (the original language of the written New Testament) that might bring out the idea of holding a documental standard in high esteem.

When I found the word apoblepo, not only was I amused by the sound of it to my English-familiar ears, but I was pretty much floored by the definition given by one source, “to look away from all else at one object.” Another source showed it as being translated to have respect or regard, and the root was also translated as behold. The word itself still didn’t work for my purpose--it just sounded too funny for a “dot-org” name (OK, so I'm not really an organization, but I'm not a company either--so I chose not to go with "dot-com"). And yes, I’d have some humor, but this was a bit ridiculous; my hurdle then became making behold usable. “Behold the blog” might have proven to be a little misleading, because it might be seen as a call to look at this blog rather than seeing the written standard as I intend. So I added the colon, and that did the job.