Shaun C. Kennedy - Author Videos

One of my 2024 goals is to pull together my thoughts about why I think Matthew was written in Hebrew in hopes of trying to submit a paper to a scholarly journal in 2025. As I've been collecting my thoughts, there are side-points that keep coming up that don't really have any bearing on the original language of Matthew, but they're kind of important in their own right. One of these is the idea that Matthew misused the Old Testament. The YouTube Channel What Your Pastor Didn't Tell You has been interviewing biblical scholar John Walton lately. I'm a big fan of Dr. Walton, and a little jealous that Zach Miller gets to interview him. That's the choices I made, though: I'm not set up to interview anyone because I'm generally not interested in interviewing people. In a recent video, Dr. Walton discussed a little bit of what is going on with Matthew and Old Testament prophecy. He brings up that the futurist/skeptic understanding of a one-to-one correspondence between the event predicted and the event that happened isn't what's in the author's mind. They never really did get as far as saying what is in the author's mind, though. One thing I'm going to put out right at the front is that there's a fair amount of discussion regarding this. If your pastor has told you that these fulfillments mean something in particular that's at odds with what I'm saying, it's not worth picking a fight over. If you find my explanation compelling and others in your church don't, just keep your head down. It's not worth losing friends over. Another thing I need to say is that I once used the one-to-one correspondence understanding of fulfillment. I was raised in late twentieth century America. "Fulfill" is not a word that we use a lot in the here and now. I've never heard anyone say that they "fulfilled" a prediction. As someone not raised in church, the only reference I had to give me the usage were cartoons and sit-coms. It's not a surprise that I would have a wrong understanding of what it

It's always interesting to see a chapter from a book expanded, filled in, and fully explored. There are some things about the way this particular expansion handled things that I'm not a fan of, but I appreciate the attempt at least. Dracula is a very difficult character to "get right." Within the book, there are such conflicting and varied accounts of The Count that it's hard to know what to focus on. The whole time that Jonathan Harker is trapped at Castle Dracula, he's an elderly gentleman, polite and calm and reserved and projects himself as only concerned for the well-being of his guest. In London, he is a young, spry playboy aristocrat, seducing his way through the social elites. At night, as the subject of their hunts, he's a rabid beast. He is both intelligent and wise beyond understanding, and naive and unsure. Picking one moment as the center of the character's being is difficult. This story focuses on the trip from Romania to England. Dracula is presented as an uncontrollable monster that initially intended to remain secure. When a box of his earth is broken, it frees him. Once free, he's unable to resist his base instincts to consume the crew. While this is definitely an interesting take on the events, it's not the impression that I got from the book. In the book, it definitely feels like Dracula has counted the crew, considered the time of the trip, and ration his stores to last until he could land on the English shore. Another element of the book that I've never seen captured on screen is the idea that Dracula is a "child vampire." Not in the sense that he's particularly new, but especially in the sense that he's still learning his limitations and powers. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Dracula learns that he's able to move his boxes of earth on his own. He had fifty boxes to move, and hired a small crew to move the first nine. Somewhere along the process, he tried lifting one side and discovered that he could. Van Helsing explains it li

I never really got to know my paternal grandfather. It's okay, I ended up with two absolutely fantastic grandfathers on my mom's side as a result of my grandmother remarrying. I can't say that I missed my paternal grandfather. And by all accounts, there wasn't much to miss. I remember being in my early twenties, and an older gentleman was standing behind me in the checkout at the local Safeway. He heard the checker address me as "Mr. Kennedy," and asked if I knew "Old Tom." I almost told him that I didn't, until a flash reminded me that it was my grandfather. We talked for about five minutes outside the Safeway. He struggled not to speak ill of the dead. I wanted to tell him it was okay: there was very little he could tell me that would surprise me. I only have two memories of him when he was alive. The first was an Independence Day celebration. I don't remember exactly how old I was. I'm pretty sure I was under seven. I was playing with a kid I had never met and would never see again at the local festivities. He had candy cigarettes and bubblegum cigars. Both sides of my family were pretty down on tobacco, and I had no idea why people would get that kind of candy for their kids. Still, it was candy, and I wasn't about to turn down candy. Then I noticed my father talking to someone. It looked deep and serious, the kind of conversation I knew better than to interrupt. A few minutes later, my dad came to me and introduced me very briefly to this man. He said it was my grandfather. I didn't want to challenge my dad in front of this stranger, but I knew this wasn't Grandpa Allen or Grandpa Francis. It wasn't my Great Grandpa Don, and Great Grandpa Clifton was dead. I wasn't sure who that left. When I asked my dad about it later, he explained that it was his father. That was the day that I realized that I had two grandfathers on my mom's side, and that this was a bit strange. The other memory was when I was thirteen. We went to an old tractor show. My dad was beside hi

This movie wasn't quite what I was hoping for. The main character, Paul Matthews, ends up in other people's dreams through no fault of his own. At first, it's harmless. Then the dreams turn violent, and the country turns against him. I wanted to be sympathetic when that happened, but he goes to social media and makes a video about how he's the only victim and everyone else that's been hurt just needs to get over it. I think that the movie would have been much more interesting if Matthews had been more understanding. There's a valid question raised by this movie: to what extent does "it's not my fault" really matter? That whole question got sidelined by Matthews' self-absorption, though. Regardless of whether Matthews deserved to get fired for appearing in his students' dreams, he absolutely deserved to get fired for making their pain and distress about him. I kind of had a similar thing happen to me once, and I'm glad that I handled it much better. When I was providing technical support, the first time I put in my application to be an associate trainer I didn't get the job. One of the people who did get into the pool of associate trainers was the person I had been partnered with to learn the product I was supporting. She had taught me everything I knew, but not everything she knew. In fact, in one of my interviews, one of the questions I was asked was to name three people I would recommend for the associate trainer team, and I said I could only think of one, and it was this mentor. At that point, I had been told that she hadn't applied, and I went to her and told her that this news disappointed me. After the announcement was made, I congratulated her and she accepted my congratulations warmly. About a week later, she turned cold. At first, I thought she had a lot on her plate due to her new responsibilities. Then I had a call-coach from our manager that went very badly. So badly that I ended up insisting that we listen to the call together. Through the course of

There are some theology questions that I don't like to get involved in. It's not that I don't have answers, it's that I don't share the intuition about the problem. One of the things that I've learned over the years is that without fully appreciating the problem, a person is less likely to have a helpful answer. When I was providing technical support over the telephone, I once had three customers back-to-back that asked the same question with the same words but meant three different things. The question was, "Why do the printer drivers lock up my modem?" One person wanted to know the mechanics of it all: this printer had originally been designed for a serial rather than parallel ports, and when the drivers would detect a device on the serial port, they tried to make contact. Since it was a modem and not a printer, it caused problems. There was a patch to fix it. The second person just wanted the fix. Actually answering the "why" didn't interest them. The third person was rather on the technical side and had already solved the problem. They wanted to know how our engineers had let such an obvious oversight get past us. To which, the only answer I ever had was that people make mistakes and we fixed it as soon as we realized it was causing problems. I know that I fully satisfied the first two. I understand their position. I share their intuition. When something strange happens, I want to know how it works behind the scenes that breaks and I want to know how to fix it. Sometimes, I don't have the time and I just want it fixed, though. I understand all that. Been there, done that. I had to call to get things fixed so often that eventually they started letting me take calls to fix other people. The third one I couldn't answer because I didn't really understand what they wanted. I never imagine that the first version of any driver or software is going to be problem free. The variety of computers out there is just too wide to fully test every possible configuration before

The Beekeepers are the new High Table, only better. Over the last few years, those of us that enjoy a good action movie have been enthralled by John Wick and his war with The High Table. The first movie had a few moments of strong storytelling and character development, but the writers were careful not to let any of that interfere with the fight scenes or stunts that the choreographers had planned in any of the following movies. While I do get invested in story and character development, only the most foolish of producers think that's why we were there for John Wick. John Wick was a bad guy. He was the protagonist. He had a sympathetic backstory. He was our point of view into the world he lived in. He was the hero of the story. The story was structured such that we were rooting for him. And make no mistake, I do understand that he was trying to put his past behind him at the beginning of the first movie. Be all that as it may, John Wick was an assassin for the Russian Mafia. He was trying to put that behind him, but then he was attacked in his home in a time of emotional weakness and hurt in a way that only a mourning husband can be hurt. The result was him reentering that world in exactly the same capacity that he left it: an assassin taking out other assassins. There was no altruism in John Wick's motivation. He wasn't going after the worst of the Russian Mafia. He was going after the Russian Mafia bosses that were connected to those that hurt him. Once John Wick had his revenge (and make no mistake, it was revenge, not justice) John Wick would have been perfectly satisfied to lay down his guns and go back to his home and simply live his life, knowing that close associates and friends of those who he had killed were going about murdering and extorting. Adam Clay is an entirely different animal. He's renting the back of a shop from a retired teacher, Eloise Parker. They get along, but it would be pressing the bounds of their relationship to call them friends.

Let's start today with two stories. Fifteen years ago, I worked at a company doing telephone based technical support helping people across the country with high speed Internet. One day, I ended up in a telephone conversation with the client related to a problem we were having at a particular city. Also on the phone was a network engineer and both of our supervisors. The engineer was emphatic that there was no problem. I had worked with a dozen customers in that city who were unable to connect. At the end of the call, I said, "If you're so sure that I'm wrong, go to the city and talk to the customers on this list. If you're right, it will only result in proving that I'm wrong and giving these customers the idea that you care about them. Nothing bad can come from it. If I'm right and the problem is growing, news will get out and you will lose customers and you will lose face. It's up to you." The engineer's supervisor found that convincing and ordered the engineer to fly out to investigate. They found the faulty equipment and repaired it. I was right, the network engineer was wrong. The second story is about a time not long before that. I had been using a temporary trick intended to test connections to get people up and running. I would set their IP address statically and turn off their DHCP. Our service gave each person an IP address and the modem we used had a default setting that would block DHCP requests. I didn't see the point in leaving people in a setting that was so unstable on our system. I had been warned by an engineer that this was poor planning, but I didn't listen. I thought I knew better. Then our service got large enough that assigned IP addresses to individuals no longer made sense, and they started rotating IP addresses for our customers. Everyone that I had set with a static IP eventually lost connection and needed to be set back to a dynamic IP. When that happened to them, whomever had to fix that also had to fix whatever underlying problem existe

As third-party prequels go, this one was pretty good. It tells us how Willy Wonka first became established as a chocolatier. It is exactly the mix of magic and inventiveness that we expect from a young, ambitious Wonka. The story is a love letter to the kind of creative storytelling that Roald Dahl was so famous for. That mix of mystic wonder and magic that someone like me can never seem to get just right. One of the themes that this movie hits on that Dahl explored several times in his books was the way that those in power and/or wealth tend to hold onto their power and/or wealth long past what's good for either themselves or the world at large. The repeated refrain "The greedy beat the needy" on the lips of the orphan girl Noodle summarizes the experiences of the people within the movie. The pursuit of power is seen on multiple levels in this film. Most obviously, the established chocolatiers in the Galeries Gourmet have established rules to limit their own competition and employed police officers to ensure that their power remained unchecked. Below them, Mrs. Scrubitt and Mr. Bleacher build in needlessly complicated rental agreements to trick travelers into deep debts that need to be worked off in the laundry service under their inn. The real world parallels to these atrocities are too numerous to list. At every turn, those with money and/or power are trying to create laws that make it illegal to challenge them. It so often feels like there's no hope and that those who are greedy are in fact just being practical. Of course, we know how the story ends. We know that Wonka himself will become powerful and wealthy and will fixate on how to keep his own power and fortune before realizing that locking himself away to protect himself had left him lonely and bitter without an heir to take care of what he had created. It has been said that you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Willy Wonka certainly lived long enough to see h

This is a charming cautionary tale about the dangers of desiring too much adventure. The story starts in paradise: Mack Mallard lives in a perfectly safe and comfortable pond with his wife Pam and their two kids Dax and Gwen. In order to ensure that his kids remain safe and don't venture too far from the safety of the pond, he wisely warns his children of the real world dangers that are out there. Then a flock of world travelers land in their pond with tales of adventure and intrigue at exotic locations, trying to tempt our noble family away from their peaceful and pleasant life. The kids and wife are in right away, but the ever sensible husband takes some convincing. The rest of the movie is Mack's slow but definite corruption to the ways of adventure and intrigue. Despite seeing first feather the danger he's putting his children in, despite the pain and anguish he's forced to endure for the sake of his newfound addiction, he keeps going deeper and deeper, seeking out new excitement and new entertainment, presenting his children to ever deeper and more exotic dangers. By the end, instead of flying north to return to the safety of his pond he's planning to help guide some penguins to the south pole. No parent ever wants to see our children in danger. There is something intoxicating about seeing our children succeed, though. This sometimes feels like a paradox: how do we see our children succeed and overcome if we guard them and keep them safe at every turn? We try to set up little ways for our children to succeed: we set goals that we know they can accomplish and help them to overcome whatever obstacles present themselves. Then, one day, we turn around and our children are facing dangers without us, and they succeed. It's an overwhelmingly good feeling. It feels for just a moment like it was all worth it. My children know that there's only one thing in the entire world that their daddy wants: for them to be safe. There was a time when I might have thirsted for ad

Last year, I wrote a post about why I believe in God. I've shared these reasons with others at various times. Of all the reasons I listed there, two have been by far the most controversial. One is the historical reliability of the resurrection. I plan to do another post to address that. The other objection really surprised me, though. So many people have taken issue with the idea that scholarly consensus in theology is authoritative. Scholarly consensus is hard to quantify, yet it is also a guiding principle across fields. I had a friend that put it to me like this: "If you have an opinion about a field you haven't studied, then you either agree with the consensus or for all intents and purposes you're wrong. If you've studied a field and you don't agree with the consensus, you're wrong unless you can win a debate with others who have studied it at a higher level than you have. Even then, you might still be wrong. If you've published your opinion in an academic journal and it was rejected by the majority of your peers, you were wrong. Only when your journal article or monograph gets picked up and quoted by the experts studying the field do you get to think that you might be right. Then you've changed the consensus." That's why I've started kinda low-key looking for someone to debate on my theory that Matthew was written in Hebrew. I see that as a fist step towards being ready to submit my findings to an academic journal. It's also why my FAQ on the subject of accepting the Hebrew Matthew, I begin by saying, "If you're not in a place to look at the evidence, I suggest that you follow the consensus. That means go with the current Nestle-Aland or United Bible Society Greek New Testament." There is always a minority opinion person out there somewhere that is ahead of the curve, but most minority opinion people are not. If you blindly follow me on Hebrew Matthew, James Snapp on the long ending of Mark, and Chris Date on Annihilationism, chances are good that you're fol

One of the ways that we can be sure that a teacher in fiction is giving good advice is that those who follow it have things work out in the end, and those that do not follow it have things fall apart in the end. It's not the only way that a storyteller has to tell us that a teacher was right, but it is one valuable tool in the story teller's tool belt. There's also a valuable discussion to be had about how realistic that is. Even if it's not realistic, it's how we interpret stories anyway. That's one of the clues that Yoda gave Luke good advice when he advised him not to pursue his friends to the Cloud City when they were in danger. Even though he does manage to rescue Leia, Han Solo is frozen in Carbonite and Luke loses his duel with Vader and narrowly escapes with his faith barely intact and his body badly injured. In the story, Yoda gives good advice because he is connected to the Living Force. He is able to see which course will lead to prosperity and peace for all, and which will lead to ruin and pain. When Yoda speaks, he speaks for the Force. Those who know Yoda know that this is true about him as well. No one questions Yoda's advice because they know that he is deeply rooted in the Living Force. It's exactly that attribute that means the Empire wants him dead. The Emperor doesn't want someone that can tell people the path to prosperity and peace if that path will interfere with his own pursuit of power. What if they have it backwards, though? What if the writing process at Lucasfilm is to have Yoda's opinion settled by some random process, but then the storytellers will manipulate the story such that whatever advice Yoda gave was right? If the roll of the dice that day had resulted in Yoda telling Luke to go rescue his friends, then it would have been Vader that was running scared and confused at the end of the movie instead of the rebellious youth. To put it another way, within the Star Wars universe, what if instead of Yoda saying it because it's right,

I had a project that got ahead of me this week, and it's not ready in time to post for my regularly scheduled Saturday morning post. Normally when this happens, I have a set of half-finished works-in-progress that I got through, and I'll find one that's near complete or one that has a component that can be finished up quickly. Not this week, though. This week is something different. My daughter just turned twelve this week, and events have come to pass that have impacted her in a way they can only impact a twelve year old. She has put her thoughts regarding recent events into words, and offered to let me use them as this week's post so that I won't fall further behind in my projects. Please enjoy today's entry from my daughter, Anastasia Kennedy. --- Hello there my fellow THEORISTS! this is my report of MATPAT enjoy. Who IS MatPat: Mat Pat (Mathew Patrick or Mat) is a male YouTuber who has a wife Stephenie and a son Ollie. He runs FOUR (If not counting GT Live) Channels: Game, Film, Food, and Style Theory. He even has a Team of THEORISTS All over the WORLD! (Not to mention you…) working with him. Head editor Dan, lead director Amy, and his wife Steph (just to name a few) he can make a lot of theories in just a week and he enjoys them. His Work Mat is a hard worker and he enjoys his job. He enjoys interacting with the theorists (that aren't just part of his crew). He is always a joy on screen. And He didn't ruin my childhood, he MADE it. A childhood full of theories. Even I am a theorist through and through. (I haven't gotten to counting animatronic toes yet.) I'm glad that he's gotten in all of the years he's been on YouTube. He's been able to get his fair share of memes. (Link here and thanks to whoever made it. I love your work and so does Mat.) Among the theorists you will find some of them (not all but some) calling him “Dad Pat.” It's because he claims to be the stereotypical dad of the Internet. (He even has the puns to prove it.) Hopefully he w

One of the ways that we can be sure that a teacher in fiction is giving good advice is that those who follow it have things work out in the end, and those that do not follow it have things fall apart in the end. It's not the only way that a storyteller has to tell us that a teacher was right, but it is one valuable tool in the story teller's tool belt. There's also a valuable discussion to be had about how realistic that is. Even if it's not realistic, it's how we interpret stories anyway. That's one of the clues that Yoda gave Luke good advice when he advised him not to pursue his friends to the Cloud City when they were in danger. Even though he does manage to rescue Leia, Han Solo is frozen in Carbonite and Luke loses his duel with Vader and narrowly escapes with his faith barely intact and his body badly injured. In the story, Yoda gives good advice because he is connected to the Living Force. He is able to see which course will lead to prosperity and peace for all, and which will lead to ruin and pain. When Yoda speaks, he speaks for the Force. Those who know Yoda know that this is true about him as well. No one questions Yoda's advice because they know that he is deeply rooted in the Living Force. It's exactly that attribute that means the Empire wants him dead. The Emperor doesn't want someone that can tell people the path to prosperity and peace if that path will interfere with his own pursuit of power. What if they have it backwards, though? What if the writing process at Lucasfilm is to have Yoda's opinion settled by some random process, but then the storytellers will manipulate the story such that whatever advice Yoda gave was right? If the roll of the dice that day had resulted in Yoda telling Luke to go rescue his friends, then it would have been Vader that was running scared and confused at the end of the movie instead of the rebellious youth. To put it another way, within the Star Wars universe, what if instead of Yoda saying it because it's right,

Today's post is not appropriate for all audiences. I will discuss subjects of an adult nature and adult feelings about those subjects. If you are under the age of thirty, please consult your parents or spiritual advisor before continuing. --- Before I get into this too far, I'm not arguing about whether or not Mary was a virgin. Luke does say that Mary was a virgin. There's a very real sense in which I don't care. I don't attach the same theological baggage to the idea that some traditions do. In that, I might be wrong. Even if I'm not wrong, one thing I know for sure is that I'm not right. I would need to make a much more definitive statement to be right about anything here. It might be right to put more emphasis on Mary's virginity, and then I would be wrong. It might be right to reduce the emphasis on her virginity, and in that case I'm still not right, because I never recommended that anyone reduce their emphasis on her virginity. Even past that, no matter how you read these concerns in the Gospel of Matthew, even this gospel strongly implies that Mary was a virgin. Even if the word "virgin" does not rightly belong anywhere in the first chapter of Matthew, it stands that an innocent young woman is found pregnant before her betrothal could be consummated. There are grotesque and evil scenarios that could accommodate this with human conception, but that's neither hinted at nor easily extracted from the text of Matthew. While I have no particular opinion on the biological details of Jesus's conception, the opinion of the Gospel writer is evidently that it is divine and pure. While I find biology boring, I do enjoy the textual examination of events like this. I'll let the biologists and the physicians argue over cases of parthenogenesis, and I'll be over on the side of the textual historians trying to make sense of Matthew and Luke's words. This does touch pretty firmly on a subject I've put a fair amount of my effort into as well. I believe that the Gospel of M

When the original Star Wars was rereleased by Lucas in 1997, there was a lot of chatter about how poorly it had handled the original material. Most of it was baseless. Of course nothing will ever be the original except the original, but almost every change was an improvement. The space battles were crisper and the added backgrounds were more in line with what we had come to expect from the Star Wars universe. There were a few exceptions, of course. Some of them are a matter of taste. When Han stepped on Jabba's tail, I thought it said a lot about his character, until I later learned that it was just the only way for the studio to handle the footage they had for the conversation. I also wished that they had done more with the fight in the bar. As someone that appreciates a good fight scene, I felt that there was a missed opportunity there. But the mother of all missed opportunities for an improved fight scene has to be the fight between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. Every other lightsaber fight in the Star Wars movie makes sense. The fights between Darth Vader and Luke are reserved because neither of them intend to hurt each other. Luke takes on the entire criminal organization of Jabba almost single handedly. Yet when Obi-Wan and Vader square off in the halls of the Death Star, they are clumsy, slow, and stiff. They aren't Jedi. This can be highlighted by a fan edit of their fight that's on YouTube. In the fan version of their fight, they use the Force to throw each other, they dodge and weave, they pull and push objects from the environment into their fight, and they relentlessly pursue the annihilation of each other. With all the changes that were made, it surprised me that this wasn't one of them. It couldn't have been more difficult than the other changes. It would have made the whole thing much more believable. But it's their movie, not mine. It's not the changes I would like to see that matter. Their vision needs to be honored. Oh, and… Han shot first. --- T

2007 Supervisor: "You look miserable." Me: "I am. My son is in the hospital again." Supervisor: "I thought you liked working with computers?" Me: "I do. Kind of. I just wish I could be at the hospital with my son today." Supervisor: "You know, there are people who would love to have your job right now. Your son is in the hospital a lot. If you can't start slapping a smile on and being happy to be here even when he's in the hospital, maybe we should find someone else to work here." Me: "I'm one of your best agents. I'm coming and I'm getting the job done. I do enjoy my work sometimes, but life is really difficult right now and there's a reason y'all give me a paycheck on the way out the door instead of charging admission on the way in. You get to ask a lot, but if you're going to ask me to pretend to be happy even when my son is in the hospital then we need to renegotiate my pay rate and time off. That wasn't part of my initial employment agreement." --- Artificial Intelligence really hit a new stride last year. Chat-GTP and Stable Diffusion are new technologies that create text and images for people based on input from a user. This has led to strikes among writers, lawsuits from artists, and general confusion among the population. I heard a story about a lawyer that started taking advice from an AI, and ended up in contempt of court for lies and bad behavior. I've used a chat-bot a few times to help me research things, but I don't trust it. The chat-bot I've used is based on Chat-GTP. The thing that I dislike most about it is that it will lie to me. The professionals like to say that it's "hallucinating," but it will backtrack and try to justify itself. If it doesn't know, it makes up an answer, and keeps doubling down and pushing that answer until it can't any longer. This isn't much of a surprise. Chat-GTP and the technologies related to it are basically the most advanced auto-complete on the planet trained to complete the conversation by the Internet. I d

The birth of Darth Vader parallels the birth of a new hope for the Jedi Order. One of the major themes of this installment into the Star Wars saga is the subject of prophecy. I wish that the text of the prophecy was part of the movie. According to a few sources online, the prophecy reads like this: Only through sacrifice of many Jedi will the Order cleanse the sin done to the nameless. The danger of the past is not past, but sleeps in an egg. When the egg cracks, it will threaten the galaxy entire. When the Force itself sickens, past and future must split and combine. A Chosen One shall come, born of no father, and through him will ultimate balance in the Force be restored. It's rather on the presumptuous side for the Jedi to believe that balance in the Force means that the Jedi remain and the Sith are destroyed. By the end of the movie, it looks much more like the prophecy is fulfilled the other way: the Jedi are all but extinct and the Sith are in control. Why not, though? This was the first movie where several things were really made clear. First, the Jedi have an almost irrational, racist fear of the Sith. It's not that Palpatine has done any particular thing that upsets the Jedi: he's a Sith, and that's all the evidence they need to eradicate him. This is also the first time we really get a glimpse of the power of the Force possibly being enough to endanger an entire planet. When Palpatine and Yoda fought, their respective Force skills kept feeding off each other until Sith Force Lightning against Jedi Force repulsion created a pop that nearly did damage to the Senate building. Yoda left because, unlike Dooku in the previous movie, this really was not a contest that was going to be decided by their knowledge of the Force, and really neither Yoda nor Palpatine were interested in putting a substantial crater in the capitol planet just to prove that this contest needed a new arena. All that after their skills with lightsabers had already proven too compatible

We live in a time when there are a bunch of theologians that identify as apologists. There is a lot to that. For one, it's just fashionable right now. For another, the life of a missionary isn't for everyone, yet we live in a Christian subculture that puts a lot of emphasis on how many people we have converted. For another, we live in a time when the church is going through decline, and there's a natural desire to stop the people that are leaving. Beyond these, every person is a unique individual and I'm sure there will be plenty of apologists that don't feel described by any of these. I don't identify as an apologist. I don't have a problem with people that do, that's just not my primary approach to theology. I find that for for the things that really speak to me, trying to turn it into an apologetic lesson often gets in the way. A few years ago I saw a post in a Facebook group asking how the Church Fathers could be wrong about Matthew in Hebrew, so I started discussing my reasons for thinking that Matthew was written in Hebrew. A third-party added their question: "Since it's all fairy tales, who cares what language it was written in?" My answer was simple: "I do. Apparently the OP does too." They tried to keep the fight going, repeating that it's all fairy-tales, to which I simply answered, "I disagree. But you're welcome to your opinion." I didn't have time to argue with them and continue the other conversation, which was the one I was more interested in. Here's the thing: the person who started the post, who was also not a believer, was impressed by my "restraint." (Is it really restraint to just not talk to someone about something you don't want to talk to them about?) This led them to listen to me more deeply. I was able to give all my reasons (which was timely because I was just getting my notes together on the subject) and they softened on their anti-Christianity stance. I don't know what became of them. A short bit later I started pulling together my note

I taught Kung Fu for about ten years. During that time, the vast majority of my students were teenage and pre-teenage boys. One of the things that most of these boys learned by taking martial arts was that they aren't as good as they thought they were. Almost every boy that came to take classes thought that they would walk in and over the course of an hour become Jackie Chan, Jet Li, a ninja turtle, or be ready to start teaching me new things. Occasionally they would have experience in another martial art, and I would know just where to push their established skillset to help them see that they were not at the end of their journey. It was tricky, though. Once I had a student come in that was a gold medalist in track and field in multiple long distance running events. This student insisted that they could keep up with a normal class. They could not. By the end of the first class, they were huffing and puffing and could barely stand. They were in good shape, they were just used to working their muscles differently. I couldn't have kept up on a long distance run. Then there was the one that bought a single private lesson. He was competing in amateur and semi-professional mixed martial arts competitions, and I went light with him because it was his first lesson. But it was much lighter than he was used to and than he was expecting, so he decided not to try another class. I had one that asked me to backup my assertion that I was more afraid of a knife than a gun at a range of less than a step. So I set up a game that I called "gun defense." I got a bunch of squirt guns, had people at close range, made it the rule that the defender had to move first, and the one that got squirted lost. Within ten minutes, no one wanted to be the one starting with the gun. That included the one who had challenged my assertion. That's not to say that no one ever taught me anything on their first day. Several times I had someone come in the first day and do a move or a strategy that I ha

Matthew and Luke have the two birth narratives that we use to make our Christmas stories. There are profound differences between them. Some scholars like Dr. Bart Ehrman say that they contradict. There are attempts to reconcile these two accounts. Not only is it possible, it's not even that hard really. One of the initial assumptions that people make which fuels these contradictions is that Joseph was from Nazareth. Maybe he was, or maybe he was from Bethlehem. In the Gospel of Matthew, Nazareth and Galilee aren't mentioned until the family returns from Egypt. In the Protoevangelium of James, a second century infancy narrative of Jesus's birth which some people in ancient times connected with Jesus's family, Nazareth and Galilee aren't mentioned at all. That leaves only the Gospel of Luke that mentions Galilee before Jesus was born, and what does it say? "And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary." (Luke 1:26-27) So that tells us that Mary was in Galilee, but doesn't tell us where Joseph is. Then after a bit, we get "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child." (Luke 2:1-5) This certainly reads more naturally as if Joseph were a resident of Galilee, but it could also be that Joseph was in Galilee negotiating the marriage to his very pregnant fiance, and the combination of the impending birth and the tax season accelerated his plans to return to his home in Bethleh