The city of Arab in Alabama for some time has had a city-provided phone company called Otelco. Essentially, a socialized phone company. They might claim to be privately owned, but it is common knowledge to the entire city of Arab that Otelco is run by the city government. Because of this, they dominate the data/communications industry in the city of Arab. They have blocked the possibility of competition.

Otelco is notorious for providing second-rate service for twice the price you would pay with anyone else.
1.5 mb DSL costs over 90 dollars a month. Compare that to AT&T's standard rate for 6MB DSL and your jaw will drop and how ridiculous the pricing is. Even the usually-expensive Charter Cable is cheaper than Otelco while even still offering greater bandwidth for those lower prices.

Because of how the city government of Arab and the phone company of Otelco have sealed the market from competition, this means that Sheria and I have no options in the way of internet service...unless of course we are willing to pay an astronomical of money up front for satellite internet service.

I won't even go into the horror stories of long distance charges from Otelco, an issue which has caused many people to either move away from Arab or just get cell phones instead of land lines.
Everyone knows about this around here. For the residents of Arab, Otelco is an immediate sore spot in conversation. But no one is doing anything about it.
The city politicians squeeze ridiculous amounts of money from Arab residents every month...and I'm sure their reasons are probably economical ones...talking about how this is such a vital part of Arab's city economy...but Arab is one of the most run-down, backward, dark cities in all of Marshall County. Go figure.
Furthermore, probably the actual reason that it continues is simply that it lines the pockets of city politicians at the expense of the city of Arab.

So, in light of this, I ask this question.


How do you feel about nationalized health care?
How many more examples do we need that it is an open door for disaster?

I don't identify myself with parties or wings. Government is an essential part of the success in this society, I don't think it is un-spiritual at all for me to say so. Yet all the same, government should be given some sort of limits as to what kind of power they can assimilate from society...I believe this as well.

The question I present is not liberal vs. conservative, it is success vs. failure.

In light of Arab Alabama and countless other examples in history, including Great Britain's garbage dump health care system, how do you think it would work in this country to have nationalized health care?
I'm just not convinced that it would.

I'm not trying to start a debate, I'm just stating my thoughts aloud.

Everyday, or at least nearly, I find myself wanting to just take a good honest look at love.

People dance around this subject so much...I've read books, I've heard ideas, I've listened to sermons...some things infuriate me. One example is once when I saw a commercial on tv for "The Naked Brothers Band," as in this commercial for nickelodian, they cover in about thirty seconds the many wild adventures of the said child rockstars. One such adventure is "about love" to which one of the interviewed child band-members says [in regards to love], and I quote, "I dig all the chicks."

And they just leave it at that. So that's the idea of love being communicated to our younger generation, at least the ones who watch nickelodian.

Then I read books by well-to-do authors, the hip new hippie-christians who mix practical worldly wisdom with a little bit of Jesus. They make Jesus sound so marketable, so easy to translate to hollywood. "Jesus is for everybody," the chant, "You just have to find out how he works for you!" Or at least that is largely what most of them say.
One such author, no names mentioned, once made the remark that the affection shared between a husband and wife was not nor will it ever be unconditional, that love in such a relationship is a maintained one, you scratch my back, I scratch yours...a constant, steady exchange of reciprocated affection. There are multiple kinds of love, some deeper than others...this the idea that the author presented.
I actually believed him at one point. I agreed with him until recently when it dawned on me that he hasn't been married, nothing against him for that. Furthermore, to fulfill the vows made to each other in marriage, it doesn't require everyday maintenance, because sooner or later that approach will fail.
In order for everyone to completely fulfill their marriage vows to the end, they would have to be completely perfect in every way. I mean lets be honest, everyone at some point in their marriage will have a thought, a temptation and at least a season where things just aren't full of sunshine and love-butterflies.
Yet if I were to take the advice of this author, an author who seemed to be seeing only half of the picture through a carnal lens, that would mean that a guy like me could leave my wife just because she stopped being nice to me...and that I would be justified in doing so. In other words, I'm not really required to work out the complexities of what it means to be married to her, I simply just need to decide where I am happier.

I cannot believe what a load of complete garbage that is.

So here is my honest look at love tonight, as I have laid awake for over an hour ruminating on the great difficulty of it.

*

Love is what it is. It doesn't change itself to fit my imperfection. Every person is expected to rise and meet love where it is at, quite the opposite of how everyone tells us that we should take the idea of love and drag it through the mud until it is dirtied up enough with our ideas that it simply becomes another one of our ideas.
Unfortunately, love was never any man's idea, it was God's. Everything love originates from Him. If something fails to be as holy as true, pure love, it isn't from God. How could it be?
So what we are confronted with is this.

We are to love as Christ loved, we are to love unconditionally...in our marriages, in our homes, in our churches, in our friendships.

But something that you must know is that it is impossible to do that. You might have had a moment where you were so sure that you could pull it off, but you can't. Unfortunately, unconditional love lasts longer than a mere moment of personal triumph. What if your spouse were to become lethargic and insensitive to your needs? Do you still love? What if you face something in your life that is full of such great pain that it is impossible for you to even begin to think of anyone else's needs? And trust me, this could easily happen. It happens everyday. If it were so, do you still love them unconditionally at that point, showering them with affection? What if your spouse were to become severely handicapped and had to live in a bed or a power chair? They couldn't show the affection they once did. In fact, they might not even be able to clean themselves, much less be intimate with you. Painful to think about, isn't it? Essentially, what if your spouse is in such a state that they cannot or at least will not show you any form of any kind of affection in return, even if it were for the rest of your life?
What would you do? How would you react? What if your spouse decided to stop trying? Would you keep trying, knowing that you would get absolutely nothing in return?

These are the questions we have to ask ourselves, this is the level holiness required of us. Impossibility.
Yet all the same, we are expected to find a way, some how through the grace of God or the Holy Spirit to daily live, walk and breathe in that dangerous, self-threatening love, the love in Christ which absorbed in himself pure, unadulterated pain, knowing full well that most would not even care how much He suffered.

Sometimes we as people suffer, but we usually look for someone to notice our suffering. It makes us feel so self-gratified, to know that someone has observed our suffering.
Christ never looked for it and largely never found it. This world largely does not care how much Christ suffered. He knew it would be that way, yet He suffered all the same. He knew that for the first twenty years of my life, I would live as though His suffering were just a given, just like living under my parent's roof or getting my allowance, until one day I found myself suffering...and not only suffering, but suffering at a point that the one person I wanted to notice turned the other way.
To be honest, most of my suffering was over something childish...and anything noble in it was clouded by my desire to be observed by someone else. But the pain in it caused me to take a second look at Jesus.

Let's look at what Jesus would have done if He would have loved his disciples the way I often love others.

"How can you even call yourself my disciples? While I was suffering, weeping, bleeding, dying, you were all scampering around like scared rats. I poured my life into you and you can't even just stand up and admit that you care about me. What do I have to do to get your attention? Has your affection for me ever been true? Have you ever just listened? I feel like I am loving twelve statues, not twelve disciples. The only time you ever do anything is if I ask you to do it first."

It makes me laugh to see how ridiculous that sounds when I read it aloud...yet that is how I would sound.
Truthfully, it is probably the way most anyone would sound. And the way we see it as people is that maybe if we can get angry enough, get drastic enough, threaten divorce enough, withhold affection enough, manipulate enough, eventually the other person will come around, come to their senses, love us the way we desire to be loved.

Christ tells us otherwise. Love. Many times we love and expect the other to change, or at least we try to. It never works though. We love in order to change someone but the problem with it isn't that they won't change, the problem with it is that we aren't truly loving them. We are putting a prerequisite on our love for others whenever we love just for the express purpose that they would change their life.
So love. Even if it costs you your pride, your sanity, your happiness, your comfort. Love anyway, even if it is to your own misfortune. Love, even if you think it is undeserved, even if you think that it is pointless, even if you think it unwise, even if it will be turned around like a weapon back at you. Love, even if the other person isn't going to change.

I don't know about anyone else, but that is about as holy as it gets. It is sobering.
Some of you might already think about this fact...and reading these words I've written makes you ache all the more just to see one person who lived this way, just so you can watch them, just so you can absorb something from them that would help you to get off of your feet and live.

Well I have good news. Someone has lived that way. His name is Jesus.
Some say He was the son of God.


Who do you say He is?


There is something about His life and the way I believe in it which also makes me believe that I could change...that I could love like that.
But sometimes I fear the pain that comes with that package.


So I think the enemy of love isn't hate.
It is fear.