darkknightradic

Being diagnosed with a primary bone cancer (Stage 3 osteoblastic osteosarcoma) 17 years after going into remission with Stage 2 Synovial Sarcoma. I've definitely become more aware of God in my life and what it really means to trust in Him for everything, not just big things but everything. Big, little, whatever. Nothing is too petty or below God's concern if it concerns you and nothing asked for in Christ's name will be denied. Even before this second-time cancer diagnosis I had been blessed by God. Born-again in 2009, cured of bi-polar in 2010, married in 2011, and now receiving His healing through the men and women of Vanderbilt University Medical Center - at no charge to myself (I have no insurance or job and my wife took personal leave from her job to be with me) - in Nashville, TN. Even more importantly, though, I have become closer to God throughout all of this and have a deeper understanding of how important it is that we go through Trials & Tribulations.

Without faith in God and supportive family and friends, I would not be able to rationally deal with cancer a second-time. I thank God everyday for the love he pours out over me and all His Children.

Ignore them.

Title: Are You My Friend?
Scripture References:
John 5:53-58; 10:10; 15:12-17
1 Corinthians 13
Mark 14:36
Ephesians 1:4
Galatians 3:26-29
By: Joseph A. Nagy, Jr.
CopyFree (F) January 2011
http://owl.apotheon.org

Christ's definition of friend: Unrelenting love for one another (John 15:12-17).
We can never hope to totally live up to that or emulate His level of friendship. The best most of us can hope for is someone we can trust and share some good conversation with, perhaps even someone we can trust with secrets and our ideas on what we believe about conducting more intimate relationships (not necessarily with each other, mind you). The worst some of us wind up with are two wildly different definitions (Christ's and our own) and therein lies a world of hurt.

Underlying all of that, though, is Christ's definition which is most poignantly defined in the above mentioned verse. First, we start out with unrelenting love.

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." (John 15:12)

None of us are even capable of loving anyone near that much. We just don't have the capacity, even if we had the will. Our bodies, our minds, cannot even begin to comprehend the love that God and Christ have for us (John 3:16). Even Paul can only write about a smidgen of what is love (1 Corinthians 13) and its importance. How can we, who are imperfect, begin to understand the perfect love of Christ and God, much less reflect that in our own lives? We are given direction with God's full knowledge that we will be imperfect in our attempts at being obedient. We fall, we stumble, prayerfully we look up and ask God for help and go at it again.

If the first part of Christ's definition is unrelenting love and that's near impossible, how much harder is the next part of the definition: being self-sacrificial even unto death.

"Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)

Christ, again, not only spoke it, but He lived it when He was unjustly tried, scourged, and crucified for our sins and to what end? That we may have life through Him (John 6:53-58) and not just for a little while, but abundantly (John 10:10). Christ sacrificed Himself for us, so that we may live, because He LOVES us. Does an enemy willingly die for his foe that the foe may live? Do even the ants not willingly give their lives so that their queen might live? How much greater is the love from the one who created us for Him to come to earth, live as a man in a man's body and die a sinners death so that our debt may be paid in full - a debt we could not ever repay. Are you willing to lay down your life for those you call friend?

It's really starting to get hard to call someone a friend now, isn't it? Unrelenting, sacrificial love. How can you love someone so much to do those two things as Christ has done them for us? It doesn't get any easier, though, so don't take off your boots.

"You are My friends if you do whatever I command you." (John 15:14)

Friendship is dutiful. You do for your friends and do not expect anything in return. Does your friend need help? As a Christian, if you truly consider someone a friend, you will be burdened to help them as you can and are led. You do it not expecting even so much as a "Thank you." You do it because it's exactly what Christ did for us. Again, we have Christ as are example and the provider of our definition. Christ loved God so much that even though He would have gladly given up the job, He did his Father's will (Mark 14:36). When have you suppressed your own desires to do something for a friend, no matter how much it would have inconvenienced you?

Unrelenting, self-sacrificial, dutiful love. I told you it was getting hard yet Christ continues to build upon this definition of what it means to be a friend.

"No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you." (John 15:15)

Friends are equals. One is not greater than the other. They hide nothing from one another. I could quote from all the Gospels where Christ has made known to His disciples and those around Him what the Father has made known to Him. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are full of examples of Christ trying to fill the people with God and empty them of religion. Do you treat your friends as equal to yourself? Greater than yourself? Lesser than yourself? Christ, as part of the Holy Trinity (or Triune if you prefer) could have lorded His relationship with God and the Holy Spirit over everyone, He could have made them feel inferior (as we all are), He could have robbed them of their dignity. Instead He always treated them as students and then friends. He made them feel welcomed. He answered their questions and subjected Himself to their touch. By living in a body made of human flesh He humbled Himself and did so without a second thought.

Unrelenting, self-sacrificial, dutiful, equalizing love. There is only one more part to this definition, this model, that Christ has set forth for us and we can find it in these two verses.

"You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another." (John 15:16-17)

We have been chosen by God (Ephesians 1:4), as Christ choose the apostles, and how we treat each other was so important that Christ Himself made a lesson out of it and modeled it for us so that we may use a concrete example in our treatment of others. I'll be the first to admit that I have not been as good at this as I could have been. I've let the enemy use my own hurt in certain situations to perpetuate that hurt in some vain attempt at justification for how I felt. It only wound up in more hurt and ruined relationships.

Christ and God throughout the ages have modeled for us the true meaning of friendship. Sometimes it was hard to recognize, as tough love is always hard to accept when you are on the receiving end of the "tough" part. The best we can do, though, is to model ourselves after Christ and God and let ourselves be led in our friendships, whether they are just for a season or longer lasting. When we stumble - and we will stumble, from time to time - know that God is there for us. He's not going to condemn us (though we might be in need of some form of chastisement), but love on us as He always had. Unrelenting, self-sacrificial, dutiful, equalizing (Galatians 3:26-29) love.

I know I haven't posted in a while, no excuse. Just not really thought about my LJ. Hopefully I'll think more about it in the near future, though.

If that's the case, I would expect calls for nuclear extermination of those scum-bags who abuse our seniors. Our children. Our special needs folks. What about those murderous scum-bags forcing others into slave labor? Or sexual exploitation? Or human trafficing? Or who start wars for freaking profit?!

This warrants a hefty fine and maybe a few days in the county lockup (or the equivelant in Jolly Ol' England). This warrants the response that the lady who put the cat in the can is receiving (well not really, but the equivelant).

How about we worry about our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and children before we worry about a cat. Get a grip people. It is only a cat, and it came away unharmed. I have 4 cats. If you'd like, I'd gladly let you have two if you come and pick them up. You people who have more outrage for a poorly thought out joke then for the neglect and suffering of your fellow humans sicken me.

A top of the line computer with quad monitors. :p

Well, considering I already have eternal life in Christ...

The franchise has proven a very profitable model for expanding a business with minimal effort (7-11, Subway and McDonalds are the most profitable iirc). With a franchise what you are doing is giving up training of staff (a huge cost, especially if you have a personal stake in making sure the training is better than adequate) and handing over a license to use the menu, look, feel and name of your business to a third-party. In return they give you a cut of profits through licensing deals and they purchase all their food from you. All you have to worry about is mass-producing as many disheses as possible and all they have to do is heat it up or in the case of meats, cook them properly; for non-cook-to-order meats such as pork, fish and chicken, you can further minimize that by freezing them as pre-cooked items.

What are you giving up? Food quality, for one. In all my years of working fast-food and the few years I spent in buffet and casual dining environments, I have yet to come across anything that was pre-cooked and frozen that tastes as good as fresh prepared (if you've ever bought those Wan-Chai Ferry, P.F. Chang, or Romano's Macaroni Grill frozen meals, you'll know what I'm talking about). Sure it takes longer, but there is a noticable enough difference in the quality. If you start out that way, or go to that really quickly before you grow too big, the loss in customers won't be as great so there is no worry and it's just what people will expect already. Also, staff training is another issue. By franchising out, you cannot take as personal an interest in the training regimen or in the quality of the new hires as you would normally do if say you had a small to medium sized chain, I imagine large, non-franchise chains have a training quality issue as wekk, but they have corrective issues they can take directly that would include escalating the issue right up into corporate headquarters. With a franchise you have a customer service line that gets in touch with the licensor who gets in touch with the particular liscensee. The level of care there will vary widely.

Who should franchise? Those who want to expand quickly, have basic training guidelines (including customer care aspects), and can afford to hope for the best. Who shouldn't franchise? Anyone who cares more then a little as to the look, feel, and quality of each restaurant. If you want to maintain that level of concern, don't franchise. Chain out, open up corporate headquarters and work diligently to set in place policies that will satisfactorily handle not only inter-employee disputes but employee-customer issues (while customer-only issues will still be a high priority and should remain a top priority). If you've been watching undercover boss, I would strongly encourage all business owners to do something similar. Good practices need to be pointed out and rewarded and bad practices need to be ferreted out and, if the people who are the source do not want to change, the source needs to be cut out without a second thought. This is your business, after all. It is your name and your companies image that is at stake here. It's not all about profit-vs-loss. There are no acceptable risks when you can mitigate or even out right eliminate behavior that would lead to loss.

This means a reform in union thinking, too. Yes, people need to work and deserve fair wages, but not if they are doing a bad job and will not unlearn those behaviors leading to bad performance. Reward those who are performing about expectations, keep them and those who are performing at level. Get rid of anyone and everyone else without a second thought.

GMO Foods: Friend or Foe?

The Basics

GMO Foods have been around since the beginning of basic agriculture. As soon as it was figured out you could actually selectively breed crops (and animals and even people) for desirable traits (whatever those may be), farmers, ranchers, and those involved in eugenics programs have taken the basic idea (mating pairs based on bringing out or strengthening desirable traits while weeding out not-so-desirable ones) and ran with it. What's going on is nothing new, in it's most basic form. What current GMO foods have on previous generations, though, is the fact that they are being manipulated on the DNA level. That double-helix we share with every form of life on the planet (hey, when God creates an awesome design, He runs with it, deal). There is only so much you can do with selective breeding (even with plants, despite their ability to incorporate even what our bodies would consider foreign (non-native) DNA) though. For example, you couldn't, through selective breeding, get the firefly glow gene into tobaccoo (Time, 1986) via selective breeding. That requires some real gene-hacking wizardry.

What's the problem?

The problem lies in plant patents, specifically the patents on the genes. Since we are talking about plants, and they generally reproduce by pollination (either self- or cross-pollination depending on species), when a GMO plant gets pollinated by a bee, the bee doesn't go, "Oh, this is so-and-so's plants, I can only continue visiting flowers in this field." No, the bee goes, "bzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzz" and flies around randomly pollinating flowers in its search for nectar. Also, the wind does a good job of helping pollination and it won't stop blowing the pollen from a field of crops that is GMO so it doesn't cross-pollinate (illegally, remember, these GMO plants are patented) in that farmer's field who doesn't happen to have a license from Monsanto (with Monsanto and the USDA being co-owners of several plant patents, don't expect this to change soon).

So far all the Monsanto cases have looked at one thing:

• Did the farmer know that Monsanto's patent-protected plants cross-pollinated with their plants


• If yes, sue into oblivion


• If no, sue into oblivion anyway, obviously the farmer should have known it was going to happen




• Did the farmer try to profit off their new-found windfall of "ill-gotten" gains?


• If yes or no, see above.

Invalid Patent?

Neither the courts, nor the defense lawyers (they have to be idiots, I swear) seem to have looked at this. Can the farmers or Monsanto stop the cross-pollination? If no, than Monsanto's patent should be invalidated because there is no reasonable means of protecting the patent from unauthorized reproduction (yes, I know it's Infowars, find me another source that contradicts anything in this article and I'll be happy to post a new entry with that link). With no reasonable means of preventing unauthorized use of said patent in it's typical application (farming), why was the patent even granted? Is Monsanto that far in bed with the USDA? Are the courts not supposed to be a checks-and-balance anyway?

Should Monsanto be rewarded for it's contribution to agriculture? Maybe. GMO foods, specifically those Monsanto have been producing, have not been shown to not cause disease in the organisms feeding on those products. Coupled along with the issue of preventing unauthorized cross-pollination (and upon detection, a farmer would have to destroy every plant that is "contaminated" with the patented genes; can you say good-bye to your livelihood that easily?), this presents a significant difficulty in getting not only farmers to grow the junk, but people to eat it (well, perhaps not that difficult, products containing GMO foods aren't required to be labled as containing such) as well.

Go, buy your fresh produce, but don't be surprised if it contains built-in herbicides/fungicides/pesticides (you know, the stuff you could wash off on non-GMO foods). And don't think you can grow your own food, either. At least, not without the government's permission.

I am, as of yet, unware of how the Writer's Block questions are supposed to help me write more.