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There Are Evangelizers In Our Midst… Even in Monmouth County, New Jersey

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While the power was out for the last several days, I found myself spending time at a lot of local stores. No, I wasn’t there to buy stuff. I was there to keep warm! Look, when it’s cold out and you don’t have any heat – you’ll do what you have to do to stay warm. For me, that included going to the local Barnes & Noble and reading books (which is something that I do anyway), walking around the local Walmart, and spending time walking around Wegmans (okay I admit it – I bought some stuff for my car while I was at Wegmans).

That’s the base of information that you need to know for this entry. I’ll add this one, crucial piece of information: given that there is near total devastation in many of New Jersey’s shore communities due to the recent super storm and blizzard, there are a lot of out-of-state people up here helping out at a variety of different companies. For example, I’ve seen utility workers from down south (who are running circles around the New Jersey teams, by the way). I’ve also seen insurance adjusters from out-of-state helping homeowners with their claims.

It’s a group effort to recover here in New Jersey.

With that information out of the way, the title of this entry suggests that there are evangelizers among us – even in Monmouth County! Here’s a story that I sent to some of my friends after spending some time warming up and reading a book at the local Barnes & Noble three nights ago. I think you’ll enjoy this:

I’ve been sitting at Barnes & Noble for about 30 minutes and this insurance adjuster – I can tell he’s not from around here by his accent – was sitting across from me the entire time doing some work. I paid no mind to him – I was just flipping between my cell phone and my NOOK.

Anyway, the guy just gathered his things and got ready to leave. When he was ready to go he came over to me and said, “Sir?” I looked up and said, “Yes.”

He said, “Can I tell you something?” I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “Do you know Jesus Christ?” I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Well, his real name is Jehovah. It’s Yahweh. And he’s coming back soon and I just wanted to tell you that he loves you. Just wanted to tell you that he’s coming back and that he loves you.”

I said, “Thank you.”

And he said, “Alright. Have a good night.” And he walked out of the store.

I’m compelled to write this experience on the blog because this type of stuff just doesn’t happen too often in New Jersey. We’re a state with a lot of skeptical people; we have people who are automatically apprehensive towards those that they don’t know. I’ve visited the South many times and it’s a bit disorienting when you’re walking on the street and random strangers greet you with a genuine, “Good afternoon. How do you do today?” It always stops me in my tracks until I get used to it again. That type of forward communication doesn’t happen in New Jersey unless it’s one person looking at another person the wrong way until someone cracks and says, “What are you looking at?”

It’s our way of life in this state. Don’t judge us.

But I had two immediate reactions to this guy coming up to me and saying what he said. First, I immediately felt warmed up in my spiritual heart. I don’t know about you all out there in internet land, but I go to church each Sunday and on Holy Days and I enjoy going to church. I didn’t always enjoy going to church, but I do now and I hope that I will continue to enjoy going to church. So when this person came up to me to tell me things that I pretty much already know and believe in from the teachings of my church – it just felt good.

Second, as I felt warmed up I began to feel better about the horrible situation that I found myself in with no electricity and a cold home to go back to that night. Hey, Jesus loves me – what else do I need, right? 🙂

And the third nearly automatic reaction that I had to this guy was a very small voice in my head saying, “What’s his angle? What’s he up to? Keep an eye on him as he leaves the store and make sure he doesn’t hang around. If he follows you home, drive to the police station instead. Maybe you should confront him outside and see what his deal is. I don’t know if I trust him. He did reference Jesus, but who is he?”

Hey, I’m from New Jersey – I’m skeptical about people sometimes!

Anyway, it was an interesting encounter and an overall good message. Over the last few days, I’ve thought about this message and this guy’s confidence and lack of fear in delivering it. Jesus Christ is coming back and he loves you.

Now that’s a pretty uplifting message if there ever was one!

How I Find Out If I’m Dealing With A Simple-Minded Person – My Last Name

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We all have different quirks that define the way we look at the world. For example, if you hate extremely loud noises, then you’re probably not going to be the type of person to get front row tickets at a rock concert. Or, if you’re the type of person that loves to read books, you’ll probably put more value in reading your NOOK at Barnes & Noble versus spending the night out partying with your friends at the local bar.

Well, when I’m teaching in the classroom (including in the digital classroom) I have certain quirks. I don’t like students who are in school for free on athletic scholarships and then choose to fall asleep in class. That happened once in my class and it burned me up to the point where I reported it to the kid’s coaches. He stayed awake and did very well in the class from that point forward. Also, I don’t like when I see a kid who is obviously coming from a life of privilege (believe it or not, most of my Freshman students would actually tell me that they came from wealth – very odd) wasting their time in class by slacking off or clacking away on their Droids or iPhones. These kids made me want to ask them why they’re wasting their parents’ money, but I don’t cross those bounds (yet!).

The purpose of this entry is to talk about one of my biggest quirks when it comes to dealing with my students: when they can’t spell my last name. This actually happens more than 50% of the time. That’s right – my students misspell my last name more than half of the time that they reach out to me for assistance…

How can students possibly misspell my last name?! Honestly? My last name is slapped on the syllabus for the course, it’s in my e-mail signature, it’s all over the course content – and yet there are still students who can’t manage to spell my last name correctly? Really? What?!

The paragraph above is how I feel every time I see my last name butchered by a student.

I think what really irks me is that while my name is a good, strong Italian name, it’s still printed on nearly every document that I hand out when I teach a course. In fact, it’s in the damn e-mail address that the college gives me to interact with the students! And if a simple-minded student can’t figure out that the e-mail address is my name, I have a standardized signature at the end of each message which gives my full name. That’s what irks me – the fact that the correct spelling of my last name is readily available to anyone who spends more than 5 seconds trying to find it.

When I have a student in class that can’t spend the extra 5 seconds to find the correct spelling of my name before they send me an e-mail or put it on one of their papers, then I know that I’m dealing with a simple-minded person. And this isn’t a statement of arrogance. Not at all. Actually, this is something that I began testing 5 years ago when I started doing this little teaching gig on the side. Whenever I had a student in class who continually butchers my name over and over again, I begin to take a closer look at their actions in class. Many of them don’t take notes or they choose to play on their phones during the lectures; many of them have poor attendance records.

If you’re reading this and you teach young adults or professional adults, then I’d be interested in your thoughts on this issue. I think this is about as direct a condemnation of the level of college-preparedness that we have in our public school system as I can provide.

We need to better prepare our high school students for college. And if they’re not ready for college-level study, then we need to stop encouraging them to attend college. We should NOT be encouraging these kids to take out a mountain of debt so they an live up to a now-archaic ideal that simply is not for everyone.

Anyway, if you’re a student and you’re reading this – spell your professor’s name correctly. While they probably won’t mention it if you spell their name incorrectly, believe me when I say that this sets off red lights in the professor’s head and makes them take a closer look at you as a student (both your in-class actions and your submissions). And for crying out loud – your professor’s last name is on the syllabus! Take the 5 seconds to find out the proper spelling!

Does Anyone Else Have a Serious Reading Problem?

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Way back when I was a young kid I learned that the easiest way to learn more stuff was to read more books. I always wanted to know more so I really enjoyed reading a lot of different types of material from textbooks to magazines to novels to short stories to you name it. And when the internet was in its infancy, I enjoyed reading internet discussion boards like Prodigy.

Remember Prodigy? Wow – what an old reference!

Well, I still like to learn more about the world around me and my love of reading has stuck with me. In my bedroom I have a bookshelf filled with books (most of which I haven’t read through yet) and in my spare bedroom I have a large plastic tote container also filled with books (also mostly unread). Plus, my Mom bought me a NOOK Color a few years ago and that thing is filled with an entirely different set of books than are sitting on my bookshelves.

But it’s not just physical books and e-books that I enjoy reading. I also enjoy reading various blogs, news, and commentary websites. In fact, I use the Google Reader interface and that poor thing is overloaded with hundreds of updates everyday. Granted, I only read 3 – 5 of the actual updates, but 3 – 5 articles each day over the course of a week begins to add up!

And the love of reading continues… each weekend I receive the bulletin from church and I go through it to make sure that there isn’t anything new going on that I’ve missed. Of course, that’s a quick read and I can usually get through it as I eat my lunch on Sunday. But then you have the occasional weekend when the diocesan newspaper is released and that thing is packed with news! I just received one of them last weekend and I’m still getting through it. Which leads me to the newspaper and “news” in general. I really enjoy waking up in the morning and scanning through the New York Times website as well as the FOX News website (hey – you need to get both sides of the story, right?). I imagine that whenever I buy a house I’ll have to get a weekender subscription to the New York Times. Or maybe the online version – who knows?

Then there is the “To Read” file that I keep on my computer. Whenever I get sent an article or a report that is too long to read in one sitting, I stick it in that file and hope to get back to it at some point. As you might imagine, that folder gets bigger and bigger. Not to mention that I have a whole series of bookmarks on my computer that are holding old article that I need to go back and read at some point.

Right now I’m reading three different books for the class that I’m taking (remember that?). I’m also at the beginning of the eighth book in the Sword of Truth Series (remember that, too?) on my NOOK. And I’m about halfway through reading The Jersey Sting. Very interesting book considering that I worked in the real estate business in Deal Township, New Jersey.

I think if I can get through the eighth book of the Sword of Truth series on the NOOK and the rest of The Jersey Sting, then I’ll feel less pressure to read. Once I get those books out of the way, I’m going to start picking off the articles in my saved bookmarks folder. Then I’m going to pick off the articles that I’ve saved on the Google Reader. The next thing is going to be the “To Read” folder and then I’m going to begin hitting those books sitting on my bookshelf and in the plastic tote.

So the question is – when does a love of reading become a problem?! 🙂

NOOK Book Review: Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo

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Sometimes you watch a clip on the morning news that sticks in your head. A while back (I think it was before Christmas 2010) I saw an interview on FOX & Friends with Todd Burpo and his young son, Colton Burpo. The gist of the teases leading up to the interview were that the young kid claimed to have gone to Heaven and had details on what Heaven is actually like. After hearing those teases as I was getting ready for work I thought, “Okay. I’m sold. Let’s hear this kid’s story.”

I don’t really remember much about the interview other than I couldn’t get an immediate read on whether or not the kid was telling the truth. Sometimes you watch these young kids on television and you can sense that they are coerced into saying certain things by their parents. Other times you watch these kids and just get a bad feeling about the entire story. It’s hard to explain, but if you’ve ever watched a person tell a lie or bend the truth to the point of nearly breaking it in half, then you know what I’m talking about.

I didn’t get that sense from Colton’s story, but I didn’t give it much thought.

The reason the interview was taking place was because the kid’s father wrote a book about his son’s experience. Over the next few months I would pick up the Burpo book at my local Barnes & Noble, flip through it a little bit, and then put it back on the shelf and move on to the next story. Quick side note – even though I own a NOOK Color I still head over to the local Barnes & Noble store to flip through some books to see whether or not I’d want to buy them and also whether or not it would be better to buy the NOOK book version or the paper version. Plus, I like spending a few minutes in the Barnes & Noble – it’s nice and quiet (most of the time).

Anyway, I didn’t consider reading the book until last week when I got my hands on an electronic copy on the NOOK. And, since the book is a relatively short read, I buzzed through over the last few days. I have a few thoughts about the book which are in no particular order below.

  • The first half of the book. No offense to the Burpo family or the writing of this book, but the first half of the book is a bore. Sure, I understand that the first half of the book is written to give a base for the second half of the book and the stories about Colton’s experiences, but if you’re picking up this book to read about Colton’s accounts of Heaven and his experiences with Jesus Christ, then you can skip the entire first half of the book. The family stories, the stories of Todd’s physical trials and pains, the ups and downs of the family – all of that tells a certain story and it’s not the one that I wanted to read when I picked up this book. I’m a spiritual guy, I believe in Jesus Christ and the scriptures, I’m already into all of that. I didn’t need to read about the Burpo family’s seemingly consistent pains and their life in the great wide open of middle America to have the point hammered home that these are regular, everyday Christian people. The entire first half of the book could have been summed up in 2 – 3 pages, which would have allowed this reader (and any other number of readers out there) to get to the real heart of the story.
  • Weird Parental Reactions. This is definitely a regional perspective, but I was shocked at some of the reactions that Todd and his wife Sonja had to Colton’s comments. For example, when Colton tells his father that he sat in Jesus’ lap and that Jesus talked to him and angels sang to him when he was in the hospital, my mind immediately went to a place that wanted to know what the father was going to do about people approaching his son while he was in the hospital. In other words, my immediate reaction to some of what is written in this book is a reaction borne out of living in the northeast United States for all of my life. Almost subconsciously, people in this part of the world process and assess what they hear and come to an immediate, negative conclusion. You might say we judge a book by its cover. The point here is that Todd and Sonja responded to Colton’s experience in a different way than, say, Sonny and Maria would have responded if little Vinny was telling them about people visiting him in his hospital bed in New York City.
  • Colton’s Description of Jesus Christ. All in all, I’m still not sure whether I believe this kid’s experience or not. In truth, I actually believe more of the story than I think could be made up (see next point). Aside from Colton’s knowledge of things that he was never told (like his miscarried sister and his great grandfather Pops), the biggest draw for me to believe his story is his consistently noting that the current vision of Jesus Christ that we have is wrong. I don’t mean that we have the wrong impression of him as our Lord and Savior. I mean his physical appearance is a bit off. Frankly, Jesus Christ was born to a young Palestinian woman (Mary) in the Middle East and yet we show him to be of Anglo-Saxon descent. Something doesn’t seem right in that to me… Colton says that this picture is the best representation of what Jesus Christ actually looks like:

      I don’t know about you, but I see that picture and I think, “Now that’s a better representation of Jesus Christ!” The picture above looks more like a guy who could have been born in the Middle East, right? Plus, that portrait just happened to be painted by a young girl who claims to have also visited Heaven and whose account nearly matches Colton’s account…

  • The swords in Heaven. This was the one part of the book that I thought didn’t flow correctly and, for some reason, made me think that something might be up with the whole thing. It’s all of Chapter 25 that really made me think twice about this story. In short, Burpo tells how he and his family watched The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (an openly Christian-themed fantasy story that became a major motion picture a few years ago) and how Colton positively responded to the White Witch being taken down by Aslan. After some discussion, Colton tells his parents that there are swords in Heaven because Satan isn’t in hell yet. The swords are for the battle that has yet to come (Armageddon) and how Jesus told Colton that he couldn’t have sword because he’d be too dangerous. The parents ask Colton if he saw Satan and he responds that he had seen him. When they ask what he looked like, Colton didn’t respond. When the parents continued to ask Colton about Satan after that night, he still didn’t respond.

      For some reason, that didn’t sit right with me. I understand that this is a young kid and that the thought of Satan, much less the sight of him, must have frightened the kid. Okay, I get that completely. But here is a young kid who is telling wonderful, amazing stories about Jesus Christ and Heaven and then he totally freezes up when the topic of Satan comes up? I don’t know about that – just seems odd.

  • The story just sort of ends. There’s no happy conclusion to Colton’s stories about Jesus Christ and Heaven. They just sort of end. The book is brought to a nice conclusion by Burpo and we even get an epilogue to read through, but that’s it. There’s no summation of salient points and no final dictum from Colton about Heaven or his experiences with Jesus Christ (other than that Jesus really loves children and there’s no way to possibly describe God’s overpowering love for us). The book just kind of… ends.
  • No heavy issues. This one seems obvious, but you’re not going to find discussion of any heavy issues in this book. As a happy Roman Catholic, the big theological issues in my Church revolve around whether or not women should be priests, whether or not priests should be allowed to marry, whether or not homosexuality is acceptable, when abortion is acceptable (if ever), etc. Obviously, a book about a kid who sees Heaven isn’t going to cover those issues. So, if you’re thinking about picking up this book to understand what Heaven thinks about these major issues, don’t bother reading the book.

Those are some of the bigger points that I have about this book. With respect to a recommendation, I’m not against anyone reading this book. In fact, if you can get it at a good price, then I recommend reading it just because the insights that Colton gives about Jesus Christ and Heaven are fun theological points to ponder. Of course there is the big question…

Do I believe Colton’s account of visiting Heaven and spending time with Jesus Christ?

The answer is… more yes than no. That story about the swords in Heaven and the battle yet to come was really improperly placed in the book and is where my doubt (if you can even call it doubt) rests. Let’s be honest – a young kid who just watched the final battle of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (an epic battle between good and evil) is probably more likely to substitute those images for a heavenly battle that will happen at some point in the future. The chapter didn’t sit right with me.

What did sit right with me was the image of Jesus Christ above that Colton confirmed is what our Savior really looks like in person. The fact that the image was drawn by a young girl who was eight years old when she drew it and also had visions of Heaven and Jesus Christ when she was four years old helps to add some credibility to the story.

In the end, as a happy Roman Catholic who tries his damnedest to practice his life the way that Jesus tells us to in the Bible, I stick with my comment above. I believe more of Colton’s story than I disbelieve.

NOOK Book Review: A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

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Wow. I don’t even know where to start this NOOK Book review so I’m just going to begin at the beginning and take you through my experience with A Game of Thrones. Like most folks, I heard about A Game of Thrones because it’s a big hit on HBO and has a pretty large fan base with respect to readers of the novels. I’m the type of person who at least likes to be aware of what’s going on in pop culture and when A Game of Thrones hit the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, I thought that I should probably give the story a shot. Plus, I’ve been looking (not that hard) for a good fantasy series to read since I’ve pretty much read and re-read everything that the master of the genre – J.R.R. Tolkien – published.

So with the thought in my mind that this was a New York Times bestseller, a hit series on HBO, and a fantasy story that was gaining momentum in pop culture I got myself the NOOK Book version of A Game of Thrones. For reference, the NOOK Book version of the novel has 753 pages, some 733 of which are the actual story versus the final 20 NOOK Book pages which are an appendix listing the relationships of the different characters in the story.

I’m not sure how deep into detail I want to get with respect to the story itself, but there are a few major, overarching points that I want to make about this book.

First, A Game of Thrones does not read like a fantasy or science fiction story except in certain places. Other than the opening prologue, the reader has to wait hundreds (literally, hundreds) of pages before any event occurs that is actually supernatural in its nature. Further, the reader isn’t treated to a second supernatural, fantastical event until the very last page or two of the book. And even at that, after the reader gets through 733 pages of this “fantasy” novel the fantastical event at the end of the novel is good, but not enough in this reader’s mind.

Second, this is a long book. A really long book. As a reader, I enjoy long books because they give me a chance to get wrapped up in a story and really try to understand the perspectives of the characters, why they do what they do, what larger issues are being commented on by the story/author, etc. I didn’t get much of that from A Game of Thrones and, frankly, the lack of both character depth and progressive character development for the majority of these 733 pages is alarming. Based just upon the character depth and development alone, I’m shocked that A Game of Thrones made its way to the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Shocked.

Third, while I eventually began to accept what A Game of Thrones had to offer, I can’t really say that I enjoyed reading the book. Don’t misunderstand – I didn’t loathe reading the book. If I hated A Game of Thrones I would have just stopped reading it and went on to the next book in my unread stack. There’s something in this story… there’s something there that made me – as a fan of fantasy and science fiction writing – want to see the superiority and depth of this story and its characters. But I just couldn’t get myself into it that deeply.

The story of the Stark family ruling at Winterfell, being split up, and ultimately having the head of the family decimated in King’s Landing after King Robert dies is certainly a good story. But the reasons behind the various actions that lead to the end of the novel are not that deep. Look, the Lannisters are scumbags and they do whatever they want to do without regarding for right or wrong. They put an inbred young king on the throne who doesn’t even know that his father is actually his uncle and I guess that there is supposed to be more of a gripping story than appears to the naked eye there, but I didn’t see it. However, a more compelling story for this reader was that of Dany and her brother Viserys and their interactions with the Dothraki. And yet even in that story, Martin (seemingly randomly) chooses to kill off one of the most interesting characters in the novel, Khal Drogo, to reach the storyline progression that is achieved at the end of A Game of Thrones. It just seemed to me that in terms of storytelling, Drogo could have made it a little bit further in the story.

There are a variety of lesser stories interwoven throughout the novel that also have potential, such as the stories regarding the Mormont family, the different characters and their interactions in the Night’s Watch, the Others beyond the Wall, etc. But Martin doesn’t really get into those stories too much. One would think that with 733 pages of story, he could dive into one of those sub-stories and really give it some color. The again, if he chose not to give a depth of color to the main characters, I guess it would seem silly to do that with the minor ones instead.

I know this NOOK Book review seems more like I’m complaining than anything else, but I just can’t figure out what my exact gripe is with A Game of Thrones. My gripe is not that the story is mostly sluggish or mostly boring – I can imagine many folks enjoying this read. And my gripe also doesn’t have to do with the extremely repetitive words and phrases that Martin uses throughout the novel (if I read that a character ate something “to break his/her fast” again or that a warrior was robed in armor that looked like “a lobster,” I’m going to punch someone).

In general, I think my problem with A Game of Thrones is that it really does take hundreds of pages for Martin to reveal a plot point that any astute reader had probably already discovered and processed the moment that the plot point was hinted at… hundreds of pages earlier. In addition, while Martin’s writing style isn’t necessarily bad, his narration style leaves a lot to be desired. A Game of Thrones does not benefit by the way Martin jumps from one part of the story to the next (very similar to the way the Lord of the Rings movies follows the progression of the story). Aside from being distracting to the discerning reader, jumping from one scene to a completely different one reveals another one of my gripes with this story – it seems to have almost been written in a format that would make it easily adaptable to television.

After 733 pages of NOOK Book reading, I can’t quite put my finger on the element of the book that makes A Game of Thrones a hit show on HBO. However, there is little doubt in my mind that this story was written – at least in part – from a desire to see the characters come to life on film or television and that is what is at the core of what bothers me. When you read a book like Tarzan or a book like The Hobbit or a series like The Lord of The Rings, you aren’t reading about characters who were created to eventually be placed on the big screen. Go back and read a book like Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe and tell me if you think that the characters in those books were written with the express purpose of eventually making a video game or television series based off of the characters. The answer is clearly no (and not just because those mediums of entertainment didn’t exist when the books were published). These books were written to tell a compelling story and let’s be honest – content is king.

The reason why The Lord of the Rings has stood the test of time is because J.R.R. Tolkien created a story with characters that are so deep and with such a rich back story that a fan of fantasy novels can get lost in his legendarium and never cease to be amazed at a new discovery that informs the core story of good versus evil. It’s that content that made Tolkien a master of his craft. And in truth, it’s that lack of content – the lack of any compelling, overarching reason as to why events are happening – that brings down A Game of Thrones for this reader. I understand that there are other books in this series. However, I have to ask the question – if a deeper, compelling story isn’t revealed after 733 NOOK Book pages of reading, then what else is there? Could Martin have made the next books in this series any less substantive, any less dramatic, any more unnecessarily graphic, or any more frustrating to read than A Game of Thrones? I have access to the next book in this series, but I’m unsure if I’m going to read it yet. I might give the first chapter a try just to see what’s doing.

For those of you out there who are looking for something different to read – A Game of Thrones is definitely different. However, if you’re looking for a good science fiction series or a fantasy series with a deep, compelling story to get into, then I don’t think that A Game of Thrones is for you. The story isn’t quite science fiction nor is it quite fantasy except in very few, very brief instances in its 733 pages. And for a science fiction or fantasy fan, that’s just not enough. The book is long – that’s for sure. But length aside, A Game of Thrones is a case where quantity does not equal quality.