Tiger Mom’s controversial book

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Thom

I’d not heard of “Tiger Mom” author Amy Chua until yesterday when my curiosity got the better of me. Evidently this lady who understands that controversy sells books first made herself infamous by launching a broadside in the Mommy Wars with a book claiming that Chinese mothers raise more successful children because of cultural tendencies. Now she and her husband are back with a book claiming that certain groups within America are more successful than other because of their values, culture, and beliefs.

I still wasn’t all that excited until I saw the list Chua identifies as the “successful groups”: Jews, Indians, Chinese, Iranians, Lebanese-Americans, Nigerians, Cuban exiles and Mormons. That perked my interest, since I’m in one of those groups–perhaps the only one not defined by race. But what do these groups have in common? Why would my religion belong on the list? Chua identifies three qualities: A superiority complex, insecurity, and impulse control, according to nbcnews.com.

Whoa. That’s not exactly a complimentary list. And yet it’s spot on. As I look around at LDS culture I have to admit that, while they’re not the terms I would use, they fit well enough. Of course there is certainly more to it than that; those three qualities don’t really begin to tell the real story of my culture, just like I imagine it doesn’t really describe any of the other cultures described. But to quote Obi Wan Kenobi, all these things “are true, from a certain point of view.”

But it’s the last one that caught my eye the most: impulse control. I’m not sure that’s the right word. I suspect you could also substitute discipline, self-denial, focus, prioritization, or a number of otherwords. But it says to me that though the world mocks my culture for its rigidity and “outdated morality”, not giving in to every indulgence has its advantages. Maybe it is impossible to live up to the standard we feel we should, but perhaps it’s also better to aim for the stars and miss and the aim for a pile of excrement and hit. American culture seems increasingly determined to hit that manure pile.

Of course Chua’s book has called down a firestorm. Many are taking it as trying to paint certain races as superior. The authors (Chua and her husband) claim that is not their intent:

“That certain groups do much better in America than others — as measured by income, occupational status, test scores, and so on — is difficult to talk about. In large part, this is because the topic feels so racially charged,” the authors write in their introduction.

However, they go on to note that “the Triple Package is accessible to anyone. “It’s a set of values and beliefs, habits and practices, that individuals from any background can make a part of their lives or their children’s lives, enabling them to pursue success as they define it.”

I’m willing to take them at their word until I read their book (if I do). The fact that Mormons are on the list supports that theory. We are not a race. We are a culture growing up around a religion. And while a majority of our members in the US are probably white, that is not true of our membership worldwide. Yet many elements of Mormon culture transfer well to other parts of the world. We value strong families. We value education and self-improvement. We encourage community involvement. We encourage thrift and self-reliance, but also helping one another giving one another a hand up.

And yes, there’s the “superiority complex” and “insecurity” elements, which we certainly can take too far. Those words are MSNBC’s, not necessarily the authors’, so I’m interested in what words they choose, and why they apply them.

I’m sure this book is going to stir up lots of trouble. I think it was designed to, really. Large parts of America are obsessed with race, and large parts of America are actively trying to alter the culture. For a book to come along and tell them “Hey, you’re getting it wrong” is not going to make them happy. But if the authors are correct that these attributes do contribute to increased success and can be adopted by anyone, people might do well to pay attention rather than dismiss it out of hand.

Posted in Random Musings | 1 Comment

Game Review: Agricola

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Thom

Over Thanksgiving weekend my brother introduced my boys to the game “Agricola.” I caught a brief, confusing glimpse of it when asked to step in for a moment, but what little I saw looked like a complicated version of “The Farming Game.” But my sons insisted it was a really fun game, so when a relative known for giving our kids games and puzzles came looking for hints for Christmas we suggested Agricola.

As with most games, you have to play it a time or two to really understand it. The rules are not as difficult as the Rules make it appear. To their credit, however, the game designers encourage you to try a simplified form of the game first, and then add in the more complex components later.

The idea of the game is that you are a medieval peasant farmer starting out with you and your wife on a piece of land. Over a five year period you need to develop that land, feed your family, upgrade your lodgings, and stockpile resources. Each person in your family represents one action you can engage in per round. The number of available actions is fixed, so if other players get to an important action before you, too bad. You plow fields, build animal pens, gather building materials, have kids, upgrade your ability to process food, and upgrade an expand your hut while the years get shorter and shorter (feels a little too realistic in that regard!).

Typically the game takes about an hour to an hour and a half to play, but the time goes quickly. Each round is a bustle of activity (unless you encounter an indecisive player like me who likes to think too much), and the game moves along at a decent clip. Scoring consists of evaluating each player’s farm and assigning points for the number of each improvement achieved (number of fields plowed, pastures fenced, food collected, animals pastured, house upgrades, etc), and taking away points for the lack of any particular category. Clearly specialization is not the key, as you must develop broadly, and there are point ceilings on each category (after a certain number of sheep, for example, you still only get 3 points).

There are some clear strategies that help win, but there is sufficient complexity to the rules that it’s difficult to do everything perfect and guarantee a win, even though there is very little random factor to the game (ie. no die rolls). One key element is the “Plays First” token, which can be obtained by selecting an action that gives you a little food and the right to go first in the next round. With everyone vying for the same key action spaces, going first or even second can make a significant difference in the game. And yet the food benefit from that space loses value as the game progresses. Early on it’s worth taking it just for the food, later on it’s almost a poor choice. Yet timing can be critical, so grabbing the Plays First token is a very strategic choice.

The major improvements available in the game also make a big difference, as feeding your family is the main obstacle to improving your farm. Early on it’s hard to do both. Major improvements, like ovens and joineries, etc., help increase food production, allowing you to focus on other options. The main issue, however, is competing with your fellow players for limited resources. You’re not directly competing, really, as you don’t every do anything directly to help or hinder one another, but the fight for resources is still intense.

We enjoy Agricola, and after the initial few games to get the feel of the rules, my kids are able to play it without adult guidance. We have yet to add in the advanced rules, however. The game is enough fun without them, and the rules don’t really give you much of an idea why it would be more fun with them. Add to that the fact that the advanced rules, represented by two sets of cards that can be added to play, offer three separate sets of new cards: basic, complex, and interactive. No explanation is giving as to the difference between them, really. Basic and complex are obvious enough, I suppose, but what the devil does “interactive” mean? Isn’t the game already interactive?

One day we’ll find out, and if it’s a tangible difference, I’ll try to return and fill you in.

Extra kudos: There are a lot of little pieces needed to play this game. The game designers include a bundle of ziplock baggies to help you keep them organized, and actually provide more than we needed (many of them are now in use helping keep Descent organized a well).

Ratings: (This is a new feature with this review, but I may back-fill as I get the chance/urge)

Over-all Rating: 7 – A good, fun, solid game that doesn’t require you to be nasty to win.

Lotsa-Pieces: 8 – Walter’s favorite factor–the more the better!
Randomness: 2 – Some cards can come up in a slightly unpredictable order, but very little is truly randomized.
Competition: 5 – You do compete for resources, but there are often alternative sources, and there is little time to waste taking resources simply to spite someone else.
Strategy: 7 – Hard to say until we add in all the rules, but there is a lot to keep track of, and a variety of ways to victory.
Variety: 4 – Also hard to say until we add in all the rules, but at this point there is not a lot of difference from game to game beyond individual results. Each game seems a fair bit like the others.
Will my wife play it: Yes
Will my youngest play it: No

Questionable Elements: Raising animals important to winning, killing animals for food often needed.
Time: 1-2 Hours dependant mostly on number and speed of players, fixed end point.
Players: 1-5 – Playable as solitaire! Scalable to the number of players, but more players increases intensity.
Age Range: 12-16 – My kids are younger than that (10 – 12) and do just fine. It’s fun for adults, too. Seems a rather arbitrary range.

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

The Green Chapel, Part One

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Thom

Ever since I started playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles years ago I’ve been wanting to build my own terrain. Warhammer is a war game using miniatures, played on a (sometimes large) table. Terrain can include hills, forests, rivers, buildings, and so on. I built a series of hills and trees some time ago, but I’ve always wanted to build something really cool, like a castle. At some point I thought up the idea of a chapel, considered to be a holy site by a brotherhood of knights. Since their deity is a goddess of nature, I wanted something that looked like a blend of man-made and nature. I hoped to be able to build something that would look like the chapel is growing out of, or a part of, the ground itself.

The concept I hit upon is a stone chapel that is partly covered by a hill, almost like a hobbit hole or a dugout building. But it’s taken me several years to finally give it a try. During my Christmas vacation I invested in some materials and set to work. As I’ve been reasonably pleased with the results, I thought I’d post some pictures up here. Of course I didn’t think of pictures until I had already done a significant amount of work, but there many times that much work ahead, so that’s probably not a problem.

The first phase was to build the hill part of the building. Now, you should understand that any hill in Warhammer is stepped, so that players can place 20 mm to 25 mm models on the hillside and not have them tip over or slide down. So there is a limit to how realistic-looking one can get. And in this case I did want it to be possible for miniatures to use the hill.

So I began by my 1″ thick foam-core insulation (basically denser styrofoam) and cutting three sections of concentric hills for each side. Beveled, shaped, and stacked, they look something like this:

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The squared out portions is where the chapel itself will go. The hill pretty much forms the two long walls of the chapel, and is supposed to be starting to engulf the front and back as well.

The next step was to build the “roof” part of the chapel. This is important because I want it to appear both as a roof and a continuation of the hill. I built this by cutting three pieces, each again smaller than the previous one, gluing them together, and rough-cutting the shape with a bread-knife. Some people have fancy heated-wire knives for this sort of thing. I wish I did, but until I do enough of these projects to justify the cost, it’s not happening. Anyway, I ended up with a shape something like this:

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You can see I also added a small steeple. This portion of the building is not intended for  miniatures to be able to stand on, except perhaps the very apex of the roof. I ended up measuring badly and making the length a little too short, but it turned out to be something of a benefit later.

I then cut two cross-pieces for the front and back walls of the chapel, and now I had a complete, if rough, structure:

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At this point I decided I needed to make the front and back walls look like a stone chapel. As you can see, they don’t look anything like it yet. My solution was to mark out where the door and windows would go, then start carving the stone texture with my Exacto-knife. After reviewing some pictures of old, stone chapels online, I decided to give it a shot.

I would cut around the outline of each individual stone, then use the head of a yarn-needle to push into each crack and further separate each stone. Then I would bevel the face of every other “stone” to give it more of a 3-D effect. In the picture below you can see I’ve already done my beveling on the left 3/4ths of the wall piece, but the section to the upper right has yet to be shaped.

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Here’s what the chapel looks like when you add the walls back in after shaping:

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It’s starting to get there, but it still needs work. The rough shape needs to be refined to help it all flow together better. Using a variety of tools, including a wood rasp, a kitchen knife, some sandpaper, and an emery board for tight spaces, I smoothed and shaped. Foam-core behaves much like balsa wood in this regard, complete with “sawdust”, though if you use too rough a rasp it shreds more than buffs.

By this point I mounted the entire structure on an even larger base of foam-core so that I could fix it in place while I worked on adding detail. I smoothed the edges and eliminated as many hard edges as possible. It’s starting to look fairly good at this point, if I say so myself:

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This is the back window, which will eventually sport a stained-glass work of art depicting The Lady of the Lake if I can make it work. The next step now, though, is to take some diluted Elmers glue and paint over the entire structure with it. This seals the foam-core, which I understand does not deal well with the chemicals in most spray paints. You protect the foam-core by covering it over in a thin layer that keeps the chemicals off it. Once that’s done I’ll begin painting and flocking. The hills and roof (except the steeple) will be green (paint with an overcoat of flock), and the stonework will be variations around a specific gray or brown stone-like color. I also need to find a way to carve up a door to add to the front and the window for the back.

By then I’ll be ready to detail or touch up any bad spots, and add some more landscaping, like trees or rocks. I’ll be posting more pictures as I go along, and hopefully I’ll have a finished product to show within the next month or two. I’m not on vacation now, so work will slow significantly. It’s been a lot of fun so far, and I’m looking toward to finishing up and putting it all together. I’m pleased it’s turned out so well so far, and look forward to adding to the finished product.

More pictures to come.

Posted in Random Musings | 3 Comments

Honesty is such a lonely word

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Thom

In a recent discussion on MSNBC a good number of the panelists seemed to agree that lying to a corporation is okay. Some even view it as a positive:

“If a lie is being told to a corporation, it’s not really a lie,” Neblett  quipped, shortly after calling a lie about qualifying for the discount “a noble  lie.”

Lying to a corporation is certainly easier, but okay, even noble? They were discussing how Amazon’s parent discount is essentially on the honor system, and that some people are lying about having kids in order to claim a discount they don’t deserve. Many of the panelists thought it was perfectly okay. What are we coming to? This urge to redefine everything in our favor cannot bring anything good; lying is lying is lying. If we cannot trust one another to tell us the truth our basic societal fabric begins to fall apart. This is not hyperbole, it’s the truth.

Think about it. It’s pretty much assumed these days that politicians lie. But if someone is assumed to be a liar, why would we elect them? Because some lies are okay, so long as they serve the greater cause? But if we’re excusing all these lies so that “the right people” can get elected, then why is it Congress suffers from the lowest approval rating of all time and the President’s poll numbers are the lowest of his tenure? Are these people getting the job done? Are they really the “right people”? Is the reason why we have such gridlock in Washington is because they all know they were elected because they’re good liars, and therefore they can’t trust each other? If the quickest way to tell if our political class is lying is “if their lips are moving”, it can’t be easy to get anything done trying to work with these people.

One of my children is (hopefully) learning a lesson right now that you can only get away with dishonesty for so long before people start to catch on. This child is now experiencing the results of a loss of trust as everything they do is monitored. Even past actions are being re-evaluated in light of this change in trust. This child is going to have an uncomfortable life until trust is restored.

But increasingly in the world outside my front door lying is barely even noticed, let alone punished. More and more the default mode for most people is just to assume that the other person is lying. It’s not paranoid, it’s just being safe. The idea that lying in pursuit of some cause is okay will only serve to intensify the problem. Everyone has a cause they’d be willing to lie for if they thought they could get away with it. Do the ends really justify the means?

It seems more and more these days the only people who get into trouble are those who tell the truth. As the Phil Robertson hubbub recently revealed, people would rather you lied or kept silent, and there are people waiting to pounce on you if you dare to tell the truth about what you believe. Al Gore couldn’t have chose a more appropriate name for our age when he named his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Honesty is inconvenient these days, even dangerous. Safety lies in lies. Pardon me if that’s not the world I want to live in.

Posted in Random Musings | 1 Comment

Game Review: Descent – Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition)

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Thom

Several months ago my daughter came home from a sleepover and reported we needed to buy the game “Descent”. From what she said, it sounded like a watered-down version of D&D. Some time after that I got a chance to play it myself and decided it wasn’t bad, but it was confusing. Still, when I got a gift certificate from work I used it to pick up a copy for the kids for Christmas.

Well, now that I’ve had a chance to read the rules, it’s a lot less confusing. It’s actually fairly fun. But it really is D&D light. You have objectives to accomplish with each encounter, but any sense of a plot arch is accomplished through “cut scene” story blurbs. The actual play session consists of accomplishing specific goal-oriented actions while in the middle of a fight. Rather than have a DM, you have a player playing the “Overlord”, which gives them control of a number of monsters trying to foil the “heroes” in their objectives, or trying to achieve their own objectives. The heroes buy new weapons, armor, and other items, gain new skills and attributes, and find helpful treasure. The overlord player uses a deck of in-game boosts which he can enhance and  customize over the course of the campaign.

Winning scenarios gives one side or the other a slight advantage in subsequent scenarios, and some scenarios are definitely sacked against a particular side. But their unique campaign system pretty much ensures the group will go through the entire campaign one way or another. The board itself is made up by selecting sets of interlocking terrain segments and fitting them together in configurations mapped out in the quest guide. One side of the piece is outdoor terrain, the other indoor terrain that often can double for both a cave or a castle. The heroes and the monsters they fight are represented by miniatures, and various in-game objectives or effects are designated by cardboard tokens.

It’s not really a role-playing game per se.The players can pick from a set of pre-made characters, and may add some characterization if they wish, but it’s really a sophisticated board game. No role-play is required. This makes it perfect for my kids, who are still a little young to understand the nuances of RPGs. They are more action oriented, so Descent is perfect for them. There’s also the added bonus of it being a cooperative game. They’re the heroes, I’m the Overlord. They work together to defeat me, and I’m finding they are really capable of some ingenious cooperation when they want to be.

My problem is that I can’t help but think of my role as being the dungeon master, not an opponent player. I try to make things difficult for them, but I can’t get past the idea that I’m supposed to let them win over-all. That’s not necessarily how the game is supposed to go. Still, I don’t mind. It’s just fun to watch them get excited over their collective successes. As a dad, that’s family-time gold.

I like Descent. We’ll be looking for expansions before long. It’s a great “gateway drug” to tie my kids over until they’re old enough for some real RPG fun. Someday the game will get old, but I suspect we’ve got a few years at least before that happens.

Ratings:

Over-all Rating: 7 – Very enjoyable, builds camaradarie, even with the “enemy”. May not have as much re-play value.

Lotsa-Pieces: 10 – This game takes a lot of setup time.
Randomness: 6 – A lot of actions are decided by die-rolls, but there are enough of them that averages will usually win out. When statistical improbabilities do occur it actually can enhance the fun. A number of factors on both sides are available to mitigate the catastrophe of a single bad roll.
Competition: 5 – Most of the players will be cooperating, but you are directly opposed to another player. Some may find a strong Overlord player to be an asset, while others may dislike his direct and complete opposition.
Strategy: 4 – There are individual tactics to pursue in each encounter, but the over-all structure does not lend itself to significant strategy formulation.
Variety: 4 – Each encounter has different objectives, but it’s usually 60% hack-n-slash, 30% dealing with changing objectives, 10% gathering treasure. The game mechanics don’t allow for much variation from that. And once you’ve completed a campaign there is even less variety beyond changing characters to play.
Will my wife play it: No
Will my youngest play it: Yes

Questionable Elements: Dark and/or supernatural elements, such as vampires and in-game descriptions not appropriate for young children.
Time: 1 hours average per encounter, 15-20 hours for a campaign. Individual encounters can vary in length +/- half an hour.
Players: 2-5 – Three (one overlord, two heroes) minimum recommended for best interaction.
Age Range: Game says 14+. None of my kids are that old (8 – 12 years), and they love it–and do quite well.

Posted in Reviews | 6 Comments

Happy New Year!

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Thom

Some of my friends are already in 2014, so I may as well get a head start here.

May the new year be everything you could want. May it be filled with love and friendship, and may your blessings exceed your expectations. May the Good Lord keep you safe and secure, and bless you with health and wealth enough to keep want at bay. May your families grow closer, and your trials farther apart. May you know only enough sadness to keep you appreciative of its absence, and may you know happiness sufficient to heal the hurts of life. May you learn something new, and may your knowledge and experience continue to mature into wisdom.

And most of all, may you continue to put up with me.

Thank you all for…you.

Posted in Gratitude, Random Musings | Comments Off on Happy New Year!

Fast away the old year passes

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Thom

Hail the new, ye lads in glasses.

It’s been a pretty good year, all things considered; a year of incremental improvements. We got our roof replaced, and now we don’t get drips or enormous icicles beneath the eaves over our front door. I got the fence replaced before it fell down, and even put up a new fence to screen part of our driveway area. Our garden was a little better this year, and we got some really nice fruit from some of our trees. The shed and garage are better organized. The kids are a year older and wiser (whereas I’m just older), and we’ve found some really fun games we all like to play.

At work I’ve gone from working on an obscure and misunderstood project to being heavily involved on one of the more key projects in the company. I got a new manager who liked and supported me (and got me assigned to the aforementioned key project) to a manager who liked and championed me, to a manager who seems to like me, but I’m still figuring out.

My daughter won’t get her braces off until spring, but the two-year payment contract has ended, at least. We found a sport for my youngest son that he’s crazy about–and crazy good at. My middle son tried a new position in baseball and made some significant improvement, and has a teacher at school that he really likes–and who doesn’t load him down with weird homework that gets his back up.

The business in which I’m a partner has had its best year yet, and survived another attempt by at least one game console manufacturer to eliminate our industry, ensuring at least a few more years before they try again. We’ve also been able to position ourselves for growth in the new year while capitalizing on the commercial demise of a competitor.

There have been some setbacks and disappointments, too, but it’d be silly to dwell on those. It’s been a good year. I’m grateful for that. I’m feeling optimistic about the new year*, though our plans are just beginning to form. I’ll settle easily for keeping everyone healthy, happy, fed and clothed. There is much to be said for that.

Thank you all for being my friend, and for sticking by me even when I’ve been a bit of a jerk* (or worse). All the best to you and yours for the new year. May your year be rife with incremental improvements (or better).

*- Cue commentary from Bill 😉

Posted in Gratitude | 1 Comment

Thank you all!

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Thom

We had a good Christmas. And, from looking around, the publishing companies had a good Christmas, too. I need to build another bookshelf.

Thank you all for your kind wishes and generosity toward our family. We are truly blessed to have such good family and friends.

And now we’re on final approach toward 2014. It’s been a good year, but there is always room for improvement–self-improvement especially. There will be much self-evaluation over the next week. You probably won’t be surprised if some of it makes it into a post or two.

We saw The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug yesterday. It was better than the first movie, but still overdone. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings in the slightest if they didn’t wind up each movie with a half-hour, physics-defying action sequence. There is no rule anywhere that says every movie has to be nearly three hours long, you know. Let Bilbo go talk to the dragon, sneak back out again, and then send Smaug off to lay waste to everything. You can skip all the running and screaming bits in between. Honest.

On the other hand, I now have a much greater appreciation for dragon hunters. Just how do you go about killing something that big? Smaug was truly magnificent. And I didn’t mind the romantic side-story so much. And we can all envy Legolas; not only does he live forever, but he actually gets younger looking as time goes on. 😉  (One of the disadvantages of using young actors is that they can age noticeably in a few years’ time, which is a bummer if you’re filing a prequel.)

Anyway, life is good, but busy. Posting may be light for awhile.

 

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Book Review: Tuesdays at the Castle, by Jessica Day George

Posted on December 26, 2013 by Thom

I found this book quite by accident. I was with my children at the library, killing time while my wife worked on Christmas projects. My kids had already found books and had settled in on couches to read, so I thought I would join them. This book caught my eye, and remembering Jessica Day George had been an interesting guest on Writing Excuses, I decided to pass the time with it until time to home.

I ended up checking it out, taking it home with me, and rushing it to the head of the line of all the other books I’m currently reading. It’s light and enormously fun, and not a long read. And it has one of the best openings I’ve read in a while. Within two pages George has set the scene so well you know you’re in for a treat.

The story is about three royal children (or rather two royal teenagers and a child) who are forced to defend themselves and their castle when their parents disappear. Only the castle is a magical structure with a mind of its own, and it clearly loves Celia, the youngest. I don’t recall a story where a building is a main character, but this is one, and Day does it well. Well enough that I didn’t realize until after I was finished reading it that Day never really explains why the castle, which clearly could, doesn’t just kick all the bad guys out and save the day itself.

But I was having so much fun with the book that there was never really much opportunity for that question to raise itself until I was finished. It’s not every day a book helps me recapture some of my childish sense of wonder, but this one did. She’s got a sequel out, I understand. I’ll have to put it on my list.

It’s middle-grade fiction, or perhaps younger. There’s no swearing, very little violence, and not much intense danger. I plan to read it to my kids soon.

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Merry Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2013 by Thom

I’m about to wax religious here, so if that sort of thing bothers you, please come back another day.

Over two thousand years ago perhaps the single most important event in history occurred. The son of God came to earth as a child. This was not just to fulfill prophecy or make some point. It was part of the plan of a just and merciful god to provide a savior to save us from our sins and succor us in our mortal condition. Christ could not empathize with us in our circumstances if he did not go through the full gamut of human experience himself. We cannot fully put ourselves in another person’s shoes, but Christ can.

What is more, in taking upon himself the pains of our sins, he experienced suffering far beyond anything we could ever endure. Yet he does not consider us wimps for not being able to bear even our own infirmities and sins. On the contrary, he understands, and when we turn to him he comes to our aid. He doesn’t necessarily remove our burdens, but he does take part of the load while we gain strength.

But most importantly, of course, he paid the price for our sins. If we are willing to accept him as our savior he offers forgiveness, so long as we pay him back on his terms. While among us on earth he was quick to offer forgiveness, coupled with the injunction “Go and sin no more.” Yes, it is through faith that we gain forgiveness, and yet if that faith does not manifest itself in a change of heart it is not truly faith. True faith is strong enough to change even our actions. Yes, it is through grace that we are saved, but if nothing changes on our part then we have not truly accepted him as our savior. Christ sacrificed himself to save us from our sins, not necessarily in our sins, though it’s pretty much a given we won’t be perfect by Judgment Day and there will still be a sizable amount of unrepented sins that his grace will need to cover.

How grateful I am that Jesus Christ, our eldest brother, came to earth and paved the way for all of us to find our way home to our Heavenly Father. I cannot begin to fathom what he went through for us, nor the love that would be necessary for him to do so. As the world grows increasingly embarrassed about religion in general and Christ in particular, I want to raise my voice as one who still believes. They may try to turn Christmas into just another holiday, but so long as the tradition of gift-giving remains, there will still be a spirit of Christ in Christmas. Any time we overcome our selfish natures to do something nice from someone else we are connect with the spirit of Christ within us.

I still believe, and not in some diluted Christ, nothing more than a master teacher who gave us a subversive moral code. I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Creator of Earth and Heaven, the Redeemer of mankind, and guide to all who would follow Him. I believe in the Christ who knows us each individually and can help us in unique and powerful ways. I believe in the God made flesh, coming to earth as a baby and growing to manhood while experiencing firsthand the trials and travails of humanity, and eventually giving himself as a sacrifice to open the doors of mercy.

The challenge is to not just remember Christ at Christmas, but throughout the year. Not just through carols and gifts, but through following his example and in doing good to our brothers and sisters. For when we have done it unto the least of these our brethren we have done it unto Him.

I believe, but I do not thank Him enough. I do not repent sufficiently. I fall far short of my potential as a child of God. But I hope to be a  little better tomorrow than I was, a better person next year than I have been. I hope to give a little more of my heart, a little more of my will over to my Savior so that he may make of me much more than I could hope to make of myself.

Let us commit ourselves at this Christmas time to go forward, following Christ’s example. Let us demonstrate our faith through the way we treat those around us. Let us open our hearts to Him to make of us something better. Let us not be found doing good only at Christmas.

 

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