The End of an Experiment

Well, I have returned my blog to its former tasteful and unoffensive color scheme. Hopefully my brief attempt at template customization didn't cost me too great a portion of my already scant readership. I think we can all identify with the desire to appear different from everyone else, but it is at one's own peril that one ignores a universal law of computers: Don't Mess With The Defaults.

So welcome back to the old, familiar, palatable palette. Henceforth, bursts of creativity will hopefully be channeled toward more suitable outlets.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I've been reading the book of Amos. I don't like it. There's this part in chapter 4 where God goes off on Israel about how he's taken away their rain, sent them all kinds of pestilence and mildew, and they STILL haven't gotten their shit together, so now they're pretty much in need of some serious smiting. Sounds a lot like No Child Left Behind logic; if you don't do well, we'll keep taking away things you need until you do better. These occasional images of God behaving in an entirely inappropriate manner for a loving deity always throw me a bit, but what's really unnerving is that they don't throw me that much. I can always come up with one or more appeasing arguments...

1. The Israelites had a different covenant with God, and this was how they expected and wanted him to act. It fit with how other nations related to their gods, and it was the relationship they had established with Yahweh. He sent his prophets to give them fair warning; sometimes they listened and sometimes they didn't. It was essential to Israel's continued faith/salvation that God follow through on his threats to remind them that he was their God.
2. The Bible, Old Testament and New, has far more examples of a loving and forgiving God than a vengeful one.
3. God is bigger than I can understand and I'm not required to fit all the available information into a coherent picture.
4. This might allow me to use the word 'unbeknownst' on my blog.

Blah blah blah. But still, part of me would like to understand better. Or perhaps, just be more unsettled about it.

Speaking of unsettled, watch people steal cars. Possibly the coolest thing to come from Vancouver since...well, modesty forbears...