"Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else." - Ogden Nash

Today I got a haircut. Attila the Hack was waiting for me.
My card is now full so my next haircut is FREE. Then it's buh-bye!

I'm bumping my bike mileage up this week and today I could feel the pain. But I did it without the aid of PED's and Nike says not to worry about my endorsement contract.

My post-debate musings:

• One of the questioners asked Romney for specifics on how he would lower taxes and what deductions he would eliminate. In response Romney suggested a system in which everyone would receive $x in deductions. (He said $25,000 but said that was a figure for illustration purposes only.) You could take that amount as a mortgage interest deduction, a charitable giving deduction, or any other type you chose. (Presumably you could use it up with some combination of types.) Then you'd pay taxes on everything else.   OK, if everybody gets the same $25k it doesn't really matter how they designate it. It's still gonna be $25k. And if everybody gets it, basically nobody gets it. That is, we all just take the top $25k off our income or - to look at it another way - we have our tax rate reduced to a percentage that works out the same. Add the $25k back in and reduce my percentage accordingly and my bill is the same. What am I missing? Or is this not as clever as I'm supposed to think it is?
• When repeatedly pressed the President admitted he had not looked at his retirement fund and didn't know how big it was or where it was invested. (Romney was making the point that the President also had "money invested in China" by virtue of his retirement fund's portfolio.) Hello!! No wonder we've got a totally screwed up budget a gazillion dollars in the red. The guy in the Oval Office doesn't even know about his own retirement account. And we should trust him with our money?? Shouldn't having a good grasp of your own finances be a qualification for handling the country's?

Worked on my sermon this afternoon. We're just about to the end of our series in Romans, and this Sunday we'll be in 16:27-10 where Paul warns the church in Rome to watch out for false teachers. Lots of implications and applications of that warning, but it occurred to me as a worked the section that there are bad sermons, and then there are bad sermons. I don't want to preach the first kind but I must not preach the second kind. 

Some bad sermons are biblically accurate but delivered poorly. Bad preaching. A poorly organized sermon structure that lacks focus, illustrations that don't, mannerisms that distract from the content, poor time management that either goes way over or rushes through the last section in order to end on time, a flat affect (or an overly dramatic delivery).... The list is endless and I've been guilty of them all. On any given Sunday I commit one or another to some degree. That's why I'm usually disgusted with myself on Sunday afternoons. It's the outcome of teaching homiletics for ten years. 

Then there are bad sermons, the ones that proclaim as biblical truth that which is not. They misrepresent what the Bible (God) says. Sometimes it's just lazy and/or sloppy study, but other times the causes are more sinister and self-serving. Either way the outcome is the same; the preacher proclaims, "Thus saith the Lord" when his words are error. And just as truth produces what is true, error produces what is false. The adage is, "Orthodoxy produces orthopraxis (right living), heterodoxy produces heteropraxis." 

Every week I work at not being a bad preacher. I work harder at not preaching bad sermons. The former will happen so long as I'm human. The latter violates my sacred trust. The former drives me crazy. The fear of the latter is greater than I can describe.