One of the more puzzling things written in the Bible are during Christ’s last moments when he said “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” For some reason the traditional explanation is that this was Christ’s moment of doubt and pain. If that were the case, then he would have sinned. To accuse God of forsaking them is a sin for anyone. I know some will say “Jesus couldn’t sin”, but that’s foolish. That’s also shortchanging his painstaking life and death to say that he didn’t have the ability to sin. To pay such a heavy price of the sins of our creation, it wouldn’t be right if God cheated and made it to where his Messiah didn’t have the ability to sin. Plus, Satan did tempt Jesus in the desert. Why tempt someone that didn’t have the ability to sin? Why would Satan waste his breath? Satan knew exactly who Jesus was and knew he had the ability to sin. How many of you has he come to and offered all of the kingdoms of the world to? None.

So why wasn’t what Jesus said on the cross a sin? The genius of what Jesus was referring to is beyond amazing. Jesus saying "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was designed to make a wise person ask why that wasn't a sin. As long as they aren’t too influenced by the traditional teaching of men, the question is designed to make them hunt for the answer. He wasn't talking to God, and I'll prove it. “He said ‘my God, why hast thou forsaken me”, so of course he was talking to God.” Well, actually that isn’t the case at all.

What Jesus did by saying that on the cross was to fulfill scripture. What scripture? Psalm 22. Psalm 22 starts off by saying “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It’s been there the whole time. Read that psalm down to verse 16 and it says “For dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet.” That is how Christ died. He had his hands and feet pierced, did he not? When were the psalms written? Most, if not all of the psalms were written by King David around 1000 BC. This was written a thousand years before Christ was on the cross. What is more amazing is when you really analyze that whole thing, the Jews knew nothing of crucifixion until the Romans came in 76 BC. This was written around nine hundred years before that. Psalm 22 is obviously the prophecy of the Messiah’s last moments. Only the truly blind will say it is not after reading it, which I had one try to tell me not too long ago, but that was more like a man that would not admit he's wrong. The willfully blind.

Why Jesus didn’t sin when he said that on the cross was because he wasn’t talking to God at all. He was fulfilling scripture. He was saying Psalm 22 is him. That shows how genius Psalm 22 even is. It’s supposed to, when Jesus repeats it on the cross, make us ask “why wasn’t that a sin?” So it’s up to us to find the answer somewhere.

Not only does it prove Jesus was the Messiah, to which no decent explanation by an atheist can come up with as a counter, but it also brings the Old and the New Testaments together. It proves there must be a prophetic author. It proves that both books are written by God through the Holy Spirit and out of His elect. Just by that psalm and what Jesus said on the cross proves all of these things beyond any skeptic’s analytical power attempting to tear it down. They can’t do it. Point this out to them and see if they can. Watch them scramble and struggle to find an answer for this. God bless.

I love genuinely good people. It’s sad to say but there are very few genuinely good people anymore. In this day and age, good seems to have no identity. People look down on good. Good has become an enemy to the masses. People, while they find good to be tedious and boring, envy evil or certainly very flawed things. Even many of those who don’t envy evil basically claim that there is no evil. Just “misunderstood”. People nowadays like to make this great gray area so that way they feel smarter than they really are. People are so egotistical anymore. They don’t want to accept things as black and white. They can’t feel smart doing that. They’d feel simple and like the rest of society. They can’t have that so they not only question everything, but disagree with everything. If Hitler was around nowadays, people wouldn’t be calling him evil either. “There must be reasons why he’s doing what he’s doing” they would say. Not to brag, but I have a very high IQ according to a real test. It’s not even good for much. Only real good thing about it is when I hear people call others who believe the same things I do, or agree with the same points as I do “stupid”, then knowing this person who’s calling us “stupid” doesn’t have nearly as high of an IQ as I do. I’m much more proud of my grasp of common sense. My sense of right and wrong. To be able to admit that I just might be wrong. To know that I cannot outthink God. To understand that just because I have the ability to think of something it doesn’t equate it with a fact. The reason I mention my IQ is because from experience I can say that these personal debates on what causes people to do certain things gets you nowhere. It’s all an elaborate display of the mind to raise the ego. It’s all futile though when you cut down to the chase. Everything you can come up with still takes you to the same destination. It’s either right or wrong. Things ARE black and white. There IS right and wrong. There IS good and evil. Yes, it’s that simple. I guess luckily for me, I realized I can’t outthink what my conscience tells me so there’s no reason for me to try. I don’t care how smart or dumb I am. I know what is right and what is wrong. Everyone has the ability to do that. It’s only those who want to hold the complete opposite opinions as conventional thinking that distort that ability. People who want to feel smart want to complicate things because that way it’s no longer simple. Their questions are not what they think most people can think of. I think most can, given time. Anyone can twist things with their mind until they arrive to the conclusion they want to reach. Anyone can. That’s not being honest with oneself though.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown wiser. I’m more mature and appreciate things that are good more than I used to. I never really took good things or people for granted, but there’s always room to appreciate good times with good people more. A couple of years ago, I lost a friend due to an accident. It had been a while since I saw him, but for years there I saw him nearly everyday. He was very good. Not only was I friends with him, but friends with his whole family. His dad is one hell of a character. I spent more time with his dad than I did with anyone in the family. We were close. He’s a very good man as well. His more than beautiful sister is a treasure in the highest sense. Her strength during the funeral was unbelievable and admirable. She didn’t only deal with her own pain of loss and shock of the whole situation, but she took on her mother’s overwhelming grief as well. I knew she was the strongest person I had ever met. What I saw only confirmed that. The mother is such a sweet, wonderful woman. She has such a great motherly instinct. Everything that she did was for her family first. She did it all out of pleasure, not just out of duty. Her children mean everything to her. Even though she was an older woman, she possessed a great innocence. Now that innocence has been taken away. They will never be the same. All because of a moment. A blink of the eye. Life goes on for them and their strength will carry them through. The whole family is a remarkable one. If I had a family of my own, I’d want an exact replica of theirs. God bless them.

I guess my whole point in this blog is that we should all get a strong grasp of good and hold it in our clutches. Whether the good be just a time or a person, we should hold onto it. First of all, we need to learn to find good. What is good? That’s something for you to figure out. Your conscience will tell you. How good in touch are you with your conscience? How many times have you compromised with that trusty voice in your head telling you not to do the wrong thing? The more you do that, the more quiet your conscience becomes. Then you will not know what good and evil is. You’ll inflate that gray line and you’ll understand why people do the wrong things because you do it too. You’ll be a kindred spirit with them. Confused and torn. People don’t want to be told what they are doing is wrong by anyone, including themselves. Hopefully before you get to that point, you’ll keep a firm grasp on what good is and what your conscience tells you to do. It’s there for a reason. I know what good is. I also know what evil is. If you know truly good people, then appreciate them as much as you can. Anytime a bad thing can happen to a good person. A good person can be taken away in the blink of an eye. In a world that embraces bad things or certainly very flawed things, it can’t afford to lose good people, but it happens all of the time.

I don’t know how much time I have. My illnesses are deadly. Hopefully I can live out my life in a decent fashion. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a good person. Before I go, whenever that is, I intend to let those good people know that I know they are good. I intend to let them know that the way they lived their life has won my respect and admiration. I intend to thank them for being the light in this dark world we live in. It’s time you do the same.

For those of you confused at the title of my blog, let me esssplain. Baseball is America's most historic pastime. Terrorism in the Arab World seems to be theirs. Do I need to explain everything? : ) Baseball has Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson and many more iconic figures in Americana. The Arab World has Osama Bin Laden, Sheik Abdul Rahman (the blind Arab dude with the Santa Claus hat), Mohammad Atah, Yasser Arafat, and Ahmad Yassin are the icons of the Arab world.

When there is nothing to do, you hate. We have baseball. We also have other things to do. We're too busy to hate for the most part. Plus, we outgrew our Western Europe and Viking history. Thanks to the Greek and Roman cultures I must say. While the Greeks were inventing democracy, Western Europe was never bathing. While the Greeks were thinking, Western Europe was busy scratching their butts with axes. While the Greeks were building society, Western Europe was barely saying "orf". I think orf meant "food". God bless them Greeks! Our melting pot has made us advance swiftly. Adventurous people from all over the world came here, and so became our adventurous spirit. We like to have fun too. Baseball is fun. That's why it took off to such great heights. No sport has the iconic heroes like baseball does in America. These guys were real heroes to Americans. Joe DiMaggio was a hero to every Italian and Yankee fan. The Yankees have a slew of icons in their history. They are the Al Qaeda of American baseball teams. The big boys.

In the Arab World it seems they live to hate. From what I see on television, I don't buy the "it's not most Arabs" cliche. In the Palestinian areas of Israel there were celebrations in the streets when 9/11 happened. They were joyously celebrating while knowing thousands of people have just died. Arafat had his police threaten to kill members of the media who shot these celebrations on video. They didn't keep all of the cameramen from shooting, however. But more than two-thirds of Arabs say 9/11 was morally unjustifiable. When they show Arabs on tv, they always show them with guns, swords, or burning things in effigy. There is a huge disconnect here from this poll and what I see on tv. Usually they show Arabs protesting over something either so small or totally inconsequential to their lives. "The Pope called us violent people?! It's time to kill someone!" Which they did. It seems most of them sees terrorism as their sport, and they play it well. The poll tells a completely different story.

I don't know if they work, come home, treat their wives respectfully, kiss their children, or anything. I do know they want to kill a woman for allowing her students to call a teddy bear "Mohammad" though. I do know they have a fixation with beheading people. I know they love to treat women as poorly as possible too. How can these fathers look at their young daughters, knowing what's ahead of them, and not do everything in their power to see they are not lashed for being raped in the future? I don't know. One woman I know of in Iran was executed because she had sex with an older, unmarried man. Her name was Atefeh Rajabi and she was only sixteen years old. She claims she was sexually assaulted. They hung her in front of a crowd by a crane. While she fought for her life, with her last breaths she kept repeating "repentance". The law there is when someone says "repentance" that they are given at least another appeal. People who are so hellbent on upholding Islamic Law broke the law. This was a young, beautiful woman who died after possibly being sexually assaulted by an older man.

I even see kids out there with AK-47's protesting with their fathers, wanting blood. They have no idea what they're doing. They are kids. Our kids here are playing video games, basketball, football, soccer, and yes, baseball. Theirs shout to kill people right along with their fathers. Chips off the old block. I guess soccer is big in the Arab World, but maybe it's only the moderates who are out there playing soccer. Maybe that's why their voices aren't heard. They know their idiotic neighbors are chanting for someone's death, but they'd rather play soccer. They'd rather have fun than rally against the haters. The ones who are out there protesting all of the time have no heroes like DiMaggio, Ruth, Williams, Mays, Koufax, Ripken, Griffey, Jeter, A. Rod, Mantle, Cobb, Robinson, Maris, or Aaron. They have no heroes. They have martyrs.