Faith Healers

I believe in God, as many of my readers know. I believe that God can heal disease but I also believe that Jesus was the only legitimate faith healer out there. When anyone claims to be a faith healer that proves to me that they are a fraud.

I went to a Benny Hinn crusade when I was a teenager and I sat right by the wheel chair people and was distinctly unimpressed. No one got up and ran. No one got up and walked that never had before. Many people got up and gave testimony of what they had experienced there but none of the dozen or so wheel chair bound people seated by us were healed there.

I think that believing that going to a person for a supernatural healing is sacrilege. Only God can do it, in my opinion, if he is inclined to do it ask him and he will do it, you do not need the voodoo forces of some mystic. If he is not inclined to, go to the doctor. Science is a gift from God, lets use it and honor him by not being taken in by unsavory charlatans after your money and glory.

I found a particularly dramatic and dangerous case. Here is the video:



http://youtu.be/iKOwDQcPwbs

Here is part two, it contains the short portion that is the reality check, the opinions of a legitimate doctor who has examined these people and found them to be still sick.



http://youtu.be/c03FulCf6LY

I think this is dangerous. People are spending tons of money, going to a healer and getting a potion that has no proven effect. Then they go home and don't go to the doctor and they could have gotten a lot worse in the time it takes to ride out the placebo effect.

WTF? or Who are the True Finns?

I usually do not like to blog about politics especially because it is a hot button issue I know very little about and used to be uninvolved in not having the right to vote in the USA. Now that I live in Finland I can vote, recieved my letter telling me where to vote and when. I have hundreds of candidates to choose from here from a couple of dozen parties. I am just guessing here I have not actually counted or looked up the number and am not going to.

The big parties are Kokoomus and SDP. Currently Kokoomus is in control of the parliament. Other little parties are Vihreät (Greens), Työväen puolue (workingpeople's party) and my current favourite Vasemmisto liitto (the leftist unity). All translations are the best I can do and not necessarily the official translations. There is not polarised conservative liberal divide. There is no conservative at all by American standards, until now. There is a cluster of deformed, hateful, ignorant parties rising up around the monstrosity of the Perus Suomalaiset (my translation would be basic or stereotypical Finns but we will just call them the WTF party).

When ever a member of the WTF party is interviewed on television, they sound uneducated. They lack a proper grasp of the Finnish language. They sound hickish uneducated and aggressive. That is my opinion. Their platform is, get those damn dirty immigrants out, they are all freeloaders and do substandard work and are lazy. When you point out to them that there are plenty of hardworking well educated diligent immigrants they say: "Oh them, they are fine, we are just against those that freeload and wont assimilate." Never mind most immigrants into Finland are here to study, work or following their spouses that do. Finland takes in less refuges based on population than other Scandinavian countries. I spend a lot of time with immigrants and have met no one that fits the description that the WTF party has labeled as the vocal majority and the trouble. Where are they?

They released their statement of principles and there is one particularly troubling part. They state that foreigners are supposed to follow Finnish laws and customs. I thought the first was a given but what does the second part refer to? They do not qualify it further. Are they just referring to eating rye bread, saunaing, swimming in a frozen lake, speaking Finnish etc.? Perhaps they want them to conform to the seedier side of Finnish customs like binge drinking, depression, collecting unemployment while being depressed and binge drinking. Teens drinking alcohol in the backs of busses and cussing loudly at night. I am sure they mean the better side of Finnish custom but being so ambiguous is dangerous, for them, the immigrants and those Finns who care about them. Honestly, is a black man ever going to assimilate to their satisfaction? He can learn Finnish, get a job, pay taxes, become a citizen, vote but they still would not want him to marry one of their daughters unless he could wipe the black off his face.

They are against such high "kotiutumistuki" (settlement aid), what kotiutumistuki? You can't even get it unless you have lived here for like six months and take Finnish classes or go into mol (government employment agency) approved work training. Besides it is not higher than "työmarkkinatuki" that is given to unemployed Finns that have never held jobs to aid them with living expenses so they can find one. Immigrants need that money. They have a hard time finding jobs unless they are very highly trained. Othervise they need the extra time to learn Finnish and to get trained for a job that they have harder time getting because they maybe brown. Discrimination in hiring may be illegal but it does not mean it does not happen. The only difference between kotiutumistuki and työmarkkinatuki is that one is given to immigrants, the other to citizens and kotiutumistuki is given for longer giving the immigrants more of a chance to not only get job training but ALSO to learn Finnish.

I am not saying there are no problems with immigration in Finland. What I am saying is that the WTF party is blowing it way out of proportion. They have no idea what the challenges faced by immigrants are because all the experience they have with it is traveling to other countries, getting plastered for an entire week at a time, acting like an idiot and not remembering a thing about it. That too is another Finnish custom.

Just got done writing a challenging paper. I suck at writing papers. I always do really mediocre. You would think the practice of writing a semi-regular blog would be good practice for this, especially because it was an opinion piece, I write those all the time, right? wrong. Writing this blog has made it easy to throw words on to a page. I can produce a piece of writing fast and painless and with a measure of pleasure, it is calming. Still it does not teach me quality. My quality rarely gets evaluated, worked on and, therefore, never improved on. So, I am like a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters. I produce stuff really fast and it maybe good on occasion, but usually it just tends to wander toward the average.

I'm Sorry

Been busy, but I hope you enjoy this video and find something to think about in it.

In case it did not load right, they usually don't, and I don't know how to fix it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EieFdXy_HwM

History of Values Through Music

So, I don't think it is a secret to anyone how much I love the podcast Skeptoid. The latest episode is just too fun and silly not to share, Brian Dunning, one of the world's foremost skeptics, but not necesarily its singers, creates a great trip through history with the aid of humour, a computer, Peter Zachos and a very heavy dose of autotune. Here is the page for the eantire episode: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4250

Here is just the song.




The video is not showing up right on my page so to get a better version go to the podcast page and scroll down.

Älä alistu!/Don't submit!

So, I found this video because it has caused quite a bit of controversy in Finland and caused 500 resignations from the Lutheran Church the day it was released. It was not put together by the Evangelical Lutheran Church but it was done with their money.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfPjTvTx5-U

Campaign official pages: http://www.nuotta.com/kampanja

If you do not speak Finnish here is the over long and tedious video in a nutshell. "Anni's Story" is the title it is from the "Don't Submit" video campaign. Anni was a bisexual girl. She realized in high school and became quite involved with gay rights and dated a girl in the ninth grade and then they broke up. During this time she was having some problems and met a girl who wanted to just help her with them. One day this girl asked to pray with her and Anni saw the holy spirit. She went to a religious youth camp and became saved. She prayed hard to leave her unholy desires behind and God heard her and she stopped dating girls nor did she really want to. She has been engaged to a man for a year now, she is twenty. She said that being with a woman never really made her feel like a woman, because one had to take the man's role etc.

What really stood out to me is that it is so simple to be rid of lustful impulses. Just admit what you are and give it to God, he will heal you. I would like to say, I do believe that God can heal everything from gout to cancer and it is very much in his power to change a person's sexual orientation or to curb lustful impulses. That being said, lets talk about the practical implications for a young person who hears this. I bet any God believing young person who has this or similar problems has prayed for them. Asking God to change a perceived flaw in you is nothing new. I cannot count the hours I prayed as a teenager begging God to change me, to cure me from this or that affliction. Lustful thoughts were very much featured in those prayers, as was my laziness and other assorted general "badness". God did not cure me, at least not then, of one single one of my flaws. I felt like crap. I felt like a failure. I felt like a bad Christian. I prayed everyday for God to take me to heaven so I could stop constantly failing and sinning. I was tired, I was desperate. What would have Anni's message of easy, reachable fixing have meant to me? It would have meant an ever compounding sense of guilt. It would have isolated my lust for women as an even more heinous crime than my lust for men. Here I had been beating myself up for both indiscriminately.

I call this a suicide inducing flick. Say, it is wrong! It is Sinful! Älä alistu! Don't submit! It can all be made better. God is waiting for you to give your burden to Him and heal you! All that can hold you back now, sinner, is your own lack of faith! Only one you have to blame is yourself. Maybe Anni has more willpower, maybe she has more faith, maybe her prayers are special. Maybe I am failing at this like I fail at everything else because I am too damn lazy to change. Way to rip old wounds open and make me feel like that girl again.

As an end note, God did heal me, but not in the way I expected. He healed me by giving me perspective, understanding and self acceptance, flaws and all. I was good enough for him to die on Calvary for my sins when I was at my worst. Not because I was special or good but because he was and he loved me. He cleansed me when I accepted his cleansing. It does not matter that I am lustful. It does not matter that I am lazy. I am exactly as he created me. This does not mean I need to whore around and not do any work because that is not how he intended me to behave. He intends me to strive for a healthy balanced life. My flaws are really the other side of my virtues. I am lazy because I am laid back. I am content to contemplate and not worry too much about having a spotless house there are more important things in life. I am lusty, but I love my husband and it can be a very positive quality in a marriage when channeled properly and understood for what it is. Now that God has healed me from my low self esteem and depression I can no longer really care about my flaws and can really give them to God, and you know what, stopping the demonization of that part of me has allowed me to not be trapped by lustful thought. When they are no longer forbidden or wrong they take a backseat to more important and interesting thoughts. I am no longer paralyzed by fear and anxiety due to my laziness and am actually able to break the inertia and do what really matters and needs to get done.

Self-acceptance is a wonderful thing. Do not submit to thoughts of self loathing and accept that if you do seek help from God for your problems, which I do recommend, he may not give you the quick fix you want but will allow you to walk down a longer, harder path that will make you a better person and accept yourself, and in the long run that beats a quick fix.

America and Finland

I love living in Finland. Compared to America it is the tops. I am not saying living in America sucks, but it does when you are poor. Being poor in America is a highly degrading hopeless experience. The possibilities are slim to none to succeed and you are blamed for not working hard and ceasing opportunities that are seen to sprout up like mushrooms after a perpetual rain. Now the environment is a little more understanding because the recession hit everyone. For once it was okay to be poor, people understood. The recession was everywhere and it was now the fault of the recession that you were poor, not the fault of your own laziness. I am here to tell you, these troubles did not come about because of the recession, the recession just brought to light the problems America's poor had been having for about a decade or so. The recession took a long time to reach the middle class the poor were screwed for years.

What of the American dream? Well, it is just a dream and has been less and less to do with reality over the years. We had little to no hope for the American dream. For years we scraped by barely making ends meet, frequently relying on food banks and the kindness of friends. It was humiliating and we were judged. Why weren't we working for a better life? Why weren't we improving our lot through job advancement and education? Why weren't we saving money? We did not have enough money for an education, we were ineligible to student loans, there is no student aid from the government, FYI, just loans, think about it. We could not get better jobs because of lack of degrees and in my case lack of a legal status in America. We were not saving money because there was not enough. We went out to eat maybe once every two months, if that and I am talking about McDonalds, and we never went to the movies or anything. Having a computer with internet access was our only form of entertainment that cost money. It was all we could afford and it was the only way to have a social life having no car. There was simply nothing to cut to have more money with out making our lives absolutely bleak. Our only hope was a sudden stroke of luck of a better job or a promotion for my husband. Those things never seemed to materialize, it was like playing the lottery. We still did not have the decency to be miserable. We were able to find fun and entertainment and love each other despite all this and it made people angry who felt like poor people with no real hope should be unhappy.

Now we are in Finland and we are able to work toward the American dream. I do not care what some people say, Finland is a wonderful place to live. My husband is getting free Finnish education in a great school. He is also finally getting his numerous and potentially life threatening not to mention painful dental problems cared for. That would have been an impossibility in America. My son is getting free dental and health care just for being a child. He will have the opportunity to partake of the best education system in the entire word for absolutely free. I am going to be able to get trained for a job and actually work and earn money. Same goes for my husband but first he has to learn Finnish. We are on basic subsistence aid. When they say basic subsistence they mean subsistence, not barely scraping by and wondering what you are going to eat at the end of the month aid like in America. With it we have enough money to actually budget to get a saving account and put a little bit aside every month for surprise expenses and the like. We are no longer hopeless and scared, now we can eat real food and not have to improvise from food pantry discards. We know that if we work hard and cease opportunities we can move up. The American dream is alive in Finland. My vote counts. I can write to political parties and get prompt, non-form letter responses from people that care enough to respond to my actual inquiry and act as if my vote and opinion counts. This is so different than America. What ever people complain about Finland are spoiled and don't know how well they have it. Sure there are problems which is why I will vote and work to make society more like what I want it to be.

So Americans, it is not too late to move to a better country. Has America left you an empty hopeless shell waving the red white and blue sobbing quietly as you face homelessness, unemployment and the hungry hollow faces of your children? It is not to late too emigrate. Take your cold hungry unemployed butt to the library, find some info on a country you would like to live in more and sell what little you have and get a passport and get on out of there. Your family's future depends on it. On the other hand if you are doing well and you have made a profit from the recession investing wisely and buying a cheap house someone was evicted from, I salute you. Help a poor, unemployed neighbor move out of the country to make a new start somewhere else and stop being a drain on the country’s poor resources. Sure the recession is supposedly over but tell that to the poor, they feel no real difference. Soon it is back to being judged and not having the understanding of those around them blaming it on the depression and not their own laziness.