The Bible is full of ideas that are contrary to human common sense. Six times in the Bible do we see Jesus warn us that to save our life, we must lose it, and those that try in their own merit to save their lives will lose their life. Almost as many times we are told that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

One of my favorite opposites in the Bible is this verse:

Proverbs 11:24 – There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.

What a bizarre idea! The man that scattereth his money will increase but the man that withholdeth for himself even more than he should will slide towards poverty. Just like many verses in the Bible, I believe that this also applies to lost people as well as the Christian. Proverbs is full of general wisdom like this that applies to anyone.

How can this be? I believe this verse is talking about or attitude towards money. When we learn to give and let go of our money we  are learning a valuable life philosophy that having money is not the primary goal and as a result, you learn to receive happiness and joy. This results in a greater ability to connect with people, create friendships, and have a more successful life. If you hoard your money, you will develop greedy, miserly attitudes that will develop into nasty habits that will eventually be your downfall.

Learning to give money is an essential life skill to develop. It sounds counter intuitive, but we see right here that the man who withholdeth tendeth to poverty. Learn to give, and if you’re going to give – why not give to the church of God and not some random charity this year?

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1. Parents in the Bible: Prodigal’s Father
2. Tithing In the New Testament
3. 4 Reasons Why Atheists Should Go to Church

He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich. Proverbs 10:4

Notice what the Bible didn’t say would make you rich:

1. Talent
2. Charisma
3. Good looks
4. Good business sense
5. Networking Skills

No, none of these things will make you rich. We would prefer to think that someone who is successful in life had talent or good looks, because in a way it excuses us from not having the same success. After all, how could we be successful if we didn’t have the talent that so-and-so had? The problem though is that it is diligence that creates riches and not talent. And the interesting thing about diligence is that anyone can have that!

So talent doesn’t matter? Well, that’s not necessarily true either. Talent does help, but without diligence it is nothing. Think of it as an equation:

(t) x (w) = results
t=talent, w=work

Everyone has a little bit of talent. We all have a base set of skills that we can use, but if there is no diligence involved in this equation, the results are still pretty low even if you have a lot of talent! Talent also cannot usually be increased, but your hard work can be. Therefore the person with little talent but has diligence will outperform the person that is very talented but does not even put forth any effort.

Stop worrying about how much talent you were given and start multiplying it against a strong work ethic and you will see results in your life.

Related posts:

1. Backsliding?
2. Looking Back
3. Diligence and Hard Work

#1 The Draft

The draft is probably the most important part of the design process. The way I approach drafting is that the goal is determine the composition, possibly the lighting or color scheme, and to experiment with different design elements.

Here you can see that we’ve established how the piece will be lit, and the composition and color scheme. Another idea that I struck on while making this mock up is that the heroes of the faith should read left to right in chronological order. This way the image seems to be telling some kind of story as you look at it. The common theme of the banner is that these people wouldn’t be heroes if it wasn’t for the work of Christ on the cross, so we have a backdrop that ties all these different people from different time periods together.

Now it’s time to find some source images and hopefully tie this whole thing together.

#2 Blocking

This design is not going to be only original artwork. Had I more time, that probably would have been my goal, but it takes a lot of work to render artwork at the resolution needed for a banner. The next step of this process is to find some nice high resolution source images that we can use to block out the main design elements of the image.

Here is where things begin to come together. We have good starting images for all the major scenes with the exception of Paul on the Damascus road who will have to be drawn in manually. Now we have to sharpen these images up and create a common lighting scheme and color balance for each one.

#3 Tie-In’s

Now that we have all of our elements blocked in, it is time to tie all the pictures together. This requires a little luck, patience, and skill. Watch the next three steps and see these unconnected images begin to mesh.

#4 Finishing Touches

The last stage of the picture is to finalize the three elements that need to be more detailed like Paul, Isaac, and Moses. All of these three characters need to be lighted and detailed so they can look like they “belong” with all the other photorealistic elements. Also some of the lighting doesn’t quite work. For example, the Damascus road looks too bright compared to the other scenes. Also the Isaac altar scene doesn’t blend so well with moses and the ark. Let’s fix these last couple of elements:

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1. Designing a Camp Flyer
2. The Design Process: Drafting

If you get a chance, check out the website. http://ana.danwins.com

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That doesn’t mean that I didn’t think the law exam was hard. I walked out of there feeling like I could have failed. The kicker is that NABP curves the exam so much that there is no excuse for failing it (unless of course you can’t speak english, but then maybe an english speaking career isn’t right for you…) . This is straight from the NABP:

The minimum acceptable passing score on the MPJE scale is 75. The passing score reported is NOT a percentage value. The score is calculated by first determining the candidate’s ability level on the MPJE and then comparing the candidate’s ability level to the predetermined minimum acceptable ability level established for the MPJE.

What this really means is that no one really knows what it means. What exactly is the “predetermined minimum acceptable ability level”? All I can tell you is that this magic level must be insanely low.

Let me explain. I would like to say that I took studying for New York State pharmacy law very seriously. In fact, I spent several days in a library studying. I could tell you exactly how long every type of record needs to be kept, what forms to use for which DEA function, prescribing privileges for optometrists, narcotic safe construction requirements, and a host of other law minutiae.

But whoever wrote the MPJE for New York didn’t seem to care about all that stuff. Instead I was asked to apply the law to weird situations that would likely never occur in real life. How weird? Here’s a fictional example:

Mrs. Jones’ seeing eye dog becomes rabid and runs into the pharmacy ripping open bottles and spewing saliva everywhere. To whom should you report this incident?

1. Local law enforcement
2. FDA
3. PETA
4. Board of Pharmacy
5. Your Mother-in-Law

I’m sure you get the idea. I was well prepared, but of all the questions I received, maybe on only 5% of them was I sure of the answer. How can someone only feel like they got 5% of the questions correct and walk out of the examination with an 87?  Maybe this means that the NABP has very low minimum standards for pharmacists, and after being in the profession for several years let me tell you: that doesn’t surprise me. I know many excellent pharmacists and I would say 99% of my colleagues are very competent at their jobs. But I have seen the bottom of the barrel and the pharmacists down there are so bad that I always had to wonder how they passed their board exams. Now I know how they did it.

I was going to write another post about the NAPLEX exam, but I think my feelings are so similar that I’ll just ditto it here. The one major difference with the NAPLEX is that while there were many tough clinical questions and patient profiles to wade through, as long as you can do basic pharmacy math (think algebra and no pharmacokinetics) you will pass.

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2. NYS Pharmacy Wet Lab Part 2

Clearing out all of the abusers in the system would go a long way to fixing our society that is off balance with too many people siphoning out money and too few creating it. But why do we need welfare in the first place?

Now of course, I will agree with you that there are people who are mentally or physically “challenged” (gotta be PC) who under normal circumstances would not be able to provide for themselves. Then there are children or the elderly who cannot work. I’m sure that there are other examples of people who could genuinely need welfare. But the real question is who should provide this aid? An easy answer is of course, the government but I believe this is an error from which we already see the negative fruit.

God didn’t intend for the government to tie our shoes for us, but to provide order and protection. What we end up seeing is a system that is designed to help those who cannot help themselves, but is abused by many more who should not be able to use it in the first place.

So let’s imagine a world in which government welfare does not exist. Suddenly all those able-bodied people who were sitting on their butts are starving to death, which as it turns out, is a great motivator to get a job. Sure there is a rough transition, but now we are left with the small percentage who still cannot work and maybe even through no fault of their own due to disability. Do we need a government program? Well we know that doesn’t work. So what now?

This is where I had my epiphany. The family and the church are the two institutions that God designed to care for these people – not the government. And the disintegration of the family unit and the neglect for God and the church is where we fail as a nation so badly that the government has to step in.

Proverbs 22:9 – He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor
Proverbs 28:27 – He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse.

Galations 2:10 – Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do.

1 Tim 5:1-5 – Honor widows who are widows indeed

These verses show our personal responsibility to help the poor, but also the church’s responsibility. It should also go without saying that families should care for their own that are incapable of doing so for themselves. Remember that if you don’t provide for your own house you are worse than an infidel. If families would provide for their own children, elderly and mentally challenged there would be no need for the government to do so. The problem is that families are more fractured, disjointed, and dysfunctional than several decades ago.

In a situation where a family could not care for someone, the church should help (with some qualifications). In 1 Tim 5, we see this exact situation. A widow without family and no way to provide for herself should be cared for by the church. But in order to qualify she has to have no other means of providing (re-marriage) and also be a dedicated, faithful member of the church. I think those are good stipulations for anyone seeking assistance from the local church. The problem again is that Americans do not care about God like in times past. God is far from our thoughts as is church attendance. We would rather get free handouts from the church then be dedicated faithful members.

The welfare problem needs a big dose of Christianity before it will ever be solved.

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There are several disturbing parts to this image. First and most obvious are the spelling mistakes. “Temporarily” is not necessarily an easy word to spell, but hey if you’re unsure, why not ask someone? The second mistake is a lot less forgivable. If you just say that word the way it’s spelled you will feel a little funny on the inside.

I realize that we don’t always have the best and brightest people serving us at the big box stores, but I remember the day when everyone at least knew how to spell. What does it say about the public school system when a high school graduate can’t spell common words?

The second thing that makes me scratch my head is that a customer actually took the time to correct the spelling and yet the sign still hangs there in bold defiance! That’s like leaving the house in your underwear and when your boss says something you just smile and leave him a thank you note instead of running back to the car to find something to wear.

The staff writes “Thank you” in response – and then still leaves the sign hanging…

Yes, thank you Mr. Customer for showing the world how ignorant we are. We will leave this symbol of our stupidity up as a token of our appreciation.

Surely a sharpie + notebook paper sign could not be that costly to reproduce correctly?

Anyway, I hope that this was an outlier and that the future of our country will not be “inconvienced” by our educational neglect.

Have a nice day.

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And what about that verse in Ephesians that says “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:” ?  Other (mis)translations of the Bible go even further with this verse. The Message bible even says, “Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.”

Thats right. Go ahead and be angry – it’s all good!

Well, the Bible actually has a lot more to say about anger than is found in Ephesians 4:26, but I find that verse is singularly quoted in support of “godly”, “christian”, or “righteous” anger.

Can anger be amoral? Is it just a neutral emotion that God gave us that can be used for good or for evil? I think this is a silly argument.

COLOSSIANS 3:8: But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

Is anger amoral, but wrath, malice, blasphemy, and filthy communication are not? This is just the tip of the iceberg of what the Bible says about the topic of anger.

Anger is primarily a tool that the devil uses to destroys families. Above all else this is where the destructive power of anger is most evident. In most of our day-to-day living when we put on our show for everyone else, most people don’t have an anger problem. We don’t want people to see us as short-tempered or out of control. But inside the home, without the inhibitions of what others will think, anger will often rear its ugly head.

Personally, I do not have an angry temperament. At least I thought I didn’t. But as a man with his own home and a family, I am utterly shocked at how easy it is to become angry. The temptation of a quick fix makes anger look so appealing, but as I quickly discovered, the end of anger is always destruction.

This new discovery put me on a quest to find out exactly what the Bible says about anger, and whether or not it can be used in a righteous manner as I had previously thought.

In my next few posts, we will look at all the verses the Bible uses to teach us what to do with our anger. In the end I hope you will discover a few things with me:

1. There is never any  justification to become angry.
2. Anger, when wielded by people, is never used appropriately and is always sinful.
3. The only person who can be angry appropriately or have “righteous” anger is God himself.

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1. Context Matters
2. Fools Mock Sin…?
3. Parents in the Bible: Prodigal’s Father

Currently, as part of the last five weeks of my pharmacy education, I am spending some time at a dialysis center. Patients get brought in on three 4hr shifts during the day and are subsequently hooked up to friendly looking robot called the BBRAUN 566. While they sit there being amused by their personal TV and headphones, this machine sucks all the blood out of their body (not all at once of course) and removes waste and water before putting it all back in.

Isn’t it amazing that it takes a robot 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide to do the job of a kidney about the size of an adult fist? And not only that, but it’s not nearly as good at filtering waste as our actual kidneys. (Just as an aside, no one would argue that it took a very skilled designer to make the BBRAUN 566, but yet some claim that our kidney’s just happened by chance? Dum de dum dum…)

I spoke with one lady being dialyzed who told me how she ended up with in renal failure and received a kidney transplant in 1982. Since then she had lived a perfectly normal life with her new kidney until 1993 when she rejected the organ. She had such regret in her voice when she lamented the fact that she had not taken better care of herself after the surgery.

Another man was only 46 years old who had chronic high blood pressure that damaged his kidney’s so badly he ended up on dialysis three times a week. Were you thinking of not taking your blood pressure medicine this month? Pharmacists don’t recommend low blood pressure goals for our bottom line. High blood pressure is the second leading cause of renal failure behind diabetes.

I am only in my second week of the dialysis experience and I hope to add some more stories in a couple weeks.

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