Alice Cooper: "I'm Eighteen"

This shock rocker wasn't a mere singer. Many of his songs had a lot of thought put into them. This one is particularly relevant to that magic age when a boy morphs into a man. Hear it here:

Adulthood is difficult for a child to adjust to at first. That's why Paul said about spiritual maturity in 1 Corinthians 13:11 (Bible in Basic English), "When I was a child, I made use of a child's language, I had a child's feelings and a child's thoughts: now that I am a man, I have put away the things of a child."

We should also be glad to take responsibility as adults, even if it seems frightening. One great example of this is Jeremiah 1:6 and 7 (BBE). "Then said I, 'O Lord God! see, I have no power of words, for I am a child.' But the Lord said to me, 'Do not say, "I am a child:" for wherever I send you, you are to go, and whatever I give you orders to say, you are to say.'"

By the time we become adults, we should be able to assume the duties of an adult. Sadly, children these days don't have the beneficial correction of Proverbs 22:15 (BBE). "Foolish ways are deep-seated in the heart of a child, but the rod of punishment will send them far from him."

The God-given privilege of an adult is to raise a family. As Christ said in Matthew 19:5 (BBE), "For this cause will a man go away from his father and mother, and be joined to his wife; and the two will become one flesh?"

As adults, married men need the sacrificial maturity to provide for his family. Like Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:25 (BBE), "Husbands, have love for your wives, even as Christ had love for the church, and gave himself for it;"

Furthermore, work is where real consequences happen to lazy people. As Proverbs 10:5 (BBE) explains, "He who in summer gets together his store is a son who does wisely; but he who takes his rest when the grain is being cut is a son causing shame."

If Christ returns for his harvest by Thursday, I won't bother uploading my post about nothing.

Saturday Song: Alice Cooper, "Dead Babies"

In spite of his stage act, Alice Cooper cares about injustices. This song is about a woman who left her toddler at home while she went to work at a bar. And as children will, her daughter got into something deadly on a shelf and died.

Here's the link to the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkbS2Zrcl6g

Though some parents either don't care or can't care for their children, we needn't worry about our heavenly Father. As Moses said in Deuteronomy 10:17 and 18 (BBE), "For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, strong in power and greatly to be feared, who has no respect for any man's position and takes no rewards: Judging uprightly in the cause of the widow and of the child who has no father, and giving food and clothing in his mercy to the man from a strange country."

And as we read in the oft-quoted Psalms 68:5 (BBE) he's, "A father to those who have no father, a judge of the widows, is God in his holy place."

But we Christians aren't excused when it comes to caring for widows and orphans. James 1:27 (BBE) admonishes us that, "The religion which is holy and free from evil in the eyes of our God and Father is this: to take care of children who have no fathers and of widows who are in trouble, and to keep oneself untouched by the world."

I'm sure that many women these days have run-away husbands who don't support them. This is all the more reason those who are good caretakers of children should lend a hand.

Provided that Christ doesn't return for us, his children, by Monday, I hope to post about the eternality of hell.

Saturday Song: Alice Cooper, "School's Out"

June sure does seem to drag by for students. The thought of eight weeks of freedom dominates their minds as they study for tests and sit for exams. On the last day of school, kids rejoice when that final buzzer or bell goes. Alice Cooper said in one interview that the anticipation of school ending for the summer is what inspired him to write the song.

Listen to "School's Out" here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcVEhtojXlc

Whether you know it or not, we believers are in school. We're here to learn how to trust God. The primary school lessons came from the fall of Adam and the patriarchs. The secondary or middle school courses are the law given to Moses and Israel. The high school doctrine is the gospel preached by Christ and his apostles.

As Galatians 3:24 and 25 (KJV) aptly states, "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster."

Unfortunately, there are those rowdy disrupters who oppose good teaching. As Acts 19:9 (BBE) reports, "But because some of the people were hard-hearted and would not give hearing, saying evil words about the Way before the people, he went away from them, and kept the disciples separate, reasoning every day in the school of Tyrannus."

And just as there are certain teachers in schools who teach their own political opinions as course material, so there are false teachers teaching destructive doctrines. As we read in 2 Peter 2:1 (BBE) "But there were false prophets among the people, as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly put forward wrong teachings for your destruction, even turning away from the Lord who gave himself for them; whose destruction will come quickly, and they themselves will be the cause of it."

The best way to avoid these wicked people is to study God's textbook: the Bible. Once you're familiar with what he taught, wrong doctrines will be as obvious as a three-dollar bill.

On Monday, I'll post about Christ's dominion and how we became managers of planet Earth. Psalm 72:8 also was inscribed in Canada's parliament building's foundation.

THE VALUE OF PERSISTANCE

I remember well the final two weeks of grade twelve. The mathematics course I took forty years ago drove me crazy. Even though it wasn't the most advance course, I couldn't comprehend how fractions could be multiplied and divided.

"Why can't you get it?" my math teacher would exclaim often when I turned in another test paper filled with mistakes. I didn't know the answer then but I now believe that I wasn't able to visualize what was going on in the equations he taught me.

One Wednesday evening, when a woman I call Sister Eileen drove me home from church, I poured out my complaint to her. "I'm so tempted to drop out of that course and try again in September," I finished.

"Don't drop out," she admonished as she parked in front of the house in which I rented a basement room. "You only have two weeks to go. If you quit now, you'll have to spend three months doing the same course over."

I pondered what she said as we sat in her car. It did make sense that I would have to work longer to get my high school diploma. On the other hand, the course felt like pure torture. How well I identified with Alice Cooper's "School's Out" hit record.

Another song which helped me plow through those final days was "Hold On" by John Lennon. I added my name into the lyrics and sang them to myself whenever I felt like I couldn't take one more humiliating day.

I'm glad I hung in there and finished the course. Though my mark was forty, the teacher felt sorry for me and added five more percent so I wouldn't get an F. Because I continued with that agonizing class, I was able to get my high school diploma at the end of June and have a worry-free summer.

Because I stuck with the class, I was able to attend a job and mobility training course at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Toronto that September. If I hadn't heeded Sister Eileen's advice, I would have had three more months of slogging my way through the same math problems which I couldn't understand.

As for that summer and the subsequent trip to Toronto, I wrote about it in a book called How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Read more about how God providentially led me to a true understanding of him at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell's Books.