For We Have All Sinned

by on October 1, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I’ve heard lately a charge coming from some that Christians who support those who have sinned are hypocrites. This usually comes from people who are not Christians. Perhaps they think that Christians believe they are holier than thou and should cringe from those who have sinned. But that misses the entire point of Christianity.

We have all sinned. All of us have done things we should not have done. We have fallen short of the glory of God. The Reverend Franklin Graham is a famous example of someone who rebelled in his youth. His father was a world famous preacher man, and Franklin walked away from all of it. He spent his youth in rough places and doing things a Christian should not. And then he came back. He was, as we say, born again and chose to live a new life. He joined his father’s ministry, and in time the black sheep of the family became the head of that ministry.

Anyone can be Redeemed you see. Many of our greatest leaders did bad things before coming to God. The Apostle Paul who spread The Word across the world was once Saul, a man who persecuted and killed Christians in Jerusalem. We do blame Saul for doing those horrible things. But we celebrate Paul for the good things he did.

For we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We are taught from our youngest days not to judge people for the things they did in the past. Judge them for what they do now. Because people can change. They can spend their life doing better than they did. It is why we support statutes of limitations in our laws. It is why we treat children differently than adults when they are charged with crimes. We recognize that people change. We know that they are not the same person they were a year ago, seven years ago, or forty years ago. Because neither are we.

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The AI Council

by on September 30, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Proxima Centauri is the AI Council’s oldest and most well-known Memory World. But it was a top-secret mission when it was young. They told no one outside the council it event existed until after they had built more Memory Worlds in other uninhabited systems. And even then, it was rarely talked about. Even most leading politicians and elite Family members like my own assumed it was little more than a storage facility for memories. Most of us did not consider how much industry went into building new storage systems, or how much storage and processing power was required to save every digital record of Earthborn humanity. And we always had this vision of dark and cold buildings on an airless hunk of rock full of rack upon rack of computer systems powered by orbital solar arrays. The truth of what they built on Proxima Centauri is anything but that. I should know. I’ve been there.

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Morning on the Lake

by on September 29, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The lake country of Northern Minnesota is a special place to grow up in. You can wake up to the sound of silence as the morning twilight spreads across the world. And then you begin to hear it. A loon trills in the distance. A hawk cries. A fish leaps out of the water and splashes back down. Waves lap against the shore. The world wakes up around you, and you can hear it all if you just sit still and listen. There’s nothing like it in all the worlds. Morning on a lake.

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Chloe

by on September 28, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

Chloe survived the bombing of Old Paris, but she did not believe her country would. She saw her nation tearing itself apart, and came to one conclusion. France needed a unifying figure to hold the nation together. A new Charles de Gaulle. A new Charlemagne. A new Napoleon. But the Napoleon she found wasn’t interested in the job. So she used some of her tame politicians to consult with him. They were just requests for information and ideas. Some of them included trips to Paris after the bombing. All of this was using his American name, of course. It wouldn’t do for a descendent of long-dead Emperors to come back to France in her hour of need. So Chloe and her tame politicians showed the man who did not use the name Napoleon what France was like after the bombing, all under the guise of asking him for plans to make things better.

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The AI Council

by on September 27, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Most people do not realize that the AI Council built the first Memory World on Proxima Centauri using communications lasers. Most people do not know how many uses good communications lasers have. They are lasers after all. Given enough energy and time, they can do what any laser can. Drill. Melt. Forge. The AI Council used their communications lasers to mine Proxima Centauri’s rich mineral deposits. Then they used those minerals to make the materials and machines necessary to build the machines to build the machines that could build a world where they could store their every memory. They built all of that with mere communications lasers. Which of course showed the versatility of that particular technology. Not that they advertised, you understand. That first Memory World was their most deeply-held secret.

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