Explaining Myself

Why am I even doing this? Dots, dots, and more dots.

I am a husband, father, and grandfather living in Indiana. I am an elder in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, an occasional preacher, a casual woodworker, a church musician (electric bass and acoustic guitar), a retired professor/practitioner of software development, and a connector of dots. That is the purpose of this Substack—to connect dots. I do this to stimulate my own thinking and, I hope, to simulate yours. If every post angers somebody, I will have done my job.

Connecting Dots

The connections that interest me most are those that link dots within and among these areas: the Christian faith, the Bible, science together with its bastard child, Scientism, some aspects of the culture, and government—how it works and how it fails.

Government is distinct from—and often the victim of—politics. In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined Politics as “a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.” I view politics as a fraudulent game in which two rival gangs of thieves and liars trick gullible Americans into putting their members in positions of power.

To be clear, I see few differences between the “major” parties, so I despise the works of Republican crooks (“love the sinner, hate the sin”) nearly as much as I despise those of their Democrat co-conspirators. Consequently, I’m not very interested in partisan politics. For similar reasons, I have little to say about the news.

In my areas of interest, I am alternately encouraged and annoyed by much that I see. I would rather comment on the things that irritate me, mostly because those are the things that I would like to see changed.

I plan to occasionally (possibly regularly) post something featuring one or two pieces from other writers that serve a similar dot-connecting function. Many of these may include links to the Free Press, the least biased source of smart news and commentary I know of. Many Free Press articles are available only to paid subscribers (including me—at $5/month, it’s worth it), but I’ll avoid those here.

I sometimes refer to myself as a “confessional Calvinistic Presbyterian of the Old School tradition”—a description of J. Gresham Machen, which I humbly borrow to describe my aspiration, if not my present reality. The curious reader will have discovered that the link leads to Machen’s obituary written by gadfly, raconteur and famed agnostic H. L. Mencken. I chose his description of Machen because I can’t imagine greater praise of a believer written by a staunch and cynical non-believer.

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