I remember when I was talking to my grandparents about things happening in society, and my dear, godly Grandma used the word “condom.” It just didn’t seem right.

In our society, lots of things don’t seem right. When it comes to sexuality, we live in the age of the bizarre. I’m old enough to remember when divorce was highly uncommon in the church. But that seems tame compared to dealing with, and ministering to, gays and transvestites and transgenders.

I want to raise some questions. Just by raising them, people will think I’ve gone liberal or heretical. I don’t think I need to defend my conservative evangelical credentials. But I think there are questions which, at the least, are interesting to ponder. I’ll start with some dealing with the Bible itself.

• Was polygamy ever something God approved of? Many of our Old Testament heroes had multiple wives. But did God ever sanction it? If not, then these heroes of the faith were living in sin, even though God used them to accomplish important purposes. What’s with that?
• The only way for Adam and Eve to become grandparents was for incest to occur–siblings having sex with each other, or parents having sex with children. This was part of being obedient to God’s “be fruitful and multiply” directive. At what point did sexual relations with siblings become “sin”? Or is it, indeed, sin? Can I be idiotic enough to ask that question without people considering me demented?
• What about hermaphrodites? How does God view a person who has characteristics of both sexes? Or what about the hermaphrodite who is raised as a girl, and later develops male sexual organs? Would it be okay for this person to begin living as a guy? This actually happens, so there must be a view that God holds on this. What is it? Would it be sinful for this person to begin living as a guy? Or would it be a sin to NOT begin living as a guy?
• If a transgender person becomes a Christian, should the church force that person to revert to his/her previous sex (if, indeed, it’s possible to undo it)? Or is that something we say occurred during their “nonChristian” days, and therefore can be written off (like we write-off divorces)? Would it be okay for a guy to undergo surgery to become a woman, later experience a life-changing salvation experience, and then continue living and serving Christ as a woman?
• A professor at a Christian college in Michigan underwent surgery to become a woman, yet continued living with his wife, who was fully supportive of the transgendering. Now there is the appearance of two women living in a marriage relationship. Is that now a lesbian relationship? Or, since God made him a him, is it technically still a male-female relationship? (Or, instead of trying to figure this out, should we just sum it all up as, “God disapproves of this situation”?)
• All my life I’ve heard Christians muse about the true identity of Paul’s infamous “thorn in the flesh,” which he kept asking God to remove. It was most likely not an addiction to internet porn. But could it have been something else of a sexual nature? The Bible never mentions that the Apostle Paul was married, and despite much church tradition, Paul never said he was part of the Sanhedrin (which I understand was for married men only). What if Paul was gay? He says in 1 Corinthians 7 that he was celibate. But what if, in his sexual orientation, he was gay and celibate? I mean…isn’t it possible? Please don’t crucify me for heresy for raising the question.

I’ve been using the Macintosh since 1988, when I switched from an AT&T computer with two floppy drives (no hard drive) running DOS. Still makes me cringe. Suddenly I found myself with a huge hard drive (40 gigs!), a mouse, and a wonderful graphical user interface. In those days, the Mac was way way WAY ahead of the PC world (and still is, BTW).

While I’ve always used the heavy-duty programs (Photoshop, Pagemaker, Word, PowerPoint, etc.), a number of very useful utilities and miscellaneous programs have come and gone. Right now, here are some of the “little” programs that I find useful.

• DefaultFolder makes quick work in dialogue boxes.
• iTunesRating, a menubar item, lets me rate songs while working in other programs.
• BBEdit, for writing and editing blog posts (I’m using it now), and writing and editing HTML. Will read most any text file.
• Fetch, my FTP program. I’ve tried bunches of others, but always prefer Fetch. Especially the integration with BBEdit.
• Databackup, for backing up my stuff.
• Disclabel designs and prints DVD/CD labels.
• Dragthing, a launcher, stays on tbe left side of my screen.
• FontAgentPro keeps my zillions of fonts organized.
• Microsoft Expression Media (formerly iView) for viewing gobs of photos (when I don’t want to import them into iPhoto).
• SnapzProx takes my screenshots.
• ThumbsUp (freeware) is great for making thumbnails.
• Art Directors Toolkit continually helps me out in Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

Got any other little program that have stood the test of time for you?

I’m in Nashville, Tenn., attending the MinistryCOM convention, which is for Christian communications professionals. About 300 people are here, and most work for megachurches. Good people, passionate about what they do, and highly competent. Seriously, these are some way-competent folks.

In one workshop, the leader asked how many of us were the entire communications staff. About one-third of the hands went up. He said, “Your job is difficult, because nobody else understands what you do.” That describes most of my career. Except for a couple years in the early 1980s, and six months in 2006, I’ve had no one with whom to “talk shop.” My coworkers and superiors appreciate what I do, but they aren’t conversant in my skills (writing, graphic design, web design). That’s the way it goes. I’m the only United Brethren person here, period. I’m not sure we have any communications fulltimers on staff at any of our churches.

But many of the MinistryCOM attendees come from churches with an entire communications staff. I ate lunch with a trio from a Wisconsin church–the woman communications director, the web guy, and a graphics guy. I enjoyed being able to converse knowledgeably with each one, since those areas are all strengths for me. That’s what happens after years and years of having to do everything yourself. You’re forced to accumulate additional expertise.

This is only the third MinistryCOM convention. There are quite a few first-timers this year, which is nice. I attended last year’s convention in Phoenix and profited tremendously from it. It took little time for me to realize, “This is a conference I must attend every year.”

As is the case at any Christian (or secular) conference, plenty of individuals stand around by themselves. They came alone, like me. We stand against the walls or in corners. Or, this being a group of communications people, open up a laptop and check email. It’s too easy to disappear into your computer, which is like erecting a big “Do Not Disturb” sign to fend off social advances. I tried to connect, but couldn’t. During the morning, I sat beside another Mac guy; he snagged a connection, but I couldn’t. Go figure. Probably too many people logging on. A number of people mentioned their inability to connect, though not in a complaining way. Church people are adept at complaining, but I haven’t noticed that here. Of course, I’m not exactly plugged in.

The break times are great. They have Nature’s Valley Sweet and Salty Nut granola bars. I tried one. Yum. I took another. In the afternoon, I took two more and ate them before the concluding session.

Now I’m back in my Ramada Limited hotel room, with my full-barred wireless signal. I called Pam at music practice, and now I’m ready to head out to the Nashville Table Tennis club, which meets on Thursday nights. Some southern rednecks are gonna get the chance to whomp on a Yankee.

Postscript three hours later: The table tennis club wasn’t what I expected. Of the 12 guys there, 9 were Asian, most of them very good. One guy had a 2500 rating, another was over 2000, and their US Top Ten player was absent (his wife was having a baby). Nevertheless, I played extremely well, and ended up with a 3-2 record. Very fun. Sure beat any alternatives I had for the evening.

It’s been raining like crazy all day, something we’ve needed.

Amidst the downpour, I’ve not used my windshield wipers. It’s an experiment. I’d heard about this product called Rain-X: rub it onto your windshield, and rain will bead up and go away. We’ve not had enough rain this summer for me to really try it out, until today.

It’s pretty amazing. The water just beads up on the windshield and goes…somewhere, I don’t know where.

This doesn’t mean I’ll stop using windshield wipers. It’s just an interesting addition to my wonderful Dodge Dakota SLT.

[This has been a paid advertisement of Rain-X…NOT.]