The twenty-second day of the fifth month in the 2729th year of our dispersion.

I added a bit of "flair" to the right side of my page... no worries, they're not ads, nor is any money changing hands (unfortunately). There was a hole on the right side of my page so I stuck some buttons over there to express myself.

How many churches sing the song "I am a Friend of God"? Read the lyrics; it starts out well: "Who am I that You are mindful of me?" But it degenerates into sheer self-worship: "I am a friend of God" repeated over and over and over. First of all, Abraham is the only person I know of who was considered a friend of יהוה. The Apostles were friends of the Messiah, which is pretty good, but I don't know if it affords the same status. Furthermore, since when are songs of praise supposed to be about us? Singing the verse and chorus through just once will have you repeat one of two first-person singular pronouns a total of ten times. The song is not about יהוה or His mighty deeds or His mercy and love. It's about US and what WE feel and what WE perceive and what WE want. This is why I will never play it at my assembly. It represents much of what is wrong with modern Christianity.

I've been trying to figure out if יהוה plays favorites. It has always seemed to me as though he did. People like Abraham and Israel seemed to get away with quite a bit, while others were killed instantly for single sins. I used to assume that יהוה treated all men equally, and that those who were disfavored were cast out for other reasons that we could not know, but that would make sense to us if we did. But is that a realistic notion or just one that we borrow from our "democratic" society in which all men are supposedly created equal? Could it be just an extension of the mindset that יהוה is just a set of rules, a being who is so rigidly defined that he cannot even change his mind? And if יהוה favors some, how does one become favored? Obedience? Prayer? Or is it, as a hyper-Calvinist would say, predetermined with no rational basis?