More unnecessary torture!

Back in August of 2009 my son, who works at a liquor store/bar surprised me with tickets to see one of my favorite groups live! One of the delivery drivers was handing out free tickets to see Collective Soul at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville New Jersey as a promotion. So not wanting to waste such an awesome free gift, I immediately made plans with my daughter who had just turned 21 the year before.

So we drive down the night of the concert and after paying $6 to park (nothing is ever really free!), getting in past security with camera intact, we found a spot right in front of the sound board and settled in for the evening. The Starland Ballroom was about the size of a large bowling alley and was converted into a Night Club type venue with a stage set up against one wall and an open floor in front surrounded by at least two or three bar areas and tables. It could easily accommodate well over 300 to 400 people without overcrowding and by the end of the night there was a descent size crowd.

I had never been there before and had no idea what to expect, but there we were right in front of the sound booth. There were two groups scheduled to go on before Collective Soul, so the first one up was a group called Safety Suit and what a shock! The group itself wasn’t all that bad, what I could hear of it, the sound was AWEFUL! There were stacks of speakers on each side of the stage and the volume was up so high you could feel the vibrations pelting your body which was very uncomfortable, not to mention there was so much distortion you could barely make out the music or understand a word that was being sung!

I’m not the most experienced person when it comes to working a sound board, but I think I could have done better! I used to hang with a bunch of people who always formed bands that played gigs out at bars and such; I did some recording for them so I know a tad about sound! I was shocked at how horrible the sound was in a well known venue like this! I have been to outdoor festivals that have had better sound, I went to see Rush at the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey and had lawn seats up on a hill and the sound was amazing!

By the time Blackstone Cherry, the next band came on someone had the foresight to turn it down a bit and they weren’t quite so bad! So by the time Collective Soul reached the stage, someone with some knowledge had stepped in and the sound was bearable! Ed Roland, his brother Dean and the rest of the guys tore the place apart! They were AWESOME playing all their hits and almost all the songs off the new album! Ed even did an impression of his dad, who was a preacher, during one song, so I ventured up close to the stage to get a better view of Ed and BAM, I’m blown away! I mean literally being blown away! The AC must have been set on 60 degrees and the ceiling fans on hurricane velocity, it was like being in a wind tunnel! Ok, I understand it was the middle of August and there was a heat wave going on outside, temps in the 90s and humid, but this was a bit extreme! I ended up cowering back by the sound booth until the end!

I’m not really such a wimp, I’m the kind who turns the volume up really loud when nobody is around, but I enjoy having pristine sound, so clear I can hear every note and every lyric! I also enjoy seeing groups play in small venues where one can get up close and personal, I’ve seen other groups in the past with no problem, so I was a bit bummed by the lack of knowledge or maybe they just don’t care about acoustics anymore and volume is all they know!  So although I loved being able to finally see in person one of my all time favorite groups, I left there feeling more like I had been trapped in a torture chamber, than a concert! 

Unnecessary Torture

Lately I’ve been exposed to some things that have felt eerily like methods of medieval torture from the past.  I recently had some X-ray’s taken during which I had to lay on my back upon an incredibly hard table for what seemed like hours, it felt more like a torture rack.  I had my teeth scaled which took hours and felt like torture, then most recently I had a tooth pulled, which took way too long to be released from my gum! 

Way back in the dark ages, when you had to sit in a waiting room somewhere, like a doctor’s office, you would sit around reading a magazine and listening to some piped in music, mostly instrumentals. As the times progressed, they started using radio stations that played what was called “Soft Rock” and lately I’ve gone to a doctor who actually plays his own collection of CDs and I had the pleasure of listening to some Pat Benatar there once. 

But there is a frightening new phenomenon being used in most waiting rooms now a days, it’s called a flat screen TV!  The frightening thing about this TV phenomenon is the programs that are put on for people to watch as we count the minutes until our appointment. Talk shows are about the worst thing to be stuck in a waiting with, they can be very offensive, next would be the classic daily soap opera which has taken a turn for the worst with the addition of more explicit scenes and language, perhaps the least offensive would be the game shows or maybe a nature or travel show.  The Judge or doctor shows are interesting sometimes, but usually just boring.

So what do they put on, but those torrid talk shows, like The View or a soap opera, like The Days of Our Lives, it can make you cringe! It’s bad enough if everyone in the waiting room is an adult, but what about when there are young children present?  It doesn’t seem to matter to the doctors who's in the waiting room, I almost believe that it’s a pass time for the employees, when there is a lull in patients.

I was at a dermatologist with my teenage niece once and there were two young boys who came in with their mother just after we sat down. They were probably both under the age of ten or 11 and at first they were content to play with their electronic toys, but soon they were wandering around the room taking in the TV and began watching what was on. There just happened to be a talk show playing with some actress talking about all the drugs and sex she’d been involved in.  Not exactly something I wanted to hear, but what about these young boys?  Their mother was engrossed in the show herself, when at last she realized maybe it wasn’t the best for her children (or she just got bored) she finally asked if the channel could be changed, although the next show wasn’t much better.

Some places have their own little channel which features info related to their practice, boring but at least practical and not offensive. How do you pick a channel that will be appropriate for everyone?  My personal ideal pick would be music videos, but then again there are some inappropriate videos out there.  I’d prefer videos by Christian artists, but that might upset other people. I don’t think I could stand watching Country music either! Such a dilemma, maybe we should just go back to listening to music and reading! 

I usually bring something to do when I have to sit and wait, a book to read or a word search puzzle to work on, but sometimes you can’t concentrate with some of the junk they show.  I also bring along my iPod, so I can at least listen to my music, but with headphones in, you can’t always hear when they call your name.  I’ve actually almost missed my appointment trying to drown out the TV by turning the volume on my iPod too loud!  I guess there is just no happy medium when it comes to unnecessary torture!

Another Portrait of a Loving God

Previously I mentioned an article that I read online concerning Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas and their “hate group” tactics. As it turns out Westboro has no affiliations with any Baptist denomination and is under the direction of a man named Fred Phelps. This group’s behavior seems almost like a cult and this might account for their “God is anti” propaganda. It sounds as though Phelps has put himself in the place of God and has taught his followers his views which are not biblical. It’s just heart breaking to see those people being beguiled into thinking his words and teachings could come from a loving Holy God! 

All through the bible there are many examples of the loving nature of our God, a God of grace and forgiveness, a patient God willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. He is a God who does not want any of His creations to parish, but gives them many chances to return to Him. 2 Peter 3:9 says this of God “the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Since God is also Our Father in Heaven, like any good and loving parent, He has to discipline His children when they need it, for every action there is a consequence!

Here are a couple of well known examples of God’s love and grace toward his creations; we read that in Genesis 18:20-33, God had sent two angels to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because their sin was so wicked and vile; homosexuality was one of their most wide spread sins. When God told Abraham of His plan to do this, Abraham begins the bargaining by asking this question “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?” God assures him that He will not destroy it if fifty righteous people can be found. Slowly God begins to come down in His figures, dropping it down to forty five, then forty, to thirty, twenty, and finally to only ten. Finally He tells Abraham that if only ten righteous people could be found He would spare them all!

Sadly when the two angels reach Sodom where Abraham’s nephew, Lot and his family are living, things get really out of hand! Lot invites the visitors to come stay the night with him and during the night all the men of Sodom, young and old, come pounding on Lot’s door demanding to have sex with his visitors. The angels put a hold on everything by blinding the men and the next day Lot, his wife, and two daughters high tail it out of Sodom! The angels give them one last word of advice, “don’t turn back and look!”, but Lot’s wife couldn’t resist the temptation and ends up as a pillar of salt! So in the end Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because God is a Holy God and must discipline His creations!

Let’s move on to another well known example of a loving God. There was this fellow by the name of Jonah who was asked by God to deliver a simple message to the wicked people of Nineveh “straighten up or face destruction” and Jonah wanted no part of it so he ran from God! He jumped a ship and sailed to Tarshish, but God caused the sea to rage and the sailors on the ship blamed Jonah for their trouble and threw him overboard. Next thing Jonah knows he’s in the belly of a whale and after three days the fish spits him up on the shores of Nineveh! Now the reason Jonah wanted no part of it was because he knows that God is just too kind and if he takes the message to the nasty old Ninevites, God just may spare them and he didn’t want that! 

So God tells Jonah a second time to deliver the message that He will destroy Nineveh in forty days, this time Jonah gives in and reluctantly goes and preaches to them. Then to Jonah’s horror, the king and everyone else, including the animals, puts on sackcloth, gives up their evil ways and prays, so God does not destroy them (this time!) so Jonah goes off in a huff and pouts saying to God “O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness and repentest thee of the evil.”

These are just a couple of examples of how God is a loving, merciful and forgiving God, the Bible is full of them. They can be summed up by these verses in Romans 5:8 ”But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” along with John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Later Paul writes this to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 5:9&10 “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.”

So in the end, if we truly seek God, we will find Him and when we find Him we will know for ourselves a loving, merciful and forgiving God!