Crazy! Just Sheer Crazy!

Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub. No nursery rhyme here. Rather, I'm referring to three gay men who once occupied the jacuzzi at the public spa suite located within our local leisure pool facility. And so they recline in the warm bubble bath, keeping themselves to themselves as I made use of both the steam room and the hot sauna, long before Corona meant anything other than a refreshing drink. And so, those three were seen as regular bathers before they moved out of our area, I believe, to settle in San Francisco. But even after their exit from the UK, the well-known nursery rhyme I had to recite at our primary school had taken on a new meaning. At least their names had never appeared under any scandalous headline in our local newspaper, let alone a national one. 

A Bubble Bath. Stock photo.

Rather unlike three teenagers in a car, whose names did appear in the national press, but hey, it doesn't sound so rhythmic as the three men in a tub, does it? But their story had a much greater impact than any butcher, baker or candlestick maker could ever achieve.

I'll refer to the three teenagers only by their first names, but these are their real names: William, Luca, and Ollie. William was at the wheel of a powerful BMW only days after passing his driving test. The car was a reward from his well-to-do Dad for passing the test. And then, just a few days later, William wanted to show off his brand new treasure to two of his pals and so, all three clambered in. 

The over-confident teenager put his foot down on the accelerator as the engine roared into life. Further down, the road suddenly rounds a bend, but by then it was too late. The speeding vehicle struck a grass bank, flew thirty metres through the air before hitting an electric substation. It must have been a spectacular accident, worthy of any James Bond movie stunt, but even before the car came to rest, Luca had already stepped off this planet and into eternity. Seeing his best friend with serious head injuries, Ollie, soon after, took his own life. With the car written off, only its owner got away with barely a scratch.

And so William appears in Court, wisely dressed in a white shirt and a blue and red striped tie. Much to the disgust of Luca's parents, William gets away with a six-month suspended jail term and a two-year driving ban. He is pictured walking free, thumb up and smirking under a large facemask. How is it that here in England, a shirt and tie can make such an impact on the Judge passing such a lenient sentence? It's a story I have seen and read about before. Smart dress is often worn by defendants in their hope to have their sentences mitigated.

There is something about the whole scenario, from the moment he passes his driving test to the snapshot of him leaving Court, which stirs my emotions into anger and frustration! Indeed, supposing I was the father of Luca, the passenger who was instantly killed. Here, I attempt to put myself in his place. I watch as the defendant walks out of Court with a victorious smirk. Yes, how would I feel? Never to see my son again. Watching his coffin enter the crematorium, knowing that after a short farewell service, coffin, clothing and body alike will all be reduced to ashes. 

The silence in his bedroom. A lifeless computer and play station, school books piled on a small desk, his school uniform hanging from the wardrobe door handle, his bed still unmade, pyjamas left thrown on the foot of the bed. His sports kit stashed proudly away in his chest of drawers. The silence. The stillness. Memories going back to his birth, that tiny shrill as the baby takes in his first breath, inflating his lungs for the first time ever. Watching him breastfeed at his mother's chest as she looks so lovingly at his tiny face, bathing him, listening to his crying at two in the morning, joining us at the table as he grows up. Witnessing his progress at school as well as developing into a keen sportsman. Then, as an adolescent, he passes his exams to qualify for university and who knows, a girlfriend, a wife whose own child would make us proud grandparents - but now this.

As William smirks as he leaves Court as a free man to continue living a normal life, there is something gut-wrenching about Luca's death. Oh, so unnecessary! Why, oh why did Luca entrust his life to this over-confident, smart-ass buffoon? In a fit of rage, I fight with every effort I can draw within my fibre against the strong temptation to smash my fist into his smirking mouth and force him to swallow his facemask. But instead, I just stand there, doing nothing. 

As I walk home, or back to the railway station, I thought about what would have happened had I gave into temptation. I would have ended up as a defendant and charged for Grievous Bodily Harm, or GBH. His father would have made sure that I receive the maximum sentence for daring to lay my finger on his son. And the judge would comply, throwing the book with full force at me. Indeed, to be smartly-dressed and well off seems to have big influences in making decisions. After all, if William's father can buy a BMW, just like that, as a reward gift for his son, then he can't be short of a bob or two.

The BMW featured might have looked like this.

And it's this calibre of men which has so much impact right across this nation. Here, I'm talking about the restrictions placed on us by those in authority. It isn't for me to disobey those in authority, as the Bible says, anyone who rebels against authority rebels against God, according to Paul's letter to the church in Rome (13:1-8.) But only today I read in a national newspaper that just one faceless smart guy, backed by a team of doctors, are now persuading our Government to make facemask-wearing compulsory outdoors. I browsed the comment forum under the online newspaper article to check out the general opinion. Just about everyone agrees that this new proposal is utter rubbish, even insulting, and it's nothing more than a quest for greater control without adequate scientific evidence to back it up.

It's bad enough to wear those wretched gags whilst shopping or sitting on a train. Unless the mask is washed in a Dettol antiseptic solution on a regular basis, with me, throat irritation along with coughing will follow. Although I don't agree that wearing a facemask outdoors will deplete the respiratory system of oxygen, as many in those comments think it does, I have looked carefully on the course of the pandemic throughout the last few months. True enough, around late Spring the worst in infection, hospitalisation and death rates reached its peak and they were frighteningly high. A national lockdown was enforced and all three rates dropped dramatically until it looked as if the worst was over.

Then by the end of August and into September, facemasks were made compulsory for all indoor venues including all public transport. I have noticed that the start of the second rise of infection coincided almost exactly with the introduction of and compulsive wearing of the facemask. It seems too, that only one close friend agrees with me, himself a PhD holder. 

I base this reckoning out of experience rather than listening to an expert. If I were to breathe in some coronaviruses in the air, normally they will be all expelled back into the outside air on the very next breath - before any have the chance to stick to a cell within the throat, trachea or even within the alveoli of the lungs. But if I wear a mask, then when expelling, fewer viruses will escape. Hence the idea behind facemasks, to reduce the spread of infection. But if at the same time a mass of viruses begins to pile up behind the mask, they won't be able to escape so freely into the open air. On the next intake of breath, they are sucked straight back into the throat and the rest of the respiratory system. With this back and forth of the viruses within the system, could this be behind my throat irritation, alongside the massive recent rise of infections?

Of course, with not being a doctor or a government official or MP, I don't have the authority to make a stand, but this does not deprive me of having common sense. I personally believe that the compulsive wearing of facemasks lies behind the recent sharp rise of infections. Only yesterday, after wearing a facemask to shop for groceries, I had throat irritation accompanied by coughing. Back at home, a thorough gargle with an antiseptic mouthwash gave some relief. After this, I asked my beloved to wash all our masks in a Dettol solution. 

But the compulsion to wear a facemask outdoors. Perhaps I could think of this:

Going back to the same illustration, here am I, walking along a street, with other people, and I expel some viruses into the air (if I have it, of course - actually it could be normal germs, a cold or a flu virus, so some other niggling pathogen). However, the chance of being breathed in by a passerby is reasonably slim, for in the open air, especially if there's a breeze, the viruses would scatter enough to make it pretty unlikely to be picked up by a passerby, unless he gets really close, almost to kissing, hence the sensibility of the two-metre distancing. But if nevertheless picked up, chances are that they will be expelled in the very next breath.

Thus, although I don't like it, to wear a facemask whilst in an enclosed space, there is some justification for this. Therefore, I wear one when required. Viruses can't scatter so freely in enclosed spaces. 

The Facemask we use.

But how I long to see our Government ministers - and the public too - loosen their reliance on these academics. How I long to see the loosening of the hold these smart guys have on us, by our own choice, this worship of the scientists and MPs behind such restrictive legislation, the robbing of our freedoms which was fought for so hard during the War years. As I see it, wearing a facemask in an enclosed space is reasonable despite the discomfort generated. But I would draw the line when it comes to wearing one outdoors. Under law.

That means if I was to walk along a footpath at a deserted beach, or a park, or in some woods, by the lakeside with very few people around, I would be breaking the law and therefore penalised, despite that there is no way I could infect anyone. Or taking the dog out for a walk. The dog has no need to wear a mask. Lucky dog! The cop would instead come after me.

To make the wearing of facemasks outdoors is sheer crazy! Most of Joe Public would agree with this. But would our ministers listen to these academics and enforce what looks to be a ridiculous law?

Indeed, three men in a tub. Three gay men in a tub. Is there any unseen fondling going on under those spa bubbles? I don't know and I don't want to know either. It's not my business. It's also illegal at a public venue. But they remain wise enough not to get caught. And no way would I snitch, even if I'm suspicious. And yes, for the record, someone tried to fondle me whilst in the bubble bath around forty years ago. I made sure he knew that I wasn't interested. But I still didn't snitch. Therefore, if I was seen without a facemask, walking in a quiet street, through a park, along the riverside or lakeside, or on a beach, I would have to depend on his goodwill not to shop me in.

Increasing Your I.Q.

According to what I have seen around in the churches and reading books, as well as my own experience, if there is a book that has the power to raise intelligence, it must be the Bible. This seems to be a rather outrageous claim to make, particularly in the face of science, historical geology, evolution, modern studies of biology, chemistry, medicine, and perhaps sociology, much of which has its foundation in the theory of evolution and of natural selection. But as I open up to reveal some aspects of my youth, I hope to demonstrate the power that is within Holy Scripture, especially when read with faith. Sure enough, there were, and are, very clever people who would have dismissed the Bible as a book of ancient myths, or fairy tales, but the likes of these, such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchins, who each wrote popular books dismissing the Bible as contrary fables - where any truth found therein having shrivelled like an Autumn leaf blown away by the wind. Yet they have demonstrated their knowledge of Scripture, even if for the purpose of pounding it with the mallet of science and, according to them, common sense.

Richard Dawkins.
 

For example, how would the academic atheist make out the six days of Creation, and the Noachian Deluge. Then not to mention the Exodus of the children of Israel through the Red Sea, following a series of plagues which inflicted the whole of Egypt except the district of Goshen, where the Israelites lived. Those bits about the staff in Moses' hand turning into a live snake, then turning back to a stick of wood again. Who in this day and age had seen such a thing, let alone believe it? Then all those plagues which failed to convince a stubborn Pharaoh to release the Hebrews for a sacrifice to be made to their God. I can't help seeing the deception put to the Egyptian king by Moses and Aaron, insisting that the whole of Israel had need to go out on an errand, like popping out for a few minutes to a nearby corner shop, and then making a quick return. Rather, the intention Moses and his brother had was to escape from Egypt permanently, liberating his people and resettling into the land of Canaan, across the finger of sea from Egypt. With God himself backing such deception, little wonder Pharaoh saw through their ruse, and with such stories, Dawkins had no time to worry about whether God exists or not. 

 

Where mathematics is concerned, Sam Harris threw his weight against the dimensions of the circular bath which King Solomon had cast and placed near the entrance of the Temple. In 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2, both verses gives a measurement of ten cubits across from rim to rim, and thirty cubits in circumference, making the ratio of just 1:3. Harris then argues that this is the worst approximation of PI one can imagine, falling short of the calculation made by the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians hundreds, if not thousands, of years earlier, when the ratio of 1:3.14 would have been familiar among their priests and the learned. Little wonder that in the present day, someone like myself who believes the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God would, at best, looked on with pity, at worst, be totally ignored.

 

But as for myself, reading and understanding Holy Scripture has done wonders, believe me! When I was a young boy, I was diagnosed with learning disabilities, (whether rightly or wrongly) and I had to attend a special school. That was in itself very good. I learnt to read and write and calculate basic arithmetic. I was even assigned a task by the teacher to help my classmates to read. However, I must admit that we lived next door to another family whose two boys were excelling at their mainstream school, which made both Mum and Dad disappointed with my academic performance. I was aware of this, and I found that the only way I can make my parents happy was to excel. That was why my days at secondary school were a disaster. What I had learnt at my special primary school was hashed and re-hashed over and over again, in a class of slow-learners who were deemed no-hopers in further education, and were to be consigned to a life of unskilled labour. And so indeed I entered a life of unskilled labour, which I still do, more than 46 years later, even if I have now been running my own business for the last 34 years.

 

But my desire to read and write was never left behind at my primary school. During the lunch break, I often went into the school library to browse and borrow science books to take home and read. And that was out of genuine interest rather than to please my parents. It was not until December 1972 that a miracle occurred, which was to have a dramatic impact on my life, and I sincerely believe, have an influence on I.Q. levels. I began to be familiar with Holy Scripture. For full details of my conversion, read my two blogs:
1973 And All That...posted 19th May, 2013
Signs of the Times?...posted 26th May, 2013, both on this site, under "Archives."
These two blogs gives full details on how I met Jesus Christ as Saviour and the first five years of Christian experience.

One of the side effects in reading the Bible is my perception of history. At secondary school I found this subject crushingly boring, with the teacher not only droning away about one particular person's life which was irrelevant to me, but having to copy a mass of notes from the blackboard into my history book, without learning anything significant. But as a result of reading the Bible and mixing it with faith, history became alive. Theology debates between Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jacob Arminius, along with Georges Cuvior, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Charles Lyell, John Pye Smith, as well as Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Fred Hoyle and Bertrand Russell, to name a few.

Along with history was my development in science, particularly cell biology. My understanding of the Genome, including the role of the Chromosome, Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) Ribonucleic Acid (RNA), the Double Helix, with its fourfold nucleotides: the Adenine, Thymine, Guamine and Cytosine. Also the Ribosome, the Protein chain including the Enzymes, all within the nucleus of the cell. Now all this would have been foreign language in the days I wore the school tie, and for many years afterwards. I have gotten this knowledge from reading Holy Scripture. How come? Because I believed the narration of the six literal-day Creation, and I wanted to prove my faith in the Bible against Darwinism, which was advocated even by fellow Christians fresh out of University. To say in a nutshell, it would have been utterly impossible for the vast complexity of the cell to have evolved by chance as originally proposed by Darwin and his followers. This was proved by Fred Hoyle's mathematical demonstration in the use of certain factors just for the possibility of the enzymes in the protein chain to have evolved by chance - and came up with the probability of one chance out of one followed by 40,000 zeroes! Yet despite all this, our nation as a whole, even though calling itself a Christian country, accepts Darwinism as scientific fact, even among Christians themselves, and anyone who believes in divine Creationism is considered to be a nutter.

Also for a long time it has puzzled me was why, in the first chapter of Genesis, does the writer chronicle each day of creation as evening and morning as the first day, second day, third day, etc instead of morning and evening, as we would expect and understand it? This had to remain unanswered while I began to notice that much of the latter part of the Old Testament was about one particular city, Jerusalem, and something about a temple on the summit of Mount Moriah, just north of the original Jebusite city before King David took it over. While at school, I had an almost incomprehensible series of Religious Education lessons, but I do recall having to draw a diagram of a Temple on the summit of a mountain. I came up with something resembling Mont Blanc, or even Mt. Everest with a tiny, crude square perched on top. There was no comment about it from the male teacher. But the constant reading of Holy Scripture inspired me to visit Israel for the first time in 1976, as a sole backpacker. Looking at Temple Mount from the top of the Mount of Olives was not only an eye-opener, but had not an iota of resemblance to how I perceived it at school.

Visiting Israel in 1976 really made the Bible come alive, as I adored the sites which would have been familiar to Jesus Christ. Such as observing how ordinary residential homes of Silwan were founded on solid rock, which had brought to mind about the wise and foolish builders. But mixing freely with Jews had thrown a light on the apparent peculiarity of the Creation narrative. In the Middle East, the new day always starts at sundown, for example, allowing all trade to cease at sunset on a Friday which ushers in the Sabbath. It is the Sabbath throughout the entire night and the following day. At sunset of Saturday, the Sabbath is over and trading commences. I have watched shops open after sundown Saturday, even if just for a few hours. All this seems to indicate that the evening and morning of each creation day were to be taken literally, as the Jews would understand it, and not as indefinite periods of years as proposed by many Christians I have met.

During the days as a believer, I was praying to God for the big picture as opposed to isolated verses to prove or disprove a point, as seemed with the current trend of our day. As discussed in my last blog, the lives of Jacob, Joseph, Moses and David were shadows of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, as their rejection by Israel, their exile and their return to minister and rule all reflected that of the Lord, as at present, "in exile" as he awaits the command from his Father to return to sit at David's throne in Jerusalem. Also, as it is worth noting here, the answer to Samson's riddle, that from the strong lion, sweetness of honey is gotten, was a prophecy about the sweetness of the Gospel coming from the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who is Jesus himself (Judges 14).

I once watched a series of films on the television, about a very possible threat of human extinction by an airborne virus which was fatal to everyone who caught it. The rest of the story was about the few remaining people who were immune to the virus and survived. It was somewhat parallel to the eight survivors of Noah's family during the global Flood, except that all man-made structures, from small toys to huge buildings, as well as deserted highways, remained intact, as with all the trees and vegetation. Corpses rotted everywhere and groceries remaining in shops and homes went off very quickly. As such the few survivors struggled to live, finding and preparing food being the chief problem. At the time of writing, the Ebola virus over West Africa looks potentially threatening. Memories of the Great Plague or the Black Death, which killed multiple thousands, spring to mind. Whenever an infected person arrives from that part of the world, panic would ensue had it not been for the efficient quarantine system already in place.

But reading Holy Scripture allays such fears of mass extinction. According to Jeremiah chapters 30, 31, 33, and particularly 33:19:26,  the existence of our very planet, its rotation on its axis, and its orbit around the sun, as well as all life on it, human and non-human, are all guaranteed by God's Abrahamic covenant with Israel! Therefore reading Holy Scripture puts up a guard against the fear of global threats, natural or otherwise. For example, astronomers had spoken of the potential extinction of the human species by a collision of a large asteroid with our planet, a theory which now explains the extinction of the Dinosaurs (but oddly enough, not the small, shrew-like mammals living alongside), or as in the movie described above, a viral pandemic which rages out of control, or a dramatic turn of global climate, causing the whole planet to be covered in ice, as depicted in a blockbusting movie The Day After Tomorrow. Or man-made catastrophes such as a nuclear holocaust, as one TV programme had put it, a contest between Russia and the United States wipes out the whole of mankind. This was not far from reality back in 1962, when the USSR drew very close to coming to blows after the Communist takeover of Cuba by Fidel Castro, just ninety miles off the coast of Florida. Fortunately, a last minute truce between the two nations had only just saved the day, or else World War III would have been inevitable. And at ten years old, I would have been alive to see it.

The Cuba crisis may have spawned the social revolution, the rise of the hippie movement, the aversion of the work ethic and machine society, changes in music and the arts with the rise of the rock bands, and so on, but I am convinced that what nipped this potential threat of mass extinction in the bud was the promise God had made to Israel through the prophet Jeremiah. The Bible is absolutely clear on God's eternal covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The covenant of grace, which is eternal. Watching the present nation of Israel surviving against all odds in the midst of hostile Arab nations is in itself the grace of God, undeserved mercy. Despite Yassir Arafat's many attempts to wipe Israel off the map throughout the sixties, Israel lives on, as God promised through Jeremiah and other prophets. If the grace of God can be so secure for Israel, which at present, exist in unbelief, how much more secure is God's covenant with all who has faith in Jesus?

Fancy having higher intelligence? Then get stuck in with reading the Holy Bible. But don't read it with intended scepticism, but with believing faith. Ask God to reveal the bigger picture to you, which is redemption of mankind into a Kingdom of God with Jerusalem as the world capital, and Israel as the chief nation. Redemption of the whole Creation is promised, going right back to the dawn of history, to be fulfilled in God's own time.

Now there is a tonic for global anxiety.