I finally got my cell phone back. I lost it 10 days ago at the Atlanta airport while going through the post-9/11 Muslim security experience. Somehow, in the middle of taking off my shoes, removing my belt, displaying my laptop, coughing when instructed to do so, and bending over at just the right time, my cell phone vanished.

Good news: I got a full weekend in Green Bay for a Packers game without worry of distraction from phone calls or messages. Wonderful break!


Bad news: It took about a week to get the phone back. I did not miss the phone nearly as much as I missed my contacts. People that I regularly check in with were inaccessible to me because I no longer had their number. Phones are replaceable; people are not.

Lesson 1: Guess I should learn to back up my phone, huh?

But The real lesson came in just how naked I felt without access to my contacts and friends. Life sure is empty when you cannot talk to the people you like or love. Love people and use your phone - never get those two mixed up.

Not surprising that our shows last week, and over the weekend, regarding second chances for sex offenders set off a fire storm in my email inbox.

It is easy to hate. Sex offenders often do vile things. However, people can change. SOme do; some do not. I have experienced that personally. Secondly, forgiveness is a way to spiritual health not only for the perpetrator but for the victim. Forgiveness is usually more popular when you need it than when others ask for it. The grace of God is offensive.


Forgiveness does not mean there is no justice. Sex offenders should serve time for their crimes and be required to receive treatment. Again, I have experienced that change with several persons who have found redemption and life change from their immoral acts.

Forgiveness does mean that when you accept responsibility for your actions, and do the hard work of repentance and therapy, you deserve a second chance.

Here are two opposing views from listeners.

I can't believe the dribble coming out of you mouth.
The more you speak, the more you demonstrate how little you know about sex offenders.

Would you approve of one of your daughters dating a convicted child molester?

Children are prey to the offenders, the pumpkins are brilliant.

See what your neighbors think about this sign on your house

"Sex offenders, I forgive you"

Did you mention they paid their debt to society with prison time and rehab?

I am currently doing a documentary on life in prison;

40 weeks, 30 different prisons - THERE IS NO REHAB.

I've never called a talk show or written a host, but your ignorance is offensive.

I can't believe you get paid.

S

And the second

I caught a few minutes of your show this evening and wanted to say, "THANK YOU".

I am a registered sex offender, my offense was against a neighbor child. I have fulfilled all of the court's orders in my sentencing, and am actively involved in a Sex Offender Treatment Program.

In Nebraska, changes in the laws regarding sex offenders take effect January 1, 2010. These laws will, in effect, continue to punish me for my crimes. I have repented of my crime, and have successfully turned my life around. Unfortunately, society could care less, and insists on perpetuating the punishment. I have been unemployed for nearly a year. My wife (of 24 years) was "forced" to divorce me or lose custody of our children. I have lost everything, except hope and my love in Jesus Christ.

Thank you for using facts (regarding recidivism rates) instead of jumping on the bandwagon to bash all sex offenders. I, for one, appreciate your Christ-like attitude, and hope He blesses you 100 fold.

G

C.B. Bucknor will not be working the World Series. Scheduled to work his first World Series as a major league umpire, Bucknor blew two calls in Game 1 of the American League Division Series. His poor performance, coupled with a number of embarrassing umpiring gaffes in this year's baseball playoffs caused the baseball powers-that-be to realign their umpire schedules for this week's Fall Classic. First-time umpires are out; seasoned veterans are in.

As frustrating as the umpires' calls have been to players and fans, just imagine the chaos that would ensure if the men in blue began visiting the mound between pitches to offer advice on pitch selection. Or if the umpires began meeting with managers before and during the game to dictate who the right-fielder should be in. Or if the umpires union met with the General Manager of each team to help set salaries for players based on their opinions as umpires. Everyone would ask: are the umpires officiating the rules or are they playing the game? Who is making what decisions and how? How does an umpire both officiate and play?

Someone needs to ask these same questions of the Obama administration when it comes to the activities of the Pay Czar, Kenneth Feinberg. Capitalism needs rules to be sure, but it is important to remember that capitalism functions best when the players play the game, and the umpires referee it. When the umpires begin to put their toe into the game, confusion reigns. Excessive government tinkering threatens to inhibit capitalism's ability to do what it does best:to create wealth and to lift the poor out of poverty.

Confusion reigns when players and managers are not sure of what the rules are anymore. They no longer understand their roles. Exactly what are the umpires doing, and what can a player or manager in the game do? Financial industry executives are left in this quandary right now. First, Washington bails out struggling financial players. Then, Washington does not clearly articulate what the expectations of that bailout will be, leaving the details for later in the urgency of “saving Wall Street and the economy.” Months later, the details emerge, the compensation at bailed-out companies is reduced, even capped, and leaders are left wondering what, if any, role they can or will play in the future of the companies they lead.

Already, executives are fleeing the tinkering hands of Big Government. At Bank of America, just 14 of 25 of the affected executives still remain. At AIG, only 13 of 25. By all accounts, morale is abysmal in both organizations. Worst of all, more details still remain to be revealed as Feinberg has yet more employee compensation rulings to issue, not the least of which is the ultra-sensitive issue of nearly $200 million in bonuses due in March to employees at AIG Financial Products. Confusion reigns, dismay abounds, and leadership is left with little but questions.

Tentative leaders are poor leaders. Leaders who do not understand the rules of the game, since the rules are being written even as the game is being played, cannot lead. Debate the right and wrong of the initial bailout all you want, but it is a reality now. The past cannot be changed. We can only deal with the present and the future. The public now has a large stake in a number of large financial institutions, and the public's interest is for their money to be repaid as quickly as possible. Disabling leaders in the indebted institutions hardly serves that public interest.

Worse still, by restricting pay, and by setting the precedent for Washingtonian micro-management, the government's actions decrease these banks' abilities to attract competitive talent in the future. Many leaders have already left. Will effective new ones be attracted by a restricted pay scale and a meddling Pay Czar? No. When an effective leader can take a job across the street for three times the pay, and without the meddling tinkering of Washington, why would he or she be motivated to work for AIG, Bank of America, or CitiGroup?

In my two decades as a pastor, I learned that some of the most expensive gifts I or the church received were the free ones. Whether the ultimate cost came as a result of the unstated expectations of the donor or from the unforeseen poor quality that was discovered later, it became clear that things that are offered as free usually end up costing you the most in the end. Free is rarely free. That may well be the case here. It is more than ironic that Feinberg's “working” for free as Pay Czar for the nation may indeed cost us a large portion of the bailout funds themselves as effective leaders abandon the enterprise and the bailed-out entities slowly disappear into never-never land. Feinberg is doing us no favor. He is performing no public service. Once more, we learn the old lesson that when you let the devil ride, pretty soon he wants to drive.

Business ventures rise and fall based on strong leadership. Effective, motivated leaders make the difference in success far more often than does the business idea itself or the glitz of the marketing package. By de-motivating leaders at a crucial time in these entities' lives and fights for survival, the federal government (or perhaps merely Mr. Feinberg since he has yet to speak with the White House at all) is putting into place the road to failure rather than the road to re-payment.

All in all, what we are learning (or re-learning for those of us who have known it all along) is that the more the government tinkers in private business the worse the results. Very simply, Washington wants the fruit of the harvest without the tree or the farmer who produced the fruit in the first place. In doing so, they will remove the farmers who know how to produce the harvest, and they will thereby eventually kill the tree that produces the very fruit Washington desires to eat.

From farming back to baseball. Umpires officiate. Players play. When the two roles get confused or conflated, only bad things can result. And taxpayers will be left holding the bag in the end. Again.

Have not shared some of the most colorful emails in a while. But last week I mentioned in passing the severe punishment Michael Vick faced - I mentioned this as a part of the discussion around Rush Limbaugh and his being "punished" for some persons' opinions that he is a racist.

Nevertheless, Michael Vick still stirs emotions unlike anyone else. A brief mention by me and a rousing response from a listener named Melissa.

Melissa berates my alleged lack of compassion for dogs (actually it is a compassion for men who have done everything that justice has asked and still get reviled) in a, well, not so compassionate way. Enjoy!

I heard you on your show say that vick was punished enough and too severely; I strongly strongly disagree he has not been punished at all in my opinion. To me he will not be punished until he is put in a cage with a bunch of mean pitbulls and they are allowed to tear his balls off! You must have a chunk of ice in your chest that you do not feel compassion at all for the dogs mistreated. WIMPS like you need to be shot in the head!

Powerful story at cnn.com yesterday. Sad but moving account of the death of Spc. Stephan Mace. CNN focused on his mother's loving act of traveling with his body on the last leg of his return trip home - from Dover, DE to Purcellville, VA. She said, "I brought him into this world, and he was my baby. I thought it was my responsibility as a mother to bring him home."

Stephan was killed in the massacre on October 3 at a remote American outpost in Afghanistan, an outpost scheduled to be closed because of its dangerous location. Closed too late for the 8 soldiers killed there. He was buried last week in Arlington with full military honors.

CNN included, at the end of the story but not in the headline, the powerful account of Mace's faith, even as he died. Here are the words from the article. Powerful stuff.

Mace was awarded six medals for his service, including a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. But for his mother, the most precious is the medal of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, that her son wore into battle.

She gave him the medal when he was 15 and preparing for a trip to South Africa. Now, after speaking to one of Mace's friends who survived the outpost attack, Adelson knows her son reached for that medal in his last moments. She was told that in his last moments alive, Mace took off his medal and gave it to his fellow soldiers.

"That's how Stephan was," Adelson said. "Here this kid is dying, and he was more worried about the other soldiers that he took his St. Christopher off and gave it to them."

She has also learned her son lived for about half an hour after sustaining wounds to the chest and leg. Adelson finds this detail comforting.

"I'm glad Stephan didn't die right away because he was allowed to give that one gift to his unit and give them the St. Christopher and that he also was able to feel God come to him and take him away," she said. "That he was able to ponder and have a last chance, a last moment, to think about his family and have God take him."

I have been a reader of Atlantic magazine for a long time. So it was a really nice surprise to see that one of their writers noticed my blog/TownHall column about Obama's Nobel Prize.

I still insist he should give it to Hu Jia in China. But a good step in earning the prize would be to remove our American soldiers from Afghanistan. We no longer have a moral justification for what we are doing there.

A friend of mine reminds me often that we are at our best when we dig down deep to live with self-control. The moments we are most proud of often come because we said no to a lot of things and said yes to the one thing that mattered most. We sacrificed the good in order to experience the best.

For example, to lose weight, you have to keep the goal in mind. Saying yes to weight loss means saying no to that piece of chocolate cake or to that extra serving of mac and cheese. Self-control.

To win a championship requires the same thing. Saying no to that lazy snooze on the couch and that lounging feeling that comes when practice should be occurring instead. Saying yes to one important goal means saying no to a lot of smaller things. Good things but not the one best thing.

I've been writing a book after procrastinating for far too long. Started getting up early each day to say yes to that one goal of a book I have been wanting to write. Saying yes to that means saying no to some other good things that get in the way of that one best thing.

The same is true for our spiritual lives as well. To draw close to God, to really seek Him each day, means to say no to some other things or habits that get in the way. Some of those other things or habits are not bad; in fact, they are good. But they are not the one best thing.

The difference between good and great? Self-control. Discipline. Not always fun but true.

Congratulations, Mr. President, you won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now it is time for you to earn it since your nomination was submitted just after you had actually taken office.

Nevertheless, it is possible for you to make some strides in lending legitimacy to an award whose nobility (or nobelity as the case may be) has been less tarnished ever since Al Gore won for his very nice PowerPoint presentation about polar bears. You can restore some semblance of “peace” to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Please begin by withdrawing America's troops from Afghanistan. Stop the dithering. In the middle of the many things you consider “urgent,” focus on matters of war and peace. You alone are the Commander in Chief. Peggy Noonan was right when she characterized you as “the anti-Lincoln.”. Whereas Lincoln, your ideal, focused every day of his presidency on the war at hand, even personally tracking down General McClellan in bars and parlors, you have barely made time to meet with your own appointed leader, General McChrystal. Then, when he embarrassed you by speaking to the press, he got your attention. If peace is the aim, your attention and focus are key.

American troops are serving gallantly in circumstances that cannot be described as promising. General McChrystal desires to win in Afghanistan. Of course he does. He is a soldier, and a good one at that. He asks for more troops to execute on the mission you gave him in March, the very mission you now are re-evaluating in a long, drawn-out process.

What none of your advisors is telling you is this: it is time not only to reassess the strategy for our war in Afghanistan, but more importantly, to reassess the morality of our war in Afghanistan.

In order to justify morally the use of arms and force, a number of pre-conditions must be met. The use of violent force should be a measure of last resort. War should be an act of defense rather than an act of offense or aggression. Violence inflicted should not proportionally dwarf the violence that is prevented by that action. And most importantly, war and force should only be exercised when there is a reasonable chance of success.

This last condition of what is commonly referred to as “just war theory” brings Afghanistan into clear focus. What exactly would constitute “success” in Afghanistan?

- A stable central government? If that is the goal, please keep in mind that Afghanistan has never enjoyed such a thing. George Will has rightly noted that far greater odds of success in establishing stability are failing miserably in Bosnia right now. Why would success in Afghanistan be something that we cannot even achieve in a more promising place like Bosnia?

- The elimination of the Taliban? Are they really our enemy or are they merely a tool of our larger foe, Al Qaeda? Eliminating the Taliban serves what purpose? There is good reason that Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires.

- An environment in which Al Qaeda can no longer nest and train? If that is the goal, we must then prepare to make war in Yemen, Somalia, and countless other lands where Al Qaeda is already at home, alive, and well.

I raise these questions because we no longer seem interested in the morality of our intended actions or their intended results. In order to justify our military action there, one must first know what success actually is. We do not. And where there is no definition of success, there necessarily is no reasonable chance of it.


So, what our intentions were in 2001 no longer matters. Whether our entry into Afghanistan was justifiable then is not of import now. The landscape has changed. The metaphorical sands have shifted. We have been in Afghanistan, we have placed soldiers in untenable positions, and we have never fully grasped what it is we are trying to do. It is time to pull out.

This is not to say that we have failed, nor is this to say that we have lost. This is merely to say that a clear reassessment indicates that our strategy for defense against Islamic terror must change as time passes. We face a real and present danger. Arrests in our own homeland in the last month remind us that the threat is real. However, having troops in Afghanistan serves no real purpose. They can be better deployed or employed elsewhere, rather than remaining in a land where they have no real mission and no definition of success.

Feel free to fight Al Qaeda. Feel free to combat Islamic terror in ways that make a real difference. Feel free to craft a realistic and meaningful strategy for how America can continue to allow Muslim immigration in an era where we are discovering that Islam is incompatible with Western ideals of equality and freedom. But, most of all, feel free to earn your Nobel Peace prize by removing our sons and daughters from a situation where they no longer belong. And use them instead to make a real and lasting difference.

Because so many of you have asked over the past 2 years, I am attaching a link to a talk about my own faith journey that I gave last year at a church in Atlanta.

This audio shares why I became Catholic after serving as a Methodist pastor for nearly 20 years. It captures the journey far better than any email I could send.

If it helpful to you, great. If not, may your faith be blessed in other ways.

Sent out my weekly email today on this story.

I love stories like this. Peter Andersen was healed in a mysterious way from a condition that had him near death. With little or no lasting damage.

I am already receiving emails from fellow believers who think this is idolatry - that somehow God cannot us people, or relics, to heal the sick. Take a glance at Acts 19.11-12 for a different perspective.

And receiving emails from non-believers who cannot get their arms around this mystery of faith. Perhaps they are right - perhaps this is just a medical outlier. Only God knows. For now, I will trust the healing power of God.

One of my favorite things about faith is the mystery of it all. We simply cannot explain everything. And that is good. The Kingdom of God is a mystery. God is far larger than we are.