You have to love Easter.  Spring is here and the flowers are blooming...oh wait...it's been snowing in a lot of places.  Huh, haven't I been hearing something about this danger called global warming?  I saw tonight that Cleveland has already had several baseball games canceled due to snow.  In fact, it snowed here in Nashville on Friday afternoon.  Nothing major, but there were flurries when I was driving home.  I wonder if Al Gore has been running the heat this weekend...hahaha.  We went down to Chattanooga to play a gig Saturday night, and when we were unloading the gear after getting back into Nashville, my hands were starting to get numb it was so friggin cold.  Oh, and the gig was great...actually one of the better times I've had playing.  We were playing the gig with a band that is close to Atlanta named The Loose Skrews.  Since we figured the crowd would be more into hardcore stuff, we did a set of our most punk and thrash sounding stuff and it was kickass.  To look out and see people who have never heard us rocking out to our tunes is awesome.  After the gig, all sorts of people were coming up saying how much we rocked, and I was feeling pretty good about everything...that is until The Creeping Cruds took the stage.  Leave it to their lead singer Pete to completely overshadow anyone's performance...hahaha....I mean that in a good way.  Thirty seconds into the first song he's already got the crowd up by the stage dancing around while I'm chilling out having a smoke off to the side thinking "I hate you Pete".   HAHAHA...I'm kidding.  I started laughing because I was remembering the story Henry Rollins once told about trying to upstage Iggy Pop and how miserably he failed in his effort.  Now I'm not saying I'm Rollins and Pete is Iggy Pop, but you get the idea.  The guy is such a showman and I'm ecstatic anytime we get to share a bill with The Cruds because I love watching him get into it.  It's funny too because me, Don (our guitar player), Matt (our drummer) and Chris and Pete from the Cruds drove down in Don's new van with all the gear.  Oh man, the van rocks.  Anyway, we're all just joking around about this and that and talking about whatever on the drive down.  We get to Chattanooga, grab something to eat, set up the gear, people start coming in, and this whole time Pete seems just like a regular guy.  Then the Cruds get ready to play and he becomes this wild man...completely fearless.  People were digging it big time.  The Cruds' music is all fun stuff, like heavy rockabilly with horror movie lyrics.  And like I've said before, our stuff is a little heavier and angry, so of course I start feeling that way in a good way, and start scowling all the time.  It's not like I never laugh onstage, because I sure did that night.  Don starts in with the intro to "End of Days", and after his opening me and Matt have some accents we hit at the same time before the tune kicks in.  I start clowning around and raise my bass in the air while I've got my foot on the kick drum.  Don said later when he saw us joking around, he figured something was going to get screwed up and it did.  Oh man did we blow the beginning of the song.  Matt came in early, I came in late, the verse was rolling and I skipped two lines trying to figure out where we were and couldn't do anything but laugh.  It was a great gig though, and I LOVED the Loose Skrews.  It was like some throwback hardcore stuff.  I had a blast, we got a great reaction and when people dig the stuff I get really into it.  And I even remembered all the words to a new song we played!

But back to Easter.  I remember as a kid there would be Easter shows on where the Easter Bunny was involved in some saga (just like the old puppet-looking Christmas specials) and "The Greatest Story Ever Told" would play a lot (the story of Jesus in case you didn't know).  My how times have changed.  I watched "The Passion of The Christ" that night, and after it was over I was checking out the channel guide.  I saw several channels were showing specials on Jesus, so I thought "cool...I'll check these out".  CNN, National Geographic, The History Channel, they all had stuff on Jesus and I would click around to see what was going on.  The one on The History Channel started, and the gist of it was basically that there are a lot of books of The Bible that were left out because they might paint a different picture of Jesus and all that.  You know how these shows kind of have a 1 or 2 minute summary of clips at the start showing what the show is about?  This one had some dude saying something like "if these lost books were exposed, it would destroy the modern-day Christian faith", and then some woman said "when you read the Gospels, there's a lot of homo-erotic themes", so I changed it.  Basically I found show after show that did nothing but try to show that the Christian faith has all these dark secrets and isn't the way it's though to be and blah blah blah.  So did I take to the streets and start bombing stuff?  No, because I'm not Muslim...hahaha.  Seriously, all I can do is shake my head and hope that these people find the truth one day like I did.  Now here's a question - Why is it Christianity is CONSTANTLY under attack, yet the streets aren't filled with Christians threatening to blow stuff up?  It's because Jesus told us we would be persecuted for what we believe, and we know it and deal with it.  I don't think it's any secret I'm a Christian.  I became one on July 30th, 1998.  Oh yes, I'm one of those hate-monger religious zealot born-again Christians.  Anyone who knows me knows I'm not what you would call a holy-roller at all, and I think that's because I remember times during my life when people would just keep going on and on about God and it just wasn't at a time I wanted to hear it for whatever reason.  One thing I'm extremely thankful for is that I've had all the garbage in my life I had up until the age of 29, and that's because when I do get a chance to talk with someone about my faith, I know how apprehensive they might be based on their perceptions, just like I was.  So when talking, I never belittle them, tell them what a screw up they are, all that.  The only thing I can do is try to answer their questions and tell them what Jesus has done for me, and that's more than I could ever write in a blog.  I am FAR from some perfect Christian and will be the first to admit my faults.  Sadly I'm addicted to smoking, I like a good rum & coke, and curse words slip out of my mouth when I don't want them to.  And of course there's the whole thing with lust.  I'm a guy, I love women, and I know my thoughts aren't supposed to get away from me like they do.  It happens to all of us, but it doesn't make it ok.  See?  All of us who call ourselves Christians have many faults.  And while I still battle through these things, the one thing I know that Jesus has done for me since that day back in 1998  was He gave me hope.  Now life isn't all sunshine and rainbows by any means, but when I quit feeling sorry for myself or think my problems are too big, I know the truth is that He will help me through them somehow.  Things may not turn out exactly the way I want, but in looking back on things, it's always been for the best.  Now I know some of you may be reading this and thinking "What the heck?  Don't you love horror movies and heavy metal?" and I would say an emphatic "yes".  In fact, right now I'm listening to a CD Don made for me of Black Sabbath from the Dio years.  But to me, it's all just entertainment, not life.  Yeah, I've still got a bit of an angry edge to me, but nothing like I used to be.  Back in my early 20's I basically hated everyone who wasn't in my immediate family or wasn't one of the couple of close friends I had.  Everyone else could pretty much drop dead for all I cared.  But the weird thing was, I felt so bad for all those people I looked on with such disgust because it wasn't their fault...well...not ALL of them...haha.  Seriously though, it was weird.  I was a nice guy, believe it or not, and the reason was I would feel so guilty for hating everyone so much that I would be nice to them when dealing with someone almost as if I was subconsciously apologizing to them for what I was thinking.  Oh yeah, MAJOR headcase.  Anyway, when I was 29 I worked closely with several people who were very open about their faith, and not in a preachy way at all.  I was in a situation where I was BEYOND pissed off at life for things not going the way I wanted, and I would see these people and just how peaceful they seemed.  So one day I was online looking at this Bible search engine and started typing in words like "anger" and "hate" to see what it said.  Well, you could definitely say my eyes opened, because I read this verse that literally changed my life.  The verse reads "For he that's hates his brother is in darkness, and walks in darkness, and doesn't know where he is going because that darkness has blinded his eyes".  That's from 1 John 2:11.  It blew me away.  Why?  Because for once there was an answer as to why I felt like I had no clue about how to change where I was in life.  So I went and bought a Bible, one of the newer translations because I couldn't understand the King James version I already owned, and started reading it at work.  I really didn't know what being a Christian meant, so I just started reading at Genesis.  A guy I worked with named Todd saw that I was reading the Bible, and sent me a web address of a site he thought would be good for me.  I went home and read through it.  It was a study of Christ - who He is, what He did, and how to be saved.  So I read Romans 10:9 which states "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved".  After that I prayed and invited Christ into my life...and since that moment life has been a bigger and better adventure than I ever could have hoped for.  Yes, I have bad times, but I'm better at keeping them in perspective to a degree.  Yes, I still get pissed off, angry, and frustrated, and generally once I'm done feeling sorry for myself things start picking up.  Reading, praying, and studying the Bible has really taught me many things about life and answered SO many questions.  And no, I am not perfect, not anywhere close...I still have TONS of flaws and will be the first to admit them.  Huh, I really didn't plan on going over all of that, but there's some of my story.

But the original point I was making deals with people ripping on Christianity.  I think I've said this before at some time, but Christianity puts people in a position where they have to admit they're wrong, and in this country where we have to walk around on eggshells so no one gets offended, someone admitting they're wrong might give them an inferiority complex and we just can't have that.  In believing that Jesus is Lord, you have to recognize that you are a sinner and need salvation.  Isn't that just horrible?  How intolerant can a religion be?  Another thing, I don't like to call Christianity a religion, and that's because religion means it's man-made doctrine and faith doesn't have much to do with it.  This is exactly what Jesus calls out the Pharisees on in the Gospels.  Christianity also paints things pretty black and white, and I guess that makes it a religion of hate-mongers.  You know, stuff like never repaying evil with evil is too intolerant I guess.  But what truly amazes me is how all these TV shows and the people who think Christianity is so horrible never mention the biggest thing about it - forgiveness.  When Jesus was crucified, He paid the price for all of us.  In the Old Testament, animal sacrifices were required for an atonement of sin, but when Jesus was crucified, His sinless blood was shed so that anyone who believes is redeemed through what He did.  Does this mean you will never sin again or if you do you lose your salvation?  Not at all, and this is really something I could go on for hours about, but like Paul wrote in the book of Romans, we are saved through faith and not because of anything we can do, so no one can boast...it's a gift.  I know some people have an agenda when they air TV shows showing how wrong or bad Christianity is, but I guess those shows look even more ridiculous to me when they leave out what Easter means...and that's forgiveness by believing in the risen Lord.  How is that such a horrible and evil thing???

Until next time sportsfans.....