Jason David Carr

Premarital Advice

Jason Carr — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:59:39 +0000

A friend of mine recently just asked me if I had any advice for her about getting married (she’s engaged to be married very shortly). I’m not sure she was looking for such an earful, but I couldn’t help but go there. I’d really love to hear what everyone’s thoughts are on it.

“Amber and I have been married since December 31st, 2005. It’s great right now (and will probably forever be), but it wasn’t always great. It can be tough. Real tough. It’s tough while your selfish love turns into selfless love. Eventually, you learn to love your spouse’s soul, instead of just loving your spouse’s looks or personality. Eventually, those will change and fail you.

It’s also important to note that you will become much more like your spouse and your spouse will become much more like you. It’s even possible that you may sort of swap roles with each other (my wife and I did so in many ways).

Keep in mind that the minor things that irritate you about your spouse’s personality will become full-blown issues in marriage. When money and children are involved, every little minor issue becomes a major issue. Just prepare yourself to learn to accept these things about your spouse, because otherwise you’ll be in quite a bind. You need to love everything about your spouse, even the little tiny things that drive you crazy. You’ll be experiencing those little tiny things for the rest of your life, so you better at least not be irritated by them.

Marriage is wonderful; it’s every bit as awesome as anyone has ever thought it could be. But, take a step back and realize what you’re giving up, and have your spouse do the same. Make sure you’ve had discussions on practical topics like money management, raising children, and so on. If there are any conflicts take them very seriously. Leave nothing off-limits, and come up with a plan to resolve any possible issues.

Finally, ask yourself if you would still love your spouse if they got into a car accident and were suddenly made to be hideous and could not move or speak.

Then, I think you’re good and ready for your first year of marriage.”

Mandatory Sex Education for Your Children

New Song – No Other Hope (Featuring Amber Carr)

Jason Carr — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:25:36 +0000

It’s a little late, but it’s finally here! Those of you who attended First Church of the Nazarene in Sterling a couple weeks ago have already heard it live. This is the fourth recording for the upcoming album; give it a listen and tell me about it! :)

Download “No Other Hope” or stream it live:

Lyrics are after the jump.

Lyrics:

God might kill me, but I have no other hope
He is within me and I hold nothing to scope

I am dead to all my own decisions
I am dead to all my “human rights”

I give it all to You cause none of it is worth anything to me
Compared to the glory of Your grace; it sets me free
Love me with the depth of the sea; come and stretch me till I’m buckling at the knees
I need You more than anything; You set me free

(Free me)
Please come stay with me
I can’t believe in me without You
Don’t let me be
I need You now

I will not be swayed by my own imperfections
I’ll place my faith in my Savior’s resurrection

I am dead to all the sins I’ve made
I’m alive because of my Savior’s grave

(Free me)
Please come stay with me
I can’t believe in me without You
Don’t let me be
I need You now

The anger of my Lord
Lasts only for a moment
The favor of my Lord
Forever holds

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-16

Jason Carr — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:45:00 +0000

Working on a new recording titled "No Other Hope" which features Amber, too. Should be up sometime later this week. http://bit.ly/acsZwI #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-09

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-09

Jason Carr — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:45:00 +0000

Apparently, @carrjd thinks my twitter background is lame. I think it's glorious. #
This probably shouldn't, but it makes me grin: Clackamas man exercises free speech rights by giving cops the finger: http://bit.ly/c1kjbf #
Happiness only real when shared. #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-16

New Recording – Tribute

Jason Carr — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:30:11 +0000

I finally finished the new recording of Tribute tonight. This is the third recording ready to go for the upcoming album “Love the People, Hate the Culture”. It’s still much the same song as in the previous recording from 2005, but it’s been much improved with a full band and a counter-melody between verses.

I’ve kept the old recording up as well so you can compare them if you wish. The old recording and the lyrics are available in the previous post here.

Download “Tribute” or stream it live:

Mandatory Sex Education for Your Children

Jason Carr — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:31:59 +0000

This is very bad news:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6905543.ece

The laws are changing to remove parental ability to opt their children out of sex education in public schools. This means that every kid in public schools, regardless of religious background or the parents’ wishes, will be taught the school’s version of sex education at 15 years old. This goes into effect in September of 2011. Thankfully, this is in Britain, not here in the US. Still, it’s a big deal.

What’s so wrong with that? Perhaps little, assuming that children will be taught responsibly. My childhood sex education experience, however, was anything but responsible. I was lucky enough to have to go through sex education at three different public schools across junior high and high school. Looking back, all three of these experiences were damaging to my health.

My first experience in junior high was perhaps the most damaging. I was taught how to masturbate from a cartoon video. I won’t get into the moral or spiritual issues or non-issues with masturbation, but personally, I very much wish I had not been taught this at that point in my life.

Obviously, sex education is important, and I do believe it is necessary from a very young age. But the way I will choose to educate my children will be vastly different from the haphazard approaches used in public schools. Public school teachers cannot be trusted with such a delicate and dangerous subject; the potential for damage is tremendous, and assuming parents are doing their job, the potential for any kind of a benefit is extremely minimal.

What are your thoughts on mandatory sex education in public schools? Have you chosen to opt-out your children in the past? Why or why not? Are you concerned with this new decision?

Reese’s First Birthday

Jason Carr — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:32:26 +0000

Reese officially turned one year old today; it was certainly an eventful day. We’re at home now and so far he’s taken something like a three hour nap due to his refusal to sleep at Grandma and Grandpa’s. ;)

These pictures were all taken by Grandpa at their house. It was Reese’s first experience eating cake and opening presents (though I’m sure he enjoyed eating cake a lot more than the presents…). Enjoy! :)

Reese at the Rockford AirFest 2009

The Misconceptions of Spiritual Politics

Jason Carr — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:01:20 +0000

Before reading this article, I would encourage you to take a quick look at the infographic to the right. Click on the image for the full-sized version; it will pop open in a new window or a new tab.

The infographic does a very good job at demonstrating the beliefs, focuses, goals, and views of the left vs. the right. It is fair and non-biased, and though it certainly portrays political stereotypes, it does the best job possible at focusing on the core thoughts and values of both sides. I am sharing all of this because of the apparent lack of knowledge as to what conservative vs. liberal politics actually represent; far too often I find that people are glued to one side or the other not because of their personal beliefs, but instead because of a series of less important outside influences. In the past I have been guilty of this as well, but I’ve since learned how rewarding it is to define your own political stance from your true core beliefs, instead of following the crowd.

Political Pride Yields Ignorance

Political awareness and discovery does not necessarily require you to always keep up on current events, nor always be aware of the laws currently running through congress. A knowledge of these things can often be a big help, but one does not need to know the current state of the system in order to decide for himself or herself what he or she believes to be the right way to approach different political topics. What is mandatory, however, is simply to be able to set your past reservations regarding the political parties aside and instead evaluate them based on their true core views, rather than your upbringing or your surroundings.

I will define political pride as a blind appreciation, following, and upholding of either conservative or liberal politics based on the sense of “belonging” to one of the respective political parties. One cannot gain a true understanding of the core beliefs of either party without being able to set this “political pride” aside. This is harder for some than it might seem, as we are often taught to embed this political pride, ironically, deep into our core beliefs. But one cannot even begin to grasp the personally perceived advantages or disadvantages of either side without a politically open mind.

Call for a Spiritual Awakening

One of the biggest influences on this “political pride” discussed above is the church, most often pushing towards conservatism. This influence sometimes comes from the leaders of the church, but more often comes from the church’s members and the perceived need for them to choose and encourage particular political views, while frowning on others. Somewhere along the line it became popular among church members to lean heavily to the conservative side, perhaps influenced by conservative leaders who claim to be spiritually focused.

The misconception here, though, is that typical spiritual core beliefs (particularly Christian views) fit significantly better with conservatism than liberalism. In fact, there is little to no correlation between conservatism and Christian core beliefs; it often even appears to be the opposite. One of the prime examples is the theme of self-sacrifice that Christ consistently demonstrates in the Bible and that Christianity not only encourages but requires; conservatism preaches a heavy focus on “helping those who help themselves” (a quote from the above referenced infographic), while liberalism leans more towards “helping those who cannot help themselves.” Furthermore, conservatism focuses on exclusivity and nationalism, both of which do not play well with Christ’s humility-based and “least of these” teachings.

The list of conflicts between conservatism and Christianity go on and on, from conservatism’s focus on judgement (which Christ clearly preaches against) to conservatism’s resistance to change (while Christ set forth to change most of the laws of his time). In all of these topics (as well as many additional topics), liberalism, though flawed in respect to Christ’s teachings, comes significantly closer to the concepts that Christ taught than conservatism. In fact, it is easy to argue that liberalism in general follows Christian views significantly better than conservatism does. It is odd, then, that we find that conservatism seems to be more popular within the church than liberalism, which I believe is a sign of mass ignorance on the subject.

I would present some arguments in the opposite direction as well, but it is surprisingly difficult to come up with an honest argument supporting the concept that conservatism is closer to Christianity than liberalism. The topics that seem to consistently come up are Christians’ views on abortion and homosexuality, which, traditionally conservatism does support better than liberalism. These matches, however, are almost certainly outweighed by conservatism’s traditional views on capital punishment and war, neither of which fit with Christ’s core teachings.

Neither Perfect Nor Evil

Obviously, neither party is likely to ever perfectly represent our personal views. In fact, if we find that our views align perfectly with either party, perhaps we should step back and observe the situation to see if our views are simply the result of belonging to a political party, or if they’re truly a core belief that we’ve come to ourselves. At the same time, neither party is inherently evil, as often seems to be argued both inside and outside of the church. Both parties will have positive and negative qualities to the educated mind (though clearly one party will be more prevalent than the other). It is important to be able to see past the blind hatred that we often have for the opposite political party, simply so that we are able to improve ourselves and our beliefs.

There are most definitely absolute truths in this world, but to package a random set of believed truths and values into a box for people to adopt, believe, and be proud of is at least a little bit disconcerting. Perhaps even more disconcerting, however, is that many people will take this package, accept it as truth, preach it, and refuse to believe anything else for their entire lives, without examining it and truly grasping any of the concepts as their own. There’s nothing wrong with avoiding politics, but if one chooses to argue political concepts, it is important for them to have examined their political stances deeper than to examine a particular political party. I believe that our current political parties, as well as many adopters, often push for this blind style of following, which is more damaging both to our country and to individuals themselves than is immediately prevalent.

Call To Action

I would like to propose that we step back and re-evaluate our political stances not based on our currently affiliated political party, but rather based on our core beliefs. Truly, they cannot be completely separated, but we may find that our current political beliefs and/or the politics that we support do not match our internal core views. We may also find that we are judging a particular political party for the wrong reasons, or we might find that we are unnecessarily passionate or impartial to a particular political subject, simply because of our surroundings. We must always keep an open mind to the other side, and refrain from eliminating a possibly intelligent perspective simply because of the label that comes with it.

Further Discussion

I am very interested in your responses both to support or oppose arguments for similarities and/or conflicts between Christianity and liberalism and/or conservatism, and your observations as to how the public interprets, applies, and argues politics both inside and outside of the church. I see this as a crucial discussion, because typically it seems people are either too scared to bring it up or tend to address it in a judgmental or condescending light. Please let me know your thoughts.

Faith?

Norway’s Open Prison System

Jason Carr — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:41:56 +0000

There’s not really a lot of things that I’m dead certain on, but I’ve learned something in the last few years that I will forever take a brutal stance on: that the American prison system does not work.

As I’ve been regularly corrected that “jail” is not “prison”, I will state that this applies to our “jail” systems as well.

I’ve come by this perspective through first hand experience. Not by going to prison or jail myself, but by watching a close friend make steady progress only to throw it all away because of the jail time he was required to serve. This particular friend of mine struggles with alcohol abuse, and unfortunately seems to get in petty trouble with the law every time he gets intoxicated. He’s been in and out of jail at least four times for various alcohol-related crimes, and can’t seem to ever get back on track before being set right back at square one after coming out of a long and destructive jail term.

This friend of mine has tried and tried HARD to stop drinking. In fact, he’s been clean for months at a time, only to take up drinking again after being released from jail. The typical cycle that I’ve seen goes something like this:

After serving a month’s time, he’s finally released from jail.
It may be several days; it may be several weeks; but eventually, he gets drunk. He’s been sheltered for so long that he simply doesn’t know how to behave himself, and he’s still ticked off at the world from his jail time.
In his drunken state he does something stupid and gets arrested.
He gets scared, can’t believe how stupid he was (again), and vows to never drink again. He doesn’t, for the time being.
The judge sentences him something like one or two months of jail time for his actions, to be served two months in the future.
He gets help, doesn’t drink, and lives life as a responsible and sober human being for the next two months.
He humbly turns himself in for his jail time (literally walking to the jail).
Slowly but surely his anger builds and his opinion of himself lowers. When he gets out, all of his previous progress is ruined, and the whole process starts all over again.

I’ve seen this whole damned process happen, in full, at least three times. Pieces of it have happened many more times. He’s stuck in a society that refuses to allow him to improve. It’s been extremely frustrating for my wife and I because we have been largely responsible for his past progress (he’s lived with us twice). And yet, by the end we knew full well what the next jail term would do. And sure enough, it never fails to destroy any progress that was made.

Think for a second what the reasons behind this behavior might be. How would you respond to being locked in a cage for the vast majority of your days? Without any respectful human interaction? Without any decent amenities? I know I would turn into a bitter, angry, and troubled human being. Would this really do any good for anyone?

I realize that there are occasional “I turned my life around” stories that we hear about from time to time, but they are few and far between. For most people, confinement and a lack of love have a very negative affect. They generate hatred, not humility and respect for others. Hating on criminals only makes them haters. It’s no secret that hate breeds hate. The few positive outcomes are the result of some sort of external positive influence (be it a particularly caring officer, volunteer, personal faith, or even possibly another inmate); these outcomes are never simply the result of the system.

I’ve had these views for a long while, but until now did not have what I believed to be a true or even a partial “fix” for the system. However, I read an article recently about Norway’s “open prison system” that opened my eyes:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/091017/norway-open-prison

I would encourage you to read the above article, but in a nutshell, prisoners are sent to an island community where they work normal hours and live a normal (though humble) lifestyle. They can enjoy the community, pride themselves in their work, and enjoy enough freedom to at least keep themselves sane. I imagine there’s still plenty of discipline, and I’m sure I wouldn’t exactly enjoy my time there, but it’s a step toward encouraging growth, instead of labeling the down and out as permanent losers and never allowing them to improve.

Granted, the system isn’t perfect (no system would be), but it is certainly closer to a humane correctional system. I believe it’s our responsibility to speak up about our failed correctional system and do everything we can to improve it. This is the direction we need to take.

There’s lots of room for further discussion (from scare tactics to the cost of implementing such a system to the possible politics), but I’ll leave that wide open for the comments. Please share your thoughts. :)

No related posts.

UpSync Version 0.7 Released

Jason Carr — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:44:20 +0000

The new version is here! As always, it is recommended to upgrade as soon as possible. Here are the major changes:

Administrator permissions are no longer required to run the application from the Program Files folder; application settings and logs are now stored in the Windows program data folders.
The application has been tested with and should now work fine with UAC under Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Summary logs have been added to the end of the logging to report count totals for the various operations.
Fixed a bug in the new syncing empty folders functionality that caused a neverending loop when the root of either folder was empty.
Added a “File Filter” property to mapped folders to allow the use of wildcards (*.txt) to restrict which files to sync (as requested by Jason Saul).

Simply run the setup to upgrade to the latest version.

Download UpSync 0.7 Setup
Download UpSync 0.7 Source Code (Visual Studio 2008 required)

Remember to share your thoughts and suggestions!