WHY DO CHURCHES HAVE PARKING LOTS?

By "church" I mean mostly Christian churches, a place employed for worshiping God and Jesus and the Bible. I could also include Jewish synagogues here, though the worship of Jesus would be optional. (For most Jews, Jesus shows up in the "close but no cigar" category.)

And let's assume the parking lot of this house of worship is not used exclusively for tailgate parties and jumble sales. And never on the Sabbath for those purposes.

Generally, churches stand empty during the week, then fill up on Sunday. Folks are encouraged to go to church on that day, and many do.

And apparently many of those who heed the call to worship come to church in an automobile (or pickup truck). Their need for a place to park would appear to answer my title question.

But hold up a bit, partner. Church-going critters are supposed to pay some mind to the Bible they've come to worship. And that particular book has printed in it (in several places, even) a set of rules to live by. Those rules are called the Ten Commandments, and were given by God to Moses so he could instruct the children of Israel.

Let's just take a peak at the fourth item on the list:

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work; thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
That's from the King James version of the Bible.

And by "thou shalt not do any work" the book means do literally nothing. Elsewhere in the Bible it says you can't even kindle a fire in your own "habitations" without breaking that commandment.

And the penalty is death by stoning.

In olden days, orthodox Jews would employ Christian servants to tend to fires and do the cooking and so forth on the Sabbath. The Christians were presumed to be exempt from the wrath of God because the Jewish sabbath was on Saturday, not Sunday. (And if they weren't exempt, who cares?)

I don't know if rich Christians employed Jewish servants to work on Sunday, though that would make sense. I suppose families could trade off services, but that system would quickly break down the next time the Jews were rounded up and kicked out of town.

On the other hand, the rule of "do no work" was supposed to apply to servants and even strangers who might be lurking in the attic, so getting someone else to do stuff for you should also be prohibited.

It's a dilemma, all right. But there may be a loophole.

It has to do with who is being ordered around by God in the Commandments. There's a hint in the Tenth Commandment:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
It says "wife," not "spouse." The commandment is apparently directed at the man of the house, who is ordered to keep his mitts off the other guy's wife (among other things).

Now, the Fourth Commandment specifically applies to a lot of different folks (and one variety of creatures), including daughters and maidservants, but nowhere does it say anything about the man's wife. That apparently leaves her free to do all the work. In fact, there's even a saying: Woman's work is never done. (Unless you're a female employee, then you have rights.)

Anyway, the dilemma is solved. Put Mom to work cooking and cleaning and chopping wood for the fire and feeding the chickens and milking the cows. (It's true, the cattle are required by God to rest, but I'm pretty sure that means they're not allowed to drag a plow across a field. Letting the milk drain out of a swollen udder can't be considered work.)

There's another question. Who gets punished for breaking the commandment? A man is not supposed to work, nor let his servants and cattle work. But is he responsible for preventing those guys from working? Is he to be stoned to death if one of his servants strikes a match? Is he required to hogtie the hapless "stranger" within his gates to make sure the guy doesn't pull any work-related shenanigans?

Or is everybody (except Mom) on the hook? Punish the man for ordering a servant to work, and stone the servant to death for following that order?

And by the way, is stoning someone to death considered "work"? If so, that could be tricky. You witness an infraction on the Sabbath and mete out a dollop of instant justice, only to take it in the neck for your trouble. The stoning of the stoners: There's a kind of irony in that.

(If the second batch of stoners doesn't delay the punishment a day or so, those guys would be on the hook themselves. If all the local zealots found themselves in a religious heat to get busy right away, it could precipitate a free-for-all stoning event that might decimate the population.)

Another, somewhat random thought: On The Simpsons, Homer often expresses his reluctance to attend church on Sunday. He'd rather lounge around the house in his robe and bear-foot slippers. If only he could convince Marge he considered it "work" to go to church, he'd have a pious excuse to stay home.

(Besides, there's nothing in the Fourth Commandment that says you have to go to church on the Sabbath or any other day.)

But let's get back to the original question about church parking lots. Since operating machinery of any sort would surely be prohibited, folks arriving for church in a car should expect a deadly shower of rocks when they climb out of their vehicle (if stoning is permitted on Sunday).

I suppose you could get Mom to drive, but I would bet simply riding in the car would put everyone in trouble when you're dealing with a stickler like God.

(And if God is not a stickler, some of the folks who enforce his rules certainly are.)

So what's up with the parking lot? Is it some sort of trap to lure the religiously uninitiated?

Here's my advice. If you must drive to Sunday services, be wary of guys circling the parking lot with suspicious bulges in their coat pockets.

Finally, this: If you're a Jew, getting stoned to death over a religious infraction is the worst that could happen to you. Jews don't have eternal damnation waiting to cap things off.

But enthusiastic Christians would like to stone your sinful carcass to death, then enjoy the thought they'd sent you directly to Hell to continue your punishment. Sure sounds like piling on, to me.

NO WAR ON TERROR

The U.S. proposes to make a war on terror, but that's not happening. There is no war on terror for the simple reason there is no terror.

If you want to terrorize someone, you put on a horrific mask and shoot at them with blanks or maybe scrape a rubber knife across their throats.

That's terror.

What we have going on these days is war. They're waging war on us in retaliation for our actions against them.

They (and I'm talking radicalized Muslims now) are convinced the U.S. is in a war against all Islam. As a result, they are fighting back as best they can. It's asymmetrical warfare, to be sure. But war, even so.

They're not trying to terrorize us. They're not trying to change our ways. They're trying to kill us, one at a time and in groups. They have their reasons and they're going at it.

Here's the tricky part. If we fight back, we play into their hands.

Nevertheless, we feel justified in going after the ones who are "terrorizing" us. And guess what? They're all Muslims.

From their point of view, all we're doing is killing Muslims (including any "collateral damage" we might inflict on the innocent). And killing Muslims is arguably the definition of waging a war against Islam.

By our actions in response to their actions, we prove their initial actions warranted. They win, not by terrorizing us, but by confirming their whole reason for fighting in the first place.

They know what they know, and they now have all the proof they need.

It's pointless to tell them we're only fighting back. We're fighting--and killings Muslims--and that's all they need to see.

In fact, that's all they can see.

They don't need to see more because what they've already seen does the job. They're done seeing stuff. They need to think no more about it.

Going after ISIS is just more proof of our crimes. Those God-fearing folks are merely trying to establish a chunk of land in this sinful world where they can practice their peace-loving religion. And here we come--the American Monster, the Great Satan--to break up their pious plans.

And why are we doing this? Because we're in a war against Islam, that's why. It's all so clear now!

Which is why the War on ISIS is going to drag more and more so-called Lone Wolves out of the woodwork to attack us here at home.

Folks who think they know what they're doing can be awfully dangerous. Religious folks who think they know they're right may well be unstoppable.

They can be annihilated, perhaps, but not stopped.

And if that happens, all we can do afterwards is say: Look what you made us do!

I've never liked the sound of that.

FIRST TIMES

Human thinking is faulty in a lot of ways. Google "cognitive bias" and weep.

Combing a list of such biases is a lot like thumbing through the Merck Manual, a doctor's reference book of diseases. You'll wonder how we manage to get through the day without coming down with something.

But here's one cognitive bias I have yet to come across:

"There's a first time for everything."

This is the sentiment often whipped out to convince someone to do something they'd rather not do. And it's complete nonsense.

It's true, there was a first time for everything that's ever happened—especially those things that keep on happening.

A volcano erupts, over and over throughout history. Rest assured, there was a first time.

The Hawaiian islands are volcanic in origin. There's a hot spot beneath the crust. As plate techtonics drags the ocean floor across that spot, magma may well up and form a new island. It's happened over and over.

For the man who lies about stuff, there was a first lie.

For the multiple murderer, there was a first victim.

For the drunk, there was the first drink. And on multiple occasions, a lot of first drinks.

But for an event that hasn't happened yet, there is not necessarily going to be a first time. Turns out, a lot of stuff will never happen at all.

In the whole scheme of things, it may be there are more things that will never happen than the things that are happening now or will happen in the future.

A phrase related to "there's a first time" is "anything's possible."

Ridiculous.

There has to be trillions of things that are not even remotely possible. I suspect the list of impossible things literally has no end.

So the next time someone tries to convince you to do something by saying "there's a first time for everything," tell them to go straight to hell.

There'll surely be a first time for that, right?

VACCINES

Last month actor Rob Schneider's State Farm TV commercial was pulled from rotation, the company catching on to the fact the guy's been promoting an anti-vaccine position for years now.

State Farm promotes vaccines as a matter of course, so the fit was found incompatible.

The flap inspired a movie title joke on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: Deuce Bigalow Gets Polio.

(Actually, the wording was "contracts" polio, but that has too many syllables, so I "fixed" it.)

Rob Schneider's career-making appearances on Saturday Night Live were best known for his portrayal of an annoying character named Richard Laymer, who waxed poetical over office workers using the copy machine in his lonely corner of corporate America.

He apparently now claims he has proof the Centers for Disease Control have been lying about the efficacy and safety of vaccines.

Vaccines, of course, catch a lot of flack, for reasons that go way beyond whatever the vaccine might do or not do.

Some folks don't want to get their daughters immunized from human papillomavirus because they think it sends the message their kids should run out and have a crap-load of sex right away.

Flu vaccines are known to many to "give you the flu," which if true would be ironic. Also, if they get the strains wrong, the flu shot might not help that much against some outlier version of the virus that clobbers the nation. Can't every one of them be winners.

Vaccines against childhood diseases are thought by many to cause autism, though there is no evidence for that. Some versions of the vaccines contain a preservative called thimerosal, which breaks down into ethyl-mercury. This chemical is way different than the methyl-mercury that contaminates fish and by extension people, producing a variety of frightening and long-lasting disabilities.

In fact, it just might be that a revision in the criteria for the diagnosis of autism is mostly to blame for the explosion in cases. That and the idea of the Autism Spectrum, which widens the mouth of the net extensively.

This whole anti-vaccine movement can be seen as a combination of anti-government sentiment (we just know they're lying about stuff, right?) and the notion that Mothers possess a secret (and probably sacred) psychical connection to their offspring that goes far beyond mere space-time dimensions.

Mothers know when their children, however distant, are in trouble. What's more, this supernatural protective force is capable of activating in advance to prevent future troubles.

Mother knows best, they say. I mean, the mothers say.

But mothers are just a subset of all humans, and the fact is, humans tend to have a heightened notion of what they know. (Or what they think they know, which—in the human brain—turns out to be the same thing.)

The big problem is that humans take all this excellent knowledge and control the world with it, mostly through error.