On This Day 1,983 Years Ago…

The following is a post I just made on my Facebook wall for Good Friday. I wanted to share it with you.


On this day 1,983 years ago, a man from Nazareth was wrongfully executed, convicted by a rigged jury and angry mob.

As he hung on the cross and died, he forgave the people the killed him, he forgave his friends that abandoned him, and he forgave you. For it wasn’t the lashes or the beating that ended his life, nor the asphyxiation from his shoulders being dislocated. It was your sin—and mine—upon his back. He was the only perfect man that ever lived and he willingly made himself a sacrifice because none of us are worthy of joining God in Heaven.

Romans 10:9 says that “if you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” It’s as simple as that. You can’t earn your way into Heaven. It’s not a matter of being a good person. There are not multiple ways to get there. Jesus said no man comes to the Father, but through Him.

This is the one day of the year that I will be this bold on my Facebook wall. The one day of the year that I will push this on you because it’s important. You need to get it. Without Christ, you are destined for hell. You don’t need to get your shit together before coming to Him, that’s the entire point. You can’t do it on your own. Just realize that the cross was for you. The sacrifice was to cover your sins. And salvation is as simple as accepting that.

I Pushed The Big Red Button…

Big Red Button

Image courtesy włodi.

The following is a cautionary tale of technology and misattribution.

It was Tuesday night. I was on the phone, joining the San Diego Filmmakers planning meeting remotely (as is my norm). We were discussing our Facebook page when I noticed a doppelgänger. That’s right, someone had created their own SDF page and was using it for their own evil purposes.

I’m guessing they took a page out of Dr. von Kaiser’s evil playbook, as there was only one fan, but we had to act regardless and take the page down.

Without alerting anyone, I clicked the “Report Page” link and filled out the DMCA form, citing abuse of our intellectual property. The next morning, I receive an email stating that they had removed my page for violation.

“Wait, that’s not right,” I thought as I logged in to see what happened. Apparently, in my haste to report them and my distraction of being on the phone, I put our official URL in the field where I was supposed to put the offending page. And now, our hard work and 1,200+ fans were gone.

That’s right, I pushed the big red button and nuked my own God damned Facebook page. Let’s just say that, if I’m ever elected president, they won’t be letting me anywhere near the nuclear launch codes. I’d be likely to blow up Newark or something (not like that would be a bad thing).

How did I respond? I swore. A lot. I pounded my desk as I muttered the F-word, tempted to throw something valuable across the room in anger. How could I have done this? How could I have been so reckless? I took a walk, calmed down, then rationally approached the situation.

Thankfully, the page had merely been disabled and Facebook operations restored it within 24 hours (while also disabling the offending profile). I do think that part of the blame lies in their confusing form (I assumed that they knew what page I wanted deleted based on where I clicked the link), but I do have to take the responsibility for the rest of it. Luckily, no permanent harm was done and—who knows—maybe New Jersey would look better with a giant crater in the middle of it.