Musings from the Cornered Hill

Quote 22 - Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

2011-05-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

Prayer is not ritualized language composed ceremonially for an audience with heavenly royalty. Our relation with God is as unpredictable, unplannable, and unrehearsed as life with our neighbors.
from Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson

I also think I take a bit of issue with this quotation, though only because it sounds so absolute. I think there is a place for ritualized prayer, possibly in some of the most "unpredictable, unplannable, and unrehearsed" times of our lives, when we don't know what to pray and ritual gives us a place to start.

Quote 21 - Generous Justice

2011-05-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm back (or so I say). Sticking with 2 quotes a day at least until I seem like I'm catching up with myself (when I started this I copied 11 pages of quotes from my Kindle...I haven't grabbed any more and I'm still pretty far from the end of those, and I've gotten plenty more since then). Enjoy.

God directs that each person should bring what they can, and if their heart is right, that will give them access to his grace.

from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

To me this is perhaps one of the most controversial things he has said thus far, but I think that's just because I've gotten too used to reformed people who are all about sovereignty and not about choice. Any thoughts?

Quote 20 - Generous Justice

2011-04-19T14:44:00.000-07:00

The three causes of poverty, according to the Bible, are oppression, calamity, and personal moral failure.
from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

Quote 19 - Generous Justice

2011-04-19T14:43:00.000-07:00

Any large-scale improvement in a society’s level of poverty will come through a comprehensive array of public and private, spiritual, personal, and corporate measures.
from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

Quote 18 - Generous Justice

2011-04-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

Both sides looking for support in the Bible can find some, and yet in the end what the Bible says about social justice cannot be tied to any one political system or economic policy.
from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

Quote 17 - Generous Justice

2011-04-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

Though some are more able “gatherers”—that is, some are better at making money than others—the money you earn is a gift of God. Therefore, the money you make must be shared to build up community.
from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

Quote 16 - Generous Justice

2011-04-14T15:31:00.000-07:00

Forgot to post yesterday and almost forgot today. One for today, then I'll go back to two for a couple more days.

Why was it that landowners were not allowed to harvest out to the margins of their field? God did not want them to squeeze every cent of profit out of their land, and then think that by giving to charity they were doing all they could for general community welfare. The gleaning laws enabled the poor to be self-sufficient, not through getting a handout, but through their own work in the field.

from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

Quote 15 - Generous Justice

2011-04-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

Israel was a nation-state in which every citizen was bound to obey the whole law of God and also was required to give God wholehearted worship. This is not the situation in our society today.
from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

Another quote pointing to proper interpretation of the OT context. I'm glad that Keller isn't a Christendom thinker.

Quote 14 - Generous Justice

2011-04-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

We should be wary of simply saying, “These things don’t apply anymore,” because the Mosaic laws of social justice are grounded in God’s character, and that never changes.
from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

This is one of the better interpretive tools I've seen for old testament law in our new testament context. I've heard it from other people, but this is clear, concise and to the point.

Quote 13 - A Clash of Kings

2011-04-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

hard places breed hard men, and hard men rule the world.
from A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

Agree? Disagree?

Quote 12 - Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

2011-04-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

Last week I got sick, which got me out of the habit of posting quotes. To make up for it, I'll do two quotes a day for a couple days. This one is another that gives you a glimpse into how beautifully well written Eugene Peterson's books are:

we learn prayer in response to what is being said to us, over and over, by the Holy Spirit in Scripture and song, in story and sermon, in heart-whispers and bold witness.

from Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson

Quote 11 - Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

2011-04-04T22:08:00.000-07:00

For those of us who are interested in living the truth and not just acquiring information, it is necessary to discover the meaning of a word by looking it up in the Story, not the dictionary.
from Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson

I really just love the way that Peterson summons up poetry in your heart and mind through his words. I'm not sure it comes across well in short little quotes like this, but in the context, amazing.

Quote 10 - A Clash of Kings

2011-04-01T10:18:00.001-07:00

Today's quote is from A Clash of Kings, the second book in the same series as A Game of Thrones.

Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.

from A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

Pretty simple quote, and while not always true it does have some truth behind it. Men give over their own power when they think that others have power over them. This is especially true in monarchies and the such, but even today you can see some of that in politics.

Quote 9 - Generous Justice

2011-03-31T14:24:00.000-07:00

In the Scripture, gifts to the poor are called “acts of righteousness,” as in Matthew 6:1-2. Not giving generously, then, is not stinginess, but unrighteousness, a violation of God’s law.

from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

This is one of the stronger statements I've seen from Keller in my reading of this book thus far. Definitely cause for some heart searching.

Quote 8 - Generous Justice

2011-03-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

Bible scholar Alec Motyer defines “righteous” as those “right with God and therefore committed to putting right all other relationships in life.”

from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

This comment struck me very similarly to how I have heard the word Shalom discussed in sermons and classes in the past. And it's a very cool picture to have, someone right with God trying to put other relationships to right. Mmm.

Quote 7 - Generous Justice

2011-03-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

Another quote from Generous Justice on the topic of social justice and the God of Israel.

“But here, in Israel’s rival vision,” it is not high-ranking males but “the orphan, the widow, and the stranger” with whom Yahweh takes his stand. His power is exercised in history for their empowerment.”

from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

Keller is juxtaposing Israel with the many nations that surrounded them and the gods that they served. Obviously this difference should also be important to those of us who serve this same God, and we should continue to examine ourselves and the world around us for what appropriate empowerment means (since it can also be appropriated in wrong ways).

Quote 6 - Generous Justice

2011-03-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

The Kindle doesn't organize highlighted quotes by book, so these quotes will likely bounce around a bit. The next couple will come from Timothy Keller's book, Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just. I think you'll get some of where he is going from the quotes. The first few chapters (as far as I have read thus far) have provided much food for thought. Today's is short and to the point:

God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. That is what it means to “do justice.”

from Generous Justice by Timothy Keller

Quote 5 - A Game of Thrones

2011-03-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

One more quote from Game of Thrones, again not needing much explanation.

“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”

from A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Quote 4 - A Game of Thrones

2011-03-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

Another quote from Game of Thrones. This one won't need any commentary from me (feel free to comment, though, I'd love to hear what others think).

Most of us are not so strong. What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

from A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Quote 3 - A Game of Thrones

2011-03-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

Another quote from the fantasy book I quoted yesterday. And as a side note, I'm not listing page numbers because at this point the Kindle doesn't list them (although they recently updated it so that it should, but I haven't seen that yet).

“Just so. Opening your eyes is all that is needing. The heart lies and the head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward, and in that way knowing the truth.”

from A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

The context of this quote is a sword master teaching a little girl how to fight, but he gives her many principles that have more to do with all of life. When I went back and saw this quote at first I felt like it was hostile to Christianity, very materialistic. But then I got to thinking about it and realized that the head and heart are just as likely to tell us that miracles aren't happening or that all we are seeing is something natural that this idea can be a good one. If God created our senses, and the world around us, then tapping into those senses should bring us back to Him just as easily as our heart or head.

Quote 2 - A Game of Thrones

2011-03-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

Today's quote comes from a fiction book which I began reading because my guild on WoW takes its name from a little mentioned person in this book. But as epic fantasy it tends to make interesting comments on people and society from time to time. Here's one.

“Let me give you some counsel, bastard,” Lannister said. “Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

from A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

The setting of the book is similar to our world in medieval times, so being a bastard was a distinctly bad thing. This advice struck me because as Christians we have made a weakness (the death of our Messiah) our strength. The cross is our most universal symbol, not something like the rolled away stone. And in a sense the many 'victims' in our society are making their weakness a strength (though it is also a prison, a bit like medieval armor could be). Something to think on.

Quote 1 - Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

2011-03-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I last blogged. I'm given to long winded posts talking about what I'm going to do followed by my not doing it, so I'm going to give a small intro and then just get into actually doing it with this post. I have a Kindle. I can underline (highlight in their terminology) things in books as I read and those quotations are collected in one file called "My Clippings". So I have a collection of quotations that interest me in some way or another, and I thought I would start sharing those here, either with or without comment from me. And I welcome quotes or feedback from any readers I may still have. I'll stop myself before becoming too long winded, and I'll wait to really introduce this book until the next time I quote it. Without further ado:

People can think correctly and behave rightly and worship politely and still live badly - live anemically, live individualistically self-enclosed lives, lived bored and insipid and trivial lives.

From Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson

Pretty sure this quote speaks for itself. It's one to think on.

Psychological Education

2010-06-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

So, I've finally restarted studying to take the Psychology sub-test of the GRE. As a result, I'm reading very broad overviews of psychological theories. I learn better when I understand more, and explaining and thinking about things helps in that process. As a result, I'm going to make all of you, my still faithful readers (if you still exist) read a bunch of posts about psychology, and I'll probably think about integration at the same time. Maybe you'll learn something, who knows. I should get the first post up sometime soon.

Health Care and Economics: Part 1.2

2010-04-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting on this post for a while because I just can't think of all that much to put into it. That of course means I'm missing a bunch of stuff. But I'm finally at the point where I'm willing to just write it and then get taken to task by comments and then maybe write a third post along this line just to address problems I'm not even thinking of. So, in this post I'm going to talk about efficiency, death, and maybe get into the issue of regulation a bit (it's out of my depth, but I see it's importance).

Ok, so where were we? Joe Doctor (the evil money loving doctor) has come up with a way to cure AIDS, bilked people for money, and then started training a bunch of other doctors to keep making loads of cash (and as a result has pushed down the price of the procedure and increased the supply of surgeons). But the price is still at 100 grand, well out of normal people's budgets.

Let's say that at this point in pricing the incentives to go into this field no longer have a great enough return, so people stop training for it. This of course causes problems for Joe Doctor, who can no longer make boat loads of cash training new doctors, so he finally decides to throw in the towel and retires. Then along comes Tom Innovator who is going to completely upend the system. He introduces greater efficiency into the system. He comes up with a surgery that gets the same results but only takes 2 hours to do.

Now, as you can imagine, he doesn't have to charge as much to make the same amount of money. So he charges 80 thousand dollars a surgery and still makes more than the doctors who are charging 100 thousand (because he can do twice as many surgeries a week as they can). He takes some business from the others and makes them somewhat angry, but he can't take everyone so most of them still make some money.

The smarter ones come to him and ask to learn his new method, and being the smart man that he is he trains them on it. He knows that this will drive down costs more, but Tom is a good man. Seeing more people cured is his reward (oh, yeah, and the boat loads of cash he charges to train the doctors).

So, demand is up again and the returns are good, so more individuals become interested in this form of surgery again. More doctors get trained, more supply, the price goes down. More than likely the price would bottom out at 50 thousand, half the cost before bringing the same return since each surgery takes half the time.

Now the old school doctors are feeling the pressure. There are plenty of doctors around that are charging half what they charge and doing twice as many surgeries, and why would people pay more for the same result? But then a windfall for the old school doctors, one of Tom's trainees has a patient die during the surgery.

That first death is a big deal, but surgery is dangerous and the occasional death is to be expected (or so the new doctors tell their patients). But then there are three more deaths from three different doctors, all trained by Tom. Percentage wise this is not many (remember that there are twice as many surgeries as before, so 4 deaths probably wouldn't even be 1 percentage point) but it is clear that the new surgery is more dangerous. Suddenly people with the money are more willing to pay for the longer, more costly surgery because it takes the risk out of the equation.

People who can't afford 100 thousand but can afford 50 thousand continue to go to the more dangerous doctors. It should also be pointed out that I think it appropriate for the government to step in to the situation in the case of deaths. Just as the government should prevent individuals from taking other individuals goods by force (since this causes the break down of the free market, then it's just whoever has the most power gets the most stuff and things go downhill), so too the government should prevent the taking of an individuals life.

It seems to me the government can step in at one of two points. They can regulate the entire industry, or they can regulate/investigate those doctors who end up with a patient dying. Let's look at the results of each choice.

If the government regulates everyone they make the whole industry safer (you can only practice after you have proven you can do the surgery properly) but they also drive up costs. Why? Because they raise the cost of entry (I assume the doctors have to pay some kind of fee to support the regulation), which means fewer people enter the field (because they could get a better return doing something else) and less supply means higher prices.

If the government only regulates or investigates the doctors who have a patient die it is good for everyone. It creates a heavy incentive to do your job right because if you don't you not only lose your source of income (no one will go to a doctor that can't do his job) but you also probably go to jail, losing all your freedom. If you do your job right but something goes wrong then the government investigates and clears you, restoring some level of trust in you, so maybe you can keep your source of income. It also costs the government less money/time, as they have far fewer people to regulate/investigate, which is a win for whoever is footing the bill (whether that be the doctors, paying some kind of premium but one which is lower, or society as a whole through taxes).

That last point on regulation is almost certain to get the most response (if anything does) so feel free to let me know what you think. Also, point out anything I left out and should address. If I don't have a good reason to write a direct follow up I'll move on to discussion how socialism doesn't work for health care, especially within a hybrid system (where medicine is socialized but parts of the economy are not).

Health Care and Economics: Part 1.1

2010-03-26T13:58:00.000-07:00

Introduction to this Series

Ok, it's time for me to actually start making my case for free markets in the health care space. Primarily I'll be presenting a very simple case study of how free markets drive down prices. I'm going to try and keep myself from going too far afield, but even if I'm successful this could conceivably be a long post. You have been warned.

When I say simple I mean simple. I will be ignoring both insurance and “credit” in this example. The people who are paying here must have the cash up front in order to get the service offered. I understand this sidesteps large criticisms of the model, and once again I beg your indulgence for a man out of his depth.

For our example, we are going to use something big that a lot of people would want. Let's say a surgery that cures AIDS (I'm going for something that doesn't already exist). So, Joe Doctor comes along and invents this surgery which takes him 4 hours to perform and leaves a person cured of AIDS. And since he is in a free market, he can sit in his office cackling evilly while he sets whatever price he wants.

At first he sets his price at 1 million dollars. Not a bad sum of money to make for a mere 4 hours of work. He convinces some guy with an ungodly amount of money (and the virus) to get the surgery and it works. That guy tells a couple of his friends who also have ungodly amounts of money and the virus and 3 of them decide to get the surgery, which Joe schedules once per week. So in a month he has made 4 million dollars for a mere 16 hours of work. Truly diabolical.

But now Joe has a problem. No one else has the money and the virus, so either he retires on 4 million dollars (possible, but he is accustomed to a better life now) or he lowers his price somewhat. Now he will do the surgery for 500 thousand, and he schedules two surgeries a week. Same amount of money, but he has an 8 hour work week instead of 4. He can live with that.

Ah, but Joe's posh lifestyle has caught Bob's eye. Bob comes from old money, so he has some cash to throw around, but he wants to make more. Joe makes more money than anyone else Bob knows, so he offers Joe 5 million dollars to let him watch the surgery and learn how to do it. Joe loves money, so he takes Bob up on the offer and Bob learns how to do the surgery.

Bob has a problem, though. Joe is a well known name now, and there aren't so many people willing to drop half a million on the surgery that he can easily get clients. So what does Bob do? He undercuts Joe, offering the surgery for 400 grand and doing it 3 times a week (so actually he is getting more per week, but also working harder to get it). Business starts out slow, but quickly people realize that Bob is just as good, and why would you pay more for the same result?

Now Joe is incensed. He didn't think through the consequences of teaching someone else, and his love of money has led to a loss of business. Joe swallows his pride and lowers his price to 400 grand as well. There is a larger pool of people willing to pay that much so Bob and Joe can coexist at this price point, but you forget Joe's evil cackling earlier. He wants to get even with Bob for making him work harder. But how to do that?

Joe decides irony is the best revenge, so he will get back at Bob by teaching more men and thus driving down the price even more. He will make his money from the teaching, not from the surgeries, so his source of income will be safe. And he decides to teach three people at once, so he can drop the price to 500 grand for the training and still make 1.5 million a surgery. He's back to the good life once more.

His students do exactly as he planned, dropping the price down to 100 grand. There are a lot more people able to afford that price, so the price starts to stabilize again. Meanwhile Joe rubs it in to Bob by taking on charity cases for his surgeries (since he is making his money from the training not the surgery) so he becomes famous for making the procedure cheaper while performing surgeries on those still unable to pay for it themselves.

Now, at 100 grand the many other surgeons have to do 10 surgeries a week in order to make the 1 million Joe started at, which they can do by doing 2 a day 5 times a week. So they are now working a 40 hour week to make as much as he was in 4 hours when he began. Let's say at this point there are 20 surgeons doing the surgery, and they do 10 a week each, so there are now 200 surgeries being done a week rather than 1, and they cost 1/10 the amount as at the beginning. All this because of an evil man's desire for money and the working of the free market.

I have a lot more to go on this scenario, but I have limited time today and probably limited attention from my audience, so I'll cut it off here. Have no fear, I will introduce a few more complications in my continuation in the next part. If you already feel the need to respond, please try and keep your responses to what I've talked about so far, as this will get more complex as time goes on. And for those of you with some economics background I know I haven't introduced the idea of efficiency yet, I'll get there.

Health Care and Economics: Introduction

2010-03-23T15:35:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I want to write a series of posts to try and express my thoughts on health care and economics in light of the current national health care debate. I have had some discussions with my sister on the subject, but conversations like that seem to be a bad medium for this kind of debate because you can too easily be sidetracked by questions which may be naturally addressed later on in the argument.

This is a post to introduce the topic, I'm not actually going to get into my arguments quite yet. Instead I wanted to preface my arguments with a few things. First, where I stand in the debate. I see clearly that the Democratic party (and President Obama) are moving us in a socialistic direction. While I disagree strongly with that direction, I do not want to demonize Democrats or President Obama. I don't think they are evil men making power grabs (or at least not all of them). I think the vast majority of them actually think they are doing what is best for the country.

Also, I am not going to be talking about an immediate solution to the current problems. That goes well beyond my knowledge and experience. I have a very limited knowledge of economics (I've read perhaps 2/3^rds of a introductory economics textbook) which I am going to try and express here. I welcome people taking issue with either my premises or my arguments. That's a big part of why I'm making these posts, to try and get productive conversations going so I can better shape my views.

And so I can jump right into an actual scenario, two points on my understanding of economics. One, economics deals with resources which are limited and have multiple uses. It doesn't deal with oxygen supply because as far as we are currently concerned that is unlimited. Health care is a limited resource because it requires the time of people which could be used in other ways. In the same way medicines are limited because those resources could be used in other ways.

Two, people will buy more of a product at a lower price, and sell more of a product at a higher price. This concept is simple, but understanding how it plays out in a free market makes it more and more complicated. Those are the only points that I can think of for now, especially since I won't be immediately dealing with insurance (I may later, but not yet).

My next post will be a simple scenario explaining how I think health care would work under a completely free market. It will be extremely simplified, which I know will probably be the main area of contention. I'm ok with people taking issue with that fact as long as you first understand my argument and then raise your objections. Also, if possible keep objections somewhat simplified. I don't want to jump from my super simple example straight to the system we currently have. If I take this far enough then maybe I'll start thinking about how you would actually go about fixing our system and taking it in the direction I think would be best for all. Or maybe I'll just be convinced that I'm wrong.

Political Rebirth

2009-07-03T23:28:00.001-07:00

Ok, first I'll acknowledge that it has been forever since I posted here last, and this is a subject I don't normally write about. Acknowledgment done.

I heard about Sarah Palin's resignation today, which got me thinking about politics. This isn't a post about her, more about the Republican party and politicians in general. I choose the Republicans because they are in disarray and so a rebirth might actually be possible, plus they try and play the morality card more often, so this post will make more sense from that point of view (I am not bashing Democrats, nor implying they are not moral...merely that the Republicans bring it up more).

I would like to suggest that people don't want politics, or more specifically, politicians, as usual. I know, I know, everyone has already figured that out. Let me make what I think is a simple suggestion which would radically change things, but might actually work if communicated clearly.

I suggest that we allow for personal and political change in our politicians, and ask to see it clearly rather than having it obfuscated as much as possible. It's the information age, people can find out that you voted one way on environmental issues at one point, then changed your mind at another time. They can also discover that you had a DUI in college, or an affair, or whatever. If politicians engaged these issues rather than trying to hide them, we might reintroduce trust into the system.

Let me address this issue from the opposite, and for that I choose George W. Bush as my target. An easy one, I know, but still it's a wonderful case study. Now, whether or not you love or hate him, almost everyone is willing to concede that he made some mistakes. Everyone does, so that's not a huge deal (unless you take issue with the types of mistakes, but I'm trying to bring people together here). My biggest problem with George W. Bush is that he would not admit his mistakes.

He ended his presidential career with an extremely low approval rating and probably dragged his party down with him. So maybe, just maybe, his model of "I will remain the same and will not admit mistakes or defeat" doesn't work. Just a thought. Imagine instead that he addressed the American people and admitted things that he did wrong. He might not say all the things that everyone wants him to, but I'm pretty sure a decent chunk of America would have been more satisfied with him if he could at least do that much.

Now let's explore that model a little more (if you are still with me anyway...I know politics can be a bit boring, and I love the sound of my own keyboard, so I might just be preaching to myself by now). Imagine a 45 year old man (it could be a woman, but I'm choosing a man) who decides to run for office. He had a DUI during his college years, his wife cheated on him when he was 30 but they worked through it, and he has changed political parties. Rather than hoping those things won't come out, he talks about them. Getting pulled over for the DUI was a wake up call. He had driven drunk other times and just never got caught, but after that he sobered up to the implications of what he was doing and he stopped. He barely even drinks anymore because of that. The affair was a hard time, but it was another wake up call that something was wrong in his relationship with his wife. He took time away from other things to focus on that relationship, and now it is stronger than it ever was before. Talking about his party switch he speaks to specific issues that he changed his opinion on, and why, giving insight into his political reasonings.

Does all of this openness mean that he will never go wrong? No, of course not, but the guy that doesn't talk about it could go just as wrong. And this way you get a chance to get to see his life as he does, and maybe even a bit of his character. And it destroys the illusion that he won't change, instead showing you what kinds of things will cause him to change, letting you evaluate if those things are good or not. I don't know if I could get behind this imaginary guy or not, but I know I would respect him a lot more than your typical politican.

Am I just being naive about this? Is this kind of thing completely unpolitically feasible, or have the changing political winds maybe made it possible? I don't really know, I would be interested to find out what my more politically minded friends think.

The Myth of Catharsis

2009-02-08T22:15:00.001-08:00

The other day the idea of catharsis came up in a conversation. I mentioned that “catharsis is a myth” but didn’t say any more than that because the conversation moved on. I got to thinking about explaining it more to the original audience, and in so doing had a realization about catharsis that linked it to the struggle with sin (at least in some ways).

First, let me explain what catharsis is (supposedly) for anyone not familiar with the word. The main idea of catharsis is that you can let go of some kind of strong emotion through a specific action. The best examples I can think of would be screaming into a pillow or punching a punching bag. People talk about various experiences being cathartic.

Why is that a lie or a myth? Because while at that particular moment in time the emotion may fade (you might not be as angry after screaming into a pillow) it’s really just reinforcing that emotion and that action. This is even more particularly evident in “violence” being spent on a punching bag. That practice will just make you more likely to be violent, and over time the punching bag might not be enough.

How does this have anything to do with sin? We lie to ourselves about our various “solutions” to sinful desires. Perhaps I feel out of control and food is something that brings me comfort, so I think to myself “I’ll just eat a bit to make this feeling go away.” Really the decision probably isn’t quite this clear, but at some level that is our thought process.

But it doesn’t get rid of the feeling because it does nothing to really address it, it merely masks that problem. And, perhaps worse, something we enjoy and probably do a fair amount (eating) is now connected to feeling out of control, so the two may reinforce each other. And by dodging actually dealing with the problem we stay away from the transforming power of God.

Instead we should address the issue, whether it is anger, pride, lust, or anything else directly before God. He can help us to actually deal with the sin problem in a way that won’t merely mask and reinforce it, and only He has that power. So don’t believe in the power of catharsis, believe in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Long Overdue Thoughts

2009-02-02T23:15:00.000-08:00

Tonight my thoughts are…more clear and concise than normal, and I’m going to try and capture them in a blog post. Something I haven’t done for a quite some time, so forgive me if I’m a little rusty.

I was thinking about my Scripture reading habits, or lack there of all too often. I am a Bible major who doesn’t read his Bible, so something is obviously wrong. I don’t think I’m all that uncommon, people who come off of intense times of studying Scripture and move away from it. That doesn’t make it any easier to admit, but maybe I’ll connect with others with this problem and say something for them.

I want very much to get back into the Word, but there is some kind of barrier. I think I pinned that barrier down recently in that I burned out. I did so much so deeply, and now I want to go even deeper but I’m burnt out. So I took a step back and started reading very small chunks for short periods of time without that much intensive study. I journal a bit to get my thoughts out and give God a chance to speak to me in His Word (since that’s the whole point anyway).

That’s about where my personal musings end, and move into a different realm. I have been reading Genesis, not the place you would expect someone burnt out to go. The Gospels are all kinds of wonderful, and the Epistles offer nice small chunks. The Psalms are given to emotion, making them easier to not study. So why start at the very beginning and “trudge through” the Pentateuch that I’ve read and studied so many times before?

Because I love the Old Testament, and I never understood why I did (or why I should) until somewhat more recently. The sort of epic story arc of the Old Testament appeals to the same part of me as all the fantasy books that I consume. And much as I love the big action sequences and the romances to last a lifetime, I also really love the normal life stuff, and the Old Testament offers plenty of that (Leviticus I’m looking at you).

That explains the why I have, but why should I? It is at this point that I must ask forgiveness of N. T. Wright if I destroy his ideas, but one of the things that I think (and hope) I rightly got from his book The New Testament and the People of God (which I still have yet to finish) is that story is more important than fact. What I think he rightly communicates is that truth statements are not as fundamental as we in our rationalist era seem to believe.

We try and boil all the stories in the Bible down into various statements of fact, so that we can then apply them today. But truth is more…truthy…when it is in story form. The fact that “a marriage should last through thick and thin” is far less powerful than the story of God’s marriage to Israel throughout time and space. Try meditating on one and then on the other and see which one works better for you. I have a very strong feeling that history will win out over fact unless you resist it.

That’s why one of my greatest desires in coming to the Scripture is just to get the story in me. There is so much there that it seems impossible to fit it all in, and I want to break it down into basic summary statements (God creates everything, Adam and Eve sin, etc) but even that loses something. The closer I can get to the actual story the better I think I can get those truths into my heart, soul and mind.

I don’t think I’ve communicated this at all or done it any justice, but I had to try. Maybe any readers I have left can do the extra work to fill in the blanks and understand what I was trying to say. If it really doesn’t make sense, yell at me in the comments. Revisiting this subject over and over would be good for me.

A Stupid Unnecessary Post

2008-10-10T16:03:00.000-07:00

Don't look now, but I think I'm about to start blogging again. Oh wait, is this a blog post right here? I do believe that it is. So I guess that answers that.

So why am I coming back, you ask? I admit that my motives this time around are a little bit on the weird side. I recently bought voice recognition software that allows me to dictate anything into a Word document or other word processing programs. That means that blogging gives me the opportunity to play around with the software which, at least for the moment, is quite fun.

What am I going to write about on here? I'm not entirely certain, but at this point I'm thinking about writing about "what matters". That allows me a lot of wiggle room, while still giving me some form of direction. I won't just be writing about what I think matters but also about what other people think matters.

On a minor side note, I've also been working on cleaning up this blog of old posts. I'm not finished with that yet and will probably continue to work on it. The posts are not gone forever, I'm saving the ones that actually matter so that in the future I can use them either to demonstrate what I've always believed or what I used to believe about a subject. If for some reason you're going looking for a specific post you can ask me about it and I'll see if I have it.
That is all, go about your business. Nothing to see here.

New Group Blog

2008-03-03T08:33:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure anyone but Bryan still reads this, but if anyone does a couple of guys and I are launching a new group blog to discuss policy. It's called Code Duello and can be found at http://codeduello.us

Progress towards...what?

2008-02-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been pondering what we (and I mean this very collectively) think that we are moving towards. There are constantly people pushing towards this nebulous concept we call "progress" while others work to maintain what progress has already brought us. I just wonder what we are really moving towards, and if it's really where we want to go.

There are plenty of good uses of technology, don't get me wrong. Better medicines and more food seem like very good things to me. Life in general is a good thing, and curing disease and nourishing people allows for life. But beyond those two goals, what are we going for?

It seems like most of the technological advances that have happened and are worked towards allow us to do more things. We are looking for better ways to multitask through computers and phones, better ways to travel through cars and planes, better ways to learn, better ways to communicate, and the list goes on. But I wonder, are we actually losing abilities rather than the other way around?

What do I gain by having a car? I gain the ability to travel farther faster. I can go see things that I wouldn't otherwise be able to see, thus underappreciating more because I never take the time to appreciate the world right where I am, so I'm not likely to appreciate what I see when I travel. I can go see more people, thus expanding the circle of friends and acquaintences well beyond what I can feasibly maintain in any real way.

Through the internet I can learn how to do just about anything I might like to do, thus allowing myself to become more self-sufficient in any number of different ways. Today any man can be an island, and he doesn't even have to cut off communications to the mainland, he merely gets to think himself independent, not needing another human being for anything but communications. There's just one small problem with that picture.

We need people. We aren't ever going to get away from that. I can't create some cybernetic implant for my soul that makes it so I don't need people anymore (and no one else can, either, just so we're clear). So while I don't know that we need to stop progress (or that we even could), maybe we should make an effort to slow down and make progress on what really matters. Loving God and loving others.

Stream of Thought 1

2008-01-31T15:46:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my first substantive post. It's going to be a stream of thought rather than a really coherent post because I can't get my thoughts on any one subject to coalesce long enough to make a good post. The end result of this (in case you want to skip the whole thing) is my conclusion that Christians (especially those in art) are too scared of sex. I didn't put that in the title because I figured it would garner me a lot of spam comments that I don't feel like sifting through.

Where does our thought journey begin? As many good thought journeys do, with Freud. Ok, so for those of you who haven't run away screaming in terror from this post, I came to the conclusion a while back that while Freud may not be right in a lot of his smaller conclusions, his emphasis on the centrality of sex and violence is probably right. Why? Because it is so entrenched within literature and other forms of storytelling, throughout time. I mean, look at what parents complain about in TV and video games. They aren't up in arms about how it might make their kids stupid, or fat (at least until somewhat recently), proud, or any number of any vices that could be encouraged. It's all about the sex and violence.

Next up on my little journey, are sex and violence necessary to our lives? I have no problem saying that violence (in a broad sense, not necessarily just physical violence) is central to life this side of the second coming of Jesus. I embrace the idea that we are "at war" and thus violence will occur. But I shy away from sex much more quickly. Why? Primarily the idea of singleness, whether for a short period or in a prolonged way. For example, Jesus lived His whole like without having sex (at least as far as Scripture is concerned...eh, I'm not going to follow that rabbit trail right now).

But Jesus still talked about sex, so obviously He doesn't completely dismiss it as unimportant. Beyond that (and this is sort of the turn in my logic towards Christians having too great a 'fear' of sex) the Bible doesn't shy away from the topic. We find cases of incest, affairs, and other such things in the narratives of the Old Testament. But for some reason Christians stay as far as possible from sex in their narratives.

There might be cases where sex is assumed (maybe characters get married, or someone gets pregnant, etc) but the writer doesn't usually get close enough to touch the actual sex act with a stick. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for pornographic details or anything, nothing having to do with the mechanics. Those who are old enough to understand generally know the mechanics, but we generally don't even deal with the situation itself.

Also, the "situations" allowed are very limited. I think we collectively decided that if we only allow implications of sex in correct situations (married couples) then that will help keep us away from sin. Too bad that doesn't actually pair up with the Biblical practice. That's as far as my thoughts go, so I'll stop. Hopefully this wasn't too long and rambling for the small audience I might still have left.

Introduction to the Kingdom

2007-06-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

As always, plans change, and I want to talk about the kingdom now. What kingdom? The kingdom of God (or the heavens in Matthew) which is so central to the Gospels. I tried to do some of this with my guy’s group a while back but I didn’t have a good enough grasp on what the Kingdom was yet, so it mostly failed.

The Kingdom was expected by the Jews, especially as a result of the later prophets, but I’ll get to that in a later post. Jesus brought the kingdom in an unexpected way, but before you become interested in that you need to know why the kingdom is even so important. I think there are two major reasons why everyone should be interested in the kingdom: it was the center of Jesus ministry, and it becomes the organizing principle for the Christian life.

What do I mean when I say that it was the center of Jesus ministry? Well, the most obvious way it is central is the teachings of Jesus. The majority of His parables are introduced by “The kingdom of God is like…” or some variation thereof. This was the main way Jesus corrected the Jewish expectations of the kingdom.

The proclamation of the kingdom is also how Jesus ministry is summarized in some places in the Gospels (see Matt 4:17, 4:23, Mark 1:15, etc). He also told His disciples to proclaim the same message (Matt 10:7). With so much pointing to Jesus’ kingdom ministry it is hard to avoid the kingdom if you read the gospels.

In fact, it is so hard to avoid that scholars actually agree (this is amazing, trust me) that the kingdom is the center of Jesus’ teaching. Not just conservative scholars, but scholars from a broad spectrum. They disagree on what kind of kingdom Jesus was talking about, but the vast majority will at least recognize that Jesus preached the kingdom.

But wait, if the kingdom is so dramatically central to Jesus teachings then why don’t we hear more about it in our churches today? (maybe you heard about the kingdom in church, but I have not and still don’t for the most part) One explanation (and what I think is a good one) is that most pastors don’t understand it well enough to explain it in a way that will capture their congregation. It’s much easier to preach specific sermons from the Sermon on the Mount or the Epistles than to preach a broad message about a concept known as the “kingdom of God”.

Unfortunately I think this misses the central importance of the kingdom to Christian life. I think that everyone needs a central narrative for their life (even if they don’t react to that narrative in the same way) and that the kingdom is the answer to that need. I’m going to start using a bunch of literary references, so if I lose anyone feel free to ask (they will probably all be fairly well known, so hopefully I won’t).

Nameless, faceless and formless causes have very little pull on people. While there have been men through history that have sought merely to live the ‘virtuous life’ they generally went to some length to give that concept real form. Unless the people around them understood that form they tended to go on with their life, perhaps adopting the principles that worked well with what they already did or fixed minor problems in their lives.

Christianity is much the same way. We present the ‘righteous life’ as the goal, and to give it form, face and name we show people Jesus. That isn’t all bad, I’m all for pointing to Jesus, but His standard is not only high, but unachievable. The Church isn’t supposed to become the groom, it is supposed to be the bride for that groom. None of us could ever be an atoning sacrifice for all of humanity, not only because we have sinned but also because it’s already been done.

So the majority of Christians go along in their humdrum lives trying to be like Jesus in a few small ways that can ease their conscience about the whole ‘Christian endeavor’ so they can get on with real life. Trying to get them to start moving towards our concept of ‘righteousness’ is like telling someone in middle earth to fight without giving them the Shire or Gondor or whatever it is they are fighting for.

You can point me to Aslan all you want and I’ll look at Him and love Him, but if you don’t give me Aslan’s kingdom to move towards then I’m not likely to do much, especially since you’re probably just pointing at a picture of Aslan and telling me stories about Him. The real Aslan came and told them how to get where He is, and continued to be active, do we have that kind of picture of Jesus?

We get to be a part of the kingdom of God and fight to make it even more a reality in our world. We yearn for the day when the full consummation of the kingdom comes, but if we don’t talk about the kingdom and meditate on it then we’ll get lost in all the little details of life and lose our reason for fighting. That is why we need a good understanding of the kingdom.

The kingdom allows us to read the entire Bible (Old or New Testament) and see how it all flows together into the tapestry that God has created and is continuing to work on. We don’t get the somewhat disconnected pictures of the average Christian because we can see it all as well as seeing the little details. I hope you’ll join me as I seek to express (and as a result better understand myself) the reality and principles of the kingdom.

Contagious Purity

2007-06-17T21:24:00.000-07:00

Sorry about not getting a post up yesterday, moving home and then going to see my grandparents got me kind of caught up so I didn’t have much time and didn’t remember during the time I did have. Also, after this week I may up my word count to 1000 (rather than the 500 I do now) because I have more time so I should be able to write it sooner and hopefully edit it well. And that’ll allow me to say more.

This post has a fairly simple message, but one that really struck me during my summer school class (Jesus Life and Ministry). I’ll probably share other things from that class, though perhaps not as obviously. But let me start with a little bit of background to get you in the mood to really get this idea.

Hopefully you are familiar with the Old Testament and to a certain extent the laws contained in the Pentateuch for the nation of Israel. Many of those laws had to do with ritual purity. There was a certain amount of purity that was required for everyone, and even more was required for the priests.

In general that level of purity was not accomplished early on. Failure after failure occurred until eventually God sent the nation off into Exile. The people were then looking for the return from exile, and though some did return, it was not in the way that was expected. As a result the people decided that they must be even more purified in order to bring about the full return from exile and the kingdom of God.

This is in some ways what brought about the Pharisees. They were the teachers of the people, lay people trying to hold the nation to a higher standard. All kinds of oral laws grew up around the law in order to build a ‘fence’ to keep people from trespassing the law. Some of these oral laws were in regards to ritual purity, raising the standards and keeping some people out of the community.

Enter Jesus of Nazareth, a seeming prophet proclaiming the coming of the kingdom. But instead of hanging out with all the pure people (especially the Pharisees) and spreading their message he broke their rules and hung out with the ‘dirty’ people like sinners and tax collectors.

But He brought an extremely strong purity, as well. He understood His purity to be so strong that it was contagious (and it showed through physical healings). Rather than making Him unclean, touching people like lepers made them clean. Do you see the extreme reversal?
Even today we think about germs being contagious and rubbing off on the clean person. It’s not ritual purity, but it’s still a form of purity. But Jesus reversed nature and brought a contagious purity that rubs off on all of us. Think on that for a while and perhaps it will refresh you like it did me.

Learning From Life

2007-06-09T11:48:00.000-07:00

I’m going to hold off on the reasons for my faith for a couple weeks so I have more time to gather my thoughts on that. Consider this an interlude.

I read a number of different blogs, but one that really catches me sometimes is internetmonk.com. He has a very interesting perspective on some things, so I enjoy reading a lot of his stuff. I was skimming one of his posts recently and recognized a way to actually get myself to journal.

Let me explain. I don’t like to journal in general. But I think I should. This combination is very annoying because it leads to sporadic attempts to journal with long periods of ignoring the idea altogether. But this blog post might just have redefined my ideas of journaling enough to get me to both like journaling and want to do it (only time will really tell).

His idea is to write a book about the lessons that life is teaching you and to go back and reread it. I’ve mostly viewed journaling as an emotional outlet and so have almost never even attempted to read old entries. But this gives the idea value now (I have to be thinking about what lessons I’m learning) and for the future (because I get to maintain those lessons).

This also manages to mesh well with my view of salvation history and what we are supposed to do with it. The Israelites were commanded to remember certain events in their history because those events taught them lessons about who God was, is and will be. If I can cultivate this kind of thinking on the small day to day things I can also integrate in this kind of salvation history thinking.

Beyond the personal application, lessons also seem like something that could be shared with other people. In fact from the little I can derive from friend’s posts about their journaling and what they share of it there seems to be a few people in my social circle that already do this. The hard lessons might not be shared immediately or with everyone, but the can benefit more than just yourself.

Basically, I like the idea that IM mentions in one of his paragraphs about learning from life. I may not have a wife to journal about like he does, but I surely have a lot of life to learn from. Ask me about my journaling in the future to see if I’m doing it, and perhaps some of the lessons I learn will show up on here to be shared with all of you.

Motivation

2007-06-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

This post is a struggle over how much of your time I’m willing to waste just talking about my own issues and my desire to talk. Maybe it will connect with something in you that will help you understand or help you help me, but that is not my motivation and that is my problem right now: motivation.

I just started reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, which on top of what I already know and other sources of self-reflection has pretty much stripped me bare. I still have not had the time to figure out if I have anything left. An analogy to help explain: I’m like a person who is so convinced that using a gas powered car is wrong that he will no longer use one but that does not have an alternate power source, so he is just stuck in one place.

I probably cannot even number the desires inside of me that I have (correctly, I think) labeled as wrong at this point. But I still need to find some that I can label as good and right. Thomas Merton illustrated well the ways that so-called “holy” people can be self-deceived about their own goodness and turn it into something that is wrong. Realistically I think Merton has made me lose faith in myself before I am ready to fully put my faith in God.

As a result I do not think any of my normal rants is appropriate to be sharing with other people and trying to convince them of. I am not sure if I will have anything of substance in the near future, but I do not want to abandon this because I am trying really hard to build into myself integrity and perseverance (I am pretty sure those are good) and ditching this would be counterproductive for those goals.

Ok, enough about me, a little about what I do know about this blog. My plan is to limit myself to 500 words or less for the near future. That will mean more focused posts which are also short enough to edit, rewrite, or basically completely scrap (this is an example of the result of the third, then the first). I know I have not been living up to my writing abilities in college, so I will hold this limit until I am convinced I am starting to live up to them, then I will slowly expand the limit.

Next week I will probably attempt to start a series on the reasons for my faith. I have a sort of ‘bedrock faith’ I can fall back on in times of serious doubt, but I do not think I know it enough, and this seems a good place to develop it (so it can be challenged or strengthened publicly). Time will tell if I can put something together fast enough, though. And I apologize for the immensely personal post, but it seemed the only appropriate thing to do.

Choice

2007-05-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

This is a somewhat amusing post for someone who openly struggles with total determinism, but it’s something that’s been on my mind and heart for a while. I don’t know exactly where it fits into the scheme of salvation, so if I suggest otherwise during this post don’t take that as a full assertion, just an idea. The subject is the free and constant choice between God and ourselves.

I don’t see Christianity as a single choice for God which evangelicals like to call “conversion” or being “born again”. I see it as a long series of choices throughout your life where you can choose (and generally do choose) either way. Sometimes you do this consciously, sometimes unconsciously. As you progress farther in the Christian life the choices tend to become more and more conscious, which to me makes them even more important.

This idea is also why I am not overly surprised when pastors leave the faith. Pastors, if they are doing what they should be, are going deeper into and spending longer on the Christian life than those around them (consciously…I’m not suggesting a split between secular and sacred, but other people don’t think about theology all the time as their job). So pastors are going to hit bigger and more obvious choices, and there is no guarantee that they will choose God over themselves (as we’ve seen many times in the Church).

While I think it is a fully free choice, I also think that we can begin to condition ourselves one way or another. If you continually choose God’s way then it will become easier and quicker in the future, and you may even begin to do it without thinking. The same is true (and perhaps more frequent) of our way.

The reason why I struggle with this point and salvation is that while I don’t think that every choice is a sort of ‘salvation turning point’ so if the last choice you made was for yourself and then you die then you go to hell even though the 200 decisions before that were for God. At the same time, I have a problem with saying a one time choice for God (sudden conversion) is all you need and then you can go your own way for the rest of your life. I like James’s epistle far too much to allow that kind of idea to take much root in my life (faith without works is dead).

This is how I live my life, at least the times when I am being intentional about it. When I’m aware of the choice I still don’t always choose God’s way, but eventually I turn back and bring that wrong choice (sin) to Him in confession. I choose to make that a choice for God and try to go on making more choices for Him so that becomes the primary orientation of my heart and soul.

That’s all I have to say on this subject for the moment, I may come back to it in the future, but now at least I’ve introduced it to y’all. And I’ll leave you with a Bible verse:

And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24:15, ESV)

Real Unity

2007-05-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

This is one of those subjects that is close to my heart, and I can see its importance, but my application of it is somewhat lacking. So as I talk about it, and probably sound at least somewhat down on the Church today remember that I’m a part of that Church and recognize that I’m still part of the problem. Also, I don’t think this is the only major problem facing the Church today, but I have a feeling that this would help fix some of the other problems if it were applied.

So what am I talking about? Why did I title this post “real unity” rather than merely “unity”? I’m not talking about churches who decide they have to make unanimous decisions, thus demonstrating “total unity” on things. In fact I think they are perhaps the churches that hurt the most for real unity because they have to be extremely homogenous for anything to happen. I am not talking about churches making everyone into the same mold, I’m talking about real people interacting with other people who are different.

As it is now we have all kinds of different church choices in any given area. Different denominations, different pastors, different leadership boards, different whatever it is you need. When Christians come to an area they go looking for a church that fits their felt needs and where the people are very similar to them (whether they know it or not). I’m reading Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer right now and he talks about starting with a focus group which got me thinking about this because having different churches focus on different kinds of people will keep them all separated out. (Please note that Stetzer says some things about expanding beyond the focus group so I got the idea eventually that he was somewhat on the same page as me, and he is fairly concise in the book so I can’t really be sure on much, I’m just using him as the springboard because that was where my ideas started flowing.)

Instead of having Sunday morning at 10am being the most segregated hour in America (which it still is, apparently, and that isn’t hard for me to believe) it should be the most desegregated hour. People who are different should be coming together based on commonly held truths and interacting in a way that is pleasing to the Lord. This isn’t just about having a bunch of different races in a church, though. There are African Americans and Hispanics that think like me, so my getting along with them is no big deal. There are white people who differ radically from me and might be more beneficial for me to interact with than those of a different race but the same mind.

Why is this so important to me (and in my mind, to the Church)? Because we are supposed to be the body of Christ, not the limbs of Christ who are unified only in word. I think we miss the redemptive power of real community because the people we are around are all like us. Let’s take one of the other problems in the Church today as an example, social justice. More and more Christians are recognizing that the Church today is not as interested in social justice as it should be. So what do we do about it? We get together with the other people in our church (or Christian social group that is about as homogenous) and talk about the problem, perhaps taking small steps but mostly continuing to do nothing.

But what if the white, affluential Christians that I tend to be around were to really listen to and understand (as best they can) the experiences of people from south-central LA? Perhaps that is asking to much as a beginning, so let’s start even smaller. What if they sat down with a minority who is similar in many ways (affluence and education, etc) but understood what it means to be a minority and be perceived as such? My experiences have been sorely lacking this area, but even the few experiences I’ve gained through my Psych of Family class (taught by a Hispanic woman not afraid to talk about culture, discrimination, etc) and talking a little with my RC (Phillip, who is African American) have been quite growing. I don’t nearly understand minority experiences or the ways in which I’ve been shaped by my culture, but at least I recognize now that I don’t and have a desire to explore this more.

I’m going to assume (for the sake of space and your time) that you’ve been convinced of the need for unity, and you understand better what I’m talking about. If not, ask clarifying questions, I’m more than willing to come back to this subject in the future. For now, though, let’s talk about why we have such a differentiated Church.

I am coming to believe that it is the very structure of our churches that brings about this situation. We have a fixed way of worship and a fixed form of message (or liturgy if it goes beyond just a message). Thus when looking for a church you find the style that is most comfortable for you and go with that. If you’re a bit more “culturally aware” maybe you find a church that is very different than you style and settle down there, where you just get comfortable with a different style eventually.

This comes back a bit to my inoculation point, and the more general idea that we just want to be comfortable. The problem is that comfortable people don’t grow, they get stagnant. The point isn’t to make people uncomfortable (though that might be the result) but instead to encourage the kind of growth in Christ that the Bible demonstrates, which includes this unity idea. A number of conflicts arose in the New Testament Church, but I never see the NT writers suggesting people split up and start separate congregations, they encourage them to deal with it by better understanding Christ and the nature of the salvation that He brought.

What do we need different in our churches to begin to fix this problem? Rather than a message here or there, or perhaps a class, and a slightly different style of worship every 8th service or so, we need to design our churches to remain constant on the central tenants of the faith but malleable on everything else. I propose that we need churches that you cannot identify the worship style or the liturgical style. Instead those are always changing, encouraging people to realize that they are merely means, not the end itself.

Some weeks one group might be a little uncomfortable, but they can try to better understand the groups who are comfortable with that style through their experience. And another week they might find themselves the comfortable ones, and they can stop and think about why it is that they are comfortable with that particular style. This kind of thing would be extremely hard to pull off, though, especially in an established church.

The problems are numerous, but it comes down to convincing comfortable people that they shouldn’t be comfortable. Because that would be extraordinarily hard, you wouldn’t be likely to be able to change an existing church into this model. You might make some changes in this direction, but likely the people who hold power would stop the church short of fully embracing this model, deciding they had done “enough”.

If you start a new church like this you need to convince people to come, which is somewhat the same. You might be working with new converts, though, so it might be somewhat easier, and as you become more established you can begin reaching out to the Christian community as well (trying to encourage them to change in this direction, and if they didn’t offering those Christians who recognize this problem a place to grow).

The final problem for a church of this kind is maintaining the things that are central tenants of the faith. Founding a church based on change makes it hard to come down firmly on a few things. You will attract people who are a little more relative with truth most likely, and people will push for changes in all kinds of areas, not just worship and liturgy (beyond the fact that both of these to some extent reflect doctrine). So you would need an extremely strong elder board that knows how to defend the truth and centrality of the important doctrines while open to being challenged in other areas.

As I’m considering church planting in the future I am thinking about exactly how you could design this kind of church and I still don’t think I’m that close to figuring out how to pull it off. But I know it’s important because I would want a church where I am forced to grow even if I am in leadership, not just a place for the “new people” to “grow” into what the leadership looks like. I want people following me only in so far as I am following Christ. Any ideas from you guys are welcome, these ideas are still somewhat in their infancy. And good job if you read all the way through, this was an especially long post.

Understanding - Inward or Outward?

2007-05-12T13:00:00.001-07:00

Reading books by Henri Nouwen has gotten me thinking more about my inner life (since he has a strong emphasis on that). I moved on from that into thinking about inward vs. outward people. What do I mean by that? It seems that there are people who seek to understand themselves as well as possible with the thought that it will also help them understand other people, or the opposite, those who try and understand how people in general work in order to better understand themselves.

The problem that must be addressed with either of these approaches is the filter through which we see the world, ourselves and our experiences. That filter has to be challenged and changed when it is wrong, and it is this process that is sought by those who are truly reflective (of either variety). Monastics and introverts lean more the inward, while extroverts and many others go the outward route. It seems as though our culture emphasizes the outward (especially in the form of psychology) and does not allow for a lot of the inward.

We (in the west especially) are all about doing things. Sitting in one place, in silence, just reflecting on our lives seems like a “waste of time”. Even those who value sometimes refer to times like these as “wasting time with God” (I have a book with that title). It seems some people have this idea that we have to sacrifice time to God because He deserves it. Admittedly I don’t think this is a large number of the people who support times of solitude, but it’s easy for the rest of culture to understand.

But what if understanding ourselves led to a much greater understanding of the world around us? In thinking about the filter that we see the world through, it seems like the easier way to break through that is by looking hard at ourselves. Because in looking at ourselves we are forced to confront that filter, while in looking at the world around us it is easier to continue looking through our filter and just using that to interpret the world without even being aware of it.

Two caveats before you start jumping on me about this. The first is that this requires a certain amount of “work” on understanding oneself. It isn’t just giving up on understanding the world around us and assuming that the self-understanding we have is enough to help us understand others. We need to understand ourselves at a very deep level, and the deeper we go the better we understand those around us.

The second caveat is that this be done with an eye toward better understanding and helping others. Our goal is not just to reach a high level of understanding and then keep it to ourselves. We need an eye towards loving others always. My guess is that a lot of the negative impressions of monasticism that protestants have is from the movements that led to a lot of inward work without the following outward work. Many of the early desert fathers (and other monastics) went into retreat to understand themselves in order to come back. That is the kind of self-understanding that I seek (though I don’t plan on going on retreat to achieve it).

Now you can give me your thoughts and criticisms ;-) And I apologize for the lack of quality in this post, I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to say, but not fully formed enough, and I didn’t give myself enough time to work it out and then come back and write it well, so I rambled a bit. I’ll try and do better next week.

Inoculation

2007-05-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

My biggest problem with the way that church is done today is the idea that we need to keep people “in the church” at all costs. If there is something that we should do to change the church but it might cause people to leave the church resistance is extremely high. It seems as though people trump the gospel in churches today.

The reasoning would go something like this, “The main place people hear the gospel is in church. Therefore having more people in church is a good thing. If we cause people to leave the church then they no longer have the chance to hear the gospel and probably won’t be saved. If we can’t preach quite as much as we normally do, at least more people are hearing most of the gospel.”

Maybe that isn’t ever vocalized by church leadership, but it seems to be there, underlying much of what we do. I think that as a result of this (and some other factors) much of the population has been inoculated against the real Gospel, and thus by doing this we may actually be preventing people from being saved, rather than helping them along the road.

What do I mean by this? It compares somewhat well to the way we inoculate children against some common diseases. In order to make them “immune” we give them a weaker form of the virus which their body can handle but it causes them to build up the anti-bodies necessary to fight the real thing. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it extends into the form of Christianity most people have today.

Pastors and evangelists use a weakened form of the Gospel because it isn’t as hard to get people to assent to it, and thus “be converted”. Perhaps for a time people really embrace this weakened gospel because they have some strong need or the person who shared it made it look really appealing. Eventually, however, they either become dissatisfied with it (and as an extension with the real Gospel, even though they may not have heard it) or they embrace it so strongly they could never move farther into the spiritual life because they’ve found a new idol, but they think they have the Gospel.

That is the biggest danger of this inoculation, that a person thinks they have heard (and perhaps accepted) the real Gospel. When that happens it becomes far less likely that they will be willing to listen to someone sharing the real Gospel. The Holy Spirit can still work through the barriers created by this phenomenon, I have no doubts, but it’s still a bad idea on our part. It’s bad because it’s deceptive, both for the person doing it (they think that they are helping people receive and understand the Gospel) and for the people on the receiving end (since they think they’ve been exposed to the true Gospel). This kind of deception should be fought by those who claim to love the one who is the Truth.

So what should the Church be doing differently? I probably won’t cover everything here, this is what I’m still working through, but I have some thoughts. The most foundational is that we need to make sure we understand the Gospel. We need to go to the Scriptures and listen to what they have to say, not come to them constantly asking about this or that need that either we or someone in our congregation has. We need the true Gospel far more than we need to have the various other trivialities in our life fixed. The Gospel will provide us the means to cope with those things, but our focus needs to be on the Gospel.

We also need to abandon the idea that keeping people in church is one of our most important duties. The Church’s most important role is to be the Church. When we cease to be the bride of Christ we lose any and all usefulness and deserve to fade into the background (as the Church is doing today in the west). In general I think evangelism should take place outside churches, allowing them to focus on growing true disciples of Christ.

I have a lot more than that to say (this is probably one of the biggest things on my mind at this point) but it would take too long to say them all for one blog post. So expect to keep hearing about this in the coming weeks, though next week might be a short break from this subject for something else I’m interested in right now.

Heilgeschichte: Part One - Creation

2007-03-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is a post within my Heilgeschichte (salvation history) series. I'm exploring our place in salvation history by reviewing the whole of salvation history (as well as can be done in a blog series). You can find the introductory post here, and the easiest way to see the whole series is through the heilgeschichte label.

The text I invite you to examine with me today is Genesis, chapters 1 and 2. I will be going a bit further than the text, but I hope to stay completely within the bounds that the text gives me, and you are welcome to challenge me if you think that I have strayed.

Why do I begin with the Creation story for a series on salvation history? What part does the pre-fallen nature take in salvation? Some would say that it is what we are being saved into, and perhaps they are right. For myself I think it is important because by seeing the pre-fallen state we can begin to imagine what would be better than it, which is what we are being saved towards. Why do I think we are going to have better than the garden of Eden? Because I believe God is in control I don't that He would have allowed the fall and the necessity of salvation itself if that did not result in something even better. Now perhaps that "something even better" is just free will, but I think it goes beyond that. Regardless, let's look together at our beginnings.

Ponder with me now the creation of the entire world. God created the heavens and the earth. Then he created light and separated it from darkness. He created the oceans and the dry land, plants, animals, everything that we see and experience in our lives. And each day He saw what He had done and said it was tov (good). And then, having created everything else, He came to the creation of man. He looked, and behold, it was tov ma’od (very good). Make sure you catch the emphasis there, every other time God merely saw that it was good. This time, behold, it was very good.

And then God rested, and intended for His creation to rest as well (and that continues on today, though it may take different forms). Then the focus shifts more specifically to man (and woman) and we see for the first time that something is lo-tov (not good). It is not good that man should be alone, which eventually results in the creation of woman as a helper for him.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that mankind alone earned the description of very good, instead I see mankind as the crown of creation. Something would have been missing without mankind to rule over it and have dominion. Thus the Bible starts with one of the highest views of man possible.

What about where Adam and Eve dwelt in the beginning, the garden? This is where my ponderings turn speculative, you can evaluate for yourself whether this seems to fit well into salvation history. I take the garden and Eden to be two different locations that are directly connected. It is the garden of Eden, not the garden called Eden. Also note verse 10 of chapter 2 where a river flows out of Eden to water the garden. It is clear at the very least that Eden is not synonymous with the garden.

My speculative interpretation is that Eden was the palace (or temple if you prefer) where the physical manifestation of God (the one that walked in the cool of the morning) dwelt. The gardens were attached to the palace as many palaces throughout history have had gardens associated with them. You can imagine how magnificent the palace would have been to have a garden like this one attached to it. This is no mere plot of well tended ground, it is a garden large enough to have “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food”.

Sometime this series will reach into the future, towards the end of ‘time’ as we know it, but for now I will leave the connections between this beginning and that ending alone. Merely note that along with this idea of a palace I think that there was a limitation placed upon Adam and Eve. They did not dwell within the palace, they were in the garden. God could come to them, but they could not go to Him for some reason (perhaps eventually they would have earned that right had they remained in the garden).

That's a side note for now, though, and we should focus on the fact that Adam and Eve were naked in the garden without any shame. Imagine with me for a time what it is that we have lost, signified by this simple statement found in a single verse. The obvious physical implications are that they were not ashamed of their body. The evident arousal of Adam’s body by the sight of Eve would not have been a source of shame creating a desire for one or the other to hide, it would have been something that would cause wonder and (excuse the word choice) excitement.

But it is not just this kind of thing that we hide with clothing today. To see another person’s body fully is to fully expose oneself. They had no mechanism for hiding emotions and feelings, so the body language would have been fully communicative. Today through the use of baggy clothing (external) or the use of so-called “masks” (internal) we try to hide ourselves from being fully seen. From a very young age we socialize children through games like peek-a-boo and hide and seek to be able to hide themselves. Merely looking into the face of a child and seeing all its emotions there (and perhaps allowing it to see all of our emotions as well) is too much for most of us, we must find some way to stop or reduce it.

These things (the high place of man, the idyllic dwelling place and the lack of shame) are some of the things that have been lost or marred through the fall. The loss of these things results in a need for salvation because we were built for that, not for what we currently reside in. I hope that you will join me as I explore the ways in which God has held out to mankind His salvation and the ways in which we have responded (after looking at the fall in the next part of the series, of course).

Heilgeschichte: Introduction

2007-03-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

This is an introductory post that I'm planning to continue for an undetermined length of time (it could be quite long eventually). Helgeschichte is approximately "salvation history" (it is a German theological term) and that is what these posts will be about. Different theologians have used it in different ways, so if any readers know of those uses please dismiss them and hear me using it simply as salvation history.

Why am I planning to make a whole bunch of posts on salavation history? Recently I have come to realize that I am in an intense time of identity crisis. I am becoming aware that I both have a strong identity based in my culture (white upper-middle class male) and that I lack the identities that I most need, those of Christian and old heritage. Before exploring my ancestral heritage I must first determine where I relate to (most likely my Scottish blood) but I know already that I need my Christian identity.

Christian identity is much more complicated than salvation history, and to a certain extent they can even be completely different topics (and I will probably explore Christian identity more directly in other posts) but history provides a person with a sense of their place in history and fixes their feet in that tradition. This is why the Israelites were instructed to celebrate certain festivals and to teach their children their history.

I feel sorely lacking in this area, not because I don't know the history at all, but because I haven't explored it as my history. For most of my readers it will also be your history, and so I invite you to join me as I explore the Christian heritage.

Where to begin this journey? I could start with the ascension of Jesus and thus the institution of the Church, but that seems far too late in salvation history. I want a fuller understanding of all that is heilgeschichte, and thus I will begin in the beginning. We will walk together through the pages of Scripture, exploring some stories we both know well and others we are less familiar with, all through the lenses of our history.

That in itself is a task of great magnitude, and I'm not entirely certain yet how I will decide which stories to look at, but I plan to continue beyond point. We will move past the OT, through the inter-testamental literature (because God was still at work), into and through the New Testament and then we will explore our Church history. When I reach that point I will likely invite others of you to join in my task if you so desire because Church history is huge and complicated, and I will most likely focus on certain movements (especially in later Church history) but welcome the other threads that make up our corporate identity.

I hope that you, my readers, are as excited to explore your heritage as I am. These aren't just pages in a book we say is Sacred, or stories of men long dead. These are the men that passed on the faith that we now stand in, serving a God who has remained the same throughout history and still speaks and moves today. Heilgeschichte is still taking place in our lives, so let us find our place in it.

Inner Life, Outer Obedience

2007-01-14T15:17:00.000-08:00

Most of my readers are probably aware that I enjoy reading. Not only do I enjoy reading, I enjoy reading non-fiction literature, especially stuff about the Christian life. Lately my own personal reading has also been combined with reading for the interterm class I’m in (an integration seminar on Christ and Contemporary Culture) to give me an eclectic mix of readings. You’ll probably be hearing from me on pacifism, Christendom, pop-culture, free will and predestination, and a number of other ideas.

But those are not the ideas for this post. This post focuses on the modernistic impulse to separate things to try and find what is most foundational and then work back to the whole. The modern approach to transformation into Christ-likeness is to break down the Christian life and find what is most foundational and work on that. The problem is that people don’t agree on what is most foundational. Is it Bible study? Prayer? Social activism? Fellowship? What about the heart versus one’s actions? Which do you work on first?

Some people decide that outward actions are more important. They will generally tell you some form of “fake it till you make it,” that is, do the right things until you are transformed in an inward way to actually want those things. This works for some people or else it wouldn’t be so popular with truly sincere believers. But it also easily leads down the road to legalism, because if you keep faking it but never make it then you start to wonder if you’ll never make it (or at least not till Christ comes back) and then you naturally dismiss the inward life because you can’t seem to change it.

Another group of people is all about inward change. This one is a little more complicated because they generally recognize that you can’t just randomly change inwardly. You have to DO something, but it’s not the same kind of actions as the person focused on action rather than the inner man. This kind of person will be a big proponent of the spiritual disciplines, actions that are mainly valuable only for the change they bring about in the inner man. Fasting isn’t valuable on its own, only for the type of person it creates. The same can generally be said of disciplines like silence and solitude.

The temptation on the inner side is retreat. When inner change doesn’t come quickly enough the inward focused person may decide that it is outside influences that are preventing inner change and slowly retreat from society. The monastic movement was for the most part an inward focused group of people which probably explains their retreat from public life and the focus they had on discipline, especially silence and solitude. The problem with retreat is that not all external influences are bad (assuming you are in a good Christian community) and it only reduces the number of forces, not necessarily their strength. The power of sin is strong within each of us and can’t be conquered in or out of society without the help of the Holy Spirit.

You may have noticed that I haven’t talked about God very much thus far, even though both groups of people would talk more about Him. Outer obedience people will focus on obedience to the many clear commands that God has given us in His word. Inner life people will focus on communion with God and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. So if both make strong appeals to God it seems like the question can’t be decided by that, can it?

No, it can’t, but you should take note of those appeals. The problem is that both sides try to say which method God will use to transform people. They try to create a formula for spiritual transformation, even though they may avoid the language of “formula” and “method”. I don’t deny that God can work through formulas, but I don’t think it’s safe to try and say how God will act, especially when he has worked in both ways throughout history.

From a human perspective the action vs. heart debate seems an undecided one. Actions influence the heart and heart influences the actions, but they mostly act to maintain the status quo. If one changes then the other will respond to bring back the equilibrium that was once maintained. That’s why real change seems impossible to humans. The only way for real change to take place is for something to break into that cycle and change where the equilibrium is.

God is the one who breaks into our lives, just as He broke into history over two thousand years ago. But God is God, not a formula or a method. Because I believe He is a person I don’t believe I can say how He will break into an individuals life. He might choose the route of inner transformation, bringing real change to their hearts that results in a genuine change in action. Or He might speak a clear command into their life which they then have the choice to obey or not, and if they obey they begin down the road of obedience that will also lead to inner change.

One of the things that the Bible clearly teaches (and shows) about God is that He is not passive. He is active in history and in human lives. As a result I can be listening and preparing for the ways He may decide to bring about change in my own life, and when it becomes clear what He is doing I can go along with it. I will obey the voice of my Shepherd if it comes, and I will practice disciplines that prepare me for His in-breaking in my life.

Radical Change and an Old Soul

2007-01-07T21:51:00.000-08:00

A couple of things have coalesced recently to challenge me in my Christian walk and change my views, especially on radical change. At some point along the way I became calloused and stopped wanting to change. My soul has become old even though I haven't aged that much. Sure, I'll change a little bit here or a little bit there, but nothing radical. I would much rather keep doing things the way I always have. Radical change wouldn't really work anyway, so I'll just go along making itty-bitty changes up until the point I die or am raptured. Even psychology suggests that you make small changes a bit at a time because you can't sustain large changes for a long enough period of time.

I confess and repent this small and sinful perspective. I ask forgiveness of all the friends that I have advised to live in this way, making a small change at a time. This is not the way we are to live, it is the way that we end up living when we give up on grace, and give up on the power of Christ for change in our lives.

Radical change is never easy, but that doesn't mean it's bad. I will most likely fail over and over again. I will fall down, and eventually I will run out of the strength to get up and keep going. But I don't have to do it out of my own strength, so I will have to rely on God's strength to keep going. Even if I continue to try again and again, day after day, I will not stop trying to be completely obedient to the call of Christ. Not part of the call, or partially, but all of it, to the best of my ability. I hope and pray that you will join me in this journey, and lend me your strength as I lend you mine, and we rely together on Christ.

Christian Imagination

2007-01-02T22:32:00.000-08:00

I've heard plenty of lectures and read plenty of books that have talked about how Christians are not any different from the rest of culture. We watch the same movies, listen to the same music, have the same divorce rate, have extramarital sex as much, etc. That isn't the case in all of the sub-cultures of Christianity, but overall it is, and usually at least some of the similarities can be found. I think most Christians would agree that their community does not live out perfect discipleship to Christ, and most would admit that they don't get anywhere close.

I know that even in my own life I don't look that much different than your average non-Christian, especially the ones that “try to be good”. Every once in a while I make a decision that is based on my Christian faith, but for the most part I just cruise along doing what I want. I propose that this is in large part due to a lack of Christian imagination. We “can't” imagine what a good Christian life would look like and so we can't make progress towards it.

Don't get me wrong, I could list quite a few different things that a Christian should or shouldn't do. Listing is easy, explaining how that would look in individual situations isn't always as easy. It can be done, but in general we don't do it, and I think because we lack the vision we can't see the means or if we can we aren't motivated enough to actually make use of them. I need to force myself to begin to imagine what a Christian life and a Christian community would look like and then start implementing it.

I invite the rest of you to join me in this endeavor. Post a comment, post on your blog, talk to your friends, talk to me, whatever you want to do just get your community involved. We need individual change, but we also need community change and community checks and balances. If our community isn't welcoming to the changes we are making it will become that much more difficult to carry them out. And if we don't talk to other people then they can't help us to correct our views, or extend them even further than we already have.

Don't try and imagine the whole thing right away. Take some thing that you know we should do (take for instance “don't have extramarital sex”) and embody it (think about the ways a Christian should avoid doing that, the way they and their community differs so they don't need that, etc). If everyone starts taking little chunks then we can help each other make better progress. If y'all are up to my call then I'll make sure to post on here a collection of the various comments, posts, etc. that I see and or hear about. And hold me to posting about this as well, or at least thinking about it (if you talk to me regularly).

Worst News Irony of the Year (so far)

2007-01-01T22:26:00.000-08:00

Rachel Hutson removed some photos from her college sorority days after she took a job as a civilian working for the military. She's also made her Facebook and MySpace profiles private, so that only friends she approves can see it.

"I just don't want certain people to find me," says Hutson, who's 23 and lives in Newport News, Virginia.

Personal doesn't mean private online - CNN.com

Christian Holidays

2006-12-30T18:34:00.000-08:00

Having just finished a book on the decline of Christendom (and the idea that it was a bad thing all the way through) in the middle of the holiday season I have some ideas on holidays. Namely on 'Christian' holidays, or the lack thereof. The point of this post is to show why I think the Christian holidays aren't Christian and to make the case for celebrating genuine Christian holidays.

First, let's talk about how holidays aren't really that Christian anymore. This shouldn't be a hard case to make, since conservatives have been complaining for some time about how Jesus isn't really a part of Christmas anymore (he's been “x”ed out). Easter is a little more Christian, but there is a lot of focus on the easter bunny and finding eggs which has nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ.

The connection to the book I just finished (or at least part of it) is the fact that both holidays are syncretisms that result from Christendom. Christmas was put on the winter solstice (or something like that, I'm not sure on details but I know it was a holiday for the sun god originally) and Easter has connections to a fertility goddess (learned that one this semester...that's the reason for bunnies and eggs, most likely).

As such these are 'pagan' holidays that have been 'baptized' and called Christian. That's not to say there aren't Christian elements (specifically the connection to New Testament events) but they aren't that strong. Giving gifts to one another has very little to do with the wise men bringing Jesus gifts, in spite of our many justifications based on that. The Easter bunny doesn't relate to the resurrection at all as far as I'm concerned.

So I propose we drop the pretense and celebrate these holidays as normal holidays. We don't stop being Christians on 'normal' holidays, so we can still do things in a Christian way, but we don't need to defend the Christian meanings of the holidays. Instead I would suggest we go with already strong themes like family. Especially in the Thanksgiving/Christmas run family is strongly emphasized and I think that's a good thing. We should fight materialism during Christmas because materialism is always wrong, not because Christmas is a Christian holiday.

Assuming we have dropped Christmas and Easter as distinctively Christian holidays why do we need to institute new ones? Good holidays have a two-fold purpose which is still necessary, that of celebration and remembrance. We understand that instinctively, thus people continue to fight for the 'real meaning' of Christmas and Easter, times when we naturally celebrate.

Celebration is important because Christianity is not a depressing religion. We need to remember that we look forward to the redemption of all things and full communion with God, and we need to celebrate the events that inaugurate that fact. Celebration also brings together the community when everyone is involved. That is why in a healthy family the holiday season is one of the best times of year (the small flaws that exist in most families are overcome by the holidays for a short period). The Church should be a kind of healthy family unit, and we should enjoy being with one another.

This also brings up the reason why it would be preferable to have separate holidays rather than trying to lay claim to public holidays. We need a time to be just the body, not to be focused more on evangelism. There are some things that we are not as likely to do with unbelievers around, like communion and confession.

The holidays also become a kind of island of happiness in a broken world. We can't (and shouldn't try to) maintain a happy face all year round. The reality of the world right now is painful, and we need to be able to recognize that and mourn with those who mourn (or mourn ourselves when appropriate). But these times of joy can help to remind us that a day is coming when all the pain will be washed away and tears will be no more.

Looking forward is part, but we can look back in order to bolster our faith in the future. We have a lot to celebrate in the life of Jesus, and it is always good to be reminded of it. Some of the 'high' churches have a calendar which they go through, which includes a few special holidays (including Christmas and Easter). I think that idea would be great for the wider church, picking specific times to celebrate the various important events (ex. incarnation/birth, baptism/ministry, atonement/death, resurrection, glorification/ascension, church/Pentecost). Spacing them out we are allowed to celebrate periodically together as a church body and during the hard times we can look forward to those celebrations which remind us of things that have already occurred and are a foreshadowing of greater things to come.

I think I've likely said enough for now, I'd love to hear what the rest of you think of this idea. It obviously wouldn't be easy to implement since the majority of “Christians” (including a large number of people who are Christian only in word) have such strong beliefs, but I don't think the difficulty of it should be a barrier to at least trying since the benefits are great (at least in my opinion).

Everwood Review

2006-12-30T00:11:00.000-08:00

I've decreased the amount of time I spend watching TV, though it tends to fluctuate over time as shown by past experience, but I'd like to get something useful out of the time spent watching a particular show, namely Everwood. I may do something like this for Battlestar Galactica, which I plan to watch with friends during the semester, but we'll see. This is mainly a review of the first season, which I watched during this break.

I've come to the conclusion that Everwood is likely the best TV show I've ever seen. In some areas my tastes and requirements will differ from other people, but I think there are some universal things that should appeal to anyone looking for quality television (really, it can exist). The main reasons I love it are the complex characters, themes it explores, and it's treatment of our cultures two greatest idols (especially in entertainment), sex and violence.

What do I mean by complex characters? There is no villain in Everwood. That isn't to say you won't hate some of the characters, but it isn't likely to stay that way. The good characters are sometimes bad, and the bad characters become good in many cases. As you begin to understand motivations you come to understand their humanity, so the idea of “hate the action, love the person” can actually become a reality. You hate what they are doing, but you hate it because you love the person and really, truly want them to do the right thing. This in itself is probably reason enough to watch the show, though I don't know that everyone is introspective enough to spot this going on. (It also helped that I watched the first season fairly quickly.)

The themes it explores are universal and they don't tend to pull punches. That isn't to say that everything turns out wrong, but everything doesn't turn out right either. There are consequences to actions, something that seems to be lacking in many contemporary stories, but I'll leave that discussion for the next section. The primary 'conflict' is a father and son one, namely the relationship between the two main characters (though it's somewhat hard to call them main characters as the show is dependent on a wide and diverse cast). But the father and son also have their own separate issues that are explored, and sometimes the same issue is explored for both but in different ways (especially the idea of loss, which is a major one as far as I've gone, part way through season 2).

Single parenthood and the nuclear family are both explored. Religion is explored to some extent, though not extremely deeply as of yet (there were a few episodes, but I didn't feel like they delved real deeply in). Ethical dilemmas come up quite frequently, and easy answers are not always offered. What I call “the hard choice” (a choice between two things) is not compromised as it is so often in contemporary media (there is a hard choice, like Spiderman choosing between saving the girl or saving the cable car full of people, but he can actually do both, so it's not really a hard choice).

The two most pervasive issues, sex and violence, are dealt with extremely well. I don't always agree with the message (mainly on sex) I can at least say that it is dealt with well. The reason why is that one, it isn't all pervasive, and two, consequences are included. Sex is a small theme an moderate amount of the time, more so in the teenage hormones idea (so not sex as much as relationships), but sex itself is never depicted and rarely even suggested (I think there were only two times in season 1, and one was a married couple). An episode is devoted to STDs (and the definition of sex), and another to pregnancy and abortion. The abortion episode allows for the complexity of the issue, including the life of the unborn, religion, and the problems with outlawing abortion (very dangerous back alley abortions). Violence is absent for the most part, but when depicted it is always presented negatively (at least so far as I can recall).

I know most of my readers will probably never watch Everwood. Some of you don't watch much TV anyway, and even those that do aren't likely to get a chance to see the first season of Everwood since they are up to 4 or 5 now. It's very story based and so coming in part way would probably be hard, and I don't know what it's like later on, but if you get the chance to see Season 1, or if you ever really want a quality TV show, consider Everwood.

Blogs as a Barrier to Social Engagement

2006-12-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

I had a conversation with Dennis recently where we discussed my thinking on some of the downsides of reading a lot of blogs. We decided it would be better to take the subject to our respective blogs for added audience, feedback, and just to better develop our arguments. My main criticisms of blogs as a large scale means of communication are quality of communication, time spent reading, and social capital spent keeping track of everyone. I should note that this is not a repackaging of what Dennis and I talked about, that got me going and this is my thoughts on it, and then he (and anyone else) can respond as he will, whether to me or with his own general thoughts.

First up, the quality of communication which is lacking in blogs. This applies to computer mediums and phones as well. They work for communicating some information, but it takes a lot more work to properly communicate fully one's feelings and experience. Too much is lost without non-verbal communication, and online even most of the tone is lost.

The exception (and this is only a partial exception) is close friends who may know you well enough to 'hear' and 'see' you as they read your words. This takes a high level of intimacy, however, and that intimacy can't be gained through online interactions, it has to be had face to face. As a result relationships that started in person and gained a high level of intimacy can be maintained to a certain extent through online and phone communication. These will become harder and harder to maintain, however, because people are changed by their experiences and that change can't be fully experienced except in person.

Next, the time spent reading a large blogroll is time that could be spent in other ways. I'm not a big fan of treating time like a commodity (I'll talk about that another time) but we are still finite beings and thus we have to decide if certain activities should be a part of our day. This is not a post against all blogs, just against the large number of blogs and “online friendships” that people tend to try and maintain. If you decrease the number of blogs you read you gain time for other things, like 'face time' with real people, communicating more fully because non-verbals will be present.

Finally, I want to talk about the idea of 'social capital,' our ability to invest in a limited number of relationships at any given time. To be a part of someone's life requires a lot of different things of you. It requires especially time, memory and emotional investment. Time is a requirement I've already dealt with, especially the time to have face time, preferably at least some one on one time where the experience of the other person is heightened.

Memory is required for keeping track of the many details of a persons life, and for piecing together how they may be influencing the person in question. Facts about the person apart from experience are especially hard to remember because they compete with all the various 'facts' that we remember from day to day. To remember those kinds of facts as well as possible you have to spend time processing (which is also some of where the bigger picture comes from) but that requires time once again.

If those facts are learned in person there is more to process (because they come along with non-verbals that may indicate importance) and thus they are remembered slightly better. The best way to learn about a person is to experience life with them, though, because you can see how they react and sometimes you can connect other facts to that 'hook' that you've created, as well as just being a part of things that may become significant later.

My argument against a long list of blogs should be fairly clear in this point. As you read a lot of different blogs you are pulling in a lot of facts, and you are doing it with a lot of different people. Many of them are about people you don't know that well and thus will have a very hard time remembering, and if you do remember them they will push out other things. This is likely to lower the overall level of intimacy you can achieve with anyone.

(a note for those familiar with the subject of memory: in a large part I'm referring to recall, I recognize that the limits of 'memory' are probably functionally unlimited, but our ability to recall those things is limited, and part of that limit is interference from other facts)

Emotional involvement is also involved in relationships. The more intimacy you achieve the more emotionally involved. I'm not just talking about how the person can hurt you directly as a result of the relationship (though that is also a factor), but instead about how things happening in their lives will affect you. When your closest friends are going through things it takes a toll on you. If you are invested in too many people's lives you can be overwhelmed.

These are not my first thoughts on the subject, nor are they comprehensive, but they should be a good introduction for all of you to my thoughts. Please interact with me, and feel free to make a separate post on your own blog and let me (and my readers) know in my comments section. This is a more intellectual subject, which I think is more appropriate for blogs than is personal information (though I'm not opposed to personal blogs entirely, as is clear from this post) and thus I don't mind expanding this out more widely than I may be reading regularly.

Finding the Story-Arc

2006-12-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

(before I start, please note that I'm aware of the comments and responses to my last post and will be responding and saying more soon, this was just on my mind recently and I wanted to get it out there)

It was 2am this morning, and I was quite awake. This struck me as strange because I'm very much a morning person, generally start getting quite tired around 9 or 10pm (working at 6am for a semester did that) and can't stay up late focusing on things like homework without getting a headache. Why was I so awake, and so easily? I was immersed in the world of a very good book, and couldn't pull myself out until there was a sharp break point (I finished the second of three major sections of the book).

As I got ready for bed I started thinking about why I did that so easily, and why I get so wrapped up in TV shows too (specifically shows with story-arc of some kind, if it's too episodic I don't like it as much). I realized it was because things of significance happen constantly in those worlds, but in this one it seems most of my life is insignificant.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think my life worthless, I've had plenty of peaks and some pretty low valleys in my time. In a peak I can keep myself up pretty easily too. If a friend needs to talk about something serious I am perhaps more awake then when I'm reading a really good book, no matter the hour (though at some point my body does start to react, I can maintain alertness for a fair amount of time).

I live for those times, but most of the time I'm bored. This realization suddenly brought something else into focus. It explained why there have been times that I've sought the depths of despair. I've driven myself into depression deeper than I would normally have gone, and I think it was because I wanted something significant. To feel deeply, and since it didn't seem I could get the high I would settle for the low.

Instead, what I need to recapture is the idea that every moment and every decision is significant. It's hard to do that in a culture so saturated by stories, because stories by their very nature drop the "insignificant" details, the ones that are harder to tie into the important action and themes. If how a character gets from one point to another doesn't have significance to something later or demonstrate some new facet of his character then it can be skipped.

There are good reasons for skipping those kinds of details in stories. Some people would say it is to keep the attention of the reader, and while it accomplishes that I'm not certain that is the greatest of reasons (since I'm not sure loving stories is always a good thing). But it saves time, since people don't need to be totally and utterly immersed into another person and world. That would be perhaps worse than the result of a shortened story because people would waste all their time there rather than living their lives.

Important themes and exciting action can be a good past-time in moderation, but we need to keep in view the fact that all of life matters. The little choices we make are what determine what we will do in the big decision points of our lives. Habits aren't changed during the high action points, they are formed or re-formed during the in between times.

This past semester I had a class on Daniel, and one of the things that my professor emphasized was the faithfulness of Daniel. In the book we see high points in his life, but if we look at the chronology they span 70 years of life or so. 70 years of faithfulness is huge, and Daniel could make the right choices in the big decisions, but he did so because of the other times, the little decisions and habits formed over the course of his life.

Don't believe me? Take a look at Daniel 6:10, in the middle of the story of Daniel and the Lions' Den. Daniel knows of a law passed against worship of his God, but he goes and worships openly anyway. But check out the end of the verse (at least in the ESV) which says "as he had done previously." He didn't decide on the spur of the moment to go pray 3 times a day just to get himself arrested. This was a habit he knew was right, and so he remained faithful to that habit in spite of opposition.

So it's the little decisions that will make me who I will be in the future. The decision between homework and video games. The decision of just how well I want to write a paper, whether it is worth the time to make it "as good as I can" or if I just want to get by. Whether I will drop the little homework assignment for a friend that wants to talk about something or if I have to do it in order to get the best grades possible.

Those decisions will determine whether I'm willing to keep going even when it's tough or if I'll give in to a "mid-life crisis" at some point. Whether I will attend to the little details or just do what has to be done. Whether my job or my wife will be more important to me at the crisis points. I have to keep the wider story-arc in mind all the time, even though I can't really see it yet. I know my little decisions will matter, and I'm not just trying to make a good story, I'm trying to live a good life, so it's that much more important that I choose rightly.

Loneliness

2006-12-18T14:14:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking about a number of different topics right now, but one that is important to me because of others (as well as myself) is the idea of being known by other people, really known. I've had a couple friends complain either to me or to an audience (on a blog, etc) that they feel like no one really knows them. Most them also feel bad telling me or anyone else this because they think they will create a guilty response in others, and they sometimes figure everyone else has people who know them and who they know already.

If that sounds like you, whether you've shared this kind of feeling with me or not, I'm here to tell you that you aren't the only one. I think this might be one of the greatest problems facing American culture (and perhaps western culture, but I don't want to extend beyond what I know well) today. You can find it in movies, TV, music...just about anywhere you go looking for it, and even sometimes when you don't.

Does everyone have this problem? I don't think so, I believe there are people who still connect well, but that it is somewhat rare at this point. Other people connect somewhat well and thus don't feel the loneliness nearly as much as other people. But I think a lot of people feel this and don't talk about it. I base that assumption not only on personal experience and relationships, but on the culture at large.

I wanted to introduce this idea and see if any of you had input on it. I'll keep talking even if you don't, because I'm thinking about it and thinking it through in text helps me, but you may have extra thoughts that I haven't had yet. I'll be looking some at the culture I mentioned (especially music), at why people don't connect, and hopefully I'll be able to come up with some good ways that people can start connecting better.

Under Studied Theology

2006-12-11T23:42:00.000-08:00

You know, there is a topic that I hear almost nothing about. The angle of the Lord. I hear plenty about the angel of the Lord. Heck, plenty of evangelicals think he's pre-incarnate forms of Jesus and all of that. But what about the angle of the Lord? What is it? 77 degrees? I don't know, but every once in a while I write about it, and I think more people should.

(I'm in a weird mood. I'll write something more substantive sometime soon, I'm not dead nor is this blog dead.)

Sloppy Christianity

2006-11-15T17:44:00.000-08:00

I thought about interrupting the flow of my posts for this one, since I think it is important and it was tied to a certain event, but I'm actually glad I waited. Now most of you won't know the chapel speaker I'm talking about, though you may also not remember the chapel itself. In any case, a specific event (which I'll describe in a minute) sparked this, but it has been brewing for a bit and it is far more than a localized event.

The problem I want to address in this post is the sloppy way in which most of us go about our Christian lives. We sing songs without thinking about them, listen to pastors preach sermons without ever opening the Bible, and read books without thinking critically about the arguments being made. Is everyone going to be at the same level of ability in these tasks? Of course not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our best at them and work to grow in our God given abilities.

Ok, let me take you back to a chapel not too long ago. The speaker was dealing with Daniel, which I am extra familiar with right now because I'm currently in a class on Daniel. As a result I admit I was lazy and didn't take out my Bible, but I did spot some obvious problems because of my recent exposure and close reading of the text. He did a couple of different things, but the one that was most significant was talking about how everyone had to bow down to the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar made.

I know that my writing style is just really riveting, but do me a favor and go grab your Bible. I could link to what I'm going to talk about, but I want to make sure you know where you Bible is ;-) Turn with me to Daniel 3:2 (if you happen to use ESV you'll find it on page 739, for the rest of you the biggest book near it is Ezekiel, which it follows). Read the verse and tell me if you think that's talking about everyone bowing down to the image.

I could be wrong, but it seems pretty clear that it was just the officials of the kingdom that were there at the dedication. Move down to verse 4, which is what makes most people think this is a more universal thing. Now realize that men from all different nations were officials in Babylon, just like Daniel and his friends (Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah) who were all Jews. Doubt me? Good. I don't happen to have Scripture for you, but I know that historical knowledge of Babylon supports me, so you can go looking in some commentaries for that if you so desire.

But if the officials were from all kinds of places, and they were the ones at the ceremony, isn't it likely that they were the ones bowing down to the image? Move down to verse 9 and notice that the Chaldeans accused "the Jews". That lends support to the idea that these three were the only Jews there. (if you are wondering about Daniel he isn't mentioned in this little story, but he was in the palace while his friends were out in the country, which may be why he wasn't there...check 2:49 for that)

Why does this matter? Because suddenly the point about how "all the other Jews bowed down but these three didn't" either loses all support or most support. Was it a great act of faith that these three didn't bow down? Yes. But don't belabor the point and go beyond what Scripture says trying to set up an example that you like.

Maybe you would have missed this in the middle of a sermon, where a close reading of the text is a little harder. You could either go look at it later, or work hard to read closely and carefully the Bible throughout the year so that your knowledge isn't just dictated by common Christian beliefs about the Bible(which aren't always true).

I remember one of the other mistakes he made, which is another good example though it doesn't have significance to his application. He said that one of the officials asked Nebuchadnezzar if they had not thrown three men in the fire. Flip over to 3:24 and check it out. That's an obvious mistake that merely reading the text would have shown you, even during a sermon (make sure you look at it, my point isn't obvious for a reason, but you'll get it if you look).

This is just one example among many, some of which I'm sure that I've missed because I'm sloppy about my faith too. I assume that I know a lot of texts pretty well and so I don't open my Bible, assuming I'll hear it if there is a problem. Sometimes I get lucky, but I've probably missed some things too.

That chapel wasn't the only thing that's brought this point to the forefront, though. I have a friend that reads Christian literature with a Bible nearby. Every time she comes across a passage she looks it up to see the context and see if it is being used properly. She gets annoyed (with good reason) if authors abuse Scripture for their points, even if those points can be supported other places in Scripture (why not use those other passages?). I haven't yet started this practice, but I haven't been reading a lot of Christian literature other than for class, and that I have to get done fairly quickly usually (and most of it either isn't heavily using Scripture or is commentary and thus has it right there for me).

My point? Think more. If Christianity really is central to your life then make it important enough to care about. Make sure you're getting things right, and that the people around you are as well. Be careful how you criticize if you do (I didn't stand up in chapel and call the speaker out) but always be learning. Seek Christ while He can be found.

American Christianity

2006-11-15T16:25:00.000-08:00

Internet Monk has an interesting article of thoughts on American Christianity derived from teaching Chinese students at his school. A very interesting read for all, and perhaps especially poignant for those of my readers with an eye towards China. Check it out if you have the time.

Separating 'Romance' and 'the Romantic Ideal'

2006-11-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

In trying to depict what the romantic ideal looks like in my last post I apparently didn't express myself well enough or fully enough. I got three comments along very similar lines that I wouldn't disagree with. It seemed to me like all three people were basically saying that romantic feelings aren't bad, though commitment needs to be there as well. I don't disagree with that idea.

Within my view most people in our culture aren't just going to walk up to someone and say, "You want to make a lifetime commitment with me?" There's going to be some kind of relationship there, and there will probably have to be some level of feelings before anything happens as well. So my emphasis is more on focus (which should be on the commitment side) than on the exclusion of one for the other. Also, it should be noted that while the feelings can help to cause the commitment, they shouldn't be part of the basis for the commitment because if they are when the feelings weaken the commitment does as well.

That's what seems like could possibly happen in our culture. But for the record I'm not (at least theoretically, I don't know much about the actual practice) against cultures where people end up in a commitment before they know each other and can have feelings develop. My reason for this is that I think that if the commitment is there, especially for the right reason, then the feelings can and will follow later. This conviction is firmly rooted in my view of Christianity, so if you want to debate me on this let's go back to my foundation for it (I could be wrong about this, who knows).

First, let's assume both people involved are Christians and thus have that motive for remaining committed to the marriage relationship. Next, let's assume that both people are loved by God (with the assumption that they are both Christians this shouldn't be a point of debate). I think that God's love isn't just some head thing, He feels love for us as well. This means that there is something lovable in both people, so if they don't immediately have feelings for one another they just need to seek for the reason that God has for loving them (since we are supposed to love people as God does, so I assume that is a realistic possiblity).

That's quite theoretical, so let me get into my limited experience for a bit to see if I can make this more concrete. While I haven't had experience with marriage yet (God willing I'll get that in His timing) I do have experience with developing feelings for those of the opposite gender. I assume that marriage won't be completely different from these experiences, though I recognize it may be slightly different and I'll talk about those ways as I go along.

Ok, first and main way that I've seen feelings develop is by recognizing parts of my 'ideal woman' in the various women that I've known. I'm realizing how bad it was for me to talk about "the romantic ideal" now, since that terminology is usually used here (I could talk about MY romantic ideal, which is what I mean by my 'ideal woman'). Anyway, I assume you get the idea, and the way that feelings develop is that I blind myself to the ways that she doesn't fit the ideal and see only those ways in which she fits the ideal. The more a girl fits my ideal the easier it is for this to happen.

Two things to note on this first way. One, as time passes I begin to see those things I had been ignoring which probably causes at least some decrease in the feelings, though doesn't necessarily make them disappear completely. It's merely a process of integration between the good and the bad. Two, in marriage this one is a little harder because being around someone all the time you see everything about them, not just the good things they are trying to show you, so it's a little harder to ignore problems.

The second way I know of for feelings to develop is through intimacy. I mean that in the general way, though at least for me it's been mostly in the emotional realm. When a young woman opens up to me and is real then sometimes feelings develop. This method is a little more limited because it is affected by the relationship and the ability for anything to happen. I don't develop romantic feelings for my guy friends when they open up to me, or my sisters, or friends who for one reason or another are not viable options (say they are already dating, or I know a good reason why it wouldn't work out between us).

This one seems to be based in our humanity, and our need for fellowship with people, coupled with the fact that men and women are built for one another. If there isn't something to prevent feelings and a guy and a gal start getting closer, feelings will likely form. This one is a much better model for marriage since a lot of intimacy can happen as a result of the marriage relationship. You're living life together, and if there is a strong commitment then it should be a safe place to express oneself. This also seems to have the possiblity of creating longer lasting feelings since this can continue easier than focusing on the ideal parts of a partner can (not to say that you can't be reminded throughout the relationship of those things that first caused your interest and thus have feelings revitalized that way).

So there are some more of my thoughts on love, marriage and feelings. Feel free to comment away and maybe I'll get to put another one of these posts up on my queue ;-)

Towards Integrating Psychology and Theology

2006-11-10T23:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry for my absence, I was pretty sick for a couple days which doesn't lead to a lot of really deep thinking. I'm back to about 80%, and after the weekend I should be back to full. I think I just need a couple more days of good sleep. Anyway, onto real content.

As a future psychologist the integration of psychology and theology is an important topic. I came in contact with it a bit at the start of my Biola career, but since then I haven't done nearly enough work on it. I want to start thinking more deeply on it since it is so central to what I will be doing with my life. So think of this post as just a start, and depending on the reaction to it you may be seeing more of these.

First, let's define our terms, since that is quite important (especially in this debate). Theology is the study of, and to a certain extent the systematization of, the Bible. Psychology is the study of human behavior (or even just behavior more broadly). I will differentiate between pure psychology (the data) and theoretical psychology (interpretation of the data) in this discussion because that is important.

Anti-psychology people generally think of the Bible itself versus theoretical psychology. Since the Bible is inerrant and theoretical psychology is obviously errant (psychology's roots extend only to the period when evolution was starting to take hold, so it is quite humanistic) then psychology is bad and theology is good.

People who are very pro-psychology tend to think of pure psychology, which is merely looking at how things actually are, and the variety of theological viewpoints on scripture and conclude that psychology has a significant place in the debate. Thus psychology becomes inerrant (it's merely reality after all) and theology becomes quite errant.

You probably begin to see the problems in this debate. It has to be recognized that human interpretation is involved in both disciplines and thus both have errors. If we could get at Scripture objectively then we would have the inerrant word of God, but we naturally interpret what we read. If we could get at the data without any interpretation or confounds then psychology would be telling us about reality, but there are problems there as well. If we had the pure form of both there also wouldn't be any disagreements between them and we wouldn't have to integrate anything.

I was thinking of going farther, but I realized that this would become a VERY long post if I tried to go as far as I planned, so I'll leave it here, at an introduction to the issues. Probably won't stir up much debate, but might start to get you thinking. I'll make another post on this subject eventually talking more about my views ;-)

Good Quotes

2006-11-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

Google does a "quote of the day" a lot at the top of Gmail. Most of the time they are ok, but every once in a while they catch my eye and I go to the page for all the quotations from that person. In this way I sometimes discover a person with a lot of good quotations. Today I found someone I really liked, and so I'll share. Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Enjoy.

Some Thoughts on Revival

2006-11-06T19:07:00.000-08:00

These come as a result of the "news" that there is a revival going on at Biola. I've heard this from quite a few sources, including a couple that I trust. I've talked with a few friends that are skeptical, and I am fairly skeptical as well, and I don't think it's just because I'm skeptical by nature (though I do tend that direction).

Before I really get into this, let me say that I don't doubt that God is moving in lives. What I am struggling with is the idea that God is moving in some special and new way and that it's taking place at Biola. I told a friend just today that God was doing things in my life, and I wasn't lying, and I hope I wasn't being hypocritical.

Since I've started on that note, let's continue that train of thought. One of my friends pointed out in discussion with me that God is always moving, and saying "God is on the move" seems to suggest that He isn't. That isn't to say that God doesn't move in special ways at specific times, look at the Exodus, Jesus' incarnation, or Pentecost. But it should make us hesitant to say that God is moving in some special, or even new, way.

So what did I mean when I said that God was doing things in my life? I meant that I was specifically aware that God was doing something in my life. Most of the time I'm oblivious to what He is doing, and then suddenly one day I see where He has brought me. In some cases, though, what He is doing is so dramatic, or comes with instruction from Him through others, so I can actually see it as it is happening.

Is that what is going on at Biola? I don't know, but there are a few more things to consider. One of the first things to be considered is whether the people calling it a revival are trying to invent a revival. At least a few of the people who have talked about it have also mentioned that there have been people praying for this for quite some time (here comes the skepticism) which means they would be more likely to see a revival where there isn't one. Maybe there is one, maybe there isn't, I would be much more comfortable looking back on the event with a bit of distance so that I can be more objective.

I should also bring up the issue of how God works, moving into how one would identify a genuine revival. First, God is not tied to a specific location (John 4:19-24) or a specific people group (I don't have a specific passage in mind for this, so I'll go to my default, Ephesians, and say check out 2:11-22). Pentecost happened in a specific place but immediately spread out as the Jews (and now Christians) went back to where they lived. At Biola it seems like we are trying to localize the revival (come to the SUB for prayer, a revival is happening) which worries me. It could very well spread, especially at a missions oriented school like Biola, but I don't have the perspective to see that happening and I do see worrying signs.

Another thing that a true revival will do is glorify God and raise up Jesus so He can draw all men to Him. I don't have enough personal experience with this revival to know, but the individuals I know that have been involved in it are glorifying God, which is a positive sign. This is still a worry for me, though, because we seem very likely to seek out experiences of God. One of my friends pointed out that this is coming at the end of October, a month that is notoriously bad for college students (I've heard it called the worst month of the entire year).

That idea, linked with the idea of the dark night of the soul which has come up for me a couple times lately makes me hesitant. What am I talking about with the dark night of the soul? The ancient Christian writers (and many today) had an idea that Christian growth did not always continue upwards in terms of felt experience. They noticed a pattern of lots of felt experience of God early in the Christian life, and kind of plateau, and then a drop into what some now call "the dark night of the soul". This time is generally viewed as a time for God to get a Christians attention and have them move from wanting the experiences of God to wanting God Himself. It is also a time where the Christian in question really comes to understand what is in his or her heart, which is a really hard experience but something that needs to happen for greater maturity to happen.

Synthesize the idea that we love experience and that as our Christian walk continues we'll plateau and eventually drop into a felt absence of God and you'll begin to see one of my problems with this. Biola is a Christian university, and while I won't claim that everyone here actually is saved, I think a greater number of people are than we generally give credit for just because they don't look like what we think they should. The people in the period of great experience aren't likely to seek it out, but people that have reached the plateau are many times searching, and those in the dark night are really thirsting for God's presence, especially if they don't know what's going on, so both would be vulnerable to something that gives them good feelings like a 'revival experience'.

I'm going to conclude now because I'm losing my train more than I already did. I apologize, I'm pretty sure this post is somewhat scattered, but I've got plenty of homework and a little shortage of time, so I don't have time to really organize my thoughts well. In the end I'm left waiting, because I don't want to say that God can't bring a revival at Biola because I believe He could, I just question whether He would. Let me know your thoughts, as I'm definitely still processing on this, and especially want to hear from people with more experience with the "revival" itself.

The Ted Haggard Scandal

2006-11-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

I'm only recently become aware of this scandal through reading the Christian blogdom and I've seen a couple good articles, but I think that Internet Monk has my favorite post so far because it's more far reaching, and looks at the implications of actions taken, not just at the person in question. It's on the long side, but I tend to like the long posts at Internet Monk that much more.

Wealth and Individualism - Affluence

2006-10-29T18:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the fourth post in a little series I'm doing. The introduction can be found here, then I talked about the Industrial Revolution, and most recently I talked a bit about technological advancements. Now I'm finally back to what got me started thinking about this in the first place, the general idea of affluence.

What do I mean by affluence? I'm talking about the amount of money that the middle and upper class has here in America, and the lifestyle that we lead as a result. I'll be talking in the first person a lot because I consider myself a part of the middle class. I go to a private university without going massively in debt, which is something that those at or near the poverty line wouldn't be able to do. That's as a result of my parents provision for me, but people raised in the middle class tend to join the middle class when they become financially independent. I also have the individualistic shortcomings of a middle class person.

What are those shortcomings? We generally don't think we need other people for anything. While we may form friendships in order to get something out of them (advancement of some kind) we usually aren't forming a support network. We don't think that the friends we make will determine where we live or what we eat.

For people on the lower side of the economic scale that isn't the case. For someone who gets into a bad situation with money and such (whether by losing their job or something like a mental disorder) friends can determine both of those things. If a person in that situation doesn't have friends they are much more likely to end up out on the street, but if they do they can find someplace to at least crash for a time, and probably get at least a meal or two. This may give them a chance to get back on their feet, because they have a support structure.

Family can also take on this role, and does in many cases, but it depends on how close the family is. Some families don't have a close enough bond to really support one another during hard times, though many immediate families do.

The point I'm trying to illustrate here is that money has allowed our culture to become more individualistic. We don't need each other for things. If I hit "hard times" it just means I don't buy that new CD or book that I want. I can reduce the non-essentials and suddenly have to live on "very little" by our culture's standards. The illusion that we don't need people is probably the strongest force for individualism.

I was planning to just do these four posts, but I came up with an idea for another one, so I'll do a bit of wrap-up at the end of that post (which will be about news media, especially local news) before moving on to try and figure out solutions (I haven't really started to think that direction, I'm still figuring out how we got here and what is keeping us here). Since the fifth post wasn't originally planned it is a bit farther along in the post queue at this point, but it'll come up eventually.

Myself, "the truth", or "the other person"?

2006-10-24T22:18:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week (I started writing this the same day, but the internet outage got in the way) I read a post on vanity by my friend Sarah. The post itself is quite insightful and caused me to evaluate myself in light of it, but it also pushed my thinking down another track. Since it's vaguely related to her post I figured I'd use the "community interaction" excuse to make this post now, rather than just adding it to the end of my queue (I have four or five posts in draft form, basically with just the title and perhaps one or two lines of reminder which I come back to and write in order).

Sarah talks about how vanity causes one to look at oneself too much, and to think that others are looking at oneself as well. This is a big problem, not only in perceptions of oneself but also in conversation with another person. I got to thinking about conversation as a result of reading through her post and came up with two other problems other than 'self-obsession'.

The first is looking only at the truth. If I am looking at the truth and only half listening to the other person the conversation will not be effective. I will be pointing, but I may be so far away that their perspective isn't the same, so they won't be able to see what I'm pointing at. This is destructive not only because they think I'm wrong (at the least I'm wrong headed) but because I've likely caused relational pain (I just wouldn't really listen). Of the two things I'm talking about I think I fall into this trap more often. Evangelical (or fundamentalist) Christians tend to do this a lot as well in my opinion.

The second is looking only at the other person. Listening to the other person so well that you completely understand where they are coming from, and that is all. You have become the other person, if in no other way than in the conversation, and thus cannot see to point them somewhere else. As a result you leave the other person feeling "heard", and perhaps even somewhat vindicated in what is going on with them. I do this sometimes, but not that often cause I don't listen too well (yet). The world tends to go this route, since they don't have as good a reason to look up.

The correct way seems to be a combination of the two (or even a combination of the three...some understanding of self is probalby involved as well). First you listen to the other person so you can tell where they are standing. But you have to keep one eye on the truth as you approach them, lest you get lost in where they are. As you move toward them you may gain a better perspective on the truth (seeing more of its contours). Then you can begin to point them towards it so that they can see it too. They feel heard, but they see the truth.

Hopefully you caught my vision. I don't think I expressed it all that well, and you may have to think a bit as you read to get it, but I don't have time right now to flesh it out. I'm burning sleep to write this, but I don't want to go another day without getting this out, and without posting. So enjoy, interact, and ask questions. I can come back to this if necessary.

Wealth and Individualism - Technology

2006-10-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

This series was introduced here, and in my last post I talked about the Industrial Revolution. Now we'll be moving on to talk about the various technological advances that have affected Individualism. This starts to be the bridge between my last post (the Industrial Revolution, which was an advance in technology) and my next post (specifically addressing affluence and individualism) because those most affected by the technological advances are the affluent, though there is a trickle down to the various socio-economic groups.

Before I really get going I want to make reference to my sister's comment on the last post asking if I was going to give a solution other than returning to pre-Industrial Revolution style living. Honestly I haven't gotten to the solution phase yet in my thinking. I'm still trying to break down for myself how we got here, and hopefully after that I can begin to formulate a solution for it. I don't know if we'll ever return to the kind of community had pre-Industrial Revolution this side of the New Heavens and New Earth, but I think we can start to move back (and I think there are some good elements of individualism as well). Anyway, on with the post.

If the Industrial Revolution ripped people away from their close knit communities leaving them mainly with just their immediate family, the technological advances since then have ballooned the size of our community past the point of being truly maintained. The main two areas I'm thinking of are travel and communication.

First came trains, then automobiles, and finally airplanes. Moving away from one's family no longer means never seeing them again, it means that you see them on holidays. You can travel 30 minutes or an hour to another city to attend a church, drive 2 hours to work each day, and maybe even get to know your neighbors. Which is your primary community? Where are your roots?

But travel isn't the only thing bringing together communities anymore. Now we have telephones (and better yet cellphones) and the internet. We have almost instantaneous communication with whoever we want, just about anywhere in the world. So even when we can't see our community, we can still talk to them. That means we keep in touch with more and more people, whether from school, church, work or play.

The result is demonstrated in the extreme on online services like Facebook and Myspace, where people have hundreds or even thousands of friends, but really they know very few people well. But even those of us that don't try and inflate our number of "friends" manage to accrue a large number of friends. I try and limit my friends on Facebook to people I actually know to a certain degree, and I have 68 friends just at Biola. I have trouble keeping my five closest friends up to date on my life.

Now rather than having a very small community (perhaps a spouse and a few children) we have a huge artificial community consisting of extended family, school friends, work friends, church friends, online friends and on and on. A best friend is no longer the person that always knows everything about you, instead they are the person you could tell everything, if only you had the time.

Next time I'll talk about the influence of affluence on top of this, though as already mentioned the two are linked (a poor person isn't likely to have a cell phone or a connection to the internet). I could have expanded a lot more on this post, and I may in the future, but for now I'm done.

Romantic Ideal in Practice

2006-10-16T15:59:00.000-07:00

Back when I talked about Ditching the Romantic Ideal I had a friend ask me to talk about what the romantic ideal looks like in practice. As I've thought about that and some other things I've had some realizations, which I'll share in the course of this post. First, let me talk about what I see as the romantic ideal in practice.

Someone immersed in the romantic ideal looks for that perfect special someone. They are always on the look out for them, because even if they believe that there is more than one person they can work with, they know better than to think that they would find "true love" with just anyone. When they meet people and get to know them they are keeping a watch on their emotional reaction, to see if this might be "the one".

When they find "the one" they lose themselves in that person. They "fall in love" and pursue the relationship, many times to the detriment of other relationships (though they don't really notice). The dating/engagement period is just to deepen the love they feel even more, and give themselves just a little more time to make sure that this is "the one" that they want to spend the rest of their life with.

I already talked about some of the faults of this kind of view. I struggled with that, because I'm a pretty romantic guy (I like the romantic ideal, even though I know it's a trainwreck waiting to happen). My guess is that a lot of that comes from being immersed in the culture, but there could also be some truth to it at times. So I kept thinking and processing.

And then it hit me. The romantic ideal doesn't work as a basis for a relationship because it is likely to fade, but that doesn't dismiss all romance from a relationship. Once commitment is firmly enthroned as the foundation, romance can be found and enjoyed within a relationship. When it fades that will be alright because commitment is the basis, and romance can be rediscovered a little while later on (that idea isn't just me musing, I've read that in stuff on marriage).

So I think the romantic ideal as a foundation for a relationship is bad, but things can be borrowed from it for use within a committed relationship. Hopefully this post helped clear up some stuff, if not let me know.

Wealth and Individualism - Industrial Revolution

2006-10-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

So a lot of people know that at one time culture wasn't as individualistic. America has always been somewhat individualistic (for reasons that will probably become clear) but there have still been different degrees of individualism over time. In fact some of those degrees still exist if you look at small towns compared with big cities, and different sub-cultures, but in general "the West" is very individualistic now. How did we get here? I introduced this series a few weeks back, and now the saga really begins with the industrial revolution.

Before the industrial revolution society in the west was more agrarian (note 'more'...just about everything in this will be referring to degrees of difference, I'm not making absolute statements). Combining the agrarian society with the lack of good transportation and people tended to stay in the same place their whole lives. As a result a person could set down deep roots without fear of losing them too easily (except through death, but the community as a whole would deal with a death, rather than just a bunch of individuals coming together for a funeral).

Everyone knows you from the time you are born, they all know your immediate family, your husband or wife, and your kids are raised in the community. As a result a different kind of community is fostered than in modern times when you are constantly meeting new people and leaving (or being left by) old people.

The size of the community also allowed you to know everyone at least in a somewhat significant way, even if you weren't bosom buddies. Today people end up knowing hundreds or even thousands of people over the course of their lives, making keeping track of all of them fairly impossible (even with Facebook or Xanga or whatever...though we'll get to those in a later post).

Then somewhat suddenly the industrial revolution hit. Cities became the place to be and people began moving to them. That meant that suddenly families (or individuals) were leaving their small town environment for a completely new environment. The people who left found themselves in a big city with far too many people to keep track of, so they had to shift how things worked. The communities that were losing people had to deal with the fact that a child that you have seen growing up might not stick around, or if there was a bad year someone might decide to move to the city where a steadier income could be achieved.

Because a job in the industrial era didn't require you to own land it was much easier to move around. If one city didn't have jobs for you then you could just move on to another city where you might find a job. You could also move within a city, whether to a better home or a worse one, depending on your fortunes.

So the industrial revolution started to introduce more mobility, and as a result more instability to small communities (and cities got bigger and more crowded as well). Suddenly the only thing that remained constant was a person, and perhaps his or her immediate family that would go with him or her. It's somewhat natural that individualism would begin to creep in as a result.

The next post in this series will examine how further technological developments worsened the situation.

Christianity and Safe Confession

2006-10-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I made a post titled "Moving Towards or Moving Away" and got requests to create a couple more posts. This is one of them. Here I'll make the connection with Christianity explicit, though my sister already hit on the main point in her comment (the picture I gave assumes Christianity to a certain extent). The other request (for confrontational strategies) will have to wait because that will probably become a series (of which I already have a few) and would benefit greatly from a couple of books that I have at home but not down here at school. So bug me after Thanksgiving (and/or right before, so I remember the books) and I'll get going on that series.

So as you'll recall I talked about how when one realizes a fault he or she is faced with a decision to either move towards or away from others. By becoming defensive or avoiding the topic altogether a person moves away from others and is forced to face the fault alone (if he even decides to face it, rather than just hardening his heart against it). If the person is open and honest with those closest to him then there is an opportunity for deeper fellowship and assistance from those around him. I particularly applied this principle to marriage because as a very intimate relationship it works well for examples. This post will broaden that idea back out (though in no way excluding marriage, nor down-playing the importance of this concept in that relationship).

Christianity provides the place where this kind of relational system actually works. With no forgiveness of sins (and consequent forgiveness of other's wrongs against us) there is very little reason for the other person to be supportive when you reveal a fault. If it doesn't directly affect them they may choose to be supportive, or if they are somehow committed to you and want to make it work (dating/engagement/marriage is a good example). Some people might even do it just because they think it's the right thing to do. That's not really the main point of this, though.

My primary point is that Christianity actually demands this kind of relational dynamic from us. Because we have been forgiven now we should forgive (and if a person doesn't on a large scale I have to question whether they have really received forgiveness at all), and we are called to help build up the body of Christ, which other believers are a part of.

The most obvious place to see this dynamic is with God, as my sister pointed out in her comment. God will support us (and empower us to change) if we will just come to Him with it. It's really absurd to try and pretend nothing is wrong with God because He obviously knows, so once we realize it we ought to confess it to Him and bring it within His power rather than trying to face it on our own.

This then extends to fellow Christians in our immediate community. We can confess to them and gain their support as well as God's. In fact I have no problem believing that sometimes the way that God supports us is through the community that He brought about. Sometimes it would be just as stupid to avoid the subject with our friends because it is an obvious fault, but even with less obvious faults we gain valuable support, as well as bringing ourselves out of hiding. Since we are now in the light (see Ephesians 5) we should walk in the light not in the darkness.

Is that sufficient coverage of this topic, or do I need to go into this more? If I do need to talk more about it, what do I need to get into? What questions still remain for y'all (if any)?

Amish Pacifism

2006-10-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

I got back early this morning, slept, then woke up around 1pm and started catching up on all the blogging I had missed. As a result I skimmed a lot of posts rather than actually reading them, but this one caught me and forced me to read the whole thing, it was that good. Here's the end (I know, I'm spoiling it ;-)) but that's just to make you want to read the rest:

This I know for sure. This world is run by a God who answers prayer, not by a God who calls us to other sorts of arms. This world is run by a God who died for me on the cross and shouted out with his dying breath about those who were tormenting and killing him "Father forgive them, they know not what they do." If we could only see with Jesus' eyes, we would know that suffering love and forgiveness is what saves and heals the world. The Amish know that. And they have borne witness to us all this week. May the memory of Marian Fisher be seared into our hearts for a long time to come. It is a portrait of our Lord.

Ben Witherington: Lessons from the Amish-- the Power of Pacifism

Benefits of Ditching the Romantic Ideal

2006-10-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

I am to a certain extent a romantic. I’ve imbibed many of our culture’s views on love into my emotional faculty, especially through music. I watch a movie and I want the main character to realize that the love interest is their soul mate, even though I don’t believe in soul mates. This leads somewhat obviously to a fight beyond the mind and the emotions.

In my life the mind wins, but I don’t think that the emotions have to lose in this case. Once a person realizes all the benefits of ditching the modern romantic ideal for what I believe is a more realistic view of love I think the emotions can be retrained and actually benefit greatly from this new view.

What do I mean by our modern romantic ideal? I’m talking about the idea of finding your soul mate, falling in love and living happily ever after, and basing relational decisions on the strong emotions of ‘love’. First, let’s talk about the ‘benefits’ of this romantic ideal, because I don’t think they are that great.

There is the special identity communicated through this kind of relationship. This other person is saying he or she was made for you and you were made for her or him. You and your emotions are held up by this implicit statement. The problem? We are all too aware that humans are fallible, so you are faced with a nagging doubt. What if they are wrong? What if they realize they were wrong after 10 years of marriage and suddenly find the person that is ‘actually’ their soul mate? What happens then?

A perfect example of this is saying “I love you”. For someone that holds to the romantic ideal this is a very important statement and should not be said lightly. It reflects a very deep seated emotion which one hopes will last a lifetime. As a result, though, a person like this must constantly be reassured that his or her partner still loves him or her. Why? Because the feeling could fade away, or be transferred to another person.

I think I had more, but I started this one day and then took it up again a few days later and I’ve forgotten what I was going to say. So I’ll move onto the non-romantic view of love since that’s the more important part anyway. Really the two are basically opposed to each other so advantages of one are disadvantages of the other generally. I’m going to call my view “realistic love” because I think it is more realistic, but you could argue with that if you want to. Just know that’s what I’m referring to when I use that phrase.

Realistic love is given, not earned. When I tell a woman that I love her it is because I choose to. She can still be very happy because I’ve chosen to love her, but she doesn’t have to worry about what will happen when she does something I don’t like. My love for her isn’t based on her, it’s based in me (so instead she has to worry about my character, which is a whole other discussion). In this way realistic love is based on the love that God shows towards us, not based on us but based in His character.

While I may tell a woman that I love her, that isn’t the only way that she will be able to tell. Because realistic love is an act of my will she can instead examine my actions. As long as my actions remain in line with my espousal of love then she can trust that I am loving her.

Realistic love also allows for change. I don’t need her to remain my soul mate; I have chosen to love her. I’ll love her even if she becomes something I don’t like, though I might try and change or influence her if that were to happen. This is a very good thing, since people change. Those that hold to the romantic ideal hope that this growth is one of growing together, but sometimes it isn’t. An argument could probably be made that it might not even be healthy to continue to grow together (if the identity of one or both of the partners is lost).

That’s all I’ve got for now. Argue with me, it will probably help me flesh this out more. I really should have finished this when I first started it, but I don’t think I had time. If it comes back to me then I’ll create another post later.

The Eternal One

2006-09-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

This morning I looked out from the SUB for a moment. I caught in my glance the "eternal" flame that resides at our La Mirada City Hall. But my attention was not drawn to it, but instead to the flames in the clouds above it, placed there by the truly Eternal One. May my soul always be drawn away from the paltry copies of His Glory to the One who is truly the All in All.

Moving Towards or Moving Away

2006-09-27T18:00:00.000-07:00

I think I might be stealing that title from somewhere, or at the very least it gets at an idea that an author I read talked about but I can’t remember what author it was. It might have even been multiple authors, thus making it a bit foggier in my mind. Regardless, this didn’t just come to me, but at least some of this is in original language (as far as I know).

This is a post about relationships and the two ways they can go. I’m using language close to the “deeper” / “shallower” terminology, and I think these ideas greatly affect that, but the two are not exactly the same. This post will deal more with openness and defensiveness. If you are open with a person it will almost certainly lead to a deeper relationship, but a defensive person can still have somewhat deep relationships, they just aren’t likely to bring about real change. Hopefully you’ll see this by the end of the post.

The easiest place to see the principle of moving towards or moving away is in marriage, since that is the most intimate of relationships. I don’t have first hand experience (obviously) but I’ve read enough in the literature for this to be at least somewhat informed. So let’s get down to some real content.

A person in a serious relationship can project an image of him or herself up to the point of marriage. The longer the relationship goes on the harder this is to maintain, but it can still be done (at least assuming a couple doesn’t move in together). Once a couple is married (or living together) there is a lot of their life that they can’t hide from one another. This mean that faults that may not have been visible before suddenly are, whether those faults are big or small.

Once those faults show up there are choices to be made by both partners, but the decision by the partner at fault is the most important. The partner who sees the fault can either bring it up in conversation or try to ignore it. The guilty partner has to decide whether to be defensive or open. Let me use an example to try and make this more concrete.

Let’s say one partner, I’ll specify the husband because I’m used to masculine pronouns and I don’t mind abusing my own gender, has a problem interpreting too quickly and too confidently what his wife says to him. She apologizes and he assumes he knows what she is apologizing for (sometimes wrongly). She tells him something and he misinterprets it (not hearing the words wrong, but getting the meaning wrong). These mis-interpretations come across in his responses.

His wife has the opportunity to actually say something or to leave it alone. Assuming it is clear to him as well as to her it might make sense to let some time pass since he will probably correct it himself, but if it keeps going she should say something. Maybe she still doesn’t, or maybe she does. If she doesn’t say something his decision is either to be open and admit he has a problem in that area (note that it may just be a minor relational problem, not an ethical issue, as in this case) or be defensive and not say anything and act as though everything is fine.

If she confronts him he can openly accept the criticism, apologize, maybe share the feelings that failing causes, and hopefully start down the road to change with the support of his wife. Alternatively he can be defensive and take any one of a couple approaches. He can defend his actions (“I just misheard you, it’s not a big deal”), attack her (either on a similar issue or just completely shift to something else) or shut down (“Yeah, uh-huh, I know. I’ll fix it.” *wanders off to the fridge for a beer*).

Thus far you’re probably with me, and this probably isn’t earth shattering. The point I want to stress here is that he knows he has a problem. If he becomes defensive this knowledge will be dealt with one of two ways. Either he’ll try and shut down his conscience in this area, rationalize it away, or else he will try and fix it on his own.

But whichever route he takes the relationship is damaged because he hasn’t been honest about his self-knowledge. He has either given the impression he doesn’t care about the problem (and maybe that will become a reality) or that he doesn’t think it is one. I’m going to assume at least in the beginning neither is true, he cares and wants to change it, and to become a better person. He is only isolating himself, a place that is not very conducive to real and meaningful change, and especially bad in a relationship as intimate and (hopefully) lasting as marriage.

The alternative is to be honest with his wife, admit he has a problem and sees it as such, and enlist her help in dealing with it. If he goes this route he is not as likely to ignore the problem, and much more likely to be actively thinking about it because he has made a commitment to his wife, and she can help him in little ways. In future situations where a misunderstanding takes place she can be sensitive to his problem but still let him know there was a mistake made.

This openness also pushes him closer to his wife because he has been vulnerable with her. That will make it easier to be vulnerable in the future, both for him and for her. It creates an atmosphere where faults can be recognized and worked on, and where closeness is sought rather than isolation.

Are you starting to get the picture I’m painting? Openness is way better than defensiveness. I had thought about connecting this to Christianity, but I think I’ll save that for another post since this one is already really long. You can also bug me about strategies of confrontation that reduce the likelihood of defensiveness if you want me to talk about that later.

Wealth and Individualism – Introduction

2006-09-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

Individualism is a subject I have always been interested in, mainly in why it came about, what might be good about it and the many weaknesses of it. Recently I got to thinking about it in a slightly different way, considering whether the ‘wealth’ (used in a broad sense as well as the specific sense most people think of) of the west has encouraged the individualism we see today.

I got to thinking about this through a very strange train of thought. I was in a Sunday school class on Ruth talking about the differences between our culture and that one. Everyone was talking about the vast different between the cultures, and for the most part I agreed, but I was thinking about how that wasn’t as much the case near and below the poverty line.

If a person is facing homelessness the main thing that will determine whether they end up on the streets is likely their friends and family. If they have no community that cares about them then they will end up out on the streets, but if there are people around them they will have a place to stay and perhaps get care (in the case of psychological problems, which many times lead to homelessness).

The more I thought about it the more I decided I might actually be onto something. As a result I’m going to start a little series on these ideas. It may be a little out of my depth, but I think I have enough of a grasp of things like history (which I’ll be talking about) to pull it off, and if not I trust y’all to let me know.

I’ll go through the industrial revolution and talk a bit about how I think that affected materialism, look at the effects of major technological breakthroughs, and also talk specifically about money itself and how that may play into individualism. That’s the entirety of my plan at this point, but I’ll let that develop as I really start to work through the stuff floating around in my head. Look for the next post in the series in the coming days (it may not be my next major post, but it should be up within the week).

Roofs and Paper Airplanes

2006-09-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

If you ask me, roofs don't make a very good place for paper airplanes. They aren't any fun up there, if they stay for long enough they'll get wet, and it just doesn't seem to fulfill the general purpose of paper airplanes (not sure exactly what that is, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't involve getting stuck on roofs...I could be wrong, though, I have been before). Unfortunately the paper airplane I made in church today, and the replacement when it got stuck on the roof both decided they liked the roof. RIP cool paper airplanes #1 & 2.

The New Law vs. Worship and Thanksgiving

2006-09-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

For various reasons I’ve been thinking about the importance of worship and thanksgiving of late. Today some of that thinking became more focused, and I realized one of the most important reasons for worship and thanksgiving, to help defeat legalism. It won’t end legalism immediately, but I don’t think that you can beat legalism without worship and thanksgiving (at the very least the person who defeated legalism would do worship and thanksgiving, whether that was actually how they beat it or not).

Why do I think that legalism can’t be beat without them? We have to have a reason for doing good works (I’m kind of assuming good works are ‘necessary’ in all of this, which also assumes Christianity…those assumptions should probably be made explicit just in case). It seems to me that there are two primary reasons for good works, love or requirements.

If we look at the New Testament and see the many commands to do good and be sanctified and such and don’t have a powerful love of God we will naturally fall into legalism. We create a new law which assumes justification by faith (because we have the head knowledge) but that leads to sanctification through our own bootstraps because we aren’t experiencing the love of God that naturally leads to good works.

This is why I suggest worship and thanksgiving, which should naturally lead us to love and devotion for God. From that can flow good works from a thankful heart, not out of some kind of screwed up sense of ‘duty’. That’s about the extent of my thoughts on this for the moment, now I have to try it out and see if I’m right. I’ll get back to y’all in a while and let you know. If you have insights of your own on this I would be quite interested.

Good Thing Theology Isn't Politics

2006-09-23T20:35:00.000-07:00

Because seriously, how is anyone ever going to beat a slogan like, "N.T. Wright is right about the NT"?

Why I Love Flock

2006-09-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

Some of you might wonder why I use Flock. Beyond the features there is another, subconscious reason. It's this.

Grafted In

2006-09-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

You know what I got to thinking about recently? The fact that I'm a Christian is amazing. I'm not a Jew, but I'm still saved. Salvation history was going along...then there was a gap, then Jesus showed up on the scene. He started with the Jews, and it could have just been a requirement that new converts become Jews first, but instead Jesus and His Disciples blew the whole thing open. We're so used to America being the "Christian nation" that we don't think about the fact that any Gentile being a Christian is amazing. Our God is great. Want some more on this? Go read Romans 9-11. The Bible is way better than I am anyway.

iTunes 7

2006-09-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

It's live, and it's hot now.

I'm All About This

2006-09-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

We'll see if I ever get the chance to do it:

Ruin your ski retreat for Jesus. And have fun doing it.

internetmonk.com » Blog Archive » Ruin the Ski Retreat for Jesus

Letting the Terrorists Win?

2006-09-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

So I started to read a post on 9/11 and heard something familar from the event itself and the time since:

One of the goals of terrorism is to disrupt life as normal, and this is why, in the face of such things, our leaders seek to move us back to life as normal as quickly as possible. This is also why you will hear people exhort us that the terrorists win if we quit living life as normal.

JOLLYBLOGGER: The Christian Faith in Wartime

I didn't read the rest of the post, it probably has plenty of stuff, but my mind took off from this. Taken along with the idea that Muslims hate the West because of our indulgent lifestyle I began to question if perhaps we shouldn't "let the terrorists win". What if we dropped our "we must be the best" mentality and took a moment to listen to the message behind the actions, even if the actions are evil and despicable. We need not repay evil with more evil. So what might we realize?

Perhaps we would see that while Muslim culture has many bad points, like the oppression of women and "the other", we aren't so much better. Women still fight for equal rights here, and while they have the right to do so it doesn't gaurantee they always get those rights. We have a culture that has produced the idea that "choice" is more important than life. Pornography and sex are rampant, whether explicity, as on the internet, or implicitly as found in seemingly every corner or our culture.

Many people ignore the poor and the needy, and there is plenty of hatred of "the other" even if we don't kill them most of the time. We decide that we have everything we need and that if other countries would just copy us they could too, so we become isolationist, except when shaken from our ignorance by pain and violence. Where then is our so called "moral superiority"?

Yes, we have freedom. Freedom seems to be the cry of every American these days, whether or not they've thought through the consequences. Use that freedom, don't abuse it by using the freedom to ignore "the other", in this case the Muslims who have a problem with us.

9/11 was a tragedy. I don't deny that, or that the men involved did a very evil thing. They came from a culture that doesn't like the West, though, and perhaps it's time to start at least listening a little. Perhaps in "beating the terrorists" we've lost as well.

Take Off My Shoes

2006-09-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

by Delirious

I’ll take off my shoes, I’m coming in,
Untie this rope, I’m staying with him,
Love of my life, I’ll live and die,
Just for the moments for my king and I.

Why did you call, why did you wait,
For someone so guilty, someone so fake.
There are no words for my beautiful song,
Now I’m in the arms of my beautiful one.

Hold me, blow all the pride from my bones,
With your fire.
Hold me, breathe on this heart made of stone,
Keep it pure.
Hold me, saviour of heaven and earth,
King forever.
Hold me, love of my life lead me on,
Through the fire, lead me on...

I’ll take off this crown and fall at your feet,
The secret of joy are the moments we meet.
How could a man with all of your fame,
Pull me from darkness and call me by name.

So hold me today, as I carry your cross,
Into the desert to find who is lost.
Look at my hands, they’re still full of faith,
God keep them clean till we finish the race.

technorati tags:Take Off My Shoes, Delirious, The Mission Bell, song lyrics

Blogged with Flock

Remember Darfur

2006-09-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

They call this place Rwanda.
A year ago it was a collection of straw huts, hastily thrown together in the aftermath of battle, hard by the razor-wire edge of a small African Union peacekeeper base.

Today it is a tangle of sewage-choked lanes snaking among thousands of squalid shacks, an endless sprawl that dwarfs the base at its heart. Pounding rainstorms gather fetid pools that swarm with mosquitoes and flies spreading death in their filthy wake. All but one of the aid groups working here have pulled out.

Many who live here say the camp is named for the Rwandan soldiers based here as monitors of a tattered cease-fire. But the camp’s sheiks say the name has a darker meaning, one that reveals their deepest fears.

“What happened in Rwanda, it will happen here,” said Sheik Abdullah Muhammad Ali, who fled here from a nearby village seeking the safety that he hoped the presence of about 200 African Union peacekeepers would bring. But the Sudanese government has asked the African Union to quit Darfur rather than hand over its mission to the United Nations. “If these soldiers leave,” Sheik Ali said, “we will all be slaughtered.”

Darfur Trembles as Peacekeepers’ Exit Looms - New York Times

Read the rest of the article on the NYTimes (I think you may have to register, but I recall it being free). They say a lot more, this is just the start of the article. And pray for this conflict, for the people on every side. The little bit that I got from this article indicates to me that it is a very complex problem, not likely to be solved just be dropping more troops into the middle of it, though I have no idea what is to be done. But God knows, and God cares. Talk to Him about it.

How to Deal with Friends and Suicide

2006-09-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

I had intended to find more stuff on this, but the source I was expecting to have stuff (the APA) doesn't, so instead I will direct you to the post that actually tipped me off to International Suicide Awareness Week, on "The Trouble With Spikol":

Scotland's Buchan Observer offers some tips for identifying and dealing with a person who may be suicidal. I think the suggestions are excellent, so I'm reprinting them here.

The Trouble With Spikol

A little taste of the post (mostly because that way I can have Flock to the work of linking you over there ;-)). A very good post on the signs and what to do if you see them. If you've dealt with suicide in the past please don't read these back into that situation, there is no need. Instead keep these in mind for any future situations where you may be in a position to help other people. I will likely post more on the subject during this week, but no promises (I'm pretty busy these days).

International Suicide Awareness Week

2006-09-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Monday, September 4) starts International Suicide Awareness Week. I found out about it recently and want to spread it around as much as possible because I think it is a subject that needs more awareness of it quite badly. However it is also a very painful subject for a large number of people.

There is a large number of people who have known someone who committed suicide, or at least was affected by the suicide of someone else. Other people either have attempted or thought about attempting suicide and so it brings back painful memories, including perhaps castigation or shame from the community. This week is not and should not be designed to bring up your pain, and if my focus on it does I apologize.

The importance of this kind of week is the reason why I choose to go ahead with talking about it anyway. People who haven't had to deal with suicide, or who have only dealt with it from a fair distance need to be introduced to the subject and hear more about it. I'll be talking about ways professionals suggest identifying suicidal ideation (thinking about suicide), starting discussion about how people who have attempted suicide are treated (and should be treated), and other such things.

If you are one of the people who has more closely dealt with suicide then any feedback and/or input you would like to give would be much appreciated. If you would rather avoid the subject that's fine too, I'll only be talking about it for this one week most likely (unless lively discussions get started that should be continued, but I don't think I have enough readership for that) and then I'll get back to my normal...well, silence at this point I guess ;-)

Upcoming Flock Features

2006-08-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

If you read this enough you know I really like Flock. I do most of my blogging using Flock's editor, I mentioned it in my recent aggregators post, and I just generally gush on about it. Well, I also read their blog, and they are talking about what's being developed now, and I thought it might interest some of you that aren't already using it (this isn't out yet, I'll let you know when it is feature complete and fairly stable):

People are at the center of the next version of Flock. When you look at version 0.7 of Flock, you notice that you can have Photo Favorites (your favorite people with photo accounts) and you can subscribe to people’s blogs in the News feature. But what if you have a friend (let’s call him Larry) in Photo Favorites who also has a blog you subscribe to? Presently, there is no link between those two in Flock. To close the loop on these loose ends, we’ve thought through the various scenarios and believe that we have a useful way to show you all of "Larry's" stuff in one place.

Danphe release update

I really like that idea, even though a lot of my friends don't really do the pictures thing. Just the fact that they are working to combine "people" into an object is really nice, so I can track specific people if I so desire. Very cool. Can't wait to see it in action.

Why Use An Aggregator?

2006-08-15T08:07:00.000-07:00

I've lost some readership since I came to Blogger. I'll probably try and get some of it back pretty soon (I'm waiting till school starts again so I know people have internet access, then I'll make one last post on my Xanga specifically to send people over here) and it would probably be good to have a post about aggregation to send them to.

Also, some of you may just be reading my site rather than aggregating, which I think is far less efficient than using an aggregator. So, first question, what is an aggregator? And aggregator is something that reads the RSS feed of a site and gathers each of it's "posts" or "entries" and displays them somewhere.

What kinds of sites have RSS feeds? Most blogs (including the vast majority of Xangas, which is a somewhat recent change), many news sites (like CNN or FoxNews or whatever) and various other sites. If you use Firefox or Flock the right side of the address bar will have a little orange box with a little radio wave to tell you that it has discovered one or more RSS feeds on a site.

An aggregator will let you know when new content is posted to a site, much like Xanga's "My Subscriptions" page, but on a much broader scale (across blog platforms and including other kinds of sites). So if you use a good aggregator you won't have to run around chasing down all your friends, you just grab their RSS feed, regardless of what platform they are on, and you will be notified when they post something.

Where can you find a good aggregator? Flock has an aggregator built in to it in the form of "My News". That's what I currently use for all my feed reading needs. In the past I've used Bloglines which was also pretty good. I think I've heard good things about Google Reader as well, though I haven't used it myself so I can't speak to its learning curve. I do like all things Google, though ;-)

Using an aggregator might take some work at the start (you have to add each feed to it) but in the end I think it's worth the investment. If you are interested in using one but aren't sure you have the technical saavy let me know and I'll make some time to help you out with it.

Bravo Verizon

2006-08-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

I don't remember where I found this article on Verizon's alternative power methods, but I thought it was cool:

By producing its own energy, Verizon is adding another layer of network reliability that it can fully control. And as luck would have it, new, cleaner technologies such as fuel cells also help the company reduce energy costs, as well as the impact on the environment over time, making the situation a win-win.

Verizon heeds call of fuel cells | CNET News.com

Note that they've only tried this one place, but hopefully they will expand it. As an addendum to my post on global warming, I'll note that a friend pointed out it is very challenging to say what causes global warming at this point (as a psychology major I know how hard causation can be). Accepting that doesn't change my stance very much, since I think it is valuable to do what we can to help the environment anyway. Using alternative power sources seems like a win-win all the way around. It means we produce less Carbon Dioxide, we're less dependent on foreign oil, and if fossil fuels ever do start running out that's less of a problem. Just my two cents.

Why I Lean Covenantal

2006-08-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

The reason why I lean towards Coventant Theology over Dispensationalism (see my dictionary post for the terms) at this point is based on a single argument. That argument is laid out well by someone quoted in the context of a bigger post by Ben Witherington:

Here again Lincoln helps us: “Without the conviction that Christ was the surpassing fulfillment of the Mosaic covenant, there would have been no reason in the first place for Jews to have become Christians or to remain Christians under pressure (the issue for Hebrews) or for Gentiles to have become Christians rather than proselytes or God-fearers. Without the conviction that Jesus Christ is the decisive revelation of God for all human beings, however the implications of that conviction are spelled out, Christianity is no longer recognizably in continuity with its Scriptural foundation. The suggestion, sometimes made today, that Christians should think in terms of two covenants, one for Jews, based on Moses, and one for Gentiles, based on Jesus, does not allow Jesus to be the decisive revelation for the people to whom this revelation was given in the first place.” (Hebrews. A Guide, p. 118).

Ben Witherington: Supercessionism, Dispensationalism, and the Present Middle East Crisis-- A Christian Stand

Until a dispensationalist can really help me understand why a Jew has to become a Christian if he still has promises I think I will remain in the covenant theology camp. Check out the rest of that post, it's interesting.

The Shelf

2006-08-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

I made mention of Flock's shelf in my second to last post, which was also a test to see if it still works the way it used to. Not only does it work quite well, but I've tested a couple things and have come out loving it. So let me explain it for those of you that might be interested in it (especially if you already use Flock).

First, where is it? This is probably the biggest downside, it's kind of hidden. It's a little clipboard looking thing on the status bar at the bottom of the window. Click that and a shelf appears at the bottom of the window and you get a couple extra buttons for use with the shelf.

How does it work? You drag stuff in there and it saves it for later use. For example, in the last post I highlighted the text that is quoted and dragged it down there. Then I used Flock's blogging tool to make a blog post and dragged the little icon that represented the text into my blog post. It made the text a quote and put the link to the original context at the bottom automatically.

What else have I discovered? Content that you leave in there is saved from one session to the next. That means if you grab something and then forget about it and close the window, and then come back later you'll find that it is still there. It also means it is important to delete stuff after you have used it so you don't end up with a bazillion things down there.

Anyway, I'm quite enamored of it, and may start using it more often to grab stuff from the many places that I read to share with all of you. No promises though ;-)

Global Warming

2006-08-07T22:25:00.000-07:00

Good post over at Ben Witherington's blog about global warming and Christian responsibility for the environment. Check it out for yourself, but here is just one quote:

My wife is a biologist and a botanist at a quite conservative Christian college--- Asbury College. The faculty there could not in any way be described as a hot bed of liberalism or ‘blue state’ thinking. It is interesting that even in this bastion of conservatism both religious and political, the truth about global warning has finally become undenial to even many nay sayers at such a place.

Ben Witherington: A Very Inconvenient Truth

(Admittedly part of why I quoted that was to test out the Flock shelf, which I recently re-discovered...looks like it still works well)

technorati tags:Ben Witherington, global warming, Christian responsibility

Blogged with Flock

Virtual Tour

2006-08-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, here it is, a virtual tour of my new apartment. I'm mostly settled in, though there will be some definite changes before the semester starts (Caleb moving in for sure, maybe the addition of a piece or two of furniture). Anyway, as a friendly gesture for my dial-up friends I will post links here, and I'll have two sets, one being just the big pictures, and one being the full tour. It is HIGHLY suggested that you use tabbed browsing for this. Makes it so you can open everything at once (probably by holding ctrl and clicking on each of the links, if you are using a browser that does tabs but don't normally use them yourself) and then click over to each picture as you come to it. And for dial up people it means it will get started loading all of them rather than waiting till you open the link.

Dial up set: Outside - Dining Area - Kitchen - Living Room 1 - Living Room 2 - Bathroom - Bedroom

Full set: Picture 1 - Picture 2 - Picture 3 - Picture 4 - Picture 5 - Picture 6 - Picture 7 - Picture 8 - Picture 9 - Picture 10 - Picture 11 - Picture 12 - Picture 13 - Picture 14 - Picture 15 - Picture 16 - Picture 17 - Picture 18 - Picture 19 - Picture 20 - Picture 21 - Picture 22

Wow that was a lot of pictures. But I had talking points for each, so I'm gonna go with it. I'll let you know when I switch areas for the dial up people, and the rest of you it will be somewhat obvious. If I'm talking about something and it's not what is in the picture let me know, I did a lot of copy and paste, so I wouldn't be surprised if I screwed up a couple links...

Outside - Picture 1: Ok, that's the door of the apartment and the two "front" windows that open out onto the courtyard. No courtyard pictures for you, it's ugly right now (something about them not picking up garbage...it's gross).

Picture 2: The view as you come in the front door. It's pretty ugly at the moment, especially since the bookshelf is empty (that will become Caleb's bookshelf, though it may not be located there eventually). I'm hoping to get something else to put the TV and such on so the bookshelves can be used elsewhere, and hopefully (cross your fingers) a big bookshelf that will block all that crap out. I don't want that to be your first view as you walk in but that works the best for other design reasons (I thought out how I positioned stuff ;-)).

Dining Area - Picture 3: Our kitchen table. It's pretty cool. Not huge, but it'll definitely do, and we could always spread to the dining room if we had more than 4 people. The fridge in the background isn't plugged in because at this point I don't need it, but I might eventually use it for drinks or something.

Picture 4: The little room AC that could. That thing is a beast, it cools two really big areas. It doesn't get back to the bedroom/bathroom, but I don't blame it for that, there isn't really much circulation to back there. I'm hoping to score a fan of some kind to perhaps fix that. And I guess you can see a little bit of the view out the front window.

Kitchen - Picture 5: This is the kitchen. Pretty well stocked considering. Stove/oven, fridge/freezer, double sink with garbage disposal, microwave, and cabinets out the wazoo. Many of the cabinets are quite empty at this point, and some will probably remain so.

Picture 6: Closer look at the oven with two observations. One, I'm keeping my towels there, which leads to two things. The one I'm not real worried about is fire hazard, I've seen other people keep towels like this and have no problem, and I assume they take a really high temperature to randomly ignite. The second is hot, warm towels, which I judge worth the risk. Also, I pulled out the bottom compartment. At first I thought this was storage, but when I first used the oven I noticed there are holes in the bottom of it that lead down to this thing, so it didn't make sense for storage because it shares in most of the oven's heat. So with a bit of investigation paired with my dad's great thinking, I figured out it is probably for warming plates and stuff like that. Pretty cool (and it's not like I needed the storage).

Picture 7: The range. Notice, gas burners (the oven is also gas, but that's less of a big deal). I love gas burners because there is no heat up time, they are hot as soon as they are lit. The one downside of them (and the gas oven) is a gas smell, but there is a hood with a fan, so it's mostly just a little noisy while I cook.

Picture 8: First glimpse of the living room, but not important enough for the dial up people. I moved the couch and chair away from the wall to center them more in the room (better use of the TV/monitor from the couch) but that left me space. I'm keeping empty containers (other than the pink one, which has computer stuff in it) there right now. Maybe I'll come up with something else, but I'm thinking if I can move the small bookshelves I might put one over there and drop one of the 3 stacked high down so that it's mostly blocked out from view.

Living Room 1 - Picture 9: Here's a good view of the couch, chair, coffee table and end table. Yes, I put books on the coffee table, I think it looks better that way. And at the moment I have a dunce chair in the corner, so don't be stupid when you come visit. I hear rumors my parents might have a chair they want to get rid of, so I might put that there (it would be a comfortable chair).

Living Room 2 - Picture 10: This is the ugly side (in my opinion) of the living room. Wires everywhere, and my desk isn't that clean. But this way I figure my computer is not in the bedroom (a plus) and if people want to watch something on it they can do so from the couch (to my right, and the chair is to my left). The couch is centered on the TV, and I tested a little earlier and the controllers of the PS2 just make it to the couch (it's not too tight, so it's fairly comfortable, though you can't put it down on your stomach). (if you're just viewing the dial up this picture works fine for the next point)

Picture 11: I wasn't looking at pictures as I went, so I didn't know that this can be seen fairly well in the last picture, so this is just a close up of the ugly heater in the back right of the last picture. I also don't know where my rotation got lost, so I apologize. This and a few of the other pictures are sideways. Since it was ugly I figured I'd make an attempt to improve it a little, so I put my BN Classics books on top of it. A few more of those would fill it out nicely ;-)

Picture 12: Another sideways one. This shows you the "hallway". It's a small square, so it barely fits the "hallway" title, but it joins three rooms, so whatever. Oh, and more storage there.

Bathroom - Picture 13: Here is our glorious bathroom. I've got way too much stuff on the counter, that will change soon (I'm not using the mirror or under sink storage in there at all at this point). Also notice that our shower doubles as a bath tub. I think I'm totally going to take a bath sometime soon just because I can.

Picture 14: Another sideways picture. The tile on the right is the floor, for reference. So what the crap is it? Well, in case Global Warming eventually leads to Global Cooling and it actually gets cold in the Southern California you need not fear for Caleb and I, not only do we have the uber-ugly heater in the living room, we have a little heater thing for the bathroom. Though it might just be a fire starter, I'm not totally sure, and I fear to try turning it on.

Bedroom - Picture 15: Does this look big to you? It felt huge to me. I just moved from Stewart where the rooms are smaller than Sigma (and definitely feel less open) but I really think this bedroom may be bigger than a Sigma room. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll hold to that opinion until someone whips out a tape measure when they are over visiting, at which point I will tackle them to the ground and forbid their ever entering my bedroom again. Or I'll let them do it and find out if I'm right. You won't know which unless you try...but you risk exile ;-)

Picture 16: Now that is empty (for all intents and purposes). That's underneath my bed. When I came there was a dresser underneath each bed, but the dressers looked tiny and still made it feel empty, so I moved the one over under the other bed and now they fill out that space, leaving this for something else. Maybe I'll get chairs or beanbags or something and create a reading/studying area. So many dreams, so much debt.

Picture 17: The spoken of dressers. One bad side effect of having them side by side is that even a casual observer might now notice that...THEY AREN'T THE SAME. What the heck? Whatever, they are about the same size, so I don't really care, but I still wonder who made that call.

Picture 18: The other desk, which resides in the bedroom. I figure work can go on in there during the day, and since Caleb is likely to have a laptop which can be easily removed (and not likely to be left on overnight) it made sense to give him the bedroom desk (if he even wants to use it). It's got some of my random stuff, but I'll move that pretty soon.

Picture 19: My side of the closet. Caleb's side is empty except for some drying hand-wash laundry (my exercise clothes) so I didn't think that merited a picture. Plenty of space in here as well. Also, if you wondered about my extreme reaction against shoes, it might have had something to do with my realizing I have a FREAKING lot of shoes. You can't even see a couple of the pairs. That's just not right.

Picture 20: Another sideways picture, I apologize again. You've only seen one bookshelf that could have been in use so far (since the other was obviously empty...the one you didn't actually see the shelves of does hold books) so if you were observant and knew how many books I have you might be wondering where they all went. Now you have the answer. They are stored in my closet, because I had nothing better to do with those shelves. Have I mentioned we have a lot of storage? Maybe I should get some books for the kitchen...

Picture 21: I think I'd be remiss if I didn't give you the view out the back...onto the alley. Such a great view. Maybe I'll get to know the people that live across from us, but since it isn't a Biola owned apartment to my knowledge I think that is less than likely.

Picture 22: Last, and probably least, I wanted you to know that the ugliness spreads into the bedroom. Stupid ugly heater. I might not be saying that if it gets fairly cold this winter...but then again, that won't mean it isn't ugly, just that it's useful ;-)

So that was your tour. It was freakishly long, but I wanted to have fun with it. Hopefully it wasn't too boring of a read. And if you never get a chance to come visit me now you'll have a good idea of what my apartment looks like.

Theological Dictionary Time

2006-08-05T10:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not really a dictionary, but I'll define some terms from my understanding of them since I got called on for that in my post regarding free will, and I'm about to make another post using some terms, so I'll define those too. And feel free to go look into these more elsewhere, I'm not going to give you anything comprehensive, and I could even be wrong (but for the sake of this blog it will be useful for you to know my view on things).

Calvinism - a view emphasizing the sovereignty of God while sacrificing to some extent human free will (Biblical Calvinism and Biblical Arminianism both live in a tension, as you move away from the center into things like Hyper-Calvinism you fully sacrifice one or the other)

Arminianism - a view emphasizing the free will of human beings while sacrificing to some extent the sovereignty of God (also commonly referred to as the "free will" side of the debate)

Molinism - as if I know what this is...there's a reason why I'm reading about it right now ;-) my pastor says it's a middle ground that means you no longer need a 'tension' like the two views above, I'm not sure I believe him...yet. Also, I have heard this view referred to as "Middle Knowledge". Maybe I'll try and explain that eventually, but not today.

Covenant Theology - the view that the old covenant (the covenant of the Old Testament) has been replaced by the new covenant (the covenant based on Jesus Christ). The main debate on this seems to center around the promises to Israel in the OT. This view would say they no longer apply to the nation state of Israel but to the "spiritual Israel" made up of true believers

Dispensationalism - this has something to do with different "dispensations" from God, but what you need to know is that old school dispensationalism (popularized by the Ryrie Study Bible, that jerk ;-)) holds that the promises to Israel are promises to Israel and will be fulfilled to Israel, not to the "Church"

Progressive Dispensationalism - this is the new view on the block, and all the cool kids are subscribing to it. I understand it as a "middle ground" between the two views above, but a friend smarter and more knowledgable on the matter says it's not really the center, it's still on the dispensationalism side. Anyway, this one says that some of the promises to Israel are for the nation of Israel, and others now apply to the Church. I don't know much beyond that, I really need to get read up on this whole debate because I think it's fairly important (especially to how you read the OT).

It may also be useful to note in closing that Biola University (and/or Talbot, not sure which determines this) is a Dispensational school, which means that everyone in the Bible department must believe either dispensationalism or progressive dispensationalism. I think we might have one or two old school dispensationalists on staff here, but for the most part I think they are all progressive dispensationalists these days (I think Biola/Talbot may have been somewhat central to the movement, not really sure though).

Behaviorism

2006-08-04T20:40:00.000-07:00

Tonight while reading an argument for Molinism (I've heard it referred to as Middle Knowledge more often, and it's in the same category as Calvinism and Arminianism) I realized that functionally I'm a behaviorist. I don't take quite as simple a view as early behaviorism did (there is obviously something that makes us quite different than animals) but I bought into the "science can figure out everything" lie. I assumed that if one knew enough, he would KNOW what a person would do in a given situation.

My guess at this point is that my acceptance of this idea had more to do with my accepting Calvinism two years ago than anything else. I entered Biola as a fairly strong Arminian and at some point in my first year (I don't know exactly when it happened) I became a fairly strong Calvinist.

As a result I just don't accept the idea of human free will. I joked to a friend last night that I thought people who believed in free will were stupid, but at the time I didn't realize that my worldview actually ruled out the ability for me to believe in free will (also, it was a joke...I've always lived as though I have free will because otherwise horrible things happen).

Now I have to go about re-evaluating that stance (and most likely rejecting it). My stories may change a bit ;-)

Church Trades?

2006-08-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big baseball fan (I think it's boring...yeah, that's right, I said it) but found this quite amusing.

Hat Tip: Sean Michael Lucas

Dead End Job

2006-08-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while it's good for me to be reminded that I plan to go into a dead-end job. I'm either going to be a pastor, a counselor, or a combination of the two (probably a pastor who specializes in counseling or something). Neither of these two jobs have a future. When the New Heavens and the New Earth come around, I'm out of a job. Many of you will be able to continue doing what you are doing, though how you do it may change a bit, but I know that my job will be downsized. I think I'm ok with that, I just wonder what my new job will be. ;-)

(and the most recent reminder came from...wait for it...the lectures I've been listening to from the Resurgence Podcast)

The Graphing Calculator Story

2006-08-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

So I was reading the Google blog today and they linked to a story. I had no idea what this story was, so I went and read it. I am very amused. Now I want to pass on the joy, so go read "The Graphing Calculator Story" and be amused. Or inspired, or something like that. Enjoy.

Engaging Our Generation?

2006-07-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

I've gotten to thinking about 'our' generation of late. That obviously refers to those of you that are around my age, as I assume the majority of my readers are. The thing that inspired me was the third session from the Resurgence Conference, which I've been listening to of late (I mentioned it in an earlier post).

In the past I've thought (stupidly) that I understand culture and can fix everything. I'm beginning to realize just how far I am from understanding even the generation that I grew up in. I've been sheltered, but I still have some of the "symptoms". I think I'm in the lead out for a new generation, the edge of what is truly the computer and Internet generation.

Why do I think that? I haven't known a time without personal computers, and most people older than me can't say that (and I mean older by 5-10 years, so not by much). Faced with a new computer program or a new internet tool it takes me very little time to adapt. The generation before me loves being on the "cutting edge", I just take it as the status quo. I expect change, so I hardly ever think of things as the "cutting edge" because it won't stay sharp for long.

Ironically the place where we expect the most change, the Internet, is also the place where we attempt to gain stability. When I can no longer stay in touch with someone in person I move to an internet relationship with them, whether that be email, instant messenging, or blog reading. Some people even make friends that are exclusively internet relationships.

This leaves us with a 'reality' hole. The internet just can't fully replace an in person relationship. I could be off, but I'm pretty sure people are looking around for other people (and relationships) that are 'real'. That seems to be the buzzword of my generation. If you can't be real with someone, it's just not worth it. If they aren't being real with you, walk away. You look for blogs of people that are real, or mediums where 'reality' comes across more easily, like podcasting and vlogging.

But wait, we don't want to give up our fantasy worlds, though. We have 'reality television' that doesn't seem at all real. We love super heroes, but they have to be 'real' people. They have real struggles, even though they aren't real and could never be real because of their abilities.

That's confusing. And my guess is that my generation is confused. That will cause problems as we begin to enter the 'real world' and take over the reins of the world from our parents. But that's about all I've fully thought through at this point, I'll just keep going on it. I would love your thoughts, though.

technorati tags:generation, growing up, contemporary, culture, the internet, relationships

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Since everyone is doing it...

2006-07-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

15% Dixie

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Yankee

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

This isn't that interesting to me, since I already knew I had picked up some habits from other regions (SoCal is probably one of the most "GAE" areas around, since TV and movies tend to follow us). I'd be more interested to figure out where I picked stuff up from, but I think a lot of it is from people not in the Lobby Crew, so I probably couldn't...

technorati tags:dialects

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Now Listening

2006-07-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

In case you are wondering what I am doing of late, here's one piece of the puzzle. I've been listening to lectures given at the Resurgence Conference this year (that's a link to the podcast, but you can get to the rest of the site). What is said conference? Not much of an idea. I got a link to it from Jollyblogger, one of the blogs that I read, downloaded the MP3s and started listening. I like it. It seems to be aimed at church leaders, but I think a lot of what gets said can still be applied to anyone (and I've only listened to the first two).

(I tried to post this last night but Blogger wasn't being happy, so here it is now)

technorati tags:Resurgence conference, free lectures, Jollyblogger

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Great Quotations

2006-07-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

Today a post on Jollyblogger had some great Christian quotations from both contemporary bloggers and historical figures. Go check it out.

technorati tags:Jollyblogger, Christian quotes, Christian quotations

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The Government and Homosexual Couples

2006-07-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

Curtis recently made a post in support of civil unions that I read and disagreed with, and since my response was getting too long I decided to turn it into a post for my own blog, especially since I haven't done much lately.

Curtis supports something separate from marriage, which he calls civil unions, for both heterosexual and homosexual couples that don't want to be related to the church (though specifically for homosexual couples so that there isn't an uproar in the church). In this way these couples derive all the same benefits as married couples without angering those that define marriage as between a man and a woman and generally do so in a church.

I am in the main opposed to all the same benefits being extended to homosexual couples. But before I really get into that I would like to say there should be a more effective way for homosexuals to get access to some of the same rights as married couples have (like in a medical emergency the partner should have say just like a husband or a wife would in a marriage). That is different that benefits like the tax breaks extended to married couples.

I've already shown my view by referring to them as benefits. They aren't a right, they are a benefit used to encourage a certain kind of behavior. The point of encouraging marriage is not just to get two people to commit to one another, though that is a great benefit as well. The point is to create a stable basis for creating a family and thus raising the next generation in a healthy enviroment.

Homosexual couples adopting is a whole other debate, but excepting that they have no way of creating a family, which is why I would not extend the same benefits to them.

But wait, isn't there another problem I haven't addressed? With so many marriages ending in divorce, are we really encouraging stable families that can raise healthy kids? I'm not sure we are, and I think that's a problem. Maybe we should think about changing the ways that benefits are extended to married couples.

It used to be that divorce required a specific and important reason. At some point we came up with horrible things like "irreconcilable differences" (in a general, non-defined sense) or "no fault divorce". As a result marriage is no longer broken off only in really bad situations, but also when the "feeling" fades, or things just get hard.

What should we do about this? I say wait to extend benefits to couples. You could wait until they hit year three or four, which is usually after the first rough spot, or until year eight or nine, after the second rough spot. Heck, make it year ten and it can be part of their anniversary celebration.

Will this guarantee that all the marriages that we give benefits to are healthy and will be productive for society? Probably not. There are couples that go longer than that but end up in the "roommates" situation and eventually one of them just decides to break it off. But we will be encouraging longer term commitment which is more beneficial both to children and to the people involved.

That's my two cents, which apparently turned into 4 cents or more as I got way off topic. Basically, the government should use "benefits" to encourage what will be good for the society. Maybe they decide that committed homosexual couples are good for society, but don't give them benefits just because heterosexual couples get them now. It's not a right that we deserve, it's a benefit.

technorati tags:marriage, homosexual couples, tax breaks, government benefits, civil unions

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