Nothing Clever Here

Heaven Has No Lost Opportunities

2008-07-18T01:01:00.002-04:00

At the moment, I'm surrounded by change. I'm moving, friends are leaving, and oh, yes, by the way, my wedding is around the corner.

Life is change. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

Every day is a passing opportunity. One less Halo match that can be played with friends. One less chance to see the world. One less chance to share a kind word with a friend. (I suppose it's also good - one less chance to disrespect one's friends, but I never keep count that way.) One less day to be young.

Heaven won't be like that. There will always be one more day to beat my friends at Halo, or travel the fjords in Norway, or surprise a long-time friend. In fact, I'll know everyone, eventually. My memory better improve, though, because I'm not very good with billions of names. A thousand or so is about my limit.

It's strange. I hate change, and yet it really helps me reflect on what is important to me: What am I trying to accomplish in life? What opportunities do I have now that won't later?

Financial Stewardship (Conc.)

2008-06-23T00:11:00.002-04:00

Well, the saga on finding housing is theoretically concluded (pending, of course, the whole problem that who knows what tomorrow may bring.) The kind leasing office called and offered us an apartment with all the features we wanted at the expected price starting July 1st.

Assuming that we don't hate it when we get the tour, we then get to sign a lease.

I've decided that wedding planning is very, very good for my learning not to worry about tomorrow. It makes me realize just how quickly my mind jumps to worrying about that next thing, and how quickly I let that wreck my contentment. I'm glad to mostly have the whole apartment bit wrapped up and find other ways to practice trusting God - like that logistics like beverages and music will get taken care of at the wedding. But at the moment I'm just appreciative that housing looks like it will work out the way I wanted and that my fiancee and I won't be madly scrambling to find somewhere else.

A Moment of Loss

2008-06-16T18:36:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine died when Jesus called her home. She handled sticky situations with a pluckiness and grace that made me think "I'd like to sit down with her and hear her perspective and how God has worked in her life through these times." Now that conversation will have to wait for heaven.

I've been surprised by how painful her passing was for how little I knew her. I don't have anything particularly profound to say, but here's some of what's been on my heart.

This life isn't fair. It hurts. My political science professor once said (roughly) this:
"In America, we put most of our effort into putting padding and cushions on the hard edges of life. But we can't always succeed, and periodically we hurt ourselves on life's hard edges."
Even in America with our technology and wealth, we aren't completely immune to the sorrows of life. Or as a pirate put it:
"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."
Death puts life in perspective: It will end for each of us, perhaps much sooner than I expect. I'm very glad that my friend knew Jesus and trusted in him alone for forgiveness so that I will see her again someday. But not all of my friends and acquaintances have that connection, and I'm way too good at letting the details of life blur that overarching thesis. As Jesus once said,
"What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"
If I care about people, shouldn't that concern be on the forefront of my mind? (Corollary: If I care about people, I'll find a winsome approach. While a few people may be won over by harsh angry statements almost gleefully attacking them and everything they care about, I'll remember that few salesmen -- or even politicians -- use that approach successfully. Furthermore, enough reported Christians use such methods that those who are won over by such methods probably become devout followers regardless of my approach.)
I think one reason I struggle finding heaven soothing is because it seems so impersonal to me. I'm reminded of the story (retold here)
A little girl woke up with a bad dream. Her mother attempted to comfort her by reminding her that there was nothing to be afraid of because God was with her. The young girl replied, "Oh, I know God is with me, but I need someone with some skin!"
I'm struck that I'm a lot like that girl, especially about heaven: I tend to view heaven along the lines of Paul's description about God as "the King eternal, immortal, invisible." The imagery conveys power and majesty, but not warmth and intimacy. And Jesus, while human, is still unseen and not skin here and now. And while I miss the people I know who are in heaven, they provide a sense of skin to it that is very encouraging to me.
Resume builders are rarely great accomplishments. Among my thoughts at my friend's memorial was "Wow, she did a lot. I wonder if I've done that much?" (This thought was spurred on by a collage about what she'd done during her life.) But as people spoke about her life, most of them talked about aspects that weren't well communicated by the display. Compassionate, merciful, or sacrificial aren't qualities that go well on a resume or collage. But I'd venture a guess that most of us were at the memorial because of her person, not her accomplishments.
Corollary: Man looks at the outward appearance. I've been contemplating the story of Samuel anointing David for a few weeks. One for haunting aspects of the story to me is that Samuel -- God's prophet for many years by this point -- goes to anoint one of Jesse's sons. He sees the first one who is tall and handsome and thinks "Surely this is the one that God is going to pick." And God says "Nope, man looks at outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." And I think: How did Samuel -- aka Mr. Spiritual Dude -- miss this point? I mean, he's been walking with God for years, and yet he makes what seems like such an elementary mistake by judging by appearance.
Random rant: I saw recently that Jim Webb (the senator) has a book out titled A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America. Now I'm all for justice and fairness -- preferably tinged with mercy, but when on earth was America fair and just? I'm grateful for the freedoms and blessings that America offers, but our history is dotted examples of injustice such as slavery, McCarthyism, the labor abuses leading to unions, treatment of native Americans, and so on. Now America has also done many good and charitable deeds, but I'm dubious that just and fair describes America at any point in our history.

Too Funny

2008-06-01T20:07:00.003-04:00

This sample mission fund raising letter is way to funny if one has ever dealt with, well, mission fund raising letters. If one hasn't, then, well, I don't know. It still might be funny.

I wonder if my church would ever have audacity to use it.

Cool or Outcast

2008-05-25T01:30:00.003-04:00

Today I've been pondering how I should expect to be received as a Christian. On the one hand, there are quotes like these:

"A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!"

"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also." -- Jesus

"In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived." -- St. Paul

And for me (and many other Christians, I fear), it's all too easy to be a righteous martyr, gleefully suffering as others persecute me for my 'righteousness'. Other food for thought:

Jesus was often invited to parties, including many thrown by the Pharisees.
Many people came to see and listen to him. He attracted a crowd.
People (usually) liked hearing Paul speak. The Roman leaders, the Athenian philosophers, and many synagogues were willing to hear him out.
Or as St. Peter says "Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?"

There's a strange paradox in all of this. People are both drawn to truth and mercy -- and repelled by it. According to Jesus, even the pagans repay kindness with kindness (and thus the mark of a Christian is to do good to those can't repayl). And yet Christians will be persecuted despite doing good.

My suspicion is that often Christians are attacked because we don't reflect a compassionately humble and sinful person who is deeply grateful that God has reached out to him and offered the gift of life. I mean, what fun is that? I mean, try proclaiming "What a great person I am! I was such a jerk -- I kicked kittens, cut people off on highways, and e-mailed spam, but God was generous to me anyway." It isn't a very spiritual line, though one might get a few laughs if properly delivered. But it's easy to feel superior through false martyrdom -- and a whole lot more pleasant than acknowledging that I'm a world class jerk.

Perhaps Peter sums it best:

"If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name." -- St. Peter

Way Too True

2008-05-18T02:34:00.001-04:00

This bedtime diagram is way to accurate.

Justice, Blind or Otherwise

2008-05-17T11:08:00.002-04:00

So lately I've been thinking about the biblical emphasis on justice (yes, my liberal friends will be so proud of me) and whether or not I have any clue what justice is (my liberal friends may be starting to get a little worried about where this post is going).

For example, people have started using YouTube to tell their stories (good) but it also opens the door to malicious slander. What's the appropriate punishment?

A woman impersonated a teenage guy on MySpace to get to know a neighborhood girl. The "guy" then harshly romantically rejected the girl who struggled with chronic depression. She shortly thereafter committed suicide. Reports state the woman was recently charged under Federal laws for hacking because she lied about her identity on MySpace after local officials couldn't find any applicable law to charge her. (No claim made that news/internet reports represent the truth, or even a vague facsimile of it.) What is justice here?

Hebrew law is mostly case-law:

"When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof." [Deut. 22:8]

And then it was up to the judge to determine if the law applied to a particular case. In America, that same law would be epic novel.

What qualifies as a house?
What if I build an office building?
Or a doghouse?
Or a tree house?
Does the law apply if I build a swimming pool? If the swimming pool is on the roof, does it need a parapet around it, or does the law only apply to death by falling?
Am I required to build a parapet if I buy a house without one?
Am I guilty if I build a 1' parapet and someone falls off?
What I don't child-proof my parapet and then a child squeezes through and dies?

I'm still pondering justice a lot. But two quick thoughts:

I view justice as "Was the law correctly applied?" (e.g. innocent people not imprisoned) rather "What is a just punishment for the crime?"
Material injustice (theft, vandalism) is much easier to settle than emotional injustice. Many of the troubling cases involve emotional injustice, not material injustice.
I ought to study the Hebrew laws again. Especially that long list in Leviticus that I usually fall asleep on.

Financial Stewardship (Cont., yes, still)

2008-04-24T18:38:00.003-04:00

Ah, housing worked out until wedding. Now my fiancee and I just need a place to live. But I guess God has some time to deal with that problem. Now I just need to ~~figure out if there's a way to make God work on my timetable~~ enjoy God's current provision and patiently relax about his future provision. It's amazing how something so simple can be such a challenge.

Financial Stewardship (Cont.)

2008-04-20T16:38:00.002-04:00

It's interesting how God works. And by 'interesting', I mean a strange combination of bizarrely fascinating and gut-wrenchingly painful. Alright, I admit it isn't always like that. But sometimes...

So last time I posted about wrestling with the struggle between planning and trusting God in being a good steward, and how often good stewardship through planning seemed to thwart trusting God. Since then, my fiancee and I are still trying to figure out our post-wedding living arrangements that are both budget conscientious and priority driven. For example, we'd really like a place where we can easily invite others and that's central to our community of friends, church, and work. And then we have some luxuries we'd really like (washer and dryer).

On the tricky side, my lease is officially up a few months before the wedding, so there's this weird transition period where I have flexibility. My preference, naturally, is to go ahead and find a place that meets all of our criteria and spend a several hundred extra bucks to have the place to myself for a few months. Meanwhile God seems to be extending my current living situation (which is definitely more cost effective) a few more months, but there's no sign of a place to move to.

In theory, of course, moving from my place (given a roommate & reasonable rent) shortly before the wedding is a highly economical plan. But I don't like the uncertainty and doubt that surrounds that approach. And it makes me realize how quickly I toss out stewardship principles to bring certainty into my life.

Wanted: Financial Manager of $2,000,000

2008-03-30T17:48:00.003-04:00

We started a new series on money this week at church. Nothing too earth shattering since I've had the good fortune of working through several different biblical studies on finances. But a couple thoughts that stood out to me.

I was talking with a friend today about three different axis involved in having a biblically sound financial aspect. One is the heart of spending - selfish vs. generous, a second of wisdom (e.g. budget or impulse spending), and the third is the fearful vs. calm spectrum: Do I trust God to meet my needs?

The irony is that there are many people who are fiscally responsible out of selfishness and distrust of God's provision. (This is my natural leaning - why spend irresponsibly and get myself in trouble later?) And then there are those who love giving and spending but never plan ahead, and call it trusting God. The problem, of course, is that it disregards most of the biblical principles on financial matters.

On the flip-side, I was talking to my friend about what it means to have trust in God when one also has an solid emergency account. If I'm relaxed and secure, is it because I have great faith in God, or because I know that rarely does God inflict Job-like disasters on middle-class Americans with wise savings habits? (At least, in my small sample size, it's rare.)

There's something unsettling that doing the right thing seems to make trusting God financially more of an intellectual exercise than anything else.

A Quick Rembrance

2008-03-18T23:05:00.002-04:00

In light of the recent political uproar regarding Senator Obama and assorted racial comments, it reminds me of the firestorm that Michigan went through 18 months ago regarding the highly controversial Proposition 2. I heard lots of impassioned arguments about the disaster it would be. And since then, silence. Even the Wikipedia entry hasn't really updated with the actual impact of Proposition 2.

I wonder - do we know the results yet? If we do, do we remembered what we argued, why, and whether it matched reality?

Everyone should be an engineer...mahahaha

2008-03-14T23:17:00.002-04:00

So I spent most of today at work trying to solve the fact that three systems which work beautifully individually don't work together at all. On the rare occasions when system Alpha interacts with Beta or Gamma, the result is roughly a blue screen of death. (Of course, we have a much prettier blue screen of death, but when all the glitz and glamor is stripped away, it's still just a blue screen.)

I realized today that most people probably never deal with the complexity of trying to get all the systems to work together. Tax returns are probably a good equivalent, but most of us get someone else to do our taxes. I wonder if architects and builders sympathize with the problem. Do they ever just finish the cafeteria when another architect comes over and says "What have you done? This space was for the geckos!"

Justice

2008-03-06T17:48:00.002-05:00

I've been contemplating the meaning of justice lately. (And yes, I've been planning on blogging on this topic even without my car getting broken into. But it did lead to some amusing moments like this:

Nice insurance guy: Was the car locked?

Me: Yes - presumably that's why they broke the window.

Me thinking: You know, I'm not a member of the Frequent Auto Burglars Association, but generally I assume that the reason burglars break car windows is because the car was locked. Now maybe there's a bunch of thieves that just break the windows without checking, but in that case, it doesn't really matter if the car was locked or not, does it?

Anyway, I've been contemplating justice. What does it mean to advocate justice in the United States? More welfare for the poor? More homeless shelters? Higher taxes for the rich? Bigger jails to hold car thieves? Making lawsuits harder? Making medical malpractice suits easier?

I've been realizing how much I tend to think of justice in a handful of options - jail time, fines, or death. But rarely do those options seem like effective executions of justice.

I am not a squirrel

2008-02-12T00:05:00.000-05:00

Some kind soul at work today brought in a bag of sun flower seeds. The instructions read roughly this: "Put the seed in your mouth, crack the seed, eat the nut, spit out the sunflower seed. Advanced eaters will put many seeds in their mouth, put them on one side of their mouth, and then eat them, moving the empty seed husks to the other side of their mouth."

I can't even manage to properly crack the seeds with my mouth, let alone doing many seeds simultaneously. The seed and nuts cracks and splinters horribly on every attempt - I'm lucky my mouth doesn't have splinters. I've decided I'm definitely not part squirrel.

Meanwhile I've been contemplating the problem of reality. No, not that problem. This one: Stories are engaging because they develop themes in a short time. Whether it's a RPG computer game, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Troy (the movie), Dungeons & Dragons, or a camp fire, a story with epic theme(s) is told in a matter of hours. It's engaging, it's powerful, it's moving. Life, on the other hand, tends to grind along. The parts that are skipped over in a line or page in the stories aren't bypassed in life. And the themes often aren't visible until years - or decades - later. Often they won't be known until I'm dead.

So here's my thought: Escapism is very attractive. Given the choice between a pleasant but challenging evening doing chores or a few hours reading a novel, it's easy to choose the novel. It's just so hard to keep a biblical perspective about what God is doing day after day. It's great to talk about God redeeming us to be like him, or him working everything for our good, or helping others to know him. But in the middle of the 3rd load of laundry, the tenth hour after an untraceable computer bug, or the umpteenth wedding detail, I don't have much faith that I'm greatly -- or trivially -- advancing the kingdom of God.

I'm trying to figure out how to maintain perspective. Thus far, my primary discovery is that I don't do it very well.

Economics 102: Why do houses appreciate?

2008-01-27T21:40:00.000-05:00

So the common wisdom is that houses appreciate. Here's a fun mental exercise: Why do houses appreciate?

I mean fundamentally, I'd expect houses to follow the paths of other objects and depreciate. My 12 year old car is worth less today than when I bought it 4 years ago. Excluding antiques (which are valuable because of scarcity and sentimental/scientific appeal), objects generally decay and rust with time. And most of us prefer non-decayed non-rusty objects.

Given that houses are objects, and that they decay with time in a myriad of ways, why do we expect houses to appreciate? Here's my list:

Land & Demand: House prices generally include land, and land is a very fixed quantity. Given that the earth's population is growing, we'd expect land to become more valuable. It's not necessarily guaranteed that the population will grow, but typically, despite our violent nature, human population has grown.
Society/Location: Locations change in how much they are worth. A bad school system improving to a good school system will improve demand. Businesses providing jobs or services nearby make a location nicer. Likewise, a business going away can drop nearby value.
Environment/Location: Environmental issues (the discovery of pollution, failed levees, or new fault lines) also shift a location's value.
Relative Wealth: This idea is similar to the limited supply of land: If more people have more money, they may be willing to pay more for housing, thus driving the price of homes up.

That's off the top of my head. It's not a complete list, and I suspect economists would have a lot more points to make. But it's an interesting question to ponder: Why is my home going to appreciate when my car doesn't? (And, if I sleep in my car, will it appreciate?)

What points would you add?

Halo: Intelligent Design or Evolution

2008-01-20T22:02:00.001-05:00

I've decided that I haven't irritated my evolution-friendly readers enough lately, so here's a post designed to do exactly that. (Actually, most of the irritation is in the title, because I'm pitting design against chance, and chance isn't a good representation of evolution without an extended argument about whether or not chance is a fair representation. But I digress...)

This halo video poses an interesting question: How do we assign probabilities of various events to past outcomes? (Here is another example.)

Were the kills in these videos designed or random chance? If they were designed, was this the first try or were there many attempts? Was the grenade death the intended goal, or merely a side-effect of another goal? Were the videos faked? (Note that just because the videos faithfully render a genuinely possible scenario in the halo universe doesn't mean that they aren't faked. Of course, if they render an impossible scenario, they are certainly fakes.)

Here's the tricky part: Can we decisively differentiate between the possibilities from just the video? Assume we can't communicate with the original posters, are the videos, a community of experts, and our own XBox 360s enough to settle the question?

Appropriately Welcomed

2008-01-20T21:46:00.000-05:00

So I spent Saturday helping my church organize one of our training sessions for our greeting team. One of its main ideas was the idea of appropriately welcoming guests. One of the great aspects of a large church is the ability to be anonymous when checking it out. One of the difficulties is feeling important and relevant when one has a question. The idea of appropriately welcoming guests means not pouncing on the people who want to be left alone, but also helping the people who, well, want help.

Fast forward twenty-four hours, and I was attending a bridal show and checking out all the vendors. It's striking to me how the same principle applied: Often I was standing around, mildly interested in a vendor, but not really knowing what to ask or how to start the conversation. The vendor would say hi - or perhaps just ignore me - but didn't try to engage me and find out what I wanted. I'm not sure I wanted the product to begin with, but I certainly didn't make a mental note to check out that vendor's site when I got home.

Other vendors did a good job of saying hello, asking about my interest, and providing a relevant spiel. They were enthusiastic and informed, and while they didn't overwhelm me with sales pitches, they answered my questions and invited me to ask more. Intellectually, I know that people skills and competence don't go together, but emotionally I feel warmer toward these vendors. They certainly presented themselves better - and I'll probably check them out again.

(And yes, there were the vendors that launched sales pitches at me no matter what I said? "What, you want to move to Africa? Well, you need a $10,000 2,000lb cooking set, brand new. Sign up now and you can win a free cruise - nevermind if you are easily motion sick...")

It's weird to look at how a very basic Christian principle "Love people; be hospitable." intersects with the capitalistic business principle of "sales."

Tax Deductions

2008-01-09T18:34:00.001-05:00

Alright, pop quiz: What's a $1,000 tax deduction worth to you?

That's what I've been puzzling over recently. As far as I can tell, the answer at most about $330. Assuming that I'm uber-rich and being taxed at 28%, plus that I can somehow get the deduction on my state (4%) and local (1%) taxes, a $1,000 deduction means the government won't charge me $330. Of course, the government will give me a standard deduction of about $5,000, so the first tax deductible $5,000 I spend is a complete loss for me.

Maybe I'm crazy. But given a choice between spending money and saving money, tax deductions seem like a lousy way of saving me. Now if I'm going to spent the money anyway, a 33% sale is certainly a great deal. But 67% savings (not buying the item) is significantly better than 33%.

Anyone more familiar with taxes want to correct where I'm off here?

(Why does this come up? Well, basically I've been trying to figure out a bunch of financial decisions - 401K deductions for payroll, housing implication, how to claim deductions on taxes, and the bunch. And my general impression from talking to people is that either I'm really confused about how tax deductions work, a bunch of my acquaintances aren't very good mathematicians, are both. And it's hard to decide whether something is a good deal when one doesn't know the actual price.)

Eyes to See, Patience to Wait

2007-12-16T22:54:00.000-05:00

Tonight I've been contemplating Psalms (probably triggered by a friend mentioning that frolicking is used in at least on Psalm). Two quick thoughts after listening to the first thirty-some of them.

First, many of them deal with waiting for God to act to relieve some dire circumstance. It occurs to me how different this theme is than the "We have victory in Christ" theme I often perceive Christians as having. I don't necessarily think that they are opposite themes (Paul, after all, talks a lot about his earthly sufferings), but I do wonder if in America we are so accustomed to instant gratification that the idea of extended suffering before God acts is anathema. It seems cruel or inhumane for God to wait to respond to the righteous in need.

The second thought relates to Psalm 37 where it says:

I was young and now I am old,
yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
or their children begging bread.

My first reaction is "Wow, that's certainly not true today." (Yes, I know, that's not pious of me.) My second is "That can't possibly be true." And my third reaction "Wow, I have no idea if that is true or not." Here's the why behind my third thought:

Most of our awareness of suffering comes from the media. Television and print usually capture a moment of great need, but rarely trace the suffering over an extended period. Given that God can be somewhat...slower...to act that we might like, it's hard to evaluate from a momentary picture the faithfulness of God to feed the righteous.
While there are plenty who claim to be righteous (including Christians), God probably isn't deciding righteousness by personal declaration. So when the media reports about Joe or Jane or Susie Q in need, not only is it a momentary snapshot, but we don't know anything about their spiritual condition.
Paul tells us that the sins of some men are obvious, while the sins of others trail behind them: It takes time to learn about a person. How many people in my life do I really know well enough to know if they have sins trailing behind them? And of those, how many have been forsaken or have children begging for food?

The Promise of Hope

2007-12-01T19:34:00.001-05:00

So my church just wrapped up a series talking about the Bible & secrets. Toward the end of the series, we invited people to anonymously share three areas that most affected them. We have them a list of suggestions (e.g. various types of guilt, hopelessness, jealousy, financial pressure, boredom, etc.) as well as blanks for free hand responses. The church is hoping to use the feedback to help know how to better minister to people.

Lately I've looking over the responses trying to figure out how to turn hundreds of tear offs into meaningful information. It's really sobering and overwhelming to read page after page after page of the deep hurts that people are suffering.

I don't know how to sort out all of my thoughts, but here are a few:

The last couple nights have really impressed on me how tempting it is to use wealth to buy distractions rather than facing the hurts of those around us. Facing the hurts of the multitude around us is heart breaking, and it deeply challenges my faith that the gospel is the solution. There's no good answer to the question "What if Jesus isn't enough for the hurts around me?" Perhaps giants of the faith can face the hurt without doubt, but for me with my mustard seed sized faith, it's not that easy. And rather than grieve and weep and grow, it's easier to bury my head in the sand with entertainment, or perhaps picking a less daunting goal like defeating evolution, stopping global warming, or campaign finance reform.
We feel so alone and vulnerable, and so we don't share, and so we feel more alone and more vulnerable. Because we feel alone, we don't realize that others are also feeling alone and vulnerable, so we aren't kind and gentle with them, and so they feel more alone and more vulnerable and aren't kind or gentle with others either.
"Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." I've been reflecting on this comment from Peter over the last week.
I finally figured out why overseas travel doesn't strongly appeal to me: It reminds me how weak and fragile I am in the world, and I'm reminded enough of that as I try and get through my life.

Vent, No Duct?

2007-11-30T01:53:00.000-05:00

So one of the vents in my room always pours out cold air. I finally got tired of it and took off the vent. Amazingly, it's just a cavity reaching into the bowels of my floor - there's no duct work, or even any evidence that there ever was any duct work. I assume there's a disconnected duct somewhere since when the furnace is on, it pushes enough air into the floor to push cold air out the vent.

But what I can't figure out is how do I end up with a vent but no duct?

My place isn't exactly new - has nobody else noticed this problem for years on end?

Or perhaps a random construction accident took out the duct work, but they just left a random vent?

Or maybe they just accidentally knocked a hole in the wall at some point and decided to cover it up with a vent? (But then how come it actually leaks cold air...?)

Values

2007-11-24T01:33:00.001-05:00

I'm still blogging - or at least, I think I am. As a friend of mine commented recently, though, my track record doesn't back that up.

Lately I've been mired in wedding planning. Okay, it's not really that bad, and it makes me appreciate my fiancee's economical sense of decor and style. But one aspect of the planning that's been really hard for me is the question of how to design a ceremony that reflects our values.

It's great that someone is willing to sell flipclips as wedding favors at $8.99 each. (Actually as cheap as $5.99 for orders of 200+.) But cost aside, what does a flipclip add to the event? Is it decoration? Is it symbolic? Is it commemorative?

But it's been hard for me to step back from the "Wow, it's really cool that for only $0.4391736/person, we can rent a reflective doodad that also doubles as a whats-it-called." sentiment to a more comprehensive picture that encompasses questions like "What would I like our ceremony to communicate?" or "What themes would I like represented at our marriage?" or "Do I really care if we have a concrete cast of our footprints?"

Maybe that's why I've felt so frustrated by the commercialness of weddings: Everyone is very happy to sell something for the wedding, but it's hard to put a context to the detail. [Incidentally, often they don't sell it very well - I've been aghast at how many businesses need to spend $500 to buy a decent website. I understand that pricing information changes, but couldn't you at least ballpark your typical services and costs? I know that an all-text site is so 1998, but couldn't you include a few photographs of the wedding urn you want me to rent from you?]

It's like trying to write an essay. Every essay needs an organizational structure - a thesis, introduction, paragraphs with topic sentences and a conclusion. Yes, details and supporting arguments are important, but an essay isn't comprised by throwing details together. The wedding shopping process feels a lot like trying to wade through the details without a supporting structure.

And yes, developing a structure is hard without knowing the cost of various details. In advanced engineering theory, this problem is known as "Catch-22".

So far the best solution I've found so far is an iterative one:

Fiancee and I outline budget.
Fiancee and I brainstorm wedding ideas and sketch out a corresponding day. (This step keeps highlighting details like 'hrm, it might be X hours between breakfast and the reception, we'd better budget brunch for the wedding party.')
Fiancee and I research approximate pricing (and use the research to brainstorm more ideas).
Review the research. Discard unreasonable ideas ("What? The reindeer drawn sled requires snow and we're not getting married in the midwinter...")
Select affordable ideas that we like. Repeat 1-5 for remaining plans.

Improvements? What have other people done that helped them balance the budget, theme, and detail aspects of the wedding planning process?

Environmentally Friendly Diamonds

2007-11-07T23:49:00.001-05:00

So for the few readers of my blog who for some reason or another don't get my e-mails, I'm engaged. I'm not putting the story up for public domain (yet, at least), but it's well worth asking my fiancee for a retelling if you get a chance.

Planning the proposal was fascinating test, but one of the most interesting puzzles was finding a stone for the ring. My fiancee had said she wanted a stone that she could be sure wasn't mined by enslaved children in the middle of Africa, being used to support wars, or similar environmentally harmful causes. For her, that boiled down to "no new diamond". (I know that other socially concerned friends had been comfortable with, say, Polar Bear Diamonds from Canada, but she wasn't.)

Anyway, I knew all of that when I started visiting jewelry stores and trying to get a sense for the ring market. And it was fascinating how the stores steer the shopper toward diamond rings (and very expensive rings at that). The experience is simply not designed for the socially conscious. Ask about "where are the diamonds from" or express concern about diamonds in general and one gets reassurances about certificates, but no one readily offers alternatives. There's no "Well, we offer X, Y, and Z reassurances, but if you don't trust those, we also have some diamond alternatives available. For example, are you familiar with ...?"

I learned (or reminded myself, perhaps) that I really don't like actively fighting societal norms. I'm really comfortable doing my own thing. But when I have to actively and repeatedly dialog with strangers about doing something different, especially something where they are the experts and I have minimal knowledge, I get really tired and frustrated. It's so tempting to just go along with the norm.

Likewise, I suspect it's hard for businesses to change since 99.9% of their customers expect the experience that I had - and would be deeply put off by suggestions that they consider the social impacts of their shopping.

Money, part x.ii of X

2007-10-17T20:31:00.000-04:00

So I've been thinking a lot about money. My budget class had it's first "real" meeting this week (last week's meeting was mostly introductory). There's a lot that's been on my heart, but here's one that's really been on my mind: Why is it so hard to be content with less?

Why does my heart gravitate toward the new and expensive so easily? I want a new desk chair. My current one doesn't give me any problems - it just isn't new or shiny or spiffy. If I didn't know that I could buy a nice new chair for $80, I wouldn't consider grumbling about my current chair. But just knowing that there is "better" out there makes me start contemplating the purchase.

Can I really tell the difference between old and new entertainment? I recently invested $40 in a couple copies of Starcraft. Partly to satisfy my conscience about actually owning software I use - and partly so I can teach my significant other a bit about real time strategy games. Yes, the graphics are a bit dated. Yes, Starcraft II will probably be prettier. But you know, I don't sit there during the game going "Ug, this is so ugly." In fact, I mentally imagine a universe which is far more detailed than the actual graphics. It's only when I see the new and better (Starcraft II demos) that I realize how much has changed.

This week's memory verse is "Just as the rich rule over the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender." I've been realizing that while I often hear a lot about helping the poor (which is great), I don't hear people talk about eliminating Visa and Mastercard. Why not? Partly, I think, it's because we don't tend to believe that debt indentures us to service. (And yes, it's possible for us to get trapped even if we're not poor.)

Here's another principle I've been wrestling with: "Do not say 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make money'". So often, credit assumes on the profitability of tomorrow - but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Money, Part x of X?

2007-10-09T22:22:00.000-04:00

So I started taking a budgeting class, which may the first of many posts. Two thoughts caught my attention.

First, the study has very case studies of people and their financial situations after they've found themselves in difficulty. It's really tragic to see how financial decisions slowly accumulate until they are a crushing load.

Secondly, the study mentioned the verse

And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?

and I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Mostly I've been thinking about in the context of work and what it means to be trustworthy with asking for equipment, new software, new LCD screens, and the like. The full passage context is here.

Post, Post!

2007-10-02T00:23:00.000-04:00

So my friend who complained a couple weeks ago that I don't post weekly seems to have had a very valid point. Unfortunately, I don't have much interesting to say at this point. Or maybe more to the point, little of it seems to blog very well. If people are suitable bored, they are welcome to create their own blog for me with it's own fictional posts.

Anyway, one quick thought: I've been reading through Ezekiel (yes, one of the major prophets that despite being major, nobody seems to know aside from prophetic utterances about Gog and the end of the world). So far, the first thirty chapters have nothing to do with the end of the world (sorry to disappoint people), but it's striking how often God says "I will do X, and then you will know that I am God." X ranges from "wipe you out and destroy you" to "return you to the land and make the nations around you serve you", but the formula of:

God acts in a significant way, and then a group knows that he is truly God.

has me thinking about what it takes for me to evaluate my world view. What would it take for me to become, say, an open theist? Or a Calvinist? Or a Muslim?

Hypothermic Weight Loss Plan

2007-09-15T13:17:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't blogged for a while. Partly it's exhaustion; partly it's just that I've been busy with activities that don't blog very well (e.g. met 50 new people).

Anyway, the recent drop in temperature combined with living in a place without free heat for the first time in ten years led me to this brilliant idea: I ought to publish a weight loss planned focused on freezing. If the temperature is lower, my body ought to burn more energy to keep itself warm, right? So there ought to be a point where my body is continuously burning lots of extra energy to keep itself warm, but not too cold so that I suffer from hypothermia and die.

This brilliant plan has great benefits:

First, it is continuous and automatic. None of the hard work of getting on an exercise bike, going to the gym, or getting outside. Instead, every moment that I am at home, being a lazy couch potato, my diet plan is hard at work.
I know it's working. None of this "hrm, I wonder if limiting myself to a syrup and lemon diet is working" doubts - the constant shivering is an automatic reminder that your body is burning energy.
It saves on heating bills.
Others share your misery, even if they aren't trying to loose weight.
If you want a roommate or spouse to loose weight, no more nagging them to exercise or diet: Just drop the temperature. If one is mechanically minded, figure out how to rig the thermostat so it won't go above 62 or so.
It's a great way to make others feel sorry for you: "Yeah, my doctor said I have to be on the hypothermia weight loss plan and I can't have the temperature above 49 degrees - can you believe it?"

I figure the plan is lousy, but I ought to be able to write a 100 page book and make millions anyway. I just need a better name for it.

Llama Economics

2007-09-03T10:39:00.000-04:00

So I made a trip to lamafest this weekend. (Yes, lamafest is the correct grammar; llama is a type within the lama genus. And since the festival also included alpacas, it is properly called lamafest.)

I had a good time getting to hang out with the lama farmers and just hearing them talk about their craft. It's a bit stunning, though, to walk around at all the custom craft items which usually cost $30-50, although some larger pieces of art cost much, much more.

Some factoids:

You can purchase your own pregnant alpaca for $20,000-25,000.
Shearing a lama (yearly) yields around 10lbs of wool.
Lama have 1 baby, or "cria", per year.
For alpaca, Internet suggests fleece yields $20-40/lb, or $160/lb for yarn

I'm still trying to figure out if it's profitable to get into the lama business. It's a bit troubling to me that the primary value of alpaca is currently breeding them since there is a short supply of them. That is, selling alpaca doesn't seem like a stable business model since unlike, say, food, there's not a need for an on-going supply of alpaca. It also seems very expensive to get into: One needs shelter, land, transport, vaccinations, veterinary visits, time at the shows, etc., etc.

On the plus side, one can get a lama pet for a couple hundred bucks, which seems like a very attractive option for a furry self-propelled lawn-mower. They also don't smell, generate fertilizer, make wool, and hum. I suppose that's not bad for a pet.

There are also miniature lama, I discovered -- I suppose for small lawns and indoor pets.

Hope Deferred

2007-08-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

Ah, the circles of life. A few weeks ago, I ended up in a conversation with a friend talking about college dreams and aspirations. We ended up talking about some hopes I'd had in college that haven't really happened. (Or have happened and I haven't recognized them?) It's not necessarily that the hopes won't happen - it's just that they don't seem particularly likely.

I'm left with a few thoughts after the conversation: (Background: I've been thinking about the "Death of a Vision" concept I summarized a year and a half ago.) It's really, really hard for me to hold visions for years. I tend to either want to see them fulfilled Now! (being the patient guy I am) or else deaden my heart to the desire. It's hard to interact with past disappointments in an intelligent proactive way. When I have limited opportunities to make progress toward my dreams, I tend to shy away for fear of additional disappointment. (I'm also tempted to simply demand "Give me! I've earned it.")

Neither approach is how I'd counsel someone else to approach a long term goal, but it's strange how hard it is for me to implement the small steps that I'd give to someone else. It's hard to even seriously pray for them. As Solomon wrote, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick."

The struggle with renewed disappointments makes me think about how tenaciously people cling to certain ideas:

"He loves me" even when everyone else sees how poor the relationship is.
"She must be the one" when dating for the first time in five years and rapidly approaching the age of 30.
Convincing older people to go to Jesus after they've been disappointed by church time after time.
And so on

It's hard to expect others to live what one can't live oneself.

Blank Sheet Creativity

2007-08-13T23:13:00.001-04:00

I was walking through Michael's with my girlfriend looking for something (sand timers?) and I a realization:

I'm lousy at blank creativity.

I've always envisioned creativity as a process akin to being locked in a small white room, given a sheet of blank paper, and being told "Invent a new mouse trap."

Other topics that come along those lines:

How are you feeling?
Name a date activity for Friday night.
Create a new board game idea.
Figure out how to make church more innovative.
Illustrate a theological principle from real life.
Find a compelling (to me) blog idea.
Layout an ideal living room furniture arrangement.

I'm realizing that I'm not very good at any of those activities while sitting at a computer or a piece of paper. Most of my ideas come from borrowing and modifying what I see around me:

Most of my blog ideas come from being somewhere (outside walking, in a store, talking with a friend), not from being on my computer.
I mostly come up with illustrations when I have a theological concept in mind and am living out life - something happens, and I think "Oh, that's a good illustration." It's really hard, though, for me to look back through my life for good illustrations.
Many of my date ideas are borrowed and modified (or occasionally just downright copied) from other people's activities and suggestions.
Walking around Art Van or Home Depot is one of the best ways for me to get ideas about home decorating. It's not exactly that I want my home to have what is there, but it gets me thinking about what is possible.

(And yes, I'm even much better at the the emotion question when I have a specific context: e.g. How are you feeling about waking up to sunlight?)

I suspect the only weird part of this realization is that I'm just now figuring out what tends to stimulate my creative thinking. But it's still weird to me.

Dog Fighting 101: Fido Bite Fido

2007-07-31T01:42:00.000-04:00

So there's been a recent uproar regarding high profile sport celebrities and their alleged participating in sponsoring dog fights.

Generally I believe that good people are kind to their animals, but I'm a bit disturbed at the media circus being generated by the allegations. On the scale of human evil, I'm not sure dog fighting scores very well. Even on the scale of celebrity (or even sports figure) evils, dog fighting?

How about worrying about sports figures who, I don't know, commit violent actions against other people or are convicted felons? Or perhaps the child slave traders or pornography produces could use some well directed outrage? Or women-abusers?

Here's a thought: Dog fighting is bizarrely yet fascinatingly cruel. Outrage is an excuse for interest in something new and different. "Sports figure beats woman" isn't new news: We have plenty of people beating others up. But we're short on celebrities who dog fight - and none of our friends sponsor dog fights - so it's news.

A pastor once commented to me that what really saddened him was the amount of verbal violence he saw in Christian homes: Parents who wouldn't let their children see movies or TV would sit at the dinner table and destroy each other with their words.

I wonder if we're not genuinely concerned with finding great evil and eliminating, or finding evil near us and destroying it. We're certainly not concerned with identifying and ridding ourselves of our own evil. But dog fighting - that certainly should be banned.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary...How does your garden grow?

2007-07-26T01:42:00.000-04:00

I'm a bad gardener. Or maybe I'm an alright gardener - I at least water my plants. But I've discovered several very bad mistakes I've made:

First, I don't know what I planted. I bought this bag o' seeds and planted it - but I don't know what any of the plants are supposed to look like.

Secondly, I over-crowded my garden. The seeds were supposed to cover 500 sq ft: My garden is about 100 - and yes, all the seeds are in it.

Third, I let the weeds grow with my plants (and fourth, I don't know what weeds look like either).

So now after a couple months, I have a tangle of a garden. It has some pretty flowers, but the poor plants are nearly hopelessly intertwined. They are disfigured with extra long stalks which allow them to crawl along the ground until they find space to to point their leafy stalks at the sky. And the weeds are everywhere. I'm finally going by the "if it doesn't have flowers, it's a weed" strategy and figuring that even if a few flower plants die, the lack of congestion will do them good.

Here's a few lessons I've learned from my garden:

1. Know what you are planting. Often in life we don't think about what we want to cultivate, so we have no idea whether we're achieving it or not.

2. It's hard to tell weeds and flowers apart by the leaves. It's easier to tell them apart by whether they have flowers. The corollary: In life, it's important to know what is a leaf and what is a flower. Jesus talked about knowing trees by their fruit (not their branches or trunk or leaves); often I can't tell the difference between foliage and flowers.

3. Ignorance is not bliss - it has consequences. My garden could be so much more if I was a better gardener.

4. I should get my digital camera and take photos of my garden.

Have Blog; Need Idea

2007-07-20T00:59:00.000-04:00

Somehow I don't seem to have any bright ideas lately for posting. I'm working on it, really I am.

Edit: Or then again, I could go read someone else's challenging yet inspiring post and ponder how to apply it to my life. It's much easier than coming up with my own.

Where Treasure, There Heart

2007-07-09T21:54:00.001-04:00

My garden (such as it is) is flourishing. It's even attracting vicious, evil wasp type creatures. (Alright, they might be bees, but I think they are wasps.) It's been an good experience for me.

Someone (here?) was talking about how divorced we are from our need from rain. My own 20 square foot patch of lawn makes me a lot more aware of how dependent the plants are on water - and how I can't bring water - any water - down from the sky. The hose is great, but it's just not like a good rain storm. And I find myself glad to see the rain because I know it means my plants won't be drooping or dying.

I'm finding myself more grateful for the rain - and gaining (I think) a deeper appreciation of the God sending rain on both the good and the evil - how deeply beneficial rain is.

The other change I've noticed is that I'm more aware of my garden: I notice when people step in it, or my wedding table decoration plant died from heat and dehydration, or it doesn't drain right. I take the time to fix it - and it's hard to let it fall apart. I've been thinking about Jesus talking about our heart being where our treasure is: Not that our treasure goes where our heart is, but that our heart is where our treasure is. If I put time, money, and effort into the garden, my heart goes toward the garden. Likewise for politics or computer games.

[The obvious application - putting effort toward God - isn't as simple as I'd like since I show a bad tendency of treasuring religious effort and show rather than God, but that's another post.)

In other news, I survived my tumble down the stairs, and discovered that I slide rather gracefully. Sadly, though, my body isn't impervious to bruising.

Security

2007-07-02T22:34:00.000-04:00

So lately I've been thinking about security in life. A couple friends of mine have gotten robbed. Others have unexpectedly lost loved ones.

On the practical side, I've been thinking about writing a will.

On the philosophical side, I've been contemplating what it means to not lay up treasure where moths and rust (not to mention taxes, thieves, and incompetence) can get to it.

What does it mean to use money for good? What does it mean to stand up for justice? I was reading today about companies that work change Google results to hide slander from bloggers. And perhaps for the first time, it struck me: That's a good use of technical skill: Working to protect the reputations of people.

Commitment

2007-06-17T01:33:00.000-04:00

I came across this blog post tonight. Very though-provoking.

Seek

2007-06-17T00:45:00.000-04:00

I haven't had a lot to post - well, actually, I've had a lot to post, but I just don't seem to be finding good words to write it all down. Life has been pretty good, although many of my friends seem to be in the middle of tough times, so there will probably be opportunities to be helpful there.

I've also been contemplating that I don't tend to be extroverted or high energy. I don't tend to resonate with fire-breathing (Mr. Awesome) or crazy spontaneous camping trips. Or as one of my friends likes to say, I'm boring. And I'm not quite sure what to do with that. I was reading Tipping Point and the author was talking about connectors. These are people who naturally enjoy and maintain light social connections with many, many people - and that doesn't tend to be me.

I not contemplating this in a "Oh, I really need to be reassured that I have other talents" way, but more in a "Huh...I wonder how this plays into my relationship with God?" way. Did Jesus have a personality? Would Jesus' ministry have been different if he had a different personality? Could there have been a still sinless but more introverted Jesus? Or more extroverted?

(On a side note, I've been reading in Isaiah about how many God tells people to seek him and they will find him. So I've been pondering why God seems so hard to find.)

Okay, So I'm Ignorant

2007-06-03T20:53:00.000-04:00

I was at a teaching a few months ago where the speaker talked about how Protestants don't know their Bibles nearly as well as they think they did. Specifically, he asked how many Protestants could summarize, say, Haggai. I brushed off the comment at the time. Anyway since then (and partially in response), I've been trying to get more familiar with the prophets.

Meanwhile I asked a friend for a theological book recommendation and he loaned me The Greatness of the Kingdom. He described it as talking about the Kingdom of God in the Bible, and it sounded a little dry - a few bits from the Gospels, a lot from Revelation, and maybe a scattering of other passages. I'd really wanted something that dealt more with the Old Testament, and definitely something more practical and thought-provoking than a discussion of a few passages.

So I wasn't very excited about the book (to be fair, that's mostly Dan's fault since he did a lousy job of describing the book) but I decided it would be rude to completely blow off the suggestion. It turns out the book is a fascinating 500-page in-depth study including significant discussion of the entire Old Testament, including the prophets, and many of the New Testament references to the Old Testament. The also includes sections of "How do we interpret the Bible?" (hermeneutics). It's also an interesting snapshot back in time - the book was written in 1959 - to see how the author applied the Bible to that place and time.

The book has been great - although slow reading - and I won't blog about much more of it. But one point that has really stood out to me is how many points in the New Testament refer back to the Old Testament, especially the prophets, and how badly I don't know the background. One quick example: Jesus' message starts with the announcement that the kingdom of God is coming (here and here). But there's no additional information provided about what kingdom. Why don't the gospel writers provide more information? Well, because they assume the gospel readers know about the kingdom from passages in the Old Testament -- especially the prophets.

So I'm realizing that the the speaker was pretty on target about his comment: There's no way I should be so ignorant of what the prophets said about something that Jesus talked about so frequently.

Honesty and Wit in Politics

2007-05-26T13:52:00.000-04:00

I came across this article today. It's mostly a light-hearted essay about weird beach laws. But one of the quotes is from a mayor when asked about a law "prohibiting baby carriages from being parked on sand within 15' of a beach entrance":

"I can't fathom what the thought process was behind that one," said Mayor Adam Schneider, who did not know the law existed until a reporter questioned him on it. "We can do a pretty good job of looking foolish when we enforce `real' ordinances, let alone something like this. I just hope I don't get embarrassed and find out I voted for it in the past."

I like the mayor. He's aware of political reality (looking stupid, weird processes, possibility of embarrassment); he's not too proud - he can admit the law seems bizarre; and he's smart enough to realize he might have voted for it. Politics would be a lot more fun if more people had his wit and honesty.

Cents...

2007-05-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been getting a number of interesting offers from businesses. My high school reunion, for example, sent me a form letter - a form letter which required my high school name, mascot, and color. It even implied that we'd had a previous reunion. If I didn't know that my high school class is actually organizing a reunion, I would have pondered if it was a daring scam to steal my credit card info.

Meijer (groceries), meanwhile, is being very clever. They used to run a charity program where they would give a small amount (1-4%) of the amount of one's spending that exceeded $100 per month. I doubt I gave more than $12/year that way. Probably more like $2. But I happily handed over my Meijer every time to let them track my groceries.

Now they want me to re-enroll. They'll donate 0.5% of all my purchases to charity - if I pay with cash, debit card, or Meijer credit card. The debit card was not in the initial offer, but they "modified" their policy based on "customer input". Unfortunately, I also get 0.5% cash back on my credit card, which I could give to charity if I was feeling, well, charitable. Part of me wonders if the whole charity aspect was a ploy to increase Meijer credit cards: Try out the program, get people hooked, then encourage them to continue giving by getting a credit card. On the plus side, I don't really like Meijer easily tracking my purchases, and now I don't have to carry a key-fob around to identify myself. I just have to remember to drop a quarter in the jar from today's purchases.

In other news, I'm practicing my home-improvement methodology. I found a small draft in the basement of my new place, so I'm trying the "plastic sheet + duct tape" approach.

Come Now, Let Us Fight

2007-05-06T14:47:00.000-04:00

I've had the pleasure over the last few weeks to be challenged in my beliefs in various ways, most of them through interactions that I've been having with others. One of the more thought-provoking questions was "Why do so many Christians take the words of Paul more seriously than the words of Jesus?" (The comment wasn't meant antagonistically, however the print may sound.) It's actually a good question, but not one I'm caring to blog about today.

Instead I'm thinking about something I read in a history of the church book (Church History in Plain Language). The author comments that during the Protestant reformation, Catholics and Protestant sects often militantly fought each other because they saw beliefs not so merely as individual, but as communal, and if one believed falsely, one led the entire community astray. While I'm glad that theologically debates aren't fought to the death and religious beliefs aren't forced upon me, I've been thinking about that passion for others and for seeing other's walk a good path.

My impression is that in American, many of us view spiritual beliefs as private. And even if they aren't private, we often speak in code words or cliches - "God wants us to come to him in faith." The sayings may be true, but they conceal that people view the sayings very differently. Who do I mean by God? Faith? What does it mean to come to God in faith? Is that an active or passive? How do I learn about what it means to come to God in faith? And does everyone agree with the answers I'd give? My guess is no, not at all.

So why aren't we more passionate about sharing our knowledge, our beliefs, our understanding with others? After all, it's what sustains us in tough times, right? It's the source of our hope and joy when times are dark. Isn't it that which gives us meaning when the world is turned upside down? Well...maybe not. Here's three reasons I've been contemplating why we aren't more verbal with our faith.

1. Frequently, we don't have the character for prolonged disagreement about important issues. How we fight or debate reveals our character deficiencies. Paul tells Timothy "And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth..." My first thought in debate is usually "Wow, it's really important that this person see truth." And then when I'm done, I often realize that by about the third sentence out of my mouth, I'd totally forgotten about them and focused on winning. (Never mind that they actually might be right...)

2. Sometimes, our beliefs aren't as important as we claim they are. We don't really see our faith as being our hope in a confused and messed up world. It's more like dessert. Nice, but not really essential. Sometimes, as part of this, we aren't really sure what we believe...and it's not a priority for us to figure out.

3. All too often, we don't deeply care about other's spirituality. Alright, I'm making assumptions. Let me rephrase: Often I don't care - at all. And from observation, I'm guessing others are like me. We're glad we have hope in a crazy world, and if our neighbor came and begged for us to share our beliefs, we'd obliged him. But we aren't desperate for others to have our hope. We don't look at people and think "Oh God, please send more workers to help these people. Please, change me, use me, let me communicate you to them. If it means a Mohawk, tattoos, a different career, embarrassment, shame, the loss of friendships - please God, let me reach others with the hope that I have."

And yes, I think there's other reasons too. There's issues of calling, uncertainty, growth, humility, timing, wisdom, and so on. It's possible this is more me projecting myself onto others than the actual state of affairs. Comments?

Slippers and Wishing

2007-04-30T21:42:00.000-04:00

I'm back. Or, more accurately, I'm moved. While I'm at it, I've lost another roommate to marriage. I think that means that over the last five years, I've lost every roommate to marriage. Of course, that's only 2 roommates, but five years sounds more impressive.

I'm not quite settled in yet - it's hard to find spots for all the junk I never use but desperately want to keep. But I'm trying to do better at actually using it and not replacing it rather than simply hoarding it.

And for the first time ever, I'm contemplating the joys of slippers. I've never really thought of myself as a slipper person, but I like to sleep barefoot, and the way the heating in my new place works, it tends to be a bit chilly when I wake up. Slippers seem to be an excellent solution. It's weird - slippers have always seemed a bit pointless to me, so it's weird to find myself contemplating them. I guess that's my weekly dose of walking in other people's shoes.

Protestant Priests

2007-04-08T23:16:00.000-04:00

I read an fascinating book (maybe Biblical Eldership by Alexander StrauchZ) which commented that Protestants often function as though their pastors are Protestant priests.

It's both an interesting and thought-provoking comment. As I understand Catholicism, the priests are different than the members: Only the priests are able to perform the sacraments - marriage, Eucharist, last rites, baptism, etc. In some rituals, there's the idea of the priest acting as the person of Christ.

In the Old Testament, the priests were the mediators between the people and God. If one had sins to atone for, one brought an appropriate sacrifice to the priests - which was how the priests were fed. Since priests were God's mediators for Israel, they had special rules for being holy.

I'm not entirely sure what the book meant about Protestant priests (I need to find the comment and re-read the section), but here's some things I've been thinking about:

- Do I believe there is certain ceremonies (Lord's supper, baptism or marriage) that only pastors should perform? If so, why?

- Do I believe pastors are more holy than other church members?

- What ministry do I believe only pastors should perform? Why?

- What do I actually think is different about someone once they've been appointed a pastor?

Confession: Marriage is actually the one that tripped me up here. I'm used to something like "By the authority committed to me as a minister of the Church of Jesus Christ, I declare that ________ and ________ are now husband and wife" or " I, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the state and the church, declare you to be husband and wife". (Here's a whole list of wedding pronouncements.")

I tend to think of "minister" and "pastor" an interchangeable, although I'd accept that those needn't be identical words. A quick Google search for "define: minister" suggests my first impression is reasonable. So what exactly is the authority committed to a pastor to declare a couple man and wife? Is it merely the state law requiring a pastor* for marriage? (* - Yes, the actual legalize is a bit more complicated. Judges can marry, some churches offer anyone a "minister" status, and there's actually a difference between the state requirements for officiant and pastoring - I've known churches that have been willing to let non-pastors receive "minister" status so that they can perform marriages. Nuance aside, pastors are the primary officiants at the weddings I know of.)

If the authority is merely state law, what do statements like "...and by the church" mean? Does the pastor have a special authority from the church regarding marriages? Or can I claim that authority? If this authority is special to pastors, where do they derive it from? And how is this different from having a special "holy" class of people - priests?

Of Pastors and Heresy

2007-03-23T21:06:00.000-04:00

I thought about titling this entry "Anything you write can and will be used against you..." I've been contemplating authority and openness. A couple of my pastors now follow my blog (at least casually), and I've thinking about the implications.

One of result is this: It's an awful lot harder get away with heresy. And in general, I think this consequence is a good thing. I know, I know, America has stereotypes of leaders being evil men (and women) who can't wait to use their power for evil. How many admirals in Star Trek were ever good guys? (Kirk was demoted back to captain...) Even the beloved Twenty-Four doesn't exactly overwhelm us with good high-ranking officials.

But the absence of authority does not prevent evil - it merely leads to other evils. For example, if we had no environmental laws, how many corporations would be ecologically friendly? Child labor laws are the result of children's work conditions. Anti-theft laws are the result of stealing. And so forth. I'm not claiming that all power is used for good, but that we (I) often underestimate the legitimate good use of power.

I see leaders restraining evil -- appropriately -- as a GoodThing(tm). It's a GoodThing for my pastors to know how I communicate - both content and tone. It's good for them to be able to say "I know you want to teach a church class, but you really need to work on your attitude toward Apple and iMacs. Your writing just doesn't reflect the tone and awe toward them that we feel is vital in teachers." (For those of you not familiar with my church, a significant fraction of our staff and leaders are Apple fanatics.) It's good for the pastors to know the people they are giving responsibility to. It's good for them to know people's doctrine, heart, character, and such.

That said, real openness toward church leadership is hard, especially when one aspires to lead. It's easier to settle for a fake openness that doesn't seem too wicked, too evil, or too corrupt than to genuinely own up to one's beliefs/attitudes/character and see how leadership responds.

It's harder still to accept negative responses from leadership, such as "We're sorry; we don't think you're ready for that responsibility." Rejection, err, constructive criticism is harder still when one thinks leadership's reasons are garbage. Been there, done that. Sometimes leadership is right and I didn't see it. Usually I was right. (Okay, maybe not. But more right than not.)

But the really tough question is this: Do I trust God to work through leadership, even when I think they are making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons? I'm not talking about really important decisions like "What is the gospel?" but just the "minor" day-to-day decisions that appear to impact me. Do I think God is bigger than the authorities in my life? And do I think he works more powerfully when I faithfully serve under my leaders, or when I work around my leaders?

[Disclaimers: Happily, I haven't had any major clashes with leadership lately. It makes writing this much, much easier. Often I think of these important topics when I'm going through the trial, and it's tough to write about while doing justice to all parties. But I have had my fair share of clashes with various authorities. In many clashes, I've decided much later that leadership was right. There's a few I'm still pretty certain I was right about, and it's been a huge challenge to trust that God sees and guides. And there's a handful where I'm not clear who was right.

I also don't intend this post to suggest that leadership should always be followed, or that advice is the equivalent to command, or that one should stay under abusive leadership. I'm thinking more about day-to-day living, not the "What should I do if my demon-troubled king starts hurling spears at me?" question.]

Bits N Pieces

2007-03-18T21:23:00.000-04:00

So I don't have much to say about my absence from the blog-o-sphere, other than, well, that's life. I've had a number of deeply encouraging interactions with friends over the last couple weeks, which is perhaps a bit scary given that my girlfriend is out of town for half of that time.

It's weird - I don't exactly have more time with her gone. In some sense I do, and yet I to have an elastic schedule which expands to fill whatever time I have. I heard a teaching once about time management like filling a jar: If one first puts in the big rocks, then the small rocks, then the sand, and then the water, then it's easy to pack the jar full. But if one starts with sand, it's hard to get the bigger rocks (e.g priorities) into one's schedule. Maybe this elastic experience means I'm doing a good job of time management.

I'm also trying a new experiment with an MP3 bible and iPod shuffle that I own to try and get through the minor prophets. I've always had a hard time reading through the prophets, mostly because the action seems very slow. I've also never been a strong poetic reader - as much as I dabble at writing it - and that may not help. So I'm trying to listen to them several times and seeing if that helps my comprehension. The jury is still out on that, but I can now summarize Nahum. I don't exactly get why a three chapter explanation of God shaming and annihilating Nineveh makes the Bible while other oracles don't, but I can at least summarize Nahum. I've also made a mental note that God's anger is very, very scary.

(I've also been contemplating how impervious Nineveh seemed, and how easy it is for me to think America is untouchable. There's been a handful of recent occurrences - such as Katrina and the TV show Jericho - that have reminded me that God wouldn't have any trouble wiping out America if he set his mind to it. Nahum is another such reminded. It's sobering that all of our technology, wealth, and civilization is meaningless against the intentions of God.)

One of these days I'll get back to blogging about my reading, but for now, here's an interesting survey on modesty. It looks at how guys answered lots of different questions about how women's attire and posture communicated to them. The Al-scientist likes data, and it's interesting how guys answered the questions. As modesty tends to be a hot topic, I should probably put lots of theological disclaimers on the survey like "Popular opinion doesn't make right" and "Just because some guys are offended doesn't mean don't wear it", but maybe I'll just stick with this disclaimer: "Caution: Hot topic. Use common sense, wisdom, and godly counsel."

Choose Wisely...

2007-03-04T19:57:00.000-05:00

For once, I have more blog topics than I care to bore my readers with. So my thoughts on the first two chapters of The Lamb's Supper will be postponed. I also will skip my thoughts on my proposed presidential campaign theme.

I spent most of today reading Decision Making and the Will of God: A Biblical Alternative to the Traditional View by Gary Friesen. Oh, that didn't say much about it? Alright, the gist of the book is that God doesn't have an individual will for our lives. Instead we're called to obey God in what he commands, and live wisely by his principles in our choices. But Friesen argues that there's no "one right choice" to our decisions when there isn't a clear command. The author's four point summary of his points is:

Where God commands, we must obey.
Where there is no command, God gives us freedom (and responsibility) to choose.
Where there is no command, God gives us wisdom to choose.
When we have chosen what is moral and wise, we must trust the sovereign God to work all the details together for good.

His points aren't entirely revolutionary for me, but I tend to have strong "there is one exact choice" leanings. Friesen does a good job looking at how the Bible discusses decision making and how that differs from the typical American (evangelical protestant Christian?) view of God having a precise knowable will for each and every one of us. So that's my summary of 500 pages, much of which is spent discussing various Biblical texts.

For example, I'm looking for housing and a roommate. At the moment, I have no supernatural revelation from God about where to live - or with him. I have a few commands about what not to do (e.g. moving in with girlfriend = BadIdea). And then there's a collection of desires about what I'd like in my housing situation

Warm, dry, safe place to live
Place where I can host activities and have guests over
Cheap (economical) housing
Affordable housing
Somewhere near my work, church, and friends
Quiet relaxing environment
Financially stable roommates
Roommates who share my values
Trustworthy roommates (e.g. won't steal my stuff)
etc.

Many of these desires are based on biblical commands or principles. For example, affordable housing is based on the principle of living within my means. Cheap housing is based on my preference of saving money. But that preference can conflict with other values, for example, living near other friends, or having warm dry apartment, or living near work and friends.

Likewise, there's trade-offs in my selection of roommates. For example, do I prioritize hospitable roommates or ones who can consistently pay rents? If my roommates also value hospitality, then is it realistic to have a quiet relaxing environment?

The traditional view is that there is one right choice for my housing situation, and that if I seek God appropriately, that choice will become clear. The view Friesen supports is that I'm to determine values and trade-offs (e.g. hospitality, frugality, location, etc.) and make a decision (assuming, of course, I'm not violating any clear commands from God, such as "Gophers are evil.")

Thoughts?

Of Catholics

2007-02-26T20:22:00.000-05:00

I had a chance to hear Scott Hahn speak this weekend. I'm not entirely sure how to describe the experience, but here's a scattering of thoughts I've had.

Christianese: I've often been reminded - either in teachings or by blank stares - how Christians have their own vocabulary. Frighteningly, Christians sometimes don't even know what their words mean. It's like a physics major saying "Clearly derivative of acceleration with respect to time is velocity" and then drawing a blank when asked what velocity is. This weekend, I definitely walked with a list of vocabulary to figure out. It's my fault for showing up at an event intended for the Catholic faithful, but I was surprised at how different the vocabulary was.

The Presence (experience) of God: After about four and a half hours of lecture, I finally realized that the way Scott Hahn talks about the experience of the presence of God in the Eucharist is paralleled in the way I perceive the dwelling of the Holy Spirit inside of Christians: He is God inside us. There is so much depth and amazement in that simple statement, the idea of a holy being choosing to dwell inside of me. < /mystic > Perhaps because of that viewpoint, or perhaps because of something else, I just don't get the emphasis on the Eucharist. The focal point seems foreign and unnecessary. I suspect there's a underlying views that I'm just missing.

Honestly Now...

2007-02-19T20:29:00.000-05:00

For those of you who like links, here a few...
- A few neat thoughts on Damaged Goods.
- A lighthearted paraphrase of Leviticus for modern dinner manners (found via Ochuk).
- A nifty way of dealing with the Greek Bible text, or at least the best I've found so far (thanks Dan).

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about my voting preferences and honesty.

Honesty? Well, that was this week's sermon.

Voting preference? I've been pondering variants of this problem...

Candidate A is a typical politician who moderately supports my important views on key issues (e.g. budget policy, abortion, Iraq). Candidate B is a politician who openly disagrees with many of my core issues, but has an unusual reputation for honesty. He outlines significant policy changes he wants to make on these issues, but also promises limit his reforms to these proposals and not pursue more radical changes.

Given the deciding vote, who do I vote for?

It's a challenging question, because of how it distills the challenge of honesty: Do I prefer a leader who says he agrees with me but leads who-knows-where, or one who openly leads toward a known outcome that I disagree with?

Or put another way, how much do I value honesty in leaders who don't agree with me? Am I willing to vote for them? If not, do I those who disagree with me politically to have the character to do so? If neither I nor my opponents will, then we're stuck in the current cycle of distrust and anger. I've effectively said that my positions are more important than trustworthiness, and that until I can assure that my positions will be represented, I won't vote on issues of character.

And if I won't vote on issues of character, why do I expect leaders with character to be elected?

Sowing and Reaping

2007-02-11T17:50:00.000-05:00

Recently I was helping a friend's daughter learn GIMP (aka almost Photoshop). I feel old since film photography is foreign to her. The topic came up because I was trying to explain why darkening and lightening tools were called 'burn' and 'dodge'. Anyway, the moment along with some other interactions has me thinking about this:

Sow an act...reap a habit;
Sow a habit...reap a character;
Sow a character...reap a destiny.
-- George Dana Boardman

More, I've been thinking about how appreciative I am (or at least ought to be) of so many of the habits my parents imparted to me. It's hard to make a choice in a radically different way than the way I've made the last hundred choices. In fact, it's scary how often my choices are self-reinforcing. I don't like calling strangers, so I avoid tasks which require to me call strangers, so I tend to be stiff and nervous on the few times I do call strangers, which reinforces that I don't like calling strangers.

On the other hand, I remember my dad constantly teaching me "Go after the ball" in soccer. When I played soccer as a child, we often had balls in the middle of nowhere with me and someone from the other team running after the ball. Usually it was clear who would get to the ball first. The temptation is for whoever is going to be second to the ball to just give up and let the first player have it. But that's lousy game strategy.

First, sometimes the first player slacks and doesn't run fast enough, so if the second player is going after the ball hard enough, sometimes he'll get there first. Secondly, the first player has to make a faster decision when he gets to the ball if someone else is going to challenge him for it. It's harder to make a smart decision quickly under pressure. When one doesn't put the pressure on, the player can leisurely survey the field and make a solid pass. With pressure, mistakes happen, or at least sub-optimal plays.

Hustle pays dividends in life too. Not always, but often. And it's hard to learn hustle as young professional. It's a little scary to me that if my dad hadn't taught me when I was young, learning it now might be very, very challenging. I've been wondering how many other life skills I learned from my parents that I'm not even aware of...and how many life skills others are trying to learn now that I take for granted.

8 Hours

2007-02-02T00:30:00.000-05:00

Story time. And a little bit of philosophizing about character decay over time.

A friend of mine (okay, several friends of mine) is looking for a new job. It's gotten me thinking about a couple summers I spent in Florida as part of a leadership training program. The program was 10 weeks. We worked during the day (~40 hours / wk) and spent 4 or 5 evenings a week at various church or training activities. The program fees were like $1500 (including room board and food budget), so it was possible to make a small profit over the summer, especially if kind souls helped with the program fees.

Of course, not all of us were lucky enough to have jobs awaiting us when we arrived in Florida. For us, the training program helped us out by giving us a job: Looking for a job, eight hours a day. Lately I've been reflecting on the days I spent looking for a job that summer. I'm still amazed at how many resumes, phone calls, and applications (picked up, filled out, and delivered) can be done over eight hours.

I'm not sure I've ever been that dedicated to a job search since then. I've also been wondering whether or not I'd put that much effort into the search if I lost my job tomorrow - I don't know if I have the self-control for that, or the humility to let my friends nag me over that goal. Alright, who am I kidding, my friends will harass me anyway; I might as well let it be productive for me.

The Right Tool...

2007-01-25T03:48:00.000-05:00

I just thought I'd mention that I have my computer back up and running. Ironically, after all the trouble I had with my old hard drive, my new windows installation took one look at it, went to work repairing the disk, and now I'm happily copying data off it. Well, I think I am...time for bed.

P.S. Remind me sometime to talk about how the Christian life is more like a road rally than a marathon.

15 seconds...and poof

2007-01-21T22:26:00.000-05:00

So the poof part is that my computer hard disk finally failed. Mostly it is my fault for getting caught unprepared; it had been acting weird for a couple weeks now, but I just hoped that it was alright. I haven't lost much (I did a late November backup), but lost my latest (1+ year) update of my finances from paper to Quicken. Oops. So my computer usage may be a little off for the next couple weeks while I fix that up.

Meanwhile, CBS is doing a thought provoking contest. They are offering a 15 second spot to say "anything" you want...within certain restrictions (e.g. no profanity). So I've been thinking about: How would I use those 15 seconds to communicate the gospel in a clear and creative way using both audio and visual appeal? My follow-up thought is: Is there a better message to communicate to America? Something more like John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Christ? If so, how would I present it?

Baaa...and evil.

2007-01-14T16:33:00.000-05:00

So it doesn't feel like I've been doing much lately, although I'm managing to keep myself busy with one activity or another. But I did start a class today at church on 'discipleship in the 1st century,' which is looking at what Jesus meant by discipleship. It's particularly interesting since we don't have many examples of discipleship in America today. When was the last time I knew someone who followed a teacher around, emulating the way the teacher lived life? (And no, cults don't count.)

We talked a lot about sheep - communal animals, vulnerable, and valuable for wool, food, and milk. We talked about raising sheep in the Middle East, and how the sheep were generally travelling - none of this 'put the sheep in the pasture by Michigan State with donkey' bit.

Anyway, two thoughts that were a good kick in the pants, err, stood out to me. The first is that following Jesus often involves movement, especially movement to places I wouldn't naturally go. The second thought was that an inherent part of following Jesus is whether other people follow me as I follow him. It's easy for me to loose focus, especially that following Jesus isn't a purely nebulous 'do good' type idea, but there's a very concrete application. I don't think our concept of teaching (e.g. verbal instruction) quite captures the essence of this application, but neither does the nebulous 'do good' idea.

Meanwhile there was a fascinating comment to my last entry:

So you believe that Christian people are the only people in the world that love others unconditionally... w/o self-protection?

I'm still thinking that one through, mostly because I wrestle a lot on what exactly the Bible means in teaching that we're fallen (depraved?) and how that interacts with our experiential observations of people.

Giving And Receiving

2007-01-01T01:08:00.000-05:00

So a week ago I mentioned that I'd been reading Tropical Gangsters. Today I thought I'd share one. Ironically, this is one of the few quotes of Steinbeck that I've really appreciated (even though that may scare my high school English teachers). Reading this quote made me think of Gates and Buffet's recent donations, although it's far older than that.

Perhaps the most overrated virtue on our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think the impulse is the same in both cases. For giving can bring the same sense of superiority as getting does, and philanthropy may be another kind of spiritual avarice.

It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.

Tropical Gangsters, pg 13, quoting a John Steinbeck essay

As others commented earlier, I don't know where Gates' heart is coming from. But I've been pondering whether I really believe people change after accumulating great wealth, and what sort experience it takes for that change to happen.

I've also been pondering whether Jesus would agree with Steinbeck or not. I don't know. Here's something else I read today: It's possible to be many good things without Christ - charitable, disciplined, self-restrained. But without Christ, we cannot love others without self-protection.

Went South, Found Blizzard

2006-12-25T01:50:00.000-05:00

So I'm back to warm Michigan. I took a brief jaunt south and managed to hit a snow storm that qualified as a multi-year record. It'd count as a significant Michigan snow storm - the sort we get two or three times a year.

In a separate embarrassing note, I played Ticket To Ride with little brother. I won the introductory game, then proceeded to loose to my girlfriend (who already knew the game) and then three losses more to my brother. I don't recall any of those games even being particularly close. Moral of the story: Don't teach games to family members.

On a more cheerful side, I read Tropical Gangsters while on vacation. I wasn't very impressed with the writing, but the book is a fascinating anthropological look at human nature and Western influence. I've a few more thoughts to post over the next few days. That makes TheBlogless two for two on book recommendations. Or maybe 2 minus. It really was a poorly written book, err, collection of memories.

Here a church, there a church

2006-12-11T21:35:00.000-05:00

So a friend of mine recently posted this article about church size and how it impacts dynamics.

I've mostly grown up around small churches, and my sub-conscious tendency is that small is good. Partly that's personality - I don't interact well with the hoard mentality. Reading through the article, part of is it is that I also tend to resonate more with the inherit strengths of a small church, especially discipline, accountability, and more time with pastors and staff. Perhaps because of my background, it's hard for me to envision a church of 3,000 functioning as well as a church of, say, 500. And no, until recently, I hadn't really put registered that the first church started out at 3,000+.

The whole article is worth a read, but here's a few points struck me:

The smaller church by its nature gives immature, outspoken, opinionated, and broken members far more power over the whole body.

In smaller churches there is an unwritten rule that most everyone must be happy with any new initiative in order for it to be implement [sic]

Ah yes, I like the power of the individual. I tend to forget that not all individuals are equally deserving of power, and it's acceptable - even wise - for more power to be in the hands of a healthier minority.

It is easier to practice lay ministry and the priesthood of all believers in larger churches, where pastoral care must be done on a large scale by lay leaders. Smaller churches tend to acquiesce to clericalism.

For me, this was the highlight in the entire article. My first thought was "Wow, maybe this is why I've seen so many small churches struggle to imbue a mindset of lay ministry in their members."

Larger churches in general have something of an advantage in evangelism; they can provide more “doors” into the church through their numerous programs. Also, many (not all!) non-Christians feel too visible to visit smaller churches.

Another striking thought: In some significant ways, it's easier to accomplish a primary purpose of the church through a large church body.

Pride and Prejudice

2006-12-03T22:39:00.000-05:00

So this clip was recently recently:It's made by a church that I used to know people from. (This video is one of my favorites, although it seemed funnier when I saw it several years ago. Not sure why.)

Anyway, the video has me thinking about how easily I stick to my perspective, regardless of facts. It's challenging about to think about how well I actually listen and consider other perspectives, or at least manage genuine arguments rather than slander.

cout << Thoughts.Brief

2006-11-26T19:14:00.000-05:00

I finally have gotten back to this blogging thing. I haven't had a lot to say, or at least, not a lot that blogs particularly well. Vague vacuous thoughts about the meaning of life, the average character change per day a person experiences, and the endlessness of life just don't make good blog posts. Or at least, I haven't had the insight or motivation to make good blog posts.

As a side note, playing Halo doesn't make a good blog post either, but is extremely satisfying.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I came across this article which talks about our tendency to be thankful for what changes, rather than simply for what we have. Perhaps one of his most catching comments is near the end where he talks about how pre-1750s, there was no expectation of constant economic growth. I remember that from Aristotle as well - his economics assume a "fixed pie" of wealth, with the primary question being how to distribute the pie.

Here's a brief excerpt:

We assume that we deserve all we receive. Yet until 1750, societies had not learned the secret of long-term per capita economic growth.

Since then, the West has grown economically by 2% per year for about 260 years. This compounding process has made society 1,700 times richer than it was. Even in terms of per capita growth, we are hundreds of times richer, and there are more of us to enjoy wealth and give thanks for it.

We have grown accustomed to a process that is nothing short of miraculous by the standards that prevailed before 1750. We pay no attention to it. We do not even understand it. Congress surely doesn’t. We expect it to go on forever...

...Wealth is not our birthright. It is the product of thrift, future-orientation, and the private property social order. These principles were articulated in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. It took over 3,000 years for one society – the West – to come to believe them enough to put them into action.

It is the moral order that led to the social order for which we should be continually thankful. The goodies this social order produces are merely reminders of the fundamental gift.

Perhaps I've Erred

2006-11-08T18:30:00.000-05:00

A man is convinced he is dead. His wife and kids are exasperated. They keep telling him he's not dead. But he continues to insist he's dead.

They try telling him, "Look, you're not dead; you're walking and talking and breathing; how can you be dead?" But he continues to insist he is dead.

The family finally takes him to a doctor. The doctor pulls out some medical books to demonstrate to the man that dead men do not bleed. After some time, the man admits that dead men do not bleed.

The doctor then takes the man's hand and a needle and pokes the end of his finger. The man starts bleeding. He looks at his finger and says, "What do you know? DEAD MEN DO BLEED!"

(Joke source, which is another interesting tangent on my thoughts for today.)

So elections are over. And sadly, the doves aren't fair targets. But I've been thinking about what it takes to convince me votes were wrong.

If our country thrives, do I attribute it to not taking radical policies too far, and that we would be far more successful if my policies were implemented? Or I decide that I was wrong, and others were right, and if I had been more supportive of change, we would do better yet?

If a policy I supported (say, the Iraq war) goes, say, unfortunately, what does that say about my original view? Do I blame implementation? Good idea - bad execution? Do I blame the opposition? Do I blame timing? Fate? All of these can be can be blamed without requiring me to re-examine my original views supporting the war on Iraq.

Here's another scenario: Suppose that the Iraqi invasion had gone stunningly well; the people welcomed us, embraced democracy, and setup a stable government. Would that say anything about the views of critics who talk about the sanctity of life and the sovereignty of nations? What about the criticism that our government was badly in err, if not outright dishonest, about the WMD programs? Would any amount of success address those issues?

I've been thinking about the success of the affirmative action ban (Prop 2) and the failure of the school funding (Prop 5). What does it take for voters to change their minds that their view was incorrect?

If educational funding flounders, does that mean Prop 5 should have been passed? Or does it mean that it would have floundered worse if it had passed?

The affirmative action consequences may be even harder to tell: My guess is that an amazing number of failures will be blamed on it, regardless of the incompetence, laziness, or circumstances involved. It's far easier to say "My organization was thwarted by the lack of affirmation action" than to say "Honestly, people just don't want to provide funding for X any more."

Statistically, I'd guess diversity will drop in many places. It's easy to quantify diversity by "What percentage of are involved?" It's hard to qualify diversity. One can achieve a racially diverse group who all grew up in poverty in Detroit. Does racial diversity translate to a diverse background and perspectives? Probably not. However, I wouldn't want to be the one selling sound bytes to the media on how my all-white college was truly a diverse place.

I don't know what it takes for me to decide that I'm wrong politically. But I'm 99.9% sure everyone who disagrees with is wrong. :-P

A Few Brief Thoughts

2006-10-31T23:30:00.000-05:00

I've been very bad about this whole 'posting' concept lately. I haven't been feeling very inspired; mostly just frustrated by not being supreme dictator of the United States and thus being able to bring a different madness into power.

Last during Bible study, we ended up talking about the following quote:

Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

It's been a thought I've been thinking about for a couple weeks now.

It's a whole lot easier to see where others approve of evil than where I do. It's easy to see where North Korea, Iran, or the one's political party of choice is approving of evil. But do I think much about how the policies I support may be promoting evil? How much would I be prepared to have my taxes go up to have a candidate who was honest?

It's pretty easy for me to see how lawyers, or business CEOs approve of evil - there's been plenty of press on that. But do I seriously examine the accepted practices and norms of my profession for how it engages in evil? Do I have any idea how Satan can tempt someone in my career?

Then there's more personal questions. Who do I idolize? Do I overly heed the professional athletes who have frequent encounters with the law, or take performance enhancing drugs? Do I envy the Hollywood stars?

Am I easily impressed by people's workaholic accomplishments, or by their priorities to spouses, children, or community that rarely improve resumes or earn public recognition?

Occasionally I wonder: If someone came in and took out our government, would we be any less chaotic than Iraq? Then I think about New Orleans and the chaos around Katrina. Mostly I've been thinking about how so many Americans, each of whom thinks himself mostly reasonable, can have so many expressions of evil in their country.

Power Conversion

2006-10-17T23:36:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been looking at my todo list. In no particular order, it includes:
Exercise
Update e-mail lists
C++ Project
Do great good
Blog
Civic/community involvement
Get to know people
Photography
...

During most of my college years, various advisors assured me that college was when I had the most free time. I'm finding that more and more true. So much of my time is spent doing the basics - trying to keep the apartment clean, running chores, feeding myself, working, and the like.

There's no doubt that I could make better use of my time. And I hope to, a little bit. But lately I've been pondering the Michigan political race and pondering "How did Michigan manage to nominate two people for governor who inspire me so little?"

More to the point, if everyone did what I did, would it change? What does it mean for me to be intelligently involved in politics with my time and money?

Here's another way I've been looking at the problem: Why is it so hard for me to convert my money into influence? I'm fairly well off in one of the wealthiest nations. Why is it so hard for me to convert money to influence in clear, concise ways?

But there's no "$20,000 for sane politics" donation that I can make. There's no "Donate $10,000 to change public education" option. (Although for $10,000, I can fund building a church in India.) There's plenty of good causes I can donate to. But generally, the progress they make is slow, uncertain, and filled with set backs.

It makes me appreciate the appeal of lobbyist: Hire them, and they'll influence the people in power toward your way of thinking. Part of me wonders if we over-emphasize the contributions of the single individual in American and fail to look at the impact of many people working slowly and steadily toward a goal. Part of me wonders if I simply don't realize how little influence 1 in 300,000,000 has.

And part of me is reminded that while influence through power is cool, it doesn't change people's hearts. That's a much slower and harder process.

Fear will keep the local politicians in line

2006-10-08T23:48:00.000-04:00

Fear of this electorate.

So in light of recent scandals sweeping the Congress, it occurred to me that what is needed is to simple vote out the Congressional GOP leadership team. Make a stunning example of how unacceptable this level of leadership is. Actually, there's a pretty long list of governance that I think the populace should be pretty put out about. But if campaign finance reform, responsible spending and integrity aren't bottom level issues, surely we can at least hold congressional leadership to the same standard we're holding the Catholic church.

No, I don't really expect the Democrats to get the message, and it'd probably be necessary to oust their leadership in a couple years. But the nice arrangement with the Congress is that they face re-election every two years, so there are plenty of opportunities to vote them out.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking I should start a grassroots campaign for President for 2016. I figure if I can convince 7 citizens per year to vote for me, and each person they convince then convinces another 7 each year, and so on, then I should will have convinced most of America to vote for me.

A Brief Morsel

2006-10-03T23:21:00.000-04:00

One blog I follow talks about the recent school shootings. Ironically, I came across this blog discussing the author's thoughts on some of the underlying issues.

I don't know if I have much to add at the moment, but one thought I've been thinking about is the principle that we reap what we sow. I don't mean that in a "we're such an evil bunch of people that of course we deserve to have our children randomly slaughtered" way, but more in a "When I look at the way Americans live, what values do I see us passing on to our children? Do we handle hurt, anger, rage, or fear in a constructive or healthy way? Do I want my children to be like America's role models?" way.

Here's my "Wow" question of the day: How can 65 percent of the world's richest nation live paycheck to paycheck? How can we be so wealthy and have so little savings?

And if we're not wise with money, why on earth do I expect us to be wise with law, or justice, or charity, or emotional healing, or child raising?

Advertising Economics

2006-09-23T22:26:00.000-04:00

I hear a lot about the advertising business boom. Selling advertising on buses. On school buses. About FedEx sponsoring textbooks. Google and Yahoo selling ads. Recently, someone auctioned off the right to tattoo a section of his body. There's this vision of the future as a "Minority Report" scene where people receive personalized ads as they stroll about. There's moaning and worrying about us becoming overwhelmed with ads.

Lately I've been thinking about the economics behind this model. Here's my conclusion: This sort of future is only possible if advertising becomes very, very cheap.

Here's why: For a company, advertising is cost limited by profit per item. That is, advertising comes out of a company's profit. Long term, a business can not function if it cost more to sell the item than to buy it. (Yes, exceptions like the razor/razor blade model where one sells a cheap permanent item and an expensive replaceable item. But even then the net profit needs above zero.)

Now a company can shift where it advertises. Perhaps the internet is a better medium than newspapers. Perhaps advertising on textbooks is a better use of resources than magazines. Perhaps sponsoring college bowl games is better than radio. But companies are strictly limited their advertising budget based on their sales.

Likewise, credit cards not withstanding, there's a strict limit on the number of purchasing decisions a person makes during a year. Just because I see more advertising doesn't mean that my yearly buying power goes up. (Yes, there's suggestions that advertising does increase spending, which may lead to debt, which leads to interest, which in turn leads to less spending...or bankruptcy.)

So perhaps the question is really...what's the value to us of non-advertising filled space? What does an advertiser have to value a space at before we'll fill it with an ad? How good is a "FedEx" tattoo on my arm as an advertisement?

<< This space available for rent. $1000/character minimum. Higher bids accepted. All content subject to review and editing>>

Zeal and Human Nature

2006-09-18T21:21:00.000-04:00

I came across this blog entry today discussing the nature of radical Islam. I don't have a lot more to say about it, other than I've been contemplating whether or not we (I) think of ourselves (myself) as somehow more enlightened and less given to violence.

Chinese Torture, err, Modern Medicine

2006-09-13T00:13:00.000-04:00

The difference, apparently, in anesthesia. Ancient Chinese used to remove toenails without to torture. Modern doctors first repeatedly stab you with a needle to numb the toe, then operate. When all is said and done, I strongly prefer modern medicine.

Thoughts from today:
Sometimes the "surely it will get better" thought isn't right, and there is a reason that modern medicine is a huge advancement over ancient times.

Experts often know more than novices. I shouldn't pretend to be an expert where I'm not.

Experts are tempted to abuse their expertise for personal gain.

Some problems take an expert to solve.

Some problems take an expert to know that it takes an expert to solve.

The Only Constant: Change

2006-09-05T00:39:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been thinking about how life is always in flux. Not necessarily truly dramatic paradigm-altering change, but a "The more things change, the more they stay the same" type change.

* I've always assumed that Steve Irwin would make video of dangerous creatures until he was fifty or sixty or seventy, and then become one of those guest commentators on TV or some such. Or not.

* Friends wander in and out of our lives...and occasionally wander back in again.

* Our pastor was commenting on how our church feels different this year than it did last year, which is different from five, ten, or fifteen years ago.

I'm also realizing all over again that I don't like change. Or rather, I like change that isn't too personal. Buying a house sounds cool. Rebuilding an entire social network doesn't. New experiences are interesting. Developing new life routines isn't. And so on.

Nothing very new for my personality and temperament, but since I haven't blogged much, I figured I'd share, especially as I'm having writers block on my more interesting thoughts.

Message or Fact

2006-08-23T00:23:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been thinking about the information overload in today's society, and how fundamentally, technology doesn't make getting the truth easier, it merely changes the means by which honest and dishonest folk communicate their messages.

I've been disturbed lately by some of the blogs I follow which discuss the wholesale manipulation of photography in the middle east. This editorial illustrates the concerns rather well.

It's easy for the message - "Innocent civilians hurt by big mean army" - to become far more important than whether or not we're actually being shown truthful shots of innocent civilians hurt by a big mean army.

It's also easy for us to be very confident in our world view, without good support. How do we know what is happening in Iraq? Well, because we have news. How do we know that the news is a realistic or accurate portrayal of the situation? Because they interview a few people? Because all the news reports the same thing? Because the politicians don't dispute the news? Because they quote statistics?

In reality, news can only capture a small fragment of life. The morning newspaper probably doesn't correspond closely to the average daily life. Few of us were murdered, mugged, or subjected to arson in the last day. That's not entirely bad - that's just how news works.

But when we begin to rely on the news for forming opinions, and especially when the news is not even being honest in their reporting of the details, how can we trust our views on situations?

I've been thinking lately about the value of integrity in society, and how it matters for so many jobs.

Janitor? It's a real nuisance when stuff starts disappearing.
Clerk?
Chief Financial Officer? It's a federal diasaster when millions in funds start disappearing.
Auditor? Arthur Anderson...
Reporter?
Photographer?
Diplomat?
Politician?
Parent?
Pastor?
Citizen?

Disturbing Friendships

2006-08-15T16:17:00.000-04:00

I came across this link in the very cool Freakonomics blog. Basically, a guy is selling himself as a "Rent-A-Pal" for 30 days, including unlimited e-mails. I'm not sure if this offer means that he'll send as many e-mails as one wants, or just that he won't report them all as spam.

I am a bit surprised that nobody has bid the $20 minimum yet. It can be hard to get someone to listen to you, and I figured some internet loner would put $20 down to get some social interaction.

I suppose if the selling bid is high enough, I might consider making myself available as an internet pal. Perhaps I could sell myself as an internet counselor and discount my services to $40-$60/hr. Some disclaimers would have to apply about advice being purely for entertainment purposes.

I spent part of today merging my old Pine addressbook with my primary Outlook one. It was interesting to go back at all the different names I've stored. Some of them are of people I barely interacted with, and yet I can instantly identify who they are and how they are connected to me. Other are of people that I *think* I knew for a period of time, yet I cannot place the name at all.

There's also a weird sense looking through the names. There are people I frequently interacted with a year ago that I rarely think of today. There are people that I rarely interacted with that I often ponder what happened to them. I'm also reminded of the people who have wandered back into my life after I was sure they were gone forever.

Finally, I'm reminded how solitary our life journey tends to be. I have a some friends I still keep in contact five years ago. A much smaller group from eight or nine years ago. And just a handful from beyond that. (I actually suspect that I keep in touch with more high school acquaintances than people from my freshman year of college.)

Even with the multi-year friendships, most of them have ebbed and flowed over time. People drift into life for a while, then out, then back. And then there's the plain bizarre, like long distance friends who move to my neighborhood.

In thinking through the solitariness of life, I've been contemplating what it means to influence people. My church likes to talk about the vision of knowing God, helping others to know God, and helping others to help others to know God. (And yes, for the math geeks reading, that is a recursive vision.)

I'll try and blog again about my contemplativeness after it cools.

Stuff, stuff, stuff everywhere...

2006-08-06T22:51:00.000-04:00

...and not a bit to use.

So I've spent the last few weeks helping several people move. Or at least, eating the food they provide when I show up to help them move. I'm not entirely sure how helpful I've been in every case.

Today's move reminded me of a couple hobbies my parents tried to involve me in growing up - gardening and fish. But I've also gotten to thinking about how much stuff I have...and how much of it I ever use. I'm struck by the 80-20 rule. I use 20% of my stuff 80% of the time. Actually, I suspect it's more like I use 10% of my stuff 90% of the time...and most of it never. But I tend to think of things like "Well, who knows when I'll use this 'Get well' card...it'd be a horrible thing to get rid of, only to discover that I really need one."

Now could I find that card when I actually need it? Probably not. Would I even think of the fact that I have it? Probably not. But it faithfully sits on my shelf, collecting dust and being remembered mostly in cleaning sprees and blog entries.

My desk happens to have a 1 page printout of Master of Orion 3's keyboard shortcuts. Total cost to recreate: Maybe 3 cents? It has sat on my desk for months. I feel that way about a lot of my possessions: With the right alignment of the moon, it'd be useful. Most of the time, it just takes up space.

From time to time, I've thought about finding a giant box and putting all of my various unused items in it and inviting my friends to sort through it. (Anyone looking for a copy of KOTOR I?)

It's weird. I'm hesitant to throw anything away for fear of being wasteful, and yet I'm not clear that my room is serving any purpose for many items other than being a temporary landfill.

It's a problem that makes it hard for me to jump into hobbies. I know my tendency to collect stuff, and I don't really care to jump into a hobby just to collect more stuff.

So today I've been thinking about "What does it mean to be responsible with my stuff? What do I really need to keep? How do I accumulate less that I won't use? And what do I do with the stuff that 'ought' to be useful, but never is? For example, my compass for drawing circles."

Resume Padding

2006-07-31T10:41:00.000-04:00

I remember a discussion with a friend of mine who graduated top of his class in engineering. It was about all of the honor societies which had invited him to join. Pay $50, $75 or $100 bucks and you can become a lifetime member of this "prestigious" organization. A few of them actually did something during the year (meet, network, invite contacts), but often the invites felt more like a mass mailing scam where a Nigerian con-artist sent a "Congratulations. You are one of a select few invited to join this honorary society every year...." letter to every student.

Inevitable, one of the plugs for these societies was resume building. The implicit message: For only $60, you can put this prestigious title on your resume. Employers (who certainly have never been to college themselves) will be overwhelmed by your credibility and competence.

I've been thinking lately about this saying of Jesus:

Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

It's the opposite of resume building. Resume building is "Doing community service? Add it to your resume." Or "Have you been recognized by a few others? Flaunt the award to as many others as possible?"

At work recently, a co-worker complimented me for a piece of work that has drastically increased our visual presentation. He's right - it's a significant improvement. The only problem? Even though I'm usually the one who people see with the work (because of my job), my total contribution on this work is about 0.5%.

After some contemplation, I've decided I like credit and recognition from others. And when others don't recognize most of my 'acts of righteousness,' I'm not above helping their thinking along. After all, it's not good to let people be naive or oblivious.

Perhaps scarier is the hesitation - a bit grumbling - after my co-worker compliments me. "God, must I disillusion him about my contribution?" I'm not terribly serious about my complaint, but the thought definitely enters my mind on a very trivial matter.

If credit is so appealing in the little things, how am I going to fair in the larger matters? If being just with credit is a challenge, how will I do when it is unjustly given to others? Do I really believe that God sees?

Incidentally, my friend's solution to the prolific honor society invites? He simply added "Invited to join numerous honor societies" to his list of accomplishments which was then read during his graduation. Entirely free too.

I'm a little slow, but...

2006-07-25T22:27:00.000-04:00

So I was reading this story recently about how Lutherans, Catholics, and Methodists signed a historic document, jointly agreeing on the doctrine of justification. Actually, the Catholics and Lutherans apparently signed it a few years ago, with the text here.

Now I'm a bit slow when it comes to doctrinal stuff, but a few questions sprang to mind reading through the document.

What has changed in the past 400 years? Is theology progressive, like science? Are we better at philosophy, theology, and ethics than we were 400 years ago? Are we smarter than the men (both sides) debating then? I'm not at all convinced that theology is like technology, which gets better with every generation.

The declaration has statements like

Our common way of listening to the word of God in Scripture has led to such new insights.

and

The Lutheran churches and the Roman Catholic Church have together listened to the good news proclaimed in Holy Scripture. This common listening, together with the theological conversations of recent years, has led to a shared understanding of justification.

What about each groups' understanding has changed? It's great that new insights and a shared understanding have been reached. What were they reach from? Whose understandings have changed in the last 400 years?

Out of curiosity, how did this issue get so misunderstood 400 years ago that doctrinal condemnations were issued? Is anyone the least bit apologetic for false condemning the other falsely? (Were those condemnations false?)

Could a document this important be written in a way that a common American could understand? I'm all for incomprehensible theology, but it'd be nice to have a "what we really mean is ..." version.

Could one finish the must statements with consequences?

But the justified must all through life constantly look to God's unconditional justifying grace [or else what?]

The justified also must ask God daily for forgiveness as in the Lord's Prayer (Mt. 6:12; 1 Jn 1:9), are ever again called to conversion and penance, and are ever again granted forgiveness. [Or else what?]

Is this Johnny must eat his peas or else he won't have desert? Johnny must eat his peas or else he will be spanked? Johnny must eat his peas or else he will be shipped to outer Mongolia?

The justified must ask God daily for forgiveness or else what...? They aren't forgiven for their sins? They suffer disconnection from God despite remaining his children? God smites them with lightning?

For A Few Pennies More

2006-07-15T22:08:00.000-04:00

So I've been doing a poor job of blogging lately. I've been hoping that inspiration would hit for talking about geishas, but somehow I just haven't felt like the topic would be very interesting.

Instead I've been thinking about fundraising. Periodically I get fundraising letters from friends and acquaintances - even the occasional enemy. I've gotten a few recently, and they've reminded me of my middle school fundraisers. Boxes of chocolate bars were the method of choice. As I recall, the bigwigs had a big (read: hot, loud, large, uncomfortable) assembly where they dazzled us with all the prizes we could win based on the number of boxes chocolate we sold (36 bars/box). Every student was supposed to sell at least one box, asking anyone (and everyone) to buy a bar or two or ten. Parents were supposed to take boxes into co-workers, etc., etc.

Fundraising in American is a strange beast. Instead of simply asking people to donate, we entice them with a value of nominal value at an inflated price. Companies are glad to be seen as aiding charity by providing products for a small profit plus marketing. Sometimes rather than provide supporters with a token, we assure them that we'll adequately suffer to earn their dollars - walking/biking/swimming/crawling some distance is popular, although occasional more creative ordeals are created (e.g. going without food/sleep/water/caffeine for 24, 36, or 48+ hours).

Here's a few questions I've been thinking about:
Why do I give for incentive? If I think the cause is worthy, why don't I simply give the whole amount for it? If I want the item, why don't I go buy one and then give the difference toward the charity?

Why don't I give without being asked? Am I unaware of good causes until asked for my money? Are my priorities/budget in giving so unclear that I primarily only give when asked? Are the causes I'm asked to support better than the ones I find on my own?

Do I typically respond to requests from within my budget? Do my financial habits reflect that I expect to be regularly giving toward various causes?

Do I have a priority framework for unexpected requests? Do I budget for these occurrences? For example, students I know often go to a summer Christian training program called "Leadership Training." I appreciate the program, and while I usually don't know who exactly is going, I budget money with the expectation that I will be asked.

Am I primarily being a producer or a conduit? Do I produce money to give to others, or do I connect other people with places for them to give? In giving, am I a businessman (who makes money) or a lobbyist (who tries to convince others how to spend their money)? I've been thinking about a quote by St. Paul:

He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.

One of the purposes of my work is have something to give to others.

Don't get me wrong: I do not think being conduit-like is bad - even this blog entry is part conduit. And there's a difference between being a conduit and serving in a position that is supported by giving (e.g. missionary). But I easily make the mistake of urging others to give rather than developing financial habits and career skills that will enable me to give generously from what I make.

The Outsider

2006-07-04T09:47:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been contemplating something Paul wrote about his missionary trip to Thessalonica (pronounced "City of Thes" when I can't remember the ending):

We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us

We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you our lives. Paul is about the people who became Christians during his first trip to Thes (Acts 17). These aren't people that he's known very long; these aren't long-time devoted Christ followers (although most of the initial followers were God-fearing people from the Jewish synagogue). I'm not even clear if all of these people were Christians at the time Paul was living with them.

And yet the result of his love was that he was delighted to not only share theological truth (the gospel), but his life as well. Sharing our lives makes us vulnerable...especially toward people who are mostly strangers, in a strange city, with strange customs. Paul certainly had enough skeletons to be more than a little uncomfortable with sharing himself.

"Me? How did God reach me? Well, I was the stiff-necked guy that he had to knock off a horse...What was I doing on the horse? Oh...well...I was going to try to go kill some Christians."

This story does a good job of putting Paul in perspective...and should be worth a laugh or two.

I remember when I first heard this verse placed in the context of community. I don't remember much about that teaching, but it has really stuck with me over the years as a reflection of Paul's heart toward people. (Much of 1 Thes 2 is very thought-provoking in that regard.)

I'm not very threatened by the question "Does my love for people lead me to delight in sharing truth with them?". But the question "Does my love of people lead me to delight in sharing life with them?" starts making me squirm a bit: Impersonal truth is far easier for me than open involvement. I'm not sure love can be love without both truth and openness.

Depraved, depraved I tell you

2006-07-01T09:15:00.000-04:00

So here's a thought provoking article looking at the idea of innate goodness in people:
Freakonomics Depravity. What can I say...statistics and theology. What's not to like?

As a side note, I'm tracking interest in the Geisha vs church discussion. Here's a few stats:

Number of requests: 11
Average requests/person: <2
Average requests/person/week: <0.6
Average request/post: 2
# comments attempting flattery/manipulation/interest with thoughtful interactions with the post at hand prior to demand: 1

Best Laid Plans of Mice & Men

2006-06-28T19:29:00.000-04:00

The plans of the heart belong to man,
But the answer of the tongue is from the Lord

I've been thinking about this saying lately. Actually, I've been thinking of a conversation I had with a mentor friend of mine a long, long time ago when I asked him "Of whose tongue is the saying speaking?"

We ended up in a discussion about initiative verses success, and some of the many arenas where we're highly dependent on others: Education, jobs, friendship, romance, etc.

I can answer a test, but grading rest in the professor's hands.
I can hunt for a job, but hiring is not my decision.
I can ask my boss for a raise, but he controls the purse strings.
I can invite others to be my friend, but friendship requires their acceptance.
I can ask for a woman's heart, but the relationship is based on her reply.

I'm sobered to think about how much of my daily life is dependent, in part or totally, on the replies of others. We strive so hard to make our lives independent - automated banking, twenty-four hour grocery stores, fast-food, and online shopping. But most major decisions - and many minor ones, are still heavily dependent on other's will: My social life, home purchasing and living arrangements leap to mind.

I'm not sure I like this scheme where God answers my plans through others. I'm not sure at all.

Quality Roots

2006-06-24T11:56:00.000-04:00

So I finally re-potted my big plant (right) yesterday. And I tried to make it reproduce (baby plant, left). The big plant was in the white plastic pot that the baby plant was in. The root to soil ratio was probably 4:1, suggesting that it was long overdue for a re-potting. I'm not quite sure it will survive as I wrecked it's root system to untangle them from a tight ball, although my mom should be proud of me for remembering to break up the roots.

Then baby plant was the tiny offshoot from big plant which I broke off and stuck in some moist soil. I'm not quite sure it will survive other. I'm a bit rusty on my plant biology, but I vaguely recall no roots is very bad for plants. On the other hand, my friends assure me that spider plants are indestructible. So maybe this is a "What happens when the unstoppable force of my ability to kill plants meets the immovable force of spider plants?" question.

Now above is a genuine Yucca plant. These live in the forsaken deserts of New Mexico. They are basically a growing half-sphere of spikes. Unfortunately, the non-sphere portion is the against the ground, which tends to be comprised of granite or other rock. Since spikes are generally considered undesirable in one's lawn, I spent a fair amount of time growing up to rid the lawn of these nuisances.

The simple approach was to take a pick mattock, place a well aimed blow at the point where the Yucca and the ground connected, and sever the spikes from the root. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't work so well because the Yucca has an amazing tap root which goes deep into the ground and will simply regrow. So shortly one simply has a smaller, harder to see protruding ball of spikes. The proper approach was to first sever the ball, then dig/hack/smash about six inches into the rock and take out about six inches of the tap root.

Re-potting my plants has gotten me thinking about the Yucca, and what it means to be deeply rooted. I don't work much with plants, and I tend to forget how tenacious and intertwining root systems are, even interfering with drain pipes.

Spirals: Inward, Downward, Onward

2006-06-16T23:57:00.000-04:00

I've recently created a hypothesis: Life is a set of spirals, or at least, self-fulfilling prophecies. Or, in physics terms, an object in motion will continue in motion unless acted upon by another force.

School/Jobs: There's a self-momentum to education. Good grades in high school makes good grades in college easier, which makes good jobs easier.

Friendships: Friendships are rarely static. They tend continue moving closer, moving rapidly apart, or reinforcing the distance that exists. Yes, momentum can shift (and periodically does), but the past is a remarkably good predictor of the future.

Group Efforts: Getting a new group going is an amazingly challenging task. But once the group gets going, it tends to have a culture which is incredibly difficult to change. Eventually the momentum will shift toward decline.

Hurricanes: And tornados. Enough said.

Maybe I'm confusing spirals with entropy: Everything moves toward decay unless energy is put into the system. Or maybe life isn't about spirals. Maybe it is circles.

X-men, Magicians, Someone

2006-06-10T23:43:00.000-04:00

So lately I've been watching reruns of the X-Men cartoons (which, yes, I used to watch in my childhood), as well as having caught the third movie. Fundamentally, I decided recently, the X-men are really sorcerers. There's a thin "genetic" explanation for their mutant powers which might work for a few such as Wolverine or, say, Xavier. But for most mutants, science can't begin to fathom a genetic explanation:

Cyclops: Solar energy is converted into a concentrated laser beam. Now we're pretty good at our energy science, and last I checked, energy is conserved. Remember those solar lamps which if you are lucky and live in a sunny state can absorb energy during the day and power a garden lamp at night? Cyclops' energy intake to expenditure ratio is, well, energy creative.

Iceman: Ice is another one of those very well understood sciences. To make ice, one needs water...and low temperature. Cooling happens to be another very well understood science. And the suggestion that with a little genetic alteration, the human body can act as a Zamboni machine...is well, magic.

Pyro: Manipulating fire is a cool talent. Unfortunately, fire requires fuel (wood, gas, oil) as well as oxygen. So for Pyro to be manipulating fire, he basically needs to be fueling by materializing an unknown fuel to feed the fire. By the time we're at matter creation, we're either at magic or godhood.

Colossus: Do I even want to start with the ability to generate a metal skin from...um...no where?

I'm fascinated, though, by how much the control of the supernatural captivates us. One friend once observed that he thought we have an almost intuitive understanding that there ought be a way to shape reality other than physically - it's almost like we're reaching for a lost ability. Here's a few other thoughts I have:

- We want to be someone chosen. Magicians and mutants are called - often self-called - to a greater purpose, whether for good or evil. They live above the humdrums of every day lives, pursuing deeper, fuller meanings of life that effect everyone around them.

- We want to be special. We don't want just to be chosen randomly, but we want to be someone who is truly one in a billion. We resent the "Remember, you're unique...just like everyone else" sentiment. Magic is reserved for the few, the chosen, the handful.

- We identify with the theme of being outcast because of our specialness. It's not very flattering to have been ostracized because one was a jerk, or just happened to be the weak kid. But to be downtrodden because I am one of the chosen, someone truly unique, with special gifts - to be a martyr of sorts - resonates with us.

I know if those inclinations are all bad. But I do think our tendency to view specialness and chosenness based upon our abilities and position is a psychological minefield for both us and those around us.

Blog? Blog?

2006-06-05T01:13:00.000-04:00

So I've been very, very bad about blogging recently. Probably because I've either been stressed and/or dealing with stuff that doesn't blog well. I've also been thinking about 1st Samuel (Bible book) recently, but will restrain myself from actually blogging on it for a few more days.

I was reading a book on money this weekend and it was talking about the idea that our financial decisions fall into two categories: Short-term (taxes, debt payments, giving, life style, and savings), and long-term (investment, major life purchases, charity, children's education, etc.) The author was talking about the idea that the longer term our perspective was, the better our financial decisions were likely to be.

It wasn't terribly revolutionary for me, but the short/long-term breakdown was very helpful. I tend to feel pressured to make too much happen too fast, and it was helpful to see goals broken down into short and long-term. I think I've also been a bit too influenced by the "If you were to die in a year, how would you spend your money/time/life?" questions.

The reality is that if I knew that I'd die in a year, I could afford to do things that I couldn't do if I knew I'd live twenty. I could probably deprive myself of sleep and vacation for a year. For twenty...not such a good idea. I'm realizing that I see the "If you were..." questions are really cool for emphasizing reflection priorities, but not so helpful for actually formulating a plan. It's the same thing with "What if Jesus was coming back next week?"

I also don't like an entirely long-term strategy such as "I'm going to invest my money and when I die, give it and all its interest to my church instead of giving regularly now". I'm not sure that my church could pay it's bills via this stratgy.)

Another point that the book made was about people: Financial planning and wisdom is a means to an end. Financial displine and wisdom is not unique to Christians. What makes Christians unique is the ends toward which they spend their money. Well, what ought to make Christians unique. Statistics are a little frightening about both the ends and means of how Christians actually spend their money.

Sigh. Now I'm thinking of some financial habits I should really change. Time to quit musing deep insights and go apply them.

'Till Death Do Us Part

2006-05-26T22:55:00.000-04:00

I periodically stumble across a obituary that catches my attention. Usually I'm struck by how people are portrayed after their death. The CEO of Michelin (the tire maker) died recently in a boating accident. Here's some sy what is mentioned about him:

He was charming
He one of France's finest business men
He was passionate about business, and inspired that passion in others
He was brilliant, dynamic, and humane.

As fine and admirable as those qualities are, I don't think they are what I'd want my friends or co-workers mentioning if they were given a single quote to describe my life.

On the other side of life, I have the honor of being in the wedding of a couple good friends this weekend. I'm sure I'll have many more reflections after the wedding (not to mention that I really should write my 'Why geishas are more relaxing than going to church' reflection after last night. But here's one I've been thinking about tonight: The custom of the father giving the bride to the groom, symbolizing the transfer of responsibility for protecting her from the father to the husband (among other symbols).

What about women makes protection appropriate? Does offering protection imply that the protectee is weaker? Is genuine protection ever offered without implying value? What does it mean for a husband to protect his wife? His daughter?

A Penny Saved...is Worthless

2006-05-19T00:02:00.000-04:00

A friend introduced me a while ago to Dave Ramsey. The site, once you get through all the glitz, has some very good advice. Essentially Dave deals with the question "How do I wisely deal with my money?" One of the sections that makes me wince is the "Stupid Tax" section, where people share stories of ways they've been taxed on their stupidity. I think I just hate the fact that many life lessons have to cost money...in some cases, lots and lots of money.

I just started poking around the site recently, and so I've been thinking about how much our money handling skills impact our lives; about why it is one of the top five sources of marital conflict; about why Jesus talked so much about money. Here's a few thoughts to ponder with me...

Is it really true that my heart goes where I spend my money?
What does it mean to be content?
What does it mean to be grateful with great wealth?
What does it mean to be wise with great wealth?

Do I believe that contentment is related to wealth? (Corollary: Do I feel guilty of the poor because I believe they are incapable of contentment without wealth?)

Why do I work? What benefits and goals am I pursuing?

Ramsey has a quote to the effect of "The purpose of job benefits is to be a benefit to us. There's no point in pursuing benefits that don't benefit our interests, nor of paying a higher cost than the benefit's worth."

One More Thought

2006-05-14T16:41:00.000-04:00

I came across this movie just after finishing my blog entry. It seemed...appropriate. Enjoy.

Labor Surplus

2006-05-14T15:43:00.000-04:00

In my last post, someone asked me "So what would your economy tend to produce instead?" Here's a few thoughts...

Missionaries: It's easy to claim that God is easily one's greatest treasure. It's also pretty easy to claim that others should equally prize God. But how we spend our money often speaks loudly to whether we truly value others knowing God or not. Without getting into a mission philosophy discourse, here's a few observations:

Besides missionaries, there's a significant infrastructure needed to provide training, support, and materials for missionaries. There's also an underlying consideration of when sending American missionaries is the wisest use of resources. In many parts of the world, native missionaries can work without the cultural or language barriers for far less money.

Rational Aid: Money means power, and that means that our economy is capable of supporting a far more significant effort to help people, whether foreign or domestic. For this aid to be helpful in many cases, though, requires more than simply throwing resources at a problem. It also requires shrewdness about human nature and how to encourage growth and responsibility; compassion and mercy mingled with wisdom. It's far easier to give a lazy man a fish day after day than to actually convince him to learn to fish.

Art: I'm not sure this industry would prosper more than it does not, but I think it would prosper differently. There's something about the creative expressive nature of art that is valuable to promote and maintain.

Relaxation: Not so much an industry, but rather a use of time. Americans are very good at living hurried busy anxious lives filled with entertainment, but generally bad at pacing ourselves in a way that includes genuine relaxation.

Technology (& Education): Technology is the ability to do more with less. Or perhaps more with more. It's also a reflection of God's creation. So research and development flourishes...or perhaps doesn't decline. Depends a little bit on how one sees today's technology situation.

Macro Economics 101

2006-05-08T19:41:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, sometimes I contemplate the economic future my values would tend to create in America. I'm not a master economist - or even a minor one, but let me start with one observation: Fundamentally, we pay money for one of two 'goods':

Labor: We pay for someone else's time, expertise, and energy.

Resource: We pay for 'ownership' of non-manufactured resources (land, gold, sand, oil, water, etc.).

So how do I think industries would fair? Here's a few thoughts...

Clothing: Very badly. The whole designer name brand bit would do very badly. I'm a big fan of inexpensive quality clothing. Something like * * = constant. So a very expensive coat that kept me really warm and lasted really long would be worth it. The inexpensive clothing industry might do okay as part of helping people in foreign countries as well.

Automobiles: Another industry that I fear would fair badly with an emphasis on longevity and economy rather than financial gimmicks for new cars. However, truck rentals might boom as a more economical way to have an occasional truck than to own one every day of the year.

Hollywood: I'm afraid I'd be taking huge chunks out of the movie and music industry. I just don't see entertainment as justifying huge multi-million dollar salaries. And don't get me started on professional sports or television...

Credit Cards: Visa and company would be reduced to handlers for debit cards. I'm not a big fan of debt, and even less for credit cards as a means of borrowing money in most circumstances.

Fast Food: I like restaurants. But in their current cost niche, I find it too expensive to use them as a replacement for my local kitchen. Sadly, I don't think America could support nearly the number of restaurants it has on my frequency of eating out.

Just Less: In general, I tend to stretch out purchases and get by with less...a few less toys, a few less electronics, a few less music CDs, and so forth.

Hospitality (or micro-economics)

2006-05-03T22:22:00.000-04:00

I've been contemplating economics lately - as in, what would happen to America's economy if a significant percentage of people followed my values? Hopefully I'll get around to that line of thought soon, but I've also been contemplating the virtue of hospitality (in part in relationship to my musings in my last post about community).

I've been thinking about the legacy of a long-time friend of mine is leaving the pastorate. One of the first characteristics that pops into my mind is how hospitable he and his wife were. Despite the busyness that was always around them, they loved to have people over, to make them feel welcome, to share their food.

It's strange how my perspective has changed: I remember puzzling over why such the Bible placed an emphasis on hospitality. Surely having people over wasn't such a difficult thing to do, was it? As far as commands go, it seems almost trivial compared to some of the other instructions (love your neighbor as yourself, don't lust, be content).

But gradually, I'm seeing hospitality as about more than simply having people over and letting them plop on the couch. Here's a few ideas...

Hospitality doesn't just spontaneously happen - people don't just lurk outside my door waiting for me say "You know what? I feel hospitable right now...come on in." In fact, hospitality is often down right inconvenient. Guests are unpredictable - sometimes they need to talk, sometimes they need food, sometimes they disrupt the "sacred social norms". Hospitality is more on our turf - people see us a bit more as we are as we deal with the unexpected parental visit or drunk friend.

Hospitality requires initiative and planning. People don't invite themselves over - and once over, they take attention. Plan on feeding them? Better have made time for an appropriate grocery trip - or keep one's pantry properly stocked. Want to have a crowd for the Superbowl? Better have gotten an appropriately sized place with plenty of seating.

Hospitality is an aspect of community: There's a nice feel to being able to be a welcome guest - to knowing that others want to have me around, want me to be comfortable, want to get to know me, are willing to have their space and convenience infringed upon.

I'm tempted to also go into why hospitality seems so difficult, and why I appreciate the examples of others in this area...but creative juices are draining rapidly...

Reading Test

2006-04-28T23:46:00.000-04:00

Today's blog entry celebrates two events: Finals week, and several of my friends' upcoming marriages.

The topic? This essay on marriage by John Yoder, a Mennonite theologian. His name rings vaguely familiar, so he may be quite well known.

What can I say? It is long, and a bit challenging to read. (Actually, the first three-fourths were the best; the last 'Parallel Reasoning' part didn't resonate.)

It's a hard article to do justice to, but here's a few points of interest. First, he defines three different views on marriage:
Ontological: A marriage is permanent as long as its 'essence' is maintained, but if the essence is broken, then the marriage is invalid. For example, a marriage is valid as long as both spouses do not commit adultery.
Realist-objective: Marriage is fundamentally determined by powers beyond human control...and the call to live up to the ideal is present regardless of the current state of the marriage.

(As a sidenote to this definition, but a theme throughout the article is the notion that sexual union is a sufficient condition for a marriage relationship. For readers going 'madness!', read the article, it isn't as crazy as I just made it sound. He also argues that while sexual union is sufficient, not all 'marriages' are viable...very fascinating.)

Realist-legal: Essentially argues that the essence of the first marriage always holds, and therefore any additional marriages (or remarriage without a spouse dying) are sinful.

I like what the author does in arguing for the second perspective, trying to stay well away from legalism ("What must my spouse do before I can divorce her?") and calling Christians to a higher vision of marriage. I also like the way the ideas of grace and mercy are woven in regarding remarriage. I don't know if I entirely agree, but it's thought provoking.

Here's another excerpt regarding community that got me thinking.

Most discussion of this issue [marriage] neglects the support which church and community owe to single people. The modern idea that a single person is somehow unfulfilled, unbalanced, unwanted needs to be attacked as an idea and undermined in practice. There should be patterns of community relations in which single persons (whether divorced or never married) would be "at home" as part of a wider "family," and would be recognized for their special contribution. If such resources were available to single persons, there would be fewer "bad marriages," and the divorced would be helped to live without overwhelming pressures toward remarriage.

Attacking the unfulfilled single idea in idea is fairly easy. Undermining it in practice, however, strikes me as exceedingly difficult. I'm tempted to do a brief poll of my peers and see whether they would describe themselves as 'recognized for their special contribution in a wider church family in which they consider at home.'

I need to think more about what it actually takes to undermine the unwanted/unbalanced/unfulfilled single concept is practice. Cheaper gas, perhaps. Fortunately, electrons are plentiful (and thus, cheap) so I can blog on the thought again.

The Type of Motivation

2006-04-25T22:17:00.000-04:00

Related to gender differences in sin, I came across this Slate article today. Interesting, with a healthy dose of salt...I'm a bit skeptical of statistics in the hands of people.

So related to my last post, I've been thinking about different types of change we under go...and my motivation for different types. For example, I wear different clothes at my current job than my previous one. It is a change, but a fairly meaningless one. I didn't loose sleep over the matter, consider not taking the job, or even really consider the cost. For all intents and purposes, my work dress style (or lack thereof?) is a cosmetic change.

Now some cosmetic changes are harder. I have friends who have finally seen the light and are forsaking their loyalty to the University of Michigan and becoming die-hard Michigan State Spartan fans. Well, at least fair-weather Spartan fans. At some level, this change is purely cosmetic - new clothes, new cheers, new bumper stickers. But it's a harder change...they have attachments that go with being Wolverines and it's hard to abandon those. If I was writing a self-help book, I would come up with a witty and clever name like connection changes to describe this category.

And then there are character changes. (See, I'd make an author because I can make all three of my points start with the same letter, which supposed to help memory or something...or else just makes editors happy so that books get published.) Character changes have to do with forsaking parts of our own identity. I don't want to be less witty in order to be empathetic; funny is part of who I am. I don't want to take risks and looking irresponsible; organized and together is part of who I am. I don't want to complain less; being open is part of who I am. Even when I think the character change is completely a good way, it's uncertain and nebulous...and that's not part of who I want to be.

Usually I find the cosmetic, connectional, and character changes all blending together. But usually when I'm really struggling with change, it's because I'm stuck on the character portion of change. I'll spare the "can character change occur without Christ" theology post for another time, but often when I'm stuck, I'm drawn back to the question of motivation: How motivated am I really? What I am willing to pay? How much pain am I willing to endure for this change?

The Price of Motivation

2006-04-22T10:42:00.000-04:00

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

I visited the bookstore yesterday - a very dangerous exercise for me, as I am reminded of how many books there are, and how many of them I want to read (all of them), and my reading speed just isn't up to the task. I need to be more content with dabbling, but it's hard for me to be content with reading just a few books. (I did end up reading Brian McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus, so I can now authoritative talk about my perceptions rather than passing along assorted rumors. (For anyone who cares, McLaren is a "big name" figure in the "Emerging Church" movement.)

Frequently when I visit bookstores, I'm stunned by the self-help section. It's huge. Apparently we need lots of help. But I also find myself wondering about what motivates me to change. Generally my current lifestyle is, more or less, comfortable. If there were easy, safe, clear options for improving it, I'd make them in a flash. But most change is hard, uncertain, tentative. At a minimum, it's the devil we know (now) verses the devil we don't - who might be a lot bigger, scarier, and more frightening. So what motivates me to change?

Pain: Duh. At some point, I simply decide that change can't be any worse than the current situation, and, being a somewhat rational creature, I gravitate toward the option that might lead to pain reduction.

I wonder how much of my change can be categorized in those terms. The pain of a guilty conscience verses the pain of paying my taxes. The pain of grieving God verses the pain of being scorned by one's friends. (Hrm, I begin to sound like my evolutionary biologist friends.)

The more whimsical mathematical part of me now wants to define joy = (alpha/pain) where alpha is constant, and then all change can be expressed as a function of pain.

I don't entirely like the simplification, but it makes for great character questions...

How much relational conflict is honesty worth to me?
How much contempt from others is pursuing God worth?
Is it worth sacrificially caring for people who scorn and reject me?
How much loneliness is holiness worth?
Is the level of pain the basis for leaving a church or getting a divorce?

Digging the Hole Deeper (Part III)

2006-04-17T21:12:00.000-04:00

If I were constructing my list of sins that Christians struggle with the most, here's where I would start. (What follows is very broad strokes; it would take theological volumes to do complete justice to these questions.)

Idolatry: We replace God with something else (power, fame, security, money), someone else, or our own "happier" idea of God.

Disbelief: We don't believe what God tells us...in fact, we openly scorn it.

Distrust: We don't trust in God's character, especially his goodness. (Yes, closely linked to disbelief; disbelief emphasizes God's honesty; distrust, God's intentions.)

Pride: We think too highly of ourselves.

Rebellious: We don't let God be God...we want to run the show. While definitely interwoven with the previous four issues, I don't think rebellion is either completely derived from the others or the root of the others, except in the most general sense.

Often, I think many other struggles are a combination of the above sins interacting with a natural (good) desire. For example, I want to avoid pain (natural, good desire), but I don't believe God that stopping the pain right now is not his will; I don't trust him to get me through the circumstance, I think that I'm too valuable to suffer this way, so I turn to alcohol or video games or a significant other to try and soothe the ache.

I don't particularly think that men and women vary significantly at this root level of sin. I lean toward the thinking that men and women differ strongly in many manifestations of these core issues. I'm not nearly convinced that the typical differences are independent of culture - and my thoughts are pretty limited to the American culture. I think some of my ideas can be traced Biblically and thus universally, but I see this area as an easy one to exceed the authority of scripture on. Also, while I think the struggles are different, I think the common roots keep struggles from being entirely incomprehensible.

Identity: Generally, I see women more tempted to get their value from relationships, where as men are more likely to get their value from accomplishment.

Church: Someone (Tina?) commented on this quote:

On the other hand, women have always been the backbone of the church and I agree with Ken Shneck, they often are the more passionate followers of Christ.

There's definitely an interesting trend toward women being more involved with church. Percentage-wise, I believe most churches have significantly more women than men involved (reference for those who think evidence matters). I've heard a number of interesting thoughts on this phenomenon. Answers range from 'women are more spiritual' to 'God shows greater grace to the oppressed' (discussion of the long-term historical trend) to 'church is too feminine'. Another thought I've heard is that men are harder to get to attend, but are more committed once involved; women easily buy into the community/attending portion of church, but less easily buy into the sacrificial following of Christ bit.

I'm not sure of the actual answer, but I suspect the trend does reflect gender differences in sin.

Here's a few other ideas I've played around with, but with no deep conclusions
Violence: Are men more prone to physical violence/aggression? Why are roughly thirteen times as many men in jail as women?

Modesty: Part of the previous thought, Paul's letter to Timothy contrasts his desire for men to live with holy hands, without anger and disputing while women are to dress modestly (and do good).

Gossip: I toyed around with this one, but wasn't terribly convinced in the end that gossip is a core gender issue...the overarching issue (speech?) seems gender-neutral.

As for the sins drawn up by the class...a few closing thoughts:
Anger: Not sure I see this one as very gender specific (I've known plenty of angry women). I might buy that men tend to express to anger in certain ways - see my violence mutters - that are more blatant.

Pride: It made my top 5 list for both genders. 'enough said.

Self-esteem: See here.

Resentment/bitterness: I have a hard time buying this one as women specific. Perhaps partly because I think resentment and bitterness go hand and hand with anger and pride...and men have plenty of both.

Lack of Trust: Ah yes, the many men I know who trust God to lead them through seeking counsel from others, from serving their bosses wholeheartedly, from listening to their pastors, from obeying their government, and from being obedient to God's word.</sarcasm> Distrust did make my top 5 list.

A Brief Trip Into Trouble (Part II)

2006-04-11T17:41:00.000-04:00

A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.

A man has six items in his bathroom: a toothbrush, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn.
The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify most of these items.

A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change and she does.

Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

Any married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people remembering the same thing.

Ah, gender differences. So the context of these thoughts is this article from a couple posts ago. The post talked about students identifying pornography, lust, anger, and pride the four sins that men more strongly struggled with, while self-esteem, resentment, bitterness, and lack of trust were the four woman tended to identify. The article goes on talk about the perceived severity of these sins, and that Christians tend to view men's sins as "more severe" than women's.

So a few thoughts. First, one idea that leaps out to me is women's reactions to men's struggles with lust, especially pornography. A quote from Every Man's Battle neatly capture the essence:

Brenda, Fred's wife, also participated in the interviews. She summarized the typical female response: "I don't want to sound mean, but because women don't generally experience this problem, it seems to us that some men are uncontrolled perverts who don't think about anything but sex. It even affects my trust in men, knowing that pastors and deacons could have this problem. I don't like it that men lustfully take advantage of women in their thoughts...It's at least some comfort to know that many men have this problem. Since most men are affected, we really can't call you guys perverts."

I'm not clear that the typical female reaction of disgust/perversion to men's struggles with lust has an equivalent counter-part with men. I don't know if I've ever heard a man respond the same way to a woman's struggles with self-esteem, resentment, bitterness, or distrust. (Also, I am not implying that women's responses are inappropriate.)

Secondly, I'm reminded of something I once read about suicide (paraphrased):

We easily assume that suicide is related to a lack of self-love. But in fact, suicide is strongly driven by self-love: The current circumstance seems too painful, and therefore the most self-loving course of action is to terminate self.

I have a similar thought about low self-esteem. If we truly thought little of ourselves, we would not greatly struggle with thinking little of ourselves. But a part of us instinctively grasps that we are valuable, that we are in God's image...and we are drawn like a moth toward flame by that which communicates even a sliver of that value to us.

I definitely have a hard time buying that low self-esteem is a "major" sin (although I don't quite agree with Keith that it is an infirmity). I accept that low self-esteem is a consequence of various major sins (disbelief, idolatry come to mind).

The last thought that comes to mind is a Larry Crabb comment about two halves of our evil selves: The animal self and the diabolical self. We often fight (and win) against the animal self (e.g. lust) only to get completely blindsided by the diabolical self (e.g. pride).

I'll try and post some thoughts on gender sins next time.

A Brief Discourse on Sin (Part I)

2006-04-08T17:53:00.000-04:00

Well, by popular demand, a few thoughts. First, I think there are clearly severities of sin, not just against people, but against God. For example, I have friends who have repeatedly been sexually abused as children. I'm sure the abusers have also said occasional unkind words to store clerks.

Suppose an abuser were together both his sexual abuse victim and the store clerk in the same room and say "I wanted you both here to ask your forgiveness; I've horribly wronged both of you, and I want to seek reconciliation. So-n-so, I want to ask your forgiveness for snapping at you in the store, and so-n-so, I want to ask your forgiveness for abusing you..."

Something deep within us ought to cry out at how wrong this picture is; that the sexual abuse and passing remarks are not equivalent. They are not the same in their magnitude against people - one is a much greater offense against the image of God, and therefore against God. I would accept as a pastor a man who said something snide to a cashier last week; I would not accept a man as a pastor who sexually abused a child last week.

Likewise, if a man had a habit of both viewing pornography and being rude to strangers, I would have no hesitation in recommending which sin to focus on (given no highly unusual circumstances).

I don't think this inequality is purely from a human perspective either. Various sins are more or less assaults against God and his image, and thus of various offense against God. Here's a few passages that come to mind:

That servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. [Jesus, on faithless (non-Christian) servants]

If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. [Paul]

Then Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. "Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you."

So sin by ignorance is better than sin with knowledge; providing for immediate family is of utmost importance, and it is really bad to refuse to repent when Jesus shows up in your city and does miracles.

I don't mean to suggest that all sins do not have some common attributes: They are great offenses against God (and often people), they separate us from God, they create an humanly unpayable debt owed to God. I don't think an exact "sin severity" chart can be constructed; likewise, if we are aware of only committing "less severe" sins, that ought not be a source of pride. If we truly know ourselves and the fullness of sins we are committing (unlikely), we certainly know our capacity for committing greater sins and this awareness leads to a humble gratefulness toward God's goodness toward us.

As for the gender specific thoughts...well, that is at least not until part II.

And sometimes I forget important links...

2006-04-06T18:13:00.000-04:00

These are the responses to the original author's article. There's a nice summary at the bottom of the page.

Sometimes I like to meddle...

2006-04-05T22:25:00.000-04:00

There was cute cartoon lion image to go with this post, but sadly my image is not being uploaded. So no cute cuddly line.

Here's a couple cage rattling links written by a columnist that I very much appreciate. He's very good at asking prickly questions. The first deals with American Christian stewardship and the second asks a simple question about gender differences in sin.

Of Hammers and Chisels

2006-04-04T00:50:00.000-04:00

It is with no small irony that I note this CNN article about Delay resigning from Congress. It's interesting to watch how the scandal has played itself out from assurances of innocence to fundraising to silence and now to resignation, officially due to "having enough" and to put less pressure on family. Meanwhile, Republican officials comment on what a great leader he was. I don't know about Delay specifically (although what I've seen certainly suggests his guilt), but I do get a little tired of the constant political charade. Has anyone ever thought about commenting "You know, he was really effective at accomplishing our agenda because he excelled at bribery and extortion...we'll miss his results, but we can't have his methods publicly associated with us" as a resignation commentary?

I also have been contemplating this blog about how acceptance and criticism should work together in the context of community. I like the concept. Implementation...well...challenging.

A rebuke impresses a man of discernment...

2006-04-02T14:16:00.000-04:00

more than a hundred lashes a fool

No image this week. The Passion of the Christ is a fine movie for illustrating what a hundred lashes can do to someone for those who truly want a picture.

I've been thinking a lot this week about a quote I read from an author I really like (but can't recall which one). The essence of the quote was something like this:

In significant relational transgression (e.g. when one person wrongs another), there is often a necessary period of silence between the two, a period of distance, for the offender to realize the magnitude of the offense. Then, and only then, true reconciliation begin.

I have not captured the thought perfectly, and I don't entirely agree with it as I've put it. But there's more there than I'd like to admit.

Silence verses Condemnation

I find that silence and distance is related to the magnitude of the offense. A friend once lamented to me that often when he brought up pet peeves with certain people, they were overcome with guilt. He was like "Dude, I just want them to wash their hands after playing with the cat before they cook me dinner...not send them into a month long guilt depression." On the other hand, I've been around people who could horribly slander someone, then when confronted shrug it off and be shocked when the other person didn't immediately offer reconciliation.

Realization verses Vindictiveness

A while ago I hurt a friend (Frank). We talked about it, reconciled, and life was good. But Frank had a bad habit of bringing up the offense at the most inopportune moments to tease me. And of course I had no defense - I was in the wrong to begin with, and I could hardly start claiming to be in the right now - leaving Frank free to rub salt in the wound as often as he wish. To be fair, Frank didn't intend to be vindictive, he was merely a bit dense about the consequences of his words. We ended up having another conversation about thoughtful words.

I think there is a line of varying clarity between helping people realize significant wrongs they've committed against us and using those wrongs as assaults against them. Rarely do I think that open and genuine fellowship comes after significant offense without some realization by the offender about what he's done. (And yes, generally all parties involved have made significant contributions.) Some offenses need to simply be let go (your friend forgot to say thank you once in a hundred times...?), and even those that don't require a non-vindictive approach. Broadcasting the offense from the church pulpit (or the blog) doesn't count.

He who walks with the wise...

2006-03-26T18:30:00.000-05:00

Some of my days have themes. Today's theme has been "Who am I listening too?" I stumbled across this blog entry talking about intelligence and foolishness not in terms of intellectual capacity, but in terms of one's relationship with God. Then I came across this blog discussing Fundamentalism vs. Liberalism. The entry is fascinating in many ways, but many of the points relate back to knowing God's heart rather than following human constructions. And then I came across this quote by A.W. Tozer (who was quoting someone else):

Let no one listen to a man unless he listens to God.

There's an interesting feedback loop here. People who know God better than me differ from me (hopefully) in their view of God. As I learn from them, my view of God improves, and I'm better at recognizing people who know God well. I've been reflecting today on some of the different types of people I've known. People don't tend to fit well in a single category, but here's some generalizations...

The charlatans: Sometimes known as hypocrites, everyone loves to hate these people. They portray themselves as deeply spiritual and their surface lives have the appearance of godliness, but over time, one realizes that there are deep sins that are being denied and suppressed. This group scares me as it takes time and often much discernment to tell whether people fall in this category.

The different mature: These are people whose view of God is very, very different from mine. Regretfully, it has generally taken me a long time to recognize the beauty and depth of their faith. But over time, these people have perhaps the most significant impact on me as they broaden and deepen my understanding of God.

The older me: These are people who are very similar to me, naturally and capably speaking into my life. Because we're similar, they tend to see through me, and are able to speak truth much more directly into my life than others.

Faith survivors: These are people who have been through hell on Earth at least once, and sometimes repeatedly. And yet through it all, they pursue God: Not necessarily without struggle - often great struggle. Often they are people who I originally meet and think "Wow, they are really young in their faith" until I hear where they have come from and realize how present God is in their lives for them to be loving people and coping with reality the way they are.

The Younger Visionaries: These are the idealists who see the magnitude of God and haven't been worn down by life's hard knocks. They often lack an understanding of God's work through pain, but they deeply and contagiously believe in what God can do with them and through them.

Most of the above are people that I listen to. Even the charlatans I tend to take seriously - first, because I think they often have good points even if they are not living them, and secondly, because I often mistake them for (the older me, the different mature) before I decide I must be much more cautious in how I take their advice.

And then there are a whole host of categories of people I take much less seriously, people who I love and care about, but who fundamentally I don't trust as listening to God. I still try and hear them out because God can speak through them despite themselves, and because sometimes they know God better than I realize.

But sometimes I think about the number of times I've re-evaluated how I categorize people, the countless times my estimations have been wrong, that I've regretted not listening to someone, or wondered why on earth I took someone so seriously...and sometimes I just throw my hands up and wonder how on earth I'm supposed to hear from God through people when it is so hard to know people's hearts and intents.

2006-03-24T17:04:00.000-05:00

I was talking to an old not-quite-dead white guy friend of mine this week. Somehow or another the topic turned to violence and parenting, and he made a fascinating comment...paraphrased:

Conservatives [e.g. Christians] are often deeply concerned about physical violence in movies, video games, and the like. But rarely are they concerned about the verbal violence that envelopes their lives, their homes, or their dinner tables.

It is a challenging question: How do I verbally treat those I disagree with? Those who talk badly about me at work? Those who make foolish decisions?

Do I believe that people are more than the sum of their decisions? Or do I award respect based entirely on what people do?

Perspective

2006-03-19T21:46:00.000-05:00

Earth: A strange planet dominated by metallic creatures. Primarily based on iron composites, these creatures can be divided into distinct classifications. All of these life forms share the ability to multiplex light frequencies in complicated patters, apparently as a form of communication.

The sea-variant are a individualistic bunch, slowly traversing the planet's bodies of water and rarely visiting each other except in large congregations with the land-variants.

The land-variants are a diverse bunch, but can primarily be divided into the long distance ones which roam continents, seemingly at random, but generally stopping at large metal structures (which other creatures routinely create). The exact purpose of these structures is unclear, but they may be a exchange point for the short distance creatures.

The short distance creatures travel very predictable routes, spending most of their day at one location, their evenings at another, with a few regularly visits at other locations - usually the exchange points mentioned above.

The land creatures are prolific in building structures for themselves, although they rarely enter the structures, preferring to linger outside. A few of the creatures even launch themselves into space, although few ever return to land. It should also be noted that there are flying variants of the creatures as well. Little more is known about these creatures, although they seem to be infected with a small carbon based lifeform. Little is known about the interaction between these lifeforms, although our scientists speculate about a possible symbiotic relationship.

I sometimes wonder if aliens would write reports about earth like this one. Would they recognize humans as the intelligence behind machines? Or would they mistake vehicles (cars, trucks, boats, airplanes) as intelligent creatures in their own right? And how would we, as humans, break that notion?

Funny how sometimes the wrong perspective can make so much sense.

Of Speakers and Microphones

2006-03-16T17:39:00.000-05:00

I received one particularly thought provoking reply to my last post on disqualification . Ok, I received several, but one I've been particularly thinking about. Here's an excerpt.

...the issue I would raise is that of disqualification. Thinking on the ministry of Jesus, I can pick out numerous examples of forgiveness, both related to general sins and even sexual sins...Sin doesn't disqualify you, otherwise no one would ever be saved, that is why Jesus came in the first place.

In contemplating the comment, I realized that I didn't talk much about the relational verses role issues that disqualification raises.

Here's what I mean by that:
The relational aspect has to do with my relationship with God. How am I connected to him? Not at all? Enemy? As a slave? Servant? Child? The role aspect has to do with our authority to speak and minister on God's behalf, especially publicly.

I think our relational aspect is fairly fixed as either a Christian or non-Christian. Occasionally non-Christians become Christians, and certainly we draw closer or further from God. But the foundation on which we connect with God is generally constant, regardless of sin.

In contrast, a higher bar is required to be "bigwig" representative of God. God has higher lifestyle expectations from those who lead and teach his people. Teachers are judged more strictly by God; they bear a responsibility not just for their own lives, but for the manner in which they influence others.

Here's a few thoughts on the qualifications regarding pastors...although I would argue they should apply to the leaders overseeing any significant public ministry (e.g. parachurch operation).

He must manage his own family well

How does a man treat his wife and children? Not in just in public, but in the privacy of his home?

above reproach

A catch-all category that could probably allow lengthy discussion about what is above reproach. I would certainly include 'does not break marriage vows', 'does not abuse children', and 'does not embezzle money' on the list.

He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace...

I think it interesting that Christian leaders are expected to have a good reputation in the eyes of others (including non-Christians). They may not be liked, but the majority of people who know the leader will acknowledge respect or a grudging admiration for him despite their disdain.

I don't think America very consistently holds it's pastorate to these standards...I wonder what would happen if we did. I'm wondering how I'd handle the issue in my church if the need arose...