Powermadrecluse

Thoughts About Who's In and Who's Out ... and John Woo.

2012-01-25T22:42:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine is right in the middle of reading Tim Keller’s book Prodigal God. It is a very good book and that coupled with a couple of other things tonight. I found out John Woo, the famous Hong Kong director, was a member of my faith family. That is to say, John Woo is a Lutheran. Its a little like finding out the M. Night Shaymalan or Brett Ratner is a member of your cliche. For some reason (and don’t ask me, I still don’t know how my mind works), I found that Sinbad, the comedian, was raised and may still be Baptist. I looked at famous Lutherans. I don’t know if they really believe or if they do not, but I have been thinking a lot about who would Jesus call his own.
Now, I am not a Universalist. I find Universalism intellectually problematic, spiritually unjustifiable, and emotionally uncaring; but I am beginning to find there is a chasm (I do not know how wide) between Universalism and being morally good. I have been trained since I was little by culture to believe in the American Civil Religion’s notion of good and evil being the determining factor of one’s salvation. Christianity doesn’t work like that at all though. Dietrich Bonhoeffer points this out in his book Ethics. Bonhoeffer seems to state that since we have the ability to choose between good and evil it shows that something is clearly wrong. Bonhoeffer believes that we have taken a judgment that was not ours and stolen it. It would be like us deciding the pros and cons of gravity. Sure we could justify our turning off gravity or suspending the laws of physics, but is it really our place to do so?
However, I wish to return to Tim Keller and another book of his, The Reason for God. Keller is right to point out a very important fact. We are going to find a lot of people in other religions are going to be morally superior to Christians. Therein lies the danger, because if we believe that our moral superiority (whatever our moral code may be) is our basis for salvation; we no longer believe in Christ because we no longer confess “Jesus is Lord.”
Now, if I am to condemn John Woo or Sinbad for not being good enough; I am a pharisee and a hypocrite. Recently a pastor friend of mine posted a picture of Jesus hanging out with a group of socially undesirables. Arranged in the form of the Last Supper it showed Jesus hanging out with people that “good Christians” would dismiss as “thugs” and “pimps” and worse. I am not saying that Jesus wanted people to live like that, but the whole point of Jesus coming to earth was that he didn’t want people to live like that. But that same Jesus is also pointing at me too. He doesn’t want me to live like that either.
All these years of worrying about being good were done not for the glory of God, but for the glory of me. I didn’t do good things because they fit into God’s plan. I did good things because they fit into my plan. Yet, when I judge. When I look away in disdain. When I fear being associated with some “undesirable”; I am no more a Christian than the most avowed atheist, because I have denied my Christ and the life he had chosen to live. The story of Jesus is simple. God decided to live with and die for sinners. You and me, but not just you and me. We have plenty of wonderful theology that tries to explain away that truth; because the simple story is so scandalous that it makes most human beings cringe, Christian or not.
I am just as bad as the worst person that I can imagine. And that is not a comforting thought. Oh sure, I haven’t done something like genocide or ethnic cleansing. I haven’t orchestrated a massive monetary scheme that left everyone destitute and me unimaginably wealthy. I haven’t done a lot of “bad things.” Yet this pride lets me believe that I can do good things and those good things will win me the privilege to look down on others and be God’s right hand man.
I know this may seem like rambling a bit, but I cannot stress enough. This could be the beginning of something new. Let us not just say, “oh we are all equal in God’s sight” while we cling to the belief that some are “more equal than others.” Let us not look at the moral superiority of Christian or non-Christian and declare who is better and worse. Let us love one another even when it makes us untouchable to American Christianity. Let us love one another even when it makes us feel we are wrong. Let us never forget that Christ loved us so much that he came to us while we were still sinners and died for us while we were still sinners and is worshipped by us while we are still sinners. Let us understand that the Christian change does not come from the paradigm of right and wrong. It comes from the grace of Jesus Christ. A grace that is big enough to cover you and me and even John Woo. A grace that sees us not as becoming morally perfect, but rather becoming lovingly changed. Our God wants not our good works or burnt offerings. Our God wants us and no amount of church-time, or soup kitchen volunteering, or weekly tithing is going to change God’s ultimate demand for our whole hearts, minds, and lives. Because we worship a God who could care less about our moral perfection when He can have our eternal relationship instead.

Our Love Affair with Victimhood

2011-12-21T23:55:00.001-08:00

One of my good friends lamented recently that he felt like the atheists were being persecuted by the larger society. This is interesting because when one talks to liberal Christians or conservative Christians one hears the same thing. I would wager that if we were to talk to any number of people we would hear the same complaint. I confess that I feel the same way too. Recently, I lamented to my girlfriend that I felt like Lutheranism just didn’t have a voice in the larger society. Fortunately, she called me to the carpet and asked what it really meant to be Lutheran. Of course I gave her some answers, but when I thought about it, I really couldn’t offer too much.
Everyone likes to be the victim. The rich are the victims of “levelers” and the “99 percent.” Meanwhile, the “99 percent” are victims of the rich. Depending on your Christian persuasion, you are being persecuted by someone else. Diana Butler Bass finds herself having to fight against evangelicals while David Jeremiah laments that “he never thought he’d see the day.” Israel feels itself threatened by Arabs and the Arab states feel themselves threatened by … well … everyone. And obviously, they all have their cases, which is probably the problem.
Nothing loses friends and wins enemies quite like telling someone not to be a victim. Yet, if there is one thing I learned from my parents, it is not to be one. My parents came down pretty tough on me when I tried to play it and I find that life tends to do the exact same thing. This isn’t a blog telling people that they haven’t gotten bad hands dealt them or to just suck it up (much less to capitulate and roll over), but rather to think about what kind of life they are choosing.
We live in a culture that feeds on hatred. I am not talking about the kind of hatred that we think about as our pinnacle of hatred, but the subtle hatreds as well: The angry words about the person who cut you off in traffic, the poor service you received at the coffee shop (hint, hint), and even the nabob on the sports call in show. Subtly we have begun to turn away from people. We see them as nothing more than the sum of opinions. In a culture where opinion is king (or queen), did we expect anything less? And so we protect our opinions as if they were our very nature. God help any politician who comes to the bargaining table. God help the friend who speaks up for “the other political party” at a soiree we are having. God help the Christian who has a different belief than our own.
Yet again, it is important to have your opinions. It is important to understand that your opinions might be dead wrong too. However, more important than all of this, it is important for you to know that you are not the victim. There are going to be intolerant people out there, and rather than looking at it as an issue of you being persecuted by all the intolerant people, perhaps we should really look at it as “some days you are victim and some days you are victimizer.”
We are going to hurt people, but we don’t like to think about that. Whatever happened, they had it coming. We couldn’t help it. We were just being honest. Yet when the same thing happens to us, we are immediately at the Alamo. However, pride is an interesting thing. It is amazing how lonely it makes us. We don’t stop to ask ourselves, “could I be wrong here if everyone else is so sure.”
I remember the thoughts that went through my head when I decided to leave my church body. I think a lot of people (on both sides) thought I had made the decision in haste because of a knee-jerk reaction to a single issue. I worried about that myself. Later when I decided to leave my seminary it was less because of being angry and more because I wanted to find a place that would teach me to focus on my strengths. Do I think I am victim? Of course. I am human. Its what we do. But the fortunate thing is that I know that I am very proud person and very proud people succumb to victimization much more whole-heartedly. I am thankful that I know I am proud because its like an alcoholic who has made peace with that particular vice.
My point here is that we should never be defined by what we are not, but who we wish to become. I am not saying that if your goal is to become a thief or a murderer, than you have my blessing; but I am saying that human beings were created to be more than just victims. Augustine said God is forever changing and changeless. If we are made in the image of God, doesn’t a little of that rub off on us.
When I was in Haiti, I saw poverty that would put any American to shame. I found a people that indulged in the same virtues and vices as we in the first world enjoy. However, what marked the truly amazing Haitians is the same thing that marks any truly amazing human being. They allowed their circumstances to mold them, without allowing them to control them. They felt pain and pleasure, happiness and sadness, love and loss; but they felt it as a human being and not as a victim. And if the noblest of the poor can weather the cruel storms of life, perhaps there is hope for us “wealthier victims.”
I am not going to lie to any of you out there. I still feel it. There is that nudge of pride that tells me to say that I am a victim and worthy of your sympathy. Yet I realize that if I indulge in that, I will lose a great deal. I will lose friends and loved ones. I will lose the ability to share my hope, faith, and love with people that I care about. We must always take a stand, but that doesn’t mean we should unnecessarily make ourselves pariahs. Jesus exemplified this best. He was willing to be with anyone and humble with everyone. The people who were victims in Jesus’ day never heard Jesus reinforce their victim-hood, but rather fight against their injustice. The ultimate victim took on the ultimate injustice and showed us all how to fight it properly. We must be willing to sacrifice our dignity, our reputations, and our very lives for what we believe is right.

Losing My Faith in American Civil Religion.

2011-11-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

A little while ago I had listened to some of my conservative friends opine that the march on Wall Street was awful and being infiltrated by Communists and Socialists. Many of you would have applauded when I said … nothing. That's right, nothing. I am a person who has a tendency to opine a lot myself, but as I have gotten older I have become aware of the uselessness of this. The crazy people who come into various jobs I have worked and complain about this thing and that thing have taught me something. I should re-evaluate the way I talk to people.

It has not been easy; not by a long shot. And yet, reading through the pooled ignorance of Facebook posts (some of them my own), I realize that there is something to be said for the old adage, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." I can tell of numerous statements where I have spoken some opinion only to have someone refute it with the greatest of ease making me feel the intellectual equivalent of a paramecium or Hollywood celebrity.

Yet, I don't want to just roll over and play dead. I should explain what I believe and I should start off by stating what I did believe. I was blessed to have two very intellectually curious parents and to grow up in just the right places at just the right time. My formative years were in a rural Lutheran farming community. At this time in the 1980s, I cannot conceive of a better place to grow up. Lutherans are known for being advocates of simul justus et peccator, a phrase which means "both saint and sinner." Lutherans follow the laws and rules of their faith, but do not let that get in the way of grace. They were masters of common sense (since they were farmers) and of good theological sense (since they were Lutherans).

We then moved to the suburbs of Cincinnati, which was a bit of a wake up call because I thought everyone was Christian and everyone attended church on a regular basis. The desire for mission and sharing God's message of Jesus is Lord and Redeemer of a fallen world grows when one is surrounded by such a world.

However, Christianity was not the only religion that I was practicing. I had bought into American Civil Religion. As one of my great intellectual sparring partners, David Kamphuis (pronounced KAMP•vīs) has put it, "The Constitution and the government it produces are philosophical ideas, which means they are going to be in conflict with other philosophical ideas. That is why it is hard to be a Christian and an American." I would discover this later, but as a youth I flirted with being a Democrat (because I believed the poor should be looked after), a theocratic democrat (because I believed in a Christian state that was ruled by Christian Philosopher Kings), then a communitarian (read Amitai Etzioni), finally I became one of the most hated of all political parties in America. I became a moderate.

Moderates are hated because they take each issue and examine it. They cannot be counted on (read: trusted) to vote down the party line. Take a moderate position on anything and watch your friends disappear. Liberals think you are a conservative and vice-versa. It isn't that moderates aren't passionate about things. They can be unbelievably passionate about taxes, poverty, military spending, etc.; its just that they disagree with the pre-packaged answers. Here, then is the moment of decision and it is here where I lost my moderatism.

Moderates have a choice in the end. They can apathetically shrug life's requirements for belief in something greater then themselves, or they can find a new paradigm. This is when I lost my faith in American Civil Religion and I declare it to be a half-truth and therefore a dangerous lie. Lutherans talk of the two-kingdoms theory. Unlike Calvinists, Catholics, and Anglicans; Lutheranism began to define itself in theological terms and not in tribal terms. While Calvin was setting up Geneva, the Catholics consolidated their domains (and began exporting their religion), and Anglicans developed a theology of pseudo-Catholicism with anti-papism; the Lutherans took the moderate road and thus the more arduous. We declared, in the Spirit of Augustine, that there are two kingdoms: there is a kingdom of the left (the one of laws and civil governments) and the kingdom of the right (the kingdom of grace and the church).

In today's society is tempting to flatten the two kingdoms into one. The "conservative" camp (though by no means all of them) wishes to create a secular theodicy. They wish to have American society mirror 1950s Christianity. Their temptation is understandable due to the relative tranquility of that time period and the economic progress of America. On the other hand, the "liberals" (again a broad brush stroke is being used) wish to make a) to use the words of Milton Friedman, to make Christianity so small a part of people's everyday lives that it can be drown in a bath tub, or b) to mold Christianity into something more palatable to the countercultural movements.

One could argue that this shows there is no American Civil Religion to speak of, but rather two or more ACRs. Yet, a close examination of the two reveals that they are the same in one key aspect. Both believe that the state is the most important aspect of life and Christianity merely an appendage). The "conservatives" believe it is the state which will evangelize. It is the state that true redemption and "heaven" are found. It is the state that we are working towards. The liberals believe virtually the same things. I recall a conversation I had in one of my Church History classes where we got onto the subject of George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative. I thought being in a class surrounded by staunch Liberal Christians, it would be a fore-gone conclusion that the Faith Based Initiative would be bad since it is an obvious violation of church and state and manifestly weakens both. I was shocked to find myself in the center of maelstrom as I argued every single person in class. What I found is that Liberal Christians are just as eager for government favor as Conservative Christians. Church and state is, like all human constructs, merely a useful tool to be discarded when it becomes an hinderance.

So where am I now? I have moved to the most radical position of all. I have become a Christian.¹ It is the worst thing that could have happened to me too. Conservatives and Liberals can at least dialogue with each other (read: yell at one another), because their language is similar and their telos, that is "philosophical goal," is the same. They are both working to "make America better." The Christian doesn't care about America, Europe, Africa, Asia, etc. The Christian is loyal to God and God's Kingdom. This is why Muslims treated Christians with wary unease during the wars with the Byzantines and why Buddhists in the Far East pushed out or executed Christians in their realms. It is also why Christians in Europe would persecute other denominations. It wasn't because they didn't like their beliefs. It was because their loyalty lay to something, Someone, some place other than the nation-state.

A little while ago I went to school at a place where it was bad to have conservative thoughts. It was bad to not just be against but to question the roots of poverty, homosexuality, universalism, or ecclesiology. They may deny it, but faculty and student actions would say otherwise. (I know I can be pigheaded too. I do not have the open-hearted spirit of N. T. Wright though in my defense he has nearly 63 years to cultivate it and he is English and not an Irish-American Lutheran.) When we open ourselves up to the Gospel and to the Spirit we find ourselves forced to listen more and opine less. We realize that there but for the indwelling of the Spirit go we. I am not saying this with pride (at least I hope I am not), because I did not choose to follow Jesus. The Holy Spirit came into me in the life of the church and showed me a bigger world that is full of people living out "simul justus et peccator." I found that I did not have all the answers. I found that our programs and secular reconditioning of people (be it through the "secular theodicy" of the "conservatives" or the "state church" of the "liberals") is completely different from what Christ taught and by proxy from what God wants. So, I have written a great deal about why I am trying to learn to say nothing. I think it is best to let 1 Peter 4:11 say it best:

Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

1 Notice I did not say I was "born again." I have always been a Christian. Christianity is not something that happens all of a sudden. It is something you are born into and grow into, so that talking about when you were saved becomes ludicrous. When are you never saved?

The Answer for Christians Might be Easier than We Think

2011-04-19T22:19:00.001-07:00

(I did not edit this properly.)

I hail from a liberal mainline protestant church. Immediately this conjures up in the minds of some people a group of wishy-washy non-thinking liberals who put their own ideologies ahead of the gospel or at least substitute it with a gospel of their own creation. I can also talk to another group of people and immediately get pigeon-holed as some backwards thinking nabob with who also substitutes the gospel for a God that looks very much like the ideology personified (or perhaps deified) that I wish to serve. And I do this too. Baptists, Catholics, Lutheran Church Missouri-synod attendees, or people who go to the ELCA church automatically get pigeon-holed, labeled, and then placed on their proper shelf. If you are anything like me, you probably realize you do it as well. Its okay, there’s hope for you too as there is for me. And its called the Bible.
Now, I am not talking about the Bible that takes one verse and expands it to mean the entirity of the Bible. How would we like it if our entire lives could be summed up in one sentence or one word? How does Good Friday carry any weight without The Fall or Easter Sunday? How does love your neighbor mean anything if you don’t know what it means to be loved yourself?# To back up this point pick up a Bible (English or Greek) and you will find that many Bible verses are linked to other Bible verses. There is a theme here, but if we wish to boil the theme down to mere sentences, we risk turning it into rules and regulations and pulling it away from it being a relationship.
Who am I? Who are you? Do you want to know the answers or do you want to live your life and discover that? I am a barista, a brother, a seminarian, a son, an American, and on and on. Do any of these describe me fully? Would you want them to describe you fully? This is the gauntlet which the Christian religion not only throws down in front of the world, but in front of the church as well. To live together as individuals in community doesn’t mean that the rest of the community must follow what you believe or that you must acquiesce to the structure of the community. The question isn’t some sort of either/or because what the church demands of you is that you is to be in relationship with Jesus. And this requires us to really believe in Jesus, not just the Jesus of our imaginations. If we think about our friends and loved ones today we often get the impression of people to whom our own will is enacted. We see them as characters in sitcoms who are placed into a situation and react in set patterns. Yet if we truly were to think about how we want to be treated, we would realize this all wrong. We want to have the benefit of the doubt and for people to seriously think about what we say not just when it happens to agree with them.
Liberal Jesus, Conservative Jesus, American Jesus, Liberation Jesus, they aren’t the real Jesus. We hang them up on our walls, place them on our bookshelves, and even see their marks in our churches. But not one of them saves us. That Jesus was a real man and is the real God. That Jesus didn’t proclaim an arbitrary law but spoke of the Torah that had been written on our hearts. That Jesus didn’t give up on the people he loved, but died for all of them. It wasn’t because he wanted us to follow his teachings, but to be in relationship. There is a myth that the church is divided, but this is a myth fabricated by people who don’t understand relationships. The church is united in its love of Christ. God sees us not in our divisions or groups, but in our unity under the blood which is called simply “The Church.”

This is Christmas?

2010-12-30T00:08:00.001-08:00

I am going to keep this brief. Which is to say, it will be longer than I expect it to be. However, the imperfections of our expectations and the let downs of our life are uncertainties. All human beings feel cut off from one another … and … whether we like to admit it or not, we feel cut off from ourselves as well. Our society is built on some pretty shabby myths. For the most part we accept these myths because to reject them, we fear, will cut us off even further from those around us.
Recently, I have been forced to ask myself a very frightening question, namely: What is an individual? The so-called "two-Americas" have two very different views about that. Some in this country believe that the individual is the center of his or her universe. Restrictions from government or society are viewed as things worse than impositions, they are viewed as downright evil. The other extreme holds that the individual is only as strong as everyone else in the community (whatever that is). These are the people who say "it takes a village." Let me be up front, in America, both these views are inherently wrong because they have a flawed idea of "humanity."
All human beings are sinners. That is to say, we are dysfunctionally programmed from birth. This is something only one institution that I know of has had the courage to say. If something is inherently flawed, no amount of tweaking it is going to get it back to normal again because there is no "ideal system" alive in the world today. Pursuit of our own paths to an "ideal me" or an "ideal community" all end in tears and many times death. Sociopaths and lone gunmen who view their "right" as one worth killing for are just as prevalent as the ideal societies of the U.S.S.R. or Nazi Germany. A person who murders for his or her own gain is just as ideologically driven as the person who has bought into an herd mentality. Murders and cultures of murder are the order of the day, and cannot be ignored. Indeed for the survival of our species, the must not be ignored.
Into this world, we have a lot of lies. These lies are the opiates of a world bent on suicide. Whether individually or corporately we are deceive ourselves and we don't have any truth living in us. This isn't the kind of message that sells. What sells is cheap Christmas stories about Rudolf coming to the aid of his community or "brotherhood of mankind" or gifts. I have just made it through another holiday season, but I can tell you none of those things did it for me. I drove constantly to be with family and friends. It was good to be with them, but sometimes I just wanted to have some time away. Then there were the times away from others that I desperately wanted to be with people. Eventually the gift cards will be spent, the vacation from school will be over, and I will notice that all the world's problems never went away. This is the same world that we all live in.
I wonder if Mary and Joseph felt this way or the early Christians too? I would answer this question with a resounding, "yes! Of course." Any Christian who doesn't acknowledge the true hardships of the world, doesn't believe in a Messiah, because there is no need need for one. The Christian is a realist. There is real pain in the world and real suffering. It won't just go away with full bellies and kind words about "individual liberty" and "universal fraternity." Those people will be hungry and desperate tomorrow. We have kept Christ hidden in a manger and left him hanging on a cross. Angels sang to worthless nobodies and women told men with nothing to live for that Someone came to us. It wasn't an idea they wrapped in swaddling cloth and laid in a manger and it wasn't a new philosophy that was wrapped and laid in a tomb; it was the God of the Universe. It wasn't the plan for life, but the planner.
It doesn't mean anything if you don't believe. I know that. However, when I look at my life and my stuff, I can't help but wonder what the point of it is. Its easy to nod our head in agreement with Bond villains as they look for ways to destroy the world. But its tough to look at God and nod our heads in agreement that it should be saved. Jesus is the great affirmation that my life is worth saving; and your life too. If this world is a plan, then we fit into that plan, right? Somewhere in that plan, there is a place for you and me and shepherds and unwed Jewish mothers and frightened first time fathers. The point is that we can't be thinking of ourselves or our groups. The Christmas story tells us that. Mary should've been cast-out of society and Joseph should have followed his own path. But these people didn't look at themselves or the group, they couldn't help but look at God.
This is the story of Christmas. We can't help but look at the Christ child in the manger. It doesn't matter if you celebrate it on the twenty-fifth of december or the sixth of January; what matters is that you keep that image of child born to all of us to take away sin. We no longer have to be the ideal person, because the ideal person already came. He already told us we aren't good enough and didn't hold back when he said life was pretty messy. But he also said he would be with us forever and ever. He said the messiness has been pardoned. He said sin is still sin, but I am still I am. And that is very comforting news for a very uncomfortable season.

Advent: Isaiah 4 - 6

2010-11-30T21:59:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 4

I do not feel qualified to speak on this particular chapter. To our contemporary sensibilities it feels very chauvinistic. It can of course be read that way. Yet, I doubt that Isaiah meant it as a way of keeping women "barefoot and pregnant" as it were. Rather Isaiah is advocating that we have really missed the mark as it were. In contemporary America we are taught we can do everything. To need a protector is to be weak. To be able to provide or give is the only measure that we Americans respect.

Isaiah looks at the weakest and most downcast people in society (the women) and equates Israel as that. He equates himself and all those around him as women. He is asking for God to give people an identity and a name.

There is something deeply humbling for both parties in a wedding when a woman takes her husband's name. The wife loses her family's paternal name and takes the name of the person God gave to her. The husband sees he must protect a person who has his name just as Genesis 2 states, "This one is from the self-same bone as me and has the same flesh as me, her name will be woman because she's made of the same stuff as me." The name and material forces a man to come to grips with taking care of his wife just as he would his own body.

For the rest of the chapter, Isaiah predicts a world in which God will bring produce to the land he started. The crops that were given by God will honor and glorify Him. This is sometimes assumed to be a reference to Jesus, but is more likely describing Israel.

At the end Isaiah shares this promise:

Then the Lord will create
over all of Mount Zion
and over its convocations
a cloud and smoke by day
and a bright flame of fire by night;
indeed a canopy will accompany the Lord’s glorious presence.
By day it will be a shelter to provide shade from the heat,
as well as safety and protection from the heavy downpour.

- Isaiah 4:5 - 6 (NET)

Isaiah 5

At the beginning of this, Isaiah talks about a his beloved God who plants of vineyard. Even though He has done everything to protect it, but this vineyard produced wild ones instead. God is so angry that He removes all that is protecting the vineyard and decides not to tend to it anymore. He will allow for the chaos and powers of the world to destroy the vineyard because He has already done everything He can for it. Briers and thistles will grow in in there as well. It will be a wild pasture land. God took delight in it, but the people did everything to displease God. Isaiah states, "He waited for justice, but look what he got - disobedience! He waited for fairness, but look what he got - cries for help!" (5:7b)

There are people who wanted everything, but their families will not fill their houses, vineyards will not fill their winepresses and their seeds will not fill their fields. Then the armies and powers will overrun Israel.

However, one verse struck out to me. In 5:7 Isaiah says, "Lambs will graze as if in their pastures, amid the ruins the rich sojourners will graze. " With all the references to lambs in the New Testament, I couldn't help thinking that we Christians might be the grazers in God's promise.

Isaiah 6

Isaiah 6 is probably full of some of the most well-known Biblical imagery. God is in heaven and the angels are singing "Holy, Holy, Holy." Holy means set apart and one cannot miss the paradox here. God is set apart from the world and yet the "splendor fills the entire earth." It is something that will be repeated later on in Revelation 4:8.

In the face of this Isaiah realizes just who he is by comparison. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that Isaiah realizes he is unclean and lives among unclean people. It is interesting that Isaiah doesn't single them out for his uncleanliness. He seems to be saying, "I'm in trouble because I am just as bad as they are."

But one of the "burning ones" who is singing praise to God comes over and places a live cole on his mouth cauterizing the sin that issues forth and sterilizing the evil. Then God and Isaiah engage in, what looks like at first glance, a puzzling conversation. However, it is far from it. God says in an ironic tone that the people have been listening all the time but don't understand and look continually but don't perceive. The point is that people are making excuses for everything they do. They don't understand why they could have gotten it wrong. It is like when we get bad grades for a test and make up all sorts of excuses as to why we just didn't have the time, but a careful inventory reveals that we had time to spare.

Then God understands that people are going to try and get out of being punished. We know of many times when we ourselves didn't feel guilt, but instead felt a need not to be punished. God gets this and realizes the people don't want to be punished for their misdeeds. They think paying a little lip service and community service (well maybe not even community service) excuse them for their criminal neglect of God and neighbor. God says no.

God says that the people are going to be carted off and their home will be desolate. There is a sadness here. God had such high hopes for this people and this vineyard. However, in the end, like Noah, God will leave a little bit to start all over again.

Advent: Isaiah: 1 - 3

2010-11-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1

What can you really do to make someone love you? Seriously. You are either loved or you are not. There is a need by many people to think that we are somehow or other doing God a favor when we go through the motions of worship. There is a belief that God likes our macaroni pictures when we feel we have been compelled to make them.

Isaiah makes it clear God is not happy with our lackadaisical attitude:

“Of what importance to me are your many sacrifices?”
says the Lord.
“I am stuffed with burnt sacrifices
of rams and the fat from steers.
The blood of bulls, lambs, and goats
I do not want.
- Isaiah 1:11 (NET)

How often do we think of appeasing God? God mentions earlier that He brought the people out of slavery, the wilderness, obscurity, nothingness; and for what? Do you think God did this to get burnt offerings? God, who has always been in relationship, wants to be in relationship with us. God wants us to be clean, not because He is a killjoy who wants to see us unhappy and doer, but because doing right brings us closer to Him and to one another. Its just common sense.

Because of this, God will allow the wrath of the universe be it chaos or order to consume this group of people. The notion is that God has been sheltering us and by turning aside (a common understanding of why bad things happened), God was taking away His protection for His people.

Chapter 2

This chapter sees something marvelous happening. It believes that God is something that the whole world is looking for and that Israel has it.

In the future
the mountain of the Lord’s temple will endure
as the most important of mountains,
and will be the most prominent of hills.
All the nations will stream to it,
many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain,
to the temple of the God of Jacob,
so he can teach us his requirements,
and we can follow his standards.”
For Zion will be the center for moral instruction;
the Lord will issue edicts from Jerusalem.
- Isaiah 2:2-3 (NET)

This is the centerpiece of what it means to be Israel. It isn't the trade relations or the nice houses or even the temple itself. It is the fact that God lives there and tells people what the world is like. Isaiah is trying to get the people to look at their most remarkable gift: God chose to dwell with them. Isaiah's vision of people beating "swords into plowshares" and "spears into pruning hooks" seems as far off now as it did back then. There was a notion that when all loved God and the Torah, all would be well finally. Israel was created to share this message just as friendships are nice in themselves but carry the responsibility of giving of what one has in the deepest part of the human soul. Israel has forgotten this though and so have we in America or in the church. There is a poignant plea made by the prophet in 2:5. He says, "O descendants of Jacob, come, let us walk in the Lord’s guiding light."

Instead we trust in idols or human beings. If God is a lie than we have trusted human beings all along and if we have done that, than why should trusting them without the illusion of God be any different? Isaiah looks for a day when all of our idols and hero worship are thrown away and we live in synagogue (the greek word means "bringing together") with, astoundingly, the Holy and one another. This is only made possible by God allowing it to happen. God has been here though, Isaiah is saying, but where are we?

Chapter 3

God gets personal when talking about the leaders we follow. In America we make sport of our leaders and it is not hard to imagine that the Israelites did as well. However, in America we think how we would make fine leaders or how someone who says all the right (or left) words to us is a paragon of leadership. We often ascribe the best qualities to these people. We put them on the same pedestal as God's messiah if only for a purpose. They become the filter of our religion, belief, etc. Isaiah is adamant that God will have none of that because in all this hero worship we disunite ourselves from God and from one another.

The Lord comes to pronounce judgment
on the leaders of his people and their officials.
He says, “It is you who have ruined the vineyard!
You have stashed in your houses what you have stolen from the poor.
Why do you crush my people
and grind the faces of the poor?”
The sovereign Lord who commands armies has spoken.
- Isaiah 3:14-15 (NET)

In the end God, asks us what legal right to we have? We have just been carrying out His Law. He hoped we would do better than we have, but we see what a mess we make of things. Isaiah is clear that there is an ultimate Torah (that is: Law) and that God is the only one worthy of Judgment. It is out of kindness and a desire for our freedom that we are allowed to be judges, but we don't ever do a good job. There are poor and oppressed. The moneyed, powerful, and influential all have more of the Law while those without are left with less. Behind this are the armies of heaven. God has all the power and it is His kindness that leads us to believe He is soft and a pushover.

Meanwhile, the wealthy live lives of, what one sociologist has called, "conspicuous consumption." That is to say, these people show off their goods. God gave these people their wealth not to rub it in other people's faces, but to use it to glorify God. God will take away all the things of beauty and replace it with things that will manifest their shame and dishonor. These were the things they were trying to hide and cover up. How often in America are our outward signs of power and prestige, really cover-ups for our feelings of inadequacy and failure? God's bringing about humility so forcefully leads us to deal with our issues without veneer of self-reliance. There is nothing wrong with wealth, but wealth built on the backs of brothers and sisters in our human family is sickening to God. Wealth used to glorify God and not adorn ourselves is what God wants. This is the notion of selling everything we have. We are selling something to get something we need. But strong men who die in pointless battles and women who try to cover up the fact that they have lost their beauty are lies that whither in the face of a God of truth.

Reading Isaiah in Advent: Part 1: Introduction

2010-11-29T20:42:00.000-08:00

"[Isaiah] is truly full of living, comforting, tender sayings for all poor consciences and miserable disturbed hearts." - Martin Luther

Its Advent and I don't think anything would be quite as fitting for this season of preparation as getting into the book of Isaiah. The book balances between preparation and appearing. It is a book of present darkness and future dawns. It is a book where many find hope and solace as well as chiding and punishment.

I do not want to get bogged down with too much detail and I plan on summarizing this after we have finished reading Isaiah, but I do want to set the historical stage for Isaiah. So here goes.

"It was the best of times it was the worst of times…"

Dickens' phrase rings true in the book of Isaiah. The setting is in the time of King Uzziah. Abraham J. Heschel, the famous Jewish theologian, says that Isaiah lived at one of the highest points of Israel's power around the mid-750s b.c.e. [sic]. The great powers around were weak and in such times small powers can become great. Heschel will also say that Uzziah thus fell into hubris. Though the kingdom of Israel had become disunited and the Northern Kingdom would be destroyed, many people indulged in a life that acted as if nothing would befall their corner of the promised land.

It would of course fall some years after Isaiah's ministry and the bleak predictions of Isaiah would come true, but also, as is so often the case, the need for hope, comfort, and a calling for One to come beside us.

A quick statement

It is important to point out that Isaiah is divided into two different books (some say three but this is a minority opinion). The first part runs from Chapters 1 - 39 and the second part runs from 40 - 66. In the interest of time I will be covering three chapters at a time and try and offer a summary at the end of Advent right before Christmas Eve. If you have any questions, please comment and I will try and answer them. Sorry to be so brief with the history, but this is more of devotion and a meditation rather than a commentary. I will try and not use these, by I am addicted to those things. So without further ado, the book of Isaiah...

The Non-Evolution of Communication

2010-02-13T10:05:00.001-08:00

The Non-Evolution of Communication

Perhaps one of my favorite thinkers is Stephen J. Gould. An atheist and proponent of evolution, I still find Gould a great thinker and one whom both theists and nontheists should emulate in their arguments about God. However, I am not writing about Gould today. I am rather writing about a discussion I had in African Theologians two days ago.

While in that class we talked about the importance of writing down history. In the European Post-Enlightenment Mindset, we live in an age when it seems necessary to look at documentation as the only verifiable form of reality or at least the highest. My bookshelf, floor, and the basement of my parents' home is a testament to this belief. In some ways I think the only thing holier than a library is a church (and I have many friends who would probably agree with me save the church part). In many ways books are the pinnacle of Western Thought. Our collective history (read: memory) appears to be documented and placed in physical repositories such as the local bookstore, warehouses, or libraries; or it seems to be placed online on sites and portals (i.e. Project Gutenberg or CCEL.org). Whatever the case, if one were to ask what is the most accurate (ergo truthful, ergo right) form of relaying memories, a Westerner would tell you that it is probably the written word.

However, throughout the world many stories and memories and histories are still spoken. We hear of epics being passed down from generation to generation in the form of stories. In the Western European mindset, this is less accurate (ergo untruthful, ergo wrong). We have a tendency to boil everything down to saying "its like a game of telephone." We say one thing to one person on one side of the telephone and get a completely different answer. From a certain standpoint, this viewpoint couldn't be more right. Numbers and scientific data charts are hardly things I want to leave to the fragile memory of the "post-enlightenment European Brain," just as I would hate to be in front of a math test without a calculator. (Okay, I just hate being in front of math tests period.) Yet, we are confronted with a rather troubling reality if we start going down this road. We must ask ourselves what we are really saying when we establish value judgments to such things.

I have told many of my memories to people. I have said, this and that happened to me once upon a time. I will tell the facts of the situation that occurred in my life to someone and they will listen. Yet, I have noticed that the more times I would tell a story the more things I would find that I could add to it. Perhaps I wouldn't remember what a person was wearing or what the food tasted like, but I could begin to understand why someone did something. Subconsciously, as we retell a story, we find ourselves psychoanalyzing everything about the event. I can imagine that the myth stories that people tell one another are much the same. In some African, or Latin American, or European, or any human culture; the people begin to tell the story and find that they understand a character in just such a way. They begin coloring in the details of why someone did something and weaving it into the myth. My question is, does it make it any less real? If someone espouses a great psychological insight about someone and the reason for why someone does something, does that mean it is less true than just giving the facts.

I know many will criticize Christians for our belief in Genesis. There are things in the Bible that just don't make sense and perhaps that backs up the authenticity of the book. The writers wrote in such a way that people were able argue and debate the meanings and motives of the people in the stories, but they never went so far as to give great detail about how things were done. They wrote as if it were poetry and not as if it were scientific data. (There are obvious reasons for doing this, but the irony is that the people most willing to believe that the Bible is scientific fact are atheists: be they scientific atheists or Christian fundamentalists of the furthest pole.)

In addition to the validity of myth, we should also look at the validity of written word as compared to spoken conversation. Most of us, in the Western European world would say that the written word is far more verifiable than a conversation. However, I would like to ask this question: who is more accurate the writer of a book which espouses a different political viewpoint than yours in the most vapid manner or a close friend having a conversation with you? Chances are you are going to listen to the friend far more readily than you are going to agree with the author of the book, yet your friend has not put his or her thoughts down in written form whereas the author has a publishing contract. Now one can argue that the friend got his or her information from books, but that is a dangerous argument to make since it shows that information and communication are fluid and can originate from all sorts of media.

This leaves us with the notion that information and data can be relayed in many ways and no way is inherently better than another. So, to bring up Mr. Gould finally, human communication works much like his notion of biology works. In Gould's mind, evolution does not move us closer to some pinnacle, but adapts for diversity. Our communication is not getting better (i.e. face-to-face conversation, writing, phones, texting, video-conferencing), but rather is just getting more diverse. Each aspect has a certain benefit and detriment. The living fluidity of a conversation is counterbalanced by the static definitiveness of the written word.

Furthermore we have not moved into "the digital age" so much as "digital age" has been added to our repertoire of human communication. We still live in the age of face-to-face communication, just as Gould argues we still live in the age of bacteria and insects. We just believe that since are the most advanced, we should call it our age. This is nothing more than intellectual arrogance and should be noted as such. The same is true with any form of communication. Lies and truth will exist on the page of a book just as they will issue from the mouths of imperfect humans, the question is about faith and what you believe.

The Silence of it All

2010-02-02T13:29:00.001-08:00

The Silence of it All

There is a common myth that Christianity tells you that if you just believe, all your problems go away. Another equally adhered to myth is that "God helps those who help themselves." The first is blatantly absurd due to all those who suffer and the latter makes God pointless because He doesn't do jack. Both are reviled by their opponents and both are boring philosophies. Clearly God wants what is best for us because we desire what is best for us and clearly a relationship is more than getting a bunch of useless junk.

However, there are times when we just don't feel it. Bills come due, our jobs feel monotonous at best, and we come to the realization that we have to wait for things we really want. The grinding suffering of life carries with it another problem, we cannot tell anyone about it because other people suffer in such excruciating ways that far exceed mere ennui. I know of a girl who is suffering from cancer, I know people who witnessed the devastation in Haiti, and I know of one friend stuck in loveless marriage. In the end, my problems seem so insignificant.

And yet they are not insignificant to me. Like wave after wave of unfulfilled hopes and unrealized joys, the spirit finds itself constantly attacked. And we have to admit, what is so hard to admit, that we cannot really speak of our problems. It isn't so much that we are afraid to sound like whiners or ungrateful people, we just don't see what it will accomplish. The problems we have are the constant ones that hang over our entirely lives.

And perhaps that is the reason for belief. I don't believe in some sugar-candy-mountain. Truth be told I don't think of heaven all that much. I believe that for the longest time of suffering and anguish, the people who have gotten the answer best are found in the Old and New Testaments. These are people who suffered everything from hostile-take-over to the long dark night of the soul. The religious books of the Greeks and Romans aren't this honest, while the books of the other religions are offering ways out and transcendence as if anyone can transcend their problems. I don't want to be free of the universe that I was born into any more than I want this to be all there is. Accept, reject, transcend, digress, live life to the fullest; these are empty promises of a world that wants to drown out the pain with innumerable opiates or liquors. At the end of the day whether we are on pain killers or not, we are still dead. The Prophets knew this. What was it that made them still worship? What was it that made them still believe when they had God come right out and say, "You are going to suffer"?

I suppose I want to know that. I want to know what makes a person tick like that. Perhaps the funniest thing is that most of us today lump all religions together. But Christianity, right down to its Hebraic roots, is utter madness. The answer it gives isn't "do this," its "believe;" and that is what the world finds the most unbelievable despite all the evidence that it seems to be the most correct answer. We don't cure cancer by doing something, but we do something because we have belief that we can accomplish something. I believe in God not because I will be free of my suffering or because everyone else is doing it, I believe in God because life is pretty nice with a bunch of crap along the way and to be perfectly honest its nice when Someone just listens.

I don't write this with any belief that this will "win" anyone to Christ. I write this to say, I'm still standing. I wish there were some other way or path or logical system. There isn't. God is God. Life doesn't work our way. That's the answer. In that way, Christians are far from close-minded, but rather open-eyed. We're done looking for systems or the sweet by and by, we just want to live life in good times and bad times.

Freedom (A Reformation Day Blog Post)

2009-10-31T22:18:00.001-07:00

Freedom (A Reformation Day Blog Post)

Today found me wandering the streets of Bexley, Ohio in aluminum foil with a foreigner in search of food. It isn't everyday I do this mind you. My friend and I commented that it would be impossible to do this in a month or so, but halloween affords people a great chance to do things that are normally frowned upon by society. Of course neither of us were going to a party. I had been invited to one, but I just didn't feel like going. However, I had also heard about Chipotle and aluminum foil and so at seven o'clock I found myself in a line waiting to get a burrito.

It had really started at work when someone told me about the goings-on at Chipotle. All I needed was a piece of aluminum foil and I could get a free meal. I got off work and promptly went to sleep. Upon waking up I got a piece of aluminum foil from my roommate, Seth, and figured that would be the end of it. I would just turn it into a necklace and throw it around my neck. I would get by with the bare minimum. Indeed while waiting in line I saw people who had done just that. I took a nap, got a shower, and called my friend from another country. He and I picked up groceries and then we decided to buy aluminum foil for the event.

But what to be? Well, in case most of you don't know, its Reformation Day. Most Americans (Christians included) don't know about this day. It is the day when Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the doors of Wittenberg Church protesting the sale of indulgences.¹ Though the work wasn't meant to be circulated throughout Christendom, the invention of the printing press pretty much led to this end. Rome and Luther went back and forth, and that children is where Protestants come from.

I got back to my room, opened web pages with Martin Luther's German mug on them, broke out my permanent marker, and drew Luther on one side and the Lutheran Seal on the other. I put it on and walked down the street. It was fun standing in line and I got to talk with some kids about Reformation Day, Monty Python, and history in general. I came back and finished my burrito with my friend and we watched Gladiator. The movie throws out the word freedom a lot and my friend and I got to talking about what it means to be free.

Of course I can talk about the Freedom to wear aluminum foil in public or to talk about my faith, but freedom means a lot more than all that. Too often we view Freedom as the ability to do what we want, rather than the ability to be who we were meant to be. My friend told me how he was glad to have come to the United States to study, but how homesick he could be. He told me how he regretted not going to a concert, but at the time didn't know how he could have gone. I find it interesting how both incidents have joy and pain. Each of our decisions is like that. With every choice we get some pain along with the joy; which is one of the most overlooked aspects of freedom. I can remember hating to get up in the morning to fly to cities when I worked for the airlines, but I wouldn't trade one of those trips for an extra hour of two in bed.

In 1517, when Luther nailed the ninety-five theses to the doors of Wittenberg he was captive to the freedom on the Word. He would sacrifice everything even "life, goods, honor, children, or wife." We are so removed from that time that freedom is taken for granted. If one looks around one can see that everywhere people are in chains. We like chains, they feel comfortable after awhile and we don't mind the excuse for boundaries. We say that the simplest things are courageous, but real courage is not in what we do, but in who we are willing to become. And it is sad that in that regard we Americans who have so much are upstaged by a medieval monk from nowhere.

notes

¹The last thing I want to do is to misrepresent the other side, but here is a brief history of indulgences. During the crusades people in Western Europe were worried that if they killed they would go to Hell. In order to counteract this, the Pope said he would pardon anyone involved and give them an indulgence. That worked well for the crusaders, but not for people who could not fight and yet still were worried about their immortal souls. So the church of Rome said that with a donation, the people wouldn't have to worry about Hell. Years later, Rome would still be giving out indulgences for donations. In Luther's time, Pope Leo X wanted to build a new church in Rome. He thought that indulgences (and borrowing money) was the perfect way to handle it. However, Luther took issue to the fact that people were paying to, in essence, get out of Hell. Ergo, the ninety-five theses. Oh, and the church that Leo built can still be seen today. It's called St. Peter's Basillica. It is amazing what you can buy if you are willing to split apart Christendom.

When is Too Far, Too Far?

2009-10-21T13:55:00.001-07:00

When is Too Far, Too Far?

P.Z. Myers threw the Holy Qur'an and Dawkins' God delusion in the trash with some coffee grounds and took a picture of it. He drove a rusty nail through a communion wafer and took a picture of it. What was the point? What did he hope to achieve? One could argue, as Myers did, "that nothing should be held as sacred" and yet we all have lines that we cannot or will not cross. We all have some sort of sacred line that will end a conversation. To not acknowledge this is to be both foolish and willfully disrespectful.

In science we human beings are required to question everything but have respect for the answers that manifest themselves. In religion we are required to question everything but have respect for the answers that manifest themselves. Some atheists have tried to get to God and cannot. I am glad I do not sit in judgment of them. I cannot judge others and I am reproached if I ever do so. One will find that most Christians adopt this viewpoint (difficult as it is). However there is a portrayal of Christians as being close-minded bigots. I would like to say that everyone in church is a Christian, but as one wise Christian put it, "just because a mouse is in the cookie jar, doesn't make it a cookie." We all know Christians whose grasp on the Bible is as tenuous as an atheist's grasp and once again, I am glad I do not sit in judgment of them.

So what does one mean when one dumps the Holy Qur'an in the garbage with coffee grounds and The God Delusion? It means that the opposing view offers nothing at all. If we live in a world with P.Z. Myers' and such, I would say that we live in a world of close-mindedness. I have on my computer copies of works by great Muslim philosophers, but I am very much not a Muslim. I want to know what a person thinks and how their feelings are going to interact with their thoughts and culture. I want to know what makes a person a person; and if I just look at science for this, I miss a great deal of life and the human experience.

I love science. I believe when certain scientists tell me something and certain scientists tell me other things. Our belief in science, if we are truly honest, has little to do with the scientific method and a great more to do with faith. We put our faith in scientists because we believe they have done their homework and thought things through very carefully. Sometimes our faith is well-placed, but most of the time science experiences a paradigm shift every fifty years or so. It is no big deal, it is just alternating opinions. We are left with technology that is less efficient or useful and the technology based off of the new science is better, the technology of the future is usually better still. Science doesn't so much move from strength to strength, but rather from opinion to opinion. A great scientific mind will be open to new theories and humble to not being the smartest person alive; but they share something in common with the Christian fanatic when they fail to be open to different ways of thinking. Einstein was brilliant but became foolish with his outright denial of quantum mechanics. (I suppose the question is, if he is proven right, will we still think of him as foolish?)

But the matter still stands of a Qur'an, an atheist book, and coffee grounds in a garbage can; and what that means. To Mr. Myers it may mean one thing in his mind, but deeper down it means quite another. I suppose that his notes on a particular task he is trying to achieve in his work are sacred in a way. I suppose that his marriage certificate is sacred to him. And if they are not, than what is a human beings life without some bit of the sacred, the thing which is set apart. There has to be some sort of core to what makes an human an human. The philosophers come back to this time and time again. What is it that makes us so special? One could argue it is the fact that we have something that is uniquely sacred to us. We may disagree on what that is, but we can all agree that there is a sacred core to the human experience.

I believe Mr. Myers did this subconsciously as an act of provocation. As if provocation had meaning in and of itself. He was not looking to bring enlightenment to people, but to set himself apart. Christianity has always wrestled with this but, because humility is so interwoven into what we are supposed to believe, we have never been able to divorce ourselves from the need to be humble. Mr. Myers action does bring up a good point on one level to always question, something all people are called to do; but his motivation was not to do this. His motivation was to call attention to his own enlightenment. If you are an atheist, I pray you do not read this next part because I am going to let you in on a secret that has made Christians the most dominant force in the world, namely: be humble when you reach out and always do good works with the love of God. My best friend is an atheist and because of his brotherly love for me, I can never dismiss him or his belief. He gets into trouble when his beliefs which stem from his desire to be right try and dominate me and put me into a box. I know that my "Christian witness" when driven by my desire to be right and not show love or commune with my friend, drive him further from the cross. When Jesus was giving the Great Commission he did not say "Go into the world and make disciples of all nations..." but rather, "as you are going out into the world make disciples of all nations ..." This means that we are to humbly live our lives in ways bring people to asking the questions.

It is hard to dismiss an atheist who humbly serves a world in need and has entered his or her decision with great fear and trembling, just as it is hard to dismiss a Christian who reaches his or her conclusion in such a manner. However, it is easy to dismiss a Christian who condemns you to Hell. It is easy to dismiss an atheist who throws books into a garbage can with coffee grounds.

On Pointing to Hidden Things

2009-10-17T09:41:00.001-07:00

On Pointing to Hidden Things

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

-Genesis Chapter One Verse One

Its only a small word made up of two Hebrew Letters. It can be pronounced with just one sound, "eth". It is the word אֵ֥ת. It is untranslatable into English. Some would say it is because its meaning is too obscure for English. Our language can do a lot of things, but from time to time it runs into some word out there that is so foreign it just cannot process it. However, I don't believe that this our problem with אֵ֥ת. The problem is that the word means too much.

You see, it is usually viewed as the sign of the definite direct object, not translated in English but generally preceding and indicating the accusative. What does that mean anyway. It means that this is a word that is constantly pointing to something. "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth." In the Greek the phrase goes a little something like this: ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν. In this version God is first and, like in good English, it is in the active voice. God is the actor and acts upon the "heaven and the earth." It works out about that same way in the Hebrew. In reading the Hebrew wrong it would appear that the sentence starts with what we see and know around us, the heavens and the earth, and then proceeds to tell us the author with the little word אֵ֥ת pointing the way. I even read it that way at first. Then I remember when you are reading in the language of God's people, you have to start reading (and thus thinking) backwards. So rather than the world creating a God, we see that the Greek, the Hebrew, and the English translators believe God comes first.

In fact in this little word can be the seen the entire Gospel and good news for us all. It is uncomplicated, unassuming. It is found near the beginning of our story but does not have to be first to show its important. It is with the first words. Does it sound familiar? In the beginning it was with the words that made creation and it was the word that shows who made creation happen. In fact it is made up of aleph and tav. These two letters begin and close the Hebrew alphabet. They are the A to Z. For the Jewish people (and I would hope for Christians as well) the A to Z of life is the Torah. The Mishlei, or as we know it: Proverbs says, "The Torah is more precious than pearls."¹ The Midrash states that the "Torah is more precious than the first born." Truly, the Torah is the Judeo-Christians A to Z.

However, we Christians believe in another A to Z. We believe in the Alpha and the Omega who is the beginning and the end. In Christ, Christians have a unique relationship with Torah because in Christ we see that Torah wrapped itself in flesh and walked among us. In Matthew 15 we get the sense that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets. We get the feeling that like a pin-prick on a balloon or a jar that flips in water to finally let it all in, Jesus burst a hole in our world with finite beginnings and finite endings and let the whole of God's Kingdom come rushing in after Him. We are drown by the fact that The ΑΩ put on the clothes of we human beings and, as Gene Peterson puts it, "moved into the neighborhood." The Word that made the world dwelt among us.

So moving away from the letters, we should move towards the word. What exactly does אֵ֥ת do. Well it connects God to the Heavens and the Earth. It is an arrow that shows the flow of how God made the Heavens and the Earth. One might even say that it is the Word that God breathed out to make the Heavens and the Earth. A Word that was with God and somehow this Alpha and Omega became God's presence. All things were created through this word and without it ... well ... you can't have the Heavens and Earth created; at least not without the beginning and the end involved.

This is only what the word אֵ֥ת is and does not even begin to address what that word does. It points. One of the best translations for Torah is "Way." A way is usually something that points us down a certain direction. Here the Torah was pointing towards something ... something BIG. It was pointing us its fulfillment. It was writing about something big that had happened once long ago and was making itself known all over again. It was pointing to itself not as an end, but as that which is waiting to be fulfilled. The Laws, beautiful though they are, could never bring us into right relationship with the Author of creation. The Laws were band-aids to a broken and bruised world that could only see the Torah, and the world that was built on top of it, dimly. So, we ask ourselves, what if this Way became human and walked among us? What then are we to do? The word that God used as the way to create creation that showed He was the creator and pointed to His handiwork is the same Word, Way, Alpha and Omega, Aleph and Tov that we Christians worship and find peace and rest in today.

The early Christians, or People of the Way as they were called, saw all this clearly. They marked the letters Chi and Rho, two other letters that mean their salvation, where they were. It is amazing how two little letters bring us back to a right relationship with אֱלֹהִ֑ים, the Strong God, Elohim, who is so powerful and big that He surrounds the entire universe and so majestic that our words are often forced to do things that only our imaginations can glimpse of, just to speak of Him.²

notes

¹It should also be noted that Jesus once said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl of great value that one would sell everything to possess." I believe a good association can be made between the words of the Torah and the Kingdom of Heaven. Christians and non-Christians can argue the aspects of this for as long as they want, but is dialogue with the Holy Scripture something to be rejected? By no means! If we are to argue about trivial matters and amongst our closest friends, how much more are we supposed to argue about deep matters and amongst God in Heaven?

²My Greek Professor who loves Hebrew will know about the roots and origins of Elohim, however it is a plural verb always used of and considered as One or perhaps is like how we use the royal singular that speaks of itself in the plural (i.e. Queen Victoria's famous statement, "We are not amused."); and it means powerful and strong.

Now What?

2009-08-16T10:39:00.001-07:00

Now What?

Yesterday couldn't have gone better. From beginning to end it was a great day. I spent time with friends, was able to work, and saw a movie to boot. Yesterday's over and I guess I am dealing with its fall-out. Yes, there is the awareness of homework yet to be completed and a rather lengthy day at work to look forward to; but what am I to do in the good times. Truth be told I listened to Sara Grove's song, "Painting Pictures of Egypt," a song about what to do when we are thrown into the chaotic beauty of real life.

I have lived too many years in a dormant winter place, a slave to the routine of it all. It wasn't good, it just wasn't frightening because it didn't require too much. I could take the bad; I really could! Not just the mediocrity, the bad! I could stand the rejections, and firings, and even the ennui that mediocrity heaps out upon us. Now that I am in Greek and working at Starbucks, I can take that too. It is painful and the rewards aren't that noticeable.

But what am I to do with a day as wonderful as yesterday? What am I to do when I get blown away by one good thing after another? I felt close to God in my suffering of futility.¹ But, when things shake out for good, I am totally at a loss. Perhaps, just as we are to give our problems to God, maybe we are to give our good feelings back to God. I am not talking about "giving thanks" here. I am talking about something else that I just can't quite put my finger on. Maybe things were just too out of the ordinary that my brain is having trouble taking it all in; or maybe it was so good that I would rather not know how good things could be when I contemplate how mundane my life usually is.

In any case, I will give thanks to God and ask for His help, even on the good days.

I really ought to learn German. I am sure they have words that mean "suffering caused by futility" or "suffering from too much joy." If anyone knows words to describe these things (besides "emo"), let me know.

A link to: What's the Other Guy Saying, by Spencer Troxell

2009-08-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

My good friend Spencer wrote a post that I believe is handles this question even better than my own. It is good to have friends who can say things better than we can. Here is the link: What's the Other Guy Saying

ochlarchy

2009-08-12T23:49:00.001-07:00

ochlarchy

It is late, very late in fact. I should be in bed, but I felt that this was important. It was too important to be left until some later time when life got in the way of the things that really matter. You see, I am afraid for my country now more than I have been in quite some time. I am afraid that the careful tapestry woven over so many centuries is coming undone. I don't want to live in a country that becomes "America-in-Name-Only" or becomes the foolishly pathetic Rome just before the barbarians over ran it. I am a patriot, I guess ... but not how certain people define patriots.

Once upon a time, before we were anything worth mentioning and even before we were a country, several British soldiers fired into a crowd of Americans who had been hurtling not just insults but objects at them. Someone yelled "fire!' and when the dust had settled, dead bodies lay on the ground and up rose from the masses a battle cry. No one would defend the soldiers except on patriot by the name of John Adams. The story is well-known for those who have studies the history of their country, but for those of you who don't know it. John Adams won his defense because he believed they were innocent and he believed in a nation ruled by laws and not ruled by the dictates of fear or by the mob.

Too often we have seen war-torn countries descend into bitter violence as one mob clashes with another in a futile war of empty words. We have seen the "dignity of man" flagrantly ignored in favor of a powerful and stirred up mob. This is the rule of law of the two-bit dictatorship and the worthless anarchic state. History has seen these places and will see them again and again. They exist not for the protection of their people, but as a warning for everyone else. These are the dead and dying places of the world; and while we give them aid we take from them a warning to never become like them. It would better to be blown off the face of the earth by an act of God than to descend into that Hell.

Adams would try to re-enforce this notion throughout his political life, while others like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine would try and exploit the whims of the people's emotions to further some grand view that THEY HAD. The rule of law was important to Adams, Washington, and even Hamilton; and they sought to buttress the United States of America with it.

Now we are screaming about health care reform. The fact is, I don't care about the issue itself anymore. I'd love to dialogue about it, but there is a far more important problem facing our country. It is this: Are we to be ruled by civil dialogue and laws or are we to be ruled by the capricious whims of screeching mob. I would be glad to hear us talk about how to make our health care system work better. I am sure those in congress would too, but tonight I beheld something that embarrassed me more than I have been embarrassed in years. I saw an elected member of congress asked a question and then shouted down when he tried to respond. I saw another member try and answer a question and then be chanted into submission. If the tyranny over a people's laws gives this group a sense of power and righteousness, than I believe that this people is no longer a civilization but a collection of savages.

Some Musings on Fame

2009-07-07T09:10:00.001-07:00

Some Musings on Fame

With the "King of Pop" dead people are talking quite a good deal about what drove him to the grave. I wasn't going to write this post, because I felt like there was already enough stuff out there. But something struck me this week and I seemed to have found the proper context in which to frame my musings.

Post-Modern America & The Cult of Personality

Billy Mays was the quintessential celebrity. Unlike other celebrities who earn their stripes by acting or playing in a band or (unfortunately) writing a novel or being a public figure; Mr. Mays claim to fame was that he was famous. He was what is known as a pitchman. He sold products, that was pretty much it. He earned notoriety for doing so and became a household name. Somewhat laughable sure, but he had his fame. With that fame and fortune he was able to build an house and start a business. The question is, what did he really create in the world that would warrant fame?

Paul Hewson, better known as Bono, the frontman for U2, disdains his fame but understands its uses. In one interview he said, "I'm just trying to put this thing called fame to good use." However, when one watches most famous people it is easy to see how they have to be drug from the limelight kicking and screaming. When one looks at what is behind there fame, one is faced with a truly frightening reality. Like the great and powerful wizard, there may be nothing behind the curtain. John and Cate are going through a messy break-up. Paris Hilton was foisted on us as something we should admire.¹ American Idol and the myriad talent shows are great, but one feels as if those singers are even one step removed from the bands who play small shows until finally breaking into the big time.

Why do we do it? What purpose does it all serve? America, land of opportunity and meritocracy. A country the Hamilton envisioned as place where all people could get ahead by shear hard work and perseverance, a place that Washington and his army fought for the right of a government by the people conspicuously devoid of king and gentry; finds that it cannot get rid of that desire for nobility.

I can't help but think of George Orwell's "1984." The thing he left out was celebrity. With enough celebrities one can take over the world. In a recent ad campaign by T-Mobile, the company pokes fun at this. They claim to have numerous economists go door-to-door to explain why T-Mobile is the right choice in cell-phone coverage, only to have each and every economist forced away. At the end Catherine Zeta Jones, the original spokesperson for T-Mobile, goes to a door, and hey presto, she's accepted.²

How bad is it that we can be shown exactly what is going on, and still not care one bit? Quick question, who is the president of France? The chancellor of Germany? The prime minster of Japan? Who leads China? Where is Iraq for heaven's sake? These are questions that no one cares about, but if Michael Jackson dies we drop everything.

Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen

There is a certain glee we take from watching heroes fall. Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, called it: Schadenfreude. For those of you who frequent my page, you know all about it; but for those of you who don't, it is the concept that we take joy from other people's misery. I suspect some of us feel that way about Michael Jackson. His over the top behavior seemed lead us to believe that he was going to fall and fall hard. Jackson was obsessed with "the show," it ruled his life. He had bought into the myth he had created and in that darkness he found his oblivion. It was the perfect death for a twisted public's spectacle.

While reading, I happened upon another interesting article about a non-celebrity. Whereas Michael Jackson moonwalked, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Armstrong however, does not give interviews and practically disappeared from center-stage. He had done what he thought was his job, and it certainly would've been easy and tempting to capitalize on all that fame; but he has rejected it. He took a job working at the University of Cincinnati where students used to form human pyramids just to get a look through the window at his office.

Today, People don't climb up to see his windows and the limelight has fallen away from Armstrong as a public figure and installed him as an historical figure. He seems to live a life of quiet dignity away from the cult of personality which has already claimed so many. Perhaps, like the astronaut with ice-water in his veins who landed safely in the Sea of Tranquility, we would be best to ignore the siren's call from the rocks of fame. Perhaps it would be better to go about our business and not look for our fifteen minutes of fame or glory in the fall of others.

Incidentally, I have yet to meet a man who finds Paris Hilton attractive.
I suppose it should be duly noted that it is Catherine Zeta Jones; who, unlike Paris Hilton, is attractive. Still she is a celebrity and therefore my argument is still valid.

ThoughtsAboutaVision

2009-07-01T20:00:00.001-07:00

I once remember in college having a vivid image of Jesus under a tree in the middle of a field of green grass. He was sitting under it and when I walked up to him, I felt bad for not living up to the standards that I thought every Christian should live up to in their lives. I hadn't helped the poor or the needy as much as I should have, I hadn't been as personally responsible or read the Bible or been as consistent with so many things. Yet, when I went to him I can remember him saying it would be okay.

Life doesn't turn out okay ... or at least it doesn't feel that way. Years of flailing around in the wilderness of just life itself takes a toll on a person. It isn't so much that we feel unworthy or we do things that aren't that great; its just the mediocrity of it all. The nine to five job or being stuck in the same place can kill a person. I'd wake up with that vision in my head and my heart. I'd feel it getting harder and harder to get back there. The rage just to be under the tree and hear him say it was going to be okay wasn't half so heart breaking as feeling that it was getting farther and farther away.

The thing is that faith in God is never about us. It never has been and never will be. Faith in God is a painful, grueling experience. There is this glimmer of hope in God and that glimmer gets fainter and fainter. The mountain top experiences where you thought you believed in God move further and further into your recesses and it is only the fool who always says that he or she had always clung to faith.

These people forget the great giants of faith. They forget how Abraham doubted, Moses had to lose everything, and Paul had to be knocked off his ass. These are the people that we idolize in our churches and hold up to as great examples of what it means to believe. Perhaps the greatest example of one of these giants of faith is Elijah who, having just scored a victory for the existence of God that is still unparalleled in all of existence, not only becomes suicidal, but wants God to do the job for him. (This is either the most whiny assisted suicide of all recorded history or the most lazy.)

It is because of these imperfect people that a Christian gets his or her strength. Some ludicrous nabob is "called" because they are fit for nothing else in life but to follow God with all their heart, mind, and spirit.

This is the point that most aggravates Americans though. The book shelves are filled with self-help books tinged with passages from scripture taken out of context and forced to obey the philosophy of the time. How often do we listen to Joel Olstein or some other schmuck in slicked back hair and a three piece suit telling us life will be okay if we just follow God's instructions. The fact is that following God's instructions is pitiful, painful, and pure suffering. No amount of sugar coating will get us around this. The Bible isn't joking when it says that every day we are crucified with Christ.

The fact is we don't live in a Christian nation. We never have. Trust me, I'm an history major. (Famous last words.) The people in this country say they don't want to give the money to help the poor; they don't want to pay for better health care, schools, infrastructure, and development; they don't want to end abortion; they don't want much of anything except to have a big screen television, a cushy job, and a decent tax break around April.

Then they do something good and they feel like they have appeased God. Some distant memory of what they should have done, who they should have been, came into their hearts and mind for a split second and they think they have tasted the wellspring of everlasting happiness and goodness and have it in with God. I have done "good things" and I still come back to that dream and doubt ... and doubt.

I doubt because I am probably more American then I would like to admit. I haven't gone to save starving children in Africa or gone to fight for the right to vote in Asia or built orphanages in Latin America. American Christians put too much emphasis on what you have done and not enough on who you serve. Bonhoeffer once said it was better for a good man to do a bad thing than for a bad man to do a good thing. For the longest time I couldn't understand what he meant. The words were caught in my head all the time and I quoted it quite a good deal too, but it still never really made sense. It makes sense to me, but not to most of us living in turn of the millennium America.

It means the good deeds and noble causes that you and I have fought for are nothing without our love of God. I think back to the great saints and what failures they were and realize what made them saints was never anything they had done, but when God called they listened. God rarely calls us to be CEOs and multimillionaires. God calls us to suffer and find joy.[1] The Bible has its share of kings, but more often has its share of nobodies.

This here is what the devil loves so much. This here is what Americans hate so much. Americans pay lip service to Christ, but when push comes to shove we do things for ourselves. Who are we? What do we really want? Nietzsche talked about the rise of the superman and how Christ, though a charismatic character in his own right, had ruined that. We Americans follow Nietzsche far more than we follow Christ. In many ways Nietzsche was right and we would be better off to abandon Christ and the “lies” we no longer believe. We would be better off to live as libertarians and forget the “myths.”

Yet, I have lived the failed life. I have lived a life of trying to figure out the answers. Perhaps that is why the fates conspired against me and allowed to make me a Christian. I shouldn’t be one. I doubt too much. I read books “that a Christian oughtn’t.” I have friends who aren’t Christian at all. Then I think of Christ whose faith overcame the doubts that tried to assail him, who talked to people he shouldn’t have, and who was friends to people who were the worst kind of sinners. It really puts things in perspective. The lies vanish and one can see the false dichotomy. There is not should’ve in God’s book, just the question: are you willing to serve?

I am not, and never will be. My life will always be filled with doubts where I wonder if there is really anything out there. I will wonder as to whether there is a God in heaven and how this world could have ended up such a mess. I will wonder if that vision of Christ under a tree telling me all will be okay is real or whether it was all something I created to make me feel okay. In this wonder I will probably die as I have lived. Still, it is better to have wonder than to die without it. I should count my life half lived without the pain and its inevitable comfort.

[1] It should be noted that this particular thread could be an essay in and of itself. However, I leave you with this thought. Name any artist, musician, or business leader of any lasting renown who has ever known success without suffering. Van Gogh only sold one painting. The Beatles were rejected from numerous labels. Steve Jobs lost his company only to come back and make it stronger than before. Suffering and joy are bound up together. To miss the former is to have a shallow victory. To miss the latter is to dive into despair and oblivion. The walk of faith is just the same razor’s edge. The only difference being is that you have to trust in something else to make the steps for you.

Paranoia

2009-06-21T11:04:00.001-07:00

Paranoia

"I know the world's been sheared by a drunken barber and I don't need anybody to tell me," says Walter Brennan in Frank Capra's Meet John Doe. Surely the faulty pretenses of the Iraq war with its ever changing reasons for why we attacked or the amount of political posturing for pork barrel spending leave all of us except the most foolish feeling a bit queasy. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in my opinion the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, put it this way:

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?

I suppose when faced with lies and deceit, the subtle wearing away of our consciences and the endless deals even the best of us make with ourselves just to get through one day; a better world can seem so far removed from this ever present hell we inhabit. This leaves us either docile or angry.

I know the anger. The ever present urge to break free from the dogmas that envelop us so much that we feel we are suffocating just by being alive.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The words of Dylan Thomas seem so real and true to many of us about life as well as death. We live with a rage against death and a rage against life so much that we live with both of them deep inside of us. We don't even know that we are all poisoned.

I was talking with a person at a local bookstore today about politics and the other subjects that one is not supposed to discuss in general (you know, all the fun things). He began discussing how America was trying to influence Iran by keeping the media talking about Iran.¹ He said it was a CIA² and State Department plot. (He is not alone, apparently the clerics in charge of Iran also believe this.) It seems where ever we go these days we hear the same stuff. We hear about such and so spinning a story, and no doubt this happens; but what is intolerable is the outright conspiracy theories.

Quite possibly one of the best conspiracies is that we went to Iraq for oil. This is a simple answer to a complex question. Oil is inevitably linked to money, but money in and of itself is not something that is desirable. Rather money is a form of order and to obtain more order means that you are winning a game. The thing many people miss is that there are more forms of order that people will follow. There are things like pride or ego that lead to actions just as disagreeable as the reckless pursuit of money and power. Now I am sure that oil played a role, but the real reason was obviously hurt pride because Daddy Bush didn't finish the job of deposing the resident dictator of Iraq.³

However, what really made me write this blog post was something I saw while watching The Best Years of Our Lives, one of the finest pictures of the year 1946. The movie follows three servicemen who are trying to readjust to life after the war. At one point a man begins to commiserate with a sailor who has lost his hands. Then he tells him that the entire war had been a falsehood and certain powers had orchestrated the entire endeavor for their own selfish reasons. This is more than two of the service men can handle and they lay the guy out.

The point in this blog post, and yes it has a point, is that life is far more nuanced than we would like it to be; and sometimes that nuance is in a cruel and simple answer that has little root in webs of reasons and large scale organizations. JFK was killed by a lone gunman, September 11th was not orchestrated by the CIA, there is nothing at the bottom of Loch Ness, and allergies in America are not the plot of the evil Kleenex company. (I am willing to be proven wrong when the evidence surfaces.) I suppose the humoresque nature of such things would be benign except for the fact that they get in the way of any real work being done, just as a television show which we would never watch in a million years keeps us from mowing the lawn or writing a paper. The things that are less than inconsequential destroy our reality and begin to weigh us down.

In addition to this it poisons our notions of humanity. I admit to being repulsed by order for order's sake, but I do love the notion that human beings create order as a tool. When we do not trust our government as a tool or our businesses as tools; we are rejecting a part of our human nature. We are choosing to be animals rather than rational beings. In addition to this we denigrate our fellow humans by saying we are more incorruptible and more pure and made of better stuff than they are be they bankers or bureaucrats.

Lastly, people mess up or let something leak. I have never known of any secret that can last as long as our conspiracy theories. Human nature will let the truth leak out eventually. People are not machines, they are flesh and blood and usually stupid errors are the cause of great catastrophes just as planned and organized terror are as well. The lone gunmen wreak more havoc many times than the organization of great powers. To look for unavailable motives to back up our audacious theories is in the same vein of stupidity.

I am not a Pollyanna, I have heard the spin of fools and mortals who try and back up their ludicrous actions with spurious justification. I have heard a great deal and read a great deal. However, America and capitalism and the government are not the things to fear; as one person once said, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." As a recovering phobo-phobic, I would say that is pretty good advice for the paranoids to heed.

As if the media needs an excuse for a good story. I can just hear John Meacham of Newsweek trying to decide the merits of covering a story about a country known for its anti-democratic tenor and totalitarian tendencies which is in a state of near meltdown as its monsters finally come up from years of sewn dragon's teeth. "No, I just cannot cover this story, it would not be fair to the good people of Iran to cover the news." Yeah, the Obama administration had to work really hard to keep this story alive.
Unlike many people who talk about the CIA, I have actually studied the history of the organization. I have many facts about it. For instance: Did you know the CIA was not founded by demons or that its primary goal was not to destroy countries or that many times it was the people's will that forced it to so many of the things for which it is criticized. First off, it was created to beam in news from the Western World into Eastern Europe and Russia via organizations called Radio Free Europe and Radio Freedom respectively. Secondly, when given the task of toppling the elected government of Chile during the Nixon administration, the CIA was vociferously against such an action. It was in fact planned by people within ... wait for it ... the Nixon administration (most notably Henry Kissinger). Go figure.
I suppose that replacing one conspiracy theory with another one is not the appropriate way to go about things, but my justification is this: First, Hussein is out of power and we have no oil revenues (nor did it ever look like we would get any in the first place, only liberal ideologues thought that might happen). Secondly, I do not believe it is a conspiracy theory because the answers are so manifest and most of the public knows the reasons anyway. Concurrently it should be mentioned that all of us (except for a few that marched against the war) were of the opinion that it was the right thing to do. Nancy Pelosi, George Bush, and yours truly all kept silent and backed the war de facto if not out right. I kept silent. I did not march. I didn't think it would happen. I should have made sure. But the hypocrisy of the Americans who say they were lied to is both inexcusable and intolerable. Admit you were wrong and then work to fix this mess.

Among the Fragments of Life.

2009-06-19T13:51:00.001-07:00

Among the Fragments of Life.

I just got back from a mission trip down in Tennessee. I am tired and a bit hungry and I suppose that things will make sense tomorrow afternoon. In Western Culture there is a phrase about coming down from a mountain-top experience. We have seen the face of God or witnessed some sort of epiphany and all of a sudden the clouds come and its just us again. Its hard when that mountain-top experience never really comes and you are plunged into a deeper valley. I combed the myriad of e-mails and found most of them to be spam or unrelated threads of thoughts thrown into the universe. (I suppose that is what this blog post is as well.) I deposited money into a bank account that has been much depleted from various trips and malnourished with my measly pay-check. My computer screen is full of half-started starts of stories where the perfect words seem to escape me. Life is full of imperfection and we just say, "Get over it. Move on."

To a degree these people are right. We cannot just stay still and immobilized, but neither should we accept the fact that our lives are fragmented and fractured. Too often they lie broken and disheartened. Maybe that is just my life and I am projecting it on others. There is a sad chord humming through the course of our lives. It never goes away and it gives some sort of importance to our existence that would be missing otherwise. I try and cure it or ignore it or "move on", but it never goes away. I wonder if others are afraid to talk about it: this sadness. The sad feeling of coming down into the dirt and dust and muck and mire of a world that seems so frankly indifferent about our survival that it borders on cruel.

This is the world of the atheist and this is the world of the Christian. These two people exist in the same world. I suppose I'm a lost cause. I have tried so hard to free myself from fear. I can't do it. I lose my old faith daily and each day I have to keep coming back to a new vision. How I wish I could throw away my faith in God, but the alternative cannot exist in my worldview. I wish this world was a place where I didn't have to answer to anyone at all. I wish this world was a place where I would be pat on the back because I, by my own initiative and power did good and resisted evil. I wish I were God.¹

But I can't. I would like to stay in my room all day and work a dead-end job and read books. I would like an easy victory with no work. I just can't do it though. I am not strong enough and so I join the legions of failures; the group of people that Nietszche said had destroyed the world by stifling the Übermensch and creating a world where the dregs of society end up on top. I am a Christian. Why do I keep coming back to this problem? Why can't I let it go?

In order to be anything you must go back to square one all the time. I suppose we never outgrow numbers no matter how far into math we descend. My reason is this. I gave up the thing I loved most. I gave up trying to have all the answers and worry if people think I am smart. I stopped trying to predict my future.² I just gave up. And I gave up worrying about my timing. I stopped getting angry that I had not reached a point where I thought I should be. I gave up listening to a lot of things. The point is, I take things a lot less seriously because I take life a lot more seriously. I am not what I am. I am a lot of broken fragments that don't know where I fit. Big deal. Walk away. Stop being perfect. Just be human ... be what I am created to be.

And so, I just got back from Tennessee. I think I will take care of a few things, get some water and read. I think a deserve to take a break from worrying about things I didn't do wrong and can't control. Mazel Tov.

Yes, I said it Spencer. I would also like to see how many other people out there believe they have a "God complex."
Oh sure, I do it still. Its my personality. I am built that way. It is my blessing/curse; that strange aspect of your humanity that is both your attribute and achilles heel. I am a know-it-all, but I have to make sure that I am never defined by it and sprawling on a pin under the heading: A prime example of a know-it-all.

Coins

2009-06-11T10:41:00.001-07:00

Coins

I was recently watching the History channel, which ironically is something I never do. (I am serious, it is never really about history is it?) On an episode of Modern Marvels they were talking about money production in the United States. Apparently Hamilton had wanted bank notes to be the main legal tender, while Jefferson wanted coinage. Really quick, what do we usually use? Sure we have coins for the smaller amounts, but come on, we use bills ... or bank notes.

Now, for many of you who know me, you know that I think Jefferson was lucky enough to be floating along with the right people. If the British had won the revolution, it is pretty safe to say Jefferson would probably have survived just fine. However, Hamilton was a republican to the hilt. He realized that economic development could never reach its full potential under a strict state control. So, he had a lot invested in the success of a republican-based federal government.

However, if you were going to put coin production under a particular cabinet who would you pick: the state department or the treasury department? That's right: the state department. Why? I have no clue. But we had coin production and the banks had decentralized bank note printing.¹ Eventually we switched over to bank notes and Hamilton's idea was implement almost three-quarters (no pun intended) of a century later. Once again, the legacy of Jefferson haunted future generations.

What does all this mean for us today? A centralized government is a necessity, not an impediment. Government, as Russell Shorto would have it, is only one part of civilization just as the individual, religion, and business are. If you do not view your life as made up of symbiotic composites, you will end up becoming a paranoid fool or at the whims of paranoid fools. What causes this is quite simply fear. Fear is purely emotional, but disguises itself as reason. It is important to understand the aspects of our human experiment and not to fear them or rage against them.

There were about 7,000 different bank notes circulating around the United States at this time. Oh, and you didn't know if they were still viable in one place or another.

Fairy Tales

2009-06-04T11:46:00.001-07:00

Two Peoples of America

The most realistic fictions are the ones that do not seem most realistic, but rather the ones that gives us what we want most. In America, grace given for free, is anathema. Neither left-wing Christians nor right-wing Christians wish to embrace what the German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "costly grace." The left wishes to demonstrate its benovolence through its "good works" while the right wishes to prove its grace through its "economic gifts." Both miss the point that Christianity is not about what you get out of it. It is a world view in the purest sense precisely because it resists the things it can get out of the world and accepts the blessings of a good day and the suffering of a bad day with the same joy. It is absurd, I know, but those who argue that absurdity is a reason to discount it, miss the point that life itself is absurd and dictated by the absurd. However, I am not arguing Christianity right now, but rather the fairy tales created by the right and left in order to ignore their Christian heritage.

I voted for President Obama, lets get that on the table right now. I believe he is a good "American." And by this I mean he is a pragmatist who is willing to reach concessions and willing to try anything that might conceivably get us out of this financial dilemma. He has the country's best interest at heart and it probably wouldn't matter if he were Christian, Muslim, Atheist, or whatever; his first loyalty is to the country. So, when certain segments of society criticize him for not being Christian enough; I respond, "We probably wouldn't like that too much if he were." Mr. Obama was not elected to be the "high priest" or "pontifax maximus" of the United States. He was elected to be the president of the United States of America. If he were elected to be the bishop of a synod or the pastor of my church; then I would not have voted for him to hold this office. His views on Christianity are very "works-based" righteousness and it wouldn't take any great theological master work to punch holes in his viewpoints.

I bring up Mr. Obama not to discredit him, but to highlight two very important points. Firstly, in America, the separation of church and state is not only something beneficial to our survival; it is actually something quite deeply rooted in our Christian heritage. From Jesus saying, "give to Caesar what is Caesar's (the state) and give to God what is God's (the church)" all the way through Augustinian and Lutheran notions about the "Kingdom of the Right and Kingdom of the Left." Christians work within the state and follow the state's rules, but adhere to further dictums of their religious affiliation. The two come in conflict a great deal less than critics believe. Mr. Obama's faith and his reason for what he does are not mine. He is not Lutheran. His speeches are to deal with finances, the environment, and the Constitutionality of such-and-such; not on the theological aspects of free-will v. determinism or the Trinity. He has a job, his own brand of Christianity informs him of it; but I am not looking to him for theological insight and I highly recommend that you do not either.

The second point that I would like to make is that his Christianity is one that I find to be flawed. It expects that works are the cause rather than the fruits of grace. His decisions and his involvement allow him to have a good cache in the Bank of Heaven. He was fortunate enough that his politics was able to accept Christianity; and that he could get by with a little work's based righteousness. This is anathema to the good Lutheran, who, though we do good works, see it as a gift rather than an obligation. To many leftist Christians any "good work" is seen as the ultimate sign of faith and even trumps the Christian who "doesn't do enough good works." I don't know who is going to get into heaven, Jesus doesn't know who is going to get to heaven, and Barack Obama doesn't know who is going to get into heaven (and he has the good sense to keep quiet about it).

The right on the other hand seem to leave their faith at the door when they pursue their issues. Gay marriage and anti-abortion and (I don't know how) the tax code; become enmeshed not in their Christian world-view, but in their Pharisaical desire to be "right." To them the issue is paramount and their faith is secondary. They have a fervor that is not found in anyone in the New Testament except Saul of Tarsus before he saw the light. And so, when someone comes to the table with viewpoints they do not particularly care for, they do not argue the point but attack the issue. Dialogue cannot continue in that environment. However it is more important to know that Christ befriended the extortionists, the prostitutes, and whoever else would listen to him. He didn't do it to prove some point and he never accepted their excuses for why they did what they did; but to him the message of God's saving love was more important than some political plank. I wonder how many we needlessly alienate by not trying to figure out how God went missing in someone's life and how we can be like Philip and say "come and see." Instead the right is trying to legalize morals and ignoring that the law was fulfilled by Christ. We are not free from the law or tax codes or obligations to the state by Christ's death, but we are free to share the good news. That's what it means, and so much more.

The fictions of the religious right and the religious left are so desirable because they require us to be in charge. They allow us to delegate and regulate good works or morals. They don't allow the Holy Spirit and God to be at the center of our lives and so they should be disregarded as fairy tales that we ignore now that we are older. Our faith in God is bigger than our faith in the state or even in our own determinism. Our grace should be the determining factor in our lives.

Summer in Ohio

2009-06-03T08:13:00.001-07:00

Summer in Ohio

Its finally summer time in Central Ohio. The sky is gray and filled with rain and people have been working on lawns and house projects. The tulips and daffodils finished blooming a while ago and now it is time for the irises and daylilies to finish their cycle. A talk with a good friend of mine by the name of Spencer Troxell reminded me of something my dad said a long time ago. Spencer asked if I was being to harsh on people what with my criticisms; and that reminded me of how my dad said he was going to avoid writing anything nasty on his blog.¹

While none of us should be Pollyannas with rose-colored glasses and happy mindless babble; I think I have spent far too much time in the stuffy ivory towers of human perfection. When I say that we humans have issues and problems, its nothing new. The problem is that many of us can get so frustrated that the world is not the way it should be, that we often sound angry. Our idealized world becomes more important the world around us. We forget to look at people as people.²

So as I stare out my windows and onto the world around me and think of tomorrow and its promises of a good walk with a friend of mine, I think that maybe I am not taking life seriously enough. The serious fact that I didn't make a beautiful day and if I didn't, than maybe it was created for me to enjoy.

An almost herculean effort to be sure in this day and age of foaming-at-the-mouth-ideologues.
I was going to argue this point in this blog post, but it seems more appropriate to argue it in a footnote where it won't disturb the flow of the rest of my post and it will fulfill the requirement for my response. Mr. Troxell pointed out that I was too hard on humanity and that we have god complexes. He is right. I believe we all want to be, not just the hero of our story, but the gods as well. Whether that is good or bad is up to you and your philosophy. I believe I am too hard on people because we ignore just how wonderful it is to be human. Here is a bit of a paradox because in my criticism I am actually ignoring their humanity which has built into the capability of doing monumentally stupid things, but also can look up at the stars in wonder. It is pretty amazing that no matter who we are, we all seem to look up at the stars in wonder. I get frustrated when people just don't think too much, but I think way too much for anybody. I suppose that is projection of desires for people to think more about what they do. Big deal, its my way.

I also was told I didn't have to write so much, but I like to write. So whatever.

You Can Stop Whining Now

2009-06-01T19:07:00.001-07:00

You Can Stop Whining Now

Everyone does it. Its second nature really. I have family members who do it. My best friends do it. Heck, I do it all the time. It is America's favorite past time and is far more popular than football or baseball or pizza or the latest iPhone. Yes, folks its whining. And now that I come think about it, it is something so universal that Americans can't claim it as just their own. Which reminds me, "Why are all these foreigners whining as much as us? We're the best whiners in the world."

Now I know that just like war and the poor and reality television, whining will always be with us. Its human nature, so the story goes. I also know my little blog post is not going to stop me from whining. And if it doesn't stop me, than it certainly will not stop you. What kind of hypocrite would I be, then?¹ However, every time I start complaining I do make a mental note of what I am doing. I weigh very carefully the stupid problem I am having with the fact that I am a middle class American, and that alone tends to stop me in my tracks.²

However, I think whining is one of the most crucial subjects to talk about when discussing religion. It may even be more important than the problem of evil and is certainly more important than the number of angels which routinely find it enjoyable to dance upon the head of a pin.³ Yes, without facing the fact that we love to whine when we talk about religion is fundamental.

I'll give you a few examples. I have a good friend who, while discussing religion on a car ride said, "Dawkins was right."⁴

"How so?" I asked.

"He said that if another religion is attacked by an atheist, the Christian will always back the other religion."

Another time a coworker stated that atheists were the most hated segment of society.⁵

One of my friends from high school is lamenting that "the government" is systematically trying to remove religion from school systems via "evolution."

What do all of these statements have in common? The answer is whining. Are we a nation that believes what we believe so that it will get us special advantages? Do we join groups to because we want to be well-liked or highly esteemed? Or do we join a group because we believe and maybe even think, that it makes the most sense?

For human beings whining gets down to that most dangerous of human problems: pride. When we whine about our fair share, what we are really saying is that it is not fair that you do not think like me. We are wanting ourselves to be the free-thinking god of the universe and every other person to be a mindless automaton.⁶ And I think this is something that we Christians and Muslims and Buddhists and maybe even the atheists (if they want to join), can agree upon.

I find it in myself though. I can't understand why Christians aren't as interested in their philosophical heritage or why my non-theist friends just don't agree with me. It isn't for me to worry about though and it certainly isn't for me to whine about. There are too many issues that really need calmly and logically to be addressed without me feeling persecuted.

This is, I guess, the crux of my argument. We all feel persecuted, perhaps we are (albeit in a blunted American way). We all feel as if our opinions are overlooked or ridiculed and we all have a perverse desire to "be right." Instead we have to ask ourselves "Am I angry because I am not being taken seriously or because my position is being ridiculed?" If our position is being ridiculed than either humanity or God will take care of the problem. If it is because we are being ridiculed, than maybe we should rethink why we took up the position in the first place.

Atheists and Theists too often wear their believes as badges of honor and do not realize the humility involved with being chosen to take up their particular cause. I did not become a Christian because I wanted power, or money, or fame, or because it was easy, or because I am stupid. I became a Christian for reasons I do not know and because of answers I cannot even begin to fathom. I think that others chose their viewpoints for quite the same reason; or perhaps they are chosen by their viewpoints. When we shed ourselves of our own pride and fruitless struggling, we find the sad truth; "we are all beggars." Then we are happy for it at last and we realize we have no more reason to whine.

The Answer: An human being.
Albeit briefly. I am an human being after all.
The answer is 42. Deep Thought II hasn't reached this point yet. Aquinas hit upon it somewhere in his Summa ... Whatever. The dude wrote like eighty books because he was a freakin' monk. I mean, imagine one long toilet break and multiply that by like a billion and you are roughly in the ballpark for the kind of time monks had on their hands in the middle ages. When they got bored they created hospitals and eventually beer, but churning out eighty some volumes on every question that enters your I've-just-finished-my-umpteenth-ninety-nine-bottles-of-beer-on-the-wall-in-thirteenth-century-latin marathon is a pretty decent achievement.
Starting off a thought with something that from the outset is illogical is probably not a good thing.
Actually no. In my book atheists trail stop light algorithm programmers.
As a Christian I would argue that if there is a God, he is comfortable enough in His skin to allow us some degree of freedom. Even though He is perfect and free-thinking, He is comfortable with non-automatons.

I Have More Important Things To Do

2009-05-25T21:30:00.001-07:00

I Have More Important Things To Do

Throughout the history of Christianity we are faced with a rather difficult dilemma. We are constantly bridging two lands, there is a land that we have already been to and must keep going back to and a land that is our future. The concept is frustrating to the human mind, but completely necessary. In essence we are beset by a rather horrible dilemma which is how do we live in a world over which we have very little control. Therefore, I am not going to argue my Christian belief with anyone who is not willing to listen. It isn't arrogance, quite the opposite. It is humility. I am not in charge of getting people into heaven, but rather I am just in charge of playing my part.

In this area, Christians have a wonderful advantage. Our point is being made through us not by us. We do not have to prove the validity of our arguments. The first Christians lived in a culture whose hostility makes our current culture's hostility towards any opposing viewpoint look positively quaint. The atheist dismisses the Christian as being a fool, the "theist" dismisses the atheist as being damned. Round and round we go, well, at least no one is dying. No one is being nailed to crosses or fed to lions or having his or her country leveled to the ground. In short, the only thing we Americans have to worry about is the momentary discomfort of having someone look at us as if we have just uttered the most absurd nonsense.

This is not to say that I do not believe atheism to be problematic at best. It seems to have certain errors that grind my philosophies in particular ways. Atheism could very well be true. A world absurd enough to have a God would certainly be absurd enough to not have one. And if there is no God, well, Pascal's wager finds me quite well. However, I am digressing.

Nonsense though. Is that all we Americans have to fear? This is a country that stood up to the most powerful empire in the world because it thought "hey, just thinking out loud here, but what would happen if we elected our leaders? Just a thought." This is a country that fought itself to end slavery. This is a country that braved torturous months to go West into an uncertain future. The list goes on. Now, however, we are a country that is afraid to simply ask questions at a dinner party. Perhaps Americans have never been the best philosophers or theologians, but we are still human and that means we can buck the systems and cultures around us and say, "well, why not?"

I am not going to argue faith with anyone. People who argue against someone else's belief systems are almost always in it for the wrong reasons. We must argue for our own ... but even that is not quite it. We must share our happiness. A long standing belief in Western Thought is the centrality of happiness. Aristotle put happiness at the chief aim of humanity and Christ talked about "happiness" in the beatitudes. St. Thomas Aquinas would synthesize the two thoughts by calling the ultimate happiness: God. We all should believe that the most happy place we can think of is the thought we are most willing to share. And, to a Christian, that happy place is God. Don't bother trying to argue that that particular place is unhappiness to you or a certain group with whom you associate. To the Christian, God and all the things that go along with him are simply happiness.

I can imagine that there are many calling into question certain checkered spots in Christian history while seeming to leave out all the good its caused. By this "logic", systems apparently must be executed perfectly by human beings in order to be true; as though all of nature can operate from a completely different origin. Nothing in this world is perfect, one merely has to read the Bible to see that.

However, there is a great danger that all human beings share, both nontheist and theist alike, because we are all of us homo sapiens. We all wish for everyone to follow along with what we think is best. Christians identify this, quite rightly, as wanting to play God. And whether or not you believe in God or not, you must come to the realization that each and every one of us wants to dominate over the other person. Nietszche called this the "will to power" and the real question is if it is right or wrong.

It seems to be manifest that it is wrong. Societies that follow a cult of a leader who wishes to dominate and control everyone seem to lose their luster sooner or later. Be it the atrocities of Nazi Germany or velvet-fisted animal brutality of Augustus' Rome, people catch on that there is a sickness to the domination. (What has been the main problem with the current American wars has not been that they have happened, but that they may have happened for the wrong reasons and executed with the wrong ethics.)

Yet we know the opposite to be true as well. We love cultures where the leader, as selflessly as any human can, gives himself or herself over to helping others. We swoon over Gandhi and Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. because they wished to live in societies that valued the greatness of humanity and not the greatness of the self. The Christian finds that perfection in Christ. India and America and Christendom have done brutal things when these cultures have looked out for the interest of single individuals or privileged groups, but these are aberrations and because they are aberrations we find them so sickening. These aberrations are not the beliefs to which we want to adhere.

In Western culture the aberrational sickness was all we knew. Carthaginians with human sacrifice, Greeks with xenophobic racism, Romans with bloody games, and Gothic tribes with familial loyalties; this was the world into which Christ entered. He entered into the mess that human pride had erected. He told us what to do and for the most part we tried to do it. The result was that the most barbarous hodgepodge of people ended up a little better than before. And for all our talk of how that was just white-wash over our real history, we have never been able to escape the myth. If that is the case, than everyone believes the myth and denies the truth that we are all selfish people out to dominate one another. This is what is commonly known as crazy talk. If humble and self-giving love were a lie, and everyone knew it was a lie; it would have been dead quite some time ago. However, everyone really truly wants to believe that they are good and benevolent people and not really wanting to steamroll over someone else. Even Nietzsche didn't make it very far with his own will to power. It seems that only Christ seems to stand alone as the great, inescapable "superman" of Western culture.

What does all this mean? To be perfectly frank, nothing at all. Each and every human being will believe in something regardless of whatever evidence is before them. Atheists pull out their hair at the stupidity of theists, while pharisees in false theistic clothing rant and rave about how atheists and theists just won't accept their evidence. Such people have limited imaginations and no real faith.

I know I am not going to change anyone's mind or heart. I believe in a God who will do that if people will let Him. My faith is not in a powerful personal will. My faith is in a God who, in spite of all the odds, went and became a little nobody from a backwater of a vicious empire; and turned Himself into the greatest engine for change in all of human history. I have more important things to do than quibble about the reality of what I believe. I don't know if I am right, but each and every day it seems to make more and more sense that this thing I believed in stupid faith might actually be the truth and happiness I need. If anyone disagrees, that is fine; but please, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons.

Life with Google

2009-05-14T22:53:00.001-07:00

Life with Google

Many of you may remember my blog post discussing why I am glad for companies like Google, Apple, Toyota, and Nintendo. There is something called the "halo effect". This is where an item is so good that it is used to raise the prestige of the other objects that the company is trying to sell. It is a good marketing technique and usually works pretty well. But sometimes a company's ethic goes beyond an halo effect.

Apple computers are often considered top notch only because of the tremendous appeal of the iPod. However, an Apple computer more than pays for itself. A prime example of this is longevity. Apple customers are not loyal to Apple because of the iPod or because of better marketing. It may lead them to buy their first Apple computer, but it is far from the reason why they are loyal. They are loyal to Apple because they feel like Apple is loyal to them.

However, some companies seem to go far beyond this. The ethos of the people at the top want to push the boundaries of what can be done. There are companies that seem to break even these rules. They go farther and desire to do bigger and bigger things. Google seems to be such a corporation.

While visiting friends, I installed a copy of Google Chrome on their computer. The speed at which it ran far exceeded the speeds of the Internet Explorer. The point I am trying to make here is that we hope and desire for companies and people to do things they love for the sake of what they love. However we usually put in our time at jobs, but live secret lives outside of work. We escape into other people's fantasies about what our lives should be with movies and television, and yes, even books. However, what if we lived our lives for the sheer joy of living them? What if we pushed the envelopes of human understanding?

Thus it is good to have companies like Google who could rest on their laurels (like Microsoft) but instead choose to innovate and make things work better. It is ironic that the companies that succeed the most in capitalism are usually the companies where the profit is only a part of their understanding of what it means to be a business. If this is so, than the holistic approach to making money is bar far better than the more libertarian form. To not do evil, the motto of Google, not only produces an halo around Google, but it produces innovation and thus wealth.

It is good to return again and again to the things that deserve encouraging. While I disagree with Google's China stance, I am quite happy to report that I use blogger and typed this document on Google Docs. I find their web browser to be quite good and I use their search engine constantly. Such innovation deserves public kudos and I am glad to support their ethos.

A Late Night Thought

2009-05-14T00:33:00.001-07:00

A Late Night Thought

Well technically its early morning. I was doing some baking and a bat flew into the kitchen hovered around and left before I could get a blunt object with which to bash its brains in. Yes, this is where I live and this is my life. (Still no sign of the bat.) So, like Estragon and Vladimir, I am waiting on some guest that will never show up or like Elliot Templeton waiting for that final invitation. So, to while away the time I listened to Mike Duncan's podcast entitled, "The History of Rome." I'll give you three guesses and an hint: I'm an history major.

Duncan's podcast has gotten better over time. The early shows sound quality stands out as poor when one listens to it compared to the more recent episodes, and there are a few episodes in the middle with an almost intolerable buzzing; but nevermind all that, it has truly been fascinating listening to them. I honestly don't know what I am going to do pretty soon because I am almost completely caught up with the series. (Yeah, I know, most people try and catch up with Lost and The Officed and I am trying to catch up with a one man production of the history of Rome.)

Duncan is flippant and you can tell he really loves what he's talking about. This, along with a handful of other things I have read and a couple classes, have made me realize just what an history major I actually am. I began reading an history of New York City and hope to delve in depth into all my books on history. It is great when someone reawakens a great enjoyment in us.

However, it is sad how very little we know of the past. The late eighteenth century early nineteenth century Americans had a far better grasp on Ancient History than we do today. They respected it and learned from it; and thus were better for it. A great deal of why we fail as a society today is our inability to learn from history. The dangers of not knowing history are obvious to all, not just the paranoid lunatic fringe. Yet very few of us really learn anything outside of a few small tidbits that back up some of our desirous claims.

From the history of Rome we can learn how nepotism and cronyism destroy a society. We learn that optimates and plebeians fight their power battles and reduce a culture to its worst character if left unchecked. We learn how we would be wise to not give our power to special interests, or the masses, or business men, or emperors; but rather that we should try to form a more perfect union. Perhaps the most important thing to take away is the knowledge that things could be and have been much worse. We should be thankful to live in the time and country that we do now.

It is far too late and I am tired of waiting for the bat to appear. I am going to go to bed and dream of:

the beauty of fair Greece,

And the grandeur of old Rome.

Have a great night.

Mr. Duncan's site is: http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/

I encourage everyone to look it up.

Guess Where I Am

2009-05-01T09:20:00.001-07:00

Guess Where I Am

So, I had some paperwork that I needed to finish up for seminary. I had thought I had finished it, but I got a call recently saying that they never got it. After having the program close on me on my Macintosh, I racked my brain and decided to fire up the old Dell using the Windows Operating System. It worked out okay after that.

Now many of you Mac haters will use this as an example of why Windows is better. However, it is obvious what happened, the people making the program rushed out the Mac version while focusing on the Windows Version (because 95% of the world uses it). I think there is a lot to be learned from this.

I live in constant fear that one of my programs on my Window's machine will crash. I live with the fear that my entire system will crash in fact. The notion of saving early and often came with the rise of Windows. One never hears of NASA in the space age¹ or the old punch-card machines needing to be backed up early and often.

In addition to this, I fear a lot of viruses. I fear inadvertently having my identity stolen.

I guess its nice to come back to Windows, kind of like coming back to a part of town you used to live in, but that is now run down and dilapidated. We like seeing where we grew up, but we make it back to our homes on OS X or Linux before nightfall to get the real work done.

I guess my biggest problem is that in order to really do what needs to be done with a system, people have to be bold. America is a country that has become a shadow of the innovative powerhouse it used to be. We used to make bold steps with this innovation or that innovation, but now the only innovations are introduced by Billy Mays and tell how we do can live a life with more stuff that will make it simpler.

It would be nice to see large companies really try and make OS X and Linux viable for the workplace. There are thoughts that such a changeover would be expensive and problematic. It would save money in the long run though. (Switching to Linux would be practically nothing.) It seems that with all our screaming and squawking for corporate freedom, we forget that the innovations they preach are rarely ever the innovations they practice. The corporation will work much harder at keeping everyone down as compared to work to innovate.

If we move to a more efficient, secure, and intelligent system, it will not solve all our problems; but it will drive us forward to capturing the ideals we used to hold. It may even allow us to get paperwork in on time.

Though one might be able to make an argument why those guys were such ... well for lack of a "G" rated word ... awesome heroic people. They might have been using Windows and just been tired of all the crap. that went on with it. Maybe a predecessor to Windows caused Apollo 13.

I'm Done Protecting You.

2009-04-29T20:44:00.001-07:00

I'm Done Protecting You.

(It's late and I didn't proofread this. I try and be more positive, but I think this needs to be said. I think Hebrews would back me up.)

I'm tired. I'm tired of protecting those who don't want to be protected. I am tired of analyzing those who don't want to be analyzed. I'm tired of listening to those who don't listen. In short I am done protecting the remnants of the Republican party. I suppose, though I am doubtful, that there are those hovering around the outer rim of a party they once believed in; but now feel themselves isolated by a party more full of venom and vitriol than of the great ideas of their forbearers.

It didn't used to be that way. There used to be a time when the Republican party stood for something worth standing for. There used to be a time when Eisenhower and T.R. and Lincoln boldly took views that were unpopular with the leading people. There was a time when writers of the party were not afraid to be marginalized by asking deep and important questions. I know many of my current Republican acquaintances would say, "We still do." No, not anymore. there was a time when the Republicans would listen to those answers and thoughtfully disagree. Now, it is all about thoughtless ignorance of other people's opinions.

The failure of the Republican party wasn't complete for me until just recently. I have always considered myself a staunch (albeit hard to digest) moderate. I am a contrarian by nature, so being fully allied and against any party has been an unpalatable choice. I never thought that I would be so against one of our major political parties. However, it has become apparent that that day has come.

So I abandon you to the fate that you have proscribed for yourself. I allow you to wrap yourself in the mantle of hatred and stupidity. I allow you to hide in the obscure recesses of your self-imposed exile. I would reach out to you, but you do not wish to hear me speak. I have grown too tired of talking (me of all people too tired of talking) to try and reason with you. I am a moderate democrat now because you have left me here behind with your reason and hope and joy. I will await your return to the land of sinners, which we all must dwell in to be made more holy by grace.

I would not mind so deeply the fact that you had gone were it not for the fact that rather than being people of the city on a hill, you have become pharisees. You condemn the problems of the world, but do nothing to alleviate them. So many non-Christians I talk to are amazed that I am a Christian because I listen to them and their problems. So many non-Christians are amazed that many of us Christians are Christians because of what has happened.

Some facts: Christ never promised that we would not be exploited by poor people who live lives on welfare forever and ever. Christ never promised that we would control government. Christ never promised us that we would get a nice house and fancy car if we followed him. Christ never promised that we could keep guns. Christ did ask that we pay taxes though.

The fact is I am done protecting the far right, who has unfortunately morphed into the "right" itself, because you are done protecting Christ. You don't make sacrifices with joy to help people. When I think of the Christian Conservative, I think of an angry person who clutches to the false straws of "an ungodly president".

I share your blame. I do not make the sacrifices I should. I do not help the poor as I should. I do not volunteer for causes like I should. I do not even love my neighbor as myself. But if you do these things without the joy of Christ in you, than you are just as guilty as if you had never done them at all because you are doing them for yourself and by yourself without the love of Christ in you.

I will end with this. I do not know where my good friends from college stands on his political views, but I can imagine he is a conservative. He loves God with all his heart, mind, and soul. I have never met a happier person who loves his wife and child so much. It would be nice if my friend were the rule and not just a random example I have to give. I think we would all do our best to remove our sack cloth and ashes and go and live with the happy abandon of Christ's love. If that sounds a little too drastic for you, than maybe we

The Price We Pay

2009-04-23T18:53:00.001-07:00

The Price We Pay

I've asked around of my conservative and liberal friends. I have enquired of the internet. I have even asked my dad. No one can tell me what these tea parties were all about except that they were protesting taxes. Now most people I know hate taxes. It is no fun, kind of like going to the dentist or the doctor's office. At least that must be what it is like for most people who pay taxes in one lump sum. However, I have always gotten money back from the government, even when I didn't think I deserved it. In that way, I actually like paying taxes.

I can hear the hisses and guffaws from my fellow Americans. They will say things like, "Well, that's good for you; but as for me I want my money." However, this is a bit of a misunderstanding.

First off let me explain why I am happy to pay taxes. I do not live destitute and scrounging around trash cans for my next meal. I have frozen pizzas, bread baking supplies, and enough Mountain Dew to survive for quite some time. Yesterday I went out to eat with friends. I have a bed, a computer, and more books than I need. In fact, I have a lot. Now, there are plenty of things I want to buy that I can't afford. Things like roads, public parks, and a good education come to mind. Whenever I look at my paycheck and see the money taken out for taxes, I think to myself how privileged I am that I own a stake in this country. I know that when I go outside I will not need a Roman noble's entourage to ensure my safety as I walk down the street or that if I want to hike somewhere I will not have to pay a fee to roam about public land.

Is it a perfect system? No, of course not. There are areas that need streamlined. American politicians, like Jeff Flake of Arizona, have it exactly right when they back their convictions up with real action by not accepting earmarks and pork. However, this is a responsibility more of the voters than of the politicians. If we really want less spending on waste, we'll vote for the right things. We don't, so we have a lot of pork. Simple as that.

Secondly, I should ask this question: did you print that money? I mean, perhaps it is government interference that prohibits us from going to our basement with a printer and green ink. If so, well that is fine by me. I am reminded of something a wise man once said, "Give to Caesar what is his." Many of us Christians seem to forget this. It is ironic because conservatives and especially Christian Conservatives tend to lament the loss of classical Western thought. If you understand Aristotle properly, than money is merely a form of order. It isn't something in and of itself, but rather it represents the interaction of human beings and the world in which they live.

The purest sense of economy is therefore not capitalism but bartering. I raise a goat and you give me some apples. Merits and fortune are at their peak in this form of economy, but nothing truly great is accomplished. The individual is at the mercy of the fates to a greater degree than anywhere else.

In a completely free capitalist economy we run into pretty much the same thing. Countries with less government interference in one way or the other don't really exist and perhaps there is a reason for that. Human beings are hardly smart enough to create a worldwide cabal that prevents such libertarian countries from emerging. My theory is that such economies exist under the aegis of larger economies, so let us look at those. Such an economy is hardly autonomous but rather useful as a piggy bank for the larger economy and in that economy the average human being is unable to pursue happiness. (In fact in modern America happiness is usually forgotten in the pursuit of success. If success makes you happy, that is well and good but please leave the rest of us alone.)

Also, as was pointed out by one of my dad's friends, why is that in countries with limited government we see less stability and poorer people? Areas with little central government usually push up the worst of society. In fact I believe that Navy Seals had to rescue Americans from people living in a country with virtually no centralized government. I am of course speaking of Somalia which is controlled not by enlightened Randian entrepreneurs; but by thugs, warlords, and the occasional pirates.

So, I think that paying a few bucks each week for a stable and relatively happy society is a good deal. I like looking at roads and schools; and thinking that while things can always be made better, my country is still the best in the world because people take an active part in each others' lives be it by themselves or by simply paying taxes.

The Writer's Block

2009-04-22T23:32:00.001-07:00

The Writer's Block

Best books ... chosen by James Toback

Its late, but as many of you know, this is when my brain functions at its best. Usually my papers are churned out at the hours between twelve and three. There is fervent praying, reading and re-reading, and of course caffeine consumption. However, I was just reading through the magazine The Week and decided to comment on books chosen by this week's selector of must read books, director James Toback. I don't think I will be viewing Mr. Toback's upcoming film; and to be honest I am not sure I am interested in his previous work. However, it is impossible for me to overlook his taste in literature.

But, I am getting ahead of myself. Let me explain about all of this. The Week is a magazine that attempts to synthesize and paraphrase the news reporting from the week.¹ Among its articles is a section where a personality (usually an author) describes his or her favorite books. This week's picks were selected by the afore mentioned James Toback, who is directing the upcoming film "Tyson". His selections were of works that he had used in his movies. While he never goes into depth about what each and every book is about, he takes a different tack and shows how he used them in his film.

I personally am a fan of four of the six author's mentioned, but I have only read two of the works mentioned. These authors are Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William Shakespeare, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Oscar Wilde. Their selected works are Notes From Underground, Hamlet, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol respectively. I am not trying to say anything here except this. You should go and read these works. (I know I should.) Life is too short to read the average stuff.

Between Hamlet's indecisions about life and death (and the innumerable other questions found in this brilliant work) and the Tractatus's exploration of humankind's relationship to language and words (as well as the innumerable other questions found in this brilliant work); we find authors trying to come to grips with the unknowable answers. Perhaps they are answers that we will never ever know fully. I believe they are beyond our grasp. To some this would cause fear and because it is fear, it is best left unsaid.² Yet, one cannot totally ignore these questions and so we disdain those who ask them. We hope that maybe if we insult, cajole, and intimidate enough; the questioners will go away and with them, maybe, just maybe, so to will the questions.

However, our hatred for the questions shows our contempt for our own lives. In cursing the unknowable we are cursing the very universe in which we live. You and I do not have the answers, we just have the questions. What the questions mean is as useful and necessary as our daily job. Each day we will have to struggle at our jobs. We are defined by what we do in large degree, but at the same time we should be judged by what we think. If we think great thoughts, there is no guarantee we will be great; but if we think small thoughts, it is fairly assured that we will be small.

We talk as if we are great innovators and adventurers who push the envelopes of science and the humanities, but our fear of being wrong often relegates us to the weaklings of history. We are afraid to take the serious questions as seriously as we should; that is with the smile and joy that we approach our daily job. I think that is what Mr. Toback was trying to get across. Great novels, tracts, essays, poems, and cetera don't exist in a vacuum and never were meant to do so.³ They are to remain accessible to us at all times. We should feel a joy at being able to bring a work into the thread of a conversation. We have, so to speak, brought another voice into the the story we are trying to tell; the story of our lives.

Perhaps one of these days I'll get around to writing my top must read books, but for now I am content to give kudos to other people's selections. After all, it is very late and while my mind does work at its best during these hours, I never said it worked for very long.

Much like the fine, and now quasi-defunct, World Press Review. While the World Press Review still exists in a way in cyber-space, it ceases to exist as the magazine that would arrive weekly in my mailbox at college. I'll never forget the day it stopped being printed and I was given U.S. News and World Reports in its stead. This is partially the reason why, to this day, I cannot tolerate U.S. News and World Reports; but most of that hatred is because the magazine finds better use in starting grill fires or composting mulch beds than as a credible periodical.
If death were sitting before us at the dinner table we would not desire to acknowledge that he was there.
If a book is built to stay in some lofty ivory tower, than the author is a fool. The purpose of a work is not to show what you know, but what you've learned. It should be the secret hope of every author that his or her work is surpassed and never surpassed by a member of a succeeding generation.

Today

2009-04-10T22:50:00.003-07:00

Today

I called up one of my friends today to wish her an Happy Good Friday. "Happy Good Friday?" she asked, "Happy Easter I can get, but not happy Good Friday!" Good Friday doesn't make a lot of sense. Its the day we Christians celebrate our leader being executed like a common criminal. Quick, quick name a religion where the hero so thoroughly loses. I know my friends who aren't Christians don't get it. That's fine. I'm cool with that. It doesn't really bother me too much.

But it means a lot to me. Good Friday is the day Christ was hung on the cross. It has a deep metaphysical reality. All the sins past and present and all the promises past and present met in and collapsed on that one point in space time.¹ It is a very weighty experience and goes beyond words. We Christians tend to pass over it and rush onto Easter with lilies and bunnies and eggs and Jesus rising from the dead again. We don't meditate on the cross nearly enough.

What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to have faith in a God like the one we have? How can we share such a ludicrous message to a world that doesn't think it's sick? Or if does, it thinks its "only a flesh wound"? Being a Christian is impossible if you think you can do it on your own steam. I've tried and I'll keep on trying; but I find that I see the most success when I'm not the one in charge.

We all know there is a God. Logical dead ends come when we pursue each point to its conclusion, but which God is it? To say that it is the Christian God is a bold absurdity. Which probably makes it either completely true or completely false; a black and white demarkation. It seems to me that it is true because ... well ... can you offer a better alternative at how the world can change? We live in a world that is full of fallen people and the only way for things to be okay is if that outside force makes it okay, obeys the obligations of wrath, and thus with the stakes high enough bets everything. I don't know. I don't get it. Thats part of Good Friday though. You don't have to get everything for it to be true. And the truth and falsity isn't what gets people, its the cost. Free? What's the catch, what do I have to do? The cost of free is too high for people want. So let them pay.

So its Good Friday and I am left with no explanations and I ask the same questions everyone else does about it. I come back with the same answer all the best theologians proffer, "I don't know, its a mystery." The payment is made and the cost is free. I'm willing to hedge my bets on that, and that is what makes it an "Happy Good Friday;" the exhilaration of the unknown.

The irony is that even though all of existence seems to be compressed onto that one point; that one point exists in a multiplicity. To God all time is now and so all the sins: past, present, and future are not only on that one point in time; but due to God's perception of time being something that exists within atemporality, Christ has died, is dying, and will die yet. Concurrently to be both separate and with God at the same time is something that is truly painful and human.

Today

2009-04-10T22:50:00.001-07:00

Today

The irony is that even though all of existence seems to be compressed onto that one point; that one point exists in a multiplicity. To God all time is now and so all the sins: past, present, and future are not only on that one point in time; but due to God's perception of time being something that exists within atemporality, Christ has died, is dying, and will die yet. Concurrently to be both separate and with God at the same time is something that is truly painful and human.

Populism Is Not The Answer

2009-04-10T19:40:00.001-07:00

Populism Is Not The Answer

In a recent show Bill Maher, a television personality, recently said that we should kill executives who got money for nothing. It is was an unintelligent and irresponsible thing to say, and at best it was just a scramble for ratings. However, that is Mr. Maher's way. But, as we have learned from history, psychology, and plain human experience: words have powerful meaning.¹ His argument, if real is part of a growing trend among many in America, both on the right and left, to appeal to populism. However, populism at its best, had a checkered past. An history of populism has demonstrated that it can be even more concerned with manipulating government for personal ends than its other tyrannical cousins.

My best friend Andrew and I got into a very insightful discussion about the importance of not being carried away by populism and I am glad to see that he and many Americans still have a good head on their shoulders about all this. However there is reason to fear that a small and vocal few may usurp the passions of the people to their own ends. This is not to say that the general populace is completely blameless. (Recent stories of squatters staying on at houses they couldn't afford in the first place shows a disregard for the laws of the state, the laws of economics, and the laws of nature. If an agreement is reached by the two parties involved, that is fine though.)

The dark history of populism is well-documented. A good example of this is the story of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. When I was younger I adored the story of the Gracchi brothers. I thought they were good people who wanted to help the poor of Rome by giving the poor farmers land they had been promised and grain that they needed. However, it was only later that I learned that they were only interested in garnering the support of the mob for their own selfish power grab. Caesar and others would do this later on too.

In the early days of our republic the situation had a chance to happen once again. Many in America believed that freedom meant abandoning the laws of the parent country. At the head of these "Republicans" was Jefferson. Jefferson is the poster-child for the aristocrat who appeals to the masses. Happy to have yeoman farmers till their plots while he enjoyed a comfortable life built on the backs of slaves, Jefferson fought with true Republicans like Hamilton and Adams who knew that order in economics and law (respectively) was the only way to ensure real and lasting freedom.

You see freedom is a lot like the earth itself. Freedom is ordered and organized but it is separated and etched out from the deep waters of chaos all around it. However, our postmodern Americans either don't know this or don't want to know this. We have been told that we can get everything for nothing or everything if we just work hard enough; and frankly, it isn't true at all. It is sickening that we scream and squawk now, but when we were reaping the benefits of the shady business practices, we let them slide. Wrong is wrong no matter if it is beneficial to us or not.

The history of populism is not all bad though. During the 1930s, Roosevelt bound the people's desire for jobs with governmental organizations that would provide work. The people and the country had something to hold onto while the rest of the world drifted from selfish despair into self-righteous anger. We didn't look for scapegoats as much; and we emerged a better country in the end.

But false populism is to be feared because it shows that we have become a culture not of laws and of order, but of expediency and personalities be they the personality of blow-hards (Bill Maher or Rush Limbaugh) or of our own myriad desires. If we were to hang or shoot every person whose hands were sullied in this economic crisis, we would be left with an empty country. The answer is to forgive and move on.

Perhaps I will talk about that at length some other time, but most of you know the very real importance that I place on words and language.

The Wandering

2009-03-25T23:26:00.001-07:00

The Wandering

To say my mind wanders a bit is an understatement. Thus, the internet is an horrible and unspeakable invention. Here is where the mind is allowed to wander free of any sort of barrier (well, if you live in America that is pretty much the case.¹) I have, in the space of an hour: looked up aspects of the Myer's Briggs, read a short story by Donald Barthelme, watched a movie trailer, and on and on and on. My left eye is twitching because it wants sleep, but here is the problem I have: this is the time when I am most lucid. My mind is simultaneously on fire and a dwindling pool of embers. I told one person that my mind doesn't start really working until three a.m. That was a lie, my mind kicks in at about midnight and three a.m. is the time when it is ready to collapse but it is still very much awake.²

This is my world. The hours of two o'clock and three o'clock are my hours of temptations. Here I can feel society giving me a unison "tsk tsk" as I plow into the night accomplishing nothing. "At least," so it says, "do something with this time. Plan a business, write a story, do something." I can't. I try start an essay, but it ends up unfinished. I run out of words or find that a myriad of segues have led me to some unknown area; like a traveler in a car stopped by some desert gas station, I pull out my map and mumble, "well now where the heck am I?" I know exactly where I am. I am at my computer at two o'clock in the morning writing a paper that will be read by a few people.

Well, the heck with it. I am a great writer. Perhaps I am not as disciplined as others. I have a great affinity for all of my thoughts because they are mine after all. Like a little-league coach, I want all my players to play in the game regardless if it is the right time. I send my thoughts out there. I joke that I just like to see if any one of them will really and truly stick. The fact is I want them all to succeed, even the inconsistent ones.

The fact is, it is very late. I wonder if this is just catharsis. I wonder if my words have meaning to anyone out there.³ I think they do, even though they don't. Kierkegaard talked about relying on the absurd instead of the known outcome. It is less pleasant to human pride, but it is the only way any of us can function. Barthelme says as much too in the one story I read by him.⁴ It is here in the absurd that we find meaning in the meaningless; and we find that meaning by accepting the fact that maybe we are too concerned with finding meaning. What is the point in our discovering the answer if it doesn't give us an answer. People make fun of my love of useless knowledge because it doesn't seem to have any application, the absurdity would seem to dictate that our greatest answer undermines while reinforcing this notion. Life is absurd, find that answer and you will be something ... whatever that means. When one realizes that nothing has meaning and that means that it is infinitely important; one truly begins to be insane; and insanity is the label that the world gives to people who really start to get it.

We write off the insane, not because they are crazy; but because we do not like where they are going with all this. I am probably wrong, so lets just skip it. There are people who believe they are Napoleon Bonaparte or Teddy Roosevelt or a box of Chex Mix; they are clearly insane, but they don't get it. Maybe all people who understand life are insane, but not all insane people get life? No, insanity is merely a place that we have to walk through to get to enlightenment. I am laughing right now. How often do we talk about enlightenment, and we never really mean it.

Well, I need to get some sleep, the pitter patter of my keyboard is having an intoxicating effect on me; and it is pretty obvious that it is time to sleep when that sound is as musical as the sound of sheep being counted. Though, here is my question, why am I cursed with thinking so well at this time of the day? Why couldn't this happen a few hours earlier when the sun was out and I was quite bored. I wonder if the insane are bored? I wonder what it is to be wandering after you have gone through the world of the insane and reached the world of the absurd. I bet God still allows for journeys there as well.

Oh sure there are many who would argue that this is not the case and that there is a great deal of repression going with regards to American access of the internet, but that is mainly due to copy-written stuff, military secrets, and good old fashioned corporate greed. That stuff is normal. That stuff is typical. That stuff is boring. If boring people want to have boring secrets, I say let 'em.
I can remember at college dragging myself up stairs to go through the necessary steps and processes and rituals to prepare for sleep. During these times I would wish simultaneously for sleep and still be thinking of the subject of the paper. I would write sentences in my head and contemplate all of the different subjects going every which way.
I sometimes like to dream that there is some college out there secretly basing a field off of my study. Some professor has been stealing my stuff for years, passing it on as his own, and he gets caught one day and I am now the genius. Or perhaps some country has decided to develop my philosophy into some sort of model for development. Who knows? It is fun to dream.
Unless of course that one story Spencer let me read was by him as well. Something about porcupines going to college.

An Appeal to Reason

2009-03-24T09:37:00.001-07:00

An Appeal to Reason

I saw a rock band had an album entitled: "An Appeal to Reason." It struck me as a rather pretentious name, but I can't say as I blame them, it is a good album. The question is: is it even possible to appeal to reason? What does it mean to appeal to reason, to appeal to good faith, to appeal to really any of the human qualities? However, the question I would like to explore is this one: What does it mean to "appeal to reason"? It seems whenever one says this, there is a fervent hope that our views will be taken seriously, not necessarily thoughtfully, but seriously.¹

However, no one really wants to appeal to reason. There are two reasons² for this, and they stem from our actual definitions of reason. Firstly, it is quite impossible. Reason is a tool of our thought process. Reason, according to the Oxford Dictionary's first definition is: a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event. It is the color inside a "fact," I would say, but lacks form. Put another way, at my job I am sometimes doing rather circuitous work to accomplish what appears to be a rather simple and straightforward task. When asked to provide my reasons, they are rejected or accepted not on the virtue of an "appeal to reason," but rather on an appeal to something else in the other person. My reasoning is apparently flawed, but I have listed reasons for my activities.³ Therefore, there must be something else besides reasoning with which my flawed reasoning came into contact.

A second problem comes into play when we ask ourselves: who is to say that the person pronouncing judgment is working through "reason"?⁴ Surely this is a mammoth problem. The Nazis "appealed to reason" with their devilish work. Atheists and Christians both say they are "appealing to reason," though that cannot be the case since one side is obviously right and the other side wrong. We then will often dismiss the other side for being "unreasonable." Reason cannot be that which we base our world. Reason is only an aspect of our understanding.

So, when we appeal to reason, we are asking the impossible, and, I believe, subconsciously know it. It is a circular argument and follows like this:

1. I am appealing to your reason.

2. Your reason should be like my reasoning.

3. If you cannot be appealed to by reasoning like I have, you are unreasonable.

However, the problem is that that which you are trying to appeal to is also that which you are trying to convince. In other words, when we ask to appeal to reason, we are really handing people a blank sheet and calling it a test; expecting them to know the answers to questions of which they were not provided.

Life is a mystery in a larger part than we would like to acknowledge. It is built on a faith that the world will not kills us. Even ignoring some Hume-based problem with causality,⁵ we cannot know if our universe is a ticking-time bomb and that we may have only moments left. In the end we rely on inductive reasoning⁶ and blind faith to carry us through to the end of the day; an "appeal to reason" boils down to pride and nonsense; but I am willing to be proven wrong. If you wish to do otherwise, please, appeal to my reason.

Perhaps we would be better off saying "an appeal to seriousness"?
No pun intended.
Some may argue that my appeal to reason fell short, but then that begs two very important questions: First, what did I follow that was not reasoning? Secondly, how was the other person to pronounced judgment that my reasoning was flawed?
Here I will assume we are working with a second connotation that reason is a judgment based on intellectual thought processes.
David Hume (26 April 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a British philosopher who believed that we could not be certain of the causality of anything. We can only believe that a certain event caused another one, but it is not possible for humans to state this with full certitude.
This is when we take our observations and blow them up to encompass the whole. It is not perfect, I would argue, but in the end it is all we really have.

2009-03-06T10:04:00.000-08:00

[Poetry] may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

- T.S. Elliot

Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want (now it's over) Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do

-- They Might be Giants

Born into the latter days of a falling Empire[1], we stare out into the sunlight and wonder what is to be done, not for the world or our loved ones, though we comtemplate those things as well. But we wonder what is to be done with us. Caught between Scylla and Charybdis, we wonder exactly how we are to make our psyche work for us. Like the time I was handed that gift and I didn’t know what it was for or perhaps being given a sweater two sizes too big and hearing some benign relative say, “Oh you’ll grow into it. You’ll see.” This is the story of our psyche. Some of us pack it away in boxes condemned to sit upon some lonely shelf. Some of us fiddle with it too early and don’t understand the meaning as we gaze at it hoping that the instructions will come to us. Who knows what is to be done with a psyche?

Our work fulfills and frightens us. We believe ourselves up to no task, but upon taking it and with a healthy dose of encouragement we move through. But where is the psyche in all this? Where is the gift of long ago, given to us by the cosmos or God or something else?

The psyche is that which must be what it is and always has been; an enigma unlocked by faith and hope and all the pithy platitudes of our elders. We are born to be happy and never satisfied. At the back the darkness beckons us and we shut it out. The question is are we living in the house of chaos with the God standing outside or are we in the house of God with the chaos at our door? I do not know. It is not for us to know perhaps, and that is what drives us … somewhere.

[1] As to which direction this empire might turn is anybody’s guess and at the singularity of that point both terrifying and exhilarating.

Economic crisis and its roots (unedited)

2009-03-03T22:25:00.000-08:00

It is, one can assume, easy to have libertarian leanings. Nothing seems more obvious. In fact we all wish we could have such leanings. We all wish that we could cut ourselves off financially, emotionally, and intellectually from those around us. Our Libertarian friends believe this to be just what the doctor ordered. Forget those banks or deadbeats who let us down. It is their fault, let them suffer the consequences. Well, unless you have been hiding your money in your mattress or are named Ted Kaczynski, you will probably see the error in this argument.

“No man is an island,” as John Donne put it.[1] This of course is a most unpleasant realization to people. We like to think of ourselves as self-sufficient.[2] We would like to believe this myth and we do adhere to it with a religious fervor. We hold to the religion of self-sufficiency in our neighborhoods, our marriages, and even our churches. When I was younger and at college, I found church much duller because I would go to church but never get involved. It was never that I wasn’t a Christian, it was just that I didn’t care.

Apathy breeds apathy, and it is ironic that something that can only produce more of itself should be so prodigious. It is also odd to see just how fired up people can become about apathy. However, we must remember that apathy is a black hole and that even though nature is ambivalent towards a vacuum, human nature abhors it. Structure and order are our gods. Each age finds it in a new form and visage. Long ago, it was Baal worship, then the work’s-based-righteous Christianity (which as much to say, not Christianity on our terms), and today it is the evolution without thought. It is hard to say what it will be tomorrow.

Our politics is the same way. When things go right, we complain that too many politicians get in the way. When things go wrong, we are outraged that politicians didn’t get in the way. Even on the individual scale, everyone is a libertarian, until bad things happen. It is interesting just how many people decry everyone else’s government waste, but not their own.

I share the blame. Mute to the impending doom in our shiny cities, like Roman edifices covered in marble, but built on inferior and temporary materials; I should’ve spoken against such evident crises. This too is congratulatory. We know the truth, why do we not follow it? We know how to build happy places, why do we not care? How many things would we nail to a cross, hoping against hope for a resurrection? That is where the rules come in and the laws and the structure and the order. We bury alive our humanity for the sake of happiness on own terms. We are not even honest about the whole thing. If you would deny God, and neighbor, and a moral law inside you that is one thing; but please, let us be honest about it. Let us be joyful in our muck and mire; and not try and cover it up with fancy names and silly systems.

And so we are, like it or not, condemned to share a ship with people that we may find unpleasant; but we cannot say that their plight is not our own.

[1] Unless you have seen “About a Boy.” Then the obvious answer is Jon bon Jovi.

[2] A comical lie on par with that the financial crisis was caused by other people and had nothing to do with ourselves.

Second Thoughts on Lent

2009-02-26T23:28:00.000-08:00

A coworker tonight asked me what I was giving up for Lent. “Nothing,” I answered, “I am not asked to give anything up for Lent. What are you giving up?”

“My time,” she replied, “I think Lent should be about what you give, not what you give up.”

Needless to say, I was floored and told her I thinks she hit the nail right on the head. I have been wrestling a lot with Lent lately. It is a time when Jesus fasted and went without, but for what purpose? The ancient monks had a notion called “white martyrdom.” Where “red martyrdom” was death for your believes, “white martyrdom” was something people could live out in their day. It meant that people could renounce the world and live a life of suffering for Christ.

People do that still today. We go around and tell people what we are giving up for Lent and ask others what they are giving up for the season as well. What point does it serve? Does it draw you closer to Christ, to God, or to the atonement? If it does … well, I don’t mean to be rude, but how? How is it that when I am giving up sugar, television, or what I love bring me closer to Christ and the atonement? It seems to turn God in a fun-stealing ogre, which is how most of my contemporaries view Him anyway. It is bad enough He is a buzz kill with our more problematic excesses, now He has to take away our benign ones too? This is not the God I signed up for twenty-seven years ago and this is certainly not the God I have worked to have a relationship with day in and day out since that first calling.

Luther had a remarkable way of turning the negative prohibitions of the Ten Commandments into positive calls for action in his Small and Large Catechisms. Here he reinforces that we should “fear and love God” so much that we not only down disobey the laws He wrote on our hearts, but obey the positive stirrings that were there before the dawn of history. That is the appropriateness of Lent. Lent is the story of the promises of God. It is the story of being tempted in the wilderness to do things for the sake of our own desires.

What is the purpose of fasting or giving something up? In the wilderness Christ didn’t fast because he was trying to beat Himself up; but rather because fasting removed an impediment to the more important part of His time alone, His need to be in communion with God. If when you fast or remove something from your daily routine, you do not replace it with time with Christ; it is hard to make the case that you are giving that thing up for Lent. Instead, you are doing a sort of post-New-Year’s resolution.

I think of Matthew 6:16 – 18, where Jesus says:

When you practice some appetite-denying discipline to better concentrate on God, don't make a production out of it. It might turn you into a small-time celebrity but it won't make you a saint. If you 'go into training' inwardly, act normal outwardly. Shampoo and comb your hair, brush your teeth, wash your face. God doesn't require attention-getting devices. He won't overlook what you are doing; he'll reward you well.

It is also interesting to note that right before this Jesus talks about how we must pray and ask forgiveness of him. Only then are we to think about fasting.

Perhaps more to the point is something found in the Gospel of Luke:

9-12 He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: "Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: 'Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.'
13 "Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, 'God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.'"
14 Jesus commented, "This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you're going to end up flat on your face, but if you're content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself."

I could be making too much about this whole thing or maybe I am just feeling guilty for not giving up anything for Lent. However, I think the more likely scenario is that my pride sees yet another way that my faith shores up my inadequacies whereas my pride is unable fill in the missing pieces. And, like grace, perhaps Lent is less about what I give up, than what I give.

A quick thought

2009-02-25T23:16:00.000-08:00

In the novella, a Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge observes, “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” This is a good lesson for all of us, but I would say that right now I am in the season of Lent. This is a season of fasting and prayer that comes right before Easter. It is considered a period of deep somber sobriety much like the dour-faced pilgrims at worship or the expression worn by many Cincinnati Reds’ fans after a game.

Lent is not really viewed as the happiest of times. It is after all commemorating Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, which one can assume would not be the most enjoyable time spent. Many Christians give up things for Lent just as Jesus did by going into the wilderness. While I believe their intentions are pure on conscious level, I think perhaps giving something up for Lent as a sort of sign, is problematic. (The Lutheran in me recoils at anything the vaguely smells of work’s-based-righteousness.) If you are to give up anything for Lent, I believe it should be unknown to anyone around you if it is to be for God’s glory; and if you are to give it up for your benefit (i.e. smoking or sugar), don’t you believe you should give it up totally for your health. Things that are to be done for the “good” should need no special time of year to mark them; and become a sort of “sanctified New Year’s resolution.” I think this might lower God to a bit o a totem.

No, the real meaning of Lent is hardly anything to be sad or mournful about at all. The real meaning Lent is about a promise … or maybe a series of promises that make a larger promise. Long ago, God told Noah that he would never destroy the world; but instead of stopping there, he set into motion a plan to save the world. The real meaning of Lent is about suffering, but never about a suffering that we were meant to bear by ourselves or even at all. The suffering that was endured was Christ’s for us. When we seek to punish ourselves by going without, we must always make sure we ask ourselves why we are suffering. Is it because of Christ or is it because of our pride? To give up something for Lent therefore will never be enough. It is only when we give something to God. When we tack on our problems and sins to the cross and the God-man that hung there, then and only then, will we be approaching the true meaning of Lent.

The name Lent has an interesting meaning. In most of the Romantic languages it is derived from the Latin: quadragesima. This means fortieth day, and the nomenclature has kept this up in most of the countries around Europe. In English however, we use the term Lent. This derives from the Anglo-Saxon root word that means “long.” It its connotation means “spring.” I think this is the best way to describe this season. It is a season of painful changes and eternal promises that eventually leads to the long-ago promise of life once again. It is a time when God will make all things new and when we finally realize that winter will not last forever.

2009-02-20T22:50:00.000-08:00

Shostakovich is my Homeboy!

I can still remember when Fantasia 2000 came out in theaters. I practically begged everyone to go see it with me, but to no avail. Later, when it came out on DVD, I was dazzled by the inventiveness of the use of music and imagery. It is one great film and I recommend it to anyone who wants to see great imagination on screen.

I had never lost my love for classical music. I had listened to it when in middle school primarily as background music for papers. However, when I listened to Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto, I became a lifelong fan. Shostakovich combines so many things in his music. It is orderly and yet feels avant-garde. It appears very simple to play, and yet I am told his pieces are amongst the hardest. His life, like his music was filled with contrasts fueled by a sort of pragmatism.

Living in Communist Russia, one had to always live with such contradictions. You never were really sure which end of the monster you were going to be on from day to day. Because of this, and his being Russian, he is widely ignored by most of us in the U.S.[1] While he has been lambasted by some. One musical theorist said Shostakovich “made no secret of his debt to Mahler and many other composers: Bach, Stravinsky, jazz and popular music, Jewish and Russian folk music. But was the music of Beethoven not rooted in the music of Mozart and Haydn? Of course it was. But did it not evolve into something entirely different - something that is unmistakably Beethoven? Of course, it did. And who can deny that the symphonies of Shostakovich, taking their starting point from Mahler, developed into an entirely different musical idiom that is unmistakably Shostakovich and nobody else but Shostakovich?”

And that is the best that can be said of anyone. There will never be anyone like Dmitri Shostakovich or me or you. Who knows years later, someone may come across some scrap I have written, like it very much, and put it in a movie, book, story, or what have you. If you just put things out there, you never can be sure who is listening.

[1] It also doesn’t hurt that Copland and Gershwin are easier names to pronounce. Then again, how many of us would actually pronounce Beethoven (ˈbā,tōvən)if we hadn’t had it drilled into our heads by legions of music teachers?

2009-02-13T23:58:00.001-08:00

In The World of My Stress.

On my way to work today I felt pretty stressed. It usually happens to me. However, my problems are hardly insurmountable and my fears hardly warranted. Indeed, I do not know of anyone who has had warranted fears. Fear, for me at least, comes about when I am jarred from peace. However, I have been looking for outward peace to substitute inner peace. And when we try and substitute the definition of happiness for peace we are letting ourselves in for a great deal of sadness, disappointment, and of course stress.

We live in a harried and archipelic[1] world. It is a world where stress is ours to own, to keep, to hold in ourselves. In life, however, we do not know how to deal with stress. There are two things I know about stress:

1) Each person has a unique language as to how their stress writes itself in one’s life.

2) Stress must either move and be held in your psyche or pass through it. If too much passes through, you are probably not taking things seriously enough. If too much is bottled up … well, I needn’t tell you how damaging that can be to someone.

Stress is a lot like water: powerful and peaceful. It has many different qualities, properties, stages, and even contents[2]. In my life, I internalize my stress. I let it become stagnant in my heart. Instead, I need to let it pass by like a river stream. Cool, forward moving without chaotic and devastating rushes; a stream brings life and purpose to all that is around it. To stop the flow is to be in painful stagnation.

This is the first stage for me to understand stress. I will discuss the improper defining of peace as happiness and how I should handle my stress differently in my next blog posts. Right now, I need to get ready for work.

[1] That is a world of archipelagos. Don’t look it up, I felt like making a word.

[2] Water picks up silt or salt or many other things. They aren’t water, but they make a body of water that body just as much as the water itself. Stress is unique in its contents as well. Stress of love or work is very different.

2009-02-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

(Again I am barely conscious. Enjoy the post, ignore the errors.)

The Comical Failure

Indulgences Return

Every time I see St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, I chuckle a little. It is an impressive building and one of the greatest pieces of architecture in the world; but as for the cost of its building … well, that’s so large, I think only God knows. You see in 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther posted 95 problems on the door of the local church. (Doors of churches were places where public announcements and such were placed.) He wrote them in Latin so that it would be a scholarly debate. The focus of the questions was on the sale of plenary indulgences. Though, it’s a bit confusing, these were documents sold so that people could get themselves or their loved ones out of afterlife punishment.[1] Now, selling indulgences to for Church projects was, alas, nothing new. However, Luther was one of the few to actually have challenged it. These particular indulgences were being sold so as to build … you guessed it … St. Peter’s. The outcome is the same one that has plagued faith and religion since the dawn of time. One person asks a question, this forces the powers that be to fight back, and the person positing the question looks deeper to find out if he or she is indeed right. Rome’s intransigence forced Luther to delve deep into scripture to understand his point of view. Rome could’ve saved face, most of Northern Europe, and several millions of members if it would’ve admitted it was wrong; but it couldn’t sacrifice its pride. It won the basilica in the end, but lost its way.

Indulgences were something I thought faded into the mists of history. I figured Rome had learned its lesson and quietly dismantled the foolish belief until an history professor brought in one that he had bought at a yard sale. This one was issued back in the 1950s. You see Roman Catholic dogma will not let things disappear. If the church were to err, than their entire religion would be in err. Protestants admit that their leaders are more right than wrong, but that these leaders were fallible humans just like any other schmuck. The Bishop of Rome however has a dilemma, when he puts on holy relics and sits on the throne of Peter, his word is gospel and infallible. Even if Rome did believe it was in err, it could not go back on itself because that would undermine everything it has become and is.

In every healthy relationship, a person must admit he or she is wrong. Spouses must apologize to spouses, children to parents, and even sometimes parents to children. The church is no different. Sometimes we humans get it wrong. A verse gets mistranslated, a belief was influenced by a culture and not scripture, or a pastor just flubbed big time. Church is a place for sinners to get together and get better; but who can get better when no one admits when they are wrong? After all, isn’t that the first step in AA; admitting you have a problem?

Well, indulgences are kept around, but with a wink and nod that they really don’t mean anything. I can sort of live with that. I would have an hard time living with Catholicism knowing that I was living with them; but as long as no one took them seriously, I guess I would be okay … sort of … a bit. Not anymore though. The Catholic Church is now beginning to move them closer to the forefront declares the New York Times or at least not be silent about them. Yes, this is a direct challenge to Protestants; much like a bully gloating over its own stupidity. Whatever the Catholic Church may contribute in understanding becomes severely diminished by high-handed declarations.

However the more disturbing problem is the cost this has for the psyche of average believer. Is God’s grace and love to be bought or is it freely given? The Smalcald Articles, written by Luther, puts it like this:

The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans 3:24-25). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:23-25). This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us ... Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark 13:31).[45]

Our faith in God is not built with our works but with our faith. I would rather die for my faith than for my works. This was not something Luther and his protestant reformers created; it was in the scriptures all along waiting to be rediscovered. It feeds our egos to believe we can earn out way into heaven. If that were the case, than God is irrelevant and our own lives had better be the center. Yet how many Christians, Protestant as well as Catholic, believe that our works will earn us our salvation? How much stronger does this myth become when our churches reinforce it with bad teaching and bad examples?

Sin is still in the world, but the way to fight it is not with get out of jail free cards or new church dogma or strategies for growth. The way to fight sin is to rely on Christ to do what He said he would do, take the sin of the world onto Himself.

Luther’s war caused a schism in the church, but one that was desperately needed. It allowed for people to be found more easily by a God constantly reaching for them. Rome licked its wounds, but later moved closer and closer to the rest of the church.

It seems that today, however, it has chosen to go back to its old ways. The question is what new physical edifice will be erected as your spiritual edifice comes crashing down around your ears? What tangible monument to foolish pride will have been lifted up as you ignore the simple monument of a cross the promise made there that “your sins are forgiven?” Perhaps that failure isn’t comical at all.

[1] Actually it kind of goes like this: During the crusades, the popes said that anyone who fought the Muslims would go to heaven and get out purgatory. What’s purgatory you say? Purgatory is a place that doesn’t appear in scripture per se (and by per se, I mean not at all), but appears a lot in the tradition of the Catholic Church. It is a place where people are “purged” of their sins, hence the name purgatory. It is kind of a like refining someone so that you will be good enough to get into heaven. It isn’t pleasant apparently, because why else would people try and get out of it? However, not everyone was fit enough to go crusading, so the Roman Catholic Church said, “Okay, well, if you can’t go, we’ll take a donation that demonstrates your faith in the church. In return for this, we’ll send you the same piece of paper that crusaders are getting to get out of purgatory.” You can see the slippery slope. People left out thoughts of donations and justification, and focused only on the tit a tat viewing payment as a way to get out of punishment, and we know that’s not right!

OMG(osh)!

2009-01-14T23:45:00.001-08:00

(Warning: I am extremely tired as I write this, but subconscious Phil is trying to say something and it is best to let him do his own writing. Conscious Phil is trying to proofread.)

There is nothing more pathetic than an adult trying to act like an adult. A child acting like an adult is cute, and an adult in touch with their inner child is enlightened; but an adult who tries to behave like an adult means they are neither what they are nor what they pretend to be.

- Me

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was hanging out with my friend Andrew. Two desperate post college buds looking for some relatively harmless things to do, we began trying to find stuff to watch. Now, I know what you're thinking, most guys our age watch other things. Things which are as frivilous and putrid as can be comprehended; but somehow, and in someway, we just started watching animation. It is odd that in our day and time animation is regarded as something for children to watch. It is something we adults find beneath us: quaint, provential, but certainly no way to behave.

In our day to day lives,* it is ironic that we forget what it means to be us. Breadwinners and romantics often kill their humanity just to attempt to be human. It is not just pathetic, it is a sickness. We then try and act like children, but we have forgotten what it meant to be a child. We forgot that it meant to have faith, to love without the boundries of our conceptions, to dream stupid dreams and not have them mean utter disgrace and failure. I have entered the world of the false adult on this account, much to my embarrassment and chagrin.

In the end the adult is one who is in touch with what we Christians call the eternal now; and yet is in touch with it in more than just what we know. The Christian knows that the eternal now is a point in which time and space are compressed forever and ever into one, what the physicists would call, singularity. At each moment our lives enter a beautiful crossroads. Here time and space meld like stars into existence. Instead of pulling apart and compartmentalizing, labeling and categorizing our being; the human spirit realizes the happiness of the moment. That person knows time is an illusion of order and is only an utility created to assist in our endevors. That person doesn't reject time, but realizes that time is beneath the human psyche and spirit. There is no force or tool more powerful or important than the tiny unknowable nothingness/everything of one human soul. It is bigger and smaller than the universe, and that its power lies in its incomprehensibility.

It is the forgetting of the wonder we experienced as children that leads us to work jobs of minutia and unfulfillment. We long to laugh at simple joys of imaginary stories and castles and far away lands, to fight wars, to forget ourselves. I am not saying that childhood is perfect and that we should be children forever; but I am saying that to forget what we learned as children is dangerous and, more importantly, unpleasant.

It was in my, to use a cliche term, "an enlightened state" that I began to watch cartoons. A connection with the simpler times of being a child, it made me happy again; the simple kind of happiness that is as necessary as the complex and philosophical ones. Naruto and Deathnote and Avatar are the simple pleasures that our the last refuge of my complexes.

I write this post to say that I am an huge fan of Avatar. I just finished the last episode and am in complete awe of the imaginations that can keep people captivated for three years. I started watching the show in the very middle of the middle (episode 33 to be exact). When I began watching the show with my friend Andrew, we desperately tried to watch as many episodes as we could. We would record them on a DVR and play them back later on that night, drinking wine, and commenting on how great a story it was.

The show, I should mention, is about four peoples. Each people is linked to elements: earth, fire, air, and water. Some individuals in each culture can manipulate the element of their people. There is a unifying reincarnation that appears in a cyclical pattern to each of the peoples called the Avatar. The Avatar, in this generation, is helped by his friends to try and restore balance to an unbalanced world. Corny? Yeah, but who says there is anything wrong with being corny?

The funny thing is that when I talk to kids, I usually mention that I am an huge fan. I have let friend's of the family borrow my dvds or watched a few episodes with my friends who have kids. The result is always the same, they end up becoming as obsessed with the show as I am.

Is there a point to this blog post? It is pretty easy to spot. Usually I am much more structured and rational, but sometimes it is just important to really enjoy the beauty of creativity and the joy of creation. When we were young we would tell stories to parents and draw pictures with friends, when we got older we forgot the simple joy of our imaginations. So, pick up the phone or sit down at the computer and tell a friend a story you have had or share a work of fiction that you have heard/watched/read. Enjoy this simple part of your humanity; if not for me, than for that little child inside you.

*I know I use that phrase a lot, but in the minutia of day to day isn't it odd how we lose ourselves.

Unedited Rant Number 1

2009-01-11T23:04:00.000-08:00

I was wanting to write something, but the muses only seem to visit me during the most impractical time and in the most impractical places. A car ride, a moment before sleep, in the middle of the work day; these are the times they visit me most. When I am in front of my computer screen, when I am faced with a million distractions that fail to distract me; these are the times when they abandon me to the vast nothingness and apathy that seem to be the units of the day. Great phalanxes of nothingness seem to crowd around me while everyone else pursues a dream or at least a dream of a dream.

I try and write when I cannot. I remember once I tried to write a paper for philosophy and muses stayed far away. Here I was a day or two ahead of schedule, and they wouldn't visit to me. The day before the paper, it seemed like there wasn't enough that could be written or said. Why is that? Why is the world so cruel as to make even the easy things hard? And why am I and an handful of others the only people that really care?

Why don't we treat our philosophers right? I suppose it is because we are all philosophers; and if we start acknowledging that truth, than we would have to treat everyone properly. I have met so many people who have bought into the myth of unkindness. They do not even have skin that is very thick at all. They are like bad actors trying to be so very unkind because they think that is what is required of an human being. Is acting like professional lying? Why is lying to ourselves and others so important to ourselves? I don't have any answers. I am hoping something triggers something and I can write.

The truth is I want to write something right now. I want to say something important only to me. No one else will care the way I do and I even realize that it doesn't really matter except to a small group of my friends. I want to shout and curse down the sun and the moon and all the satellites of the cosmos; but after the primeval yalp ... what will I have really done. Oh, to not think so very much; especially about a blog post.

Contemplating Grey Skies or The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

2009-01-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you've taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

--Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

I got home today from a rather tough day at work. It can be really boring. Its the same people and we do the same stuff. We all have this feeling like we should be getting better and better and faster and faster, but in reality ... there is a point where one has to just be grateful that we have one another at all. On top of this, I am really tired. I have been going to bed late at night because I drove home from Lexington the night before last at about ten o'clock and was up reading a cook book (yes, a cook book; no, not "How to Serve Man"). The sky was gray, you know that horrible tint of terrible that one runs across from time to time. It feels as if the sky wishes to land and smother the world below like a beached whale on an unsuspecting surfer.

I tried to make it through like any red-blooded American would. I went shopping. I found a couple of cooking knives, some pots, some pans, a food processor, condiments, etc.; but there is a sort of cathartic apathy that ensues after the Christmas credit binge and I just didn't feel up to spending any more money. I drove home and tried to muster my thoughts and emotions and will (my platonic goodie basket called the psyche) into one good long prayer. The words come out, but sometimes it just feels like one is mumbling at the sky or ground or, in my case, the road straight ahead of me. I took stock of my life and found the truly painful truth, there is one thing that I believe.

I came home and the gray skies that I had left behind in the day time followed me home as I watched news that I disagreed with and talked over the same daily ennui that I had brought up countless times before.

A friend of mine said that we cannot rely on others for our happiness. This is true, but we cannot rely on ourselves either. My mind came back to the thought I had had in the car. I am cursed to be a Christian. It is the one thing that in which I believe, and I have tried to grow doubt in my heart and head, and it just gets crushed by the overpowering facts. In the end, what I have found is something very interesting. The more we lose, the more we have room for other things. Faith is not some promise that things are going to be rosy-colored sunshine days. Faith is a promise that there are bigger things than gray skies and ennui emotions. There are bigger things than the things we want. Faith is about the realization that we are aware that there are bigger things than ourselves. And it in a world that can be kind of boring, isn't it nice to know there are still things that make life a little more interesting.

In Whose Name?

2008-12-28T22:43:00.000-08:00

I was going to post a blog piece about how religion is not behind conflicts, but really what's the point? This seems to be the main issue where the religious and non-religious can really agree. It is also a patently false premise. People use religion as a tool, not to control the minds of others, but to get what they want. It is the equivalent of using the passive voice to express unintentional acts of brutality (i.e. The knife went in. or The gun went off.)

If God wanted a piece of land for Himself he'd just make it. If God wanted to force you to convert, He'd be able to just break you. If there is no God, than we'll just find some other reason to beat the hell out of one another. What scriptures do we look at to push for peace or war, tolerance or ostracization, good or evil? What do we mean when we say these things? We never ask though because that would require the hard decision of giving up what we wanted. And when we cannot break free of what we say we believe, we hold God accountable for our own failure.

False Christians and unquestioning skeptics figured out long ago who the fall guy was. I have seen Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Black and White, kill in the name of their father when there wasn't an ounce of conviction in their bones except power and pride. We are all after the wrong person when we crucify God, perhaps we would best to crucify ourselves a bit more. If I were to say that however, I should have the whole world allied against me ... and they would do so in the name of whatever it is they worship.

I didn't write much.

2008-12-27T23:10:00.000-08:00

(I don't feel like editing this blog post.)

I was going to post a blog but its two o'clock on Sunday morning and I can't think of anything new to say. I was going to talk about waking up every morning with a sense of existential dread about the mysteries the world held counterbalanced with my fear of all the stuff I actually needed to accomplish; but I pretty much summed it up in that one sentence. After the shower and stepping out the door for work, I am usually over my mental incapacitation so long as I am busy.

It is odd how some distractions are beneficial and some are detrimental. A writer trying to write a piece is quite different from the writer being driven mad by all the thoughts in his or her head. In the former case, distraction is a killer; in the latter, the savior. C.S. Lewis said that sin is like playing a note in a song at the wrong time. It isn't that the note is wrong, its just not its place. I suppose distractions are a lot like that too. In fact most all of life is like that. Perhaps were all just comedians looking for the perfect timing? Perhaps we are all just taking ourselves a bit too seriously?

Anyway, I have got some sleeping to accomplish.

The Greatest Gift I Never Got.

2008-12-26T18:14:00.001-08:00

Grenache |grəˈnä sh |
noun
a variety of black wine grape native to the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France.
• a sweet red dessert wine made from this grape.

"You know you guys didn't have to get anything for me," I said, and unlike most people during the holidays I actually meant it. Christmas in my family is another day with God. He really doesn't need to reinforce it on December 25th. "I really am not expecting anything."

"I know but Seth really wanted to get you a bottle of wine," my friend told me. Seth was her brother and though I had met him only once, I had instantly like him. He seemed like the kind of guy who appreciated genuine people.

"Well that was nice of him," I said, "but I really don't need anything."

"It was really funny," my friend went on telling me in her kitchen as we poured glasses of Riesling, "Seth was asking everybody, 'Don't you have any grenache?' We had all of Meijers looking for a bottle of it. He was like, 'It's Phil's favorite.'"

Many people know that I developed an interest in wines. I think this is pretty much because I was jealous with so many people having an hobby like model railroads or video games or stamp collecting. So, I have delved into writing and photography, cooking and wine drinking. I remember the first wine I ever had was in communion, and it is a miracle that I continued to be curious after that because if there is anything that can turn one off wine drinking it is probably communion.

Years later I went to college at a dry campus. Yes, a college with no alcohol sounds like watching an Hollywood Blockbuster with no special effects, but in reality without the distractions one does have a clearer idea of all the things going on. Still, I think ... it messed me up a little bit though because I was more interested in learning about alcohol after that.*

When I went to Spain I had a sangria that was quite possibly the worst sangria of my entire life; and yet I wanted to know exactly if there was a great wine. I had drank all the beers that one could, but I was still curious about this next step. When I got back from my trip, I went to the local wine section of my favorite grocery store in Cincinnati, Jungle Jim's, and asked what I should have next. The answer was that I should try this Spanish wine called Vina Alarba.

That wine will always be my favorite because it made me love wines. It is made from the grenache grape, but actually that is not its real name. The French called it that when they took it over the Pyrenees and started planting it in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.**

In Spain, where it is likely to have originated, it is called garnacha. It is still one of the most planted grapes there, but is not really well-known over here in the new world. It is also beautiful.

It's tastes are not subtle, but rich and bold. They are not heavy with the ether of alcohol, but rich with the flavors of the grape itself. In Spain's hot dry climate one can tell that this is a grape that is a survivor. It clings to every drop of rain that falls in that arid climate and concentrates and treasures its flavors deep in its berry. When the wine is made you know that it is a survivor and that it is rich with character.

"Oh wow. I'm really appreciative, but you can't find grenache around here," I began slowly as I realized the thought that had gone into this gift. It was a search for a grape that I had mentioned only once to a friend who I had met only a couple of times. I continued, "I have only seen it mixed with another grape around here. You have to go pretty far to get a bottle."

"Well, he tried to get it for you," she went on, and smiled as she said it.

"I know it sounds trite," I said, "but its the thought that counts."

Gosh, what a trite saying is! It is overused as people get us gifts for which we have no use (and even less room). We say it to people who miss parties or events. We even mutter it about failed attempts at things. Its a throw-away phrase like, "Thank you." or "Have a nice day." or even "How are you?". When I was a child, such words were so empty. When I was child, I tried to mean words the words in those phrases or I tried to really care about the cards people attached to my presents; but to be truthful, I just wanted the swag. What card could ever compare to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure wearing an hockey jersey or a Transformer? When your a kid, you appreciate the objects; I guess when you get older you appreciate the thought.

None of us like to be forgotten, especially by friends and strangers. Like the song, "Auld Lang Syne," we wish not to be the forgotten through the mists of "Days Gone By." Memories of people seem to be shorter and shorter; and we forget loved one's; but we hope that we can make up our shortcomings as good friends when they get a brief biography of the past year in a Christmas card.

However, it is the kindness of brief friends, the re-occuring "touching base" of old friends, and unexpected phone calls; that really make this world a beautiful place. Christmas presents and holiday letters are well-and-good, but they lack the pure kindness of person who lives up to the honest to God cliché, "Well, it's the thought that counts."

* I never fall in love with anything without full participation of my neurons. The irony of alcohol is that it negates the proper functioning of the neurons; and is a joyful paradox, kind of like talking about a square circle; which exists and doesn't at the same time. Or perhaps it is more like trying to make it to zero Kelvin or hit terminal velocity or get to absolute singularity.

** Can you see now why I love wine? When is the last time that a bottle of Mountain-Dew ever had such an interesting history?

Things I Thought When My Brain Was Off

2008-12-24T23:56:00.001-08:00

I don't really do this, but my imagination was piqued earlier in the week and also tonight, so I did the unthinkable (literally, I had to stop thinking), I read some of Richard Dawkins' quotes. Okay, okay, there is a danger in reading quotes and a small diatribe; but hear me out, I didn't get them from any Christian web sites so I guess it counts.

Of course Dawkins makes some decent points, but the problem with some atheists and theists (unfortunately usually the most vocal ones of these groups) is that they believe they have made and/or are making the "slam dunk" argument; that after this argument there will be no more debate on the issue of religion and it will be over and done, Amen.

I think that is what makes some of these atheists so jaded. I once heard the story of a wealthy philanthropist who worked his whole life at something and when he accomplished his mission, he was angry and jaded because there was nothing left to do. Or, how about the fact that Martin Luther wrote a scathing anti-semetic work that embarrasses we Lutherans to no end and is completely unjustifiable, simply because the Jews wouldn't become Christians after the yoke of Rome had been removed. What is the similarity between the two stories? Though one person was disappointed with what he perceived was success and the other was disappointed with what he perceived as failure; both men put too much stock in their own achievements and win or lose became all that there was.

I think Mr. Dawkins puts too high a value on his own achievements, and that makes him look like a fool to a great many people (except his disciples). It allows him to go into areas of which he has no expertise (philosophy, literature, sociology). Then he says that that particular area is not important at all. This can make you a lot of enemies. However, Mr. Dawkins acts like a brash young bully rather than a person who really cares about his beliefs or, as he might say, "the facts". Mr. Dawkins overlooks the fact that in regards to the humanities he can allow himself to be outgunned and outclassed by simple bachelor's degree students. His hubris is his greatest failing, not his lack of zeal.

No one should debate Mr. Dawkins because there really will be no rational debate involved. I will give you an example. I once had a supervisor tell me I needed to get something done. It didn't make sense, so I asked why I needed to get it done? This person replied that he was in charge and, with all due respect, I shouldn't question it.* Mr. Dawkins seems to ignore a lot of things in his quest to be the world's smartest person. Ironically, the thing he ignores most is the fact that for every invective he levels against Christianity and belief of any kind for his own ego boosting, he is reinforcing the faith of every Christian and making his argument weaker by building it on his own very human understanding.

I wish Mr. Dawkins the best. I hope he finds a civil and intelligent way of debating with people, but until he does, I am thankful that the atheists will never have a foe worthy of the Christian's notice.

*In the hierarchy of things not to tell a philosopher, this is near the top. In the hierarchy of things not to tell an American, this is also near the top. Finally, under no circumstances should you tell a Christian this, just ask the Roman Catholic Church.

A Christmas Message

2008-12-24T18:45:00.001-08:00

Christmas is upon us once again. Day in and day out we feel the unbearable weight of it all. There is a tension in this season unlike any other time of year a dark and cruel undertone behind the veneer of holiday platitudes about "peace" and "happiness." We are told that people behave better, have some common kindness, and a spirit of joy permeates us at this time of year. If this is the case than may I say two very important things. First, if humans are capable of such sentiment for a period of less than one month, why are they incapable of it for the rest of year? Secondly, they are incapable of such a sentiment for a period of less than one month.

I have driven on roads and been cut off by cars that any other time of the year would have yielded to me out of common kindness. Now that natural inclination to kindness is supplanted by the Macy's Christmas special homing patterns. I have seen people not tip or thank or return the greetings of lowly retail peons, because they were too busy trying to purchase the requisite presents for friends and family. I have even seen good people* get shunned when people talk of Christmas plans with other friends when this lonely soul is in their midst. In fact it is striking how many times it is the non-Christian's "merry Christmas" is heard as opposed to the Christian's.

All the time Christians "fight for their rights." "Keep Christ in Christmas" we say, or "Those atheists are trying to remove this or that from our town's Christmas." Yet, Christmas is not so much about what is done, but rather it is about what has been done for us. All our secularization of the holiday hasn't been able to remove the common theme: God loved the world and he sent his Son. No one brought God any gifts that he used to win our salvation. No one deserved to have God move into the neighborhood. And no certainly showed the holy family any kindness or gave them any tips or invited them to stay with them or even let them merge into traffic. The Gospels don't tell us of any human providing them with anything of use at all, and yet everything turned out okay.

And the gifts provided by the wise astrologers and songs of praise given by the shepherds all disappeared under the vast waves of history; but what remained was one gift, not earned by the laws of "naughty or nice" and not just given to the people who let people merge into busy intersections on Black Friday. The gift of peace on earth and unending happiness and reunion with God was given to the harried Christmas shopper who forgets the meaning of Christmas while at Wal-Mart or forgets to invite a friend to a holiday party. God, you see, has a way of reaching us even in the midst of Christmas.

* Not that ascribed moral worth should in any way dictate the benevolence that we should show to our fellow human beings.

The Human Problem

2008-11-30T22:25:00.001-08:00

It is common to hear people lament the "divisive" nature that religion plays in our world today. Voiced by John Lennon's "Imagine" and Vladimir Lennin's "Russian experiment," people blithely accept that if we can just get rid of religion life will be a shining utopia. Recent events in India or the vast embarrassing history of humanity make such visions seem like a good idea. If only we could figure out how to get people to stop believing in God and start believing in one another life would be grand.

There is of course a catch to this though; and it is not God I can assure you. It is the human problem. "Imagine philosophy" and "Bolshevik politics" do not believe in a God. If there is no God, than it is humans causing all the suffering and pain in the world. If that is the case, than are human beings really worth saving? I mean, we are nothing more than carbon blueprints that only appear to "know" things. We don't even have ourselves. Indeed any rock we excavate or log we burn has just as much value as we do; this deduction seems preposterous and I have an hard time believing it.

However, even if I were to ignore that glaring flaw, how can I really love creatures as deeply troubled and messed up as myself. We do not share. Lennon lived in the Dakotas while the poor died on the streets of New York. At the same time in Russia, the Communist elite lived like kings while others were being dragged off to Siberia. Therefore this is not a religious problem, but a problem with humanity. Human beings have to be free to do the right thing, something that the Judeo-Christian religion has stated right from the beginning. To be forced or coerced into doing the right thing makes the allure of doing evil seem like a virtuous rebellion.

Meanwhile people kill because ... well, why? Borders are crossed and religions are offended? Folks Christianity has never backed any country and we can all say that Christ "humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross." Translation, first, God has been mocked and is big enough to handle our little slights and second, I doubt God really needs us to avenge him. So while we kill in the name of God, we should note that God died for our "good" name.

This leads me to my main thought. There is nothing laudable about humanity. Even if we aren't unfortunate enough to be in places where our lives are in constant danger, we do live in a world where our wills butt up against other people's wills. The subtle anger and malice of people eats away at everyone's soul day in and day out. People kill in so many ways be it behind the back comments or sarcastic put downs that there really is nothing do be said in our favor. In fact I often wonder why God even bothers keeping us around and if there is no God, why not just be done with us all together. We have done nothing to commend us.

The answer is, I am afraid, an unpopular one even with me. I was ransomed and saved. I like to think of it like this: There are some very awful cars that cost a great deal of money. They break down a lot and have extremely high costing replacement parts, but people pay a fortune to own them. My little Geo Prism is a great car but isn't worth nearly as much. Why is that? Simple economics: People ascribe higher value to things that aren't necessarily worth the cost. In this regard, God has made a serious blunder. He offered his deity as sacrifice to creatures who don't deserve it.

I know it is pointless or foolish to actually love people for their intrinsic value, there is nothing really lovable. I just happen to love that which is perfect, and that which is perfect sets an unusually high price on humanity, so I am stuck loving this beautiful mess. In other words, if there were no religion, there would be no people worth living for. This option is something not worth imagining.

You win some, you lose some.

2008-10-29T21:17:00.001-07:00

Sigh, the Phillies won the World Series. Don't get me wrong, I love the National League. I feel like too often we get beaten in the All-Star game by that other league. Still...and I apologize to all my Phillies-rooting Phanatics out there, I usually do root for the underdog.

But the real reason I am writing this is not to congratulate the Phillies or console the poor Tampa Bay Rays who will have to retreat to their high seventy-degree paradise. Rather, as the game wrapped up tonight, I turned to my dad and uttered that one word that hangs over my beloved Cincinnati Reds like a pall: Pitching. One baseball expert put it best by saying that "pitching wins games and hitting keeps butts in the seats." The Reds can have a very fine group of hitters, but it doesn't mean anything without the requisite pitching staff.

The great tragedy or comedy, depending on who you ask, is the fact that Cincinnati has known this for years. Yet, nothing has been done about this. We wring our hands and lament it, but we are unwilling to make the necessary changes (i.e. budget or valuable player trades) in order to get better and move forward. I can attack and criticize my hometown all I want, but I realize that it is really a lot like my own life.

I look at people around me and how my friends move forward by sacrificing that which is truly unnecessary. I know the problems and have an hard time fixing them. Someone once said that admitting you have a problem is the first step, but I'd add that first steps really don't amount to much of a journey without the requisite next steps. Sometimes our sins are just too comfortable. So are beds I guess, but sooner or later you're going to have to get up and go.

The key is to just accept there are going to be rough spots in the outside world as well as in our own psyche, and that rarely will everything unfortunate visit us at the same time and not to worry when they do because there are bigger things than our worries. Meanwhile we can still be happy that there are things like the World Series and especially baseball.

2008-09-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

Hi, I'm a Mac ... and, I'm Sorry

(An attempt at a short blog.)

I once got into an argument with my uncle (nothing very heated, mind you) about a recent ad campaign by the vacuum company Dyson. At the end of the advert, the founder of the company said, "I just think things ought to work properly" or something like that. My uncle said it sounded arrogant, I countered that it just stated facts.

Following the rather ... oh lets face it, bad Seinfeld advertisement series released by Microsoft; the company and their ad firm have decided to try and resurect the PC from its bad image by showing that millions of people around the world (some ninety-five percent of the human population that owns a computer) runs Microsoft. This overlooks a couple of central themes. First, it is an all too blatant appeal to popularity fallacy. Second, it ignores that PCs have been getting bad marks for crashes, viruses, and generally just "not working properly."

This is not the hardware's fault on the whole (though I have owned a Dell that only gets to be plugged in from time to time). Most PCs have very similar components and do virtually the same thing. However, the modern PC has a major design flaw: its operating system. It isn't that the Window's operating system is flawed or bad or anything like that. These things can be fixed. It is that it is so inherently flawed, bad, and problematic; and that no one at Microsoft thinks that instead of fixing their deservedly tarnished image, they ought to try and fix their products.

In this Microsoft typifies corporate arrogance. They feel that instead of working to make things better, they should not be challenged. Instead of fixing what is the problem, they decide instead to try and "fix" how the problem is perceived.

My friends, I do not have the best job and I am not a graphics designer or scientist; but I do have an amazing computer that has lasted me longer than any computer I have ever owned. It is coming up on four years since I purchased one of my best investments. My last virus was over four years ago (on my Dell), my last hardware fix was over four years ago (on my Dell), the last time I had to restart my computer because of a blue screen of death was ... well you get the picture. My parents have a computer from longer ago than mine. My dad bought a computer recently and it shows no signs of slowing down. This is because all of these computers are Apples.

When people ask me what kind of computer they should buy, my answer is simple, buy a Mac. It doesn't crash, it doesn't get viruses, and it runs as fast years down the line as the day you got it out of the box. To me the choice is obvious. (Ironically it is also obvious to the ad company that runs Microsoft's campaign, for they too, you see ... run the Mac computer.)

Hello, I'm a Mac, and I'm sorry.

P.S. - If you have time and are interested you can also download Linux. It is free, but it is harder to use. Oh yeah, unlike Windows it won't crash, get viruses, etc. Odd how many operating systems out there don't mess up on an hourly basis.

P.P.S. - Yes, that is the blue screen of death leading into my blog post. Lest we get lulled into a false sense of security and happiness by all those "happy" Window's Users, let us not forget what we are "really" dealing with. (Other options were the Mac and PC guys, a video of Windows messing up whenever Bill Gates unveils something, or the MCP from Tron.)

Words Have Meaning

2008-09-06T13:19:00.001-07:00

Some of you may know of my increasing obsession with words, language, and its vital importance to how we live our lives. I’d like to focus on three words in particular namely: love, freedom, and sacrifice. These words seem to be or have been words bantered about recently. The latter two seem more important in our culture today than the first, but the first one is still used a lot today and in its time was the word of choice. In fact, it may actually demonstrate a generation gap.

Love

The Oxford English Dictionary says that love is “an intense feeling of tender affection and compassion.” It is important to know definitions, if for no other reason to know how inapplicable they actually are to our everyday usage. If we were to talk to an hundred people on the street, we would most likely end up with nearly as many definitions. Words have different meanings for different people because words are not solid things. They are socially agreed upon symbols. Imagine if you will a boat anchored in the water. It will move about on the surface of the water but stay relatively rooted to that spot. Words behave in much the same way.[1]

The main problem with people is when they believe, very firmly, that a certain word is no longer a symbol but an actual thing. In this way people cannot come to a common understanding because they are unwilling to yield on their notions of definitions.

A prime example is that of homosexuality.[2] Many people say we are to love homosexuals or that homosexuals love members of their own sex. However, we are fighting a battle of differing definitions. A Texas Baptist may differ greatly with a San Francisco homosexual on the definitions of not just erotic love, but of agape love as well. The problem comes when both sides refuse to see that the other person has a different definition. One of these definitions may indeed be tied into the deeper undercurrent of the laws of nature[3] and thus truly be called “right,” but that does not mean that we are to dismiss someone out of hand because they have a different definition. Indeed we are to “love” them so much that we try and practice our definition in such a way that they see it as so self-evident.[4]

Equally dangerous to holding too structured a definition, is to act as if such definitions do not matter. Back in the sixties such things were common. Love was the buzzword, but did it really mean anything to anybody? The definition was so mercurial that it actually didn’t have any substance at all. Therefore it wasn’t anything in which we could believe. That was the point. By ignoring the definition, you could have more and more people under one tent. What does that mean though? It’s not real community. Thus, reality imitated the word. A hollow group for a hollow word.

Freedom

Today’s word of choice is freedom. Yes, change and hope are popular, but they are not as important as freedom. The definition of freedom from Encarta is that it is “ a state in which somebody is able to act and live as he or she chooses, without being subject to any, or to any undue, restraints or restrictions.” It is manifestly obvious that no person on earth (with the possible exception of sociopaths) feels that absolute freedom a good thing.

However, we see that we run into the same problems with freedom as we do with love. Whose definition do we choose? Take for instance the very broad (almost cartoon-like) definition of freedom that I will give about the Democrats and Republicans. The cartoon depiction of Democrats is that they believe in freedom for sexual preference, religion, and lifestyle; whereas the cartoon Republican will believe in freedom for business practices, taxation, guns, and the like. The odd thing that neither side sees is that they both believe in freedom for different things. They are morally outraged that the other side would impede upon their freedom.

We know that these definitions of freedom only go so far though. The definitions that we give of freedom seem many times to be shallow and apparent excuses to allow us to do what we want to do. We accept it, not because we believe in freedom per se, but because we have a “gentlemen’s agreement” that we will look the other when you want something; a sort of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back” attitude to rights and freedoms.

The true freedom needed in America is something that will not harm the civil population and should not be rooted in any religion per se, but must be rooted in the common culture which may spring from a certain religion. Our acceptance of some freedoms and rejection of others can become hypocritical and it is important that we do not overly condone or overly condemn other people’s desires.

From this we understand that freedom is pretty hollow. A culture rooted in Confucism or Islam or Hindu may have a completely different notion of freedom. And, to be frank America is not, has never been, and should never be a completely free country. The anarchy of three hundred million little gods imposing their will to power in the name of hollow freedom is a Hell too horrible to imagine. Freedom is marketed though because it ties in with our ego and that ties into our pride. The wise person knows the danger of pride, whereas the fool will buy into the lie of contentment at the price of happiness.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice today is cheap. It can be bought and sold…literally. When President Bush told us to fight terrorism, he said we could do this by going to Disney World. This made many Republicans grown and gave many Democrats more ammunition; but the fact is that we all believe that we are sacrificing something while not really sacrificing anything at all. In many ways, however, true sacrifice flies in the face of freedom. You cannot have true freedom if you feel the need to sacrifice and you cannot have sacrifice if you place freedom at the forefront of your goals. Yet we hear all the time about sacrifices for freedom. We are told to respect the sacrifices that soldiers make for freedom. The irony of this is that we pay lip service to their sacrifices and yet make none on our own. We talk a great deal about the heroism of those fighting, but we don’t even do the smallest of things: like thanking a soldier.

And we can’t say that going to Disney World is a sacrifice or that paying the real cost of gas is a sacrifice or that this thing or that thing is a sacrifice. A real sacrifice would be to give up eating chocolate because of the slave labor that is used to produce it or not buying from China because of the horrible human rights abuses. We could set up public funds for colleges to do research for cleaner energy or volunteer at that local boys and girls club / food pantry / habitat for humanity project. We could spend less time glued to the idiot box while spending more time with family, books, and community. We could even sacrifice time and money to get that next degree. That is sacrifice.

Now this is not to say that Americans don’t give. Americans donate time and money on levels that other countries don’t understand. While I think more of our budget should go to foreign and domestic aid, I believe that Americans give more on a private level than most anyone else in the world;[5] but let us not pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves that we are wonderful individuals when most of us (yes us, because I am as guilty as the next person) don’t sacrifice nearly as much as we really believe we could.

Sacrifice becomes a pharisaical word. We believe we can fulfill moral requirements when we have made the proper sacrifices. However, we know that a change of heart is the only place where true sacrifice finds its beginning and ending. We have even begun fudging on the definitions of sacrifice. It has moved from what have you done because you had a change of mind and body and heart to what have you done to what have you done without to did you not buy that thing you wanted because you couldn’t afford it to did you go to Disney World and sacrifice your budget so the terrorists won’t win? I don’t want to live in a world where that is the definition of sacrifice. Ironically sacrifice has been having a pretty universal agreement. Most people believe they have done or are doing enough and some believe they can never do enough.[6]

If, as the dictionary puts it, sacrifice is “a giving up of something valuable or important for somebody or something else considered to be of more value or importance,” can we really say there is anything we have sacrificed or will sacrifice? I suppose the great irony of America is that until it knows what it really values above everything else, it will never know sacrifice and no matter what it may sacrifice, it will never measure up to that unknown something.

Humanity will always wrestle with definitions and the thoughts behind the words. Words like sacrifice, freedom, and love are hard to define. A big danger comes about when we forget that words aren’t really the things they are describing but rather signs that point towards these things. A great example is the word car. When I say the word car you may think of a different car than that of which I am thinking. The question is who is right and how much does it matter? Love, freedom, and sacrifice matter to the American and individual psyche; but we should never hate because someone has different definitions. We can disagree with others and even hate their definitions, but in reality we are all humans trying to grasp at the deeper meanings of words and their importance to our daily lives.

[1] So do mathematical symbols and numbers, but that is another story.

[2] Oh yeah, I can just see it now. Everyone is going to be getting all ticked off and ready for a battle. It’s like someone broke a glass at a crowded restaurant. Now I am not going to argue homosexuality, primarily because I don’t care to do so at this moment. I am not interested in it in that way, but I may write a blog post about it in the future.

[3] Do not for a moment pigeon-hole me into a close-minded Christian camp because I speak of the laws of nature. People from Aristotle to Kant have discussed the laws that govern human beings souls as being co-equal to those that govern the natural world. One does not have to be a Christian to believe that such things exist.

[4] Neither camp has been too good with demonstrating their definition of love properly.

[5] If I could have data on this, I would be one happy Phil.

[6] A Christian believes that there is only one sacrifice that we can make and that we can never truly make it by ourselves and on our own.

Arguing about Water

2008-08-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

I recently went to Columbus with a few of my friends. There are times where I can hold a wrong opinion in the face of overwhelming reason and data. That day was just such an occasion. On the car ride one of my friends stated that businesses, governments, and organizations were worried about water shortages and that it was quickly developing into a crisis on par with our current oil problems. She was saying this as a way to get a conversation started with all of us in the car, and most likely, especially with me. I knew it was a problem, but I really hated to agree with her.

What caused me to contradict her? Why did I have to win an argument even if I was wrong?

I countered by explaining that water was the most plentiful resource available and that desalination plants were advancing by leaps and bounds. I pointed out that people had similar misgivings about the amount of food that we have, and that current thought holds that our food supply will be okay until we hit about twenty-five billion people. Anyone with a modicum understanding of logic will see the above two fallacies.

My main problem wasn't the data itself, but rather what was being done with that data. Do the corporations actually use it to fix the problem, or do the governments, or does the populous; or do we gnash our teeth in our ivory towers and lament how we are all going to die in an hot, or dry, or foodless, or oilless world. If society is the individual writ large, than my own lamanentations about how insurmountable my own problems are should dictate that I would be better solving my problems than complaining about them. Human society would be best to learn this as well. I get agrevated by the doom and gloom of problems; and, I suppose, I would like things to be rosey and happy all the time like a bad movie.

So when the problem was brought to my attention, I argued against this friend of mine even though I had known her view to be correct. It is sad to admit this error in myself. I had argued her point a week or two earlier. I wasn't in control of the conversation and therefore my pride for wanting to hold the winning position trumped my desire for truth.

This is a common story with human relations. Bush's stance on the Iraq war, the Neocons' stance on the economy, or the Democrats' strong position on various social issues; show that our desire to be right will not only trump what is right but even our own notions of what is right. Admitting we are wrong means others are our equals or our superiors. In a world where we have become like God, we feel a need to set up a strata where we are on top; and being wrong means we are not perfect.

The irony is that the same sensation to tell my friend she was wrong was the same as our desire to not admit the problems with water, or oil, or global warming. I wish I could admit being wrong more often even with my friends.

The Curse of the Men of Silver

2008-07-21T23:30:00.001-07:00

[Disclaimer: A friend approached me and reminded me that many of my generation were dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. While I believe the war in Iraq is an inexcusable quagmire and that some people have discredited our military by their conduct over there; I have been more than impressed by the zeal shown by those fighting for a democracy and working to rebuild a very broken country. I believe the lion's share of soldiers are good and honorable people who more than anything believe in the ideas behind this country. They are the good thing about this war and one of the few glimmers of hope to be found in such a regrettable mess. It is because of them that this war has not been a complete loss and they have proven that victory can sometimes be seen even in the darkness of defeat. I hope that their example will be the starting point for a deeper understanding of what once was great about this nation and could be great yet again.]

"So, why do people fight anyway? Perhaps the meaning of human existence lies within their will to fight. People feel a sense of accomplishment through battle. And its also a fact that the ones actually fighting are never perceived as being tainted."

- Katsuyuki Sumizawa

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Translation: Who watches the watchmen?

- Juvenal

In Plato's Republic, Socrates is asked who should lead his shining new Republic. Socrates answers that the Republic should be led by philosopher kings whose rule is enforced by soldiers to ensure that the people live happy, prosperous, and orderly lives. The philosopher kings are the men of gold. The soldiers are the men of silver, and the average people are the men of bronze.

First off, as a philosopher myself I can assure that nothing would be worse for a country than to be led by philosophers. When we are not lost in thought and undecided on an issue, we are ideologues arguing the most curious things with a frightful zeal. I suppose that it would be best to have people of wisdom and moral courage ruling, but this is a given for what all societies truly want deep in their heart of hearts. America is a country ruled where the leaders are chosen by the people and there is a strong blend of all these classes. The people try to elect those who will be the wisest.

However, what are we to do with the soldiers? In our current society we seem to have a perverse view of the military. We civilians lust for the destruction of enemies and see them as nothing more than objects. We have objectified the enemy so much that now we can no longer talk to them, but rather we look at them as obstacles in our way to victory.

The great shame is that we view our soldiers in such an horrible way as well. They are the flip side of this. Trained to be weapons, they must be stripped of pity for the people against whom they fight. When a war is just, this is a sad sacrifice to ask anyone to make. When a war is unjust, it is damnable act by those who lead. In essence, war is state sanctioned murder. Murder is wrong, accept when worse things can arise from it's going unpunished. Even the just wars (World War II or the reprisal to attacks from Afghanistan) leave us with the ultimate horror of asking young men and women to commit murder so as to protect others.

The shabby treatment of soldiers in this country is inexcusable. Our country has failed our military in three very large ways. First, we have allowed war profiteers to gain large sums of money for doing virtually nothing. Secondly, we have not worked hard enough to promote peace throughout the world so as to end the threat of war. Third, and most shamefully, we have cried crocodile tears and talked a great deal about the sacrifice of veterans; while turning a blind eye to what we can really do to show our gratitude.

If we really mean to look out for our citizens who are willing to fight for us, we should make sure that they are best equipped for wars which we pray will never happen. We don't do this though. And when they return, they are never thanked by people who see them in uniform.

Instead we are fortunate enough to turn them into objects. (Perhaps living in this age of materialism has made everything and everyone an object.) However, a soldier is viewed to be a tool of war like a tank or a plane. They are the "smart chip" in the machines or infantry; and not an human being. That is how we get to sleep at night. That is how we are able to deal with all those parts of the statistic. The people dying in wars are nothing more to us than the scrap metal of an incinerated humvee or apache helicopter or any other war machine. God help us when enemy and protector are nothing more than a tally for how a war is progressing.

So what is a soldier's duty. A soldier is a person who must only be called upon when the country is in its darkest hour. They must prepare for a job that they should never ever have to perform; while in the meantime working to prevent the ultimate horror from occurring. They should be asked, as they have so often in the past, to built the infrastructure of this country and the rest of the world. They should trade in their precious time for the promise of this country to give them a solid education. They should receive loyalty from those who lead them and are protected by them (namely the United States people and its government).

It is a testament to how fortunate we are, that we have never seriously contemplated a military coup. It seems the most ludicrous notion in the world that the military would overthrow our government, and yet most of the world is used to this kind of behavior.* When one really thinks about this, one is amazed with the loyalty that is found in those who serve; and dismayed by the lack of loyalty found in the body public with regards to its military.

Let me be honest. I am not a jingoist who believes in the unsullied purity of the American soldier; but I am a realist who knows that as long as there are evil people willing to perpetrate evil wars, it is best that we have a strong protection against them. Those who fight for what is good deserve to be encouraged for and in their endeavors. They are fulfilling a dangerous job and it is up to us assist them as best we can.

*This of course was another precedent set by the first president. When military officials were preparing to establish General Washington as the military dictator of America; he cooly stared them down and we have been without such a threat ever since.

Notes upon the first few minutes of a movie I turned off.

2008-07-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

No one needs to tell history majors of the inanity of war or its tremendous influence on human affairs. We know. We've studied them. Most wars are shallow, pointless, and stupid. People justify them then and later generations will justify them. In my opinion World War I, the Spanish American War, the War in Vietnam, and a myriad of other wars did nothing but spill a lot of human blood in the name of high ideals while in reality it was mere blood-letting of some anger and hostility. War is usually pointless and it is a rare and very fine leader who can keep the general banality of human nature from indulging in a base desire on par with denying poor food or the helpless assistance.

That being said, sometimes war is necessary. It is a nasty and abysmal thing, but still a necessary evil. It is not my desire to here-in discuss when war is justified and when it is not. Rather, I wish to discuss something I recently watched.

I had heard good things about Flags of Our Fathers. I had really wanted to see it when it was released. I had thought the movie would be a good study on guilt as one group goes home at the price of others who really did the deed. I will not by any means discredit Mr. Eastwood's ability as a director. I will lay siege to this movie.

Flags of Our Fathers, or atleast the bit I saw, is a jumbled mess. It starts in the dreams of an old man, and yo-yos between past and present to a degree that hardly lets one have grasp of anything. In fact that would be the main point of the movie. One feels as if nothing is real. There is no right and no wrong. The soldiers fight and die on the beach for nothing. The heads of state want to win a war just to win a war. There were no concentration camps, there were no brutal Japanese, there were no real points to this war. It was just some foolish old men sending men to die needlessly.

My generation applauds this kind of talk. It is not because of some noble enlightenment about the nature of war and its cost. (To believe that is such damned nonsense if you just look at the practical lust we have about mutilations and cruelty in our films.) Rather it is that my generation wishes to see itself as the best generation. We would rather tear down the edifices of our grandparents so we did not have to look at them. We have accomplished nothing in our lifetime except the acceleration of the destruction of the environment, the continuation of the banality of our culture, and the destabilization of world order. That is just to name a few things. When did my generation sacrifice? When did my generation give? When did my generation really practice costly grace?

It doesn't matter though because revisionist historians tell us that our grandparents were just as banal as we were. This war they fought in the forties didn't really mean anything. You see they were either saps or scoundrels. The former believed all that nonsense about ridding the world of tyranny and the latter was just in it for all they could get.

I cannot respond to such a world-view because it falls so far out beyond the pale of reality as to be considered in the realm of Lewis Carroll. We have seen the Japanese catching babies upon bayonets and holding our soldiers in zoos or working them to beyond the point of death. We know of Germans leading people to incinerators or perpetrating horrible "experiments" upon them. We had tried to appease these monsters and they forced us to have to launch a crusade upon the darkness. If there had been another way, we would have done it; but there was no other way except brute force.

Were there evils on our side? Of course there were. The internment of American citizens who happened to be of Japanese origins is a deep blemish on our country's honor. Our treatment of African American service men was bad enough, even without the stark contrast with the German soldiers we sent back to be "prisoners" in the South. That is what makes America such a unique country. We freely admit where our mistakes were. However, it also invites countries with less developed senses of "guilt" and notions of "atonement" to label us as just as vile.

But let us Americans be perfectly honest. We live in the greatest country in the world and we are inheritors of an honorable legacy. It is a legacy of ideas and ideals. A country were imperfections were written down right beside achievements; and this is where I find fault with Flags of Our Fathers.

It is a film glorifying nihilism. Nobody really believed anything. The soldiers really didn't believe in the war. They didn't believe in right and wrong in essence. They were just along for the ride history was giving them. Do me a favor, talk to a veteran from that war and ask them if that is what they really believed. Perhaps you could read some history and find the truth of the matter.

This was a war that had to be fought. It was a war that could have no appeasement save total victory by the allies. There would be other wars where the two sides could compromise, but this was a war between absolute good being represented by flawed human beings and absolute evil being represented by flawed human beings. This film would be wise to take heed of such truths and not trade the heritage of a nation for a cheap forgiveness of my current pathetic generation.

Clinton’s Magical Fairyland of Doom

2008-06-04T19:29:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to write this blog. I was going to calmly let all this pass, but given the fact that I have no women who regularly read my blog, I guess I am safe to say what I am about to say. I am rather disheartened by the support that some women are giving Hillary Clinton, despite her clear self-centered nature.

Men do a lot of stupid stuff, that is true. We can get very enamored with large televisions and the newest gadgetry. We have been known to continue down roads without asking for directions. The stereotypical male is pretty awful.

Fortunately we don't live in the land of stereotypes. The world isn't written by a cosmic sit-com author, based on ingrained biases handed down in some dusty book.* We live a life filled with lots of people who do things outside of what they are supposed to be doing. We have democrats who are gun activists. We have Republicans who are working feverishly to save the environment. I have known responsible corporate leaders, honest politicians, and one or two math majors who didn't bore me to tears.

Women have a lot of stereotypes too. Turn on the television and see if you can find them. There is the "angel of the household" stereotype where mom has to look after everyone in the family. (Dad is relegated to the biggest child status.) We have the double standard motif where a guy is allowed to be promiscuous, but not a girl. (It still exists.)

To be honest, the stereotypes women have are probably a lot more intrusive than the one's that men feel. Men are regarded as uncouth idiots, but it really doesn't effect our jobs or our leisure. Women have had a tradition of really having to work hard to get where they are. The generations of suffragettes and female workers who tirelessly fought to gain equality under the law of nations and law of economics is truly a triumph for all of humanity. It does not belong to females alone, but to all people.

That is why it sickens me to see a snake-oil salesmen come in and usurp history.** I would vote for a myriad of other women before I would vote for Ms. Clinton and the women of this nation should too. She is not a populist and she doesn't care about the needs of women. And even if she did care about these things, it would not qualify her one bit to be president of the United States of America. Pandering to the public with a platform of bread and circuses is neither helpful or safe; and unless I missed my guess the president is supposed to be the president of all Americans, not just people of his or her own cliche.

It is also disgraceful the way Clinton has insinuated, and her followers have out and out said, that Barack Obama is ahead because he is a man. (He won, but you will never hear a Clintonite or Clintonian or whatever they are say he's won.) That is the most utter nonsense I have ever heard in my life. If that was the case, the democrats wouldn't allow a black man to be the nominee either. They would've picked someone smarmy like Jon Edwards or someone crazy like Denis Kucinich because they are white. The democrats had a lot of white guys to choose from this year. If it comes to elections being about picking people like us, the democrats decided to be a little on the brave side. (It is a pity that they weren't more brave in actually backing their nominee.)

For all her faults and flaws, Ms. Clinton seems to have served her constituency quite admirably. I suppose she will be a fine legislator. Her problem is that she doesn't want to be a legislator, but rather she wants to have power. She has lied about her credentials, her record, and her rival. I suppose if they had been very good lies, she might make a decent president, but the lies haven't even been that good.

The thrust of my blog post is this, stereotypes are fine as rubric. They help create a sort of order to our lives and allow us to organize things, but when we ignore facts in order to adhere to our stereotypes than we are living in a fantasy world and a dangerous one at that. Ms. Clinton is doing just this. She is reinforcing the stereotypes that men are evil and out to get her, you cannot trust Mr. Obama because of his race, and that the people of money only got that way by screwing everyone else out of their money. Such broad stereotypes are not believed by the Clintons, but they are used to manipulate those who WANT to believe in these nefarious cabals. It would be wise of Clinton supporters to trade in what they want to believe for what they need to believe.

* We must ban together and find the actual stereotypical sit-com book. My bet is that it is in the L.A. public library and has its own private group of librarians who take calls from stymied second-rate authors about how to get a character in and out of trouble. "Oh, he's a man," one declares, "have you had him burn down the house while trying to cook dinner?" Another says, "well, she is a blonde and we all know that means she's a ditz, so have her mispronounce some words and do a few cheers." When we find this book we must destroy it. We will have to go without television for a few weeks, but it will be worth it. Then again, the stupider parts of society will probably not know how to behave without the "sit-com reference"

** I am not going to write "herstory" because history and his are based off of two different linguistic branches. "His" is an old english word and "history" is from Latin, no doubt brought over by the Norman French. So once again, blame the French.

My Great Big Freakin' Mistake.

2008-05-30T19:41:00.001-07:00

Congress just looked into the fiscal responsibility (or lack thereof) of the United States Military. For those of you who don't know, the U.S. carries a big stick. According to the latest information I could get from Wikipedia, America spent 489.20 billion U.S. dollars on its military or better yet $489,200,000,000. The United Kingdom, number two in Nato, spent 38.4 billion U.S. dollars on its military. France came in at 29.5 billion U.S. dollars.

I don't mind my government taxing me. I don't even mind it being a little higher than it already is. I just like for people to use the same responsibility they'd use for themselves. For instance we wouldn't blindly spend $320,000 per laborer when we don't even know what they do. We wouldn't fork over five million dollars for special vehicle training when we don't even know what the company is doing period. The New York Times wrote all of this in their most recent article.

In short, I would like to know that the technocrats and bureaucrats are putting in an honest days work for an honest day's wages. The libertarians are all wet if they believe we need a smaller government, we need a more streamlined government. One where money is as intelligently used as if it were the person's own bank account.

Which leads me to my biggest problem. We aren't even that good at managing our money. According to spurious information from that oracle known as the internet, 80% of Americans are two missed paychecks away from disaster; and about 40% spend 110% of their paycheck. (For those of us who aren't math majors, I can assure you that 100% is an amount that you can get from a paycheck, and the extra 10% probably comes from fairy land or China.) I tend to look down on these people who spend so foolishly, until I look at my credit card bills and realize I am darn close to being one of them.

It is very humbling to realize that something like thriftiness, which you have prided yourself on, isn't necessarily the whole truth about yourself. How easy it is to live a blind life free of worry about who we are. In some ways I could justify my faults saying things like, "while I was in college and high school I couldn't buy all the stuff I wanted" or "I know I'll use this doohickey and it won't be on sale for very long."

It is funny how much we live a bifurcated life with a clear line of demarcation for God's plan for our lives and our plan for our lives. And it is amazing that such a lie as a private life apart from God, a room of our own as it were, was something that we would enjoy, let alone have at all.

So in the end, for me it is back to savings accounts, Roth IRAs, and not buying every electronic gizmo that is advertised. It is about not eating out so much, conserving my gasoline, and learning to be happy with what I have. I suppose that if I could do this, I would be a better individual not just financially, but holistically. Perhaps our technocrats could learn this lesson. But not from me, I'm still learning it.

Googling the Language of Hypocrisy

2008-05-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

It is impossible for any organization or corporation or even an individual to make it to the top without some bit of tarnish being applied to his, her, or it's reputation. Google is no exception. In many ways they have been a paragon of virtue in an otherwise less than virtuous area, namely business. Google has done a great many things of which to be proud. They have been incredibly innovative what with the more efficient search engine, Google Maps, the open source Android mobile phone operating system, and the backing of cloud technology*. The motto of the company is: Don't be evil.

However, YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, has allowed Islamist videos to be posted on their web site. This has earned them the ire of Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He says it is "offensive." For it's part YouTube took down several of the worst videos, but kept others up stating that it "encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."

What is freedom anyway? Webster's dictionary puts it this way: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action and Oxford says freedom is: the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Both are completely right, but who would want to live in a world like that? Absolute freedom is, as Hobbes would no doubt say, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It is a very nasty world to say the least.

Yet, we don't talk about about freedom that way. Instead we use some sort of vague and undefined feeling to describe freedom. In this way freedom can be whatever we want it to be. Although human beings love order, we want to control that order and thus in rides the ill-defined freedom.

However, as George W. Forell points out in his commentary on the Augsburg Confession, "Many people believe that order is the mortal enemy of freedom, and that those who advocate freedom must of necessity oppose order of any kind." He goes on to state that we all live in order and find disorder (i.e. absolute freedom) appalling or dangerous. Using the example of a family he puts it this way. "Only if a family operates according to some generally observed rules are the individual members free to eat and sleep, to work and play. A totally chaotic family would mean that the children starve, the father loses his job, and the mother her mind. You have observed such families in operation, but they hardly strike you as examples of freedom."

The aspect of freedom that YouTube and Google are talking about is free speech. Free Speech is an amazing privilege and responsibility. It is not a right though. The U.S. Constitution doesn't list freedom of speech as a right per se. We have it as a right in so far as we use it responsibly. The examples of taking free speech too far in the areas of yelling fire in a crowded theater or libeling someone in a news article are freedoms of speech, but in an irresponsible manner.

Furthermore, we find that even this criteria is wanting. Words are powerful. In fact words are so powerful that the Bible describes Jesus, part of the triune God, as The Word. Philosophers talk about words all the time. Descartes said, "I think therefore I am." This fundamental knowledge is manifestly about words for he cannot even declare anything without them. Ludwig Wittgenstein puts it this way, "The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for."

Language and words are terribly important. In post modern society, however, there is a rebellion against what is known as the Numinous. (That is something that cannot be described but exists none the less.) There are reasons why we have abandoned the Numinous and there are excuses as well. (It would take far too long to enumerate them here and now.) However, it is a safe assumption that it was a very poor mistake. For the truly dangerous and powerful people in the world are those who don't understand the thoughts behind the words, but can manipulate the rules. The truly great men and women are those who approach language with fear and trembling.

The vast majority of us though don't have respect for what we have here. Language comforted America in a cemetery in Gettysburg. Language drove a country to soar to the moon. Language inspired a country at war with itself that it could believe in a dream that would allow us all to sing "in the words of the old Negro Spiritual: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!" Words lead to freedom, freedom does not lead to words.

I have also heard language misused and misshaped. It can cause pain between loved ones and rend nations apart. Language carries ideas, and ideas always have consequences. No word is unimportant. As Wittgenstein put it, "a new word is like a seed."

But, back to Google and YouTube. It is doubtful that the Islamists will get any recruits from showing pictures of downed U.S. planes and speeches in Arabic by it's so-called "leaders." It is also dubious whether or not it is transferring any information this way.

The thing that is certain is this, it serves no good purpose. What could possibly be the positive outcome of showing these images or allowing these images to be shown. The Islamists are seen as freedom fighters who are fighting against American Imperialism. We also fear the loss of loved ones fighting over there, but not because of rational and logical reasons, but simply because of fear itself. We allow vile and ludicrous ideas to enter into America and around the world. Freedom requires responsibility to lead people to make choices that are correct.

YouTube may advocate that a large town hall breeds a symphony, but we know what history has taught us. Disparate voices of hatred and bigotry lead to a cacophony that swallows up what is good and right and happy. Some ideas can be discussed, but we can all agree that the wanton killing of people who are trying to rebuilt a broken country (and yes a country that was broken by those people) is wrong. We can ask ourselves which is a better country, a country built of freedom tempered by order or a country built on order tempered by fear. We know we prefer a country where people are judged not by their race or family or tribe or religion but by the contents of their message is far superior to a country ruled by cliques and power grabs.

However, even ignoring these common pleas for decency, I charge Google with hypocrisy of the highest degree. As I have said, freedom must come with order. However, order without freedom is just as dangerous. Google has a completely different way of speaking to China. China has put blockers on certain Google searches. The average Chinese person cannot access the great documents of the founding fathers or indeed any other documents that pertain to Western Free Order. The powers and culture that allowed Google to exist are ignored and scrapped when it comes to Chinese dogma.

So Google is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. It gives lip service to "Freedom" while ignoring it in China. It talks of not being evil and yet allows those who do it day in and day out to broadcast what they have done. It is driven by the benefits of a free and yet orderly culture, but doesn't have the faintest clue of the history of the culture which gave birth to it. All things end up with a little dirt after the fall, but we are fools to think that wallowing in the mud will make us clean.

* These are web based applications that have their storage on a site outside of the computer. For instance, Google docs is a word processing application that runs off of a website and saves the information to that web site.

Dismantling the Party for a Victory

2008-05-19T22:25:00.001-07:00

Today, I had a revelation. Hillary Clinton wants to go to the primaries. I tried desperately to figure out why this would be. I mean honestly, she cannot win. It would take a miracle and a super strong swing from her party to actually accomplish this goal. Mr. Obama has the nomination in hand. So why go all the way? It will only hurt her because the Democrats would blame any loss in November on her.

That is when it dawned on me. Democrats are Americans, and Americans have notoriously short memories. Indeed much like goldfish. Okay, here's what will happen. Clinton will face off against Obama. She is going to push him further and further into the left. She will do this by painting him as a lefty and also trying to "out-left" him. Like a game of chicken, both are going to be hurtling and hurtling closer to a precipice of left-ism.* The reason for this is that both candidates need to have the approval of their party's base. Left by himself several months ago Mr. Obama could've gotten both the base and the vast American moderates handily. It is now up in the air. Mr. Obama will have to swerve, after Ms. Clinton's inevitable exit, back towards moderatism in order to win the general election.

It is hard to know if this will be possible since Clinton has wrapped herself in a mantle of populism. (And not the good kind from the turn of the century, the one that panders to the average person whispering honeyed words into his or her ear.) She has deprived Mr. Obama of a very crucial group of people especially, namely, the Reagan Democrats. She has divided the party between what she erroneously portrays as his Harvard snobbery and her down-home charm. It is really sickening. It is like how Alexander Hamilton was portrayed as an elitist and Thomas Jefferson as a man of the people. When in reality Mr. Hamilton was a person who tried to elevate his fellow countrymen, just as he had elevated himself from poverty and obscurity; while Jefferson rested upon, not his laurels, but the laurels of greater people in his feudal estate of Monticello.

Mr. Obama has worked with the poor in intercity Chicago; while Hillary has been married to a president. If we were a developing South American quasi-dictatorship, than I would say this is to be expected, but unfortunately we are the greatest nation in the world with the richest history of democracy.

So what, she can't win the nomination. Obama will go into the election without the support that we would expect the Democrats to have. And that is where Clinton has laid the trap. It is a win-win for her. If Obama wins in November, then all is well. The Democratic party will completely ignore what happened all through the summer. No big deal. However, if Obama loses, then she will be able to say "I told you so" to all her doubters and to the Democratic party. She is creating a myth (just as she has about all her victories this primary season). She will then be able to be a stronger candidate the next time around.

This is possible because the Democratic leadership is extraordinarily weak. (Just look at how the super-delegates haven't backed candidates en mass. Even as things look inevitable, they do not dare risk looking like failures.) It is also a weak confederation rather than a strong coalition like the Republican party.

In four years' time, if Obama doesn't win the election, Clinton will create a myth that the Democrats lost their way and backed Obama when they should've backed the heir apparent, namely, Hillary R. Clinton. And that is what this is all about for Ms. Clinton: entitlement. Her precious nomination was challenged by another person. So, she cried in New Hampshire because it was all slipping away from her. And the women thought she was crying because the "big bad men" had ganged up on her. So she ran with it, pushing forward on the worse parts of human nature: victimhood, solidarity with a group, and a touch of racism.

So with Mr. McCain gobbling up the independents and even Reagan Democrats, Mr. Obama is fighting a two-front war. On top of that he is having to placate his own party, a job he should not have to do at all. He has to babysit the Democratic elite and keep the far left happy, while Clinton carves out his voting blocs and delivers the nomination to McCain, knowing that he will not be strong enough in four more years. Then she will have neutralized threats like the upstart Obama and the Republican party. After this, she will cobble together a coalition through empty promises and half-truths and dub it "the third way."

I am not a conspiratorial person, but I know what I have seen from Mr. Clinton. I know she is of the same ilk. I also know her promises are not legit. I know her half truths and lies to get her out of trouble. Revelations, however, are usually not some fitful dream, but based on facts and past observations.

* Do not assume that because I talk about "left-ism" or absolute "left-ism" I do not have certain left leaning feelings. I am for a lot of the policies on the left. However, they are trying to be cartoon versions of their party and not real live human beings. That is what the Clintons always have been though.

A Review of the Movie "Crash".

2008-05-11T22:12:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I am tired and may not have written too coherently.

I have not been having too much luck with movies this year. I tried to watch "300" and turned it off after the rather risqué scene in the Persian Headquarters. Tonight I attempted to watch "Crash." For those of you who don't know, "Crash" was the Oscar winner of a few years back. I remember there was big stink because everyone thought it would be "Brokeback Mountain," but it was "Crash" which is just as awful I can assume.*

The forty minutes I saw of "Crash" (and I know it was forty minutes because watching my DVD player's numbers tick up was more enjoyable than the movie on the screen) were filled with the un-artful dialogue I had grown accustomed to hearing while I was working as a ramp agent for the airlines. The main difference was that there was more cohesion in the sentence structure of people who had never graduated from college than there was in this script from allegedly educated people.

Anyway, ignoring dialogue (the apparently lost art of screenwriting), "Crash" follows the exploits of a city of angry stupid people. They say angry stupid things, get into angry stupid fights, and in the end it is a dystopian "Pay It Forward." The problem with many such dystopian ideas is that they can have very flat characters in the face of such an horrendous monolithic evil. It can sometimes work. But, it especially won't work if you take dystopian characters and put them in the middle of a freakin' character driven movie. That is just asking for trouble.

The movie was also filled with the characters that Hollywood considers avant-garde, but the rest of the United States calls cliché. You have the racist little trophy wife, the African American thugs, the racist cops, the good black man, and a myriad of other characters who are defined by the color of their skin first and their character second. I understand that Paul Haggis was attempting to show us how racism exists in all of us and we must something something something. You know how if you hear something enough times, it becomes just background noise. Yeah, that is "Crash" for you.

We hear the same shrill pseudo-psychology that passes for great insight in Tinsel Town. Nothing changes here in America, no one learns anything, and we all go home and feel better about ourselves for watching a movie about racism. (Guilt atoned by a few dollars at the movie store.)

It is a movie of the typical formulaic anger put forth as genius by Hollywood. Many movies in Hollywood work of a perverse interpretation of postmodern existentialism (trust me I have studied real postmodern existentialism for my major in philosophy). Here is how it goes, your subconscious is your real self. Your desires and appetites are what make you who you are, and your poor little beaten up rational self is just cleaning up after it all day long.

This of course is what Hollywood wants you to believe so that you will do things based on emotion (i.e. buy stuff you don't need). However, if we have learned anything from history people rise above their surroundings usually because of rationally pursuing an intellectual course of action. The lies we tell others are many times more real than the person we are. We just don't tell lies to fit in or not to be thought bigots. Many good people tell lies because they know the lie they are telling is more true than what they believe. They want to believe in what they do not believe because they know it is true.

We all have bad experiences with certain groups. A man may have a bad relationship with a woman. A person of one religious persuasion may have have a bad incident with another. Perhaps we have dealt with one person from a certain race that didn't treat us well. It doesn't matter. We have to keep certain things secret and we have to believe what is beyond our own experience, because we believe that there are deeper truths than our own experience leads us to believe. And human beings are not strong enough to believe right off the bat, but rather have to believe things that they don't understand by themselves. In other words, people have to fake 'til they make it.

Hollywood has a nasty habit of being self-congradulatory. It talks about how it has been edgy and forward thinking, but it can do this because it is also the industry that controls the information of its own history.

Watching this movie reminded me of a quote my parents are fond of repeating, "There is nothing worse than a stupid mean person." If that is true, than perhaps the only possible thing worse than that, is a movie of a bunch of stupid mean people.

* I should say that I never saw Brokeback Mountain. It just didn't appeal to me to watch it.

Quoting Dylan to Prove a Point.

2008-04-05T20:35:00.001-07:00

Oh God said to abraham kill me a son
Abe said man you must be puttin me on
God said no, abe said what
God say you can do what you wanna but
The next time you see me comin you better run
Well abe said where dyou want this killin done
God said out on highway 61

- Bob Dylan, "Highway 61"

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

- Bob Dylan, "Gotta Serve Somebody"

No one has embodied the words "Rorschach blots" quite like Bob Dylan. We hear a lot of stories of people who say they actually got what Dylan meant about something, only to find out that he was re-inforcing something that they believed. Quotes are like that, so are data, essays, tests, and so much else. One person looks into the heavens and remarks, "There has to be a God," while the person next to first states, "I just can't agree."

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though whatever your dogmatic stripe, I am sure you can feel it is at times. We have all this evidence. See, it is looking us straight in the eyes. How can you not believe in global warming or the trinity or government cover-ups or the myriad of pieces that make up the whole known as our soul? When we are rebuffed or challenged, we shake our heads, and just say that the other person doesn't get it.

So, are we to abandon reason simply because we cannot prove our reasons to another person? Of course not. For one thing, what are we trying to prove, the reasons or the thing in which we believe? Secondly, there is nothing more humbling and therefore nothing more glorious than the realization that we do not have all the answers to something...especially somebody else's problems. Think of all the things we can't fix. In the end, the thing in which we believe becomes more true precisely because we cannot prove it.

To us this sounds like an horrible predicament, and I admit that it is indeed. But, comfort is not the same as goodness or happiness. We have to come face-to-face with the simple reality that reality is far, far too complex for anybody to figure out completely. This humility is the root of what it really, truly means to be human. When all of our systems and all of our data let us down, we are left face to face with the fact that we believe something and that this "something" is beyond us.

As a Christian I become more and more aware daily that I cannot "win" people to Christ. What could I do? Can I argue my reasons for what I believe? (As if my facts could persuade anyone.) Can I expect people to relate to my stories? (As if their lives and struggles are the same as my own.) Can I browbeat, cajole, threaten, or bribe someone to honestly and truly believe what I believe? (As soon as my back is turned they will follow what they wish to follow.) If my pride were the lie that I clung to, I would surely perish; and my pride is exactly what allows me to think that it is I who will turn people to my way of thinking and my beliefs.

Human beings yearn to trust, but desire to rule. We want to be loved, but how often do we lord it over someone the moment we are let into the other person's heart. Or you can look at how cruelly we rip minerals from the land, and yet feel miserable when the world throws our lives into chaos. Lives and civilizations rise and fall from this simple arithmetic; love, then pride.

And so we write volumes upon volumes as to why some civilization failed while we ignore the precarious state of our own; or perhaps, a little closer to home, we ignore our friends and our families and only take from them what we want when we want it while making up excuses as to why we did what we did. We believe first and reason later. We do this with everything. I know I harp on the point of faith being beyond reason over and over again, but it is true; at least that is what I believe. Though you know, I can't really prove it.

The Grass is Greener

2008-04-02T22:40:00.001-07:00

They say the grass is always greener on the other side, and I would be inclined to agree with them if my cursed intellect wouldn't get the better of me all the time. Single people lament their married friends. College kids wondering "now what?" seem to look enviously at their compatriots making a killing or at least a living. I often want a little more faith, or wealth, or at the very least some tip from the fates who seem so unwilling to bless me.

However, when I examine my life I have to admit that I am more blessed than I can even imagine. Air, food, and a very good nation are things to be thankful for; but these things escape my mind all too often. We want more and more, and I often wonder why our appetites are not fulfilled by the gifts that we always have laid at our feet.

I suppose it is because I act like a glutton that I am not thankful. I make deals that if I just have one more thing that I do not have, then I will be happy. When I was younger, allowances and paper-route money came in such a small trickle; but I would save up for some video game or any number of things. I remember the happiness of finally being able to buy that item I desired, and yet I experienced more happiness in fulfilling the goal than in the item I would buy. Now, with such items being so easily bought, I wonder if I have lost the subtle joys that come softly and without fanfare, from patiently waiting.

There is a Yiddish proverb, that says, "God will provide, but only if He would until He does." I feel that way so much of the time. Patience is taught us by being patient. It seems comical that we learn so fully how to do something by doing that thing; but life seems to be built like that while our society seems to recoil at such tough earned knowledge.

I know that there are things I do better than my friends or gifts that my friends look upon as enviously as I look upon theirs. I know the deep sadness of the void that visits my heart, but I also know there are worse things than not getting what one wants.

In the story "The Monkey's Paw," a family is granted wishes by a sacred relic. However, while they get their heart's desire, they do not get it the way they expect. They wish for money, and the parents only son is killed at work, allowing them to collect a check for the sum. How often do we look back on our lives and feel glad that our dream wasn't granted us? If you are anybody like me, you spend a lot less time thinking about how glad you are for plans of yours that fell through, than you do dreaming about about the green grass in someone else's lawn.

A Response to an Atheist

2008-03-23T17:43:00.000-07:00

(I thought for quite some time about how to write this blog or even if I should. The long and short of it is that it doesn't make a bit of difference in the long run. We believe what we believe. Eventually God will show me the answer of how to prove my Faith to others. But until then, I can only say that when I think of Atheism, these are the main problems with their arguments.)

It is all about faith; life that is. Reason is a tool of our human faith, whatever that faith may be, our reason is that tool. If I am a Christian, Buddhist, Shintoist, Atheist, Muslim, Jew, Pagan, and so on and so on and so on I have faith above reason. And the cool thing about life is the fact that each and every one of us has faith in something be it science, God, nature, or whatever. And most of us have varying degrees of faith in all sorts of things or more faith in a certain field for something than in others. So, faith and reason are not mutually exclusive propositions. They are different tools of humanity that perform different tasks; and whatever notion of reality you may hold, you can respect that this is most certainly the case.

A good example of how faith works is in the case of medicine. I am a philosopher (and if ever there was something to be proud of...being a philosopher is not it). I know nothing of medicine. However, I have trust and faith that doctors know what is wrong with me when I am sick, and to have faith in their ability is to have faith in something I do not know or see. I am also a Christian. I am sick with problems in my head and soul that I know exist. I trust in experts to see the solution to my problem and give me a remedy for it. If you think you have found the remedy in some other faith (even if that faith is the non-existence of God), that is well and good. However, as of late, many atheists have gone about saying they believe in reason over faith.* Even if this were possible, it would be saying my reasoning or reasons are better than your reasoning or reasons. Yet Christians and Buddhists and what-have-you-ists all have reasons for their beliefs. The atheist has done nothing to discredit the theist, but has forced him or her to become more entrenched in their reasons or, worse for the person making the charge, explore the opposing reasons and discredit it.

So, atheism stands on the same legs of faith that theism does; namely: faith. However, if we are to explore atheism's claims of superior reasons, we are left with another problem. With atheist logic, God gets caught in several catch-22's in the realms of miracles or interference. The Christian** believes in miracles because they make logical sense. If there is a God more powerful than the created world, and Who lives outside it, would He not want the world to function a certain way? Miracles happen when He makes the world sync more in tune with His will than it normally does. The Christian accepts that the world is sin sick and that reality is not operating as it should. (In fact this is the general consensus with ALL belief systems, the question is how to fix it.) A prime example would be with my braces I had put on my teeth when I was younger. I believe that only a lunatic would say that my teeth should be allowed to naturally grow the way they would, so we place things that shouldn't go there on our teeth to straighten them out; namely: braces. Each and every day we manipulate every aspect of the world and ourselves to fix problems. Here begins one of the catch-22s God finds Himself in. If He is always interfering, than He is loathed for not allowing us to freely do anything. When He doesn't interfere, He is judged as cold and heartless. (We usually base this on our own sense of timing, which isn't as reliable as we pretend it is.) God cannot win in this scenario. And, upon further examination we come face to face with a frightening truth. If God did things on our timing (even assuming our timing was correct), we are left with a God who is weaker and more pathetic than us which is totally contrary to what we would expect God to be like. It would be as if aliens came to earth and were incapable of understanding simple machines such as the wheel or screw or inclined plane and couldn't talk and were complete infantile in their reasoning. How could this be? It is completely illogical. If God can create things ex nihilo, he will be smart enough for miracles.

The second catch-22 is that of miracles. I don't know how the world was created. God could've taken seven days or it could be imagery to explain things. (The odd belief among some atheists or Christians or a plethora of adherents to other religions, that we must take everything in these books as literally true is both un-imaginitive and intellectually insulting. If we are capable of such things like imagery, why wouldn't the ancients be? It is an intellectual arrogance nowadays to think ourselves knowing new secrets in the art of writing. The average American high schooler may know a great deal more about electricity and computers than people of the ancient world, but our knowledge in the humanities is always among equals.) However, let us assume that the Bible is in fact literally the case that...say...Moses parted the Red Sea and led the Israelites out of Egypt.

Science says this is plausible. You see an island volcano blew up and the shock-waves would've clouded up the sky (plague of darkness), released iron into the water (turning the Nile red as blood and killing sea animals), and eventually drawing a bunch of water back up to it, and then releasing it back in a shallow enough body of water. Well, here is where the theists would be stymied, because the Red Sea isn't shallow enough. But the Sea of Reeds is in fact that shallow, and usually is mistranslated as the Red Sea. So, science proves this event is plausible.

Here an atheist would say that this proves that things can happen naturally without a God. This is the main philosophical problem that the atheist runs into. If a miracle is impossible to prove at the time, he or she says that the writers must have been liars or some such. However, when it becomes verifiable in a natural world, the atheist then says the event must have been true, but the people were mistaken for believing in God. This is extremely problematic for the atheist though, since while the conclusions have stayed the same, the propositions have not. Usually scientific atheists (since atheism has many different denominations) state that deductive reasoning is the only way to go, but here it would appear that the premises and conclusions are irrelevant because of the faith of the atheist.

The point I am making is that the world is filled with beliefs. This is a key component to humanity. It is impossible to empirically prove or disprove the existence of God through this sort of reasoning unless your faith is in this reasoning, if not the point is moot. As one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein put it: That which we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence. Logically we cannot prove or disprove God from this scientific standpoint anymore than I place a picture from a t.v. signal under a microscope in order to see the molecules in the actor's flesh.

Faith is usually seen as something that is always fighting against reason, yet this is complete foolishness since it is faith that propels reason. We believe there is a cure for cancer even though we don't know where it is. We believe we can find some way to better power our vehicles, even though reason is quiet about this as well. To rid ourselves of faith is to rid ourselves of the engine of reason.

*This is hardly possible, because to believe is to have faith and that violates the law of noncontradiction (~p ^ p : Not something and something at the same time).

** I will hereafter use Christian as my example, since I am a Christian and it will be less cumbersome than trying to use counter-examples from other faiths as well.

Read a Freakin' Book People

2008-03-18T20:53:00.000-07:00

It was all like hell. Rain, snow, everything but frogs falling from the sky. Needless to say I was depressed. We were in a phase three weather alert at one point and I couldn't go anywhere even if I wanted to go anywhere. What is one to do when no one has nowhere to run? I recommend reading.

Before the move to the Hocking Hills region of Ohio, I was as addicted as anyone to television. Fortunately I now am without two of my favorite channels: Cartoon Network and MSNBC. There are nights when I miss Chris Matthews or some new anime that Japan finished watching about three years ago, and I might even be tempted to watch the flickering goodness of the idiot box if not for another wonderful inconvenience: the writers' strike.

Now, I don't know who started it or who was right; but I am certainly glad it happened. I am an American and as such I have a right to life, liberty, and the attention span of a mayfly. I liked certain shows (Chuck, Monk, and Big Bang Theory), but with no "writers" there were no new shows.*

For awhile I have been beating my head against the wall trying to figure out what to do with my spare time. (I still have some of that.) These passed two weekends really forced me to ask the tough question of what to do with my free-time. Being left alone with my thoughts is not a pleasant experience. Usually either my thoughts or I will invariably tick the other side off and a mental screaming match will ensue.

However, after forcing myself to sit down and read the books that I constantly tell people I am reading. (I have a confession, I am not as big a reader as I pretend to be. It is my one little indulgence in the realm of dishonesty. Well that and I am from a small planet orbiting somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.) However, I do try and read a lot now rather than turning on the tele. I have been retreating to my room for adventures in theology, mystery, and the occasional op-ed.

All-in-all reading is like any worthwhile thing we do, we have to make time for it, even when it would be easier to do something similar but less rewarding with that time.

* I should say that given the calibre of most shows now-a-days, I doubt that a writers' strike should've been too great an impediment to the production of a show...or a movie while we are on the subject.

Talking with Others

2008-03-11T21:48:00.001-07:00

This isn't some deep insightful blog post about the secrets of learning. You can close out and try some other page for that. This is just a simple thought I had recently. For the longest time, I was asking questions without listening to the answers. I like what I have to say. I think I am relatively insightful and usually spend a lot of time just analyzing everything. One can take this to the extreme though. A person can disregard all the opinions that another person says because they fall outside of the realm of that person's logic. Or, one can do what I do, read too much into something.

I have never been that great in literature because I honestly don't see what the writer is trying to get across. (For all of my love of Eliot's J. Alfred Profrock, I cannot for the life of me understand it's meaning without a trained English scholar standing over my shoulder. Alfred Molina's character in Spiderman 2 remarks that, "Eliot is more complicated than advanced science.") I have probably been rooting around at the philosophical ramifications of someone's statement or perhaps I have been trying to move it towards areas I find more entertaining. They are just trying to have small talk. How does one perform this..."small talk"? The fact is I probably fail to let my friends be themselves.

I am a bit tired right now, and I hesitate to lump all people in this rather large net, but I think most of us are guilty of this. We wish to paint our friends as we would like to see them. We fail to really listen to them except when they have a problem we can solve and then we can play god.

I probably sound very dark and gloomy about all this, but I am really happy. There are great challenges in talking to friends and that should excite us with all its adventure. But we all have friends too. That is such a great thing, because it shows how we live in a very forgiving world that gives us quirky people who like our own quirkiness. Maybe that is my insight for tonight?

The Exodus of the Values Voter

2008-03-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

This year the conservatives blew themselves apart. I will say that as a staunch moderate, this was one of the best things I have seen in awhile. Neo-conservatives and Militarists have lamented the fragmenting of their party, democrats have crowed with glee as if they had actually done anything to punch a hole in the rival party, and news periodicals are running around like so many Chicken Littles declaring the sky is falling in their neo-yellow-journalistic fashion. I admit that part of me misses the old conservative party (they were a fun lot of straw-men), and who knows, perhaps this year is nothing more than a minor hiccup. We may still see the Grand Old Party pull itself together under some new leader flying an old banner. I hope not, but I don't know.

Perhaps the most interesting group that has undermined the Republican Party has been the evangelical Christian vote. Once a sure thing for the Republicans, it is now becoming either an ignored or hard-won vote. So many of my friends who I considered dyed in the wool Christian Republicans are telling me that they voted for Obama in the primaries. Also, during many of the primaries, those who consider themselves value voters and voted Republican evenly split among the leading candidates. The vote is therefore no longer up for grabs so much as the voters. It is not a cohesive voting block like it was even just a few years ago when Bush was running for a second term.

One of the oddest and most frustrating things is the mainstream media's asinine and intractable stance on viewing this group of people as they did only a few years ago despite being faced with facts. One example of this was when those poll numbers showed candidates Romney, Huckabee, and McCain were pretty evenly split in picking up the Conservative Christian vote. The numbers could not have varied more than a point each (and then one has to factor in that there were probably margins of errors at play as well). While this was running, the media talked of the Evangelical voters as if they were all going out in droves to vote for Huckabee (the evangelical vote). Another key thing to look at are the results from New Hampshire, a staunchly un-evangelical state. Huckabee came in third, but with much higher numbers than expected and even eclipsed the numbers of those who consider themselves Conservative Christians. How can a group of people who are supposed to report the facts, have so obviously or intentionally missed these facts?

The answer is that most people do not know how Christians really think. It is true that the evangelical voters have been on cruise control for far, far too long. But now that there is a sea-change, why are we unwilling to adapt our understanding of this group to the change?

Ironically, it was Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama who best tapped into the change that was sweeping across the demographic. Now, I am not saying these two came anywhere near one another where policy was concerned. However, both reached beyond the cliches of their party for the most part.

I will leave Mr. Obama alone for the moment, and focus more on Mr. Huckabee. I admit to being an early supporter of Mike Huckabee. As he progressed, I found him a less and less desirable option for president. (I disagreed with certain views about gun control, taxation, military budget, as well as other issues.) However, I agreed with him fully about how one's faith (regardless of what that is) should play an undeniable part of one's leadership. His faith got him into trouble with the more unsavory members of his party. (How dare he raise taxes to help the poor in his state. How dare he offer college tuition for the children of illegal immigrants. How dare he put his faith ahead of his party.) Perhaps Mr. Huckabee is to be more of a prophet than a president. God uses unlikely people to speak messages. Huckabee voiced the growing concern among evangelicals about issues such as the environment and poverty. (The main people within the Republican party who are looking at environmental issues are the evangelicals.)

This year is the Democrats to lose. As Democratic strategist James Carville put it, "The good news for the Democrats is that the only way we can lose this election is if we talk ourselves out of it; and the good news for the Republicans is that we just may be able to do it." The reason for democratic ascendency and evangelical discontent is in large part due to the failure of Mr. Bush.* Neo-cons and Militarists hold tightly to the old regime, while the Conservative Christians strike out on their own. I do not know how history will look back on this election or if it will acknowledge this exodus from a party, but it would be wise for us to rethink our positions just as this group has. They have proven that it is better for there to be thoughtful change rather than foolish uniformity. The Republican party may have split apart at the seems, but it will be interesting to see what comes next.

* It should be noted that Mr. Bush has stated that he is an Evangelical Republican as well, and yet he does not rank too high amongst the Christians with whom I have talked.

Answers to Prayer

2008-03-08T21:46:00.001-08:00

I think this is going to be one of my brief posts. If you aren't a big fan of my religious discussions, you could probably skip this one. If you are curious, I hope you enjoy.

Last week, a little girl who was in the hospital was also in a lot of people's prayers. She pulled through and most of us will say it is an answer to prayer. I have been a Christian all my life and I don't know how prayer works. It is a big freakin' mystery.* Life is full of unsolved mysteries and we don't need Robert Stack to point that out to us. There are mathematical equations that we believe, but cannot prove. There are scientific processes that give us the right answers, but we don't know why. I suppose in the long run, the similarities break down after awhile because the natural things will be explained and lead to more mysteries and prayer is just an article of faith.

Prayer doesn't make sense a lot of times. A truly faithful person looks like an absolute lunatic because no matter how the prayer is answered, that person is happy with the outcome and ascribes it to God's will. Numerous scientific tests have shown that when people were asked to pray for someone and not for another, the results were inconclusive at best. It took me awhile to get passed that. I am not sure I fully did, but that is why faith is faith.

I don't believe in prayer's outcome anymore, because it is God who is important in the prayer and not thing for which I am asking. If I pray for something, I don't get angry if I don't get it. At least not anymore. I am not resigned either. I guess I grapple with my prayers. I have prayed for all sorts of things guidance, healing, and so much more. Sometimes, I get a yes, sometimes a no. Usually I get "a wait". Waiting kills me. I want so badly for something to be done my way in my time. Yet, I see the stupidity of this.

In the mean time I am left with the problem. I used to try and fix the situation when I thought God wasn't working on it. It is ironic that when we leave things in God's hands we find ourselves trying to work on it as if He wasn't even there. What was the point of giving it up in the first place, if we take it back and start meddling with it? Can we honestly call this thing faith or that thing prayer? On the other hand do we just sort of give things up to God and expect Him to be a cosmic genie and perform all His magic tricks? Would we want doctors to stop working of figuring out what ails a patient or aid workers to forgo assisting people in need simply because God will take care of things?

What are we to think about prayer? Neither the viewpoint of relying on the prayer or believing it to be dogmatic hoop that accomplishes nothing seems good enough. Prayer requires so much more than those things. It is terribly difficult. It hurts us so much. God seems so silent and the answers don't appear in the cloud of smoke and loud bang that we had secretly anticipated. Though our circumstances do not always change when we pray; what happens is that we change when we pray.

I know this because I have been changed because I pray. I have prayed so long for certain prayers and had them been unanswered the way I wanted them to be answered. I have wanted a better job and been left in jobs I feel do not fit me. I have prayed for love and watched my closest friends get married. I have prayed for college acceptance letters and received the standard form letter: Dear sir, we regret to inform you...

I have been disappointed with my answers to prayer. I have thought God a cruel joker. I have thought my prayers to have fallen on the deafest of ears. I have been sickened by the people who seem to have all their prayers answered or worse still, those who do not pray receive the gifts of heaven.

But what are we to do when things don't go our way? We have two choices, we can abandon the whole thing or we can ask "why"? I implore you to try the latter. I ask you to search, question, and fight with yourself so as to determine what you asked of God. I not only have prayed better because of this. And I have learned so much about myself, the asker of prayers, as well as God, the One who answers the prayers. Wrestling with God is going to be a messy affair and you will get bruises and probably walk funny afterwards; but who wants to die without any scars? I am a deeply flawed individual and I want to know where those flaws are.

When we pray we are asking God to give us not only our desires, but something worth desiring. Prayer requires us to take stock of our lives and ask seriously hard questions about what we believe. Many of us (myself included) have the devil of the time doing this and we thus relegate prayer to the realm of the "magical hold over" part of our faith. It is not because we think prayers are too hard, but we believe it should be an easy affair that costs us nothing. It is like going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and saying, "Yeah, I'd like to not be a drunkard, but I still want to drink. Got that?" Maybe we should go to debt counselors and say, "Yeah, can you wave your magic debt wand and make all this go away? What you can't? Why the hell am I here then?" Or better yet, it would be like me going to a psychiatrist and saying, "I want to be a normal functioning member of society, but I like being an orange still."

Seriously, prayer requires a great deal more of us than a simple hope that things will turn out just like we want them to turn out or that it is nothing more than some simple legal mumbo jumbo that we pay to a God who isn't really there. Prayer asks us to question our motives, our actions, and our souls. We don't even receive these answers right off the bat. They take time and in the meantime we pray.

I can't explain prayer to you. I can't tell you how God works, only that He does. Just as I cannot explain how this girl pulled through, only that she did. The answer to prayer is powerful enough.

* I think "freakin'" is today's Pee Wee's playhouse mystery word. I have been using it all freakin' day.

Humble Pie

2008-03-01T23:02:00.001-08:00

I'll try and make this quick, but knowing me, I don't know if that is possible. I recently picked up another job working at Radio Shack. I will say it is very very difficult for me to learn new practical things. I feel as if I should know everything right off the bat, especially since I went to college and most of my co-workers have not. It is truly humbling. I feel almost glad when I go to my other job in the evenings over at Starbucks. I feel glad when I can sit down at my computer and type up blog posts. I do not feel glad in the morning when I have to face approximately four hours of telling people, "I just started here, let me go get the manager."

We have just hired two new people at my Starbucks as well. I recognize the same deer-in-the-headlights-look I had when I started there. I try and tell them not to worry (or as the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has written in big friendly letters: Don't Panic), but there is bound to be some small degree of anxiety. It is odd to feel both sides of the problem of the anxiety and fear of newness. I try always to be understanding of new people when they start a job, but I am merciless on myself and it has only been recently that I have ditched my self-deprecating humor and constant apologizing.

We human beings don't like to make mistakes. We like to think of ourselves as terribly self-sufficient even if we know that this notion is a lie. I really learned a lot the other day when I was talking to a man who came in to buy something at Radio Shack. (I forget what he bought, so don't ask.) I asked him what he did for a living, and he told me that he did odd jobs. I told him that I could imagine that would be really difficult learning new jobs all the time. Then I smiled because he helped me realize something, none of us can ever learn anything without humility. It cannot ever happen. We have to come to the conclusion that our knowledge is insufficient or our skills are insufficient for tackling whatever it is we wish to face.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately. Humility is something that I have always sort of taken for granted. I hear about humility in my faith and I ask for it because I am supposed to ask for it, but who really wants to be humbled? Apparently the Devil in Milton's Paradise Lost utters that it would be better to "reign in hell than serve in heaven." That is our feeling too. We'd rather live lives of mediocrity than take the chance of feeling inadequate. It is humbling to admit to ourselves and others that we aren't the best. But if we are honest, there are worse things than being humbled. In fact, humility is not such a bad thing after all.