Freedom (A Reformation Day Blog Post)

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

¹ The 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?

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

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

¹ It 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?

² My 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?

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.

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1. 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

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

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

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.

---

1. Incidentally, I have yet to meet a man who finds Paris Hilton attractive.
2. 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

              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.

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[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

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.

    

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1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

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.

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1. Yes, I said it Spencer.  I would also like to see how many other people out there believe they have a "God complex."
2. 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

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.

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1. 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

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

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.

    

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1. An almost herculean effort to be sure in this day and age of foaming-at-the-mouth-ideologues.
2. 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

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.

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1. The Answer:  An human being.
2. Albeit briefly.  I am an human being after all.
3. 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.
4. Starting off a thought with something that from the outset is illogical is probably not a good thing.
5. Actually no.  In my book atheists trail stop light algorithm programmers.
6. 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

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

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

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

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.

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1. 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.