These are just presented in the order I wrote them down:

1. Read the Bible all the way through.
2. Translate one of the shorter books of the New Testament from Greek.
3. Get my weight down to 175lbs.
4. Run a 7:30 mile.
5. Bench my own weight.
6. Have at least one immediate neighbor visit my apartment.
7. Visit Japan.
8. Take the GRE.
9. Read twelve books.
10. Host a single day LOTR movie marathon.
11. Write a short story.
12. Write a song.
13. Take a road trip somewhere west of Texas.
14. Play at an open mic night.
15. Cook a legitimate three course meal for someone(s).
16. Ride the city bus for at least an hour.
17. Complete a two-day solo hike.
18. Wake up to see the sun rise once a month.
19. Take care of/keep from killing a plant for at least three months.
20. See the Grand Canyon.
21. Spend a night sleeping on my porch.
22. Convince someone to walk around with me in the pouring rain.
23. See a big college football or NFL game.
24. Pay off my credit card (and thereby be debt-free).
25. Perform fifty consecutive push-ups.
26. Sing karaoke solo.
27. Have lunch with a professor from my alma mater.
28. Enter a ping pong tournament.
29. Learn all the words to “Ice Ice Baby”.

So that’s it, folks. If you’ve got any better suggestions and think one of mine should be replaced, you’d better get it in before Tuesday. : )

Last year, I experimented with a vegetarian diet for six weeks, just to try it. I have no ethical problem with eating animals; my foray was inspired by a desire to eat more healthily as much as by a curiosity of how difficult it would be. I abstained from beef, poultry, pork, eggs, fish, and even foods containing animal broth — I wanted to make sure no animals died as a direct result of my diet. It was not nearly so difficult as I anticipated, since there are plenty of tasty substitutes for animal meat available these days.

An unexpected side effect was that I started paying attention (for awhile, anyway) to the fact that I was taking an animal’s life when I ate meat. This is not intuitive for Americans. Our food is highly processed, and we are psychologically removed from that fact by the very design of our advertising. Not all cultures suffer this indifference, though. For instance, before eating a meal in Japan, one usually says “Itadakimasu” (いただきます for Hiragana readers). Literally, it means “I will receive,” but it is understood that what will be received is two-fold: On the one hand, you are receiving a meal from a host who has prepared it. On the other, you are receiving nourishment from an animal that has given its life, or spirit.

I was reminded of this on Saturday night, when I had the opportunity to see Disney’s new nature documentary, Oceans. Several scenes feature our oceans’ complex food chains. Gargantuan Blue Whales swallow tiny Krill by the thousands. Bigger fish eat smaller fish, and smaller fish eat plants or even smaller fish.

Watching a Dolphin chase down a Tuna was not particularly disturbing to me. I noticed something, though: witnessing a Great White Shark hunt a Sea Lion was uncomfortable… and eating popcorn as baby sea turtles were carried off and eaten by seagulls just felt wrong. What’s the reason for this disparity?

Maybe seeing lots of animals die at one time keeps me from viewing them as individuals and making a connection. Perhaps it’s more difficult to identify with a fish than with a mammal. Definitely, it seems unfair that baby Turtles don’t even make it to the water before they’re subjected to the maw of a hungry sky rat Seagull.

It seems that I pick favorites (unconsciously) among animals based solely on how I can identify with them, and that thought is disturbing. However, it is symptomatic of a much more serious problem if it also describes how I relate to my fellow humans.

A close friend of mine shared with me recently that she looks at how humans value one another in terms of fractions. For instance, I might look at the guy who sells me a burrito at Taco Bell as 1/4 of a person. He is only valuable to me insofar as he will hand me with food that I request. I might feel superior to him if I think I am paid more for my job or if I think it requires more expertise to perform. Maybe I wouldn’t take much effort in being polite to him or considering how his day has been. On the other hand, I might treat a good looking celebrity as 7/4 of a person if she needed something from me. Perhaps I would listen carefully to everything she said in hopes of making her happy.

If we don’t automatically identify with someone because they are like us or because they can fill some need of ours, we have a tendency to treat them as less of a person and to be less concerned with their needs.

As it is in the ocean, so it is in life. Everyone suffers and is subject to the merciless nature of this world. Young children, the old and sick, the good looking and the undesirable will experience pain, loss, and death. Some go before they ever have a chance to build up their defenses, and parents are not there to provide protection. Some are hunted down in the prime of their lives by a calculated and merciless enemy. Some find themselves dying alone and friendless when age has taken a toll on their bodies.

It’s easy for me to have more sympathy for children, or good-looking people, or those who it seems are making some sort of contribution to society. That thought worries me, and more so because I don’t feel like it’s one I have consciously developed. Perhaps if I notice this in myself, others may be in that situation, too.

For those of us who follow Jesus of Nazareth, we are called to a different Way:

As Jesus was approaching Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the road begging. Now hearing a crowd going by, he began to inquire what this was. They told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he called out, saying, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those who led the way were sternly telling him to be quiet; but he kept crying out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded that he be brought to Him; and when he came near, He questioned him, “What do you want Me to do for you?” And he said, “Lord, I want to regain my sight!” And Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and began following Him, glorifying God; and when all the people saw it, they gave praise to God.

My friend who talked about fractions said she thought Jesus never viewed people that way. Everyone else tells the blind and the hurting and the forgotten to be quiet and to leave Jesus alone, but He looks at things differently. As His followers, should we not try and do the same?

In the end, we still live in a dog-eat-dog world. People are going to suffer and get knocked down by the world… but if every follower of Jesus tries a little more to love the unloved and to treat them like Jesus would, the ocean will become a little less scary.

The truth, though, is that I feel like teaching on suffering is pretty pointless for me. Pointless because it’s been taught and explored by people far more intelligent and studied than myself. Pointless because to teach about suffering, you have to know of suffering. No matter how much I might feel I’m hurting at some particular point in time, I know that mine is merely a speck of sand compared to the mountains others have faced.

But perhaps more significant than any of those reasons, it feels pointless because I don’t know why God doesn’t intervene to stop it. Why doesn’t He sit down and warn us Himself before we walk into worlds of pain? If His final plan is to wipe away every tear from our eyes, why is He letting us cry so many now? And I’ll give you a heads up, this isn’t one of those posts where I have some solution waiting in the wings. I’ve got nothing. I don’t understand it. I have no answers.

Naomi lived in Israel with her husband and two sons. There was a famine, though, and so they moved to a different country to try and make ends meet. But Naomi’s husband died; so she was left with two children and no husband. She could have moved back, but what good would that do with no food to eat? So she took care of her sons, and they married women in the foreign land. After living ten years in this new place, some of which she spent alone and sad because of her husband’s death, her sons died too. That was the last straw. She was now an older widow taking care of two younger widows, neither of them even from her own country.

When she heard there was food back home, she found no more reason to stay. She told her daughters-in-law that they’d be better off staying where they were, to find new husbands, and to move on with their lives. One stayed, and the other refused; her name was Ruth.

When Naomi made it back to her home in Israel, it had been over ten years. When her people greeted her, she had some interesting things to say:

“Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because El Shaddai has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; El Shaddai has brought misfortune upon me.”

Naomi is a Hebrew word that means ‘pleasant’. Coming home minus two sons and a husband, Naomi didn’t feel very pleasant. Mara means ‘bitter’ — and that is how she felt. That seems fair. She had been on a very hard road. What strikes me as odd, though, is that she attributed her hurt to God. Both El Shaddai and LORD refer to the God of Israel. So, “God has made my life very bitter. God has brought me back empty. God has afflicted me. God has brought misfortune upon me.” She never says God did anything wrong here, but she believes He is responsible. By far, the most interesting thing to me is that never once, in the entire remainder of the book, does God or the author reject that claim.

I’m usually pretty reticent to lay any of my suffering on God’s shoulders, because it could be Satan, right? Or maybe someone else made choices that were wrong and it’s affecting me? Or maybe I made choices and I’m facing the consequences. Sometimes things happen for which no instigating party can be given credit. But when I hear Naomi’s assertion, I can’t help but think of Job:

Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away.

I remember that nowhere in the text of Job does God deny responsibility for taking away Job’s wealth and family. Here, we have more details than we do for Naomi; God actually allowed Satan to hurt Job and those he loved. In the end, it was Satan who instigated the pain, but God clearly let it happen. In fact, Satan had to ask God’s permission, so in this case, is God not ultimately responsible? Apparently, Job did not sin in thinking so.

For a moment, let me just assume that Naomi and Job were right… that God is responsible for your suffering and for mine. What God gives only departs when He takes it away, and when those we love are hurt, it is not without God’s permission. I’ve thought about whether that assumption makes God no longer good, or whether it makes Him too unpredictable or scary to serve. In the end, I think it really just means my assumptions about Him were wrong. The idea that a good and just and loving God could simultaneously be responsible for bad and unjust and hate-inspired suffering — that is a hard pill to swallow. Of course, it’s easier to leave that pill in its academic bottle when you, or those you truly love, are not suffering.

When it really hits home, though, when you are hurting, or when it’s someone you love (and you’ll know you love them when you truly wish you could take their place), then that hard pill grows jagged edges and lodges itself right in your throat. And how do you breathe like that, much less function? How do you keep putting one foot in front of the other without falling over?

I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I do know this, though: whether or not I love God, whether I do good deeds or evil, I will suffer in this life. If I had to choose one entity to be responsible for that suffering, it would be the God who gave his Son.

King David, the sinner, the adulterer, the murderer, the man after God’s own heart, once found his people in trouble with God.

By the text’s own admission, God influenced David to do something that would cause Israel to suffer. David commanded his armies and fighting men to be counted, which was forbidden in the law. This count resulted in a punishment for Israel, and David was offered three possible options for that punishment: Either there would be seven years of famine, or three months of military defeat, or three days of pestilence in the land.

David did not try to get out of the punishment, but rather reasoned that if the suffering was to come from any source, He would rather it come from God and not from man, “for His mercies are great.”

In the end, that is what I choose. If I must suffer, I’d rather it be at the command of a loving God, rather than at the remorseless hands of man or Satan. If God gives, I will praise Him, and be glad. If God takes away, I will praise Him, and not be afraid to cry out in pain. God’s mercies are great, and I will trust Him to do what is best.

Why is my computer so slow?

Yeah, I know. When you bought your computer it was all speedy, but now it’s not. What’s the deal?

Your computer is slow because of one or more of the following three reasons:

• You have too many applications running simultaneously with not enough RAM (memory) to support them.

• You have some sort of spyware bogging down your computer. This is actually just a subtype of #1.
• You have a virus designed specifically to slow down your computer, or designed to do other things in the background without being detected. This is also a subtype of #1.

So now that we’ve identified the problem, let me tell you exactly what I do, almost every time, to fix it:

1. I run msconfig. Just go to your Start menu and click on “Run”. Then type in msconfig.exe and hit ‘enter’. If you’re on Windows 7, just type msconfig in the start menu search box, and hit ‘enter’.

2. I go to the tab that says ‘startup’. This tab shows you what programs are slated to begin running as soon as you boot your computer, before you get a chance to do anything, and they are the main reason your computer takes so long to boot in the first place. Some of them are important, and some are not. I usually un-click them all, unless I know for sure that I want it running at bootup. You will not break anything here, even if you un-click every single one. If it’s a necessary program, it will just start up again at next boot anyway. If you’re still confused, here’s a handy dandy website to help you.
3. I reboot. You will probably notice that your desktop loads a lot quicker this time than it usually does. When the little box comes up warning you that you used msconfig, just check the box saying not to show it again, and be done with it.
4. I uninstall all the programs that are either unnecessary or that the person whose computer I’m fixing doesn’t even know are there. Go to your Start menu, choose ‘Control Panel’, and then ‘Add or Remove Programs’. Then find the ones you don’t need, and get rid of them. If you’re unsure about a particular program, put the name of said program in a search engine and see what comes up. That’s how I decide when I don’t know.
5. I get rid of Norton Antivirus. I cannot stress this enough, and there are plenty of people who still won’t listen to me, but Norton is terrible. Yes, it may help keep viruses off of your computer. However, if it brings your computer to a cripplingly slow pace in the process, what good is it? If you cannot seem to remove Norton (or Symantec, same thing) from your computer via the control panel or an uninstall program in the Norton/Symantec folder, then consult your nearest geek for help, or just google the word “uninstall” and the name of your particular brand of Norton product.
6. I get rid of IE. Stop using Internet Explorer. It’s bad… stop it. Find some other browser to use. I recommend Firefox, but there are many others. Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari are also good choices if you’re looking for alternatives.
7. On my new non-IE browser, I download and run Spybot S&D. This is going to find and help you remove any spyware that may still be on your computer.
8. I download and run Clamwin AV. This will help you identify and remove any viruses that may still be on your computer.
9. I reboot, and I’m good to go.

Optionally, you can run a registry cleaner like Ccleaner to clean up your registry (in case you have old entries remaining from previously installed programs, corrupted entries, or other problems). Some people like to defragment their hard drive as well, but it’s not as necessary in the NTFS file system that has been in place since Windows NT/XP, since that file system doesn’t fragment as much as Fat32 did.

Hopefully this will help some of you better understand and solve your slow PC problems. I still think you should try Ubuntu, or get a Mac though. : )

What did you do when you were dating that has made your marriage better as a result? Conversely, you could tell me: what do you wish you had done when you were dating that might have helped make your marriage easier?

I’m wanting to hear from couples that have been married just recently, couples who have been married longer than I’ve been alive, and anyone in between.

Of course, if you’re not married (whether you have been in the past or not), and want to throw in on this conversation, feel free.

We lived in a house with wooden floors then, and my mother kept them clean and polished. She would always tell us to be careful, because they could get pretty slick. Barefoot, it was no problem, but with socks you could lose your traction. My brother saw this as more of a feature than anything else. He recognized the potential for a rink, and thus began his experiments with inertia.

He made it look easy. He would take a running start from our room, grab the door post as he swung out, sliding in a half oval down the hallway, and end up in the adjacent guest room. It was cool. I don’t say that just because I was 7… you would think it was cool if you saw it now.

I watched him 2 or 3 times before the thought occurred: “I can do this.” I put on some socks, and even had him give me a final demonstration to make sure I was clear on the mechanics. My running start went very well, but the thing about inertia is that it’s a real problem if you don’t manage it. My speed stayed up… my direction did not. By the time I’d picked myself up off the floor, one tooth had cut entirely through my upper lip, and I was pouring blood out of my mouth.

My Dad was out working on the car while all of this was going on. Both of my parents had told me not to run on that floor, and now there was blood all over. I couldn’t keep it from dripping through my fingers. Mom had just cleaned. I had no interest in her finding the floor that way. I wasn’t crying, because it didn’t really hurt, and I couldn’t see my own face, so I didn’t know how bad it was. My idea was to ask Dad if we had any band-aids. Once I stopped the bleeding, I was going to clean up the floor before anyone saw the mess. It was the perfect plan.

Now, my father is a very smart man. That doesn’t always come out to everyone, but it’s true. He’s smart in mathematics, physics, and radar engineering. One of his best qualities, though, is that he reacts intelligently in an emergency. He stays calm, and has a good idea about how to keep other people that way. So I know that when I asked whether we had any band-aids, he knew that a band-aid wasn’t going to cut it. He also knows me very well… he is my Dad, after all. He took a look at my mouth and told me that we needed to show Mom when she got home.

I forgot to mention that my Mom was out grocery shopping at the time. If Mom had been home, none of this would have ever happened in the first place. That mommy sixth sense of hers would have been tripped before my brother even put on the first sock. It must have been tingling anyway, because she was home within minutes of my accident (for those who don’t realize it, this was before cell phones, so we couldn’t call her). In the few seconds it took my Mom to figure out what was going on and to look at my mouth, she also knew a band-aid wasn’t going to fix this. Unfortunately, her knowledge about me was temporarily overridden by her motherly care, and she blurted out the truth: “that’s going to need stitches.” This was not what I wanted to hear.

In that moment, I transformed from a very calm little boy who was bleeding profusely out of his mouth to a very terrified one bent on avoiding the hospital. Someone sewing my skin shut was not in my game plan, and I let everyone know it. Minutes later, my poor parents were experiencing the horror of trying to get me into the car. I refused, and physically resisted every effort they made. In the process, our entire neighborhood got to spend that Saturday morning hearing my screams that my parents were trying to kill me. At one point I landed a fist into my Mom’s throat as I was flailing around and trying to get loose. Before it was over, my Dad was vocally considering tying me up with a rope, and he wasn’t kidding.

It wasn’t much better when we arrived at the hospital. I was outnumbered by my parents and doctors, but had no intention of giving up. I had my hands clamped over my mouth and felt like I could keep that up indefinitely. In retrospect, I think I probably terrified other children at the hospital that day, what with the insane look on my face and blood dripping out through my hands. In the end, they managed to pry my fingers back and confirm the need for stitches.

I remember very specifically one of the orderlies asking me whether I was going to do this “like a big boy” or whether they were going to have to “strap me down.” At 7 years old, I said: “you better strap me down.”

In the end, they sewed up my lip, but it was a lot harder than it had to be. My parents even made me go back and apologize to the doctors for my behavior.

I was just so afraid of those stitches. I didn’t like needles. I was scared of the pain.

It was clear to everyone but me that I needed them though. It’s hard to believe that I actually wanted to use a band-aid. I was so busy protecting myself that I didn’t have time to look in the mirror and see how bad it was. I was terrified.

The doctors knew what they were doing, though. They knew that even as the needle and thread pierced my flesh, it would also bind. It would put my body in a state of healing. The pain was minimal, but it would truly stop the bleeding — the way a band-aid never could. Though I resisted and fought with every ounce of my strength, they did what was best for me.

How often does this happen in our spiritual lives? The wound is there. We cannot stop the bleeding. We desperately want to cover it all up before anyone can see. We fear the pain of legitimate treatment to the point that we’re willing to accept the superficial. We are terrified.

But the God of all creation has the solution. The psalmist wrote: He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.

I still bear the scar today from my experience in the ER. If I hadn’t struggled so much, I might not still have a fat upper lip on one side.

Our God is the master Healer, though. When He binds up, there is no scar. When He treats, there is no trace of infirmity. When He is finished, we are just as good as when He created us.

Every now and then, I still trip and fall. Even today, I nearly knocked over a girl as I was coming out of a restaurant. So it is with my spirit. I make mistakes; I stray from God’s will. I am encouraged to know that when I am bruised and broken, the Lord is gracious to me and will heal me if I am willing.

I shudder to think what would have happened if I’d been allowed to try band-aids as I wished, or if I’d been left to continue bleeding. The wound could have become infected and festered; I might even have died. May we never be so afraid of the treatment that we remain bleeding and broken. The master Healer is always ready to treat us, if we will trust Him long enough to work.

One thing you may not be aware of is the fact that, if a friend of yours adds an application, it might now have access to any information your friend can see about you.

Some people (like myself) are not a big fan of that. Here’s how to stop it:

Personally, I choose to eliminate any information for those applications, like so:

Good luck, and feel free to leave any questions in the comments.

Then some elders of Israel came to me and sat down before me. And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and have put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity. Should I be consulted by them at all? Therefore speak to them and tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “Any man of the house of Israel who sets up idols in his heart, puts right before his face the stumbling block of his iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the LORD will be brought to give him an answer in the matter in view of the multitude of his idols, in order to lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel who are estranged from Me through all their idols.”‘”

Of course, it’s no surprise that Israel’s God is no fan of idols. He kind of mentions that in the first two commandments. There is something more going on here, though. Notice God’s description of the elders: they have set up idols “in their hearts”. They “put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity.” In fact, God is so upset about this that He said these people have no right to consult Him at all.

Wait… what?

Since when does God not want people asking Him for advice? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? It seems we’re going to have to dig a little deeper.

A God who hurts

You see, the prophet Ezekiel lived with his people in Babylon. God allowed Israel’s defeat and exile because they refused to leave other gods behind. Despite this punishment, the leaders and the people were unwilling to make the changes that would provide reconciliation. Back in chapter 6, God details the consequences of idol worship:

In all your dwellings, cities will become waste and the high places will be desolate, that your altars may become waste and desolate, your idols may be broken and brought to an end, your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be blotted out. The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am the LORD. However, I will leave a remnant, for you will have those who escaped the sword among the nations when you are scattered among the countries. Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes which played the harlot after their idols; and they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed, for all their abominations.

So there we have it. Amid God’s righteous anger, there is something else stirring. God is hurt. It seems impossible that supreme deity could be wounded, but the message to Ezekiel is undeniable: God is hurt.

Anyone who has been rejected remembers the sting. No one knows it like God, though. Just as God’s love is infinitely deeper than our own, the pain He feels at our rejection is infinitely sharper than any we could feel.

In chapter 8, God shares the source of His pain. He provides a spiritual vision in which Ezekiel is shown the inside of the temple area. God wants him to see what Israel’s spiritual leaders are doing:

And He said to me, “Go in and see the wicked abominations that they are committing here.” So I entered and looked, and behold, every form of creeping things and beasts and detestable things, with all the idols of the house of Israel, were carved on the wall all around. Standing in front of them were seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them, each man with his censer in his hand and the fragrance of the cloud of incense rising. Then He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are committing in the dark, each man in the room of his carved images? For they say, ‘The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.’”

A love destroyed

I have never been married, but I can imagine the pain of betrayal would be severe. The only thing I can envision that would make it worse is deception. It is a grave matter to openly reject someone and break a commitment. It is something much worse to do it in secret, to hide it, and to act as though vows have not been broken, and as though sin has not occurred. Those who do such things are scorned by society for their lack of compassion. Our God knows about that kind of pain.

Sometimes, when we make poor choices, it seems easiest to continue on that path. When vows have been broken, and so much has been lost, restoration seems like a foolish dream. We might choose to drown ourselves in the pleasures of sin, and extinguish any hope for a new beginning. Looking at chapter 11, it would seem Israel did just that. They were not interested in coming back to God. They believed He had abandoned them and left them for dead. Even Ezekiel wondered whether God would completely destroy what remained of his people. Fortunately, that was not the plan:

Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries among which you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. When they come there, they will remove all its detestable things and all its abominations from it, and I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them and I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God.

God never wanted to rid Himself of Israel. He always wanted them to come back. He only disciplined them so that their idols could be broken and brought to an end. By the time we arrive back at chapter 14, Israel has yet to repent, and God has yet to give up.

God knew that the problem was not the wood, or the clay, or the stone from which Israel’s idols were built. The problem was that the idols had been set up directly in their hearts. Israel’s idols were without spirit, without love, and without life. Now that those idols lived in human hearts, the hearts became just like what lived inside. They became stone.

A hope restored

All humans feel temptation. Sometimes we wonder why God even lets it exist. It might help to know that temptation has another name, though: free will. One cannot exist without the other. Free will is the thing that makes our good choices so beautiful, and our bad ones so terrible. Neither our good nor our evil is forced.

God knows we are tempted, and He knows we have a choice. What He wants is for us to choose Him first. He wants us to love Him, and trust that His way is best. It’s what He wanted from Abraham when He told him to move to a new place. It’s what He wanted from David when He promised the kingdom of Israel. It’s what He wanted from Jesus when He came to save the world, and it’s what He wants from us now.

Even with all the love and mercy God provides, He knows we will never choose Him first if we keep our idols hanging around. As long as we keep our stumbling blocks right before our faces, it is pointless to ask for His guidance.

If I were married, but decided to leave my wife and be unfaithful, it would be so hurtful to her. How much more of a slap in the face would it be if I called her up for directions to a hotel where I planned to take my mistress? That is what I do to God every time I choose to keep my idols right in front of my face. I call myself His child and His beloved, but will I choose Him first? Even as I began writing these thoughts, I was tempted to linger too long on one of those paid programming advertisements that are prominent just before dawn. What will I choose? How will I let God know that He comes first?

Let us make no mistake; God will not give up on us. However, if we want to seek His presence and simultaneously live in sin, He will let us know just how bad things are without Him. I the LORD will be brought to give him an answer in the matter in view of the multitude of his idols, in order to lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel who are estranged from Me through all their idols. Even in His discipline, God is seeking out our hearts and moving us to choose Him first.

No matter what you have done, or how far you have run from God, He is seeking you out. Israel broke their vows with God so many times, and yet through Hosea He says:

I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ “You are my people”; and they will say, “You are my God.”

You may be like me. You may be covered by the blood of Jesus of Nazareth, and still tempted to sin. Let’s encourage one another to remember that we are not who we once were:

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

I want God’s presence and guidance in my life. I want to love Him and make Him proud. I want to claim Him as Father and ask Him for good gifts. I am weak, though. Let’s encourage one another to smash down the idols in our lives, and never set them up in our hearts.

After about ten seconds, he gave up his search and started screaming, “DAAAAAAAAD!!” at the top of his lungs. It was pretty funny to see, especially since everyone in the pews (myself included) just looked on and continued to sing. This little guy just kept screaming, and… we just kept singing. I mean, neither I nor any of the people I was with knew who this boy was or where his Dad might have been. Eventually, a young lady who seemed to know his parents came and helped guide him along.

I was thinking about how often this happens in our congregations. We are really good at getting into patterns. We know the drill. There’s always a sermon, always the Lord’s supper, always singing, always praying, and always giving, and as long as all those things happen, we stay happy.

If that ever gets interrupted though, it is no good for the person through whom that interruption comes. It would be better for them to have a millstone tied around their ne–

Well, maybe it’s not quite that bad. At least we feel it would be better if they left well enough alone.

Sometimes people get lost, though. Even amid a well-oiled congregation’s ministries, people get out of place. They are looking for their Father. Sometimes they get to needing Him so bad that they step out of line. They get out in the aisle. They look up and down. They might even scream if their search goes on long enough. You can bet they won’t be singing, or giving, or listening to a sermon, or anything like that if they’ve lost sight of their Father. Sometimes that screaming comes in the form of asking for attention. Sometimes it comes in the form of sinning. Sometimes it comes in actual screams.

How should we react to that? Should we just keep on singing? Should we tolerate the interruption in a bemused or perhaps irritated fashion? Maybe we should consider a different approach.

If there is any place in the world where a person should be able to scream out loud for the Father, it should be in our congregations. That’s the place it should be because that’s the place where there should be the most people willing to help.

That’s not how it always works out.

Sometimes we’re pretty content to keep on singing, or to keep on doing whatever it is we were doing before the interruption came. That’s a bad plan. Jesus said that He came to help the sick, and when we lose sight of the Father, we are sick, indeed. The worst thing about it is that, for some people, the kind young woman guiding the way never comes along. Sometimes people are left to scream and cry and seek, and none of us lifts a finger to help. When that happens, they keep wandering down the aisle until they come to the foyer. Then they wander out into the parking lot. If no one stops them, sometimes they never wander back at all.

So, next time there is someone wandering the aisle, screaming for the Father, and interrupting our perfectly good worship service, let’s try and remember why we came in the first place. Perhaps God is more concerned about the welfare of the one child who is desperately seeking Him out in the aisle than with hearing the end of “Just as I am” from the ninety nine who are still in the pews.

Most of my readers come from Facebook, though, and leave comments on the imported notes there. Now, they can leave comments straight on the blog via Facebook Connect (thanks to Otto‘s amazing Simple Facebook Connect plugins). Just by using the “connect with Facebook” button, you can log in via facebook to leave comments. This will also allow you to publish your comments to your feed, if you choose.

If anyone is willing to test this comment system for me, feel free to give it a go on this post.

Thanks!

-Lloyd

Buffy is not the only vampire story I’ve liked, though. I was enmeshed in the Twilight series earlier this year; I read all four books in about three weeks. On the one hand, I like a good plot. On the other, I eschew pretty much all things scary. I’ve decided that I can stomach vampires because they have super powers and are surrounded in mystery. It’s the same reason I enjoy comics so much: Supernatural powers + mythological saga = Lloyd is hooked.

Given my Buffy and Twilight affinity, it’s not surprising that this article, written by self-described feminist Latoya Peterson, grabbed my attention. If I am understanding correctly, her premise is that recent vampire lore fails to exhibit feminist values and actually retards the liberation of women, as it were. She sees a trend in which women are relegated to a weak position: they are the object of violence and in need of protection. She believes that, compared to newer implementations, Buffy is more faithful to true feminist ideals. I’m not going to spend any time criticizing Ms. Peterson’s understanding of Buffy or Twilight (it seems a good number of people have already done so in the comments), nor am I going to try to judge this application of feminism (I’m unqualified to do so). What I will do is contend that followers of Jesus can learn something from the argument presented in her column.

In case you haven’t read the article, let me present a few quotes (links have been removed):

The latest wave of novels and series … reflect our culture�s deep ambivalence about women’s sexuality and our obsession with glorifying chastity and sexual violence.

Stephanie Meyer … has been criticized for emphasizing chastity in the story arc between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. Quite often, their scenes together felt like an extended tease … Alan Ball, the creator of True Blood, may have more progressive politics than Meyer … But, from a feminist perspective, he is still transmitting the same idea: To be desired, a woman should be beautiful, virginal, and submissive.

In Buffy, there is also a slight whiff of the virginity good/sex bad dynamic. … Buffy�s approach to sex is remarkably third wave. After a relatively celibate Season Three, Buffy proceeds to sleep with three more men (two human, one vampire) before the series closes. … This attitude toward sex also extends to the rest of the cast … most of the characters, after the initial awkwardness of adolescence, go on to have healthy and varied sex lives with a variety of other partners.

When I first read this, my initial response was heavily critical. Peterson’s view presupposes that extra-marital sex is not a moral problem; she vilifies media she perceives as “glorifying chastity.” From a christian perspective, chastity is an asset to be desired — an ideal to be encouraged. The concept that celibacy results from awkward feelings or that it hinders a “healthy” lifestyle is clearly contrary to the assertions of scripture. It’s very easy to focus on these warring philosophies and miss the common ground. If we look closer, however, we will see that both camps act from a thirst for what is just and a disdain for what is counterfeit.

A Double Standard

We have to remember that Peterson writes from a feminist perspective; she is concerned about how media and literature influence social perceptions and expectations of women. She specifically complains that the modern vampire sagas promote a notion that women should be chaste and subject to a man’s protection (or lack thereof). Inherent in that complaint is the recognition that men are not subject to the same expectations. Can anyone claim that such a double standard does not exist? It is an ancient injustice that continues to find traction today. Followers of Jesus should deplore this double standard more than anyone.

I’d like to examine the Hebrew narrative of Tamar and Amnon. Even though it was forbidden for kings, David had many wives. Tamar and Amnon were half sister and brother, both children of David by different mothers. Amnon actually fell in love with his sister, but because of the familial relation, he could do nothing about it. He became so obsessed that he was nigh physically ill. On the advice of an evil friend, Amnon tricked Tamar into being alone with him. Then, he made his sexual intentions clear. Tamar begged for him to reconsider, and even suggested that he ask David to let them marry. It’s hard to tell if she honestly thought they might marry, or if she was just desperate for a way out of the immediate situation. Either way, Amnon did not listen; he raped her. Of course, this is plenty of injustice for one story, but it actually gets worse. After the rape, the scripture says, “Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her. Amnon said to her, ‘Get up and get out!’ “ In the end, Tamar goes to live with her full brother, Absalom, as “a desolate woman.” That is the last we hear of her.

If there is a more apt display of this double standard that includes both sexual violence and the degradation of a woman due to her sexual status, I don’t know what it is. The point I want to make abundantly clear is this: Scripture never condones any part of this situation. Clearly, the reader is intended to react with disgust at Amnon’s actions and to mourn the travesty to which Tamar is subjected. We are told that David is made aware of the rape and is angry, but apparently he does not punish Amnon. Amnon is eventually killed by Absalom, but it appears that Absalom’s actions are politically motivated. Worse still, Absalom may have even helped plan Tamar’s rape in the first place. In the end, Tamar is never afforded true justice, and all parties involved (including David) suffer. Scripture does not condone Amnon’s actions, nor Absalom’s, nor David’s. Instead, we are shown exactly what can happen when God’s laws are subverted: there is only disaster.

The sexual double standard survives in our own culture, despite advances in feminist thinking. A number of comedic movie plots revolve around a young man’s quest to lose his virginity. Virginal men are viewed as weak, inept, and unattractive to the opposite sex. After all, why else would they choose to remain celibate? On the other hand, men who engage in sex with multiple partners are viewed as desirable, adventurous, and more masculine in general. Conversely, women who have sex with multiple partners are viewed as immoral, self-debasing, and undesirable as a mate. In a perversion of logic, women who are chaste find themselves equally accosted as prudish or non-affectionate. In this scenario, men are encouraged to pursue sexual pleasure while women are relegated to the untenable station of being judged no matter what they do. It is no wonder, then, that feminists (and anyone else who cares for justice) would reject these terms.

Unfortunately, this is not the only sexual double standard that exists. Some followers of Jesus have allowed an even less equitable arrangement to survive over the years. What else can we call it when homosexual practices are attacked as immoral, but a blind eye is turned to premarital heterosexual activity? Surely it is unethical to apply God’s standards to one group of people while failing to do so with another. If that injustice is allowed to continue, we can be sure that very few among those who do not follow Jesus will ever be persuaded to start.

In both cases, we would do well to follow consider the thoughts of Jesus: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Let us not miss the main point here; Jesus is not saying that we should all walk around with sawdust and planks in our eyes. That would be ill-advised. So what, exactly, is He saying?

It isn’t really rocket science; both sawdust and planks make it impossible to see clearly. We need to cleanse our eyes. It is not wrong to help a fellow believer clear their vision if they are stumbling (sexually, or otherwise); we simply need to make sure our own is clear before we get out the tweezers.

The truth about sex is that God designed it for our benefit. Whether one believes in God or not, and irrespective of gender, the plan attributed to Him in scripture still works best. It was devised to be shared between a husband and wife, exclusively. When we engage in it any other way, we miss out on the full benefit that God intends.

An Impossible Battle

Nonetheless, even those who submit fully to scriptural teaching about sex find it difficult to wait. Remember Peterson’s Twilight observation? “Quite often, their scenes together felt like an extended tease.” I have to agree with her… that can’t be right. Surely God is not interested in seeing us suffer while we fight against the desires He established in our bodies? Yet, almost every christian dating couple I know struggles with maintaining chastity before marriage. Is God just setting us up for failure? I don’t think so.

Secular thought tells us that the solution is for everyone to satiate their sexual desires as they please. However, followers of Jesus are not free to pursue that course; it is incompatible with biblical teaching. So how can we date and have limited physical contact without wanting to consummate the relationship?

Part of the difficulty arises from facets of our contemporary culture. Humans usually reach sexual maturity around our early to mid teen years. Despite this fact, in most states we are not even allowed to marry on our own cognizance until age 18. Even then, the average age of first marriage for men in the U.S. is 27.7, with women marrying slightly earlier at 25.6. That means most followers of Jesus in the U.S. are dealing with a decade of sexual maturity before they are able to consummate in a chaste way.

Christians have also taken secular dating norms and attempted to merge them with a christian lifestyle. Simply put, it is nearly impossible to abstain from sexual activity if one is constantly engaging in what is normally considered foreplay.

The solution is not to adopt unscriptural sexual values, but rather to effect practical standards by which we can live out true chastity. First, we may need to consider whether we want to discourage marriage at a relatively young age. As Paul said, it is better to marry than to burn with passion. I think many concerned parents have opted to encourage later marrying ages to ensure financial and emotional stability, with the tacit understanding that chastity is difficult or impossible. Perhaps we need to reconsider our priorities as we raise new generations of believers. Second, we need to assess why we’ve embraced our culture’s dating standards. The simple fact is that foreplay without consummation amounts to an “extended tease.” We should be able to agree that this is not good.

A Look in the Mirror

One characteristic of the newer vampire series is a habitual deviation from traditional vampire lore. For instance, vampires in Twilight and True Blood cast reflections in mirrors, but those in the Buffyverse do not. In yet another unlikely convergence with Ms. Peterson, I like Buffy’s world the best. I like the idea that soulless, parasitic creatures cannot see their own reflection. If that is true, then creatures with souls who spread life, rather than take it, must surely see a reflection when they look in the mirror.

As followers of Christ, it is high time we take a look, ourselves. If the mirror we need comes in the form of someone with whom we do not fully agree, then all the better. We cannot refuse to learn from what is reflected back at us. Perhaps by making the necessary adjustments and cleaning up our act, we will better match the image God desires for us in the first place. Perhaps that image will be more appealing than the counterfeit version that some non-christian thinkers have seen.

We can refuse to look at the mirror at all, or choose to see nothing when we do. If that is our choice, we may have more in common with the vampires than we think.

Nonetheless, Google’s Blogger offers a lot of nifty features, and sometimes I get jealous when WordPress can’t match up. One such feature is the blog list. Essentially, it is a feed aggregator that takes the form of a dynamic link list. My suspicion is that Google runs a specialized version of Reader to accomplish this. At the time of this writing, WordPress does not have this functionality included in the core version.

After much searching, I found Jan Weinschenker‘s Feed Reading Blogroll plugin. It does require some setup, but if you are savvy enough to host your own blog, you can probably handle it. (I am not sure if you can do this with a wordpress.com blog, as you need to be able to install the plugin.)

First, it requires that you obtain a key for Google’s AJAX Feed API. This is easily done and only requires a Google account.

There is an option to enable feed discovery through the Google API, and that works very well. It appears that the favicon image can be automatically discovered too, but for some reason the widget would not display it. I had to define each link’s favicon url in the link editor to get it to work; that can be tedious. My only other complaint is that some of the plugin’s setup options are redundant, and it’s hard to tell at first which takes precedent.

Overall, I’m very pleased that a plugin exists to match Blogger’s blog list. Hopefully this will keep someone else from having to search as long as I did.

I never really liked watching that movie, and I always closed my eyes at the scary part. It wasn’t graphic at all by today’s standards, but at the time it was terrifying for me. I don’t think the death itself really bothered me, though. It’s just that it was so calculated, so protracted, and so inevitable. Even though T-Rex started the fight, I still felt badly for him as he was disemboweled. Of course, this type of thing happens among animals every day, from insects in my backyard to lions and antelope on the Serengeti. You gotta eat, and in the animal world, for many species that entails chasing something down and defeating it in battle. I always identified with Wilbur from Charlotte’s web. He understood cruel reality, but he never quite got over the fact that Charlotte had to kill her trapped insects. If he could change things, he would.

He couldn’t, though.

Charlotte still sucked the blood of her victims. Bambi’s mom still caught a bullet. Even king Mufasa was run down by a stampede of wildebeest.

So when I think about the harsh reality of death in the animal kingdom, I’m supremely glad to be a human. In most scenarios, I won’t have to face off against a predator. It’s very unlikely that I will be hunted down for food. In fact, I do not have to hunt my own food either. I don’t have to kill if I would rather not. I can even choose to be a vegetarian if the idea of animals dying for my sustenance bothers me.

Cartoons aside, real animals do not have the ability to plot out a murder in malice. Most certainly, they do not have the wherewithal to torture a victim. Of course, some animals have it worse than others. Cats play with their food all the time, and sometimes the prey dies slowly. However, no animal inflicts pain or distress on another for the purpose of seeing it suffer.

This is where I’m not quite as glad to be a human… because while we don’t have so much to worry about from the animal kingdom, we have a lot to be concerned about from one another.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw a trailer for the new Saw movie. I’ve never watched the series, but from what I understand, the antagonist traps victims and puts them in scenarios where they must gore, maim, or otherwise torture themselves to live. While it’s true that I have a particularly weak stomach, I’ve never been able to understand how anyone who values human life could enjoy watching torture. It is so abhorrent to me that I refuse to watch anything to do with it. The thought of a person causing fear and pain like that on purpose angers me. Last year, I went to see a movie with some friends. Within the first two minutes, it was evident that it would be focusing on torture. I asked the girls I was with if we could leave and watch something else, and they were kind enough to agree (I don’t think it bothered them like it did me).

I’ve asked friends what they enjoy about this type of entertainment in the past. I’ve never been able to understand how someone who values human life could enjoy watching torture. Some have defended the Saw series by explaining that it actually extolls the value of human life. Apparently, it teaches us how far we should be willing to go to protect it.

Seriously?

I cannot see how watching multiple gruesome scenes does anything but lower the value of human life in our eyes. Of course, I am not saying that everyone who watches these movies is in support of torturing and maiming people. In fact, many people who seem to enjoy watching Saw movies are the same ones who call for swift justice upon hearing news stories where someone is kidnapped and tortured. So apparently, while a situation is horrid and vile in reality, it is… entertaining when posed as fiction?

Politically, I hold libertarian views, so I’m not calling for government censorship of these types of movies. What I am asking is for those of us who are Christians to think about what we consume. Some will tell me to get off my high horse and recognize that there is a difference between fiction and reality. Truly, there is. Why not use that argument with pornography? Sexually immoral behavior in real life: sinful. As entertainment? OK. I think we have bought into too much of our culture’s assertions about fantasy. Namely, that what occurs in the heart is not as important as what occurs through our bodies. Jesus taught that what comes out of the mouth reflects what is in the heart, and that what is in the heart makes someone “unclean”. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Similarly, when it comes to physical sins like murder or adultery, Jesus taught that entertaining the act in one’s heart amounts to the same thing as committing it.

I believe our culture is beginning to face the consequences of that truth now. We have continued to expand the outer limits of what is considered acceptable in terms of violence and sexual deviance. Of course, we are not the only culture to have done this. Toward the very end of Rome’s existence as a Republic, gladiatorial games came into mainstream use as a form of entertainment. POWs, slaves, and sometimes volunteers fought to the death for the entertainment of the populace and at the behest of political leaders. It is telling that only animals and second or third class citizens acted in this capacity. Legally speaking, citizens were forbidden from acting as gladiators because it would endanger their lives (this was not always enforced). In other words, the Romans respected life for some groups, but not others.

The patron of the games (or the crowd, in many instances) could determine whether an obviously defeated gladiator would live. The preference would be indicated by pollice verso, or “with a turned thumb”. It’s not clear whether this gesture is the same “thumbs up” (or down) with which we’re familiar today, but either way, the defeated gladiator was at the mercy of the audience. Now, we’re talking about people who were entertained by watching a fight to the death. Unless the defeated was popular, he had a very good chance of dying for his loss.

When I look at my culture, I see a people who is increasingly bloodthirsty. I see a people who requires more and more suffering to be satiated. I see the beginnings of barbarism creeping into mainstream acceptance.

I can think of no time in our country’s history in which we have more closely identified with the Romans. For many decades now, our legislature has eschewed the values of a republic and moved towards the perceived virtues of empire. If we are to repeat history, this change will continue to our own demise. Whether the decline of the state instigates the moral failure of the people, or whether the reverse is true, we would do well not to ignore the symptoms of this move. The devaluing of human life combined with the thirst for suffering can only lead to disaster.

An early Christian writer, Tertullian, commented on his culture’s ambivalence toward the gladiators:

On the one and the same account they glorify them and they degrade and diminish them; yes, further, they openly condemn them to disgrace and civil degradation; they keep them religiously excluded from council chamber, rostrum, senate, knighthood, and every other kind of office and a good many distinctions. The perversity of it! They love whom they lower; they despise whom they approve; the art they glorify, the artist they disgrace.

Could we not say the same of ourselves? If we patronize faithfully an art that glorifies torture, how can we condemn those who practice it in earnest? We have already done this in the sexual arena. If, in private, we are sexually immoral or consume pornography to no end, how do we then look down on prostitutes and use words like slut in our vitriol? Indeed we have fallen prey to the same attitude Tertullian condemned, and we are accelerating down that path even still.

The Roman empire which provided such excesses of cruelty in entertainment did not avoid it in public practice. It adopted the form of execution, which, even by its own standards was excessively cruel. This “ultimate penalty” is what Jesus of Nazareth suffered under the orders of Pontius Pilate.

I do not write this to condemn those who have chosen to patronize movies like Saw, most particularly if they do not consider themselves followers of Jesus. Certainly, it is not the place of Christians to judge those who do not believe. I do, however, want those of us who are Christians to consider what we are approving. Perhaps more importantly, we should ask ourselves where we are headed. After all, the cruelty of the arena was ultimately extended to Christians under Nero, Domitian, and even the relatively benign Marcus Aurelius.

It would be a shame to find ourselves giving the thumbs up to our own demise.

“U Better not be squirtin brain Juice all-over! Don’t let your Brain overload with smartness! My speech was better than yours Remember This quote!” – Ebony

“Have a nice summer and don’t bother me!” – Tanya

“Hey Lloyd (Nerd) How life? Stay Smart Nerd, (Sike) [indistinguishable signoff] – BabyFace (I do remember that this was a guy)

“Don’t show anyone my pic. k? Have a nice life” – Tina

And… the photos.

7th grade honor roll

Lady's Man

Fast forward three hours, and I’ve left my disastrously unclean apartment behind. Ranessa Perry (one of our elder’s wives at church) gave me a ride to the airport and was kind enough to let me leave my car at her place.

Fast forward another five hours, and I’ve landed in Houston. I’ve also made good progress into Twilight, which I borrowed from a friend. I’m beginning to understand what all the hype is about.

Shortly after I arrived at the international terminal in Houston, it was time for my flight to board. The plane was packed… and warm. To my right sat Graham, a Canadian teaching English in Nicaragua. To my left sat Maura, a Nicaraguan woman in her sixties or so. She actually lives in Jinotega where I’ll be working, and has invited me to come visit her house when I arrive.

The flight landed around 8:30, and I was surprised to see all of the airport workers wearing dust masks, ostensibly to avoid contracting swine flu. We had to pass by a thermal image scanner to make sure none of us had a fever. As much as I have chided our government for over-hyping this thing, I will admit that the whole environment created at the airport was intimidating.

I’m staying at a Best Western hotel across from the airport called Las Mercedes. It looks more like a resort than a normal hotel, and I’m thankful to have a bed. Yay for ubiquitous internet access and photo booth:

Safe and Sound in Managua

Thanks for all your prayers, and stay tuned!

Of course, this is all general outdoors or survival gear. I’ll also be taking my bible, a journal, a good spanish dictionary, my camera and laptop, a good pair of tennis shoes, and clothing. Did I miss anything? Am I going overboard? Let me know!

My flight is scheduled to leave Thursday, and if the Lord wills, I’ll return July 30th. I’m going to be assisting my on-again-off-again roommate this year, Phil, with some documentary/P.R. work he’s doing for the Misi�n para Cristo in Jinotega. In addition, we’re scheduled to spend some time in the jungle (via R�o Coco) helping to scout out a location for a new christian school. From what I can tell, this is going to be a real adventure, and I’m ready to carpe the diem.

I’d like to share some of my personal goals for this trip:

Manliness. I would like to gain more confidence in the outdoors. I don’t know how long we’ll be in the jungle, but I’m totally looking forward to it. I’m not comfortable with snakes, lack of medical facilities, or navigation. I wouldn’t mind gaining some outdoor survival skills (in a non-survival scenario).

In addition to my goals, I would not be sad if I came back in better shape… and maybe just a little tan. : )

Please feel free encourage me with as many e-mails as you want. Also, if you’d like a postcard from Nicaragua, send me your address and I’ll do my best to make sure you get one! I’m going to be posting here as often as I can (with pictures, of course.)

Hasta pronto!

]]> http://blog.floydius.com/2009/06/16/to-infinity-and-beyond/feed/ 2 http://blog.floydius.com/2009/04/03/theoconomy/ http://blog.floydius.com/2009/04/03/theoconomy/#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:13:40 +0000 Lloyd http://blog.floydius.com/?p=408 more...]]> I think about death often. Perhaps this comes off morbid, and I should rephrase to be more precise: I think about life often. These statements may seem antithetical, but let me argue the opposite. The nature of physical life is temporal; we recognize both birth and death. All that exists between we understand in terms of age. We accrue experience upon experience as the days pass into years. Sometimes in chunks and streams, sometimes in bits and pieces, and rarely in perfect replica do the events of our lives huddle in the recesses of our memory.

The longer we spin on this globe, the faster (or so it seems to us) we accelerate. This perception is the first clue that time is not some inscrutable force, but rather a dimension through which we move — kindred to length, width, and altitude. Fractions solve that riddle for us. That is to say, one hour after our birth, a single minute represents the same percentage of our life as an entire year at age sixty. Understood this way, it’s no wonder some older drivers are content to cruise at 35 mph while a less experienced driver is loath to drop below 65 or 70. In fact, the elderly driver is experiencing the commute at an accelerated rate. Compared to a 70 year-old driver traveling at 35 mph, a 20 year-old would have to accelerate to 122.5 mph just to keep pace. I imagine poor Methuselah would be reticent to set foot in an automobile at all.

It often overwhelms me to consider the terminal point along my path. Ever accelerating through time, I will eventually cross a line where I can accelerate no more. Aristotle wrote that neither perpetual acceleration nor perpetual deceleration is possible. We understand the latter half of this argument because we know that it is impossible to drop to a slower pace than no movement at all. The former is more difficult because we can continue to to contrive larger and larger numbers without any predictable end. Thus, 19th century calculus explains Aristotle’s observation in terms of limits. Simply put: even if we cannot precisely locate each of an infinite number of points along a line segment, we may still describe exactly the location of the terminal points on both ends of the segment.

The path of a life might be best described as a series of curves that vary along the ordinate (y) and applicate (z) axes but move always in the same horizontal direction. Robert Frost doubted if he should ever return to his divergence, but I am beyond doubt: I can never return to any point along my path. If such a thing were possible, I might maintain awareness of the future and the past concurrently. Indeed, I might even “remember” possible futures based on alternate choices. As it stands, I cannot do so precisely, but only in imagination. Since I still move, this absolute seems irrelevant, or at most I may put it on the back burner. However, the more closely I consider the reality and proximity of this terminal point, the more important my horizontal limitation becomes. Thus, at the end of life, humans tend to seek significance in each minute; we hoard our time as a valuable commodity. In youth, though, when the end seems far away, we spill our time liberally over significant and trivial ground alike.

The economy of our time seems more savage than that of our physical commodities, but both work precisely the same way. To the person with a billion dollars, one dollar is trivial. To the person with thirty five cents, one dollar is monumental. Our seconds, minutes, and hours experience deflation as our lives progress. It is understood that time is well-spent on purchases of lasting value. We exchange it for trifles only to our folly.

Perhaps it is true, then, that when we encounter phenomena independent or even contrary to this economy, we are supremely confused. This is appropriate, since the One who ignores or confutes altogether our pattern is Himself supreme:

Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. (Luke 15:1-7)

To this One who has a hundred sheep, the single lost one is of more significance than the rest. He will expend energies on the individual despite His opulence. Perhaps, with such a confusing economy, it should not surprise us that with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. (1 Peter 3:8b). Is it conceivable that the physical dimensions in which we exist do not confine the God who created them? Asked in this way, the question answers itself. Our conclusion confirms the fact that we do not fully understand God, but how does it serve to reduce our ignorance?

Eternity has terrified me since I was a young boy. Some nights I would lie thinking in my bed and suddenly, the reality of ‘forever’ would strike me. I did not want to be stuck anywhere ‘forever,’ even if that somewhere was a mansion in a nebulous heaven. I certainly did not want to be stuck singing the same song over and over to God, nor could I imagine Him never getting tired of it. Eternal life was no prospect I anticipated except to the extent that it excluded an eternity in hell, which I judged much worse. Under the hypothesis that God’s economy of time is unlike my own, my fear subsides, for it is only founded in the current system.

Revelation 21: 3b-4 reads, the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” I believe that when God moves in with man permanently, He will be bringing His economy of time and commodity along. Only in this way can the old things pass away and we reap the benefits. Our terminal point here is nothing to fear, so long as we have plans to adopt God’s economy of time and value. Of course, if we do not plan for that, we will suffer terrible loss and our fear is founded. Paul is right: If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. (1 Corinthians 15:19) Fortunately for us, the next life will bring a new system whereby our present condition will be rendered obsolete.

In the meantime, what should we do? How should we live? In the face of unrelenting time and physical confinements, where can we invest our time in exchange for real worth?

Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man. (Ecclesiastes 12:13)

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

]]> http://blog.floydius.com/2009/04/03/theoconomy/feed/ 4 http://blog.floydius.com/2009/03/28/up-and-running/ http://blog.floydius.com/2009/03/28/up-and-running/#comments Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:07:52 +0000 Lloyd http://blog.floydius.com/2009/03/28/up-and-running/ more...]]> If you were wondering, I have not completely disappeared from the blogosphere. A couple of months back, I attempted to update WordPress to a newer version and experienced a complete data loss. I have finally located all of my lost data in a backup and restored all my old posts. I’ve also cleaned up some dead links and am ready to start posting again. Carry on, citizens.

]]> http://blog.floydius.com/2009/03/28/up-and-running/feed/ 2 http://blog.floydius.com/2008/12/02/running-and-relaxing/ http://blog.floydius.com/2008/12/02/running-and-relaxing/#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:55:40 +0000 Lloyd http://blog.floydius.com/?p=332 more...]]> It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged, so I’m going to catch everyone up on my life colloquially.

In mid October, Josiah and I decided we needed to find a race to run so that we’d get in shape. We settled on the Mountain Home race on 11/15/08 and chose the half marathon. We had a grand plan to run every day and train; I think we ran together maybe twice. In the mean time, my aunt Jan died and I had to go home for a funeral, so I didn’t really keep up with my running well. Before the race, I’d managed to work myself up to a grand total of 4.5 miles, which obviously prepared me for the 13.1 required for the half. Come race day, it was freezing (with wind chill in the 20s) and at one point during the run it started sleeting on us.

Let’s have a little before and after, shall we?

Before

After

I’d say Josiah fared better than I did. His girlfriend, Katelyn, was kind enough to trek up to Mountain Home with us, brave my driving, and take these pictures. At this point I’m planning to run either the half or the full for the Little Rock Marathon in March. I’m going to try and work myself up to at least 30 miles per week, starting with a minimum of 10 miles per week.

For Thanksgiving, I went up to my brother’s house in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. He and Sara just had their first child, a lovely daughter named Cambria with whom I’m totally enamored. I had a great time getting to know her and can’t wait to see them again during Christmas. As a bonus, Sara’s sister Christianna and her husband Wes were there, as well as Sara’s parents. It really was fantastic to see them all. I felt a little like the 7th wheel though, since I was the only single person in the group. That is to be expected, however, when you’re 27 and everyone you know is getting married and having babies. All in all, it was a memorable trip and I hope to head up that direction again soon. Thanksgiving is a great time to catch up and renew old friendships. It’s also nice to spend time with the family and share in the joy of that relationship. I’m so blessed to have longstanding friends and a loving family for sharing all these times. The shot below is a little grainy because it was dark and I took it on the isight, but it’s one of my favorites.

Teaching Cambria the Hebrew alphabet.

On the way back to Searcy, I stopped by Nashville and stayed the night with Nick. Nashville has an REI store, and I’ve been looking for some camping/hiking gear. Two hours later (Melanie even stopped by to say hi!) I emerged with a new tent, a REI membership, and the urge to go camping at least once in this cold weather before Christmas. Anyone game?

For the time being, I have about two weeks to finish up all the assignments and work I haven’t done over the semester. For those who don’t know (I haven’t really announced this to many people yet), I don’t think I’m going to continue with this Masters of Ministry program at Harding next semester. It’s not a bad program, but (a) all my classes are online, and that’s not working out to be a great scenario for me. I feel like my time and money would be better spent doing face to face classes if I’m really wanting more school. (b) the classes seem more oriented towards current preachers who have no bible background, and I’m re-hashing a lot of stuff I did in undergrad. Doesn’t make the program bad, but it’s just not what I am looking for right now. I’d rather cut my losses and pursue other avenues at this point. I’m not sure what exactly that will entail, but one option that’s been on my mind a lot is teaching English in Japan and maybe planting some house churches while I’m there. Another option would be to move up to N.C. to be near my brother and his wife, or I could also just stay here in Searcy. Either way, I’m bound here until June when my lease ends, so I’ll probably find a job here until that time comes.

So, we’re all caught up and I solicit your prayers as I re-group and plan my next steps. Merry Christmas, all!

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