religion – Page 2 – and the lack thereof

salvation

Does purpose come from meaning?

Or does meaning come from purpose?

Meaning: the personal force that encompasses that which we love and hate. A meaningful event is such because it holds power to influence that which we care about. Meaning is an attribute of external objects.

Purpose: the intended direction of personal action. The driving force behind everything we do. Purpose is an attribute of internal choices.

My gut wants to say that the reality could be both – but I am having trouble reconciling the problems. I do, however, see clearly the conundrum of my faith, in this context.

God gives me purpose, but not meaning. The world gives me meaning, but not purpose.

I love dearly that purpose that God has shown me, but I fail to see how it is worthy with how meaningless it feels so far. The world, likewise, is showing me what it is to be human, what it means to be this incredible structure that I am – but the world has yet to show me anything beyond self-destruction in its ways, defeating the very purpose of life.

Watching Iron Man made me think a bit about what modern guys idealize. Tony Stark achieved his lifestyle through intellectual mastery – with his mental faculties, he obtained fame, fortune, and sex, the pinnacle of what the world considers valuable goals. But these forces are so fleeting – so ultimately meaningless. They are their own meaning. Pleasure for the sake of pleasure.

Which brings me to question the power of purpose in faith. Is it all just purpose for the sake of purpose, just as the world is meaning for the sake of meaning?

I crave, I crave, I crave!

doctor, heal thyself

Once upon a time, stories of demons, angels, and miracles excited me. They spoke to the reality that I was taught of, but had never seen. They hinted at something beyond my own experience, a plane of nature that I would be forced to regard with fear and reverence. A shard of that remains, but it lies defeated after little nourishment over these past few years.

On my last day at L’Abri, my Swedish tutor asked me if I ever prayed. I told him no – it feels a useless activity. I have yet to see a tangible response. I might as well talk to a wall, and in fact, that is what I used to do, from a literal standpoint. He scoffed and asked if I believe in God – which I do. What kind of God do I believe in, then, that I do not pray to him, my perfectly good and all-powerful creator?

Sources are everything. Many, I believe, find their source of faith in anecdotes of old women rising from the firm grip of death. That shard within me yearns to have my belief confirmed by a lovely story such as this. But I cannot escape the fact that leaping for miracles is a wholly useless activity. It defies logic, progress, rationality – if we were so impatient as to pass off our ignorance as miraculous, we would be nowhere and a half. Praying for miracles is, I believe, a mostly foolish activity. Miracles are, by nature, the exception. To expect the exception is poor faith, to say the least.

All that to say, I wonder what my source of faith is. My faith is tremendously weak – I know, I understand, but my belief sees a paltry level of realization. Having walked away from anecdotal evidence and hand-me-down stories, I am left with frustratingly little – a handful of people I admire, and a book of eerily accurate wisdom about human nature and the surrounding world. The moments where I can only say “I don’t know how I know this to be true” are becoming more frequent, and this endlessly vexes me. I’m tired of uncertainty. I’m tired of being unsure. Yeah, Crede, ut intelligas, but that whole belief part isn’t just a choice. It has to come from somewhere.

Where the fuck am I supposed to derive my beliefs, with so little to trust?

supermodels

In my first week at L’Abri, I became consumed with developing a model for human interaction with supernature. This was a result of being introduced to the transcendentals (truth, beauty, goodness), and my fascination has since not waned.

The model, as I last touched it, was as follows:

RATIONAL: Father – Truth – Faith – Mind
EMOTIONAL: Son – Goodness – Hope – Heart
SPIRITUAL: Spirit – Beauty – Love – Soul

supernaturenature

1) Truth: that which is worthy of faith.
2) Goodness: that which is worthy of hope.
3) Beauty: that which is worthy of love.

4) Faith: our mind’s attempt to interact with truth.
5) Hope: our heart’s attempt to interact with goodness.
6) Love: our soul’s attempt to interact with beauty.

7) Mind: our best tool for understanding truth.
8) Heart: our best tool for understanding goodness.
9) Soul: our best tool for understanding beauty.

To test the accuracy of this model, I also attempted to switch out the transcendentals and their corresponding verbs with their opposites.

Truth :: Falseness
Goodness :: Evil
Beauty :: Corruption

Faith :: Distrust
Hope :: Despair
Love :: Hate

Falseness – Distrust
Evil – Despair
Corruption – Hate

There are a few more dimensions to this model that I can’t do with text, so if I have any luck at resurrecting my skills of an artist, I’ll finish my explanation with that.

supernature

These are two forum posts I made recently as an attempt to answer the question “Is God good?”.

March 23:

Before we can answer the question at hand, there must be some definition of terms, as it were. Particularly, God, and goodness.

Who is God?

These might seem obvious or repulsive, but these are the assumptions that allow us to begin to answer this question:

– God exists. If God does not exist, then he is nothing but a psycho-social phenomonon. A figment of history’s imagination cannot be good.
– God is the creator of the universe. What point would there be in investigating, questioning, or worshipping a god that was not responsible for the world he presides over? Within this assumption, there are hidden two more points – particularly, God’s omniscience and omnipotence. If God is the sole creator, then he knows his creation perfectly, and has perfect control over it. I should insert a note that I see absolutely no reason why God couldn’t have crafted the world within its own mechanisms – those being the Big Bang and Evolution.
– God is knowable. This is what Agnosticism and Deism deny, as well as to a lesser extent, Islam – that God avails himself in certain ways to enable his creation to have relationship with him. He must be knowable, if there is to be an answer to who he is. Otherwise, we’re just making guesses and assumptions.

The catch is that God’s existence and his knowability, in and of themselves, say absolutely nothing about his character. But before we talk about God’s goodness, we have to define goodness, as well.

What is goodness?

The trouble with defining a term like goodness is the presence of its polarity, evil. Humanity has the consistent problem of mixing the two up, whether purposefully for personal gain, or accidentally via the human tendency towards imperfection and mistakes. If we say a human is good, we do not mean that he/she is incapable of evil, but that on the whole, they seem to prefer goodness. If God is good, it has to be in a higher sense, because of God’s aforementioned nature.

In order for goodness to have any meaning, it must be more than a cultural/sociological concept. That is to say, goodness must be absolute, regardless of race, gender, socio-economic status, culture, and so on. I should backdrop this by noting that this is not an attempt to give meaning to morality – I believe that meaning is self-evident and intrinsic for all human beings. How that is expressed and altered varies between people-groups, but the absolutes never change.

I can’t really imagine defining goodness without invoking the other two transcendentals – truth and beauty. The three are inexorably linked to each other – where one appears, the other two are also present, whether apparent or not. That which is true and beautiful, is most definitively good. Now, the whole of human history has been spent waxing and waning over trying to pin down what truth, beauty, and goodness really are, and dare I say that nobody’s made a whole lot of definitive progress. That doesn’t mean that it’s useless to try to find out, but I think that the problem lies in separating them out. They belong together, they thrive together, they enhance one another, they define one another.

What, then, is God’s relationship to goodness?

Christianity’s answer to this question is that he is perfectly good – incapable of evil, and therefore the penultimate embodiment of goodness. The same can be said of beauty and truth, I believe. But there’s problems that immediately come to mind, just by looking out the window and seeing the world that God has created. This world is not perfectly good, and a perfectly good creator would not make an imperfect creation. This, quite distinctly, is the problem of evil, or of suffering (since that is evil’s most direct result).

Yet still, alongside Christianity’s answer is the claim of exclusivity. That is, that our souls are immortal (persisting beyond death), and that we will be judged for our choices and actions (or lack thereof) upon earth by God. The most universally popular conception of the consequences therein is heaven and hell. Heaven being the reward, hell being the punishment. But therein lies many problems:

– Why would a good god demand the loyalty of his creations, under threat of eternal damnation?
– Why would a good god demand loyalty but never reveal himself to so many of his creations?
– Why would a good god create people just to damn a shitload of them to hell?

And all the while, God has created a world chock full of suffering and pain, an imperfect world, created by a supposedly perfect creator.

Even if you acknowledge the existence of God, why would you want to worship a god like this?

I have my answer, but I’d like to hear other thoughts first.

Today:

“Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.” – John Calvin

God’s goodness demands that he be knowable – if his goodness cannot be seen, then what use is it? Morality is a concept of movement, of action. That which does not move cannot be moral. That which has no will, cannot be moral. Indeed, morality can be applied only to creatures of choice. If God is good, that means he is choosing, he is acting, and he is acting out that goodness in an active way. If he is good, then that goodness can be known.

Where is that goodness?

My greatest vexation at this juncture is that the objectivity of goodness versus the subjectivity of experience. No person experiences everything in the same way, nor are the experiences we face exactly similar. This is, in essence, the problem of epistemology. Knowledge is not equal, nor is our understanding of that knowledge. Many philosophers have spent their whole lives seeking to find the solution to what knowledge really is, and Plato probably got about as far as anyone else might have hoped. His theory of “Justified True Beliefs” is what tends to dominate current thought, most visible in the realm of hard sciences.

Modern society has more or less reduced knowledge to facts – only that which can be proven and observed. Yet that does not match our reality. Very little of what we do in our daily life has much of anything to do with this kind of knowledge. We do not love our parents (insert loving relationship of your choice here) because of any knowledge we have gathered, and we do not know they love us. These are not objectively provable aspects of our reality, but that does not make them any less real. That knowledge is, in the end, is up to us.

The verb I’m hinting at here is faith. No, I am not saying that the answer to the question of “Is God good” is “If you have faith in him”. That’s a foolish and self-righteous answer with no reasonable justification. One rather famous Christian paraplegic, Joni Eareckson Tada, has shared letters from other Christians telling her that “If her faith was strong enough, she could walk again”. Please do not interpret me in that way. What I mean here is more in line with something St. Augustine once wrote: Crede, ut intelligas – I believe, in order that I may understand.

Hebrews 11:1 – 1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
James 2:14-19 – 14What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

18But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

19You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

Faith is not a rebellion against rationality. It is not the enemy of thought, nor the denial of experience. It’s not sticking my fingers in my ears and humming a mantra. It’s an action. It’s a response. It is, I believe, the supreme way of understanding our world. When faced with the goodness of the world, I can only understand that goodness through faith. Goodness, Beauty and Truth lose all meaning without faith. They become nothing but shells of a concept, a mystical feeling that comes and goes. The more faith I hold, the more I experience these things within my life. No, it is not because God is rewarding me for being a good little boy – it’s because they were already there. It doesn’t make the presence of evil, corruption and falseness disappear, either – those are forces greater than myself, and to think I could stop them is foolish.

Goodness is not something we can find from an armchair. It will not jump out at us from the television, nor will it consume is as we play video games. If you wish to see the goodness of the world, then you must first believe it is there to be experienced.

As for heaven and hell?

If there is Goodness, there is Justice. In a world where evil exists, that evil must be brought to justice, if goodness is real. Unfortunately, I believe there to be a large amount of misinterpretation as to how this justice will be played out. I do not believe in a heaven of such mystical proportions, of streets made of gold. I do not believe in a hell of fire and flames; in fact, with the exception of Revelation (a book rife with bizarre metaphor and symbolism, fitting given the similar nature of Genesis), the Bible makes very little allusion to such a place. Jesus does indeed say the life comes only through him – and I cannot disagree. The only afterlife that makes sense to me is an afterlife with God. If, indeed, the problem with our reality is separation from God and disobedience towards him, the solution is union and obedience. If that is the reward, then the punishment could only be complete separation from God. Annihilation, oblivion, nothingness. If God is good, and he is just, then the punishment for failing to follow him will be just.

I cannot know the answers for what life lies beyond this one, or who will be where. Simply put, that doesn’t matter. If God is good, and he does indeed love us, then I need not worry about the eternal fate of those who might never have heard of Jesus. Any implication otherwise – that God is most certainly damning billions to hell – is nothing but a self-righteous and pompous claim made to spawn guilt and fear. Yet, I do believe that our actions have eternal meaning, that what we do matters both in this life, and the next. Evil cannot happily coincide with good.

Faith in God’s goodness resolves the anxiety of, well, his goodness. If he is good, then he will be good, and that is the truth of the matter. I can only understand myself. My fate is my responsibility, not anyone else’s.

And the problem of pain?

I will be blunt and honest: I don’t know. I don’t understand how a good God could allow a father to rape his daughter in a cellar for 24 years. I don’t understand how a good God could allow 15,000 people to die at the hands of a cyclone. I really do not understand why God would allow his creation to cause such incredible levels of malevolence against one another. I cannot see the reasoning behind it, I cannot understand it. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

However, I am faced with terrific accuracy with which the Bible explains the problems of this world, and where they started. I cannot escape the truth of Jesus’ message, nor can I ignore the power of that truth in my life and the lives of others. Faith does not make pain go away, and I despair over those that seem to believe it could. Faith is a response to truth. It is not a means by which we improve our lives, but a reaction to both the good and the bad of life.

Is God good?

I believe he is. I don’t believe it every day – my faith is as imperfect as I am, and it truly is a constant struggle. Fortunately, God’s goodness does not depend upon my faith. Rediscovering my faith is something I do quite often, and it usually does not take long before I’m faced with something awesome and terrible to behold, a truth which demands my response.

about time

A collection of American evangelicals have drafted what’s being called an ‘Evangelical Manifesto’, condemning the divisive politics of faith among the Christian right and left.

“The declaration, scheduled to be released Wednesday in Washington, encourages Christians to be politically engaged and uphold teachings such as traditional marriage. But the drafters say evangelicals have often expressed “truth without love,” helping create a backlash against religion during a “generation of culture warring.”

Terrorize

A lot of people ask me why I’m holding off on sex until I’m married.

The first, most common assumption that many make is that I believe sex, especially sex outside marriage, is an affront to God. I’m a Christian, and it would be a fairly rational leap of logic if you didn’t know better to conclude a lot of things about my beliefs. I’m not whatever you might assume, I’m Tim, and I have a pair of mostly functional eyes that I use to make observations for myself, and a supposedly working brain that I use to process those observations.

As such, I don’t buy the bullshit that God put one wo/man out there for you somewhere and that you’re going to make them very sad if you give your virginity to anybody else. I don’t buy the bullshit that your virginity has a super magical attachment to it, and that we’re forsaking God by forsaking that attachment. I don’t buy the bullshit that sex is something to ever feel uncomfortable with, ashamed about, or afraid of. I do believe that sex is special. I think everything about our sexuality is special, and that the fact that we have so many ways to express our sexuality is a beautiful and awesome thing. Thusly, I think our sexuality is something to be taken seriously, and I think that means more than just attaching a time and place to certain portions of our sexuality. I believe that means maintaining a healthy sexuality, just as we should keep a fit body, an active mind, and well-balanced emotions. As with every other aspect of our being, this requires discipline, knowledge, and willpower. We’ve been given a body, and we’re supposed to take care of it and make good use of it.

I came to the conclusion that I should examine what I want, before I could ever decide how to get there. We do the same thing with our bodies when we exercise, the same thing with our minds when we learn, and this is just the same thing. So, I started simple.

* I do want to have sex. No shit.
* I do want sex to be awesome. Another no-brainer.
* I do want sex to be special. It starts to get complicated. What could happen to make sex less special, for [i][u]me[/u][/i] (not you)?

* I don’t want sex to be a means to an end – it should be an expression of love, and shouldn’t be exploited for any other means.
* I don’t want sex to be an end – my goal should be knowing and enjoying who she is, not knowing and enjoying her vagina. The same should apply for her. I want her to want more than sex.
* I don’t want sex to be a necessity – I don’t want my life or my image to revolve around whether I’m having sex or not.

Ensuring all of this is no small task. Realistically, how can I have sex with someone that I’m not sure I’ll be with for the rest of my life, and guarantee that I’ll be living up to all of these standards? For me, I don’t think that’s possible. I can’t say the same is true for anybody else – no one is exactly like another. These are hopes and desires that not every person shares. Some people really just don’t care, and that’s their right. Let them experience sex however they want – this is how I want to experience sex.

Ultimately, I don’t want sex to come before a relationship in my priorities. I feel like the best way to know that I’m focused on being there emotionally is by not giving myself the chance to lose focus on the part of the relationship that has to last, no matter what. Does that really mean I need to wait until I’m married? Not necessarily, but the only reason I would let the boundary back any closer would be to satisfy my own lust. I’m not going to sacrifice anything for short-term pleasure, even if it’s a pleasure as awesome as sex. And believe me, I’ve had plenty of people tell me how awesome sex is. Ignorance is not bliss, in this regard.

Am I setting myself up for failure by trying to resist a force as powerful as my own raging sexuality? Who knows. I know I’m not perfect, and I sure as hell don’t plan on getting caught off-guard. But just as surely, I’ll do everything I can to follow through with my plans.

Curiosity

This is the post the you’re going to read before you harass me with repetitive questions.

TATTOO?! Aren’t you aware of what you’re doing?!

Yes, I’m aware that tattoos are permanent. Yes, I’m aware that people change and minds change. Yes, I’m aware that skin gets old and wrinkly. Yes, I’m aware that not everyone likes tattoos. Yes, I’m aware that it hurts like all hell (obviously, at this point).

But I thought Tim was such a smart boy! What went wrong?

Nothing went wrong. You don’t have to be a miscreant to get a tattoo, and they’re not as uncommon as you think. If you’re implying it’s a foolish choice to get a tattoo, well, just about anyone that has a tattoo will disagree with you. The naysayers are rarely those with tattoos – and in general, those that regret their tattoos got them while completely blasted with their frat buddies. That’s a fact.

Where would you get such a stupid idea from?

The same place anyone gets an idea from – other people. Nobody suggested it to me, but two people in my sociology class were discussing their tattoos, and I found myself intrigued and looked into it myself.

How did you decide you wanted a tattoo at all?

I can’t really say, it was just something that really interested me. You don’t know you want one until you find what you want.

What is that? A flaming wombat?

That’s a phoenix.

That’s gay. Why would you get a phoenix?

Traditionally, a phoenix represents immortality, regeneration, and rebirth. As I was reading Mere Christianity, it struck me that these are themes heavily carried within my faith, but ill-represented in popular culture and within the faith itself. The phoenix has been occasionally used in early church history, but never made its place as a standard symbol, given its stronger mythological nature that couldn’t be altered towards Christianity’s needs.

If you don’t know, the general idea is that a phoenix will live for several hundred / thousand years (depending on where in the world you are), and at the end of its life cycle, will make itself a death nest (in some lore it would be a nest of cinnamon twigs) and its ashes will produce a phoenix egg, continuing the cycle.

Along with having some very nifty lore that, for whatever reason, manages to stay consistent across many cultures (and indeed it’s bizarre that it exists in multiple, independant cultures at all), it also carries a lot of fantasy weight to it. I had considered a dragon, but really, they’re overdone and don’t represent much. It carries the imaginative weight that other mythological creatures do, but maintains a sense of meaning and purpose to it.

On top of all that, the colors are my favorite. I’ve had orange on black as my font coloring for years, now. My forum/IM avatars and desktop backgrounds are generally dark, and were for a very long time orange on black (in fact, the fractal I have right now is what I’ve been using for a very long time). It’s just a color scheme I love, and it takes a really wicked and unique form in the shape of a phoenix.

Where’d you get the design?

For those that haven’t seen it:

I found it after about three hours of searching the internet. I have no idea who made it, and I tried my best to find out, to no avail.

How much did it hurt, how long did it take?!

A shitload. But, no pain, no gain. If you want some kind of idea of what it feels like, imagine a very precise power sander, or the feeling of a dull knife quickly running across your skin. The artist noted that I chose a pretty intense spot. Portions of the design run across my sternum – which produced some pretty intense pain that I really can’t describe, but it sucked major balls. It makes it very hard to breathe and it’s impossible not to focus on it. The stuff closer to my armpit hurt more, and as well as the stuff near my collarbone.

Much of the pain was multiplied by the presence of shading. Though the picture makes it hard to see, there are no outlines in my tattoo – it’s all done in shades, no hard-set lines anywhere. She did the black first, which wasn’t so bad – because there were large amounts of it in each area, and it progressed fairly smoothly, there was something of a numbness to it all. However, when she ran across it in red, she started at the beginning – my skin had gone from numb to raw, and the sporadic nature of the coloring prevented any real numbness. The orange was equally bad. There wasn’t too much yellow, thankfully.

I was in the studio for three and a half hours, but the time spent needling was one hour and fifty-five minutes. That’s a lot, and I’m not sure I could have lasted much more than two and half hours. I started sweating like nobody’s business the minute she started – it was REALLY nasty.

How much did it cost?

$190. A $50 deposit was required when I handed her the design and made the appointment. She charge $100 an hour, but said she’d have capped it at $225. I also left a $20 tip.

Why’s it all shiny and crap? It looks messed up.

Tattoos take approximately ten days to heal. Given that the process is essentially leaving a giant, pretty wound on your skin, the first thing that happens is you bleed. Colors will be distorted by the blood and by the irritated/rash appearance of your skin. There’s also a lot of excess ink. My tattoo is currently raised off my skin from the excess ink, but as I continue to wash it, that will fade. At the same time, the tattoo will start to scab, as any wound would. This will create a glazed, dull, speckly appearance. Once the scabs fade, the dead skin needs to come off, which will make it appear flaky (and cause it to itch like nobody’s business).

That whole process will eventually leave the tattoo looking like it should – but as is, it’s a shadow of what it will be.

Where’d you get your tattoo? Why there?

Medusa tattoo, it’s a little place run by a rather nice woman. I chose there because she had a really excellent portfolio – her work was pretty awesome, the place was clean, and I felt comfortable. Other places in town didn’t look quite as good, and as I learned from guys at work, I made the right choice. Looking at the results has pretty much confirmed this.

What do your parents think?

I don’t know. I didn’t consult them before making this decision, but I did inform them I was getting one.

Uncertainty

Certainty is a rare and valuable thing. How often are you positive about anything? Everything comes with its share of doubts and potential pitfalls. Those, I don’t particularly mind. It’s only when those potential pitfalls are things I can fix, that I can change, that I can prevent. It’s not out of self-loathing or self-doubt that I say this, but merely because I acknowledge that I am imperfect and capable of screwing things up, especially when I’ve recognized my previous patterns for screwing up and I’m afraid of making the same mistake yet again.

This is something that’s only truly become apparant to me in the past few months, as I begin to understand the value of experience. This new-found respect for experience is not out of a sudden wealth of it in myself, but of the realization of what little I do have, and what there is in others. Last Sunday was a pretty interesting experience (lol) in this regard.

A fellow pastor from across the state came and preached and did some official duty related to my church’s recent election of elders (essentially the governmental body of the church – irrelevant to the story at hand). In our typical fashion, we (my parents, myself, and said pastor) went out to lunch and had a fairly nice time chatting and such. Somewhere along the conversation my dad started explaining the events that stopped us from moving to Tempe, Arizona in the summer of 1997.

A lot of the details I shouldn’t, and won’t share, because it’s a pretty personal story. What I can say, though, is that it’s weird to stumble across a whole new realm of respect for your own parents. Some of you may, or may not, know that once upon a time I was destined to move to Arizona, where my dad was going to start a new church. He had the financial support, the manpower, and we were just about a month or two away from moving. Our destination, to us, was quite certain, but everything fell through. In essence, they were backstabbed by their own church and fellow (quoteunquote) Christians, in a pretty clear-cut way (meaning, this isn’t just the bias of the son talking). I really wish I could describe it all, but perhaps another day.

Anyways. I had a whole varied amount of conclusions about everything after sitting and watching my dad almost drop to tears. The first was, as originally mentioned, about respecting experience. I came to realize that my parents had experiences that strongly affect how they act – for me to be as critical as I often have was, in retrospect, quite unjust, when taking into account where they’re coming from. I’m known to be especially critical of my mom. Some of it’s justified. Now, I realize, some of it’s not, and I should have questioned myself a little more harshly when others told me it wasn’t.

The second was one of the value of bad experiences. At the time, there was little good behind the emotional, financial, and practically physical abandonment my parents faced, and yet, there is much good that has been wrought of that ill. I wouldn’t live in Ithaca, for starters, and I don’t particularly enjoy the thought of not having the friends and experiences that I do now.

And the third, of course, was of certainty. As much as I’d love to be certain about something, anything, there’s nothing around me or within me that I can trust to provide certainty. Thus, I just have to suck it up and trust God that it will come out for the best, regardless of how I want to screw it up. And maybe try to minimize my capability of doing just that in the mean-time.

*hums softly*

I feel really, really good. This break has been wonderful, for myriad reasons. Some of which I will teasingly not mention.

Political Religion

Read this. I found it quite interesting. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but overall, he’s got the right idea.

The Latest Craze

Tonight’s Maundy Thursday service was a little bizarre, not in and of itself, but because as I looked at the bulletin, I literally started adding () at the end of each header (mentally). This is a strong indication that I rocked today’s practice APCS test, with the exception of the last question on Trees and Binary Expressions, which may prevent me from attaining my preliminary “5”.

I feel like I really did well on that thing, not because I studied (I did a total of 20 part one questions, 10 on two consecutive nights, mostly to get in the APCS “mood”), but because I’ve started getting the rest of my life in order before even thinking about school (yes, a long school performance post is coming). I’ve often wondered why I can’t get a grip this year (even my “I WILL NOT BE LAZY. :)” slogan failed after 5 weeks), when the simple answer came to me that there’s no way I can come close to excelling in matters of the mind, nor the body, when my heart isn’t even in the right place. While every conclusion I’ve come to concerning my performance at school has not been wrong, they’ve been misguided at the core.

Take, for example, my original thought that I was simply overloaded with courses in the midst of a busy life. This was possibly the furthest conclusion from the truth. Why was I doing poorly in Math 11H? I was getting two hours of sleep every night and doing half the homework. I didn’t accept THIS part of the equation until later, when I decided that my problem was sheer laziness. Back to analyzing the former, however. Was I busy? Sure, but the lie I repeated to me teachers about having three hours of homework was certainly overblown. This was a time in which I compulsively manipulated my teachers to gain pity and leniency, but not necessarily intentionally. I twisted the facts just a bit to gain the sympathy I needed to continue being a slacker.

Hindsight, as always, is 20/20, and it’s easy to judge my past acts so unabashedly. Maybe I WAS overworked, but I specifically remember spending half a dozen nights blowing off homework to watch Lost or the Sopranos or some movie. I can’t say with complete confidence that dropping Math 11H was a completely bad decision, but, I think I can say it could have been avoided. There was a definite shock factor at the beginning of the year – I was not prepared to actually work. Freshman and Sophomore years had been absolutely effortless, although my failure to apply myself is highly evident in my Sophomore year – my first F on a progress report (remedied to a B) appeared of all time, as well as my first D. So, this was something that was long overdue to happen, but is not totally the result of what I felt like it should have been. I WANTED to believe I was doing poorly because I was so overworked. I made things a lot harder for myself than they should have been. It’s definitely hard to do complex math at 3:00 in the morning, that’s for sure, so in one sense, I was right. I failed to see the connection between actions in the rest of my life, and consequences in my school life. Which is where I’m heading, here.

My true low point came a little bit after dropping AP Physics. I had justified the drop to a multitude of things – crappy teacher, depression, crappy course, still too much work, you name it. All of it contained a level of truth, just like with Math 11H – as I’m hearing from a lot of the people in there now, it’s only gotten worse in every respect. I was definitely a little depressed somewhere in there. The depression was a circular illness, though. I do poorly in AP Physics, I get depressed, which makes me do more poorly, etc.. The ONLY way to break the cycle, I figured, was to drop the depression factor – AP Physics. It never occurred to me that perhaps my performance in AP Physics was directly related to my constant absence from school, or my increasing failure to do the homework before each test, or my failure to study for the tests. A lot of the latter (homework, studying) can be attributed to frustration with the material when I didn’t understand it immediately. I’m not a patient learner. At all. So, I’d sit down for 10 minutes and stare at the book, and pretty much call it a day. All this, I believe, was the result of chaos in other, more important portions of my life.

I believe the last diagnosis I had, that I was sheerly lazy, was the closest to the truth, but was only treating the symptom. When I look at myself as a whole, my best work is done when I can actually focus on school – not in the “close the door and study for 5 hours” sense, but in the “there are no conflicting situations with friends and family, nor with God”. This isn’t something I’ve thought about for a while, but I realized it when I fell asleep in the middle of communion last Sunday, and subsequently missed the usher passing out the bread. Nobody came and scolded me for it or anything, no weird looks, nothing. I often fall asleep in the middle of church, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. But this was ridiculous.

I started from the beginning, asking questions to get to the source. Why did I fall asleep? I was tired. Did I mean to? No, it was, at the moment of occurance, out of my control. I was tired enough to fall asleep in the middle of the prayer beforehand. Why was I tired, then? Lack of sleep. Why didn’t I sleep? I stayed up late (until 3:00, as per usual). Why? Because I was playing games and watching TV. Why? Because that’s what I wanted to do. I felt like it. It was purposeful.

I realized that when I choose to deny myself something that will enable me to do the simple act of properly worshipping on Sunday morning, I’m choosing myself over God. That, right thurr, is sin. So, this gets down to the problem of me falling asleep in the middle of church. How does this relate to anything?

I have a lot of other unresolved problems with friends, far and wide. Anything from just a lack of communication to miscommunication to discommunication. Probably one of the more haunting failures this year was with the old guy, Mr Dynkin. Although I’d already given me notice that I was leaving, I repeatedly delayed and canceled at the last minute for the last time I was supposed to work for him, he pretty much fired me for being so unreliable. I can blame him and his senility and him trying to make me put on those gigantic pants all I want, but really, that was mine.

That spawned from an overally apathy concerning work and duty in my life. I have a duty to do a lot of things in my life, and I can’t really take that as lightly as I used to. Keeping up with the world isn’t as easy as it was a few years ago, which, I guess, is just part of aging. If I don’t keep up with my duties to the most important things in my life, there’s just no way I can keep up with the lesser things, like school.

Hopefully, by God’s grace I can keep up with the greater elements.

Of Note

Mike told me about a rather widely-viewed program on National Geographic last night concerning the “Gospel According to Judas”. I hadn’t heard of it, so I did some research.

Essentially, it was found in the mid-to-late 2nd century by a bishop of Lyons, and this date has been verified by all the surrounding evidence. So, it’s definitely old. The “Gospel of Judas” apparantly is told through the eyes of Judas, and suggests the Judas did not, in fact, betray Jesus, but was asked to by Jesus. I haven’t been able to find any manuscripts of it online, but from what I’m seeing, that’s the big “danger” it poses to Christianity.

My initial reaction was mild confusion, whether due to being massively tired or whatever, but I managed to not hold judgement until I got some research done. Lo and behold, it appears to be yet another Apocrypha. For those of you who don’t want to read the article, the Apocrypha are texts from Jesus’ time that have been deemed false. The Roman Catholic church and some Orthodox churches still keep some of the Apocrypha.

The Apocrypha, in general, are massively inconsistent with the basic canonical text of the Bible. In them you’ll find stuff about Jesus getting married and having a child, or various Old Testament stories in which men are worshipped (iirc) with God’s sanctioning. The stuff is pretty blatantly contradictory. That doesn’t automatically qualify it for being excluded from the Bible, but considering that a lot of this stuff was made by Gnostics, I fail to see how the “Gospel of Judas” is any different (the author is apparantly unknown, although it is told through Judas’ eyes).

An Inexorable Anxiety of the Heart

I’ve had the feeling again.

The feeling where my heart sags and beats irregularly, where I can think of nothing but gloom and doom. It spews this angst, this attitude that eats humor and joy for lunch, and occasionally brunch. I’ve spent all of today complaining to my dad about how much I hate school and generally saying anything I can that will distance myself from my inability to be responsible for my work. Whether anything I said is true is unquestionably irrelevant. Joe Wilson and Judith Pastel’s shortcomings as leaders of my educational system are not an excuse for my failures.

Tonight, I did my generic, meaningless plea to God. Something about me, a little more about my selfish needs, what I need, what I want, what must happen to me, complete with a delicious topping of insecerity and laziness. I knew I was wasting my breath, and I knew exactly what I needed to do. So I spent three hours not doing it. And I felt miserable for the whole three hours.

Once I finally got around to opening up my Bible, I read the last two chapters of Ecclesiastes. As I run across verse 8 through 10, I finally get the entire point of Ecclesiastes.

“However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything to come is meaningless. Be happy, young man, while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you to judgment. So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigor are meaningless.”

Meaningless. Life. Meaningless. Not pointless. Not worthless. Meaningless. This exact thing has been bugging me for two weeks straight. When I say bugging me, I really mean to say it’s been controlling my actions and thought processes to a very unhealthy level. I had this circular train of thought going. I was confused over the whole concept of enjoyment and despair. If I eat something and enjoy it now, it’s not making me happy later, so what’s the point? Every enjoyable thing is temporary; games don’t last forever, jokes stop being funny, movies get old. This is a basic fact that everyone knows but very few understand. These very few are what we call “content”. I understood this. But I wasn’t getting the “point” of enjoying anything at all because it’s so temporary. That’s where the answer comes in. They’re meaningless. They don’t provide meaning to my life. They don’t give it meat. They don’t give me any joy whatsoever. No material thing can do that (not even an HDTV). I’ve been relying on them for some kind of mental support so much these days.

I’ve got more on my mind, but some of it I can’t say. Or won’t, anyways. Good night, yon readers.

Let Us Assume

A few more site changes to note:

There’s a fully functional “about” section, linked at the top,
a fully functional index page linked from nowhere,
and a “various” page that is just a copy of the index page, because I don’t know what else to do with it at this point.

These were done like a week ago, but I never mentioned them. A few people noticed, and by a few people, I mean Zach. Horay for Zach.

EDIT: Paul claims he noticed them. I claim he only noticed them because I told him about them when I was making them. [2] Nolan also noticed them. Horay for Nolan.

The events of the past few days have left me more drained than I’ve been so far this year. Today is possibly one of the worst days I’ve had. Perhaps it was the eight hours of homework I had last night. Perhaps it was the three hours of sleep that followed that. Perhaps it was being 5 minutes late to school, again. Perhaps it was the 62 on the latest CIM test (yes, we actually work in there, Paul). Perhaps it was the Physics test I didn’t finish. Perhaps it was the 57 I got on my latest Math test (I didn’t feel so bad when I saw another kid, whom I believe to be rather specialized in Math, got a 12). Take your pick (or perhaps that’s my pick).

All of this, and my progress report that came over the weekend, has lead me to try and figure out a better course of action beyond “get more sleep”. There’s no way I’m gonna pull out of 2 D’s and 2 C’s just through getting more sleep (and thereby doing better on homework and quizzes). One thing that keeps running through the back of my head is this constant reminder of what other people think of me. I constantly compare what am doing now to what I’ve done in the past. This is a pretty unfortunate thing to do.

This is all to say that I don’t know if I have the ability to do everything at once. I so desperately want to prove my intelligence to other people, that I end up making myself look more idiotic than otherwise. What I’m trying to do at this point is basically cutting my losses. The first order of business is Math. Tomorrow, I’m dropping down to regents. I know I could do it, but it’s not worth it to me. I will take the same level of Math next year either way, when I’ll have all the time in the world to do what I want to do. I know I could do the work, but 4 hours of homework a night is more than I am willing to do. Math makes up the majority of time spent working at home. Besides, a class with Gwen (that is, if it isn’t full yet) would be nice.

That brings me to the second order of business. Generally, I haven’t kept my friends in my loop for a few months now. It’s not to blame on being busy, because I was doing it during the summer as well. I haven’t figured what to do to rectify the situation, but getting a little more free time is a step, I suppose.

The third order of business is Robotics. It’s something I’d love to do, and I’m not entirely sure as to whether I’ll have room for it. Supposedly build season is massively busy. I don’t know. I’m slightly more inclined to do it after dropping down in Math. It sounds like something to get me out of the house, if nothing else.

And finally, the fourth order of business is dating. In line with considering what I need in my life right now, I’m not sure if romance is a part of that. Before you all start saying “What romance?”, it’s not about what is, but what could be. I frequently manage to get myself hugely confused whenever a girl walks into the picture. Removing that factor entirely by saying “no, I’m not even gonna bother with that right now.” may be a healthier thing to do at this point. It’s not that I’m getting anywhere, it’s more that I spent a lot of time in my head getting nowhere. I just don’t see a hugely compelling reason to spend my time worrying about that stuff right now, and the only way I can truly enforce that is by cutting it off entirely, and leaving it for later. I don’t know when later is, but it’s not now, and it’s not soon. There are other reasons, but none that I can accurately engender here.

Another inspiration for all this is the fact that I never seem to have room for sitting down for 15 minutes to read my Bible and pray. I usually do it before I go to sleep, since that’s when I can concentrate best. But when it comes down to getting 15 minutes of sleep or reading my Bible, I’m never coherent enough at that point to actually make the better choice.

And with that, I leave you all to your business.

EDIT: I am aware that “hooray” is spelled with one two O’s. The single O is purposeful.

You no take candle!

This so, so so isn’t ready, but I desperately want to post. I’ve been dreaming about it. I kid you not. This blog is wonderful to me. I love it dearly.

We’ll backtrack from here to then.

I’ve spent the past 3 days pretty much just playing World of Warcraft. I caved in and used Paul’s 10-day free trial, after which I will continue playing. At the moment, I’m a level 13 priest, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Very good game. But none of you have waited a month to hear about that.

Work has improved marginally. At this point, I’m basically getting paid to learn/do AutoCAD, which I shouldn’t be complaining about at all. It’s actually been a really good learning experience – I’ve learned how to mail all kinds of packages (I only knew how to mail letters before), stain wood, do stuff at the bank, lots of random things that are kind of useful for every day doings. It has a lot of boring moments though, mostly when I don’t have enough variety in my work. This last project in AutoCAD I’ve been doing has just shot my nerves – every day, something new changes or happens and I have to redo a lot of work. Frustrating, let me tell you. Thankfully, I’m not under any deadline, so nothings going to fail because of me. Actually, the project I’m working on right now is for a building that will be going up where Dominoe’s (that don’t look right O.o) used to be, next to the Gateway Center. It’s a pretty spiffy building. Maybe there’s an NDA on it or something, so I should probably be hush hush….

The only other significant thing in my daily life (e.g. that consumes time) is Jen, whom I still don’t like. She’s mostly house trained, but she’s still a puppy, and thus retains puppy-ness. How quaint.

In important news, Jonothan gets back from Iraq September 15th. He actually arrives back on the 5th (this Saturday), but has to stick around for a many number of days for whatever reason. I’m really looking forward to seeing him. I won’t be able to go down and meet him because it’s 10 days, but, whatev, I’ll see him soon. Before I got WoW, I was playing lots of Zelda (the gamecube version, which I will get to, and OoT), which brought back some great memories from our first Christmas here. We’d get up in the morning over break, grab some hot chocolate and all the blankets we could find, plop down in front of our little monitor and play for many hours. I can’t remember how we worked it out, we probably took turns or something, I dunno.

No word has come in on Christopher’s discharge (still). I’m hoping he’ll be here before Thanksgiving, at this point.

Let’s see….I’ve acquired a job with a cool old Russian dude. He’s a retired professor from Cornell, like 80 years old, so I help him out with gardening and stuff. It lasts basically indefinitely, which is how I’m going to be paying for WoW.

Zach lent me this CD from a band called Bloc Party – it is growing more, and more, and more on me. The lyrics SUCK, basically the same phrase (which was good the first time he said it) over and over (not so good the 8th time). However, the music is excellent, and my constant techno-listening (6 hours a day minimum, thanks to work), I can phase it out and listen to the good stuff.

And now, for the rants that have been brewing for a month.

I.D.

I can’t stand it.

I can tolerate a literal interpretation of Genesis, but the ID mindset has gone too far. For once, Bush has really ticked me off. As most of you know, I was once a big fan of him, but he’s servicing the “religious” right, giving them everything they want while he has time. I can’t stand it. Whether I’m a part of the people he’s blowing kisses towards or not, I don’t want the tax dollars I am now spending (I pay income tax now! Huzzah!) to go towards a movement to stick a “science” like ID in schools. A Slashdotter put it perfectly: Once the ID crowd are willing to say that the Intelligent Designer (God) is falsifiable, then and only then can ID be considered as a possibility. And I know well enough that it’s impossible for that to happen. Faith is the hope in things that cannot be seen, proven, or denied. As with most things that are written in the midst of emotion, I will probably regret a specific phrase or sentence which does not reflect what I mean. But we’ll see. Open fire.

The Gamecube Zelda.

It sucks.

It sucks majorly.

I could live with cell-shading. I could almost live with playing a child, with child-like characters in a child-like work. I could just about live with the sailing. But not. It sucks. I want the next version, which has been delayed until 2006.

Nintendo, if it isn’t good, I sincerely hope you go down in flames.

I wish you all well on this night. I will slowly improve the blog as I desire, but it’s readable, and that’s what matters at this point.

The Joy of Geckos

VBS was surprisingly fun. It got better as the week went on. I got kind of attached to a few of the kids, they were pretty cute. It was really, really obvious which kids had solid homes, though. It was fun sitting behind the wall after the puppet shows goofing around, too. And then there was Mr. Missirian’s class…which was not so fun. I’m glad I did it though.

I’m officially signed up for Word of Life, which, was kind of late, but whatever works. I’m supposedly paying for 100 dollars of it, a big chunk out of my upgrades, because my parents don’t have enough to pay for it themselves. Admittedly, they are paying for me, but….

Moving on, those new Halo 2 maps come out Tuesday, and I’ve been playing rather much recently. The new maps look fairly sweet, especially Terminal and Gemini, and Relic might be fun. We shall see.

EDIT: Ithaca, the only place where fireworks are secinctly followed by a chorus of “O, Canada!”.

EDIT2: That’s just funny.

“Back, in a Color Roughly Akin to Black”

By the time this post is done, the DNS address should have resolved, and the blog will be back online. Not that any of you will notice. You all deserve many apologies from myself for having ignored all of you and stood on the sideline in a dark-colored pancho daydreaming. Metaphorically speaking. I am, however, back, and in a good mood, with loud music again, and with good speakers. First on the list: landmarks in geekdom.

Suspended Animation: 1, 2, 3, 4 (watch this one, very funny).

Intel sued by AMD: 1, 2.

American (IT) Economy Sucks, the EU sucks: 1, 2, 3.

Anyways, I’ve been at Daniel’s house since the 17th. I was there a total of 11 days, which, when you think about spending time with any one group of people, is a long time. It was overall pretty fun, I spent a lot of time helping out at Daniel’s church (which, I maintain, is identical to mine). Ben got me convinced to get Star Wars Galaxies after watching him play and learning the level system. I had been set on Guild Wars, but I then learned the level limit is 20, which kind of defeats the fun I hope for in these games. I didn’t do much at Daniel’s house in particular beyond watch Babylon 5, 24, and play Gladius with them. I was also not able to blast my techno without my large speakers. What can one do?

I was not a complete bum, though. I helped out at their VBS (Vacation Bible School), which was more interesting than expected. Daniel and I got the four and five-year-olds, and while they aren’t exactly aware of their surroundings at that point, they manage to be a handful. It’s hard to teach anything complex or meaningful to kids that young, and some of you would have laughed heartily at what they were doing.

Example: “God Loves You”
A non-competitive version of musical chairs, four hoola-hoops are placed on the ground. The kids run around in a circle while the leader sings some tune, and jump into the nearest hoola-hoop when the music stops. Upon jumping into the hoola-hoop, kids say “God loves you!” to eachother. Remove one hoola-hoop, rinse and repeat.

Events such as this and a puppet show, with one puppet commandeered by myself, are to be found at VBS. The unfortunate side-effect of VBS is the teen study, in which a highly aged and experienced engineer (whom I admire for his personal quality and ability) gives us a sort of “look at me as an example” lesson. On top of the style of teaching, it is a low-discussion class, which does not fly smoothly with me. My style of “saying something against the grain, and then backing it up with experience or references” does not work, as I usually get stopped at “saying something against the grain”, making me look like some kind of “bad” Christian. Anyways.

Beyond helping out at the church, I also attempted to bike around the lake with some of my Scout troop. This is a 100 mile trip, which, contrary to what I was thinking, is not just a 50 miles trip that goes for 50 more miles. No, this is much harder than that. Factors that did not help: I forgot an essential tube to my camelback, the route was very badly planned, and I forgot sunscreen. I made it 70 miles before Daniel, K2, and I all quit. It gets hard after 65 miles. Oh well.

EDIT: Pictures, stolen from Benjamin.

At the first grocery stop, nice and healthy. 15 miles.

[2012 edit: lost forever]

At the lunch stop, fairly healthy. 50 miles.

[2012 edit: lost forever]

At a shaded area, not very healthy. 65 miles.

[2012 edit: lost forever]

My mom and dad had some interesting stories about their bike trip, which may or may not come later. At the moment, I need to grab a coke, mow some lawns, and relax for the wonderful 10 days I have before running off to see my grandparent’s 50th anniversary, instead of getting to see Ben and Gemma’s wedding.

Part 11-13 of X

Does the Bible condemn astrology?

Yes:

Is.47:13-14
“Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.”

No:

Lk.21:25
“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars.”

The Bible condemns living by the stars – planning your days, seeing the future, and living by what you see in the stars. There are signs in the stars – the star over Nazareth is a good example.

Should we believe everything?

Yes:

1 Cor.13:7
“Believeth all things.”

No:

Pr.14:15
“The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.”

1 Th.5:21
“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

Hmm….that first quote looks a little short. Context! Here’s the NIV version, because the SAB version would require me to quote the entire chapter to make sense.

1 Cor.13:4-7
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Now, it doesn’t say believe in there, but instead says trusts – this is obviously talking about what love does, not what wisdom or caution does. Ahem.

Does the blood of animal sacrifices take away sin?

Yes:

Lev.17:11
“I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”

No:

Heb.10:4
“For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.”

In the Old Testament, God asked the Israelites to present sacrifices to atone for their sins. These sacrifices were not actually doing anything; they were symbolic of where their sin was going.

These Fries Sure are Loaded…(O.o)

I’ve had a rather interesting weekend, of sorts. Friday was rather enjoyable – Paul came over, we went downtown, expecting a horde of girls to greet us with unmeasurable joy, and were instead greeted with a capella and greasy pizza. I don’t like spelling a capella, it is most unnatural, suggesting something about the genre itself. Ahem.

We came back (he spent the night), watched the Royal Tenenbaums (good movie, not quite as hilarious as I had expected, but good), and Paul still can’t beat me in soccer. I was Cameroon. CAMEROON. I spent the rest of the day basically doing nothing – I rather badly wanted to get Jesse, Benjamin, and Daniel over, but Jesse had no transportation, Daniel was at his last day of classes, and Benjamin did come over, but we had nothing to do. I sat up in the attic reminiscing, listening to music, for about an hour, doing absolutely nothing. It was actually quite nice, in some respects. I cleaned up the attic some more, moved some signs, and, randomly enough, two couches appeared up there. Dad said Louie (Young Life director-majig) left them here, though it’s not known whether we’re keeping them. Either way, they’re here for a while, and it really rounds off the attic nicely – no weird empty spaces.

The 7 days between now and the end of school seem very, very long. I’m not actually looking forward to the end all that much, I just want to be in a place of regularity, so I can sit down and plan things out. It doesn’t help that I still haven’t gotten an answer from Sho’s dad – that decides a lot of what I’ll be doing over the summer. I really hope I get it, I’m really eager for a new computer, moreso than the repairs on the car. Speaking of which, I’m getting the permit Tuesday.

I’ve begun to appreciate some of Jonothan’s massive 1000+ CD collection in the back room – I’ve dug out his Built to Spill and Sunny Day Real Estate stuff, but it’s hard to find anything in a collection that massive. Admittedly, it doesn’t compare to Christopher’s 100GB library, but his is sorted into folders, which you can scroll down. Flipping through books of CDs is a little slower.

And to end, a fitting quote to my anti-SAB series.

Hebrews 4:2 (NIV)
“For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.”

I wasn’t always a Christian, you know.

Parts 8-10 of X

You want answers? (2, 3) You got answers.

8: Is it okay to drink alcohol?

Rom.14:21
“It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.”

Gal.5:21
“Drunkenness … and such like … they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Eph.5:18
“And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess.”

There are dozens there, but I chose these three, because they sum up what the Bible says. As with most things, the Bible warns against excess – some alcohol is okay, but drinking to be drunk is wrong. It’s common knowledge that your judgment is impaired while drunk, and that can easily lead you down the “garden parth” (as Mrs. Teukolsky would say).

Jg.9:13
“Wine, which cheereth God and man.”

Ps.104:15
“Wine that maketh glad the heart of man.”

Pr.31:6-9
“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.”

Again, it’s not that it’s wrong, only in excess. Proverbs is a book of true sayings, basically quotes that sound pretty and are true. Proverbs isn’t a guide for life, it’s just stating fact.

9: Does God want some to go to Hell?

1 Tim.2:3-4
“God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved.”

2 Pet.3:9
“The Lord is … not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

This, my friends, is the hardest question of Christianity, although poorly phrased. Here’s a short explanation. God loves everyone, but he cannot ignore our impurities. We’re all equally sinful before his eyes. We all deserve Hell. We don’t all get it. Any person that believes in Jesus won’t go there. In more basic terms, the question is asking if God decides who believes in Jesus or not. Short answer: kind of. God made us unique, knowing what choices we would make. He knew what choice we would make when it came to Him. Take with that what you will; this question has no comforting answer. The Lord COULD make everyone go to Heaven, but many of us would not do so willingly, it would be forced. God wants willing hearts. He wants all of us to believe in Him, but He is not going to force us all to believe. This is a paradox – He wants us to choose Him, and yet our destiny is chosen for us. I have not found a satisfactory answer yet.

Rom.9:18
“Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.”

This sums it all up; it’s all up to Him.

10: How long does God’s anger last?

Mic.7:18
“He retaineth not his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy.”

This pretty much sums up the other 2. This goes back to Romans 9:18, which is just above. He has mercy on those of which He will have mercy on. He’s never said His anger is not everlasting. Most of these verses are just contextual – in some cases, it is temporary.

Ps.30:5
“For his anger endureth but a moment.”

These are the Psalms – they’re like a diary of his walk with God. He’s cursed the Lord in some Psalms, in others, he is delighting in Him. It is his experience.

Jer.17:4
“Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever.”

The other three actually aren’t relevant – punishment is not anger. You may deserve everlasting punishment, but that doesn’t mean His anger is punishment. He deems that some deserve His everlasting anger. That’s as best an answer as I can give.

Many to go.

Part 7 of X

You want answers? You got answers.

Ex.20:14, Dt.5:18
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

Heb.13:4
“Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”

Correct. Adultery is a sin.

Num.31:18
“But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

Wait, what? I do believe SAB has some stupidity issues to solve. This is telling them to save those who have not had sex. That’s what “have not known man” means. Duh?

Hos.1:2
“And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms….”

Not only is this not approving of adultery, it’s not even close to relevant. God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute, and be faithful to her until death. Even though she ran off dozens of times with other men, he stayed true, and in the end, she was turned.

Hos.3:1
“Then said the Lord unto me, God yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress.”

I’m impressed by the lack of context they give. See above.

Many to go.

Part 6 of X

Having thoroughly owned 5 minor detail “contradictions”, I’m now going to skip through to general questions. It’s simply not worth anyone’s time to have to go through all of them. I suspect this will entail about 45 more questions, so it doesn’t end this any time soon. If you find one worth considering, tell me.

You want answers? You got answers.

In reality, I shouldn’t dignify this one with a response, but, I know that some want more than logic to disprove these things.

Gen.1:25-27
(Humans were created after the other animals.)
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image…. So God created man in his own image.

Chapter 1 of Genesis is the chronological account of God creating the world. This is correct.

Gen.2:18-22
(The man was created first, then the animals, then the woman from the man’s rib.)

And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them…. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Easy. God created more animals for Adam to see, instead of taking from what was already there. Or, if you don’t like that, consider this: just because God created more animals doesn’t mean he didn’t create them before. Common sense.

Part 5 of 339

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1 Sam.22:20
“And one of the sons of Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar.”
1 Sam.23:6
“Abiathar the son of Ahimelech.”

Yep. These two references refer to one Abiathar.

2 Sam.8:17, 1 Chr.18:16, 1 Chr.24:6
“Ahimelech the son of Abiathar.”

2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles overlap as far as the timeline goes – Abiathar had sons, and named one of them after his father, Ahimelech. Simple.

334 to go!

Part 4 of 339

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Heb.11:17
“By faith Abraham when he was tried, offered up Isaac, … his only begotten son.”

Gen.22:2
“Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, … and offer him there for a burnt offering.”

These both refer to when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. This, for Abraham, was the ultimate test of faith. Isaac was considered his only true, loved son. While Abraham did have other sons, Isaac was his only begotten son. Ishmael, who was born before Isaac, was not his true son, as he was not born of Abraham’s real wife, Sarah. Isaac, who was born of Sarah when she was about 80-90 years old, was God’s gift to Abraham.

Gen.16:15
“And Hagar bare Abraham a son: and Abram called his son’s name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael.”

Yep.

Gen.21:2-3
“For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son is his old age …. And Abraham called him Isaac.”

Yep.

Gen.25:1-2
“Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah.

Again, yep.

Gal.4:22
“Abraham had two sons; the one by a bond-woman, and the other by a free woman.”

This is hardly relevant. This isn’t saying he had only two sons – if you look at the context, it was comparing the origins of Isaac and Ishmael.

335 to go!

Part 3 of 339

You want answers? You got answers.

Rom.4:2
“For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory.”

This is correct. Christians are saved not by works, but by their faith in Jesus – so that no man can boast. (Ephesians 2:9) Meaning? I won’t be able to say “I am better, because I managed to save myself from death by being better than you.”.

Jas.2:21
“Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?”

Having read James two or three times, I can tell you off-hand exactly what’s going on here. Let’s get some context first.

Jas.2:14-26
“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”

As shown, this verse is about how faith is worthless without backing it up – you can talk the talk, but will you walk the walk? This is a great example of why context is necessary.

336 to go!