I have this speaking problem. I always want to be right, and if I am not sure about something I will not say it. I don't seem to say much anymore.
The thing is, I am never going to be right. In FYE class we established that pretty much everything is arguable, and I am never going to be in a position where any of my beliefs are purely correct. If they are not purely correct, they are wrong, and I need to be okay with that.
I believe my beliefs are skewed. Sin skews things. The devil can not create something new, he can only skew what God already created.
Everything that exists is God, so if it isn't God, it doesn't exist. Some of the things I worship are not God. Some of them don't exist.
I think from now on I am just going to say whats on my mind, and whenever I am wrong someone will tell me. And I will become better.
I need some limit though. I would not discuss sex or starvation or quantum physics with a 3 year old. Prudence is considering the strength and maturity of the audience.
A dead man is not able to say anything, his attempts are just empty words with no more influence than, well, nothing. but I am not dead so my speech has influence.I should probably learn more.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Journal
Because of the fall we, humans, try to create a different version of ourselves than the one which God created. Why would they choose to make the Tower of Babel out of bricks, not stone, especially for something that would reach "heaven"? Man makes bricks out of dirt, the same substance from which he is made. So in essence the Tower of Babel represented man trying to, on his own, build this new, human created form up to God.
They built the tower because they didn't want to be scattered, yet God scattered as a punishment for building the tower. Ironic.
I always imagined Abram in a tent or two with his small circle of children when God called them to leave for a new land. I didn't see his departure as an exceptionally hard choice, excepting the strain that comes from moving to a new place. It is true that he didn't know to where he was following God, but that seemed like the only real difficult part of the situation. He didn't live by himself in a few tents, he lived in a city, a small empire built with his father and mother, brothers and sisters, family judges, family livestock, and example of the completed promise of many offspring. God called Abram away from this full-grown, prosperous set up. He had the logical promise of all that a good man of that time could want to inherit, and God called him away. Abram literally gave up the inheritance of a nation for the inheritance that God offered him. One offered stability with the promise of a solid, pre-established system, and the other offered limitless possibilities (that means death and the loss of the family name as well as recognition and a great nation) with no base on which to establish a nation, not even a fertile wife. When God offers for us to walk together, it goes away from everything we ever wanted and offers nothing at all in face value. We must literally walk away with no hope of getting anything at all from the decision. Christians must be lemmings, following God where ever he goes even if it is off a cliff. We must become almost self-destructive, losing all regard for ourselves for the sake of this unexplainable love.
They built the tower because they didn't want to be scattered, yet God scattered as a punishment for building the tower. Ironic.
I always imagined Abram in a tent or two with his small circle of children when God called them to leave for a new land. I didn't see his departure as an exceptionally hard choice, excepting the strain that comes from moving to a new place. It is true that he didn't know to where he was following God, but that seemed like the only real difficult part of the situation. He didn't live by himself in a few tents, he lived in a city, a small empire built with his father and mother, brothers and sisters, family judges, family livestock, and example of the completed promise of many offspring. God called Abram away from this full-grown, prosperous set up. He had the logical promise of all that a good man of that time could want to inherit, and God called him away. Abram literally gave up the inheritance of a nation for the inheritance that God offered him. One offered stability with the promise of a solid, pre-established system, and the other offered limitless possibilities (that means death and the loss of the family name as well as recognition and a great nation) with no base on which to establish a nation, not even a fertile wife. When God offers for us to walk together, it goes away from everything we ever wanted and offers nothing at all in face value. We must literally walk away with no hope of getting anything at all from the decision. Christians must be lemmings, following God where ever he goes even if it is off a cliff. We must become almost self-destructive, losing all regard for ourselves for the sake of this unexplainable love.
Sacrifice is ugly. Sacrifice is gross and bloody. When I think of sacrifice, I think of a paster with a self appreciating smile on his face speaking metaphorically from the podium of a serene chapel. Sacrifice doesn't bring smiles, at least not a smile for yourself. A happiness for the person who benefitted from the sacrifice causes a smile, but the slaughtered thinking at all of himself will not bring a smile. If it is a real sacrifice, the slaughtered loses life. It becomes fractured, no longer whole by itself.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Baby Changing Station Experiment
Baby changing stations are the little fold down tables found in restrooms, usually imprinted with a koala or cartoon child. One sample declared a weight capacity of 50 lbs, but the baby changing station definitely holds more.
Purpose: Test how much mass an average baby changing station will hold before breaking.
Start ideas off slowly.
1. Use actual babies or toddlers, striving for abnormally heavy builds, and methodically place them on changing stations found at various locations. Use multiple subjects at one time to maximize weight, in addition to diaper bags and siblings. Start with the heaviest subjects and slowly add weight until the station breaks.
Pros: convenient test location
Cons: either felony if broken tables left unacknowledged, or expensive, changing station costs range from $140 to $450 and up; willing participants may be difficult due to risk of injury
Rejected
2. Use actual metal weights, and perform the test on only the cheaper baby changing station models.
Pros: No child injured, semi-convenient test locations
Cons: Still expensive
Rejected
3. Use metal weights and test the changing stations in bathrooms scheduled for demolition.
Pros: Cheap, no damage, no child injured
Cons: inconvenient, communication with strangers, tests results may be skewed due to the age of the changing stations
Most logical and responsible Option
4. Go to the nearest public restroom and sit on the baby changing station. If it doesn't break, bounce a little, and then declare your weight to be the holding capacity.
Pros: Cheap, extremely convenient, maximum researcher participation
Cons: A researcher significantly larger than a baby will almost always break the changing station.
College Student Option
Purpose: Test how much mass an average baby changing station will hold before breaking.
Start ideas off slowly.
1. Use actual babies or toddlers, striving for abnormally heavy builds, and methodically place them on changing stations found at various locations. Use multiple subjects at one time to maximize weight, in addition to diaper bags and siblings. Start with the heaviest subjects and slowly add weight until the station breaks.
Pros: convenient test location
Cons: either felony if broken tables left unacknowledged, or expensive, changing station costs range from $140 to $450 and up; willing participants may be difficult due to risk of injury
Rejected
2. Use actual metal weights, and perform the test on only the cheaper baby changing station models.
Pros: No child injured, semi-convenient test locations
Cons: Still expensive
Rejected
3. Use metal weights and test the changing stations in bathrooms scheduled for demolition.
Pros: Cheap, no damage, no child injured
Cons: inconvenient, communication with strangers, tests results may be skewed due to the age of the changing stations
Most logical and responsible Option
4. Go to the nearest public restroom and sit on the baby changing station. If it doesn't break, bounce a little, and then declare your weight to be the holding capacity.
Pros: Cheap, extremely convenient, maximum researcher participation
Cons: A researcher significantly larger than a baby will almost always break the changing station.
College Student Option
Sunday, September 6, 2009
My Lie and the Lover
So here is the lie I have been believing lately: that God does not individually know nor love me. I don't know when I first started believing the lie, it must have crept in subtly, like the gradual setting of the sun. Only when my faith got near the horizon, near total submission beneath the hill did it become obvious.
Like the constant touch of a love
is the hand for which I long,
and I know not how it comes
nor the being to which it belongs.
But I know without lie
that for it I long
because with it I
am so inexorably intertwined
that its absence takes with it
my very essence of being.
And I long for it though
I don't even know
how it comes,
nor even what it is.
They talk of it
as if they hate it.
They tell me it is a monster
that subtly rips my flesh
and leaves me
a dry shell in its
prison of a belly
that cares not for me
nor my will but only
its hungry appetite.
And sometimes I shrink from it;
I don't know what it is.
How can I love it
when I don't even
know what it is
nor from where it comes?
I wait in the dark
as they curse it and hate it,
and in fear and trembling I wait alone
because I do not know.
But though this creature remains
hidden beneath the dark
I now know this:
that to it I became married,
and its flesh and mine
intertwined
in a pain that withdraws
and expands and makes room
for the creation of old and new
past, present, and future
and all that is
in a strange morph;
it is inside me.
I will sacrifice myself
every day as I wait
for this love in the dark
for this hand of the thing
which I do not know
what it is nor from what it comes.
I wait for this one
in the dark
for whom I know
I can no longer
live without.
Like the constant touch of a love
is the hand for which I long,
and I know not how it comes
nor the being to which it belongs.
But I know without lie
that for it I long
because with it I
am so inexorably intertwined
that its absence takes with it
my very essence of being.
And I long for it though
I don't even know
how it comes,
nor even what it is.
They talk of it
as if they hate it.
They tell me it is a monster
that subtly rips my flesh
and leaves me
a dry shell in its
prison of a belly
that cares not for me
nor my will but only
its hungry appetite.
And sometimes I shrink from it;
I don't know what it is.
How can I love it
when I don't even
know what it is
nor from where it comes?
I wait in the dark
as they curse it and hate it,
and in fear and trembling I wait alone
because I do not know.
But though this creature remains
hidden beneath the dark
I now know this:
that to it I became married,
and its flesh and mine
intertwined
in a pain that withdraws
and expands and makes room
for the creation of old and new
past, present, and future
and all that is
in a strange morph;
it is inside me.
I will sacrifice myself
every day as I wait
for this love in the dark
for this hand of the thing
which I do not know
what it is nor from what it comes.
I wait for this one
in the dark
for whom I know
I can no longer
live without.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Righteous war, oxymoron?
Are we supposed to be new? Everything I do feels as if someone has done it before. As humans we have been eating, sleeping, and communicating for ages and ages. Everything is repeated, I just want to be free. I'm tired of wondering why a God would choose the Israelites alone and not all mankind and why He would proceed to order the death of so many of those he did not "choose". I'm tired of reading David in Psalms talk about how much God loves him, how only the blameless can be saved, and how the "evil" people, the enemies, the wicked and dirty and unlawful others will be crushed by the wrath of God. I really am not liking Psalms, because amid all of that "How great is your love, everlasting, unshakable, shelter me", amid all of the pretty power point slide verses is some wicked stuff. It catches me. It makes me wonder, am I in the group that is crushed, or am I in the group that for no reason God choose to make blameless and kill those who in the other group? Because it appears as though back then, those were the only two options. I just want to live in peace. Can I trust a God who does all of these things that I have read about?
I know I can say that the Old Testament took place in a different context, that God stays the same in the fact that He doesn't always look the same to us, and that God will do what God will do, but why would God do that then and not be able to do it now? Why is it acceptable to kill your neighbor 4,000 years ago, but now its not? The other nations must not have been the Israelite's neighbors, they must not have been human. Dirty dog Gentiles (sounds a lot like genitalia, now that I think about it. Another unclean thing; why would an unclean thing be created at all?) deserve to be killed. They violate the laws that no one ever told them about. The same is true for those in the Middle East, or maybe those in the Middle East can say that the same is true for us. Dirty dog infidels.
I just want to make a difference, but the more I am striving toward my goal, the more I find reasons not to continue. Yes, God ordered the killing of thousands of men, women, children, and animals. Yes, he did catalyst some holocausts. So much I want to find ways around this. So much I want to read a verse that says, "but in this battle and the massacre of thousands of people, (insert Israelite leader name here) was wrong, and God's anger burned at the sight of the undeserved killing". I haven't yet found that verse, and I don't think it exists. It must have been deserved.
Did Jesus really change things that much? And I don't really want to hear from the typical evangelical Christian about this, because I have heard the answer before and it doesn't take me anywhere. I want what I want for every question I ask: an answer that will not stop me in my journey with a false sense of security but one that will carry me forward into more questions, more answers, more questions. I don't want a neat little package of words, I want a canvas I can actually paint on.
So why, why did Jesus change things if he changed them at all? Did he simply offer a new facet of what already existed, or did he really drastically change the rules of the game? Possibly more important, is God still the same? Would He still order a righteous massacre of thousands of people? Is there still such a thing, and if not what made it go away?
I want to do something new.
I know I can say that the Old Testament took place in a different context, that God stays the same in the fact that He doesn't always look the same to us, and that God will do what God will do, but why would God do that then and not be able to do it now? Why is it acceptable to kill your neighbor 4,000 years ago, but now its not? The other nations must not have been the Israelite's neighbors, they must not have been human. Dirty dog Gentiles (sounds a lot like genitalia, now that I think about it. Another unclean thing; why would an unclean thing be created at all?) deserve to be killed. They violate the laws that no one ever told them about. The same is true for those in the Middle East, or maybe those in the Middle East can say that the same is true for us. Dirty dog infidels.
I just want to make a difference, but the more I am striving toward my goal, the more I find reasons not to continue. Yes, God ordered the killing of thousands of men, women, children, and animals. Yes, he did catalyst some holocausts. So much I want to find ways around this. So much I want to read a verse that says, "but in this battle and the massacre of thousands of people, (insert Israelite leader name here) was wrong, and God's anger burned at the sight of the undeserved killing". I haven't yet found that verse, and I don't think it exists. It must have been deserved.
Did Jesus really change things that much? And I don't really want to hear from the typical evangelical Christian about this, because I have heard the answer before and it doesn't take me anywhere. I want what I want for every question I ask: an answer that will not stop me in my journey with a false sense of security but one that will carry me forward into more questions, more answers, more questions. I don't want a neat little package of words, I want a canvas I can actually paint on.
So why, why did Jesus change things if he changed them at all? Did he simply offer a new facet of what already existed, or did he really drastically change the rules of the game? Possibly more important, is God still the same? Would He still order a righteous massacre of thousands of people? Is there still such a thing, and if not what made it go away?
I want to do something new.
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