You just earned a rant...

Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without.

James C. Dobson

Thank you, Dr. Dobson.

I know what he's getting at, and it's a wonderful idea, isn't it? And a truly good thing to strive for. It's a big part of the American Dream.

I'm speaking as a very single person here, so that does affect my point of view, but I kinda think that's hogwash.

What if the person you can't live without, *can* live without you? Time to hit the drawing board. Back to the end of the queue. What about all the people throughout the world that are married to someone who is not the person they "can't live without"? Even worse, it's only supposed to be the person you *think* you can't live without. Never had buyer's remorse, eh?

Marriage, what a beautiful institution, what a wonderful experience. What a damn responsibility, what an irritation, how much damn work it is being in a relationship you can't back out of!

If you want to get married, find someone that is worth spending that energy on. Because you're going to spend a damn lot of energy on that relationship, especially if you have designs on that relationship lasting for a lifetime. Make a good decision. Don't just do it out of love. Do it with love, and with an eye for all the problems, too. If you don't think you have the energy to make it work with this person, over, you know, the next thirty years... forget it. Maybe they're someone that you think is amazing and you can't live without, maybe they're "just" someone you think you can make it work with. Making it work is going to be the nuts and bolts of your relationship for the length of your marriage...

Settling for someone is not an advisable choice. On the other hand, if you find yourself on the steppes of Russia for the rest of your life, and you think getting married would be a good idea, settling for someone just might be the decision you have to make. Make sure you make it wisely.

A hugely important part of any relationship is being able to appreciate the image of God in the other person. You don't have to see it as such; I don't think that way about my friends, I see it without knowing I see it. But the longer you get to know someone, the more you are going to have to be able to see it, or the less you are going to be interested in that relationship. In my few years on this earth, this seems like something I am finding.

Theology 3

Evangelism

I am not an evangelist. I rarely tell people they should "get right with God" or that they should have a "personal relationship with Jesus" or that "God has a plan" for their life and aren't they interested in knowing what it is?

The thing is, though, I really am glad that someone evangelized to me. If someone hadn't told me that God existed and that I could be forgiven of the ways in which I'd done him wrong and have a in-good-standing relationship with God, I don't know if I would have gotten to know Jesus. And Jesus has been worth knowing. There's been a lot of other stuff that has come with my relationship with God. Knowing something about why I'm valuable as a person, which has made me much more comfortable in my own skin. is something I'm not sure if I would have understood without knowing God. Grace would probably not have been something I would have gotten to know, which means I'd still be starvingly hungry for it. But all those things or none of them, Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit have been deeply, deeply worth getting to know.

Which leaves me in a weird position of being grateful for something I have but not really doing much to help others have it. At least in a person to person way. I do pray for this for specific people, albeit with some lack in consistency.

One of the reasons I'm not fond of evangelizing is that I've met a lot of people, including myself. who have been wounded in some way by evangelism. A lot of the ways that people talk about
God, talk about Christianity, and try to get other people to become Christians has damaged a lot of lives.

I think a big reason for this is because Christians have lost sight of (if in fact they knew) the whole purpose of evangelism: introducing Jesus to people and helping people see what the reality between God and man is. And from a pragmatic standpoint, I think simply introducing people to Jesus would suffice. I'm not sure you can actually make a good introduction to Jesus without naturally including any other pertinent details. And as I talked about in a different post, one of the key things here is that you're introducing a person. Is it really that dissimilar to saying "Hey, John, I like you to meet my friend Dave. He's a really swell cat and I think you two would get on together well."? Granted, there's more to the whole situation than that, but I think that is fundamentally what the purpose of evangelism is.

It's God that we're after. It's knowing Jesus, knowing the Spirit, knowing the Father that matters. Introducing people to everything but the actual person of God seems...pointless. And it seems to me that a lot of people don't actually hear that when they listen to Christians. The moment you mention Jesus people respond very defensively, as if you're going to hurt them.

What I really want people to experience, what I want people to know in a definite, living way, is what a great thing it is to know Jesus, to know all of God. To know that God loves them, to know the wonderful peace of grace, to have found something solid upon which to live a life. To that end I could really care less about the religion of Christianity. I don't care if anyone becomes Christian from a religion standpoint, I just want them to meet and be friends with Christ.

Theology 2

My last post made me want to write up a sort of tree of sources. I'll write it up in list form, though.

The first item in the list is the most basic, the primary source, the most basic aspect of reality from which everything else flows. Each item then flows from the last.

1. God exists.
2. God is a person (in three distinct parts, each of which is also a person. Strange.).
3. God relates.
4. God creates things.
5. These things include the universe, the earth, angels, and humans.
6. Some angels rebel against God, and so do all humans.
7. Apparently, the rebellious angels can't or won't repent of their rebellion.
8. Humans can, and maybe will.
9. God sees the rift between himself and humans (and, apparently, also all of creation) the rebellion creates as being a fixable problem.
10. God sets upon a course of action to solve the problem.
11. This course of action goes through a few phases culminating in God's only son dying as an intermediary sacrifice between humans and God.
12. The sacrifice is accepted and a means by which the rift between humans and God can be closed is established.
13. The means of restitution between God and humans must be chosen by each individual, it is not globally applied.
14. At a time of God's choosing, the realities set in progress by the creation of the universe are
stopped.
15. Judgement of each human's relationship with God is enacted.
16. Those who have followed the means of restitution enjoy continued eternal relationship with God, those who have not followed the means of restitution suffer eternal banishment from relationship with God.

I think it needs some further work, but even if incomplete I think that's the general gist.

Theology 1

So, I have lots of thoughts about lots of things. And I've been wanting to write out some of my thoughts about God, Christianity, etc., in a more organized way for some time. Here goes nothing.





I don't really have a good way of introducing how important I feel this idea is, so that knowledge will have to serve as preface.

God is a person.

Like any person, he has thoughts, feelings, desires, goals, etc. Like all people, one of his innate inclinations is to interact, or relate, with his environment. On a personal level that would be you and me, and globally all people and everything everywhere. And like all people, he is real.

(For the my purposes here, I'm assuming that God exists and reality exists and that both can be known at least in the sense of interaction.)

The reason I think this is so important is that I believe it is the basis of everything that has to do with God. It is the thing that Christianity has as its most obvious lynch-pin after the existence of God. It is the moving force behind all the concepts and doctrines of Christianity. (And also Judaism, for those keeping score at home.)

Also, it is important currently because I feel it often gets left behind in Christians' communication about their faith, which affects everything about one's faith, including evangelism. For example, a popular phrase that I heard growing up in an evangelical environment was "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ." Well, if Jesus Christ is just a concept or an object, really anything besides being a person, that whole concept sort of loses its appeal and becomes confusing or at least esoteric. It would be like talking about a "personal relationship with your car" or a "personal relationship with happiness". Kind of odd thoughts, right? Rather on the periphery of the day to day realities of making sure you have enough to eat, a place to sleep, something to ward off the elements, etc. But if Jesus Christ is a person in the same way that I am or anyone else is, than that phrase immediately makes much more sense. Two people having a personal relationship is a pretty fundamental part of being alive, isn't it?

And it also removes the dogmatic and philosophic elements of the beliefs from the hypothetical realm. The story of God's interaction with man and man's interaction with God as told in the Bible can be seen not as a story but as a history. God can't be just a concept or an allegory or an imaginary device is he is an actually real, living person.

And I think people are much more interested in relating to a real person than some out-of-the-frame, complex deity-thing. Even more so if that person has your truly best interests at heart and has set out upon a planned course of action to ensure your best interests are met. If God loves me in the same way that my friends love me, that has some appeal. If he loves me even better than my friends, better than any (potential) romantic partners, well, all the better, I think.

And if God is a person and the Almighty Creator the Bible claims, than he actually does have some legitimate claim to how we live.

Because he's not a concept, not an object, he's a real person.

But if that's not made clear, what exactly is the virtue of this belief?

But because I believe God is a real person, I get an awful damn lot out of the statement "Jesus loves me".

Jesus loves you.

Infrastructure

Recently, there was a large gas pipe explosion in San Bruno, California that leveled an entire neighborhood damaging close to 40 homes, injuring 60 people, and killing 4. (Here's a nifty article about how news reports are often wrong and sometimes make things worse.)

Last night I watched a program on the History Channel about America's failing infrastructure.

One of the interesting things we will see in our lifetime is the collision of people's views on taxes and their need for infrastructure. It is quite commonplace for people to complain about their tax burden, and levies for schools and infrastructure fail so often it is almost cliche. The current climate in America leans heavily toward the idea that our resource distribution systems (gas lines, sewer lines, electrical lines, roads, dams, levees, waterways, etc.) are automatically granted us as citizens. Their continued existence is not something we need to concern ourselves with. These things are somebody else's job and are taken care of for us. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our infrastructure, like all structures, require maintenance and replacement. This is true for fire alarms, toilets, refrigerators, stoves, cars, houses, boats, and so forth all the way up to roads, dams, bridges, sports teams, governments, and the environment. And just like all our in-home amenities, our out-of-home amenities like our free highways (freeways, get it?) must be maintained by us. We as individuals are responsible for the maintenance of everything we use. It may be someone else's "job" to do the actual work, but if we don't fund it and oversee it, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Currently our infrastructure is unfunded and we as a society are not looking after it.

Oh, Burn Notice is on, see ya...

Cars and Communipaw

It was nice to go out and take the car for a run tonight. North 271 to 90, and back again. I'm glad my car is minimally highway-worthy now. It just seems like a good idea to get the car up to speed and run it out for awhile. Like taking the dog for a run in the park. I spent the first half cruising at seventy and the last half cruising at 60. Managed to get 33.7 mpg burning 93 octane fuel. Not tremendous, but not bad.

Listening to Communipaw right now. They played the ARMfest, which I unfortunately could not make. Good stuff. Also, their self-titled album is 12 songs. I think 12 songs ought to be the minimum for CD albums. It's just a good quality length and sort of necessitates good writing and good variety.

There's still a few things to do on the car before I can really feel okay to leave it go. Spark plugs and wires, sway bar bushings, new tires, and new steering knuckles (at least, that's what i think they're called; the inner opposite to the tie rod ends). Actually, I'll probably just change out the tie-rod ends at the same time. No really good reason not to. But that may make me want to change out the ball joints, which may make me want to just change out the whole control arm. Or at least see if it's possible to change out the control arm connects. Ah, it just never stops.

Oncoming death

I was on my way to Walmart after work to get soap (gots to stay clean!), and I saw a car sitting in the middle of the road at an intersection, perpendicular to oncoming traffic. My immediate thought was, "that's not good.", followed by "what the heck?" followed by "that's a very dangerous place for a car." Cars were just turning around it and going on their way. It turned out to be a girl who had her battery die on her, killing the car in the intersection, according to what she told me. I had her throw it into neutral and pushed the car onto the shoulder of the road. She got it started and I suggested that it might be the alternator, not the battery. After thinking upon it all night, I think it's more likely that her car simply stalled out. When the engine was running it sounded like it was going to quit about any time. She said she'd paid $400 dollars to have the battery replaced (!!) (with gold bricks!?!? I hope there's more that went into that repair or there's some seriously shady shop around these parts.). I regret not taking a little more time to try and help diagnosis the problem. I was anxious about my car being on the shoulder in the flow of traffic.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why one would just go around a car in that situation. I suppose if you don't know anything about cars, you might not want to get involved, but this is such an obviously dangerous situation that I would think it would be obvious to try and do something, anything, considering that oncoming death is a realistic possibility with every car that approaches. I just don't get it. Pushing a car onto the shoulder of the road is the most basic of emergency car skills. Anyone and everyone can do it and has probably seen it done or participated in such an event if they have made it to the age of 18. How is it that I was the first person to stop and enact this most basic of skills??

Anyway, I sure hope she works it out with her car without spending oodles and gobs of money chasing false solutions.

I got the sadness really heavy right now.

I've had a thousand things to say, mostly rants about this and that.

Right now, Sheryl Crow's Lullaby for Wyatt is hitting the right chords right now.
She's actually a pretty damn good songwriter, though she never gets the credit. Maybe not a stellar lyricist, but she's got the changes.

Here's something to think on:

McDonald's - automation
Wendy's - homestyle/gourmet
Coca-Cola - a classic system
Pepsi - still kinda hasn't figured it out.

Employee training videos are one of the best things you can do for your new employee even though every new employee thinks they're a gigantic waste of time.

Detox the Tar

So, I've been a bit miffed about something recently, but now I'm not feeling so steamed, which means it's probably a good time to write about it.

"Love your Enemy".

I feel like a lot of Christians don't seem to have this on their radar, in their philosophy, on their mind. It's distressing to me. Now, I realize that if you looked at my life on a day to day basis, you could say this is the pot calling the kettle black. Certainly in my graciousness to drivers who may be "in my way" by virtue of their law abiding vehicular habits. And as far as even loving my neighbor, I've got a long, long way to go. But it really does concern me that this doesn't seem to be in the Christian zeitgeist.

Now, I'm not talking about those who practice the Christian religion, and even less am I concerned about those who don't claim any association to Christianity, but to those who claim to be Christian by relationship to Christ and God, I'm a bit surprised. "Love your neighbor" is a popular Christian idea and slogan. That's good. It is what Jesus claimed to be the second greatest commandment. But people have a tendency to give the "neighbor" part of that a short leash. Which I think is why Jesus a bit later identifies one's neighbor as those whom we most despise in his parable of the good Samaritan.

I am not in any shape or form, thought or deed, signing up for this with gusto. Those I despise most are the kind of people for whom we make gallows and prison cells. I find the thought of loving these people to be emotionally and mentally distasteful. Thinking about the pragmatics of it makes my stomach churn and my inner being blanch. But when Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.", I don't think he was being metaphoric or setting out a hyperbole to make a point. I think he was making a plain and simple command. I can't really ignore that, can I? Distasteful or not, there it is, as plain and simple as it could be. Not only am I to love those who love me (a difficult task) and love my neighbor (a truly problematic task), even more, I must love my enemy (an impossible task). Not at all meaning to have affection for my enemy, that would be unlikely, if not psychological suicide. Affection is mostly an emotion, but love is a movement of will.

One of the things that brought this frustration out in me is the number of disparaging remarks I hear Christians say about Christians who don't think like they do. The ones with different ideals, different ideologies, different doctrines. I understand people are going to disagree. I understand that some viewpoints are going to be closer to the perceived truth or real Truth than others. That's all well and good. There is nothing in any of that reality that constitutes an excuse for failing to love. I don't think disparagement is love, neither Gentle Love nor Tough Love.

As a challenge to myself and to others, I'm going to wrap up my thoughts with this: Many Christians want to know how to love God, how to love others, what they can do to change the world for Christ, what they can do so that people can see and meet Jesus and come to know Christ. Love your enemy, actively. That's just not something anyone does. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take care of the the outcasts and the people no one looks after, bless those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you, do good to those who hate you, love your enemy. It will have a profound effect.

To be a Hermit...

So, I googled an old flame today. That was...an interesting mistake?

(By the way, Google, you own blogspot, yet your dictionary doesn't register google, either as a noun or a verb? uh??)

Turns out she's a pediatrician. She's a got a kid now, or two; I didn't delve too deep. Her husband is going to be a lawyer. I'm certain she'll be a great pediatrician. They'll do great things.

It made me think about the direction of my life. I feel a little sheepish, a tad embarrassed. I'm living in a basement room, working a entry-level job, trying to dodge the credit agents until I can move up enough to pay them. I've written a few songs that nobody's heard. I'm not on the fast track to doing "great things". I haven't studied anything with any intent, haven't produced anything of caliber, and aside for helping a few folks now and again, haven't been particularly useful. I've learned a lot, a little about everything. By no means a jack of all trades, though. It's been an odds and ends life for me.

The flip-side is that I never had a goal of accomplishing anything. I've never been ambitious. I used to daydream about being a hermit in the woods when I was growing up. Ha, maybe I've accomplished that; I only see a few friends every now and again, by habit, if not choice. In many ways, I think my goal has been to Understand. I suppose I'm slowly accomplishing that, but not in the standard way. I never cared for studies. I consider them a necessary evil. Books and academia will jade you and warp you. Any path, in fact, will do that. I'm not sure I want to be warped by academia, studies, or books.

Anyway, it's embarrassing to have your formers and your peers accomplishing where you are not. I'd like to take some little victory away by making a "this vs. that" case, but frankly, I don't think I can. I've not particularly had any goals, and I've not particularly had any accomplishments. I think I could make the case that in some way I've dumbed down the bar so that I could stand to live with myself.

But I think I've also come to the point where I can see that the value of a goal is not in its accomplishment. It's somewhere else, whether that's the journey or a future enabled by that goal or that accomplishments allow you to be useful to people and to the world. They keep you moving. Maybe the importance of goals is in simply helping yourself to mirror a dynamic world. It *is* a dynamic world, and rather than being static, we, too, should be dynamic.

I'm reassessing...

Doctrine, or, The Fallen Nature of Systematics

So, I was thinking after church today about doctrine. Actually, about doctrine and evangelism and biblical interpretation and living a 'Christian' life (an idea that distresses me enough to be a set of essays, but not to be written today).

I believe that doctrine is not to be the First Thing, as in, that which is Priority #1. In fact, it may not even show up in my Top Five. And here's why: Doctrine cannot circumscribe God. It is a part of man's attempt to understand, and true, complete understanding is not something that the limitations of human nature allows for. I think that's a safe statement to make regardless of whether you believe humans were created by God or whether God doesn't exist and therefore didn't create humans, or some other viewpoint. The simple reality is that the human mind, soul, and body cannot completely, truly understand. Anything. In part, yes. Good enough for forward motion, yes. Completely and truly, no. And if it can't circumscribe God, it cannot convey reality.

God comes first.

The thing is, I think that's easily recognizable. And I think most Christians can recognize that. But when you then ask, "Well, what do we do with that?", nobody really knows. Because God's un-understandable. Yes, he comes first, but I can't grasp him, so what do I do? So people set about making it simpler (another topic that could easily warrant it's own set of essays). They don't necessarily do so intentionally, they do so out of a perceived necessity. And it is necessary. Humans need something to follow, whether instructions or people or vibes or zeitgeist. So where's the problem?

Doctrine is all about systems. Whether the system is rational and logical, or intuitive and mystical, doctrine revolves around ordering things so that they can be understood and, thus, followed or adhered to. Making them static. God, however is not static. He is dynamic. And reality is dynamic. Certain things stay the same, just as God himself is characterized by his unchangingness, yet there is no staticness. The foundation is set, but the connections move.
This dynamicism is something doctrine can't convey. You can make a "dynamic" doctrine, but it won't convey what is unchanging.

Doctrines, like ideologies (they are brothers), are insufficient.

So, I think the point here is, you have to keep looking beyond the doctrine to what it is trying to talk about. Where is the real thing?

God is the real thing. And following him is interacting. The doctrine can serve as a marker or a signpost, but God is the one to interact with. And that requires real work, both intuitive and learned. It requires actual interaction, true relationship, honest communication, quality time spent.







Not that I'm any good at it...

Hung My Head

I love the song "I Hung My Head" by Sting from his Mercury Falling album.



It's a sad song, but a beautiful one and I've always loved the rhythm in the both the verse and chorus. I think initially what hooked me about the song was the guitar sound. At the time I first heard it, around winter of 1996, I had pulled it out of the library along with a Sarah McLachlan album that had this one really interesting track with a great overdriven gritty guitar sound (maybe "Ice" from The Freedom Sessions) (yeah, overdriven guitar and Sarah McLachlan don't go together, part of what made it so interesting) and Peter Gabriel's Us and So albums. I loved Us and So, the way those records sound is amazing.

Somehow, these sounds remain tied together in my mind, in some kind of sympathetic sound.

All of this is set on a backdrop of some of the other guitar sounds I was drawn to at the time like "One of Us" by Joan Osborne and "Wonder" and "Carnival" by Natalie Merchant, "Counting Blue Cars" by Dishwalla (which owned the radio at the time), and everything by The Gin Blossoms. There was just a lot of really overdriven guitar music on the radio at the time. Not really heavily distorted in my mind, just good, pleasantly-overdriven to gritty guitar sounds in the pop world at the time.

"I Hung my Head" is another instance, and perhaps my favorite of those mentioned here, of that overdriven quality. Here it's much sweeter and with the added effects it's really stirring and gorgeous to me. In fact, the duo of albums coming from Sting at the time, Ten Summoner's Tales" and "Mercury Falling" had some really wonderful guitar sounds to my ear, both then and now.

At any rate, I haven't heard this song in a few years and it was nice to have it pop in my brain and be able to hear it again through the magic that is The Internet.

New Year, New Thoughts

Is it a new decade or just a new year? Does it really matter? You have to mark off your time somehow, but I'm not sure that numbers are particularly better than, say, the moon. And apparently, this month is a blue moon month. Two full moons in one month. See what I mean? Numbers versus nature. It's the standard versus metric argument.

Anyway, I think I've decided to stop letting my evangelical-Revelations-interpretation past from influencing my present decisions/thoughts about world events anymore. It's not been at the forefront of my thinking for some time, that evangelical intrepration history, but it's still in there at the back of things. In a phrase, it's not a good idea to let prophecy influence your decisions. Prophecy will work itself out in its own time and way. You have to work yourself/situation out regardless. Still, I'm surprised at how the interpretations of Scripture from my youth still figure largely into my thinking/acting at the age of 30. I've spent lots of time thinking about Scripture and life and interpretation and the fact that there are still significant holdovers from my growing up, while normal, comes off as surprising to me. Kids, learn this lesson: adult's views on the world are often no more thorough or long-sighted than your own viewpoints. Learn to understand the differences between thorough and true; not thorough and true; not thorough and not true; and thorough and not true. Also, understand that thorough is a matter of gradients and nothing is ever truly thorough enough.

Do people who aren't religiously Christian understand that within Christianity there are significant differences in understanding of God, Scripture, and how to live life?

I have also been thinking about this statement that Jesus made to the religious leaders of Israel during his lifetime: "You diligently search the Scriptures, thinking that by them you have life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life." I've been thinking lately that this underlying concept should gird all Biblical interpretation. I have to admit that I've been a bit frustrated/bitter at the conservative Christians in my life for putting (what I now feel is) more emphasis on scriptural "adherence" than actual relationship with God. (As a not of fairness, the liberals have the opposite problem: relationship without adherence.)

Similarly, two things: Christians don't seem to understand the Bible as set of literary documents and the following idea: there are no answers only processes. This is similar to the concept that everything is dynamic, nothing is static.