in the new year

Resolutions are kind of ridiculous. It's sort of the same as how if you add more adverbs to a pledge, it's almost guaranteed you don't reeeeeaaaallly mean it. For example, "I absolutely positively definitely 100% for sure am going to eat less junk food next year." It sounds like you know you'll be hitting the pecan pie by nightfall. (Disclosure: I more or less stole this bit from Dave Barry - or maybe it was Scott Adams.)

So I don't make resolutions. And yet, the drive for improvement is in and of itself a good thing, I think. Then again, Mr. Miles Stanford in his Green Letters would probably disagree. I've been reading that lately, and I agree with a lot of what he's saying, to a point. Strangely enough, his point is rather similar to Tyler Durden: "Self-improvement is masturbation. Now, self-destruction..." Except self-destruction has to mean abandonment of self, and entrusting of that self to God's hands. It's not disputing with oneself, it's denying one's self, almost like denying its existence. It's not choosing God's way over your way, it's not even putting your way on the table for consideration. And it's strikingly close to death. Stanford is right that the actuality of crucifying oneself with Christ is every bit as repulsive to many "believers" as it is to the non-Christian. Yet that's the meat and potatoes of the matter, right? Here he agrees with MacDonald (though he might not word it just the same), that what he wants is not assurance of life eternal, not assurance of complete union with God, but the thing itself. He wants to be made perfect; he is not content to be "saved." And for that to happen, our self-will must be subject to the Master's. Whether that happens in this life or at its end or after is immaterial. It will happen before you enter in the New Jerusalem.

The agnostic or free-thinker might take umbrage, and think this means a denial of reason. It is anything but. On the contrary, I think denying self to follow Christ means not abandoning reason, but letting it grow free of our selfish desires and prejudices. Abandoning self may in fact mean abandoning presumptions about God we grew up with, may even involve harsh questioning of the historicity and implications of Scripture. I'm increasingly confident God insists we follow our conscience as much or more than we follow our current understanding of Scripture. (This is not to say it is not critically important to be in Scripture, only that is a mirror, the moon; it is not the Sun itself.)

Guess that's rambling a bit, but that's what's on my head this New Year's Eve. In the New Year, God willing, I will maybe stop thinking about God so much, and start living selflessly in His will. God give me the grace to do so; to appropriate the new creation I will be and (in the same sense prophecy is rendered in the present tense for its certitude) already am.

eternity

I was always scared of eternity in heaven. The thought of my mind / my existence going on and on, without anything new to do, without any destination point, scared the crap out of me. Today I realized maybe it was just that the only eternity I could envision is one where there is still a wall between my mind and everyone else's. In other words, an eternity trapped inside myself (and myself as I currently exist, not as a fully sanctified son of the Father). That kind of eternity has a name - hell. The other kind, the kind with unity and love, is probably not so scary. If only it were easier to envision.

two small things

I believe God loves especially while (and especially because) we are silly.

A new goal for my life, from Angel:
"We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be."

lighter side

Let's forget about politics, religion, etc. just for a moment and talk about my favorite forms of entertainment. Even I know some times I need a break from all the serious.

TV: Been watching a lot of Angel lately. I really like it, although *SPOILER ALERT* Evil Cordy in Season 4 was very annoying. I wonder what they would have done if Charisma Carpenter had stayed with the show. Can't ever let Angel be happy, I don't suppose. Sigh.
Also, Mad Men continues to impress. I like the world of it, and I enjoy seeing what happens to the characters, even if there's not a one of them whose moral backbone isn't made out of rubber.

Video games: The World Ends With You - PLAY THIS GAME. Best thing to come out of Squeenix in *years.* Fun, complex but a reasonable learning curve, and a story that does well what it tries to do. Can't ask for much more than that. Also, I need to make with the WiiWare/VC downloading: Megaman 9, Shining Force II, Secret of Mana, and Super Mario RPG have all come out in the last few weeks. That's a mighty huge pile of retro awesome.

Music: Still on a Death Cab kick to some extent, but my "let's throw another album on the pile" list at work also consists of "Chess," Guns 'n' Roses, Coldplay, and I think Prince. How's that for eclectic?

The previous seasons of LOST, 30 Rock, HIMYM, and The Office will soon be out on DVD. Lot of great eppys...to buy, or to rent as needed with Netflix?

do your homework

So, I've been talking a big show about how people blindly support one party or the other, without making any effort to understand the other side. A friend of mine says we get so defensive about politics because the truth is, we don't really know what we're talking about. Can you be absolutely certain your economic policies are the best ones? What does that even mean? Best for whom?

I say I'm not a Republican anymore, but I have a responsibility to be more than just "not a Republican." Not being a Democrat, but rather doing at least a little research into the actual plans and proposals of the candidates, and see who I actually think would make a better president. It's easier to make snap judgments, or to just take one side at their word, without actually having to consider both sides, without having to see through the spin.

Question is: where do I start? The internet is full of information, but who actually has any interested in relating the truth, and not their perspective, masquerading as absolute fact?

The Epistle of St. Paul to the Protestants

Sometimes I almost wish we didn't have the epistles, especially the Pauline epistles. I mean, not really, there's a lot of great stuff in there, but here's the problem. Western Protestantism leans sooooo heavily on the Pauline epistles you could almost scrap the rest of the book (besides the Fundamentalist obsession with the historicity of Genesis, of course). And because those epistles are written with very clear targets, with what at least seems like straightforward "do this, don't do that" commands, I think it is natural for people to just stop there. It's a lot easier to plum for absolutes from an epistle than a poem, and hey, that's what we're after, right? Absolutes? God forbid we should leave any room for difference of opinion. Also, the topics covered in those epistles provide most of the material to support the centuries-long pissing match between denominations. More and more I think, where theology is concerned, we should have "ideas", not "beliefs." When we start believing that how you explain atonement or predestination is as important as love and grace, as faith and obedience, we have a recipe for trouble. To quote Paul himself, "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." I'm just saying, let's ease up a little, and appreciate the beauty of the Bible a little more rather than demanding eternal exegesis from every verse.

Side note: on "grace" and "love," I think we have bankrupted the word "grace". Either we confuse it with mercy, or somehow (in my mind, anyway), when we talk about God's grace, it feels like an arbitrary gift, in the sense of God would be largely unaffected whether or not He gave it to us. In the sense of "underserved", grace is arbitrary, but it is intimately connected with His love for us. His grace is loving us though we are unlovable. The specific actions that pour out of that are almost inconsequential compared to the enormity of that fact. Consider it this way: God's love compelled Him to send his Son for us. Sometimes we try to define God almost as though His emotions are not operative on Him. When we say God didn't need to save us, I think that's true in that justice would not necessarily demand it, but that does not mean He is above actually caring about our fates. Far from it. If He has no emotional pull to save us, how could He really be said to love us? Why describe the relationship of Christ to church like groom and bride?

cringeworthy

I just had a thought. An obvious one. No aspect of your faith should make you cringe. There should never be an aspect of your faith which you wish wasn't true. It may well be true, and if true it is therefore beautiful, and you will someday see it for what it is. But while it rings false, or unlovely, to hold it as part of your faith is poison.

To cite a personal experience, a non-Christian once asked me if I thought she was going to hell. She didn't ask it in a mean way or a flippant way, but was really asking if it was my opinion that, should she die unbelieving, she would go to hell. I more-or-less refused to answer, leaving such judgments to God (whose grace and justice are both infinitely wiser and greater than my own), and only asserted that Jesus is the way to heaven.

I might be able to answer slightly better now - or at least I've thought about it a bit beyond just absorbing what I was taught - but that's not the point. The point is, I cringed inside, because, essentially my belief at the time was that yes, she probably would go to hell. Understanding of course that it isn't my call, but under what I'd been taught, that would be the expected result.

Now, I do very much believe that if you reject God, by which I mean with your whole being you refuse the light of His truth and love, then yes, you will be separated from God. If there is any punishment inflicted above and beyond the separation you have created, it is (in my opinion) most likely God conforming the external to the internal, possibly even in an attempt to make you see life without Him for what it is. But again, not my point.

The point is, I believed something I didn't want to believe, and it made me cringe. Because no way in a million years would I ever send someone like her to hell. As far as I could see, she was - at least in the common use of the word "good" - a good person who legitimately cared for others. I couldn't make myself believe that she deserved to be punished for ever, least of all for her opinion on the truth or fiction of an account of what happened thousands of years before, and not for anything that really reached to her heart. Now, through the influence of the Spirit, I believe those two things can become related, that the two become at length intertwined - heart and opinion. But they do not appear to be obviously related, and are obviously not very related at all in some.

Anyway, I basically believed sending her to hell would be unjust, at least from my vantage point. I probably would not have admitted it, though. I more openly believe something like it now. What I mean to say is this: there is a vast gulf between saying you are Christian, and living out the Christian faith. I believe it may well be that someone in complete denial of God's existence, yet loving and gracious and serving his fellow man, is miles farther along on that infinite stair to the holy than the man who rests his hat solely on his opinion about what historical events are and are not factual. No doubt in the fullness of time, the soul that loves and serves will believe and see God; the "godly" unbeliever will ultimately see God for the lovely Father that He is.

Here's what I think: we, blinded by sin and pride, cannot understand the full nature of living faith. Otherwise, why does Jesus commend those who did not think of serving him ("When did we visit you in prison?"), and blast those who drove out demons "in his name?" "Get away from me, I never knew you!" He says. Terrifying words, especially since the knowing of him is eternal life. Knowing about Him, however, is not. Our own opinions may be as superficial as any other lie we tell, if they do not reach down to our hearts. May God give us the grace and strength to set ourselves at His feet, and follow wherever He leads us. Comfort zones and prejudices be damned.

Jesus prayed we might be one...and did we ever drop the ball on that one

I was gonna go on a rant about the problem with a, b, and c (I'm not sure what the a and the b are, but the c is for Calvanism), but what's the point, really? And what do I know? Sure, I may have issues with fundamentalism, and issues with Calvinism, but the presence (or absence) of those belief systems are not what makes you a follower of Christ. No, the faith and the strength to follow Christ comes from the Holy Spirit, and flows through the heart - the deepest will - not the intellect. For all my wishing that some Christians changed their attitudes, or their opinions, what about me? Do I let Christ be at work in my heart? Or do I stymie every effort with selfishness, indignation masquerading as a heart for justice, and a refusal to do anything more strenous than hold a somewhat out-of-mainstream opinion? As much as I am able, when I even think about laying down my self, I realize how utterly impossible it is without divine intervention.

Calvinists, Arminians, Lutherans, Catholics, whomever: let's drop the names, drop the theological buzzwords. Let's stop saying who is and isn't Christian, or who is and isn't in a better standing before God (due to their opinions, of all things!). Since when was that our call? And let's work together. Do those not knowing Christ recognize us as Christians for our love? I should dare say not. We've got to let go of the things that divide us, and realize that (by and large) they are not what makes us God's children. Our opinion (and it is only that) on predestination, or sacraments, or whatever - none of it affects the work we are to do. None of it is a part of the pure, good religion laid out by Micah and James. I can't believe we let opinion stand in the way of justice, mercy, humility, and caring for others.

Besides, a lot of the theological opinion stuff is much worry about things that are not our business. Just as Jesus explicitly said it is not for us to know the date of the end times, it may not be our place to try and define the means of or the limits of God's justice and grace. We know that God takes "no delight in the death of anyone," we know in Him is no darkness at all, and we know the Judge of all the earth shall do right. What more do we need to know? Is that not enough of a basis on which to trust Him? I think it is. I think it is more than enough to know that, in the end, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Love Your Enemies

Today in church the sermon was on Jesus's instruction to "Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other cheek," etc. While I freely admit that the message is mainly aimed at personal relationships, I got to thinking about international relations. It hit me like a thunderclap that our (the U.S.'s) attitude towards "enemy" nations is anything but loving. Heck, we're barely loving to our friendly nations. I mean, we do some good here and there, and I know the U.S. helps a lot to international aid, but our leaders frame things very antagonistically, often throwing animosity at a whole country, not distinguishing between violent leaders and largely peaceful people. Even when I was more "Republican" than I am now, I thought calling Iran, Iraq, and North Korea the "Axis of Evil" was a stupid, stupid idea. Even if that were the case, why frame it that way, unless you've already given up on diplomacy? Think about it. Saying something like that is throwing peaceful, rational dialogue right out of the window. It is exactly the same as Muslim leaders calling us "The Great Satan." If in any way we aim to be a Christian nation (or rather, uphold the values of Christ), we are to repay evil with good, not up the ante in name-calling and aggression.

I'm starting to agree with Barack that we should talk to any leader. Talking is not appeasing. That's nonsense. If Iran or whomever poses a legitimate threat, and we can appeal neither to its people nor its leaders with peaceful means, then force may be necessary. But I don't think you can make any plausible claim to have tried the peaceful way unless you actually speak to the other party.

Or put it this way: do you suppose the hawkish types pray (in any positive, non-judgmental way) for the people of Iran and its leaders? Maybe some do, but I doubt very many of them do. To truly pray for someone requires love, a willingness to tear down barriers and extend our hand and our cheek, even if it was struck the first time.

Call me naive if you like. Accept this war torn world as inevitable and stockpile your nukes. Store up for yourselves weapons on earth, weapons which are treasures neither here nor in heaven. You do not trust God enough to act as His Son explicitly asked you to. Who or what do you really trust? Who or what do you really serve?

Independence Day

As we take a day to be thankful for our freedom, I wonder: do we really know what being free means? A lot of us take it to be, in the words of Henry Higgins, being able to live exactly as we like and do precisely what we want.

Is that all there is? No world, no country, no city, no family, no soul was saved with that kind of freedom. It's not far from being a slave to passion. No one seriously thinks giving a child "freedom" to do everything he wants would be in the child's best interests, so why do we think it is in our best interest to have no outside influences on our behavior, no one educating us?

That being said, so often the "righteous" are not interested in educating their brothers as much as judging them, making them understand just who knows what's going on, making them understand who's a sheep and who's a goat. But that's backwards. Far healthier to, when faced with the unknowable of our neighbor's heart, to look for the sheep in him, and to look for the goat in ourselves. We are to have salt in ourselves and be at peace with each other. Or, to put it another way, maybe the speckled-eyed man we least expect it is able to help us remove the plank from our eye. And then, when our sight is clear and we breathe the fresh air of truth and beauty and love, only then shall we truly be free.

Après Facebook group, le Déluge

My high school is organizing our ten year anniversary via a Facebook group. I've already gotten two new friend invites out of it in as many days, and I'm sure there will be many, many more to come. Looks like my entire graduating class will soon be Facebook friends with each other. Question is, will any real communication come out of it?

My Wii Fit trainer is a fascist

So, I got Wii Fit last week. I can see how it might be very helpful in tracking your BMI and teaching exercises and such, but man that fascist little circle that you have to stay inside drives me nuts. No matter how well you do, it never seems good enough. Also, some of their balance tests seem arbitrary. How come I'm a rockstar at one and a complete failure at another? Why does my "Wii Fit Age" jump from 27 to 42 to 34 when I've made no real changes? It seems to be based on how well I can manipulate the game, not how good my balance is. Anyway, it just seems like a number of the things the game says are designed to make you feel bad. I don't want to get all PC and whiny, but man, it ticks me off sometimes. Shouldn't the game be supportive, rather than critical? I mean, that's a big "duh" in my book. Who wants a putdown instead of supportive encouragement?

Note to Nintendo: I don't know how they do it in Japan, but Americans don't like to be verbally abused.

Blue Like Awesome

I just read "Blue Like Jazz." Wow. I was just floored by it. Not so much in the revelatory sense, but in the "here's someone who's going through exactly what I am" sense, although he's a few years ahead of me physically, and a few decades ahead in the sense of spiritual maturity and willingness to act on faith.

Anyway, I agreed with everything he had to say, as far as I can remember anyway, and found it to be a singularly honest work. Somehow it was extremely whimsical, yet grounded. I may have to stop by at the Imago Dei church next time I am in Portland.

Bottom line, if you want to read honest Christian thought (or Christian spirituality, as the author might put it), if you want to see someone working out their salvation with fear and trembling, you could do a lot worse.

Also, I saw this today: http://www.jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com/
I kind of doubt I'll vote for Obama, but I'm totally behind what they are trying to do here.

Dear Dr. Dobson: if you're reading, please pray for all of us who seek to follow Christ (yourself presumably included) to take a step back and legitimately ask ourselves how he would like us to participate in a democracy. How would he act? With knee-jerk pronouncements and judgments? If so, against who? It's been said before, but guess who more-or-less all of Jesus's anger was expressed towards? 1) Self-righteous religious people, and 2) those using God for profit, or those who attempt to serve both God and money. Sadly, far too many Christians in America are guilty of those very two things (myself definitely included).

your blog is too safe

So, every time I think I've stopped touting my theological opinions long enough to share the blog publicly (by burying a link in my facebook profile :P) - I do something like this:

Here's a thought: would God rather have us doubt His existence or His righteousness? I'm gonna go with the former over the latter. I think God would rather have us not believe in Him at all than believe in a distorted, unjust, unloving version of Him who more closely mirrors a tyrant, a Zeus, than a loving father. God is jealous, make no mistake, He is jealous for His lost children to return to Him. And He hates sin. Still, I cannot believe or support the conclusions people arrive at by applying layer after layer of human logic to what's in the Bible, in a misguided attempt to answer every question. Sometimes it needs to be enough, at least for now, to know that God is loving and that we can trust Him to act justly (and mercifully) where we are concerned.

Case in point: a fairly widely held belief is that infants who die unbaptized spend an eternity in hell. This is just, somehow, because of Original Sin and God's demands of perfection. If you can simply accept that at face value, then "mister you're a better man than I." Some poor soul who subconsciously sees evangelism as saving sinners from a vengeful God no doubt came to this conclusion. Now, I can get behind faith entering at baptism, and I can get behind Original Sin (sort of, although its a moot point for anyone old enough to be held accountable for their actions), and I know God will have his children be just and holy to enter into His presence, but I don't think it's right to string these notions together to arrive at a conclusion about what happens to an unbaptized baby or a fetus (regardless of the faith of the parents). Maybe, somehow, it is truly just and not incompatible with the truth that God is Love that such a soul essentially suffers forever with no chance of redemption. I can't see it for now, though. On the other hand, there is certainly no promise that those who never hear are saved. Otherwise we should stop evangelizing - to do so would just be condemning people to hell, not revealing the wonder of the joy and mercy and glory of our God. No, the spread of truth, done in love, can only yield positive results - in the fullness of time.

The bottom line is, in my opinion anyway, we simply don't know in a lot of situations what God will do with the eternal soul. So why don't we trust the Son who told us that the Father loves us, and come to Him? All that needs knowing will be revealed, in the next world if not this one. Let us busy ourselves with the work the Father has given us, and not worry ourselves over the algebras of abstract equations of salvation. In Jesus's words, eternal life is knowing the Father as he does. So let us press on to that goal, forsaking all else (even complicated and convoluted doctrines) that gets in the way, until Christ reveals the truth to us.

two ears and one mouth

Listening is not something I'm great at. I'm far too prone to talking. Maybe it's just that I get anxious when I'm waiting for someone else to speak. So I end up running the conversation, and probably boring whoever I'm talking to.

Still, at least that's communication. I was sitting outside my church waiting for praise band to start the other day, and people were going in and out of the fitness center next door. One or two of them were sporting iPods with headphones as they walked to their cars. I just thought, is this what we've come to? We can shut out the world around us, and fill our silences with sound. I mean, I love music and it's wonderful, but maybe being shut up in our iPods isn't the greatest way to live. A thought popped into my head as I watched a girl get in her car, still wearing the headphones. "No one's listening to each other and we're ruining the planet." I don't know that I meant it as an environmental thing. Maybe I just meant it spiritually: we can't hear anything now, except what we want to hear, a soundtrack (a prison?) of our own making, and no one notices the world - environmental, economic, social, spiritual - withering and dying.

I suppose if I want to "walk the walk," maybe I better try listening more myself. I could start by not sitting at work with my headphones on all day. But with everyone else listening to music, who would I talk to? Would I just replace music with random office noises? In a weird way, I think it might make me feel stir crazy. Music is a good calming, distracting agent.

the sun is hot

FYI: the sun is hot. I went for a run today at 3:30. Bad idea. I wasn't very hydrated when I started; when I finished I was substantially less so. All the water in my body was escaping in rivulets of sweat down my face and chest. Isn't that a pretty picture?

Just finishing up a good, though rather low-key, weekend. I rewatched LOST season 1 over the past week, and it was interesting to look at foreshadowing and clues and see if I could isolate some big hints that haven't played out completely yet. Nothing earthshattering, though something is up with Charlie not being a swimmer at all at first and an excellent swimmer in "Through the Looking Glass." Desmond's work, somehow? I saw a clip where it sounded like Desmond may have been present in the background when Charlie's dad got him to dive into the pool in "Greatest Hits." Man, I miss Charlie. I had forgotten that the 1st episode was a Jack/Kate/Charlie flashback. Boone's demise was even more heartbreaking watching it again. Interesting that in the flashback Christian talks to Jack about how he can't let go of things. Didn't make a lot of sense for that specific flashback - what does not letting go of things have to do with writing his vows, as opposed to wanting to marry Sarah? It makes a lot more sense as "I'm marrying this woman because I can't give up on the relationship, even though it isn't working anymore." I don't really know why it would frustrate his vow writing and not the relationship. The implication in the episode is maybe that he cares too much to take a step back and just write simple vows, rather than something elaborate. Anyway Jack not wanting to give up certainly comes up a LOT in the later seasons.


I should get back to "No More Heroes," but the hour or two I played didn't do much for me. I bought the Penny Arcade game, which seems okay so far. Coincidentally its battle system is kinda similar to one I've long envisioned where it is real time and you use the different buttons for different attacks. I'm not too keen (or clear) on all aspects of the battle engine, but I take it to be relatively lightweight as RPG battle engines go. So far it seems like mainly a way to provide tension and a tangible threat; it doesn't feel like the meat of the game is there. Baten Kaitos, now there's an RPG where the meat is the battle engine, not the (mostly forgettable, where it isn't downright painful) story. Whereas lots of Squeenix RPGs fall on the side of mindless repetitive battles that you just click "A" through, occasionally healing outside of battle. That's fine with me, though, at least if the occasional battle is more interesting. It forms a nice rhythm. More annoying is when the battles are mindless EXCEPT for the one random tedious task the game expects of you. Final Fantasy VIII, I'm looking at you. Stealing spells was kind of neat, but what a repetitive waste of game time. If I have to do something over and over again, I want it to be steam rolling over enemies, so I can feel like a badass. I do not want to sit there politely taking finger poking and tickling from them until I drain all their spells, then end up mindlessly steam rolling over them anyway.

The Orchid Station

Not long now, and the LOST season finale will be upon us. I'm way too excited about it, gotta control my expectations a little. Right now I'm thinking, if Jesus came back I might ask him to wait a few hours. Although then what about seasons 5 and 6?

I'm just kidding, of course, although it does bring up an interesting point. Why is it so easy to get excited by or distracted by the things of the world? The tyranny of the present, I guess. Still, there is a simple joy to my love of a good yarn, and I'm pretty sure the Big Guy loves a good story too. Now if I can just focus on the story He is writing in my life and the lives of those around me, instead of resisting and trying to impose my own version. I guess we're kinda like diva actors whose overbearing egos make a mess of the movie. I think most of the reason I try to assert my own way comes from impatience. It's not for nothing that patience is extolled as a virtue.

The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him;
it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.
It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.
Lamentations 3:25-27

Julian of Norwich

Where C.S. Lewis meets Stephen King.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Whole Wide World

Optimism is tricky for me, confidence too. I knew at the time how deeply ironic it was that I gave my valedictorian speech on confidence and determination. Never had a problem with the latter, but the former...not my strong suit.

I'm starting to understand, though, that no matter how much your attitude affects outcomes, you might as well be positive. If attitude affects outcomes, seems pretty clear a positive outlook will produce better results. Or, if your attitude has no effect, basically your choice of attitude only affects how you feel right now, so why make yourself miserable?

I think if I'm going to be more optimistic, the right thing to do is to start taking more chances, to be more spontaneous. Not capricious, but free. I guess we'll just see how that plays out.

Random reviews:
How I Met Your Mother - "Miracles"
Spoiler Alert
Tonight's episode was all right, but really I thought it didn't work terrifically as comedy or as drama, which it veered towards at points. Bringing Barney and Ted back together was already a given, and with the minimal time it consumed in the episode it felt undersold somehow. I guess it felt rushed. Then again, Ted just shutting Barney out like that and pretending not to be upset was silly to begin with. The whole Stella plot felt a bit rushed to me too. Ted and Stella both react so quickly to things; I don't know about you but my feelings don't turn on a dime. He shouldn't have ditched her to begin with, but Gee Whiz, Ted, do you think wanting to get back together with Stella after a near death experience might be a manifestation of the age-old "I don't wanna die alone" feeling? Hardly noble.
The two big surprises at the end were good; I didn't really see them coming. It will be interesting to see how Barney acts in the beginning of season 4. Was it a revelatory experience, or will he resist real feelings for a woman? As for Stella and Ted: is she the mother? It still seems too obvious / straightforward for it to be her. That said, Ted making a proposal is a big enough step on the way to wherever that it makes a suitable link in the chain, sort of back-justifying telling about Robin (if there was no Robin, there'd be no tattoo, ergo no meeting Stella).
I just hope season 4 is closer to seasons 1 and 2. Season 3 felt kinda weak on the whole. And can we have some Lily & Marshall plots that aren't about the apartment, or their jobs? Please?

The Matrix Is The Only Humane Solution

From a purely "secular" point of view, sooner or later (probably sooner) the robots are gonna get smart enough that there won't be any meaningful labor humans do any better than they do. Not just factory workers, not just pencil pushers, EVERYONE will be crap at doing their job compared to a machine. So then what? 6+ billion people all lying around doing nothing? I don't think so. We need something purposeful to do, a raison d'etre as they say. People would go nuts without a purpose, and hedonism as a philosophy can only take you so far. There wouldn't be anything worth our doing in such a world. So - if the machines decide to keep us around at all - they might as well create a fake world for us, and let us feel fulfilled and frustrated and everything else we call being human. Just like in the movie, I guarantee we won't accept an artificial paradise world.

Of course, if God exists, there must be a qualitative difference between what He creates and what we can create. We cannot make an eternal soul. So either we will discover that limitation as we further our artificial intelligence capabilities, or the end will come first, or ... it will look like there's no difference. I gotta admit that's pretty scary.

brief, wondrous

I'm reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Almost finished. It's a good book, maybe upon reflection it will be great, probably depends on the ending. The author throws out the f-bomb a lot; at least, he did at the beginning. I don't have huge objections to it, if it fits with the character and the situation. At least I understand the word, as opposed to the many, many Spanish words and expressions littered through the book. My all-but-forgotten high school Spanish gets me through only the simplest of the examples. That said, I'm learning some of the Spanish naughty words just from context.

One of the big impressions it has had on me is teaching me of the mind-boggling cruelty of Trujillo's reign in the DR, and the devotion he enforced from his people. The fact that such a clear villain - who is often compared to Sauron - has as his main enemy the communists, the lefties, makes me think. In the Third World where the greedy and violent have absolute control over capitalist systems, maybe communism isn't any worse. At least the people who espoused it believed in egalitarianism. Never mind that some totalitarian bastard always showed up sooner or later to seize power and ruin the show.

Review-o-rama

I'm gonna start reviewing things here because, "Why not?" In fact, I think "Why not?" is probably a good motto for this blog in general. So, without further ado:

Tonight's LOST: I can't really review LOST objectively since I'm more concerned with where the story is heading than the quality of each episode. That said, I enjoyed tonight's episode, but it's getting really jarring to jump back and forth between all the different plot lines. I always want to see a likable Locke, and by and large that's what we got tonight. Keamy is the new villain that I love to hate, and he's 100% loco crazy to boot. I hope Ben gives him what for. The most fascinating part of tonight's episode for me was not even the strong clues that Claire is dead or "beyond" or something, but Ben. He's playing a man who believes he has gone from chosen to rejected. We know in the future he regains some of his poise and self-confidence, but right now he is almost as aimless as Locke season 2. You can see just how weary trying to be the "chosen one" has made him. Also: please, please, let Desmond be alive and well in the future!

30 Rock: Very funny, but I was hoping they would take the whole "Producers" parallel thing with Matthew Broderick further. They can ham it up for an "Amadeus" parody, why not this? Also: I'm glad Liz isn't pregnant. Not because it would have been Dennis's, but because I am sick to death of sitcom pregnancy.

The Office: Excruciatingly embarassing. Like every episode. But I couldn't look away. Also, score 1 point for me because it's obvious they are setting up tension for Jim and Pam. I totally called that it would be about her desire to be an artist.

And now for something completely different:

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut: I just read this one. It was like Slaughterhouse 5 in that they shared a dry, caustic style that I take to be vintage Vonnegut (although I grant you I've only read those two books). I guess I would say he's like the anti-Thomas Hobbes: life with authority is nasty, brutish, and short. And still meaningless. I don't believe that, of course, but then I do think we try to ascribe meaning to the random too often. We can't know what God is doing sometimes, and there's no point insisting we understand when we don't. Otherwise you might end up justifying tragedies instead of helping the victims. Humanism is a fully sensible idea, and far better than materialism, sensualism, power-mongering, or any other worldly end, even if it is (as is often the case) carried out in heaven's name. Although I would add that the most fully human being ever is Jesus, and that if we take Him for our leader, and follow His example, our ideas will be humane. So we will fulfill Kilgore Trout's tombstone inscription: "We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." Although his other inscription is my absolute favorite:

SOMEBODY
[Sometime to Sometime]
He Tried

Banarama Fofama

So, I heard that Banarama song "Venus" on the radio tonight. It always makes me think back to when I was nine or ten and couldn't understand the words. I wasn't sure, but I half-thought it said, "I'm your fetus, I'm your fire, what's your desire?" This was back when all I knew was, a fetus was what you called a baby in a pregnant lady when you didn't think it was alive. So I worried that the song was somehow pro-choice. I know the right lyrics now, but am no less mystified by those who somehow don't see a fetus as a living thing. Or even more troubling, those who do, and don't seem to care. If you really believe life only begins at birth, well, I disagree but in that case I can understand your support of abortion rights. But if you believe life begins at conception, and still support abortion, when do you believe it becomes worth protecting? When does it stop being worth protecting? I am reminded of a quote I read recently by Pope Benedict:

"It may be seen that the 'nos' pronounced by the Church in her moral guidelines, and upon which public opinion sometimes unilaterally fixes its attention, are in fact so many 'yeses' to the dignity of human beings, their lives and their capacity to love."

Groovin'...

No big plans for this Sunday afternoon. Maybe make some time with my Wii for SSBB. I'm really just aiming to unlock the characters so I can bring the game out when I have company over. But "Subspace Emissary" takes friggin' forever. Plus it suffers from being a platformer, using the controls of a game which are intentionally loose. Brawl's controls are great for schizophrenic combat, not so hot at precise jumps.
I'm also reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions." Pretty heavy, darkly comic stuff so far. Not guessing that will change. Vonnegut reminds me of Mark Twain in some ways (and it's not just the crazy hair and 'stache). Speaking of Mark Twain, an excellent example of how bizarre divine justice looks from the outside is presented in his final story/novella, "The Mysterious Stranger." Said stranger is an angel with divine powers of creation and destruction, who uses them sometimes arbitrarily and generally against our reason. Case in point: to make a man happy, he makes him insane. Twain wrestled with conceptions of God a lot, I guess. Interesting that he and George MacDonald were acquainted and grew to be friendly.

at-one-ment, as good old George would put it

I've been thinking a lot about theology lately, atonement and sacraments and systematic theology versus revelation versus whatever else. I should state that I believe the most important thing isn't what set of facts you believe about how God works salvation in us, just that He does and that He is intimately concerned in our lives and helping us become more like Him in our words, thoughts, and actions. That said, here's some food for thought:

Here's an interesting quote from Luther:
"I have often advised and still advise younger theologians today that they must so study the Holy Scriptures that they refrain from investigating the Divine Majesty and His terrible works. God does not want us to learn to know Him in this way. You cannot nakedly associate with His naked Godhead. But Christ is our way to God. Those who speculate about the majesty are crushed and led to despair by Satan. The reason for this is that they are looking for answers of a kind that they cannot know, such as for the question: Why did God condemn Judas but spare Peter? And such a speculator argues with God as if with some potter. To keep us from striving to observe God in Himself in this matter, He came into the flesh, presenting the flesh to us, in which we might behold God dwelling bodily, as He answered Philip when the latter gazed at Him: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). From this, then, you see the madness of those who say that the flesh avails them nothing (cf. John 6:63), though on the contrary God is of no avail without the flesh. Indeed no God will avail for you except the God of Him who sucked the virgin’s breasts. On Him fix your eyes. For you cannot grasp God in Himself, unless perchance you want a consuming fire. But in Christ you see nothing but all sweetness, humanity, gentleness, clemency—in short, the forgiveness of sins and every mercy, etc. ... The incarnation of Christ powerfully calls us away from speculating about the divinity."
What I take away from this is that trying to understand God from the outside - that is, trying to use human reason as a primary means of understanding the justice and love of the Father - is a recipe for trouble. Instead we should put our emphasis on learning about God through Christ, and also (I would say) from the personal / relational aspect of God's interactions with man in either testament. I don't like systematic theology because I see it as putting God in a corner. For example, applying rigid terms and ideas from man-made legal systems to an understanding of the nature of grace, redemption, and election. It's almost like divine logic algebra: if Exists(grace) & Not All(saved) -> Not All(receive grace).

Another quote, this time from MacDonald:
"It is the one terrible heresy of the church, that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ."
This makes me think of the Grand Inquisitor story from "Brothers Karamazov." The church in Spain in the story basically admitted to giving people a system and a pat on the back instead of helping them attain to what Christ wanted for us, a life of following where he walked, and doing as he tells us. It's "too much" for people. I assure you, nothing less will do. Some members of my synod, the LCMS, might take offense to the quote, but it is not (in my opinion) against our teaching. If (living) faith is trusting in Christ, what is to trust Him but to do what he asks of us? To the extent we follow where he leads us, we have real faith. Don't misunderstand me; our attempts will always be feeble and imperfect, at least in this life. But I would quote Lewis here: "if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles."

One more thing I think: Christ died for us in a way we could not die of ourselves. But will we not have to do the same in the end? We must be rid of Self, we must someday be willing to endure all that Jesus did, rather than forsake the will of the Father. If we follow where he walked, will we not follow to the cross, will we not grow into sons and daughters who cry "Abba, Father," even if all sense of His presence is gone? Is this not the definition of the Life we are striving for, the Life Christ has planted in us: to know the Father so well and so lovingly that we would forsake all else, endure all things, rather than be parted from the Father? Hell itself could not contain such a one who knew the Father like that. In fact it has failed before.

Hello, World

Let's see how many references I can cram in, huh? url is from a video game (the inimitable Xenogears) and a character from George MacDonald's excellent-if-somewhat-abstruse novel "Phantastes". The title of this post the classic "first program you write in any language." And of course the title of the blog is from my favorite Haruki Murakami novel "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle." Plus, I guess, Mike Doughty's song also inspired by the novel.

Anyway, no idea how often I'll be updating, but oh well. We'll just see how it goes.