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.