Sunday, June 22, 2008

The problem with invisibility.

I'm pretty sure that if they could make a person invisible like they did in stories like "The Invisible Man" and "Hollow Man" that person would not be able to see.

If your body's cellular structure were modified so that light passed right through it I think that would make your eye's stop working because they wouldn't be able to detect the light that hit them in order to turn it into signals that your brain could turn into sight. The light would just pass right through your eyes. Also the light would not be properly focused because the light wouldn't be shaped by the lenses of your eye.

They would have to make some kind of forumula that left your eye's visible, which would be really creepy looking. just some eyeballs floating around with no body.


Saturday, June 21, 2008

Don't have a cow man...

The other day my family and I watched the movie "The Nativity Story" , it was great, I thought it was very well done. I didn't know how my kids would react to the scenes where the babies in the movie (John the Baptist, and Jesus) were being born, well I found out the next day.

We were going for a walk and on our way back to the house Zoe was skating really fast on her Heelys, she stopped for a minute and was really out of breath.

Xander turns to her and hears her gasping for breath and says "Man Zoe, you sound like Mary when she was having Jesus!"

WOW! I thought that was hilarious, "You don't only sound out of breath you sound like your giving birth to God"...only a 5 year old could come up with that one!

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

GOOD NEWS!!! : All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God!!!

So I came across some good news in the Bible that I hadn't seen before. That news is this in a nutshell: "All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God." (Romans 3:23). There are a bunch of other versus with this same theme, basically the idea of Total Depravity and Orginal Sin. I always thought and was taught that this was the "Bad News" (especially when someone regurgitated the Bad News/Good News evangalism technique "I've got some bad news, you suck and your gonna burn in hell, the good news is that if you say these magic words about Jesus it will all be ok"). Here's a very uncomfortable video to demonstrate, not the good news bad news technique but just as bad, (I think Mitt Romney stars as the hero in the video, you'll have to watch to see what I mean).

The thing is that the bad news is not the bad news at all, it really is really really good news that we are totally depraved and that all of us have fallen short of the Glory of God, in fact it may be the best news.

If I'm correct in latching onto the idea that the whole purpose of my being is for me to seek and obtain a right relationship with God and that God Himself is all that can satisfy the longings of my soul, and if there is no way on my own I can come into a right relationship with God because of my sin, then that is just awesome! It's awesome because it means that God must be incredibly good and worth obtaining, so good that not even Christ "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" (Phillipians 2:6).

I was always shown Romans 3:23 to explain to me how I was destined for Hell and this is why I needed Christ to save me. True enough, but it does little to motivate me to love God. I'm just looking to save my own skin. But if I take the focus of this idea off of me and put it onto God, I can see something completely different. That God desires for me to have the very thing that will bring total, abundant, and even overflowing satisfaction to my entire being (a relationship with Him) and the even better news is that this gift of God is so good that there is no way I can be good enough to deserve it. I could work for the rest of eternity and not be able to earn or deserve it by any standard human or divine. Even if I lived a PERFECT life for all of eternity I still could not deserve a relationship with God that could satisfy me and Glorify Him simply because I had a beginning and He didn't (maybe another post on this idea later, maybe not). This relationship that God is offering must be AMAZING!

If I DID earn or deserve this relationship with God then the magnificance of being with God would have to be limited by my mortal ability to achieve the deserving of it and therefore God's goodness would be limited by my goodness and then God would cease to be God. In other words what I recieved could only be as good as me. And I am mortal, I had a beginning and I will die. This really limits the scope of whatever goodness I can provide for myself. So this new understanding of Orginal Sin and Total Depravity also brings about for me a new understanding of Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Through Christ I can recieve God who is so good that there is no way for me to deserve Him. And if I was not totally depraved then none of this would be possible!

Thank you Lord that mankind fell from grace through Adam, so that you could give us an inheritance through Christ that is infinately more than we could ever deserve on our own.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Getting ready for Christmas

I was having a discussion with some friends about how we should celebrate Christmas this year, and maybe how we should start planning now to make it a Christmas with at least a partial message of non-consumerism, or at least bridaled consumerism. There was some discussion about how we need change hearts and minds and that maybe focusing on non-consumerism isn't really the right angle. I agree with this idea except to say that the only real way to change a heart and mind is to have that change to be manifested in behaviour. I believe that all of our good intentions at Christmas are generally cancelled out by our propensity toward hyper-consumerism. Not to mention that in many cases the simple living out our cultural norms (ie shopping at wal-mart, using lots of energy, eating lots of food) is actually contributing to the oppression of people all over the world, and although a "boycott" is not really what I think is necessary or effective, a change in behaviour would at least go along way to open the hearts of our church to the fact that our actions have a rippling if not tidal wave effect on people all the way across the world.

I definately agree that the non-consumerism message should not be the only message of the Christmas season, but never-the-less think about what would happen if we did just that. If people actually tried to live out a non-consumeristic Christmas, that would leave them with a giant void (where all the stuff used to be). I think that would be great, because even if nobody mentioned it, since it IS Christmas, Jesus would get some attention. It's not like Jesus is really the subject of the season now anyway, refocusing to to a message of non-consumerism could at least create the opportunity for Jesus to come up in a meaningful way.

Also, as one who has kids, I can attest that it is almost impossible to keep the focus of Christmas on Christ, family, and friends when there is so much time, money, and attention spent on stuff. (right around august we start getting hammered by our relatives to get our Christmas lists together, so basically the consumeristic stage is set very early)

Personally I am all for consumerism, but let's do it right. Here are some thoughts (I might cover some of these ideas in depth in future posts):

  • Take the time to find quality items that aren't made by slaves and pay more for them on purpose.
  • Since quality items cost more it may cut into your budget, that's ok, just buy less.
  • Don't cut out the middle man (he might be your neighbor), and if you cut him out he'll probably have to go to work at wal-mart.
  • Have a few awkward Christmas's with no or very few gifts, and let that time of awkward silence (when you'd usually be opening gifts) slowly be filled with conversation and the enjoyment of each other, it'll become normal and comfortable soon enough.
  • Tell someone you love them, and try to show it in a way that doesn't involve purchasing something from wal-mart.
  • Spend more money on food and eat it together.
  • Buy your food from a local farmer, have him tell you a story about it/himself/his family/his business, relate that story to your family.
  • Prepare the food with the people you are spending christmas with.
  • Buy gifts that aid in the preparation of the christmas meal.
  • It must be getting close to lunch because I am talking alot about food.
I'm pretty passionate about this for several reasons, one being that I am all for the resurrection of the small business owner in America and the small town and tight knit neighborhood in the cities. Two I don't like the new slavery, I think it's more cruel than even the slavery of the South in America, because at least those slaves were housed and fed and cared for to some extent because at least they were property (which was horribly wrong), but the slaves of today are less than property. They are simply an endless supply of hungry people, and if they can't care for themselves and thier families on $.13 an hour we'll just get another one who will try. And most importantly I think that one of our jobs as Christians is to redeem things for Christ. And the way we trade with each other is a very good thing to redeem for Him, it is really something that cuts right to the core of who we are.

That's my pocket full of change on this subject, there's probably some more in there somewhere, maybe i should check the seat cushions in my couch...

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Speaking of incarnational living...

There's a great Spurlock documentary out there call "What would Jesus Buy". It's about this group of performance artistist/activists. The lead guy is a character called the "reverend billy" who looks and talks like a stereotypical television evangelist, however his message is very different. They call themselve the "Church of Stop Shopping" and thier message is one against the rampant consumerism that is consuming our lives and our culture.

I don't know if these guys would call themselves "Christian" but you know what? I think they get it. When I whine and complain about not knowing what to do about living a life that honors Christ in this American culture these guys have a message that I think really gets me somewhere on this journey, the message?...stop shopping...hey that's a start, really it is.

Here's an interview with Morgan Spurlock at Imago Dei