It's NaNoWriMo Time

It's NaNoWriMo time again! I skipped last year, but the game is afoot!My posting here is going to suffer for the next month: fair warning! Why don't y'all take this time to write some comments?

Steve Jobs 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford

So much of what he said resonates with me and my beliefs. The speech was very
life-affirming. I know he was a Buddhist, but I also know that there are many Buddhists whose choices and values put them much closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than many hateful sunday-church-goers. To the degree that you choose Life, you move yourself toward God, the author of Life, whose name is "I who Am".

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

See, we all live faith-based lives. The question is, what is your faith in?

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

It is the nature of life that we live moment to moment, not knowing what will happen next, making choices based on what we believe is right - at least when we are not too tired or afraid or angry: those are the kinds of reasons that keep us from following our hearts. It seems that Mr. Jobs trusted in his heart, and he was singularly successful in following it.

Understanding that death is coming to us all is a great motivator. But there is an even better way, something better to trust in, and that is God himself, who is willing to send the Spirit of Christ to live within your all-too-deceitful heart and provide a better perspective. If you can bring yourself to be open to that possibility, Jesus will reveal himself to you, and following Him works better than following your heart. It felt like death to surrender my will to him, even seeing his love for me; and I'm always trying to take it back; but he said unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit. I find that whenever I can bring myself to betray my safe little self-portrait that I present to the world and be honest, a little of me dies and Christ lives in me a little more.

Living in the space-time continuum makes this a challenge, similar to following your heart, and for the same reasons: your moods, your energy level, your changing circumstances; when something happens that seems bad, like Jobs getting fired from Apple, and we hold fast, we often find looking back that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing.

I'm not saying every bad thing is like this. The sins of the world hurt many more than just the particular sinner. I've been wanting to make a sign that says "Cpl [name] died for YOUR sins, you hateful hypocrite!" and take it to one of those military funerals that that asshole pickets. Perhaps that is unchristian of me in my turn. It's not as if I am perfect.

So I see parallels with Steve Jobs' and my lives, and I see differences. I see parallels with anyone who is trying to choose life and love; but I believe that life and love are ultimately personified and embodied in Jesus. So we christians go through our lives trying to understand what He thinks is best, not seeing the future any more than anyone else, but trusting in something wiser and more constant than our hearts, more personal and powerful than destiny.

The Genealogy of Jesus

I have followed Jesus for over forty years, and read the Bible regularly. In all that time, I have found passages I didn't understand but never one that I found to be in contradiction to another. Now the other day, I was reading in Luke 3 about when John the Baptist starts his ministry, and it begins with a firm historical peg: "in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee...". I like those touch-points with history. Then Luke moves on rather quickly to where Jesus is baptised, and John sees the Spirit descend on him like a dove. Then Luke goes into another sort of historical peg, stating that Jesus "began to be about thirty years old" - was it his birthday? - "and being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, who was the son of Heli," etc. All the way back to Adam, the son of God. Now, I think it's cool that his complete genealogy is given, 75 generations from Adam. It sounds so little these days, and it's the kind of thing that leads people to calculate the beginning of the world at 4:00pm (Daylight Savings Time?) on a Sunday or something. Anyway, it is only around 30 generations since he was born to the present, so a lot can happen in this world in that kind of time. But wait, here's my problem: in Matthew, the gospel begins with a genealogy going the other way, only starting with Abraham. Matthew goes through David and on to Joseph, "the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus". The problem is that in Matthew, we go from David to Solomon and onward, whereas in Luke we go from David to his son Nathan, and onward. People sometimes are called by different names, but that is not the case here. Nathan and Solomon are two distinct sons of King David. So what is going on here?

Suffering and God's Nature

In his book, God's Problem, Bart D. Ehrman asserts that the suffering of humanity, especially from natural causes such as flood and famine, impunes God's loving nature. If He is in control, and He is loving, then how can He allow such things as the Ethiopian famine when the earth is capable of growing enough food for all, or the hurricane-caused devastation of New Orleans? Dr. Ehrman concludes that this god does not exist.

Well, I agree, the god he is imagining does not exist.

Women and Men - Beyond Good and Evil - the Body of Christ

So, here we are, male and female components of the Adamic image of God, knowing good and evil and suffering for that knowledge, being sinners and thus out of fellowship with God our creator. Oh, wait! Those of us who have come to know the Christ and have decided to follow him have been born again. Behold, all things are become new - hmm, except for this body of flesh. I seem to be pretty much the same as ever on the outside. Paul describes this problem in his letter to the Romans in chapter 7. Here are some verses:

For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. v5,6

Let me point out here that the word 'sinful' is unduly loaded these days, but it simply means error-prone. Do not take upon yourself the condemnation of Victorian old maids - it's bad enough as it is. I assert that this sinful nature is simply our knowledge of good and evil, inherited from Adam, that causes us to go so oft astray from the love of God.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. v15
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? vs18-24

Paul argues here about how even the Law of Moses, given by God himself and thus as good as laws can get, simply became an opportunity for us to commit sin by identifying what sins are available to commit. I think that it is in our nature to want to do good; but Adam was not designed for good and evil. He, and all of us his children, are living in the physical world, not eternity. We "see through a glass darkly", meaning that because we are moving through the space-time contiuum, we can never see enough to reliably know whether something is actually good, until it's too late. And the more we wander off the path of righteousness, the more lost and messed up we all become. What's the answer? It lies in the word 'righteousness', meaning having the right relationship. The knowledge of good and evil was abstracted into the form of a beautiful fruit on a tree; Adam was an abstraction of the fellowship of God. With Christ's sacrifice on the cross, a way is provided for us to die to the old Adam and be reborn a child of the new Adam. So we Christians are learning to follow Jesus, moment to moment, trying to be in fellowship with Him. Never mind figuring out good vs evil: what does it take to get closer to Jesus, to know him better? That is the new guiding principle. We cannot see much of what is happening in the world, and less of what is happening in eternity; but we can see Jesus`as he reveals himself to us, and the more we see him, the more we become like him. The more we become members of his body, the less being male or female will matter.

Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Eph 2:3-7

I think I can safely say that in the spirit, I am a new creature, made alive by the grace of God and immersed into Christ's spirit. In my spirit, I am seated in the heavenlies with Christ and in the coming ages, God will be able to use me, built together with the rest of the Church, as an example of his incomparable riches of grace and kindness. In my spirit, I have already begun living eternal life in Christ Jesus, hallelujah!

In my flesh though, phooey! I'm still here in this wayward world, and oops! I'm still kind of wayward myself. By faith, I know that I am free of the law of sin and death; but every day, every moment that ticks by seems to bring me another choice to make, to live by faith in Him or by the knowledge of good and evil. Why couldn't it work so that when you're born again, your flesh is transformed too? Or just die on the spot, dust to dust, and all that's left is my spirit in Christ while I await the resurrection? Well for one thing, that might have hindered evangelism, but hey, it could have been worked around ;^)

Anyway, the serious answer is that God has decided on a different end-game, one that ultimately brings him greater glory. God is not into quick fixes; he likes the performance aspect of how this creation is playing out, in spite of all the grief it causes him. I really don't quite get how the payoff can make it worthwhile. He doesn't throw away this nice universe he's created just yet, but instead we go through a series of transformational experiences in our lives that are intended to make us more like Christ, more the building block of the Temple that each of us was meant to be. And collectively, we will be his bride, a new Eve for the new Adam and the two will become one.

This is the last of my series about Women and Men and Adam and Eve. I haven't really answered quite what I set out to answer, but instead feel as if I have found something that renders the question less important than it seemed. For more detail about this incredibly rich metaphor of Elohim, Adam and Eve, and the Body of Christ, I suggest looking at the Song of Solomon.

Women's Rights, Abortion, and Legislation

This subject has come up again, as so-called social conservatives seek to restrict women's access to abortion in the United States Congress and in the laws of various states. Women often see this as a bunch of old white men seeking to control their bodies; men don't often see the issue in those terms because their bodies are seldom the subject of legislation, at least what goes on inside their bodies. Perhaps they would feel different if the law required them to get their wives permission before they could buy viagra, get a tatoo, or get a vasectomy, Indeed, what if a woman could order her husband to get one, under the law?

I have two beliefs that come to bear here: 1)that when we marry, our bodies are no longer our own, as the two become one flesh, ie one organism; and 2)that once a child is conceived, it deserves full recognition as a natural person. These are my beliefs, and that's what this web site is for, discussion of beliefs. Okay, so far it's only about my beliefs, but I really do hope others will join in. Anyway, this is an issue where differing beliefs cause a big political controversy.

As I try to write about this, I keep getting sucked into the political dispute; but nobody really needs to hear my legal opinions. I want to try to stay focused on the spiritual issues here. Many people, Christian or not, fail to see the impact of "the two shall become one flesh", or try to apply it only in that women's bodies belong to their husbands and not the other way around. It's clear to me that oneness has to work both ways. And I don't need no piece of paper from the city hall (thank you Joni Mitchell) to recognize a marital commitment.

Oh, and what about unmarried women who become pregnant? Should a man who has sex without marital commitment have any input in this decision? Maybe, but I don't think so.

Still, I don't think a woman should make this decision alone. That really would be murder, when one person arbitrarily decides to kill another. A woman distressed enough to be thinking about it should be required to talk to a doctor about the medical issues, a social worker about the social issues, and the father of the child (if appropriate) about the personal issues. Ultimately though, I end up coming down on the woman's side on this one. If there is an irreconcilable difference with her advisors, the woman's decision must be the final answer. She will have to live with it more than anyone else. As with the matter of divorce, I see this legal process being necessitated by the hardness of our hearts.

So in a nutshell, I think that we could all avoid a lot of pain by agreeing on a few principles:

• A child is a person from the moment of conception.
• In our society, we do agree to kill people from time to time, after some due process.
• In an effort to limit the imposition of other people's beliefs, we need to respect the decision of the woman, as long as she has access to appropriate advice.

It's not a perfect world out there, and I believe that trying to legislate beyond this only leads to more oppression and sorrow for women. This is not a social problem that can be solved with mere legislation, so we must act to preserve liberty under the law.

Women and Men - Wrapping Up the Garden Story

I just want to finish up the story of the Garden of Eden with the last few details that happened after God gave the serpent, the woman, and the man a good talking to. You might have noticed in my previous post that I always referred to the woman as "the woman" or "ishsha". That's because up to that point, the "unto dust you shall return" point, ishsha was the only word used to refer to her. Now, in the very next verse (Genesis 3:20) Adam gives her a personal name, "Eve", that means "living", because she was to be the mother of all living people. In Hebrew it sounds more like "heva". She is one of very few people in the Bible who is named, not for something that has happened, but for something that is going to happen. The only other person I can think of like that is Jesus, whose name means victory.

God hasn't quite left the scene yet. In the next verse, he makes them coats of animal skin and clothes them. Now in the movies, these clothes are depicted as minimal (especially for the pretty actress playing Eve) primitive leathery things; but don't you think God could be a better tailor than that? I'm not suggesting a black leather Harley Davidson outfit: I'm suggesting that before the ground was cursed it was not the kind of threat it is now to our health. I think this is when Adam and Eve got covered with skin. Fits great, doesn't it? I remember a long time ago a dermatologist telling me that the skin layer really doesn't do anything except protect the innards from dust and germs and abrasions, etc.

This skin may moderate our nakedness, but it's clear from other scriptures that it does not completely hide it; and so we fashion other clothes and cover ourselves more. I am not very uncomfortable with nudity, but as I said before, this nakedness has something to do with the intimacy of the godhead and by extension, with our own dignity. I cover my nakedness, not because I'm embarrassed by my appearance, but because I think the sight of my sexual parts somehow rubs the noses of my fellow sinners in the fact of their sinfulness. And I think it sort of exposes God in a way he did not intend originally. This is all highly speculative, so take it for what it's worth. By the way, that word "make" is the same word he used to describe making Adam and Eve.

So the last thing that happens in this story is that Yahweh Elohim says, "Look, the Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he get a hold of the fruit of the tree of life and live forever..." The Lord God boots them out of the garden and puts some Cherubim on guard with a flaming sword to keep them away. Thanks, God, for keeping Adam and Eve from having to live forever in their sins! As bad as things are, they would have been far worse. Adam did indeed die and return to the adama from which he came.

So why is it a problem for Adam and Eva to be like God in knowing good and evil? After all, they were made in His image, right? I believe that the answer lies in image-making. When you make an image of something, a symbol of something, you are making an abstraction of that something. In other words, an image is like the something that it's an image of - but only in certain ways. If you are a java programmer like me, you may have heard this definition of abstraction: the process of simplifying something by ignoring certain details.

God created the Adam-image of Himself and deliberately designed it to not include the knowledge of good and evil. Maybe that was why (or at least one reason) He planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the Garden, as an artistically contrasting theme. In that tree, and in the tree of life, he abstracted two qualities of Himself that were not present in Adam. Well, honestly, it is not clear whether Adam would have lived forever if he had remained as originally constituted.

Anyway, it may have been that He felt the requirements of artistic composition in planting the Garden to include those trees and the Adam. Adam was designed to demonstrate fellowship and loving intimacy. So it really bent the design for the knowledge of good and evil to get into them. God was more than ready for this, as I've already outlined. It was a very robust design, as it turns out.

Women's Place - and Men's - the Fall and Beyond

So here we are in the Garden of Eden, the man and the woman, naked and unashamed. Next thing you know, there's this serpent, more crafty than any beast of the field that God had made, and he talks to the woman. Where did this son of a talking dinosaur come from? Is he actually an animal that God had made? Maybe not. There is virtually nothing directly said about it in the Scriptures, but we commonly suppose this is an embodiment of Satan, the enemy, the father of lies. How he got there is completely outside the scope of the story, and so there is very little to be said about that, only speculation. It's always good to keep in mind your limits.

And while we're out of the box, let me be the pot criticizing the potter for a moment and ask, why the heck is that tree in the garden? Didn't you know that this would happen? The whole history of mankind looks like the consequence of an error in judgment, doesn't it? Well, I have to believe God did know. Again, maybe there was a reason he planted it there that is outside the scope of this story, but I don't think so. Here is my theory, and that's really all I can call it: God is such an incredibly cool person that He longs to be known as fully as possible. He can't help being under-appreciated; it is in His nature to want to be known. That is why he chose to personify Himself; that is why he created this work of art we call Creation, and Adam in particular, then Ish and Ishsha. And still there's more to be revealed. If it were any other person, that person's ego would be outrageously inflated to have such an attitude; but in God's case, it is only what He deserves. So He has set the stage for another increase in entropy that will reveal his loving nature to be greater than anyone thought possible.

The serpent says to the woman, "Yeah, so did God say you couldn't eat from any tree in this garden?" Was he fishing or did he know the answer?

An Unspectacular Wonder

As I was returning from a jog along the beach this morning, I happened to notice that the little tidal creek that flows under my street looked quiet and full. Normally you can see it moving upstream or down, but this time I noticed that it was just at the turning point. On the seaward side, water was flowing out; on the landward side of this very narrow creek, it was just perceptibly flowing in. The turning point was right under my feet as I stood on the bridge.

It was a subtle thing, but the idea that I was standing right at the point where the passing moon was losing its grip on the waters of this bit of wetland made me feel as if I were in orbit at a Lagrange Point. As it happened, I was warm and cozy on the surface of my planet, but there I was, in a momentary point of balance between the Moon and the living surface of the Earth.  I took a moment to give thanks and worship the Lord for the wonderful complexity the creation has, even in our little corner of the universe, then I ran home to get my camera.

Walking back from taking the video, I passed by a woman who was just parking her car there to get to the beach. On impulse I walked over to tell her about this so she could see it before it was gone - but as I approached, her scowl turned to fear. I said, "Good morning, are you headed to the beach?" She moved away a little on her seat and started rolling her window up. I said, "I just wanted to tell you that the tide in the creek up ahead is just now perfectly balanced at the top and you might like to see it." She kind of squinted at me. "Okay," I said, putting my hands up in surrender, "sorry to bother you." And walked away, wondering if she had understood anything I'd said. She looked about my age, but how far apart we seemed. She had the wall up so fast, utterly uninterested in the slightest fellowship with a stranger, it really made me sad.

Women's Place - and Men's - In the Beginning

When Jesus was asked whether it was lawful to put away their wives (Matthew 19 and Mark 10), he first engages the legal question on the Pharisee's turf. He asks, what did Moses say? Then, he launches into a deeper discussion of causes. In the Beginning, Jesus said, he that created them made them male and female; for this cause the two become one flesh. I always wondered what that meant, and the remark is made in four different places. For what cause, exactly? and what does that mean, becoming one flesh? I think the answers to both of those questions lie in Genesis.

Near the end of the sixth day, God, elohim, the mighty ones, said to himself/themselves, "Let's make Adam in our image, after our likeness..." So He did, and Gen 1:27 states, "in the image of elohim he created him; male and female he created them." God also told them to be fruitful and multiply. How they were to accomplish this we don't know.

The language is confusing because, I think, both God and Adam were a single entity that had a plurality of persons, and Adam abstracted something of Elohim into the flesh by being male and female. Some years ago, I heard a funny radio commercial in which a guy was advised to become "at one" with himself. He replied, "Yeah, it would be really hard to be at two with myself." Adam was able to directly experience in his/their flesh the kind of multiple-personal intimacy of the godhead that leads us to talk about the trinity. God gives them dominion over the earth and the animals, and tells Adam so, then looks it all over, pronounces it very good, and takes the next day off. Perhaps one reason He hallowed the seventh day and wants us to remember it is because it was the only day off he ever got.

Okay, so on to Chapter 2. God forms Adam out of the dust of the ground ("adamah" in Hebrew) and breathes the spirit of life into him. God plants a garden in Eden and puts Adam there to take care of it. In this garden is every tree that is pleasant to the sight, every tree that is good for food, and two more trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. More on that later.

Things sound pretty smooth and peaceful, but immediately, God goes on to introduce the next artistic theme. It is not good that Adam should be alone. Say what? It had been very good on friday evening. Well, from that moment on, it wasn't. God - and starting with after the seventh day he is referred to as the LORD God, Yaweh Elohim, I Who Am the Mighty Ones - God alters the design and sets himself a creative challenge: make an appropriate companion for Adam. I've written about this before, so I will repeat that the LORD God makes an artistic counter-move and creates an instance of every beast and bird he's thought of, and brings each one to Adam to see what he would name them. And the name Adam gives them is the name they get. Naming things, symbolizing things, is in Adam's nature and is one important way he and his children can participate in Creation with God. Okay, so finally God puts Adam into a deep sleep and takes out a rib, from which he created a woman. When the LORD God brings her to Adam, he names her, not Adamita, to continue the naming convention that God had started, but ishsha, because as he said, she was taken out of ish. Thus Adam also renamed himself: he knew that he was missing more than a rib. And here the Holy Spirit interjects a bit of omniscient narration to say for the first time, "Therefore shall an ish leave father and mother and cleave to his ishsha, and they two shall become one flesh." Wherefore? Because only be recombining can they recreate the Adamic image of God. This is more than just having sex; they have to recreate the personal relationships. But it is thoroughly bound up in the flesh, so sexual combining is part and parcel of this achievement. God has revealed something about himself in this higher entropy that was not knowable before. That has to be behind Jesus' unusually hard line about divorce. And the only reason it seems like such a hard line is the hardness of our hearts.

I was so angry with this google blog - but have figured something out

I spent all afternoon on my next post, and all afternoon, the editor told me it was automatically saving every word as I went along. I had to stop to go hear my granddaughter's piano recital, but no problem, right? It was all saved. WRONG!! It was all gone when I got back, some crap about a form error. I think now that what happened might be that it was indeed saved on the site, but when the browser came back up, only the very beginning was in the form it had saved, and I killed what was on the blog server when I tried to save at that point, blah blah blah.

Well, I have realized from this that I am trying too hard to write a complete composition for each entry. This is the new millennium and I should just lighten up and write what I can, and when I run out of steam or time, just save it and let you all read it. It goes against my sense of literary content and good composition, but losing a whole afternoon's work and having to reconstruct it when I had been rolling so well is WAY more annoying. So think of it as more opportunities to jump in and comment. It's the Sesame Street approach to essay writing

Women's Place in the World, and in the Church

I want to undertake this ambitious subject because of discussions I have been having with a woman who is smart, independent, and sensitive to women's issues. Being a man, I find that I have not been nearly as sensitive as I always thought I was about the way some of our more glib brothers talk about God's intended design. So I intend to conduct the most thorough review of the Scriptures on this subject that I can manage, and I intend to write a series of posts as I go. Please come along and help me.

Let me say at the outset that my beliefs as to what the Bible says about women are probably more liberal than many, but there are some places where I am forced to draw the line as to how women can best fulfill their intended role in Creation, if I am to respect the authority of the Scriptures. I think this is a matter of entropy and not value. By that I mean that men and women are different enough, both by original design and as a consequence of the Fall, that their paths through this life have distinct differences. That said, I assert that every one of us, man or woman, has a unique path to follow through this life, and we are all sinners, all needing to receive the redemptive work of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, all equally valuable members of His body when we do. And so I hold the notion of women's equal value with men as one of the most important revelations that Christianity has given the  world.

Predicting the End of the World

Sorry Dude, the world is still here. More to the point, so is Harold Camping. And so am I, darn!

Jesus was really quite clear about this particular event, the one now known as the Rapture. Nobody knows when it will happen, I mean nobody, not even Jesus Himself - except for the Father only. How do I know this? Oh, here we go again. The Bible tells me so. The words of the Lord Jesus Himself as recorded in the gospel, state unequivocally what I just said. "Oh yeah," some people say, "and You are the only one who really understands the Scriptures, right? Or at least you understand them correctly and anyone who disagrees is just wrong."

Well, yes, if you have to put it that way. It isn't that tough, actually, to be honest about what the Bible says. Many times, the Bible is ambiguous abut things, and I think that is deliberate on the part of the Spirit. But not always. Many things are stated very simply. Some of those are the hardest to accept too. After all, if there's room for interpretation, then you can have your opinion about what it means. I'm all for that, the word of God is a very rich document, a many-faceted jewel into which we can see things from different perspectives. I have been wrong in my interpretation of the Scriptures, by the way. Fortunately for me, a brother or a sister in the Lord had the courage to engage me on it, and I managed to learn something. It happens ;^) So the thing is, if you accept the authority of the Scriptures, as I do, then if you come up with some idea you say is based on those Scriptures, then let's hear about it. Maybe I'll learn something - or maybe you will.

Once again, that is a good part of why I'm here in the Pub. So check out Matthew 24, or Mark 13. There are plenty of poetical phrases there, but it's clear Jesus is talking about the end, when he returns in power and glory as Messiah. But the day that will happen, and the hour - notice he particularly mentions the hour? - No man, no angel in heaven, not even the Son knows when it will be - only the Father. Only the Father.

At First Sight of Love - the image of God

When two people first realize that they are both in love with each other, there is a tremendous thrill in their hearts. Suddenly, they have an inkling of the loving, creative intimacy of the Godhead. By forming a loving intimate relationship, they have recreated the Adamic image of God. They feel new and utterly transformed, as if anything is possible. It is a thrill our culture has celebrated for millenia.

Originally, you will recall, God created Adam in His image; but then as part of the performance aspect of this work of art we call Creation, God declared that it was not right for the Adam to be alone. And from that moment, it was not right.

When I Consider Your Heavens

I love to look at the night sky. This picture is from APOD, the Astronomy Picture of the Day, one of my favorite sites. The universe fills me with wonder and appreciation.

This is from Psalm 8, a psalm of David:

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

God, who created galaxies, also took the time to make snowflakes such that no two are alike. Even the hairs of our heads are numbered. It seems that, for God, the world has infinite entropy: nothing is interchangeable to Him; everything is unique - even necessary? - to this work of art He has created.

And it is a work of performance art, playing out as it does, moment to moment. We are invited to participate with Him, by our choices in life, in the continuing symphony.

Welcome to the Pub

A public website is a little daunting, although I'm sure it's a long way to fame from here. I have been wanting to write down thoughts I've had about life in the Spirit, in the Church, and in the world for a long time. Finally I feel as if the Lord himself gave me kind of a kick in the pants to get to it. So here we are.

The vision I have is of a cozy, friendly pub where people can come and relax and talk about the nature of Life. I am a christian, have followed Jesus for over forty years, but only recently have I had much occasion to talk to people, believers or not, about how I see this world and my lord. I think of myself as a reasonable person and I love discussing ideas, so I guess I'm an intellectual. I'm also a geek, and real-time discussions with people have often flustered me, but I think I need the practice trying to articulate my beliefs. Some of the postings will be carefully crafted, but some, I think, will be just trying to let the Spirit of God have his way with me. We'll see how that goes, I guess.

One other thing to point out at the beginning here is that I believe the truth of the Bible. It is the eternally being spoken word of God, and is a reliable guide to the truth that He personifies. I know there are problems with the english language versions I've read all my life, and as people like Bart Ehrman like to point out, there are even problems in the ancient greek manuscripts that we have; but these things only serve to put you on guard against what we used to call 'legalism' back in the Seventies. You cannot treat these writings as a piece of legislation, where you childishly pull at every word to get it to say what you want to believe. If you let the thing say what it says, I think you can know what it means. Sometimes it tells history in a very literal and straightforward way; other times it is incredibly poetic and allegorical. It's not really that hard to tell the difference. Come then, let us reason together.

Scattered Thoughts of Spring

Today is my father's birthday; he would be 89, I think, if he were alive. I don't imagine my children are totally clear on my age either, as they are even more estranged from me than I was from him. I find it ironic that in these last twenty years, I have grown more and more convinced that God chose to personify himself, and as a father at that, so that He could have a personal relationship with his children; and yet I cannot figure out how to have one with my own. I am caught in the web of my sins, I suppose, a combination of pride and insecurity, anger at their mother, issues with work and taxation. I have tried to follow the way of truth, but am still ensnared in the knowledge of good and evil. I try to be loving, but my heart is deceitful. I don't know how this is going to play out.

And speaking of Spring, the woman I have spent the last twenty years with, whom I might have said on a number of occasions that I love, has managed once again to put the whole matter into doubt. She tars me with the brush of her prejudice against Christianity, indeed any religion, and I end up saying to myself, though not yet to her, how can you have been with me so long and never known me? Am I a pharisaical Baptist type, ignorant and hateful, afraid of women? Just because I believe in Jesus and the truth of the scriptures, it does not follow that I believe everything my mother ever told me. It doesn't work that way.

Somehow I am unable to convey this to Ms. Spring. Living quietly for twenty years, sort of a Christian Hermit, I have lost the ability to defend my faith, similar to how I seem to have lost the ability to speak French. It just slipped away from disuse when I wasn't looking. So perhaps this conflict is good for me. I am forced to take a look at passages of the Bible I thought I knew cold. I need to find a way to explain my beliefs to a thoroughly reasonable and totally secular person I care about. I think the exercise is beginning to pay off, but the emotions run high; it is very difficult to penetrate the modern smug rationalism without sounding arrogant or patronizing. In fact it is she who sounds arrogant and patronizing to me, with her attitude that spiritual beliefs are juvenile at best, dangerously insane at worst.

What About the Dinosaurs?

One of the things I have been asked to explain, as a person who believes that God created the heavens and the earth, is dinosaurs, the fossil record, all that time, etc. I believe that the Bible is true, the inspired Word of God - but it is not a legal document, nor a technical one. It isn't even literature, exactly - the universe is His literature - but I think the rules of literary criticism can apply to it. God is an artist and this is his artist's statement about himself and his work. I hadn't thought much about what the creation story says for a long time, but looking at it now, I find there is more room for dinosaurs than I ever thought.

I am not a Creationist, in that I have not made a religion out of believing in creation vs evolution. I do believe that verse one of Genesis is unequivocal, that God created the heavens and the earth. He did it, that's what counts for me, and the rest of the account is just details. Very interesting and poetic details. The more carefully you look at this passage, the more difficult it is to be dogmatic about how to interpret it. So I have always been vague about it in my own mind, accepting the vagueness of the language as being that way on purpose. On the other hand, I have never been able to accept the mechanism of evolution, even before I became a Christian. It has never seemed capable of producing the progression of changes evolution talks about, and the more time you give it, the less likely it is to produce any change at all. I could be wrong, but instead of progressive change, what I see in this world is an artistic repetition of idea, and a brilliant symphonic complexity. It is a work of artistic composition, but it has a performance aspect too.

The Problem with Health Insurance

Maybe a lot of what I've said is considered more to the right politically than other Obama supporters, but on this issue, my Christianity pushes me to the left. The idea of insurance comes from different historical sources, but one of them is the Church.

In Acts 4, it says " And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any [of them] that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common."

And when Paul first met with James, Peter, and John, after his conversion, he reports that "... they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do." (Gal 2:10)

From the earliest history of the church, they were coming together, sharing with each other and the poor people of their communities. So I think it's fair to say that the idea of a community coming together to try to help out those in need, which became insurance, is a Christian one, if not exclusively so.

So here's the problem: profit. Just as the Corporation has perverted the profit motive of entrepreneurial capitalism (see my post on debt), so Insurance For Profit has perverted the charitable nature of its roots.