Earth Day Thoughts: Global Climate and Malthusian Scare

Global Warming.  It’s happening, right?  Ever since Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, everyone has just assumed that global warming is a real thing, and based on many scientists’ stances toward climate change, we need to reduce carbon emissions and try to save the world from some kind of The Day After Tomorrow scenario.

Well, perhaps not.  Here’s a post by a fellow blogger which is entitled “Earth gives us an Earth Day present:  Arctic sea ice is highest for this date in 8 years.” In summary, the author points to recent studies that indicate that the ice in the arctic sea has actually returned to a near-normal level.  So…how does this fit in with global warming?  “Well…it’s global cooling, which is caused by global warming, which is caused by people.”  Does anyone else detect something amiss in this?  Because this is really what some scientists are saying:  that global cooling is the natural result of global warming.  So wait a minute…that sounds oddly like a cycle:  a global warming trend causes ice cap melting, which causes in influx of cooler air into the world’s oceans, which brings about a trend of global cooling, which causes the ice caps to refreeze.

Now personally, I at this point have decided that human activity has little to do with this global climate.  I am not saying that human activity doesn’t affect the climate; for certain, pollution, urban sprawl, and other such human issues cause environmental damage.  What I am saying is that, based on the data we have, the climate really is cyclic, not just in that it’s a cycle itself, but it’s built with cycles on top of cycles on top of cycles, and I highly doubt that after 100 years of our current technologically advanced culture, we will have all of that figured out.

Let us suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that human activity does affect global climate.  So the world gets a little warmer…which means that it gets a little cooler next time around in the cycle, which the next warm cycle counterbalances, and so on until we’re approximately where we’ve started.  Now, legitimately, if enough of a global warming trend occurs that all the ice caps melt and the world is drowned, that would be an…apocalyptic problem.  However, that is not what the data we have is forecasting.

Now, if there’s been two alarmist trends over the last 50 years, it has been the fears of the changing global climate (cooling during the 60′s, warming during the 90′s) and the Malthusian scare:  “The world is overpopulated! There aren’t enough resources for everyone!”  As a result, many modern philosophers have proposed euthanasia, abortion, and other such measures to help control the world’s overwhelming population.

Well, it appears that the Malthusian scare might be a total farce as well.  A recent article called “Sleepless in Shanghai” has stated that the very opposite of a Malthusian scare may soon occur.  Instead of world overpopulation, we may soon be experiencing world underpopulation.  Let me explain: in most developed countries on Earth, the birth rates are falling.  I remember when I was younger, the average children per family in the United States was 2.3.  Recently, I’ve heard that it’s dropped to 2.1.  Now, the Malthusian alarmists will say, “That’s good!  We need fewer people to feed!”  But wait a minute, let’s think about the effects that this is having and is going to have.

First of all, overpopulation is a localized problem.  There’s cities in the United States that have hundreds of people per square mile, and there’s places in the United States that have become wilderness because there’s less than one person per square mile, and that’s just in the United States.  The majority of the world’s population is concentrated in Asia: China and India alone have 3 billion people – over half of the human population on Earth is concentrated in two countries that are no larger than the United States and Canada.

Now, the real concern with the overpopulation debate is the need for resources:  The more people there are, the more resources need to be produced for them to consume.  Well, if people are really concerned with this overpopulation thing, then why aren’t people simply suggesting that we stop sending so much food to the United States and send more of it to Asia?  After all, we’re only 300,000,000 people, while China and India come together to possess about 10 times that number of people, yet the United States alone controls and consumes over half of the resources produced on the planet – in fact, one figure I’ve heard says that’s actually closer to 2 out of 3 global resources are consumed in the United States.  But most people don’t want fewer, scarcer resources in the United States.  They see a problem, but they aren’t willing to change their lifestyle in order to help fix the problem.

So, what about underpopulation? To be honest, I think underpopulation may become a far more real problem than the Malthusian scare.  For example, Social Security in the United States is under a constant threat now from the Baby Boomers.  Why?  Because not enough young people are working to support the older, more numerous generation.  (Interestingly, recent statistics have shown that approximately 50 million people have died in the last 50 years in the United States from abortions.  Now, I don’t care whether you think it’s right or wrong; that’s still 50 million fewer people that are working to support our faltering economy).  That’s just scratching the surface too; imagine how bad the housing market will be when we have too many houses and not enough people to live in them.  Yes, this is a financial disaster in the making.

Oh, and this article also points out that China, infamous for it’s famed one-child policy, is now encouraging their couples to have 2 instead of 1.  Why?  Because they’re having the same problems we are.  Their economic system is threatened.  Perhaps we should take some clues from them.

Now, inevitably, some people would say, “Well, these are all problems for the future.  Why should I care?  I like how things are right now.”  Ah…I hear these words, and the word “selfish” sneaks to the front of my mind.  So, I would say that if you don’t care enough for your children to try to give them the best kind of culture and future they can have, then I would say go ahead and don’t have any children.  Live on your thrones of materialism…and don’t expect me to be very sympathetic when you’re freaking out because the world is falling apart.

Okay, rant complete.

SfC

Free Will

In a recent blog post on one of the blogs that I commonly visit (http://www.challies.com/), the question of Free Will was addressed, and I thought that the question of free will could be brought up here.

The author starts by bringing forth the words of C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity where he says, in reference to free will, “though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”  Lewis goes on to state that, if it were not for Free will, our devotion to God would be limited to a robotic, automated love; there would be no choice involved, and it would thus be diminished.  Everyone knows that someone doesn’t love you when you threaten to harm them if they don’t; love has to be a choice.

I have always accepted this doctrine, mostly because it checks out with what I perceive to be true.  I could deliberately stop typing this post right now and pick it up in a couple of hours (or never again), and it would be completely me under control of my body and mind.  Besides this, there are other implications of free will:  ethically, men who have commited crimes cannot be tried for them if they did not act on their own volition; scientifically, if free will exists, then we must conclude that the human being is more than just a collection of biological machines operating in a way that nature has designated them to operate; there must be something beyond the body (a soul) to make sentience and self-awareness possible.

Now, before I launch into this post, I want to say that I do believe that humans are more than the sum of their parts, and I also believe that humans are punishable for the crimes that we commit.  These ideas are not in dispute here.  However, I think that it is necessary to revise my own understanding of free will in an attempt to be completely consistent with the Bible.  I know that I probably won’t get it all right, but I’m also hoping that this starts a conversation where these thoughts could be further perfected.

You see, over the last semester, I have had some contact with other Christians who hold that there is no free will.  This is based on the scriptures where God speaks of hardening the hearts of men (Exodus 10:1, Isaiah 63:17, and more).  This tells me that God does have some control over the minds and bodies of men.  This is obviously in conflict of the doctrine of free will.  However, by the same token, the Bible also talks often of men hardening their own hearts (Hebrew 3:8, 3:15, and elsewhere.)  This is obviously in support to the doctrine of free will, in addition to the many scriptures where God is calling on His people to turn from their evil, where God is implicitly appealing to the free will of his people.

So, biblically, we are neither entirely free in our desires, nor are we entirely restricted in our desires.  You see, there are some pretty major theologically and spiritual implications that depend on whether you accept or reject free will.

Some of the implications of accepting free will is that God can no longer be relied on to have any power of men.  The example of this is to fail to give God the glory when a new Christian is reborn; our tendency is to look at the preacher’s teaching, or the music that was sung, or the environment that was set in order to draw people to God.  This is not a denial that these things are important, or that God doesn’t use them, but the key element to notice is this:  If God is not moving in a congregation or in a setting, then no one will come to Him.  We might be the visible draw to God, but God also has to be working behind the scenes within a person’s heart and mind to draw them to Him.  By embracing the doctrine of Free Will completely and without reservation, we are placing the responsibility of being saved completely in the hands of the individual, which is not consistent with the Bible where it says, “…and God added to their number daily (Acts 2: 47b).”

However, it is equally problematic to assume that God has complete control over the hearts of man.  If that were the case, the obvious question is, “Why then doesn’t God simply will everyone’s heart into a place of worship to Him?”  As C.S. Lewis said, true love would cease.  However, this is not the only problem: it would also mean that God simply doesn’t wish for some people to enter heaven, which is completely inconsistent with the Bible’s teachings.  This would also invalidate the scriptures where God is addressing people as beings with the ability to choose or reject Him.

So, the proposition I have made is that humans are neither completely free in our will, but we are also not completely lacking in free will.  Essentially, I am placing “Free will” and “Lack of free will” at ends of a line and stating that we find ourselves somewhere in-between these two extremes.

Let me try to elaborate the situation that we find ourselves in by borrowing one of Jesus’ illustrations:  Our mind is like a field of farmland, ready to receive whatever seeds we place within it.  Obviously, as we go about our lives, different thoughts and ideas of different varieties and sizes grow within our mind.  Some of them are good, and some are not.  Keeping in mind that every good and perfect thing is from above (from God; James 1:17), this means that it is God who sows the seeds of good within us.  Our responsibility is to cultivate the good plants and try our best to remove the bad plants (the weeds, the vines, the useless trees, etc.).  Obviously, however, there is only so much that we can do with our minds.  We cannot provide good seed that is independent from God, and there are some weeds and vines that have such control and reign in our minds that we cannot, by our own power, remove them; God has to do it, or to help us to do it.  In this manner, we humans operate as a gardener, trying our best to produce good fruit in what we have been given.  In this manner, we have free will.  However, if we try to plant good seed without God, then we will be disappointed to find that good things must always come from God and no where else.  In this manner, God controls our destiny by controlling how much to give us, and it is our job to take what he has given us and make it more.

Obviously, this illustration isn’t perfect, but I think that it gets the point across:  we humans are not capable of good beyond what God has given us.  I believe that this is the heart of Jesus’ parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30).  I believe that this is also why Jesus articulated at the end of the parable, Jesus says, “For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him (v. 29).”  In other words, don’t simply live your life wishing for a better job, a better mission field, or a better family: invest what you have in them, and more will be given to you.  Invest in your bad job, and it will get better; invest in your mediocre family, and it will become better for it; however, if you fail to invest, then what good you have will be given to those who will be better stewards of it.  You’ll also notice that God isn’t pleased with simply receiving what He has given us; He wants us to make more of it than we originally had.

Those last couple of paragraphs were a bit of a tangent, but the point is this:  I believe that we, as humans, find ourselves with a limited free will.  I cannot articulate very much on this because this is a new concept, and I will need time to process it.  However, I am postulating that the idea of limited free will is consistent with what we know about God through the Bible.

Please post your thoughts!

SfC

Ringing in the New Year!

So last night, I went to an amazing concert by an exceptional contemporary Christian band performing in the region for the News Years celebration.  It was very powerful, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Afterwards, I spent the rest of the evening with the youth group that I attended during high school and watched them go ice skating (I decided that I would probably not be good for my healing jaw; falling on your face historically isn’t).  We also stayed up to watch a New Years fireworks show, and went out for a late-night snack afterwards.  We got back at 2:00, so I didn’t get up until late this morning.

Now, I find myself thinking about a New Years Resolution.  To be honest, I have never liked New Years Resolutions.  To my mind, they always seemed like some kind of organized effort to will ourselves into a better world with nothing but good intentions, mostly because 90% of people make New Years resolutions that they know are drastically difficult for anyone to achieve and are often unrealistic.  The result of these unrealistic expectations is that people make commitments that they don’t expect to keep or, if they do intend to keep their resolutions, they are quickly disillusioned by realizing that they cannot.  From my perspective, when this happens, I see people becoming calloused to commitments and are establishing a pattern of breaking the commitments that they make.

Do not misconstrue, this, however.  I recognize that no one is perfect and that people should make every effort to improve themselves.  I am no different in this, and thus I find that I, too, desire to make some New Years’ Resolutions:

1. Limit myself to three sodas a week - Of course, everyone knows that soda isn’t good for health, and I know for a fact that I’m not the only person whose commiting myself to less soda.  However, I’m going to try and do this slowly and sort of ease into the changes I want to make.  This isn’t to say that I will always drink three sodas during the week; even now, there are weeks were I don’t drink any soda.  However, I’m hoping to establish a pattern of drinking as little soda as I can.  Three is the maximum, set with the hope that I won’t reach the maximum every week.
2. Walk every day – Some exercise would be good for me.  I’m not saying how much; I might walk a mile, or I might walk to class.  I want to at least say, “I’m going to be physically active, more so than I have been in the past.”
3. Forgive those who wrong me - “Forgive, and you will be forgiven (Luke 6:37).”  In God’s eyes, all have sinned, and I’m no different, so there is no reason for me to be forgiven while I condemn others.  As Lewis B. Smedes said, “Forgiving is to set a prisoner only to discover that the prisoner was you.”
4. Finish Reading the Bible – I set before myself the task of reading the Bible from cover to cover in one year last February.  I’m hoping to meet that goal by this coming February, but more important than the “when” is the simple act of finishing.
5. Memorize the Book of James – We were doing this during the semester for our Bible study groups, and I managed to memorize the first two chapters and get started on the third.  I’ll focus on this more after I’ve read the Bible all the way through.
6. Pray First Thing When I Wake Up and Right Before I Go To Sleep – I like to think of it as bracketing my day in prayer.  By opening my day in prayer, I’m hoping that I will feel more in touch with God throughout the day.
7. Limit Myself to One Hour of Computer Games a Day - Again, there will be plenty of days, especially during the semester, when even one is too much and there are other things to be doing.  The idea is to give myself a ceiling limit that is not exceeded.
8. Read More – It’s vague, but effective.  I want to be reading more, if nothing else so that when my friends are talking about a book, I can contribute to conversation.
9. Be curious – curiosity is the gateway through which learning comes.  If you don’t ask questions fearlessly, then you will stop learning, and even though I don’t believe in Darwin’s theories about the origin of all life, he was right about this: the organism that does not learn dies.
10. Finish a rough script of The League of Kenushi Ryu this year – It’s a very aggressive goal, especially considering what I have yet to do, but I believe that with God’s help, this goal can be achieved.
11. Journal Consistently – I’ve often found that, if there some form of block obstructing my ability to write, it is often some form of unresolved conflict within myself, and writing in a journal seems to help that.
12. Persevere – If and when I fail to hold to these goals I have set before myself to do throughout the year, don’t just give up; just keep trying.  Failure is inevitable, but quitting is optional.

I have made all of the above New Years Resolutions with the full intention of going through with them.  We shall see how well I do!

SfC

Theology in Life: What I Have Learned This Semester

As of Monday, I’m back at college from the break.  I’ll confess that I didn’t do everything I should have done over break, but I did take home several books from my classes because I don’t really consider reading work, so I was able to get far ahead in reading for my History class, and that has given me a great deal of opportunity to catch up and get ahead in the rest of my classes.

Right now, I have only one chapter in one book left to read for my history class, and after our second paper and our final exam, I’m done with that class.  For British literature, we have some reading left to do, a quiz or two left, a paper, and our final exam.  Religious Studies, as usual, is my most relaxed class; I can’t see myself getting anything less than an A in that class.  Music Theory, also as usual, is going to be the class that I cram for in the end; I have at least two assignments left (probably three, to be truthful), a music project (I must compose 16 measures of music using proper partwriting rules, cadences, etc.), and our final exam, which is going to be a rough one, and my last exam wasn’t such a good grade, so my grade (and my decent GPA to keep my scholarships) might hinge on this class.  Other than that, my band sessions are over, and beyond my French Horn jury, I’m really done.

However, prompted by the proximity of the end of the semester, I have begun taking a retrospective look at my first four months of college.  To be quite honest, it has gone by quite quickly, and that frightens me a little when I consider that next semester, I will be taking some pretty advanced classes.  However, I have also learned a great deal, not only about my classes and areas of interest, but also about life in general.  Of course, being a man of faith and trust in God, my spiritual growth has often coincided with some major points of thought that I have had in learning about God and myself.  Here, I will relate some of them and some explanations and how these points have changed my thinking and lifestyle:

1)  God is Order: I am actually quite fascinated to discover and consider that the foundation of modern science is based on the premise that God has created reality with calculable, mathematical constants that we, as humans with minds and souls, have the capacity to discover and understand.  Even today, there is a number of scientists who look at Earth’s position in the galaxy and notice how ours is the perfect position in the universe not only to support and sustain life, but also to explore and understand life, both on this world and beyond.  This isn’t always the case, but many of the scientists who recognize this attribute it to a Creator who had us in mind when He made everything.

The practicality of this discovery was immediate as soon as I came to college: if God is a God of order and He created the universe to have and maintain a sense of order, then it follows that I should endeavor to have a sense of order in my life as well.  This has caused me to change the way I organize my living space — well, I guess I should clarify that statement because I didn’t have a sense of order for my living space to begin with before I came to college.  In addition, I now keep a to-do list of things that I want or need to do in a day and, by doing this, I am able to keep myself on task with my schoolwork and recreation, including the writing of my book.

Since I have mentioned, I will say that I achieved little if any progress on my book during the Break.  However, I will be doing some revisions on the book itself, and I hope to further immerse myself in it in the next couple of weeks, especially after the semester’s end.

2) God is Truth and Love:  John 14:6 says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and I have been doing some thinking about that statement these last few months, and the simple statements like, “God is love” and other cliches have also been on my mind.  That is, if Jesus is Truth itself, then as a Christian, it is my job to introduce people to Truth, not simply talk about them abstractly.  It also means that God does not lie, nor does He ever twist language to say one thing and mean another, because that is also a form of dishonestly that goes against who He is.

The practical implications of this are major.  If Christ is Truth and I am trying to be Christ-like, that means that I have a very high standard of honestly.  I’m not just talking about lying or even the occasional “White lie” (which is still wrong, in my opinion) that I ackoowledge as evil; I’m talking about when someone asks me to do something and I say, “Okay,” or “Whatever” without any actual intention of going through with what I’m agreeing to.  I must also be completely honest with myself, having the strength of character to tell myself when I have a problem, when I’ve overtaxed myself, when I’ve slacked off too much, etc.  By being Truth and Love to other people instead of simply telling them about it, I am opening the door for God to live not only within me but through me.  By being more like God, I make God’s image and his reflection through me clearer and more attractive.  Also, by becoming Truth, I am allowing God to transform my soul from the inside out, and by becoming Love, I am declaring my allegiance to the one whom I believe in.  This also means that it is our privilege to love others, to give to the poor, and to worship God.  That is, God has never demanded me to worship Him or do anything else for Him; for me, I do what I do as a privilege that God has given me by introducing me to Himself and informing me of Himself.

3) God is Community: The doctrine of God being a Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit confirms this idea, not to mention that the reason that God created the universe to begin with was community.  Also, if we humans are made in God’s image, then it is not surprising to me to see why much of Western society today is dysfunctional: we lack real community.  I’m not just talking about co-workers that you whisk by on your way to you cubicle, desk, or work site every morning, and I’m not even talking about the people that you talk with from time to time about last night’s game, the weather, the recent elections, or your schoolwork.  I’m talking about people you confide in, that you trust with your secrets, that you think about during the day and discover that you love that person, not in a sexual way, but in a communal, trusting, supporting relationship.  When the creation made in God’s likeness is not behaving in the way they were created to behave, dysfunction, disorders, and destruction always results.

Perhaps the most powerful example of how this has changed my perspective this semester has been through a simple prayer group that I meet with every Wednesday before our midweek services.  We just go to a sort of living room in one of the halls on campus and hang out for half an hour.  We spend the first of our time writing private prayer requests on note cards and then pass them around and exchange them.  We make sure that its random to make sure that sub-cliques don’t form in the group, and then we relate some public prayer requests.  After that, we split up into groups of 3-5 and just pray together.  It’s enormously simply, but it’s also one of the most powerful ways that I have found to become better acquainted with people I didn’t know three months ago, not to mention the relational satisfaction that it gives me when I can’t go home to visit with my best friends for weeks at a time.

4) God is a God of both Work and Rest: another very powerful and motivating discovery for me to make was that God did create us humans to be productive.  I mean, in the book of Proverbs alone, there is a great deal of condemnation for laziness and a great deal of commendation for hard and reliable work.  Also, the Creation narrative specifies that God created six days of the week for work and the seventh day for rest.  This means that God wants us to be productive and successful members of society insofar as we can be.  Of course, there are some things that we cannot take care of on our own: for many people right now, unemployment is a growing problem around the world because of economic problems across the globe, and many people are legitimately trying to get a job to now avail.  For anyone who might be reading this who fits into that category, I’m praying for you and I hope that God gives you a source of income soon.  On the flip side, however, God did commission us as humans to work, and I believe that doing our work well can be an act of worship to God if we really allow ourselves to do as the Bible says and work as though we are working for God himself.

For me, this means that I should apply myself with all of the attention and focus that I can manage to my classes.  This is also a matter of honoring my parents; as of right now, my parents are putting me through college, and one of my goals in high school was to obtain scholarships to help ease the load from my parents and honor them for what they are doing for me.  Now that I have these scholarships, it is my desire to honor my parents’ sacrifices to me, both now and for raising me, by keeping my scholarships and applying myself in school.  I am also currently considering becoming a French Horn tutor at a local high school next semester; right now, my sister gives lessons at a local high school, and she has been doing this for a diverse number of people since she was in college (several years ago).  I’ve mentioned it to her, and she said that, if that is my choice, she will suggest me to some of her former students and I can tutor them and thereby have a source of income to prepare for my future.

However, God did also provide us with a day of rest, and I have to extrapolate from that that God recognizes that humans are prone to burn-outs and need a break every now and then.  Of course, this isn’t to excuse people who went on Thanksgiving Break last year and still haven’t returned to productivity; this is to prevent what we call workahalism and to prevent people from being so consumed by their jobs that they forget that the most important thing in our lives is relationships, both with God and with other people.

5) My place as a Steward of God’s Gifts: Finally, God has been teaching me of my position as a steward over all that He has given me.  The reason I use the term steward is this, and maybe this context will help clarify what I’m talking about:

There are plenty of people who go about this life and say, “Oh, the good Lord has been good to me.”  They might be speaking about their relationships, their financial situation, their house, their children, etc.  However, when it comes right down to it, I think that for many people, saying that is just another form of bragging and saying, “Wow, look how good I have it,” or even, “Look how good I have it in comparison with yourself.”  I have truly come to believe that, when God gives us something – money, a car, a family, a friend, an acquaintance, a job, even our body – then he is appointing us as a steward over it, with the expectation that God may ask for it back, and it would be a slap in the face to God to accept something from Him and then give it back to him in the same state that we found it, or even in a diminished state.

So, what does this mean practically?  If I am a steward of my body, that means that God has given it to me for the purpose of using it, but He also expects me to take care of it.  Supporting this proposition is the idea of doing with my body what Jesus would, and I’d have to say that I have a hard time picturing Jesus gaining weight or eating fast food all the time simply because he would want to take care of his body.

Also, stewardship with money is a concept that I think would benefit society greatly.  If people looked upon money not as their own but as a gift from God that He gave us for His Earthly purposes instead of something for them to spend on their own worldly pleasure, then I’d be willing to bet that the following things could and would happen:

• Credit card debt would cease to be a problem,
• The national debt would stop growing and would start to be paid off,
• More donations would go to starving men, women and children who can’t expect even one square meal a week,
• More hospitals would be built,
• The housing crisis would dissolve because everyone would suddenly realize that God does not approve of debt (again, in Proverbs),
• Schools wouldn’t have to teach high school students personal finances because the students would already have the one concept that they need for financial management and security,
• World hunger would eventually cease to be a problem,
• Homeless shelters would be built,
• Churches would be sending out missionaries by the tens and hundreds of thousands, and
• People would know that, no matter how much money they have, it is all from God’s hand for God’s purposes, and I’d be willing to bet that Christmas would still be the biggest shopping season of the year because everyone would be so excited to give to those they love…within reason, of course.

Stewardship also applies to how I spend my time.

These are the sorts of things that I have been thinking about and learning about this semester.  I guess it’s all a part of becoming an adult.

God Bless!

SfC

The American Cornerstone and More Reading of Bloom’s American Mind

In a conversation with another writer and thinker that I am acquainted with, this thought came to me about America’s origins:

Psalms 118:22 is a well-known verse to studied Christians. It states, “The Stone that the Builders rejected has become the cornerstone (or capstone in some translations).” It is referenced several times in the New Testament, pointing to how Christ, though He declared himself to the Jewish people as the Messiah that had been prophecied of since the days of Moses and the 40 years in the wilderness, was condemned by the religious leaders of the time and was crucified. However, because Christ lived the perfect life and bore the sins of the world, He rose to new life and spawned a movement within Judaism.

However, even though the movement was peaceful, the leaders of the time (and for the next 300 years) continued to reject the teachings of Jesus. However, from the perspective of history, the stone that the builders the builders rejected truly did become the cornerstone for today’s largest sect of faith on Earth’s surface as well as one of the dynamic elements within the dialectic that is Western culture.

Similarly, the values that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Paine, and many of their co-conspirators (I use the term loosely to refer to America’s Found Fathers) held to political (and in some cases, religious in the form of Protestantism) ideals that had faced persecution in Europe. However, in America, these same ideas held strong and eventually became the cornerstone of the U.S.’s government, ideas about “all men being created equal” and having freedom to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Again, the rejected stone became the cornerstone.

Of course, this might be why the United States and Christianity have seemingly walked hand-in-hand for the last couple of centuries; both share similar histories and, regardless of what people say, freedom to practice religion are one of the central reasons as to why people came to (and still come to) the United States since its birth.

Of course, from my perspective, I see that both are facing (and losing to) the same enemy. The United States and the American Christian Church faces many struggles ahead, not the least of which is the death of the American culture, consumerism, egalitarian ideals towards both people and ideas, and lack of concern over these problems, which multiplies the potential damage they could inflict on our nation exponentially.

When I speak of Egalitarianism as a danger to our democracy, I do not contest the belief that the Declaration of Independence is true in that “All men are created equal” insofar as men all have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as well as the many other rights that the Constitution grants. The egalitarianism that endangers us all is to take the phrase, “All men are created equal” and not continue on. The purpose of the statement was to assert that men are all, in the eyes of the government, the same (which in today’s society is not true in total practice; I know people who are given leniency from speeding tickets because their relatives are police or city government officials). The assertion was not that all men were created completely equal in mental capacity and capability, which is an idea that has broken our education system.

To illustrate this point, I will reference something that my director at church camp told me and the rest of the counselors in relation to caring for the students. The gist of her thought is, “Equal is not fair.” From there, she elaborates that some of the campers coming to camp will have lived perfect (or at least passably normal) lives and will need no extra attention. On the other hand, there will be other campers who struggle with obesity or who have abusive parents or who have had no exposure to God or Godly people in their lives. These campers will need more attention, more care, and more love than some others.

I believe this to be a very meaningful phrase to consider in a world that is constantly pushing for fairness through equality. With first-hand experience of passing through the public school system, I can safely say that equal is never fair. I have seen it; students who are ultra-high achievers who are capable of being the next Abraham Lincoln, Frederich Nietzsche, Rene Descartes, or J.R.R. Tolkien are put in the same institutionalized holding pen as kids who won’t learn to read or write until they are ten or twelve and are expected to receive the same training and exposures (in the public school) as everyone else. This not only can’t be achieved; it shouldn’t’ be. The end result would be taking the standard Bell curve that illustrates a class and manipulating the whole thing until all you have is a straight line: no incredible geniuses, no mentally challenged students either. So, here’s my question to this philosophy of education: is the squandering and suffocation of our greatest minds worth the effort of trying to hoist everyone onto the same level? Remember, “Equal is not fair.”

I have also continued reading Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. His chapter on relationships is highly interesting to me who, as a Christian, am taught that our relationships with other people are the most important part of our life on Earth. I also think that the “Relationships” chapter is one of the longest ones in the book.

First, Bloom discusses the “niceness” of his students and how they, living in a society where they have no great need, are neither greatly good or evil, though they do seem without ambition. Next, Bloom notices how Equality seems to have shattered all racial barriers save for the one between Caucasians and African-Americans, where a new barrier called affirmative action has reinforced some of the barriers that were nearly completely destroyed and might become a catalyst for greater racial unrest in the future. Also (and this is as far as I have read thus far), Bloom talks of how the new modes of sexual relations (brought on by music and media that promoted release from sexual inhibitions during the sixties) have given rise to feminism. Unfortunately, even now, I do not fully understand the full extent of what Bloom is trying to say here, though I do recognize that, at the point I am in the book, he is only making observations of his students, not stating opinions. From what I could understand, his observation is that sex is so easy (by easy, I mean to mean simple or common to obtain) as to be common knowledge and thought for today’s youth (especially young girls, who were expected to be the “proper” ones in cultural periods past).

Because of this, we have the rise of feminism, which to my mind’s eye seems like affirmative action and the rising “tyranny of the minority” that I observe: for a long time, blacks and females seemed to have fewer cultural (not political, mind you) rights than Caucasian men and, in government, political minorities were respected though not calling the shots. Now, this is not to say that the principles behind affirmative action are wrong; I would hazard a guess that there are good intentions in those who do this. However, the end result is that, instead of a stabilization of equality between Caucasian and Blacks, men and women, we know see that the ball is rolling further into their court; instead, Blacks, women, and even political minorities are receiving special treatment, which goes against the principles of equality that were the basis for the push towards abolition of slavery and Woman’s voting rights as well as the Constitutional assertions that the majority vote rules.

However, that leap-frogs into an entirely other political ballgame that I don’t have enough time to cover. I’ll likely comment further on Bloom’s observations of feminism when I better understand them. Thanks for reading!

SfC

Recent Activities

Several events of interest have occurred in the last couple of days. My brother was married on Tuesday, and I was the Best Man of the ceremony. The wedding itself lasted for less than 15 minutes; beyond that, we had a reception at the bride’s church. It was a strange event for me; while I was a little disappointed that my brother wouldn’t be around like he used to be, I was still happy for him to having finally been united with another.

Afterward, I left for my college for a couple of days to hang out in that town and see if I could sort through some of the things that I still needed to do in order to be all geared up for college in a month. While I was there, I managed to read through Book III of Psalms, and I also started reading Black, the first book in Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy. It is thus far a good book, and I look forward to being able to finish.

I have also finished Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, which was on my To-Do, list. As it stands now, my reading list includes finishing Black (Dekker), Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe (Hart), and The Closing of the American Mind (Bloom) as well as reading through the rest of Psalms before I go to college, with hopes to also get started reading A House United (Frangipane) and Christians Only (DeForest).

I have also received some authorial references over the summer that I would like to look into. One is that of Wendell Berry, referenced on the grounds of his knowledge of farming in relation to my novel. The societies of my series of novels will be medieval rural societies, which is difficult for a modern writer to illustrate due to its distance in the past and difficult for me to illustrate specifically because I have limited agricultural and horticultural knowledge. Therefore, I’m hoping that, by pursuing and reading some of Berry’s works, I might A) find a new fiction writer that I can observe and learn from as a writer, and B) learn something of cultivation of plants and care for livestock.

Another reference I have received is for Gilbert Keith Chesterton. From a cursory investigation of him, I see that he is something like what I hope to become, being a Christian apologist and writer as well as lacking any political base. While most of my ideas line up with Republicans, I try to not allow party affiliations affect my thinking; it has been my decision that political parties are a form of organization in government that, as they stand right now, would be far more productive if they were eliminated and recreated from the ground up. However, that is just my opinion. Anyhow, I shall endeavor to be on the lookout for works by these two authors as the summer draws to a close.

That’s about all that I have to talk about for today. Bless you!

SfC

Noah and some Theological Thought

Thursday evening, I went to see a musical about Noah. I had uncertain expectations; I couldn’t help but wonder, “A musical about Noah? Will it really resemble anything like the biblical account?” But I’m here recounting that I was pleasantly surprised by the performance.

Of course, it is definitely something to hear the announcer at the beginning of the performance basically state that the musical was made as a direct inspiration from the Bible as well as stating the hope of the staff of that the audience might have a personal encounter with God. In my mind, anyway, that was something I don’t hear very often.

Anyhow, the show began by showing a “typical” day with Noah and his sons, their wives, and Noah’s wife…and, of course, it begins in song. Then, Noah hears God’s voice, informing him of God’s judgment on the world. After this, Noah and his sons begin to work on planning the Ark as the friends of the family react to the announcement of God’s judgment. Some of the creative license that they took involved Noah’s visit to a nearby city, which is shown as being a bastion of adultery, prostitution, greed, and many other types of evil (think of another Sodom and Gomorrah for the general idea, or if you are more bold, think of an American city at nighttime). Finally, Noah is confronted by Lahobbe, the King and self-appointed god of the city, who denounces Noah’s belief in Jehovah God and banishes him from the city. Throughout the time of the construction of the Ark, Noah and his family are oppressed by Lahobbe and his evil servants, who draw away the friends of Noah’s family by tempting them with security and sin. Eventually, when the Ark is completed, the first Act concludes with the Ark being completed and the final preparations by Noah and his family for entering it, which included the bringing in of live animals (horses, camels, llamas, cats, birds, turkeys, etc. etc.)

The first scene of the second Act showed Noah’s family entering the Ark and the subsequent beginning of the judgment. Lahobbe and his people continue to persecute and threaten Noah’s family right up until the door of the Ark is closed immediately before the flood begins, during which Noah’s family hears the final cries of the people that moments before had hated them and rejected God. The rest of the second Act involved the Ark voyage and the many tribulations encountered by the survivors. Finally, the narrative ends with the Ark’s perch on Mount Ararat and Noah and his family building an altar to God in praise for His deliverance, after which God sends a rainbow as a symbol of his promise to Noah’s family. The last part of the musical involved the stripping away of parts of the Ark until all that’s left is a cross, out of which Christ emerges and gives a short monologue summarizing his earthly ministry and how his second coming relates with God’s flood of judgment.

I found the overall play very interesting. They certainly took some artistic license, though I was satisfied that they mentioned the logistical problems with feeding and managing hundreds of different kinds of animals from across the world and demonstrated the mental strain it would take to be trapped on a wooden boat for hundreds of days with an uncertain ending of the voyage.

It was also during my watching of this performance that I realized something: in the Bible, Christ talks of a baptism with water (which was brought by John the Baptist) and a Baptism by fire (which occurred on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after the Jewish Passover). Similarly, the Bible talks of a judgment of water (which occurred in the days of Noah) and a judgment of fire (which will happen in the days of Christ’s second coming). This thought seemed quite significant to me when I realized it and I am still mentally sorting through what more I can learn from this correlation. One obvious thought is that, if the twelve disciples realized this as well, it is no wonder that they expected Christ to return quite soon.

Anyhow, that was the musical about Noah that I went to. Overall, I would give it a 9.6/10. It wasn’t absolutely mind-blowing, but it was very good, and I would advise that anyone who is considering it ought to go see it.

SfC