Month: February 2012

  • God’s Gender

    Originally posted December 08, 2009 @ 7:53 PM on my NaitoOfNarnia account. Reposted with minor edits.

    On Facebook, I wrote this comment: The only beauty greater than a woman’s is God’s. But if woman is also in the image of God, what a marvelous sight He is, for woman alone is powerful to behold.

    A friend asked me, “How do you know God isn’t a woman?” Continue reading →

  • OPINION: On Mass Messaging and New Updates

    Since having returned to Xanga some number of months ago under my new account (that would be this one; my former, still active account being NaitoOfNarnia), I’ve been trying to reach out to new people. To broaden the range of people I connect with, even in tiny ways. This does have a dual-purpose, as I am a Christian with a deep-rooted passion for the message and hope of the love God, so naturally I’m inclinded to want to share what I write with others. However, this seems to have had a small bit of backlash. It’s nothing serious, but it does get the tinsiest bit annoying.

    It seems a couple of people I am subscribed to/friends with rather regularly send mass messages about the latest updates they’ve posted. I’m not able to take the time to read everyone’s updates as my time is stretched thin throughout the week (that, and my attention span needs work). Thus, I don’t know if the people I’m referring to do this for every post they write. Still, it gets rather bothersome to see I have messages waiting for me only to find out – once again - that it’s nothing more than someone saying, “Hey, I wrote another blog post. Come check it out!” From the brief descriptions on what the new posts are about, I can’t say that such updates warrant anything vital or truly important. Continue reading →

  • Culture: The Bible & Baseball

    Orginally posted February 20, 2012 @ 10:08 PM.

    “In the big inning…” Proof there was baseball back in the Bible days. HA!

    My “short” thought-drop here will certainly not change many people’s minds about the Bible. So let me start by saying that this isn’t an attempt to convince anyone of the Bible’s claims to absolute truth, but rather it is an encouragement to not be so quick to dismiss the Bible just because its claims may contradict with your own point of view on matters of truth and such. I’d like to simply ask you to consider the following, if you wouldn’t mind taking a few minutes…or maybe ten.

    One of the best ways to understand the Bible’s message is to recognize that the writers wrote within their time and culture. They didn’t write necessarily (if at all) with people of the future - hundreds upon thousands of years from their own point in time – in mind. Thus, it was rightly assumed that many things would be understood – such as the people, locations, and various practices that were referenced.
     
    Those things needed no detailed explanation. It was common place. To them, unless you were talking about specific details, if you talked about Jerusalem, everyone knew where that was. If you talked about King Herod or the Caesar of Rome, no one questioned who these people were. It would be like talking about going to Hawaii or discussing the politics and policies of (hopefully not second-term) President Obama.
     
    Suppose you wrote to a friend about baseball. You don’t need to explain what baseball is because it is such a huge part of American (and even world) culture. It’s just taken for granted that virtually everyone in America is going to know precisely what you mean when you utter that compound word. Not everyone will know all the intricate details of the game, however, the basic idea is going to be understood without a second thought. Nine players position themselves on a field and try to throw a ball to each other to “tag out” the runner after he has hit the ball with a bat. The runner tries to tag all three bases on a diamond-shaped path before returned to home plate. Simple! Everyone’s on the same page.
     
    Were baseball to ever fade out of popularity, though, someone many hundreds of years after that fact might enforce the need for an explanation when reading past articles referring to baseballs teams. (You might be surprised just how different games like soccer and American football were when they were first developed over 100 years ago.)
     
    Imagine it. What kind of crazy game has people and animals swinging sticks at each other anyway?? And in red and white “sox”? They can’t even spell right! What a backwards people back then. [CUT-TAG="Take a peek at "historical" baseball by clicking here..."]
     
    Then try explaining the deeper intricacies of the game from a future-looking-past perspective. A guy throws a ball at a player with stick, trying to hit him for some “ungodly” reason. The batter hits the ball out towards the mob of nine fielders who all converge on the ball like bloodhounds. The batter – who was being attacked by the pitcher – doesn’t run away from the mob, but towards them! The idiot runner loops around this square dirt path just daring and taunting the mob to throw the ball at him while he runs…back to where he was before?! Even more insane is how sometimes the runners will stop at the corners as if they’re on some magical safe base preventing the mob from touching him. Or maybe the mob can’t see the runners when they’re touching the white mounds on the ground. (They must have been really superstitious.)
     
    Next, the ball gets tossed back to the guy in the center of the field and the mob takes their positions again… Why don’t they just attack the batter before the ball is thrown? What do they hope to accomplish by tossing the ball away if they’re just going to attack the batter when they’re the ones who threw it at him?!
     
    Here’s the most ludicrous thing about it: After they capture three runners, they trade places!!! They actually take turns attacking each other. It’s like one of those old-school video games (you know, before the days of holodecks where you can beam yourself inside the game) called RPGs, where you take turns attacking each other. If I finally stopped some band of nit wits from hitting my ball, I would just give it to them! I’d claim victory right then and there.
     
    As you can see, in trying to look back towards an “ancient” game almost completely forgotten with the past, baseball might seem rather absurd. Even today, baseball has its own variations depending on where it’s played. I remember watching a movie with Tom Seleck where he plays a major league player who is traded to a Japanese team. In America, no one bats an eye when a player spits in the dirt or kicks sand over the plate (a slight of…er, foot in order to make the strike zone over the plate difficult to judge by the pitcher). However, according to the movie, Japanese culture highly frowns upon these behaviors. It was quite a culture shock for Tom Seleck’s character.
     
    During the days of the Super Nintendo home video game system, I remember reading an article about one of Ken Griffey, Jr’s games. It was noted by the developers that localization was a big deal when taking the American version of the game and editing the graphics and sounds to accommodate for Japanese cultural traditions for the same game (or maybe it was the Japanese version to America…I can’t remember which was developed first). Such differences included large accordion-looking lanterns held by fans in the bleachers, and gongs and other Japanese-relevant songs played to celebrate a home run. I imagine it would be even more confusing for the same future-person to read two different accounts of baseball but lacked the clarification of the cultural differences between America and Japan. This would be because such articles assumed that readers back in that day would understand the variances. (Disclaimer: These are things I remember reading about long ago. I tried to find images of Japanese baseball that reflected these characteristics but could not find any. I might very well have been wrong. Hopefully, though, you understand that such differences do exist elsewhere in some fashion regarding a common trait like baseball…or even McDonald’s…or Disney.)
     
    So it is when reading the Bible. The writers didn’t know what the cultures and technologies would be like in the future. God did not often reveal the future in such detail, let alone reveal the future at all.
     
    It really shouldn’t be a surprise, either. After all, we don’t normally write stories and articles with whatever future cultures that might emerge in mind. We write for today’s culture(s). We write with the assumption that the vast majority of people are going to understand many (if not most) of the ideas and things we talk about. We talk about computers, cars, bicycles, hair dye, tampons, cell phones, and microwaves. We discuss issues of homosexuality, abortion, taxes, immigration, and health care. Who knows how things will develop and change as time moves on, especially hundreds and thousands of years from now. Take a moment and think about what kinds of ideas and things we had almost 20 years ago that we’ve all but forgotten about. Imagine how strange these things might seem to a child of 10 years of age. To such young ones, these “old forgotten” things are odd and weird. (You mean you actually had to get off the couch to change the TV? Does anyone remember what an eight-track is?)
     
    Speaking of cultural differences, I moved to Texas for the first time in my life back in October 23, 2010. I had visited family in Okalahoma back when I was younger than five years old – barely a memory to me. So I’m otherwise still very new to the south. One of my first jobs here was working for a well-known local grocery store chain called Brookshire’s (brook-shurs, not as Shire from Lord of the Rings). During training, the manager kept referring to these things called “buggies”. I’d maybe heard of a baby buggy, before, but in a grocery store, I really didn’t know what he was referring to. Keep in mind that I’m from the west coast, mainly the Seattle area. I’ve lived from California all the way up to Alaska and a few places in the Mid-West. In all my 31 years, I’ve never heard of a “buggy”. I don’t recall how it finally became clear to me, but eventually I finally understood that the shopping carts in the South are most often called buggies! Here I am in the middle of the 21st century – not several hundred years removed – and I had no idea what a buggy was.
     
    All because of such a slight difference of culture. Still the United States of America, but a minor variance in culture within. How much more so can we expect differences between today in American and way back then during early A.D. Israel, Egypt, Greece, and Arabia?
     
    If we are to truly make valid arguments for or against the Bible, it’s in our best interest to understand that, first, we’re dealing with major differences between time and culture (which carries other factors like historical details, language, and more) and, second, we must step out of our own cultural biases. We must be careful not to apply our thinking and conclusions to the Bible’s stories and claims before understanding those stories and claims and why such were told as they were. Just like my example of how someone from the future might think critically against baseball as some absurd, violent mob attack, so, too, must we recognize that things are not always as they may seem when we read the Scriptures.
     
    Context is everything, my friends and fellow humans. Read your Bible not with your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5b).

  • KARMA, Justice, & Grace (Part 1)

    Originally posted March 21, 2010 on my NaitoOfNarnia.Xanga.com account with minor editorial changes.

    NOTE: This is a (re)post partially in response to the first quote @Be_Happy_Be_You wrote on her post here. I had already written this post two years prior, and so should not be taken as a personal criticism or otherwise related. It simply reminded me of my own post and decided to update it here.

    Part One: KARMA — Part Two: JUSTICE — Part Three: GRACE (Links will be added shortly.)

    There are many ideas that have been going on for centuries and more that try to explain why things happen. Many are simplistic and many are very complicated. But all attempt to grasp the notion that when we choose to do something – whether good or bad – there are consequences. Oddly enough, many have not failed to notice that even the most genuine of choices have seemed to result in far worse endings. Even stranger are the bad things done that have the reverse effects!

    Now, I won’t claim that I can tell you why some things happen. I won’t say “this” was the result of “that”, end of story. It’s not always so simple. While some things are quite obvious – if you stand out in the rain, you’ll get wet – others are not always so easy to comprehend – why loving and firm-minded parents can still have a child who grows up to be bad and reckless (or the other way around). What I hope to explain in this short series is how God intercedes for us both in the immediate and in the long-term. How things that ought to happen do not, and how things that should not have happened do sometimes happen anyway.

    “What goes around, comes around” is the stereotypical message of karma. Karma, while having an assortment of fundamental differences in the schools of thoughts and religions that employ it (sort of like having different “denominations”), is the idea that for every good thought or action, there will be a good result returned to the individual, and so on for every bad choice. It’s like a boomerang. Unless you just completely throw it into the ground, typically, however you may throw it, it’s going to come right back to you. (Duck if you’re not very good at catching things.)

    The general consensus behind all the different schools of thought (i.e.: Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, etc) is that “karma is not punishment or retribution but simply an extended expression or consequence of natural acts” [1]. (Although, Jainism does differ greatly on this in that karma is viewed more like the Force as mentioned by Qui-gon in Star Wars: Episode 1. Sort of.) Buddhism does take into account the motives behind the actions, but also makes a point to cite that ignorance can result in the opposite result than intended. And in Spiritism, the spirit, prior to reincarnation, can choose when to suffer for past wrongs.

    In short, “karma is [the] action and Vipaka, fruit or result, is its reaction. Karma is a law in itself, which operates in its own field without the intervention of any external, independent ruling agency” [2]. “[Karma] more broadly names the universal principle of cause and effect. … That is to say, a particular action now is not binding to some particular, pre-determined future experience or reaction; it is not a simple, one-to-one correspondence of reward or punishment. … The conquest of karma lies in intelligent action and dispassionate response” [1].

    Now, there is certainly a lot more to this topic, but where does this leave those of us who believe that there is more than some boomerang-Force of cause-and-effect in action?

    In the Bible, John tells of this story:
    As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man who had been blind from birth. “Rabbi,” His disciples ask Him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sin?” [3]

    Hold the phone! Isn’t that interesting? Even the disciples way of thinking was similar to the idea that suffering is due to “bad karma”. Someone – either the man or his parents – had sinned. Why else would the guy be blind? Jesus had a curious reply for them, though.

    “It was not because his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the One who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work. But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.”
    Then He spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes. He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “sent”). So the man went and washed and came back seeing! [3]

    I’m guessing Jesus’ words must have sounded so odd. Apparently, up until that point, the idea that anyone would suffer needlessly was absurd. If you didn’t do anything wrong, why are bad things happening to people? (Job’s friends basically argued the same thing. To them suffering equaled the direct consequence of sin. It was that simple to them. [4]) Jesus’ reply was that this was so God’s power could be shown to them in as plain a moment as we can see the sun rising. If we really want to go back and find out why people suffer, we have to acknowledge the destructive power of sin running its course through all of humanity. In general, sin was to blame, yes; specifically, no one sinned so that that man had to be born blind. The disciples were looking for a direct cause that produced the related effect of blindness and Jesus was telling them, “There is none.”

    This isn’t to say the Bible completely rejects the basic notion of karma. No, quite the opposite. It supports the argument that there are blessings for faithful and righteous people who obey and trust God, and there are punishments for the wicked and Godless. However, as Jesus illustrated, not all instances so clear cut and dry as karma would have us believe. What the Bible also teaches is that God is the intentional dispenser of those blessings and punishments in response to the intentional actions and thoughts. Further, not all all results (such as the man having been born blind) have a direct cause…sometimes, not even a slightly indirect cause.

    So where does that leave us? How do we further resolve this conflict of logic between “dispassionate response” and God’s intentional punishment. What’s more, if bad things can happen for no immediately obvious reason and it just happens to be so that God can somehow show us He’s real, why does God not simply put up a big, tacky, 1970s neon sign in the middle of the sky and say, “Guess Who?!” instead of letting us suffer? To answer that, in part two of my series, I’m going to address the similar concept of justice. Stay tuned.

    (Technically, that big, tacky, 1970s neon sign in the sky are the stars…)

    Part One: KARMA — Part Two: JUSTICE — Part Three: GRACE (Links will be added shortly.)

    SOURCES:
    [1] www.wikipida.org/wiki/karma
    [2] www.buddhanet.net
    [3] John 9:1-7 (NLT)
    [4] The book of Job in the Bible

    OTHER SOURCES (unused):
    www.skepdic.com/karma.html

  • The God of Abraham, Isaac…and Tebow?

    Trivia: I’ve reposted articles by updating the time stamps many times before, but this is my first article I’ve ever post-dated. It was began in the evening of Feb 4, 2012, and finished the morning of Feb 5, 2012, at 4:49am. I just thought that was interesting.

    Christians love football. You don’t have to look very hard to find a sold-out-for-Jesus Christian who will get just as intense about his favorite team as he will express passionate worship for Christ, and there’s no need to worry about a foul being called. Whether you are for the Patriots or the Giants, hate them both, or just don’t care, anyone and everyone can be a football fan. So we really shouldn’t be surprised when churches put on big events of their own or make a light-hearted parody of Scripture to celebrate a great sport and to enjoy each other’s company.

    If you’re not a regular church attender or really have no experience with traditional Church practices, you might want to use one of your time-outs for this…you might be in for a small shock. Back home in Washington state, the people from my church puts on their annual practice of clearing out all the chairs from the sanctuary and bringing in half their living room. No joke. You will find the entire room filled front to back, left to right with Lay-Z-Boys, lawn chairs, bean bag chairs, and probably a sofa or two. Some of the families are very well-to-do financially and have brought in a giant flat screen TV…I mean one of those big ones that could double as a cinema screen. On the side of the sanctuary, tables or lined along the wall filled with snacks and goodies. Some people bring in some healthier meals (…the weirdos). There’s also a game played revolving around which commercials are people’s favorites.

    Of course, despite the shared faith in the one true King and Creator, there will be division, and not over spiritual matters. No, something far more important than that: whose team will take home the trophy. Heh heh. Good-natured heckling is a common audible amongst believers at my home church. People enter as friends, watch the game as mortal enemies, and leave with all the good cheer they came with.

    Certainly this social interaction is not exclusive to Christians. Oh, not at all. You’ll find many life-long friends who became fast-friends over a good bond of a shared interest in tossing a pig skin around. Loyalty to a team has forged even more loyal friendships. For that matter, entire online communities exist as they revolve around one of America’s other most popular pastime (aka football).

    Yet, not unlike the common thread of the love for football, Christians also have a deep bond that binds them together, no matter how many yards of life they’ve ran or how well they play the D. Obviously, it is Jesus Christ and their faith in Him.

    Now, if you’re at all familiar with the Bible, the Old Testament in particular, you’ve likely heard or read a phrase found in Scripture that goes like this: “…the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” In case you’re not well versed in the Bible playbook, let’s huddle up for a second.