On the Nature Around Us

Got the new MuteMath cd on monday.
It's excellent.

The very last line in the whole album is, "The devil is not the nature that is around us // but the nature that is within us all."

I heard that line and decided to think about whether or not i believed it.
My conclusion: both yes and no.

The line brings in an element that is prevalent in Eastern thought- we go around pegging things as "good" and "bad" based on how they pertain to us. For example, a hurricane might be considered "bad" because it destroys houses and makes people cry. But in reality, the hurricane isn't "good" or "bad" because nothing in eastern thought is good or bad, just is. The good and the bad is our interpretation that is often wrong. In this case, the word "devil" in the line up there might refer not to the devil in the traditional christian sense, but to the concept of "evil". Nature isn't evil. People are.

That's how I think that Paul Meany intended his lyric to be read.
But there's a whole lot more under that.

Taken literally, the line doesn't actually make sense. The devil is a being; a fallen angel. So he can't be equated to any sort of "nature". He is his own distinct thing, not 'within' us but hanging around in the natural world.

But I started thinking about the devil and his role in our lives, and his role in "nature".

First, some prose:

“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.
—Isaiah 14:12-15

Let's journey back in time to sometime after God created the heavens and the earth, but not very much after. Your name is Lucifer. You're an anointed angel, with responsibilities above other celestial beings. But you want more. You want to be as powerful as God himself.
But God, being God, knows this, and throws you down to earth.
bummer.

Here's a similar situation:
We're back in the present time.
Your name is Johnny, and you're a 7 year old boy.
It's Christmas time.
For the past few months, you've been asking for a Nintendo Wii. It's all you want. It's all you hope for. You want nothing more than to play Sumer Smash Bros Brawl against your older brother. You're fixated on it.
You're sure that your parents Santa is gonna get it for you.
Christmas morning rolls around.
You see a box that looks something like a Nintendo Wii sitting under the christmas tree!
excitedly, you rip into the wrapping paper... it's an n64 with no games and no controller. $7 at a yard sale. You throw a temper tantrum.
Dad just looks at you and says that he doesn't want you getting fat in front of the TV. Not yet, anyway.

What does a disappointing christmas morning have to do with the fall?
Johnny wanted a really cool video game for christmas. He got something that he couldn't use. Satan wanted the really cool ability to control everything in the universe.
He got the earth.

In John 4:8-10, the Bible reads:
"Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 'All this I will give you,' he said, 'if you will bow down and worship me.'
Jesus said to him, 'Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.''"

The devil tried to get Jesus to bow down to him in exchange for the Earth. the Earth!
That's like Johnny trying to pawn off his n64 on the school playground for his friend's dad's brand new car.
It makes no sense whatsoever.

Because the earth is lame. It consists of trees and mountains, lakes, rivers, and wild animals. They just kind of hang around. They don't have relationships with God. They just simply are. Just like how an n64 isn't playable without controllers or games. It's pretty to look at, if you're a video game collector, just like how the earth is pretty to look at if you're into nature. (everyone should be, by the way).

If you were Satan, you'd probably have pulled a temper tantrum just like Johnny over there. You wanted it all, and you got a bunch of lame animal friends that don't even have souls.

I asked Pastor Nate a bunch of questions about Nature this week.
Here's my conclusion:
Nature isn't good nor evil. in a sense, them eastern guys are right on that.

But, rather, it's broken.
God created Nature to be perfect; He said that it was "good". Good as in, "swell job, Self." Then Man came over and messed it up by bringing Sin into the world.
We decided to disobey God.
Not only that, we decided to disobey God while standing on his Creation.
That's digging a hole in somone's front yard and then refusing to leave.

So we broke Nature. Now dogs bite children and hurricanes drown old people.
And the devil gets to hang out with it all day long like a kid without an n64 controller.

None of it matters. Jesus fixes it all. And gives us all Wiis.

On General Research

I read an article in Popular Science today about how IBM has built a supercomputer that they are going to pit against contestants on Jeopardy. It's going to participate just like a human, with a buzzer and everything, and offer spoken answers. The showcase here is the programming that has to be able to read Alex Trebek's voice and interpret it's meaning, not only literally but also through tone of voice and inflection.

I told my brother, "Why is IBM doing this? They've been losing money for 20 years, it seems like a waste."
He replied cooly: "General research. Companies make money by doing research."

And he's completely right.
Example: NASA spends billions of dollars each year in weird little projects that don't seem directly related to space exploration. Yet NASA projects have given us things like memory foam mattresses and the protective coating on the outside of the statue of liberty.
Bell Telephone in the 40s through the 70s had one of the most successful think tanks in the world- Bell Labs, which created UNIX (aka every modern computer operating system), thousands of advances in electronics, MOSFET amps, C, and all sorts of things that have shaped our very world. None of which, of course, seem to have anything to do with telephone. 6 Bell Labs researchers received Nobel Peace Prizes.
And you know what?
Bell Telephone was one of the most successful companies of all time before it was split up by the government.
Companies get successful by putting money into research.

And you know, it got me thinking.
Think about how much more successful church ministry would be if we invested more into general research?

I've sat through innumerable "salvation sermons". Some have been better than others. But the problem with every salvation sermon is that at the end of 40 minutes or so, they challenge a listener to make a radical, life-changing decision.
That's not something that i think I, personally, would do after a 40-minute sermon, at least not without help from the holy spirit.

Recently in our area i've noticed an increase in general church ministry- there's more outreach going on, which is a good thing. But i still think the church is lacking in the area of community "research": Spending time and money getting our foot in the door by creating community building projects and being generally charitable. Things that have no apparent use for getting people to church. Because when you make something obviously about getting people to church, they won't want to go. Because there's valuable experience and reputation that can be built by "just being there" in the community at every available time.

I want to be part of a church that puts emphasis on that: "just being there", even and especially when it doesn't make sense to "church people". Because just like Bell Labs, you never know when you'll stumble on something that changes the world.