On Fighting Bravely

Theres a neat little story in 2 Samuel 10.
I'm going to type it out here, and you should probably read it.
It takes place during the reign of King David over Isreal, and documents the defeat of a people called the Ammonites:

In the course of time, the king of the Ammonites died, and his son Hanun succeeded him as king. David thought, "I will show kindness to Hanun son if Nahash, just as his father showed kindness to me." So David sent a delegation to express his sympathy to Hanun concerning his father.
When David's men came to the land of the Ammonites, the Ammonite nobles said to Hanun their lord, "Do you think David is honoring your father by sending men to you to express sympathy? Hasn't David sent them to you to explore the city and spy it out and overthrow it?" So Hanun seized David's men, shaved off half of each man's beard, cut off their garments in the middle at the buttocks, and sent them away.
[2 Samuel 10:1-4, NIV]
-Now, first of all, David had perfectly good intentions.
He just wanted to show his respects to the new Ammonite king after his dad died.
But the advisers to the king were morons and deceived the king- theres a lot more you could probably say about that.
Secondly, eww gross. How much would it stink to have someone cut a hole in your pants where your bum is?
anyway, continuing on:

When David was told about this, he sent messengers to meet the men, for they were greatly humiliated. The king said, "Stay at Jericho till your beards have grown, and then come back."
When the Ammonites realized that they had become a stench in David's nostrils, they hired twenty thousand Aramean foot soldiers from Beth Rehob and Zobah, as well as the king of Maacah with a thousand men, and also twelve thousand men from Tob.
[10:5-6]

-So David was a pretty cool king, and saved his messengers the humiliation of having to show themselves with their beards cut off (beards were a big deal back then). Props to him on that.
The other thing is, wouldn't you think the smart thing for the Ammonites to do would have been to apologize?
Like, they knew they screwed up, and they should have been like, "oh man, my bad, have some money or servants or something, and don't hate us".
Instead, they pulled one of the dumbest Foreign Relations mistakes possible and mobilized to attack. "Maybe if we kill them, they'll forget that we're morons"
...yeah. not happening.

On hearing this, David sent Joab out with the entire army of fighting men. The Ammonites came out and drew up in battle formation at the entrance to their city gate, while the Arameans of Zobah and Rehob and the men of Tob and Maacah were by themselves in the open country.
Joab saw that there were battle lines in front of him and behind him; so he selected some of the best troops in Israel and deployed them against the Arameans. He put the rest of the men under the command of Abishai his brother and deployed them against the Ammonites. Joab said, "If the Arameans are too strong for me, then you are to come to my rescue; but if the Ammonites are too strong for you, then I will come to rescue you. Be strong and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our God. The Lord will do what is good in his sight."
[10:7-12]

The story wraps up with everyone running away from the Israelite armies, and the Ammonites pretty much getting owned.
But my point here is that last statement.
"The Lord will do what is good in his sight."
In the book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day that pastor Nate gave to the uturn leaders/student leaders, i just read a chapter that was all about changing our prayers to what God wants instead of what we want.
Soooo many times in life, we have an idea of what we think we want.
A car, a job, a house, a girlfriend... so we pray for a car or a job or a house or a girlfriend or something else like that.
But for all we know, God might not want you to have what you think you should have.
He could have an entirely different plan for you.
And who wants to be praying for something against God's will?
no one.

That's why Joab's mindset is so good.
He wasn't concerned so much with, "OH EM GEE WE HAVE TO KILL THEMS AMMONITES ENEMIESSSS" as much as he was concerned with, "Fight bravely and God will have his way."

It's like he's saying, "Buckle down and do your Best, and everything will go the way God wants it to go."
It didn't matter to Joab if they were outnumbered or outsmarted or anything like that.
He knew that no matter what, all he had to do was his best, and God would pull through no matter what that meant.

That's pretty cool.

On Walking Alone

This blog is a few months in coming.

There's a Dunkin Donuts down the road from my school, and a popular after-school activity involves walking and/or driving there to get some eatables so we're not hungry until 5:00.
I've frequenced this walk by myself numerous times; one time, i got thinking about it.
I enjoy walking alone.
When my parents started letting me drive myself places, i rather liked being alone in the car.
I'll tell you why.


Tuesday night I was watching the music video for Avril Lavigne's "Complicated".
i know, i know... laugh.
Everything that avril lavigne writes makes me want to throw up.
Like, its too catchy, the lyrics are stupid, and just in general... eww.
BUT.
This is the only song that's tolerable.
Because:
a) its got a thoughtful message
b) the bassline has one really cool harmony near the end
c) it made me think

anyway, watch the video.
then come back here and finish reading.


Alright.
So the video details a bunch of friends who go crash a mall.
They act like complete idiots.
For all we know, they live in rochester new hampshire.

So think about that for a moment.
What would you do if you went to the mall alone?
answer: you'd go shopping.
not shopping as a sport; that's something you do with friends.
When you go shopping, you actually buy things you need.

Consider a concert:
You go to a show alone, you go for the band.
But there's a subtlety that gets factored in when you go with friends;
you are no longer there just for the music.
Who pays $40+ to see a band if there's no one to share the experience with?
And that's exactly it.
You do things with friends for the experience.

Now go back and watch the video and listen to the words.
She's talking about how a guy (or possibly people in general) puts on a show for all his/our friends; he's not genuine like he is when he's alone.
The modifying factor here being other people.

So here's my point.
Humans are social creatures.
When you go to a show or the mall with friends, you're no longer there for the mall or a band. you're there for your friends.
Essentially, your focus switches; it goes from shopping or watching a band to hanging out with your friends.
Are you seeing what i'm saying?

When you go somewhere with your friends, you don't even think about where you're going; your destination isn't important.
What's important is the people you're with, and what you're doing with them.

When you go somewhere alone, you're more concerned with your destination; that's all there is to think about.

As a matter of fact, most of the time, what exactly you're doing is entirely unimportant.
You say, "lets hang out", and after you're hanging out, you figure out something to do.

So what's my point?
Think about your life.
Then think about your life without your friends, work, school, and other various distractions.
What's your focus?

Are we really doing anything except hanging out with friends and performing menial labor?
One of the first lines in that song is, "lay back, its all been done before".
And really, just about everything has been done before. (Unless you're an engineer)
So are we doing anything else besides re-tracing the steps of countless years of civilization before us? People have been hanging out with friends since before last names existed.

So yes, there is a way to do what's never been done before.
Most importantly for us as individuals is to have our focus on God all the time.
That's 100% an individual, personal relationship.
Sure, theres things like fellowship ("koinonia"), youth group, church, etc which we do together. But when you go home at night before you go to bed, we're talking about one-on-one with God.
That's something you have to do alone.

That's why i like walking and driving alone.
When there's no one around, you can let your mind wander, and you find out pretty quickly what your focus is on.
If you're hungry, you think about food.
If you're lonely, you think about other people.
Or maybe you start talking to your savior; maybe you start singing to him; maybe you dance around a little bit.
That's a good focus to have.

I found this verse highlighted in my bible:
"I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man in concerned about the Lord's affairs- how he can please the Lord. But a marriend man is concerned about the affairs of this world- how he can please his wife- and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world- how she can please her husband."
-1 Corinthians 7:32-34

If you take that out of context of marriage, you can apply that verse to what i'm saying here. Paul wanted the people of Corinth to be unconcerned with this world, because he wanted their full focus to be on God.

On Forrest Gump

So honestly, i'm not sure if i've begun to repeat myself in these blogs... im pretty sure i've written about what i'm about to write about before, perhaps several times... but this is what was running through my head last night, so this is what i'm committing to. And i'm suddenly quite sick. So i'm not going to spend much time deliberating.

Anyway, last night i watched the last 2/3 of Forrest Gump.
It ranks amongst my favorite movies, mostly because i've always dreamed of being insanely rich on accident and not caring about money one bit.
But one of my favorite parts of the movie is when he starts running.
He says he doesn't know why he started running. He just figured he'd run to the end of the road; then he just never stopped.
He ran for like 3 years or something ridiculous.
To quote the movie, "When i was tired, i slept. When i was hungry, I ate."
Now, clearly the movie writers didn't bother figuring out HOW or WHERE he slept and ate.
But that image stays with me: a guy running, with nothing on his back, nothing in his hands, just some dirty Nikes and a mass following.

Something that i've always wanted to do is to take a trip somewhere far away, and bring nothing but a wallet. Recently when i've gone places like my grandmother's house or youth convention, i've done as much as i can to pack as little as possible.
There's just something that strikes me about being completely unprepared, on purpose.

Even though Forrest Gump is fake, there's something inspiring about him. Everything he needed was right there in front of him, except a razor and scissors to cut his hair. He didn't need his mansion or anything like that to get by. He was entirely self-dependent.

Now society values self-dependency.
In history class this year, the theme has been "The American Identity", and one of the key parts of the "American Identity" is the Self-Made Man. Think Benjamin Franklin, or Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, etc. We look up to people who have made it to their perch in society on their own strength, without being pulled along by those ahead of them.
Consider the image i made below:

This would be a continuum of self-dependency verses dependency on others.
Note that most of us probably fall around the middle.
Society, and most people in general, consider the far right side to be the most ideal place to be, whereas we lump hobos (not necessarily their fault), moochers, and 23 year olds who live with their moms on the far left.

Now, why are you bothering to read about what you already know?
Try to stay with me here.
In Luke 12:33&34, Jesus is in the process of telling his disciples not to worry about their lives, that God will take care of them: "Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourself that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."[NIV]

There comes that image of Forrest Gump again, running without anything but the clothes on his back. Jesus also said, "I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes." (Luke 12:22)

Bill Gates and Benjamin Franklin were self-dependent. But God doesn't want us to be self-dependent.
God doesn't want us to be model citizens that society looks up to. God has something more epic planned for us.
Consider this second diagram:


Our first diagram was one-dimensional; it had a left and a right.
But God ads a second dimension to this little outlook.
God says be neither dependent on others or your own strength.
Rather, be dependent on the one who has infinite strength, infinite ability, and will provide everything we need. Rely on something way bigger and way higher than what there is here on the earth.

Forrest Gump never did that, but he sure did become a fishing boat captain...

On the Allegory of the Cave

Anyone who's ever taken a philosophy course or read any books about philosophy is probably familiar with one of the oldest, most famous thought experiments.
Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, came up with what is known as the "Allegory of the Cave".

Essentially, here's what Plato suggested:
Suppose there's a cave. In this cave, a prisoners have been chained against a wall since childhood; they can't move their limbs, they are only able to look at a blank wall, and these conditions are all that they know.
The entrance of the cave is behind them, as well as some puppeteers. Shadows of the puppets are projected onto the wall from the sunlight, and the prisoners watch these shadows. When a puppeteer speaks, his voice bounces off the wall and it appears that the shadow is talking.
They live their life by looking at the shadows moving about. This is all that they know.

Now, Plato suggested a number of things about these prisoners.
Suppose, for instance, one of the prisoners was unchained and forced to turn around.
Immediately, he will be blinded by the direct sunlight that he has never seen. In his blinded state, when he sees the puppets, they will seem less real than the shadows that he has seen all his life.
After his eyes adjust to the light, the former prisoner would, understandably, want nothing to do with the cave.
He'd be able to experience life as it actually is, rather than by looking at shadows on a wall.

BUT, suppose he goes back to free his friends.
When he walks into the cave, his friends will see his shadow and will just suppose that he's part of their false reality.
Obviously, no form of explanation would be able to convince the prisoners of how lame and pathetic their life is. They would have to get up and turn around and go through exactly the same process that the original person had to go through before they understood.

Now, there's plenty of different interpretations of the allegory.
Platos' interpretation dealt with education.
But we can make our interpretation as well.

In Luke 10:21, Jesus says, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, father, for this was your good pleasure."
There's a lot of different philosophies and teachings out there in the world today.
People invent new religions every day.
But when it comes down to it, the vast majority of people are just looking at a wall with shadows dancing across it.
They try to interpret what they see.
They think they understand what's going on.
But in Isaiah 6:9-10, God says, "'Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing but never perceiving.'
Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."

We can say that the allegory of the cave is analogous to people's general inability to understand the world as it actually is, to how it was designed, and to how we're supposed to live. And we can try to make people turn around and see life for what it really is.
make sense?

On Social Norm

Freshman year i went to somersworth high school.
i learned a lot that year.
More than anything, i was able to put into perspective how "regular" teenagers see themselves, their surroundings, their friends... it was really my first time being able to watch people go about their lives around me.
One thing you begin to realize when you watch teenagers in action is that most of them are absolutely stupid.

The numbers for kids who drink on a monthly basis are pretty high... suggesting that a majority of teenagers think it's alright to go partying once in a while. And why not, right? Their parents probably did the same thing when they were kids, and don't see anything wrong with living a little. Heck, if you live in rochester, a whole boatload of parents still do dumb things.

Sometimes, just for fun, i like to imagine some of the adults i know as teenagers... but that's a completely different story.

Anyway, at somersworth, and most schools, the "popular" kids are always the ones who do the craziest stuff. They're the ones who aren't afraid to take risks for the sake of saying, "i did that... yes i did". But as a teenager, most of the "risks" we're talking about aren't the same risks that they told us to take on the 8th grade team-building ropes course. You know, all that stuff about "stepping out of your comfort zone" and the like. Those aren't the healthy risks that teenagers take. The risks that popular kids take are the ones like, "how many people can sit on the driver's seat at the same time before i can't reach the steering wheel anymore?" and random other stuff that i'm too exhausted right now to think up.
You have people who end up going to every party that anyone ever tells them about, because they have nothing else to do and because it makes them known around. People see the kid and go, "man, he goes to every party... i wish my parents were that dumb/i wish i didn't have a life/i wish i didn't care about my grades like he doesn't"
And eventually, you have a whole highschool full of kids who look up to people who do stupid stuff. And once again, we're not talking stupid as in, "think i can break through the ice on the salmon falls river?", we're talking stupid as in, "let's go find new drugs to try"

king David had something to say on that... psalm 52 says:
"Why do you boast of evil, you mighty man?
Why do you boast all day long, you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?
Your tongue plots destruction; it is like a sharpened razor, you who practice deceit.
You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth.
You love every harmful word, O you deceitful tongue!" [1-4, NIV]

Anyone in highschool can tell you that there is this social norm of bragging about the worldly things people have done. Be it girls, drugs, or assorted traffic violations, people see it as an accomplishment.
But it's not.
And people generally figure that out a few years after they graduate college and settle down... but hey, everyone does it, right?
what a shame.

On Landfills

Landfills pretty much sum-up human existence.
Nothing shows our society's hypocrisy and blatant neglect for what we depend on more than a several-mile-long mound of dirt hiding everything we don't want.

I'm sure the concept of the landfill came about at a time when it actually worked; you have poop, foodscraps, and other early-human-type waste that you don't want to carry around with you, so you leave it lying around, or bury it in the ground so you don't have to deal with the smell. Over the years it either biodegrades and ends up fertilizing a tree, or fossilizes and becomes the subject of archiological debate for several decades.

However, ever since, say, the industrial revolution, landfills have stopped working.
All of a sudden we're dumping harmful, concentrated chemicals into the ground. Our excuse? Because it costs too much money to dispose of them in a way that's environmentally sound.
So we bury it and let future generations deal with it.

New York City disposes of 11,000 TONS of garbage... EVERY DAY.
It takes 9 miles of semi trailors to haul this trash away from the city... 550 trucks.
And where do they go?
Well, obviously there isn't a landfill in NYC. They go to, you know... VIRGINIA, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey... these 550 trucks travel up to 300 miles (and back again) EVERY DAY just to get rid of New York's garbage.
Do you know how ridiculous that is?

As evidenced there, we go to great lengths to bury our trash; to put it out of sight and then eventually built baseball fields on it or use it to heat UNH.

I'm surprised you don't hear more environmental groups making noise about landfills... probably because few people have come up with better solutions. The gist of it is, though, the earth is at the end of its ability to support our waste, let alone our resource demands.

What is my point?
The fact that we have a glorious industry of curb-workers, spikey steamroller operators, semi-drivers, and corporate management dedicated to hiding away what we don't want. If we pay Waste Management to deal with our waste, we don't have to think about it.

Think about that.
Landfills are an excuse for our garbage. We can't see it anymore, so it's no longer our problem. In terms of daily life, most people don't give a thought to the amount of garbage that they use.
...almost as if we forget it exists.....

For centuries, Science has made a point about objectivity.
You need to have proof, hard evidence, etc in order to make any grounded scientific claim.
But just because you can't make a legitimate scientific claim doesn't mean that something doesn't exist.
An alien could walk the surface of the earth and not see any open landfills, and he might come to the conclusion that humans don't throw away our waste, because we hide it so well. Little would he know that we bury millions of tons of it every week.
That alien would be ignorant of the environmental disaster that our society is.

Can you think of anything else that we can't see, and therefore doesn't exist?
of course you can!
In Romans 6:23, Paul says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."[NIV]
That's right... death!
from what?
Sin!

Our society does an excellent job of pretending that sin doesn't exist.
Nay, we glorify it!
We pretend that it doesn't have any consequences, because, well, we can't exactly see it. It's not particularly tangible.
That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, however.
It just means that it's easy for us, as a society, to forget that it's there. It's easy for people to ignore the Truth and live as if New York City isn't spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year to prevent itself from drowning in its own waste.

Maybe its time for people to take environmental action.
Maybe its time for people to wake up, stop being ignorant, and lose the hypocrisy.

On Mediocrity

My Latin teacher today went off on a bit of a tangent during class.
We are beginning to delve into the land of straight translating, as we have gotten to the end of our book's grammar and vocab lessons.
My teacher told us a story:
when he was a teenager, he played baseball, and one day he had been invited to a league all-star game. He was set to be starting pitcher, and had to get to the field 45 minutes before the game started.
Before he could leave the house, however, he had to finish his chores, which included washing the dishes after dinner. So he scrubbed the pots and plates and other such eating utilities and was on his way out the door, when his dad called him back inside:
"you need to do the dishes."
my teacher was taken off guard, seeing as how he had just done the dishes.
His dad proceeded to wipe his finger along the inside of a pot and showed him that it was not thoroughly clean. "wash the pots," he said.
So he did.
three more times, before his dad was satisfied.
By the time his dad let him leave, he had wasted a good 20 minutes or so washing the pots, angry, and his coach was ticked. He wasn't allowed to pitch.
Upset, he confronted his dad at the end of the game.
All his dad said was, "wash the pots right the first time, and you won't have to do it again."

A good story.
He led this on to a soliloquy on mediocrity.
It's easy to be mediocre.
Most people in America strive for it; the struggle to be unnoticed in a crowd, the desire to not stand out. Americans, teenagers especially, have a tenancy to surround themselves with a buffer. We don't want to be the best, and we certainly don't want to be the worst.
The problem with this is that, sure, anyone can be mediocre.
But being mediocre doesn't impress anyone.
It won't get you a sweet job, won't lead to a high quality of life, and will guarantee that you'll never rise to the top.

But that's okay, right?
why should we want to rise to the top?

Before Jesus left his disciples for good, he told them this; "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." [Matthew 28:18-20, NIV]
This is known as the Great Commission.
It's what Jesus charged christians with before going back into heaven.

Let me tell yah... no one is going to make disciples of all the nations by being mediocre.

In Titus 3:1, Paul said, "Remind the people to be subject to rulers and to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men."
Does that sound like someone who's mediocre?
absolutely not.
That sounds like someone who would stand out in a crowd as someone who's going to rise to the top. You'll go far in life by being obedient, being ready to do whatever is good, and not slandering... being considerate and showing humility to everyone. That's not mediocre. That's exceptional.
And what better to be exceptional about than that Great Commission that we've been charged with?

Let's not be mediocre.
Let's show the world that we want to stand out- for good, for excellence, and for Jesus.

On Serving

Every summer for school we have summer reading books. Usually there's one required book, and then a selection of books that you have to choose from for others.
This past year, the required reading was Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. In the book, Quinn suggests that humans society is on its way to destruction. Not because the world is living wrong or because of corruption, but rather because human society shouldn't exist.

The idea is that our ancestors (think: african tribes before europe divided it up like a pie) lived in harmony with nature, following the natural laws of only taking what you need to survive, letting death run its course, etc.
Then he re-interpreted Genesis to be the point where humankind ceased being hunter-gatherers, and became agrarian (farmers). When this happened, we stopped being at one with nature because we started doing things like hoarding food, cheating death with medicine, reproducing wildly due to our ability to grow surplus food... eventually we built society, and now we ravage the earth's natural resources and are on our way to oblivion.

Now, i liked some of the issues Daniel Quinn brought attention to, but his whole extrapolation is more-or-less ridiculous.
I don't think that humans were ever "in harmony" with nature, other than in the garden of Eden. And i don't think that, under our societal coverings, we're anything remotely like our animal friends.

See, i was thinking a little bit, and i think that one thing that separates us from them wild animals is this: The need to Serve.
You could change the name to the need to have a purpose. But i like the need to serve better.
Think about it. Everyone serves something.
Slaves serve their masters.
Peasants served their dukes and earls by working their land to the bone.
Communists serve the state.
Workaholics serve their jobs.
Students serve their schoolwork.
Americans serve themselves.
Perhaps the only people who don't serve anything are the 20-somethings who still live with their moms and have no jobs, and whose entire existence consists of getting up at 1:30 and watching old episodes of Lost until they get tired, and then going back to bed again.
And that's just depressing.

See... people without purpose get depressed. They get restless... they find that they have a need to find that purpose and go serve something.

That's what separates us from dogs and cats and 3-toed sloths.
Sure, you might say that dogs "serve" their masters.
But that's not true; dogs are only capable of existing.
They might have emotions, they might be capable of reasoning, but they still only follow their instinct. Which is to survive.
When you train a dog, you teach to its instinct. It learns to do things that get it doggie treats or pats on the head, because food and interaction are part of existence; part of survival. So it does what its trained to do, because of the natural instinct to survive.

Humans, on the other hand, are more than capable of going against that natural instinct.
We have all sorts of eccentric millionaires that break the mold on purpose; we insist on living in new england and canada and alaska even though it goes entirely against the natural instinct to not be freezing cold in the winter. Birds migrate; we don't.

What i'm trying to say here, is that we're different from animals; one of the ways that we differ is in this need to serve.
And that's one of the reasons why Christians are, generally, happier, more content, and more at peace than nonchristians. We have a purpose; we have someone to serve who is infinitely larger and more important than anything on the earth.

On Love

Today dec’s youth pastor talked about John 21. He spent a lot of time talking about fishing and what it must have been like to be there...and near the end he touched on the final conversation between Peter and Jesus.

John 21:15-17 reads:

"When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son og John, do you truly love me more than these?"
"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"
He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."
The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep...""

Now, one of the deals with that passage is that Peter had denied Jesus three times before the crucifixion, even after saying that he would die before he would say that.
What you typically hear about this passage is that it makes more sense in the Greek.

See, the first two times, Jesus is using a different word for "love" than Peter is.

Jesus’ "do you truly love me?" uses the word, "Agapao", which is taken to mean a complete, total, absolute love. Its noun form is the word used in 1 John 4:8, when John says that "God is love."

Now, the word that Peter uses for love, and the one that Jesus uses the third time, is the word "Philia". This is typically taken to be more of a "friendship" type of love.

The gist of it is, Jesus asked peter, "do you love me?" and Peter replied, "no; i really like you."

Anyone who goes to church more than twice a year will know that 1 Corinthians 13 is that part of the bible where Paul talks about love: (verse 4) "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It us not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs..."

Here’s something that i want to stress to you.
Paul, to the Corinthians, describes "love" as a noun.
In all those statements, Love is the subject, and it’s followed by a slew or predicate nominatives: "Love is..."

Sometimes, people describe love as an emotion.
I think that this is completely ridiculous.
Here are a few emotions: Anger, Fear, Sadness, Happiness, Disgust...

Emotions are something that you feel; they pertain to your mind’s chemical balance.
They are intangible; you can't hold happiness in your hand.
Outside of what we feel in our bodies, emotions are just abstract ideas that have a feminine gender in latin.

Love, on the other hand, isn’t anything like an emotion.
Paul describes it as a very real, concrete entity.
Remember, God IS Love. It is something that exists outside of the human condition.
It has substance, meaning, and lasts forever: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."[1 Corinthians 13:13, niv]

Here’s something else that i think about love:
I don't think we should use it as a verb.
Sure, we say, "I love this" and "I love that".
But i think in modern times, we’ve confused the verb form of "love" with the word Like.

Notice the greek word Agapao, the verb, and the noun, Agape.
They are very similar.
But a lot of times, we get verbs from nouns, nouns from verbs (gerunds), adjectives from verbs (participals)... its often hard to figure out which word came first.
But i think in this case, the noun has to be the root form.
Why?
Because of the nature of Love.
If love is a tangible, secure idea, that exists as an entity on its own, you can't acutally turn it into a verb.
It's about the same as the verb "google".
We say, "google it", and what it -actually- means is, "search for it on google".
The word has come to mean an action, much the same way "to hit" is a process of striking one object with another.

Do you see what i’m trying to say?

Love is an entity; the opposite of apathy.
One of the reasons we are so confused with "love this" and "love that" and so on is because of the way we use it as a verb. People say love and think of "like", because they have no idea what love actually is.
Love is the essence of need; it is completely consuming. Without love we have nothing.

On Bears

proverbs.
solomon wrote a lot of them.
He seems to talk a lot about fools and wisdom... and money.
I just read proverbs 17:12, and was surprised to see that my study bible didn't have an entry on the verse:
"Better to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than a fool in his folly."[niv]

think about that.
What do we associate with a mother bear, who has just realized that her cubs are missing?
rage... destruction... panic... insanity... mutilation... that bear goes nuts until she finds her bearlings.
so why is solomon saying that it's better to experience that first hand, than to see a guy who's being dumb?

I guess it says a lot about the need for wisdom.
He'd rather risk getting mauled by a bear than meet a foolish person.
In Ecclesiastes 7:12, he says, "Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: that wisdom preserves the life of its possessor."

everyone dies... a lot of freakishly wealthy people use their money like a security blanket. But in reality, they die just like the rest of us, and they're better off becoming crazy eccentric philanthropists than hanging on to it... because its wisdom that ends up saving you in the end.

On the Original Match.com

am i the only person who gets sick every time a commercial for an internet dating site comes on tv?
eHarmony, match.com... others.
Like, that right there is prime example of "leftovers" from the dot-com boom.
You know, when the mid-’90s came around, commercials for websites were abundant. People over in Palo Alto were making gobs of cash without spending any effort; it was the heyday of e-commerce, and TV ads were just another way to increase business.

Flash-forward to post-bust and the line is a lot more blurred between "internet business" and regular business. Sure, there’s "free credit report.com", which isn’t free, but other than that and other exceptions, eHarmony and match.com are pretty much the only TV ads we ever see anymore that are for exclusively browser-bound businesses.

So why does it make me sick?
It’s like the pinnacle of what technology allows us to do.
For so long, "getting hitched" has been one of the most important life decisions you can make. And we can find people now effortlessly. Not to mention the stigma of meeting up with someone you’ve never seen before. You’re just paying money to talk to a picture of someone’s face.
weird.
and lame.

But amazingly, the internet dating site has become rather successful.
You have those people in the commercials talking about how "perfect" their meeting was, people getting married... there’s no problem at all with forging relationships over the internet. All you have to do is ask a kid who’s addicted to runescape or WOW, and the only difference between IRL and internet friends is the face and the voice... which can even be a nonissue with skype.

Then there’s the people who do like, "meet-ups" with their MMORPG friends, where people drive/take the bus for miles just to meet some of their in-game buddies in a cafe or somesuch. And they come back with tales of a grand time.
Personally, i’d find it a little creepy...and unnerving... especially when you’re with a bunch of people who know you by your username and not your actual, legal name.

Weirdness aside, the internet has proven what pen-pals have known for ages: it is not necessary to see, hear, smell, touch, or taste someone in order to have a relationship with them. (as in friendship) All that is necessary is a form of communication. The rest is just enhancement.

Sherman, set the WayBack machine for the middle 1st century AD.
Jesus is talking to his disciples; things are winding down for his ministry before the crucifixion, and Jesus is telling his followers to trust in what is going to happen.
John 14:6&7 reads:
"Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. no one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."
Jesus answered, "Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ’Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father, And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.""[NIV]

The Disciples were a unique group of men. On the one hand, they had the once-in-forever chance of being face-to-face with Jesus. On the other hand, they had to carry the incredible truth of salvation onwards and spread the Gospel. Which comes with a whole long list of opposition, oppression, torture, the like.

Anyhow, re-read the passage and realize something.
For the past few years, these guys have been through everything together. They’re tight. Like, imagine a size small t-shirt on the fattest kid you know... that’s how tight. Circulation-destroyingly tight. Sweat-producingly tight.
And the words Jesus uses are "Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?"
Sure, Philip and the rest of the Gang knew Jesus. But they didn’t entirely grasp everything he was all about.
Which we can’t blame them for... it’s a pretty ridiculous concept: "I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me"... like, unless you’ve grown up in a church, that’s a pretty weird statement right there.
And none of these guys grew up in a church.

But realize at the end, what he says to them: "You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."
Those are the words of a friend.

The disciples were standing face-to-face with God himself, the creator of everything, the essence of Love, pure power... and he’s their friend. That’s pretty overwhelmingly awesome.

Jesus and his disciples obviously had excellent relationships.
But as a Christian, the notion kind of bubbles on the back-burner of how, with our physical inability to be face-to-face with Jesus, we can still have a similar relationship to him.
We don’t need to talk to him, we don’t need to watch him make a ruckus in a synagogue, don’t need to see him snap fish into 5,000 pieces... all we need is that simple communication. The internet has shown us that.

On Vastness

Yesterday i delved into Isaiah 40... i’m picking it up again now.

Verses 6-8:
"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of out God stands forever."

Isaiah compares us to grass... here in New England, grass stays green for about 2-4 months, and then turns brown and nasty. Unless you have Zoysia Grass. But that’s another story, for another day.
Grass is an excellent example of feebleness.
It grows a couple inches long, and then you cut it down with the lawnmower... and it doesn’t take a lawnmower to cut grass. You can pick it with your fingers, you can eat it, you can rub it in with your foot... them green stalks don’t stand a chance. Grass is so weak that it blows over in a gentle breeze.

And that grass is us.
All of our "glory"... our accomplishments, dreams, aspirations...
All of our corporations, the great pyramids, the Eiffel Tower; its all likened to flowers.
Flowers fall apart and turn brown and smelly and nasty a few weeks after they bloom.
All it takes is a little energy and its all gone.

The point here is to try to show us just how small and insignificant we are.

Have you ever sat back and thought about infinity?
It’s pretty difficult.
Like, think of the number 10. Pretty ordinary. Pretty small.
Compared to infinity, it’s nothing.
If you multiply 10 times itself 100 times, you get the number one googol.
That’s a 1 with 100 zeros at the end:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
The "official" name for the number is ten duotrigintillion.
It’s impossible to count to a googol.
don’t try.
Check it out though.
Googol was 10 raised to the 100th power.
Theres an even bigger number (duh)...
A Googolplex is 10 raised to the googolth power.
That is, multiply 10 times 10, one googol times.

You know how a googol has 100 zeros?
Well, since a googol is more than the number of particles in the known universe, it is actually impossible to represent a googolplex in decimal form.
Wikipedia has more information on the relative scale of a googolplex... trust me, it’s impossible to imagine.
That said, remember how much bigger infinity is than the number 10?
You could say that infinity is infinitely bigger than 10.

That said, infinity is also infinitely bigger than one googol.
And it’s still just as much infinitely bigger than one googolplex.

Get it... its like swimming in an endless pool. You can’t ever get closer to infinity, no matter how high you count.

That’s exactly the scale that God is to us, on earth.
We’re grass... God is the vastness of the universe. You can’t even comprehend it.

Isaiah continues on like poetry, in verses 12-20...
"Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?
Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor?
Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?
Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.
Lebanon [as in, the whole country] is not sufficient for altar fires, nor its animals enough for burnt offerings.
Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.
To whom, then will you compare God?
What image will you compare him to?
As for an idol, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it.
A man too poor to present such an offering selects wood that will not rot.
He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not topple."

It keeps going... but the jist of it is that God is unfathomable.
Our minds simply aren’t capable of grasping the vastness, the perfectness, the extent of God.
It’s incredible.
We’re not even a drop in the bucket; not even a sodium ion in the ocean.

On Life Being a Highway

Today in english class we watched a little bit of a Peter Jennings documentary about the 1920s. I guess it was to prepare us for reading the Great Gatsby. Whatever.
Anyway, one things they mentioned about the '20s was the widespread adoption of the automobile.
Cars were totally different than horse-and-buggys, notably in that could go pretty fast... and were heavy. As such the conditions of current roadways was not adequate. The rising number of people with cars also prompted the need for an international highway system.
The government began a process of clearing land throughout the country and paving roads. People would wait in long lines at the opening ceremony of bridges and tunnels so that they could drive through them on the first day.
This was a big deal.
All of a sudden, an individual was free to go as he pleased.
And, of course, he didn't have to worry about chunky dirt roads that would mess up his suspension.
With the national highway system, there was no hindrance to travel; just the smooth, open road.

Isaiah 40:3-5 states:
A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the Lord;
make straight the wilderness a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low;
the rough grounds shall become level, the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken."[NIV]

The terrain described here can be equated to our life "journeys", if you will.
Theres no need to climb over mountains and hike through valleys, just like how there's no need to drive on old beaten down horse trails with your mom's minivan.
We have a God who has blasted down the mountains, filled in the canyons, and clear-cut the forests for us. He's built us a highway that we can cruise down without trial or worry.

A lot more can be said about this, but i have to do homework... you can probably figure it out though.
Isaiah 40 will continue tomorrow... stay tuned. Or just read ahead in the Bible.

Easter Blog

So today was Easter... arguably the best holiday that we celebrate.
My day consisted of waking up and finding out that my brother still hadn't taken a shower, and consequentially rushing when it was my turn to get out of the house in time.
Was only a few minutes late to practice/not actually practice because there wasn't time/stand around and wait for 10:01.
ANYWAY, the point is, p.Dave talked a little bit out of Romans 8.
Verses 1-4 read:
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." [NIV]

I bolded out the important part for you.
It basically explains everything that nonchristians don't understand.

When sin was introduced to the world, Man was kicked out of the Garden of Eden; human kind could no longer be so close to God, couldn't walk with the Father, couldn't be innocent. Sin was a barrier between us and God.

To overcome sin, we have everyone's favorite staff-wielding, bush-fearing, no-formal-training leader, Moses.
You know, the whole wandering in the desert thing for 40 years and such... well God had Moses establish the Jewish law.
You all know what Jewish law is. Its all those crazy things in Deuteronomy.
Anyway, essentially the law made sin "illigal".
It accounted for just about everything imaginable that man was capable of doing that God didn't want man to do.
So theoretically, an upright Jewish person didn't sin.
In that respect, God made it pretty straight forward. All Israel had to do was follow the laws, and they were all set.
Except the law couldn't account for the fact that, well, laws can be broken.

So the theoretical upright Jews that didn't sin were pretty few... and many who followed the law, like the religious leaders that Jesus had so much beef with, only followed the law as an exercise, and not from their hearts.

So it turned out that God's law wasn't a good solution to humankind's big problem.

That's where Romans 8 comes in... "For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering"
Under the law we were still controlled by our fleshy, sinful desires.
Seeing as how law is a rather intangible thing, it couldn't do a whole lot to stop us.
But what Jesus did by dying on the cross was "condemned sin in sinful man", and set us free from ourselves.
And now we can be controlled by the Spirit; no longer ruled by the flesh.
We don't have to worry about following the law, because everything the law put into effect comes naturally through the spirit.
Paul goes on in verses 5-8:
"Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God."

See; we don't have to have a sinful mind anymore. We have Jesus.
That's basically why Easter is so cool.

Some Obvious Stupidity

do you mind if i paraphrase a story from the bible?
of course you don't.
1 Kings 22 is pretty much about Jehoshaphat, king of Judah.
He was a pretty good guy. Unlike a lot of kings in the old testament, God didn't have any reasons to strike him dead.
Anyway, Jehoshaphat one day went down to visit the king of Israel, Ahab.
Ahab, unlike Jehoshaphat, wasn't really a good king.
You know how 4,000 years ago, kings used to have like, this council of advisers, that was mainly these crazy mystics and soothseers and whatnot?
Ahab had a bunch of those. In fact, he had about 400 prophets that weren't from God.
They were just a bunch of guys who made "prophesies"... in quotes like that.
not prophesies. "Prophesies". big difference.

Anyhow, when Jehoshaphat went down to see Ahab, Ahab kinda wanted to attack Ramoth Gilead.
I'll start quoting here, so you don't get bored.
22:4 "So he asked Jehoshaphat, "Will you go with me to fight against Ramoth Gilead?"
Jehoshaphat replied to the king of Israel, "I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses." But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, "First seek the counsel of the Lord."

It was at this point here that Ahab asked his 400 "prophets" if he should attack Ramoth Gilead. They answered that he should- enthusiastically, because he would win.
Jehoshaphat didn't really want to listen to fake prophets, though.
verse 7: "But Jehoshaphat asked, "Is there not a prophet of the Lord here whom we can inquire of?"
The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, "There is still one man through whom we can inquire of the Lord, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah."
"The king should not say that," Jehoshaphat replied. So the king of Israel called one of his officials and said, "Bring Micaiah son of Imlah at once."

Well, to make a long story short, Micaiah told Ahab that if he went to attack Ramoth Gilead, the people of Israel would be "scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd" (vs. 17)
Of course, Ahab didn't listen to the guy, and ended up dying in the battle.
Jehoshaphat lived on.

Let's go over that again.
(1) King of Israel wants to attack some people
(2) King of Israel's fake prophets tell him he'll win
(3) Actual prophet, WHO THE KING KNEW WAS AN ACTUAL PROPHET tells him otherwise
(4) King listens to the guys that he pays to tell him what he wants to hear
(5) King dies.
(6) I laugh.

What. A. Retard.
"I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad."
So instead he listens to the people who tell him nice things about him.
Like, if there's a guy who's a prophet, and he tells you stuff that you don't want to hear, you probably shouldn't not listen to him, just because he's telling you stuff that doesn't make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, right?
right.

Likewise, when God tells us things we don't wanna hear, we're not supposed to plug our ears and sing catchy pop songs.
Instead, when God tells us we're being a moron, we listen to him and stop being a moron.
Unlike Ahab.
who died.
from an arrow wound.

I don’t want to be a moron. Join me?

[and for the record, Micaiah is an awesome name. even though its essentially Micah with an extra syllable.]

On What's Right

Have you ever seen an interview with a convicted felon?
Last year in European History, we watched an interview with a guy. I don’t really remember what he did, but i’m pretty sure it had something to do with extreme racism.
Or possibly neo-nazi-ism. Which would probably be an example of extreme racism.
But anyway, it was really interesting to see the way the guy answered the interviewer’s questions.
He seemed (obviously) genuinely sorry about whatever it was he did, or at least you could tell he knew it was dumb of him.
Yet at the same time, his answers typically took the form of, "it made sense at the time", or "i don’t know what i was thinking" or somesuch.

Think back to any stupid thing you’ve done that you’ve regretted.

What in your mind allowed you to do it?

Do murderers know they’re killing people?
Obviously.
BUT.
There -HAS- to be something inside that shuts off the, "this isn’t right" alarm, at least momentarily.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t do it.
It’s a mechanism of the human brain.
I’m not talking about knowing right from wrong.
I’m talking about listening to it; everyone knows its wrong to kill people.
But a killer’s mind might be more on the level of, "its wrong, but that doesn’t really matter".
See, something has to let him think it’s alright.

Chizech it out.
Proverbs 21:2.
"All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart."

King solomon was pretty smart. The wisest king that ever lived.
Naturally, he’s right on.

Clearly, everyone thinks differently in terms of right and wrong.
Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a two-party governmental system, or multiple candidates, and all that hoo-ha.
So obviously, out of the 300,000,000 people in america, a whole bunch of them are wrong in at least a couple ideals.

Why do we spend 20 million dollars a MONTH on presidential campaigns?
beats me.
It’s right there in black and white. It doesn’t matter what people think; it doesn’t matter what seems right to them.
All that matters is what’s right in God’s eyes.

On the Definition of Human Existance

So i was flipping through my bible yesterday, and my eyes landed on a particular passage.
I read it.
I laughed outloud.
This was most likely because we're in virginia visiting virginia tech, and i only brought my pocket bible, which is NLT.
I don't read NLT a whole lot, because the language feels too fudged to me.
But in this case it's wonderful.

I've talked about Jeremiah before; his book is starting to become one of my favorites.
I've also talked about idols before.
Try to forget that. If you haven't read that one, do yourself a favor and don't read it.
It was on February 27th, if you're still interested.

Anywho, Jeremiah 51:17-19.
The little heading over the section in my bible reads, "A Hymn of praise to the Lord".
so i'm not really sure who's talking. But it doesn't really matter.
"The whole Human race is foolish and has no knowledge!
The craftsmen are disgraced by the idols they make,
for their carefully shaped works are a fraud.
These idols have no breath or power.
Idols are worthless; they are ridiculous lies!
On the day of reckoning they will all be destroyed.
But the God of Israel is no idol!
He is the Creator of everything that exists, including his people, his own special possession.
The Lord of Heaven's Armies is his name!" [NLT]

So that made me laugh, because its absolutely true.

How many people do you know who are discouraged?
I know plenty of people; my teachers, my friends, my extended family... they are discouraged because life isn't what they know it should be.
My favorite science teacher comes across to many as depressed, even though he isn't.
He talks all the time about how worthless life can be, and how little of an impact is being made on things that need to be impacted.
He has spent his life whiling away teaching and managing an organic farm.
He is disgraced by the idols he has made.

I know tons of kids [spaulding people should be able to say all their friends and their friend's families for this one.] who are in a similar position.
You go to school. You maybe have a job. You do homework. You inexplicably fail classes. (it's because you're stupid.)
Worst of all, you're stuck there by federal law.
You toil away 4 years of your life, just to be pitched out into the real world to fend for yourself.
Why bother?
You make "idols".
Relationships. Friends. Jobs. Famous people. Hobbies. Money. Random useless trivia.
You realize that they're pointless.
You're disgraced.

Why?
it's right there in Jeremiah.
You know it's all a fraud.
There's something more.

oh, wait. all you have to do is read the next verse over.
The God of Israel is no idol!

hecks yeah!

Keep going, and you find out that his people (the Jews. But as p.Dave says, you can mentally replace "israel" and related words in the old testament with "church" and such. so we can take it to mean christians, yes?) are his own special possession!
sweet.
we're special to God.
and we don't need idols.

That's essentially the life of the nonchristian-searching-for-existance and the christian-who-knows-his-existance in a nutshell.
Thanks Jerry. You da man.

You Are What You Eat

We've all heard that phrase before, "You are what you eat".

This is a perfect example of one of those things that changes meanings as you get older.
Such as the movie, Cars.
A little kid watches that, and laughs at the little kid jokes.
Teenagers will watch the movie and laugh at other subtleties.
Grown ups catch yet more jokes, that most idiot teenagers blatantly miss, like the Car Talk guys in the Rust-Ease booth.
The movie bears more meaning still to people who grew up in the 50's and remember what life was like back then with them neon lights. Nostalgia. Strong stuff.

Anywho, when we're little kids, "You are what you eat" is pretty concrete. [kids only understand the concrete. duh.] Parents use it to scare kids into eating healthy (you don't want to turn into a big tub of ice cream, do you?) and there was that old Magic School Bus where Arnold eats Sea-Weedies and turns orange because they're made out of carrots.

As we mature and age, we learn not to dwell on the sickeningly obvious.
The other day, people were talking about how Berwick english classes screw us up for the SATs, because we're so good at finding obscure, thoughtful meaning that doesn't actually exist.
Abstract thought always made me queasy.

But really, we realize that the term, "you are what you eat" means so much more than what's related to food.
We realize that the people we hang out with, the music we listen to, the books we read, the movies and shows we watch... it's all what we "take in".
It's what we eat.
And it's what forms us. Molds us. Makes us who we are.

The Bible references, multiple times, how what we are dictates what we make.
In Matthew 7:15-20, Jesus talks about trees and their fruits:
"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them."

So everything we take in influences us.
And that influence makes its way out of us back into the world in everything you do.

Let's pick on emo kids.
Because they love being picked on.
And they're so perfect for picking on.

You're an impressionable 6th grader.
One of your highschool friends is wicked cool.
He is like, the man, like, and dyes his hair black, and wears black tight jeans, and talks wicked cool with a fake lisp... one day he gives you a cd of some emo music.
You love it, naturally, and start getting into wicked emo stuff.
Everyone around you thinks you're cool, because you're only in middle school and you're already hardcore.
4 years later, you're in the same position your friend was when you were in middle school.
You're like, the leader of the emo posse.

[i'm sorry that wasn't more detailed, i really couldn't think of any good examples...]
Anyway, use your imagination.
You take in crap, you become crap, and then you start spewing crap to everyone else.
[not saying anything about emo kids here... just using them as an example. ha.]

Now, this concept of "you are what you eat" and bearing fruit has a spiritual aspect as well.

In Romans 7:46, Paul lets the Church in Rome onto something.
"So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Chris, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. 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 was of the written code."

We start out in life filled with sinful nature.
I wrote a line down during sunday school today: "Humility isn't natural; we have to learn to be humble."
See, naturally, we humans are a nasty bunch. We lie, we cheat, we steal, etc.
But look again at what Paul said.
"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 was of the written code."

When we start following Jesus, we get filled with the holy Spirit. We stop 'taking in' everything of the world.
We read what God has to say in the Bible, we talk to other christians, we go to church and youth group.
We become released from sin, and that begins to show itself in our "fruits".
You could say we go from being a "bad tree" to being a "good tree".
We bear good fruit, not bad fruit.
And that goes for both spiritual, and physical things.
The way we talk, walk, act, communicate, think, perceive, and understand the world become new and different from that of the World.

On top of that, the last part of the verse in Matthew was that "by their fruit you will recognize them."
People will recognize the good trees by the good fruit.
We set an example for others; we show them what its like to be a good tree and have good fruit.

And if you ask me, the world could use some more good trees.

On Being Part of It All

Let's shoot back in time a few thousand years.
We're in ancient Isreal, hanging out with a guy names Jeremiah.
Jeremiah was a prophet to his nation in a time where no one listened to him.
Isreal was sliding downhill and would soon be taken over by babylon... and God often spoke through him about the wickedness of his people.

Here's a couple verses i wanna talk about...
Jeremiah 25:30 & 31, in the NIV:
"Now Prophesy all these words against them and say to them:
"The Lord will roar from on high;
he will thunder from his holy dwelling and roar mightily against his land.
He will shout like those who tread the grapes, shout against all who live on the earth.
The tumult will resound to the ends of the earth, for the Lord will bring charges against the nations; he will bring judgment on all mankind and put the wicked to the sword," declares the Lord."

Now clearly here, God's telling Jeremiah, who is supposed to tell everyone else, how He will roar from on high and thunder against the land.
But there's one itsy word in there.
It's a reflexive possessive adjective.
know what it is?
the word "His".
see, "he will thunder from his holy dwelling and roar mightily against his land"
The HIS part of that is ridiculously important.

why?
because the earth IS GOD'S LAND.

Now read back what the verse is about.
He's talking about bringing judgment on the earth, and causing tumults and craziness.

Why?
I'll get to that.
But frist, try to see things the way i see them.

Say you're sitting at home, doing your math homework.
It's really hard. You have to do like 30 problems, and you're in AP Calc BC, so they're all like impossible.
It takes you two hours to complete, and finally, at 12:30, you're done.
You give your excellent work a final look over, nod reassuringly to yourself, and hold the 2 double-sided sheets of paper between your hands.
You then take hold of them and rip your homework to shreds.

Why?
I'll get to that.

...right now.

SEE?!

Consider the Earth God's metaphysical homework.
Remember all that stuff in Genesis about it being "good" and then "very good" and such?
So was your math homework.
But here God's talking about destroying his creation.
Wrecking his work.

Why destroy the earth?
Clearly something needs to be done about humanity.
In Noah's time, he just flooded the place out and started over, but sometime in the future it's all going away.


Anyone ever play the Sims?
the Sims was always a pretty fun game... for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes your sims start being stupid.
They don't listen to you, the pee on the couch, they starve themselves... it's a complete mess.
After 20 minutes, everyone always ends up making a new game and starting over.

Think of Humans as sims, and think of God as the player.
We've been around for a few thousand years; you'd think that, in that timespan, we'd figure out how to listen to God.
We should know how to do what he says, to uphold his commands.
But the human race has proved itself remarkably bad at that.
We don't listen to God.
We ignore him.
In fact, many people just deny his existence.
How do you think it would feel to be God, with everyone completely denying that you created them?
It would be a bummer.
I'd wanna start a new game.

But what do you do with all the "sims" that actually listened to you?
Give them a way out.
John 3:16-21, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."

There you have it.
God has given us a ticked out of this place; but still billions of people ignore it every day.
Men love the darkness because then they don't have to realize/admit/come out that they're wrong and evil.
We need to show them that that's completely foolish; Jesus said that the Light is in the world.
People who ignore the Way are like someone in a bright room who insists that it's dark.
"what? i can't see you!"
"i'm standing right here, the lights are on! you probably have your eyes closed."

And maybe that's it.
Everyone just has their eyes closed, so they can't see the Light that is Jesus Christ.
They don't understand, they don't want to understand... but if we can't get them to figure it out, they're gonna get swept away through God's judgment on HIS creation.

/nighttime ramble.

On Understanding

New England is a rather unique place.
Historically, we have a high percentage of liberal activists, dating back to colonial times... that's what puritans were, after all... they wanted change in the way things were done, and kicked themselves out of england for it.
Modern times are different times, though.
We have socialists, anarchists, canadians, and Hillary supporters.
As a senior at my school once put it,
"Its like our school is off the rictor scale when comparing divisions. We mostly have moderates(conservatives), then we have extremists(the liberal majority). Our perspective is just skewed geographically."

The other group of kids at my school would appear to be those whose parents are catholics [read: kids from Exeter], who have been through ccd and all that... but have grown up with it simply thrust upon them.
For that reason, they know all about catholicism, (the religion part) but they don't really know how to be christians. Refreshingly, they're conservatives.

ANYway...
when it comes down to it, most people, at least around here, have NO IDEA what's in the Bible.
when the 4th quarter starts up i'm gonna start doing some kind of bible study or something to try to get people interested in what's inside them leather bindings.
But what's also interesting is how, when you try to explain something, they completely don't get it.
People have been taught ignorance about the Bible, so they have these predispositions on what christians believe... which are totally false.
And it's as if they don't want to hear the truth from an actual christian; they just want to prove themselves right.

Did i already say that it's frustrating?
Well, it is.
There was a verse today in Bible study about people having a veil over them so that they can't understand the Word... i wish i could remember it...

But, check out 1st Corinthians 1:18 & 19...
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.'"

See.
People of the world simply can't understand why Christians believe the way we do.
In fact, a lot of christians [read: them religious catholics] don't understand why they believe the way they do.

As a side note, i think its interesting how Paul used the present tense in there... "us who are being saved".
It's worth pointing out that we aren't just saved and then that's it.
Salvation is an ongoing process that never stops. Hence why it's ongoing. And hence why Paul used the present tense, rather than say, the perfect (simple past).

Linguistic subtleties aside, Jesus said a pretty powerful statement in Luke 10:21.
At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure." [NIV]

So everyone who's seen Jesus Camp knows how easy it is for little kids to understand the Gospel. Contrarily, people who are regarded as "learned" (giggle) have no grasp on it whatsoever.
Who do we consider Learned?
How about my teachers who are all incredibly intelligent and well-versed in the world, but who are completely clueless towards Christianity.
Or politicians, doctors, scientists... so many of them just don't get it.
And Jesus praised God for this!
He was glad that God lets little children understand the Truth, whereas hardened, learned people of the World just can't grasp it.

You could also tie this back to the attitude of "childness"...
Luke 18:16
But Jesus called the children to him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it."

The great irony with this whole thing is that we typically associate children with a lack of understanding.
How many times, when talking to a six year old or such, you have to be careful of how you say things so that you don't go over their head?
You can't talk calculus to a 5th grader.
You can't talk politics to a 7 year old.
BUT.
You can absolutely talk about the Kingdom of God... which is much more important.

God's got a pretty cool way of doing things.

On Being Known

So we're studying some poetry in English class.
Today we went over a bunch of poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson.
Draw your attention to his Poem, "Richard Corey", reproduced below. And yes, it is the inspiration for a Simon and Garfunkle song.

Richard Corey
Whenever Richard Corey went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich- yes, richer than a king-
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Corey, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet though his head.
-Edwin Arlington Robinson

So there's a lot that we discussed in class about this poem, specifically regarding the 3rd line about "sole to crown", but what most stands out in the poem, i think, is the shocker of the last line.
If that line wasn't in the poem, you wouldn't have ever guessed the outcome of the situation staged by Mr. Robinson.

See, this poem is about, among other things, the fact that no one [the "we"] suspected that Richard Corey would shoot himself.
Clearly, he was battling something internal that he didn't let show.
Clearly, being rich and powerful amongst pavement-dwellers wasn't enough to solve whatever crisis he was going through; maybe that was in fact his problem.

This poem, along with a bunch of others that we read by the same author, seems to point out how many times we don't share everything that's going on in our lives.

Think about it.
How many of your friends ACTUALLY know everything about you?
Chances are there's something you hide from everyone; maybe even yourself included.
And in the end, all it comes down to is that no one really knows everything about you. No one sees the world exactly the same way as you, no politician supports the exact same viewpoints as you... we're individuals.

BUT.

check out Psalm 139:1-4
O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when i sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. [NIV]

HOW COOL IS THAT?
Your friends might not know you; they might think you're the richest, most awesome person ever, and you might secretly want to go home and put a bullet through your head.
Or vise-versa.
BUT, God knows what you're going through.
He knows everything about us, and knows why and how we do everything.

Jesus said it this way:
"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me- just as the Father knows me and I know the Father- and I lay down my life for the sheep." (John 10:14+15, NIV)

So keep in mind that you don't have to be like Richard Corey. We aren't alone, or by ourselves. We have someone who knows us better than ourselves. And that's pretty cool.

On Falling Mountains

We're in for it.

When Jesus was being crucified, and was walking down the road with Simon of Cyrene carrying his cross, a crowed was following him, along with women who were crying.
He said to them:
"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!' Then:
'They will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!''
For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?"
[Luke 23:28-31, quote from Hosea 10:8, NIV]

The women in Luke were crying because Jesus was about to be put to death.
They might have been followers of him, but then again they might not have been.
And notably, he was crucified by the religious leaders of the time; these were the people that the Jews revered. And here they are, the (puppet) government, killing our savior.

Jesus told them not to cry for him; rather to cry for themselves and their children.
Why?

Roman times were decent.
True, the romans took over every country they could dump a couple infantry units into. But the Romans knew [or maybe, had known] how to run a government.
With Roman times came roads, sanitation, cleanliness, order... more-or-less peace...
Times were pretty good.
And when the Roman empire fell, the Western world was thrown into darkness.
(cough, the dark ages, cough.)
Emphasis: the Western World. As in, Europe.

China? Japan? Baghdad?
All perfectly fine. Thriving, even.
While Europe was trying to remember how to wear shoes, the part of the world that wasn't ruled by the Roman Empire was just dandy.

Cut to: modern times.
We have: GPS, Fiber-Optics, cell phones, the internet, full government regulations on the electromagnetic spectrum...
Ask anyone and they'll tell you that "global economy" is a pretty big deal.
America's economy is fully and 100% dependent the likes of China, Japan, Taiwan, etc.

When a little chunk of Serbia breaks off and calls itself Kosovo, the news is instantaneous, and everyone's buzzing about it.
In Roman times, Japan wouldn't have had reason to care about that.

See, nothing can happen in today's world that wouldn't be world-wide.
If one super-power crumbles, the whole world will be set askew.
And all you have to do is take a peek at Revelation to realize what kind of skewing will be going on.

I'm sure that governments will be doing plenty of stuff that will cause people to weep. Incompetence galore. Craziness.

Just ask Luke- the women will be wishing that they never had children.
That time is coming soon... and we better be ready.

On How It’s All About The Heart

Ch-ch-check it out.
Ezekiel 14:2+3
"Then the word of the Lord came to me: 'Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all?'"
When Ezekiel wrote that, God was talking about the elders who worshiped idols, and then dared to go to Ezekiel, God's profit, for advice. Obviously, God was not okay with this, and went on to tell Ezekiel that he would turn those people into examples for others not to idolize.

However, reading that passage, the word that seems to poke its head out above the rest is "heart".
He said idols, in their hearts.

When i think of the word "idol", i usually think of some creepy Mayan figurine or something, or them little statues that the Romans used to keep in their houses.
Other people think of Brad Pitt or some hottie like Stephen Hawking.

But that's not necessarily what God meant when he was talking to Ezekiel.
He meant -anything- that we invest our heart in that isn't Him.
So, the usual: money, jobs, celebrities, and ourselves... all can become idols.
That's not good.


In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment."[Mtt. 5:21, NIV]
The anger there that Jesus equates to murder is something that you harbor in your heart.
So is the Lust that he talks about in Mtt. 5:27...
"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."


This is how religion turns into a bad thing:
People [take the religious leaders of Ezekiel's time, and Jesus' time, for example] follow religion because they have to, or because it's expected of them, or because they're all caught up in it. But as soon as it turns into empty motions (going to church every sunday, standing like a mummy for half an hour, falling asleep for another half hour, and then going home), you're better off not going to church at all.

This is one of the reasons that Martin Luther got himself excommunicated.
After reading the actual Bible, Luther decided that God doesn't care so much about your outward actions as he cares about your heart.
Granted, actions betray the heart (you can't go murder someone and then try to say it wasn't the will of your heart), but by the same token, you can't expect God to take a fake lifestyle as the real thing.

Learn from the religious leaders of Ezekiel's time. They screwed up 2,600 years ago so we don't have to.

On Hypocrisy, or, Conflict of Morals

I present you with a couple of pictures.






these are pictures from the LHC, or Large Hadron Collider.
The LHC has been the source of major buzz in the scientific community for the past few years.
What is it?
It's a particle accelerator.
In fact, it's the biggest and most powerful ever made.
What does it do?
It smashes itsy-bitsy pieces of matter together at ridiculous speeds.

As it begins operation in May, particle physicists hope that it will reveal the existence of the theoretical Higgs Boson particle, which is supposed to provide the identity of mass.
Think about that.
What is mass?
most people define it as a measurement of weight, which technically is incorrect; weight is a measure of gravity's pull on mass.
Mass is essentially how much stuff you have.
well, what is that stuff, and how come we can measure it?

exactly.

we have literally thousands of scientists working on these types of questions.
the LHC might also answer many a question about gravity... which is one of those things that most people don't even think about.

look at it another way:
Scientists know that Physics is wrong.
This May, they might actually find out what is wrong with it.
This is big news.
How big?

The LHC occupies a circular tunnel roughly 16 and a half miles long, in Geneva, straddling the border between France and Switzerland.
At regular intervals, there are massive detector units (that big red thing in the second picture) that see what's going on inside that blue pipe.

This gigantic machine has cost roughly 3 Billion dollars.

No where online could i find a number of how much energy it will consume.
However, i do know that it uses a multitude of superconducting magnets- requiring near-absolute zero temperatures.
And the energy required to keep just that is enormous.

Now, the LHC presents the scientific community with the ability to do things that were previously impossible.
As such, we really have no idea what will happen the moment it gets activated.
Among the possibilities for disaster include the creation of miniature black holes that could devour our planet, and the production of Strangelets that could consume our earth.

To break that down, we (yes, the US chipped in) paid 3 billion dollars for a machine that saps enormous swaths of energy, and could potentially destroy our existence.
What we stand to gain is an improved understanding of how the universe works.
AKA, nothing.


Seriously, this stuff makes me sick.
The scientific community is insanely giddy over this thing.
And after we figure out about the Higgs particle, it will be close to worthless.
And i guarantee you, we have nothing to gain from learning what mass is.
Like, there's nothing you can do with it.
"oh, we know that there's a particle that makes matter have mass."
And like, after our society goes the way of the Roman Empire, NO ONE WILL CARE.
BECAUSE THERE WILL BE NO ONE LEFT TO CARE.

people, there are serious, pressing matters in the world.
the ENERGY CRISIS.
GLOBAL WARMING.
THE GREAT COMMISSION.

The scientific community once again presents itself as hypocrites.
These people are the ones pushing the hardest about global warming, and responsible economics, and free trade, and they're the ones obliterating resources for useless gains.
You'd think they'd spend their money on pressing matters.
You'd think they wouldn't want to contribute to global warming and energy dependence.
But instead, they've chosen to ignore their own ethics and ideals in favor of this big particle accelerator.

Why do we still use 100-year-old light bulb technology?
Why aren't we all using Induction stoves?
And seriously, WHY ARE WE STILL BUYING OIL FROM OUR POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC ENEMIES?

Maybe if people spent as much money solving important problems, there wouldn't be as many problems left to solve.

it's insane.
it's like, everyone in Western Society drank the cool-aid.

Isaiah 65 states:
"The Lord says,
'I was ready to respond, but no one asked for help.
I was ready to be found, but no one was looking for me.
I said, 'Here I am, here I am!' to a nation that did not call on me name.
All day long i opened my arms to a rebellious people.
But they follow their own evil paths and their own crooked schemes.'" [NLT]

God wants everyone to run to him; to realize the dumbness of their routine lives, shape up, and start living for something.
As it stands, popular belief, especially in hard-left New England, is about as ready to do that as they are to admit that the LHC isn't worth its pricetag or one-and-counting fatality rate.

And that's why we need to show them what it's like to let go of all that and run to our savior.

On Poetry

In my english class we're reading a short story by Stephen Crane, called "Maggie, girl of the streets".
its pretty depressing, but well-written.

In class today we looked at a couple (as in two) poems by the same author.
they are both short.

The first is titled, "A Man Said To The Universe":

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replioed the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."


The second is titled, "I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon", and goes as such:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never--"

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.

I should need to, but i'll explain the poems.
The first is on Man's plea to the universe.
People cry out to the stars all the time.
they want to be recognized by the world.
They want acknowledgment of their existance.
But does the universe care?
how can it? it's just a collection of stars and planets and giant rocks hurtling around through emptiness.
Cold, dark, sterile.

The other poem is on ignorance, for the most part.
Liken it to a dog chasing its own tail.
Futile, yes. Obvious, perhaps.
But the man refuses to accept that he cannot reach the horizon, which is in fact, an imaginary line representing the curvature of the earth.
Since the earth is more or less spherical, that line moves away from you at the exact same speed that you move toward it.


Here's some more poetry.

Psalm 121:
I lift up my eyes to the hills-
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip-
he who watches over you will not slumber;
Indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord watches over you-
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all harm-
he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
[NIV]

The universe doesn't give a crap about you.
crying out to it doesn't do you a thing.
If anything, it makes you look stupid.

But God cares.
As the psalmist points out, he watches over us, both now and "forevermore".
Think about that.
The universe doesn't even care that we exist.
But God watches us intently- the way a child might watch an HO scale train run around and around its tracks, setting it straight when it gets derailed.
So crying out to Him might prove useful.
Even better, don't bother crying out to Him.
just trust that He's gonna guide you right on to where you need to be.

As for chasing after the horizon... don't be ignorant.
Don't try to reach goals that aren't possible to reach.
And don't find yourself believing in things that are obviously ridiculous.
Try to see reason.

Stephen Crane spent a lot of his life observing life in the slums of new york, and essentially surrounding himself with despair.
He died of tuberculosis when he was 28, in the year 1900.
What a bummer... i kinda liked the guy.

On The Lunchroom Dilemma

Today we're going to be talking about a parable that confused me for a long time.
It's in Luke.
I'm quoting NIV.
Lk. 16:1-15
"Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'
"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to bed- I know what I'll do so that, when i lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'
"So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'
"'Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied.
"The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.'
"The he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?'
"'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied.
"He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'
"The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?
"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
The pharisees, who lived money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, "you are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight."

What i could never understand about this passage is why, after the manager acted even more dishonestly (remember, he's getting fired for wasting the guy's possessions in the first place), the master commends the guy.
Why would Jesus be telling his disciples to be dishonest with money?
The definition that the NIV translators must have had in mind for the word "shrewd" must have been "clever".

What throws me is the next paragraph, when he talks about being dishonest with what's been given to you.
Wasn't that guy dishonest with what was given to him?
Why is he then a good example of how to live?

Jesus isn't telling his disciples to be dishonest.
He's telling them to take advantage of what they can.

I guess the opening of the parable, the part about where he was dishonest, applies to us being trustworthy. But the part about us gaining friends with money applies to the second part.

This guy had the ability to give away a considerable amount of money, and he did to gain advantage, and to plan ahead for when he'd need the favors returned.
That's what Jesus wants us to do.
He wants us to plan ahead... but not for when we get fired.
He wants us to plan ahead for eternal life.

Even your social studies teaching will tell you that money is fleeting, and not to spend your time chasing after it.

Bill Gates is an example of a shrewd person.
He never chased after money... it just kind of fell into his lap.
In giant, uncountable sums.
And for the most part, he's used it pretty wisely.
Sure, his house is ridiculously extravagant, but he's not a greedy person, he's fighting aids, and hasn't bought any countries yet.
But if i were Bill Gates, i'd spend it all.
Not on stupid things.
On things that will matter in the long run.
We're supposed to use our resources for God's work, not our own idiot whims.
After all, whims are pretty fleeting.

The next thing i want to focus on is the very last line i quoted:
"What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight."

Jesus is talking here to the religious leaders, about money.
But the line applies to more than just money.

When i went to Somersworth freshman year, the most intimidating thing for me for the first 3 months or so, was the Cafetorium.
AKA, the lunchroom.
I didn't know anyone, so i went out of my way to get to lunch early and get a table all by myself.
And not eat anything.

Eventually, people started to try to get me to be social.
They'd sit with me, let me drink their chocolate milk, and ask awkward questions.
I kept to myself pretty much the whole time.

Now, when i went back to berwick the next year, i knew some people.
But the crew that was the most outgoing was kids from exeter that i didn't know very well.
They got to know me a little bit, and they were pretty cool.
One of the most notable thing about them is that they never dont have a good time.
Anything turns into a joke.

Lunch is a lot more natural when you're around people you know, who are outgoing, who laugh at stuff you do.

I don't sit there this year.
I don't really sit with anyone anymore.
Sometimes i sit with sophomores, sometimes i sit with random people, and sometimes i just dont go to lunch.
This is partly because the other table is too crowded.
But its also for another reason.

When you spend 7 hours a day with people, you get to know their personality.
You might not get to know what their dog's name is, or how often they get their hair cut, but you get a good feeling for what they value and what they hold as important.

So the question then becomes, what do your friends value?
Because like it or not, it doesn't take long for you and your friends to value the same things.

If you went around a lunchroom at most highschools, and listened in on conversations, you probably wouldn't hear a lot of what God values. You'd get more of the "detestable in his sight" stuff.

Get your values on track.
Get your friends to do the same thing... or, get different friends.
Be shrewed in what you have at your disposal.