Recently in Pointless Pontification Category
At first, I thought this was a joke. Then I realized it wasn't.
Ingenious. Too bad this has never been tried before
I'm sure it'll work great.
A dash of Python and a smattering of HTML will make all the difference in how government by committee works.
I'm reading St. Augustine's Confessions as the non-biblical text in my own personal study and I came across this fantastic quote from Book I, which seems to smack writers squarely in the forehead:
When a man seeking for the reputation of eloquence stands before a human judge while a thronging multitude surrounds him, inveighs against his enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most vigilant heed that his tongue slips not into grammatical error, but takes no heed lest through the fury of his spirit he cut off a man from his fellow-men.
— St. Augustine
Confessions
Expect me to quote him more as I get through the entire work.
Another towel thrown into the ring in the long-standing argument over whether Christianity is treated unfairly by Hollywood:
Are we so confident, I wonder, in how virtuous we are and how virtuously we act in and towards the rest of the world, that the only possible explanation for a negative reputation is an irrational and unfair prejudice? Could it be—I’m just asking—that one reason so many Christians are portrayed as jerks in contemporary media is that a lot of Christians act like jerks in contemporary society?
— All Things Ken
Read the whole thing. (HT: Looking Closer/Jeffrey Overstreet)
My sermon from yesterday:
I
1 A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death better than the day of birth.
2 It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
Ecclesiastes 7 (ESV)
It turns out my Gothic sensibilities aren’t all that far off the mark after all!
It’s not that I don’t like being happy. And it’s not that I don’t like seeing others being happy. Sometimes, I’m absolutely running out the ears with happy. It’s just, well, to use a cliche: complicated.
...my profession of faith should not understood [sic] as an assertion of holiness. Quite the opposite, in fact. My profession of faith is an admission of my sinfulness. This is something many unbelievers seem to have a hard time grasping.
—Frank WilsonFrom Frank Wilson's blog.
I'm probably going to run the risk of being misunderstood with this post, but I've been getting annoyed lately at people who think they know what they're talking about but who, in fact, don't have a well-rounded understanding of their sheer ignorance.
You've heard the phrase "it takes all kinds"? No, it doesn't. There just are.
I've always been fascinated by computer games. I remember playing Keystone Kapers on my cousin's Atari, I had an original Nintendo (my mom still has it), and I've been playing console and computer games since my Apple IIc days (with the green-tinted monitor, no less).
But Gamers sometimes make me want to smack them. Especially when they rant on about the only computer platform they've ever had any exposure to (Windows) and how Macs are for snobs and zealots.
I get irritated because they've only ever used a computer for fun. Computer makers design these weird-looking enclosures for them so these guys can have bright, shiny things on their computers that make them feel all high-techy and stuff. But they don't depend on a computer for productivity. They can afford to put up with idiosyncrasies in the operating system and software that actually slow you down and let you down. But some of us actually have to get stuff done on a computer.
Their knowledge and understanding of the depth and breadth of what can be done on a computer is fairly superficial. I'm not saying that Mac users aren't susceptible to the same dogmatic views on computers and that there aren't Mac users that don't really understand the inner workings of the computer they use to get stuff done, but if you take a random sample of gamers and compare them to a random sample of Mac users, you'll find that gamers tend to be myopic about their technology and Mac users actually understand the fundamentals of why they chose that platform. Gamers adamantly stick to what they know and deride anything else. They make fun of other technologies to which they have had no exposure.
I've used most of the major operating systems and I work all day within the confines of the computer world. I depend on my computer to do actual work and it's not an exaggeration to say that I know of what I speak when I espouse an opinion about it. Others, with louder and more dogmatic opinions also espouse their opinion, but it becomes immediately apparent that the more dogmatic the opinion, the less well-informed it is.
With this new release of Apple's operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, Apple has exposed itself to criticism for their unfounded anti-Windows attitudes. There are a number of issues to be fixed in OS X 10.5 that should have been caught before releasing it into the wild. One of the show-stoppers for developers like myself is the delaying of Java 1.6 on Leopard. But even then, it's still the best operating system on the planet and I get more work done on my Mac than I do in Windows or on my Linux workstation. I'm getting ready to upgrade my PowerBook G4 to a new MacBook Pro when Java 1.6 gets released and Apple has had a chance to release a few updates to 10.5 to fix some of the more outstanding issues.
If all you want to do is goof off and play games, then by all means, buy a crappy laptop at half the price (you get what you pay for) and laugh all the way to the service center about how much money you saved on your shiny toy. Just keep in mind that some of us have actual work to do. I don't want to brand all gamers as second-class computer citizens, but, at the very least, get a little more broadly informed about what's happening in the larger (and arguably, more important) "real world" of computing before you draw your ignorance in such sharp relief.
I've been going back over some of the old posts and organizing things a little better now that I've converted the site over to MovableType 4. I ran across this little piece of creative non-fiction that I wrote as a posting on the school's bulletin board in our discussion of Herman Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener". I have to say, it's a work of pure brilliance! Or, something:
An Analysis of Melville's 'Bartleby the Scrivener'
I felt like I should fish it out of obscurity because I liked it so much. Sometimes, you just end up having a love affair with your own words...
I feel like I've been writing fiction for a long time. Not counting that time when I went to the lake with my grandparents and started working on a mystery novel when I was all of nine or ten, I've been concentrating on writing fiction for the last six or eight years. I would take my Underwood portable typewriter with me when I worked at the factory. Got some strange looks from folks, as I'm sure you can imagine. The life of a writer is a perfect fit for my personality and who I feel like I am.
But sometimes stories come out of me that I don't know what to do with.
The story that won me Editor's Choice at Relief Journal is still a mystery to me. I don't know where that story came from. I read it again when I got that issue in the mail and although I recognized the words I had written, in some ways it didn't feel like it was mine. At that point, it really wasn't. It had grown up and gone out into the big, bad world on its own. It had become its own "thing," wholly separate from its creator.
I wrote a story the other day and had planned to submit it to a contest. I let a few trusted readers look at it, though, and they confirmed my own suspicions: it's not really a literary story. It's pretty conventional—conventional narration, conventional dialogue, conventional emotional arc… More of a mass-market piece than a "literary" work. I know, labels shouldn't really matter. "Literary" is just an arbitrary adjective to describe work that tries (whether it succeeds or not isn't so much the issue) to go beyond the conventional and explore areas of human experience in new (and sometimes fresh) ways. This story doesn't really do that. It's just a plain-ol' short story.
I wrestle violently with the ogre of wanting to be A Writer That Matters. I set for myself a lifetime goal: to have something I've written be anthologized in a college textbook. It's an ambitious goal; I look through the authors that have stories in the various literary anthologies I have collected over the past several years and I doubt whether I have what it takes to play in that league.
But maybe that's short-sighted. I really would like to make a full-time living as a fiction writer so I can get out of web development entirely. Most of the writers in those anthologies, while respected for their craft, are not John Grishams. They probably have no desire to be. I think there's a lot to be said for focussing on the purity of your art at the expense of commercial viability. But somewhere, there's a tight-rope to walk. Somewhere, there's a line you spend time jumping back and forth across so you can be respected for your art while allowing yourself to be commercially viable so you can continue to do your art.
One of the things I've considered doing, in addition to writing short stories and novels, is to get into writing screenplays. A couple screenplays could give me the income I need to keep writing the more "artistic" works. I've been toying with the idea of writing a screenplay for quite a long time. I think it fits my personality very well because screenplays are a shorter, more concentrated form of story-telling. My writing also tends to be very visual. I doubt I would have a lot trouble transitioning the same skills I've learned writing fiction to the more visual medium of film-making. It's also a market that doesn't have as bleak an outlook as that of fiction in print.
At any rate, I'm not giving up on this latest short story. I'm a little disappointed in myself that it's not more "literary" than it is, but I feel like it's a story that has some mass-market potential because it's much more accessible than a lot of stuff I've written lately.
If nothing else, I'll just have to say to myself: "you did the best you could, so be happy with that."
Unfortunately, I rarely am.
As a member of our pulpit committee at church, it's our job to fill in the pulpit until we can find a new pastor (our last pastor retired). It was my turn this Sunday.
The scripture referenced is the Book of Jude.
The book of Jude has always interested me. It's short—only twenty-five verses. That fits well with my short attention span. It's mysterious, too: just who are these "angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home," and what about the oft-mentioned reference to the apocryphal Book of Enoch in verse fourteen?
It's a dramatic book, no longer than it is: in verse seven, Jude reminds us of the fire from heaven at Sodom and Gomorrah; and verse eleven, the Israelite fricassee of Korah's rebellion.
Its metaphors are beautiful and frightening: (verse 12) "These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead." It's a work of literary brilliance in its own right.
These are some of the reasons I personally am interested in the book of Jude. But if there's one thing I've learned about myself as I've matured, it's that what interests me is, quite often, of little to no interest to everyone else. As much as I'd like to, we won't talk about the Nephilim of Genesis six. Or the Book of Enoch. Or the poetic metaphors. I think the book of Jude has several important themes that are as relevant today as they were two millennia ago. Be on your guard—and pray. Be merciful, but be careful. Be proactive. Contend for the faith—and do it with confidence.
This topic may not interest very many of you. It's not related to writing in any way I can manufacture. It's simply something that I've had on my mind lately and I have to get my thoughts down somewhere so I can obsess about the next thing on the list.
This post is about Satan.
He's a fascinating character, I have to admit. The arch-enemy of Man has appeared in all kinds of literature (not to mention other creative endeavors) throughout human history. We're told to be wary of his subtle ways and we're admonished (quite rightly) to be careful of our own arrogance so we don't end up one day becoming neighbors with the fiery Prince of Darkness.
One of the things that has drawn my attention over the years (off and on…I'm too ADD to pay attention to any one thing for an extended period of time) is the question of angels and demons and what happened in that, as Charles Williams puts it, War in Heaven.
Well, I've been doing some digging and I don't think we're looking at the fall of Satan correctly.
I've always been taught that Satan and God had their big row at some time before the Bible records human history. In other words, Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth" (KJV) is lying. Well, not "lying" per se, but at the very least omitting certain important facts. After closely re-reading a few important verses, I don't think that any longer. I think Satan and God butted heads somewhere between Genesis 2:18 and 2:21.
I now take Genesis 1:1 literally. The word "heaven" used (in the King James…the NIV uses the word "heavens," plural; I'm not sure what implication that has on our understanding, but there it is) is the Hebrew word "shamayim" or "shameh." The same word used fairly often in Genesis 1 to refer both to the universe and the atmosphere (although in the King James, the phrase "firmament of heaven" is used to describe the air). Luke 10:18 says that Satan fell from "heaven" (Greek word: ouranos or Uranus, like the planet and the various gods of the sky—it seems to mean basically the same thing as the Hebrew equivalent in the Old Testament) and that Jesus personally witnessed it. So how could Satan fall from something that wasn't yet created if his fall occurred before Genesis 1:1? And if he was already fallen before Genesis 1, why was he allowed into the Garden of Eden? Or even on this planet? Wouldn't his very presence defile the perfect creation that hadn't yet known the effects of Sin? Well, I think the answer is: he couldn't, he wouldn't have been, and absolutely. I think Satan, when he conversed with Eve, was not yet fallen. Leaning in that direction, sure. Maybe even had it out a time or two with the boss.
I think the Bible is fairly clear on when the fall of Satan occurred. It happened in Genesis 3:14. Before then, he was "more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made" (Gen 3:1 KJV) but the comparison between the animals and Satan—an angel, after all—is hard to ignore. Angels may be a little higher than Man on the totem pole, but they're not a substitute for us. After Genesis 3:14, he was changed into (basically) a snake, which is the image that sticks with us over the centuries.
But why did God create him? I think therein lies the rub. Angels were created as helpers to Man. Genesis 2:18 is God saying that "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable helper for him." (NIV) Genesis 2:19-20, though, is Adam naming the animals:
Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. (NIV)
We've probably just assumed that the whole parade of sundry animals was the audition for Man-helper (say it with me: "That's disgusting!"). That interpretation makes some sense, since it's sandwiched between God ruminating on Man's companions and the creation of woman. But all this talk about helpers is strangely absent from the verses talking about Adam naming the animals. And the animals had all been created in the first week. Why would God say "let's go make a helper for Man" if He was going to pick from things already created? Wouldn't He have said "let's go find a helper for Man"?
UPDATE: Athol Dickson has drawn to my attention that, even at this point, we're still in the creation mode. That God could have been drawing up an animal and asking Adam "Okay, what about this one?" I'll have to look into this a little more.
I think He would have if that had been the plan. I think, after having gone back over this carefully, that the angels were created after Genesis 2:18. As helpers. As subordinates?
UPDATE: Okay, so it doesn't ever say that angels, specifically, were "created" as our helpers. Maybe that's a little bit of a stretch too. Athol points out that they were "sent" (Heb 1:14) but that that's not necessarily the same as created for that purpose.
Yeah, that's where we lost Satan too.
The last sentence of Genesis 2:20, then, turns ominous: "But for Adam no suitable helper was found." (NIV) Wait a minute, I thought God went off and created a "suitable helper" for Adam? How is it that, in the space of two verses, it's ixnay on the elperhay? Well, from what we know about Satan, things just didn't work out. With a little dash of free will and a heavy dose of inflated ego, I suspect Satan said something along the lines of: "I'll quit if you make me take orders from that human!" Ever the good executive, though, God probably said: "Well, we hate to lose you. Don't let the door hit you in the…"
So what are the implications? None, really. Oh, purists would argue that anything that helps us take the Bible as literally as it was meant to be taken is A Good Thing. Believing in God, and then believing in Jesus and his saving grace came easy for me. Probably too easy. But for some people, any alleged gap in the timeline is a stumbling block. But if that's the case, there are bigger issues at work there and an untrained theologian's observations on obscure Bible lore isn't going to make much difference.
But you never know. Maybe someone needs to hear, in a different way, that this whole universe is all about you. Well, me too, but that's another theological sticky wicket. It really is all about us. About Man. About God's relationship to us in this physical world and consequences that stretch into "the heavens." If the angels were created as helpers to Man, then the angels weren't the "first try," the "beta," or the Grand Experiment. Sure, God gave them free will, but that's just the kind of God he is. He's cool like that. We're the important thing. Not the pretty little bunnies or the cute little trees or the fluffy spotted owls. Us. Humans. People. Creatures with souls and minds and hearts.
Am I all wet? (Of course I am, but that was a rhetorical question) After close reading and study, I don't think so, but feel free to offer your own informed opinions. In a way, this is your blog too.
