Hallo-week!!

It's the week from Halloween friends.
It wasn't my favorite holiday growing up (pictures of a younger, much larger, me would explain why Thanksgiving was my #1), but I've always enjoyed, at the risk of sounding like a 5 year old girl, the dressing up part. I used to be a costume master friends, so I would look forward to this every year. As I've grown older though, I'm finding that I'm enjoying the dressing up in costumes part less and less.

So, instead, to celebrate this year I'll be:

1) trying to find a copy of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!!,
2) hitting an awesome lecture at my university centered on Zombies,
3) ending on Halloween at our church's yearly tailgate party.

I understand, not exactly adrenaline-pumping action here, but at my age you start to look at the word "exciting" a little differently. I mean, I might even add a little Nightmare Before Christmas if I'm feeling up to it, who knows. It's Halloween and I can be wily like that.


So to kick off this week of festivities, I think a song is in order:

Happy Hallo-week everybody!!

Calvinism vs. Arminianism

Sorry for such a heavy topic, I promise to make it up to you if you get past it. Literally, if you get past it, even just by scrolling past this post.

I had a long discussion with a friend on Wednesday about Salvation, and ultimately, Predestination. Discussing if man is so totally depraved that he's not even able to believe in God by himself, that he needs God's help to believe in God; whether man is inherently evil or inherently good; and if our lives, including every decision we make in them, are just a series of string pulls by a giant puppet master in the sky.

So basically it was that nice, light, fluffy conversation that you always aim to have right before a concert.

But in all seriousness, this was an issue I had quite a long internal debate about long before this conversation. For 2 years I wondered what God meant by verses like Ephesians 1:4,5:

 . . just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will . . .

and John 6:44 and 65:

"No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day" . . .(65) And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father."

Do these verses mean that God chooses who goes into heaven? Does he have a select few who he decided a long time ago that he likes and wants to be saved? And does that mean he didn't pick everyone else? Do they go to hell just because he didn't pick them, or I guess, like them? What does that mean our God is, predestining us before we even have the chance to decide?

To summarize, this lead me to research 2 schools of thought: Calvinism (Predestination) and Arminianism (Free Will). Here's a great point-by-point comparison between the two. The argument basically boils down to whether God has absolute sovereign control over the universe, meaning he would control Man's steps too, or does Man have a free will to do what he wants, and God not really be in control of situations that boil down to Man's choices. I found that I mostly agreed with Arminianism, but I still had no answer for those verses listed above. (I mean, it's pretty hard to get around "He predestined us".) So logically, I had to believe in Calvinism. Which meant that I also thought that man didn't really have a choice in his own salvation because of God's Irresistible Grace, that God only died to save the Limited number he chose instead of the whole world, and that in the core people are Totally depraved beings who aren't capable of anything good.

Problem was I didn't believe any of that.

None of that sounded even close to the God I knew. The God I knew loved me for me, knew me in my mother's womb, he wasn't some uncaring puppet master. He wanted me to make right decisions, he wasn't a ruler over robots. So I was stuck in a odd place, believing God predestined everything in my head, but believing we all had free will in my heart.

But then I read a book by the author G.K. Chesterton called Orthodoxy. (As a side note, you will see me quote him a lot on here). He spent a chapter or two explaining the importance of imagination in understanding God. He explained that God can't be understood by logic alone, that sometimes we encounter paradoxes. Sometimes we find things that are supposed to be contradictions, things that logically can't both be true at the same time, that are in fact true. Take for example Jesus himself. Fully human, yet fully God. That sounds like a contradiction. Logically, those terms shouldn't work together. But they do. And they are both true statements. So here we have a paradox, something that logic breaks down when trying to explain. Here is another example of a paradox, when Peter is preaching about Christ in Acts 2:23:

"This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross."

The contradiction here comes from who actually sent Jesus to the cross, the men or God. But here's the paradox: at no point is the distinction made from where God's sovereignty ends and where Man's free will begins. Both are just there. Just because these ideas seem mutually exclusive or contradictory, we don't have to settle in one ideology or the other.

This helped me ultimately settle my inner dispute between predestination and free will. To answer the question of whether God is in control or if I have free will to do what I want, the answer is yes. Both are true, God is in control, and I have free will. It's a contradiction that shouldn't make sense, but it does. Logically people can work out how God might foresee my decisions and therefore still maintain control over situations by knowing how to act, and logically people can point out how those verses might mean something different when they are in context, but the point is we don't always need to. I've seen some kids my age aiming to become ministers who encountered these tough questions and lost their faith because they weren't able to rationalize who they believe God is and what they were told about him. Trust me, I still want to pursue God wholeheartedly with logic, but I have to often remember I won't get very far without faith and imagination.



btw, in preparing for this blog post, I found out Ravi Zacharias called G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy one of the most influential books on his life and one of the best works ever written in the English language. If you haven't gotten the hint, read this book!!

Less Heavy Stuff

Not sure if you'd count this "worth it", but at the very least it's a little less heavy:

Dude's a genius.
And if that didn't work, how about Hipster Barbie?

No? Really, you're that picky?
Well, the last thing I've got is a penguin in a sweater, will that work?

Seriously, who can resist something that adorable? Especially since I hear that they love it, much more than dogs do.

I think it's settled, I've made up for the heaviness from before.
Now get on out of here, there's a lot better things you can be doing than wasting your time looking at penguins in sweaters.

Old News

Literally. Sometimes there's news that I missed when it was fresh, but I still feel the need to bring back up. I mean, how can you ignore a headline like this?


Fugitive German Cow Evades Capture

In late May, a beautiful, fattened, almost ready for slaughter 6-year-old cow named Yvonne broke free from her farm and was on the run. She and another cow, named Waltraud, decided to run through the electric fence containing them and make a run for the woods. There seemed to be a disagreement of sorts between Yvonne and her jailbreaking mate because Waltraud returned to the farm later that night. A case of cold feet probably for Waltraud, and although Yvonne was scared, she did not consider turning back an option. She knew she was destined for the slaughterhouse. There was no life for her back there. So she pressed forward.

Little did anyone know that Yvonne would soon integrated herself into a pack of deer so she could hide during the day and graze at night. At one point she leapt out in front of a police car, causing a shot-to-kill order to be declared. This didn't deter Yvonne, it only emboldened her. Yvonne started to make the German papers, becoming somewhat of a symbol for freedom. Even when people could locate her, no one could come within 200 meters of her without her running away. Experienced Western cowboys weren't even able to lasso her. With the police deaming her a possible danger, helicopters with thermal imaging cameras were deployed. Eventually a leading newspaper placed a 10,000 Euro reward for Yvonne's capture, but still no success.

In comes Gut Aiderbichl Animal Sanctuary. They've heard the plight of Yvonne, and want to intervene. They offer to buy Yvonne from her previous owners, as well as her son Friesi and "best friend" Waltraud. Her former owners accept, so now it is the Animal Sanctuary's responsibility for finding Yvonne. First, they enlist Ernst, a bull with "a deep baritone moo that will appeal to Yvonne." He's been called the "George Clooney of bulls", so they are hoping Yvonne will forgo her survival instinct to satisfy some of her other animal instincts. This, however, has had little effect. So the Sanctuary enlisted the help of Animal Psychic Frankziska Matti, to communicate with Yvonne and understand her state of mind. The Psychic states:

"I spoke to her yesterday and she said that she was fine but didn't feel ready to come out of hiding," said Matti. "She said she knew that Ernst had been waiting for her but that she was scared. She said she thought that humans would lock her up and she would no longer be free."

This saga continued for 3 months, until an update hit on August 29th: the search was called off. Yvonne was officially declared free. She didn't seem to pose a danger to anyone else and was not a danger to herself, so she was to be left alone. Proof of this came through a hunter who spotted her in the woods. The hunter was tracking her through the woods at night when Yvonne suddenly "appeared" in front of him. He was so stunned by how quickly she appeared within mere feet of him that he was unable to even fire a tranquilizer. Instead all he could do was stare into her eyes. He claimed that she's adapted to her environment so well that she "looked more like a buffalo than a cow now". Yvonne eventually ran away from him as quickly as she appeared, leaving everyone to believe she wouldn't be a threat to anyone approaching her, that she just wanted to be left in peace.

Yet, less than a week after being declared free, Yvonne turned herself in. She came back to her son, whom she missed dearly, to live out her days in the Animal Sanctuary. It's as if she was fighting for the right to be free, and once she was free, she wanted to rejoin society. Now she will live out her days "comfortable and undisturbed" in the Animal Sanctuary as a popular attraction, with her son and best friend. (Ernst seems to be out of the picture. After all, how long can you keep someone as good as George Clooney tied down?).

And people say there aren't any happy endings anymore.

Repost: On Political Belief

When political events occur, our first impulse is to try to fit it in a box. We hear that something has happened, and we efficiently make up our mind about what it means and whether or not we agree.

A recent study explains our behavior: it shows that the part of our brains we use when making decisions about politics is completely different from the part we use when trying to solve reasoning problems. Why is that? You would think whether we're facing problems affecting the nation or problems affecting our place of work that we would handle both with cold reasoning. Instead, when it comes to politics, we think with "emotion-based Motivated Reasoning", where we seek only to minimize damage to our ideologies or increase the positive effect to what we already support.

How can we move forward from a polarized political system when we can't even listen to ideas from the other side with honest and fair reasoning? I'd love for us to move beyond this. To figure out what develops our political beliefs, what causes them to shift and change over time, and what could be done to open our minds so we could use actual problem-solving reasoning when dealing with issues which so badly need an unbiased mind.

Hopefully it's a start for people to realize what biologically sets us back, and maybe we can move forward from there.

Britain!!

I'm a huge fan of all things British.

Or at least all things British that make it across the pond commercially. Monty Python, Fish and Chips, Top Gear, the BBC, Harry Potter, and so on. One piece of Britain I've fallen in love with lately is comedian Danny Wallace. Allow me to show you why I've fallen in love with him through some excerpts from his photoblog:

I don't know which part touched me more:

(Click to enlarge if you can't read it)


I ordered a bacon panini at IKEA and was surprised to see that even their snacks arrive as DIY flatpacks:




Dolls to love & cherish.




"Sandra? It's me. I'm just wondering how you want me to subtitle the next guest? ... Right ... Really?"

More of this brilliance can be found here.
The reason I bring him up is that I recently found out he's started a breakfast show on Xfm. And it rocks. It can be found through iTunes, definitely worth checking out when you get a chance.

Update:

This adorable cat has come to live with us now. 
She's been here a week, and she loves us to the point of falling asleep in our arms.
She was briefly named John Paul Jones, but upon further inspection we discovered that she was in fact a "she", so her name is now Luna the Gypsy Ninja.
(This was a compromise, as I wanted to name her "Voluptuous Pericard", and my wife wanted something more... normal). 

Also, there's no need to worry that this will become some weird cat-centered blog, as I am almost completely unable to take pictures of Luna. Every time I do this happens:

She isn't called a Ninja for nothing. 

Be Bowlin'

When I think of Chris Tomlin, Hip Hop isn't usually the first thing that comes to mind.

But now it just might be:

This morning...

Sucked. 

I was at work at 4:45am and within 3 hours I was angry at a co-worker for stupid decisions, told by customers that I'm an idiot who can't do my job right, then went into the shirt shop and lived up to those customer expectations.
And then I saw this:

Boom. Suddenly, my day was alright.

Religion Talk

So if you haven't gotten it by now, I love me some Jesus.
And I appreciate intelligent (or at least pseudo-intelligent) conversations on religion.
Especially from unexpected sources.

Thanks Nerdfighteria for reminding me again that the Truth resists Simplicity.

Polycarp

Polycarp (69 - 155), an early church leader known as a kindly pastor and a defender of orthodox doctrine, later served as Bishop of Smyrna. Unlike Ignatius, Polycarp has no hankering for a martyr's death. But he is considered a prime target. During an athletic festival in Smyrna in AD 155, Christians refusing to worship the emperor are threatened with execution. Officials particularly want the revered Polycarp, hoping he will deny the faith and disgrace the Christian community. Polycarp's friends provide a hiding place in a hayloft outside the city, but a boy reports his whereabouts to authorities. Soon the hunt is on, and the old man is discovered, shackled, and brought before authorities. The imperial official begs him to cooperate: "What harm is there to say 'Lord Caesar,' and to offer incense?"
Polycarp was a beloved bishop. His congregations would have no doubt forgiven the old man any weakness displayed in such desperate circumstances. He might have simply offered incense to the emperor. Did not Jesus say, "Render onto Caesar what is Caesar's"? But burning incense meant far more in the pagan mind than merely showing respect.Moreover, Proconsul now goes a step further. To spare his life Polycarp must curse Christ and take an oath to Caesar. He is now standing before a sea of people. He understands the consequences. He does not flinch. The crowd hushes to the sound of his voice. "For eighty-six years I have served Him," he reminds them. "He has never done me wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"Preventing this from turning into a religious rally, the official clarifies the punishment in graphic terms. There will be no trial at all. So it was with Jesus. Polycarp knows the passion story. His own death will not be on a cross, but the pyre is bad enough.
The crowd is growing and becoming restless. It is obvious that this is overkill - the powerful Roman Empire waving its flares in the face of a frail old man. So the official explains again the torture he will endure, pleading with him to just get it over with: Deny Christ, go home, and get on with whatever you do as a Bishop. But Polycarp is not taking the bait. He has one last chance to address the crowd - though his words are aimed at the official: "The fire you threaten burns for a time and is soon extinguished; there is a fire you know nothing about - the fire of the judgment to come and of eternal punishment, the fire reserved for the ungodly. But why do you hesitate? Do what you want."

I talk a lot about great uses of smack talk throughout history.
And that was some good smack talk.
Though I don't think that last line was said out of spite, like normal smack talk.

Polycarp was known as a fiery individual, calling another Christian not teaching the truth "the firstborn of Satan", but I don't think that's how that last line was spoken.
I like to think it was said with a tone of warning. An old man who's wise enough to know what's coming. What's coming for him, and what's coming for everyone there. So he uses his last moments to give the audience one more bit to think on: what's worth dying for over something as simple as bowing down. And then Polycarp asks why they hesitate, so everyone knows that he's not bluffing, that he willingly chose this death.

Smack talk through honest truth: "In the end, this won't matter."
"Do what you want to me, it doesn't change what's true about the universe."
"Burn me for being a Christian. But still you must face punishment for sin that Christ has saved you from."
It's a worldview of Nihilism with an exception, with a center point that gives everything purpose.

Go ahead, burn me.
Mock me.Hurt me.
Just don't ignore me.
Because in the end, nothing else matters. 

A Day with the Boys

I've had mixed emotions about yesterday for a week or 2 now. I'd been looking forward to October 8th for quite a while, but I've also been dreading it. Here's a list to explain why:

Reasons to be excited:
- A gun show in Manatee County. I like guns.
- Getting to hang out with some guys I don't normally spend a lot of time with. 
- One of these friends has been pulling away from our group of friends for some time. This was a chance to hang out with him, have some fun, and maybe even find out what's going on in that head of his. 

Reasons to dread:
- Howl-o-scream. Howl-o-scream is how Busch Gardens in Florida celebrates Halloween, by having the whole park overrun with Zombies and haunted houses. I've never had a desire to go, but this group of friends really wanted too.

So a mix of emotions. As you can tell, the good list outweighed the bad, so I ended up going. And the day did not disappoint. The first half of the day was well documented with photos, so let me walk you through a photo journey:

Before we started, the one friend I wanted to spend time with decided he was going to skip on the gun show and just go to Howl-o-scream. We were all a little frustrated, but grateful we were going to spend any time at all with him so we went with it.

We started the day at 9am, with our first stop at Burger King. Aiming for some good quality breakfast here. While we were there, we came across this:

And by "came across" I mean I asked the lady taking our order for one. I wanted this hat to become a makeshift Dunce Cap, meaning if you did something stupid then you had to wear the hat. Nobody else in the car felt the same way, as you might be able to tell from these pictures:

And quickly the hat was stolen from me and thrown into the trash. A depressing moment, since I was hoping to tell several of the gun enthusiasts that the guy in the second picture was totally Team Edward.

Then we arrived at the Gun Show.

Some foreshadowing of later that night:

As you can tell, even gun lovers have to try to stay fashionable too, with their wide variety of jewelry and protective glass.

We all drooled over the things we can't buy yet, no one bought anything big, and we learned a few things. So it was a great trip.

Leaving the show, we decided to grab some lunch. We looked through the GPS for something close, and we couldn't resist finding out what the "Rose of Sharon" is. So we followed the GPS to... well.. it turned out to be the ghetto. A single house in the ghetto actually, which definitely wasn't a restaurant. This caused the one of us in the backseat to crouch down in his chair and lock his doors, asking us to speed away as soon as possible. 
So we decided to hit another strange name on the GPS hoping for better luck. Allow me to introduce you to the "Omega Mushroom".

After that we tried "Southern Goodness":

And then "Eden's":

Which is when we gave up. We settled for the first place we could see, which turned out to be Big L's:

Though we were intimidated by the gang of bikers that pulled in the same time we did, it turned out to be a nice little diner with some elderly waitresses selling Denny's-style food. We tore it up and headed home, getting some rest before part 2 of our adventure. 


Part 2 was Howl-o-scream and it was... hilarious. Truely hilarious. I honestly thought I was going to have a terrible time, just getting angrier and angrier at everyone trying to scare me, but I wasn't scared at all. I was too busy laughing. Mainly laughing at the 2 guys in our group who were scared beyond belief. Scared to the point that both of them started screaming at everything that moved halfway through the first house. Any time zombies passed us as we walked they huddled closer, and they arranged our group to walk in a straight line where they were in the middle. I was dying. Due to the rain, we only did 2 houses and 1 ride and called it a night, but I couldn't laugh anymore than I had without having a heart attack, so I'd call it a full night. 

So the part of me dreading October 8th was worried for no reason. In fact, I can't see why I never went to Howl-o-scream before, depending on the group you go with, that can be some quality entertainment.

The Sorting Hat Says...

I've just reached the Sorting Hat in Pottermore, and I was sorted into Slytherin. 

I wasn't sure how to feel about this at first. I mean, should I feel guilty that I'm not a pure-blood of any race? And I've really always felt an affinity for Hufflepuff, ever since an unofficial Facebook quiz sorted me there.
But maybe the Sorting Hat saw something more in me than just your average Hufflepuff.
Maybe it sees some sort of greatness.
Some sort of untapped potential that couldn't be reached if I stayed in another house. 

Or maybe it just sees that I'm going to have far too much fun doing this:

It's Wednesday...

So it's the longest day of my week. I go to work from 4:30am till 2pm, then I'm at church by 5 to volunteer with the youth for a few hours. Which means by the end of the night, sometimes I feel like this (forgive the language):

In truth, more like this:

Is it bad that I used a line of his on a student last week?
That I use lines of his on a regular basis?
I know, I know. I'm working on it.
In the meantime though, "forgive me Father, for I'm about to sin."

Gotta hand it to China...

There had to be a way to get back at Americans for all the racial stereotypes Hollywood has put Asians through. And I think China's found it:

Oh yes, you saw that right. Obama Fried Chicken.

To top it off, he's more than just a bit of a mascot, he's even appearing in commericals.

Just look back at Obama's face.
Admire the detail.
This was well thought through.
And no one, at any point, said this might not be a good idea.
That's hilarious.
And just for that China, I will hold back on the obvious racial joke of the gutsy-ness of this move compared to... other things.

Limiting Awesomeness

Meet Demias Jimerson:

Demias is your normal 6th grade boy who enjoys sports, except for one thing: he's full of awesome.

Actually, I think most kids are full of awesome, so let me rephrase: he's ridiculously good at playing football. So good, apparently, that other teams know they can't win when they play against him. A bit of a problem for an Elementary school league, but I guess this is what happens when we have a star in the making, right?

What's making this young man "blog worthy" is the solution to this problem Demias's football league came up with. They've set up a rule that limits the number of times he can score. In the words of the Principal:

"The rule isn't meant to hurt Jimerson. It's there to help the other fifth and sixth graders develop as football players too."

Which just... bugs me. It seems to be a symptom of what's wrong with our society as a whole: we punish success to save the feelings of others. We don't want people to be "too good" at something because it makes everyone else competing feel bad. So instead of everyone learning to be happy for those excelling in their field, we diminish those excelling, even make them feel guilty for doing well. Instead of promoting Demias to an older league so he can have decent competition and become a better player, they are forcing him to sit out, to slow down, to be less than what he can be.

This is how standards are lowered and excellence forgotten. This is how to discourage people from doing their best and to settle for the mediocre. It seems to me that we as people have forgotten how to lose well; how to pick ourselves up from the dirt and strive to compete with our fellow men.

Should we decrease the difficulty of medical exams because too many people are rejected from becoming doctors? Should everyone receive the same pay at a job even if some workers are lazy and cause others to pick up the slack? Then we shouldn't limit awesomeness when we see it. We should encourage it.

Pottermore!!

Through their week of 1 million early account giveaways, I have Beta access to Pottermore.
I know you're jealous.
And I'm sorry I'm taking a little bit of joy in that.

To summarize: It seems to be a mix between an old school text-based RPG and some sort of Flash-based interactive game. You can definitely feel that it's still in Beta, with some broken links and frequent timeouts or slowdowns because the servers can't handle the demand. 

But it rocks. Totally rocks. Haven't gotten far yet, but I'd say my favorite part so far is getting to nickname your friends.

Can't wait to be sorted by the Sorting Hat.... Come on, Hufflepuff...

Dying and Dinner Parties

We live in a culture that seeks to ignore death as much as possible. We push it away from normal conversation, we're barely willing to discuss a Living Will or Life insurance, and we expect funerals to last less then a half hour. Whenever we are finally forced to face it, we resort to cliché's like this one from Gran Tourino:

"Death is bittersweet. Bitter in it's pain, but sweet in it's salvation."

Which is rightly met with Clint Eastwood's reaction:

"All you know about life and death is what you read in the rookie preacher's handbook."

In truth, we don't know how to handle death because we don't allow ourselves to deal with it. We shelter ourselves from it and wonder how come we lack experience of handling it properly.

Here's a project that's changing that:

It's called Lessons for the Living, a documentary of hospice patients and hospice volunteers who are talking from a different perspective than we normally encounter.

It's somewhat haunting and refreshing at the same time to see people deal with something directly that we so avidly avoid.

Am I on my period? I hear guys get those too...

This week has been kinda... blah.

I've had some great conversations, met some cool people, had a productive week at work, and even had a great night at church. But through all this good stuff I've just been stuck in this weird... mood. It's a hard mood to describe too, but I think Anderson Cooper might have captured it:

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say my week was slimy, but I think you get the point. Btw, that was Anderson trying spinach for the first time, so it's nice to know I'm not the only one on a food adventure.

Then again, maybe my lack of sleep has something to do with this...
Maybe I'll end this as a post at 1:30 in the morning instead of 2 a.m. or later.
Liking those big strides? I know, I try to shoot big on these things.