Just a warning, a kind of disclaimer if you will, before I begin. If you're the sort of Christian who likes their belief system nice and tidy - summed up in three Gospel presentation points - then you might want to skip this entry.
What follows (or at least what I intend to write as I begin) is a kind of a personal spiritual State of the Union address - a State of the Soul address if you will. There's a program on NPR called This I Believe. In this program, people from all walks of life share something about what they believe. The program is very diverse. The topics range from what people believe about death, about love, about peace, justice, hope, about a wide variety of topics relating to the human experience. It's an amazing program and I've more than once been driven to tears listening to it because it's people talking from the heart about something they've come to understand (often something at odds with the norm), often through episodes of tragedy.
After listening to an episode, I always think about what it is that I believe about God. The unvarnished, religiously incorrect, honest truth about what I believe about who God is and how he relates to me and I to him.
I'm going to try to do that tonight (or in the next few nights if I don't finish in one sitting) but I must issue another warning before I begin. It's not like I've already got my ideas worked out beforehand. I'm going to be piecing things together as I write them so this entry might jump around a lot and don't be surprised if I contradict myself from time to time. This is almost a kind of stream of consciousness, free writing exercise so don't expect something concise and ordered.
Here we go.
There is one thing I can start with which I know for certain. God is God and can do whatever he wants to do. He's God, that's his right, that's what it is to be God. I don't see how anyone who believes in a Biblical God can dispute that.
Now as obvious as that is, it's something I only came to understand a couple years ago. See, for most of my Christian life, I attended churches that preached what you might call Transaction Theology. This is a view of God that says that X, Y, and Z will happen if you do A, B, and C for God. The most common expression of this theology can be seen in this popular Gospel presentation: "If you accept Christ into your heart, you'll never feel alone again (or) your life will be filled with a sense of purpose and direction (or) God will set things right in your life."
This kind of Transaction Theology was ubiquitous. It was drummed into me at church retreats, in church services, in Christian books, on Christian radio, all over the place. It always took the form of, if you do this certain thing for God then you can expect God to do this other thing in return.
And of course, I wanted to be blessed, I wanted to have God fill the void of loneliness, to give me peace and understanding, I wanted to see my cup overfilled with the oil of joy. And so I did the A, the B, and the C to the best of my understanding and ability and waited for the X, the Y, and the Z, but far more often than not, I'd be left waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting and waiting and waiting.
I've since come to understand that God is not a salesman. His gifts and his blessings are a product of his unearned and undeserved grace, not a result of anything we might do to entice or earn them.
To sum up this first point, maybe I can restate my first idea this way: God is God and there's nothing we can do to make him do what we want him to do. I wish someone would have shared this with me earlier because it would have spared me years of frustration as a Christian.
Well, what does that mean for the act of praying? I mean if there's nothing we can do to earn God's favor and if God can do whatever he wants to do then why pray?
Honestly, I don't know what I believe about prayer. I know prayer is supposed to be central to the Christian life. I know Paul encouraged the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing, and that he told the Ephesians the same thing. I know there are references to Jesus going off on his own to pray (see Luke 6:12, for example). I know all the Christians who ever made a difference in this world would say that prayer was absolutely essential to them.
I also know that prayer has never been easy for me. It's not something that makes me feel closer to God. It usually feels forced and odd. Unfortunately, the only time prayer feels real for me is when either lashing out at God over something I'm frustrated with him about or when I'm asking forgiveness for something stupid that I've done. If prayer is a kind of conversation with the Almighty, then ours is a pretty dysfunctional relationship.
But I try to pray when I can, when it's all I can do. And I suppose I'm glad for this avenue even if I can't always find my way through. I wish I had the kind of vibrant prayer life that I've read about but I'll take what I can get.
You know, I've heard it said that men usually relate to God the way they did with their father. That's certainly been the case in my life. I love my father. He's a hard worker and he always goes above and beyond to make sure the job is done right. He's also very quiet. A whole week going by without he and I saying anything to each other is no big deal. For all the years I lived at home, we never really had much in the way of conversation. Most of what I know of him I overheard in conversations when my uncle and aunty would come over for dinner and they would talk about growing up in Hawaii.
There was a time, maybe ten years ago, when I did try to talk to my father. It was hard. It felt really weird, probably as much for him as it was for me. I can't remember what it was that we tried to talk about, I just know I felt a lot better after it was over, not because I had learned something about him but because the act of talking to him just felt so unnatural and I was glad we were back to our usual silences.
I know he loves me. I've never held anything against him. I've never wished he'd talk to me more. That's just the way it's always been between him and I.
And that's pretty much the way I see God. Well, not exactly. For a long time, I really longed to hear from God. I'd hear all kinds of stories in church about how God told someone to do something or how God led them to do something - all these stories about an intimate relationship with God.
But not anymore. I've come to understand that some people somehow do interact with God in ways that are as real (some of them might say more real) as the way they do with their best friends. I've also come to believe that this doesn't happen for everyone because it doesn't happen for me. And maybe that seems unfair, but as I said above, God is God and can do whatever he wants.
I said I'd do my best to speak the unvarnished truth about what I believe so here it is. I believe all Christians are children of God, that we're all a part of this huge family. God loves us all as his children but he has his favorites. When Jesus was here he had both his inner circle and a most beloved disciple. This all probably sounds harsh, but I believe it's just a messy, earthly way of understanding something that has higher, heavenly design. Maybe some Christians are more needy than others and so God makes himself more available to them. Maybe some Christians have already been blessed with a healthy self-image or they already have a healthy support network surrounding them so God doesn't have to hover as close and micromanage.
Maybe in my case, he wants me to be a voice for those other Christians out there who've heard the same Transaction Theology that I did and are still waiting for their returns to come in. I'm sure they're out there, probably not in churches anymore, but out there somewhere. I don't know if this is the case, but I like this idea because it makes some kind of sense of my life, gives it a purpose. I wish he had taught me this through personal tutoring rather than sending me to Hard Knocks University, but God is God and maybe this was the only way I could have arrived at this understanding.
To sum up, here's what I believe about God.
God is God and can do whatever he wants to do.
Prayer is a mystery.
God has favorites, sort of.
Maybe I'm God's advocate to those who feel spiritually neglected because of some variation of Transaction Theology or to let Christians who also don't hear from God that they're not the only ones.
Not exactly an uplifting state of affairs, but it is what it is. I hope my faith isn't always so bland and mediocre. I don't know.
Just to be clear, I believe in the essential tenants of the Christian faith, essentials that are best expressed in The Nicene Creed. I don't think anything I've written would fall outside of the creeds or (more importantly) anything written in the Bible, but I know I've written things that fall outside the common fundamentalist's understanding of Christianity, but I don't mind that so much.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
253. what not to wear
A couple weeks ago I went clothes shopping with Miles from my band and Jenn (Martin, the lead singer's, wife). Specifically, we were looking for clothes for me to wear when on stage with my band. See, back in Hawaii, I didn't put much effort into what I was wearing while playing. I mean I made it a point not to dress like a dork, but jeans and a cool t-shirt was the norm for me during performances.
Things are different now that we're in Seattle. Rock bands mean business up here and so if we're to compete, we need to dress the part. The other guys in the band have their look together already, but I needed more help because the things that I like to wear around town won't work on stage.
What's my normal garb? Jeans, t-shirt, and (now that I'm in Seattle) jacket.
If I had a bottomless budget to spend on clothes, I'd go around wearing some nice, tailored blazers, hemmed jeans, and some artsy t-shirts. If I had to give it a name, I'd call it smart but not preppy. I think this look would work on stage, but this look is expensive (especially the tailored bit and yes, it IS necessary because I'm Asian so everything is too long for my short Okinawan body) so it's not an option.
Because I couldn't go with the look I wanted, I needed help because while I know how to dress the way I like to dress, I wanted to explore a different look and I needed a fresh pair of eyes. Thus the shopping spree with Miles and Jenn.
I had a great time. We hit up some stores and a couple malls and I told them I would try anything they thought might look good, even if it was outside my comfort (and fashion) zone. And they did.
It was hilarious because I'd be in the dressing room trying things on and they'd literally be throwing more stuff for me to try over the dressing room door. It really did feel like being on the TLC show, What Not To Wear because I'd go into the dressing room to try something on and when I emerged, Miles and Jenn were there to comment and critique.
Now before I go on, I need to tell you about the single most embarrassing day of my life. I don't remember what grade exactly, probably fifth or sixth grade, but it was at a time in the early eighties when designer jeans were all the rage.
Back in elementary/intermediate school days, I was a dork. Now while dorks and nerds are similar, there's a crucial difference. Nerds, at least, have their intellect working for them. Dorks, on the other hand, share all the socially clueless handicaps that nerds have, only they don't have the sharp mind and good grades to buffer their self-esteem.
On the social food chain, there was only one other guy lower than I, but come to think of it, he had a girlfriend so technically, he was cooler than I was. Damn it!
Anyway, I was always trying to find ways to up my social status and cool factor but opportunities were few and far between. But then I started to notice how all the cool kids were wearing and talking about these new jeans that were hitting the stores. Now while the new cool jeans didn't look all that different to me than the Toughskins pants I wore (the ones with knee reinforcement pads sewn on the inside so only you knew they were there), the one thing that seemed to make these jeans cool was the name brand.
In this name brand, I saw the opportunity I was waiting for. If only I could get my mom to buy me a pair of these cool, brand name jeans, the gates of popularity would swing wide open for me and I'd enter and be granted instant "it" status.
Thus began the whining onslaught.
I pestered my parents about these jeans. I tried every angle. I tried explaining to them the social necessity of these jeans. Of course I told them how everybody was wearing them but they had the well rehearsed "if everybody starts jumping off the bridge are you going to jump off too?" retort. I knew these jeans were a lot more expensive than my Toughskins so I had to pull out all the stops. I tried to make nice. I watered the plants, I did my piano practice without being told to, I ate my vegetables without pouting. I even cleaned my room.
Now while room cleaning doesn't sound like all that big of a deal, I was a rotten kid. When my parents told me to clean my room, I'd move so slowly and complain so much that my mom would eventually push me aside and clean my room for me. Maybe she thought this would give me a guilt trip. And yeah, sometimes I felt bad but mostly, I was just glad I didn't have to do it myself. So you can see what a big deal it was for me to clean my own room unprompted.
Maybe that's what finally did the trick because the next time we hit the mall, my mom told me to go pick out some of those designer jeans I kept talking about.
I didn't waste any time. I found a pair that had the name I kept hearing around school. I tried them on to make sure they'd fit then I brought them to my mom who made one more comment about how expensive they were before finally paying for them.
I don't know how I slept that night. I can't remember, but I wouldn't be surprised if I actually slept in those jeans. I couldn't wait to get to school. I couldn't wait to play in the cool part of the playground and I was sure I'd start receiving invitations to those cool birthday parties at Farrell's where the Sundays were so big it took three kids to finish one.
The next day came and I remember walking onto the campus. I was excited but also a bit apprehensive because I wasn't sure exactly how it was that one entered the upper echelons of cool. I did notice some kids out of the corner of my eye who were pointing in my direction and whispering. I could only assume that they were wondering where it was this cool new kid with the fancy jeans came from.
And then I went to homeroom, and what was supposed to be the best day of my pre-pubescent life, imploded upside-down and inside out.
See, prior to this, I heard one brand of jeans being mentioned more than any other and so naturally, that's the brand I got my mom to buy for me. So there I was in the homeroom doorway with my Jordache jeans looking at a roomful of my peers laughing at me.
Me and my designer, Jordache girl's jeans - the ones that had the little horse head embroidered on the back pockets.
Yeah, it was bad. Even some of my teachers laughed at me. The worst part of it was, I had to go through that whole day in those jeans.
I kid you not, I didn't buy or wear another pair of jeans until the summer after my Junior year in high school and even then, I made sure I bought them in the company of friends who knew what was what.
Okay, so I share that story because it turns out, one of the things that I bought on my shopping spree with Miles and Jenn was a pair of women's jeans! The jeans I'm wearing in the photo. Turns out, women's jeans are all the rage in emo/indie circles. Maybe it's a reaction against the loose and baggy look. Maybe it's a way of confusing marketing executives. Maybe it's just because they fit better...because they do.
Couple things I learned about today's women's jeans.
1. Very short zipper. At first I couldn't figure this out. Then on my first night wearing them out, I had to go to the bathroom and then it all made sense. If you don't get it yet, use your imagination. Think about the difference between men's bathrooms and women's bathrooms and then think about why women wouldn't need long zippers.
2. What is up with the miniscule front pockets? I swear, the BACK pockets are bigger than the front ones! What's up with that? No wonder you need to carry around a purse.
3. And what's the deal with your sizing system? Guys jeans are sized by inches around the waist and inseam (for example, I would wear 31/28 which means 31" around the waist with a 28" inseam). But when a pair of women's jeans says size ten, to what does the number ten refer to? Jenn told me that ten just means larger than nine but smaller than eleven and that a ten in one brand might be a nine in another brand or eleven in yet another. Great system, girls.
Oh and one last thing about jeans in general. How does anyone justify spending upwards of one hundred dollars on jeans? One of the stores we hit was Lucky Brand Jeans and while we did find a pair that looked great, my debit card had a heart attack when it saw the price tag: $130 on sale!
Earth to shoppers, jeans are casual wear. Casual as in you shouldn't have to take out a loan to own a pair. If I wore a pair of $130 jeans, that's all I'd wear. I wouldn't want any other piece of clothing to distract people from noticing my $130 jeans. For $130, those jeans better come with a guarantee that says, "if you don't meet someone and get a date while wearing these jeans, you get a full refund and a back rub, and a bag of chips."
PS. an apology to those who thought my disco was a kind of celebration dance, that I had finally gotten a date with Quest Girl, but such is not the case.
Maybe if I had a pair of $130 jeans...
Sunday, February 18, 2007
252. a confession (part two...sort of)
Yesterday, I wrote about a prayer and a "deal" I made with God that had to do with some missing files at work and a girl I've been trying to ask out. In that entry I made reference to some ancient history in my life that calls all this into question.
There was a time more than ten years ago (ugh, that makes me feel so old) when I thought I had heard from God about rekindling a failed relationship with a girl that I had fallen hard for, a few years before that. That story is entirely too long and messy to retell here but if you want more detail, you can find it in blog 174.
Suffice it to say that I thought I had heard from God regarding this girl (I believe I referred to her as Kay in blog 174) but it turned out not to be true and that left me reeling in regards to the "relationship with God" metaphor that is so popular in so many churches (at least the churches that I attended at the time).
See, back then, I heard lots of talk at church and at the para-church meetings I attended about the importance of having a relationship with God. I'd hear testimonies all the time about persons who had attended church all their lives but only recently learned that "Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship." I also heard sermons about the importance of hearing from God when it came to important decisions in life. Others talked about how they related to God the way they did to their best friend.
All this talk of relationship was confusing to me because I couldn't figure out why I wasn't experiencing anything that I would call a relationship, much less a friendship with God. I mean, when I think of the word relationship, I think of a back and forth conversation between two people. My relationship with God seemed to be all forth and no back - I'd pray and ask God questions but I was never able to discern any kind of reply.
For a while, I thought I wasn't good enough or that I wasn't trying hard enough. I did my best to read my Bible more and to pray more and to volunteer more of my time at church. But no matter how hard I tried or how much work I did or how many books I read on the topic, I wasn't hearing back from God.
Eventually, I burned out from trying too hard. I didn't abandon my faith completely, in my heart I knew that God was real and that I believed that he humbled himself and came to earth in the person of Jesus and lots of the other foundational things I had learned. I just couldn't stop believing something that resonated so deeply within me, it's just that I wasn't exactly sure what that something was exactly, and I wasn't going to just blindly believe what people were telling me it should be.
Now for lots of Christians, this is the point where they jettison their faith and jump into the deep end of debauchery. Me? I stopped going to church for a while. I started drinking - not hard drinking, I just felt free to drink a Jack and Coke if I was at a bar or club with friends (I didn't have my first drink until I was 23). I started asking some big, hard questions about what it meant to be a follower of Christ - questions I'm still asking today.
Basically, what happened was, I decided to break off the crust of the cultural aspects of American Evangelical Christianity to get back to the core essential truths. And though it was hard at first, one of the things I let go was this relationship idea.
At first I felt in the minority - that I was one of the few unlucky Christians who just weren't born with spiritual sensitivity (I called it "broken spiritual antennae" in a previous blog). But then a friend gave me a copy of a couple CDs that contained a talk by a Christian apologist (person who tries to defend the faith through reason) named Greg Koukl who runs a radio show called Stand To Reason. The talk was titled "Decision Making and the Will of God" and I won't go into detail about it here (see blog 94 for my longer take on the talk...caution, small kine potty mouth), but basically Koukl makes the case that according to principles drawn from the Bible, making decisions (miniscule or monumental) comes down to asking three simple questions:
1. What do you want to do? When presented a with a choice (A or B), the first question is to simply ask, which one do I want? Which do I prefer?
2. Is it moral? Is making that choice within the boundaries presented in the Bible? When choosing between adultery and abstaining, most would rather choose to get it on, but Biblically, that's not a moral choice so it's off the table.
3. Is it wise? Cashing out your retirement fund and gambling it all in Vegas is something people contemplate (though not me), and while I don't think it's explicitly prohibited by the Bible, but it's certainly not a wise decision.
Simple as that. No waiting on divine revelation, no setting out of fleeces, no casting of lots, and, I suppose, no banking on lost (misplaced) files to be found. If something you want to do passes those three tests then have at it.
And so finally, I'm back where I began - at this deal I made with God about asking Quest Girl out. The prayer about the files was something I thought would be fun, a way to brighten up an otherwise tedious task. But when they were actually found, I was torn. A part of me was ecstatic because I thought maybe I had seen the had of God at work, but another part of me remembered the situation years ago with Kay (see paragraph three above) and how wrong I was then about supposedly hearing something from God.
At this point, I know there are some Christian friends I have who would tell me that I made a binding agreement with the God of the universe when I prayed that little prayer and that I have to live up to my end of the deal. I know there are other Christian friends who will tell me that I'm making way to big of a mountain out of far too small of a molehill (see the comments section in blog 252).
What do I think?
Well this might seem like an non sequitur, but maybe things went down the way they did just so that I could write about it.
Here's what I mean. Those Christian friends I mentioned? Let's put them into two camps. Camp A believes that my prayer about missing files and Quest Girl amounts to a binding covenant and that I must uphold my end or risk dire consequences. Camp B thinks it was a stupid prayer to pray and that finding the files has nothing to do with talking to this girl.
Normally, Camp A people don't hang with Camp B people and it's just as true the other way around. No surprise there because birds of a feather, they do flock together. But you know what? It may be logically inconsistent, their two views might be incompatible, but I honestly believe that they're both right...and that they're both wrong.
I don't mean to say that there's no truth to be found in the world, but I believe that the truth of a matter such as this is far more generous and complex than those in Camp A or Camp B would make it out to be. Before he was crucified, Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that his followers "would be one," that they would be united despite their differences.
Charles Baudelaire is quoted as saying, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist." That's a neat trick, but I think a far more powerful device in the devil's toolbox is division. By dividing Christians along non-essential lines, he keeps Christians hunkered down, defending their piece of theological turf instead of heading out into an increasingly broken, dysfunctional world.
I'm not saying we all have to come to some sort of agreement on which side (Camp A or B) is right, but I am saying that we should be able to agree to disagree in love. And no, that's not easy or clean or what comes to us naturally, but I believe that the widening divide in America (red versus blue, for example) is, in part, a consequence of Christians' failure to reconcile our own differences and to work together.
Dr. Martin Luther King referred to 11am on Sunday mornings as "the most segregated hour in this nation." (You can see the context of this quote here. Highly recommended.) And I hope I'm not doing a disservice to him by suggesting that this segregation exists not only along racial lines but also along ideological ones.
Let me end with this. The Bible teaches that God reveals himself not only through the Bible, but also through the universe he created (Romans 1:20). And what do we see there? Variety and diversity of color, shape, form, function, taste, smell, and on and on. What else do we see? We see harmony, symbiosis, a network of complex, highly dependent interconnectedness.
Seen in this way, God's creation tells me two things about him. That he loves diversity and that this diversity can work together for the benefit of all.
And so should we.
There was a time more than ten years ago (ugh, that makes me feel so old) when I thought I had heard from God about rekindling a failed relationship with a girl that I had fallen hard for, a few years before that. That story is entirely too long and messy to retell here but if you want more detail, you can find it in blog 174.
Suffice it to say that I thought I had heard from God regarding this girl (I believe I referred to her as Kay in blog 174) but it turned out not to be true and that left me reeling in regards to the "relationship with God" metaphor that is so popular in so many churches (at least the churches that I attended at the time).
See, back then, I heard lots of talk at church and at the para-church meetings I attended about the importance of having a relationship with God. I'd hear testimonies all the time about persons who had attended church all their lives but only recently learned that "Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship." I also heard sermons about the importance of hearing from God when it came to important decisions in life. Others talked about how they related to God the way they did to their best friend.
All this talk of relationship was confusing to me because I couldn't figure out why I wasn't experiencing anything that I would call a relationship, much less a friendship with God. I mean, when I think of the word relationship, I think of a back and forth conversation between two people. My relationship with God seemed to be all forth and no back - I'd pray and ask God questions but I was never able to discern any kind of reply.
For a while, I thought I wasn't good enough or that I wasn't trying hard enough. I did my best to read my Bible more and to pray more and to volunteer more of my time at church. But no matter how hard I tried or how much work I did or how many books I read on the topic, I wasn't hearing back from God.
Eventually, I burned out from trying too hard. I didn't abandon my faith completely, in my heart I knew that God was real and that I believed that he humbled himself and came to earth in the person of Jesus and lots of the other foundational things I had learned. I just couldn't stop believing something that resonated so deeply within me, it's just that I wasn't exactly sure what that something was exactly, and I wasn't going to just blindly believe what people were telling me it should be.
Now for lots of Christians, this is the point where they jettison their faith and jump into the deep end of debauchery. Me? I stopped going to church for a while. I started drinking - not hard drinking, I just felt free to drink a Jack and Coke if I was at a bar or club with friends (I didn't have my first drink until I was 23). I started asking some big, hard questions about what it meant to be a follower of Christ - questions I'm still asking today.
Basically, what happened was, I decided to break off the crust of the cultural aspects of American Evangelical Christianity to get back to the core essential truths. And though it was hard at first, one of the things I let go was this relationship idea.
At first I felt in the minority - that I was one of the few unlucky Christians who just weren't born with spiritual sensitivity (I called it "broken spiritual antennae" in a previous blog). But then a friend gave me a copy of a couple CDs that contained a talk by a Christian apologist (person who tries to defend the faith through reason) named Greg Koukl who runs a radio show called Stand To Reason. The talk was titled "Decision Making and the Will of God" and I won't go into detail about it here (see blog 94 for my longer take on the talk...caution, small kine potty mouth), but basically Koukl makes the case that according to principles drawn from the Bible, making decisions (miniscule or monumental) comes down to asking three simple questions:
1. What do you want to do? When presented a with a choice (A or B), the first question is to simply ask, which one do I want? Which do I prefer?
2. Is it moral? Is making that choice within the boundaries presented in the Bible? When choosing between adultery and abstaining, most would rather choose to get it on, but Biblically, that's not a moral choice so it's off the table.
3. Is it wise? Cashing out your retirement fund and gambling it all in Vegas is something people contemplate (though not me), and while I don't think it's explicitly prohibited by the Bible, but it's certainly not a wise decision.
Simple as that. No waiting on divine revelation, no setting out of fleeces, no casting of lots, and, I suppose, no banking on lost (misplaced) files to be found. If something you want to do passes those three tests then have at it.
And so finally, I'm back where I began - at this deal I made with God about asking Quest Girl out. The prayer about the files was something I thought would be fun, a way to brighten up an otherwise tedious task. But when they were actually found, I was torn. A part of me was ecstatic because I thought maybe I had seen the had of God at work, but another part of me remembered the situation years ago with Kay (see paragraph three above) and how wrong I was then about supposedly hearing something from God.
At this point, I know there are some Christian friends I have who would tell me that I made a binding agreement with the God of the universe when I prayed that little prayer and that I have to live up to my end of the deal. I know there are other Christian friends who will tell me that I'm making way to big of a mountain out of far too small of a molehill (see the comments section in blog 252).
What do I think?
Well this might seem like an non sequitur, but maybe things went down the way they did just so that I could write about it.
Here's what I mean. Those Christian friends I mentioned? Let's put them into two camps. Camp A believes that my prayer about missing files and Quest Girl amounts to a binding covenant and that I must uphold my end or risk dire consequences. Camp B thinks it was a stupid prayer to pray and that finding the files has nothing to do with talking to this girl.
Normally, Camp A people don't hang with Camp B people and it's just as true the other way around. No surprise there because birds of a feather, they do flock together. But you know what? It may be logically inconsistent, their two views might be incompatible, but I honestly believe that they're both right...and that they're both wrong.
I don't mean to say that there's no truth to be found in the world, but I believe that the truth of a matter such as this is far more generous and complex than those in Camp A or Camp B would make it out to be. Before he was crucified, Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that his followers "would be one," that they would be united despite their differences.
Charles Baudelaire is quoted as saying, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist." That's a neat trick, but I think a far more powerful device in the devil's toolbox is division. By dividing Christians along non-essential lines, he keeps Christians hunkered down, defending their piece of theological turf instead of heading out into an increasingly broken, dysfunctional world.
I'm not saying we all have to come to some sort of agreement on which side (Camp A or B) is right, but I am saying that we should be able to agree to disagree in love. And no, that's not easy or clean or what comes to us naturally, but I believe that the widening divide in America (red versus blue, for example) is, in part, a consequence of Christians' failure to reconcile our own differences and to work together.
Dr. Martin Luther King referred to 11am on Sunday mornings as "the most segregated hour in this nation." (You can see the context of this quote here. Highly recommended.) And I hope I'm not doing a disservice to him by suggesting that this segregation exists not only along racial lines but also along ideological ones.
Let me end with this. The Bible teaches that God reveals himself not only through the Bible, but also through the universe he created (Romans 1:20). And what do we see there? Variety and diversity of color, shape, form, function, taste, smell, and on and on. What else do we see? We see harmony, symbiosis, a network of complex, highly dependent interconnectedness.
Seen in this way, God's creation tells me two things about him. That he loves diversity and that this diversity can work together for the benefit of all.
And so should we.
Friday, February 16, 2007
252. a confession
I believe it was Sting...no, I know it was Sting. He said in an interview right before (or maybe it was after) his CD, The Soul Cages, that sometimes when you can't write, it's because there's something you want to say but don't want to or you're afraid to...something like that.
Well all this week, I've been trying to write a blog entry but it's like drawing blood from a stone, like pulling teeth, like trying to get George W to listen to military advice (sorry, I couldn't help myself...more on this in another blog perhaps). I've started a couple and some of them have the potential to be really entertaining (and embarrassing for me, but often, I can't do one without the other), but they all felt forced and wrong and just plain bad.
I'm stalling, of course, because I still don't want to write what I suppose I have to write.
And so,
I'll just come right to it.
These past few weeks, I've been writing about someone I've come to refer to as Quest Girl (see blog 240, 246, 247, and 249). Basically, she's a girl i've been eyeing at my church - a girl I've been unable to ask out for what I believe are a myriad of reasons, but I'm sure most people just think I'm just too shy and/or scared to...and maybe they're right. Regardless, here I am, two months since I first noticed her and nothing to show for it.
That's all old news, and I'm about to get to the bit that I need to confess, but there's some back-story that needs to be covered in order to get the whole picture...but let me get to it and then I'll go back and let you in on all the history.
So a few weeks ago, I was at work (I work at a records storage warehouse, pulling boxes and files) and my supervisor had me working on a special project. See, we house millions of files and, of course, sometimes files get misplaced (don't call them lost, they hate that) and one of the only ways to find them is to go to each box that had files placed in them on the days around the time when the files got los...misplaced.
Here's what I mean (and no, I'm not stalling again, this is the thing I'm going to confess...you'll see). My special project was to find two files. I was given two things to accomplish this: 1, they gave me the numbers that referenced the target files and 2, they gave me a list that was probably seven or eight pages long. This was a list of each box that had any kind of file re-filed into it. The idea is, the misplaced files were miss-placed into the wrong box and so the wrong box must be one of the hundreds of boxes that were touched a few days before and a few days after the file was supposed to have been put away.
Unfortunately, that means going to each and every one of those hundreds of boxes and flipping through the dozens of files inside those boxes to see if the missing files were misplaced there.
Not. Fun.
Now a project like this isn't exactly brain surgery and so it's easy to let your mind wander. At the time, I found my mind wandering to thoughts of Quest Girl and about whether or not I would man up and ask her out. As I went from box to box, I wavered back and forth between deciding to just go for it and deciding to remain comfortably single. After looking through a hundred or so boxes, it became clear that my chances of finding these files were going from slim to shady.
See, the farther you get from the box where the files were supposed to be, the less likely you are to find the files because the most common way that a file gets misplaced is when you accidentally grab two files instead of just the one that belongs in the box. In that case, the missing files will be in the box before or the box after the target box. Another mistake that can cause this is for the files to be sorted wrong before they are put away. In this case, you'll usually find the file in the aisle or at least the floor where they were supposed to be.
I had already looked into all the boxes on the aisle as well as the floor where they should have been. I was five nines sure (99.999 percent...see the five nines?) that I was never going to find these files because not only was I on an entirely different floor from where the files should have been, I also learned from another co-worker that I was the SECOND person to search through these boxes for these files. Oh, and I forgot to mention that these files have been missing for six or seven months.
Anyway, I'm flipping through yet another box when I casually (carelessly?) pray to God. At first, I just asked that God would help me find the files so that I could stop looking for them (I still had one more entire floor to search through after the one I was already on) but then I decided to have some fun. And so I prayed this prayer: "Lord, if you help me find these files, I'll ask Quest Girl out the next time I see her."
It wasn't the next box, or the box after that, or even the one after that. I don't know how many more boxes I looked through, but I do know that I didn't even make it to the end of the aisle I was in before I found those damn files (both of them were in the same box, but that was to be expected - we knew if we found them that they would be together).
I was elated, ecstatic, euphoric because not only did I find these files that no one believed would be found, I had a mandate to ask Quest Girl out - no more waffling, just do it because that was the deal. I was pumped because I felt like I had God's stamp of approval for asking her out and how confident do you think that made me?
Well, not confident enough, because I believe I found those files on a Wednesday afternoon and by the time that Sunday rolled around, I was pleading with God for Quest Girl to not be there because once again, I didn't want to go through with it. But she was there.
And I didn't ask her out.
And I felt awful.
And I asked God to forgive me for being such a wuss.
And then another Sunday came and went without me asking her out.
And then another.
And each time I asked for forgiveness.
But.
But I haven't been able to forget about it. I've been trying to rationalize my way out of the deal, but it's like an itch that won't go away and now it's gotten to the point where I can't write a blog worth reading even when I've got material aplenty. I've got lost of stuff I want to write about but this week, each time I tried, I knew it wasn't worth posting. Believe me, if I had posted anything I started this week, you would have been crying tears of boredom before finishing the first paragraph.
And I don't know if this blog has been worth reading, but it's the best thing by far that I've written this week. It's certainly the most effortless blog of the week. And I suppose that confessing this was what I needed to write.
But there's more to it than this prayer and those files and that girl.
But I've written too much already. I'll try to get to the other stuff tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'd love to hear your comments. I know I have readers across the Christian spectrum from Pentecostals to more conservative types and everywhere in between and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Well all this week, I've been trying to write a blog entry but it's like drawing blood from a stone, like pulling teeth, like trying to get George W to listen to military advice (sorry, I couldn't help myself...more on this in another blog perhaps). I've started a couple and some of them have the potential to be really entertaining (and embarrassing for me, but often, I can't do one without the other), but they all felt forced and wrong and just plain bad.
I'm stalling, of course, because I still don't want to write what I suppose I have to write.
And so,
I'll just come right to it.
These past few weeks, I've been writing about someone I've come to refer to as Quest Girl (see blog 240, 246, 247, and 249). Basically, she's a girl i've been eyeing at my church - a girl I've been unable to ask out for what I believe are a myriad of reasons, but I'm sure most people just think I'm just too shy and/or scared to...and maybe they're right. Regardless, here I am, two months since I first noticed her and nothing to show for it.
That's all old news, and I'm about to get to the bit that I need to confess, but there's some back-story that needs to be covered in order to get the whole picture...but let me get to it and then I'll go back and let you in on all the history.
So a few weeks ago, I was at work (I work at a records storage warehouse, pulling boxes and files) and my supervisor had me working on a special project. See, we house millions of files and, of course, sometimes files get misplaced (don't call them lost, they hate that) and one of the only ways to find them is to go to each box that had files placed in them on the days around the time when the files got los...misplaced.
Here's what I mean (and no, I'm not stalling again, this is the thing I'm going to confess...you'll see). My special project was to find two files. I was given two things to accomplish this: 1, they gave me the numbers that referenced the target files and 2, they gave me a list that was probably seven or eight pages long. This was a list of each box that had any kind of file re-filed into it. The idea is, the misplaced files were miss-placed into the wrong box and so the wrong box must be one of the hundreds of boxes that were touched a few days before and a few days after the file was supposed to have been put away.
Unfortunately, that means going to each and every one of those hundreds of boxes and flipping through the dozens of files inside those boxes to see if the missing files were misplaced there.
Not. Fun.
Now a project like this isn't exactly brain surgery and so it's easy to let your mind wander. At the time, I found my mind wandering to thoughts of Quest Girl and about whether or not I would man up and ask her out. As I went from box to box, I wavered back and forth between deciding to just go for it and deciding to remain comfortably single. After looking through a hundred or so boxes, it became clear that my chances of finding these files were going from slim to shady.
See, the farther you get from the box where the files were supposed to be, the less likely you are to find the files because the most common way that a file gets misplaced is when you accidentally grab two files instead of just the one that belongs in the box. In that case, the missing files will be in the box before or the box after the target box. Another mistake that can cause this is for the files to be sorted wrong before they are put away. In this case, you'll usually find the file in the aisle or at least the floor where they were supposed to be.
I had already looked into all the boxes on the aisle as well as the floor where they should have been. I was five nines sure (99.999 percent...see the five nines?) that I was never going to find these files because not only was I on an entirely different floor from where the files should have been, I also learned from another co-worker that I was the SECOND person to search through these boxes for these files. Oh, and I forgot to mention that these files have been missing for six or seven months.
Anyway, I'm flipping through yet another box when I casually (carelessly?) pray to God. At first, I just asked that God would help me find the files so that I could stop looking for them (I still had one more entire floor to search through after the one I was already on) but then I decided to have some fun. And so I prayed this prayer: "Lord, if you help me find these files, I'll ask Quest Girl out the next time I see her."
It wasn't the next box, or the box after that, or even the one after that. I don't know how many more boxes I looked through, but I do know that I didn't even make it to the end of the aisle I was in before I found those damn files (both of them were in the same box, but that was to be expected - we knew if we found them that they would be together).
I was elated, ecstatic, euphoric because not only did I find these files that no one believed would be found, I had a mandate to ask Quest Girl out - no more waffling, just do it because that was the deal. I was pumped because I felt like I had God's stamp of approval for asking her out and how confident do you think that made me?
Well, not confident enough, because I believe I found those files on a Wednesday afternoon and by the time that Sunday rolled around, I was pleading with God for Quest Girl to not be there because once again, I didn't want to go through with it. But she was there.
And I didn't ask her out.
And I felt awful.
And I asked God to forgive me for being such a wuss.
And then another Sunday came and went without me asking her out.
And then another.
And each time I asked for forgiveness.
But.
But I haven't been able to forget about it. I've been trying to rationalize my way out of the deal, but it's like an itch that won't go away and now it's gotten to the point where I can't write a blog worth reading even when I've got material aplenty. I've got lost of stuff I want to write about but this week, each time I tried, I knew it wasn't worth posting. Believe me, if I had posted anything I started this week, you would have been crying tears of boredom before finishing the first paragraph.
And I don't know if this blog has been worth reading, but it's the best thing by far that I've written this week. It's certainly the most effortless blog of the week. And I suppose that confessing this was what I needed to write.
But there's more to it than this prayer and those files and that girl.
But I've written too much already. I'll try to get to the other stuff tomorrow.
In the meantime, I'd love to hear your comments. I know I have readers across the Christian spectrum from Pentecostals to more conservative types and everywhere in between and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
251. more thoughts on salvation
I've been watching those TED videos and continue to be impressed but something I saw a few days ago has stuck with me. I already linked to his presentation in the previous post, but at the end of Robert Wright's talk, he talks about salvation.
He claims that the idea that salvation is about keeping people from going to hell and gaining them access to heaven instead is a modern interpretation of the word. And for the most part, I happen to agree with him. When Jesus came on the scene, Israel was looking for a specific kind of salvation - deliverance from Roman rule. The last time I blogged about this, I came to the conclusion that perhaps a better way to understand salvation is to see it as being delivered (saved) from slavery to sin.
But while I think that's closer to a Biblical (as opposed to a cultural) understanding of salvation, I think it still misses the mark. Here's why. When Jesus talks about what he's came to do, he talks a lot more about large units of people rather than individuals. The first sermon he preached was all about the kingdom of God. And when he ascended back to heaven, he left us with the Great Commission which instructs us to make disciples of NATIONS.
I believe our modern, American understanding of salvation (not going to hell) comes more from cultural, societal sources than from the word of God. We live in a nation where the customer is king, where individualism is a virtue. I can't remember where I heard it or who said it, but someone observed that we've gone from Life magazine to People to Us to Self magazine. Now we even have magazines with celebrities names as the moniker - Oprah and (the once cute, now irritating) Rachel Ray. And look at me, I'm a part of this whole blogging trend where we (I) go out and just publish my own ranting and raving.
What I'm getting at is the idea that we live in a culture that emphasizes the individual. Now I'm no anthropologist or historian, but I think it's safe to say that prior to the Industrial Revolution, life throughout the world was far more communal (and life still works this way in much of the world), and by that I mean that people relied on one another to make things work. There was no such thing as one-stop-shopping.
In our me, me, me (and mini me) culture, it's no wonder that salvation has become individualized as well.
Now let me clarify something before I go on. I don't mean to say that there isn't a personal component to salvation. Every individual must, at some point, make a conscious decision to follow Christ, but that's merely the beginning, the entryway into a new way of living. But I'm trying to get at is the idea that this personal component of salvation is only a part of what salvation is about.
Which brings me back to Robert Wright's talk at the TED conference. He makes the claim that the original meaning of "salvation" was about "saving the social system." When the Israelites cried for salvation, they were usually asking for God to get them out from under the thumb of a foreign oppressor - the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans. They wanted God to save the nation of Israel.
With the advent (a useful pun) of the New Testament, the scope of salvation expands to a world-wide scale. Salvation (nations living harmoniously with their neighbors) is made available not just to the Jews but to all nations (Romans 1:16).
Now I don't know if I fully buy into this larger understanding of salvation, but I gotta say that it's very appealing. Read through the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) with this in mind and you'll find sparkling new insights. Read Matthew 22:39 as "love Canada and Mexico the way you love the US" or "Love Aisa, the Middle East, and Europe the way you love North and South America."
And I know at first glance, the verses I cited seem like they refer to individuals but what if the larger, cultural aspect was assumed? Remember that in Jesus' day, the Jews understood salvation to mean Israel being rescued from Roman oppression - the salvation of their nation. And Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. What if by this he meant that in addition to the old understanding of the law (national, Israeli laws), he was reminding us that there is a personal component as well.
Now it sounds like I'm going back on what I said earlier, but here's what I'm trying to get at. The first century Jews understood the law to be that which God gave them to obey and through this obedience, God would prosper their nation as he promised to Abraham. This was knowledge ingrained into Jewish thought from birth. Jewish holidays and celebrations all point back to God's covenant with Abraham. What I'm suggesting is, maybe we've been reading the New Testament without this common cultural assumption.
We've been focusing too much on the personal, individual side of salvation because that's how the New Testament reads to us but what if it reads that way because the larger view I'm suggesting was assumed (too obvious to mention)? And again, there are allusions to this assumed view in places like the Great Commission: "make disciples of all nations."
I don't know, I'm no theologian. I could be way off the mark here, but I'm willing to put my ideas out there because, as for myself, I need an understanding of Christianity and salvation that's bigger than the common Evangelical view (each one save one). Again, I don't want to discard that view, I want to see if there's more that we've been missing.
He claims that the idea that salvation is about keeping people from going to hell and gaining them access to heaven instead is a modern interpretation of the word. And for the most part, I happen to agree with him. When Jesus came on the scene, Israel was looking for a specific kind of salvation - deliverance from Roman rule. The last time I blogged about this, I came to the conclusion that perhaps a better way to understand salvation is to see it as being delivered (saved) from slavery to sin.
But while I think that's closer to a Biblical (as opposed to a cultural) understanding of salvation, I think it still misses the mark. Here's why. When Jesus talks about what he's came to do, he talks a lot more about large units of people rather than individuals. The first sermon he preached was all about the kingdom of God. And when he ascended back to heaven, he left us with the Great Commission which instructs us to make disciples of NATIONS.
I believe our modern, American understanding of salvation (not going to hell) comes more from cultural, societal sources than from the word of God. We live in a nation where the customer is king, where individualism is a virtue. I can't remember where I heard it or who said it, but someone observed that we've gone from Life magazine to People to Us to Self magazine. Now we even have magazines with celebrities names as the moniker - Oprah and (the once cute, now irritating) Rachel Ray. And look at me, I'm a part of this whole blogging trend where we (I) go out and just publish my own ranting and raving.
What I'm getting at is the idea that we live in a culture that emphasizes the individual. Now I'm no anthropologist or historian, but I think it's safe to say that prior to the Industrial Revolution, life throughout the world was far more communal (and life still works this way in much of the world), and by that I mean that people relied on one another to make things work. There was no such thing as one-stop-shopping.
In our me, me, me (and mini me) culture, it's no wonder that salvation has become individualized as well.
Now let me clarify something before I go on. I don't mean to say that there isn't a personal component to salvation. Every individual must, at some point, make a conscious decision to follow Christ, but that's merely the beginning, the entryway into a new way of living. But I'm trying to get at is the idea that this personal component of salvation is only a part of what salvation is about.
Which brings me back to Robert Wright's talk at the TED conference. He makes the claim that the original meaning of "salvation" was about "saving the social system." When the Israelites cried for salvation, they were usually asking for God to get them out from under the thumb of a foreign oppressor - the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans. They wanted God to save the nation of Israel.
With the advent (a useful pun) of the New Testament, the scope of salvation expands to a world-wide scale. Salvation (nations living harmoniously with their neighbors) is made available not just to the Jews but to all nations (Romans 1:16).
Now I don't know if I fully buy into this larger understanding of salvation, but I gotta say that it's very appealing. Read through the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) with this in mind and you'll find sparkling new insights. Read Matthew 22:39 as "love Canada and Mexico the way you love the US" or "Love Aisa, the Middle East, and Europe the way you love North and South America."
And I know at first glance, the verses I cited seem like they refer to individuals but what if the larger, cultural aspect was assumed? Remember that in Jesus' day, the Jews understood salvation to mean Israel being rescued from Roman oppression - the salvation of their nation. And Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. What if by this he meant that in addition to the old understanding of the law (national, Israeli laws), he was reminding us that there is a personal component as well.
Now it sounds like I'm going back on what I said earlier, but here's what I'm trying to get at. The first century Jews understood the law to be that which God gave them to obey and through this obedience, God would prosper their nation as he promised to Abraham. This was knowledge ingrained into Jewish thought from birth. Jewish holidays and celebrations all point back to God's covenant with Abraham. What I'm suggesting is, maybe we've been reading the New Testament without this common cultural assumption.
We've been focusing too much on the personal, individual side of salvation because that's how the New Testament reads to us but what if it reads that way because the larger view I'm suggesting was assumed (too obvious to mention)? And again, there are allusions to this assumed view in places like the Great Commission: "make disciples of all nations."
I don't know, I'm no theologian. I could be way off the mark here, but I'm willing to put my ideas out there because, as for myself, I need an understanding of Christianity and salvation that's bigger than the common Evangelical view (each one save one). Again, I don't want to discard that view, I want to see if there's more that we've been missing.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
250. best website ever, I mean, EVER!
Have you ever had the chance to read a book or listen to a speaker whose ideas were so huge and well presented (and backed up by research) that it felt like the world, as you understood it, just grew exponentially? Off the top of my head, I can think of a few books that did this.
I can't remember which one it was, but I remember the first time I read a short story by Raymond Carver. It was my introduction to the power of the short story form and (though it wasn't something I cognitively recognized then, more something I intuited) saw how, freed from the structural weight of the novel, it was able to dive into the depths of the human condition, often in a precise, surgical way. I loved how Carver just dropped you into the middle (or sometimes the aftermath) of a situation and let you watch the cascade of consequences play out.
There are other books I could mention, but I don't want to get sidetracked.
I want to use this post to point you to a website where you can hear short lectures from some of the best thinkers around today. It's called TED. Click on the link, go to the TEDTalks page and then tie a bandana around your forehead because the ideas you'll hear will blow your mind - and I mean that in the best way possible.
I've only listened to three or four of them, but what I found striking was the optimism. I mean this optimism is tempered by recognition of current problems, but while it's easy to get mired in the depressing details, what I find refreshing about the lectures I've viewed so far is how they take the wide view and point to trends that suggest a way forward.
For example, there's a lecture by Hans Rosling that points out misconceptions when it comes to the wide divide between the Western World and the Third World. While there is much work still to be done, his talk provides a refreshing glass-half-full perspective on global socioeconomic trends. (Oh, and as a side note, this lecture is worth watching just for the uber-geeky-cool animated charts he uses. Trust me, you've never seen data presented like this before.)
A good companion to this talk would be the very funny (and, of course, enlightening) talk by Robert Wright who talks about the world as a "nonzero sum game" where (unlike the Super Bowl where there will be one winner and one loser) the possibility exists for all parties to benefit. While this sounds like an uplifting idea (which it ultimately is), he is quick to balance this with pressing, present day problems but what I find particularly amazing about his talk is how, unlike the more common going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket view of the world, he gives us a way forward - a solution other than the simpler (in theory, not practice) method of just killing the enemy.
Heady stuff but presented in a short form format that quickly gets at the marrow of grand ideas from great thinkers. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to move from the daily dirge of nitpicking that is the daily news to a wider view of the world.
TED host (who also owns the non-profit Sapling Foundation which runs the event), Chris Anderson, calls the event, "the pre-release version of heaven." What he means is, one of the great things about being in heaven will be getting to talk to some of the people who changed the world through their ideas and inventions. The TED conference is a way to get a taste of some of those conversations here and now.
Maybe it's easy to forget, since we're living through the middle of it, but we are alive at a time of innovation and creativity unparalleled since the high renaissance. Centuries from now, historians will be pointing to events in our lifetime as moments that revolutionized life on this planet. It may be tempting to think that the current pace of advancement will continue unabated, but if history is any indicator (as it has been for, well, all of history), we will eventually reach a plateau and people will wonder, as they read their history books, what it must have been like to have lived through the whirlwind of change that we're living through right now.
Do yourself a favor and visit the TED website (www.ted.com).
And don't forget the bandana.
I can't remember which one it was, but I remember the first time I read a short story by Raymond Carver. It was my introduction to the power of the short story form and (though it wasn't something I cognitively recognized then, more something I intuited) saw how, freed from the structural weight of the novel, it was able to dive into the depths of the human condition, often in a precise, surgical way. I loved how Carver just dropped you into the middle (or sometimes the aftermath) of a situation and let you watch the cascade of consequences play out.
There are other books I could mention, but I don't want to get sidetracked.
I want to use this post to point you to a website where you can hear short lectures from some of the best thinkers around today. It's called TED. Click on the link, go to the TEDTalks page and then tie a bandana around your forehead because the ideas you'll hear will blow your mind - and I mean that in the best way possible.
I've only listened to three or four of them, but what I found striking was the optimism. I mean this optimism is tempered by recognition of current problems, but while it's easy to get mired in the depressing details, what I find refreshing about the lectures I've viewed so far is how they take the wide view and point to trends that suggest a way forward.
For example, there's a lecture by Hans Rosling that points out misconceptions when it comes to the wide divide between the Western World and the Third World. While there is much work still to be done, his talk provides a refreshing glass-half-full perspective on global socioeconomic trends. (Oh, and as a side note, this lecture is worth watching just for the uber-geeky-cool animated charts he uses. Trust me, you've never seen data presented like this before.)
A good companion to this talk would be the very funny (and, of course, enlightening) talk by Robert Wright who talks about the world as a "nonzero sum game" where (unlike the Super Bowl where there will be one winner and one loser) the possibility exists for all parties to benefit. While this sounds like an uplifting idea (which it ultimately is), he is quick to balance this with pressing, present day problems but what I find particularly amazing about his talk is how, unlike the more common going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket view of the world, he gives us a way forward - a solution other than the simpler (in theory, not practice) method of just killing the enemy.
Heady stuff but presented in a short form format that quickly gets at the marrow of grand ideas from great thinkers. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to move from the daily dirge of nitpicking that is the daily news to a wider view of the world.
TED host (who also owns the non-profit Sapling Foundation which runs the event), Chris Anderson, calls the event, "the pre-release version of heaven." What he means is, one of the great things about being in heaven will be getting to talk to some of the people who changed the world through their ideas and inventions. The TED conference is a way to get a taste of some of those conversations here and now.
Maybe it's easy to forget, since we're living through the middle of it, but we are alive at a time of innovation and creativity unparalleled since the high renaissance. Centuries from now, historians will be pointing to events in our lifetime as moments that revolutionized life on this planet. It may be tempting to think that the current pace of advancement will continue unabated, but if history is any indicator (as it has been for, well, all of history), we will eventually reach a plateau and people will wonder, as they read their history books, what it must have been like to have lived through the whirlwind of change that we're living through right now.
Do yourself a favor and visit the TED website (www.ted.com).
And don't forget the bandana.
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