So I (finally) started working a temp job today. I use the word "finally" because I've actually been on file at temp companies since January. At first it was just one then another and another until finally on Mondays I found myself calling five different temp companies telling them all that I was still available and looking for work.
I got a call on Tuesday from one of the companies telling me that they had something starting on Wednesday and would I be interested? I said yes.
It's basically a data entry job for a company that hasn't quite worked out the bugs in their software so information that's eventually going to be automated has to be put in my hand. It's tedious, boring work but honestly, I kind of like it. I certainly don't love it, but I don't mind it. The pay is nice (but not a lot) and it's nice to be out of the house again on a regular basis.
One thing I've learned from being at home so much is how to make my own food. I mean, I did cook for myself every now and then but it was usually really easy to make stuff like Spam and Vienna Sausage and rice and rahmen. Actually, those are still regular parts of my diet but one thing I'm getting better at is making eggs. I know two ways - scrambled and over easy. I'm still working on the over easy method (fresh eggs really help) but thanks to Alton Brown's show on eggs (on You Tube), I've had some of the best scrambled eggs ever. This has less to do with my cooking skills and more to do with the fact that I like my scrambled eggs runny and when I make it myself, I can make them my way.
All that talk about food may seem to have nothing to do with my temp job but truth is, all that cooking has gotten me geared up to make my own lunch and take it to work. I used to try and take lunch to work (back when I was working) but it was inconsistent at best. And a lot of times, it wasn't really lunch. It was a ghetto smoothie (bananas, yogurt, and apple juice). My lunch today wasn't anything spectacular (sandwiches, granola bar, and an apple) but it wasn't an option. That is to say, making and taking my own lunch was something I did without having to think about it and it's only because of all the cooking I've been doing at home.
Something else I've been meaning to update you on is my MacBook. A few weeks ago I wrote about how my church was going to pay for half of what it would cost for me to replace my stolen MacBook. Turns out they actually up and paid for all of it!
I love my church. I mean even before they did this for me I loved my church and I would still have loved my church if they hadn't help pay for an part of a new MacBook.
I really do need to write a post about Quest Church sometime soon.
Let's see...any other updates?
I cut my hair the other day in preparation for my temp job...
Um, no, I think that's about it.
I'm just counting down the days until I can start school.
And speaking of school, please pray for my friend Matt. He's on a waiting list for getting into architecture grad school and the deadline is coming up. He's done a ton of work to try and get in and he's great and really deserves to get in. Please pray for him when you get the chance.
Thanks.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
330. extraterrestrials and the Body of Christ
A few weeks ago on MSNBC's show, Hardball, there was a discussion between atheist Christopher Hitchens (who wrote God is Not Great) and senior fellow at the Family Research Council (a conservative, christian organization), Ken Blackwell. The discussion was about whether America is having a crisis of faith - a Newsweek poll shows that 68 percent of those surveyed believe that religion is losing its influence in America.
At one point, the host asked why it is that religion (particularly Christianity) is losing its hold on growing swaths of the American landscape. Blackwell said that faith in America has always gone up and down. Hitchens suggested that people's skepticism towards faith may have to do with the fact that one of the greatest threats to global peace and stability is terrorism which is itself driven by faith.
If I had to answer the question of why Christianity is losing its influence in America, I have a few ideas but the one I want to talk about here is this: The church really needs to make peace with science. In particular, the whole anti-evolution thing just needs to be dropped.
Crack open any book critiquing the theory of evolution (Google "intelligent design" for examples) and there's one word that you'll see over and over again and it's the word, "impossible." For example, they'll say that it's impossible for evolution to account for the flagellum of certain kinds of bacteria. Or they'll say that while microevolution happens all the time, it's impossible to find the sorts of transitional species required to prove the existence of macroevolution. Most commonly, they'll say that it's impossible for random mutation alone to account for the exquisite intricacy of even the most basic unicellular organism.
I won't go into countering those "impossibles" here because that's already been done in many books. One book in particular that I'll point out is The Language of God by Dr. Francis S. Collins - a christian biologist who headed up the Human Genome Project (when it comes to biological street cred, it doesn't get much better than that). If you want to see those "impossibles" I listed above dismantled, check out Dr. Collins' book.
In this post, I want to argue the more general point that christians need not fear the claims of science - that the church needs to make peace with the scientific world. Now I won't go so far as to say that we need to embrace all of science because just as there are questions and issues that the Bible isn't designed to take on (what's the atomic weight of helium?), there are questions and issues that science cannot tackle (what's my purpose in life?). What I am going to try to say is that religion and science cover two different aspects of the world and they both have a lot that they can learn from one another if they could just get along. I'm no scientist so I'm ill equipped to make the case that science needs to learn from religion, but as a christian, I do want to make a plea to the church to listen to and learn from our friends, the scientists.
Because I believe that there is much that God is trying to show us through them.
I suppose there are a lot of ways I could make the case for the church needing to accept the claims of evolution and other areas of science but I want to try a route that hasn't been tried before - at least I've never heard of anyone taking this tack.
I want to make my case by talking about...
Extraterrestrial life.
Now before you think I've gone all Coast to Coast AM and resign me to the lunatic fringe, conspiracy shelf, I'll have you know that a great many scientists across different fields believe that finding life outside of earth is just a matter of time.
Two reasons why I believe we'll find life outside of earth in the near future:
Just these two factors alone lead me to believe that it's very likely that we will find evidence of life in our own solar system in the very near future and by that I mean in the next few decades if not sooner.
My guess is that we'll find evidence of past life on Mars or one of Jupiter's moons and this life will likely be simple in nature. I suppose it's entirely possible that we will find complex multi-cellular life and/or creatures that are living, but that's almost too good to hope for.
And what will the church say when such life is found?
I'm sure some in the church will do their best to deny the findings as long as they can and as more and more evidence pours in, they'll finally they join in with the Flat Earth Society.
But what if, between now and the then when extraterrestrial life is found, the church were to make peace with science?
Because here's the thing. I'm having trouble finding links to back this up but I know that many of the first scientists were christians. For them, studying the world was a way to learn about God. Romans 1:20 tells us that "God's invisible qualities . . . have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. . ." In other words, God has revealed himself not just in his Word, the Bible, but also in the universe he created. The first scientists saw this and figured that if they could better understand the world that he created, they might learn more about God.
Then somewhere along the way science and religion began to drift apart. And when Darwinian evolution entered the scene, things really went ape snatch. Some people in the church got it into their heads that scientists were conspiring to debunk the Bible and once their guard when up, all kinds of scientific claims became suspect. I've known christians who railed against quantum mechanics, claiming that the random, chaotic universe it describes is an affront to God who created an ordered, rational universe.
With all due respect to christians who fear science, the fact of the matter is that we have to live in the world that is, not the world that we think the Bible paints for us. Christians have nothing to fear from the theory of evolution because there's nothing in the theory that contradicts the creation account of the Bible. The important thing to realize about the first few chapters of Genesis is that it is NOT meant to be a step by step, blow by blow account of how God created life, the universe, and everything. The main point of those chapters is to show that it was God who did the creating - how he did it is nowhere near as important as the idea that he was the one doing it. At the same time, the Bible does describe God as being wise and in control of what's going on. That doesn't mean that randomness and strangeness at the quantum scale is any threat to God's sovereignty.
To take this idea even further, what if God is trying to teach us things about himself through the things we are learning about his creation? For example, what if through the ideas of evolution God's trying to show us that change isn't such a bad thing after all and that maybe we should be a bit more generous in our orthodoxy - allowing time and "natural selection" sort good theology from bad? Similarly, what if the chaotic nature at the quantum scale is God's way of showing us that even though christianity can get messy and strange on the personal scale, the body of Christ (his church) as a whole can remain solid and firm in the same way that quantum messiness is all but transparent to us.
If the church makes peace with science, it need not be embarrassed when evidence of life is found outside of earth. And mark my words, this will happen whether the church is ready for it or not. If the church sees science as a partner and an ally, it will be able to celebrate with the rest of the world at the discovery that our universe is thriving with life - glory be to God!
And okay, here's where I get really wacky - way outside the box and off the reservation. What if many, many years from now we make contact with intelligent, sentient beings - an entire civilization of them somewhere out there? Wanna know what I think might happen?
While I suppose it's possible that their religious ideas might line up neatly with ours (perhaps with their own visitation from Jesus) I think it's more likely that God (yes, the same God that we know, love, and worship) will have revealed himself to that civilization in a way uniquely suited to them just as he uniquely reveals himself to us here, today. And my speculation is that while elements of their idea of God will differ from ours, the main points will be the same - that God created everything, God loves us and is trying to help us (our unruly selves) to live and thrive in his creation - to right wrongs and to help the needy, the oppressed, and the marginalized.
Hopefully, by the time we get to this point in our own civilization, the various denominations of our own churches will have learned to get along and accept one another. Because if we're as divided and divisive amongst ourselves then as we are today, that's going to make for very thorny inter-galactic ecumenical communications.
In closing, I just want to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should get some of our best theologians together to think and talk a bit about how our understanding of our place in the universe as informed by the Bible will change if/when evidence for life outside earth is found. I suggest this not just so that the church can be better prepared to respond to such a discovery, I also suggest this because by viewing theology in this broader context, we may find some clues as to how to be the Body of Christ here, today, now. But even without this extraterrestrial theology conference, the church as a whole really needs to make peace with science.
At one point, the host asked why it is that religion (particularly Christianity) is losing its hold on growing swaths of the American landscape. Blackwell said that faith in America has always gone up and down. Hitchens suggested that people's skepticism towards faith may have to do with the fact that one of the greatest threats to global peace and stability is terrorism which is itself driven by faith.
If I had to answer the question of why Christianity is losing its influence in America, I have a few ideas but the one I want to talk about here is this: The church really needs to make peace with science. In particular, the whole anti-evolution thing just needs to be dropped.
Crack open any book critiquing the theory of evolution (Google "intelligent design" for examples) and there's one word that you'll see over and over again and it's the word, "impossible." For example, they'll say that it's impossible for evolution to account for the flagellum of certain kinds of bacteria. Or they'll say that while microevolution happens all the time, it's impossible to find the sorts of transitional species required to prove the existence of macroevolution. Most commonly, they'll say that it's impossible for random mutation alone to account for the exquisite intricacy of even the most basic unicellular organism.
I won't go into countering those "impossibles" here because that's already been done in many books. One book in particular that I'll point out is The Language of God by Dr. Francis S. Collins - a christian biologist who headed up the Human Genome Project (when it comes to biological street cred, it doesn't get much better than that). If you want to see those "impossibles" I listed above dismantled, check out Dr. Collins' book.
In this post, I want to argue the more general point that christians need not fear the claims of science - that the church needs to make peace with the scientific world. Now I won't go so far as to say that we need to embrace all of science because just as there are questions and issues that the Bible isn't designed to take on (what's the atomic weight of helium?), there are questions and issues that science cannot tackle (what's my purpose in life?). What I am going to try to say is that religion and science cover two different aspects of the world and they both have a lot that they can learn from one another if they could just get along. I'm no scientist so I'm ill equipped to make the case that science needs to learn from religion, but as a christian, I do want to make a plea to the church to listen to and learn from our friends, the scientists.
Because I believe that there is much that God is trying to show us through them.
I suppose there are a lot of ways I could make the case for the church needing to accept the claims of evolution and other areas of science but I want to try a route that hasn't been tried before - at least I've never heard of anyone taking this tack.
I want to make my case by talking about...
Extraterrestrial life.
Now before you think I've gone all Coast to Coast AM and resign me to the lunatic fringe, conspiracy shelf, I'll have you know that a great many scientists across different fields believe that finding life outside of earth is just a matter of time.
Two reasons why I believe we'll find life outside of earth in the near future:
- Turns out the universe is teeming with planets.
Planets orbiting around stars other than our own sun used to be just a theoretical possibility but today, with scientific tools specifically designed to detect them, planets and solar systems outside of our own are being found with increasing regularity.
According to the Drake equation, the greater the number of planets circling stars, the greater the possibility of there being life outside our own planet. And so as we continue to find planets, the chances of finding life goes up as well. - Used to be that scientists thought life outside of earth would be rare because twenty or thirty years ago, they thought that life was delicate and required a cushy environment in order to survive. For example, marine biologists used to think that the deep sea was a desolate, underwater dead zone, completely devoid of life because of the lack of light and the extremely high pressures. Then they started sending probes and cameras down and started finding hundreds of new species lurking in the deep. Similarly, scientists have found entire ecosystems living next to hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor - a highly acidic environment where temperatures can reach 750 degrees F. In fact, biologists have found so many creatures living in extreme environments that they've created a category for them called extremophiles.
The fact that life can be found in such extreme environments makes it all the more likely that life may exist in some of the extreme environments found in our very own solar system.
Just these two factors alone lead me to believe that it's very likely that we will find evidence of life in our own solar system in the very near future and by that I mean in the next few decades if not sooner.
My guess is that we'll find evidence of past life on Mars or one of Jupiter's moons and this life will likely be simple in nature. I suppose it's entirely possible that we will find complex multi-cellular life and/or creatures that are living, but that's almost too good to hope for.
And what will the church say when such life is found?
I'm sure some in the church will do their best to deny the findings as long as they can and as more and more evidence pours in, they'll finally they join in with the Flat Earth Society.
But what if, between now and the then when extraterrestrial life is found, the church were to make peace with science?
Because here's the thing. I'm having trouble finding links to back this up but I know that many of the first scientists were christians. For them, studying the world was a way to learn about God. Romans 1:20 tells us that "God's invisible qualities . . . have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. . ." In other words, God has revealed himself not just in his Word, the Bible, but also in the universe he created. The first scientists saw this and figured that if they could better understand the world that he created, they might learn more about God.
Then somewhere along the way science and religion began to drift apart. And when Darwinian evolution entered the scene, things really went ape snatch. Some people in the church got it into their heads that scientists were conspiring to debunk the Bible and once their guard when up, all kinds of scientific claims became suspect. I've known christians who railed against quantum mechanics, claiming that the random, chaotic universe it describes is an affront to God who created an ordered, rational universe.
With all due respect to christians who fear science, the fact of the matter is that we have to live in the world that is, not the world that we think the Bible paints for us. Christians have nothing to fear from the theory of evolution because there's nothing in the theory that contradicts the creation account of the Bible. The important thing to realize about the first few chapters of Genesis is that it is NOT meant to be a step by step, blow by blow account of how God created life, the universe, and everything. The main point of those chapters is to show that it was God who did the creating - how he did it is nowhere near as important as the idea that he was the one doing it. At the same time, the Bible does describe God as being wise and in control of what's going on. That doesn't mean that randomness and strangeness at the quantum scale is any threat to God's sovereignty.
To take this idea even further, what if God is trying to teach us things about himself through the things we are learning about his creation? For example, what if through the ideas of evolution God's trying to show us that change isn't such a bad thing after all and that maybe we should be a bit more generous in our orthodoxy - allowing time and "natural selection" sort good theology from bad? Similarly, what if the chaotic nature at the quantum scale is God's way of showing us that even though christianity can get messy and strange on the personal scale, the body of Christ (his church) as a whole can remain solid and firm in the same way that quantum messiness is all but transparent to us.
If the church makes peace with science, it need not be embarrassed when evidence of life is found outside of earth. And mark my words, this will happen whether the church is ready for it or not. If the church sees science as a partner and an ally, it will be able to celebrate with the rest of the world at the discovery that our universe is thriving with life - glory be to God!
And okay, here's where I get really wacky - way outside the box and off the reservation. What if many, many years from now we make contact with intelligent, sentient beings - an entire civilization of them somewhere out there? Wanna know what I think might happen?
While I suppose it's possible that their religious ideas might line up neatly with ours (perhaps with their own visitation from Jesus) I think it's more likely that God (yes, the same God that we know, love, and worship) will have revealed himself to that civilization in a way uniquely suited to them just as he uniquely reveals himself to us here, today. And my speculation is that while elements of their idea of God will differ from ours, the main points will be the same - that God created everything, God loves us and is trying to help us (our unruly selves) to live and thrive in his creation - to right wrongs and to help the needy, the oppressed, and the marginalized.
Hopefully, by the time we get to this point in our own civilization, the various denominations of our own churches will have learned to get along and accept one another. Because if we're as divided and divisive amongst ourselves then as we are today, that's going to make for very thorny inter-galactic ecumenical communications.
In closing, I just want to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should get some of our best theologians together to think and talk a bit about how our understanding of our place in the universe as informed by the Bible will change if/when evidence for life outside earth is found. I suggest this not just so that the church can be better prepared to respond to such a discovery, I also suggest this because by viewing theology in this broader context, we may find some clues as to how to be the Body of Christ here, today, now. But even without this extraterrestrial theology conference, the church as a whole really needs to make peace with science.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
328. updates
A friend (and blog reader) pointed out to me the fact that I sometimes forget to post updates on some of the things that have been going on in my life. And she's right. Lately I've been caught up in talking about my latest thoughts about christianity or about Bob and I've neglected talking about things like my job situation and my stolen laptop and my application to Mars Hill Graduate School and what's going on with my band.
Sorry about that.
And so, one by one:
So that, in a nutshell is what's basically going on in my life - at least the things that are front and center on my mind.
There are lots of other things I'm hoping to write about soon so stay tuned.
As always, thanks for reading.
Sorry about that.
And so, one by one:
- My job
I lost my job back in October of last year. Back then I thought that I'd be back to work in a couple months at most. I thought this because for one thing, I'm a kick-ass worker with a work history and references to prove it and secondly, I was willing to do almost anything since I was planning on going back to school in the Fall. But here it is, April, and I'm still sending out resume after resume (six this week alone) and getting next to no call backs.
This is the longest I've been unemployed since college and to be honest, I'm going a bit loopy. It's getting harder and harder to not get discouraged - to not think that the lack of response from employers is a reflection of me and my abilities. But I'm trying and I'm continuing to plug away.
Financially, there are only three things keeping me afloat.
a. Unemployment Insurance helps a lot. But I only get a fraction of what I was making at my last job. If that was my only source of income I'd probably be out on the street by now.
b. Because of some restructuring at my church, I've been hired on as their Audio Visual Tech Lead which means I take care of scheduling the volunteers who run sound and PowerPoint during service and I fix things when they break. There are other elements involved with this position but that's the bulk of the week to week work. It's not a lot of hours and it's not a lot of pay but like UI, it really helps.
c. To be honest, the only thing really keeping me off the street is the support I've been getting from my parents. Without their help I'd be super screwed. And I have to admit that it's a bit embarrassing to be counting on my folks at my age...but I'm insanely grateful at the same time.
It's clearer to me than ever before how easy it is to end up homeless. Especially with the way things are financially right now.
It's not hard at all. - Stolen laptop
So this one is pretty cool.
My pastor felt bad about the way my laptop got stolen, especially since it was taken while I was trying to help get a Quest Global Presence meeting up and running. So he said that he was going to have the church pay for half of what it would cost for me to get a new MacBook!
Needless to say, I was stunned, floored, just blown away.
Apart from the immediate, concrete aspect of being able to be mobile again with my computing, there's a far deeper healing that I'm sensing. See, to be honest, I realize that I've come to see the church as a place that takes and takes from me. I mean, I know that they are there to support me if I ask, but asking doesn't come easy to me whereas giving does. And so the church takes what I give and waits for me to ask but I don't ask and so I don't get and while it may be unfair of me, I get to the point where I see the church as a place that takes without giving back.
Let me be clear here. I'm not talking about the church I go to now. Even before this generous offer to help me with my MacBook, I've always had the sense that my service was appreciated and there have always been people making sure that I wasn't taking on too much, guarding me against burnout. So when I talk about seeing the church as a place that takes without giving back, I mean some of the churches I had served at in the past. Not all of them, but some of them.
The fact that my pastor's offer to help me get another laptop came unsolicited really blows me away. I've said on numerous occasions that I love my church but, in a way that's hard to explain, this act has done some deep work of repair in me. It's got me realizing and rethinking some really bad ideas I have about church. - Mars Hill Graduate School
I got in!
I posted a status update on my Facebook page announcing my acceptance but for those who missed it or aren't on Facebook, yes, I've been accepted.
I'm super excited and I wish life had a fast forward button because I start late August but wish I didn't have to wait that long.
There are lots of reasons why I'm almost giddy with anticipation. For one thing, it'll be great to be in school while this financial tsunami blows through. But I'm far more stoked about the school itself.
It's a small school, probably under 300 students. It's probably best know for its president, Dan Allender. But I'd never heard of him until I started researching the school. I found out about the school through friends at church who were going there and one of the things that intrigued me from their stories about the place was how the study of theology is taken seriously but it is taken seriously so that it can be more effectively used in a people's lives to bring about healing. That is to say, studying theology isn't an end in and of itself. It's a means to develop a better counselor. And that's an important distinction.
We'll see if my excitement and expectations are warranted once I begin classes. But for now, I'm just glad that my life is finally headed towards something like a career, grad school being the first step towards that career. - My band
Not really sure what's going on on this front.
Earlier this year we started working with a producer named Brandon Bee. He's helping us write and produce a new song. I recorded my tracks back in January and I haven't heard anything from either of my bandmates about what's been happening since then. I know Brandon is a busy guy with his own band and he's touring to support an album he recently released. I'm basically going with the assumption that Brandon is out on tour and that the remaining tracks are being recorded on the days when he's back in town...which judging by the gig calendar on his MySpace Page, might not be for a while.
So that, in a nutshell is what's basically going on in my life - at least the things that are front and center on my mind.
There are lots of other things I'm hoping to write about soon so stay tuned.
As always, thanks for reading.
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