***GEEK ALERT***

For those of you who, like I, enjoy Star Wars perhaps a little too much (don't worry, your secret's safe with me!), you might be interested in knowing that George Lucas has approved a Star Wars TV show that should premiere in May 2005. The article about this is here.

More Marching Band

In today's issue of Sports Illustrated On Campus, there was an amusing article about great moments in band history. It was a true/false quiz (which was kind of annoying), but I have distilled the following list of humorous, true, band moments in history:

• 1941: The University of Chicago disbands its marching band--two years after having disbanded its football team.
• 1967: During a nationally televised game against Harvard on ABC, the Princeton band intentionally spells out the letters NBC.
• 1974: On Children's Day in New Haven, Yale's band dedicates a halftime show to birth control.
• 1981: The Brown band visits Columbia, in New York City. During the halftime show the band forms the "I [heart] NY" symbol. Suddenly three saxophone players don stocking masks and begin mugging their fellow performers while other bandsmen pretend not to notice.
• 1981: During a postgame performance a few members of the Stanford band reportedly urinate on the field.
• 1989: After a dean is named at Columbia, band members blockade his office, refusing to disperse until he accepts a list of 10 demands. Among them: "Write a glowing law school recommendation for [the band manager]."

This article isn't up on Sports Illustrated's web site, but last week's cover story about the murder of the Husker soccer player, Jenna Cooper, is here if you missed it.

Ezekiel 33

Today, my Bible reading plan brought me to one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, Ezekiel 33. Here's a quick run-down of why it is so meaningful to me.

• Verses 1-9: It is a challenging and sobering thought that we are responsible to communicate our knowledge of Christ with those who don't know Him, although we obviously have no control over their response. Paul, toward the end of his life, said that he was innocent of the blood of all men, because he never shrunk from proclaiming the gospel to people. Ezekiel, though, had already received this challenge from God when he was first commissioned.
• Verses 10-20: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but wants all to turn to Him. We really need to see people who are lost as just that--as people who need a Savior just as much as we do. Still, our God is a just God, who must ultimately meet those who reject His grace and mercy with the wrath their sins deserve. (Paul explains this as well in Romans 2:1-16.) And remember, it's not that God did not demand justice for the sins of those who trust His Son, but that God met His Son with the wrath that should have been put on us.
• Verses 21-22: As soon as Jerusalem falls to the Babylonians, God lets Ezekiel speak again (previously, Ezekiel was only able to speak when God was directly speaking). This concept was one of the biggest motivating factors in beginning my policktical fast. The idea is that God wanted nothing of Ezekiel coming from Ezekiel, because otherwise that might corrupt the pure message of God. I realized that much of what was coming out of me was not God's pure message (the hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ), but a lot of party-line rhetoric, some of which having dubious Scriptural roots, even though it might not have been outrightly contrary to Scripture. In the process, I built walls between people of different ideologies that were a hindrance to the gospel, since I might have been giving the impression that to be a Christian, they needed to vote for exactly the same people I would vote for. Thus, I had to get rid of it, at least for a little while.
• Verses 23-33: When I first read this, I didn't really know how to tie it together, so I will instead quote the thoughts of D.A. Carson in his For the Love of God:

  So the news arrives: Jerusalem has fallen (33:22). Ezekiel is now released from the silence God earlier imposed: he can converse openly and can say things other than what was given to him as a prophet. But all that he says in the rest of this chapter are more words from the Lord. He has two themes. (a) Regarding the people left among the ruins of Jerusalem, they are ever the optimists. They think they will reestablish themselves, even though they have not renounced their sins. So God will continue his chastening until there is only desolation, so that they will learn that he is the Lord (33:23-29). (b) As for the exiles whom Ezekiel addresses directly, they have learned to enjoy listening to him, as one enjoys listening to a gifted orator--but they have not learned to repent.

  Where are the closest analogies to such stances today?

There are a lot of challenging ideas here for only being a 33-verse chapter!

DN Extravaganza

Some of the important news of the day from our beloved college newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan:

• Apparently, Rep. Tom Osborne (R-Neb) has switched houses in Congress to be in the Senate without my knowledge (is that even legal?). This is news to me, because I haven't been paying attention to such things. Here's the headline of the DN today: "Osborne near rocket explosion: Senator unharmed after incident" (my emphasis). As you can see, it wasn't really a political discussion, so I felt it safe to read. I couldn't find a link to the story on the DN's web site, but maybe I'll try to get this scanned and put up on my blog soon.
• The next article that caught my eye was one entitled: "Phishing trolls for personal information as latest online scam" This brought to mind the story of how Ben, upon receiving an e-mail purportedly from eBay, signed up for identity theft by giving out his social security number, his checking account number, the user ID and password to his eBay and PayPal accounts, as well as his mother's maiden name (which is needed to get new credit cards and bank accounts). Ben later said that he did, in fact, have warning bells going off in his head, but he just hit the "Manual Override" switch because, after all, who would try to steal someone's information and use it for ill-gotten gain?

That's pretty much all for the DN today, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!

---

Update:

I forgot to mention that the reason Ben's story is funny is because he never actually lost any money, and (so far) no one has tried to get a credit card in his name or anything like that (Ben put a fraud alert on his credit report). I didn't want you to think I was sadistic or anything, but since no one got hurt, it is really funny!

Anyway, I also forgot to provide a link to today's letters to the editor. Most of the time, I don't read them, because what do I care what people with too much time on their hands write? (Don't think about that too much.) Anyway, read the insightful letter titled: "WWJD? Probably practice safe sex." I love his logic:

1. Assume "hypothetically" that Jesus sinned.
2. Would it not make sense, that, if Jesus sinned, that he would do it in a "responsible" manner?
3. For example, if Jesus murdered someone, would he not do it in a humane (rather than torturous) way, and would he not clean everything up afterward?

Bravo, Mr. Griess! You have proven...nothing!

Unbelievable.

A more Orthodox Christianity?

Continuing my series of posts on Winner's Girl Meets God, the next subject I would like to broach (and probably the last, unless I think of anything else) would be that of Orthodox Christianity. This is not so much in the sense of the principles contained in the Apostle's Creed or the Nicene Creed, but in the sense of the rituals and practices the Christian Orthodoxy has promoted over the centuries. Winner is herself Episcopalian, and her book is structured through a year of her life, each section of the book being a new season of Christianity. She does this largely because her former life as an Orthodox Jew was structured around the festivals and calendars of Judaism.

In the denominations in which I grew up, there was something of a fear about celebrating anything other than Thanksgiving, Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter. For example, we never observed lent, I never attended an Ash Wednesday service, and I only now know what the Maundy in Maundy Thursday means because she explained it in her book (it has to do with the Last Supper). I am now wondering why we didn't.

Before reading this book, I would have given a pat answer that would be something like, "Rituals can take the place of a relationship with God. Remember, Christianity is the only world "religion" that is not about man's trying to get to God (religion), but is about God's attempt to get to man (relationship)." As I read this book, though, I wondered if my Christian life (which is largely a routine of when I get up to read the Bible to pray, when I go to church, when I meet with other believers to fellowship, etc...). Furthermore, how different really is each service I attend from the last one--there is a very "ritualistic" pattern of worship, announcements, more worship with perhaps a special program on some ministry or other, a sermon, and a little worship to top the whole thing off. What's more is that I take comfort from this pattern of the service. I need the ritual of the worship and the teaching to be reminded of who God is and to be taught what God wants from me every week. Is that a bad thing? If not, then what about more rituals, as long as they are designed to continually remind me about the nature of God and the nature of His commandments?

Of course, there is a point where ritual takes over, but are we anywhere close to that dividing line? Furthermore, is it a bad thing to be prepared for Easter by the Lenten season? I have always been skeptical of what people were giving up for Lent, because (a) I knew a lot of people who quickly broke their fasts; and (b) even if they could stave off temptation for that time period, they were always back at whatever they had given off--so what was the point? Now, though, as I am giving up politics for forty days, I realize that the purpose is not so much on giving something up (if you should give something up--for example, a specific sin--that surrender should probably be permanent), but it is more about replacing what you are temporarily giving up for time in the Word, in prayer, and doing other things that perhaps don't have quite such a hold on your life.

Winner also talks about the "icons" (posters) of Jesus she has around her room. She writes several times about the conversations she has with different depictions of Jesus (for different moods she is going through--one Jesus may look encouraging, another may look forgiving, and another may look powerful). To me, this raised a few more warning bells than the stuff about Christian holidays and church service rituals, because this seems to teeter on the brink of breaking God's commandment against idols. Still, because we know pretty much everything we know about relationships from what we've learned with flesh-and-blood people, it seems like it would be comforting to at least have an artist's rendering of Jesus to talk to. As I said, I am quite a bit less sold on this idea as I am on the idea of rituals in Christianity, but it was certainly something to think about.

So that this post doesn't get too long (and so I can get back to my homework), I'm just going to post the rest of the ideas I gleaned from Winner's book about this subject in bullet-point fashion:

• Using a Book of Common Prayer--the book of Psalms also, in a way teaches us to pray, and we certainly pick up ways to pray from some of the good Christian music we listen to (like Derek Webb's "I Repent"), so why not have an organized book of topical prayers? Might they be good guidance for our prayer life, or should we try to "rough it" and be taught by the Holy Spirit?
• Confession--the Bible tells us to confess our sins to one another, so why not make a regular practice of it to a pastor? This, of course, is not for actual forgiveness (we as Christians have the authority to go straight to the throne of grace because our High Priest is Christ Himself), but it seems like it could be useful for accountability, support, and prayer in the areas of our struggles.

Finally, I want to point out that it is possible that all these things are externals, and if one denomination practices one of these sorts of things, we should praise God for how He is working there without feeling the need to adapt our denomination to do the same thing. As long as we are following Christ, perhaps the how's and the when's and the what's aren't so important.

Praise

Having written my earlier melancholy (but hopeful) post, things may be starting to look up. I just got an e-mail from a wonderful, faithful client of mine (for those of you who do not know, I am a parliamentarian--the information is a bit out of date on that web site, by the way), perhaps needing a professional opinion for her organization. This is a good thing (it means that I might be able to pay off a bit more of my credit card bill this month than I had planned on doing!). So, whether this is the turning-point for my life to move upwards, or whether this will fall through and there will be many difficulties yet to come, I do want to praise the God who is orchestrating all of it, whether good or bad (from my perspective, of course--from His, it's all good!).

On Literature

Well, my faithful blog readers (i.e., those of you who have sloshed through some of my deeper, weighty, and just plain long posts, who are still reading my blog now), I am considering writing a novel. Now, don't whisk away to Amazon.com just yet--I still have to actually get this future bestseller on paper (or, at least on the hard drive of my computer).

What I am interested in knowing (and this will require reader participation) is what you most appreciate about the books that you most appreciate. Is it a quick-paced plot? Good, descriptive imagery? A deep delve into weighty issues?

I have a story for a book in mind (literally--it will be based on an actual dream of mine) which I will describe in a future post. For now, I am interested in what people are interested in when they pick up a book to read it.

My date with a Messianic Jewess

I read Lauren F. Winner's Girl Meets God this weekend. I loved her insights into the relationships between Judaism and Christianity. Her thoughts about politics challenged my conceptions of what a Christian should be. Also, she's an extremely good writer, if you can stand memoirs.

This probably won't be an extremely long post, but I wanted to give you a general idea of what I thought about the book. First, if you do not like books written in the style of a memoir, you probably won't like this book. Still, it has extremely strong organization for a memoir.

Second, the most valuable part about reading the book was learning about the ties to Christianity from Judaism that I never knew about. She was always comparing some holiday in Christianity to a holiday of Judaism, and she knew quite a bit about the symbolism from each.

The only thing I was disappointed with was how she sidestepped seemingly important issues. She only mentioned homosexuality once in passing with no value judgment, and I was wondering what she thought about that. She never even mentioned abortion. As I mentioned earlier, she is one of the more liberal Christians I have read from (culturally and somewhat politically, but not theologically), so I was wondering what she thought about such moral issues.

So, I give the book a four out of five stars. I highly encourage you to find time to read it, but it wasn't quite profound. And, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I read this book on the suggestion of another reader. If you have any book suggestions, let me know!

On faith

My life isn't going very well right now. Starting a little over a week ago, things just haven't moved as I would like them to. School seems to be piling up everything it has on me. I'm extraordinarily broke. Yesterday, I even had a little car trouble.

As I was driving back to Lincoln from Hastings (both in the great state of Nebraska), I suddenly got a "Check Engine" light, which prompted me to call my dad. Before we got figured out exactly what was going wrong, my car died. On the interstate. In one-lane, construction traffic. I pulled over into the ditch. Steam poured out from under my hood. My dad came out to see what we could do. About three hours, a wrecker (to tow my car back to Hastings), and several police officers and highway assistance vehicles later, I was back on the road (this time in my father's van) headed to Lincoln.

So where am I? Even though everything is going poorly, God's given me this supernatural faith that sort of feels like He's leading me by the hand through something like the valley of the shadow of death. I, like a blind person, have no choice but to just keep moving where He's showing me to go. It's somewhat scary, but there are no other hands I'd rather be in.

At other times, I seem to get a little anxious about where everything is going. Still, even then, God seems to sort of remind me who He is, and then He reminds me who I am, and somehow He gives me just enough faith to get through the class, or the assignment, or the early morning to get things done, or the waiting for the wrecker to come pick up my car, or whatever else comes up. It's partially rooted in the theology gleaned through His Word, partially in what He shows me through prayer, and partially through a desperation that has nothing else to hold onto.

Anyway, I've written enough about bookish academic theology on this blog so far. I wanted to write something about the real-life Christianity. Really, they are the same lessons, but learned in different contexts. Sometimes I wonder if the Christian life is about learning what all those Sunday School, churchy, Christianese cliches really are all about. So, right now, I'm learning about the strength of God in my weakness.

***NEWSFLASH***

WORLD PREMIER STORY :: MUST CREDIT "WORDS, WORDS, WORDS."

Our ever fickle-friend (or should we say "flaky"?), Ben, has started a new blog with the help of his friend Christy. Ben had an embargo on the address, but with a little technical know-how, this blogger uncovered the new blog's address before its official launch.

The sure-to-be-smash-hit (or at least, the perhaps-to-be-soon-jettisoned) blog in question is:

umm...yeah...we couldn't agree on a title

###

(I think that I'm going to go straight to the NYT Editor this time.)

Update on the Policktical Fast

Per the advice of a member of this blog's readership, I have been reading Girl Meets God, by Orthodox-Jew-turned-Christian Lauren F. Winner (this is a link to the original edition sold on Amazon.com and has better reader reviews, but the first edition-first print from which I am reading is full of typos). Once I am through reading it, I will post a general review of the book, but, in the meantime, she has given me many things to think about. Therefore, instead of inundating you at once with everything I thought about the book, I am going to try to break it up a little. This naturally leads me to an update on my policktical fast.

The link to my fast is bound up in the fact that Winner, growing up an east coast Jew, was a Democrat. Although she sheds her old faith, she doesn't seem to shed her party. I find this intriguing for several reasons. Before, we get into this, I want to clarify the terms of my fast a bit more, because some political items will be thrown around in this post: for my fast, I do not mean that I am somehow bound from stating objective facts (i.e., the statement that George W. Bush is running for president for the Republicans, and that John F. Kerry is running for the Democrats is not a violation of my fast); on the other hand, I do mean that I am bound from exploring the pragmatic (as opposed to theological) pros and cons of issues, or from keeping up with the latest news on what each candidate is saying about the other (i.e., arguing that one candidate would be a better president than the other would be breaking my fast). That said, let's continue.

First, I think that I actually thought at one time that part of being a Democrat meant not believing in the authority of the Bible. Although she seems to suggest that Biblical inerrancy is not completely central to her identity (she defines herself as an evangelical, and contrasts evangelicals and fundamentalists thus: "Theologically, evangelicals and fundamentalists have a lot in common. Both groups affirm the authority of Scripture (though fundamentalists are more inclined toward a literal interpretation of Scripture, and a doctrine called biblical inerrancy--the idea that the Bible, in its original autographs, is perfect and immaculate and free from error--is more central to fundamentalist identity)" (105, my emphasis).), she certainly writes as though she believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. Thus, we'll give her this one for the benefit of the doubt. Still, the hesitancy of most Democrats to completely endorse the Bible has, in the past, been another justification for me to completely dismiss that party as un-Christian. Winner is a great counter-example to my former overly-simplified thinking.

Second, I have been wondering through this time of my fast (and in the past in what led up this fast) to what extent my political differences boil down to (a) cultural differences (i.e., the sort of things of which I should be accepting in grace and love), and (b) theological differences (i.e., the sort of thing on which I cannot budge). On this, Winner writes:

Sometimes I even feel equivocal about claiming the evangelical label. For, theologically, I am right in line with the evangelical mainstream, but what people want to know when they ask me whether or not I'm an evangelical is rarely theology. What they want to know is whether I vote for Pat Robertson, listen to Amy Grant, and believe the Earth is only five thousand years old. In fact, I've never voted for Pat Robertson, I prefer Mary Chapin Carpenter, and I think Darwin might have been onto something. (105)

She ends her thoughts on this by saying, "I look around [her church] at a motley crew of Christians, some of whom buy clothes at Wal-Mart and some of whom wear Vera Wang, and I know that these people are my people, polyester, Amy Grant, and all" (106).

Although I feel like I need to hear what she meant by her statement about Darwin, I still feel that she has written a great description of the body of Christ! Some of us are very culturally conservative (that would be I), and some of us are culturally liberal (that would be Winner), but we are all part of the body of Christ. In fact, she, being a Jew, has greater claim to being part of the body of Christ than I do; I'm merely a Gentile who has been grafted into the olive tree.

All in all, I think that this fast has given me some good insights into the blinders I had put on myself with such a dogmatic adherance to the philosophy of conservativism. I still have 30 days left, but I've rarely felt more free to think biblically in my life.

Marching Band

This weekend I went home (I am right now writing from my couch in Hastings). I got home extremely late last night, but this morning I turned right around and went to Norfolk for a marching band competition. I usually enjoy following my old high school's band around the state to the various competitions that I marched in during my tenure. Today was a slightly different story.

Of course, it was wonderful to hear the old parade cadences and songs, and it was great to see the band's field show, and I enjoyed seeing the seniors (those who were freshmen my senior year). My problem was that my parents had volunteered to be band trip sponsors. In other words, they rode up on the buses and made sure that the students on their bus didn't stage a revolt or anything like that.

Of course, I have no problem with my parents' being involved and volunteering. My problem came when I had to ride up on the bus with them. If you close your eyes, you can probably picture me--I looked like a sore thumb. There I was, a junior in college, riding the band bus. I wasn't a band student, but a has-been. I wasn't a Band Parent, but a tag-along. I felt like some kid who graduated a few years ago, but still hangs out in the high school parking lot in his letter jacket--he's not really cool to anyone. Self-consciousness, thy name is Jacob!

Fortunately, I escaped with a few shreds of my pride intact. Also, the extreme shame of my situation left me in a good position to get a lot of reading done, partially for school, and partially for pleasure (I will be posting on what I've been reading soon).

Now you might wonder, "Why did I even bother going home for all the torture I have gone through?" Mainly, I just wanted to do free laundry (even though I spent $20 on gas for the trip and would have spent $5 on laundry--what was I saying about logic and English majors?). It was nice to see my family, but it was they who pulled me into my plight today. Maybe I just really missed my dog.

The Joys of Java

It has been something of a lifetime goal to learn how to program computers. It isn't that I have something specific that I want to program; in fact, I doubt I would have much use for programming skills much beyond writing simple programs to check math problems (we English majors who have completed our math graduation requirements don't always think logically). Still, I followed my heart (not my head), and I signed up for Computer Science 155 this semester.

The professor is pretty cool. He gets so excited about the most mundane details about our computer programming language of choice, Java. He'll say stuff like "With Java you can import a package that already defines all this for you! This is so much better than when I started. Back then, we had to do all of that ourselves; this is so easy!" I, though, am thinking, "What's a package?"

On the first day, the professor asked, "How many students are computer science majors?" About half the class raised their hands. Then he asked, "How many are computer engineering majors?" About a third of the class raised their hands. Then he asked, "How many mathematics or other engineering majors do we have?" The rest of the class (except for me) raised their hands. "Did I miss anybody?" he inquired. I, the lone humanities major in the room, raised my hand. I could tell at that point that it was going to be a long semester.

Our second homework assignment is due on Monday. I couldn't get it to compile (that is, change it from text of the programming language into a program the user can run), so I took my source code to a teaching assistant. She offered me sage advice about what to change about my program. Merrily, I came back to my room, implemented the suggested changes with a giddiness that comes from knowing that your assignment is completed, hit "Compile," and the stupid thing still wouldn't work!

It's times like these that one questions the meaning of life. Questions like "Who am I?" and "What am I doing here?" take on new meaning when the professor has just said something about constructors and initializers, and you didn't know that there was a difference. Why can't we talk about plots and character development?

But a compiler does not understand such things. I shout at it, demanding "Wilt thou flout me thus unto my face being forbid?" and it retorts:

Triangle.java [175:1] cannot resolve symbol
symbol:   class IsoscelesTriangle
location: class TestIsoscelesTriangle

And, as we well know, "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in batallions!"

Triangle.java [196:1] ';' expected

*Sigh*

So, I have to go back later today to get additional help on my program. But right now I'm going to read some Shakespeare. At least he is someone whom normal people can understand!

***NEWSFLASH***

WORLD PREMIER STORY :: MUST CREDIT "WORDS, WORDS, WORDS."

Ben's blog, "The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers," officially passed on into the abyss of cyberspace. Ben, citing issues of time, commitment, and interest, formally terminated his blog.

The real problem we, the blogosphere, are faced with is the void formed by the loss of this blog. So, if anyone out there is interested in writing about government openness and sandwiches, please let me know, and I will post a link to your blog to in some way compensate for the loss we have just experienced.

###

(Does anyone know why the New York Times hasn't returned my phone calls about even the dawn of Ben's blog? Hopefully they'll pick up the slack on this story.)

Trans-Christianity

I heard a presentation tonight on why we (my university) need to take greater efforts to protect transgender people in areas as diverse as housing rights, restroom construction, and forms that force people to define themselves either as "Male" or "Female."

There was a time in my life (and indeed, there may be more times in my life) when I laughed dismissively at stories of how identity questioning people felt oppressed by bathrooms that made them make a choice about their genders. During that time in my life, the homosexual agenda made me want to storm Washington, D.C. in an attempt not to have other people define morality for me. Now, issues like these only leave me confused.

Don't get me wrong--I think that homosexuality is a perversion of God-ordained marital relations between one husband and his wife. Furthermore, I see the movement to gain acceptance of a transgender identity as just one more step to reject the classifications of gender given to us by God, because classifications and roles mean that there is someone to whom we are ultimately responsible. If there are no classifications and roles, everyone can define their existence for themselves.

Still, I think that there is a bigger issue here. Do we Christians approach this issue from a desire to extend God's grace to these people by pointing them to the truth, or do we just sort of write them off and wait for God's judgment on them? Do we, who are so enamored by God's grace in the context of our lives, desire justice above all for the people who call our way of thinking "oppressive," "bigoted," "homophobic," and "hateful," whether they be homosexuals, transgender people, or the liberals who believe that such lifestyles are acceptable alternatives?

If we really believe in the gospel, I think that we should be fighting for homosexuals, transgender people, and the liberals who condone such lifestyles, not against them. Think of Christ's attitude for the lost: when Jesus saw sheep without a shepherd (lost people who have no direction and therefore decide for themselves their direction), he felt compassion on them; then "He began to teach them many things" (Mark 6:34). When I say that we need to fight for these people, I mean that we need to be fighting for their souls. I in no way want to give what they are doing a pass because such actions are sins, but I also realize that I have no way to claim the higher moral ground in life. I am just as much of a sinner as they are (in fact, perhaps I am a sinner to a greater extent, because I know and claim to believe the gospel).

And this is about as far as I can get with all this. You see, I don't really think that I know what it means to "hate the sin, but love the sinner." I don't know how to love someone without muddling the fact that I believe that the Bible identifies the activities in which they are involved as sins. I don't know which issues I should support, and which I should oppose (that, of course, is off-limits right now because of my fast from politics).

So I guess the only thing I can do is pray more for all these people that I know. Even if I could come up with the perfect way to communicate Christianity--eloquently, firmly, and lovingly pointing out God's moral demands, our inability to keep them, and Jesus Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross for everything from homosexuality to lying to murder--I have no power in myself to affect any change in the life of anyone, whether that person be homosexual, transgender, or just regular ol' heterosexual. Maybe if we as the Church of Christ spent more time praying (petitioning the throne of the Almighty God) and less time politicking (petitioning the government), we might make a bigger impact on those who need to know Christ.

What do you think?

Powering Andrew's Blog

I have six Gmail invitations to give away, and I have a friend who has another six who is willing to give his away. If you don't know what Gmail is, it is Google's up-and-coming e-mail service that turned the geek community on its head because it offers a whopping 1 gigabyte of mail storage. Also, it has a lot of other intuitive features in its mail service that I'm enjoying. Furthermore, because it is so new, you don't have to be joesmith45623@whatever.com, because few names are taken. In fact, I know several people with Gmail accounts and none of them have to use numbers in their address. All in all, it's pretty cool.

So, the first twelve people to contact me by e-mail will be sent invitations. Otherwise, I will probably send them to a service that connects all the people who do want a gmail address with those who have them. But I wanted to give you, my faithful readership, the first opportunity.

Because I am trying to protect my pristine, Spam-free Gmail address from being corrupted, send it to an e-mail like name@gmail.com, except fill in where it says "name" with my full name, all lower-case, in one word without any spaces or periods or underscores (my full name is Jacob Gerber). Believe it or not, there are programs that scour the internet for e-mail addresses published on web sites, so I'm trying to be really careful here.

Happy Gmailing!

Boy Meets World

I hate being poor (poor in the sense of I'm-an-American-who-has-no-real-perspective-on-poverty). You see, Buena Vista Home Video has released the complete first season of Boy Meets World on DVD. I desperately wanted to purchase this when it came out some time in August, but I had no money to spend then, and I have no money to spend now.

*Sigh*

I was doing a little poking around Amazon.com, and apparently, the torture continues: coming out on November 23, 2004 is the complete second season of Boy Meets World.

This probably wouldn't be a big deal to me if it were any other TV show, but it's Boy Meets World. Boy Meets World practically taught me what it meant to be a high school adolescent. Furthermore, I was a big proponent of its being put on DVD before there was ever even a whisper on the internet that this would happen: I signed a petition on TVShowsOnDVD.com a long time ago, and was an active recruiter to get other people to demand that the most profound (and yet, so darn funny) television series of the modern world be put on DVD.

But when the time comes, I have no money with which to purchase it.

On that note, I would like to make an official announcement that I have joined into affiliation with Amazon.com and with Google's AdSense. If you buy books or DVDs or whatever through links on my site, or if you follow links to advertisers from this site, I will be that much closer to my dream of owning the DVD set of the seven seasons of Boy Meets World. Please do not just click links for the heck of it, but if you see something in which you are interested, use your best judgment. And by the way, if corporate sponsorship really bothers you, just do what I do on the vast majority of web sites I visit: ignore it.

But whatever you do, think of me laughing with Cory, Topanga, Shawn, Eric, and everybody else. Do you see me smiling? Now think of me sad and without my copies of the series. Am I still smiling? So just follow your heart on this.

Does this count as selling out?

Worship Choruses

Andrew put up a post about the worst worship choruses. He is absolutely right about the horrendous nature of some choruses. I have often been frustrated by the picture our "worship" music paints of God. It seems like far too many of the songs we sing in church read like "Oh, God, you have made me so happy, so I am happy, because you made me happy. I am happy, so I praise you, because I am happy." Garbage like this seems to drain our omnipotent, uncontrollable God of His power, leaving Him as something like a big, jolly vending machine in the sky.

Still, I think there was a time when I went too far the other direction. I began to get really self-righteous about what music I would allow myself to use in my (holier-than-everyone-else's) worship experience. I started to believe that if we were singing a song where there wasn't a theological truth taken from some obscure passage in one of the books of the minor prophets, then it wasn't good enough for me. (Then I'd stamp my foot, take my ball, and go home, because that's what real worship is all about.)

So, you might wonder, have I found a happy medium between a willingness to trivialize God and a self-righteous desire for every song to have some deep truth? Sort of, but my pride still likes to poke his head out about as often as my complacency does. I have to be on guard for both. The attitude I have tried to take is one where I certainly appreciate the more meaningful songs, but where I try to approach the "other" songs with a heaping helping of grace. I think that Paul writes pretty strongly about this: "Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions" (Romans 14:1 -- read the whole pertinent passage here). While I don't want to trivialize God, I don't want to be judgmental of the people who do derive some meaning out of these songs.

Anyone think this is a cop-out?

Ezekiel 24

This morning I read Ezekiel 24. In this passage, God tells Ezekiel that He was about to take from him "the desire of [his] eyes with a blow" (v. 16); in other words, Ezekiel's wife was soon going to die. Why? Well, God also commanded Ezekiel against mourning in any way for the loss of his wife. Why? God wanted the Israelites to have a representation of what he was about to do in the lives of the Israelites: he was going to allow the Temple to be destroyed by heathens (so say my notes in my Ryrie Study Bible).

So how does Ezekiel respond? Verse 18: "So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. And in the morning I did as I was commanded." What incredible obedience! Imagine the difficulty he must have had; I really wonder to what extent he struggled when he "did as [he] was commanded." This is really humbling to me, because sometimes I throw a fit about getting cut off in traffic, which is nothing in comparison to what Ezekiel went through.

I am wondering, though, how I will respond to the loss of a loved one in my life. I am blessed enough to still have both sets of my grandparents still living. I have all my uncles, aunts, and cousins (and in my family, there are quite a few of those). I don't think God is asking me not to grieve when people do die, but I often wonder whether I will be able to praise God as Job did. I guess time will tell.

Ego

This evening I read Ayn Rand's Anthem. For those of you who are unfortunate not to have ever read any of her works, I highly recommend that you do. This one is particularly good to start with, since it is extremely short (well under 100 pages).

Be warned, though, that Ayn Rand is not someone to read as a source of Christian inspiration. In fact, she is one of the staunchest atheist writers I have read. Still, there is something in her philosophy that is so intellectually honest that it is, in an odd way, attractive to me. Furthermore, she is one of the few philosophers who writes fiction to convey her ideas. If it were up to me, all philosophers would be required to write stories portraying how their ideas would work in real life. Otherwise, it is easy to get people writing garbage that only makes sense on a very cursory level and that seems to have absolutely no practical application whatsoever.

Let me give you a prime example of Rand's basic philosophy from Anthem:

I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. (p. 94 in the Signet Fiction paperback copy)

Okay, so it's obviously pretty sacrilegious. But here is another thing I really like about her: she unwittingly gives insight on what it would mean to be God. What I mean is that Rand portrays man as a god, an end in himself, and responsible to no one but himself. She argues that no other person or god should have control over man. Her philosophy is often called "ethical egoism" for that reason.

Obviously, this selfish doctrine doesn't mesh well with Christianity, at least as far as how we should run our lives. But think about God in this light: no one has any claim on God, and He is responsible to no one but Himself. It seems to me that often we get in a mindset that because God sent Jesus to die to pay for our sins that God is somehow obligated to have done that. In reality, God owed us nothing (and still owes us nothing, for that matter). Amazingly, He sent His son to die for us while we were actively warring against Him.

Two things, though. First, I think that Rand would roll over in her grave if she read this. This type of thinking is completely antithetical to her philosophy. Second, this one idea isn't the only thing that has kept me pushing through two of her larger works, Atlas Shrugged (about 1100 pages) and The Fountainhead (about 700 pages). (I would highly recommend both of those books, by the way.) I find her ideas interesting, because she is the only person you will read who takes capitalism and egoism to such extremes. She isn't a touchy-feely kinda gal, but I recommend that you read something of hers in your lifetime; she will definitely make you think.

Confessions of an English Major

I need to get something off my chest. I'm not really sure how to broach the subject, so I'll just treat this like a band-aid, and rip it off quickly, thus exposing my deep, gaping wound:

*big breath*

I use Sparknotes.com. I, who love literature and despise cheat-guides like Cliff's Notes, have been using the plot-summaries of Sparknotes.com for about two years now; I have been doing the very thing that I hate, a slave to my sin. Instead of grappling with difficult texts to find the meaning out for myself, I lazily make a few clicks on my computer and get (Oh, the shame! Oh, the ignominy!) someone else's regurgitation of what is happening. I'm not even the dog who returns to his own vomit. Worse, I'm the dog who seeks out the vomit of others!

Sometimes I can justify what I do by telling myself, "You are only doing this because you want to enjoy how the writer is portraying the plot. Really, the plot isn't that important to find out for yourself. Besides, who's the victim here?" Only sometimes will that justification soothe my raging conscience; most times, I can't shake an image of William Shakespeare standing beside me, looking at me in a way that at once conveys his hurt, betrayal, and anger.

I'm wondering if there are any support groups for English majors caught in the trap of such vices. I think it would be helpful in the healing process to meet with other English majors who have sunk to such levels. Of course, I must consider the possibility that I am the only one. *sigh* Who can set me free from this body of sin and death?

***NEWSFLASH***

WORLD PREMIER STORY :: MUST CREDIT "WORDS, WORDS, WORDS."

A friend of mine, Ben Keele, just entered the blogosphere with his sure-to-be-smash-hit-blog, "The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers" (a reference to the play Henry VI, written by your friend and mine, William Shakespeare). Already, Ben is providing hard-hitting analysis of today's most pressing issues.

We want to welcome Ben to the world of blogs. Ben, we look forward to your insights.

Mozilla Firefox

Well, I just downloaded and installed the preview version of the internet browser Mozilla Firefox 1.0. It's pretty nice, but, unfortunately, some of the extentions and themes I had for Firefox 0.9.1 don't yet work in 1.0PR. I imagine that there will soon be updates. For those of you who have never used Firefox before, you are definitely behind the times. Here is a whole list of reasons to switch to Firefox if you are still using Internet Explorer, but I just wanted to let you know that it has my full endorsement (the Mozilla Foundation and I are still working out the compensation issues of this endorsement, but in this post, I am offering a good-faith gesture).

(For those of you who were lost when I used the term "internet browser": an internet browser is the software that you use to view web pages. Unless you are on AOL, you can use any internet browser, regardless of the provider from whom you get your internet service. Most likely, if you don't know what you are using to read this, and if you use Microsoft Windows, you are probably using Internet Explorer. I am highly recommending that you make the switch to Firefox.)

Thou wilt be like a lover presently

- Much Ado About Nothing (Act 1.1, l. 290)

Now that I have a blog on which I am posting my thoughts on everything (as well as a reader base that spans the entire Husker nation), it certainly seems obligatory to write about such a subject as the opposite gender (that would be women). After all, it's my writing on this topic that ensures the posterity of this blog!

First, I have a list of qualities I want in my wife. I want:

• a Messianic Jewess.
• a French or Scottish woman.
• a girl with dark brown, curly hair.
• someone who enjoys reading and discussing literature (and who is, most importantly, an ardent believer in the Law of Charity in the way of literature).
• a girl who could not be characterized as being "flirty," although she should be somewhat outgoing.
• someone who takes her faith in Christ seriously and will continually challenge me to do the same.
  

Of course, many smirk at my list, thinking it a bit too specific, but I think that the list itself is a good idea. In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick remarks:

One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well. But till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that's certain; wise, or I'll none; virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her; fair, or I'll never look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what color it please God.

That Benedick and I have slightly different tastes in women is not the point--the point is that we all should figure out our non-negotiables before giving our hearts away.

(By the way, I suppose that I could be convinced to marry someone other than a Scottish or French Messianic Jewess with dark, curly hair, but the type of woman in whom I am interested would not change. I just wanted to include that so not to discourage those of you who were not privileged enough to be born into the God's chosen race and/or in two specific countries on the continent of Europe.)

So when is this woman coming my way? No clue. I'll just wait. Where am I going with this post? Not really sure about that either. Perhaps I'll have more clarity about all this when I meet my Scottish-born, French-speaking, dark, curly haired, Christian novelist (think C.S. Lewis--not Christian girly novels).

Policktical Views

I have been known to be somewhat...ah...partisan in my political views. Often, in fact, I have been more interested in changing someone's mind about a political issue than being sincere in telling them about Christ. So, I have made a decision to go on a forty day fast from politics. This means:

• No news (I tend to enjoy Fox News)
• No Drudge Report
• No Rush Limbaugh
• No taking sides in friendly, political debates

My political fast will be over about a week before the election. Hopefully, though, I won't be dying to gorge myself on politics, but, rather, will be able to approach politics from a much more temperate position (I don't necessary want to moderate, but I do want to be less convinced that someone is off the deep end if they do not agree with my conservative views.

What prompted me to make this change? For starters, I have been reading a lot in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel which have been reminding me of the sovereignty of God in the rise and fall of nations. It's quite freeing to be able to live by faith that God will accomplish what he will through America, without trying to believe either that (1) God can only accomplish his will through a conservative America; or (2) that the American system of government and values is in some way God-given and inspired. Most of all, eschewing politics allows me to form my opinions on the Bible alone. And honestly, it hasn't been so hard to avoid politics as I thought it would.

Also, I am writing about this not because I want to pass myself off as super-spiritual (I don't want to be like the pharisees whom Jesus condemned). Instead, I think that this is a weakness of mine that I am trying to temporarily remove from my life in order to allow God to work in me to give me perspective.

Finally, I do not want to imply in any way that good Christians really should be doing exactly as I am doing. I think that God uses some to work within the political system for His purposes, but I don't think that I am called to be there, and I think that I am spending far too much time somewhere I'm not supposed to be.

Football

Well, the Huskers pulled it off this week, beating Pittsburgh 24-17. Still, the victory lacked the gusto I would have liked to see. The Husker offense played very conservatively, trying to avoid at all costs the turnovers that cost them the game to Southern Mississippi last week. Though he didn't throw many passes, Joe Dailey threw only one interception, which was a big improvement over last week.

I want to confide to you, my inner circle of blog-reading fans (all four of you), that I am slowly becoming a bigger and bigger football fan. For example, I have actually chosen to follow and root for a professional football team (i.e., the National Football League--NFL), something I have never done before. Thus, through a carefully chosen system marked by arbitrariness, I have decided to cheer for the Green Bay Packers.

And of course, there are great truths of the universe to relate through football, such as, um...

Well, anyway, I'll keep you posted about the seasons of my two chosen teams.

O, what men dare do!

- Much Ado About Nothing (Act 4.1, l. 18)

Since my old roommate got a blog, I became instantly jealous. You see, I have wanted to get my own blog for quite some time. In fact, I had one this summer, but only for a brief amount of time, because posting on it was extremely labor intensive, and not many people came (If you wish to send me a sympathy card, I am always appreciative of any I receive about this). So, I had to dump the illustrious Parliamentarian's Blog. Therefore, I wish to unveil my new blog, "Words, words, words."

In case you are worried, I do not plan to post much (if anything) about parliamentary procedure on this blog. I suspect this blog will be more geared toward my Christian faith (which will probably be the dominant theme of this blog), literature, amusing things from life and the internet, and other things that strike my fancy (a subject which is quite broad).

So, anyway, I hope you enjoy my new blog. So it begins...