Bible Shopping

Last night, a Friday, Anna and I found ourselves perusing the local christian book store after dinner. Since one of my favorite things to do is look at the different covers, pages, translations in which God's word appears in our culture (and I've been eying the ESV Study Bible), when we head in there we tend to stay a little while, until we get sick of the self-help titles and discuss Christian culture on the way to one of our domiciles.

Last night, it was kid's Bibles.

Oh my stars.

There were Bibles with glitter, the Precious Princess Bible, the Adventure Bible, the Treasure Chest Bible (complete with plastic clasp.)

At this point, I will discuss a little bit of insight into my brain. I used to be far more militant than I am now about feminism. I would no longer call myself a feminist due to the social implications of such a label. However, I believe that men and women are both made in the image of God, and that they have different roles to play in family and church structure.

Nowhere in the Bible, though, does Paul, or Moses, or Luke, or Jesus talk about glitter. In fact, in multiple places in the Bible (1st Peter 3, 1st Timothy 2, Proverbs 31 all come to mind) women are exhorted not to put their hope in their external beauty. This doesn't make glitter and fashion and the like bad, but the mind and heart are what are emphasized in these passages.

In all of the kids' Bibles I looked at, all the "boys" Bibles had maps in the back, and the "girls" Bibles did not. This is frustrating to me as well because three very important women in my life are really visual. So they like maps.

There is nothing wrong with Bibles having glitter on them. Not my cup of tea, but if that's yours, fantastic. But if the ones with glitter on them, marketed towards girls don't have a map in the back, I take issue. For visual women to not have that aspect of their brain cultivated at an early age really bothers me.

What are some of the reasons that the publishers might leave this information out?

Nukes

A few weeks ago, Obama and Medvedev (the presidents for the United States and Russia respectively) signed an historic arms agreement that essentially reduced the amount of nuclear warheads that each country could have in it's arsenal. However, the United States is looking at new means of defense to replace the lost weapons systems. The New York Times describes the weapons under consideration as well suited for quick, pinpoint attacks that would be able to take out, say, a nuclear facility in Iran without all the nuclear fall-out.

The thing is, these new weapons actually make conflict MORE likely. Part of the historic reasons for even having nukes is that they preserve the balance of power between nations; if you hit the button, they hit the button, and everyone dies. But with these new weapons, the damage isn't as great, at least in a localized sense. So the incentive NOT to launch isn't as high, especially on the peripheries of the larger nations.

Russia worries that these attacks may be directed at them. Naw, because Russia still has nukes. But smaller nations that aren't allowed nukes are definitely at greater risk of an attack.

Could be bunk, but it's interesting to think about.

Someone's In Trouble

Bummer.

Not Really Feelin' It

First, I must say I am REALLY tired. The mega-church worship team thing is definitely an interesting departure from picking up a guitar and leading a handful of people in worship. It's no less important, but it's certainly more tiring.

We are currently two services through our five- service Easter weekend. I hopped on a bus to the church at 12:04 and got home right around 9:00. Luckily I'm doing okay, having rationed my energy, amending a mistake I made the last time I played this much. Still, dealing with job-hunting, feeding myself, and working on my feet full-time leaves me worn out at the end of a week, and the weekend and the rest it entails never comes a moment too soon.

And frankly, I am not always excited to worship musically. Shoot, I'm not always excited to do things God's way.

But worship is not about how we feel. It's about giving God the glory he deserves. Not even because of what he did through Jesus on the cross. Just because he's God.

My feelings are irrelevant. I promise you that I won't want to get out of bed tomorrow morning at 5:30, much like many other Christ Followers. I know he deserves everything. Because of this knowledge, I get up, thank God for choosing me as one of his representatives in this present age, strap on my bass, plug in, tune up, and let music be an expression of my gratitude for his sacrifice and victory over Satan, sin, and death.

It's not about how I feel.

It's all about Jesus.

Knowledge is Weakness

We all know the phrase "knowledge is power," right?

I'm not so sure. Knowing is good, I won't deny that. However, I've noticed recently that the more I learn, the more want to learn, and the more aware I am of how little I know within the spectrum of what want to know. So really, I'm just learning that I can't learn everything I want to at the comprehension which I want to.

And the more I learn, the less power I feel like I have. The more I read about Jesus' work on the cross, the more I know I need him. So as I learn, I am more aware of my weakness and more aware of God's power.

With respect to the Gospel, knowledge is knowing your weakness, and knowing the power of your Savior.

These are the things I ponder while I sweep stairwells. No wonder I come home exhausted.

Holiday at the Sea?

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - C.S. Lewis

Yesterday morning, I arose at the pleasant hour of about 9:30. I boiled some water, took my shower, then made morning coffee in my beloved french press, which was given to me by my parents for my birthday. (Funny how much things like that mean to me as I get older. I frequently try to figure at which point in my life I stopped asking for toys of the children's variety.) While my coffee brewed, I started making my breakfast: red potatoes, onions, eggs, and sausage all fried together. Just as the food finished cooking, the sun came out, and it occurred to me that I should sit outside. Our deck is severely lacking in the area of seating. So I settled for the roof.

It wasn't long before I was laying on my back on the roof with my eyes closed, soaking in all the vitamin D I could and singing to Zac Brown Band. Right about the time I realized what I was doing, I thought of this quote and started laughing.

"Far too easily pleased? Are you kidding?" I thought. That was the most fun I'd had in so long, and I was doing NOTHING. Yet this quote was telling me that I should want more than that. I realized I really would have just as much fun, if not more, making throwing mud around than I would going to the beach. Being able to sit on the roof in the sun was a huge blessing to me, and yet somehow, according to Lewis, I was supposed to be striving for more.

Being easily amused has given me so much joy in all of the little things that people always overlook. All the little wisecracks or the puns that occur in conversation and cause groans from everyone else make me laugh more than things that everyone else finds hysterical. I don't know what it is, but I actually like being content with the little things like mud pies.

Because there's sand at the beach.

And that stuff is IRRITATING.

Reading Job

Job has been the source of some confusion to me. The first time I read it, it was weird and hard to follow. The second time, I felt like I understood the general idea, and wondered why it took nearly 42 chapters to get it. The third time, I suddenly realized that it was written like Proverbs or Psalms, and could be put bridging the gap between history and poetry. But then it read like a musical. For real: who talks like that?

"Hey Eliphaz, I'm depressed, scratching between my boils with a shard of broken pottery"

"No worries, I'll tell you you're sinful in a poem off the top of my head."

*cue the harp here*

"Did this really happen, or is it just some kind of crazy metaphor?" I asked. I guess it makes more sense to believe that there was a guy named Job who's life stunk for awhile than to believe that God would become a man to save the people that would kill him. I believe the latter of the two. It makes sense to believe the former.

So then the fourth time (this morning) I remembered that Job's friends weren't really any help to him, or so it's been said to me. But as far as I could gather, everything they were telling him was true; he just knew it already, and expressed as much. So Job spent 40 chapters whining about how righteous he was, how he was being punished for no reason, and on and on and on and on.

I wanted to play Eliphaz and be like "DUDE. You self-righteous, arrogant, whining little boy. SHUT. UP. Yes. Everyone's dead, but you shook that one off like a champ. Yes, you hurt. But you crying about it isn't going to solve anything."

While I am only about halfway through Job, the little booger is irritating me. I'm gonna be excited when God shows up, rocks his world, and puts Job back in his place.

I say this knowing that we all whine every now and again. I feel like I've been whining my whole life. We even whine when our friends try to help, but we don't want to hear it because all we know is our own pain. While many of us don't get the fireworks that Job does, I know I could use one when I whine about my life. Especially because I have a job, a place to live, food to eat, friends and family that love me, a church to attend that isn't in danger of getting torched, five quilts on my bed, and an air purifier on top of my dresser.

So I'll fight through Job. It'll probably still confuse me, but it seems I take something different from it every time.

The Haiti Post

Everyone and their mother is commenting on this whole Haiti bit, so much so that for a long time it seemed pointless to look it up and see what was actually going on, such was the stream of information on Facebook and the number of people who said their hearts were aching for the country.

Unless something drastic has changed in the last few years, Haiti was switching back and forth with Afghanistan for the poorest country in the world. I would guess it's back at number one. It's really high on the GINI Index, which means it has a huge income disparity. They are currently ranked number eight based on the most current information they provided (2001), so I would suppose they've gone up the list a ways. As far as I can remember, it also has a pretty high level of corruption.

I've kind of avoided looking at pictures of the tragedy, lest I have dreams about finding someone I love dead in a pile of rubble. For this reason, the heart-break I've experienced is fairly minimal, even barely existent. However, I got a chance to look at a New York Times article in which the Haitian President's palace was in ruins, and the President was quoted as saying he didn't know where he was going to sleep.

From what I remember about Haitian politics, the President is one of the wealthiest people in the country, living in splendor while the people he governs suffer because they lack the income to do anything besides feed themselves (I apologize for the generalization.) The fact that he was effected by the outcome of a devastating earthquake at a deeper level than an administrative headache seemed a small slice of justice in a situation as horrific as this one.

Prayers go out for the people in Haiti. Pray that many come to know the Lord through this catastrophe, and may those who do feel a peace that surpasses understanding as they serve others, knowing that the God of the universe will do great things through what seem to be terrible situations.

Lots of Little Topics

Because I spend forty hours a week doing what janitors do, I've had a lot of time to ponder. Lots of things, really. I've thought about music, news, health care, going to the dentist, my future, climbing, and theology. So because I haven't written in many moons, I figured I'd hit the major topics in my line of thought.

This may seem a bit disjointed, but so is my thought process. As an extrovert, I tend to think out loud, and my thought process emulates that. It's really hard for me to carry a single line of thought until I'm finished with it. This is why the topics discussed are so vastly different from one another. I'm getting better at doing all this in my head, but until I learn to think before I speak, this is how it goes.

1.) Hello Hurricane. The newest Switchfoot album. Now, most of you know how much I love Switchfoot. Knowing this, these guys could put out an 80's pop album and I would buy it, listen to it, and learn to love it. This one is taking a bit more work.

Lyrically, the album is BRILLIANT. After about the third time through the whole album, I recognized a much more "Christian" vibe to the whole thing. A major theme of the album is repentance, coming to the realization that we are completely and utterly destined for a life of destruction, sadness, and separation from God if left to our own ways. A desire to worship Jesus with everything that we have, change our way of life and live a life of holiness and joy is reflected in many of the tracks, and I gotta say, lyrically it's some of the best work they've done, as far as I'm concerned.

Unfortunately, the music isn't as cohesive. Drew coaxes some fantastic sounds from his guitar, and Tim continues to blow me away with his tone and bass riffs that are so central to Switchfoot's sound. But really, the songs, aside from lyrical content, seem so different from one another that they don't really flow.

That said, there are maybe three stand-out tracks on the album that exemplify everything that Switchfoot does best. I would actually venture to say that "Sing It Out" is one of their best songs.

It's taking me a long time to get used to it, but I definitely like it more every time I see him. That's really all I'm gonna say about that one.

2.) Doctrine. I have listened to a fair amount of sermons while sweeping the steps of the Fairhaven Administration building. I enjoy learning within in that context, and it's nice to do something while I feel like I'm doing nothing, seeing as someone will tramp their muddy feet up the stairs without a second thought as soon as I'm done.

But here's the thing about Doctrine: it's distracting. At least to me. Great big terms that explain why I'm not good enough to choose God, and he has chosen me. Wordy explanations about the authority of Scripture. Predestination, penal substitutionary atonement, justification, sanctification. And it's all true. It's all valuable under a certain light. At least as far as I understand it, it is.

But such inner dialogue that occurs when I hear words like "elect" is almost instantaneous: "You don't love Jesus. You're not elect. You just looked at that girl, that means you're lusting and God's children don't do that. See. BAM. Not elect. No hope. I just proved it to you." The result is INWARD focus, rather than UPWARD and OUTWARD focus. So I focus on fighting the lies I'm being told while trying so hard to be spiritual and know what all these concepts and big words are rather than KNOW JESUS. And I would rather know Jesus than have a dictionary full of doctrinal terms that lead me to religion and a spiritual check list of all the stuff I know.

3.)Last one. Gender inclusive housing and bathrooms may be making their way onto Western's campus. I'm not really that surprised, honestly, because I knew it would happen sooner or later. And I'm not flipping out, blowing the whistle or anything like that. I just think it's interesting.

Gender inclusive housing i'll leave out of this for now, because I feel I need to be able to accurately articulate what I think about it. Bathrooms, however, I can address now.

The intention of gender inclusive bathrooms is to help individuals who identify as a gender that is different that their sex. By having one bathroom that everyone uses, aforementioned individuals just walk in rather than feeling uncomfortable choosing between their gender or biological sex that appears on every bathroom door. There are lots of arguments as to why we should adopt such a system, one of which (that I, for the record, thought about for probably a half hour) is that it increases standards of cleanliness. I still haven't figured it out: when we're done cleaning them, men and women's bathrooms are equally clean. ANYWAY. The main issue (not addressed on the little blurb that was handed out in promotion of such a policy) that I find with gender inclusive bathrooms is one of simple safety.

I'm not a huge dude. In fact, I'm not even really strong. So I can do pull ups on my finger tips-big deal. I don't really worry about using public restrooms, even at night. If girls were in there and it was deemed socially appropriate for them to be, I wouldn't feel weird peeing next to them.

SO switch perspectives, and I can tell you that if I was a woman, there is no way that I would want to use a public restroom on the fifth floor of the library, where no one ever goes at 10:45 PM if I knew that a guy with Brandon Adent's build could possibly walk in and find me there, regardless of his intentions.

I guess it comes down to my wondering if we really have so much faith in humanity that we would take away all restrictions on who could use which bathroom and when.

See how disjointed that was? I'm actually getting drowsy and pretty tired, so I wouldn't be surprised if none of it made sense.