If You Are Fascinated By Design

So, first, picture your entire life as it has led up to this exact moment. Think of all the events that have shaped you into what you are now; how things have worked out, how things haven't worked out, and how the things that didn't either eventually did, or taught you something you needed to know. It's nearly an absurdity, right? And to think that it all works together for you (in a sense)...

Now, think of everybody you know. Friends, family, colleagues. Now, put the miraculous absurdity of your life and how it's worked together (you can call it coincidence if you want, but I think that's a bit foolish) into all of those persons'. After all, everybody has a life too, and believe it or not, it's just as ridiculous as yours. Now, connect them; for everybody you know you have a connection with. Okay, so now we have this crazy awesome web of awesomeness.

Now, picture Times Square on New Year's Eve. Expand your imagination to fill all of those bodies with the incredible precision of your life. Connect the webs. That's Times Square. Zoom out to view New York. Good; we have one major city in the U.S. Now, multiply it by Chicago, D.C., Dallas, San Francisco, L.A., Miami, Detroit, Seattle, Nashville, etc. Expand it to include all of their suburbs. Fill the U.S.

Good, one country down. That's 4.54% of the world's population. Fill the Earth. Connect the web.

How awesome is our God?

(What's on your mind?)

So, first, isn't Facebook wonderful? And by that I mean that it provides an opportunity for the distribution of thought, and therefore expedites feedback, of those with whom you have contact.

Recently, I made a comment about Proverbs 21:12,

A man's ways seem right to him,

But the Lord weighs the heart.

and received a response from a good friend asking my own thoughts on moral discernment. I replied that morals, though partly inherent, are learned. Hebrews 5:14 says,

But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Some might question my belief, quoting the reference to Jeremiah 31:33 five chapters later.

This is the covenant I will make them after that time, says the Lord I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.

However, I do not find this to be a contradiction. God promised to give us His laws, written in our minds, to be found in our hearts; but just like binary must be decoded to make sense to our mind, so must God's plan for our lives (though He gives us the encryption key, according to His will). When we come to a moral fork in the road, we must not just seek guidance through prayer, we must also seek guidance through the Word. The closer we walk with God, the better we will be able to discern right from wrong; and this is a discipline in and of itself.

After asking for some collaboration on the subject, another good friend offered up a different way to look at the picture. As infants, we are sinful from the womb, thanks to the Human Condition. Superficially we might find this unfair, but every single one of us sins naturally, like it or not. As young as we were, though, the immediate consequences of such sin are less intense, as we are incapable of not only understanding consequence, but also incapable of understanding sin (and this surfaces a whole other question about the age of accountability that I will not get into right now). Of course, sin is also sin, no matter how old you are, and the urgency is never any less. And so every child knows when he/she has done something wrong; and this is why children need guidance in their growth, immediately from parents or guardians, and as they grow to know Him, from God.

And of course Jesus said in Luke 18:17,

Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.

I know it is true for me I have believed in God since birth. Granted, my faith is different now; I'm less--innocent, I suppose. But children are a blessing to this world! A child that believes in God has a light shining through him that is so rare among adults, and it's not only obvious, it's infectious. As children we live with our heads cracked wide open, taking in the world like we never will again; and then we slowly sew our minds shut as we grow. This is such an obstacle for a Christian, because really, we are still children of God. We must continue to seek guidance and wisdom in the One who will never be misguided, or we will succumb to our sinful ways. And we won't even realize it.

Cogito, Ergo Cavillō

Heisenberg is pulled over by the police for speeding down the highway. "Do you know how fast you were going?!" demanded the officer. "No," replied Werner, "but I know where I am."

Descartes walks into a bar. "Would you like something to drink, sir?" asked the bartender. Not thirsty, Descartes responded, "I think not." He promptly vanished.

Another Thought

So I've started Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of the Will here recently and wanted to just comment on one thing. The first few pages are his defining the term "will" with regards to John Locke's definition of the word "will." Locke says that will and desire can run counter to one another, as they are distinguishable from one another. Edwards takes it one step further. Will and desire are not necessarily distinguishable from one another, as desire is rather a part of the will, and therefore cannot run counter to one another in Locke's sense. "...'will' seems to be a word of a more general signification, extending to things present and absent. 'Desire' respects something absent."

Let me preface my next idea: First, I don't necessarily disagree with Edwards. Second, my thoughts are impromptu, after just a couple of readings of the text. Third, I'm not as smart as he is.

Okay, so I feel (like Edwards) will and desire never run contrary to each other. I desire the cookie. I will not eat the cookie (for whatever reason; health, money, etc.). However, my will is still a product of my final desire, that being I will not eat the cookie because, though a part of me wants to eat it, a larger part of me does not want to eat it, even if that part of me is motivated ulteriorly. So I think what Locke was getting at is that there are different kinds of desires within our minds, all with different reaches of influence (resulting from a level of discipline); and I think what Edwards was getting at is that all of these work together to form our will.

I could have that wrong, but I'll go with it for now.

But I'm afraid I'm nuking the fridge.

But not to dwell any longer on this, whether desire and will, and whether preference and volition be precisely the same things or no; yet, I trust it will be allowed by all, that in every act of will there is an act of choice; that in every volition there is a preference, or a prevailing inclination of the soul, whereby the soul, at that instant, is out of a state of perfect indifference, with respect to the direct object of the volition. So that in every act, or going forth of the will, there is some preponderation of the mind or inclination, one way rather than another; and the soul had rather have or do one thing than another, or than not to have or do that thing; and that there, where there is absolutely no preferring or choosing, but a perfect continuing equilibrium, there is no volition.

I couldn't have said it any better myself Mr. Edwards. Let's move on.

He Slappa da Bass

I've posted this before on my Facebook, but it's just so good, I felt like posting here again. My second favorite part of the video (my first are the last ten seconds of the video) is when the audience begins clapping along with the groove. You see, I feel that if music is being performed, then part of the musician's (or musicians') responsibility is to engage the audience. One time I was playing Brahms's "Hungarian Dance No. 5" on the piano for one of my high school band concerts. Halfway through the audience started clapping along, and it was fantastic! Next thing I knew, people were shushing and giving dirty looks to the clappers, and I found that disappointing. I realize in some situations, such interaction is sort of taboo because it disrupts the art as it was supposed to be presented, and so, though I was disappointed, I wasn't angry about it.

I just feel that music is experienced at its highest when there is not only sending, but receiving, which makes band and orchestra and choir (etc.) so appealing. Some of the most fun I have is sitting at a piano and just improvising with some friends, even if we don't have a structured set of changes. You let the music do the talking. There is conversation happening. And finally, when your audience begins to converse with you; that's powerful stuff.

A Musing on the Living Dead

[pun intended]

So, something amusing I've come across lately is the entrance of Resident Evil 4 into my household. Was it given to me? No. Was it given to my sister? No. Of course, it was given to my dad.

So out comes the Wii, and I put my head in my hands as the first M-rated game to grace our television sparks to life. I was giving him about ten minutes with the controller before the cd was thrown into the trash. An hour and a half later, my dad is still in front of the TV blowing zombie's heads off while my mother sat in her favorite chair navigating and cheering for him, my sister and I left waiting for a turn at a different game/movie/something besides zombies.

A week later, my dad is still playing that game; and I now sit here typing this, waiting for a chance to practice the piano that would drown out the game if I played it now, making it difficult for my dad to hear the undead sneaking up behind him. And my mother is also still watching it like some kind of engrossing sitcom.

Oh yeah, and look at what they bought for the gameplay today.

Never would I have imagined I would see the day when my parents would join the world-wide effort to fight the zombie apocalypse. But I guess I should have seen it coming when I received a text message from my mom about a month ago reading: "Dad and I just got out of Zombieland! You should go see it."

I wonder what it is about these flesh-eating monsters that so excites the human imagination? My roommate owns all of the George A. Romero zombie films, and I've thus received quite a good education on how to survive a zombie attack. In bookstores I see everything from The Zombie Survival Guide to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. For better or for worse, I did very much enjoy the movie Zombieland. In fact, in just a couple of hours I'm heading out to my friend's so called "Zombie blowout night" which will be full of cheering, gore, weapons, and sodas (I hope there will be pizza too; nothing goes better with watching a zombie tear the flesh off a screaming innocent than a good, greasy slice pizza).

It seems that something so vulgar would be considered more taboo than it is; but honestly, after a childhood free from the fear of the walking dead, I'm even finding myself inexplicably drawn to this somewhat cult following. To put all of this bluntly, it's the weirdest thing ever; and it's quite amusing.

So here's to the lonely survivors on their never-ending quest for solitude! I'm off to try my hand at zombicide.