I am King of this castle of dross and straw.
By birthright, my crown is a yoke tied to the law.
As I plough through the earth, my brow doth sweat.
I am hence like my father, much to my regret.
How poignant is this soil, the source of my depravity.
This grave that grips me grievously with its great and ghastly gravity.
Surely, he died, and to me he bequeathed it all.
Such is my legacy, from he who fell the fall.
He is to blame. He is to blame! That filthy man of clay.
So if I may, why oh God, why was I made this way?
He is to blame. He is to blame! That filthy man of clay.
Because of him I’ll die today, unless I find a way.
I am plagued by my bacterial existence.
A war is waged against my own ignorance.
Competing and consuming; dividing and reproducing.
Fleeting is my joy when each disparate desire is despairingly confusing.
Where it not for these earthly ears, I would not have been here to hear it.
To bear in mind, the good news He bore, that I can be reborn in spirit.
What joy doth creation yield that loves You with such imperfect behavior?
It matters not, for hell is hot, I accept You as my Savior.
He is to blame. He is to blame! That filthy man of clay.
So if I may, why oh God, why was I made this way?
He is to blame. He is to blame! That filthy man of clay.
Because of Him I’ll die today, unless I go the Way.
I repent when I commit, my illicit acts of sin.
But what good I do, if not for You, brings too, death within.
Because just as vexing and quite perplexing are the sins of omission.
But God knowing this, afforded my happiness, and gave to me this revelation.
Give glory to God first… then ask and you shall receive.
God gives to the grateful, lest I be deceived.
Though commanded, I can not be, perfect in every single way.
I can try to give Him all my thoughts for at least one imperfect day.
Hooray! Hooray! Cheers to that man of clay!
For now I see my immorality and all my wicked ways.
Hooray! Hooray! Cheers to that man of clay!
For how much sweeter will be immortality, on that great and dreadful day.
What is a soul?
Take 1 part spirit, mix it with with 1 part body, stick in an oven for 10 months and voila! You have a soul! But what happens when you add a robotic arm into the mix? Read the following:
"...the monkey had become dedicated to controlling the robot, as if it were an extension of itself."
Once machine becomes an extension of self, we begin to question what self really is. If you judge that I speak presumptuously on your behalf by using the subjective personal pronoun of "we", then to you I extend my apologies. I was only speaking for my self and the extensions thereunto pertaining.
Know God; know Good. No God; no good.
My wife, Jenna, asked me today what it was I wanted to accomplish in my 29th year on this planet. It was an appropriate birthday question and I wanted to give it a serious response. I paused for a moment, and then I answered, “I want to love my fellow man more.” My wife then asked my how it was that I planned on doing that. I would like to share what went through my mind while I contemplated this follow-up question.
Whatever capacity I have to love at this point is only due to the fact that my Father has given me the power to know good. By my own will, I have tried to share what I know to be good but my weaknesses often hinder my intentions. This is why I know enough to acknowledge that my will is not enough, and that it is only by the power of God that others can benefit from my efforts. So that only by His power I came to know Good, and only by His power do others come to know Good.
Therefore, if I am to accomplish what I have set out in my heart to do when I answered my wife’s first question I must know God better. That I may know of His goodness to a greater degree than what I know now and that I may know His will for me that I may not resist it but rather carry it out according to His grace. It is in this line of thinking that the correlation between the two greatest commandments becomes self evident. So how can I learn of God’s goodness more than what I do now?
I consider myself to be a faithful disciple of Christ but only so far as convenience is concerned. I am like the rich man who does all good things but is unwilling to take the final step and give away his riches. Within the realm of the rich man’s comfort, he is capable of doing good works among men but when Jesus asks him to forgo the worldly security for spiritual security the rich man finds it hard to oblige. I find myself in a similar pattern, not that I am a wealthy man, but rather I am unwilling to go outside of social and cultural norms to demonstrate love for my fellow man.
A while back, I noticed a woman weeping in the parking lot. My heart wanted to reach out to her but I told myself to mind my own business; she did not want me to interfere. As I got in my car and drove away I felt like such a coward. It is possible that she could have told me to mind my own business but maybe she needed someone, anyone, to talk to and I did not give her the opportunity for fear of being rejected.
This year, I will not shirk from the hard time. As prompted, I will open my hand and my arms and my heart to those around me. I will share the burden of others and by doing so I hope to learn of God’s goodness to a greater degree than I known in the past. This year, my prayer is that I will have the courage to walk outside my comfort zone that I may comfort another soul.
Eucharistic Eukaryotes
I was contemplating the ways of God today. Specifically, how consciousness is affected at the cellular level, when the term Eucharistic eukaryotes came to mind. I think creationists would get a Eucharistic kick out of that one.
Response to a question in Facebook "What should be legal?"
What is law? A law must have a consequence (e.g. punishment). In the case of natural law, gravity keeps us on the ground. On earth, we measure the consequence of the law of gravity as a force (9.81 meters per second per second). We can use this force to our benefit (e.g. cracking open a walnut by dropping a bowling ball on it) or to our detriment (jumping off a building).
For the purpose of this discussion I will confine my political ideas to the US constitution and laws created by its states. Politically speaking, the US creates laws in congress and we execute or enforce these laws through the administration of the executive branch. To enable readers to follow my logic I submit the following sequence of events: If I run a stop sign, I could get ticketed. If I don't pay the fine and I am pulled over again, I could be arrested. If I resist arrest, the cop could use force to detain me. If I overcome the cop, take his gun, and run, I could be hunted down for assault and possibly shot at were I to use the weapon against the cops. Ultimately, the political consequence of breaking the law is the loss of life to some degree or another. It may seem a bit of a stretch to say that the reason that I pay a traffic ticket is to preserve my life, however this is my position and I welcome the reader to challenge it.
Establishing that laws must have consequences, justice is the enforcement of punishment equal to the degree of violation of another person's rights (an eye for an eye). The authors of the constitution declared life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as unalienable rights and submitted that these rights were self-evident. Using the rights as the basis for my arguments, my freedom stops where yours begins and this line is drawn through relationships. To illustrate this point, consensual sex and rape are the same in performance however, the latter violates a person's right to pursue their own happiness. On a smaller scale, if my brother grabbed a $10 bill without asking me while driving my car to buy himself some lunch it would not be the same as a stranger grabbing the $10 for themselves because of relationship. To answer the question, "[W]hat is it that determines an action is legal or illegal?" I submit to you that it is a mutual agreement between two parties.
Consequently, what should be legal is ultimately determined by a contract or covenant. Politically speaking, the contract that exists between us and our government is the constitution. Just as the state constitution can not prescribe by law anything that violates federal law we can not legally make contracts with one another that violate the laws of our county and state, etc.
It should be noted that drugs, gambling, and prostitution are already legal to some degree and depending where you are. The term legalization is interpreted as the expansion of what is already legal. In light of the aforementioned, I will attempt to address the legalization of drugs. However, there is one more level of depth I must add to the above. In its attempt to protect the people whom it represents, the state must protect us from the social consequences of a behavior without creating a measure of correction that the enforcement thereof exceeds the cost of the unbridled behavior.
Should it be made popular by way of the democratic process, I advocate the controlled legalization of all drugs so long as the controls in place are equal to the degree of risk placed upon society. If someone wants to experiment with a chemical it should be medically prescribed and supervised. The cost of administration should be offset by the consumer and the drug should be taxed to offset the cost of government auditing (by the FDA perhaps). Arguably, the cost of the drug could potentially be more than illegal methods of procurement however, the costs may out weigh the obvious risks (e.g. purity, theft, assault, etc). Additionally, if the anticipated decrease in cost of waging war on drugs is realized (to include the cost of counseling and hospitalization), this savings could be applied to the cost of government monitoring and thus decrease the cost of the drug itself. The drugs should be administered by a Psychiatrist who can offer counseling in conjunction with the drug and who would submit significant findings to peers for review and potentially advance the body of science itself. I propose that the increase in the number of curious individuals who wanted to experiment with drugs would be greatly offset by a decrease in the number of drug abusers. Abuse here, is defined as usage beyond a consumers ability to function in society.
Even without any monitoring at all, there are still some laws we can not escape. The damage that drug abuse does to the body is based on irrevocable natural laws and this is the risk taken on by the consumer. The political laws that exist today are an attempt to protect us from the social consequence of operating in a universe governed by natural law. In other words, even in total anarchy Rousseau is correct in saying "Man is free, but everywhere he is in chains". It would be a fun thought exercise to create a government based on the idea of being immortal.
God wants relationships, not religion.
Why was Christ was put to death? Why were there people who hated Him? Who were these people? Were they homosexuals? Were they pro choice? Were they people who preferred to stay home and watch football instead of go to church? No, in fact, they were the super religious, conservative, fundamentalists of their time. Over and over again the phrase, "Religion killed God," has played in my head for the last week or so. Science, Christianity, and the very belief in God is under attack and I attribute it all to the same evils that exist in religion.
I feel strongly that God hates religion. "Obedience in better than the fat of rams." Obedience to what? The spirit of God guides us to Christ who teaches us of the Father and it was Christ who taught that our Father's kingdom is within us. The Babylonians did not understand this, which is why they though they could build a tower so high it would enable them to reach heaven. That tower was one of the first "churches" built and men have been building them ever since.
I have watched quite a few YouTube videos lately. I have notice that theism (belief in God) is under attack by a series of successive videos created by various atheists. First let me state that every (without exception) atheist I have met in person, I judged to be a highly intelligent, kind, moral person. This is significant because I met many atheists as a missionary. The majority of atheists I see presenting arguments on YouTube however, have faulty premises, faulty logic, and sometimes both and seem to hold a contempt for theists in some cases, especially Christians. To be clear, this post is not a personal counterstrike on atheist but an attempt to bring logical, intelligent people to an awareness of the war that is ensuing about them.
Atheism seems to be gaining popularity in this country which is disturbing to me because this growth seems to be fueled by a religious and fervorous, dogmatic belief that their is no God. To prove that something exists is infinitely easier than proving that something does not exist which is why the assumption in science is that something does not exists unless it is observable. Not only is this fair but wise because otherwise we might as well believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny and all other creatures of imagination. So as far as science is concerned, there is no God. To be real it must be proven, but to be dogmatic about atheism is more foolish than the religious fanatic who is dogmatic about the earth being created in six days.
I can respect a person who says, "I do not believe in God because I have yet to see any evidence of such a being." Likewise, I would expect the same respect in return for my belief in God and my testimony that I have experienced His divine influence in my life. To witness the majesty of the universe and of life is, in my opinion, observable evidence, though not conclusive, which is why it is a belief.
I recently watched Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and Richard Dawkins in his interview with Ben Stein said that if you believe in evolution then you can not believe in God. Perhaps I do not fully understand evolution because I don't see why God could not have been the author of such a process if that is in fact the way it happened. However, what troubles me is that the process of evolution is still very fuzzy and Intelligent Design theorists have come along to challenge the paradigm. So what is the reaciton of the Darwinists? They treat evolutionary biology like a religion and act as though it is sacrilegious to challenge Darwin theory.
I think of Poor Charles Darwin, and the tremendous suffering and humiliation he went through as a scientist. To this day, religious fundamentalists think he was an evil man. The Vatican Church put so much pressure on Darwin that Charles renounced his Theory before he died. You would have thought that the Catholic church would have learned their lesson with Galileo but that's how incredibly ignorant religion is. Now here we are, centuries later, with all our knowledge, education and advanced marvels of civilization and now we witness a body within the scientific community acting like a bully? First we have the crusades and now we have terrorists dressed in lab coats flying their planes into the twin towers of science.
So I submit to you, that this is the very type of thinking that killed Christ. It is a spirit of pride and one of hostility towards any new way of thinking. If we are to to be Christian, we must shun any connotation of religiosity. We must be open to new ways of thinking, and if we find that we disagree with these new ways then we shall resist the ideas while loving our neighbors and the new ideas they share. Even if you do not belief in God at all, it would be wise to adopt this attitude. How many more must needlessly suffer or even die?
Text-Mail
Fire you voicemail box and replace it with text-mail. I call you. You don't answer. I leave you message explaining to you how lame you are and bamsa! You get a text message of my dissatisfaction line by line. How cool is that?
Q: How do you get an elephant into a Safeway grocery store?
A: You take the "f"s out the words "Safe" and "way".
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