The Questioning
As part of the question meme going around, Christopher has given me an excellent set of interview questions. In return, I believe that I am suppose to offer to question five more fine blog readers, a task I am happy to do. If you would like to be the next to try out the question meme (or to try it again), let me know in the comments.
1. You can only choose one to own for the rest of your life: a Linux box or a Mac. What do you choose? Why? Money is no object.
That is a tough question. I've noted several times that I am using a Mac these days, but I'd have to say GNU/Linux. While the Mac suits me best for my present endeavors, I know that GNU/Linux can be customized to whatever I might need in the future. Especially if money was not an object, I could even hire a developer to enhance it for me as it became outdated, whereas if something happened to Apple, I'd be stuck the rest of my life with an increasingly obsolete system. I anticipate that GNU/Linux will continue to get better on the desktop, and it is already an enterprise class solution for servers.
2. You are writing a book. What is it about?
Well, I'm not quite ready to reveal all of the details, but, briefly put, it is a novel. Expect it to be somewhat dark and dramatic, to contain the pursuit of a criminal and so on, but with a twist that makes it hopefully a bit unique. If I get some time to plow ahead with it a bit, perhaps I'll post the first chapter on here in the future, but I'd like to get a little further along first.
3. What is one thing that you want to change about yourself?
Just one? I'd like to be less self-centered and more humble. I worry far too much about myself and my own opinions; I need to wrest more control from my ego at times. It's not that I have any reason to be proud and self-absorbed, I just am, and I've been feeling especially convicted lately of the need to remedy this. Just thinking about all the things I would like to and should change about myself ought to be enough to deal with the latter problem (although it is not). The former problem takes more work, but I'm trying to improve with God's help.
4. Describe the process of salvation.
Wow, we aren't dealing with little questions are we? Well, as you noted, I've dealt with this a bit in my last post, and since I've been quoting C.S. Lewis, I shall again point to him, for like him, I do not claim to truly understand the specifics. But, I will give an answer as good as I presently can muster.
As I see it, Jesus' death and resurrection serve to provide complete atonement for the world's sins, with one “catch:” people must make a conscious choice to be receive the grace provided by Jesus. There is plenty of Grace on the table, people just have to ask for some. As totally depraved beings, we have no desire to place ourselves in a position of dependence on God, but God dispenses grace — reaches his hand out, as it were — to us as we flail around drowning in sin.
As I noted in my last post, I've contemplated a lot how God decides whom to provide this grace to. I find it troubling to accept arbitrary election for the sole reason that it necessitates that God created some for the sole purpose of being damned for eternity (arbitrary condemnation), which does not fit with my understanding as God as loving and just. My understanding could be flawed, of course, but I will have to write another post on the problems with arbitrary condemnation.
While I, and everyone else, deserve nothing more than to be cast down into Hell, I do not believe God intends some people for that purposes; rather He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3.9). Does that mean I'm trying to argue a universalist position? No, but I will argue I think that God would like everyone to be saved, but prefers the greater good for free will that leads to true love and obedience rather than the mechanical obedience that would come from sovereignly ordaining us to love Him.
Therefore, my theory is that God foreknows those who would choose Him, if not for their depravity, and extends His hand to help those onto the shore of salvation. If we imagine a ship wreck in which people are flailing around helplessly, a person on shore could tell which ones wanted to his help and which ones were unwilling to receive help despite their hopeless situation. Likewise I believe it is with God that He gives us the grace needed to seek salvation when He knows we are ready to surrender our will and therefore choose to be with God rather than being forced to follow Him. But we cannot do anything, even surrender, until His hand allows us to quit sinking.
At the point of accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, His sacrifice is vicariously put in place of our demise. That is, we are hopelessly in debt and the debt is paid in full, therefore allowing a just and righteous God to accept us with the love He intended for His creation, despite our anger provoking sin.
5. Who was your favorite teacher and why?
That's a tough one. Given that I made my way through the majority of grade school, middle school and high school with my mother as my teacher (that is, I was a homeschooler), I'd be tempted to name her. I could not have had a better teacher. I'm a little biased there, you know? Seriously, she worked amazingly hard to find new and interesting ways to learn material that seems to be repeated almost every year in schools, and had me spend time studying stuff that normally would not have been included in the curriculum, such as absolutely fascinating (yes, fascinating) books on biology and economics. These weren't text books, but why must we spend time boring students with dry text books when there is a wealth of better books out there?
If we exclude my mother from the running, for the sake of exploring another “nominee,” I would name quite possibly the world's best (ok, I'm biased) professor of religion, Dr. Alan Meyers. He was the one, a number of years ago, who introduced me to the academic/critical study of religion. He demonstrated the usefulness of applying the academic study of religion, which is often viewed as an enemy by Christians, as a useful tool that encourages faith. This is a topic I've been meaning to talk about separately, so I won't go into the nuances, but he is an amazing man. He has a stunning wealth of information in his head, but if he is confronted with a question he doesn't know the answer to, he will inevitably search out an answer and return with it. He will also gladly admit when you've presented him with a new peace of information too.
He is extremely kind and always looking for ways to share his enthusiasm for the study of religion with anyone who is willing to learn. He calls his students “friends” when addressing them as a group, and his attitude shows that this is sincere and not just a nice way of addressing a group.
As a Presbyterian minister, he also shares my love of Paul's epistles, and when talking on them, will often switch to “preacher mode” for a few moments. I would assert that he is a perfect example of someone following the spirit of being “in the academy” in the classical sense.
Christopher Questions...
…but I took too long writing up my answers to get them posted tonight. Expect 'em up sometime tomorrow.
Pondering on Free Will
Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness of joy worth having. (48)
Now, Lewis doesn't suggest that we are able on our own to establish a right relationship with God. Specifically, he argues a case of God being like someone reaching down to save a person drowning in a river. That drowning person has a choice to refuse the help or accept it, but the actual process of being saved from the watery depths is entirely dealt with by the rescuer.
This sounds Arminian, and to the extent that it is, I perhaps should consider myself Arminian. On the other hand, I remain convinced of the perseverance of the saints and believe that God must reach out the hand of Grace for one to be able to accept it; perhaps He does so arbitrarily, more likely, I believe because he foreknows whom will accept Grace of their own accord having been offered that Grace. I believe the latter proposition can still qualify as election, although perhaps in a four-point Calvinist way rather than five point. In the future, I plan on considering Karl Barth's alternative thoughts on the subject of election, but that's too much to handle tonight.
Therefore, I have a foot in both camps, but remain convinced I should consider myself a member of the Calvinist/Reformed tradition. I do believe there is a divine mystery concerning the relationship of the sovereignty of God and free will in which both are allowed to coexist for the greatest good possible.
Mere Lewis
I started re-reading Mere Christianity yesterday, numerous years after my first pass through it. I had forgotten what a joy that book is. C.S. Lewis had such a gift for stating things clearly and precisely, not to mention interestingly. I started highlighting parts that stuck out to me, and I had to hold back so that I wouldn't highlight the whole thing. I was talking to someone today about how much more I was getting out of the book this time, and I got a lot out of it the first time around.
Now if only people accepted Lewis' push for “mere Christianity” — focusing on the essentials and not the minutia that divide the Church for very little reason…
Late Night Haiku IV
VII.
Clock ticks slowly on.
More time goes, ne'er returning.
Cats are unaware.
VIII.
Unworthy I am,
Edwards rings so true tonight,
Refreshing is Grace.
IX.
Worry less about myself,
Time indiff'rent, for good reason
Soli deo gloria.
X.
To bed I go now,
The sound of crickets lacking,
Just the tick of clock.
The Question of God: The Conversation
Starting tomorrow and running for four weeks, the Philosophy and Religion departments at Lindenwood are going to be doing a set of “coffee conversations” based on the Question of God, which I've mentioned before on asisaid (part 1, part 2). I'm really looking forward to this live version of the panel discussions from the program. It should be a lot of fun.
They offered it for course credit if you read Mere Christianity and the Future of Illusion and write on the two contrasting books/authors. I plan to do this. I've read the former book previously, but this will be my first pass at anything by the good doctor. I'll let you know how Freud goes.
Monday Brunch on Lunch
1) Do you take your lunch hour at work?
No. Since I don't have a schedule exactly, I eat whenever there is time. Usually between 11:30 and 1:30. Generally I take far less than an hour too. I do take a lunch forty-five minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, however, since I have classes before and after the noon hour.
2) What is your favorite place to eat lunch at?
Tough question. I like lots of places, it just depends on my mood. St. Louis Bread Co. tasted very good today. My favorite lunch is just one that is different than what I had the day before.
3) What do you usually eat for lunch?
I vary a lot.
4) Do you have anyone that you eat lunch with on a regular basis?
Yes, but it varies depending on the day of the week.
5) If not eating, what do you usually do on your lunch hour?
Me, miss lunch? The only other thing I might be doing is frantically working so I can fit lunch in.
Have your Brunch on Lunch in the comments, if you'd like.
Rough Blog Weather
I've been playing around today a bit to finish up text processing, and after much hassling, was able to get a module known as “SmartyPants” to work. It adds support for “smart” characters such as “Smart Quotes” (notice that I'm using lots of quotes to show this off
) to text. SmartyPants takes the straight quotes that I can type in a standard web browser and converts them to nice smart quotes like you would see in a word processor. It also takes care of Ellipses… Dashes — and so on. Combined with Textile (well, to be clear, I'm using Brad Choate's Text::Textile Perl module that was written for his MT-Textile plugin), I should now have an uber-text-processing™ blogware program.
If you noticed the blog was unavailable for awhile… well, that was because I was lazy. Rather than using my “sandbox site,” I used the main asisaid code base for testing. Sorry about that. I'm going to try to implement BB Code support soon, but I'll try to be good about keeping up the site during that process.
Since the site has been down a lot, let me remind y'all that the latest installment of the CYOA Dakmoore saga has been posted here.
Problems and More Problems
Well, trying to post my CYOA entry tonight I spent two hours instead of five minutes. I spent more time trying to get the stupid thing posted than I did writing it. For some reason, Safari (the web browser) is messing up the way it posts data, so that Unicode stuff was getting completely garbled. It took me a long time to figure out where the problem was originating from and along the way, I ran into numerous bugs impacting Firefox as well. Ack! On the bright side, SAFARI (the CMS) now uses Textile to format the text. Textile seems to be pretty popular for blogware formatting, and since it is licensed under the MIT license and available as a standard issue Perl module, I decided to integrate it into the system. This means you can use Textile commands in the comments too. If it causes anything to look weird, let me know.
CSS Blues
Ok, so I thought it would be smart to use CSS on my site and catch up with the times. But now I have a problem. If you look at the CYOA entry, you'll notice that the CYOA graphic is down at almost the bottom of the part of the post visible on the front page, level with the last right hand side div area (obviously, this will correct itself as the CYOA post gets pushed down further on the page). I suspect this is because I used clear: right to make the boxes on the right side stop stacking on top of each other. That seemed well and good, but I'm not very happy about being unable to use align=right or left or any div tags within posts without having them pushed way down on the page.
Anyone out there know how to fix this problem? Perhaps the way to make the content div tag isolate everything inside itself so that those things are “unaware” of the right side bar? I'd be very grateful for suggestions. Tables were so simple…
CYOA 4.5: Gregorian Chants
Riley tried to steady her head as an FBI agent named Mark Stevenson droned on about the situation. How had Jon gotten himself involved in this?
“Mrs. Turner, I’d like to say I know who has Mr. Turner and your son, but I’m afraid the local detective has proven less than cooperative in providing us with information. Fortunately, I had a wiretap installed on the department’s phone line and was able to get some key information that my associate is processing at the moment. It seems a group named the Variant Alliance is involved.
“Unfortunately, your county’s detective happens to be the FBI’s former man in charge of Alliance activity, a post that was not filled after his resignation from the agency. I’m afraid if he doesn’t cooperate, finding your family is going to be quite difficult, but I’ll be darned before I’m going to beg a county detective to cooperate.”
“Sir, with all due respect, we’re talking about my family here. If you have to prostrate yourself before the jerk, do it. I just want to know where Jon and Isaiah are… before, before…” Turner’s voice broke up and she started to weep.
Stevenson had a strange sensation come over him; he actually pitied the sobbing woman in front of him. He flipped open his phone and dialed Herrick. Maybe he could intimidate Herrick into cooperating. “Stevenson here. You’re in a lot of trouble, Detective. I took some liberties to listen into your conversation with Mr. Dakmoore and see you’ve been keeping a lot of information to yourself. What exactly are planning to do – play Mr. Hero and save the day? I’m going to talk to Chief Jonson and ask that you be suspended.”
“I’m not surprised you did that. Look, Stevenson, I had my reasons… I’ll meet you at 1700 hours and I’ll brief you on what I know. But I need your assurance that you’ll keep me on the case and play by the rules I know will work in dealing with Dakmoore. They’ve just taken… they’ve taken another person.”
“I’d be interested in your briefing, but I’m afraid I’m still going to have to talk with Jonson. You’re clearly not a team player, so I have no room for you on my team.”
“Look, Stevenson, they’ve taken my fiancée. I need to be on this case.”
“The last thing I need is to have someone with a personal cause on this case, detective. I’m going to have to take over this case. Your behavior has only reinforced my dim view of local departments and frankly your sudden willingness to cooperate is quite telling.”
“So we agree on something – I’m not exactly thrilled with you either. But listen, you know I’m the only one who knows how the Variant Alliance works. They have some demands that need to at least appear to be satisfied; this is something I cannot accomplish alone and you know good and well that you’re never going to get this case solved without me. Leave Jonson out of this – you know you need my help and, while I hate to admit it, I need yours.”
“That’s not my style, detective.”
Riley glared at Stevenson. What was he doing? It sounded like he was refusing to work with the detective that he had just finished saying he needed help from. All of these agents were alike – big heads and no compassion for those actually being affected by crime, she thought. “What’s wrong with you, you, idiot, do whatever he wants,” she blurted out. She couldn’t believe she had just said that to an FBI agent.
Stevenson turned and cast a surprised look her way.
“Look,” Herrick said, “I never kept the information from you to hurt Mrs. Turner – I know I know this group better than anyone else, and I made a call that I could work better alone. Dakmoore is keeping an even closer eye on me than I expected, however, and without some serious action occurring, I think he is going to kill all three of his hostages tomorrow. Let’s save these games for later and stop the Alliance before they proceed. OK?”
Stevenson sighed, he didn’t like being put in a situation where he must cooperate with a defiant local detective, but Turner’s exclamation made him feel a bit guilty. Perhaps he was acting just like Herrick. At the very least, he was not sure how he’d solve the case if he didn’t garner Herrick’s cooperation.
What will you do? Show you are the superior agent that you know you are and agree to work with Herrick for the good of Mrs. Turner. (5.9) Hang up on Herrick and go see about getting him taken off the case and the force. (5.10)
How to Continue CYOA
The first two people to comment here requesting to do so will get to continue the story on their blogs. Just pick which story direction suits you and run with it. Why not give it a try?
As Christopher explains on his blog entry about this, you will probably want to link backward to the previous part (or perhaps both previous parts) so that someone new can read the whole story. Also, it will be helpful if you title your piece with your option number, and likewise provide numbers to correspond with the options at the end of your segment of the story so that things continue in an easy to follow fashion.
Christopher has given permission for participants to “steal” his CYOA graphic (featured at the beginning of this piece), so you may want to include that in your entry for easy identification. Have fun!
