Inside the Sojourn

today

Today:

what concerns you?
what occupies your thoughts?
what occupies your time?
who will you see?

Pray about it all...

Ortho-whatsy?

Orthodoxy has to do with what we believe.  Orthopraxy has to do with how we live.  The two never perfectly match because we don't live everything we say we believe - though as we mature the gap should close.  Churches tend to emphasize one over the other.  We can focus most of our energy trying to get belief straight or we can focus our energy on "doing" our faith - getting out into the community or just helping each other out inside the church.

We need both of these ideas at work in our lives.  Correctly understanding the truth without it affecting how we live is useless.  Going and doing with good intentions alone ends up misguided and missing the point. 

Sometimes, you need to skip the meeting and go help a friend knock out an overwhelming amount of yard work.  Sometimes you need to stop what you're doing and have some bible study with a few friends.

May we have the wisdom to maintain a good balance - may we know the truth and consistently act on it, as our life comes to an end may we look back on a life well lived.

The lady doth protest too much...

I've been part of an ongoing conversation for a few weeks about different aspects of the man we know as Jesus.  This week we talked about the controversy he caused.

He caused controversy when he spoke truth.  Certain people he confronted with true statements did not like it because it threatened their control over people.  They viewed his plain spoken, public statements as undermining their position.  His true statements called into question their motives - rightly so based on the historical record.

Controversy wasn't the point - neither was it to be avoided.  It was simply to be expected.

Two thousand years later, it's no different.  People who deny absolute truth are actually advocating an absolute truth (that it does not exist).  It's a circular argument made blindly to it's nature. 

People that proclaim the tolerance imperative violate their own stand when they tolerate everything except that which threatens their way of thinking on any level.

Case in point: the movie "Expelled" is an expose of academia's hysterical opposition to Intelligent Design.  In general, intellectuals and academics have a reputation of priding themselves on being open minded - except when someone with a theistic, and especially Christian world view, wants to enter the discussion.

Intelligent Design essentially asserts that biological systems contain information that cannot be explained by random or natural processes.  DNA is a prime example.  Intelligent Design concludes that design is inherent in the universe - thus some transcendent intelligence is behind our being here.  Proponents officially stop short of prescribing the nature of the transcendent power to avoid straying outside the limits of science.   Of course, they would tell you outside of the intelligent design debate that God is the source of the design.  Hence the staunch opposition from secular academia.

An open minded look at the theory would have to acknowledge that there's something there.  Information theory has been long established as legitimate (this is the theoretical basis for designing successful digital communication systems - it's why modems work, etc).  No one questions that DNA contains the encoding that determines everything about a biological system (green eyes, 6' tall, brown hair, male, etc).

  Perhaps the theory isn't perfect - I'm not an expert in biology or information theory - but to vehemently assert that it is fatally flawed and useless for discovering truth, to the point of firing professors and banning the subject from discussion reminds me of a famous Shakespeare quote: "Me thinks the lady doth protest too much..."

When real threats emerge, stop at nothing to discredit, punish and eliminate honest discussion.  Machiavelli would be proud of many of our universities...

That's a word.

I like words. 

I remember the office door of the head of the physics department at the University of Tulsa when I was studying there because he posted a calendar that had a different word for every day.  The word "bovine" is the only word I can remember on his door from that semester.  Funny how something like that sticks after so many years.   

I don't know how I came by my love for words.   My parents are both articulate; my mother read to me from the time I was an infant.  I loved reading to my kids.  "Go Dogs Go" is probably the only book I'll remember when the rest of memory fails me.  Do you like my hat?

Words convey ideas and ideas are powerful, transforming things that change the course of a life.

The idea that God is... 
The idea that love is a verb not a feeling... 
The idea that I can be more than I am with God's help... 

Jesus is called the Word by John.  The Greek word (for word) is logos - where we get the word logo.   The brand is the sum total of everything a company is.  The logo represents the brand.

If God were a brand, Jesus would be the logo; the summation of the totality of God.  Now that's a word.

Apologies to Ockham

Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae ("law of parsimony" or "law of succinctness"): "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", or "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".  [Exerpt from Wikipedia.]

With apologies to William, my experience shows that this "law" does not always hold true in human behavior unless you embrace extreme reductionism (e.g. humans are selfish, thus all selfish behavior is explained).  Human behavior, perhaps simple at the deepest core, is complicated by time and circumstance.  Assuming the simplest explanation for puzzling behavior is rarely adequate. 

It helps me to remember that there are at least three sides to every story - yours, mine and what really happened.  We should not be so convinced of our incomplete perceptions that we make judgments before we've pursued the facts directly from the source.  In other words, if someone does something you don't understand, ask them about it.

The only thing worth being convinced of so deeply that our conviction is unshakable is that Jesus is who he (and the scriptures) says he was.  Everything else flows from that...

The minimum energy trajectory

I once had a calculus professor describe students as a "minimum energy trajectory" as he drew the function on the chalk board.  He was mathematically describing the attitude of doing the minimum necessary to get by.  We all laughed and immediately understood the equation.

For me, this equation also applies to managing the complexities of life.  I tend to oversimplify.

I naturally assume everyone sees things from my point of view - it's simpler that way.  I naturally assume everyone gets my motives - it takes less energy to explain myself.  I naturally speak before thinking - it takes time and energy to think first.  I naturally assume responsibility for only those things clearly assigned to me - it takes far more energy to take responsibility for things others should be doing.

The bible speaks to this propensity to minimize use of personal energy:

Be slow to speak and quick to listen. 
Work as unto the Lord with all your heart. 
Consider others better than yourselves. 
Above all else, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 
Bear one anothers burdens.

Yeah - it's a better way to live alright.  Fortunately I don't have to muster the energy - God provides by his Spirit in me.

The fetal position is not an option

I found out on Friday that I had badly disappointed someone a couple of weeks ago.  I had absolutely no idea.

What I considered a minor (but admittedly last minute) request to make a change of plan comletely ate this other persons lunch.  I'd left two messages asking for a call back so we could talk through it.  Never got the call back.  Apparently the fetal position and the silent treatment are this person's favored response when faced with disappointment.  Too bad.  A returned phone call would have solved the whole thing.  Maybe I expect too much maturity.  Maybe I don't think enough about the possibility for melt down on the part of others.   Problem is I project my attitudes into my relationships just like we all do - and I don't tend to curl up like a fetus and hide when I'm disappointed by someone else.  Hence, it's hard for me to anticipate anyone else doing it.

Someone disappointed me today.  It wasn't about me and I wasn't undone, but it pricked enough to force me to process it.  As a human I want to respond one way.  As a believer, I know I have to do better; be bigger; grow instead of quit; love instead of withdraw; bear burdens gracefully; be loyal to those not present; so many things, really.

God - thanks for continuing to give me the opportunity to learn and grow.  Help me to see you in all of it instead of me.

On being a grateful non-polygamist

This morning my plans fell through.  It's a Saturday and everyone's gone.  The wife is scrap booking with friends at the lake all weekend, the three kids are scattered to the four winds.  My first impulse when I got up around 7:00 was to click on the tube in the kitchen, brew some coffee and waste some mindless time watching drivel.  Something stopped me from powering up the squawk box, but of course I brewed the coffee.

Then I sat down to read part of I Samuel.  it's the story of a woman whose polygamist husband loves her more than his other wife, but she's inconsolable because the other wife who has kids picks on her because she's borne him no kids.  In ancient Israel, that was a true bummer for a woman.  All the husband can do is point out that she has him and isn't that better than a lot of sons - big help that was...  She prays and makes God a promise (that she later keeps) - then lo and behold she has a boy she names Samuel who becomes probably the greatest pre-king leader of Israel since Moses and Joshua.

This story makes me glad that I am not a polygamist.  I can barely figure out how to care for one wife much less two.  It also made me glad that I chose some quiet reflection time with an apple, a cup of good coffee and a good story rather than staring at someone talking about distant issues or play acting some fiction.  It also reminded me that we need to pray over what concerns us - which I did.

The rest of my day has been better for the time spent in my flannel pants with the book open.  Now, on to other things...

Live the life we're living

It seems like I've spent a lot of my life contemplating what it would be like if only...  more muscles, bigger brains, lots of money, significant influence, fame, better/different relationships, a house at the lake (with obligatory SeaDoos, of course), and how about a private jet while we're at it.   My mind is capable of manufacturing the greenest grass in the universe.  Every day I have the opportunity to imagine a parallel universe in which something is true there that's not in this one.  They can be small things, like the slowly thinning hair I have noticed, to big things, like the totality of my circumstances.  Of course, the imaginary life's pleasure always exceeds reality because it is idealized.

The older I get, the more I've been able to snap my head back to reality from flights of fancy.  It's the only way to make the most of what I've actually been given - which, when I really look at it - is pretty phenomenal.  It comes down to having a grateful heart.

This is the life we're living.  So let's live the one we have well.