Who dunnit?

My life was changed. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, but unfortunately, I don't remember it too clearly. It was the day I asked Jesus to "come into my heart". I think I was about six, maybe younger. But since I was too young to have dug myself into any sinful hell-hole of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, and since I don't remember any radical, immediate, dynamic life transformation, my entire life's experience has been only of the blessing of God's love and wisdom guiding me through. I mean, that's the reason that I am the most blessed man on Earth. But you know what's kinda weird? I have nothing to compare it to.

He has guided me through good times and bad. And during the bad times, when I’ve turned from Him, I’ve got a glimpse of what my heart is like without Him and what my life would be without Him. But He’s always been there to call me back and receive me again and lead me on to grow in new ways. This process has been on going since that day when I was six or so, and that means that some parts are kinda hard to distinguish who dunnit. I mean, what parts are just the normal processes of growing up and developing character, and what parts are miraculous steps of spiritual growth?

Here’s where this is going: I see people of other religions who also seem to have developed character and integrity, and they live morally, and they say they are at peace in their souls. But how did they get there without Jesus? I thought Jesus was the only way to Life? Did I come to find purpose in life by my own power, as other have? Is it as some religious pluralists say, that Jesus is just one of many ways to “find god”?

To begin my thoughts, let me answer that last question. No. Jesus has brought Life to me (and countless others), so I know he’s true. And he said he was the only way. From there it’s a simple operation of logic. If X is true, and X is Y, then Y is true. Jesus is the only way to Life.

So here’s my theory: I’ve seen that often throughout history, the Enemy takes an element of truth and twists it. That helps us to think it’s True, but then it actually leads us away from God. The first example is, of course, in Genesis when Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate.”

Here are some examples: (I guess I’m over-using colons today, so sue me!) I find strength when I follow the psalm that says, “be still and know that I am God.” For me, that means I go to a quiet place, get in a comfortable position, breathe deeply, and think. That sounds a lot like certain meditation or yoga exercises that Zen-Buddhists use. Also I find that a lot of growth happens when I read scripture and pray daily. Muslims do this too, in fact five times daily! Also, I try to follow the Law that Jesus reiterated saying, “love your neighbor as yourself”. And Hindus even follow this to the extreme belief that all life is sacred!

Now there are crucial differences I think (I fill my mind with thoughts of worship instead of “emptying my mind”, for example), but you can see the similarities. Insightful people of many religions have realized something about how the human heart and soul works and have utilized it to effect real change in their lives. So that leads me to the next question, is it an Eternal change? I don’t think so. As much as any religion can help an individual to change his behavior, gain control of himself, or give him a sense of purpose, it can’t change the condition of his soul. Not even Christianity. Only the merciful trade that Jesus offers us, of his righteousness for our sin, can make us worthy to stand before God.

These are my thoughts and conclusions for the day, and I’d like your perspective. But what I’d really love is your thoughts on my remaining questions. Where do we go from here? I’ve seen other religions answer people’s needs, but then how can I show those people their need for Jesus? People won’t find an answer their not lookin’ for! Just pray for them? Engage them in philosophical discussions? How has Jesus changed your life, and how have you changed your own life? How do you explain the difference?

Welcome to Liberty Village

For those of you who are as nuts about the show as I am, you'll recognize the title of last night's episode of Alias. You can definitely expect ongoing questions, conversations, and reviews of this outstandingly fun TV show to pop up on this blog from time to time. So to begin, I had to post something about this episode I just saw. It was the best episode ever! Sydney and Vaughn went undercover into a Russian black-ops/terrorist cell where they were training to blend into American suburbia. The suspense was tense and the bad guys were eerily evil. I could go on and on.

For those of you who haven't seen the show, it's basically James Bond meets Days of Our Lives. It's that simple and that complicated. There's another show called Lost by the same creator, which is also a fun, dramatic, suspensful thriller/soap, that I also enjoy. The other TV show that my wife and I follow religiously is The Amazing Race. We recently canceled our cable in a New Year's resolution type effort to be more purposeful with our time. But we still purposefully get together with our families (who have TiVo) each week to watch these three hours of fun.

So... back to Alias. Here's what I want comments on: Is Sydney's mom really dead? I never thought she was even for a second, so a better question is - what is she up to? What's Sloan's end game? Is Sydney really the "one"? And What does it mean to be the "one"?

The answer that matters most

So I just started this blog a couple of weeks ago and you’ll see that I’ve just posted a few silly ramblings so far. But I figure it’s time to post something like a statement of purpose. As the title says, I don’t have a lot of answers except that ones that matter most. Here’s what I mean.

I’m sick of humanistic pride! It’s a real turn off to me when people think they’ve got the answers or that their powers of reason are some how the ultimate force in the universe. You see, I attended San Jose State University for four years, a school that’s pretty well recognized in California as one of the most “liberal.” Not as famous as Berkeley, but the same academic culture. Again and again I sat through lectures from people who seemed to think that human culture was the highest form of knowledge, or that scientific deduction held life’s final answers. Again and again they bashed the Christian worldview and blamed “Christian” civilization for their personal pains and for most of the world’s ills.

Also again and again I saw my outspoken, Christian classmates blab out simplistic arguments and get quickly shot down. Again and again they overlooked the personal issues of the individual, and reasoned using scriptural principles, which were meaningless to the intellectual opposition. Frankly, I was just as sick of them. They also seemed to think that they had all of life’s problems figured out or that their faith gave them a superior point of view. And talking amongst themselves since then, they think they know exactly what Jesus would do in most situations.

And the thing that really gets me is that it all only results in unsympathetic intellectual impasses. Everyone thinks they’ve got the answers. Perspectives are invalidated. Feelings are hurt. Staunch opinions only dig in further. Superior reasoning degrades the opposition. No relationship is ever fostered. No one ever finds the Truth. And even amongst brothers I’m not sure if God is ever glorified. Everyone thinks they’ve got the answers.

Well, I don’t know the end of all things. I’m not sure if Plato’s Republic is a good idea or not. I’m not sure what Jesus would say to Nietzsche. And I’m not sure what Jesus would say to George W. But I’m pretty darn sure that arguing about it hasn’t gotten anyone much of anyplace that I’ve ever seen.

Here’s what I do know: I was born with every blessing. I was raised in the best of all possible circumstances. But left to myself, I’m still a pretty pathetic person. Left to myself, I do pretty foolish things and I can’t find peace. Here’s what I do know: I’m not left to myself. I’ve got a wonderful, unexplainable relationship with Jesus. I follow his lead ‘cause it’s made a positive difference in my life. Here’s what I do know: His words and ways sustain life. And any man or woman can begin a heartfelt relationship with him like I have, and they will also find peace and the means to handle life’s problems.

That’s the only answer that matters!

She can't take much more of it, Cap'n!

Even those of you who aren't Trekkies should recognize that famous (or infamous) saying from Scotty, the engineer on the original Star Trek TV series. He said it whenever the Enterprise was in some kind of trouble, which was pretty much every week. But I learned something recently about the science of the show that practically made my brain say the same thing.

I know! I know! Realizing that science fiction is bogus, is like realizing that pro wrestling is fake. Everyone knows it; they just refuse to acknowledge it. But stick with me for a second here.

In Star Trek they traveled at warp speed; like in the real world we have jets that travel at mach speed. Mach 3 is three times the speed of sound, so warp 3 is supposed to be three times the speed of light. Now the fastest any spaceship in any version Star Trek could go, as far as I remember, was warp 13. So they just jump to warp 13 and cruise over to the next star in 20 minutes. No problem, right? Not quite.

What I just learned yesterday is that the closest star to us is estimated to be 4.24 light years away! It's called Proxima Centauri and it's only 1/10 as big as the Sun. But here's the point: even if you could travel at warp 13 along with the cast of Star Trek, it would still take you 4 months to get to any other star! As far as I can figure, that means two things: Captain Kirk was a crock, and this is an amazingly huge universe.

I think maybe George Lucas had the better sense to leave out a little more science from his science fiction. “Long ago in a galaxy far, far away” folks traveled from planetary system to planetary system at the ambiguously fast rate of hyper-speed. I guess that makes the plot of Star Wars at least imaginable. Although how they all spoke English remains a mystery.

Messy Metaphors

My wife and I went away to Half Moon Bay this weekend and had a great time. The weather was outstanding, the shops were quaint, the cafes were cozy, and the tide pools were lots of fun to explore. It was our late Christmas present to each other. Part of the highlight of the weekend was the wonderful dinners that we treated ourselves to at local restaurants. On the evening we arrived we went to an Italian place called Mezza Luna. It had an upscale atmosphere, excellent service, even more excellent food, and all at a suprisingly average price. But on our second evening there, our dinner at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Co. turned out to be more of a mystery.

The hostess seated us at a table near a fireplace. It wasn't a normal brick fireplace, built into the wall. It was free standing, in the middle of the room, like an old-fashioned wood burning stove. Except more like a new-fashioned gas burning stove. Anyways, the fire swirled from the gravel in its base in a cyclone pattern up towards the chimney. And in the center of the circle of swirling fire was, of course, a cast-iron whale. Not an anatomical whale, mind you, but more like a cartoon whale. It was like an egg with a tail at the small end, and smile at the wide end, and stubby fins sticking out of it's middle. Hmmm...

We spent the majority of our delicious meal trying to decipher the meaning of this odd sight. Perhaps a mermaid or a crashing wave would be better suited for a bay-side fire pit. But why the friendly whale? We were trying to match the smiling whale from a toddler's cardboard picture book to the dangerously passionate hurricane of flames - and it just wasn't happening.

Suddenly, it dawned on my wife! With her astute powers of observation and spiritual discernment she declared, "It's like Moses and the burning bush! Just as the bush was on fire but was not consumed, so the whale is not consumed by the fire."

"Aha!", I said. "And Jonah was eaten by a whale!"

"Yes!" she said. "Jonah was consumed by the whale, but the whale was not consumed by the fire. Therefore," she reasoned, "Jonah was not consumed by the fire!"

"Just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!" I finally declared.

We were so contented and proud of ourselves for unraveling this complicated, Old Testament metaphor that we decided not to care that we didn't have the foggiest clue as to its meaning. We had solved this puzzle, gosh darnit, and we wouldn't let it dampen our spirits that its purpose was completely inane and irrelevant to any of life's questions.

So we conversed on slightly related topics over the rest of our dinner. Like Jonah and the whale versus Jonah and the "big fish." We decided that for correct biblical interpretation and scientific accuracy, we'd someday tell our children the story of Jonah and the Coelacanth. Next to that fire pit, anything seemed more reasonable.

Please don't hang up

If you ever receive a phone call at home just as you're sitting down to dinner and it begins with, "Please don't hang up. This is not a telemarketing call." go ahead and hang up. It IS a telemarketing call. I mean, do these people think there's a monkey on the other end of the line. Of course it's a telemarketing call!

If they're not telemarketing then why can't they just come out and say who they are? Maybe these folks don't realize that most non-telemarketing calls begin with, "Wassup Ben! This is Rick! How's it going?" or "Hey there, hubby-wubby. I miss you." or "Ben, this is your father. Your mother wants to know why you haven't called." Nobody that you really actually want to talk to ever needs to begin a phone conversation with, "Please don't hang up. This is not a telemarketing call. This is just your friend Rick. And I just wanted to find out how you're doing. This will only take a moment of your time."

Now most of the time when I deal with telemarketers, I use the polite but firm approach. I just say, "No thanks" and hang up before they even get the chance to not take "no" for an answer. But I've heard of some other creative ways to deal with these folks. One friend of mine says stuff like, "No, but how about if I call you during dinner and try to sell you a gas powered mini-quiche slicer." Another more eternally minded lady says that she'll give the telemarketer five minutes if they give her five minutes. Then after listening to their pitch, she shares the Gospel with them. That's cool!

Since I just started this blog yesterday, I figure this is a fun way to get some feed back started. So how do you handle these calls? Let us all know your creative method of wrangling these ear leeches by leaving a comment below.

We'll see if I can't think of something serious to talk about tomorrow.

Is anyone listening?

So a few of my friends have blogs and it seems like a really cool idea. But up till now I've been asking myself, "Self, does it really matter what you have to say? You're no scholar, only an amature philosopher, and only hilarious on those other days." Time and again I've almost posted comments on my friend's boards, but then I wonder "How does this help anyone? Maybe I should just shut up, listen, and learn."

So I told my friends about this last night and they said I was absolutely right, but that that is exactly what a blog is for!

So here I am, starting every paragraph with the word "so" and wondering who out there is actually interested in my ramblings. If you're reading this, I would really love it if you would just let me know with a short comment. I guess I'm hoping that someone out in internet land who's got lots of friends will stumble on this blog and tell everyone that it's the best thing since sliced cheese. Like maybe the next time Tom Cruise goes on 20/20 he'll tell Barbara Walters, "I found this really awesome blog that I read everyday. This guy just talks about funny things he has observed or pretends to have observed. But he also has really deep insights about why people just don't get along, and how we all should be a little more humble. He's become a really good friend of mine, people say we look alike, and I think I'll fully finance his world travels."

So, maybe that last part was something I made up. We'll try this blog thing again tomorrow.