Lightspeed Travel

Traveling Light is a book written by Texas preacher Max Lucado. It's been sitting on my parents' bookshelf for a number of years, and the title always made me consider a beam of light peaking into a dense forest, a light that we might travel somewhere beyond the thicket of our own makings.

Thus, I was again a little disappointed that the book did not match my judgment of the cover. Where I used Traveling as an verb indicating how the noun (Light) moves, Lucado meant Light to be an adjective describing the process of movement (Traveling).

Basically, he's retelling the 23rd Psalm, reminding us that we ought to put down our burdens and let God do the worrying in our journey called life.

I've read a short Lucado book before, but this better illuminates his writing style, which can only, if ironically, be described as pastoral. Yes, he's a pastor, but that's not what I mean. Look it up. Additionally, metaphors flood the pages like cats and dogs from the sky in a thunderstorm. Some get lost in the specific nomenclature of the example, but the range of topics allows one to grasp most of them, or at least discern the meaning.

For the most part, the book accomplishes what it intends: a line-by line examination of the 23rd Psalm, addressing problems people have today. A few chapters felt like he was stretching his page count (at best) or giving loathesome counsel (at worst). What stands out to me are the chapters on Grief and Loneliness. Here I will make a lot of text about minor objections:

The chapter on Grief, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." Psalm 23:4 (NKJV) tells a story of a young boy dying. The intent is of the chapter is to console the greiver, and this is accomplished. We are assured that God comforts those who greive, and Lucado should have stopped there. No, he continues, death is a good thing. Sometimes people are suffering and their quality of life is no longer good. What for the one that died early in life, say, in a car accident? God's time is not our time. But what about the unbeliever? How can we rest easy knowing they did not go to a better place? Lucado's solution is one of dangerous inclusivity. He insists that maybe they repented at the last minute, or as they traveled the road between death and judgement. He continues that God wants us to repent and go to heaven (2 Peter 3:9) and insists that God "usually gets what he wants."

Now I don't pretend to know what happens when we die, maybe we do all get some grace period to recant our misdeads after we die, but this feel-good approach that you can rest easy knowing your friend who lived a decidedly ungodly life went to heaven seems like bad teaching. Jesus said "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." Matthew 7:13-14 (NIV).

Thus, my contention is that while God may want everyone to join him in heaven, the reality is that FEW actually do.

My second objection to this book comes from the chapter on loneliness. Oh how this made me angry. He give the story of a shut-in that orders deliveries for personal interaction, and is puzzled at how someone could be so lonely. He continues with another analogy of driving a friend's car, with your only choice in music is to listen to nothing or something you don't prefer. Eventually, out of desperation, you find yourself adapting to the friend's choice in music. Lucado says this is like God, forcing us into a corner which the only way out is God's way, and therefore loneliness is a Gift from God.

Obviously he doesn't know lonely. Most preachers I've met are extroverted social butterflies. They go where people are and make conversation, and make friends. Lucado says one of his prayers on a sunday morning on behalf of the congregation gave thanks to God for all our friends, noting we have more than time to spend with them. A businessman later informed him that wasnt' the case for all the congregants, like himself, who was in the midst of a church but still lonesome.

My work in software has found many such people. We're an introverted lot for the most part, and many prefer that, but loneliness still abounds. I've known people that although lonely, would prefer to not go to a party with a bunch of acquaintances. The rationale was simple: being around a group of people who all knows each other highlights one's own loneliness. Being around people and their friends as an outsider is worse than being alone and not having that reminder right in front of them. Its a vicious cycle, to be sure, but hardly one that I would consider a Blessing for those undergoing it. Yes, "God is with me" but friends of flesh and blood are important too. A lonely person doesn't want to be told their isolation is a blessing anymore than someone with terminal cancer does. Someone who is truly upset because they are lonely is so because they feel it too is terminal; there is no relief in sight.

Later in the chapter Lucado emphasizes that whatever the problem we are facing (see economy) God is with us. These are reassuring words, despite the earlier part of the chapter that I find unfortunate.

On the whole, the book accomplishes it's task of relating the 23rd Psalm into today's vernacular. Take comfort in the Shepherd that so many have heard of, and trust him to guide us throughout this day.

Connections

Once upon a time, I was watching the learning channel on a Saturday afternoon, and a rerun of this show called "Connections" was on. See what I'm talking about on youtube here. The premise is exploring technology and seeing what causes in history which seem unrelated actually are related.

So I was having a chat with my brother, who is en route to Omaha, Nebraska to pick up a friend at the airport. This is a little farther away than the expected airport in Sioux Falls.

Wikipedia's article on Omaha lists the city clerk as one Buster Brown.

Buster Brown is also a cartoon character from the early 1900s.

This character was named after vaudeville child actor Buster Keaton.

Buster Keaton was well known for wearing pork pie hats.

The pork pie hat had a resurgence in popularity after Gene Hackman’s character Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle wore one in The French Connection, a film released in 1971.

Gene Hackman does the voice of Lowe's Hardware Commercials.

Lowe's is based in Moorseville, North Carolina.

Mooresville is also known as Race City, USA for its 60 NASCAR teams based there.

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. resides in Mooresville.

AMP Energy is on his car.

AMP has Taurine in it.

Urban legends surrounding the source of taurine have included bull urine extract and bull semen. While it's true that taurine is found in both sources, it is not the source of taurine in the pharmaceutical or food industry.

Another Urban Legend indicates that carjackings happen frequently in broad daylight in Omaha Nebraska.

So there your have it, we've gone full circle back to Omaha. Wasn't that fun?

Matt

Cataphatic Prayer

Seeing Is Believing: Experience Jesus through Imaginative Prayer by Dr. Greg Boyd takes a look at Cataphatic, or imaginative prayer as advocated by many in Church Tradition, such as St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit Order.

Boyd's argument is that many Christians struggle with faith because if they are joyless or unsucessful in not sinning in particular ways, the clergy often responds with a 'try harder' response. Since a Christian ought to be joyful, if you are not joyful then you're just not exerting enough effort.

What this results in is Christians hiding struggles from one another and putting on a guise of holiness while often feeling empty inside.

Rather, we ought to seek Jesus and just be honest with Him in our struggles. The process of "Resting in Christ," as defined by Boyd is that we use our imaginations to vividly conceptualize Christ and just exist with Him, that a common understanding of how much He cares for us and wants us to be aware of that becomes evident. Only then might our Christian walk be advanced to its biblical prescriptions.

Obviously, there are objections to this process. One must not give up on 'trying' altogether, but rather an understanding that trying alone will not accomplish much of lasting value. The idea of envisioning Jesus may seem like make-believe, but Boyd argues that this has more to do with our Western science-based culture defining anything non-physical as not real.

Other issues are addressed in the book, along with several stories of people who have undergone dramatic benefits from the process.

So read it with an open mind. As CS Lewis noted in one of his books - if it's useful to you, use it, if not, don't give it a second thought.

Matt

Change?

How a lot of us are feeling at 3am these days.

Kalām Cosmological Argument

Recently, I've been reading up on position papers both propagating and denouncing the Kalām Cosmological Argument of the existence of God. In Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, philosophers William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland contend that there is a cause for the existence of the universe, and that existence is God.

The premise is that the universe exists, and whatever exists must have had a cause. Therefore, something caused the universe to exist. This, supposes that the universe began to exist.

Craig and Moreland assert that the universe is finite, because 1) philosophically, there cannot be an actualized infinite. As much as we try to rationalize it, infinity is logically untenable when dealing with finite elements. Examples are provided, such as Hilbert's Hotel. Point 2) is that scientific laws back this up; everything that exists had some beginning, which therefore includes the universe.

Contrarian opinion is provided by philosopher Paul Draper. He maintains that the phrase began to exist applies to temporal entities. This supposes that the Universe is temporal and subject to Universal Laws, which may not make sense, considering it is the thing. He does not dismiss the idea of the Kalam argument out of hand, but is urging for better defending of its holdings.

Giving this some thought, I have to side with Craig and Moreland. The Universe is temporal; it cannot exist outside of time as everything within the universe is subject to time. The Big Bang theory points to a time when all matter in the universe was condensed to a pinhead. This small entity existed in something, but that something was extra-universal, as it wasn't what we understand the universe to be now. Accordingly, there was a time, if we were to travel with Doc Brown, that we could set the time machine to, where we could see the beginning of the universe. Supposing that it just always was, supposes likewise that there always will be, if the universe exists in the fourth dimension. No, the scientists project life-spans of stars, and so what is will eventually cease to be.

Thus, I suppose:

1) The universe has a finite beginning and and end
2) whatever exists had a cause
3) whatever causes something else is greater to or equal than the result
4) Supposing God is the only thing greater than the universe, He must be the cause.

This pattern proves corrollary to the Christian ideal of God being "the Alpha and the Omega: the beginning and the end." If God is the beginning and the end, he supercedes that what which is subject to beginning and ending, in this case, the universe. Therefore God exists, that the universe may have existence.

This brings up troubling questions about if God is infinite or finite. Both sides pose both affirmations of scripture and concerning implications. That will have to be an entry for another night.

Matt

More Writings

Greetings again friends. As I am plodding through some tomes at current, several of you requested some more things to read. If you're interested, I've posted some more writings at the following site:

http://www.geocities.com/matthew_alfson/writing.htm

Enjoy,
Matt

Slaughterhouse-Five

The late Kurt Vonnegut's most renowned work, Slaughterhouse-Five, is the author's product of conveying the horror of living through the Dresden Firebombing in 1945.

I had first heard of Kurt Vonnegut a few years ago, during that week or so that I thought it would be fun to play Second Life, and author Kurt Vonnegut was going to make an avatar of himself and have an online lecture. This must have been in early 2007 or late 2006, because I recall when he died in April of '07.
Enjoying some free time of late, I saw fit to read this acclaimed piece.

The book itself is once of controversy due to some strong and explicit language. Vonnegut explains "that's the way war is..." It shows up on the American Library Association's list of "The 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000" This list has other infamous works such as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Where's Waldo." I found these two a little odd amidst books that, along with this one, probably aren't good bedtime stories for little Timmy.

The story is a convoluted tale of short sections, the author indicating it might not make sense, but little about the firebombing did, and this was the only way he knew how to convey this properly. The plot involved time traveling and space aliens. Not your typical story about WWII, but that keeps things interesting. The thesis here is that we can push to get rid of nuclear arms, but firebombing with conventional weapons like this instance are profoundly devastating. Vonnegut concedes that trying to stop wars is like trying to stop the glaciers; wars have always and will always be fought.

A subplot involving the aliens interested me in their blatant acceptance of predestination due to their outside-of-time existence. They found free will to be a nonsensical concept. As they existed outside of time, all things were happening, all at the same time, and nothing could be done to prevent or alter those things that were at once, going on. Thus, while we may perceive having control, we in fact do not. The choices we make are always being made and always will turn out the same. We feel like we have free will because we do not know what choices we are always making; we do not perceive life outside of time. Ultimately, those choices are fixed though, at least according to the aliens, and John Calvin.

The argument has long since been that God exists outside of time, as do the aliens in this book. In seeing all that has ever occurred and will ever occur in the future all as present tense, God need not have a causer, going back to my concern on the Cosmological Argument on the Existence God from an earlier entry. In short, everything is caused by something, some greater force, leading either to the creation story of Genesis or the Big Bang Theory, depending on your view. These two events were caused by some greater force, God in the Genesis story, some unknown cause in the Big Bang Theory, which some have argued is, in fact, God. But where did God come from? If God is, not being finite, but having infinite existence outside of time, it is irrelevant to our conception of everything how he may have come to persist. Still, this seems like a cop-out. Insisting on God's existence being inconceivable and therefore not something worth pondering doesn't do much for my inquisitive nature. The two year old in me insists, "why?"

Oh, so the book was interesting, and yes, its controversial. But if you can find me a book about the Firebombing of Dresden that is not controversial, well, maybe it should be.