Category: God

God

Coming back to multiculturalism

For another installment in my “The New York Times Has Interesting Stuff” series, you should check out this article about a historically white Southern Baptist church in Georgia that has recently become a truly international community. “We realized that what the Lord had in store for that old Clarkston Baptist Church was to transition into a truly international church and to help minister to all these ethnic groups moving into the county,” says one of the church members. This isn’t just “whites and blacks” multiculturalism, which is usually the only thing to come to mind when Georgia is involved. This is a group of immigrants and refugees from all around the globe.

Their transition is far from perfect or complete – the longstanding congregation had mixed opinions about “catering to foreign people” and it certainly is an amazing thing to see from Southern Baptists, who supported openly racist organizations until 1995. But overall I view this as an incredible victory for Christ’s Church as one big group. As the pastor reminds us, “Jesus said heaven is a place for people of all nations, so if you don’t like Clarkston, you won’t like heaven.”

Read: The World Comes to Georgia, and an Old Church Adapts (New York Times)

Featured

Bible: “Pi is Exactly Three!”

There is an episode of “The Simpsons” in which the nerdy professor, John Frink, silences a room of academics by shouting, “PI IS EXACTLY THREE!”

Once the room is silent, he apologizes and tells his audience that he needed to take desperate measures.

But there’s more to this story… Read 1 Kings 7:23 (ESV):

Then he made the sea of cast metal. It was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference.

Notice anything strange? It’s summer, so I’ll give your brain the benefit of the doubt and go over it.

Any basic arithmetic, geometry or algebra class teaches us that (Circumference) = (Diameter) * π. So if this thing had a diameter of ten and a circumference of 30… then:
30 = 10 * π
(30/10)  = π
3 = π

Now this is from a document that is several milennia old. Normally you could blame it on a less advanced culture and move along. But this puts me in a difficult place.

Now I don’t know what to think. Most of the Christians I know would say outright that the Bible is literally true. Since I believe in Man’s complete depravity, I am guarded when anyone claims to represent God or to correctly interpret His will. I have trouble trusting that a thousands of years-old document rooted in oral recitation, contradictory source texts, and multiple translations can be 100% accurate and literally true. Then again, I refuse to trust in even my own judgement, as I, too, am fallible. Call it a gut feeling which I noted, and waited to make my own decision until I could see more proof one way or the other.

If God wills the Bible to be 100% accurate, of course it will happen. But I don’t know if God does will it. Overall, it would not be a horrible thing to accept that he does by faith.

But π = 3?

From my own observations, I cannot accept that pi equals three. OK, big deal. But at this moment, from what I see right now, I cannot believe that the bible is 100% literally true.
Some argue that they were simply rounding up. Fine by me, but that is not literal.
Some argue that they made improper measurements. Fine by me, but that is not truth.

This is in no way threatening my relationship with Christ or most of my central beliefs. I’m just really surprised to see this. Does anybody have some wisdom or insight that would help here?

Current Stuff

Keeping us scared

I’m tired of how everytime a large-scale disaster takes place, the only tangible change is a temporary state of paranoia, and nothing really is done to prevent the situation from happening again.

Example: Columbine High School shootings. For a few months, there was a big deal about school violence. I remember suddenly doing lockdown drills and a lot of workshops on not alienating kids.
Point of failure: Things went back to normal. I haven’t done a lockdown drill since fifth grade. And the Virginia Tech murderer directly referred to the actions of Harris and Klebold.

Example: 9/11. Remember the terrible initial fear we all felt? All of a sudden, nobody wanted to travel or go to a public place. A bunch of supposed fixes went into effect: a color-coded terrorist threat paranoia advisory system, the Transportation Security Administration, et cetera.
Point of failure: We used 9/11 for other stuff, and didn’t bother with actual protections. Somehow, in five years, we went from an attack from Muslim radicals in Afghanistan to a failed war on a country that had no connection to the attacks. It took Congress until 2007 to act on all of the 9/11 Commission’s reccommendations. I was at the airport last week, and heard over the intercom, “THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY HAS RAISED THE THREAT ADVISORY LEVEL TO ORANGE. PLEASE REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY.” But nonetheless, I had hastily packed and didn’t remember that there was an aerosol in my backpack. Security at DIA didn’t care, they let me through. I didn’t even know it was in my backpack until Phoenix security found it on my return flight. When they searched my bag and found the aerosol, they didn’t even bother to check the rest of the compartments of my bag. I could have walked on with materials to blow up a plane on either flight. But the important thing was that the advisory level was “Orange,” whatever the heck that means. Unfortunately, our current leadership is more worried about keeping us as scared as possible to push their unrelated agendas, instead of actually keeping us safe. If that isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is. Don’t believe me? Believe Merriam-Webster:

ter·ror·ism
Pronunciation: 'ter-&r-"i-z&m
Function: noun
: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

Example: Virginia Tech Massacre. The murderer turned out to be a deranged loner, just like the Columbine shooters. Campuses nationwide are reacting to the situation, and most are being caught with their pants down in terms of handling such a problem. At CSU, there is supposedly a system in place, which is kept secret for security purposes. But what we do know is that RA’s and building proctors have received no training or instructions of how to act in such an event. And even after the Virginia Tech incident, campus officials are saying that instead of revising their current procedures, the best thing for people to do is call 911 and let them handle it.
Point of failure: This, too, will be forgotten. Everyone is paranoid and articles are being published in the school paper this week, but we’ll all forget about this once the NBA playoffs heat up. At 4:30 AM yesterday, some lunatic got on the roof of Edwards Hall and tried to commit suicide. CSU Police evacuated about 100 students from the dorm, and dealt with the situation, but no e-mail was sent about the situation until 9:30 AM, well after it was over. Had it not been for VT, no e-mail at all would have been sent.

Example: The holocaust. Some consider it to be the most horrific event in modern history, and much time is spent trying to make sure that it happens “never again.”
Point of failure: It’s happening again. As many as 450,000 have died in the Darfur conflict, but what gets news attention? The fight over a dead porn star’s child. What gets military attention? A troop surge for a war whose death toll has exceeded the deaths under the dictator it saught to dethrone.

All of these events are terrible, and since man is fallible, they will happen again. No form of government, economy, or religion will ever solve this problem. Only when Christ reigns over this world again will we be free from such tragedies. (If you’re confused as to how I can say religion will never solve the problem, but Christ will, here is what I mean: religion is man’s acts of spirituality. Manly manifestations of this will always be imperfect- every church has its faults. We can only trust someone who is not subject to our own shortcomings will be able to effectively rid us of our own imperfections.)

So these problems are gonna be around ’till Jesus returns. Does that mean that we shouldn’t try to fix these problems? No – that would accept and endorse evildoing. But just getting scared about it doesn’t fix the problem. Doing something about it does.

God

To the 32 who will not wake up this morning

Who’s to blame for the lives that tragedies claim
No matter what you say
It don’t take away the pain That I feel inside, I’m tired of all the lies
Don’t nobody know why
It’s the blind leading the blind

I guess that’s the way the story goes
Will it ever make sense
Somebody’s got to know

There’s got to be more to life than this
There’s got to be more to everything
I thought exists

“Youth of the Nation” – P.O.D.

We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.
Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.
We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.
Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

(1 John 3:12-16, ESV)

I am a citizen of the world glued to my television set, fighting back my rage and despair at these horrible events, and I am a person of faith struggling to forgive the unforgivable, praying for the consolation of those who have lost loved ones, calling upon the merciful beneficence of God/Yahweh/Allah/Spirit/Higher Power.

May I know peace.

So May it Be, And so it is.

-Thich Nhat Hanh