tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78844499124138576112024-02-07T01:24:21.663-05:00Life Outside the FoldHow the Christian Right ticks, from a former Pentecostal.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-71753534950170742992013-12-12T12:26:00.000-05:002013-12-12T12:26:08.867-05:00It Should Be Obvious: Wickeder and WiserI'm of the opinion that the Bible should be obvious to people. By that, I don't mean there's no nuance or interesting intricacies to study; I mean that the basic core messages should be easily interpreted by even the unstudied. That's the point, right? That anyone can obtain guidance from God's Word, regardless of status, education, capability, all that. That it's obvious. That even the little children can get it.<br />
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In that light, I thought back to some things where the "obvious" answer isn't always the right one, but maybe another answer is just as obvious...just overlooked. Part one of this is "Wickeder and Wiser."<br />
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For one, this isn't even <i>in</i> the Bible. It's an often-quoted "Biblical urban legend" of sorts. More on this later*. Most people point to it as being related to Revelation, if not actually being in Revelation itself; it's seen as a prophetic statement about the state of the world in the End Times. But insofar as scads of people do believe it's in the Bible, the point of "the world's children becoming wickeder and wiser" is obvious: it's telling us that over time, the world will become more deceitful and try even harder to mislead Christians, being very skilled at such things. In the end, they will be so clever that most people will fall to them. We have to be strong and realize the world is out to get us.<br />
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But even if this verse were in the Bible, the other "obvious" answer is clear: the structure of the world will become more evil and more deceitful, but that doesn't at all mean that individuals are evil, or that there is any need to be paranoid about friends and companions and so on. That doesn't mean the world is out to get you.<br />
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"Wickedness" has many forms. One of these is greed, which is driving the capitalist world now. Corporations are becoming more brutal, cutting more corners, hiding more illegalities, and in the end, perhaps these megastructures are causing more problems than in the past. I'm not sure, given how most countries have given up the slave trade, that we're more evil than before, but we certainly still have great evil in our fundamental structure. We still have all sorts of ancient cruelties that have lived on through the ages. Sin is no new thing, and we certainly haven't come up with particularly new ways to do it. It's all just a rehash of the old.<br />
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So are we becoming "wickeder and wiser"? Wiser, probably. More evil, maybe not, maybe so. Either way, it's not about paranoia -- it's about repairing the structure and function of the world we live in, and the organizations who live in it. It's not about your friends trying to convince you to become an atheist or your neighbor being gay. It's about obvious sins. Great crimes against humanity. Little abuses of the day to day. Not whether your neighbor's son is sleeping with the schoolteacher's daughter. Or son, for that matter.<br />
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*This "urban legend" has also been translated as "weaker and wiser," and if you look on the Internet, you'll find scads of sources saying that this does not at all exist in the Bible and could easily be a misparsing of a number of verses that have nothing to do with the End Times.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-33011046622110028552013-06-25T19:45:00.001-04:002013-06-25T19:45:22.720-04:00Blue and Orange (or How Touhou Taught Me About The Nature of God)Wow has it been forever since I posted.<br />
<br />
My recent obsession in the video game world these days has been the Touhou Project, a series of top-down shoot-'em-up games set in a land where all of Japanese mythology is real. I'll spare you the further summaries, as I could go on about this series forever, but a friend and I have written and roleplayed and so on in the universe for a while, and it led to me thinking a lot about the nature of God.<br />
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(Here's where you ask...how are these two related? There. Now it's out there.)<br />
<br />
Yukari Yakumo is a mythological monster with power over boundaries. That's it, full stop. She is meant to be every bit as absurdly powerful as she sounds, because boundaries define <i>everything.</i> Even the games' creator says she could undermine the very fabric of reality itself. To anyone looking in from outside, Yukari may as well be a god -- perhaps a God, in the monotheistic all-powerful creator being sense, since the Shinto gods all exist in the Touhou universe and are all inferior to her in the sense that they are fundamentally weaker. She has all the physical properties of a God; she is extradimensional, immortal, effectively omniscient, and superhuman in every regard. She is only defeatable in the games because she goes easy on the heroine. As far as anyone can tell, the only limit on her capability is her desire to do something.<br />
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Perhaps it is a departure from the series, but in my friends' and my headcanon (this means 'the extended universe we've built that is not necessarily in-game fact but is consistent and we regard as true for our own purposes'), Yukari is a confusing but eventually benevolent being who does her best to ensure that there is maximum net good done in the universe by the point at which it has ended. At one point, another character refers to this as "what the hell is your morality, <i>blue-orange</i>?" as opposed to black and white, which are the traditional colors of good and evil. (Blue-orange is taken from the tvtropes.org page, and it is defined as "morality that is orthogonal to normal human morality, and is confusing and alien to us.")<br />
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Blue-orange became a curious subject to think about, so my friend and I knocked our heads together (and so did our characters), and we worked it out. Here, "blue" is a sort of cosmic "white," and any action that eventually leads to the greater good of the universe as a whole is considered some degree of blue. Orange is the opposite, and any "orange" action is a cosmically "black" action that decreases the good in the universe eventually. Taken to a large scale, all black and white morality eventually moves to blue and orange, because as one's scope grows larger and larger, "white" must include all the consequences of one's actions over an immense period of time and space, eventually encompassing the universe, and it become "blue." The same applies to black and orange.<br />
<br />
As a result of this curious expansive morality, Yukari is one of the most confusing and irritating beings in the known universe. She has immense power, overwhelming knowledge, and absolutely no apparent sense of when to use it. People cry out to her for help; she fails to respond. People try to get away from her; she is there when they most want her to leave. She does strange and irrational things that seem to make no sense in the context of the rest of her situation; she is cryptic and refuses to share knowledge, even sometimes when it is important; all in all, she is eventually considered by most to be fundamentally too alien to be worked with reliably. She is utterly undependable, un-empathetic, and inconsiderate. Many consider her to be evil by inaction.<br />
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There are similar PR problems with God. Every religious person who has ever existed has asked the questions of <i>why hasn't God answered my prayers? Where was God when (x) happened? Why can't I ever seem to get a response? Why does God seem random? Why does it seem like no one is out there and everything is up to chance?</i><br />
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Yukari can't just fix everyone's problems, because her interference is inherently orange. It takes away free will and thus decreases the independence and improvement of the universe. Sentient beings must be free to cause themselves problems, to solve their own situations, to struggle and fear and hate and die. Even if someone is begging her to push the boundary of life and death to save a beloved child, the consequences of such actions could be dire...in a thousand or more years, even.<br />
<i> </i><br />
A just and moral God is under self-imposed constraints to do what is morally right for the universe itself. What if saving your son or daughter would set off a chain of events that, in two thousand years, would cause great pain to the world? What if curing your sickness would wreck someone else's family in a hundred years, even after you're dead? What if even letting you know that He is there...would cause great problems to the universe somehow? How will you know?<br />
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Belief in any omnibenevolent God requires that one accept blue-orange morality as an incomprehensible thing while having faith that it is the right way to go about running a universe...and that what happens <i>must</i> be blue.<br />
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Even if you hate it. Even if it seems evil. Even if you can't understand it.<br />
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The universe <i>will</i> work out...but humans are just too small to realize why it will. No amount of complaining will change what is blue, and that it will happen...we just have to realize that it <i>is</i>, and it <i>will</i>, and that everything will be okay.<br />
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Yukari's got this, guys.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-14887826453949780112012-12-25T01:28:00.004-05:002012-12-25T01:28:35.279-05:00A quick not-post on "teachers"Back in Jesus' time, teachers were probably not all that common. At least, not religious teachers.<br />
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To be a Jewish rabbi, you had to be pretty learned. Pastors are a dime a dozen nowadays. Back then, if you chose one teacher over another, by choosing one when the two conflicted, you were doubtless taking a serious side.<br />
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Nowadays, with "teachers" in every shade of gray there is...well, how do you know what teacher to pick? When everyone tries to justify their teachings from the Bible, how do you know which interpretation is true?<br />
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Some day, does it matter? Of course it matters. What you think is good and true, will affect your behavior and what sins you do or don't commit.<br />
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With a fairly continuous spectrum of teachers' interpretations and opinions, how can you tell if you're choosing just to make your life easier, or choosing what is true? How do you know that you're choosing someone who is false and just reinforcing what you <i>wish</i> were true, rather than teaching what is true?<br />
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After all, in order to recognize truth, you must know truth, right?<br />
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So what does the seeker after truth do?Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-76780235049996691432012-11-16T12:35:00.002-05:002012-11-16T12:40:34.046-05:00The Music Box (2.5 Years Later)I have a music box in my room. It took me an entire year to find it, or rather, it took my mom a year. It is one of my most prized possessions, and I give it so much sentimental value that I would go ape all over anyone who tried to steal it. Like, irreplaceable so much that I would track you to the ends of the earth to get it. If my house were on fire, I would grab that music box before jumping out the window. If I had to evacuate <i>right now</i> and take only a single bag with me, that box would be in the bag. It's possible I'll ask whoever is around when I'm old, to put that box in a container and set it on my grave when I die. It's that ridiculously important.<br />
<br />
The box proper isn't very interesting. It's a little plastic and wood box, about 2x3 inches. The top section is a pale tan wood, and the bottom is clear. You can see the little turning cylinder with nubs, rotating inside the structure, when it runs. It has a silver key that you use to wind it up, and it's purely mechanical. No batteries, just a wire coil that tightens and loosens with the key. Pressed into the top of the box and inked are the words "How Great Thou Art."<br />
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As you would expect, turn the key and the cylinder starts moving, and the nubs flick little flaps of steel to the tune of "How Great Thou Art." Classic music box twang.<br />
<br />
See, this is so important to me, because my grandmother owned this box. It's certainly older than I am; I don't know precisely how old it is beyond that. When I was a kid, I'd sit on her couch and wind it up as far as it could go, then watch the little cylinder turn, and listen to the music play until it got slow, then I would push the key and make it keep going until it couldn't run on its own. Then I'd do it again. It's just the chorus to the song, but I thought it was beautiful.<br />
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My grandmother died two days after my birthday, on March 23, 2010. That's also less than two months before my graduation, which I really wanted her to attend, so she could see a close to my school years. That never happened, though we kept her graduation ticket anyway. I only wanted three things from her old possessions, all of which she left to my mother: a gold locket on a chain, an old sewing machine mounted into a table, and that music box. Mom got the house and everything in it, and she said I could take whatever I wanted. Part of me really wanted to just grab everything that wasn't nailed down, as if I could keep her memory stronger and/or more reverently and/or just <i>better</i> by piling up stuff. I screamed inside at the thought that anyone would own her house, or any of her furniture, or any of her clothes, but us.<br />
<br />
But we couldn't keep the house as some kind of shrine, no matter how much it smelled familiar, and how many times I'd played in that crawl space under the side, and how cute the faux-well was at the top of the hill, or...any of that. Some young couple owns it now. I hope they treat it with respect.<br />
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So in the end, I shoved back the desire to keep everything, and decided on those three things. Two of them are in Boston with me -- the shippable things, namely the locket and the box.<br />
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Two and a half years later, the memory has become more calmly solemn and reverent than piercing and empty in turn. I no longer want to scream at the universe so much about how unfair it was that Grandmother died only two months before she could see my landmark day that she would be so proud of, or that she didn't die peacefully in bed, but instead in a hospital after breaking both hips. I no longer feel quite so bad about fleeing the funeral as quickly as I could, or about having to force myself to cry at the ceremony despite feeling completely blank, just to convince everyone else that I wasn't trying to be an Overly Strong Person. Really it was as if someone had sucker-punched my soul and I didn't have any chance to react. I didn't viscerally <i>get it</i> the way others seemed to; I had these random spurts of intense despair, rather than a predictable "you cry when you see her stuff, or when you go to the funeral, or whatever." I walked around her house and ate the food others left for her family, without much of a thought, and I only cried when no one was around, because I think my subconscious decided that this was the appropriate time for it. Besides, my mom was so sad, that my guardian instincts kicked in and wanted to help her, rather than giving myself any time for much. I cried a lot when I got back to Boston, but not so much at home. I regret not going on the funeral procession, but...I don't know why I didn't.<br />
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If I had to say anything to people today, about that incident, I might. I might ask my aunt why she rarely visited her mother, and why she didn't contribute to the upkeep of her house and all that, while my mom was a tireless glad helper. I might ask my uncle why he was such a failure at life, having thrown his money away gambling and mooched off his friends for most of his time, and why he disappointed his mother so much. I might ask the doctors why there was nothing more they could do for a couple of broken bones. I might ask myself why I didn't throw classes to the wind to go sit by her side until something got better or worse, so I could have held her hand while she was moving on. I might ask God why His sense of timing was so utterly cruel, as if it was deliberately planned to be a trip-at-the-finish-line. I guess I don't have as much of a desire to ask all that anymore, because what is it going to do?<br />
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The song from the music box is an old Christian hymn. It became Grandmother's song, over the years, because I always associated it with her, and she spent so much time with me that it rubbed off on her. I asked my mom to have it played at the funeral, and so it was, a music box made real for that while.<br />
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I don't pretend to understand why God let any of that happen when it did. I don't even know if God chooses things like that, really. Does God time everything right, to make sure the most good comes out of it? Or does life just really suck sometimes? Is Grandmother up in heaven tending roses and playing the piano? Can she see me? I don't really know any of that.<br />
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One point of regret I do have, is that Grandmother couldn't give me her music box herself. I had been asking about it for years, and she had lost it. Turns out it was just in a drawer of her nightstand, and Mom found it while cleaning out her things. So, a year after Grandmother's death, I took the music box home with me. It sits on my shelf and waits there, just like it always waited on the table in her living room. There's not much I can do with the memories these days; they sit like the box does, and they're not so powerful that they show up a lot, but there's always a little gap there when I go home.<br />
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Grandmother was a tireless Christian. She had more faith than some entire churches probably do. She firmly believed that God had everything under control, and even when life sucked, God was still there for you. If I had half the faith she did, I could move mountains. Even with an alcoholic husband, a delinquent son, and only one daughter who actually paid any attention to her, Grandmother was an unshakable pillar of stone. You could hide in her shadow, and the wind and the rain couldn't reach you. You could climb onto her strength, and no monsters could find you. She would be standing through Hell and high water. It would take an act of God Himself to make her back down from anything she had decided on. So I guess it's fitting, in the end, that her anthem is a song of praise.<br />
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The box is perfectly functional. If you wind it up, it still plays...<br />
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"Then sings my soul,<br />
My savior, God, to thee<br />
How great thou art<br />
How great thou art."Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-10253496842242640602012-10-31T11:43:00.001-04:002012-10-31T11:43:12.947-04:00A Thing I Read Last Night1 Timothy 4:3-4: "They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain
foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who
believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,"<br />
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Everything.<br />
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Including all humans.<br />
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<i>Everything</i> God created is good. <i>Nothing</i> is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.<br />
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*gong*Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-594341196056779002012-10-26T16:04:00.000-04:002012-10-26T16:04:40.974-04:00That Time I Broke Up With Someone For Two WeeksFreshman year of college, I broke up with my boyfriend for two weeks. Both of us pretended it was the right idea; both of us agreed to it; both of us knew it was a stupid plan, done for really stupid reasons. There was a lot of crying, a lot of confusion, and a lot of underlying, "You idiot, just forget all this and go back to being <i>happy</i>" throughout the process. But let's go back in time and be really, really blatant.<br />
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It all started with the Baptist Student Fellowship and a woman I'm going to call Susie.<br />
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Susie was the most well-intentioned conservative Texan that she could possibly be. She was cheerful, had all that Southern charm, and to boot she exuded competence and kindness. She was enthusiastic and invited me to be with the Baptist folks on campus. I went to a couple of their gatherings, and Susie, being a good group cat-herder, said that as the new person I should go to lunch with her and we should get to know each other. I said sure, that sounded fine. I was at a particularly crappy spot in my life and really needed someone to talk to who knew about spiritual matters, and she was there. So we went to lunch.<br />
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Susie and I talked over Thai food, right next to the dorm that I would live in two years later. Most of this encounter is a blur. I don't remember a single word of what she asked me, up until the memory becomes quite clear in a sudden <i>zing.</i><br />
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The waitress sets a plate of mango chicken down on the table. Definitely mango chicken. I remember that clear-as-day. The mangos tastes not all that great, but I'm hungry. Susie has something else, I don't remember what. I start eating; she starts eating. She asks me, somewhere in there, who I'm dating.I tell her, this guy from my hall, he's pretty cool, I like him a lot.<br />
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I ask her the question I never should have asked her, ever, but it was niggling in the back of my mind and I wasn't about to leave there without asking. "Is it okay if I'm dating him? He's not Christian."<br />
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She said that it was a sin.<br />
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That oh, but you're not going to Hell, but...well, it <i>is</i> a sin. You shouldn't be dating him.<br />
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And she gave me that <i>look</i>, the look of concern, the patronizing look that says you poor thing, you're falling away, let me bring you back. Let me dictate to you the life you must lead, the one that will bore you out of your skull, the one where you won't be able to find romantic options because MIT doesn't have that many people who are compatible with your interests <i>and</i> geeky in the ways you are <i>and</i> Christian <i>and</i> not in relationships already. Let me take something that is making your sad, depressed life better, and smash it to pieces.<br />
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Let me put you back in chains.<br />
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I lost ten pounds stewing over this issue. I worried so much I ate one meal a day for a month and came out of it lighter than I had been in years. I talked to my best Christian friend, but I couldn't shake it -- this woman was Authority. Susie wasn't just any person; she Knew Things. She was Right, because she was a pastor, and of course all pastors were right. If I thought I was right, well, then all her spiritual education and connection to God was worthless. She <i>had</i> to be right.<br />
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I broke up with my boyfriend because he wasn't a Christian, despite the fact that he was one of the kindest, most open people I knew at the time. He was great for me, at that point in my life, and we were very close friends. But Susie said so, therefore God said so, and so I had to do it. I couldn't live a life where I was sinning.<br />
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"Do not be unequally yoked." Or something. That verse would haunt me for years of my MIT life.<br />
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And in the end, had I followed her advice, I would be a sad, miserable person right now.<br />
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I broke the rules. I broke the rules because I refuse to be a Pharisee. I refuse to believe that anything in the world that makes me happy, has to be evil. I refuse to believe that romance, and caring for another person, and love, can't transcend religious boundaries. I refuse to believe that Jesus wants us to stick in our own little enclaves. I refuse to believe that God Himself, who is my Father and cares so deeply for me that He sent His own son to be tortured and killed so my sins would be absolved, would let Satan just run rings around me, that all the people that appeared in my life and loved and cared for me who weren't Christian, were just there to make me screw up. If I was truly a child of God, then God was not going to let "faux-good" things happen to me just to trip me up. God does not plant poisoned candy there for you, just to punish you for having a good thing in life. God does not set booby traps.<br />
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These non-Christians I dated had far more of the virtues that God desires, than many Christians I know. Patience. Perseverence. Kindness. Gentleness. Self-control. You know, all the Fruits. The ones that God wants <i>us</i> to have.<br />
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"And you shall know them by their fruit."<br />
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What Fruits have the conservative Christians I know offered me? Fearmongering. Inflicting pain. Creating despair and depression. Lack of empathy. Self-righteousness. Careless words. There is a time to hurt and a time to heal, but the people I know, didn't heal at all. They were like surgeons who went in and cut something out, then didn't finish the job and left you there bleeding, told you to stitch yourself up. After all, it was your fault you had the sickness, whatever it was in the end, so you should take care of yourself.<br />
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I am not one of them, not anymore. Non-Christians have done more for my faith, than Christians have. I'm tired of dogma. I'm tired of chains. I'm tired of being scared, and I'm tired of seeking refuge in the false sense of security that is, "So long as you don't do <i>anything</i> on this long list, you have no reason to be scared." I want adventure. I want experimentation. I want life to be interesting. I don't want to be constrained to boring old...fear.<br />
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I want to live.<br />
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We got back together, by the way. Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-55832342624788523992012-10-23T13:28:00.001-04:002012-10-23T13:28:27.220-04:00There Are Many Sins (Why I Hate Election Years)I really don't like presidential election years.<br />
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My family doesn't really talk that much about Senate or House elections, but when the Presidency comes around, they're on that like white on rice. It gets a bit bothersome, especially since my dad loves to talk and try to convince everyone else that he's right about everything, while my mom stands by and just sort of lets people do whatever they want. I'm guessing they have never really had a political argument, if only because Mom sees it as a waste of time.<br />
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Now's the time of year that Dad appends a few political notes to all his phone calls to me, telling me I better not vote for the dirty liberal atheist Democrats, or else I'm going to be screwing over the country and we're all going to Hell or something. This is sort of exaggerated, but not by much, because dear Dad, for all his awesome qualities, believes that if we so much as sniff at compromise on social issues, we're horribly betraying society, God, and everything else. It got me thinking about how weird conservative priorities are.<br />
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I never hear evangelical folk talking about poverty in America. I'm sure they do once in a while, but I never hear one word of it. I never hear about the evils of corporate scandal, corrupt politicians, and environmental destruction. No comments about feeding the hungry, helping the disabled, or making medical care more accessible in any possible way.<br />
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I hear about the following topics: abortion, gay marriage, and contraception.<br />
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What the hell is <i>wrong</i> with evangelical culture these days? It's like they are centering every possible bit of effort they could ever have, on something that Jesus really doesn't seem to consider a priority in all of the Bible's lesson. The fact that my dad says not to vote for Obama because he favors abortion, strikes me as incredibly short-sighted.<br />
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I'm not disclosing who I'm voting for. As far as I'm concerned, both candidates suck, and since I'm in a hardcore Blue state and came from a hardcore Red state, my vote for the presidency has <i>never</i> mattered one whit. Still, the point being, you should <i>never</i> vote for a candidate based solely on one issue, no matter how emotional it may be, unless the issue is "should we blow up the Earth" or something. If the issue is at all controversial, in any significant way, it should not be the only reason you're voting against someone.<br />
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I don't care whether you do or don't think abortion is okay; it should <i>not</i> be the reason you're voting for a candidate, as a Christian. If a candidate were to have a proven-to-work, revolutionary program to raise families out of poverty, provide cheap and nutritious food, and promote inexpensive medical care without pissing off hard workers who want to keep their money, but he endorsed legalized abortion, is it <i>really</i> sensible to reject him on those grounds?<br />
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In a non-ideal world, we have to work with necessary evils. Even if you think abortion is evil, it is just one more ticker on the scale. Think about it this way: if God says that all sin is sin, and you can't just rank sin and say, "oh, I'll commit some little sins, they don't matter, as long as I'm better than the guy over there cheating on his wife," then we should realize that abortion is no greater a sin than anything else. Sin is sin. If your candidate turns away the poor and sick, isn't that just as great a sin as endorsing gay marriage would be? If your candidate spurns and wastes God's Earth like the Prodigal Son spent all his fortune, isn't that just as great a sin as promoting legal abortion? <br />
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Let's not even get into the arguments of how many times various sins are mentioned in the Bible, and if they are even sins at all, and so forth. In the end, just look at the person in question, and ask yourself, how sinful <i>overall</i> is this regime going to be? Stack the good points on one side and the sins on the other. Make sure to count <i>all</i> the sins, not just anything related to people's genitalia. Despite what many evangelicals want you to think, who you sleep with, when, and in what fashion, are not the only topics for sin. Count all of them: greed, lies, cheating, taking bribes, depriving the poor of aid, fearmongering, selfishness...<br />
<br />
Now choose, with open eyes. If you still end up choosing the original candidate you were voting for, that's <i>fine.</i> No one cares if you started out hardcore Romney, looked at both sides, and still said Romney was the right answer. Same for Obama. But at least make a <i>real </i>decision, not one based on the idea that sexuality is the only possible metric for sin.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-14108560402614539702012-10-17T17:03:00.002-04:002012-10-17T17:03:24.526-04:00MiraclesMy boyfriend and I see God in completely different areas of the world.<br />
<br />
He looks at numbers and sees the divine. Nature is full of uncanny mathematical patterns, and the laws of the universe fit together like laser-cut puzzle pieces, perfect in their simplicity and complexity. "I imagine God as having His hands around the world," he said one night. "He's everywhere." He sees miracles as unnecessary, as breaking the beauty of the world; to him, nature and its perfect fit, like gears in a clock, is the real miracle. He claims he doesn't need to believe in the miraculous, because what kind of God would need to go back in and patch up the work He already did? It's like Michelangelo returning to the Sistine Chapel and scratching a doodle in crayon on a corner of the ceiling. The universe is so perfectly designed from the start, from the moment God set "let it be," and the Big Bang went off, that the one miracle God ever truly did is still going, and going, and going. The things we call miraculous, are so miraculous because they are natural phenomena that were decided billions of years ago, a tiny butterfly flap that caused the cancer to be attacked at just the right time by just the right virus to pop the right cell, and so forth.<br />
<br />
I see God in the cracks of reality. When something uncanny happens, just in the precise way it shouldn't. When a disease vanishes in a way that is impossible. When nature moves aside a little, so you can see the God behind the curtain, holding the universe in perpetually moving fingers, playing physics like a piano, throwing in a riff now and then that wasn't originally in the piece. "I imagine God peeking in between slips of time," I said. "He's hiding behind the world, always watching, waiting, and acting." All the world's a stage, and God is running the tech crew. I don't think God planned it ahead of time, or at least not to fit seamlessly; I believe that miracles are supposed to happen, that we can't actually exist without breaking reality at some point or another. That natural law is purposely and divinely imperfect and incapable of acting entirely on its own. That without God's direct intervention, humanity wouldn't have evolved; sentience would never have occurred; the nations wouldn't have lined up as they did when Jesus existed; so on and so forth.<br />
<br />
<br />
In the end, I think we're both a little bit right.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-52682583247435558422012-08-22T13:02:00.002-04:002012-08-22T13:02:22.153-04:00Guard Your What?"Above all, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." - Proverbs 4:23.<br />
<br />
This
is probably one of the most altered, mistaken, and perverted (in the
old sense, not the creeper sense) verses that is talked about in the
church.<br />
<br />
There are twelve words in that verse. None of
these twelve include any of the following: virginity, penis, vagina,
body, nakedness, sexuality, marriage. And that's just a partial list of
all the words that <i>aren't</i> in this verse.<br />
<br />
Proverbs 4:23 is unequivocally <i>not about sex.</i>
This is not a pro-abstinence tract, nor is it restricted to women. This
verse has been used for restriction, laid down like some kind of law,
as if there were a punishment attached to the end. As if there were
eighteen words instead of twelve, and the remaining six were, "Or you
will go to Hell."<br />
<br />
Guard your heart. What is the heart?
It's the metaphorical center of love and caring. It's the part of the
analogy-body that feels and empathizes. Even if people thought the brain
was a giant radiator, the <i>mind</i> was the center of thought,
wherever in the body it was thought to lie. The heart is reserved for
pure emotions. So in the end, what are you guarding? You're guarding
feelings, emotions like trust, love, dedication, kindness, and empathy.
You're not expending your every last drop of energy on the pigs, who
will not appreciate the pearls you've thrown before them. You're making
sure to take care of yourself, not in a self-centered way, but in a way
that will protect your stability and energy and enthusiasm for life.
You're not letting other people take advantage of you, even though you
may care for them and help them. You maintain a center, where you can be
strong and capable, despite what the world may throw at you.<br />
<br />
Guarding
your heart isn't about keeping it in your pants. There's no mention
about pants here, or any of the body parts under those pants. What it's
about, is keeping your priorities straight, and not throwing yourself
away. Wanton promiscuity is a definite danger, don't think I'm saying
otherwise. Throwing caution to the wind and ruining your body is not
taking care of yourself. Disease and unwanted pregnancy are torments to
the mind and heart. But the point is the damage they're doing, not the
overgeneralized whole.<br />
<br />
Guarding your heart means having
respect for yourself. It means choosing good lovers and good friends
and good coworkers. It means not letting anyone crap all over you and
not being a pushover. It means maintaining your cool and your stability
among the hurricane that is humanity. It doesn't mean alienating
yourself, or being prissy, and it certainly doesn't mean being
abstinent, or not dyeing your hair, or not shaving your head, or not
getting a tattoo, or caring about this or that political issue and not
the other one, or preaching to every person you see, or...<br />
<br />
<br />
It
means, have respect for yourself. Take care of yourself. Treat your
body right, and your mind right, and your heart right. Don't let
humanity drown you. Don't let others destroy you. Don't throw yourself
into a situation where you know you're just going to come out a ruined
shell.<br />
<br />
Does that happen to people? Yes. Does it mean they didn't guard their hearts? Not always. But sometimes you can see it coming.<br />
<br />
You can only do so much. This verse is asking you to do just that: what you<i> can</i>
do. Not what you can't, not what you couldn't account for. But what you
can do, right now, to be good to yourself, to protect yourself.<br />
<br />
Guard your heart. And go be free.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-85261265374018855702012-08-03T12:51:00.001-04:002012-08-03T12:51:01.905-04:00What I Learned from "Dogma" (spoilers)Since it's a movie I've wanted to see for years now, I finally got around to watching Dogma. For those of you who don't know, it's a Jay and Silent Bob satire film about a couple of angels who, in a fit of drunkenness, lay aside their heavenly duties and get thrown down to Earth for all of eternity as punishment for their flippancy and disobedience. (Also, angels are no longer allowed to drink.) Now one of the half-related descendents of Jesus Christ (through Jesus' brothers' bloodline), a couple of modern prophets, and a reincarnated thirteeth Apostle named Rufus have to go keep the two angels from exploiting a cosmic loophole in their punishment and getting back into Heaven, which would reverse a mandate of God and end the universe. Along the way, the mob encounters the Metatron (angel serving as the Voice of God), demons appear in the form of hockey-stick-wielding teenage thugs led by fallen angel Asrael, and lots of wackiness ensues.<br />
<br />
Anyway. On to the things I learned.<br />
<br />
The beginning of the movie was the most satirical part, if you ask me, and the biggest punch in the gut came right at the entrance. It's the closest I came to being legitimately offended, and then I realized why.<br />
<br />
At the very start of the movie, a cardinal at the local Catholic church has decided that he's going to try to make Catholicism hip and modern now. Being Catholic is antiquated, he says. Nobody finds it relevant anymore, so may as well fix it up so that people feel attracted to it again. It's a two-millennium-old religion, and the reason they're bleeding followers is because they need to shiny it up for the young folk. So, the cardinal decides to "retire" the crucifix as a symbol of Christianity and replace it with the "Buddy Jesus," a statue of a traditionally-attired European-looking Jesus (the one you usually see around America) making a thumbs-up gesture while smiling and winking at the onlookers. Jesus looked too morbid and pained before, says the cardinal. He's not a downer; he's a supporter and a friend, so why not show him as happier and more supportive?<br />
<br />
This is...a surprisingly accurate view of two things: what many churches are trying to do to bring in more followers, and what the conservative folk say is screwing over Christianity as a whole. Let's start with Point One.<br />
<br />
Lots of churches are trying to be modern and "cool." They have slick 21st-century-style logos, catchy names, and even ad campaigns to try to convince random onlookers to go for a visit. One church in Boston must be paying through the nose to post ads all over subway stops, and these ads even <i>bribe</i> onlookers with the promise of coffee and food after services.<br />
<br />
What has the world come to, that we have to offer bribes and rewards and shiny new toys to people who are supposed to be coming to church to seek their spiritual value and fulfillment and all that? If you're going to church because they have free food and it's the most convenient one and you feel guilty not going to church so you may as well, does that mean anything? How does that help build community? Do these people really think that visitors won through shameless marketing are going to be committed or even care?<br />
<br />
Back where I come from, you go to a church because your family goes there. The young folk grow up to be adults who have kids or invite their neighbors, and then they become old folk who mentor the new young folk. Alternatively, you get invited or check out a few churches and then stick with one because it particularly speaks to you. No one bribes anyone. There are no ads. You're just <i>there</i>, and you get to know the church and its people.<br />
<br />
(I think I know why there are so many churches in America. The whole one-on-every-corner thing seems silly and hackneyed to a lot of people, but I think it's the nature of humans to want small tight-knit communities. When churches get too big, someone will inevitably start a new one, and a few people will gravitate there. Eventually, you get the little churches full of old people, that little pack of followers who really love the place, and someday they'll probably all die and someone will buy the building, but in the end, they like their twelve people. Not all pastors want hundreds of followers. In fact, I'm guessing the reason we have so many churches is because of this exact reason: people naturally group off into little packs when they want to be close to others. Sorry, off topic.)<br />
<br />
What is going on now, smacks of materialism and modern advertising shenanigans. And I don't like it. I'd rather look in the Yellow Pages and find churches, or on the internet, and then try them out on their own. I don't want them to throw cool-looking logos in my face and go on and on about how modern and cool they are. This isn't a competition, guys. Communities are supposed to be small and tight-knit here, not to mention, if people don't come to church because they want to be at church, what are you really accomplishing? (Seriously, be honest, how many converts happen because some poor person wanted free food, or something like that?)<br />
<br />
What is the solution here? Go old-school. Ditch the modern shenanigans and go back to the reason we really went to church. Cut the silly socialization games and the bribes and the advertising. Stop trying to hold a carrot over our heads and get us to jump. Focus more on community prayer, perhaps, or study classes, or maybe just days where people can come and spend time in silence in the sanctuary. Make church feel really holy and special again, rather than just a social playdate with a sermon once a week. Stop holding church in crappy old buildings and bring back the beauty and iconography when you can. Put down an atmosphere where people leave their lives behind and really talk to God. I'd also like to see "office hours" of sorts where authority figures in the church just talk to members and try to help them on their spiritual paths. Make this really be mentor-mentee style relationships. Go back to when church really felt like it was <i>about</i> something.<br />
<br />
<br />
Second, a completely unrelated point: the conservative church basically sees the liberal church as the cardinal in Dogma. Liberals are, as they say, trying to put a pretty face on what should be a scary, intense, exclusive sort of religion that is supposed to really get all up in your grill and show you the Dark Frightening Things about reality that you should really care about. All the hellfire-brimstone gets swept under the rug in favor of this "Buddy Jesus" kind of figure, who is really there just to make you feel good. This follows pretty quickly to "churches that don't tell you about Sin and Punishment are evil" and so forth.<br />
<br />
Some of this, I'd say is true. The modern church kind of does like to cut corners and talk more about what God likes than what God doesn't like. The concepts of sin and punishment get swept under the rug, and people really don't like discussing Hell and what it means. Oddly enough, televangelists (who are often very conservative) tend to push these points more, because they get more views if they spread around feel-good messages rather than moral lessons. I can't say I've particularly encountered How To Be Moral sermons up in Boston, and I expect this is because the churches up here try to focus way more on "how God is nice" rather than "how God is a Father who expects you to obey His rules regardless of how much you think it'd be fun not to." Both of these points, when taken to an extreme, are both misguided. God is nice. God is also serious business. Both of these must be acknowledged.<br />
<br />
<br />
There you go, things I learned from satire. Most of the rest of the movie is just fun plot shenanigans, and watching the two angels evolve as characters as well as the Last Scion (the descendent of Jesus' family) accept her mission and really go for it. Good movie, watch it.<br />
<br />Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-18208971846209308432012-06-27T16:39:00.002-04:002012-06-27T16:39:25.620-04:00Holier Than ThouChristian Evangelicals have this complex surrounding miracles.<br />
<br />
Now, first off, I'd like to say that I absolutely do believe in miracles. I am entirely certain that people have been healed of diseases, made to walk again, or see again, or what have you. Planes have been strategically delayed, and cars have been made to start again. Poisons have been purified and bullets steered off course. I firmly believe that these things can and do happen.<br />
<br />
However, I don't believe that they come on command. Certainly it seems that despite God's myriad opportunities to wow us, He seems perfectly content to let the world do its thing most of the time. I can't explain it, but needless to say, God is not a lab rat or a dog. He can't be trained, and He doesn't bark on command. You can't wave your hands like a magic wand and expect God to do something flashy for you. (For those of you who still believe that televangelists like Benny Hinn work miracles on camera, just Google "leg lengthening." The people these guys call up for demonstrations, are total plants. People have seen the wheelchairs waiting for the plants that "stand up and walk.") Anyway, despite "God is not a trained dog," the Evangelical church is rooted in physical display. Funny, for a denomination that so vehemently protests science and other such "visible" things, they sure do rely a lot on what they can see and feel. Speaking in tongues is one such phenomenon, as is "being slain in the Spirit," which looks a lot like a pastor touching someone on the head and said person fainting. Every so often, you'll get the claim that someone has cast out a demon, but I can't comment on what that looks like because I've never seen an exorcism. Either way, there are a nontrivial number of church members, usually well-known pastors or ex-pastors who now function as "prophets" or "healers" or what have you, who go around claiming that God has endowed them with a very Elijah-esque ability to call down miracles at will.<br />
<br />
That's at the high level. Go one step down, and go back to speaking in tongues and being slain in the Spirit and what have you. When I was a kid, I always wanted to know what those were like. Did you just start doing something against your will, as if your body was suddenly being moved by invisible strings? Did you just have an overwhelming desire to do the action? Did you blank out and wake up five minutes later with everyone gawking at your words of Godly wisdom? What happened? Needless to say, I always went to the altar when we had special guests, or when it looked like the pastor was going to walk around doing that funny thing where he touched people's foreheads and they fell over.<br />
<br />
It took me years to finally get someone to tap me on the head, and let me tell you, it was really underwhelming. Despite my praying, and wishing, and getting into the zone and all that...nothing really happened.<br />
<br />
I was disappointed. I expected something transcendental. But I was young, and my legs were tired from standing up...so I figured, okay, maybe that means something. So I let myself sink to the ground. I got a vague curiosity about talking. So I started saying something, and I wasn't sure what it was. I don't think it was much of anything, even for an attempt at the neat babbling thing that the old ladies in church did.<br />
<br />
I got up off the ground at the end of the service, and I didn't mention much about it. I went on with my life, wondering if anything had really happened. In the end, I figure it didn't, and I was just hoping really hard and doing what I saw everyone else doing in hopes that it was something it wasn't.<br />
<br />
I'm sure that God does sent messages through unknown languages. I'm also fairly sure that they don't happen in 95% of cases. I'm guessing most of the people who fall over in church, do it because they're so psyched up that it seems like a good idea at the time.<br />
<br />
This all culminated in the biggest letdown I've had: my friend Amy (not her real name), who I decided I would get healed of a bone issue she had in her hands. Her fingers were stiff and couldn't bend more than maybe an inch in arc, and she couldn't make a fist or even start one. So I was super enthusiastic and prayed as only an innocent believing little kid can, and I brought Amy to the altar at a healing service at church. We cried and prayed and talked with the guest speaker/healer guy and we begged and we tried <i>really hard</i> to be Good Christian People, and I secretly hoped to myself and God that her hands would be healed so that she would get off the fence about whether she was Christian or not, because look! There would be proof.<br />
<br />
Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Zip, zero, nada. Her fingers were as straight and stiff as the moment she walked into the building.<br />
<br />
Looking back on all this, two things have occurred to me. First off, 99.N% of people who claim they can zap miracles out their fingers, are clearly smoking something. Second, the Evangelical church teaches you to join the "holier than thou" contest of who can do or see miracles, and who can't. It seems like to them, the more faithful you are, the more crazy supernatural things will happen to you. If you can't even faint in church, seriously, how faithful can you be? As a kid, I felt deficient somehow, as if I just didn't believe <i>hard</i> enough. Maybe if I prayed more, or read the Bible more, then next time I brought an Amy to the altar, something would happen.<br />
<br />
In the end, I have settled on the idea that Christianity isn't a contest to see who can rack up the most cool showoffy miracles. But in the end, it sure sets up the idea.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-4637303115424154802012-03-20T13:17:00.004-04:002012-03-20T13:17:55.644-04:00Off Topic: Tips on Rental House HuntingI busted my butt for weeks (months? I forget) to get hold of the house I live in now. I think I got lucky in that there were no particular disasters, but in the end, I should compile a list of the Wisdom I learned from going through the process. For the record, "apartment hunting" and "house hunting" I expect are very similar in the Boston area, so consider this as such.<br />
<br />
1. Never assume that anyone is going to do the work but you. And it's a <i>lot</i> of work.<br />
<br />
Even if your roommates are the best project buddies ever, work at your maximum. When it comes to houses that can come and go at the blink of an eye, everyone kicking ass is better than everyone thinking everyone else will kick ass and suffering the temptation to apartment hunt <i>tomorrow</i> rather than <i>today.</i> And internet-searching and calling realtors and landlords is much, much more time-consuming than you think it is. People won't call you back, and you'll have to haunt them until they tell you what you need. Realtors will sniff at you for being too (young, unprofessional, not serious enough, whatever they think you are even if you're not). People will lie to you, string you along, and waste your time. And in the end, properties will appear and disappear and you will lose sight of what's going on if you drop the ball even for a little while.<br />
<i> </i><br />
2. Do the work today, even if you're not assuming you're the only one on the project.<br />
<br />
If you violate principle 1, at least do whatever work you're going to do, today. The market is always cycling, especially in a location where there are more people than there are properties. September in Boston is lease hell, because all the college students are picking up apartments, and properties are flying in and out of the rental market faster than a pack of fighter jets. Get an assessment of the situation today. Tomorrow, get another. And then another the next day. Stay on the ball, and don't wait for the situation to unravel or your favorite property to vanish before doing something. I don't care if you think it'll be there tomorrow, <i>do it now.</i><br />
<br />
3. Force the realtor to show you the property as quickly as humanly possible.<br />
<br />
If he can do it tomorrow, do it tomorrow. If he can do it today, do it today. If you can see that house <i>now</i>, get on your bike/in your car/on your feet and hoof it over there. If you don't, there's a reasonable chance that someone who has seen the house before you or who doesn't care about seeing the property in person will pick it up. We lost a sweet three-story place with a deck over that one. We were left standing outside the house and then getting a call of, "Oh, we already sold the place." So don't wait a couple days, see it now.<br />
<br />
4. Remember that if you're there, so is your competition, and so you have to think <i>fast.</i><br />
<br />
My housing group was the second in a queue of about four groups looking at the house we eventually rented. When we got to the place, we had the awkward issue of having to stare down the other guys, because they too had that think-fast mentality and were muttering under their breath about checks and rent value. Here are some things you need to know before you walk in the door of the house.<br />
- Are you willing and able to drop money on the house <i>right now</i> if you end up liking it?<br />
- Are you up to speed with yourself and your housemates about what constitutes a good house, what kind of physical integrity you need, what neighborhoods are okay, and all the other safety and security logistics you need to know?<br />
- Is there someone in your mob who can front large sums of money <i>now</i>?<br />
- Have you worked out all possible major conflicts with your housemates, such as pet issues, allergies, and so on?<br />
<i> </i><br />
5. Landlords <i>can</i> and <i>will</i> raise rent between the time you see the house and the time you rent it.<br />
<br />
I don't care if this is false advertising or what, but yes, this can happen. Be careful. Make sure you know all the statistics of the place when you sign the lease. Read the lease, talk to the landlord, read the lease some more, and make absolutely sure what you're getting is what you want to sign up for. That sweet $500-lower-than-everyone-else rent price may rise now that the landlord sees how much competition there is for the house.<br />
<br />
6. The landlord/realtor will try to make a house sound amazing even if it's a pit of filth. Ignore this. Make your own judgment calls. No one will be offended if you don't call back on a place. Do not rely on "fixer-upper" statements, or the idea that a place will be happy and clean once the old tenants move out.<br />
<br />
Realtors especially exist to be pushy. Push back, and don't be afraid to drop them even though they'll whine and wheedle after you. One of my housemates and I checked out a house whose floor was coated with sticky gunk, whose kitchen was flooded with trash and dirty dishes, and whose walls were covered in Sharpie. The lights were dim, the place was a sty even if it weren't so filthy, and well, it was filthy. Someone here clearly didn't care, and if the realtor was willing to show us a property like this, that says terrible things to me. There were <i>holes</i> in the <i>walls</i>, and he said that all the place needed was a little cleaning.<br />
<br />
No. Trust your instincts. If the current tenants are living in filth, the house likely has a bug or mouse infestation (or both), and nothing short of a miracle will get cigarette or drug smoke out of the walls and carpet. Also, the more damage that is done to a property ahead of time, the more that the landlord can suck out your security deposit by blaming damages on you if you don't properly document them.<br />
<br />
7. Corollary: buck up and don't be timid when dealing with realtors.<br />
<br />
You have to be firm. I know they're trying to tell you that this house is really awesome and you should live here, and you feel bad for taking up their time because they could be doing their job somewhere else and actually making money and everyone needs money, but this is <i>their job.</i> Suck it up and turn them down if you need to, and by definition of this process, you will turn them down every time but one.<br />
<br />
8. Carpe diem.<br />
<br />
If a property looks good, throw down some cash <i>now.</i> Sign the lease <i>now.</i> Someone else will do it if you don't.<br />
<br />
9. Use the Internet.<br />
<br />
Look at realtors' sites, but also places like HotPads.com will show you properties in your area. There are rental house/apartment search engines, so make good use of them. Different engines will show you different properties, so check several.<br />
<br />
10. Realtors often use the same picture for different properties, so see a house in person before you buy it. Also, even real pictures are an artistic lie.<br />
<br />
Unless you are moving to Clone-House Suburbia, there is no way the realtor has that many properties with the exact same internal layout, colors, lighting, and that neat palm-frond fan. Don't believe this. Go see a property for yourself. Pictures lie, and they're also taken by people who know what they're doing, in the best lighting and conditions. It's like jazzing up someone with makeup and a good pose and precision lighting, when 99% of the time they just look frumpy.<br />
<br />
11. Some realtors/landlords will hate on you for being young and a student, because odds are they've been bitten before by irresponsible types.<br />
<br />
If you're a student or a young person (think 18-24) looking for a place, get ready for landlords and realtors to hate on you for being what they perceive to be a high risk. We were turned down once for not being "a family," due to some BS technicality about 4+ person houses having to be occupied by a family or something. This basically boils down to the landlord not trusting a pack of college students not to destroy the house. Probably somewhere down the line, one of their properties got nuked by a bunch of kids who didn't know how to be Real People and who trashed the place, or else they heard horror stories, or else they just decided that any chance of that was too great a risk. Keep calm and carry on, but know that you're not going to convince these folks.<br />
<br />
12. Skip the realtor if you can, but don't expect this to be easy.<br />
<br />
Houses on realtors' sites will never tell you the exact address of the place, because they don't want you to go to the landlord and rent it under their noses. You'll have to pay a fee to the realtor if you rent through them, but if you <i>can</i> skirt them and go to the landlord, do it. Alas, this was impossible when we tried; we even Google Street View-ed the place, but realtors cover their butts and don't post external images of the houses that give enough detail to peg the building. Sometimes the neighborhood is also inaccurate (remember, Inman Square is not Central, no matter how much they say it is), so your odds of finding it by brute-force searching of the area on Google Street View are very low.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-59307568502766852202012-03-08T16:30:00.000-05:002012-03-08T16:37:23.203-05:00Creative InterpretationI was sitting in a Lutheran service at college, when I heard a familiar story being told. For those of you who aren't familiar with the healing of the ten lepers, here is how it goes:<br />
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Ten lepers approached Jesus one day, begging for them to be made clean. Back in Jesus' day, lepers were thought to be horribly contagious (insofar as people at the time knew what contagion was, but theoretically, if you touched a leper, you got nasty horrible things happening to you), which is now known to be untrue, but as such they were treated as outcasts. If they could be cleaned, and prove themselves to be clean, then they would be allowed to participate in society. Jesus healed all ten, telling them to go to any of the local priests and show themselves to said priest and ask him to verify their being healed and clean. The ten men departed and did so, and found themselves to be exactly that -- except the one man who, being healed, immediately turned around and found Jesus to thank Him even before seeing the priest.<br />
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One man came back to thank Jesus, and Jesus wondered out loud where the other nine were. Still, He told the man to go and be well, as he is now healed.<br />
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End of story.<br />
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It's a funny fact, then, that this is not the end of the story according to the church I'm from.<br />
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The version of the story I heard is identical, except that there is another section at the end that is not actually in the Bible at all. I didn't know this until a long time later, because I hadn't closely read the story, but it turns out that my old church amended the tale. In their version, the ten lepers depart, one turns around and thanks Jesus, and Jesus sends him on his way again, wondering where the nine are...and after that, the nine find themselves to be lepers once more, because they didn't say thank you. Essentially, Jesus curses them for their lack of gratitude, which is never something we see Jesus doing at all (ever -- the only thing He ever curses is a fig tree, which he withers as a demonstrative gesture accompanying something He said).<br />
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What does this mean, then, that some conservative churches feel the need to turn Jesus into some kind of punishing figure, even when the evidence they want is something they had to create themselves? That Jesus isn't a merciful healer, but instead some sort of divine overseer, rewarding the good but exactly strict justice the moment any mistake is made?Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-3637484168985002472012-02-05T18:44:00.000-05:002012-02-08T10:18:45.295-05:00Off Topic: A Primer on Long HairAs a grad from one of the nerdiest schools you're going to find, I end up meeting a lot of people with long hair. For women, this isn't such a weird thing, but we have a fairly significant quantity of males with long hair of various magnitudes. As such, I wrote a primer on how to deal with long hair.<br />
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This isn't to say that all guys don't take care of their hair, by any means, or that all girls do. In the end, there are many on both sides who just sort of ignore it. Without further ado, some helpful tips from someone who has had long hair for 20 years. Note that I have straight hair and, as such, can't give as helpful advice for very curly hair. Wavy hair acts similarly to straight hair in a lot of ways, from what I've seen, but grain of salt and so forth.<br />
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1. Cut your hair.<br />
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I know this is counter-intuitive. You want to grow your hair out, so you ignore it and let it grow, right? This is incorrect, especially if you have blonde hair. Dark hair is thicker per strand than light hair, on average, so it tends to suffer less damage per unit time, but in the end, all hair will have split ends. Split ends are when the hair shaft divides near the end of the hair, causing a frizzy clump of skinny hair tips that gives your hair a ratty, tangled look. They make the hair weaker, and the longer they're around, the higher up the hair will split. Eventually, you can get inches of split ends, and it's made even worse if your hair deals with chlorine, heavy heat, salt water, or other such abuse on a routine basis. A friend of mine went hiking in the desert for three months and had to get about four inches of hair chopped off because it was utterly destroyed.<br />
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The solution to split ends is to trim your hair about half an inch when you see the frizz starting to appear. Don't cut it often, or much -- just go to a stylist or a friend and tell them to take the split ends off. Your hair grows faster than its ends split, so you'll slowly grow your hair out and keep it nice-looking. There's little sadder that can happen to hair, than having a foot and a half of ponytail with the last six to eight inches being ratty split ends.<br />
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2.Get a separate conditioner from your shampoo and use it every time you wash.<br />
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Conditioner is in no way overrated. When you shampoo your hair and nothing else, you strip off all the oils but put nothing back on to protect the hair. As a result, your hair gets dry, damaged, and brittle. When you brush it, it will break. Those two-in-one shampoos are atrocious -- shampoo strips off oil, and conditioner tries to moisten, and the two do not work well together. First shampoo, then condition. If you have particularly damaged/brittle/dry hair, leave the conditioner on for a few minutes, and consider buying something you can leave in after you wash.<br />
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When you wash with conditioner, make sure that you're not over-rinsing it. Notice how, after you shampoo, your hair gets that "squeaky clean" feeling where your fingers cause enough friction to actually catch on the hair. After you condition, you should stop rinsing when your hair feels smooth but not slick -- your fingers shouldn't grab in the hair, but nor should you be able to feel the conditioner either. It's a practice thing, but in the end, that's the magic point where the conditioner is doing its job without leaving a residue.<br />
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3. Don't use crap conditioner.<br />
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I know it's tempting to buy a two-dollar bottle of conditioner, but up to a point, you really get what you pay for. Six to eight dollars is the minimum for good conditioner on my hair; it probably varies per person, but if you're using a cheap bottle of Pert, it simply won't do much for you. It'll be like you didn't condition, and see above for the consequences.<br />
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4. Use a brush.<br />
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I know this sounds ridiculous. Still, some people don't brush their hair. Granted, some people's hair is magical and doesn't tangle, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't brush it. Brushing hair flattens the flyaways that form halos around your head after you wash, and it gets rid of shed hairs that are caught up in the rest of your hair. Finger-combing isn't going to get all of them. Even if you're losing hair, brushing softly isn't going to tear out any more; it's just going to remove the hair you've already shed.<br />
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There are two different kinds of brushes, loosely: bristle brushes and rubber-nib brushes. Rubber-nib brushes are the most common kind; they have spines that have rubber bulbs on the end. They tend to be stiffer and dig farther into the hair, which means that for most people they're better at getting all the tangles out, but for people with sensitive scalps, they're little torture devices. If you're like me, and pulling at your hair causes you nontrivial pain, you should use a bristle brush, which has thinner and more flexible strands with nothing on their ends. Bristle brushes are less powerful than rubber-nib brushes, but they're gentler. Try each one and see what you think. Most people prefer the nibs, but a few just can't deal.<br />
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Brush your hair from the ends upward. This will brush out any tangles without clumping them together at the end of your hair. It can be slow going, but it will do less damage to your hair in the process and make the tangles easier to get out.<br />
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5. Tame flyaways.<br />
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Fine hair tends to be really fluttery. Chances are that if you have fine hair, you get shorter strands flipping about and giving you a vague halo a la those Catholic saint pictures. What you can do for this is to take some anti-frizz cream or some hair shine liquid and rub a tiny bit on your hands, then run your hands through your hair. That should be enough to keep the loose strands back.<br />
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6. Pull back your hair.<br />
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I know ponytails aren't for everyone, but find some way to tame your hair when you need to. It will get in your way during sports, on windy days, and so on, no matter how much you like to wear it down. Sometimes it's just worth it to carry a hair tie or two. Get the kind with no metal -- the metal bits on old hair ties will snag strands and hurt when you pull them out of your hair. And seriously, don't even consider using rubber bands.<br />
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7. You don't need to go to a stylist to cut your hair.<br />
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Friends can trim long hair as long as you don't have a crazy cut. If you've just got hair of a fairly uniform length, all said friend needs to do is flatten your hair when it's wet and trim straight across. Put it in whatever part you like (middle, side, whatever) before the cut is done. If you have wavy hair, this gets even easier, because it's harder to see a slightly uneven cut on curly or wavy hair than on straight hair. Granted, if you want a special cut, you will have to go to a salon unless you know a particularly skilled friend, but odds are if you're an average guy with long hair, just get a friend to snip the ends off once in a while. It takes ten minutes, tops.<br />
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8. Consider a hair dryer if you have to look particularly nice.<br />
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I know hair dryers are said to completely ruin hair, but this is utterly false. They do some amount of damage, but it's nothing conditioner doesn't fix. As long as you don't over-bake your hair, you'll be fine. Hair dryers prevent hair from looking oily after you wash. When you dry your hair, keep the dryer moving so that no one section of hair sustains too much heat. Take a brush and brush your hair while facing the dryer toward the bristles; this will help it dry faster and look smoother. If you're one of those people that likes curling the ends, you can get a round brush and make some waves at the end of your hair by wrapping your hair around the brush and drying as you pull the brush through.<br />
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9. If you have oily hair, only condition the hair that is farther from your scalp.<br />
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Don't put conditioner directly near your scalp if your hair gets oily. Your head will naturally condition the roots of your hair, so worry about keeping the length from being damaged and breaking off. Conditioner will only force you to wash your hair more often to keep the greasy look away.<br />
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10. Try not to brush your hair harshly while it's wet.<br />
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Brushing wet hair tends to break it, so be careful. Combing is better, but long hair tends to resist combs.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-6582844306754030672012-01-04T17:04:00.002-05:002012-01-04T17:04:35.858-05:00On the Age of Accountability (and More Eternal Hell)There is a concept highly pushed in conservative Christianity, and that is the Age of Accountability. Through no particular Biblical text -- mostly just sane but partial logic -- someone down the authority chain decided that there was a maximum age past which people suddenly become accountable for their sins. I will refer to it as the AoA for sanity's sake, because Accountability is a huge word. The AoA is loosely defined as the point where a person has enough understanding of what is right and wrong to make good decisions and do what is right.<br />
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Very little kids clearly have no particular clue. They scream, hit, steal, whatever they want, they try to get. They have no reasonable concept of "moral" or "ethical" or whatever. They know they have needs, and they try to take the most direct path between the need and the fulfilling thereof. You can't really blame them for that, because they're underdeveloped and don't have the knowledge and brain maturity to do otherwise.<br />
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The AoA, despite its general definition, is often set at age 12. Why? No other reason than Jesus began showing consciously executed signs of divine knowledge at 12, according to text. We don't actually know if Jesus started exhibiting divinity before that, but the first recorded moment is when Mary and Joseph, through some mishap we don't know, lose Jesus while heading home and have to turn back and search for the missing child. They find Jesus in a synagogue, astounding the local teachers with His knowledge. Beforehand, obviously, there were the singing Christmas angels and whatnot, but this was the first voluntary action we see Jesus taking that is "superhuman." Never mind the fact that Jesus was clearly incredibly mature for His age as a human, and that He had a huge bank of knowledge that no one else could possibly have access to, the AoA is set at 12 from this story.<br />
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Ergo, according to Christian lore, at age 12, every human being now has the ability to damn himself.<br />
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Okay, when I was a kid, this scared the pants off me, I don't know about you. The moment my 12th birthday hit, it was like a huge weight came down around my shoulders. I now had Responsibility. I didn't ask for it. I certainly didn't want it. Who wants the chance to screw up their eternal fate?<br />
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And, in complete, unashamed seriousness, I would much rather die than have that opportunity.<br />
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This leads back to eternal Hell. If Hell is permanent, and your state of belief on Earth can screw you forever -- especially if by some shadow of a chance I've done it wrong and some other religion with a Hell figure is correct -- then I would much rather have been killed as a baby when I had no opportunity to ruin it for myself.<br />
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Even when you include religious mandate, what is God trying to get at when He gives us commandments? Love your neighbor. Treat him well. Do good to him. Be a nice person.<br />
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What is the nice thing to do, when someone is faced with the opportunity to completely destroy their fate? What is the only way to help them?<br />
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It's the same thing we do to wounded animals. We kill them. No fancy words -- that's exactly what we do. When the animal is faced with dire suffering, instead of letting it be tortured into oblivion, we do the kindhearted thing and end its life. This is considered humane, moral, and correct. Now this creature is at peace. So, when the difference is between heaven and even the slightest possibility of permanent Hell, the solution is very, direly, simple.<br />
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Kill every single human being before their 12th birthday. End the human race in a couple of generations. Everyone goes to Heaven and the world ends for us. This is is the only humane option for us.<br />
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There is one contingency plan, <i>if</i> you allow for those who have never heard of Jesus to go to Heaven. This is a big <i>if</i> for some people. If you consider that tenet, the other solution is to completely eliminate Christianity. By eradicating the very religion that is trying to promote salvation, you prevent anyone from losing salvation by gaining knowledge and then choosing to ignore it. If those who never hear, are considered to never have had a chance, then we should never give anyone a chance. The worst life on Earth, even a spiritually unfulfilled and miserable one, is infinitely greater than eternal torture.<br />
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When your most humane options become "murder the entire human race" and "eliminate your own religious system," something is<i> incredibly, direly wrong</i>.<br />
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And besides, what happens if someone is precocious? What if their brain develops fast and they gain moral understanding at age 10? The age-12 rule is silly and has no real basis in reality or Scripture, while you could argue for a moving AoA due to "innocents going to heaven." The mentally unstable or impaired may not even have an AoA. So in the end, it's a huge crapshoot as to when someone gets the chance to go to permanent Hell, when you have this moving target. Or what happens if someone dies at age 13, after having just a year -- and a year during adolescence, when people make crap decisions and are biologically screwed with regards to good sense -- to sort their entire lives out?Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-46028269068588621562011-12-26T12:06:00.001-05:002011-12-26T12:06:03.571-05:00My Issues with Eternal HellI have a beef with the concept of eternal Hell.<br />
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I don't even mean the Dante's Inferno type of Hell. After all, there is very, very little evidence that Hell is going to be full of fire and brimstone; the "lake of fire" is seen as being a place for the devil and demons, not for ill-fated souls, and it might just be metaphorical for something else. But even if it does exist, odds are the humans won't end up there.<br />
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My issue is really with the permanence of Hell. I don't even mind the idea of it existing. Now, there are plenty of people who will bring up a lot of scriptures regarding Hell and its existence, but I want to point out a few Biblical passages also. I'm going to paraphrase here; I will likely return and put in chapter and verse numbers later.<br />
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<br />"How many times must I forgive my brother? Is seven times enough?" That was one of the apostles, asking Jesus. Jesus replied, "Not just seven, but seventy times seven." As in, we should forgive people and endless number of times, and not hold their crimes against them. This isn't the same as letting them endanger others, but we have mercy upon them and grant them pardon.<br />
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"Forgive your enemies; bless those who curse you; do good to those who spitefully use you." That's Jesus again.<br />
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Four men lower a paralyzed man down into a house where Jesus is teaching. "Your sins are forgiven," he says to the man, then tells him to stand up and walk. The man does.<br />
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Jesus is hanging on the cross, after suffering horrible torture and finally nailed to a couple of wooden planks to die. It's a most undignified death, saved for thieves and traitors and other kinds of scum, and surely the meaning isn't lost on him. He looks down and says, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."<br />
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Notice how, in none of these examples, does Jesus ever put any significance whatsoever on the <i>perpetrators asking for forgiveness.</i><br />
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Forgive your brother, whether or not he asks for it. Forgive your enemies, and they certainly aren't asking. The paralyzed man was probably just confused; we have no record of him saying anything, though his <i>friends</i> had faith -- but we don't know at all if he did. As for the Romans, they didn't care jack squat for this random Jew who the others had decided was clearly terrible enough for the death penalty.<br />
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Jesus forgives them. So what's the huge leap between that and forgiving the other poor stubborn people on Earth who just haven't made it to the point of faith yet? If Jesus forgave the Romans, who clearly didn't care what religion He was pushing, what about the people who were raised atheist and simply saw no particular proof to believe otherwise? Jesus was running around throwing miracles like they were candy, and <i>still</i> people didn't believe -- how is modern day life giving anyone a fair shot?<br />
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If God tells us to do something, I expect He will do the same thing, only more so. (Worshiping Him notwithstanding, let's all be sane here, I expect God doesn't worship Himself.) If He asks us to forgive someone, I expect He's going to do it all the more. Which basically means...well, everyone. He also tells us to be fair, and just, and He'll do that also. But in the end, whenever that means, whether it's on Earth or in the afterlife, He will forgive all those people He told us to forgive. Because He's God, and He's not a hypocrite.<br />
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It seems to be that by the definition of hypocrisy -- of which Jesus accused a huge number of religious officials, so He clearly subscribes to the definition -- God constrains Himself every time He makes a rule for us. He can't violate rules that He set in place, because that would make Him untrustworthy and hypocritical. (A comment on "Thou shalt not kill" -- God is clearly referring to innocents, or people who have not already qualified for the death penalty, because God definitely allows humans to levy the death penalty at least in the Old Testament. We can argue all day about Canaanites and whatnot, but this isn't the point.)<br />
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Scripture also says that God chastises those he loves, and he punishes people that he cares for, presumably to let them know the consequences of their actions and correct them. That's what chastising is for -- it's a reprimand, and instruction to do right. Chastising is completely useless if it never ends, because it crosses the line between punishment and cruel vengeance. It's torture for torture's sake; it's straight-up sadistic. It's passive-aggressive ("look what you did, and what you could have done, now sit and wallow in despair forever because you were bad, because you deserve it") and senseless, because once the person has seen the error of their ways, <i>what reason is there for not letting them leave?</i><br />
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In this case, let's think about Hell as a separation from God. No more, no less. It's a calm limbo, where no one is tortured, but where people feel the crucial void between themselves and their creator. They are aware every moment of their "lives" there, that they have fallen short and that they are missing something<i> </i><br />
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You know, this seems a lot like Earth.<br />
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Doesn't it seem that way to you? That's what people are trying to make others feel here. However, we have a lot of Earthly pleasures to get in our way, and lots of other people to convince us not to believe, and so on. By this image, Hell is mostly more of our lives here, only with a focus on the depressing parts, the parts where we feel spiritually unfulfilled and empty. That does suck quite a lot, but in the end, surely <i>someone</i> in Hell is going to figure out that they don't have to do this anymore.<br />
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At that point, continuing to rub their nose in their proverbial pee stain is just being mean. If they understand, if the punishment has achieved its purpose of teaching them what they did wrong, if they now decide they want to fix their life...well, why not let them? Jesus never turned anyone away. What's up with this arbitrary deadline of 75-ish years, compared to eternity? At that point, it just seems like God would be saying, "Ha ha, you didn't make it in time, now go shove off." God doesn't do that. He's all-loving and all-merciful, but it seems like people forget the <i>all</i> part of that. It's not "all Christians," it's just <i>all.</i> Everyone. Everything. Every man, beast, plant, stone -- He shaped everything, and God doesn't make junk, and He doesn't throw things away.<br />
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A lot of people will start screaming about how human morality sucks, here. Maybe it does, for people who aren't Christian -- maybe at that point, whether the person's morality is right, is a hit or miss kind of question. There are certainly some human impulses that are less than admirable. But in the end, I like to think God gives His followers a sense of right and wrong, and if something is utterly repulsive to us, maybe we should give it a second look and see if we've read it right, or if we're interpreting it right, or what have you.<br />
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One of my acquaintances once said that Christianity is scary and depressing, and that it's supposed to be, because we were called to make huge sacrifices and be hurt and tormented for God's sake.<br />
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Sacrifice happens. Pain happens. But Christianity is supposed to be the <i>good</i> news, the news that someone has already come by to atone for all our crimes, <i>full stop.</i> That whosoever believes in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life, <i>full stop.</i> Not if they do it in a certain way, with certain ritual. Not if they are perfect.<br />
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Not even if they only do it before they die.<br />
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For God so loved the world, that He sent His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.<i> </i><br />
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If Christianity is scary and depressing, we're clearly reading this verse horribly wrong.<i> </i>Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-2699282943384820802011-12-02T10:45:00.002-05:002011-12-02T11:13:54.097-05:00The Prodigal SonThe story of the Prodigal Son is given as an example of great forgiveness and mercy. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it goes like this.<br /><br />A man had two sons that worked the land with him. One day, the younger son came to him and asked for his share of the inheritance early, and his father handed it over. At that point, he hoofs it out of town and heads off to the Wild Blue Yonder to live the good life with the money and resources he has. His older brother stays behind to keep working for their father, not wanting his inheritance early.<br /><br />The younger man spends all his money on food and prostitutes. His life goes off like a bottle rocket, fast and dangerous, and he burns himself out in a matter of a few years. At that point, he is reduced to sleeping in pigpens, eating scraps given to the pigs and living in the streets. A while later, he realizes that he can't live in the sty forever, and he goes home in shame to his father to tell him what has become of himself and his inheritance.<br /><br />When he arrives, he begs that his father would let him sleep in the stable and work as a slave, because he expects no more. His father has a different agenda, calling in all the farmhands and his older son and throwing a grand celebration for the younger man. He brings out a big fat calf and kills it for a feast, then puts a ring on the man's finger and nice sandals on his feet, and he rejoices that his son has returned.<br /><br />Normally, the moral of the story is that the prodigal son was lost and now is found; he went off to live the "good life" and figured out that it's not so good after all, then decided to come home, where he is always welcome. His father is all-forgiving and has no lingering grudge over the man's bad decisions.<br /><br />This is a charming story, but I wonder from time to time -- did the prodigal son have the right idea? Was it necessary for him to go off, spend all his money, understand what the world has to offer, and then reject it? I'll say, yes. Hear me out for a moment.<br /><br />Every so often, families spawn children who are just not satisfied with a cloistered life. They want to know what's out there in the Wild Blue Yonder, and they're tired of being held back from doing what they want. Now, for most people, what they want is far more wholesome than wild spending and whores, but the point still stands. Let's look at the two brothers for a moment.<br /><br />The first son in the story, the older one, is happy where he is. He goes about his everyday life without regret, working the land, reaping crops, slaughtering animals, selling food, so on. His life is relatively uneventful and secure. He likes it that way, and he's not oppressed into it, because his father is a kindhearted person. He's probably very stable and not very adventurous.<br /><br />The second son clearly isn't pleased with his life. He's a "go big or go home" type. He wants to have wealth, luxury, and satisfaction. Instead of getting married young, as was the custom, he's going to go off and live a commitment-free life, where he doesn't work and doesn't have to support his partners. He is dissatisfied with constancy and security. He's probably a risk-taker.<br /><br />Fundamentally, both of these are reasonable ways to live. They're the difference between the quiet, hard-working student and the one who parties at the frats all weekend and does just enough to get by. You can get by doing both; I'm not even going to bother on the point of which one is better. Unless you get alcohol poisoning and die, both of these will sustain you at the bare minimum, at least.<br /><br />But in the end, as it often is with bottle-rocket types, the Prodigal Son realizes that he has screwed it up big time. He has no money and no food. He's reduced to living with pigs, which in Jewish culture are unclean animals. He eats what he can steal from them, and he lives in the dirt all day. His life is nowhere near the lap of luxury that he had imagined. So after a while, he heads home to try to clean things up. I expect that afterward, he doesn't bother trying to live the fast and dangerous life again.<br /><br />What if he hadn't left? Probably he would have been grumpy and unhappy until the end of his days. Some people just have to know what they're missing, to see that they're not really missing anything at all. Curiosity, and sometimes envy, are powerful forces. He saw the men throwing cash around, buying rich foods, and spending the night with all the whores they wanted, and he wanted that life, too. Had he not tried it, he'd probably have idolized it for the rest of his life, sat around being angry that his father and brother were keeping him chained down, generally folding in on himself and being bitter about his inability to go do what he wants.<br /><br />Did you ever do something utterly stupid as a kid, but realize that you learned a good lesson from it? Maybe you ate three bags of candy, felt horribly sick and threw up, then realized that this was perhaps a terrible plan and you're never doing it again? Or maybe you pulled your cat's tail, got bitten, and saw that you know, maybe it wasn't worth it to see the cat get all riled up? Yeah. I did that stuff. But you know, I'd have been angry at myself for not doing it, had I not done it. There are things in life you have to experience, just so you can see if they're as good as you think they are. You have to take the risk. You have to see what you're missing. And then, in the end, maybe you weren't missing much. Getting drunk and barfing really isn't very interesting, despite what the frat boys want you to think. I suspect that getting high also isn't, although I haven't tried. Lots of things aren't. But hey, try anything once. After all, I did once dare a friend to eat a betta fish, in exchange for me doing the same afterward. A live one. It was an experience. I don't feel the need to do it again, but hey, it was nifty.<br /><br />Was the Prodigal Son's decision a good one? Not in the least. Did he learn from it? Yes. Was it probably necessary to his eventual happiness and satisfaction? Most likely. Was he a better man for having gone through something dumb and coming back home to fix it? Absolutely.<br /><br />In short, I don't think it's the end of the world to be the Prodigal Son once in a while. Just learn from your dumbassery.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-31013049949697179402011-11-30T12:50:00.002-05:002011-11-30T13:12:48.975-05:00Assume Positive IntentNo one likes to do this anymore, and I think that's a big part of what's wrong with daily life in America.<br /><br />"Assume positive intent" means that you assume that others aren't deliberately trying to hurt, impair, or otherwise screw up you or your efforts when they do so. Their motivations are not evil, vengeful, whatnot. They're just people, doing things by accident. Assume that people do what they do because they don't know any better, or because of other circumstances, not because they hate you or they don't care about your welfare.<br /><br />By this mentality, the average Joe on the street doesn't care one way or the other about you. He doesn't have any ill will towards you, certainly. If he happens to bump into you and knock over your books, he did it because he tripped, or he got distracted, or he couldn't stop in time, or whatever. If you don't assume positive intent, you might think he did it because he thought it would be funny, or because he doesn't give a crap that he knocked your books into a puddle, or because he was thoughtless and couldn't be bothered to move out of your way.<br /><br />This is even more obvious when you watch drivers in Boston. They automatically assume that other drivers are malicious. They honk a lot, which is the driver's version of yelling at you, as if you intended to cut them off and their being a dick back at you is going to even the score. They don't bother to think that maybe the driver has a sick kid who needs to go to the doctor and is being driven there quickly (and thus the driver is vaguely distracted), or that the other driver may have been urged forward by other people honking behind him, or anything but "that guy is an asshole." Pedestrians do it when drivers cut them off at intersections; they'll flip off people and otherwise get in their way. I knew a guy who stood in front of a car just to piss the driver off, because he tried to move through a walkway when there was a gap in the pedestrian traffic.<br /><br />This is a dick move on no one's part but yours. Assume that the driver, or the pedestrian, or whatever, does not intend to ruin your existence. Very few people go around thinking, "Huh, today I think I'll scare the hell out of some cyclists by opening my car door into the bike lane." At worst, people are oblivious. They really aren't malicious. So assume positive intent, and <span style="font-style: italic;">forgive the guy.</span><br /><br />Positive intent is all about forgiveness. If you assume that others have a reason for their screwups, you're way more likely to forgive them and get over it. You hold a grudge when you think it's their personal nature to do bad crap to you, because then you have the excuse that they're a bad person and it's okay to be angry at them.<br /><br />I see this on a larger scale in politics. Liberals think that the Religious Right are a bunch of woman-hating bastards for not supporting abortion. If they assumed positive intent, they'd see their guesses change from "they don't care about women" and "they're okay with killing innocent people" to "they have a very strong, fear-driven set of morals" and "they are genuinely worried about others' eternal fates" and all that. You can still not agree with them, but I'm fairly certain you'll treat them differently in conversation if you think about how their motivation isn't to just screw people over for the hell of it.<br /><br />Have you ever seen someone get pissed because someone else is being ignorant? And then the angry person walks away and does nothing about it? This is a huge issue. It's like they consider ignorance to be an innate, unchangeable trait, or that they assume that the person is being ignorant just because they want to piss you off.<br /><br />Let's take, oh, random issue...sex ed. Evangelicals have an absolute crap record for sex ed. They vote for abstinence-only education, and they have a notoriously hard time talking about the birds and the bees. What do people think about this?<br /><br />- They want to control people's lives.<br />- They want to confine women to traditional gender roles.<br />- They want to use pregnancy and disease as punishments for sex.<br /><br />These are assuming that the Religious Right is a bunch of people-hating bastards. All of these are strictly supervillain-esque evil schemes. "I know! I want people to get horribly sick for their entire lives! That'll show them! Nah-nah-nah nah nah nah!"<br /><br />These people exist. 99.9% of human beings are not these people.<br /><br />What's the real problem here? Well, they see someone promoting values that they believe are unethical. So their real motivations are this:<br />- They want to <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>teach people their values, because they believe those values are what is moral and good.<br />- They want to convince people to not do things that contradict these values.<br />- They want people to understand the consequences of their actions.<br /><br />Suddenly, they don't seem like goatee-twisting villains anymore, because everyone wants to do these things. Any human likes it when they see others abiding by what they perceive to be good morals. They will generally try to steer others away from what they see as bad decisions or actions, and usually that involves the levying of consequences in whatever form they arise, or letting (physics, biology, etc.) levy its own.<br /><br />The problem is how they're doing these things. The villain schemes are symptoms, not problems. They not malevolence; they're ignorance. The Right needs a better way to get their message across.<br /><br />For example, say you want to teach your kid not to have sex before marriage. You know, this is a very valid decision to make. I'm sure no one would have any problem if 20-year-old Jimmy said that he chose, by himself, to not have sex before marriage. That's his life and his decision, and he made it himself. No one would mind.<br /><br />Clearly, someone out there wants Jimmy to make this decision. How do they induce this? Well, right now, they're doing it by means that create lots of pain, fear, and tension. They deprive him of information, say that he'll go to Hell if he does it, and otherwise mess with his head. Right now, this is the only way they know how to enforce their morals, because they go against some pretty serious human instincts.<br /><br />These are people who only know how to use the stick end of the carrot-and-stick strategy. When stick doesn't work, they use more stick. They don't actually <span style="font-style: italic;">know</span> any positive strategies to get people to live the "right" life.<br /><br />Instead of telling them their morals suck, we need to start educating them. How do you convince kids to make the right decisions on their own, rather than scaring them into it or forcing them to endure pain and suffering after the fact? It's really easy to punch someone. It's a lot harder to use words to stop them from doing the thing you want to punch them for. Peer pressure, punishment, social ostracizing, mind games, information withholding -- those are easy. They're the natural instincts of desperate people. They're like a kick in the balls -- it's a dirty trick in a fair fight, but it will win you the match, even though no one approves of it and you come out looking like the real bad guy of the two.<br /><br />We need to teach them how to play fair, but no one wants to do it, because they're too busy being self-righteous and assuming that the other side is evil by nature.<br /><br />Next time you get in a sparring match with some of these people, assume positive intent. Your values do not trump theirs. Work <span style="font-style: italic;">with</span> them, instead of <span style="font-style: italic;">against</span> them, and you'll get a lot farther.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-42158843574312776072011-11-29T11:55:00.004-05:002011-11-29T12:24:47.027-05:00Fight!Evangelicals are not chill people.<br /><br />They are not calm; they are not level-headed; they most certainly are not quiet. They won't sit and listen to your opinion with hands folded in their lap. They won't smile and nod genuinely when you say something they don't understand or don't agree with. They'd much rather lay the smack down than have a prim and proper discussion. They get their hands dirty.<br /><br />We have this thing with <span style="font-style: italic;">winning.</span> I swear, it's not me, it's everyone down there. And it's not that they want to go around and toot their own horns, it's that everything feels so darn <span style="font-style: italic;">serious</span> to them, that it really does feel like a legitimate fight.<br /><br />For many people, issues like abortion, gay marriage, whatnot are political issues. They're issues of the logistical treatment of other human beings. They're issues confined solely to this planet, at this time, right here, right now. Once we die, they cease to matter, because we cease to exist. Acceptance is always good. Rejection is always bad. This sort of thing. But for the southern Christian community, this is a matter of eternal life or death.<br /><br />It sounds stupid to most people. Most people don't think about it really hard. Think this way: eternity is a <span style="font-style: italic;">long, long time.</span> By definition, it <span style="font-style: italic;">never ends.</span><br /><br />Imagine <span style="font-style: italic;">never-ending pain.</span><br /><br />Take a moment to imagine the sheer <span style="font-style: italic;">reality</span> of that. Of what would happen if you were in dire pain <span style="font-style: italic;">forever. And ever.</span> And the entire time, you are vividly aware of what you were missing, that it was no one's fault but yours that you're stuck here <span style="font-style: italic;">forever.</span><br /><br />It's almost impossible to get your mind around. Suddenly <span style="font-style: italic;">everything</span> becomes <span style="font-style: italic;">really freaking important</span>, something worth fighting for, something worth getting hurt for. There is no such thing as compromise, because compromise is death. Compromise is pain. Compromise is eternal destruction.<br /><br />This is what these people are fighting about. It doesn't matter if it's real to you, or if you care. What matters is, is it real to <span style="font-style: italic;">them? </span>If I were confronted with the choice between "marrying a chick + eternal hellfire" and "forever celibate + eternal paradise," which one <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> matters in the end? Assuming that their beliefs are true (which is their point of view), which one is significant? Choosing the temporary sin and the eternal punishment feels a lot like choosing a huge ice cream sundae when you could have a nutritious meal a little later. It's instant gratification. It's foolish, even childish. On a large scale, it becomes a threat, because it becomes a bad influence on otherwise obedient people.<br /><br />These people spend decades of their lives trying to teach kids, essentially, to stay out of trouble. To learn delayed gratification so they can put off their sins and achieve a reward for doing so for 70+ years. To them, the rest of America looks like a bunch of toddlers crying for the ball that rolled into the middle of the busy street.<br /><br />Some of them have gotten bitter and standoffish, and this is where you get the egotistical, "un-empathetic" types. They'll tell you to go get your ball, who cares if you get hit by the car? You whine about it enough, don't you? Just go run out there into the traffic and see what happens, see if I was right. Now I can say, "I told you so." Because you never listened. I tried, I really did, but you didn't care. Alternatively, they figure out ways to lock you into the yard so that even if you were to try, it's <span style="font-style: italic;">impossible</span> for you to get the ball. They put up laws like electric fences, and if you touch them, you get shocked. You couldn't run into the street if you tried, and if you try, hopefully earthly punishments will be better than eternal damnation. These people are going for a sort of conditioning approach, where if every time you do something they don't like, you get punished, hopefully you'll stop doing stuff they don't like.<br /><br />Some people think it's oppressive. That's a completely moot point. I'm not even going to comment. The real point is, you're not going to stop it until you convince them to change their morals. <span style="font-style: italic;">Anything</span> is superior to eternal agony. Anything is a big word. Now realize that these people theoretically have permission to do <span style="font-style: italic;">anything</span> to keep you eternally safe.<br /><br />Scary, isn't it?<br /><br />When it comes to social politics and morality, these people want to win far, far more than you. Even if your hatred knows no bounds, they <span style="font-style: italic;">still </span>want to win more than you. They have the sheer energy, stubbornness, and drive to squash you, even if it takes a hundred years to do it. Stop fighting a battle you're doomed to lose, and start figuring out how to reconcile their beliefs with yours, and how to convince them of that. It's the only way. You can't say, "Just tolerate the fact that I don't believe." To them, this is as real as physics is, as real as the sky being blue or the water being wet, and you're all damn fools for not believing, so why should they support a blatant lie?<br /><br />Until then, they have far more on the line, than you do. After all, you can only hurt for about 75 years. That' s trivial compared to Forever.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-68792409289062383602011-11-28T13:20:00.004-05:002011-11-28T14:23:50.355-05:00What Do You Deserve?What do we deserve, as human beings? Do we deserve food, water, and shelter? Friendship? Sexual contact? Happiness? Love? Nothing at all?<br /><br />It's a surprisingly hard question for Christians sometimes. There are two hugely conflicting messages, each with their own pitfalls, that are fighting over the Christian population right now. In this case, I'm referring to the word "deserve" in a sort of "should" sense, as in, "by deserving this thing, it means that you have every right to have it, and you have been dealt bad cards by not having it." (The other use would be, "If you have this, you were meant to have it." This is a different sense of the word that I'm not using right now.)<br /><br />Point of view 1: you deserve nothing.<br /><br />This is a popular point of view among evangelicals, the idea that you deserve nothing in life. You are backstabbing scum; you can't manage to pull it together enough to obey God; that's okay, though, because God has extended a hand and rescued you even though you are essentially incapable of rescuing yourself, ever. If bad things happen to you, this is theoretically the way it should be; any crumbs of goodness should be considered a privilege, not a right. Your life is supposed to be difficult and lowly up until death, wherein you finally get all the things you ever really needed in the afterlife. You don't deserve friends; you should be glad and thankful that you have them. You don't deserve love; thank God you do have it. All of humanity is a miserable excuse for a sentient race; we should be glad we weren't incinerated. Yep.<br /><br />Advantages -- you certainly have a humble view of yourself, and in the end you don't run into entitlement issues and feelings that you deserve all the things in the world without working for them. You weather bad events because you expect them, and because you have already come to terms with them being inevitable and inescapable.<br /><br />Disadvantages -- you become complacent with feeling crappy and not having your needs met, because you don't deserve that, anyway. You start feeling like that is an okay situation.<br /><br /><br /><br />Point of view 2: you deserve everything good. Just for being a sample of <span style="font-style: italic;">Homo sapiens</span>, you deserve the entire Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, right up to all the self-fulfillment stuff. You are entitled to all your basic needs -- you shouldn't have to scrape to acquire them. If things in your life aren't meeting your needs, dump them and get something or someone else. Your life is supposed to be joyful and smooth, tempered by a few helpful difficulties that eventually fall off in the end to a sort of wise nirvana. You have friends because you deserve it, because all people deserve friends. You're beautiful in your own way, and that's just great. You have love not because you are lucky, but because you deserve it.<br /><br />Advantages -- You feel good most of the time, and you have a less stressful life on average because you go after the things that make you feel joyful. You are ambitious in that you run towards a better situation at all times.<br /><br />Disadvantages -- When things go wrong, you get pissy that your rights and entitled things are being held back. You think that if something is bad in your life, it's the end of the world, and you jump at the chance to get rid of any kind of discomfort. You expect to be handed good things.<br /><br /><br />POV 1 is generally seen in the evangelical community and is a holdover from the days of corporal punishment and "well that sucks that you're offended, now get out of my face." POV2 is a more liberal point of view, backed by modern feel-good politics and the Self-Esteem Movement (i.e. the parenting style of the Millennials' families.) POV 1 is the hardass drill sergent to POV 2's fluffy guru type. They're extremes, and it seems most people believe a combination of the two (i.e. "bad people don't deserve good things, but everyone else does, so you can tell who is bad/lazy/whatever by their bad lives," is just one example.)<br /><br />Still, it's a fight that rages on -- do you "claim what you deserve," or do you "eat the crumbs from the children's table"? Are you being a jerk by believing POV 1, or are you being too compromising and wishy-washy by believing POV 2? In the end, the battle is over one basic question: what do you deserve?Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-87621239775388583962011-11-22T11:54:00.002-05:002011-11-22T12:23:58.575-05:00Trust Me, I'm a ChristianThe South has this interesting phenomenon that a couple of my friends have brought up lately, so let's talk about it here.<br /><br />Down South, if you're driving around the local town, chances are you will see at least one business with a sign on it referencing something about Christianity. It may be a simple cross; it may have "Jesus is Lord" on it; it may be the Ten Commandments or John 3:16 or some other well-known piece of text. The business can be completely secular, like a fast food joint or a furniture store, and it still has a good chance of doing this. Sometimes there are even symbols on the local water tower, essentially "claiming" the city for a certain faith. At least one of my friends has said that this intimidates her away from said business, because it says to her that they are overbearing, un-accepting, or at the very least are open enough to make her uncomfortable. The merits or drawbacks of openness aside (that's another post with a lot more fire to it), I figured I'd say a few words on why this happens.<br /><br />First off, it's not an effort to chase away non-Christians. As much as some Christians are squicked out by anyone who isn't of their faith, no one wants to ruin good business. Everyone knows, whether or not they viscerally believe it, that bashing someone over the head with your opinion/faith/anything else is going to just make them go "ow" and rub their head, not believe what you want them to believe. Sure, in some places no one will want the atheist next door to come to their Christmas party, but everyone will want him to buy their product no matter what his beliefs. It doesn't matter how country or traditional or what have you that you are; business is business, and profit is profit.<br /><br />People do this to <span style="font-style: italic;">draw</span> business to them. In a town where most people are Christian, even if just to shut their neighbors up, people see these really overt signs as a big neon sign that says, "I'm like you! I abide by the morals you respect! You should trust me!"<br /><br />Think about it this way. How do you become popular with the other kids at school? You wear the trendy clothes, say the right slang, and endorse their values. If they say that pink is totally out this year, it doesn't matter if you like pink, you're not going to wear it. In a more adult setting, people like other people who identify with them, and with whom they can identify. If you walk into a building full of smartly dressed types while wearing only fishnets and a bra, you're going to scare the hell out of everyone else, even if they <span style="font-style: italic;">should</span> respect you and treat you like anyone else. Even if there is no rule or occasion saying that you shouldn't wear only fishnets and a bra, people are going to see you as a social threat. You're foreign and therefore untrustworthy.<br /><br />It's all about human tribalism, and really, you can't blame us. We're evolutionarily programmed to think that Different People are scary. On the million-year-ago African plain, if some weird stranger comes up to you, they might very well be from a rival tribe trying to shank all of you for your food and women. You should distrust them until they prove themselves reasonable people; after all, life is hard and rough, and you can't afford to screw up here.<br /><br />Evolution is slow. Today, our monkeyspheres (go look it up, I'm waiting, okay, done) are huge. We encounter far more people than we can reasonable empathize with or know well, and thus our instincts drive us to look for signs that these people are in our tribe.<br /><br />In a mostly Christian town, having a Christian label on your business says that you don't have a strange and foreign set of morals. You value God in just the same way as your neighbor does, and you say your prayers at night just like they do. You are familiar, and you are confirmed to be friendly because you endorse the same code of ethics that everyone else does. You are an ally.<br /><br />Will people consciously decide to go to one business over another because of this? <span style="font-style: italic;">Yes.</span> If I had a nickel for every time someone has said around me something like, "Oh, they're good Christian people. See the sign on their door? You should go buy from them," I would have a pretty nice sum of money. This is very conscious; people will stand in front of two doors and explicitly state that they want the Christian one.<br /><br />People do this in conversation also. If you're down South, you'll notice how often, "I see him in church each week," is used as a statement of trust. If someone is Christian, he gets a lot of brownie points in random strangers' books, so when he finally walks into your office, you know he's a good guy. It's just how things work there. If someone goes crazy and shoots up his workplace, but he was the kind of guy with a cross around his neck, everyone will throw their hands up and say that there is <span style="font-style: italic;">no way at all</span> they could <span style="font-style: italic;">ever</span> have guessed he would do such a thing -- mostly because their assumptions about his morals or mental state were set in stone by his overt displays of religion. It's an instant badge of trust. Of course, that trust can be ruined, but it starts you out ahead of the game.<br /><br />This isn't just a religious phenomenon. Bumper stickers do a similar thing. They're an easy way to tell others that you are like them, or tell others you are against them. You're making yourself easy to read, condensing your tome of morals and opinions down to a kid's book, so that other people can process it with a glance and immediately trust you. Look at the "evolution fish" tag. It's an obvious mockery of the Jesus fish -- an alpha-shaped fish with two little legs -- and it's a big declaration to the evolution-accepting community that you are one of them, while declaring to the religious anti-evolution camp that you aren't just disagreeing with them -- you're hostile. You're willing to ridicule them in public and disparage their symbols. It sums up your opinion and mannerisms in one little symbol, so that others can already know whether or not you're worth their time. Flags outside your house are yet another way of doing this -- "I am the vocally patriotic type." You get the idea.<br /><br />Is this bad? No. No, it isn't. Yes, it scares away some people (usually those who had a bad experience with extreme Christians), but in the end, when in Rome, you have to appeal to the Romans. As a religious person, I wince at the idea of lying about your faith just to suck up to someone, but what I don't mind is a religious person advertising their already present beliefs to get others to feel closer to them. It will push away a few, but think about it this way -- business is business, and if showing off your beliefs will endear you to more people than it rejects, why not do it?<br /><br />Just as we can consciously decide to choose the door with the cross on it, so can we choose to ignore the signs. For people out there who <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> turned away by a John 3:16...you don't have to pay attention to it. By demanding that a business bend knee and remove their religious references, you're slighting the owner and saying he should keep his religion out of sight. You have no right to do this, and I'd be tempted to say you don't have a right to call offensive the act of someone else being open about his beliefs. (See the SMBC Comic about "It's offensive" vs. "I'm offended." You're offended, but it isn't offensive.) I would absolutely not mind walking into a store with someone else's religious symbol on it, just like I don't really care if someone is wearing the little Jewish hat or a head scarf or what have you*. It's all about who you are advertising to.<br /><br />Now, in Boston, for example, it's probably unwise to put up your sign, mostly because there are enough members of other faiths that you want a more generalized advertising campaign, and the number of people you turn away by such an overt description starts getting large. But in Small Town, The South, this is basically putting a huge halo on.<br /><br />There you go.<br /><br />*I apologize for not knowing the technical term for these pieces of clothing.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-51248171989148550972011-11-15T16:11:00.002-05:002011-11-15T16:25:14.598-05:00Humans Suck?There are a few dilemmas I've yet to work out, that I hear from Christian people. In today's short (but no less verbose) post, here they are.<br /><br />1. Desires are bad vs. Desires are fine<br /><br />No one ever really says that desires are <span style="font-style: italic;">good</span>; the real debate is whether your personal wants are in fact okay to have. You get the sorts of people who seem to think of humans as completely dependent types, not just in the way that we depend on God for help, luck, guidance, what have you, but in that we can't do absolutely anything at all without an edict from God as to what we should do and how we should do it. Anything we want as a human, they say, is inherently bad, because humans are inherently bad. If you want to date that person, you should wait on a response from God. If you want to get that job, you should wait on a response. If no divine answer comes, it must be born of your own evil desires, and you shouldn't do it. Things that fall into your lap are okay, because they were clearly sent from God. Stuff your Christian authorities tell you are also okay, because God talks to them. But you, within yourself, are completely incapable of making a decision.<br /><br />This is a big circular problem. Human nature, here, would say that this is crap, because we're independent thinkers and can at least try to solve problems without being hand-held every step of the way. The logical response to that, given the above paragraph, is that of <span style="font-style: italic;">course</span> you think you can do it yourself, and that thought within itself is wrong and evil, because it came from your innate desire to rebel and do whatever you want to do. Ergo you can't even question the "human desire is bad" premise without invalidating your own argument against it. It's like, "Are you an alien in disguise?" "No, of course not." "That's exactly what an <span style="font-style: italic;">alien</span> would say!" You can't win.<br /><br />2. Bad thoughts are just as evil and sinful as bad deeds vs. Bad thoughts happen, get over it<br /><br />Do you ever think about punching that guy who cuts you off in traffic, or leers at you when you're lounging on the beach? Apparently this means you're a terrible person. I'm quite a victim of this also; I believe that motivations are half of what makes you a good or bad person, not just your actions. You can save all the puppies you want, but if you're doing it for bad reasons, you're still a bad person. This is backed up by the single verse that comes to mind about this: "If you look at a woman, and lust after her, you have committed adultery with her in your heart."<br /><br />This verse pretty much says that any thought you think, is the same as doing it. Ever thought of bashing someone's face in? You just did it. Ever wanted to trip the obnoxious kid at school? You did.<br /><br />Ever thought about having sex with someone who wasn't your partner? You did.<br /><br />Ever thought about killing someone?<br /><br />You did.<br /><br />Isn't that terrifying? You can't even be safe in your own head anymore. Does this mean that the average person has committed a huge battery of very heinous sins without even leaving his armchair? Does this mean that most people are horribly adulterous, violent, even murderous monsters? That most people have stolen a number of things, alienated their families, kicked their neighbor's cat and more?<br /><br />Does this mean we're really all terrible people, because we don't have the mental strength of Buddhist monks? Because we don't keep control of everything we think at all times?<br /><br />This gets scarier: what <span style="font-style: italic;">about</span> appreciating the looks of others? What if you're dating/married/whatever, and you see a hot woman, and you're like, Wow, she's really hot. Is this a problem? Doesn't everyone do this? Does this mean we're all just jerks?<br /><br />It's a little unnerving. I like having the peace of mind that I can do whatever I want in my own head, and as long as it doesn't come out, it's fine. I can do all the daydreaming about being a superhero and punching out all the bad guys or whatever have you, and it's just a dream.<br /><br />Or is it?Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-27144768691565412612011-11-10T11:38:00.002-05:002011-12-25T22:39:57.446-05:00Off Topic: World War IISo, I've been reading a lot of Maus these days. (Wikipedia it -- in summary, it's an account of an Auschwitz survivor through the artwork of his son.) Which got me thinking about World War II and if I had any connections to it at all. Turns out I do, and I only recently learned about them.<br />
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Now, my family isn't Jewish, or any other ethnicity/group that the Nazis were rounding up. We're as white and Western European as you get. My biological mom, I'm not particularly connected to, and while I know her family was at least partly Russian, I don't really have any people I can point to there. The people who raised me, have had heritages in America since the Civil War at least. Basically, we were spared any traces of the Holocaust in any way. Thankfully.<br />
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Still, after my grandmother died, I found something cool in her house. Turns out my grandpa didn't entirely suck, and he went through some crazy stuff.<br />
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Some backstory: my grandfather, on my mom's side, was kind of a deadbeat dad. He was an alcoholic and didn't really bring in much money for the family. This was particularly bad for a poor family in an agricultural zone, where the man of the house was expected to go work his ass off and bring home the bacon scraps. Instead, it was my grandmother, raising three kids and a husband by herself, working at the sewing assembly line while my mom, her eldest daughter, worked at the local five-and-dime for pocket change. They were nowhere near what you could call well off. Once her kids grew up and got married, Grandmother divorced her husband and lived happily ever after by herself, never having the desire to remarry and enjoying her life as a single woman. She moved to another town and never looked back.<br />
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I saw very little of Grandpa Roscoe. He died a couple years after I was born, so all I really remember is an old guy in a hat, in a couple of fuzzy memories from Christmas gatherings. I never got to talk to him past little kid babble. I especially didn't get to ask him any real questions. I also didn't find out until 20-ish years later, about some other things he did in his lifetime.<br />
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Turns out that before he was an irresponsible drunk, my grandfather landed on the beaches at Normandy.<br />
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No joke. I found a box in my grandmother's house that contained his medals, papers, an American flag, and records of his capture and release, as well as an account that he had indeed fought on D-Day, in the initial landing. She had told me that he fought in World War II, but I didn't know that he was down on the ground when the boats were coming in, when Allied soldiers were drowning in the waves before even getting to fire a shot, and a few of the boats sank before making landfall, and there were bodies all over the sand and the water ran red with blood and the paratroopers missed their landing point and all kinds of other hell happened before we finally won.<br />
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This drunk grandfather of mine, the guy who essentially abandoned his kids and wife for the bottle, what did he think when he was throwing himself off the boat and landing on the stained sand? How many men beside him died? How many enemies did he kill? He was clearly wounded in some way -- he has the Purple Heart to show for it. How bad was it? Did he have a field medic patch him up while agony blazed around him? Did he grin and bear it and help break the German defenses? How far did he get before he was captured? Did he simply pass out with the other bodies, and have Germans carry him away later?<br />
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Right. After the battle of Normandy, a number of American soldiers were captured and set off to stalags, which were German POW camps for military captives. Roscoe went to Stalag XIII-C (you can even Wikipedia it, I'm so thrilled!), near Hammelburg, where he was held until the end of the war. If you look at the timeline, after the Normandy troops were carted in, later there was an exodus from Stalag XIII-D to C, where a number of prisoners trudged <span style="font-style: italic;">500 miles</span> to get to Stalag XIII-C and arrived there in terrible condition.<br />
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On April 6, 1945, Stalag XIII-C was liberated by American troops, and Grandpa Roscoe got to go home.<br />
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My mother was born after the war. How easy would it have been, for me to simply not exist? For some German bullet to cut down my grandpa on the shore? I wonder what sheer luck he had, such that he made it to safety. And also such luck that he was sent to a POW camp that didn't shut down and force him to death-march through the hellish winter like the folks in XIII-D.<br />
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I hesitate to call him any kind of hero, since he was only one of the scads of people who ended up on the beach that day, and he was captured right off the battlefield there and didn't go any farther, and since he came home and was a sorry excuse for a father to his kids, but in the end he surely did something worthwhile in his life, that I can say. I wish he were still alive, so I could ask him questions about what he experienced on the beach, in the POW camp, all that. But it's gone and buried, and from what I can tell he kept a lot of the stories to himself, because my grandmother didn't know very much about his actions there, only that he went to Germany, fought, and was captured.<br />
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Grandpa Roscoe, you may have been drunk off your ass for a lot of your life, and you sure sucked as a family man, but you did some really awesome things.<br />
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Edit: I found out from my family how he got his two Purple Hearts. One was due to starvation during his imprisonment; he lost 60 pounds on a frame that was already not particularly chubby. At some other point in time, he was shot in the shoulder.Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-19856072667638431472011-11-08T13:39:00.003-05:002011-11-14T10:25:42.098-05:00Energy!Say what you will about Southern churches, but there is one thing they do tremendously well: energy. Huge quantities of energy. If you could somehow translate the energy of a Pentecostal church service into electricity, you could probably power a small city for at least a few minutes. Churches up here in the Northeast are, frankly, pretty darn boring from what I can tell, as are a number of very ritualistic, liturgical denominations. I love me some Lutheran services, but honestly, it feels like everyone there needed to get a little more sleep and about ten pounds of caffeine more than they've had that morning. Everything is slow and quiet. People are afraid to sing loud and proud.<br /><br />Not so down South. I don't care if the service only gathered five people that day -- those five people will be jumping up and down, flailing their hands, and singing as loud as they possibly can until their voices run out. They will be a five-man crowd. Even the pastor will be in on it, jumping around with microphone in hand and waving his hands in the air. (I think it's some kind of unspoken mandate that Southern pastors have to be good singers? Okay, not really, but lots of them are at least competent and lead songs.)<br /><br />What is with this formalized, squashed church service idea we have up here? Music is a powerful tool, and not just for slow meditation. I believe that God created rock music for a reason, and you can make awesome church songs with just about any genre. I'm pretty sure there's even Christian hip-hop and metal and stuff. Musical styles aside, you owe it to yourself to see the sheer momentum involved in a Southern church service.<br /><br />We're enthusiastic, shameless people down there. We don't care if someone sees us shaking our booty to the music, or doing a very sports-stadium kind of arm-waving, or singing louder than anyone else. I was taught as a kid to project -- to really ball up your volume in your diaphragm and then use your abs to throw it out there like the song leader is a drill sergeant and he just told you to drop and do a zillion situps. We love the sense of being swept away, of giving up life's troubles and being thrilled to bits for an hour or two. We want to show how enthusiastic we are for God and all the awesome therein. So we're not going to sit on our little kneelers, no, we're going to get up and dance!<br /><br />Apparently the concept of a "praise band" is a distinctly conservative thing. It's usually the Pentecostals and other fundamentalist and/or evangelical types that really do the loud church singing thing. "Shout to the Lord" is meant to be sung with the amps to 11, if you ask me, none of this wussy piano and quiet singing business. I was happy when we did Christmas carols at my church last year, because then I got to actually <span style="font-style: italic;">project.</span><br /><br />I'm not sure what this entails. Does this mean that Southerners are more open and brash, more in-your-face? Does it mean they're more relaxed, or more enthusiastic about their faith? After all, these are the people who are okay with getting in your face about their beliefs; maybe that is yet another trait of people who are open and used to being received warmly for their religion. In contrast, I've experienced a lot of cold shoulder in the Northeast, a lot of "well, that's what you think, good for you, little kid," a lot of looking down the nose at the specimen of the "privileged majority." Down South, Christianity is a point of pride, and people will assume you're a trustworthy person until proved otherwise, so long as they've seen you in church each week. They respect that. Up here, people are expected to keep that kind of thing under wraps. God forbid you insult someone by suggesting that you have<span style="font-style: italic;"> beliefs.</span><br /><br />We should take a lesson from the South. Be <span style="font-style: italic;">proud</span> of what you believe. Stand behind it. Fight like a beast for it. Don't be afraid to sing it loud, throw your hands in the air, dance like an idiot, whatever gets your blood going. If anyone else has a problem, they can shove off. The Christian has the same right to celebrate and enjoy their faith as anyone else, so make sure to claim your space and your voice. Don't be a shrinking violet, trying to shrivel up and disappear. Challenge assumptions, and don't let other people put you in a box so they don't have to look at you.<br /><br />Sing!Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7884449912413857611.post-12742769850490678342011-10-05T16:12:00.004-04:002011-10-05T16:26:47.068-04:00Feminism Part 1: Paul's Missed QuoteHello there, all! Today, we're going to talk about the F-word.<br /><br />No, it's not "fat." Or "fart," as my family finds hilarious even to this day.<br /><br />It's "feminism." Namely, one of the passages that lots of people get hung up on, which is 1 Corinthians 34-35. For my explanation and discussion, I have extended it a few verses.<br /><br /><br /><br /><sup class="versenum" id="en-KJ21-28684">34</sup> Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.<p><sup class="versenum" id="en-KJ21-28685">35</sup> And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.<br /><sup class="versenum" id="en-KJ21-28686">36</sup> What? Did the Word of God come out from you? Or did it come unto you only?<br /><sup class="versenum" id="en-KJ21-28687">37 </sup>If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.<br /><sup class="versenum" id="en-KJ21-28688">38</sup>But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant.<br /><sup class="versenum" id="en-KJ21-28689">39</sup>Therefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak in tongues.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>This is the King James Translation, which has the most blatant Verse 36. If you look at the first two verses in the passage, it seems obvious that Paul is trying to tell the church to not allow women to speak up in church or to ask questions when the guys are talking. Don't get in the way, ladies, wait until you get home so your husbands can tell you what you want to know.</p><p>But then look at how Paul follows it up. Imagine, if you will, a voice of outrage and sarcasm. "What? Did the word of God come out from you? Or did it come to you only?"</p><p>This entire book is a letter from Paul to the Corinthians, and we don't get to see what he is replying to. But in the most dated Greek transcripts we have, the letter contains a funny little mark near Verses 34-35, a symbol that serves as primitive punctuation and means that the section is being quoted from another source. It's the very basic form of what we now know as these: " " .</p><p>Paul is quoting someone else, about the expected behavior of women in the Church. If he isn't, then what exactly is Verse 36 responding to? It makes no sense to have that kind of juxtaposition, and especially those two anti-female verses, in a paragraph about encouraging people to speak in tongues and prophesy. They stick out, a massive blot of forbidding among a large chunk of encouraging. So what Paul is actually saying here, is that traditional laws in the Church -- not made by God, but put there by society and culture -- have disallowed women from speaking during services. But Paul says, essentially, "Wait, what? Do you somehow think <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> made up God's Word, that you're mandating this? Do you think that you and only you are privy to it? That you're cutting out half of Christ's followers?"</p><p>In doing so, he's vouching for women, saying to let them talk, and let them prophesy, and let them speak in tongues right alongside the guys.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, I'm usually one to question apologetics, to make sure the people are coming from a reasonable place and not just pulling stuff out of the air. What really got me here was the mention of that quotation mark of sorts, the little engraving that has been seen to mean that the text is from a different source and should be considered a recitation of something said elsewhere. You can't deny a piece of the text, and presumably it fell by the wayside at some point during translation and the manuscript that survived natural selection was the one that didn't have it, or else the translators didn't understand what it meant. I can't really say what was going through their heads.</p><p><br /></p><p>Check this out, for more information: http://christianfeminism.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/silent-church-women-part-3/<br /></p>Alcorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06116763118407298881noreply@blogger.com0