God + Bad Things = Huh?

Musings from the west coast (I'm with Adrien visiting our friend Kyle in Hollywood):

I have been thinking a lot recently about two specific questions that we have been looking at in our youth group. They are two questions all of us will continue to ask at various points throughout the rest of their lives:

"Why does God let bad stuff happen?"
&
"Do the things we do actually matter?"

These are two of the central questions of faith, and dramatically effect the way in which we understand God, and our relationship with him.

The prime mover in both of those questions is that God is in control.

We may not always understand it, but when we look back, we can see God moving even in the midst of tragedy. God's will is always what happens. God's desire is for there to be no suffering and for the world to be perfect (what will ultimately be achieved).

The discrepancy between the two is free will combined with our broken human nature. God's love for us gives us "free will," and sin uses that freedom in ways that cause suffering. While God doesn't desire us to suffer, it is still within God's will (what he allows to happen).

Essentially, you can't have broken humans executing their own free will and not have it lead to suffering. Likewise, you cannot really have love without some sense of free will.

It's similar to parents teaching kids to ride a bike: their desire is that the child learn to ride the bike and to not get hurt. Their will, however, is what they allow to happen, and we understand that in order to ride a bike, everyone has to fall. While that is not the parents' desire, it is still their will, in order to achieve the end result. Yes, the parent could simply push the child around all the time, ensuring that they are never hurt, but that wouldn't involve any action from the child, and ultimately, the child would never grow from that.

God is in control.
All the time.
Even when it seems like he's the most out of control.
Look at the Passion.
The greatest suffering and chaos of all time, especially to those who experienced it. Followers of Jesus watch him die like a criminal, and they have no idea that he is coming back. They are scared, lost, and disillusioned. They fear for their lives. Their whole understanding of the world has failed them. Or so they thought.
As we can see it now, the Passion was one of the times that God is most active in all of history.
God was in complete control, doing exactly what needed to be done to save us.
Yet to the disciples and followers of Jesus, they felt about as alone as ever.

God was in control then.

God is in control now.

Glasses.

(The Poindexters, 1997-2009)

Glasses are weird. I have had them since I was in seventh grade, and ever since then, it's odd for me to think that there are people who wake up in the morning and see everything perfectly. I feel like glasses (or contacts) are something that everyone should need, that eyes aren't designed to be perfect. Clearly that's not true, but nearly all of my closest friends and relatives wear corrective lenses in some way.

Glasses are also weird in how much they represent who you are, and how much we immediately discern about someone's personality and character based on the frames that they have.

I recently had to retire my trusted pair of glasses that I have had for the last 12 years. I was quite a fan of these glasses. They saw me through the good times and the bad, and helped me to see a lot of things differently. I had an older thinner pair of wire-rims that I also wore intermittently as well, but it was the black rims, which I shall refer to as "the Poindexter" that truly felt like my glasses. Once, when I was having the lenses replaced on them, the glasses technician who actually said, "Don't ever get rid of those glasses!" I'm not sure they are that special, but I really liked them.

A few years back, two things happened: the wire-rims snapped in half, and Adrien hit me in the side of the head with a ball during a youth group game, cracking the arm of the Poindexter glasses. It was then that I knew that I would soon need to find some new glasses.

I was able to get the wire-rims hastily "repaired" to give them another year or so of life, but the clock had started. The Poindexters were still alright as well, definitely wearable, but the crack was enough that it was clear I would soon have to retire them or watch them die.

I have spent the past year or so looking for something as close to the Poindexters as I could find, but to no avail. During that time, the wire-rims cracked again (vaya con Dios, wire-rims), and each time I put on the Poindexters, I was afraid that it would be the last.

Then, in January, I stumbled on a site that seemed like a scam (in fact, I'm still rather surprised that it isn't). From this site, I purchased three pairs of glasses, for $35.

Not three frames for $35. Three pairs of glasses (perscription lenses & frames) for $35.
Not three pairs of glasses for $35 each. Three pairs for $35 TOTAL (shipping included).

I chose the opportunity to therefore try some new looks, and came up with some winners:

The Invisaline Glasses.
These are invisible feather weight frames that are so light to the touch that you can barely feel them. They do however require you to wear contact lenses and are not actually real.
Cost: $free

The "Almost Poindexters"
This was the closest that I could find. They are a bit rounder than I was looking for, but the price was right.
Cost: $8


The Coffee Shop
What better way to say "I might be pretentious and kind of a jerk" than with glasses like these. When wearing these, I begin to think that Smart Cars are just that, and that perhaps I haven't seen enough movies by Ingmar Bergman, and that I need to read more of the writings of David Eggers.
Cost $8

The Dungeon Masters
These frames have a million hit points and maximum charisma. With these babies I can program in C++ and see nuances in the movie Tron that I never quite grasped before. Clearly frames designed for those who have nothing to prove to anyone.
Cost: $10

I'm not sure that these three frames fill the hole in my heart left by the Poindexters, but the cheapness makes me feel like a genius.

I also would like to note that I have no regrets about dropping the extra $2 for The Dungeon Masters. They are great to wear when you want to tell people, "I have all the friends that I need, thank you very much," but don't want to sound like a jerk about it. They also provide you with added authority when called upon to settle matters of random trivia disputes (especially in the realm of comic books, sci-fi, and sci-fa).

Cat Horror.

I got this from my friend Lori's blog, but it is perhaps one of the more hilarious and terrifying things that I have seen online in a while, resulting in literal laughs out loud.

Check it.

The Crowd

Today, I led a Bible study on Mark 15:1-15. The passage tells of Jesus going before Pilate, having been condemned by the chief priests in a secret meeting the night before, and now put before Pilate as an enemy of the state, a treasonous threat to Caesar's authority.

The passage deals with Pilate's reluctance to convict Jesus, and with his attempts to allow Jesus to go free. He appeals to the crowd, having the usual custom of releasing a prisoner in honor of the Passover feast, encouraging them to let him release Jesus to them. The crowd resists, instead asking for Barabbas, the murderer who had just been involved in an insurrection against Rome.

This whole scene made me think of a number of things (the amazement that Pilate has toward Jesus' demeanor, the envy that the chief priest show toward Jesus), but the one that stuck out the most was the crowd's flip flop. Just a few days earlier, they were praising Jesus, and honoring his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, placing their outer garments on the road his donkey was walking on, so that even the donkey would not be made dirty. Yet only a few days later, they are calling for his death.

We often shake our heads at the crowd there, lamenting their fickle hearts, seeing them as mindless ogres of history, that killed Christ. In reality, though, I don't think they are all that different than us.

Jesus was a hot religious figure. He blazed onto the scene and attracted big number quickly. People wanted to be part of this movement. They were attracted to the bigness of it, if not the truth of it. However, when Jesus is presented before them by Pilate, this is not the same conquering hero that they had welcomed into Jerusalem a few days earlier. This man was instead a man who was dirty and ragged. He had been up all night being cursed and beaten. He was bound like a criminal, and was now on a public trial before them all, again, not as a hero, but as a criminal. In this context, it becomes a bit easier to see the crowd's anger. They feel like they have been fooled by this guy. He came in and preached all of these glorious things, but here he was not presented as a criminal.

Think of how much we revel in the times that our celebrities fall. When you see a mugshot of someone, we see them as broken liars who deserve punishment, not as the heroes that we had once hailed them as. Even more so when that figure is a religious leader. We as a culture seem to love to see religious leaders fall. Many times, even the accusation of wrong doing is enough for us to condemn them.

Why is that?

I wish it was harder to relate to this crowd than it actually is. I wish that crowds weren't so easy to follow, even when we know that they are wrong...

Happy Saint Patrick's Day
(fanks to Val for pointing out this pic)

Fat.

Two things have happened that have reminded me that I need to lose weight:

I was finishing a bag of chips, and neared the end of the bag, and made the choice to then dump the remaining crumbs into my mouth. No matter how many chips you have just eaten, whether it is the whole bag or just two or three, there is perhaps no more slovenly way that you can finish it than literally pouring food into your face. As I have said before, I always feel a need to reconsider where I am in my life whenever I find myself dumping chip bits into my food hole.

Right after that, my cat jumped up on my lap and started happily kneading on my belly, as if to emphasize my doughy physique.

Thanks, cat. I get it. I need to lose some of the weight.

T Rex Domske

Each week, our youth group gathers on Wednesday evening to go out and get dinner, and then comes back for a Bible study.

This week, I started out the Bible study with some interesting findings from the doctor last week, and illustrating the conclusions that one must therefore draw as a result.

Here are the slides from my presentation. Perhaps you will reach the same conclusion as me.

This is a T Rex.

A T Rex is noted for having a very large head, yet tiny little arms.

This is a picture of something that is growing in Adrien's right now.

As you can see, this being also has quite a large head, yet tiny little arms.

The logical conclusion, therefore, is that Adrien is pregnant with a T Rex.
Given that understanding, here is are a few artistic conceptions of how such a T Rex might one day soon appear given a full gestation period.

The end.

The aforementioned video from the previous post.