[+/-] Undisciplined

Two things:
1) December's up on my journal.
2) I've changed my email address. psalm13@hotmail.com got a buttload of junk mail, so I've switched to gmail. (Note that it's 13thpsalm this time, not psalm13, because some other punk has psalm13@gmail.)
And now for the main event:

"If you're not reading your Bible daily, you're not giving yourself much of a chance as a Christian"

That's an approximate quote from the speaker at the camp I attended last weekend. Statements like this always bother me. I don't read my Bible daily. I used to - I dutifully read 2 chapters a day, every day upon awaking, for maybe a year and a half once. Never really got anything out of it. Well, I'm sure I gained knowledge about what the Bible says, but I never enjoyed it and I never noticed any effect it had on my life. It was just something I made myself do because I was supposed to. It was pure religion.

These days I read my Bible in little spurts. I haul it out when I want to do a study of some doctrine or understand some difficult passage, but there are weeks when it never leaves my bedroom floor. When I do read it's far more often with an intellectual focus than out of some desire to "grow closer to God", whatever that means.

I have trouble thinking of good reasons to pray. Quick story: I once spent a day talking with a homeless guy in Vancouver. At the end of our talk I asked him if I could pray for him, and he said yes. I asked him what I should pray, and he said that it would rain money. ("Small denominations are ok - tens and twenties.") That wasn't what I was hoping for, but I told him I would pray that for him, and I have. Infrequently. Awkwardly. Briefly. But whenever I think of that guy I pray that God would make it rain money for him. If you ask me to pray for you I will, sporadically yet dutifully, but I have a suspicion that the encouragement brought by saying "I'll pray for you" does more practical good for a person than any amount of prayer.

I used to think that it was bad for me to stand in Church and sing worship songs if I wasn't thinking about the words. These days I often try not to think about the words I sing because I disagree with so many of them. I look at worship (meaning singing) as something I do for God to show my devotion to him. It's far more about the act of acknowledging God's existence and presence (or my belief therein) then about affirming any kind of doctrine in the songs. And it certainly has nothing to do with any emotions I might feel.

I've tried fasting maybe two or three times, and never for more than a couple days. The result of depriving myself from food is that I become really miserable and grouchy and all I can think about is food. Some people say fasting removes distractions and allows us to focus on prayer. Maybe for some of you, but not for me. For me there are few things more distracting than fasting. How am I supposed to focus on praying about stuff when all I can think about is food? Other people say depriving ourselves of food shows the ugliness of our true natures. Well ya, because my body needs food to survive. Try depriving me of oxygen and I'll become pretty miserable too. Would suffocation reveal my "true nature"? I honestly think that banging my head against the wall at regular intervals, cutting myself with knives like the prophets of Baal or any other method of self torture would accomplish just as much spiritual good as the "spiritual discipline" of fasting.

I have no idea what "listening to God" means. To me this is on par with Hindu ideas about reaching higher states of reality through meditation. I'm not going to go around telling other people they can't listen to God or transcend the physical world or whatever, but I have no idea how or even if I could achieve something like this myself.

My intuition and experience tells me that I'm naturally different from other people and I can't expect what works for others to work for me. I've found some things that do work for me and I should be happy with doing those things. Maybe it's just jealousy that makes me wish prayer worked for me the way it worked for Brother Lawrence or Jim Cymbala or that reading my Bible could become something that I'd cherish and that would bring me closer to God. But on the other hand maybe these things will work for me, and I just gave up too soon. Maybe if I could somehow force myself to pray more or if I just kept fasting long enough, then maybe there would be some kind of payoff. Ok, I don't actually believe that, but I do feel uneasy just shrugging off the tried-and-true methods of godly old preachers. I'm cautious of saying, "Ya, I'm not like you. I've got my own stuff that I do; yours doesn't work for me." I don't want to miss out on the obvious answers because I'm so busy being special, and I don't want to tell some guy three times my age that he doesn't know what he's talking about. What do I know anyway? Bah, I'm silly. A reed swayed by the wind.

[+/-] Happy Birthday Jacob

Hard to believe it's been a whole year since I started this blog. And at the same time it's hard to believe it's been just a year. One year, nigh 50 posts, and an unknown number of words. (Unknown because my profile's user stats froze at the beginning of November and has yet to unfreeze. Join me in a rousing chorus of boos for the people at Blogger, who have failed to fix my little stats-counter thing for going on seven months.)

It's been an interesting year. I just skimmed through a few of my old posts, and it feels like I wrote most of them yesterday. But I also feel so different now. Nothing has changed; everything has changed. I've always hoped that God would do something amazing to shake up my world and keep me from becoming what I've become. I've always hoped I could become a good conservative again and believe everything the Bible says and have a great story to tell about how I fell into the dark, slimy pit of cynicism-and-liberalism and God called me back. Actually my ultimate hope was always that God would open the heavens and reveal himself to me, and that I'd be able to become a good Charismatic and be emotional and passionate about everything and have a great story about how I called out to God from the dark, slimy pit of luke-warm intellectualism and He raised me up. (The band would play softly in the background as I gave my alter-call - eyes closed, one hand raised, cheeks streaked with tears - telling the thirsty and the broken about the abundant life available to them in Christ, and how all they have to do is pray right where they are to accept it.) But here I am, some kind of liberal intellectual, and I'm ok with that. (Not ok with the labels maybe, but ok with who I am. Labels are sucky, but you can't really communicate without them.)

I never thought I'd be happy again - not without being called back to Conservativism or into Carismaticism. I never knew people like me could be happy. And I certainly never imagined that becoming the way I am could take me from depression to contentment. I never thought this would be the testimony I'd have to tell.

One thing saddens me: where could I tell it? Not at any camp I know. Not at my church or in my youth group, or any of the places I've volunteered. And I don't want to make it sound like I've found The Way and everyone needs to start believing what I believe (may it never be!) but I'm ok with who I am. And those of you who have known me for a while will know how unusual it is for me to be at peace with what I believe.

Dear reader, smile for me today. Today is my birthday (ok fine, my blog's birthday), and I'm happy. Share in my happiness today, and tomorrow we can talk about theology and orthodoxy and inerrancy and whether I'm going to Hell. Love to all.

[+/-] Why Everything You Believe is Probably a Lie

Just for fun, here's little bit of philosophy for you:

I've decided that the physical world is probably an illusion. Like the matrix, maybe, except that if you were to somehow "wake up" you wouldn't still be in a physical world like this one. You probably do not have a body. The basic laws of physics and everything you've come to believe about the world is probably false. You are probably being deceived.

How do I come to this belief? I'll take you through three steps. First, let me explain how it is at least conceivable that the physical world does not exist. To do this, we must simply imagine a possible explanation for how this could be the case. There are several possibilities, but the simplest is that there is a greater being who is deceiving you. This being could have any number of motives for presenting you with the illusion of a physical world, some benevolent, some malevolent, some that have nothing to do with you. If we cannot prove that a being capable of deceiving us in this way could not possibly exist, we must allow that it is possible that the physical world is an illusion.

Second, let me claim that this scenario is more than just an obscure possibility. In fact, I would go so far as to say it's at least as likely that the physical world does not exist as that it does. Do you disagree? Can you explain why it is more likely than not that the physical world exists, or to put it another way, that a powerful deceiver does not exist? So far as I can tell, there is no compelling argument against the existence of the deceiver. Since most, if not all, of our knowledge is derived from our experiences in the physical world, I cannot imagine an argument for the physical world's existence that does not presuppose that it exists. (All such arguments would be circular reasoning.) If we can make no arguments either for or against the existence of the deceiver, we cannot attach a probability to it's existence. All we can say is that to the best of our knowledge, it is equally possible that the deceiver does or does not exist.

But if we can't develop an argument for the physical world existing, maybe we can develop an argument for it's non-existence. We could do this is we could find an inconsistency in our belief that the physical world does exist. Let me tell you about the mind-body problem. Most people believe that there is both a physical world and a non-physical world (I'll call it this the spiritual world). The spiritual world we know very little about. Some believe that it contains God or gods, angels, demons, ghosts, etc., while others believe that the spiritual world is limited to our minds. Our minds are distinct from our brains. Our brains are the physical stuff - neurons and whatnot - that control our bodies, and our minds are the conscious part of us - metaphorically "the ghost in the machine" - and contains our conscious minds, our spirits or souls (if you believe such things exist), and possibly what we call our hearts. It seems to us that mind and body (or spiritual and physical) are distinct substances. Our bodies exist in space, have mass, and are perceptible by various senses and instruments. Our minds are totally different - they are not perceptible by any physical means - and yet they seem to interact somehow to our brains. (For example, willing my fingers to move affects my body, and drinking alcohol affects my mind.) And this is what really stumps philosophers: how is it possible that two totally distinct substances (mind and body) causally interact? Many people have suggested solutions to this problem, for example that our brains somehow generate consciousness as a side effect of , or that we are entirely physical beings and the mind is an illusion, but all such theories are flawed or inadequate. However, the theory that the body is an illusion solves the mind body problem nicely. To put it another way, the belief that you have a body which is of different substance from your mind is flawed. Unless we can explain how the mind and body could interact, the weight of evidence is against the existence of the physical world. Interesting, eh?

Disclaimer: My philosophy text tells me that this view is called idealism, and that it has "few if any serious defenders" today. I don't see why it's not a good theory (except that it's a little counterintuitive) but I suppose the fact that all the smart people who think about such things disagree with me suggests that I'm likely wrong. (If you can explain to me why I'm wrong, please do.)

Oh, and I'm really not sure what the applications of this belief would be, if any. Just so we're clear, I'm not saying that if you put your "body" in front of a "bus" you won't be "killed", I'm just saying that your pain and death (along with anything you may experience afterwards) would also be illusory. But I don't know what you should or could do differently if you were to adopt the belief that the physical world probably doesn't exist. Well, maybe I do, but my thoughts aren't fully formulated, so I'll leave that part for another day.

November's up on my Journal.

[+/-] Consistency

"Look," said Naomi, "your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her."

But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Isn't that beautiful? One of my all-time favorite passages. Ruth = da bomb. Imagine being so loyal to someone that you would stay with them until death, living where they live, dying where they die, believing what they believe... oh wait. Do we admire that? Do we think God admires that? What if you met someone who said "I'm devoted to this person. I follow their religion for that reason alone, not because of (and if necessary, contrary to) any intellectual or spiritual conviction." Say you have a friend who's a Muslim or whatever. You're praying for her that God would show here the error of her ways. You've got all your scientific proof that your religion is better than hers. You've got a strategy to become her friend and be nice to her so she'll be interested in the beliefs you're selling. At the right time you broach the subject of faith and she says "It doesn't matter what you say. I am loyal to my mother in law/husband/family and I will believe what they believe." Would that warm your heart?

I often feel like Christians apply a double-standard when evaluating people's actions. Never mind Old Testament genocides, barbaric laws, racism and hatred, there are plenty of examples in our day-to-day life. If you admire Ruth you must also admire anyone who adopts or sticks with the religion of their loved ones out of loyalty. Long ago (years before I became a heretic) I became convinced that if I was going to ask non-Christians to subject their current beliefs to scrutiny, I must be willing to do the same to mine. I wasn't worried, of course, because I knew that my own beliefs were true and thus impossible to prove wrong. But I thought then (and still do) that I can't ask someone of another worldview to think critically about their beliefs if I was unwilling to do the same. (If you disagree, please explain to me why.) If you admire a Christian for refusing to question their faith, you must also admire a non-Christian who does the same. If the non-Christian ought to think honestly and critically, so ought the Christian. If I'm going to ask a Mormon to consider the possibility of his book being fallible, I must do the same for mine.

Just in case you agree with me so far, let me get a little radical. If I admire a person with whom I agree for acting on her convictions, I cannot also condemn someone who acts of very different convictions. If I admire a Christian martyr for acting on her faith I cannot condemn a suicide bomber for acting on his. To be consistent, you cannot praise some who boldly stand up for their convictions in spite of intense societal opposition if you demonize others (say, Fred Phelps). I'm not sure who my readers are, but this cuts both ways. Do you love or hate James Dobson? George Bush? Osama Bin Laden? Mother Theresa? Mao? The Pope? Unless you can show me otherwise, I think all are people who follow(ed) their convictions. Either you must accept them all as good people on that grounds, or you must find something other than personal convictions on which to base your judgments of such people. And if you choose the latter, you must explain why a good God (if such a being exists) would allow some to be convicted of things for which they will later be condemned.

The easy way out is to assume that everyone who disagrees with you is acting against their convictions, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. I used to believe this, until my convictions started to lead me away from the beliefs of my friends. I have a hard time believing that every conservative Christians I know is acting against their convictions. Some of them maybe, but not all. Once you know the people on the other side (so to speak) it's a lot harder to dismiss them as depraved.

(Btw: October's up on my Journal.)