fifteen minutes

Just one more killing spree to add to the list of shootings in the past twelve months. The mass-murder-suicide thing was a big deal back in 1999 with the Columbine incident, but in the past couple of years it's happened so often that we don't even care anymore. We can't. It's just a statistic.

In our information-overloaded society, the only way to get your fifteen minutes of fame anymore is to either make a popular YouTube video or to kill a lot of people. A kid went into an Omaha mall a few months ago and shot eight people just to get famous, in his own words. But history will only remember the names of Dylan, Eric and Cho, because Robert wasn't able to destroy enough lives to make a lasting impact on our collective memory.

The next disaffected kid will notice this and make sure he tops Cho's record of 32, knowing that with anything less, he will be forgotten within the week.

The Internet has networked everything together, globalized our culture and communication, and given the media unprecedented power. All indications are that this technology is only making the world a better place... but as a society, we have never been more disconnected from each other.

on creativity

Central to our universe is the concept of limits: that our creativity is restricted to that which already exists.

As an example, try to imagine what a sixth sense would look like. The existence of such a thing is conjectured in science (and movies), but all descriptions of a proposed sixth sense are nothing but combinations of the other five senses. In the same manner, try to conceive of a completely new emotion – like fear or anger – that is not a mixture of existing ones.

Describe a fourth dimension beyond height, width and depth. Think up a new color or a new number. It's not possible, because we are limited by what already is: "There is nothing new under the sun."

Following this, creativity becomes a misnomer because no person actually creates anything. The best songwriters among us do not make new notes or chords; they merely assemble existing ones together in new and interesting ways. The same is true with painting, writing, or any other form of artistry. We are not capable of conceiving anything beyond the scope of what exists.

But consider that perfect qualities such as complete goodness or pure justice, though they are found nowhere on the earth, are nonetheless established in our minds, so that we feel free to judge when something falls short of one of them. It follows that such perfect qualities must exist in some form; otherwise, we would have no standard by which to make our judgments.

When we think of the act of creation in Genesis, our focus generally drifts either toward its mover ("God created everything") or its scope ("God created everything"). But for me, it is amazing that God created everything. It was He who decided that there should be three primary colors and not four, though He could have chosen to make four to begin with, and I would have instead marveled here that we cannot fathom a fifth. He is the only true creative Being, and like any great artist, He has left traces of Himself in His works, in order that we should know that the painting did not paint itself.

This world lets us down on a daily basis with promises of fulfillment. Advertisements appeal to our sense that something is missing, claiming that new cell phones or credit cards will fill the gap in our souls, but it is all just grasping at the wind. (Pity that it works so well on us!) We are broken and incomplete, but there is beauty in it: our universal longing to be whole is a constant and tugging reminder of God's existence.

He is the only true creative Being, and He has not finished creating. At a time still future, He will make all things whole: peace, when all we know is contention; joy, when all we know is sorrow; life, when all we know is death. What we now see through cracked and concaved glass, we will see with perfect clarity.

I'M WORKING ON IT

I didn't quit, I didn't forget, I just didn't have anything to write about. I started about three different posts but just wasn't able to end them in a way that was satisfactory. I plan on revisiting them soon, so that maybe future-me will be able to read them with a fresh perspective and finish them up. You'll see some more posts before long.

In the mean time, Brooks tagged me and it sounded fun. You list your three top albums that you think everyone should hear before they die, and then you tag three other blogs to do the same.

Mine:

You strike the match... why not be utterly changed to fire?
To sacrifice the shadow and the mist
of a brief life you never much liked?
So if you'd care to come along, we're gonna curb
all our never-ending, clever complaining,
as whoever's heard of a singer criticized by his song?
Though we hunger, though all that we eat
brings us little relief,
we don't know quite what else to do;
we have all our beliefs, but we don't want our beliefs...
God of Peace, we want You.

1. mewithoutYou - Catch For Us the Foxes

It took some time for their first album, [A]-->[B] Life, to grow on me, but this one has been one of my all-time favorites since it first came out. The poetry that Aaron Weiss writes contains of the most beautiful, concise, evocative words I have ever experienced, and even though a lot of the album's content springs (like a flower) from (the dead soil of) a failed relationship, he sets his eyes on God as the healer.

It has no genre - Aaron yells when he needs to yell, sings when he needs to sing, and talks when he needs to talk, but it never sounds forced or contrived. Content-wise, he has moved beyond the relationship that haunted [A]-->[B] Life, and now he just sings to God - about himself, about the world, about God. The musicianship behind all of this is gorgeous, perfectly matched to the lyrics, and serves only to add meaning that cannot be expressed through words alone. The CD is worth buying just for "Carousels" alone.

MP3: January 1979

 

Thy servants are we,
Our Lord who sits on high.
Thy rod and thy staff
Shall comfort and guide our hands.

2. Orphaned Land - Mabool

I used to listen to a lot of metal, and I kind of outgrew it I guess. I still pop in the occasional Extol or Living Sacrifice disc, but for the most part I've moved on. But this one still gets its share of play time even three years after it came out.

These guys are bona fide Israelis from the Holy Land itself, although I don't think they are Jewish. Mabool is sort of a concept album about the Flood, but it is heavily spiritualized. The basic premise of it is that the three sons of Noah represent the three major world religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), and that we are all brothers and we should work together as equals. As a Christian, I cannot agree with this, but I can play air guitar to it.

Most people label them "folk metal" because they blend a lot of traditional Middle Eastern musical influences into their music, but the truth is that pretty much every song on the album sounds different from the last one - whether it's an acoustic arrangement with a lone soloists singing in Yiddish, a death metal onslaught, or a six-minute melodic guitar solo. It just equals awesome. I've heard a lot of bands try this kind of eclecticism before, but it never snaps into place quite like this. Even if you've never listened to metal in your life, you may find that you like it a lot.

MP3: Ocean Land

 

When the world welcomes us in,
we're closer to heaven than we'll ever know.
They say this place has changed,
but strip away all of the technology
and you will see that we all are hunters,
hunting for something that will make us okay.

3. Sleeping at Last - Keep No Score

I first heard of Sleeping at Last when they were slated to be the opening act at a concert I went to. They ended up having to cancel, but not until after I had bought their previous album Ghosts so that I would be familiar with their songs. Ghosts wasn't groundbreaking, but it was good enough that I decided to check out a couple of songs from Keep No Score when it came out. I listened to it and then kind of forgot about it. But when I listened again a couple of months later, it completely clicked with me and I wondered how I ever missed it the first time around.

Layers. Their music has an abundance of texture, gorgeous instrumentation, not to mention a string quartet that plays on three or four tracks. Lots of bands try to do this kind of thing, but it falls flat unless there's tremendous songwriting to back it up. This album has it all. "Tension & Thrill", the first track on the album, has been in my top five favorite songs since the day I heard it.

MP3: Careful Hands

REVISED 12/9: Changed the mewithoutYou album from Brother, Sister to Catch For Us the Foxes. Also, I didn't tag anyone to continue on in my footsteps. So...

Corrie... I know you RSS my blog so you better see this.

Ryan... no stealing my albums, I found them first.

Matt... I don't want to mess up your topic blog but you can do this if you want.

free will vs. determinism

Determinism and free will, two ways of looking at a truth that is far greater than either of them.

Two godly, mature men will pray the same prayer over Romans 8 and 9, as many have before throughout history, asking God to reveal to them the correct interpretation. To one, the Spirit reveals a sort of divine foreknowledge; to the other, predestination. Is God the author of confusion? Or is the whole truth just greater than any one of us can understand? What if God only reveals to each of us the aspects of the truth that we need to best serve Him?

I do not think there will be anyone in hell who can say he is there because he was not "chosen before the foundation of the world"; nor will there be anyone in heaven who can claim that he chose Christ of his own accord without the Spirit's quickening.

Thus no one in hell can blame God, and no one in heaven can boast in anything but God.

"Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
    and his paths beyond tracing out!
'Who has known the mind of the Lord?
    Or who has been his counselor?'
'Who has ever given to God,
    that God should repay him?'
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen."

i don't believe in global warming

It is blasphemy to say this on Earth Day, isn't it? The one day of the year that we're supposed to all rally together and resolve to fix all the environmental problems that we cause during the other 364 days. In reality, though, it plays out almost like a New Year's resolution or a kid fresh out of a week at a Christian camp — get fired up about it for awhile, and then taper off after a few weeks until everything is back to normal.

Let me go back and clarify my statement: I do believe the statistics that say the world is getting slightly warmer. I do not think it is caused by anything we have done, nor can it be prevented by anything we will do.

A couple of months ago I was talking to an environmentally-conscious coworker about renewable energy. The topic of ethanol came up in our conversation. I told him that last summer I quit buying E10 because my car gets terrible gas mileage with it. I, like most Midwesterners, started getting "Super Unleaded" (E10) a few years back because it usually ran five cents cheaper per gallon than regular unleaded, and besides, Super means better, right? Well, last summer I discovered on accident that I can pull 350 miles out of a tank of unleaded gas, but only around 290 with E10.

His reply to my little vignette was that he always heard ethanol was supposed to get better gas mileage. Welcome to the wonderful world of mass media.

Last semester Amanda took a speech class, and one of the things they had to do before giving a speech was poll the rest of the class about certain things pertinent to the topic of the speech. Amanda's topic was global warming, and her first question was "Do you believe global warming is a real threat?" All but one person (her brother Andrew, who was also in the class) responded that they did. Her next question was, "Are you able to support your position with facts?" Only two or three people (Andrew included) said they could.

If people are exposed to an idea for long enough, they will begin to believe it without even thinking.

Have you ever watched the local weather on an especially hot day? The weatherman says something about how we are one degree away from that day's heat record, which was set in 1905, or something like that. A good amount of the records are a hundred years old or more. Long before the days of gasoline-powered vehicles and industrial waste and ozone depletion, we were setting heat records that have yet to be broken. What's more, the Middle Ages were some of the hottest in history. The world's climate just goes in cycles. (Don't forget that we also had an ice age a few thousand years ago.)

We must have an awfully inflated sense of importance to think that we're solely responsible for the environmental changes and that we are the only hope for its reversal. We cannot even begin to understand the intricacies of our planet, and yet the "inconvenient truth" is accepted as a fact. There really is a lot of legitimate research showing that today's global warming is completely natural, but it gets ignored by the media. You can hardly blame them. Whether it is real or contrived, a disaster is always profitable. And no matter what the position is, there is always an "expert" scientist who will back them up.

I don't believe in global warming. How do I reconcile this with my faith? My Christian "worldview" demands that I care for the earth for no other reason than because it is God's artistic masterpiece. I will not start caring about the environment just because we are in the middle of a fake emergency, nor will I stop caring about the environment once the rest of America moves onto a new fad in a few years. I should always care about the environment regardless of whether it's the current trend. My faith should make me greener than anyone.

So global warming isn't an issue for me. If I am wrong and it really is happening, then such a revelation should not change my actions if I am truly living out my faith. And if I am right about it just being overhyped by the media, I should still be indiscernible from any environmentalist.

If only more Christians would realize this.

plastic jesus

Amanda's cell phone is four years old. It is an old monochrome Nokia from before the days of flip phones, and it works better than any phone I have ever seen.

Despite its age, it holds a battery charge for a week, and gets reception in places you wouldn't believe. It has been dropped a few times, but you couldn't tell from looking at it. It has never caused her a problem.

Meanwhile, Joel is on his third RAZR in six months. Look at how far cellular technology has progressed in the last few years: We now have hand-held phones that play music, take pictures, and fall apart if you shake them too hard.

How quickly we abandon quality for convenience. It's not hard to see in our culture. Even though the food at McDonald's or Taco Bell is a nutritional nightmare, it's fast and cheap; low-quality and overpriced digital downloads have replaced the crystal clarity of CD audio; wireless technology is dominant, even though it is unreliable and slow compared to wired alternatives.

It has permeated every aspect of our culture – technology, environmentalism, art, relationships, and perhaps more inconspicuously, religion.

Because when it comes down to it, Jesus is inconvenient. He is impractical. He always seems to get in the way of my affairs, reminding me that the harder road is usually the right one, or telling me that I am not worthy of Him if I love anything else more than Him.

Jesus is inconvenient, and so those who do not have Him do not want Him, and those of us who do have Him are usually guilty (to varying extents) of trading the real Jesus for an innocuous, manufactured version of Himself. We do this by taking certain of His sayings seriously while ignoring others that do not fit into our already-established lifestyle. Make him white; make him handsome; make him political; make him tolerant. This plastic jesus is convenient because he agrees with us, but he is fragile and easily broken.

The thing about Jesus – the inconvenient, real Jesus – is that He is forgiving. No matter how many times I exchange the truth of God for the lie that I can find happiness in anything but Christ, I am still His missing son. He lovingly awaits my return, and when I do find my way back into His arms, He throws a celebration party.

This is the Jesus I will always come back to.

some new thing

I have been working retail for the past four years, putting myself through school and gaining valuable insights into the human nature. From day one at Hy-Vee back in 2003, all the way to Target in 2007, it has been for me nothing more than a means to an end. I needed a job to help out with college expenses, and they needed a faithful worker that they could underpay, and that was the extent of our relationship.

I knew from the start that I could never actually make a career of it. It was just a feeling I got when I thought about myself in ten years, still putting cans on shelves and showing customers where the macaroni is. But I never really understood why.

Last week I brought my 1910 hardcover copy of Pensées to work so I could read it during my breaks. With all the wedding planning, and working two jobs, I haven't had much time to read. (I started it way back in July.) And as I sat reading a book that was printed nearly a hundred years ago, filled with words written before 1662, it hit me all at once that I was holding the oldest thing that has ever been inside the walls of the building.

Target rotates the sales plans about every three months and clearances out all the "old" merchandise to make way on the shelves for whatever new items are coming in. There isn't a single thing in the whole store that is more than a year old. Even the building itself was constructed in 2001.

I finally realize that this is why I have always hated retail so much. Its sole focus is new. Something that is three months old must be replaced with something new because it's not new enough. If a package is opened, we can't sell it because it's not new anymore. Old stuff doesn't sell very well, isn't popular enough, so it has no place there.

When Paul went to Athens to proclaim Christ, the city's residents were described in this way: "For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing." When I hear my coworkers spend most of their conversations talking about the latest movie or a new restaurant, I realize that things haven't changed much. We are a consumeristic society: We consume newness, in the form of new ideas, new products, new news.

What a contrast: God spent a fifteen hundred years writing a book in such a way that it would stay applicable for at least two thousand more, having no need of a replacement until everything in its pages has come true.

I put in my two weeks' notice at Target last Saturday. I start work at Smart Public Safety Software down on Main Street in Cedar Falls on the 19th... I guess I just needed something new.