I. Aprioricot

It is entirely impossible that this doesn't exist. The world, life, the vast universe, small microbes, all the myriads of factories humans have built, grand pianos, nachos, love and hate; all of these things are related in a big web of interconnectedness. And either the web exists, or the web doesn't exist. There is really no other basic fundamental concept of reality than the fact that it is either real or it is not real. But if the universe is found to be not real by examination, we have proven it is real by examining it. You see, even the act of examination, therefore, would be the universe. And if examination exists, then what is examined exists along with the examiner. Since the examiner exists, unless we hold that he is the self-starting cause of the examination, we must find a reason for the examiner, and his itch to suddenly examine a cosmos that is somehow fitted for such speculative study. We've already birthed by necessary cause a universe that is examinable, the examiner, the need to examine, the act of examination, and the subsistence in which examination can take place. By necessary cause we now need something ultimate, that neither examines nor can be examined. Why must this exist? Simple necessity. Nothing can cause its cause. If we know the universe only by examining, knowledge is something that therefore exists before examination (since examination cannot cause knowledge) and something must exist that knows without examining. If that exists, and I believe it does, we call such a concept God. Of course making it a concept would be odd. Concepts don't know things, they are known. And to be known means to be passive, and to be passive in knowledge means to be non-existent if unknown. Therefore God cannot be a concept (because to be unknown means to be non-existent and a non-causal agent). Since we said knowledge exists before our knowing (since our examination didn't cause the knowable to exist), we realize God must be an active mind, or a state of knowing that preexists the known. We call that mind (if we can call it that) God. God, therefore, exists, or nothing exists. If you even pretend to argue, you exist, and therefore God exists. And don't try to prove me wrong by logic, because if logic exists, a force greater than our minds exists that we must adhere our minds to, and you are in all kinds of trouble if you believe a mental force greater than our minds exists but have no room for God in your system. The only way to prove me wrong is to stop existing, and please don't do that in the first brief essay.

20 Essays on the End of the World

I've been hatching this idea for a while, and it has refused to go away or take coherent form. Since it won't naturally coalesce into a well-shaped idea, I will accept the amorphous nature therein and commence my diatribe on the End of the World. The natural reading of this due to popular context will be the commencement of the cosmos, rather than the purpose of the planet as might be intended. I say might, because at this point, I really don't know which topic, the cessation or the goal, to entirely devote myself to. It might be that the end of the word and the end of the world are very similarly grouped. When we come to the world, and its intended end in creation, we come to the ultimate snuffing out of all things, and after the last coal extinguishes, the rebirth and re-realization of the earth's intention. By going far enough north, we shall make good time towards the south lands. So over the next few weeks there will be twenty rambling attempts to make good sense of hide and hair, and if not...then not.

If I had a Church today....

Quick random post: If I could start a church today, what would it do? What would its core values be? What mission would we undertake? Etc. Here's a quick rant.

1. Expository Preaching on Sunday mornings (don't read "non-evangelism focused", read "evangelism in context")
2. Theological Education during traditional Discipleship times
3. Outreach to homeless in community (temporary residence, food bank, advocacy service, life-management and job-search help)
4. Liturgical and Reformation-appreciative worship style (No fad gimmick worship, we are sitting on the wave of an ancient tradition, let's not violate sacredness with base forms of relevance) (note: base forms of relevance are different from other forms of relevance, i.e. an acoustic guitar is relevant, but ripping off Vanilla Ice for a praise song is base)
5. Family-centered community involvement (don't dice up ministries and keep the men separate from their family, or kids separate from mom and dad)
6. Smart missions involvement (not a smattering of random trips here and there, but a long-term partnership with missions personnel to equip indigenous leaders to minister)
7. Homeschool families cooperating in the education process (Christian families, homeschooling, is multi-generational discipleship, the church should capture and redeem this facet of society. Not sheltering kids from the 'corrupt' world, but engaging the world through the family)
8. An understanding expectation for commitment from prospective members (if someone wants to join, I wouldn't be so impatient as to rush them through the process. I would want to see commitment and service before the church expects commitment and service. That way they aren't disappointed and we aren't either)
9. Corrective and formative merciful church discipline: you can't punish every sin for every member, but there are certain sins and issues that affect the body of believers in a congregation that must be dealt with either privately or publicly. It is biblical and avoids many pitfalls with unregenerate non-repentant members causing problems under the auspices of membership.
10. Spiritual leadership: no lost used car salesman will be a deacon just because he is well known in the community and has been in church for a while. Too many churches are ruined by unspiritual businessmen who manage God's house like a furniture wholesale store. If a man isn't spiritually adept at layman ministry, he probably isn't fit for administrative leadership in the church.
That's it.

Morality, the Universal type

Morality is the trickiest subject to deal with in postmodern culture. Nobody wants to nail down what is right or what is wrong in a universal sense (i.e. nobody wants to say this is wrong for you and I). But people still want to deal with the categories of right and wrong, people want to use correct and incorrect to describe behavior and principles, even if more limited than in eras past. The existence of morals, which we will call the specifics of right and wrong, is held as a truth. But the definition of morals in a fixed sense is not a tenet of postmodern morality. It is the pronouncing and not the knowing that is wrong (funny how that word works) in postmodernism.

How does this work in practice? When we say we have encountered an objective “right or wrong”, we say the soul has in a figure of speech, hit itself against some immovable wall, or force, that is real but unseen. The soul cannot progress past this point without definite resistance from the unseen reality, and if it acts beyond this boundary it is with real and tangible mutation to its composure. If a person comes across a starving child while walking around in Africa, and has the wallet and time to give him food, most postmoderns would believe this person is morally obligated to fix the problem temporarily. This person should feed the child. If the person does not, there is a cruelty that makes other people shudder in disagreement with the lack of action that has taken place. For you or I to ignore the situation, a moral boundary would be transgressed. Some people feel unable to even think of inaction. Why is that? Is it something internal? If so then we are all bigots for thinking ill of the person who ignores the child. Is it something external? If so, we have found that there is an objective, universal standard at work.

People often try to sidestep this issue of objective morality by saying they do not believe in “wrong or right” but in mental “sickness or health”. To give an example, they would say murder is not evil, but it is only a sickness. What they are trying to do is avoid the standard of good and evil, which they do unsuccessfully, having merely redefined a spiritual problem into a physiological problem, still under the shackle of the standard “sickness or health”. We don't think the person caught the will to murder from a doorknob. It is a mood that is out of balance with what we consider wellness. (Sounds like a moral standard under a different guise) Sometimes people deny even this and talk about collective morality. An action is only good or evil as it relates to the collective will towards the goodness of evilness of particular actions. The people holding this view try to deny the objective and universal nature of morality by making it subjective and regional; derived from existence rather than bending existence to its dictates. This also is a weak attempt. For it to work, it still supposes that good and evil exist externally as categories. Good and evil exist unchangeably, different region recognize them with a slight variation. The only things that change are particular actions within the sphere of good and evil. Notice they do not say “some societies make good good, and others make evil good.” Such a view would be better defended, yet still weak and relying on external universal moral categories to give value to certain particular transient actions. It is also dishonest with the scope of our existence. People do not convene to decide their moral positions on issues unless they are politicians in danger of losing funding. Even when a large number of people act in a way contrary to the moral position of a person, the person can appeal to a third party standard in labeling such actions as wrong by appealing to a sense of morality rather than retiring to a polling station in order to make a judgment. Humans tend to shoot from the hip in moral situations rather than do extensive study in order to formulate an opinion on universals. Most research or inquiry is usually seeing if a particular conforms to any universal opinion. This assumes there is a universal external standard again, and is not proof of subjectivity.

Just an issue I have with peole who claim that different cultures have different morals. Although customs often differ, morals are often fixed issues. Perhaps the best example from history is the issue of stealing. Every culture has treated stealing as an evil as it relates to the local community. Just the identity of property and tribe have changed. White men could steal land from the Indians because they did not hold it as property. But Indians would steal women, food, and belongings from other tribes. Within the tribe there was little to no contention, outside the tribe there was. This is not an example of differing moral standards. Stealing was wrong, whether land or women or children were the property. This was an example of different designation for property. Europeans held that women weren't property and land was. The Indians, women were and land wasn't. Stealing is stealing in both situation.

Atheists who are 'Scientists'

It amazes me how religious atheists can really be. Especially atheists who give reason for their atheism as 'science'. Scientists call creationists superstitious and primitive because we believe God spoke and created the heavens and the earth. “This is just another silly myth,” they mock, “like the Hindus and animists and other non-modern people hold to.” Of course they don’t see the clear difference between a hyper-intelligent being speaking the cosmos into motion in Genesis and a mud-coated giant tortoise shell earth in the Hindu origin stories. They think the belief in rain spirits is evenly paired with the impersonal description of nature in the Hebrew Old Testament.

Of course, don’t mention to them their own foolishness when they talk about random, impersonal, deterministic, chaotic nature [and then try to study and assign laws to this nature]. Especially don’t mock them when they assign to nature a will, a sex (her), and super-intelligence. Don’t tell them they sound almost theistic about the whole idea of her design and her will. Is it so strange that Christians should merely acclaim an additional quality exists to nature, namely personhood, and say “God” rather than “nature”? And yet we are so scorned by those who bestow on her [Nature] such infinite honors and intelligences, only to hear them say out of the other side of their mouths that she is only our perception of what is.

Who believes in the invisible god, the Christian or the Scientist? At least we claim genuine existence is an attribute of our god, whereas Nature exists only as the predilection of the inquisitive nature of humans. Even if God does not exist, just as she [nature] doesn’t really exist, our deity is at least a product of religion whereas the scientist’s god seems the product of an agreed upon professional delusion.

From Creation to Abraham

I am preaching through a series on Abraham during the Sunday night services at the church I attend. I have been very excited about the subject matter, and planned to teach on this ever since I took a Hebrew exegesis class of Genesis 12-36 last Spring. Abraham occupies such a central place in story in Genesis. The earth is created, people sin, murder, fill the earth with violence, God curses the ground and wipes the slate clean, only have to people refill the earth with the same indolence. Abraham is called out of the cursed humanity, bearing the burden of having a barren wife. Sarah at this point represents as a walking parable, the barren, hopeless state of humanity after Creation. Abraham is called out of his own family line, led to a new land, and given a great promise by God. "In you shall all families of the earth be blessed..." The 'good' creation from the garden which was 'cursed' when sin entered the world now finds a focal redemptive point in Abraham. Abraham's faith is not the cause of this blessing, however, as much as God's faithfulness to his own covenant. That is the central point of Genesis. God will be faithful to his intent for Creation, and faithful to his word as Abraham's God. God is created a new humanity, that will be gathered in Abraham for blessing even as he scatters them from Shinar in a curse of chaos.

In the Oven

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I don't think people read this so I guess I do it for myself mainly. I like to write and collect my thoughts so I can reference it later. Life has been hectic. I've had to adjust to a fiance, then a wife, then a pregnant wife, and all of the wonders and labors those things have brought. I need to write more, so I can remember later how this all felt; fearful and joyful hand-in-hand. That's my New Year's Resolution perhaps. Write more.