the glory and the horror

Sometimes, I think too much, and trust too little.

Just thoughts.

This week hasn’t been the easiest. Anatomy lab takes it out of you. You’re on your feet for over 3 hours, smelling a little funny cutting, getting a bit messy. It’s quite tiring and wearing, especially since our cadaver isn’t the most well-preserved, so some of the tissue is still fairly fragile, and structures are easily lost or overlooked. I guess it comes with the territory, but it seems to be one of the harder bodies in the lab.

Another great night with some of the other Christians here. Friday evenings is an informal time of singing and praying with Southwestern Christian Fellowship, and it’s nice to just hang out and talk and pray for others. I’m missing the prayer meetings from last year, and I’m realizing more and more how much I need to pray, more and more. Specifically. Consistently. There are many habits I developed this past year that I want to continue. It’s a little harder in a different atmosphere, a different location, but they’re good habits worth continuing.

Just thoughts.

Tonight, the Chamberlins had me over for dinner, and it was a lot of fun. They live in this nice little area north of me, and their house is right next to some tennis courts, which is GREAT for them, since they love tennis. They also have a little 9-hole golf course behind them, with a lot of water hazards We had a great time reminiscing about East Asia, about our friends there, the students, and just how much fun it was, and how much fun it was to see God work in and through us there. We also called Onnie, just to talk to her, and we accidentally caught her in the middle of a Bible study (sorry Onnie!).

I really miss the team. I miss Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, Wednesday evenings, Friday evenings, the random visits, the hanging out in the courtyard with the bicycles and the bubbles, xiao gou, the radio flyer, my 12 speed gamma bike. I miss the community, the closeness, the knowing that I could share anything with them, and that I wanted to share my entire life with them, that I wanted them to call me on my sins, that I knew I could be real with them. Not that I don’t necessarily feel free to be real here, but it’s just different. I still feel like I’m getting to know the place, the people, here. It’s part of the transition, I suppose, of going from being known and knowing, to being unknown and not knowing, and I’m working on being known and knowing again. Reese is really a wonderful blessing in this process, because he doesn’t have any ulterior motives, and is very honest and authentic in everything. I especially appreciated his coming up to me last night, and clarifying the arrangement that we made regarding food, and how communal we wanted it to be, and so on. He didn’t have to, but he did. And that’s what makes it memorable.

Just thoughts.

My 2nd week at PCPC was pretty cool. Kenny was there today again as well. I really enjoyed the service today. The entire liturgy and atmosphere created a sense of true awe and wonder at the providence and power of the Lord. And that was what the sermon was on. It was very nice to see it all come together in a worship service. The sermon was also really good. I really enjoyed it. Sunday school was ok. It wasn’t heretical or anything. It just wasn’t anything particularly stellar. One gentleman sitting next to me at service recommended I check out a couple different sunday school classes. We’ll see. Next week, Northwest Bible Church with Reese.

Just thoughts.

Bah! Major League Baseball is quite a frightening proposition nowadays. At least the baseball players are. Take a look at A-Rod’s attitude. Sickening.

“Across town at Yankee Stadium, Texas shortstop Alex Rodriguez backtracked from his comments Friday that he would give back 30 to 40 percent of his pay if it would improve the sport.

“I’m willing to do my part. Thirty to 40 percent? Probably not. I was speaking off the cuff,” he said.”

From Yahoo News

Should I do the math for him? Let’s do it just for fun. $252 million dollars over 10 years. 30% of $252 million is $75,600,000. Divided by ten, that’s a pay cut of $7.56 million dollars a year. Oh darn. Only $17 some odd million dollars a year. Awwww, poor baby. That means only 10 new cars this year, and that 3rd house in the Alps will have to wait. Sheesh.

Will Gregory go an entire year without updating lethologica? He’s almost there. Just 67 more days.

Just thoughts.

I’ve been to Price Club, Costco, Sam’s Club, Super Walmart, and other bulk grocery stores, but I’d never been to a place like Central Market. Last night, after dinner, a bunch of us (Kermit, Eric, Sarah, Kathleen, and myself) went there, because some of us had never been inside of a Central Market before, and like my friends said, it’s not just a supermarket, it’s an experience. I have never seen a place like it before. It seems to cater to a slightly more affluent/picky clientele, or at least to people who know what they’re looking for, and won’t settle for anything else. They have some really rare, hard to find things, like very specific spices, “Smart Water,” and other sundry items. Some things seemed ridiculously expensive, while other things were cheaper than Albertson’s or Kroger’s. For example, they had about 40 different types of coffee beans, I think, more than anyone would ever need. I don’t remember how much it cost, but they had all sorts, from Hawaii, Africa, South America. They also had dried fruit, by the pound. It was cheaper than Trader Joe’s, and I thought that place couldn’t be beat. Dried pineapple chunks for 3 bucks a pound. Safeway was 3 bucks for 4 ounces.

One thing that struck me about the place was the sheer number of choices. It was a bit of sensory overload for me. It was really quite amazing to me.

Afterwards, we hung out at Kathleen’s apartment, and discussed life, music, theology, school, movies, childhood cartoons, and more. It was challenging, encouraging, fun, refreshing, invigorating. It was a great evening. I hope I have more nights like last night.

Just thoughts.

My first week of medical school is over. And it wasn’t too bad.

There were a bunch of recruiting pitches this week, mostly for AMSA and TMA/AMA. That’s the American Medical Student Association and the Texas Medical Association/American Medical Association, respectively. I joined them all, for different reasons. Some were free, some weren’t. Some have positions I’m not sure about, some positions are cool. For example, both AMSA and TMA/AMA are working to figure out work hours for residents. After all the hubbub in recent years about medical errors and stuff, people are starting to wonder if it’s a good idea to have residents doing 36-48 hours straight or not. Hmmmm. I wonder. Anyone is significantly less alert and careful after being awake for 24 hours straight, much less 36 or 48. Anyway, the groups are working on making sure there are more clear policies, and maybe even laws, about that sort of thing. The flip side of that issue, though, is that you’ll never know if you can work under pressue/less sleep than if you train that way, much like the reasoning behind the way the military trains.

Another issue is “universal health care.” AMSA supports it, but they don’t do a good job of defining that, though. They say they want a single-payer system similar to Canada’s, where the federal gov’t is that entity. However, they don’t define anything about the level of care that they support, and since the US is the most technologically advanced nation in the world, I’m sure lots of people will expect the BEST of care. But that’s not possible. As much as people don’t want to admit it, it must be said that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to provide the best of care for everyone. Period. There are limited resources in this world, and so that would just be impossible. Having said that, someone has to define what care people will be able to get, and what they won’t. Who decides that? No one wants to ask that question, because in reality, that’s the dreaded “R” word – rationing. And what about people who have more money? Can they “buy up” and get more care? Questions like this are not answered, and rarely discussed in any serious manner, with politicians and the like jumping in on issues that they don’t understand. *sigh* Good ethical wrangling and the discussion of the value of human life is just not how health policy is made of anymore. If people want universal health care, they better define “health care” and how much people are getting before they talk about it.

Just thoughts.

Yesterday, during one of our many introductory speeches/lectures we’ve heard the last 4 days, one speaker said something that bothered me. I’m going to be paraphrasing a little, but I think the idea will come across just fine. He said that we “have to be convinced that we are the best doctor in our field of specialty.”

On the surface, that doesn’t seem like much, but it just sounds a little egotistical and like something only someone who cared about power would say. Why is something like that important? Is there no place for humility in modern medicine? Do all doctors have to have this aura of “I’ve-got-it-together”-ness to reassure patients?

Today, we had an interesting talk about the “emotional reponse” we’d have to the start of anatomy lab. Reese and I were both thinking about the eschatological implications of donating your body to science, and what that means when we get our resurrected, glorified bodies. Jesus’ resurrected body still had the scars, and He was able to walk through walls. Hmmmmm. Depending on your eschatology, that could be pretty wild and weird.

Here’s a little something a missionary friend I met this past year wrote one night at 2 AM. Thoughts and comments welcome. Please note, it’s a work in progress.

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So how about breaking it all down again…taking it down a notch and starting from the top.

So it seems that one can only truly meet God in a concrete time and space. That God can only be encountered and truly grasped at certain intersections and that these intersections are really nothing less than the concrete reality of the self. I in no way mean that God is somehow equivelent to self, is in his own person dependent on self in some sort of existential way, or that the human self is comparably great or represents the center of the universe. I simply mean that though God is alone awesome, independent, and central that we as humans can only encounter him in actual moments in time and in the local of the self.
To be more specific, it is impossible to really encounter God in any true way when one is not willing to be honest with his own person and life. The hours have added up to millenniums that are the time spent using words, emotions, and actions that are fabricated by the individual and the community but that have been used to avoid the reality of individual and communal brokenness and not to engage it. The question is, is religion that reduces interaction with God to abstract words, fabricated emotion, and shallow actions actually interacting with the real God or with some hologram dimly reflecting a forgotten idea of the Almighty living God.

God lives independently of man. Regardless of our experience of us God is alive and very well. We are not existentialists in this way. However it is the right function of the Christian religion to have real experience with the living God. The living God must be, and only can be, interacted with by the living. “How can I praise you from Sheol?” And yet the fact that our evangelical mouths keep yakking, pages keep turning, and minds keep spinning does not mean that our evangelical selves are really alive in any dimension that can truly expect to encounter the real and living God.
God, as living person, can only be encountered when humans have what I will call “life moments”. That is when we enter for even brief moments into a dimension of life where we are both aware and threatened. These are moments when we give up playing our labrynth of games for a few seconds and its only in these moments that God, the true God will show up to play with our lives, for in any moment of simple fabricated life we simply reduce God, his name, and His truth to another card in the deck that we shuffle and that we deal with all the sly and skill of Vegas dealer. We in fact control God, that is our cheap plastic God coin, and He does not control us. God does not play this game.

Life Moments take place when we hear the voice of God. Life takes place when we obey the voice of God. Both of these take faith. Both of these take courage. We do not miss God’s voice because He is silent. We do not miss God’s voice because He is quite. We miss God’s voice because we desperately want to miss God’s voice. We do not hear the voice of God because we do not want to hear it. In fact it is the very last thing in our experience that we want to hear. More than any bad news that we can imagine getting on the other end of the phone, the voice of God will threaten to expose, change, and even kill us. This is why we refuse to be still, this is why we run for our lives.

There have been precious few, and yet very precious none the less, moments when grace yanked me from my Matrix to say to the Lord “speak Lord I listen.” Faith always proceeded or at least accompanied this moment because when spoken sincerely we know that his word will always be simply “die.” And it is faith that says with enough confidence that “death is life” and that “God is real” and even “good” that its no longer a game of hide and seek, its now a real life drama of seeking and finding.

Somewhere before or in these moments must be self-awareness. We must as cause or effect deal with who we are in some real measure. It is impossible for us to believe the lies that we tell others about who we are and for us to survive or even have a Life Moment. Just as we turn God into a cheap plastic coin, we turn ourselves, and though the coin may be shinier and prettier than the real us it is still cheap and it is still plastic. God does not do business with plastic, only gold.

It is my belief that self-awareness comes in two basic contexts; solitude and community. I do not mean by solitude simply being alone, and I do not mean by community simply being together. What I mean at least at one level that these two contexts are the settings where the coin is put between the back teeth and with a firm bite is tested and exposed. We have mastered in modern Westernism, taking “alone” and adding information and stimula and escaping the trials of solitude, and so too, through our expanded transportation and communication and busy lives we have taken community and known so many people that we have know no one at all and no one has known us. We hop churches and marriages because these two institutions were made by God to put us in the vice of the real so that we could do business with him, die, and finally live. Where we have not hopped we have simply sat on the back row, where the pastor can’t quite look us in the eye and where we can nap if we need to. Then we find we have napped through the entire sermon and the sermon is life itself.

Stillness is disengaging so that we might truly engage. It is stilling the spinning mind so that it might see the truth of who we are and who God is and surface the implications of the difference. Stillness is certainly not merely physical or even necessarily physical (though never completely disconnected from the physical either). It is not emptying the mind of truth like some Eastern religion or even stopping the mind from spinning truth around. The mind can not spin truth around because truth does not spin. Truth stays the same. It is in fact the mind itself that is doing the spinning, and it is spinning around the truth. Our evangelical minds play with truth like moths play with fire. We love the color and concept of the truth but we are afraid of really touching it or letting it touch us because we know that it will burn us up in only a moment. We are only safe as long as we flutter the wings or our mouths and minds around its harmless glow. It is when our minds and hearts our still that we see that our hearts are empty, broken, and scared and that truth is not a fun thing that we tell others but something that wants you and it wants you dead. It is in stillness that the games are over and the we hear the real threats of truth. God is no longer “good”, that is simply like being nice. Now He is actually “better”, that is better than me and the cost of this realization is the death of my prized pride. Any magazine on any rack will tell you that the loss of your pride is the loss of your life. We have to keep that at all costs. We can’t be truly still. And if we are still we have to be still before something smaller than us, not bigger, not better, and surely not the Almighty. The Almighty is no candle that we are fluttering around, it is the raging consuming bonfire that wants you and your everything. He is not “nice” He is “better.”

These Life Moments of self and God exposure will not bear their fruit in the safety of the abstract. They will live where life always takes place, in the real world, the world that God made where now men sweat and smile and stink. Life Moments take place in moments of honest, still, exposure in solitude and community. Life itself however only follows these Life Moments in true Obedience.

We have misunderstood our brother Paul when he said that we are not saved by works. We have thought that he meant either that actions have no relationship whatsoever with Life (“salvation”) or that at most these actions are Life only in the sense of some sequentially subsequent result. They are not the cause of Life they are the result of Life, we have thought. I will follow in hesitating to use any person, thing, or word as the ultimate cause of any good thing besides God Himself. (We have skipped one idea that we should think of and that is that the actions are the Life itself in part.) What I want to think of is that we have made a false choice and that is that the concrete actions of obedience are not of course the ultimate cause (God) but the immediate cause of life. I mean by this, if nothing else, the context of receiving life.

We have, as evangelicals, made the context of receiving life an abstract mental transaction. We ask “Jesus in our heart” or whisper some other canned words and then tally an extra person in our copy of the Lambs Book of Life. We insist that this has nothing to do with “doing anything”. It can’t because doing something is a work and a work doesn’t save. We have one slight inconvenience and that is that we must snip (without using scissors) most of the book of James and flush it down our theological toilets, but this is no problem really. We are good at that. The problem is that we, in fact have to flush much more than James, we have to flush most of the rest of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the teachings and examples of Christ. Our theological toilets are now clogged and we have a mess on our hands. We have forgotten, with the Gnostics the very first verse of the Bible, that God made the world. God made not only dirt and trees but skin, muscle, bone, and even brain chemicals. God put his breath inside a real human body and we have tried desperately to remove it again. James pics two of countless expameles, and tells us that Abraham found Life only when with his son in his shadow and a knife in his hand he lifted his real arm into the real sky. Rahab found Life only when she hit real men in her real home and risked her families very real lives. And “by works faith was perfected.” What perfected what? Concrete, real works perfected faith, not visa versa.

I believe that James’ “works” have the same referent as Paul’s “obedience.” Obedience (James’ “works”) is the raising of Christ and lowering of self through the concrete performance of faith in action. What Paul means by “works” is the externally similar, internal opposite of raising of self, forgetting about the Living God entirely through some concrete action and then passing it off as “obedience” in the game world. You obey because you don’t believe in yourself anymore and you believe in the real God. You work because you believe in yourself (or am trying to) and you think God is a plastic coin or a glossy card in a deck of 52. Jesus’ gospel was always in the concrete of the life and heart of the individual. Because no two individuals are the same he never preached the same message. Tracks and canned messages work, though not well in the abstract world, but in the concrete world of the individual, where the individual is really just that, the gospel always looks as different as the face it is being preached to. Not to say that it is totally relative. Faces are not totally relative. They may not always have the same size nose or always have freckles but they always have a nose and they never have legs. So the evangelical is entirely threatened by Jesus’ message to the Rich Kid that his “prayer” should be an estate sale before his death. And yet, that’s just it, it wouldn’t have been before his death at all, it would have been his death itself. Even the ten commandments to that man were just a rubber knife that had never really threatened him. Jesus’ simple, short command was a razor sharp blade and only faith could take it as the saving blade of the surgeon and not the sword of an enemy.
It is my contention that our abstract gospel is only valuable on the evangelical monopoly board and not in the concrete world where souls are simultaneously trying desperately to grasp God and run from his aweful living presence. We have made up prayers and forgotten Baptism. In some cultures this thing called Baptism is still as scary as suicide and as important as birth but in the West it has become a harmless bulletin insertion between the offering and the special music.

But I never meant to talk about Life Moments and Life as simply a one time transaction, anymore than Life itself is one moments deal. Life is a process, a series of lives that are a second long each. We must choose whether to anesthetize our souls with words running from solitude and community so that we might escape both ourselves and ultimately God. We are in the end, nothing less than chickens. We don’t have the guts to still our minds enough to become real for just a second, and let God be real to us, take a deep breath, and tell him that we will do whatever he wants, and then in that magic grace actually do it.

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Just thoughts.

I went to Park Cities Presbyterian Church for the first time today with Blake. I think I got the full dose of Presbyterianism. They had 3 infant baptisms, AND it was Communion Sunday. I’m not sold, but only because I’m trying to remain a little removed until I get to check out some other stuff. Reese and I had some good talks about what we’re looking for in churches. It was a good Sunday though. I had lunch with other single people, and then came home.

Dinner was a little earlier with some faculty members. It was interesting. Those who know me well know that I’m not naturally the most outgoing or gregarious person, and so I’m not usually the one starting conversations, throwing topics out there, or whatever, but if there’s a conversation, I enjoy being a part of it. However, at my table at this dinner, I was the one throwing out the softball questions, only to see the momentum of the conversation flutter away, and disappear, like bubbles on a really windy day. I kinda gave up after a while. I don’t know if the group I was eating with just had no chemistry or what, but it was kinda hard to get anything going.

There were some fun people that I met on Saturday at FunFest and the party at the house. I like my class.

Disturbing theology:
Two-covenant theology – not a recent development, but disturbing nonetheless (from the SFC BBS)

Just thoughts.

I’m in the Big D! And I’m barely ready to start school. If you can call it ready. I still have several boxes to unpack, some clothes to hang up/organize, and just a general smattering of STUFF to do. And classes start Tuesday. Crazy!

Just thoughts.