What do you say?

So, I had a really interesting conversation with an officemate about God and faith today. Basically, his main question was "how can I have faith in Jesus if I can't make myself believe in God?" I guess, more to the point, "how can I avoid hell if I can't make myself believe in God?" He is philosophizing, in some sense, but it's an interesting question. How does someone come to believe in God, or even a god? Now, this particular guy is looking for God to drop a billboard on him and answer all his questions. He agreed with me when I say that you can't prove God (although, in Spiegel's words, it may be rationally obligatory to believe in God), so then where do you go in the conversation from there? I told him that just because he's "prayed" before, doesn't mean God is going to answer him in an auditory voice. I have never heard God speak, but I have experienced Him in so many other ways (from dreams to speaking in tongues to a strong sense of peace to...). He seemed to think that not actually hearing God speak is a pretty big indication against His existence--he wants concrete evidence. Now, most likely, God is not going to give you some evidence where the only possible explanation is God (ie. the proverbial billboard from the sky), but how do you explain seeing God in all these other ways? How do you explain that to someone who would eagerly and quickly search for a more naturalistic explanatin for anything that would happen? At times he seems so receptive, and at others he seems completely against it.

I haven't prayed about this or anything yet, just kind of organizing my thoughts, so you get my mess. Enjoy!

Fear the Big Ten

6th RPI conference my foot--fear the Big Ten and their mad basketball skills. Tieing the "all-powerful" ACC with 3 Sweet Sixteen teams, the only conference with more than one team in the Elite Eight (we had 3), and now two teams in the Final Four. Makes you wonder why the fourth team in the Big Ten standings didn't make the tournament...

So, speaking of good weekends, I had a great time with the Woodrum ladies--thank you for letting the bum and me crash your weekend together for a few hours. Of course, when you spend all Saturday in Indy, and Sunday is full of basketball and the whole "resurrection" thing, it makes it hard to get much math done. But, which of those activities you going to replace?

Bonus points for the best use of the word "man-cute" in any comments. :)

I am not as strong as I think I am

I am not as strong as I think I am. How do I know this? I just spent a weekend with a couple of my closest friends. I felt completely comfortable, completely natural, completely at home. It was just like the Church is supposed to act together. We had fun, and there was very little temptation or even thought about sin. Then I come back to Bloomington. I go to work in an office full of talk of sex, drinking, and making fun of each other. So what do I do? I crawl into myself, and very quickly enter into my officemates train of thought. I am crude, stupid, and mean. They probably don't even notice, but I do. It's night and day from what I consider the real me I saw this weekend. So how did I fall into this fake me so quickly upon returning back to Bloomington? I do it myself. I rely on my own strength. I'm a super-Christian--I'm going to walk into that office and change everyone into super-Christians with me.

"...live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature." Gal. 5:16

"because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death." Rom. 8:2

I don't think I've done a very good job of not gratifying the desires of my sinful nature, so the mathematician in me says I'm not going a good job of living by the Spirit. And clearly, said Spirit has set me free from that very sinful nature.

The past day or two, God has put on my heart a phrase that was (one of many things) prayed over me when I was leaving Covenant (my church at Taylor) around graduation time. The phrase is "God will equip you to obey." It's not a lack of right and wrong on my part. It's not a lack of ability--God has "furnished me with the qualities necessary for performance" (dictionary definition of equip). So what am I doing? I'm not taking advantage of God. I'm using my abilities, and doing things on my strength, instead of relying on Him. Starting my day off with Him. Listening to Him instead of my officemates. Letting Him permeate my being. Forget about being a super-Christian and worry about what God wants for me right now.

In some sense, I'm sure I'm being too hard on myself, and needlessly so. To an outside observor, they might not notice any difference. But in another sense, I'm probably not being hard enough. I'm not dealing with an outside observor, but the Sovereign Creator of all. The worst thing that can happen is to get to heaven and hear Him say, "I knew you not." While I'm not completely worried about that, I also don't want Him to say, "I gave you ten talents, and you used two of them but buried the other eight." Or even all ten.

Just another step in the process of "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matt. 5:48

Yeah for friends!

There's something special about a group of people who can just sit around a table, in a restaurant, and have fun for over two hours after all the food has been eaten. Thank you Dave, Tara, Matt, and Kim for an evening full of craziness where absolutely nothing got accomplished or discussed except for the magnetic properties of knives and refrigerator calendars.

As a bonus, my 0-for-my life streak in Settler's of Catan is officially over with--not one--but two victories over the weekend. Fear my mad Settler skills! Word.

How are you doing?

So, a few weeks ago, I was posed with an interesting question, so I was curious as to other's thoughts towards an answer. When people ask you "how are you doing?", why is it that more often than not people will answer "not bad." Now, I tend to pause and then say "alright" or "I'm getting by", but at this particular time I answered "not bad." The asker then asked, "Why does it seem like we (as humans/Americans/etc.) always compare things to something negative instead of something positive?" My first inclination was to get defensive and say, "well, that's not how I usually respond," but before I could figure a way to say that smoothly without looking like a total moron, I started to think about the question. I think it's a really good question. I realize people just say it without thinking, but what does it reflect that that even entered the stage of "meaningless jargon"? Is it a competitive thing--we want to be better than someone? Or are we so insecure in who we are that we have to say something about what we are not, instead of saying something actually about us? Just the use of a negative seems a priori worse than something without a negative....
So, does anybody have any thoughts? This is kind of a "give me your thoughts" entry, so we'll see if anyone besides Dave actually reads this thing. :)

The Best Day of the Year

For those of you not in the know, today was the first day of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, which means basketball games all day long! Woohoo! So far, my bracket is 7 for 8, a my one loss was not supposed to advance, so we're good so far. And yes, that includes the beautiful pick of the 12 seed UW-Milwaukee knocking off Alabama. Plus, I'm probably going to go out for a run soon, since I want to get back in shape (and what better way to gain weight than to do a lot of running, right?). Running always makes the day better. We'll see if I can continue running once the school year starts...I always feel better and sleep better when I run during the day, not to mention I'm better able to focus, but finding the time to run is difficult when the best times to run I'm in the office.
As you can see by the complete lack of content in my post, not a lot is going on right now. And since IU's basketball team disgraced the name of Indiana last night, I can't talk about them much. So, until I have some real to say...

Go Glenn!

John Glenn High School has made it to the semi-state of Class 2A basketball--the final four! Let's hear it for the Falcons!!! So next Saturday, Shawn's plans have more or less been set down. If we're lucky, the games will be in Huntington, which is right on the way to PJ's. Hmm....pizza, basketball, and the lake. Does it get any better?

Why?

Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh
was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment
me so I would not exalt myself. (2 Cor. 12:7)

Why do we sin? Paul struggled with his sin, and I certainly have areas of sin in my life that I do a poor job of combating. But what is the appeal of sin? Is one moment of rage, or excitement, or material possession really so important? The feeling of comfort, of being love, of power, when I spend time with God is amazing. Starting my day with God, really worshipping Him, really praying to Him, makes the entire day go. It's night and day what happens between the days I spend with God and those that I don't. It's an amazing feeling going to bed at the end of a day knowing you have been productive, you've served God, and you've heard His voice. And yet, I sin. I mess up that relationship, that communion. For a cheap thrill. For a minute to blow of some steam. For an intimacy that measures up so poorly with that you get from God it's hardly worth mentioning. Why? It doesn't make sense.

Even crazier, God keeps pulling us back to Him. He desires that communion even more than we do. He never leaves us, even when we do the inexplicable--we sin. He blatantly run away from that communion. There's no point in being coy--we know what's at stake. And we run. From the ever-present, sovereign Lord. And what does He do? He pulls us back to Him. He keeps working on us, helping us become less and less succeptible to our own stupidness, so the communion that He--and we (usually)--want actually comes to pass. And blossoms. And is even greater than we ever imagined.

I've kind of run out of steam and don't know where I'm going with this. Why do I sin? Why do I do things that are explicitly against what I want, and make it harder for me to get this awesome communion with the Creator of the universe. I don't know. I can't answer that. But it is comforting to know that God wants that communion more than me, and He doesn't take "no" for an answer.

The Bum is Naggin'

So, apparently when you have one of these things, it's important to actually write things...what's up with that? It's not like I don't have a take-home final due tomorrow. Oh wait, I don't have a take-home due tomorrow. Unfortunately (in my opinion), the due date of the exam was pushed back. I say it's unfortunate for multiple reasons. First, it would be great to be over and done with the stupid thing. It's in my logic class, which I'm only trying to get a B- in to get credit for it. :) The fact that I only have about 65% of it done is irrelevant. To be perfectly honest, of the 4 of us in the class, I think I was three times more done than two of them. Which leads to the second reason to get it done: if we turn it in tomorrow, I won't have a ton finished, but it's more than others, so I look good relatively. But more than anything else, I don't want to have a take-home weighing over me during spring break. I'll probably do very very little of it after this weekend anyway, but it would have been nice to completely forget about it already. Anyway, I am really looking forward to break. It will be good get away from math a little bit (for a few days, but I do need to review some algebraic geometry). Plus, I get to see my family for a few days, and hopefully visit some friends. I miss my friends a lot. My friends here in Bloomington are cool, but there's something different about good, solid, quality, Christian friends. There's such a deeper connection there between brothers in Christ, it's so amazing. You don't always notice it until you around an office talking about and the latest drunken debauchery. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the intelligentsia of America is here in Bloomington, getting drunk and (to avoid getting to graphic) do things that drunk people do. I talked on the phone for Jen (Lewchuk) a couple weeks ago for about an hour, and a half hour into it she could tell I was a little lonely. That's how cool it is to have close, great friends. :) Anyway, after spending a lot of the past year going all over the place for church and whatnot (ie. Muncie), I think I'm going to make a lot more of an emphasis on going to ECC here in Bloomington and trying to establish some good, solid, Christian friends here. I don't expect them to become like my Taylor friends, but I need good Christian friends that I can hang out with here, get support from, watch VeggieTales with, pray with, things brothers and sisters in Christ do together. Anyway, this has turned into an essay. Sorry about that. No, actually I'm not. I'm doing this as much for me as anyone else...sort of let me sort out my thoughts and stuff like that. Until I get a girlfriend to listen to all of my rants and raves, the internet gets to take brunt of it--to the benefit (or harm, for that matter) of the reader. :) Ok, no more "being single" comments. Promise.

Here we go....

Yeah, so I really don't have that much time to do this, but we'll see what happens. I'm only starting it so I could post something on Tara's page, but we'll see what happens. I just said that. I'll probably say it again sometime before this mindless drivel comes to an end. Who knows? We'll see what happens. Told ya'. It feels like an "oh look, there goes one now" type of moment, but how do you do a Junior Asparagus voice with text? Obviously, we are getting to the point when Shawn needs to go to bed, because he's losing it. Ok, "losing" may not be the right tense, but the main idea is that Shawn has cracked. Probably his spleen. Cracking a spleen would probably hurt. A lot. Guess I dodged one there, then, didn't I? Lucky me. Maybe I can actually write an entire sentence before inserting a period. But probably not. Seems like a pretty shaky bet to make. I would have to call. Or reraise. Not all in, but definitely a big raise. I really need to go before the voices in my head start telling me to do things instead of simply insulting me and discussing the status of the color fuschia and its socio-political impacts in the nation of Ghana. Is Ghana even a nation anymore? I used to know....