I want my rib!

Think about that for a moment.










Ok. Your moment's up. Or you were just lazy and scrolled down.

If you still haven't figured out what that meant think back to the creation story of man. Does it still not ring any bells?







If at this point you still haven't figured it out, then you're in luck because I need you to understand what the title of this blog means. Women was created from one of Adam's rib and recently I've become consumed with the idea of a future wife. It seems to be crop at times of non-busyness. When I become busy doing something, it kind of forcibly gets pushed to the background... but that's an aside.

I was listening to a sermon given by David Jeremiah on his radio show "Turning Point." You can listen to it yourself here and here. There were a lot of different themes that came up, but what stood out to me was the logic flow of the sermon. Dr. David Jeremiah preached along these lines:
We must not be convinced of the falsehood of the following statement: it is good to be single. (1 Corinthians 7:8) Why? Because you can then devote yourself to the ministry and service of the LORD, blessing those around you and being a part of what Christ is doing in the lives of others (1 Corinthians 7:32, 34).

As an addition (and I'm not sure if Dr. Jeremiah talked about this, I was cleaning my room at the same time as listening to the sermon) chapter 7 does not say that it is sinful to get married. As a matter of fact, he simply weighs the two against each other and says that he holds that is good to remain unmarried, but it is no sin to get married.

However, what Dr. Jeremiah does warn against is not to let the search for a future spouse be the all-consuming desire of your heart, for that displays a lack of faith and trust in the LORD. (note: the above was a rephrasing and interpretation of his words). He said that God has put you in the particular situation that you are in at the moment (specifically one's singleness) to use us in that state, whether it be to teach us a particular lesson, or to use us in a very specific way. By demanding that we be given a spouse we display a lack of faith that God's judgment is best. The other side of it, which he also briefly mentions, is that how can we unite in one flesh with a person when we are not ready to submit to the will of the LORD? For he also warns that much worse than the loneliness of being single is the misery of marital discord.

However, the one question that cropped up in my mind and that was not addressed by Dr. Jeremiah was the idea of men initiating the relationship with women. I have heard this idea referenced in many articles and blog posts on this subject everywhere I turn... but one thing that I realize is that all these articles have implicitly assumed that this principle is biblical and have not actually cited any passages of Scripture to defend the Scripturality of this concept (is that a word... Scripturality).

So then, how do I balance the idea that God can use me in my singleness in his service, but at the same time balancing the deep desire to develop a relationship with a women with whom I can grow spiritually with, share with, love, care for, and have children with? Where do you draw the line between becoming obsessed with this desire and trusting the LORD that your being single right now is where he wants you to be? How do I then discern when it's time to move on to a different stage in life? I definately do not think that I am built for a life of celibacy... I'm WAY too much of a romantic for that to NOT drive me insane.... oh how little faith I have.

If you never commented before, your comments would be well appreciated now, especially re: biblical references to the man leading out in the relationship.

(and btw, the idea of "I want my rib!" was actually garnered from the sermon itself where a woman wrote a rather humourous poem about how she wished some man would come and claim his rib (aka her).)

Deja vu?

Does the title of this blog ring any bells?

If you thought of the new film starring Denzel Washington, you would be correct. Alternatively, Val Kilmer also played a pretty key role in the film (he didnt show up in any of the trailers so this surprised me). The first thing I thought to myself was, "Man where did that hot stud go and leave this fat old middle aged guy behind?"

And no, the above comment should not be read as evidence that I'm becoming gay.

More interestingly than the movie (which I have to admit was somewhat of a disappointment. It left me desiring to go and watch a movie that had a really complicated plot and would make my mind do backflips trying to comprehend everything going on.... which was what I was expecting from this film. It was so... predictable... an odd charecteristic for a film that sells itself as a thriller talking about the manipulation of space time. Oh well. Wow, that was a long aside.) was the theories behind the main piece of technology in the movie, Snow White. Essentially, scientists had accidentally discovered a way to manipulate the fabric of space time so that they could look back into any point in the past to determine what was happening at that time. The situation in this film is that the scientist that had originally made this breakthrough along with many others that you do not see (the higherups if you will) were so afraid of what they had discovered that they were loath to do anything with technology other than use it as an observational tool to better understand what happened in the present (or use it as a crime solving tool.)

Denzel Washington gets all radical and demands to know whether the women they are watching is alive or not. (I'll let you decipher that one yourself. I'm not going to give away more of the film than that. As one-dimensional and unsurprising a film as I found it, it was still a pretty good story.) This leads into a discussion of various theories about time travel and the manipulatoin of the past.

Many movies have dealt with this film, but none that I have seen so far have actually juxtaposed the various "past manipulation" theories against each other as this film did. You have two MAIN theories, the rest just being offshoots or more or less extreme versions of these two main theories.

The first theory, and for lack of a better term, is the butterfly effect theory. The ACTUAL butterfly effect theory is the extremist end of this spectrum of theories, which holds that if a person were to go back into the past and change the slightest little thing (like swat a mosquito or something) that they would return to the present, only to discover that the ramifications of this one tiny little action had served to completely alter everything that happened in the future. Another film example is where this squad of hunters or something go back in time to hunt dinosaurs or something and they walk on a bed of air so as not to disturb the tiniest thing. One of the guys is scared off the bed of air by a T-rex and steps on a moth. The team returns to the "present" only to find that this guy, by killing this moth, had destroyed the parallel universe where the English languaged had developped and everyone spoke some sort of other language instead. (I think it was an Isaac Asimov short).

Personally, I think the extreme end of the above is ridiculous. It might make logical sense but it's incredibly difficult to believe that the "flutter of a butterflies wings on one end of the world will cause a hurricane on the other." (And by making logical sense, I mean that if one event were to change another and another, eventually WAY down the line you would have a divergent outcome. Think of drawing two rays that only differ by a couple of degrees. As the rays get longer and longer, the distance between them grows larger and larger. So maybe if the distance of time you were travelling was in the billions of years, then yes maybe this particular theory holds true.)

The alternate theory was dubbed the "tradionalist" theory in Deja Vu. This theory holds that the events in time are set in stone and plod ever on. What happened happened and always will happen whether you change something or not. Again, obviously this is the extreme view of things, and obviously makes little logical sense, seeing as how a tiny difference in a decision making process could lead to a drastically different outcome. What the moderate traditionalist might argue, however, is that yes you might change a tiny little thing, you might even cause some sort of significant event to happen... but by changing that one thing, you actually do not change anything and in the end, it all works out to the same ending, although the script might have been tampered with slightly.

What does Deja Vu suggest? Deja Vu actually (interestingly) suggests both theories. Again, if I told you how, I'd be ruining the movie, which I'm sure you don't want.

What do I think? First of all, let's make this clear... I don't think time travel will ever actually happen. God stopped the Tower of Babel, I'm sure he's capable of making sure that humans don't go screwing with the timeline while we still rely upon our limited understanding of where the actual interconnections with events actually take place and how those interconnections actually work. So pragmatically? I don't need to think anything because none of this will ever happen.

But because I love a good debate and I love science fiction, I would postulate that I am more of a traditionalist than anything, with some butterflist leanings (I used butterfliest to remain consistent with my own terminology.) Why? Because I believe in a God who is all knowing, controls everything that happens in this universe, and ensures that everything occurs because it will in the end work out to his penultimate plan. Although I was about to say the penultimate plan of the salvation of humankind, that would be speculating that I know what God's penultimate plan is and I refuse to do that.

If for some incomprehensible reason we do develop time travel and go back to try and correct wrongs and evils that we thought were preventable, I think that God would find a way to make sure that the results of those changes would lead us right back to where he wanted us. So what would be the point?

However, I throw in the butterfliest leanings portion because I think it makes little logical sense to hold that things would work out EXACTLY the same way as they did before. If you do something drastic in the past, clearly it will manifest itself in the present and the future. Clearly many of the decisions that I make at the very least influence the thoughts of others, which may or may not influence future actions taken by said others. It would be logically irresponsible to think that a change in the past would have no effect whatsoever on the unfoldings of time. However, it is NOT logically irresponsible to believe that those changes can be made irrelevant by the controlling hand of God, who can (and will) unfold things so that his perfect desires are met (see John Piper Desiring God.)

Do I have any biblical backing for the above? No. It was just fun to post the above because science fiction and the ensuing debates about theoretical things that have not been and may never be invented is just so awesome. And nerdy.

In 4 hours...

In one hour, I go in to write my final exam.

Three hours later I will be FINISHED FOR THE YEAR!!!!!

Three hours and 1 second later I will be seen running down the hallway screaming FREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!! (Maybe 3 hours and 10 minutes later for the requisite, "What did you put here, and what did you put there.")

Then Three hours and 15 minutes later I will be reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood prince.

Then maybe I'll get around to actually making up a serious blog post sometime this break. I know it's been quite trivial and not smart this past week. My apologies.

Why YOU should come to Winter Conference

Ok, maybe we're not ACTUALLY "Bringing Jesus back" but this video is still awesome, wonky heretical doctrine not withstanding.

YOU should come to Winter Conference (if you're from Campus for Christ and you haven't registered already. If you're not from Campus for Christ... well I don't know if you can come :P)

--Edit--

So I finally decided to take a closer listen to what they were actually saying. Ignore the bits about SF Conference, San Francisco, and North Cal. :P Clearly Canadian winter conferences is where its at.

So excited!!!

I know have full use of a laptop computer! Which means... no more paper wasting in my sociology lectures, and which also means that I'll be able to take down even better notes than before because i can type so much faster than I can write.

Sweet.

On another odd note, because this computer is equipped with Korean Windows XP, apparently Blogger knows that I'm korean and is giving me all of my option tabs in... Korean!

Geez.... now I won't know what to do if I need to do something complicated.

Back in the groove

I'm back in that studying groove... which makes me wonder why I'm blogging.

But yeah.

Wigging out here!!!!

I'm trying to study for my economics..... and it feels like someone has built a stone wall in the part of my brain that allows me to understand economic concepts, because I'm reading, and I'm not comprehending....

Stuff that I understood perfectly in lecture suddenly doesn't make sense....

I'm so dead...

John Piper

So, having heard much of John Piper and how amazingly awesome he is, I finally decided to go to Oneplace.com and search for his radio show, Desiring God Radio. I listened to the sermon that was aired on November 27th, 2006 entitled Dead to the Law, Serving in the Spirit.

Piper made the lynchpin of his sermon the question, "Why does it that the fact that we are no longer under the law make us lovers of the law instead of lawless?" Why don't we all go out and just start sinning because it doesn't apply to us anymore?

I loved Piper's explanation. He used the analogy of lover's throughout the whole sermon. As we died to the law and were redeemed by Christ's blood, we are no longer bound by the letter of the law but that we now serve "in the newness of the Spirit"(Romans 7:6). The purpose of our being freed from the law is not so that we can break it with impunity; we were freed so that we might serve Him with whom we are united (v. 4) so that we may bear fruit. We are "married" or united with Jesus. That joining together means that, fundamentally, we are changed; if we are not changed, we are not married.

Thinking about that, you can think of James, who says in 2:18 "show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do." If we are fundamentally changed in our union with Christ, then how much more can we continue in the actions loved by the world. How much more can we continue to show outward allegience to wordly temptations and successes?

So why are we not lawless? Why does becoming a Christian not give us an excuse to go and do whatever it is that we want? Because we are transformed in the newness of the Spirit, in service to God, bearing fruit for him... and one cannot do that when you continue along the path of action that you were taking before you were united.

(Just so you don't think I"m some crazy theologian, do remember that I'm sort of mulling over Piper's sermon and ideas and analyzing them in my head. Anything above there is just a restatment of the sermon. Go listen to it yourself here.)

On a funnier note, if you do go to listen to it, take note of 10:45 until about 11:15 where Piper rails on the NASB for it's not being a literal translation. His exact quote "C'mon NASB don't let me down when I need you."

It's 3:40...

I'm awake when I should be sleeping (or studying)...

I haven't even cracked my books for the last two days even though I have three exams next week...

-_- Someone come over here and slap me. Nice and hard. Then chain me to my desk until friday dec. 15th.