I went to see "Expelled" tonight with my friend George. There was a lot more they could have said about Intelligent Design itself, but their focus was more on the conflict between the "scientific establishment" and those trying to gain a hearing for ID. The connection they made between Darwin and Hitler (and then with today's scientific establishment) was rather chilling, and led me to think more about the possible spiritual aspects to this conflict.

The ID controversy is similar in a number of ways to the other major point of scientific controversy today, that of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In both cases, the scientific establishment is adamant that the point is settled in their favor and that it is an affront even to question the "scientific consensus." Anyone who does question the consensus is assumed to have an ulterior motive, either religious or commercial, and is dismissed without serious consideration. The mainstream media has taken the side of the establishment in both cases and generally refuses to seriously investigate either the tactics that the establishment uses to defend its position or the legitimacy of the arguments uses to put forward dissenting views. How is it, I wondered, that the same sort of battle has developed around these two particular issues? Could these issues be manifestations of a single deeper spiritual purpose that could account for the similarity of these reactions?

One of the points that Expelled clearly made was that Darwinian thought has provided justification for people pursuing dehumanizing thoughts and behaviors. The principle of "survival of the fittest" nurtured Hitler's efforts to destroy the Jews and create of the German people a superior race. The conviction that human beings are simply highly evolved animals has allowed Darwin and others since him to conveniently hold the conviction that it was ok to treat human beings as a farmer would treat animals; breeding those who seemed likely to produce desirable offspring and killing off those whose cost to society exceeds their perceived value. On the other hand, AGW has justified a kind of hatred of technically advanced human beings as destroyers of the world. The more advanced the society, the larger its "carbon footprint" and therefore the more it is to be hated because of its perceived contribution to a pending global catastrophe.

The combined effect of these two theories is to make both weak and strong human beings liable to destruction. Darwinian survival of the fitness will ensure that the weak (including the unborn and the elderly) will be killed off, while AGW will ensure that the strong get hamstrung to reduce their carbon footprint. When these two ideologies have done their work, only the middle will be left. Since the middle will have its weaker and stronger members as well, they too will be destroyed in time. Left unchecked, these forces will destroy humanity.

This looks very much like spiritual warfare to me. If so, a victory in either of these areas will require combat in the spiritual arena. The Christian conviction of the dignity of all human beings as bearers of the image of God and stewards of the world is under serious assault by both of these movements and we must take up our spiritual weapons to defend this conviction, or else we may find ourselves losing the benefits that Christianity has brought to western civilization.

Satan's strategy.

A thought from the preacher at my church this morning: when we are unbelievers, Satan bends his energies to make sure that we think that we are good enough already and don't need anyone to redeem us; once we are believers, Satan's goal is to make us think that we're not good enough to represent our faith to anyone else. Interesting, isn't it...

That pent up desire.

I was asked this last week by a co-worker if, when one became a Christian, we could hope that our bad desires would disappear, or whether our best hope was to jam them down inside and keep them caged as best we could for the rest of our lives, only expecting them to disappear when we were raised into new life in heaven. This question probed me deeply, because that has been exactly my strategy for dealing with a lot of my desires over the years, and it has worked poorly at best, causing me stomach problems, loss of sleep, headaches, and other problems. What are we to do with desires that won't go away and we dare not let out?

When I think about the dynamics of sin, I find it helpful to look at Genesis 3:1-6, which is probably the finest short exposition of how sin works there is. The passage reads as follows:

3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate (ESV).

There's a lot that can be said about this passage, but for now it's good just to notice that the serpent made God out to be a liar who was depriving Eve of what was rightfully hers and would benefit her greatly if she had it. Once Eve believed this about God the outcome was obvious; she would take the fruit, just as I would have had I been in her place.

In fact this is how I justify much of my sin today; by telling myself that God is wrong to have forbidden what he did, that I'm entitled to have it and that it will greatly benefit me (or others, if I flatter myself into believing that I'm altruistic). As a result, I grab what I want, despite God's prohibition. Or, if I am too weak or afraid to impose my will on the situation in which I find myself, I don't grab what I want, but I harbor in my heart a deep resentment against God for placing me in a situation which prevents me from having what I need and deserve.

What happens when I become a Christian? Hopefully I am less prone to claim that God is wrong when he forbids things that I want and more likely to believe that some (at least) of my desires for things may be wrong. But I still encounter things that God appears to be forbidding (or at least refusing to make possible) that are (to my eyes at least) manifestly good or even necessary. What do I do with these?

In C. S. Lewis's allegory The Pilgrim's Regress the main character John asks the heroic lady Reason what would happen "if a man wanted to know [something] so badly that he would die unless the question was decided --- and no more evidence turned up." Reason's answer was simple; "[t]hen he would die, that would be all." Is it possible that if I were to ask God what would happen if I encountered something that I urgently needed and could not get, that he would also answer me "then you would die, that would be all?" Is fatalism the answer to possible disappointment?

I don't think that God wants us to stop caring or to stop striving for what is good or to stop petitioning him to give us what we and others manifestly need. But I need to remember that if God chooses not to give what is good, it is not because he is indifferent to my situation. The worst that can happen to me in this life if God fails to answer my prayer is that I die - and then I go to heaven. I may not get the job I want or my family may not treat me well or society may make terrible choices, but in the end we all die, and what happens then? Do I really believe that God has done in Christ all that needs to be done to make good the suffering and evil in my life and in the lives of those I love, even this present suffering that I find so intolerable?

If I don't really believe this, then I will find myself furious at God for allowing this evil, convinced that nothing can justify the suffering I now endure. But if I look at the cross, I sometimes realize that maybe there are reasons why God permits unjust suffering, and that if I or someone I love finds ourselves in that position we are in good company. And that realization may help the inner urges to subside, if I realize that if they're not satisfied "I'll just die," and that that's not such a bad thing.

Truth Project

Our Grace group (home fellowship group) just saw the first lesson from The Truth Project. I was impressed at the radical argument this study makes; that in Jesus Christ we see the truth about everything that exists and that the root of all evil in the world is that we prefer to believe a lie rather than the truth.

You can't simply get the DVDs for this series and study them on your own, but it's well worth it if you can join a group that is going through this study. The people who put out this series want to change your life, and it looks like, for me at least, they might have a chance to do just that.

Back again... experience with a homeless woman

The example of some friends has prompted me to start blogging a little again after almost two years away from it. I don't expect a big audience, but perhaps a few people will find it interesting, and if it's a choice between writing something to post and solving my 95th game of Sudoku, I think this is the better alternative.

An experience my wife and I had trying to help a homeless woman told me something about my own faith. We spent a number of days paying for a motel room for her while looking for resources in my neighborhood that might help her. Unfortunately none of the resources we identified met her exacting requirements, so in the end we had to stop and say that we had nothing to offer her. She was furious and called us a bunch of hypocrites who were a blot on the church.

We were rather angry at her behavior, but when I stopped to consider how often I do that kind of thing to God, I realized that this woman was only acting out in a different context what I do quite frequently in a more socially respectable fashion. I commonly go to God asking for help with strings attached. God must deliver His assistance in a way that does nothing to undermine my self-confidence, my comfort level, my social status and anything else I hold dear. When God offers his assistance (perhaps with instructions to apologize to my son or fast for a day), I am offended - this wasn't the sort of help I wanted at all; how dare He call Himself a loving God if he doesn't give me what I need in a way that meets my requirements.

Unfortunately, just as was true for the homeless woman, the requirements I set down for God's assistance are frequently the cause of my problem in the first place and are incompatible with its resolution. It was my self-confidence that got me in trouble with my son and created the situation where I needed to apologize to him. It was my slavery to food that caused my heartburn and lost for me most of a night's worth of sleep. If I go to God for help I need to set my conditions aside, for they are the very things that get me into trouble and so long as I cling to them I will remain in the trouble from which I am demanding deliverance.

Response to DanielR - major political issues

I've been in conversation with DanielR at the Daily Episcopalian regarding the different perspectives of liberal and conservative Christians on major political issues. For some reason I've been unable to post my latest response to him on that site, so I'm putting it up here for him to see if he's interested:

Daniel, I'm impressed. I was thinking that there wasn't much more we were going to be able to say to each other, but you substantially altered the tone of the discussion and now there's lots of room to keep talking.

I think that a large part of our disagreement stems from different perspectives on the unborn child and what is done when a woman has an abortion. You say abortion is a tragedy. How big a tragedy is it? What would you honestly compare it to, and what would you say is the magnitude of the loss resulting from having an abortion? When we have clearly answered this question, it will be easier to say what Jesus would do when presented with the option of having a young girl have an abortion.

Regarding your concern for the woman who's been raped, it is also worth looking at the side of the child conceived by the rape. Here's a story of one at least who's glad she wasn't aborted: http://www.righttoliferoch.org/nforgotten.htm, and here's the organization she founded: http://www.stigmatized.org/information.htm

You say that you are not for unlimited unrestricted on-demand abortion, but that is in fact what the courts have required since Roe v. Wade. Would you be willing to see the Supreme Court rescinded Roe v. Wade and turn the responsibility for this decision back to the states? This would allow those states where public opinion runs strongly against abortion to pass laws like those of South Dakota, while permitting those states which support the current status quo to pass laws allowing minors to have abortions without their parents' knowledge or consent. As you've noted, this may not completely please the absolutists, but they would certainly be happier than they are now and they'd be free if they wished to continue the battle for the hearts and minds of individuals at the state level.

Your concern about children being unwanted or unloved has long been a standard argument for abortion, but there is no evidence that the children born since Roe v. Wade have felt more wanted or loved than they did before. If anything the trend appears to be in the opposite direction, with the evidence being that children are valued less than they were before. In some places, families with more than three children are now called "breeders" and are the objects of either pity or scorn. Under such circumstances we will certainly find it more difficult both to encourage women to keep children they would otherwise have aborted or to find people who are willing to adopt the children women cannot raise on their own. This is another reason why decisions on what laws to pass regarding abortion should be left to the states rather than enforced nationally. Those states whose people place a higher value on children will be the more likely to restrict abortion, but will also have a better environment into which children can be adopted.

Regarding evolution, I would teach something like the following: "The generally accepted view among scientists today is that life arose as a result of the random combination of non-living materials and that living creatures evolved to their current level of diversity by a process of natural selection from variations caused by the random mutation of the genes of previously existing creatures. While there is no doubt that the process of evolution caused by random mutation and natural selection (RM&NS) can cause variations among organisms, some scientists are not convinced that life could have spontaneously originated from non-living materials or that it could have acquired its more complex characteristics through RM&NS alone. Some who have expressed this doubt have suggested that it is only through the intervention of some kind of intelligence that life with the kind of complexity that we now see could have come into existence." Unfortunately, efforts to include statements like this in state curricula have so far been struck down as violations of the separation of church and state.

Regarding care for the poor, my wife and I support a small denominationally based organization located in downtown Los Angeles called "Hope Again" that does case management and counselling for people who want to get off the street and learn to take care of themselves. For a fraction of the cost of welfare, they have helped thousands of people get homes, get jobs and get their lives together again. Federal support of such organizations would doubtless be ruled a violation of the separation of church and state (and they might not want it anyhow if it meant the intrusion of federal supervision and regulation), but if I had my choice, I'd rather put my money into organizations like these than into federal programs any day. If the churches mobilize to form more organizations like these, I suspect we could do a lot more to combat systemic poverty than any number of federal programs could.

Laws like the South Dakota law against doctors performing abortions are not an intrusion into "our bedrooms and private lives," they are simply a restatement of the Hippocratic Oath (not, by the way, either a Christian or a Republican document), by which doctors have sworn for over 2000 years that they would "not give to a woman an abortive remedy" (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath_classical.html). You can do what you want in your bedroom in South Dakota, but if you don't like the results, you can't go to a doctor to "fix it."

The reason pro-life people can oppose abortion and support the death penalty at the same time is that we can tell the difference between innocent and guilty life. The unborn child is innocent of any crime, some people are guilty of crimes that are severe enough to warrant their being put to death. To say that someone could torture and murder a dozen people and not deserve the death penalty is to be guilty of an irreverance towards the lives of the victims.

The example of George W. Bush

Hugh Hewitt has a lovely post on the example President Bush sets for us in dealing with our critics and the critics of the New Orleans disaster recovery. It would be wonderful if we could follow it.

The God Who loves diversity - 1 Corinthians 12

In our weekly Bible study (which I haven't posted in a few months now), we've been studying 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul teaches about spiritual gifts. Two of the things that became really visible to me as we studied were how much God loves diversity, and how He intends for the diversity in His church to be a source of blessing for His people.

God's love for diversity is clearly shown in the two lists Paul gives of the gifts that God has given his people. While the lists overlap, they are by no means the same, which indicates that rather than being exhaustive lists of the spiritual gifts, they are representative of a potentially much larger group of the gifts God gives. God has a vast and diverse array of gifts He means to give to His people, according to His purposes for them and their needs in the particular time and place in which they find themselves. While the focus is on the powerful and spectacular gifts which so entranced the Corinthians, Paul also hints that some of these gifts are not ones we would desire to have in his discussion of how the human body fits together. In verse 23, he makes reference to parts of the body that are less presentable and require more modesty and yet are still essential parts of who we are. Given the force of the analogy with the church, it seems reasonable to believe that God also gifts the church in the same way, with people who are less presentable and require more modesty, and yet are inseparable from what He means His church to be. God likes not only those in our midst who are spectacular and beautiful but also those who are weak and unimpressive, and He's glad for part each of us contributes to the body of Christ.

We, on the other hand, prefer the prominent gifts, and perhaps with some justification, as Paul himself told us to eagerly seek the greater gifts. But the greater gifts are to be sought not because of the added luster they give to us individually, but because of the blessing they give to the body as a whole. The Corinthians were notorious for the factionalism and their tendency to push the envelope of their spiritual freedoms, both of which were rooted in a desire to gain personal prominence and power. Thus they sought gifts like tongues because such gifts made it unmistakable that God was speaking through them even if no one had any clue what He was saying. But God wants us to use our diverse gifts to bring diverse blessings to others because our needs as a body are diverse. We need not only teaching, but also encouragement, not just good leaders, but also faithful followers, not only people with great faith, but also people with only a little faith who provide the strong with an opportunity to use their strength to bless those in need.

This is rather different from many churches today, where homogeneity is considered a strength and personal weaknesses are kept carefully hidden so as not to be a source of embarrassment. But from what Paul says, these churches are actually rather ugly in God's sight, sort of like a gigantic eye with no body to support it, or a torso with a hand and an ear attached to it. While homogeneity may promote efficiency and make it easy for everyone to get along, God seems to prefer a diversity that forces us to move out of our comfort zones and be stretched to bless people who are very different from us, and perhaps even to receive a blessing from them in return. Where we tend to prefer age-segregated adult fellowship groups and would rather keep the disabled and handicapped in "their own place" if we allow them at all, God would rather we bring college students, grandparents, middle-aged homemakers and those on wheelchairs or with speach impediments all together in a diverse group of people who love Jesus. I've seen this diversity in my church, and God uses it in unexpected ways to make something very beautiful.

Technology and the church

My #1 son and I were looking at some computer software designed for churches, and we found ourselves rather bemused by some of the capabilities of the software. You can, for example, create sophisticated personalized letters for bulk mailings and photo id badges for church members that make it easy for church staff to call people by name and can be scanned to record the member's attendance.

One possible use of these features is to make it easier for the staff of a large church to create for people the illusion that they are connected to the leadership. It's comforting to be addressed by first name and to receive letters that contain personal information rather than being simply addressed to "Occupant." And it can be nice to have someone say "we missed you on Sunday" even if they only knew about your absence because you didn't get your badge scanned.

But we need to more than just an illusion of connection, we need to actually be connected to each other, and that's a much more difficult challenge. When the time comes that we encounter strains in our lives and need someone to talk to, what we really want is not simply to talk to a pastor whose only knowledge of us is the information he's reading from his computer screen as we talk. But people have only a limited amount of time for each other and a limited capacity for meaningful relationships, so pastors can very quickly reach the point where they simply can't keep in touch with any more people in a meaningful way. What churches really need from technology is not simply assistance in creating the illusion that people are connected to each other but help in actually connecting people. Software that can effectively help us to identify people who are inadequately connected and to bring them in contact with others who have open capacity for relationships would help churches to take a step towards creating real Christian fellowship within the community.

Unintended consequences of war

The Belmont Club has a fascinating comment on how the rush to get a technological edge on our enemy has unintended consequences that, for better or worse, we have to live with.

Thirteen numbers that tell about George Bush - part 3

Here are the last of the numbers that the Democratic Party believes say something about George Bush. Some of these are guesswork, some are of uncertain interpretation, and none of them in my opinion say anything particularly bad about a man who is a better president than his opponents give him credit for being.

Here are points 9-13 (see below for the others):

9. 5 million - the increase in the number of people who have no health insurance since George Bush took office.
“One of the groups with the greatest risk of being uninsured is non-citizen immigrants; almost half (45.3 percent) were uninsured in 2003.” A better policy for dealing with illegal immigrants would greatly reduce this figure, and would go far to dealing with many other healthcare issues.

10. 20,000 - the number of premature deaths annually resulting from the Republican gutting of the Clean Air Act
This number is not easily proven and needs to be considered against other projections, such as the number of people who would die early because of the loss of healthcare because of their unemployment as a result of their employer’s being forced out of business by the expenses of implementing the Clean Air Act as it now stands. Some of the rationale for President Bush’s Clear Skies act are here. The act will result in more than 60% reduction in major pollutants from current levels - perhaps not as much as the Clean Air Act would have, but a lot nevertheless, and perhaps as much as we can afford.

11. $400 million - ho w much the Bush administration wants to slash the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency.
As documented here, this is a 6% reduction in the budget and reflects reductions in the spending on water cleanup. Other areas of the agency’s budget are increased.

12. 3 - the multiple by which North Korea has increased its nuclear weapons arsenal while George Bush has lead us into Iraq.
I would have thought that the Democratic party would have expected this to be an issue for the United Nations to address, just as it is addressing Iran’s nuclear weapons development plans.

13. 0 - the number of mistakes George Bush admits to making in his first term.
It’s not clear why this should be a surprise.

Thirteen numbers that tell about George Bush - part 2

More on the numbers relating to President Bush (see the previous list for more information on where these came from). I've learned a lot from this exercise, both about how numbers need to be taken in context and how an awful lot depends on whether you trust the sources providing you with the numbers. Here are numbers 5-8 of the list:

5. $236 billion - the surplus Bill Clinton left George Bush
This followed the huge dot-com boom and was diminishing rapidly during the last year of Clinton’s term due to the impending collapse of the boom..

6. $333 billion - the current deficit under George Bush
On the heels of 9/11, the dot-com bust, and Operation Iraqi freedom, this is not a terribly surprising number. As a percentage of the GDP, the federal debt is been smaller under President Bush than it had been at any time between 1998 and 1999.

7. 800,000 - the net loss of jobs in George Bush’s first term
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total number of civilians employed increased from 137.8 million to 140.2 million between January 2001 and January 2004, a growth of just under 2.5 million jobs, and this despite both 9/11 and the dot-com bust. Unemployment levels are now the same as they were during President Clinton’s first term, which is a better base of comparison than his second term when they were artificially deflated by the dot-com boom.

8. $13.1 billion - how much George Bush has underfunded the No Child Left Behind Act.
See here for some rebuttals to this accusation. Education is getting funded at a remarkable level in this country (about $10,000 per pupil from all sources in California, for example) with no real proof that the additional funds are providing a commensurate improvement in educational quality. We need to concentrate on using existing funds more productively before looking at increasing funding further.

Thirteen numbers that tell about George Bush - part 1

The Democratic party recently distributed a fund-raising letter in which it listed thirteen numbers that “tell how poorly George Bush and the Republican Congress have served America.” At first glance, these numbers look serious, but when we look a little deeper they loose much of their force against the President, and in some cases highlight how well he has actually done his job. I’ll post these questions in a couple of chunks together with a brief analysis of why these numbers do not make the point the party leaders apparently think they do.

Numbers 1-4:

1. 1766 - number of American soldiers killed in Iraq as of July 18, 2005
This works out to about 61 casualties per month or two per day. For a war of this magnitude, this level of casualties would seem to be remarkably low. At this rate it would take over seventy years to reach the number of casualties suffered in the Vietnam war (58,226) .

2. $181 billion - spent on the Iraq as of July 18, 2005.
Operation Desert Storm cost $61 billion for about 100 days of combat. Iraqi Freedom cost three times that much for almost ten times a long a period, or one third as much to sustain over a much larger front.

3. 0 - number of weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq
While fear of WMDs was one justification for the war, war was authorized for many other reasons, including Saddam’s support for terrorism and violation of numerous United Nations resolutions. The unanimous opinion at the time was that Saddam had WMDs (even his own generals thought so). If he did have them, he also had plenty of opportunity to get rid of them or convert them to peaceful uses (e.g. fertilizer plants) before we invaded. For all we know they may still be hidden out there, since we’re still discovering new weapons caches every day.

4. $98 billion - how much George Bush has underfunded first responders since 9/11
As of early 2004 (see here) only $1.1 billion of the $6.3 billion allocated for first responders under the Homeland Security grant program had actually been spent. It is difficult to see how we could usefully have spent almost 100 times that much, or given the current budget deficit, how it would have been funded.

Not by might, nor by strength...

When I woke up this morning I found myself thinking "not by might, nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord." God said this to Jeremiah, and I believe that it is the key for me too. Nothing I do on my own propers, but if I let God lead and enable me, then good things start to happen. I found this true at work today; when I let God lead, things moved along ok but if I got distracted or my trust wavered, I started to slump. Now my hope is that tomorrow I'll wake up with the same thought, and the day after as well, until it becomes a habit and a settled conviction. Then God might finally have His way with me as I think He's intended all along.

Still alive...

My family is in a new home and we're mostly oriented to our new neighborhood. It's been a big learning experience for me, with one of the big lessons being that I need more help from more people with more things than I have been willing to admit. Admitting this is tough on my pride, which values self-sufficiency more than a lot of other things. But the effort to be sufficient to all the needs I've been encountering has threatened to make me really sick and has undermined my ability to do the things that I really should have been able to do.

With God's help I've relaxed some, reducing my expectations in some areas and getting help in others. People are graciously stepping in to help, and my stomach has stopped hurting. And I'm hoping now by God's grace to be able to start some low-key blogging, believing that He has a few things He wants me to say here.

Stay tuned...

Proclaiming enough of the gospel

Today at church, my Sunday school class was talking about what is minimally needed to be able to say that we've proclaimed the gospel. Listening to the many interesting and insightful comments, I began to realize that this is not such an easy question to answer as I'd thought. For one thing, it doesn't take much under the right circumstances for God to work in a person's heart to draw him to Himself. Often just a fragment of the gospel suffices to begin the work, even if it takes many years after that for that fragment to fully take root and bear fruit. But only rarely will we know in advance what it is that is actually needed for the transition to take place. Some of what we say that is true will be misunderstood, and some will be beyond the capacity of our listener to adequately process. And some of what is needed may be beyond our own ability to adequate explain. But we are not engaged in this process alone, for God is working in the hearts of our listeners even as we speak, and can make what we say powerful in ways we could not expect.

All of this indicates that we are not likely to be able to say that we have done all that was needed to present the gospel when we speak to someone. But some things are foundational to faith, and need to be said to people who are seriously considering the significance of Christianity or their lives. These include the following:

1. There is one God, the creator of the universe, who is different from us and cannot be fully comprehended by us.
   
2. We are born alienated from God, and cannot enjoy His company, nor He ours while we are in this state.
3. This alienation is called sin and is the cause of most of our present suffering, a suffering that will only be intensified after death unless it is remedied.
4. For us to be reconciled to God requires the intervention of God Himself; we cannot do it on our own.
5. Because He loves us, God tooke the initiative to send His Son into the world as Jesus Christ to die and be raised from the dead in order that we might be reconciled to Him.
6. We need to believe that God has accomplishedin Jesus Christ the work we need for our reconciliation and accept it as a free gift in order for it to have value for us.
7. Being reconciled to God involves a change of heart and lifestyle as we seek to live lives pleasing to Him rather than for our own purposes.
8. Being reconciled to God also involves being baptized as a tangible sign of our participation in God's purposes and becoming unified with God's people in a local church.

Not all of these things need to be said in the first five minutes of a conversation on spiritual things. Some of them may not be said for months or even years. But until all of them have been understood and accepted, the gospel has not been fully understood or accepted. Because this is often not done, many people fall away from Christianity, for they never full had Christianity in the first place.

We have our home

We have sold our current home and purchased a new one. Now comes the process of moving in, which will last at least a week. We're renting back our old home's guest house to keep a reasonable proximity to our children's schools. We'll complete the move when school is over or sooner if we decide that the longer commute (30 or so miles) is worth the effort.

I'm finding that now that all of the effort involved in buying and selling is past, I have more energy for thinking about blogging. I had underestimated how much emotional and spiritual energy I need to be able to blog, and I was just too drained over the last month to even think about it. God willing, I should be able to pick up the pace some now.

Wasting one's life.

Tonight on my way to and from the "Y" where I was exercising, I heard two separate programs on our local Christian radio station both of which urged us not to waste our lives. I think that God was giving me a warning here. I've let the stress of buying and selling a home together with frustrations about some aspects of work lure me into things that are supposed to be restful, but are really wasteful. Computer card games are one of the biggest offenders for me; they accomplish nothing, require lots of focus to do well, and leave me with neither satisfaction nor renewed energy for my other tasks. Better to go for a walk, talk with a co-worker, play with my son, read a book, wash dishes - indeed almost anything is better than losing large chunks of time to playing computer cards onto a computer screen and accumulating numbers on a computer scoreboard.

"I am the way..."

In my morning Bible study, I was reading Jesus' well known statement "I amd the way..." and asking myself "what does that really mean?" The visual image I get reading that passage is something like Jesus lying down and us walking on Him, but that doesn't seem like a good way to understand what He means. Then I thought of communion and another one of His mysterious statements, that we must eat His flesh. Perhaps the way Jesus is speaking about is the way of transformation that we follow as we take His life into our own. Jesus is the Way because it is He who changes us to become like Himself.

I don't know for certain that this is what Jesus meant, but I believe that it is closer to His meaning than my previous image.

It is good sometimes to ask yourself as you read Scripture "what does that really mean?" You may find that God is waiting there to help you see a little deeper into the truths of His Word.

Back with updates.

I'm back. Stress knocked my energy level way down, and I just couldn't find the energy to post.

One challenge has been a work related. I'm in a technical field, but the recent demands have been more for adminstrative than technical effort. My difficulty is that I'm not good at administrative stuff, and I'd frequently come home weary from filling out forms, and missing the satisfaction that the technical work frequently gives. What's more, the stakes have been raised, and people are now getting disciplined for mistakes that used to be tolerated. The stress this generated was very tiring.

Another more pleasant but still taxing effort has been putting our house up for sale and looking for a new place. The market is amazingly hot right now, and our home has hugely appreciated over the seven years we've lived there, so things look pretty good for sellers. Homes are getting snapped up almost as fast as they hit the market, so there are no houses for sale near us. After doing a lot of cleanup and some minor repair (which should have been done years ago in some cases), we put the place on the market, and within less than a week had two offers at our asking price. Right now we're in escrow with one of the buyers, having asked the other to stand by as a backup just in case.

But what helps us as a seller makes it harder as a buyer. Our first bid we made was $25,000 over asking price on a beautiful house that attracted seven other bids after being on the market less than a week. We ended up being #2 due to the contingency of the sale of our house despite the fact that we had two offers on the place. The next house we looked sold after less than two days on the market. So we have started looking at less desirable places that can meet our needs without attracting such a bidding storm.

One of the main contributors to the tremendous speed of the market is the Internet, which allows the news about a new home on the market to get to interested people with great speed. But we've realized that we cannot allow ourselves to be dragged along at such a breakneck speed because we will be totally overwhelmed by the effort needed to keep up with all the options. Instead we pray, believing that God can and will keep track of all the offers out there, that He will keep for us the home that He wants for us, and that if we simply do our best to follow His lead that He will keep us from missing the place He has for us.

This conviction has played out in some interesting ways during our search. When we first visited the house on which we made our first offer, I was immediately attracted by its beauty, but at the same time I had this inner feeling of uncertainty and darkness that I couldn't account for. Knowing my proclivity to depression, I thought that I could simply be overreacting to the stress of all the real-estate transactions we were involved in, so we went ahead and made our offer on the place. But during the following few days the darkness deepened, to the point when one day as I was driving home I was crying out to God not to let us buy the place if it wasn't what He wanted for us. So it was with a sense almost of relief that I learned that night from our realtor, a sweet woman and longtime friend, that our offer hadn't been accepted. I ended up comforting her, for she was very disappointed, and not the other way around.

This sense of God's guidance has continued to keep us through a number of other bumps in the process. We are confident that we'll our place will ultimately sell at the right time to the right people for the right amount, and that we'll be able to get into the right home when we need to for a price we'll be able to afford. So as places come and go on the market, we don't feel driven to check every one of them out, and don't fret as much if others get there first. It's not stress free, that's for sure, but I'm much more relaxed than I would be on my own. Hopefully I'll be relaxed enough during the process to have enough energy to post here on a more regular basis than I've done in the past.

God bless!