The Love of God: Chapter 1

The love of God. How many of us actually take a minute and think about what that really means? Sure we've heard it said a million times in church and youth group, but do we really, really know what it means? Over the next week or so, I'll post about the different parts of God's love I've encountered, and hopefully He will reveal to you what His love means too. :)

Most of you remember the old story from Sunday School about Jesus telling Peter to go fishing and the first fish he caught would have a 4-drachma coin. He told Peter to take this coin and give it to the tax collectors for His tax and Peter's.

God directed me to this passage today. But instead of the usual passage I was given the verses before it. Here is what I read in Matthew 17: 25-26, 25 "When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. "What do you think, Simon?" he asked. "From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and tax-from their own sons or from others?" 26 "From others," Peter answered. "Then the sons are exempt," Jesus said to him. Then it hit me like a brick what Jesus meant by this statement. He was trying to show Peter that sons of God (the ultimate king) are exempt as well from the taxes or death we deserve, through forgiveness.

Sometimes it's so hard to believe that. There are many days where I feel like quitting. "God can possibly care anymore, I've screwed up WAY too many times," I whisper to myself. But God still considers us His loved ones and keeps forgiving us, no matter what we do or where we go. God says in His word, "Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God." That means NOTHING!!!! Not what you've done in your past, not what your doing right now, not what your afraid you will do. Nothing can separate you from His love. No matter what your faults are, He can and will cover them with His cleansing blood and with His forgiveness. Just ask Him. That's all He wants is a willing heart. He doesn't want a perfect person, He just wants your love. :)

So next time the enemy pulls you down and tells you that God can't possibly love you, remember the story of the 4-drachma coin, and remember that You are covered with His forgiveness. :)

Blessings! and always praying for your walk with God,

Tess :)

The pull of LIFE

Life. When I think of it, I usually think of the game. You go around the board a bunch of times, try to keep your finances balanced, get married, have kids, graduate them, and then die.

Pretty depressing, no? Is that all there is to life? Are we really just going around a board, in the hopes of beating the other guy? Is everything we do just to get ahead of someone sitting across from us?

I would argue we are here for a purpose. I would argue everything we do has a purpose, no matter how small. Some end goal, something we are all striving for. But what is it? Some people say it is reincarnation. For some, it is to better the world. Still others think they will be nothing but dust, and their death will give a new baby life.

Paul, in many of his letters, compared the Christian faith to running a race. We are running the race. It isn't a circular race, but more like a marathon. It has it's ups and downs, twists and turns, roundabouts and yes, a finish line. However, unlike a typical runner, we only get one chance. We only pass over each bit of ground once. We can only affect the world once.

So my question is this: How are you affecting those around you? How are you sharing His light with the world, in a way that would make everyone want to run the race?

The Beginnings... And An Experiment...

With dread, I realized that I neglected this blog, yet again. This is a problem, especially since I really like the idea behind a blog like this, and the topics that have yet to be discussed...

It was while pondering the strange fate of this fairly new blog that I came up with a very interesting idea... A friend and I were discussing the different ways we might bring teens together. We were hoping to create a network for teens to support and encourage each other, as well as maybe even begin to provide physical assistance to areas in need. This was several months ago. More recently, (today) another friend and I began to discuss how much time is "wasted" through Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and the other two dozen social networking services.

While musing upon these two separate ideas, I decided to put them together: What if there was some means through which teens could do something useful, in the median of social networking? Something that takes as much time as they want to put into it, and provides some output?

My mind switched into high gear, and began racing around the track of ideas. When I put both of those ideas together, along with this blog, I came up with the obvious solution: Find other teens who are willing to give this blog a try. If you have a handful of teens who are willing to post, at a minimum, once a week, you could have daily content, thus generating traffic, and thus getting whatever it is you have to say out to the world. Plus, by having multiple writers, it provides some accountability for posting. The idea is to pair teens together, and let them start their own blogs. Every two dozen kids, you give them a blog. They create their own network, and then you can create another network of the authors.

So I decided to put this idea to the test. I invited several of my friends onto this blog, and (hopefully) they will begin posting. I am hoping to provide a place where both kids and adults alike can come to be encouraged, inspired and uplifted through Godly advice, suggestions and random thoughts, but all with a Godly worldview as the framework, and the Bible as the foundation.

Hopefully the test will prove successful, and we can launch a forum for the sharing of ideas, resources, etc. I look forward to seeing these projects through, and if you want to help, let me know!

Popularirty?

So I realized with dread that I had completely forgotten about this blog... So here goes another post with a few thoughts on worldviews and cultures...

First thing that comes to mind is how we have slowly switched to a more "popularity" based culture. If you think about it, and look at the world around you, you'll see what I am talking about. Who do you see on TV? Mostly stars, all of whom are worshiped and idolized by their respective followings. We have entire shows dedicated to seeing who can become the next most popular person. American Idol, for instance. Does anyone else catch on to the name? What is an idol? According to Merriam-Webster: "A representation or symbol of an object of worship." Does anyone else have a problem with this?

Sure, some might argue that there will always be someone for us too admire, someone for us to follow, someone for us to pay money too look at, but I would argue some people take it too far... Sure, I know, you are saying to yourself, "well, I'm not one of those people..." Well, let me ask you this: How much time is spent every day watching the TV? How much time do you spend watching movies? I'll admit, I love watching movies. So where do you draw the line?

Let's take into consideration some of the following statistics. First, the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV a day. Kids spend, on average, 3.5 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with their parents. How much TV do they watch? 1680 minutes per week. The TV is on, on average, 6 hours and 47 minutes in American homes. And yet only half of Americans say they watch too much TV.

If you do a little bit of math, you get 250 billion. (That's 9 zero's after it.) If you say that the average wage is $6, which is very conservative, you get a grand total of $1.5 trillion. (That's 12 zero's after it.) The National Debt currently sits at approximately $13.2 trillion. If everyone took the time they would normally spend watching TV, and went out and got a second job, we could have the National Debt paid off in less than nine years!

In closing, let me just insert a verse. Philippians 4:8. "Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." I just encourage all of you to examine what it is you are worshiping, if you have any idols, and if so, to get rid of them...

That's all for now...

An Eternal Golden Braid...

With all my talking, raving and discussing of this book, I thought it was time to share it with everyone else...

Perhaps one of the greatest books ever written, Douglas Hofstadter has created a masterpiece with Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. When you first pick this book up, you are immediately faced with its daunting 777 pages. All of them filled to the brim with scientific and technical words, diagrams, puzzles, art, mathematics, and even music. The author describes it as a "metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll." but it is really much more. Many people have come to look at this book as the relationship between science, music, mathematics and art. But more importantly, the connections between these, the symmetry involved in going from one to the other, and finally, how humans are able to do what we do.

But when you really begin to dig into it, and begin to analyze everything that is being discussed, you realize that there is more than what meets the eye. With different analogies, he builds the groundwork for how the human brain, and thinking in general, has been developed, and the many attempts that technology has made to create a human brain. With his likening of the human brain to a colony of ants, he digs even deeper than that, and looks at how DNA defines who we are. He looks at how the brain interacts with the rest of the body, and how art, music, mathematics, and just about everything around us is interlaced and how closely connected everything is.

From the worldview point of view, he avoids the creation question all together. In fact, he even mentions at the end of one of his chapters that he could discuss at great length where we came from, but he chose not to do so, but rather to leave that up to the reader. Because of this, you can interpret this book either way. He has very carefully written this book, and while I tried to figure out which side he is coming from, I was unable to decide.

So, all that being said, I highly recommend this book to everyone, regardless of your area of focus, education level, interests, or anything else. It presents many interesting ideas and theories, and it is loaded with amazing selections of art and intriguing discussions between different characters.

Textbooks and more... Have we adopted a Don't Ask-Don't Tell policy?

So I know it has been quite a while since I last posted, and due to an influx of what is generally referred to as life, I have been previously occupied, and now find myself with free time to begin blogging more. Today, I just want to give a few thoughts about textbooks.

We all use textbooks, right? Everyone has had some kind of education in their life, and odds are that you used a textbook at least part of the time. Unfortunately for us, the way our education system is set up, whatever the teacher's views on the subject are, you will have to conform to those views in order to pass the class. We place ourselves underneath instructors, and many times, their beliefs and value systems don't line up with ours. We very often find ourselves in the position of either having to disagree with the professor, or just be quiet and pretend not to notice.

Textbooks are often used as sources for many things, and people, especially students, take the information inside of them for granted. In some cases, like with my Calculus textbook, this can be done without too much uneasiness. Math isn't really something that changes from person to person. But when you start looking into books that have more subjectivity in them, you enter a dangerous ground. While many people accept most science books for granted, many of them have inherent flaws in the knowledge that they enclose. Take Physics for example. The first chapter of my textbook deals with units; time, weight, length, etc. A pound is a pound, right? An hour doesn't change from person to person. I was agreeing with everything in the book up until the time when they discussed how old the earth was. I'm sure you can guess what's coming. Current "Scientific" approximations currently put the age of the earth at about 3 billion years. We've all heard this, and from the Christian point of view, we know the complete opposite. But how many of us actually say something about this?

Many of us, and I am guilty of this as well, have adopted what the Army calls a 'Don't Ask-Don't Tell' policy. We aren't asked our views on controversial issues, so we don't tell them. I did this very thing the first day in Physics class. The professor went through the table of units, and off-handedly mentioned the age of the earth. Inside, I knew I should say something, but instead, I allowed myself to be convinced out of it. 'Don't be a fool' I told myself. 'You have to spend the rest of the semester with these people, probably longer. Don't make a bad first impression.' I was thinking inside, and too my shame, I held my peace and allowed that statement to go unchallenged.

Throughout our entire lives, we will constantly be facing a barrage of contrary beliefs, ideals and morals. People are constantly making statements that they believe are true, and unless someone says differently, that is what they accept as the truth. Unfortunately, the Christian worldview has been almost completely forgotten, and people have been writing and rewriting their own versions of morals and absolutes. Academia was one of the first stones to fall, and many people within the halls of it are professing atheists. This means that most of the textbooks we have today were and are written by people who, in some cases, have openly stated that they are anti-God.

While I don't have any helpful tips or an answer to this problem, I do exhort everyone to think about what they are accepting as true. When you are reading a textbook, or any book for that matter, try to analyze every bit of it. If we lower our guard, it allows false truth to take seed, and once it has claimed some land, it is increasingly hard to reclaim it.

Another thing that I have seriously been thinking about is career paths. Most of us will have some career field that we will spend most, if not all of our lives following. Many of us will have gone through higher education to get a degree to follow that career. But how many of us have thought of passing our knowledge and worldview onto the the next generation? I was waiting for a professor a few months ago, and as many of the halls are lined with bulletin boards, I was reading all of the posts. One of them was a flyer on how to become a professor. Looking more closely, I found that at the community college I attend, you can become an adjunct professor if you have a 2.5 GPA in you're field of expertise, meet certain background information, and pass two tests, with the SAT being able to count for one of them! This means just about anyone could affect the lives of anywhere from 30-200 students per year, and even more if you become a full-time professor!

Most people say that professors are in Academia for that one bright student that comes along every 5-10 years. I would beg to differ, and say that there are some professors that teach because they know they can make a difference, and they have realized that the foundation of everything someone will do in their life is set while they are in school. So ask yourself this; are you willing to take on a part-time job, to pass on what you know, to the next generation? Many people spend their lives just trying to get ahead, thinking of the next year, or sometimes, the next 5 years. What they should really be doing is thinking of the next 100 years. We are setting the stage for our children's and grandchildren's world. I don't know about you, but that makes me think a little bit harder about what I want to do with my life.

Just a few thoughts for you to consider...

To Engineer is Human - Henry Petroski

Perhaps one of my favorite non-fiction books, Henry Petroski looks at a very different aspect of engineering that has not really been touched on before; the role of failure in design. In fact, he goes as far as to say that failure is necessary to have a successful design. It’s a seemingly depressing book, if you were to judge it from the writing. But once you really start diving in, you will find a wealth of theories, stories, and real engineering concepts.

He looks at the design and creation of art, buildings, sculpture, bridges, cars, buses and even literature, through Oliver Wendell Holmes magnificent account of the Deacon’s Masterpiece or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay. He looks at the unexpected way life happens, and proposes that accidents are more than just accidents; they play a vital role in design and construction of anything man has ever tried to do.

As for the writer and his worldview, he hints several times that he might be a Christian, but as it is a technical book, he understandably leaves God completely out of the picture. The worldview of the book is very earth-based, and is completely grounded in a science realm. Everything in the book seems to be written from a biblical worldview, but there is just no way to know for sure.

Over all, I thought it was a very well-written book, and the author seems to know what he is talking about. Perhaps the best part about it is when he talks about when he was a student, and was filled with fear of failing. But what he essentially says is that is the very fear of doing something wrong or failing that drives us to continue on and work harder. I think this is a great book for anyone who likes technical books and a must-read for anyone going into engineering or science related fields.