Impressed

Last Monday I had an interesting meditation roll through my noggin. This came on the heels of starting to see a lot of sin and self-centeredness in my life. In a sort of attempt at repentance, I've tried to be more deliberate with my time, thought, money, and actions in hopes that my life might look a bit less... self-consumed. It's been a process- a difficult, but joyful one. More than anything, I've really resonated with C.S. Lewis when he writes, "No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good"

As much as I'd love to write about the process, that's not the purpose of this post. When I look around me I see mostly two types of people- a few people striving very hard to be loving and those who aren't. Even if you've found someone who is decently thoughtful, odds are that they'll be the first to tell you about the selfishness that resides in them.

But then... as you take and read, you see someone and something wildly different. Something the world hadn't seen and hasn't seen since. You see a man walking through the streets- He's not like other men. As he sees the crowd his heart breaks. He's healing people who have been sick their whole life. He's teaching people a better way to do life. He doesn't give any heed to the establishment- he dialogues with lonely tax collecters and shunned adulteresses.

But he just keeps doing it, and he's making it look so easy. What a sharp contrast to my own feeble attempts. It's like I've been struggling to bench-press 100 lbs and all of a sudden, someone walks in the gym and lifts 1000 without breaking a sweat.

And then- wait, what? He's taking this too far. I see a man dying on a hill. That's when I know that this being, this love, is so far and foreign to me. There's just no category for this whole thing. I can't hardly share my sandwich with another person. What is this?

For me, this contrast, this world of difference, inspired worship. As a meditation, look good and hard at your own life. How are you really loving others? If you're like me, you're probably pretty selfish, and it's not much, if anything. But then... look at Jesus.

Honest Abe - 3 Links

Abraham Piper on loving a wayward child... this is so good... and applicable to far more than a son or daughter.

Listen to this. it's a brief interview with Abraham Piper. Very honest guy. He's such an interesting dude. Not at all the man you'd expect to be John Piper's son. His story might surprise you. Man.

His South Minneapolis blog.

The Cloud of Unknowing

"Lift up thine heart unto God with meek stirring of love, and mean Himself, and none of his Goods. And thereto, look the loath to think on aught but God himself. So that nought work in thy wit, or in thy will, but only God Himself. This is the work of the soul which most pleaseth God."
-Anonymous

My prayer - to see

The more I see of how rough and difficult this world is for some, the more I realize that what I have experience and continue to experience day-to-day is, for lack of a better term, a dream world.

The prayer from the depth of my spirit is to simply understand this place we call Earth and the suffering that goes on. It's not that I want to suffer- I don't. But as uncomfortable and heart-breaking as it is, I want to see my place in the world. That I would see how unfathomably, ridiculously blessed my situation is as an American Christian with a family that loves me and food on my table and a warm house and that my persecution is people thinking I'm a little strange. Oh, that I would see the privilege and responsibility that goes along with all of this and that my time and money and affections would be so driven by reality, that maybe the people around me would think I had completely lost my mind when in fact I had simply begun to see the world through the eyes of Jesus...

Parents

Let it be known: my parents are great. They love me like crazy. What a blessing! I'll elaborate in the future.

Darwin's Black Box

This book was the book that started it all- that is, the Intelligent Design movement. For those of you who don't know, let me explain the premise of the book (and, really, the movement). Scientists post-Darwin thought that the cell would be extremely simple. Until the 1950's that was the assumption that fit nicely in the Darwinian explanation of life. However, once microscopes were powerful enough to see the cell, they quickly saw that they were dead wrong. They found a world of complexity, a world of machinery that perform the necessary procedures to keep us alive. The idea for Behe is that there are some organelles and processes in the cell that could not have evolved.

Think about it. In order for complexity to arise out of Darwinism, there needs to be one adaptive advantage added on to another added on to another one at a time. That means that each successive step on the road to what we have to day would have to be advantageous, otherwise there would have been no reason for nature to "select" that particular trait.

Now think about if you found a machine. Behe famously uses the example of a mousetrap. Could something like this have evolved- one piece at a time? If you think about it, the answer is no. The mousetrap's single parts offer no advantage unless they are all there at once and arranged in such a fashion that the machine will operate. If all the parts of the trap aren't present, there's no advantage- it will not get selected. The entire trap must be there at one time! When this describes something it is said by Behe to be "irreducibly complex".

When we look into the world of biochemistry we see that the machines that do the work of life are far more complicated and require far more precisely-tuned parts than a simple mousetrap. What's more is that there are processes, like blood-clotting, that are extremely complex. These are processes that would be of no use, in fact they would be often fatal, if just one part of its elaborate cascading sequence didn't work. A Darwinian explanation depends on slow, piece-by-piece explanation of origin, with each successive piece being selected on the basis that organisms who had this trait would be more likely to survive. Half of a blood-clotting system, however, is worse than no blood clotting system at all! (I must spare details)

The book is split into thirds. The first section details his basic idea and some general troubles with Darwinism. The second third explains in scientific, gory detail 4 examples of irreducibly complex systems- those machines or processes that, if you don't have the whole thing, you don't have anything (that is anything helpful for survival. The last third addresses where to go from here. This is the last stage of his argument.

What do scientists do if a Darwinian solution seems highly improbable or even impossible? (The examples he uses are currently complete roadblocks for evolutionary scientists). The only situation in our experience that we see systems with irreducible complexity... are when they are designed. Behe simply asks, "Why can't we say that these systems are no exception? Our best explanation is that these systems were designed by an intelligent agent. It appears that an intellect made some things with an end-product in mind. Behe insists that we can't know anything about the designer from this argument and he spends a great deal of time discussing the implications in science and philosophy that inevitably come up with an argument like this. He also notes the easy-to-see difference between this argument from science and any form of creationism or appeal to special revelation.

Though most in the media and internet world completely (and I mean completely) misconstrue his argument, it is a very good one that is based in the bare facts of biochemistry. The idea of intelligent design is important for theists and scientists alike and it constitutes a movement that will continue despite violent opposition from the both scientific and skeptical sources, as well as the media. Why is that? It's simply because men like Behe are looking at facts. It's hard to argue with that. Honestly, if someone could construct a plausible, Darwinian explanation for the 4 items mentioned in the book, this thing would be just as the majority says- a done deal- not worth mentioning. In the absence of such explanations, however, I am compelled to wonder about the future of Darwinism...

2 Quick Reviews!

Pride and Prejudice

In the words of Donald Miller (it's actually his friend), "What is in this book is the heart of a woman." He's right. Some quick thoughts:

-I have learned much about girldom through reading this book.
-Jane Austen: super-intelligent and witty
-Penetrating analysis of the culture at the time she wrote. I'm baffled how well Austen saw her surroundings from enough of a bird's-eye/objective view to critique it and poke fun at it.
-The two main characters, Elizabeth and Darcy, are very likeable. It's a different sort of love story.

Bruchko

I basically read this in a day. IT'S GREAT. Man, was this a crazy book. Read it for suspense, adventure, drama, humor, conviction and inspiration. It's a book about Bruce Olson, a kid who grows up in a nominal Lutheran church in Minneapolis and upon becoming a Christian takes off for South America against the wishes of everyone (including the missions agency) to be a missionary. The Lord leads him to a tribe that kills outsiders on sight.

The story is nothing fancy- it simply documents the facts as they happened. There would be far too much to reflect on anything, really. It's up to the reader to read between the lines. To sum it up, God just shows up in wild, dramatic, obvious ways to help Bruce (who is called Bruchko by the Motilone Tribe). Really, the things that happen make the book feel like a fiction. It's wild. It's the story of how God changed an entire jungle in South America through a young man from Minnesota who simply obeyed. READ THIS BOOK.