Since I'm heading back to school tomorrow, I feel that the summer is officially over, or practically. So I'm going to run through the goals I had going into the summer and how well I met those goals.
1) Volunteer I volunteered a few times at my church, helping them prepare for Vacation Bible School, and helped teach Sunday School a few Sundays. I had imagined myself volunteering more, but considering that I had a job for the summer, I'm pretty satisfied with how much volunteering I did.
2) Freerice I still can't quite believe it, but I actually reached my goal of getting 2 million grains! Today I hit the 2 million mark, and my final total was 2,011,260 grains. Wow!!
3) Summer reading Considering the fact that I had a job, I was really pleased with how much of my list I finished. The only books I didn't touch were a book about bees and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (which is really too bad, I was really looking forward to reading it). I'm also still working on Parzival by Sir Wolfram Eschenbach; I only have a few chapters left.
4) Book reviews I reviewed every book I finished this summer. I even feel like my reviews have improved a bit.
5) Reflect more Hm. Sometimes I did great on this, and sometimes I did really horribly. I think that I actually reflected more last school year--perhaps because I'm so in the habit of analyzing things, perhaps because my fellowship group at school is more supportive. I did try to reflect, but it was very up and down.
6) After graduation I made a lot of progress in this direction, although not at all in the way I imagined. I scheduled my GRE and then cancelled it; that was what I felt God calling me to do. Then I felt Him calling me to go to seminary. So I researched seminaries, and spoke with three different pastors over the summer about seminary and the ministry (although I'm not sure if I'm being called to ministry--just seminary, at least at the moment).
7) Sleep! Considering the fact that I had a job and no time, I did pretty well. There were very few days when I didn't get at least eight hours of sleep, at least (I tend to need nine).
8) Exercise OK, I didn't do very well on this goal. I rarely exercised more than once a week, if that.
9) Work on thesis I read almost every book that I wanted to read this summer, which really pleased me. I didn't get a chance to read any of the articles I wanted to read, but I'm still pretty happy with what I accomplished.
10) Declutter Some decluttering happened, although not as much as I would have liked.
11) Scholarships Amazingly, I submitted 42 scholarship applications this summer. Wow!
12) Pray for others I made amazing progress on this, actually. I thought and reflected a lot about prayer this summer. I got a lot more in the habit of praying for people and situations that I see, and created a list of things to pray for throughout the year (it includes endangered species and careers). The one thing that I wish I could have worked on a bit more was the list itself--it's not done yet, and I still haven't quite gotten into the habit yet of using it every day.
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Thursday, May 24, 2012
The Design Revolution, continued
The wrap-up of my earlier comments (view them here) about The Design Revolution, by William A. Dembski, more about my spiritual rather than scientific reactions.
Overall, I found Dembski's argument convincing, especially on a spiritual level--God created the world, and why couldn't He do it in a subtle way? If anything, the subtle way is almost more awe-inspiring: God has been subtly working to create humans for the past 3.7 billion years (or 4.6 billion if you include the creation of the earth, or 14.6 billion if you include the creation of the universe). That's pretty cool!
Actually, ever since I started reading this book, I've been repeatedly coming across Bible verses about how God created the earth.
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval. By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear." Hebrews 11:1-3
"Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." Romans 1:20
"Thou art the Lord, thou alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and thou preservest all of them; and the host of heaven worships thee." Nehemiah 9:6
I think what's most important of all is the knowledge that God created the earth and the universe, not the knowledge of how He did it.
So I'll conclude by saying that I found this book very thought-provoking, and recommending it to anyone who may have questions about intelligent design.
Overall, I found Dembski's argument convincing, especially on a spiritual level--God created the world, and why couldn't He do it in a subtle way? If anything, the subtle way is almost more awe-inspiring: God has been subtly working to create humans for the past 3.7 billion years (or 4.6 billion if you include the creation of the earth, or 14.6 billion if you include the creation of the universe). That's pretty cool!
Actually, ever since I started reading this book, I've been repeatedly coming across Bible verses about how God created the earth.
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval. By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear." Hebrews 11:1-3
"Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." Romans 1:20
"Thou art the Lord, thou alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and thou preservest all of them; and the host of heaven worships thee." Nehemiah 9:6
I think what's most important of all is the knowledge that God created the earth and the universe, not the knowledge of how He did it.
So I'll conclude by saying that I found this book very thought-provoking, and recommending it to anyone who may have questions about intelligent design.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The Design Revolution
Today I'm going to do something a bit different. I just finished reading The Design Revolution, by William A. Dembski. It's about the idea of intelligent design, in the form of a series of questions that critics of the idea would or have asked him about the idea of intelligent design. I just wanted to write down my thoughts about the book here.
A huge theme in this book is the dogmatism of science today, especially when it comes to evolution. Scientists believe that evolution is true. Period. In many ways the ideas of a dogmatic science may seem counter-intuitive--after all, isn't the idea of science to reach for new knowledge in an unbiased way?--but I think it's true, at least to a certain extent. It's certainly true of scientists and creationism (which is separate than intelligent design, which simply states that some being created or shaped life as we know it)--every scientist I've ever known speaks of creationism as really stupid. Scientists try to think of themselves as open-minded, but they often have a very set thought pattern. This is true not just in their thinking about intelligent design versus evolution, but in everything.
Another theme was the complexity of life. Dembski argues that irreducible complexity--a system where taking out any one part of the system makes the system unable to function--is a reliable way to spot intelligent design. The idea behind this is that such a system, where everything is vitally important, could not gradually evolve--it must have come about just the way it is, because no other combination of parts makes a functioning whole. On one level that makes sense--in fact, a similar technique is used in lots of other things too, like archaeology and cryptology--and on another level I doubt it. How can we infer anything about a designer we know nothing about? He/she/it (I'm speaking here of a purely theoretical designer, not the God that I ultimately believe to be the designer) is so far beyond our understanding that how can we infer/decide anything about him/her/it? (I suppose you could make a similar argument about Christianity, but we have the guidance of God. He spoke to us and told us about Himself. How much would we have known otherwise, though?) Dembski did address this point, by pointing out that archaeologists and cryptologists and so on don't need to know anything about the person who made the artifact/code they're analyzing to be able to realize that it's been designed, and I suppose the same is true here. Also, of course, science shouldn't just shy back because of the possibility that they won't understand or that they're wrong, because there's always that possibility.
Irreducible complexity, Dembski argues, is something that has not been adequately explained by evolutionists. It's true that a hypothesis is not the same as proof that something happened the way the hypothesis says it did. But Dembski also argues that evolutionists need to provide proof that some irreducibly complex system evolved gradually, as they claim irreducible complexity did evolve. How would they prove that? It is, after all, impossible to un-evolve an organism back to the way it was X million years ago, after all. The lack of proof and provability to a lot of evolutionary biology, especially the formation of species and macroevolution in general, is a huge problem for evolution. All of the proof for macroevolution is based on inferences, mostly from evidence like the incomplete fossil record, DNA, and geographical location/history. The problem with inferences is that if you don't understand the situation as well as you think you do, you can be so completely wrong and still think that all the evidence points your way.
And it is true that so much of macroevolution especially is still a complete mystery to biologists, whether they want to admit it or not. Dembski even goes so far as to claim that it is a completely unproven theory. My first response to that was definitely to get all defensive, but in a way it's true. Certain amounts of species formation has been observed by biologists--for instance in apple and hawthorn flies, which used to be a single species. Once the apple tree was introduced to North America, some flies switched to feeding on them. Over time, this switch appears to have led to the isolation, and possibly complete splitting off into a separate species by, the apple-feeding flies (For more information see Berkeley's "Sympatric Speciation" and Martin G. Kelly's "As the Worm Turns: Speciation and the Apple Maggot Fly"). However, this is a short-term example. Yes, there are other examples, but just because one species of fly appears to be able to split into two species without obvious help doesn't mean that a plant or animal could evolve from a bacteria, or birds from reptiles, or any of the other major evolutionary transitions that have occurred in the history of life could have occurred, without help. Yes, there is most definitely proof that macroevolution and the formation of species has occurred. That doesn't mean that those new species arose purely because of evolutionary mechanisms, or even because of evolutionary mechanisms at all. So many new species and new innovations, like flight in birds and flowers and insect pollination, seem to have just suddenly appeared, and no one really has any idea how or why. The typical explanation is that much of evolution is driven by ecological factors, many or all of which it would be impossible to determine from the fossil record, or that the fossil record is spotty enough that intermediate fossils don't exist or haven't been found yet. And maybe at least some of that's true. But the more I've learned about such problems, the more I think that something must have pushed or nudged to get things to how they are now, or at least on the path to become so. Take the evolution of flight in birds. No one can really think of any good intermediate reason for the reptiles that evolved into birds to have gone from having four legs to having two legs and two wings. Wouldn't the intermediate have been awkward, to say the least? It's clear that they two are related, evolutionarily, but again that doesn't prove that evolution was the mechanism that caused reptiles to evolve into birds. (Perhaps I should point out here that when I say 'evolution', I mean completely random evolution with no input at all from any outside source, ie the designer ie God)
Which brings up another really interesting, and I found really convincing point, and that is the tendency of life to go from less to more complex. Evolutionists always explain it as the way things are, just a tendency of evolution, but that really doesn't make sense. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that the entropy (ie randomness, and presumably also organization/complexity) of a system (such as the universe) is always increasing, and the only way to increase the organization is to put energy into doing so. Why would a completely random evolution favor an increase in complexity? It doesn't make sense. Especially since increases in complexity in the history of life almost always seem to just appear, almost out of nowhere. Why would God want to create a world full of complex organisms? Did He really create the whole universe and history of life just for us humans? If so, why go to all the trouble? Why not just create humans and the earth, as He wanted them, at the beginning, like Genesis says? Of course, I have no idea, I was just wondering. If anything, I'd say that if you look at how natural selection acts on organisms, it favors simplicity. Parasites especially tend to become extremely simple over time. Natural selection has been proven to be able to modify existing structures and behaviors, but it has never been observed creating entirely new structures (although it is often argued, and there is some support for this, that most "new" structures are actually pre-existing, modified structures).
One problem I did have with the book was Dembski's criticism of evolutionary biology for its lack of ability to make predictions. Biology is not physics or mathematics, where every theory has a working, fairly accurate formula. Life is not predictable like numbers are. We understand how natural selection works (and natural selection is a proven phenomenon, which Dembski admits as well), but we do not understand how an organism's body works; it's much too complex. We also don't particularly understand how ecosystems work. But it's these two things that are interacting, because with natural selection the ecosystem is one of the things that is putting pressure on the organism and its body. So how could we possibly predict what would happen? (Is this the point Dembski is trying to make?)
Another, more scientific criticism I had was the fact that Dembski totally ignored several aspects of evolution. Evolution occurs through four mechanisms: mutation, gene flow, genetic drift, and selection (Wikipedia's article "Evolution" is actually pretty thorough, and mentions a few other evolutionary forces as well). Only selection, and only natural selection at that, were even mentioned (there's also artificial and sexual selection--possibly because neither are particularly random, unlike the other evolutionary forces), except for a few brief mentions of mutation. This did surprise me a bit, not least because all four of these mechanisms are essentially completely random processes (which was a large, and I thought rather successful part of his argument--come on, how likely or logical is it that nothing would evolve into a bacteria would evolve into a plant, animal, fungus, or protist completely because of random processes? Those are all extremely complex organisms, after all!). I think that the other evolutionary forces should have been addressed at least a bit more.
Wow. This turned into a really long post! Thanks for bearing with me, and I hope it mostly made sense (if not let me know!). I still have more to say, but I'm done for now. I think I'll post more on this tomorrow, more on the spiritual rather than scientific side.
A huge theme in this book is the dogmatism of science today, especially when it comes to evolution. Scientists believe that evolution is true. Period. In many ways the ideas of a dogmatic science may seem counter-intuitive--after all, isn't the idea of science to reach for new knowledge in an unbiased way?--but I think it's true, at least to a certain extent. It's certainly true of scientists and creationism (which is separate than intelligent design, which simply states that some being created or shaped life as we know it)--every scientist I've ever known speaks of creationism as really stupid. Scientists try to think of themselves as open-minded, but they often have a very set thought pattern. This is true not just in their thinking about intelligent design versus evolution, but in everything.
Another theme was the complexity of life. Dembski argues that irreducible complexity--a system where taking out any one part of the system makes the system unable to function--is a reliable way to spot intelligent design. The idea behind this is that such a system, where everything is vitally important, could not gradually evolve--it must have come about just the way it is, because no other combination of parts makes a functioning whole. On one level that makes sense--in fact, a similar technique is used in lots of other things too, like archaeology and cryptology--and on another level I doubt it. How can we infer anything about a designer we know nothing about? He/she/it (I'm speaking here of a purely theoretical designer, not the God that I ultimately believe to be the designer) is so far beyond our understanding that how can we infer/decide anything about him/her/it? (I suppose you could make a similar argument about Christianity, but we have the guidance of God. He spoke to us and told us about Himself. How much would we have known otherwise, though?) Dembski did address this point, by pointing out that archaeologists and cryptologists and so on don't need to know anything about the person who made the artifact/code they're analyzing to be able to realize that it's been designed, and I suppose the same is true here. Also, of course, science shouldn't just shy back because of the possibility that they won't understand or that they're wrong, because there's always that possibility.
Irreducible complexity, Dembski argues, is something that has not been adequately explained by evolutionists. It's true that a hypothesis is not the same as proof that something happened the way the hypothesis says it did. But Dembski also argues that evolutionists need to provide proof that some irreducibly complex system evolved gradually, as they claim irreducible complexity did evolve. How would they prove that? It is, after all, impossible to un-evolve an organism back to the way it was X million years ago, after all. The lack of proof and provability to a lot of evolutionary biology, especially the formation of species and macroevolution in general, is a huge problem for evolution. All of the proof for macroevolution is based on inferences, mostly from evidence like the incomplete fossil record, DNA, and geographical location/history. The problem with inferences is that if you don't understand the situation as well as you think you do, you can be so completely wrong and still think that all the evidence points your way.
And it is true that so much of macroevolution especially is still a complete mystery to biologists, whether they want to admit it or not. Dembski even goes so far as to claim that it is a completely unproven theory. My first response to that was definitely to get all defensive, but in a way it's true. Certain amounts of species formation has been observed by biologists--for instance in apple and hawthorn flies, which used to be a single species. Once the apple tree was introduced to North America, some flies switched to feeding on them. Over time, this switch appears to have led to the isolation, and possibly complete splitting off into a separate species by, the apple-feeding flies (For more information see Berkeley's "Sympatric Speciation" and Martin G. Kelly's "As the Worm Turns: Speciation and the Apple Maggot Fly"). However, this is a short-term example. Yes, there are other examples, but just because one species of fly appears to be able to split into two species without obvious help doesn't mean that a plant or animal could evolve from a bacteria, or birds from reptiles, or any of the other major evolutionary transitions that have occurred in the history of life could have occurred, without help. Yes, there is most definitely proof that macroevolution and the formation of species has occurred. That doesn't mean that those new species arose purely because of evolutionary mechanisms, or even because of evolutionary mechanisms at all. So many new species and new innovations, like flight in birds and flowers and insect pollination, seem to have just suddenly appeared, and no one really has any idea how or why. The typical explanation is that much of evolution is driven by ecological factors, many or all of which it would be impossible to determine from the fossil record, or that the fossil record is spotty enough that intermediate fossils don't exist or haven't been found yet. And maybe at least some of that's true. But the more I've learned about such problems, the more I think that something must have pushed or nudged to get things to how they are now, or at least on the path to become so. Take the evolution of flight in birds. No one can really think of any good intermediate reason for the reptiles that evolved into birds to have gone from having four legs to having two legs and two wings. Wouldn't the intermediate have been awkward, to say the least? It's clear that they two are related, evolutionarily, but again that doesn't prove that evolution was the mechanism that caused reptiles to evolve into birds. (Perhaps I should point out here that when I say 'evolution', I mean completely random evolution with no input at all from any outside source, ie the designer ie God)
Which brings up another really interesting, and I found really convincing point, and that is the tendency of life to go from less to more complex. Evolutionists always explain it as the way things are, just a tendency of evolution, but that really doesn't make sense. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that the entropy (ie randomness, and presumably also organization/complexity) of a system (such as the universe) is always increasing, and the only way to increase the organization is to put energy into doing so. Why would a completely random evolution favor an increase in complexity? It doesn't make sense. Especially since increases in complexity in the history of life almost always seem to just appear, almost out of nowhere. Why would God want to create a world full of complex organisms? Did He really create the whole universe and history of life just for us humans? If so, why go to all the trouble? Why not just create humans and the earth, as He wanted them, at the beginning, like Genesis says? Of course, I have no idea, I was just wondering. If anything, I'd say that if you look at how natural selection acts on organisms, it favors simplicity. Parasites especially tend to become extremely simple over time. Natural selection has been proven to be able to modify existing structures and behaviors, but it has never been observed creating entirely new structures (although it is often argued, and there is some support for this, that most "new" structures are actually pre-existing, modified structures).
One problem I did have with the book was Dembski's criticism of evolutionary biology for its lack of ability to make predictions. Biology is not physics or mathematics, where every theory has a working, fairly accurate formula. Life is not predictable like numbers are. We understand how natural selection works (and natural selection is a proven phenomenon, which Dembski admits as well), but we do not understand how an organism's body works; it's much too complex. We also don't particularly understand how ecosystems work. But it's these two things that are interacting, because with natural selection the ecosystem is one of the things that is putting pressure on the organism and its body. So how could we possibly predict what would happen? (Is this the point Dembski is trying to make?)
Another, more scientific criticism I had was the fact that Dembski totally ignored several aspects of evolution. Evolution occurs through four mechanisms: mutation, gene flow, genetic drift, and selection (Wikipedia's article "Evolution" is actually pretty thorough, and mentions a few other evolutionary forces as well). Only selection, and only natural selection at that, were even mentioned (there's also artificial and sexual selection--possibly because neither are particularly random, unlike the other evolutionary forces), except for a few brief mentions of mutation. This did surprise me a bit, not least because all four of these mechanisms are essentially completely random processes (which was a large, and I thought rather successful part of his argument--come on, how likely or logical is it that nothing would evolve into a bacteria would evolve into a plant, animal, fungus, or protist completely because of random processes? Those are all extremely complex organisms, after all!). I think that the other evolutionary forces should have been addressed at least a bit more.
Wow. This turned into a really long post! Thanks for bearing with me, and I hope it mostly made sense (if not let me know!). I still have more to say, but I'm done for now. I think I'll post more on this tomorrow, more on the spiritual rather than scientific side.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Imagination
I just ran across this quote in one of the blogs that I read:
"Because ours is an age with a will to fiction, the role of imagination is extremely important. Men who will not be governed by God’s word will not be governed by reality, because reality is not of their making. God having created all things, reality reflects the mind of God, not man. Hence, it is the essence of sin to resort to imagination to escape God’s law world...It is essential to imagination to create a man-made world and a man-ordained decree of predestination. It is the essence of sin to demand such a world.” R.J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology Volume I, pp. 474, 475.
This quote just hit me SO hard, especially that sentence in the middle: "Hence, it is the essence of sin to resort to imagination to escape God's law world". That is just a very good description of my life a few years ago. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a writer so much that I stopped being a Christian, because God didn't want me to be a writer. He made that perfectly clear, but I ignored Him. Afterwards, my life was almost consumed by imagination--I would imagine scenes from my stories, mostly, over and over and over again. Or I would spend hours obsessively writing out the things I'd imagined, and then not be able to sleep because I couldn't stop my imagination from continuing with the story, with what happened next. I loved my characters, knew them better than I knew myself.
It's taken me a long time to understand this aspect of myself. I still struggle with it, sometimes, and God has been so patient with me; when I'm upset, sometimes I will want to do nothing so much as escape into one of my stories. I can control everything in that part of myself, in that other world; I can do whatever I want to the characters, and they can turn into wonderful people anyway. I think a lot of it is also boredom; real life can be boring--doing the same things week after week, working hard, doing what you know you're supposed to do. And my storylands were just so exciting, full of emotion and adventure and self-discovery (of the characters, not me).
And that is why the above quote just really struck me, I think; my storylands were such an escape for me, not only from the boredom of everyday life, but also from the fact that I was ignoring God. In my world, a human being could become essentially perfect all on their own, or with the help of a few close friends. And it was just so addicting, this ability to escape to another world!
This quote also made me feel less alone, unique. I suppose other people escape into dream worlds, but I never really thought about it; the fact that this theologian thought it was important enough, enough of a problem, to write about it, write about the problem of imagination and how it is such a sin when it's used to escape the reality of God and His world, was a bit mind-blowing, but also comforting. I'm not the only one who has ever struggled with this.
I know, how prideful could I be, right?
Anyway, a related topic that I've struggled with a great deal is the subject and content of my reading. I love to read, by the way, and fantasy books are some of my absolute favorites (all my stories were fantasy as well). I think I love it more than any other genre because so often it features characters who are forced to make a choice between right and wrong, and they often grow tremendously in the process (some really good scifi books/shows also do this). But I also love the epic quality of a lot of fantasy stories, and the sense of magic and wonder of so much that goes on around everyone. So I've struggled recently with whether I should read fantasy and scifi books--they can serve the same function as my Storyland at times, escaping from reality, and can sometimes trigger the desire to return to thinking about my stories. I have prayed a lot about this, and oddly enough, I haven't received any overarching demand from God to stop reading/watching fantasy and sci fi. I do pray about every book before I begin to read it, and I have been refused some books.
I think this is related to how I've approached reading lately. I've been reading to develop my mind and spirit, and I often discover God in a book, or at least read something that makes me think about what I believe. This is true even in fantasy books, even when they challenge my resolve to not think about my stories anymore.
I just took a break in writing this to go delete everything on my computer, and anywhere I backed it up, that had to do with any of my stories. And then emptied my trash, just to be on the safe side. It felt very strange. Momentous, and yet as simple as clicking 'Move to Trash'. A few months ago I recycled all my hand-written notes, but I didn't feel God telling me to delete the typed-up copies yet. Maybe I wasn't ready. Even now, I felt a bit of dismay at the thought of deleting those stories--there was no turning back from that, no getting the stories back (whereas a lot of my hand-written notes I kept for no real reason and I'd already typed them into my computer). I'm not sure I feel any different after deleting them, but then again, maybe I do. I trusted God enough to do what He asked, to delete those stories that I spent hours writing and thinking about. I'm not good enough to be totally at peace about it yet--I still have a nagging little nervous feeling, that I did the wrong thing, that I might have needed/used those stories someday. But I did what God asked, and it was something that needed to be done, and I think I'm also relieved, because now there's no chance that someday in a moment of weakness I'll go read one of my stories, maybe even edit it a bit.
"You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God." Psalm 51:16-17
I know, how prideful could I be, right?
Anyway, a related topic that I've struggled with a great deal is the subject and content of my reading. I love to read, by the way, and fantasy books are some of my absolute favorites (all my stories were fantasy as well). I think I love it more than any other genre because so often it features characters who are forced to make a choice between right and wrong, and they often grow tremendously in the process (some really good scifi books/shows also do this). But I also love the epic quality of a lot of fantasy stories, and the sense of magic and wonder of so much that goes on around everyone. So I've struggled recently with whether I should read fantasy and scifi books--they can serve the same function as my Storyland at times, escaping from reality, and can sometimes trigger the desire to return to thinking about my stories. I have prayed a lot about this, and oddly enough, I haven't received any overarching demand from God to stop reading/watching fantasy and sci fi. I do pray about every book before I begin to read it, and I have been refused some books.
I think this is related to how I've approached reading lately. I've been reading to develop my mind and spirit, and I often discover God in a book, or at least read something that makes me think about what I believe. This is true even in fantasy books, even when they challenge my resolve to not think about my stories anymore.
I just took a break in writing this to go delete everything on my computer, and anywhere I backed it up, that had to do with any of my stories. And then emptied my trash, just to be on the safe side. It felt very strange. Momentous, and yet as simple as clicking 'Move to Trash'. A few months ago I recycled all my hand-written notes, but I didn't feel God telling me to delete the typed-up copies yet. Maybe I wasn't ready. Even now, I felt a bit of dismay at the thought of deleting those stories--there was no turning back from that, no getting the stories back (whereas a lot of my hand-written notes I kept for no real reason and I'd already typed them into my computer). I'm not sure I feel any different after deleting them, but then again, maybe I do. I trusted God enough to do what He asked, to delete those stories that I spent hours writing and thinking about. I'm not good enough to be totally at peace about it yet--I still have a nagging little nervous feeling, that I did the wrong thing, that I might have needed/used those stories someday. But I did what God asked, and it was something that needed to be done, and I think I'm also relieved, because now there's no chance that someday in a moment of weakness I'll go read one of my stories, maybe even edit it a bit.
"You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God." Psalm 51:16-17
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)