1 Corinthians 12

Paul writes of how the church is the body of Christ, and each believer is a vital part of that body. Every part does a really important job, without which the body would be either handicapped or dead. I've read this passage many times before, but today I really thought about it. I thought about the human body, and how intricate it really is--so much more so than Paul realized, with DNA and RNA and enzymes and all sorts of crazy amazing stuff that controls and builds the organs Paul talks about, like the eyes and the arms. I find that image of Christ's body, as an incredibly intricate system of small cells or enzymes or whatever working together for a goal, guided by some force they can't really understand, even more wonderful and amazing. What an awesome picture of God's body!

Worrying Again!

Last night, while reading through the Screwtape Letters, we read the following: "There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy [God]. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them" (letter 6). This really struck me (and everyone else; we spent a while talking about worrying), I think because I had experienced this earlier in the day yesterday, and even skirted around the thought that worrying separates you from God, although I don't think I ever verbalized it. I was just really worried yesterday that I would be late for work; I spent most of the morning worrying about it, rather obsessively (for no good reason, I might add; I had plenty of time to get to work, and I knew it, but for some reason I just could not stop worrying about it). And it really stopped me from praying. I normally pray on the way to work, but yesterday I just couldn't because of how worried I was. It really did get between me and God.

Judith 16

Just a great reminder that God can save you from any situation, no matter how hopeless it may seem. One small town, Bethulia, stood against a HUGE army; but, through Judith, God defeated that army. Through our small actions, God can make a difference.

Summer Goals

Time for a review!

1) Volunteer I volunteered once at my church, helping make Vacation Bible School decorations.
2) 2 million grains on freerice As I write this, I've averaged about what I wanted per day in terms of donations. However, that's only because I spent a good amount of time today catching up on all the time I didn't spend doing this during the week. I want to focus more on doing freerice consistently, every day, and reaching my goal daily, not just weekly.
3) Summer reading list I finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (which was really really good, and I would totally recommend it to anyone), and I've been steadily working my way through the book of Hawaiian legends.
4) Book reviews I have kept on top of this and reviewed every book that I've read.
5) Reflect more Not really. I woke up really tired most mornings this week, too tired to really think about what I was reading. I tried, really! And I think that on the mornings I wasn't tired, I did reflect on what I was reading. Overall I probably reflected about the same amount, but it was all clustered in the weekend times, when I didn't have to work and therefore didn't have to get up early.
6) After graduation options I studied a few chapters in my GRE study book.
7) Sleep! Considering the fact that I worked all week, I did surprisingly well on this. Even though I woke up really tired every morning I had to go to work, I did get a decent amount of sleep every night. Also, every weekend morning I woke up feeling wonderfully rested.
8) Exercise Again, I only exercised once this week. :(
9) Work on thesis I have kept working my way through that thesis book!
10) Declutter Nope, I haven't done anything for this goal.
11) Scholarships Haven't done anything for this goal, either.
12) Pray for others Did about the same this week, I think. I didn't concentrate as much on just sitting down and praying, but did it a lot driving to work. Also, almost without thinking, I have been praying for almost every emergency vehicle I see or hear.

1 Corinthians 9

Paul talks a lot about how he, as an apostle, has the right to be fed by the Church. Is it a right? Do we have rights in God, or just things He allows us? Do servants have rights? But I'm not denying that the church should feed Paul, because I think that they should. And not even because he's the one who converted them all. Then Paul says he's too proud to take food from the church. Why? (and what is he eating?) Am I missing something here? Isn't pride a bad thing? Or is he just trying to help the churches by not giving them something else to do or seeming to demand his "rights"? (although he does spend quite a while proving his right to his rights, so maybe not). Because he says, "Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ" (v. 12b, RSV), and later that his reward for preaching the gospel is "that in my preaching I make the gospel free of charge, not making full use of my right in the gospel" (v. 18).

A couple things really caught my eye. Paul says, "For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!" (v. 16) When God asks us to do something, He's not really asking. As Christians who want to serve God, our duty is to do what He requires, every time. Secondly, the chapter ends with the famous race analogy: "Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified" (v. 24-27). It really struck me today--when running a race, you can't just suddenly stop trying and still expect to win. Likewise, in my life as a Christian, I can't just suddenly stop trying and expect to be able to pick everything up again when I feel like trying again. Also, as Paul says, we need to exercise self-control to be able to keep running. I've been realizing more and more how important self-control really is.

Media

I spent a lot of today watching TV. It's something I do a lot when I'm home; my family likes to watch TV, and my best friend here loves to watch stuff with me. I'm not sure why it feels different, doing it with other people. I watch plenty of TV when I'm at college, too. But here, it seems as if every time I watch something, I really enjoy it, but right after I get a really empty feeling inside, like I've done something wrong, or maybe was expecting to get something out of watching whatever-it-was that I didn't end up getting out of it. That happened to me today. And I started thinking about when this happens to me. Well, firstly when I let my TV-watching get out of control and don't do it to honor God. Yep, definitely going on today. Also when I watch expecting to get something more than entertainment, or perhaps a bit of thought or reflection, out of it. Something like fulfillment. Yeah, maybe it sounds silly. But I think it's something I used to do a lot when I wasn't a Christian. And in many ways I remember it being rather fulfilling, at least in the short term (am I just remembering things better than they were?)--maybe because my standards were much lower?

The other problem with watching so much TV is that it gets me thinking about my stories. The world that they present in TV--in most, if not all, media, actually--is a world that's almost perfect except for one or two little problems, which can be solved relatively easily by a self-dependent character in the amount of time required for the book/show/movie/whatever to be done exactly when it needs to be done. In many ways, such a world-view appeals to me; hence, I think, my tendency to create my own such worlds, inside my head and then on paper. It's so tempting--what a simple, perfect world, where characters really can solve their own problems without God!!

Logically, such a world view no longer appeals to me, at all. Unfortunately, the habit of thinking about the characters I created for such worlds is not so easily broken. The idea/temptation to think about them has been popping up a lot this past week. It's been difficult. Also a bit frustrating--I thought I'd solved this problem! And maybe that idea is the problem. I've never had the strength myself to deal with this problem, or any of my other problems. Thinking that I'm avoiding thinking about my stories myself means that I'm thinking of myself as in charge and self-dependent (independent?), when I'm actually not. I just pray for the strength and wisdom to resist this new onslaught of temptation through God's wisdom and guidance.

1 Corinthians 4:5

"So don't make judgments about anyone ahead of time--before the Lord returns. For he will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one whatever praise is due." 1 Corinthians 4:5 (NLT)

Just another expanded version of "Do not judge" (Matthew 7:1, Luke 6:37), but it really got me thinking about judgment. I must say, it's always been a command that I've had trouble wrapping my head around, let along following. "Do not judge"--what are we supposed to do about sin, then? Ignore it? I'm often told to condemn the sin without condemning the sinner. How do you do that in real life? What's the Biblical precedent for that? (for instance, maybe Jesus refusing to condemn the adulterous woman for her adultery by throwing a stone at her but still being willing to tell her to stop sinning? See John 7:53-8:11) I used to often wonder how a loving God could condemn us for our our sin, but I think now that he loves us too much to allow us to destroy ourselves through sin, and that He hates sin too much to allow it to go uncondmened (and perhaps unpunished?). And what about yourself? May you judge yourself? How do you know what you're doing wrong if you don't think about it and judge yourself? OK, that question is actually rather simple--God tells you. And right before the verse above, Paul says, "I don't even trust my own judgment on this point. My conscience is clear, but that doesn't prove I'm right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide" (1 Corinthians 3-4, NLT). Even with ourselves, we can't judge well; we must allow God to do it.

Ultimately, we are not to judge because only God can know what's in a person's heart, what they've experienced, why they did what they did. Only He knows whether a person had the right motives, maybe even whether they sinned or not. After all, God may forbid me to do something but not forbid it to someone else. And that's what Paul is saying in this verse.

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I read that verse in 1 Corinthians early in the day, before I went to work at my new job. I feel like God was trying to warn me, and I unfortunately just didn't heed His warnings at all. I went to work. There are two groups of workers, half of which look really punk, weird, whatever. The other half looks more normal and acts more what I would call normal, with lots of joking and whatever. I'm ashamed to say, I picked the normal half and almost ignored the other half. Then I started judging the "normal" half and how shallow they are. Lord, please forgive me. Please help me to act according to Your will tomorrow, not mine.

Also, I tried out a new Christian group and during the meeting this quote was brought up (it's from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, which is a series of letters from one demon to another advising him about how best to tempt/destroy this man's soul and therefore send him to hell). Here, Screwtape is advising Wormwood about how to turn this man away from the church because of the hypocrisy/unpleasantness he sees or thinks he sees there. He writes, "All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question 'If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?' You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won't come into his head." (from the 3rd letter, if anyone wants to go look it up or read more). What a vital question to ask yourself when you start judging people: "If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" May I remember it more.

Summer Goals

Time for a check-up!

1) Volunteer I volunteered once this week with my church, helping to make Vacation Bible School decorations.
2) 2 million grains on freerice I have kept steadily working towards this. I have a little more than 800,000 grains. However, through most of the week I have a bad attitude about spending so much of my time on freerice. This attitude is something I want to work on in this coming week.
3) Summer reading list I finished a book on my reading list, started another one, and continued working on a third book. I also read three books this past week that are not on my summer reading list.
4) Book reviews I have reviewed every book that I finished this week.
5) Reflect more I don't think that I reflected more on my Bible readings, perhaps even a bit less than I did last week. I also think that I reflected less on my life in general in the past week.
6) After graduation options I spent about an hour this week studying for the GRE.
7) Sleep! I did not in fact sleep as much as I should have in the past week.
8) Exercise I only exercised once this week. This is definitely something I need to work on.
9) Work on thesis I have started to read one of the books I plan to use for my thesis.
10) Declutter I worked on my room (it looks a lot better!) and finished my purse.
11) Scholarships I spent a lot of time on that this week. I applied to nine scholarships, as well as creating a list of scholarships I should apply to, the deadline for the scholarship, and other information. My mother also challenged me to apply to 50 scholarships this summer, which I intend to aim for. I've applied to 10 so far!
12) Pray for others Last Sunday, I promised God and myself that I would spend 10 minutes every day praying for others. I reached this goal six out of the last seven days. However, most of this time was spent praying, getting distracted, praying, getting distracted, and so on. I would like to work more on being able to pray for longer periods of time without getting distracted.

I also got a summer job this week. It's full time, so posts may be scarce from now on (although hopefully not!). My goal is to still try to complete all of these summer goals. It may be impossible, but that seems to be what God wants from me. Maybe the extra challenge/time crunch of it will force me to be much more efficient about it than I was last week.

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.

Nehemiah 9

A prayer. Most of the prayer is actually just the history of God and the Israelites. They did that a lot, and today it finally hit me why. They were praising God for His faithfulness in the past, and also through that reassuring themselves that He would keep His promises by looking at all the times He did so in the past.

Then I started thinking about how I don't really do that when I pray. I mean, sometimes I'll pray about a Bible verse I just read, or I'll pray about Jesus or mention that God created the world or are love or something. Is that the same thing? There is something good about reminding yourself of God's goodness and past actions. Should I do it? Yes, I think I will try it out.

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.

Nehemiah 3

Most of this chapter is a list of names and places. My first reaction was to sigh--there's a lot of those lists--but this one was different. It was a list of people/groups and what part of Jerusalem's wall they rebuilt. It's pretty amazing, when you think about it, that a group of refugees, basically, managed to build their city. And they did it by all working together and each rebuilding their small part. Another example of each person doing their small, seemingly hopeless part and God making it work out.

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As a matter of fact, a few hours after originally writing this, God brought this home to me, in perhaps the opposite way of the chapter mentioned above. I found myself up late, very late (as you can all see from when I'm posting this), and regretting it very much. Staying up late like this is something that I know God doesn't like, something that I regret every time I do it no matter what the reason (although some reasons are better than others), and something that is ultimately harmful to me. Not that that stops me from doing it, something I've been wrestling with on and off for several years. Tonight, as I was thinking about the seemingly impossibility of bringing myself around to common sense, God said to me, "I would never ask you to do something that was impossible if you trust in Me." It may seem hopeless, but if I work with God on this, He can work it out. An incredibly comforting thought.

Summer Goals

Time to check up on my summer goals and how I'm doing with them!

1) Volunteer I've still made no progress with this goal.
2) Get to 2 million grains on freerice I've been working very hard towards this goal all week and have reached a little more than 700,000 grains, which puts me well on the way to reaching this goal before the end of the summer.
3) Summer reading list I finished Emma (and very much enjoyed it), and am well on my way to finished three other books that are also on the list (I tend to read multiple books at once)--a book of Hawaiian myths, an Arthurian epic poem, and a book about intelligent design. The only stain on my attempts to reach this goal this week is that yesterday especially, I read just to do something, rather than to learn about the world around me, expand my mind, and glorify God. I enjoyed the reading much less and got much less out of it. On the other hand, I also really really thought about some of the readings that I did this week.
4) Book reviews So far I have written a book review of every book I've finished. I'm even starting to plan the reviews of a few of the books I'm currently reading.
5) Reflect more I think I reflected on Bible readings about the same amount as I did last week, a decent amount but not as much as I'd like to reach.
6) After graduation options I got a GRE study book and made myself a study schedule.
7) Sleep! I did rather badly on this one this week. I slept rather less than I needed.
8) Exercise I went for two walks and helped a friend move out of her apartment. Not as much as I would like, perhaps, but not bad.
9) Work on thesis All I did for this was to make a schedule for myself, to hopefully encourage myself to do more work on this next week.
10) Declutter Nothing.
11) Scholarships I applied to a few simple ones, made a list of possibilities and due dates, and just found several promising search sites.
12) Pray for others On one of my walks this week, I spent a lot of the time praying for others. The church service I attended today was also all about mission, so I spent some time during and after the service praying for others. I really felt like God was condemning me for my lack of concern for others today. I really want to focus on this one next week.

Weeds

In church today the parable of the mustard seed was read. I've always thought of it in terms of God's power to take something small, like what we can do for Him or offer to His kingdom, and turn it into something large and amazing. Today in church it was interpreted a bit differently. It was pointed out that mustard plants were fast-growing weeds, especially in fields. They would spread and cover an entire field incredibly quickly (dandelions were suggested as the modern equivalent)--so God can work incredibly quickly with the small amount that we can offer him. This, in turn, suggested to me the idea of invasive species. Invasive species often invade fields, because they are bare and easy to grow in, and are unwanted both by the farmer and by society at large. Is God and His word a sort of invasive species here on earth? Unwanted to worldly residents? Something they attempt to eradicate but can never quite manage? Something that isn't native, in some sense doesn't belong? It seemed like a pretty good comparison to me.