Sighs and Musings

Another Year

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:00:00 -0800

Not a great one by most measures for the world as a whole (although the election of Obama might be considered a bright spot – we’ll know for sure in 4 years).

Ignoring the usual kinds of health issue for people our age, Anne and I are doing well. The two “stand out” stories for the year for us were: first that this was the year our church went on sabbatical as a whole. An interesting experience and it did give me more time to step back and rethink my own views about church. The second big story was our move to San Francisco which will certainly color the next few years of our lives.

For me personally, it was a pretty good year. At work I managed to deliver my main project ahead of schedule with more features than originally promised. Spiritually, I continue to feel God is working in my life and I continue to grow closer to Him. I also managed to make a serious dent in my reading backlog.

So what’s in the work for next year?

First Anne and I need to figure out what God wants to us to do for a church here in the city. There’s one we have found that we are comfortable going to; but both of us are getting a sense that it isn’t where God wants us. I have a short list of other churches for us to check out and remain open to finding out about others. And, of course, there’s the option of starting something new of our own.

My second big goal is to lose weight – in fact that’s one of the factors in our decision to move to the city. You tend to do a lot more walking when you live in the city, so exercise becomes a part of daily life as opposed to something you have to schedule time for. So I have been walking home from work most days that I am in the city (1.7 miles). I walk to the theatre when I go to movies (1 mile). On those days when I don’t need the car when I work out of the Mountain View office, I take CalTrain down and walk from the station to the office (1.2 miles) and back. I also tend to take walks for lunch (1.5-2 miles) to explore the city a bit – I keep a map on my office wall to track where I have been and to plan new routes each day. On the other side of the equation, Anne and I have also been much more careful about how much we are spending on food (both groceries and restaurants), so we are also managing our calorie intake.

The result is that I have already lost 20 pounds since we moved to the city and keep losing at a slow but steady pace (the rate of loss is such that I am confident that it is sustainable and that I will be able to keep it all off in the long run). I’d be quite happy if I lost another 55 pounds over 2009 (I need to lose a bit more than that; but I don’t want to push it).

So that’s my year. How’s yours?

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

I have made abundantly clear in this blog that I have a great deal of respect for the creative genius of Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy’, Angel, Firefly, etc.). I am willing watch anything he writes because he has proven that even if the concept sounds strange, he will deliver a show that is both entertaining and thought provoking; and he is one of only 3 writers I am willing to say that about - the others being Brian Fuller (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies), and Tim Minear (Firefly – with Joss, Wonderfalls – with Brian, The Inside, and Drive).

Well, during the WGA writer’s strike last winter, when everyone was supposed to be “pencils down”, Joss and some of his friends and family found an interesting way to keep busy. As it turns out, writing for shows distributed over the internet wasn’t covered by the contract (this was in fact one of the issue behind the strike), so WGA writers were allowed by the union to work on internet content. Joss had this strange idea for a short film bouncing around in his head for a couple years, and convinced his brothers, his soon to be sister-in-law, and some actor friends to get together and make a 3 15-minute long shows to be distributed for free on the internet (and for a small fee via iTunes).

The result was “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” a musical about a guy who 1) wants to be a super-villain, and 2) is afraid to talk to the cute girl he met at the laundromat. Yes, a very strange concept. Actually a very, very strange concept; but this being Joss, he pulled it off. The shows were both funny and tragic; and the songs were wonderful (Joss was after all the guy behind the musical episode of Buffy, although his bother and soon to be sister-in-law did a lot of the song-work).

What’s more, it was an amazing success. Even though it was available for free on its own site, Dr. Horrible’ was the number one download on iTunes (where people had to pay for it) for 5 straight days. Time Magazine even declared it one of the “Best Inventions of the Year” (although I’m not sure what the “invention” was – I guess doing professional quality content for the web).

So why am I talking about Dr. Horrible now when it was released to the web in June? Because the DVD (available only through Amazon) just came out; and while I enjoyed the show on the web, the DVD put it over the top for me – thank in large part to one of the extras on the disc. The DVD comes with a standard commentary track with the writers and actors talking about making the show; but it also comes with “Commentary!: The Musical.” Yes, there is a second “commentary” track on the DVD that is a musical in its own right. Actually it isn’t so much a commentary on the show; but on the industry with songs like “Strike!”, “$10 Solo”, “The Guild--I mean—ART", “Nobody's Asian” and “Pick-A-Part.” The songs are cutting satire worth buying the DVD for on their own.

I’m starting to wish that Joss would figure out some way create a TV series that was a musical. I know Steven Bochco tried that with “Cop Rock” and it didn’t work; but I think Joss might actually be able to pull it off.

Christmas Haiku

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

The Transcendent God
Incarnate as a Child
Joining God and Man

Omnipotent God
Come as a Servant to All
Leading to Freedom

Holy, Sinless God
Dies as a Man on a Cross
Bears our Sins Far Away

Sin: Seeds, Roots, Fruits

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Last Friday’s post was my first attempt at a synthesis of two ideas I have been working through as to the nature of Sin. I need to work more on how best to explain it; but I think I have the basic idea right.

For a very long time, I viewed the seed from which Sin grows to be a lack of trust in God. There is good Biblical basis to claim that. First a short linguistic digression – the term “faith” as is it used in the Bible is probably more accurately translated “entrust”. In fact the Hebrew word often translated “faith” in the Old Testament is used to describe things as varied as how pillars support a roof (you entrust the weight of the roof to the pillars) and the act of handing over your child to the care of a nurse (you entrust the child to the nurse). It is an action word that describes not mental assent (belief) but action taken because of what you believe. Belief becomes Faith when you act in such a way that depends on what you believe being true. The book of James in the New Testament tried to make this point to those who spoke Greek when it says “Faith without works is dead”.

Sin then starts when you fail to entrust God with your life. The Bible says “Without Faith (Trust) it is impossible to please ” (Hebrews 11:6) and “Whatever is not of Faith (Trust) is sin” (Romans 14:23). I have always taken the latter passage to be a definition of Sin – unless you do something out of a trust in God, it is Sin.

The problem with that definition is that while it may be true, it is not actionable for most people. Very few people think in terms of trusting God or not (in fact very few think about God at all, even those that believe He exists).

Over the past few years I have been exposed to another way to look at Sin – that the root of Sin is our struggle to compete with each other. That all of the bad things we do are a result of our desire to “get ahead” relative to each other. What’s interesting is that I have seen both secular and religious people who have come to this conclusion. What’s more, it is a very actionable definition – you don’t have to understand much theology to see how your actions to assert own agenda have a negative effect on other people.

So I have been working through these two ideas in my mind to see if they can be reconciled, and have come to the conclusion that they can, although I may not yet have right way to explain it. The process goes something like this: We were meant to get our identity from God – He knows who we are and what He created us for. If however we do not trust God for our identity (whether because we do not believe He exists, or because we believe he is too distant to be relevant, or we outright distrust him), then we must seek out our identity someplace else, and the only other option is each other. Without God’s absolute statement of our identity, we can only be better or worse than each other. Thus we end up competing with each other, and we struggle to find ways to move ourselves “up” without pushing others “down.” The things we do to raise ourselves up at others expense are sins; but the root of those actions is the principle of Sin which is the struggle to establish our identity without God.

So a failure to trust God is the seed from which Sin grows; but the plant that grows from that seed (like an Oak from an Acorn) is our competition to establish our identities, and the fruit of that plant are the sins we inflict on each other.

Holiness then is accepting that we are who God says we are; and looking at everyone else, not as our competition but as equal fellow travelers in this life. More on this in a later post (after the holidays, perhaps).

So what is Sin?

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

I’ve said “Sin” is that thing which infected humanity and interfered with our ability to form the relationships with God and with each other that we were originally created to have. But what exactly is it? And how did it cause so much trouble? The following is my understanding as of today. I should note that I have been rethinking the concept of Sin over the last couple of years, and the description here may not be as polished as I’d like.

To understand Sin, you first need to understand the kind of relationships we were originally designed for. God’s plan was for a clear division of responsibilities within the new fellowship that included humanity (just as there were divisions of responsibilities between the three persons of the Trinity). There were things that were God’s responsibility and there were things that were humanity’s responsibility. Among God’s responsibilities was establishing the values of things – what was of value and what was not, what was worthwhile, what was worthless, what was "good" and what was "bad" (I’ll get back to this in a bit).

Humanity’s responsibility was to use the skills God gave us to do our part of a much greater work. You could think of it as constructing a giant mosaic or painting, where each of us was to be responsible for small sections. The picture would turn out beautiful and worthwhile because God would know each of us well enough to give us pieces to develop that we were perfectly suited for; and we would be full of joy doing it because our responsibilities would perfectly match our abilities and so we would both be challenged by the work and yet be able to succeed.

What’s more, since each of us had a small part of the whole, the picture would not be complete without all of our work. As I said, God was responsible for establishing the values of things and since each of us was necessary to complete God’s plan, each of us was determined by Him to be of equal value. What’s more, since God was solely responsible for determining the value of things, His declaration that we were all equally of value to Him meant that we were all equally of value to each other. We might all be different and do different things for God; but God said we were all of equal value, and therefore we were.

At least that was God’s intent for the fellowship of God and humanity.

If you read the story of The Fall in Genesis 3, you can see (to use my previous parable) the soul-virus the hacker used to infect and corrupt humanity. To set things up, God puts humanity into a place where all their needs would be met. But (as I said above) God says there was one thing they were not to take upon themselves – the right to judge the value of things. That right was reserved for God alone (in the story it is described as “The Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”). So the bitter hacker (described as a serpent) comes in and plants a simple but corrupting idea into the minds of the people – that if humanity would take on the right to judge the values of things (eat the fruit) they would then be like God! They wouldn’t need God to tell them that they are valued; they could determine their own value for themselves!

And with that idea a seed of doubt was planted in humanity. What if we weren’t actually all equal (as God said)? What if some of us were better, more valuable? What if God is cheating us by treating us all as equals? Why should we trust God to determine our value? Why not take on that right as our own and determine our own value?

And from there things went downhill quickly.

Humanity decided to determine its own value, and in doing so rejected God's standards of value. What standard then remained to base their value on? Only one possible standard existed – each other. So people began to look for their value by comparing themselves to each other. There was no absolute sense of value (as God had provided) – only value relative to each other. One could only be "better" than that person but "not as good" as another.
Chaos ensued.

Instead of simply doing what God said, each human started to try to influence what they did and what others did to position themselves better. Sometimes individuals competed against each other. Other times groups formed that cooperated with each other to better compete with other groups. Hierarchies formed and competed against each other hierarchies for dominance. Since every individual, every group, and every hierarchy was trying to create something in which their own contribution was most important, the picture God had wanted to create with us became fragmented with multiple images constantly overwriting each other.

Even God began to be viewed as a way to establish superior value. People began to think in terms of "I am more godly than that person" or "My denomination is better than those other denominations" or "My religion is better than that other religion". Sometimes the idea of value even got inverted in strange ways with people competing to show who is more "lowly" or who was a "worse sinner" before God straightened them out. I think God weeps over how we have used Him to subvert His plan for us.

Individual sins then are a reflection of things we do to establish our own value without God. Consider the Ten Commandments:

-We worship things other than God in hope that our association with them will raise our value.
-We dishonor God's name by using it to establish our value apart from His will

-We work ourselves to death to find value in our accomplishments

-We dishonor others (including our parents) to put ourselves above them

-We hate and kill those who threaten our value

-We seek pleasure in others to make ourselves feel more valuable

-We take things from others (legally or otherwise) to use them to establish our own value.

-We lie, gossip and slander each other to raise our own perceived value

-We desire things that belong to others because we think having them will increase our value.

Yet in all this, God is standing by simply saying "You are all of value because I have said it. Abandon your struggle and come back to do the work I have created you for".

What went wrong? (geek version)

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Following on from my previous post, God (who by His Trinitarian nature embodies perfect relationship) created humanity capable of perfect relationship with God and with each other. God purpose was to join humanity into His fellowship that previously was only experienced by the Trinity.

Then something went wrong. Humanity's ability to engage in perfect relationships became broken, and in the process our relationships with God and with each other became flawed. This was a problem for God since He could no longer bring humanity into His fellowship without our making a mess of things.

So what exactly went wrong?

There is a theological explanation, which I will get to in later posts. However I note that Jesus often spoke in parables and allegories using things that were familiar to his audience. As a software engineer, I often find myself thinking in terms of computers as analogies. So consider the following a geek-parable of The Fall.

God created humanity with an operating system that was able to interface with God and others to accomplish great things as a unified community (to follow the computer analogy – like a distributed computing network where God was the control hub). But a vindictive hacker with a grudge against God didn’t want that to work, so the hacker created a virus that corrupted mankind’s operating system, breaking our ability to cooperate with God and each other. The “Sin” virus (as it became known) caused people to do things (which became known as "sins") which messed up their relationships with each other. What's more, the virus also corrupted their data files so that even if the virus was removed, they would still not operate properly.

A nice story (for the few who can appreciate it); but all it really does is give the problem a label. What exactly is “Sin” and how did it interfere with our ability to form perfect relationships?

That’s the next (more serious) post.

A Relational God

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

I wrote previously about my understanding of God being “A Transcendent God” and “A Triune God”. The resulting picture is of God being completely “other” – unlike anything we have experience with. Even God himself acknowledges that the way He sees things is alien to us:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa 55:8-10, NIV)

So what hope do we have of ever understanding Him?

There is hope, and it is hidden in one of the things that makes God so alien to us – the Trinity.

If you step back for a moment and consider what the Trinity means to God’s nature, there is one clear conclusion – God is fundamentally relational. Before God created anything, he embodied relationship: Father, Son, Spirit. Three minds in constant and harmonious relationship with each other within one being. Yes, God has power and knowledge and wisdom; but God IS relationship – it is fundamental to His nature, His identity.

I believe relationship is what has driven God’s actions from before creation. It is not possible to understand what God has done or what the Bible says about Him unless you look at it from the perspective of a being who’s most fundamental characteristic is relationship.

Consider the short version of God’s creation of humanity found in Genesis 1:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, . . ." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26a, 27 NIV)

A couple of things I want to note here: First, every English translation I have ever seen correctly translates the Hebrew here as “Let US make/create” – using the plural pronoun. God refers to Himself in the plural because He is both plural and singular – He is Trinity. However, almost as important as that is the fact that this is the only place in Genesis 1 where the plural is used – elsewhere God is only quoted as saying “Let the light/water/land/etc.” do something. So why is it important to emphasis God’s relational nature here? Because He is talking about creating another relational being – humanity. We are made in the “image” of God, male and female. Does that mean God is male and female? I don’t think so. I think the message is that humanity was designed by an inherently relational God to be inherently relational as well – that we would be drawn into relationship with each other and with God (more on this in a moment).

The longer Genesis 2 version of the story reinforces the point by a little “street theatre” God employs. First a single human was created, and God allowed that one human to interact with all of the other creatures that God has created; but the one human discovers that there are no other creatures that they can have a relationship with. Once the human understands that, once they see their own need for relationship, God splits the one human into two – a male and a female – so they can have a relationship with each other.

But their relationship is not just with each other; but with God as well. While the events described in Genesis 3:8 are horrific (humanity’s first interactions with God after Sin), there is a hint there as to what things were like before the fall. It talk about God “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” looking for Adam and Eve. You get the sense that this was a common occurrence - that God would show up regularly and interact with humanity. God had a relationship with them.

How could this be? How could a transcendent God have a relationship with simple humans? Because God created us with the purpose of having a relationship with Him. Perhaps not an equal relationship (and Theologians still debate whether there is equality between the persons of the Trinity); but a relationship nonetheless. We may not be able to understand God fully (at least for now); but we were made to understand Him enough to have a relationship with Him.

You could almost look at God having created a new Trinity – God, Adam and Eve; and just as God had a perfect relationship within Himself, He was looking to establish a new perfect relationship with mankind.

Unfortunately, things ended up a bit more complex than that – there was sin, betrayal, broken relationships and a whole lot of mess for many generations; but for now, I want to jump ahead to the descriptions of how this all will end. I’ll started by noting that the ultimate expression of relationship between humans is marriage; where, as the Bible says “the two become one flesh”. Think of that phrase in the context of the Trinity where you have three people who are one being, “of one substance” as the Nicene Creed says. The marriage union is supposed to give us some small, flawed insight into what God has always experienced in its perfected form – multiple persons in perfect unity.

Then in the Christian scriptures, it talks about the Church as a whole as “the Bride of Christ” and how, after this world is transformed into the next one, there will be “the marriage feast of The Lamb (Jesus)”. One way to look at this is that we (the church) are to be made “one flesh” with God. God’s purpose in creating humanity is to create new persons to join Him in his perfect relationship; and while our journey to that goal has not been a direct one, it remains God’s ultimate plan for us.

So, God is by nature the embodiment of Relationship.
God Created humanity with the purpose and ability to join Him in that Relationship.
Our present detour on that process will be a subject of later posts.

An overwhelming thought

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

It is popular these days to talk about one's "carbon footprint" – how much carbon gets released into the atmosphere to keep you in your lifestyle? How much carbon is released to produce and transport your food, clothes, gadgets, etc. as well as how much carbon is released as you use your normal mix of transportation, home heating and electricity?

As a Christian, I think I am called to be good stewards of the environment, and so there is some value in considering my carbon footprint. However, for as much as God cares about my stewardship of the environment, he cares about people much more. This led me to ponder a much scarier question:

What is my Suffering Footprint?

How much suffering exists in the world to keep me in my lifestyle? How much suffering results from the processes that produce my food, clothes, gadgets, etc. as well as how much suffering exists as a result of other aspects of my lifestyle? How many people in the world are lacking food, water, medicine because it is more profitable for companies to sell that stuff to people like me?

My answer isn't very encouraging, and I suspect most Americans, if they were honest with themselves, would have equally dismal answers. While I don't directly exploit anyone, my lifestyle is the cause of a lot of exploitation around the world.

Anne and I have tried to improve this over the last couple of years – trying to buy more of our food from sources that certify how the workers are treated, trying to avoid buying clothes that are made in countries that use sweatshop (or worse, involuntary) labor. Trying to reduce our buying of gadgets in general since as you follow the supply chains back on almost anything, it is hard to avoid minerals and the like that are obtained using ill treated workers.

What we have found is that short of dropping out and living in a commune that makes all of its own "stuff", it is next to impossible to avoid these things (and I'm not ready to drop out quite yet). I find the whole idea quite overwhelming; but I don't know what to do about it other than to continue to take the small steps I am already taking. As an individual, it seems completely beyond me to make a difference.

I do however wonder what the Church as a whole could do if we were united behind the idea of ministering healing for the hurts of this world.

Jesus and us losers

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

This post is in large part a reaction to reading Yaconelli’s “Messy Spirituality” – a short, must-read book which managed to get me crying on several occasions. But rather than do a book review, I thought I’d do my own short exploration of the same theme.

Christianity has in too many ways embraced the drive for excellence from the surrounding culture. Church has become a place where seemingly perfect people come into seemingly perfect buildings and hear seemingly perfect musical performances and seemingly perfect lectures on seemingly perfect doctrine. God is perfect and holy, and so we should all be perfect and holy when we come unto His presence. Those who aren’t perfect (or at least can’t fake it well enough) should wait outside until they get their act together.

I remember being admonished at one church to think about how I would dress and behave if I was ushered into the presence of President of the United States or the Queen of England, and that I should look at coming to church like that because I was coming into God’s presence. In theory it sounds rational.

The good news is that Christianity, at least Real Christianity, is messy. We should know that from looking as Jesus’ life. He was a devout Jew who hung out with Roman collaborators, prostitutes and notorious sinners. When it came to picking the “inner circle” of those who followed him he picked salty fishermen, terrorists, and shady businessmen – most of whom never really understood what Jesus was saying until after He died. What a bunch of losers – but that’s who Jesus liked to surround Himself with.

The people who “had their act together” never cared much for the Jesus, and Jesus only paid attention to them when they got in between God and the messed up people God loved.

It was the messed up people who understood their need, and in that understanding were interested what Jesus was saying about getting closer to God. Their trajectories then became towards God. Some had quite a distance to go; but that never seemed to bother Jesus as long as they were headed in the right direction. Those who “had their act together” were quite content to orbit God, going in circles – perhaps close circles - but never ever getting any closer to Him.

That is much of what is wrong with the church these days. It has become a place for people to pretend to be good, while it should be a place for messed up people to draw closer to God and to each other. That’s why I liked Yaconelli’s book – it is largely a collection of stories about losers who understood that what matters is showing God’s love to the world in whatever imperfect way they can manage. Like I said, I cried though parts of it.

I read another “messy” book recently, Rick McKinley’s “This Beautiful Mess”. In it he talked about how Christianity in its quest for “right doctrine” has dissected our faith, putting all of the pieces in nicely labeled jars of formaldehyde. The only problem is that dissected bodies are dead. Real living bodies are messy and move around too much to understand in that way. He argues in part that we need to learn to be a little less concerned about getting all our doctrines right and more about bringing people into relationship with God. The result is a rather “messy” form of Christianity; but it is one that is alive.

Let’s hear it for God’s losers!
Let’s get messy for Jesus!

Alas poor Forry . . .

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Alas poor Forry . . .

. . . I knew him, as did most of Science Fiction Fandom.

Last week, at the age of 92, Forrest J. Ackerman (“Forry” (or 4E) to just about everyone) died, and Science Fiction as a genre and as a community is poorer for it.

For those who are not SciFi fans, Forry (among many other things) was the guy who coined the term “SciFi”. He also discovered and encouraged a teenager with a gift for writing that you may have heard of – Ray Bradbury. Actually his contributions to Science Fiction as a writer, publisher, agent, actor, and collector are numerous – the media would often refer to him as “Mr. Science Fiction”- but first and foremost Forry was a fan with a heart for Fandom as a community.

I met him a couple of times at World Science Fiction Conventions, and was always impressed with his openness to talk to anyone who shared his passion for Horror or Science Fiction. He was always willing to lend a hand (or even money) to fellow fans. There are many science fiction writers today who owe their careers to a “leg up” from Forry. His home (the “Ackermansion”) was probably the best science fiction museum in the world with over 300,000 items he had collected over the years; and every Saturday, Forry opened his home to anyone who wanted to tour it (no charge). That’s the kind of man he was.

From 1959 to 1999, Forry was responsible at WorldCon for giving out the “Big Heart Award” to a fan (whether professional or amateur) who has served the community with generosity and magnanimity. I was there at LACon-IV in 2006 when the community not only gave the award to Forry; but renamed it the “Forrest J. Ackerman Big Heart Award.” No one disserved the honor more.

Forry, you will be missed.

Start Here: Kingdom Essentials for Christians

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Start Here: Kingdom Essentials for Christians

by Don Willliams

This book is essentially an attempt at a summary answer to the question “So I’m ‘saved’, now what?” This is actually a question that most churches answer very poorly – usually all a new Christian gets is a quick answer like “Be good, go to church, read your Bible, pray, tell others” and then is left to figure out the details on their own. And as an answer to that question, the book is actually quite good. If I was a pastor I might keep a stack of these in stock to give out (although I would also hope I would do a good job of mentoring people without the book).

The author is also a long time associate of the Vineyard movement, and the book is heavily influenced by that point of view. So while I am almost 40 years past the “So I’m saved, now what?” stage, I enjoyed large portions of the book as a quick summary of what I have learn in the last 10 years as part of Vineyard churches (which is a lot). This may prove useful since on face value it seems unlikely I will continue to be involved with the Vineyard movement much longer (there are no Vineyard churches in San Francisco, and I believe God wanted Anne and I up here to be involved in the city).

A Triune God

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

I am a Trinitarian Christian – I believe in a triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit. I do however understand that the trinity is a difficult doctrine to wrap one’s head around. There’s just not a good way to describe a triune God that people can relate to.

Actually, that’s not quite true.

There is a perfectly good analogy; but it is one that most Christians would shy away from using.

There are folk stories in Europe of heroes encountering two-headed giants (or trolls, or ogres, depending on the variation on the story). The creature is a single being; but it has two (or more) heads, each of which has its own brain and personality. The stories usually involve the hero somehow tricking the heads of the giant to start arguing with each other (demonstrating that they are separate persons with separate personalities) and while the heads are occupied with each other, the hero is allowed to steal the giant’s treasure and slip away.

Not a very pleasant model to use for an analogy (the fact that in these stories the two headed giants are almost always depicted as being fairly stupid doesn’t help); but in abstract it fits the concept of the Trinity fairly well. God is a single being; but He has three distinct persons with distinctive personalities. Now given that God is transcendent (see my previous post), He doesn’t actually have three “heads” since he doesn’t have an actual “body” in the sense we think of it; but if you need a way to visualize the Trinity, thinking of God as a single being with three minds is a good place to start. The biggest difference is that unlike the giants in the stories, God’s three persons are always in perfect cooperation with each other. Theirs is a relationship of perfect intimacy and synchronicity. They may be three persons; but they work together as one.

So who are these three persons in the trinity? Well, describing a fellow human in a few words can never do them justice – we are all too complicated to be neatly summarized. Trying to do that for God is impossible; but here’s my feeble attempt.

One of the persons of the Godhead is a “big picture” person, concerned mostly with things like “How things should be” and “What needs to be done”. Another of the persons of the Godhead is more of “hands on” type who is focused on doing the things that need to be done. His joy is in implementing the plans the first person comes up with. Historically, we know the first person as “The Father” and the second as “The Son”. In the ancient cultures where life spans where short and businesses tended to be hereditary, this made a lot of sense since people were used to seeing the sons doing most of the work in a business while the father (who would be “old” by the standards of the day) would provide the big picture direction from the back of the shop.

The third person of the Trinity tends not to talk about themselves much and so is harder to describe. I tend to think of the third person as a teacher/mentor at heart – one who loves training other people and who has the patience and compassion necessary to keep working with someone until they get it right (but is not hesitant to tell them when they get it wrong). We know this third person as “The Holy Spirit” – a rather nebulous term, which perhaps is appropriate since He doesn’t disclose much of himself (just as many teachers show little of themselves in class).

Not pretty, and a flawed description I am sure; but as a short summary, it's how I think of God.

A Transcendent God

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:00:00 -0800

There are a lot of terms used to described God – many of them being “omni-“ words: omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. To that add words like merciful, just, loving, holy, generous, and the like.

One characteristic of God that doesn’t seem to get talked about a lot is His transcendence. God is not “in” the universe. If anything, the universe is “in” Him. Consider: God created the universe; therefore He had to exist before the universe; therefore His existence transcends that of the universe. Also since (according to relativity) time and space are intertwined and are a part of the fabric of the universe, God exists outside of space and time.

So while the ancients worshiped “gods” of mountains and oceans and human characteristics (love, war, etc.) – all small parts of the universe, the One True God is so much bigger than that.

And this is a good thing.

Science tells us that this universe is going to end, or at least be obliterated. They don’t know whether it will end in fire or ice (the Bible seems to indicate fire); but it will end. If our hope is in anything within this universe, then that hope is in vain. But our hope is in fact in someone who transcends this universe.

Still, transcendence is a difficult thing to wrap one’s head around. I have a way of looking at it that is helpful for me, although I don’t know for how many others this would be useful.

I am a software engineer, and have spent a lot of time developing computer simulations of various kinds (for the non-geeks out there, think of things that range from games like “SimCity” – a traffic and real estate simulation, to the complex simulations that meteorologists use to predict the weather). Some simulation I have developed for my employers, many I have developed for myself at home. In fact there was a long period of time where I didn’t feel I really understood a subject unless I could write a simulation of it on my computer that gave realistic results.

So when I studied macroeconomics, I might develop a macroeconomic simulator that showed the behavior of production, prices, trade, etc. I would set up an initial scenario and let the simulation run and see if the behaviors I saw in the simulation were the kinds of things you would see in real life. If they were, then the simulation was successful and it was clear I understood the subject. If not, I would keep working at it.

The simulations I tended to write had a lot of common characteristics. First, they all had some about of randomness in them – there were always minor factors in any simulation that might have an effect on the outcome but would take too much effort to simulate in details. Adding a few “rolls of the dice” in the right places is often the way to represent these factors. Second, I always had a way to save and play back a given run (repeating the same random choices in the process, so the results were the same). This was critical to getting the simulation right since it allowed me, whenever something happened that I didn’t expect, to go back and look in detail as to why it happened. Sometimes I convinced myself that it was in fact a “realistic” result. Other times it was a bug in my simulation. Still other times the behavior pointed to some way in which I didn’t understand the subject well enough (which was the whole point of doing the simulations). Finally, I always had a special interface for manipulating the data in the simulation directly. So I might do a run, and then go back and half way through change some details to see how the change I made affected the outcome.

So where I am going with this?

I tend to think of God’s relationship to our universe to be very similar to my relationship to one of the runs of one of my simulations. God is outside (and much greater than) our universe, just as I was outside (and greater than) one of my simulation runs. That transcendence includes the ability to see and understand the whole of history from His vantage point, just as I could run my simulation backwards and forwards and see each step in detail and understand what (and why) everything happens. While some digital entity (if such existed) within one of my simulations would only understand the passage of time as steps in my simulation, I could understand the whole thing because of my transcendent point of view. What’s more, God created the universe with the ability to intervene, just as I created by simulations with the ability to directly manipulate the data. On the other hand, just as I ended up using a bit of randomness in my simulations (behaviors that were not completely determined by the program), I believe (although some Christians would disagree) that God gave mankind free will so our behavior is not fully determined by God in advance.

The one thing God did that I never had the skill, time or computer power to accomplish was that God put Himself into the universe in the person of Jesus. I might be able to name a “person” in one of my simulations “Steve”; but they would never actually “be” me – I have no skill to write a simulation of myself or the time to create a virtual reality interface that would allow me to walk around inside of one of my simulations. Yet God was able to put himself fully into our universe and experience it from our point of view.

Why He would do that I will get to in a later post.

500 posts

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

This is my 500th post on this blog (comments are currently up to 650), and it is a good time to consider the “state of the blog”.

I have to admit I am a bit ambivalent about it right now. Certainly the rate of two new posts a week (excluding the book posts which are a bit artificial) which I have been on for several months (with a few misses) is a comfortable one for me – I seem to have that much to say on an ongoing basis without it feeling like a burden. What’s more, I have a whole collection of posts that are coming together in my mind which should keep me busy for a while.

On the other hand, comments are down, and it does feel sometime like I am talking to no one out there. Some of that, I am sure, is a consequence of the number of posts that have been on fairly mundane topics, like our move to SF. I’ll see if things change if I start posting on weightier matters again. However, there hasn’t been a new commenter in long time, and perhaps we are reaching the point where those few who have been a part of this blog have said everything they have to say to each other.

Nonetheless, I remain committed to maintaining this blog at a slow pace of 2-3 posts a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Friday) at least through the end of the year. I will re-evaluate it again in January.

A Year of Book Posts

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

A Year of Book Posts

As noted Monday, this week marks the 52ns and final weekly book post on this blog. It was an interesting experiment (and certainly one I benefited by); but as there seems little interest in it from my meager readership, I will pass on it for the future.

A quick summary of the year:

I started with 167 books waiting for me on my “to be read” shelves. Actually the situation could better be described as their “overflowing from my too be read shelves”, hence my intent to discipline myself on purchasing new books this year and see how far I could drive that number down.

Over the last year I have:
- read 110 books
- punted 11 books
- purchased 25 books
- borrowed 2 books

Leaving me with a count of 73 remaining (and yes, in the last few weeks I did consider making a final push to get that down to 67 so I would have reduced my initial number by an even hundred; but there were too many other things I also wanted to do).

So, what now?

First, as stated, I will discontinue the weekly posts. I will still post reviews of particularly significant books; but no longer list all of the books I have read. However, since I have found the collection of posts quite useful for me at times (being able to go back and figure out what book it was that had something I was remembering), I will maintain on my computer my own little diary of books read, including the running count of my backlog.

I had considered replacing the weekly book posts with a shortened diary post, simply listing books read, TV watched, movies seen, games played, etc.; and may in fact implement that at some point; but my current plan is to not do so immediately.

As to my smaller but still not small backlog of books, my goal remains to get it down to a single row of books on a single shelf (roughly 20-25 books). On the other hand, there are clearly books available now that I am far more interested in reading than the ones I currently have pending. My solution then is that until that goal is reached I will limit myself to purchasing in any month a number of books equal to half the number I read in the previous month. Thus on aggregate, half of the books I will be reading will be newly purchased and half will be from my backlog. At that rate, I should reach my goal sometime late next year.

I had also intended at this point to purchase an Amazon Kindle E-book reader for myself. I still want to buy a kindle; but plan to wait until after the new year to do so.

Books 2008/11/24

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Current count of books pending to be read: 73
Read two, purchased two

This is then the 52nd (and therefore final) weekly book post. I’ll give a brief recap Wednesday.

Books finished this week:

Cat and Dog Theology: Rethinking Our Relationship With Our Master
by Bob Sjogren and Gerald Robison

Short version – excellent book to remind Christians who is the servant and who is the Master.

Long version – see my previous review.

The Jesus I Never Knew

by Philip Yancey

Another book I had picked up, set aside, and now wish I had read it earlier.

The author sets about to cut through the “tame” Jesus that most Christians believe in – one that is a mix of cultural filters and hindsight – to examine Jesus as he is actually described in the gospels and how He would have been perceived at the time. In the process Yancey describes his own struggles with things like the Sermon on the Mount and the Ascension. The version of Jesus described here is much more like the one I have come to know than the one I see discussed from most pulpits.

Computer Games Played: Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria expansion
DVDs Watched: none

Next Book: TBD

Cat and Dog Theology

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Cat and Dog Theology: Rethinking Our Relationship With Our Master
by Bob Sjogren and Gerald Robison

Anne as I saw the author of this book speak a couple weeks ago and enjoyed it enough that I bought one of his books. This is an “Every Christain should read it” book.

To quote from the book:

There’s a joke about cats and dogs that conveys their differences perfectly-
A dog says, “You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me, you must be god!”
A cat says, “You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, you love me, I must be god!”

The books is about how some Christians are like Cats – they act as if Christianity is about them and what God can do for them, while what God is looking for are Christians who are more like dogs who realize that Christianity is about God and how glorious He is. God is not our servant who exists to meet our needs. We are His servants who exist to bring glory to Him. Sometimes God is glorified by blessing people and sometimes God is glorified by people suffering and dying as martyrs and frequently God is glorified by situations in between the two extremes. What matters though is if God is glorified, not how comfortable we are.

This is a lesson I learned a while back – I exist to serve God in whatever way brings Him glory. This book however is one of the best presentations of the idea I have seen.

Books 2008/11/17

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Current count of books pending to be read: 73
Read two, purchased none

Books finished this week:

The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God
by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge

I have written before about John Eldredge’s book “Epic” (and the excellent video that was made of him “performing” it). Epic provides an excellent study in the “greater story” we are all a part of in this world. “The Sacred Romance” is essentially a longer and more complete version of the same idea with more attention paid to why we often lose sight of God’s perspective on things.

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English

by John McWhorter

John McWhorter is one of the linguistic writers that I consistently enjoy reading. He is both an entertaining writer (I started to annoy Anne with the number of times I started laughing while reading this book); and he has an interesting perspective on the English Language. He is also one of the linguists who believe a language is what is spoken and understood, not what the rules say it should be.

This book in specific is an examination of three key historical influences that made English Grammar (not vocabulary) what it is today. In the process of making his case for the grammatical influences of the Welsh, the Vikings, and (he believes) the Phoenicians on English, he also managed to grind a few axes he has with fellow linguists and their unwillingness to ask the question “Why?” Another great book.

Computer Games Played: Fallout 3
DVDs Watched: none

Next Book: TBD

Thinking

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

There's a bunch of ideas for blog posts that have been rolling around in my mind, unfortunately none of them have come to fruition for me to post today. A bunch of them are likely to end up as a long series that will run several months (not unlike the church series I did last year), occasionally interrupted by interesting life events.

While it may change form by the time I start posting it, the basic theme of the series is: "the first ten lessons I would teach if I were starting a new church". Essentially what are the core concepts I would want everyone to be on the same page on if I was starting something new.

Now I have a fairly clear idea of several of the later lessons and could write them now; but the first few are proving to be more challenging that I had expected. Part of the issue is that I am less certain these days of how to explain exactly what Jesus did on The Cross than I once was.

For almost all my Christian walk, I have been part of churches that taught "substitutionary atonement" – essentially that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins when he died on the cross; and I can explain the whole of the Bible based on that theological perspective. In fact, I wasn't even aware that there were other non-heretical points of view.

However, this past year I have come to appreciate that people like C. S. Lewis and the whole of the Eastern/Orthodox church have a different way to explain Jesus' work on The Cross (referred to by some as "Christus Victor" theology). The effect is the same; but the emphasis is different, sometimes in subtle but perhaps important ways.

I am therefore loath to write up a description of the meaning of The Cross (which strikes me to be something I would want to establish early) until I either resolve this or have some way to explain things that provides a bridge between "substitutionary atonement" and "Christus Victor" (which is what I'd really like to do).

Anyway, since I had no post today, I thought I'd at least explain why I have no post today, and thus create a post.

Books 2008/11/10

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Current count of books pending to be read: 75
Read two, purchased one

Books finished this week:

Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces
by Frank Wilczek

An interesting physics book by a Nobel Prize winner. The book is yet another survey of the current state of theoretical physics (I have read many of these); but takes a sufficiently different approach that it stays interesting and educational. The essential question of the book is – what is the origin of the property of matter known as “mass”? (Hence the pun of the book’s title.) While most physics books assume matter has mass (simply defining it as an essential property), this book asks the question “why?” and uses the examination of why matter behaves in the ways we associate with having mass to explore the current state of physics and to propose the author’s own approach to creating a grand unified theory. I very much appreciated the different perspective presented by the book, and it did allow me to see “the same old equations” in a new light.

The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All

edited by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson

I’ve read several books from the “Popular Culture and Philosophy” series, and have almost universally enjoyed then. While they tend to be far more focused on philosophy and less on the popular culture (some of the essays barely use the popular culture material as an excuse to present philosophical ideas), they do to tend to be educational, and occasionally have been my first exposure to some of the minor historical philosophers. This book is no exception. Some of the essays are deep examinations of the philosophical questions raised by Tolkien’s works, while others use minor points in the stories as launching pads for philosophical digression. Either way, the points made are interesting and enjoyable.

Computer Games Played: Fallout 3
DVDs Watched: none

Next Book: TBD

A Hidden Virtue of States Rights

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

A while back I had an interesting conversation with a friend and co-worker who was complaining about how every state in the United States had different laws covering a wide variety of subjects (rules of the road, taxes, voting, etc.). I started off giving the usual justifications (history, the fact that the United States is built on the assumption that the federal government has no authority beyond what we give it, etc.); but eventually came upon an interesting virtue of the system that I had never heard anyone propose – that the “States Rights” rule actually gives the federal government a diverse laboratory for testing government policies. By letting individual states try different solutions to problem like health care, tax policy, welfare, education, etc. the federal government can see the effect of various policies before trying them at the national level.

Want to know the effect of higher taxes? Look at the states that have higher taxes. Want to know how well certain solutions for health care work? Take a look at the states that are using them. Alternatively, want to know how to encourage innovation? Take a look at the policies in the states where a lot of innovation is taking place.

What’s interesting about this is that you can build a whole party platform around the idea. Have a party that is very supportive of trying new policies in individual states; but discourages other states from adopting them until they have been proven to work in at least one state. Then say that they will only adopt at the federal level those policies which have already been proven to work in a diverse set of states.

Now this doesn’t work for those things which only the federal government can do – basic monetary policy, military policy, etc.; but for many other areas of government this can be a quite useful way to both limit the federal government and to make sure what it does do works.

Change. . .

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

. . . in this case is good.

This year, early on, the presidential race was a tough decision for me. I actually have a great deal of respect for Senator McCain. He is someone who has shown a willingness to do the right thing even when it is not politically expedient. Unfortunately, my respect for 2008 Candidate McCain waned over the course of the campaign. The John McCain that ran in 2000 (the one who created the “straight talk express”) I would have voted for easily, no question; but as time went on I started to see more and more that the McCain who was running this year was a different person. It started to become clear to me that to win the Republican nomination, he had to compromise in too many ways to be the kind of man I would vote for.

The last straw for me was the selection of Governor Palin as his running mate. Presidents don’t personally make the majority of the decisions of their administration. Most of what any “President” does is actually done by their appointees, so one of the most important things to look at in any candidate is the kinds of people they surround themselves with. The selection of Governor Palin showed me that there was just too much of a risk that he would end up surrounded with more of the same kinds of people who surrounded George W. Bush, and I do not believe the United States can afford four more years of that.

And to be clear, I am not knocking Sarah Palin as a person. Were she a member of the church I go to (which is not inconceivable since I’ve attended churches similar to the one she goes to in Wasilla), I would probably get along with her quite well. But as a candidate, she stands for what I think are the worst elements of the current Republican Party.

And that is a sad thing for me to stay. I have been a registered Republican for most of the 30 years in which I have been eligible to vote; but the party has drifted too far away from the principles I had admired in it in the past for me to stay with the party any longer. I have no intention of becoming a Democrat – there is too much they stand for that I do not agree with – but I can no longer consider myself a Republican either. This election was not only a major transition for our nation; but also for me personally.

I’ve said a lot about why I couldn’t bring myself to vote for McCain. Lest you think my decision was only a “vote against” and not a “vote for”, let me say that I greatly admire Obama as a speaker. We have not had an orator in the oval office like him in many years. Now that may seem like a small thing; but his ability to inspire, to motivate, to encourage will serve our ailing, divided nation well over the next four years. Perhaps what we need most today is someone who can remind us all of the Dream that is America; and Obama may well be the best person to do that.

Books 2008/11/03

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Current count of books pending to be read: 76
Read one, purchased none

Books finished this week:

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
by Francis S. Collins

Excellent book.

Francis Collins is a geneticist who invented the “positional cloning” technique for finding genes which allowed his team to discover the genes responsible for several diseases. These discoveries led him to be appointed director of the Human Genome Project from 1993 until this year (taking over from James Watson who started it in 1990).

Francis Collins is also a Christian.

This book is essentially his answer to the question “How can someone as smart as you believe in God?” It explains how he came to his faith and how he reconciles it and his equal belief in science (including evolution). It is well written, and his arguments are clearly presented. I strongly recommend this book.

Computer Games Played: Spore, Fallout 3
DVDs Watched: none

Next Book: The Lightness of Being

The State of Discourse

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:00:00 -0800

sigh

I had to bite my cyber-tongue this week reading a post on a blog I follow. It was a very political post on a normally non-political blog explaining why the foundations of the United States would shatter if Obama gets elected (or something along those lines). The statement that really caught my ire was in the midst of the author echoing the current McCain sound-bite about Obama being for redistribution of wealth, the author states how Obama is "for socialism not democracy" – as if those were mutually exclusive terms. I started to compose in my mind an explanation of how socialism is an economic system while democracy was political power system and that there is nothing to prevent someone from supporting both ideas. Fortunately I took a quick look at the existing comments and the author's replies and realized that he wasn't interested in hearing other opinions, so I didn't bother.

I wrote this post on my own blog instead.

The bottom line is that I am beyond disappointment in what passes for political discourse these days, particularly from Republicans (Obama, in my opinion, has done a bit better staying focused on issues, but only a bit). The thing is that there are real issues here which can be discussed and debated in front of the electorate - the candidates just aren't doing it.

Take the issue of "redistribution of wealth". The reality is we already have a progressive tax code. Those with higher incomes already get taxed more than those with less, so there is a graph you can plot that shows how much tax you pay for a given level of income. Both candidates want to change that curve. McCain wants to move the whole line down, while Obama wants to change the angle so it is lower at lower incomes and higher at higher incomes. Neither of these approaches represent a fundamental change in the nature of our country, despite the rhetoric.

What's more, some of that income is already being used to assist those at the bottom of the income scale, so America already practices "redistribution of wealth" (taxing the "rich" and giving to the "poor"). In addition, the recent bail-outs of major corporations also represent taking money from a bunch of people and giving it to a small subset of them – another "redistribution of wealth", although one which would appear to tax the middle class and give to the rich (perhaps with good reasons, but a redistribution nonetheless).

My point is that which approach is best between McCain and Obama is a quite reasonable question. Historically, have across the board tax cuts resulted in stronger economies where everyone's boats (even the middle class and poor) have been elevated by the rising tide? If you lower tax rates on higher income, has that in fact resulted in increased investments which resulted in higher incomes for everyone? Conversely, when we have raised the tax rate on higher incomes, has that historically caused downturns in the economy which caused the incomes of lower and middle class workers to decline? What about when we have lowered the tax rates for middle and lower income workers? Has that historically resulted in increased consumer spending which has driven the economy to grow? Or has the money just been spent on cheap imported goods and therefore taken out of our economy?

While I have some ideas on what the answers to these questions are (and therefore whose economic plan will actually be better for the country), I could be convinced to change my mind with more and better data. I would love to hear both parties make the case from hard data as to which approach is better.

But instead I get things like "Obama is a Socialist", "Obama is running for 'Redistributor in Chief'". McCain talks about how he's the one to reach across the aisle and do things in a bipartisan way; but he seems to be the one who is doing most of the name calling which, in my experience, does not lend itself to cooperation.

And the economy is not the only area where there could be serious discussion. On a variety of topics, the two candidates have made proposals that are at some level reasonable (there is at least some reason to think that they might work). So where are the people making the case why one side will be more effective than the others? Instead both sides seem to be going for an emotional response from the electorate.

I know. American voters are not intellectuals and have the attention span of a 2 year old. Emotions are the only way to connect to most of them. The candidates are only doing what works. I shouldn't expect more.

It is all very frustrating.

I do at least give credit to Obama that he occasionally tries to take the high road. I haven't seen much of that from the Republicans this year. Very disappointing from a party I called my own when I was younger.

Looking at their faces

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:00:00 -0800

Living in the suburbs, it is often far too easy to ignore those that are different from yourself.

You can travel from your safe, middle-class home to your safe, middle-class job to a safe, middle-class shopping mall or restaurant (or safe middle-class church on Sundays) and finally back to your safe, middle-class home; all the while zipping on the expressway or freeway past those neighborhoods where other kinds of people live.

That's not to say you don't know that there are people who are different from yourself, or that you don't care about those among them who are in need. Perhaps you donate used clothes to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, or donate to charitable organizations that serve those in need. Yet in the suburbs it is very easy to take on an out-of-sight, out-of-mind perspective and to get comfortable only interacting with people similar to yourself.

Living in the city, that is much harder. Riding the subway or public bus, you come face to face with a broad range of humanity – all ethnic groups, assorted subcultures, almost all socioeconomic strata ("the rich" being excluded since even in the city they find ways to zip past everyone else). People different from you are no longer "out of sight" and therefore are much harder to keep "out of mind" (not that many people don't try).

But even in the city where you are constantly exposed to people who are different, it is easy to begin to objectify and collectivize them. There are "the poor", "the punks" the "ethnic minorities" (pick one) as if those categories define who they are. It is easy to fall into the subtle trap of thinking about the individuals who are like you are the groups who are not.

As I have been riding public transportation these past weeks, I have been taking the time to look at the faces of the other people, and I keep seeing people who really are "like me". Some may belong to different ethic groups or subcultures. Some may belong to different economic strata. Some may be drunk or on drugs. Yet looking at their faces I keep seeing people with hopes and fears are not so different from mine – people who at some level want the same things out of their lives as I do.

I keep thinking about the observation that as different as humans and chimpanzees look, 95% of their DNA is the same. I think an equivalent statement can be made about the hearts and minds people of different cultures and backgrounds – for as different as we might act and appear, deep down we are all far more the same than we are different.

I had several reasons I wanted to move to the city – access to culture, exercise (I am already losing girth), etc. I also had a sense that God had several reasons for wanting me up here (my experience is that God rarely does things for just one reason, although we may be limited to only understanding a limited number of those reasons).

I am starting to see that one of those reasons is to get me to be more comfortable interacting with people who are different from me. Put me in a room with other college educated professionals, and I do fine; but I'm never sure what to say when faced with people's whose backgrounds are very different. My sense is that this is one of the things God wants to work on in me while we live in SF, and that my rides on the subway are the beginning of those lessons.