Category: General

Definition

Boredom: when you have plenty of things to do, but you don’t want to do *any* of them.

I actually have two different levels of boredom. The first one happens when I run out of distractions. Sometimes those distractions are legitimate things that interrupt me, and I resent them. Most of the time they are the things that I set up to keep me from doing **work**.

Work is defined as any large project wherein there is a significant time lag between beginning and when I see any kind of measurable result. Reading is not work. Blogging is not work. Writing a book report is work.

The first level of boredom is relatively easy to deal with. I put myself in a place where creating new distractions is actually… work. Eventually, I run out of distractions and begin showing actual productivity. The second level of boredom is much more dangerous: At some point, particularly when I’m working on a large project when I begin to feel slightly discouraged because of the time lag between putting effort in and seeing measurable results. The typical response to this is to revert for a “short” period of time to doing something where I can get lots of progress with little work. Reading (even assigned reading) generally has this effect. So do video games. Sometimes blogging has that effect (thus), though not if I have something particularly complicated I’m trying to pound out. But when I’ve already removed most of my distractions, I can hit a spot when I have nothing to do but… work. And when every single project I’m working on is in the exact same slump… that’s boredom.

Of course, usually the biggest time for these kinds of slumps is right before a deadline. And next week is midterms.

Copying is Stealing?

Mark Loughridge is accusing me of mendacity: He says that copyright infringement is stealing. I say I don’t get it. He says I get it just fine and I’m just playing dumb.

I suppose he’s right. I do comprehend the argument: infringement=stealing. I just think it’s a stupid, fallacious, incoherent argument, which actually undermines any desire that responsible and upright Christians might otherwise have to obey the law.

There are two very good reasons to avoid copyright infringement:

  • First of all, it’s illegal. There is in fact a law against it. It’s a very bad law, stupid and shortsighted, having the effect of crippling the very people it’s designed to protect. But it’s a law, and Christians have a responsibility to obey the law. Continue reading “Copying is Stealing?”

Kohl’s Here I Come.

After this Wednesday evening, I will be officially employed at Kohl’s to fill in the rest of my hours for the week. I don’t know what my hours will be yet, but they already know that I have a teaching position in the morning and can’t come in until 11am on weekdays. I’ll be doing cashier work. Please pray that I get enough hours to offset our costs and to save up a bit for the move back to NC.

In other news, Tom and Christy had a healthy little girl yesterday. Kyle deleted the message that he had on his phone from Tom, but I believe that they had a 7lb little girl that they’ve named Jocelyn (not sure about that spelling). So they have a beautiful little Sabbath Child to bring them lots of joy and little sleep.

Peace and Blessings to you all.

Written vs. Oral Communication: an application

As I was saying last week, before I was so rudely interrupted by the weekend, I have my own personal little conflict between talking and writing. Talk is easier, but writing is more cogent, more permanent. I have lots of great ideas all the time, nice little five-minute blasts of controversy. When my life is peaceful, these things show up here, in print. But when things are all crazy, like they’ve been for the last six months (or so), writing things down just takes too much effort. I keep having great ideas, but you never hear about them. My poor wife hears them – over and over and over again – because seeing that I can’t expurgate them by writing, I keep talking until I’m done thinking about them.

For instance, last semester, I had a spiritual encounter that was a sort of culmination of a period of thought and study on the nature and purpose of the church. This was a Big Encounter, something on the level of the call I had to go to seminary. Continue reading “Written vs. Oral Communication: an application”

Bruce Metzger

Bruce Metzger, a prominent professor of Biblical Criticism at Princeton, died last week. I was generally familiar with him, but I haven’t read a lot of his work. However, this quote was particularly pleasing:

On another occasion, one of our more charismatic ‘scholars’ took issue with one of Dr. Metzger’s interpretations of several verses in the book of Revelation. She proceeded to share the interpretation she had received by ‘the gift of the Holy Spirit’ while she was praying over that Scripture the night before. Some students began to giggle. But Dr. Metzger thanked the young woman for sharing her interpretation and noted that he placed great faith in the ability of the Holy Spirit to assist us whenever we interpreted Scripture. He stated further that he, himself, never approached the study of the Bible in any language apart from prayer and the invocation of the Spirit. And then class continued.

World’s Shortest Church History Lesson

Recently, I taught the World’s Shortest Church History Lesson to the kids in my Sunday school. What I tried to accomplish in one hour was to trace the three ways people have tried to established religious authority since the Reformation. That’s a Big Undertaking, I know, and it requires a lot of simplification, but here’s what I came up with:

The three bases for religious authority that people usually appeal to are: 1) Tradition, 2) Scripture, and 3) Nature (or “science”). From three very different foundations, you get three very different kinds of movements: If your primary basis for controlling what you believe and the way you do church is Tradition, what you end up with is Fundamentalism (if it’s good enough for grandpa, it’s good enough for me). If your primary basis for controlling what you believe and the way you do church is Scripture, then what you end up with is Evangelicalism (Evangelical – meaning “gospel based” since the number one thing you can derive from scripture is the gospel – everything else is extra). Interestingly, in Germany, the Lutheran church has always called itself the Evangelical church. Last, if your primary basis for controlling what you believe and how you do church is Nature, or “science,” what you end up with is something you might call “modernism” or “liberalism.”

The odd thing is what happens when you look at how these kinds of ideas have played out in the last 500 years. Continue reading “World’s Shortest Church History Lesson”

God’s Direction Part II

And now for the rest of the story…

Due to the realization that the Lord wanted us to move back southward, I opened myself up for looking for employment either part time or full time to fill up the rest of the spring semester and came across a part time teaching position at Bradford Christian Academy. I called the number and asked for more information about the position and found out that they needed someone to teach high school chemistry for their sophomores and someone to oversee the students taking an online physics course. Neither of these subjects is my strongest suit but I decided to apply for the position and see if this was the direction that the Lord wanted for me to go. After two in person interviews I was offered the position yesterday (Tuesday, February 7) and found that I was very interested in taking the position to teach.

While I was in between in person interviews I received a second call for an interview as a Customer Service Coordinator at North Shore Medical Center in Lynn. Continue reading “God’s Direction Part II”

God’s Direction Part I

“For my thoughts are not your thought neither are your ways my ways,” declares Yahweh. “As the heaven are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9

“And my sense of humor and irony will drop your jaw faster than the anvil falling on Wile E. Coyote.” (Paraphrase due to recent experiential evidence).

I am employed in a position that I have never ever thought of being in. Picture this: Continue reading “God’s Direction Part I”

Grumblies

It has come to my attention that certain family units have begun to get the grumblies as far as our lack of posting goes. Rest assured we are not dead; just busy. Kyle’s classes have started well (and his Hebrew retake went wonderfully) and I’m still in the process of looking for a job. I plan to say much more both here and in the next grents letter, but now I’m hungry and need to go eat.

Peace and Blessings.