A Ramble About Newtown

I've been more or less silent on this subject so far. There's been a lot of pain, and it is all too easy to add to it even with well intentioned words. People have been hurt and traumatized severely by what happened in Newtown, and anything like this should never be used to make or score points on opinions or viewpoints. I've read a lot of articles and headlines using the tragedy to make points about everything from gun control, to prayer in schools, to abortion. It really does turn my stomach.

It turns out the shooter had Asperger's syndrome. As many of you know, this is something with which I am intimately familiar. Immediately once this became known, certain parties have come out to assure people that his disorder had nothing to do with the killings and that there are many, many good people with the disorder who will never harm another human being. The concern is that somehow it will spark a fear of people with Asperger's or autism if people find out the shooter had it, and so every attempt is made to downplay it. His Asperger's syndrome had absolutely nothing to do with it they assert.

As I said, I am intimately familiar with this disorder. I am one of the few people, if not the only person, who can refer to having the disorder in the past tense due to bio-feedback treatments. What's more, I can remember what it was like. I have family members with the disorder as well. I know this demon very well, and I know what it can do with the wrong stimulus. As a teenager, I knew how easy, too easy, it would be for me to shut off any pretense at empathy with other people and take a life. It scared me then when I realized it was true. I also know how difficult it would be to do the same thing now that my brain is functioning normally and I am able to feel what other people feel.

To be sure, there are thousands, if not millions of people with this disorder, the vast majority, who make the choices every day to try and fit in and live normal lives. They choose to not act on how they feel inside or how they perceive others feel about them or make them feel. But you must understand that to be born with Asperger's syndrome is to be born into a life of misunderstanding, ridicule, and personal emotional pain that never really goes away and that you don't really understand. This is true whether or not anyone around the person intends to be the cause.

To have Asperger's syndrome is to not be able to read the intentions or feelings of other people, and often to not be able to process your own. It also means that you are likely to be more academically intelligent than your peers. Because of this latter thing, people expect you to understand social cues, facial expressions, and relational subtleties that your brain can't process in the moment. The mirror neurons which allow for true empathy between two people simply don't function correctly in someone with Asperger's.

Often, someone with Asperger's is at least four years behind their peers in terms of social and emotional development because the part of the brain which processes it can't do it at the same rate as everyone else. When most kids move on to seeing things as right or wrong, black or white (normal around 7 or 8), a kid with Asperger's is probably still focused on “mine, mine” (normal around 3 or 4) and only makes progress depending on the severity of the disorder, and the perceived understanding and acceptance of the people around him.

This causes two problems. The first is that the kid isn't socially appropriate for their age group, and their peers know it. Kids are cruel and taunt the kid for being different. The kid with Asperger's has no idea why they are making fun of him, and why he can't make friends like they can. The second is that the kid with Asperger's can't feel it right away when someone truly cares about him and loves him, or when someone is offering real friendship. The only emotions which may register in real time are strong emotions like pain, anger, fear, and hatred because strong feelings are what will push through the brain's processor faster. Getting across to the kid that he is really cared about takes an incredible amount of time and energy. More than many people are willing to devote to someone who isn't a member of their family.

All the people with Asperger's who live peacefully have, at some point in time, made the choice to live with that pain and not seek retribution for perceived injuries and trauma. They have done so because they have made the personal choice that to do so is right and causing harm to those who have “wronged” them is wrong. This choice doesn't make the pain go away, sometimes it only compounds it as they struggle to fit in and pretend to be “normal”.

As I read the descriptions of the twenty year old kid who did the shooting, he seems to have had all the classic signs of Asperger's. The difference between him and the rest of us is that he didn't or couldn't make that personal choice to not act on his pain. Now, the reasons why he didn't can only be speculated at. Did he have any kind of religious upbringing? Did he have any kind of a moral compass or guide? Was it because his parents divorced a couple of years previous? I haven't the foggiest idea, and only he really knows.

The truth is that there were only victims in Newtown. The shooter was among them. This is a hard thing to accept but it is true.

People don't want to think that way though. They want to find someone or something to blame so they can persecute it and stamp it out so that it can never happen again. “If we can only eliminate guns...” or “If we can just return God to the schools...” The one which Autism advocates are afraid of is “If we can just contain or control people with Asperger's...” This is a perfectly human response to this kind of a trauma, but it is a misguided response. The human response is to try and control or eliminate the cause of our fears, but the truth is that such things can't be controlled.

No, the thing which must be controlled is fear itself, and fear can only be controlled through understanding, compassion, and forgiveness. It is hard to forgive such a grievous crime. We want to judge and hate the person responsible, and somehow forgiving that person makes us feel like we're somehow condoning it and thus somehow ourselves responsible. But people don't commit atrocities like this unless they're somehow in pain themselves. That pain creates fear, which then causes anger, which leads to hatred. This twists the mind until the most heinous actions seem good and reasonable. Denying the existence of this progression only makes it more likely to occur. It creates a cycle which then spirals outward to inflict damage on everyone it touches as it infects everyone.

Forgiveness doesn't condone the action, but it does accept some responsibility for it. And in order to keep an atrocity from happening again we must all accept some responsibility for it happening in the first place and not try and shield ourselves from that responsibility.

Twenty seven innocent people died that Friday, but there were twenty eight victims.

A Ramble About Upgrades

Recently, Microsoft released the latest version of its operating system (OS), Windows 8, to the computer hardware manufacturers and to those savvy enough to upgrade their own computers from the previous versions. Microsoft does this periodically; about every three years or so. Ubuntu, the operating system I usually use on my personal computer, does a regular release about every six months and a long term support release about every two years.

I'll admit, I was one of those computer junkies who kept getting lured by the promise of newer and better software. I would see some new version number of a program I already had and phrases like “Oooh! Shiny!” would enter my subconscious mind. Newer features... better graphics... I had to have it. I even began, as many do, to start using developmental versions of software (in other words, not ready for daily use) so that I could stay, not just on the cutting edge, but the bleeding edge.

The problem with this though is that it's based on a dirty little secret of the software and computer industry. What drives software upgrades isn't the desire for better software. It's the desire to keep people buying newer computers and hardware. Computer manufacturers can't make money if people are satisfied with the computers they already have. Software that has more features or better graphics usually requires better hardware which means that you have to either upgrade or buy another computer. If you don't, chances are either it won't run at all, or it may crash your otherwise perfectly functional computer system. Often, they rope people into upgrading by promising that the newer version will be easier to use, have better security, and will make all the problems they've been having fade away.

The truth of the matter is that there is usually nothing wrong with previous stable versions. A case in point is Windows 3. There was nothing wrong with this operating system. It did exactly what it was supposed to. It gave you a user friendly environment to find and run the programs you needed to. You could write with it. You could network with it. You could play games with it. You could organize your life with it. A lot of software was written for it. I know of people who are still unhappy with the direction Microsoft took when they moved away from it, and didn't appreciate being forced to relearn how to use their computers.

Another case in point is Word. It is a known fact that there are something like a thousand new features in the latest version of Microsoft Word that almost no one knows are there and neither are they used by virtually anyone. The old versions of Windows, Word, and other programs worked just fine and got the job done. A lot of aficionados find that they still do. Apple's Mac OS is another case in point. I had the privilege of using Mac OS 9.22, the last version before OSX was introduced about ten or eleven years ago. There was very little this OS couldn't do even in comparison to a “modern” operating system. The switch to OSX seemed kind of pointless.

After moving away from Windows, I continued the upgrade bandwagon with Ubuntu for years. I finally jumped off of it with the last, long term version of Ubuntu, 12.04. I could upgrade my computer to the latest version, 12.10, for free. But I came to realize that I really don't need to. My computer and everything on it works just fine the way it is. Maybe it won't always, but it does now.

The devotion some computer nerds like myself have to their preferred operating system has often been likened to a religious devotion. There are Windows devotees, Mac devotees, and Ubuntu Linux devotees. Most are fairly reasonable and open minded, but some are extremists who would happily see the other's OS go down in flames (and often try to bring it about). But that's not where I'm going with this.

There is a train of thought among people that one's faith needs to be upgraded periodically. That there was something wrong with the old way of believing and practicing one's faith. This train of thought is often encouraged by the “Christian” media industry. One can make some educated guesses as to why. “Are you still stuck in the old version of your Christianity? You need Christianity 8.0 with cutting edge graphics and better security!”

It sounds ridiculous, but let's face it, it's not new. It's something that has been continuously handed to us for centuries. Every split, every division, every new theology or heresy within the Church is due to something like this. If people were satisfied with their Christian practice the way it was they wouldn't go looking elsewhere for a change.

“Something's not working the way I think it should with my Christianity! Oh, I need an upgrade!” At that point, the question really needs to be asked, “Did anyone properly show you how to use it?” “Oh, that version of Christianity looks so much more exciting! It must be better!” Chances are, it's a resource hog which will drag down your system, cause it to crash, and force you to pay through the nose to get more expensive hardware. “Oh, but that version has so many more features than mine does?” Have you even bothered to learn to use the features yours already has? “Oh, but it's brand new! Newer is always better!” It was the stance of the pre-Nicene Church (the Church of the first three centuries) that the full revelation of the Gospel had already been given by Christ to His Apostles and that He wouldn't have kept anything from them; especially not anything important. Thus, they were constantly refuting people like the Gnostics, the Docetists, the Ebionites, and many others who continuously claimed to have a newer, shinier version of Christianity. The Fathers of the Church never tried to add to the revelation of the Gospel, only to defend it and explain it as best they could, and they wrote manual after manual to that effect. “Oh, but I need to stay on the bleeding edge of my Christian faith!” To this I must respond, why? The reason why they call it the bleeding edge is because developmental versions usually don't work right and can cause your system to fail miserably if you're not careful. The latest version isn't worth it if it fries your processor to a little puddle of goo, or trashes the rest of your faith so that it becomes totally unusable.

Some may find my analogy here a little far fetched. Others will know exactly what I'm talking about because they've been there. As for myself, I've finally learned to be satisfied with what I found that works. I suppose you could say that I've downgraded my Christianity to the old stable version from the more “upgraded” version I grew up with and I can honestly say that when I look at the newer shinier versions, I'm not impressed any more; not in the slightest. It doesn't take long until you see the bugs in the programming begin to appear and goof things up. I like things to just work well, and mine does. Is it the easiest to use? No. Does it have the latest eye popping graphics? No. Does it have thousands of new and exciting features? No. Its claim to fame is that it is absolutely rock hard stable, impervious to malware, and does everything it is supposed to do. Have I learned how to use all its features yet? No. I'm still working on that, but at least I don't have to spend time focusing on features I don't need and would never bother with in the first place.

Before you head out to pick up that latest version, think about whether or not it's really what you need and consider that newer isn't always better.

A Ramble About Patience

We bought a PC game for our girls today with some Christmas money. The girls were there when we bought it, so it was kind of pointless to wrap it and make them wait until Christmas morning for it. It was one of those Sims games with a Pets expansion included. Our girls love the Sims games and were excited about being able to create the pets with the expansion. I wasn't entirely sure whether our main desktop would meet all the graphics requirements for it, but everything else checked out, and the graphics card requirements were just vague enough to give us some hope that it would run.

We got it home, unwrapped it, and installed it onto the computer. Everything looked like it checked out during the installation, and then we tried playing the main game a bit. Everything looked good, so we installed the expansion disk. That's when we ran into problems. The pets wouldn't show up right, and the game occasionally crashed.

A few inquiries into Google via our cell phone, and we found out that our graphics card is the problem. It happens to be on the extreme low end for this particular version of the Sims to run. Further, while it will in fact run the main game okay, the Pets expansion refuses to cooperate with it, or so say all the forum comments by people who have had the exact same problem we do. All of our other computer hardware checks out as either adequate or above, but Dell went cheap on the graphics processor.

Needless to say, our girls were disappointed, my middle daughter in particular. She really wanted to play this one because she could make horses with it. I found myself then calmly explaining to her several times about patience.

If it is one thing I have learned over time, I told her, it is that if there is some book I want to read, some movie I would like to see, or some game I would like to play, then, in all probability, I will eventually be able to do so. It may not be right now, or tomorrow. But I have learned that it will happen if it is important that I do, and it may happen eventually even if it isn't important. Prices come down, games become abandonware or open sourced, movies eventually wind up broadcast on network TV for free, and computers eventually get upgraded. Sometimes it takes months, years or decades, but it does happen. I have learned that God doesn't withhold good things from us, and those things He does withhold aren't good for us right in that moment. The same thing might be bad for us at one point in time, but later on He allows it at just the right moment when it can be good for us or do the most good for us. I went on like this for some time until she seemed to understand.

As I was talking to my now twelve year old daughter, I realized that it wasn't really I who was talking per se, but God was talking through me. And I also realized that I wasn't the one explaining, but I was the one it was being explained to just as much as my daughter was. He was answering some of my own questions and disappointments I had posed to Him just the other day through my own words and experiences which I was relating to my daughter.

It's not the first time He's answered me in this manner, and it likely won't be the last. It's a humbling reminder as well that whatever wisdom which I think I possess really comes from Him.

A Ramble About Salvation

I am Orthodox Old Catholic, but I wasn't always. There was a time when I came from a non-denominational bible church in California, and attended a non-denominational missionary bible school in Wisconsin. The bible school, like the church I attended, was one which taught that, if you accepted Christ as your savior and truly believed in Him, you were saved, and nothing could take that away from you.

One day, the question was raised, as a part of the class, “how much does someone have to know and believe in order to be saved?” As an answer, and a tool for evangelizing, we were given a system called the “Three Crucial Issues.” The first crucial issue is that everyone has sinned and can do nothing to earn their way into heaven. The second is that Jesus Christ died for our sins and paid the price for us so that we don't have to. The third is that it's our responsibility to believe this and act on it. This was considered the bare minimum standard of faith and understanding necessary for salvation.

As I was thinking about this lately, I also thought about the Catholic/Orthodox faith, and how it is perceived by Evangelicals, and even by many Catholics and Orthodox, who see it as somehow requiring us to work to earn our salvation or somehow do enough penance to become “worthy” of our salvation. What a load of rubbish. The writings of the Saints are replete with the understanding that there is no way for us to make ourselves worthy of Him, but that He is also capable of saving even us, unworthy as we are. Time and time again, the Saints write about how unworthy they are of Him, and the closer they draw to Him, the more intense this sentiment becomes and the more vocal they become as to their inability to save themselves. They did not presume on their final salvation, but they did entrust it to God as they grew in their understanding and knowledge of Him.

The truth is that if, as was taught in my old school, these three crucial issues represent the bare minimum of understanding for salvation, then according to this, all professing Catholics and Orthodox who understand their faith are saved. Furthermore, so are all Mormons (at least insofar as the Book of Mormon itself teaches). For that matter, any professing, devout Christian, of any stripe or denomination, Orthodox or not, falls under this category because these “crucial issues” are the most basic understanding of Christianity there is. They are understood as true by everyone who understands what their Faith actually teaches, and this is the key point.

The error in what I was taught in that bible school lies with the misunderstanding of how to evangelize and not proselytize. Evangelizing is spreading the Gospel. Proselytizing is trying to convert people to believe what you believe. There is a wide gulf between them, but they are too often confused. Evangelizing seeks to give Jesus Christ to people. Proselytizing seeks to grow local churches and denominations (and, need I add, increase revenue from tithes).

If such Evangelicals truly wish to Evangelize other Christians of different traditions, then the best thing they can do, according to their own belief system, is to teach these other Christians about their own faith traditions, and not try and force them to leave the Churches they know. If you teach a Roman Catholic about his own faith from the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, you will certainly inform him enough about the Gospel to ensure his salvation according to the Three Crucial Issues. If you teach an Orthodox Christian about his own faith from any of a number of good Catechisms (I like “The Orthodox Way” by Kallistos Ware) you will most certainly fulfill these Crucial Issues. Even if you teach a Mormon from the Book of Mormon itself, once again you will run directly into these Crucial Issues again and again within its pages. If a sincere belief in these three tenets alone ensure one's salvation, and not a belief in other doctrines, or actions or practices associated with the faith tradition in question, then it is better to make the foundation of their salvation more secure by working within their faith tradition and not against it. If you work against it, you run the risk of ruining their faith and pulling up the wheat with the weeds, so to speak.

I am no longer a Protestant Evangelical, but I still understand the theology underpinning it. There is no logic, in this theology, in the attempt to draw Christians of other faith traditions out of their own churches in order to save them when it can already be demonstrated that the tradition in question already meets the bare minimum understanding for this purpose. The only purpose to trying to convince them to leave is to grow one's own church for either that church's financial gain, or personal glory. This is the root of heresy, and what the Apostles and their successors were trying to combat relentlessly. The question which an Evangelist must ask himself is this, “am I trying to truly give Jesus to this person, or am I trying to get him to join my church and leave his?” The person who does the first is a true Evangelist. The person who does the second is a true Heretic.

A Ramble About Getting Older

I woke up one day recently and made the realization, “hey, I'm almost forty.” I then thought “how the heck did that happen?!” I think these thoughts had something to do with my having a birthday a few months ago. Suddenly I went from the middle of my thirties to my later thirties and forty didn't seem as far away as it should have. Something inside me shouted, “no, wait! I can't be nearly forty yet! I couldn't possibly be!” But, here I am. And, with the realization of my impending four-oh, I realized that most likely, I'm in the middle of my life now.

No, thirty-seven isn't generally considered middle-age, that's true. But both my grandfather and great-grandfather died when they were in their early to mid seventies, and my dad isn't doing so hot right now being in his late sixties. That doesn't improve my odds at longevity past my early seventies.

Be this as it may, it doesn't bother me that I may die in another thirty-seven years like my forefathers. I know it's going to happen at some point in time. To be honest, I'd rather it happen with all of my faculties intact. I suppose it struck me more because it means I most likely only have a little less than forty years left. Forty years seems like a long time at first, but seeing as I wasn't prepared for the last thirty-seven to blaze by as fast as it did, it seems a lot closer now than it used to.

The question then becomes, what have I done with my life for the last thirty-seven years? I suppose it depends on whom you ask. I'm fairly certain there are people who would swear that I've totally wasted it. Others might say that I spent it chasing after a fantasy. Still others might be kind and point to my family, my wife and kids, and the people the Lord has used me to work with and say that neither is true, as rough a road as it has been.

A wise friend once told me that God isn't so much concerned about the work of a worker as He is concerned about the work in the worker. He later told me that God's work is the worker himself. I've come to understand that more and more. Everything He's allowed me to do and be a part in has been done with the goal in mind of making me one with Him. Every failure, every success, every slip, and every re-direction. When God said “no” to something, it was because it wasn't in my best interests as much as it wasn't in the best interests of everyone else who would have been impacted. When He permitted something, it was because it would further that goal with me, and with everyone else involved.

The greatness of the successes and failures which we cling to and allow to define who we are in this life don't really matter much in the end. In a hundred years, no one except people interested in obscure history will remember them. Wealth, accomplishments, personal disasters, and poverty all end in this way for everyone. Even our memories which we cling to will fade as the brain fails, and we don't recognize even our loved ones. So what is left to aspire to then?

God does not fade. God does not end. And the purpose and goal of our lives is to become one with Him through Jesus Christ. Because, at the end, we will lose everything of this life we have worked so hard to achieve no matter how hard we try and hold on to it. But what cannot be lost through the death of the body is our upward calling to union with God.

A Ramble About Worldviews

I was teaching a history lesson to my daughter today on the Latter Day Saints and their migration to the Great Salt Lake. It actually surprised me that it was in the US history textbook which I was using, because it had never been in any of my textbooks when I was in public school before. But, there it was, with a whole chapter (all of about four or five pages) devoted to it. It was, in general, a generous treatment which I felt glossed over a number of the negatives of the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The picture it gave was of a sincere religious leader and his devout followers bravely facing persecution, and traveling westward to found a religious haven.

As a result, I had to spend a short time explaining some of the things about Latter Day Saint history which the textbook didn't cover. I had to explain that Joseph Smith was most likely a charlatan and his original six followers were in on it; and that the Book of Mormon was most likely a manuscript which had been stolen from a publisher before it was published and altered by Smith and his men to fit the scam they were trying to impose on sincere but uneducated people.

I then had to explain that while Smith and his original followers had lied to the people who followed them, the people who believed the lie and perpetuated it themselves hadn't been a part of it. They had believed what they were told and then told it to their children as the truth, who then told it to their children, and so on down to the present day. As a result, there are a large number of devout, Latter Day Saint followers who are, on the whole, good people. They do believe in Jesus Christ, and practice their faith with sincerity. When they go out to evangelize others into their Church, they do so with no ulterior motives except to bring salvation to them as they understand it. But for all their good intentions, the things which separate Mormon Christianity from Orthodox Christianity are based on a lie, and there's no getting around it.

Modern Judaism is in much the same position. Almost two thousand years ago, the Sanhedrin which had illegally railroaded Jesus Christ into being crucified told a whopper to their people and said that His disciples had stolen His body after the resurrection. This story, like the Book of Mormon, was perpetuated from the liars to otherwise honest people who then perpetuated it unknowingly to their children and followers down to present day. This lie is what separates Orthodox Judaism from Orthodox Christianity. There are good, honest Jewish people who only want to follow God and His Torah as they've been instructed. They look forward to the coming of their Messiah never coming to terms with the fact that their Messiah has already come.

When confronted with the truth, in the case of either of these two groups, the usual response is disbelief. The first defense the mind has is to defend it and reject the contradiction. You're challenging a “truth” upon which the rest of their beliefs and faith are established. But if you succeed in convincing them, once that “truth” is eroded or removed, the rest of their belief structure can come crashing down and that's not something which the mind easily handles or recovers from once it has happened. Consider that a person's whole belief in Jesus Christ may rest on the belief in the veracity of the Book of Mormon and its origins. What happens when you destroy that belief? When you disrupt a foundational belief like this, how then is the person able to trust that what you're telling them is the truth? How do you keep them from spiraling downwards into a black abyss?

If you think about it enough, you realize that most of our foundational beliefs about our world, other people, and even (and especially) God are themselves based on erroneous assumptions and explanations. They are based on erroneous assumptions because we do not know the absolute truth about everything. Our very nature as created, limited beings precludes this kind of knowledge. We observe things, we theorize about why those things are the way they are, and then we test those theories to see if they have real explanatory power. This is a tried and true method of learning about anything, and the only method we have at our disposal. But if we have learned anything we have learned that the explanations which serve us today may be proven inadequate or completely wrong tomorrow. This is the nature of human knowledge. We must be satisfied with only partial and incomplete explanations on which to base our worldviews so that we can have a worldview that allows us to function. But we must be careful with it or else we run the risk of having it crash down around our ears and we being driven insane when new information contradicts the foundations of that worldview and that new information itself can't be contradicted at the time.

God knows this and understands this about us, far better than we understand it about ourselves. When He works with a person to draw that person closer to Himself, He always works within the worldview of the person in question, and gently leads the person into a better understanding of Himself over time as the person is able to handle it.

Jesus taught “Don't judge so that you won't be judged.” We can all only make sense of the information about the world around us when we filter it through the worldview we each of us possess, and we react to that information based on that worldview. When we pass judgment on another, we run the risk of unraveling that person's worldview, which could then unravel the person beyond recovery of his faith, or even of his sanity.

St. Paul wrote, “Now accept one who is weak in faith, but not for disputes over opinions,” (Romans 14:1,WEB). In his letters to the Romans and the Corinthians he addresses the problem of eating something which has been sacrificed to an idol. For some of the Christians of the time, it wasn't an issue. They realized that the idol was just a carved piece of wood or stone and it didn't bother them in the slightest. For others, however, who had converted from the pagan religions, their worldview saw these idols as being representative of very real and powerful demons. Eating the meat of an animal which had been sacrificed to one of them was the same as taking part in the sacrifice yourself. Paul's instruction regarding this was to respect the worldview of the other, saying “who are you to judge another's servant?To his own Master he stands or falls.”

We should always work to bring a person into a more full knowledge of the truth, but we must always do so with humility, recognizing that our knowledge of the truth is limited at best. And we must always do so with compassion, seeking to recognize the limits of how much “deconstruction” of their worldviews the person we're working with can handle at any point in time. It must always be their choice to make those changes, and they may not be able to safely. Sometimes as in the parable, we must allow the weeds (false teaching) to grow alongside the wheat (faith) until harvest time so that we don't lose the wheat when trying to pull the weeds.

A Ramble About Two Kinds of Death

I've recently been reacquainting myself with Battlestar Galactica, the most recent version done a few years ago. Truth be told, I've been a BSG fan since I was three or four years old, when it originally came on television, as well as the Galactica 1980 spinoff. I never missed a rerun of the original series on Saturday afternoons when I was growing up either. The original series was far more kid friendly than the recent series, yet the recent series is far more realistic in terms of human characters, responses, and relationships under the extreme stress and trauma of having your whole world destroyed and having to rebuild everything from scratch (literally). This, I believe, is what made it do so well, even though it is also what makes it difficult to watch and unfit for kids of any age.

In one of the episodes from season four, a leader of rebel Cylons (Cylons generally being the bad guys) addresses the Colonial Quorum (the government of what's left of the good guys). In her address she expresses that humanity's greatest flaw, being mortal and subject to death, is also what makes humanity whole. When the Cylons had the capacity to download their consciousnesses into new bodies, time was pretty much meaningless, and so was their existence. But when they lost that ability, when they became mortal, suddenly every moment of life became precious to them because they knew those moments were now limited.

In the book, and later the movie, The Bicentennial Man, the android Andrew Martin spends his life, from the time he is switched on, pursuing a goal of being human, and being accepted as an equal among human beings. In his journey he underwent radical physical upgrades so that his robotic body began to resemble and function like a human body instead of a machine body. As he spends his two hundred years making every change imaginable, he watches his human friends and “family” grow old around him and pass away, much to his grief. In the end, the thing which held him back from the recognition he sought was his own inability to die. It's when he takes steps to allow the circuitry in his positronic brain to permanently corrode over time that he finally wins the recognition, and peace, he had spent so long in search of.

The Bible says that death entered the world through sin, and death was one of the punishments for Adam for doing what God said not to do, “but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat; for in whatever day you eat from it, you shall die by death.” (Genesis 2:17, Saint Athanasius Academy Septuagint)

We know from modern science, that natural death was in the world millions if not billions of years before human beings, modern or otherwise. Death on its own is a part of life and the processes of life. As something dies, it contributes to the nourishment of the life of something else. In fact, life can't exist without death, be it the death of a plant or of an animal. In order for one form of life to be fed, another must die and this is true whether we are talking about a plant or animal or single-celled organism. Something must die and decompose into the soil in order for a plant to be nourished and grow and bear fruit. The bread you may use in a sandwich was made of the seeds of the wheat plant. Those seeds, the embryonic young of the wheat plant, had to die in order to feed you and sustain you. Every hamburger is a heifer or steer that died so you could eat fast food. In the human body cells are continuously dying in order to make room for new cells. The uppermost layer of our skin is made up of dead skin cells, which are constantly shedding off as new skin cells are born from the bottom and grow their way to the top. It's a fact that the human body itself completely replaces itself every seven years as the cells within the body die and are replaced with new cells. Cancer, one of the most heinous diseases, is a malfunction in the cells where they start reproducing out of control and don't die like they're supposed to. There is no life without this kind of death. If this process were to be interrupted, biological life on this world would end. It is so important that it's built into our very genetic coding as telomeres.

But the death which came as a consequence to Adam and Eve's disobedience was something else entirely. It had to be. Everything God created was good, and the natural cycle of birth and death is necessary for that creation to function correctly. The death which came about by Adam and Eve's sin is destructive. It feeds no one and nothing but itself.

“Adam” means “human being” in Hebrew. Whether the Scriptures are speaking of a literal Adame and Eve as the ancestors of all human beings, or if they are speaking in general terms of Adam and Eve as representative of the human beings at the time, this destructive death spread to every human being then and now. Instead of a continuing cycle of life, death, and rebirth, humanity would continue on in a cycle of death and destruction which would end in the death of humanity as a whole, and the destruction and suffering of many other forms of life on earth in the process.

Often, “eternal life” is seen as a synonym for “living forever.” But consider, would living forever really be a reward or a blessing? Would endless life in our current physical bodies really be something to look forward to? If it was only a select few, we would have to watch friends and family pass away until we were alone, and would be afraid to make new relationships for fear of losing those to death as well. If it was everyone, the Earth wouldn't have the resources to sustain an immortal population if it continued to grow. It is likely every other species on Earth would be pushed out and go extinct as we made more room. If it didn't continue to grow it would stagnate and people would eventually begin to despair that there was nothing new, and quite probably wish for death. No, there is something perverse about living forever under these circumstances. It is a selfish desire born of a fear of something which is a natural part of life and the cycle of life. We're so afraid of the possibility of not existing that we're willing to sacrifice everything else to keep it from happening. This is not the eternal life talked about in the Scriptures. It isn't even the proper translation of the Greek phrase.

In order for there to be life, death must come first. In order for us to take our natural place in the creation, we too must die and be able to die. It was through Christ's death and our joining to His death through baptism which bring us our salvation. And in order for us to be raised with Christ as undying just as He is undying, we must first die to the life we now have. We must not interfere with its natural course, either in trying to avoid the death which comes naturally to us (which is an exercise in futility), or in trying to take control of it ourselves and hastening it (which is murder and damaging someone else's property). But this is not the destructive death, which nourishes nothing and only causes more destruction and death.

That kind of death is produced by fear, greed, and selfishness. This kind of death can be seen easily enough as one selfish action produces a chain-reaction of pain and misery within the person who committed the action and especially with those who surround the person who committed the action who are directly and indirectly affected by it. This kind of death is futile and accomplishes nothing positive or beneficial.

In reality, our natural ability to die can be one of God's greatest gifts to us. It allows the human race, as it is, to continue without overtaxing our resources. It allows us to move on into greater union with God through Jesus Christ unencumbered by the malfunction which plagues the human race. And it gives us the chance to be at peace regardless of who we are.

A Ramble About Ascension

Daniel Jackson: “Maybe I've done something good every now and again, but nothing I've ever done seems to have changed anything.”

Oma Desala: “These tasks of which you speak were great challenges, perhaps even impossible to achieve.”

Daniel Jackson: “Does that absolve me?”

Oma Desala: “Do you feel you journey must continue until you have found redemption for these failures?”

Daniel Jackson: “Nope. Not anymore. Not if I'm dead.”

Oma Desala: “Exactly true.”

Stargate: SG-1, “Meridian”

This dialogue is from what is perhaps my favorite episode from the series “Stargate: SG-1”. The episode is also my wife's least favorite because in it a much loved main character dies horribly from lethal radiation exposure. But in those moments before death he is visited by someone he had met before, an old friend you might say. She is a member of a race of people that learned to shed their physical form and “ascend” to a higher plane of existence as pure energy. This particular ascended being had then spent thousands of years helping others to do the same thing when they were ready to die and leave their mortal existence behind, and now she was here for Daniel in his final moments to help him. In other words, she was there to help him ascend and become like her.

But Daniel doesn't believe himself to be worthy of it. Part of the journey of ascension for him is that he must release his burden, and for him, this means letting go of his guilt and perceived failures as well as letting go of the mortal life he clung to so he could follow her in ascension. Eventually, she does guide him to the understanding which allows him to let everything go and follow her, becoming a being of pure light.

This idea of the need to die and release everything you're clinging to in order to achieve salvation isn't new, and it isn't confined to science fiction:

“Because whoever would wish to deliver his psyche will destroy it; and whoever would destroy his psyche for mine and the Gospel's sake will deliver it.” (Mark 8:35)

This saying is found, almost word for word, six times in all four Gospels. Twice in Matthew (10:39, 16:25), Twice in Luke (9:24, 17:33), once in Mark (8:35), and once in John (12:25). By anyone's definition of textual criticism, liberal or conservative, this would mark this as something that Jesus Christ not only actually said, but that it was so important to them, the Gospel writers repeated it again and again. (Though not well known, “psyche” is the transliteration of the Greek word used in all six occurrences, and is the most accurate translation of the word as well because, in its strictest sense, it encompasses the emotions, the reasonings, the soul, the memories, and the physical being of the person, and not just the mind or the soul.)

Submission to death and the letting go of the things of this mortal life are fundamental concepts of the path of Jesus Christ. St. Paul wrote about it several times in his epistles, beginning with the letter to the Romans:

“Or are you ignorant that, as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into His death? We were therefore entombed together with Him through the baptism into His death, so that just as Christ was awakened from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we should walk in newness of life. Because if we have become grown together in the resemblance of His death, but also will we be of His resurrection; knowing this that our old human being was co-crucified so that the body of the sin disorder would be abolished, for us to no longer be enslaved to the disorder; because the person who died has been acquitted from the sin disorder. And if we died together with Christ, we believe that we will also live together with Him, knowing that Christ having been awakened from the dead is no longer mortal, death has dominion over Him no longer. So also you figure yourselves to be dead indeed to the sin disorder yet living to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:3-11)

Death acquits a person from sin. The dead man no longer worries about the guilt and failures in his life. He no longer worries about what he did wrong or right. The sentence for his mistakes in life has already been carried out. Death has absolved him. As Sirach says in 41:4 “There is in Hades no inquiry into your life.” (SAAS) Yet in spite of this, the dead man must still face the natural separation from the things of life he clung to, being unable by nature to sense or recognize the God who surrounds him with His love. Thus Jesus Christ, and His death and resurrection.

St. Paul's argument is this, those of us who were baptized were grafted into His death on the cross. We therefore shouldn't continue in the way we lived before this baptism, being subject to the sin disorder, because we died when we were baptized, and the person who died has been acquitted from the sin disorder. But his argument goes further in that just as we were joined to the death of Christ, so would we be joined to His resurrection. Just as Christ was raised immortal, so would we be raised immortal, if we died with Him; if we accepted our death, and let go of this world and stopped clinging to it.

This thinking was central in St. Paul's understanding of what the path of Jesus Christ was all about. In his letters to the Galatians and the Colossians, he brings it up as the lynchpin of his arguments which all of his instruction hangs on:

“I was co-crucified with Christ; and I live no longer; but Christ lives within me; and that which I now live in the flesh, I live by the Faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself over for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

“But let there be absolutely no boast for me except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14)

“If you died together with Christ from the basic elements of the world, why are you dogmatizing as living in the world? Don't handle neither taste neither touch, all of which is for the decay to consumption, according to the commands and teachings of human beings, which things are a word indeed having wisdom in self-made religion and humility and severe discipline of a body, not in anything valuable against the gratification of the flesh. If then you were awakened together with Christ, look for the things on high, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God; be mindful of the things on high, not the things upon the ground. Because you died and your life has been hidden together with Christ in God; when Christ your life is made to appear, then you will also be made to appear with Him in glory.” (Colossians 2:20-3:4)

In his letter to the Philippians, this death is implicit in his rejection of all the benefits of status which his ancestry and formal education brought him as he says:

“But the things which were profit to me, I lead these things loss because of Christ. But rather I also lead everything to be loss because of the superiority of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, through whom I lost everything, and lead it crap, so that I would profit Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8)

St. Paul knew that it is absolutely important that we accept the sentence of death which has been carried out on us through our union with Christ in baptism, and which is brought to completion in the death of the physical body. We must live as though already passed out of this world. It is nothing less than accepting the original sentence passed on Adam instead of futilely trying to fight it. We must be as a corpse is to the things of this world: unfeeling, disinterested, detached, unmoved, and focused upon the center of our existence, our God and Savior Jesus Christ, paying only the attention we have to in order that Christ might live His life out through us. Accepting that we no longer live, and releasing the things of the world we cling to so tightly is the only path to being joined to His resurrection.

If we reject this sentence of death and cling to our life and things of this world, we incur judgment to ourselves, not because God is cruel or because He wants to condemn us, but because after death the object of our clinging has ceased from our experience and we go insane, or rather our insanity is brought to its culmination, total separation from everything else but God, and unable to welcome or recognize God Himself.

Jesus Himself pleads for this and warns about it in the Gospel of John:

“Stay in Me, and I within you. Just as the branch isn't capable of producing fruit from itself except it should stay in the vine, so neither you if you don't stay within Me. I am the vine, you the branches. This person who stays within Me and I within him produces a lot of fruit, because without Me you are not capable of doing anything at all. If anyone doesn't stay within Me, he has been thrown out as a branch and has been withered and they gather them together and throw them into the fire and they are burned.” (15:4-6)

We see this acceptance of death in the lives of many if not most of the lives of the recognized saints. The more one accepts this death with Christ and turns away from the things of the world, the more Christ-like one becomes and the closer to His resurrection one gets. The more one welcomes the things of the world, clings to them, and fights against death, any death, the farther from Christ one becomes, and the farther from His resurrection. It is movement one way or the other. If you welcome your death with Christ you are absolved of your disorder. If you turn away from it, your disorder grows with all the consequences thereof.

The only path to ascension, as Daniel discovered, was by letting go. The only path to resurrection is by accepting one's death.

(Except where noted, all translations from Scripture are mine.)

A Ramble About Knighthood

I was browsing the shelves at Goodwill the other day and came upon an old friend. It's a small paperback volume called “The Legend of Huma,” which is a part of the “Dragonlance” series of books published by TSR. I loved these books when I was in early High School, although I later gave them up when I felt I needed to for a while in order to concentrate on Christian things. I read “The Legend of Huma” during a time when the Lord had really started to call me towards Him, and Huma, the main character, had become a kind of hero for me when I was fourteen because of his devotion to his god and his beliefs. I remember consciously almost praying at that time that I wanted to do or be for my God what Huma had done for his.

The story of Huma is set in the fantasy world of Krynn, where there are gods, monsters, knights, elves, dwarves, and most of the familiar personages and characters you would find from contemporary epic fantasy. Huma, in the story is a Knight of Solamnia, a holy order of knights which was established by the god Paladine (the chief god of good), and his sons Kiri-Jolith and Habbakuk. The knights live their lives by a strict religious code of chivalry, loyalty, honor, and virtue which had been given to them by their gods in order to hold back the darkness of the evil gods of Krynn.

As I became acquainted with this old friend again over the past couple of days there were a couple of lines which caught my eye and set me thinking. In the passage, Huma's friend and love interest is torn between her duty and her love for Huma. She must lead Huma to a set of trials which, if he fails he will die, but if he succeeds he will find the key to defeating the armies of darkness which have overrun his world:

“Were it not Krynn itself that would suffer, I would tell you to turn from here now, before it is too late.”

The knight stiffened. “Even if you told me to, I would not. I cannot. Not—and remain what I am.”

“Is the knighthood so much to you?”

“Not the knighthood. What it teaches.” He had never thought of it in those terms before.

(p. 184, Knaak, Richard A. The Legend of Huma. Lake Geneva, WI; TSR Inc., 1988)

It's this last line which caught my attention, “not the knighthood. What it teaches.” It wasn't the fact he was a knight which meant something to him, nor was it the order of knights themselves. As with any organization, no matter how honorable or well meaning their intentions, there was often a difference between what they stood for and taught and the internal workings and politics of the order which at times actually went completely against the teachings of their gods. Fallible human beings remain fallible human beings, even in fantasy novels. It wasn't the organization of fallible human beings that meant anything to Huma, but the teachings of his god which that organization represented.

The priesthood of the Church is also made up of fallible human beings. It doesn't matter which denomination you look in you'll still find internal politicking, selfish ambitions, avarice, political interference outside of the denomination, and abuses of every kind. It varies from local church to local church, from diocese to diocese, and from denomination to denomination, but it can usually be found to some degree or another in just about any church you look in. It is because of these things that many have left the local churches altogether, switch denominations, and some leave the Church and even our Lord completely. They have lost faith in either their church in particular, or the Church in general and feel betrayed and lost.

It doesn't help the situation, and hurts a great deal, when churches and denominations “circle the wagons” and hide as much of these failings as possible from the general public. I have a dear friend who grew up as a missionary kid in Papua New Guinea with one of the largest, most well known and well respected missions organizations in the world for which her parents were missionaries. For a long time after meeting her we knew that something wasn't quite right. When other friends and I were finally able to get her to talk about why, she told us that one of her close friends had been raped by a gang of New Guineans who had broken into the Mission compound there. This was bad enough, but the Mission board had made her and everyone else who knew about it swear silence on the subject, and they weren't allowed to talk about it to anyone. It had so traumatized our friend that she became self-destructive.

Beyond this are the now well known cases of sexual abuse by members of the Roman Catholic clergy, and the subsequent denials and cover-up by the leadership of the various dioceses and possibly by the Vatican itself. There is also the merciless emotional abuse inflicted by certain, domineering evangelical churches upon their members. There is also the inconceivable avarice and vanity of some “pastors” living in wealth and luxury and plastering their picture and name all over their houses of worship to the point where you wonder who the congregation is actually worshiping. I could go on with more indictments against just about every church and organization I have seen, but it isn't necessary. Most people have only to look at their own local church with an honest and critical eye.

I have been finding it instructive to look back at the lives of the Saints as well. Though the Church hails them now as examples and heroes of the Faith, during their lives many were the targets of the local clergy for abuse and derision. St. Ignatius of Loyola was hounded by the Inquisition in Spain and thrown in prison on the suspicions of local priests and monks. Because of his extreme dedication to Jesus Christ and his embrace of a life of poverty, many people chose to adhere to his rule and practice his Spiritual Exercises which caused dramatic changes to their lives and devotion to Christ. It scared the local clergy and authorities who then reacted to try and re-establish the status quo. St. Ignatius was labeled a troublemaker and was verbally and physically abused for no other reason than he lived and practiced what Jesus Christ and His Church actually taught.

So then the question for many becomes, “Is the Church so much to you?” Another way of saying this question is, “Is it so important for you to remain within the Church that you are willing to risk all of this?” For many now, the answer has become “no.” They can only see what the visible Church is as the human beings within it practice it, and it is a great disillusionment and disappointment.

For St. Ignatius though, it wasn't the practical, visible Church itself, but what the Church teaches that meant everything to him. It wasn't the clergy who berated him which meant anything, but the God who established that clergy and the rule of Faith which bound them both. Much like Huma with his knighthood.

The greatest question, or one of them anyway, which we can ask ourselves is “why do we do what we do?” The answer to that question will either see us through the tests and trials which could cost us everything in this world, or it will trip us up and see not only our bodies destroyed but our souls as well. We can either dedicate ourselves to the fallible human beings in an organization, or we can dedicate ourselves to the teachings of the God who established it.

A Ramble About "What are You Going to Do About It?"

I was watching the first “Iron Man” movie earlier today. It was just at the scene where the Taliban look-a-likes were about to start shooting innocent men while they rounded up the women and children when Iron Man shows up and starts taking out bad guys. Then the question popped into my head, “well, what would YOU do in that situation?” (yes, like I would ever be in that situation) “Would YOU, professing turn the other cheek and non-violence, just let them kill and rape while expressing peaceful platitudes of non-violence?” It's a question that demands a response, and it's geared in such a way that it must be answered either yes or no. Then some paraphrase of the Scripture pops into my head saying “if you can do something about it and you don't do it, you sin.” It wasn't the exact form of the Scripture, but it might have been close enough.

I was conflicted and I wrestled with it. As I was wrestling with it, I realized, that was the temptation. The temptation was to say, “Yes, if I was in the situation, I would do this,” or “no, if I was in that situation I wouldn't do that.” The temptation was to do, or plan to do, something myself; to be ready to give a response from myself.

Living most of my life with Asperger's, whether I was aware of what it was or not, I did a fair amount of role-playing or acting out any given social situation in my head. I relied heavily on this so that when I came into that situation I would know what the correct response to give would be. I wasn't able to react with natural emotions, facial expressions, or body language, so I had to have a ready store of them in my head. The old I became, the better I got with them, but they still weren't quite natural enough to pass for the real thing.

The one exception to this was when the Lord took control and worked through me with other people, especially after I was ordained as a priest. When His Grace empowered me, my reactions could be natural, caring, and entirely appropriate. It was the only time I seemed normal. When I wasn't functioning in this role, if I attempted to just “wing it”, I was just as awkward and somewhat inappropriate as I had always been, whether I meant to be or not.

The basis of any temptation, and if temptation itself, is to do “something.” We're tempted to quickly role-play and then act out our role-play based on our understanding of the situation around us. When we do this, we abandon trusting in His Grace empowering us and Him acting through us. When we tell God, “I've got this, I can handle this”, this is when we submit to the sin disorder. When we think we don't need Him for something, we open up a weakness which can be exploited by the enemy to our ruin, and he is an expert and opening up those weaknesses.

What would I do if murderous terrorists were running rampant and I was in the middle of it? After I came to this understanding of what this question was, I realized that the correct answer is “I don't know. 'I' should do nothing. I would have to see what God would do through me in that moment, should it ever come.”

Some of the greatest set-ups for spiritual failure are when we look to potential future events and seek to answer the question “what are 'you' going to do about it?”

A Ramble About "The Right Person for the Job"

I was finally able to see the recent superhero movie, “Captain America.” I've loved superheroes since I was a kid, and as a result I've loved superhero movies for the same amount of time. My favorite is “Superman,” but Captain America ranks right up there with old Supes.

For those not in the know, the character of Captain America starts out as a weakling kid from Brooklyn, NYC, named Steve Rogers. In some versions of the comics, he had polio. For the movie, he was a short, scrawny asthmatic with a medical history that would make most doctors cringe. He attempted to enlist in the Army because he didn't feel right about not being there to do his part for the war effort. When he was given the “4F” rating, he went to another recruiting office and tried again. When that didn't work, he tried again. He refused to give up. When he was beat up in an alley, he refused to back down even knowing he would lose the fight. Steve Rogers refused to give up. What's more, he couldn't stand bullies, and always thought of the other person first, regardless of what it cost him.

His determination and heart caught the eye of the scientist in charge of a super soldier program that would take an ordinary man and give him extraordinary strength, speed, endurance, and self-healing abilities. To illustrate his point about why Steve was the perfect candidate for the program, a dummy grenade was tossed towards Steve's training platoon (who didn't know it was a dummy). Everyone else, all men much larger and stronger that Steve, ran from the grenade. Steve, believing it would kill people close by, ran to it and jumped on it to save their lives. The scientist who chose him knew what he was doing, and could see in Steve what no one else could.

When God chooses people for a task, He doesn't choose the people we would normally think the best suited. He never chooses the richest, the strongest, the fastest, the smartest, or the best educated. He never chooses the best speakers. God chooses the Steve Rogers from among His people (and sometimes He starts by choosing those not from among His people at first). He most often chooses the weakest, the slowest, the least educated. What does He see in them? He's not concerned about their physical and mental abilities because He's perfectly capable of suping them up as needed by His Grace and power. He's concerned about whether or not they're going to trust Him and accept what comes from Him. Someone who has always been able to trust his own abilities isn't going to let go of those abilities in favor of what God can do, and is far too susceptible to pride and self-esteem believing that it was through their own abilities and not God's.

Today, I just saw something truly amazing. I saw my wife out raking up grass, watering plants, and doing yardwork. She's been doing it for a couple of hours. Now she's back in the house talking and joking. Three years ago, that wouldn't have been possible. Even two years ago it would have been a true miracle because of her illness and seizures. All of her life she's been told she was weak and sickly. Doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong, and some even had the audacity to tell her it was all in her head when it clearly was not. She's had a dream though. She's wanted to run a home taking care of special needs kids, fostering and adopting them. She's had that dream ever since I've known her. Doctor after doctor told her that it wouldn't be possible because of her illness (which we later learned was Celiac and a spinal curvature, and finally got under control through diet and chiropractic). The thing about my wife is that she's a Steve Rogers. She doesn't give up. She's the person that would run to the grenade to save people and not away from it. I have absolutely no doubt that she's the right person to run that home that we've talked about so many times. Both God and I know what's inside of her.

St. Paul wrote that God uses the weak and sickly things of the world to put to shame the things which are strong. He doesn't need the strongest or the fastest or the smartest. He can fix all of that. He just needs the person who will cooperate with Him and trust Him. God takes the Steve Rogers of the world and turns them into superheroes.

Another Ramble About Weeds

It's funny how some weeds look a lot like the vegetable or herb you're trying to grow. Recently, I was watching one plant come up thinking it might be a potato that we missed last year when we harvested them. After a few weeks though, it became clear that it was just an inedible weed, and up it came as I removed it.

I was thinking about this as I was watching a real potato plant come up where I had planted it a few weeks ago. The differences between this real potato plant and the weed pretending to be a plant I wanted were obvious now that I was looking at the real thing.

But what about someone who didn't know the difference? What about someone who had never seen the real plant come up, but had only just planted? Or what about someone who was looking for edible plants in the wild? Many edible wild plants have poisonous lookalikes. As my wife reminds me, we can't afford to be wrong.

This in turn makes me think about the kinds of fruit we want to see from a disciple of Jesus Christ. We know what it's supposed to look like from what the Scriptures tell us, but how many of us have actually seen a true disciple of Christ who practices everything Jesus taught? In those we take as our examples, are we seeing the edible plants, or are we seeing the poisonous lookalikes? If you've never actually seen the edible plant, you may well assume that the poisonous lookalike is the real thing and feed on that. In the same way, if you've never actually seen someone who “gets it”, you may take what you are seeing for real Christianity and wind up trying to be like someone who is as far from Jesus as possible.

I heard recently that one of the ways you can tell an edible plant from a poisonous one is whether or not it's sweet or bitter (I'm sure it doesn't work in every case, but it seems to be built into our taste buds), and not just by appearance. Granted, this means you have to sample some of it and be prepared to spit it back out quickly.

In some ways, telling whether or not someone is actually a disciple is a lot like this. A true disciple of Jesus Christ will always taste of love and compassion. None of us are perfect as of yet, but a true disciple gets it that what Jesus taught was loving compassion for anyone and everyone, and this is how you know God is coming through that person when His love is pouring out of them.

These days, we tend to take theology or moral virtues as our taste test. But there are a great many pseudo-disciples that are toxic to our progress of faith who are highly virtuous and hold to technically sound theology that truly don't get it that you can't know God apart from loving compassion and allowing His love to flow through you. They think God is found in this or that writing or piece of doctrine. These things tell about God, but you can't know God through them any more than you can get to know a celebrity by reading his or her online biography. God can only be known through loving compassion.

Jesus said you would know a tree by it's fruit. The fruit which you need to see is loving compassion. If it isn't there, turn away, there's nothing nutritious from that plant that you can use and it may poison you.

A Ramble About the Desert

"There is a tremendous serenity about the desert." So begins a story that I started working on thirteen years ago. I'm still not done writing it, rewriting it, and turning it inside out. The character who speaks this line is sitting in the middle of one, musing about his life.

If you've ever been in a true desert, you'll understand what the line means. I was born in Yuma, Arizona, and every so often my family and I would pass through it again on vacation. Down in that little corner of the country it resembles a desert planet scene out of a science fiction movie like "Dune" or "Star Wars" (which is why "Dune" was filmed down there). It's quiet, serene, and sterile. It's the perfect place to muse or meditate without distractions. It has it's own beauty which not everyone can appreciate, but is there nonetheless.

From at least the third century up until this present day, Christians fled into the desert, and into mountains, and into mountains in the desert to meditate and remove themselves from distractions to focus on God. They abandoned everything to focus on progressing in their relationship with God and knowing Him better. Today, Orthodox monks in Egypt still do this, living in caves, and spending their time in fasting, prayer, worship and menial work. From such men as these we received the writings of great spiritual giants (though they never would have regarded themselves in this way) as manuals of practical spiritual growth.

The unfortunate thing about these men, is that most of them never left the desert. We only have their writings now, because someone went to their communities and collected and translated them for the rest of us to learn from. You see, unless you come out of the desert or down from the mountain-top, what happens there stays there. The only one who benefits from your experience is you, and you run the risk of self-centered spiritual pride.

There is a story behind the "fat buddha" statues which are so common. It is actually a statue resembling a Zen Buddhist Master who lived in China centuries ago. He was walking one day with a loaded sack on his back when someone asked him "what is the meaning of Zen?" He calmly put the sack down on the ground. The person then asked him, "what is the actualization of Zen?" He then picked the sack up and continued on his way.

A common understanding which can be found in the eastern mystical traditions is that once you reach enlightment, in order for you to be of any use to anyone you can't actually stay there. Enlightenment is a flash-bang fireworks experience, not a day to day living your life experience. Life doesn't stop when you arrive spiritually, and there is a "next day". In order for your experience to be of any use to anyone, you must be able to share it with others and help them down the path as well.

For Christians, this means that we cannot stay in the solitude of the desert or on the mountaintop alone with God, regardless of how beautiful or peaceful, because in order for our newfound experience with Him to be of any practical use to us or anyone else, we must be able to help others get there as well and this can't be done in isolation. There's a fine line to walk here, because those who are able to help often don't feel that they can, and those who feel that they can often really have no idea. So discernment and double-checking with those ancient Fathers to see if your experience lines up with theirs is important. Never assume that you alone have the answers, always check and see if it more or less lines up with those Christians who came before you whom you know are safe.

The desert is a great place to meet God, but it does no good to others if you can't bring Him to those outside of it.

A Ramble About Being Cherokee

Recently I've become interested in researching my family history as far back as I have the tools for. Right now this consists of the Internet and time spent searching looking up dead relatives and ancestors and hoping to find their parents' names. I already knew quite a bit about one part of my mother's side of my heritage, the Hanchett side. This has been traced by a distant cousin all the way back to the Boston Bay Colony in the 1640s or so, and from their back to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. As I've looked online, I found more research done by other cousins of my dad's mom's side which also traces all the way back to the colonies in the 1630s and from there back to ancestors in England as well.

But the one side of my family that has always been a bit of a mystery, for various reasons, is my paternal ancestry. This is the side of my ancestry, which I have always been told, is Cherokee. When I was a kid I was always told that I was 1/16th Cherokee, and that my grandfather was 1/4th Cherokee, but because of family history, I was never able to research it farther. Nevertheless, it was something which I have always felt was a good part of my heritage, whether I could prove it or not.

Recently, I was told by my dad that it was my great grandfather who was full Cherokee, and possibly my great grandmother was at least part Cherokee. He did a fair amount of research on our family history as well, but couldn't go back any farther than my great-grandfather. As I tried to pick up the trail again, I kept running into brick walls too. We know that the original spelling of our last name wasn't "Bair", but "Bear", and that my great-grandfather was born in 1872. My grandfather was born in 1905.

The Cherokee have a long and tragic history with the U.S, and through it all have survived as a proud, industrious, and great people that has managed to retain their language and culture even as they has weathered the storms history has thrown at them. The most famous, and most extreme example of this is the Trail of Tears, which was when, after the Indian removal act of 1830, the U.S. government forced the Cherokee off of their ancestral lands and forced them to walk to what is now Oklahoma. It's called the Trail of Tears because 4,000 Cherokee died along the way.

What's so striking about it as well is that many, if not most, of the Cherokee at this point in time were of mixed descent, with the mixture mostly with Americans of European descent. There were few "full blood" Cherokee, and most who were forced to march were half or less. The standard for forced removal was if you had 1/32nd Cherokee blood or more. Furthermore, most of the Cherokee were "civilized." They didn't live in traditional dwellings (certainly not teepees), but houses. They owned plantations and businesses, some owned slaves like other Southerners. Except for the color of their skin and the language they used they didn't live that differently from their European descended counterparts. Most were Christians. The Trail of Tears holds a special place in my heart where American history is concerned, because if my family and I had lived then, we would have been thrown out of our house, and off our land and forced to march too. Prejudice and greed only sees what they want to see, and historically they've never seen the part of you that looks like them, only the part of you that's different.


After that there were numerous treaties between the Cherokee nation and the U.S. government, most were broken by the latter party shortly after being made. In the late 1800s, about 1893, there was a proposal by Congress to end the reservation system and allot land to the members or citizens of the five "civilized" tribes: Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, and Chickasaw. Whoever would sign the roll, registering as a citizen of that tribe, would receive an allotment of land. Called the "Dawes Roll" it was open between 1896 and 1906 to anyone who was living in "Indian Territory" at the time and could prove citizenship. Many Cherokee however didn't trust the U.S. government and so wouldn't sign it. Other didn't meet the residency requirements, living in Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Kansas and elsewhere other than what is now Oklahoma.

Near as I can tell, my great-grandfather fell into one of these latter camps, because he doesn't appear on the lists of the Dawes Roll. There are several "Bears" that do, but he and his family aren't among them. But I can trace him to Oklahoma and Arkansas, where I still have distant relatives today. Because he doesn't appear on these rolls, there's no way I can register with the tribe and be counted with the Cherokee.

I've always been a touch darker than other "white" people, and have always tanned easily, so I did a simple image search on the Internet to see what would distinguish Cherokee features. I then compared these images with pictures of my dad and myself. Lo and behold, there it was: genetic resemblance plain as day (cheekbones, chin, shape of eyes, hair and skin coloration), my dad especially. Further, it seems like other Native Americans at least somewhat recognize it too judging by the reactions I get or rather don't get when walking around the grocery store on the Nez Perce reservation which we live near (it's a long story). So, regardless of what the Dawes Rolls say, my face proclaims my ancestry even if I can't carry the card to "prove" it.

This idea has been going through my mind again and again. The truth about who we are will always come out regardless of what we claim or don't claim to be. This is especially true between those who claim to follow Christ, and those who actually do. How we live and treat other people betrays our "spiritual" ancestry. Jesus knew this when He called a bunch of devout Jewish people who claimed to follow Him sons of the devil. A person can't hide this, at least not for long, any more than I could actually hide my own Native American ancestry if I tried. It's written all over my face. So also is it written all over the lives of those who do or do not follow Him, no matter what they say or claim. The children of God and the children of the devil are apparent by how they treat others, as the Apostle John wrote in his first epistle.

It doesn't matter if the Cherokee tribal government recognizes me. I don't much care. All I have to do is look in a mirror. What matters is that I remember and teach my kids to remember. In spiritual things, you can flash your "Christian" credentials all you want and receive the praise of other "Christians" ad nauseum, but if you don't resemble Christ, or if others can't see Christ in you, then you don't belong to His family. It's that simple.

A Ramble About Muscles and Faith

I was out using a hoe on my front lawn today. The roto-tiller's broken for the moment, so if we want to get a garden in this year, my back and arms have to fill in for gas powered machinery. I have a feeling that our garden will be smaller this year than last for that reason.

I used to have a fair amount of muscle on me. A few years ago I worked unloading trucks for a Wal-Mart in Southern California. But that was a few years ago. I haven't done anything nearly that physically demanding since, partly because I hurt my back doing it (it involved a coworker, a pallet, and a backflip on my part; I was later told it was quite the sight). As a result, my arms and back aren't what they were.

I started hoeing the new plot for the garden yesterday. I worked for about twenty minutes before I had to quit because my back was hating me. Today I tried to at least finish what I started yesterday. I think I got a little more done, but not by much. My arms and back were already screaming at me from yesterday and they weren't too keen on it today.

I learned from when I started unloading trucks that this kind of conflict is, in many ways, mind over body. No matter how much your body is telling you it's being tortured, you have to just ignore it and keep going. It will, many days hence, get easier and you'll be able to do it for longer periods of time. When I started unloading trucks, I thought fifty pounds was heavy. When I left Wal-Mart, I could lift nearly one-fifty to two hundred. I learned that in order to really build muscle and build strength, you have to stretch and tear the muscle a little at a time. It hurts. It makes you sore for hours after the exercise has stopped. It exhausts you. In the end, though, it strengthens you to where you could carry loads you never could before.

The opposite is also true. If you don't use the muscle you've got, you lose the use of it. Over the last year or so I've done more sitting down (due to my back) than has been good for my muscles. As a result, when I actually tried using what had been there before, they screamed bloody murder at me.

Faith is a lot like our muscles. In order for it to grow, it has to be stretched and torn a bit as it's exercised. In order for it to build up, it has to be pushed to its breaking point and exhausted. In order for our faith to be maintained, it has to be exercised regularly and consistently at the level of exercise which it has been conditioned for. If we don't use it, it begins to disappear so that when we are called on to use it, our mind and fears scream bloody murder at us.


Faith becomes too easily flaccid when we buy into the illusions of security with which we surround ourselves. To put it another way, our faith in the unchanging God begins to die when we put our faith in changeable things we can see, hear, and touch. We stop believing that we need to depend on Him and begin the mistaken belief that we can depend on something else.


When we put our faith in a large bank account, it create the illusion that we don't need to depend on Him (ask the modern Greeks how that's currently working for them; they're staring down the barrel of all of their money becoming worthless overnight). When we depend on the works of our own hands, what happens if those hands can no longer work? When we depend on a government, what happens if that government falls, or decides it's no longer in their interests to help you?

If you ask God to grow or increase your faith, it's likely that He'll allow all kinds of "bad" things to happen in your life: job loss, illness, death of a loved one, and other problems. Each of these is the removal of the illusion that you were trusting in for your security. It's a fly or fall, sink or swim proposition. Either you turn to Him and learn to trust Him, or you don't. You learn very quickly whether or not you had faith in Him to begin with. God is pleased to help us to exercise our faith and indeed He wants us to grow closer to Him through it, but that doesn't mean it's any more of a pleasant process than extreme body-building. You have to be trained to carry heavier and still heavier loads by faith alone and not by what you can see. It is torturous at times, but necessary.

I know I've got to work the garden plot a little at a time to recondition my muscles. I also know that if I don't, it won't get planted, and my muscles will continue to grow weaker to where when I need them they won't be there. My faith in Him is the same way.

A Ramble About Releasing Your Burden

My family and I are big fans of the Stargate series. We have DVDs of the entire series of both SG-1 and Atlantis as well as all of the associated movies. For the most part, the storyline of the series is essentially the belief of every UFO alien conspiracy theorist that the US government is hiding the truth about their cooperation with good extraterrestrials in order to defeat bad extraterrestrials who are bent on conquering Earth. It also took the ancient alien theory and turned it into ten seasons (plus five more from Atlantis) of pretty good action-adventure Sci-Fi television.

One of the various story lines revolves around "ascended beings." Ancient aliens who, thousands of years prior, learned to transform their entire being into energy and live on another plane of existence. This theme and plot line is milked again and again throughout the series as the main characters struggle through the meaning of it, and some of them experience ascension themselves before deciding they still prefer flesh and blood.

One of the things which ascension requires, especially if you can't do it on your own naturally, is that you "release your burden." As it gets explained through several episodes, what this means is letting go of your guilt, shame, and all of the reasons why you believe that you are unworthy of ascension. It also entails letting go of everything to which you are attached in this life. In other words, in order to ascend, you have to let go of all of the anchors keeping you here in this life.

This has gone through my mind much over the last couple of years. As Christians, we also seek "ascension" in that we seek union with God by Grace through Jesus Christ. Orthodox Christian spiritual writers since the beginning have used terms like being "in-Godded" and "God became Man so that man might become God," and also being "Oned with God."

What obstructs this union in our own lives? Attachments to things here, principally. Attachments to people, attachments to things, attachments to ideas, emotions, and anything else which is not God. But there's another thing which obstructs it which I have realized that I struggle with.

I know in my own life, as I have meditated trying to find out this obstruction in my own life, that one of the biggest obstructions for me is my own guilt and feelings of shame. When I do something I believe I shouldn't be, or (more often) when I don't do something which I believe I should be that guilt begins to build inside of me, and then I feel depressed which then makes it less likely I'll do what I believe I should be and this downward spiral then continues. I go to God asking for forgiveness, but then deep inside me I feel like I don't deserve it and so either refuse to forgive myself, or refuse His forgiveness (which, as I think about it now, amounts to the same thing). Instead of releasing my burden, I refuse to let it go. The twisted irony of it is I want nothing more than to let it go.

Jesus Christ died for our sins, and because of His death and resurrection God says through the Apostle that if we confess our sins He will forgive them and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. This is one of the reasons why He died and rose from the dead. So, why am I reacting this way if I know this? I feel guilty about forgiving myself. I feel as though I'm justifying what I've done or not done. On and on the spiral like this goes. I become so obsessed with right and wrong, and with being right, that I lock myself into a cycle of condemnation which has nothing to do with God and everything to do with me. Normal reasoning would suggest that I would take His forgiveness and hang on with both

hands held tight. My response seems to be far from normal reasoning, but as I think about other people, I realize that it is far more common than just me.

There comes a point, if we want to get out of the depression and despair and move forward towards Him, when we have to release our burdens. Along with our other worldly attachments, we have to let go of our self-judgment and guilt and agree with His forgiveness and that because of Jesus Christ we are worthy of forgiveness. We must accept that God will forgive us through Jesus Christ and agree with Him that He does forgive us because of what Jesus has done. It is only then that we can move forward towards ascension and union with God.