the one who is loved

At any given time I have a few open thoughts and questions about Scripture in my mind, and so when I read Scripture I am more attuned to those thoughts and questions than I might have been prior.  As an example, I have been more attuned as of late to passages that appear to imply that we do or do not have a choice in our justification due to the fact that it is a topic that a friend of mine has pushed to the fore lately.  If I am consistently and objectively reading Scripture and I have kept specific issues at the top of my mind my belief is that those passages that support or do not support that position should jump out at me.  However, It is not my intent to talk about resistible or irresistible grace today, but rather about love.

A few years ago I noticed that all of the passages that I could recall about love in the Bible presented it in terms of sacrifice or humility.  So, for the last few years as I have read I have paid attention to what the Bible says about love, and thus far I have only seen that perspective confirmed.  There are certainly times when sacrifice is not the obvious focus, but it's amazing how often it's an unavoidable theme.  This is true from the love Boaz shows to Ruth (Ruth 4) to the love Hosea shows to Gomer (Hosea 3) to the love I mentioned in my previous post that Christ showed to us (Romans 5).  It is even true in the love that husbands are supposed to show their wives, as Christ's sacrificial love is the example that Paul uses as a template in his instructions to husbands (Ephesians 5).

This addresses something seemingly minor issue that bugged me since I was a kid.  John was known for referring to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved.  Factual or not, I always thought this sounded prideful and not fitting for Scripture.  Now, when I view this through the perspective of sacrifice I do not see this as a prideful statement, though.

Luke 7:36-47 illuminates this a bit more for me now, though it flips who is showing love.

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

As an aside, when I read this a few months ago in Sunday School I could not get through it without choking down some (many) tears, because this image is so beautiful.  The town prostitute who knows she is scum shows more love to God than a pious religious leader, and the reason is that she knows how wretched she is while he wrongly supposes he has little that needs forgiven.  If there is not a better illustration of who the true Gospel should and does appeal to I have not heard it.

To take this from another perspective that is on my main topic, there is much love where there is much sacrifice and where there is much forgiveness.  Where the woman above passage showed love in response and proportion to Christ's sacrificial love, the love that John received from Christ was great because it was in response to his own sinfulness.  So, saying that Christ loved him much was saying that he had a lot bad in his heart that Christ had to sacrifice to atone in him.  Christ's love is proportional to the natural darkness of our own hearts.  That being the case, I am a man who Christ loves very much as well.  I know how voluminous the darkness in my heart is that needs to be forgiven.

gift selections

I am approaching my ten-year anniversary in my current place of employment.  Where did the time go?  Because of this anniversary I received an email from HR indicating that I can choose an award from a list, which is managed by a vendor, to commemorate the occasion.

Traditionally, companies have given employees watches, and there are some on the list, as well as some jewelry.  Hardly anyone wears watches any more, including me, so I am happy I have a choice of something other than a watch.  I do have some questions about whoever chooses the available options for these prizes, though.  They seem to be targeting a specific type of person.

Apart from jewelry and watches I can choose from golf equipment, a wine cellar, a few electronics options, etc.  My sense is that the items on the list either reflect the tastes of one or two people tasked with selecting items, or that they are meant to be targeted to some upper-middle-class stereotype of a golfer who likes mechanical watches and enjoys the occasional wine.

I am certainly not complaining or attempting to look a gift horse in the mouth.  I'll appreciate the telescope that I selected when I get it.  I especially appreciate what this signifies—that I have had consistent employment for such a long period of time.  I am just intrigued by what the process must have been in selecting items to commemorate that time.

despicable me

A school shooter who killed three people in Ohio has been in the news due to the fact that he wore a shirt with the word "killer" on it, then laughed at, cursed, and flipped off a court room containing the families of his victims.  There are scant few things I can imagine that could be more painful and galling.

However, thinking back to my post on forgiveness from a few years ago, even these actions pale in comparison to how disgusting my sinful nature is to God in His holiness.  When Paul writes about Christ dying for us when we were yet sinners, that is not much unlike if one of the aforementioned family members voluntarily gave up his or her life to save that despicable killer who took his son, or her brother, or his grandson, or her nephew.

In my own humanity, if I were in the families' position I would not be capable of forgiving the man.  It just would not be possible, even though this is what we are instructed to do in Scripture.  I would have to hope that God would grant me the grace to allow me to forgive where I would not be able to under my own power.  That would be my one and only hope.  I pray these families are granted that same grace and peace that I would hope for.  I simply cannot imagine how horrifying being in that situation would be.

bully for you

One opinion that I see every once in a while is that school bullies eventually get their due.  I think the assumption is that they're more likely to end up in prison, or at least have personality issues that keep them from being accepted in the business world.  I don't know if only a few people think this or many do, but it's ridiculous upon reflection.  Sure, some bullies do end up in prison or with issues that keep them from getting good jobs.  Most of the traits that allow people to gain a social upper hand in the school social world certainly don't do the opposite elsewhere, however.  When people complain about office politics, for example, what else are they really complaining about other than that other people are using bully-style tactics.

In my job I interact with a lot of people working for a lot of different companies.  As a result, I see a lot of different styles of management.  Some that show up occasionally are those that integrate elements of bullying.  Honestly, bullying employees to just below the threshold of what HR considers abuse can be an effective short-term motivator.  I cannot be the only person who has observed this.  It seems to be the basis for most executive's actions on Dilbert (but interestingly, not the pointy haired boss). 

What I do not understand is the need to pretend that bullies do not succeed.  Generally speaking, they do quite well.  Being willing to take actions that hurt others for your own gain is very effective in most social structures, and business is no different.  Sure, there are caveats to bullying your coworkers and employees, but there are caveats to behaving altruistically as well.

Certainly, this fact does not make bully tactics acceptable for those under Christ.  My main hope is that we can be honest and acknowledge that bullies do not always get their just deserts in this lifetime.  Some of what kids learn in school is that manipulating the system for your own gain at others' expense often works.

all that jazz

For one reason or another, one data point that some people have determined is valuable in determining whether someone else is intelligent or has artistic taste is what that person's opinion of Jazz music is.  If you can appreciate Jazz it somehow establishes that your brain works in ways that are superior to normal brains in certain functions.  Perhaps this is true, but if that is the case I cannot count myself among those superior thinkers.  I simply do not like Jazz music.

The reasons for my disinterest in Jazz are numerous and detailed below.

Jazz is played in 7th chords.  I do not generally like 7th chords.  An example of what I am talking about is below.



Jazz focuses on improvisation.  This shows up both in the instrumentals and in "scat," which most people know is the "boop-diddy-bebop" that some singers throw into the improvisational sections of songs.  All of this improvisation sounds random, as it is supposed to.  I think this randomness and unpredictability is appealing to a lot of people, but it does not do anything for me.

One of the main instruments utilized in Jazz is the saxophone, and for reasons that I cannot currently articulate, this is one of my least favorite instruments.  I think I have a weird mental association with the instrument because I largely find saxophone music to either be depressing or boring.

Finally, and probably more importantly, Jazz is different from most other forms of music in that there is little or no focus on resolution.  Most music follows a pattern of question and answer.  Two or more musical phrases will be put together where the first phrase or group of phrases builds tension, like a question in verbal communication, and the final phrase will resolve the tension by concluding on a note or chord that answers the previous question.  So, where most music sounds to my mind like a question and response, Jazz sounds to me like a run-on sentence that, even for its length, never completes its thought.

I am sure that a lot of my distaste has to do with the fact that I have not put enough effort into understanding Jazz to appreciate it.  I do think that I have some valid perspectives for an art form that is intended to be subjective anyway, though.  Sometimes people are just not wired to be able to enjoy specific things.

bodily privacy

I apologize in advance to anyone who is paranoid about being watched.  If so, don't read the rest of this post.  I'm serious.  This is about a prediction I am making that might make some such people uncomfortable.

I had a shocking realization recently.  I certainly hope that I am wrong, but I think that at some point in the future there are going to be unclothed pictures of pretty much everyone stored somewhere publicly accessible.  This isn't because I think that everyone is going to be an exhibitionist in the future, but simply due to technological advancement.

As a minor, slightly unrelated example of how fast privacy is going away, a couple of weeks ago a picture of NJ showed up on my Facebook news feed, except it was not a picture of NJ.  It was a picture of one of my Facebook friends taken and posted by someone he knows and with whom I am not friends on Facebook.  He just happened to be in the same restaurant we were in earlier that day, and NJ was simply in the background of the picture.  Just think of all of the people in the background of the pictures you have taken.  You're probably in just as many picture backgrounds as well, so there is pretty strong documentation of most places that you have been in public if the faces in the pictures could be properly indexed and searched.  Usually, that is not a big deal, but in some situations it may be.

I have long suspected that privacy as we think of it will become infeasible to maintain at some point in the future.  It is also easy to see in social media that a lot of people are very comfortable exposing specific aspects of themselves that society has traditionally deemed private.  Most of my contemplation to this point has centered around the privacy of thought rather than bodily privacy, however it makes sense that if we lose one we will lose the other.  If there are cameras everywhere to catch conversations and facial expressions, there will be cameras everywhere to undo other sorts of privacy as well.  These cameras might catch things inadvertently or intentionally, but the result is still the same that privacy will be violated.

The one thing I can think of that might strike down my predictions is that I can also consider is that anti-filming or camera detection technology will advance at the same pace, and that businesses and governments that manage public restrooms and changing areas invest in those technologies.  This will means that individuals will have to be diligent, and the question is whether that level of diligence is realistic.

As an extra consequence of this prediction, I believe that any companies that currently hold patents on technology to detect and/or disable hidden cameras will probably make a killing in the not-so-horribly-distant future.  Well, at least that is my paranoid prediction.  Hopefully, I am wrong about all of this, or I am at least wrong about how far in the future this reality is.

pride & prejudice

For Golden's birthday we watched Pride & Prejudice.  The version we saw was the two-hour one with Keira Knightley rather than the the five-hour one with Colin Firth.  Obviously, the book and the movies were not made with me mind, so my opinions on the story are probably of little consequence.  Also, I can only truly comment on the shorter movie because I have never seen the longer one, and I gave up on the book four chapters in the one time I attempted reading it.

Back when I attempted to read the book it was because I had been told it offered insight into a woman's mind, and I am always interested in understanding how others think.  It took me little time to realize that I was not capable of discerning what insight was available. There was too much about the story that was supposed to resonate with the audience that failed to resonate with me simply because I am missing the part of the brain that is supposed to resonate.  Also, I couldn't keep the sisters' names straight.

One thing about the movie that perplexed me a bit was how much of the story was intended to be social commentary of the society in which Jane Austin lived.  Elizabeth, The main character, is largely defined by how much she is not like her off-kilter family members on one side and the members of proper high society on the other.  At least in the movie, is Elizabeth supposed to be the character with modern sensibilities surrounded by people who are at least a little bit off-center, or is she simply supposed to be a participant in her environment who actually does fit in just like everyone else?

This idea of social commentary stuck out to me because I think that one of the greatest appeals to the story to modern women is that it hearkens to a time that many find easy to idealize.  If the story is actually supposed to negatively reflect certain aspects of that time period that is an interesting contrast the people who on some level wish they lived in that time period.

Like everyone I have my own escapist entertainment as well, so I am not one to judge.