end of days

I honestly do not know how my audience as a whole will take this post. It reflects my true opinions, but I think there are people who really care about this topic and some who really don't, and I am horrible at distinguishing the two. Regardless as to which group you are in, please read this with a grain of salt.

This past weekend I watched The Omen. The idea of the movie is that things that have happened in recent years correlate to the seven trumpets in Revelation 8, and that the Beast arrived on earth in the form of a baby on June 6, 2006. The movie was good, but not great. It was about what I expected.

After I watched the movie, though, I noticed that there was a short documentary on the beliefs surrounding the end times and specifically the mark of the beast in the DVD extras. A wide variety of folks were interviewed from Tim LaHaye to the leader of The Church of Satan. As is usually the case, a lot of people put a lot of value in their personal beliefs about prophesies in Revelation.

I am always amazed at the interest that the end times (also called eschatology) seems to inspire in church settings. In the last decade Christian producers have released not just one but two movies to theaters on the last days. The Left Behind series was somehow stretched to ten books. Finally, in my own experience when people in one specific class in my church were asked one summer to list questions they wanted our pastoral staff to address, they listed about four weeks of questions on the end times. Obviously, there are people who care. I am very nearly not one of those people.

Because I don't see how it applies to everyday life, the end times is something that I don't expend too much energy over. I tend to avoid conversations about it and do not go out of my way to study it.

There is one thing about the end times that I do care about. I believe that some people substitute an interest in knowing God with an interest in knowing what is going to happen in the future. Rather than look at the real meat in Scripture, I think that many people would prefer to waste time speculating what the four horsemen, or the seven bowls, or the seven trumpets mean. I do not think this is God's intent.

My eschatological belief is that God does not intend for us to know what exactly is going to happen, and that it is a waste of time to obsess over it. This may sound weird coming from someone who believes in the same Bible that contains the books of Daniel and Revelation, but it is true. I believe that if God wanted us to care about the specifics of how things will work out in the end He would have given us specifics. Instead God gave us enough information to know that there will be an end of days at some point (which some preterists actually disagree with, but it's not worth arguing) and that it will eventually be followed by a judgment. The rest is purposely coded in a way that we cannot decrypt.

If you think this sounds dumb, consider that God did this once before. There were Jews in Jesus' time who were looking for a Messiah to free them from Rome's iron grip. They had plenty of prophesies that could be interpreted to support these beliefs, however wrong the beliefs were. Every time I hear someone say with certainty that some obscure prophesy in Daniel or Revelation refers to such and such event that will happen at this specific point in a timeline, I am reminded of those people who thought the Messiah would be a warrior rather than a servant.

What really gets under my skin is when someone who I think obsesses too much about the end times refers to a verse like it is the ultimate proof that what they are saying is correct, but say it so quickly that no one who wanted to check the context could remember what the passage address was let alone take the time to look it up. But I digress.

Please don't get me wrong. I believe that if end times prophesy is in Scripture it does have value. I just read prophetic passages more simply than a lot of other people do. Revelation is an encouragement to a persecuted church not to give up. That is why there are two chapters' worth of instructions to individual churches. The prophesies in Matthew 24 through 25 are reminders that there are eternal consequences for selfishness. That is why they keep referring to treating others right. Daniel's prophesies are meant to show that governments are temporary and God is permanent. This is where all his prophesy ultimately leads.

To read more into the Bible than is really there is to put words in God's mouth. Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough for that task.

riding high

I have been having a problem with NJ lately that I never would have anticipated. I figured he might have trouble establishing a sleep schedule, or perhaps problems digesting food properly, or maybe he wouldn't like taking baths. I simply didn't figure on this.

When I hold NJ he will not tolerate me sitting down for any period of time. If he is in a particularly good mood it might take him fifteen minutes to decide he wants me to stand up and maybe walk around. It is usually much quicker than that.

Once I am up NJ typically gets much happier, looking around his surroundings and taking it all in. He can be satisfied like this for literally hours. Yesterday, I resorted to carrying him in his strap-on carrier (I think it's called a snuggly) while I stood and walked around with short intervals of sitting. I would have gotten pretty tired otherwise. Plus, I have a lazy streak.

So, as is the case with a lot of things, I generally know how to make NJ happy but I don't understand fully why it is such a big deal to him. Is the view from five feet really that much better than from three?

saved

I have always been a saver. I am sure that part of it was because I was taught to save, but part of it also has to do with a genuine concern about what I would do if I needed the savings and I didn't have it. A final large part of it came from the fact that I learned that saving was the only way I would be able to make a large purchase.

One of the people I work with does not believe in fully utilizing savings. This isn't an issue of math. His stance is that there is no such thing as security, so stressing yourself out to create a false sense of security is pointless. I have taken some issue with this perspective, mostly on mathematical grounds, but he does have one point that bothers me.

What gets under my skin is determining what the Biblical perspective is. The only book in the Bible that might be considered explicitly to back saving money might be Ecclesiastes. Jesus and Paul both made comments that actually implied saving money was less than ideal. What I struggle with is how much of saving money is due to responsibility and how much is due to worry or greed? Are savings a false sense of security? Is it irresponsible not to save?

I have seen people who did not save anything throughout life and expected family, friends, and/or government to take care of them when they were old. This can't be right. Refusing to be generous with those in need because I need a set amount in my savings or 401(k) doesn't seem quite right either. Then again, if Jesus saves, shouldn't I as well?

programmer for hire

About a year and a half ago I put some serious thought into taking on a side job in my spare time. I went so far as to check for approval from my "day job" for me to have a second job. I have long since decided a better use of my time would be to go back to school, so my investigation was short-lived.

Before I decided against doing something on the side, though, I signed up on a web site designed to hook up freelance programmers with potential contracts. I thought that I might be able to find something that would take a few hours on a weekend and maybe make some money in the process.

I never shut down the emailing service from the website, so I get a few emails a week about projects looking for a proposal. The emails are automatically sent to me based on a filter I set up when I signed up. All the emails are pretty much the same, so I don't even read them any more. They are immediately redirected to a separate folder in my email program.

As I was checking my email last night I decided to look through the folder to see what I was missing out on when an email that didn't look like the rest stuck out to me. It said something to the effect of, "Request for Proposal," and was dated July 8. Apparently someone looked through the site, noticed my resume, and thought that I was well suited for this project. The project would have even satisfied my requirement of being able to work on it on off hours.

I have to say I am a little proud because my resume has never impressed for any job other than standard technical support and junior developer roles. It is way past the time for me to submit a proposal, and I wouldn't have anyway, but it is nice to know I could have for at least one job.

pacing

This past weekend I watched North by Northwest, which is a Hitchcock film from 1959. The film is not incredibly long, but for the content it contained I would have expected it to be a little shorter. Conversely, I also watched Poseidon, and that movie kept steadily moving. This is an observation I have often made about the difference between classic movies and movies of today.

I don't want to make it sound like things are better or worse today than they were in the past, but I think the pacing of movies is a good example of the difference in how people approach things today compared to in the past. Popular classic movies often take great time to set a mood. Popular modern movies usually constantly keep the story moving. I think that films like Lawrence of Arabia and Ben Hur would be difficult to make today because both contain long gaps of story where not much exciting happens, even though both were "action" films.

I think people today as a whole think faster but shorter, and that people as a whole in the past thought slower but longer. A movie from the 1950s is often a very deliberate affair where there is not too much concern about moving the story along. A movie from this millenium is more likely to be edited to keep the storyline moving.

I'll end now before my audience loses interest.

technical difficulties

One of my classes this half of the semester is a pass/fail Global Management class, which looks to be relatively simple. There can't possibly be wrong answers. Also, the grade shouldn't impact my GPA, and it only lasts five weeks.

As an example of the simplicity of the course, half of my last session was devoted to watching a film on the impact of IMF (International Monetary Fund) policies on Jamaica. When the video came on the screen, though, we couldn't hear anything. The volume was adjusted. Wires were checked, and eventually A/V people came by and fixed the issue. They didn't completely fix the issue, though. The volume faded in and out and background noises came through much clearer than voices. Apparently the room had been set up for a satellite conference earlier in the day, and adjustments hadn't been made for a normal video to be played.

I am actually surprised with the number of times this sort of thing occurs. I can't count the number of times a video wouldn't play or a remote control wouldn't work or equipment seemed to spontaneously fail right when it was needed most. This has happened when I was in charge as well. I have had a few occasions when I needed a projector or a TV or something else to work when it just wouldn't.

So, here's the question. Why is it that when technology fails it does so when there are ten or twenty-five or one hundred people are waiting impatiently for it work? When one person sits down at a TV it just works. When one person pops a CD into a music system it just works. When twenty-five people sit down to watch a video, four times out of five something doesn't work. It's enough to drive a person crazy.

that bites

The other night I was minding my own business eating some cereal when it happened. I bit into the inside of lip hard. That was irritating! It hurt, it swelled up a bit, and I just knew that the bite would turn into a canker sore. I know this because I get probably on average one canker sore every month or two due to biting the inside of my mouth.

Once I had bitten the inside of my mouth once, though, it was like my teeth started to like the taste of my blood. I bit into that same location twice more, I lightly bit another location in my mouth once, and I bit my tongue once all over the next fifteen minutes. I was beginning to wonder if something had happened to cause me to lose any sense of coordination in my mouth.

Eventually, I decided it was about to stop eating. I can only take so much self-inflicted violence. Plus, I was full.