Bill's Notes

OK, I'm re-hinged after this morning's unhinging. A little prayer and lunch seemed to help. Still not 100 percent, but that'll probably take a day or so.

It helps for me to remember gratitude. I have a lot to be grateful for. Some friends of mine have been very good to me lately, and I have to remember that not everything in my life is negative and dark and doomed.

In fact, I'm doing okay in many areas. I just had a bad night. Not the worst thing in the world.

Did a series of dumb things this week and as a result I'm not doing so well today. I got way behind in my deadline and ended up stressing like crazy to make it, to the point where I had chest pains. Then after deadline I did a casual search of a former friend on the Internet and got way more information that I wanted, which triggered a lot of memories. As it was I've been flooded with memories lately in a way that hasn't happened to me since Peace Corps (a lot of used to report that). So this was just piling it on. And I was trying to make progress giving up some bad habits, and screwed that up last night, too. It was a really bad night. Ended up taking a long ride in the dark to just to clear my head and nearly got run over by a white panel van.

Do you know when you're having a bad night? When you wake up in the middle of the night and feel horror, like you're not going to make it until morning, like you're not sure you want to make it to morning. And then you go back to sleep and you dream about living on an island with a bunch of people you hate from your life, and you try to take a taxi out of town. But the taximan just takes you to a crowded parking lot while Jimmy Cliff comes on the radio. In the dream I ended up not just singing along, but shouting along. Remembered every word. So at least I got that going for me.

Seems like I'm caught up in your trap again
Seems like I'll be wearin' the same old chains
Good will conquer evil and the truth will set me free
And I know someday I will find the key
I know somewhere I will find the key
Seems like I've been playing your game way too long
Seems the game I've played has made you strong
When the game is over, I won't walk out the loser
I know someday I'll walk out of here again
And I know that someday I'll walk out of here again

Well now I'm
Trapped
Ooh yeah
Trapped
Ooh yeah
Trapped

Seems like I've been sleeping in your bed too long
Seems like you've been meaning to do me harm
But I'll teach my eyes to see
beyond these walls in front of me
Someday I'll walk out of here again
Someday I'll walk out of here again

But hey, it's almost the weekend. And it's after deadline. And as Grace Slick said at Woodstock, "It's a new dawn."

Andy responded to my First Principles response.

This can go on forever, so I'll let him have the last word if he chooses to respond to this. It's been a fun discussion, and I've enjoyed it. I hope the same is true over at WWR. Andy has shown himself to be a robust defender of his lack of faith :)

A couple of points:

1. It's not meaningless to talk about good and evil. But when we are talking about an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnibenevolent deity, it is largely meaningless to judge God on the issue of good and evil. We don't have enough info. (But that doesn't mean we can't try to determine good and evil in our own lives, which is granted, off the topic.) Which is why I'm not sidestepping the issue of Leviticus. I just understand that, gulp, I need to suspend judgment when discussing whether God is good or evil.

2. Embrace your own irrationality. I'm not going to get into the whole critique of reason thing, but there's a long debate, and any argument I posited would just be a pale imitation of that argument. You can start with Hume and work your way through Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell. Yes, you have to deal with the limited tools of language and our own human ways of conceptualization; understand the limits prevent you from just declaring that believers are inherently irrationality. There is plenty of reasonable room to believe in God. You prided yourself on your examination of your own assumptions when you were a Christian. I'd recommend doing the same questioning regarding your faith, yes, faith, in your own ability to reason.

3. You can't prove a negative such as, "God doesn't exist." Thus, logically, we should be agnostics unless we look at the evidence. In either direction -- atheism or theism -- we take a leap of faith. So you're being as irrational as I am according to your own paradigm, except that unlike you, I don't believe either one of us are being irrational.

4. Next, the order of knowledge. If someone hands you a maze on a piece of paper, you can start at the end and work your way backward, or start at the beginning and work your way forward. We can start with faith and then "test" our experiences against our faith. But even then we are discussing a supernatural experience. You'll understand not when you believe, but more correctly when you are baptized with the Holy Spirit. Faith is a gift from God. It is meaningless unless you have the experience of the Holy Spirit. And it's far, far more than just a gooey good feeling. It is the power of God. You don't have to believe it, but believe I believe it, and that I've got good reasons for doing so. There is no perfect syllogism for the non-existence of God, Andy, (see point three); otherwise, it would've been thought of ages of. There are only arguments and evidence from people who are seeking the truth on both sides, but there's no clincher, Andy. I say, go and try it. You say, "I did but nothing happened." I'd say ask God to reveal Himself to you and grant you the gift of faith, and then seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And then, yes, you'll see. And like all of us who have the experience of God, the whole apple cart of our pretty thinking is upset, and we have to work our way backward from there.

5. I don't "demand" you do anything. I'm just giving another perspective.

That's all. It's been a fun discussion. I don't pretend I'll convince anyone, since I believe you need to be loved into changing your mind on something like this. But it's been fun nonetheless. Best to those on World Wide Rant.

1. The healthcare system. It makes no sense. I don't trust either party to fix it. The combination of managed care, health insurance, and hospitals' running up bills on the uninsured has created a nightmarish system even if you have medical insurance. I got hit for $3,000 in medical bills last year, of which I had to pay $2,000, just because I didn't understand how my medical insurance worked. It turned out that because a MRI firm was billed through a hospital, I had to pay a $500 deductible and a big co-pay. Whereas a second MRI with a company that wasn't affiliated with a hospital, I only had to pay a small co-pay. Then I got a bill for $1,000 out of the blue from some radiologist who I've never been to and didn't hire. Either an MRI firm hired him or my orthopedist did. If so, why the hell do I have to pay him? I never contracted his services, sought his help, or hired him on. So I'm not paying.

Chris makes a helpful comment on the impasse between Andy over at World Wide Rant and myself regarding the existence and nature of God.

Chris says:

Of course, the problem is that while I think Andrew willfully blind, he thinks me delusional. The problem is that neither of us can prove it to the other. When you get to an impass[e] of first principles like that, there's really nothing more that you can do. As another old saying goes, you can't reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into, and no one was ever reasoned into his first principles (by definition).

On one level I agree with Chris. Andy's gone to that place in his mind where many of us have been -- he's tripping all over the contradictions, criticizing problems with extending the logic of religious principles, especially Jewish and Christian ones, and seeing religion as an self-contradictory, confusing mess. And he doesn't really understand why others don't see that.

What Andy doesn't see is that many of us who have developed a faith in God have been through many of the same discussions, said the same things, and argued from the same premises as he has. We do see.

And in many cases, to be fair, Andy has a point. No, I don't agree that stoning children is right, or stoning adulterers, or stoning homosexuals. There are seeming contradictions, or paradoxes, whenever you start talking about the nature of God. Language limits our inquiry, as does our ability to perceive. But at the end of the day, it's not easy to try to get around those words in Leviticus. So why try?

That all said, I'd like to turn back to Chris' comment about first principles.

How can no one be reasoned into first principles? I don't posit that God exists, and thus start from there. I was a non-believer, and I moved inductively, or if you'll permit an inexact use of the term, empirically. My first principles have changed based on the results of an investigation. But my first principle was the same as Andy's: that God didn't exist. In fact, many of the exact criticisms that Andy has made I have made. Yet I believe and he doesn't. Why?

I don't know about Andy, but I made an effort to observe, to test and to experiment. Some things that helped convince me:

If God doesn't exist, then the Christian scriptures shouldn't resonate deep within my heart. They should be just like reading anything else. Yet nothing I've read has ever touched my heart like the scriptures. That told me something.

If God doesn't exist, then prayer should just be wishful thinking. I should pray and maybe feel good about myself if I'm just talking to my imaginary friend. But I prayed and things happened. Things in the external world, things external to me, and beyond my perception. Yes, I suppose that's anecdotal evidence, but the nature of spirituality tends to show it's a personal journey that way.

There was a lot of testing and observing and experimenting on the way.

In fact, I was moving so empirically, inductively and rationally that for 10 years after I became a Christian I never really integrated the concept of faith into my beliefs. It hadn't occurred to me to just believe it. I believed because I tested. I learned based on what happened. But I didn't believe a religion just 'cuz.

I was interested in the truth, not in becoming a Christian. In fact, I started out in eastern meditation and later Buddhism and specifically didn't want to be a Christian, which I thought was an obviously contradictory fairy tale. When the evidence during my journey led me toward Christianity and away from Buddhism I was upset. I was looking for understanding, not Christ. But it was Jesus who showed up. And then there wasn't a lot I could do about that. If Jesus was the truth, then Jesus was the truth, and I'd just have to deal. So I had change my first principles. God exists, and it's the God of Abraham. And yes, God did send His son to walk among us. Praise God for that.

That doesn't mean, at the end of the day, that I have an answer for Andy for every objection. But as I've gotten older, one thing I've found is I'm more okay with the answer, "It's a mystery."

That also means I know the inadequacy of some of my answers to Andy. Does that mean I'm contradicting myself? To borrow a phrase from St. Paul, by no means.

I know it's difficult to hear my mystical argument and believe it for yourself. But no one is asking anyone to take my word for it.

One thing I know is Jesus doesn't sit and argue for long periods of time. Do you want to haggle about the stoning aspects of the Old Testament? Jesus says, "Let he Who is without sin among you cast the first stone." You want to discuss the nature of church and state, especially living under an unjust social system. Jesus says, "Render under Caeser what is Caeser's, and render unto God what is God's." Do you want to know who He is? He doesn't give you a treatise on the Trinity. He says, "Come and see." He doesn't issue you a FAQs, ask you to look at the sales literature, and say He'll come around next Tuesday to see if you need anything. He says, "You, come out from them, come and see Who I am."

The journey is personal. Once the first principles are in place (there is a God, He did send Jesus, He wants me to do this and believe that) then you can take a look at some of the details that are contradictory. There is a lot of brutal stuff in the Old Testament. I don't have an answer for that.

The Eastern Orthodox surprised me a bit by saying that the Jews were wrong in thinking that God wanted David to wipe out the local inhabitants of Israel. If they were mistaken, then whole books of the Bible are essentially wrong. If they are wrong, then what's right? The Orthodox would hold that the Holy Spirit has revealed to the church which is which. And my ex-girfriend Jen would no doubt say, "Well, isn't that convenient?"

Which is why I keep coming back, in these discussions, to the following scripture:

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath God not made foolish the wisdom of this world?
For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;
But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are;
That no flesh should glory in his presence.

In scripture, there are logical traps that our minds fall into, because our minds seek after worldly wisdom. And then we never get out of them. Because faith in God is something that must be sought after first. And then, after baptism in the Holy Spirit, you can see these contradictions (which are real) to be the traps they are.

The Gospel, according to another translation of the bolded passage above, is "a scandal to the Jews" and "folly to the Greeks," but to us who believe, "Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God."

All Andy and many others are saying is they think the Gospel is foolishness. So they're Greeks. We've got our response right there in Corinthians.

It's not like this is a new argument. And it's not like I'm going to convince anyone on this blog.

If you want to know if the Gospel is true, go and see. Listen to the Gospel preached. Conduct your own investigation. Don't necessarily start with the scriptures — as I've discussed earlier on this blog, the scriptures require baptism in the Holy Spirit (or the teaching of the church) to be understood because the carnal mind will find what's written in the Bible to be upsetting, contradictory, annoying or boring. Like the Leviticus passages.

If you want to see, start with prayer. Without putting God to the test, that is, sitting down for some quiet time in good faith, pray to God in the name of Jesus Christ. Ask for God to reveal His truth to you. Say thank you. Ask for help in understanding. And let God take it from there.

If God doesn't exist, if this is all folly, you've got nothing to lose.

If it's not, then you may in time just develop the faith that our civilization was founded upon, the faith the saints contended for, the martyrs died for, and the faith the church, prevailing over the gates of hell as promised, proclaims to all the earth to this day, "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again."

Andy over in World Wide Rant took exception to a comment I left on his blog. He seemed to be tearing into some folks, and I didn't like his attitude, and so being the diplomatic guy that I am, I wrote a few sentences to give Andy some food for thought. Then he responded by writing a post explaining why I was WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! His post is here. I'll just reproduce it here to make it easier.

God Is Love
Indeed.

That's what we're told anyway; however, I find it somewhat difficult to believe when a Christian says something like this in my comments:

What the hell does any of this [mocking Westboro Baptist Church] have to do with a debate about God.

God could heal through science, you know.

Some of you are just as bad as the folks you complain[] about.

First point: Given that Westboro Baptist Church claims that "God hates fags" - that AIDS is punishment to homosexuals - and that their belief is just a logical extension of the charming book of Leviticus from which other Christians love to pick and choose their morality*, I'd say it has everything to do with a debate about God.

Second point: Yes, God could heal through science**. He could also heal just by thinking about doing so for a nano-nano-nano-second, all while juggling an infinite number of bowling pins and standing on the heads of angels on the head of a pin.

Imagine, just like that (snap fingers), he could prevent suffering on a massive scale from both biological and environmental threats.

Instead, IB Bill asks us to accept that this all-loving, all-powerful God would rather sit on the sidelines while human knowledge of science trudges along, finding the odd cure here and there.

God would rather make pouty sad faces at centuries of senseless pain and misery than to actually do something about it.

God would rather watch my cousin waste away and die from this horrible disease rather than heal him and say "Hey, wasn't that neat? I'm probably worth following now, aren't I? Seeing as how I am loving and all-powerful and all."

God is love? Sure, in much the same way Susan Smith loved her little chirrens right to the bottom of a lake.***

Third and final point: Yes, some atheists are just as bad as religious zealots. This, of course, has absolutely no bearing on the irrationality of god-belief or the fact that the Problem of Evil continues to be a crown of thorns on theism's pretty little head.

* Homosexuality? Bad, bad, bad because God says so! It's right there in the Bible! Eating unclean animals and wearing mixed fibers? Surely he was just kidding around about that part.

** If he existed, which he does not. Get over it.

*** The obvious difference being that Susan Smith exists and can actually have an impact on the lives of others.

Posted by Andy at 12:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

So I called up God on the telephone. Out of respect for God, I shall only transcribe my half of the conversation.

Hello, God. Bill here. Thank you for taking my call. Anyway, sorry to disturb you because I know you are busy, but Andy over at World Wide Rant says you don't exist. Furthermore, he says that if you did exist, you aren't acting at all in a manner of an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God.

What's that?

Yes, I know you hear that a lot. Hmm...How would he know how an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God would act? I guess he just thought about it, and based on the wisdom he's gleaned in his two-digit numbers of years on the planet, has decided he couldn't be wrong about the behavior of a eternal divine being based on such his period of observation. Please stop laughing.

What's that?

Well, yes, there's also the spatial dimension, too, when it comes to comparison of observation. Wait, I'm not getting that. I know it's amusing when we struggle with space and time. So just considering the observation limits are only a few years on one planet around one star in the outer spiral of only galaxy ... how do you divide by eternity [illegible scribbles in my notes, sorry] then multiple by the relative mass of the portion of the earth compared to the total mass in the universe. Am I to assume N is very small here? Yes, I understand the assumption is this is your first universe. Okay, I give up. Yes, yes, I'm glad this is amusing. So a creature has too small an observation period and space to judge the eternal and the divine, got it.

What's that?

No, Andy cannot build a whale. Or a fish. But he seems smart and apparently made a kid. I know that doesn't count unless you start fabricate from scratch. He's got a cool Web site, though. He made that. Yes, I know that those are God-given talents.

Ok, thanks God. I appreciate your guidance.

In fairness to Andy, I do not believe that God "hates fags" and I don't take seriously those who create placards and march in the street saying things like that.

I'm also not discussing homosexuality on this site right now, simply because I'm really, really, really sick of the subject. Like most of us.

And I'm not going to explain, for the two billionth time, the impact of the New Testament on the laws of the Old Testament, and the difference between the kinds of laws in Leviticus [Hint: Would you say the Leviticus laws against incest are also void, Andy?] Google it if you want the answer. Perhaps someone can comment and leave a link to a good response. I know I've seen them all over the place.

That's all. Thanks for playing.

UPDATE: Andy responds. Really quickly, too. I mean, my computer crashed, and by the time my system was up and running and I went over to check, he had already written a response.

Andy says:

Claiming that I cannot know how an all-powerful, all-loving God could or should act unfortunately implies that IB Bill also cannot know. Thus, for him to even suggest that his god is all-powerful, all-loving, or all-anything-else, and to assign any sort of value judgment to any actions of said God, while admitting that to understand such a thing is impossible, reduces his assertions on the qualities of his god to, well, absolute gibberish.

You're missing the point, Andy. I'm not saying I know and you don't. I'm saying if there is such a thing as an all-knowing, all-powerful, loving God, his actions might appear to be a mystery to all of us, especially over a limited observation period.

Andy further says:

As for whether the laws on incest contained within Leviticus are also void, claim all you wish that certain kinds of laws no longer apply, while some still do. This leaves the (thinking) Christian in the position that he must say that at one time killing homosexuals, adulterers, and back-talking children was a moral thing to do because God said so.

Personally, I find anyone who would say that to be rather... disturbed.

As long as the person who casts the first stone is without sin, then it's the moral thing to do.

I don't know what the question is. OK, whatever the question is, it's not a sign of insight and maturity if your response is:

1. Other people are stupid. Believe it or not, other people are NOT stupid. Many, many of them are very, very smart. And others of them are smart in particular circumstances and not-so-smart in others. But others' being dumb is not an acceptable answer. Others disagree not because they are dumb, but because they have thought about things differently.

2. I got it all figured out in my head, so it must be this way, and can't possibly be another way. Listen. Lots of shit about life is counter-intuitive. It seems to counter reason, or at least the initial attempt at reasoning, and sometimes many, many attempts at reasoning. You may come up with the most rational argument in the world in the abstract, but unless you test it against reality, you've got nothing but a theory. Zeno's Paradox is disproved by reality, not the other way around.

3. Somehow the right answer depends on my argument. The truth is the truth, whether you and I perceive it. You can win and argument and still be wrong. You can win lots of arguments, convince many others, and still be dead, totally wrong.

I'm just saying.

Good stuff on Derrida. Good explanation of both Derrida's nonsense and why it's nonsense. Note: I don't get how Reagan alleged corrupted the public debate, and why Derrida would be responsible for it. But overall a good article.

So I'm thinking this morning about the West Wing episode I saw and my earlier thoughts on it.

Then I got to thinking about fiction in general, that is, why do we create fictive worlds? What do those fictive worlds do?

Despite all my graduate student and Ph.D. dropout-stuff, I'd say a fictive world ultimately comments on the real world. [Yes, yes, it does, settle down everyone, no murmuring in back. Yes, you, with the glasses. Sit up and pay attention.] ... Yes, a fictive world stands apart from reality, and is it's own self-contained thing, but ultimately that thing gets compared to the real thing. [Yes, yes, physical reality we can perceive and communicate. Calm down, you franco-wussies. It's pretty standard Anglo-Saxon fare here. Don't act so shocked.]

Anyway, these fictive worlds relate to physical, perceptible reality by describing the real world one of three ways:

1. The world as it is. The fictive world complements reality. This means it attempts to create a world that works much the same as the world does, in order to talk about, investigate, reveal, understand, play with, and otherwise help ourselves comprehend the real world around us. Northrop Frye's anatomies would be here, as well as novels, and most confessions.

2. The world as it could be or should be. These are usually dystopias or utopias. They are attempt to warn us about the potential dangers of human nature, or a call for us to fulfill the higher potentials of human nature. Burning Chrome or Star Trek, our choice, is what we're told. Add St. Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic (yes, it's fiction, leave me alone).

3. The world as I want it to be. The "I" is either the reader or the writer. This includes Frye's category of romance, that is, the story is about wish fulfillment of the ego. Pornography is also in the romance category. What some people confuse is romance with pornography, and use terms like business porn or reality porn. Pornography is a depiction of sexual immorality ... translate straight from the Greek here, porneos=sexual immorality and graphy= writing, extended [heh] to depiction. Pornography is thus a subcategory of romance related to sexual images, with the specific judgment [loophole anyone?] required that the images are immoral. To include other forms of romance, such as the West Wing, into a porn category by slurring it as liberal porn, is to confuse categories and thus be unfair. More correctly, the West Wing is a liberal romance.

Fiction can of course move across these three categories, but they are usually the less for it. We are disappointed when we think we are getting reality as it is, and it turns out that the writer has decided to impose his fantasies on it. That is my complaint with the West Wing. The writers and producers don't seem to understand they are producing a romance. They think they are telling us how the world should be or is, but they're really telling us how they want it to be.

Coming up with a heuristic for telling the difference between the two is left as an exercise for the reader.

Now, careful readers [editor's note: could you be any more fucking pompous?] will have noticed that I've left a big chunk of fiction on the table here. Most modern and post-modern fiction concerns itself with what we might call the tools of fiction. That is, it is about the act of storytelling itself: what goes into it, how can the tools be used, can we trust it, what is the relationship between author and reader, what are the limitations of perception, language and understanding, and the philosophical underpinnings and implications of all that.

I would say that at best, modern and post-modern fiction are still an attempt to describe the world as it is because the fictive world in effect deflates into the real world. Say the fictive world was inside a balloon. In some modern and postmodern literature, the author stops talking about the dream inside the balloon, and starts to talk about the balloon itself, the ingredients of the dream and our own ability to see and perceive both. Since the balloon and the ingredients of the fictive world are made up of real things in the real world, we're talking about and trying to understand reality, even if the writer, reader and critic give up and say it's impossible.

However, however, however ...

At a certain point, and here's where the postmodernists lost me, some writers, readers and critics decided that they construct reality, or that society constructs reality. They are fuckheads. I'd place them into category three, the world as I want it to be, but by no means do I mean everyone in that third category is a fuckhead. Anywa, back to reality-constructers, yeah, all Marxist-based criticism and literature (this includes race, class, gender analyses, study of the body, etc.) is thus a romance. No wonder they can't tell the difference between high art and low art. They can't tell the difference between the world as it is, the world as it should be, and the world as they want it to be.

Of course, all this hangs on the heuristic of determining the difference between "the world as it should be" and "the world as I want it to be." Any thoughts on the difference?

I found this explanation of the Gospel at GeoCities. The link at right goes to the site, but I'm not sure you can get there directly. The author is Eastern Orthodox, and he explains the Gospel with that clarity that is so indicative of the eastern church.
The "gospel" is the good news about Jesus Christ.

Why do we think that Jesus Christ is good news?

When we look at the world around us, there is mostly bad news.

There is war, and preparation for war. There is violence and hatred. In many places, people are oppressed and downtrodden. Their lives are made miserable by hunger and disease. Sometimes, and in some places, people may attain joy and happiness, but all too often this is attained only at the expense of others.

There are many different ways of looking at the world. For some, there is no ultimate good or evil. They believe that what we call "good" and "evil" are purely subjective ways in which human beings experience the world, but in reality, things just happen. Some things that happen we find pleasant, and others we find unpleasant, but this makes no real difference to the events themselves. Whether people live or die, whether they are happy or unhappy, makes no difference to the universe.

Orthodox Christians take a different view. We believe that the world was made by God, and that God made man, the human race, and that God made the world good.

Charles Stewart, in his book Demons and the devil summarises the Orthodox view of evil and the devil thus:
How is it that if God is good, there can exist so much destructive evil in the world and so much unhappiness in the lives of humans?

Orthodoxy responds that God is purely good and that evil comes from another source altogether: the Devil. This would appear, then to resemble the dualist religions of Persia (Zoroastrianism or Manichaeism). But the position of the Orthodox Church is consciously distinct and opposed to precisely these doctrines... The Orthodox moral world emerges as an arena in which good struggles against evil, the kingdom of heaven against the kingdom of earth. In life, humans are enjoined to embrace Christ, who assists their attainment of Christian virtues: modesty, humility, patience and love.

At the same time, lack of discernment and incontinence impede the realization of these virtues and thereby conduce to sin, sin in turn places one closer to the Devil... Since the resurrection of Christ the results of this struggle have not been in doubt. So long as people affirm their faith in Christ, especially at moments of demonic assault, there is no need to fear the influence of the Devil. He exists only as an oxymoron, a powerless force."

The main doctrinal point here is that there should be no dualism. Satan is not to be regarded as a power equal to God. He is God's creation, and operates subject to the divine will.

The world lies in the power of the Evil One (I John 5:19), and so every human being is a citizen of the kingdom of Satan by birth. When we are born we are possessed by Satan, that is, we are slaves. But possession is not the same as ownership. A thief may possess stolen goods, but cannot become the rightful owner. Yet by his death and resurrection Christ has overcome the devil, and liberated those who were captives to sin and Satan. By baptism we are identified with the death and resurrection of Christ, and we are transferred from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God.

We believe that in Christ God came to reclaim the world from the devil. Jesus gave the picture of the world as a huge prison, or concentration camp, to use a modern metaphor, with the devil as the commandant (Luke 11:21-22). God enters the camp as one of the prisoners, and the devil offers him a job as deputy-commandant (Luke 4:6-8). Jesus rejects the offer, and in his subsequent ministry liberates people who are demonized, or sick or otherwise oppressed by the power of the Evil One.

The devil tries to get rid of him, and he is condemned to death in a rigged trial. In the human court he is found guilty, yet in the court of ultimate appeal, the court of heaven, he is aquitted (cf Zech 3:1-5). The word "satan" means accuser, and satan in fact acts as a public prosecutor. The sentence of death is nevertheless carried out. But both the verdict and the sentence are overturned by God (Acts 2:23-36).

And so we sing:
Christ is risen from the dead
trampling down death by death
and upon those in the tombs bestowing life

Start with the concept of worship. How we humans seemed to be designed to find things that we consider cool. Is a desire to find things that are cool, that is, to find things worthy of reverence and honor, a use of the worship instinct? Do we humans thus inevitably worship? Is thus the pursuit of the cool thus a kind of idolatry?

Part of the issue of worship is the word is a bit weird. It always reminds me of people kowtowing, you know, the whole weird eastern Oriental emperor thing. Which always made the "worship" aspect of my Christian faith seem a bit weird, too. You know how we democratic Americans are.

But worship it seems to me may not mean that whole kowtowing bit at all. It may just mean reverence for something, according it respect, honor, or even enthusiasm.

And God no doubt wants us to love respect, honor and have enthusiam for the people and the things in this world. But he doesn't want us to hold these people and things in greater esteem than the love, honor, respect and enthusiasm we have for him. Once that happens, you have idolatry.

Hmm... this doesn't seem quite right. Seems too pat. Don't have time to fix it.

What I'm trying to get at is this: The first commandment indicates that God is a God that brought us out of Egypt, that is, out of worldly values, out of worshipping wealth and the flesh, and sets us free from the addictions and the futility of Egypt. What I want to try to demonstrate is how pursuit of the "cool," which I believe is a salient characteristic of intellectuals and aesthetes and probably Americans in general, can in context be Christian but unhinged from the God of Abraham becomes exactly the sort of idolatry in the Pharoah's Egypt. That is, I'm trying to show that seeking what's cool can be a form of worship.

Then, God seeks not to liberate us from what's cool -- that would be silly -- but to show us that that instinct for finding things that are beautiful, insightful, different is a kind of worship, and that that worship belongs first and foremost to God. God is source of beauty, insight, wisdom and well, even things that are different.

Hmm...not quite there yet.

The First Commandment involves God expressing how He has liberated us from worldly values, and called us out. But, as anyone who has ever tried to give up a worldly value knows, the experience in the desert can be unpleasant. The "jealousy" God expresses is a precise term. It is not an abusive individual afraid of independence of thought or mind. Jealousy is a fear of losing something. God expresses his desire, as a jealous God, not to lose us. But remember this is immediately in a context of liberation. God is saying in the first commandment, "I have set you free from the bondage of sin, and I don't want to lose you to sin again. For that to happen, you must first pay attention to me and not going back to paying attention to things that cause you to sin, as fascinating and interesting as they are."

This is not because God is a despot but because God doesn't possess vanity or ego; he can handle it. (And remember that Christianity's triune deity takes care of some of this, too, but I only understand this on an intuitive level. I can't really express it.)

But other things that we accord our reverence cannot handle it. Look at how the attention accorded celebrities unhinges many of them.

Our culture in the United States contains both strong Christian elements and strong Egyptian elements, so to speak. It is one of the difficult things about living here in the U.S. There is a lot of worship of wealth. There is a twisted sexuality running through this culture that's just bizarre. I am not just referring to the homosexualization of pop culture. I'm referring to a weird cult of titillation in this culture, mostly in advertising but which pervades our entertainment culture as well, that denies healthy sexuality in favor of a desire to manipulate the sexual desires of others for a commercial purpose. Fortunately, in our culture, as twisted as we get about wealth and sex, we don't do so about power. In many cultures powerful people are worshipped. I don't see a lot of that in the U.S.

That's the notes so far.