7/30/10

I had a lot to say yesterday, but I was mentally frazzled to the point where I forgot most everything. Today is the quarterly meeting at work, and then we'll get to play a game where we each win some trading cards and can put them on the site for free. Then, next Monday, people will start heading out to Baltimore for the national card convention. It will be a good week to prove my stuff. I still don't feel like I have a handle on all the irregular packaging minutia, but the majority of the process is in my pocket now.
God is good to me, and protects me from a lot of things. One take-away from this week is that I shouldn't make large purchasing decisions without a second pair of eyes to back me up. I'm too absent-minded. I don't think I've made a terrible choice in buying this car, but I feel like I very easily could have. That's not a tremendous sense of personal security.
It's all okay, though. An excellent choice I have made is to ask you to marry me. If I ace the final, it's not that I don't feel bad about messing up some homework assignments during the class; it's that proportionately it simply matters less.

- J

Good morning, mood.

I got an email this morning from Mr. Ban Ki-Moon.

From: "Mr Ban Ki-Moon"
baaaannnkiimoonnn@mail.com

To: undisclosed-recipients

We are very sorry for the delay in transferring your over-due contract payment the sum US$10M USD into your personal Account for the pass 4 years now; sorry for the delay, and listen while we present our good reasons to you.

View attached message for more details and get back to me.

Will do, Mr. Secretary-General. I like his email address. It's like he's repeating his name for the fourth time to a confused tourist.
I'm writing now because I won't have sufficient oomph later. I'm off to work, and then a barbecue, which I assume is why today is the first overcast day in more than a week.
Alright! I'm off.

- J

7/27/10

I've realized that my functional view of heaven includes power windows and remote keyless entry. I don't need these things, and my life is decomplicated without them, but part of my brain won't get on board.
I like my new car because it will keep me humble. I don't require features to be happy. It seems I've forgotten. My first car was a lot like this car. Except it broke every fifteen days and smelled a little funny. Some day I'll drive a different car than this one I have now, and on that day I will have just as absent a need for custom luxury packages. Maybe life will be such that buying a car with a few neat tricks will be an okay thing to do. That would be welcome, but not for the toys; for the other things that would be necessary in our life first to allow such a margin of comfort.
Gray is a fine car. A simple, plain, unremarkable car that is a wonderful gift from God, and will remind me not to lust after the treasures marketed to me by the earth. I would much rather have a washing machine, hot running water, and a refrigerator than any add-on to a vehicle. This car will safely transport me and my family to our destination. That's called success, and everything above that success is vestigial. And much like the appendix, it's starkly noticeable and dramatically more irritating when it goes wrong.

- J

Post of postiness

Post post. Bed time now. I love you. I was going to write something about nickels, but it wasn't coming together. Delete delete.
See you soon.

- J

I really dislike being the first one knocked out in a large game of HORSE. I'm competitive; I'm a guy. I want to win. And I know I'm almost certainly not going to, but if I'm not out first then I at least beat somebody. I should look at it as a charity work. No one else had to feel bad because they were the first one out. I'm so nice! But even though I've been practicing on my breaks, I still don't stand a chance against these guys. Today the deck was stacked against me... I went after one of the best guys, and the guy before him wasn't hitting anything.
I'm frustrated because I'm tired, and because being knocked out first sucks, and because I was having fun playing with the guys in the sunshine and now I can't because I lost.
Today was good otherwise.

- J

7/21/10

A coworker turned on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" at work today. I only saw snippets, but from my desk I could hear most of it. I was mildly appalled... mildly because I wasn't surprised by it. The idea of every comedy show is "sit back, and we will present to you funny things. This is funny!" It wasn't funny, though; it was repulsive.
Becoming a Christian has definitely altered my sense of humor. I can't enjoy a lot of things I used to laugh at. Humor is an intriguing psycho-sociological cloak that we drape over experience. I laugh at a lot of things that are probably humorless to most people, but I don't think any of them involve characateures of suffering in the fashion that is presented by the majority of current (and probably past) comedy shows. To me a dysfunctional marriage has no business being mined for jokes. It's too important, too tragic. Laughing distances ourselves and diminishes the seriousness of the reality.

- J

1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus our hope.
1:2 To Timothy: my true child in the faith; grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
1:3 As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephasis so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.

=)

- J

Waiting-for-biscuits post

My cheese biscuits are in the oven, and I've got just enough time to write something totally uninteresting. Here I go!

...

1:1 - Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.

I did that from memory. My .doc file says that "Savior" should be capitalized, but otherwise I'm right on. =) It's a start. Beginnings of course are almost always easiest. You pick up the most knowledge for the least effort. If you know two guitar chords, then learning a third one is a 50% increase. If you know twenty, then twenty-one is harder to remember and less big a deal. I'm not sure I do know twenty. Not by name, anyway. Well, I guess a lot are just variations... A, Am, B, Bm, Bb, Bbm, A4, C... maybe I know twenty after all. I don't have anything up the neck except barre chords though. =(
So sleepy! Why, why must coffee taste so bad?
Alright, gotta check on my biscuits.

- J

7/15/10

Are you kidding me? I haven't written anything all week? Surely, surely I thought I had not missed three days in a row.

Boo.

"Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted." [1 Tim 1:8-11]

In the previous passage, Paul upbraided certain teachers of the law. In this caveat, he makes it clear that the problem is not within the law itself. Christians shouldn't need to be instructing one another in the law, as the Jews would do amongst themselves. Christians should be righteous and just! There is a parallel here to Matthew 9:12, where Jesus remarks, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." Jesus came to save sinners, and the law was sent to the lawless. The law is a blessing to all, for even lawbreakers are protected by law from other lawbreakers. But those who profess a love of Christ should not contradict themselves by breaking the law. If they do, they testify against the faith - against order, against obedience, against humbleness, against divine law. How can we tell everyone that they should bend the knee to our authority if we are selective about what laws we obey? Isn't that the same as selecting which verses to believe? "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it." James 2:10
Therefore we need grace from God all the more, since we are accountable not only to the law which we do not uphold, but also to the higher calling of holiness in Christ.

- J

Magic: back in the saddle

Hi, my name is Jeremy, and I'm a recovering nerd. Well, I suppose "recovering" isn't entirely accurate. To be honest, just remove it from that first sentence and it'll read more truthfully. I am a great big nerd. On July 10th, though, I revved it up into an arena of nerdiness I had sworn off for over ten years; I played in a sealed deck tournament of Magic: The Gathering, 2011.
I was just out of elementary school when I bought my first Magic cards, and every dollar I obtained from ages ten to seventeen went into my collection. Eventually, though, I gave away all my cards to a friend and walked away. And now I'm back, sitting at Uncle's Games in Bellevue, and signed up for the noon prerelease event of the brand new Magic edition.
This was my first time opening a booster pack in a decade, and as the clock slowly inched towards twelve, I found myself feeling nervous. A broad array of players were slowly filling the cozy shop, and I recognized all the old demographics: young kids accompanied by their parents, teens with their card collections in binders under their arms, a good number of men about my age, and a few older stalwarts in their forties and fifties. How many expansion sets of Magic have come out since I stopped playing? Twenty? I wonder to myself if I will even recognize the terminology. Two boys behind me are excitedly discussing the preview cards that Magic's publisher, Wizards of the Coast, have shown on their website. One is thrilled that his favorite is back for another round. "He's not very good," he concedes about the card, "Well... he's pretty good. But he's cool!" That's the Magic I remember loving. It's not just a deck; it's a stack of cardboard heroes.
At 12:03 my name is called, and I'm handed six booster packs by the well-organized guys behind the counter. In my absence from the game, I've occasionally peeked at the state of affairs and it has seemed like every set of cards is stronger than the last. As I settle in at one of the sturdy wooden tables, I wonder to myself what overpowered monsters I'll get to unleash. I open my first pack.

Every booster pack of Magic contains one rare card, and I quickly flip through to see what the first component of my arsenal will be. "Sealed Deck" tournaments are a different format than regular games of Magic. Each player receives a half a dozen boosters for a total of ninety cards, with which they make a deck of no less than forty. The number forty is misleading though, since almost half of a well-built deck will be different colored land cards to power the spells. The staff at Uncle's is well-stocked with each of the five lands, and as players finish their tinkering, they approach the register and are supplied with their land cards for free. Selecting which color of land to focus on is crucial for a tournament of this format. My first rare card is red, so as I open my second pack I cross my fingers for a run of good luck and another red rare. I pull a rare land card! I smile, since it is a combination of two colors. Sadly, my fortune turns. My third rare is white. I make my way through the rest. Green, another white, and then I find it: a third rare white called "Vengeful Archon". My eyes boggle as I look at how powerful it is. White looks like my color today.
It takes me almost the entire time allotted to deck construction just to browse through my cards and learn their abilities, so as the clock runs out I simply grab my white and green cards and shuffle them together. The minimum deck size is forty, but mine weighs in at sixty, obese by sealed deck standards. My name is called out, and for my first game of Magic in a very long time I'm paired up with a teen named Michael. He was born the same year that Magic came out. I feel old.
Michael snagged three green powerhouse cards, and our best-two-out-of-three contest begins with my deck being staggeringly crushed. Back on my heels, I rallied my forces and came back to snag a win in game two. Game three came down to the wire, and on the last turn Michael played a card that would be just enough to grant him victory if he won a required coin flip. He called heads and I tossed it up. Tails. I let out a sigh of relief and shake his hand. These are the moments that make Magic great.
I went on to win about half my games on Saturday. My cards were decent, but so were everyone else's. My final opponent played a merciless white and black deck that was tuned to perfection, and it was honestly a pleasure to lose to him. Everyone I met at the tournament was incredibly nice, the sportsmanship was tremendous. In the end, my white card that I thought would win me every match wasn't so overpowered after all. As big and scary as he looked, he didn't live in a vacuum, and my opponents were all inventive and impressive in dealing with him. Omar cast a spell that returned him to the top of my deck, and then forced me to discard him. John, a father accompanied by his son and "life coach" Cole, exiled him to another dimension. It was nice to be proven wrong about my assumptions, and truly it was even better to see the strong and diverse following that Magic still enjoys.
When I finally had to leave for the day, I drove away feeling that the Magic brand is being well taken care of by Wizards of the Coast. The feel of the game has changed a bit since my younger days, but listening to the energized chatter surrounding me on Saturday I know that the soul is still the same. The crowd surrounding my old hobby is just as enthusiastic and diverse as ever, and they felt like old friends. My name is Jeremy, and I am still a nerd.

- J

Transcription

Jenn Odell July 8 at 2:08pm

Would you ever take part in a demonstration such as the one described below?

it seems to me...: I Hugged a Man in His Underwear. And I am Proud.

Jeremy Williams July 9 at 8:22am

The short answer is no. I found the post a very interesting read (and I would have read it regardless of the post name because you sent it to me). I feel that, in general, Christians shouldn't demonstrate. This is not a rule, I want to stress, and my sentiment applies most strongly to Christians who demonstrate to convey their annoyance / hate / condemnation. It's worth noting that the only people that Jesus preached condemnation to were the religious people. Paul backs this up in in 1st Cor 6 - we have no business judging non-believers. That's God's job. It is ours neither to judge nor condemn people who don't love Jesus. If we do, we put ourselves in the place of God as the pharisees did in Jesus' day.
God cares about our hearts, and will use a relationship with us to change our words and deeds until they are in alignment with Him. Changing words and deeds first is profitless, so telling non-Christians "Don't do that sin" is not only hypocritical, it's unhelpful too.
We should always repent and ask forgiveness for our own sin. This demonstration, though, is a grey area. Some of these protesters are legitimately apologizing, but many are repenting of the sins of others. That doesn't work. It's no different than Jesus' parable of the pharisee and the tax collector in Luk 18:10. It's just a different form of arrogance - judging yourself to be better than those Christians who judge themselves to be "better than the homos". You see, it's a trap. If you've sinned against someone, God calls you to first repent and second to seek reconciliation. With that person, though, not with a parade. Not with a televised press release like apologetic celebrities. True reconciliation demands 1) repentance of the offender, 2) forgiveness from the one sinned against. The reconciliation the author blogged about is false, because the people who hurt these gays and lesbians would hurt them again at the first opportunity. It would be appropriate to say or hold signs saying "I love you". To say "Jesus loves you". To say "God is a perfect father, and wants a relationship with you." But not "I'm sorry."

Sexual identity is a lightning rod issue, because people attach so much of their identity to it while at the same time it is also (relative to the sins of pride, cowardice, greed, wrath etc, which also tend to attach to one's identity ("I'm not argumentative, I'm Italian!")) outwardly visible. I had attached to my identity the lack of desire to have children. I believed that it was just "who I was". Reading scripture and praying, though, I was unable to escape the conclusion that "who I was" was wrong. If we don't give God the opportunity to rewrite what we consider to be the fundamental elements of ourselves, we close ourselves off from full relationship with Him. God has changed my heart, and I want to be a father now. "Who I am" has changed. To return to the specific point, a Christian has a duty to speak the truth, and an equal duty to love and not judge non-Christians. Error may be found on either side of that thin line. It' supposed to be hard.
"For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." Mat 7:14

Thank you for sending this to me. How are you?
-J

7/8/10

"But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions." [1Tim 1:5-7]

Paul immediately defines what success looks like. When he is teaching he cares about three things in his audience: love, righteousness, and faith. This can be used to differentiate good teachers of God's word from bad ones. In the previous verse he spoke of "certain men," and he paints very clearly a line between what should and should not be listened to.
Hallmarks of what should be disregarded or rebuked in the teaching and discussion of God's word (and faiths / sects which have gone astray by way of these errors)
Strange doctrines (Christian Science, LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholicism)
Myths (Catholicism, Christian Identity / White Power)
Genealogies (Judaism)
Speculation (Episcopalianism, new-age spirituality)
Fruitless discussion (Agnosticism, Unitarianism)

Everyone likes to feel good about themselves. There's a self-important belief that since God cannot be known, everyone's opinion is therefore equal. That is like saying "since we cannot visit other stars, my opinions about them are just as valid as an astronomer's." The astronomer spends her life studying the star, making observations and comparing them to the observations of others, taking notes, searching for new information and reading scientific journals. Her conclusions are not to be accepted on the same level as those of a person who watches a lot of Star Trek.
If we do not approach God's word with a reverent humility, however, we are likely to fall into the same trap. How often do we think that our opinion of the sermon is just as important as that of the pastor who preached it? Both information about God and a relationship with God are freely available to all, but to take advantage of this grace demands a regular and focussed effort. We wants the results without the investment, like a child who covets the skill of a guitar player but is uninterested in the work it would take to achieve it. If this sin is not addressed in our heart, it is much more likely that we will give others a pass who also have it; we cannot condemn them without condemning ourselves, so we silently decide that neither of us is sinning.

- J

Wednesday!

The tough part of writing on weekdays right now is the irregularity of my schedule. I can come in to work at any time, so anything I do at home in the morning must be weighed against the usefulness of clocking hours. And it's tough to remember to write during my breaks since 1) they are also somewhat random and 2) the World Cup has been on in the mornings and 3) the sun has been shining in the afternoons, which means the guys are always calling me to come out and play 'horse'. Or 'pig'. Or 'C-o-m-c'.
Personal reliability is important, though, so I'll keep trying.

- J

Q & A

God is gracious. I believe I have mentioned that before. But it's still true. I listened to the next sermon in Genesis today, the one I've been sitting on for the past two days, and in it Pastor Mark talked about Judah's sons. One of them is killed by God for wanting sex but no children. Genesis 38. Maybe he doesn't want to share his inheritance. Maybe he doesn't want responsibility. Whatever it was, it was evil enough and God took it seriously enough that there was some smiting. Pastor Mark stated his plain belief that if someone does not want to be a parent, they should not both get married and also call themself a Christian.
Maybe you cannot have your own children for physical reasons; maybe it's not wise to start procreating at a certain season of the marriage. But everyone is capable of being some manner of parent. And if you say "well, that's not for me," because you are scared or lazy, that's a sin. That's the direction that my meditation was taking me on my own. Birth control technology has altered the conversation, as well as the pace of life events, but in the end the answer is pretty simple. I am grateful, both for the answer and its clarity. I hate stuff that I can weasel out of.

- J