Isn’t it amazing how much division there is in the Christian Church today? With so many different denominations, you can find any different flavor of Christianity to suit your individual tastes. But here’s the thing that’s starting to bother me about the legitimacy about the Church. According to the theologies that most groups have, they all have some type of doctrine about the Holy Spirit. One of the things that the Bible lists about the Holy Spirit is that it brings unity in thought and agreement.

So here’s the thing. If Christians truly have the Holy Spirit working through them, shouldn’t there be a lot more unity in their thought? Instead of having fighting between different factions and the condemning of different groups of people, shouldn’t there be unity in the Christian Church? Of course, the traditional response is always that the sin of humanity always messes these things up, but you’d think that somewhere down the line we could get it right?

Is it just because people are too stubborn? Perhaps it boils back to some of what I blogged about on Monday with John Locke? The issue is, there are so many people walking around saying that God has told them something, that it becomes to hard to sift out what God is actually saying. Perhaps it’s from our immediate response to say that God is saying something that the church has fractured so much. If the power of the Holy Spirit is real, then there must be unity somewhere. Unfortunately, I’m just not seeing it anywhere.

Want a great way to say that special something to someone without being too cheesy? We’ll I’ve got two options for you today.
The first is Some Ecards. These are Ecards that you can send to that special someone for almost any occasion. What separates this website from others is the sarcastic biting humor that is associated with all of the cards. It’s a great way to get your message across without being too serious, because nothing does it better than sarcasm, right? Probably the best part about this site is all of the pictures that go along with each card. I should warn you right now that there are a number of cards that have some pretty lewd content, so be forewarned if you are extremely offended by that kind of thing.

The second is The Bureau of Communication. This is another wonderful way to send a message without taking yourself too seriously. Instead of sending someone a card, you fill out a form for a specific occasion, like an apology, thank you, or invitation. Then it’s simple enough! All you have to do is fill in the different blanks on the form and then send the form to the recipient. It gives it that nice governmental feel, and isn’t that what everybody always wants?

The next time you want to send someone a message, why not give one of these a try? Variety is the spice of life.

I just recently finished reading through An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke, and let me tell you, it was a pretty exhausting read. But there were some pretty great things that came out of this reading among the mixture of his thoughts.

…it would, me thinks, become all men to maintain peace, and the common offices of humanity, and friendship, in the diversity of opinions, since we cannot reasonably expect that anyone should readily and obsequiously quit his own opinion, and embrace ours with a blind resignation to an authority, which the understanding of man acknowledges not.

There are a lot of wonderful things that you can get out of this quote from John Locke. First, I think Locke makes a great point about conflict and opinion. No matter what differing opinions people have, we must always maintain civility and politeness in our discourses. Locke even makes it a point to show that people are most likely not going to back down from their opinions right away. He knows that people are not so easily convinced. Locke’s philosophy on the nature of discourse is one that would help us all dialogue in a more humane way without causing so much division in humanity.

The second thing is not implicit in this specific passage, but comes out later in his writing. Locke lays out the concept that one cannot just easily take in new ideas, and in fact, should not easily take in new ideas. He lays out his definition of judgment, which states that we take different ideas and test them against one another. The main idea that Locke makes is that one should never just swallow up different things that people have to say, but always be using judgment to discern out new ideas that come out of the world and through discourse. It means that as we discuss the different opinions we have, we always need to be patient in dealing with each other and listen to the other ideas people have. It is through patience and humanity that can allow us to live in sync with each other even when we believe different things.

No, no, no. It’s not that kind of post. But it sure got your attention didn’t it? I’m not going to take up beef with the Christian faith today. However, there is something interesting about Christian sub culture that I would like to address.

Have you ever noticed how everything in the Christian world seems so… mediocre? For a community and lifestyle that proclaims to have the power of the Holy Spirit running through it, we sure don’t strive for quality too often. Turn on a Christian radio station and you’re bound to hear sub par music at best. I suppose it’s not that different from mainstream radio, but more often than not, when someone says they are a Christian band, we give them a little leeway because they’re doing it for Christ. In reality, a lot of Christian music is not that good or difficult to pull off. Let me put it this way. If I can reduplicate your songs with a junior high worship band, then you’ve got some issues.

Let’s also get into the concept of Christian movies. Do you know why most Christian movies don’t make a huge impact in the mainstream media today? It’s not because their message is about Christ, it’s because the movie isn’t that great. We can’t let our label of Christians restrict ourselves into producing less than quality work. I’ve seen some quality Christian works before, but I think we do ourselves injustice when we are producing Christian entertainment to help enforce our little subculture.

I’ve touched on this in the past, but it’s the same idea with science and academics. Christians are most often content to ignore science, to ignore what many people before them have written. The only time Christians seem to get excited about academics is when it comes to the Bible. If we want to have people that can truly work with the world around them, we have to take getting smarter seriously. If we are called to be excellent in all things, shouldn’t we apply that to be knowledgeable as well?

My English prof put it best I think. He said that if Christians really want to make an impact in the world, they need to be the best at what they do. If we take ourselves seriously, then we need to be the best artist, scientist, engineer, graphic designer, computer programmer, etc. that we can be. For too long we’ve allowed the Christian medium to be filled with mediocre products. I think it’s time to step it up a notch.

It’s commonly said that during the winter months people are more prone to depression. When you think about it, its a complete no brainier. First of all, it’s cold, and nobody likes that. Cold on its own is fine, but the frigid body destroying cold that happens in the heart of the winter months is enough to make anybody feel like there is no life in their bones. This was one of the first blog posts that I ever wrote about when I started this thing in December, but in a nut shell, I always feel that most particles stop moving when its cold, hence, lifeless.

The other thing that makes winter more depressing is the fact that most people leave for work/school in the dark, then return for home in the dark. There’s nothing that sucks the life out of someone like never seeing sunlight.

So take lifeless cold and then add brooding darkness and you get instant depression! Isn’t winter wonderful?

Here were two stories that I came across last week that I thought were too good to pass up:

The first is about the best way to do CPR. A study was conducted to find out what the best song to keep in someone’s head would be to help give an idea of the proper amount of compressions per minute. After sifting through a bunch of songs, researchers found that “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees was the perfect tempo to help give proper CPR. At 103 beats per minute, the song gives you the basic idea of how frequently one should do a compression.

Not only is the song obnoxious, but now it can save lives! Maybe there is a use for having that song stuck in your head after all. The researches found that “Another One Bites the Dust,” by Queen was another song with an ideal tempo, but the message of the song isn’t encouraging in a life or death situation.

The other great story I came across this week was about an elderly pie fight. A couple of months ago, the world’s most premeditated pie fight went down. It was between Dan Johnson and Malcolm McDowell who at the age of 18, made a pact to have a pie fight when they turned 50 years old, so they could always make sure they were never getting too stiff in their old age. Sure enough 32 years later, they actually went through with the plan and invited family and friends to attend. What’s amazing is not only that they have remained friends for so long, but that they also kept their pact to do it! Good on ya!

I realize this would have made more sense to do on Monday, but what can I say, I’m a little behind the times. Even though I wrote this large explanation for why I hate Halloween, I ended up participating in the festivities. What can I say, I’m a sucker for making a fool of myself. Let me just start by saying that I went to the Copeland concert, and it was amazing, no joke. Aaron Marsh, if you are out there, I love you, seriously. Okay… now that this creep fest is over.

I dressed up as Chuck for Halloween, from the NBC television show, “Chuck.” If you haven’t checked out this show, I strongly recommend it because it is hilarious. The show doesn’t take itself seriously, and that is part of what lends to its comedic charm. Sure, the guy who created it is the same guy who created “The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl,” but if you look past it, you will probably find a show you really like! When there’s nothing but sub par drama or pseudo comedy on TV, I suggest checking out “Chuck.” I understand that Chuck is tall, white, and skinny, and I am none of those things, but it was still worth it to imagine my life as a secret agent. My picture is on the left, and the actual Chuck is on the right!

Facebook: What a wonderful place for getting the general feeling of the 18-24 (and some older) age group and a sense for what people are thinking. When Barack Obama was elected president, the facebook world blew up! I couldn’t believe the facebook statuses that came up from my facebook friends.

Can’t believe this is actually happening, our country is going to fall apart.

Terrorists - Our doors are now open. Welcome to America.

Cannot believe this country voted for a communist. He cannot believe that we would do that.

Get your guns now, affirmative action wins, somebody get this guy a parade with a convertible down a street by a grassy knoll… why are people so stupid!?

Pray for our nation… Obama is our President! God save our Nation!

Wondering where we should turn in our clothes and pick up our uniforms… arg… socialism…

Amazed at how ignorant Americans are. Socialism here we come…

Seriously, has anybody ever heard of the word overreaction before? I think this is the textbook definition. There are a couple of points I want to make in reaction to bitter Republicans.

1) The comments saying Americans are ignorant is not helping your cause any. Nothing says, I can relate to you, like saying you are too stupid and not educated enough to understand how the political system really works. Guess what? This is what America wanted, so even though YOU don’t want it, does not mean everyone else in America is stupid. It just means that there are more people that don’t think like you. Calm down, seriously.

2) There has to be a point where you realize that the overreaction you are having is also based out of ignorance and single mindedness as well. How can you point fingers at a whole group of people while at the same time, make statements that are completely untrue and hateful? Uniforms because Obama is elected? Terrorists attacking our country instantly? Listen to yourselves and tell me where the rationality of this is! Calm down, seriously.

3) You’ve got two options at this point. You can sit in the corner, whine, complain, and moan because you didn’t get your way, or you can be part of this great nation and work towards a Bipartisan America. If you continue to feel so embittered as the days go on, America will turn into a place of hatred where nothing gets done. However, if you pick yourself up, wipe the dust off of yourselves, and work with the people around you (this doesn’t mean you have to give up your ideals), you may be surprised at what can happen. So, calm down, seriously.

I just got back from voting, and I was amazed by the turnout! There was a line right around the block even fifteen minutes before the polls opened. It was unbelievable how many people turned out to vote, I can’t imagine what its going to look like later in the day when everyone gets back from work!

Even going so early, the whole process took an hour overall. This leads me to wonder why election day isn’t a national holiday. So many people have to work, and what better way to push people to vote than to give them the day off! It would probably encourage them to go out and vote for every election, not just the general elections. So if you’re reading this and you haven’t voted, what are you waiting for? GO VOTE!

For my British Literature class, we were doing some reading by Francis Bacon. It was actually very interesting stuff to look through, but one of the quotes that caught my eye was the opening to his essay “On Superstition.” It reads:

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him.

I thought this was a very interesting quote from a guy who proclaimed to not believe that there was a God. Bacon uses this quote to say that if one cannot have an accurate picture of God, then why have any picture at all. The argument is then that it is better to have no picture or idea of God than to have one that isn’t accurate. As I was thinking about this, I came across the idea to look at this as Pascal’s Wager for atheists or agnostics. Pascal’s Wager states that one may or may not believe in God. If one does not believe in God, fine, but Pascal argues that it there is no harm in believing there is a God because you don’t lose anything, you only gain salvation. If you do believe in a God and there doesn’t turn out to be one, then you do not lose anything. While this is a traditional wisdom argument, it does have some major assumptions that turn into flaws, but that’s not what I want to get into right now.

Bacon essentially applies this logic to the view of a God. You can have a picture of God, but it would take no extra effort to not have a belief in Him. You don’t lose anything because the picture of God you create can never be accurate anyways. Therefore, the benefits are on the side of the agnostic to err on the side of caution, why believe something you cannot prove?

I think this is a very valid point that Bacon makes. Why have a picture of God at all if you can’t have one that is accurate? Don’t you think that over the course of the years, Christians have tried to create a picture of a god that just isn’t accurate or true and that is too tainted by conservative values? It’s no wonder that so many people walk away from faith or the Church today, because the God they worship is a flawed view of God. I believe if people are going to continue to be Christians, they need to start to make sure they can nail down an accurate view of who God is so that they are not misrepresenting Him to the masses.