Hope

As a linguist I think it is in my job description to be hyper aware of different senses of words. Most words in human languages have nuances of meaning to them depending on their context. Sure, dictionaries are helpful and keep us somewhat all on the same page, but they by no means capture all the senses of words and nuances of meaning. It is because of these different senses that humor is even possible most of the time. When we make a joke we usually use a word, or words that normally has one connotation in a certain context and use it in another context where it doesn't really belong and creates a tension that we generally find humorous. Enough about the theory of humor though and on to what I wanted to talk about.

Hope as we use it commonly is nothing like the hope described in the Bible. Let me put it in context for you. "I hope Jill comes to the party tonight." vs. "More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Romans 5:3-5 Do you see the difference? One is dependent on a fortuitous outcome. If Jill does not come to the party, then your hope is in vain and has disappointed you. Biblical hope does not disappoint. In fact, it is in our sufferings that we hope even more. It is when things are least fortuitous that hope swells. In 1 Corinthians 13:13 it says, "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;" just after talking about the passing away of things that aren't permanent like childishness, prophecies, tongues, etc. meaning that hope will not pass away. Hope is everlasting and something we have because of what Christ has done for us. No circumstance can steal it from us. No enemy can crush it. Our hope in Christ does not disappoint, no not ever.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Tradition and Change

As with most polar opposites we like to classify things, life and people are usually on a continuum. The same is true concerning tradition and change. I don't know about you but when I think about tradition I think about the Catholic church, or even the pharisees in the Bible who hold on to tradition at all costs. But then when I think about change I think of hippies and challenging the status quo. I think that both tradition and change can be good things, but also bad things.

Tradition is something that the Pharisees held so highly that they had esteemed it on the same level as scripture. Often the reason for how upset they got with Jesus was because he didn't follow their traditions. But tradition is not a bad thing inherently. It helps us to pass along culture, teach lessons, and sustain community. Traditions carry meaning. We remember things about our past and value our history because of traditions. Holidays and festivals are one category of tradition that almost everyone observes in varying degrees. In fact, when you think about it, it is impossible for humans to not hold traditions because that would mean living differently all the time, which in a way would be a tradition of its own. Its just in the case when traditions become so important to us that they become a detriment to life and faith, which was the case of the Pharisees. It is in these instances that Change is necessary and desirable.

Change in culture is not an easy thing. People in general do not like to change. It requires the power and motivation of the Lord to create change in individual lives and in cultures. But Change can also be a bad thing. If we start to change things that shouldn't be changed, it because a detriment. If we seek to change the laws of God and say something like one of the ten commandments and say that stealing is no longer wrong, then change is a bad thing. There are certain unalterable truths about God and his character and to attempt to change what he has commanded of us is wrong.

People tend to lean one way or another on this continuum and value tradition over change or vice versa change over tradition. However, I see both qualities in our Lord Jesus who sought to change what was erroneous and contrary to His will, but also upheld the traditions that bring people closer to God. It requires discernment to tell the difference.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Originality

I've been pretty busy the past few days. With that comes the unfortunate (or fortunate depending on perspective) side-effect of having less time to just think. Since I have gotten into the habit of blogging every few days that has become a problem because I have had no new topics to really talk about. That is until I thought about maybe borrowing ideas from others and talking about those. Ahhhh, there we go, what about that topic?! It set me off thinking about creativity and originality.

When you really think about everything we as humans have done, none of it is truly original. What I mean is that there is nothing completely new that did not exist before. Everything we do in terms of creativity is manipulation and change of what already exists. Our ideas and creations are bounded by what God has created already. I'm about to use an old cliche example, but try and think of a new color for the rainbow. Try and come up with an animal that has no relation to or similarity to any known living thing. We can't do it. It is something truly beyond us. We can do amazing things with what is already there, but we can do nothing out of nothing. Just read Ecclesiastes sometime and Solomon will repeat on several occasions, "There is nothing new under the sun." We've made amazing advancements in technology over recent years. But even those completely "novel" ideas that men from hundreds of years ago would completely marvel at are simply manipulation, adaptation, and use of what already exists. We have a greater understanding of the physical universe and so can use it to a greater extent than ever before, but by no means did we come up with anything new. I wonder if we ever would have thought about building planes to fly if God had never created birds. Many of our technologies nowadays are adaptations from the world of animals like velcro and solar power.

When we have to write papers at universities, in light of these things, I find it humorous that we have to cite things as much as we do. Basically if the idea isn't yours and is not original you have to cite your source. I think it would be infinitely better and easier for everyone if we all could just assume that the idea wasn't original to the author to begin with. After all, originality is a quality that I think only God possesses.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Zombie Lord of All

What do you think about when you think about zombies? What are they like? Though zombie movies vary in the traits of zombies (some are fast, some slow), there are certain characteristics that are common. First there is usually an original zombie that starts the epidemic and then it spreads like wildfire. A zombie is someone who was dead and is now alive. A zombie is someone who lacks sense and is obsessed with only one thing (usually brains), a mindless drone. And when I first look at these things I wonder if that is how the world sees Christians. Jesus was the start of it all from where the infection of Christianity spread. He died and then came back to life. That sounds kinda like a zombie to me. People are bitten by other zombies and become Christians who are mindless drones that can't think for themselves (mind you, I'm talking from a worldly perspective). And it has been spreading for millennia now and every attempt to extinguish it has failed utterly. In this way, Jesus might be described as the Zombie Lord of All. That is what I'm sure the world sees when they look at us, but let me tell you what I thought about after that.

In truth, I think its exactly the opposite. I look at the world and I see billions of people who are deceived. There is life out there to be had, but they still walk mindlessly in their sin and death. They are the walking dead, and that is the most basic meaning of a zombie. They are dead and they don't even know it. They go about their days without purpose and insight into the true nature of the universe, themselves, and God. Then we consider Jesus and how he approaches the diseased and walking Dead. He died and defeated death. In truth he created a cure for zombiism which sheds light on purpose and removes the haze of mindlessness. He is in fact the exact opposite of a zombie and is the only way to cure the condition. It all depends on perspective. From the world Jesus will be seen as the cause of zombies, but from the perspective of God, the Church, the Truth, he is the cure for zombies. Just an interesting thought that was much harder to express than I thought it would be.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Back to Canada

If you are one of the 3 people that read this blog, then just be aware that I won't ALWAYS pester you with my deep thoughts, I also pester you with some of my personal life! With that said, I'm back to Canada and my life there. Wednesday I took off from home with my Mom (who volunteered to come and drive overnight Thursday night so I could sleep because I had meetings starting Friday morning but also plans to spend all day Thursday with my best friend Kyle in Boise, ID). On our way through Auburn we stopped off at the Confluence and I joined Jake for one last run. We decided to do K2 three times. We took off the first one as Jake decided to go for a PR, which he accomplished with an 11:06 split. I don't know exactly where I was because I haven't been wearing my watch on runs lately (intentionally). I always immensely enjoy my painful runs with Jake who is an intense and amazingly talented ultra-runner. He is also a strong believer with a heart for missions, so our conversations on our runs are always encouraging and challenging.

We took off and I drove most of the way to Boise (except for a short stint where my mom stole the driver seat while I was using the restroom and getting a sandwich from Subway). We got to Boise and showed up where Kyle has been housesitting for a couple on their honeymoon. Kyle and I joked around and talked until around 1:30 in the morning. Luckily my mom was tired enough (less than 3 hours of sleep the night before) to sleep through our jesting as I can be very loud when I laugh.

The next day was great to spend with Kyle and Amanda. I helped out at their church's VBS that they were in charge of (their church would be an amazing place to play hide and seek). Kyle and Amanda are heavily involved in that church and are basically the youth ministry leaders. Oh, almost forgot to mention their housemate and friend Jessy who was a fun individual. She works in assisted living homes so has a pretty erratic schedule, but she got to spend most of the day with us. We all five of us went out to a breakfast shop for lunch where Kyle wanted me to try the Strawberry Cheesecake French Toast. It was interesting and tasty. We went back to the house and did various things like letting the 4 dogs out of the house. There were 4 dogs there, 2 cats, 2 bunnies, and 2 donkeys. Kyle and I went to interact with the donkeys. The dominant one, Triumph, is a female that basically wants all the attention that the other one may get. This one isn't all that skiddish and pretty quickly allowed me to pet her and brush her. The other one, Samaria, was much more skiddish and never did let me get close to her. Eventually we got on Triumph and held on to ride her to get her used to the idea. She didn't really like the idea, but after a little while got used to it, or was just tired, not sure which. After we were done with the donkeys we went around town and he showed me a few things like the home they'll be staying in when the owners of the house they're staying in now return, the school he recently graduated from, driving past some park areas, and visited a few minutes with a friend that he knew well and I had met at Kyle and Amanda's wedding. We went back to the house and decided to explore the basement and see if there was anything we could play with. We eventually found some badminton and croquet stuff. After batting around a birdie for a few minutes until it broke we decided to do something more productive. We starting pulling the weeds that were everywhere underneath the hammock they wanted to clear out. We were just buying time since Amanda was at piano lessons (well, actually, lessons about how to give lessons). We went out to dinner after she returned and had a good joking around time. After returning it was time to leave and that was too bad but it was 10 PM and I had a 10AM meeting in Langley with about a 10 hour drive.

So I slept as my mom drove and she dropped herself off at SeaTac Airport. I then continued on northward to Canada, got to my home there and dropped everything off and got ready for the day. Lots of orientation and team building stuff happened. After all of this logistical stuff I went home to meet up with my 3 roommates whom haven't all been together since January. We decided we'd have a good night and went to some friends' place, watched the end of the Canucks game and had dinner (pizza). We returned home and I was as tired as I've been in a very long time. I was out pretty much in seconds upon lying down on my section of the floor. I feel blessed to have these friends and family and my intention is to glorify God through these relationships.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Dodging Twitterpation

I like that word, twitterpated. It's from the movie Bambi used to describe how everyone was falling in love in the spring and that everyone eventually falls "victim" to it. I feel like I'm about to head into such a period and I'm a little paranoid. Let me explain. Last summer during Summer @ CanIL I saw at least 3 couples start from the students that were there. There were several skits on "Vowel Harmony" something linguistic but used as a joke counterpart to "eHarmony". I even had professors and staff at some points make intimations and suggestions. The overall expectation is that its okay. And in truth it is, but for some reason it isn't the kind of situation I imagine myself building a relationship with a woman. To be sure, in no other place am I likely to find someone with similar or the exact same goals in life that I have, so maybe if I dodge twitterpation this summer then I'll remain single for the rest of my life. Theres the rub though, I'm okay with that. I'm not even sure that I want to get married someday. God is going to have to speak to me in that area and lead me, because honestly I'm an idiot when it comes to these things, so I generally avoid the subject. Sure I joke about it a lot, but honesty in this area is something I struggle with because I don't want to deal with it. So I find myself heading into a situation I don't particularly like and wonder what might happen this summer. Luckily (this is about the only time I use the word luck!) and ultimately, Christ is in charge, not me. So I'm not too worried about it.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Coming and Going

I wonder how Paul's family reacted when God met him on the road and he became a follower of Christ. Who was he close to? How did his relationships change? When he left to travel and preach the Gospel, what ways did they confirm his calling or seek to divert it? Tomorrow I'll be leaving and heading back to school up in Canada. I'll make a quick stop off in Auburn to run with Jake, then drive to Idaho where my friend Kyle lives with his wife Amanda (also a good friend). Then a quick overnight drive to Seattle to drop off my mom at the airport (she offered to drive overnight so I could sleep) and up to Langley for some meetings at CanIL getting ready for Summer @ CanIL where I'll be TAing this summer. Now that I've set the picture I wonder the things previous and how Paul felt about leaving those he loved. I've always lived with a level of detachment from people and things. Most of my life I suppressed my emotions, and that has left me in a place where for the past few years as a follower of Christ I've been wanting. I've worked hard to understand and stop suppressing my emotions, but its a long road. So when I say I don't miss people when I'm gone from them, its not for lack of deep relationships. I've learned to make those deep relationships with my family and seek every opportunity to spend time with them and have also made deep relationships with people like Jake and Kyle. But I have to admit that I am still deficient in these areas. Maybe that is for a reason, since both times I've been to Tanzania and the time I've spent away from those I love, I have never been homesick. Well, to be honest there was one moment while I was in Tanzania where I saw a young man with Down's Syndrome and for those few moments severely missed my dear sister Dawn. Beyond that though, I've never been homesick. Maybe its because I'm emotionally deficient. Maybe its because I believe and feel like my true home is in the Kingdom of God, so I'm either always in a state of homesickness, or not homesick at all (its hard to say being a uninterrupted continuous state). Maybe it is because I was created to be a voice among the voiceless to bring the Gospel of Christ to those who do not yet know it. Maybe its a combination of all these things. Whatever it may be I doubt I'll ever know for sure, but one thing is sure, I'll be coming and going for the rest of my mortal life here on Earth.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Gaining Perspective on the Storm

I just got back from a run in the rain. Running in the rain isn't usually much fun (depending on if you're running with some goofy people or not that can change), and I have a bad memory of a race my freshman year in high school that was pouring rain and I was frozen stiff for most of the day. Anyhow I was driving to the Track to get in my morning run and as I went I prayed a simple prayer, "Lord, please take this rain away, or if it is not your will, then show me the lesson or reason for this rain." Well, I got my answer. There is an elderly gentleman from my church that I've been helping out with various projects in and around his home for the past few weeks. When I go over I usually go at 10 AM and stay until around 4 or 5 PM. Today this posed a few problems as I have a 10 mile run I need to get in sometime this afternoon. But I also want to go to church at Bridgeway at 6PM with an hour drive. If you're doing your math like I am, there simply wouldn't have been time to do all three things. When I returned from my very wet run I had a message on my cell phone from Tony telling me that we had to call today off. I guess today's project was outside. The whole point of this story is to emphasize that unpleasant things in our lives, that we analogically call storms sometimes, may have some purpose we don't yet grasp or some positive effect we're not focusing on. For those of you in Northern California getting rained on right now, sorry about that, God sent the rain for me ;).

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Addicted to Creme Soda

I'm sitting in a rocking chair across the room from my napping nephew so my Dad can get a little away time and recover a bit with a can of Shasta creme soda next to me. I've been drinking a lot of these creme sodas the past few days and I can't seem to get enough of them, which is strange. I'm not a soda (pop) kind of person normally. I prefer water or gatorade or some juice or something else. It doesn't have any caffeine either so that can't be the explanation. It must be psychological, which got me thinking back.

Maybe I just really like creme soda, and to a large extent that is true, but there is something else, memories. A few years ago while I attended William Jessup University, I had some amazing time with friends. My time at WJU is pretty much all fond. I don't have any negative memories that I can think of. To clarify, I don't mean there aren't any painful memories, because there definitely were, but nevertheless they were good memories that I cherish. Some of those memories involve a get together a few of us had every Wednesday night for almost a year. My friends Kyle, Mike, Aaron, and I would regularly gather to play Risk (there were some other folk that would also play, but these were the regulars) of various versions (The second version of the original risk, LOTR risk, Risk 2210, and eventually Star Wars Risk). It was one of my favorite times of the week, and Kyle and I started picking up something to drink from the store to share with the guys for the night. If you have any deductive reasoning skills you can guess what it was. We would pick up a 6-pack each of Henry Weinhard's root beer, vanilla creme soda, and my favorite orange creme. It wasn't until I gave it some thought that I had attached such fond memories to the drink, but I realized whether I had known it or not the drinking of the creme soda made me feel good because of those memories. We do that as human beings, attach memories to sights, tastes, sounds, smells, and various sensations. I'm grateful that God has created us this way, otherwise there would be so many wonderful memories that I wouldn't think about without those sensory reminders.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Receiving Gifts

I've still been thinking about the same thing today, and I realized something fairly profound specifically in my relationship with my mother. She likes to get gifts. She likes to be appreciated for the material blessings she gives to others, and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is gifts don't mean a whole lot to me. As I've been saying, I'm a minimalist, and material things really don't mean much to me. If you've ever read the book "The Five Love Languages" then you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I highly recommend you read it, it will help you understand others and yourself much better in terms of how you express and interpret love. I'm a person that feels love best through quality time. The more time I spend with you, the more appreciative of our relationship I am and the more I feel loved. Thats probably why right now I feel very close to my good friend Jake whom I've been running with at least once a week since I came home to California.

Blogs of Note

Okay, this is something that is getting on my nerves. So far every time I look at one of the blogs from Blogs of Note, I am severely disappointed. Many of the blogs have interesting titles, like the one that I just looked at called "What is reality anyway?" I was hoping it would be someone who was interesting and deep, a thinker who ponders reality and other subjects evaluating our existence as human beings. Nope. It was a bunch of pictures of some girls partying and dressing up. It was basically a fashion blog. This has been my experience with just about every Blog of Note that I've seen. So why do I keep looking through them? I don't know. Maybe its because I'm hoping eventually something truly interesting will pop up, but I doubt it. I have a feeling the people who choose the Blogs of Note aren't what I would consider interesting.

Slightly annoyed,
Jason

Looking down on "materialistic" folk.

I recently wrote about my personal life choices concerning minimalism, use of money, materialism, etc. I was just thinking about it and I wanted to point out a few pitfalls of following this lifestyle. First and foremost is the temptation to feel better than others because we have "chosen a higher path." Its a bunch of hogwash. Labeling any path as higher or lower requires evaluating them, and I don't believe any human is qualified to do such a thing, only God. So I want to let everyone know, at least for me, that just because I choose not to spend money on nicer things and stick to the basics is not a judgement on your choices. I choose not to do those things because I see them as distractions and the more I allow myself to partake of those blessings the less clearly I can see Christ. So I value minimalism almost to the point of asceticism. Which is another temptation. Someone like me who has chosen a path of minimalism also has a tendency to want to withdraw completely from the world. I know I have from time to time wondered what it would be like to be a monk. I've also considered doing one of those 1 month as a monk opportunities, because then I wouldn't have to deal with the world! But its wrong to withdraw from the world because that is why Christians are still here on Earth rather than taken away from it as soon as they're saved. I would not be fulfilling my purpose in life by running away from the world. So those are the two things I fairly constantly keep in mind, not judging people for their lifestyle choices and not running away from my responsibilities as a Christian. Its a balancing act that is getting easier with time, but I hope it never gets too easy.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason

Afterthought: Perhaps my choice of the words "lifestyle choices" wasn't the best choice since those words within our culture carry some other connotations and maybe you thought of them immediately while reading those words. So let me clarify. I am only speaking concerning the use of resources, specifically money, in order to gain material wealth and for lack of a better term, "stuff". I am however not saying I approve of lifestyle choices such as are clearly sinful in the Bible such as homosexuality, murder, thievery, etc.

Without Prejudice?

Well, I'm going to write about a topic I think most people have probably thought about and considered, so its probably not new to you. But I'm a linguist, and one of the things I can't help doing is dissecting words. We don't like prejudice. When someone calls you "prejudiced" you get angry whether the words are true or not because its an insult. When we think of prejudice we think of groups like the KKK or the Nazis. We think of these horrific events in history where some group has oppressed other groups simply for being different and as soon as someone calls another person prejudiced that is what we think of. In today's culture, calling someone prejudiced is tantamount to calling them Hitler. So we end up without convictions and live in realms of double speak and shifting sands. But that is off topic. I want to look at the word itself, prejudice.

I think we can agree that the two basic parts of the word are pre- and judge. Prejudice means to judge someone beforehand (before what is a matter of context and interpretation). Now like any word we can use it in different ways, but I'm just trying to get at where it came from. Most of the time we would mean prejudice is judging someone before really getting to know them, basically assumptions. Only that these are assumptions deemed inappropriate and often evil. But when you really think about it making prejudgements (even character ones) and assumptions is what makes life manageable. We can't wait everytime we meet a new person or situation to fully understand it before we interacting with it, we must engage first and then learn. We make loads of assumptions all the time. I assume the person working at the store down the street speaks English. I assume the person in approaching the stop sign to my right after me obeys the same road rules as me. I assume basic etiquette is shared with all the people that are waiting in line at the bank. Its usually when our assumptions and expectations are violated that we tend to get annoyed or even angry, but we have to make these assumptions to even get by in this world. It is just that some assumptions are bad, and some are good. I wouldn't presume to tell you which are which since society is in a terribly befuddled place these days as concerns that particular notion. However, just be aware that there is no such thing as a person without prejudice or assumptions.

For His Glorious Name,
Jason