My Thoughts on Universality...

Universality is the idea that there are things that transcend language and culture, things that are universal. This is an essay that I wrote in highschool about the issue of universality as it was discussed in the play "Our Town."

There are many things which are universal to life; birth, eating, sleeping, the idea of having a soul-mate, having children, suffering, and death are some of the easy ones. There is, however, another universality that I think is often overlooked, that is the knowledge of God. The Bible says that “God has placed eternity in the hearts of man,” and the stage manager in “Our Town” even concluded that deep in their bones, everyone knows that “somethin’ is eternal.” He never said what it was, only that it was.

I, obviously, do believe that a god exists and that that god is Jehovah, Elohim, the Father, YHWH. He has many names, but He has been known, loved and worshipped in every time period and by this time, not by every person, but in every nation at one time or another. The mere fact that El Roi exists, demands and dictates universality. A prime example of this fact is related in a book called Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand. The story goes that a Russian couple, who held Marxist beliefs, were sculpting a statue of Stalin. The wife noted to her husband the ingenuity and necessity of the thumb on the statue and how if we had accidentally evolved without a thumb, life would be much more difficult. She said, “‘We praise Edison and Bell and Stephenson who have invented the electric bulb, the telephone, and railway and other things. But why should we not praise the one who has invented the thumb? If Edison had not a thumb, he would have invented nothing. It is only right to worship the god who made the thumb.’” Her husband retorted that “there is no god” and “in heaven there is nobody!.” But she replied with an even greater wonder, “‘If in heaven there were the ‘Almighty God’ in whom in stupidity our forefathers believed, it would only be natural that we should have thumbs. An Almighty God can do everything, so He can make a thumb, too. But if in heaven there is nobody, I, from my side, am decided to worship from all my heart the ‘Nobody’ who has made the thumb.’ Their faith in this ‘Nobody’ increased with time, believing Him to be creator not only of the thumb, but also of the stars, flowers, children, and everything beautiful in life. It was just as in Athens in earlier times when St. Paul met worshippers of the ‘Unknown God.’” There are many more stories of this type, people who come to know God without any formal knowledge, instruction or the like. The Bible says that God has set eternity in the hearts of man so that man has no excuse when he comes before the Great White Throne to be judged.

The stage manager in “Our Town” hit on another universality when he said that something is eternal. He kept mentioning “something” without saying what it was. That “something” is our soul, God has given every person an eternal soul, but as soon as we are brought into the world we are bound eternally to sin and the only way out of that eternal bondage is through Jesus Christ, an offering to everyone. Our soul is eternal, whether we spend eternity with God, which is Heaven, or separated from God, which is Hell; our soul is still eternal. This is the horrid or glorious fate that awaits everyone. Not only is the soul universal, but so is sin, free will, and the offering out of bondage. These are the most important of any universality that can be understood. No other concept has as far reaching, eternal, and universal consequences as where you decide to spend eternity. This is the most universal ideology that exists, every single person that ever has lived and will live is approached with this decision, without exception.

Even more universal than marriage, even more than eating, or drinking, or choices, or the knowledge of God, is God Himself. Not only is His existence the very creation of universality, He is the embodiment of the idea that something can be universally understood. He is the only thing/person/idea that is perfectly universal.

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Medusa

I feel the heat of power fade from my eyes as yet another would-be hero freezes into granite before my gaze. Another frustrated paladin dons my guest’s cloak; the cloak he will never remove. He will forever be a guest in my hall; forever bearing the weighty burden of visiting my home. He becomes yet another trophy in my vast gallery; another monument to my hideous appearance. The statues laugh. They always laugh at me when another tormentor joins their ranks to mock my ghastly face. How dare they remind me of what I know all too well?! Do they die pitifully beneath the press of my prowess only to be victorious through eternal mockery?! To torment me with my own power?! I steam with pent up rage; with the wrath that turns great men to stone. I smash the face of this newest mocker, shattering his head into dancing fragments. Who does he think he is, to face me?! The pain reminds me of the pain that he no longer feels and the memory redoubles my rage. I turn upon the nearest statue and backhand it, toppling it to the floor in a cascade of stone shards. I smash corpse after corpse in an unusual rage, littering the floor with fragments and powdered stone. This tantrum does nothing to relieve my pain, and I finally exhaust myself and lay down to sleep.

I sleep fitfully. Terrible dreams come to me, of a great and awesome man in shining armor and terrible to behold who carries the keys to the torturing chains that bind me. He is more handsome than I have ever seen a man, but the ground trembles before him and his eyes see everything, they pierce to my very soul and see my pain. He comes to free me, but I cower in fear, for he is the only intimidating thing I have ever encountered. He frees me from my pain and I am beautiful again. And dreams of a great and awesome warrior covered in armor and bearing a great sword that stinks of death. He is a fearful man, not ugly but with a face full of hate and a lust for death. He comes bearing freedom as well, but he hunts me. He tracks me down, but not like the other men; no, he is successful and I see my hideous head roll on the ground at his feet while he laughs in triumph. One is a kind key bearer who walks upon the earth bringing peace and healing. The other is vicious and cunning; he bears a sword, huge and terrible; his shield shines like the smelting furnace, hot and destructive, and he flies after me, riding on the wings of death.

The dreams wake me as my sisters return from their prowlings. They laugh, but not with mirth. This lair abhors mirth. They have been to see the blind prophet. They are always amused by his prophecies, though they will not admit that he has never been wrong. They are fools. They traipse about in broad daylight, because they are immortal. I, however, have been assigned a more grievous punishment. I must stay in this hole; I must kill my attackers; I must watch them suffer under my hideous gaze while my sisters need only to shrug them off like so many flies. They are laughing at the prophet’s latest revelation. He has said that there is one who could make me beautiful again; one who could let me see the sun again, and they laugh. They are fools.

When night falls, I leave to find the prophet, because I must at least have hope, if not redemption. But surely there is one who can forgive whatever grievous sin I have committed to deserve such heavy penance. I cannot even remember what the sin was, it was so long ago. All that I remember is a short time of sun and air and light and pleasure, followed by this unending night of pain and torment. When I reach his home the prophet somehow knows who has crept up on him. Perhaps that is why he is a prophet. He tells me of the one who has power over the woman who made me into this horrific beast. He tells me about the peace and healing and love that this one can offer, but nothing is free. This one wants my devotion. He wants me to be forever devoted to spreading the knowledge of his power. To devote myself to his mission of peace and forgiveness. I must forsake everything that I have ever known before to go careening down a path that I don’t know. If I utterly trust this ambiguous, amorphous, enigma to lead me, then he promises to make it worth my while... in the long run. In the very long run. He promises hardship now and eternity after, in return for absolute, complete devotion in every instant and aspect of my life. Nothing is free.

I return home in torment. Hope– no, even love, is within my grasp... for a price. If I wish to give up my very self, then I can gain what I desire the most. He can’t ask that; no one has the right to demand of me my very life and soul to be used for his own purposes. This life is mine, why should I ever have to give up my very self for love? To relinquish my dreams and hopes, my wants and ambitions? He asks too much. What good is it to be loved if I must lose my very self? Or revenge... He also asks me to forgive the one thing that can never be forgiven: the torment that I have had to endure at the hands of savage antagonists. No... I cannot forget this most heinous offence. Not only can I not forget, I refuse to forget. I will make them pay. They will feel the torment that they have caused me!

What is this madness?

What is that sound? Another intruder already? He crept through my hall in what he thought was a stealthy manner. I string my bow and draw an arrow, ready to pin him to the wall. I had been given plenty of time to perfect my archery and now I had a bow so strong and arrows so thick that they would lodge in stone walls. I see him creep across the length of my hall. I have no desire to make him suffer emotionally or psychologically. I do not want to toy with him. I want pain. He will watch his own blood flow from his body and know that it was I who caused him more pain than he had ever known. I loose a shaft and it strikes his arm with such force that it carries him to the wall and pins him there. With his other arm he raises his javelin to throw at me, careful all the while not to look at me, but another arrow spikes that arm to the wall as well. I laugh. I watch him struggling like a fly caught in a spider’s web. With a groan he pulls one arm off the end of the arrow that had been holding it to the cold stone. He has not yet cried out. In anger I fire another shot through his belly, finally nailing him down. I pick up one of the rusted axes that is lying by the way and approach him to tear him apart. He must writhe! He must feel pain! I will make him cry out in agony! Deliberately, he looks at me. His look of steely defiance becomes permanently etched in stone, never to flinch again; another eternal reminder of my torment. To this day he has not cried out.

In absolute hysteria of rage I hack the stone arms from the wall and dash them to the ground. I wrench the statue from the wall and raise it over my head throwing it the full length of the hall. It shatters into a million shards of granite that glint in the firelight as they flash through the air. His torso and legs are dashed to a powder by the impact, but his head spins back down the length of the my gallery to lay leering at my feet.

A man steps from the shadows. He bears a sword and shield. He sneers in triumph as he views the monster’s reflection in his shield. His sneer fades as the beast makes no move. He feigns an attack, but still she does not move.
“What do you want,” the creature asks.He grins at this response. “I have come for your head.”
“You want my life? My head for a trophy?”
“You cannot keep it from me, I will free this land from your roving terror and hideous face!”
“Speak not of my face!! You cannot know my face,” she screamed. “Have you worn it?! Have you felt it sear its putridity into your soul?! You speak of what you do not know!”
“It makes no difference,” he retorted.
“Do you wish this face? Will you take this head for your prize?! Would you?!!”
“Yes, I would have your head!”
The two eyed each other.
“Take it.”
The hero started in surprise.
“I have no need of it. If you wish a trophy then take it. I have tired of this hideous burden.”
She knelt. The hero backed, bewildered by his opponent’s abeyance.
“Take it!!”
He stepped into a swing that struck her head from her body. She toppled to the floor of the hall. He put the head in a cloth and strode from the hall to tell glorious stories of his fight with a terrible monster. Granite statues remained forever, leering over her immortal body as an eternal jest against her undiminished repugnance. The hero’s sword lay on the floor glistening with gore.

Some say that another man could be seen standing in the doorway. With tears in His eyes, He turned and bore His keys away.

My Thoughts on Gothika...

A movie that claims to be about the supernatural and paranormal, but delivers different from what the viewer was expecting. A woman in a federal penitentiary begins telling her case worker (Miranda) that Satan is raping her in her jail cell. Miranda, of course, believes that she is hallucinating, or is otherwise mentally unstable because the woman has said such things before. The complication comes when Miranda encounters a girl in the middle of the road on her way home. She wakes up three days later in the penitentiary where she had worked, to discover that she is now a patient because she killed her husband three nights before, the same night that she met the girl on the road. Through supernatural experiences with this girl whom she had met, Miranda learns that the girl had died at the hands of a rapist and that the girl had possessed Miranda and caused her to kill her husband the same night. In the search for the rapist, Miranda discovers the possibility that this may be the rapist whom her subject had been referring to as if he were the devil. Fortunately there is a twist; disappointingly, it has nothing to do with the supernatural. Miranda discovers the lair that the rapist used to torture his victims in all manner of atrocities. In the lair she finds a video camera with a tape in it. The video is of her husband raping the girl who Miranda met on the road. Apparently, the girl had possessed Miranda so that she could get her revenge on Miranda’s husband. Miranda eventually discovers that her husband had an accomplice who is still raping women who are in this penitentiary. With mystical aide of the girl, Miranda finds out who the accomplice is and kills him while defending herself against him.

There is very little in the way of visual effects, although the movie does do a couple of neat things. The most notable visual effect is the way that the dead girl is filmed. The effect is hard to describe, but is quite noticeable in the movie Thirteenth Ghost. The most notable things about the movie overall was the disappointing gimmick. The movie was advertised as being a supernatural film after the nature of Thirteenth Ghost or Sixth Sense, something like that, but the supernatural plays a very neutral roll in the story; it could just as easily have been anything else that gave Miranda the clues that she needed.

Overall, it was worth watching. The actress who plays Miranda does a very good job of making the viewer question whether she is crazy or not. It was well made and well executed, but it had a gimmick and I hate gimmicks.

My Thoughts on Reign of Fire...

The dystopic story of the earth after it has been almost completely decimated by dragons. The movie starts off with quite a jolt as the dragons are unleashed and begin wreaking havoc within the first 10 minutes of the film. A tunnel construction disturbs the millennia-long hibernation of a few dragons which spawn at a devastating rate and burn the entire surface of the earth to ashes. The story picks up with an outpost of some of the surviving humans in Europe, probably one of the British Isles, who happen to be on the edge of despair. The main characters are the community’s leader and his best friend. They offer their guarded trust to a convoy of American marauders that has asked for refuge. The Americans are not trusted and are indirectly characterized through their leader, at first, as being arrogant and foolhardy. This pretense is mitigated by the civility of some of the rest the convoy. After this point, the story is focused on exemplifying the kind of lives that these survivors are leading and the differences between the suffocating defensive stance of the Europeans and the suicidal offensive aggression of the Americans. Finally the Europeans realize that they can’t wait it out, but that such a stance will lead to their eventual extinction. The Americans realize that they cannot forcialy take the aide of the community, but they must respect the fear that the Europeans have for things that the Americans have learned to fight instead of to fear.

The special affects are absolutely amazing. The dragons were created with seamless integration between the realistic movement, detailed textures, believable biology, interaction with the real set, and terrifying audio. The developers were careful to make them complete in every way. The movie was a wonderful visual experience, enhanced and supplemented with other sensory details to complete the visual affects.

It is interesting to note the similarities between this movie and the current terrorism situation. There is an uncanny correlation between the way that the Americans were characterized as reacting to the event and the way that the Europeans reacted. I don’t think that it was coincidence that the Europeans were the ones biding their time trying not to confront the problem head-on. Then the Americans were the arrogant, brash, offensive ones who were not willing to wait for the dragons to kill them all. I think that this is an uncanny commentary on the way that the world has reacted to the terrorism crisis. Too many of the Europeans were willing to let 9/11 slide, while the Americans weren’t going to allow someone to kick them around in their own home. Many European nations tried to be non-confrontational and negotiable so that the terrorists would leave them alone. The problem that "Reign" addressed is that ignoring the problem of terrorism won’t make it go away. They will kill, maim, and destroy no matter how compliant and pacifist we are. On the other side of the coin, America needs to be sure that they are willing to pay the price that freedom asks. America must be sure that they know what they are getting into so that they are not brash and foolhardy.

Overall, a good movie. Some foul language, but not too much. No sex and most everyone that is touted as a good guy is also decent and respectable.

My Thoughts on Blade Runner...

Starring Harrison Ford, this Sci-Fi anthem is a story about synthetics who had been developed to mimic every aspect of the human physiology except for emotions. They were stronger, faster, and at least as intelligent, and called replicants. They became dangerous and were systematically destroyed by soldiers called Blade Runners. Harrison Ford is one of the last and one of the best. He is tasked with locating and “retiring” four replicants which had managed to return to earth from the off world colony and had already killed a few humans. The movie is the quest of Ford to find these machines before they kill more people. Eventually he discovers all of them and kills them in less than dramatic combat. The issue of their humanity is discussed, especially in a soliloquy by the last and most philosophical of the replicants.

The special effects are apparently spectacular for the year it was made, but that seems to be the only reason for the label that it receives as a “classic.” The dialogue is almost non-existent and when there is dialogue it is simple and vaguely expected. It makes a few glamorous attempts at good dialogue, but never really does anything with the opportunities that it is given. There is even an interesting plot twist when they discover a fifth replicant that doesn’t know she’s not human. This, however, is little more than a gimmick. Ford does little to prove to us that he is the best Blade Runner that there was. Twice, he is nearly killed by one of the replicants. Once he is saved by a woman, the other time he is saved by the replicant’s talkativeness and desire to discuss philosophy, resulting in the inevitable decay of the replicant as it reaches the end of it’s allotted life span. One other replicant puts up a fight and he kills it by a quick draw, the fourth runs away and he chases it down.

Overall, it doesn’t live up to the hype, but it is at least entertaining, I suppose.

My Thoughts on the Movie "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence"...

Produced by Stephen Spielberg, this modern version of Pinocchio is the story of the first robot boy who can love, named Daniel. Rejected by the parents upon whom he first imprinted, he begins a quest to find the Blue Fairy (from the story of Pinocchio) whom he believes can turn him into a real boy so that his mother will love him. On his quest he is befriended by an artificially intelligent prostitute. A connection is made regarding the similarity between his friend’s prostitution of the sexual desire, and Daniel’s prostitution of the parental desire. That avenue, however, is not pursued beyond its conception. Eventually Daniel finds the Pinocchio ride at the submerged Coney Island theme park. At this ride he finds a statue of the Blue Fairy from his story, to which he prays that he may become a real boy. The movie ends with Daniel futilely repeating his heartbreaking plea to an unhearing statue until his energy is expended. The story is violently defibrillated, however, when Daniel is reanimated 2000 years later by extremely advanced robots who live in a world without humans. Daniel begs for his mother and the robots are able to reanimate her and return to her all of her memories, but she will live only for a single day. Once she goes to sleep at the end of the day, she will not wake up. The story finally ends, long after the movie has given up, with Daniel choosing not to get up from next to his sleeping mother after the only day that she loved him.

The special affects in this movie are very well done. They are occasionally showcased, but not overly glamorous. There is a very interesting camera technique used that gives the appearance of overexposed film. The vast majority of the film is made with this technique, with emphasis on scenes that are particularly pivotal or emotionally charged, and it actually becomes a little distracting. I have not yet decided whether I like the effect or not, but it is at least new and different. There must be a purpose behind the technique, but I don’t know what it is.

Several philosophical issues are introduced regarding artificial intelligence; they are not, however, addressed decisively or even much more than conceptualized. The movie introduces the problem of torturing things which do not live when Daniel is captured by a round up gang for a debacle that showcases the destruction of “mechas,” as robots are called. Also, Daniel is introduced to the family as a possible means to cope with the likely loss of their terminally ill son, and this introduces the difficulty between letting go of a loved one who’s dead and defacing their memory by trying to replace them with someone(thing) else. Another issue that is introduced is the favoritism shown by parents against a child whom is not viewed as being as good as the other child(ren) and the ensuing rivalry between siblings. These issues are never truly discussed, however. When Daniel is put on stage at the destruction debacle, possibly making the point that Mechas could be just as human as people, the issue is avoided when the spectators mistake Daniel for a real boy and protest that particular incident without making any lasting impression on the rest of the show. When Daniel is introduced as a potential coping mechanism, the issue is avoided by the unexplained, guarded acceptance of his “mother.” When the issue of letting go versus replacement comes to a pinnacle, it is conveniently interrupted by a complication in the plot. When perceived favoritism results in a dangerous level of sibling rivalry, it is conveniently time for Daniel to go away forever. When Daniel is confronted by his unscrupulous compatriot with the fact that his mother doesn’t really love him (but rather loves what Daniel does for her just as the customers love what the prostitute does for them), Daniel rebuts with an escape to the fairy tale “Blue Fairy.”

Ultimately, a very well made movie, but in the intellectual arena it lands in the disappointingly teasing ‘meringue’ category.

My Thoughts on the Law and Christians...

This is an essay that I wrote when I was having difficulty understanding the part that Law (which Christ freed us from) plays in the life of Christian. I hope is makes sense...

As Christians, we deal with harmonizing contradictory concepts on a daily basis. God demands a payment, but pays it Himself. Give peace where violence would be a more normal response. The one who will be great is the one who least wants to be great in the eyes of others. Persecution for Christ is good. Build up others, and forget about yourself. He must increase, and I must decrease. Boast in weakness. But perhaps the most complex concept is the system of rules and regulations required of Christians, or rather not required… yet still imposed, but not fulfilled by Christians, but rather by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit… yet not entirely. This concept of the Law that God has imposed on the world is one of the most confusing aspects of our Christian struggle, second perhaps to the perfect balance that God strikes between justice and mercy, sovereignty and free-will, righteousness and grace, holiness and forgiveness, love and anger, almighty Lordship and tender Fatherhood. The idea that Christ defeated the Law, yet we still have to obey the Law, confuses the line between unmerited salvation and penance. The fact that the Law is our enemy and condemns us in our filth, yet it makes more earthly promises than any other tenant in the Bible confuses the line between friend and enemy. There are so many different views of the Law that are seemingly contradictory. Sin is perhaps the first thing that every Christian is confronted with and the 10 Commandments are many times held to be man’s only salvation. However, the Christian knows that the sacrifice that Christ made on the Cross was sufficient for all the sin of the entire world. Why then did He say “be therefore perfect, even as your Father is perfect?” Why did He give us the ultimatum that “if you love me, you will keep My commandments?” Do we still have a penance to pay in addition to the payment that Christ made? But Isaiah says “all our righteous works are as filthy rags.” No matter how many filthy rags you add to a brand new car, you’ll never increase the value of it, you will only ruin the value. So then is our keeping of His commandments a confirmation of our love for Him, or is it like throwing filthy rags onto the Cross of salvation? The Truth is much easier than that, but it is a little more complicated. The first step in solving this problem is to realize that there are two systems of Law at work in the world and they work together for the glory of God. The commands that God gives us are neither an ultimatum that we prove our love for God, nor are they some sort of personal payment for sin that adds to the work of Christ on the Cross. In the following paragraphs, I will try to explain the true nature of the two Laws at work in our lives as Christians.

The very first dilemma that any person is presented with, in the realm of spiritual matters, is that people do wrong things. Parents punish their children in order to discourage unwanted behavior. Society in general is built almost completely around sets of rules and regulations that are enforced by whatever level of government may be in place, because people generally don’t want to follow rules. In fact the mere presence of the rules is, for many people, the only encouragement needed to break them. Governments impose all manner of deterrents, including indirect deterrents like the exhibition of punished criminals and direct deterrents like threat of physical pain or other suffering upon violation of an ordinance. Oddly, as diverse as humanity is, we can distill several rules that are accepted in most societies. These rules are the result of the fact that God has placed an innate sense of the order of things in each human. It is natural for a parent to care for a child and for the child to obey and respect the parent. It is not natural for one human to take another’s life in cold blood. Ownership is a universal principal that should not be violated. Since we know that these are the way that things are supposed to work, we have begun to make rules that institute manufactured punishments for these violations and, in some cases, allow the government to enforce by consensus of the people the punishments set out in a religious text. Unfortunately, we all like sheep have gone astray, each unto his own path and thus not everyone turns to the Bible to find the rules and regulations that they want to codify in their own social government. Despite which government codifies which religious text, the Christian is undeniably confronted with a set of commandments that are listed in the Bible as being man’s only salvation. But at the same time it is quite obvious that the purpose of this Law is not to be kept so that we can earn the favor of God, but rather to prove to us the gravity of our situation and to prove to us that we are utterly helpless before a God Who demands justice. Now, the rest of the story is, of course, that Christ brings the justice for us so that we can have a relationship with God, but that is for later. In Romans 7:5 Paul shows us that we were aroused to sinful passion by the Law to the purpose of death, Romans 8:2 calls this Law “the Law of Sin and Death,” and later in 1 Corinthians 15:56 Paul tells us that the only sting of death is because of sin and that “the power of sin is in the Law.” So, already we are seeing a very bleak picture painted of the Law. The Law is our enemy and none of us can keep it. This enmity comes from our own propensity toward sin as stated in Isaiah 53:6 “All we like sheep have gone astray, each unto his own way…” and in Romans 7:19, even when we are Christian we still struggle with the “good I want, [and] do not do,” and the sin that we practice and “do not want.” In fact, not only do we have a propensity toward sin, but when we are without God any “good” that we do is without merit, “…whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). By the breaking of the Law of Sin and Death, a debt has been accrued, one which must be paid (Romans 6:23a). This debt has already been paid, though. When Christ lived a perfect life, died a perfect death, and was raised again on the Third Day, He paid the price for all of the sin for all time. The fact that the whole world was paid for is evident in 1 John 2:2 when John says that Jesus was the atoning sacrifice for “not for [our sins] only, but also for those of the whole world.” The sacrifice was not only for the whole world, but it was also for all time as demonstrated in Acts 17:30 where He “overlooked (lit. “winked at”) the times of ignorance” when they did not know about the sacrifice of Christ. So then what is Hell? If Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient payment, why do people still go to Hell? Because Hell is not punishment, it is a consequence that we bring upon our own heads. It is as if God has bought the last bottle of water in the middle of a desert and he is offering it to us. If we refuse the water that does not “un-pay” it; the water is still paid for, but we are doomed by our own refusal to die of thirst in a place that was not meant for us. Never in the Bible does anyone say that Hell was created for sinners, but it was created for Satan, his minions, Death, and for Hades. Hell is not what God intended for us, but it is where we go if refuse the salvation that He offers to us. Fortunately Christ did buy that salvation for us. He lived a perfect life, and life without sin and He gave that life as atonement for the sins of the world. He made a human sacrifice for a human debt, Hebrews 2:17-18. He did not, however, live a life and make a sacrifice in the Law of Sin and Death. This is quite obvious because the priests of Sin and Death (Pharisees) were always at odds with Christ’s fulfillment of the Law of Sin and Death to the Law of the Spirit. Through Christ’s death and resurrection He finished the Law of Sin and Death into the Law of the Spirit (Romans 7:6). This is because the Law of Sin and Death is not to be kept, it is to condemn the world in it’s sin so that sin may exist for what it is and that the world may become accountable to God, because without the Law sin is ambiguous and not punishable (Romans 3:19, 5:13). The Law of Sin and Death is based on rules, regulations, infractions, punishments, and rational reasons. These are things with which humans are incredibly incompetent. We tend to pride ourselves with the perception that reason is what separates us from the animals, but we do not spring from the womb with reason. Reason must be cultivated and manufactured. No, reason is what we are condemned by! Human reason is what God uses in the 10 Commandments to chase us away from what we think we know and into the reason and rationale of the Spirit. Christ came into the world not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. When He kept the Law He did it with God’s reasoning, not the reasoning of man. The reasoning of man extrapolated the 10 Commandments and the sundry laws that He gave to Moses out to their logical conclusion. The logical conclusion was that if a Person picked a head of grain and rubbed it between His fingers and ate it, He was harvesting and winnowing on the Sabbath, which is obviously against the Law! Christ did not come to keep the Law of men, though. He came to keep the Law of the Spirit, for it was by this Law that He would save mankind.

Enter, Law of the Spirit! This is the salvation of mankind, because the Law of Sin and Death says that each must pay for his own, but the Law of the Spirit says that there is One Who can pay the price for all. In this way, and others, the Law of the Spirit has overcome the Law of Sin and Death. “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned the Law in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:3-4). Where the Law of Sin and Death is based on keeping rules and regulations in spite of a sinful nature, the Law of the Spirit gives us a new nature that will love and follow God. By this fact, we are no longer under the Law of Sin and Death, because its requirement has been fulfilled in us by the only One Who can fulfill it. Now, this of course does not mean that we are free to sin as much as we like, now that we are free. This is addressed in Romans 6 but a more important relationship between the Law and the Christian is made by a commonly misunderstood verse. In John 14:15 Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will keep my commandments.” This verse is not an ultimatum. We do not have to prove our love for God by arbitrarily keeping a set of regulations that He has already kept for us; neither do we keep His commandments so that we can learn to love Him, for love is a fruit of the Spirit, not of the Law. The entire relationship is described by Jesus Himself in John when He answers a question posed to Him by some followers. They ask Him, “What shall we do so that we may work the works of God?” What they were asking is, “What deeds must we perform so that we can follow the occupation of God?” Jesus answers them in a plain and straightforward way, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” Many people take this to mean that the activity that God performs is to cause you to believe. This is not the case, because that would not be an answer to the men’s question. What Jesus says is, “The occupation that God has called you to is to live your life believing in Me.” What Jesus is emphasizing here is the difference between what the men were used to thinking about and what Christ had come to change. The men still thought that (as had been the case for thousands of years) there were rules and regulations to keep in order to fulfill God’s calling in your life. What Jesus did by fulfilling the Law of Sin and Death is make it so that “if you love Me, you will keep my commandments.” Not as an ultimatum, but as a tandem relationship. We no longer have to worry about keeping His regulations, because if we love Him, then all the commandments will fall into place. It is not possible to sin while you are loving God. Not that if you are loving God then whatever you do is suddenly okay, when it didn’t used to be. No, if you are loving God, then you are not going to lie or kill someone. He came to change the focus. The focus is no longer on the Law or on the sin, because if you’re looking at the Law then you’re not looking at God. Before Christ came, they didn’t have a way to look at God except through the Law, but now we are our own High Priests and we can come before Him and cry out “Abba! Father!” because it’s not about rules, anymore. It’s about love. The chief end of man used to be to fear God and keep His commandments because every deed will be brought to judgment, whether for good or for evil, but every deed has been brought to judgment and now we can rest in the love of God and the fact that “it is finished,” it is done. “Where there is forgiveness, there can be no more offering for sin.” Sin has been defeated! This is what that means, sin is no longer a contender. It has been dealt with and it has been thrown away as far as the East is from the West, it is no longer a matter to be taken into consideration because the veil has been rent, we no longer have to search for His providence in a Law, straining to sift through the humanity to see what God really meant, we now can look straight into the face of almighty God, because my sin (oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!) my sin, not in part but the whole, has been nailed to the Cross! and I bear it no more! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, oh my soul! I bear it no more, I don’t bear the price of it, I don’t bear the weight of it, I don’t bear the power of it, I don’t bear the scars of it, I don’t bear the memory of it. I bear the love of my Heavenly Father who will cause all things to work together for the good of those who love Him. So, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: love God, for this is the chief end of man.

My Thoughts About Helen...

Possibly my favorite subject is my girlfriend, Helen. She and I have been dating for about 1yr, 9mo, and 5days... give or take. She is the only girl who I have ever dated and the only girl who I want to date. We have something of a strange relationship because we have been talking about marriage since about 3 months after we started dating. I have always been taught that the purpose of dating is to find a person to marry. Therefore what's the point of dating if I'm not ready to get married? And what's the point of dating someone if I don't intend to consider marrying them? I also believe that God has a person for me to marry and that if I wait for Him to show me that person, then I won't be disappointed.

Well, I met Helen about 4 years ago during my sophomore year of highschool (that was the first year that I was in public school). I instantly realized that she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I started praying about it and decided that if this was the girl that God had planned for me then I would make myself available, but I wouldn't send any signals until God told her the same thing. It was after 2 years of walking her to class and hanging out with her at school that I decided to join the Marine Corps. Only four days before I left I decided to throw caution to the wind and I asked her out 3 days in a row. She wrote to me all 3 months of bootcamp and when I came back for 10 days of vacation, we decided that we were officially dating. Well, this naturally brought up my thoughts about dating (marriage) and so I asked her what she thought dating was for. She almost quoted me word-for-word about how she wouldn't date anybody unless the goal was to find out whether we should get married or not. She has never dated anyone else either. Well, here we are, madly in love and ready to get married, but she's going to college back home in Texas and I'm stuck up here 1300 miles away in North Carolina. Unfortunately, we still have a while to go before she graduates and so we're trying to avoid a long engagement. At this point, she's trying to graduate in 3 years instead of 4 so that she can move up here when we get married.

I cherish her as the most precious thing on this earth. She only gets more beautiful every day and I can hardly love her as much as she deserves. I will try to get a picture posted at some point, but I don't have one on the web, until then you can take my word for the fact that she is the most gorgeous young lady in the world. She is also one of the smartest, she graduated 6th in a class of almost 700 and she has already been approached for 3 honors programs in her freshman year of college. You can probably begin to see what I meant when I said that if you wait for God, then you won't be disappointed.

I love you, Sweetheart.

My Thoughts About Space-Time...

This is an essay that I wrote as research for the novel that I'm writing. Only the most basic concepts of quantum physics are accurate, the rest are theories that I developed solely for my book. Enjoy...

Based on the fundamental composition of our universe, there are limits on the speed at which anything can travel, even through a vacuum. These limits can be felt in two ways, one is in gravity. Any object that exhibits mass, begins to warp the space-time continuum as in Einstein's description. Anything that comes close enough to the object, including light—which exhibits no mass—experiences stretched and bent space. The bending of space is evident by the tendency of objects to be drawn in a particular direction, despite a lack of energy, propulsion, or contact forces. This force is relatively weak when compared to other fundamental forces like subatomic and electromagnetic forces, but when an object becomes massive enough without taking up volume, as in the case of a black hole, it can bend space enough that it subsequently bends time as well.
Theoretically, if a black hole were massive enough, it could even break the space-time continuum. There are a few different ways that theorists believe this could happen. One way is based on Einstein’s original theory of space-time, the one with which he describes it as a sheet. Mass rests on the sheet of space-time, and massive objects bend the sheet so that other objects are attracted to it. A massive enough black hole would tear a hole in the sheet to some other place. Another way that the space-time continuum would react to such extreme force is that the continuum itself would be compressed onto the singularity creating a pocket of space that would both stretch the space within the black hole’s sphere of gravitational influence and make other objects shrink as they approach the black hole. Objects near the black hole would take up a smaller percent of the overall space, because there is more of the space-time continuum packed into the small location near the singularity.
This second explanation is the more widely accepted and the more bizarre. The distortion to the continuum that this theory supposes is quite a bit more severe and has farther-reaching effects. Not only would objects in the immediate vicinity be stretched out, but distances would be impossible to measure because the amount of space between two points on either side of the distortion would be far more than it should be, due to the space compression on the black hole. The apparent distance between two points outside of the black hole's influence would be shorter than the ever-growing diameter of the black-hole's event horizon. the event horizon would not expand externally, however, it would rather expand internally, similar to what the mouth of a balloon does when the balloon is inflated.
These distortions are mild, however, when compared to the spatial distortions that researchers suspect would result from breaking the speed of light.
The other way that these fundamental limitations can be felt is with inertia. Inertia also happens to be the primary hurdle in defeating the light speed barrier. For an object that exhibits mass, the space-time continuum has placed limits on the rate at which the object can accelerate, similar to the limits on speeds through gaseous atmospheres. Also similar to what happens during atmospheric travel is what may happen when the light barrier is broken; it will cause severe disturbances throughout the medium of the continuum. When the speed of sound is broken it sends a shockwave through the atmosphere. In the case of FTL travel, the speed limit is light as opposed to sound, the medium is the space-time continuum as opposed to air, and the limiting agent is inertia as opposed to aerodynamic drag. So then, what is the shockwave? The atmospheric shockwave of a sonic boom can shatter glass from a mile away, so what happens when breaking the speed of light sends a shockwave through the medium? A shockwave through the atmosphere consists of compressions and rarefactions, which move the gases to different places and stretch and compress the atmosphere. The equivalent for the space-time continuum would be compressions and rarefactions of both space and time. Space would be thrown to another location, and time would be catapulted forward and backward. Just as in an atmosphere, the tremors would eventually settle out and everything would return to relative equilibrium, but things would be irreversibly changed.
The implications of traveling faster than the limits imposed by space and inertia are quite considerable and potentially devastating. There are aspects of our universe that we do not understand and potentially cannot, something akin to a fish trying to understand the concept of being wet.

My First Thoughts...

Well, I have to admit that M@'s idea was so good that I just had to copy him. This will be a place for me to post things that I do/make/read/think/etc. but that I don't want to flood your email boxes with. This will also be a source of information my life in general, in case I don't have the time to email every person who I know or if I don't have access to email at the time. I do not intend to use this as an excuse to not keep in touch, however ;-) I hope that this will be fun and informative. Enjoy...