As you've probably noticed, this site looks exactly the same. Of course, if you're one of those hoighty-toighty RSS feeders, you can't tell, but rest assured, if you visited the site yesterday and then again today, you'd not notice a difference. That took a lot of work, let me tell you. I was thinking about adding digg, and if digg is successful, possibly ads to my blog. See if I can't make a little money off this wailing wall of words. But first things first: how hard is it to add digg to each post? Turns out it's five lines of code, but, for lack of motivation, I hadn't changed my layout to use the new Blogger API, and digg, at least the code I found, requires use of one of the new features. So, it took me about four hours, but I finally got everything back to the way it was from one of the other sample layouts blogger offers. There is one major difference besides the added digg, and that's that comments are now only displayed on the item pages themselves, which is irritating. Since I hardly ever get comments, to my displeasure, I always liked having them right on the main page. Therefore, I have amounted more evidence that Google is evil.

It appears I've evaded the important topics for two nights, and now, this third night, there's no avoiding them. I've run out of all the other padding. I suppose I could make up an entire boring scenario that has nothing to do with anything and contradicts any number of statements previously written while I wait for good ideas to pool, but then you'd be as frustrated with me as I am with Bleach.

Pandora truncates "Casting Crowns (Holiday)" to "Casting Crow...". My mind extended it to "Casting Crows" and I immediately pictured throwing birds like paper airplanes. And then I saw "Casting Crow" and imagined a sorcerous raven complete with robe and pointy hat.

Oooh! I've thought of two. Take that, actual content! First, my thermostats are all messed up. It's either like 65 degrees or 80 degrees with nothing in the middle. It's rather frustrating. I don't mind the heat, though it keeps guests away and I have to water my cats more often, but I do mind the doubled electricity bill.

Second, during the Microsoft GIVE campaign this year, we were trying to come up with a theme for our group's code names. A lot of people had ideas (I was not among them), and most of them sucked. So, the last day of the campaign, October 30th, we had a contest, and whichever faction donated the most money that day got to choose the theme for future code names. It quickly became a bidding war, and in the end, our small group donated just under $15k, and Microsoft matched all of that. All in a day's work when there are generous people competing over something relatively small. I am proud to be a Microsoft employee, and even more so to be on the SQL Azure team.

As I said in part one of this chain of posts setting the record, the gold standard, if you will, of blogged days in a row, Heaven has been pushed down on the stack of books I'm reading. The top of the stack is a book called Birthright by David Needham. One Sunday after the church service, I went up and talked to the pastor again. He gave me his email address and apologized for not responding to my facebook message. Liked I'd suspected, it just got misplaced somehow. So, I re-emailed him that one question, and three others. He answered the first one by recommending that I read Birthright.

It's amazing how well the prologue of that book fits my experience. Basically he'd lived his spiritual life academically, but didn't really have the joy that seems so abundant in other Christians. So one day in college, he skipped all of his classes, and went out into the wilderness to pray all day. And nothing happened. I've not done that exact same thing, but I can easily imagine a similar situation. I recognize his frustration, and so I got my hopes up.

Chapters one and two were alright, if a little depressing. They covered what it means to be human (versus being an animal) and the nature of the Fall. When I read, I take each bit of information and reevaluate it against what I already know, think, or have learned. With information on a new topic, or fiction, when the world is relatively simple and new, reading is a lot quicker (though still tedious). When it comes to reading about Christianity, it's very slow going, because there's a lot to process. And on top of that, it might pique some dark spot in my knowledge, and cause me to stop and run down a rabbit trail, usually resulting in a question, and ten minutes later, having to reread the paragraph that caused the interruption.

Processing and reevaluating also means, "suppose this is true; now what are its implications?" So then those implications also need to processed and reevaluated. I'm a fan of the depth first traversal, though I frequently experience stack overflow. I just don't have enough heap memory for a breadth first traversal. Ok, that's enough computer science for now. Anyway, I suggest this method of reading when it comes to important topics, and do not when it comes to finishing reading a book before the quiz tomorrow in CP English, because you'll never finish in time.

A bunch of things in chapters one and two didn't feel quite right. They didn't fit into my already-dug "trenches," as the book describes it. For reading it, I've found I had to think of it as completely hypothetical, then evaluate it as a whole when I'm done, to replace whatever trenches I already have if it turns out his thoughts are more right than what I already have, else I'm going to end up chiseling the walls with a butter knife, and that's just not structurally sound.

Chapter three was pivotal. He reiterated what he'd said in the prologue, again bolstering my hope for some crucial secret I'd never been taught, nor figured out on my own.

Actually, the first portion of chapter three was really interesting. He said something that makes complete sense to me (no chiseling required) that I'd never thought of before. He describes salvation as a "screen" (and uses quotes every single time he mentions it as if we'd forgotten in the last two sentences what he was talking about), and when we accept Jesus' gift, death, and forgiveness, God no longer sees us, but sees a screen, displaying Jesus. God sees Jesus' righteousness rather than our sinful nature. Essentially, we're not seen at all. This leads me to ask a question. Didn't Jesus take all of our sin? Doesn't that make him sinful and us holy in the eyes of God? So wouldn't that make that screen of his a sinful one? I think the answer is no, because Jesus was God and so when he descended to hell, he was able to atone for the sins there, and now is holy again. As for seeing us as holy, I think that's what he means by the screen in the first place. Maybe it's more like a super powerful sin vacuum cleaner that pulls the stains off us as soon as we put them there before God gets a chance to see them. Anyway, this is all a little trivial in comparison to the point he was making, and the point I said makes complete sense to me, that the screen is a completely external process. When we accept Christ into our lives, there is no immediate internal change. We are seen as holy, but are still of the flesh, still fallen.

Then he went onto two internal changes that do happen. The second one becomes the primary focus of the book thereafter (I've not read that far yet), but the first one, while seemingly small, is a bridge to the second. This first internal change is this: that we are no longer enemies of God. God is now a father with open arms, and we love him for that. Alas, this is where my hopes crumbled, because that's not my experience. I love God because he is holy and good, and I love good things. But I've never really felt like he was proud of me, or that he cared at an intimate level. He's like a war general that cares about his troops three levels below him, and wants none of them to die. He makes his orders and brilliant stratagems to that affect, and if given the chance to save those soldiers' lives by dying himself, would do it in a heartbeat. But that's not a personal love. That's not the love of a father, and not what Needham describes.

When he was going over this, like many times before, I tried to imagine God as a man with open arms. An overwhelming image appeared in my mind's eye. It was an irrepressible darkness deserving the fear of the Lord. I don't know what to make of that. Something happened, then, a few minutes after I let the image slip. I tried again, and this time (and every time since) it was a blurry image of a figure with open arms, with white-blue light surrounding him. But it was entirely foreign, and not of love, at least that I could recognize. Embracing this figure would be like clasping your hands, then shifting the top hand down one finger. I don't know what to make of that either.

Anyway, I'll keep reading, but once again I've gotten my hopes up and then they were dropped and broken.

Now I've arrived at an age-old philosophical debate, and this one has a known right answer if you're a Christian. I'm just not sure I've seen evidence of this right answer. In fact, this answer caused the reformation and split the church off from Catholicism. Is salvation a free gift? I know that it is not earned. There are any number of arguments against that train of thought. What merit could man possibly bring forth to earn salvation? Further, if he could, potentially, what need of salvation would he have? So, the answer is a resounding 'yes,' salvation is absolutely a free gift.

There's an old word play. Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don't deserve. It is "by grace you have been saved through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9) There's a bit there: "through faith." That faith has to come from somewhere, doesn't it? Is it still a gift if we're required to supply this faith ourselves? This presents a chemical simile. What if faith is like a catalyst. It's not used up, not exchanged, in the process, but still required for the reaction of salvation to occur? Another thought comes to mind. What is faith? Maybe we do have to supply it, but what if it occurs naturally from simply wanting the gift in the first place? I've heard two definitions of faith. One, that faith is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see," (Hebrews 11:1) and two, that faith is the substance of things hoped for. Those might actually be two ways of saying the same thing. If we take this second definition, then hoping for salvation, and acting on this hope by naming ourselves Christians, produces faith in and of itself. This is what "accepting the gift of salvation" is, so faith isn't irrelevant, but it's not an issue, I don't think.

This topic brushes on the 'how' of being saved. There's a lot of theological debate on this one too. Romans 10:9-10 puts it simply.

That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

Justified was a word that Needham talked a lot about in the first half of chapter 3, what spawned his screen idea. I suppose it's ironic, then, that the believing in your heart is what produces the external effects, and confessing with your mouth spurs the internal changes.

It just seems like, though, that with salvation, always comes the need to change our lives. My friend David put it this way, "I usually side on the 'salvation is a gift from God, but that gift should be reason enough to be life-changing' side." However, John (the apostle) goes so far to say to cease sinning. It's a do, not a should. (He doesn't mean completely, I don't think, as that's impossible in our fleshy bodies, but perhaps to get out of the mindset of it's okay.) Paul makes a similar point in Romans 6.

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

See, now I'm confused. We were given this gift in order that we might die? We're now losing our lives for a "free gift." Even Jesus turned people away for various reasons. What about the man in Luke 9 who is hyped up about miracles, but Jesus knows there's more hardship than glamor? What about the wealthy man in Mark 10, when Jesus tells him to give away all his possessions if he wants to follow him? At this point, I believe we're in a paradox. I'm okay with paradoxes. If we're going to argue that it's a completely free gift, and that this isn't a paradox, then God needs to do all the changing of our lives himself. All of it. In my experience, he doesn't. It probably contradicts free will, which he has promised us. The number of times I've prayed for change in my life above and beyond myself -- a total makeover of my life without letting me get involved. It's never happened. The only option left to me is that this is a paradox. What gets me is that we continue to preach that this is a free gift, and it is, and we preach that we need to quit sinning, change our lives, kill our lives, and we never want to point out that these appear to contradict themselves. The sermon on Sunday, for example, was on "the gospel as gift," in a five-week series titled "the gospel as ...". He spent the whole sermon arguing that it is a free gift, much like I just did but with different verses. And in the last five minutes switched to "now what can you give?" Wait, what?

I was going to write a bit about God's love. I'm not sure that I have much to write, though. Wait, that sounds bad. There was a "sermon" given in Bellingham on God's love. It wasn't a sermon, though. That church does things differently (not wrong), and some weeks they have more of a discussion or forum, rather than a formal sermon. (Other weeks they have service projects rather than meeting at the church at all. It's actually a really cool idea. It's not my thing, but it's a really cool idea. I wouldn't mind doing the service projects, but I get the most out of a good speaker and a good worship session. That and service are what build me up the most, and I see church as the place to go to be built up. Really, I think, glorifying God should be what the rest of the week is about, but perhaps that's a different blog post.) Anyway, the pastor got up and said that he could talk for thirteen hours on the topic of God's love, and then he sat down and had everyone else talk. I've just never heard a satisfying sermon on God's love. I'm not certain I've heard any sermons on the topic specifically. It's a rather large topic. I'm not sure what you'd talk about specifically, aside from John 3:16. I find it frustrating. I don't even know what I want in order to be satisfied. Like pornography, I know it when I see it. I say I want something concrete, but what's more concrete than God sending his only Son to die in our place? I say I want something I can directly apply to my life as an action, but any time someone has taken me up on that challenge, I'm not satisfied with their answers (or they give my favorite answer: just give it to Jesus). One time I was told to journal....

I was talking to Courtney last night about Birthright and about my lack of joy. Defining joy has always been a challenge too. It's obviously different from happiness. We're expected to have lasting joy. Happiness is by nature fleeting and circumstantial. I guess that means that joy is not circumstantial, and so must then be based on something permanent, maybe knowledge? I would say faith or hope, but I find both of those fleeting -- hope more than faith. After all, hope crashes and burns due to circumstances, like getting to page 61 in a book. Do joy and disappointment, then, not contradict each other? I go round and round in circles. I get frustrated trying to define joy, trying to decide whether I have it or not. And then I remember it's moot. Whether or not I'm missing joy, I know I am missing something. I feel like Anakin feeling he's being denied some knowledge of the force. So I feel really whiny, and a little bit paranoid. But if this is it, I'm not satisfied, and I refuse to believe that an infinite God is not satisfying.

One thing that always comes to mind is the excitement I see in other Christians. I think I touched on this when I was still hanging out with Paul. (I need to call him again, and grab coffee or something.) They're just so happy about what Jesus has done in their lives. Why am I not? Am I merely ungrateful? If I am, can I change? If I can, is that not just forcing my own happiness? Think happy thoughts! I guess I've been excited once or twice, like after Challenge a few years back. Maybe I just notice when Christians are excited, and I don't notice when that excitement fades or falters.

I know for one thing that I don't feel forgiven. I know that I am as take it at your word knowledge. Isn't that rather core? I don't doubt my salvation, and I don't doubt that I'm forgiven, but why do I still feel guilty all the time? Why can't I forgive myself for things? I would think that if I truly realized the enormity of my situation, my grievances and the mercy and grace given instead of justice -- if I took that all into perfect perspective, maybe I'd be touched deeper down. But I'm pretty thick. It takes a lot to shake me. How can I not take something for granted when I already do? I can think about the cross and the sacrifice, but then I just feel guilty again, which is the cause of this issue in the first place, right?

Like I was saying, I was talking to Courtney. She and I had a rather blunt conversation with straight forward questions. I'm still trying to decide whether it was refreshing or awkward, but whatever. She asked me if I see God's love in my life. And I don't, at least not in the moment. I see God's influence in my past, the brilliance of the General's orders after the battle is over. The biggest example of this is my not getting into Harvey Mudd, and being forced to go to Western, where I roomed with Swood and got involved in CCF and the INN, and ultimately landed my dream job at Microsoft. Had I gotten into Harvey Mudd, I wouldn't have been near my family during the divorce, and I would have taken four years instead of three to graduate. I would have been looking for a job right in the midst of the recession.

She gave me a few examples of how she sees God in her life. Part of it seems to be an assuredness that whatever happens, God is in control. That's probably another thing I take for granted. Other things are like her "wonderful family." To be blunt, I don't have a wonderful family. I love my mom and sister dearly, but we are really broken and dysfunctional. Or she's thankful that she gets to go to college. I'm thankful for the experience -- in hindsight -- but it really was expected of me. It was a stressor, even if it was something I wanted to do, and something during which I was relatively carefree. Maybe this is a bad example, but imagine you're a prince. You want to be king, because you'd be a good king, but you are going to be king, and there's nothing you can do about it. Since the age of five, I was going to college. It was hard for me to count that a blessing, in fact, I never really even considered it.

So is this what joy is? Being content with what you have, and the knowledge that you'll be taken care of one way or another, even if not in this life? That raises an interesting question -- why bother feeling that you'll be taken care of in this life, if you don't know that for sure? This is morbid, and I don't know exactly why I just thought of it, but one time I was feeling especially suicidal, and my dad got fed up and told me that if I tried to commit suicide and it wasn't God's will for me to die yet, then I wouldn't. Later I was replaying that conversation in my head, and I really wish I had responded, "So how about we try it out, and if I die, it's what God wanted."

The last thing Courtney suggested was writing down five blessings. Blessings are tricky. At face value, they're things you're glad about, right? So if I roll a Yahtzee, is that a blessing? I don't think so. So then they're probably deeper than that. They're things, though. They're not necessarily material, but they're still temporary. The people Jesus healed still died eventually. How good an idea is it to get attached to a something you'll lose? Are thankfulness and attachment the same thing? God gives, and God takes away. I'm afraid to be thankful of things, I think. Yet, there are things I'm thankful for. Swood is the first that comes to mind, followed quickly by the rest of my close friends. He's probably first because I see him on a regular basis, and he's the least likely to leave.

I run into this issue a lot. I'll be working on something or thinking about something, and I'll think about praying for or about it. Sometimes I don't want to, either because I want to do it under my own esteem, feeling I'm more than capable of doing this mundane task I do all the time, or because it's something I don't really worry about (like a plane crashing or something completely random like my sister getting small pox [just made that one up]). But now I feel like if I don't pray about, and then something goes wrong, it was my fault, or even that if I don't pray about it, something will go wrong, despite a complete lack of evidence for this. Should I then pray about every little thing? The Bible does say to pray without ceasing, but I've always been taught that means to live your life as a prayer. Also, I kind of figure that if God is listening in on my thoughts, and I've now devoted twenty-five paragraphs to God, along with all the thought that went into them while writing, as well as the two months since the last post when I was actually doing all this thinking, is that not prayer? Is thinking about God fundamentally different from thinking to God? I'm not sure I've ever read in the Bible that praying in your head "counts." Every time I've read about someone praying, it was aloud. Unless I'm in a group of people, I never pray aloud. God's omniscient, so this shouldn't be an issue. But at the same time, prayers said aloud are typically more focused and less prone to tangent than thought is. Does that make them more powerful? Have I just reduced prayer to magic, if heartfelt, words?

I believe that is enough pondering for one post. It's late again, and I'm driving home tomorrow morning. I haven't seen Luigi in maybe over a year, and I am looking forward to it.