I've been trying to read more. I usually have three or four books going at a time. I'm sure I would get through them quicker if I just worked on one at a time. My mind is a little sporadic and I get bored quickly (lack of mental discipline). I finally finished my favorite book of all time. It took me time to get through not because of it's length but because of it's depth. I decided I 'd like to share my favorite books list. This will likely change over the course of the next few years. Here it is in it's current Glory.

1. (the Bible)
This doesn't really count as a book and shouldn't be on this list. The Bible is phenomenal on three levels. 1; face value, the reading is generally wonderful and uncomfortable, 2; it is clear 3; it is multi-dimensional.

2. Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton
This is a book of paradoxes. And it teaches one to think in paradox. I think Jesus is paradoxical. Orthodoxy is the most profound piece of philosophical literature I have ever read. It's heavy and light, funny and tragic, brilliant and dumb. Please read it.

3. Suprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis
This is the story of Lews' life, how he found faith. Personal narratives are wonderful and this book is deeply personal. This is not a common top tenner of the Lewis books. When I read this book I was swept to a few different locations standing beside (or in) Lewis.

4. 1984 By George Orwell
Tragic political commentary in narrative.

5. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Amazing writing style.


Next bunch I like. In no particular order.

How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

Catfish and Mandala By Andrew X Pham,

She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall by Misty Bernall

God Spoke Tibetan: The Epic Story of the Men Who Gave the Bible to Tibet by Allan Maberly

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

I've seen lions at the zoo before. They are a kind of scary-fun conglomerate. Lion's at the zoo, as they are caged, are much more fun than scary and there business is specifically to be our entertainment. A couple of years ago I was in Africa. I was specifically in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda. We were out on Safari sitting on the roof of a bumpy van. We rounded a corner and beheld jewels of the savanna, a lioness and her two cubs. Our bus driver was a little nutty and decided drive the bus within 15 feet of the mother lion. I remember seeing the lioness bear her fangs and make a guttural sound, this was more on the side of scary and less on the side of fun. The lioness was 15 feet from our van and we were sitting on top of the van like 5 meat-cicles waiting to be devoured. I thought I might be able to kick the lioness in the face if she jumped up here for a meal. I also thought I might be able to kick one of my team-mates off the top and avoid being chomped on myself. Thankfully the lioness was not in the eating mood.

There is an instinctual urge for survival. In response to my last post that instinctual urge for survival is not the same as a fear of death. Again an atheist would say religion is created to medicate the instinctual fear of death. This is untrue.

My instincts only alert my fear sensors when I have first learned that I should be afraid of something. The pack-herd element of my desire is not overwhelming. Herd animals have instinct because they lack the cognitive ability to make complex decision. To argue on evolutionary grounds (which would be like fencing on a Lilly-pad), we do not have the same need for herd thought as we have a more highly developed level of cognition. While a migratory bird might fly away at the sound of a rattler, my child may be drawn to that sound, especially if he likes rattles. He has not been taught to fear snakes and having no instinctual fear he is therefore not afraid of snakes. We fear death without ever being told what it is, for none of us know exactly what it is.

I have natural, biological desires. I have the desire to eat. But if I go without food I am not scared of missing the process of eating. I have the desire for water. But after going without water I am not afraid of not drinking, I am afraid of dying. Here there is something to be said for having a natural desire to be alive. In an evolutionary sense (back on the pad) we as creatures would need a desire to live to function at all. This is where we diverge. A desire to live is not the same as fear of death. I could have a strong desire for a basketball, it may even be so strong that I will run onto a court and wrestle to the ground a basketball player and viciously bite his hand until he releases the ball and I walk off with it. It would be in an evolutionary sense better for me to have no fear of death rather a unbelievably strong drive or urging to live.

My point is this. Humanity has a fear of death. Our fear of death is irrational. Our fear of death does not come from herd instinct. Our fear of death as cited in the previous blog, does not primarily come from the fear of the unknown.

One time I thought I had poison Ivy. I went to the doctor and said hey doc can you give me something for this poison ivy? He said, that's not poison Ivy it's shingles. I was at once relieved and frustrated. Relieved because I knew what it was and frustrated that it was so severe. The doctor continued to tell me how long it could be around and why it was painful and why it was in such a specific pattern. From my perspective the anomaly was clarified and although it remained potent I could rightly, in my mind put it into it's proper category.

The concept of death is often like that for many people. They can recognize it and may even falsely diagnose it, there is a Hebrew's 9 (it is granted one time to live then the judgment) feeling about the patch on our souls. The stripe remains in obscurity until someone who knows what it is can accurately describe it. When it is described we can reckon with it, unless we think we know more than the Doctor (in our day many of us do).

In our Christianity we are able to be healed of shingles and one could declare, O death where is your sting, O grave where is your victory. The judgment becomes a judgment of righteousness.
We are with the writer of Psalm one, standing before a righteous judgment where we are rewarded and not condemned.

In my last post I told a story about going to the hospital. On that fated day I had the worst stomach pain I could ever remember. Perhaps the worst pain I had ever felt. I remember lying in the emergency room singing the song, I was sure I would die, "that mountain's burning in the sky... to the heart of Heaven." A Jason Upton song referring to Zion the holy city in the sky, were I would soon be. The doctor came in and told me about a bug that had been going around that was essentially the stomach flu but attached to it was stomach pain. The doctor then said I was either about to die or had the pain tolerance of a seven year old girl, unfortunately the latter was true.

The atheists response to my mindset in the hospital room would be this; you were afraid of death and because of your fear of the unknown, you applied religion as a kind of fear salve. But as a rule; are we as human's really afraid of the unknown? Let's take outer space as an example. Cold dark possible alien infested outer space is certainly the unknown but we do not have fear of it. Rather we have people who would line up by the thousands and hundreds of thousands to explore it. If I had never been to Chuck E Cheese and my Grandparents said we are going somewhere you have never been. My initial response is not fear but excitement. The excitement of discovery, even if there is a giant rat-man waiting me there.

The atheists great response to religion is that religion is primarily for old lady's afraid of death. But why should they or anyone naturally be afraid of death. The closest experience we have to death is sleep. And sleep is a thing we love, some of us love it too much.

Too say religion is a salve for the fear of the unknown is not only irrational but illogical. It reminds me of the Shackleton ad, Shackleton was going to the north pole in a time when it had not been traversed. The greatest line is, "safe return doubtful," Yet thousands of men signed up for the adventure. We as humans recognize in death not fear of the unknown but rather fear of the known.

I've been thinking about the god of science in our culture recently. Our culture has placed science as the standard of truth and even morality. The more I think about this it has led me to one conclusion with two premises. The conclusion is this; Science gives us no moral standard. The premises are that science gives us only two things: 1 longevity and 2 speed.

Science gives us longevity. In a developed culture we understand certain aspects of biology and this understanding creates longevity. We as a people live longer in a very practical sense. Our average age has gone up. We also have food and other products that can be sustained for a longer period of time with out breaking down.

Science gives us speed. A hundred years ago I could have sent a letter to a friend in Germany and would months later receive a reply. Now, in our current social stratus I can recieve and instantaneous reply. But not only my communicative needs but many other needs can be met at a far greater speed. Many instances come to mind but overwhelmingly our diverse desires for please can be met at a far greater rate.

Yes science meets needs practically but it gives us no morality. Science merely enhances the speed by which our morality is equated. This is not a benefit in a moral sense but rather a danger. In the scheme of morality if I have bad morality that is enacted faster I will then have faster brake down in a societal- social - and familial structure. If I live in a pre-sodomite nation technology will only increase the speed of which the desire for the average man to debase himself comes to pass.

I am reminded of Matthew 16, what good is it for a man to gain the world but loose his soul. It seems that the quickening of our corporal needs being met has been a trade off for our cultural soul. We have as a culture traded the world for our literal souls. We no longer believe in a fixed morality or a fixed soul as a part of a material body but rather a material body that has immediate needs met with a strong disbelief for the eternal soul. This concept is easily reckoned by the illustration if a man has all his physical needs met he is no longer thinking about death. We recognize that every man thinks about the eternal on his death bed. A society that consistently pushes death away also pushes away the need or the compulsion to recon with death, God, and his own eternal soul.

Whenever (the few times rather) I go to the hospital for a physical ailment I am quite certain it may be my last few hours on earth. I remember being in college under such circumstances. My immediate response was to sing my favorite hymns (modern hymns) as I would (so I thought) be meeting my maker. Alas I survived but the impression is significant. If we have an eternal perspective we live with eternity in our pragmatic lives. I think that is why there is talk in the new testament about Jesus eminent return. Not so we stand with our eyes fixed on the clouds but rather that we walk and act with our hearts in view of eternity.

Maybe microwaves aint so great-

It was the spring of 2005 my last term at Portland State. I was sitting in a Sr. project class (I had in a previous criminal justice class wooed this same professor by playing a crime and punishment lullaby in front of the class). This days topic was not our usual culminated learning experience, rather the subject was about men who rape and murder women and children. I remember the professor asking the class to raise their hands in response to the question, "who would ever forgive them?" He was trying to make a point, whatever he was saying wasn't significant enough to remember. My solitary appendage in the air, frustrated the illustration. He looked at me and said, something like, "I know Christians are supposed to forgive but there's a difference." And then he continued with his deflated illustration. I thought it odd that with 50 or so people in that room not one other person raised their hand with mine to forgive. I'm reminded of a Sufjan Stevens song John Wayne Gacy Jr.

I love how magnificent and tragic our faith is. I am compelled to release the most putrid sinner, it really was one of Jesus' prominent points. If you do not forgive your brother then your Father in heaven will not forgive you. Often men and especially tough guys have a hard time with this aspect of Christianity because they feel the sinner deserves the highest level of disdain. Which is partially right, the act does deserve intense guttural hatred. But the human (not deservingly) by grace is applied forgiveness and even dare I say love. The Christian is not called just to forgive the sexual deviant murderer but to love him. Forgiveness is so large it's scary. So where's the paradox.

The paradox is here that we are called to hate sin so much that we cast those in sin out of our midst, 1 cor 5. , that when our own members walk in rebellion we call them witches 1 sam 15 and when Christians start turning others away from Christ and toward themselves we Damn them to hell Gal 1. That is not a faith full of weak edges, pulling punches. It is violent and vicious.

We are often times heavy on forgiveness and light on sin or heavy on sin and light on forgiveness, examples clearly abound in both of these categories. But we were never called to be lukewarm either in our kisses or our cursing. We are to despise drunkenness for we are royalty but hug the homeless man with stale vomit in his hair. The unrepentant woman in our midst we must label the proverbial whore who wipes her mouth and says I've done nothing wrong but the next day we must go to the red light district and offer a prostitute a way of escape.

Our strength is not in having a right arm we work out all the time and a left that gets used in case of emergency. Our strength is our symmetry our balance, but not soft balance, raging, blazing balance otherwise known as paradox.

We just met our son Solomon today. He is wonderful. Seven pounds, fourteen ounces, and twenty-one inches long. The experience of childbirth is profound and certainly sacred. The fragility of his and his mothers life combined with the corporal urging, the earth like groanings of his delivery are breathtaking. It reminds me of the scripture that says creation longs and groans for the revealing of the sons of God. Solomon is here and we are so elated to be in this moment with him.

During the labor process I thought about how often times angels herald the coming of new baby's. Abraham, John the Baptist, and of the hosts of Angels at the birth of our savior. I felt like there was an angel in the room with us. It was like I would look in a place in the room and I could see the outline of a large being and then I would look again and it was as if the outline was in a different part of the room. When I say outline I mean a faith outline. Which is the best way I can describe it. Well after hours of intense, hypnotic, contractions and about twenty minutes of pushing, unto us a child was born and unto us a son was given and the gov't shall be upon his shoulders... All that to say it was an amazing experience.


As I have been sitting here next to my beautiful wife and new baby I came across a profoundly disturbing story that can be read here. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-nu-prof-apology-20110305,0,6838703.story?track=rss

The short story is about a par-for-course psychology professor from Northwestern University in Chicago who allows a live-sex demonstration in his class. The fashion of the demonstration was so graphic I'm not sure how to detail it, so I wont. But it got me thinking. The professor was quoted as saying, there is nothing wrong with doing that (having a live sex show at school) and even those who don't like it wont tell me why it's wrong.

After reading the article my head was spinning. I thought, "Well of course you don't think it's wrong." Because acoording to your humanistic-mechanism, atheist, ego-ology; nothing can be wrong unless it hurts someone and that pain is against there will. That is the limit to our colleges (and the devil's) moral system. It is do unto others outside of the bounds of biblical morality. So if my friend wants me to chop his arms off, why not? He wants me to and I would enjoy doing that?

One of the dangers of this kind of thought is; There is nothing sacred. Why do I not want you to get screwed like an animal in front of a hundred people? Because I believe that sexuality is a sacred gift and not on the same level as chewing a piece of gum. Why Do I not want you to cut your arm off, because I believe that the body is a gift, a beautiful sacred gift that should be cherished and taken care of, it is valuable and not just a mass of cells accidentally joined together. I love the song, "you and me baby aint nothin but mammals, so lets do it like they do on the discovery channel." It was a big hit when I was getting out of high school. A funny joke right? No it was rather a prophetic declaration over my generation and it seems to have foreseen what was inevitable.

Rant: I don't understand why learning about biology takes away the beauty of a thing. All of a sudden because we know there's a chemical fireworks show during the birth of a baby it becomes base or common? Because we know how flowers are pollinated does that destroy the delicacy of the flower? Science has given us nothing but longevity and the ability to meet our carnal needs (desires) sooner. It has given us no morality, it has given us nothing sacred, it has allowed us to spend out money for more years at casino's and given us R.V.'s to drive around while we're old and alone, oh yea and we can take a pill so we can get more sex even at eighty. Science / Learning has been the God of our culture and what a cold cruel bastard-child it is.

Why do we need the sacred? Because of Solomon. Because his birth is important, weighty, a thing to be cherished remembered and enjoyed. Because one day he'll leave the house and he and I will go on a drive and talk about life... that will be sacred. One day he'll get married that will be sacred and one day not to far from now I'll be a grandfather and he'll be having a baby, that will be sacred...