Jeremiah 26

I started the book of Jeremiah on my plane ride to Chile, and it's been an interesting book so far. My goal is to complete the entire Bible by the time I graduate college, and I'm doing pretty decently so far. After Ezekiel and Psalms, I won't have any more "major" books to complete in the old testament... the minor prophets should be relatively quick reads, I think. If anyone wants to catch up to me in Jeremiah so we can read and comment together, you can listen to the first 26 chapters of Jeremiah here (this is really easy to multitask with other work). It's 94 minutes long.

My reading today was Jeremiah 25 & 26, and Jeremiah chapter 26 really stood out to me. Basically, Jeremiah has just delivered Epically bad news to all the kings of Jerusalem, Judah, and other parts of Israel. God has given them chances to repent of their evil ways, but they haven't listened (what's new in the OT?), so God is about to bring all the kingdoms of the North, including Babylon, against them.

Of course the leaders in Israel react negatively to Jeremiah's message... who wouldn'treact poorly if someone told him that his nation had been really sinful and was about to be completely overrun because of it? However, the most interesting part of this passage is a comparison between Jeremiah, and another prophet (who was also prophesying correctly in the name of the Lord) named Uriah. When Jeremiah is confronted by people in Israel wanting to kill Him for His message, he says to them: "Now reform your ways and your actions and obey the LORD your God. Then the Lord will relent and not bring the disaster He has pronounced against you. As for me, I am in your hands; do with me whatever you think is good and right. Be assured, however, that if you put me to death, you will bring the guilt of innocent blood on yourselves and on this city and on those who live in it, for in truth to LORD has sent me to you to speak all these words in your hearing."

In contrast, Uriah sought to fix his situation under his own strength. "When King Jehoiakim and all his officers and officials heard his words, the king sought to put him to death. But Uriah heard of it and fled in fear to Egypt. " King Jehoiakim sent men after him. "They brought Uriah out of Egypt and took him to King Jehoiakim, who had him struck down with a sword and his body thrown into the burial place of the common people."

One of my life themes is always seeking not to control my life and do things under my own strength, but instead letting God take control and following His far superior wisdom. This is really hard to do. If I found out the Chilean government wanted to kill me or imprison me, I'd want to go hide away in another country to "be safe." But the safest place in the world is always exactly where God wants you to be. Uriah's course of action makes a lot more "sense" to us. But Jeremiah's course of action... trusting in God to take care of him, and standing behind his message was the much safer and more powerful course of action. I pray that I can have the boldness to follow God's plan no matter how much "sense" another course of action makes.

Equally here, it's easy to want to "fix" situations I find dissatisfying. I've been striving a lot in making friends instead of enjoying to experiences I have had. The meat and potatoes of this passage is trust, though, and I'm excited to start trusting God more with my time and activities here.

Love you all!

Top 3 reasons to observe lent

Growing up Catholic and later becoming a non-denominational Christian, I've seen an interesting spread of attitudes and practices surrounding lent. For the most part, Catholics have the strictest view, with dietary customs such as not eating between meals and giving up meat on Fridays. Every Catholic church I've attended has had a positive view on giving something up for lent, and using the 40 days prior to repent and prepare one's heart for the amazing blessing that happens on Easter. The six Sundays during lent are days of celebration, and these days actually ARE NOT included in the 40 day count. The Byzantine tradition, including Orthodox Greek churches do consider Sundays part of lent, and therefore believers must continue their practices through the weekend.

During my life-church adventure, I attended two Lutheran churches, both of which still practiced lent. In non-denominational churches (with pretty strong baptist roots), we did not. Neither The Father's House NY, a church I attended for about one year, nor my current church, Pittsford Community Church, have any special practices for lent.

I looked online to see the baptist view towards lent and found this extremely slandersome post:
http://jwest.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/why-baptists-dont-observe-lent/

I'd like to reply with the top 3 reasons to observe lent.
1) Lenten observers enter into a continued tradition of people who fast and pray. Until the protestant reformation, nearly every Christian practiced a life of repentence and sacrifice for the 40 days preceding Easter. Moses spent 40 days with God on Mount Sinai, and Jesus fasted and prayed for 40 days before He began His ministry. By fasting and praying more strongly before Easter, we get to join into this communion of believers in faith and in practice.
2) Lent gives us time to really focus on repentence. I do agree with Jim West that repentence needs to be practiced 24/7/365, but we are human, and lent gives us a time to sharpen our focus. If we really try to do something 24/7/365, we can't and we lose focus. With God's help we can focus a whole lot more, and learn discipline that transfers to the other 325 days.
3) God knew exactly the amount of time we needed to change our habits and customs. By omiting small things that deter us from the life God would want for us, these changes are often times long-lasting. It takes a conscious decision to start a habit again after a successful lenten season.

That being said, Jim West needs to tone down. We are all Christians and the ways we express our honor and reverence to God are all important as long as they serve their purpose.

I have yet to see that 12 newborns actually get switched in the hospital daily

I read a spam-type email today with random facts, and one of the ones that shocked me said:
"On average, 12 newborns go home from the hospital with the wrong family daily." If this is a statistic for the United States, I have yet to find the information. But what I did find interesting was the following article designed to help you prevent baby-snatching.

Maybe I've been pampered living in a small mid-westernish town my whole life, but I've never seen so many people worried about things getting stolen. That would honestly be my only complaint about Santiago so far... a general distrust in one's fellow man. Everyone on the subway acts like everyone else is out to get them!

*Update on 8/1/11: the statistic is actually that 12 to 18 babies will get switched yearly. That is only 6-9  pairs of children.

Straight out of Curious George

It makes me really happy to know that some people pursuit the impossible. Here is the story of a professional hang glider who rigged up a helium balloon chair. It only cost him $1500 in fines.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,376721,00.html

Key Points about Fundamentalism

Our flight to Portland was cancelled today, so I took time to catch up on interesting reading. I read an essay entitled The origins of fundamentalism: toward a historical perspective by Ernest Sandeen (1968). In reading I realized a few important things:

1) I am NOT a fundamentalist.
2) Theological fads are only as influential as the people who support them.
3) I am terrified of writing. (This blog should help)

So what is fundamentalism? And how did it start?

Lyman Stewart, a chief stock holder in the Union Oil Company of Los Angeles devoted his life to bolstering the Christian faith through the printed word. Both he and his brother published a series of twelve pamphlets entitled "The Fundamentals." They printed and distributed over 175,000 copies of these pamphlets in the U.S. The essays they contained came as a reaction to Modernism, a theology of putting scriptures into their historical context and only living by the standards which seem to still hold true today.

Two groups reacted very strongly to this mentality by falling back on biblical innerancy. These groups, the dispensationalists and the Princeton Theologians, united to prove the bible's innerancy. They asserted 3 main points:
1) Verbal inspiration of the Bible
2) The inerrancy or every reference, statistic, and quotation in the Bible
3) 1&2 hold true for the "original autographs" of the Bible.
These three main points became the tenets of fundamentalism.

The "five points" of fundamentalism come from the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1910. This group never intended for their five points to become the benchmarks of fundamentalism. The five points Christianity has now adopted as its "fundamentals" are:
1) the inerrancy of scripture
2) the virgin birth
3) a substitutionary atonement (Jesus died to forgive all of our sins)
4) Jesus' physical resurrection
5) Christ's miracle-working power

Despite the youthfulness of dispensationalism and the Princeton theology, fundamentalism became the twentieth century theology most closely resembling nineteenth century theology. Fundamentalists focused on returning to the practices of the early New Testament churches, just as their fathers had.

Who were the dispensationalists? Sandeen did an excellent job explaining their beliefs:

"Dispensationalism refers primarily to the division of history into periods of time, dispensations, seven of which are usually named. The Scofield Reference Bible, the most influential dispenser of dispensationalism in America, named them Innocence (the Garden of Eden), Conscience (Adam to Noah), Human Government (Noah to Abraham), Promise (Abraham to Moses), Law (Moses to Christ), Grace (Christ through the present to the judgement of the world), and the Kingdom or Millenium. Proponents argued that God judged man not on an absolute and unchanging standard but according to ground rules especially devised for each dispensation. For example, under the dispensation of Grace, men are required to repent and turn in faith to Christ, while under that of Law they were commanded to obey the law."

Overall, an interesting essay with a lot of pedantics. I am not a fundamentalist because I have a much looser hold on the inerrancy of the scriptures, and a lot of rebellion against the absolute authority of the scriptures. The scriptures have about as much authority in my life as my father does right now. I have no lack of respect for everything they say, but I really like reserving the ability to pull rank and choose to set some parts aside for the time being.

I don't even know if I want to pray that that changes. I currently live like a fundamentalist, but I don't want to be one, if that makes any sense.

Consolidation: Proust was a Neuroscientist : part 1

Half of the reason why I started this blog is because I realized that I keep forgetting really awesome information because I don't take the time to assimilate it and write it down in my own words. Ergo, I plan to write simple summaries of the things I learn in my reading endeavors this summer.

Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
Cool facts:

• In 1968, Dr. Motoo Kimura discovered that the rate of genetic change in species undergoing natural selection was 100 times the rate predicted by the equation of evolution.
• Why do identical twins have different personalities? Firstoff, the process of going from DNA to a complete structure doesn't happen the same way twice. This is why your left thumbprint differes from your right. It also explains why different parts of identical twins' brains will light up on the same task, and the brains will actually have different structures.
  
• Fred Gage discovered little pieces of junk DNA that jumps around the genome called retrotransposons. These scraps insert themselves into 80 percent of our brain cells, arbitrarily altering the cells' genetic program. The chaos contributes to our individuality.
• MSG specifically adds the flavor "umami," a Japanese word meaning "deliciousness." It is not dangerous for one's health.
  
• Odor receptors encompass over 3% of the human genome.
• Philsopher Henri Bergson's speech at Columbia University cause NYC's first traffic jam in 1913.
• Every time a rat recalls information, it must reform the idea and recode it, otherwise the memory shall be forever lost. Rats injected with a protein-blocker at memory retrieval lost long-term conditioned fear responses.
• It takes 3 months to die of sleep deprivation. Extreme insomnia, mad cow disease, and excellent memory skills are all caused by prions, or pieces of protein that can change form and function on their own.
  
• van Gogh drank kerosene, turpentine and absinthe on a regular basis.
  
• 10 times more fibers connect the cortex to the eye than the bundle that connect the eye to the cortex (all via the LGN).