Sunday, October 26, 2014

Which Quotes Will Be Famously Poignant 100 Years From Now? One Idea.

The title expresses my whole thought. And here is the quote-du-jour that sparked it.
Our society is rapidly not just drifting away from its once-biblical foundation, but it is actively and aggressively attacking this foundation. For years, Christian leaders, including myself, have been saying that we are heading toward a time when Christians are going to be persecuted and even jailed for what they believe. Many people thought we were crazy, that nothing like that would ever happen in America, but it’s happening right now before our eyes. Ken Ham, CEO of Answers in Genesis
More food for thought at the link. Lots of other possible quotes.

I think of Dietrich Bonhoffer's quote, "silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to act is to act." (paraphrased), which references the Nazi Holocaust. Bonhoffer was executed just a few months before the war ended, but his stark stand on behalf of the oppressed has been memorialized in this generation as his words have made the rounds on social media in connection with the modern day abortion holocaust. 70-some years removed.

What passionate statements will become increasingly poignant in future decades, as 'evil men, being deceived, go from worse to worse?'

~ Rak Chazak

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Personal Life Update: Car Trouble Revisited, and what I've been doing instead of blogging

Blitz upload, let's go:

1. My "big, slow and ugly" recently started making scary noises. Those scary noises were diagnosed to be chunks broken off from the catalytic converter, which had gotten stuck in the muffler. Hence, the symptoms weren't associated with either steering, braking, shifting or accelerating, consistently. They rattle at random based on the exhaust movement, and sound like metal scraping on the ground behind the car, but are functionally harmless, and the car's driving is hardly affected.

2. More important is the back tires, which I learned from an older man at church that the reason the tire guys were able to tell me they needed replacement in under two seconds, was because there's this neat little thing called a "wear indicator" in between the treads. Much like how you aim a gun with iron sights by lining up the ball at the tip of the muzzle with the two bars by the action, the wear indicator will show you that you need to replace the tires when the treads get worn down to an equal height with that rubber strip.

3. A lot of the time when a long time goes between blog posts, it's because I play video games in the morning instead of visiting the library. Or I take my day off to work on a project instead of sitting at a wifi location all day like I'm doing today. However, the dead periods in January were because I was walking 5 miles back and forth to work because I didn't have the car yet at that point.

4. This last week, though, I decided to have a little fun and delve into some dating sites, not completely seriously, but to see what was out there and mainly because I was starved for human interaction. My coworkers at Fast Food Chain don't make for intelligent conversation. On a related note, I've learned a lot of ebonics, such as the proper application and definition of the words "ratchet," "bae," "turnt up," "wuz good," "real talk," "right though," and I've learned that there aren't wives any more, just "baby mammas."

5. Now that I'm done with that little investigation, I've gotten someone to talk to and intend to pursue making friends. It's interesting, all the very good friends I have from college I met online first. This really isn't that out of the ordinary, then, for me. It's just more fun because it began expressedly under the auspices of looking for someone to be in a relationship. This is hardly to suggest that I'm manipulating the poor lady, everything I do is very real. It's just that every part of life is an adventure for me. It's thrilling to see where it goes.

And in other news, today I got some information with regard to what I'm considering in terms of career advancement, and plan to be making some phone calls in the coming week. A deacon at church asked me to meet with him a day or two ago, since I hadn't been to 'sunday school' (not the word the church uses but the essence of it) for a couple of weeks, and he's offered to help hook me up with other folks who can give career advice, and for that matter, cheaper tires. Church is really intended to be a family. It's pretty neat what you can benefit from just by being connected.

And life goes on.

~ Rak Chazak

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

The Religion of Transformers: Age of Extinction

Transformers IV finally came out on Redbox and I immediately rented it to watch at home. Well worth the wait. I enjoy action movies, for several distinct reasons.

  1. They're creatively stimulating. Intricate CGI gives an active mind much to fantasize about.
  2. You'll therefore get something out of it even if the plot or dialogue is terrible.
  3. Because of the emphasis on aliens, robots, war etc, there's less unnecessary sexual content.
  4. Because of dealing with very big themes and archetypes, the sparse dialogue is more significant. It can therefore be amazing (Jurassic Park, Dark Knight), or far off the mark.

In this case, with my senses highly attuned to detecting religious themes, I found several seemingly innocuous scenes which could, depending on a particular person's political/religious passions, be enormously significant, either as a slight or as an affirmation.

These go all across the board. Allow me, briefly, to show you where and what they are, to hopefully dazzle you with content you might not have noticed when you watched it.


Possible Theme: Diversity and Multiculturalism v. Conformity and Tradition

This is not an evenly matched equation, I grant you. But yet this is what gets bandied about in higher academia. Diversity is the golden calf and golden goose egg both, for universities these days. There is an unquestioned assumption that geographic diversity among students means better things for society. This has replaced the archaic notion that diversity of thought improves education by increasing students' exposure to a variety of ideas through lively discourse, that the most persuasive arguments may carry the day.

And why is this set in opposition to "tradition?" Because it's held in these circles that people who are "opposed to diversity" are religious hardliners who are all about following outmoded rules and such.

This is a portion of the cultural message from the left that I've been exposed to via student organizations in my college experience. That's why it stood out to me, when this line of dialogue occurred:
"All this species mixing with species, it upsets the cosmic balance. The Creators, they don't like it. They built you to do what you were told."
This is put in the mouth of the archvillain of the movie, and in one fell swoop, it ties the ideas of racism in with obedience to one's Creator. Subliminal promotion of the belief that the Bible and Christianity are/promote racist ideologies? Or do you disagree?

Next up,