TULIP -- A Quick Breakdown

Since this will be an introduction and not an exhaustive polemic, I will utilize diverse prooftexts to demonstrate the truth of each point concisely in a way that makes sense. I'll cite source texts that show where the doctrine is taught in the Bible, and I'll give a philosophical angle as well, to demonstrate the logical consequences of rejecting each point. TULIP is an acronym, its points referring to five fundamental concepts about salvation as set forth in the Bible, and these concepts describe the theological system colloquially known as 'Calvinism,' after John Calvin, the Reformer who most clearly articulated them together for the first time.

Total Depravity

The short and sweet: All humans are inherently sinful by nature, from the earliest moment of their creation. This depravity assures the following: man is not incapable of doing good, but he is incapable of not doing evil. 

The Biblical basis: 

Isaiah 64:6 All of our righteous deeds are like filthy rags in the sight of God.

Matthew 7:17-18 Every good tree bears good fruit, but every corrupt tree bears evil fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

Psalm 58:3 The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth.

Ephesians 2:1, Ephesians 2:5 Man is dead in his trespasses and sins.

Romans 3;10-11 As it is written, "there is none righteous, no not one. There are none who seek after God."

Romans 8:7 The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit itself to God, because it cannot.

The common sense: All that is needed is for a person to live a little while in this world for them to encounter irrefutable evidence before their very eyes that all of humanity, individually, is horrendously and inescapably internally corrupt. Good people don't do bad things. Everybody does bad things. Therefore nobody is a good person. It is self-evident. The only way to avoid the conclusion that we are not good is by rationalizing that "bad" things are not really "bad." No one in their right noggin can deny that these "good people" do bad things, but to hold on to the hope that we are good (only necessary if you believe that people must earn heaven by being good), the evil that we do must be minimized. It gets explained away as merely being 'imperfections,' 'flaws,' 'mistakes,' etc. But in doing this, we deny the existence of sin, and that denies the motive for Christ to have gone to the Cross. What would be the point of dying for the sins of mankind if mankind could redeem itself by being good? Ignoring the blatantly obvious depravity of man is to declare that Jesus died in vain.

PS the only reason man can do any good at all is by the grace of God that enables him to. So a more forceful presentation of total depravity would hold that man is incapable of doing any good by his own efforts, which is utterly true as well. 

Unconditional Election

The short and sweet: God chooses who will be saved. They do not attain salvation themselves. It is God who initiates and man who responds, not the other way around. Salvation is therefore a free gift and no one can say that they deserved it, or that they accomplished it through some effort or desire on their part.

The Biblical basis:  

Ephesians 1:4-5 "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, "

Romans 9:15-17 "15 For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” 16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy."

The common sense: Then, in the fulness of time, He purchased me with His blood; He let His heart run out in one deep gaping wound for me long ere I loved Him. Yea, when He first came to me, did I not spurn Him? When He knocked at the door, and asked for entrance, did I not drive Him away, and do despite to His grace? Ah, I can remember that I full often did so until, at last, by the power of His effectual grace, He said, "I must, I will come in;" and then He turned my heart, and made me love Him. But even till now I should have resisted Him, had it not been for His grace. Well, then since He purchased me when I was dead in sins, does it not follow, as a consequence necessary and logical, that He must have loved me first? Did my Saviour die for me because I believed on Him? No; I was not then in existence; I had then no being. Could the Saviour, therefore, have died because I had faith, when I myself was not yet born? Could that have been possible? Could that have been the origin of the Saviour's love towards me? Oh! no; my Saviour died for me long before I believed. "But," says someone, "He foresaw that you would have faith; and, therefore, He loved you." What did He foresee about my faith? Did He foresee that I should get that faith myself, and that I should believe on Him of myself? No; Christ could not foresee that, because no Christian man will ever say that faith came of itself without the gift and without the working of the Holy Spirit. I have met with a great many believers, and talked with them about this matter; but I never knew one who could put his hand on his heart, and say, "I believed in Jesus without the assistance of the Holy Spirit."
I am bound to the doctrine of the depravity of the human heart, because I find myself depraved in heart, and have daily proofs that in my flesh there dwelleth no good thing. If God enters into covenant with unfallen man, man is so insignificant a creature that it must be an act of gracious condescension on the Lord's part; but if God enters into covenant with sinful man, he is then so offensive a creature that it must be, on God's part, an act of pure, free, rich, sovereign grace. ~ C H Spurgeon, A Defense of Calvinism

Limited Atonement

The short and sweet: Jesus died on the Cross for everyone who would ever believe in Him and be saved. He did not die for all people who ever lived. Consequently, He does not bear the sins of the damned, but only of the saved. The damned bear the punishment for their own sins.

The Biblical basis:  

Isaiah 53:11 the righteous One (Christ) will make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities.

John 3:16 ...whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

The common sense: This is one of the easiest ones for me to understand, to be honest. Clearly it would be pointless to say that whoever believes will be saved, in John 3:16, if those who do not believe will also be saved. And there's the rub. Does anyone truly believe that there will be unsaved people in heaven? No Christian can, this is heresy. If someone is in heaven, they are saved, but to be saved they must believe, and it is obvious that not all people (to make an understatement!) believe. So, then, did Jesus die for the sins of those in hell? He couldn't, that would be double jeopardy. It would be unjust of God to punish someone for their sins if Jesus was already punished for them! So if there are any people in hell, then they are dying for their own sins, and that logically means that Jesus did not. Jesus only died for the sins of those who would believe in Him. 

Irresistible Grace

The short and sweet: If God wants you to do something, you're gonna do it.

The Biblical basis:  

John 6:29 this is the work of God, that you believe Him whom He has sent.

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.

John 6:37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me

John 6:44 No man can come to Me unless the Father draws Him
The common sense: Of all the points of Calvinism, this is the one that seems to matter the least to me, because it's something I already take for granted. Of course God gets His way, it's writ into the whole concept of omnipotence. If God wanted to make something happen and we had the ability to prevent Him, then God would be too weak to accomplish His own will. What a puny and futile view of God that is! No, clearly if God intends to do something, then He will do it. If He doesn't, then He wasn't committed to doing it. Simple. So let's apply this: if God wants to save someone, can they resist His draw, and refuse to be saved? No. Does this mean that God saves people against their will? Here's the interesting thing: God saves EVERYBODY against their will. God isn't unfair in acting against their will, though, because everybody He 'overrules' is desiring things that will hurt them. God lets the un-elect get exactly what they want! Remember the T in TULIP: nobody wants to go to heaven. Sure they do, they just want to go on their own terms and they don't want God to be there. This is everybody prior to being saved. So when God saves somebody, He does what He knows is best for them, even though they don't agree at first! The only people who would have the right to complain that God contradicted their 'free will' are those who are saved, and the irony is that these people are in the least likely position to complain, because they received an amazing gift that they didn't deserve because of it. It's a humbling thing.

Mark Driscoll explained it perfectly in this video, by way of an illustration.

Perseverance of the Saints


The short and sweet: if you are saved, you will never become un-saved. You can be confident that you will be with God in eternity. The corollary is this: those who appeared to have been saved but now are not, were never actually saved in the first place

The Biblical basis:  

1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.

John 6:37,39 37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. ..39 This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.

Hebrews 6:4-6 4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.
The common sense: Again, it's double jeopardy. If Jesus died for your sins, is it possible for you to "undo" that by falling away from the faith? And if you did, and came back to the faith, then you would be crucifying Christ again--He would have died twice for your sins, which would be an injustice. No, either you were saved before, and while you seemed to fall away you were still saved, or you were not saved in the first place. This is known as a false conversion, and that's also Biblical. 

Matthew 7:21-23 21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

There's so much to say on these subjects that I almost feel rushed to finish this post. But hopefully this cursory overview does the doctrines justice.

~ Rak Chazak

Further reading: 
http://www.gotquestions.org/total-depravity.html
http://www.gotquestions.org/unconditional-election.html
http://www.gotquestions.org/irresistible-grace.html
http://www.spurgeon.org/calvinis.htm
http://www.carm.org/calvinism
http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/articles/what-we-believe-about-the-five-points-of-calvinism

Word Study: Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me

It's time again to do another short word study to gain a deeper insight into the message of the Bible.

What is "God?"

The word "God" in the first of the Ten Commandments is the Hebrew word Elohim, defined here at BlueLetterBible.com, together with a list of the instances where it is used in the Old Testament. There is also a word study on that site here. Elohim is a plural word (-im is the plural ending to words in Hebrew), and always refers to the Trinity when used of God in the Bible. The plural always takes a singular noun when referring to God, also, driving home the point of the existence of the Trinity by grammatical evidence. Likewise, the singular word El is used of the individual persons of the Trinity, the Father, Spirit and Son, as shown in the BLB word study linked.

I briefly touched on the meaning of Elohim in a previous blog post. The word connotes strength and when referring to humans can be understood to mean "mighty ones," powerful people whom even in Modern English could be symbolically spoken of as "gods among men," without anything being lost in translation. The word is translated in various places as 'judges' or 'rulers'

Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods

What does this mean?

Let's look at it grammatically. 'other gods' implies a comparison rather than a contrast with God. The 'other gods' are clearly presented as false gods, in context of the Ten Commandments, but the word Baalim (a catch-all term for false gods), the plural form of Baal, which means "lord" and was the primary [implied false] deity of the Canaanites, as defined here, was not used, since that would imply that God was a false god, grammatically speaking, because of the usage of "other." 

Why is this significant?

I think it's because if God had inspired Exodus 20:3 to read "thou shalt have no false gods before me," then there would undoubtedly have been those who would have claimed, "God, we don't believe in any false gods [baalim], we simply worship 'true' gods [elohim] in addition to you; is that so wrong?" By not merely forbidding "false gods," but forbidding the worship of any conceivable deity of any kind God closes all loopholes and makes no excuses possible.

Application

Yet, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox today put church "saints" [elohim*] before God and worship them.

Others put charismatic figures such as politicians, celebrities, etc as their [elohim] in their life, which they worship in the sense that worship consists of respecting and obeying your god, desiring to please your god, and looking to your god for guidance and hope in accomplishing a solution to whatever problem you're praying to them for their aid in fixing.

And most of the rest think so highly of themselves because of persistent self-esteem campaigns and the Gospel of The Inherent Goodness of Man that they are their own elohim, the highest ruler and authority in their life to which they give deference above all other earthly and heavenly authorities.

God says that no matter what sort of "mighty one" you can conjure up, whether you recognize it as a "false god" or not, it is wrong of you. Whatever your alternate object of worship, it is not worthy and you should cast it aside and worship only God, Elohim-Elyon, the Most High God. 

The Call of the Individual

What is your idol today? We all have temptations. Even if you have no person or earth system that you put your faith in for deliverance, perhaps your tendency is like mine, the most simple kind: that subtle pull of your inclination to worship self, to consider your own wants first and to be the final arbiter of what course of action you will take. No matter how often you've mentally handed the reins over to God and repented of trying to be your own God, there are always improvements to be made. For the Christian believer, this is part of sanctification. And if you are not Christian--if you have never yet stopped serving "other gods [elohim]"--or if you are not sure where you stand, may I encourage you to seek to be saved? The same website I've been utilizing for this post has a concise and clear explanation of what it is your soul needs, even though it's our natural tendency to do just the opposite. I encourage you to give it a read: How to Know God.

~ Rak Chazak

* in context of this blog post. Not to be confused with the actual old testament word for saint, Qaddiysh

Update: Going to Church

I took the first step and have gone to church the last two weeks. I have to wake up early since I couldn't catch the late service due to starting work at 12. It's nevertheless nice to be on day shift, since that lets me both go to bed and wake up at reasonable times, at least in theory. I've already seen some people I recognize, and maybe I'll get the chance to get to know them better now. I went, in honesty, partially motivated by an attitude of being tired of just going to work and going home, and feeling a need for socialization. I think that's one of the purposes of Church. It's a place for believers to interact with people they can connect with -- just like how all people naturally form cliques between those who are like them. The difference is that Church prevents this from being a clique based on likes and dislikes, appearance, origin, etc, but makes the distinguishing characteristic of the fellowship a shared theology. That makes it very intellectually stimulating to me, and I hope to have some in-depth conversations with people soon. Another thing I've noticed is that the only other guy my age (but 5 years older) is married to one of the young women in the group. It reminded me of the statistic, that the demographic least likely to be found in church is an early or mid-20s male.

In other news, I learned some plumbing terms as I watched a guy replace the 'bladder tank' and 'pressure switch' for our house. We only lived one day without water, and thankfully it was my last day off (also why I didn't post last week), but it reminded me to be mindful of the things that I have stocked at home, because in an emergency, you can't go to the store and casually get some stuff together to prepare for it, because it's already happening.

Tonight's my t.v. night. I watch Person of Interest because it's got one of the most intricate running plots (good writing), and the nature of it being the type of action drama that it is makes it refreshingly void, by comparison, of the stuff that makes me want to turn off the tv that I find in other places, whether it be extreme lefty-politics or unnecessary sexual lewdness. Its late time slot is forgivable since it now comes after the NCIS/LA shows. Maybe tonight I'll work in the kitchen, keep the computer off, and watch all three shows.

Life goes on!

~ Rak Chazak

Spurgeon on Calvin

I loved the short quote in this, the first time I heard it. It encouraged me, because I had been researching Calvinism and was unsure whether it had been believed through history, or was a recent invention. What had "big-name" pastors and preachers of the past said about it? Spurgeon was a name I'd heard mentioned positively in the theological circles I'd been crossing into. So this served to unify my understanding, and conclude that "these guys are on the same team. We are on the same team."

If anyone should ask me what I mean by a Calvinist, I should reply, "He is one who says, Salvation is of the Lord." I cannot find in Scripture any other doctrine than this. It is the essence of the Bible. "He only is my rock and my salvation." Tell me anything contrary to this truth, and it will be a heresy; tell me a heresy, and I shall find its essence here, that it has departed from this great, this fundamental, this rock-truth, "God is my rock and my salvation." What is the heresy of Rome, but the addition of something to the perfect merits of Jesus Christ—the bringing in of the works of the flesh, to assist in our justification? And what is the heresy of Arminianism but the addition of something to the work of the Redeemer? Every heresy, if brought to the touchstone, will discover itself here. I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor.

The website I chose to use for the source text is Spurgeon.org. Please read the whole sermon, called "In Defense of Calvinism."

~ Rak Chazak

Poem: Awe

I wrote this poem over text to a friend one night when I was walking the dog before bed and looking up at the stars.

                   AWE

The airplanes flying overhead

In contrast to my waiting bed

Bespeak no comfort, only awe

And ‘mind me of the sight I saw

The night before, when in the chill

Of falling Winter I stood still

And contemplated yet once more

The wonders which remain in store

The Maker of the stars above

Has promised to bequeath in love

To those who hold him dear at heart

A grander world in which t’ take part

If knowing how enormous all

The stars are makes you feel so small

As to be speechless at the sight

Of brilliant pinpricks in the night

Then let your wide eyes squint in light

Of Him who made both day and night

And whom, like stars, we know in part

Because of the surrounding dark

For that which makes you stare amazed

Is not the spots that color space

But what they say about the source

Who placed and set them on their course

If nature so strikes awe in men

That they revere it, even when

It proves itself an unfit king,

Then what of Him who made all things?

Should not the God of nature too

Strike awe in hearts of men like you?

And unlike nature, God does not

Consider us a ‘pale blue dot’

It’s true He wants you to feel small

When you are deep in nature’s thrall

It’s so that you’ll depend on Him

Since power comes not from within.

I've noticed that the Orion constellation now contains the "scabbard" stars, but when I looked for them all summer I couldn't see them. I wonder if there's an astronomical explanation for this? That perhaps the sky is clearer in the winter and the longer nights means that there is less light and dust pollution that obscures fainter stars. At any rate, despite the cold, I'm enjoying my nighttime walks a lot right now, since the sky is rarely overcast.

~ Rak Chazak

Video Post: Discernment & Duck Dynasty

I used to pray for wisdom, in my mid to late teens. I was inspired by the way that God responded to Solomon's request for wisdom. Clearly the better thing to ask the Giver for is not things, but the correct understanding of how to utilize the things you have. I was amazed, years later, to consider that the end result of all the theological, historical and scientific education I'd gotten with regard to Biblical truth online had been an answer to the prayer I had made a habit of praying on night walks by the road. My mind is bursting with valuable, helpful information about an extremely wide and deep assortment of topics concerning the Christian Faith, and my concern now is how to best use this knowledge now that I have it, so that the last word won't be that all of the facts I knew were simply random trivia.

Discernment is the next step of wisdom. Whereas wisdom is the proper application of knowledge, discernment is the accurate and consistent application of wisdom. Let's say you could wisely conclude that a course of action is appropriate. But if you never took the time to reach that conclusion, and never acted, then your wisdom was in vain, because you didn't use it. Suppose that you know that certain song lyrics are not appropriate for your children to hear, but you don't know that your child is listening to a singer who employs such lyrics. You have the knowledge to determine what the lyrics are. You have the wisdom to determine that your child shouldn't be influenced by such music. But you lacked the discernment to identify the bad lyrics under your nose so as to take action against letting your child listen to them. This 'last step' is what I want to improve on, because my great fear is that I won't successfully identify and separate what's good from what's bad, and everything "in between," and reap the consequences of that inability.

My new prayer is for discernment. And to show an example of what I mean by drawing a distinction between "wisdom" and "discernment," please watch the following video. I have the knowledge of what is orthodox soteriology (the doctrine of salvation). I have the wisdom to know that I shouldn't promote people as Christian brothers whose doctrine is heretical on the topic of soteriology. But I am uncertain that I could identify, on my own, that a certain person is espousing a heretical soteriology, if it wasn't directly and obviously stated.

That's where men like Todd Friel come in. I discovered him first when I investigated whether Roman Catholicism was authentic Christianity or not, and someone had uploaded a video of him comparing Catholic and Christian positions. I liked his style and the information delivery in each of his short video uploads I would find, so I've eventually come to consider him an online, impersonal mentor figure in my Christian walk. Every young person ideally should have an older, more mature Christian of the same gender from whom to receive advice and take cues from as they model the Christian walk for you, so that you can grow in the faith, etc etc. I'm still working on finding such a relationship in person, but thanks to the Internet, I've been able to benefit from Todd's podcasts and video clips from his show, Wretched, and continue to polish up on my theology and practice. He has seemed to me on more than one occasion to serve the purpose of a theological watchdog, on the alert for errors, heresy, and other dumb-but-not-damning silliness that ought to be avoided. Following is a video clip of him helpfully analyzing a segment of Phil Robertson talking about salvation. Phil is one of the "Duck Dynasty" characters, which is the most popular reality show of all time, and their family's faith is bound to be a huge influence in America going forward. So just what do they believe? The nuance is very important, and Todd explains it below. Please check it out.

~ Rak Chazak

Stay Away From My Penis! What the Government Has Against Uncut Guys (Pics)

                This is shamelessly titled to hopefully show up in search queries by people looking for internet pornography. And yes, there are pictures. Here’s one:

                This is an image I created in Photoshop myself so as to avoid potential copyright issues, which I’ll use to identify posts which will discuss sensitive or personal subject matter. It will alert people who may be discouraged from reading something that they think is “TMI” (too much information) or that would make them feel awkward or uncomfortable. For extremely intensive (one could say ‘descriptively explicit’) blog posts, I’ll utilize a different image, one with an exclamation point instead of a period. 

                Today’s discussion will require the latter identifier. From the title, you may have guessed that ‘uncut’ refers to someone who has not been circumcised. Circumcision is the process of cutting off the foreskin of a penis. For those who may not know what a foreskin is, imagine the texture of your cheek, inside and out, but with the thickness of the thin edge of your ear. It covers the whole glans penis (the purple/red part) but can be pulled back to completely uncover it, where it then can sit rolled up against the back edge of the head of the penis, quite similar to how a rolled-up pantleg or shirt sleeve is prevented from unfurling past the knee or elbow. The immediate benefit of a foreskin is that it protects the tip of the penis like a sheath protects a knife’s blade, or a cap protects lipstick. Both by reducing sensitivity and to a lesser extent by keeping dirt out. This is great for a guy who doesn’t want to use a restroom and have something splash back up and hit the vulnerable parts. That would be like getting something nasty on your eye, rather than on your eyelid, wherefrom you can then wash it off, since it just hit the skin.

                Now that the stage is set, with the reader understanding why the presence of a foreskin is more sanitary than the lack of one, it’s time to get to the point. Apparently some educated idiot has gotten the bright idea to claim, in alarmist tones, that having a foreskin makes you more at risk of STDs. The solution, they promise, is to promote circumcision among males, particularly in Africa (because of the HIV epidemic there).

                But wait. How does the presence of a foreskin make one more at risk of STD transmission than a ‘snipped’ guy? Doing a little digging reveals that the science behind the claim is thus: the foreskin has a lot of blood vessels, and since it has very thin and tender skin on the inside, small tears from sexual activity would allow infectious agents to enter the bloodstream and make the person sick. But wait. Where would these infections be coming from? An infected person. And how are they transmitted? Through sexual activity. So what is really going on here?

                A foreskin is only going to “put” a person at higher risk of contracting a disease if the uncut guy is having sex with someone who has a sexually transmitted disease! If you’re not having sex with STD-positive people—for example, if you’re not having sex with anyone at all—then no problem! It’s the wanton sexual activity that’s the risky behavior, having a foreskin isn’t what makes it risky. Snipping yourself is a non-solution that doesn’t make you immune, just reduces the chance that you’ll get what’s coming to you for doing the wrong thing. In that way, it’s just like a condom. It doesn’t make your unsafe behavior suddenly become “safe sex.” It just slaps a 98% chance rating on what was previously a 50/50 or 100% guarantee that you would become a victim of the consequences to your own bad choices. There is absolutely no need to get snipped if you aren’t, just like there’s absolutely no need to ever use a condom, if you’re doing it right. If you’ve gotten married to someone, after years of knowing them, and being totally confident that their sexual history is either nonexistent or at least hasn’t left them with a disease, then there is no necessity to adopt “risk-reducing” behaviors, because you aren’t “at risk” in the first place. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to be afraid of that? That’s just one of the many wonderful benefits to submitting to God’s rules for human behavior. Sexual purity and monogamy. Risk-free sex with no strings attached.

PS So what did the government have to do with this? They’re promoting short-term fixes to a problem that requires a spiritual and not a medical solution. This government would NEVER recommend Biblical morality, that is to say, abstinence from promiscuous sexual behavior, as a way to avoid the spread of STDs. Instead they would recommend “safe sex,” which is code for minimizing, but not removing, the inherent risks that are part and parcel of sexual promiscuity. The only 100% guaranteed way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases is to not engage in sexual activity outside of a marriage that fits the Biblical model. This isn’t popular or politically correct. But people have always hated the truth when it gets between them and their personal gratification. This is nothing new. What would be new would be if people started rebelling against the norm and chose to refrain from the things that they weren’t expected to refrain from. Imagine the attention that such a divergence would garner. 

~ Rak Chazak

Proof I'm not making stuff up, with regard to the government-promoted circumcision program:

http://open.salon.com/blog/judy_mandelbaum/2012/07/27/africas_male_circumcision_crusade_boon_or_boondoggle -- hah, this site even criticizes the methodology of the tests that led them to conclude that circumcision reduces risk!

I kinda wanna leave it there. But here's the rest of the results of the google search:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/12/01/circumcision-is-africas-best-weapon-against-aids/

http://www.avoiceformen.com/a-voice-for-men/clinton-determined-to-push-28-million-circumcisions/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/14/1160451/-The-USA-Encourages-Genital-Mutilation

http://www.avert.org/male-circumcision.htm

http://allafrica.com/stories/201207130100.html

See, I gave you links favoring circumcision and links critical. That's what it means to be unbiased. Not that you have an objective view, but that you considered all views without prejudice, before making your own decision.

Is the Name Redskins Really Racist?

My university forum is bringing up a lot of articles about racism these days. The most recent one was about the apparent (I don't watch football) controversy over the name "Redkins," where the media has found some representative of an American tribe to demand that it be removed because it's a racial slur.

Here's two of my responses. I figured they were concise and thoughtful enough to be worth a blog post.

What about the Vikings? That's racist against people of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish heritage.What about the New England Patriots? That's racist against white Americans above the Mason-Dixon Line.What about the Bengals? That's racist against Bengalis. We all know it's not about the tigers.What about the Texans? That's racist against white American southerners.Or the Cowboys for that matter? That reinforces stereotypes about white American westerners.Why is "Redskins" racist but "Chiefs" isn't?What about the 49ers? That's racist against poor white working-class gold-diggers.

No one seems to care. I declare selective outrage. 

Look at it this way: football teams pick a name that they wish to identify with in order to project an image of unity, strength and skill. Calling themselves "Redskins," as with calling themselves "Lions," "Eagles," "Giants," or "Titans," is a sign of HONOR and RESPECT of the namesake. Whoever the redskins were, clearly they were perceived as badasses who would strike fear into the heart of their enemies and achieve victory through strength and merit. That's why the name is chosen. What part of that is racist? Doesn't racism require denigration or negative implications about the supposed object? If everything said or implied is honorific or at least positive, it is the exact opposite of racism. 

and then in response to someone saying that it was a racial slur,

What makes it a racial slur? Is it because you assume that all native-american people have red skin, so that it's referring to them? Isn't that a racist assumption itself?

I want to challenge people to question themselves with this: "what IS racism?"

Is it a word? Or is it hatred and prejudice toward a group of people? If there is no prejudice, hatred, or negative connotations of any sort whatsoever, then what makes it racist except that you have personally placed the name "redskins" on your banned-words-list?

~ Rak Chazak

Near-Future Plans

Yesterday I watched Oblivion which I got from Redbox. $1.27 is way more worth it than $7 in the theater. It's probably $1.35 with tax. I've gotten used to quickly trying to tack on sales tax to the cost of things, since the prices of food at the fast food restaurant aren't the same as the final price the customer pays. I sometimes have to explain why the cost seems so much higher, so quickly figuring out a round number of how much tax they paid is helpful. The movie reminded me a bit of Terminator and Independence Day, with a little bit of Transformers and Battle:LA elements in there, too. Probably one of the few movies I've seen in a long time that didn't have an obvious religious theme in it at all (although the evil-alien-robot says "I am your God," to its human creation at the end, but that came across more as a demoralizing insult [like the pivotal point with the Reaper in Mass Effect] rather than a metaphysical claim about God's existence).

Last week and this week, I've been working on getting a number to call, or a link that would give me some solid information on what my loan repayment amount will be starting in November. I finally found a loan calculator on a website that has my information (but apparently isn't who'll be servicing the loan--servicing means to be the one to send the bills and acquire the repayments; they aren't necessarily the same people who "hold," i.e. own the loan), and I ran some income numbers to see what the differences are between the following:

Standard Repayment
Graduated Repayment
Income-Contingent Repayment
Income-Based Repayment
Pay-As-You-Earn

I need to do some more research to find out what the "catch" is for any of these and then weigh my options. I have a feeling I have to do some "exit counseling" before the loan repayment starts. No one told me. 

That's the responsibility part of maturity. Your situation might not be your fault, but it's your responsibility to take care of effectively.

In the meantime, I'll keep working, and in a few months I'll be up for a promotion. By late Spring, I could potentially be in a low-level manager position so long as I keep getting better at handling the things that the store needs taken care of for it to run properly. And by that time, I should have raised enough money to buy my own car for the first time. Then I could use it in my spare time to drive farther when looking for work, or going in for interviews. Next summer could see me with a number of different doors opened for me. Just gotta be faithful and diligent day by day until then.

That's what's going on with me. Keep the faith :)

~ Rak Chazak

Errands of the day

Today I went for a flu shot and visited the post office. When I got to the library I had a debate about evolution with the brother of someone who's my 'facebook friend,' and I gave him this link. Downloaded some Wretched podcasts with the aim of listening to them at home. It's been raining a lot, mostly in the evenings, so that when I walked the dog yesterday I actually needed to grab the umbrella.

The television lies to you. Nora O'Donnel is one of the anchorladies on CBS This Morning, and when they were interviewing a Republican congressman from Utah last week, he corrected her to say that many businesses are exempt from Obamacare, but she reiterated the lie, phrasing it thus: "businesses are already moving to comply with the law." If I didn't already know about the exemptions, I wouldn't have known that she was deceiving me.

And today I discovered that Baroque architecture is a Roman Catholic response to Protestant minimalism. Protestants, when they took over old Romanist cathedrals and chapels, did away with what they considered idolatrous decorations, and the passive-aggressive response of the Papists was to effectively say, "oh, so it bothers them that our churches are decorated with false deities? Let's really lay it on thick, then!" An excessively bombastic Eastern Orthodox person on my university's website justifies what I expect the mindset of those who commissioned the architects was. It's essentially 'short-man syndrome," where a person overcompensates with elaborate cars, houses, clothes etc to make up for something that is lacking in his life. The Roman Catholic Church decorated their churches to such a ludicrous ('baroque' means 'bizarre') extent because their physical edifices were all that they had. Their religion is empty, so they compensate with large cathedrals, acts of charity and take up offense when they feel that their religion has been disrespected. The protestants didn't have to boast in the ornamentation of their churches, because the focus of their worship and faith is their God, not any earthly thing. God doesn't need defending, so protestant worship centered on God-righteousness and not man's righteousness. There was no need to make a big show of things to impress people, because they had no insecurity--they were secure in God, and His grace was enough for them. 

~ Rak Chazak

Still here

Just letting any readers know I haven't abandoned the blog. I just don't have the time to write a post today. My schedule at work has gotten more regular, so I now have Thursdays and Fridays off. Blog posts will for the foreseeable future, then, be made on these days, so now you know when to look!

~ Rak Chazak

Sarcastic Apologetic Response of the Day

One of the characters that I met through my university forum had an excellent response to a few aggressive feminists and postmodern pro-"transgender" debaters on a discussion thread a while back. I think it was succinct and powerful enough to be worth sharing here.

If I may demand of society how it perceives me in one way, then why not in another way? What limits that principle to gender?
Why can't I demand to be perceived as a different species? So my DNA says I'm human. Who cares? Species is a social construct, just like gender. Species is genetic, while species expression is external. I choose to live as a T-Rex.

…

[omitted for conciseness]

…

[OPPONENT], if I or my ancestors make money and I become wealthy, then I am wealthy according to the natural order. If I run for office and get elected President, then I am President according to the natural order. If I am born genetically human, then I am human according to the natural order. And so on. If I am born with XY sex chromosomes, then I am a man by the natural order.

I'm a middle class male human being. Economic and genetic reality dictate those facts beyond any doubt. So if I were to declare right now that "I am a millionaire" or "I am a T-Rex" or "I am a woman", why would the first two statements be nonsense while the third wouldn't?

~ Rak Chazak

Journal Entry: Sickness and My God-Given Health

Journal Entry from earlier this week.

NOTE: Might be TMI for some people. I'm describing symptoms, so proceed at your own tolerance.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013. Day 322. C1: 1141(1214). C2: 719.

                        Pretty sure if “most people” had what I had from Sunday evening through last night and lingering but nearly gone this morning, they would’ve been out sick from work for three days and bedridden. Not to brag. I have been richly blessed with an excellent physical and genetic health from both of my parents. To this day, I have not broken a bone, had a cavity, or needed any organ removals (think tonsils and appendices). I think the last time I had a cold with a fever that I was aware of was when I ran States in Junior year for Cross Country. I found out that I’d had a fever of 101° when I arrived home—I’d walked and then run a 5K course while having a fever. My muscles were burning afterward. It was painful to sit in the car because of the discomfort to my leg and butt muscles. I didn’t do it knowingly, but it’s highly dangerous to do intense physical exercise when you have a fever. I now know a little bit of what it feels like because of that. A side note, the last time I was sick with a stomach bug was in spring 2011, which knocked me out for a few days. I’ve always been much better able to tolerate headaches than stomachaches. The heaving was so uncomfortable. If I have had a cold or flu infection at any point since high school, I’m completely unaware of it. There have been days when I haven’t felt great, sure. But because of having to work through my seasonal allergies, if I’ve had symptoms similar to that, then it’s likely that I wouldn’t have been able to recognize it as an illness. Other classmates have shared that they're sick usually 3 times a winter. I’ve been sick, on average, once every 3 winters, if the two cases I mentioned are the only ones. And if they are not, that’s an exciting thought—that my biology is on such a level as to be able to power through an infection without me even realizing that I had one! THAT is something to be continually thankful for.

                        I got a bit of pressure and a slight headache but no real sinus problems starting Sunday night, and a bit of burning in my quad muscles began then. I felt better in the morning, after taking Dayquil (actually equate’s knockoff version, but it all works), but in the mid-early afternoon, I felt a wave of nausea. I had to sit down for a bit. That didn’t continue any, although a mild-pressure headache and burning in my lower back and butt muscles as well as my quads persisted through the day until bedtime. Speaking of which, I went to bed before 8:00. A couple times during the day, I had a few nasty hocks (is that how you spell it, or is it ‘hawk?’) of phlegm from the back of my throat, which made my throat feel clear and much more pleasant. The way the big mucus-balls looked, I recognized them as things I’ve had before in the winter, unassociated with any sick feelings or fever, so I wonder if that means that it’s not connected at all to the headache, or if it means that when I have coughed up (that stuff) before, it means that I had the beginnings of a cold but got over it? That each such moment, usually in the morning, would mean that “any other person” would be sick and miss work or school, subsequently? It makes me feel oddly superhuman. I say oddly, because I’m not accustomed to thinking of myself as so different from others. But anecdotal evidence shows that other people get sick almost at the drop of a hat, whereas sickness for me is such a rare phenomenon that I don’t even know how to tell that I am sick when it comes.

                        When I was feeling really bad Sunday night, I prayed for God to make me better. I didn’t know if I was sick or just felt sick, so praying to not be sick wouldn’t help much if I wasn’t, so my prayers involved a lot of conditional statements. I asked for relief so that I wouldn’t be forced to miss work. Aside from a little bit of reduced speed, I think I was able to do my job quite well yesterday. I thought about what I’ve written above now, this morning, and considered that while a supernaturally miraculous recovery would’ve been nice/convenient, what I went through instead was certainly passable(!) if I was supposed to have been writhing in bed for three days. And if it had necessitated a miraculous intervention, that would mean that I would otherwise have in fact been sick much longer, much more severely. The lack of an obvious miracle allowed for divine Providence to show itself. Providence is, to give a short definition, the everyday ways that God is sovereign over all the minute aspects of the world and our lives, working to achieve big results through small actions, rather than drastic large-scale actions. My quick recovery and minor illness (I may not even have had a fever, though it felt like it. We couldn’t find the thermometer!) is an example of God’s providential care in my life. I’m much less familiar with the supernaturally, dramatically miraculous than I am with the providential, and I am just as much, if not more, happy/satisfied/with reason to rejoice/thankful for my experience of the latter than the former.  


~ Rak Chazak

Daily Life Update

Third Paycheck
It's nice to be making money. I looked online yesterday but I realized that I had never had any on-line profile with whoever my Stafford Loan lender is. It was the private loans that had those. I'm going to have to go hunt through the old binder to calculate how much the repayment is going to be, based on how much I was loaned. Really hoping there's a convenient phone number that's reasonably placed on a piece of paper somewhere. One of the worst things when trying to sort out financial stuff is when you can't figure out which of the dozen phone numbers you're supposed to call. And then you have to deal with a machine operator for 10 minutes before you get a real person. Anyway, what does this have to do with paychecks? Simple. The main reason I'm stocking up money right now is to have a buffer for when the loan repayments are going to begin, to save myself stress. As of right now, I don't know what the payment's going to be. So I'm putting everything except whatever goes toward food into my mental "savings" category.

Exercise Routines
I began August doing situps in bed (in bed, because it's soft. Have you ever done them on a hard floor, even on a mat, and gotten really sore on your backside? Well, that happens to me, so when I did a lot of situps back in High School, I developed a habit of doing them in bed every night, then rolling over and letting the ceiling fan cool me off). I went from 20 to 50 but slacked off a bit in the last few weeks, in all honestly probably because of the cold. I've had the fan off. Yesterday was the first day I ran my 2x1 mile distance since starting work, and boy am I sore in my quads today! I bet that's because I biked to and from work the day before, (I've been biking a lot this past month and a half for the purpose of transportation) and running rather than resting must've overworked the muscle. I made myself run because I noticed I'm inching up the scale and wanted to counteract that. At work I get to move around but there's a lot of standing in one place, which doesn't burn a lot of energy.

March of the Wooly Caterpillars
On the days when I have biked to work, I've noticed the annual migration of wooly caterpillars crossing the road, always going from East-Southeast to West-Northwest. I wonder what makes them do that. It's like they're fleeing winter. They're a harbinger of cold weather.

My Tree Transplants vs. Grubs
I moved three small loblolly pine trees from the corner of our yard two years ago, to the side yard where there aren't a lot of trees. I'm not much of a gardener but I like landscaping. I guess I just want to make bigger things. I'd rather change the topography than worry about keeping the lawn uniform. Building a hill 10 feet high and 20 by 40 feet wide/long in the back yard sounds like an exciting project! Me planting the trees is motivated by my excitement at seeing them get big over time. But now one of them appears to have died. I saw a collection of about 15 small grubs (at first they looked like caterpillars, but their head shape is beetle-like) hanging on to my biggest one, and I shook them off and threw them over the fence. I'll have to keep an eye on them. 'Would hate to lose my hard work to an insect pest infestation. 

Coworkers Gaming the System: Anecdotal Evidence of the Statistics
When I was spending my days arguing politics on my university forum, I'd often refer to statistics. Statistics can be very useful, but also very misleading. The irritating tendency of people I argued against would be to use statistics all the time to try to make points, but reject anything I said that utilized them. One example of such a statistic would be abuse of government welfare, such as unemployment benefits. I was mocked by the "older, wiser" liberals for talking about things I'd only read about, when I "hadn't experienced life" myself. This is maddeningly illogical but I'll address that another time. Here I'm going to make the point that now I have lived a little, and I have some anecdotal real-life experience to demonstrate the actuality of the general claims I made.

Two of my coworkers are gaming the system. One is only scheduled for two days a week, and they leave at 1 or 2pm, a really awkward time, if we happen to be having a rush that stretches on until 3pm. I was surprised to learn of her short hours because I'd overheard her say that she was anticipating working more when school started for her kids. I had it explained to me by another coworker that they were working as much as they could to be at the bare maximum level that they could in order to still qualify for unemployment. 

Another coworker is a promotion higher than me, and is one of the best crewmembers there. I asked someone if he'd been given an offer for promotion and he had--he had turned it down. Why? His girlfriend would lose her 'assisted living' benefits if he got the higher rate/position, whichever.

Now here's the question: can you blame them? On the one hand, they're intentionally choosing to get free money by taking less responsibility. They're incompletely ambitious. But on the other hand, if their benefits now are significantly better than the slight increase they'd get from being paid a little more per hour/working full time, respectively, then aren't they making the most rational decision, the one that's best for them? The fact that they're in a situation where they're pressured to make the decision they've made is, pure and simple, the fault of our intrusive government. It isn't the government's job to get so involved with people's lives that it makes them dependent on continual handouts. That messes with the economy and it messes with people's lives. They're stuck in a rut because they're afraid to be ambitious lest they lose. Our "benevolent overlords" have conditioned them to do that.

So who is the enemy, and who is the victim, in this? Think it over.


~ Rak Chazak

Treatise: Married Women, Turn-offs, Turn-ons, and Plato’s Forms

                        I realized something right around the time when I was beginning to enjoy Christian music and spend time with other believers on campus. There were several couples who attended Campus Crusade (now known as just “Cru”), and I was happy to see that. Rather than focus on the obvious downside (“bummer, one less fish in the sea”), seeing a happy couple in a good relationship gave me encouragement because they, by their very existence, demonstrated that a committed relationship between young Christians could work. The obvious extrapolation of this observation is that if it works for them, it can work for me. Instead of being disappointed when I see a beautiful woman who’s “taken,” I draw enjoyment from their enjoyment by being glad that God is strengthening their bond and using them as a lamp for His glory, and look forward to the day when I can experience the same joy, personally. 

Yet, I want to make clear that what I like about a young Christian couple is the fact of their relationship itself and not an attraction to the woman in the relationship—getting these two confused can lead to catastrophe, and I think that inappropriate approaches to people in relationships, both by Christians and nonchristians, is one of the root causes for a lot of strange relationship problems that exist. I acknowledge that I initially recognize the woman as an attractive person. Sin is when that becomes lust—the desire to have HER for myself, which I’d like to think I don’t often do, but I acknowledge my imperfection and won’t dare to suppose that I’m less prone to that sort of thought than any other man. What I hold to be attractive about seeing her, happy, in a loving bond, is not her but the fact that she is happy, the fact that someone like her can be happy, and the fact that there can be such a loving bond that can generate such happiness. 

Let me briefly explain Plato’s forms. Plato used his brain of brains to wonder about things like definitions—what makes a thing the thing that it is? Is it arbitrary convention or is there an abstract concept that defines it? Let’s give an example: a chair. What makes a chair a chair? Is it that it has four legs, or three, or five? Is it its shape or its material that it’s made of, or its size? Why do we recognize every new chair that we see as a chair, and not as a completely new thing, since not all chairs are exactly alike? Plato would hold that there is a form called chair that defines “chair-ness,” and describes what it means to be a chair. Chairs are destructible and material but forms are eternally existent and immutable. Every chair possesses the form of “chair-ness,” and that’s what enables us to recognize it as a chair.  This is all a complicated way of getting to my point, which is this: I am attracted to the form of marriage. It is recognizable only in actual examples of marriage, but each actual marriage possesses some quality of “marriage-ness” that points to the form marriage, which is what I’m attracted to and desire. 

When I see a happy marriage between two Christians, it is not THEIR marriage that I desire. But there is something in their marriage that points to, that “reminds” me of some quality of the ideal of marriage, and it is THAT that I want. So when I see something in this ideal of marriage displayed in an actual marriage, it gives me hope because it shows that it’s not just an unreachable abstract idea, but a concrete reality that isn’t impossible to achieve—they did, and that means that you can have it too. That’s why I can be turned off to a particular woman upon realizing that she’s in a relationship (this is true. I would almost consider it a spiritual gift, but I suspect it’s just biology or psychology), yet turned on to/by something more abstract about her that isn’t HER, but a quality that she possesses that I yearn for in my own life. I don’t want their relationship. I want a relationship like theirs. And what that really means, in Christian theology, is that I want an earthly relationship with a woman that as closely mirrors the heavenly relationship, that God has with His Church, as possible.

~ Rak Chazak