Text Treatise: Epicurus and the Problem of Error

The Problem of Evil is often easily explained by reference to the ancient Greek philosopher (mentioned by way of identification in the Bible, in Acts, where there were Epicureans and Stoics who wanted to debate with Paul) Epicurus, whose pithy presentation is presented below:

 

The problem with the Problem as stated is that it does not take into account time. Perhaps God does want to destroy evil, and will, but for the time being has a sound rationale for allowing it to persist. This is, in fact, justified by the Bible:

"The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." 2 Peter 3:9

There is also the question of evil being a necessary side effect of the free moral agency of mankind -- Love is given freely by an act of will, so making perfectly functioning automatons which lack any aspect of generosity, grace, compassion, or desire is inferior to a creation that includes beings which have the capacity to love others -- and with it the requisite capacity to choose not to.

But moving on from that, here is "The Problem of Error." It is something worth considering for anyone who claims to be Christian but does not regard the Bible as the inerrant, word for word Word of God.

Did God author the Bible, or men?

If God is not the author, then there is no guarantee of its truth.

Moreover, can God lie?

If there are untruths in the Bible, either God lied, or God is not the author. In the first case, such a being is not to be worshiped or obeyed. In the second case, who knows whether the Bible accurately depicts God or His moral Law truthfully? There is no way of knowing, so there is no reason to give it any greater weight than any other human document.

In conclusion, either God is the author of all Scripture, or it has no authority over the activities of men. And if it has no authority, why heed it?

Either the Bible is inerrant, or you have ZERO justification for the authenticity and veracity of the Christian faith. Which is akin to saying that a Christian has no reason to believe Christianity if they don't also believe the Bible. They are like all the false religious adherents in that their "feet are firmly planted in mid-air." They may be saved, but they're still being foolish.

And in many cases, they're not saved. If you believe God exists, how hard is it to believe that God can make sure that His will is known with 100% accuracy and reliability? It really isn't. So non-belief in Biblical inerrancy, while it doesn't force the conclusion that a person is a false convert (i.e. they claim to be a Christian but they aren't saved), but it is certainly strong and worrisome evidence in favor of that conclusion.

'Which is why it's so important for people to think through this issue and get with the program.

~ Rak Chazak

Text Treatise: How Do We Deserve to Be Treated by Other People?

This was a response to a friend's text. I had expressed frustration with the behavior of coworkers and she'd replied with the ever-relevant "anything better than hell is better than you deserve."

Well, there are two levels of "desserts." The one you mentioned is before me always and is a relished bulwark against pride and resentment. Then there is "what we deserve" in the sense of how other humans should treat us if they were acting in obedience to the Law of God and with the Love of Christ. So there is a sense in which it is wrong how you and I and any Christian is treated -- but it's not wrong because we deserve better on our merits, but because God says that there is a better standard by which they should be treating others. So not a dessert in an ultimate sense, but a dessert in the sense of idealized personal relationships.

Basically the ultimate sense is important to avoid sinning by thinking that we deserve any thing, which is pride: thinking we deserve more than we do, which in an ultimate sense is nothing good, and everything bad. The second sense is helpful in addressing grief and other emotions in response to ill treatment: that feeling such a way is valid and appropriate. You have been wronged, and you are not inherently wrong to feel anguished or even angry about it. "But in all your anger do not sin." It's helpful as a perspective on why it's wrong: it's not wrong, what they did to you, because you're hurt. That makes you the standard, and now we're back to pride. It's wrong because it's a sin against God. David after indirectly murdering Uriah: "against you, and you only, oh Lord, have I sinned." If you should be angry at mistreatment, it should be because they're dishonoring God, not because they insulted you. I try to harness my feelings of insult and turn it into zeal instead. To validate the emotions in an appropriate way, with truth.

~ Rak Chazak

Mini-Treatise: Emotions and How to Relate to Them

I find it helpful to see my emotions as something that happens to me, not "me." They are useful because:
* they are like indicator lights in a car, diagnostic tools that help you figure out what's right or wrong
* they sometimes give false readings, so you've got to use your brain to know when to ignore them or get them fixed
* sometimes they're not diagnostic at all, but rewarding. They make you feel good or bad, to reinforce doing/not doing a certain behavior you engaged in.

They are never your destiny. They don't tell you what you have to do--they have to be interpreted. You don't have to feel the way your emotions make you feel. You can uncouple your mind's participation in them by consciously choosing not to dwell on them. Engage in an activity that biochemically alters your physiology so that the emotions you're dealing with change. An easy example is if a guy is sexually aroused, a way to destroy that is to engage in vigorous exercise. It kills any feelings like that and clears the mind. It does the same with hunger, for that matter. If you're up late at night and feel depressed, go to sleep! It'll get your circadian rhythm back on track, and stressful build-up gets dealt with unconsciously while you sleep. Distracting your body by interrupting a natural process (or returning to one, if your emotions are due to biological instability) can keep certain moods at bay for a while so that you can make progress without their influence.

~ Rak Chazak

I Won't Say the Words "Mother Nature"

I won't use "mother nature," because nature is not my mother. At best, nature is our "sister," because we are co-creations--neither came from the other, both were directly formed by God. But nature is more like a pet, because we have dominion over it. The fact that this dominion is fallen and therefore incompletely exercised at present is, I suspect, the reason for why people are in awe of nature: they fear what they cannot control, and I think "Mother Nature" is in some ways a rationalization attempt by people, like pretending to make friends with the monster under your bed--making something scary into something more familiar. People see nature as "mother" as a way to deal with their fear of its obvious power to harm us and our inability to control it. But we who love God have nothing to fear, because we know that God controls nature and has promised to work all things for our good. So knowledge of the truth drives out fear.

~ Rak Chazak

A Good Story

I want my life to be a good story. Not the most captivating one, by a long shot, but a 'good read.' Something that makes sense, where you can clearly see the bigger picture, and how the formative events at various milestones conspired to produce the outcomes that were realized later on. How a latent, nascent potential, and a long preparation for the activation of the key purpose of this life (when all's said and done) unfolded into something that believers for eternity can say, "that had the hand of God upon it" "that's something only God could do" "what an amazing God we serve that would cause this to happen!"

Even if it's something so simple and ordinary as loving my wife, raising our children well, supporting the Church, and having my reputation with the World ruined for my unashamed witness for Christ.

There have been far more ordinary saints than of the amazing sort. And they still have a role, an important, God-given place in the Master Plan. Pursuit of that is not unambitious or a denial/missing of potential or success. It's just a different form.

~ Rak Chazak

Text Treatise: Thinking Big, Space Fantasies, and Groping for Infinity

Try to keep up :)

--------------------------------------

I've tried to create super-hyper-operators**(see attribution at bottom of article)** to express numbers so large that they're meaningless in this universe, even as expressions of mass, information, energy, power, time, probability, volume etc. 

The  idea is  twofold: 1) to help me fantasize more scientifically accurately aabout imaginary alternate universes and 2) to help me appreciate how big infinity really is.  

You know that 10^10 is 1 with 10 zeroes after it. 10^10,000 would be 1 with 10,000 zeroes after it. 10^100 is known as a Googol. 10^10^100 is 1 with a Googol of zeroes after it, known as a Googolplex. In comparison, 10^10,000 is 10^10^4, so a googolplex would be 10^10^96 times greater. That's assuming that you add the second exponent if you multiply, I'm not sure if you would have to exponentify the numerator to multiply the exponent so as to add the second exponent. Which just shows you even more, how massive the number is.  

But then I tried inventing a new system for showing even larger numbers. 

The next thing I tried to do was create a symbol to represent the next level of hyper operation. I used an up arrow but the keypad doesn't have that. 10x10=10^2. 10x10x10=10^3, and so on, we all know. 10^10=10,000,000,000. 10^10^10= 10^10,000,000,000. A massive number. 1 followed by ten billion zeroes. In contrast, a googol is 1 followed by 100 zeroes. But 1 followed by 10^10 zeroes is still nothing compared to 1 followed by 10^100 zeroes, which is a googolplex. 

Now, 10^10=10>2. 10^10^10 = 10>3. 10^10^10^10 = 10>4.  10>2^2 is a googol (10^100, 10^10^2) and 10>3^2 is a googolplex (10^10^100, 10^10^10^2)

So my next big numeral to invent was 10>100 (or 10>(10^2), not to be confused with 10>10^2. The latter would have 10 "^"s with the 11th position being a ^2; the former would have 100 "^s" -- I'm doing my best to stay consistent with established mathematical symbolism). 

If I wrote 10>10>10 that would not be 10>1 followed by 10 zeroes (10>(10^10) would be that), it would be 10>10 raised to the tenth power successively 10 times, or 10 to the googolplex to the googolplex to the googolplex. MASSIVE, MASSIVE NUMBERS.   And then I pretended that I could comprehend the size of a universe where the average planet was 10>100 km in radius, supposed that I couldn't go any higher, and went to bed mentally exhausted. 

Texting Treatise: Different Responses to Temptation

Texting Treatise: Different Responses to Temptation

The first section contains the types of responses or non-responses to sin, where a person rejects the idea that they should be repentant about it.

Blindness

Lack of Awareness: unaware of what you are doing

Qualified Unawareness: aware of what you are doing, but think it is good. Unaware that it is sin

Incorrigibility

Apathy: aware it’s wrong but don’t care to change it

Minimization: aware it’s wrong but deny the severity of it

Defiance: aware of the wrongness and severity and willingly indulge it anyway without contrition

In this next section are different types of responses to sin that contain a measure of contrition (feeling sorry) or repentance (genuinely desiring to flee from or overcome the temptation). For the sake of making it seem more interesting, psychologically, I’ve arranged them in a potential ‘maturity scale’ that the hypothetical average sinner might progress through while dealing with recognized temptations to sin in their life.

Contrition

                Sub-set: Vain Heroics

Halfhearted Abstinence: an attempt to break from it, but not strong enough in conviction to persist. Likely followed by binging on the particular temptation (shopping, drinking, sexual activity, surfing channels/websites, abandoning healthy eating or exercise, etc) upon crashing

All or Nothing: can lead to longer sustained abstinence, but more often leads to more time in between attempts, because of the fear of failure. Successive failure leads to disillusionment with pure abstinence and leads to a variety of different attempts to deal with the issue:

                Sub-set: Allowances

Hesitation: failing with abstinence doesn’t immediately lead to abandoning that method, but can cause a person to rationalize not trying right now, while they’re waiting for the perfect moment to start. They tolerate giving in to the temptation because they tell themselves that they’re planning to try to abstain from it soon

Banking: sinning more in the short term to satisfy an imagined quota that your flesh desires, so that you can hope to have better success in your abstinence effort. This leads to an expectation of high indulgence, which produces a cycle of periodic abstinence followed by binging, which is worse than the initial ‘halfhearted abstinence’ program.

Putting it Out of Mind: not thinking about it, in the hopes that it was one’s focus on trying to deal with the temptation so strongly that led to the catastrophic failures in the past. When this inevitably fails, it is modified to

Tolerance: not keeping track, and letting yourself get away with indulgence in the hope that by not “banking” it, you’ll end up indulging in it less, and that by not trying to abstain all-or-nothing-wise, you won’t have a “crash.”

                Sub-set: Searching for Loopholes

Rhythm/Scheduling: when tolerance doesn’t end up diminishing your gratification of your sinful desires, and you catch yourself, you may try to “out-think” yourself, by intentionally planning to give in to the temptation at certain points, but insert periods of focused abstinence in between. It’s basically a modified “banking/all-or-nothing” approach with shorter periods of abstinence that make success more likely. When the periods are extended in the effort of “weaning” yourself off of a dependence on the indulgence, you reach the level of

Gradual Improvement: this can be reached with or without the “scheduling” stage; it’s basically an attempt to “play a long game” and start comfortably with a high tolerance for your indulgence, gradually decreasing how much of an allowance you’ll give yourself. This is basically a more intentional version of

Fatalism: aiming for less than perfection because you can’t get it. Whereas the “gradual improvement,” “scheduling” and “banking” approaches tolerate sin for the sake of trying to build some sort of spiritual immunity to it (doesn’t work, by the way), fatalism is the final resting place of many people (note that this scale does not have to be limited to Christians). They decide that they’ll accept a certain amount of giving in to temptation over a certain length of time, indefinitely, because they’ve decided that they’ll never have victory over it. Such thinking can lead a person from being contrite  to becoming incorrigible. However, some people may make a few further desperate steps to dealing with the issue of their temptation

Flashback: Reflection on Social Stratus

It's indeed "stratus," not "status." Level based on financial assets, not esteem based on political success in the realm of public personality. This was a text:

I recall a classmate back in high school once described his family as "middle class," because they only owned one yacht and had a 5-bathroom house on waterfront property. That was my first recollectable introduction to the idea that there are big differences between tiers in the middle class. 

I'd have to honestly say that I'm middle class (one-family home, college educated, never missed payments on utilities growing up, one car per person [now!]), but definitely LOWER middle class (no cell phone until age of 19; no cable tv; no disposable income; underemployed; highly infrequent rate of 'going out' to movies, let alone restaurants anymore, etc; 8 new major articles of clothing in the last 3 years; drained or insufficient safety net/rainy day fund; no savings worthy of the name; no bi-monthly dinner parties like our neighbors; no dental visit in 1.5 years; etc)

Also, no second homes, second cars, RVs, ATVs, boats, etc. 1 or 2 acre property. No owned stocks or other investments. 

We have enough to not feel impoverished, but we don't have enough to have a sense of optimism with respect to finances. My parents have no retirement outlook apart from the sale of the house at some future date. I have enough money saved to pay for TWO college courses, or car insurance and food to keep me alive for c. 1 year, if I lose everything else. We have just enough to feel the pressure from what we lack.

And from a standpoint of pride and grace, I appreciate the place I've grown up in so much; there's neither a strong impulse of bitterness nor arrogance. I have things, which let me be grateful for the gift of possessing them, to God; and I lack a great many things as well, which give me a mindset of dependence on God and an appreciation of whatever I get in the future, that it's a blessing and privilege and not a sign of my own greatness or monument to hard work.

7 

The sayings of Agur
Two things I request of You

(Deprive me not before I die):

8 

Remove falsehood and lies far from me;

Give me neither poverty nor riches—

Feed me with the food allotted to me;

9 

Lest I be full and deny You,

And say, “Who is the Lord?”

Or lest I be poor and steal,

And profane the name of my God.
Proverbs 30:7-9

That came to mind.

~ Rak Chazak

All About that Alto, No Soprano..."Empowering" Sexism in Mainstream Music

This is a lambast of the Main-Stream-Music song "All About That Bass." I recently read a TIME snippet where the song, along with a few others, was held up as an example of an uplifting message for girls about body image.


Talks about butts.

Ok.

Here are the lyrics from the chorus:

My mama she told me, 'don't worry about your size'
She said 'boys like a little more booty to hold at night'

WHAT?

Okay, let me get this straight: "(1)Don't care about your personal health, (2) because you're a sex object." Niiiice. Oh, and even better: "your personal worth lies in your rump's ease of being groped, and (sexism alert!) boys don't care about anything but sex, objectifying women, and being a pervert." And last but not least, it purports to lift up fat girls by dealing with their insecurity by telling them they're superior because of their body type. This is literally putting down skinny girls for the same reason, that they "don't have all that bass." Yay empowerment!

You don't improve someone's self image by telling them they're better than somebody else. That's the essence of what bullying is, putting someone else down to make you feel better about yourself. And that's even without the twisted fact that the thing that makes you better than the other person is your ability to be objectified and treated like a piece of ass, that you don't have value in yourself, only in being desired by immature sexually-obsessed boys!

Is this empowerment? No, this is an example of how messed up our culture is, when in the name of doing good for someone, the exact opposite is perpetrated.

Feminism is dung.

That is all.

~Rak Chazak

Not 1 Corinthians 13

A poetic text treatise.

Love: an earnest, sustained desire to pursue another person's best interest, at the expense of one's personal wants, convenience, comfort and enjoyment. An attitude demonstrated by action, not an emotion or expression of affection. Affection is a by-product of love, it is not love, though it is commonly called love. Love sacrifices the self for the sake of another's benefit. It esteems what others need as more important to attain than what you yourself want. Anything that defies this is not love, but selfishness disguised. Wanting what makes someone happy is not love, because what makes you or someone else happy is not always what is best for them. Love perseveres when there is no reward of happiness, no fulfillment of personal desires, and no recognition or thankfulness for the effort expended. Love is not exhausting, because it is its own reward, and putting it into action is its own sustenance.

~ Rak Chazak

Texting Treatise: Pragmatism is Impossible in an Infinite Universe

"Just came across a tidbit on the traveling atheist that has interesting implications. It's a conditional that applies to anyone who'll say that the universe is infinite in either time or space or both, and for whom morality is defined as doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And diminishing suffering. That's actually logically incoherent.

In an infinite universe, there'll be an infinite amount of happiness and an infinite amount of suffering, so nothing you do will have an impact on the total number of either. Consequently, a morality based on the greatest benefit for the greatest number CANNOT BE TRUE if the universe is infinite in any aspect. It is logically contradictory. Therefore, the moral imperative for doing good rather than evil CANNOT just be a pragmatic decision. It must be justified some other way.

'Love logic."

Afterthoughts:

Texting Treatise: Pure Fantasy?

[To a friend who had sent me excerpts of a book she's reading]

I have to tell you….after reading the texts you sent yesterday, I was reminded…last night before bed, I indulged in fantasy. A gaggle of girls far too young for a relationship, but high school aged and physically grown, came in to the store a third time (I recognized them and the mom of a couple of them) yesterday. It strikes me that a worldly man—yea, I may even be tempted to, in weaker moments—may respond to their vibrant youthfulness and beauty by giving himself over to mentally desecrating them in his mind, to try to gain satisfaction and/or put the thought of them out of his consciousness. But I have been amazed to realize that God has even been reforming my thoughts to the level of interfering with my daydreams about lovely women—I’ve never been tempted toward younger ones, but recently I’ve found myself imagining scenarios wherein which I take advantage of a vulnerable young girl willing to be influenced by me by preaching the Gospel to them and by my abstinent example showing and leading them the way to true love. As a mentor.

And so, I found myself, before sleep fell over me, having a clean fantasy, where my inner desire to bring joy to a woman’s heart was consummated not by intercourse but by loving them with my words as I told them the Truth. It felt really good. I had another experience like this a week or so ago when I imagined a conversation between me and my wife in bed. I was actually brought to tears that time.

Praise God that He is working on me, to overcome my sexual depravity in my mind and replace it with pure and good thoughts, day by day. Few things can give better encouragement than noticeable change in one’s own character, from more worldly to more holy. Is God too lofty to concern Himself with sexual thoughts? Nay, He is near to our hearts and can impress us with how uncharacteristically pure our thoughts about a lovely member of the opposite sex can be, if only we meditate on His Word and Gospel so that it becomes a fixture in our minds that affects every aspect of our lives.

It feels so good to honor someone in your heart rather than using them.

Thanks, God.

~ Rak Chazak

Meta-Talking: Talking About Talking

The title says nearly all. I have long been aware that in a lot of my writing, I “think about thinking,” meaning that I not only discuss the content of thoughts I have, but the thought process itself, the better to introspect and analyze whether my reasoning is correct and appropriate. It helps me ensure to myself, or prove to others, that my conclusions and observations are truthful and beneficial. It’s also fascinating to peek under the hood and go beyond ideas into investigating the “why” behind those ideas. But until very recently, I didn’t consciously catch myself in the act of ‘talking about talking,’ while having a face to face conversation with someone else.

It took a casual conversation wherein which I was flirting occasionally with a young woman I ran into at the gym, for me to notice that I wasn’t merely talking to her, I was talking about how I talk, with her. And acknowledged it in the conversation. “Going out of the plane of conversation” is a fun thing to do, because it’s so unusual. It generally garners amused interest in the other person, from what I can tell. See, in an act of meta-talking, I tend to ask if I’m talking up too much time (not a typo), if they’d like to leave but are too polite to tell me, or if they’re actually interested. It’s socially incorrect. I love it. It’s one of the things that make me a bit unique. I might not have a musical talent or be a world-class athlete or have a modelesque appearance, but I’ve got a peculiar mind. What better thing to be the most “out-there” when I meet and get to know someone, since of all the aspects of my person, my mind is the most accurate definition you can point to to say, “this is who I am?” I have a deep desire to be known and understood by my wife. I’m thrilled to pieces to realize that the personality I’ve developed through the way I think and talk has made my uncharacteristically eccentric thoughts so prominent and inescapable, that I’m guaranteed to only one day wed the woman who can tolerate this social weirdness and interact with me on the same level. All others will be made uncomfortable, overwhelmed by the intensity, unable to understand what I’m saying, or just plain uninterested, for any of these reasons or just that it turns them off personally. What a great way to avoid getting involved with the wrong people.

I’m meta-talking right now.

There’s a quote I can’t remember the middle of, which goes something like this: “boring people talk about other people. Interesting people talk about ___ (events?). And inspiring people talk about ideas.” I make use of small talk about random trivia I might have on my mind, in beginning a conversation with a stranger or acquaintance, but I can’t sustain a conversation based only on that. I quickly move beyond the base facts and bring up theories, educating my listener with concepts they may not have heard of before, or heard explained in just the way I am then doing. I’d like to think that by lifting up their own consciousness out of the realm of people and things, into the realm of big ideas and the connections between the things we see, that I’m adding something to their experience instead of just taking up their time. I hope that I can give every person who listens to me something to think about, that will be beneficial to them. I don’t want to open my mouth otherwise, if I can’t do that. And I am hopeful, because testimonials from people I’ve had long conversations with tend to support the belief that I “really have something here” with how I talk, and talk about talking.

Treatise Hub

These range from "a decent length" to "ridiculously long," meaning about 3,000 words for the most ambitious articles. Often, they're taken from my private Journal or transcribed from my cell phone, after texting a lot with a friend, and these tend to be somewhat shorter and are called "Texting Treatises."


Because they take place in a referential vacuum, the content is off-the-top-of-my-head, and not footnoted with Bible verses or links, and they tend to be very philosophical in nature. If that lies in your interest, you'll find these types of articles an enjoyable read.


Note, once again, that this won't be an exhaustive list of all lengthy philosophical articles I've posted on here, but the ones which are most characteristic of what I described above.


Long-Form Treatises:


Private Letter: Falling In and Out of Love and the Transformative Power of the Holy Spirit
Journal Entry: A Theology of Evangelizing Discussion Forums
The Atheist Fallacy of Imputing Motives on Actors Motivated by Religious Ideology
Silly Obligations
Journal Treatise: When Was I Saved?
Journal Treatise: Why I'm Not Baptized
Journal Treatise: Maturation
Journal Treatise: Oort Cloud
Does Sanctification Come Through Experiences?
Treatise: What Made the Red Planet Red? A Theory of Planetary Colonization and What Could Have Been
When Open-Air Preaching 'Clicked' For Me
Treatise: Married Women, Turn-offs, Turn-ons, and Plato's Forms
A Comparison of Single People to Young Children
General Disinterest in Valentine's Day
Proof of God: The Argument from Possibility
Impassioned Prayers
Intimacy in Heaven
Irrationality in Regeneration: A Source of Relief
Treatise: Confessions of A Smart Guy
Treatise: A Monument to All Your Sins


In a theme by themselves, my 3 Treatises on modern feminism from a Biblically Christian perspective:


Journal Entry: On Feminism, "Male Privilege," and "Rape Culture"
Treatise: Third-Wave Feminism's Irresponsibility Double-Standard
On the Word "Slut" and "Sexually Liberated" Third-Wave Feminism


Texting Treatises:


Text Epiphany: Recent Thought on Prayer
Choosing to Break Up or Break In A Relationship: Risk-Reward Calculus
Texting Treatise: Flirting
Phreniology: Theory of the Mind-Brain Interaction
Text Treatise: Suicide's Real Victims
Texting Treatise: Pride, Lies and Murder
Text Treatise: What God Taught Me About the Innate Sinfulness of Man Through My Experience of Being Cyber-Bullied At College



And there we go. I'll place a link in the sidebar and this hub page will be modified to include future additions to my collection of Treatises which I post on this blog.

Subsequent Additions

Treatises:
Always Happy to Reconcile with the Repentant

Texting Treatises:
Meta-Talking: Talking About Talking
Texting Treatise: Pure Fantasy?

Texting Treatise: Pragmatism is Impossible in an Infinite Universe

Not 1 Corinthians 13
All About that Alto, No Soprano

~ Rak Chazak

Text Treatise: What God Taught Me About the Innate Sinfulness of Man Through My Experience of Being Cyber-Bullied At College

A follow-up of sorts to Pride, Lies and Murder

I don’t mean anything mystical by the title. God didn’t audibly speak to me and I didn’t see a hundred shooting starts immediately after thanking God for the wisdom I gained from my [traumatic] time as an internet pariah whom it was fair game to slander, harass and attack in a variety of ways, for the crime challenging other ‘academics’’ consensus views of what could be discussed and what couldn’t. The lesson is something I learned through reflection and study of Scripture, subsequent to personal experience that knocked any and all tendency to believe that “people are generally good” right out of my head. And it’s instruction from above simply in the sense that all truth is authored by God, and He is sovereignly in control of all circumstances that occur. He could have prevented what happened in a number of different ways, but He didn’t. In yet another series of texts to Hank the Homosexual, I explain why.

This began as a response to a question from Hank as to what my full name was.

**     **     **     **     ** 

I’m nervous about telling people that because of my college experience. It could be not-necessarily you, or not-necessarily the person you mention me to, but the person they ‘let slip’ some seemingly innocuous information (e.g. I work at [place]) to, who knows or is friends with one of my sworn enemies from that college, and funnels that information to them, to be used against me. Next thing you know, the store is flooded with customer complaints alleging that I made racial slurs, homophobic remarks, etc etc toward/in front of guests, and even if the GM knows it’s bogus, it will raise suspicion over why people would be so motivated to come after me, and I may be less likely to get that stellar work reference from my managers, much less rise in the [ranks] while I remain in employment there. I’ve had to really think hard after what could be innocent yet harmful information. I’ve resolved that people knowing things that DEFINE me are hardly embarrassing or shameful, but information that IDENTIFIES me puts me at risk of character assassination.

It’s not intuitive for me to think that way. And that’s how I got hurt in the first place. If my name was not attached to my posts on my university forum, I couldn’t have been targeted for mobbing. Based on my experience I’m a firm believer in the right to be anonymous. For a debate that is contextualized by the individuals involved in it, in private, it is not right for antagonists to take one of the private names of the individuals involved, and publicly shame them by making accusations that cannot be defended against. Truth is, most of the world isn’t Christian. And that’s how people are. Truth doesn’t matter, so the way to win an argument isn’t through reason, it’s through demoralizing your foe so they stop telling you the truth, or through tarnishing their name so no one else listens to them. I was young and naïve in my 20s-22s. Now I am no longer, but the damage is done. Was it because of something I said? Or was it because of how others chose to behave in response? I refuse to accept the blame for any damage to my reputation.

[Hank responded that I didn’t deserve to be treated cruelly etc]

I have two ways of approaching that. One is, that I absolutely don’t deserve better, because what I deserve from God is nothing but the blackest hell for what I’ve done to scorn Him, and continue to do. Two, is that I absolutely don’t deserve this from other people, because they are on the exact same plane as me. Unlike God, who is utterly perfect and has every right to deal calamity after calamity on our heads for our evilness, no human has the right to usurp the role of Judge of another and to proceed to Punish them for their perceived sins. What the Cross shows us is that any time a Christian is punished by another person with human wrath, whether the punisher is Christian or not, they are denying that their punishment was already dealt with—that Jesus took ALL their punishment for sin; not just eternal but any and all punishment. [note: this is adapted from bonus material on the The Biggest Question DVD] For any human to inflict suffering on another as a rationalized retribution and “what they deserve” in the minds of the inflictor is nothing more than a sin that denies the very heart of the Christian faith—the Cross.

In other words, social ostracism on the basis that “I deserve it” is double jeopardy and is a sin against God. I say this with particular irony aimed at one person who did the most early on to make me a pariah; a self-absorbed Orthodox “Christian” male of about the same age. He has alternately justified his behavior, and refusal to remove his thread(s) attacking me, on the basis that:

Texting Treatise: Pride, Lies and Murder

I sent the following to Hank the Homosexual (altered name), after it became apparent that he was receptive to at least reading lengthy theological pontifications from me, about a month or so ago. For background on how I met Hank the Homosexual, see this blog post: http://singlechristian1.blogspot.com/2014/03/ive-finally-arrived.html

Text Treatise: Pride, Lies and Murder

There is a passage that starts, “these six things the Lord hates, yea, seven are an abomination to Him,” and it singles out 7 particular sins. While I could get the interpretation off on 2-ish of them, I can easily understand the rest, which are basically pride, lies and murder. There is no mention of sexual sins of any kind in the list, nor is there a mention of gluttony, greed, jealousy or anger. In short, there’s a list of sins God hates in particular but they aren’t = “the 7 deadly sins,” which though they are sins, are not the worst. That list is actually an invention of the first Pope.

To wit, all sins are equally sinful, in the sense that all result in separation from God and merit His righteous judgment. But 3 x infinity is still infinity, and God does hate some sins more than others, which is further justified by the passage (I forget the location) that says that there are degrees of punishment in hell.

Justifying that not all sins are equally evil is Jesus Himself, who said to Pilate, “he who delivered Me over to you has the greater sin.” Seems pretty clear cut.

Why these more than others?

Why should God hate pride, lies and murder more than other sins? I think it’s of interest to note that these sins strike at God’s character more than others. Pride is literally having a higher opinion of yourself than you ought and thereby a lower opinion of God than you ought. Pride is a lack of acknowledgement of how great God is. If a person understands God’s greatness, they can’t logically believe that they deserve anythng from Him, so thinking that you deserve what you don’t is basically saying that God owes you something, and that He is subservient to you and that you can require Him to obey you. How offensive this must be to a holy God, since it’s so obviously offensive even to us, if someone behaved that way toward us without warrant.

Lies.

Then you get to lies, which attack God’s character as being Truth—not just truthful, but Truth itself and the source and foundation for all truth. Further there’s the fact that lies deceive people and by the very nature of causing them to make wrong decisions, hurt people. Lies are fundamentally tied to murder because lies that prevent a person from repenting and seeking Christ lead people to damnation. Lies are also connected to pride because it’s pride that fuels lies. If you think you’re above or beyond the rules, you can do what you want with impunity. Since pride is itself a lie (I am greater than I am, God owes me life and happiness etc), it’s clear why pride leads to more lies. It’s a snowball effect. Once you lie, you have to keep telling more lies to protect your central lie. The only alternative is telling the truth, which would require giving up your pride. See how it hangs together?

Murder.

And then you get to murder, which is offensive to God because man is made in His image—therefore a murder is literally an attack on God’s image. It’s as if by killing a person, you are vicariously attempting to symbolically kill God. There’s also the sense in which a person’s death deprives God of that which He deserves (not to say that God’s impotent—this is in the context of Him sovereignly allowing events to come to pass through personal choices). Whereas a person is prideful by thinking he deserves what he does not, God actually does deserve everything, so the refusal to submit in faith to Christ and the act of murder are both essentially the wrongful refusal to allow God to be given that which is due Him. Hence how murder is also fundamentally a lie. God deserves a man’s life’s work in life and a man’s life in death, but to cut his life short on earth or to send him to hell by killing him before he’s repented and thereby depriving God of his soul in death, the lie is the prideful assertion, implicitly, that God does not deserve what belongs to Him. As you can see, this is outrageously offensive, all these things. They are unfair denials and refusals of the truth.

And it’s essentially then to wrongfully treat God, treat Him unfairly. To act unjustly toward the just Judge of the universe. See how backwards it is? SO in short, Pride and Lies and Murder are among the most hated sins of God because of how directly they attack Him and how Offensive they are to His character.

Wrap-up

Sex before marriage, homosexuality, pedophilia, rape, pornography, sex with multiple people, cheating etc are all sexual sins that are very offensive to God, too, and I didn’t name all (oh no. That list is nearly endless). But they are less direct in their perversion of truth (though they still symbolize/represent lies about God) and less direct in their assault on God’s character (though still they attack it). It is fundamentally, I think, sins of an intellectual sort, the kind that make people consciously choose damnation over reconciliation, that are the worst of them all. I think that’s the distinction.

~ Rak Chazak

Phreniology: Theory of the Mind-Brain Interaction

I've had an idea that the body is a machine, the brain is the computer that controls it and runs subprograms, and the mind is the "user" component that "operates" the brain-body system to get the living human being to perform the actions desired by the operator. As an allegory for how our bodies, corporeal and incorporeal, actually work together. I was interested when I picked up a magazine from the leisure-reading rack at the YMCA and read this:

Credit for the information: National Geographic Magazine, February 2014 edition.

"Caltech and UCLA scientists use pictures of celebrities to study how the brain processes what the eyes see. In 2005 they found an individual nerve cell that fired only when subjects were shown pictures of Jennifer Aniston. Another neuron responded only to pictures of Halle Berry—even when she was masked as Catwoman. Follow-up studies suggest that relatively few neurons are involved in representing any given person, place, or concept, making the brain staggeringly efficient at storing information."

I fired off a text to my college friends telling them what I thought:

This is interesting, and seems to confirm my phreniology theory (+10pts for using big words!) that the brain is not the thing that stores memories--the mind(the spirit/soul) is--it is merely the biological machine that allows our complete human form to have access to our spiritual-identity-associated-memories for the purpose of conscious, mind-and-brain thought processing of these memories. How's that sound?

If the brain itself doesn't store memories, then the one-neuron recognition finding would be consistent with this: the memories associated with identifying and recognizing Jennifer Aniston as a singular individual need only be accessed by a single neuron "tagged" as the gateway for the brain to interact with the mind's memories. The rest of the brain's activity, beyond this one neuron, makes up the biological "processing" of this connection, that allows you to consciously realize that you're looking at Jennifer Aniston.

Side thought: In other words, every individual you can recognize is represented by one neuron. So, it seems likely, is any given place, any given major event in your past experience, and any given major concept that you understand or believe in. They are like locked gates that your brain holds the key to; it opens each gate when prompted, and proceeds to open up related thoughts through that particular memory-jogging avenue. (Your mind-brain therefore has an almost infinite capacity for remembering things, since you have hundred billions of neurons. It would seem necessary, if we're going to live forever, and remember a near infinite amount of things, wouldn't it?) Have you ever found that, for example when remembering song lyrics, you can only remember some things if you first "go through" the associated stored memories that come before it, in a sequence? I've heard the old poets of old held a remarkable amount of history in oral tradition, and perhaps this is how.

This makes further sense when it comes to mentally impaired or brain-damaged individuals. Their brain-mind connection is hampered because the brain is damaged. The brain therefore can't interact with the mind properly, and conscious thought is hamstrung and takes place less efficiently. Even more interestingly, this can explain why seemingly smart people can make such mind-numbingly (points for relevant adjective!) idiotic decisions and go from reasonable starting points to impossibly bizarre and false conclusions. In this case, their brain isn't damaged, but their mind is. The Bible says that those who rebel against God and do not have the Holy Spirit in them have a 'natural mind' and a 'seared conscience.' (1 Timothy 4:2, 1 Corinthians 2:14) My understanding of this is that unbelief literally makes you unintelligent, and perhaps that's because the mind fails to interact with the brain properly--it's the reverse of the previously discussed circumstance, except in this case it's your fault for it. Romans 1:21-22 further buttresses this notion, that prolonged and obstinate refusal to repent before God will literally make people stupid. The smart choice, in more than one way, it would seem, is to submit in faith to Christ.

If my phreniology theory is right, then an interesting conclusion results: you don't actually lose your memories. You may forget them, but you've merely lost access to them. You'll be able to access them once more in the eternal state, when your whole human form--mind and body--is repaired to full capacity. Unless, that is, you never submit your carnal mind to Christ.

~ Rak Chazak

Further reading:
http://www.gotquestions.org/seared-conscience.html
http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/2-14.htm