Personal Life Update: Short

Just a post to inform that I'm still alive. I've never had such a full schedule before, that I've actually depended on carrying a calendar with me to make sure that I don't miss deadlines for things on any given day. I feel so very 'adult' because of it. It's a different experience, to know exactly just how much time I have--and don't have--to do anything, like studying or blogging, and I think it's helpful to keep me motivated and busy. A side effect is simply that extracurricular activity takes a back seat while I work on keeping abreast with homework assignments, so that I'll still have time to study for exams on top of it.

More to come, just no guarantees on when or where or how much. :)

~Rak Chazak

Personal Life Update: Admission Applications

Details are omitted for reasonable reasons.

I'm halfway through the application and enrollment processes at two higher education institutions: one a community college and the other a university. Until this fall, I didn't have a clear conception of what specific career goals I wished to aim toward, and was wary of making decisions without the requisite information to make them well. But now, I have a notion of what to do with my degree, and consequently, know what I need to do to get from here to there. First I learned about accreditation agencies that can certify you for a specific career position, and then I found different accredited programs around where I live. I picked two institutions for their relative convenience in terms of location to me, and am intending to conclude the bulk of the remaining prerequisite courses at the community college, while applying to be wait-listed in the mean-time at the university, for the Fall 2015 program.

Now it's a waiting game of two sorts: waiting to be admitted, and then waiting to see if I make it into the actual courses that I'll be wait-listed for. Being on the wait list is not a death sentence, it usually is as good as getting into the course itself, because a fair number of people are often bound to drop the course or fail to meet criteria and be removed administratively, opening up slots for you. So I'm fairly confident in getting the prereq's out of the way. This will make me higher ranked for the 2-year program I'm applying to, so that when they run numbers before the Summer, and then again before the Fall, I'll likely move up and have a much better shot at securing a position. The other thing to "wait" for is the question of financial aid. I'm almost guaranteed to get loans like the ones I already hold, but finding need-based grants and scholarships would be nice.

The specifics of the outcome belong to the Almighty. But I learned this wisdom from a speaker at one of the few Cru meetings I attended one semester: that (using a Biblical example, he asserted) stepping out in faith is the mark of obediently waiting on God. Faith is not total resignation and waiting for God to do everything. Faith is knowing what is in accordance with the will of God, seeking to do it, and praying for Him to lead you to the right conclusion. Whether God answers your prayer or not, you still act in faith. By trying to accomplish something, you give Him the divine prerogative He deserves, to decide the outcome. But if you refuse to try to accomplish something, such that it is impossible, then you are not being faithful and waiting, you are essentially trying to control the outcome by limiting yourself to the option of failure. "You do not receive because you do not ask." (James 4:2) Faithfulness involves both asking God for help, and striving to be obedient whatever the outcome. It is not one or the other; it is not doing nothing, and waiting for God to move, and it is not trying to do things in your own power, for God.

If I don't apply, I can't be accepted. Only by applying, can I have the option of either being accepted or denied entry into a course/program. So which one of these confers more glory to God? The one where He can bless your obedience or the one where He'd have to perform miracles to alter the nature of reality just to give you the good things He desires?

I feel good, because I know that it's wise to improve my marketability as a suitable employee for the particular field I have in mind. I also know that a good work ethic and personal responsibility is pleasing to God. And I know that whatever the outcome, it's solely in His control, because I made sure to pray beforehand, that whatever I pursue would be the path that He intends, and that I do nothing from the strength of my own flesh but by His Spirit.

Stepping out in obedient faith. Now it will be exciting to see what God will do with it.

~ 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

When Open-Air Preaching 'Clicked' for Me

Prologue

I was 11 when I started to take following God's commandments seriously. Not because I was wantonly disobedient before, but merely that the reason I was doing it changed. And to tell you the truth, I can't be completely sure I know the reason. I'm very hesitant to say that I wasn't saved before, lest I blaspheme and profess to say something about God that isn't true. But from a perspective of evaluating myself, I realized as I prayed last night, I don't think I can ever "know" that I was saved before, since the way to really know is to understand the theology of salvation, which I didn't have any incorrect ideas about, to my memory, but I certainly didn't have a complete understanding. So for the simplicity of language's sake, I think I can say that I know I've been saved, since somewhere between the beginning of 2011 and 2012, with confidence. That said,

Wake-up Call

It was even before I know that I was saved that I became "converted" to the belief that open-air preaching was not only useful, but important, and a necessity. I had lived most of my life having a basic understanding of God from whatever I'd gleaned from church and what I got from the books I'd read at my own leisure, which included Genesis, Exodus, Revelation and parts of Daniel. You know, the 'exciting stuff.' And though I had no shame in talking about God with others, as I can easily remember from my time in Boy Scouts, I never had the urge to evangelize--to go out and talk with people with the express intention of trying to explain Christianity to them, and if possible, convince them of its truth. This makes some degree of sense, considering that I didn't yet have the complete picture myself, whether it's the case that I had weak faith or vain faith. But I took for granted that Jesus was God and that the basic points of the Christian faith were totally understood by everyone in America, because of how widespread the influence of christianity is.

My wakeup call came in my second semester of college, when I passed by one of the street preachers. There was one guy who came regularly to my university, and another who traveled more widely and whom I know less about, and came less frequently. It was not the first time I'd seen a crowd gathered in a semi-circle around the speaker, but this time I wasn't in a rush and I took some time to listen. I can't remember to this day what exactly I heard, and I might be conflating several different moments into one, but I remember being utterly shocked at how ignorant the people challenging (heckling) the preacher were of basic Biblical facts. Further, my university had a very high minority population. There were substantial amounts of foreign nationals from Africa, the Middle East and the Orient, as well as students who descend from those regions and had been brought up in that culture in their home, but had grown up in America. One might expect a Saudi national at an American university on a royal scholarship to not be aware of Christian doctrine. But these were white, native-born American kids who couldn't tell right from left when it came to theology. And this was something I understood as soon as I saw it, even long before my 'awakening' in the spring of 2010. I was shocked. Shocked. 

That experience impressed upon me the belief that open-air preaching is an important service, getting the basic facts of the Gospel out there so that people can at least know what it is, in order to make an informed decision about it. Like the Bible says in Romans 10:14, "how can they hear without a preacher?" If it weren't for men like these, the message would be lost over time in the culture, because people simply don't look it up on their own. That is a lie. The only way they'll hear the truth is if someone annoys them with it when and where they don't want to hear it. 

The Preacher and the Preaching

After I began studying the Bible passionately a year later, I began to feel the effects of regeneration, I believe. A strong desire to share the amazing truth that I was learning took hold of me, and my feelings toward the street preacher went from affirmation to thankfulness and encouragement. I introduced myself to the preacher, who served the Mid-Atlantic region for the organization called "Open Air Campaigners." His name was Paul Adams, shown above, and would be very recognizable from a distance with his painting easel and the crowd that typically gathered in the middle of the day. I'm very happy to report that this preacher doesn't live up to his reputation among the students as the angry, loud, offensive bigot he supposedly is. It's funny, the cranks who make such comments confuse other students to the point where they're not sure they're talking about the same person! No, Paul's Gospel presentation is complete (not lacking anything essential), done in love, and just salty enough to not let people's consciences off scot-free. "If only" he didn't speak against people's favorite sins, they wouldn't be offended. But as 1 Corinthians 1:18 and 1 Peter 2:8 together say, "the Gospel is an offense to those who are perishing."

Another year later, after my initial immersion in studying Creation, Biblical Inerrancy, and then Islam, to cover all my theological bases, I had moved on to "meatier," more in-depth Christian theology. Throughout most of 2011, I eventually came to wrap my head around what is commonly called "Calvinism," but which is nothing more than the key parts of the Gospel, clearly emphasized in no uncertain terms. I also began to learn about pseudochristian sects and heresies, and came across the concept of false believers. This was early in the year and happens to coincide with the "P" part of TULIP (an acronym for the points of Calvinism): a video of Ray Comfort preaching on youtube called "true and false conversion." In it he asked  a young man if he "knew the Lord," when he was allegedly a believer. If he answers yes, he admits God exists, if he answers no, he admits he didn't know God. So any unbeliever who claims to have once been a believer, bottom line, never was. And that, I believe, is how I began to watch Way of the Master (Ray's ministry) videos and began watching their On the Box videos fairly regularly.

That was how I got to 'meet' the guys involved in their ministry, which at the time also included Tony Miano, who is now a freelancing preacher as well. I just wanted to bring this up to make the teensy-tiny observation that I think Tony and Paul are alike in a few ways. They:

* are sponsored by (and rooted in) the church they worship in to go out and preach

* have a similar testimony, in that they came to faith when they were a bit older. Paul was in the Marines(? if it was the Army, my mistake) and Tony was a Roman Catholic, but I'm not sure if they overlap here necessarily. But both were 'tough guys' whose regeneration produced highly noticeable changes in their character. 

* used to have a history of shouting and sounding angry, from which they've changed and now if you'd hear their typical open-air, they're some of the calmest, kindest, least-wrathful-sounding people there--the hecklers are the nasty ones.

I had a funny thought. That last bit made me think of Vulcans. From Star Trek--do you know that they had a reputation for always being highly in control of their emotions and never seemingly getting angry? But if I remember the backstory, Vulcans behaved that way because they were inherently VERY aggressive and angry people, and learned to 'stuff' their outbursts deep down over time and focus on logic over emotion. This isn't to imply that these guys are bursting with rage on the inside, haha! Just that from an observer's standpoint, they can take disrespect and aggressiveness from others with extreme calm and not return kind for kind. You can really see that particular fruit of the Spirit in each of them when they're in action.

It's from watching videos of Tony (and Ray Comfort and Todd Friel) online and from seeing Paul in person that I've come to believe from personal experience that open-air preaching, combined with tracting and the use of internet sites as tools to amplify your ability to reach people, is and is going to be the most effective way to evangelize the nation we live in. The mission field isn't in Africa. It's down the road from where you live, in America. It's time to hit the streets.

Some pictures of Paul preaching

 Heckler front and center

 A wide assortment of people turn out, gather around, and at the very least hear the Good News.

If you don't believe it works, then when you see the crowd it draws, and hear the questions that are asked, and the answers that are given, I almost guarantee you'll change your mind.

~ Rak Chazak

"No Man Is As Polite As You"

Ehm. Not to toot my own horn. I wasn't expecting such a compliment, but that's what made it stand out when I heard it. I'm going to attempt to draw something valuable out of it.

I just began working at a fast-food chain restaurant, and each of the days I was there, there were also two or three Ukranian girls at the fry-station, sandwich area and drive-thru station. I worked the cash register. In the middle of the day, there would tend to be a 'rush,' where there's more than two or three people in line at a time, for an extended period of maybe an hour or more (at our establishment, at least)--this prevented us from being able to talk much initially, not that you should be doing too much of that when you're on the clock, anyway. But over the 5 days we were there at the same time, we had the opportunity to trade some words back and forth. I "impressed" them with showing that I knew the words 'spaziba' and 'dobre utre' (I'm spelling them as they sound to me, not according to any actual standard), which mean 'thank you' and 'good morning.' I learned 'dobre veche' (good evening), 'bon scheuye spaziba' (thank you very much) and was reminded of the word I'd forgotten, 'izviñi,' which means both 'excuse me' and 'I'm sorry.' It' a very utilitarian word, thus. 'Parschallista' means both 'please' and 'you're welcome,' making it very easy to get the words right if you're just learning the language! Specifically, this language is Russian. There is a Ukranian language, but Russian is widely spoken in the country and it's the only thing I heard them speak while they were there.

They were there doing a student work-exchange over the summer. I've run into Russian college students doing that before, when I worked at a summer camp. There was a girl named Vicka who was really motivated to try to experience everything (rock wall, swimming pool, biking) while she was there, and I had the most opportunity to talk to her. Some of the other guy staffers suspected us of being interested in each other, romantically. That wasn't the case. In February, there had been some Thai girls doing a similar exchange at the same restaurant. So it seems that this is a widespread thing, where other countries send students here to work and live for a short amount of time, to have the opportunity to practice their English, interact with actual Americans, and of course see the sights. Always surprised that my small town ever gets the interest of people from far away, I nevertheless enjoy being a part of the impression that these people get of the place when they leave.

Free Use, Wiki Commons

The above graph on the left shows the religious diversity in the Ukraine. White is atheist, and the rest of the colors are mainly sects of the Orthodox Catholic Church. This is typical of European countries of the present time--there tends to be more nontheists than any other individual group in these countries, though there are long histories of the influence of traditional religions, mostly Christian or nominally christian, in those places. I bring this up because while I'm not assuming what the girls I worked with believe, it's nevertheless a reasonable inference to make, that what I was asked was influenced in part by the national spiritual landscape of their home country, irrespective of their personal beliefs.

The "more American" of the girls (spoke better English, not that the others were unable to communicate or anything) spoke up when they were all standing together and we were talking. She said, midst giggles from the other two, that 'no man can be (or is, I forget which she said) as polite as you.' This was after first asking why I was so polite. To me, I was just behaving normally, not putting on an act in order to speak with customers, although maybe putting in more effort to appear cheerful and friendly than usual, but other than that, 'what you see is what you get.' I tried to think of a reason, and gave her that it's just natural to me to be respectful like that, that it's genuine. "No men are as polite as you," she said. And now I come to the twofold impression I gained from the experience:

1. It struck me that this has happened before. It isn't something that contains itself based on geography. I've met many an American girl that treated me with suspicion for no readily explainable reason. Through the grapevine, it's come forth that people sometimes have the impression that I'm putting on a front, not being genuine, that maybe I'm hiding something. They think I'm too nice. Of all the things to have for a problem, right? People think I'm faking my personality because they can't see why I should seem so happy or pleasant to others, particularly strangers. It hurts a little, but I'm more happy that it's because of being too friendly and nice than because I come across as the opposite. I wouldn't be surprised if a great number of potential friendships or romantic relationships were prevented in the past because my demeanor motivated people to be suspicious of me. It's a loss, to be sure, but on the other hand it's inadvertently screened for people who are more confident in themselves and less judgmental of others to be the sort of people that I eventually get closer to. And lest I be remiss, this all is directly tied to my faith--or rather, my regeneration. You can really tell the difference between a saved and unsaved person by whether they have joy or whether they do not. In general, of course. I simply want to affirm that I have the outward personality that I have because I have the inside satisfaction and joy that comes from knowing the answers to the tough questions of life, and having relief in the knowledge that I know where I'm going, I know what my purpose is, and I have a healthy relationship with my heavenly Father. It isn't any more complicated than that. Which brings me to my next point.

2. Shortly after that, the young girl (they were all about 19--at 23, I feel fairly old) asked me if I was religious. For simplicity's sake, I didn't argue about the meaning of the word, and decided to answer 'yes.' I wanted to make myself understood and not confuse her. She responded, "ah, that explains it." A little while after, she asked me if I went to church and I explained that I hadn't had the opportunity to visit during college and currently didn't have a car (see earlier blog post). She said, 'aha, well you're not *really* religious, then,' and this may have been her teasing me and possibly attempting to bring some jocularity into the conversation to draw it away from the serious topic, which people can find uncomfortable, because the other girls laughed at her and implied she was messing with me. I did respond that 'well, if being religious just means you go, sit, and leave, once a week, then yeah, I'm not really religious.' So there you see that I did make a slight attempt to define the term and not imply that I was just your run-of-the-mill lame churchian, or whatever she might have had in the back of her mind because of her prior experience, when she asked.

It was a short but fascinating exchange, to me. My surprise at the declaration by the girl (and the two others emphatically agreed on that point) that I was inhumanly polite can be explained by the fact that there's very few Christians (capital C) around, and consequently most people live the bulk of their lives without really getting to see the fruit of sanctification in another person. So what's the reason why I was so polite and why they were so confounded by my behavior so as to comment on it -- and to declare that no other man on earth was as polite as me, no less? It comes down to Christ and His grace. His gospel. It always comes back to that. He is at the root of it all. 

So that was a little way in which I might have 'witnessed,' recently. Not something extremely remarkable, since I didn't exactly have (take?) the opportunity to share the full Gospel with them, but I'm hoping God will take that memory and use it to bring fruit in their lives when the moment is right in the future.

~ Rak Chazak