Watching Movies - My Mom

Like most 20th century American families, my family watches a lot of movies together, and each one of us has particular movie-watching habits and preferences.

I tried to make a flowchart for each member of the family, but I don't have Visio on my computer and I realized very quickly that making flowcharts in Word is a huge pain, and the end result is much uglier than expected. So here's the one for my mom, and the rest will come later, probably after Urbana. Hopefully I can figure out a way to do it on Visio or something else so it's not so darn ugly.

Merry Christmas, all.

AOE and The Importance of Reflection

I recently rediscovered Age of Empires after many years of not playing, and I discovered a fairly large, vibrant community of people who still play, and I've started playing online. This is actually the closest I've become to a "gamer", as I've also started watching recorded/commentated games online in addition to playing a good amount. [As an aside, I never used to understand what the appeal was in people like Sam Li watching recorded games, but now I understand].

I was listening to an interview of one of the top AOC players (I think it was FeAge) by ZeroEmpires, and he asked FeAge if he had any tips for getting better. FeAge gave the following two tips -

1) Play against people that are as good or better than you.
2) After every game, spend 5 minutes and think about why you won or why you lost the game. 

I've been practicing the second tip, and while it might not seem like such a big deal, it has actually helped my game tremendously. Thinking about the one or two things I did right or wrong and either applying or avoiding them in future games has helped me improve dramatically. I've improved from being a "Super Noob" with twice as many losses as wins to simply being a "Noob" with as many wins as losses (though I definitely had to win much more than I lost to get here). I didn't realize at first how much I was improving until I realized that I had jumped much higher in rating than I ever thought I would. At first I thought this was a fluke, and that I must have just gotten lucky a few times, but after a while of maintaining my rating and outplaying players of lower rating, I think I can say with confidence that my rating isn't a fluke.

I've always assumed that just playing the game a lot will somehow automatically make you better at it, and to some extent, that's true. Joshee once mentioned to me and he was frustrated with someone who had played LoL for a long time and still wasn't very good, and I remember wondering to myself if that guy was just incompetent and kind of stupid. But now I guess I've realized a bit more that to become a better player, there needs to be some intentionality behind it and improvement doesn't just come by "playing a lot". Either that, or I'm just stupid and not as talented as everyone else.

Obviously, this lesson on reflection can be applied to many different arenas in life, and this practice of reflection has also helped me specifically in my ultimate play. But whatever. This is an AOE post, so here are some of the random reminders and tips that I've picked up that have really helped my gameplay:

• You are going to need to transfer your villagers from one resource to another, so don't be afraid to do it. Start sending your lumberjacks to seed farms once you have your extra Town Centers up. Don't wait until you've saved up a ton of wood to do it. You'll end up with too much.
• Start trading before your gold runs out. When it runs out, it will already be too late.
• When playing Turks, don't forget that the Light Cavalry/Hussar upgrades are free. They make for a great meat shield for your Janisseries/Hand Cannoneers.
• Don't be afraid to ask for help from your teammates. If you need resources or military support, ask immediately.
• Do your military upgrades before you need them. Especially the upgrades to Champion. Those take a while.
• Don't forget to make siege. Good use of siege seems to actually be the difference between noobs and better players.
• Anticipate what your opponents are going to make, and make the hard counter to them. Don't forget about Hand Canoneers and how much they tear through infantry.
• Build an extra Blacksmith or two to get all your upgrades faster.

There was a time when I thought that any decent RTS player who decided to pick up AOE could still beat me because I simply wasn't very good at AOE, but not anymore. So if there are any of you people out there who still play AOE or want to get back into it or want to challenge me, hit me up so we can Wololo together.

Defensive Killer Instinct

I'm watching the Knicks-Heat game right now, and I just noticed that Ronnie Brewer is guarding Lebron James. I wonder what that feels like. I wonder what goes through his head when Lebron has the ball.

Thinking about it, the mental game is huge for playing defense. You need to really believe you can guard the person you are on to do an effective job of it. In sports, when we say that a player either has or lacks that "killer instinct" and the "ice in his veins", we mean that he truly believes that he's going to make the clutch shot, and that belief helps him make it. It isn't that if someone believes hard enough, they'll make the shot all the time, but believing it allows a player to more effectively use his skills and talents to make a play. We don't usually associate this mental strength with defense, as we do with offense, but I experienced how important this "defensive killer instinct" is first hand recently. I'm talking about the need for that reckless, over-confident belief that you're going to shut down whoever you guard and the eagerness to defend the best player on the other team

I experienced this last weekend playing in a small ultimate tournament here in Fort Wayne. Those of you who've played sports with me, you know that I take pride in playing good, hard defense. I always truly believe that I can shut down whoever I'm put up against, no matter how much better they are supposed to be. As I've played ultimate here over the last few months, I've noticed that I've transitioned from a more defensive player to a much more offensive player, as I was slowly reacquainted with the flow of the game and the movements of the game. Offense just became more fun for me to play, as I began to really believe that I was unguardable and was just faster than anyone guarding me. And maybe I still felt that way towards the people I was playing against, so I just got used to poaching more and helping on defense (translation: I played lazy defense).

So last weekend, we brought a group of people we play pickup with and played in a small 5-team tournament. In one of the games, we were playing another team who only had 6 players. One of their players is a kid who currently plays for the Indy Alleycats (the "pro" ultimate team - he's number 37). And I was scared of him. Luckily, I didn't need to guard him, and the super-stud on our team decided to guard him the entire game. I've never been good at guarding the give-and-go kind of handler guys, because I always feel like I'm a step behind, so I had a horrible feeling when we got switched up on defense and I was all of a sudden guarding this amazing player. This happened twice in total, each for probably around 30 seconds each time. And I did alright - I don't think he threw or caught a score in that minute that I was on him, but guarding him for that thirty seconds felt like forever, and I was totally spent after each time.

In reality, he's not that much faster than me, and I didn't run all that much when guarding him, but it really seems to me that the "This is not good" repeating in my head just made my body shut down. I really can't describe it. In my head, I really didn't want to be in that situation, and my body seemed to respond accordingly. I felt tired, probably more tired than I actually was or should have been. I think I was physically capable of playing him competitively, but my mind told my body after thirty seconds "I can't do this; I can't take it anymore", and so my energy just seemed to disappear with my morale.

So I wonder what it's like to defend Lebron. I wonder what it's like being put on Kobe in the last minute of the 4th. I think this is what really makes guys like Kobe and Lebron great defenders. They know and believe that they can take you. That's part of why guys like Shane Battier and Bruce Bowen were as good as they were, despite not necessarily matching up physically to they guys they were guarding.

But don't worry guys. I'll get that mental strength and defensive confidence back. I actually think I only lost it for ultimate, and not basketball. So next time we ball, expect good defense and hard fouls. No easies.

"All this is, it's fun to me. There's no pressure in it. There's no fear. A lot of guys, I think, when they match up with other great players, there's a fear of embarrassment, you know, to guard them, afraid that they might make you look bad. I really don't care. It's just fun going up against them. If you're playing a great player, of course he's gonna make you look bad at some times, but that's part of the game. It is what it is."

- Kobe Bryant in Kobe Doin Work

Check out my sweet 2-inch vertical. Oh by the way, we went undefeated in that tourney!

Beating Bullying

Last Friday, Northpark had an overnight campout for their youth, which I got to help out with. The youth group is, as the youth pastor described, "bottom-heavy", with a lot of junior high kids and fewer high school students. One of the lingering feeling after spending ~9 hours with them (from around 6 at night to 3 in the morning), is "Wow. Kids can be so mean!"

There's one kid in particular who seemed to be picked on and laughed at the most. He was the kid that everyone else particularly liked to see lose games and the kid who was told to stop talking in conversation. It probably had a lot to do with his youth (he was in 6th grade), general empty-headedness, and tendancy to talk non-stop about random, irrelevant things. While I don't think that most of the remarks, laughs, or snickers directed at him were malicious or particularly hurtful, I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

I got a chance to talk to him a little sitting out at the campfire, and after I asked him what school he was attending, he told me that he was going to a new school this year. I asked him why he switched schools, and he said something to the effect of "I was tired of being shoved into lockers and being called names." Man, stuff like this breaks my heart. The mild teasing and mostly-innocent remarks tossed his way at his youth group are probably nothing compared to what he went through at school, but the church family should a haven of safety and love, as cheesy as that sounds.

The topic of bullying actually came up during the campfire conversation, and one of the kids told us a story of a bully getting beat up at his school. Apparently, a kid was picking on a mentally handicapped kid, when a football player came and told him to cut it out and beat him up. After he told the story, there was this general gladness that justice had been served, but I wish the kids could see that they could also make a difference in the life of the kid being made fun of right in front them.

I'm not sure how many people I've shared this with, but I was bullied as an elementary school kid to the point that my mom came to school to talk to the kids and my teachers. (Some of you may be thinking "Hah! I knew it! No wonder he can be such a jerk sometimes.") I wouldn't say that the bullying was especially malicious or hurtful compared to some of the stuff we hear on the news or see other people going through, and I certainly wasn't the "most-bullied" kid in school, but I still know that hurt and loneliness and fear of being bullied.

Through my awkward pre-teen years, when I often hated everyone around me at school, there was the rare person who whose kindness made the biggest difference ever. I always had my own group of friends, but there's really something about a more "popular" kid being nice to me even when he had nothing to gain, and probably more to lose, that made a huge difference.

In fourth grade, it was Matt Sullivan. "Sullie" was the funny, athletic kid that everyone liked. In that era of constantly being unncessarily football-tackled while playing goalie during reccess soccer, he was the one guy that was kind to me. I won't pretend to remember what exactly he did for me, but to this day, I can clearly remember his face, and the sadness I had when I found out that he moved away the year after.

In sixth grade, when we were in trailers at Asher Holmes, it was Mike Canetta. He was the nice, seemingly rich Jewish (or Catholic?) kid, as all the popular kids seemed to be. Despite my complete uncoolness which I will readily admit, he was kind to me. In that point of childhood when clothes and other material possessions all of a sudden mattered, I remember very clearly him spending the time to teach me the cultural must-knows, like what zip-off pants and Abercrombie and Fitch were.

I could probably count on one finger the other people I remember from my fourth and sixth grade classes, and I certainly don't remember what any of those kids looked like, but the impact these two young kids made on another young, awkward kid will never be forgotten. Here's to you, Matt Sullivan and Mike Canetta. Your small acts of kindness turned out to make a huge difference in my life. Thank you.

Living as a Closet Moderate

My Experience

It's really no secret that Indiana, and Fort Wayne especially, is extremely politically conservative (even though Obama won Indiana in 2008, surprisingly). I consider myself a moderate who has been increasingly leaning left, and I currently plan on voting for Obama again in a month. However, I can count on one hand the number of people in Fort Wayne who know my political leaning.

It may come to a surprise to some of you that I've, for the most part, kept my political leanings a secret, given my headstrong, stubborn, arrogant, and argumentative nature. I haven't spoken up about it for various reasons. Obviously, I don't want to start unnecessary arguments and break relationships with others. Also, I get the feeling, especially from the older people in the church I attend, that if I "came out" as a moderate who is going to vote for Obama, my "Christian-ness" will come into question. I can't help but feel like if people found out I was going to vote for Obama, people would wonder if I was actually a Christian or not. Let's not even get to whether or not gay marriage or abortion should be legal.

The most troublesome reason for not speaking up, however, is that I've never really gotten an opportunity to speak up. I was never asked what I believed. It is assumed, that as an evangelical Christian, I am part of the right-wing movement and am going to vote Republican. I've never been asked on my position on gay marriage, abortion, war, capital punishment, or healthcare. Rather, people speak about it around me as if it was a universal truth that Mitt Romney is the correct "Christian" choice for the presidency, and that everyone else must be blind, misguided, or anti-Christian. It really isn't what they believe that bothered me so much as it is the nonchalant dismissal of all dissenting opinions, without, in my opinion, a responsible consideration of the merit of those beliefs.

And so here I am, every Wednesday at prayer meeting, listening to anti-Obama rhetoric, mentally mumbling to myself how so much of it is flat out lies and how clearly biased and uninformed some people are. And I've realized that it wasn't before long that I started basing my identity at church and in Fort Wayne in general around my political standing. The identity that I had before, which was "the short but good-looking guy who's the only Asian in the room", has shifted to "the short, good-looking Asian who is secretly going to vote for Obama." It's really hard to describe how this happened, other than politics jumping to my mind whenever I interacted with, or even just thought about, certain people in the church. My view of others also gradually warped, as I started mentally categorizing people as right-wing nuts, instead of valuing the various non-political aspects of their lives. Instead of loving, I started judging, even though judging was the the fault that I so hated, as it got me here in the first place.

There grew an invisible divide, a canyon that only I could see, between myself and those who expect me to be Republican. It is impossible for me to really feel close to anyone to whom I can't even share my political views with. All other interaction begins to feel superficial, as I can hear myself questioning what would happen if they knew I supported Obama or that I didn't care much about gay marriage. This inability to be honest about politics and worldview has become a barrier from trust and any truly meaningful relationship.

Eventually, this judgement and its subsequent divide turned into resentment. I resented that I was expected to hold certain political beliefs as a Christian, and I resented others for holding those expectations. My heart grew fiercely defensive at any mention of politics, leading me to be increasingly irritated at any opinion of politics that was different than mine. All attacks on Obama became attacks on me, as I started taking everything more and more personally. I looked down on everyone who I thought was blindly right-wing and uninformed.

I'm glad that God's revealed the condition of my heart to me, as He's reorienting my heart towards love rather than judgement. I'm grateful for the MAC training that God's brought back to mind, as I've red-lined hard for a while without even realizing it. I'm still working on my love and humility, so please continue to pray for me in these areas.

Exhortation/Encouragements

So what's the takeaway for all of you, who are probably reading this in relatively open-minded campuses in relatively diverse and healthy ministries? I hope that you remember to never assume that other people believe everything that you do. Just because someone doesn't speak up when you're talking about something doesn't mean they don't have a different opinion about it, especially when you are discussing things in groups. Gently ask people for their opinions on important topics, and always lovingly leave room for disagreement and dialogue. Avoid unknowingly creating invisible barriers between your group and other people. Otherwise, you may end up with people that secretly resent you, your group, or all Christians.

Remember that others don't always need you to agree with them, but just that you respect them and their ideas without disregarding them for certain opinions or beliefs that they hold. And even if you truly believe that you would still love someone even if they disagree with you in some area, perception is everything, and if they don't feel that way, then you are still erecting that invisible barrier that is a stumbling block for them.

This goes for everything. Offhand remarks about girls. Using the word "gay" inappropriately. Assuming the people around you don't struggle with same-sex attraction, identity, pornography, sexual immorality, drug abuse, self-image, etc and being insensitive about those issues. Public expectations of certain people to be a certain way. Perpetual teasing of any denomination, doctrine, race, tv show, movie genre, music, lifestyle, etc. You never know who you could unintentionally be pushing away.

I hope this doesn't come off as me on a moral high-ground, preaching to all you inferior Christians. If there's anyone guilty of malicious teasing and callous insensitivity, it's me. I've actually been approached, engaged, and rebuked about it more times than I'm willing to admit. In fact, chances are that I've personally hurt you, the reader, whoever you are, at some point by doing exactly what I'm saying not to do (and for that, I'm sorry). And I'm obviously still nowhere from perfect, and God is still working on my soul. But it's only now being on the other side of things that I've really gotten a tiny taste of what being "in the closet" about anything feels like. It sucks.

Colossians 4:5-6 - "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."

Philippians 2:3-4 - "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."

1 Thessalonians 5:11 - "Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing."

Quick Thoughts on the Replacement Refs

We all saw it yesterday. The officiating in the NFL is noticably poor. It's not just the media, the announcers, or the complaining players. It truly is worse. There's so much to talk about here, but here's two quick thoughts.

I feel bad for the replacement refs.

Of all the different parties to blame in this debacle, I blame the replacement refs the least. I really find the vitriol towards the replacement refs, especially on Reddit, totally over the top and just plain mean [1][2][3]. These are people that probably love football more than you or me or most fans out there, and they were given the opportunity to do something they've probably dreamed about for a long time. They probably didn't realize how big of a jump it would be, and just how difficult referreeing in the NFL could be, compared to D-3. It's basically the same game, right?

Just think about it from these guys' points of views. One of these refs has been officiating Division 3 football for longer than he wants to be, holding on to the hope that one day, maybe the SEC or Big Ten would give him a call for big-time D-1 football. Then one day he get a call from the NFL, asking if he wants to ref professional games - games with players that they watch on TV, with crowds larger than the few hundred that attend D-3 football games. Incredibly excited, he agrees, and proceeds to share the good news with his immediate family and friends. Sure, the gig might only last a few weeks, but this is an opportunity of a lifetime that there's no way he can pass up. The first week of the season, he let's all of his friends and family know which game he'll be on, so that his son can see him on national television for the first time and brag about it to his friends.

But the game is too fast for him. The plays, too fast. The rulebook, too fat. The players, too argumentative. The coaches, too deceptive. The fans, too intimidating. He tries to make the right calls, but it's hard to tell if he's actually doing a good job, with both coaches yelling at him, the players arguing with them, and the crowd loudly boo-ing every time a call is made against their team. Emotionally, physically, and mentally drained, turns on the TV in his hotel room, only to find that all the sports analysts seem to agree that all replacement refs did a horrible job. He logs onto Facebook and Twitter to discover that the entire sports world is united against him. What makes it worse, his name is made public, and he begins to receive death threats for certain calls he was so sure he made correctly.

It's so easy to see refs as mere commodities and forget these are real people with real emotions. I don't mind occassional boo-ing, or even the occasional BS-chant, but villifying these refs or wishing harm upon them is really over the top for me.

The regular refs (NFL Referees Association) need to share some of the blame.

It is well accepted that the NFL deserves a TON of blame for not getting this deal done. They deserve blame for thinking that replacement refs would cut it in the NFL. They deserve blame for not properly equipping the refs. Two illustrations borrowed from Reddit (one of which is mine).

Analogy #1

The officials suck, but the NFL hired sucky officials. You get what you pay for. We're pissed about that?

My analogy: The NFL promised everyone a great dinner and took us all out to dinner at McDonalds. Now everyone is yelling at the McDonalds employees for serving up McDonalds food and not serving up four star food... No shit, we're at fucking McDonalds.

Analogy #2

I'm not saying they aren't responsible, but I think they're doing the best they can.

If a guy needs to fix some pipes in his house but is too cheap to hire plumbers and hires a cheap amateur, he shouldn't be surprised if there's water leaking again in a few weeks.

But a CBA is a two-party agreement. Both sides need to make concessions. From what I know about the talks (from ESPN and Mort), the NFL has made it clear that they are willing to make compromises on the economic terms, but the referree union is resistant to the operational changes the NFL is proposing, most of which many people would agree with. Mort mentioned in the ESPN post-game report yesterday that some of the changes the NFL proposed include benching referrees with poor performances and training new referee crews to try and phase in new, younger refs. It's totally understandable why the referee union would be opposed to those changes, but let's not pretend that they aren't in part to blame for the deal not getting done. The NFL is offering what they think will benefit the league in the long run, and the union refuses to compromise.

With the mounting pressure on the NFL to get the deal done, I wouldn't be surprised if they just folded to the union's demands, without the CBA they wanted in place. Next season, when we're complaining about some blown call and demanding the benching of some official, we don't have the right to blame NFL for not trying to put it in place.

Jesus Culture and Hillsong - Mostly Love, a Little Hate

I've been going through a spiritual dry spell recently, and listening to Hillsong and Jesus Culture during really work has really helped me to remember God more during the day. It's really awesome because there are full hour and a half worship session videos on Youtube, and my two favorite are probably I Heart Revolution by Hillsong and Your Love Never Fails by Jesus Culture. I especially love One Thing Remains that's done by Jesus Culture (I actually bought this version for a dollar on Amazon Mp3). . Whenever I listen to this worship music at work, I find myself singing or humming along. Hopefully it doesn't bother the people I sit around too much...

Jesus Culture - One Thing Remains




Anyways, even though I really like Jesus Culture and Hillsong and I tolerate most of the little theological/worldview differences in the music, some of the stuff in the music is absolutely too ridiculous that I find it difficult to worship to. The following are some of the idiotic lyrics that I really object to.

Come Away - Show Me Your Glory



Interestingly, this is the song right before my favorite song of One Thing Remains. Here are the lyrics-

"I see the cloud, I step in
I want to see Your glory as Moses did
Flashes of light and rolls of thunder,

I'm not afraid
I'm not afraid

Show me Your glory, show me Your glory, my God
Show me Your glory, show me Your glory"

I find it either incredibly arrogant or incredibly naive for someone to think that they can "handle" the fullness of the glory of God. What makes you think that you are more holy or righteous than Moses or Isaiah? Even John got all confused when an angel of the Lord appeared and he bowed down and worshiped it. John, one of the fathers of the Church, who walked with God on earth for three years, couldn't even handle the glory of an angel. Do you really want God to reveal the fullness of his glory to you? I think it would really benefit whoever wrote this song to read RC Sproul's Holiness of God and rethink those lyrics.

Jesus Culture - Fill Me Up



I absolutely hate this song. It really doesn't give me anything lyrically (well I guess Jesus Culture songs don't normally anyways), but I don't really like the melody either. Also in the few lyrics there are, there's borderline heresy.

"You provide the fire
I'll provide the sacrifice
You provide the Spirit
And I will open up inside"

"I'll provide the sacrifice." Really?! Really?! Have you read the Bible? Don't you know the narrative of scripture that God and God alone provides the sacrifice?! Old Testament. Abraham and Isaac. It was God. New Testament. Jesus. He is God. This isn't some Reformed vs. Arminian difference (like in the third and fourth lines). This is Bible 101. This is the gospel. I can see how they might mean giving yourself as a sacrifice, with "fire" referring to the Spirit. But come on. I can't help but get angry every time I hear this song.

Hillsong - I Heart Revolution Video Snippet

In this little video snippet, the people from Hillsong Church are talking about how important it is to love people, including those near us. Their approach is a little moralistic, but it's okay and I don't really disagree. Then this guy, comes up.

"As long as we are preaching the gospel with our actions, I think we're fulfilling the Great Commission, which is to go out and make disciples."

This is absolutely wrong on so many levels. "Preaching the gospel with our actions" alone would give some pastors fits, but it's a common mistake, and somewhat forgivable. But then he throws in the Great Commission. Do you really think that being nice to people and feeding the poor is fulfilling the Great Commission? If I may ask, how are you going to baptize people by your actions? Is being nice to people really "making disciples"? You've got to be kidding me. You may not hold to the whole unreached people's group thing with the Great Commission, but as a full-time minister, you can't possibly really think that the Great Commission amounts to nothing more than just being a good person by "preaching the gospel with your actions." My goodness.

I know this has been a really negative post, but in reality, I really like Hillsong and Jesus Culture and God has used their music in my life, even if they are kind of wacky sometimes. I guess I just felt the need to rant a little bit about the bad songs that I really dislike.

My Testimony at Knox

Two days ago, I got to give the following testimony at Knox. I was only given 5 minutes, and had I had more  time, there was SO much more that I wanted to say. But anyways, here it is.

Good morning, Knox Church. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Caleb, and I’m a recent graduate of U of M. I don’t actually attend Knox anymore, because I’ve moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana for my new job, but I did attend Knox for four years when I was here.

I first visited Knox a few weeks into my freshman year when I was looking for a church to challenge me spiritually and intellectually. The richness, honesty, and depth of insight of Pastor Chuck’s sermons kept me coming back.

It is through Pastor Chuck’s preaching that I learned one of the most important lessons of the Christian life my first few months here at Knox - and that is that the gospel isn’t something you learn and you “graduate” from. It’s not something that you learn, get over, and go and learn deeper and more majestic things. No. The gospel is huge. The gospel is beautiful. The gospel encompasses all of Christian life. And every Christian should be striving to understand the gospel more deeply every day.

What I appreciate so much about Pastor Chuck’s preaching is that I think that it’s impossible to visit Knox and to leave without hearing the gospel. It doesn’t sound the same every week, and he doesn’t use the same words every week, but the life, death, and resurrection of Christ are always central to his sermons.

But it’s not only through the preaching that my understanding of the gospel deepened. The people of this church embody the gospel. In 2 Corinthians 2, it says, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”

Knox Church, you smell good. I’m not talking about the bathrooms here which smell deliciously of Fruit Loops, though it is that too.

This church has a real gospel fragrance, an aroma of the knowledge of Christ, which I first got a whiff of as a freshman smelling those donuts and bagels after service. Your love and care for college students is a real, tangible way that we college students get to experience Christ’s love through you. So on behalf of myself and all the college students that attended Knox, past and present, thank you for all the things you’ve done to display your love to us.

But the gospel fragrance of this church isn’t smelled simply in what you do, but it’s simply who you are. I hope this doesn’t offend anyone, and I don’t think it will, but I love how Knox is a church of just ordinary people. Believe it or not, I didn’t realize this when I first came in and saw the big, beautiful church building and all of you beautiful people all dressed up, and it wasn’t until I sat in Sunday school and got to talk to some of you and hear your stories that I really realized that this church is full of people with family issues, relational issues, and spiritual issues, just like mine. I take comfort in knowing that I’m not surrounded by a group of “super-Christians” without any problems. And in Sunday School, I take comfort in knowing that in knowing that I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand what Pastor Bob is talking about all the time, and that I’m not the only person that doesn’t know as much church history as he does.

And while you are ordinary people, most of you are still more experienced and advanced in life than most of us college students. But your experiences and your lives are the answers to so many of the questions that we have as college students, especially those of academics, career, and how they relate to the Christian life. Questions like, “How do I glorify God in my studies? Can I glorify God by being a doctor, even if I’m not a medical missionary? What does it mean to be a Christian in academia? Is it possible to be active in the church and a high ranking officer in a company at the same time?” We have all of these questions, and the people in this church are a great resource and example to all of us college students thinking through these questions.

And it is for all of these reason that I really believe that churches like Knox, and Knox especially, are perfect for college students. So if you’re a freshman and this is your first or second time here at Knox, I really encourage you to consider making Knox your home church for the next few years. And if you’re already a college student here and have been attending Knox, I challenge you to go to Sunday School. It’s only an hour a week, and it’s a great way to get to know some of the people you worship with every week and to participate in the life of the church, even when you don’t have time during the week to participate in other activities.

And again, to all of you who serve and care for us college students, even kids like me who rolled out of bed and came to church in sweatpants and a hoodie, and kids like me who took more than my fair share of donuts in the morning, thank you so much. God has really used this church to bless me, and so many other college students like me.

Thanks.

My Pro-Life Defense on Reddit - My Stance

As you may have seen on my Facebook, I posted in on reddit in response to the question/prompt: 

Okay conservatives, post your rational arguments that we constantly bury here. I won't downvote any of them. Hopefully others will follow suit.

[Here's the link] of my response and the literally hundreds of follow-up comments. In this post, I'm going to outline some of the basics of my stance on abortion, and will continue to clarify my position further in future posts.

Introduction
As I began responding to the hundreds of responses I got, my stance on abortion became increasingly clear to me. Believe it or not, I was largely unconvinced that abortion was wrong until only a few months ago. To me, the Biblical support that the soul begins at conception is shaky and unconvincing. Not only that, I objected to the idea that abortion is murder and that those who have abortion are murderers, because to me, a genuine belief in this morally justified things like the bombing of abortion clinics or the murder of doctors who perform abortions. Also, if abortion truly was murder, why don't the anti-abortion conservative evangelicals care more about the issue? I just didn't believe that the pro-life rhetoric that abortion is murder was genuinely reflected in their belief systems or in their actions. All this paired with the lack of any sort of emotional attachment to "clumps of cells", I could not bring myself to accept the pro-life side.

So as I began writing back to my millions of fans around the world, my stance became solidified. To me, these stances are coherent and internally consistent, and it seemed like many of the pro-choice people were satisfied with many of my answers. That said, some of my beliefs are non-traditional, especially for an evangelical Christian. I haven't really run these arguments by many Christians, so tell me what you think.

Abortion is a violation of human rights.
The following is the response that I submitted, to which I got over a 1,500 upvotes and hundreds of responses. This line of thought came to me as I was reading about William Wilberforce in the book Amazing Grace (thanks, Knox!). I thought to myself, "How could they not see Africans as people too? Shouldn't it be so obvious?" I've actually never heard someone give the following argument, and from some of the responses I got (which I will post later), it seems like it's the first time that others may have heard it as well.

"I think abortion is a violation of human rights. I'm actually a little surprised that most progressives are so adamantly pro-abortion, as I think it's actually the next human rights hurdle that needs to be overcome. In Roman times, infantacide was common, because children were perceived to be property of their parents, without rights for themselves. Now, we recognize the personhood of children, and killing children is universally accepted as morally wrong. Two hundred years ago, slaves were considered as the property of their owners, and had no human rights. Killing a slave was merely just destroying something that you owned. Now, it's nearly universally accepted that those slaves were persons, and deserved their own human rights.
Which brings us to today. I understand the argument that a woman should be able to do what she wants with her body and I agree with it, so long as it does not infringe on the basic human right of life of someone else. I know that all (if not most) pro-choice people out there do not consider a fetus as a human life, deserving of human rights (if so, I don't think you would be pro-choice!). However, 200 years ago, slave owners viewed slaves as sub-human, as did parents to children even longer before that. Slave owners would have objected that they should have the right to do what they wanted to their property. 

Yes, I understand that infantacide, slavery, and abortion are all different issues, with different societal implications and cultural nuances. However, the point is that we see in history that society has progressed to recognize various "peoples/groups" to be persons deserving of human rights, and I think/hope that the same will be true for unborn babies. These changes come not only with legislation, but with a general shift in thinking. It goes much deeper than just politics to general worldview. 

Progressives have led us in the fight for human rights in so many different areas, and it is a little surprising to me (and a little sad) that for the most part, they aren't also fighting for human rights in the realm of abortion. 

Edit: sorry for using "pro-abortion". It is a poor choice of words, and should be "pro-choice" instead."

A baby's personhood begins at conception
This is the underlying assumption I hold. I will elaborate more on this in the next post, but I just wanted to make this clear.

The moral heinousness of aborting a baby and murdering an adult are NOT the same.
I do not believe that aborting an unborn baby is of the same moral weight as murdering an adult or even of the same weight as murdering a born baby. So while it could technically fit the dictionary definition of murder, I think that the word "murder" is too loaded and has moral implications that I do not think necessarily apply to abortion. You may object that if it is essentially the same action of ending the life of a person, it should carry the same moral weight. Here's an argument against this that I posted -

I think that two identical actions with two different subjects/victims can hold different moral weight. For example - adult rape is morally wrong, but in my mind, raping a 2-year old (and it does happen), is indescribably worse. Another example would be robbing the house of a rich person and stealing $1000 of cash seems "less wrong" than knowingly stealing $1000 from a poor family. From many perspectives, the crime is the same, and both are morally wrong (taking this at face value), but one seems to carry more moral weight than the other. 

This of course does not add to the idea that abortion is less morally weighty than murder of a toddler, but it feels that way, and that's the best I can give you at the moment. I need to give it a little more thought, but I hope this kind of gives you some of my premises and framework of thought.

As I mentioned above, I have a real problem with the implications of considering abortion as morally equal to the murder of an adult. Would it be morally justifiable to murder an abortion doctor, who may have "technically" murdered hundreds of people? Would it be morally justifiable to treat those who have abortions as true murderers? In my opinion, no. However, most pro-choice people don't consider it any sort of moral transgression if a baby is aborted before the third trimester, and I've found this observation of different moral "weights" is a reasonable, appealing one. The abortion has been framed in such a polarizing way, where abortion is either murder, and mass genocide is happening, or there hasn't been any moral transgression at all. I find this to be unnecessarily polarizing, and I believe there is a middle ground.

Should abortion be criminalized in the US? 
As in all things, I believe that Christians should not put hope in any legislation to be the solution, and I really don't believe that an all-out ban on abortion is the solution, at least right now. I don't actually think that the legislation is the root problem at all. If we ask ourselves, "Why are people having abortions? What is the root cause?", I don't think it's possible to just point at Roe v Wade and say, "If that law wasn't passed, no one would be having abortions right now." There are various root causes, ranging from poverty to inadequate sex education to a disregard for the unborn. All of these need to be addressed.

That said, do I believe that abortion should be criminalized? First of all, I don't think it ever will. I don't believe that Roe v. Wade will ever be overturned, so I think it is somewhat futile framing the debate in such all-or-nothing terms. That said, given a choice, I don't think that the US is ready for a ban of abortion, especially in how people in the country view abortion. It was brought up multiple times that abortion rates go down in countries that legalize it fully, and that abortions remain common in countries that criminalize it. Until abortion is widely seen as more of a last resort, I don't think banning abortion will necessarily have the desired effects that so many pro-life people hope for. In addition, I feel like there are just too many special cases that may make abortion morally justifiable, which makes legislation even more difficult to write and pass.

However, passing legislation to curb abortions is still beneficial, as it does help shape the culture. A great example of this is the ban of third-trimester abortions, where tons of the liberals that responded agreed that this was a necessary restriction on abortion. So just in summary, I believe that legislation is one answer, but not the answer, and the pro-life movement needs to bring answers to some of the other root problems that cause abortion.

The pro-life should be truly pro-life, not just anti-abortion.
You will not believe how many people asked about my stance on universal healthcare,
war, and capital punishment. While my stances on those issues does not have a real bearing on the validity of my arguments, people just wanted to make sure that I was holding an internally consistent worldview.

I think it's very important for pro-life people to be pro-life, not just pro-unborn-life. One of the major complaints that I read over and over is how the same conservatives who claimed a regard for the unborn showed no regard for the lives of the poor or the lives of soldiers. While I think all of these issues are more nuanced than simply being pro-everything, we really need to think about whether or not we display a sufficient care for the poor, the elderly, and people in other areas of the world where we are invading.

Below is one of my responses to a question about the pro-life movement.

I totally agree with you that we need to address why unplanned pregnancies happen. The pro-life movement has yet to show an appropriate concern to these issues along with an appropriate concern for those who are stuck making the difficult decision of whether or not to keep their baby. 

That said, I don't think it's an either-or thing w.r.t more restrictive legislation. I believe that it's a both-and thing. But yeah. The pro-life movement (along with all of us citizens of the world) needs to pay more attention to the root cause.

So this concludes my first post. What are your thoughts? Do you have objections? I hope some of you do. Because I've been thinking through the holes and perceived holes in my arguments and have tried to formulate counterarguments for them.

Coming up next - When does personhood begin?

Then after that - Answering the tough questions of rape, mother's safety, and other objections.

My Life in Fort Wayne - Fridays

It's kind of hard to believe, but I've already lived in Fort Wayne for 6 whole months. As with living anywhere else, I've developed a certain rhythm of life, and because most of you have no idea what I actually do in Fort Wayne, I thought it would be a good idea to do some short posts of what I actually do every day. So every day this week, I'm going to be posting a short blurb of what that day normally looks like.

Friday - 9/80 Day

Because yesterday's post was a day late, I'm afraid the last few of these posts may be a day late as well.

8:00am - 5:00am - Work (every other Friday)

There really isn't much to talk about for Fridays, other than that I get every other Friday off. I work a 9/80 schedule, which means I work 9 hours a day every day and get every other Friday off. [Actually, on the Friday that I do work, I only need to work for 8 hours.] As you can probably already see, my work days are ridiculously long. May days basically end at 6 every day, which is later than most people stay. I've gotten used to it though, and having every other Friday off is absolutely fantastic. The difference between a four day work week and a five day work week is huge. Because I don't really have anything else to talk about in this post, here's a list of reasons why 9/80 rocks.

Why the 9/80 schedule rocks:

• That "holy crap it's only Wednesday and I have two more days of work after this" feeling no longer exists.
• Holidays extend the weekend to four day weekends.
• I can switch to take two Fridays off in a row for vacations. Last month, I took three days off on July 4th weekend and had a 10 day vacation!
• I can run errands to places that are only open on weekdays (or that I just wouldn't want to spend time going to on weekends).

10:00am - 5:00pm - Play Age of Emperors, run some errands, take a nap

Free Fridays are probably my favorite day of the week. I have literally nothing I need to do. I usually play a good amount of Age of Empires during the day, because my internet gets kind of weird at night, so I don't get many opportunities to play on the other days. If there are any of you out there that still plays Age of Empires, tell me, and we can play together!! I play on Voobly, where I'm considered a noob. But it's okay. I'm getting better (I think). 

Fridays are great for running errands, which is also what I did yesterday. I went to go to an optometrist for the first time this year to get my vision checked and to order some new contact lenses. When I was at the desk going to pay, I was surprised at how much money needed to come out of my pocket. I asked to the lady and asked her why it was so much. After she listed out all the different silly fees that I needed to pay, I told her, "Sorry, I just moved out of home, and this is my first time doing this by myself. Being an adult is so expensive." After I said this, all the people around me started laughing and saying stuff like, "You have no idea, kid." Fun experience. After seeing the eye doctor, I went to Comcast to get my modem replaced. The door was out the line. I heard a lady remark "It's August 3rd. The beginning of the month. All the people on Social Security are here." I'm not positive why exactly they would be at Comcast (to pay the bills, maybe?), but yeah. There were a lot of poorer people there. 

8:00pm - 1:00am - Watch movies/TV shows

I was bored last night and started watching the Tudors because I heard that it was a good show. It's a Showtime show, so there's a lot of nudity and stuff, so it's not really good for my soul. But it's such a great show! The story has me totally intrigued. Why must all the best TV shows be HBO/Showtime/Starz shows with a lot of nudity?! Boo. 

Sorry this post sucked. Me doing nothing isn't really post-worthy, even if it is enjoyable to me.Hopefully tomorrow's post will be more interesting to you. 

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays

My Life in Fort Wayne - Thursdays

It's kind of hard to believe, but I've already lived in Fort Wayne for 6 whole months. As with living anywhere else, I've developed a certain rhythm of life, and because most of you have no idea what I actually do in Fort Wayne, I thought it would be a good idea to do some short posts of what I actually do every day. So every day this week, I'm going to be posting a short blurb of what that day normally looks like.

Thursday - Small Group Day

Sorry for posting this late. As I'll describe below, Thursdays are often my absolutely craziest days. I'm going to do this post a little bit differently - Because this post is going to revolve around the small group, I'm going to give an overview of the small group here and the details will come later. As you can see, Thursday nights are small group nights, and we try to rotate around different people's homes, so it's not too much of a burden on anyone to host every week, which also includes feeding everyone. However, the "default" location is still my apartment, and I would say that we've met in my apartment for around half of our meetings. Our group is pretty small, with around 12 total members, and we've had meetings with as few as 4 people and as many as 10 people.

8:00pm - 5:00pm - Work

5:0pm - 6:00pm - Cook like a madman. Smoke up the apartment so much that my eyes are watering and I can barely breathe. Open up the door and windows to try and get rid of the smoke before people arrive. Frantically clean up the living room.

Dinner is basically the responsibility of whoever is hosting that week. Small group originally was only at my apartment, but it's been awesome seeing everyone take ownership of the group, and we've been at a lot of different homes, making it not so stressful on me. But around every other week, including yesterday, it's up to me to host. Dinner starts at 6, which means I need to leave work earlier than normal, to rush home and cook whatever I plan on making. Not only do I need to cook, I need to clean up my super messy apartment and throw everything into my room. Sometimes, when I'm feeling especially hospitable, I even do a quick vacuum of the living room area.

Anyways, cooking for the group has been super fun. I try to cook decent food instead of the peasant food that I normally eat. If you know me in my college days, you may know that I hated using recipes, because I saw it as week and unadventurous, which lead to my very well-known culinary disasters. However, I've found out recently just how fun and satisfying cooking from a recipe can be. I still get to make my own modifications and stuff if I so choose, but recipes give me a general baseline to follow. Also, it helps me to make food that is actually edible for other people to enjoy. I've had a lot of fun making food for the group. So far, I've made meatloaf, spaghetti and meatballs (homemade meatballs though!), steak/chicken tacos (with homemade pico de gallo!), and yesterday I made wings! So many exclamation points! But yeah. I like cooking.

Rice Krispie Treats!

Half-eaten meatloaf!

Guacamole!

Nothing really out of the ordinary here. We just grab food, sit around, eat, and talk. I guess I can talk a little bit about the group. We range in age from 20-30, with must of us being between 20 and 25. We have a total of 4 girls, 3 of which are nurses. The girls tend to rotate weeks, so we average probably two girls a week. Other than me, the 30-year old lawyer is the only one not from the area, and only one other guy (the church's youth pastor) besides us two has attended a "big-name", higher-tier university (he went to Purdue). Around half of our group was home-schooled growing up. Everyone but me is white. Everyone but me and the lawyer still lives with their parents/family. As you can tell, the culture is just very different. Life is extremely family-oriented, and most of them, especially those that haven't ever left home, haven't experienced any real sort of peer small group community that we experience in college ministries.

Something interesting is that even before I arrived, the people in the group for the most part didn't really know each other well. This made it pretty easy fitting in, simply because they didn't know each other much better than I knew them. As mentioned before, their idea of community is pretty different from what I think of it as. And the church seems pretty disjointed in this sense as well.

7:15pm - 7:45pm - Play a game or sing some songs

I really love playing games. Most of you know that. Unfortunately, because a bunch of the members in our group either need to get up really early for a weird shift at the hospital or to get up to work the next day, we needed to cut our meetings a little shorter, so we haven't gotten real opportunities to play games recently. Which makes me sad. Because I think games are an awesome way to get to know each other and just to make people comfortable with each other.

7:45pm - 9:00pm - Study the book of Mark

So after a few weeks of meeting and derping around during our meetings, it was decided that we should actually do a set Bible study. I forget how exactly we got to this point, but we all agreed to studying Mark together. Just like the hosting, we try to rotate leaders every week to reduce the singular burden of leading. Also, it's nice to be able to experience the leadership of different people every week instead of being subjected to one style every week. Something interesting that happened when we were talking about rotating leaders is that one of the girls piped up and said that she prefers that only guys lead, because it's better that way and we get practice for marriage and all that. Talk about conservative. So yeah. It's been all dudes leading.

I've gotten to lead a few times, and I chose to lead inductively. Believe it or not, before this small group, I've never actually lead an inductive Bible study before. I never actually got a chance to do it at any point in my 4.5 years in AIV. Maybe it's because I've always been considered for Core and not for small group leaders. Who knows. But anyways, no one else in the group has done inductive before I introduced it to them, which makes things doubly interesting. After leading it for the first time, I have a whole new level of respect for my past (and the current) AIV small group leaders. Man! Leading inductive is hard! It's much more difficult than the free-for-all, everyone-wants-to-contribute idea of inductive Bible study that I had envisioned. So to all my previous small group leaders, thanks! It was much harder than I had imagined. Also, I also feel the difficulty of many people not wanting to touch their papers or mark anything up, and with them looking at you as if you were stupid for underlining so many things. So yeah. It's been a fun experience.

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays

My Life in Fort Wayne - Wednesdays

It's kind of hard to believe, but I've already lived in Fort Wayne for 6 whole months. As with living anywhere else, I've developed a certain rhythm of life, and because most of you have no idea what I actually do in Fort Wayne, I thought it would be a good idea to do some short posts of what I actually do every day. So every day this week, I'm going to be posting a short blurb of what that day normally looks like.

Wednesday - Prayer Meeting Day

6:45am - 8:00am - Crawl out of bed, moan that it's only Wednesday, get ready, and go to work

8:30am - 6:30pm - Work

Since I haven't talked much about my job, I guess I can spend some time doing that now. I've been at my job here for six months now, and I've gotten a chance to really start to contribute to the team. Even though I was hired on as a software engineer, I actually haven't done much coding in my time here. Though I was kind of frustrated in the beginning with the lack of coding, I'm happy I got a chance to spend a good amount of time testing and messing with the product so that I know how it works. Not only has this been pretty fun, knowing how the product works makes understanding the thousands of lines of code easier to understand.

Today was actually a really special day. For the first time ever, we got to see our product in its fully integrated system. In other words, we got to see and touch the plane that our product goes into. The plane was freaking awesome!!! What surprised me the most was the physical feel of the wings of the plane. One of the guys told us that it was made of layers of polycarbonate. I don't know how better to describe it, but the wings just felt "soft". As one of my coworkers said, it felt like a toy. A military aircraft worth tens of millions of dollars - feel like a toy? It's crazy, but yet. That describes it perfectly.

Best day of work ever!

At this event, a lot of people brought their families. Sometimes, when you work with other people professionally, it's easy to forget that they are people with lives, passions, loved ones, etc. I absolutely love it when coworkers stop being coworkers momentarily and just become friends. It's amazing how when we converse in a group about personal stuff, people who have worked together for years seem to know as little about each other as I do about them. Anyways, it was good today to put a face to many names - well, not names, but "my wife" and "my kids". It was really fun and heartwarming playing with a 6-month old baby and incredibly funny seeing my coworker's 3-year old daugher bounce off the walls while her exasperated parents try to control her. All of a sudden I understand that look of dread and exhaustion in my coworker's eye when he shakes his head and explains to me how he needs to play with his kids when he goes home. It's just nice being able to chill together and not need to talk just about work stuff. Also, babies are funny. It's funny watching grown men playing with a baby and making funny noises and faces trying to get the baby to laugh. Okay. Enough rambling. Next topic.

7:00 - 8:00 - Church Prayer Meeting

I've already written about prayer meetings at Northpark and things haven't changed much, so please go and read it if you haven't already. It should give you a better understanding of where I'm coming from in this next section. (Aside: actually, I got one of the young adults to go with me to prayer meeting today. Could this be the beginning of a culture change?!) Instead, I guess I'll just mention some observations about the prayer culture I've seen around me, and how it's so different from what I'm used to.

How the majority of "prayer" happens in the groups I've been in is as follows. There's usually a "leader" who goes around, asking for people's prayer requests. And so we all go around, talking about random stuff. Sometimes it's more serious, sometimes there's a lot of joking around. Sometimes the prayer requests are deeply personal, and sometimes they are for other people (usually sickness or travel). Rarely are prayer requests for the unsaved. And because the prayer requests are only personal, anything outside of personal or church life is usually out of scope of the prayer session (as mentioned in the post about the prayer meetings). This sharing process usually takes around 20-30 minutes, and after everyone has shared, the leader usually just prays for the whole group. And it's done. Half an hour of sharing for five minutes of solo prayer.

It's not necessarily good or bad, but it's just a style of prayer that I haven't been able to really get used to. To me, there just doesn't seem to be much participation in it. I don't feel like I've prayed because, other than saying "Amen" in agreement, I haven't. But instead of complaining about it, I hope that I can bring something different to the table and be couragous enough to offer suggestions for prayer meetings and prayer in general.

8:00pm - Bedtime - Derp around. Prep food to cook for tomorrow, if needed.

If you are also in this current state of derping as I am, here is an awesome video of what it's like for a plane to take off and land onto an aircraft carrier. Here's a video of a landing at night. Absolutely insane. I learned so much about military planes today! Awesome.

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays

My Life in Fort Wayne - Tuesdays

It's kind of hard to believe, but I've already lived in Fort Wayne for 6 whole months. As with living anywhere else, I've developed a certain rhythm of life, and because most of you have no idea what I actually do in Fort Wayne, I thought it would be a good idea to do some short posts of what I actually do every day. So every day this week, I'm going to be posting a short blurb of what that day normally looks like.

Tuesday - Meijer Day

6:45 - 8:00 - Wake up, eat, do QT's, drive to work.
Tuesday mornings are usually my fastest mornings. Because I (usually) shower Monday nights after summer league, I don't need to Tuesday morning. I also don't usually pack lunch on Tuesdays, as I'll describe below.

12:00 PM - Cafeteria Salad Day
I try to buy lunch from the cafeteria minimally, but it's nice to just not have to pack lunch every day of the week, and I've determined that Tuesday will be my day to eat from the cafeteria. The main reason I started doing this is because I don't buy many fresh vegetables because I usually don't eat them fast enough before they go bad, and the company cafe has a pretty awesome salad bar. Pasta salad, chicken salad, olives, banana peppers, sunflower seeds, onions, green peppers, raisins, cranberries, and freaking amazing croutons. Random: I decided today that I'm going to bring my own bottle of salad dressing and keep it in the fridge here. It should make my salads much cheaper, and I'll be able to stuff more goodies into my paper boat.

Big, delicious salad I ate today for only $4.67. 

While I'm on the subject, I might as well describe what I normally eat for lunch. If you are reading this and you don't care about what I eat for lunch (if you are anyone but my mother), feel free to skip to the next, uninteresting section. I sometimes make mac and cheese and add some frozen vegetables and sriracha hot sauce onto it. Other times I eat a ghetto canned soup and crackers combo. Every once in a while, I bring in frozen vegatables along with a tv dinner and microwave them. I also often bring in leftovers from whatever I cooked the previous night, which often includes some hamburger/tuna helper or Rice-a-Roni, that I've added extra pasta and/or vegetables to.

6:00pm - Meijer Trip
This may surprise you, but I actually dread this weekly Meijer trip. This is mainly because I'm starving by the time I arrive at Meijer and I'm tortured by the piles of unattainable foodstuffs that I wish I could just open and stuff in my face. I always shop hungry (bad idea), but I usually keep a shopping list to try and keep myself focused. 

I'm also sorry to disappoint all of you there that I am unable to carry all my groceries into my apartment with only one trip. It's quite hard when you live alone and need to carry bags of food, along with soda and bottled water, while needing to close the trunk, lock the car doors, and unlock my apartment door. So between being excited to eat salad along with not being able to "one-trip" my groceries, that's two strikes against my manliness. Sorry to disappoint guys. Maybe this is why I'm still single.

[Random aside: I actually won't be making my weekly Meijer trip today because I was just notified that Sam's Club will be having an open house this weekend where non-members can go in and "try" the Sam's Club experience. I figure I'll just go blow my food budget over the weekend instead of today.]

7:30pm - Cook. Eat newly-bought snacks in a hunger-craze while cooking. Eat half of cooked meal due to previous superfluous consumption of snacks.

8:00pm - Bedtime - Relax.
Tuesday nights are my only completely free nights, so it's nice just to stay in, watch some TV, play some AOE, read some books, or just derp around on the internetz.

And there you go. That's my Tuesday. Probably the most "boring" day of the week, but whatever. Quiet nights are nice too.

Random: check out this sweet pennant I bought at Lids.com on clearance for only $2.00 with free shipping. Slickdeals win!

It's always nice coming home to a package at your door

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays

It's kind of hard to believe, but I've already lived in Fort Wayne for 6 whole months. As with living anywhere else, I've developed a certain rhythm of life, and because most of you have no idea what I actually do in Fort Wayne, I thought it would be a good idea to do some short posts of what I actually do every day.

So hopefully, every day this week, I'm going to be posting a short blurb of what that day normally looks like.

Monday - Summer League Day

7am - Monday Mornings - Worst mornings ever.
Monday mornings are difficult. Sometime it's because I sleep too late on Sunday, trying to prolong my weekend. But really, most of the time it's just because it's Monday morning. I've developed this weird, unproductive routine that happens most Monday mornings. I get up, eat some breakfast and do my quiet times. Then I go lay down and take a nap. That's right, folks. I take a half hour nap half an hour after waking up ...at 7:30 in the morning. I usually end up getting to work a little later than usual, but the nap is totally worth it! I actually didn't take a nap this morning, and I've been feeling uncharacteristically tired all day today. Coincidence? I think not!

8:30am - 6:15pm - Work
Not much to say here. Work is work.

6:30pm - 9:00pm - Ultimate Summer League
For those of you who don't know what summer league is, it's basically just like IM sports, where you are on set teams for a set number of weeks (10, for us), and you compete every week against whoever you are scheduled to play. At the end of the season, there is a playoff tournament, and teams are seeded according to their regular season performance. Some of the teams in our league are pre-formed, and some of them are draft teams (meaning, team captains drafted players).

I'm on a draft team, and I'm pretty sure that our team is the best draft team, despite having a mere 3-5 record. Around half of our team is inexperienced and haven't played any level of organized ultimate, so we had a pretty steep learning curve the first few weeks. But we've played pretty damn well for being a draft team. We had the most difficult regular season schedule in the entire league, but we still managed to score double digits in all but one loss (games are to 15). We lost our last playoff game and are out of contention for the championship, but it's okay. We actually beat a 4-1 team in the first round of the playoffs, which was awesome.

So I actually wrote this entire post (except for this part) beforehand, and I just got back from my summer league game. HOLY CRAP. WHAT A GAME. We had already beat this team 15-8 in the regular season, and we didn't like them. And we still didn't like them. They called a lot of travels and ticky-tack fouls on us. They were actually 0-4 in our division. But they jumped off to a 8-3 lead. We cut the lead down to 2, at 10-12, and we finally tied it up at 13-13. Games are win by two, and we started trading points, with us taking advantage and then them coming back and tying it up. With hard cap at 17, they took the last advantage at 16-15, and we tied it up again making it 16-16, universe point. We lost universe point. But oh man. What a game. I actually cramped up a few times in that game, I stretched out, came back to play, and finally cramped out at universe point again. So did our best handler. But damn. What a game. Two and half hours. Universe point. Both of my calves are super tight right now, and I can barely walk, BUT I FEEL SO ALIVE. It's been a while since I've felt this deep competitiveness come out from inside of me, and I love it!! I was planning on taking a picture of us playing to post on here, but I completely forgot. So please accept this crappy picture of us trying to figure out our team cheer.

Red Team!!!

9-10PM Go Home, eat, watch a little TV, read a little, shower, sleep.
There are few things better than some Meijer-brand Flavor Ice after a long ultimate game.

Best $2.99 I've ever spent

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays

It's been a while, Barnes and Noble.

I went to Barnes and Noble the other day to look for a book to give to my Little Brother as a birthday gift. I had already bought him a Calvin and Hobbes collection from Amazon, but I wanted to also get him something more "productive" like an interesting history or science book, because he's mentioned before that he really likes to learn. 

Walking through the store, I couldn't find the science section for the life of me, as the entire store seemed to be either recent bestsellers, teen fiction, or non-book products. I eventually gave up my quest for the science section and just asked one of the employees there, and she led me to this hidden corner of the store, a crevice with only two bookshelves worth of books. Many of the books there were by Dawkins and Hawking and dealt with topics relating to science and religion, sparking my long-neglected intellectual interest, so I momentarily paused my gift shopping to go see if there were any philosophy books I could take home to read. Again, after trekking through the store many times, I couldn't find the philosophy section. Asking the attendant to help me again, she led me to a literally waist-high, half empty bookshelf. This was the philosophy section.

I'm convinced this is an accurate representation of the Barnes and Noble I visited.

I tend not to be one of those generational, temporal snobs that goes "OMG KIDS THESE DAYS. FAITH IN HUMANITY LOST. EACH GENERATION GETS WORSE AND WORSE. I DONT WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE", but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little sad for the state of our society.  I don't care much what kids read, because they're just kids. But it was really weird walking through the store and seeing so many adults browsing the teen fiction sections and sitting down reading near those sections. Maybe this all has to do with the relatively lower education level here in Fort Wayne.

On a somewhat more positive note, it was nice walking through a bookstore again. Browsing in an actual bookstore is so much better than browsing an online bookstore like Amazon. It's nice to actually see how thick a book is, to pick it up and feel its weight, and to flip through the pages. This may sound kind of weird, but it was a nice feeling being able to once again "judge a book on its cover" (along with its back cover and infolds). Amazon is great, but it's often impossible to tell what a book is like and if its good or not, even from reviews (there are a lot of dumb reviewers out there).

After an hour and a half of wandering around and looking at my own stuff, I finally found a book to get Jobe. It's a non-fiction book on ninjas that was surprisingly heavy, with a lot of drawings and illustrations and stuff. It was pretty cool, if I can say so myself.

Justice for Penn State

The NCAA just lowered the boom on Penn State. Sixty million dollar fine, 4 year bowl ban, all 1998-2001 wins vacated, and a reduction of 20 scholarships per year for four years [src]. For some reason, it feels too soft, too harsh, and just right all at the same time.

The $60 million fine, post-season ban, and scholarship reductions feel just about right. The University, the "system" that is responsible for the coverup of these horrendous, perverse actions will suffer massive, mainly financial, losses. We're hearing about decommits from football recruits, and I wouldn't be surprised if general enrollment plummets these next few years. It may be a long, long time before PSU as a university as a whole recovers from this.

The vacation of wins from 1998-2011, 112 wins in total including six bowl wins and two conference championships, seems a bit harsh. The intent of the vacation is clear - it's a straight shot at Joe Pa's win record, dropping him from first in wins to 12th. This aim at Joe Pa is warranted, but hugely unfair to the players that played in those 14 seasons, who had nothing to do with the coverup. It's unfair to the fans, who witnessed the wins first hand. I've always been a big opponent of vacating wins, as it's completely retroactive. If there's one thing this whole Sandusky/Paterno fiasco has taught us, it's that you can't change the past, which I think the NCAA is trying to do.

But for some reason, this all still doesn't feel like enough. The people really responsible for this haven't received their due punishment. Joe Paterno has the refuge of being dead, Sandusky is still alive in some prison somewhere, and others responsible for the coverup haven't even charged criminally yet. There's part of me that wants so bad for Joe Pa to be alive to face the music, to take the stand, to suffer further public humiliation for his failures. The taking down of the statue isn't enough. The renaming of the library (which hasn't happened yet) isn't enough. And let's not even get started on Sandusky. Lifetime in prison for him isn't enough. Execution even seems merciful for the man who raped little boys and made them perform oral sex on him. My stomach turns just at the thought of it.

These sanctions are a good start, but I can't help but feel like justice hasn't yet been served, that the students and former players are being punished too harshly while Paterno, Sandusky, and the others involved in the coverup aren't being punished enough.

Justice can never be fully dished out in this life. We can take comfort in knowing that Paterno and Sandusky will one day have to answer to their Maker, and will have to answer the God of heaven and earth, Righteous Judge, the Creator of the broken little boys, face to face. Thank God He is a God of Justice.

Joe Paterno and the Depravity of Man

Less Dreaming, More Prayer

"It's a great thing to want to do great things for the kingdom of God. However, it's a terrible thing to want to be great in the kingdom of God." - RC Sproul

I really don't know if other people are like this, but I daydream a lot. I'm not talking about the "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" sort of temporary complete detachment from reality, but when my mind wanders or when my eyes are closed and I'm trying to sleep, I drift off into my dreams.

My imaginations are exactly what you would expect from a young guy who struggles with pride - they usually consist of me being some sort of hero. Sometimes it's me being a hero in sports, where I hit some game-winning shot or make the game-winning layout. Other times, I defend some beautiful girl's honor and win over her heart. As I've grown spiritually and started thinking much more about the kingdom of God, many of these imaginations often become imaginations of the great things I would do for God.

Some of the more "dangerous" and obviously sinful imaginations are easier to recognize and suppress immediately. These are those imaginations of being some famous pastor or a sacrificial missionary-martyr. They could often also be as simple as doing something good for the Church and getting a lot of praise and recognition. These sorts of dreams, though extremely tempting to me, are easy to recognize and fight.

It's the imaginations of more imminent works for God that often prove more problematic, especially when God brings something to my mind that I should do that would actually be pretty admirable. For example, upcoming meetings and conversations, or some evangelism or invitation that I'm hoping to make often bring this sort of imagination/dreaming/speculation to my mind.

Recently, as I was driving, God brought one of my old friends to mind that I thought I should encourage to return to church when I got home. In itself, this was a very good thing that I was excited to do. However, I sort of drifted into imagining my conversation with her, and what it would look like. I imagined the different things she would say and how I would respond. Then it sort of hit me. What was I doing? It's good to be prepared for any conversation, but what was the point of allowing my imagination to run wild with simply speculating at the conversation that would happen? If I actually cared about this friend, shouldn't I be spending the time to pray for her, as I know that it is only God who will actually be able to change her heart? Is this dreaming as opposed to praying a symptom of doing good works out of pride rather than love? Am I more concerned with winning God points than I am with the restoration of someone's soul? The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much more time I could spend praying as opposed to imagining myself doing something "good" for God.

Prayer matters. Prayer works. I know it. I've experienced it. I know God is sovereign over all. But still I always seem to fall back and rely on my own effort, on my own wisdom and eloquent words instead of the power of God (1 Cor 2). Instead of drifting off into dreams of how I'm going to evangelize to some specific individuals, I need to lay it all in front of God, the only one who can actually do anything about it. Dreaming won't do any good. But prayer will.

[Thinking about it, this "Less _______, more prayer" seems to be a good formula in general. Less complaining, more prayer. Less self-reliance, more prayer. Less fear, more prayer.]

Not getting anything out of sermons?

How's your obedience been recently? I've found in my life that when I am actively battling sin and doing my best to live blamelessly that I usually get the most out of Scripture and sermons, and it is when I'm steeped in sin, my conscious isn't clear, and I'm waffling spiritually that my Bible reading most often feels dry and sermons are hard to sit through. The following quote and book excerpt were especially poignant to me as I've thought and struggled through recent spiritual "funks." I know the "I don't get anything out of sermons" sentiment is commonly felt, especially with us young people, so hopefully this can be of some encouragement to you, as it has been to me. 

"God does not grant fresh revelations until there has been a complaince with those already received." - A.W. Pink

An excerpt from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"'Only those who obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey... The truth is that so long as we hold both sides of the proposition together they contain nothing inconsistent with right belief, but as soon as one is divorced from the other, it is bound to prove a stumbling block. 'Only those who believe obey' is what we say to that part of a believer's soul which obeys, and 'only those who obey believe' is what we say to that part of the soul of the obedient which believes. If the first half of the proposition stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of cheap grace, which is another word for damnation. If the second half stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of salvation through works, which is also another word for damnation.

At this point we may conveniently throw in a few observations of a pastoral character. In dealing with souls, it is essential for the pastor to bear in mind both sides of the proposition. When people complain, for instance, that they find it hard to believe, it is a sign of deliberate or unconscious disobedience. It is all too easy to put them off by offering the remedy of cheap grace. That only leaves the disease as bad as it was before, and makes the word of grace a sort of self-administered consolation, or a self-imparted absolution. But when this happens, the poor man can no longer find any comfort in the words of priestly absolution - he has become deaf to the Word of God. And even if he absolves himself from his sins a thousand times, he has lost all capacity of faith in the true forgiveness, just because he has never really known it. Unbelief thrives on cheap grace, for it is determined to persist in disobedience.

Clergy frequently come across cases like this nowadays. The outcome is usually that self-imparted absolution confirms the man in his disobedience, makes him plead ignorance of the kindness as well as of the commandment of God. He complains that God's commandment is uncertain, and susceptible of different interpretations. At first he was aware enough of the disobedience, but with his increasing hardness of heart that awareness grows even fainter, and in the end he comes so enmeshed that he loses all capacity for hearing the Word, and faith is quite impossible.

One can imagine him conversing thus with his pastor:
"I have lost the faith I once had."
"You must listen to the Word as it is spoken to you in the sermon."
"I do; but I cannot get anything out of it, it just falls on deaf ears as far as I'm concerned."
"The trouble is, you don't really want to listen."
"On the contrary, I do." 

And here they generally break off, because the pastor is at a loss what to say next. He only remembers the first half of the proposition: 'Only those who believe obey.' But this does not help, for faith is just what this particular man finds impossible. The pastor feels himself confronted with the ultimate riddle of predestination. God grants faith to some and withholds it from others. So the pastor throws up the sponge and leaves the poor man to his fate...It is now time to take the bull by the horns, and say: 'Only those who obey believe.' 

Thus the flow of the conversation is interrupted, and the pastor can continue:
"You are disobedient, you are trying to keep some part of your life under your own control. That is what is preventing you from listening to Christ and believing in his grace. You cannot hear Christ because you are willfully disobedient. Somewhere in your heart you are refusing to listen to his call. Your difficulty is your sins." 

Christ now enters the lists again and comes to grips with the devil, who until now has been hiding under the cloak of cheap grace. It is all-important that the pastor should be ready with both sides of the proposition: 'Only those who obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey.' In the name of Christ he must exhort the man to obedience, to action, to take the first step. He must say: 'Tear yourself away from all other attachments, and follow him.'...The traunt must be dragged from the hiding place which he has build for himself. Only then can he recover the freedom to see, hear, and believe."