Silly irony.

Macs. You love to hate them. They are so pretty and seamless, yet they are a bloody headache when you are a long-time Windows user.

My mom just recently purchased a MacBook. It’s been in our house for less than 24 hours, and I want to punch a hole through it. It’s supposed to be easy, but easy for whom?

Possibly for someone with zero knowledge about computers and no routine built around a Windows environment. My mom has voiced the difficulty she has learning the Mac environment coming from a Windows environment as well. She has never used a Mac for more than a few spare hours. In our current society where technology is so prevalent, my parent's generation hasn't grown up with computers like mine has. So naturally she comes to me with the computer questions.

I told her, "Just be patient, it takes time to learn a new computer system".

Lord knows I need to heed my own words. I know Macs are useful. Hundreds of thousands of people own them, possibly even millions. But less than a day in and I already want to tell my mom to just send it back in and get a Dell.

An ordinary Monday

I promise you there will be no tricks in the writing of this blog. No sleight-of-hand. No misleading subject headings.

This really is an ordinary Monday. A boringly unrepentant Monday.

It has been my observation of others that peaks and valleys are an everyday part of life. There are good, and there are bad seasons. They can last for months. They can last for years.

Mine, for some odd reason, seem to come weekly and seem to be highly contingent on my circumstances. As a Christian, I have heard the axiom, "God is in control".

I must be ignorant of God. I had a speaker during my DTS that said they had always seen themselves as "spiritually retarded". No matter how hard they 'listen' and try to identify the 'still, small voice', they are without epiphany.

I feel spiritually retarded. Perhaps I'm being impatient. Perhaps my circumstances dictate a swift answer and I am unwilling to listen because I have already made up my mind.

I struggle massively with the line between God's voice and my own. Between making the choice myself, or following God's choice. It's been said that God has given us intellect, reason, and free will and choice. But where do we end and God begin? Is there a point where this is indistinguishable? Should it be?

Anyways, I could use some prayer friends. I have to start making some decisions about my immediate future. I have already decided to stay here in Montrose for another year. I need a job that will facilitate my current health situation (bad back, minimal sitting, minimal lifting....I know, a lot to ask huh?)

Adios amigos.

In the recesses of my dreams.

Ever had Patrick Swayze sing "In the Light" by DC Talk to you? I have. It was a piece of celebrity memorabila. And what’s worse, he was smoking. You have cancer. NO! Shame on you Mr. Swayze.

Oh and I’d like to thank the sperm whale for splashing copious amounts of sea water, covering my hometown and for the guy that kept exposing himself and yelling "ALPHA MALE!!!!!"

Only in dreams, eh?

Colonoscopies....yum!

In my line of work, I see lots of people’s insides via a few sheets of color photos. Anything that moves fluids from one place to another and is below the layers of epidermis and viscera, I’ve seen it. One of the parts of one’s insides I see much of every day is the lower digestive tract. Specifically, the large intestine and colon - The Colonoscopy....ick, right? Why is he wasting a blog on talking about people’s pooper scoopers?

I have seen literally thousands of these procedures. Granted, I don’t get to see the procedure itself, but the exploratory results of one. They made me very uncomfortable and queasy at first, I expected the paper with the pictures to actually smell acrid and offensive. But alas, it was just paper. (I apologize for the vulagarity of this...there is a point. Bear with me.)

And in my non-professional, uneducated opinion, I have learned one immutable truth from this:

We are all the same on the inside!

I have heard people much older and wiser than myself say this very thing. I was thinking about the truth in this statement though. What makes us think that we are so special? We all bleed the same, break the same and expire with time.

So that got me thinking about how humans pang for individuality. As Westerners, we seem to whine about it. Like it’s our birthright or something. I think it’s simply from boredom that we are creating and re-creating things. I’m not saying that creating is bad, but it’s the mentality that underlies the ’creation’ that is telling.

A story I heard on the radio yesterday talked about how teenagers today are starting to wear bandanas. One of the ladies that called in to the show, who was an administrator at the middle school she worked at, said to the kid "I wore those things when I was your age, and they need to stay in that time period".

Solomon the writer of Ecclesiastes in verse 1:9 says "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Which got me thinking about the story of the teenager wearing the bandana. Why did he wear the bandana thinking it was "starting a new thing"?

If this is something that has been done before, why is labeling it "new". This may be the ignorance of a teenager (many of whom believe they are the best thing since they put peanut butter and jelly in the same jar).

Someone at 80 is typically more advanced in common knowledge about the world, than someone who is 40, than someone who is 25, than someone who is 16. We discover some new epiphany about the world that someone else before us has discovered, and someone before them did. In my illustration, it is the new discovery of something as trivial as bandanas. It’s them trying out their world.

But it is when we are revealed that the ’new thing’ is nothing special that we are then able to appreciate it for what it is. All like babies we are, daily learning something new about our world.

Here’s to today.

The Cry of the Proletariate

Today, we sit on the helm of a fantastic time in life. It's when the worries of the weeks simply melt and dissipate into a sea of ambiguity. Where how many reports I scanned are evicerated into nothing. Where gossip only matter to those who care.

It's a time that blends so smoothly that you almost forget that you actually have responsibility. It makes one feel proud of the job they have done. People have been known to go crazy, lose their minds, even take their own lives waiting for it. Managers battle against it, the common worker pangs for it and productivity bows in subservience to it.

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about Friday, ya'll.

I mean, it's something to look forward to, isn't it?

A search for truth in a world that doesn't want to find it.

Truth is one of the most elusive creatures in our day and age. During our parents and grandparents age, things were accepted as they are. Then the 60s happened, and a new cultural revolution took place. There was an influx of Buddhism, Hinduism, early New Age religion and a burst in thought and revelation beyond anything we could have ever imagined: We were allowed to think for ourselves.

What came about as a result of this new movement is what we now refer to as Postmodernism. There is no absolute truth, and in a religious stance, there is no One way to God.

I discovered today, that in my beliefs as a Christian, this man believes I'm wrong. The man in the video is calm, cool and collected. He tells us that religion is only for people that are born with it and know nothing else (Plato's Cave Allegory) or they only fall upon it on hard times.

He makes a good point, and is revealing the very thing that makes us human: sin. He, without his knowledge, is acknowledging the existence of the God to help in time of need and a source of comfort. In a world inundated with postmodern ideas, he is allowed to believe something like the benevolent existence of a God that cares and yet complete deny it, and completely ignore the basic facts he is discussing.

This paradox is the crux of postmodernity. We can stare truth raptly in the eyes and confidently deny it because we can. Nobody wants to be subject to anything where their basic right to choose is taken from them.

This is a fallacy that people who refuse religion of any kind 'choose' to believe. Athiesm,Agnosticism; any faith that denies or belabors the existence of a Deity are refusing to believe that there is anything beyond this life. Yes, the two aforementioned dogmas I referred to as "faith".

Faith is defined as "Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing" according to the American Heritage Dictionary. Anytime you deny, accept or simply straddle the fence, is an acceptance of faith. You believe that your beliefs and ideas are there for you to believe and that yours is the ultimate.

There are people, I'm sure, who believe that Christianity is a hoax, perpetuated by time and ignorance. I have heard it before. I believe that the opposite of the spectrum are just as likely to be subject to the same issues. These two dogmas - not the only two that believe in such a way - but make claims of absolutism. The problem with humans is that we will believe whatever we want at whatever cost, even if it means death.

I am by no means a biblical scholar. But there is a story about a man named Lazarus. Many have heard it, I'm sure. Lazarus died, as well as a rich man. The rich man, who was in hell, spoke to Abraham, with whom next to him sat Lazarus. The rich man said to Abraham,

Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment."

After Abraham mentions Moses and the Prophets, the rich man continues,

"No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent."

To which Abraham responds:

"If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead".

This is one of the biggest truths in the bible that is a response to postmodernism. Even given the facts, men are not wont to believe in God. The truth has been given to us, we have to listen. We want something more.

I know that truth lies within the life of Jesus Christ. I believe he is the answer to many of the earth's problems. Small and big alike, absolute truth lies within the bounds of the Bible. The only way to eternal life is through God by way of his son's sacrifice on the Cross.

I will end with a quote by C.S. Lewis that I love and typifies my thoughts on God.

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.