The Church. Why does it matter? Part 1

Personal faith in Jesus Christ. This is a term that is thrown around a lot in evangelical circles. I think it's silly but it's used with good intention, so I don't get worked up about it. The problem is when people take this term to mean that their faith is private and because of this they have no need for the church. As far as I can tell, the idea of a "personal faith" is completely absent from the bible. I will go one step further and say that "personal faith" is exactly the opposite of what God has intended for us as his followers. To explain this, I want to start at the beginning. Actually, before the beginning.

Before any of us, before the world, before even time existed, there was God. Assuming we believe in the Trinity, we know that before God even got into the creation business, he existed in relationship with himself. God in three persons. This tells us that community and is literally a part of the very essence of God.

Now let's get to us. After God created Adam, he realized that he needed a partner. From here we get Eve. Already God realized that it's not good for man to be alone. Fast forward to Abraham. God promised to make Abraham a great nation. Through Abraham God would form his chosen people. This is the beginning of the faith community. From this point forward, God does his work through his chosen people. He forms a body of believers to be the vehicle of his kingdom on Earth. God forms a covenant not only with Abraham but with all of his descendants. He would be their God and they would be his people.

God intentionally designates a people. God certainly could have used heroic individuals to accomplish all his work. It may have been easier. But because relationality is a part of God's being, he founds a nation. God gives his people very specific laws by which to live. The purpose of the law is to set them apart from the other nations and to ensure that they lived pure lives so they could stay in right relation with God and one another. Their way of life was much different than ours today. Our customs are all about individualism, self-empowerment, and upward mobility. God's people were about community, brotherly love, and humility. Once again, community and relationality are woven into the very identity of God's people.

Let's fast forward again to Jesus. Jesus' ministry begins with the calling of his disciples. Why did Jesus need disciples? Could he not have accomplished his work without them? It often seems like the disciples are more trouble than they are worth. But Jesus calls them nonetheless. Christ chooses this ragtag group of misfits to build his church on. Yes that's right, Jesus founded the church. It was not an invention of first century Christians. It's clear from Jesus' ministry that he is not just starting the latest personal self help program. Jesus is God's means of establishing a new covenant with his people through which his Church will come to life.

It's also worth mentioning that Jesus went to church regularly so to speak. He was constantly in and around the synagogue. He spent much of his time in the Temple and the Synagogues teaching, praying, and worshiping. When he wasn't at the synagogue he was often found eating and fellowshipping with friends and ministering to them.

I hope you are beginning to see a trend. We do not have a personal, private faith because we don't serve a personal, private god. Community is woven into the fabric of our being because it is the nature of God. He established his people on Earth first through Israel and then through the Church. This was on purpose. He never intended for us to go it alone. Rather we are to participate in our faith through the vehicle of the Church. The Church is God's gift to us. It's not a chain holding us back and pulling us down. It's a force that strengthens and empowers us to reach the world and advance His kingdom.

This has gotten very long so I want to commit to writing a sequel. This article sets the precedent for the church and hopefully explained that the Church is an intentional part of God's plan for the world. Next I want to focus on the practical reasons why being a part of a church is an essential part of being a Christian. Keep an eye out for the next post. I think it will be good.

Valentine Schmalentine. Why V-Day matters.

It's been a while now since my last post. Not to mention that the subject of this post is  a day late. What can I say? I've been really busy and plus, I'm celebrating Valentine's Day tonight anyway so it's just in time for me. As the title suggests, I'm talking about Valentine's Day in this post. Most guys my age hate V-Day. They think it's girly or too sappy. They hate spending money and trying to make over-the-top plans for a fabulous date night. My best friend so cynically calls it "obligatory show of affection day." These guys say it's forced affection and all about spending extra money for no real reason. 

On the other hand, Girls love Valentine's Day! That is, unless they are single. Then they get either depressed or desperate. Girls act crazy when they don't have someone to show them affection on this special day. They either mope around watching Nicholas Sparks movies and living vicariously through the couples in the Notebook, or they madly run around looking for a date so they can get in on the action and not be left at home like the above girls. For single women, V-Day is called "singles-awareness day." 

I can see where a lot of this comes from. Valentine's day has been taken over by our consumeristic, material society which has sucked the vitality out of the day. I could go on about that for a while but it speaks for itself and that isn't what the post is about. I'm here to say that despite all the naysayers, I still love Valentine's day. Granted this is easy for me to say. Like my dad, I'm a bit (maybe a lot) of a romantic. Furthermore, I've been in a blissful  relationship with my girlfriend Staci for five years. * (insert question about when we are getting married here.) But I see valentine's day for what it really is. It is a special day set apart to recognize, honor, and celebrate the one we love. It's a day for us to remember our commitment to these people through special, significant shows of affection. 

But here come the naysayers. "I don't need a special day to appreciate my girl/boyfriend. I do that everyday." Even if this is the case, these people miss what a holiday is all about. Holidays are celebrations of the things that are important to us. For example, we all try to honor our father and mother everyday, but we still have Mother's and Father's day. We should be thankful everyday but we still have Thanksgiving. We should always reflect on the birth and resurrection of our Lord Jesus but we still have Christmas and Easter. I've never heard anyone say, "I'm thankful for Jesus everyday. I don't see why we have to have Christmas." But Valentines day gets this treatment all the time. 

I wish people would begin to see Valentines day for what it is. It's a celebration! It's not only a celebration of our love for our significant others. But for all those single people out there, it's a celebration of love itself. We humans are hardwired to love and be loved. The idea of love permeates every aspect of our lives and our cultures. I'm choosing to celebrate that love today. God gave us love because he first loved us. By loving others, we honor God. I'm not trying to make Valentine's Day a religious holiday, although its origin is quite religious. I just want all the cynics and haters out there to realize why days like Valentine's Day are important.  

I guess the rest of you can pout about why Valentine's day is so dumb and be miserable on this happy day. I for one will be enjoying a romantic evening with my favorite person celebrating the love we have for one another. It may be sappy and I will probably spend way too much money. But when it comes down to it, she is worth it, and our love is more than worth it. Happy Valentine's Day!!! A day late...

Help! I dont rite so good.

It seems that the internet has been struck with a plague. This plague is poor grammar and badly misspelled words. People are bringing down the general IQ of the internet so quickly, the internet will soon be somewhere in the intelligence range of Sponge Bob Squarepants.  You know those people I’m talking about. There speling is wers then teh “eet mor chiken” kows. Well I stumbled across something on the internet that might solve all of our problems. It’s a free web-based software that corrects spelling and grammar mistakes as you type. It’s called Ginger. It’s completely free and it works like a dream.

I know what you may be thinking. MS Office already has that. “Why should I download some fancy new software?” Well, here’s the kicker. This software is about 5 times smarter than MS Office spellchecker. This Ginger Software understands contextual spelling. It doesn’t just check individual words for misspellings. It looks at whole sentences and uses the context to correct mistakes that a normal spellchecker would not see. Take these sentences for example.

I stepped in a rock with my bear foot.

It hurted.

A normal spellchecker would not find any errors in the first sentence. These are properly spelled words. In the second sentence, a normal spellcheck would see the word as misspelled but give suggestions that do not fit the context. The suggestions are hunted, hurtled, hurled, etc. Ginger takes context into consideration and properly corrects these sentences.

I stepped on a rock with my bare foot. It hurt.

Pretty neat huh?!

Another great feature is that it works in your internet browser as well as on applications like MS Office and others and corrects mistakes as you type. You can also use it to scan a whole document for mistakes. I wrote a paper for school last night using ginger as my spellchecker. I was amazed at all the typos and small grammar mistakes it found that my spell checker didn’t catch. It probably improved the grade I will receive on my paper.

I consider myself to be a halfway decent writer. However, I’m a not-so-great typist. I’m not immune to typos and small spelling errors. Hopefully, this great new software will take care of most of those problems. Everyone could benefit from using this. It saves intelligent people from simple mistakes and may even start to raise the IQ of the internet by reprimanding those language challenged individuals who plague the world wide web with their ignorance of the written word.

This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen on the web in a while and I thought it would be great to share it with you nice people.

Stay tuned for more,

Outtamymind!

P.S. I've provided a link to the Ginger website HERE. Download today and start correcting your grammar! (No, I am not a paid employee of Ginger Software.)

Also, feel free to comment!

Aristartled!

Aristotle, Descartes, Immanuel Kant. What do the three of these men have in common? Well, aside from being famous philosophers, they all confuse the crap out of me! As a religion major at Trevecca Nazarene University, I'm required to take TWO semesters of philosophy. Of all the subjects I've studied in my liberal arts education, philosophy is easily the worst of them all. Let's face it, Philosophy is among the most pointless pursuits in all of academia. It has no end, no aim. It's simply a study of the garbled nonsensical thoughts of centuries old dead men. Most philosophical ideas can now be completely disproved by modern scientific thought or are replaced in peoples' lives by religion. It has no place, no relevance in today's world.

Here's how the study of philosophy works. You start with Socrates and learn about his ideas and methods, then you move on to Plato who is slightly more coherent than Socrates but whose actual ideas make even less sense. He says something about Forms and weird metaphysical realities and blah, blah, blah. Then we move on to Aristotle who puts them all to shame in terms of strange ideas about the nature of reality and knowledge. You continue this pattern all the way up through the modern philosophers. You study one dead guy and his ideas then move on to the next dead guy and discuss why he thought the previous guy was all wrong and why in fact, it is he who is right. Then another dead guy comes along claiming he knows the real truth and explaining why the other guy who found out the answers to everything before him was actually wrong about everything and it is in fact he, the new greatest philosopher who actually knows the answers to everything. Confused yet? Me too.

So what do these philosophers actually philosophize about? I'm glad you asked. The job of the philosopher is to sit and speculate about the nature of unknowable things. Every philosopher has a new idea about the nature of God, the nature of good and evil, the nature of reality (physical and/or metaphysical), the nature of the universe, the nature of knowledge, and of truth itself. It's safe to say that there really are no answers to these concepts. Neither modern science nor any religion can really offer us a solid explanation of any of the above. Yet, this is what philosophy seeks to do. In the words of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, "All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." Philosophy is just like that. No matter how hard you try to grasp it, you will just end up with a fist full of nothing.

Let me leave you with an example of how a philosopher tries to discover the nature of a thing. He stands up and points at the chair on which he had previously been sitting, He asks the class, "What is this? Is it a chair? How do you know it's a chair. What about it makes it a chair? Is it a chair because I can sit on it? I can sit on my desk. Does that make my desk a chair? If I stand on the chair is it still a chair? Maybe what the chair is made of makes it a chair? Do the wood, fabric, and metal define its nature?" What if I took it apart and put the pieces in a pile on the floor? Is it still a chair? There must be some universal idea of what gives a chair it's "chairness." But what if the chair doesn't really exist at all? Maybe it is only a perception. But I can see, feel, and sense the chair so it must be real. Unless the physical reality of the senses isn't REAL reality! AGGGGHHH!!!

This is philosophy in a nutshell. No matter how you spin it, Aristotle and his buddies leave me simply Aristartled!

Thanks for reading,

Disgruntled Philosophy Student

P.S.

Obviously this post was written tongue in cheek. However,  I'm sure some have differing opinions. Please feel free to comment about your own thoughts on philosophy!

Christian Schools are so lame... NOT!!!

People say that choosing which college you go to may be one of the most important decisions of your life. And let's face it, it's a difficult choice for certain. There are so many things to consider when thinking about colleges: location, areas of study, cost, student body size, prestige, financial aid. One other major consideration in my opinion is religious affiliation. It's one of the biggest factors influencing my choice to come to  Trevecca Nazarene University. However, for most prospective college students, Christian schools are the farthest thing from their minds.

Christian schools get a bad rap with most college students. "You go to a Christian school?" say my peers with an incredulous tone. In this article, my aim is to address some of the stigmas that are attached to Christian colleges and to explain why choosing to attend a Christian school really has been one of the best decisions I've ever made. The following are things I hear people say about Christian schools like TNU.

1. Christian Schools are too expensive.

There's no doubt that Christian schools  are very expensive. But whether or not it's too expensive depends on the value put on Christian education. Some people really cannot afford private schools. This is fine but in my opinion it is well worth the cost if there's any way to swing it. The price of attendance may be high, but the reward of having a Christian education is priceless. I will explain more about that in the following sections.

2. I bet you don't have any fun.

False! We just have different kinds of fun than what you will likely find at big state schools. To be honest, TNU often feels like a big youth group  You are surrounded by like-minded Christian friends in a wholesome environment with activities going on all the time. We have countless opportunities for fun and excitement at my school. Our Student Government Association has events almost every week for students. There are sporting events, concerts, film screenings, parties (of the non-drinking variety) and myriad other opportunities to get out and have fun. I admit I'm not the biggest socialite on campus. But for those who are always looking for something do, there is never a dull moment on campus. 

3. You're so sheltered in Christian schools.

Am I sheltered at my Christian school? Of course I am. But why does that have to be a bad thing? I have seen good Christian friends go to secular colleges and be overwhelmed by the lack of shelter they have known their whole lives. This causes good kids to make bad decisions that could have been avoided. I admit that some rules seem a little strict here. But I feel blessed to live in an environment where temptations are intentionally removed from daily life. It makes it easier for me to focus on academics and friendships when I'm not worried about the people around me influencing me with their lifestyles. Some say this sheltering causes me to be unprepared for "the real world." On this I have to disagree. I feel more prepared for the real world because I have been kept in an environment that teaches me real world values and how to be a better person in my community. 

4. Private Schools are too small.

Yes, my school is small and that's the best thing about it. There are about as many undergraduate students at TNU as there were students in my home town high school. That may seem boring to some but it's actually the opposite. Around here, we refer to TNU as the Trevecca Community because of the close-knit relationship we all have with one another. Here, I know almost everyone in my graduating class. All of my professors know my name and I can easily get in contact with them for personal help if I need it. At big schools, it's easy to get lost in the crowd. You have your core group of friends and that's pretty much it. In my small school, everyone knows everyone and no one gets left out unless they choose to. It really is a community and I love being a part of it.

5, You don't get a real education in Christian schools. 

This could not be farther from the truth. I will walk out of Trevecca in a year confidently because I know I will have received a first class education. Not only are the professors experts in their field with years of experience, they also genuinely care about the students in their classrooms. In a class of 200, it's difficult for a professor to really be invested in each student individually. However, at a school with an average class size of around 25, you get a more personalized and meaningful education. Furthermore, the education you receive at a Christian school goes far beyond academics. All of the faculty are Christians and care about the faith and spiritual health of their students. Most professors pray before classes and frequently relate academic principles to matters of faith and theology. Here at Trevecca, in the process of receiving a quality academic education, I'm also learning to be a better person and a better Christian. Did I mention that Trevecca is a fully accredited liberal arts university? This may not be characteristic of all Christian schools but it's proof positive that you can find quality academics in Christian schools if you look.

So going to a small private Christian school really isn't all that bad. In fact it's really great once you've experienced it. I'm sure this won't ever change anyone's mind about where they will receive their higher education. Who really cares what I think anyway? I just wanted to share about an important part of my life and address some of the common stigmas that are associated with it. What else can I say? I love living at and being a part of a Christian college. I love Trevecca Nazarene University!

Continuing the Journey,

AimlessAdventurer

Life is an adventure... mine is just really weird.

In case you don't know, my name is Caleb and this is my blog. If you've come expecting to read deep insights into the nature of the universe and  the meaning of human life, you are likely in the wrong place. If you have come expecting to read potent analyses of political events and contemporary issues, look elsewhere. This blog is simply an outlet for the thoughts and ideas of myself.  On occasion I may conjure some profound, philosophical insight that I have discovered and want to share with the world. Mostly though, I'll simply be writing about things that catch my attention.

Considering that I could be the poster boy for Attention Deficit Disorder, the things that catch my attention are unsurprisingly eclectic, varied, and at times just plain random. My blogging topics may range from matters of faith and theology to scientific ideas and the latest gadgets. I may blog about political topics and current events, or simply write about the experiences of my day. Often I will write about my geeky hobbies like video games, comic book heroes, and of course the galaxy far, far away.

This lack of focus and organizational structure may frustrate some to no end. As for myself, I find it nearly impossible to express myself within such constraints. Furthermore, since this is my blog I can write about whatever I want and you have no say.  :) This lack of a defined theme or purpose, might cause one to ask, "What is the point? Why write a blog at all?"

Simply put, life is too interesting to be experienced by oneself. Life is an adventure. Like any adventure that's worth having, it is always shared with someone else.  This blog is my attempt to share the adventure of my life with you, my fellow adventurers. Bear with me, this journey may have a long and winding path. At times, it might not make any sense. But therein lies the real adventure.  So, take up your swords (or lightsabers) and join me in my quest! It's gonna be big…

To humble beginnings,

AimlessAdventurer