Once upon a time. . .

If you have never heard that ancient phrase, that begins so many heroic and romantic stories, you probably are not from a western culture. But every culture has their own stories. As a matter of fact every person has their own stories, both to tell and to live.

I was reading "The New Testament and the People of God" by a theologian named N.T. Wright. In it, he points out that stories are the basic building blocks of science and basic human interaction. He points out that a scientific fact is only a fact because it tells a story about something. Science takes a hypothesis and that is the "Once upon a time. . ." The facts just are events in the story and scientists are the story tellers. In the end, we have a story that explains something. Take gravity for example, Newtonian physics said that because an apple fell from a tree (and hit Sir Isaac Newton on the head) then the culprit must be a graviton molecule that is exerting force on the apple, pulling it down. There was an event, the apple falling and to explain the falling there was a story. The story is that the graviton pulled on the apple until it fell. It is short and sweet and was adopted into a scientific law.

This is a little hard to grasp, so lets bring it down to a more everyday level. What does a good husband do. Well, he remembers birth days, anniversaries, grocery lists, chores ect. Husbands also find a career and work hard to build a prosperous home. These things are good, but why does he do them? He does them because in his mind, he has to do them to fill the role of a good husband. In effect, he role plays. Now, what if someone does not play the part very well? If he does not, then he certainly has other roles that he is trying to fill. Perhaps, a "bad" husband wants to fill other roles; such as, a sexual item or a drug dealer or of a couch potato.

When I thought about this, everything made perfect sense. I want to be a good provider for my wife, because I am playing a role as a good husband. I want to be strong in technology, because I feel that my role as a professional will have a lot to do with IT work.

Some times, in a world of 6 billion stories, there are stories that do not fit with each other. Sometimes stories subvert or replace other stories. When this happens things dramatically change. We can see it in history and in the world around us. The American dream is a story that has subverted many other peoples story; because it is a strong story, it can subvert stories of dictatorships and monarchies. By the way, Einstein came up with a better story to explain the apple falling from the tree and has now been accepted into science (Einstein's story better fit the evidence that he discovered).

It should be left to a different blog, but can you think of competing stories and how we can judge to see which stories are worth replacing other stories?

Why do people limit their options and build lives that they cant live?

It has came aware to me recently that some of my friends are building lives that they cant live. Rather, they built a life for themselves that they could not continue. Now, many people would condemn my friends for their failure; but is that failure really their fault? Everyone grows up and we make stupid mistakes, but we are fooling ourselves to believe that God is going to give us the strength to do something that he did not intend for us to do. Many times, we as humans, decide a path to take our life down but do not explore the options that we have. Christians specifically do this when we date without making preparations for marriage. Having premarital sex is just one of many ways we make lives that we cant live. My personal favorite is the crash diets; people starve themselves for weeks only to breakdown and start all over again. In my life I have needed God's help and good guidance from friends to make good decisions that I could live with. Thats why both my wife and myself married as virgins (we dated for 6 months before I proposed and waited for 4 more before we got married). Both my wife and myself realize that we could not have waited any longer to be married; so we got married. Why do people limit their options and build lives that they cant live?

"Power is defined by choices [options]. Often the best way to enhace one's power is to develop better choices." Bernard Mayer.

The Bible as the Ultimate Source of Wisdom

Is the Bible the ultimate source of wisdom? In order to answer that question, we need to compare it to other works. Is the Bible full of more wisdom than Confucius or is the Bible a better source of Science than a text book. I will with a renouned voice . . . it is not. But wait! I am a Christian and that means that I beleive that the Bible is "God-Breathed," right? I do so. But how can I take science and history in one hand and the Bible in the other and say that they are both right? This is a very good question and it is the job of every Christian to do just that. I suggest that Christians take another good long look at the Bible!

Where I go from here is to ask, what is the Bible really for? I have asked my good friends that during my church service; and my good friend and ex-college professor told me exactly what the Bible is. The Bible is actually about a story; every book in the Bible adds something to the story. There are many books in the Bible that have different purposes; but they are ultimatly meant, not to convery history or wisdom, but simply a story of a supreme being creating a kingdom on the earth. No where in the Bible does it say that there will never be a recording error or that every book in the Bible was meant to be taken litterally; the Bible is meant to convery one over-arching story. That is phenonomly different than what I was taught in sunday school.

This story is about a perfect humanity falling from a perfect state by doing something that God told them not to do. The story then goes and gets infinantly more complicated (as we humans do); but if humans are complicated, it seems that God is much more complex because God goes and tries to create a kingdom on the earth. God uses Abraham and his descendants to create a nation on the earth. In this time we go and find that the Bible is not meant for timeless truth because God commands his people to go and to destroy every man woman and child in the land that they were to acquire. If that were a timeless truth than Christianity would be very bloody, indeed. God's kingdom does eventually fall because of their disobedience; but God quickly goes about to recreate his kingdom. Jesus, the Messiah, is the one that God has chosen to succeed the ancient kings as the monarch of the kingdom. But wait! If Jesus has a kingdom where is it? In this respect, God changes the rules of humanity; and in this time we find the "timeless truths" or so some think. Where in the old kingdom, Israel was taught to honor a code of "an eye for an eye" and to destroy the enemies of the kingdom; Jesus the monarch of the new kingdom commands us to lover our enemies and lover our neighbors and to love God. How can destroy are enemy and love our enemy both be timeless truths? They cant! Jesus showed us that his kingdom is here now but not all of the way; we will have to wait till the end to see God's kingdom in its fullness on the earth. Meanwhile, Jesus dies on a cross and raises from the dead to redeem humanity so that all can be part of God's kingdom and to become the first to be resurrected into a new body.

So is the Bible the ultimate source of wisdome? Yes and no. The Bible is not a proverbial handbook for Christians (although it does contain some proverbs). Confusius can have all of the wise sayings in the world. Most of them are funny because they are so common sense and yet nobody does them. The Bible is very different; it is not meant to be the source of wisdom but yet it is the source of the greatest wisdom; to follow the Messiah and to be a part of God's kingdom on the earth.