CCF Sharing Night (F10)

Minutes for the Fall 2010 sharing night. A large majority of it, anyway. Towards the end, I lost focus due to fatigue and my batteries was low, and stopped typing. Whew...


AT (7.50p)

• Outreach ministry
• Went out to talk to random people -> Talked to a Buddhist. Learned about Buddhism. Was scary when first started talking, but got easier as time went on
• "Break my heart for what break yours"

JC (7.54p)

• Worship coordinator
• First year Optometry
• Never knew how to share the Gospel, but tried. Felt good, doing God's work. Want to be more comfortable talking to non-Christians

 
ML (7.59p)

• Difficult term: School was hard, lived with people who likes to party
• Realize that faith has to be active 
• need to be pushed to maintain faith
• If not, it sometimes doesn't feel Christian anymore. Life is routine
• Cling onto your faith

MC (8.02p)

• 1040 rally: "If you have nothing worth dying for, then you have nothing worth dying for"
• God placed certain people in his life. People who needed the Gospel.
• People who pursuit school or pride or whatnot -> realized need to pray for campus
• Frosh cell: Believes that God is raising a powerful generation, going to do amazing things
• Stay prayer focused

DT (8.08p)

• God is in complete control
• We like control and certainty. Trying to maintain control everything caused a bit of a burnout
• Family
• Don't get a chance to talk to them much
• Sister was talked to by a Christian
• now open to asking questions about Christianity
• Dad does not think much of Christianity
• but been going to church for a year
• God is working, even if we don't see it

DY (8.13p)

• Originally, did not like CCF/Waterloo
• Felt different in CCF, didn't like their way of doing things
• Didn't feel fitting into Waterloo
• Realized God is at work, and it's up to us to join Him. The current generation that is passionate, we didn't do anything to get that. God did
• God is at work! Think about the story of the... 
• bleeding woman 
• centurion
• feeding of 5000. 
• "Only God can, and God will." Our ministries isn't ours to begin with. It's all God's. God will do amazing things, if we are willing

M (8.22p)

• Went to C4C for a while, for a term
• Joined CCF again. It was hard, didn't know much people. 
• But volleyball and worship helped reintegration

D (8.24p)

• Lived with a person who was formerly Christian. 
• Wanted to talk to him about his lifestyle, serious rebuking. 
• But God told him that there is a better way. 
• One day, suddenly, his roommate initiated the convo. 
• They prayed, and his life changed
• God holds onto His children
• Another non-Christian saw something different in him, is now nvestigating
• Ephesians 2 (living as children of light ... [note: this is what he said, but I may have recorded the wrong passage. The children of light is Eph 4])
• We all have a lot of friends who claim to be Christian, but still need to be transformed by God

AW (8.31p)

• CCF is a group of people wholove each other, obeyed Matthew 28, spread the Gospel and are salt and light
• Before CCF started, UW had lots of Christian. Some are solid (firm in faith). Some are round (easily influenced). Some are confused (not sure what they believed in). Got together, prayed, community
• CCF was founded in the early 70s, by Terrence Lau
• Why do we need CCF? 
• Diverse background. 
• Breeding ground of thoughts. 
• Place where professionalism is nurtured
• Campus today: Tough, adventurous, stressful, secular, competitive, rowdy
• CCF today needs to be: united and have one voice
• Vision of CCF:
• University is not just a place to gain knowledge. 
• It is also a place to search for truth. 
• A place to train them to serve the church. 
• A place to evangelize. 
• A place to build up Christian character. 
• A place to network and build community. 
• CCF needs to be a city on a hill, not a ghetto.
• Bring CCF back to home churches

 
MW (8.42p)

• Rapped/poem

-- Break. Missed some people -_- --

GL (9.28p)

• Bible memorization was good
• Sometimes, it's 2 step forward, 1 step back...but it could also be 1 step forward, 2 steps back
• Jeremiah [note: didn't catch the chapter reference]: People don't actually turn to God...except when we're in trouble. Would you treat a friend like that?
• Are we cheapening God's grace? Don't do it. Don't take grace lightly. Reflect.
• Colossians [note: didn't catch this one either -_-]: Don't settle. Keep walking. Keep pursuiting Christ

CM (9.39p)

• School is boring and stressful
• Dad is agnostic. 
• Always seems disinterested in his family. 
• Difficult to reach out to him. 
• Spontaneously told him about Christ. 
• You cannot claimed to have loved someone unless you've told them about Christ

Z (10.01p)

• Transition to university has been okay
• Made lots of friends. Burdened to share
• Called to spread the Gospel

S (10.05p)

• Overall, feels that God has a plan for him
• Something special about CCF

MW (10.07p)

• Originally disappointed with job
• But it was nice to have co-op in Waterloo -> met lots of people
• Was told that he lacked passion
• So focused on mortal things, why don't we have passion on bigger things? "If you are not going to risk anything, you're not going to gain anything"
• Find a passion in God

JQ (10.13p)

• Continue to be used by God. God brought you to UW for a reason.
• Learned and challenged lots in and by CCF
• "As I have loved you, love one another" - 1 John
• Jesus showed us the way to love: servant leadership (John 15.13)
• Passion: "willingness to die for" in latin
• Remember your leaders. 
• Sometimes it's good and we can see fruits and results. 
• But can also burn out and be burdened, and that's why we rely on God. 
• Encourage your leaders
• After every storm is the sun

 

-- Break 2 --

 
JC (10.37p)

• We're not the ones that make it happen. God is
• God doesn't need us, He could've done it all Himself
• Made it this way so we depend on Him
• Committee...wasn't sure if he wanted to do it, but it came up a few times:
• Sunday message: Harvest is many, but worker is few
• Sunday school: Jesus sending out disciples
• Youth group: 1 Timothy 3 (Responsibility of the overseer)
• Wanted to do Bible studies, from upper year showing that there's a lot to get from the Bible
• The fact that a 2000 year old message can still be powerful is compelling
• Had passion, but no training. Those are times when you really need to depend on God
•  People lost the passion of living sacrificially for God over time
• But came back in recent years
• Want people to want to know the Gospel, Scripture
• School and academic advancement is important
• But so is using your talents for the Kingdom

D (10.49p)

• Hard to get in touch with people from home (HK) due to time zone
• School is hard
• Realized that she can rely on God
• Life can be frustrating at times
• Was sent people to help her through hard times
• His grace is enough

S (10.56p)

• Want to be more discipline in chasing after God, else will become complacent
• Got sucked into materialistic mentality of HK
• Why am I storing treasure here instead of in heaven?
• Discipline

L (11.01p)

• Wasn't sure if she should come to Waterloo (exchange student)
• Encouraged by sharing
• 4 months seems like a long time before coming, but it's been good

L (11.04p)

• Wanted to get deeper with relationship with Christ -> joined a bunch of CCF things
• But didn't feel any different
• Was pointed to a book on legalism
• God reveals Himself to who He wants to, not by our powers, but by His

B (11.06p)

• People didn't challenge his faith when he was growing up
• University is much more difficult than high school
• We need God

H (11.10p)

• CCF is humbling. Lots of people looking after each other
• Got really involved. Learned lots

RL (11.20p)

• See many professing Christians who don't act Christians
• Liked Waterloo when she visited -> decided to go to Waterloo
• HK friends made fun of her for wanting to go to Waterloo
• Friendship here seems more real

 
J (11.25p)

• How do I know that I love God?

Boundaries of apologetics

Summer of 2010 started with an encounter with Mormons, which emphasized the importance of apologetics and knowing the details about my faith. It led directly to the start of NNC (or BBW, or just Apologetics cell, even though our premise isn't really just on apologetics). After several months of apologetics and a few presentations, I was a bit amused to note that the end of Fall 2010 was marked by a case where apologetics just didn't work.

I was working with someone on a project the other day, when he started talking about religion. He talked a bit about meaning of life, then proceed to note that the Christian God is insane. Curious, I asked him to expand a bit. He pointed to the Old Testament, and the purging of Canaan. Oyy...

As the conversation went on, I found out that he grew up in a Catholic school, taught by people who simply told him to ignore apparent contradictions between OT and NT, and that didn't make sense to him. After telling him that I agree with him, that one should think about their faith and be active in figuring things out, we launched into things:

God of the Old Testament
I pointed out that major destructions of people groups were not unwarned: Noah was warned and had a chance to tell other people (Genesis 6), Canaan's purging was also forewarned (Genesis 15.16). Sodom and Gomorrah's issues were described as an outcry...other people were complaining about how bad the situation in those cities are (Genesis 18.20)! To top it off, Abraham argued for the cities, saying that there must be some good people there (Genesis 18.22-33), where God agreed that He will not destroy good people. I brought up that God was ready to destroy Israel (but still want to give humans a chance) when they worshiped the golden calves in Exodus 32 but relented. God didn't kill anyone there, Moses did (Exodus 32.25-29)!

I pointed to the healing of Naaman, a general of the enemies of Israel (2 Kings 5.1-19) and Nineveh, a city that pillaged and burned Israel. (Jonah 3). I stopped around there, even though I had more examples still. My point has been made already, and I realized one fundamental assumption I've made here, in my interpretation of the OT: the sovereignty of God. And although I've placed examples of God being merciful to contrast his view of an angry God, our difference in fundamental assumption meant we could not meet at a common ground.

I was just told ignore things that didn't make sense. How could that be?
Ah. Apologetics. I explained to him what apologetics is, and that most people don't bother with it, but that's not the proper attitude. Just as we investigate scientific principles that we believe, we should also examine the what our faith says as well. We talked about dinosaurs. Young Earth creationism and Genesis 1-2. Big bang. Evolution. Archeological evidence of Biblical events. Philosophy behind translation of the Bible. I mentioned that I grew up believing science, and things had to fit together before I can whole-heartedly accept this. I admit, I have not been able to figure everything out. Evolution and big bang arin't exactly easy concepts to grasp. But I'm at an okay place right now in terms of that.

...but how can you believe all this?
He asked me, what if God was just a made up concept and all these things just happened to have fit together?

Well...Voltaire believed that. One quote attributed to Voltaire is "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." Enlightenment era philosophies. Sure. He advanced the principles of Locke (Tabula Rasa, "the blank slate"), in that we are fundamentally bad people, but society forces us to conform to become good people, and that we can shape people's behaviour. Later on, Freud reinforces that idea, with the id/ego/superego.

I subscribe more to Hobbe's ideas (the Social Contract). We agree that people are fundamentally bad, but it is rather difficult make someone good. Can we actually just colour in the blank slate and make someone good? Or do we need a central governance to make sure people behave, implying that people cannot be expected to be good when left to their own devices? It's evident what our modern society believes...communism failed (a whole different discussion altogether) and democracy, which is an implementation of the Social Contract, is widespread. Our own society believes people are fundamentally bad.

But this isn't what we disagreed on. We disagreed on the solution. He said he wouldn't mind becoming a Buddhist. Buddhism believes that the individual had the ability to become a good person and be perfect, on his own accord. I didn't believe that. My life experiences tells me that I need Jesus, because if we can be good on our own accord, humans would've all been good already. So I shared a bit of my own stories and how I got to this point in my faith.

Concluding
I think, even though we've hit a lot of different topics and (hopefully), I presented a decent case, I've been reminded the limitation of apologetics here. I cannot expect someone to believe just because I could answer all his questions. Apologetics allowed me to present my case in a intellectual, logical way, to lend creditability to the hope of my faith, and not be stuck with a "uhhh I dunno"

I'll point to Mikee for a discussion about apologetics and Jorge for further thoughts on how to properly use apologetics. We're called give the reason for the hope that we have. We can plant things with our arguments and logical debates, but God is the one that makes the seeds grow.

Post-modernism

BBW just went though a section on post-modernism/relativism. Researching and thinking about this has got to be one of the harder topics we've covered in BBW. We don't often encounter groups like Mormons or JWs around. But post-modernistic ideas are everywhere. Chances are, I myself have some post-modernistic beliefs that I just absorb from my culture, and haven't really thought about...well. Until now, anyway.

Post-modernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial. Post-modernism has influenced many cultural fields, including literary criticism, sociology, linguistics, architecture, visual arts, and music.

- Wikipedia

So in our context, post-modernism is the belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth (i.e. denial of Biblical truth). Rather, what is true for you may not be true for me. What works for you might not work for me. That truth is relative and that everyone's point of view are valid. I was brought up to believe that tolerance is good. In fact, I've found myself pretty upset when I encountered situations of blatant intolerance.

I've gotten into a few discussions regarding religion and belief systems before. It's been a lot of sharing of what one believes in...and usually left at that. The rallying cry (verse, rather) of the apologist would most likely be the one from 1 Peter:

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect...

- 1 Peter 3.15

So we're called to present our opinions, but to do so in a gentle and caring way. I wouldn't enjoy it very much if someone just came up to me and told me how dumb I am for being an engineer, being in academia or having Christian beliefs. I would assume that the same goes for others. Be firm, but be loving.

My search in finding more about this topic and these thoughts has led me to two people, William Lane Craig (Professor of Talbot School of Theology) and Tim Keller (Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian), both of whom can say this much better than I can. I'll share their thoughts first, and write more later.

Tim Keller
About every other week, I confront popular pluralist notions that have become a large part of the way Americans think. For example, pluralists contend that no one religion can know the fullness of spiritual truth, therefore all religions are valid. But while it is good to acknowledge our limitations, this statement is itself a strong assertion about the nature of spiritual truth.

A common analogy is often cited to get the point across which I am sure you have heard - several blind men trying to describe an elephant. One feels the tail and reports that an elephant is thin like a snake. Another feels a leg and claims it is thick like a tree. Another touches its side and reports the elephant is a wall. This is supposed to represent how the various religions only understand part of God, while no one can truly see the whole picture. To claim full knowledge of God, pluralists contend, is arrogance. When I occasionally describe this parable, and I can almost see the people nodding their heads in agreement.

But then I remind the hearers that the only way this parable makes any sense, however, is if the person telling the story has seen the whole elephant. Therefore, the minute one says, 'All religions only see part of the truth,' you are claiming the very knowledge you say no one else has. And they are demonstrating the same spiritual arrogance they so often accuse Christians of.  In other words, to say all is relative, is itself a truth statement but dangerous because it uses smoke and mirrors to make itself sound more tolerant than the rest.

Most folks who hold this view think they are more enlightened than those who hold to absolutes when in fact they are really just as strong in their belief system as everyone else.  I do not think most of these folks are purposefully using trickery or bad motives.  This is because they seem to have even convinced themselves of the "truth" of their position, even though they claim "truth" does not exist or at least can't be known.  Ironic isn't it?  The position is intellectually inconsistent.

From: The Supremacy of Christ and the Gospel in a Postmodern World (Desiring God Conference 2006)
(I actually copied this from another short article, found here, but Keller mentions this story, and most of the contents of the article I cited, in his Conference lecture)

William Lane Craig
Now I can imagine some of you thinking, “But don’t we live in a post-modern culture in which these appeals to traditional apologetic arguments are no longer effective?  Since post-modernists reject the traditional canons of logic, rationality, and truth, rational arguments for the truth of Christianity no longer work.  Rather in today’s culture we should simply share our narrative and invite people to participate in it.”

In my opinion this sort of thinking could not be more mistaken.  The idea that we live in a post-modern culture is a myth.  In fact a post-modern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable.  Nobody is a post-modernist when it comes to reading the labels on a medicine bottle versus a box of rat poison!  You better believe that texts have objective meaning!  People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics.

...

And as for the idea that people in our culture are no longer interested in nor responsive to rational argumentation and evidence for Christianity, nothing could be farther from the truth.  If I might be permitted to speak from my own experience, for over twenty years I’ve been speaking evangelistically on university campuses in North America and Europe, sharing the Gospel in the context of presenting an intellectual defense of Christian truth claims.  I always close my talks with a long time of Q & A.  During all those years virtually no one has ever stood up and said something like, “Your argument is based on Western, chauvinistic standards of logic and rationality” or expressed some other post-modern sentiments.  This just never happens.  If you approach the questions on a rational level, people respond to them on a rational level.  If you present scientific or historical evidence for a Christian truth claim, unbelieving students may argue with you about the facts - which is exactly what you want -, but they don’t attack the objectivity of science or history themselves.  If you present a deductive argument for a Christian truth claim, unbelieving students may raise objections to your conclusion or premises - which is, again, precisely where the discussion should be -, but they don’t dispute your use of logic itself.

From: Christian Apologetics - Who needs it? (Reasonable Faith)

A bit closer to the other side

I am more and more a grad student. This is how I know.

PHD (Piled Higher and Deeper) Comics
Link here. I've always like xkcd, with its Math/CS references and amusing stories and thought experiments. I used to read Dilbert, during my co-op days. Now it's been PHD. You know it's bad when you relate more to PHD comics than Dilbert.

Proctoring
I proctored two midterms. The closest word I can use to describe my proctoring experiences is "jailer". I walk up and down the exam room, trying to look intimidating. Glaring at students when they make too much noise and walk them to the bathroom. In 1.5 hours, they'll be gone, worried about the next exam. I still need to supervise another exam. There was a line that kept on running through my mind:

"You see? I will end up living in prison longer than you." - The governor/jail keeper, to Pu Yi, when he's being released from jail (The Last Emperor, 1987)

Hockey stars and...professors?
Friends of mine are getting published. Whew. I was looking around at related works and saw a name I recognized from a previous paper, a fairly big name in motion detection/motion segmentation research. I got excited, before catching myself. Perhaps the average person isn't excited by famous researchers as they would a hockey player.

Suits and other fancy dresses

I don't tend to care too much about what I wear. I'm not into brands or expensive clothing. I rather my stuff be comfortable than fashionable. Warm rather than cool (literally). So I walk around in hoodies and jeans/khakis. Long-sleeves that I can roll up sleeves to so I can "adjust the temperature." I happily ignored years of people telling me to insert some colour into my life until I was forced to consider the opinion. The first time I've ironed a shirt is in 4th year. So it was a rather interesting experience for me to go suit shopping. Yes, I'm getting better. -_-

Suit shopping history
My mom bought me my first and only suit. This is the suit that I brought to Waterloo. This is also the suit to which the pants to I accidentally machine washed because it looked just like all my other dress pants. This is the suit I had to replace.

New suit shopping history
Being totally ignorant of suit culture, my "fine dressing for men 101" consisted of numerous trips malls, trying on more suits more times then I've worn my original one (thanks to everyone that convinced me that non-black/white colours are wearable =P). No, this isn't a post documenting my suit shopping experience. =P

Thoughts on dressing
I've come to realize that dressing is not entirely an individualistic thing. That when I dress to go school, no one really cares if I'm in a hoodie (grad students don't tend to dress any better than undergrads, I've noted). The purpose of my school clothing is to keep me warm (and decent).

But just like there is a season for everything, formal ware is important when the time calls for it. One is expected to "dress to impress" when it comes to situations like interviews and weddings. So if I'm going to spend the time and money to find a decent suit, I might as well finish the job and find a decent shirt and tie as well. And etc. The purpose of these formal situations is no longer just for myself, but for the event/company that I will be attending.

I recently came across this article (Why what you wear matters) and I think it reconciles fairly well my not wanting to spend much time/effort/money on clothing, but still have what is needed for the occasion. Perhaps I'm the only one in my age group that needs to realize these principles. I'm working on it -_-. The points from the articles are as follows:

• Be conscious of clothing selection - Keep in mind of the situation and intent of dress. Going to a interview dressed all bummy draws negative attention. Social protocol is suppose to kick in at some point. And if nothing else, it reflects poorly on chinese people, students, christians, and chinese christian students
• Don't draw attention to one's privilege - A while ago, three of us got involved in a clothing donation run. We ended up gathering a large amount of old clothing and donating it off, to the point that it wouldn't fit into the donation box that we found in the middle of the night. It reminds me that the ability to buy clothing is quite a privilege indeed, and some thought should go into things before picking up super expensive suit when a moderately priced one would do. Or number of clothing, I guess, for that matter.
• Dress modestly, not sensually - I don't think I have any problem with this one. =P
• Dress properly, use good judgment, don't be associated with evil - I guess I don't tend to keep this in mind much. There was this one suit that looked okay-ish and was within my budget, but when I went home and looked up the brand, I found that the company was associated with child labour. I already wasn't super happy about the suit, but that was the finisher for that particular suit
• Spend wisely - Well. I could point out that I don't have much wealth, and is why I choose not to buy much clothing. But this idea should fit with the first point, so some balance is needed here

Yes, I'm learning. -_-

Religious Intolerance

I was walking from my lab to RCH the other day, mentally reviewing my latest tutorial that I was about to deliver. Around campus, there's a bunch of "Is Jesus Relevant" posters for an event a while back, hosted by mCCF. On several of these posters in E2/E3, someone took a black Sharpie and wrote NO across the poster. I was shocked about the poster for a few reasons.

1) Walking around campus, I've rarely noticed poster defacement. I can probably count all the cases on my hand. I figure most people don't even pay attention to the posters (when I did NSR, only a tiny handful of people came due to poster advertisements). Even in terms of general grafftti, I don't notice that often (other than bathroom stalls, anyway). Either Plants Ops are very good at cleaning those up, or Waterloo students are generally well-behaving. Or maybe I'm not very attentive. Either works.

2) I was reading about how there are many Christian-based laws/events being repelled these days in the name of religious tolerance. I remember getting frustrated at that, since Canada was really originally found on Christian principles, by Christian settlers. You don't expect the Middle East or parts of southern Asia to suddenly repel their religious laws as well, do you? But okay. Democracy is built on freedom of speech (well. to a degree. hate propaganda will get you arrested pretty quickly).

I feel that society is more and more pendulum-like. A few decades ago, it was for women and minority rights and suffrage. Nowadays, I've had Caucasian male friends tell me that they're most marginalized. I noticed RIM job applications asks me if I was a visible minority (Are Chinese actually visible minority? Certainly not on Waterloo campus...). I've see other companies boast that they are equal opportunities employers and etc. But I'm not going to get into gener roles and if fair = equal here...

3) I'm don't think I'm being superly biased here. A few weeks back, a Florida pastor publically announced that his church was going to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11. He later canceled his plans. I've never read the Koran, but I'd be pretty unhappy if I found out some Muslim groups were out burning Bibles. Lets stick with the Golden rule here. If you don't want other people to tell you what to believe, don't tell them what to believe. I'm in the business of sharing my faith, thoughts and ideas, not shoving it down someone's throat.

It took a while for Joge and I to hammer out, but I'm happy with NNC/BBW/Apologetics' mandate. We research ideas and questions. Present the different point of views. We add a bit to what we believe in ourselves and why we do so. That's it. You decide what you want to believe in. If I just tell you what to believe, then your beliefs are mine, and that will crumble when push comes to shove. If you decide for it on your own, then your belief becomes yours, and you learn to take a stand, and that is much more important. Haha. Sounds like that Inception movie.

Intrinsic Motivation

I was poking around the Internet today, trying to find some information on Subversion, to sort out my MATLAB romping and version control. Some searching got me this site. Not feeling a strong particular urge to work at the moment, I started skimming the recent article in this blog. I came across this entry:

The Vast and Endless Sea by Jeff Atwood
Talks about why he enjoys working on StackOverflow, a programming advice forum board, and how he doesn't do it for the money, but because he wants to make the Internet a better place.

It was an amusing read, but wasn't really thinking about it, until I saw the TED talk. Now, watching TED talks is a relatively recent thing for me. First exposed to me from Joses and Jacky, the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) is a series of seminars (short! The few I've seen are all under 20 minutes) that has all sorts of interesting ideas. (Or, if you don't want to watch the 20 min TED version, there's a 10 min "whiteboard sketch" version by the same presenter that is linked on the blog). I'll quickly summarize the blog entry, but I suggest you read/watch the entry yourself. It is an entry on intrinsic motivation.

What Science knows vs what Business is doing
The speaker, Dan Pink, point to the 'candle problem', where you are given a candle, a box of tacks and a box of matches, and you are to attach the candle to the wall in a way that the wax does not land on the table. The solution is literally outside-the-box. You empty out the box of tacks, put the candle in it, and tack the box to the wall.

Princeton scientist Sam Glucksberg performed a variant of this experiment. He offered people money to solve this problem. Surprisingly, the control group did better. Hmm...

MIT's Dan Ariely did this experiment as well, where they offered several types of experiment (cognitive and mechanical) with rewards. The findings here are the same as Glucksberg. They found that rewards boosted performance only if the actions are mechanical. This makes sense, because rewards focuses the mind on just the task and little else. The subjects performed much worse when cognitive activities are required. It's hard to think outside the box or creatively when your mind is so focused. And just in case there is a cultural influence, they repeated the experiment in a rural town in India. Same results.

This is totally opposite to what the business model suggests, where bonus and raises are given to those with innovation and breakthroughs. Perhaps...really...these innovations occur in spite of the money-based pressures presented by companies?

And so Dan Pink presented his most strongest evidence. Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember a Microsoft digital encyclopedia known as Encarta. I had a copy of Encarta 98. It was pretty good. I did a lot of readings there. Encarta had the input of numerous experts, and is filled with good, professional thoughts, that Microsoft hired. However, this eventually faded as Wikipedia came into the picture. Why would experts and common folks alike put so much time into a volunteer-based, thankless project like Wikipedia?

Because it made the Internet a better place.

Pink noted 3 major concepts that gives someone intrinsic motivation:

• Autonomy - The freedom to pursuit what you want. An example he cites for this is the Twenty Percent Time of Google, where 20% of the Google engineers' time are spent doing whatever they want, to produce whatever innovation they want
• Mastery - People want to be known that they're good at something. Really good at something. Bragging rights, perhaps? Or perhaps this feeds into the third point, which is...
• Purpose -  Wanting to reform outdated systems. Make the Internet a better place. To help people. Materialistic comfort. Status and reputation.

I could take this concept and apply it to a various different locations, things that I, or people around me struggle with. Studying for school. Making Bible studies interesting. Staying with new year resolutions. Self-control. The idea is not to appeal with extrinsic motivation. Even PSYCH101 teaches you enough that intrinsic motivation is much more powerful than extrinsic ones. No one can really tell you to study harder, or be more focused. You need to do that. And sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's really hard. Which is why we were given Help, to do things that we cannot do alone.

Related papers and other links

• S. Glucksberg, The influence of strength of drive on functional fixedness and perceptual recognition (1962). Journal of Experimental Psychology.
• J. Heyman, D. Ariely, Effort for Payment (2004). Psychological Science.
• D. Ariely, A. Bracha, S. Meier. Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially (2007). Social Science Research Network
• Dan Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation (TEDGlobal 2009): found here

Nostalgia

I think I've came a long way since Calgary, 2005. The people that I knew way back in first year could attest to that. I sometimes think back to my old WatCard picture (which, unfortunately, got shredded when I got my grad student version) and my attitude when I first came in. Just another frosh, far away from home, and hating every moment of it. Today, Waterloo doesn't seem that bad.

I don't think it really was Calgary. I have several high school friends that continuously tell me how sucky Calgary is. One is in LA now. The other in Belgium. I think back to our struggles in jr high and high school and realize it really wasn't that bad. All the "end-of-the-world" events is just another memory. Vanessa was in Calgary for a month and was telling me about how people are (Dang. Matt's taller than us now?). Who's married to who (What?! TD got married?!). Who's working where (Wow, how did Noel end up in HK?). News of people that I once stood, walked with and was challenged by, but now just an acquaintance due to time and distance.

I resonate strongly with Jo Wong's post, of how "I don't hang out enough with them" anymore. With time a (slightly) more flexible commodity, I spent some time reading people's thoughts, flipping through Facebook, just to see where that entire crowd is. What people are doing. My CCAC friends. My IB friends. My family friends (actually, I can guess what they're doing...StarCraft II -_-). I think it's easy to be surprised and shocked at where people at home is. But those of us who left Calgary, we've made a few steps forward too. A bunch of us are doing grad school, in Ontario and Quebec. Kevin ended up in NYC. I constantly forget that Jon and Mel Lau are in North York. A few went all the way back to Taiwan/China/HK.

Whenever people ask of my past, I always complain about Calgary. I complain about it being spiritually dead, and that I instantly feel "more spiritual" when I step onto Waterloo soil. I point out that I've grown more in the first 2 years of UW than I have all my life in Calgary. I lament about the lack of community that I've come to know as fellowship. What I don't talk about is those late night MSN chats with Sr Rock upperyears. Or the counselors that tried. The running around with the elementary kids. The joking around in choir practices. The bags of wet grass. The hours in the Industrial Arts shop. The talks in the parks and the malls. Scoffing down the noodles when no one is around to tell us to slow down while eating. Assaulted by mosquitoes at Edworthy park. Tripping on rollerblades at Edworthy park. Spraying water into wound at Edworthy park. Sharing my testimony at Edworthy park.

Calgary was just a set up for the foundations. It felt like an uphill battle, where I was young and foolish (now, just foolish). Where I often wonder "if only I knew what I knew now...". Where I remind myself that's what the upperyears tried to tell me. Calgary, with its environment and people, set the basis for later growth. I am no longer like them, eager for the next Halo night or bowling event, but I would not have grown without them. It was rather interesting then, when my family came over for my Convocation. A bit of a collision of worlds. A slight reminder that I can't maintain contact with everyone. That the stories goes on, with or without us. Waterloo has it's difficulties too. It's just easier to complain about Calgary.

Haha. I wonder how much Calgary people would see this. Funny how one can still get homesick once in a while, after 5 years. Thinking back, but always still looking forward.

Doing not-so-grand things

Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.


Now bands from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."


Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. "By all means, go," the king of Aram replied. "I will send a letter to the king of Israel." So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: "With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy."


As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, "Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!"


When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: "Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel." So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, "Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed."


But Naaman went away angry and said, "I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?" So he turned and went off in a rage.


Naaman's servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!" So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. 

- 2 Kings 5.1-14

Interesting passage. Commentators note that...

• Naaman was only awesome cuz God made him so
• The girl in v2 was a captive Jewish slave, but still advertised for the benefit of her master, thus is an example of outreach
• The king can't do anything. Haha. 
• Elisha didn't feel like coming out to meet the general

And now getting to the parts that caught my attention. Having read though all sorts of strange ways that Jesus chose to heal people, the instruction to jump into the local river didn't seem that out of place. Naanman getting angry is also understandable. He's some high up, important official. Yet here, a normal civilian wouldn't give him the respect he feels that he deserves. But the thing that caught my attention was in v13...

Naaman's servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!"

- 2 Kings 5.13 

If the prophet had told you to do some great thing...

I feel that we're constantly expecting to be handed some great thing to do. Somewhere between exposed too much science fiction and action anime/movies/books/games, and all the epic stories we read in the Bible, one might come to the conclusion that we're all called to do "great things." In fact, it might even be easier to do great things. To have something worthwhile under your belt. Just so I can say "yeah, I did this."

Last weekend, I assembled my first CV (I'm totally sold on LaTeX now. No more Microsoft Word spacing ugliness). CV, short for curriculum vitae, loosely translates to "the course of my life," and essentially is a resume without page limits. It was a mildly entertaining 3 hours while I thought about random things I can stick here (to make up for my lack of publication count). At the end, I had 2 pages worth of volunteering experience. Quite proud of myself...until I started removing all the irrelavent ones. -_-

We live in a society of accomplishments. When I meet someone new, "what do you do as a living?" is a typical first question. "So...what exactly are you researching?" is probably the question I get the most often. We're constantly doing things...and all the better if they happen to be great things. Nothing like a good ego/pride boosting to get one going.

But more often than not, the stuff we do arin't all that great. Especially so in research. In fact, one of the early papers I read was about the importance of stupidity in research (no worries, there's no math or proofs...I'm extremely amused that someone cited it). In real life, great things arin't that easy to come by, because they tend to be hard to pull off, and sometimes you just gotta be at the right place at the right time. 

In God's kingdom, great things don't come that often either. Paul sheds some light on why:

Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

- 2 Corinthians 12.6-10

It's more about God then it is about us. And so when we're sent to do the littlest of tasks, the great things that are achieved are not by our hands, but by God's.

Random conclusion note

Ungrateful people. Aram attacks Israel in chapter 6. -_-

Roles of political leadership

A law...

When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," be sure to appoint over you the king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

- Deuteronomy 17.14-20

And a warning...

...they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."

When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."

Then Samuel said to the men of Israel, "Everyone go back to his town."
     

      - 1 Samuel 8.6-22

I found it interesting that the provisions for a king was already outlined when Israel was still in the desert. I tuned in on this part as I was reading a friend's blog earlier, where he is talking about early Chinese emperors and how the early kings avoided extravagance and instead opted for a simple life style. A life of servitude. The modern government is also designed to do that; centralizing power and serving the people. Although I'm, in general, tempted to bash our governments for endless bickering and finger pointing (as oppose to actually solving problems), I will refrain. Having been in leadership roles, I recognize that it's hard to draw a compromise and meet everyone's ideas. It leads to a greater question of...should a governmental leader let his own beliefs and biases colour his political decisions?

Who do we elect?
The current Canadian Prime Minister, Steven Harper, is a Christian (denominational Alliance, actually. I was a bit surprised. I thought Alliance people were all Chinese, haha). We've already established that the government's job is to serve the people. Do we elect governments that will listen to the public and implement changes are appropriate? Or do we elect a person because we want certain agendas to be met in the country?

Most people would probably reply the latter, but with expectations that the former would happen (especially if your particular needs are not being met by the existing platforms). Are these two ideals not contradicting?

Political leader of another kind
It is expected that Harper would behave "Christianity" while he's in office, and table bills and appoint others with Christian ideals. People rant when that does not happen. So what if we ended up with another type of leader? What if we had a pro-communist leader that was elected in because not enough people voted? Or a fifth column effect occured? Surely, we would protest and break windows and firebomb police cars (you knew a G20 reference was coming) and complain that democracy is being destroyed.

So now...you WOULDN'T want the political leaders to implement their beliefs. So then...what should these people do? As a leader, you're often stuck with trying to set up the system so that it meets the needs of the maximum amount of people. If the people are unhappy, you're simply removed from power, and can't influence the system anymore. A very real case of how you can't please everyone.

Okay. So what?
Not really trying to advance any agenda. Part of this post came from the amusing Bible passages, where God laid down the rules before a king came into the picture, as if He already knew it'll happen. Part of this post came up from the annoyance at the knee-jerk reaction commentaries (and the knee-jerk reaction to these reactions) I tend to find on CBC when the government does something stupid. Part of this post comes from lack of voter turnout and how many people choose not make informed votes. Another part came from the frustration at the G20 protests. As another friend noted, I'm a loss to where these anarchists came from. Sigh...

Verses on Marriage

A non-Christian friend of mine asked me to assemble the passages of the Bible that talks explicitly about marriage/relationship/etc. While I was thinking about the meaning of marriage in Christian context, it occurred to me that it is difficult to talk about marriage without talking first about Christ. So I set out to write about Christ first, but then I was asked to find marriage passage for another friend who is getting married this August. So now I have a document full of marriage verses. So...lets see what we can do with this...

Genesis 2 - God created marriage

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man."

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

- Genesis 2.18-24

This here is the first marriage. Even though all the animals were around, God specifically said "it is not good for the man to be alone." Adam knew about all the animals. He named them all. But no suitable helper was found for Adam. So God had to make one. So when Christian folks talk about how marriage is between one man and one women, this is it here.

Matthew 19 - Divorce?
One will note that polygamy is fairly common in the Old Testament. Although God did not explicitly forbid polygamy (or divorce, for that matter), it wasn't part of His original plan. What God wanted was marriage to be one-on-one and long lasting. Jesus was challenged about the OT divorce laws (Deuteronomy 24.1), so He interpreted the Law properly, as follows:

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"

"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"

Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."

The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry."

Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

- Matthew 19.2-12 (emphasis mine)

Why adultery? Marriage is a contract ("covenant", in Christian lingo). It is an agreement between a dude and a girl. The marriage vows that are cited, "to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part." It is an agreement to take care of each other regardless or what happens. In modern day, most contract/agreement are finalized by a signature. Or the transfer of money. Handshake. Handing someone else your shoe (I am totally serious). For marriage, the contract sign is sexual intercourse. Sex was intended to be shared only between a husband and his wife. So adultery means that the contract has been breached, thus divorce is allowed. Of course, adultery is also forbidden, in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20.14). Marriage is serious stuff.

This is why Christians are against no-fault divorce. What about abusive relationships? I'll comment on that later on.

1 Timothy 3 - Arguments against polygamy

Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap.

- 1 Timothy 3.1-7 (emphasis mine)

So a leader in the church is a good thing. Paul says it is a noble task. We are called to be leaders, so these words, we should pay attention to. One wife, eh. Though, this isn't too hard to convince, given that Canadian society has anti-polygamy laws.

Leviticus 18 - What's wrong with homosexual marriage?
Bibically speaking? Nothing. Sort of. The Bible defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. So anything else should not be called a marriage. But that's just a definition. I suspect that the reason why the average Christian is against homosexual marriage and call it a sin stems from this passage:

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable. 

- Leviticus 18.27

So the Law is against homosexual sex, and not necessarily against male-male union/relationships. But read this verse in context with the rest of Leviticus 18. Leviticus 18 is against all sorts of sexual relationships, like don't sleep with your mother, or your aunt, or your brother's wife. Or a woman having her period. Or with animals.

Don't have a lot of thoughts about this field, so I can't comment too much about it, but as a scientist, I don't know if homosexual attraction is genetic or a choice. Based on what I've read, I'm more inclined to say that homosexuality is a choice, and will liken "struggling with homosexuality" similar to "struggling with pornography"...

But before anyone attacks homosexuals for their lifestyle, I will point out that there are very few verses against homosexuals (others include Romans 1.26-27 and certain translations of 1 Timothy 1.9-10 and 1 Corinthians 6.9-11), as oppose to the many, many verses against fornication, adultery and divorce. Be mindful of one's planks (Matthew 7).

EDIT: Adding a bit more thoughts, after getting some comments about my post being ambiguous. It is very clear what God had intended marriage and sexual union to be. It was designed to be shared between a husband and a wife. Anything else and everything else is sin. As noted in above passages, that includes incest, bestiality and yes, homosexuality. The point I wanted to make was...the church has many issues of it's own. Divorce and issues with child-raising, for example. Be quicker to tend to the issues within the church before groups outside.   

Ephesians 5 - Relationship in a marriage

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church - for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

- Ephesians 5.22-33

Okay. Fun passage. But before we can dig into that one, we'll have to outline what Christ did, to understand how Christ relates to the Church. A quick recap, then, of the Gospel message...

As you may have noticed from Jesus' Matthew 19 re-interpretation of divorce laws (Jesus is full of these re-interpretations of the Old Testimant Law, ie Sermon of the Mount of Matthew 5-7), Jesus' entry into the world also served as a re-interpretation of the meaning of marriage. Jesus came as God's servant (Isaiah 42.1-9), to "proclaim freedom for the captives" (Isaiah 61.1). That is, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6.23), and that man cannot earn his own salvation because he will ultimately fall short of the perfection demanded by God (Romans 3.9-20). So Christ came to preach repentance (Matthew 4.17) so that people will be aware of their depravity. In order to pay for the wages, Christ dies on our behalf to turn aside the wraith of God (Romans 5.12-17) so that we can live a transformed life in righteousness (Romans 6.16-18).

So Jesus died for the Church (Christian believers) so that they don't have to. He died, taking the punishment of our wrong-doings so that God will see us as holy and righteous (Ephesians 5.25-27).

In a marriage, it is expected that the husband be the "head" (lead) of the marriage. It does not mean that the man is better (wrote about this before, see here). Just that he is responsible for the marriage. If his family screws up, God will hold the husband responsible. The husband is expected to love his wife as Christ loved the Church (that is...be willing to sacrifice everything for her, even death on a cross). He must love his wife as he loves himself. He is expected to look to Christ as the example: love, caring and obedient to the Word of God (Philippians 2.1-11). He is not to abuse his headship, and certainly no abuse is permitted.

In response, the wife is called to be submissive. Once again, this does not mean the wife is worth less or has no say. The wife's first duty is to God, not to her husband. If her husband screws up, it is her job to know that he screwed up and to confront him about it. She is to submit only if her husband is godly and bibically sound. The point of all this is to arrange some form of order in the family. The husband will lead, as long as he maintains the qualifications to lead.

At the end of the day, the marriage union is an analogy, representing Christ and His Church. The analogy is limited in that Christ is perfect and man is not. But a good marriage is designed to glorify God, which is the Christian mandate. It all goes back to God.

A few other notable verses
Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 talks about how "it is good for a man not to marry" (1 Cor 7.1b), since there are less distractions for the man/woman so they can serve God without reservation. Paul also talks a bit more in Romans 7.1-6, relating the marriage union to our relationship with Christ. There are many comparisons between Israel's rebellion against God in the OT (idol worship), and God typically accuses Israel of adultry. An example of this is though the prophet Hosea. Lastly, in Malachi, God says this:

Didn’t the LORD make you one with your wife? In body and spirit you are his. And what does he want? Godly children from your union. So guard your heart; remain loyal to the wife of your youth. “For I hate divorce!” says the LORD, the God of Israel. “To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty,” says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. “So guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife.”

- Malachi 2.15-16 (NLT)

More resources
Much of what I've written here, I've heard from other resources. Mostly sermons or conference recordings, but also some books as well. Those speakers are much more capable than I, and I would point to them. I've read/heard about half of these, whereas the others were recommended by others.

• The 722 series on Love and Marriage (Voddie Baucham) - very excellent series, let me know if you're interested
• Peasant Princess series, MH Blog series (Mark Driscoll/Mars Hill Church) - heard only a few sermons from the PP series. I've heard other Mark Driscoll stuff on this topic (like this one and this one), and he generally agrees with Voddie
• A guy/girl's guide to marring well (Boundless) - a good read. not too long
• Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, This Momentary Marriage and Sex and the Supremacy of Christ (John Piper) - haven't read, but suppose to be good. John Piper also has sermons on this topic, but I haven't listened to any of his stuff on this yet
• God, Marriage, and the Family (Andreas Kostenberger) - haven't read this either, but it's endorsed by Driscoll, so it should be decent
• Boy meets girl (Joshua Harris) - interesting ideas. don't totally agree, but...most of it is not bad
• Wild at heart/Captivated (John/Stasi Eldredge) - agree even less with this one than Josh Harris. but John Eldredge has some interesting ideas that's worth considering. don't know anything about Captivated, except for it is the girl version of the book

C4C iCrave Seminar - The Solution

This is the minutes to a Campus for Christ seminar on the existence of evil, suffering and God. The seminar was presented by Dr. Kirk Durston. I went to listen in hopes to pick up some apologetics material for the NNC workshops. He recommended that I check out William Lane Craig's website for apologetics questions. 

Definition of God (by philosophy)

A being that is so great that it is not possible to be any greater. Maximally excellent. 

Could it be that there is no God? 

CS Lewis' (Christian apologist) arguments, summarized in Mere Christianity

• Universe seems to be cruel and unjust
• But how did I get the idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of what a straight line is. 
• So evil is real? Evil is only real if there are objective moral law that are being broken. These moral laws must transcend societies and civilization. Where do these moral laws come from?
• Richard Dawkins: We are born selfish. To create a society of kindness and altruism, it must be taught, for human nature will not naturally lead to that. It is easy to see this, by looking at the news or following people around and listen to their thoughts.
• If there is no moral law, than evil is just a made up concept in CS Lewis’ mind
• Moral law is only useful to minds capable of performing moral deliberation, therefore a mind. You must also must be able to make decisions (free agent - ability to make decisions that is not influenced by other agents). Moral law must transcend time, so the consequences of breaking the law needs to be known in advance. But the only way that we would know the consequence ahead of time is if it’s from a being that transcend time. This being, then, must be perfectly good. Because if we say someone is not perfectly good, then there must be a perfectly good person that we are comparing any given person against. This is God. 
• He must be all powerful (draft the law without influence) and all knowing (know the consequence of evil)
• The existence of moral law means God is interested in the moral behavior of humanity. But we all have violated the moral (God’s) law, we are all enemies of God. With this context, the message of Christianity makes sense (Jesus Christ)
• So atheism is too simple to explain all this. God must exist. 

What should God permit?

Evil which God could have prevented without forfeiting some greater good or permitting some evil as bad or worse than the instance of evil being examined

- William Rowe (Atheist Professor of Religion)

Plantinga’s Free Will Defense

• The world contains free agent who can make decisions that are not determined by any antecedent conditions and who, for any decision, could have decided otherwise
• The actualize of a world “W” containing moral good is not up to God alone; it is also depends upon what the significantly free creatures of “W” would do if God created them and placed them in the situation “W” contains

Rowe’s argument

• God might exist, given evil exist. But assuming that God probably doesn’t exist, considering the following:
• Situation 1: Fawn trapped in forest fire and undergoing several days of terrible agony before dying
• Situation 2: Young girl raped, beaten and murdered
• No good we know would be justified permit these situations. So Rowe argues that since we can’t think of justifications to permit these events, a good that could have prevented these events, must not exist. 
• We tend to ignore events that do not have direct moral value. But these events could lead to events that could lead to moral events. Ie how Churchill’s mother fell asleep during Winston Churchill’s pregnancy, which lead to the creation of Churchill, who made major moral decisions in WW2. 
• Worries from the above conclusion:
• Worry 1: Utilitarianism - happiness for the greatest number of people at the expense of the individual (so net moral value is positive). The solution would be the necessity of a ‘Judgment day’ that God would balance things out at the end and put a final end to evil
• Worry 2: Moral indecision - not sure the consequence of a moral intervention of someone else’s situation. The solution is that a free agent is only obligated to act on the basis of what that agent could reasonably be expected to know. We’re not omnipotent. 

Should read: 

• Butterfly Effect (apparently it's a book)
• Journal article: Kirk Durston, "The consequential complexity of history and gratuitous evil", Religious Studies, v36, pp. 65- 80

What is the point? If God knew we were going to mess up so badly, why even start the show? Or...if so much evil is the result of us misusing our freedom of choice, why does God permit it? Why not to erase free will so we do good all the time?

• God created us in His own likeness for the purpose of an eternal relationship. This requires that we have free will for the relationship to be meaningful. In example, I don’t want to program my computer so that it tells me it loves me regularly. That is meaningless.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

- Revelations 3.20

• We massively underestimate the power and capabilities of humanity (Kirk Durston)
• We are created in the image and likeness of God, so nothing is impossible for us (Matthew 17). The world is where we determine our own eternal destiny
• A metaphor: AI androids
• Say we want robots with a lot of power, but also autonomous
• But what if they go bad? We’ll set up a training realm (with limited robotic abilities, so they don't do too much choas) for them and recommend them to follow a given moral code. They all go bad, but some decide that there is some merit in the code and reprogram their AI to follow the moral code
• So you collect the robots, deactivate all the robots that didn’t go for the moral code, and keep all the robots who follow the moral code and allow them to have their maximum potential

The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth's inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left.

- Isaiah 24.5-6

• If you made the mess, you need to clean up your own room. It is not your mom’s job to pick up after you or to clean up your room
• So what if this world is training for the next one? Given the immense human suffering we have inflicted on one another in this world, in our mortal form, what would we be capable when we’re in our immortal form?

Q/A: How can God be omnipotent but humans still have free will?

• Omnipotent: Such a being is able to do that is logically possible (not necessarily impossible) to do
• It’s impossible to create a free agent where God can decide what he will do prior
• But since God is omnipotent, He can simply erase free will...

Q/A: Cause of evil could be from either God or the free agents in the world that God created. If God created the world to begin with, how could the creatures in it conceive evil?

• What is free will decision? There is generally rules governing a universe/thing. For example, if I buy a laptop, there is a proper way to use it. You generally don’t want to throw a laptop across the room or drop it in a puddle and still expect it to work. 
• So a free agent in the world can chose to violate the rules. So is there a flaw with the free agent? But the definition of free agent is that any cause of the free agent’s decisions is completely from the free agent and not from prior influence
• One should note that evil is the absence of goodness (by Christian def) 

• In Eden, why does the tree exist?
• In chemistry, we use catalyst to speed up reactions. The reaction will occur anyway, but the catalyst will help
• Durston suspects that the tree itself was not special. The tree was to test if humans would obey or disobey God or not. The tree was there to speed up this test. If the tree (catalyst) was not there, then the “Fall” event could’ve easily been something else, since if humans was going to be disobey, it could’ve been anything

Q/A: Existence of moral code

• If all humans are wiped out by aliens, is the purging of humans a bad thing? There must be a moral code that is higher than humans to enforce/endorse this code, since there is no more humans to defend against the purging of humans. This code must come from a higher being. 
• But there is no logical argument that will prove God. The final step is a leap of faith. It is a two-layered thing. 

Q/A: How could anyone justify events like 9/11?

• You and I are not in the position to know if God should/shouldn’t have prevented that event. We experienced the event, but don’t know the total impact of it. We would need to look at the impact of the event till the end of history and all the branches/consequences of event. We have no way of predicting how the net moral value would change if the event did not occur.
• Emotional problem of evil: You don’t want to explain this to someone who just had evil done to them. Even if God explained it to us, we might not be able to understand. As a result, Christians must take a leap of faith and have hope for the greater purpose. 
• Conversely, for the atheist, the only reasoning is that “crap happens”. 

Q/A: How can we compare different moral systems?

• There are certain principles that seems to be universal. Stealing, murdering, sleeping with your friend’s wife. If there is no objective moral law, some other society could just not think murdering or stealing is bad and you can’t do anything about it, as it is their culture. But if there is objective moral law, we can tell them that they’re wrong
• But the northern pike has NO moral law. They eat their young. Yet they thrive. 
• Do you feel that there is an objective moral law? 

Q/A: Do the free agents have inherent moral value?

What if the world got together and nominated you as “the loser”? But God came up to you and told you that He loves you? Then that matters more, since God is maximally perfect and valuable. So that matters more. 

Spiritual snipers

Was listening to Mark Driscoll, during the Desiring God 2008 Conference, delivered this talk. It is a strong-worded sermon, talking about feeding sheep, rebuking the swine, shooting the wolves, criticize the dogs and praying for the shepherds. He addresses the good Christian. The bad Christians. The false teachers and hypocrites. The religious self-righteous. The leaders. It's long, but worth listening to.

My thoughts
It's hard to not fall into one of these extremes. It involves continually examining yourself and figuring out where you stand. It involves knowing the Scriptures and what you believe in and not just repeat what you hear on TV, at church or from your peers. It involves keeping Romans 14 and 2 Timothy 3 close at hand.

I don't necessarily agree with where you were, sometimes I wonder where you at...but I am hopeful about where you are going. 

-John Piper

Growing and supporting your close ones involves love and gentleness. But also with firmness. It involves teaching and encouraging. And most importantly, hope in their future. Refining a metal is a multi-step process. Sometimes the desire for God will come easily. Sometimes it's hard and we'll need to examine ourselves.

As I mentioned during the NCC (the workshops, "no-name cell"...yes, it's a sucky name. We're still thinking -_-) introduction night at CCF a few weeks back, one of the more inspiring quotes I've heard in recent times is something I read from someone's gtalk tag:

Christians are just sinners that get back up. 

We're not that different than everyone else. We just happen to have reason for hope.

Encountering mormons

Over a span of two weeks, a few of us met with Mormon missionaries. That was an interesting experience.

Crash course on Mormonism
So Mormons are a group of self-proclaimed Christians who claims the Bible is not complete and that they have additional materials that "completes" the Bible. Research into the Book of Mormon has shown that their book do not agree with the Bible, thus most Protestants don't recognize Mormonism as a branch of Christianity.

Previous encounters
I'm guessing most people have had some form of Mormon encounter. I remember meeting them first on the road to school, in high school. They gave me a pamphlet, which I ended up using as a bookmark in a textbook. Hopefully the next person that got the textbook didn't actually follow up on that. Haa...I didn't know anything about them, but didn't think too much about it.

Next encounter occurred in Waterloo in first year, where they tried to convince me to go to their church. Given the things I've heard about this group, I ducked out, and turned down any of their attempt to meet up further. I didn't know my theology enough. It would've been a bad idea.

Latest encounter
Now, in fifth year, I was still a bit weary. However...

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

- 1 Peter 3.15b-16

So I went along. After thinking, reading, listening and praying. I went along. And they sound very similar to what I would've said, if someone asked me about what I believed in. I realize now why Jesus sent His 72 in pairs of two. Because it would've been too easy for one person to stray...

But differences between what we believed in and what they believed in ultimately arose. We shared our perspectives. They shared theirs. When it became evident that we wouldn't budge from our beliefs, they stopped calling to arrange for meetings.  But it sounded very similar to what we believed in.

Some questions I walked away with
Whenever one's belief system clashes with someone else's...questions will inevitably come up.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.

- James 1.2-3

These trials and testing of faith includes clashes with the faiths of other people. The questions that I am forced to struggle with...

• How do I know that the Bible that I believe in is true?
• Why is salvation by works so attractive?
• Do I need to be able to explain everything in the Bible? Is everything suppose to make logical sense?
• How well can I explain my faith? And how important is it?

I'll follow up on these questions on a later post. Also, one of my friends who was with me, his thoughts are documented here. 

Cost of freedom

For my thesis work, I need a crash course on HCI (Human-Computer Interface), since I need to do some interface design. Having shaken my head at some of the poorly designed interface that I've encountered in the hospital, I figure the easiest way to do this is to take a course. Thus, I sat in on the first two lectures of this course. (Course website, if you're interested in the readings, is here)

It was interesting. Although the course touches a bit on HCI, it is not the focus. Rather, the focus is on the concept of Open Source code. Free code, if you will. Free as in freedom, not as in no cost (the quote they use is "Free as in free speech, not free beer"). As an user of various open-source software (OSS), such as...

• Mozilla Firefox - Internet browser
• Google Chrome - Yes, I have two browsers installed. 3, if you count IE8.
• Mozilla Thunderbird - Email client. Not so much anymore, too much CCF reply-all spam -_-
• Pidgin - Multi-purpose chat client (MSN Live was too much)
• Launchy - Command-line launch prompt (if you're lazy, you'd like this)
• GIMP - Graphics editor
• Audacity - Audio editor
• Notepad2 - Notepad replacement
• 7zip - Compression client
• Cygwin - UNIX emulator. Sort of. I "ls" more than "dir". (installed for school needs)
• Eclipse - Java IDE (okay, this is for work, but I use it anyway =P)
• TexnicCenter - LaTeX IDE (okay, this is also for work)

Haha. Listing and linking all the OSS was probably unnecessary. Anyways. The CS course is ran like a discussion. The focus is more on the philosophy behind the Free Software movement, spearheaded by characters like Richard Stallman. They'll also look at various OSS licenses and applications. A CS philosophy course. Never would've thought.

Richard Stallman is a computer programmer who started the GNU (GNU's Not Unix) project, which was to create an "free OS" that will run a collection of "free software". So what is free? The idea is very simple. Consider the following:

Say I buy a car from Toyota Corolla (yes, I still believe in Toyota...hope it's not misplaced =P). I then drop in a new engine, lower the frame, install a NOS injection system...Toyota would not stop me. In fact, Toyota might be happy to hear that I've put a lot of TLC and won a few street races. Okay. maybe they wouldn't appreciate THAT, but...I can improve my car, I can customize and personalize it, and they wouldn't care.

Or...say I buy a vacuum cleaner, and I use it. Then my housemate needs to vacuum his room. So I lend it to him. And he use it. GE probably isn't going to care. Probably. I can lend out my Corolla and Toyota wouldn't care.

Yet, I cannot do this with software. I cannot just lend my neighbour my copy of MATLAB or Starcraft without risking getting into trouble. I can't hack Windows Vista in the event there is something super-annoying that I really want to change myself, in the event that Microsoft doesn't want to change it. No, Windows Vista has anti-reverse engineering clause that you agree to when you click "I agree". As a programmer, I can't soup up Vista like I can soup up my Corolla. I can't even lend it to my friend without getting nervous of getting into trouble.

Stallman first encountered this when he was still in school. The company that sold his lab the printer refused to release the printer control program. The previous printer came with open source control program. They modified it as they needed to. They couldn't update the new printer. Shocked at the repression from the printer company, Stallman (an OS programmer) decided to create a new philosophy to oppose the closed software. All computer needs an operating system before it can run software. So he started the GNU project, which eventually grew to Linux. Linux is now in competition with more established OS companies like Microsoft's Windows and Apple's MacOS. A new OS was created to oppose an existing similar system, Unix. In fact, Linux is a combination word between Linus (for Linus Tovalds, the creater of the kernal) and Unix. All in the name of open software and user openness. All in the name of freedom. 

Freedom in Christ
This word, freedom, is one that is often thrown around. As I've understand it, the concept of being "free in Christ" means to be free from sin. That, of course, is only achieved by saving grace. Appropriately, our response is to rise above our natural selves. I often hear...and I myself have said that Christians are different and that it should be seen in our lifestyles. But a criticism I've often heard is...what is the difference between Christian-living, and a non-Christian (but a nice guy)-living? After all, I can think of a few non-Christian friend of mine that live very moral/ethical lives, and are probably a lot nicer than I am.

"So how are you going to be a witness, Jon? What about your living style? How are you different than some random nice guy down the street?" I had no answer, when I was faced with that question, back in first year.

Gradual change
It is often the little things. In class, we talked about how Stallman is so fixed to his visions...even little things like calling the OS GNU/Linux, instead of just Linux, in order to remind people of the "openness" ideals of the project...of how everyone will never fully understand what GNU was intended to achieve, but by making stances on little things, the world slides towards what the vision is intended. Most people probably think Stallman is crazy.

That's how we're suppose to be. We are suppose to slide towards Christ. We'll never reach Christ, but we make every effort. We're suppose to be seen as crazy. A few little life examples stands out in my mind...

Pirating software
I'll admit it. I was very into this. I've never paid for my own copy of Windows. It either came from burnt CDs...or more recently, from the school's MSDN site. I've never paid for my own copy of Office either. Also pirated...or more recently, the license I have is paid for by my lab. It's funny. I never used to care where my software come from. But as I start to perform my own programming (all 6 co-op terms), I gain a better appreciation of software and the time it takes. I can't say I'm perfect, I'm sure I still have something illegal somewhere, or something I've rationalized my way though...but my conscious no longer allows me do something like this without thought.

Bus pass
And I thought I was doing pretty well. All my software is legit now. I stream most of my music, from grooveshark or youtube (I still have all my music, for Fair Use purposes, but I don't really listen to them anymore). I make more effort to buy CDs, because I want to support the artists (NOT because DRM won. Stupid DRM...). Or the studio (I am totally buying Starcraft 2 within the week of release, even if it's ridiculous -_-). And whatnot. So yeah. I'm pretty good. Pretty righteous. But my latest, and probably most convicting experience regarding this topic came recently.

Last week, a bunch of us were scheduled to go watch Iron Man 2. Like a bunch of fan boys, we decided to line up at the threatre and watch it on opening day. So we were coordinating rides when one of my classmate suddenly told me that he needs a ride. What? What happened to your bus pass? Did you lose it? Thew it away? Come on, we've only graduated for like, a week man. But I realized what his response was before he said it. "I don't have a bus pass". He's not a student anymore. He's technically not suppose to use the U-pass anymore.

When I lost my WatCard last year and got a new one, I noted that they updated the expiry date. Cool, I thought to myself. I can take the bus longer. I can "maintain" my student status, even after I'm done. No biggie. A lot of other people are doing it. People who "lose" their cards and get a new one, right before they graduate. Not a big deal.

But it is a big deal. The small deals are big deals. And so I was convicted. One more unquestioned behaviour was questioned. To follow Christ means we have to be different. Rising above the pressures of society. Questioning conventional behaviour. Free from society in order to do what is right. For Stallman and the GNU team, their freedom meant they had to build a OS from scratch. For us, it means we have to do what is right instead of what is popular.

I was talking to another friend about this afterwards. A friend that did what I would've done, using their expired IDs to get on buses. "Sometimes, I wonder if I'm cut out for this Christian thing. Because I know what is 'good' and 'right'...but it is easy to just ignore it." Of course. But that is part of learning and growing. To notice the little things we do. To notice the little things our peers do. To guide, teach and rebuke. I saw a quote in someone's gtalk tag a while ago, and that is the line I quoted for my friend:

Christians are just sinners that get back up.

Without question, we will fail. Moses failed. David failed. Solomon failed. Elijah failed. Peter failed. Paul failed. But they were challenged. And they got back up. And us too.

I've read this verse many, many times, but I now have a better understand what Paul was saying...

So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

- 1 Corinthians 10.12-13