Opus 2024-356: Is God a Nitpicker?

I’m still on the porch.  I’m still looking at oak trees.  I’m wondering just how God is involved in the formation of these trees.  I have about six trees close enough to notice details on and it’s obvious that you can’t find more than a couple inches that might be the same on any two trees.  I’m not even sure you could find that.

Now comes my question.  Does God oversee and direct every single cell that forms in these trees?  Does He get out that device we used to have in my drafting class that was called the French curve and carefully craft every bend?  Or is there some process that God has put in place that allows random chance in the formation of oak tree trunks?  And what does that say in regard to human beings?

I can go either way on this.  My God is big enough that He could be directing the twists and turns of every leaf that falls off the tree.  He could be directing the formation of each cell and the location of each little bit of mitochondria that is found in it.  He is that big.  Forgive me for the smallness of the word big.  At the same time He’s also big enough to set up random choices and allow them to run.

I tend to lean toward the random choice side of things because I believe in free will.  I believe that is part of being made in the image of God.

You can go for being a robot if you want.  It doesn’t make sense to me.  I don’t understand it.  But then I don’t claim to understand God either.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-355 Dark Thoughts: Leading the Blind

I was sitting in the dark enjoying the morning, and suddenly there was this noise.  I couldn’t figure it out.  Was someone sneaking up on me?  Was there an animal trapped in my attic.  It kept knocking and making this sound, and kept moving around.  I turned on my flashlight and couldn’t find anything.  I sat down in the dark again and kept hearing the sound.

Finally, I was determined to figure out what it was.  It turned out to be a giant mouth as big as my thumb, I exaggerate not.  And I have a big thumb, trust me.  It seem to be wanting to knock against the roof in the corner of the eve of the roof.  It was totally disoriented.  Eventually I decided that I would take the broom, wave it like a magic wand and help it to escape from the porch and get out into the open air.  I turned on my flashlight and fixed it on the moth, thinking that it might be drawn toward the light itself.  That didn’t happen.  Instead when I targeted the beam on the ceiling, the moth was drawn toward the light on the panels, and so I gradually led it out and to the point where it was able to fly out into the open air and embrace its freedom.

I may not be Harriet Tubman but I certainly hope this month find its way into the freedom of the open sky.  A job well done.  Thank you.  I couldn’t have done it without you.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-354: Click bait: Suckered Again

I was caught by the headline that gave any indication that Douglas Murray was going to share something about the problem at the heart of Islam.  Douglas Murray has good insights.  I’ve read a couple of his books.  I thought it was worth a try.

The podcaster started off with some comments which didn’t take too long and then he went to a clip with Douglas Murray speaking.  What Murray had to say was well put and worth hearing, but we were only a third of the way through the video when the host came back on and started giving his opinions.  At that point, I paused and went on with life.

I noticed that there is a parallel here between podcasters who want to go viral thinking that they can expressed the thoughts of good thinkers better than the good thinkers and some Bible translators and Bible teachers.  We have Bibles translated with what is called dynamic equivalence.  They take the literal Hebrew and Greek and then try to find modern parallels of thinking that they can express it in.  In my opinion, they seem to know what God wants to say better than God did.

If you have a clip for your podcast from a deep thinker, don’t try to go deeper than the thinker.  I’m sure that your opinions are valuable.  But they aren’t valuable to me.  If you are a Bible translator don’t try to go deeper than God’s original word to tell me what He would’ve said if He had  been around today.  God is outside time.  He knows how we think today.  He gave it to us in a form that would last through the ages.

I don’t think you can improve on that.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-353: Do Mighty Oaks Really Exist?

As I sit on the porch, contemplating the glories of nature and creation, I have to look through the branches of a number of oak trees.  They bring a lot of different thoughts about God’s methods and priorities.  As I looked at the oak trees in front of me, I found myself wondering where does my oak furniture come from?

I was raised around California live oaks.  They seem to be very similar to the oak trees that I’m seeing in the hill country of Texas.  They can get good sized but nowhere near the height of Sequoia trees or pines in some of the forests I have enjoyed.  Another characteristic of these trees is that there are no straight branches.  As I look at the five, no make that six, trees I can see right in front of me I can’t see any portion of trunk from which my bookcases could have been made.  I hear they made sailing ships out of oak.  I have seen massive beams that they tell me are oak.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an oak tree from which this kind of wood could come.

Does that mean the giant oak trees never existed?  Does it mean that there are none today?  Are people just pulling my leg?  Just because I have not seen something, or was not aware I was seeing it, does that mean it never existed?  Does it prove they don’t exist now.  There are certain things I assume because I have seen the evidence right in front of my eyes.

Which brings me full circle back to creation, and the existence of God.  I see evidence all around me that there must’ve been a Creator sometime.  I see the results of this God.  I think I sense this God.  As the old saying goes, “Who are you going to believe, me, or you’re lying eyes?

As another famous quote goes, “Mr. Atheist, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-352: Slippery Slopes

At what point does exaggeration, spin, or even humor cross the line from being a means of communication to a blatant lie?  We all know that hyperbole is a means of emphasizing a point.  A good joke can get truth across to someone.  We are aware of this kind of thing.  But what about when the whole point is to manipulate and control for your own personal purposes?

I just experienced that.  I was told something.  It did not jive with my memory.  I confronted the person on it, and was told again the same thing.  I was told with the inference that I was wrong and was not living up to my responsibilities.  OK.  My memory is far from perfect.  Maybe I had the wrong things filed away in my mind.  I went on with life.

But the issue kept bugging me.  It was right in front of me.  I thought about what I knew to be true and as I put together events that were irrefutable to me it became very clear that the exaggeration that I was being confronted with was wrong.  It was a lie.  It was offered up in order to manipulate, control, shame, denigrate me as a person, so that I would be more compliant in the future.  It crossed the line.

Did the person know that they were lying?  I don’t know.  There would be no point in going through the details that I knew to be true that pointed out that their statement could not be right.  They would not listen.  I’ve been down that road enough to know how it would play out.  Did they care that they were lying?  Another question that I can’t answer.  I find it hard to believe that being in control is so important that you violate one of the basic 10 commandments that God has given us.

It’s a slippery slope.  I can’t keep other people from starting down it.  I can’t save them once they start to slide.  All I can really do is keep an eye on my own behavior, my own attitudes, my own motives, and try to keep them up there with the angels.  That will be hard enough for me and enough for today.

homo unius libri