Thoughts and questions about Genesis, Job, and the first part of Exodus

I bought the One Year Chronological Bible (NLT) a week or two after the new year and the Moses just led the Israelites out of Egypt. I have a few thoughts on what I've read so far.

In more ways than one, Genesis is like the shows on TV. (Clearly, I'm making and stretching an analogy here, please bear with me.) The first twelve chapters are obviously something out of sci-fi or other over-the-top genre; the rest are like a soap or reality show: a tangled mess of relationships and humans doing human things. There were many times where I had to stop and ask myself, "Did that really just happen?" On stories I've read and known about for ages, none-the-less!

Job was... confusing. After reading it, I'm not entirely sure if it is perfectly historical. (In the same sense that we have "Based on a True Story" stories today.) I am also confused about how the characters acted. Until God rebuts Job, I got the feeling that Job was being... I'm not sure how to express it. Not modest and highly presumptuous, perhaps? His friends were definitely preaching the prosperity gospel, but I have read some commentary stating material goods was part of the old covenant—not sure about that, though.

I've heard it commonly said that Job is a good book to read to understand loss and sorrow. While the question of suffering is clearly prominent, God's response doesn't seem to even touch the question. Job challenges God about justice, God responds with, "Why are you questioning me? I'm God." There is clearly other issues at play here. I'm reminded of how Jesus mentioned people dying in a tower that fell (Luke 13:1-5). He didn't address the issue of why they died or why there was suffering, simply, "Repent!".

Also, I don't know how much better of a description of a classic, fire-breathing, reptilian, monster-sized, DRAGON we could ask for from Bible. The leviathan fits each of those categories and more! The only issue I saw was that the leviathan is stated to be a sea creature, not a land creature.

If God can't stand evil in his presence, how does the Accuser enter his court?

Reading through the plagues of Egypt, I'm wondering God means when he says he has "hardened the heart of Pharaoh." I know it's an old question, and one that many people have asked before (and continue to do so); yet, I have yet to find an answer for it (admittedly, I haven't done much research).

Analysis of "Nobody Deserves to be Perfect"

A friend of mine shared a photo on Facebook with some text that caught my attention. Normally, I don't think too hard on these kind of motivational pictures; sometimes I think the sayings are cute, but ultimately they are merely platitudes with little context that could be applied to nearly any circumstance. However, this particular phrase got under my skin. I was going to simply comment on the picture, but (as usual) my thoughts well exceeded a reasonable Facebook comment (or post, for that matter). The phrase, which was taken from a larger text, is reproduced here:

"Nobody is perfect, and nobody deserves to be perfect. ..." 

 — Nytiesha Monta*

"Nobody deserves to be perfect." It's a bit flipped around—normally you are deserving of something when you are perfect, but this phrase is implying you have to deserve even the chance to be perfect. You could say you have to be meta-perfect to deserve to be perfect.

What does it mean to be smart?

While at Chick-fil-a with my church's youth group, one of the middle schoolers and I had a lengthy conversation about all sorts of things. Well... perhaps conversation isn't quite the best word. It was more of a constant rolling through the beginnings of a conversation. I normally dislike people who flit and flutter between topics like a bee through a flower garden, but tonight my friend's tendency to willfully abandon every attempt at anything more than a few short sentences for each topic captivated my attention. Besides, I didn't have much else to do, and I wasn't about to go home for the night.

Do you believe airplanes fly?

Do you believe airplanes fly? Of course you do; you see them every day in the sky. You go to your hangar with your plane and your friends, and everybody is happy. What kind of person could deny such a self-evident fact as airplanes flying?

Leaving your hangar where all of your friends are, you venture out into the world to let other people know what joyous times you and your friends are having with planes. You have flown your plane around the world, seen many beautiful things with your plane, and with it done many great things for your community and the world.

You know the aircraft manual inside and out. You have studied it forwards and backwards, trying to get the most out of your beautiful flying machine. At the slightest sign of trouble on your flights, you head straight to the manual: it has the answer for everything that could go wrong. The manual also details how a pilot is to properly treat his guests—on and off the plane. This particular section is a favorite studying topic for you and your pilot friends.

Some of your pilot friends tell you of people outside the hangar who have never flown on an airplane, don't think they would be much fun at all, and doubt planes could fly at all. What's more, some even have the audacity to insist planes don't exist! Not believing your friend, and wanting to show him up, you venture out into the world—surely something as awesome as riding an airplane is something everyone would do!

To each person you meet, you tell of your plane, how everybody can ride for free—they only need ask! It's so much fun, it will be great! When asked about details, you refer to the manual; it specifies why people should fly and how they can fly—both very easy to do.

You go all over town—the market, the university, the city hall—trying to find people who don't believe in planes. You find not only are there some people just as your friend described, you find, to your horror, most people haven't flown. That they don't want to. And, they don't think planes can fly. Several were quite hostile, questioning your intellect, wondering if you were mentally ill! They constantly berated you for appealing to an "old book" full of nonsense—that book is the manual! It can't be wrong!

The one or two who actually engaged you in a somewhat-serious manner came up with questions and statements that—quite frankly—went over your head, and sounded like ridiculous objections to boot. Yes, your plane is perfectly awesome; you can't fathom how others' misfortunes affect your plane's awesomeness.

Who doesn't believe in a plane? You have seen one! You have flown in one! You have your very own plane!

You go back to your hangar, to your plane, to where you won't be made fun of, where you will be accepted. Your pilot friends shake their heads with you as you tell of your adventures outside the hangar, neither of you asking the real question: why don't they believe in planes? Or, if you do, you don't follow through and try to really understand the answer.

Sports Discussions

In general, I dislike sports. (Yes, I am going somewhere with this.)

Faulty GPS Directions

You may or may not know this about me. It's something I've struggled with for years now. It is something many of my friends and peers seem to take for granted. They talk about it all the time. When they do talk about it, I lose focus, start drifting and pondering about the meaning of the whole thing and my handicap at doing it.

CS 1801 Journal 1—First Weeks

I wrote this for class, and realized this would make a great post summarizing my first weeks at Tech.

John Njoroge on Morality at Georgia Tech

I was happy to find out Ratio Christi was hosting a Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) speaker on campus on the first day of classes. I have known of Dr. Zacharias for a while now, and have watched many of his lectures on YouTube. He is a great apologist and I've learned a great deal from him. While Dr. Zacharias himself wasn't going to be on campus, I was excited to have the chance to learn something new in apologetics. The RZIM speaker John Njoroge was speaking on the topic of morality, of which I don't have in-depth knowledge on, though I have the basics.

Youth Michigan Mission Trip 2013

The Michigan Mission Trip was an eleven-day trip to Detroit and Menominee, Michigan, with an emphasis on Menominee. Our main focus was to increase awareness about Abundant Life Church in Menominee by holding a block party and Kids' Camps throughout the area. We also did service projects at Victory Fellowship in Detroit and in Menominee.

I kept the daily blog updated for Eastside's (my church) website. You can read the blog over at ebcfamily.org/michigan2013. Since that was for the group, I wasn't able to give my viewpoint as much as I would have on a more personal site, or give my opinions of the trip—that means RI gets another post!

Why did I go on this trip?

I initially came on this trip to solve one problem I knew I had with ministry: talking to people about Christ. I simply didn't know how that process started. I had questions like:

• How do I start this type of conversation?
• How do I keep the conversation on track?
• How do I keep the person I'm talking to interested in what I have to say?

Recognizing I couldn't really take a class or ask someone to explain these concepts, I started looking for a way to gain this experience. I knew plenty of head knowledge, and could give lectures on many different topics about the Bible and its related topics, but I was uncomfortable starting such conversations.

I suppose my reason was to learn how to talk to people, but I returned with the realization that I already knew how to do that. Conversations about the Bible is something many, many people are interested in—or at least will hear you out on—and already have questions about. My expertise in creation can be useful in talking to Christians in particular. They have already have questions about how science relates to the Bible, so we easily get into a good conversation about what I study all the time. And, science and the Bible are already really interesting topics, so I don't have to work to keep them interested.

Highlights of the Trip

Victory Network

Being the one and only person who could fix Victory Fellowship's computer network issues was awesome. Upon arrival, Darrell (mission leader) asked Pastor Gaddy if he needed anything computer related fixed and I was put on securing the network. It was nice to be inside working on what I have done dozens of times at home and not outside mowing grass or painting the fellowship hall.

It turned out the church had this haphazard conglomerate of wireless routers and wireless extenders, all on different BSSIDs and no encryption. With something like four routers, and two extenders, with 20+ computers, they needed a better system and security.

I was asked to lead a meeting to talk about exactly what the state of Victory's network was in. It was cool to have Darrell, Dale (elder at Eastside), and the pastor of Victory Fellowship listening to what I had to say and taking my recommendations. I'm not sure, but I don't think 23-year-olds get that kind of authority very often.

I made their network more robust and more secure, but I just hope they don't forget about computer security again. I made the analogy that before I came they had all of their computers setting outside that anybody could come up and interact with. After my changes, there's now a fence around the computers and a gate. It's now up to them to keep the gate closed. I should have mentioned things like making sure people can't dig under or climb over, but I think I made my point.

Blogging for Eastside

Being put in charge of posting a daily blog post on the church website and having quite a bit of latitude as to what I could do with it was another great experience. I was writing the each day's events to an audience of a few hundred people. I had to inform the parents back home what we were doing, but also ensure they didn't get the wrong impression about the events since the wrong wording of an event can be disastrous.

Interviewing the students was quite interesting. I asked each student very similar questions, but, while there were similar themes, no viewpoint was the same. Sure, I know that each person has their own experiences, however, to see it first-hand was really neat.

Father in the park

Our first day of holding Kids' Camp (rebranding of VBS) my group had a father and three kids. I'm on the story team, so I sat away from the main group going over my notes of what I was covering that day: creation week through the flood. Shane, the father, came over to register the kids and we got to talking about the Bible. He mentioned how much he loved the story of Job and I saw the opening—I had no idea if it was going to work, and didn't know his stance on creation. I stated Job described a dinosaur and Shane couldn't believe it. He recovered from his shock and thought for a moment, realizing I must be talking about the behemoth. We looked up the exact passage (Job 40), read it, and we talked about the implications: dinosaurs lived with humans, and not 65 million years ago. The conversation led to Genesis, Noah's Flood, the Trinity, and many other topics. I couldn't believe I was talking about creation with a stranger, not knowing if I would ever meet him again.

My group came over and informed me it was time for the Bible story, so I sat down with them in the grass. I suddenly realized I had left my notes over at the table, but I didn't think it would look good if I left to get them. Resolving to tell my favorite part of the Bible with the best impression possible, I proceeded to cover Creation Week, Adam and Eve, and Noah without notes or other aids. I'm not sure who learned more, the three kids we had, their father, or my teammates gathered around me. Questions abounded from my teammates, asking about dates, dimensions, and other details of Noah's ark. It was clear they had never heard the story with so many details.

Talking with the leaders

As we traveled back from our stop in Chicago to sightsee after ten days on mission, I got to talk for hours with two of the leaders. We covered topics most people consider taboo, talking about each topic for at least an hour. They shared what they struggle with, how they deal with it, and how hard it is to keep from giving in to the temptation. They go to incredible lengths to keep temptation as far away as possible—I told them I didn't understand why they did such things and thought they were weird. Their zeal to keep themselves as pure as possible impressed me and has left me wondering how I can imitate their zeal. I'm going to be processing the wisdom they shared with me for quite a while.

Talking about creation with the guys

One of the guys in our van stated he didn't believe dinosaurs existed and was very distrusting of scientists. That got an hour-long conversation started about dinosaurs living alongside humans, old-earth creationism versus young earth creationism, radiometric dating, why God created stars, and aliens. It was awesome to see ten middle and high school boys asking these kind of questions and listening thoughtfully about my answers. Most of the guys believed in a young Earth, probably from their parents, but one was very clear he believed in an old Earth, and asked specific questions relating to timescales. I made him think seriously about what he has been taught. I hope he continues to think about these issues.

Summary

It was hard work, it was long hours, and it was a strain at times, but I will do it again. I learned many things, I left an impression on several, and I bonded with students and leaders that I would not have otherwise.

Project Unison

I was preparing my new resume page and wanted to link to one of my school projects I had done, but realized I had not published the summary of the project. This post rectifies the situation.

Minecraft

MINECRAFT!

Why The Universe Requires A Cause

It is often stated you can't prove God exists. However, it can be proved that a higher power must exist based on the properties of our universe. I believe the existence of the Bible's God can be deduced from the historical record and other facts, but I'm still learning about that area and don't know how to do that just yet.

This post deals with proving a 'higher power'. We aren't discussing the God of the Bible, but I'm going to eventually post on that. We are making room for the possibility of a god right now. It is necessary to start at base zero: starting with facts everybody, regardless of their theistic presuppositions, accept.

The History of Evolutionary Thought

Preface:

This paper was submitted to my History 1110 class at KSU in the Spring Semester of 2012. When doing any kind of paper or presentation, I like incorporating any part of the CvE dispute when appropriate—it's a great way to make a splash in the eyes of the professor and classmates as few are willing to have any taint of hostility (real or perceived) towards evolution in their works.

As the word limit was 1200 (which I made it under by only 22 words, so long as you don't count the citations), I didn't go into as much detail as I would have liked. In particular, I allude to a few things in my conclusion that aren't explicitly stated in the body, but are apparent in several of the sources.
Perhaps I will expand upon it later in another post—if there is a particular part you would like to see more of, or if you have questions, let me know in the comments!

SOPA

Well, this is a bit late to the party, but I'd like to mention that I oppose both SOPA and PIPA bills in all of their forms.

Issues with starting to teach, as well as who, and what, are we fighting against?

Christmas is over; a new school semester, a new year, and New Year's Resolutions are all starting soon. I never did take much stock in those resolutions since the success rate is so abysmal; besides, if you are going to actually "change" your life, it will take effect when you get the proper motivation—a new year is a normal event, not something to get excited about, and definitely not something that will motivate you. In light of that, I'm making a resolution: teach a Sunday school class (or equivalent) on Biblical Creationism. Ever since I've learned about this subject, I've seen the absolute lack of education on creation and wanted to correct it. It's not the reason I started this blog, but it is the reason I've continued it.

Of night, sleep, and music.

At this point, I usually like to pose a open-ended and rhetorical question. It is not meant to be answered; it perhaps can't be definitively answered. However, I'm struggling to find both answers and questions to what is happening in my life. I am at the point of uncertainty—whether that is a real term or not, I know not; however, it fits very well to my circumstances. You must bear with me as I jump around, this piece is not planned, nor am I intending to do much editing past spelling and grammar. It is a true stream-of-consciousness post.

Creation vs Evolution

Ah, the seemingly endless debate of whether we came into existence via a singularity known as the Big Bang, or a single voice stating, "Let there be light" (1). It is the epic battle between those who follow science and those who follow religion. Each side seems to be completely blind to the other's assertions, passing them off as baseless, twisted accounts of the facts, fairy tales, or altogether ignoring the other's claims. Neither the Creationists nor the Darwinists can give ground without their very foundations being rebuilt; they are mutually exclusive (2).

Culling the Rampancy Inducing Thoughts

Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?

After reading that piece from the NY Times, which was very interesting, I thought of what initially seemed like a good idea: buffet style restaurant where you cook your own food, but it has more of the raw materials available than the cook-it-yourself places I know of. Like a supermarket where you can sit down, cook, eat, and all the other things you would normally do when you cook with friends.

Meh, the idea would have novelty appeal at first, then fizzle out as customers realized they were paying a premium to do exactly what they could do at home. Long-term appeal would come from the convenience of having everything in stock and not having to buy a large package of something when the customer would never use such a large amount of that food.

Whatever the appeal, need, or niche that could be carved out for such a restaurant, I don't have enough of the next topic to pursue the idea even if I had enough enthusiasm for it.

Time
Just had the thought that I would be quite okay with 48-hour days. I'm not talking about merely adjusting the coefficient on time—that would be silly and pointless. Thinking about this as I write, it makes more sense to ask for sleep to be required less. That would sidestep all the issues with the world rotating less and the innumerable side effects that would entail.

There never seems to be enough time. The root is more likely my schedule than amount of time; nonetheless, it would be nice to have more time to do things. Many, many things are rushing by my mind's eye related to this issue: sleep, karate, job, school, romance, friends, this blog, programming projects, and many more. While some of those items do not have entries on my calendar at the moment, I do not see how they would fit in if they needed a slot.

I've often wanted to "pause" life, or at least slow it down considerably, to learn more about a subject. To focus on nothing except that particular subject. Not every minute of every day, mind you, but have no other pressing items. Of course, I would want to return to where I was to begin with, with no adverse effects on other aspects of life (friends, and other things).

Spell Checker
I wrote most of this post on my tablet and then edited from my desktop. When using the tablet, I used common acronyms such as "atm" with the intention to change those to proper English. When doing the final cleanup passes, I realized that Chrome's spellchecker does not flag "atm" in certain circumstances. Unbelievable.

Pay Walls
Lately, I have come across several technical articles about many different topics linking to papers published in scientific journals. However, to access these papers you must have a subscription to the journal, which usually costs quite a bit. My school offers many of the journals for free, but the articles are delayed one year—much too long to be of any use to me.

I don't fault the journals for trying to make some money, but I wonder how a student such as myself is supposed to learn about the latest technology if I can't access the scientific papers.

Crazy Few Weeks

The question isn't so much what has happened since the last post, more on the lines of what hasn't happened. In reverse-order, I've had to play catch-up with school, TKD tournament in PCB, prepare for TKD tournament, get school things sorted out for the tournament, etc. Oh, and I received a sweet new tablet from my grandpa. Now, sorted by my whim, here is the exposition on those topics.

Half-posts, character limits

I frequently find myself wanting to post some thought or something, but it isn't nearly long enough for a full post on RI or I don't have the time, energy, or enthusiasm to post about it. This could be helped if I do "half-posts," yet I don't want to clutter up the posts on here. I've thought about using another platform to publish these smaller thoughts, however, I have yet to find one I like.