Some Random Thoughts

13Aug10

The last few weeks have been a roller coaster, spiritually. I’ve succeeded, then failed, then recovered, only to fail again. I’ve spent a lot of time in the metaphorical sunshine, only to fall gain and feel like a failure. In all of it, I’m amazed at God’s forgiveness. His mercy is new every morning. I’ve literally spent a lot of time on my knees asking God for patience and mercy and begging Him not to give up on me. There’s a scene from a movie that has been ringing in my ears this week, and it’s become a mantra of mine. It’s from The Book of Eli goes like this:

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Rachel Photoshoot/Hangout

01Aug10

Rachel has the coolest room ever. You can't see much of it here, so take my word for it.

Yesterday (Saturday) Rachel and I made plans to hang out. For a while, Rachel has always been more of an acquaintance (she went on the Kenya trip with Heath and Kristen over spring break) insofar as I see her around everywhere and she knows everyone I know, but somehow we’ve avoided hanging out. Until now. After I moved into my new place, we spent the day hanging out, playing with her pet hedgehog (female, named Chewbacca), taking pictures, talking, creek-stomping, walking, talking, driving, birthday-party-crashing, shopping, fridge-raiding, and, oh yeah, talking.

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Open Mouth, Insert Foot

21Jul10

To provide some context, like most American Christians, I’ve had more hands-on experience with the New Testament than the Old one… I mean, I’ve read almost the entire NT if not all of it, but my knowledge of the OT is mostly second hand. As far as the OT goes, I’ve always had a jist of the storyline, which was the only thing I thought was important–understanding the events that happened. Then I read a good chunk of it. 1 Samuel through Job and a good portion of Proverbs to be more accurate–I did this over the last few months.

The real value in the OT (to me, right now, at least) is in understanding the Holiness of God. Understanding that He is sovereign above everything and everyone and he is deserving of respect and reverence and fear. It seems strange, but you start to fear God–and rightfully so.

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Tags: Bible, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament, Peter

Dear GOP:

05Jul10

Dear GOP: endorse a candidate whose allegiance is to America more than it is to the Republican Party. Then we can talk about trivial things like policy and experience. I would rather have a green-horned but well-intentioned politician than one who seeks his own agenda at America’s expense, even/especially if that candidate has the experience to do so.

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Family History

04Jul10

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about where I’ve come from. I know that I’m more or less full-blooded German–there’s a German girl at work and it seems strange that we shared the same culture a hundred and fifty years ago. Give or take.

In the back of my head I suppose I always just thought that my family has always had this midwest American culture and for how proud we Americans are of our nationality (especially today, Independence Day), it’s remarkable that we aren’t separated by more than a couple hundred years.

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New Post

04Jul10

Click the image for an explanation / to see the flickr page for this image.

I gave this post a generic name. It’s late (1:20 AM) and I’m tired of thinking. Here are my thoughts tonight in no particular order:

Seth and I smoked cigars tonight on my porch and had some pretty great conversation. I’ve just come to love our friendship and he’s actually taught me a lot about how a friendship should be. Or at least how friendship can be when we let ourselves be ourselves around our friends.

I also dug through some of my photos that I took with my pointandshoot camera (at the God’s Mountain mission trip) and I am surprisingly impressed with a lot of them, considering they weren’t taken with a DSLR. Evidently the on-camera photo-processing on the pointandshoot is a lot more finely-tuned (albeit there is less control) than my Canon 20D and the pictures usually end up looking even better than the ones I take with the 20D and then edit. The color contrast/saturation settings are just amazing. At least I like them, but I am only an amateur photographer. And an amateur Photoshopper. Click here to see the ones I posted to my Flickr account (all from the pointandshoot on the God’s Mountain mission trip).

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Tags: 20D, Flickr, God's Mountain, mission trips, pointandshoot

Photography

27Jun10

the actual flickr page is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51426634@N03/4731991208/

I haven’t posted in a while. Mostly because this summer has been busy with work. I don’t mind working a lot, it’s just unfortunate how few hours I am left with each day. Anyways, more recently my small quantity of leisure time has been devoted to my latest hobby: photography.

A couple of Tuesdays ago I bought a camera (a Canon EOS 20D for the camera-savvy) which is one of those large cameras that real photographers use (for the less savvy). From what I understand, the tech in the 20D is ~5 years old which is an eternity in the digital age; however, I’ve found there are ways to subjugate that problem (specifically taking the raw image data from your sensor without having your camera process it neatly and then putting it on the PC and doing the processing there, since the PC has much more power than the camera–this is called post-processing).

I’ve done a lot of research over the last few months and I’ve devoted more time than I care to admit studying “good” photographs on Flickr (Flickr in general has become an obsession of mine). In my research, I’ve learned a lot about lenses, camera processing, lighting, etc and it turns out there’s a lot more to taking good pictures than pointing and clicking. But I’m a nerd, so I’m always excited to learn new things like this. Here are some things I’m learning so far:

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Tags: Flickr, photography

Protected: Craig’s Psalm

05Jun10

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Tags: Father, Jesus, psalm

Some Thoughts on Free Speech

20May10

These are some common-sense ideas that I took the time to write as they seem to be called into question in the controversial discussions surrounding events like “Blasphemy Day” and “Draw Muhammed Day” (which today–5/20–has been unofficially dubbed)—events organized to offend people to remind them that free speech protects offensive speech. However, it is my opinion that events like these fail to account for a hugely important aspect of free speech: responsibility for what you speak.

1) Freedom from censorship, not consequence. Speech may be free from censorship, but that doesn’t mean that we are without responsibility regarding what we speak. Speaking recklessly still has consequences. To restate, “free speech” refers to speech which is free from censorship, not consequence. You may have the right to speak offensively, but you should understand that, free or not, offensive speech still has consequences.

2) Self-censorship is protected by, not in violation of, free speech. Just because our “right to free speech” protects provocative and offensive speech doesn’t mean we are required to speak as offensively as possible in the name of free speech. The same free speech that protects your right to make offensive statements also protects my right to abstain from making those same statements. The right to free speech encompasses the right to be respectful speech—just because I don’t speak offensively for the sake of offending doesn’t mean I’m an opponent of free speech, it just means that I am responsible to speak provocatively only when it is necessary and unavoidable.

3) Responsibility. Points 1 and 2 can be tied together with this term. Free speech (and other freedoms) entail responsibility. I have the right to speak freely, but I have the responsibility (social, ethical, and moral) to speak constructively. And when any responsibility is not met, there are consequences—this is to be expected. This is an important part of the social contract and moral mandates.

So in conclusion, yes, you have the right to offend the Muslim community today insofar as free speech goes, but that same freedom also makes you responsible for the consequences that come from your destructiveness. Were you really concerned for free speech, I think you would find a more creative and constructive way to find it. Using hate and offensiveness is rather lazy and destructive, moreover, it will do more harm for your supposed cause than good.

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Tags: Blasphemy Day, censorship, consequences, Draw Muhammed Day, free speech, freedom, offensive, responsibility

This Needs To Be Happening Everywhere, Always

23Apr10

This is one of my favorite short stories and the direct link can be found here (the story in its entirety is posted below, so just scroll down to read it). It came to my mind this morning as I think about all of the beautiful broken people in the world. I’m just kind of absorbing how great a tragedy it is that people don’t know how much God loves them and how blessed we are to have opportunities to be instruments through which God expresses that love to a broken world. And at the same time, how much we squander those opportunities–the very thing we are here on earth to do–in the name of pursuing mindless, practical activities like work and school (these things exist to enable us to fulfill the purpose God has given us, yet so often we mistake work and school to be our purpose).

I pray that God changes our [believers'] hearts and gives us opportunities to share His love to people who need to know about it, like in the following story. I pray that he wakes us up from our monotony so we can share life with the dead. I just pray that I can be part of this great adventure that is God’s work on Earth. I pray that he would use my humble life to reach out to a broken and dying world. I want my life to look like this, at least on occasion:

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