Mind-blowing Awe (of God)

An interesting news items scrolled across my RSS feed this week. An exploding star (article) suddenly appeared in the sky at 2:12 am last Wednesday (Mar. 19) – an explosion so intense that it could be seen with the naked eye. An hour later, it was gone. But think about this… It took the light from the explosion (which was traveling at 186,000 miles per second) some 7.5 billion years to reach us here on earth. To understand this, just multiply 5.9 trillion (the distance light travels in a year) times the 7.5 billion years and you can see just how far across the universe this event occurred.

The fascinating thing is that, if the universe is indeed 13.73 billion years old (give or take a 120 million years), then this event occurred when the universe was half its current age and before the earth was even formed.  When was the last time we got to peer 7.5 billion years into the past?  It reminds us that the entire sky we see is an open history book measured not in hundreds or thousands of years, but in millions and billions of years. Makes you wonder what the universe really looks like right now?

It makes me wonder why so many Christians believe that an old universe destroys one’s confidence in the existence of God.  While billions of light years may be unfathomable to me, why should I insist that it be unfathomable to God?  How does an old universe destroy God?

I’m all for challenging the age of human existence, but an old universe is hard to fight. We know with great accuracy by the length and color of light waves just how far light has traveled. To say the universe is thousands of years old does not explain how I can look in the sky and see the light that, as fact, took hundreds of millions of years to reach me.  A person explained to me once that “God created the universe with age.” Okay, but find that in the Bible and then explain to me why God would deceive us so.

Instead, let’s let God blow our minds with how vast, complex, and immense his creation is and accept as some scientists do that “it takes a universe as big as ours to make human life possible at this one place in the universe.” Simply amazing.

Poll question of the day…

So… Hillary has no chance of winning (see article).  Unless, of course, she uses back-room tactics to “convince” super-delegates to give her the nomination.  They, then, tell Black America that… sorry… you can’t have a black president yet, because we white people know better.  And all hell breaks loose at the convention.  One of every five democrat swings to McCain in retaliation and gives him the victory in November.  Which leaves Hillary to lose either now… or in November.  Either way… she loses.  So… the question of the day…

Is Hillary making plans to step aside for the good of the Democratic party in a few months?  Or is she planning on destorying the Dems’ chance in November so she can run again in 2012?

(Bonus Question) And what kind of hospital job will she do to Barack in the meantime to keep him from crashing the party again in 2012?

The Barack racial play by play

Writer Mark Steyn of the National Review gives an excellent breakdown of the internal inconsistencies of Barack Obama’s speech on racism where he described his grandmother as a “typical white person” who has secret fears of black people. As Steyn asks, Is Reverent Wright, then, to be considered a “typical black person”? Let’s hope not. Consider the article…

Here’s the speech, if you want to hear it in full…

HBO’s John Adams Mini-series – INCREDIBLE!

I’ve watched it twice now (actually used my DVR to immortalize this), and will probably watch it a time or two more. I must admit that the Revolutionary War and the work of our Founding Fathers has been for me nothing more than a flat and uninteresting story… until I got the courage to read (listen to, actually) Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. The “John Adams” miniseries is adding vibrant color to the detailed lines of history that Chernow has drawn for me. Each second I watched, I had a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye. Just see it, and you’ll do as I did… You’ll say “Man, I love this country!”

This renewed interest in our country’s history now has me wondering what the founding father’s really thought about religion, and separation of church and state. That’s next on my list. For a fascinating tilling of the fertile intellectual ground of this subject, listen to Krista Tippet’s interview with Steven Waldman on “Liberating the Founding Fathers.“

I’ve attached my brother’s well-written insights in the comments section. Check those out.

a worn out debate

I stumbled across this entry in a religion blog about the “big bang” theory… “the reason that the Big Bang Theory was invented was to explain the reasons behind the fact that the universe appears to be expanding slowly.” This theory, he argues, was conjured up to justify a man-made presupposition… that God did not create the heavens and the earth. We shouldn’t create facts to justify our own ideas, he says.

Then… he posits this… “I feel that the real reason that the universe is expanding is because of sin. Our sinfulness has a direct effect on the earth (Rom. 8:22), and I believe that also includes the physical laws like gravitational pull. The horrible sin of mankind has been piling up since Adam and Eve’s rebellion and is tearing apart God’s creation.”

Do I even need to say it? At the risk of insulting your intelligence, I will. Have you ever seen such an obvious case of making the Bible support a pre-conceived idea?

This is why the creation vs. evolution debate is crippling the church’s credibility. We accuse scientists of a “hidden agenda,” when, let’s just admit, they seem to look at the facts and do their best to make sense of it. And if they do have an agenda, it’s not nearly the size of ours. We have preconceived ideas about how the world was created, and we work even harder to make the Bible say things it never intended to say. In the end, at least most scientists admit that there is still mystery at the end of their best arguments. Who set the “big bang” into motion? Where did matter come from? Who set the laws of light, energy, and motion into motion? Hmmm.

Genesis 1 is poetry – a fabulous work of art. Genesis 1 has all the elements of artistic symbolism. It demonstrates beauty, supreme power, God’s goodness, his kindness, his self-control – ideas about God and the world that were completely revolutionary when Genesis 1 was written.

People like me get accused of taking a “scientific text” like Genesis 1 and make it symbolic. The fact is, it was never read scientifically before Mr. Darwin came on the scene.

Why can’t mystery prevail?

I accuse science of believing too much in its ability to give a “final answer.” These are the same guys that said eggs are bad; eggs are good; no, eggs are bad… But God does not give us a “final answer” about the ins and outs of creation either. The only final answer God gives that we can all bank our lives on… “God created the heaven and the earth.”

Why can’t that be enough? Why can’t at the end of the day we say, “Wow! Look at this place. We have no idea how we got here and probably will never know completely. God is amazing, and I am not God. Glory be to Him who created all things”?

A Few Good Movies

for years now, I’ve been frustrated at the lack of good movies.  Not since Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, and Independence Day (just kidding about that one) have we had really good movies.  Most are hit and miss these days.  But recently, I’ve been on a roll.  Four good movies in a row, so I must recommend them…

All four are rather dark, involve institutional corruption, and are quite post-modern in that they leave you with more questions than answers.

Michael Clayton - Pretty good.  George Clooney won me back with his performance.

We Own the Night – Not as popular a movie, but Joaquin Phoenix is a favorite of mine and he really embodies the complexities of his character.

American Gangster – I made myself watch this one, since I loathe most gangster movies.  but this one isn’t the traditional Italian mob movie.  Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are both incredible actors.  Once again, you find yourself empathizing with a horrible criminal (Denzel).

Gone Baby Gone – Like the others, the line blurs between the good guys and the bad guys.  It’s hard to know who should be wearing the black hat.  This is a movie about doing the right thing when the right thing is really the wrong thing.  Very postmodern.

Nutty News Media

What we heard from our crackerjack group of talking heads in a stretch of 24 hours.

Before Jr. Super Tuesday: “…the 3:00 AM, ‘red phone’ ad is a desperate attempt by Hillary to impart fear into voters. Fear doesn’t work. It’s a rehash of Mondale in ‘84 and Bush Sr. in ‘92. It didn’t work for them. It won’t work for Hillary. And let’s give Barack Obama some major credit here. The ad came out on Friday, and Obama’s campaign had a response out the next day. Let’s play Obama’s wonderful ad response. [video plays] It seems that no matter what Hillary does, Obama stays one step ahead.”

After Jr. Super Tuesday: “We knew when that ad came out that Hillary would gain tremendous momentum in Texas and Ohio. She played to Obama’s biggest weakness with that superb ad. Obama’s weakness on foreign policy experience was exposed. She made the voters think about who really is prepared to lead this country in perilous times. Obama just seems off the mark. His campaign isn’t leading. They’re just reacting to Hillary, and as we’ve said many times on this show [insert favorite talking head program here], Obama’s just missing something lately, and Hillary is just one impressive candidate that must be reckoned with.”

You Go Girl!

If only Hillary had shown a little more of this along the way, she wouldn’t be in the hole she’s in. I thought she did great in this, and I actually liked her for a few moments. It goes to show that we want to vote for a real person, not a machine.

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Jesus Christ Superstar – My thoughts

For Tara’s birthday, I did the usual… bought her something for me! I got us tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hershey Theater. What a great experience. If you’ve grown up a Christian, you usually have one of two views on this kind of thing. Either, one, you shun everything but the theological perspective you have on Jesus in order to preserve the Jesus you’ve come to enjoy and thus run from such a humanistic perspective. Or, two, you look for other perspectives, even the humanistic ones, in hopes that they just might add some color or perspective to the Jesus you’ve thought you always knew. Obviously, I’m for the latter.

To begin with, Jesus Christ Superstar, in my childhood remembrances, was considered an absolutely abominable pop-culture abuse of Jesus. But actually, it’s gained some acceptance in the evangelical world… possibly because… go figure… people actually have gone to see it.

Since I’ve dissected Christology every possible way over the years, I tend to judge these kind of things by the new perspective I gain. I’m always hungry to see Jesus in a way that is fresh while still consistent with scripture. I found several moments of fresh insight during the show…

1. Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene had to be quite a bit more scandalous than I realized. In the musical, I was quite offended by the fact that in one scene, Mary was rather sensually rubbing Jesus’ face and hands with oil. It was a TMI moment. In the scripture (Luke 7), it is His feet that she anoints. But really, how offensive is it that she poured herself all over his feet? Well, about as offensive to the Pharisees as her stroking his face is to us! I fell for it. At the moment I was offended, I was pulled into the Scripture to join the Pharisees in their disgust. I guess it’s hard to let Jesus be as cozy to sinners as he really wants to be. (Here’s Mary’s famous song, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” – Scroll down for more review…)

2. I was struck by how offensive Jesus’ sayings could be. One example. Judas is the one in the musical pushing for Jesus to do more for the poor. Jesus responds by saying, “You will always have the poor. But you will only have me for a little while…” I struck me how dumbfounded His followers must have been at his sayings.

3. Judas – I’ve been vacillating between streams of thought on Judas. The flat, fundamentalist view is that Judas was just evil, and evil people just kill good people. The sympathetic, more complex view of Judas is that he was fiercely loyal to Jesus and used the betrayal to force Jesus’ hand to act against the Romans, only to have it backfire on him. The musical blends these two, showing a much more confused Judas… loving and loyal at times, then hateful because Jesus wasn’t doing things his way. And he hated Jesus because he wasn’t doing the good things Judas wanted him to. I appreciated the more complicated viewpoint, and will hesitate now from pinning Judas down. (By the way, Corey Glover of the band Living Color played Judas… here’s a clip of Judas’ death as done by a modern movie version. It’s a little freaky… not like it was on stage, but you can hear the words)…

4. Jesus – We know him as 100% God and 100% man. But we think that somehow His Godness reduces his manness to getting hungry and suffering pain. But, when you’re Andrew Lloyd Webber, and you aren’t convinced Jesus was really God, you can posit some real man-like emotions on Jesus in a way a devout Christian has a hard time doing. So it’s good once in a while to let Jesus go beyond our sanitized version of him. The song, Gethsemene, which is the absolutely crowning jewel of the whole musical is worth studying and analyzing for it’s portrayal of Jesus’ emotional pain. If you don’t listen to any of the clips above, you’ve gotta listen to this one… over and over.

Lastly, in regards to presentation… Ted Neeley, the original Jesus, is making his last and final comeback tour. But… he’s 61. So while it was enjoyable to watch a classic unfold, I did miss a younger, more expressive Jesus. Ted Neeley was a little to stiff, like the Jesus of Sunday School. I was hoping for a less caricatured version of Jesus. Go here for a look at Ted Neeley.

I recommend this at least once in everyone’s life. It’s different, psychedelic at times, but a much better evening out than at the local church cantata.

Billary

Bill Clinton – the official toxin of the Hillary Campaign.