:: Spike's Divers Thoughts on Sundrie Notions ::

:: Sunday, June 29, 2003 ::

The frequency of entries does not seem to be improving, but I guess that it's okay to use it for really momentous things, like today's.

Last month, we finally closed on our new house. We signed contracts on five different houses, and the fifth was the one that was finally signed by the seller. It's tough to be in such a strong seller's market, but that's the way it is. I really hope that it stays that way for a while, so that we can get some "free" equity built up and maybe refinance before rates start to turn the other way. They have to eventually, otherwise banks will start to pay us to borrow their coin. Anyway, I now have an office in my house, and even though it does not have a door (it's in the basement, left turn at the bottom of the stairs) it's my own spot. It's kinda messy right now, but I'm trying to get it organized and arranged and hopefully it will be in pretty good shape in a week or so.

And Thursday, I got my eyes fixed. I've been thinking about getting LASIK done for some time, but took a long time to go after it. I'm not particularly given to hyperbole, but I don't think that it's too much to say that this is a miracle. I have been without any sort of vision correction for three days and I have been doing everything that I was doing before, except cleaning my glasses or inserting and removing contact lenses. It was weird, but when I threw away my old reliable rigid gas permeable contacts, I almost felt a pang of sadness. I had been wearing that type of lens for nearly twenty years, and now I don't. Tomorrow is my last day of the post-operative medications (steroid and antibiotic drops, as well as artificial tears, four times a day for a total of 32 eye drops per day) and tonight is the last time I have to wear the eye shields to bed. That stuff takes all of the fun out of it, but I am determined not to do anything that would jeopardize my ability to see. I'm really looking forward to waking up on Tuesday and seeing clearly right out of the gate.
The whole thing was so amazing. I was on the operating table for all of ten minutes and when I was finished, I could see things across the room. The first thing that I noticed was the texture of the acoustic tile on the ceiling. I would not have been able to see that unaided before the surgery. After the ride home in the car, which was utterly miserable (couldn't really even open my eyes), I took a nap and when I got up, I could see fairly well. That evening, my eyes were somewhat scratchy and sandy. By the next morning, the sensation in my eyes was like the way it felt the first time I ever wore contact lenses. There was the sensation of something in my eyes, but it was not uncomfortable. The last two days, my eyes have felt completely normal. My vision seems to be improving still (albeit veerrry slightly) and I am so happy with the whole thing.
I know it's not for everybody, but I am so glad I did it. If somebody was thinking about it and on the fence, I would say this: find a doctor who has done a large number of surgeries and who has a good clinical record. Avoid the great deals -- it's your only pair of eyes -- and don't be afraid to pay for the surgery. Make sure that you are a good candidate in the opinion of at least a couple of reputable optometrists or ophthalmologists. And do everything they tell you to do pre- and post-operatively. It's worth one evening of discomfort to be seeing the way that I am seeing. What an incredible thing.

:: Rich 5:52 PM [+] ::
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Okay, so I go a month between entries. I'd like to see that change, but right now, it just seems like that's the way it is.

So much has been going on in our church. I seems that there has been a lot of stuff that is not spiritual and we are trying to figure out what is off track and get it back into step with the Bible. For me, I have seen that there is a lot of harshness and arrogance that have grown up around my convictions as a Christian. I have had to take a step back and re-examine the way I do things.
One of the things I have seen in myself is just how much I have put my confidence in my identity as a "church member" rather than my place as a child of God. While we are commanded in the bible to be active in the fellowship (no such thing as a "lone ranger" Christian), God isn't going to come to us on the last day and ask whether we were good members of our church. I feel so much more freedom in that realization. The Book of Life is not equal to the roster of a church. There are people in my church who are not saved and there are people in other churches who are. That's pretty scary/cool.
:: Rich 8:57 AM [+] ::
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It's been a while since I've posted. And, of course, when I return, I am doing something totally different from what I have been doing...
This weekend I got my wife's computer and mine networked together. Since they are in different rooms and I live in an apartment, it meant that I had to implement a wireless network. It took a lot of doing, but I am typing this entry on my wife's computer, which was not attached to anything three days ago. Needless to say, I'm pretty jazzed about the whole thing. It's been hanging over my head ever since I got her computer rebuilt so that it would work.
Anyway, I'm now officially a network adminstrator, even if it's only in my own home. I have to be. My wife couldn't do it -- not that she'd want to anyway :-).
:: Rich 3:05 PM [+] ::
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A new year. Again we have come to the time where it seems that everybody makes a decision about things that they are going to do different in the coming 12 months. I think that for most people, resolutions last about two or three weeks and then just kind of fade out. It is not, at least for me, a conscious decision to go back to the way things were before, but rather just the simple phenomenon of inertia. It's almost as if there is a gravitational force that pulls us back into the old ways which seem comfortable on some level.
This year, once again, I will make some decisions. One of the things that I have decided is that my telephone needs to ring more. This is a tricky one, because I can't very well call myself up on the phone. It is going to require that I get more involved in other people's lives and really get to know them. Even more nerve-racking for me is the thought that I am going to have to let other people into my life on a much deeper level. It's not something that I am good at and the thought of trying to change that makes me feel scared and overwhelmed.
Another thing that I have resolved to do the last three years (and probably more) is to finally lose weight and start taking care of the body that God gave me. Occasionally I will have a dream in which I am at an ideal weight, and I never remember the dream, just how I looked in it. I think I see myself much differently than I actually appear, but I have not to this point had the willpower to make reality match up to my perception of myself.
Finally, I have decided that this is the year that I learn to become truly dependent on God. My own prejudices include the idea that dependence is a bad thing. Independence is a virtue here, but in my heart of hearts I question that. I read so many places in my Bible the ways that spiritual people confess, and even celebrate, their dependence on God. Even Jesus himself was completely dependent on God. If anybody had reason to believe that they could live independently, it was The Word of God living among us. He, however, constantly pointed back to God as the source of everything he said and did and the wellspring of his power over sin, disease and death. As a weak, sinful, fallible man, I am not entitled to independence, nor am I enriched by it. I am indebted to Thomas Jones for this thought.
:: Rich 8:01 PM [+] ::
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Yesterday was Christmas -- a big day in our house. I can remember the way things were for me when I was a kid and how much fun and anticipation there was. What's funny is that as a dad, I have more fun and look forward to it at least as much as I did when I was a kid. I know that if I told that to my kids, they wouldn't believe me and I know that if my parents had told me that, I wouldn't have believed them either.
I found myself yesterday thinking -- lamenting, really -- about the way that the forces of political correctness are doing everything that they can to marginalize Christmas. But as I thought about it, it occurred to me that there really is nothing bad about that. That's a strange thought from somebody whose mission in life is to bring people to the Gospel, but it makes sense on a very important level.
It is amazing to me how many people here celebrate Christmas with the tree and the songs and the parties and the gifts and on and on, but completely omit the reason the holiday exists in the first place. There is another group of people that get all fired up and go to some service on Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning, but don't think about anything remotely spiritual the rest of the year (except for Easter, maybe). It has, for a long time, been the biggest holiday of the year.
Anyway, here is how the marginalization of Christmas is a good thing: the more Christmas gets pushed off to the side, the more ordinary people will stop putting so much emphasis on it and, eventually, stop commemorating it altogether. As this happens more and more, it will become more special and more meaningful for the Christian world. I can see that there are many denominations out there that will begin to de-emphasize the holiday to stay in step with the society by which they so badly want to be accepted, but true Christians, who are in the world, but not of the world, will celebrate Christmas in a much smaller and more spiritual way.
One thing that's funny about Christmas is that we probably aren't anywhere close to the actual day of the birth of Jesus Christ. Most experts in such matters believe he was born sometime in the spring. I don't know enough to say I agree or disagree with that, but the point is true enough -- we really don't have any idea when the Messiah came to earth. We have a much better idea of when the resurrection happened ("Easter Sunday", if you prefer). The bible is very clear in associating the resurrection of the Savior with the Jewish Passover observance and Jewish people have celebrated Passover at the same time of year for untold centuries.
It's interesting to me that the celebration of Christmas is considerably more important in worldly thinking than is the celebration of Easter. While it is true that the birth of Christ is a profound event surrounded by many miraculous occurrences, the death and rising of the Savior is far more important. The birth was the beginning of his life, but the resurrection was the culmination of it. Without the resurrection of Jesus, there is no hope for any of us. The birth of Jesus got God here in human form, but the sinless life and the inability of death to hold him is really the summit of all that God has done through all of the centuries that this planet has existed.
:: Rich 7:20 AM [+] ::
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From Philip Johnson "The Storyteller and The Scientist" in Objections Sustained page 56:

"...the concept that the universe is the product of a rational mind provides a far better metaphysical basis for scientific rationality than the competing concept that everything in the universe (including our minds) is ultimately based in the mindless movements of matter. Perhaps materialism was a liberating philosophy when the need was to escape from dogmas of religion, but today materialism itself is the dogma from which the mind needs to escape. A rule that materialism should be professed regardless of the evidence, says [Michael] Behe, is the equivalent of a rule that science may not contradict the teachings of a church. 'It tries to place reality in a tidy box, but the universe will not be placed in a box.'
"Behe's fundamental principle is that 'scientists should follow the physical evidence wherever it leads, with no artificial restrictions.' Science has come as far as it has because scientists of the past were willing to describe the universe as it really is, rather than as the prejudices in their current times would have preferred it to be. The question is whether today's scientists have lost their nerve." (italics in the original)

This is among the most rational objections to evolutionism I have come across. This casts creationists as latter-day Galileos, fighting against a smothering dogma that holds true only things which fit the a priori assumptions of the prevailing belief system.
:: Rich 6:36 AM [+] ::
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