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But if I say, “I will not remember Him
Or speak anymore in His name,”
Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire
Shut up in my bones;
And I am weary of holding it in,
And I cannot endure it.

Jeremiah 20:9, NAS

If I don’t write what’s really important to me, I lose the fire to talk about it at all; but then it becomes to me almost like a sin of omission, after the fact. This weekend promises to sharpen my focus; more on that later.

I’ve been thinking lately about how hard it is to meditate in the Christian sense—to meditate in actual prayer, as opposed to just going through the motions of insincere rote incantations. A friend and I were discussing this, in fact: it’s really hard to concentrate on how great God is because mere intellectual assent gets in the way so often. When we are commanded to dwell on God’s sovereignty, it’s not a matter of saying the words that acknowledge that this hypothetical being and-or great commander of the universe is in control. He’s not a Greek god satisfied with rote prayers and insincere libations poured out before Him just to appease His greatness. No, we are commanded to get a grip on Hs actual greatness in terms of what that means for our lives, which is at once terrifying, humbling, and comforting—and it’s the first thing in what we call the Lord’s Prayer! Here’s to making that kind of meditation first priority.

For information on creatine, check the creatine FAQ. It’s not a prohormone and it’s not a steroid. I’ve been learning more about it as I work at the Vitamin Shoppe and the more I think it’s a great thing. Check it out; and also if you have time, check out the Men’s Health Forums in regard to the latest creatine research.

This is more of a thank-you post than it is theoretical or even practical in any sense. I can be myself around PJ, my former roommate and my constant friend. He is, like me, goofy, Christian, and southern—but he especially keeps me rooted when I come visit him in Charlotte and I realize only by his invitations to southern restaurants and by his jabs at my non-regional intellectualism that I can by my hailing-from-SC self with him. Last week we went to John’s Country Kitchen in Charlotte, voted by all sorts of quasi-unofficial organizations the “Best Breakfast” and “Best Southern Food” in Charlotte, for lunch. It was the best meat loaf I’d ever had, let alone the gravy, lima beans, fried okra, and sweet tea and cornbread I’d had short of Grandmama Leila. Seriously, what more could you possibly ask for? (I have a menu here that I’ve been meaning to scan in, but as I write this, I don’t have access to that scanner. Will upload ASAP.)

There are generally two types of people: the Jungian “Feeling” types that are very suspicious of psychology because they are simply “too unique to be put into a box” (like all the other people who can be categorized into that same group, ironically enough) and who believe that psychology exists only to impose external, arbitrary, restrictive boundaries on the nature of humanity (these are quick to point out that humans are so different that they are hardly categorizable); and the Jungian “Thinking” types, who are suspicious of psychology because it is so soft and subjective a science, such a framework that allows so much play in comparison to, say, biology. Both are right and wrong; isn’t that interesting! Where do you fall on the continuum?

I’ll get right to the point. What assumptions do you carry with you that you never really have stopped to consider? We all have thousands. You can detect your own assumptions about the way reality is and ought to be by the way you react to certain social situations; do you remember the last time someone committed a faux pas at a restuarant? How about in your home? Did someone say something that offended you in conversation?

These are all based on assumptions that we hold that pertain to our daily lives. I will be soon posting a list of my “assumptions” as well, though of course these will be for public discussion and will not be unchallenged in the sense that I am asking you, my beloved readers, to consider your “assumptions.” Do you know of any off the top of your heads?

Aside from the clever wordplay (Shamandalie is a Finnish girl’s name; “sham and a lie” is a redundant phrase in English meaning “untrue”), the song itself is a work of fine art. I don’t even have any reason to post it other than that it’s an excellent song by an excellent group, and I have felt this before—so perhaps it will speak to you, too.

In good old times, remember my friend
Moon was so bright and so close to us, sometimes

We were still blind and deaf, what a bliss?
Painting the world of our own, for our own eyes, now?

“Can we ever have what we had then?
Friendship unbreakable
Love means nothing to me
Without blinking an eye
I’d fade, if so needed,
All those moments with you
If I had you beside me”

One cloudy day we both lost the game?
We drifted so far and away

Nothing is quite as cruel as a child
Sometimes we break the unbreakable, sometimes?

“And we’ll never have what we had then
Friendship unbroken
Love means nothing to me
Without blinking an eye
I’d fade, if so needed,
All those moments with you
If I had you beside me now”

I was unable to cope with what you said
Sometimes we need to be cruel to be kind
Child that I was, could not see the reason
Feelings I had were but sham and a lie

I have never forgotten your smile
Your eyes, oh, Shamandalie

Time went by, many memories died
I’m writing this down to ease my pain

You saw us always clearer than me
How we were never meant to be
Love denied meant the friendship would die
Now I have seen the light
These memories make me cry

“Can I ever have what I had then?
Friendship unbroken
Love means nothing to me
Without blinking an eye
I’d fade, if so needed,
All those moments with you
And see the world with my wide open eyes

Friendship got broken
There’s no other for me
Like the one of my childhood days
Can you forgive me?
The love got better off me,
On that one day back in old times”

© 2004 Sonata Arctica, Reckoning Night

I do not believe there is a single honest man living who, having once heard the gospel simply preached, does not in his conscience believe it to be true. I am persuaded that light will penetrate. There is such force, such energy in Christ, it must and will pierce through some crevice and convince at least a natural conscience. but this is the very reason why men oppose it. They do not want it to be true.

Back in 1999, when I had practically no money anyway because I was a young student, I actually paid for WinZip. You know, those click-here-if-you-acknowledge-it’s-been-thousands-of-days-and-hundreds-of-thousands-of-archives and so forth. I actually paid for it because I felt a conviction that I should be honest and forthright about my dealings online. At the time I was knee-deep in researching C++, hacking culture, and what it really meant to “crack” a piece of software with serial number generators—but I wanted to make sure that it was kept strictly academic. So I paid whatever they were asking for a single user license.

This was supposed to guarantee free upgrades, right?

Wrong. Now, WinZip has changed their tune and will only allow you to use your old registration key for the new 10.0 version if you pay 50% of the brand-spanking-new license, both of which are ridiculously exorbitant for mere compression capabilities.

If you, like me, have been stung by this and don’t care to search for a WinZip crack and descend into the dark halls of computing’s arcane underbelly, you can still find WinZip 9.0 via FTP searches (forget Google, it’s uselessly pointing to version 10.0). See specifically here, for instance.

Interesting how when we read books that are typeset in pleasant fonts the text itself seems to be crisper, brighter. I’ve been looking for some good, unique fonts for the logo of this site (it’s been up for several years—it’s about time, right?), and a couple of good links are as follows: Googling “historical fonts” and specifically Lord Kyl’s Medieval & Fantasy Fonts.

It took some finagling, but I successfully converted from phpBB to SMF. It was actually much easier than I would have guessed it would have been, and now the Forums are live again. Please let me know if you have any issues at michael at [this domain].

Took the GRE on Halloween, and did well. Next step? Applying to grad school. Will keep you posted.

To define the terms:

-> Vanity: desire for praise or adulation or worship; an excessive pride in one’s possessions or qualities.
-> benevolence: inclination to do that which is good, kind, and/or charitable.
-> praise: ascribe worth
-> worship: the highest form of praise

The one thing I would ask is, how would you picture a God who is not “vain”?
Doesn’t vanity conflict with benevolence?

No, because God is God. God is the only one who deserves our praise, adulation, and worship; and He is all-good. He not only loves it and deserves it when we worship Him, but because He gave us life and all things that we receive and enjoy, He rewards that worship by the innate nature of our relationship with God. It’s built in to us that it is immensely rewarding to worship our Creator. In fact, you might say that His “vanity” in this sense is an illustration of His benevolence, because through our praise and worship of Him, He pours out His love and blessing on us (that is to say, we are more attuned and able to receive it).

God deserves our praise also because different freedoms are intrinsic to the offices that different people hold. A gynecologist can go where a stranger can’t; a President can do what a civilian can’t; and cetera.

But even so, let’s take a closer look to see if God does indeed deserve our praise. Vanity and praise are both tied to worth. It’s not that praise itself is silly or unreasonable: we ascribe worth to that which we appreciate, such as saying “This CD is really entertaining [attempting not to confuse “good” here],” “That shot behind the three-point line at the buzzer was amazing,” and that sort of thing. We do that all the time. There are things in the world that have worth; only an extreme cynic would proclaim otherwise, and the burden of proof would fall to him or her. Thus, praise itself is rational.

There is a certain amount of praise that is appropriate–even due–each person. We have all done commendable acts, and we all deserve some praise. Our problem, the problem of vanity, is that we think we deserve a lot more than we do. Most of what we think we deserve actually came by accident: for instance, good looks. That’s why we call it ‘vanity’ most commonly when someone is puffed up about themselves, because that had nothing to do with them. There is a lot more accidental stuff than we’re often willing to admit that gives us a false sense of worth.

God is a different case than us altogether. Nothing about Him is accidental; all His works are of immeasurable worth, and He Himself is of immeasurable worth (along with immeasurable everything else!). Every good quality God possesses is absolutely, totally His own. Furthermore, let’s carry this one more step: we are given all the good things we have by God Himself. If you’re good looking, it’s because God made you that way; if you’re intelligent, it’s because God has given you a sound mind; if you have a lot of money, it’s because God has given you the power to earn it. Et cetera.

The irony in the question of whether God is vain is that if praise is rational, if there is anything worthy of praise, then God deserves it all because “He is the source of every good and perfect gift” (Jas 1). Furthermore, if God is indeed worthy of my praise, He is worthy thereof whether or not I’m blissfully happy, because it is His due.

Thus, not only is it not “vain” for God to want praise and worship in the sense that it would exceed His worth, but it is His right to demand it.

Technorati Tags: vanity, theology, apologetics, God

I had a sweet little old lady come into the Vitamin Shoppe this morning who was asking me about CoQ10 and other supplements.  After I gave her the spiel on all the supplements, she asked me sweetly if I would help her test them.

I thought that she was implying the question of whether I would be willing to keep track of what she told me worked for her and what did not.  It’s not in the job description, but hey, if I suffer from memory loss when I’m her age I would hope that some kind young lady working at my favorite supplement shop would do the same for me, right?  So I agreed.

But when I did so, she immediately grasped the bottle of Co-Q10 to her sternum with her left hand and stiffly held out her right arm, fist clenched.  Then she closed her eyes.  I was dumbfounded.  Peeking out of her right eye when I didn’t respond in the slightest, she said, “Um?  Push my arm down.”  Like it was the most natural thing to say at such a time as this.  I asked her what she meant, and she just repeated herself; so, not wanting to abuse this fragile woman, I used the two first fingers on my right hand and  gingerly pushed down on her wrist, whereupon her arm didn’t move.  She then corrected me, “No, push it down—hard!”

What?

So I did, right?  It was difficult to press down her arm, but she eventually let it fall, then proceeded to test another package of Co-Q10, this time by taking the blister pack out of the box and clutching it to her bosom again.  We repeated the procedure.

She explained to me afterward that if the medicine would work for her, I wouldn’t be able to easily push the arm down; but if not, her arm would fall immediately.

What—?

When I had rung her up, she proceeded to give me a tract about God’s Simple Plan of Salvation from so-and-so Baptist church.  I do not hesitate to point out that this is nowhere in Christendom, especially not in Baptist churches; it struck me as peculiar precisely because this seemed more similar to something like a Wiccan superstition, in which the magnetic energies would react in our bodies to those in the supplements or some such thing.

When I later asked my manager about it, he said that there were at least one or two people who had a similar superstition who came in every other day or so.  Some of them did the arm thing, but most of them would only close their eyes and hold the supplement to their bosom to see if they fell backwards; if so, it would not work for them, but if they held their ground, it would work.

I have not been able to find anything on this via Google, mostly because I don’t know what to Google for.  Queries such as “ridiculous superstitions” and “superstition medicine hold to chest” and such don’t seem to produce much of anything.  So my question to you is, have you ever heard of this?  And, if so, would you be so kind as to explain its origins?

Technorati Tags: supplementation, superstition