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As children of God, we have the privilege of being forgiven for our sins. As such, we're often tempted to commit these deadly sins with the excuse that God will forgive us for such. In the Bible, Paul warns about this specific attitude.¹ Paul's point is that sin is death, and death is the ultimate enemy of Christ. As such, if we are in Christ, we should have no desire to associate with that sin.

I see it like this: we are civilised. As such, there are certain maxims of civility that all civilised people share. Specifically, we share in the desire to remain clean. In this world of filth, that is not an easy task to accomplish. Dust consisting mainly of dead organic material continually hovers in the air until contact with another object. Dirt clings to a person's skin and settles in the pores of that skin. The body itself emits an oily substance that causes a person to leave a residue on every object that he touches. When the temperature reaches heights, the body will emit a salt-water substance from the sweat glands that gives off a foul odour. This sweat and dirt can also end up underneath the fingernails of a person through contact with the skin. Through the natural consumption of foods and beverages, the body disposes of this material in substances that also emit foul odours. In the mouth itself, bacteria can form within and cause more foul odours. However, our civility doesn't allow this. If there was a man walking down the street drenched in his own bodily fluids while covered in dirt and chicken manure, any person with a milligramme of civility in his soul would think of the person as a lunatic. There's not just the social stigma, but the fact that poor hygiene and sanitation promotes disease and sickness. So, our civility does us a favour. The civilised person washes himself with water, but water's not good enough. The civilised person mixes the water with soap to make it even thinner in order to clean his skin better. He uses shampoos to cleanse his hair (or her hair if it's an expensive shampoo). Twice a day, his teeth are brushed of plaque. He flosses in order to further cleanse the areas between the teeth. If that weren't good enough, he uses mouthwash in order to kill the microscopic germs in his mouth. Throughout the day, he uses gum or breath mints in order to suppress the odours that occur within his mouth. Deodorant is applied to places in which it might be necessary. He will style his hair in a certain manner or cover it with a hat because appearances matter just as much as cleanliness. With appearances, he will wear clothing that has been just as thoroughly cleaned as he has.

How is our spirituality similar? Where we have civility, our soul has God's grace. Where we have soaps and detergents, our soul has God's forgiveness. Our soul is made even cleaner than our body can be made clean. However, we are bound to sin just as much as we are bound to become dirty. It's our human nature to sweat and sin, but when we are dirty we can be made clean again. However, as far as civility is concerned, do we seek ways to make ourselves dirty? Do we roll around in the mud or jump in a septic tank even with the knowledge that we can cleanse ourselves again? By no means! Such is surly the mark of an uncivilised person. In the same way, are we to commit sin intentionally knowing that we can be forgiven again. By no means! Such is surly the mark of someone who is not of Christ. Paul says it plainly, “For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.”²

1. Romans 6
2. Romans 6:14

Do people make other people angry or do people choose to become angry?

The question's pointless. I have never been more pissed off in my entire life than right at this moment. Did I choose to be this way or did someone make me angry? Either way, I feel horrible. There are plenty of other feelings that I would prefer to be demonstrating right now. Depression is one of them.

If I choose to be this way, why do I choose to be in a condition that I don't want to be in. If someone makes me this way, why do I allow him the opportunity to degreade my soul my making me hate him?

Oh, I could try to justify it saying that it's his fault. Well, I don't need to try; it is his fault. Does that matter? People will cause me difficulties. They might be maliciously trying to ruin my life or it just might be a difference in viewpoints that are incompatible. The point is that it will happen again. When it happens again, what will I do? Is the anger itself that causes the problems or is how we react to anger the problem?

As I was talking with my RA the other night, he was explaining about a girl that he had arguments with over the JBU forums. Myself, I am a forum junkie. I even serve as the moderator of the politics forum. Naturally, the forums interest me, so I wanted to know more.

The topic of the forum was over the age of the earth and the existance of dinosaurs. His view was that the world is older than six thousand years. At my American high school, such thought would have been condemned as heretical. Their view was that if one didn't accept the view of a litteral Genesis, his reasoning was in error, and therefore, as Genesis is supposedly the foundation of all biblical thought, their entire understanding of the Bible must be in error and bad things will come. The school's view was that a belief in a nonliteral Genesis led to attrocities. That's bullhonkey. The greatest attrocities in the world were comitted with biblical inspiration. According to them, racism is caused by evolutional thought because evolution teaches that some form of man are higher than other forms of man. Simply knowing that the greatest racist acts that come to my mind (slavery in America and raunching of Jews in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition) were biblically inspired and existed long before evolutional thought was commonplace debunks that idea.

I'm starting to ramble, so I'll get to my point. Take Revelation: there is some pretty crazy stuff in Revelation such as creatures with eyes all over them, beasts with seven heads, creatures with a congregation of body parts from various different species. There is no one that I know who believes that the events that are described in Revelation will happen litterally. Most believe that the book is symbolic in its descriptions. Why? If you were trying to explain to someone in the first century about events occuring today (and I'm not trying to imply that the end times are occuring today), would you use words like car, computer or lightbulb or would you dumb the vocabulary down and use words like horse, mind and lamp. When we try to describe something outside of someone's understanding, we'd probably dumb the vocabulary down. Would that be the same for Genesis? How can God create something from nothing? That is beyond my understanding. Let's assume that he took billions of years to create the earth. He's God; He could do it. How would you describe that to a primative society that doesn't have a linear view of time? Personally, I do believe that God created the world in six days, but if someone doesn't hold that view, is their foundation for logic gone? I have to say that if it's because someone doesn't believe that God can do it in six days, there's a problem. God has infinite power. If someone doesn't have enough faith to believe that God could do it, how can he please God? If it's simply that he believes the verses to be symbolic, then I don't see how someone's biblical logic is messed. Personally, I believe that someone's biblical logic is screwed up the moment he believes that the King James Version is an advanced revelation from God (like Maranatha American Center).

Katrina hits New Orleans. That's terrible. The United Kingdom wants to help the United States. They send 350,000 packaged meals to the evacuees to help them out.¹ That's nice. The United States puts those meals in quarantine. That's bad, but why? It turns out that British beef is often known to contain a disease known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (but you know it better as mad cow), and the United States doesn't want people to get sick from eating the beef. Okay, that's understandable. Since the goal is not to get people infected with some disease, it makes since to give these meals to people that aren't people. The United States is trying to hand these meals off to citizens in third-world countries where the people inhabiting them are worthless and insignificant enough to get bad beef because Americans are worthful and significant. So far, no nation has taken the United States up on that offer. I wonder why.

By the way, I finally finished The Clash Of Civilizaitons. I'll be chalking the book report this weekend.

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4344168.stm

So, tomorrow is Columbus Day. Here's an overview of what Columbus did:

Columbus discovered America in the year A.D. 1492. By using the term discovered, we're saying that he was the first person to find America. When he found America, he had a friendly encounter with some of the inhabitants of the lands that he discovered (who were there before Columbus discovered America). He left some of his sailors with these inhabitants (who were there before Columbus discovered America) as he sailed back to Castille. He brought back to Castille two of those inhabitants (who were there before Columbus discovered America). On his second voyage, he managed to enslave around 1,600 of these inhabitants (who were there before Columbus discovered America) and sent those inhabitants (who were there before Columbus discovered America) back to Castille. When the inhabitants (who were there before Columbus discovered America) arrived in Castille, the royalty of Castille sent them back to America where Columbus records in his journals as using some of the inhabitants (who were there before Columbus discovered America) as sex slaves. Other antics performed by Columbus were misleading some of the inhabitants (who were there before Columbus discovered America) into believing that he was a God by predicting a lunar eclipse and chopping the hands off of inhabitants (who were there before Columbus discovered America) who didn't collect enough gold.

I'm going to stop my tirade before Columbus Day is banned, and millions of school children across America hate me for taking away a day off of classes.

What does a wise man gain
by knowing how to conduct himself before others?

Ecclesiastes 6:8b (NIV)

There are times when you can be the gentleman and someone else can be the jerk. Then, when the woman picks between the two of you, she'll choose the jerk. What can you do about that?

Life sucks.

I know that this says that I've been reading The Clash of Civilizations for a while now. I know that it seems that I'm a slow reader, but don't worry, I'm almost finished with it. I had plenty of time this weekend (spending fall break at my good friends' home in Missouri whose daughter is an excellent cook) to do nothing but read. It's an interesting book and has expanded my outlook on the world.

Otherwise, in a topic completely unrelated to the current subject, I've been thinking about death a lot. Let me share my thoughts: you could die tomorrow. If you did, would that one person that you've had your eye on know how you feel? Well, mine wouldn't. Let's hope that you have the ability to tell them… assuming that you haven't already told them of course.