3...2...1 the last Chapter

Chapter 10 is titled "How Can I Know?" It was short but got its point across. How much we intellectually know about God doesn't say anything about our relationship with Him; it's really got to do with the heart, something which I have trouble with sometimes with certain truths. For example, in my head I know my value lies in God alone, but this isn't always fully incorporated into my heart knowledge as can be seen when I gauge my value according to other people's opinions or my image. This chapter, however, deals with mainly taking that first step into a relationship with the LORD. The uniqueness of Christianity was brought up again in that God (the "initiator", as the author wrote) reveals Himself to us first and thus begins "communication." Sending His Son into the context of this world, which we are more familiar with, was all part of His plan of revealing Himself (clearly). We're not the ones who take the first step and act on our own in the hopes of figuring out this almighty Being. God promises that He'll make Himself known, as long as the person seeks Him and is open. I rejoice in the fact that God loved us first and reaches out to us. =D

Random news:
-I got excited during home group on Friday because I met Canadians for the first time here. XP They were actually here for just a visit; they're studying graphic design in Weimar for a year, which I find almost unimaginable because I've been there and that place is super tiny. The city part of the town seems like it can be crossed in 10 min. Really nice girls. Too bad they're gone already.
-Went to the Jewish Museum and one of my favorite exhibits was one called "Fallen Leaves" by Daniel Libeskind. The floor is covered with over 10,000 metal faces and is dedicated to the innocent victims of war and violence. You're supposed to interact with it and step on them. You realize soon enough it's impossible to not make a sound when you go through. One way to interpret this is that WE are just as important a part of the exhibit because without us, no one would hear these faces, so it's like we're waking up the memories of those before.

-Today I saw through my window a rainbow that was visible throughout the storm. :)

ch 9

wow, this is the 2nd to last chapter! it's about sexuality, mainly homosexuality. i think basically the author was talking about how too much emphasis is put on the debate about whether homosexuality is genetic or behavioral, but it really doesnt matter because it shouldn't define a person either way. It's sad how many misconceptions there are that all Christians are homophobic people. and our society today pretty much outcasts you if you express any form of "homophobia" or intolerance. I feel like that in itself is a form of intolerance too.. homophobaphobia? anyways, i def agree with the author that that debate is getting us nowhere and that it's not the defining character of a person.

I feel like just as God gives each of us strengths and different measures of faith, it's the same with weaknesses. We still atleast have the choice to want to grow closer to God. Especially in today's society, it's hard to reconcile homosexuality with sin atleast publicly. if you call it a sin, you're outcasted, but i feel the bible is clear on this issue. i feel like there's a more socially accepted but sorta similar example: it's a well known fact that boys are more sexually driven than girls. you can even look at it scientifically with testosterone levels. if you give girls testosterone, they have more sexual desire. I guess people try to see homosexuality the same way.. it's just how they're born.. just part of their biology. It doesnt make it ok for guys to go around womanizing every girl they see though. Guys, just like girls still have to live for something greater. We have that choice no matter what is in our dna or chemical environment.

semi-update

I am unfortunately NOT caught up with the reading, but I decided I'd just write a short update. So...and now my mind is not working. Alrighty, so the 50 summer program kids (duke and rutgers) arrived last weekend, and I got to meet some of them while we did a 6-hr. bike tour of Berlin. It was a very nice surprise to see Tomi at our reststop at a Biergarten. :) I had no idea she'd be coming. It looks like the summer program doesn't coincide very well with our semester program schedule, so I'll have to be very intentional to see her again.

I recently have felt really weird around my host mom. After spraining my ankle kind of badly from basektball Tuesday night, I got home knowing that my host mom had worked all day and wouldn't want to talk, but I thought she'd probably still respond if I asked a question. Seeing that she was still up, I called her name, but all she did was start to close her door. I thought, maybe she didn't hear me, so I called out again, and she just shut her door all the way. I felt kind of abandoned after that, but knew there was nothing else I could do. The next day she actually seemed kind of annoyed that I'd hurt myself, but wrote down numbers for me to call to make an appointment. Things seemed to be fine for the next few days, but then yesterday she gave me a lecture about how I'd get sick from sitting in my room all day and that it's not a smart thing to do. I don't know why this should really affect me so much, but I think the sequence of events put together made me even more emotionally sensitive. I thought I'd already be used to this bluntness after almost 5 months, since I get to experience this a lot from my host sister, but somehow I'm not. Part of the reason might be that I forget where my value lies (in God).
Oy, this post seems very unorganized.

I don't have too many interesting recent pictures, but here's one of a lion pulling at a piece of meat that I saw up close at the Zoo on Friday. It's sad how these big cats got such small cage areas. We hypothesized optimistically that they were just in these cages for feeding.

ch 8 wars

I thought this chapter was really really interesting. I was recently in a conversation with a nonchristian about how the old testament God could be the same as the one described in the new testament. There was a really troubling passage in 1 samuel where God commands for a village to be destroyed, no one spared, not even women, children, and livestock. throughout the whole conversation all i could think about was how much i wished i had read the old testament. i think i realized just how little i knew about the old testament there. it sparked a lot of questions in myself also.

i really like how the author talks about the "bigger picture" perspective and how warfare is shifted from a physical warfare to a spiritual warfare and how this is something God planned (seen in the so many prophesies about Jesus' life and purpose). i feel like it's still something that's difficult to interpret though especially in our modern world where there are still so many wars made on the basis of religion. in some ways i feel like we've been "spoiled" in this post-Jesus era where love is seen in the highest regard. I wonder what the mindset of the people before Jesus was. How did they see God? wars? judgement? What does it feel like to still await a savior? I feel like the early church had no problem reconciling Jesus' life as the one sent by the same God of the old testment. It must've made a lot more sense to them.

in other news, we just finished our first week at the marine lab. i'm still waiting for my roommate to arrive. my roommate is supposed to be pen-yuan for those of you who know him. He's the nicest guy ever and he lived across from me back in the southgate times. i feel like i've been so lucky in terms of roommates at the marine lab. and it's pretty cool that i got to live in a single for a week (just like last semester when my roommate came late from papua new guinea). Class is going pretty good. our professor has a really untraditional teaching method. there's very little structure and we learn mostly by trying things out and making self-discoveries. it's pretty cool i guess. we're working on experiments that will eventually get legitly published in scientific journals too, so we all get to be co-authors. Last night we canoed to carrot island nearby and collected animals. It was fun, we waded around the low tide and netted up blue crabs, learned to catch fish with our hands and cool stuff like that. The waters are so different at night. fish are not afraid to bump into you, your flashlight is a thing of fascination to the animals, and little crabs run around the shore in the millions. it is sad to think about a world where almost no one will ever get to experience nature like this.

marine lab part 2

I'm back at the marine lab for summer session 1 (till june 12). it feels weird to be back especially after an amazing week at rockbridge. There's something weird about having to write a 1 page personal statement on what you want to do in life after rockbridge instilled a sense of Godly purpose in you. "Research" doesn't seem very fulfilling anymore. here, everything is physically the same, but the people are different (except like 5 of us) and there are a lot more of us here and for a shorter time, so me and the people i was here with last semester are hanging out a lot more. i'm taking a biochemistry of marine animals class now. something i've noticed about professors here... it feels like most of them are extremely secular and openly ridicule religion. 3/5 of my professors at marine lab so far have made comments against christianity. i guess i can expect these sorts of things from people who make a career out of a science that is so media-ly biased against religion, but it's really annoying and makes me lose a lot of respect for them. It just doesnt seem fair that you can get in trouble for saying pro-religious things in the class room, but you can't get in trouble for saying anti-religious things in the same class room. Is this one of those turn the cheek situations? i always thought the turn-the-cheek applies to us, but they're talking about God. I feel like we're allowed to get angry in that situation. God shouldn't have to turn the cheek for anyone. Then again, was that what the cross was? one gigantic turning of the cheek? anyways, that was a pretty random rant..

i caught up on the reading (ch 7 was about is the bible sexist). i thought it was really interesting because i grew up going to a pretty liberal church. i never really thought it was an issue. then again, i'm a guy too and maybe i'm somewhat blind to it. My mom, a woman, was in many ways indirectly influencial in my walk with God. I also never looked at the samaritan woman story from that perspective.. i feel like it gets a lot of hype for being the Jesus breaking racism story, but taking into account the culture i agree that it must've been surprising that the woman at the well was a woman. I feel like after reading the chapter, it seems like Jesus actually did more to help women's rights than to oppress them given the cultural context just by doing culturally shocking things. It's also really cool how God is described in parables with qualities of a woman. i think it really speaks to how we're all made in the image of God. Those controversial verses in Paul's letters about women not teaching and being quiet in church and stuff bugged me too when i was growing up. i feel like paul said a lot of stuff that i sometimes didnt agree with. i would always just tell myself "well, paul was human too.. maybe he made a mistake". i feel like we dont understand the contexts of these letters well enough, so i'm just gonna stick with what Jesus said and acted on about these topics. I don't wanna discredit the epistles, but at the same time, i hold the gospels higher, and it seemed to me that Jesus loved women and men alike. the church is His bride. God is like a woman who lights a lamp and searches the house for a lost coin. I really don't think that God is sexist.. and it shouldn't be an issue in the church.

It's Mother's Day!

Hi e'rybody! I've been a bit of a slacker with this blog, I know. I made sure to NOT slack off in wishing my mom a happy mother's today though. Don't forget that today's Mother's Day! Let your mom feel appreciated. =)

So first with thoughts about Chapter 7 "Isn't the Bible Sexist?" It was a good reminder of how Jesus wasn't a sexist, but I didn't find it as convincing when the book addressed other issues. I couldn't figure out why it was so important to see the possibility of a fellow prisoner of Paul's being a female apostle. In the quoted verse as well as in the verse in my Bible, the male name was used, which seems to me that the majority of scholars believed the prisoner was male. Also, I don't see where it says that Paul told women to be silent in church and not ask questions (1 Cor. 14:28) because there was a problem with chatting. After looking at the other controversial passage (1 Tim. 2:12) and keeping in mind that Paul did mention Phoebe as a deaconess, I still have problems taking that in. And I got doubly confused with a following verse about how women will be saved through childbearing. o_0 Ack, I still have questions. Thoughts?

Another short update: Due to having Friday off for Labor Day, Justine, Rebecca, and I went to see Neuschwanstein (the castle Disneyland was based on) in Fuessen, Germany and got to go to Salzburg as well. Salzburg is where the Sound of Music's supposed to take place and where many of the shots were filmed. You guys should wiki The Sound of Music to read a few hilarious liberties the director & co. took with the story. (; After much debate, we decided to go on the Sound of Music tour, which was pretty cool because our tour guide was so awesome. The next day while resting during a short hike up a nearby mountain, I got on the topic of religion with Justine somehow and got to share my testimony! What I thought was really cool was that just the week before in home group, I shared mine for the first time in a long while. I see that incident as a kind of prep for my talk with Justine because my faith story came out more easily than I thought it would. For background, Justine grew up having to go to Catholic school to get confirmed, but didn't have anything to do with the church after that. She views religion very skeptically because she's seen all sorts of people back home who call themselves Christians and then drink and party during the week. She also feels like religion brings more problems than help. I feel like I chickened out when she asked if I thought she'd go to hell. I just answered that I don't really know how God's going to judge and then she said, "I feel like no one really knows what's going to happen after they die, and that people are Christians because they don't want to go to hell." So, anyway, it was an interesting conversation for me, and I don't know how it affected Justine, but PTL that God placed me there to show my friend another side of Christianity.
Another highlight was seeing the largest ice caves in the WORLD! :) I know I'm fortunate.

Congratulations all you 2009-ers! I will miss you dearly.

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Hello. I was just curious if anyone knew anyone who would like be a future treasurer? Ideally the candidate would be:

• Mature
• Responsible
• Neat & organized
• Nice handwriting
• Never loses anything
• Knows people
• Impeccable integrity
• Comprehends how the convoluted Duke funding system works

And hopefully an underclassman so that s/he can continue for next year!

We're going to be seniors??! Seriously!