Our Brains are Not Like Computers

With nearly 15 years of software engineering experience, I have noticed that many people assume our minds function just like a computer. In other words, the difference between you and your computer is simply a matter of horsepower and programming - if we just get a fast enough processor, and write a smart enough program, viola! "artificial intelligence!" And, hey, it's just around the corner!

That's the common thinking among many - especially software developers and computer scientists. New research coming out of Cornell University, however, suggests that our minds work differently than computers. Roland Piquepaille summarizes:

"We're using computers for so long now that I guess that many of you think that our brains are working like clusters of computers. Like them, we can do several things 'simultaneously' with our 'processors.' But each of these processors, in our brain or in a cluster of computers, is supposed to act sequentially.

Not so fast! According to a new study from Cornell University, this is not true, and our mental processing is continuous. By tracking mouse movements of students working with their computers, the researchers found that our learning process was similar to other biological organisms: we're not learning through a series of 0's and 1's. Instead, our brain is cascading through shades of grey."

At least one conclusion is obvious: many of the artificial intelligence "experts" seem to have been barking up the wrong tree. What interests me more, however, is why they were wrong in the first place.

You see, we software geeks tend to be notoriously optimistic, often in spite the facts. For example, somewhere between 70-80% of software development projects fail, die, or are abandoned, but you will rarely meet a programmer who anticipates it happening with his or her project.

Why is that? Why are we so confident in our reasoning abilities, even when all manner of metrics raise questions about our ability to draw accurate conclusions?

I think part of the problem is that by its very nature software design involves abstraction and simplification. A bigger issue is the the objectivity of the developer. You see, when your methodology inherently involves simplification, it's very easy for the desires of the simplifier to color the conclusions - it's very easy to end up with oversimplification.

That's why so many developers are wrong about things - we want it to be a certain way, and so we interpret the data accordingly: we think artificial intelligence is cool (after all, all of us geeks like Star Trek, right?), we see similarities between computers and our minds, and so we conclude (wrongly) that our minds work like computers.

It works just fine in sci fi, but it's not reality.

Unfortunately, all of the sciences are subject to the same critique. There really are no "brute facts" - every fact is an "interpreted fact" which cannot escape being affected by the emotional (and religious!) affections of the interpreter. Our hearts cannot help affecting our heads.

Consequently, I think we'd all do well to be a little more skeptical of our certainty, particularly when the conclusions are biased in favor of our actions. What we really need is someone who sees clearly to interpret reality for us. And I'd suggest that that is what God does through Scripture, through Christ.

What we really need is divine insight - after all, we already have plenty of artificial intelligence.

What to Do With Your Life

Wondering what to do with your life? A friend recently sent me Steve Job's commencement address at Stanford. I found it an interesting read, and thought I'd pass it along (without further comments for now).

Stanford University commencement ceremonies, June 12, 2005:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories..

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life..

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Why Ice Fishing Sucks

This is why Montanans are 'Fly Fisherman' rather than 'Ice Fisherman' (what do you want to bet this guy is using bait?)

Why Ice Fishing Sucks

How Much is Too Much?

So how much transparency is too much transparency, especially when you are a pastor, a leader, a parent, or someone else who's supposed to have it all together? Real Live Preacher tackles that question here with an interesting little set of diagrams. His conclusion?

If very good friends show you .9 of X [Where X is 'the real you, in all your sinful wickedness'], let us agree that a reasonably healthy and authentic pastor might show the congregation some lesser part of himself, say .5 or .6 of X. Most congregations don't want to see any more than that. And since many pastors have little time to nurture relationships outside of the congregation, they often have no one to whom they may show .9 of X.

This is why so many ministers feel lonely and isolated. At church they seem cheerful, outgoing, and winsome. At home, they struggle with depression, disillusionment, and despair.

As Real Live Preacher, I try to show you .9 of X.

For this I am both admired and despised.

I think this is an interesting illustration, and I willingly admit that I wrestle with how much of myself to reveal here on this blog. As regular readers know, I generally err on the side of saying too much rather than too little. And that's where RLP's illustration might be helpful.

You see, I think we can actually take it a little further. I would suggest that the goal of "how much of me to show" may vary, depending on the specifics of who you are talking to. The real goal is not "to reveal 100% of me" - it's really more along the lines of "to reveal as much of me as possible which will help people to turn to God and glorify him." In other words, the whole process of "me being really me" is not actually about me, so much as it is about God.

I need to reveal enough of my sin to demonstrate that I am human and imperfect (so people can relate their experiences with mine), but not so much as to cause them to focus completely on me (lest they despise me and write me off, or find themselves enticed by the blatancy of my sins).

Likewise I need to reveal as much of my sanctification as possible (to encourage people that change really is possible, and to set an example for others to follow), but never in a way that would cause them to magnify me rather than God (either to see me as some messiah, or to be incorrectly conclude that I am somehow better than they are).

So I need to be genuine, but in a way that drives people to Christ and causes them to glorify God and follow him, rather than in a way that leads them to focus on me (whether my triumphs or defeats). Just how much is too much will probably vary, but I think this may give us a guideline from which to start.

sin or god must die

i just read a great excerpt from the classic devotional book by oswald chambers my utmost for his highest. today's reading is called "acquainted with grief" and references isaiah 53.3, "he is...a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."

we are not "acquainted with grief" in the same way our lord was acquainted with it. we endure it and live through it, but we do not become intimate with it. at the beginning of our lives we do not bring ourselves to the point of dealing with the reality of sin. we look at life through the eyes of reason and say that if a person control his instincts, and educate himself, he can produce a life that will slowly evolve into the life of God. but as we continue on through life, we find the presence of something which we have not yet taken into account, namely, sin - and it upsets all of our thinking and our plans. sin has made the foundation of our thinking unpredictable, uncontrollable, and irrational.

we have to recognize that sin is a fact of life, not just a shortcoming. sin is a blatant mutiny against god, and either sin or god must die in my life. the new testament brings us right down to this one issue-if sin rules in me, god's life in me will be killed; if god rules in me, sin in me will be killed. there is nothing more fundamental than that. the culmination of sin was the crucifixion of jesus christ, and what was true in the history of god on earth will also be true in your history and in mine - that is, sin will kill the life of god in us. we must mentally bring ourselves to terms with this fact of sin. it is the only explanation why jesus christ came to earth, and it is the explanation of the grief and sorrow of life.

this really spoke to me this morning because of the reality of this second paragraph. as humans we have no choice but to be ruled by something. most of us think that we are free, but the truth is that just like in the movie the matrix, we are slaves in our own minds-slaves because of the very fact that we have deceived ourselves into thinking we are free. the reality is that we are either slaves to sin or we are slaves to god-there is no 3rd option.

many people would rather be a slave to sin because they think this is the option that gives them the most freedom. why is that? wouldn't we rather be slaves to the ruler for which we were created in the first place? every human being has longings in their soul that other worldly - where they think they have a higher purpose than this life. cs lewis says that if a person has a longing that cannot be explained by something in this world it is because they weren't created for this world.

what i'm getting at is that a life in god, will provide meaning to these longings. whereas most of us try to quench this thirst through intellectual assent or by numbing our minds through the lusts of the flesh, there is only one thing that can truly quench these longings. that is to be acquainted with our creator. and, as oswald explains above, as we are filled more and more by him, the things that we make up to try and fill his place in our life gradually gets put to death.

my call for you is to find life in god which will put sin to death. notice what i am not saying. i am not saying "put sin to death in order to find life in god." life in god must come first. that is the only way sin gets put to death in us.

Pryor Mountains, Montana

Just an FYI, for those of you who may not follow my Granitepeaks postings, the rest of our Father's Day trip-to-the-Pryors photos are up on our photo-blog. If you like flowers, mountains, scenic vistas and wild horses, you might want to check them out and see why Montanans see life a little differently...

what's your theological worldview?

i just took this theological worldview quiz which i saw over at life of a steward. I felt relieved when I came out mostly reformed, but was a little surprised at how high wesleyan was on my list. before you laugh (or judge me), take it for yourself and let me know where you came out.

You are a Reformed Evangelical. You take the Bible very seriously because it is God's Word. You most likely hold to TULIP and are sceptical about the possibilities of universal atonement or resistible grace. The most important thing the Church can do is make sure people hear how they can go to heaven when they die.

Reformed Evangelical		64%
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan		61%
Emergent/Postmodern		61%
Roman Catholic		54%
Charismatic/Pentecostal		43%
Classical Liberal		39%
Fundamentalist		39%
Neo orthodox		39%
Modern Liberal		11%

Mormon Piety

Silus Grok has been graciously answering a lot of my questions about Mormonism lately, and when I asked him what "Mormon Piety" looks like (I realize that's probably not what Mormons would call it - basically I just mean "spiritual practice"), he posted this response over on his blog.

I'd encourage you to check it out, and I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on it (as I'm sure he would be too).

Cinderella Man

So last night Marilyn and I celebrated our 15th anniversary by going out for dinner and then seeing Cinderella Man afterwards. The movie was excellent (acting, storyline, cinematography - every inch of it was first rate); set in the midst of the Great Depression, we get to watch the true story of an over-the-hill boxer try to keep his family from starving.

While I don't want to give too much away, there were a few things that really struck me as I watched it.

First, Jim Braddock was a man of character, the likes of which we seldom see these days. The scene where he makes his son return a stolen salami - when the family is starving - is heart wrenching: "We do not steal, ever! Do you understand me?". Watching him get up before dawn day after day to go try and find employment on the docks (even with a broken wrist) is a tribute to his work ethic. He never whines, complains, or gives up, even when he loses everything. He is a proud man who simply refuses to quit.

And at the same time, he is never too proud to do whatever it takes to provide for his family, even if it costs him his own pride and dignity. He is willing to fight hurt, to live in a shack, to take work wherever he can find it. He is willing to be humiliated by going on public assistance and at one point even asks a room full of wealthy businessmen who used to bet on him "back in the day" to put money in his hat so he can get his kids back. He is a humble man who knows when the debt is beyond him.

One of the most amazing scenes in the movie: the winds of change are beginning to stir and we see Braddock standing in the welfare line, the night after miraculously winning a big fight. Why is he there? To pay back everything the governement had given him! Simply unreal.

As I watched this movie, I could not help but think, "They don't make 'em like this anymore. The America that produced this kind of man is gone today." We live in a different world now, one where people feel entitled - where we are too lazy and selfish to do things the old fashioned way (hard work rather than easy credit), but where we are also too proud and self-confident to ever admit that we can't do it on our own (that we even have a problem, that we need someone to bail us out).

Anyone else see gospel parallels here? We are the antithesis of Jim Braddock. I dare you to watch the movie and tell me otherwise.

Now listen, I'm not naive - I have no idea whether Jim Braddock was a Christian or not; I'm certainly not suggesting that the America of the 30's was a "more Christian nation" than the America we live in today. I am simply saying that Braddock's life illustrates many of the values we find in Scripture (faithful diligence combined with humility in the face of need), and I find it interesting that such character is so alien in our modern society.

Back then, those who lacked his character still acknowledged it in him; today we despise it in others, especially when such convictions are based on faith in Christ. Today, our society says that character based on Christian values and convictions is wrong, it's dangerous.

In times like these, it seems like we could use a few more Cinderella Men...

Mormons & Polygamy

Polygamy and Mormonism are in the news again out in Utah. While I know that the Mormon church renounced polygamy over a century ago, a couple of paragraphs caught my eye:

Although polygamy is illegal, it's believed that tens of thousands of Mormon fundamentalists and others across the West continue the practice. ... The fundamentalist sect split from mainstream Mormonism after the broader church renounced polygamy more than a century ago. The fundamentalist group touts that men must have at least three wives to reach heaven.

And so my question for my Mormon friends is simply this - how do you know you are right and the "fundamentalist group" is wrong? If God's revelation is an open book which is still being written, how do you decide which prophets to listen to and which ones to reject? How would a non-Mormon know which "Mormonism" to convert to?

This is not a flame - I'm genuinely interested in knowing how you'd answer this question.

What's Your Secret?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to read someone's mind? To see what deep dark secrets lurk within? Well now you can, thanks to an interesting site called PostSecret.

The premise is simple really - people create postcards expressing something which is true about themselves that they've never told anyone... and then they mail it to him and he posts a photo. The resulting blog is a collage of collective secrets, things people are afraid to reveal to anyone else. Take this one for example...

Stuff like this is fairly representative. The artwork is generally interesting; the content is often dark and heavy.

What fascinates (and grieves) me most, however, is how much baggage and hurt folks are carting around. Some might say that it's only self-absorbed, navel-gazers who actually feel this way inside; Scripture says such is the universal condition of fallen man - there is no one righteous, not even one; we are all sinful, worshippers of self rather than of God (Rom 3:10-12).

So why do people get off on a site like this? Why does this guy receive more secrets than he can post? There is something cathartic about confession. God designed us that way. But confession alone can't change things, make them better. Consider this comment from someone in Texas...

I was very excited because I too had a secret I wanted to post. I thought long and hard about how I wanted to word my secret and I searched for the perfect postcard to display it on. After I had created my postcard I stepped back to admire my handiwork. Instead of feeling relieved that I had finally got my secret out, I felt terrible instead. It was right then that I decided that I didn't want to be the person with that secret any longer. I ripped up my postcard and I decided to start making some changes in my life.

Kudos to this person for realizing we need to do more than just admit we have a problem. After all, simply talking about it doesn't change anything.

Sometimes, however, we are powerless to change even when we want to - a quick look through this book of secrets will make it plain that much of this stuff is beyond people's control. People are enslaved by their secrets, and neither confession nor human effort can change their situation. That's because their problem stems from their hearts (cf. Mk 7:14-23).

Anyone who has ever loved someone they know they shouldn't can tell you just how difficult it is to simply stop feeling they way you feel. Seldom does our intellect succeed in driving our affections - usually its our affections, desires, lusts, and addictions that drive everything else.

The only hope of change, is to find a change of heart. And that's precisely what Christ offers.

What's your secret, the one keeping you in bondage? I am living proof that God changes hearts. But the only way it happens is by admitting your need and calling on Christ to save you, putting your confidence in him rather than yourself.

If you are looking for freedom, I know the secret to finding it...

What's In My Library?

Ok, so I have been tagged by Anne the Palm Tree Pundit (I feel so very cool). The topic centers on one of my favorite things...books!

(1) Number of books I own - Umm, I just asked my wife, and she rolled her eyes and muttered a disparaging "hundreds." I take that as a good sign, because it's actually well over that (probably somewhere between 800 and 1000). Which means she's lost count and I can keep asking for more... :-)

(2) Last book I bought - two by Lauren Winner: Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity, and Mudhouse Sabbath. I've read part of the second (it's ok), and I'm reading the first one a second time (it's excellent - which you can tell from my previous posts). Prior to that I purchased Subversive Spirituality by Eugene Peterson (which I am still working through - also excellent).

(3) Last book I read - Real Sex. You can read some of my thoughts on it here.

(4) Five books that mean a lot to me: (aside from the Bible, of course!)

1. Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz – This book provides penetrating, provocative reflection on Christian spirituality. Accessible and entertaining, it should resonate with the postmodern unbeliever in all of us. If I met a non-believer who was willing to read one book, this would be the one I would give them.
   
   
2. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce - Ok, if I was dealing with a thinking non-believer, I would probably give them C.S. Lewis rather than Donald Miller, and I would probably start them here, although I would also encourage them to read the Chronicles of Narnia (but it really needs to be a old, original-order hardcover set from the 60's, or better yet, a set like this!). Even better, I'd want them to read Lewis' Space Trilogy (this is absolutely one of the best pieces of science fiction of all time, by a real author who understands how literature actually works and can write well to boot!)
   
   
3. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy - Chesterton is a lot like Lewis... this is a great work more people need to read. Somehow I think Chesterton would easily hold his own in this rising tide of postmodernism.
   
   
4. Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty – This profound little book elegantly captures the heart of the gospel and illustrates how Sanctification by Faith fits squarely in the Reformed tradition.
   
   
5. For this last one, I'm going to change gears and list some favorites in the children's lit. genre, many of them very old and hard to find (and you REALLY need the hardcover versions of these - bookfinder.com can be a great resource here) - Fred Gipson's Savage Sam, Alfred Ollivant's Bob Son of Battle, Hilda Lewis' The Ship That Flew, Edward Ormondroyd's David and the Phoenix, and more recently, Kate Dicamillo's The Tale of Despereaux. And of course anything by Tolkien and Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy. And, as a bonus if you can lay your hands on a copy, Steven Lindblom's The Mouses' Terrible Christmas (a mere 30 pages or so, with illustrations, but you will pee your pants laughing).

SO! How's that for eclectic? Now it's my turn... I tag Ryan, Charles, and Andree Seu (of World Magazine fame).

Real Sex Reality Check

I heard someone say recently that while sex may only account for 10% of a healthy marriage, it can easily become 90% of a bad one. The point here is simple: sex matters bigtime, and the prevalence of our sexual struggles - experienced by those both within and without the confines of marriage, on both sides of the dividing line of faith - suggests the seriousness of our disfunction.

Society tells us the problem is simply a matter of size or technique (you just need "more-bigger-better," and then it conveniently offers us all manner of "low-cost, zero-guilt-or-consequence" solutions). Scripture, however, flies in the face of such mainstream sensibilities, pointing us in the opposite direction: God calls all of us to inhabit sexual chastity - abstinence outside of marriage, fidelity within it.

Any guesses as to which message is more popular?

In Chapter 1 of Real Sex, Lauren Winner cuts to the heart of the problem with an excellent observation:

What sits at the center of Christian sexual ethics is not a negative view of sex; the Christian vision of marriage is not, at its most conise, merely, "no sex before marraige." Rather, the heart of the Christian story about sex is a vigorously positive statement: sex was created for marriage. Without a robust account of the Christian vision of sex within marriage, the Christian insistence that unmarried folks refrain from sex just doesn't make any sense...the core of this book is an effort to offer a definition, in a Christian vocabulary and grammar, of good sex, even (as the title suggests) of real sex. (p25)

Winner is quick to point out, however, that while the church may have the right theological answers for our sexual angst, we have often done a poor job of communicating the positive side of that message. Even worse, we frequently fail to provide both a context where people can be open about their sexual struggles, and find resources and accountability to strengthen them in their trials.

The result is an ecclesiological equivalent of gays in the military - when it comes to sexual chastity in the church, we end up with "don't ask, don't tell" where we all say one thing but many practice another.

The first chapter of Winner's book should serve as a wakeup call for this present reality. In terms of our sexual demographics, the church often looks indistinguishable from the world:

• 65% of America's teens have sex by the time they graduate from high school; 75% of women will have sex before marriage; 41% will cohabitate with a man;
  
• over 25% of 15 to 17 year old girls think that sex is "almost always" part of a "casual relationship"
• for the most part Christians match these trends - a survey in the 90s showed that only one-third of single Christians are virgins (which means that two-thirds aren't)
• for those who have maintained there virginity in college, religious reasons are extremely low on the list (most just haven't had the opportunity, or are still waiting for "the right person")
• a study of teens who took abstinence pledges (think "True Love Waits") found that those who took the pledge abstained from sex a year and a half longer than those who didn't - which means they're having sex at 19 instead of at 18
• research at Northern Kentucky University showed that 61% of students who signed such pledges broke them; but of the 39% who kept them, 55% said they had oral sex but did not consider that to be sex (Winner notes that anectdotally, a similar percentage of self-identified evangelical college students felt the same way about anal sex - fair game)
  

Winner has plenty more of such statistics (the book would be worth reading for this first chapter alone). Her point is that in terms of sexual practice, professing Christians are not that different from unabashed pagans, and this holds true across the denominational board (yes, even those Reformed Puritan girls and boys are engaging in some not-so-puritanical behavior).

And if such is the reality, Winner says it's high time the church starts talking about the situation. That's really the direction the book goes from here - how do we help Christians living in such a hyper-sexualized society actually reclaim a biblical view of sexuality? How do we help them inhabit chastity?

Winner says we need to start by seeing chastity as a spiritual discipline - to realize that it doesn't come naturally and certainly won't be easy; but it can be embraced and the benefits are real. She finds four ingedients particularly important:

• 1) time (viewing chastity as an ongoing process),
  
• 2) prayer,
  
• 3) reading (both Scripture and Christian writings), and most importantly
  
• 4) the church (a community of believers to help bear one another's burdens).

I won't try to flesh out the details behind these categories (that's really what Winner does throughout the rest of the book). But this is the basic trajectory of Real Sex, and my goal in sharing this much detail is to encourage you to pick up a copy of this book and start reading it for yourself. This is a huge issue facing the church today, and thoughtful answers must start with an honest assessment of where we are.

Joshua Ryan Sutherland

For those of you who are interested, Ryan and Rachel have posted some new 3-D ultrasound images of Joshua Ryan which you can see over here, along with an update on their situation. If you are looking for background info on what's going on the Sutherland's pregnancy, you can read about it here. As always, your prayers would be greatly appreciated...

20 things to know in your 20's

i've been reading a magazine called relevant for about a year now. i've become somewhat bored with the trendiness of the magazine recently, but every now and then they have an interesting article that grabs my attention. their book section has some really great titles though such as the one that i want to buy right now, the naked christian (click here for a sample chapter).

anyway the recent article that grabbed my attention from their current issue is titled 2o things to know in your 20's by Colin Creel. here's the list:

1. live below your means
2. live life like an adventure, do not merely endure it
3. honor god with your resources
4. create a clear picture of your "dream" spouse. "take out a sheet of paper and recognize those traits, both physical emotional, that are important to you. wait and pray. i had to wait eight years after i wrote the list, but yowza, she was worth the wait."
   
5. stop wrestling with god
6. wait on god's timing
7. do not settle for anything less than god's best
8. take time to fill up
9. critique your bookshelf
10. pay god, pay yourself, pay your bills
11. establish perspective
12. invest in people
13. pay your dues, "do not be in such a hurry to climb to the top or to find the 'perfect' job. think of each job as an opportunity to enhance your skill set."
14. christ doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies those he calls
15. face your fears
16. guard against the tyrrany of the urgent
17. enjoy your freedom
18. establish disciplines
19. writed down your prayers
20. dream

each of these has a short explanation as well, which i don't think i'm at liberty to give you here without doing some copywrite injustice. i gave you two quotes from the explanations under 4 and 13.

as i approach the end of my 20's i can honestly say that this is a great list. 20-somethings like myself are in such a hurry to get going in life and establish themselves that we don't often take time out to do many of these things. ironically, the things that drive us often also inhibit us from taking this kind of advice.

what do you guys think of this list? is there more you would add?

Daisies at Dusk

It was a beautiful evening tonight...

Trial By Marriage

David Wayne over at JollyBlogger has a great post on how marriage can be a trial by fire. Here's a snippet of an incident with his wife while they were going through seminary:

One day we were sitting around, not sure if we had just had a fight and not sure what prompted this confession, but she let me know that if I were to die, she had already picked out the guy she wanted to marry next. He was a young, good looking single guy there at the seminary. Oh, I said. Well, it just so happened that I had been thinking along the same lines. So I told her that I too had my eye on a future mate if she should die. I had picked out this cute little blonde from Alabama who had a southern accent that wouldn't quit.

Of course you understand the position we were coming from. As Christians we knew we could never divorce, so we had to hope for the death of our spouse. You may have heard Ruth Bell Graham's famous words that she had never, ever considered divorcing Billy, but she had considered murder on a few occasions. That's the perspective we were operating under.

Strange as it may seem, that was a kind of healing moment for us. Rather than lash out at each other we cracked up. Here we were, the great man of God in training and his lovely and godly wife, secretly planning a life after the other's death. And as I said, it was strange, I think we actually grew closer through that because the blinders came off and we both realize that we were both sinners who were married to sinners - EGAD, oh the horror!

I think at that time we began learning the fine art of cutting each other some slack. We both realized that we could start demanding perfection from each other when we had reached perfection. I think one of the reasons we have such a good marriage is that slack is something we cut each other on a daily basis.

Click here to read the whole thing...

I appreciate David's realization that marriage is not be-all, end-all, cure-all that makes everything better - and yet that is often how we view it. People enter marriage thinking that is going to cure their problems, strengthen their failing relationship.

It does do that - or at least it can - but the way it does this is often unexpected, and what it requires of me is often painful. You see, above all else, marriage reveals us for who we are. It's like sandpaper, an irritant that grinds away. It's like a magnifying class, which takes little imperfections and enlarges them for everyone to see.

And what marriage reveals is what I'd least like to admit - I am indeed a sinful, selfish person. Do I love my wife because she cooks and cleans and is a great lover, because she performs according to my expectations? Or do I love her simply because she is my wife, because I promised to love her in spite of her beauty, her utility, her performance?

You see, marriage reveals that we are both deeply flawed. And apart from such recognition, repentance and forgiveness are both impossible. Grace is meaningless if we do not also understand our own shortcomings, failures, and inadequacies. But a couple who sees the magnitude of their sins can also appreciate the magnitude of forgiveness in spite of those sins.

This is why Jesus spoke of the woman who was a "sinner" - she loves much, because she has been forgiven much (Lk 7:47). And his point for all of us is that we are sinners too, just as bad if not far worse.

This brings us back to the heart of the gospel: we can't learn to love until we learn to forgive, and we'll never learn to forgive others until we see our own need for forgiveness. Marriage brings these realities to the fore. The way we learn to live together is by first learning to die to ourselves and to repent of our self-righteous pride. That's where real marriage begins...

More Real Sex

So a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I had Lauren Winner's Real Sex on my reading list. I have since read the book, and found it very, very good. Good enough that I intend to post further on it shortly (right after I finish re-reading it). Good enough that I will be recommending it to a lot of friends and their spouses (or significant others), with the invitation to sit down and talk about it afterwards. This is an exceptional book for facilitating dialogue, about how our sexuality relates to our Christian community - Winner never titillates, but she doesn't pull any punches either. If Real Sex is not already on your radar, it needs to be.

Ok, enough gushing. If you want to know more sooner rather than later, I'd encourage you to check out the recent World Magazine interview with Winner. They are quick to point out that Winner has not always held this position - as recently as 2000 Winner was wrestling with whether or not it's ok to be a single Christian who is sexually active (cf. Sex and the Single Evangelical. Winner has since modified her views, but this article is still a great example of her writing style).

So what types of things is Lauren saying today? Here's an example...

Chastity is not just about keeping your pants zipped. It is about renouncing bodily union with another person so that you can find a deeper union with the Body of Christ. This is why some of the recent books on modesty irk me. Many of these books suggest to women that they should be chaste because godly men don't want to date women who wear tubetops; because farmers won't buy the cow if they can get the milk for free; because chaste women will attract godly men. If that's your reason for dressing modestly—if your attention is still focused on attracting the right kind of guy—then I'm not sure you're really inhabiting chastity.

Inhabiting chastity. Sound interesting? Read the articles, grab a copy of Winner's book, and then check back soon for further discussion...

Why I Like the Yankees

Two words: Derek Jeter. This is how I want my kids to play the game, whether it's baseball or life.

Yes we need to keep both those things (baseball and life) in perspective - after all, neither means anything apart from the context of a relationship with God. I just think that this is the type of thing Paul had in mind when he told Timothy to consider the example of the faithful soldier, the hardworking farmer, and the athlete who competes according to the rules (2 Tim 2:3-7).

Jeter is a great athlete, and he plays the game the way it was meant to be played - humbly, and all out. He's the reason why I like the Yankees.