First US Official to Resign Over Afgan War

The war is painful for everybody involved, including the leaders.

Here is the last paragraph from Matthew Hoh's resignation letter:

I realize the emotion and tone of my letter and ask you to excuse any ill temper. I trust you understand the nature of this war and the sacrifices made by so many thousands of families who have been separated from loved ones deployed in defense of our Nation and whose homes bear the fractures, upheavals and scars of multiple and compounded deployments. Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds, some that will never heal or will only worsen with time. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can anymore be made. As such, I submit my resignation.

Sincerely,

Matthew P. Hoh

Senior Civilian Representative

Zabul Province, Afghanistan

Let Loose Your Inner Nerd

5 rational realities that science cannot account for. The nerd side of me loved watching this clip of one nerd getting absolutely OWNED by the other nerd. Check out the look on the dude's face after each point at 1:42, 2:11, and 2:22.

1. Logical and mathematical truths

2. Metaphysical truths

3. Ethical beliefs about statements of value

4. Aesthetic judgments

5. Science itself

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Tim Keller @ Google

If the other Tim Keller post intrigued you, here is a lecture given by Tim Keller which includes a question and answer time regarding his New York Times best seller The Reason for God. The video is lengthy but well worthy your time if you watch the whole thing.

Tim Keller's New Book

My next series of posts will include various articles, videos, and who knows what else that I have found helpful, interesting, and who knows what else over the past few weeks. Here's a video of Tim Keller introducing some thoughts about his new book Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters.

Here's My Week in 60 Seconds

[This weekend I went to a Black and White costume party.]

[We totally didn't plan this, but there were 3 "Mormons missionaries" there. I lost my name tag somewhere in the Safeway parking lot during the photo scavenger hunt.]

Sunday night I went to a "Slam Poetry" thingamajig down the street with some new church friends. I learned that the audience is supposed to raise their right hand when the poet has 10 seconds remaining and that the polite way to encourage a poet who is struggling to remember his or her words is to snap your fingers.

I'm doing homework each night this week. Friday night and Saturday morning I'm attending membership classes for Providence and then on Saturday night I'm going to the Meese show. I have to go shower now and then go to work.

One in a Million Flu Shot Reaction

Picking Up Steam

[Mutemath]

This past week was pretty packed full of excitement. Wednesday night, Mike, Aaron, and I went to a Mutemath show at the Ogden Theater downtown. Here is a video I took of their hit song "Typical."

I spent much of my work week last week training for my CDL test tomorrow morning. Having my CDL will allow me to drive a school bus for work to help transport students.

If you haven't had your head buried a hole this weekend, you've probably heard news about the "balloon kid." Yup, that's Colorado for you. The family involved in the "hoax" as it's now being called lives about an hour north of Denver.

In recent reading, I was directed to this article online. It's written by one of my favorite song writers, Jon Foreman, and addresses the craziness of America and our heroic treatment of celebrities who are anything but heroic. Here is a paragraph from the article.

Let's face it. Mother Teresa doesn't look that good in a negligee. And Team Hoyt won't sell beer commercials to the networks. But when the ball players and the supermodels end up in rehab, we end up asking esoteric questions about what makes a hero. In the movies the good looking actor who gets the girl is easy to point to. But after he gets the girl, then the house, and then a few kids and then a divorce and then another girl. Then what? After all of the special effects are gone, we're left with an aging mortal who looks a bit awkward on the talk shows. Perhaps we've set our goals too low. Or perhaps we've got it backwards. (read more)

Friday night Mike, Greg, and I attended an all-night (10 p.m. - 6 a.m.) prayer meeting at church. We attended the 10 p.m. - 2 a.m. shift. I was later told that 50% of the church participated in the event. That's great participation for an event like that. These prayer nights occur quarterly at Cornerstone. We spent time singing together, praying together, praying alone, discussing Scripture, and distributing care packages to the homeless people in the community.

Church has continued to make me uncomfortable, in a good way. There has been a steady increase in homeless people attending the church. As one raised in a comfortable setting, this is an unusual experience for me. In fact, one guy has been sleeping in his car outside the church for weeks and that's how he learned of Providence Bible Church. Another guy parked his shopping cart in front of the church today and attended the service. It challenges me to see our pastor put his arm around a first-time visitor homeless guy after hearing him share a testimony about how he has had AIDS for 23 years (as a result of a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll) and pray for him in front of the congregation.

After church, a group of us walked to the 16th Street Mall downtown for lunch. I met a lot of new people today and am looking forward to attending membership classes at the end of the month and possibly getting involved in the music ministry.

That should be enough for now.

P.S. Hawkeyes are 7-0 and Churchill is recording 2 music videos for Comcast on Tuesday.

Jesus in "The Washington Post"

No 'Best Case' Way to Present God, but Many False Ways

Q: What makes the best 'case for God' to a skeptic or non-believer, an open-minded seeker, and to a person of faith and Why?

Answer
Jesus.

Christianity is not first and foremost about a sacred place to pilgrimage to, a philosophical system to ponder, a moral code to live, a religious tradition to honor, or an impersonal god to experience. Rather, Christianity is about a person who claimed to be the only God and said he would prove his unprecedented claim by living without sin, dying for sinners, and conquering death through resurrection.

So, as Christians, our aim is not to convince people of some god in general, but to introduce them to Jesus in particular. And since he created us with the ability to communicate, think, love, and experience, Christians have always valued using every means by which the truth and love of Jesus can be revealed.

Helpful to this end is using the evidence for a personal Creator who handcrafted our world for human life by explaining the principles of intelligent design and such things as the fine-tuning argument and the argument for irreducible complexity. These show that our world is a gift to be enjoyed worshipfully and stewarded wisely.

It is also important that people learn to understand how God speaks uniquely and authoritatively through the Bible. Acts that can aid in this include giving away Bibles (along with helpful Christian books) as gifts for people to simply read, bringing people to church to listen to the Bible preached, inviting people to small groups and classes to ask their questions about the Bible, and recommending good podcasts that would bring the Bible into the daily rhythm of their commutes, exercise workouts, and the like.

On a more practical level, acts of truly selfless compassion--done not for fame, notoriety, or to merit God's approval, but done out of love for someone--help to reveal a small measure of God's loving, merciful, compassionate nature. In a world where people use one another far more frequently than they love one another, these kinds of acts can be signs pointing to the God who is altogether good. As one example, in our church filled mainly with young people, we have put much effort into weeping with and serving the hundreds and hundreds of victims of molestation and rape.

Thus, informing the mind about Scripture, explaining the world and our place in it under God, and extending a hand of loving compassion all help to give people a framework by which to interpret their life experiences. They can begin to see that God has made them, wants to speak with them, and desires restored relationship with them, relationship that otherwise remains broken through sin.

While each of these ways of informing someone's understanding is important, none is alone sufficient. That is because what they leave us with is knowledge about God by revealing what he has done (creation), how he communicates (the Bible), and what he seeks (relationship). But we still do not enjoy that relationship.

This leads us to Jesus.

Christianity has always held, based upon the teachings of Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament and apostles of the New Testament, that in Jesus, the Creator has entered into creation on a rescue mission for the restoring of relationship, in fulfillment of Scripture. For making the three most unprecedented claims in the history of the world--that he was without sin as the only God and the only path to salvation--Jesus was treated without compassion. He was lied about, arrested, falsely tried, beaten, whipped beyond recognition, nailed to a cross, and lifted up for a crowd to mock, jeer, and spit upon. Jesus our Creator then, with bloodied lips, spoke the word "forgive" for his murderers. Jesus died to pay the penalty for sin as the greatest act of compassion the world has or will ever

witness; the Creator died for his creation, to make enemies friends.

Three days later, Jesus rose, conquering sin and death and vindicating his claims. Subsequently, if Jesus is dead, so is Christianity. If Jesus is alive, so is Christianity. And so while there is no "best case" for presenting God, there are false ways of presenting God: as anyone in addition to or other than Jesus Christ. As Christians, our goal is never to lie to people by only telling them what they want to hear, or manipulating them to feel what they want to feel. Instead, we want to respect them enough to tell them the truth, and love them enough to do so in a way that is compassionate. We care more about the truth and the love than having the "best case." We believe that there is power in the truth about Jesus that can unleash new life in people as they agree with the truth about him.

- article by Pastor Mark Driscoll

A Helpful Interview

This interview provides helpful advice for progressing on one's personal walk with Christ.

A Lazy Sunday Afternoon

So this past week contained a little bit of everything. I filled in teaching some morning ESL classes at work. It was a lot of fun but a little trickier at times because I normally teach an advanced class and these morning classes were beginner level. That means that many of the students speak little to no English. Nevertheless, I had a great time and would happily teach the classes again.

One semi-funny moment was teaching the students to clearly pronounce the "r" in the word "party" as to not confuse it with the word "potty." It was kind of a you-had-to-be-there moment but I explained to the students what "potty" meant on the board by drawing a picture of a toilet. As the students recognized what I was drawing, they started laughing and realized that the student had told me that she and her family went to the potty together over the weekend.

I wrote my paper for class this week and turned it in yesterday. That's the first paper I've had to write in almost 2 years. Crazy MLA format, takes a while to remember how to site all your sources and such. If I get a good enough grade on the paper, maybe I'll post it on here for those interested in reading it. It deals with gender equality and headship in marriage. Not the least bit controversial.

Friday night I came home from work only to get invited to go to a Manchester Orchestra concert. I've never really listened to the band before, but figured sure, why not. Mike, Aaron, and I made the trek up to the University of Colorado for the show but the tickets sold out (they were only available at the door) when we were 7 people from the front on the line. Rats. If only we hadn't wandered around campus looking for the venue we would have gotten in. We ended up meeting up with Greg at a Starbucks and headed over to Aaron's house to chill.

Yesterday afternoon I did laundry and watched Fair Fight - a documentary about the filming of The Fray's newest album. Last night was a house warming party at the Meese's. Greg, Joe, Nate, and I made a killer fire pit* in the back yard. It was fun hanging out with a bunch of new people. I was gonna take a few pictures at the party to post but I forgot my camera at Aaron's Friday night because I had also intended to take some pictures at the concert. 0/2.

This whole upcoming week at work I'm taking classes to officially get my air brakes CDL so I can drive the Goals school bus. Twill be exhilarating, I'm sure.

*The fire pit was a large cement flower pot that we put some logs in. We found out later that you're not supposed (read: it's illegal)to have fires within city limits. Oops.

This blog has not been abandoned, I've just been very busy of late. I'll update this on Sunday -- hopefully.

You've Got to be Kidding Me

It's stuff that this that makes Christians easy targets.