Since it’s Friday and I’m preparing for yet another international adventure (to Australia this time!), here’s a video that will hurt your brain.

It’s not quite string theory, but close enough to make your head explode a little bit. I love the point where philosophy meets physics.

I don’t normally quote Bible verses on here. You can probably tell by the nature of the things I write. I’m more inclined to quote atheist philosophers; more comfortable getting irate about how some people live out what they believe (with terrible results) rather than exhorting you with a word from the Lord.

This is mostly because I admittedly don’t know my Bible as well as I ought, considering it’s what I believe (most of the time), but also in large part because I get frustrated at people who quote verses at any opportune — and oftentimes inopportune — moment.

I’m just not That Guy. It’s probably a bad thing to some people, a good thing to others. I’m sure one day I won’t doubt my own beliefs enough that it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

And, yet, today I give you a word from God. Via my grandmother, who ended an email (yeah, my 80-something grandma emails! Cause she’s awesome!) with this verse:

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19; NIV)

Rooted and established in love. A love that surpasses knowledge, no less. Huhhhh.

I’m going to butcher this quote, but one time Jay Bakker passed along a brief note that said something to the effect of “theology is not one of the fruits of the spirit.”

Go to seminary. Spend four years at a Christian college absorbing Bible knowledge. But, guaranteed, if you don’t love others before you throw knowledge in their faces, you will be ineffective, pushing them two steps back from where you want them. If they’re anything like me, anyway.

Maybe that’s why I don’t take huge issue with the fact that, thus far, I haven’t done much in the way of memorizing verses and having a firm stance on Romans 8 that I can give a lengthy dissertation on.

And you were too busy
Steering the conversation toward the Lord
To hear the voice of the Spirit
Begging you to shut the fuck up
You thought, it must be the devil
Trying to make you go astray
And besides, it could not have been the Lord
Because you don’t believe He talks that way

from “Foregone Conclusions” by Pedro the Lion

Sometimes you see something that makes you slap your forehead, not because of the thing itself, but at how well it sends the message of how silly some people are.

Thanks, Al Franken, for your satire via The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus. If only everyone saw the issue so clearly. The best part is that Franken may not even be aware of the message he sends about how the kingdom we are meant to participate in is not the empire around us.

Time to read Jesus for President again. I keep saying that.

At the risk of alienating a few people, I’m gonna throw this out there: healing prayer seems to be full of crap 99% of the time.

Here’s my deal: I’ve heard stories of miracles happening in people’s lives when they are prayed over for healing. It’s even happened to people I know. But I’ve also noticed that people pray for healing a lot more than it actually happens.

Sometimes I wonder if the more charismatic Christians forget that praying to God is not a way to get your wishes granted. Remember how Jesus told us to pray “Thy will be done”? That’s because it’s up to God to do the healing, not anything we do. So why do people pray over others for healing then act a bit disappointed when nothing happens? I’ve seen that a few times. Or worse, they say something to the effect of “well, sometimes it takes a little while.” Yeah. That’s called healing. You know, the kind that happens to all normal humans whether or not they pray to God or even believe in Him.

From what I’ve observed, it seems more like God sometimes works miracles in people’s lives, and sometimes it happens while someone is praying, so they assume their prayer had a significant role in the healing when God was going to do it anyway. I sometimes even wonder if it’s a little joke He plays just to throw people off. Yeah, I know. I’m terrible.

Sorry, call me a doubter or a cynic or whatever, but sometimes I feel like people are highly unrealistic about the whole thing. I probably just opened up a can of worms I’ll wish I never touched, but it’s how I feel.

Please don’t take this as an excuse to not pray if you are the praying type. Rather, see it as raising awareness of the fact that we don’t have special powers. Even if we have the faith to move mountains, sometimes God would rather we didn’t.

Every once in a while I feel inclined to read a book outside of my normal scope of literature. Mostly I read modern novels less than 100 years old and any sort of modern nonfiction. 1800s British lit isn’t exactly a strong point, but yet I still feel the need to give it a try every so often when such a book comes into my possession.

Wuthering Heights is that kind of book. You know, the kind where you have to slow way down to understand what’s going on, inevitably there’s some character that speaks in an accent or dialect that is beyond comprehension, and there’s always something to do with cousins marrying each other, then killing each other, and riding horses through “the moors.” Whatever those are.

What I wasn’t expecting, though, is a book that is all sorts of dark. Well, as dark as a girl in England could have written 150 years ago without getting thrown in the loony bin, anyway. Every character is plagued by some sort of evil, and a couple of them don’t have a good bone in their body.

So what ensues is a 200-year-old British soap opera where kids are marrying each others’ inlaws (not cousins, but close enough). And there’s this guy Heathcliff who only does stuff to piss people off, so he marrys his brother-in-law’s sister, just to make the guy angry, cause the guy married his sister. Well, sort of sister, cause Heathcliff’s adopted.

And then (SPOILER ALERT) pretty much all the main characters die from either grief or madness.

The long and short of it is that this book isn’t too bad. A slow read for me, and not worth reading if you want something happy, but still well done, considering the odds were against it for me in the first place. But yeah, Wuthering Heights is pretty much a book about how to make people unhappy.

In July 2008, hotelier and developer Doug Manchester donated $125,000 to help gather signatures for a proposition that would ban same-sex marriage in California. The early money was crucial to getting the initiative — which ultimately passed — on the ballot. At the time, he told The New York Times that he made the donation because of “my Catholic faith and longtime affiliation with the Catholic Church,” which preferred that marriage remain between a man and a woman. Indeed, the Catholic Church has vehemently opposed gay marriage. Then again, it’s also not too keen on divorce.

(via San Diego CityBeat)

I’ve said this before, though maybe not here, but a lot of people have their priorities mixed up when they care more about 1% of the population ruining the sanctity of marriage when roughly 50% of marriages end in divorce.

Let’s start pushing for a proposition to ban divorce and see how people like it. If you think that makes less sense than letting gay people get married, maybe you should reevaluate some things.

Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, I want to make sure you are aware that, when I write these blog posts (or notes, for those reading Facebook), I’m well aware that it’s very likely that I’m wrong or off-base about things I say.

I’ve long held to the idea that the beginning of wisdom is admitting to knowing nothing (thanks Socrates). I do want to be wise, so I take the nothing that I know, grab an idea and spin it around in my head and spit out some words for you to read that could be right or could be the stupidest thing ever.

I wish I had time to respond and dialogue on every comment I get on the things I write, and I hope that my lack of response leads no one to believe I think them wrong (or right, for that matter).

Maybe that’s the next step in becoming wise: listening to the experience and opinion of those around you with an open mind and humble heart.

I’m working on it, friends. I hope you enjoy my ramblings half as much as I enjoy hearing what you have to say about them.

I swear to you, if this film doesn’t get US distribution like the rumors say, I will resort to illegal means to make sure I see it.

Five words: Tom Waits plays the Devil. And six more words, for good measure: Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell.

The call for young marriage raises questions: How young is too young? What if marriage is viewed as a ticket to guilt-free sex? What about the fact that marrying young is the No. 1 predictor of divorce?

(via Evangelicals Try Early Marriage)

One one hand, I think getting married young just for guilt-free sex is the stupidest idea ever. I feel like kids today probably mature slower since they often don’t have much taste of real independence or “adult life” until after high school and, for some, after college, unlike people 100 years ago who were probably more prepared for adult life by 16. Like it says, “marrying young is the number one predictor of divorce.” Not sure where they got that stat, but I believe it based on my own anecdotal evidence.

On the other hand, it makes a good point that the longer you wait, the harder it becomes to avoid that temptation and urges.

So pick your poison, I guess: marry young and risk a messed-up marriage, or wait until you find the right person and risk giving in to temptation. I’m 25 and unmarried, so I guess you know which poison I took. (Whether that was an active choice or not is up for debate.)

And then there’s comments like this that make me wonder if Christian culture has gone completely off the deep end:

Among evangelicals, there’s a tendency to wait because many believe God “is going to deliver me a spouse right to my door,” so they don’t actively seek one, said Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies for the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family, a young marriage promoter.

Another symptom of the passivity of today’s Christian “man.” But that’s a topic for another day.

“In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,” says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn't as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser — or, for that matter, from magazines like this one.

(via Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin)

Well, what do you know. I guess the past few years all that going to the gym just to stay healthy has not been in vain. So many ask why I don’t feel bad that I don’t lose weight at the gym. Now we all know.

This is definitely an encouragement to work more on my diet, though. I fluctuate between good and poor diet far to much. And I’m someone who actually is conscientious of what I eat much more than many people I know. Kind of scary.