Failure = Freedom

All of my life growing up I was told, "You are so smart...you can be [insert respected profession]." Every adult in my life since the time I entered first grade has been telling me about all of the things that I could do for people. Many of them have sited a further ability to process logically and connect large concepts as the main catalyst for this. 

To be quite honest, I never wanted to be any of the things that people asked me to be. I don't want to be a doctor, although I'm sure I could do a good job of it. I don't want to be a lawyer or anything else that carries prestige of that nature. Many people have looked at where I am and consider what I am and what I do successful and many have considered it failure to use my potential. 

A band that I used to listen to coined it rather simply:

"There's nothing like complete exhaustion 

The atrophy of complete defeat 
The feeling of the world upon my shoulders 
And realizing I am incomplete 
Well there's a lot of freedom in failure 
Of recklessness of weightless abandonment " - Brave Saint Saturn

I was pining my entire life to live up to standards that everyone else set for me. I wanted to be the smartest, the most well-payed, the most famous, the most "successful" (whatever that means). The thing that I had to learn was that the whole time I was yearning to make things happen on my own, my soul was reaching out for something larger than myself and in a sense holding me back. Not holding me back from what I should be, but holding me back from being distracted by a feint illusion of happiness and a future that ultimately would serve to be more and more self gratifying. The other thing is that it seemed the closer that I got to achieving success the further it walked away. I can name several times in my life where it seemed a fruit was dangled directly in front of me to be wildly successful and then it disappears. The enemy works like that.  

Christ calls each and every one of us to serve others and deny ourselves. When we die daily as He calls us to, we are crucifying our own desires and as a result we pin all of our successes and failures on Him. We have all heard a lot of this in sermons and it's a tired speech, but many people take it there and simply stop - robbing you of the real statement. 

When you nail your success and failure to Christ, you are freed from the burden of failure because He will turn all things to good for THOSE THAT LOVE HIM. I struggled in life a lot and have had many things come up that I simply could not understand and when I look back it all boils down to a simple concept of not relying on Him. He will honor your obedience and your sacrifices with blessings.

Tricks Satan uses to rob you of your spiritual purpose:

1) Distracting you with goals that are self serving (Money, Power, Success, Achievement, Fame, etc.)

2) Preys on your emotions of inadequacy

3) Gives thoughts of doubt and emotions of fear (The bible says almost 365 times not to fear)

4) Has you looking for physical signs of His presence (Testing God)

                  -For the record, once I became more obedient I started seeing much more of His presence

5) Engages you in logical reasoning against God's will (Versus leaning not on your own understanding)

Many people think that Satan is there to try to harm you and punish you. I feel that those notions could not be farther from the truth. The Art of War by Sun Tzu speaks to strategy as deception. To be victorious you should make your enemy think you are weak when you are strong, unorganized when you are organized, unprepared while you stand ready, and several other deceptions along those lines. If you think that Satan is unintelligent in the Art of War you are fooling yourself. Satan will make you think that he is very strong, when comparatively to God he is incredibly weak. He will make you think that he doesn't have a plan for you when he is consistently searching for whom he can devour. He will make you think that the bad things that are happening in your life are all because of him, when all the while he is tempting you with sinful desires to lead you astray.

Don't be fooled. Money, Knowledge, Power, Beauty, Wisdom, and all other things will pass away but His word. The only thing that will ever matter in life is the effect you have on other people and when you sacrifice yourself you are free to fail because the overwhelming power of Christ takes over and turns things to good FOR you. It's the ultimate safety net.

Jesus Believed In Evolution

I recently was engaged in a topic with a friend regarding the trials and tribulations of Evolution-ism versus Creationism. While I am myself someone who believes in Jesus Christ, I do have some ideas that stray from the conventional notions of "right wing" christians.

NO SUCH THING AS PROOF
Many times people want PROOF on one side or the other that Evolution and The Big Bang started everything, or that God Created everything. Let's be clear. There is no such thing as PROOF in religion or theory. It will either be based off of an educated guess or simply on faith. But on to the topic.

USING THE BIBLE WITH/AGAINST SCIENCE
To be entirely objective, you need to look at the bible as a book that is historically very accurate but still written by man and the theories of evolution and the big bang also the same. If you contend that a writing of man is being put to a writing of God, you are simply undone by a narrow reply that "God said it" and the like. I personally believe the Bible is the written word of God, but for the topic at hand, let's say it was written by man and is historically pretty accurate.

ARGUMENTS FOR CREATIONISM

1. No transitional fossils have been found to prove a phase of transition of one evolutionary form to another

1. Evolution as a theory posits that everything was created from nothing (i.e. the big bang)

1. In Genesis the Bible speaks to a creation as a literal six (seventh day rested) venture

1. Evolutionary reasoning is circular and therefore flawed

1. Certain animals do not exhibit evolutionary traits

ARGUMENTS FOR EVOLUTION

1. Dinosaurs (and their lack of mention in a scriptural text matching fossils)

1. The age of the earth (approx. 4.54 billion years)

1. Observed adaptation of animals based on surrounding areas

1. Mathematical formulation regarding the expansion and contraction of the universe

1. Biblical inconsistency regarding creation

1. M Theory

So rather than tackle each individual topic for each argument I am going to pose a series of thoughts and questions supporting how I think these two theories can work together. 

COULD GENESIS BE AN ALLEGORY FOR CREATION?

In the bible, Jesus is referred to as "The Word" several times. In Genesis it begins, "In the beginning there was the word and the word was God, and the word was with God." This lends most scholars to the theological notion that Jesus (who is the spoken word of God) was with God at the time of creation. My personal belief on this is that if it can be written allegorically regarding Jesus at this point, why can it not be that the creation story is an allegory explaining a larger concept? 

The literal story in Genesis DOES have some inconsistencies. For instance, it says that there was light on day one. Light comes from stars, which were not created until after day two. So where did this light come from? Additionally, Genesis posits the idea of a "day" but in the same context says that the first day the earth was formless and empty. A day is our interpretation of how long the earth revolves on its axis. If the earth was formless and empty, how could it revolve and create a day? Some people contend that there was morning (12 hours) and evening (12 hours) as is written in Genesis but the concept of morning itself is based on the time that the sun is rising in the sky. In fact, morning changes for each different time zone on the earth that you are in. So then morning and evening could not have existed on day one either, but then there could not be a day? Another idea that Genesis could be an allegory for a larger concept that was hard to understand.

Jesus in the new testament teaches us primarily using stories and parables. Each of the stories is used to teach a point that has a larger value and meaning than the actual context of the story. In fact, almost every time He has something to say He uses a parable. Would it not seem fitting that the Word of God, which is Jesus, would maintain the same mode of operation? Doesn't Jesus say that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever? This is yet another idea lending to the idea that Genesis could be an allegory. 

DINOSAURS?

If Genesis is an allegory then we are justified in our other thinking to resolve such conflicts as dinosaurs, the age of the earth, and biblical inconsistencies. Those simply dissolve because the time factors ascribed to that book are now open and suggest that God is a loving God who has compassion on people who cannot possibly understand existence outside of time, since we ourselves are bound to time.

Some Christians refer to monsters of the Bible as dinosaurs, but it's simply not compatible with what we currently know as a fact about some dinosaurs. They site Behemoth and Leviathan specifically because they are termed as monsters in the bible, but the bible itself refutes the idea that these could be the predator dinosaurs that we are speaking of:

Many people think Leviathan was a dinosaur. Specifically this is not plausible because not only is the etymology for the monsters name indicative that it was a sea monster that was not on land (mind you we have many "sea monsters" nowadays and we know less about our oceans than we do about space) but also  in Isaiah 27:1 he is called the "wriggling serpent" who will be killed at the end of time. If dinosaurs are extinct, then this verse cannot be true or Leviathan cannot be a dinosaur. 

Other people refer to Behemoth as a dinosaur. While initially I have to say that it was a tempting thought to jump into, when you look at the actual evidences it proves less plausible. Even the bible itself says "Behold now the behemoth that I have made with you; he eats grass like cattle" which is directly opposite of any of our dinosaurs that were meat eaters. 

By all factual data and word written in our own Bible, it is very unlikely that humans lived during the time of the dinosaurs. There is no recollection of men needing to slay dinosaurs and no archaeological findings that are consistent with the time periods and anything regarding humans and dinosaurs together. 

SETTLING THE BIG BANG AND THE CONCEPTS OF EVOLUTION

So there is never any one thing that will make people happy regarding evolution and creation. If you follow M Theory, it basically boils down to the concept of everything in the universe being determined by a vibration and how the tiniest organisms vibrate determines what they are. Look at this a little deeper in the context of Christianity.

A voice is nothing but your vocal chords VIBRATING. In the bible Moses cannot even look into God's face or he could very well be blown off the mountain. How much more do you think his voice could do? I look at this personally and I think that M Theory perfectly supports creationism. When God spoke the Word (Jesus), the vibrations that came from his mouth into our universe became everything that we know and they way they vibrate, which would vary depending on what He said, determines what they are. Some people say that this is silly, but Jesus said himself that if we kept quite that the stones would cry out, which means they would vibrate with the frequency of God. You can make any substance speak if you vibrate it at the right frequency - that's the basic concept of primitive vocal recording. 

If you get into the concepts of evolution, the actual theory is that : the phylogeny of all species is wholly ascribable to the combined effects of random variation (mutation) in genotypes of the members of a stock as a result of the operation of undirected accidents with consequences to their phenotypes and the operation of preferential (but by no means certain) survival of those resulting phenotypes most suited to survive in the contemporary environment. The proposed system survives largely because of genetic factors that avidly conserve the ontogeny of the stock.

Well here is the breakdown:  change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

So the concept that things change over time you find that it is observably true. Things will change over time due mutation, survival of the fittest (natural selection) or genetics simply winning out. Darwin studied several birds that changed from generation to generation based simply on their location and the vegetation available to them. Things DO change over time, people, places and things. 

Jesus actually calls us to be changed ourselves by the renewing of our mind. Paul also suggests that Christians start on Milk and then move to solid food - suggesting that we change over time. The bible also says that when we accept Christ that we are a NEW creation. The OLD has passed away - another homage to evolution - the process of changing over time. The bible also says to daily repent, take up your cross, and follow Him. This again suggests that we need to be changing over time because we keep repenting of sins over time. 

If the concept of change over time in the bible is prevalent, change over time is prevalent in the observable universe, and the common consensus is that change over time is a reality, then why try to fight it?

THE DIALED DOWN VERSION OF ALL OF THIS (WHAT I BELIEVE)

I believe that my God is bigger than we can ever imagine. I believe that Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to get to heaven. I believe that in the beginning, God spoke some sets of words and out of obedience our universe came to be and that (Similar to a comic book Multiverse) God can exist both inside and outside of this universe. I believe that since our universe is bound by time and space that any universes or areas beyond our universe are impossible to conceive. As a result, I believe that Jesus/God dial the concept of creation of our universe into a story that is much easier to dissect because I believe our God wants us to know things and gave us minds to think for a reason. I believe that when he spoke, matter of all kinds burst forth from his mouth which to our human mind and eyes might appear as coming from nowhere since we are bound by space and time and he was speaking from beyond space and time - which could be the formation of a singularity - that is God. I think that God told everything to go forth and reproduce because he created everything to change over time and by obeying Him they are furthering the purposes of His creation and show us beauty in the divine art that is evolution and the change that He commands of not only His creation but us. I believe that God is always the same and as a result when He speaks in parables and stories in the Bible it would make sense that He is the MASTER story teller so if he chose to make that story in Genesis loop itself like that He would then be lending that we look further with the spirit that He gave us to see that what we observe in his creation is His intent. 

My First Girlfriend Was Little Debbie

When I was a kid I was not generally THAT fat. I was always kind of chubby, but never really fat until about a year after having left my home. This was mostly due to the fact that I was eating many high sugar, high carb, and high fat foods in one sitting and consuming them in volumes that wouldn't be healthy for two people, let alone myself. I have been doing much of the raising of myself since the age of 13 with a host of supporters from several different angles. Here are some things they DON'T teach you growing up that would have changed my life had I known:

1) Go outside and be active
I was told to go play outside several times and quite honestly most times it was simply a way for adults to rid themselves of the burdens of being a parent for a small time and relax. I understand that. The part they never tell you about is that the activity your children and even us as adults get when being outside and active is more productive to a healthy lifestyle than even trying to work out at home.

2) Carbohydrates can make you FAT
When I was a kid, the food pyramid looked something like this:

Reality is that the meat and poultry section should be much closer to the bottom. I had a lot of bread and cereal and pasta as a kid and what happens when you don't burn those is that they turn directly into fat - JUST LIKE SUGAR AND FAT ALREADY DO. Higher lean proteins, vegetables, fruits, and dairy products are more of what you need.

3) Healthy food can taste good
I was always served healthy food with the least amount of creativity possible. Peas slopped on a plate. Spinach in a soupy goop. Beans served from a can or in a sloppy soup of meat and sauce. It was never something that tasted great to me. Specifically, most vegetables had a raw flavor that wasn't that great and the texture of beans didn't sit well with meat to me.

                  TIPS:

• Corn is not a vegetable - it's a grain - put it with the breads (Ok they are but they fit better there)
• Potatoes are not a vegetable - they also belong with breads (See above about Corn)
• Do not mix beans with meat - season them and cheese them - much better
• Wrap certain veggies (asparagus, carrots, etc.) with bacon or another good protein
• Tomatoes are a great FRUIT
• Spinach is less potent raw but great for salads and rather yummy - do not cook it

4) It's okay to have food that is bad for you if you portion it correctly - BALANCE

Growing up I was always told that things like Little Debbie and Hostess would make me fat. In excess this is true. They will make you fat a lot quicker than healthier food, but the basic concept is still the same. If you do not over eat and you eat these in moderation you can still stay skinny, be healthy on the inside, and stay happy. My problem growing up is that I had ZERO clue as to what moderation meant. If I ate only one Little Debbie or Hostess snack per meal was that bad?

                WHAT IS MODERATION?

• The amount of weight a food will add to you is called a Calorie - that's why we count them
• Everyone burns a different amount of calories at rest and during activity
• The average person burns around 2,000 calories/day with their regular activities
• You can eat whatever you want as long as you stay under the limit - so if I only burn 1400 I can only eat 1400 unless I engage in extra activity to burn those extra calories - simple really
• Fat + Sugar + Carbs = Fat (so if you are trying to lose weight - try to lose these categories)
• A Zebra Cake (Little Debbie) is 330 Calories, 47 carbs, and 32 sugars - Just for the info, your daily average of 2000 Cals brings you to 1670, carbs to about 200, and sugars to about160. If I ate a whole box of these treats I have consumed most of my calories for the day, more carbs than I should for a day, and more sugars than I should for a day. I can have them - but do I really want them?

Just some thoughts I had about losing weight. By the way my wife and I are still on track and I am currently down about 14 pounds - give or take a few ounces.