Scriptorium

"I Have Always Labored Out of Love"

2012-01-31T07:57:00.004-06:00

The stereotype of traditional Catholic education is dominated by the image of strict nuns whacking knuckles with rulers. Today is the feast of John Bosco (1815 - 1888). Here is a brief write-up about him.

He was born in Piedmont of a peasant family, and he was brought up by his widowed mother. He became a priest, and his particular concern was for the young. He settled in Turin, where, as in so many cities in the 19th century, the industrial revolution was bringing enormous movements of population and consequent social problems, especially for the young men who came there to work. John Bosco devoted himself to the care of the young, first of all by means of evening classes, to which hundreds came, and then by setting up a boarding-house for apprentices, and then workshops for their training and education. Despite many difficulties, caused both by the anti-clerical civil authorities and by the opposition of some senior people within the Church, his enterprise grew, and by 1868 over 800 boys and young men were under his care. To ensure the continuation of his work, he founded a congregation, which he named after St Francis de Sales (a saint for whom he had great admiration), and today the Salesians continue his work all over the world.

The following is from a letter John Bosco wrote, and it is read on his feast day in the Office of Readings. It very much reflects the philosophy of education that our Headmaster at Cistercian is constantly telling us. Since he is a Cistercian monk, he hears this read every year, so he is surely familiar with it.

First of all, if we wish to appear concerned about the true happiness of our foster children and if we would move them to fulfil their duties, you must never forget that you are taking the place of the parents of these beloved young people. I have always laboured lovingly for them, and carried out my priestly duties with zeal. And the whole Salesian society has done this with me.
  My sons, in my long experience very often I had to be convinced of this great truth. It is easier to become angry than to restrain oneself, and to threaten a boy than to persuade him. Yes, indeed, it is more fitting to be persistent in punishing our own impatience and pride than to correct the boys. We must be firm but kind, and be patient with them.
  I give you as a model the charity of Paul which he showed to his new converts. They often reduced him to tears and entreaties when he found them lacking docility and even opposing his loving efforts.
  See that no one finds you motivated by impetuosity or wilfulness. It is difficult to keep calm when administering punishment, but this must be done if we are to keep ourselves from showing off our authority or spilling out our anger.
  Let us regard those boys over whom we have some authority as our own sons. Let us place ourselves in their service. Let us be ashamed to assume an attitude of superiority. Let us not rule over them except for the purpose of serving them better.
  This was the method that Jesus used with the apostles. He put up with their ignorance and roughness and even their infidelity. He treated sinners with a kindness and affection that caused some to be shocked, others to be scandalised, and still others to hope for God’s mercy. And so he bade us to be gentle and humble of heart.
  They are our sons, and so in correcting their mistakes we must lay aside all anger and restrain it so firmly that it is extinguished entirely.
  There must be no hostility in our minds, no contempt in our eyes, no insult on our lips. We must use mercy for the present and have hope for the future, as is fitting for true fathers who are eager for real correction and improvement.
  In serious matters it is better to beg God humbly than to send forth a flood of words that will only offend the listeners and have no effect on those who are guilty.

Christ is present to his Church

2012-01-22T07:36:00.002-06:00

I especially liked the second reading from today's Office of Readings. It is from The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council. I think it makes clear why the Catholic Church teaches that missing Sunday mass is a serious sin.

Christ is always present to his Church, especially in the actions of the liturgy. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, in the person of the minister (it is the same Christ who formerly offered himself on the cross that now offers by the ministry of priests) and most of all under the eucharistic species. He is present in the sacraments by his power, in such a way that when someone baptizes, Christ himself baptizes. He is present in his word, for it is he himself who speaks when the holy Scriptures are read in the Church. Finally, he is present when the Church prays and sings, for he himself promised: Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in their midst.

Indeed, in this great work which gives perfect glory to God and brings holiness to men, Christ is always joining in partnership with himself his beloved Bride, the Church, which calls upon its Lord and through him gives worship to the eternal Father.

It is therefore right to see the liturgy as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ, in which through signs addressed to the senses man’s sanctification is signified and, in a way proper to each of these signs, made effective, and in which public worship is celebrated in its fullness by the mystical body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the head and by his members.

Accordingly, every liturgical celebration, as an activity of Christ the priest and of his body, which is the Church, is a sacred action of a pre-eminent kind. No other action of the Church equals its title to power or its degree of effectiveness.

In the liturgy on earth we are given a foretaste and share in the liturgy of heaven, celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem, the goal of our pilgrimage, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, as minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle. With the whole company of heaven we sing a hymn of praise to the Lord; as we reverence the memory of the saints, we hope to have some part with them, and to share in their fellowship; we wait for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, until he, who is our life, appears, and we appear with him in glory.

By an apostolic tradition taking its origin from the very day of Christ’s resurrection, the Church celebrates the paschal mystery every eighth day, the day that is rightly called the Lord’s day. On Sunday the Christian faithful ought to gather together, so that by listening to the word of God and sharing in the Eucharist they may recall the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus and give thanks to God who has given them a new birth with a lively hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The Lord’s day is therefore the first and greatest festival, one to be set before the loving devotion of the faithful and impressed upon it, so that it may be also a day of joy and of freedom from work. Other celebrations must not take precedence over it, unless they are truly of the greatest importance, since it is the foundation and the kernel of the whole liturgical year.

Response to a Video

2012-01-15T23:01:00.000-06:00

I shared the following fine video on my Facebook page, which provoked a long response from an old friend of mine, Kenny Mansfield. Because the comment was so long, I thought the FB comment system was too awkward to adequately respond to it, so I'm using a blog post for that purpose.

First of all, here is the video, which was created by Patrick Gothman, a member of my parish.

Now I will respond to Kenny's post a section at a time.

OK, I listened to 2:03, when he said "...without the Catholic church, you would have no Bible." That, and other misstatements caused me to prematurely stop him and start writing. The Torah existed long before the Catholic church. And, while the canon was born in the 4th and 5th century by writers in the Catholic church, it was the leaders of the same church that tried to suppress it's distribution 1000 years later. It was during the Protestant Reformation that the Bible was printed in modern languages and made available to common people for all to see the heresies that the Catholic church had forced into the lives of Christians.

There are two issues I will address here: first is the accusation that the Catholic Church suppressed the distribution of the Bible in order to keep people from knowing about the heresies they were teaching. The second issue is the greater question raised by Patrick in the video: did the Bible came from the Catholic Church?

Regarding the first issue, Kenny repeats a common story among Protestants that is a gross simplification of a much more complex history. It is true that Bible translators Wycliffe and Tyndale were opposed by the Church, but it was due to their doctrine, not merely for translating the Bible. A quick check of Wikipedia shows that there was some translations of Scripture into English and several versions of the Bible in German before the Reformation. I have heard it said that there were Catholics who thought that vernacular languages were to "low" for the words of Scripture, and only a lofty language like Latin was a proper way to express the Bible. That would be an incorrect position, and one that has since been corrected by the Church. I also know that in reaction to what was seen as misuse of the Bible by Protestants, a fear developed in the Catholic Church that the Bible could not be correctly understood by those without a proper theological education. That mindset has since been reversed. Vatican II, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI have all strongly taught that knowledge of the Bible is important for all Christians, quoting St. Jerome that "ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ."

Regarding the second issue, which is that the Bible came from the Catholic Church, I raise the question of where did Wycliffe, Luther, and Tyndale get their Bibles from which they produced their translations? Wycliffe used the Latin Vulgate, which came from the Catholic Church. Luther and Tyndale made their translations from Hebrew and Greek. The Hebrew Old Testament was available from the Jews, but how did they get a Greek New Testament? They used the Textus Receptus produced by Catholic scholar Desiderius Erasmus. If it were not for the Catholic Church, the Protestant Reformers would not have had a New Testament to work from.

I want to make one more point about the idea that the Catholic Church kept the Bible in Latin in order to keep people from challenging their heretical doctrines. Such an idea rests on the idea that Latin was some secret language that only the evil heretical Catholic clergy could understand. On the contrary, Latin was known by all educated people in Europe, a fact that remained true even among Protestants well into the 17th century. Regardless of the issue of the Latin language, an educated person is more likely to oppose the so-called Catholic heresies and be able to mount a successful attack against them, so keeping the Bible in Latin would not be effective for hiding heresies. If the Church had really been afraid of the Bible, it would have destroyed it.

In Vatican Council II (12/7/1965), the following statement was added into the record: "It [Vatican Council II] longs to set forth the way it understands the presence and function of the Church in the world today. Therefore, the world which the Council has in mind is the whole human family seen in the context of everything which envelops it... This is the reason why this sacred Synod, in proclaiming the noble destiny of man and affirming an element of the divine in him, offers to co-operate unreservedly with mankind in fostering a sense of brotherhood to correspond to this destiny of theirs."

This is blatant idolatry by the Catholic church, a statement giving the green light to self-worship and elevating man to the level of God, which is clearly forbidden in the Torah. And this was written just 45 years ago, showing that even the modern leaders of your religion are still operating in the darkness.

I was not familiar with that quote, but using Google, I was able to find that it comes from Gaudium et Spes, The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, §3.

Kenny appears to object to the phrase, "affirming an element of the divine in him." The English translation on the Vatican website says, "championing the Godlike seed which has been sown in him." I have not studied this document; my studies of Vatican II have focused on the more theological Dogmatic Constitutions, Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation, and Lumen Gentium on the Church. I would have to do more study to be sure of what it was saying, but it appears to me that it is talking about the fact that we are made in the image of God.

The Catholic Church teaches that Adam and Eve were created in the image of God. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he create them" (Gen 1:27 RSV-CE). They sinned in the garden, bringing upon themselves spiritual death. The image of God in them was marred, but not completely gone. St. Paul affirms this when he says, "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts..." (Rom 2:14-15a). St. Paul is talking about the law of God being written on the hearts of pagan Gentiles, so there is something from God still remaining in fallen man.

Kenny says that such an idea is idolatry, but idolatry is the worship of a false god, and I see nothing in this quote about worshiping the "element of divine" in man. I agree that such a thing would be idolatry, but the mere mention that there is something divine in man is not idolatry. Even if Kenny thinks like many Calvinists do that the image of God is completely gone from fallen man, he has not eliminated the fact that there was something divine in original man, and that there is something divine in redeemed man. Christians are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19) and will "become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). That doesn't mean we worship each other and commit idolatry.

From the same Council, a statement issued on 10/28/1965 reads: "...In Hinduism, men explore the divine mystery and express it both in the limitless riches of myth and the accurately defined insights of philosophy. They seek release from the trial of the present life by ascetical practices, profound meditation and recourse to God in confidence and love. Buddhism in its various forms testifies to the essential inadequacy of this changing world. It proposes a way of life by which man can, with confidence and trust, attain a state of perfect liberation and reach supreme illumination either through their own efforts or by the aid of divine help. The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions."
WHAT?!?! The official position of your religion is that there is a little good in their evil paganisms that deserves recognition (a dip into Taoism)?

I also had to Google this quote, and found that it is from Nostra Aetate, Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, §2. Again, I am sorry that I have not studied this document, but I have heard teaching on the subject, including a talk by Cardinal Francis Arinze, former President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. This teaching is rooted in the doctrine of the universal ministry of the Holy Spirit, of which Jesus speaks: "if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment" (John 16: 7b-8). We believe that the Holy Spirit constantly speaks to all people, and some of them respond, even if imperfectly. What I learned from Cardinal Arinze is that we can engage in honest dialogue with non-Christians with the expectation that we might learn something from them. Of course, our hope is to convert them to the Catholic faith, which we believe to have the fullness of God's revelation and gifts for salvation, but even so, we might learn something from their unique perspective, which ultimately comes from the same Holy Spirit who indwells the Church. (Note that we believe someone must be a baptized Christian to be indwelt with the Holy Spirit, but not to be influenced by the Spirit.)

What I liked about Cardinal Arinze's talk was that he combined the certainty of the superiority of the Catholic faith with the acknowledgment that there could be some truth in other religions. He said we can confidently desire to convert the non-Catholic, while at the same time be open to learning from him.

Assuming that I may not have been convincing about the possibility that other religions might have "a little good in their evil paganisms," I will pose the following questions. What if another religion taught that is wrong to commit murder? Is that good or bad? Should I reject that idea because it comes from another religion? Of course not! I would then be rejecting God's law as revealed in the Bible. I must affirm that their belief in the evil of murder is true, and good, and compatible with God's law. If they teach that there is only one God, I must also agree that this particular belief of theirs is true, good, and compatible with Christian doctrine. However, I cannot stop there. If they do not believe that the one God is triune, I must say that they are wrong in that aspect of their belief.

To be more concrete, when the Muslim says there is only one God, I must say he is correct in that regard, and his belief on that point is good. If I say he is wrong, I am rejecting Christian doctrine, which teaches there is only one God. However, when the Muslim says that Jesus was just a prophet, and not God incarnate, then I must say that he is wrong, and his belief in that particular aspect is evil. I may also point out that the Muslim characterization of God is different from the Christian understanding in many ways.

When the Hindu says there are many gods, I must say he is wrong, and in that aspect his belief is evil. However, when the Hindu says that the things of this world will not bring happiness, I can affirm the truth and goodness in what he says on that particular point. When the atheist astronomer remarks on the beauty of the cosmos, I can agree with him in that regard. I actually believe that his perception of the beauty of the heavens is actually the Holy Spirit speaking to him. "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Ps 19:1).

At 1:30, he talks about the Scientific Method being born in the Catholic church but it is commonly known that Ibn al-Haytham, an Islamic Arab, is considered the father of the scientific method. (Gorini, Rosanna (October 2003), "Al-Haytham the man of experience. First steps in the science of vision" Journal of the International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine 2 (4): 53–55

I will agree with Kenny that Patrick over-stated the point in this regard. I again checked Wikipedia, and on the History of the Scientific Method, it does mention Ibn al-Haytham, and other Arab scholars through Avicenna. At that point, the history moves to the Catholic bishop Robert Grosseteste, Catholic friar Roger Bacon, Catholic scientist Galileo Galilei, English (Protestant?) philosopher Francis Bacon, French Catholic philosopher René Descartes, and then English Protestant Isaac Newton.

I heard an interesting talk by Robert Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist. I will try to state from memory what he said about why the development of science in the Muslim world ended with Avicenna. At that time, an extreme view of God's sovereignty arose in Muslim thought that has persisted to this day, which eliminates all secondary causes. It says that God directly causes the whole state of the universe each moment, entirely according to his will, independent of what the state of the universe was in the previous moment. So if I drop a ball, and I think that gravity is pulling it down to the ground, I am mistaken. Actually, God, in his sovereignty, has decided to create a series of universes in which there is a ball in different positions, such that it appears to be falling due to gravity. However, God could have just as easily caused the ball to exist in different locations, or not at all. Such a worldview tends to take the wind out of the sails of scientific inquiry.

At the same time, the writings of Avicenna, and other Muslim philosophers, including their translations of Aristotle, made their way into the Latin speaking Catholic world. There, although the belief of God's ultimate sovereignty existed, there was also the belief that God created secondary causes which could be studied and understood. That worldview carried forward in the Catholic world, and eventually into the Protestant world, and was the womb in which modern science developed.

And, at 3:04, he says I am welcome? Can I walk into a Mass and partake of the Lord's Supper? I have professed faith in Jesus as my Christ and renounced my sin for over 35 years but your religion won't let me eat at Christ's table without a bunch of legalistic man-made hoop-jumping.

The Catholic understanding of the Eucharist is that it is the Sacrament of the unity of the Church. The desire of the Catholic Church is that all who belong to Christ would come together in unity at the table of the Lord. However, unity does not exist in the Christian world at this time. Protestants believe that the Catholic Church is in error, so for a Protestant to receive communion at a Catholic Church would be a lie, proclaiming a unity that does not exist. The Church does not allow Catholics to receive communion at Protestant churches for the same reason.

The "hoop-jumping" that Kenny speaks of is just an attempt to make sure a person knows what they are getting into before they make that commitment of unity with the Catholic Church. Receiving communion is a very serious thing, and the Church wants to do all it can to make sure people are prepared. "For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died." (1 Cor. 11:29-30). The RCIA program is a 9 month long education program on the beliefs of the Catholic Church, and most priests want people to complete that program before they will receive them into the Church. However, because I already knew something of the Catholic faith, and I went to a small parish where the priest could know about my background, my wife and I were able to receive private instruction in a shorter period of time.

I am struggling with the fact that I know you know a lot about your religion but would still post this video on your wall.

As I said above, Patrick goes to my parish. I don't know him well, but he seems to be a fine young man. He has been to diocesan seminary and is now preparing to become a Dominican friar. Except for his over-statement about the scientific method, I think I have shown that I agree with what he says in the video. I'm hoping that through this post, I might clear up for Kenny and anyone else who reads it, some common misunderstandings about the Catholic Church.

The heart of the just man will rejoice in the Lord

2011-11-16T05:50:00.001-06:00

From a sermon by Saint Augustine

The just man will rejoice in the Lord and put his hope in him; the hearts of all good men will be filled with joy. We must surely have sung these words with our hearts as well as with our voices. Indeed, the tongue of the Christian expresses his deepest feelings when it addresses such words to God. The just man will rejoice, not in the world, but in the Lord. Light has dawned for the just, Scripture says in another place, and joy for the upright of heart. Were you wondering what reason he has for joy? Here you are told: The just man will rejoice in the Lord. Another text runs: Delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.

What are we instructed to do then, and what are we enabled to do? To rejoice in the Lord. But who can rejoice in something he does not see? Am I suggesting that we see the Lord then? No, but we have been promised that we shall see him. Now, as long as we are in the body, we walk by faith, for we are absent from the Lord. We walk by faith, and not by sight. When will it be by sight? Beloved, says John, we are now the sons of God; what we shall be has not yet been revealed, but we know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. When this prophecy is fulfilled, then it will be by sight.

That will be the great joy, the supreme joy, joy in all its fullness. Then we shall no longer drink the milk of hope, but we shall feed on the reality itself. Nevertheless, even now, before that vision comes to us, or before we come to that vision, let us rejoice in the Lord; for it is no small reason for rejoicing to have a hope that will some day be fulfilled.

Therefore, since the hope we now have inspires love, the just man rejoices, Scripture says, in the Lord; but because he does not yet see, it immediately goes on to say, and hopes in him.

Yet already we have the first fruits of the Spirit, and have we not also other reasons for rejoicing? For we are drawing near to the one we love, and not only are we drawing near – we even have some slight feeling and taste of the banquet we shall one day eagerly eat and drink.

But how can we rejoice in the Lord if he is far from us? Pray God he may not be far. If he is, that is your doing. Love, and he will draw near; love, and he will dwell within you. The Lord is at hand; have no anxiety. Are you puzzled to know how it is that he will be with you if you love? God is love.

“What do you mean by love?” you will ask me. It is that which enables us to be loving. What do we love? A good that words cannot describe, a good that is for ever giving, a good that is the Creator of all good. Delight in him from whom you have received everything that delights you. But in that I do not include sin, for sin is the one thing that you do not receive from him. With that one exception, everything you have comes from him.

(Sermo 21, 1-4: CCL 41, 276-278)

From the Office of Readings for Wednesday in the 33^rd week of Ordinary Time, courtesy of universalis.com.

New Blog

2011-08-13T21:59:00.000-05:00

I have started a new blog called "Hoc Tempus" (Latin for "this time"), which examines assumptions of our modern world. The first post, which is about René Descartes, is very philosophical, but the blog won't all be that way. I will continue to put more theological stuff on this blog.

Conversion

2011-08-13T12:45:00.001-05:00

The CEC

In 2002, after becoming convicted about the Papacy being God's plan for the unity of his Church, but also believing that God had put me in Sherman with the Charismatic Episcopal Church (CEC) for a reason, I rededicated myself to working with the CEC. I focused on the good things we had in the CEC, which we believed was the best of the Catholic and Protestant traditions.

However, in 2004 I was growing more and more uneasy and uncertain about my role in the CEC. The path I thought I was on to become a priest seemed to be going nowhere, and I felt like something had to give soon. The CEC's international convocation, which occurred every 4 years, was coming up that summer in the Philippines, and my hope was that at the convocation I would somehow receive a clearer idea of what I should be doing in the CEC. With high expectations, I made the sacrifices it would take to get to Manila.

The first couple of days in Manila were filled with events of welcome from our Filipino hosts. This was a wonderful time of introduction to a beautiful and generous people that I will never forget. As the convocation proper commenced, I encountered difficulties as I experienced signs of conflict within the CEC. Still, I endeavored to not be distracted by these problems, and tried to seek some direction for my life. However, I came to the end of the convocation with no clearer idea of what I should be doing than when I started.

Transition

A few months later, something happened that definitely got things moving. The department I worked in at Nortel was eliminated, and after 11 years of working there, I was laid off. The layoff was not a big surprise considering the state of things at Nortel, but it was still a shock. Even so, I welcomed it as an opportunity for change. I soon found other work, but the opportunity for telecommuting from Sherman was gone, so we started planning for a move back closer to Dallas. The good news was that by leaving the cathedral in Sherman, which had 3 priests and 3 deacons in residence, I would be moving into a situation where my own ordination was more likely. The two possibilities that I discussed with my bishop were starting a new parish, or helping out at an existing one. We decided to move to the Denton area and help with a small existing parish there.

Things went well in Denton for a while, and plans were put in place for my ordination to the Diaconate. However, in October of 2005, a conflict arose in the Denton parish that caused me to wonder if we could continue with that parish. As I began to think about what we would do about a church home, it suddenly came to me clear and strong that now was the time for us to become Catholic. I came to believe it would be much better for us to leave the CEC before I received ordination because ordination would involve vows of obedience that I would not want to break by leaving. At that point I knew I could not in good conscience be ordained in the CEC, and that it would be better for me to be a layman in the Catholic Church.

We were just finishing a new house south of Denton, but we knew no Catholics in the area, or anything about the local parishes. We eventually found our way to the Church through the kind ministry of Fr. Allan Hawkins at St. Mary the Virgin parish in Arlington, and we were received into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 2006. After a few months going the church in Arlington, we decided we needed a parish closer to home, so we became members at St. Ann parish in Coppell.

Catholic Blessings

I was expecting that becoming Catholic would be a huge sacrifice because I would be giving up the many advantages that I believed that the CEC offered over the Catholic Church. By joining a large parish like St. Ann, we did lose the intimacy of the small churches we were used to, and the preaching and liturgy were not always as good as what we were leaving, but we gained some important things that I was not expecting.

The first thing was the beauty of the Catholic faith in its wholeness, and the joy of submission to the authority of the Church. Although we in the CEC accepted much of the Catholic faith, there were still aspects that we distanced ourselves from. Some of these things, such as Marian devotion, were difficulties for me as we approached conversion, but I made the decision to accept the authority of the Church, and relinquish any perceived right to pick and choose what doctrines I would accept. I dove head-first into Catholic doctrine, and I was surprised by the beauty I found. Once I trusted the Church to be my teacher, everything started to fall into place and make sense doctrinally. Every difficulty did not disappear overnight, but Catholic doctrine is significantly more solid, reasonable, beautiful, and practical to me than was my understanding of Christian doctrine before my conversion. There is also a great relief in not having to bear the full responsibility of determining all truth for myself. This does not mean that as a Catholic I have switched off my brain and I blindly accept everything my priest tells me. The situation is not always so clear cut, and there is always a need for discernment. However, the Church gives me so many resources that it is like I have entered a doctrinal treasure chamber.

The second thing has been the transformative power of the sacraments. I am not qualified to debate the validity of CEC sacraments, although I will say that my opinion is that they are valid. I will also say that my subjective experience is that the transforming power of the sacraments in the lives of my wife and myself is greatly increased now that we're Catholic. I know that the effect of the sacraments is dependent on the disposition of the recipient, so my theory is that Toni and I are better disposed to receive the power of the sacraments now that we are in full communion with the Church. Also, I believe we benefit from more frequent reception of communion through the availability of daily Mass.

The third blessing of the Catholic Church has been its Catholicity, or universality. There is so much diversity in the Catholic Church. Protestant denominations and congregations tend to be collections of like-minded people. Although there are definite boundaries that determine whether something is Catholic or not, there is much room for diversity within those boundaries. Franciscans, Jesuits, Carmelites, Cistercians, and many other religious orders, traditions, and groups all have different approaches to the Catholic faith and practice, and they all have their influence on the Church. As Catholics, we benefit from all of them, and can choose an approach that fits each of our personalities. Even though some parishes are run by a religious order, and each parish has its own personality, there is still a great diversity in the makeup of a typical parish compared with the typical Protestant congregation. All of this has been very refreshing and a cause of growth for me.

The Road

At St. Ann's, I soon got involved in a men's ministry, which led to me giving a testimonial presentation about the way that God had used the Scriptures in my life. Several people who heard my presentation responded with encouragement for me to do more teaching. I decided, however, that as a brand new Catholic, I needed time in the Church, and deeper instruction, before setting myself up as a Catholic teacher. I decided to begin work on a Masters in Theology degree at University of Dallas. I'm on schedule to graduate May 2012, after which I hope to do more teaching in some capacity, and/or more writing.

As I look back on the long and winding road that has brought me to where I am today, I sometimes wonder why I couldn't have converted sooner. It seems like it could have saved a lot of trouble if I had, but I also know that what I am today is a product of all that has come before. I also value all of the people whom I have come to know along the way. Whatever God has for me in the future, I believe he will make use of everything he has given me in the past, and so I thank him for his guiding hand, and trust he will be with me until the end.

Unity

2011-07-31T19:58:00.000-05:00

One of the Church Fathers that made a big impression on me was St. Ignatius of Antioch. He was born around 50 AD, and had been a student of the Apostle John. He was the third bishop of Antioch (the Apostle Peter was the first), and was arrested and taken to Rome, sentenced to die in the Colosseum, eaten by lions sometime between 98 and 117 AD. On his way from Syria to Rome, he wrote seven letters that have been preserved to this day.

The first thing that amazed me about these letters was the description of the structure of the leadership of the churches. Ignatius always spoke of each church as being led by a single bishop, assisted by a group of presbyters and a group of deacons. While the words for bishop, presbyter, and deacon appear in the New Testament, the words for bishop and presbyter appear to be interchangeable, and there is not a clear indication of only a single bishop in a local church. This 3-tiered structure is what we find later in church history, and continues today in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches. I was amazed, however, to find this structure spoken of by someone so close to the Apostles. Also, Ignatius was not proposing this structure, but he spoke of it as if everyone knew that this is how churches are structured.

The other thing that made an impression on me was St. Ignatius' concern for unity within the churches. This was not a new issue for me; the Apostle Paul had written very strong words against the divisions in the church at Corinth. Even back when I was a college student reading 1 Corinthians, I thought that St. Paul would not approve of the present existence of so many denominations, with rival churches sometimes on the same city block. Although St. Paul spoke against the divisions at Corinth, he didn't provide a practical, structural way of solving it, short of his own personal intervention. However, St. Ignatius said that the key to unity was the single local bishop. This one man was to be the point around which the church would gather, and nothing was to be done in the church apart from the bishop. His language was shocking in its absolute tone.

Take care to do all things in harmony with God, with the bishop presiding in the place of God, and with the presbyters in the place of the council of the apostles, and with the deacons, who are most dear to me, entrusted with the business of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father from the beginning and is at last made manifest.
—Letter to the Magnesians 2, 6:1

As I thought about a single person being the point around which a church maintains unity, it made sense to me. History repeatedly shows the failure of other methods. Co-leaders, or a small group of leaders don't work because factions form around the various leaders, and there is no one with the authority to arbitrate between them. A document like a constitution, confession, statement of faith, or even the Bible, is not sufficient by itself as a point of unity. The problem with a document is that different people can interpret it differently. Unless there is someone who can judge how the document applies in a given circumstance, division is bound to occur with no mechanism for resolving it.

The theme of unity came up again while reading the Venerable St. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He is very concerned about the lack of unity between the Celtic Christians, who follow traditions they developed through many years of separation from the rest of the Christian world, and the English Christians, who have been evangelized by missionaries from Rome, and thus follow Roman practices. The biggest difference was how they calculated the date of Easter. What got my attention is that there were no doctrinal issues dividing them like we have between Protestant denominations. These days we would say there were cultural issues dividing them, and once adequate communication took place between the cultures, they were able to be united.

As I thought about the problem of unity of the world-wide Church, which Jesus prays for in John 17:21, I saw how the principle of unity around one man that St. Ignatius described for the local church could be extended throughout the whole Church. The bishops of the various local churches would need a man that would be the point of unity that they would gather around. Although there could still be councils, committees, and documents, the existence of one man that could arbitrate when these other structure broke down seemed necessary. The Catholic Church claims that Jesus set up such a structure when he chose the twelve Apostles as the foundation of the Church, and chose Peter as the leader of the Apostles. The Church in the beginning consisted of those who were united to the Apostles, who were led by Peter. As Peter and the other Apostles died, they were replaced by bishops. The Pope, the bishop of Rome, is seen as the successor of Peter because Peter was the leader of the Roman church when he was executed. The Catholic Church today consists of those who are united to those bishops who are united to the Pope.

Jesus only uses the word "church" twice in the Gospels, both occurring in Matthew. The second occurrence, Matthew 18:17, indicates that there is a church which can resolve disputes (not invisible). The first time the word is used is after Peter makes his confession of Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (16:16). Jesus gives him the name of Peter, and says, "on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (vv. 18-19).

The same passage that confers some kind of special authority on Peter is the passage where Jesus says "the gates of hell shall not prevail" against the Church. There seems to be a link between the authority of Peter and the permanence of the Church. Kingdoms and empires have come and gone, but the Papacy has lasted for almost 2000 years. We know the name of every Pope from Peter to Benedict XVI. There is no other institution in human history with that kind of longevity.

I came to a strong conviction of the truth of the claim of the Catholic Church to be the Church that Jesus founded, and that in order to be obedient to Jesus' desire for unity, I should do my part by becoming Catholic. However, I did not want to leave my friends in the Charismatic Episcopal Church (CEC). I went through several weeks of agony over what to do, only telling two people in the leadership of my diocese about my thoughts, and they both encouraged me to stay. They provided some counter arguments for staying, none of which were convincing, but eventually I came to the conclusion that God had put me with the CEC, and I should stay there until I saw I clear path otherwise.

Orthodoxy and the CEC

2011-07-23T22:10:00.000-05:00

After the Malcolm Smith retreat, I wanted to find out more about his denomination, the Charismatic Episcopal Church (CEC). I found some information on the web, and saw that there was a parish not too far away in West Plano. We decided to visit one Sunday morning, and were disappointed to find that we were two out of six people at the service. Still, the priest was very friendly, and took us out for lunch after the service. One of the things he said was that theologically, the CEC was very similar to Eastern Orthodoxy.

So, I decided to check out Orthodoxy, and called up Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Dallas. I spoke to one of the priests, who was very friendly and invited us to come for a tour. He showed us the church, explained some of the worship, and gave me a book. A few days later I attended my first Orthodox Divine Liturgy service at Holy Trinity on New Years Day, 1999. It was beautiful, but the service was half English and half Greek. So I next tried St. Seraphim Cathedral, Orthodox Church of America (OCA), which had their services in English. They also had a Wednesday night Bible Study conducted by their Archbishop, who was doing a study in the epistle to the Romans. It was a great opportunity for me to learn the Orthodox approach to the doctrines of grace and salvation. I continued going to the Bible Study, and trying various Orthodox churches in the area through Easter of 1999.

Unfortunately, something about the Orthodox churches didn't fit for us, so we decided to give the CEC another try. The Sunday after Orthodox Easter, we visited Christ Church Cathedral in Sherman, and we liked it very much. After a while, we were going up to Sherman every Sunday, and often on Wednesday nights. That fall, I was invited to their seminary program, which was held in Sherman one weekend a month, with classes on Friday night, and all day Saturday, with lots of reading in between the class sessions. Theology in the CEC was rooted in the Patristic tradition, which means it was rooted in the theology of the Church Fathers in the early centuries of Christianity. This Patristic approach gave new life to my study of theology. We ended up moving to Sherman in the Spring of 2000, and lived there several years.

One interesting effect of my studies was a growing appreciation of the Roman Catholic Church. Although the CEC had its disagreements with Catholicism, they still respected the Catholic Church, and saw her as a sister church. I learned that in some cases I had misconceptions about actual Catholic beliefs, but I also learned the Biblical and historical basis for a lot of what Catholics truly did believe because there was a lot that the CEC and Catholic Church had in common.

Liturgy

2011-07-14T11:55:00.000-05:00

At Mesquite Bible Church, I ended up getting involved in their “Worship Team.” I helped out with the music, sound, and the slide projector for the words of the worship songs. (Yes, we used a real 35mm carrousel slide projector back then.) We had regular Worship Team meetings in which we discussed how we could improve the worship experience, with an emphasis on increasing congregation participation. We knew that worship should be more than being a passive audience member. In Charismatic churches, the congregation was very involved, but we wanted something more orderly.

Bob, the leader of the Worship Team, bought a copy of The Complete Library of Christian Worship, edited by Robert Webber. He asked that members of the Worship Team read a volume of it and report back to the team. I was assigned the volume on the history of worship, which I began to read, and I was surprised at what I found.

All of the churches I had been involved in had a relatively simple order of worship, and although there were common elements, such as the singing of hymns, reading of scripture, and a sermon, each church determined an order of worship as they thought best. The New Testament appeared to say nothing about the subject, so we thought that God left up to the judgment of the congregation. However, I saw in this history of worship that there had been a rather consistent traditional form of worship that went back to the early centuries of Christianity. I also saw that this liturgical style of worship involved the congregation in the worship, but in an orderly manner. The orderly involvement was made possible through the liturgy, which was like a script for a play. The liturgy said who said what, and at what time. There were parts for the leaders and the congregation. I reported all of this to the worship team, but was told that there was no way our church could move to a liturgical form of worship.

At about this same time, I had been listening to tapes of a Christian teacher named Malcolm Smith. He taught about God’s love for us, which was rooted in his covenant with humanity. I got a catalog of his tapes, and while most of them where on similar themes, one series jumped out at me called “The Power of the Holy Spirit in Liturgy.” I was very curious about this because my conception was that the power of the Holy Spirit and liturgy were at different ends of the worship spectrum. I bought the tapes, and listened to them. They were interesting because he gave a lot of theological reasoning behind the liturgical practices of his church. However, I had become jaded when it came to theology and thought that his church had come up with a theological rationale for their liturgy, and other churches probably had just as much rationale for their own liturgies. Therefore, I put the tapes on the shelf.

A few months later, Toni and I found out that Malcolm Smith was doing a retreat in Kerrville, Texas. We had enjoyed his tapes so much that we thought it would be nice to go to his retreat and see what he was like in person. When we arrived, I was surprised to see him dressed up like a priest, with a black shirt and white collar. It turned out that he was a bishop in a denomination called the “Charismatic Episcopal Church.” He considered himself “Catholic, but not Roman” because he said that there was one Catholic Church that went back to Jesus and the Apostles, and that it was now split into three main branches: Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox. He taught that the liturgies that these churches used were all descended from how Jesus taught his disciples how to worship, beginning at the Last Supper, with bread and wine in which Jesus was truly present.

This retreat turned my thinking upside-down in so many ways. Rather than picking up a Bible and trying to reconstruct Apostolic Christianity the way Bible churches did, Malcolm claimed that the worship of the Apostles had been passed down in a living tradition. You did not find descriptions of how to conduct a worship service in the Bible because the liturgy was taught by example, and all Christians at the time the New Testament was written already knew it. I had heard that Catholics claimed to have an authoritative tradition, but somehow the fact that there were other branches descended from the Apostolic tradition besides the Roman Catholics, made the whole idea more believable. Nevertheless, it was still another kind of theological system competing against many others. It was attractive to me, but I had no idea how to know if it was true.

In the last session of the retreat, Malcolm described how he discovered liturgy while he was a young Pentecostal preacher in England doing prison ministry. Because the Church of England is the established church there (no separation of church and state), all prison ministry had to be approved by the Anglican chaplain. Where Malcolm was ministering, the chaplain was an older priest who would have tea with him and talk about the ministry. From Malcolm’s Pentecostal perspective, this Anglican priest needed conversion, but instead it was the priest who ended up doing the converting. He casually asked Malcolm how much time he spent in prayer each day. This was a sore point for Malcolm because of the emotional nature of his Pentecostal spirituality. Although he had his share of spiritual highs, he had no consistent daily practice. Malcolm asked the priest the same question and received the immediate reply, “two hours.” This impressed Malcolm, so the priest taught him about the Daily Office of prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, and Malcolm said he’s been praying the Daily Office since then, and that it transformed his prayer life.

This story resonated with me because I had a very poor prayer life. I had tried various systems and never had lasting success. Many of them seemed like fads, but Malcolm’s system was centuries old, and he had used it for decades. I thought it would be worth a try, so I found everything I needed on the Internet, and eventually bought my own copy of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). Even though my church did not want to adopt liturgical worship, I was able to bring liturgical worship into my prayer life. I immediately took to this form of prayer. It had a depth that I had not experienced before, and the fact that it was rooted in history was very attractive. The most impressive thing for me, however, was the consistency it brought to my prayer life. After so many years of struggle with prayer, I had finally found something I could do every day over several years. I continued to pray the Daily Office in the BCP from 1999 until 2006 when I entered the Catholic Church. Then I switched to the Catholic Divine Office, which is similar, and I continue to use it to this day.

Calvinism

2011-07-09T12:12:00.002-05:00

I think it was near the end of my Sophomore year, after a few people had suggested it, that I decided to visit Westminster Presbyterian Church. Westminster was a smaller church than Grace Bible Church, and only a few college students attended there, although there were several professors there. Westminster had no separate college Sunday school or any other specific college ministry. College students attended regular adult Sunday school classes, and Westminster spent money they would have use for their own college ministry to give to InterVarsity and some other campus groups. I thought this made Westminster a good fit with my own growing involvement with InterVarsity. I also liked being more involved with the whole congregation rather than being just with other college students.

Westminster was a Presbyterian church, but it was in a different denomination (PCA) than the church I had belonged to as a child (PCUS). In general, the PCA was more conservative and traditional than the PCUS. While I was there, I learned that the PCA had a strong missionary and church planting effort. They also had a high regard for the Protestant reformers, especially John Calvin, and they wanted to revive some of the principles of the Protestant Reformation that they thought had subsided in contemporary times.

After I graduated, and was on my own, I ended up continuing in PCA churches. At Arlington Presbyterian Church, I learned more about the theology of Calvinism, and it made a lot of sense to me. I found the strong emphasis on God's transformative power at work in the life of the Christian to be helpful in this question of whether a person can be saved without there being any change in their life.

Another thing I liked about Calvinism was its logical consistency. It was built on a few principles, including the sovereignty of God, and the sinfulness of man, and everything else in the system followed from these principles. Many Calvinists were masters of logical argument. One of my favorites in this regard was R. C. Sproul, who crushed opposing views with his logic and intellect.

However, after a few years, I came to be bothered by the realization that there were Calvinist doctrines, which although they seemed to follow logically from a system built on Biblical principles, they themselves did not seem to be Biblical. The primary example of this was the doctrine of "limited atonement," which states that Christ's death on the cross was only for the elect who were chosen by God to be saved. Although Calvinists could make this doctrine seem to fit with the Bible, it seemed a strain. I did not see how someone would come up with limited atonement by reading the Bible without the structure of the Calvinist system.

I came to form this mental image about Calvinism, and theological systems in general. I saw the truth of the Bible to be like a rugged mountain that was sometimes difficult to climb. Theological systems such as Calvinism or Dispensationalism were like scaffolding that was constructed on the mountainside to aid people in getting up the mountain. Although the scaffolding of Calvinism was firmly attached to the mountain at its base, the straight and orderly construction of the theological scaffolding did not always fit with the ruggedness of the mountain, and at certain points, there were huge gaps between the scaffold and the mountain. I came to decide that while Calvinism was one of the better built scaffolds, it still had serious problems. Unfortunately, I did not know how I could find a better system. Each system argued from Scripture, but interpreted the Bible differently.

After studying theology with excitement for a few years, I came to despair of such study leading to ultimate truth. I even came to believe that theological study could actually get in the way of a person's relationship with God. Therefore, after Toni and I married, and we had reason to consider going back to Mesquite Bible Church, I decided it would be fine, even though I had left the Bible churches a few years earlier based on theological problems. I was just going back to one flawed theological system from another flawed theological system, and I was unable to definitively rank one as superior to the other. We ended up back at Mesquite Bible Church because there were caring people there who had known us for several years, and it felt more like home.

Toni

2011-06-08T17:39:00.001-05:00

At this point, the story of my faith journey would be incomplete without introducing Toni. I knew Toni in High School through her sister Dena, whom I met in Sophomore World History class. Toni was a year ahead of me in school, and I had occasional contact with her at their house, at Band activities, and in a Physics class my Junior year.

After Toni graduated, she went to the local community college. When I graduated a year later, I went to Texas A&M, but during my Sophomore year, Toni transferred to A&M. My roommate Greg and I made it a point to welcome her to the campus. Her dorm was near ours, and we all ate at the same dining hall, so we often had meals together. Toni didn't have a car, so I would give her a ride when I went home to Mesquite.

Toni's family was not religious. I had my conversion from atheism to Christianity after I had become friends with Dena, and I had tried to talk to Dena about it. She was very nice about the subject, and was glad it was helpful for me, but was not interested in the gospel for herself.

During one of my trips to Mesquite with Toni, I thought I should talk to Toni about the gospel. I heard talks and read books about sharing your faith, but I was very nervous. The times I had tried before with other people had either been politely refused, as with Dena, or had made the other person angry, as happened with an old friend. However, I believed it was important, so I was going to try again.

I was unable to work up the courage to bring up the subject on the way to Mesquite. It was not until half-way back to College Station, traveling on I-45, that I finally got up the courage to use an opening line I had read in a book: "Do you ever think about spiritual things?" Toni's response surprised me; she said that she had been wanting to talk to me about the subject for a long time. We ended up talking so much that I missed my exit at Madisonville, and did not realize it until the surroundings looked unfamiliar, and I realized we were in Huntsville, 25 miles past the exit.

I turned around, and we made it to College Station fine, just a little bit later than planned. Toni and I had many more conversations, and she soon become a Christian herself, receiving baptism at Mesquite Bible Church, the same church that had been instrumental in my conversion. Toni and I formed a strong bond of friendship in the process, and a few years after our college graduation, we got married, also at Mesquite Bible Church. Next month we will celebrate 21 years of marriage. I am thankful that God used me in the early stages of Toni's journey of faith, and that he has allowed us to continue to travel that road together.

InterVarsity

2011-05-15T16:32:00.000-05:00

Now, back to Texas A&M, where my conversion story left off.

Although I continued to go to Sunday worship at Grace Bible Church, my concerns about the college minister's teaching led me to look for alternatives for college Christian fellowship. Campus Crusade was probably the largest group on campus, but after attending a few meetings, I didn't feel like I fit in. They focused on evangelism using a little booklet called "The Four Spiritual Laws," which essentially gave a four step process for becoming a Christian. This was not the way I came to the faith, it was the very kind of thing that would have turned me off before I was a Christian, so I couldn't whole-heartedly get behind it.

Instead, I was attracted to a quaint little group on campus, whose primary method of outreach was to just set up a "book table" with a dozen or so books and booklets for sale. The people manning the table were kind-of nerdy and shy, but the books were very interesting, covering a wide variety of topics concerning Christianity and various issues. The group was the A&M chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, one of the oldest evangelical college student fellowships. The books were all published by InterVarsity Press, which soon became my preferred source for deep-thinking Christian books.

I started going to their weekly meetings, and met Christians from a variety of denominations, including Presbyterian, Bible Church, Baptist, Assemblies of God, Methodist, and Catholic. Like most Christian fellowship groups, they had a time of singing, but in addition to the simple chorus songs that were popular at that time, they also sang traditional hymns that had deep lyrics. They had a speaker at each meeting, often a guest, and the talks were usually challenging and smart. One of the guests was a woman who had been a missionary in China when the Communists took over, and continued to work there until she was forced out. The students seemed to all be serious students, and they saw their dedication to their studies as part of what was required as serious follows of Christ in college. I was also impressed that we had faculty sponsors who were Mathematics, Physics, and Mechanical Engineering professors. They each gave talks at some of the meetings.

After I had been involved for only 2 or 3 weeks, I was invited to a weekend "Bible and Life" conference in Austin. A group of us drove down together, and there I met InterVarsity students from UT, SFA, and other area campuses. During a break period, I stumbled upon a conversation between a couple of the A&M students and the InterVarsity staff worker, Pete, who was responsible for the UT and A&M groups. I was surprised to hear that the topic was concern over the teaching of Dwight at Grace Bible Church. These students had some of the same concerns that I did.

A few days after the conference, Pete contacted me to talk about the conference. We met on campus and had a good talk, and then he asked me about how I felt about the Grace Bible Church situation. I told him my concerns, and he said that if I wanted to ever try another church, I might want to check out Westminster Presbyterian. Although I stayed at Grace for the rest of my Sophomore year, I would remember his recommendation and try Westminster out the next year.

I remained involved in InterVarsity for the rest of my time at A&M, with some continued involvement even after graduation. There are two things I want to point out about InterVarsity that were important in my life. The first is that since it was a small organization, I was soon invited into leadership roles, first as a small group leader, and eventually as chapter President. Although being President was an overwhelming experience for me, and I stepped down after one semester, it was good for me to be stretched like that. If I had stayed in the Grace fellowship, or gone into Campus Crusade, I could have easily spent all four years on the sidelines since they were such large groups with plenty of strong leader types.

The other important thing about InterVarsity was that I got to know strong Christians from many different traditions. They all clearly loved God, and we agreed on the core of the Christian faith, although we disagreed on many non-core issues. This was eye-opening for me because before then I had a pretty narrow idea of what it took to be a real Christian. I think this experience made it easier for me to begin to think critically about my own beliefs, knowing that Christians I admired thought differently about them.

Salvation, East and West

2011-04-26T20:00:00.000-05:00

In the last post about my faith journey, I described the theological controversy around the meaning of salvation by faith alone that I encountered while in college. Although I came to a few conclusions on the subject, I had not resolved it satisfactorily when I encountered the Eastern Orthodox church over 15 years later. The Orthodox ended up helping me see the question from a different perspective.

What I found was that Eastern Christianity was not so focused on sin and forgiveness as much as a new kind of life and the transformation of our natures. Salvation is a process called theosis, which is being changed from our fallen human condition into sons of God, brothers and sisters of our Lord, transformed into his image, and partakers of the divine nature. We enter into this new life by faith, but our initial response of faith is just the beginning of this life of transformation. We receive the Holy Spirit, who works in our spirits, and we commune with God through prayer. However, we are not just spiritual beings; we are also physical. Therefore God makes use of physical means such as the sacraments to transform us. Our changed nature is reflected in the way we live our lives.

In short, the life of discipleship is not optional for a Christian, but the very path of transformation that saves us from a life of self-destruction, and brings us into eternal life. Heaven is not so much a reward for believing the right thing, but the fulfillment and completion of a supernatural life that begins in this life. What I found in Eastern Orthodoxy was that faith, good works, the work of the Holy Spirit, and salvation, were all intertwined in a dynamic relationship with God.

I read a booklet by Bp. Kallistos Ware where he responded to the Evangelical question, "are you saved?" He said that he was saved by Jesus on the cross; he is being saved now as he grows in his relationship with Christ; and his hope is to experience the completion of salvation in heaven. Notice that heaven is his hope, not his guarantee. He knows that he freely entered into this relationship with Christ, and he could freely leave it, even as a bishop. Apostasy and turning to a life of sin is always a possibility for any Christian in this life, so we must be vigilant so that we don't drift away. Don't get me wrong, God does not easily let go of us; he wants our salvation more than we do. However, he does respect our free will, and it is possible for a Christian to get so caught up in the world and sin that he prefers it to God, and is in danger of destruction.

That's my quick sketch of the Eastern Orthodox view of salvation as I understand it. What surprised me years later was that this was very similar to the Catholic view. Indeed, the worldwide Catholic Church includes Eastern Catholic churches whose theology of salvation is no different than the Eastern Orthodox. When you get to Western Catholic theology, there is more of an emphasis on sin, punishment, and forgiveness. Western categories are more distinct, and Western theologians try to nail down answers to questions that Eastern theologians prefer to leave unanswered. Western theologians use the term "sanctifying grace" to talk about the presence of God that accomplishes theosis. They use the term "mortal sin" to describe the kind of act that completely kills our relationship with God, and "venial sin" to describe an act that damages but does not kill the life of God within us. Eastern Christians recognize both kinds of effects of sin, but they are reluctant to categorize things in that way.

Nevertheless, Catholic theology recognizes that we need the grace of God to forgive our sins and to lift us up into the life of God. We respond to God's work in us by faith, and so cooperate with him. In other words, God will not change us if we don't want him too. We, in ourselves, can add nothing to what God does, but we can say "yes" to the offer of Christ to live his life through us. As in the Eastern view, there are physical as well as spiritual means through which God works in us. Although there are lots of activities involved in the Catholic walk of faith, known as works of charity, they are all actually works of Christ, because it is Christ who does them through us.

Well, these are huge topics, which I've barely touched on. I hope, however, it clarifies things a little bit. Please feel free to ask specific questions, and I'll see if I can find some answers.

Christ and the "Dying Gods"

2011-04-24T09:30:00.001-05:00

Happy Easter, everyone!

I am using a new search engine, duckduckgo.com. I typed in "C. S. Lewis dying god" and this popped up in the "red box" instant results at the top.

Christian mythology: Comparative mythology: Christ and the "Dying Gods"

The more recent writer C. S. Lewis regarded the pagan "dying gods" as premonitions in the human mind of the Christ story that was to come. Pope Benedict XVI expressed a similar opinion in his 2006 homily for Corpus Christi: "The Lord mentioned [wheat's] deepest mystery on Palm Sunday, when some Greeks asked to see him. In his answer to this question is the phrase: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit' (Jn 12: 24). [...] Mediterranean culture, in the centuries before Christ, had a profound intuition of this mystery. Based on the experience of this death and rising they created myths of divinity which, dying and rising, gave new life. To them, the cycle of nature seemed like a divine promise in the midst of the darkness of suffering and death that we are faced with. In these myths, the soul of the human person, in a certain way, reached out toward that God made man, who, humiliated unto death on a cross, in this way opened the door of life to all of us." There have been some modern attempts to discredit the notion of a general "dying god" category of which Christ is a member. More at Wikipedia

I did the search because I remembered how C. S. Lewis, when he was an atheist, believed that Christianity was just another "dying god" myth. However, he came to wonder why there were so many dying god myths in human cultures, and came to believe that they were all premonitions of an actual event that was so cosmic in its scope, reaching across space and time, that it made a deep impression in the human psyche, even before it played out in human history.

The first link brought me this quote:

“In the New Testament, the thing really happens. The Dying God really appears—as a historical Person, living in a definite place and time. . . . The old myth of the Dying God . . . comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens— at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We must not be nervous about ‘parallels’ [in other religions] . . . : they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.”

By the way, I think DuckDuckGo (DDG) is the first serious alternative to Google. One of their biggest selling points is that they don't track you like Google does. They also make a bigger effort to keep out spam, which I like. I also like their nice user interface. Give it a try!

The Lord descends into hell

2011-04-23T07:18:00.001-05:00

From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday

Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Make a Friar

2011-04-03T12:44:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, I saw a young man speak at my parish, Patrick Gothman, who is in the process of joining the Little Brothers of the Lamb, a missionary branch of the Dominican order based in France, and operating in several countries around the world. This branch not only sees St. Dominic as their spiritual father, as do all Dominicans, but they also look to St. Francis of Assisi as a spiritual father. I find this remarkable because Dominic and Francis lived at the same time and started similar reform movements, but the orders which resulted from their work have often been at odds with each other. The Little Brothers and Sisters of the Lamb appear to take the best of both movements, and have the potential to be an effective reform movement in the Church. They have fully the adopted the mendicant practice that characterized these movements in the beginning by trusting God to provide for them day by day through the gifts of others.

Patrick has set up a website about his vocation not only to inform, but also to raise some money he needs to pay off student loans before he enters religious life. If you would like to learn more about Patrick, the Community of the Lamb, and possibly help him out, check out www.makeafriar.com.

Theological Controversy

2011-03-13T21:56:00.001-05:00

My faith journey began with a conviction that the Bible was a book from God. In the last thirty years I have never seriously doubted the truth of that conviction, but questions about the origin of the Bible and how it should be interpreted have been more difficult to answer. Related to those questions was the problem of the many Christian denominations.

Our family had been going to a Presbyterian church since I was in fourth grade, but my High School friends went to a Bible church. My friends stressed the importance of the doctrine that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and without error (inerrant), so I asked the Christian Education director at my Presbyterian church if "we" believed the Bible was inspired. His answer was that it depended on what I meant by inspired. He said that the events of the Bible were inspired, but not every word was inspired because there were obviously errors in the Bible. My teenage mind quickly came to the conclusion that this disagreement was at the root of the denominational problem, and I decided the inerrancy side was correct. I thought that if I stayed with churches that believed the Bible, I would have all of the right answers.

Such a strategy served me well through most of my Freshman year at A&M. In the Spring semester, I took a discipleship course from Dwight, the college minister at Grace Bible Church. We studied Paul's second letter to Timothy in depth, and I was getting a lot out of it. I had a friend, Brett, who was taking an advanced discipleship class from Dwight that Spring, and as the semester progressed, Brett and his friend Mike were getting into arguments about some of the things Dwight was teaching. I dismissed their argument as nitpicking over trivialities, and did not get involved. The year ended, and we went our separate ways to Houston and Dallas.

When we came back to school after summer was over, Brett and Mike had resolved their differences, and agreed that Dwight's teaching was wrong and dangerous. The issue had to do with the relationship of faith and works in salvation, and the fact that they had come to agreement against Dwight caught my attention. Dwight was going to teach an advanced discipleship course that semester that would study the epistle of James. I knew that James dealt with the theme of faith and works, so I decided taking that course would be a great way to get to the bottom of this question.

What I thought would be the relevant passage did not begin until chapter 2, verse 14. Since we were covering the epistle verse-by-verse, I expected the issue would come up later in the course. However, I did not have that long to wait. We hit verse 12 of chapter 1, and the problem came to the surface. It reads, "Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him." Dwight taught that the "crown of life" was an extra reward given by God to Christians who endure trial. He made a point that James was not speaking of salvation because salvation is obtained by faith alone, and does not require enduring any trials.

Dwight was working on a degree at Dallas Theological Seminary during the summers, and he was a proponent of the teaching of one of the professors, Zane Hodges. This teaching was an attempt to make the most of the Reformation doctrine of salvation by faith alone. A difficulty with salvation by faith alone is that the New Testament makes a lot of demands that can appear to be related to salvation. Hodges dealt with this difficulty by making a distinction between salvation, which leads to heaven, and discipleship, which results in rewards. Salvation was by faith alone, and caused a person to be forgiven of their sins, saved from punishment in hell, and gives him the gift of eternal life in heaven. After a person was saved by faith, they could optionally become a disciple, which involved commitment, endurance, good works, and much of the other directive teaching of the New Testament. To the extent that a believer practiced discipleship, they would receive additional rewards in heaven.

So, Dwight concluded that the "crown of life" in James 1:12 was one of these additional rewards because it was connected with enduring trials, which he considered additional to saving faith. I had two problems with his interpretation. First of all, I thought it very possible that "crown of life" could be a poetic way of describing eternal life. Second was that James said this crown was promised by God "to those who love him." It seemed to me that love of God should be connected with being a Christian. I pointed this out to Dwight, and he flatly rejected it. He said that there were many times he did not love God. Did that mean he lost his salvation at those times? I did not have an answer, but Dwight seemed wrong to me, and I saw why my friends thought his teaching was dangerous.

I quit the discipleship class, and at the suggestion of a friend, took up my own personal study of John's first epistle. I don't remember who suggested it, but it was the perfect thing for me to study at that time in relation to this question. The epistle is full of "if" statements which I pieced together to get a big picture of what John was talking about. For example, the first one is "If we say we have fellowship with him [God] while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth; but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1:6-7). In the first "if" statement, John says fellowship with God is incompatible with walking in darkness. Is fellowship with God salvation or discipleship? It's hard to know looking at the one statement, but the second "if" statement is connected, and it equates walking in the light with fellowship with one another and being cleansed from all sin. Being cleansed from sin would definitely be connected with salvation. By looking at many more of these "if" statements in 1 John, I pieced together a picture of the Christian life in which the concepts that Dwight called salvation and discipleship were intimately intertwined. According to 1 John, it was impossible to be saved and not be a disciple. The danger of Dwight's teaching was that someone might choose to not take the discipleship option and think they were saved, but be deceived.

I went into such detail on this controversy for two reasons. The first was it showed me that just believing in the truth of the Bible was not sufficient for unity of belief. Two people could sincerely believe the Bible and interpret it differently, even on important issues of how someone is saved. The second is that I would continue to struggle with this issue for the next seventeen years until I discovered the Eastern Orthodox perspective on this question. The Orthodox and Catholic doctrines of salvation, which I believe are two sides of the same coin, make sense of everything the Bible teaches on salvation, whereas the various Protestant doctrines I explored in the intervening years would each fit with certain Bible verses, but would have problems with others.

Welcome to Aggieland

2011-03-06T21:39:00.000-06:00

I was very excited to be going to Texas A&M. I was excited about living "on my own" in a dorm, making new friends, and studying Engineering. I felt like this was the beginning of my adult life, and there was a world of excitement and opportunity ahead of me.

However, I had this new faith that I wanted to nurture, and I was well aware that college was a place where people often lost their faith. Therefore, I resolved to go to church my first Sunday in College Station, and start a weekly habit. Since my friends who had led me to Christ went to a Bible Church, and I had enjoyed visiting their church, I looked in the phone book for a Bible Church in College Station. I found Grace Bible Church, which was not too far away. I found out the times for Sunday School and the Worship Service, and made my plans.

On Sunday morning, I started out early walking to my car, which was parked far away in the Freshman parking lot. I had been on campus for several days, and had not used my car since it was so far away. When I reached my 1974 Chevy Vega, I found it had two flat tires. Now one flat tire I could have changed and been only a little late to Sunday School, but not with two. I saw this as a test, and I resolved to not be overcome by this obstacle, so I began walking to the church. I think it took about 45 minutes for me to get there, and I arrived as Sunday School was almost over.

I snuck into a crowded classroom where every seat was taken, and many were standing along the wall at the back when I recognized a face. Danny, who had graduated from my high school a year earlier, saw me also and welcomed me. After class he invited me to join him at the worship service, and we sat together. I liked Grace Bible Church; it had a similar intellectual feel that had experienced at Mesquite Bible Church, and there were lots of college students there. The college minister, Dwight, was a very good teacher and was very popular with the students.

Having overcome the obstacles to going to church my first Sunday, I got my two tires fixed, and was ready to go back to Grace the next Sunday. I lived on the fourth floor of my dorm, and as I was going down the stairs, Bible in hand, I met another student going down stairs carrying a Bible. We talked and found out we were both going to Grace, and since he, Ted, had an upperclassman parking permit, he offered to give me a ride.

Through Ted, I met several other students who were active in their faith, and soon I was in a network of friends who encouraged me to grow deeper in my faith, whether through formal meetings such as Sunday worship, Thursday night college fellowship, and a dorm Bible study, or just through eating together and hanging out together.

I had been concerned about losing my new Christian faith at a secular university, but instead I found an incubator in which it could grow and develop. My Freshman year was primarily a time of learning and just soaking things in. In my Sophomore year, however, I would encounter some challenges.

God’s Word is an Inexhaustible Spring of Life

2011-02-13T19:08:00.003-06:00

I am taking a break to share a quote I read today from St. Ephrem of Syria, who lived in the 4th century. Even though I just discovered this quote, it describes what I began to experience as a young adult as I began to study the Bible. I remember having discussions with friends in college about how we would come back to a passage that we had read in the past, and see new things we hadn't previously noticed. I can testify now 30 years later that my experience of the Bible continues to be as a spring of life that never runs dry.

Lord, who can comprehend even one of your words? We lose more of it than we grasp, like those who drink from a living spring. For God’s word offers different facets according to the capacity of the listener, and the Lord has portrayed his message in many colors, so that whoever gazes upon it can see in it what suits him. Within it he has buried manifold treasures, so that each of us might grow rich in seeking them out.

The word of God is a tree of life that offers us blessed fruit from each of its branches. It is like that rock which was struck open in the wilderness, from which all were offered spiritual drink. As the Apostle says: They ate spiritual food and they drank spiritual drink.

And so whenever anyone discovers some part of the treasure, he should not think that he has exhausted God’s word. Instead he should feel that this is all that he was able to find of the wealth contained in it. Nor should he say that the word is weak and sterile or look down on it simply because this portion was all that he happened to find. But precisely because he could not capture it all he should give thanks for its riches.

Be glad then that you are overwhelmed, and do not be saddened because he has overcome you. A thirsty man is happy when he is drinking, and he is not depressed because he cannot exhaust the spring. So let this spring quench your thirst, and not your thirst the spring. For if you can satisfy your thirst without exhausting the spring, then when you thirst again you can drink from it once more; but if when your thirst is sated the spring is also dried up, then your victory would turn to your own harm.

Be thankful then for what you have received, and do not be saddened at all that such an abundance still remains. What you have received and attained is your present share, while what is left will be your heritage. For what you could not take at one time because of your weakness, you will be able to grasp at another if you only persevere. So do not foolishly try to drain in one draught what cannot be consumed all at once, and do not cease out of faintheartedness from what you will be able to absorb as time goes on.

Discovering the Bible

2011-02-06T21:42:00.000-06:00

I took Physics in my Junior year in High School. Doug, Chad, and Mike were all in that class. (Toni, who 11 years later would be my wife, was also in that class. More about that story will come later.) I noticed that they would bring Bibles to school and talk about religion, but they were also very intelligent and did well in science. They made me think that it could be possible to be intelligent, rational, and religious at the same time. Their example combined with my growing disillusionment with the unfulfilled promises of modern progress made me think I should give religion a chance. I decided that I would conduct a systematic study of the major world religions to see if any of them made sense. I believed that my Christian heritage was just something I happened to be born into, so there was no reason to believe that Christianity should hold any priority over any other religion. Therefore I should give them all a chance before making any kind of commitment.

Of course, I couldn't just Google Hinduism and bring up a Wikipedia article in the comfort of my bedroom. Such research in that day would mean a lot of time in the library just to get started. I had not made any progress towards my goal when I found myself in some conversations with these guys about the Bible. What made an impression on me was when they showed me how Jesus fulfilled so many Old Testament prophecies that had been written centuries before he was born. In the process of seeing these prophecies and their fulfillment, I had a kind of epiphany such that I knew that the Bible had to be a supernatural book. I suddenly had confidence that the Bible was a message from God, and losing all interest in other religions, all I wanted to do was to know and understand what it said.

About this same time, Doug, Chad, and Mike took me to a Christian youth meeting where they gave a simple gospel presentation that focused on the fact that Jesus Christ took all of our sins upon himself on the cross. We needed to trust in his work on the cross in order to receive forgiveness of our sins and eternal salvation. I wasn't sure if I had done that before or not, so I made a renewed effort at faith in Christ.

I began to immerse myself in anything Bible or Christian related. I wanted to make sure I had the right kind of Bible, so I ended up buying several. I would try to watch Christian television shows, but even in my enthusiasm, I couldn't take most of them. I did start to get into prophecy related teaching that predicted that Jesus was returning soon. I got into Christian music, including Michael Omartian, Keith Green, John Michael and Terry Talbot, 2nd Chapter of Acts and Daniel Amos. When I found out that there was a series of fantasy books with a Christian theme called The Chronicles of Narnia, I immediately started reading them. The Narnia books were very helpful because they worked on my imagination. As I stated before, growing up I had not found the person of Jesus to be very appealing. Now I believed that he was the Son of God and our Savior, but I still had trouble looking up to him as a person. However, in Narnia, Jesus was in the form of the lion Aslan. The way that C. S. Lewis portrayed Aslan was very appealing to me, and over time I was able to transfer the way I felt about Aslan to my conception of Jesus.

I continued to go to the same Presbyterian church our family had attended since I was 10. I got involved in the choir and was more interested in Sunday school and youth group, but my school friends went to a Bible Church, and I believed that they were closer to the Biblical truth. I visited their church whenever I got the chance.

As we neared graduation, we were all making plans for college. Mike was going to a Bible college, but I was going to Texas A&M. There was some concern that by going off to a big secular school, I would be endangering my new faith, so I prayed that God would protect me.

Entering the Digital Age

2011-01-31T19:09:00.001-06:00

Sometime during my Freshman year in High School, I found a magazine on the dining table. The cover art suggested a science fiction theme, but the contents definitely had something to do with electronics. The title was very weird and confusing to me: Byte. The subtitle was not that helpful either: The Small Systems Journal. What kind of small systems are they talking about? As I tried to read the articles and analyze the ads, I began to realize that this magazine was about small computers. Up to that moment, my concept of a computer was something that cost millions of dollars and filled several rooms. When I was six, my dad had taken me to work on a Saturday, and let me go with him into the data processing center, full of cabinets roaring with forced cooling air, reel-to-reel tape drives, washing-machine looking disk units, punched card readers, all controlled from a large panel of switches and blinking lights. This Byte magazine had pictures of machines costing around a thousand dollars that could fit on a table. It now appeared to possible for someone to actually have a computer in their home.

This was mind-blowing for me; science-fiction was becoming reality. I pored over the magazine trying to understand what these machines were, what they could do, and dreamed about how I could possibly get one. It turned out that a friend of my dad's had given him the magazine, and more issues started to arrive. Some of the articles reviewed hardware or showed how to build circuits, but other articles talked about programs. Some of these programs were in machine and assembly language and were completely incomprehensible to me, but some were in a language called BASIC, and I could figure out some of what they did. Not long after that, the first computer store in Dallas opened up. My dad took me there and I got to see some of these machines in person. Some of them had boxes with switches and lights on the front, others just had a power and reset button. Some had keyboards and little TV monitors connected to them. I could press the keys and see the letters appear on the screen. On one of our visits there, I tried typing in a little program...

10 PRINT "GREG"

20 GOTO 10

RUN

... and my name went racing up the screen. What a thrill!

Thoughts of computers filled my mind. A company called Commodore came out with a computer called the PET which you could buy for $600, and it included everything you needed to write BASIC programs. My goal was to save up enough money to buy a PET, which seemed achievable with a lot of work. I did not consider the dream machine, the Apple II, which at over $1000 seemed unobtainable. In the meantime, I heard that my High School had a course called Computer Math that taught BASIC programming, so I signed up to take it my Sophomore year. I didn't think it would be a very good course, but at least I would get to program a computer.

That summer, my dad surprised me and delighted me to no end by bringing home an Apple II with 16K of RAM! I probably spent every spare hour I had that summer on the computer, typing in programs out of magazines, playing little games, and coming up with my own programs.

When it came time for me to take the Computer Math class, I had already learned on my own most what would be taught in the class. There was one other kid in the class, Chad, who also knew a lot about computers, and we became friends. Chad and I did well in the class, but Chad had stories of a kid named Mike who had taken the class earlier and was quite a computer wiz. Later that year, our teacher took Mike, Chad, and myself up to North Texas State University (now UNT) for a programming contest. This was my first time to spend any time with Mike, and although he was kind of strange, he was clearly very smart, and I admired him. We did not win the contest, but we had a good time. On the drive back, Chad and Mike put a tape in the car stereo, and a very strange song began to play. It seemed to have a religious theme, but it was not like any religious song I had ever heard. I couldn't tell if it was serious, or making fun of religion. I now know it was Larry Norman singing Moses in the Wilderness, and this song was a kind of sign of things to come.

Swords and Sorcery

2011-01-17T20:17:00.002-06:00

Although the presence of the Force in Star Wars opened my mind to the possibility of something like the supernatural, I did not immediately turn to traditional religion. The Force was manifested in Star Wars through mind control, telekinesis, and skill in fighting; these are not things you find in most traditional religions. However, I began to think about the legends of wizards and witches from the Middle Ages, and I wondered if there was some kind of reality behind those legends.

In those days, you could not walk into a book store and find books on witchcraft or Wicca. If such things had been available to me then, I might have been tempted to actually try it. However, all I got into was Fantasy genre fiction and the Dungeons and Dragons game. Although I read a few different Fantasy series, what made a huge impression on me was The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I was amazed by the detail and the scope of the imaginary world that Tolkien created, but I think there were deeper things that affected me. I was drawn to the beauty, goodness, and heroism in these stories that was stronger than anything I had encountered before.

I think my new interest in Tolkien improved my relationship with my friend, Doug, who had become religious a couple of years earlier. He was a Tolkien fan, and now we had this in common. This relationship would grow in importance through the rest of High School, and lasts even to this day.

The Summer of 1977

2010-12-17T20:59:00.000-06:00

In the summer of 1977, my family piled into our van and took a two week road trip to California. It was a great, once in a life-time experience. We got to see many amazing things as a family, and we had a great time.

While we were on the trip, this movie Chuck had told me about came out, and it was a sensation. I couldn't believe what I was hearing on the news that people were lining up for hours to see a Science Fiction movie. Of course, the movie was "Star Wars," and while we were in a drug store in San Francisco, I picked up a copy of the book to see what this thing was about. When we got back to Texas, we stopped at Chuck's house in Lubbock. By then I had read the book, and he had already seen the movie twice. He immediately took us out to see the movie, and I was blown away.

Star Wars was not traditional Science Fiction, though. It didn't speculate about our future, but took place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." George Lucas even admitted that space travel and technology were just part of the setting for a classic hero's journey story. In other words, Lucas what not really very interested in Science Fiction, but just wanted to create an exciting, fun movie. This is why Star Wars had a much broader appeal than other Science Fiction like Star Trek. Although I was aware that Star Wars was not pure Science Fiction, I was so taken by the movie that I didn't care. This was the first movie I strongly cared about, and to my 14 year old mind, it was the best movie that had ever been made. (When "Annie Hall," a movie I had never even heard of, won the 1977 Academy Award for Best Picture, I thought, "What is wrong with these people?! Don't they get how great Star Wars is?")

Another thing about Star Wars that was new to me was that in the midst of a technological setting with space ships, robots, aliens, and blasters, there was a mystical element: the Force. I did not know what to make of the Force. At first, it seemed to be like the psychic powers I had encountered in other Science Fiction, but it was different in that it had a moral element. There was a light side and a dark side to the Force. Also, it was not just a power of an individual, but it seemed to be a power outside of and beyond the individual that aided the individual who cooperated with it. One man, with the Force as his ally, could take on a huge technological power.

Looking back, I see Star Wars as having an important role in my spiritual journey. It opened my mind to the possibility that the scientific and spiritual worlds might not be incompatible. I considered the possibility that if there were something like the Force, then ancient religion might be a primitive attempt to understand human experience of this Force, but such thoughts did not immediate lead to an interest in religion. I had no evidence that any religious people I knew experienced anything like the Force. Instead, my interests took a different turn.

Dystopia

2010-11-14T18:13:00.001-06:00

Before going on to the Summer of '77, I want to mention that not all of the science fiction I encountered painted a rosy picture of the future. Concerns of devastating nuclear war, overpopulation, destruction of nature, and dehumanizing technology were reflected in some of the stories I read. These negative visions of the future introduced doubts in my mind that scientific progress would necessarily lead to good. I came to realize that science and technology could be used for evil as well as good, but my hope was that improvements in education would help the future turn positive.

Young Atheist

2010-10-31T22:27:00.000-05:00

When I turned 10, our family started going to church regularly. This was a result of neighbors inviting us to their church. I started going to Sunday School, and it was a struggle to fit in, but I tried to learn the material in order to fit in and not appear stupid. Regardless, I soon came to see a conflict between the science that I loved and some of the things I was taught in Sunday School.

As I thought about this conflict, I came to the conclusion that science had given us a better picture of reality than was known by ancient religion. I chose science over religion, consistent with my overall preference for new things over old. In the same way I preferred an automobile to a horse and buggy, or an electric light over a candle, color TV over black and white, the Apollo spacecraft over the Mercury, or heliocentrism over geocentrism. Even in my short lifetime, I had seen that things were progressing, continually getting better as scientific knowledge advanced. Religion was part of the old knowledge that was surpassed by the new.

About this time I discovered Star Trek reruns and became and instant fan. In Middle School I got hold of any Star Trek related book I could, and I completely bought into the Gene Roddenberry vision of the future, where scientific and technological advances had solved all of our problems. My mind was always on the future, and I became interested in other works of Science Fiction. Anything that was old, classic, or even contemporary was uninteresting to me.

While looking for Science Fiction books to read, it didn't take me long to discover the prolific Isaac Asimov. While some of his books were a little too difficult for me in the beginning, I found plenty of others I could consume. I soon discovered that he wrote as much or more non-fiction than he did fiction.

Asimov had a doctorate in Chemistry, but he wrote widely on all kinds of matters of science, including what I like most, which was astronomy. I had at least a couple of books of his that were collections of articles on a variety of subject matter, and it was difficult to tell from their titles, what the subject was. I remember one article called, "The Judo Argument," in his book, The Planet that Wasn't, which turned out to be about arguments for the existence of God. I was happy to see that Asimov disproved several of the arguments that believers put forth for the existence of God. However, what surprised me was that in the end, Asimov said that it is not possible to disprove the existence of God either. It surprised me that someone whom I considered to be a great man of science admitted that he could not disprove the existence of God. Asimov himself was not a believer, but he did not side at that time with extreme atheists who unequivocally denied the existence of God.

Before reading "The Judo Argument," I had assumed that the non-existence of God was an open and shut case for science. I agreed with Asimov that there probably wasn't a God, but I also agreed with him that to be intellectually honest, we must admit that God's existence was not disproven. Still, I retained my preference for the new over the old. In fact, I remember in 8th grade that a friend of mine was all excited about a book, The Hobbit, but I was completely uninterested because it was not about the future. I remember this same friend had also developed an interest in religion and wanted to talk about it, but I was not at all interested. By now I found the whole thing annoying.

However, things were about to change. It was 1977, and my best friend Chuck, who no longer lived in town but kept in touch with me by letter, was telling me about a new Science Fiction movie coming out. The SF movie and TV landscape had been pretty bleak since Star Trek ended in 1969, and I was skeptical that Hollywood could make a good Science Fiction movie, but I was going to keep my eyes open.

Early Memories

2010-10-18T18:35:00.000-05:00

I will begin my story of my religious journey with some of my earliest memories. We did not often go to church when I was a child, and when we did, I did not like it because it was a strange place where I didn't know the people or the routine. I did not like religious art; it seemed strange looking to me. Depictions of Jesus I saw did not make him out to be someone I would look up to or want to be like.

My real interests were in the realm of science and technology. I liked jets, rockets, lasers, and astronauts. I had little plastic dinosaurs, and I learned all of their names. I had a book about science that had diagrams of jet engines and other machines, showing how they work. I had a children's encyclopedia, and I loved to look at the volume on science and nature. One of my favorite cartoons was "Jonny Quest." I wanted to grow up to be either an astronaut or a scientist like Dr. Quest.

I do remember that both of my grandmothers were regular church goers, and that one of them spoke to me once about Jesus. She said that if I believed that he died for my sins on the cross, I would go to heaven. I think up to that time I associated heaven and hell as the places good and bad people went to when they died. I knew that I wasn't always good, so this idea of believing in Jesus seemed like a good thing to do in case all of this was true, and I wasn't good enough to get to heaven otherwise. However, it seemed like some kind of loophole, and I wondered if I was doing the belief thing correctly enough to qualify.

Why So Religious?

2010-10-09T22:44:00.000-05:00

I post a lot of religious material, whether on my blog, Facebook, or Twitter. I'm also working on a degree in Theology. I'm sure there are people who wonder why I'm so focused on religion? I will give a short answer in this post, and then I plan to write a series of posts giving the story of how I got here.

I believe in the existence of God, as he is described in the Christian faith, or more specifically the Catholic faith. This God is characterized by love, and it is out of love that he created the universe and us humans in it. The purpose of human existence is to receive God's love, and to respond back with love. Since God gives us freedom, he does not force us to receive his love, but allows us to reject it if we want to. This is the most important choice we can make in our lives because it not only determines the quality of our life in this world, but by receiving God's love, we enter into a life that extends beyond the grave to a relationship of love with him that lasts forever. Those who reject God's love, reject the very source of their life.

Over the last 31 years, I have been on a journey seeking the love of God, and have been richly blessed in doing so. It has been a dynamic process where my knowledge and belief about God has developed over the years. Some aspects of my belief, such as the Bible being God's Word, and Jesus being the Son of God, have been there from the beginning. Other aspects, such as the nature of salvation and the Church, have changed over the years. I have made many mistakes and wrong turns, but even when I willfully do the wrong thing, God is ready to forgive me and turn even the wrong turns into good. I plan to write about this journey to show how I went from not believing in God at all, to eventually becoming Catholic.

My desire in writing about these things is not to show off what I know or what I have done, but to tell others about something that has been good for me, and I want them to have too. Jesus tells his followers to freely give away what they have freely received. My hope is that if you are not interested in God, you will see something that interests you. If you are already a believer, I hope that I can share something that might help you in your journey. I expect that I will learn some things as I go through the process of writing. I also hope that I may learn from readers' comments, whether they be affirmations, questions, or objections, so feel free to comment.

Japanese Readings

2010-08-20T22:17:00.001-05:00

I've been reading some things on the web related to Japan lately. First of all, there is a lot of talk about the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Catholic doctrine says that nuclear weapons and other weapons that indiscriminately kill innocent people are immoral. The best piece I read on this subject is The World's Most Dangerous Idea, which is not only concerned about the immorality of our use of those weapons against Japan, but it is also concerned about the fact that a large majority of Americans have thought it was the right thing to do. The idea that there are certain "ends" (such as victory in the war with Japan) that can justify the "means" of killing innocent people has continued to this day to the justification of abortion and euthanasia.

Catholic moral theology tends to be more clear and uncompromising on these types of issues than what most people are used to thinking. There is another aspect of Catholicism that is probably even more foreign to most people, and that is the idea of redemptive suffering. Although most Christians believe that Jesus suffered on the cross to accomplish human redemption, most Protestants do not embrace the idea that the suffering of Christians can have a part to play in redemption. The Bible passage that most clearly illustrates this is Colossians 1:24, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church..." (ESV). I found the long article, 'The Catholic Holocaust of Nagasaki—"Why, Lord?"' to be a beautiful story of how redemptive suffering transformed lives in the aftermath of the bombing of Nagasaki, which was the most Catholic city of Japan.

Finally, I just read Sandro Magister's column called 'Why Christianity Is "Foreign" to Japan,' which includes an essay by Kagefumi Ueno, the Japanese ambassador to the Holy See, on the differences in Japanese and Western approaches to religion. The essay is very informative and shows some real differences in belief. However, it appears to me that some of the perceived differences are more a reflection of Western culture than actual essential Christian doctrine, which gives me hope that a presentation of the Catholic faith, properly inculturated, would have more traction in Japan, as it seemed to have in the days of St. Francis Xavier.

Thoughts on Gay Marriage

2010-08-09T12:13:00.001-05:00

This story on Rosie O'Donnell's protest marriage has prompted me to make some brief comments on the subject of gay marriage. Proponents of gay marriage usually characterize those who oppose it as homophobic and hating. They say that they are doing nothing to damage heterosexual marriage, so they should have the right to do whatever they want. Here is why such a statement is false.

My opposition to gay marriage is based on the idea that the family is the fundamental unit of society, and that the health of the family is essential to the health of society. Anything that undermines the family also undermines our society, and threatens the eventual collapse of society. The importance of the family is based on its traditional definition. A man and a woman commit themselves to a life-long bond, and it is in this context that children are conceived and raised by their natural biological parents. (There are exceptions such as children who are adopted, and couples who cannot have children, but these exceptions are rare enough that they don't seriously affect society. Also, I will say that although many adoptions work out wonderfully, that doesn't mean that all else being equal, it would not have been better for those children to be raised by their natural parents.) Such families have for thousands of years provided the foundation of the civilization that we have inherited.

Over the last few decades, the family has been seriously undermined through easy divorce, and now faces greater erosion through homosexual marriage. These changes are result of greater focus on the needs and desires of individual adults rather than the needs of children and society. The changes are justified by citing studies that show that children are not adversely affected by divorce, or don't need to be raised by their biological parents, but there are also studies that say the opposite. It appears that the purpose of Rosie O'Donnell's protest marriage was not to create a permanent stable environment for the raising of children, but that it was a throw-away marriage in order to make a point.

How does gay marriage undermine the family? It does not produce a family where children are conceived and raised by their biological parents. Divorce is a similar problem because even if the children are conceived within a family, tragically the family does not stay together, and the children suffer some amount of separation from one of their biological parents. In a gay marriage, it is impossible for the married partners to conceive together due to the deepest biological structures of our sexuality. The best that can be hoped is that through some donor or surrogate process, children can be conceived who are raised by one of their biological parents combined with a partner to whom they are not biologically related. It is interesting that in the currently running movie, "The Kids Are All Right", the children raised by lesbian mothers who are evidently "all right" still have a desire to know their biological father.

The deeper issue is the prevailing attitude that individuals should have the freedom to be and do whatever they want with little attention paid to the common good. Traditions that formed the foundation of our society are considered expendable. People think that they can remove the foundation and that the structure will continue to stand. I think that is very unlikely.

Scientist-Clerics

2010-07-16T22:16:00.003-05:00

I'm taking a class on Religion and Science at University of Dallas. While doing some research for my paper, I ran across this cool little article on Wikipedia: List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics. The bulk of the article is just an alphabetical list of these scientist-clerics with short descriptions of what they did. The article begins with an introduction, from which this is an excerpt.

Many great scientists throughout history have also been Roman Catholic clerics (or can it be said that many Roman Catholic clerics were also scientists), including many of the most prominent scientists in history. These include such illustrious names as Nicolaus Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Roger Joseph Boscovich, Marin Mersenne, Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, Robert Grosseteste, Christopher Clavius, Nicolas Steno, Athanasius Kircher, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, William of Ockham, and many others. Hundreds of others have made important contributions to science from the Middle Ages through the present day. These scientist-clerics should give pause to all those who consider science and religion to be incompatible.

Some of you may ask, "what is a cleric?" It's just a word for a member of the clergy. In the Catholic Church, many of them are priests, but there can be monks or friars who are not ordained who are considered clerics. Also deacons are clerics as well as members of what were known in the Middle Ages as minor orders. For example, Copernicus took minor orders, but never became a priest.

A Summary of Christian Doctrine

2010-07-10T21:07:00.002-05:00

The Ignatius Press website put up an excerpt from one of their books by Catholic poet Paul Claudel. It is a beautiful summary of Christian doctrine using unconventional language that caused me to see things from a little different perspective. I suppose that is the job of a poet. One warning, there are a couple of Latin phrases that might not be familiar to some of you, so I will provide a translation. Fiat voluntas mea means "my will be done," and fiat voluntas tua means "your will be done."

Here is a little extract to whet your appetite:

How do we know a living being whom we cannot see? By the movement of which he is the cause. The, mole under the ground, the hare in the bush, the heart beneath the fingers. For we see that the whole universe is in movement. In this world all is movement, all bears witness to the divine restlessness of nature, always in a state of creation, incapable of existing by itself or in the presence of an unmoving Creator; everything betrays perpetual change.

Humble Theology

2010-07-07T18:20:00.001-05:00

Continuing his series on medieval theologians, the Pope talked about Blessed John Duns Scotus, the 13th century Franciscan theologian, who espoused the doctrine of Mary's "Preventive Redemption," also known as the Immaculate Conception. This had long been a belief at the popular level, but it was not accepted by theologians until Scotus figured out how to explain it. The Pope says this should be an example to theologians to "always listen to the source of popular faith and maintain the humility and simplicity of children."

Such humility is very important. I am often surprised at some at some of the things that some theologians have the nerve to say about the faith. They seem to think so highly of their own intelligence that they are willing to not only deny, but even ridicule orthodox Christian beliefs. The fact that it is common belief even by those in their own church means nothing. Years ago I saw a news report about some large theology conference, and one of the attendees was interviewed who said that the beliefs of the "man in the pew" is just "folk religion" and has nothing to do with what these real theologians work on. Although I admit that sometimes we can get more technical than some believers would be interested in, theology should never be detached from common faith. Pope Benedict XVI is one of the most brilliant theologians alive today, but he is also a holy and humble man who knows that brilliance is not a guarantee of truth, but can even lead away from the truth if we're not very careful.

Georgia On My Mind

2010-07-01T21:19:00.000-05:00

I didn't much care for the Georgia font when it started appearing on computers in the mid-90s. I think at the time I was much more into modern looking san-serif fonts, and Georgia looked very traditional to me. However, I am seeing it used more, and since it was designed to be very readable on computer screens, I've found that I appreciate reading websites that use it. So, I'm trying it out on the blog, and so far I'm pretty happy with it.

Pope: "The Truth is Accessible to Human Reason"

2010-06-16T19:43:00.000-05:00

The Pope addresses the importance of believers and unbelievers reaching an understanding about the truth of human nature. Such an understanding will lead to a concept of natural law, which should be a guide for a government. Natural law is not based on a particular religious revelation, but on reason. Natural law protects against moral relativism at the personal level, and tyranny at the level of government.

St. Thomas Aquinas did a lot of work on natural law because although he followed Christian revelation, he wanted to determine what could be known by human reason. Aquinas did not see a conflict between faith and reason, but instead saw them as two avenues to reach the truth, which ultimately comes from God. There are some truths which cannot be known through reason alone, but what is known through reason is compatible with Christian faith. Faith allows a person to move beyond the limits of human reason into the mysteries of God, not destroying human nature, but building upon and perfecting it.

John Adams Visits a Catholic Church

2010-05-23T22:00:00.001-05:00

I'm still reading John Adams by David McCullough on my Kindle. I was very impressed by his description of his first visit to a Catholic Church while in Philadelphia.

One Sunday, “led by curiosity and good company,” which included George Washington, Adams crossed a “Romish” threshold, to attend afternoon mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Fifth Street, an experience so singular that he reflected on it at length both in his journal and in a letter to Abigail. Everything about the service was the antithesis of a lifetime of Sabbaths at Braintree’s plain First Church, where unfettered daylight through clear window glass allowed for no dark or shadowed corners, or suggestion of mystery. For the first time, Adams was confronted with so much that generations of his people had abhorred and rebelled against, and he found himself both distressed and strangely moved. The music, bells, candles, gold, and silver were “so calculated to take in mankind,” that he wondered the Reformation had ever succeeded. He felt pity for “the poor wretches fingering their beads, chanting Latin, not a word of which they understood,” he told Abigail. The dress of the priest was rich with lace—his pulpit was velvet and gold. The altar piece was very rich—little images and crucifixes about—wax candles lighted up. But how shall I describe the picture of our Savior in a frame of marble over the altar at full length upon the Cross, in the agonies, and the blood dropping and streaming from his wounds? Yet Adams stayed through all of the long service. The music and chanting of the assembly continued through the afternoon, “most sweetly and exquisitely,” and he quite approved of the priest’s “good, short, moral essay” on the duty of parents to see to their children’s temporal and spiritual interests. The whole experience, Adams concluded, was “awful and affecting”—the word “awful” then meaning full of awe, or “that which strikes with awe, or fills with reverence.”

I was amazed that despite his tradition, he was open enough to express positive things about the experience. I will comment on his pity for "the poor wretches." I can't speak for the Catholics of 1770s Philadelphia, but I will say that there is evidence of vibrant knowledgeable faith among Catholic laity in many times and places before the liturgy was in the vernacular. Yes, there are also cases of ignorance of the faith, but that's also true in the Protestant world. In general, I think it is good that the Catholic liturgy is now usually done in the vernacular, although I'm glad that the Latin tradition is being preserved.

I can speculate on two related reasons why Adams may have been so affected. The first is the sacramental presence of Christ in the Catholic Mass. Although I believe from what I've read that Adams had a relationship with Christ, Jesus is present in the Eucharist in a way that Adams would not have experienced before. I have heard many testimonies of people walking into a Catholic Church and feeling a divine presence there, and that has been my experience too. The second reason is that there was worship appropriate to the bodily presence of Christ there at the Mass. It would have been more like the heavenly worship described in Revelation 4-6 than the sermon-focused services to which Adams would have been accustomed.

There is no evidence that Adams ever considered conversion. It would have been practically unthinkable in his world. Still, I'm glad to see that he took the time to describe this experience.

After Trying an iPad I Bought a Kindle

2010-05-17T21:29:00.000-05:00

An alumnus of the school I work at donated an iPad to be given to a teacher to use in the classroom. The iPad was given to me first so that I could figure out how it might be useful in the classroom, and then pass it on to a teacher. I had it for about two weeks trying out its various capabilities. It's a nice device, but I decided since I already had a MacBook and an iPhone, getting an iPad of my own wouldn't be that useful to me. That's not to say I wouldn't make use of one if I had one, but not enough to justify the cost.

One evening that I was playing with the iPad, I turned my attention to eBooks. I installed both the Amazon Kindle Reader and the iBook applications to see what they could do. I had used the Kindle Reader on the iPhone to read one short novel (Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson) and had started reading another book on it (John Adams by David McCullough). I enjoyed always having the availability of a book in my pocket, but the iPhone was not good for extended periods of reading. The Kindle app on the iPad was the same thing, but with a bigger screen. You didn't have to turn the pages as often, but it was still a computer screen that caused eye-strain. Apple's iBook application had some nice features, but it was still the same screen. It was getting late in the evening, and after having used a computer all day, I was in no mood to stare at another computer screen to read a book, even if was the latest touch-screen tablet.

I did some research on eBooks, including the two major eBook formats: Mobi which is used on the Kindle, and ePub, which is used by everyone else (Sony, Nook, iBook, and others). I found out that for books that did not use DRM (Digital Rights Management), it was easy to convert between the formats using a program called Calibre. I also found out that it was easy to take any text and convert it to one of these eBook formats. I realized that if I got a Kindle, I could do the following cool things:

Read new books at a reduced price, since Kindle prices were usually lower than printed book prices.
Read older books for free, or a very low price ($1-$3).
Have the same book on my Kindle device and my iPhone. The iPhone allowed me to always have something to read in my pocket, but the Kindle was much better for long reading. Amazon's Whispersync feature would keep my reading position synchronized across both devices.
I could put study materials for grad school on the Kindle rather than printing them out, especially when it came time for comprehensive exams. I've seen some of my friends who were further ahead in the program carrying huge ring binders full of stuff they were reading for their comps.

So, I ordered a Kindle, and it arrived on Saturday. I'm really happy with it so far. After I've used it a little longer, I will write more of a review.

Intrinsic Motivation

2010-05-10T12:43:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching "Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation" who claims that for higher order cognitive tasks, intrinsic motivation such as autonomy, mastery, and purpose are more effective than extrinsic rewards such as money or threat of job loss (carrot and stick). He claims that extrinsic rewards work well for mechanical tasks because they provide focus, but creative work suffers from that kind of focus.

Although I think there is some value to his idea, I find it ironic that he is trying to apply intrinsic motivation for employees of companies which exist on the basis of extrinsic motivation. Most companies in the U.S. are created for the purpose of making money, which is an extrinsic motivation. I think that ultimately, intrinsic motivation for employees is only going to work when it is consistent with the thrust of the organization. Anything else will eventually be seen as manipulation. If an organization's primary purpose is to do something good in the world, then I can see how members of that organization might be motivated to do great work towards that goal.

The Lord's descent into the underworld

2010-04-03T09:37:00.003-05:00

From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday (via the Office of Readings) [vatican.va]

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Quotation Source

2010-02-11T20:17:00.002-06:00

I almost forgot to reveal who was the source of the quote I gave in my post on January 22. It was Friedrich Nietzsche. He is known for his opposition to Christianity, but in this case, his view reminds me of the Christian practice of Lectio Divina,

What are we doing in Latin class?

2010-01-22T21:44:00.003-06:00

On Classical Philology

For philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all—to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow—the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. Thus philology is now more desirable than ever before; thus it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of “work”: that is, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, which is so eager to “get things done” at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not so hurriedly “get things done”. It teaches how to read well, that is, slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes.

This quote was given out by my Latin teacher today. As good as this quote is, it's even more surprising to me who said it. I will wait for a few days before I reveal the author's name.

American Enlightenment

2010-01-03T13:13:00.008-06:00

I'm reading John Adams, by David McCullough. So far, it's a very good read. At the beginning of chapter two, McCullough describes the city of Philadelphia at the time of the Continental Congress. It was "a true eighteenth-century metropolis, the largest, wealthiest city in British America, and the most beautiful" (McCullough 78). Benjamin Franklin was Philadelphia's first citizen and the most famous American alive, and he 'had led the way in establishing the American Philosophical Society, "for the promoting of useful knowledge," with the result that Philadelphia had become the recognized center of American thought and ideas' (McCullough 80).

The goal of promoting "useful knowledge" reminded me of René Descartes' Discourse on Method, where he describes the pursuit of "clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life" (Descartes 4). This interest in useful knowledge finds its roots in Descartes' philosophy of the 17th century, but we see it in full bloom in America in the 1770s.

Further correspondence between Descartes and Franklin can be seen in the following quotes. Descartes wants to establish a "practical philosophy" to "thus render ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature. This is desirable not only for the invention of an infinity of devices that would enable one to enjoy trouble-free the fruits of the earth and all the goods found there, but also principally for the maintenance of health" (Descartes 62). Now compare this excerpt from Franklin's proposal for the American Philosophical Society as quoted by McCullough:

all philosophical [scientific] experiments that let light into the nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter, and multiply the conveniences or pleasure of life ... all new-discovered plants, herbs, trees, roots, and methods of propagating them.... New methods of curing or preventing diseases.... New mechanical inventions for saving labor.... All new arts, trades, manufacturers, etc. that may be proposed or thought of (McCullough 80).

The emphasis is on knowledge that leads to control of nature, quality of life, and better health. America has pursued these things over the last 200+ years, and now we find ourselves in environmental and health care crises. We have learned many secrets of nature, and are able to build amazing devices and harness large amounts of power, but we often don't have the wisdom to do so in a way that doesn't harm the environment and future generations. We have the technology to improve our health, but we're having trouble justly applying medical technology to the whole population. The "Age of Reason," which broke free from the bonds of religious authority has led to us being masters of nature, but it may be to our own destruction.
I'm not bringing this up to say that we should abandon reason or technology, but that we also need to consult the wisdom of the past, including that which comes from religion, in order to deal with our present problems. I especially recommend we pay attention to those such as Pope Benedict, who advocate the use of faith and reason together in public discourse.

Works Cited

Descarte, René. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th ed. Translated by Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998.

McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

Answer quickly, O Virgin

2009-12-20T16:42:00.004-06:00

This is from today's Office of Readings, from a Sermon of St. Bernard (1090-1153).

You have heard, O Virgin, that you will conceive and bear a son; you have heard that it will not be by man but by the Holy Spirit. The angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us.

The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent. In the eternal Word of God we all came to be, and behold, we die. In your brief response we are to be remade in order to be recalled to life.

Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, O loving Virgin, in their exile from Paradise. Abraham begs it, David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you, as they dwell in the country of the shadow of death. This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned, indeed, salvation for all the sons of Adam, the whole of your race.

Answer quickly, O Virgin. Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord. Answer with a word, receive the Word of God. Speak your own word, conceive the divine Word. Breathe a passing word, embrace the eternal Word.

Why do you delay, why are you afraid? Believe, give praise, and receive. Let humility be bold, let modesty be confident. This is no time for virginal simplicity to forget prudence. In this matter alone, O prudent Virgin, do not fear to be presumptuous. Though modest silence is pleasing, dutiful speech is now more necessary. Open your heart to faith, O blessed Virgin, your lips to praise, your womb to the Creator. See, the desired of all nations is at your door, knocking to enter. If he should pass by because of your delay, in sorrow you would begin to seek him afresh, the One whom your soul loves. Arise, hasten, open. Arise in faith, hasten in devotion, open in praise and thanksgiving. Behold the handmaid of the Lord, she says, be it done to me according to your word.

Hosea Quote

2009-12-11T23:34:00.002-06:00

I found an interesting quote while studying for my final. Hosea 10:3b-4, "Since they do not fear the Lord, what can the king do for them? Nothing but make promises, swear false oaths, and make alliances, while justice grows wild like wormwood in a plowed field!"

Pope Benedict on Medieval Theology

2009-11-11T06:17:00.002-06:00

Continuing the theme of the Middle Ages is this article about the kind of theology the Pope likes.

The Age of Unreason

2009-11-10T21:36:00.002-06:00

A friend of mine sent me a link to a post by a Mike Flynn that addresses another post that was written by an atheist, Jim Walker. Walker contends that Christianity is anti-scientific, and primarily uses examples from the "Dark Ages," which Flynn does a good job at countering. Walker's post is poorly written and has some obvious historical mistakes, but Flynn's post is hastily written, and although he correctly points out many of Walker's flaws, I would like to see a better treatment of the subject. Flynn has another post where he lists several books about the Middle Ages, so that might be a place to start.

Abp. Wuerl at UD Ministry Conference

2009-10-23T22:18:00.002-05:00

Today I went to the University of Dallas Ministry Conference, which was cosponsored by the Dioceses of Dallas and Ft. Worth. I enjoyed all four of the sessions I attended, but the keynote by Abp. Donald Wuerl, who is the Archbishop of Washington D.C., was especially impressive. I typed up my notes and posted them for anyone who might be interested.

A Git Success

2009-08-15T21:45:00.003-05:00

Here is a nice, short testimony from someone who switched their software version control system for a 500,000 line Java project from Subversion to Git. I am still using Git for my little projects at work on Windows XP and at home on Mac OS. I'm very happy with it, but I must confess that my needs are simple, and I know just enough Git to get me by.

One feature that I enjoy is that after I realize that I have changed several files without a checkin, it is easy for me to break up the changes into logical groups, and check them in separately. I am not forced to check in all of the changes together. Git does this using a two-step process for checkin. Each changed file must be "staged" before it can be checked in. You do not have to stage every changed file for a given checkin, giving you control over what goes into the checkin. In fact, you can even stage individual lines in a file, allowing you to split the changes in a file over multiple checkins.

School Papers Online

2009-08-05T14:27:00.001-05:00

Last night I finished putting my school papers on my website. They are available at http://www.grahamtx.net/papers/ . I will warn you that these are academic papers and may not be the most lively reading. They are also written to fulfill the requirements of an assignment rather than the needs of a normal reader. However, someone might find them useful, and it's an additional motivation for me to write clearly if I think someone besides my professor will be reading them.

Finally, I took this picture at St. Ann's after Mass this morning. I thought it turned out nice for a picture from a phone.

Posted via email from Greg's posterous

Fighting Death

2009-08-04T21:25:00.001-05:00

Death is evil, and the fight against death is a noble fight. The Christian, however, knows that the fight is largely over. Jesus Christ conquered death on the cross. Although we still experience physical death, the cross has taken away the sting of death for those who believe. The fight that remains for the Christian is the fight of faith.

Of course, we naturally avoid physical death. It is good for Christians to maintain their health, seek medical treatment when needed, and do what they can to have a long and productive life. But we must keep in mind that such goals are secondary. Our destiny is the next life, and the basis of that is our ongoing relationship with God, which is rooted in faith. Before we can have a relationship with God, we must believe that He exists, that He loves us, that He has conquered sin and death through Jesus Christ, and that we can trust Him to do what is best for us, even when it is not what we think would be best. This includes the point at which we leave this life, whether it comes early or late, quickly or slowly, easily or with difficulty.

My mother is going through cancer treatment right now. It is going well, and I'm very thankful for that. I am praying that she will have a complete recovery and stay with us for many more years. I know others who are fighting cancer and other life-threatening conditions, and I also pray for their recovery. But I have another prayer because recovery is not guaranteed, and all of us will die one day. I pray that even for those of us who do not recover, that they and their loved ones will keep trusting God. My fear is that if recovery does not come after a long, valiant, prayer-filled fight, people will think that God does not care, or that He let them down. This is the crucial point, the ultimate test that we face. It is difficult to trust God at those times because the rewards of heaven and His ultimate plan are invisible to us. We have to believe that it will ultimately turn out good, or we risk falling into bitterness.

Jesus Christ has obtained eternal life for all who will receive it from Him. We can have an experience of eternal life in this world, but its complete fulfillment is not until later. We walk by faith, not by sight, and although God gives us many evidences and helps to our faith, He does not give us all of the answers. We may face times when it seems like we don't have any answers, but we must remain confident that God is good. In the end we will see that it was for the best.

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Posted via email from Greg's posterous

Back to work

2009-08-03T18:44:00.001-05:00

After two weeks of vacation, I'm back to work. It's a beautiful day, but hot. Due to construction, A/C isn't working in my office, but it's not too hot because cooling is working in other parts of the building. I'm trying this post from the iPhone, so I'll see how well this works. I'm very happy with how well Posterous worked with my post this morning. Well, there's lots to do, so I'd better get back to it.

Posted via email from Greg's posterous

Trying out Posterous

2009-08-03T06:11:00.001-05:00

I am trying out the Posterous service. It lets me make a blog post using email. The post goes to my blog on greggraham.posterous.com, but it should also post it on Blogger and Twitter, putting any pictures on Flickr. Sounds like fun! I'm attaching a picture of St. Thomas to see how that part of it works.

Posted via email from Greg's posterous

Welcome

2009-07-24T09:37:00.003-05:00

I have redirected the blog that used to be at grahamtx.net/greg/ to here at greggraham.blogspot.com. I have also renamed this blog to Scriptorium because it will contain posts having to do with Theology (which mostly comes from Scripture) as well as programming (for which I often use scripting languages). Scriptorium refers to the "written output of a monastery" [Wikipedia], and while I am not a monastery, I do now work at a school run by monks, so that's another reason for me to pick this new name.

I hope that the new readers of this site who are interested in Theology are not bothered by the programming posts, and I hope the old programming readers are not bothered by the Theology posts. I have gone back and forth in the past on whether to have separate blogs for these subjects, or one combined blog. Well, it's combined again, and I hope it's for the best.

Great Quote

2009-07-10T09:05:00.002-05:00

Tim, the Enchanter, is a Ruby coder who also created a git installer for OS X. His blog has a great quote at the bottom: "What manner of man are you that can summon up code without C# or Java?"

Let the Coding Begin

2009-07-10T08:45:00.002-05:00

As is obvious, I have not posted a lot on here lately. Part of the reason is not thinking about it, or putting something in Twitter instead. However, another reason is I haven't done much coding lately. Well, that's about to change. I need to do v. 2.0 of a Django app at work this summer, and I will be doing some coding at home in Processing to get ready to teach it in the fall. Hopefully these projects will inspire some posting here.

Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship

2009-03-25T08:42:00.002-05:00

This is a video of an interview with Bob Martin, Pete McBreen and Michael Feathers about software craftsmanship.

Git is the next Unix

2009-03-06T13:09:00.001-06:00

I was asked in a comment to my previous post about comparing Git to Mercurial. I have only used Mercurial in simple scenarios, and I'm an extreme newbie when it comes to Git, so I can't really say, except that repository synchronization in Git seemed harder to learn than in Mercurial.

Even so, I'm going to continue to try to learn Git because of posts like this one. Here are his concluding remarks:

With git, we've invented a new world where revision history, checksums, and branches don't make your filesystem slower: they make it faster. They don't make your data bigger: they make it smaller. They don't risk your data integrity; they guarantee integrity. They don't centralize your data in a big database; they distribute it peer to peer.
Much like Unix itself, git's actual software doesn't matter; it's the file format, the concepts, that change everything.
Whether they're called git or not, some amazing things will come of this.

Clojure Gitorial

2009-03-02T10:45:00.002-06:00

This article by Larry the Liquid describes a great idea of using the Git version control system combined with the Github hosting service to present a tutorial. Each commit is like a slide in the tutorial. They can be viewed through the Github web interface, or you can clone the repository yourself using Git, enabling experimentation.

Camping

2007-01-09T09:31:00.000-06:00

Gregory Brown wrote a nice little article on Camping, a Ruby web framework that is much smaller and simpler than Rails. Here is a quote to whet your appetite:

I realized that this was the kind of tool I was looking for. Something simple, basic, and super extendable. I’m not afraid of rolling my sleeves up, and sparse documentation isn’t enough to keep me away from code that seems cool. If you’re in the same boat, be sure to check Camping out.

Firebug

2006-12-14T17:11:00.000-06:00

A coworker just pointed out Firebug to me. It is a Firefox plugin which is a web development IDE. I played around with it for just a few minutes and was very impressed.

Array Searching in .NET 2.0

2006-12-04T13:04:00.000-06:00

Again, Jeffrey Palermo has written a very instructive .NET article. This time he describes the FindAll method, which works on a array or similar collection, and returns an array containing the elements in the source array that fulfill a certain condition. He also shows how the delegate keyword can be used to create an anonymous function to specify the search condition. Ruby, Python, Lisp, and other languages commonly use techniques like this, but it is not normally seen in more mainstream programming. Whatever you might think of Microsoft, one good thing about .NET is how it is picking up a lot of functional elements and bringing them to the mainstream.

Windows Power Shell Coolness

2006-11-10T12:35:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to learn the new Windows Power Shell, and I wrote my first useful little script. I used the following to count the number of source files in a directory that begin with S through Z:


$count = 0
$re = [regex]"^[S-Zs-z]"
dir *.cs | foreach { if ($_.Name -match $re) { $count++ } }
$count

I found the following O'Reilly article to be helpful in getting going with WPS.

Working Backwards

2006-11-02T09:36:00.000-06:00

Werner Vogels has an interesting post about Amazon's process for defining requirements called "Working Backwards". They use small development teams, and start with customer-focused documents like a press release, FAQ, and user's manual in order to help them define what they're going to build.

NHibernate Stuff

2006-10-23T13:02:00.000-05:00

I hope this blog does not turn into just an index of Jeffrey Palermo posts, but he is often writing about something that I think will be useful to my current work. Now he's talking about NHibernate, which is the .NET port of the popular object-relational mapping framework for Java.

First is a post about autoflush mode, and the second is how typecasting affects an object's "dirty" state, both of which we will need to be aware if we choose to use NHibernate, which is likely unless we find that iBATIS.NET is a better fit for our current code and database schema.

Java Does Duck Typing

2006-10-18T13:19:00.000-05:00

Duck typing is a feature of dynamic object-oriented languages that goes back to Smalltalk, although I first heard the term in the context of Ruby. Here is a very well written article about how to implement duck typing in Java. Although it's more work in Java than in Ruby or Smalltalk, it's not too bad, and could be a worthwhile technique for some cases.

Getting rid of god code

2006-10-17T13:43:00.000-05:00

Jeffrey Palermo's post from last Saturday exactly describes what I am about to do at my work right now:

god code leads to overly complex applications. A remedy for god code is to push behavior down into the smaller classes being worked on. Empower the smaller classes to take some responsibility for themselves. They are quite capable.

Ruby Declared Mainstream

2006-10-17T06:21:00.000-05:00

Curt Hibbs announces that Ruby has been declared mainstream, meaning that it has made the A-list on the TIOBE Programming Community Index, which attempts to chart the popularity of programming languages. On this list, Java is still number one, but dynamic languages such as Ruby and Python are growing in popularity.

Experiment failed

2006-09-24T22:32:00.000-05:00

My experiment in having a blog that combined my interest in Philosophy and Theology with the kinds of posts that I make on this blog did not work out well, so I'm back to posting my code notes here. I don't have high expectations for this site, except as a place to share some knowledge. I will continue to write about my Philosophical interests here, for those of you who might be interested.

Comprehensive guide to .htaccess

2006-09-15T13:11:00.000-05:00

I ran across this tutorial on .htaccess, which is a configuration file for websites hosted by Apache. Even after just a five-minute glance, I found some information that allowed me to fix a Ruby code download problem I was having on this site.

RubyCLR Interview

2006-09-01T13:11:00.000-05:00

Port 25 has a video interview with John Lam, the creator of RubyCLR. I was very impressed with him, and I get the impression that RubyCLR has a great future. In the interview, John demonstrates his Avalon Ruby Editor. It's kind of hard to see the screen, but it looks pretty cool. Now I just need to learn what Avalon is!

Exception Rules

2006-08-31T13:10:00.000-05:00

Scott Hanselman is working on some rules of thumb for managing exceptions in .NET, but some of these concepts will translate to other languages. The most important to me are:

Exceptions should be exceptional.
Don't catch exceptions you can't do anything about.
Avoid swallowing exceptions, but if you have to swallow an exception, make sure it is well documented, and log it when it happens if possible. Evidently some code out there has performance problems because a large number of exceptions are routinely raised and silently swallowed.

Power Tools

2006-08-29T13:09:00.000-05:00

Jeffrey Palermo is doing a series on producing software quickly. In part 3, he describes the importance of good programmer tools. It's all good stuff, but what is of most interest to me is his list of software tools that are applicable to the C# developer.

Scott Hanselman also has a very comprehensive list of tools. Categories in his list include:

The Big Ten Life and Work-Changing Utilities
Dropped out of the Top 10 for 2006 but still rockin' sweet
A Developer's Life
COM is Dead
The Angle Bracket Tax (XML/HTML Stuff)
Regular Expressions
Launchers
Stuff I Just Dig
Low-Level Utilities
Websites and Bookmarklets (that change the way you work)
Tools for Bloggers
Smart People and their Pages for Utils They Wrote
Alt.lang
Browser Add-Ins
Things Windows Forgot
Outlook AddIns and Life Organizers
Ultimate Registry Tweaks
Windows Explorer Integration (and other Integraty things)
Continuous Integration
TabletPC Indispensibles
ASP.NET Must Haves
Visual Studio.NET Add-Ins

Serial Performance in .NET

2006-08-28T13:09:00.000-05:00

Scott Hanselman chronicles his experiences doing timing sensitive I/O in .NET. I haven't studies it carefully, but it reminds me of some of my early Java experiences. As much as I am a fan of the higher-level programming model that Java, C#, and Ruby provide, it often breaks down for this kind of work. Then you need the ability to easily drop down to C-level.

Events and Delegates

2006-08-15T11:44:00.000-05:00

As I've been learning C#, one of the things that has confused me is the Event construct. I understand Delegates as type-safe method pointers, and I saw Events as something related to Delegates, but I wasn't sure of the significance of the distinction. This article does a great job of explaining the difference, at least in a way that I now understand, and I had not seen elsewhere. I highly recommend it for anyone working in C# to read.

.NET Build Tools

2006-08-12T13:08:00.000-05:00

Jeffrey Palermo has another informative article that may be helpful on my new job. This time he's talking about building .NET 2.0 projects using NAnt and MSBuild.

Winform Test Tools

2006-08-11T13:07:00.000-05:00

I ran across this post from Jeffrey Palermo which mentions some tools for testing .NET Windows Forms (aka WinForms) applications. Since I will be working on a WinForms app, this could come in handy.

The latest tool is SharpRobo, by Vivek Singh. While Jeffrey Palermo says he wants to try using it with FIT, Vivek has a blog entry stating that he thinks FIT is too simplistic for defining tests at the UI level. He prefers using a full-strength programming language like Ruby.

Why Haskell Is Not Mainstream

2006-08-11T13:06:00.000-05:00

Since I went from BASIC to Pascal in the late 70's, I've been fascinated by advances in computer programming languages. I don't get to follow them as closely as I would like, but I do like to see where the wind is blowing. One way I do that is by reading the Lambda The Ultimate site, which is a kind of multi-author blog with discussion forum focused on programming languages. From there, I learned about defmacro.org, which also has articles about programming languages. Although they are few in number, they are high in quality.

The latest article describes his adventures in trying to use the Haskell language to write a prototype. This is a great way to try out a new language, especially if it promises large productivity benefits, because you can quickly try out an idea in the new language, and then when you've decided on a design, translate it into your implementation language, such as Java.

Before I comment on defmacro's experiences, I want to say something about Haskell. I've run across several Haskell advocates, but I haven't run across many Haskell applications. Haskell, OCaml, and Erlang are languages that are getting some attention these days because they enable functional programming, which has advantages for maintainability, unit testing, and concurrancy. I've never tried any of these languages, but I have tried Lisp and Scheme, which also encourage a functional style, but they allow violations of pure functional programming. My understanding is that these newer languages make it easier to write in a pure functional style.

One obstacle to the adoption of these new languages is the different mindset of functional programming. I believe it is at least as big a shift as is involved in going from procedural to object-oriented programming. Also, most functional programming advocates are in the academic world, and much of their writing is not very accessable to working-class programmers. Defmacro helped this situation with Functional Programming for the Rest of Us.

However, there is another obstacle to adoption, which defmacro details. He tries to do a little bit of GUI programming in Haskell, and is unable to find a language implementation that will work. I think this is because GUIs are a low priority in the academic world. If these languages are going to see greater adoption, they need to be able to do practical things like manipulate files, implement network protocols, create GUIs, and build web applications. Not all are necessary for success. For example, Ruby is lacking in the GUI area, but it has a very good web application framework.

New Blog

2006-07-19T16:37:00.000-05:00

I have created a new blog that combines material from this blog and my other blog that was more philosophy and theology oriented. I've moved over the posts from 2006, but not further back than that. This blog will remain for archival purposes.

Enterprise Ruby

2006-07-18T14:42:00.000-05:00

The Rails web application framework has put the Ruby language in the spotlight. However, as some enterprise developers have looked into Rails, they find that it doesn't fit their environment very well. Rails has a focused, opinionated design which works wonderfully for programmers who are willing and able to work the "Rails way". However, there are legacy and enterprise environments that don't fit into the Rails mold.

However, the Ruby language is not as opinionated, and Martin Fowler has written a good article about the difference between the Rails philosophy, and the larger Ruby philosophy, showing that there is value to both.

Another indication of the enterprise nature of Ruby is the Enterprise Ruby Studio workshop. The stuff covered in this workshop is not as hot as Rails, but it looks like it's full of very useful techniques and tools for common enterprise tasks. I wish I could go, and I hope they put a lot of the material into a book soon.

I like an expression that I found Fowler's article, and the Studio web page, which is "Ruby is the glue that doesn't set". I think that Ruby makes it easier than some other glue languages, like Perl, to create code that has a good object-oriented design, which I believe results in code that is easier to modify and reuse.

Offensive Coding

2006-07-16T08:18:00.000-05:00

Michael Feathers wrote an interesting article on checking for null arguments in a non-public method. Although the example that he gives is clear, it does raise the question of how defensive should our programming be where we have less control.

In a related issue, Mr. Feathers had a link in his post to an article on run-time versus compile-time type checking. This is a debate that is becoming more heated as dynamic languages such as Ruby become more popular. I'm not prepared to be dogmatic on this issue because I see good points on both sides. I guess I will be exploring the question myself since it looks like I'll be primarily working in C# and Ruby for the foreseeable future.

Java Posse

2006-06-09T15:42:00.000-05:00

I've found the Java Posse podcast to be a great way to catch up on the sometimes confusing world of Java technology. The show is hosted by a panel of four Java professionals who each have many years of Java experience. They interview luminaries of the Java community, comment on industry news, and respond to listener feedback. All of the panel members are articulate, and the show is fun to listen to, assuming you have an interest in the subject matter. I recommend that all Java developers give the show a try.

C# Integration Testing Example

2006-05-23T09:33:00.000-05:00

While trying to learn .NET, I've been looking for various examples of code and testing practices. Jeffrey Palermo (aka "EZWeb guy") looks to be a good source, including this article on integration testing.

Agile Testing Blog

2006-05-22T10:35:00.000-05:00

While looking for some Fitnesse tutorials, I found these tutorials on Grig Gheorghiu's Agile Testing Blog. The articles are Python oriented, but it's not hard to translate the examples to C#. Also, he had some good posts on test strategy that are applicable to any language.

Fitnesse and C#

2006-05-22T09:33:00.000-05:00

I'm learning a lot of new stuff right now. I'm trying to quickly get up to speed in the .NET world with C#. In addition, I'm learning NUnit, a unit test framework for .NET, and I'm learning Fitnesse, which is a tool for writing requirements in terms of acceptance tests.

I found a tutorial by Cory Foy for using Fitnesse with .NET which would have got me up and running quickly except that Fitnesse, as of last week, was built with support for .NET 1.1, and I've got the latest Visual Studio 2005 which supports .NET 2.0. Fortunately, in the comments for Cory's post I found a reference to Jeff Mattfield's instructions for building Fitnesse for .NET 2.0. After doing the rebuild I was good to go.

Dallas Ruby Brigade

2006-04-26T09:41:00.000-05:00

The Dallas Ruby Brigade had their first meeting the first Tuesday of March. Over 40 people showed up for that meeting, and it was great to see so much interest in Ruby (primarily because of Rails). I was unable to attend the April meeting, and I heard that attendance was less, but I plan on making involvement in this group a priority.

Monospaced fonts

2005-11-05T07:28:00.000-06:00

While looking into configuring the font for Emacs, I found this long list of monospaced fonts.

UPDATE: The page is no longer available. According to a note on the site, the owner's pages were removed due to censorship. I don't remember looking at the rest of the site, so I don't know what the controversy was.

Emacs Command Summary

2005-10-20T14:08:00.000-05:00

I'm in the process of taking up Emacs again. I like vim a lot, but I think I would benefit from becoming more proficient with Emacs. I found this command summary that I think will be helpful.

Tabs versus Spaces

2005-10-20T14:05:00.000-05:00

This article advocates using spaces for indentation in source code, and shows how to configure emacs and vi to accomodate this practice.

The State of Ruby on Rails '05

2005-10-19T12:42:00.000-05:00

Slides, MP3, and OGG files are available for this talk. By the way, I went to a meeting of the DFW Pragmatic Programmers group last night, and one of the people there, Adam Keys, had just got back from RubyConf. He said he thought it was very worthwhile, and he had a good time there.

Practical Common Lisp

2005-10-03T16:15:00.000-05:00

Following my friend's advice, I started reading Practical Common Lisp online. Then I decided to buy the print version after I got into a few chapters online. I think this book could lead to a revival of Lisp popularity. So much of the other stuff I had tried to read on Lisp made it hard to see how it would be used in real-world applications, but this book shows how it is a good high-level, high-performance general purpose programming language.

I saved the first paragraph of this post in May, and since then I have sold my house, and I've been living in temporary housing with most of my stuff in storage until the construction of my new house is complete. I packed up a lot of my books, and I've put my Lisp learning on hold. I hope to go back to it in a few months.

Meanwhile, I've been able to use some Ruby at work to do consolodation and summarization of performance metrics logs. Although this is the kind of work that Perl was originally created to do, I wanted to use Ruby as an opportunity to learn it better. I'm glad I did because I had to create some complicated data structures to collect all of the data, and I've always found such a thing messy in Perl. People who are more proficiant with Perl might do much better, but I had no problem building the objects I needed in Ruby.

Finally, I've posted before about Ruby web hosting. My previous hosting contract expired, and I moved my site to TextDrive. I've yet to try out Ruby on Rails on my new site, but I can say that I prefer the simple, straightforward tools that TextDrive provides for site management. I also like the fact that I have shell access. So, after a few weeks of usage, I so far have a positive experience with TextDrive.

Ajax

2005-05-14T17:16:00.000-05:00

I just read Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications, which describes a web application approach used in some of the new web applications like Google Maps. The article is well written and worth reading if you are involved in web application development, or you're curious how these new applications work.

Lisp Notes from a Friend

2005-05-03T12:52:00.000-05:00

I received an email from my friend, Chris Johnsen, which has a lot of good Lisp starting places:

You probably already know about On Lisp (which is out of print, and available as a free download, like you mention in your blog entry), but there is also a newer book on Common Lisp that has been getting some good reviews: Practical Common Lisp. It was just recently published, but the author has made arrangements to keep it freely available in a downloadable form, too (though I am sure he would also appreciate sales of the paper copies). PCL is an introductory book that covers most of Common Lisp while working up some practical code/projects.

I have a copy of Paul Graham's ANSI Common Lisp (which is not out of print, nor available as a free download). It offers a good introduction to Common Lisp. Some of the stuff is a bit more introductory than you really need (since you are an experienced programmer), but, in my experience, it is pretty easy to skip over the generic-programming parts while picking up the stuff that is unique to Common Lisp.

Also, don't forget to download a copy of the Common Lisp HyperSpec. If you are an Emacs user (or feel up to learning enough Emacs for the purpose), SLIME is a popular Common Lisp development environment for Emacs. I am not sure if it is packaged for Unbuntu, but getting it from CVS usually better anyway. SLIME also has some nice commands for pulling up entries in the CLHS while writing code and/or throwing stuff at the REPL.

SLIME Config

2005-05-03T11:29:00.000-05:00

SLIME is an extension to Emacs to provide a development environment for Lisp. Dan Moniz posted a lot of information on how to configure it.

David Winer's Birthday

2005-05-02T21:31:00.000-05:00

David Winer turned 50 today. He introduced me to blogging through his Radio Userland product, so it is only appropriate that I honor him in my blog. Happy birthday, Dave! May you have many, many, more!

On to Common Lisp

2005-04-29T21:21:00.000-05:00

C++ is boring, but it's a living. But I was looking at the magazine rack at Barnes & Nobles, and I saw that a British Linux magazine had an article on Lisp. I flipped through it, and saw a reference to the Lemonodor weblog, which I've enjoyed reading in the past. I went home, brought up Lemonodor, and scanned through it; enjoying the writing.

The next day at work, I have found myself wishing I had a good macro capability. I started looking for some Lisp materials on the web, and read this article by Paul Graham, which made me think that restarting the Lisp learning that I did two years ago might be a good idea. But this time I'm going with Common Lisp rather than Scheme.

So, when I got home I installed CLISP on my PC, which is now running Ubuntu, by the way, and I'm going to work through some books. Many of the good Common Lisp books are out of print, and available for free on the web! I will post which one I find to be a good starting place.

XML Alternatives

2005-04-29T21:02:00.000-05:00

I found this list of XML alternatives on Uche Ogbuji's website. XML is great because of its ubiquity, but there may be cases where it doesn't fit very well. Check out the list if you find yourself in such a situation.

The Free Lunch is Over

2005-04-13T19:01:00.000-05:00

I just read this interesting article about the growing importance of concurrent programming now that CPUs are moving to multiple core architectures. I've been dealing with concurrency in applications for the last 8 years, but for many programmers, it will be a new thing. I think this article does a good job of stating the need and introducing the challenges.

More Ruby Hosting

2005-03-28T21:39:00.000-06:00

Besides OCS, I found two other hosting services supporting Ruby, Iniquinet and A2.

Hello World

2005-02-23T10:15:00.000-06:00

This is something I first saw years ago. It's still relevant, and it's still funny.

Windows Annoyances

2005-02-22T09:58:00.000-06:00

I've tried to avoid Microsoft Windows for the last decade, but now I'm finally coming to terms with having to use it professionally. So, in order to make the best of it, I'm reading Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks, 2nd Edition on O'Reilly's Safari electronic book service. I'm just in the introductory material, and I've already found a nice tool, Creative Element Powertools. Check it out if you use Windows. Also, if you don't want to pay for or dig into the book, check out the annoyances website for lots of free tips.

Ruby on Rails

2005-02-20T00:30:00.000-06:00

Ruby on Rails is a web application framework conceived by David Heinemeier Hansson as a reaction against the complexity of J2EE. I ran across a very detailed tutorial for creating a web-based todo list using Rails and MySQL.