The Saturday Evening Post About Beer: Spaten Optimator

So Doppelbock's are not always my favorite, but I've been hearing such good things about Spaten Optimator I figured I'd give it a try. And that try warranted a review here.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by the complexity of flavor in the Optimator: there is an initial sweetness followed by a savory body that settles on the outside of the tongue. The aftertaste has two stages. The initial stage is standard Doppelbock; a good dose of hops. The second stage is more of what I've come to expect from a Belgian ale; a lingering sweetness that brings to mind caramel.

All in all, a very enjoyable beer, and it may have made a Doppelbock fan out of me... for now.

***1/2

One side note: this is a strong beer, if you have two, do not plan on driving.

It isn't the Guns, it isn't the Knives

Today I've read two completely separate and yet quite related stories, and both fill my heart with overwhelming sadness, grief upon grief.

In Sandy Hook, CT today, someone shot and killed 27 people. 18 of them were elementary school children. Words cannot express the horro, the tragedy of this episode, which, as detail emerge, is proving to be one of the darkest hours of American history. I cannot even fathom how someone can arrive at a place where killing scores of children is even considerable.

And of course, the very first set of comments on the article in the Washington Post launch into gun control as if it's the bass-ackwards gospel of salvation. If we didn't have guns this wouldn't have happened. And while I can see that there is considerable truth to this, an article I read just minutes before I read about the Sandy Hook tragedy sets this logic on its ear.

In Chenpeng Village of Henan province, China, a villager slashed 22 children with a knife. China is a country with extremely strict gun control laws: generally citizens are not allowed to possess them. Yet more children were slashed in Chenpeng than were shot in Sandy Hook. 

The facts are obvious, and more profoundly chilling than gun control activists would care to accept. It isn't the guns, it isn't the knives, it is the people who use them. If we denied access to guns in the US like China does, people would find a way to kill without them. A knife is just as horrendous as a gun, just less sterile. And a rock or a stick is less sterile yet. Regulation of firearms, knives, rocks or sticks isn't going to change the character of a person. It just dictates what means are used to carry out the atrocity.

What of a culture of violence? What of a culture dedicated to the ideal of war and bloodshed? How much does the pervasive use of violent video games and movies influence this cultural ethos? And yet it seems so base, so ingrained in even the way I think and react. 

Tonight I'm going to see the Hobbit. I expect to see violence, bad guys getting chopped up, some orc blood splattered onto the screen, etc. And I'm going to like it. Why? What is this in me?

I can only say then that it is not the weapons used, or even entirely the culture that foments their use, but something base within the essence of the people who use them. In me, in you. I think there is a word for this: sin.

What a World

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything on this little blog of mine. I'd like to say that I've been busy doing cool things like playing shows or taking in some serious culture, but the truth is that I have been buried in course work for the classes I'm taking this quarter, and have not had the brain capacity to post anything here.

However, I came across a facebook post which led to an article which led to a video of a young girl with handwritten signs telling the story of how she was bullied by her peers for something she did in seventh grade. The article said that after posting the video, she committed suicide.

Now, I'm not naive or idealistic enough to be inspired to blog by such a tragic story, but what the article had to say provided such an impetus. The main jist of the article was that this was yet another example of how women are abused by the patriarchal whims of men, and called for society as a whole to rally around this poor girl and many like her to put an end to this kind of abuse. It further argued that more campaigns against "bullying" are no help, as the word is meaningless to the bullies.

There are two things I agree with in this article, and one major flaw that I must address. First, I agree that as a society we have a real problem with gender stereotyping and abusive patriarchy. Furthermore, I agree that the nomenclature attached to "bullying" is hopelessly flawed and fails to address anything more than the symptoms of a problem that runs central to our social ethos. And while I am put off by the bandwagon posturing and the overt use of a tragedy to push an agenda forward, I can sympathize and agree with the authors position.

What I cannot overlook is the inability of this author to offer any sort of rationale that supports their conclusions. While it may seem to be a common sense issue, or a universal point of agreement that young women (and people in general) should not be blackmailed and abused such as she was, it certainly can be neither of those, as such things still happen and are perpetrated by people!
This is due to the fact that in the wake of our society's wholesale abandonment of universal ethics (a good thing) we have failed to posit anything in its place (a bad thing). This is precisely where Christians need to step up and demonstrate that a Biblical Christian ethic offers precisely such rationale. Sure the girl flashed a web cam in seventh grade, but can there be no forgiveness for that? The Bible provides us a clear standard for caring for the abused and protecting them from harm if viewed in its entirety. Where we drop the ball is when we take singular verses and build from them a universal ethic.

Instead of trying vainly to appeal to some long abandoned universal standard of goodness, Christians should stand up and say "Hey, we have an ethical standard which says that this girl shouldn't be abused like that, that men should not lord it over women, that even if what Amanda did was wrong, there is forgiveness here with us."

P.S. I know I'm taking the opportunity to push my own agenda here as well, but I feel that we as a Christian community have something to contribute to the social issues we face.

Serving God?

I've been troubled lately by the way in which we bandy around the terms "Serving God" and "Giving Glory to God". Such terms lie at the core of Christian practice, but are largely undefined by the Christian community, leading one to ask "How do I serve and give glory to God?"

There seem to be two points of departure for these expressions that I want to explore. I'm going to start with the idea of serving God.

In order to understand what it means to serve God we need to understand what it means to serve. As I see it, serving occurs either when needs are met or values are affirmed. I serve my wife when I meet her needs (emotionally, physically, relationally, etc), or when I affirm and act in accordance with her values.

When this criterion is applied to God, I am instantly aware of the fact that I cannot meet God's needs. Beyond that, it seems presumptuous to assume that God even has needs. So then, when we read in the Scriptures of serving God (Ps. 2, Rom. 12, Eph. 6, Josh. 24, etc), we tend to assume something of the meaning of service and seldom deign to linger on the question. The assumption I grew up with was that serving God meant not sinning ("...Keeping oneself unstained by the world" Js. 1:29b), and living a morally pure life.

This understanding is still, I believe, correct, as I understand that the Bible affirms this as part of serving God. But it is not the complete picture of how we serve God, as the Bible makes it perfectly clear that more is at stake here. Pervasive throughout both Older and Newer Testaments is the repeated emphasis on serving other people and taking care of their needs (James, Micah, the Torah, The Gospels, etc).

This then reveals that in order to fully serve God we need to serve other people as well as avoiding sinful living (Matt 7 - "What you have done to the least of these you have done to me").

The second part of the question pertains to giving glory to God, and is similar to the idea of serving God, but it has as its point of departure an assumed value of words. What I mean by this is that when I think of giving glory to God, I immediately think of someone doing something great and then saying "I'm giving all the glory to God". This is, I think, okay and fine, but I don't think it actually gives glory to God, but instead increases the glory of the person saying it. This is because simply saying "I give all the glory to God" doesn't actually do what it claims to do, and as such is a lie unless accompanied by the corresponding action. In fact, the person saying it is often lauded for being so humble and righteous, thus increasing the glory of the person.

So then, if simply saying that we glorify God is not actually glorifying to Him, how then do we do so? Again, it ties back into the fundamental reality of God in Christ in humanity. God chooses to work through people, and if you achieve something great, or have your financial need miraculously met, there was always someone else involved in the process. Someone instilled in you the desire for excellence, or someone sacrificed some financial security to meet your need. Nothing comes from nowhere, but always from somewhere and as the result of many factors.

Now then, going back to my first point about serving other people, giving glory to God is recognizing the ways in which He works. If you want to truly glorify God, thank the people He used to bring about whatever it is you're thanking Him for. "What you have done to the least of these you have done to me". This doesn't mean neglecting God in the realm of recognition, it means being for what God is for: His glory in His creation. And the crown jewel of that creation is people. Glorifying and serving God means being for people and using your abilities and talents to serve them.

Now let me give this some teeth. If we only go half way in this, or if we remain as we are currently, trying to serve God through moral purity and glorifying Him with the power of words alone, we are sinning. All good lies have half an ounce of truth in them. Doing half the job and not the full job is the same as not doing it. The serpent's temptation in the Garden in Genesis 3 contained some truth, but in the end that small truth was a big lie. The origin of sin involves half truths, and in the same way our half obedience results in complete failure.

Continuing Thoughts on Gender and the Semantic Breakdown of Communication

What has become obvious from my previous post on Gender is the frustrating lack of clarity in the English language. Words seem to carry different weight depending on the person reading/hearing them and the person writing/speaking them. This is due, I think, to two things.

First and foremost, I believe that for Christians words have an inherent "meaning" that we assume to be absolute. This is itself due to the protestant impetus of being "people of the Word" and the unfortunate development of English within this tradition. The Greek word logos that is translated "word" in English carries a different meaning than our English word, "word", and means something more akin to "revelation". But we read it as "word". The association that we make between "word/Logos" and "word/word" means that over time we equate words with Jesus. Thus, our communication is boiled down to speaking and writing cognitively.

This would be okay if life were monolithic (of one type of communication), but it isn't. Nor is it dialectic (of only two options). Instead, communication requires context and connotations. Words do not have an absolute meaning aside from what is assigned to them by the people using them. This leads me to my second point:

We've assumed a Platonic Reality of meaning. We believe that somewhere outside the Cave of human experience there lies a real thing that is "Meaning". We believe that at their core words have a meaning all of their own, and nothing can change that. This of course stems from the New Testament writers borrowing Platonic language to communicate the ultimate reality of God as beyond the scope of human experience, which is of course true. However, due to the human inclination to draw lines of association and find "like kinds", we quickly (or not so quickly, depending on who you read) developed "Realities" of things like Truth, Justice, Love, Meaning, etc. Thus we constructed Idols of penultimate things in our own minds that exist, if not as parts of God, at least in the same realm as God. Thus, to think of words like "Truth", "Meaning" or "Love" as self sustaining entities like God is nothing short of idolatry. Only God can be God.

This phenomenon translates into an assumption of the absolute nature of words and meaning.

Now here's the kicker: we don't actually know what the words we are using denote and connote. And such was the case with my previous post on Gender. I assumed a certain meaning of gender that was not shared by everyone the world over. So here's what I mean by "Gender": Gender is a function that a person performs or is expected to perform by society. It is an office or position, not a biological reality. Gender identification then refers to the social position a person finds themselves identifying with emotionally or psychologically. Gender is thus a means of identification for an individual within a communal setting, and is closely tied with the way that individual understands him/herself.

What I was addressing was not sexual orientation or biological sexuality. There is of course a correlation between Gender and biological sexuality/sexual orientation, but the two are not the same thing. I was instead addressing the emotional agony that accompanies social homelessness, or, loss of ability to identify with a social office, and how Christians ought to react to such people. Which is to say how people ought to react to such people.

Forgive my oversimplification, but this is only a blog post.

Thoughts on Gender

The whole issue of Gender and Gender Roles is so inextricably tied to self identity that there is no wonder that it is a sensitive topic. At some point close to our existential core we feel the need to identify with a Gender.

This becomes problematic when we identify with a Gender that is not what society assigns to us. Whether we like it or not we are not born entirely free; we are born into a set of assumptions and expectations for what we will be and become.

Further complicating the issue is that social expectations are not static, but are dynamic and fluid in nature, changing from place to place and time to time. This means that what may be a social expectation for a specific gender in one place may not be the expectation in another.

This becomes even further complicated by the fact that technological advances allow us to see what the social expectations of gender are in other parts of the country, and even the world. This then reveals that expectations and norms develop at varying speeds depending on innumerable external factors, such as information sharing, points of origin, religious affiliation, etc.

Now that the web has been illuminated, allow me a few words to try to make sense of it, and help point to a better way of operating within this world we live in:

First, we need to understand that our expectations on Gender are not a static, timeless, universal reality but are in fact tied inextricably to our context and the myriad factors that created such. In fact, the expectations on Genders have changed remarkably in the US while I've been alive, so much so that people identifying with the female gender are now the primary breadwinners for American families. This means that social norms are changing during my lifetime, but not everywhere. Today, I am at home while my wife is working. I'm doing the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, making the bed, doing the dishes. This was the Gender expectation for women when I was younger, but not now and not here. This then leads to my second idea:

Gender roles change. Then change back again. Right now, my wife is the breadwinner for our family. But in the future, she wants to stay home and raise our family. Then our current Gender roles would be reversed. I think one of the follies of talking about Gender roles is that we assume they are unchanging and universal. That just isn't the case. Nor should it be.

Now to my third idea.
Awareness of the variances of life. Know that the way I understand the world, or even the bible, is not the only way, and while I need to be faithful to my convictions, I also need to acknowledge that as a sinful human being I do not have a corner on God or on truth. I could be wrong entirely! And so could you. That is why we truly need to rely on grace, and extend grace to others. For people who identify with a different gender than what is assigned to them, the loss of identity is compounded exponentially by people who harass and condemn them as "weird" or "depraved". Have we no compassion? No one chooses to have an identity crisis, especially one as significant as Gender!

Saturday Evening Post About Beer: Golden Road's "Get up offa that brown"

Golden Road's "get up offa that brown" was an interesting Brown Ale, but I can't say as I liked it. For a Brown it was quite sharp, holding a long hop note at the end that I didn't particularly enjoy.

While I assume a desire for "nut brown" in this ale, I was disappointed by the nut flavor, which seemed to carry with it a connotation of burning. It was like when you're eating roasted sunflower seeds and get one that was too close to the roaster that completely destroys the sweet build up of flavor in your mouth. that was how the nuts came across in this Brown Ale.

Over all, not worth a second go. But feel free to disagree with me :)

*

Who is God?

I get the feeling that people consider their thoughts to be God. I get this feeling about myself as well. This seems to happen in many ways: philosophically, spiritually/religiously, emotionally, etc.

I'd like to explore these a little further, and I'll start with the spiritual/religious aspect. We as evangelicals seem to place a high emphasis on "hearing" God's voice, and I think this is likely a correct emphasis, but we don't often enter fully into the conversation of how God speaks to us. Does He influence our thoughts? I think He does, but at what point do we distinguish between what we think and what God is saying? Furthermore, how can we trust what God says to someone else, especially if we think He's said something different to us?

So then, are our thoughts anything more than just thoughts? I don't deny that sometimes our thoughts can come from God, but often even those thoughts that do indeed come from God come via some other means, i.e. a person, a book, a conversation. I think there is a fundamental honesty lacking when we assume that an out of place thought is a thought from God.

What seems to take the cake though, is the way we make our thoughts into our God. I'm guilty of it myself, but that doesn't mean I can't call it for what it is: self reliance and arrogance. Perhaps then, we would do well to allow that our thoughts are our thoughts, and take responsibility for our own actions, instead of trying to justify them by blaming God.

The Saturday Evening Post About Beer: New Belgium's Blue Paddle

I confess, I'm not a Lager/Pilsner guy. "Why do you keep trying them then?" you may be asking, and the answer is that I want to like them! I want to find one that tickles some nerve in my pallet or affords some pleasure here-to-fore undiscovered on a hot summer afternoon. But alas, they continue to only meet my expectations of mediocrity.

The same holds true for New Belgium's entry into the fray. I had high hopes for this one, too! With their penchant for complex and hoppy brews I thought that this would be the Lager I would like (I confess, I didn't actually buy it for it's own sake, it was a part of a sampler pack). But alas, it fell victim to the same fate which befell Sierra Nevada's Summerfest: it just tasted like beer. which is not a bad thing. But I wanted more. I wanted brilliance. I wanted a beer that tasted great before it warmed up enough to lose some enjoyability in the hot Pasadena sun. But alas, it was not to be

The trouble with this one is that it has no aroma hops, only bittering hops. And even those fashion themselves into a delicate aftertaste: subtle, soft, and annoying. The kind of annoying that can't quite articulate itself into anything more meaningful than a tickle in the back of ones throat. This again is much the same as any number of Lager type beers on the market today, and to be honest, you might as well go and pay a buck for a PBR as spend more money for something that tastes about the same.

**
2 Stars

Worship Thoughts For The First World

Worship cannot be too consonant, for then it becomes unreal. Just as in life dissonance not only exists, but illuminates the consonants, so it must be in worship. If life becomes too consonant we will manufacture a dissonance, or we will kill ourselves. This is evidenced by the fact that people in developing nations do not kill themselves. In worship, we will either become disengaged, or worship will die for us. If we continue to create an unreal experience out of worship, we will worship that which is not real, or, we will have unrealistic expectations of what life and reality should be. And when those unrealistic expectations are unmet, we will leave the family of God.

Sin as "How"

I've written on this topic before, in "How vs What", and would like to further explain how sin is truly a "how" equation instead of a "what".

I understand there to be a very limited number of "whats" in the realm of human experience. And I also understand all of those "whats" to be good. In order to arrive at this understanding, I need to examine and understand the underlying desires that drive my actions. I say this because, on the surface, there certainly seem to be "whats" that are sin. For instance, in the biblical narrative Cain's murder of Abel certainly appears to be a "what". Yet upon further inspection we discover that Cain's action was motivated by something deeper than simply wishing to eliminate his brother's existence. He wanted equality and justice. He felt that he had been wronged before God by his brother, "shown up" if you will, and sought to correct this. He wanted approval from God. That is in no way a bad thing. In fact, it is supposed to be a Christian's basest desire.

However, how Cain went about achieving this "what" was terribly wrong. In this sense Cain's action, on the surface a concrete "what", was really "how" he sought to gain his ends. The same goes for the original sin narrative in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve fell into sin when they tried to circumvent God's means for acquiring knowledge by some immediate means: the fruit.

So then, lets connect some dots. If sin is truly a "how" and not a "what" scenario, then sin is not a static being, but a dynamic series of methods. It is then not enough to want justice, or love, or God's approval, for in the wanting there is no righteousness. It is how you pursue justice, love or God's approval that determines righteousness or sinfulness. This then has tremendous implications for how we formulate our ethics, and demands of us an ability to hear and obey God's word, instead of relying on a series of principles that are supposed to govern our actions regardless of context.

But in another sense of the word, how do we do this? If our "how" determines our "what", how do we know the proper "how" concretely? The answer I think will take much more than a blog post to sort out, but I think I can sum it up here.

First, it requires a careful attention to God's word, and a properly humble approach to it, allowing it to inform you as opposed to you bringing your own ideas to it. It also requires patience, as God's methods may not seem direct to us. My imagination plays out a scenario in which a student informs a teacher that she does not need to know everything. The teacher responds that this is a good position to arrive at, but in order to properly arrive at this position, the student has to go through the process of learning that she cannot know everything, and only then can she arrive at a place of peace in not knowing everything. In the same way, God's methods may seem circuitous to us, but perhaps in order to reach the goal that both we and God are aware of, we need to experience things so that the goal will be good and not evil.

Forms and Meanings

I am writing this during a time of musical worship led by great friends of mine. That is an important caveat for what is to follow. 

I can't connect to it. Why? Am I too far gone into some long suffering plot of doubt and questions? I don't know. But here's my best attempt at understanding it.

We are singing a song that repeats the line "the Great I Am", and that is the line that gives me pause. What did God mean when He named Himself "nameless", the I Am, the Existent One. In difference to the pagan deities who claimed for themselves extravagant titles, the God of Israel declined to name Himself. Instead, He claimed that He was existence itself. Names cannot contain His being, so He declined to select one.

So then, what's wrong with an arbitrary selection of a title so that we can talk about God? Likely nothing. However, I understand it to be indicative of an absence in our worship, or perhaps a miss-direction. I think we have mistaken the Form of God's name for God's name itself. I think that God applies the meaning to a word about Himself, and when we worship the word instead of the source of the meaning that the word points to we are engaging in idolatry. 

I finally have more questions than answers. Have I confused the form that God has given me to engage Him with God Himself? Am I worshiping a word and calling it God instead of understanding that God has given no such name for Himself so that I would understand His all encompassing power and the inability of our faculties to comprehend Him? Do I exchange God for the forms and patterns of His interaction with me? Probably.

Yet there is an other side of this equation. Life is patterns of living cells. The cellular make-up of my genetic "code" do not exist as isolated individuals but a complex pattern of life that combines to make more life. And even though those cells do not disappear when I die (although they may change form), I, as an existential reality, have ceased to be because the pattern that caused me has ceased to be. By extension, is God a pattern, or a philosophical reality? Is worshipping the pattern of God really worshipping God Himself? I confess I do not know, and it is entirely likely that I never will. This is why Grace is the greatest meaning that I can think of. Though I try my best to understand, I never will. Yet this is precisely the point. I can't understand, and I will almost inevitably always be wrong, but for whatever reason God still extends His grace to me, forgiving and bearing with my foibles and failures. 

I may never be comfortable in a contemporary worship service. Grace isn't an excuse to do something that I know to be wrong. But as I have no other option at the moment, I choose community over isolation. Even though I have my reservations and doubts as to the validity of what perhaps amounts to idolatry, I will continue to live with my fellow human beings and identify with Christ's body, as flawed as it may be. 

"Still Darkness Waits"

An Old Poem:

Like first fruits born
Of a barren womb
Empty I came
So I was consumed
The dust drank up
The blood which called
For the harvest of men
For long since the fall

Still dreams persist
Long past grey dawn
Through a chorus of souls
Still I stumble on
Beneath watchful eyes
So deep and so worn
Like the end of the age
That sad, tired morn

By cross shaped trees
And blossoming tombs
I peer through the dust
Of my own upper room
And to my ears
A whispered fate
Your voice remains:
"Still darkness waits"

The Saturday Evening Post About Beer: "Bootlegger's Rustic Rye IPA"

Rye IPA's are something of an enigma to me, I've never been able to put my finger on how I feel about it. On the one hand, there's a great complexity to them, on the other hand, they ride a little dry for my liking.

Bootlegger's take on the genre is consistent to it's claim. The finish is what one would expect from a Craft Brewed IPA, and the Rye bit adds an interesting complexity. The flavor seems to start forward and work it's way back, with the aftertaste holding steady on the back of the tongue.

Final assessment, the jury is still out on Rye IPAs. This one was one of the better ones, and if you like 'em, find this one.

**

On Learning and the Quest for Questions

I'm gonna start this out ambitiously: The biggest problem that we face as academics and people trying to live responsibly is that we ask the wrong questions. What is more, we answer the wrong questions, and exert considerable energy doing so.

How we define "learning" factors into this equation considerably. We define "learning" as the collection of information, the assimilation of facts. If we are good at it, we may even delve into depicting what that information or those facts mean. The problem with this is our point of departure.

Our point of departure most consistently is one of myopic personal comfort or pleasure. We ask our questions seeking justification for some action or inaction of ours. This is what I mean by saying we as the wrong questions.

So let me propose this: Education should be learning how to ask the right questions. Teaching should not be the eschewal of knowledge and facts (embodied or otherwise), but explaining why asking the right questions will reveal so much more than answering the wrong ones.

Saturday Evening Post About Beer "Avery Karma"

This Belgian Pale Ale, despite having a relatively low alcohol content for a Belgian (5.2%), has a wonderful front end sweetness. This is followed by a somewhat floral/citrus middle and the characteristic hoppy aftertaste, which lingers for just long enough. The traditional red-ish caramel color conceals what is a surprisingly bright and lively ale, perfect for a hot spring day, and the lowered alcohol content means you can have two and still stand-up :)

Belgian Pale Ales are my favorite, and this one does not disappoint. While perhaps not as complex as some of the more pricey varieties, the flavor is pleasant and the price is right.

Overall Rating: 3 and 1/2 stars ***1/2

Saturday Evening Post About Beer

Sorry for the delay on this one: I've been sick...

Enough with apologies, here's the belated Saturday Evening Post!

:Young's Double Chocolate Stout:

The first thing that stuck out about this beer was the Chocolate. If you were to drink cold Hot Chocolate and a Guinness at the same time, you'd be getting close to this stout. Yet the initial sweetness gave way almost immediately to a smooth, creamy savor that lasted just long enough to appreciate the dark chocolate flavor, but not long enough to make me resent it. Flavor location was on the outsides of the the tongue initially, and then on the back of the pallet in stage two. What aftertaste there was was pleasant and varied little from beginning to end. Overall an excellent choice when in the mood for a stout.

Overall: 4 Stars - ****

On the "How" Vs. the "What"

In theology, and in all of church practice, there is a continual and universal nemesis to the work of good in the world: Sin. If we were to draw a narrative structure onto our system of dogma and doctrine, Sin would be the bad guy, the sinister villain who is constantly engaged in disrupting the order of things, introducing chaos onto that order.

Our understanding of Sin dictates how we engage life. For many of us, we've grown up with an understanding of sin that is defined in terms of positive and negative actions: Do this, don't do this. 

The effect of this is heightened when we consider our desire for definition. We like things to be contained and identifiable, and our overarching desire for this is amplified when it is applied to something as important as that narratological enemy, sin.

As much as possible, we define what sin is. What is strangely disturbing about this is that this is not how the bible defines sin. While there are elements of "what" is sin in the bible (for instance Cain killing Abel), when we consider the story of the Fall in the garden alongside the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, we see that sin is primarily defined as "How", and that defining sin as only a "what" is a dangerously thin understanding of sin. 

In the garden, it is not the desire for knowledge that leads to sin, it is the desire to circumvent God's intentions for how that knowledge is acquired that leads to the fall. Likewise, Satan's temptation of Jesus follows the same theme: In each of the three temptations, Satan tempts Jesus by offering Him a shortcut to what was obviously God's intended end. "Turn these stones into bread" Obviously, God intended for Jesus to survive at this point: To die then would have been diametrically opposed to God's desire. But to bypass God's how to stay alive would have been sin. Likewise with the other two. Of course Jesus was the ruler of the world, but not like that. He wasn't going to demonstrate His divinity in that way, but in God's way.

This understanding of Sin as a "How" and not only a "What" has tremendous implications for us as Christians. Of course God wants peace, but how we go about achieving that peace can be just as sinful as ignoring God's demands for peace. How we say what we say says more that what we say.

The Meaning of Words

Words. Such a complex juxtaposition of positive and negative qualities. I often like to think that the words I choose are arbitrary, holding no inherent meaning but that which I apply to them by the context of my creation. In this, I hold to a form of modified Nominalism. I give meaning to the words I use.

Yet despite my high and lofty ideals, the words I use have an inherent meaning, even if that meaning is generated by the people who are receiving my words. If my goal in using words is communication, then I need to use words that mean what I am intending to the person who is hearing/reading them. Otherwise, the words I use could be selected for their aesthetic value alone, regardless of meaning.

But here's the tricky thing about words: sometimes the most powerful words are the ones that are unexpected, that don't quite fit. In them we see our paradigm of understanding broadened, and a whole new world of meaning opened up to us. This is the poetic ideal of wrongness, a careful crafting of syntax and structure that may not agree with the rules of English grammar, but by their disobedience say more than myriad correctness.

Yet the sword that cuts forward cuts backward as well. In my attempt to craft a texture of color by my words, I've quite often painted with the wrong hue, creating a tapestry of dissonance that reflects more truly my state than that which I meant to convey. And if you listen carefully, I will really say what I mean despite my best efforts.

This is what the bible means when it says "Out of the content of the heart the mouth speaks"(Mat. 15:18). What's really inside comes out. Sometimes this is visible in the words I use, but usually it is more visible in how I use them. It's funny to say, but how we say what we say says more that what we say. If I'm ever curious about what actually lies beneath my veneer, all I have to do is listen to how I use my words.

The Saturday Evening Post About Beer: "Summerfest"

Whether we like it or not, we are all driven by the need to be meaningful. We want our lives to mean something, and we are willing to look almost anywhere for that meaning. Some of us find our meaning in creating something beautiful, others find it in popularity. Or, more commonly, we find it in a combination of any number of things - from beauty, to money to power. But at the basest of levels we want life to mean something.

In the coming weeks and months I will be exploring this idea of meaning, from the paradox of an artist needing to convey meaning to be meaningful to the meaningfulness of a cold beer, this blog will be devoted to meaning. I hope to publish between two and three posts a week, with a Saturday evening post being devoted to beer. So with that in mind...

:Sierra Nevada Summerfest Lager:

This cold-brewed beer espouses some of the traditional characteristics I have come to expect from a cold-brewed barley-pop: Light color, middle pallet flavor and a dry roasted aftertaste. The major drawback for this beer is its largely unoriginal flavor. This could be one of any number of Craft brewed Lagers, and as such fails to distinguish itself from even some more mass produced varieties such as Harp. It still beats having no beer, but at $14 a 12 pack, it is over-priced by my estimation. As a pairing note, a mid-quality bourbon such as Makers Mark brought out a latent sweetness in the beer, and added to the overall experience. 

Final verdict: 2 out of 5 Stars - **

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