Appreciation

Life seems so pointless at times. Just a cycle of stories repeated over and over again. Every story ends, every life fails. But the depression of pondering this cycle of hopelessness ends when I think of appreciation. Appreciation of music, nature, beauty, love.

The existence of appreciation counters my tendency to conclude that there is no hope for life beyond death. These moments of experience don't seem to be merely developed for the benefit of the survival of our species. Rather, they seem to be gifts from a being who would also give us a hope for eternity.

Scholarly Work

I look with general disdain towards the praise of scholarly work over other works. Academit merit and academic method to not ensure an author's work to be of quality and free of unfounded bias, ler alone to any exclusive degree. In fact, I believe that in the arena of non-scholarly work lies opportunity for superior peer review, sincere sharing of ideas, and a more humble attitude in these dissemination processes. What do you think?

The Cycles of the History of Worship

It is frequently argued that Evangelical worship is increasingly beginning to follow the model of a marketing corporation, and is losing its roots in traditional worship which used to have a model of theology.¹ Without saying whether this is a good or bad thing, I will argue that this is not a new trend. In fact I see this as a part of a cycle the Church has repeatedly gone through since the Apostolic Age.² This is by no means an academic paper based on a thorough research, but is just the spawn of an idea I wanted to get written down. If you have thoughts or reactions to this, by all means please share them with me.

The Church is composed of a community of individuals. I propose that the individual tends towards an experiential and emotional form of worship, and the community tends towards a traditional or principle based form of worship. I also propose that experience is a factor all authentic acts of conversion.³

My cycle is composed as follows:

1. Individuals convert to Christianity because of an experience they had. Their religion is thus based on their experience.


2. The community of individuals grows.


3. Once the community becomes sustainable, it no longer needs to be based on experience. In fact, it is impractical to do so, since the community is distanced by time from its individuals' experiences.


4. The community thus begins to emphasize on tradition and principle


5. The lack of emphasis on experience slows the inflow of converts, but this is not an issue since the community is significant in size and thus sustainable


6. The community begins to age, and dwindles in numbers


7. The community reaches a point of crisis where it can no longer survive


8. The community goes back to an emphasis of experience to draw individuals into the community, so that it can grow again

For example, the early church had an enormous influx of believers because they saw the acts of love by the Church, and the benefit it was having on their city, their neighbours, and themselves. This was enough reason to join the community of believers. The size of the community reached a critical mass where it had to begin institutionalizing many aspects of itself, thus shifting emphasis on deeds which have experiential consequences to deeds which dwell on principles of faith. In fact it became entangled with the state and thus became mainstream. The community dwindles and ages, mainly not through stagnation, but through falling to the temptations of mainstream culture. The crisis is sensed, and Christians begin to flee to the desert and other abandoned areas, to punish their bodies and seek true purity. This is the shift to an experiential emphasis. Many people see this as being attractive, and begin pursuing these Christian hermits and their ways. Communities of monks are formed, numbers grow, and the cycle begins again.

Notice how in this case there was not a conscious embrace of "experiential recruiting tactics", but the shift to an emphasis on experience was still there. Each example of a cycle will have its own complexity to the cycle, but the cycle is there in meta-form. Let's look at another example.

The story of the Salvation Army is that of reaching out to those who had rejected the Church because it was not relevant to them. They would provide to the needy, and put Christian lyrics to the tunes and genre which was popular at the time. Here lay the Crisis point and the shift of emphasis to experience. As the movement grew into a large community however, its emphasis shifted from experience back to principle. We can see that the Salvation Army still uses the same tunes and genre today which they used back in the 1800s.

As I said, I'm not trying to point out that the shifts are good or bad. I am just trying to demonstrate that there is a cycle, and it's been there from the beginning. I could go on with thinking up of examples, but I shouldn't digress too far from my studies. Having accomplished my task, I look forward to your thoughts and responses to my ideas.

Footnotes

1. If you are unaware of worship taking place on a marketing corporation model, or traditional worship which is based on a theological model, just ask me and I'll be happy to find demonstrations of them.


2. This "cycle" is can get complicated by other factors, which I will mention later


3. Inauthentic (e.g. forced) conversions are different, but nevertheless have had an influence on the history of the Church, which complicates my cycle

Isoformat in Python

As Tim mentions, trying to get the current datetime's isoformat is really ugly in Python. Unfortunately it's a little bit uglier than he described, due to daylight savings time... Here it is.

from datetime import datetime, tzinfo, timedelta
import time

class TZ(tzinfo):
    def utcoffset(self,dt): return timedelta(
        # begin extra craziness
        seconds = -time.altzone\
            if time.localtime().tm_isdst\
            else -time.timezone)
        # end extra craziness

    def dst(self,dt): return timedelta(0)

a = datetime.now(TZ())
a= a.replace(microsecond = 0)
print a.isoformat()

That prints

2009-11-01T22:24:30-08:00

Compare with php

date("c")

/* I actually don't know if this handles 
   daylight savings time or not
   but it's still way simpler */

grrr...

canada.com

There is a picture of me on canada.com... weird. I'm the leftmost pink shirt.

TWU Spartans' Soccer

Oh the woes.

Trinity Western University is looking forward to hosting the Men's National Soccer Championship for the Canadian Interuniversity Sport league this November. This is only a year after hosting the women's nationals, which is really good PR for the athletics department and the University. Unfortunately, they're in for a bumpy ride.

The field is kinda falling apart. Bad growing season, overuse, stuff like that, and they're getting divots all over the place. Oh by the way, that's a new word for me, and I think it's going to be my vocabulary word of the year.

Also just this weekend, the score clock stopped working. It's too bad they don't have much money these days. Makes me wish I was a billionaire and could donate a brand new everything to them. Oh well, maybe one day.

Street View comes to Canada

Canada has finally joined the ranks of Google Streetview! You can take a look at Google maps now to see street level imagery of Vancouver =) Unfortunately however, they didn't drive all the way up to the house I live in right now. I'm really in the boonies. Sorry folks =)

English = Confusing

I detest English sometimes, because it's confusing. Sometimes it's confusing because I don't understand it well enough. Other times though, it's just plain confusing. Here is my huff-puff for the day:

high : low => higher : lower
up : down => upper : lower..? not downer?

grr

Twitter

Just so you know, I post randomly on twitter much more frequently than I do on here. Here I tend to post in little bursts every other month =P. Just the way my busy-ness goes.

Since I left...

Well Japan was awesome, I did a lot of fun things with Tamara. We got engaged there though, so all our other awesome activities are having a hard time topping that one. Memorable things there include riding roller coasters, climbing Mt. Fuji, running around Tokyo, and spending time with church and family.

Once I got back to Canada I caught a virus from Chilliwack involving throwing up, shivering, diarrhea, back cramps, and inability to eat. I barely got two days at work before this virus took me down. My landlord called me asking me to clean up while I was bedridden because she was having a potential renter viewing the suite the next day. I was too sick and oblivious to realize that 1 day was way too short notice to clean the house. That culminated in a very unpleasant situation as I was recovering from my illness.

That was Thursday, and obviously I was cleaning the house the best I could over the weekend. Tamara was very kind and offered to help me on Saturday. That night after taking Tamara home, I got into a car accident with a pedestrian who was running across the highway intersection against the light. She was ok, no broken bones, but my headlight and windshield were damaged, and I also ran into other unexpected and avoidable towing expenses.

I just got my windshield replaced yesterday, thanks to my bosses' best friend to runs an autoglass company and gave me a discount. I feel like I'm finally back on my feet again...

The annoying this is I fell ill the same day I decided to spend the best part of an hour with God before I started my day. I don't need things like this hindering my relationship with God. Please pray that this series of unfortunate events will stop, and even if I come across them again, that I would persevere and continue to give my time and devotion to God.

Thank you Jesus for taking care of me in the midst of it all.

Japan, here I come

I will be going to Japan in less than a week for a whole month! I get to take my girlfriend Tamara with me and show off my "homeland" to her =). 'Twill be fun with much excitement in store.

CFO

I will be leading the youth segment of Camp Farthest Out in Falkland, B.C. this August. Here is a picture of me playing with the speaker for the camp and his kids last month.

I love my computer glass

My I love you computer cup cracked!!! =(

Multiple Intelligences

If you want to see my learning style according to a multiple intelligences' test, type "2db2n10214kq" into the "Your Code" field on this page. If you want to try it for yourself, just click "Take a Test" on the top right of that page.

My Paper

I just finished writing a long paper. I might as well post it here in case any of you would have fun reading it.

Read my Paper

Spring

Spring has begun. Not technically, but actually. How do I know, you ask? Just look around you - the couples are everywhere. They are out on their walks, holding hands and smiling. The boy puts his arm around his girl as she looks up to him and laughs. Imagine this... everywhere. This is a sure sign that spring has arrived.

It has been quite cold and miserable until 2 days ago actually. The lake has been frozen over, and my car has constantly had frost on its windows and the doors were frozen shut. As for school...

Calculus started well, and then I got a little bit behind, just before (and during)my midterm. I got a D+ on my midterm, and then suddenly my brain clicked again and I did well on the following quiz. So anyways. As for my Religious Studies class, it's a very "rattling" class, raising questions which the church would never dare raise. This makes me really happy, because even if it doesn't answer absolutely all of my questions, it's been raising questions which I've been wondering since I was quite young. It's mostly on New Testament Theology, and the problem of understanding what the New Testament meant 2000 years ago, and how to bridge that time gap and give it meaning today.

Then there is my Operating Systems class. Half the time this course seems very trivial and mundane, then all of a sudden you realize it's hard because you haven't been paying absolute attention, and you have to do a project, assignment, or write a midterm. I really like what I'm learning though (When I'm paying attention to learn it.) Finally, there is my Digital Recording class. This course is lots of fun, because I already know a lot of it really well, but then on the other hand, there is so much of it I don't know. Maybe I'll post a song here from one of my projects if it turns out well =).

When that's a little fragmented summary of what's going on. Next week is reading break so it will be relaxing but still a little busy because I have much schoolwork to do, such as preparing for presentations, studying for midterms and reading books so I can write papers on them. Pray that I will be diligent. Well I better get to my Calculus, so that I will do well in class tomorrow.

The Quiz

As I anticipated, I did not know how to solve the problem in the quiz. I feel quite terrible at the moment.

Snow and homework

I'm doing Calculus homework but ran out of energy to think math, so I might as well write a blog post.

This winter has turned out to be the coldest and snowiest this region (and the entirety of Canada) has had in the past 50 years or so. This means a couple of things. For one, it has meant lots, and lots of snow. We just got over a huge bout of snow, which was good for practicing driving in. Another bunch just came recently, about 5cm in one day; very unexpected. Hopefully more won't come since the practice doesn't seem to be doing the drivers any good... I really benefited though =).

Another thing we got was lots and lots of fog. Here is a picture of a sunrise over the fog in Vancouver (go to the photographer's flickr site to see what is what):



The most unfortunate thing that came with this cold winter is the electricity bill (called "Hydro Bill" in BC). But hey, what do you expect...

So far school things have gone really well. I'm on top of my Calculus, gotten 100% in everything in that class, and gotten 100% in everything else in every other class. Unfortunately, today is the day where I'm not able to complete my math assignment due tomorrow, which will definitely lead to some disappointment. My math professor either collects the assignment or gives a quiz. Either way is not good.

The thing that is worrying me is that even though I have been doing well so far, my class work and work work balance has been in a pretty tight rhythm. So when my papers and midterms (assuming I do extra studying for them) come along, trying to squeeze them into the rhythm won't work.... then everything collapses unless I learn to make some sacrifices. I've been working on the sacrifices part (giving up on assignments when doing them will hurt my grade more than help it), but it's hard. I'm a perfectionist in that aspect...

Oh well, God please give me wisdom in how I choose to allocate my time, especially when the big whoppers try to mess up my pattern. Give me unending, semester long energy, motivation, peace and a thirst for you throughout it all. Thank you for my success so far =). In Jesus name Amen.

Approximating Integrals...

Integral Approximation is hard because there's a lot of algebra to it...

Church Portable

My church, Cariboo Road Christian Fellowship, just received word back from the Burnaby city council that their application for a permit to build a portable on church property has been rejected.

The portable is to be for the youth ministry as they and the entire children's ministry move into a new phase of ministry.

There was very little explanation from the council, and what little they gave seemed contrary to their laws.

Please pray that as the church attempts to dialogue and win the favour of the council, that the Lord will work in the hearts of the council and that they will carry out His will. Also that the church team which will be undertaking this task will have wisdom and insight from God as they dialogue with the government and others.