Devotional Thot

'Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples, went to the leading priests and asked, "How much will you pay me to betray Jesus to you?" And they gave him thirty pieces of silver. From that time on, Judas began looking for the right time and place to betray Jesus.'

What did Judas want? What was Judas’s motivation? He knew Jesus, spoke with him as one man speaks to another. Where Jesus went, Judas was welcome also. Judas heard the message, saw the miracles – Judas knew Jesus. What would motivate him to betray his friend?

The answer, I am afraid, does not appear to be profound – he wanted money. The priests who condemned Jesus to death were clinging to a religious worldview that they understood and had cherished for hundreds of years. The Romans who ordered his execution were protecting the stability of their empire; the soldiers who carried out the orders were men under authority. But Judas… Judas wanted money. I confess, it is not a desire that I can (even in abstract) understand. If it had been a misguided attempt to win favor; if he thought that he would be a hero to the Jews; if he were tired of living like a fox without a hole or a bird without a nest, any of these I could understand. Judas just wanted money.

I’ve been thinking a lot about humility lately. In the end, I think humility amounts to nothing more than having a genuine preference for God’s will; a lack of humility is something that I can understand. When, instead of choosing to follow God, I prefer my own will, then I am following in the footsteps of Judas, and the Romans, and the soldiers… When I choose to pursue my ambitions, satisfy my desires, ensure my own security; these are the things that would motivate me to betray my friend.

Gambling Stat Tracker

Wins:
Peter: "Bet you two dollars you can't eat two super-hot jawbreakers from start to finish without taking a break."

Catherine: "A dollar says that your team (Jonas and Elliot) doesn't win this game of Cranium"

Losses:
Catherine: "I'll give you three to one odds that your team does not win this round of charades." (We were meant to act out "the Hokey Pokey" and didn't win. Three to one odds seemed attractive; there were four teams, so our team had a one in four chance BEFORE you consider our natural advantages.)

Weekly Total: two dollars to the good, and what matters more, I have discovered that Catherine likes to gamble. I need that sort of thing.

Bet at offer this week: I'm offering even odds that I score in the soccer game tonight. This is a very god bet for anyone to take advantage of -- I don't score in even close to half of the games, and this week the competition promises to be stiff, but I feel strong. I am not currently able to facilitate bets larger than two dollars. Bets must be received before midnight, Mountain Time.

If you're interested in offering another bet, make your offer below. No bet too ridiculous to be considered.

Quote of the week 2

"I have overcome a fiercely anti-Catholic upringing in order to attend Mass simply and solely to escape Protestant guitars." ~ Annie Dillard

A crisis of faith that has tempted me, too... Protestants and their acoustic guitars (shakes head).

Question of the Week 2

You’ve put in the hard hours, lingered around the Rutherford Library or the Engineering buildings, and finally met someone exciting, someone who might possibly be The One… The One who makes talk of the weather seem fascinating, The One who gilds the ordinary moments of your days, The One who will walk with you through the dangerous places in your heart, and blah blah blah.

Early in a relationship, it is easy and even delightful to selflessly sacrifice, but is it wise? When things have just begun, competition is often fierce to see who can be more attentive to the needs of the other, and everyone wins! Some part of me thinks that it might be smarter to do things exactly the opposite way: commit to a general selfishness early in the relationship and seek your own happiness first. (I know, this flies in the face of everything you’ve learned in YM (or Brio) or GQ (or Breakaway), but bear with me.) Being committed to your own happiness means that you are doing the things that you really enjoy, telling the jokes that you really think are funny, watching the movies you really like; in short, being the person who you really are. If your intended doesn’t like that person, you are early enough into the relationship to cast them back into that wide sea filled with many fishes, and “no harm done.” If they do like the person you are, then the long term health of your relationship will not rest on maintaining a persona or an alter ego.

Of course, at the same time, it seems intuitive that selfishness and relationship run always in opposition. This leads us to question of the week: Early in a relationship, is it wise to be self-sacrificing, or does a long term relationship grow more easily when fertilized with selfishness?

Devotional thot

Pavlov;

I am interested to know why you would ask me about how I reconcile Matthew 25 to the picture of salvation given in the rest of scripture; I am convinced that you will not be satisfied with my answer. I have long been of the opinion that scripture (and in a more profound way, God himself) resists systematization. In fact, the sort of generalities that I am most comfortable with are along the lines of “God is unpredictable.” When I consider the story of God’s relationship with man as presented in the Bible, there is a trend of God doing unexpected things; think of the incarnation – nobody saw that coming. Jesus promises that no one knows the day or the hour of his coming but the Father himself; this might well underlie a more profound theological point, namely, that prognostication will fall short, and God will resist our dearest efforts to understand. We know God only by the spirit of God – we know what he tells us, and nothing else.

It might sound like mere laziness to present the problem as incorrigible right from the start, but I am not above laziness, and when the topic is God, I am quick to admit that I am in over my head. Here is that admission, Pavlov: I do not understand the mechanism of salvation, and indeed, the accounts given by James, Paul and Jesus differ in important ways. That said, I must admit also that this (apparent or actual) inconsistency does not bother me in the least, nor can I think of any reason why it should. The point of the parable of the sheep and the goats is pretty clear: those who will be with Jesus in the end will be those who cared for others; there is an element of ministering to God in ministering to the ‘least of these’.

I think that you are struck by the inconsistency between the account given by Paul, which makes it clear that justification is by faith, and not by works, and the account given by Jesus, which makes it clear that the separation between those “blessed by [the] Father” and the “cursed” is made according to their deeds. So… what saves us? My short answer: Jesus. Jesus saves us. “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” I am incapable of stating the means of salvation or bridging the gap between faith and works; wouldn’t it be just the flexing of ‘superior wisdom’ to try? Why do we need to distill the message further?

Things are gonna change around here!

David Hengen came over from the popsicle stand to add his two cents, refusing even to “pretend that i read part three,” and instead informing me that he “regularly check your blogs for more entries like the one about the comedy house, or the trip to the west edmonton mall theme park.” And who can blame him, really? It is entirely selfish to post windy, wordy stories with no immediate payoff, and it doesn’t fit well with the weblog medium, either. For some reason, it is really hard to read all the way through something long on a weblog, and I am always putting long things on, for my own entertainment. It’s an approach that will never make you popular with the weblog crowd. I’d been thinking for several weeks that I needed to make a change, a thought that was confirmed by David’s comment.

So let me spell it out for you. From now on, things are going to be different. For every long thing I post, I will also post a short thing. That means that when part four of the dead cat story comes out (and it is coming, I promise. I can’t stop, I really can’t) it will be accompanied by something short and funny.

But wait! There is more!

I am also going to add a “gambling stat tracker” to the website. I have been meaning to do this for some time now. In September, when I made my annual New Year’s resolutions, I began my attempt to turn five dollars into $200 using only canny gambling. Since then, there have been some successes. For instance, I won a dollar by knowing that green peppers, red peppers, yellow peppers, purple peppers and even the rarely seen brown pepper are all the same pepper! Yessir, the farmer (isn’t the idea of a farmer quaint?) just leaves the green pepper on the vine longer, and as the pepper matures it gets sweeter and changes colour! I won a dollar for that. I won a dollar and a big buck after speculating (correctly) that there is an escalator in Red Deer. On the other hand, I have lost several bets. The problem is that I have no idea how much I am up, or, more likely, down. Hence, the gambling stat tracker. Every time I make a wager, it will be listed on the website, and when it is resolved, the stat tracker will reflect a running total. That might be kind of fun.

But wait! There’s more!

To counter the ‘fun’ of the gambling stat tracker, and in deference to my Christian upbringing, I am going to add a weekly ‘devotional thot’. (A ‘thot’ is like a ‘thought’ only shorter and more inspirational; often grounded in suspect logic.) I have long believed that one of the great things about going to a Brethren church is that everyone is prepared to share at every meeting. In theory, everybody in a Brethren church could end up preaching, and so (once again in theory) everyone should be comfortable with their Bibles and what their Bibles say. In practice, the same eight guys get up every week, and I have never shared, ever, in the first service. There is no good reason for this. I ought to prepare something to say, even if I am not going to say it, and the Interweb is going to help keep me accountable to that end. You will see a ‘devotional thot’ posted prior to church every Saturn’sday.

But wait! There’s more!

I am also going to add a “quote of the week” section – quotes to inspire and lighten the load as you wend your way through your week.

But wait! There’s (a little bit) more! (How is it possible?)

Finally, the casuist will from now on supply a “question of the week” to be pondered, mulled and debated passionately. Check back often, as this feature is sure to generate plenty of discussion! The first question of the week and the first quote of the week are listed below.

Now, David, I feel I have made some concessions. It is up to you to now do your part. In exchange for all my wit and delightful repartee, I expect that you will read, or at least pretend to read, the windy, wordy stories I insist on foisting upon you. That is all for now.

Part four of the damn cat story will be available soon.

Quote of the week

"We could not obey your commandments, for we did not believe your promises." ~ G.E.M. Anscombe.

(Anscombe originally wrote this as a part of a discussion about the Cold War, and intended it specifically to comment on the (Christian) world leaders who built up their nuclear armaments and drove the world to the brink of war. Anscombe pictures them standing before Christ, attempting to explain the foreign policy decisions that did not respect Jesus' prohibitions against force and vengeance. Anscombe believed that we should never allow ourselves to act as if the 'end justifies the means'. So, for instance, if a madman offered a bargain: "If you kill this one kid, I will let these twenty go," Anscombe would advocate our refusal. God has commanded "Thou shalt not kill," and that, for Anscombe, is the end of the matter. We don't apply our own judgment to the situation; our responsibility is to trust God. Besides, Anscombe points out, we cannot expect a person who makes such a demand to act predictably; nothing assures us that they will live up to their end of the bargain. (Anscombe adds some further philosophical justification, but it is not needed here.))

I have been challenged by this thought, and I think it is applicable to more than just world politics... I thought I would share it with y' all.

Question of the Week

Each building on campus contains its treasures, there can be no doubting this, but the treasures are not the same. My question is fairly simple: where on the university campus would you choose to loiter if you wanted to catch the eye of a desirable mate? Obviously, if you spend time outside the dentistry/pharmacy building, you stand a high chance of meeting a future dentist or pharmacist, and they are widely rumored to make a good salary. Or, perhaps you would choose to visit the Phys. Ed. building, where you are likely to meet fit and handsome people, fresh off the treadmill. Or maybe you would head over to the drama department, where exciting, passionate, artistic visionaries roam the halls, looking for someone to impersonate or lie to.

Of course there is no perfect indicator of romantic compatibility, and the people inside the building are as varied and unique as snowflakes, but I am looking for generalities: In view of Valentine’s day, where on campus would a single person would be wise to eat their lunch?