One Man's Junk is God's Treasure

It's been a while. I know. My schedule for going to and from school has gotten very irregular these days. And now I have a course that actually has papers that need to be written.

However, I have missed writing here, and have had several ideas floating about in my head for a while. One of them was yanked from the nebulous cloud of thoughts and plastered in the forefront of my mind recently, so I suddenly felt the need to write. A serious need.

My life here in Montreal has been one long series of unexpected events and happenings. Quite honestly, when I first came here, growing in my faith was not something I expected to be doing until I had some time to settle in, get comfortable with people here, get into a rhythm with church, all those things. I figured I'd just at least maintain my level and maybe take a few small steps forward, but nothing major. Looking back now, and even looking ahead, it's pretty obvious God had other plans.

Quick bit of backstory. My youthgroup in Bermuda was not providing any sort of challenge at all. My peers around me were not as strong in their faith as I was, and, in typical public schooling fashion, the level of the teaching and discipleship was targeted towards the last student. This isn't me criticizing. Just me observing. The youth leader was doing the best he could do, which was what the others needed, but the simple fact of the matter was that I needed more in order to grow. Therefore, most of my senior year was spent in spiritual stagnation. I had reached a bit of a plateau in my faith and, to my shame, I didn't make the effort to get past it. Life was good, why would I push then?

This is why I didn't expect to grow here. I had gotten used to that sort of life, and I still was so busy I had trouble making time for God. I figured university would be so much more work, so there was no way I'd have the time to make a proper effort to grow. Like I said, however, God had other plans.

When I first started spending time on campus, I remembered my youth leader had recommended to all of us heading to university to seek out Campus for Christ there, if there was one. A quick bit of poking about on the internet garnered me a few emails for staff at McGill, so I got in touch. Two weeks later I was able to go to one of the weekly worship meetings, which was where I got connected with the discipleship groups (devotional? I really don't know, we just call it DG). The first time I went to one I instantly knew I was in the right place. It was just four of us guys getting together to do a Bible study and look at applications. This was step one of God's plan.

The next was shortly afterwards when, during the first or second meeting, Marvin, the leader of the group, challenged us first-years to go sharing with him or Mark (the other leader) in the cafes. This would basically involve going around, trying to engage people in spiritual conversation. Anyone who knows me knows that I dread interactions with strangers, completely separate from the fear Christians have when it comes to speaking of their faith. I quickly said that at this point there was no way I'd be able to do that, and I didn't think I could do it in the near future (as in, the whole academic year). In retrospect now I can kind of see God chuckling a little and thinking “Just you wait...just you wait.” Less than three months later I was not only going sharing on a regular basis, but I was also taking the leading role in conversations, as opposed to being the “side-kick” to Marvin as he led.

This semester, Campus for Christ (henceforth known as Power to Change) started a discussion series called “Ultimate Questions” in the place of our former weekly meetings (which were basically small worship services). The objective was to become more outreach oriented. Thus, we needed to start spreading the word on campus about these meetings, and one method that was suggested was doing announcements before a class. As soon as this idea was suggested, I was scared. There was no way I was going to speak in front of more than two hundred people to announce a discussion series. Again, I have trouble speaking to a person one on one, let alone to a large crowd. And yet, a few days ago, there I was, making the announcement.

All this shows how much of a transition has happened. I went from being unwilling and, in my own view, unable to do certain things, to doing above and beyond what I didn't think I could do. When I look back, there was no way whatsoever that I expected to be where I am. At all. It's terrifying and exciting at the same time. To push this further, the possibility stands quite high right now that I will be leading a first-year DG in the coming fall. Me. Leading a Bible study group. All I can say is that God must have one heck of a plan to be able to pull that off successfully. And here's the thing; as far-fetched as it may seem I know that if it's God's will, it will happen. And it will be amazing.

This has been, to me, strong evidence of something I've heard preached at youth rallies all the time. Specifically, to step out of your comfort zone, as that's where all the action is. After a few weeks here, I decided that I would take this challenge to heart and whenever I was tempted to say “no” to something because I was too scared or insecure about doing it, I would instead say “yes”. Examples of this are not just limited to the two I provided above; playing piano at church is another. Back home I would desperately resist playing lead keyboard at church but I've realized that this is another one of those instances where I need to just do it.

The issue with piano brings up an interesting point. It's no secret really that I've been blessed with musical talent, particularly with the piano. However, what is also no secret is that my strength in piano lies in classical music, not improvisational congregational playing. What I've seen God do there is take my gift and use the weakest aspect of it. So often we hear people saying “God has given you gifts for a reason; He wants to use them.” While this is true, I'd argue in a slightly opposite way. We are to use our gifts, sure, but I find God likes to give us a set of strengths and weaknesses and then use all the weaknesses rather than our strengths.

Not only does He do that with the gifts He's given us, but I'm finding more and more than our weakest aspects are the ones used the most. Like I wrote about already, I've never been, nor do I really ever expect to be the most brilliant of speakers or, honestly, someone who can carry a conversation without it being extremely awkward for all parties involved. And yet I've been put in multiple situations where, while I have no ability in the area, the words coming out of my mouth were used to fulfill a purpose. And really, that's the whole reason I don't think I'll ever be “good” at speaking; I'm bad at it for a reason. The reason being so I can never claim to have anything to do with it aside from being a willing party.

What is the take-home message here? Is there even one? I would say this in closing. Evaluate yourself honestly. What are your clear and obvious strengths? What are your clear and obvious weaknesses? Once you have those sorted, also look at where your weak spots are in your strengths. Once you've found those weak spots, watch to see what opportunities God puts in your path to use those weaknesses for His plan. As 2 Cor. 12:10 says, “...when I am weak, then I am strong.” I have been seeing this to be true over and over again this past year and fully expect to continue to see the truth in this in coming days, months, and years. I have taken huge steps forward in my faith this past year, and, in all honesty, these almost seem like steps back, as they have largely been allowing me to see just how far there is to go still. The biggest step forward was realizing that I was not where I thought I was. I find that incredibly ironic

I feel like I'm closing this semi-organized beast of a post in very disjointed manner. Possibly because I didn't write it all in one sitting. I do find that I write better when I can get the whole thing laid out in one sitting, otherwise I might forget where I was going with it, as I confess I did here a bit. All this said, if you get something out of this other than what I said in the above paragraph please feel free to share.

That's all for now, but I really want to put more up. I really enjoy this more than my level of activity would seem to indicate.

I'm Not Dead!

Hi!  I'm alive!  And yes, it's been almost a month.

I'm just wanting to say, though, that I've been thinking about this a lot.  I've missed writing here.  And I have some relatively large things in the works for this, so, yeah...watch this space. 

SOPA Protest Day

January 18^th. SOPA protest day. If you don't know what SOPA is, that's partially why I'm here. Partially.

Why only partially? Because, to my shame, I must admit I really don't know that much about SOPA and PIPA. Up until this morning I had a vague idea about what the bills were and what they would do. I also got the feeling that much of the internet-using world didn't think it was a good idea. This morning I found out a lot more. Let me share what I know.

First, if you're really out of the loop, let me explain what SOPA and PIPA actually mean. SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA is the Protect IP Act. They generally sound good, don't they? And this is the whole problem. Almost anyone who supports these, SOPA in particular, likely don't have a clue. All they know is that it supposedly is going to stop online piracy, which, judging by amount of time and effort spent on such a project already, is more important to track down and stop than offline criminals. You know, the kind that pull out a knife or a gun and inflict bodily harm. The question is; have they been successful thus far? The answer is; no.

Let's face it folks; the internet is the internet. Trying to stop piracy, which admittedly runs rampant on the web (depending on how you define it), is like fighting a hydra. Cut off one head, two more grow. Which is where SOPA comes in. Basically up until now, websites could be yanked by US Government (provided they were run by something or someone under US jurisdiction) if they were blatantly infringing copyrights. One example I knew quite well was a website that provided streaming links of live, televised sports; my brother, dad, and I used this website quite extensively before we purchased a television. This year, at the beginning of the NFL season, we were not at home for the kickoff game, and the online package we had just purchased from NFL.com did not allow Canadian users to watch nationally televised games. Upon pulling up the URL of the website we were greeted with a small wall of text over a patriotic background explaining the site had been yanked due to copyright infringement. This allows me now to make two points; first, the site still exists at another URL now and, as far as I know, is still operational. Second, this is what will happen to the web with SOPA in effect, only on a much, much larger scale.

But why? Why will this happen? Basically, under SOPA the US Government has the right a DNS block any website with potential of copyright infringement. And not like a temporary ban or until removal of content in question. At least, as far as I understand. In addition, it need not even be posted, supported, or endorsed by the website; any user could post a comment with some questionable material (in regards to copyright infringement, of course) and boom, that's enough to incur the banhammer. Put it this way; I have never broken copyright rules on this blog, have I? But all it takes is one of you guys to post a comment with an image of copyrighted material and bye-bye blog. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Here's the real kicker, though. Admittedly this is a bit of a secondary/tertiary source here, but according to an informative video I watched (which is below), the people in Congress voting on this bill don't even know what they are doing. As in more so than usual. They don't know much about the internet, they don't realize what the fabric of the internet is like, they don't know the whole world and culture that has sprung up and thrived on the internet, spanning the whole globe. Those who do are voting against it. That basically tells you what you need to know about that.

That's all the time I have for now, I'll probably write about this again at another time.

 Disclaimer: I have not yet watched the full video.  There may or may not be language in it, but the first half at least I know is pretty clean, depending on where you draw the line.  All that to say, you have been warned.

Heading Up

First of all, while I did sort of vow to not discuss sports here (as I may have mentioned before), yesterday requires some amount of discussion. Just briefly. Because I know I'm going to be constantly railed upon for the next few weeks. So, just quickly now, yes, I am annoyed by the losses by Houston and Green Bay yesterday. What kind of fan would I be to not be annoyed? Second, not to detract from the Giants, Green Bay really self-destructed rather than got beaten. It was that kind of game. And yes, I think they'll be able to now have a nice long think about how nineteen game winning streaks are no reason to slow down. At all.

Right. Now that's out of the way.

Growing up. That annoying thing we all must do eventually. That, and perception of time. When I was little I always thought of the future as some big, far, distant place. A place I didn't understand well but was sure I would when I got there. As I moved into preteen-teen years it started to become more real and more worthy of thought, but was still a long way off. Suddenly I'm in the future. Well, part of it. University was always classed as “out there” for future.

During my first year at Veritas Press I made some very close friends with whom I still communicate frequently. When I first met them university was the kind of thing we all had to think about but was still far away enough that we could sleep at night. As the years progressed and it drew ever closer I, for one, started to wonder what it would be like in university, having the friends that I had; remember, being homeschooled I didn't really “grow up” with any schoolmates or anything. I had no idea what to expect as this was as close as I was going to get to “moving away” from the town and school where I grew up (as is often the subject of advise columns for pre-teens).

The funny thing about growing up, however, is that everyone else seems to progress with you. My younger brother has always been two years younger and always will be, but it's so easy to forget that just two years ago I was exactly where he was. Going back to the people I knew/know from Veritas Press; when I “met” them they were a certain age and for some reason having a mental image of them at any other age is remarkably difficult. And then there's my littlest brother. He's another interesting piece because I have watched him grow up. I can remember him as a baby because I was old enough to remember. While this is probably horribly naïve, I find it to be similar to a parent watching their child grow. Everything he does I've done years before. And it will likely be the same through much of our lives.

So why is this? Why is the phenomenon of growing up so odd? Everyone does it, there are countless books written about it, shouldn't we know what we're doing now and what to expect? See, that's the whole thing. As we grow, and observe those around us growing as well, our own perspective is changing so we often cannot really compare things as they were to as they are yet, this is the key, we do it anyways. This is why watching my littlest brother grow is different; I'm sufficiently far enough ahead of him that he does not gain my position in life until many years later.

Anyways, I've run out of time. But this topic was rather pressing on me as I was pondering how very weird it is that the present becomes the past, the distant past becomes yesterday and the future becomes today. All far too quickly.

The Hipster Paradox

Here's something that's always bothered me. Hipsters. And their mentality in general. I'm not just talking about the morons who just do random, illogical things (i.e. the glasses, the ever-present scarf, the plaid, etc.). No, I'm talking about the world at large.

There's been a running joke on the internet for a while now about hipsters and almost everything being too “mainstream” for them. My gripe with this whole deal is that being hipster is the mainstream thing nowadays. This simple fact pretty much blows everything about them in general out of the water. If the point of being hipster is being different then why the heck are you a hipster if being one is a popular, common thing to do? The real hipsters would quit as that's the different thing to do, and if they're all really what they say they are then we'd have no problems whatsoever. But alas they're all too busy being commonplace to notice.

Now, I'm not really here to yak about hipsters, something I'll admit I actually barely know anything about, simply because the whole thing seemed moronic to begin with. The thing here I want to talk about is us. The world. As a whole.

How often do you hear the phrase, “I'm not like other guys/girls/people.”? How often do you hear the phrase, “I'm exactly like other guys/girls/people.”? This is my point here. The good news is that the utterance of the first phrase at least indicates a recognition of the fact that being like the stereotypical depiction of people (think media) is not desirable in the least. The bad news is that, well, the world is still a stupid place. Allow me to explain.

Like I alluded to in the previous paragraph very rarely will anyone freely admit to being the stereotype maker in any serious sense. Granted you'll have people joke about it but let's be honest; when people joke about being the stereotype all they're really trying to do is distance themselves from the stereotype. But now, with so many people trying to break away from the stereotype (I've said that word a lot....) breaking away is becoming the new norm. A few years ago hearing someone say “I'm not like other guys/girls/people.” would be a welcome statement (for me). Now, unless they provide good, reasonable proof to support their claim I'll not believe them for a moment. But, we are back to the original problem; the paradox.

Suppose that the person making this claim really has observed the world as a whole, noticed patterns in human behavior, saw where the problems lay and carefully removed these problem areas from their personality. Certainly they could truly claim to “not be like other people.”, right? But, what about the people who just take whatever minor quirk they have, amplify it, and then claim “I'm not like other....”? This is such a commonplace thing to do, all they really do is make themselves more like other people. The whole thing basically is that there was a mass movement to get away from the norm, but now being away from the norm has become the new norm. Everyone thinks they are special, but, in the words of Syndrome (modified), if everyone is special, no one is. To an extent of course...

DO NOT READ THIS

Only just yesterday I witnessed a horrible example of complete lack of self-control. And for once it wasn't me.

You see, there are certain things that exist on the internet, findable through google image search, that one should never look up. I'm not even going to mention any as I have a horrible feeling that people who read this will lack the self-control needed to not google them and then blame me.

This whole topic came up at the hands of a skype status my brother and sister shared. Both were expressing their disgust at something someone had shown them. My sister then informed me that I probably didn't want to google **********. So I didn't. I mentioned it in passing to another friend, who then googled it. I'll admit I was performing a little experiment on human curiosity at the time and she failed with flying colours. As she does most things. But that's not important.

I then went back to my sister. I remarked at how little self-control people could have with thins. I then severely warned her not to look up a certain thing. Her end went quiet for a few minutes. Then I got a message saying, “I wish I hadn't done that.” Adding a few more head-shaped dents in my “wall of frustration” was not quite enough. So I set to pondering the remarkable, amazing, and disturbing thing that is human curiosity.

It is a common joke about pushing buttons. We just love to push buttons. Something inside us is fascinated by the way just pushing a small round piece of plastic can do so much. We want to know what they do. So, of course, we push them. Especially when they are big and red and specifically say “Do not push”. This coincides exactly with the google image search. Being told to not look something up naturally makes you want to do it. There is this feeling that something is being hidden from you, something that might be good. That others don't want you to have. Obviously those exact thoughts don't exactly apply to every situation where you are forbidden from doing something. But it's the general idea.

Recently at youth group here we had a presentation given by a youth leader about a four month mission trip she went on to Haiti. While there was more to it than just this the one thing that really stuck out was the shoes. They brought hundreds and hundreds of pairs of shoes with them to distribute to the people of Haiti. One thing they immediately noticed, however, was when they would bring the children in to find them shoes that fit, they were never interested in the shoes on the table. They all went right for the boxes of shoes that had not been opened yet. This initially puzzled them but it became clear; the kids couldn't help but think that there was something being hidden from them. They were convinced that there must be something better hidden in those boxes.

A lot of this would have to do with human nature, I believe, while one's upbringing may often have something to do with it. Just look way back to where the world initially went wrong; the Garden of Eden. All Adam and Eve had to do was live there, eat the fruit of any tree except one. Just one. And they couldn't stay away. Why couldn't they? It's actually relatively simple, at least how I see it.

God clearly said to not eat of it or they would die. At that point it's a relatively simple matter to not eat it. If I said you would die if you googled [insert name here] you probably wouldn't, would you? The direness of the consequence held them away. At that point in their lives the idea was, “I'm happy and comfortable the way I am. If I eat that I'm going to die. I can eat anything else. Why would I ever want to eat that?” Very easy, right? Well, along comes the Devil, the Father of Lies. He plants doubt in Eve's mind, convincing her that actually, to eat the fruit wasn't a death penalty, but it was just God trying to keep them away from becoming like God themselves. He instilled in her the idea that something was being kept away. Suddenly, eating the fruit seemed like a very attractive option, something to be desired.

The take home message here is basically just what my economics professor explained yesterday. If the opportunity cost is greater than your income, you are losing money, meaning you are not as well off as you could be. The “opportunity cost” is basically how much money, whether in direct cash or not, you could be making in your next best opportunity. If you are making less than you could be you are working at a loss. This rather self-centered mindset is a prime example of basically everything I've discussed. There is something more we could have, and we want it. That's pretty much what drives the world. Sad, isn't it?

Randomness

So I'm back. It's a new year. A new term. Semester. Whatever you want to call it. I should have had something up yesterday but my battery was flat and I didn't have time after getting home from a flight with over an hour of delays to find my charger. Which I have since located and now can use the laptop in a more mobile way.

I did intend to write on here over Christmas but evidently I didn't feel the need to. Too many other things to be doing and seeing. Bermuda does that to you. But only last night, now that I've had time to just sit and do nothing (or, relatively nothing) and must consider my course of action over this next term I suddenly realized I missed this. Especially last night when all that had been bottled up decided to show up again and for a few hours I could barely keep my thoughts organized in any way. I need a wall to scream at. But I don't exactly know why.

It's not like I had any epiphanies over the holidays. I didn't have any situations that pushed me out of my comfort zone. I wasn't forced to ponder my entire life, past, present, or future. There was nothing really that should have lead to a pile up of thoughts. And yet something did.

This is the paragraph where typically something big and life-changing would be revealed. The answer to the implied questions given above. But nope, those questions are not rhetorical. I'm just here throwing words at a computer screen to see if they stick in some recognizable order.

Seeing as I have nothing else really to speak about and I'm not even half-way through my train ride, let me throw a few random things at the screen now.

First off, while they are horribly stereotypical New Year's resolutions is something I like to take relatively seriously. Which means I always have just a few that I honestly want to keep in the coming year and beyond. Things I want to make my habits. This year, while I never wrote down a list, I have these:

• Less time on the internet. This seems to be a recurring theme. But seriously the amount of time sunk into that is quite frightening. And, now in a horribly paradoxical way...
• More regular posting on both my blogs. A subset of this is to basically get the weekly pictures up on time each week...something I've already managed to fail but that doesn't mean I'm giving up.
• More music. Seriously. It doesn't seem right that it's something I love so much and yet do so little. It annoys me.
• Keep. My. Class. Notes. Organized. The amount of time I spent just organizing stacks and stacks of paper near finals was simply amazing. I could not believe how much time was spent. Again, more generally more neatness overall (there's a difference between neatness and organized, but it's no secret that the latter is easier if the former is kept).

Secondly, if you haven't already the recent Sherlock Holmes movies are well worth watching. As well as the modern-day version that BBC is doing. While as a bit of a purist in this matter I have my complaints about them they certainly are very, very good. Just because I have to say it my biggest complaint is that in both the television series and the movies Sherlock does in fact have a love interest part that comes in. Occasionally. That irks me to no end.

But now my train ride has almost come to an end and if I don't hurry for the doors I shall be trapped in a mass of people. Something else that irks me to no end....