Fickle Dreams

I know my heart is fickle when I look inside and see
The inconsistencies of what I say and what I mean
I wish that I would say exactly what I believe
As I imagine all it is I know that I could be
I could be that guy who always does the right thing
It’s frightening to realize that it’s frightening
To put my best foot forward
And to keep on walking towards
The goal of following the Word
With everything that is me
See, every single night I lay down with the same dream
It’s amazing
How a dream
Can paralyze
And stop
All forward motion
With a single thought that dwells deeper than
Well, than the other thoughts that dwell
Or even the ones that skirt along the surface
You see how a dream breaks?
It shatters against the pattern you thought was emerging
As your life seemed to line up with this piece of reality
You place the transparent dream over your film and
Suddenly, nothing matches.
The colors are all wrong. Everything is broken, but not destroyed.
And you realize that this fickle heart of yours
—of mine—
Has taken your dream and attempted
To stretch it over the surface of your reality
And where you thought you would get some
Some sort of alignment
Instead, you only got a surface
Suitable only for beating
Boom
Boom
The taught dream-skin over reality
Is beaten until it is all you hear
But one day, reality will break free.

This whole weekend–well, everything through Saturday night, at least–has been filled with a lot of reflective thoughts; I’m at a turning point in my life, and I’m not sure where I will be going. This is my last difficult semester in school, I think, and so even though I won’t be graduating for another year, I am at a point where I feel like this is the final push. I’m looking to the future with nearly every aspect of my life and attempting to figure out what it all looks like; so far, all I’ve come up with is ‘I look a bit older.’

Okay, that’s a lie. I have a lot of things more-or-less figured out, at least as far as goals are concerned. But that is beside the point.

Today I’ve been contemplating a lot of things: friendship and relationships of every sort; the importance of circumstance in nearly every decision (some may call this context); history, both personal and otherwise; and, of course, writing itself, as I am often wont to do. I won’t expand on those topics, though perhaps the last will get a bigger treatment, except to say that all of those thoughts are important to consider more deeply than I have previously allotted.

I am ever grateful for my friends. Tonight I had conversations with friends who have existed in my life in wildly disparate capacities. Some began as almost vicarious friends but have evolved into trusted but removed confidantes, others were friends who were extremely close during small portions of our lives where our schedules were nearly identical, and yet others are the sorts of friends who are relatively consistent and recent, but have become extremely cherished none-the-less. They have all been sounding boards for various thoughts and blogs throughout the years, and tonight was no exception. I’m ever grateful for the circle of friends I find myself somehow sitting in; I honestly don’t know what I would do without them.

Earlier this week we re-launched The Christian Manifesto, which is a bit of a misnomer: the site never disappeared, which removes the necessity of the re, but we certainly have re-designed it, which I suppose gives the re some credence yet again. In addition to writing reviews and participating in the Dual Impressions reviews (which you can find on the site or on iTunes), we have also started up new podcast simply called “Roundtable.” The people involved in the podcast will shift from time to time, but I was involved in the first two (at least), and the first is already available. We are discussing church discipline in context of a story published about Mark Driscoll’s church in Seattle. The topic is controversial and I was glad to be a part of a discussion with other solid thinkers, even if I don’t always agree with them. If that sort of thing catches your ear (or eye, in this case), be sure to give it a listen.

Also, keep an eye on Evangelical Outpost. I’m not sure when the new stuff will be coming there, and I’ll update here when it does, but there should be some good content coming out of there relatively soon.

There will be a new poem this Thursday. I know that has been one area of this site that has never really disappeared before, and for that I apologize, but it will be back. In fact, I’m almost done writing the poem I intend to post.

Christ Abide.

• The first type of player is the straight-shooter. This sort of player approaches video games with one question in mind: what does the game expect me to do to win? The answer to that question dictates the player’s actions. In adventure sort of games, this often means going from one objective to the next. Sometimes exploration or side-questing are taken up, but that depends on the sort of game. A game like Skyrim naturally encourages exploration, while most shooters (think Halo or Gears of War or Call of Duty) do not offer much incentive (beyond some collectibles) for heading down every single corridor. Straight-shooters tend to play games the way you might see a game played in a commercial: the game looks good, because developers designed it to look this way.
• The second type of player is the exploiter. This is the sort of player who seeks out glitches and other ways to ‘break’ a game. Many games are shipped with glitches that make objectives particularly easy to complete (Oblivion had a glitch where you could clone items, and the original Pokemon was filled with infinitely useful glitches). Some players, rather than operating under what the developers planned for, decide to seek out or use exploits like these to gain an upper hand. In single-player games, most people do not mind when other players use glitches; what difference does it make to me what someone else does in their game? In multiplayer games, however, glitches and exploits unleash a whole flurry of fury towards any player who intentionally (or who appears to do so intentionally) uses them to gain an upper hand in a match. This seems to hold true even when the game is primarily co-operative in nature. Sometimes this sort of player will use cheat-codes as well, though these sort of intentional exploits rarely work in multiplayer settings (sometimes cheat codes work in local multiplayer; this depends on the game).
• The third type of player is the purist. This category can fit into either of the above categories, but the key defining element here is that the player will not look up information about the game, either through strategy guides or online help (in the form of YouTube videos or forums or any other type of assistance). The reasoning is often that the fun of the game is playing through it/beating it on your own, rather than having someone else do the work for you. This mindset is more prevalent in games that have puzzles (adventures games, platformers, or even dedicated puzzle games) or are dependent on your skills to get past a certain area (shooters, platformers). Rather than looking up solutions or strategies, this player prefers to hammer through the old-fashioned way: by many, many attempts.
• The fourth type of player is the observer. This person may or many not even play the video games themselves, but they find deep joy in watching others play. Sometimes this is due to a lack of skill; observers sometimes enjoy the spectacle of a well-done speed run of a difficult level, but cannot pull it off themselves. Other times, though, this is simply because the person loves aspects of video games that are not related to actually playing; this can be anything from the environment to the story to the puzzles. Some games are much more entertaining when you have someone to sit through the game with you (Amnesia: The Dark Descent is like this, in my experience).
• The fifth type of player is the single-player gamer. This person ignores multiplayer modes of games, if they are there, but generally sticks to games that are designed for individuals. This could be for a variety of reasons, but most often it is simply a different focus on story/environment over skills. If the player is not particularly skilled at the game, it harms no one, and there is no competition. Multiplayer games are extremely competitive these days, especially shooters, and this turns many people off to multiplayer in general.
• The sixth type of player is the multi-player gamer. This person is the opposite of the previous category: rather than enjoying single-player games or game modes, this person often dives right into multiplayer gaming. Sometimes this is of a more cooperative nature (either campaigns, “horde” style modes, or even things like raids in World of Warcraft), but often this sort of gamer is competitive to the core. Call of Duty and Halo are games that cater to this type of gamer, and they will spend hours honing their skills on the same maps. While the maps and levels stay roughly the same, as does the gameplay, the variety of players and strategies that a gamer has to go up against drives this gamer to continue to the next match.
• The seventh type of player is the casual gamer. This type of gamer often focuses on what has come to be called ‘casual gaming’: games like Bejeweled, Words with Friends, Angry Birds, and the like. Small, cheap, and simple games attract this sort of gamer. This is usually a person who doesn’t consider themselves a ‘gamer’ by most conventions, but will still spend significant amounts of time seeking to beat out their own high scores. Sometimes casual gamers transition into more ‘full-fledged’ gamers, with consoles like the Wii or games like Plants vs. Zombies appealing to both categories, but more often than not casual gamers enjoy their bit of entertainment and are content with that.

This list is pretty rough and far from comprehensive, but I think I’ve hit most of what comes to mind initially. Feel free to add to my list or correct it in the comments. Christ Abide.

• War is an ugly thing no matter which side you are on. Sometimes one side is clearly right and the other clearly wrong, but most often both sides have a good deal of the latter. Perhaps one side has more of the former and is therefore worth siding with, perhaps even worth leading or changing, but to assume war doesn’t have an ugly or evil side is definitely not safe. Sacrifices must be made, but that doesn’t make war evil, necessarily. After all, a sacrifice once saved my soul, and I do believe the event was anything but evil, at least in most sense of the terms ‘event’ and ‘evil.’
• Children are powerful agents, though rarely powerful in themselves. Emotions are played on by using children, whether through advertisements or simply obligations in times of peace or war, but these sorts of power are not necessarily bad. It isn’t bad to care about children, even if caring about children should somehow become dangerous.
• Music is awesome, and I wish there were more Christians seeking to make solid music. I have much love for a few select artists without any hesitations, and most of them are making hip-hop. Go figure.
• Blogging is a weird and complex activity that  I find myself spending a lot of time talking about, a moderate amount of time doing (in spite of what some people perceive as much more), and a minimal amount of time considering whether or not blogging is actually worth doing.
• I change my wallpaper once a week on my laptop. I do this by selecting one wallpaper from whatever Lifehacker posts on the Wallpaper Wednesday post and using it for a week. I started this about 15 weeks ago, and intend to keep it up, if possible.
• I’m currently reading a book by two authors I’ve never read but have heard mostly good things about. As I am enjoying the book thus far, I’m not sure whether I should want to read them both or quit while I’m ahead, lest I find that I have a distaste for one of them and never see the book the same way again.
• I really do have awesome friends. I have the strangest conversations with a few of those friends, though, and I am probably most grateful for the insane things I have been known to say. Just yesterday I told a friend that if there were a governmental order for my eyes to be removed, she would likely volunteer for me to take her eyes. Today I managed to say that someone made me feel crazy right after I explained that I’d like to write a book about a book I’d not yet written. To top it all off, I’m pretty sure I threatened to bug someone with tattle tape so that the library sensors go off. Oops.
• In case, by some odd stroke of luck (we’ll call it luck), my boss reads this, I wouldn’t actually put tattle tape on anyone intentionally. Promise.
• I was relatively hesitant to read a book about the end times, even one that purports to be funny, but so far I am having quite a good time of it.
• It is weird when a friend goes to Canada and meets another friend of mine who I did not know was in Canada. Small world. Or, rather, a kind of confusing one where people run into other people who are in places you did not expect them to be.
• Skyrim is the sort of game that feels so huge that you will never be done with it. On the other hand, there are only so many things that you even want to do in the game that eventually you find yourself wondering what else there is to do. I’m not there yet.
• Joystiq (a gaming blog) put out a top 10 games of 2011, and I have played (to completion or close to completion, depending on the sort of game) 7 of them. I guess I really am a gamer.
• These posts are getting shorter.
• I’ll end here.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,100 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

What does it mean for man to be made in the image of God and then to have God become man? What does it mean for God to hold man together–and, indeed, all of creation–and then to enter into humanity as a man himself? How does it change our lives that God lived a life like ours and now lives on?

The Incarnation is at once simple and complex, beautiful and humiliating. There’s a balance to the whole thing and it begins to feel like wordplay at times. The way poetry makes words mean more than they may have meant before so does the Incarnation change the meaning of man. God became man that man might be with God. See how the phrase just sits on top of that center phrase “man that man”? The phrasing of it almost begins to feel circular but it never quite closes in. The spiral continues upwards and away from the starting point, naturally leading to conclusions and truths but starting with just one simple statement.

God became man.

Man was already in the image of God. That was part of the plan, and had been that way since the beginning. Man fell, but was still in the image of God. Suddenly, though, we were bad at being like God. We’d try, and sometimes even worship ourselves as though we were God, but worship is deserved by being and identity, not actions.

And yes, I do mean ‘we.’ It’d be easy to read that last paragraph and think about the people of the Old Testament as the perpetrators, but I do intend to say ‘we.’ The above paragraph applies to us in the same way.

At some point, God stopped talking to us. Mankind received no words from his creator, even though previous years had been filled with words and laws and actions. Men had previously walked with God, conversed with God, argued with God, and seen miracles that shocked whole nations for generations.

Suddenly, the Word burst forth. Born to a virgin and legal son of a carpenter, Jesus the Incarnate Word broke the worst silent treatment anyone has ever endured. This man, this second Adam, walked with God in part because he was God. For thirty years, however, we hear nearly nothing from this Word. He simply dwells among us. He probably made tables and chairs, or whatever else Jewish carpenters made at the time. He likely had friends and his town knew who he was. But even the Word waits for more words from the Father and the Spirit before proceeding to speak to the nations. The Word demonstrates perfect submission even in light of a perfect will.

Man, made in the image of God, rejected the perfect Image of God and crucified him. We who were older in flesh but younger in age took it upon ourselves to kill the one who created us and intended to save us from ourselves. Of course He rose–after all, who are we to kill God?–and now offers us the same chance to rise when we kill ourselves. And kill ourselves we must, since we deserve that which we condemned the innocent one to.

God became man that we may learn to kill ourselves the way we killed the ultimate man. The Incarnation teaches us life to teach us death to give us life. The spiral continues, but always points back to that simple truth.

God became man.

God as man saves man from man and from God.

Untitled Incarnation Poem

There is no ray of hope.
Hope is dust –
dust that chafes the inner eye,
dust that suckles tears –
that is hope.

Hands grope blindly that are not eyes
and eyes are blind.
Blind eyes still feel.
Blind hands commiserate
and share their sorrow
but cannot rub out hope.

Hands grope blindly
finding a man
crucified in darkness.
The cross’ boards were sawed.
Saws drop dust.

Eyes blind and dead in darkness
are raised in light
to see a man
both king and priest in one –
both God and man in one.

A note from the author:

This poem, like the one other poem that I ever remember publicly distributing, was conceived when I was working on something else. It is about how Jesus gives us hope that sticks with us. Since you have the basic meaning, I will not explain the metaphors until you wrestle with them yourself. I spend a lot of time thinking about how crummy Christian contemporary music is.  Here is a go at positively worshiping God rather than saying how badly other people worship. A lot of people say that their words fail to capture God’s glory and his majesty. While this is true, do they fail to die trying? English is a well developed language that even has a finely tuned Christian vocabulary to aid worship, given that much of classical English literature is overwhelmingly Christian. You can have a go at my worship now, and hopefully we can proceed together into fuller worship of God.

Christ Abide.

There is a depth to the Incarnation which goes well beyond what we can comprehend into the realm of divine mystery—that age old place of theological duality where restlessness and comfort coexist in loving harmony. While there is much that can be said about the Incarnation, it is the simple truth of its mysterious depth which seems its most revealing quality. Humans cannot understand Incarnation fully, for the same reason they cannot understand the Trinity completely—human beings are simply not deep enough. Nor will they ever be deep enough. There are truths which are simply beyond the depths of reason because of the nature—and the simple fact—of our beginning.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and eventually even man and woman, whom He blessed with His image and likeness. Leaving the particulars of this likeness for another day, we can infer that it was not an exact copy of God’s own Image for the simple fact that humanity has a beginning dependent on a pre-existent Creator; whereas God Himself is eternally self-sufficient without end or beginning. Scripture teaches about unending bliss or damnation depending on the choice of the individual human which proves the unending nature of “human eternality” yet it is impossible for human beings to be without beginning. And therein lies the rub.

Adam and Eve wanted to be more like God than was appropriate for them. In their attempt to know ‘good and evil’ they rejected the deeper relational knowledge of harmony. Knowledge of such lesser things does nothing to nurture the individual if one divorces themselves from the Deepest Truth to it. Adam and Eve were left like two trees rooted into themselves. Withering. Dying. Humanity blew away from its home, across the world they had destroyed, carrying the accursed disconnected knowledge they paid so much to steal. Knowledge which only served to make it more difficult for them to deny themselves and fruitfully live lives of willing submission to God.

We broke ourselves by trying to fix ourselves when we had no need of repair. As a result we ended up without the simple thing which kept life livable. Faith. The simple ability to experience God and His creation and to innocently accept the truth of both without having to box it up and own it. To read a story without having to covet authorship. Mankind became twisted by Satan’s lie and needed a way out of its fantasy. The only way for men to get out was for God to step in.

This is the mystery of Christ. That the second person of the Trinity can be something as limited as a human being. That the Word can be contained within space and time, while simultaneously existing beyond the spatial and temporal universe, giving life, motion, and being to all things. The Word was in the Virgin womb while the Virgin lived and moved and had her being in the Word—and yet there was only one Word! We can try and understand this but the simple truth of the matter is that the Word of God is so wondrous that He can be the Firstborn among Creation even though He ‘existed’ before existence.

Christ can be born generations upon generations after creation outside of Eden and somehow still be more the Man than Adam ever was. And the sheer beauty of it all is that this is not a change in the laws of the universe but a revelation of their true nature. The laws of time and space are subject to God so that when the Word of God, at the behest of His Father, enters the physical world its laws seem to wrap around Him. Miracles happen, same as more common laws of physics, simply because the higher reality of God Himself wills that they do so. All this because we have Someone bigger than the universe inside the universe. And yet all this revelation of creation’s relation to God is still secondary to the principle purpose of the Incarnation: Restoration of the unity of humanity and Divinity.

Christ came both to show man the way out and to be his way out. Remembering the ties between Christmas and Easter, one knows that Jesus was born to die. He came to pay the debt of mankind and to bring mankind into Him. Because there is something “new under the Sun” as my friend Mackenzie Mulligan has pointed out, humans have a means for a return to bliss. We have the Son beneath the Sun. Under the Son there is new life. There is hope for the future and forgiveness for the past. There is the opportunity for active unity by the Holy Spirit with the fullness of God even in this present earth.

Incarnation: The Son of God became Man and dwelt among men so that they might in Him become sons of God. Among them He lived and moved and had being so that they might do the same.

Today’s post comes from friend Mackenzie Mulligan. I’ve known him since we took a class on the Trinity together, and I’ve always admired his thinking. His blog is well worth checking out, so make sure to bookmark it. He’s also getting married soon, so don’t expect his blog to be updated too quickly thereafter. Take the time to catch up on some of his archives. Without further ado, here is his guest post:

“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new?’ It has been already in the ages before us… I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.” Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, 14-15

The world of the author of Ecclesiastes is old and stale. Nothing has any meaning or creates any lasting difference—the author questions, then, whether it is worth it to do anything at all. If the wise die in the same way as the foolish, if the rich suffer the same fate as the poor, if the good man fares the same as the evil man, why even make an effort? Even his last words carry the same sense of melancholy and hopelessness. “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” Fear God and obey him, because it is your duty: it will not help you in life, it may not help you in death, you will still die the same as an evil man… but it is your duty nonetheless.

And that was the end of the matter. There was nothing more to said, nothing more to be heard, because even the words of the wise were vain and meaningless.

And then something happened that had never happened before. A new star appeared in the heavens and a company of angels sang to the shepherds of Bethlehem, because God had been wrapped in swaddling clothes and was lying in a manger. This was, without a doubt, the most important thing that had happened since creation. And what this meant was… everything.

God was a child. He had friends, he played games with them, he skinned his knees, he was hungry and thirsty and tired. And then God grew up and was a man. He was sarcastic and biting towards some people and utterly kind and gentle towards others. He was enraged at the misuse of the temple and driven to tears by the death of a friend. He had friends and ate and drank and slept under the stars when he could have had an angelic canopy.

And as we think about these things we must remember one simple truth: God does not do meaningless things.

And this does not just apply to his “kingdom work.” The ultimate proof of this is his very first miracle in John 2. This miracle was not planned: this is evident from his response to Mary: “What does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” But he does it anyway: he has the jars filled with water and by the time the first cup reached the master of the feast, it is no longer water but the finest wine that had yet been served.

God does not do meaningless things. There were any number of ways to make his disciples believe in him, if that was his main goal. He could have made the water disappear: he could have turned it into grape juice (as some Christians fervently wish he had). But instead he chose to turn it not only into wine, but into the finest wine, wine so good that it made all the other wine pale in comparison. We are forced to realize this amazing truth: that God did something not just to further his mission, not just to make his disciples believe in him, but to help people celebrate a wedding with wine, the ultimate of extravagant beverages.

God does not do meaningless things. And that means that the world of Ecclesiastes is gone forever. Everything is no longer vanity and meaningless: instead, everything assumes a colossal importance. Even “neutral” things like eating or sleeping become full of meaning when we consider that God has done these things as well. When we eat, even a snack, we are reminded that God has done the same. When we sleep, we are reminded that God did too. When we attend a wedding, we remember that in doing so we walk in the footsteps of Christ. Life is full of meaning: I might even say full to bursting. Serving God is no longer a mere duty, but a privilege, an honor, a gift, as we walk this new world and think of Christ taking his first steps in Bethlehem.