Anger management

My wife recently attended a talk regarding anger management (see handouts). She said that the main takeaways were to prevent things from escalating and to talk things through. For example, putting into words why you're angry can help you cope with the anger better and also give others greater insight into why you're mad (and also make it less scary). I know one of the things that triggers my anger is when I have something in my head as going one way (particularly in terms of getting things done or having time for myself) and then things turning out completely different. In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (via Screwtape) observes:

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at this own disposal unexpectedly taken from him ... Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.

This is definitely my #1 anger trigger. There are so many things I want to do and seemingly so little time to get it all done.

Life's Journey

I was randomly looking at other blogs and I came across one that I really liked. It's called "Life's Journey" and it's written by a 26-year-old woman in Minnesota named Emily (who I don't know). I especially liked her post called "The Day I Died". It says:

I died the other day. No, it wasn't suddenly. It had been happening slowly. It started the day I stopped dreaming. You see, my dreams were too big and I was inadequate. Or so I thought and so I had been told. "You're too shy. You're too sick. You're too depressed. You're too broke..."

So I gave up those dreams. And I stopped dreaming altogether. That's the day I died. The fire that burned so brightly through sickness and despair was snuffed out. After all, isn't it time I started living a little more "realistically?"

But then I wonder, in deeming my dreams too big, am I making my God too small? I mean, "realistically" I couldn't have done half the things that I've done in my life. That's the miracle of God. He helps us do things that we couldn't possibly do on our own...

I died the other day. But I know a God that can bring dead things back to life and accomplish the impossible. Even dreams that are too big for lives that are completely inadequate.

Emily, whoever she is, is a great writer.

Sexless smooching

While on the topic of depression, there's a quick blurb in Men's Health magazine about the importance of intimacy with your spouse. Specifically:

A new survey shows that couples who don't kiss frequently in nonsexual situations are eight times more likely to feel stressed or depressed compared with frequent smoochers. The survey of 3,300 people for the Berman Center found a strong correlation between relationship intimacy and the frequency of nonsexual kissing and cuddling ... Snuggling, says [therapist Laura Berman Ph.D.], may trigger the release of oxytocin, "the chemical of attachment," which leads to a feeling of closeness.

Just one more reason to kiss my wife as often as possible. =)

Depression and faith

I just discovered a Web site that seems pretty intersting: explorefaith.org. It's tagline is "Spiritual guidance for anyone seeking a path to God". I think I qualify. Anyway, there is an article on the site called "How could depression lead to a richer spiritual life?" by Parker J. Palmer, Ph.D. The response is included below in its entirety:

I can answer this question only after the fact, because in the midst of severe clinical depression I have never felt anything redeeming about it, spiritually or otherwise. But when I emerge back into life, several things become clear. One is that the darkness did not kill me, which makes alldarknesses more bearable—and since darkness is an inevitable part of the cycle of spiritual life (as it is in the cycle of natural life) this is valuable knowledge. Two, depression has taught me that there is something in me far deeper and stronger and truer than my ego, my emotions, my intellect, or my will. All of these faculties have failed me in depression, and if they were all I had, I do not believe I would still be here to talk about the experience. Deeper down there is a soul, or true self, or "that of God in every person" that helps explain (for me, at least) where the real power of life resides. Three, the experience of emerging from a living hell makes the rest of one's life more precious, no matter how "ordinary" it may be. To know that life is a gift, and to be grateful for that gift, are keys to a spiritual life, keys that one is handed as depression yields to new life.

I was sick last week and wasn't able to eat much. At the tale end of the sickness, my wife and I went out for dinner and I had a turkey burger. The first bite was heavenly - but only because I had been eating white bread and white rice exclusively the prior four days. Sometimes you just take good things for granted and only truly value them once they've been taken away.

My wife rocks

This afternoon, my wife sent me a quick email entitled "you rock" saying "I just want to tell you how much I love you and how much I enjoy sharing my life with you. You rock!". Today was kind of crazy at work but that simple statement changed my whole day. It's funny ... there have been so many times that I want to tell my wife how I truly feel about her but only the words "I love you" come out. There's so much more to it than that but I simply can't put it into words. It's simply an amazing feeling to know you've found your soul mate, someone you can share your ups and down with and rely on no matter what.

Gospel of Judas

There has been a lot of coverage recently regarding the newly found Gospel of Judas (here is a link to one such article). For centuries, Judas has been characterized as a traitor. But now there appears to be evidence that Judas might have been fulfilling a request from Jesus. It's hard to know what to believe. The Gospel of Judas and Judas being a traitor are not necessarily incompatible. If you were Judas or an associate of Judas and he really did betray Jesus, you might still feel guilty about the betrayal and propagate a story that you were simply "acting under orders" - the excuse certainly get used for all forms of atrocities. On the other hand, perhaps Judas has been misunderstood all these years. Who knows.

Reading about the Gospel of Judas reminded me of a larger topic from my religion course - whether the Bible is literally the word of God. My opinion is that it's not. In one of our lectures, the professor pointed out that “the New Testament … took centuries to take its final form. Many writings were not included because at some point or other decisions were made what was orthodox (true) and what was heretical (not true).” When I hear things like that, it immediately makes me think of the fact that the winners write the history books. Many American history books (especially those used in K-12 settings) either gloss over or massively sugar-coat the injustices against Native Americans. But the reality is that the “white man” was the victor and propagated a favorable (or at least more favorable) version of those events. Similarly, with the New Testament, practical considerations such as a patriarchal culture and Roman/Greek philosophy can’t help but to have compromised the New Testament in some way. I understand the argument that some make that the authoring and editorial process was guided by God (specifically the Holy Spirit) and, therefore, the New Testament is the word of God. But I have a lot of trouble buying that argument. I can certainly accept that many people were moved by the Holy Spirit to record their stories in written form and to share their stories with others. But if you buy into the concept of free will (and “free will [being] so important that even God must respect it”), I don’t see how God could have guided every sub-action of the process. If God did, it would imply that the human participants wouldn’t be permitted to choose between good (ensuring the absolute accuracy and integrity of the document) and evil (compromising the document given external forces). And if free will was active in any part of the authoring process, there must be at least one word in the entire New Testament that isn’t truly the word of God. I’m not saying any of this to “attack” the New Testament. I’m sure it’s a very valuable document and is probably accurate in many accounts. But I just can’t accept – at least not right now – that the document is the literal word of God.

Islam shares a similar opinion regarding the Bible. They believe the Bible is divinely inspired but God's true message was corrupted by man over time. Muslims believe that message was restored through a "direct transmission" to Muhammad and is recorded in the Koran. By the same logic as before, I can't buy into that argument. In The World's Religions, it says that “the words that Muhammad exclaimed in [his] often trance-like states were memorized by his followers and recorded on bones, bark, leaves, and scraps of parchment, with God preserving their accuracy throughout.” But I can’t buy into this argument (that God preserved the accuracy throughout) any more for Islam (and the Koran) than I do with Christianity (and the Bible). Free will must have been active and compromised the process somewhere along the way. With all that said, I can accept that the Koran is divinely inspired and that its existence and beauty is a miracle (given Muhammad’s level of education, etc).

The thing that all of this gets me thinking about is whether any of these faiths is really “complete”. For example, why would God create man and then offer revelations to different people / prophets around the world (“to every people we have sent a messenger”)? One explanation is that God wants man to search out the “truth” and conduct that search of their own free will. But that begs the question of why such a search for truth (religion) has led to so much turmoil and violence in the world. Perhaps it’s all a test of man. Perhaps God gave different pieces of the puzzle to different faiths but left enough overlap and confusion that it wouldn’t be immediately clear which pieces were which (or even what is or isn’t a piece in the first place) and how the pieces fit together. Perhaps that man’s greatest test – finding a single truth among all the revelations (old and new), being selfless and God-seeking enough to set aside some of our prior beliefs, and come together as a people (all of us) in that new found truth.

An Inconvenient Truth

I just read two entries on the TerraBlog regarding Al Gore and his fight against global warming (entry #1, entry #2). Gore is coming out with a movie on May 24 called "An Inconvenient Truth" (see web site and trailer). If possible, I'm going to try to see the movie on opening day. Similar to The Passion of Christ, they're trying to get as many people as possible to go on opening weekend to generate buzz for the film (and topic of global warming). I really hope this film does well. There are some really scary implications if we don't start doing something about this problem. I usually don't endorse films but, if possible, please go see the movie too when it first comes out.

Semantics

I've commented a number of times in this blog regarding pride. There was a set of articles in InTouch magazine regarding the importance of humility (articles here). Probably the most interesting passage from one of the articles is1 Peter 5:6-7:

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

Now there is a lot of richness in the English language for a reason and the words "pride" and "proud" can mean a number of things. So I think it's helpful to be as precise as possible regarding what I think my issue is. The Random House Dictionary defines "pride" and "proud" as:

Pride: 1. too high an opinion of one's importance or superiority; 2. dignified self-respect; 3. gratification arising from one's accomplishments or possessions; 4. arrogant behavior; 5. something that a person is proud of; 6. a company of lions

Proud: 1. thinking well of oneself becuase of one's accomplishments, possessions, etc; 2. feeling honored, as by a distinction conferred on one; 3. governed in one's words or actions by self-respect; 4. inclined to excessive self-esteem; 5. promoting a feeling of pride; 6. stately or majestic [syn. 1. self-satisfied; 4. haughty, overbearing, vain]


While we have the dictionary out, let's look up some more words that may be relevant to this discussion (in alphabetical order) ...

Arrogant: 2. making unwarrantable claims to superior importance; 2. haughty or overbearing

Conceit: 1. an exaggerated estimate of one's own ability, importance, etc [syn. 1. egotism, self-esteem, vanity]

Condescend: 1. to lower oneself to do something; 2. to behave as if one is conscious of descending from a superior position

Confidence: 1. full trust; 2. self-reliance, assurance, or boldness; 3. a confidential communication

Dignity: 1. formal, grave, or noble bearing, conduct, or speech; 2. nobility or elevation of character; 3. elevated rank, office, station, etc.

Egocentric: regarding the self as the center of all worldly things

Egoism: 1. the habit of valuing everything only in reference to one's personal interest; 2. conceit or self-esteem

Egotism: 1. excessive and objectionable reference to oneself, in conversation or writing; 2. self-conceit or boastfulness

Egotrip: an act undertaken primarily to satisfy one's vanity or self-image

Pompous: 1. making an ostentatious display of dignity or importance; 2. ostentatiously lofty or high-flown

Self-important: having or showing too high an opinion of one's own worth

Self-respect: proper esteem for the dignity of one's own character

Self-righeous: smugly confident of one's own righteousness

Smug: contentedly confident of one's ability or correctness [syn. complacent, conceited, self-satisfied]

Superior: 1. above the average in excellence or intelligence; 2. of higher grade or quality; 3. greater in quantity or amount; 4. higher in rank or position; 5. showing a consciousness of superiority to others; 6. not yielding or susceptiable: to be superior to temptation

Vain: 1. excessively proud or concerned about one's own appearance or achievements; 2. unsuccessful or futile; 3. without real value or worth


That's quite a list of words - most of which I don't think apply. So, let's be precise. I think my issue is primarily feeling superior and secondarily being egocentric. In the first InTouch article, it says that some people "give the appearance of humility through [their] outward actions while inwardly harboring thoughts of spiritual superiority toward others." That's my issue precisely - acting humble on the outside but feeling superior to others on the inside. That's then combined with egocentrism in that I feel like I'm the only one grappling with certain issues - or at least grappling with them at a certain level or in the "right" way. Combine these two things and it's no surprise why I'm reluctant to ask for help or to pray. On some level, I feel like I'm above it all (even assistance from God). This is all changing a bit but it's going to be a long, long road.

Cosmic religion

Yesterday was Earth Day 2006. I didn't even realize it was Earth Day until I saw Google's logo (archived here). That lead me to look at the Earth Day Network web site and I found an interesting document regarding the inter-relationship between religion and the environment (archived here). That made me think about some of the early religions I studied in my religion course. Specifically, cosmic religion came to mind. In the lecture, the professor wrote:

It finds and expresses sacred meaning in aspects of nature and human life - seasons, sacred rocks or trees, the social order, birth and death - without linking them to historical personalities or written documents as do founder-religions. This was a religion that was closely observant of the natural world and this formed a strong belief in "animism". Animism, or belief that everything in nature - stones, trees, mountains, lakes, as well as human beings - has a soul or spirit. Indeed, the belief that nature is alive with spirits that have feelings and can be communicated with is one of the most common to human religious experience ... This world - here and now - is fundamentally sacred, and everything is alive with spirit ... Indigenous spirituality is a lifeway, a particular approach to all of life. It is not a separate experience, like meditating in the morning or going to church on Sunday. Rather, spirituality pervades all moments, from reverence in gathering clay to make a pot, to respect within tribal council meetings.

I especially like a practice of the archaic hunters in which they prayed for the souls of the animals they were about to kill for food.

It is necessary to prepare spiritually for a great hunt. There were ceremonies in which the hunters prayed to the spirits of the animals asking their permission to kill them and letting these animals know that they were needed for the hunters to survive. To take the animal requires in some sense the consent of the animal or that of its Divine masters, due propitiation for the wrong done to it, and proper magic to make anything happen at all.

This type of respect for animals and other living things largely does not exist in society now. I’m not advocating that we undo the advances of agriculture and food production but a little respect for the planet would go a long way. I know my eating choices would probably change a lot if I prayed at each meal for the spirits of the animals (and plants) that I was consuming.

Noah's Ark

I was talking to my mom this morning and she told me about an experience I had when I was JD's age. She enrolled me in a preschool at a local church. In addition to play, stories from the Bible were introduced and discussed. One of the stories was that of Noah's Ark. Apparently it made sense to me why people were being killed for being wicked but I questioned why the animals and other living creatures (who had done nothing wrong) had to suffer as well. It's an interesting question.

In Genesis 6:5-7, it says "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenth me that I have made them." Clearly man (aside from Noah) didn't have any redeeming qualities but what about the animals? Again, there's no mention of them being wicked or that "every imagination of the thoughts of their heart[s] was only evil continually." In Genesis 1:24-25, it says "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the eart after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good." So the animals are made "after his kind" and "God saw that it was good". Still not clear why the animals had to suffer for man's sins.

In Genesis 1:26, it says "let [man] have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepth upon the earth." If man has dominion over animals and over all the earth and man needed to go, perhaps the animals and other living creatures would be irrelevant without man. In military terms, perhaps they would be "acceptable collateral damage" of the mission (flood) to wipe out man (except Noah and his family). Perhaps that's the answer. If so, I don't like it. I believe that animals are God's creatures too and they have souls and go to heaven when they die.

In a Purpose-Driven Life, the author says Earth is a temporary home and that God doesn't want us to get too attached to it. Perhaps the animals' reunion with God was simply accelerated by the flood. Perhaps it was actually a gift in disguise. Not sure, but I like that explanation better than any other one I can come up with. If you can shed some light on this, please let me know.

The thing I find the most interesting about this is that I read these passages in Genesis the other day and this question didn't even occur to me. In Matthew 18:3, it says "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Perhaps I had a better chance of finding God when I was four (when I poised this question) than I do now. For more on that topic, see this article from InTouch magazine.

Parental support

My mom sent me two copies of InTouch magazine along with the following note. I thought she had some pretty insightful things to say so I decided to post her note (with her permission).

You may or may not find some of this information helpful on your spiritual quest. One of the reasons I support this ministry is because their leader says not to believe anything he says but to read the Bible to see if it is true for yourself.

You did pray as a young child. One day you asked me how do you pray. I told you simply to not be afraid because God knows the secrets of your heart and your inner most thoughts already. There is nothing you can hide. You must trust. This is difficult because there is always the fear of God asking you to do something or give something up that you don't want to do. However God has infinite patience and will keep calling you to seek as long as there is any hope you will listen. It is harder for those who he has gifted with a brilliant mind but God knows if those gifts are used as he intended then much good can result.

For my forbearers who fished the open ocean, there were trusting because each day they were confronted with their vulnerability. I used to ask them all kinds of questions when I was a child to which they had no answers. No answers to those questions to one struggling to believe and have faith because they simply accepted what to them was totally obvious.

Keep seeking. You will find answers and a lot more questions.

Yes, I must keep seeking. For now, I'm left with more questions than answers.

Our deepest fear

A friend of mine just started working at AK Designs. While looking through their web site, I found this quote on their vision page:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?

- Nelson Mandela (orig. quote Marianne Williamson)

It's funny. Sometimes you find inspiration where you least expect it.

Cheasters

Today is Easter and I feel obliged to blog about it. There were two interesting articles in the Salt Lake Tribune this morning. One article was about Christians who only attend church on Christmas and Easter. Some churches see two to three times as many attendees on these two days than on a regular Sunday. There are a variety of nicknames for these folks - Cheasters, C&E Christians, and CEOs (Christmas & Easter Only). At the other extreme, there was an article about a group of people who carry a 50-pound cross 21 miles to remind themselves of the suffering that Christ endured for humanity. As one walker puts it, "Everybody is different for what they get out of it. Personally, it's a feeling of humbleness ... It's a lot of pain, also, on your feet and we realize what Christ did for us is so much more." If and when I decide what I'm doing with religion, I suspect I'll be somewhere between these two extremes, but I'm not sure what side of center.

As an aside, my wife's mother did an organ performance at today's church service. I wonder what it's like to be as good at something as she is at the organ.

Dawn Treader

About a year ago, my therapist recommended that I read the Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. It's part of the Chronicles of Narnia series. I was visiting my sister-in-law SG's library today and I saw some of the other Narnia books on the shelf - which reminded me of this book and one passage in particular. In the book, Eustace (an annoying little boy) gets turned into a dragon. The experience gives him a better appreciation for his friends and for the importance of being nice to them. After Eustace becomes a boy again, he tells Edmund (one of his friends) about his transformation from dragon back to boy. Note: It's a lengthy passage so I created a seperate page rather than post the text here.

Aside from the obvious Biblical allusions (which permeate all of the Narnia books), the thing I found significant about this passage is that as part of our personal transformations, we must strip away multiple layers of imperfections. Most of the time, we think we've made a lot of progress and then discover that we didn't tear deep enough. On some level, we probably know we should go deeper but it's too painful so we just scratch the surface. Genuine transformation, however, requires the courage to go "right to [the] heart" and have "it hurt worse than anything [you've] ever felt". Kind of reminds me of Wilber and his opinions regarding transformation.

Price of children

A co-worker of mine forwarded this email to me. It quotes a government study saying that the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 is $160,140 for a middle income family - not including college expenses. The rest of the email goes on to describe all the great things that you get for that $160,140 per child. One interesting excerpt is:

In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits.

Especially with little kids, it is pretty amazing how a hug and kiss can make so many things right for them - whether it's a bump on the head or a broken toy. It won't last forever, but for now, I guess I really am right up there under God for them. Then one day, as GC once told me, the kids will discover that I'm not perfect and will decide that I don't really know anything.

I'm done

I need more and better sleep. Between work and the kids, this is getting ridiculous and I don't think I can take it any longer. In the Screwtape Letters, there is a relevant excerpt on fatigue:

The paradoxical thing is that moderate fatigue is a better soil for peevishness than absolute exhaustion ... It is not fatigue simply as such that produces the anger, but unexpected demands on a man already tired. Whatever men expect, they soon come to think they have a right to: the sense of disappointment can, with very little skill on our part, be turned into a sense of injury ... To produce the best results from the patient's fatigue, therefore, you must feed him with false hopes ... Exaggerate the weariness by making him think it will soon be over; for men usually feel that a strain could have been endured no longer at the very moment when it is ending, or when they think it is ending. In this, as in the problem of cowardice, the thing to avoid is the total commitment. Whatever he says, let his inner resolution be not to bear whatever comes to him, but to bear it "for a reasonable period" - and let the reasonable period be shorter than the trial is likely to last. It need not be much shorter; in attacks on patience, chastity, and fortitude, the fun is to make the man yield just when (had he but known it) relief was almost in sight.

Perhaps relief is in sight, perhaps not. There are plenty of people worse off in this regard than me - including my wife, my sister-in-law NGR, and her husband TR. Honestly, that doesn't give me much (if any) comfort. Clearly they are better people than I am in this regard. I'm at my breaking point. On this count, the Devil appears to have won since my "reasonable period" came to an end last night. I'm not sure what to do. Physically and mentally I feel defeated ... I'm done ... game over.

MV to SLC

My wife and I decided to bring the family to Salt Lake City, Utah for the Easter holiday. We were thinking about flying but ultimately decided to drive. From Mountain View, California, it was a 800 mile drive and took about 13 1/2 hours. With two little kids (both of whom had a "bad body" - stomach bug - that day), that's some great time. All things considered, I was really surprised that everything went as well as it did. No traffic, no problems with the car, no rain or snow, the kids did great, and I didn't get drowsy at the wheel. When we left the house that morning, my wife said a little prayer. When we got settled in SLC, I made sure to thank God for listening. The following excerpt from the Screwtape Letters was top of mind:

Don't forget to use the "Heads I win, tails you lose" argument. If the thing he prays for doesn't happen, then that is one more proof that petitionary prayers don't work; if it does happen, he will, of course, be able to see some of the physical causes which led up to it, and "therefore it would have happened anyway," and thus a granted prayer becomes just as good a proof as a denied one that prayers are ineffective.

We'll see how things go next week with the drive home. I doubt they'll go as smoothly as the way out but perhaps I'll be surprised again - and thanking God again for listening.

Sudoku solver

I'm proud of myself. I did my first Sudoku puzzle the other night. After doing it, I decided to create a solver in Microsoft Excel - I am a finance / Excel geek after all. It turned out to be pretty nifty (download here). The spreadsheet uses a combination of Excel formulas and Visual Basic code to solve the puzzle. And the VB code uses recursion to test various permissible permutations of unknown values. The performance is pretty good. Beginner puzzles are solved in a couple of seconds. Expert puzzles take a couple of minutes. I tried it out with Web Sudoku and it worked well.

Anyway, it was a fun, creative challenge. A nice distraction from the other stuff I have going on at work. And a good excuse to brush off some old programming skills and learn some new stuff in Excel. Glad to see I haven't lost all my old computer science knowledge.

Note: If you intend to use the solver, you'll need to have macros enabled in Excel. To do that, in Excel, go to Tools -> Macro -> Security and select medium security. That way, when you open spreadsheets that contain macros, you will be prompted whether you want to enable or disable them.

The creative act

I had dinner with GC (a friend and co-worker) the other night. After talking about work stuff for awhile, I asked him where he stands on spiritual matters. GC and I have very different backgrounds so we complement each other very well (and have developed some great thinking at work as a result). So I thought getting his perspective on spirituality would be helpful as part of the process I'm going through right now. Our discussion covered a lot of ground. One of the things GC mentioned was the creative act. He and I had talked about the creative act a number of times before - but never in the context of spirituality.

After I got home from that dinner, I did some Google searches and came across this 1957 speech by Marcel Duchamp. One of the concepts that I found interesting in Duchamp's speech is the interplay between an artist and the spectator of his/her art. As Duchamp puts it, "the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act." The concept of an "art coefficient" is also introduced - specifically, "the personal 'art coefficient' is like a arithmetical relation between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed."

I had never thought about art in this way. Perhaps there is a similar interplay at work between God and human beings in which we all have a role to play in completing the creative act that God began. And perhaps there is a personal "spiritual coefficient" that relates what is unexpressed but intended by God to what He (or books like the Bible) unintentionally express to each of us.

Email to Jesus

My sister-in-law HG babysat the kids today while my wife and I went to a play. When we returned, HG told us that JD (our older son) mentioned sending email to Jesus twice in his prayers and wanted to know whether we had taught him that. The answer is no. But the more interesting questions in my mind were (a) where did he pick that up and (b) since when does JD pray? On the first question, our collective theory was that JD made it up on his own. If you can send email to a friend or family member, why can't you also send email to Jesus? On the second question, HG says a little prayer before eating meals and I guess JD picked up on that. As an aside, I'm fine with JD praying. I've just never seen him do it myself.

Sending email to Jesus (more generally God) is an interesting concept to me. In many contexts, I much prefer email to other forms of communication. It's asynchronous so you can take time to craft your message exactly the way you want. But it can also be near real-time if the other person is online. It's obviously not appropriate in certain situations but, in general, I really like the medium. Right now, it's hard for me to pray verbally. In a prior post, I said that pride is a challenge for me. I think the thing that holds me back from praying is that I'm not ready to "submit" to God - that I'm not ready to be humble before God. But email could potentially be easier. Rather than having to submit to God, perhaps it would be more like sending him a message - simply sharing some thoughts (similar to this blog). There obviously wouldn't be a response (as is possible with prayer) but some communication is better than none.

All of this lead to a rather random idea. Extending JD's idea one step further, if you could send email to God, why not instant-message with God? There are AIM Bots out there like SmarterChild. Why not create an Eliza-like bot that would pretend to be God? One of the reasons that Joseph Weizenbaum decided to make Eliza a therapist is because the therapeutic situation is one of the few real human situations in which a human being can reply to a statement with a question that indicates very little specific knowledge of the topic under discussion. For example, the question "Who is your favorite composer?" can be answered acceptably with responses such as "What about your own favorite composer?" or "Does that question interest you?" Relating this to God and the Bible, in Opening the Bible, Merton tells us that "the Bible raises the question of identity in a way no other book does ... When you ask: 'What is this book?' you find that you are also implicitly being asked: 'Who is this that reads it?' ... If we ask it for information about the meaning of life, it answers by asking us when we intend to start living?" Sometimes God gives us answers but, much more often, He answers our questions with questions of his own.

I'm not going to write a GodBot. I don't have the time and most people would probably find it blasphemous. But it does make me wonder what it would be like to communicate with God using modern technology (email, AIM, etc). The movie Bruce Almighty comes to mind - the scene where Bruce (have been given almighty powers) opens his email inbox of prayers, is overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of them, and simply hits "grant all". At the end of the day, though, I suppose it's more important to communicate with God in a humble, sincere way than how specifically you choose to communicate with him.

All too soon

My mother-in-law BG recently sent me two articles in the mail related to being present (see this post) and to the journey being more important than the destination (see this post). The first article appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal in the late 1950's or early 1960's. In it, a mother of four children realizes that all too soon her youngest child would be grown up and she'd lose the precious moments of babyhood.

As I sat quietly watching and answering his repeated “Da?” I realized how little time I had left for such enjoyment. All too soon his body will no longer be round and soft, nor his mannerisms the enchanting ones of babyhood; he would no longer want to be held and played with. Why was I so often in a hurry to change his diapers, put on his little shoes, pull on his snowsuit, in the evening to pop him into his crib? In every part of my life I was continually thinking ahead, rather than enjoying the task in hand. When had I last stopped to look out at the garden, or waited – quietly accessible – for the children to come and talk, to find my attention undividedly theirs?

The second article is from the March 1997 issue of Ensign magazine. The article covers a lot of ground but one of the topics it discusses is the importance of the journey.

[The fact is] most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise … Life is like an old-time rail journey – delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.

Some important things to remember.

Cruel irony

I was reading this article from HBS Working Knowledge earlier today. Research (and personal experience) show that managers have to change their decision-making styles as they advance in the organization. What makes a first-line manager effective, for example, does not work when that person becomes a director. And what makes a director effective does not work when that person becomes a VP. This got me thinking about this topic more generally since it certainly applies outside of work. For example, what makes a person an effective parent of a toddler does not make that person effective as the parent of a teenager. I find a cruel irony in all of this. Just when you feel you have something mastered, that you have things figured out, the game changes on you. What used to be a strength becomes your Achilles' heel.

I've known this for awhile (we discussed it in my MBA program) but the HBS article reminded me of this principle. In the context of my post last night, it got me thinking about the "cruel" irony of my current situation. Take pride, for example. For a variety of reasons, I've never really been proud of my achievements in life. And just when I do begin to take some pride in myself and my accomplishments, I feel that God is telling me to be humble. Honestly, I'm not ready to let go of that sin quite yet. Now, generalize this a bit more. When I was growing up, I felt that I needed to adhere to my father's plan for me. Now that I'm older and taking control of my life, I'm faced with whether I need to adhere to my Heavenly Father's plan for me. When I was younger, I felt I could never meet my father's expectations. Now I worry that I'm not meeting my Heavenly Fathers expectations. Unbelievable. Just when I thought I had things figured out, the game changes on me.

Admittedly, I opened this Pandora's Box. But it's a cruel irony nonetheless.

Mid-life crisis?

Sometimes I wonder whether I'm having a mid-life crisis. I always thought it would happen early for me but 31-going-on-32 is a little too early in my opinion. Perhaps it's a pre-mid-life crisis and I still have the real one left to look forward to. Then I could have an excuse to do a GNP 4.5 blog - or whatever the new technology is 14 years from now. =)

In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (via Screwtape) talks about the "law of Undulation". Specifically:

Their nearest approach to constancy is undulation - the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life - his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth, periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty ...

Now, it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.

Perhaps this "mid-life crisis" is really just a temporary "trough". And perhaps its length and depth are some indication of favor from above. That last statement's a little uncomfortable. A part of me really wants it to be true and another part of me is ashamed of the lack of humility in that statement. Of the seven deadly sins, pride is by far my biggest challenge. For the moment, I can't get past it. Even when I am humble, I take pride in it. As Screwtape says:

All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove! I'm being humble," and almost immediately pride - pride at his own humility - will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tried to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt - and so on, through as many stages as you please.

Chapter XIV of the book (of which this is an excerpt) does an excellent job of discussing pride. My other favorite quote from this chapter is the following (related to people trying to downplay thier talents in the interest of humility):

By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty woman trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it, and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.

Lewis (via Screwtape) goes on to say that "when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours."

What an interesting post. Mid-life crisis, the law of Undulation, deadly sins, and love for thy neighbor all rolled into one. I didn't see that coming but that's the beauty of this blog - at least for me. It forces me to put my thoughts down on paper and that leads to some unexpected connections.

Pretend to become

In the Screwtape Letters, this observation really reasonated with me: "All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be." It reminded me of a passage from the Book of Mormon (Alma 32:27) that my wife is fond of:

But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

In business school, we did a case about a person who, early in career, observed effective behaviors in certain executives and then tried to apply them in his own job. When presented with a challenge, he would ask himself how would so-and-so act in this situation or how would so-and-so think about this problem. At first, he was just pretending to be like these executives but over time he internalized their behaviors and made them his own. Hopefully I can do the same. If I pretend to be the person I want to become, perhaps I'll actually become that person in time.

Everyday Money

My wife pointed me to this column on the CNNMoney.com web site. There are some interesting topics posted there. In one article, economists quantify the salary value of four key factors that determine job satisfaction. Their findings are:

• Trust in management is by far the biggest component to consider. Say you get a new boss and your trust in management goes up a bit at your job (say, up one point on a 10-point scale). That's like getting a 36 percent pay raise. In other words, that increased level of trust will boost your level of overall satisfaction in life by about the same amount as a 36 percent raise would. Conversely, if you lose some trust in management, the decline in your job satisfaction is like taking a 36 percent pay cut.


• Having a job that offers a lot of variety in projects is the equivalent of a 21 percent hike in pay.


• Having a position that requires a high level of skill is the equivalent of a 19 percent raise.


• And having enough time to finish your work is the equivalent of an 11 percent boost in pay.

All of this just solidifies my growing belief that having a job I really like (and having a happy marriage) are far more important than purely maximizing my salary.

Good and Evil

I'm about a third of the way through the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. JG mentioned this book to me in the context of a talk he gave at his church (see this post). While discussing "Turning to Christ During Times of Loss or Despair", JG contrasted how God and the Devil would want us to react in times of loss or despair. I thought the approach was an interesting one and asked JG how he had thought on the concept. As part of explaining his thought process, JG mentioned the Screwtape Letters so I decided to check it out. So far it's been a fascinating read and I'm sure it will lead to a number of posts on this blog.

For those of you not familiar with this book, it's a series of letters from Screwtape, a professional devil and self-described under-secretary of the department of temptation, to his newphew Wormwood, a junior temptor. Screwtape provides a series of directives and plans through which Wormwood may subvert and twist human strivings toward love, charity, and wisdom, manipulating the human soul to his own diabolical ends. In the course of providing this guidance to Wormwood, Screwtape indirectly provides a number of insights into the human psyche and the nature of God and religion. As Lewis puts it in the preface to the book, the book's purpose "was not to speculate about diabolical life but to throw light from a new angle on the life of men."

One interesting place to start is who or what the Devil is. Earlier in the the preface to the book, Lewis says:

The commonest question [I receive] is whether I really "believe in the Devil." Now, if by "the Devil" you mean a power opposite to God and, like God, self-existent from all eternity, the answer is certainly No. There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite. No being could attain "perfect badness" opposite to the perfect goodness of God; for when you have taken away every kind of good thing (intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence itself) there would be none of him left.

The proper question is whether I believe in devils. I do. This is to say, I believe in angels, and I believe that some of these, by the abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God and, as a corollary, to us. These we may call devils. They do not differ in nature from good angels, but their nature is depraved. Devil is the opposite of angel only as Bad Man is the opposite of Good Man. Satan, the leader or director of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.

I like this explanation. It makes sense and it also doesn't violate monotheism. It does not answer the question, however, of why there is evil in the world if God (being entirely good) is without equal. In the religion course I took, the instructor talked about the concept of Ethical Dualism in the context of Zoroastrianism (a religion that predates Judaism). Specifically, he said:

Ethical Dualism is a creative and psychological approach to the problem of evil. Basically, it states that evil is not part of the universe itself, which is good because it is created by God who is good. Rather, humans make evil a reality as a result of their choices. In other words, evil enters time and history with the human race. Philosophically this means that evil is the price of freedom. In order to be free, we must have the ability to make choices and in order to choose between good and evil there must be opposites to choose from. But evil does not spring into reality until it is made present by human choice. Good and evil in this world become matters of function and not substance. They do not have any substance outside the realm of man's thought, word, and deed. This gives humans quite a bit of power; power which has not been used so wisely in many cases.

Zoroaster believed that “no one can be just neutral; in every area of life, day by day, everyone must decide which lord he or she will side with, the Lord of Light or the Lord of the Lie”. My faith in humans definitely varies over time. Most of the time, I believe that most people are inherently good and given a choice between good and evil, they will naturally side with good. But some of the time, I believe that people lose sight of that choice and they don’t consciously side with good. In the absence of that conscious, intentional choice for good (which is basically an implicit decision against good), it’s very easy for evil to creep in. Perhaps it’s just gossiping or cutting someone off on the road. Perhaps it’s getting so caught up in our own needs that we lose sight of the needs of others. But without resolve, without a committed decision to move the world toward good, it’s hard to make much meaningful, sustainable progress in that direction.

It is an interesting question why an all-powerful, all-knowing God would give humans free will in the first place. It would seem to run counter to the notion that God is all-powerful. How can God both create humans and be all-powerful but not have the ability to override a person’s free will to pursue evil in the world? Why is “free will so important that even God must respect it”? On some level, it just doesn’t compute. Then again, if you were the creator, what fun would it be to create players in a game and then control their every movement on the board? It would be much more interesting to establish a set of rules, establish a starting configuration of players, and then see what unfolds. The fun would be in the uncertainty of the outcome of the game. In that context, you could argue that God has created an elaborate game on Earth in which the goal is to get as many people as possible to consciously choose a relationship with God, to choose a relationship and commitment to good. But the only way that game can enfold in a non-deterministic way, for it to be fun for its creator to observe, is for people to have “opposites to choose from”.

Zoroastrianism says that the world was created for the purpose of attracting evil “in order that it may be brought into God’s world through the choices humans make when they choose righteousness instead of sin”. If you accept that, you could view the world as a huge proving ground where people earn their right to have a relationship with God by exercising their free will to side with good over evil (rather than people having a preordained, inherent right to have a relationship with God simply because they are a human being). This all seems to make sense on some rational level but it still seems odd to me that God would create man, give him/her free will, and then put him/her on the Earth just to test their resolve towards good when God could have just as easily pre-wired humans to be good in the first place and just side-step the whole free will thing to begin with.

Coming back to the Screwtape Letters for a moment, Screwtape helps shed some light on this topic in one of his letters to Wormwood. In talking about God, he says (and remember this is a devil talking):

He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself - creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself; the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct ...

You may have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve ...

He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs - to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such [difficult] periods, much more than during the [joyous] periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature he wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with, the better. He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be decieved, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

People have been trying to figure out the nature of good and evil since the beginning of time. I'm not going to figure it out in just one post - or ever. But some food for thought.