• So-cons might finally come around to the libertarian view.
• The ultimate goal of gay marriage supporters might not be accomplished until their effort eventually infringes on our First Amendment rights

On the latter point, this is how I imagine it coming about: when the word “marriage” has been redefined to the point that one cannot distinguish traditional married couples from, ah hem, nontraditional ones, those who are dissatisfied with this lack of distinction will seek a way to set themselves apart, perhaps by getting covenant-married. If private covenant marriages become widespread, it will undermine the goals of current gay marriage supporters, i.e. (forced) sanction of their relationship by their peers. In order to re-establish their (perceived) moral position, they will have to push for a ban on covenant marriages, so that traditional marriages may not be set apart from their own.

Anyways. As I said, a crazy thought. Even if I have the gift of soothsaying, I suppose all this will not come to be until I’m, well, too old to remember having written this.

and we will take ten men of a hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, and a hundred of a thousand, and a thousand of ten thousand, to bring provisions for the people, that when they come they may repay Gibeah of Benjamin, for all the outrage that they have committed in Israel.” So all the men of Israel gathered against the city, united as one man. And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, “What evil is this that has taken place among you? Now therefore give up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and purge evil from Israel.” But the Benjaminites would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the people of Israel. Then the people of Benjamin came together out of the cities to Gibeah to go out to battle against the people of Israel.

Oh, it just reminded me of the saying that history rhymes.

Don’t you see the theme repeated over and over: some men commit violence against the other; relations of that other demand retribution against that small group of men; the relations of those men refuse extradition (or “circle the wagon”); and war ensues.

Just to cite famous examples (that I, a non-historian, know of): Peloponnesian war, WW I, and American-Afghanistan War.

An aside: the section of Judges following this is one of the most … complex passages in OT I’ve read in recent re-reading of the Bible. So many angles and lessons one can take: e.g. if one were given to naturalistic—i.e. wrong—interpretation of the Bible one might think this is the kernel of truth on which story of Sodom and Gomorrah was woven around; also look at how Israelites consulted God on matters of this civil war and what the outcomes were.

Also, if I remember correctly, this is the section of Bible where some of the atheist rhetorics are taken from. Just remember the section ends with, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” That is, this is the sad state of affairs the country fell into (recorded for posterity because this is true history of people of God), leading them to demand a king (history show that didn’t help all that much in the long term, but hey, we all love placebos).

To ignore that is at best stupid and at worst dishonest.

There is one thing that we do not mean when we say God is sovereign. We do not mean that he is merely omnipotent—because omnipotency implies so little. Take the example of a policeman and a kidnapper: they are both able to bind my hands and take me to the place where I do not want to be. When the policeman does it, it’s a legal detainment (if not an actual arrest) that I can’t do much to protest; when the kidnapper is found by authorities, however, the full force of the law will be on him.

The ability to do things means little, at least when compared to the awe-striking ability to do them in full justification. Any common criminal can come upon a created world to rule it (I believe this is the conception of “gods” in many religions; even Zeus didn’t so much create the universe as he killed the Titan Cronus). Only the Creator is sovereign in the world he created.

We can get closer to the meaning of “sovereignty” if we look at its secular application on the sovereigns, i.e. the kings, the queens, and (in a classless democracy like U.S.A.) the government. In one particular aspect, there is this widespread legal doctrine termed “sovereign immunity”, which, in short, says that the government cannot be sued. In the words of Justice Holmes, in deciding Kawananokoa v. Polyblank:

A sovereign is exempt from suit not because of any formal conception or obsolete theory, but on the logical and practical ground that there can be no legal right as against the authority that makes the law on which the right depends.

Since sovereignty of mortal institutions is clearly less sovereign than that of God, if this principle applied to human governments, it must apply all the much more to God: his sovereignty means he can do no wrong—that everything he does is justified, with no recourse of appeal to a higher authority (which, by definition of “God”, doesn’t exist in this universe).

It’s at this point one almost starts empathizing with atheists: it’s almost more comforting to believe that sentient life began with capricious Chance than to believe that there is this awe-inspring being who is so powerful that he created everything (and by implication defines right from wrong).

But wait. Is it true that the sovereign can never be sued? People sue the federal and state governments all the time, and not just to declare public school prayers unconstitutional or get EPA to regulate CO2 as pollutant. This happens because the full principle of sovereign immunity is “the sovereign may not be sued without his consent.” And the sovereign sometimes consents to be sued, for whatever reason. Why would a sovereign ever waive this immunity? In a governmental system like that of U.S., I imagine it’s political pressure (in cases not already governed through a superior law or a superior sovereign); after all, in our democracy the People are the actual sovereign and the branches of government are mere agents—and the sovereign may deem it convenient to allow the agents to be sued in some cases.

I don’t know why a sovereign like God would waive this power (some people like John say he did it for love); all I know is he has: he has given up his right to flood the Earth when he made his covenant with Noah; he has given very specific promises to Abraham that he had to fulfill (or suffer the consequences of a breach of contract); and, I think, when he gave Moses the Law, it was yet another instance of a waiver of his sovereign immunity.

With the standards of righteousness unwritten, he alone (and his prophets) defined the righteous at any moment. No man could say, “I have done this and that; therefore I am blameless before God.” After all, when the standards are that we must be our brothers’ keepers (see: Cain and Abel; or for an actually correct reference, e.g. Deuteronomy 22), who among us could measure to such a standard? Who knows which things that we aren’t doing might condemn us before God? Through the Law, God waives his right to condemn us (with all the justification in the world) if we would only follow his easy commandments.

Only if we would follow them … (but since obviously we—more precisely Israelites—couldn’t, he waived it further through Jesus.)

The Philistines drew up in line against Israel, and when the battle spread, Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who killed about four thousand men on the field of battle. And when the troops came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.”

It was a foolproof plan. After all if the Ark was in the Israel’s camp and her army was defeated somehow, the Ark would be captured. And it would be embarassing to God. Therefore Israel could not be defeated so long as they were dragging the ark along (at least it seemed to work when Moses used this line of reasoning).

Oops:

Take courage, and be men, O Philistines, lest you become slaves to the Hebrews as they have been to you; be men and fight.” So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and they fled, every man to his home. And there was a very great slaughter, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. And the ark of God was captured, and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

The fact is, God is no holy conciergy. We cannot set up a trap for God. We can scheme, reason, and plan according to the rules we know. We might even delude ourselves for a moment that we have painted God into the corner where we want him. Well. He doesn’t follow the rules we set up for him; he’s not confined in the picture of our imagination.

When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place.

God will do what he needs to do when he wants to do it, how it fits his pleasure to accomplish it. If it takes a miracle, he will perform the miracle. If agency of his believers will do, he will use that. As Mordecai said to Esther, “if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish.”

No matter what we plan, it is God’s plan that will happen—the choice left to us is if we will fit within his plan, not whether we can subvert God for our little purposes.

‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.

‘I know our works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.’

—message to the church at Laodicea (from Revelation to John)

An easy cop-out in today’s religious debates, especially for those who do not believe in God or Jesus but do not wish to insult a great number of people, is to say, “I think Jesus was a great moral teacher and taught a lot of good things, but I don’t believe that he was the son of God—if God exists at all.” It must sound easy to those who say it, if only because it’s heard so often (particularly as relayed by C. S. Lewis, and as we hear even to-day). But I can’t think of a more insulting thing a thinking person can say to Jesus or his followers.

Eyewitness accounts (let me just take Mark, who is said to be writing Peter’s account of events) attest that Jesus said following things:

And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—”I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.”

These strange sayings, they want to ignore. But, at the same time, they want to preserve their access to such desirable quotes as,

And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?”

And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.

And so on. According to those holding up Jesus as a moral teacher but only a moral teacher—not the only-begotten Son of God—these moral teachings are to be accepted (in order: how the moral teachings are to cure our failings not just to condemn them; how the hungry should be fed; how one must not take marriage lightly; how the rich should share the wealth with the poor; and how humble we must be; some of these supposed “lessons” miss the point, but that’s what you get when you try to excise God out of gospel), all the while rejecting who Jesus really is, and who Jesus claimed himself to be, as he said, continuing on the last quote above,

… and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The entire lesson of humility is meaningless if Jesus did not indeed come to give his life as a ransom for many—after all, if he didn’t do that, what compelling reason do we have to be humble?

Imagine yourself as a juror, listening to two lawyers arguing for their sides, examining and cross-examining witnesses. The defense brings out a witness to give an account of the events. Wouldn’t you think it confusing, irrational, and self-defeating, if the prosecution, in cross-examining the witness, tried to get the witness to say a few things in his favor, and then turned around to try to tear down her credibility as an eyewitness, by implying that what she said in answer to the defense’s questions are so preposterous that they should be ignored?

For a thinking person, you can do one or the other: you can take someone as a credible witness, a reliable narrator who tells essential truths (even if minor details remain in dispute), or you can take her as a liar and perjurer. What you cannot do is take the person as trustworthy in one instance and regard him as a lunatic the next. But that’s what these people who take the split-the-difference approach wants us to do!

There are only two logically consistent way to look at Jesus, from all available eyewitness accounts: you can believe he is the Son of God and worship him (or at least in his name), or you can believe that he is lying, or deluded. But whatever the cause may be, in that case, he would be a blasphemer who claimed a station equal to God—claiming to forgive sins—and deserved a cursed death on a tree. Worship him or condemn him, those are our only options if we consider rationality—and self-consistency—a thing worth preserving.

To do otherwise would be a greater lunacy than a mortal man claiming to be a virgin-born son of god.

The one app I just couldn’t get away from: Gmail. The built-in IMAP email client works to a degree, but only to a degree. Because of the peculiar way I use Gmail, I didn’t want to compose emails in that client, and mobile web version of Gmail has a few annoying bugs.

Well. I do prefer Kindle Fire’s stock reader (has Unicode compatible fonts) over Kindle for Android, so this far I will go and no further.

Oh, well. So long as the glass screen looks scratch-free, I’ll be happy. (I thought I noticed a hairline scratch some days ago, but it takes special effort to reveal it (enough light at just the right angle and all that), so it’s not in any way comparable to the annoying scratches on my Nokia (with its easily scratchable plastic screen); oh, and I’ve gotten to carrying my Kindle without the skin—it’s just easier to hold it the way it came out of the box.)

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us.

In other words, when secular—nay evidently atheist—politicians try to appeal to Christianity, don’t get so annoyed. Even when they are trying to distort our doctrine, they won’t be able to then turn around and directly attack us, not without tripping over their own traps.

And when they are not trying to distort our doctrine but merely pander to Christians, well, as Paul says in the letter to the church at Philippi:

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

As long as we remember we worship in the Church of God, not of men, there is no harm in worldly men immitating us, even insincerely.

For those of us living within the walking distance of campus, it comes down to simple math: we will not use it often enough to justify its $70 price tag (at least last I checked) added to our student fees. To get your money’s worth, you will need to ride the bus at least 35 times in a semester, which works out to more than twice a week during the semester.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I don’t ride the slow AC Transit buses that often (how slow are they? Some times of the day, I can walk to the Safeway on College Ave. more quickly than waiting for and riding the bus through the traffic). For years, as an act of protest I simply did not get the Class Pass sticker so that at least I show up as a statistic. This ASUC election is the chance for us to be more than a statistic: vote No on Class Pass.

One of the not-so-nice things: I got tired of Kindle Carousel fairly quickly. It’s difficult to use and clumsy (e.g. if my finger slides even a little while trying to select an item, I just jiggle the thing a little). So, I finally broke down and installed the GO Launcher. So now my home screen looks more like a proper Android device, not one that’s been tied down to be a book reader.

Over the long term, I suspect my satisfaction would depend on how well the Gorilla Glass holds up, but, well, so far so good.

P.S. Oh, and one of the nicer things: I found an IM program in the App store that can do Skype chat.