Accepting Religious Curiosity in Context

I was catching up on NPR’s “On Point” from February 16th, where Tom Ashbrook was interviewing Richard Watts, author of various books, the most recent of which is “Hungers of the Heart: Spirituality and Religion for the 21st Century.” The entire podcast is worth listening to, but toward the end, Watts and Ashbrook got into some interesting territory.  In general, Watts is very interested in “the historical Jesus,” looking at the man and historical record and the context in which the Bible was written, as opposed to focusing on what could be considered the more “mystical” aspects of the Bible.  We pick up this transcript as Tom Ashbrook is reading a comment off the internet:

Ashbrook: “…but then here’s Elmridge who says of you ‘but he is denying the divinity of Jesus.’  What about that, Rev. Watts?”

Watts: “Well, one of the things we need to do is we always need to read texts in context.  When we don’t do that we get into big trouble.  Now, for example, if I tell you that there’s…that I know someone in the first century that’s called ‘divine,’ ‘the son of god,’ and ‘the savior,’ you know, who do you suppose I’m talking about?  Well, most people would say you’re talking about Jesus.  No, I’m talking about Caesar Augustus.  Caesar Augustus received all of those divine titles, and so when Christians talked about Jesus and what they had encountered in his life, they used titles which were very counter-cultural, they were saying, look, if you want to know what life is about, if you want to know what real power is, if you want to know where divinity is, look at this peasant going around talking about creating a new community of compassion and love.  Don’t look for the seat of power for the emperor in Rome.”

Watts: “Christianity in the very beginning, before it was called ‘Christianity,’ Tom [Ashbrook], it was called ‘The Way.’  And it was a way of life.  It was a lifestyle.  It doesn’t mean that lifestyle was devoid of a basis of belief, of course it was, but it was a lifestyle long before it was a creed, and I think we need to get over our hang-up with absolute creeds and get back to the lifestyle, a lifestyle which is non-violent, which is compassionate, which is inclusive, which creates community rather than holding people off at arm’s length.”

There was another interesting exchange later in the podcast.

Ashbrook: “You know very well, as do many other preachers, that the kind of mainline protestant churches that you’re describing that may be most open to this kind of open-minded, liberal conversation, are the ones that have seen their attendance just go through the floor in the last decade.  Now why is that?”

Watts: “Part of that, that’s a great question, and part of the problem is, that, I have to lay at the feet of clergy.  It seems to me that an awful lot of clergy don’t bother to teach the people what they themselves have learned.  And so, people are sort of fundamentalist by default because they, these sorts of questions that you and I are talking about today are not often raised and I know that in mainline churches there are all kinds of people sitting there never receiving permission to raise their questions, never having the opportunity to engage in give-and-take about what their life experience has taught them, or what their life experience has asked them.

Let me tell you a very brief story.  There was a scholar in the Jesus Seminar, which works to uncover the facts about the historical Jesus, that was giving a talk to a group of Missouri Synod Lutherans, a very conservative denomination, and he was talking about New Testament documents, and the document “Q,” which is a lost document of the sayings of Jesus.  And then came time for the question period and he wondered, he felt like Daniel in the lion’s den, and a woman stood up and, instead of addressing the speaker, she turned around to address her preacher in the pew behind her and she said to him, ‘did you know about Q?’ And he said, ‘well, yeah.’  And she said, ‘why didn’t you tell us?’  And I think that’s a very powerful parable, that our churches are full of people that are questioning, who are curious, but who aren’t being adequately taught…”

I won’t write much about this, as the post is already long enough with these transcripts included.  I just wanted to say that this is the kind of thing I like to hear about, the historical context in which the Bible was written, and how that context can help inform what we know and what we don’t know about religion.  Moreover, I think that if there was more of this being taught in our churches today, there would be fewer “black and white” interpretations of what the Bible tells us, and we would all be more accepting of each other.

It’s a shame when pastors and educators shut down the intellectually curious.  We should all be fostering curiosity in ourselves and in our kids in order to better understand where we come from and who we are, rather than asking someone to tell us, and then accepting that information blindly.

Questioning and thoughtful investigation is the way of science.  It should be the way of religion, too.

03.13.11 Dinner

Breakfast pizza with eggs, bacon, cheese, and green onion. I was searching for something to use as the “sauce” and ended up using Miracle Whip. It turned out exactly like I thought it should!

03.12.11 Dinner

We had company Saturday night. I had originally planned homemade pizzas, but one of our guests just had her wisdom teeth taken out, so I made Chinese so she could have soup. This was sweet and sour chicken, tiny egg rolls and crab rangoon, and egg drop soup.

A Lesson in Customer Service

Brooke signed us up for Amazon Prime last year, a $79/yr service that grants you various benefits at Amazon.com.  The most well-known service is free 2-day shipping on anything you purchase.  As we now live, for all intents an purposes, in the middle-of-nowhere, we figured it would be a useful service to take advantage of.  Typically, we can wait 2 days for an item, and now that we both have Android smartphones, we can shop for stuff in town, scan the barcode of the item with our phone, and see if we can get it cheaper from Amazon.com.

As I was shopping for components for my new web server box (which this site is now running on!), I was looking at Newegg.com, the computer company I typically buy components from.  I have no problem with Newegg, of course, and they tend to provide a wealth of details on each component, something Amazon doesn’t do very well, yet I still checked with Amazon to see if I could get the same thing(s) from them instead.  Turned out I could, and because we already had Amazon Prime, that meant I could get the same things for almost the same price, but not have to pay $13 in shipping.  And the $13 in shipping would have been regular Ground shipping.  In order to get the same, 2-day shipping through UPS, the same items would have cost $38.  Through FedEx, for some reason, it would have been $59.

So yeah, almost in a single purchase, Amazon Prime justified itself.

I started assembling the system last Thursday night, inbetween various baby duties.  Unfortunately, the thing wouldn’t turn on.  I had the components installed in the box, tried a few things, re-seated various wires and jumpers, and couldn’t get the monitor to turn on.  This, obviously, did not please me.  It could have been a few different things, but I eventually tracked it down: the power supply was, likely, not working properly (as another power supply I had booted the new motherboard just fine), and the RAM seemed like it had problems (as the BIOS screen would only work with one stick in, and it was a specific stick).

I did a bit more research on Friday on the interwebs and brought my multi-meter home from work, in order to try checking the output of the power supply.  Some folks online that had written in about the case I bought, which came with the power supply, had said that their power supply was “dead on arrival,” so they had to get replacements.  There was one poster, however, that said they had to “turn it on and off a few times, and eventually it worked.”  Therefore, I didn’t want to write off the power supply until I’d let it sit overnight.  The multi-meter would tell me definitively whether it was generating any power or not for the system.

Long-story-short, I tried it again on Saturday morning.  The multi-meter said that the power supply was providing power to the motherboard.  I plugged it back in to the full system and the thing booted.  I dunno.

The RAM, on the other hand, is still presenting problems, which brings us to the “Customer Service” part of this story.  I bought two sticks of RAM for $40 from Amazon, but only one of them worked.  In order to return/exchange them, both sticks have to go back.  Annoying, ’cause I’d like to continue using one of them until the replacements arrive.  So I log in to Amazon, go to my “Orders,” and select “Return” to go through the process of exchanging the RAM.  In then end, Amazon had me print off a UPS slip that lets me return the RAM at no shipping charge to me, and I have 30 days to do it.  And along with that, they’re automatically shipping me an identical replacement.  The kicker to this story, though, is that they’re shipping me the identical replacement Next Day, so I’ll have it tomorrow.

So, in the end, I can wait until the replacement arrives before sending back the defective product, and they’re sending the replacement as quickly as they can at no additional charge to me, even though I used Two Day shipping the first time around.

That, I tell you, is customer service.

Good on you, Amazon.com.

03.09.11 Dinner

Grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches (on inside out hamburger buns), chips, and mandarin oranges. We’re in need of a trip to the grocery store, so I’m running on what’s left in the fridge!

03.07.11 Dinner

Now we’re all caught up! I decided that this week will be SOUP WEEK, in hopes that the weather will warm up soon and we won’t want to eat soup any more until fall….keep your fingers crossed!!

Tortellini soup with Italian sausage and garlic cheese bread made with leftover hamburger buns (I’m classy that way).

02.21.11 Dinner

I almost didn’t post this one, since a few hours after eating it, Andy and I came down with a nasty stomach bug, but it was good, so here you go:

Barbecued chicken sandwiches, mashed potatoes with cheese and bacon, and homegrown carrots.

02.20.11 Dinner

Two weeks of trips to Missouri and illnesses made me get out of the habit of posting our meals, so I’m a little behind!

This one was scrambled eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, and strawberries and bananas. Does anyone else sing Gwen Stefani when they type B-A-N-A-N-A-S?

Upgrade Paths, Part 1

Thanks to our relatively hefty tax return, we have a bit of extra cash on hand for me to run an upgrade or two on the computers, upgrades that have been sorely needed for a bit now (though Brooke would probably dispute that…).  For the last few years, I’ve been using laptops as my primary Windows gaming machines, and then a dedicated Linux desktop to act as the server hosting this website.  This has worked out pretty well, however I’m getting to the point (and the age…) where a gaming-capable laptop is less and less necessary, while a gaming-capable desktop is more attractive.  A desktop can be upgraded, while a laptop really can’t to any reasonable degree.  Therefore, I can run reasonable upgrades more often if I have a gaming desktop, rather than a laptop.

My current server uses a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with 2 GB of RAM.  The system has worked just fine for the past 5 years since I built it, and has been running almost non-stop since that point.  It’s honestly pretty impressive how well it has held up, considering how long it sits there running without any huge problems.

However, I’m going to use that box and put a different motherboard and processor in it, and will start to use it for gaming.  My laptop (a Core 2 Duo system with a 256 MB GeForce 8600 video card) is well out of warranty and is only barely able to play anything modern, so it’s about time I did something else.  That, however, will be “Part 2” of this particular upgrade.

Since I will use my current desktop computer case, I decided to go with a completely separate system for the new server.  Something smaller and low-wattage was ideal, as the computer doesn’t need to be that powerful to run a web site (as this site doesn’t generate 1000s of hits per day or anything…), and since it runs almost non-stop, something that doesn’t take much power is also a big plus.  The Intel Atom D525 processor fits the bill, as this is the processor found in many netbooks, amongst other devides.  It’s a dual-core 1.8 GHz system, so it will more than do the job, and this particular processor and chipset can utilize DDR3 memory (the current standard).  The box itself, pictured above, is somewhat tiny, only maybe 5″ tall, and will fit snugly wherever I want to stash it.  I’m also going to go ahead and max out its memory with 4 GB of RAM, mostly because they’re having a good sale ($40) on it right now.

In total, this upgrade is under $170.  I’m going to use one of my existing hard drives, and I’m not putting a disc drive in this particular system, so I’m saving some money there.  I am grabbing a new keyboard, however, because Brooke spilled soda in my 10-year-old wireless keyboard…so we may finally get rid of it…  But yeah, $170 for a new system ain’t bad, in my opinion, especially for a system that should be more than capable of running a website for the next 5+ years.

I’ll take care of Part 2 in the coming months.  This upgrade had to happen first, however, to move the website off of the existing computer so I can do other things to it (like…you know…turn it off…).

So hopefully the upgrade will be relatively painless.  If, however, this website is down for a few days, you can turn your ear toward Iowa and probably hear some faint grumbling…