This series is titled (obviously), what you might miss by taking the freeway through life. The freeway is the easier way, but there is a richness in God’s country just like what you miss by jetting through God’s life in the fast lane.

Ruminations on a fallen world

Everywhere you look while traveling those back roads, evidence of the curse abounds. An apparently pristine forest is overflowing with mosquitoes. And anyone who doesn’t think that mosquitoes are results of the curse (or were horribly disfigured and terribly re-purposed after the curse) must live on the moon. Yet, they are still marvelously designed! A recent article in Answers magazine discussed poisonous snakes, and the amazing design behind them (I’d link to the article, but it’s not unlocked yet). Satan doesn’t have that kind of creativity. So, God must have designed animals, at some point, to kill other animals and people. Which begets the bigger question, did God create man with the intent that he could kill other men? I’ve thought long and hard about that question, but can only answer that God knows what he’s doing. He knows best. After all, He knew enough to create everything! :-)

A corn field is withering from drought. Why does God hold back rain when He knows it will hurt a farmer (or rather a farmer’s bottom line)? Come to think of it, why does God reserve control of the weather to himself? Just imagine how thrilled Al Gore would be to have the universe’s thermostat (or at least earth’s) handed to him! Or how enthusiastic old folks would be if they could have their yard at 85 and let the neighbor kids play in the snow at 30 degrees? But, what would happen if everyone decided they wanted 77 degree weather for a couple of months? chances are, much life on earth would die. See, the air flow depends on temperature differences (By the laws of thermodynamics, heat travels from hot to cold, and thus moves air, which then creates low and high pressure systems, which is how meteorologists predict the weather), and Humans depend on fresh air. If air stopped moving, it would grow stagnant and polluted. It would be like living inside a sealed box–our own carbon-dioxide would kill us.

Ok, you say, scientists know about that, and they wouldn’t let temperatures be the same worldwide. But, wouldn’t it be great to stop global warming with the turn of a dial? Um, no. If you live in the lower Michigan area, you are currently experiencing one of the coldest Julys we’ve had in ages. If scientists turned down the temperature another 5-10 degrees, I would be looking for my coat and snow shovel. Global warming proponents say that the poles are melting. But if that were true, why are we still getting hit with some very strong hurricanes (Katrina) in the past few years? Hurricanes and strong winds are caused by temperature differences between the equator and the poles. If the poles are getting warmer (and the equator is not getting proportionately warmer, which would mean basically unbearable temperatures at sea level), the heat transfer should be slowing down, not speeding up.

After Noah’s flood, if you agree with most scientists (those who believe in Noah’s flood, of course), the earth is coming out of an ice age that happened some few (~4500) thousand years ago. And there’s a good chance that we’re still recovering from that. Have you seen a picture of Greenland recently? Apparently, when the name was given the land was actually green. Now, it’s basically a big sheet of ice. I do feel really bad for the people who live in cities built below sea level (New Orleans?), but think of all the land that’s uninhabitable because of cold and ice! There would more new land gained than old land lost. Antarctica could become the new New World! Pilgrims could sail/fly there and start a new country! We could be free of American oppression! Oops, someone already tried that, which is why we have America. :-) At any rate, I think it’s very fundamentalist and extremist (let’s see, what other names do they call us?) to say that the lay of the land can’t change. After all, isn’t that the new rallying cry of the century, change? Besides, God knows what He’s doing. It’s very presumptuous to claim that humans have changed the climate when we can’t even predict tomorrow’s precipitation correctly.

I’m a big fan of lower emissions–like many environmentalist worried about climate control–but not because of their effect on the earth, because of their effect on humanity. People have died from living too close to a poultry factory farm (another reason to buy PotterVilla Pastured Poultry: they cause no waste problems! Environmentally friendly! Fresh! Local! Tasty!) God has called us to be good stewards of His creation, which is another good reason not to pollute. Creation includes other humans, though. We can’t completely neglect them while being over cautious about trees or endangered hamsters or something.

Another result of the curse: as we traveled along the back road, two young men (quite young, and apparently brothers) were quarreling. Not a fight, yet (at least that I could tell). One of the first examples of the curse the Bible gives us is a story about two young men by the names of Cain and Abel. They had a small argument that turned into a big argument, which turned into an outright war, which ended with one brother dead and the other a murderer. One of the saddest things things in the world today is how families split apart and their members declare war on each other. You only have one family, you should take care of it! I see so many sons estranged from their fathers, who live to regret the trivial arguments that began the separation. The relationship between a father and son can be the most rewarding that a man can ever have (I haven’t spoken of female relationships simply because I’m not a woman. [A Jew would thank God for the fact right now because of the supposed inferiority of that gender, but I’ll just thank Him because that’s how he made me and He knows what He’s doing!]). Particularly the relationship with our Father in heaven, which is the real relationship that Cain was ignoring.

Another highly disregarded relationship is the one between a man and his wife. Not enough value is placed on the other party, and the single party that they both have become. Once divorced, both the man and the woman go through the rest of their lives missing parts of their selves. How different could our society be if we took care of our relationships? With both God and other people? I’m not talking about the whole citizenry of the world (though that would be amazing!!!!), just the citizens of heaven, who should know better! How can the Church be a lamp on a stand, a city on a hill, if we tune our light to the same frequencies the world uses? When we’re supposed to be bright white visible light, why are we on invisible, radio active X ray channels?

The Church needs to wake up, look up and stand tall, instead of groveling in the world’s filth. But back to the disputing brothers. No one taught these guys how to fight. Or at least, how to get on each other’s nerves. It’s been in every boy’s system since the first parents sinned–it’s an inheritance. Of a bad sort. And girls aren’t exempt (I do know that much about them!). It’s an inheritance from the first man, Adam. But there’s another inheritance, from the Last Adam, that we can give to our children, and grand children and great-grand children: Salvation.

Which brings me to my next major subject, multigenerationalism. [For those who are wondering, I transliterated that before I inscripturated it. :-)]

Part 4: A Multi-Generational Dream, coming Wednesday @ 6:30 p.m.!

This series is titled (obviously), what you might miss by taking the freeway through life. The freeway is the easier way, but there is a richness in God’s country just like what you miss by jetting through God’s life in the fast lane.

Ruminations from examining housing architecture

You can also see God’s hand in the work of his creatures; after all, man was created in the image of God. There is one particular house off road a ways that always catches my attention. It’s built on a hill. Coming from the north, it appears to be three stories tall, but I think it’s really only two stories tall with a walk-out basement. If you look at the roof of this building, there must be three or four sections, with valleys and ridges all over the place–it’s quite pleasing to the eye. Unless you’re planning on replacing the shingles on it, that is. Another feature of this house is a lovely wrap-around porch. Over all, I find it very charming.

It’s empty. There’s a for-sale sign by the drive. This gorgeous house (on the outside) is barren, lonely, and lifeless on the inside, waiting for people to fill it. Which is just like many of the structures built by God, the image that the house builders are based on. Humans, no matter how gorgeous, lively or fulfilled their lives appear from the outside, all have a dark chasm on the inside that howls for God whenever the wind blows, and aches for him when things are still. A chasm, that is, until God comes into the building and gives life–and life to the fullest.

Many people try to fill that chasm with things and activities and friends, which does about as much good as filling a house with dust, spiders and mice–maybe a family or two of squirrels. Nothing will really fill the chasm except a personal, faith and grace based relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The home of the family that hosted us for the evening was around 5 years old. An A-frame log cabin type home, it utilized a ton of engineering tricks to get a real log feel with the convenience of a modern home. For example, the log exterior was logs cut in half, but the ends were left whole. Inside, 1/4 logs lined the walls–you couldn’t tell there was wood and concrete inside them. A plastic chicken wire net keeps the barn swallows out from under the eaves. A valley runs up to one side of the house for a nearly hidden walk out basement, letting the unfinished level can be used for equipment storage. It has a first floor laundry with a shoot from the upstairs bedroom, and a roller clothes line 10 feet from the washer. And that’s just a sample of the clever conveniences. Inside, the walls are tastefully lined with trophy turkeys, deer, pheasant, and fox. A real woodsman’s palace.

Their home is a simple example of architectural ingenuity and creativity, which in turn is an example of the creativity and ingenuity of their Creator. God created man (people) in His image. He created them to create, like their Creator. And to create creatively! But even creativity can’t contain the chasm that creaks and groans for it’s Creator.

Our world is fallen, in need of a Savior.

As always, comments are welcome and encouraged.

Part 3: Ruminations on a fallen world, coming Tuesday @ 4:30 p.m.!

This series is titled (obviously), what you might miss by taking the freeway through life. The freeway is the easier way, but there is a richness in God’s country just like what you miss by jetting through God’s life in the fast lane.

We went to a church event down in Calhoun county two weeks ago on a Sunday evening (when I started this behemoth). Instead of taking the freeway–which was all of one minute faster–we took a parallel road (Old US 27).

On the way, I was looking around at all the scenery and noticing the evidences of creation. And not only that, but the results of the curse–and what I can do about it.

It was worth going cross-country. As Charles Kuralt said, “The interstate highway system is a wonderful thing. It makes it possible to go from coast to coast without seeing anything or meeting anybody.”

Ruminations from watching leaves blow in the wind

Allow me to begin with an interesting example of God’s ingenuity. Place two green objects outside in the sun and rain (not both elements simultaneously, of course [although the resulting apparition is quite pleasing if you mix them at the correct angle {think Noah and ark}]): a piece of cloth and a small maple tree. Now, after setting in the sun for a sufficient period of time (it varies depending on how hot the sun is) the cloth will have turned a light, bleached green. However, the tree will be a darker green. Flip one of the maple leaves over, and it’s a lighter color. Being in the sun increased the vibrancy of the leaf.

Consider the technological implications: what if clothes could be made that got brighter in the sun, instead of bleached? What if fabric became stronger as well as cleaner when subjected to water? What if a tear could repair itself? I can hear most of you, at least, saying that’s never going to happen until Christ returns.

But, that’s what the maple tree does! It gets stronger when it gets dirty and wet, and the summer sun makes its color brighter. What an amazing designer God is!

Look at the green color in plants–most of it is from Chlorophyll (some of us drink that stuff because it’s so good for the body). Chlorophyll is what plants use to produce energy from the sun in the process called photosynthesis. So, more of the green stuff is needed where the energy is at than on the underside of the leaf, where there isn’t as much sun. And, look at the design: the underside of the leaf isn’t as green! The plant can recognize where it needs the chlorophyll and concentrate it there!

From an aspiring AI [artificial intelligence] coder’s perspective, plants are extremely complicated. From the same perspective, even the simplest animal is nearly impossible to duplicate electronically. You can imagine my point by trying to predict where that annoying fly that’s buzzing around your head is going to land next. You’re right, it’s basically impossible, as the still annoying fly can attest to. Then, consider your pet dog or cat or rabbit or hamster or ferret: try to imagine what decisions they are making right now (or the last time they were awake, in the case of our aging 18 year old cat who sleeps 16 hours a day and meows the remaining 8). It is nearly impossible for our brains to comprehend the millions of electrical signals that are received, processed, cataloged and sent in an animal’s brain in just a few seconds.

Take it up another level. To the next kingdom. To those created in the image of God. Look at humans. Can you imagine a computer just managing all your sensory inputs? Let’s start with graphics: a nice $200 point & shoot digital camera takes pictures at about 10 MPs. A $600 video camera can take 30 two MPs pictures in a second. That’s pretty much what high-end computers display. One Megapixel (Mp) is 1,000,000 pixels, which are dots of color. Each dot of color has 256 bits (a zero or one) of information in it. So, a 10 MP digital image has 256,000,000 0’s or 1’s describing it.

The human eye has a resolution of approximately 600 MP ( http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html ). Adding color and assuming 30 frames per second, our hypothetical computer would need to process 4,608,000,000,000 bits of data [a 0 or 1] every second. That works out to 576 Gigabytes of data every second (8 bits in a Byte). In 2 seconds, you would have run out of space on one of the biggest hard drive available (1 Terabyte). To record one minute of what your eyes see, you’d need 17 hard drives, which would run you about $3,400. It would take about 15 days (you couldn’t even record in real time!) to transfer that data to the hard drives on a modern system. And that’s going to be the cheapest part of our computer.

That’s solely to process what our eyes see. Then you have to process millions and billions of touch sensors (think a swimming pool filled with tablet PC’s, all wired to our hypothetical mainframe), audio, taste, and smell (taste and smell can’t be captured to current computer systems, you’d have to design something specifically). Then, figure out a system to make this thing self sustaining and self replicating.

Even after you get a computer that is up to thinking like a human (forget all the other stuff, and I still can’t see this happening in the next two centuries [Moore’s Law–it’s a computer chip speed prediction], and that’s banking on the world continuing in its current semi-peaceful state), you’ve got to program it. Now if you gave me unlimited funds and our super-computer to work with, I’d still need about 4,000-8,000 experienced software engineers and about 40 years to get the thinking processes ready for this behemoth. In all of this, I’m neglecting the spirit of a human, because I don’t have enough information to even consider how it is created–and I doubt if we could mess with that kind of stuff even if we did understand it. Ever get one of those 401 ‘Authentication Required’ errors, where you need permission to access a web page? It’s like that.

And after all that, consider that God designed his creation to run off plentiful resources. Consider that a woman (with a little jump start from her husband) can create a new one of these machines in 9 months.

And here’s the kicker: evolutionists believe that this incredibly complex machine that we’re replicating exists because of some mistakes in the programming. Which wasn’t really programmed by anybody. And nobody designed and programed this thing without a pattern, like we had. It all just happened when nobody blew nothing up. It kind of begins to sound like the universe wasn’t really made that way, doesn’t it? :-)

Part 2: Ruminations from examining housing architecture coming Monday@ 2:30 p.m.!