I'll say it, some things about God are annoying!

Annoying. Those who know me know I use that term a lot. My dad used to say aggravation a lot. Everything aggravated him.  Guess I'm the same only I use the term Annoying. Lots of things annoy me.

In a long session of just sitting on my back porch after a 30 minute bike ride, I got to thinking about the church today and how relevant is it to today's generation. This generation is growing up in decidedly the most advanced and comfortable life ever in the history of humankind. In the Bay Area of California, where I live, I believe we are the most progressive, successful, comfortable, wealthy people of all time. We should be the most worry free. People from our past would have thought they entered heaven if they could be in our place.

Yet, our pain; our anxieties; our suffering - is as real to us as the pain suffering of any previous generation.

As I considered history, I thought that it must have been easier to witness to God's love and the future joys of heaven to people in the past whom (for the most part) had to literally work until they were tired virtually every day in order to just survive.  That can hardly be said of the majority of us today. Sure there are pockets of people who struggle to get enough food -- even here in the Bay Area. But that is hardly the norm.  In fact, the overwhelming majority of us have the ability to have vast amounts of unbelievably tasty food delivered to us, merely by pressing some buttons on our phone and asking for it.

But, as I said, our pains are just as real to us.  So, you'd think the messages of God's love and the future joys of heaven would still be compelling. Yet it doesn't seem that these messages are relevant to the world.

I considered why I felt that was the case. That's when I was again confronted with my feelings about how some aspects of God can be really annoying

Probably the big annoyance is that strong believing Christians can pray for things and these prayers go unanswered.  Consider calling a friend and asking to borrow something and having the phone go dead. That's how it often feels. Wouldn't that be annoying?

Secondly, why can't we have regular, undeniably real events that can only be attributed to by God's transcendent intervention into creation?  Seems that would be a great way to witness to the world.

It's no wonder that so many folks have turned elsewhere for their "religion". They've tried ours but it doesn't "work".

My history is one of those who discovered that praying to God doesn't work. As a young boy, I embraced the teaching of the church to give ones heart to God and relate to him in prayer. I did feel a closeness to him. But as I got older, I got bullied at school; parents and teachers would punish me for forgetting to do what they wanted me to do; and although I wanted to be included, I found that many times, those who could care less about God were the most popular and seemingly the most happy.

So, asked God why that was the case and got no answer. Eventually, in what is now an obviously idiotic approach, I decided that I would be anti-God -- sort of a way to get back to him. I guess I thought he'd show me that he was real by punishing me.

Eventually, I realized the ridiculousness of that approach. I remember realizing the absurdity of yelling at God: "You can't make me believe in you!"

Looking back, I now know that I had to come to God on his terms not mine. It is still kind of annoying but just because it's annoying doesn't make it not true.

God waited until I was ready to accept that he is in charge. Until I was ready to accept Him unconditionally. Ready to listen and learn about the real God -- not the god I wanted him to be.

Yet, even now, I'm one of those who is a card-carrying believer in Jesus Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus. Committed to the truth of the Bible. And yet, I am also one of those who's prayers "don't work".  Even heartfelt prayers for the salvation of others; or bringing about relief of pain -- for the good of His kingdom, not for my own benefit. I'm not the one in pain. But healing someone, wouldn't that be a wonderful witness to His love, grace and power?

Nope. No response. Often after days and even longer of continuous prayer.

Annoying.

So, why do I bother? Why do I continue to hold to a faith like this?  Well, the truth is that I have experienced miracles. Sadly, a skeptical outside observer could come up with a plausible explanation of how these things occurred. But to me, they are miracles.  Miracles are like pain - each person has their own and you can't look at someone and say "yours is not real". We know how we feel.

All these things I thought while sitting on my back porch contemplating why the church is not relevant today.  And as often happens, I found myself asking God that question and asking him what we can do about it.  It was then that it occurred to me that I needed to tell people. That, for some crazy and not particularly efficient reason, God has always chosen people as his primary means of reaching other people. Witnessing. 

It was then that I decided I needed to write to my blog about it. Maybe someday someone will be encouraged by these to learn more about God. I kinda doubt it but here it is anyway.

May your journey lead you to a saving faith in the living God.

Why people don't get closer to God

Outline: story of Asimov and robots in his famous book I Robot. Basic concept being people cannot stand their depravity whereas closeness to God points out the contrast between his Perfection and there depravity. They get stuck at a certain point in exploring God because going deeper is uncomfortable.

Asimov's Laws of Robotics stated in the first law: robots can't do anything to harm humans or through inaction cause humans to come to harm. Two: robots will protect themselves except where it violates rule number 1. Story is of a robot that can get close to a crash site because of radioactivity that would harm him but as he moved away from the crash site the rule to protect and cause a human from being harmed overrides and so he runs in circles.

Same is true with God. As we get to know God and His Purity and his Perfection it highlights our depravity and we've become increasingly more uncomfortable with our own depravity. So, depending upon our tolerance for that, we may stop getting to know God because it becomes unbearable to see the depravity our own depravity compared to his perfection. 

Generally, I expect we all go through cycles of deeper awareness and have to pause at various points in the journey. Sometimes, people get stuck and won't go further - they cycle in that spot like the robots in Asimov's story.

This is an update/cleanup of a blog post I did via voice to text on 10/21/2016

Bathroom Behavior

Recently I am seeing more people on their phones in the restroom. And while I've been guilty of going to the bathroom while on a conference call with the phone muted,  these people are talking on their phones!

Is it a cultural thing? Maybe I am just a throw back to the puritan days and the rest of the world thinks it is OK to hear flushing and other bathroom noise during a call.

For me,  I don't hold back at all when someone is talking on the phone in the bathroom. If they are not quick with the mute,  I'm afraid the listening party will get an ear full. Not my problem.

I know I'll be even more distressed when they have unisex bathrooms. I already modify my behavior in front of women. I don't look forward to dealing with what to do when they are in the bathroom.

They say that change is good.  I say: not all changes are good.

Keep Reminiding me that God is not like people

Was contemplating today how much of my anxiety in life (which is also a good thing because it motivates me -- propels me even -- to be better) is due to the idea that I don't believe I meet other people's expectations. I'm acutely aware of how much better I could be in virtually every aspect of life.

It struck me that I assume that God is equally aware of and equally disappointed.

But is that really true?  What if God were really, truly OK with our performance when we "do our best".  What I mean by "best" is really what we are already doing. I don't mean the sort of best we could do if we were at our best. I'm constantly thinking of times when I achieved some level of competence that is above my normal and then I set that as what I expect my normal should be.  And I do that in virtually all aspects of life. 

Yes, I walk around in a dark, gloomy cloud of uncertainty and insecurity most of the time.  I've been like this all my life so it's not surprising or unexpected.  And I'm not sad/discouraged/depressed - at least not usually.  When I have moments where my head clears the cloud and I'm confident and feel competent, it's a really wonderful thing. Those times do happen and they are not infrequent.

What I realize is that all that introspection and self criticism does not accurately reflect what God actually things of me. In fact, I'm not really sure of what he thinks but if I think about what the Bible says I have to conclude that he does not feel about me the same as I feel about myself. To be more specific, I'd have to say that since he went ahead and gave his son (or another way to say it, he gave up his glory as the king of creation to limit himself to a human body and the subject that body to brutal torture -- all to open the door for us to approach him!)  Since he did that and the explanation we get is "For God so loved the world..."  wow.

The closest human analogy that I can draw is that of a parent to their young child. Of course we know we could do better than them but somehow we rejoice in even the tiniest little, simple things they do. We get goose bumps when they first utter our name!  I mean how ridiculous is that?

What if God feels the same about me?  What if he rejoices in those moments where I exceed myself but he is happy/proud of when I just do my normal best - despite that not being as good as it could/should be?

There's a lot more that could be said about this but I'm out of time so I need to go and slog my way through the work before me. It's OK. I'll be OK. God loves me. If I could only keep that thought in my brain....

Somebody please remind me that I wrote this when I'm back in the darkness.

AT&T is so messed up

We are long-time AT&T customers and have cellphones, (had) a home phone, still have internet and we were DirecTV customers. So when AT&T purchased DirecTV, we thought we should do the combined billing both to make it easier for us and we hoped we'd get a discount in the process.

Sadly, the discount was only $10/month but hey, that's better than nothing. Unfortunately, we are totally paying extra for this mistake. Since making that change, our billing has been mishandled and at this point, after at least 3 phone calls and several chat sessions, the amount we owe is unknown.

Conveniently, whenever I login to any of my AT&T services, I always get redirected to the same place. This page shows that we owe $376.53.  If I click "view paper bill", I see we owe $333.63.  If I go to history, I cannot find the payment we made to AT&T Uverse for $215.53.  Seriously, I have no idea how much I actually owe them.  Between the DirecTV deal and the combined billing, some of the bill says that the charges were not received in time.

As you can imagine, I've been on hold a bunch waiting for someone to come online. Interesting that no matter what time of day/night I call it's "higher than normal" wait times. Huh. You'd think they could hire someone in the roughly three weeks I've been dealing with this problem.

Pretty annoying how they continually tell me to go to the web to view and pay my bill. Not only did they make it hard for me to get to the point where I could wait on hold but now some automated voice continually comes online to tell me to go to the web. Of course I went to the web first! Who wants to wait on hold or talk to someone who's first language isn't English?

It's as if I'm being punished for being one of those who naturally go to the web and avoid using the phone.  After all, why would AT&T spend so much time trying to steer me to to the web unless there were, in fact, a ton of people who are not web savvy enough so they just call AT&T.

Clearly, AT&T does not have service in mind as they go FAR out of their way to avoid spending money on actual people to provide it.

And the fact that the billing is so messed up is also and indication of their lack of investment. They spent $49 BILLION (yes that's not a typo) on purchasing DirecTV. Obviously, they can't afford to spend a little  more to make that a round 50 bill to have setup the systems to properly integrate the billing and provide support.

Well, this has been fun. Waiting on hold and typing into this blog has kept me from doing other work. I know no one will read this and it won't make any difference but there's a part of me that wishes I had some voice and that someone was listening.

Oddities of Prayer

Usually, I forget to pray.  I'm busy and thinking about all the stuff of the day. But recently, I've been focusing on God being with me and contemplating prayer a lot. Which has led me to some remarkable thoughts which I will share with you.

First, you must understand that I fully accept God's awesomeness -- his omnipotence, and sovereignty. He can do anything he wants and as I think further about this, it occurs to me that there is nothing in the universe that can stop him or prevent him from doing what he wants. He can make things happen by a simple word or thought -- really big things too!  I guess he has to be careful :)

Without us, every thought he has would be turned into action; every thing he wills would happen. With us, he has granted us free will. By that, he has limited himself (much like he did when Jesus became a human) to yield control over some aspects of this universe to us. Otherwise, we would have no free will.  In order for me to do what is contrary to his will, he must limit himself to allow that. Otherwise, he will thwart my actions because he has the capacity and since his thoughts are contrary to mine, his way will happen - he can do anything.

On the other hand, I find it remarkable that he would yield to us creatures. Free will is a gift from God -- something he must willfully accomplish. If he doesn't stop himself, we would have no free will.  I would find it pretty painful to be God. How can he let us do all the really stupid things we do? Remarkable.

Secondly, and along those lines, sometimes I get tied up in my prayers -- sort of paint myself into a corner.  It goes like this: God, you invite us to pray to you; you are both all powerful and all knowing; you know what needs to be done and you have the power to do it; soooo --- why do you want me to pray?

Until recently, I accepted that the primary purpose for prayer is to change me. In prayer, I acknowledge that this is his universe and he gets to decide what to do - not me. I need constant reminder of this because it hasn't (even after over 50 years) sunk in yet that he is God and my King.  I need to re-align my goals, needs, desires, will to his. I can pray for things but in the end, he will decide what is right.  So, prayer is really a way for me to re-align with this concept.  While I can have huge passion towards a certain way or thing, I need to calm those passions and accept that he will do what is right (best for all). Furthermore, I need to be happy with what he does.

Yet, as important and good as that is a reason to pray, it is dissatisfying; especially when I'm confronted with aspects of the Bible where we are encouraged to pray diligently and the Lord "changed his mind"!  This means there is another aspect of prayer that is not just about me.  But I didn't understand how this works since he is God and all powerful and stuff, he knows what needs to be done and has the capacity to do it so why does he need me?

What I've recently come to think is that God invites us to join him in creation. Admittedly, this is pretty remarkable, unbelievable even. Why would God, whose intelligence and knowledge are far superior to the sum of all humanity, ask me (clearly just a spec in the grand scheme) what I think should be done?  Or, how could I offer God a solution that he hasn't already thought of?

What occurred to me recently is that it's more like God is saying: "yea, we could do it that way". The image in my head is that of a father working with his son on a project. The father knows there are plenty of ways to accomplish the task and may even know that the proposal of the son may not be the best or most efficient way but also knows that it will get the job done. He may even know there are things that he must do beyond the project, unknown to the son even, in order to make this work but he's willing to do that. That's how I've begun to think of my supplications to the Lord. Less of a me bowing before the king and begging him to consider what in my mind is a great solution. Instead, God is near me and we are working shoulder to shoulder. This second way is much more relational and personal.

It is just as remarkable as the idea that he would send his Son to die for my sins.  But this is the God I believe in. As the catechism goes:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God,[1] and to enjoy him forever.[2]

Truly there are marvels (oddities) of God that we will spend the rest of eternity learning and getting to know.

What? I'm starting to sound like an old person!

The company I work for has graciously given me stock RSU's and a 401K.  These were given to me, no doubt, in order to heighten my level of loyalty and make me feel good about the company.  After all, they are not obligated in any way and, indeed, I never asked for the RSU (I did expect there to be a 401K since every company has one these days).

Clearly, administering RSU's and 401K's falls outside the core competency of a High Tech company so they outsourced these to Charles Schwab.

Now, I digress.  During my lifetime, technology has "evolved" rapidly (at least that's the term the enlightened people use).  A long time ago (20-30 years), if you wanted to do something with a company, the best option was to call them and someone would eventually help you. Usually, they'd send a form in the mail and you could either send it back via the mail or, sometimes use this new thing called a FAX machine!  Oh, and by 'mail' I mean postal mail - letters, envelopes, old school stuff. Think in terms of transactions like this taking weeks.

With the advent of the web, the new mode is to go to their website, snoop around for a while and try to find a way to do what you want. Most of the time, you can do your business instantly (assuming you find out how).

I prefer this new method because its faster and because I get irritated easily and it's socially acceptable to yell at the computer screen but not so much in regards to real people.  Yet, the "evolution" of technology has enabled new complexities so that finding what you need and actually doing it have become enormously frustrating.  This is due to several things such as inept user interface design, secret disincentives of companies to let you do what you want to do (ever try to cancel cable?), but mostly, the world has become orders of magnitude more complex.  Before the emergence of the computer/web, the paperwork for most common things like buying a house, buying insurance etc were all much reduced compared today.  Today, it seems like any purchase for anything that costs more than $1000 comes with a 10 page legal agreement.

As I watched the computer/web become first the dominant information media and then the primary interface for commerce, I noticed that older people who didn't grow up with computers would be very frustrated with these new forms of interface and moan about just wanting to talk to someone in person.

What does this have to do with my sounding old and my stock grants?  Ok, maybe going off tangent in a conversation is an old persons behavior - damn it, it's happening to me!

Over the past few weeks, I've had a simple task to do: change the beneficiaries on my RSUs.  It has been one dead end after another in trying to find out how to do that. I've tried contacting Schwab (through a chat) and my company (through email).  Schwab says to contact my HR department and my HR department says it can be done on the Schwab.com website. In fact, the answer from HR was so terse it was maddening.  Did the HR lady think I hadn't tried going to Schwab.com?  If I asked for help, was it unreasonable for me to expect her to tell me specifically how, where, what forms to fill out?  My guess is she didn't know or care. She has 100 other equally urgent issues so point me at the web and move on.

Now I find I want to talk to someone in person. Constant back/forth over email can be very inefficient. But talking to a real person may not be possible.  The nearest Schwab branch can deal with the brokerage business but, my guess is they've never dealt with RSU's and probably are no better at searching the Schwab website than I am.

In regards to talking to someone in HR, I suppose that's possible. Before I do that, I need to vent a little and calm myself. Ok, done and done.

Have a nice day.

Divisiveness in America

I've heard recently that many historians claim that America is the most divisive and polarized that it has been in over 100 years. Sadly, there are forces today that prevent public discourse on a few fundamental ideas that are at odds in the public view today. These ideas are often lost in torrent of information and opinions that are sometimes related to the ideas but not the ideas themselves. This creates confusion and prevents the average person from being able to discuss the fundamental ideas but, instead, we spend our time talking about consequences from those positions.

One of those ideas is the role of government in relation to individual religious belief.  Is the secular law more important than one's religious belief (or religious law)?

Another of those ideas is the distribution of wealth - is it better for society to take from the rich and give to the less fortunate and if, so, when and how does the government facilitate that?

Where you stand on these issues can be defined by what your belief system is and is likely to vary quite a lot from person to person. For example, reading a excerpt from the Hillsdale College Imprims entitled "Individual, Community, and State: How to Think About Religious Freedom", Matthew J Franck points out that originally, the the founding fathers believed that to follow ones religious convictions is an individual's duty in both time and obligation which takes precedence over the claims of civil society (i.e., the governed law).  Even the Declaration of Independence places the "Creator" ahead of the Government. It declares rights given by God to people: life, liberty and the pursut of Happiness and that  "To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

Yet today that idea is under attack. In public sphere, it is common to hear the idea that religious freedom is secondary to Civil Law. In fact, over the past decade, Civil Law has limited religious freedom dramatically, from the enforcement of contraception in Obama Care, to countless court cases forcing religious groups to adopt the values of the Gay Rights movements saying that religious doctrines holding homosexual acts to be sinful are in themselves a form of "harm" to gays.

On another front, there has long been the debate over the government role in the redistribution of wealth in order to provide for a "level playing field" for the less fortunate.  Or as some would say, tax the rich to provide funds and programs that aid the poor.  Clearly, our society has embraced the idea that there is a role of government to play and the rich should pay more than the poor.  At various times over the past century, the government has taxed the rich anywhere from 40% to 80%. Each change in tax law has been ushered in under the guise that it is best for society as a whole. Depending on whether you benefited from these changes strongly defines where a person stands on this ideal. Generally, the poor support higher taxes and more government programs whereas the rich are less supportive.

Where did the idea come from that the government needs to intervene and provide programs to support the poor? Clearly, before federal tax law was instituted in the early 1900's, the poor were provided for by charity. That legacy remains today as the US is still the most charitable country among the 1st world countries.  So, why did the US decide that it needed to legislate this? In doing so, we placed the role of government above religious belief. Instead of passing laws, we could have had education programs and tax incentives for religious charity organizations to provide for the poor. If society had maintained the ideal that God was in charge and that all moral direction comes from Him, then we would not have tried to legislate charity. In fact, it could be argued that by taking the role of provider to the poor, the Government acted in a particularly religious fashion.  Instead, to claim separation of church/state, society had to first remove God as the foundation of moral authority.

Of particular concern is the fact that we are not talking about these issues but deal with specific consequences of these ideals. For instance, we talk about pro-life but we can't say that we are pro-life because we believe in God who is the giver of all life and his 'law' states that we "shall not murder".  The so called "separation of church and state" has gained so much power that we are no long free to discuss the issue in these terms.

Obviously, my opinion is based on deep held religious values. Anyone who disagrees with my opinions and claims that they are unbiased and intellectually immune from their own belief system is clueless and therefore I am not interested in their opinions.  First tell me what you believe.  From that it can be derived what your opinion is. I'd rather debate your beliefs.