Author Archives: Jen

About Jen

Jen isn't quite sure when she lost her mind, but it is probably documented here on Meditatio. She blogs because the world needs her snark at all hours of the night... and she probably can't sleep anyway.

“Bones” Episode on Evil

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I watched “Bones” for probably the first time after “House” tonight and the premise of it was a priest and altar boy coming upon a fire on the altar in which something resembling a demon or devil was being immolated. I didn’t much care for the show in general — it wasn’t as good as “CSI” or “Law & Order”, mostly because the plot kind of wrapped up in the last 30 seconds in a really weird slapdash way.

It was,however, an interesting show in that you saw the views on the existence of evil from various characters including a Catholic, a Muslim, and Temperance (Bones) herself who has an atheist/scientific view point. I’m not totally a fan of how religious issues are portrayed on TV because the writers seldom “get it right”. (Please spare me the lecture about how “TV is not an indication of reality”. I’m fully aware that show like “CSI” and “House” are fictitious.) It was definitely fascinating to see how each character’s perception of evil influenced the way they reacted to the situation from the Catholic repeatedly genuflecting when they were in the church to the Muslim (Vazari?) talking about the difference between angels and demons in Islam. It appealed to the religious scholar in me and the interest I have in comparative religion.

It also begs the question for me of how I perceive evil in the world. I’m not sure that I believe in a corporeal devil or that demons have bodies. Nevertheless, I do believe that evil exists and that there is an evil force (Satan or “the Great Adversary”) acting in the world. Why else do we have war, hatred, violence, etc? I want to believe that good always triumphs but I also (in an Arminian way) believe that a lot of what happens that is evil is the consequence of our actions and our lack of consideration of others which is part of our inate selfishness as fallen people. Good can only do so much in those cases and it takes a whole lot of good to overcome so much evil.

As for why earthquakes and natural disasters happening, I want to say God is in control and I have to believe it. It is however hard to explain so much death and suffering other to say that much of it stems from poverty caused by capitalism and our annoying habit of valuing our personal wealth over the needs of others. (Example: Joel Osteen and all the other “mega-church” pastors could probably sell their massive properties and donate the money to feed the poor and rebuild Haiti instead of building bigger barns and buildings for themselves. *stepping off my soapbox*) I heard recently that only 10% of the aid pledged to Haiti has actually come through, which is really saddening to me as a Christian because I believe that we do have a duty to help our brothers and sisters (i.e. FULFILLING OUR FREAKING PLEDGES OF AID) instead of welching on our pledge.

What do you think, y’all?

OMG… Ten Years!

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It’s pretty hard to believe that I’ve been doing the blogging thing for ten years now. I started my journal as an experiment in the summer of 2000 and have kept it going in one form or another since then. Not all the archives are uploaded — it’s an ongoing project that I work on when I have some extra time and a good Internet connection, both things that are lacking these days.

How My Life Has Changed Since Then: When I started blogging, I was a 20 year old college student living at home over the summer. I was dating this guy I’d met over the Internet and working at Barnes & Noble to pay for books and living expenses. Ten years later, I’m married to that guy (8 years now), living in southern California, have a 15 month old son, and have worked a variety of jobs. I’ve lived in 8 different places in 7 different cities/towns in 4 different states. Oh yeah… I also have 18-24 inches less hair than I did in 2000. 🙂

What Blogging Has Done for My Life: It’s been an *interesting* ten years and blogging has given me an outlet to express my thoughts/frustrations/reflections on everything in my life. In my last year of college, I was meeting Crystal, Krissy, and Eileen for the first time. In 2002, blogging kept me sane when we moved to Newark and I was pretty much stuck in the house all day. I made friends through blogs4God (at that time an Internet Christian blog portal) and became a moderator for them in 2003. When we moved to Minnesota and then to Montana, my blogging people became a portable community that I could take from place to place. In these 10 years, I’ve made some really great friends (some of whom I have been able to meet in person) and been able to be part of some amazing experiences in their lives such as rejoicing when someone was able to adopt their daughter from China and being with a friend (by phone and in spirit) at the death of her brother. When Daniel was born, I had an amazing support system in place to help me deal with my stress, grief, and joy and I had people who held my hand from afar when my grandfather passed away.

How My Faith Has Changed: When I started blogging in 2000, I was a neophyte Christian and trying to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. (Philippians 2:12b) Ten years later, my faith and how I express it has really evolved. When I started blogging, I was attending an Episcopal church at home and a Conservative Baptist church at school. (Being Lutheran was a compromise between the two.) I know now that I am bi-ritual (i.e. I can worship in both liturgical and free-form settings) but that my ultimate preference is liturgy. The parts of the Bible that I thought I understood ten years ago mean something entirely to me now. I would say that I’m more conservative theologically now but I can express that conservatism in a more grace-filled way.

How the Internet Has Changed: I got into blogging relatively early and hand-coded my blog at first. In the intervening time, I’ve used: Livejournal, Greymatter, Moveable Type, and b2/Wordpress. b2/Wordpress has been what I’ve used the longest — 7 years combined with WordPress being about 5 years of that. The blogging thing seemed to catch on around 2003 and a lot of the blogs I used to follow have petered out since then. With the advent of Facebook and Twitter, blogging has gotten edged out and I admit that posting to Facebook has made me less likely to blog. On the other hand, blogging is also a way for me to get the junk out (in passworded entries).

What I’m Proud of Having Done: I think the posts I like best are mostly from 2003 and 2004 when I tended to be more reactive and take on more people. Probably my best post was a letter to Dr. Michael Newdow that was cross-posted to blogs4God and caused me to incur the ire of the people at Atheism @ About.Com. I also have some political posts from that time where I took on someone that annoyed me and explained why their point of view was completely and utterly wrong. If nothing else, those posts caused me to figure out a whole lot of diplomatic and polity issues.

What I Probably Shouldn’t Have Done: I probably could have been slightly less vitriolic about my utter dislike and disdain of our ex-president Bush. (Those who knew me back in 2003 are probably laughing hard enough to choke at that statement.)

What I Hope For the Next Ten Years: I hope that we’ll be more settled in a place where Jon has a call and that Daniel will be a happy and healthy 11 year old. I’m not against having more kids but if we do, I’m hoping for a daughter named Hannah Grace. As far as blogging, I hope that I’ll have two Obama administrations to blog through and that whoever follows him is somewhat competent. Peacefulwaters.Org is renewed for the next two years and Grace-Filled.Net will be renewed for at least another year in September. I have no idea what will happen in that time but God-willing, I’ll be blogging through it all.

Evolution: Why It’s Not A Huge Deal to Me

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Again, I get a posting topic from Jen at BlagHag. Maybe I should put her on my payroll or something? (OK… if I *HAD* a payroll.)

She blogged about how Indiana is one of 5 states where evolution is directly mentioned in state curricula for school. Not shockingly, California is one of them — we had UNITS on evolution in my two high school Bio classes.

My freshman Bio teacher Mr. Bowen was fanatical about it — he’d apparently grown up in a fundamentalist family and had students in the past who tried to undermine him with material from the Institute for Creation Research. AP Bio was along the lines of “we’re presenting this as a viable theory” and it was treated as an “if evolution occurred, this is how it happened thing” — faith wasn’t brought up and it was pretty chill. It’s also the part of Biology I liked best and the unit I did the best in as far as work and my exams.

It’s also one of those things that causes me to scratch my head because it isn’t mutually exclusive to Christianity for me. Maybe it’s because evolution does make sense — Genesis would jive with the punctuated equilibrium theory — or maybe because I’ve got the attitude that “the clock is evidence of the clockmaker”.

I Wish God Didn’t Trust My Friends So Much

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A week or two, my friend Jenn lost her husband.

Today, two of my friends (Laura and Tim) found out from the ultrasound that their baby didn’t develop a skull or brain tissue.

Cue Mother Teresa quote: “I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”

Because of my own science project pregnancy experience, I feel especially hard for Laura and Tim because this is one of those situations where they did everything they were supposed to and something awful happened. I feel awful that they’re going through this at all but I feel especially awful that they’re going to get the following comments from well-meaning (and some not quite well-meaning) people:

[+] At least you have a healthy two year-old daughter. Yeah… be as that may, Magdalena does not make up for the baby that they’re losing now.

[+]Well, if Laura had only done [insert thing], she wouldn’t have had this problem. Laura is one of the most granola hippie people I know. She wouldn’t do anything while pregnant to make this happen. This also discounts the fact that crappy things like this happen for reasons that are only clear to God.

[+]This will make Tim a better pastor. While this is partially true, it’s still not going to remove the sting from this.

Keep them in your prayers please.

Yet Another Surprise

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After my pregnancy with Daniel, I kept having joint and muscle pain which I couldn’t blame on pregnancy. It was worst in January and February and has continued intermittently since with the worst of it being at times of high stress.

I finally got a referral to a rheumatologist and saw him this morning. His thought: a “little bit” of fibromyalgia. Apparently, I have the tenderness in the right places and all the other symptoms and conditions that are associated.

The good news is that this isn’t life-threatening or crippling. Staying active will help keep it at bay.

The bad news is that flares can be triggered by excess stress and it’s one of those conditions that’s a diagnosis of exclusion which means that everything else needs to be ruled out first. They also can’t treat the disease — just the symptoms.

They took some blood and I’ll see the doctor again in two weeks.

If I Knew God Was Real

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**Disclaimer: I am not writing this because I want a fight — I think it’s a valid question and as a convert to Christianity, it’s one that I should answer.**

From Jen @ BlagHag who tossed this out to her readers on what they would do if they knew/had proof that God was real.

Let’s assume you have proof that God exists. You’re now a believer for whatever reason. But believing in God is totally different from following his laws and living your life the way he desires. Would you actually worship him? Would your life change in any way? Or would you rebel for any ethical, philosophical, or personal reasons?

Jen acknowledged that conceiving of a Protestant godhead would be different than a deist godhead or a Zeus-like godhead. The discussion in her comments was assuming that we were talking about the Judeo-Christian godhead. (I would personally prefer the term “Abrahamic” so as to include Islam which shares its conception of God with the Jews and Christians.) Within that framework, most of the commenters were saying that they’d rebel if it was the God of the Old Testament and going off on what a jerk this God was.

(The best comment by far was from someone who said that they “[didn’t] want to worship the god that Glenn Beck worships”. My response: “Most of us don’t worship that God. We worship the God manifested in Jesus Christ.”)

So… if I knew God was real (had proof/whatever), would I actually worship him and would my life change? Would I rebel?

I’m sure that people who might surf here from Jen’s site would expect my answer as a committed Christian to be a resounding and perky “OH YES!!! I WOULD WORSHIP HIM ALL MY DAYS AND LIVE MY LIFE ACCORDING TO HIS WILL!!!! I WOULD NEVER REBEL!!! WHY WOULD I WANT TO?!?!?!?” (BTW, anyone surfing over from BlagHag is most definitely welcome here both to read and to comment.) My answer is definitely different from that. Why? It’s because I wasn’t always Christian (or religious) and I can see both sides of that coin.

My seminary’s president, Dr. Mark Ramseth, would frequently quote Hebrews 10:31 which states that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”. I can relate to that because I know that fear was one of the first emotions I felt when I realized that OMG God is real and OMG I am such a screw-up. When you’re confronted with a God whose standard is perfection and you seriously fall short, it’s a very fearful thing and I struggled with that for a really long time.

The thing that gets me over the terror is the fact that God created me in love and loved me enough, even in my sinful and rebellious state, that he sent His Son to die in my place and atone for all the sin and rebellion. That love is much deeper, wider, and higher than I can comprehend. That love is life/soul/heart-changing and as a result, my life changed. When you come into relationship with someone you love and who loves you, your life is going to change and your outlook on things will change.

As for worshipping God, it’s a choice. I see God’s fingerprints in everything around me from the skies to the mountains to the ocean and worship, at least for me, is praising God for the amazingness of His creation.

One repetitive thing I saw in Jen’s comments was the thought that the God of the Old Testament was a jerk. (“Jerk” is about the most polite way I can express the sentiment conveyed.) Having been through Old Testament studies at a mainline seminary with a seriously FEMINIST professor, I can honestly say that I understand where people are coming from on this. However, the God of the Old Testament (who is the same as the God of the New Testament) isn’t exactly a jerk when you consider that He created the world and called it good, created man and called him very good, and then had to deal with disobedience when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge. The disobedience pretty much spirals from there and you see the Israelites dealing with the consequences of their bad decisions.

Oh yes… in response to any criticism about all the laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy: the children of Israel were the chosen people and as a result, they were called to live a life that was different from the other peoples that lived around them. Being holy is being set apart and all those laws were meant to help the people be that way. If you want to know the purpose for all of them, read the Talmud and Mishnah. You can find enough discussion on them to make your head spin.

Does all that answer the question?