Thoughts http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/ en-us Copyright 2008 Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:55:24 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Venezuela Project Videos function playVideo(sourceId, targetId) { if (typeof(sourceId)=='string') {sourceId=document.getElementById(sourceId);} if (typeof(targetId)=='string') {targetId=document.getElementById(targetId);} targetId.innerHTML=sourceId.innerHTML; return false; }
I finally got around to making a project DVD from the pictures and video we took while on summer project in Valencia, Venezuela. To watch the movies, click on the bolded movie titles below. The video will play in the gray box and will show a blue "Q" while it is loading; you will see a gray bar appear at the bottom of the box when the video is done loading, where you can click the play button to start the video. If the video does not play in the box (you will see a "Q" with a "?" in place of the gray box, denoting a failure to load the video) click on the "Small" or "Full" links, which load a blank web page with the video only. Note that full resolution versions will take several minutes (possibly 5 minutes or more) to load. Also, the "Project Video" is large even when viewing the small version (78 MB), so it will probably take 5 minutes or more to load, and the full resolution version might take 20 minutes or more.



Click on a bolded link (on the left) to watch a video.
It may take a minute or two to load.

If you are using Internet Explorer (IE) to view this page there is a good chance those bolded links will not work, in which case you can use the links in parentheses.
]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/test.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/test.html Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:55:24 +0000 More Thoughts About Venezuela Wow, what a month that was! I am sad that I didn't get to write more while I was abroad, but I still want to fill you guys in on what happened. So first of all, an update to my last entry: Kate is doing fine and seems to have recovered almost fully now without any complications from her surgery. After the first day on campus things continued to improve as we met with more and more students. Each day we would walk on campus and within 15 minutes we would be waving to students we had met earlier. It's amazing how friendly and open the people are to talking about spiritual things. As the week went on we got to be pretty good friends with a group of English speakers at the university. As an example, I forgot to mention that on our first day on campus some of the students jumped on the bus with us as left campus. Some of us, including myself, were a little annoyed by it because we thought that they were going to follow us into the hotel and hang out for the evening. But I found out after I got into the hotel that they just wanted to make sure we got back safely! They probably went miles out of their way just to make sure that we would get back safely. Like I said before, you just don't see that kind of kindness in the United States, especially not from strangers. We didn't ask them to help us, they just did. That's all I have to say for now, but there is still more on the way about Venezuela. http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/more-venezuela-thoughts.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/more-venezuela-thoughts.html Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:56:09 +0000 Buenos dias from Valencia, Venezuela here. Getting adjusted to this culture/country has been a challenge, but not overwhelmingly so. When Venezuelans ask me what I think about their country I tell them two things: Your country is very pretty and you drive crazy. The food is definitely better than the Korean food we were fed at CM 2007, but I still prefer good old American cookin'. The Venezuelan-leg of our summer project began in chaos that we believe can only be the work of Satan. After having taken a day (Sunday) to rest, we began Monday with prayer and praise to prepare ourselves to go step on the campus of the University of Carabobo (Universidad de Carabobo) for the first time. As we finished this and were on our way out the door of our hotel for campus, one of our staff team members felt a bad pain in her stomach. Her name is Kate Jackson and after the staff team deliberated about what to do they decided that the majority of the staff would stay behind to take Kate to the hospital while the students and a few Venezuelan staff left for campus. That day the doctors at the hospital eventually concluded that Kate had acute appendicitis and needed to have her appendix removed as soon as possible. The doctors said that they would need the full cost of the surgery paid before they could operate and that this procedure would cost 12 million Bolivars (if you want you can ask me for the conversion to USD). Needless to say it was a lot of money to scramble and find without any notice. By God's amazing providence and goodness we were able to find a loaner from a church that we visited on Sunday to front the money! How amazing that strangers in this country who know the Lord personally would trust us so much to do this for us! Praise God. So Kate went through the surgery without complication (praise God again!) and is recovering fine, though she is still not back to full health. Meanwhile, while all this was going on the rest of our team and I departed for the university. We got on a "public" bus which apparently was going to take us to the university (I don't know any Spanish so I was following the Venezuelans). None of us, including the staff had been to this university yet so we were all going trusting God to get us there. We did arrive at the university and by talking to students we found the region of campus we were looking for. There we met with a friend who was doing ministry there through an English club. He took us to meet students at his English club. There we got to break up into small groups and talk about random things with these Venezuelan students who spoke pretty good English. I ended up in a group with 4 Venezuelan students and a few of my friends from our team. I was having trouble hearing the conversation because I was far from many of the group members at the end of our circle. But more students kept coming into the classroom and they began to sit next to me. So I decided to break off and started talking with these other Venezuelans. The conversation was fun and the group I was talking with kept growing, but after a little while we were struggling to find things to talk about. So I asked them if they would like to help me out with a survey we were using on campus. They said sure and so we went through it and at the end I asked them the last question: "If someone could explain how you could know God personally, would you like to have a discussion about that?" And sure enough they all said yes. So I got out bilingual Bible tracts that Crusade had provided us with and handed them out to everybody. By this time the group had grown to about 10 people. So I told them I would read through the booklet with them and if they had any questions they could ask me. So I read through it, stopping along the way with common questions that people have about sin and why Jesus had to die for our sins. What I thought was awesome about all this was that these students were not having trouble paying attention to me. They were all genuinely interested in what I had to say. I'll make the bold statement that this would never happen in a group this size in the United States. You'd be lucky to keep the attention of half the people. They hung in there with me and when we got to the end I asked them if they would like to make Jesus Christ their savior. In a group this size I could tell that they did not want to make the decision publicly, before the group. So I went through a prayer they could pray if they would like to make that decision later and I believe that they all walked away seriously considering to do so. I want to be clear that I am not giving this story to demonstrate that I am skilled in evangelism or for any other prideful kudos. I am giving this story humbly as an example of how God can use us anywhere anytime. So this basically concluded the first day on campus, and I can happily say that things have gotten progressively calmer since then without any other major health problems. I'll stop there for now, but I definitely hope to tell you all more about my time in Venezuela very soon.]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/buenos-dias-from-valencia-vene.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/buenos-dias-from-valencia-vene.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:31:26 +0000 Hello from Tokyo! here. On the trip the students (myself included) were trained to share their faith, and then we went out on the beach each day and did just that. I came across a whole gamut of people, from old to young, walking Christians to atheists. I can still remember thinking, "Why don't I do this more often?" I've never run into anyone who wanted to bite my head off for wanting to share my faith with them, and in the process of sharing my faith I always feel closer to God. Sharing my faith is not something that I ever want to do by relying on my own wisdom. Instead I want to be completely dependent on God and His Holy Spirit to provide the words that those people need to hear, so while sharing my faith I am striving to constantly seek His direction and therefore I naturally feel close to God while I am sharing. I can't recall if I have mentioned this verse before or not on this blog but I will go ahead and backup what I am saying with some scripture.
"I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ," - Philemon 6
The Bible tells us here that sharing our faith with others gives a deeper understanding of what Christ gave us. The scripture also tells us,
"How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? " (Romans 10:14)
The Greek word translated in the NIV here as preaching actually literally means proclaiming. How can people know the gift of Jesus Christ unless we take the opportunities God gives to proclaim this truth? There is no doubt in my mind that the Bible calls all Christians to share their faith, with these two verses as simple defense thereto. So anyway, I definitely enjoyed this trip for the fun times I had with friends and the things He taught me. The other exciting thing that happened to me this school year is that I got to get involved in high powered rocketry. This was definitely a lot of fun and it didn't cost me a penny. You can see a couple pictures and videos of my rockets launching here (sorry I haven't had a chance to upload them yet). I'll leave it at that for now. Finally, to the part that I wanted to get to in the first place. I have just spent the past 5 or 6 days in South Korea with 18,000 students and staff involved with CCC from around the world. You can visit the website of this conference to see pictures, and video of our speakers' talks, etcetera at http://www.cm2007.net. While at this conference I have literally seen cultures represented from nearly all the nations in the world. I have seen Africans in vibrant robes, ancient Korean musical and dancing performances, and countless other people groups from around the world. I think one of these biggest memories that I will take away from this time in South Korea is the Korean Christians at this conference. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met; they are extremely polite and considerate. But beyond their social kindness, they are the most fervent prayers I have seen in my life. Period. There is no question that these people are talking to someone holy when you hear one them praying behind you. Their devotion to prayer is truly inspiring and humbling, frankly they make American prayer look like whispers to a distant God. This is probably one of the biggest lessons I will take away from this conference, that my prayer life has a lot of room for growth. I want to share something else that God has taught me here while spending time with Him alone, but I think I am going to do it in another entry because this entry is plenty long enough as it is. From here on out I think you can expect frequent updates, though they may not be lengthy like this one because I should have relatively easy internet access in Venezuela. Please, if want leave your thoughts about anything I have said here, click on the link immediately below this entry to do so. I will try to respond quickly if appropriate. Also, expect pictures and video soon.]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/hello-from-tokyo.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/hello-from-tokyo.html Fri, 06 Jul 2007 01:44:06 +0000 So much to say... Once again, it has been a long time since I have written anything on my website, despite my promise (from my last entry) to not let that happen. The only thing I can say is I am someone who has to have information pried out. But I hope this time is different, because I have amazing summer plans that I want to keep you guys informed about. I'll get to the summer plans soon, but I think I should try to look back at this school year and mention some things first. My last post was at the very beginning of the school year, so I'll start there. How about our Bucks?!! What an amazing season we had. Sure it ended sourly, but if you ask me we beat the one team that matters. And of course I was incredibly to witness that amazing victory in person. Although it was sad that I could not photograph the event as much as I wanted because the battery on my camera was accidentally drained over the previous night. To beat 2/3 teams that are ranked number 2nd in the nation in one season is an accomplishment that will be untouched for a long time, I think. Besides football, fall quarter is a time where I had to hit the ground running as a Bible study leader. Fall quarter is when you will meet most of the men that will be in your Bible study for the first time. It's a time when Bible study leaders are given a big stack of contact cards for their target area and sent to go meet with students (usually freshmen), invite them out and if possible to share the gospel with them. This fall quarter was no exception as to how much free time I had to give up to see my contacts reached and to continue to offer/encourage them to come out to Crusade events. But I think this time was well spent, because if someone hadn't taken the time to do this with me, I almost certainly wouldn't be where I am now: immersed in a body of believers. I think Campus Crusade for Christ at OSU is an amazing resource for students (especially freshmen) and I enjoy giving them the opportunity to get involved. This is all I really have to say about fall quarter. I hope to write another post within the next couple days about what the rest of my year has been like. http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/so-much-to-say.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/so-much-to-say.html Tue, 22 May 2007 14:11:51 +0000 Whoa! Six monthes of silence! Not cool!! So I checked in on the website today and saw that 6 full monthes have now gone by since my last post. Saying I apologize does not do it in a situation like this. Unfortunately that is all I can offer. I sincerely hope that this will never repeat itself, because what good is a website or blog if you never update it? With that said, I suppose I will try to fill those of you who are out of my daily circle in on what I have been doing all of this time.
My summer was excellent. I had a laid back job working landscape maintenance for the Sycamore school district (at home in Cincinnati, Ohio) which entailed me trimming about 500 shrubs and moving a lot of mulch. I also got to watch The Price is Right everyday this summer on my lunch break. Another big event this summer for me was the World Cup. All I can say about that is that the World Cup is amazing, especially in HD. My goal while this was taking place was to download every match in high definition and have my own DVD collection of the world cup. Unfortunately this eventually caused my computer to crash after I had downloaded about 30 games. I am still working on getting whatever else is out there.
The end of my summer was crazy-hectic as usual. About a month before school was going to start I was invited on a road trip to Nova Scotia, Canada to visit grandparents of a friend. The drive is 26 hours one way and we only stopped for food and gas. Once we got there, we got settled in and had a pretty relaxed week. In the mournings we would help with general maintenance work around the outside of the house and the rest of the day we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. Sometimes we went out for a hike and to skip rocks at "the cove", or we drove golf balls at an island 200 yards across the sea. We also played a game called Settlers of Catan a lot. And to fill in the rest of the time we either read ot talked. The food was great. Each dinner was made from scratch and we had something different every time. It was certainly a great experience.
When I got home my next project was to begin construction on a set of drawers that would be put under my water bed. I hope to have pictures and a video up that I took to document the ordeal. The video was done on the tail end of an all-nighter I pulled to finish staining and polyurethaning my drawers. I imagine those of you that know me would find it funny. Well that project took up so much of my time that I wasn't able to move into my new house on campus until 2 days before class started! So I am just now to the point where I have gotten settled in and organized.
The school year looks like it will be another great year. Academicly I have a light schedule this quarter with one class on mondays and no class on fridays (7 classes total). This has allowed me to pour into my passion at Ohio State: Campus Crusade for Christ, where I helping to lead a freshmen Bible study in my old dorm, Taylor Tower. So far everything is going great and I can't wait to see what God has instore for us. I also am going to be the webmaster for the Ohio State chapter of the Amaerican Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) whcih shouldn't be too hard.
Well, that's where I stand as of now, so hopefully you feel up-to-date on my life. Oh yeah, and how could I forget, I have season football tickets to what is sure to be a breath-taking season of Buckeye football. Being #1 and having beaten #2 Texas and having a very well ranked opponent from up north to visit us in the last game of the season, this will be one season not soon forgot. Go Bucks!

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/whoa-six-monthes-of-silence-no.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/whoa-six-monthes-of-silence-no.html Tue, 26 Sep 2006 18:14:08 +0000 Life of Recent Well it's been a while since I've done anyhting on the website, so here's an update. Winter quarter flew by and before I knew it it was finals week. I can only imagine how fast spring quarter will go. Finals week was interesting because I had 4 finals over about 36 hours. And me being the ambitious person I am, made a schedule of things to study for the 7 days leading up to the exams. But then the much bigger procrastinator in me came out and I never looked at the schedule or bothered to start studying until the day before my exams! What makes it worse is that I didn't let myself embrace the procrastinator in me so I would tell myself 'okay, just 3 more games [on my xbox] and then I need to start studying'. So instead of spending a couple of days relaxing and intentionally not studying, I spent them in constant limbo between all sorts of little fun things and studying. But it all worked out and I did fine on my finals.
I got a good night of sleep after finals were done and then the next day I packed up my car along with 4 other Ohio State Campus Crusaders and I drove from 10:30 pm - 8:30 am to go to New Orleans for a Campus Crusade for Christ spring break trip. My friend Kyle Davis finished driving and we arrived at our camp in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans at noon. The camp was a warehouse that had cots setup for about a thousand students. We had tent showers, port-a-potties and relief food as ammentities. Monday - Thrursday we drove to assigned houses in New Orleans and worked in a team of about 9 men and women to gut the house. This usually consisted of tearing down all the interior walls and sometimes the ceilling as well. Oh and while we were working we wore respirators and when necessary eye protection. I couldn't believe the scale of devastation that was down there. And even more shocking is how little of the city, outside of the downtown area, has been untouched almost 7 months after the disaster happened. I made an album of pictures taken during the trip here from my friend's digital camera. Here's a day-by-day breakdown for those who want more info:
Day 1) We unloaded the car and then I headed off with another group to help our another camp like ours. We helped pick up trash, serve dinner, move hundreds of unused cots and chairs, among other things. That was about it for work, the rest of the night was spent hanging out with the Ohio State crew.
Day 2) I went along with a group of students from Taylor Tower and other Ohio Staters to church Sunday morning, which turned out to a Methodist church. It was an honor to be there and witness a community of believers trusting the Lord after a catastrophe. Afterwards some us went to downtown New Orleans to sightsee because we were not going to begin working until Monday. We ate on Bourbon Street and met this guy who tied balloons in the streets while he evangelized. He was a cool guy. Oh, and I feel I should mention that the group I was with was 13 Ohio State women. I didn't see it coming, but somebody has do it. And as always, we returned to the camp for the night to spend with the rest of the Ohio State crew.
Day 3) Our first day of actual work on houses. The house my team got had a flood line across it that was about a foot or so from the ceiling. I am not sure if the owners took all their stuff before or after the flood but there was nothing in it except an aquarium and a dish washer (no refrigerator or kitchen sink). In the backyard a giant 60 foot tree had been uprooted, either by the hurricane or flood. There was even flood water in between the two glass panes of the windows.
Day 4) On Tuesday we worked to finish the house by removing the bathroom sink and tub and pulling the nails from the wall studs. When we finished removing all the molded parts of the house all that was left was the exterior walls, the interior wall studs, most of the ceiling, the floor and the toilet.While we were working this man who had lived across the street would come over and talk to us. He had lived in New Orleans his whole life, had lived in that house across the street for 50 some years and was 72 years old if I'm not mistaken. Everytime we talked he would try to give us directions to this place that made "the best roast beef sandwiches in town." The directions went something like "take a right at the end of this street, you will come to city park, turn left when you get through it, go down to the bayou and turn right, follow the bayou and it will be behind a funeral home." We decided after finishing the house at lunch time on Tuesday that we had to try to find the place because this man had raved about it so much. Needless to say we made a lot of u-turns and asked for directions a couple of times along the way, but we found it. It was a great little restaurant and the roast beef sandwich was amazing. The second half of that day we helped out another team who had been assigned a nightmare of a house. It was twice the size of ours, had 4 feet of junk and mud throughout the house and had a backyard and gargage full of junk too. We ended up having a crew of guys put on Tyvek suits to protect us while we removed the wet fiberglass insulation. I believe the team we assisted finished the house by lunch the next day.
Day 5) On Wednesday we were assigned this house that was really nice, much nicer than either of the other 2 houses I had been in. It had nice kitchen cabinets, a nice plaster finish on all of its walls and all of its exterior walls were brick. We removed the kitchen cabinets, kitchen counter, sink and dishwasher and took out a few plaster walls up to a about a foot above the water line, which was about 6 feet from the floor. We finished the house in half a day. We went back to camp and got lunch, which ended up being some kond of rice and Chip Ahoy cookies. We got our final assignment, which ended up being an apartment building with 3 or 4 apartments. The second half of Wednesday we spent tearing down walls. Kyle Davis and I put on Tyvek suits and worked on getting insulation out of the exterior walls and the ceiling.
For dinner we took one bite and decided to eat out. It was white rice served on a hot dog bun. We had been driving past a Church's Chicken to and from our work sites so a group of guys loaded up in my car and we drove out there. It turned out that at around 6 o'clock they were closed. Apparently it is too hard to find workers in the 9th Ward to keep the place open through dinner. So we continued driving down the street and found a Rallies. We got in line at the front of the restaraunt and 50 minutes later got our food. It was definitely better than the volunteer food.
Day 6) On Thursday we got 2 other teams to help us out (a total of 27 people) and we finished the apartment building in a little over half a day. It's amazing what a small army of Buckeyes can do in half a day, whether it'spulverizing some Wolverines or demolishing an apartment building. I had a Tyvek suit on for almost the whole time that day to get the rest of the insulation out. We had a formidable pile of debris on the street when we finished.
Afterwards we showered, and went to downtown New Orleans for some hang out time and dinner. CNN ended up being at the camp when we got back and Anderson Cooper reported live from our camp for his show (he made a blog entry himself about us here entitled "Trading Beer Bongs for Sledgehammers").
Day 7) We left Friday at about 8:30 am and arrived back in Columbus at 11:30 pm to snow! What a bad welcoming back from a spring break trip. Ohio weather gets crazier every year.

I have to say that everytime I spend part of an academic break with Crusade I always get that feeling at the end that many of us have had after a youth convention or retreat where you wish that you could spend your life in a setting like this, living with your Christian friends. I can't believe all the amazing opputunuties Campus Crusade for Christ has provided me with to give my time and effort to the Lord, and the amazing community that I get to experience through it. I know that Crusade has impacted my life in more ways than I am even aware of. It has definitely shown me what an awesome blessing it is to live with others who want nothing but seek and bring glorify to the Lord.

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/life-of-recent.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/life-of-recent.html Sat, 25 Mar 2006 14:18:09 +0000 Facial Hair February So Ohio State's Campus Crusade men have this tradition called "facial hair february" and much to my mother's dismay I decided to participate this year. Here's the aftermath:



What do you think?
And oh yeah, these pictures were taken with my new cell phone! The Sony Ericson W600 is a 1.3 Megapixel digital camera, video camera, MP3 player, radio tuner, among many other things. Pretty sweet.

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/facial-hair-february.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/facial-hair-february.html Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:25:56 +0000 Believing in God... (part 2) [This entry is a continuation of my Believing in God... entry.]
In the previous entry I offered a lot of questions. As I was thinkig then and still am, it seemed that my conception of what it meant to "believe" in the God of the Bible needed refining. At first thought, this concept seems pretty simple: you either believe in something or you don't believe in something. Plain and simple. But as I continued to think this over, I couldn't help but ask again and again why this belief doesn't utterly transform us. So today I decided to do a little study on the word "believe" as used in the New Testament in the NIV. This lead me to a verse that I think really points out the questions I am dealing with. This verse is Mark 9:24
"Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, 'I do believe; help me with my unbelief!' "

The greek word (pisteuĊ) translated "believe" here is the word that is used most often to mean "believe", and it means (as defined by The Strongest NIV Exhaustive Concordance): to believe, put one's faith in, trust, with an implication that actions based on that trust may follow. This isn't too ground breaking, but it's when I looked at the word for "unbelief" that things got a little bit more interesting. This word (apistia) means: unbelief, lack of faith (often with the implication of stubbornly refusing to believe or act in accord with God's will or law). This word is also used in Romans 11:20
"Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith."

So now we have contrasting verses dealing with the idea of unbelief. A man asks Jesus to help him with his unbelief, and Jesus does by granting his request (removing the demons from his son's body). On the other hand, Paul points out to the Gentiles that they have been "grafted" into the Body of Christ because of the unbelief of the Jews. So Jesus in one specific instance aids someone struggling with unbelief while Paul suggests that the Jews are being punished (or at least neglected) for their unbelief. I suspect that in the latter incident the unbelief is due to the Jew's "stubbornly refusing to believe or act in accord with God's will" which probably isn't exhibited in the former passage. But nevertheless there is an interesting idea here. As Mark 9:24 clearly suggests, both belief and unbelief can coexist, they are not mutually exclusive. So there is more to the question of believing than yes or no. There is also: how much so? I think this is definitely where I am at in my walk with the Lord and it is awersome that I found this passage while reflecting on this topic. Because I know that at least part of me believes in Christ as my Lord and Savior. But like I stated in the last entry, I still am not consumed by this belief. It doesn't keep me awake at night. It's something that I try to pursue and reflect on daily, but it is not something that dominates every moment of my life like it should. Like I said before, some part of me must doubt that the God of the Bible exists or else I would be consumed by that belief. So like the man in Mark 9:24 I am asking God to "help me with my unbelief!" I feel that it is only when I overcome my unbelief that I will live a life that is consistent with my belief in the God of the Bible. Finally, returning to Romans 11:20, it is important to note that this verse is not the end of the story here. Paul continues in verses 22-23 as follows
"Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you provided that you continue in his kindeness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again."

So God does not hang those out to dry who fall into stubborn unbelief, but he does not act kindly to them either. I think that is all I have to say for now about these passages. Does any one else want to offer another interpretation to these passages?

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/believing-in-god-part-2-1.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/believing-in-god-part-2-1.html Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:36:21 +0000 Believing in God... For about 6 months now I have been chewing on a collection of thoughts, and I have not yet been able to draw a whole lot of answers or conclusions from them. But I would still like to share these ponderings. I think the best way to convey my thoughts to you is to share a "journal" entry I made during Christmas Conference this year. I used the term journal in quotes because I really do not have a legitimate journal, but every once in a while when I have a lot of thoughts in my head I like to try to sit down and put them down on paper and get a clearer picture of what exactly is going on in my head. So here it is:

....I feel like the root of all my troubles in my walk with the Lord is that part of me must doubt his existence [a bold statement, but keep reading]. Because I know, at least basically, who God claims to be. I know most of the stories God has given [us in the Bible], or I at least have heard most of them. But I feel now that I am confused about what it means to believe these things. I have written down these questions before but I still feel they are important to write down. If God really is who he says he is, and he really cares for us as much as he says, and he really personified his self to us to exemplify Himself to us perfectly and he really bore the penalty of my sin, wouldn't anyone who really believes these things be literally insane with joy? I would think that someone who truly believes this would only find sleep in pure exhaustion due to their relentless and whole hearted proclamation of the gospel. How can people who honestly call themselves Christians blend in so well with the rest of the world? If these truths that God has given us are really true, how can we Christians live lives that have any normalcy? Why are we not utterly transformed by these basic beliefs into souls that can think of nothing but proclaiming the gospel? How can we even fathom something as crazy as a selfish thing? How does this enormous disconnect between reality and the seemingly necessary reality come to be?

Whoa! These are challenging thoughts! And not only that, but they are kind of disturbing too because how many Christians do any of us know who exhibit as deep a passion for the gospel as was described above? Does this mean that the rest of us are in some sense doubting that the God of the Bible exists? I honestly believe that if you believe fully in the God of the Bible, then you have no option but to be completely consumed by your belief. So if we are not utterly consumed in our belief, doesn't this suggest that we are in some sense doubting God to be the God as described in the Bible? This isn't to say that we doubt God's existence completely (making us agnostics), but that our own personal God must be a very limited and small God compared to the God described in the Bible. There seems to be absolutely no room for compromising your belief, you are either all-out for the God of the Bible or this God must not exist. So why is it that seemingly about 99% of Christians sit on the fence with this question. Very few of us are consumed by our belief in the God of the Bible... it is not what drives us day in and day out. Some of us spend time with him daily and read his word often but if you looked at the subject of our thoughts throughout a normal day, God would not be there most of the time. Why? As I have elaborated with some of my friends, we are sitting on the most amazing news we could ever conceive! The story of God in the Bible is more dramatic than any soap opera we have ever watched, and yet we some how come to view this as a mundane story. It should blow our minds whenever we reflect on our basic beliefs! I want to come back to the series of questions above: how do we as Christians manage to live pretty normal lives? How can we take our minds off of something so amazing and pursue so many other insignificant things? Why are we not insane with joy to believe in something so incredible? The only thing I can come up with is that our God is a very small God... And the other thing that baffles me is that when we come to sit and reflect on these things, about how great our God actually is, that we will soon be marginalizing him again. I am struggling to understand why we choose to think about anything else.

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/believing-in-god.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/believing-in-god.html Wed, 04 Jan 2006 19:14:05 +0000 Evolution and Intelligent Design in the News ScienceAndSociety
Above is a blog entry from an ABC News journalist reporting on, among other things, the recent ruling that a Pennsylvania court gave in response to a public school attempting to require the the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID) as an alternative theory to evolution. This topic of ID and evolution is something I think I am well informed about, and I have to admit that I am a little saddened by this story. Evolution is taught without question in our schools today despite the basic fact that it teaches us that we came from nothing and came through the most incomprehensible odds that we can imagine to get us to the modern age. ID on the other hand makes a much more logical assertion (atleast it is more logical in my book) that we did not come from nothing, but from a creator. I realize that this theory has religious implications, but I also believe that you are very naive to think that macroevolution does not. It certainly rules out the Judeo-Christian conception of God that many Americans adhere to. I realize that teaching ID in public schools is tricky, because it could be used to point to a particular religion, but there are valid objections to macroevolution that ID can offer explanations to. I do not see why the mentioning of an alternate theory in classrooms is being met with such resistance by our government.

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/evolution-and-intelligent-desi.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/evolution-and-intelligent-desi.html Wed, 21 Dec 2005 11:01:48 +0000 Done! I just finshed my last class of the year, and I am kind of speechless. I all I know is that for better or worse it is now history. I hope that next year I will be able to conduct my studies outside the hours of 3 am - 7 am! I pulled entirely way too many all-nighters (I think I might have been somewhere around 8 this quarter) and who knows how many days that I went to bed this quarter during or after the sunrise. All I know is I am going to have somewhere around 27 days off for Christamas break and I will be able to get all the sleep I want. Amazing!

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/done.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/done.html Wed, 07 Dec 2005 11:40:19 +0000 In a word: Calvinism This entry will probably contain more questions than answers... It has been inspired by a discussion I just finished with someone who has recently come to embrace Calvinism. I have never had a deep discussion before with someone who holds to the principles of Calvinism, specifically predestination. It is something that I have occasionally glanced on and pondered about from time to time, but never deeply considered. In this discussion a million questions have crossed my mind, but let me start from the beginning.

First of all I will state that Calvinism adheres to the belief that all of our actions are predestined. That is to say that every perceived choice in our life is made because that choice must be the one made, all other choices that hypothetically exist could never actually be acted upon. The person I discussed this with explained that this stems from the fact that God does not change, including His desires. Next, and this is where I begin to falter, he explained that all our desires are initiated by God. God could instill desires in our hearts directly, or He could instill them through our interaction with our environment. Whatever we feel at the time can eventually be traced back to God! That is quite a big pill to swallow! And the rest easily follows from there. At time that we make a decision, we make that decision based upon our own feelings and desires at the time, and this is the one and only thing we base our decisions on. Thus, our decisions in life come from God and God only! Whoa!!!!

One of the biggest questions that occurred to me after chewing on this for a little while was why did Adam and Eve take bites from the apple? Why would God have them disobey Himself? It seems absurd to me that God would have us choose to sin. In a way, this seems to depict God as a cat who is toying with the mouse. God calls us to obey and love Him, yet He places desires in our hearts to choose to disobey Him. This is a giant oxymoron that I can't get over. In addition, how can God hold us accountable for our actions? If I go out and stab somebody to death, all I have to do is explain that my decision to choose to kill the person was due to God's will insistence on me to do so. Having said all this, speaking from a philosophical/theological point of view I haven't disproven his argument; I have only demonstrated some absurdities that I see if I accept the point of view.

His argument seems to hold some legitimacy as long as you accept the premise that God is the creator of us and our universe. Since God set everything into motion, does that mean Adam's desires were wholly set into motion by God as well? As I was thinking these things through, it wasn't my goal to disprove his point of view as a Calvinist, but in order to determine if these things were true I was playing a devil's advocate role. So my first objection to this was that just because God set everything into motion, it does not mean the He set everything into motion to yield his will. In other words God placed some ambiguity into the world which would release the world from predestination. It would allow some things to unfold on their own, basically by chance. The person I was discussing this with then asked if this meant that God choose to limit His sovereignty, to limit His control over the world. I believe that God would not have been limiting His power over the world, but that he was in effect limiting its expression. God chose not to fully express His power or sovereignty. Why would God do this? An analogy that I came up with was the following. Say I was a good basketball player, hypothetically of course, and that I was playing a little one on one with someone that was really bad. I would probably decide to not use all of my ability to play well so we could both enjoy the game and have fun. I would be choosing not to fully express myself for a greater good. We see that God has at times done this as well in the Bible. The greatest example is His own personification through Jesus Christ. He limited Himself to the human form. The question becomes would God limit his expression this sense. It certainly isn't necessary that he do so.

First I need to mention another common premise among Christians that we accepted. God's ultimate purpose in creating us and our world was to bring glory to Himself. Having said that, I was inclined to believe that God would in fact limit His power expressed in our world to allow us to have free will. This in turn would allow us to freely choose God, and any glory that we bring Him would be somehow more valuable. If something must glorify you, how uplifting is it really? Technically you are still being glorified, but it seems so much more valuable to be glorified by someone who doesn't have, but decide to anyway. But I suppose this is a weak point in my argument, because it completely based on my own feelings. It isn't logical that glory received unnecessarily is more valuable than glory received otherwise. Also, this person would argue that the person who is unnecessarily deciding to give glory would actually be doing it necessarily. They are actually glorifying because they desire to, and that desire eventually comes from God and nothing else.

So it seems that both a Calvinist and its opens disagree on the means, but not the end. God could choose to limit Himself if He felt that it would bring Him greater glory, or he could choose to fully express His power and forcibly bring about the most glory. So the important question is: is glory that is forced valuable? As I answered previously, logically the answer is yes, but to me personally the answer is no. Which answer is more important? I don't know. I want to keep myself up in the air about this because I can tell that my friend has reached this decision after much prayer and deliberation. This is something that I will definitely be praying wisdom about.

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/in-a-word-calvinism.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/in-a-word-calvinism.html Thu, 01 Dec 2005 01:09:21 +0000 Where is Wildwood? So where is Wildwood, New Jesey any way? (denoted by red star in map)



Derived from this mapquest map

The Official Wildwood Summer Project Website

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/where-is-wilwood.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/where-is-wilwood.html Fri, 18 Nov 2005 17:37:44 +0000 A Response to Suffering [In response to answering the suffering in the world]:
"It's Jesus himself. It's not a bunch of words, it's the Word. It's not a tightly woven philosophical argument; it's a person. The person. The answer to suffering cannot just be an abstract idea, because this isn't an abstract idea; it's a personal issue. It requires a personal response. The answer must be someone, not just something, because the issue involves someone-- God, where are you?.... Jesus is there, sitting beside us in the lowest places of our lives. Are we broken? He was broken, like bread, for us. Are we despised? He was despised and rejected of men. Do we cry out that we can't take anymore? He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Do people betray us? He was sold out himself. Are our tenderest relationships broken? He too loved and was rejected. Do people turn from us? They hid their faces from him as from a leper. Does he descend into all our hells? Yes, he does. From the depths of a Nazi death camp, Corrie ten Boom wrote: 'No matter how deep our darkness, he is deeper still.' He not only rose fom the dead, he changed the meaning of death and therefore of all the little deaths-- the sufferings that anticipate death and make up parts of it. He is gassed in Auschwitz. He is sneered at in Soweto. He is mocked in Northern Ireland. He is enslaved in the Sudan. He's the one we love to hate, yet to us he has chosen to return love. Every tear we shed becomes his tear. He may not wipe them away yet, but he will.... In the end, God has only given us partial explanations.... Maybe that's because he saw that a better explanation wouldn't have been good for us. I don't know why. As a philosopher, I'm obviously curious. Humanly, I wish he had given us more information.... But he knew Jesus was more than an explanation. He's what we really need. If your friend is sick and dying, the most important thing he wants is not an explanation; he wants you to sit with him. He's terrified of being alone more than anything else. So God has not left us alone. And for that, I love him."
Peter John Kreeft, Ph.D (quotation taken from The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel)

]]> http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/a-response-to-suffering.html http://www.chrisraper.net/thoughts/a-response-to-suffering.html Fri, 18 Nov 2005 17:30:21 +0000