What's the Big Idea?!

*Disclaimer*
WARNING: This post may or may not contain material involving me in a restroom setting. If you do not wish to read such material, please kindly skip this entry and move on to the next (or move on with your life, whichever is most applicable). This post also may or may not be humorous...

*End Disclaimer*

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So there i was sitting on the John at the Menlo Park Public Library contemplating the meaning of life and science. It had been a pretty good day so far, things running as smoothly as can be expected during days like these. As i was, uh, lightening my load, i heard the bathroom door squeak open. Footsteps. To my horror i knew that those footsteps and the person attached to them were headed straight for the stall door! Quick as lighting i wondered if i had remembered to bolt the door properly at the exact moment the former realization popped into my brain and only seconds before said person attempted to open said stall door.

*whew* Fortunately i had remembered.


♪♪* Sploosh! *♪♪


And only seconds after that as i sat there finishing up the job, i immediately wondered how horrible, how completely terrifying it would have been if i had forgotten. Mystery Man would have seen me naked on the Crapper. There would have been an awkward verbal altercation. What would have been the best way to fend him off? Shout some obscenity? Something along the lines of "Hey!" or the probably too-polite "Excuse me!" even though he would have been the one needing to ask to be excused (funny how our language gets twisted around like that, isn't it?)?

I suppose i subconsciously decided that the best response would have been, "Hey! What's the Big Idea?!" probably because it's in a movie someplace or it just sounds so classic and great in my mind's ear. Which got me wondering...

What is the Big Idea? Who ever thought of saying that in the first place? Was there some Big Idea which everyone at some given point in the history of language and communication knew about and referenced from time to time and which eventually morphed and came to be widely used as an expression of indignation and mild anger? Is this Big Idea still accessible, knowable, quantifiable? COULD IT UNLOCK THE MYSTERIES OF THE FABRIC OF EXISTENCE??!?!?!!!!!!!

Perhaps the world may never know. Some brief research on "the internet" did not yield any immediate results. But folks, perhaps the Biggest Idea yet in the fabric of this man's existence has been this very realization that maybe no one knows where this expression originated and that perhaps with a little bit of concentrated effort, and perhaps some help from magic and science, we may yet again re-discover...

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*******[drum roll!!!]*******

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THE BIG IDEA.

a dumb move

So presently i'm typing at a library computer (thank the Lord for this, at least!)

Here's why:

As usually on Wednesdays, i went to play basketball and brought my usual stuff with me (next to nothing). Unfortunately, i neglected to bring my house key with me. Thus, i've locked myself out of the house until Kirsten gets home (4pm i hope), i have no wallet, no money, no library ID card, and it's cold outside. I told my sob story to the lady at the front desk in an attempt to get my library ID number to at least be able to be somewhat productive on the library computers until Kirsten gets home. Of course she needed a photo ID to do so...which i didn't have! Fortunately, she was nice enough to give me One American Dollar to buy a day pass for the internet. Yay!

So, since it's cold outside and i've been listening to this song lately, you get a snipet of Waterdeep lyrics.

"Jesus, I'm a sucker, I wish I believed less of the lies
Did everything I thought I knew turn out to be true?
'Cause baby boys and little toys are all that I see anymore
Will somebody close the door?
'Cause it's cold outside"

Of course the baby boys part doesn't apply to me yet...

I'd like to post more lyrics, but the compy is about to kick me off and i'm afraid of losing my short blurb here when it does.

See you soon.

*salutes*

Breakin' the Law

Not too long ago i heard a man say, "The Law is like gravity. You don't break the Law, the Law breaks you."

Of course he wasn't talking about martial law or civil law, but God's Law. In addition, this guy took the analogy further to say that the Law actually sets one free, instead of being a set of restrictive or inhibitive rules. Now the Law certainly inhibits us and restricts us from doing certain things, but, perhaps counterintuitively, this is actually liberating.
Here is why: by the force of gravity, we are able to move. We can walk around, jump up in the air, run, skateboard, play basketball, drive to work, bike to school, etcetera etcetera all with the confidence that we won't fly off into space or that if we are temporarily suspended in the air that we will inevitably fall back to the earth; our feet will hit the pavement again. However, if we try to jump off a four-story building or a bridge, we will feel the negative effects of gravity (i.e. we will probably get hurt or die). The law of gravity, in this case, hasn't done anything wrong or differently, we have just behaved differently in relation to it.

Why should we act any differently toward God's Law? Whether or not the law of gravity is perfect, God's Law is. He "lays down the Law", so to speak, for our best interests and protection. He knows that we don't know what's best for ourselves, even though we think we do. It is like a baby trying to crawl across a hot grate and a parent repeatedly keeping them from doing so even though the baby whines, pouts, and still tries with all its might to crawl across that thing. It doesn't know that in keeping the law "don't crawl on something that will burn you" is actually in its best interest. (This example is flawed, of course, because God does not physically prevent us from breaking the Law, but gives us the choice as to whether we will keep the Law or not.) In another example, if a husband and a wife remain faithful to on another, they are free to love each other without fear of injury--the husband will not feel hurt when they are intimate with one another, because the wife cares for him only. Likewise, the wife will not be jealous, because the husband has eyes for her alone. When they keep the laws of marital faithfulness, they are able to freely love one another.

Nevertheless, when we slam ourselves against the Law, it breaks us. The Law is perfect; it cannot be broken. Fortunately for us, the Law alone is not the harbinger of salvation:

"23 Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. 24 So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. 25 Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law." (Galatians 3)

"8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, 9 not by works so that no one may boast." The passage continues to say, "10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2)

Here we see that we are saved from the stairway to heaven aspect of works into the joy of doing good works for God--we become his living, moving, breathing, working masterpieces.

We still have the Law, yes (Jesus said not the least stroke of a pen will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished [Matthew 5 Luke 16]), but we are now granted pardon for the parts of the Law we have broken and the parts of the Law we will break again. It's not that we ought to continue breaking the Law just so God can have mercy on us, but eventually God wants us to be able to be keepers of the spirit of the Law.

(Übrigens, the Law also tells many things we SHOULD do, not just we ought not do! Also, as i learned during this whole "aha" moment, the Law, (in this case the Ten Commandments) do not begin with "thou shalt not", but rather with "I AM"!)

That first time we say "yes" to Him, he sends His angels concerning us. In the famed showdown between The Christ and The Accuser, Satan quotes Scripture to Jesus from the Psalms, urging him to cast Himself off the highest point of the temple in the holy city: 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' Jesus responds with Scripture, this time from Deuteronomy 6, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." Jesus calls Satan on his bluff, as he obviously has taken the verse out of context (look at Psalm 91 in its entirety, it's quite beautiful!), but what a magnificent picture these words portray of how God will treat us if we make Him our dwelling, if we seek refuge in Him!

Finally, i'll leave you with a cool image i found. Take this shield with you! Keep the Law, break the lawbreaker in you.

On Basketball

Lately i have been playing basketball at a community gym in Menlo Park on Mondays and Wednesdays. This is great because it gets me in shape (i hope), gets me outside (and inside), and it's fun!

Most of the guys i play with work for SRI International, which is a local research institute. Lots of...science? At least one of the guys is a security guard there. So maybe for him working for SRI is the science of safety. Or maybe ass-kicking.

I like basketball because it reminds me of my childhood. And it connects me with my roots. My dad used to play the sport, and perhaps other forebearers of mine, too. When i was growing up, we had a basketball hoop out on the front driveway and we'd play games after school or work and sometimes on weekends. Of course the "cooler" sport of skateboarding at some point took over these play times at least in part, but i have come to realize that while skateboarding is, in fact, cool, the reasons i thought that it was cool were largely affected by Swill Merchants. Still, i have memories of playing into the evening hours and having to constantly try to get the sensor light to stay on after it got dark. We would mostly play one-on-one or two-on-one (Travis and Aaron vs. Dad OR Travis vs. Aaron OR Dad vs. Aaron OR Brian and Travis vs. Aaron) or some other combination of players, usually neighbors and friends. We would sometimes play HORSE (a game i was recently reminded of while playing darts with Mr. Kyle Warner in his abode), but usually it was just first to X amount of points, you have to win by two. And, whenever possible, always end on a swish.

I also like basketball because, as i have recently realized, it is very American. Whether my degree of patriotism be high or low, i am proud of this North American creation. Peach baskets. James Naismith.

According to Wikipedia:
"Basketball, netball, dodgeball, volleyball, and lacrosse are the only ball games which have been identified as being invented by North Americans. Other ball games, such as baseball and Canadian football, have Commonwealth of Nations, European, Asian or African connections."

Did you read that?! Baseball! Ha! Some "great American pastime"! (all you baseball fans: this is not a jab!)

Of course there are sides to basketball which i don't like so much, but i guess they're inherent in any sport and life in general: trash talking and excessive cursing; headaches (for me if i exercise too hard for too long); exclusion or humiliation of players; fights, usually about pointless stuff like, "FOUL!!" "What?!". I suppose i disdained these aspects of Ultimate Frisbee with the Frisbee Takes a Weekend crowd as well.

In college i also played basketball from time to time, mostly on the one-night-a-week intervarsity teams. These were less like intervarsity teams and more like, "lets all go to open gym basketball and play some games...and maybe have a tournament at the end". This was great when it was on, but unfortunately only for part of the year. The rest of the year was overtaken by volleyball, which i guess i like ok, but not as much. Basketball drove me to show up, not volleyball.

And what's more, Basketball drew me to watch the games, not the NBA. Basketball drove me to watch the playoffs, not the hype nor the oft-drug-popping professional babies. In short, i love the game, not the spectacle. I could be totally absorbed in the game and not notice one bit what's going on around me, but sit me in front of a television set to watch a game and i will inevitably get bored. A live game will certainly keep my attention and excitement much better, but ultimately i want to play.












Comic Bonus!