Well, their argument goes something like this. Jesus demands that we be perfect like God in heaven is perfect. Jesus wouldn't ask his disciples to do something they couldn't or wouldn't pull off. Therefore you can be perfect like God is perfect. Sounds reasonable enough. So lets look at the assumption they are making about Jesus. Is Jesus wouldn't ask his disciples to do something they couldn't or wouldn't be able to do. Assuming this is true, then why did Jesus ask his disciples to DAILY pray for the forgiveness of their sins in the Lords Prayer.

So which is it? Is it that they can be perfect and then have no need for the petition in the Lords Prayer asking for forgiveness? Or is it that Jesus wasn't serious about either being perfect or asking for forgiveness? Perhaps Jesus just meant be complete; no need to be perfect. This isn't much hope either. There isn't a single day I feel like I'm complete.

Perhaps these two go hand in hand. Perhaps Jesus is saying that we SHOULD be perfect as God in heaven is perfect and that daily we SHOULD ask for forgiveness when we are not perfect. To me this sounds like a reasonable interpretation of these two verses.

Image by Iulian Nistea

On my travels around Southern California I was listening to something and had the following thoughts that seemed weird. It seems that many churches today are spending a lot of time and effort dividing their congregations into separate groups. They have the woman's group over here, and the men's group over there. The blue collar workers have their own group, and the professional office workers get their own group as well. If the church is large enough the groups get split up even more. Some here and some there.   

Now at these same churches there is another activity that is going on. They are taking as many different people

and grouping them together. They are taking women and adding them to the men. They are making men pastors. They are taking women and making them pastors.

They are ignoring the fact that the bible calls for no Jews or Greeks, Free or Slave, or male or female in regards to our standing with in the community of believers. Then they decide to ignore the fact that the bible calls for pastors to be men of good character.

Strange how they want it both ways just as long as it's not the way the bible tells us it should be.

Image by: Wonderlane

"The old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise; who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever." Martin Luther

"Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done..." C.S. Lewis

After my time at The One Ring, I started my personal blog which mixed my love for technology, art, and religion.  However as time has gone by, I’ve decided that I will split those three areas out into separate blogs that can be consumed individually or corporately.  I plan on making Urban Fish my blog about religious things I find important.  I plan on making tschopp.net the place where I will post all my stuff.  Finally I need to come up with a blog that will be the home for all my technology related posts.

In the past I have used the breadth of my interests as an excuse not to post anything, I hope that this division will encourage me to continue to post things on all three areas that I am interested in.

1. A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

• The Narrative fallacy: creating a story post-hoc to create an identifiable cause for a given event.
• The Ludic fallacy: believing that the structured randomness found in games resembles the unstructured randomness found in life
• The Statistical regress fallacy: believing that the probability of future events is predictable by examining occurrences of past events.

The fallacy I want to concentrate on is the narrative fallacy. What fascinates me the most about this is that religions use Narrative to communicate their ideas. Christianity, the religion I feel is true, even goes to the point of stating that the only way that God communicates to people today is mediated via the Bible, a large collection of stories. When we are told to communicate the Gospel, we are told to tell a story. This story is summed up as follows: The creator of the universe entered reality as a human born of a woman in a small town at the center of the known world. He lived a short life, and then was put to death. Three days later he was alive again. When he was alive he claimed that those be swore fealty to Him as Lord would be able to give Him all the bad things they had done in life and have them killed as he was killed. They would also receive the life he received after being dead for three days.

I guess what fascinates me the most is that Taleb tells us that this narrative fallacy is one of the strongest and easiest fallacies for us to fall into. How is it that one of our weakest points in our intellectual armor is also one of the most critical. The book of Romans calls for us to renew our minds. We are called to be crafty as serpents. So we are called as Christians to be ready for this type of post-hoc fallacy.

I guess we can take this in several different directions. The first is that narrative is the mediated way God communicates, therefore it's not wholly evil. Another direction is that narrative is definitely screwed up I wonder what it looked like before the fall. I also wonder if this fallacy is becoming more and more common as time passes.

During last week's Life Light I overheard some of you talking about those who feel they do not need the church -- the "assembly of believers". That attitude seems to be increasing in the United States. You can do everything on the "internet" --

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/03/13/online.confessions/index.html

Here is my response. I'm posting it here as I would like to post all my rather lengthy and perhaps thoughtful stuff here.

I am sorry for the length of this email. I felt I should respond as I was the one who brought this up. Having the ability to write something without the limitations of paper tends to make me very verbose. I have edited several rather large tangents out of this diatribe against the idea of virtual churches. As with most new things in the Church, I think they only point to the novelty of mans ability to create new ways to sin and the churches (the building, not the bride) willingness to scratch the itch.

My first thoughts on reading the article is the first letter to the Corinthians. Paul says that when they have gathered together and that he Paul is with them in spirit they should hand the man over to Satan who has become proud in his sexual sins. Paul also states that he is with the community of believers in spirit. So we do have an example of the lack of the remission of sins due to some form of confession remotely from the apostolic fathers as recorded in the New Testament. In each case that I can think of, including where the Christ lays outs the Office of the Keys, distance doesn't seem to be a problem.

However, proximity also seems to be important. Paul asks for the community in Corinth to gather together. Jesus tells us that we can bind and absolve sins here on earth and that he will honor that in heaven.

I guess I will tend to lean away from the idea of a virtual church because online communities tends to get gnostic. I use to run the largest Tolkien community on the Internet. At our height we have 50,000 - 75,000 active participants. From that experience I know a virtual community online can be good. They have many strengths and are the source of much blessing. But there are weaknesses to an online community. They tend to emphasize their strengths. The ability to focus on the mind and being virtually present. This means the group will start to deny the physical in favor of the mind and the virtual. This is the exact same problem that the gnostics championed as one of the blessings of their philosophy.

Being a part of a community is touching, tasting, breathing, crying, and in the end living together. The creator of the universe has blessed us with many amazing blessings including a mind that can come up with things like computers and email and virtual communities online. But that same creator did not enter cyberspace to talk to us. He didn't send us an email. He didn't touch the heavens and have the clouds form the letters "I LOVE YOU." No, he entered reality as a messy, dirty, smelly, Human. The creator liked matter so much that creator and creation became bound up in reality in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

In this cases we should follow the example of our God. How did he communicate our forgiveness to us. When Adam and Eve had sinned, e came to them in the cool of the evening. From that point forward, when God came, it was mediated through the medium of prophets, priests, and kings. Finally when the time was right our God entered reality, and when it was all done he yelled "It is finished" for all to hear. And before He left he charged his followers to tell others what they had witnessed.

No our God entered reality. No more mediation is needed. No more prophets, priests, or kings. No need to approach a mountain on fire, or a building or tent filled with the blood. And now that we are this free isn't it -so- human to say. "I don't like my freedom. It's scary. I need my church experience mediated with a computer screen. I need my experience with my fellow believers mediated by the television screen. I need my experience with God's forgiveness to be mediated through forms of entertainment like a movie. I believe in the communion of the saints like the creed says, but please, I need that experience mediated; the physical reality of the connection between other believers is too much." These are all the sayings of a sinful man returning to the same attitudes he had before he experienced God.

I suppose I could keep ranting about this, I agree there are good things about having the ability to remotely confess. Sins are hard to confront. It's easier to leave a note on a car and say "Sorry I ran into you. Here is my insurance information." than it is to stop and confront the person you ran into. But the absolution of sins needs to be very real and felt, and seeing the words "I absolve you" scroll across the screen isn't as real as the confessor/pastor saying it; and it's definitely not as real as the dying God saying "Today you will be with me in Paradise."

And therefore I observe, that the Will (without any metaphysical refining) is, That by which the mind chooses any thing. The faculty of the will, is that power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice. – Jonathan Edwards in Freedom of the Will

Did you eat breakfast this morning?  How about Lunch?  What did you do this weekend?  What choices did you make over the long weekend?  Did you make any choices or did you just go along with what you have always done? 

Right now it’s getting close to 5:00pm and I am hungry.  I have a cup of tea I’m sipping, and I have not had solid food in almost 20 hours.  Sitting a couple desks down from me is a full spread of sandwiches from Togo's.  Back the other direction is a table with a large jar of smoky roasted almonds, one of my favorite snacks.  I know where there is a cache of Milky Ways and a candy jar full of Kisses.  I’m sure if I spent some time looking around the office, I would find the conference rooms with food from Baja Fresh, Trendy Thai, Pickup Sticks, or Panera. 

But I’m not eating.  My stomach is grumbling a bit.  But I am choosing not to eat.  Every time I walk past a large spread of food here at work I am reminded of my choice.  I choose not to eat. 

During this Lenten season, I have chosen to fast.  I only told an individual or two at work about the fast, but it soon got out to the whole group.  They all now know that I was fasting for 40 day (but not 40 nights).  One of the questions that has been asked boils down to:  “Isn’t it hard to fast, how can you do it?”  This question takes many forms, but it has been asked so many times that I think I will formulate a response that reduces my experiences to some general advice about what I have learned.

From the quote above we can see that Jonathan Edwards, in Freedom of the Will, defines the will as the mind choosing.  This fast has made me start to question what it means to choose.  What is free will.  I am now of the opinion that man has a lot of freedom, but many times he choose not to exercise that freedom. 

I am free to eat.  I gain nothing in heaven or here on earth for not eating.  Perhaps I’ll be healthier.  Perhaps I’ll learn some lesson about my life.  But in the end there is very little ‘value’ in my fast.  It is a choice I make freely.  The value for me is that I chose it.  I chose to act differently.

How many times do we run through life and we don’t choose.  We have freedom to eat whatever we want, but we choose to let the smells of McDonald’s fries choose our meal.  How many times do we let advertising of a product make a choice for us.  Each time I walk past a spread of food here at work, I smell the aroma of those foods.  It calls to me.  The voice reminds me of other voices I hear; the voices that call to me and tempt me to other things, more horrible things. But every time I choose not to eat the food, I make a choice. This leads me to ask how many times do I truly have my mind choose for me. How many times do I truly use my free will?

I can ask these questions about many areas in my life, but we are adults. Let’s make these questions count.  How many times do I actively choose to do good instead of evil.  How many times do I choose to be kind, instead of cruel?  How many times am I just going with the flow of the culture or the social groups around us? How many times do I do just those things that I have always done? How many times do I actually think about each of my actions? Many of us at this point some will probably say the following:

“Well, I’m not so good at this.  I need to work at this.  I need to get better at this.  I’m glad you brought this up.  Now lets see; I’m going to choose to do a better job at choosing things in my lfe.  I’m going to be different than all those other people.  I need work, but I’m not as bad as those other people.  I am no longer going to be a sheep, I’m not going to be like all those other sheep out there.  They just follow each other into stupidity and ignorance.  They do all sorts of evil and wrong.”

Can you hear that voice in your head? No? Wait until you drive to work tomorrow and you go the same way you have always gone without thinking. Wait until you eat the same thing you ate last week for dinner. Wait until you don’t make a choice and you just go along with the way things always were. You will then be a failure. That is when you will hear the voice. It will say, it’s not so bad, you did so good up until now. You are not as bad as some other people who fail all the time. You choose to do two good things this week. You have gotten one nagging habit under control. Well to that voice I have the following to say.

"Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."  Jesus as recorded in Luke 18:10–14

What is that voice in your head saying now?  How do you respond to that voice?

This parable was recorded as occuring when Jesus was heading down to Jeruselem for the last time.  Every step along the way, Jesus chose.  He chose as no man before him or since him chose.  He chose becuase he knew what was going to happen.  He chose, even though he knew the outcome.  Here is the point of all this writing.  Many times we don’t use our free will.  When we do, many times, we choose things we later regret.  But someone else has already chosen.  He chose to die.  In his death he took on all the wrong choices we made and gave us all the right choices. 

In this lenten time remeber that you have a choice.  Remeber the choices that have already been made.

I have done this fast once before and combined it with a one and a half mile walk because Jamba Juice was that far from work.  This year Jamba juice is much further from work, so I will have to go out of my way to do the walking.

So far everything seems to be working great.  I will post more later this week about how the process is going.

The talk is worth listening to, as many of their seminars are.  Alex left me with a couple ideas I want to look into further.

As a child we all use to play the 20 questions game, and we are all very familiar with the first 3 questions.  Is it an Animal?  It is an Mineral?  Is it a Plant?  Then we would proceed to ask 20 questions, each time trying to further narrow down the selection until we were able to say what the person was thinking of.  This categorization if formalized is a taxonomy. 

The first idea surrounds taxonomy.  It turns out that when sociologists and anthropologists look at different societies around the world they break their world into different taxonomies.  This isn’t all that weird.  The weird part is that universally these taxonomies are only 5 or sometimes 6 levels deep.  There really is no good answer as to why this is the case. 

There are several guesses.  One has to do with the depth of families; you, your children, Your parents, and your grandparents.  If you count up the generations, you get 5.   If you add you children’s children, then get 6.  The idea then goes that this is culturally conditioned into us and the way that we see the world.  Eventually those individuals who are predisposed genetically to accept this fact become more successful in reproducing and the “idea” is carried forward via genetics and culture.

That’s an interesting idea, but also controversial even among evolutionary biologists.  I think the idea above is interesting, but it is just as scientifically mythological as other anthropological mythologies.  As a religious person I would love to have seen Adam apply the first Taxonomy. 

Next Ideas to Think About:  The House of Memories