Florida

Here are some photos from my recent family vacation. The first two were taken at a cemetery in St. Augustine; the rest are from the condo we stayed in.

Rebel Rebel

It’s not that I haven’t been writing, or even that I haven’t been writing very much; I’ve just been writing things that are less interesting than all the wonderful content that so consistently appears in this weblog. I’ve been writing for school. I wrote a paper on Hamlet last week—about seven pages—and since it was an English paper, it was particularly important that the organization, grammar, word choice, and other such technical aspects be as close to flawless as I could get them. That took up a lot of the time I would otherwise use to post updates on here. I also spent some time in Washington D.C. the previous weekend for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which is the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the U.S. I had saw some good speakers—most notably Wayne LaPierre, the CEO and Executive Vice President of the NRA, as well as the infamous Newt Gingrich—and I did some sightseeing and pointless wandering throughout the nation’s capitol. The Lincoln Monument is especially breathtaking around midnight, by the way.

As interesting and worthwhile as any of the seminars I attended or pieces of information I gained was the effect that being in a stuffy, upscale, politically-minded environment for a few days at a time had on me, though. A lot of kids—the ones who attended the conference with me, for example—really eat that sort of thing up. They enjoy the pretentious, superficial side of the political realm because they see it as a social activity. I don’t. As far as I’m concerned, a good share of the people who are involved in this stuff, from the teenagers who attend it to the keynote speakers (e.g. Ann Coulter), are bland, pretentious, and in many ways, ignorant individuals. They have very little sense of culture of any sort; they don’t take any interest in music, or in good books (Slander, anyone?), or in film apart its capacity for mindless entertainment, and they have absolutely awful senses of humor. They’re not interested in philosophy or psychology or art of any sort or even in real politics (by which I mean the principles of governing)—they’re shallow. They’re usually good, moral people overall, and most of them are at least reasonably intelligent. I tend to get along with them without any major problems, but I don’t want to spend my entire career trying to get ahead with people like that and interacting in the environments in which they thrive.

This truth was made especially clear to me on Friday night of the conference. A few of the girls from the Hillsdale group and I took a subway to a lower-rent area of D.C. than the one our hotel was in with the purpose of finding dinner. There was a burger place there called “Five Guys” which had a prominent In-N-Out Burger feel to it, so we hit that one up. The food was excellent, and the environment was much more relaxed than what I’d recently become acclimatized to. The release in tension was absolutely wonderful; the conversation flowed better, there wasn’t anybody around whom we had to look good for, and I felt like I was back where I belonged. Afterward we went to the Urban Outfitters across the street, and I found a fascinating little book on film noir which I spent a good bit of time with. When the other members of my party had finished shopping, we walked through the streets of that district a little more then took the subway back. I realized, upon returning to the hotel, that the outing had been exactly what I needed; the chance to soak up some culture and spend some time in an atmosphere more like my daily surroundings had been a bit like “coming up for air” to me, as Orwell put it.

The other conference event that impacted me most strongly was the speech that Wayne LaPierre delivered. Most of the speech was a relatively generic defense of the Second Amendment and assault on the concept of gun control, which was anything but new to me. Despite all that, however, his speech it didn’t fail in the least to make my heart race and my head spin with excitement. It reminded me that there’s not another political issue in the world that I care about as passionately as gun ownership. I have tremendous respect for Mr. LaPierre, also, for all the time and effort he’s poured into the NRA, and seeing him in person had a major effect on me. I support the NRA wholeheartedly, and I thank God that they fight as hard as they do to protect the gun rights of Americans.

My dislike for the superficiality that so strongly characterizes the political world, in combination with my interest in gun rights and the inspiration I felt from being in the presence of Wayne Lapierre, the bedrock of the primary gun rights organization in the United States, raised the possibility in my mind of pursuing a career with some independent political action group as opposed to a career in the government itself or on a politician’s staff. I still don’t know exactly what I want to do with my life, but I’m certain that it should have some sort of impact on the lives of other people. The prospect of pouring a huge portion of my life into some pursuit that ultimately leads to nothing other than my own material gain (and that of my employer) is unsettling to say the least, and my biggest reason for wanting to work in politics in some fashion. I don’t necessarily need to subject myself consistently to people and situations that make me miserable to do that however, and that’s why an independent political organization is starting to sound pretty good to me. Partisanship sucks anyway.

Changing Links

I made a few changes to the blogs that are linked to on the sidebar. I eliminated a couple that I have no interest in and added some that are better. It's still not really an accurate representation of my blog reading habits--there's a few I really like that I don't have on there yet and a lot that I read more casually, and in addition I don't really keep up with some of the ones that are currently there at all--but it's something. I expect to make more changes soon. I've also recently discovered Google Reader and Bloglines, which are two excellent services for tracking blogs and reading them all from one location. I haven't decided which I like better yet.

Buried Treasure

This is classic Brennan Manning, but it’s especially pertinent with the recent theme of surrender in mind. It really got to me the other night, so I’m sharing it.

Since the day that Jesus first appeared on the scene, we have developed vast theological systems, organized worldwide churches, filled libraries with brilliant Christological scholarship, engaged in earthshaking controversies, and embarked on crusades, reforms, and renewals. Yet there are still precious few of us with sufficient folly to make the mad exchange of everything for Christ; only a remnant with the confidence to risk everything on the gospel of grace; only a minority who stagger about with the delirious joy of the man who found the buried treasure.
-Reflections for Ragamuffins, January 28

Also, I just watched the documentary Born into Brothels last night, and I strongly recommend it to anyone with even a passive interest in good movies. It moves a bit slowly just because of its nature, but it’s quite fascinating in the way that it finds and exhibits incredible beauty in the midst of an otherwise incredibly bleak scenario (it focuses on the children of prostitutes in the red light district of Calcutta). It contains two or three scenes with some very crude language, but it’s important to note that all of the profanity is in subtitles—as is much of the other dialogue—and it would easily qualify as a PG if it were not for this element. It’s really terrific.

Dependence

One who trusts in the Lord knows that by clinging to a miserable sense of security the possibility of transparency is utterly defeated. Just as the sunrise of faith requires the sunset of our former unbelief, our false ideas, our erroneous and circumscribed convictions, so the dawn of trust requires the abandoning of our craving for material and spiritual reassurances. Security in the Lord Jesus implies that we neither calculate nor count the cost any longer.
-Brennan Manning, Reflections for Ragamuffins, January 18

As I said in the last post, one of my goals during Christmas break was to reach a point with God at which I was willing to sacrifice absolutely anything he asked me to. Arguably the greatest goal for any Christian is to want exactly the same things that God wants and to die to himself altogether, and that’s what I’ve set my sights on. One would naturally expect that after asking God for help in an area like this, there is a strong possibility that God would push that individual by asking him to make some particular sacrifice, and that’s exactly what happened in my situation.* He asked me to give up my pipe.
I debated momentarily on whether or not to be open about this detail on the weblog, but the main point of the weblog's existence is self-expression, so I have no desire to conceal it on here. During the past summer I began smoking pipe tobacco, and I really think it’s a wonderful hobby. My roommate, Dan, picked it up soon after the semester began, and we usually enjoyed a good smoke together about once or twice each week. We’d buy good tobacco from specialized stores and sample as many kinds as we could. We didn’t do it for the nicotine, and we never inhaled it; we did it for the flavor and for the camaraderie it promoted. I’ve never touched a cigarette, and I have no intention of ever doing so, but I don’t regret the pipe smoking I did at all. Anyway, I’d just bought a nice new pipe during the first or second week of January, and the following day I got the sense that God was asking me to give it up. Again, I don’t think this was because pipe smoking is morally unacceptable; I think it was simply an exercise in self-sacrifice. I debated over whether or not it was actually God I was hearing from, but everyday I became more convinced that it was. I would read scriptures about the importance of surrendering to God and the fulfillment that it brings, and during every prayer time I felt it weighing heavily on me. That Brennan Manning quote at the top of the entry was the last straw for me, and I think the last line of the paragraph is probably the best thing I’ve ever read about surrendering to God. It wasn’t easy, because it’s a hobby that I derive great pleasure from, but I’ve given it up. I don’t regret it in the least—I think it was an important step toward total dependence on God. I don’t know what the next step is, but I’m pretty sure he’ll show me... and that's something to look forward to.

*I suppose there are some who are skeptical of any account of God speaking to an individual, and I have no intention of making a case for the potential legitimacy of such claims in this particular entry. This writing is targeted primarily at those who have a set of beliefs at least relatively similar to my own, and those who find themselves in an altogether different position probably won’t receive any benefit from reading this at all.

Giving Up

If all goes according to plan, this post will be the first in a brief series on the developments of my spiritual life during the past… six weeks or so. The break brought a good deal of activity in that area, and the occurrences of that period have wielded a good deal of influence over the past week at school as well.
I think that in some ways I moved backward in my relationship with God during the fall semester, and I was entirely conscious of it the whole time. There was certainly a lot of change to my life in general, and I had a lot less spare time than I was accustomed to. The adjustments alone made it a battle to continue progressing as I had been. On top of this, I was separated, for the most part, from the friends I’d been discussing spiritual matters with and receiving encouragement from, I was separated from the church I grew up in, and I was deprived of the space I had at home (i.e. my bedroom) that I always conducted my “quiet times” in. It’s a lot harder to practice the sort of silent listening prayer that I believe so strongly in when I’m sharing a very small, relatively cramped dorm room with another individual. I had determined to reverse the situation as well as I possibly could during Christmas break, and I was in fact extremely successful in this endeavor.
For starters, I was pretty consistent in spending time with God. I read my Bible quite a bit, and I committed a significant amount of time to prayer and meditation. I had some barriers to push through, but I think I ended up closer to God than I had been before I left for college. I also engaged in a two-week Daniel fast (subsiding primarily on fruits, vegetables, and whole grains) near the end of the break, and that probably had a fairly large impact on the situation. My main goal was to reach a point of more complete surrender to God: a higher value on my relationship with him, a total alignment of his desires and mine, and a willingness to give up absolutely anything he asked of me. I was enjoying nearly every part of my life to an enormous degree; I was on break for a month, I was at home with my family and nearly all of my close friends, I had plenty of good music to listen to and books to read, and I had plenty of time to use on those things. There wasn’t any issue with gratitude—I credited God for all of the wonderful blessings he’d given me—but I was afraid of placing too much value on his blessings and drawing more fulfillment from those than I was from God himself. Overcoming that struggle—the struggle to give one’s will completely over to God and acquire a willingness to sacrifice anything for him—is what Oswald Chambers calls the hardest battle a Christian ever has to face. I can’t say that I’ve reached it entirely at this point, but I’m closer now than I ever have been. I’ve had a lot of grace in dealing with that lately, and there have been very few times in my life when I’ve been as excited about the future with God as I am right now. I know this all might seem very vague and evasive, but I’ll try to clarify it more in the near future; right now I’ve got to get to bed pretty soon. Good night.

Broken Social Scene

I really, really like watching movies. That's partially because I'm taking an increasing interest in them as an art form, but it's also partially because when I watch them on weekends here, they provide a temporary escape from my unfulfilling—and sometimes miserable—social life. I've never been a social butterfly by any means; I've never been a big fan of parties, and I've never insisted on surrounding myself with a huge group of friends. I've always counted on having a couple close friends I could hang out with all the time, though, and as long as I could call Andy up on a Saturday night and go wandering aimlessly through the streets of East Lansing, or hang out at Jacob’s house, or shoot some pool with Luke, or even just go for a drive, I was more or less satisfied. I really miss all of that stuff. Dan is a very close friend, but at this point, he's the only one I have at Hillsdale. There's a few other guys that I really like and would be happy to hang out with every weekend, but most of them are older than me. Ordinarily there’s very little difference between hanging out with kids whose ages are a year or two above or below one’s own, but this rule doesn’t necessarily apply in college situations. The difference is that someone who’s been here for a year already, or two or three years, has already established himself in the social scene. He knows a lot of people, and he already has a core group of friends. He’s got the school in general figured out a lot better, and he’s got certain habits and activities that he likes to spend his spare time doing, and all of this stuff makes it a lot harder to really become close friends with him. It’s harder to spend that much time around him. It’s a lot easier to just hang out with other freshmen, and that doesn’t work out that well for me because there aren’t that many that I like enough to want to call friends. There’s more than just character involved in a decision like this; the questions of personality and interests are of enormous significance. I end up spending a lot of time with a couple of the guys who live in rooms next to mine: partially because its nearly impossible to avoid them and partially because Dan likes them more than I do. They’re okay. In general I’m not repulsed by any of them, but I certainly wouldn’t hang out with them at home. It’s kind of assumed that we’re all friends—I usually go to meals with them, and we end up hanging out on most Friday and Saturday nights—but I’m extremely discontent with this arrangement. I’m not going to go into detail about what I dislike about them, but they’re simply not my kind of people. We have very few interests in common (they don’t take music nearly as seriously as Dan and I do), they have terrible senses of humor, and their personalities wear on my nerves. Case in point: yesterday morning, after breakfast, they spent about five minutes piling leftover food items on top of one tray and mixing them together, trying to create the grossest combination they could (sausage, milk, eggs, hot sauce, marinara sauce, etc.) with no higher purpose than to make it difficult for the cafeteria employees to clean up. They found the whole incident endlessly amusing. In all honesty, they’re not my friends, and it’s hard to believe that they ever will be.
I don’t mean to give the impression that everything is absolutely miserable here. It’s not—I really enjoy the academics especially. I’m reading a bunch of books for English this semester that I’m really excited about, and I like all of my professors quite a bit. I’ve got some acquaintances whose company I really enjoy, I get to play guitar quite a bit, and like I said, Dan’s a great friend. All in all, I’m very happy here. It’s just Friday and Saturday nights that really have a tendency to get me down, and I’m coming right out of a Friday and a Saturday right now. I sometimes wish this school were two or three times as large as it is; given the size of the student body, it's a lot harder to find people whose interests and personalities are suited to mine as it would be at a state school. If anyone happens to think about it during the coming few weeks, I could use some prayer for that area.