For the record

All of this 2012 = end of the world stuff is a scam. I could try and argue why it's a scam, but the fact is that there isn't any rational basis for thinking it is the end of the world, so this belief is not actually subject to rational criticism. There simply isn't any reason for believing it, so there is nothing that can possibly be deconstructed other than the basic human fears and psychology that results in such irrational claims (which means that you are not inherently respecting the 2012-end-of-world stuff as valid). To this, my response is as follows: Do a bing.com search for "William Miller". Look up the Great Disappointment. And yes, I work at Microsoft so I'm happy to do shameless plugs for bing.com. Of course I just got to see a demo today of new stuff they're working on and it looks AWESOME!!! (But I contractually cannot say what it is!!!! You'll find out in a couple months [or whenever, I don't have the actual release schedule] when it's unveiled!!!!!)...........Sigh, I am such a pettifog.

Heaven and Hell

Today I was shopping for granola and two things happened that made me think. First, I was in the checkout line and I saw a girl of around 10-12 in front of me with her dad. This made me grieve when I saw the tremendous amount of horrible magazines, filth and vituperation in that checkout line. To me it was a metaphor of how this young, innocent girl is going to spend the rest of her life being assaulted by societal norms regarding sex, bodily appearance, etc, and how her identity will be under a constant stream of attacks for decades to come.

The second thing I saw was several of the cashiers were elderly, and in particular there was an older woman who was the cashier in my checkout line. She had a very morose attitude; very quick and efficient, but humorless. This also made me sad. Firstly, this woman shouldn't have to work at that age. She should be a respected elder in the community. Secondly, she was also a metaphor to me, a metaphor about how all of the assaults on identity that I mention above slowly suck the life out of people over the years and decades. That attitude of hardness and bitterness is the result of a life of darkness. (Not to say that this is all true of the woman I saw, like I said it was just a metaphor; I don't know what her life is like.)

I was thinking about all this when I was walking home, and it struck me so powerfully that I believe there is an underlying falsity in contemporary evangelical dialectic. I don't know if I will be able to express this as clearly as I believe it, but I will try.

I do not believe that eternal destiny depends on a single decision. I am absolutely horrified whenever I hear some organization say how many "decisions for Christ" they had last year, for more reasons than I can now enumerate. My biggest objection (and most relevant to this discourse) is that I just do not believe you can summarize someone's faith or walk with God in a single decision. To say that whether somebody is going to heaven (eternity with God) or hell (eternity without God) simply based on a single decision reduces peoples' entire lives into mere statistics, which is contemptible to me.

I have come to believe more and more that there is an incredible complexity and depth to each person and that how people relate to God, whether positively or negatively, is the cumulative result of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of interactions throughout their roughly 30,000 days of life on earth. I believe that whether someone ultimately goes to heaven or to hell, that their will and desire is tried a thousand times. Jesus speaks of the broad path leading to destruction and the narrow path leading to life, and I believe that these paths speak of consistent, repeated lifestyles. C.S. Lewis calls the last scene of Dr. Faustus "stage fire": hollow theatrics with minimal basis in reality. He speaks instead of persistent sensual habits that shroud the eyes and year after year build patterns of darkness that flood the soul. By the time you are on the threshold of total destruction, on your deathbed, God would still accept repentance even then, but man would not offer it. Their whole life up until that point had already spoken, and would not be revoked.

Every person has a story. Every person has a history. Nobody is shallow. God does not look at a single point in your life to decide who you are, he sees the whole picture of who you were and who you have become through that process.

Love and power

I was thinking about love on the bus ride home today. In particular, what I came to realize is that when you truly love someone, that love empowers you in that person's life. A fantastic passage illustrating this is from George Macdonald's Phantastes, which I will now quote at length:

It was evening. The sun was below the horizon; but his rosy beams yet illuminated a feathery cloud, that floated high above the world. I arose, I reached the cloud; and, throwing myself upon it, floated with it in sight of the sinking sun. He sank, and the cloud grew gray; but the grayness touched not my heart. It carried its rose-hue within; for now I could love without needing to be loved again. The moon came gliding up with all the past in her wan face. She changed my couch into a ghostly pallor, and threw all the earth below as to the bottom of a pale sea of dreams. But she could not make me sad. I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This is possible in the realms of lofty Death. "Ah! my friends," thought I, "how I will tend you, and wait upon you, and haunt you with my love."

This is a beautiful passage and the part that really struck me is how he speaks of the power that comes to someone who loves another. As he says, this is a power that cannot be but for good. I would call it (somewhat tritely) a "power under your beloved" rather than a "power over" them. It is a power, but it's a power to serve, honor and lift up that person; not to manipulate them to do anything for you (selfishness, using them to serve or satisfy you) but a power to do good in their life.

It is a position of sacrificing your own interests, taking up their interests and doing what you can to see them blessed. But the true mystery is that it really does give you power in their life. This is something that I have experienced with 2-3 of my closest friends and it's hard to explain but I really feel like I have the ability to affect their lives in various ways, such as influencing their thoughts, emotions or decisions.

Like Macdonald says, this doesn't have anything to do with whether that person even knows you. Anybody (loving or not) can manipulate others through words, to change how they act. I'm not talking about giving advice to my friends who trust me and therefore I have power in that trust. What I'm talking about is that through my love for them, I have a direct line of power into their spirit/soul to change them and bless them.

But lest anyone fear manipulation, the other mystery is that this power is purely derived from the love (selfless concern for the other), so if a person even starts thinking about using that power for anything but the good of the beloved, the power fades.

A more concrete example I thought of is this. When I was in college, I remember once when my campus minister was sharing some prophetic words with me and a few other students there. These were not "regular" prophetic words, but rather he was getting prophetic insight into our lives because he was our minister. On other occasions, he would just randomly know stuff about me. I believe he was able to do this because he had true spiritual authority over our lives, but at a deeper level you can only have spiritual authority over another person if you love them. Jesus says the greatest among you will be the servant of all. True love is laying down your life for your friend. Therefore the path to gaining spiritual authority over others is to have selfless love for them, considering your own personal interests as less important than theirs.

And on a slight tangent, this is how you can reliably identify spiritual authorities over you. There is a lot of confused and confusing teaching about authority in the church, but at a simple level if you want to know if someone is an authority over you, just ask yourself how much they love you. The proportion in which they selflessly love you is how much of an authority they are.

Abstract Beauty and Known Beauty

Even though I've thought a lot about this, I'll try to keep this post short to save myself time. I've been thinking about two things, which I call "abstract beauty" and "known beauty". Abstract beauty is what happens when I see beautiful people who I do not personally know. It's abstract because, even though the beauty is real, I don't know the issues they deal with and what's going on in their lives. So in these people, I get to see the exterior beauty, but I do not get to see the interior struggle.

With Known Beauty, this is what happens when I see beautiful people who I know very well. Not only do I get to see their outward beauty, but I also get to see them fight through and overcome difficult situations. I get to see their joy and pain through all the various issues of life, and so to me, their outward beauty is filled with the substance of my knowledge of their inner beauty.

So what I've been thinking about is how amazing it is that so many people with so much brokenness and horror within can be so beautiful on the outside. I'm thinking of both people who overcome their difficulties (like my friends) and people who are overcome by their problems (for a biblical example, Cain). For all these people, outward beauty is a manifestation of the grace of God, which is so incredible to see. I honestly marvel whenever I see beautiful people because outward beauty is a mark and a sign of the grace of God over a person's life.

But if that is a marvel, I am even more astonished at the inward beauty that I have seen in the lives of my friends. If outward beauty is a mark or sign of the grace of God, then inward beauty is the substance of the grace of God filling a person's life. That is truly a profound miracle.

Random George MacDonald quote

The story goes on to tell how, at last, weary with wintriness, she travelled towards the southern regions of her globe, to meet the spring on its slow way northwards; and how, after many sad adventures, many disappointed hopes, and many tears, bitter and fruitless, she found at last, one stormy afternoon, in a leafless forest, a single snowdrop growing betwixt the borders of the winter and spring. She lay down beside it and died. I almost believe that a child, pale and peaceful as a snowdrop, was born in the Earth within a fixed season from that stormy afternoon.

From Phantastes. So, so powerful.

Natural limitations vs. Divine provision

This post is cribbed from an email I sent to a group of friends, but it should be interesting and profitable even without the discussion that preceded it.

----

Hey guys, great discussion on the group today. I've been thinking about the first topic, the dichotomy between finite natural resources (and the human needs thereof) and infinite divine resources (and how we need provision from this too).

What I said on the call was that infinite divine provision "trumps" natural limitations, such as Jesus multiplying food to feed the 5000 and the 4000. However, in the same parable Jesus tells the disciples to collect the leftover scraps of bread. So at first glance there really is a paradox here: why would God who can multiply food tell people to collect the scraps of leftover bread and take it along? If he can multiply food, then "wasting" food becomes irrelevant. In a hypothetical scenario, why didn't Jesus multiply the food so much that it could feed 10000 and leave piles of bread in the dirt when everyone was done? It would have been a great testament to the extravagant, wasteful love of God, and yet he was not wasteful. He gave out as much food was needed and then stopped. It's actually somewhat surprising that there was ONLY 12 basketfuls of bread leftover, because that means that Jesus did not make too much.

There are two old testament parallels I can think of (I'm sure others can name more). One is the manna from heaven, where the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. God prevented people from hording by making the extra food spoil, so that they would have to come to him every day, but once again you see that the resource (manna given) matched the need. The second is the jars of oil that were multiplied for the widow (2 Kings 4). Once again you see that the oil stopped flowing when all the jars were filled, so there was provision to fill every jar to the fullest, but it stopped flowing so that oil was not wasted and poured out on the ground with nothing to contain it.

I believe all of these examples strongly highlight the importance of resource stewardship. Everything we have been given should be well managed (cf. Joseph in Pharaoh's house), and in an aggregate sense this means that we as a people should manage national resources well: natural resources, economic resources, technological resources, and the land, people and properties of our country. I believe that we individually and as a group collectively have a responsibility to govern the earth correctly and with prudence, including the preservation of natural habitat. In Revelation it says that God will destroy those who destroy the earth (Rev 11:18). Obviously it's important to not fit in that category (people who destroy the earth), but of course this is only one aspect of stewardship.

It's a very important question to ask how and why to reconcile natural stewardship (stewarding natural resources like money, property, land, human resources, etc) with divine provision. I believe that there are two equally-flawed extremes one could take and the best path is walking between them. On one extreme is focusing entirely on natural stewardship ("wisdom") and ignoring divine provision ("faith"). This would be the standard secular humanist perspective. Cf. Matthew 6:25-34, but in particular verse 32-33. In 32 you see that pagans (those who do not know God) run after natural resources, because they do not know divine provision. I'm sure they are great stewards of their possessions, because that's all they have.

The other extreme is ignoring "wisdom" and relying on "faith". In this case, you have people who believe that God will provide everything they need, but don't bother to save money or invest, or handle their finances correctly, etc. This is common in certain streams of charismatic Christianity and I don't think it's the right perspective.

Ultimately I don't think the flaws with either of these extremes is in actions, but ultimately the root issue is in the mentality. You see that again in Matt 6 where Jesus focuses on WORRY for "wisdom" based people. While I don't have a corresponding passage for "faith" based people, I think the bad mentality there is simply not understanding the ways of God and the original mandate of humanity (Gen 1:28, to care for and govern the earth). I don't know if I can identify one root mentality behind this behavior, but at least I can show in numerous ways how it contravenes God's desire and intention for humanity.

So in conclusion I think the best perspective is to combine both approaches with the Godly mentality of Matt 6:33-34, to seek first the Kingdom, to not worry about material possessions, to govern what is within our control with wisdom and intelligence, but always to have faith and belief in the abiding presence and provision of God. Do not seek after material things, do not let them control you, but use wisdom in investing what you have (donation is a form of investment), and let your peace rest in the knowledge that God will always provide what you need.

Finding the balancing point between faith and wisdom can be tricky, but if you seek the heart of God about this and seek his ways I believe that he will give us all clarity on this matter. See Psalm 25 for a GREAT prayer on learning the ways of God.

The LORD confides in those who fear him;
he makes his covenant known to them.

Blessings
Daniel.

How to remember and record dreams

I forgot to put this up before. Will do so starting.... now.

I will explain by going through, chronologically, how I have recorded dreams in the past and present.

In the beginning, I recorded dreams "the hard way". This meant whenever I had a dream that I found important, immediately upon waking up (at 0200 am, 0400 am, or whenever), I would force myself awake and write down the dream. I kept a sheet of paper (on a clipboard) and a pen near my bed at all times, and I would use this with a small keychain flashlight to write down my dream on the spot. For particularly long dreams, I would play through the dream in my mind before opening my eyes.

From my experience, opening your eyes is the first major step that dispels a lot of dream memory. That's because it changes your focus from your "mind's eye" vision of the dream that just happened onto the "physical eye" vision of the room around you. Seeing your room awakens associated memories of things you have to do tomorrow, books you read, etc, etc. All of this displaces the dream memory that is still very tentative and vulnerable to being wiped out by the stronger physical memory.

Typically, due to the way memories form, your memory of physical events is stronger and more reliable than dream memory. You can have a dream and forget it by the next day, but you will still remember what you did last night, whether that be read a book, watch a movie, etc. I'm not a neurologist so I couldn't tell you why it's like this, I can just say that in my personal experience, that's how life works.

So anyway, the reason I call this the hard way (getting up to write down the dream) is because it interrupts your sleep. If you're having prophetic dreams 2-4 days a week, that's a lot of nights of interrupted sleep. It's worse when you have multiple prophetic dreams in the same night. Sometimes I've had 3 prophetic dreams in a single night (I have at least 2 of these nights recorded). I know very well how disruptive this can be, but in my life it was doubtless worth it.

Back when I first started, I thought it would be like this for the rest of my life. I thought I would always have to get up and write down the dreams, but I valued them more than I valued sleep, so the decision was easy (even if the execution of that decision wasn't always easy).

However, over time, perhaps a year or so, I got better and better at remembering dreams. There came a point in time (I did not record when) when I got so good that I could remember dreams simply by replaying them in my head after waking up. Now, whenever I wake up after having a prophetic dream, what I will do is replay the dream in my head several times until I can firmly and easily remember every detail. Then I go back to sleep and I write it up the following morning when I get up. I can do this very reliably for short to medium length dreams.

For very long dreams, I still have to write them down to capture all of the myriad details. For these dreams, I replay them in my head several times and then get up and type the dream out on my computer immediately after waking. For all other dreams, I can wait until the next morning to write them down.

I believe that I am able to do this because I have trained my mind to remember dreams by repetition. I have honestly had dreams where I am writing down details from the dream while STILL IN THE DREAM. That's because of ruthless, disciplined repetition. I have gotten up in the night literally hundreds of times to write down dreams like this, so it's only natural that I have gotten better at simply remembering them.

At the same time though, I think I have discovered a strong technique for dream memory: mental repetition. I don't know if other people could simply copy my technique and get the same results, because I'm not selling a book or anything about this. I know what worked for me, and it may or may not work for others. Either way, I hope this information is useful to others in the course of studying and meditating on prophetic dreams.

So in the end, this has been great for me because I get the high value of prophetic dreams without having the difficult task of writing them down at 0300 am when I'd rather be asleep. Now I get both!

And..... done!