good Neo-Reformed post

Featured: a good post on the recent Neo-Reformed discussion.

For those not familiar with the whole Neo-Reformed issue, here is a summary from the article introducing Scot Knight, a Christian author who recently wrote a heated blog post on the subgroup of evangelical Christians he calls the "NeoReformed"

Who are the NeoReformed? According to Scot, the NeoReformed represent a particularly aggressive group of people who embrace Reformed theology and demonstrate an attitude of exclusion reminiscent of pre-evangelical Fundamentalism. The NeoReformed see anyone outside of their circle as unfaithful to the gospel and only pseudo-evangelical. Therefore, they exalt peripheral doctrines to “central status” and then ”demonize” others that disagree.

While a lot of others wrote of Scot as an arrogant raging lunatic, I couldn't do so completely. I agree that while a lot of his accusations of the group seem like over-exaggerated blanket statements, I have interacted with a lot of people who fit a similar description.

The article does a great job of sifting carefully through the issue fairly. I hope you find time to read it and leave some comments/thoughts if you have anything to say.

blog etiquette

so, a question - when someone comments on your blog, is the correct blog etiquette to
1) comment on your blog in response and expect them to check the post again?
2) comment in response on their blog (which would be on an unrelated post)?

thoughts?

nostalgia

I came back to Houston for LNY yesterday, and I miss it here. A lot more than I realized while in Austin. UT's college experience seems very different from what I experienced during college, and I think I know more of why I was so drawn to Rice now.

There's a sense of welcome here that stems not only from Rice, its atmosphere, and the friends I still have there, but from the 20+ years of my life that I invested here. I know this place, and in some sense, it knows me - the house I grew up in is still here, and though Jimmy and Pat have made changes to it while they've lived here, I can still remember when my parents and I built parts of it. Austin is so new; but new is not the way most people would want to describe their home.

Since then, it seems things have been pulled apart with family and I both moving away. Nostalgia hits hard whenever I come home and open up old boxes to find old memories that I had nearly forgotten, and I toy with the idea of either transferring to Rice for grad school or finding a job in order to move back home.

Is it easier for people who moved away from home for college and then stayed in the same town after graduation? Is it as difficult adjusting to post-college life?

foodie habits

I've recently discovered this manga called "Mixed Vegetables". The story involves two students at a culinary school, one who is a prodigy at sushi working in a pastry shop, and the other one a pastry lover working in a sushi shop. And there's a comedic romance between them too involving their chef dreams - I couldn't believe it. Cooking and comedy and romance. Together in one manga. It's like a dream come true (incidentally, I am not gay).

But seriously, after starting to really watch what I eat and focus intently on cooking healthy good food, I think I've become a foodie. Telltale signs...

1. All the movies I watch more than once nowadays are food related (God of Cookery, Ratatouille, Babette's Feast, Chocolat). I have a lead on several others that I want to check out as well now...
2. I follow several cooking mangas/animes (Addicted to Curry, Mixed Vegetables, Cooking Master Boy, Yakitate)
3. I actually taught my mom how to cook something this Winter Break, and she got me a wok for Christmas.

I'm not sure what it is about having a weird obsession with food - there's something I really enjoy about it, not just eating it, but sharing it with others too, and even the whole preparation process is fascinating to me. I feel as if I could fall asleep listening to the sounds of a kitchen (dishes being laid out, the sounds of whisking, iron spatulas clanging against frying pans, gas stoves burning hot, soups and sauces boiling, onions sizzling, etc etc). Every part of the food preparation process seems much more glamorous than it used to =P.

Does anyone else identify with this, or am I just weird?

"high school never ends"

I've noticed UT feels a lot like high school. Not academically, but in the social environment. To put it a little differently, take Rice: it's been described as being a school for all the kids who weren't cool in high school. All the nerds and geeks and such suddenly congregate together in this safe haven, and voila! a new social order is born. Suddenly, it's alright to suck at sports, to really enjoy learning, to have weird random hobbies, to be different.

Admittedly, this wasn't perfect. Rice would probably be perfect for someone who is really enthusiastic, outgoing, a little geeky/nerdy/quirky/etc. However, though these kids fit in at Rice, others often didn't - for example, I know that a lot of athletes felt out of place because they were different from most of the Rice population. Different senses of humor. Different goals in life. Different worldviews and senses of fun. However, in my opinion, the people at Rice tried to reach out to everyone, and even if the athletes didn't fit in, I've seen students trying to reach out and befriend them, talk to them. The atmosphere at Rice felt, for the first time for me, welcoming.

UT is not Rice. If Rice is welcoming, open-minded idealism, UT seems more like efficient, result-driven pragmatism. Example: Rice has no business major and emphasizes research heavily. Even its engineering program is criticized for not exposing students to "real-world" materials by focusing too much on a theory-heavy curriculum. I get the impression that some Rice students would balk at the idea of "schmoozing", resume-padding, and getting a job through connections as opposed to merit. (For the nerdy reader) I get the impression that at Rice, it was OK to write code in Matlab, because it was for *research* and didn't have to have a specific industry application. None of these impressions strike me as being true for UT.

The reason I think this is a problem goes back to the types of people who are at Rice. You didn't often find mean or cold people; you didn't often get the impression that people would step all over each other for. I'm not saying I find that here at UT, but unlike Rice, I hear premed stories where students are so cutthroat towards each other that I'd fear any of them becoming doctors. And most unlike Rice, I don't see a welcoming hand extended from people towards others below them. I'm sure this happened at Rice too, but I feel like it's much more common at UT for an IM basketball team to make fun of their opponents if they're winning. There's a lot less good sportsmanship, and in general respect for others than I'd like here.

Perhaps I'm just glamorizing Rice too much. I loved it there, and felt like I was really a part of Rice. I feel kind of like I'm just at UT; it hasn't especially welcomed or taken me in, and I haven't really invested myself in it. Maybe UT is just a large school and I haven't found the right sorts of people yet. Perhaps it's just a matter of examining how I perceived things at Rice psychologically. Whichever it is, though I'm glad to be at UT, I miss Rice.

Footnote: "High School Never Ends" is a song by Bowling for Soup. It's pretty funny.

From a good read

They say that it is fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years.

But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason comes less troubles in it’s working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed;

whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of the light; turns naturally and inevitable;

for now that all that gave to the world of sensations it’s life and charm has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play false - a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth.

- Cardinal Newman, as quoted in "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley