churches and choices (and then less serious stuff)

I talked with Kati Li during winter break and had an interesting conversation on the sociology of religion. I feel like, after reading Mark Noll, I've tried to make myself somewhat of an amateur sociologist of religion, analyzing groups, thinking about what characterizes them and their particular brand of Christianity. I mention this because, I think for a while, in response to my questions on faith and the lack of answers I found, that I became obsessed with doubt, evidence, thinking about things and making sure they were right. This habit has relaxed somewhat, but I find that even now I tend towards this more than I used to (which I guess is normal, considering I'm an applied math grad student).

So, like Matt Dunn, I've been looking around for churches recently. I've been going to Vox Veniae in Austin, an emergent-ish church that carries heavy emphasis on social action. It's very hipster, very cool, and very much not like a typical evangelical church (good?). It does some great stuff around Austin; however, I don't think it stresses especially good thinking habits. Mark Noll remarked that a key feature of the evangelical church is a "call to action", that the world's troubles were the demands of the hour that needed to be met *now* (without too much time thinking). Vox may be different from evangelical churches in a lot of ways, but they retain this trait in some form. Even in their thinking and reflection, it seems focused on how to do something, how to achieve some goal or help some group. How.

I visited Austin Stone, the largest evangelical church in Austin, and was impressed by the setup, the attendance, the band - most of the things that don't seem to matter to me much anymore. But at least from a cursory glance at things, I didn't find the depth of thought that I valued from either the people I knew there or the pastor, and I felt a little out of place in the large-Christian-conference type of emotional band that I have grown wary of.

I have visited Ted Lee's church as well (Acts), and I'm impressed - had I come to Austin 2 years and 1 crisis of faith ago, I probably would love to have joined this church. It's solid; there's good, correct (I think) teaching, and a friendly, open community. I may go back - it reminded me of HCC, and perhaps it has people like HCC too who will dig deep into a subject and really ponder over it - but before I do so, I wanted to look beyond the types of churches I've been to before.

When I talked with Kati, we talked a lot about habits of the mind, thinking habits of Christian groups. This is primarily the focus of both "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" and "A Mind for God", the latter which I'd highly recommend to any Christian. We both remarked that we enjoyed groups that emphasized and encouraged careful thinking, and somehow she commented that I seemed somewhat Anglican/Episcopalean.

I'm going to visit an Episcopal church that one of my friends goes to. He's a fellow grad student I really admire for his thinking/reading and intellectual habits, and I'm fairly excited given that he admires the level of thinking in this church (it's close to a seminary, so there's interplay similar to how Dunbar Heights Baptist Church and Regent seminary in Vancouver are). I'm a little nervous too - I admire the liturgy from a distance, but I wonder how I will respond to it longer term, when the novelty wears off. It's so different from what I've experienced before - Episcopalean, large, non-Asian. I hope I don't get scared off by these differences before I have a chance to grow as a result of them.

So...long boring stuff over. I'll update with more long boring stuff in the next few weeks if I get another free night like this one.

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On a side note, recent life updates

1. I went swing dancing at a place nearby. It's great - a lot of fun. For me. I can't be sure that other girls dancing with me aren't bored out of their mind - I can only do the most basic steps, can't hear the music and rhythm clearly sometimes and thus go off beat, and often fail when trying to actually spice things up (and a lot of these dancers can REALLY spice things up). Girls, any thoughts? I'd like my partner to enjoy the dancing as much as I do, so I'd like to know a girl's perspective on this.

2. I'm getting old - I injured myself. I don't think I'm exercising too much or too hard in cardio, but I think my bike seat was too high when I biked 5 miles somewhere. At the very least, I'm finding that unlike my high school days, I can't just push myself mindlessly (like some action anime character) and expect good results.

Elegy for an Ipod

After 2 (or 3? or 4?) years, the original 4GB Ipod Nano I purchased from Sam Feng at Rice has powered down for the last time, it seems. Ah little Nano, we had some good times together while you were alive.

We were perpetual running buddies; no one else would accompany me on midnight or 2AM runs at Rice, but you; you never called me crazy.

Alas! we were apart for a such a long time after I let Henry borrow you because he thought he had lost his forever. I never knew how much I missed you until he returned you, but I guess even then I really didn't use you for the next 3 months until I moved here to Austin.

I even bought my car because of you; it had a little 1/8in plug through which I could hear your lovely voice, which was really someone else's lovely voice piped through your lovely circuits.

Ah, who will keep me awake on long car rides now? Who will keep me motivated and pumped as I run? The younger generations of your kind may someday replace you, but they will never be you. Sleep in peace, little child of Steve Jobs.

R.I.P. Jesse's only Ipod
2007(?)-2009

friend in me

A little fun in my free time here at UT, dedicated to the good friends I have in Houston and elsewhere.

returning to normal

Houston was fantastic. I really felt like a Rice student again for a little while. It was amazingly fun and great to share good conversation with old friends all over again, and thanks to all who shared time in their busy schedules to spend time with me. I'm exhausted though, and glad somewhat to be back in Austin where it's definitely a bit more relaxed =P

Random tangent - as a musician and wannabe singer, I am immensely jealous of the singing talent and songwriting prowess of these 3 artists. Check out their videos if you have time - they're fantastic.

Anoop Desai (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRunoqV-IQA)
Winter Song by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUO0gd7cr9o&feature=channel)
The Way I Am (Live) by Ingrid Michaelson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFRnPKlxPo&feature=related)

makes me think

I don't know what it is about it, but returning home always makes me think about the "big questions". Whether home to CA, or home to here in Houston, I feel like I enter into some sort of cognitively-dissonant phase of questioning whenever I come back to an old familiar haunt. When I'm not exciting nostalgia, flipping through mementos of memories that have gathered dust while I've been away, I sit down, become oddly philosophical, doubtful, and temporarily load up my Amazon cart full of books that I hope will cure my current state.

Odd things seem to trigger thoughts on topics, but the topics are ones that I'm sure anyone can relate to: death, the meaning of life, the existence and identity of God.

1. Death: I enjoyed my time with my parents in CA, which makes the thought of their aging all the scarier. I was conceived late - my parents were past 30 by the time I was born, so they are rapidly approaching 60. As I read obituaries and hear of deaths, I can't help but reflect that they're rapidly approaching a human's average life span. Nothing paralyzes me more than to think about this - I love them, have so much I want to tell them, and depend on them for so much advice that I need at this point. And more so than ever, I've begun to understand how family is precious: their relationships with you are unique, stronger than any others. While they may not identify with me as well as others, they share memories of and know me far better than maybe anyone else on this planet ever will.
   
   Just in terms of time spent, they've been around far longer than even my closest friends, and leaving my closest friends for Austin has only reinforced these thoughts; making new friends and building new relationships is difficult. How much more so to build a family.
   
   
2. Meaning of life: I didn't use to think this was a difficult question. Glorifying God, obviously. Sure, the realization of this end was difficult to characterize since it was unique for everyone, but at least that was far off and I had a long time to consider it. Almost 10 years have passed since then, and I think I'm less certain of how to achieve this goal in my life. How do I do so in my job and career? Do I need to be passionate about what I do? What if my passions change? What about serving outside my job and in the community? What about my beliefs and thoughts? What about family?
   
   Over all of this, the end question still looms - is glorifying God the correct meaning of life? I don't often question the goal itself, but that's probably due to the fact that, given a broad view/definition of God and a broad view/definition of glorifying, almost any positive activity can be said to strive towards this goal. At the very least, I have to question the way that I answer this question at any specific moment in time and ask if my criteria for glorifying God is even correct.
   
   
3. The existence and identity of God: such an interesting question. I always keep coming back to the science-and-religion discussions. Just thinking about it can waste a good hour of time (as evidenced by my writing of this blog post). My views seem to have become much more "liberal", to use the umbrella term. I can never be completely sure of any view, so at any time, I guess I tend to rate the views I know by some rough estimation of how likely it is that that view is true (given current knowledge). The existence of God is hard enough; the identity and nature of God are even more difficult.
   
   The question of evolution is especially interesting. Ray always gives great points I can't answer, but there's so much evidence and a massive scientific consensus behind macroevolution as well. Yet, questions arise; not necessarily complicated theological questions and consequences (though those exist too), but simple ones as well. What do we do about the first 11 chapters of Genesis if humans evolved? How does this tie into evolutionary psychology and psychology's interface with ethics and morality? What does this tell us about the dualistic idea of an immaterial soul? And many more.
   
   Thankfully, like Dr. Greg Boyd and a German theologian whose name escapes me now (EDIT: Jurgen Moltmann), I feel like I can always approach Christianity and God through Jesus whenever the rest of the science-religion discussion becomes too much for me to handle. For the moment, it seems as if Jesus is a concrete example of a historical anomaly, an event that changed much about the world. I may not know what I believe about science and religion, but I think I believe in the Resurrection, and I finally am beginning to understand why Paul writes that without the Resurrection, our faith is in vain.
   

At the same time, at the encouragement of my Dad, I've started trying stocks, thought about getting a job, wondered about how I will make new friends, wondered about how I will ever meet a girl, and on and on and on. It's difficult growing up - I don't know exactly what changed, but somewhere along the line, whatever box wrapped up all my thoughts into a nice simple package ended up tearing, and everything just fell out, expanded, and made a very complex mess.

Yet, at the same time, I don't think I could go back to the way I used to be. Everything's more complex, everything's messier after coming out of the box, but things become more accessible. Once things come out of hiding from that simplistic box, they're there to examine more closely, understand more fully, and interact with more wholly.

lol

haha. there's a whole series of these. this one's my favorite.

in other news, I'll be back in Houston tomorrow! hope to see some of you there (sorry, Atlanta =( can't go with Henry this time...)

more porno

A study done measured effects of short-term exposure to pornographic material on the interpersonal relationships between men and women. Both men and women were exposed to films for 11 minutes, then paired into male-female groups and asked to do a problem-solving activity together. During the activity, the behavior was videotaped and analyzed. The results of analysis were

The experimenters found that men who viewed the sexually explicit films (both erotica and pornography) showed more dominant behaviors, touched their female partners for longer periods of time, and ignored their partner’s contributions more often that males who viewed the news clips. Furthermore, men in the pornography condition interrupted their partners more and showed more anxious behaviors than those in the other two groups.

The result that was a bit more worrisome was

Female participants were blind to the first portion of the experiment. Results showed that women’s behaviors correlated highly with their male partner’s behaviors. Women whose partners had viewed sexually explicit materials showed similar levels of anxiety, physical proximity, partner touch, and gazing as their partners. This behavioral matching, argue the researchers, is particularly notable. It suggests that women are affected by a partner’s use of sexually explicit material, even when they are unaware of such use.

It seems interesting here, as well, how people can have more influence than they'd imagine normally. If this is true, they would probably feel extra responsibilities in response to knowing what they could do. A simple example could be how the behavior of parents change knowing that their lives are intimately tied to their children's lives. This goes against a common myth nowadays that pornography and similar things "are ok since they doesn't hurt anyone". However, from the opinion of this one paper, it does seem like this behavior bears noticable effects the principal actor and, more importantly, the people he interacts with. It's hard to know if those effects could hurt or not.

From a Christian point of view, it offers a new dimension into what it means for a man to be the "lead" or the "head" in a relationship as well. I haven't done enough thinking and reflecting on what this might mean, but I have a few cursory thoughts on it. I've heard sermons describing this lead as a sense of responsibility for the woman's spiritual life as well as your own - this would extend and tie that responsibility not only to her's but your spiritual life as well. Pornographic effects would then also extend to interactions between platonic friends (or "brothers" and "sisters" in Christian lingo) - how would "guarding your heart" or not "being a stumbling block" change with this in perspective? Furthermore, in this study, the partners were simply college students randomly paired - for a married couple, I could imagine significant differences. I don't think I know enough about "two becoming one" to comment on this yet though.

The source for these quotations is an interesting set of articles (available here), from a conference at Princeton. I've only read two so far (Neuroplasticity and Acquiring Tastes/Loves, and Pornography's Effects on Interpersonal Relationships), but they're interesting, and they flesh out a lot of points I heard brought up back in my last post on the "Price of Pleasure" pornography documentary.