Black Holes and Revelations

it is for freedom that Christ has set us free

2010-03-26T23:32:00.000-07:00

Joy. Bliss. Freedom.

God is incredible. Tonight has reminded of many things I have known before, but not as clearly perceived. This evening me and a few hundred of my friends, really my family, we celebrated to no end the greatness of the gospel. A hundred new Young Life volunteers were welcomed into the family tonight as we all joined together to sing, dance, and laugh as a response to this: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Gal 5:1).

What I have now observed more plainly than ever is the expression of this freedom. Once unimpeded, several emotions sweep over your self. First, in a momentary glimpse of the truth that is the gospel, there is absolutely no room for selfishness or depravity in one's mind or heart. Sin has loses its power over you in that moment of victory. Indeed, the opposite of sin envelopes you: love. While experiencing this freedom your greatest desire is to love those around you. And that in and of itself elicits more emotions of joy.

I've read so many times Romans 6:18, which tells me I'm free from sin, but I have failed to believe it as I myself fail over and over again. Yet in this instant of pure joy, I see it, and like Thomas, I can finally accept this to be truth.

And in these moments of understanding I, for once, am completely myself, without a worry in the world about how I appear and how I am perceived.

So tonight I am thanking God for allowing my heart to be free enough to tirelessly celebrate his victory over death and I praise him for the new life that is infused into the core of my being.

America's Chief Concern

2010-03-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

As it seems to me, personal monetary resources have two key functions in the life of the 21st century American. Money may provide some source of entertainment (e.g. fancy cars and homes, an xbox, season tickets and so on) and/or a sense of financial security. We find enjoy the former by a variety of avenues. We are entertained by competing for social standing, owning the most powerful new technology in the smallest possible casing, and being the best at all endeavors we take on. For some, these thrills never get old and age has no effect on where money is spent, while for others, as they become older and have families to care for, nothing is more important than leaving nothing to chance and, in order to do so, creating the largest 6 or 7 digit account balance possible.

The reason for my brief analysis of American monetary culture is to contrast it with the ideals presented to us by Christ in scripture. Many Christians today want to disregard the truths found in the Bible in order to allow themselves a lifestyle that has the outward appearance of being more satisfying.

The scriptures do say the following about money:

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."

1 Timothy 6:10

"'No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.'"

Matthew 6:24

I believe many of us read these things and believe that since we don't necessarily consciously obsess over money all the time we then should be exempt from any conviction in this area. Personally though I believe that our Lord is calling every single Christian to examine his or her own heart through these verses. Christ said that the entirety of the law could be summed up by saying "love your neighbor as yourself," and through the good Samaritan parable we learn that anybody in need is our neighbor. And so we have the choice to love our neighbor through our ample supply of financial resources, or to spend selfishly on ourselves over and over.

The most obvious example of a neighbor in need would be our brothers and sisters in Haiti. I learned that the Haitian GDP per capita is 790 dollars a year or about $2 per person per day. These numbers were accrued before the capital city was destroyed by the infamous earthquake. And as for a neighbor more literally, how about the 46 million Americans uninsured, some of whom are currently suffering through health crises. Or those 1.1 billion across the world that lack clean drinking water, which has been estimated to account for 1.8 million deaths a year due to waterborne disease. Do you believe that you did something to deserve being born into the wealthiest country in world history? Or do you believe that God in his sovereignty placed you here for his glory?

There are so many incredible things we can do with our wealth. The choice really boils down to this: would we rather build up our own personal kingdoms of opulence or would we prefer to invest in the eternal Kingdom of God by following our one command in order to glorify his name.

Christ said "'seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well'" (mat 6:33). If we just seek first his kingdom, then he promsies us all we need. No need then to place all of our trust in ourselves to produce a security blanket of funds to insure our happiness and vitality. And so here in lies the beauty of Christ: a life filled with freedom from all worry and freedom from America's chief concern, money.

My First Summer Outside of Texas

2008-06-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

OK so this is going to sound a little LiveJournalesque, but something big is going down tomorrow morning. I'm leaving. 3500 miles of driving are in front of me between now and August, two-thirds of which are coming in the next week. And I don't know a single soul that I will be spending the next 9 weeks with, but that is part of the adventure.

I'm excited about getting out completely on my own for once and also the challenge that is the research project I will have at Ohio State. Before that, Young Life camp at Crooked Creek Ranch (ahhh CC!). I'm so thankful to have this awesome opportunity to just hang out with my guys and for all of us to hear about Jesus for an entire week as we live our lives at home back in Austin.

Much more soon about how camp went once arrive in Columbus!

Peace n Love,

D

Naturalistic Observation

2008-05-27T23:26:00.000-07:00

The following is a naturalistic observation paper I wrote for my psych class:

The setting for this study is the pool at the University of Texas’ Gregory Gym aquatic complex. The two subjects whose behavior was examined were lifeguards on duty on the afternoon of Tuesday May 27th.

Subject one is a male who will be known as Joe, more than likely a student at the University near 21 years of age. Joe sat in his lifeguard stand with a somewhat slouched posture hinting at his lack of interest for his task at hand coupled with a shred of arrogance. There were eight people in the pool Joe was watching over at the time with over a dozen mainly female students lying out on beach chairs around the pool’s perimeter. Not much noise came from the people in this pool, as most of the volume came from those playing basketball around the corner and the moderately loud music being played out of loudspeakers positioned around the pool area. Joe would keep his mind occupied often by fiddling with the whistle that hung from around his neck. His job was a very simple one that required very little active concentration, but only a mental awareness of his environment. It seemed that Joe was eager to socialize whenever the opportunity was presented to him, especially by his female colleagues. In these instances his relatively stern expression would quickly change to one of lightheartedness.

For the most part, Joe seemed to play into what was socially expected of him as a somewhat authoritative figure over the pool. It was as if he was playing a specific character when he was performing job operations such as pool supervision and addressing the students swimming in the pool that he turned off when he back to interact with his coworkers. It seems that one can make some conclusions about Joe’s personality based off of this fact. For instance, Joe probably takes pride in and enjoys the little bit of authority he has in this position, and so by playing the serious character he gives people less room to disrespect that authority. Also, it can be hypothesized that in most social settings Joe is more of a laid back and charismatic type who is easy to get along with, at least judging by the responses of his female associates.

Subject 2 is a female university student near the same age as the previously mentioned test subject. She will from here forth be known as Jill. Her posture seems relaxed but upright. The setting for the hour I observed her is very similar as that which was previously described despite being later in the day. Jill also seems to be quite stern as she sits in her post, supervising the pool. The more noticeable difference in her outward behavior is the distance she puts between herself and her coworkers. Fewer people approach her and when they do she seems to spout out a concise, obligatory response that does not garner much additional attention. Jill is apparently uninterested in her male counterparts and is more than likely preoccupied by something weighing on her emotionally. The similarly tight lipped facial expression that projected a sense of arrogance and pride from Joe exudes perhaps an inner conflict from Jill. One may speculate that perhaps she is recounting troublesome interactions with someone who she is close to or some other event that could produce such a reaction.

I could not decipher whether or not the standoffish behavior from Jill was a result of her personality and how she normally socially interacts, or because of an event which elicited such a response as previously hypothesized. If this was because of a traumatic experience, she was undergoing emotion-focused coping, as her problem was currently out of her hands as she sat on the lifeguard stand. In order to more specifically narrow down whether or not I was observing a character trait or an emotional response, I would need more time observing Jill along with additional experience in general of observing people.

After observing both of these subjects for hour long periods of time, I was able to infer subtle differences in their personalities and/or current emotional states. As with any naturalistic observation however, the conclusions made were very hypothetical and are based off of both my observational skills and deductive reasoning abilities. Both additional time with each individual and additional experience would limit the amount of probable error or uncertainty related to these assumptions. All naturalistic observations then could be limited by these characteristics of such experimentation.

The information gathered however could have some very real and applicable usages. Due to the fact that the subjects were performing the same, extremely simple tasks, it was easier then to make observations about the people themselves independently of what they were actually doing. On the other hand, the simplicity of the tasks required less social interaction and thought process which may have reduced the amount of information collected about the individual’s personality.

If I were to repeat such a naturalistic observation experiment again, I would find a setting with more social interactions. An interesting place to do this I think would be in a setting in which strangers came in contact and were forced to interact with one another such as on a bus or at a team business meeting. A situation with more vocalization would probably allow for better personality analysis. Also, another idea could be to use a situation in which emotions of people were seen more transparently such as at a sad movie shown in a theater or in a sports bar watching an intense finish to an important game. Through this experience however, I was provided with a small window into psychological analysis and experimentation.

Pride or Fanhood

2008-05-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

So Tuesday night, as I was preparing for my onslaught of finals this week, I was keeping on an eye on the Celtics-Cavs game via gamecast expecting brilliant star performances and perhaps an upset victory. While KG showed up in a big way, carrying most of the offensive load for Boston on the night, and once again proving himself to be one of the most reliable players in the league, Lebron was nowhere to be found. Ten turnovers, shooting 2 out of 18 from the field including rimming out a game tying layup with just seconds left to play. One of the worst games of his career and one of the worst in recent memory for an MVP caliber player in the post-season especially.

Yet, sitting at my laptop, studying some genetics and noticing the game's score slowly increasing in a way that could only be described as Eastern Conference basketball, I could feel myself hoping that the Cavaliers would hold on for the win, despite shooting a collective 30.7%. I'm sure though I was rooting more for a Boston loss than a Cleveland W. The reason? Primarily, because I have been telling people ever since the week of the draft, "Oh, the Celtics won't be that good," or "There is no way they could win a championship." They've got three guys, a decently talented young PG and for all I'm concerned, that's about it. How these are the pieces to win a championship in a league filled with the most talent it has ever seen, I'm not exactly sure.

Despite my pessimistic attitude towards the C's, I'm a big fan of Garnett and Ray Allen. They are likable guys. Garnett is the definition of a fierce, passionate competitor and who can't get behind a guy like that? Not to mention he is an avid soccer fan and so am I. And, Mr. Allen has the most revered shooting form in the NBA and loves to come up big in the clutch.

All this being said, I'm torn. It's the March Madness syndrome. Whether or not you've got money on your bracket, you expect/hope all 63 of your picks turn out to be the right ones and you root for that (exception being that you pick against your #1 team - you shouldn't ever bet against your team, it's a bad deal anyway). But the Celts aren't my number one, so here am I having to pick between my pride and my main men (thanks Ahmad Rashad).

Dissapointing Dallas

2008-04-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

Here we go again.

After losing 12 of their last 15 playoff games, Mark Cuban decides to fire Maverick's head man Avery Johnson. Avery became the fastest head coach in NBA history to win 50, 100, and 150 games; however, those numbers are accumulated in the regular season.

What it really boils down to is the team's lack of passion and intensity, particularly on the defensive end. Normally, such characteristics of a team are signs of poor preparation, yet in this case, we need to look a little deeper. The Mavericks traditionally have played decently as a defensive unit, but one on one allow individuals to tear them apart. For example. look at the career defining series that have precipitated as a result: Dwayne Wade in '06, Baron Davis in '07, and Chris Paul + David West in '08.

I still vividly remember Wade transcending into his superhuman form in order to demolish a 13 point lead with 7 minutes left in game 3 of the 2006 NBA Finals. Yet, where has Wade been ever since except for becoming fabulous wealthy thanks to T-Mobile?

Flash Forward to the present defensive disaster. Paul averaged 24.6 points, 12.0 assists per 1.2 turnover per game, while his counterpart West added 22.6 a night. Let it be made clear, the Mavericks had no answer for either. The only reason the Mavericks won a single game in the series was due to 4 out of 18 shooting from Paul and 6 out of 20 buckets converted by West in Game 3. This had much less to do with a slightly improved defensive effort from Dallas than it did with the tandem not knocking down the open shots they normally bury.

The Mavericks' only true center, Eric Dampier was rendered entirely useless by the Hornets' frontcourt duo of Chandler and West. That left Dirk to defend West, with defense not exactly being the German's strong suit.

The Mavericks attempted defending Paul with an entourage that included Kidd, Terry, Howard, and George to name a few. Half court trapping proved disastrous, along with posting Kidd on the other end to wear down Paul on defense. So the Kidd trade sent away arguably the Mavs' two best defenders in Harris and Diop for a slow 35 year old who will make 21 million dollars next season. Not to mention that Dallas has to deal with slowing down Deron Williams, Baron Davis, Steve Nash, Tony Parker, Allen Iverson, and Paul all throughout next season. A young, adept defensive point guard could really help in the mighty West.

All this being said, is it really Avery's fault that the Mavericks' slow and aging roster could not defend against the explosive youth of Paul, Chandler, and West (or stop Peja from consistently knocking down everything he shot)? Give me your opinion.

Warmly,
Derek