Thinking about hell

that was a great post by M about the archbishop's comments about the problems with the world. it really relates to what i have been thinking about the past few days. i just finished brian maclaren's (sp?) the last word and the word after that. the whole book is dealing with the issue of hell and rethinking the traditional christian view of hell. i have not thought through the issue fully at all, i just wanted to bring the issue up to see if anyone else had any opinions on it.

some of the main points that i came away with were:

- the idea of an afterlife/heaven/hell were virtually nonexistent in the OT. the idea seemed to be a new one in the NT, and most likely influenced by many other ancient near east cultures.

- Jesus actually does not talk about hell specifically very often; he often talks about the darkness, the outside, sheol, etc, but rarely hell in the way we think of the word. (i dont have the book in front of me so this is very rough).

- Jesus' focus was on building his kingdom in this world, making the world a better place (like what M was talking about), not just making sure we all believe some very specific dogma in order to get our behinds into heaven. look at the sermon on the mount, that is all about how we act (again, not looking at the text right now).

- God's desire is to save everyone, he does not want to see some weak little humans suffer for all eternity for a finite number of sins.

- Jesus discussion of hell may have just been a response to the pharisees, who talked about how the outcasts, unrighteous, unreligious would be sent to hell. however, Jesus turned the idea of hell back on them by saying God will welcome the despised, weak, outcasts into heaven. the book suggested that many present day christians have become like pharisees, saying that only those that agree exactly with what they say get a pass into heaven.

- Jesus is about bringing God's justice to earth now, which means helping the poor, getting rid of greed, ending injustice to the weak, poor, downtrodden. christians talk about everyone being judged for all the wrongs they did; but God's justice is not something to scare us into believing some doctrine - it should be something we welcome as an expression of god's love for us and that makes the world a better place, makes the world right.

ok, that is all i can come up with right now.

any ideas?

and oh yeah, i haven't mentioned it on the blog yet, but Shen Rong and i are engaged!

love is not against the law

politics is love
can make you blind or make you see
make you a slave or make you free
but only one does it all
and its giving up your life
for the ones you hate the most
its giving them your gown
when they've taken your clothes
Its learning too admit
when you've had a hand in setting them up
and nocking them down
because love is not against the law
love is not against the law
no love love love
are we defending life
when we just pick and choose
lies acceptable to lose
and which ones to defend
because you cannot chose your friends
but you chose your enemies
and what if they were one
one and the same
could you find a way
to love them both the same
to give them your name
because love is not agianst the law
love is not against the law
no love love love
--Derel Webb "Love is Not Against the Law"
http://www.nobelitythemovie.com/
http://www.nobelitythemovie.com/nobelists.html
see coments

Prayer Request

Kappa Upsilon Chi
Gamma Chapter
9:24 Officer elections begin with officer speeches.
· The newly elected president is Andrew Durrett
· The newly elected Internal Vice President is Sean Kissinger
· The newly elected External Vice President is Ben Johnson
· The newly elected Chaplain is Matt Glenn
· The newly elected Treasurer is Jon Jonse
· The newly elected Secretary is Kyle Marshall
10:01 The meeting ends in prayer

I wasnt expecting this, but it is exciting. I think I have alot to offer, but I know there are some doubters out there. It might be a heavy load for me, but hopfully I can have just as much fun doing this than doing anything else.

BJ business trip

(whenever i am in beijng, i always make time to pay mao a visit)

i took my first business trip last week: two days, three nights in beijing (incidentally, SR had a trip to beijing two weeks earlier). i went up with a colleague for a discussion session with google, yes, the same google that hosts this blog. they are cranking up their China business, and sent a bunch of US employees over for lots of meetings and discussions with chinese companies.

i have to admit, i enjoyed the trip. i like any kind of travel, and its fun to stay in a decent hotel and take taxis on the company dime. my previous trips to beijing had been pretty positive, most importantly meaning, the weather was ok. on this trip, however, the pollution mixed in with dust blown in from mongolia (which isnt far away), as well as it being unseasonably cold, made it pretty uncomfortable. and beijing traffic is the worst! just too many cars and some bad freeways. going to beijing made me appreciate living in shanghai. the city is just laid out better, it doesn't take 45 minutes to get everywhere, and the air, though still dirty, is much cleaner than in Beijing. however, one thing i do like about beijing is that everyone speaks mandarin there; there is no shanghai dialect, which doesnt really make my own communicating any easier, but does make it much easier to eavesdrop on other people's conversations.

so paul and i gave a short presentation to the google guy's about china's internet market and then took questions from them (we shared the panel with another research firm) for the next hour. i wore a tie for the first time in who knows how long. it went fine, no major blunders, and nothing too exciting. later in the day i interviewed a chinese internet company similar to youtube.com.
the big event of the trip was the next day, when google was hosting a party to announce the chinese name of the company, which turned out to be a word that means "harvest song", a pretty strange choice in my opinion. but it was a pretty fun party. google CEO eric schmidt was there (pictured on the left), though i didn't get to shake his hand or anything. and "the Chinese bob dylan" (that's how he was introduced) cui jian - pictured below) played 4 songs at the party. and google gave all the guests google lava lamps! so SR has now been introduced to lava lamps, as



have the security guards at the beijing airport, who could not for the life of them figure out what the darn thing was.

so a good trip, now i am just waiting until pacific epoch grows large enough so i can take some business trips to the US.

John Denver speech

My friend gave an infromative speech about john denver today, and how he got his name from denver's adopted son. at the sentimental parts, he gave me the signal and i started into "Country Roads", we finished the speech with rocking the class to a rendition of "Country Roads".. take me home, to the place, where i belong, west virginia, mountain mama, la di da my country home.
i started yesterday against Hardin Simmons on the bb team, a nice change.

helloooooo famiillllyyyy'ss!!! froooom geooorgetownnn!

well, right at this very second, i am drinking coconut pulp juice in my dorm room. I just got back from McDonalds and had a double cheeseburger with small chocolate shake and apple juice box.
this year is almost over and im not sure how to sum it all up. classes im taking-- post-communist politics, chinese economy, anciet chinese literature, and public speaking aaannnd public speaking. im making a C,A/B, ?, A, respectively. i think ill try a big push at the end of the semester to get em up. i had a great start to the baseball season but it ended with an irritating ankle injury. Im starting to work a little harder in school and everything else i do, so i guess im still getting readjusted to this way of life. im president of FCA and we just had a rally for this movement going around called Invisible Children. its just one of those things that goes around college campusses trying to save the world doing great noble things, which is what college is all about, joining movments and revolution for the sake of it riight? so we're right in the middle of it all, we had a discussion about our response to it in FCA tonight and it was great. so on the 26th a few crazy seniors got the crazy idea to walk from geogetown to austin and sleep out in the streets with teh rest of the country (only around college campusses-of course)- so im going with for no other reason than for an adventure. we plan to leave at 4/5 in the morning and walk allthewaythere.

I had last weekend off from bb so i went to a formal with a girl. here's a picture - the only picture I have to show, bc the only pictures i have are the ones people take of me and send me, -candid.
yes, i got a haircut, ive got mostly positive responses, so its ok, i havent buzzed it yet like ive promised everyone.
Im taking a maymester in political science so i can graduate easily with a political science major but working on an economics minor, we'll see about that. after june, ill see what flies my way, maybe an independent study, possibly another class, a mindless job, riding horses across the counrtyside-whatever, and im still counting on that family reunion at camp meeting!

camping in china

SR and i joined a camping group last weekend for a trip out to anhui province, about a five hour drive southwest of Shanghai. it was my first experience camping in china, and was not that different from what we do in the US.

in the end, it was a good trip, though i was feeling a little bit differently on Saturday morning when we were hiking in the rain after not sleeping on Friday night - that's right, we didn't get to the trailhead until 6:30 am (after getting lost a few times), so had no time to sleep and just had to start hiking.

SR ended up having a good time but i dont think she was so glad she had come on saturday. i was regretting it too. it rained most of the day saturday.

we camped in a big clearing in between two mountain peaks. we had to pitch our tents in a little wood cabin. they started some fires in the cabin, which made it so smokey i couldnt open my eyes, but i couldnt go outside because the wind was so intense - clouds blew in the door whenever it was opened.



so a funny thing happened with our tent - it was meant to be put up outside (which seems reasonable), and so you needed to put stakes in the ground to keep in standing up. well, since we were inside, we couldn't put stakes in the ground. so i was feeling pretty stupid, and SR was getting a little disappointed in her first tent experience.

but eventually we rigged something up - put one corner under a table led, a few others attached to other tents - so that it was standing up fine. we slept 11 hours that night.





got up at sunrise to beautiful weather. if i can see a nice sunrise, that makes any trip worthwhile. there is something about seeing a sunrise.
we then got to hang out on the mountain top for a few hours enjoying the sun.

the hike down was great. went through several small villages. folks from the countryside are often very warm. the people we ran into were very friendly.

so in the end, a good trip. we will hopefully be going again.

Huang Shan

i am playing around with Youtube.com again, so here is another video. this is a video from a trip we took to Huang Shan (the Yellow Mountains) over Chinese new year 2005 (a year ago).

another sunday at the park

this looks a lot like last weekends post. it was the same crew, another sunday afternoon at the park, though a different park. it was super crowded this day, as you can kind of see from the picture. we were especially lazy this day.

something you will only hear in china

"Oh, man!! I accidentally bought the green tea toothpaste!"

-Fredrik, last night at about 11pm

spring in shanghai

i know this is late, but i really wanted to blog about our weekend, LAST weekend. people sometimes ask what we do for fun in Shanghai, so here is one example. last weekend was the first warm weekend of the year, and it kind of had that affect that spring has on students at CU in Boulder - on the first warm day, you see everyone out on the grass just soaking up the rays. so we had to get out and enjoy it. it had to be at least 80.

so saturday i had a bball game at 10am at a gym way down on the other side of town. so SR and i make it just in time (SR is one of the head cheerleaders for our team) and we only have 5 guys. but anyway, we pulled out a win (for the record, my line was 8 pts, 10 boards, 2 assists, 1 steal; the league keeps stats). then SR and i went for a hair wash to freshen up. this is a common thing in China. the barbershops all offer hair washes and shoulder and head massages. it is great. costs about $1 usually. so after getting cleaned up we went to one of our favorite restaurants for a good American breakfast. after some impromptu shopping and some japanese tepanyaki for dinner, we headed home.

that night we went out to an old warehouse near Suzhou creek that runs through shanghai to see a show. shanghai has some pretty good nightlife, and even though we dont get out too often, we like to go see a band every once in a while. the show was pretty good, but the cops showed up after awhile because it was too loud i guess. it is easy to forget you are living in a one-party communist country a lot of the time, and china is doing a lot to open itself up, but things like rock concerts in old warehouses are probably still difficult for the local police to understand. so we took off after the music stopped.


sunday the weather was beautiful, so i got to work trying to put together a trip to a park to throw the frisbee and kick the soccer ball. i rallied the troops and we headed out to Chang Feng park near my old university ECNU. but when the weather gets nice in shanghai, EVERYONE goes out to the park. and chang feng park is now free, so it was completely covered up, plus they have taken out most of the open grassy areas to build new buildings. so we instead ended up on a field at ECNU. it ended up being very nice. we threw the disk, and taught our swedish roommate fredrik how to play american football.
We then got Korean for dinner.

another quote

"Reality is like a fine wine . . . it does not appeal to children."
- Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What

one of my favorite all time quotes. i feel like i didn't really learn about reality until after college. i could go one, maybe i will later. but the two other americans are out of the office this week, so it was a long day today and i need to go to sleep.

another quote

"Reality is like a fine wine . . . it does not appeal to children."
- Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What

one of my favorite all time quotes. i feel like i didn't really learn about reality until after college. i could go one, maybe i will later. but the two other americans are out of the office this week, so it was a long day today and i need to go to sleep.

a video from banna

i am having fun messing around with youtube.com, so here is another video. this is from me, Shen Rong and Matthew's trip to Xishuangbanna. we were riding bikes one afternoon. saw an awesome sunset this day. this was in october.

a cat video

this is a video of our kitten mooch and a crab we bought at the market to cook.
-elias

a quote stolen from brent's blog

"Sin is more than turning our backs on God, it is turning our backs on life! Immorality is much more than adultery and dishonesty; it is living drab, colorless, dreary, stale, unimaginative lives. The greatest enemy of Christianity may be people who say they believe in Jesus but who are no longer astonished and amazed. Jesus Christ came to rescue us from listlessness as well as lostness.He came to save us from flat souls as well as corrupted souls.He came to save us from dullness. Our culture is awash in immorality and drowning in dullness.We have forgotten how to dance, how to sing, and how to laugh.We have allowed technology to beat our imaginations into submission and have become tourists rather than travelers. Television dominates our time, alters our values, numbs us to life in all of its wildness.We have been stunted by mediocrity."

-Mike Yaconelli

Brent's blog.

SR's bday. i made a cake!

SR's bday was on February 13 (many of you may note that that is the day before Valentine's day). She got a new cell phone for her bday; otherwise we just took it easy. we cooked dinner and i baked a cake. it was my first time making a cake from scratch. thanks to mom and dad for the betty crocker cook book. so it took me most of an afternoon, but i thought it was pretty good. SR decorated it. with some chocolate sauce and strawberries. most chinese cakes have a lot of fruit on them.










i saw lindy say she spends a lot of her time baking. so do we. we cook almost every night now. we rotate chinese and western. SR is usually in charge of chinese with me assisting, and michael is in charge of western.



-elias

a quote (a lyric, actually) for today

can you deny
there's nothing greater
there's nothing more
than the traveling hands of time.
-son volt, tear stained eye

i am a big fan of short quotes from books or lyrics from songs. i am always underlining short passages in books, but then i always just forget about them. i am going to try to start putting some of them on here; you guys should add your own. there is something powerful in a short statement that presents a truth or a new perspective on something or something that offers a little hope is some way. reading these types of things just make you feel a little better about the world.
-elias

Mooch the cat

many of you are already aware of this, but we got a cat about a month ago. his name is Mooch, or Macgyver, or Mac. he is great. kind of a mental case, but a lot of fun. our hands and feet are his sworn enemies. we paid about US$15 for him at a market that sells pets and flowers. he is super energetic and likes to play a lot. these pics are from when we first got him, it is now about a month later and he is already a lot bigger. he is now attacking my fingers and not letting me type. he hasn't been too much trouble so far, and i would say orion and i have done a surprisingly decent job of taking care of him, and SR has helped out a lot too.

i hear abi is thinking of getting a cat - i say do it! if david will let you. then we can exchange cat stories!
-elias

virtual dorks

virtual dorks
file://C:/Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\My Pictures\2-4-2006
HOLA!! That's how we say hello here in Texas SR. This is Lindy and I'm here with my number one prima, Annagraciella the Fincher. It's a lovely Lubbock day, and yesterday was even sweeter because it was my birthday. Annagraciella came down last night, and we've had a rip-roaring time so far. I'm throwing a party for myself tonight. The theme is DIAMONDS: Celebrating Lindy's past, present, and future. I invited Matthew and I told all my guests to frost themselves with bling.
Lindy taking the bench.
Annagraciella signing in.
Well, things are exciting in our lives. Lindy has boy in her class, who has been eyeing her. He thinks he smooth, but his moves do nothing for her. As Lindy says, "He has the small guy complex," which is really the little man snydrome. I have young fourth grade girls who sneak of to the bathroom to make out with their boyfriends, unfortunately there is no joking around about this. Student teaching has overtaken our lives, and this is all we can talk about. The big news that is happening is my life, is my new beau! Haha, I figured this is big news for me and EVERYBODY should know about it. Well his name is Jordan, he is a football stud!
Annagraciella signs out.
Lindy substitutes in.
Ah, yes. Student teaching is now our life. I do have a bad boy in my class. I give the evil ice queen eye and some harsh chiding, and the problem is solved. Yes Annagraciella is seeing a young man. It is true, he is a football stud. She tells me he is so much bigger than her. That's good news. John is running his little tail off. He also has a small child in the form of a pup. Sophie is her name and she is his one true love. What other news for Lindy, you ask? Not a whole lot my friends, but times are good. I have been painting pictures and baking the days away. I also painted a chair in my room a pink shade that was called 'Sweet William'. It's really beautiful.
Lindy, down for the count.
Annagraciella checks back in.
Well, we tried to put a picture on the site, but we do not know if it worked. Well we are about to eat at Fuddruckers, finally, we have been waiting for John. He was spending some much needed time with his girl, Sophie.
Lindy and Annagraciella leave.