ethics

so... i have this new profs in one of my classes... he isnt new... like he has been teaching at the school for a while... but he is new to the class. we used to have this great teacher, but due to the fallen nature of man... he got sick and had to step down from the class for at least the remainder of this semester... so we got stuck with a new prof. this guy is the same one who taught my business law class. so... now we have a law prof teaching an ethics class. am i the only one that sees potential for not great things?

dont get me wrong... we do live in a fallen world, therefore we can justify rightly the need for law. however, ethics is above law. law needs to be upheld within ethics, but i like to think of law being the minimum requirement. now... what do you do when the law is not governing a certain aspect? who knows? this is a place where ethics comes into play.

well... after a few week with this prof... i am seeing some very bad things come of the class. we learned under the previous prof that when you see something not going well... you shouldnt just bail out... but instead try to step up and change things... make them more ethical. well when in the first day of classes under this new prof... in an ethic class no less... i hear cheating on homework i dont consider unethical.. because it is so small... i start second guessing things. red flags started flying up everywhere. especially since just the week before that we were learning that no matter how small it may seem.. we have to hold our ethical stance... because a small hole can become very large over time. well if you did this... this is ok... and then this is ok... then this... then this... etc. soon.. you are claiming something falsely on an income statement... and you are $1 million dollars richer.

doesnt seem like that bad for such a great reward... cost-benefit tells me it is worth it. i mean what are you risking... a few years in jail... restitutions after settlements of like $500,000? shoot... one lie and a couple years just got me a decent paycheck. these are the kind of things i see the class slipping to. and to be honest myself at times. i hate it. i learned last class that if you can state it in a way that is beneficial... then even the worst thing can be ok. justification makes something ok... now that doesnt seem right. but when i speak up about it... what do i get? i get well sarah... make the best out of it... or this is what i am trying to do?

well i am sorry... you may be trying to do the best thing in the world... but if you arent... and you are raising up a group of unethical leaders... something needs to change. but i keep getting told to back down... or tough it out. doesnt seem right to me. i want out of the class at this point. but they wont let me. so... to avoid causing more problems or disrupting everyone elses "learning".. i have concluded that numbing my mind and sitting there quiet is the best solution to the problem. everytime i bring up anything... anger just builds... i shouldnt be angry... i know.. that is not a fruit of the spirit.. but one of the flesh... if i just sit the anger is gone... but when i try to handle any situation that arises in the class... like a poorly graded assignment.. or anything like that... then i just start to get angry... and attempt to walk away...

i honestly just hate to see this class going so poorly. i loved being challenged by the other professor. now i am just blindly memorizing what i need for the test. another class that is a waste of money. goodbye favorite class of the semester... and hello waste of money.

health

so... i havent been feeling well.. that is no real big news to some. i feel like everytime i turn around i need to go back into the doctor... we are still trying to figure out what is exactly wrong with me. they think it is this thing called diabetes insipidus.. no that is not regular diabetes.. it has nothing to do with my blood sugar or insulin levels.. it has to do with your pituitary gland or your kidneys. depending on what type you have... well... like i said... i may or i may not have this. i have had to do a lot of medical tests... blood and the like... they are fairly sure now that they will do this thing called a water deprivation test... not too excited about that at all. it is the crappiest test on the face of the planet. i drink a lot of water a day. generally i am always carrying my nalgene with me. if i get to sit for a second and just drink... that nalgene will be downed very quickly... and i will have to go fill it again. this test just takes the water away from you... NOT FUN. i am playing the waiting game now.... when the doctor calls.. then we go from there... if not.. then yay!

i really dont like waiting... it seems i am being asked to do a lot of it lately.. normally i dont have a problem with it... like one thing here or there... i can wait... i am generally a patient person... but when everything around you is saying wait... and they are all generally large things.. it gets rather annoying and nerve wracking... i understand i should be trusting God. and i am trying... it is just hard sometimes. i guess that is why they call it trust... and faith... if it wasnt so hard... then it wouldnt be the same at all.

beautiful destruction

so... for those of you who dont know... i am living in the middle of a disaster zone. earlier this week a sheet of ice planted itself all over the city. tuesday i went out to the car and there was about an inch separating me from my windshield. there was also icicles making it very very hard to get into the car. i had to break this wall of ice just to get in and turn on the defroster... like that was actually gonna help. well... after about 40 minutes... i got it uncovered enough that i felt it ok to drive... well... that was the least awful day of the week...

tuesday afternoon i sat and watched trees topple over as i was taking the new slate of ice off of my car. i feared as i drove and heard small twigs hit my car. when i got home... i walked inside and there i sat for the next 2 days. JBU for the first time in history cancelled classes on wednesday. we were encouraged to stay inside. power was lost all throughout the state. the place was really a disaster...

but this morning as i went outside... because jbu can never cancel 2 days of class... that would be crazy... i go out to my car... get into it after a couple of knocks to remove some ice... and try to start it up... its dead... oh joy... well... i had to get up to school for a voice lesson... so i take off walking.

as i walked i saw amazing things. things were destroyed. trees fallen on powerlines. people unable to leave their house because of powerlines draped across their driveway. but you look up and see the light shining through the ice. it was beautiful. throughout the destruction... there was still beauty.



it is kind of like fire... a forest fire kills off so much... but it leaves the land so fertile and ready for life. it is a beautiful thing. God may have times that things dont always look the greatest... outlook on our end may seem bleak... but it always leads to something more beautiful than we could have ever planned...

What was the dream?

so... we had a speaker come into chapel... of course he was black. it seems funny to me... i think back to all that i have learned every year on this day about martin luther king jr. what did he teach... he didnt teach equality of the races at all... he taught that race wouldnt matter. it would be the content of the character that mattered. and that is basically what the guy said. he made a lot of comments about how he gets asked to speak on MLK day because he is a black preacher and all that. but how he always changes his topic to something more universal.

well.. something i thought was funny that happened yesterday that is very relavent to what the guy talked about tonight was something i saw on tv yesterday. i was watching lean on me on BET. a commercial came on that was for obama... it wasnt all that surprising that i saw it... but then it was talking about inaguration and had this figure that looked a lot like MLK out in the crowd. the guy was watching obama swearing into office. and then at the end it said a dream come true... or a dream realized or something like that. i almost turned off the tv... now i am not a racist... yeah... i have some strong feelings sometimes... but not about the people but some of the crap that has come out of reconciliation. i dont agree with affirmative action or anything that says one person should be held above another just because people of their "kind" had it rough in the past. well i got to thinking during chapel today as to why that made me not very happy seeing that on the tv. and now i know.

that was not the dream at all. the dream was that one race wouldnt be held over another... but it seems that there is something special about a black person being elected president. you know i will give you that yes. it is historic. but it is nothing that should be really treated like a dream has been realized... saying that in itself tells me that it has not been realized. on the contrary we are still very far from it. we are still looking at the color of the skin. we have just switched it around. we have a race picking a president just because he is black.

im sorry mr. martin luther king... your dream is just as far from being realized as ever.

longing for what i run from

those that know me best know that i am always busy. i often complain about the sheer quantity of things that i have to do... but... i strategically make my life out to be busy... why do i do this? why do i think that i have the right to complain about anything...

throughout my busyness.. i always find myself longing for some relaxation... but i am so unwilling to do anything that will get me that..

time is something that is i long for... but run from as fast as i can... time means thoughts... time means struggles... time means sin.... well it shouldnt always mean that... but it seems to at this stage in life... i know i should be giving myself more time... that way i can learn how to handle it.. but sometimes i just dont think i am able to...

do you ever find yourself running from things that are healthy for one reason or another.... generally because of fear... i know i do... this is only one example. i am now out of school for about a month... i have nothing to preoccupy my mind... i am just here. gotta think... gotta process... gotta deal...

An Aroma Pleasing to Who?

i was just thinking about my last post... if you havent read it, you might want to just to know where i am coming from with this.

i was just thinking about the things that happened that night... and how it was not necessarily something far out in left field. it was something that was just an extreme of something that exists out in the world so often today. this just gets me thinking... who does our worship exist for. i understand there needs to be this balance. it needs to be good enough that it doesnt hinder worship of others, but i mean how much of that is just catering to our society. we are perfectionists who demand it of everything... including our worship. but its funny worship is not for us. it is something that i think should actually leave us in awe of how insignificant we are apart from God. It is God living in us that makes us anything. so why does our worship have to sound so pleasing to us?

something specific that i was thinking about today was the concept of the sacrificial worship of the old testament. the burnt offering was made as an aroma pleasing to the lord. can you imagine the burning of an animal carcus... that would smell something horrible to us... it hasnt been seasoned or anything like that... and this is burning flesh and hair. not something you would find pleasure in. God looks for something different than we as man do. He sees this offering as beautiful... but to the man giving it... that was the loss of His best calf or whatever the animal happened to be. does that make sense? man... isnt that mind blowing? we need to take selfish selves out of the picture. when we think of worship we should be thinking of pleasing the Lord first and foremost. our lives of worship... pleasing the Lord first and foremost. but NO!!! we dont. what is wrong with us. we say one thing... but when we build something like a worship service... what do we do... we spend the majority of our time concentrating on something like the arrangement or musical excellence. something seems backwards. maybe we should take it back. God doesnt see excellence the same way we do. why dont we ask what he wants and aim to hit that? seems logical right?

what is worship?

so... i just got back from a final senior worship presentation of a couple of my peers. at first, i must say... the music was great. they excelled greatly when it came to the sound of the different songs. this is something they have always been good at... but yet... i was left incredibly disappointed.

i have talked with several others who attended tonight as well... they all seem to also recognize something was missing. when i ask what they think... being music majors, they most say it sounded great musically. yet... something was lacking. it lasted an hour and a half.. and throughout this time... i cant really say i "entered into" worship. there was a spiritual aspect missing. i liken the whole experience to a christian concert. but... what makes it different. i mean... the songs were about God. there seems to be some around me that were worshipping... i looked around often curious of how people were taking to it.

i realize part of me not worshipping tonight is my fault... i need to walk myself always in worship. but gathered together for corporate worship is different than walking in a life of sacrifice for our Father. we must be led as one in worship. but for that... there needs to be more than just religious songs offered up with empty words. each word that was sung... was said... was acted out... i hate to say... was just that alone... there was nothing to it. at one point i stopped singing.. and just sat... i wanted to think about what was happening...

and as i think back... it wasnt worship... at least not of God. it was worship of what man can do. at the beginning there was a professor that spoke and introduced the evening. all this time... he spoke of all the two guys had done. and what they will do... he also talked about how we all are there because we love these two guys and want to see them do well... then... at the end... we got a thank you. it was a thank you not for being a part of a night of worship... but for coming out to support them... that is not what worship should ever be about... these guys became the center of a night of "worship"... this context led to the empty words...

with all this said... i feel further confirmed in my disappointment in my worship education. if a worship student gets anything out of their education it should be that God is always first. and that we must completely give up ourselves to serve our God by worshipping and guiding others into that worship. the musical talent should be second. yes it is important. you want someone who can keep in tune while leading, but it is not to be primary... unfortunately... the musical practical critiques are all we ever get... so... even though we hear we are supposed to be servant... these too become just empty words within our educational context.

so... what is the point of this education? to find out... not how to lead... but the falacies that often come up in the church today... sad excuse for an education...

oh.. one more thing... this angered me today... being told by a professor... you are in college you cant just use the bible to talk about worship... you need to read other books... who are they to say the bible cannot stand alone!