Simply Explained

Dem recently sent me a link to a site that had the following quote from Albert Einstein: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

That is exactly how I feel. I originally got the idea from C.S. Lewis discussing language. He was explaining how it shows more understanding to use simple words because its the technical terms that are really just short hand for a whole bunch of simple words and ignorance can be hidden by using the technical term.

Here is an example from fluid mechanics..."Couette Flow". Sounds technical, but really all it is is a simplfied way of saying you are discussing "a fluid filled between two parallel plates with no variation in pressure in fluid and the plate on the bottom not moving and the plate on top moving at some speed, creating a linear velocity profile in the fluid from zero at the non-moving plate to the speed of the moving plate at the top plate." Now these terms may need some further explanation, but what you see is that true knowledge of the subject allows for further explanation of each term in the definition until it can be conveyed to anyone.

So whenever someone uses a term that you don't know, make them explain it...you'll find out if they really know what they are talking about and if they do you'll probably be able to learn something new.

Pain

I’m currently reading Paul Brand’s The Gift of Pain, which I selected as a change from all the C.S. Lewis I’ve been reading. I’ve only read one other book by Brand, but I really love the stuff he writes. He simply presents the human body in all its glory, which in turns brings to light numerous truths…the other book I read, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, relates human body parts to the various parts of the Body of Christ.

Anyway, I’m about half way through the current book and the entire book so far has been describing how pain works the result of painlessness…which is the true problem that cripples lepers. One of the interesting things is that Brand explains how pain signals are constantly being sent to the brain, but in the subconscious a decision is made whether to listen to it or not. An example is when you sit in a chair...at first you feel fine, but if you don’t move you start to listen to the subtle messages saying to move. If you don’t move the signal will become stronger and stronger. What makes this interesting is that the brain actually gets to “decide” if something is painful or not. As a result if someone is really focused on something the pain messages will be ignored…Brand said that he can tell if his lectures are boring by how often the audience readjusts in their seats.

I told you this because while I’ve been thinking about pain a short story from my youth came to mind. It was the first time I shaved…I was probably about 4 or 5 years old. I had watched my dad shave in the mornings and thought for some reason you take this device and rub it all over your face each day. So one day while I was taking a bath I decided I should do this. I was playing in the tub and getting my “shaving” done when all of a sudden I noticed the bath water was really red. Then after a few confusing moments I figured out the red water was the result of numerous cuts on my face. I immediately started to scream, my mom came and got me, and then I spent the rest of night laying next to my dad while he held a towel on my face to stop the bleeding.

What made me think of this story was that I never felt a thing while slicing up my face because I was focused on having some fun in the bath tub. Once I realized I was bleeding my focus was put on the cuts, and man it didn’t feel good anymore. The body is a funny and marvelous thing.

Apologetics

I wrote this post sometime last week, but I didn’t post it because I wanted to wait until I had written out my thoughts on each of these topics. However I started to write the first follow up and realized that they would be way too long to post. Maybe I will just write them and give links to my opinions on each topic some time in the future. Either way I figured I would still post this one since it is only an intro to something that’s been on my mind for the past couple years. I warn you that this post doesn’t have much to do with my life, but is only some thoughts that I’ve wanted to get down on paper.

So over the past several years I have enjoyed studying Christian apologetics as well as plenty of reading on Christianity in general. My top recommended authors are C.S. Lewis (general), John Eldredge (man’s heart), Lee Strobel (intro to Christian apologetics), Paul Brand (pain and beauty of God’s creation), Philip Yancey (Grace and suffering), and Michael Behe (intelligent design). I was fortunate enough to be raised in a church where your faith was something that you were expected to think about. I’ll never forget when my pastor told me that he was human and could be wrong so when he teaches us something it was our job to make sure that it was consistent with the teachings of the Bible. To a 10 year old boy an adult telling you that it is your responsibility to correct errors by them is pretty exciting. I took this challenge serious and whenever he said something that I wasn’t absolutely sure was consistent I would look into it and try to challenge his statements. This had three major effects on my life: (1) it resulted in me obtaining an intimate knowledge of what the Bible says, (2) it brought to light doubts that I had inside and forced me to take an honest look at them, and (3) it made my faith my own at a young age…I was not spoon feed knowledge that was suppose to be taken at face value. I saw the reality (of coarse I didn’t and still don’t understand it fully) of Christianity.

Now as I’ve grown and matured in my faith I have been more honest with myself and perhaps “critical” of Christianity. Don’t misunderstand “critical” here…what I mean is that I’m so sure of the reality of Christianity that I try to find tough questions that may disprove Christianity. This way I can dig out potential stumbling blocks for others as well as strengthen my own faith as I search of understanding. With my attempts to disprove Christianity I have settled on four levels at which it can be argued against. They are as follows…

1) Why have a god at all? (Atheism vs. Theism)
2) Why can’t there be multiple gods? (Monotheism vs. Polytheism)
3) Is Christianity consistent with the world around us? (Christianity vs. Science)
4) Is Christianity consistent with itself? (Christianity vs. Christianity)

Each of these questions are formed from some basic claim that Christianity makes. (1) Well His name is “I AM”…so we have to back that up. (2) Our claim is not only that a living god exists, but that he is the one and only God that can grant us eternal life in heaven. (3) According to Christianity we are intimately linked with God’s creation. Thus we would expect both our beliefs and our perception of reality to be linked, and that is what we call science (man’s perception of reality from his/her senses). (4) Well this is somewhat obvious…if Christianity made mutually exclusive claims about itself then we would have to conclude that it is non-rational and should be ignored.

As stated above, I won’t be writing a hundred pages explaining my views on each of these questions, but in the future I hope to at least give you links to my thoughts. For now I simply want to point out that if someone wants to argue against Christianity they have to attack at one of these points. Quite often when I’ve gotten into a discussion with someone that wants to refute Christianity the lack of focus in the discussion typically prevents any real explanation to be made of any topic. So my one suggestion here is to try not to answer too many questions if you are in this situation and if you are the one challenging then try to really focus your question (if you have a solid case then limiting the conversation will only make your point clearer to the Christian).

So now that I’ve written this I wonder why anyone would want to read it…not to mention that this seems more like advice then a blog. People don’t read blogs to be given advice. They read to find out weird/interesting details about their friends lives that won’t normally come up in conversation. Then I decided that the only solution to this dilemma is to point out one simply fact…it’s my blog and I’ll post what I want.

Inner Rings

For those that don’t know I’m stealing the title from the annual “Commemoration Oration” given at King’s College by C.S. Lewis in 1944 (later published in The Weight of Glory). The idea of inner rings has really been on my mind lately. I’ll make an attempt to explain in a few words what is meant by inner ring, but for a thorough understanding of what I’m talking about read Lewis’s conclusion to his space trilogy, That Hideous Strength. Basically I think it can be best explained by focusing on the typical high school setting. Within the high school there is say a quarter of the students that might be referred to as the “cool kids.” They are an inner ring, however even within that group there exists smaller even more elite groups. So the way to picture it is concentric rings like an onion cut in half. While my example makes it sound like inner rings are bad, I’m not thinking of the elitist type of groups for this blog, but more the your “best friends” that form your own personal innermost ring. These groups may have a positive or negative effect on you, but either way I find it quite fascinating how they form and what they are like. Lewis wrote/spoke on it mainly because he saw it as the primary way in which the world will affect your walk with Christ.

At every stage of my life I can pretty easily narrow my friends down to a handful that would form my innermost ring. In high school I had the 4-bangers, during my undergrad the Waterford guys (and a Pigeon), during the summer was the BBM crew, while working for NASA the Poor Souls, and now in grad school the OC. What really makes these groups an inner ring is that each one has its own language or key words that will let those within it know that you belong. This is so true with friends…just pay attention when you are hanging out with a friend and you feel comfortable with them, but then their “best friend” shows up. They immediately start talking in some kind of foreign language and suddenly you feel like you totally don’t belong with that person anymore.

Now I’ll make my point really clear…for each group I’ll just list words. If you are a part of that inner ring or at least that part of my life it will make some sense or possibly bring to mind numerous stories. However any ring that you weren’t a part of the words will just seem like gibberish or at best pointless.

4-Bangers
Mohair, Beast, Black Velvet, Ron Style, Grande Marqi, cloves, the shed, po-po hunting, pregame subs, tip 21 w/ rum, warehouse ball, Hacker, 40 in 4-4-1, gummy worms

Waterford Boys
Tabasco, Shaq, 60 wings, Blitz, Chavez, mini-kegs, trickass, chaches, the Gathering, Taco Bell, Ben and Jerry’s, Good Ass Dave, 3am talks, goldfish, Miller Lite, kiss of the cross, come here girl I’ll hold you close, taquilla, Eldora, Beav, Hank, Lawrence, Iben, Fender

BBM Crew
Tucson, Boring Oregon, DJW, JB, honey wagon, Elmer, the rock game, Ann Landers, Lucky, Rascal, chocolate, icy wing, Oh did ja now?, 2lb steak, hiking at night, waders, sexual harassment notification, fishing

Poor Souls
Rock N’ Roll, sleep, highway, movies, enjoy yourself, tennis, Sunday church, rocket sled thing, drop tower, autonomous vehicle

OC
Now this group being that it is current I can’t really do the same thing with. In fact out of all the groups I believe this one is truly the least defined ring. It actually shows the full complexity that makes the inner ring hard to define (even for Lewis). See OC really isn’t a fair description of my “inner ring.” That is already a pretty large group and is part of an even larger group, NLC. One chain would be NLC – OC – OC (Wed) – Ocdudes, but that line excludes many of my closest friends. See at this point in my life there really are numerous splits with numerous overlapping rings. Lewis talked of the stability of rings and how the members aren’t obvious until it stabilizes, and that some may never stabilize. Based on the structure of my life I really don’t expect this one to ever stabilize, but even with an unstable system I’ve already formed some of the deepest relationships that I’ve ever had in my life.

At this point I don’t really feel like adding a conclusion to this because I really haven’t finalized my thoughts on it. Plus it feels so incomplete not even mentioning how destructive it can be for someone to try to get into a ring. I just find it so interesting how these inner rings (the best friend ones) form without anyone noticing or even trying to get into it. They simply just form because of similar interests and a common bond. Alright I’m going to end with that.