It wasn’t my intent, but turning this into a hard training ride was about all that was left. We had a south wind and rising temperatures today. I took advantage of it and rode north to Lake Arcadia on Midwest Boulevard. I got to Memorial Road in really good time, turned left and hit it almost head-on because it was actually more like a SSW wind. So I crossed the bridge-dam and turned right along I-35 Service Road. Low and behold was this little gem sitting near the road (image upper left). It’s an ancient water tower in front of an equally ancient cabin and barn.
Up and around the corner to the right is the Boys Ranch Town. That’s a Southern Baptist thing; it’s been moved once or twice over the decades. When I was in college it was still north of Downtown OKC around NW63rd and Pennsylvania Avenue. That location is now a billion-dollar business park called “Waterford.” The current facility is huge, with at least a half-dozen very large homes. They fit right in out here with the mansions; I assure you the palatial samples of conspicuous consumption got downright tiresome.
And while the terrain was hilly and a good workout, the experience itself kind of went downhill, so to speak.
The first park was new and still under construction. I straightened up the banner on the gate so it was readable. The second one said I had to pay cash just to come in the gate and look around. I’ve never thought highly of Edmond’s City government, so this offers no real surprise.
So I simply reversed course westward on Edmond’s SE 15th (same as OKC’s NE 164th) and rode to Coltrane. That’s the same as Sunnylane Road farther south, but it changes around the point where it crosses the North Canadian. Anyway, the perspective on this little camera disguises what a monster hill that was looking back down toward the turnpike. Most of this was familiar terrain from previous rides and I just kept my head down and my legs cranking. By now the headwind from the south was stiff and I had to shed some clothing, but I made it back in decent time. It was about 35 miles.
Consistent with the previous post, I’m going to offer some narrative about my internal process so that you’ll understand how it works.
For the time being, I’ll be using the fancy router as my home server. Right now that’s mostly a matter of firewall and FTP server. Only a couple of folks have expressed interest in the FTP service, but that’s fine. It’s my personal cloud storage; I use it and that’s reason enough to run it. Meanwhile, this sexy workstation computer bought with your generous donations is the place where I create and format the content. It is still very much the shadow server behind all the stuff I do with the two blogs, the books, and static website content, etc. So the basic question is what can I do to make this thing overlap as much as possible my comfort zone for producing and shaping that content, with sufficient flexibility to adapt when I discover God has something different in mind.
I run Windows in a virtual machine on my computer. I actually like Windows, mostly for what it does manage to do, despite all my other objections. Microsoft is accountable to God, not to me. All I can do is offer my reaction to what they’ve done. It is horrible technology, but Windows did a marvelous job of capturing the vast majority of user’s instincts and general hopes and dreams for what a PC could and should do. Sure, some of it was the result of manipulation and destroying sometimes better options offered by competition, but were the net result unacceptable, nobody would be using it. You can theorize all you like about whether the current business environment would be the same without the Redmond Borg’s market behavior, but we are where we are and this is how we get things done right now. In the context, I still like running Windows for some of my work.
What I can’t tolerate is how Microsoft seizes increasingly greater levels of control over users’ work environment. Somewhere between Win2K and XP was the pinnacle of usability and adaptability. It was buggy and riddled with security vulnerabilities, but that period was the best balance between moving forward with new technology while keeping the door open for old habits that served well some major portion of users. It was also just vulnerable enough that technicians could find ways to pry open the fingers of Microsoft management and do some of the things Windows was not supposed to do. With Vista and Win7, MS managed use the excuse of security and stability for closing those doors. Windows became less breakable and more tightly locked in every sense.
When MS gives with one hand, they take far more with the other. For example, I’ve discovered through some background tech chatter that if you choose to install Win7 now, one of the first required updates you get will break Windows Update on many systems — and you cannot fix it. While we cannot be sure of the criteria, it’s probably entirely intentional that your hopes of a fresh install of Win7 on some hardware now will be subject to the MS’s approval. And with every passing week, we get new announcements of yet more ways MS portrays the Borg mentality about what you will and will not be allowed to do with your hardware and their software.
Again, I don’t hate the technology but the attitude. I use Linux because, while I still have to deal with a certain amount of attitude from developers, it’s nothing like what we get from MS. So I run XP in a VM where it’s protected and I can still use the productive technology that’s frankly better than what I can get on Linux otherwise. I also run WINE for a couple of programs that work well enough without having to fire up the VM. These are choices I make in pursuit of God’s glory, so human logic and the opinions from various advocates just don’t matter.
By the way, in WINE I run Notepad++ for every day plain text composition and HTML formatting tasks. It does more with less hassle and less horsepower, and does it better, than the editors I can get made for Linux. I run Word 97 for basic pre-formatting in my books. In the VM with XP I run Word XP for the final product passed to my publisher. I use those versions because I have copies with valid product keys. If you must know, LibreOffice comes with some frankly nasty defaults that ruin the document formatting so that the published product is flawed. Changing those defaults doesn’t seem to stick, as it keeps inserting them back into new documents regardless of what I do with the templates. Complaining to the developers has proven pointless. And to be honest, I have grown much more comfortable with the subtle collection of habits associated with MS Office up through the XP version. The XP version won’t run under WINE; Office 97 does and I still think it was just dandy, but my publisher doesn’t like it.
Some of this reflects simply being set in my ways. There is nothing inherently good or righteous in change itself. I also don’t reject change that improves my service. We each must explore our own convictions and follow the path that brings us peace with the Creator.
God portrays Himself amongst us as an Eastern potentate, a sort of nomad sheikh. With that image is a certain kind of baggage about the nature of things. It portrays how He deals with us and how we should deal with each other. So far as we are concerned, this is the fundamental nature of moral reality in our universe. This is the optimum; it’s how we are wired. It is the very nature of human existence. For each of us, our best grasp of life in this realm of existence is striving to serve God as a feudal family member or household servant.
Included in this approach is the recognition that things are not static, that the whole universe is literally very much alive in its own right. If we don’t see it that way, we will fail to understand critical elements in God’s revelation, as He commands us to treat His Creation in terms of something alive with His divine character. Further, it is we who are fallen, while the rest of Creation is not fallen. Yet God has placed us in dominion over His Creation, so that our fallen nature is a painful imposition over Creation. Redemption can be characterized in part as learning how to exercise dominion in this world as God intended and giving the rest of Creation a break from our miserable thrashing.
An Eastern feudal servant is responsible for keeping track of his or her domain. That domain is delivered under certain terms, with certain limits and a distinct mission to occupy and make it profitable for the glory of our divine Sheikh. We represent His interests and are personally responsible to Him.
There are times when, in the process of doing this in my own life, I must go out and see where the boundaries are in the domain God delivered to me. That imagery applies on many levels and one of the most critical is recognizing who you are in terms of how you will go about God’s business. Yesterday was such a day of boundary inspection. Part of the artistry here is learning to recognize when a change in the boundary lines is the work of God versus when it represents a challenge to God’s divine authority. If you can’t embrace the serious need for being tested, you can’t improve your service. Our Sheikh remains ever mysterious and inscrutable in some of His purpose in moving things around and waiting for us to catch onto it.
In other words, there is no harm in going back and making sure you understand that this old thing is no longer appropriate, but that one is. And this new thing is to be added, but those things are a distraction. No other human can say what should drive you to go out and test the boundaries again, and whether it’s a waste of time.
This business of stretching out the virtual parish to cover new ways of sharing has shifted significantly from my original ideas. I was headed in the right direction but had a very normal tendency to stop too long at transitory points along the way. I just imagine that if God told me everything that was afoot, I’d mess up my chance to participate because I haven’t walked through the fire enough times to shed all the flammable junk. So I push through certain ideas until they run into stone walls and stop moving. “Okay, we got that out of the way.”
The point here is not the tentative answers at which I have arrived for today, but the underlying process. Indeed, that’s the whole point of sharing my faith, because human accomplishment was never that important. It’s all just a tool for His glory. What most Western minds keep failing to grasp is how paramount is that underlying process. Divine redemption is the process of growing an appetite for God’s favor by pursuing His glory, not the collection of things we do along the path. How He uses each of us is cool, but that He uses us is the thing we celebrate with each other. If He uses me and something about my story draws you, then you already understand as much as you need. You’ll understand that He wants to use you, too.
By no means would you be responsible to me for satisfying my inner visions in how you mark out your boundaries. Look past my foibles and follies, because there are plenty of them. See the merciful and mighty hand of God at work in me and realize He calls you into His service, as well.
Some things on my computer were not working right; I decided to test some alternatives. None of them worked, of course. But instead of running Debian 64-bit, I decided to test the idea of running 32-bit. Seems to work okay, and the PAE kernel extensions allow it to address all the RAM. It meant changing the mixture of software I use because some of it is only available as 64-bit. Such is life. I think I like this better. Besides, in all the mucking around I moved my new USB wired keyboard and mouse connections into a different place and the machine is quicker to find them now.
For now, I’m using the router as my home server. I’m still hoping that DD-WRT developers come up with something less buggy.
And of course it all made me a little stir-crazy, so I went for a ride. Take into consideration we had stiff winds varying between north and northwest. I was riding our Oklahoma River trails and ended up listing into the wind up to 15° at times. It was a lot of work just riding at all, so I didn’t go far and didn’t take any pictures. It was still one whale of a workout.
We see “the Serpent” in Genesis 3, and it’s just a poetic term for Satan. The Hebrew word for “snake” is nakawsh (naw-kawsh) — doesn’t that sound like a snake? Say it drawing out the last syllable for dramatic emphasis. Yet Paul says he was an “Angel of Light” (2 Corinthians 7:14). In the Garden, Eve instinctively recognized him as a person of authority. If we compare this scene with the opening paragraphs of Job, we begin to get a picture of someone who was allowed to come and go on the Earth at will, had tremendous power, and yet was accountable to God. Further, he had some access the God’s throne room, and seemed familiar with the protocols for addressing God.
Next, we look at Isaiah 14 where we get the name “Lucifer” — an English rendering of the Greek translation of Hebrew Scripture. The poetic lines of condemnation for Nebuchadnezzar (vv. 12-15) sound a great deal like the condemnation against the “King of Tyre” in Ezekiel 28:11-19. In the case of Tyre, we know for a fact that there was never any person bearing the title “King” over Tyre. There was a Prince (more accurately translated “leader from among the people”). We also know that the Prince was simultaneously the high priest of a very nasty religion. In the eyes of Hebrew prophets, the heathen god a people worshipped was their true ruler. For centuries, Bible scholars have said that this passage in Ezekiel could only be about Satan. Keep in mind, that there is a sense in which every pagan god and goddess was merely a front for a demon (1 Corinthians 10:19-20) when it involved genuine worship. It’s not too much of a stretch to see Tyre’s demon as Satan himself.
If you chase down the passages in Scripture regarding Satan (AKA Lucifer, the Enemy, the Accuser, etc.) and piece them together, you get a feel for this character. Seen as a whole, they describe one who, at first was the “Covering Cherub” of God. Try to imagine that few in Creation can bear the presence of God Himself, without losing their created form (i.e., they die). Thus, someone had to be a cloak to shield Creation. God created a special being to handle the task. This meant that all traffic/communication between God and Creation had to pass through this Living Cloak. No surprise that this being got a big head over his unique status, and tried to skim off some of that glory and praise meant for God, and keep it for himself.
Is this not the same thing the prophets denounced in the latter days of the Covenant? The Chosen People took themselves too seriously, convinced they were God’s gift to Creation. They forgot that they were simply the chosen messengers; they forgot that Israel the Nation was supposed to be Israel the Message. So while Jesus did encounter a few folks who remembered this (Luke 2:25-32) in His time, you would think they were a tiny minority. Today you can read and study the Talmud, if you get your hands on an honest translation that hasn’t cut out all the embarrassing stuff, and be told that only Jews are actually human, while the rest of us are animals.
You’ll have to decide for yourself how much this affects the way Jews as a whole and Jews individually interact with the rest of us. Compare that with Anglo-Saxon arrogance or any other presumption of superiority we encounter on this earth. It’s human nature because it comes from the Fall; it’s part the fundamental attraction in Satan’s sales pitch to Eve about the Forbidden Fruit. We are born with a reflex to measure all things by our own internal chatter. Our assumptions are surely so sensible; how could anything think differently?
When Satan came to visit Adam and Eve, he had already suffered the demotion from Covering Cherub to Divine Jailer. The only way he could prosper now was to increase the occupancy of his jail. The primary seduction was suckering folks into his own mistake. This business of presuming that human reason is sufficient to answer all the important questions of “life the universe and everything” is the very essence of the Fall. This is what puts us in the jail, because it is contrary to cosmic reality, contrary to the moral fabric of Creation, and contrary to God’s moral character. The nature of sin itself is arguing with God.
This is a terse prophetic song. The Hebrew is difficult to grasp if you read it literally, and you would be in good company. Toward the end before Babylon laid siege to the city, a great many shallow minds and closed hearts mistook such prophetic material as some kind of cheap guarantee that they had God over a barrel. They could do what they pleased, but as long as they hid in the City, God could not allow His House to be destroyed. How wrong they were, having forgotten the lesson of the Tabernacle at Shiloh. They forgot what God said to David, that He did not actually dwell in structures built by human hands. Rather, Solomon would build a house for God’s name, His earthly representation. This is not a song of Jerusalem the geographic spot on this earth; it is a song of Zion the heart of God.
So far as the record of Scripture shows, God first spoke personally to Abraham. On this Mount Moriah where Abraham was prepared to offer his only natural born heir, it is here that one can make some physical contact with the foundation of divine revelation and redemption. This act of Abraham was the symbolic foreshadowing of Christ, the final revelation of the Creator’s character. For the Sons of Korah, this is the place where God had been willing to found His personal reputation in the midst of fallen humanity.
He could have chosen any part of the Promised Land, but this is the spot to where He called David to build his capitol. It was honored by His choice, not by its own virtue. God could visit any Israeli in his home, but He called them as sovereign to appear before Him in a place they could learn to treasure for what it meant. While it would mean nothing but a burdensome ritual to some, to those whose heart was awake and focused on Jehovah, it was a sacred duty. They would come and be moved deeply at the sight of those symbols of imperial majesty.
And it was in this place where those with committed hearts could not remain silent, but would burst with praise and grateful thanksgiving for the high privilege of being God’s chosen voice to the world.
Someday, you would look around at all the foreigners who came to celebrate their Creator in this place. People from as far as Egypt in one direction and Babylon in the other. Philistia, once their implacable foe; Tyre who depended on them for food even as she controlled so much of the commerce coming into Israel; all colors of men, including those from Ethiopia — you will point to them and say that they were born here in Zion. This is where humanity’s redemption was born, and it will give everyone it touches a new identity. The Lord will count them as born in Zion. They will all be Children of Israel in the sense of God’s divine mission of revelation.
And the Sons of Korah singing and playing worship instruments will rejoice in this global redemption, welcoming everyone who seeks the Lord, proclaiming loudly that Jehovah is the source of their very existence.
