The Demise of Social Christianity

As biblically-based Christianity becomes more irrelevant to the evolving American experiment, what heady freedom comes to the people of God!

Freedom from:
* "church" as a tired synonym for "religion"
* the burden of carrying an entire national culture on its back
* the burden of making the world "safe" for Christianity (so-called) through military might
* the burden of subscribing to party politics with consequent alignment to ungodly practices

and

Freedom to:
* live out the kingdom of God as @alt.culture
* testify the meaning of Christ's lordship as @alt.life-style
* proclaim in communion the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ of God, until he comes

Teaching With Minerals

The following parenthetical note may be read.

[Oh, yes, children, despite its name the board was not chalk - it really was a sliver of a different rock, a thin slate piece covering a goodly part of a wall. (The board could also consist of other stuff made to look and act like the dark gray slate.) The other piece of technology that made the whole thing work synergistically was another mined rock formed into a stylus of sorts; we called this manipulative "chalk," after the rock from which it mostly arose, whitish in color. Usually. As the softer chalk stylus was pressed onto and moved across the harder slate board by hand, it left a trail of chalk dust particles, noticeable white marks against the dark gray board. The particles stuck to the slate semi-permanently so that the marks held, but then they could be dislodged easily by wiping the slate with a piece of cloth, thus cleaning the board and rendering it ready for more such dusty marks. This system may yet be witnessed in some classrooms and other historical places.]

The Most Important Election -- Ev-ver!

Election cycles highlight the urgency of the mess we're in. In each cycle we hear claims the present election is the most critical that ever has been, and that the outcome will herald either the demise of the republic or its resurrected glory.

People of faith often find in political parties a home for their hopes, and, therefore, a home for the Divine agenda. For many of the faithful, supporting and ultimately voting for a particular candidate becomes an exercise of religious fervor, indeed, a test for soundness.

All stuff and nonsense, of course.

A political election stands as the will to power: the attempt of one party to gain and exercise power over opposing parties.

"The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your slave." -Jesus, to his followers

Now.

There is one election that counts for something. God elects. God, indeed, elected an eternity ago. God elects to immortality whom he qualifies. God qualifies through Christ. There is one party to which Jesus, the Christ, calls: a party to deny self, to take up one's cross, and to follow him. There is one Divine agenda: to bridle one's tongue, to care for orphans and widows, to keep oneself stain-free from the world.

[Originally posted mostly elsewhere, October 19, 2016]

When The Center of the Universe Shifted

In ages past, and in the not so distant past, people held Earth as the unchallenged center of the universe. How foolish! Modern people hold that it is not. Earth flies about the Sun. The Sun in turn, among numberless other stars situated toward the edge of the Milky Way, flies around the center of the galaxy. That galaxy is itself but one of a countless horde of other galaxies all flying hither and yon, mostly yon. We live in an increasingly expanding universe.

Here we were in a class called analytical geometry, excitement unbound. Grids, curves, lines, numbers, letters, and mostly, lots of math equations remained the order of the day. Our instructor presented the famous graph grid consisting of two lines perpendicular to each other, the x line going left and right, and the y line going up and down, toward four different infinities right there on the chalk board. The Cartesian coordinate system, he called it.

Anyway, the lines crossed each other in the middle, their cross hairs aimed right where the Big Zero was. The Origin. On the grid, but well off center, was a noticeable dot, its location described by some proper x and y values. Not Zero. Not the origin.

Holding us with bated breath, the instructor discussed passionately that as you do certain mathematical calculations, you can shift the x and y cross hairs so that they move right over the off-center dot, all the while keeping careful notice where the old crossing used to be, and where everything else was, too. The Big Zero changed place! By such marvelous manipulation, a purportedly useful, new Origin of the whole system took place. The same kind of thing could be done in three dimensional notation, apparently. Or in any number of dimensions for that matter.

In an infinite system, that is, in the kind that math people like to think about, any place can be the center of the system. Pick any origin and you can describe anywhere else in terms of that center. Pick another, and you can still keep track of everywhere just as easily. So, the "center" can be be any place you want it to be in that infinite world ...

Huh ...
Well ...
Oh ...

But, wait! What if the system were not merely in the mathematical chalk board mind, but were the world "out there," the real universe? (Revelation dawns way late.)

Now, they tell us there is no "edge" to the real universe. All things holding equal (which never they do, of course), if you start outbound from here in one lightning push as fast and furious for as far as you can, you just go from here to there (and back to here) traveling the universe in a (straight!) cosmic loop, never approaching an edge. I confess not to get it, but that's the way it works. They say. Not that anybody's ever gone and done it.

So, here's the deal: In an unimaginably huge space-time universe such as ours, Earth might as well be the center of that universe as anywhere else. Math models just don't care what arbitrary points are chosen as their respective origins. Everywhere else can be described in terms of some referred starting point. Indeed, people who study these things tell us that anywhere you may stand in the real universe, if you look out very carefully in any direction into the skies, you will notice that the mass of galaxies is moving away from you at an increasingly great rate of speed. You are the center away from which that mass exodus takes place, no matter whence you gaze into the cosmos!

Those old fools through the past archaic centuries who stupidly thought Earth was the center of the universe ... 

Well, now, they were righter than moderns who said it wasn't.

Readier Than Ever To Teach Yesterday

As I continue studying to teach the Word, I feel ever better prepared and more solidly equipped to address all comers and to engage any controversy intelligently back in the heady 1960s.

Wherefore Constants?

Pay attention to this: Most anything in this note is subject to change.

Yet.

Not everything is relative. Some things never, ever change.

Fundamental physical constants are dimensionless ratios among "dimension-ful" observations of real events in the world. These constants, as the term implies, never change. They do not come from theoretical mathematical models. No math myths, here, like string theory. The constants arise from actual measurements of physical events such as the measured distance between two things, the measured speed of light, the measured gravitational strength between two objects, the measured magnetic strength of an electrical current in a field.

It's odd to think that something constant describes something that continually changes. Yet it does. Even the famous relativity equation, E=mc^2, has within its symbols a constant, namely, the speed of light (well, the number 2 is also a constant, but that's a special constant aside). Now, the speed of light is not dimensionless, but it illustrates the thought nicely. The speed of light (in a vacuum) never changes. The very constancy of the speed of light describes the relativity of the other factors in the equation, energy and mass. As energy changes so does mass likewise, but always relative to the speed of light, a constant. As the speed of light never, ever changes, the proportion of energy to mass never, ever changes.

If the fundamental constants had values other than they actually have, then the universe would not exist (certainly not as we think to know it). But the constants in fact have their known, unchangeable values. For example, the so called "fine structure constant" concerns the measured electromagnetic strength of interactions between electrons and photons. Its value is very close to 1/137. It never changes. Yet it is constants like this one that provide for all the changes and evolution of what appears in the universe whether we speak of star formation or of genetic mutations.

So the constants are not relative. They describe, yes, other factors that are relative and changeable, but the constants themselves just are: fixed values by which the universe holds together and about which the universe (r)evolves.

And so. The constants, those persistent unchanging values, describe the universe as it's understood, and provide for all the apparent diversity and continual change seen in the universe. Without those particular constants, there would be no universe in particular.

No constants, no change, no universe.

(All things holding by His word of power. Hebrews 1:3.)

An Address To The Slacker Faithful-Of-The-Correct-Way-To-Do-It Who Criticize Those Who Do It Incorrectly

I like the way they're doing it wrong better than the way we're not doing it right.