Collateral Bloggage

Dear Sir or Madam,

We’re writing you this letter to inform you that your son is simply too good to play baseball for our league.

Perhaps this sounds strange.  You may think that Youth League Baseball would want to bring in as many talented players as possible.  This is simply not true.  We are, in fact, attempting to put together a league that is uniformly mediocre.  Your son simply does not fit our paradigm.  His ability to throw the ball harder than the average player, hit the ball with more power, and run the bases faster renders him ineligible for our league.

Some parents, on receiving this letter, have instructed their children to “dog it,” as they say.  We discourage this practice, and we maintain a list of players who have been rated “too good.”

Keep in mind that keeping the general level of play somewhere between “okay” and “laughable,” we’re assuring that no child feels badly about his performance.  The last thing we want is for the kids to get too involved in the games.  Why should a child have to cry after striking out?

And on that subject, there have been several major rule changes in our league.  For instance, we’re no longer counting balls and strikes.  The kids will simply get to stay at bat until they either get a hit or decide they’d rather just go to first.  Once on base, they will be able to either stay on the same base or advance to another one.  Actually, there aren’t actual “bases,” since some children might find it difficult to stand on such a small target.  What we have now is “base zones,” which allow a child to stand where he thinks the base should be.  This also allows for multiple occupancy of a base zone, which traditionally is not allowed.  But we find that some kids just are not comfortable running to another base zone.

Each half-inning will consist of all nine players coming to bat once.  The responsibility of the defensive team will be to throw the balls back to the pitcher when (or if) they are hit.  No attempts will be made to put out a runner.  The fielders will be permitted to catch a ball in play, but no outs will be awarded.

On the offensive team, all hits will be singles.  We don’t want the pitcher to feel he’s doing badly just because another boy hits the ball hard.

One really great thing about our league this year is that we don’t require umpires.  We just felt that the umps were responsible for much of the emotional distress our players experienced last year.

With all these rule changes, the games become really quite unimportant.  This will lend to the kids having a better time during the before and after game refreshment period.  Parents are asked to bring cookies and sugary drinks so the kids will feel they accomplished something:  eating unhealthfully.

In closing, we’d like to ask you for referrals of slow and unathletic kids.  We are having some difficulty fielding any teams.

Best Regards,

Lou Sirs

Commissioner, BaseZoneBall

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I know, I know…this just wasn’t snarky enough.  It comes in response to a news story about a kid being banned from pitching in a youth league because he throws too hard.  He hasn’t hit any batters.  He’s just intimidating.  His team is actually under threat of being disbanded because they’ve refused to comply with the ban and want to keep running him out there.

I played Little League.  I struck out.  I cried.  Then I went out and tried to get a hit the next time.  It was good for me.  How is this difficult to understand?  In Anchorage, there was always a Samoan team, and their kids were half again as big as us.  It was brutal to pitch to them.  I still did it.  And you know what?  When we beat them, we actually felt good about it.  Normally we got our hineys handed to us.  On all the other teams, there was always a kid who was clearly the best player.  We tried to not let him beat us.  Sometimes he did.  Sometimes he didn’t.

It’s almost as if dealing with adversity can be positive!!!  What a concept!!!

It’s true that the parents of this kid were offerred the chance to move their son up a level, to play with older kids.  While that might seem to make sense on the surface, there’s no reason to think that, just because he throws hard, that he’s necessarily ready to play all aspects of the game against older kids.  It would be unfair to make him face older kids’ pitching if he hasn’t built an offensive skillset properly.  If he’s up to it offensively, I’d be inclined (as a parent) to move him up.  But it shouldn’t be forced.

Okay, enough snark…

So, how committed am I to looking at an issue from all angles?  On the same day, I downloaded “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” from The Listener’s Bible (free download, BTW), and then downloaded a free book titled The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment.

I suppose it’s not totally clear that the latter is not defending the doctrine of Endless Punishment, but showing that it is not a valid doctrine.  The book was written by a Christian Universalist.  That’ll probably keep some from even looking at it, but I’m very curious to read it.  In fact, since I first drafted this edition of Theology Thursday, I’ve started it.

While it’s a powerful sermon, and brilliantly delivered by Max McLean, I do not really resonate with “Sinners” in any significant way.  I agree with the idea that God’s holiness does not tolerate sin, and I even agree with this line:

The unconverted walk over the pit of Hell on a rotten bridge, and there are countless places on that bridge that are too weak to bear their weight.  These places go unseen.

I’m just still unsure of what exactly Hell means.  If you think you know, go back and read my post titled “What Hell do You Know?“.  It’ll at least familiarize you with the three traditional views of Hell.

Look at the sermons in the NT and find me a reference to Hell.  The Apostles knew what they were doing, and they didn’t try to scare anybody into the Kingdom.  They preached about the need for repentance and acknowledgment of the Lordship of Christ.

And yes, Jesus did apparently refer to “hell,” but look at your footnotes.  The words rendered “hell” are Hades and Gehenna (although Peter does use Tartarus in one of his letters).  Hades and Gehenna can be explained as referring to death only, not everlasting suffering.

The Endless Punishment book looks terrific (not surprising since it was recommended by my favorite Bible Teacher). The author takes on the issue systematically, starting from the earliest accounts of Creation and Fall in Scripture. He makes a good point here:

As regards the penalty of disobeying the commandment, do we find any statement which can be mistaken for endless punishment? God says, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;” but this is very far from saying, “Thou shalt, after the death of the body, be subjected to the torments of an endless hell.”

We are told, to be sure, that this means “death temporal, death spiritual, and death eternal;” but where is the proof of it? So terrible a doctrine must not be assumed, but demonstrated by unquestionable evidence. Who can believe that God would reveal so frightful a punishment in language so easily misunderstood - by the single word “die,” a term employed in such a variety of senses, capable of such a wide latitude of usage?

Would any earthly parent, if the immortal salvation of his children were at stake, have been so careless of his speech? Would he have chosen language so liable to be mistaken? Would he not rather have announced the awful truth in words which would admit of no possible doubt? Beside, if the terrors of this punishment are so effectual in preventing transgression, this was another reason for a specific declaration of the consequences of disobedience. If the argument on this point is good, a plain, open threat of endless woe at the very gate of Eden, as they entered, might have kept them back from the forbidden tree, and saved them and our race from the dreadful evils which followed the introduction of sin into the world.

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book  He’ll be proceeding through the Old Testament, then into the New (to tackle the Hades/Gehenna thing), then on into church history. Should make for interesting “shock my Christian friends” material (like when I say I don’t believe in the Rapture).

What do you think?  What view of Hell were you raised with?  Have you ever questioned it?  Did you know there were other views?

Maybe I’m taking the easy route here, since I linked Stephen King’s excellent and, dare I say, “Foney” take on Movie Snacks in my Monday Morning Musings. If you didn’t go check it out, here’s a sample (and another link to the full article):

From www.ew.com:

With my calorie-absorbent drink in hand, I can then safely order a large popcorn with extra butter. Of course it isn’t really butter, it’s some sort of mystery substance squeezed from the sweat glands of small animals, but I have developed such a taste for it over my years of filmgoing that the real stuff tastes wrong, somehow.

I normally get my popcorn with no glandular butter, but he makes me rethink that choice…

My son is seven.  Which is absurd, becuz I am not nearly old enough to have a seven-year-old.  Alright…maybe my knees and feet are, but the rest of me is still very young.  Except maybe my hairline.  Maybe my waistline.  Definitely not my sense of humor (where immaturity holds on for dear life).  Shoulders are on the bubble.

Nah, I don’t feel old.  Just because my son is only nine years from driving, eleven years from voting…no need to panic.

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Okay, so we’ve established I’m most definitely not old.  And I’m certainly not a 98-pound-weakling (NPW).  I could snap an NPW’s neck like a chicken’s.  I’m (nearly…or almost…or slightly more than) twice the man of a NPW.

On the other hand, I haven’t exactly been burning up the workout facilities -anywhere- in some time.

Solution?  One Hundred Pushups.  Yep, I’m training myself to be able to drop and gimme (Really?  Give myself?) 100.  How?  Well, observe:

If you don’t want to visit the link right now, I’ll break down the system for you.  First, you do a pre-assessment.  Basically, you drop and do as many reps as you can.  The number you grunt out puts you into different training intensities.  I made the mistake of being able to do too many, and I’ve found the program difficult.  I’m not saying you should slack on the pre-assessment, but I’d encourage trying to do the pushups in a very controlled manner.  That way, you can ease into the training a bit more.  Plus, it’s probably a better isometric exercise when done on the slow side.

You’ll do your exercise three days a week, and it’s broken into four levels.  For instance, you might do 20, then 15, then 13, then 13 again.  Then you do as many as you can for the fifth level.  I know, I said four levels.  You rest between sets, of course, so it takes some precious time away from reading coffee and drinking books.  Sorry…a bit punchy from my workout.  And still pumped.

I like the feeling of my flabby muscles starting to harden.  I just hope my shoulders are up to the task.

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My little sister is in Japan.  Awesome.  She’s there for a seven-month stint as an Engrish Teacher.  Okay, English Teacher.  I set her up a blog on heasley.net so she could blog about her experiences there.  That way, when she gets back and starts telling us her cool stories, we can say, “Oh, you blogged about that.”  You can’t underestimate the value of that.

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You might not think of Stephen King as a funny man, but he is.  I’m not a big fan of his work, never having actually cracked the cover of one of his books (I listened to The Gunslinger, but that’s it).  But his take on Movie Snacks is altogether hilarious.  Hat tip: Colin.

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Funny…I thought I had nothing about which to muse.

Area Man Not Trying to be a Jerk, Succeeding in Spite of Lack of Effort

HILLSBORO, OR - An area man really isn’t trying to be a jerk.  He’s just speaking his mind.  The fact that he succeeds in coming off like a jerk shouldn’t be construed as indicating a particular effort on his part.  It just seems to come naturally.

“Honestly, I’m not trying to be a jerk,” said the man, who wished to remain anonymous, “but if you interpret what I say in a jerky manner, what am I supposed to do?  Is there any way I can speak my mind in a way you people won’t interpret as offensive?”

In an effort to quell his newly acquired “jerky” image, he has taken to prefacing all his statements with, “I’m not tryin’ to be a (derogatory), but…”

The strategy has not seemed to work, however, and he’s sounding more an more like a (derogatory) every day.  Perhaps it really does just come naturally.  Maybe he was born a jerk.  Certainly, he’s got all the skills you’d look for in a potential jerk.  He’s arrogant, proud, and considers himself to be generally better than everybody else.

Said the Jerk, “Maybe it’d be different if I wasn’t right all the time.  But, when you see how superior you are to everybody else, you’ve got to do what you can to help out.  For me, that means calling out everything I see that’s wrong.  If people want to take offense, what can I do?”

One can only hope that his lack of effort will one day be rewarded.

Source: O. Handwasher

I mentioned previously that I might give a short blurb explaining what I believe Paul’s “thorn” was. So, here goes (Yeah…short blurbs aren’t really my thing). First, let’s look at the passage where he mentions it:

What could it be? How about we look over in Galatians for another clue?

Paul is clearly talking about the same affliction here, but the last statement about the Galatians wishing they could pull out their eyes and give them to him is a huge clue here. Maybe it’s something wrong with his eyes? Look at this:

What would necessitate Paul to write in large letters? Could it be poor eyesight? Are there other clues about this? Check this out:

The context for that quote is that Paul was before the Council, and the High Priest ordered him to be whupped upside the head. Paul barked back at him, calling him a “whitewashed wall” and actually cursing him.

How could he not recognize the High Priest? It’s possible he was being sarcastic. “I didn’t realize that jerk was the High Priest…”, but I suspect he just couldn’t see that far.

Of course, what I’ve presented here isn’t an ironclad case. But remember, when Paul was converted, he was struck blind, then received his sight again when Ananias laid hands on him. There’s no reason to think he received his full sight back. Or, he may have at that point, but then had it go bad at a later date.

I’ve heard other ideas for Paul’s thorn, from a nagging wife to a case of arthritis. Thoughts?

That was pretty short, wasn’t it?  Not even 500 words…

One of the hilarious thing about traveling to Asia (and Japan in particular) is the enjoyment of the many poor English translations on display.  And it’s not just in places you’d expect, like maps and menus.  It’s also on shirts and mugs and various other products.

For examples of the hilarity, I give you Engrish.com

Nice, eh?  Wouldn’t want the other person’s feelings to be bad.  How about a menu?

I have no idea what “Piling match of cheese” is, but I’m quite sure I don’t want the French flies.  When we were in Japan, we encountered “Scent of garlic extinction” on a menu.  Decided not to order it.

And then there’s just the confusing…

Men’s Retreat?

Not to harp on the Japanese (actually not all these are from Japan) too much, because I’ve always wondered if about half the kanji tattoos you see on shoulders actually say, “I’m a smelly barbarian.”

Anyhow, hopefully I’ve caused you to lose some time browsing the hilarity.  It’s my gift to you.

WARNING: Restroom Fixation Disorder symptoms forthcoming.

I’ve known for some time that I’m blessed with a less demanding bladder than many of my peers.  I’ve left exactly one movie for a trip to the bathroom (and it was The World is Not Enough, which didn’t require much attention) in my adult life.  I use the restroom during plane travel just to break up the monotony.  At work, I pretty much go when the restroom intersects a path I was already taking.

I generally characterize myself as having a “Five-hour bladder,” but I’ve never actually studied it.  Should I decide to, I know what I’ll call my data-collection: a Jourinal.  When I came up with that name, I actually LOLed, so I just had to blog it.

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Ethan and I went to see Star Wars: Clone Wars with our neighbors, and it was a lot of fun.  It’s not exactly The Shawshank Redemption, of course, but it was still cool to see with my son.

Really it wasn’t even a movie, but more like an extended pilot.  By that measure, it succeeded really well.  It also maintained much of the typical Star Wars feel.  You know, cool fight scenes, bad dialogue…

The really cool thing about this series (and the former one), is that animation allows the Jedi to really be shown as superhuman.  The movies did a decent job of showing glimpses of their skills and powers, but I’m excited to see what they do in an all-CG universe.

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Somehow, with my torrid reading practices, I’ve only managed to finish one book in August.  Since July, I’ve started to read eight different books.  I suppose it’s natural that I’d only finish one of them by now (I finished five others during the month of July).  The library just keeps sending me new books before I can finish the old ones.  My policy is, when I get a new book, I read the first chapter or so to see if it’s more interesting than one I’m currently reading.  It usually is.  Hence, I start reading the new one until I get a newer one.  I’ll need to double-back to catch up on some of my partial reads, and I’ll have to cut the cord on a couple of them.

The “newer” book I just finished is Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution.  I know.  I’m going to hell just for reading such a book.  But I like to keep an open mind on such things and read all around the issues.  I’ve read several Young Earth Creationist books, and a couple Old Earth Creationist books, and now I’m reading some Evolutionist books.  This wasn’t a very good one.

Actually, as a concise history of the Creation/Evolution debate, it was really good.  Very readable and well balanced.  But it failed to deliver on the promise of the title.  In the introduction to the book, the author mentioned that he’d had to reinterpret the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and Original Sin.  He then failed to elaborate on his reinterpretations.  He never got back to it.

Basically, the book was about how wrong-headed the Creation/Evolution debate has gotten.  Granted.  But I was really hoping he’d actually discuss the theological implications of his belief in evolution.  The closest he came to it was this paragraph in his concluding chapter, titled “Pilgrim’s Progress”:

God’s creative activity must not be confined to a six-day period “in the beginning” or the occasional intervention along the evolutionary path.  God’s role in creation must be more individual - so universal that it cannot be circumscribed by the contours of individual phenomena or events.  We must resist the temptation to make God into a “superengineer” or “master craftsman” or “grand artist.”  God may indeed have all these attributes, but we ought not to suppose that any of them capture more than the tiniest intuition about God’s role in creation.  It seems to me a more hopeful perspective to step back as far as we can and examine the biggest possible picture in the hopes of getting a glimpse of what it means to say that God created the world.

Nice thoughts, but it still doesn’t really help in anything but the most broad theological terms.

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That’ll do for today.

Chinese Life Expectancy Increased by 25%

BEIJING, CHINA - The World Health Organization (WHO) has upgraded the life expectancy of the Chinese from 72.9 to 97.2 years.  This comes in response to the apparent lack of a normal rate of aging, particularly in the Chinese Ladies’ Gymnastics team.

“The rationale here is simple,” said C. Redulous, a representative of the WHO, “we’ve got a bunch of fifteen-year-olds on the Gymnastic squad who look like ten- or twelve-year-olds.  What conclusion can be drawn, other than that the Chinese are now aging at a slower rate than the rest of us?”

There has been considerable controversy over the apparently underage athletes at the Beijing Games.  But the case has been closed and all the athletes’ ages verified through a rigorous course of asking the Chinese Olympic Committee to be “really, really serious and honest and stuff” with the world.  Thus assured, the only conclusion is that the Chinese are simply not aging as quickly as the rest of the world.

It has been estimated that the Chinese are aging at a rate 25% slower than the rest of the world.  Thus, the 25% increase in life expectancy.  It has been noted, however, that the increase in life expectancy may only apply to females, since the male athletes appear to be aging at normal rates.

In other news, several top American actresses have announced plans to move to China.

Source: O. Handwasher

Sunday, Barb Feil taught from 2 Corinthians, and she showed us one of the more enigmatic passages from Paul’s writings.

Barb didn’t dwell on the “Third Heaven.” In fact, she specifically told us she wouldn’t go into it. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to provide some input on it. I don’t have any particular authority here; I’ll just share what I’ve come to understand about it. It’s not much.

First, I have to say I’m a bit perturbed that Paul would even bring this up. It’s like someone saying to a single person who desperately wants to find a mate, “I found the perfect person for you!” and then walking away and never elaborating. Don’t you want to know what Paul saw and heard? I feel the same way when John experiences the Seven Thunders in Revelation 10, but is told not to write about what he learned.

Anyhow, Paul obviously expected his readers to understand what he was talking about, and since there’s no apparent mention of Three Heavens elsewhere in Scripture (although the Rabbis found no shortage of different Heavens, as I’ll mention later), I figure it’s a Greek concept, or at least something that was generally accepted in the time and culture.

First, let’s examine a nice clue we have in the passage itself. Paul uses very similar phrasing in verses 2 and 4, speaking of a man who was “caught up” into “the third heaven” and “paradise,” respectively. Given the tendency in Hebrew writing to use parallelism, isn’t it likely the two phrases are just different ways of saying the same thing? That’s what I’m inclined to believe. NETBible seems to agree, given their footnote:

The reference here in 2 Cor 12:4 is probably to be translated as parallel to the mention of the “third heaven” in v. 2.

The footnote goes on to show the punchline of what all this about multiple heavens is about:

Assuming that the “first heaven” would be atmospheric heaven (the sky) and “second heaven” the more distant stars and planets, “third heaven” would refer to the place where God dwells.

This is what I’ve read and heard, and it makes sense to me. Interestingly, as I mentioned before, the Rabbis seemed to feel the need to define a different “heaven” every time it seemed like one was implied. To that end, they distilled this list (stopping at seven probably less because they ran out of need for definitions, but more because seven is just a really cool number </cynicism>):

Vilon - the dark, night sky (removed at daybreak like a curtain)
Rakia - where the sun, moon, and stars are set
Shechakim - the source of manna (seriously)
Zebul - where the Heavenly Jerusalem sits
Maon - the angels sing from here in the night (but are silent during the day to give us a chance to sing)
Machon - the storehouse of snow, hail, and harmful weather
Araboth - the conventional conception of heaven (God, angels, the righteous dead)

BTW, I got this information from a terrific book, Everyman’s Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages by Abraham Cohen. If you’ve ever been curious about what the Talmud is or what it contains, but don’t really think you’re interested in reading tens of thousands of pages, this book is a terrific resource. It distills the essential teachings down into a fairly readable format. I say fairly because it’s not exactly popcorn. I’ve been working my way through the 350+ pages for the past two years.

One last note.  In the same passage (but further down), Paul speaks of his “thorn.”  As Barb also noted, there’s a lot of speculation about what exactly the thorn was.  I’ve read and heard some interesting theories, and I think maybe next week I’ll bust them out and write about the one I think is correct.  It’s always nice to have a topic lined up a week early…