I’ve been hearing a bit of griping about my mandatory monthly lunchtime departmental meetings.  I’d just like to give some perspective on the whole thing.

Now, I recognize that in lieu of the meeting, I could send out a short email to all concerned.  But you have to realize there are larger issues here.  Where else would we get a forum for the sycophants to ask meaningless, babbling questions?  As a manager, my main job is to justify my own existence.  Those questions are a big part of that.

And yes, I could attempt to schedule the meeting at an alternate time, but then how would you ever know  how much more important my time is than yours?  Should I really be expected to alter my schedule just to accommodate you people?  Why should I require you to spend five minutes reading an email when I can take up a full hour of your time in person?

I hope this helps.  Don’t feel you’re missing out on work here.  In fact, you’re just getting a little glimpse of the real work I do each and every day, for which the company pays me more than it pays you.

All employees are valuable in their own way.  Some of us are just more valuable.

Regards,
Hugh Irkfermeigh, one of your boss’s bosses

1. All spiders have eight legs.
2. Tarantulas are spiders.
3. Therefore, Tarantulas have eight legs.

Go figure that I (arachnophobe that I am) would use a spider example.

Why did I even bring this up?  Because of a common use of a passage from 1 John in defense of a ridiculous syllogism.  First, the passage:

And now, the bizarre syllogism (variously attributed to teachers and professors, or just lazy atheists):

1. God is love.
2. I love you.
3. Therefore, I am God.

If you ever encounter this kind of verbal diarrhea, try this on them.

1. Dogs are mammals.
2. You are a mammal.
3. Therefore, you are a dog.

No, my logic doesn’t follow, any more than the fictional professor’s does. For his logic to follow, the second premise would have to be “I am love” (and even then, how is love quantified?).  It goes to show that you can still be pretty stupid regardless of your education (maybe I should’ve used “irregardless” for irony).

In any case, John leaves himself open to this kind of reductionism in several places, variously describing God as “love,” “light,” and “spirit.” What if we took the last one and tried to misuse it?

1. God is spirit.
2. Satan is spirit.
3. Therefore, Satan is God.

Yeah (again, doesn’t really follow). Might it be that John wasn’t trying to reduce what God is, but rather to explain him in grand terms?  We know something of love, but John tells us that what we experience is only a reflection of True Love.  We understand something of light, but our light is only a reflection of his True Light.

Of course, we can’t expect those who don’t respect Scripture to deal with it honestly.

In closing, I billed this as Theology Thursday Lite.  Was it Lite, or is my Lite-meter way off?

At LeTourneau, we married students put on a lip sync of The Streak. Good stuff.

In any case, I feel like I should backtrack a bit…I call it Booktracking.  At least now I do, because I so enjoy making up new words.  So I’m going to attempt to finish the five or six books I’ve started but not finished this year.

And then I had to go and by the new Ender book, plus three others (The Impossible Faith, The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.  Oh well…maybe I’ll be able to resist them until next year.  Yeah.

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My sister and brother-in-law and their kids are here.  And I just had a birthday (I’m now over 21 again).  This was the first time since 1993 I’d had a family member around on my birthday.  Yeah.  15 years.  Now if they’d only move down, we wouldn’t have this problem!

Dear Employee,

At Corporate, we’re concerned that many employees are taking advantage of the company’s lax policies regarding personal time off (PTO).  It seems that at the merest hint of a bug “going around,” half the office is empty.  To that end, we’ve decided to rename PTO to PAOFITO, which translates to “Pretending and/or Feeling Ill Time Off.”  We feel this better captures the spirit of what you people are doing.

Please remember to put a PAOFITO appointment on your Outlook calendar when you’re pretending to be and/or feeling ill.  Planning ahead makes for easier coverage of your critical tasks.  Don’t worry, the company will go on just fine without you.

As always, employees are encouraged to maintain their health and take as few sick days as possible.  Of course, employees who do manage to stay well will not be compensated in any way.  But the company thanks them.

Source: O.Handwasher

I know it’s possible to get something out of these narratives, but at this point I’m still coming up empty. So, when I read Ezekiel 40-48, it’s tempting to just assume no inspiration will arise during my reading. Thus far, that assumption has not proved to be incorrect.

So why would I do a post about Ezekiel’s vision of a future Temple, detailed and dull as it is? Well, because it gives rise to some interesting interpretations.

See, Ezekiel has a very detailed walk-through of this temple, describing it in excruciatingly fine detail. And then?  Well, nothing, really. If you look at the details of this temple, it’s not hard to determine (with a little research) that it was never built.

Thus, some assume the Ezekiel was predicting a New Temple to Be Built in the End Times!!!!!!!! (fanfare)

I’m sure all my readers will be shocked to learn that I don’t hold to the Future Third Temple idea.  Why?  Well, there are several reasons:

1. Ezekiel wrote this during the Babylonian Captivity.  What was the state of Solomon’s Temple at this time?  Destroyed.  In other words, there was no Temple.  So Ezekiel was shown a design for a new one.
2. Ezekiel was instructed to only show the plans to the Israelites if they met certain pre-conditions (more on that in a bit).
3. Upon their return to Jerusalem, the exiles did, in fact, build a Temple.  More properly, they rebuilt Solomon’s Temple.

In other words, if they had the plans for the Temple, why didn’t they build it when they returned from Exile?  Might the answer be that they didn’t meet the conditions for getting those plans?  And what were the conditions?

Interesting, isn’t it?  God instructs Ezekiel to describe the Temple to the people and observe their response.  If we can assume Ezekiel obeyed God and described it to them, can’t we also assume that if they met the conditions, they would totally have built the Temple that God personally designed for them?

Now, it’s possible that the fact that we have written copies of Ezekiel indicates the people did get the plans, but it still leaves open the question (doesn’t beg the question, see here) of why they didn’t use it.

Maybe the Temple will be rebuilt in the End Times.  In fact, I imagine it’ll happen eventually, because there are many people who are looking for it to happen and actively trying to make it happen.  I just don’t think it’s predicted, any more than the establishment of Modern Israel in 1948 was.  But that’s a whole other can of worms…

Yes, I do harp on End Times stuff quite a bit, and I don’t think End Times (eschatology) is really a very important subject.  However, interpreting the Bible correctly is a concern of mine, and I’m worried that many simply take what they get from the pulpit (or Seminary) and never even know there are other ways of interpreting some passages.  And that’s a shame.

I’m not saying my interpretations are all correct (I’m certain I’m between 1 and 100% wrong).  It’s just that I hold many positions different from those I held when I was younger.  I would never have changed those positions unless I heard (or read) something that I had to wrestle with.  I’m just paying it forward. So, wrestle with this and lob me a comment if you’ve got anything to add.

I must admit, this took a lot of skill to pull off.

And if you don’t like coffee, try an Aldretea.  It’s like a latte, but with brewed tea instead of coffee.  Add a little honey to it and it’s an absolute treat.  Plus, the owners are awesome.  Support the local guy (and guy and gal).  Seriously.  Go!

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Anyway, it was Halloween.  Thus, one of the main coffee-jerkers was dressed up.  We couldn’t place his outfit.  He had on white overalls and big-ole-shop-goggles, looking for all the world like a butcher or crime-scene-cleaner-upper.  He informed us he was Dr. Horrible.  One of our group was familiar with the character and sent out a link for our viewing pleasure.

Dr. Horrible is hilarious and surprisingly good (who knew Neil Patrick Harris could sing that well?).  The full name is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and it was created by Joss Whedon during the Writer’s Strike.  All I can say is, I want more!  That’s the trouble with it.  If you go watch the video, it’s three fourteen-minute “episodes.”  And then it’s done.  And now I’m sad.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention it’s not rated G, but it’s clean enough for American TV.  Make of that what you will.

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HOME DEPOT, US - Ballot Measure G, which attempted to redefine epoxy, has failed.  Supporters of the measure hoped that 2-part bonding-agent-only and 2-part resin-only adhesives could be sold as 2-part epoxies.

An epoxy, of course, is a thermosetting epoxide polymer that cures (polymerizes and crosslinks) when mixed with a catalyzing agent or hardener.  Without the catalyzing agent, the epoxy resin does not cure.  This was the crucial point for detractors of the ballot measure.

“You can’t call something an epoxy if it doesn’t stick.” said Elmer Sklew, a spokesperson for “Sticking up for Epoxy,” a non-profit defense-of-adhesives organization.

Supporters of the measure have said repeatedly that it is unfair and discriminatory to exclude resin-resin and catalyzer-catalyzer pairings as less valuable to society.  Unfortunately for the supporters of the measure, their bumper stickers kept slipping off cars.

Source: O.Handwasher

I’ll tell you right off the bat here that I don’t really know what this passage means. I know of a few theories, and I know which one I favor, but I’m open to a new and better interpretation if I find it.

By the way, I’m going for informative here, not boring, but I fear the bore-meter may spike a bit.  So if you’re not up for it, I’ll understand.

How about if I introduce the three interpretations I’m familiar with, then give their pros and cons?

The Harrowing of Hell:

First, we have the Harrowing of Hell idea. By the way, “Hell” here has the same sense as it has in much of the King James Bible (and the Apostles’ Creed). That is, it means “Hades” or the undifferentiated Place of the Dead (”Sheol” in the OT). Don’t picture flames and such (if you even believe in the flames and such, which I increasingly don’t).

Anyhow, the Harrowing of Hell idea is that Christ descended into the place of the dead, where everyone who had previously died was. Among them, of course, were the Old Testament Saints, like Abraham, Moses, David and John the Baptist. Why should they be in Hades instead of Heaven? Well, traditionally, Heaven wasn’t opened until Christ was resurrected or ascended, depending on who you ask (the source passage for this idea is generally Ephesians 4:8-9). By that logic, even the righteous who died before Christ were just in Hades (or Limbo) until Christ came.  (BTW, the First Circle of Dante’s Inferno may have a tie-in here.)

So, Christ preached to them, and those who were looking for him were then taken to Heaven.

Something to do with those troublesome Nephilim:

The next idea involves Genesis 6, that wonderful passage that speaks of the “Sons of God” and the fact that they took wives of the “daughters of men” and had families. This position requires that the Sons of God were angels who took on flesh, then spawned half-demonic children who became giants known as the Nephilim. In this interpretation, Jesus went and preached to the fallen angels or “Spirits in prison.”

Christ preaching through Noah:

Lastly, we have the interpretation that doesn’t require any particular supernatural travel by Christ. By this way of thinking, the “made alive in the Spirit” isn’t the key.  Rather, it’s the “In it he went” that’s the key.  That is, it should be read like this: “Christ was made alive in the Spirit.  This is the same Spirit through whom Christ previously had preached to Noah’s generation.”  And how did Christ preach to Noah’s generation?  Through the Spirit, and through Noah.

Analysis:

So, what do these have going for them or against them?

The major problem with the Harrowing of Hell idea is that the passage says that whatever preaching was done was aimed at the “disobedient,” which certainly wouldn’t bring to mind Abraham and Moses or any of the OT Saints. It’s also explicitly stated that the particular disobedient folks lived before the Flood.  To my mind, if the Harrowing of Hell is to be believed, it needs to be believed on other grounds than Peter’s writing.

The Nephilim interpretation rests on what I think is an erroneous interpretation of Genesis 6. I won’t go into the whole explanation here because I’ve dealt with it before. To sum up, though, there’s no reason to assume that the Nephilim were a unique production of demonic/human pairings. Why? Well, because then we’d have to believe they were destroyed in the Flood. Since they show up in the Bible again after the Flood, that just doesn’t work. So, I have a really hard time with this explanation. In fact, I can find nothing to recommend it other than its matching better with the idea of Christ preaching to the disobedient.  Besides, it attempts to explain an enigmatic passage by reference to another enigma.  In fact, I think this may be why many theologians hold to it.

So, we come to the final explanation, whereby Noah preached to his generation through the same Spirit who raised Christ. Now, Noah, if he preached at all (and he did according to 2 Peter), wasn’t very effective since his generation apparently didn’t respond. But basically what this explanation has going for it is that it shows that Noah’s generation was without excuse for their behavior and, ultimately, their destruction. If Christ truly preached through them through Noah, that ends the discussion as far as their guilt.

Conclusion:

If you hadn’t guessed, I favor the Noah interpretation.  To me, it’s the simplest explanation, and I dig simple.  What do you think?