September 2005 Archives

I just finished reading Confessions of an Engineering Washout as linked from Slashdot. It's an interesting commentary on why one student switched from chemical engineering to liberal arts. After reading his article an interesting idea clicked into place about the computer science department where I work.

One of our biggest concerns in engineering right now is the lack of women in engineering. Interestingly, the 60's, 70's, and early 80's saw considerably larger percentages of women in the engineering fields than we see today (as high as 40% compared today's less than 10%, if I recall correctly). Where did they go? The blame has been tossed in several directions (many of which must be partially valid) and the video games industry is often blamed in computer science as video games only appealed to boys until the last few years. However, I would like to suggest another reason: socialization.

My only experience is within my department. I got both degrees here and now I work here. Therefore, my explanation is really only truly applicable here, but I think that this explanation probably applies in a lot of engineering departments. I think a real reason for many of our social problems in this department is that we are very stuffy.

Our faculty are very interested in their pet projects, researches, papers, and grant proposals. This is why they got their Ph.D. They want to discover interesting and important facts of computer science. Kansas, in particular, pays faculty very little compared to what they could be earning elsewhere (though, we shouldn't forget the extremely affordable cost of living), so the faculty must feel like they should have a little more freedom to do things their own way as compensation.

As such, most of our classes end up taking second place in most faculty member's lives. When I was a student, this showed quite plainly in the fact that hand-outs often came stamped with dates 2, 3, or 5 years earlier with obvious copy and paste errors. Some of our courses have changed just slightly in the last 10 years! In a field whose entire focus shifts every 5 to 10 years, this seems incredible.

Finally, and worst, in my opinion, our faculty members tend to be little concerned with the students. How many students have had a real conversation with a faculty member? One that wasn't related to a course or advising session? Our department is trying to cope with this problem via a mentoring program and some other programs, but the attitudes of the faculty have not changed. The faculty members still rate their own pet projects as most important. They also have a tendency to treat them professionally rather than personally. It's easier to do so, but it also builds a barrier between student and professor and creates a sort of formal professor-student vibe. When getting this vibe, a student generally just thinks the professor's full of his own highly educated crap, rather than seeing him as a person interested in her as a fellow person.

Now, before any faculty member reads this and bristles too much, I will clarify and say that some faculty members do better than others. I will also say that, in general, the faculty does really care about the students, but they just don't make time for them. When two things are important to you, but one is much more important than the other, the second important thing will likely be neglected. My yard is important to me. It bothers me that it doesn't look better. Yet, I have no plan for addressing many of its issues because I have other things to do that are more important to me.

From this perspective, it's really no surprise that we have only a small percentage of women in our department. Women are much more openly social, at least in America (my experience), than men. Whether this is cultural or physiological, it doesn't matter. If we, in our department, do not place real socialization as a higher priority, we will not draw in individuals who are interested in both computing and having a social life. We'll just attract the introverts, like me, and the occassional extroverts that can exercise their extroverted-ness elsewhere.

Therefore, what we need is not more programs forcing faculty members to take time out of their busy schedule of research and writing. What our department needs is a change of heart. Faculty members need to loosen up, drink some beer, and take a real interest in students and getting to know them.

I was reading through the back logs on one of my IRC channels this morning and found an interesting comment: "[I'm] just waiting to hear someone suggest that the Law of Conservation of Mass isn't true, and a theory of scientific wine into blood thing happen [sic]." This was stated in a discussion of Christian communion and specifically with respect to the Catholic belief that the wine of communion is transmuted to become the very blood of Jesus. I don't happen to agree with this mysticism, but I do believe in transmutation.

Jesus said to them, "Fill the waterpots with water." So they filled them up to the brim.

And He said, "Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter."

So they took it to him. When the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew) the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said, "Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine, but you have kept the good wine until now."

– John 2:7-10 (emphasis added)

The Bible says this happened. Therefore, I believe it. This is unscientific.

The problem with the statement above, "I'm just waiting to hear someone suggest that the Law of Conservation of Mass isn't true" is that he's stated it. It isn't true, it's a theory for explaning observations. From Wikipedia: "The law of conservation of mass/matter states that the mass of a system of substances is constant, regardless of the processes acting inside the system." To state that this Law is true is to assert faith in the fact that it will hold for all observations that could ever be made for now and for the rest of the observable future. This is a religious assertion. Stating that a physical law is true is an expression of belief that an explanation of observations always holds. This is definitely unscientific as well.

Science is the business of observing facts and then assembling the patterns into theories. The theories should be able to effectively describe the data and predict future observations. However, a theory ceases to be useful when a new observation invalidates it. The theory must be adapted or thrown away and replaced with a new one. Stating that a theory is true asserts that every possible application of the theory has been observed and that it held for every application for all time for all parts of the universe. Obviously, this is impossible unless one is omniscient. Any theory must be testable and an assertion of truth cannot be.

Therefore, it is not irrational to state that transmutation has occured, merely unscientific. In the specific case of wine turning to blood, that's quite testable. We could easily have a person take communion in a controlled setting and then test their stomach contents for blood containing foreign DNA. The obvious religious response would be that we aren't to put God to the test and that we'd probably just find wine because we'd be taking communion in an unacceptable way—whatever. Again, that isn't necessarily irrational, but it's certainly unscientific.

My main point is that too many people use science as a crutch for explaining truth when science isn't the search for truth, it's the search for explanations of the small database of known facts humans have collected. To state that a theory will always hold is just placing faith in science. Is that wrong? You can be the judge of that.

Cheers.

I'd say that most of the Christians I've met are doomed to a lifetime of immaturity. Even our leaders are doomed in this way. The problem is that we face little to no adversity. Sure, Christian's might be the butt of jokes in many circles, particularly in a university town like Manhattan. Yet, few of us have been openly jeered at, spit upon, beaten, or otherwise harmed. We're just looked down upon as rather slow and dimwitted, unfashionable, and politically incorrect. We're slighted, but not truly persecuted.

This is really a blessing in many ways, but still leaves us with very little motivation to gain true spiritual maturity. I believe a friend of mine, Doug, said it quite well when he said that "True maturity is really having a heart of brokenness." (my paraphrase) I would augment this by saying that it's the ability to trust God to do what is good even when the circumstances indicate otherwise.

As immature Christians, we too often try to come up with methods or programs or "tricks," if you will, to try and make Christianity work. These things aren't bad. However, many times they obscure some of the real facts of what's going on. In some ways they try to make up for the fact that God is unpopular by trying to make him seem cool. We want to come up with ways of making it easier to explain the gospel without scaring people. We want to offer God without the risk of catching people's "hang-ups."

However, I find no such teaching in the Bible. Sure, Paul often started a sermon by referring to familiar terms for a region or using idioms that reached out, but when he told the gospel he said it in full. It's not a pretty message.

I think if we're really to show true maturity and seek after Christ without compromise we need to stop trying to put together good programs and encouraging better ways of convincing people. Instead, we really need to focus on God Himself and just tell His story as is. If I have to err on trusting some method or err on trusting God, I should err on trusting God.

Unfortunately, I don't think I or many other Christians I know are very good at this. Cheers.

I've been thinking more about the evolution versus intelligent design debate. I think the folks on the side of intelligent design have been fighting for the wrong thing. They need to focus on the real problem: science versus philosophy.

Philosophy has lapsed into an unpopular subject in modern America. Philosophy is the rational (or sometimes the irrational) pursuit of truth. Philosophers want to answer questions lots of questions that are really only answerable as thought exercises. What is true? How does one test that something is true? What are good ways to search for truth? How should truth be structured? The biggest question tends to be, what is? Is life just an imagination of our minds? Is what is even knowable? Is existance guided by absolute standards? These are all philosophical questions. Perhaps science can help give us data that will help us answer them, but their answers are often found independent of the physical world.

Science is the study to find how things work. Science must assume a certain philosophical basis. First, it must assume that what we observe is real and not imagined (or why bother measuring and observing?). Second, it must assume that what we are observing is objective and repeatable. Finally, science asserts that all the knowledge it gathers is testable. If I assert that something is true, then I must be able to observe something that can tell me whether or not it is true. The really interesting (and not well-known) fact about science is that nothing can ever be considered really true—just not falsified.

For example, Newton's assertions about physics explained how planets and stars can orbit each other. His ideas were considered to be the truth until observations began to deviate from his suggestion. Einstein came along and added a new hypothesis to the system that appears to be more useful in explaining the motion of large bodies because it accounts for the fact that planets orbiting the sun appear to get heavier as they move faster. Einsteins theory of relativity tells us this. Relativity, however, asserts that light travels near or below a maximum velocity, but recent experiments have suggested that light can move faster than that under certain conditions. Another theorist will have to make sense of these problems.

The difficulty with theories like biology's evolution and geology's uniformitarianism is that they assert non-testable hypotheses. For example, uniformitarianism is the belief that the geological processes we see today explain everything we see in nature. Yet, how can we test this? Well, without being able to go back in time, we can't. Evolution states that living things evolve from one species to another through a process of mutation and natural selection. This is also not a testable hypothesis. Even if we find two fossils of what look like a human, only a little different, that doesn't mean they mutated from one form to the next or that it's not just some isolated genetic mutation. There is no way to falsify evolution.

Intelligent design, uniformitarianism, and evolution are all forms of philosophical belief. They are not testable and are, therefore, not science. Presenting these things in science classes is appropriate because they present frameworks for classifying observations. However, these are not science in and of themselves.

As such, I will restate my belief that students should be learning philosophy. How does one determine truth? Is truth rational? What are the rules of logic? Then, from there students are equipped to determine their own belief system as the basis for their science.

I added a new category just for this blog: Whine. I just need to vent and this is really beneath a Rant.

I have been trying to get, for several months now, a new file server for the CIS department. I got approval for it in June, I wanted it to be ordered in July, but we finally got it two weeks ago in August. However, the company we ordered it from (one of regular suppliers I will not name here) did not have the brains to send us a cable that fit between the server and external RAID enclosure.

So, after sending us an additional cable that also didn't fit and the CIS department purchasing an adapter to a cable supplied by the vendor, we finally were able to begin real work on setting up the new file server. After that sorry excuse for a football game against Marshall, I headed in to work on Saturday to perform the server upgrade. I anticipated about 10 hours of file copying maybe a bit more, hoping for a bit less. Well, after about 10 hours we weren't really much further than we were an hour after we arrived (Cole was of huge help this weekend and really did most of the early work). At that point, I decided to try and push things through. Looking back, that wasn't a very bright idea. (That is, hind sight being as it is.)

Basically, we were experiencing periodic errors on the system that appeared to be driver related. We'd seen similar SCSI errors on the previous file server with the same driver and similar equipment. With what I know now, that was probably a misinterpretation of the data. Anyway, after pushing on this all night Saturday (~20 hours + ~8 hours from Cole), I managed to copy about 80% of the data from the old file server. At which point, I was finished. I was getting too tired to do anything, so I went home at 10:30 am and slept like a dead man until about 4:00 pm on Sunday. (Missing church is something I very rarely do. Working on Sunday is something I have written out of my weekend schedule on my calendar—literally, I have it blocked off for "Quiet Time".)

When I woke up, my beautiful, caring, and lovely wife fed me and took care of me. I'm not saying that I was an invalid or that this was something to be compared with the experiences of folks in New Orleans right now, but I was used up. Cole, blessed Cole, spent much of the afternoon also working on things and put in another several hours. He'd made a second copy of the files that was complete on another part of the system during that time. I then tried to synchronize that copy with the other and had no success. This should have been a sign of problems more sinister, but I don't think I was yet operating with a complete picture. The work had been split between Cole and myself and we were operating on separate shifts. I worked for another 8 hours or so on Sunday.

I woke up early on Monday after getting about 4 hours of sleep to work on the file server some more. We reached the point where we could not get any further; the original partition had too many errors and simply wouldn't function if we tried to write the rest of the data to it. Cole had succeeded in copying the files over into another partition on the RAID. We decided to format and start over with the home partition and copy from the local mirror. This failed too. Finally, we repartitioned and tried a different file system format and everything went smooth as silk.

Now, we had to reconfigure the systems. Configuring Linux file systems was as easy as setting up the NFS exports and fixing some DNS records. It took us a couple days to get all of Windows straightened out. The blasted things kept wanting to contact the old file server because Windows doesn't really pay attention to DNS for file services. It took quite a bit of effort to get that all straightened out.

Everything was going swimmingly by lunch time today. However, sometime between 2:00 and 2:30, the "smooth as silk" snagged. We got our errors back. We got driver errors and then some minor file system errors and then when I was in the server room looking at the machine, a kernel panic. We rebooted and rather than risk the file systems, we copied everything back over the extra partition we'd been using with success before. The file server is now running off that partition temporarily. Now, we have the glorious job of trying to run a "Level 1 Diagnostic" on the drives. (That was a little ST:TNG lingo for you.)

This also means that my students in CIS 450 are getting short changed because I haven't had time to really prepare for class. It's a good thing I've taught this class 2.5 times before, because my lectures would be all bad instead of just mostly bad if I didn't have most of the facts memorized. Added to this is the fact that CIS is currently being audited for accreditation this semester and I didn't receive the email last semester telling me to collect graded homeworks, exams, and papers from students. Thus, I have nothing. I'm really quite terrible at keeping records and filing and I'm not sure where I'm going to get the paperwork required. Not getting the mail is not my fault (it was no ones fault, just an oversight), but that doesn't make me any less responsible for this. I'm going to have to see if I can get at least some of it back from students. I'm not the only instructor that has had to do this, but I believe I'm the one in the worst shape at this point.

Needless to say, I'm not particularly fond of my job right now. I really like teaching and I really like running the CIS systems, but it is very tiring being on-call all the time for problems. I took a "vacation" this summer, but I could never really escape the department because if something bad happens, it's up to me to make sure it gets fixed. Having responsibilities that I simply can't escape is like being slowly run through a grinder.

Okay, I feel better. I hope folks can forgive me for whining. Cheers.

I was thinking today about a friend that has been coming to church for the last few Sundays and wondering if this person's motives for coming to church were "pure." I am beginning to wonder if this person is just coming to impress someone else. I then began to think, "Well, if this person isn't going to come for the right reasons, this person just shouldn't come!"

After a few minutes of mulling over this, I decided I'm being a self-righteous ass. The fact is that if everyone had to come to church and ultimately to God with the right motives, no one would come to God. The fact is that if anyone comes to Christ, they come not because they want the right things, they do the right things, or know the right things. The Bible is clear, we do nothing to merit a relationship to God, He simply takes our wrong motives and changes them on our behalf.

Paul really lays this out step-by-step in Romans. I think this particular thought, though, in Romans 9:15ff, "For He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy." That is, we can come to God with any motive we want and God steps in and has mercy on us for it and gives us a pure heart for Him or He does not.

Paul continues this thought in Romans 9:17-22,

For the Scripture says to Pharoah, "For this very prupose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth." So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?'" On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wraith prepared for destruction?

All of this to say that God's highest purpose is to see Himself glorified because He is the perfect being that deserves it. It also shows that the purest motive for seeking God is to glorify Him. Selfish motives can have no part in true glorification of God. Yet, no one really comes to God with a pure motive, not even those who have already been redeemed, we still bring our own faults to God. Yet, He is willing to endure our selfishness and sin in order to ultimately demonstrate His glory to all of creation.

Anyway, I don't rant against myself often enough and this seemed like a good opportunity to explain an essential feature of my beliefs and how badly I am at adhering because I too am selfish. I suck. God redeemed me anyway. Amen.

Today's sermon is by Dan Stipp and is primarily taken from 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, though he reads much of chapter 6 for context.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. – 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Dan begins with a description of the context. Corinth was a major trading post because ships would travel to the port on one side of Corinth, take their goods across land and then ships on the other side would carry the good on to the next port. Corinth was extremely wealthy and the place where the temple to Aphrodite was found. Aphrodite is one of the Greek gods and is a goddess of fertility. Worship of Aphrodite generally included intercourse with the temple priestesses.

He also describes the Greek dualist religion, which states that the body is temporal and that the spirit lives on after death. As such, the body is an obstacle to the Greek. Greeks typically took one of two ways of dealing with this problem: (1) asceticism was the practice of beating one's body into submission by denying it what it needs, or (2) indulgence was engaged in because what happens in the body dies with the body, so let's have some fun in the meantime. Corinth was largely possessed by those interested in indulgence rather than asceticism.

The first point of this sermon is that we belong to God. (v. 19) The second is that we were bought back by and for God. (v. 20) Dan is specifically interested in saying that we who follow God must not sin because he is our owner. We don't want to do anything to dishonor Him, especially since the Spirit of God dwells within our body as the temple. (v. 19) By committing acts of sexual immorality after we become believers, we dishonor God through this act of sin. Furthermore, God went out of his way to buy us and this reenforces the point.

Dan finishes by asking, "What does this mean for my life and relationships?" He answers this question with three answers:

• Accept God's authority over all my life
• Flee from sexual immorality
• Embrace my relationship with the Lord and His design for my relationships with others

One thing I would like to add to this is something I usually say, you have no power to do these things without the power of God working through your life. This sermon was for the believer, but for the unbeliever that God is calling, know that you will have this power when you accept God's call on your life. God's ownership is not only a reason to want to live a moral and good life, but it is the power by which we seize this life.

This is a continuation of Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

I'm down to the last "one" and we've reached the One. "There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all." (Ephesians 4:4-6) Interestingly, this One is actually mentioned three times. God is called by three names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19) Each name identifies a person in the Godhead. In this passage, "one Lord" identifies the Son as Jesus is most commonly referred to as our Lord, i.e., "the Lord Jesus Christ." (Ephesians 1:2) Also, "one Spirit" clearly refers to the Holy Spirit. Paul completes the passage on ones with the master of the Godhead, with "one God and Father."

One God and Father. This really brings up the concept of trinitarian doctrine. This doctrine was not directly enumerated by the Bible, but was established by believers in two of the early church councils (Nicene in AD 325 and Athanasian in AD 500). Essentially, we know that God is one. It is a clear teaching of all the Bible that we do not worship multiple gods, but only one God. (Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 45:5; Mark 12:29; 1 Corinthians 8:4; James 2:19)

Yet, with the coming of Christ, we find that God is revealed through multiple persons. Jesus said to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19) Perhaps the clearest demonstration of the tri-unity of God occurred at Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist in Matthew 3:16-17: "And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, `This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.`" Jesus was baptized, visited by the Holy Spirit, and then the Father spoke to Him. From many scriptures we know that each is God, but that they are each the same God revealed in three different ways. I believe trying to explain this much further delves into the realm of speculation. It is my opinion that this is simply a truth that can't be explored too deeply by the Christian. I don't really fully understand it, but why should I expect to understand an infinite God in only the few years I've lived on this earth? However, it does seem clear that this is what God is getting across through out the Bible.

The Father is the master of the Godhead. However the Godhead works, the Father is the one described as knowing the dates and times of the final eschaton (end-times) (Mark 13:32), of having chosen who would be called to salvation (John 6:37), He is revealed by the Son (Luke 10:22), and is the One Christ serves. (Matthew 26:39)

Christians exist to serve God and worship him. We worship God through a number of actual acts, but the Bible is consistently interested in correct motives. That is, worship can only truly happen when it wells up within a Christian from inside himself—ultimately, the source of true worship is from God Himself working within us.

And now we come to the four "all"s. I don't want to start discussing the principle of unity through the Father until we explore all of the final parts of this statement. Each of these four phrases refer to one principle relationship God has with his children. It is my belief that just as this whole set of verses, 4 through 6, is concerned with unity within the Church that each "all" refers to the "all the members of the Church." I think that each might have a wider application, but I do not think that this is Paul's purpose. He's making a specific remark about the relationship God has with his own chosen people.

One God an Father of all. This relationship has to do with creation. Paul is stating that God is our Father, our Creator. I believe this holds in a couple important senses: (1) He created us as part of general creation and is therefore the Father of all (Genesis 1:26-31; Job 10:11-12; Psalm 139:13), and (2) he "recreated" us in our new birth through faith in Christ. I believe the second sense is the important sense for this passage. All people can claim that God is their Creator, but only Christians can claim that God is the father of their second birth.

I think this second sense is best illustrated in Jesus' discussion with the Pharisee Nicodemus,

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."

Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?"

Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I say, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit." – John 3:1-8

This is, of course, where evangelicals get the turn "born again." Though, I'd say the term is tossed around a bit too lightly. The reality is that God chooses those He will save and reaches out to them through the proclaimation of how Christ died to save his people from sin. This rebirth culminates in a specific event that most Christians retell as their "testimony of faith." My wife was "saved" when her mother came to faith out of a deep depression and saw her older brother come to faith as well. My salvation was wrought at a Bible camp when I discovered that my fellow high schoolers weren't performing a ritual by rote, but discovered that Christianity is about life, not rules.

All Christians are united in the second birth. Some Christians now the precise day of the event and possibly even the time down to the second. I can pinpoint my experience to a week during the second week of June between my Sophomore and Junior years of high school. Some Christians can't say for certain when the experience is because they can't remember life being any different, they've always just loved God. However it works in each life, all true Christians have experienced this rebirth. This separates us from unbelievers for whom God is not the Father of the new birth, but the Righteous Judge they must one day face to be sent from His presence to hell.

One God and Father who is over all. This is the relationship God has over us as Master and Sovereign of our lives. In a general sense, God has an ultimate plan for all of history unfolding, "And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place." (Acts 17:26) We know that this plan is specifically for the good of those who believe in God and are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

This sense ties in closely with the sermon that Dan Stipp gave today. That sermon was taken from 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body." The specific sense this passage is trying to get to is that immorality is not for believers. Committing sexual sin such as viewing pornography, having sex with prostitutes, or engaging in any other form of sex outside of marriage is simply wrong.

In a more general sense, this repeats a common theme throughout the New Testament, that we have been freed from the bondage of sin to become truly free, which also means that we know have God as our master. "Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." (Acts 20:28) "You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men." (1 Corinthians 7:23) "If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ." (1 Peter 1:18-19) "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves." (2 Peter 2:1) "And they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation." (Revelation 5:9) We are owned by God.

This is a unifying principle because the slaves of one household wouldn't work against each other even if they all had different tasks set before them. We must seek to honor our Master and to do as He wills. Because God speaks to us indirectly through his word, we sometimes are confused as to what He wants and frequently insert our own desires into what He wants, but when we find that two believers are at odds with one another, they should find agreement. They should work out the difference however they can because God seeks for unity.

One God and Father through all. I understand this sense to mean that God is working out his plan through his people. Really, this is a continuation of the last principle. As our Master, he delivers instructions that we are to carry out certain tasks for his glory.

Frequently, the slave system of Bible times is compared to the corporate system of today. That is, slavery of Christ's day was frequently less a way of being stuck in bondage and a way of learning trades, getting out of debt, or bettering oneself. To be sure, this ideal didn't really hold as often as it should have, but that was part of the justification for it in that day. My point is that if we think of being a slave as being akin to being a part of a corporation, or most organizaitons, you typically subjugate your goals to the goals of the company. Corporations in America are legal entities with most of the same rights that any person has, but that the "person" here is merely a logical entity created for the sake of grouping the employees work together as a whole. If an employee has an idea and implements that idea for the company, the company takes credit for it. For example, my dad works for Glaxo SmithKline, a large pharmaceutical company. One of their products is AquaFresh. Some team of chemists put together the concoction that is AquaFresh, but do we see any of their names on the label? No. We see the "gsk" logo for the company.

This is a good analogy for the ideal Christian life. If we're really to live our lives to God, all of our actions to be credited to God. We work to glorify Him. This is especially appropriate because He works through us to do these good works in us. We find unity in the fact that we all are working to glorify Him in our lives and through His work within us.

One God and Father in all. Paul finishes by touching off the statement that not only is God our "ReCreator" and Master and that He works within us, but that He lives and takes up resident within us. One strong assurance for the believer is that there is a nagging desire from within to know God and do what He wants. While this desire is generally discolored by the fact that we usually want to use God to fulfill us and do what we want, true belief is exemplified by the fact that we want to know and glorify God simply for the sake of doing so. That is where true assurance comes from.

"What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said, 'I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.'" (1 Corinthians 6:16) "Whoever keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us." (1 John 3:24) "No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of teh world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God." (1 John 4:12-15)

Each time I've found that the in-dwelling of God's Spirit is discussed it seems to be paired with a discussion of obedience to God's will. I mentioned above that the major reason I initially experienced Christ is because I discovered that Christianity isn't about the rules. That's very true. It's about God and a relationship with Him. However, a consequence of belief is a desire to do the right things and avoid the wrong things. It also means that even if I do screw up, it doesn't count. I admit to a continually strong temptation to view pornography and to think about sexually immoral things. Yet, my desire to know God works within me to help me say, "No, God has a better plan than simply satisfying my personal cravings." I am not perfect and I do indulge myself in sin from time-to-time, but because of my relationship to the Father through Christ the law cannot condemn me to death and punishment anymore.

In this final bit, all Christians find unity once again because God's own Spirit rests upon us and spurs us toward unity. Unity is a part of glorifying God. "By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother." (1 John 3:10) Unity within the Church is a natural consequence of belief in God.

All in all, this has been a very interesting study for me out of Ephesians 4. I plan to continue this study on through the rest of the chapter. As a dear brother in Christ often says when he shares, "It's been hard, but it's been good." I don't know if I've really taken my own lessons to heart very well, but I'm going to keep hammering away at these things and publishing my studies in the hope that someone might benefit even if I tend to be too stubborn to change much. Cheers.