Seems like an odd question for a guy to ask himself, but it is an important one in the life of a Christian. We were visiting Terri's home church
in Hutch today and the pastor, Rick
, was discussing the Transfiguration
. Along the way he quoted a very profound passage in Luke about two sisters, Mary and Martha. This is a challenging passage because it serious challenges the way most churches in America operate. It's a personal challenge for me because I find myself identifying with Martha when I ought to identify myself with Mary.

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her." — Luke 10:38-42 (ESV)

Essentially, Christ has told Martha that Mary really has the right idea and that Martha is choosing a lesser way. Jesus doesn't exactly rebuke Martha, but you do get the feeling that he's at least scolding her a bit for her attitude.

I've heard some messages in the past where the pastor has tried to say that Martha was doing a good thing until she tried to get Jesus to scold Mary, but that's not at all what I read here. Jesus starts with, "Martha, Martha," which already sounds like scolding to me, I suppose I could be misreading this through the lens of my own culture, but that's what it reads to me.

He continues, "you are anxious and troubled about many things." This can't be complimentary. Christ has already been on the record as scolding his disciples for worrying about food and clothing. "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" (Matthew 6:27
ESV) Similarly, he is telling Martha that all her fussing isn't really necessary, "but only one thing is necessary." Focus on Christ, that's the one thing. He's tell Martha, "really, you should stop fussing and listen to me because my teaching is way more important than your preparations."

Now, don't get me wrong, he's not telling Martha she's being foolish or that her effort has been wasted. He's merely telling her that of the two things she could be doing now, listening to his teaching is the better. If Martha had gone about her preparations content, it seems that we might not have even had this object lesson recorded for us.

Fortunately, Martha's bad attitude was remembered well enough that it was recorded for us to read because this little vignette tells us something important: dedication to Jesus is more important than working to serve him. What did Mary do? She "sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching." She wasn't really doing anything but listening.

The lesson for me is that when I feel compelled to work on this project or that project in an attempt to please God, I'm not spending my time as wisely as I could if I haven't first taken the time to listen to Christ's teaching. If my focus and attitude isn't on Jesus and his ways first and foremost, I'm not really pleasing God as I could. If I'm not really pursuing my prayer and Bible study (or even just Bible reading) as the top priority in my life, I've missed it. Jesus doesn't condemn this work, but my work is really a secondary occupation to my first job of knowing Him who saved me.

For the Church, the question is, are we dedicated first and foremost to Christ's word? Or are we concerned with developing a good children's program? A good youth ministry? A good Sunday school or equipping program? Are we more concerned with developing our community than we are about knowing Jesus Christ? These are all good things and God won't condemn our efforts here, but we might find ourselves scolded on the other side of death for pursuing those works instead of pursuing Christ first.

Cheers.

I've been going through the list of tables on my Drupal site in prep to convert an existing single-site to a multi-site with a shared database. However, I haven't found any reference that illuminates the general purpose of the tables. I've tried to put together at least a preliminary list here. I share it in hopes that someone else might find it useful, but it is not normative or complete.

access

User. This is the table used by the "Access Rules" section for banning usernames, IPs, etc.

accesslog

Statistics. This stores the accesslog if Drupal is collecting statistics.

aggregator_category

Aggregator. Store the categories feeds may belong to.

aggregator_category_feed

Aggregator. Links feeds to categories.

aggregator_category_item

Aggregator. Links feed items to categories.

aggregator_feed

Aggregator. Store the feeds that the Aggregator module pulls from.

aggregator_item

Aggregator. Store the items that the Aggregator module has pulled for the various configured feeds.

authmap

User. This stores a map to the authentication module used to authentication each user in the database.

blocks

Block. This stores information about blocks provided by every module installed, including custom blocks.

blocks_role

Block. Stores the roles permitted to view blocks in the system.

boxes

Block. Administrator created blocks.

cache

System. The general cache of data, used by many modules.

cache_filter

System. I have no idea what this table is used for.

cache_menu

System. I have no idea what this table is used for.

cache_page

System. I have no idea what this table is used for.

cache_views

Views. Used to cache information related to views.

client

Drupal. Used to record Drupal client sites. I believe this is the list of sites that others have logged in from if you use the Drupal module.

client_system

Drupal. I'm not exactly certain what this table is for.

comments

Comment. Stores all comments made on your Drupal site.

contact

Contact. Stores the emails sent via a contact form.

files

Upload. Stores information about files uploaded via the file upload module (and used by some other modules too).

file_revisions

Upload. Associated file revisions with node revisions allowing different node revisions to have different versions of a file associated with them.

filters

Filter. Stores information about the body content filters used in your install.

filter_formats

Filter. Associates filter formats and settings with a body content filter.

flood

Watchdog. Used to detect floods from requests coming from a set.

forum

Forum. Used to link forum posts with the forum topic.

history

Node. Used to track which nodes are read/unread.

locales_meta

Locale. Something to do with language translation.

locales_source

Locale. Something to do with language translation.

locales_target

Locale. Something to do with language translation.

menu

Menu. Storage of menu module customizations.

node

Node. The main table for storing general node information, including the title, node number, dates, workflow state, but it does not store most of the actual content.

node_access

Node. Storage of per-node access permissions.

node_comment_statistics

Comment. Notes certain statistics related to the number of comments and how recently comments have been made on a node.

node_counter

Statistics. Records the view count for each node.

node_revisions

Node. Stores information about node revisions, including the main content of the node.

node_type

Node. Stores information about the custom node types.

permission

User. Stores the permissions that have been assigned to each role.

poll

Poll. Extra information associated with poll nodes.

poll_choices

Poll. Associates the available choices with a poll node.

poll_votes

Poll. Votes by visitors on a poll node.

profile_fields

Profile. Definitions of available profile fields.

profile_values

Profile. Profile field values associated with a particular user.

role

User. Assigns role IDs and names to all the roles in the system.

search_dataset

Search. Something to do with search.

search_index

Search. The search index.

search_total

Search. The number of times a given word appears on the site.

sequences

System. The current counter for each of the sequence IDs.

sessions

User. User session tracking data stored in the database.

system

System. Information about installed modules.

term_access

Taxonomy Access Control. Access control per category.

term_access_defaults

Taxonomy Access Control. Access control per vocabulary.

term_data

Taxonomy. Definition of taxonomy terms.

term_hierarchy

Taxonomy. List of parent terms for each taxonomy term.

term_node

Taxonomy. Table linking taxonomy terms to nodes.

term_relation

Taxonomy. Relationships between taxonomy terms.

term_synonym

Taxonomy. Alternative names for a taxonomy term.

tinymce_role

TinyMCE WYSIWYG Editor. Roles assigned to use TinyMCE profiles.

tinymce_settings

TinyMCE WYSIWYG Editor. Definition of TinyMCE profiles.

url_alias

Path. Path aliases recorded to nodes.

users

User. User records.

users_roles

User. Link table between users and roles.

variable

System. Administrative settings and other site-wide variables.

view_argument

Views. Definition of arguments to a view.

view_exposed_filter

Views. Definition of exposed filters in a view.

view_filter

Views. Definition of filters in a view.

view_sort

Views. Definition of sorting in a view.

view_tablefield

Views. Something to do with the views plugin.

view_view

Views. Basic information about a view.

vocabulary

Taxonomy. Definition of taxonomy vocabularies.

vocabulary_node_types

Taxonomy. Associates vocabularies with node types.

watchdog

Watchdog. Records watchdog log entries.

This debate is making a lot of headlines lately and has been for the last few years. Kansas and other states have tried to change the standards of education to include intelligent design or similar theories as important discussions to be placed side-by-side (in general) with the theory of evolution. I've been considering this debate for a long time and I've come to the decision, as I often do, that the two major stances have it wrong.

The conservative stance is one that states that we shouldn't teach evolution dogmatically, that it's just a scientific theory. The conservatives see evolution being taught without an alternative and think that it is somewhat misleading to teach it alone as the students will come to assume it is truth. There is, of course, some truth to this claim and I can prove it because it was true in my case. I grew up believing that evolution was the truth and believed such most of my way through high school. I have since switched to a position far more conservative than intelligent design.

The fundamental problem with this stance is that instead of proposing an emphasis on the teaching of theories and that evolution, uniformitarianism, and other similar theories that are useful in science are limited, they propose to introduce an alternative theory commonly called "intelligent design." However, the opposite side of the issue is quick to point out that intelligent design is not strictly scientific, but includes religious overtones. And here, is where I become a heretic and agree with the liberal stance (please read on, as I will qualify that remark shortly).

The liberal stance is that public schools are run by the state and as such, the First Amendment to the constitution bars the state from legislating religion, the so-called "separation of church and state." (I would argue that the separation of church and state doesn't state quite what the liberal stance says it does, but I'll leave that for another blog.) They believe that intelligent design crosses that boundary because it assumes there must be some form of intelligence that created the Universe. Who can disagree with that?

The problem, though, is that evolution is no less dogmatic, but not because it's not taught as a theory, but because science is based upon metaphysical assumptions that are religious. Now, let me clarify: the problem here isn't evolution versus intelligent design, but a question as to the nature of science. The modern definition of science is the search for truth by finding patterns utilizing only observable evidence. On the face of it, this doesn't imply anything truly metaphysical, but there is a clear metaphysical implication: If God is to be utilized by science, He must be observable.

This is a religious statement. It cannot be proven that if God exists, He must be observable. It cannot be proven that if one cannot observe something, it does not exist. We've only been able to observe certain celestial objects for a few years, but does that mean those objects didn't exist prior to them being observable? Or, even more persuasive, black holes cannot be directly observed, because the singularity absorbs every form of radiation we might observe. Yet, most astronomers and physicists believe there is enough evidence in other forms to state they exist.

Some would say I've setup a false comparison by stating that we can know black holes exist because our observations of other phenomena suggest a system of physics that demands their possibility. But, isn't this the exact argument made by the proponents of intelligent design? We don't directly observe God, but because of the nature of the ordered complexity of the Universe, can't we logically conclude that it was designed? I don't know that I follow that line of logic myself, but I think it's a little immature for a scientist to deny that any sort of metaphysical (read religious) assumptions are made by the nature of science.

Getting back to my point, it would be my argument that this isn't a scientific debate at all. Science is an established methodology that should be tweaked in this way. Rather, we ought to address the problem more fundamentally. That is, we have a broken education system because we do not teach our students the fundamentals of truth. We should be teacher our youngsters the nature of syllogism and logic and we should educate our students in philosophy.

It's an unfortunate fact that we wait for students to get into high school or higher education before we teach them the modes of thinking and logic. I remember talking about the major types of fallacies in fifth or sixth grade, I believe, but they were an afterthought. They weren't integrated into my education. They weren't established as things I needed to work through to really determine if what someone told me is true. I believe that reasoning skills should be an underlying part of math, reading, writing, and science. This need not be some new curriculum to thrust on our students, but a supplement to help organize and provoke thoughts among students.

Someone will certainly think that hitting young students too early will be lost. However, I disagree. If we have teachers just using terms like "Thus" and "Therefore" and "Ergo" early, we won't have to do much more than that for the primary students. In intermediate and secondary education, we can start to introduce these as formal topics. I have heard young children utter some of the most profound things. Children can think for themselves even if their inspirations are scattered and poorly stated.

An even more fundamental problem is a fear I have in our society as a whole. Americans disdain the intelligent. There is even a general annoyance with smart people for those who work in education. I don't see it too often in the University, but this is the University where we have proud braniacs by the egg carton. Yet, the search for truth and knowledge is looked down upon because some aren't as capable at doing it. Rather, American society has a strong desire for fairness. It's really not fair that some can aspire to greater knowledge and wisdom than other just because of genetic predispositions and because some children have nurturing parents and some children are badly abused. Unfair, yes. But there's that old adage...