The Sword

(Disclaimer: This was written at the behest of my love Julie who was concerned that nothing significant had ever been written about just her. As an act of my own love, I proceed with the following.)

Julie,
Smart and caring,
Beautiful with kindness,
Lover of animals and me,
So cute.

That was a Cinquain about Julie. I hope she likes it.

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So… a lot of people have weird misconceptions about Christianity. Especially a lot of the finer details. I thought in the spirit of Christmas, I’d put a couple of things up that it seems the majority of Christians do not understand about their religion. I consider myself Christian, so bear in mind that I am not saying these things make fun of Christians, just ignorant ones.

Jesus is not the given name for the Christian’s savior.

Jesus (pronounce he-SOOS) is a Greek translation for his name, much like “Jeffu” is the translation for “Jeff” in Japanese. The Christ’s real name is Joshua ben Joseph (YA-shoo-a ben YO-sef) which means (in English) Josh, son of Joseph. Now I know his father is in actuality God, but given that Joseph was his mother’s husband, his name is inherited in that way. You notice in the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew the talk of the lineage he came from and all the generations. In a way that is his full, family name as surnames were simply the given name of your father or mother.

While I could say his name is Josh throughout the rest of this post, I won’t because I don’t want to confuse you. I’ll refer to him as Jesus if only because it’s recognizable.

Christ is not part of Jesus’ name. It’s a title.
People often say “I pray to Jesus Christ our lord” but don’t actually understand that it should be said “I pray to Jesus, the Christ, our lord.” This is because “Christ” is synonymous with “Messiah” or “Savior.” And as much as it might have happened just from people being lazy and shortening the title to a simple suffix to his name, I do not think religion or belief should be something you’re lazy about if you’re going to participate in it (in terms of organized religions anyway). Religion doesn’t have to always be serious (in other words, it’s okay to laugh at your own religion), just when you’re in the act of practicing it, take it seriously. Otherwise it’s just words.

Christmas is not Christ’s birthday
Contrary to popular believe, Christmas was not always about Christ, as is evident by the fat saint (who wasn’t always a saint) who brings us presents every year. That is because long before Christmas was a Christian holiday, it was a Pagan one: it was the festival of the winter solstice. How did it turn into a celebration of Christ’s birth? The answer may surprise you.

The Roman Empire.

Let’s say you are an Emperor of a big civilization that believes in many gods and has many festivals all around the year commemorating some of the different gods and omens. Now, as Emperor, the people believe you have been ordained by one of the gods in order to rule over them, however because there are so many, committing to just one may influence your power or prestige in different ways. Then you hear about a new religion. They only have one god. If your people believed that there was only one god (and that you were ordained by him), no one would think of challenging your decisions or authority. It would centralize your power and give new order to your empire. But how are you going to make the transition smooth? You still have lots of pagan holidays people are not going to just want to give up. What if…

You give the old holidays new names and new meanings but celebrate them the same as before!

What genius! (by the way, this is the same reason Easter has bunnies and eggs. It used to be the fertility festival).

The Bible was changed during the early to middle Papacy.
Now, I’m not saying they made significant changes to the inner text of the books (although the popes at the time had more than enough power to do so and may have, but I don’t want to get into that at this point). But they did cut some books out. This was called the Council of Nicene and had far-reaching implications on the Bible and how Christianity is practiced. Most Christians might’ve noticed there is a Nicene Creed in the hymnal/worship guide. This was a new Creed to replace the old one.

There were more than 4 gospels in the beginning (although some of the ones that were cut have been questioned in terms of authenticity while others are simply over-looked, so while I’d suggest looking at them for contemplation, read more about when the books were written and what has been contested about them).

In the end, I guess my message is this: If you plan on believing a religion whole-heartedly, do some research on its history as well as soul-searching. Find the path that is meant for you and not the one the church, mosque, synagogue, temple tells you is for you (even if they might be the same). While faith is an important part of religion, I have always felt one should believe with eyes open and not dismissing anything at face value. And while I do not believe that church or organized religion is the path I should take, I do believe they can be a force of good in this world and that the force would not be as strong without togetherness.

Merry Christmas, and many blessings upon your family and friends.

3 Responses »

Greetings again,

Today I want to talk about a particular website of note, Bitme.org, and how it’s going to help me talk to my mom.

Bitme.org is a private torrent site. Then again, I believe private is too mild of a word to describe it. It is an exclusive torrent-hosting site that is dedicated to learning material, documentaries, and the like. How exclusive? Here are the basics:

1. You can only join if you are invited (and you can ask for an invitation, but it isn’t very normally granted unless they are sure you are going to be a good citizen on their site.
2. Any user only gets 4 total invites unless they become one of the admins (which never happens)
3. You are only given and invite to give away if you’ve been a good citizen on their site and have been a member at least 10 days.
4. In order to access the newest torrents (anything uploaded in the past 48 hours) you must not only keep some of the older torrents long enough to upload a lot but also have a decent sharing ratio (at least 1.0)

This keeps their torrents active for very long amounts of time and also keeps users happy as they are able to download even very old files that some people are keeping alive simply for their share ratio.

What kinds of things does bitme.org have? To put it bluntly, if you want to learn something, you can probably find something on it at their site. Currently I’m downloading some language learning programs with the hopes of perhaps picking up a little Korean so that my mom and I will have something good to share between us. Should someone want an invite, it will be a while before I get my first to give to someone else, not to mention I have to work on bringing up the share ratio on my account. Until then, I think I shall start on my korean learning.

Sincerely,
Jeff

4 Responses »

Greetings again,

Today I want to talk about a particular website of note, Bitme.org, and how it’s going to help me talk to my mom.

Bitme.org is a private torrent site. Then again, I believe private is too mild of a word to describe it. It is an exclusive torrent-hosting site that is dedicated to learning material, documentaries, and the like. How exclusive? Here are the basics:

1. You can only join if you are invited (and you can ask for an invitation, but it isn’t very normally granted unless they are sure you are going to be a good citizen on their site.
2. Any user only gets 4 total invites unless they become one of the admins (which never happens)
3. You are only given and invite to give away if you’ve been a good citizen on their site and have been a member at least 10 days.
4. In order to access the newest torrents (anything uploaded in the past 48 hours) you must not only keep some of the older torrents long enough to upload a lot but also have a decent sharing ratio (at least 1.0)

This keeps their torrents active for very long amounts of time and also keeps users happy as they are able to download even very old files that some people are keeping alive simply for their share ratio.

What kinds of things does bitme.org have? To put it bluntly, if you want to learn something, you can probably find something on it at their site. Currently I’m downloading some language learning programs with the hopes of perhaps picking up a little Korean so that my mom and I will have something good to share between us. Should someone want an invite, it will be a while before I get my first to give to someone else, not to mention I have to work on bringing up the share ratio on my account. Until then, I think I shall start on my korean learning.

Sincerely,
Jeff

No Responses »

Good day,

Just recently I checked the online news source slashdot.org and found an article that somewhat disturbed me. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml

For those of you with little time, NASA has been keeping James Hansen from talking to the media.  Why?  Because he sees data that concludes that if we do not curb our emission of greenhouse gasses, in ten years our climate may spin out of control.

So, here is the question I wish to ask: When did the federal government become our parents?

They have told us what we can’t say.  They censor the media we receive.  Files are classified everywhere not simply because it could threaten national security, but because they do not agree with the views of our dictator.  It continues to spiral further and further out of control: they take more freedom away from us and in return tell us that we are safer because of it.  As Benjamin Franklin once said:

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Is that not what we have let happen?  Have we not let the government impinge on our liberty for what only results as temporary safety?  Have they not done what some parents do, looking through our diaries, listening to our phone calls, reading through our e-mail because they think some could be harmful?  Has terrorism really twisted our government so far around that they will spy on the most basic individual?  It is, we have, they do, and it’s worked.

However, what can you do?  When the country is controlled by a dictator and his associates, how can we show that we won’t simply let the government do as it wishes without talking to the people?  I do not know.  But, for those of you more familiar with European history than I, I invite you to speak up about how other countries did so in the past.  Europe has evolved much further than the United States primarily because we are such a young country in comparison that it is a wonder we haven’t crashed sooner.

I urge you that if you have an idea on the next step to speak up.  God knows, we cannot allow to continue going blindly in the direction our government is leading us.  Abraham Lincoln once said that our government should be “…of the people, by the people, and for the people…” and that it should never die.

It is now dead to me.

Sincerely,
Jeff

No Responses »

Good day. 

A decent amount of time has passed between my last writing and what you are reading now.  I am not entirely sure what has kept me from put my thoughts to paper (or screen, if you will) except that I may have been unsure in the thoughts themselves.  Starting last winter, I have had trouble with finding a personal motivation for completing my schoolwork, doing work before it was due, and otherwise keeping my obligations; both to myself and others.  Since the very beginning of the problem, I have been searching for why I wasn’t able to complete my work.  At first, I thought it was because I was in a depressed mood or was burnt out.  That was not the case as even after a relatively easy summer, the problem remained.  I thought perhaps it was my addiction to video or computer games.  That too was not the case as I would simply find different ways of distracting myself from doing work (reading multiple online papers, fazed.net , etc.).  I feel that now, I may have found it.  Some are aware of this next fact and some of you aren’t.  Those of you who have not heard it, do not worry.  This is something long in my past and the trauma of which I have long overcome. In the fourth and fifth grades, I was depressed and seriously contemplated suicide (I even put the knife in my hand).  This happened because I had very few friends at my elementary school, was overweight from an inability to survive physical exertion because of my asthma, and was one of the smartest (at least when it came to math and science) in my grade.  This experience has resulted in a few, minor psychoses, some of which I have already dealt with.  

One is my extroverted social nature which derives it self from a fear of being alone.  I have dealt with this by facing that fear whole-heartedly and finding that you do not need to be accepted by everyone in order to find a social niche.  Another was an obsession with my weight: not always trying to do something about it, but simply being concerned about it.  I have also come to terms with this knowing that as long as I am healthy and can clearly see my toes, I shouldn’t be worrying very much at all. The last, however, is from where this analysis all began. When in my depression, I could not find a reason to continue living.  Being in a lot of pain, I was not prepared to live with it unless there was a rationale for my life.  Eventually, I came upon the history of Albert Einstein.  I began to think that if I were to continue living, it would not be for myself.  I would live for other people.  I could use the intellect — that which had made me an outcast — to help people. And that is how I have lived until now.  During high school when I played the cello and piano, it was not for my own enjoyment but to give my parents something to be proud of.  I chose bioengineering because it was both an achievement and I would design machines that could help far more people than I could being a doctor.  I had even thought out plans of how, should I become rich, I would donate my money and how much I could afford to live on.  Until last night, I still believed all of this. 

So why did my work suffer so much?  Why was I not able to motivate myself to get things done?  I had lost my direction.  In not living (at the least) somewhat for myself, I became drowned in other people’s expectations and found that I did not have a reason to live up to them.  I had not ever lived truly for myself.  What has changed?  Today I believe I have found that reason, even if it is only temporary.  My reason to continue is simply this: I will not only do everything in my power to be an honorable person, but I will also strive to find the honor in other people and to cherish it.  It may be only a temporary reason (although I will not strike the possibility of it being more permanent), but I believe it will be enough for now.  Until my next writing, I hope you fare well and that your endeavors be fruitful. 

Sincerely yours,
Jeff