Hello, Dalai!

I got to hear the Dalai Lama speak at Stan­ford on Fri­day. I was actu­al­ly a few min­utes late because I was walk­ing up from a non-stan­dard direc­tion and so I was trapped on the oth­er end of his motor­cade and the accom­pa­ny­ing secu­ri­ty detail. At one point I was about 15 feet from him.

A few thoughts in no par­tic­u­lar order:

  • A stu­dent asked me why in world I would want to hear the Dalai Lama speak since he’s a leader of a rival reli­gion. And then I read an arti­cle describ­ing how some sci­en­tists are hav­ing the same reac­tion to the Dalai Lama’s sched­uled appear­ance at a neu­ro­science con­ven­tion: This merg­er of seri­ous neu­ro­science with a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion is a prac­ti­cal joke because the very recog­ni­tion of the Dalai Lama relies on the belief in rein­car­na­tion,” said Yi Rao, a neu­rol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. (source). I always find it fun­ny when I see a sci­en­tist get­ting all fun­da­men­tal­ist. This is the flaw in that crit­i­cism: to say some­one is wrong about one thing is not to say that they are wrong about all things. Of course I think the Dalai Lama teach­es a lot of absurd ideas. That does­n’t mean none of his ideas are good ones. Plus, I fig­ured I’d prob­a­bly get a ser­mon illus­tra­tion or two out of the mix. I was right, too–check out the next bul­let point.
  • The talk was about non­vi­o­lence, and the Dalai Lama is a well-known paci­fist and a recip­i­ent of the Nobel Peace Prize, so I was fair­ly shocked when I heard him say that the jury was still out on whether or not the Iraq war was jus­ti­fied. I am not tak­ing this out of con­text at all–this was in direct response to a ques­tion whether or not war was ever moral. I don’t think the audi­ence knew what to do with that at all. I was laugh­ing pret­ty loud­ly on the inside.
  • He has a won­der­ful lack of deco­rum. In the midst of one ques­tion he took off his shoes, rubbed his feet, and tucked his legs under­neath him.
  • He con­tra­dict­ed him­self quite a few times, but it could have been a byprod­uct of not being flu­ent in Eng­lish. He was talk­ing about some sub­tle things and he may have used a few words impre­cise­ly.

update 11/7/2005: the Stan­ford Dai­ly just released an arti­cle about his vis­it echo­ing many of my points above (includ­ing the Iraq war thing).

Kyle Lake Died

Some­time last year I read a help­ful lit­tle book called “Under­stand­ing God’s Will.” I googled up the author, one Kyle Lake (pas­tor of the church David Crow­der attends–Uni­ver­si­ty Bap­tist in Waco), and emailed him a short note thank­ing him for tak­ing the time to write the book. He wrote back to me and said thanks, which I thought was pret­ty classy of him.

So I was pret­ty shocked this morn­ing to read about his death. He was about to bap­tize some­one and he reached to adjust the micro­phone which then sent a cur­rent through his body, killing him in the bap­tistry.

Wow. He was about my age and he just dropped like that while doing a fair­ly rou­tine part of his job.

My heart goes out to his fam­i­ly and his church. This has to be an incred­i­bly hard time for them. And that poor woman who was get­ting baptized–I won­der how she’s pro­cess­ing all this?

Paula’s Grandfather Died

Paula’s mater­nal grand­fa­ther died ear­li­er this week. He died very peace­ful­ly and com­fort­ably, as far as any­one can tell. It was one of those expect­ed things–he was 80 and had been ill for quite a while. He’s sur­vived by his sev­en chil­dren and his wife.

I only met him a few times, but I liked him. He was a very kind man and very skilled at mak­ing things. Also, I think it’s cool that he spoke Cajun French at home to his fam­i­ly. A lot of peo­ple from south­ern Louisiana seem just like peo­ple from Gener­icville, USA, but he was the real deal. He was like all those Cajun chefs you see on tele­vi­sion, except he made bird­hous­es instead of meals.

He’ll be missed.

For­tu­nate­ly, he had such a large fam­i­ly that his wife will be well-looked after. Almost all their chil­dren live with­in a few miles of the fam­i­ly home.

Tired of Bumper Sticker

I’m a lit­tle tired of see­ing that bumper stick­er that says, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” If I’m not mis­tak­en, it actu­al­ly leaves two peo­ple with no depth per­cep­tion. 🙂

They Look The Same

Yes­ter­day Dana was sit­ting on the toi­let attempt­ing to wipe her bot­tom with tis­sue paper. After she felt that she had accom­plished her mis­sion, she lift­ed the paper to blow her nose into it. Log­i­cal from a cer­tain van­tage point, but dis­gust­ing nonethe­less. Need­less to say, I laughed like a mad­man.

Stanford iTunes

Lots of Stan­ford audio con­tent is avail­able online for free now. Check out Stan­ford iTunes for fac­ul­ty lec­tures, con­fer­ences, guest speak­ers and more.

Anne Rice–Christian

Anne Rice (the vam­pire nov­el­ist) has become a Chris­t­ian.

“For the last six months,” she says, “peo­ple have been send­ing e‑mails say­ing, ‘What are you doing next?’ And I’ve told them, ‘You may not want what I’m doing next’.” We’ll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chron­i­cler of vam­pires, witch­es and—under the pseu­do­nym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encoun­ters, will pub­lish “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” a nov­el
about the 7‑year-old Jesus, nar­rat­ed by Christ him­self. “I promised,” she says, “that from now on I would write only for the Lord.”

Inci­den­tal­ly, her nov­el is get­ting rave reviews.

The advance notices say she’s pulled it off: Kirkus Reviews’ starred rave pro­nounces her Jesus “ful­ly believ­able.”

You might also want to check the Wikipedia arti­cle on her.

The Worst Vegetarian In The World

I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals--I hate plants.I recent­ly had occas­sion to be pum­meled at Halo 2 by Dylan, who is quite pos­si­bly the world’s worst veg­e­tar­i­an.

You see, he hates veg­eta­bles. He thinks they taste nasty.

He does­n’t have any con­vic­tions about the moral supe­ri­or­i­ty of veg­etable con­sump­tion. He does­n’t seem to have any wor­ries about the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of a car­niv­o­rous soci­ety. It’s not a spir­i­tu­al thing for him. He does­n’t real­ly fit into any of the stan­dard veg­e­tar­i­an cat­e­gories.

He just does­n’t eat meat. He appar­ent­ly sur­vives on assort­ed junk food.

Why does he live this way? Because he was raised a veg­e­tar­i­an and now can’t digest meat and does­n’t want to go to the trou­ble of train­ing his body to process meat again–I’m not quite sure what that would entail, but it sounds as though unpleas­ant diges­tive moments are involved.

I just thought that was hilar­i­ous. A veg­e­tar­i­an who hates veg­eta­bles. 🙂

By the way, you can buy that bumper stick­er at http://bumperart.com/ if you’re a bumper stick­er sort of per­son.

Student Administers Test

I received an email from a stu­dent ask­ing whether it was okay to “put God to the test.”

I just came back from a strange church ser­vice, and I have a ques­tion. Late­ly, I have been learn­ing quite a bit about God up there. The pas­tor’s wife shout­ed out loud that the Lord wants us to “test” him in prayer, mean­ing see if our prayers are answered. I was con­fused about this state­ment, as I recalled the temp­ta­tions of Christ, when Satan tempts Jesus, and Jesus quotes scrip­ture, “thou shalt not test the Lord your God.” Am I get­ting caught up in a tech­ni­cal­i­ty, or is there some mer­it to this claim, which I do not under­stand? I can see how God would want us to pray and ask for proof in life, but I feel such a strong injus­tice to this thought. Any thoughts?

As I fre­quent­ly field this ques­tion or a vari­ant there­of, I thought my response might be of more gen­er­al inter­est.

Are we to test God or not?

In Deut 6:16 we are com­mand­ed not to put God to the test. In Malachi 3:10 God tells us to test him.

Is this a con­tra­dic­tion? No, not at all. The Hebrew word in Deuteron­o­my 6:16 is nac­ah http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/words.pl?word=05254
where­as the word in Malachi 3:10 is bachan
http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/words.pl?word=0974

So what we have is two words in Hebrew that can both be trans­lat­ed “test.” Some tests are for­bid­den and oth­ers are com­mand­ed.

So what are we for­bid­den to do? Jesus tells us not to tempt God in Luke 4:12 (quot­ing Deuteron­o­my 6:16). If we look up Deut 6:16 (“Do not tempt the Lord your God as you did at Mas­sah”) we will notice that it is a ref­er­ence to Exo­dus 17, where­in the Israelites demand that God do a spe­cif­ic thing to prove he is with them. That’s the same temp­ta­tion Satan set before Jesus: make God per­form an action of your own choos­ing.

How­ev­er, we read in Malachi 3:10 that God desires us to test his good­ness and his faith­ful­ness. We are to expect God to per­form actions of his choos­ing.

That makes sense. In the first case we are giv­ing orders to God, in the sec­ond case we are receiv­ing orders from God. In the first case we are try­ing to be God our­selves, in the sec­ond case we are allow­ing God to be God.

Per­haps we could phrase the dis­tinc­tion thus:
“Don’t try to tell God what he ought to do, but expect God to do what he has promised to do.”

So in your spe­cif­ic case, it all depends on what sort of prayers you’re expect­ing God to answer.

Did that help clear it up?

Seen On The Facebook

I still say a church steeple with a light­ning rod on top shows a lack of con­fi­dence. — Doug McLeod 🙂