Archive for the ‘Ponder’ Category

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Third Tree

May

1

2024

As we discussed last week, the phrase “made in His image” refers to our having a body, soul, and mind.

There are numerous example in the Bible how things apply to all three parts of body, soul, and mind. I won’t go into those here, but I’ll go into something that should apply but doesn’t.

First of all, a reminder that God has favorite numbers, like 3 and 7 and some others.

A number that is not a main number in the Bible is 2. It’s not an uncomon number in general, so it does appear in the Bible, but I wouldn’t classify it as significant.

Today’s topic is the trees in the garden of Eden. Everyone knows the “bad” tree – the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There was also a “good” tree – the Tree of Life. And those were the two specific trees.

Why only two trees?

That bothered me at first, because there should be three trees. We have the Tree of Life – affecting the body. And we have the Tree of Knowledge – affecting the mind. Where is the tree affecting the soul?

What I think is going on is that the soul just is. The body can be improved – it grows, it changes, it withers. The mind can be improved – it grows, it changes, it withers. But this is how God shows us that the soul isn’t like that. I don’t have a good answer for what the soul can do, but I did think it was interesting that the soul was left out of the tree test.

Out of the ground the Lord God caused every tree to grow that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:9

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Made in His Image

Apr

24

2024

Many years ago, thanks to a book by Watchman Nee, I came to the understanding of what the phrase “made in His image” in Genesis means.

I will give the disclaimer that could be applied to a lot of theological topics: that my understanding or interpretation of it is by no means the right or only one. But I do think it is the best one, or at least the one that makes the most sense to me.

When the Bible says that God made man in His own image, there are a lot of different explanations out there. Just for fun, I looked up what the internet had to say, and to me they were either too deep or too shallow. The shallow answers just glossed over the concept and said something like “it means we represent God”. And the deep answers talked about a lot of things but didn’t give a definitive answer.

That’s why I’ve gravitated toward the Watchman Nee school of thought on this topic – because it’s a concrete answer and it makes sense.

God is a Trinity, and what He said is “make man in Our image”. Not images, but image. And likeness. So it has to be representative of the multiple persons of God.

What are those? The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And what attributes do we give to those parts of the Trinity?

I’ll answer that by referring to another verse, where we are instructed to love God with “all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

Based on that, and some other verses, we see that the Trinity can be thought of as the mind, the body, and the soul. More or less correlating with the jobs of the three parts of the Trinity.

So humans reflect God’s image by having a triune nature.

And I would also argue that’s what makes people different from other animals – they have mind and body, but they are not made in God’s image so they do not have the soul.

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27

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Movie Plot Quiz

Apr

10

2024

I’m sure there are many varieties of movie plots you could do this with, but I recently watched one of these movies for the first time so I just personally made the connection.

Here is the movie plot:

An idealist, assisted by a ragtag group of misfits, takes on a German officer who is leading his troops to harness the power of a super weapon in order to turn the world war in his favor.

Please choose which movie the plot describes:
A. Wonder Woman (2017)
B. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
C. [Indiana Jones and the] Raiders of the Lost Ark (1984)

And if you’re ever tasked with making a movie and need a plot, consider this one as a generally successful plot.

There were more than forty who formed this plot.

Acts 23:13

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Spork Varieties

Sep

20

2023

With the spork being ubiquitous, I was wondering about the name “spork”. It is the easiest name if you’re combining “spoon” and “fork”, but there are other combinations too.

Spork
Fpoon
Foon
Forn

image of spoon and fork combined as a spork

Not as popular, but you could also have a combination fork and knife.

Knirk
Knork
Fofe
Forfe

image of knife and fork combined as a knork

And least popular is spoon and knife.

Spofe
Spoofe
Spife
Knoon

image of spoon and knife combined as a knoon

He also made all the utensils of the altar, the pails, the shovels, the basins, the meat-forks, and the firepans; he made all its utensils of bronze.

Exodus 38:3

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Cars and Temperatures

Sep

7

2023

With some hot temperatures around here recently, I got to thinking about what people think is hot compared to what a car thinks is hot.

Actually the thought process started years ago during a trip to the Badlands. As the temperature was well over 100 (note all temperatures here will be in F not C), I was worried about the car. I knew I would be unhappy being in the sun (no shade in sight, and you can see a long way in that area of the country) with the temp being 105. And I wondered if the minivan was equally unhappy.

It’s easy to tell in general, because cars have a temperature gauge. As long as the needle stays in the middle of the gauge, everything is happy. But I have also learned that if the needle starts leaving the good zone, something is bad and it’s too late to do much about it other than turn off the engine.

But I’ve since realized that what we think are hot temperatures are not hot to the car. It was replacing a thermostat and radiator that helped me understand that. The thermostat was rated for 195 – that’s the normal operating temperature of the engine coolant.

My body’s thermostat, however, is around 98.6 degrees, about half that of the car. So although I’m in danger of overheating in 105 degree weather, the car is not. Going from 80 to 100 degrees is significant to people, but to a car that would feel like going from 40 to 50 degrees to us.

It’s like dog years – a car degree is half a people degree.

Recalling my thermodynamics class back in college: heat moves from the hotter object to the cooler object, like water flowing from a higher point to a lower point. Once the air gets above 98.6-ish, I’m not longer giving off heat, I’m absorbing it. But for a vehicle, that point is 195. And if the air temperature is even close to that we have bigger problems.

And when the sun came up God designated a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint, and he begged with all his soul to die, saying, “Death is better to me than life!”

Jonah 4:8

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Various and Sundry Thoughts

Aug

9

2023

Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

  • There are two phases to Jackie Chan’s career – the good old days and the not-so-good newer days. If his movie was produced by Golden Harvest, it’s from the good phase. Once he started making movies with Hollywood, it was all downhill from there.
  • Isn’t all food ethnic food? Or when people say “ethnic food” they mean anything other than their ethnicity?
  • It’s summer, but it’s August so football is back on the radar. This year, I’m going to keep track of which announcers know the difference between a reverse and an end-around.
  • If you take a laundry bag on vacation and bring it home full of dirty laundry, make sure that it contains only dirty laundry. This last vacation, someone packed the shaving kit in the laundry bag because it was easier to carry that way. We didn’t find it until we moved the laundry from the washer to the dryer, because laundry bags just get dumped into the washer.
  • Tip for husbands: if the wife ever references TOH, she’s probably talking about Taste of Home, not This Old House.

Harvest is past, summer is over, And we are not saved.

Jeremiah 8:20

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AI Captcha Logic

Jun

15

2023

A typical sci-fi storyline involves robots/computers/AI taking over the world, and worst-case is ridding the world of humans. And now with things progressing rapidly on that front, more people are getting worried about that happening.

However, I’ve been doing a fair amount of tasks online lately, such as paying my electricity bill, and I am not worried about robots taking over the world because the Captchas will prevent them from doing just about anything.

I think it’s a good system, as we seem to have caught the AI in a catch-22.

Because how does an AI learn what to do? It uses many existing examples to find the patterns.

And what do our many examples of online interactions have? Lots of “Are you a robot?” questions. And if you’re a robot, you’re not allowed to continue in whatever process it was.

So the robots will learn that many tasks are not allowed to be completed by robots, so they’ll be stuck and they must allow humans to exist. Of course, at that point the worst case becomes the humans are kept around for the sole purpose of completing the “Are you a robot?” questionnaires and that wouldn’t be a very good existence.

As a side note: why can’t a robot pay my electricity bill? What if I did want to automate some mundane bill-paying tasks? Don’t these people want to be paid in an efficient manner?

Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, to prevent you from being defeated by your enemies.

Numbers 14:42

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