In search of the truth.

Holidays - an eternal perspective

2010-11-26T05:19:00.000-08:00

If you have lost someone recently, been through a divorce, or experienced some other loss, you know the holidays lose some of their charm. There is something not right especially if your loss is not remediable. As I began to think about it, I questioned God's goodness in the immediacy of my situation and it made no sense to me. And I wallowed deeper into self pity and into bitter tears. I trusted you God, why does my life suck like this.
And since I believe in a God who is alive and communicates, these are the best times - because God out of his utter mercy responds with overwhelming love. He reminded me of a few things: the life I am in is not permanent. I have been blessed by God even on earthly terms immensely. The pain I am feeling is a pain all creation feels for restoration (Romans 8:22). And finally, this is not the end - nothing on earth will truly satisfy us. Everyone at one point or the other experiences what we call existential angst: the pain of a God sized hole that is filled with false gods. For nature abhors vacuum and where we reject God, we turn to pleasure in food, sex, drugs, alcohol, work, video games, other mindless activities that consume human attention that was created for God.
So how do we deal with the holidays and the pain? Focus on the people around you, be a blessing, stop being a sorry clod of aches and pains and let the hope that you have in Christ Jesus shine. And most importantly if you do not know Jesus as your personal savior, make sure you find out more about it and make peace with your creator. We don't know how long we have to live and TODAY is the day of redemption.

God, Poverty and Genesis

2010-06-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

What causes economic inequality? I believe its trade. I wrote a small simulation program to simulate random trading between a population that started with equal wealth. Unbelievably, a lot of folks became poor and a few became very rich.
So I came to this conclusion: I think randomness is the "natural" order of creation - first there was chaos then order. While I don't think it is God's will for anyone to be poor, poverty is a result of the fallen nature of man. I am still researching this, but third law of thermodynamics (entropy always increases) is the nature of the Universe without the sustaining presence of God. There are other indicators of a fallen nature such as the viscious cycle of life form eating life form. I dont think that was a design intention - I think its an indicator of a fallen world. As often, people blame God for human failure. The nature of man is that he is fallen from grace and the world he lives in is a fallen world. So if we then point to the existance of evil and provide that as proof a benovelent God doesn't, we are simply being foolish.

Spanking

2010-04-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

Time magazines attempt to define our times and set the narrative on every little aspect of our lives, is admirably successful. That such influence has been captured by leftward leaning idealogues is regrettable. Look at the series on "Spanking" , each time the narrative starts out appearing to be nuetral, but their mind already has been made up. ergo. if you are educated, you dont spank. If your some bible believing, redneck hick, you spank.

Look at their repeated articles in 2006, 2009 and 2010
Their latest article lays on how spanking causes aggressive behaviour. They say spanking instills fear , but "understanding" is whats desirable. This kind of logic would call for appeasing Hitler and mollifying the Jihadists to instill "understanding" as opposed to fear. When you understand your two year old is a tyrant, you realize nothing comes close to imparting understanding as a whack to the bottom. Your position of non negotiability and your god-like sovereignty over a little one's life is what gives him security in the boundaries you lay for him. As he grows you enlarge his boundaries as he learns expand his horizons responsibly.
All this said and done, every child is unique and you need to find the best way to correct him/her. The most important thing is that you love the child, unconditionally and give they the attention they need. Be their friend and guide, correcting them by example rather than fiat, you will see they will turn just fine. All that is not enough, we have a responsibility to plead their cause before God everyday. My mom did this for us and we have benefited more than from a "spanking" or "timeout". Behaviour is not the problem, its the symptom. All attempts to modify behavior will fail to address the underlying problem.

All said and done, the saving grace for Time magazine's exalted standing in our opinion, is a few user comments. Time has gone the way of the Nobel prize - of the liberals, for the liberals, by the liberals.

Growing

2010-04-08T21:41:00.000-07:00

There is incredible joy in watching things grow. So when someone at church shared about Square Foot Gardening I got all excited about the prospect of growing a vegetable patch in the back yard.
Eating is one of the most intimate things we as humans do. As a society however we have come to care less about what we eat than say where we sleep. After watching Food Inc. my resolve only got stronger.

So we made it a father daughter project to plant seeds and start them indoors. I then made two raised beds with 6 2"x8"x8ft pine boards and moved about a 1500 lb. of potting soil, composted manure, peat moss and sand with my bare hands and my trusty Civic - which now smells like manure. A labor of love indeed. So far I started onions, cabbages, cauliflower - these are supposed to do well in cold weather. We will see how this goes. I have yet to plant okra, peas, beans, summer squash, pumpkins , spinach, coriander.

Of all the things we do in labor divided society, nothing seems to come close to raising food in usefulness to your fellow being - even if it is your immediate family. In comparison my day job as a software developer seems to be futile - what do I do? I shuffle electrons around. I shuffle very interesting electrons, .Net electrons, some electrons in my emails consequently helped a measurable improvement in customer service. Which helps some person move his money electrons from bank to bank to store and perhaps buy some food. But nothing comes close to the earthy satisfaction of watching things grow and helping them along.

Besides this is a way for me to remember my mom. Painful as Easter was, it is still Spring, a season of renewal, of resurrection, the dead seed growing into a beautiful plant and then bearing fruit itself. In a sense I am a seed of my mom and this is my season to grow and flourish. In another sense, I am the offspring of the gospel taking after the first fruit of God's work of salvation which is Jesus Himself. I am growing in my faith and becoming more and more like Jesus, which was my purpose from before the creation of the world. I need the occasional pruning but I am glad to be in the hands of a master gardner and one day I hope to bear fruit and produce after my own kind. And I hope one day you will either be at my funeral celebration here on earth or the celebration in heaven and see what I have done with my life.

Enlightened

2009-11-06T10:05:00.000-08:00

Nothing brings existential questions into spotlight, as does suffering and pain. When things are going well, people move along, unmindful of their overall predicament - vulnerable in an a chaotic universe in which much evil exists. At the first experience of pain, their thoughts turn to try and understand the world they live in. And out of this comes two responses, one to ignore the pain and dull the senses or to turn to search and understand. Some times those who turn to search, give up too easily or don't excercise enough intellectual honesty to separate truth from fantasy.
Well, how does one search for the truth?
" There is a mine for silver and a place where gold is refined ...
" But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? Job 28

Is it found in the writings of stoics of ancient greeks, in ancient eastern philosophy? Or does life as they claim have no meaning? How does one conclude? Is it with the experimentalist or with the theorist?

I don't know, but here is some worthy advice I have picked up. I have experimented and found it to be true:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and to shun evil is understanding.

In other words, there is no hope for your search, if you first didn't consider the question about Jesus. There is no hope for your search if you considered Jesus and rejected him. You cannot know God except through Jesus.

Can a person know the absolute truth?

2009-06-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

Ramraj,

One of the points I was trying to establish that truth exists apart from the observing frame of reference. Your opinion is we cannot find what this "outer" truth which may or may not be, but the fact is truth exists. But I believe there are some things we can infer - how can all the complexity in the world be produced by a random universe whose established law (of thermodynamics) states that it increases in disorder when left to its own means. Other things have to be revealed, was it a loving God that created it or a hateful one or an indifferent one?

The problem is now not that there are no claimed revelations, the problem is there are many claimed revelations. Which claim is true? Secular Humanism, Islam, Judaism, Buddism, Hinduism or plain old paganism. All of them have some things they agree on which may be true. But all of them disagree on somethings and from a universal frame of reference (aka God frame of reference) all may be false, but only one of them may be true since they disagree with each other.First we have to agree that there is meaning to words given to them by those that utter them. And that the same sentence cannot mean different things to different people - unless intended by the author. Just as truth is absolute communicated truth is absolute and its frame of reference is the author or speaker not the reader or listener.

So now how will you evaluate which claim is true. I believe you should apply the same principles as above - since at this point all we have at our disposal is rationality, then we should say all the claims made should be consistent with known knowledge and within itself. And this is no small matter because, if there were no forces trying to cloud our opinion and darken our minds, then it would easy. Unfortunately I don't beleive it is so. We have to glean through the data and weed out what is inferrable and true from that which is not. This is the pursuit of truth who goal is to remove mental obstacles to where the heart can turn - which is necessary for the empirical verification of my truth claim. My aim is to remove the mental obstacles so the heart can then beleive. "For it is impossible to please God without faith - whoever comes to him must beleive he exists and that he rewards those who seek him earnestly". Truth is a combination of head truth and heart truth. What the heart wants to believe colors the mind, and what the mind knows (or does not) can give fuel for a deceiving heart.

If you remember me 10 years ago, at a certain point for a few years infact, I was an atheist. I did not believe in God and would make the darkest statements about my philosophy of life. I had many reasons starting with Bertrand Russels teachings - There was no need for a first cause or a first cause can be just the world -not necessarily God, etc etc. I assumed then that Christianity was the manufactured religion of the predominant cultures in europe. Then one day as I was browsing the dead sea scrolls from an article in a newspaper , http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/intro.html I realized these scrolls have the book of Isaiah - a book of Judaism (Torah or the old testament). One of the verses I chanced upon was "He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities and the punishment that brought us peace was upon him". This was carbon dated to 2000 years ago, the same time. Jesus was born lived and died. And I knew a man made religion with a future vision would never come up with a silly thing like thisthat one man died for sins of all men. This is patently stupid from human point of view. And I thought maybe - just maybe it is infact true. This knowledge opened my heart enough to be prepared for God to touch me.

Revelation is not static. God's word is meaningless to those without a relationship with him, this is why you see religious Jews killing jesus - while Jesus fulfilled what was prophesied in Judaism about him. In fact Jesus himself endorsed the Torah stating not an "iota (or a comma) will be struck from the law (of moses)". This is the same reason again why you see religious christians doing perhaps bad things. True religion the bible says is to take care of the widow and the orphans. Now don't you see some christians doing this? They are the real ones - living their religion in a relationship with God. This is the confusion i was talking about earlier.

But back to the questions you raised about certain things - first thing I want to say is truth is different from morality . Is something right or wrong is a moral statement. Is something true or false is a truth statement. Some things truth applies, for other morality applies. Morality does not arise patently out of what the truth is but by the definition of the first cause or God.

Let me give an example from my life. Recently I bought a motorcycle. It was old junk I bought for 600$. I put money and time into it and it became an idol in my heart. I loved it. Then God said "sell it" for two months I struggled. I was rationalizing - that's just my guilty conscience - if I spend more time with God and my family i will be fine. Then everytime I would open the bible, the motorcycle would come up with the word of God being bent in my mind to apply to the motorcycle. This is how God speaks. Unless you can hear him speak you cannot know right from wrong. Besides motorcycles are not bad, but for me because of God's commandment i was guilty of breaking the law or being sinful. Finally I sold it and how free I feel!

inter caste marriages are wrong, polygamy caste has nothing to do with marriage - so people were mistaken. Infact they are mistaken now. The first thing thats wrong is if you are not in a relationship with God, then nothing you do is right. Some may be wronger than others. So Jews were instructed to not intermarry to other religions for the fear of being turned away from God. Christians are told to do the same thing - there is no guarantee that your partner will come to God. Be equally yoked the bible says. In Christianity the ultimate requirement is to love God passionately and nothing else. Marriage and family come second to your relationship with God.
About polygamy and divorce Jesus said this "Moses allowed you to do this(divorce) because your hearts were hardened , but in the beginning God made them male and female so what man put together, let no man separate". So Gods revelation is required to get moral questions right. Infact as far as the caste system, the Bible says clearly that you should not discriminate - whether Jew or Gentile , rich or poor - so what is the basis for division.

Earth was flat - old misconception - its not true. It was not revealed in the bible that the earth was flat, but it did say as old as 5000bc that God suspended the earth over nothing. Remarkable insight when everyone back then believed the earth was stacked on an infinite column of turtles.

evolution or creationism. Jesus or Allah, Republicans or democrats, war or no war, nothing really matters.
Truth matters. God's opinion matters. He is the reference. Either God created the universe or not. Who made the raw materials for evolution? If Allah was right and the Torah is incorrect(muslims beleive torah was later corrupted) but you have archeological evidence (dead sea scrolls I referred to above) stating Jesus was required to be born and die for his people. There is no room for later corruption of things that were predicted before.There is more evidence for Jesus than for say alexander the great. And it is not as if your beliefs here have no consequence on how you live or how you will spend eternity. That you are not convinced heaven or hell exists is not a good excuse for judgement. No amount of feigning you did not know about the speed limit with excuse you from a speeding ticket.

dont let loyalty confuse you As you know I have switched loyalties. I am hardly a christian because I was born one - although I had the foundations. You know my atheist days. How do you know I wont switch again. You have to wait till I die, and by then it might be too late? No man is a christian by birth. Every man becomes a christian when he is "born again" . Christians come from other religions, whether nominal christianity or Hinduism or Islam.

Why christ came to Jerusalem instead of madurai- Christ came to Jerusalem for the same reason as you were born in Virudhunagar.
The bible says "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'" Jesus did come to madurai later and there are those in Madurai that hold to this truth. Infact God's vision for the world is "every nation, tribe and tongue" worshipping the "lamb of God" who was slain for the "sins of the world".
Jesus might have texted but I think God intended him to be poor so that people may know God is concerned for the poor. Not that there is anything wrong with owning stuff and not every baby in Jesus time was born in a smelly manger. But that was God's decision to make him lower and tougher for him than for all the earth so he can be an example for us that nothing is an obstacle to seeking and being in a relationship with God. The bible talks about women dressing modestly, and I think the women in my life who are christians follow that example (both american and Indian).

I hope I answered in a humble way. I dont have a license on Truth (TM)? I don't know anything that hasn't been revealed and those that I inferred I have from the same facts available to you. Now could I be wrong, may be so. But what if I am right? Isn't that the more dangerous outcome ?

Is truth subjective?

2009-06-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Does absolute truth exist. In fact does anything apart from an observer? What triggered these series of thoughts was a comment by a friend that if one "stepped back" and took a different perspective, you may see things in a new light. So is what's wrong with a world a matter of human perspective. A matter of sharing and empathy and living and letting live? The world is wanting for empathy to be sure, but I wish it was only so simple that all problems would be solved by greater sympathy to our differring worldviews.

Consider a thought experiment. Consider the world before any sentient being existed. All kinds of knowledge tell us this is so. Scientists tell us a "big bang" created us, theists tell us that their favorite deity created the world. But all agree the world existed before any sentient being did. So now since at any point a sentient being could have begun to exist - either by the will of God or by evolution, it becomes apparent that the world exists before they did and hence is capable of existing without a sentient observer. So the nature of existence seems to be that it (existence) is a separate phenomenon from observation.

The statement I just made about insentient creation is a truth statement. This statement is true independent of an observer. So its useless for two observers to argue about their own relative view points. They may differ yes - but the truth is outside them. For this reason all truth has to be either inferred or revealed. The best would be for the observers to get to a "common frame of reference" -think Einstein's relativity and "infer" it. Or it has to be revealed with significant authority from a "God" point of view or a universal point of view. From a point of view - where "time" is absolute. Time is woven into a time-space continuum, but imagine a point of view that could exist at all times and in all spaces at the same time and place. Natural science has no reference for it - in fact they call it meaningless. Theologians have long had a name for this - omnipresence and omniscience.

Einsteins Theory of relativity is the ultimate triumph of the subjective. Time itself is relative to its inertial frame of reference. What brilliant insight into the laws of the physical world - yet what it establishes is the limitation of a "human" or a "sentient" view point. Same as Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle - which establishes the human limitations on observation - you may infer the velocity or location of a particle with increasing accuracy but not both. Again imagine a view point where this is not a limitation.

As I have shown in the "thought experiment" above, things exist apart from an observer. We can make truth statements about the existence of such things that we must by definition agree with when we consider things from that view point. This is the only view point that matters, because we have only confusion with every other view point. Otherwise I could be writing this in an ancient dialect that only appears to be in English and only appears to say what it does. It might be a recipe for making pasta - go enjoy it. For the rest of us more to follow from a simple minded epistemologist.