Well, today was my last day of spring break. Now it's back to school. I'm not too upset about it... I mean, the first half of the semester wouldn't have been to bad had it not been for my exam. So I'm guessing the second half will be relatively fine.
So, here's something that bothers me. For the past 6 years, I've gone to two different Nazarene churches and a Nazarene university... and at all of these places I've noticed a very bad trend. It is often the case that when someone at one of these places is discussing missionary work, discipleship, or some other method of expanding the kingdom of God, there seems to always be a decisive mention of the work done by the Nazarene church. It's not about how the kingdom of God is expanding... it always seems to be about how the Nazarene Church has planted more missionaries, or people were brought to Christ through the work of the Nazarene church. And I've seen this at all three places: two churches and a university. This really bothers me. None of this is about keeping a score card against other denominations or other Nazarene... districts, I believe they're called?
I absolutely believe that a denomination should teach the doctrine that is the foundation of that denomination. But I've always had the perception that each Nazarene Church has some sort of metaphorical scorecard that they use to compare themselves with other districts or denominations.
The thing that set me off today was from the beginning of the service. Someone was going to pray and said that he was going to pray for all of the Nazarene missionaries spreading the word and growing the Nazarene church. And I thought to myself "no... I don't think that's how it works. I think this is God's church."
Anyhow. That was just something that has bothered me for a while.
After church, I had some lunch and read from my new book. It's very interesting. The author wants to tell a story about what he calls "Strange Loops." In terms of art, an example of a Strange Loop is Escher's "Ascending and Descending."
Here, we see a literal loop of people going continuously up... but somehow arriving right where they started.
He compares this to the renowned mathematician/logician/philosopher Kurt Godel, who made the claim that a system whose existence rests upon axioms (statements that simply exist and cannot be proved) and creates new theorems based upon those axioms will necessarily contain truths that cannot be proved with those axioms. It was a very troubling discovery that caused quite a ruckus in mathematics.
Anyhow, the author seeks to explore these infinite loops in music, art, and mathematics. I'm not quite certain what the end goal of this book is, but that does not concern me. For now, I am enjoying what I'm reading and learning. I was warned that it's a pretty dense book, but so far I've found it to be far less dense than most things I've had to read. However, I still have 700 pages to go, so I anticipate that the material will get far more complex. At this point, it has remained pretty familiar and understandable, even reminiscent of some courses I took at Mount Vernon.
I like it.
Later in the evening, I attempted a new experiment. I'm going to be getting up early to go work out with Tim H. so I decided to make breakfast burritos that I can simply microwave and eat. This will be faster and more efficient than making eggs or oatmeal (though it's nearly always eggs) each morning. Especially when I'll be learning around 6:45.
On that note, it's time for me to go to bed. Good night!
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