TwiddleGeek

“I envy, truly I envy, those people who pray in simple faith without worrying about how prayer works and how God governs this planet. Alas, for some reason I cannot avoid pondering these imponderables.”
– Philip Yancey

I’ve been pondering a lot of biblical questions lately, and thankfully SpaceKitty has indulged me in at least a few essay length emails on the topic, maybe more. I’d like to get some of the topics down into a more concise summary here so that I might link to my findings for other searchers, but forgive me if this post is still a bit nebulous.

First of all, SK lent me the excellent book The Case for Faith, which by itself cleared up many of the tough questions I had been pondering in my conversations with her. It reaffirmed many of my own suspicions and gave me a few fresh ideas on others. Sometimes, it’s just good to hear an expert on the subject say what you’ve been thinking. The interesting ones for me were #1 Suffering, #3 OT Violence, #4 Hell, and #5 Jesus is the only way. Each was well answered and interesting. I’ll probably post up a favorable review shortly, but check it out if the questions interest you.

Two big questions, or rather topics, remained for me however. The first of which was prayer, the second I’ll tackle in another post. On prayer, questions like “Should we pray for even small desires?”, “Why pray when God already knows the answer?”, and “What about when prayer doesn’t seem to work?” The first question isn’t terribly hard to work out, as God commands us to pray in pretty much all matters. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”.

But as for the second one, the best response I’ve heard to this is that since God knows our choices, his plans include our prayers and requests. If he knows no request is made, no plan is made. If he knows a request will be made that he will answer, the answer is planned before we even actually ask. Jesus tells us: “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” — yet he still tells us to pray, and he himself prays.

[C.S.] Lewis replied that you could use that same argument against any human activity, not just prayer. “Why wash your hands? If God intends them to be clean, they’ll come clean without your washing them … Why ask for the salt? Why put on your boots? Why do anything?” God could have arranged things so that our bodies nourished themselves miraculously without food, knowledge entered our brains without studying or teachers, umbrellas magically appeared to protect us from rainstorms. God chose a different style of governing the world, however, one which relies on human agency and choice. — [source]

An excellent description in my opinion. The answer is, in my mind, simply because God wants us to ask. It’s definitely biblical that God wants us to seek him and come to him for answers. The prayer is already known, even the answer is already planned, but we need to ask. It’s a willful turning away from ourselves and our own strength and toward God. Someone once put it: “Prayer is the method God has chosen to bestow his blessings.” That makes a lot of sense to me. It’s not to say he doesn’t grant us things we haven’t asked for, or even thought to ask for, but simply asking goes a long way.

And as for the 3rd question of what to make of an answer of “No”, I believe it’s all in how you look at things and seeing the big picture. When I look back over my life, I’ve been blessed to be more or less where I needed to be, when I needed to be there. Had things worked out differently, I would have missed the opportunity. I have faith that God guides our lives and works things out for the best. But I believe that it’s also important to look for answers to prayer in ways we might not expect. In my case I once prayed for the health of a terminal loved one, but as she continued to get worse, God had still granted the request in a different ways. In the midst of her worst days, she had days of surprising clarity that we shared together. She was suffering less, comforted more, and visited by nearly all her family and reunited with her church before death.

I’m always on the lookout for consistently amusing webcomics, and Bunny fits the bill. Pink, Orange, and Blue bunnies generally star in single panel randomness, ranging from mech attacks to Half Life 2 puns, and the end of the world more than once. Aside from being cute, stylish, and random, one of the best things going about Bunny is that it’s updated (almost) daily. Quite a challenge, but it’s great to have a new image to enjoy every day. With over 1,000 comics in the archive, clicking the random button could keep you busy for quite some time.

Along with playing games and watching movies, I simply love to read. I typically go through a fair amount of books on a large variety of topics including everything from time management to Japanese study, art to various fiction and humor. I’d say my favorite books are of the Sci-fi, fantasy, and study types. I love a good book that can make me laugh, think, or teach me something new. Of course this year I have several more that I’d like to read. I tend to enjoy long running series, last year finishing the complete Harry Potter set and this year His Dark Materials.

First and foremost, I’d like to read a new Bible I recently purchased cover to cover. SpaceKitty helped me pick out a new one over the New Years holiday and I’m quite fond of it. It’s based on the New Living Translation and although I wouldn’t use it for serious study, it makes for a nice and easy read. It neatly separates the books, further dividing them into sections with concise headings and useful information along the way. I’ve seen plans for ‘Reading the Bible in 1 year’ and a local church has plaques for reading plans… but if you do away with some of the hard to follow old English sentence structure, it’s really not that big of a task. This NLT Bible is 66 books with a total of just 759 pages. At a normal reading pace rather than a in-depth study, it shouldn’t take very long at all.

Other than that I’d like to get back into the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. I’ve read the first 5 books, and I plan on reading the entire series as soon as I can. It’s funny, and I hear it only gets better as the books go on. I’d also like to pick up some more Halo books. I’ve read the first one, The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund, and found it surprisingly good. I don’t have much desire to read the The Flood, but I want to pick up Nylund’s other two in the series, First Strike and Ghosts of Onyx. Another unlikely series is the Star Trek TNG books. I loved that series, and as much as I never thought I’d get into the fiction, they’re actually very enjoyable books. I’ve read about 13 of the 60+ official books, and I plan on reading many more. Sure, they’re the literary equivalent of junk food, but they’re entertaining if nothing else.

Other than that, I want to get back into some of my study books on Japanese and art. I’ve a lot of great Japanese study books by Taeko Kamiya and Naoko Chino published in the excellent Kodansha series, and I quite enjoy reading them. I also have art technique books ranging from more modern all the way to The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed, first published in 1917. Lots of good stuff to go through, but all of it taking a good deal of time to properly study.

I want to touch on the site Games for Lunch. Games for Lunch didn’t inspire this site or anything of that sort — I had never really sat down and read it until the other day. That said, I do enjoy reading other gaming blogs out there to see what’s going on. There are actually very few “Gaming Blogs” around the web that I can find. Oh sure, you’ll find plenty of blogs covering gaming news, but very few people are blogging about playing the games themselves. If you know of any, I’d be interested in reading them.

TwiddleGeek started as a way for me to share the experience of gaming. My previous site became something of a review blog, but I wanted a way to share with readers more than just the end result. The first idea was simply a gallery of impressive, interesting, and amusing screenshots taken from games with my capture card setup. But as I was building the site, I realized that writing about games in a blog style would allow me to not only showcase the game, but tell people what’s interesting and impressive about a given title as I play it.

Games for Lunch has an interesting take where the author basically plays a game for an hour and writes an opinion on it. I like the concept, but I’m not a fan of the ’stream of consciousness’ writing. He writes on Kotaku that he pauses the game and jots down shorthand notes… I would think that would hurt the experience, myself. Personally, I’d much rather he collect these notes and rewrite them into some overall thoughts at the end of the hour rather than simply dictate his experience verbatim to the reader.

I’ve also started reading EGM again thanks to finding a free year subscription online, and I have to say it’s not as bad as I expected. I haven’t read EGM for years, but I’m glad to see they’re still following their multi-author reviews. I really like how the writing style is free flowing and personal, almost impression based rather than a critical review. I also really enjoy how each reviewer touches on the comments of those before him, connecting it all together and giving a very well rounded view of each game. As a side note, I’m glad to see Hsu and Chan are still featured in the mag! I read the original strips back when they were first published.