All you need is love

I've been reading through parts of the gospels this week and have re-discovered the core of Christian teaching. In the words of Christ, "Love others as I have loved you." The gospel is all about love. At it's core, it's about God loving the world so much that he gave his one and only son to die so that it could be saved from it's sin. It's about Christ loving us so much that he gave his own life so that we may live with him eternally. It's about his call for us to love everyone, including those that we may consider beneath us.

I think it is very profound how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, showing them that no matter how superior you are socially, morally, or economically, you should still serve the least of mankind as much or more than the people society would have you believe you should be serving. Everyone, is deserving of your love, just as God thinks we are all deserving of his love, even if we don't believe we are. Peter was very opposed to Jesus washing his feet, claiming that he instead should be serving Jesus instead of the other way around. But Jesus tells him that Peter can't be his disciple unless he allows him to wash his feet. I found this to be much like how I feel towards God's love for me. I'm far from deserving of the love he has shown for me, but in order to follow him I have to accept Christ's love and sacrifice for me, despite how far I am from deserving such infinite love.

God loved us so much when we never deserved it. And I think it'll be very helpful for me to think about this any time I don't think I should be loving others. Often I tell myself that someone has done nothing to deserve my love or my help. Perhaps they've been unreliable in the past, or perhaps hateful or has hurt me physically or emotionally. Yet I've done so many things that have hurt God in the past, yet he never ceases to love me despite my failures. I should show the same love to everyone who has wronged me, or just never done anything specifically to help me. I think this is the main justification behind Christ's teaching on loving your enemies, which can be one of the most difficult commandments to put into action.

Remembering what to take true joy in

Summer is almost to an end, and I'm really ready to get back to Rice. I even bought my first car yesterday with a little over 1/3 of my total income for this summer. I realized that God has blessed my life with a lot lately. I have a great job that I've learned a lot from this summer and made a lot of money from at the same time. I have amazing friends that I am still in contact with even though I've been gone for two years, including Kameron, James, Franklin, Ashley, Sabonis, Geoff, and Andy from my high school and Matt I, Matt M, Patrick, Ciera, Charlie, Geoff, Christa, and Eddie from youth group that I've been able to spend a pretty good amount of time with this summer, plus many others that I'm leaving out. I have an incredible girlfriend who constantly makes me feel loved and who I can talk to about anything with. I now have a car that is completely mine, and was able to pay for the car, insurance, and gas on my own. And my future is brighter than it ever has been. Aside from national fame (which I will gladly do without, thanks), I've got just about everything that popular culture says you need in order to be happy.

And don't get me wrong, I'm really happy with life right now. But there is a great danger in deriving all of my joy from worldly pleasures. The Bible offers incredible bits of wisdom when it commands us (and I'm summarizing because I'm terrible with memorizing scripture) to not strive after earthly pleasures, but to take joy in serving The Lord. I could lose any of those earthly things that are making me so happy at any moment. I could lose contact with many of my friends. My car could get in a wreck or be stolen. My job is almost over and my money will be gone before I know it, and I may not even get to work here again next summer. Robyn and I could break up. All of these things could happen, and many of them probably will at some point in my life. I think it is important for me to realize now, while times are good, that while they bring joy now and will no doubt bring sadness when I lose them, God will stay with me forever. But there's nothing that can ever keep me from serving Him, and from my experience, that brings much more happiness and satisfaction than any of my earthly possessions ever can.

And I should also take more time to thank God for blessing me as he has. Because all of these things, even those which I often think come from my own hard work and smart choices, come from Him. Which is even more reason to follow his word and serve him in everything I do.

Awesome dream

Last night I had an incredible dream. I was back at Rice and it was the first two days of classes (the dream spanned two days). As I went through my classes and activities, people randomly began singing songs from Disney movies. I remember going to my Business Communication class and was a few minutes late. The prof was like a fatter and balder version of my accounting professor from last fall. After getting upset about people being late (it was the first day, come on!) he started singing "Let's get down to business" from Mulan. I really appreciate my own unconscious sense of humor. I think "A Whole New World" from Aladdin was sung at the beginning of one of my classes, probably during Fluid Mechanics to describe how completely different it will be from solid mechanics. I think Neil Patrick Harris showed up to teach one of my classes, perhaps music theory(?). It was interesting that even in my dream I had my entire class schedule memorized and in correct chronological order.

The finale before I woke up involved Robert Downey Junior in a hospital bed drugged up on painkillers, one of my engineering professors in Ryon Lab, and Felicia Day in the engineering quad sitting on 180, singing "Can you feel the love tonight?" from Lion King in a style similar to "My Eyes" from Dr. Horrible where it kept switching between multiple people. I don't really know what this had to do with being back at Rice, but it was epic. I love my crazy dreams.

Then I got an email from my fluid mechanics prof an hour ago. I was hoping that it would be written in rhyme. It wasn't. MLIA.

I hope the first day of fall 2009 is very similar to this. It would be a great start to my senior year.

Leadership and Friendship

As of the end of today, I'll have exactly 3 weeks, only 15 days, left working at ARL for the summer. Despite what I thought at the beginning, summer did actually manage to fly by pretty quickly. While I'm really excited to go back to Rice and stop working, I still feel like there will be some things about summer that I'll miss. The lack of stress and deadlines, weekends where I am free to do whatever I want, and my friends in Austin which will become harder and harder to see in the future as they are going off to college, or finishing college and moving to wherever jobs take them.

I also noticed today that I've actually grown pretty close to my boss at work, Anthony. Despite how strange he seemed at first, he's quickly become the best boss/ supervisor that I've had at a job. He does a good job of making sure I get work done and don't slack too much, but he's also an incredibly good teacher and takes time out of his work to teach me things that he thinks I will use for the rest of my engineering career. We also discuss our weekends, complain about annoying co-workers, and discuss ridiculous news stories from time to time. It almost feels like a jedi master/ apprentice relationship. I think relationships are really helpful to being a good leader.

I've had my share of good and bad leaders (this includes bosses at work, theater directors, coaches, etc), and I think there were two qualities that made a big difference in how much I liked and respected those in authority. The first is how much the leader knows about what they are supposed to be leading. My best coach in my opinion was Coach Rotich, who was a world class runner who had won marathons. If someone has proven that they are knowledgable and experienced, it is a lot easier to trust them to make the right decisions. On the opposite end of the spectrum, my worst boss was the program director when I was working at Camp Sol Mayer. She had never really worked at a summer camp, yet due to her position in the local boy scout council, had been put in charge of the camp. Even the youngest and most inexperienced staff had a better idea of what was going on than she did, and as a result she wasn't very well respected and most of us never felt very compelled to listen to her when she told us to do things. It was a nightmare.

The other important trait is how well a leader can relate to his or her followers. A leader who came from the same background as those that he is leading, or one who makes an effort to get to know his followers, is much more effective at understanding what motivates his followers and can be more effective at communicating. The underlings also will feel more relaxed if working for someone that they know and understand, and are more likely to work efficiently. The fact that Anthony has decades of experience in our field, and tries to get to know me as a person, has made me respect him quite a bit. Theater directors who have pushed me, but still had realistic expectations about the amount of time the cast and crew had to give to the show, were much more respected than those who sacrificed the morale of the cast and crew just to put on a good show.

There are definitely many other traits of good leaders, but these are two that stick out to me as I've been spending time working under Anthony, and two traits that I should keep in mind the next time I find myself in a leadership position.

Robyn comes to Austin!

Robyn came to visit me and meet my family and some of my friends from high school this weekend. And it was really, really fun. Friday night she showed up right in the middle of Peter's 18th birthday party, so we ate leftover pizza and played rock band with Peter and his friends. It was really cool that Robyn clicked so easily with my family. My mom really seemed to like her, she spent a lot of time just talking with Victoria to get to know her, and she enjoyed spending time with Peter and his friends too. It was cool that she stayed at my house for an entire weekend and it almost felt like she was a part of the family.

Saturday we slept in for a bit, watched a couple movies (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Enchanted) and went to Schlitterbahn with some of my youth group friends. I could tell at the beginning that it was probably kind of weird for her to be crammed into a minivan with 6 people she had never met before, but she warmed up to them pretty quickly and seemed to have a really fun time. It started raining right as we were about to go on the first ride, but we still managed to hit about all of the good parts of the old section of the park. I was a bit upset that we didn't make it to the new section with the awesome wave pool and insane water slides, but I found it easier to dwell on how much fun we did end up having and not how much more fun we could have had if we'd decided to go for the entire day or if it hadn't rained for an hour. This was especially helpful since people were already upset about Geoff losing his keys in one of the tube float rides and the possibility of not being able to drive back to Austin loomed over our heads. Fortunately one of Geoff's parents was able to drive down and give us a spare key, and even offered to pay for our dinner on the way back at Dairy Queen.

On Sunday I drove Robyn to UT before going to mass so she could visit one of her band friends from high school. After picking her back up again much earlier than I expected to be seeing her again, I took her to see my high school and outside of the building that I work at this summer (unfortunately you need quite a bit of clearance to actually go inside the building). She thought it was really cool that my school was broken up into different buildings so we could be outside so much, something I hadn't really appreciated much while I was there. I guess it would have been pretty awful to be stuck inside one building all day. Then we went to Mangia, one of the best chicago-style stuffed deep dish pizza places ever, and later drove up to a Target in Cedar Park to visit TJ while he was working. Robyn was worried that it might be awkward for the two of us to see him together since neither of us had seen him since before we were officially together, but it was actually pretty nice to see him and not really awkward at all. We were especially lucky since we managed to get there right at his 3:30 lunch break. Still trying to figure out how a break at 3:30 counts as lunch though.

And I'll get to see her again in about 3 more days when I go back to Houston for the last time this summer. Then it'll just be 2 weeks and 5 days until I move back home to Rice!

Well at least I'm better than that guy

After a lot of prayer and thought, I've noticed a common problem with my own spiritual growth that I think also affects far too many Christians. We often get caught up in the mindset that "Well, I'm not as bad as this person and that person, so I must be living a good life." It seems like I often inflate my idea of how righteous of a person I am by comparing my actions to people who don't act as morally as I do. I see people who get drunk every night and pat myself on the back for only having a drink or two every few weeks. I hear of people having sex before marriage and congratulate myself for keeping to just kissing my girlfriend and keeping my virginity. I hear people gossip and tell myself that it's good that I only say bad things about people who truly deserve it.

What difference would it make in our lives if we instead compared ourselves to people on the other side of the spectrum, or to how Jesus Christ acted? Maybe I should be asking myself why I even drink occasionally, when these other people completely abstain, knowing that that is what God calls them to do. Why don't I strive to be like some couples who save their first kiss for their wedding day, to keep from any lustful temptations, but instead continue to put myself in situations where lust takes hold of my mind? Why can't I seek to be like some of my friends who I've never heard a mean word come out of their mouths all my life?

I think the key sin here is my own pride. It's so much better for my pride and self-esteem when I build myself up by focusing on how much better I am than others. If I were to instead think about the ways in which I fail, and set my goals for a higher ideal, it would kill my pride and my own sense of accomplishment.

I think Jesus knew exactly how dangerous this mindset can be to people. After all, the 2nd and 4th beatitudes specifically call us to set our pride aside and seek to become more righteous instead of dwell on how great we already think we are. Christ says, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land," and calls us to humility. CS Lewis writes in Mere Christianity that all sins can be linked to pride, which I think is true, though the same could also be said of idolatry. Jesus also says two verses later that "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they shall have their fill." It seems counter intuitive that by recognizing our faults and striving to live a more righteous life, we shall be more satisfied than if we build ourselves up, yet I've noticed that this tends to be the case.

When I first came to Rice I was overwhelmed by how little I was beginning to realize I actually knew about the world. Although I was now more knowledgeable then I ever had been, I felt as if I knew less than I had before. The annoying thing is that the same is true in our spiritual walk. The closer we tend to grow towards this ideal of righteous living and the more time we spend in communion with God, the more we realize how much further we have to go. While I feel like I've come a long way since I really started thinking seriously about my faith at the beginning of high school, I feel like I'm more inadequate now than I ever did back then. Perhaps my blindfold of pride has been slowly disappearing since the beginning of high school, but then every time I think about how far I've come I fall into the same trap of pride in my own righteousness that I was in to begin with.

Where did summer go?

I realized when coming into work today that I only have 4 full weeks left of working, and then a partial week before moving back to Rice. I've already worked for 8 weeks, which means that summer is basically 2/3 of the way over. I'm getting more and more excited about going back to Rice. Perhaps I'm also just in a good mood because I had an amazing weekend. Phantom of the Opera was incredible, and although Robyn had to work for part of the weekend, I still enjoyed just getting to sit in the same room as her. And I'll get to see her in Austin in just 4 days. I spent a lot of June waiting for July to get here because it meant getting to see her more often, and now that it's here I'm pretty excited.

As Mithun commented on my last post, I've noticed that a lot of my problems seem to come with not being completely convinced of the importance of devoting myself fully to God in everything I do, and I don't see the benefit of doing that over just giving him control over 70 or 80% of my life. I need to find a way to become completely convinced of that again. I think this was the theme of DWC during my freshman year. Perhaps it would be good to try to find any notes that I took while I was there and see if any of the verses or points made by the speakers are relevant to my problems. Maybe even spending more time in prayer and reading from God's word will convince me of the importance of giving him total control of my life.

Another thing I've been thinking about is how far is too far in a relationship? It's something that I'd always considered irrelevant when discussed back in my high school youth group and something I didn't pay much attention to. Every Christian knows that holding hands is good, and premarital sex is very bad, but where is the 'Do Not Cross' line somewhere in between the two in the spectrum? It seems like every Christian couple has a different idea of what they consider too far. Some will consider everything short of sex to be ok as long as they aren't losing their virginity. Others think they should save kissing for when they're married. I haven't done anything that I think I'll regret at this point, though maybe I'll find that I have and need to stop doing things to remain faithful to my beliefs, but it's still something I think I should look into now that it's something that might actually influence my future actions. It seems like something I could find answers to in John Paul II's Theology of the Body, though there might be something about it in the Bible.

It looks like this is going to be a very busy week. I've got something going on every night this week (Soccer on Monday, Movies and a Meal with the college aged church group on Tuesday, Harry Potter on Wednesday, and frantic cleaning on Thursday). As someone who really likes constantly having things to do, I'm really looking forward to it.