sorry to see

Unless you've been completely ignoring the news over the past few days you've heard about Ted Haggard, the prominent evangelical Christian leader who has experience a massive impact between the fecal matter and the proverbial fan. He's a very political figure, well-known for his opposition to things like gay marriage. If the accusations are to be believed, he has carried on a relationship with a male prostitute/meth dealer for the past few years. The prostitute didn't know who this guy was until he saw Haggard denouncing gay marriage on TV one day. Apparently this horrendous hypocrisy prompted the man to go public.

I'm not entirely sure what the facts of the matter are. Jones (the male prostitute in question) failed a polygraph test about the alleged sexual nature of their relationship. Today, however, Haggard's church fired him, citing "sexually immoral conduct." As far as I know Haggard has publicly admitted to purchasing meth from Jones but says he didn't use it. Haggard also admitted contacting Jones in order to get a massage. The whole thing is pretty shady.

I have to wonder what Haggard is thinking. Politically I am not quite a member of the so-called Religious Right and was only vaguely aware of who Haggard was before this. This almost seems fake. I mean, one of the most influential anti-gay-marriage political figures is patronizing male prostitutes for gay sex and crystal meth? It's so bizarre. I think the biggest victims here are Haggard's family, who have to be absolutely devastated. Of course there is collateral damage to things like the message of Christianity, the integrity of Christian leaders, Haggard's disillusioned followers, and so on.

I don't suppose I have any original thoughts on this. It sucks for Haggard and his family. It's also pretty weaksauce that someone would work so hard to keep gay marriage illegal while at the same time carrying on this kind of relationship with a guy (if the allegations are true). I'm personally of the opinion that gay people should have the same legal rights as others. I do think that marriage is something between a man and a woman but that others should be allowed the same legal status and perks and all that.

But anyway, this Haggard thing is a reminder that if you let some little secret thing linger it can grow into a monster that destroys your life, and you'll have nobody to blame but yourself.

unsportsmanlike conduct

I really enjoy playing flag football. I wouldn't say I'm particularly good. I'm not as big or strong as the really effective guys we have on the line, and I'm not fast enough (nor do I have good enough hands) to be a very good receiver. I've QB'd only a couple times and done okay but others are better at that as well. But I do enjoy playing for one reason or another.

I do not enjoy, however, how competitive the games often become. I find myself becoming pretty immature in-game, and my friends doing so as well. It's funny, we can be best of buds off the field but when we're playing we become competitive and are pretty short and sometimes quite rude to one another. When someone does well and they're not on my team I am mad about it instead of happy for them. I mean, in any other situation I'd be trying to encourage them or say "wow good job" but on the football field I'm thinking "they're not so great" or whatever. I think that's something I need to work on, because too often I find myself saying something and thinking "wow that wasn't how you want to be, Jackson." An area to grow in, I suppose.

the little things

I'm sitting in Panera Bread working on an assignment due this Monday. Two people walk in the door - one quite large, the other rather normal. Near the entrance is a bowl of cut up baked goods for you to sample. The large man beelined straight for the bowl and helped himself to a morsel or two. The smaller man walked by. It's the little things, I think. Easy to recognize in others, harder to keep track of yourself.

it's here

Today I went grocery shopping and was greeted to one of the most wonderful sights I am graced to see each year. The presence of that most glorious of beverages, Egg Nog, in the dairy case. Let the rejoicing begin. Yea verily, Egg Nog is awesome. You should also be able to find Peppermint Ice Cream as well as Pumpkin Ice Cream at the store now. I love the holiday season. Bring it on.

Perdue Family blog thing

In order to keep those who wish to be updated updated on stuff about Belle, Janelle, and myself, I've started a blog that will be your place for one stop shopping on infos related to us.

If you want to bookmark the site you can head over to

http://theperdues.blogspot.com

and do so.

I also have a list setup to where you can get automatically e-mailed with the blog updates if you 'd like that so you don't have to keep checking back. If you want to do that, then e-mail me or something and then I'll send you an invite to the e-mail list. Then you'll get whatever I post on the blog in your e-mail and you won't have to bother checking the site, etc.

Peace out homeskillets, &c.

a's swept in the alcs

So the A's lost the ALCS officially today, they got swept 4-0 in the best of seven series. All I can say to my A's is: at least you never gave us the false hope that you actually COULD win this series. Thanks for keepin it real from the beginning of the ALCS and sparing us the heartbreak of a collapse late in the series or stretching it out to a seven-game elimination.

Next year will be ours!

dude

All I can say is it's a good thing I have a beautiful wife and daughter because Sweet Freakin Moses the A's are doing everything they can to throw away the ALCS and make me want to sit in a corner and weep uncontrollably.

Yes maybe I care about sports a little too much.

But come on, seriously. Last night they set a record for GIDP in an ALCS game, and tonight the starting pitcher once again gives up 5+ followed by an anemic offensive night (Milton Bradley excepted). Then they go and get everyone's hopes up in the 9th before the Big Hurt pops out. They showed a stat during the game tonight - the road team has won the first two games of the ALCS eight times, and every single time that team advanced to the World Series. I hope the A's can make it one of nine times but something in me strongly doubts that.

Pictures of Belle

Belle with Grammy
Originally uploaded by actionjax.

We actually got her to sleep in her bassinet a little bit. We were totally freaked out about leaving her to sleep and then having something happen to her. We want to keep our eye on her 24/7...but she did go down to sleep a bit and Janelle and I both got to sleep a little. I think I slept a little more soundly than Janelle.

You can click on the picture to check out a link of some more pics of Belle. I have some awesome ones on my Treo but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to get to them. Enjoy, and embrace the cuteness.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jperdue/sets/72157594315469163/

baby

I just sent an e-mail out on Janelle's e-mail with the following text, which more or less fills you in on what's up with us. Words cannot express how tired we are. It's a little daunting being at the very beginning of this long journey and being so worn out. Anyway, to the e-mail:

Janelle went into labor Tuesday night, she was induced around 10:30ish, and Belle Elizabeth Alana Perdue was born at 3:20am on Weds October 4th. Janelle did awesome and assured her place atop the throne of "toughest one in this marriage" with the labor. She's amazing. Belle appears to be totally healthy, not to mention ridiculously adorable. We have a followup appt on Saturday where they will check her a bit for jaundice, they said she looks a bit jaundiced but that's pretty common so we're not too worried about it. Other than that she's healthy and doing well.

It was been an incredibly exhausting couple of days. Janelle is getting the hang of feeding Belle, Belle is getting the hang of eating, and we are trying to find time to sleep inbetween everything. Janelle has probably had less than five hours of sleep since Belle was born. I've had a bit more but am still running on fumes myself, I don't know how Janelle keeps going.

Apart from the occasional family member coming by we're not really ready for any visitors yet. We are completely wiped out and Belle isn't on any sort of schedule yet. We're hoping that all that gets worked out soon...and we hope to show her off real soon to everyone in person. We're just not ready for that quite yet. Once we're ready to have visitors and all that we'll send out another e-mail letting you know about it. Until then we appreciate your prayers (it's a little overwhelming how much there is to be done and how there are no breaks...Belle is a relentless eating/pooping/crying/attention-needing machine).

Thanks for all your love and well-wishes and all that good stuff...we hope to send along a picture when we get the chance.

Jackson and Janelle (and Belle)

biblical inerrancy and stuff

Janelle has not had the baby yet. We're still waiting, I'll be sure to keep this space and probably my myspace updated when we go to the hospital, or at the very least when we get home. I can actually post from my Treo so I might even take a picture of the baby and put it up to share with the world after she's been cleaned up a little, who knows. But anyway, Belle is still in utero.

This morning I took a test for my Old Testament Intro class, and it was mostly good. The first few parts of the test were matching stuff that we've learned. Tests where you can match the definitions with the terms are high on my list of tests that I enjoy because they're typically pretty easy, and you can use the process of elimination to help you out. There was an essay portion to the test, which ended up taking a fair amount of time and I used every bit of space available to answer it. The question was something along the lines of: "Take into account the issues of inspiration, revelation, inerrancy, and authority as they relate to the Old Testament and scripture. Discuss how any claims to the authority of the OT are legitimate in view of the things we have discussed in class." Something like that - it was a pretty open-seeming question and fairly difficult to go about answering.

In that class up to this point we've discussed very little actual content of the OT but we have discussed the various views on inerrancy (the idea that the bible is free from error), inspiration (the idea that the bible is inspired by God), infallibility (the idea that the bible accomplishes what it is meant to accomplish without error), etc. I won't get into all of it here, but basically there were a number of differing views with regard to teach of these topics.

For example, on the question of inspiration there was a range of approaches. The "Illumination View" holds that the bible contains the noble thoughts of great people of faith, and is on par with any other piece of literature. The Dynamic view of inspiration says that God inspired the authors of the bible but there is some non-inspired stuff in there that you need to sort out. Mechanical Dictation states that humans were little more than stenographers, writing down exactly the words God wanted them to and serving only as hands and pens for God, who essentially did the writing himself. Then there's the Plenary Verbal view of inspiration which states that everything in the bible is as God intended it - that he inspired the authors and he kept his "hand" on the whole development of the scriptures. I am of the opinion that this last view best interacts with the available evidence, at least if you're going to believe that some sort of God exists and does stuff to reveal himself to humanity.

My basic idea was that if a god exists and he (I use that out of convention) does not want to reveal himself to humanity, then we can't know about him. We may have some sense that there is a god or gods if we look at the world around us, but we can't know much of anything about said god(s). Is he/are they calm and serene like a placid lake, or violent and angry like whitewater? Nature itself does very little to inform us of the nature of god, if in fact there is a god. As many believe it could just be a testament to natural processes.

But if a god did exist and chose to reveal himself to humanity it would make sense that, unless he were some sort of capricious and fickle god interested only in tormenting humanity and not in actually disclosing himself, he would reveal himself in a consistent manner. That is, god would not tell someone in China he was one way, and then tell someone in Israel he was another way, and then tell someone in South America he was something else. One might say God was disclosing various parts of his nature to humanity, but so much of what the various holy books and religions say about the supernatural and how the universe came to be is incompatible. One could also say that perhaps god is playing a joke on everyone and telling everyone these differing stories to see what we do - but if that's the case we have no way of knowing and can only go by what we see. There's no good reason to make such an assertion. You can't prove we're not all brains in jars, either.

So as I was saying, if God did reveal himself to humanity in a specific way it would make sense that he'd reveal himself in a consistent and meaningful way. If we were intended to get anything out of his revelation it probably would not line up with the idea of the Illumination View or the Dynamic View as listed above. Such views on inspiration relegate revelation to something rather arbitrary. "Good thoughts" about faith and life are not in need of inspiration and revelation to exist. And a view where we have to sift through revelation and strip away the "uninspired" portions to get to the "inspired" portions seems a rather untoward way for a deity to reveal himself to humanity. It also makes it rather difficult to say which is inspired and which is not, especially if you're making judgment calls based on nothing other than your own thoughts about the text in question. If the bible is where you learn about God and the bible is partly inspired and partly uninspired then how can you determine which is which? So it is my contention that if the bible is inspired, then it must be wholly inspired - if God can inspire part of the scripture to say something when one person is writing it down, he can make sure that the bible as it went through its processes of editing and compilation says what he wanted it to say.

A view like the Mechanical Dictation view which says God just wrote it down through people doesn't really stand up well when you look at the bible and see pretty clear evidence of later editing, inexact quotations, round numbers, and apparent contradictions. As much as Christians would like to believe that the bible is completely free from any sort of blemish, it simply isn't so. Holding to a view that says "God wrote it down exactly like this" when it is demonstrably questionable at some certain points (not even taking into account translation) makes one appear rather foolish. And in reality if you hold to a view like that you either (1) don't believe it yourself and are fooling yourself or (2) are putting your head in the sand. If humans were simply God's writing instruments, couldn't he have done a better job? I'd like to think so.

The concept of inerrancy - that the bible is free from error - is quite apart from the concept of inspiration. If the bible is inspired - that is, if God inspired the bible to say what it is he wants it to say, and there is some human interaction but the words are what He wants to communicate to humanity - then one might again assume a certain degree of inerrancy. That is, there should not be errors in something God communicates to humankind if he is deserving of the name God. Unless he is playing tricks on people, which is something I mentioned earlier. There are also a number of views on inerrancy. Pietistic Inerrancy is the most common one among Christians these days, which is the idea that everything the bible says is true, with no critical thought applied. This is also the view of inerrancy most ridiculed and rejected by critics of Christianity. This view's primary problem is that it looks more at the what a particular verse says than what the same verse means. There is no regard to authorial intent.

For example, someone holding to the idea of pietistic inerrancy might look at Genesis and see a story about God creating the world in six days. They may then look at the scientific evidence we have to date and see that it appears that things didn't unfold that way. You might add up the numbers and years in the OT and come up with something saying that the earth is 6000ish years old, but the universe appears to be a whole lot older than that. But if you consider whether the author actually meant "24 hour day" or was being poetic then you might come up with a different conclusion. Or you may read the story of a flood that flooded the "world" and assume the bible is hogwash because there's no evidence of such an event. But when you consider that to the people of that time, "the world" was basically Mesopotamia...you may reach a different conclusion regarding the veracity of the passage. So it's important to consider more than just the face value of a passage when you're considering the inerrancy of scripture.

Also of note, the doctrine of inerrancy properly describes the original autographs of scripture rather than the bible you or I can pick up from the store. Properly understood inerrancy allows for things like copyist errors, round numbers, and so forth. It is unfortunate that most Christians are led to believe that the bible is a document akin to Joseph Smith's golden plates, which supposedly descended from heaven with the words of God written on them. The bible is clearly a document with human influence, from evidence of editing and compilation to some apparent inconsistencies. But there are also some qualities to it that suggest divine inspiration, and if the bible is inspired in any meaningful way then God must have preserved his message through it all. Perhaps it is because of these very human elements that we can trust the bible - not because it is the fanciful story of God teleporting his magic words into the hands of people, but because for some reason he chose to use human beings to transmit his word and despite that we still have a consistent record and teaching. Despite human interference we have a collection of scripture that has remained astoundingly consistent, with none of the copying errors affecting any major teaching.

This is not likely to convince anyone that is unconvinced, and in reality I'm writing this more for myself than anyone else and not trying to convince anybody. As I continue to work through the idea of what I mean when I say "I trust the bible" a lot of things go through my mind. It isn't this fairy tale book free from blemish. There is evidence of editing. There are numerical differences. It does raise some difficult questions with regard to many things. But I think looking at inspiration and inerrancy that the bible is either the inspired, authoritative word of God and must be recognized as such, or it is the collected and mangled writings of a nomadic group of people and some misguided Greeks that should be relegated to the heap with the rest of humanity's unfruitful graspings for a greater meaning that doesn't exist. From my perspective it more resembles the former than the latter, but your mileage may vary.

All I know is that it's important for everyone, whether they're a devout Christian or staunch Atheist, to honestly put the thought and effort into working through some of this stuff. Dismissing the bible because it says or teaches something it doesn't is as foolish as trusting blindly in it and believing Satan put fossils here to test our faith. I'm not saying any rational person will believe the bible is inspired and inerrant, but I'm saying there's more to it than most of us ever consider and we do ourselves a disservice by ignoring these things, wherever we stand on the spectrum of faith and belief.

I doubt you read that whole thing - but these are just some of the thoughts running through my head right now. I don't know if that makes sense or not but it does in my head. Kinda. It's a lot of stuff to sift through. Once Belle gets here you will be subjected to pictures of a cute baby and probably my whining and complaining about not much sleep and how stinky diapers are.

Also - Go A's! They face the Twins in the first round. Not a very favorable matchup, but I suppose they never are in the postseason. This team is different than the four-year-consecutive-chokers of the past, so we'll see what happens.

a quick update

Janelle and I are still waiting for Belle to be born. The due date was yesterday, so it could be anytime now. I can't imagine how tough it'd be to be pregnant for nine plus months. Janelle's a trooper though and is still a lot of fun to be around, which is good for me. With each passing day I get more excited about being a dad. I am not looking forward to the diaper changing thing but I am looking forward to having a little girl I can take to A's games and the park and stupid pumpkin patch things that held absolutely no appeal to me until this whole child thing came up.

Speaking of the A's, I am proud of them for clinching and am much more optimistic this year regarding their postseason fate. I think they may actually make it past the first round of the playoffs. Of course this optimism is against my better judgment and my general policy of not getting my hopes up, but I can't quite help it. At least this year I'll have a baby to distract me from any chokage, whereas if the A's wind up winning it all I will have a baby to make it all the sweeter. And it will also mean she is responsible for them winning - a standard I will hold her to for the rest of her life, and any further A's failures will rest squarely on her shoulders. It's the only right thing to do.

a day off

Lately I've been feeling a bit drained. Throughout the summer I worked full-time with the Crossing and while that was a lot of fun and exactly what I wanted to be doing with my time, I didn't ever get away for even a few days of vacation. I didn't really recharge after school/finals ended and went right into the summer with the Mexico trip and then keep on rolling. Before I knew it summer was over and school had started up again. And I have very little in the way of emotional energy. Little tasks have seemed like monumental undertakings and while I am mentally excited about various things I'm finding it difficult to summon the mental and emotional energy it takes to actually do them. In order to combat this I am trying to pay more attention to what I eat and exercise more regularly (I am very sore because of this), and I also took today off. There are some things I needed to get done but I wrote them off in order to spend time with Janelle, relax, continue my Madden 07 49ers' romp through the NFL, and finish the day by watching the A's take on the White Sox. I'm hoping these various diversions will help restore some of my missing energy and help me to take on the many things in front of me with passion and energy instead of just slugglishly enduring my life.

Also, various signs seem to indicate Janelle will be entering labor soon. Of course you never know but it looks like she may not make it all the way to her due date of the 28th. The fact that at any moment she could begin labor and a baby pop out is very frightening. Each day could be my last without a child to take care of. It's kinda weird. But also exciting.

bsg - the resistance

If you haven't heard of Battlestar Galactica, you should really check it out. It's a series on the Sci-Fi channel and on October 6th the 3rd season premieres. I suggest you check out the DVDs in order because it's one of those shows that actually has a continuing storyline. If you see what's going on in a later episode it'll spoil the awesomeness of the earlier ones for you.

If you are a Battlestar fan, then make sure you are checking the website every Tuesday and Thursday until the season premiere. They're showing "webisodes" of a few minutes each, which will lead into the premiere. I get the feeling that Tigh is going to become a lot more hardcore this season. Like Jack Bristow. In the previews for season 3 people keep saying "you don't do some things Colonel Tigh, even in war." You do if you wanna beat the toasters, you cylon-sympathizers!

brewing coffee

At some point in the last year or so I seem to have lost my ability to brew a pot of coffee that doesn't taste like garbage. I'm not the kind of person that always pays attention to details, like how good the coffee tasted when I used x amount of beans and x amount of water. This morning I decided that I will no longer be content with wasting the precious precious beans we pay good money to purchase so I'm going to start tracking how the coffee tastes when I use certain amounts of grounds/water until I find a good mix. I am going to do this at least partially here because it's a place I know I can check and I won't lose it.

So this morning:
Water: Filtered, 4.5 cups
Beans: Medium/fine grind, 13ish flat tablespoons

The coffee tastes way better than usual (I actually measured according to the instructions on the bag of beans). I used a little bit of the Coconut Creme Creamer from Coffeemate and it's pretty good. The coffee isn't blonde, it's more brown than tan. Still room for improvement but it's much better than it has been lately. Wow, reading the instructions really can work.