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A while ago someone married to a paraplegic for 16 years was in an interview and asked the question “How’s the sex life?”  No doubt the person who asked was trying to be humorous, but the man gave an answer anyway.

Somehow I knew this was going to be the first question…I’m not gonna lie. Sex is one of the big issues. I wish I was a better man, and could simply ignore that side of myself, but I’m not. I get as frustrated as anyone else, and working through that is difficult.

What followed was one of the best interactions I have seen concerning the difference of what real love is and what much of our society thinks it is, someone else followed up and pressed the issue further;

Have you ever considered or had a discussion with your wife about making the physical aspect of your relationship open? You both have needs, and I respect your patience and efforts to be a good husband. However, I feel that on a level of need you may benefit from having an agreement with your wife about a sexually open relationship while maintaining an otherwise monogamous one.

This questionsuggestion hurts my soul every time I read it.  I do not know if this person genuinely believed this idea was a good one or he was just wondering out loud what the man thought about it, but this is entitlement not love.  It says, “Love should be about you getting everything you want and if you are missing anything then you should go get it!”  Sure, redefine the way a monogamous relationship works to fulfill your needs.  You deserve it.  You’re entitled to it.

The married man answered;

I’ve had others ask this question before, but lets be serious here.

My wife already deals with feelings of inadequacy because of the things she can’t provide for me physically. She knows I love her anyway, but she can’t help feeling like she’s somehow less than a “real” wife.

Were I to go elsewhere for sex, romping around with some able-bodied lady, even if it was done with her knowledge and nominal permission, any sense of security that she has in me, in us, would be gone. That kind of damage is irreparable.

An “open relationship” would signify only that my physical needs are more important than her emotional ones. And that just isn’t true.

Beautiful.  This man gets it.  Ladies if you ever doubted men, let this man restore your faith that we aren’t all douchebags.

Yes I know, sex is not love.  I think that love is greater than sex, they are connected, and I think that is another way of looking at what is being misrepresented here.  When this man opens himself to questions about his marriage and someone asks him about sex, he doesn’t try to disconnect the two like the second questioner does because the married man knows they are very much related.  He knows asking him “How’s the sex life?” is part of asking him “How’s the marriage life?”.  Look back, his answer would probably be very similar if the question was changed.  The man understands that to go outside of his marriage for sex, or for anything, would render his marriage pointless.  Whatever benefits he would receive from outside his marriage are worth nothing to him if his marriage or wife suffers.

I believe that our biggest need is love, but love is a funny thing because in order to do it correctly one must put another’s needs before their own.  And that is so hard to do sometimes.  Being a selfish 22 year old, my innate desire is not to put Hallie’s wants or needs before my own.  My brain says that the most efficient way to enjoy the benefits of life is to have all my needs met without doing any work.  But because I love her, I make any of her needs more important than all of mine.  Well, I try to.  I fail a lot, but that is another story.  The point is we cannot fulfill our own need for love, we must love something beyond ourself if we want it to be real.

Another person made a snide comment;

So it’s essentially a one-way deal, where she gets here psychological needs met, and you don’t. Got it. But then, I guess you made that decision when you got married. Oh well.

The man responded;

Not really, no. It is called love. It is letting the needs of someone else supersced your own. I’m rather sorry you feel the way you do. You’re missing out in the long run.

I’ll post my thoughts on being a small part of the process it took for Blue Like Jazz to become a movie later.  For now here is just a little of what I thought about the movie.

Blue Like Jazz finds a way to talk about spirituality in a relevant way to our culture.  This is big.  It isn’t preachy, cheesy, and it doesn’t judge.  It is witty, intellectual, and offers, what I think is, a sincere look at faith and what it looks like.  It follows a college freshmen’s existential struggle through life as he explores what Christianity is, what it means to others, and what it means to him.  While some movies try to explain life’s hardships, Jazz stands out because it offers the idea that maybe life is messy because life is messy and we can’t simply pray or follow 4 easy steps to make the conflict of life go away.  With a great deal of influence from his new found friends, consisting of a lesbian, civil disobeyer, and the college pope, Don begins to piece together what life is all about and where his faith belongs(if at all).  Something as miraculous as life and the human experience deserves to be struggled with and tried first hand.  There is no easy right or terribly wrong answer and Jazz doesn’t try to give you one since that is something you need to find for yourself.  Very few movies are brave enough to bring up spiritual struggles like this in a well balanced discussion that believers and nonbelievers can both enjoy.

The difference between Blue Like Jazz and other Christian-genre films is Jazz never turns you away for not believing or acting a certain way, but instead apologizes if you were ever turned away in the first place and offers to take you out for a drink.

It isn’t the best film of the decade, or even the year.  But it gets across what so many other movies have failed to in an entertaining and worthwhile way–Christianity can be(and is!) relevant in our culture.

Go see it!  If you don’t like it at all I will pay you back.

Kevin Wilkinson : Associate Producer

For this year’s Easter post I’ll leave you with a quotation from a recent book I read.

“The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

My previous Easter posts if you’re interested.

My favorite part of a discussion, or even an argument, is a proper end.  When all sides have respectfully explained what they think, why they think it, all counter points have been said, evaluated, and considered, and no one can really budge from their own viewpoint because everyone can see each other’s validity, then the time comes when everyone leaves the topic and agrees to disagree.

It is beautiful.

A couple of years ago I was playing the game Cranium with some friends.  It was my turn to get my teammate to guess my humdinger(click here if you don’t know what that means).  I picked up the card, it was a song I knew I should know and I was very embarrassed that I couldn’t remember how it went.  So I did the next best thing and hummed a different song by the same artist and explained what my teammate should be guessing was a very related popular song.  In the end he did guess it and I was relieved that I didn’t lose us a turn for my brain’s incompetence, but the rest of our group found it funny that I couldn’t remember or hum the Star Wars main title theme.  I got more embarrassed so I decided to do something.  I started to make up explain the fact that it was actually much harder to remember the opening theme because it isn’t used anywhere else in the movie, because the Imperial March is much more memorable, because people usually talk through the opening sequence anyways, etc.  I tried to explain that people should think its difficult to remember one of the most iconic movie openings in the history of film.  It was a huge lie and I was stupid for thinking I made myself seem smarter because of it.  I had a choice to laugh it off, shrug my shoulders and remember how to properly hum the song in the future but instead I desperately tried to show that I was ‘right’.  I made the wrong choice.

Why trying to appear right all the time is lame:

1. Its fake and you know it.  What good is it to appear right when you know you were wrong?
2. Its fake and they know it.  If others can blatantly see you trying to appear right all the time they will lose respect for you.
3. You will seem arrogant to others.

You can never be right all the time.  Don’t let this get you down and don’t try to fight it!  Instead, embrace the fact that you can’t be right 100% of the time, and you don’t need to be!  Start to recognize when you are wrong and use it as an opportunity to learn for next time.

Why learning is cool:

1. You learn something new that you didn’t before.
2. It is an important skill to have; if you can’t learn anything then you aren’t going to go very far in life.
3. People will respect you more when you learn something from them, or when they learn something from you.

If you are ever faced with this choice I encourage you to learn instead of trying to appear right.  I’ve been trying this and its amazing how much more you learn when you aren’t wasting energy trying to prove how much you already know.

I know.  Its everywhere.  You’ve already  heard about it.  But I’m asking you for a little bit of time for one more thought about Invisible Children, Jospeh Kony, and their recently launched campaign to “make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for International Justice”.

Brief summary of the campaign;
This last week Invisible Children launched their latest campaign called KONY2012.  It is an effort to massive flood any form of communication we have to point to a 30 minute video they put together roughly summarizing who Joseph Kony is and what he has done in the LRA.  It calls for support to stop this man and bring him to justice.  Facebook, Twitter, posters, phone calls, and even sandwich signs were used to aid the spreading of the campaign.  If you haven’t seen the video, check it out here.

My thoughts on the campaign;
I think this is an overall very good thing.  At times I couldn’t see anything else besides the video on my newsfeed.  People were watching it and people were spreading it.  Many of these people hadn’t ever heard of Invisible Children, Joseph Kony, or the LRA before.  Word is getting out and causing people to act and discuss it with each other.  This was their goal, to raise awareness.  Afterwards each person has to decide if this is something worth taking action on and if they should support Invisible Children.

There has been some controversy over this video spreading.  As usual anytime something receives a lot of public attention, it generates a lot of negative criticism.  Some of the noise is just curiosity to learn more about the whole issue, some people don’t think Invisible Children are doing the best job to fix the situation, some say they aren’t doing any good, and some are annoyed that their Facebook newsfeed appears to be hijacked.  Reading some of the most popular articles of controversy make me cringe; their facts are so grossly twisted, wrong, or perhaps accidentally misstated.  This is not just me discounting the article, compare them to Invisible Children’s responses.  Some of the accusations or reasons for Invisible Children being a scam are so stretched I can’t help but think the writers have a serious beef with the company.  Like most articles regarding controversial topics, the loud and completely one sided ones are often shared or spread around more than the sensible middle of the road ones are.

To the outlets of controversy I say this;
Critique is one of the finer parts of a discussion, and it is needed and welcomed especially when both sides want the best possible outcome.  I am all for other ideas on how to handle situations, and so is Invisible Children.  But blatant misrepresentation of Invisible Children or attacking them for the way they approach things shouldn’t be accepted(this is what the visiblechildren tumblr page was in my opinion).  I found it very hypocritical when so many people were saying “Silly people, you’re all jumping on the bandwagon for some video you just found and you think it explains everything. Look, read this article I just found that explains everything.” Do you see the parallel there?  It does no good to anyone and doesn’t help the issue here that we all can agree is terrible(Kony).

My thoughts on Invsible Children in general;
I’ve been involved with Invisible Children for 6 years now.  Taking part in every single campaign they’ve put on since their launch, president of the UCI Invisible Children club for a year, and flying out to DC to help talk with congressmen about our countries involvement in ending this conflict.  I whole heartedy believe that Invisible Children has the best interest at heart for Uganda, its children, and what may come of the Joseph Kong aftermath.  I’ve seen it with my own eyes their planning teams pain stakingly decide what course of action is best and how can they achieve it in Africa.  I wish I could give you a well thought out article as to why I believe Invisible Children is doing the right thing. I wish I could show you how they have researched all possible ramifications of their actions. They have many partial answers on their website(invisiblechildren.com) and I hope you read through them if you are curious about what they are doing in Africa.  And if the reading doesn’t satisfy you, I hope you call and talk with a representative about it more. They will talk to you.

So much has already changed in Uganda because of IC’s involvement with this conflict and I’m very glad this organization has given people like me a chance to try to change a little part of this world for the better.  KONY2012′s goal was to raise awareness, and I believe they met that ten times over.  After all, who ever heard of a 30 minute long viral video?

If you know me by any degree then you know I’m a computer programmer.  I mostly program with java based web technologies, but I like to try my hand in all kinds of stuff.  Primarily being a web developer I can’t help but nickpick at websites when I’m browsing the web.  Most of websites are designed fairly well; you can usually navigate and use it without wasting too much brain power(Facebook).  Sometimes there are sites that are a bit confusing to navigate, but you can figure it out eventually(MLG).  Then there are the ones that it seem like they don’t have any actual content on their page, just terribly slow fancy effects(Xerox Real Business).  The worst type are the sites that actually have content on them but are impossible to navigate(don’t have a current example of this, but the previous mlg website was pretty bad).  It really isn’t that hard to make a simple and easy to navigate website(The University Project).

Besides considering the webpage layout/code itself, I also find myself thinking over the purpose of a website.  When I create a new web application I want people to have a reason to use it and to keep using it.  If they can get the same functionality somewhere else, I haven’t really accomplished anything.  Some web sites don’t really try to serve a particular purpose(heynicebeard.com) while others do.  I specifically want to discuss social networks here.  What purpose does each one serve?  How come so many people have multiple social networks?  Do we really need another social network?  Is it accomplishing its purpose?  Who is actually using it?  Well I thought I’d do a write up of sorts to name the most current most popular.  Shout at me in the comments if there is one you want my thoughts on.

• Facebook
• Facebook has done everything right.  They captured our interest by being an exclusive group(at first) and offered us order from our terrible MySpace free-for-all-layouts.  Currently there is no alternative in my eyes(Google+ being the closest, more on that below) so everyone uses it and will continue to use it as they keep forcing new changes on us.  Now matter how much we complain they know we aren’t going anywhere.  The scariest part about facebook is that they make so much money off of us by selling our information.  Facebook isn’t the product in this scheme, we are.  You should always be careful what you put on the internet.  Just food for thought.
• Goodreads
• Goodreads is one of the newer social networks gaining ground.  It is a network centered around sharing books with your friends.  Fairly useful if you like to chat, share, and keep track of books with friends.  I’ve rather enjoyed using it.
• Google+
• Google+ is a fully functional social network, just without users.  In many ways it is better than Facebook, and Facebook took note of them and copied those features.  I use social networks to socialize with my friends but only a minuscule part of my friends use Google+, and that is why I don’t use it even though I think it is better designed.
• Linkedin
• Linkedin is marketed as a business related network, people connect with each other and create a sort of portfolio/resume via connections, employers, and projects.  However I’ve never personally encountered a use for it beyond that.  I can imagine the connections would be useful for finding jobs through old empoyees or recommendations.
• MySpace
• MySpace was the first Facebook, it held the monopoly on social networking at one point.  Its biggest fault was to give too much layout freedom to the users.  Too many MySpace pages were slow loading, hard-to-read, multiple-music-video-playing abominations.  Apparently it still survives as a more music related social network, but I don’t see how.  Its slowly dying from the stigma of its own past.
• Pinterest
• This is the newest social network I’ve encountered, and oh boy is it popular.  Personally I think it is the lamest thing on the web right now.  I have to give it credit since it has done a lot of things right to amp itself up–like be invite-only to appear exclusive.  Here is my main beef with Pinterest: it offers no functionality that you cannot already do with almost any other social networking site.  What do you do?  You share pictures that you have either a) upload yourself or b) get from another user.  ”But Kevin!  Pinterest makes it so much easier!”  Really?  I didn’t know the share button on any Facebook link or picture was that hard to use.  ”But Kevin!  I can have all 9000 of my pictures in my profile all sorted into their respective categories!”  And do what with them?  Let them sit there that is what.  95% of the pictures I see on the internet I get a good laugh and move on.  4% I keep open in a tab on chrome to get more laughs throughout the week.  1% I will save in some fashion(save on reddit, share on Facebook, or post on my blog).  ”But Kevin!  I found a great recipe that I need to keep on Pinterest so I can cook it later!”  Recipe.  Book.  Write it down.  A+ for the name though.  It has a ring to it.
• Tumblr
• Tumblr is essentially a rebranded blog system.  It offers nothing new except this tumblrity feature that measures how many people have reblogged your content.  That’s cool I guess.  If someone reblogs my stuff I would hope they credit me somehow.  Again, my issue is with the network’s purpose being a duplicate of an already existing and functional social network(wordpress/blogger/any-other-blog-system).  If you didn’t catch on in my Pinterest rant I am bothered when something that offers no new functionality from what we already have captivates people as something totally new.  Tumblr to a lesser degree.  Pinterest is basically an even more boiled down version of Tumblr.  I see many people just using it as a blog and I would encourage them to use WordPress or even blogger.  More freedom and cooler plugins.  Also, the name is stupid.
• Reddit
• Reddit.  Where do I begin with Reddit.  I love it and I hate it.  It restores my faith in humanity and makes me realize how messed up we are.  I learn all sorts of interesting facts and waste hours scrolling through nothing.  I can’t think of another social network where I can read endless amounts of content from nearly every single subject that interests me.  I wrote a rather long blog post on my thoughts on reddit a while ago.  Most of it still stands.  The coolest thing about Reddit is that it serves as a completely open and non-censored(apart from the illegal) content library.  You can either post or read almost anything.  The oddest thing about reddit is how amazingly broad but eerily similar its user base is.  When the hivemind is in effect Reddit looses its appeal very quickly.  It is then that I become frustrated because the hivemind effectively censors that it disagrees with from being seen, which goes against Reddit’s initial purpose.
• Twitter
• Twitter is something I see as the most misunderstood social network on the web.  I’ve had this exact conversation with multiple people regarding Twitter:

So what is this Twitter thing?

Its pretty cool.  Its a way to instantly share what is going on with the rest of the world.

That sounds stupid.

No it isn’t.  Look I can read 30 different updates from my friends about what they are currently doing.  It even has helped a lot of social movements in the Middle East organize against their oppressive governments.

Why would I want to read about what people are doing right now?  I don’t want to read about people going to the bathroom.

….

• They either miss the point of Twitter entirely or they just don’t think technology itself is very cool and that its going to corrupt your soul if you tweet where you are ate lunch.  One thing I don’t like about Twitter is that it is quickly becoming a library of idiots’ thoughts.  People are either making stuff up to appear cool/funny, complaining about mundane facts of life, or trying to make their hashtag trend(OH. EMM. GEE. I just got asked if I knew how to use powerpoint.  #mac4life #thingsthatartisticbarristasdealwithintheirdowntime)  On the whole I find Twitter very interesting.  It is one of the least structured social networks and while its only functionality is very similar to Facebook’s status updates, it serves a different purpose entirely.  It initially started out asking people to answer the question “What are you doing?” but has switched its question to “What’s happening?”(Twitter’s blog post regarding the matter).  A small change that had enormous impact on its purpose that I found fascinating.

Well those are my opinions and thoughts on some popular social networks.  I am always on the lookout to for new and interesting stuff on the web so if you ever find something, send it my way!

What I think of what other people think of Love Wins

Honestly, I can’t see any good reason to get too upset about this book.  A pastor wrote a book on what he thinks about spirituality, salvation, heaven, and hell.  I’m sure Bell believes that he is right(why else would he believe it), but I don’t think Bell believes that his opinions are 100% correct.  But remember, this is just a collection of a man’s thoughts.  A man.  A human being affected by our depraved nature.  Something in there is screwed up somewhere.  So don’t get bent out of shape if you absolutely disagree with something in Love Wins, its normal to have different opinions on grey areas.

And why are there grey areas about theology?  Why shouldn’t we think that what we believe is 100% correct?  Because, if we know everything about God then we have God figured out.  If we have all the answers, what do we need God for?  One of the questions I get asked a lot by atheists or agnostics is “How can you hold onto your faith when you have so many questions about salvation, theology, and God himself?”  I do have many questions that I can’t answer.  There will always be questions and grey areas and, quite frankly, I think its worse to claim/believe/lie to yourself that you have them all figured out.  Some things we can know for sure(what is 1+1?), some other things we cannot know(If God is 100% loving then why is my friend dying from cancer?), or know if we ever will know.  So why pretend?  Why say “HEY I HAVE THE ANSWER AND YOU ARE WRONG IF YOU THINK DIFFERENTLY!”  Lets be real about it.  We can discuss what we think about it and get good conversations going.  We might even learn something new!

But there will always be questions.  Sometimes we can answer them, sometimes we can’t answer them yet, and sometimes we never will be able to answer them.  God is bigger than us.  He operates at a higher dimension and we cannot comprehend how He works.  Personally, this is one of my favorite attributes of God; Him being beyond me.  There is always ways to fall in love with Him again.  And you can’t love something, or someone, after you’ve figured it out; the appeal is gone.

One of the most beautiful things I have heard regarding this idea was from a thread on reddit.

I do not claim to hold the truth. I claim that the Truth has gotten ahold of me, and I am merely doing my best not to lose sight of it.

Anther thing, I covered this above but I want to stress this again just like Bell did, “nothing in this book hasn’t been taught, suggested, or celebrated by many before me  I haven’t come up with a radical new teaching that’s any kind of departure from what’s been said an untold number of times”(XXX).  This is true.  Everything in this book has been said, taught, and believed before.  Inclusivism?  CS Lewis.  Multiple chances for Salvation?  Origen Adamantius.  Heaven isn’t the end destination?  NT Wright.  God loves everyone?  The Bible.

That’s more or less my attitude towards what the majority of what other people think.

What most people who have a problem with Bell or Love Wins will say is, “Bell says that people don’t need to know Jesus to be saved”  Well…what Bell actually says is, “sometimes people who have never heard about Christ and then who hear about Christ say “That’s who we’ve been looking for. Or that’s who we’ve been worshiping. You gave us his name.” Missionaries experience these stories.  How common is this?  It’s probably pretty rare, but I believe the missionaries are right and that those people were and are experiencing the true Christ.  How can they know the true Christ before ever hearing about Him?  “What [Jesus] doesn’t say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him. He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him. He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and and restore the world is happening through him” (154).  Many, many, many people have a problem with this.  I don’t really.  As I explained it in part one, I am an inclusivist.

The Big Question

The big question Bell asks, “Does God get what God wants in the end?”  Its kind of a loaded question really.  Does God get his entire creation redeemed from our corruption and back in harmony with Him?  If not, can you still consider Him God if he can’t get what he wants?  If God is all powerful why aren’t we all saved if that is His desire?  The better question, in my opinion, ”Can God get what God wants in the end?”  Can it happen at all?  If God is all powerful it should be able to be possible, right?  Well…here inlies the title of the book I think, Love Wins.  In the end, we get what we want.  No we aren’t more powerful than God, but He did give us a little thing called free will.  He gave us an ability called love, which is a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature(I had to sneak in a Harry Potter quote in here somewhere).  Our ability to love or not to love God is our choice to choose or reject him.  And that is what ultimately wins, our choice.  Our love.

If you want to read some other thoughts on Love Wins then check out my friend’s take on it http://jobandthestorm.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/love-wins/

Check out my other thoughts on Love Wins

• Love Wins: What I Liked
• Love Wins: What I Didn’t Like