Something Creative...

I play Battletech.

It's a tabletop RPG that me and a group of guys play on most saturday afternoons.  The game is played with little pewter mechs that are moved around a hex board.

These pewter minis are a source of pride for us players; particularly their paint schemes.  We all paint our own, and we come up with various techniques to paint them.  Some players paint each panel separately; this is what I did with this mech.

However, this week I tried something totally different.  Experimenting.  Believe it or not, I dipped the minis in minwax after painting them.  Yes minwax.  The stain seeps into the crevices between the panels and helps give them definition.  After a coat of matte finish, the paint scheme looked awesome.  I did it on a full "lance," or group of four mechs.
Here's a crappy "I-took-this-with-my-cell-phone-because-someone-stole-my-digital-camera" pic.

Class Comes Second

I was unable to attend class yesterday because I was frantically planning (last-minute, of course) my proposal to my girlfriend.  I couldn't post this up until now, because she checks my blog.

It happened today at Fort Benjamin Harrison state park.

She said yes.

True Importance

Love.

Yes.  It sounds cheesy and lame.

But when you boil down my belief system to the most basic, fundamental level, love is what it's all about.

I'm a Christian.

I am not religious.  The distinction for me is that religion involves legalistic effort.  You build up a life and a "goodness factor" and then give it to God.  In response, God is obligated to let you into heaven.  Your long, painstaking effort to "be good" requires that God hand over the keys to the Kingdom.

This model is the same in most religious beliefs.  We do good.  God/Allah/ForestGod lets us into heaven/afterlife/virginland because he/she/it is impressed so much.

The Christianity I believe in is different.

God's requirements to get into heaven (according to the Bible) are as follows: Live a perfect, sinless life.

That's it.  Easy enough, right?  There's a catch, though: anything less than absolute perfection turns you away to hell (which, according to all accounts, is not just a big party).

Now, how many of us have lived a perfect life?  None.  Some of us may have lived pretty darn good lives, and some of us maybe not so much, but it doesn't matter how "good" your life is if it isn't perfect.  Mother Theresa and Adolf Hitler were both equally sinful in God's eyes.  They both had sinned at least once, and therefore were both disqualified from Heaven.

That's where legalistic effort leads to [hopelessness and doubt] or [pride and arrogance.]  Either you realize that you're not perfect and never CAN be perfect (leading to hopelessness) OR you think you really are perfect and look down on those who are not (leading to arrogance).

Either way is bad news.

Ok.  Now for the good news (cool trivia fact: "Gospel" means "Good News" in Greek).  I was introduced to the following analogy a long time ago, and I think it works very well to get my point across.

We all have report cards (nowadays we call them "transcripts").  To get into heaven, God demands all A's.  We all have lied, cheated, stolen time and possessions from others, hated others, been selfish, etc.  That gives us good solid "F's" in every category.  Without Christ, we stand before God and hand him our failing report card and are turned away, to burn forever.

But that's exactly why we need Christ.  He stops us, and takes our report card.  He took all of our cards with him to the Cross and paid the penalty for failure.

But even better than that, he gave us his own card.  Now we don't just start from "C" and work our way to "A": we are given his righteousness and perfection.  Solid A's all the way across.  Now we can go to the gates of heaven and give the A's to God and live forever in paradise.

This is where Love comes in.

What is our response to this gift?  What is the motivator for the whole process?

Love.

Christ did such an amazingly good thing for us that our reaction SHOULD be love.

If someone takes away all your mistakes and gives you the greatest inheritance imaginable, what would you do?  Try to live for that person, right?  You'd be that guy's biggest fan.  You'd want to tell everyone how good he was to you.  You'd cringe when others badmouth him, and you'd be willing to make a fool out of yourself just to share with others how cool he was.

That's how I try to live.  As previously mentioned, I am a sinner and will always be a sinner, so I mess up the whole "love" thing too, but the driving force behind what I try to do is always love.

I don't do porn because God told me not to and I love him.  Typically christians (and conservatives) are ridiculed and/or underrepresented in collegiate settings, but I stand up because I love the Lord for what he did for me and want to share it.  I am a virgin because my girlfriend and I both agree that the loving thing to do is to wait until we're married.  I bare my heart and beliefs on a publicly viewable blog because I love my classmates and anyone else who reads this.

Hopefully I'll be able to answer questions in class.

Class Response

I was blown out of the water by Justin's "presentation/soul baring" in class today.

All I can say is that I applaud his courage, faith, and tenacity.



On an unrelated note (and in the unlikely event that people actually read this):

I think I misspoke today in class.  I believe I said "there is a Bible verse that says 'hate the sin; love the sinner'."  If that's what I said (it might not have been), then I apologize.  I should have said "Biblical principle" instead of "Bible verse."

If anyone wants the verses and concepts behind this principle, I would more than gladly give them...  I hope I didn't confuse anybody OR lose all credibility in the class either.

:P

Fav Experiment

My favorite experiment that someone else in the class performed waaaaaas...

*drumroll*

William Wallace.

Now, I know I'll probably be the only one who preferred his "I'm going to set myself on fire" stunt to the rest of the experiments, but I really do have a legitimate reason.

The "fear" (more "discomfort" than anything else) of watching someone else set his bare skin on fire is completely different than all of the other experiments, for the following reason.

The other experiments all caused fear/discomfort for personal protection reasons.  We jumped at the popping balloon because it might be a threat to our physical selves.  The same reason governs our fears of mice, the unknown (the lsd trip and the ghost recordings), and being confined in small spaces.

But our fear/discomfort during William's experiment was for his physical self.  We were not afraid in order to escape danger; in fact, if William's skin was actually uncontrollably on fire, several of us would have probably put ourselves in danger to try and put him out.

This fear is not motivated by selfishness or self-protection, but out of compassion and/or empathy.

This type of fear is the reason we as an audience respond viscerally to horror and action movies.  If fear was limited to purely selfish situations, these experiences would be essentially meaningless.  Any time someone jumps into a river to save a drowning swimmer; any time a fireman breaks down a burning door; any time someone steps up to defend another person, the fear response (adrenaline dump, etc) accompanies the action.

Evolutionists would say that this type of fear developed in order to protect young from predators.

Christians would say that this type of fear is motivated out of love, and is a gift from God.

Elephants Beware

Analyzing the concept of "fear" is extremely difficult.

Fear is a self-definitive concept: you always have to use the noun itself in the description.  While this may seem like a detriment, in fact it is very revealing.  It shows that fear is a deeply-rooted part of every person.

My favorite fears to analyze are one that are logically ridiculous.  Like fears of small places, pickles, open places, aaaaaaand mice.

Mice are easier to produce than small places or large places (and pickle phobias are hard to come by).

Original plan: Put the mouse in a box and make members of the class, without knowing what is inside the box, put their hands inside and tell me what they find.

Original Hypothesis: most people will be more afraid of the unknown than they will be of the actual mouse itself.  However, a few will probably be more afraid of the boxed mouse AFTER they figure out that it is a live mouse.  Their fear of the perceived risks involved with interacting with a live mouse will keep them from being willing to put their hand in a second time.

However...
This plan went out the window as soon as we put a classmate inside a box to brave his claustrophobia.  Because I had, in my possession, a live mouse, I couldn't resist the temptation to take the claustrophobia experiment to the next level.  I dangled the mouse through a hole in the top of the box.  Everyone laughed. The box shook violently.  I put the mouse away.

This required me to change up my original experiment and hypothesis, leading me to:

Revised Plan:  Hand the mouse to everyone in the class.  If a classmate is found who has a previous phobia of mice, hand it to him/her with his/her eyes closed.  This heightens his/her sense of touch and general unease.

Revised Hypothesis: The majority of the test subjects will be willingly receptive to holding an "adorable little mouse," but at least one should be reticent to hold the mouse; hopefully even downright fearful.

Then...  the experiment happened.

Exactly as predicted, I found four people who were at least "uncomfortable" holding a mouse.  All four people were, with some peer pressure, willing to hold the mouse and even play with her and let her run on their shoulders.  Three of the four were willing to hold her again, later, which surprised me.

There is a psychological method of pushing past phobias known as "flooding."  This technique involves exposing a subject to their personal fear repeatedly in a controlled environment to condition them to push past their phobias.  This is essentially what I accomplished with the three test subjects.  Mice phobias are easy to cure by "flooding" because domestic mice are relatively calm and free of most contagious diseases.  They are also adorable.  "Flooding" a person to these cute little furry animals helps them realize that mice are not something to be afraid of.

... unless they have rabies.  :P