Goofy Foot

I have determined, as of approximately 3pm yesterday, that Switchfoot is my new favorite band. Their predecessors, the OC Supertones, will always hold a special place in my heart. I mean, what other Ska band, or better -- Christian band, can claim to have the greatest lyrics of all time. They don't say that themselves, but if one was to pay attention to the things they said (especially in their earliest CDs), one couldn't help but get pumped up, or possibly convicted, or even encouraged. In one of their songs, they remind us all that we "need faith deeper than a t-shirt or a sticker," which rings so true in a culture that considers an instrument of death "trendy."

So why switch to Switchfoot? For one, although I lack a complete collection of Switchfoot, New Way to be Human is a pretty mellow CD and very enjoyable at the end of a long day. And despite Beautiful Letdown's fist track, Meant to Live, it is also relatively laid back musically.

The biggest reason for declaring this band as my favorite involves the lyrics. In both New Way to be Human and Beautiful Letdown one major theme seems to follow along the lines of their song "Meant to Live," we were all meant to live for something more than the materialism that Hollywood and MTV try to sell us, and although that "something more" is never given the name of God or Christ, if one knows this is a Christian band, it is a message pretty hard to miss.

New Way to be Human is my favorite CD (I've listened to it three times in the past 15hours) because there are songs that describe my worst fears as well as songs that declare my greatest hope and ambitions for this life.

"Company Car," describes a man who once had great dreams and ambitions, only to trade them for "that which is attainable/ Not what I'm looking for," the American rat race. I would hate to find myself twenty years from now living the American dream in (and of) comfort, because I know that the worth of selling out to Christ is far greater than anything that they show on Cribs or Pimp My Ride, even if it does mean sleeping in a ditch in some strange country or being beaten for my faith. As I stand at a crossroads, which are these few years at Texas State, I hope and pray that the decisions I make lead to the glorification of God, and not the attemted glorification of myself, for God is eternal, but as Switchfoot says, "all the riches of the kings end up in wills."

My favorite song (I'm slowly narrowing my scope, soon I'm going to pick my favorite verse, favorite line, and then favorite word that Switchfoot says) is by far "Amy's Song." At the end of my life if people can say of me what is said of Amy, then I know that I lived a life worth living and fought the good fight. I can't really say much more than that, you just need to listen to the song yourself.


Dan

PS -- the youth pastor at my church, Jason, pointed out how ridiculous storage places are. We have so much crap that we can't keep it all in our house, and so we rent a monthly shed to keep it somewhere. Why don't we sell all that excess stuff and give the money to -- those missionaries in India :). As Jason said, God blesses us with money and things, so that we may use that money and things to bring glory to His name. We should not seek satisfaction or fulfillment in those things.

PPS -- my favorite word is "You" w/ a capital Y. :)

American Missionaries: A Waste of Money?

I just finished reading Revolution in World Missions by K.P. Yohannan. It's a fairly easy read (I finished it in about six or so hours) and you can order a free copy at the Gospel for Asia website, gfa.org .

The author is a native-born Indian who now lives in Dallas, Texas. He has spent the past twenty-five years of his life informing Americans of his countrymen's desperate need to hear the Gospel. After being at CRU for two years and hanging out with Justin Tucker for five minutes, I wasn't surprised at Yohannan's claim. What grabbed my attention is the suggested method of reaching the millions of lost people in India -- native missionaries.

Native missionaries are, well, native to their land and are trying to establish churches among their own people group or tribal areas within their national boarders. Barriers that a Westerner might face (such as language and culture) are almost non-existent, and since they are already in the country they can perform the work of the Gospel without all the money an American missionary might need. According to Yohannan, an American missionary needs about 30,000 -40,000 dollars a year to support themselves. In comparison, the most a native missionary would need is $120 a month, or $1440 a year, but they can do fine on $30 a month, or $360 a year! Had I gone to India this summer, my airfare alone would've supported a native missionary for nearly four years!

Yohannan's objective in this book is convince American's that native missionaries are the new wave, and that Western missionaries, although not obsolete, are not as necessary as they once were. Over the course of 200pages, Yohannan successfully achieves this and leaves me with a question:

Why are some many American Christian organizations making such a big push for my generation to go overseas in light of Yohannan's information on the effectiveness of native missionaries? It seems that it is fruitless work to pay a group of people to travel America in efforts to convince people my age to do a work being carried out by others. Not only that, but after these traveling teams go through, it appears that no one's heart has changed. Of all my friends at Texas State and more specifically CRU, I only know of two people who are sold-out future missionaries, and Justin is the only man I know taking active steps to achieve that dream by going to the extra trouble of learning a difficult language that few will teach. If anyone else mentions mission work, a wistful expression overcomes their face, and they say, "Well, I would like to go to ____." And it ends there.

Furthermore, after these faint embers of missions cool to nothing but ashes, my generation is left with nothing practical. We are not told how we can advance God's work across the globe while we stay in San Marcos, Austin, College Station, or whatever college town we are in. We understand missions are good, but we don't see our roll. What we need is man like K.P. Yohannan to tell us how to support our brothers and sisters in Asia as they are beaten, starved, and stoned for the cause of Christ. If we stopped drinking Dr. Pepper and eating bags of chips, and instead opted for tap water and an apple, we would save at least two dollars a day. Over a period of a month, that is sixty dollars, enough to support two missionaries, so that they can better provide for their families, so that they can afford something as simple as a pair of shoes, or even a bicycle.

I'm tired of hearing college students complaining about their financial situation. Has anyone examined the way we live? Someone who lives on campus not only has a place to sleep everynight, we get two to three meals a day and we have a medical center. Gas prices are ridiculous, if we walked more often (hint hint -- CRU on Thursday nights), that extra money could go to missions. We say we need new clothes because what we have is old and slightly faded, but our brothers and sisters in India are wearing garments that "would not be fit for cleaning rags in America," according to Yohannan. We need to readjust our priorities and realize that CD we want, or that computer, isn't nearly as important as giving money to those who will share the Gospel with the untold millions in Asia.

Dan

It Was All Padme's Fault

My brothers and I had a bonding moment this past Saturday when we watched Star Wars Episode III. We were half-expecting every ticket to be sold out till midnight when we arrived at 6:30, but surprisingly we obtained tickets for a 7:45 showing, and the theatre had empty seats!

Although the movie wasn't atrocious, it wasn't all the great either, with the exception of some hard core light saber fights. If there was ever a doubt in regards to the supremacy of Yoda, after Episode III it has been effectively decapitated (watch the movie and you'll know what I mean). Brent, my 17yr old bro, made the astute observation that women bring men to the dark side of the force. If Anakin hadn't felt the need to save his dearly beloved, he wouldn't have gone to the dark side to attain the supposed power over death. I'm speculating that this is the same reasoning Adam used in Eden when blaming Eve for the fall of humankind, so Brent's argument is completely sound and Biblical.


Dan

Epistemic Commonality or The Experiences We All Share

Well, as of 3pm yesterday, I'm officially a dork (as if I wasn't one already). I spent about an hour or so of my afternoon revising a philosophy paper. Why am I wasting my time editing a paper I already turned in and made a 95 on? Well Michael (aka: great M-Rice) was reading that same paper about a week before school was out, and before finishing the first page, he carelessly tossed it to the side. Slightly perturbed, I picked it up and began reading. After reading the first half of the first page, I stuffed the paper into my backpack, disgusted by the writing. It was chock full of grammar errors (I'm glad this paper wasn't for an English class) and a whole lot of jargon that would not have made any sense outside of the fourteen people in my problem of evil class.

So yesterday I got this paper back out to see if I could improve on it, and I believe I did to an extent, but while rereading what I argued on epistemic situations (epistemology, in a few words, is the study of how we know things), I realized how strange it is that each individual has such drastically different beliefs. If we look at the average upper-middle class American, our experiences have many similarities. We have all had absolutely fantastic days, and absolutely horrible ones. We have all experienced love to some degree. Not necessarily romantically, but through family bonds or a close friendship.We have all -- or will eventually -- lose a loved one. I'm making some bold, sweeping claims, because we also have to bring in situations such as child abuse. But there is still a common human experience -- filled with both pain and joy. So how is it that there are so many different beliefs in regard to God? And not only are the number of various beliefs impressive, but the fact that these beliefs are well founded is astounding. One of the biggest things I learned in my problem of evil class is that atheist are not idiots. Although I never really felt that way in the first place, I never fully understood or respected their position until this semester. It appears that God has struck the perfect balance in regards to keeping the absolute certainty of His existence ambiguous so that we may all choose to freely worship Him or deny Him.

The Stay thus Far

Well, I'm one day shy of being in Houston for a week. Sunday was a good day and gave me some hope for the upcoming months. It turns out that more people than I realized will be home, and thus I'll have somewhat of a social life; I'll probably be hanging out with my former youth pastor is in "retirement mode" at the age 30. He's in somewhat of a transition period, since him and his wife will be living in London three months from now.

Still haven't found a job, which means maybe I won't have a social life since I have no money to spend (this is the first time I can honestly say that). I've been trying to be somewhat productive by reading a couple of books, right now I'm working through Pilgrim's Progress, which is just as good the second time around as the first.

On a sidenote, went to the Houston Art Car parade last Saturday, and I'd have to say that Houston gave Austin a run for its money as far as weirdness goes. People from all walks of life attended the show, and it seemed that with all the art driving around on wheels, it was time for the hippies to come out. I saw one lady actually wearing a coconut bikini. There were some other guys who dressed up like aborigines, which means wearing extremely revealing shorts and covering oneself in white mud. Their car/motorcycle thingy was in the shape of a giant 10ft tall drum with a platform about half way up to walk around on. Who knew that such interesting people lived here? I thought this place was only filled with yuppies.

That's all for now, keep it real.

PS- MW Rice, I think you're the only one reading this, b/c you're the only person I told about the revival of the blog.

Easy Over Eggs are NOT Easy

Well, this is my third day home from school, and it seems that I am just wasting my time. I've been switching between the computer, video games, and TV -- the top 3 evils in the world (not necessarily in that order). I actually read for about a half hour yesterday, and hopefully that time will quickly increase. My room is a disaster area to say the least. What was easily packed away in my itty bitty dorm room -- along with another person's stuff -- can barely fit in my own room. So right now it is an organized mess, although it's not that organized.

One of my greatest joys as this semester ended was that I would never have to eat at Harris again (unless some kind freshman wanted to give me meal swipes). Harris has become "the worst," to quote a friend. You can order an omelet with ham and cheese and they'll give you sausage and jalepenos. And the food there is generally crap. Needless to say, I was glad to say "Adios" to those cooks.
Typically, I get 2 easy over eggs for breakfast (best source of protein). Deciding this morning that I would like eggs once again, I proceeded to cook my own. Unfortunately, I popped both the yolks in the process and ended up with this brownish mass of semi-scrambled eggs. To top it all off, I set of the smoke detector, conveniently waking up my brother for high school. As I eat my eggs as I type this, I humbly realize that although the Harris cooks weren't the best, they are by far better than me (who on earth burns eggs?).

Foray into Philosophy

As the semester draws to end, I realize I missed my blog and that it's time to bring it back (besides, all of ya'll are going to miss me during the summer, I've gotta keep you posted somehow).

This semester I've had some of the worst classes ever. I'm fortunate to get B's, not because they're hard, but because I have no motivation what-so-ever to study. But I've also had some of the best classes, more specifically: the Problem of Evil with Dr. Hutcheson.

Never has a class been a source of such extreme stress as this one. Over the course of the semester I had to write four 5pg papers in which I argued with professional philosophers. I knew I failed every paper when I turned it in. During Spring Break, I had nightmares about making a 20 on the paper I turned in the previous Friday (I'm not making that up). Yet I made 3 A's and a B in one of the hardest classes I will ever take. Dr. Hutcheson is by far the hardest professor in the philosophy department; one friend described him as the "litmus test": if you can pass him, you're set. I didn't just pass him -- I made an A!!! I'm dumbfounded to say the least. All my doubts about switching my major have been unfounded. I'm cut out for this stuff after all. Who knew I could argue so well? I didn't. In the upcoming weeks I think I'll design a blog for all my papers, in case anyone is interested in reading my papers (and/or has too much time on his/her hands).

I'm heading home this summer, which I have mixed feelings about, but I'll know it'll be alright. As one friend said, I'm not going to have many more opportunities to spend an extened period of time with my family.

One thing I'm uber excited about is living in a Sagewood duplex. If you haven't heard, it is party central at Texas State, and it's going to be an adventure (to say the least) as I'm exposed to this new kind of lifestyle (although not necessarily taking part in). I'm also taking 9hrs of philosophy classes, and I'm looking forward to getting to know other people with the same major (there is only 75 of us).

The long and short about my attitudes in life at the moment.
Till next time...
Dan Reiter