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Friday, October 28, 2005

With What Voice Shall I Answer You?

“With what voice shall I answer you, oh most High? What groaning, and with what utterance? Is there any tongue that is skilled enough in the art of speaking? Is there any mind capable of conceiving thoughts characteristic of your infinite worth?”

And so, once again, my heart cries this out to the Savior. What is an acceptable response to my Jesus? Even if I could know how to requite the love of God, I doubt I could even muster enough of any available natural resources necessary to praise. To praise a supernatural God, do I not need some sort of supernatural resources? This is a great paradox for me. Although I have mere colored, seasonal praise to offer, which is nowhere near the praise that God requires, this is exactly what He asks of me. He asks me for what I have. It has no inherent worth, for it emanates from something below Him. If I wanted a job reference to become the manager in a business, would I drag up a local street bum to sing my praises to a potential employer? And yet, God does exactly this. Who does he choose to spread His fame throughout all the great world he has created? He chooses us. Us, the local street bum. Us, the fickle and cold-hearted human race, a group of beings who no almost nothing about His greatness. Out of our lack of knowledge He requires us to sing. God did not choose the simple beauty of a budding rose to bear His image. He chose humanity, the complicated, tangled mess of stray desires that has polluted the rest of creation.

I find these desires constantly leading me astray. I am unable to walk closely with my Lord because the strength of these desires is greater than the strength of spiritual tendencies. Or is it possible that the strength of my carnal desire is not the problem? Perhaps, it is that they are weak. For God offers to us joy without bounds, and we are content with limited pleasure. No. I think the problem is more than a carnal desire. The problem lies within a flawed perception, something deep within a darkened heart. Our perception of beauty is wrong. It is beauty that drives us to desire. Lust for a beautiful woman derives from a sense that she is beautiful. Lust for power derives from a belief that authority will beautify the person who gains it. Lust for money exists because the person seeking riches believes these riches will make his or her life a beautiful one. Our carnal desires emanate from a belief that these things are beautiful.

These things are, in fact, not beautiful. When we say that we are, we prove that we have bought into the great deception, the planned fallacy, Satan’s attempted glorious coup. Holiness is beauty. That which is most upright and like our Maker is truly beautiful. When I lust, I desire something contrary to the nature of what God designed for my life. I am saying, “Lord, I reject the notion that your will for my life is beautiful. Lord, this other thing that I have chosen for my life: I believe it to be beautiful. Therefore, I will desire and pursue it.” This is antithetical to holiness. Holiness is understanding. It is understanding that what is eternal is truly beautiful and that what is natural is only a taste of the eternal. In other words, the worldly “beautiful” things pursue derive their beauty from eternal things. They are mere tastes. When we love the world more than God, we are content with a sampling of foods, rather than sitting and dining, consuming the whole feast God has prepared for us. God stands at the door of our hearts and knocks. He wants to come in and dine. Christ opens His arms wide and offers us endless joy purchased by the wounds in the hands He unreservedly stretches out. But we reject this. We reject this because we do not realize these temporal things are representative of eternal things. The temporal pleasures are only there to point us to the God who allows us to enjoy them. In doing this, we reject holiness.

The reason we reject holiness is that, again, we do not understand what it is. We don’t understand the implications of what it means to let God purify us of sin. To most of us, holiness is an appearance, a state of mind, or a pious tendency. The “beauty of holiness” is not that it dishes out obligations, but that it allows us to partake in the wonder of God’s character. Imagine for one moment that all the good that ever existed were summed up in one of your closest friends. This friend is perfect. He is everything that you respect and everything that you wish you could be. He is successful at everything he does. He has never once failed at any endeavor he has ventured upon. He has never, however, let his endeavors get in the way of his friendship with you. He is constant and always there for you. And yet, you admire him so because he befriends everyone else in the world the same way he befriends you. In short, you could never name the many wonderful attributes he has, and everyone else feels the same way about him that you do. If ever such a person did exist, the whole world would flock to him. They would pay anything to listen to him lecture, have a brief meal with him, or even have a piece of his clothing. The whole world would also pay anything to become this one respected and most envied gentleman.

God is this man. Except He is not man. He is the epitome of everything good and right. And because He is of a generous nature, He does not wish to hoard this goodness for Himself. He does not resort to a cave with the wealth of his treasure and say, “Look at me, how splendid I am. I do not want to have anything to do with anything less than me, for it would detract from my absolute goodness and purity.” God has done the exact opposite. He has made available to us the chance to become the beauty that He has. He invites us to the potter’s wheel and says, “Because I love you so, I will make you like myself. I do not want to keep what is good and right to myself. And because I am what is good and right, I have the power to give to you that good. I wish you to partake in this absolute joy. Moreover, I want you, human creature, to become my expression of that absolute beauty upon earth.” For some reason, we reject this invitation. It is because we perceive holiness as an oppressive thing, an obligation, an onerous task. Be it farther from the truth! Holiness is our last hope! It is our opportunity to break from the fallacy. To enjoy firsthand the beauty of the eternal things.

Ignorance is not bliss! Those who, by denying God’s existence, think that ignoring eternal truth and experiencing carnal pleasure are winning—these people are in a wretched condition. Ignoring the beauty of holiness is the biggest tragedy of a mistake we have ever made. We have lost beauty. We think that the vaporous phantom of beauty, natural pleasure, is worth giving our lives away for. Meanwhile, Christ weeps that the natural things he has created have led us far away from Him, rather than to Him, as he intended. We are turned away from God by natural beauty not because God made a mistake but putting it there, but because our dark hearts direct us so.

Is there any hope left for our kind? Are there any left who haven’t betrayed true beauty and embraced the enemy? Our hope is steadfast. To answer the original question, “With what voice shall I answer You?”: the answer we must give to Jesus is “Yes.” Yes to the beauty of holiness! Yes to the invitation to carry truth in our hands, to become everything that is good and right! Yes to having fists afire, smashing the Enemy, who seeks to rob us of knowing, seeing and tasting true beauty. How can we answer “yes” with such darkened hearts that guide not only our desires but also our response to God? Again, all God requires is praises. Is it praise colored by natural desires, whims, affections and sentiments? Yes. Is it natural stuff, incomparable to some sort of supernatural exaltation He deserves? Yes. Is our praise only representative of the extent of His beauty? Yes. And so are the natural things that represent His beauty. The ultimate fact is that the story of history we are characters in is not our own. The epic battle we are fighting is not of our choosing. The beauty we are called to both view and become is not our own. But the God that authors this story, this battle, this beauty: this God is our own. He belongs to us. And we belong to Him.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Star Wars Gangsta Rap

This is hilarious. Click on "Star Wars Gangsta Rap SE."

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Weekends of Winnings

Friday, night A Soup Named Stew won Battle of the Bands. I was ecstatic. They were, of course, who I was cheering for. With lyrics like "Man, I really love monkeys!" (The Monkey Song) and songs about how silly emo kids are (She Broke Up With Me), they have developed a new genre, that of "Humorcore." Amazing stuff. A laugh a second.

Then Saturday, LSU Tigers beat Auburn University, an age-old rival. A very dramatic win after a frightfully close game. In overtime, it was tied 17-17. We scored a field goal, then Auburn missed their field goal. Not only did they miss. What made it dramatic was that it actually bounced off the goal post. All 92,600 people in the stands, for 2 seconds were completely silent. Then, gleeful pandemonium ensued. I grabbed and hugged my friend Greg, twice my size, who then chucked me in the direction of Zeke, who I semi-bowled over. I got up to my feet, only to involuntarily crowdsurf and be hugged by a girl behind me. It was an insane win and a heart-stopping football game.

Then on Sunday, my friends' college bowl team went from near last place to runner-up, and Cody will be able to go a regional bowl in Houston, Texas next year. Cody stayed up late sewing my Homestar Runner costume (with it on me). Til 5:30 am, actually. I missed 2 of my classes the next day. But it's a heck of a costume, and my roomate and I will be unrecognizable at the human scavenger hunt this weekend.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

this is an audio post - click to play

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Steeeeeew!

I'm so excited! A Soup Named Stew won the LSU Battle of the Bands tonight and put on a heck of a show! Check them out at their website and their Purevolume account for songs. They are the funniest band I have ever seen.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Friendly Advice From the Department of Residential Life

Taken from the community bathroom:

Friday, October 14, 2005

How to Have More Free Time

How to have more free time.

I figured this out yesterday while in Wal-Mart. Just run! Run everywhere. Or at the least, power walk. I found that running with the shopping cart got my shopping done twide as fast. Then, back on campus, I ran back to my dorm. Heck, I got back to my room...twice as fast! Not only will you have more time on your hands in the long run, but also:

-You will be forced to develop better coordination, i.e., not running over people, weaving through crowds...
-You will burn off excess calories.
-You will be tired. And the reason that's good is you'll be so tired you'll sleep well at night (which you means you exercised during the day).

In other news, Tollie Martin Coates IV and I are sharing Zeke's Blockbuster movie pass (since Zeke ran off, joined the Air Force, and is now spending his spare time scaring off hurricane victims, specifially old people, with his M-16 assault weapon...)

Yeah anyway, so we each pay $13 per month and you can have 2 tapes out under an account, letting me have one. And when I bring the movie back, I can get another one...unlimited per month. So in the past 2 days I've watched 4 movies I've never seen before. When you see the list, you'll realize how lame I am for not having seen them, but then again that's why I got the movie pass: Count of Monte Cristo, Boondock Saints, Spiderman, Spiderman 2.

Oh and one other thing. I'm writing a book. It's about vampires....OSTENSIBLY. But,...it's really about the reunification of Germany.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Seasons and Emotions

I was telling John and Cody today that I should do a thesis on the effect of weather patterns and changes on people's emotions.

Seriously, every year when there is the autumnal temperature drop, my emotions are very bittersweet. The sweet part is that I love cold weather, putting me in a cheery mood. The feel of the cool air excites my senses and makes me happy to be alive. It makes me want to just breathe in the air and smile. It also makes a romantic of me.

I use "romantic" in 2 senses. The first, meaning "imanginative but impractical." Fall weather puts me in a dreamy, enchanted, poetic state. The second meaning of the word "romantic" is where the "bitter" in "bittersweet" enters in. The temperature drop inevitably makes me feel depressed to be single. It makes me wish I could go up to the right girl, profess my love, and live happily ever after. Very strange. This has happened consistently for years, since, like, junior high. I don't know what to make of it. I'm still hopeful...

On a lighter note, this is NutriGrain's ad that claims you'll marry the person next to you if you eat their product.

Yay



I'm very excited about this. "This" is The Mission Bell, the forthcoming album from my favorite band of all time, the band Delirious?. It's released November 7 in the United Kingdom and December 27 in the USA. Click here for album audio clips.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Friends

I love friends. I love recognizing other people and having them recognize me. Loving them and having them love me. I'm glad God made the human race one dependent upon social connections. Jesus is wonderful.

After a monotonous day of class and work (which ate into what would have been Fall Break, but for a make-up day due to Hurricane Rita), my friend Cody taught me to play golf. We went to the beautiful LSU golf course. Of course, I'd never even held a golf club before, so we just went to the driving range. He spent about an hour and a half helping learn the basic swing and everything. It meant a lot to me to invest that time to not just develop a skill, but a friendship.

Later in the evening I accepted the invitation of the ladies of the U.Commons to drop by the apartment with a Nintendo. We had a great night. Lacey gave us spaghetti, Erin baked cookies. We played Mario Bros. and talked and laughed. It's nice to talk to other people who care for the things of God. We watched The Sixth Sense, which I somehow had never seen. Quite an unnerving film which adequately crawls underneath your skin. Now that I think about it, I'm even more scared now that the film's over. Is that my roomate over there or a dead dude? (Just kidding, if he reads this.) I didn't leave till like 3 a.m. Annie brought her Franz Ferdinand, which we rocked out to, complete with much foot-stomping.

In short, this oh-so-sappy post results from me feeling loved. Loved by God first and foremost...but friends, too. It's funny that a week ago I was blogging about how friends are the fatal wound. Scratch that. It was the satanic study of Chemistry that made me say that, when I was trying to study. Having ample time on Fall Break makes everything all better. Plus, I haven't done a normal jounral post like this in a while.

Oh yeah and I get to see my family tomorrow...I'm driving back to St. Tammany.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Aw-wight, aw-wight!





Which Homestar Runner character are you?

this quiz was made by jurjyfrort
That settles it. And I was already thinking of being Homestar for the scavenger hunt this year.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Hurricane Clean-up Photos

A couple weekends ago, a bunch of Chi Alpha folks, including myself, went to my hometown of Slidell to help people who sustained flood damage from Hurricane Katrina. We were basically ripping up carpets, knocking out walls, etc., all day long. In all the pictures, I'm the guy in the yellow "B.A.Holloway" shirt.

Slidell. Widespread devastation. The neighborhood we were in. My hometown.

The front yard as we were emptying the house.

Me. And a wheelbarrow.

My friend Matt Davis cleans up. As you can see, we really gutted the home.

Dustin and I take the kitchen sink.

Um, I don't know. Maybe...Dustin farts, Nick is aghast, and in the background, I space out and suddenly imagine I am floating through the mesosphere, surrounded by flying llamas.

Heather and I enjoy a break.

Eating lunch.

My idol, Chris Simmons, washes his hands, the work's day done.

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