Check out today's VLOG on change. I'm on a treadmill!! -Tim

My office is a mess. I have papers stacked on papers, pens scattered across my desk, piles of stuff on my desk and table. Organization is not one of my strong giftings, but I do like cleanliness. I like it when there is nothing on my desk and everything is in its place. It seems to create a sense of peace. The problem is that as soon as I get everything where it needs to go, it all ends back up in a state of disorder in a matter of minutes.

Life tends to run the same way. We work hard to try to get things in order, to feel like life is neat and tidy. The next thing we know some whirlwind slams in and throws everything into a state of disarray. Our heads are bobbing from the current.

You may feel like everything has fallen apart today, but just take some time to pick up the pieces. Place your life in God’s hands and allow Him to help you straighten things up. Sometimes it takes a storm to help us appreciate the sunshine.

-Tim

Since the Scientific Revolution entering on the heels of the Renaissance and the subsequent Enlightenment movement of 17th and 18th centuries, the Western mentality has taken on a unique way of thinking. You can read pieces of pop literature and other works from each time frame and see a shift happening in the very words you read. It is in light of this, that I would like to issue a brief challenge for your mind. Has the "Age of Enlightenment helped or harmed our understanding of Reality, Morality, Spirituality, Philosophy, etc.? In many ways, there is not doubt we are much better off than our ancestors due to scientific advancements and medical progress. In other ways, it seems we have lost our sense of being and a knowledge of our place in the universe. Since we are the product of the Age of Reason, many of the advantages from that development shape the way we think today. In fully acknowledging that, I will explicate a thesis that articulates the disadvantages that our modern and post-modern mentalities would tend to find disagreeable.

"One cannot prove by scientific means, that a supernatural being can exists." The very basis of this statement is true. There has never been an empirical study that can prove the existence of a supernatural being. However, there is a major fault in this line of thinking. That fault is this, the typical Western mind has been conditioned to think the highest disciplines are the sciences. Here it is often presumed that fact and truth are synonymous, therefore all truth must be found by verifiable facts (empirical evidence). The modern mind has set up the scientific pursuits as the highest of all disciplines. It is the basis for thinking in terms of medicine, space, physics, etc. It is also the foundational stone to atheist and agnostic epistemology. There is one undeniable truth to this basis--One can never answer the question "Why" with science alone. It can only answer "How." With the overarching assumption that only that which is empirical can be considered true is very minimalist and limited with regard to the spectrum of knowledge. People follow that way of thinking to form a logical strand to Theism and Intelligent Design--see below:
All Truth/Reality must be the result of Empirical evidence.
The absence of Empirical evidence=Not true/Not real
One cannot prove Empirically that Divine Beings exist, therefore they do not exist.

But there are other disciplines that play into a fullness of knowledge, which Scientism is vastly inadequate in its contributions.
The basis for scientific study is the ability to recreate results repeatedly to verify them. The scientist would quickly find himself ill-equipped to prove or explain the meaning of life. Why some people fall in love and marry other people...Why societies take on the forms they do...Why language develops the way it does (Note: to this day, linguists are still at a loss in explaining the meaning and origins of language).

Science cannot prove I was depressed last week over spilling my favorite coffee after I left the coffee shop. They can make inferences, but they can only trace the chemical reactions in my body without definitively proving the immediate event precipitated that chemical reaction. Science is also ill-equipped to prove that Napoleon marched 600,000 men into Russia and returned with about 6,000. They also cannot prove any other event in history--because those events cannot be repeated and recreated through thorough testing. Science is still ill-equipped in explaining what some philosophers have called the "Ghost in the Machine." (that which makes us as humans operate)--let alone the development of morality and ethics-the innate sense of right and wrong.

One of the disadvantages of our "Age of Reason" is that we have hailed empiricism as the ultimate in knowledge and keep it unaccountable to the other disciplines, like history, philosophy, music, religion, etc. There are many ways of knowing and empiricism is only one in a spectrum of others. So one major deficit of our Modern Man is that his ability to gain fuller knowledge is hamstrung by the almost worshipful reverence for scientific facts to which all other forms of knowledge are mere schoolyard games that have little bearing on the pursuits of reality.

When we open the door to other forms of knowledge, we may find a higher sense of existence and a fuller life. We may even be able to create categories in our head for the supernatural. And who knows, that may lead us into another "Age of Enlightenment" where all spectra of knowledge are harmonized, not monarch-ized under one dictatorial form, leading us to a better knowledge of ourselves and of the meaning of life.

Just a few thoughts for the evening.

May the Peace of Christ be with you.

I lathered my face with urine…

That is what comes to mind when someone asks me what my most embarrassing moment in life was. Today I am going to discuss a difficult topic – depression. It is a demon that I have personally faced and conquered in my life and I hope that today’s words can be of some help to people who are struggling with this dark enemy.

If you know me well, you would not associate the word depression with my personality. I am a happy, fun-loving guy. I love to laugh and say/do things to bring a smile to other people’s faces. I do have a dark period in my past, however, and it took place during the part of my life that I earlier referenced. Before I get to that story, let me give you some background. When I was a child I was thin, athletic, and popular. I have mentioned in another blog about some of the challenges I experienced when I moved to a new school and lost my popular status.

I changed when I hit puberty. I suddenly gained weight and went from being as skinny as a rail to ‘pudgy’ overnight. I also wore glasses and braces and began developing what would later become severe acne. My parents also went through financial strains. My mom worked for a company that made carburetors when fuel injection took over the industry and my father worked for a hardboard siding company while aluminum and vinyl siding were beginning to dominate the industry. Both plants closed around the same time and my parents were without jobs. They both had enjoyed good incomes while working, but we suddenly became very strapped for cash. This resulted in my not having as expensive clothing as other classmates. In case you didn’t get the picture I went from being thin, popular and well off to overweight, wearing glasses and braces, unpopular and poor practically overnight. I had normally been a very happy guy but suddenly became angry, sad and depressed. I had a very difficult time liking myself.

When I was twelve I went to a summer camp and had a wonderful time. I really felt like part of a group and it was nice to make new friends. I couldn’t wait to return the following year. That next year I ended up in a cabin with some extreme pranksters. Most of the guys in my cabin were from a different part of the state. They all went to the same school, were friends with each other and apparently of a high social status in their school. They really enjoyed having fun at the expense of others and I quickly became a target. I was already experiencing problems with acne. Unbeknownst to me they decided to take my bottle of Sea Breeze, empty half the bottle and fill it back up with urine. I used the bottle the next morning and they all began laughing at me. One kid in the cabin finally told me what was so funny and I cried. I felt like the worst person on the face of the earth and wanted to crawl into a hole and die. To make matters worse my face broke out into a rash so I had pimples and a rash on my face the rest of the week.

I don’t think I told anyone, including my camp counselor about the incident because I was so humiliated. That was one of the lowest points in my life. The guys played several pranks on me that week from dumping cold water on me while I was in the shower to hiding my clothes, but urinating into my facial medication is the one that hurt the most. I think the only reason I returned to camp the next year was because my dorm leader, Tim Bagwell, was a really nice guy who invested time into my life. I really felt like he cared about me and he was the main reason I went back. I never had another bad experience at camp like that again and camp later helped me overcome my depression and those later years still remain among my fondest memories.

I dealt with low self esteem throughout high school. My acne was so bad that I went to a Dermatologist and was put on a severe medication known as Accutane which was later linked to severe depression, sometimes resulting in suicide, and digestive disorders. While on that medication I exhibited strong swings in my emotional stability. I was sometimes angry and often withdrawn and depressed. I am naturally an extrovert but I was more of an introvert during that phase of my life. I did contemplate taking my own life but my strong faith in God overcame my negative thoughts.

When I was eighteen my outlook on life took a dramatic change. I began making new friends, some of whom I am still close and I began to see myself as God sees me. Over life I have realized I am important and I want to make that clear to you today. You are an important person and you were created with a purpose. If you are dealing with low self esteem, please know that you do have great value and life is worth living. I am about to release my first published novel and I would have never experienced the joy that comes with this accomplishment if I had allowed depression to rule my life or if I had taken my life at a young age. Don’t give up on your future. –Tim