Flooding in Harrisburg

My town of Harrisburg, NC — and indeed the entire region — has been in a state of moderate drought for the past, I dunno, fourteen months or so. So when we got a solid day of rain yesterday, Amy and I were thankful for it. Who wouldn't be? As helicopters hover over my head right now, I'll tell you who wouldn't be: our neighbors down the street.

Our house is on one of the higher pieces of ground in a neighborhood that is bordered on one side by a creek prone to occasional flooding. So we were blissfully unaware until a few hours ago, as we went about our morning, that just 200 yards away were several homes whose first floors were under water! Amy had left the house to take the boys to Romp n' Roll for some activities, but called my cellphone shortly thereafter saying she was coming back home — she couldn't go anywhere without hitting flood waters.

From our neighborhood, the rest of the world is accessible (by road anyway) only via Stallings Road. To the west, Stallings Road was flooded across some low-lying cow pastures; to the east, it was flooded at the bridge over that creek that borders the neighborhood. Our neighborhood and the one just west of it are now effectively on an island! It's an island full of people who couldn't get to work today. And, sadly, it's an island not quite big enough (or high enough) to hold all the houses in the neighborhood.

We took a walk down the street to see the damage and find out if there was anything we could do to help. Here are some photos I snapped while there. You can see in some of the photos how high the water line was before we even got down there to take the pictures.

I was told that one of the houses now under water was for sale, set to close today. And while the potential buyers are probably glad they didn't sign yesterday on the place, the sellers have certainly had their world turned upside down. My mother called to tell me that in her neighborhood across town (which is bordered by another creek), the water level rose by over ten feet. Apparently, there are crews acting there in boats to get people out of their homes. And another section of the same creek that runs by my mom's neighborhood flooded over yet another key road, according to the Lathams.

My neighbors appear to be in good spirits, and helping each other. I imagine that elsewhere in Harrisburg, NC, folks are doing the same for their neighbors. And that's just … Right.

Context. It really does matter.

Context is everything.

3 Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.

Yes! Prosperity Theology! Name It and Claim It! "Dear God, I commit unto You my big plans to win the lottery without even playing it! I know You have the power to accomplish this in my life, so now I await your outpouring of success."

4 The Lord works out everything for his own ends — even the wicked for a day of disaster.

Doh! "So, um, God … scratch that last one, will You?"

(Quotes taken from Proverbs 16, verse 3 and subsequent verse 4.)

Q4H: Why does God allow suffering?

I was reminded this morning of a question I think most theists — and many atheists, when in let's-just-suppose mode — ask at least once in life: Why does God allow suffering? What's the deal with all the floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and so on? I certainly have asked this question of Heaven myself.

Some time ago I was pointed to an online audio clip of an NPR interview with John Piper, a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can listen to the interview yourself at http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Interviews/1678_The_NPR_Tsunami_Interview/. I think Piper's responses throughout the entire interview are amazing — his mastery of Scripture and natural ability to deploy it as needed are incredible. But two threads in this interview really stuck with me:

1. God is sovereign. Not only can He do anything, He rightly and justly may.
2. God is always mingling judgment and mercy, both of which are useful for bringing people back to Himself.

Judgment and mercy. The Flood and the Ark. The sweeping through Egypt of the Death Angel and the passover sacrifice. The wages of sin (death) and the gift of God (eternal life through Jesus Christ).

What brought this interview to mind today was a bit from this morning's Bible reading. I'm in the book of Job, now. If you don't know Job's story, it runs something like this:

Once upon a time, there was an extremely wealthy and extremely righteous man named Job. Job had a wife, kids, and crazy amounts of livestock and servants. Job pleased God.

One day, Satan and God were chatting, and God asked Satan if he'd noticed what a good, righteous guy Job was. Satan replied, "Well, of course he's righteous. You've given him everything he could possibly want and more. He only loves you because you're good to him." So God granted Satan permission to do whatever he wanted in Job's life, so long as Job himself was granted immunity. Satan used his temporarily extended leash to kill all of Job's children and most of his servants, and to have his livestock stolen by raiders.

Job was shellshocked, but remained faithful to God (a fact that God bragged about to Satan). Satan said to God, "Yeah, yeah, okay, so he passed the test. But that's only because you didn't let me touch his body." So God fed Satan a few more feet of tether, and Satan struck Job with terrible sores over his entire body.

Thirty-five chapters' worth of (really poetic) dialogue fly by. Job's bummed but still faithful, his wife isn't offering much by way of help ("Just curse God, die, and get it over with already!"), and he has three friends who've come by to cheer him up but seem to offer more mouth than mind. Finally, God Himself comes[1] to speak to Job and his buddies, to set the record straight, and ultimately to restore Job's wealth and rebuild his family. And they all live happily ever after.

Anyway, while reading about Job this morning, I noticed this bit from Job 12:13-15:

To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his. What he tears down cannot be rebuilt; the man he imprisons cannot be released. If he holds back the waters, there is drought; if he lets them loose, they devastate the land. [emphasis added]

Why do we — why do I — find it so easy to assign credit (blame) to God for the holding back of good things, yet routinely fail to assign credit (praise) to Him for holding back the bad stuff, too? God may let many problems come our way, but just think about the ones He didn't let come. Two things routinely taught in Christianity are that mankind has a supernatural adversary (Satan) who seeks our ultimate destruction, and that Satan has been given dominion over the earth. How long do you suppose we'd survive if those were the only two factors at work here? So why do we remain? Mercy.

Job had it right. After Round One...

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. [Job 1:20-22]

...and then after he was bodily afflicted:

[Job] replied [to his wife], "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. [Job 2:1-3]

[1] By the way, I love how God enters the scene here in Job 38:1-3: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said: 'Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.'"

Justincasion

Over at Stuff Christians Like today, Jon Acuff is remixing one of his previous posts on the topic of subtly finding out if others drink beer, too. It's a humorous look at the awkwardness that exists when two Christians with potentially differing views about the morality of alcohol consumption try to discern each other's beliefs without revealing their own.

I left the following comment on his post:

Jon, this issue is just one of many flavors of a general problem with the Church called "justincasion". Not to be confused with "justification" (remember "just as if I'd never sinned"?), justincasion ("just in case I ever sin") is quite the opposite. Its symptoms include blurred vision, inaccurate depth perception, paranoia, and an odd fascination with sidewalk chalk. To best learn how to identify a person (or organization) suffering from justincasion, let's look at an example. Say, alcohol consumption.

Two people -- one with justification, one with justincasion -- read the same Bible. They both see the same texts prohibiting drunkenness, both read about Jesus turning water into wine, etc. Now, the person with justification recognizes the value of what these scriptures offer: the freedom to drink what he wants so long as he keeps his head, the freedom to celebrate (rather than stifle) important cultural gatherings such as weddings, protection from the consequences of bad decisions made with judgment impaired by alcohol, etc. To the justified person, the law exists to give freedom, not to restrict it.

Enter the justincased guy. The minute he sees words like "not" or "never" in the text, his paranoia kicks in. He begins to sweat the definitions of words such as "drunk" and "wine" and ... "and". While still a little woozy from this sudden onset of Heavenly pressure and the threat of eternal damnation, he does the only thing he knows how to do -- he reaches for his sidewalk chalk. He eyeballs (as best as he can in this state) a "safe zone distance" from the forbidden thing, doubles the distance "just in case", and then draws a circle at that radius around this particular evil on the ground. That line is never, ever, to be crossed. All must remain outside the circle.

Of course, the problem with said circles is that, once you've drawn one around each and every sin in the Book, you find there really isn't all that much of the Earth left not in one of those circles. Getting from one place to another requires carefully planning and often some quite complex acrobatics to avoid falling inside one of the circles and (of course) certain death. The law becomes a burden, causing these people to spend all their time looking down at the ground and the circles instead of looking up to their God.

In fairness to some, there was an important freedom I neglected to mention that is available to the justified person: the freedom to avoid drink altogether for any personal, non-judgmental reason that seems fit to him. This includes abstaining in the presence of others who don't understand the other freedoms, or avoiding things which he from past experience knows leads him into temptations he cannot resist. When in doubt, our relationships with each other should be of far more concern than our relationship with the bottle.

Pranks are fun (and fun is violent)

My wife, Amy, and I have a very playful relationship. We've always placed great value on smiles and laughter, and we want to create for our children an environment which encourages such. Marital roles are a complicated-yet-structured thing, and the overarching goals of the design involve mutual love, respect, co-edification, and a joint effort towards holiness. But when pressed for a quick explanation, we'll skip the philosophy of it all, and tell you that marriage ought to be full of good clean fun!

One way in which we have fun is by playing mild pranks on each other. For example, a few nights ago we were playing Monopoly in our living room. Now, our living room has through the North Carolina summers a tendency to attract such unsavory and unwelcome guests as house centipedes (which we lovingly refer to as "thirty-leggers") and American cockroaches. From June to August, we very rarely enter that room without a cursory scan of the ceiling and fireplace area for "critters". Lately, we haven't seen as many of them, but this didn't stop Amy from — in the middle of our Monopoly game, with my back to the fireplace, and with her giggling about something else — pointing behind me and gasping as if she'd seen the largest dual-headed, ten-legged, armor-plated mutant cockroach in the world about to dig into my skull for some cranial pudding. To say that I "was startled" and "jumped" would be an understatement. Truth be told, I was lucky to survive the ordeal with wearable underpants!

My opportunity for revenge came today. I was working downstairs, and Amy went upstairs to shower before lunch. I gave her some time before heading up after her, then — figuring she was already in the shower — burst into our bathroom feigning a child's voice and saying, "Mommy! Mommy!" Well, she wasn't in the shower. She was almost in the shower, standing on the bathroom scales. At my outburst (or is that, "inburst"?), she grabbed for a towel to cover herself so quickly that she broke the towel rod off the wall. Once she realized it was only me (and the towel rack finished bouncing off the walls and floor), we had a great laugh about it. Oh, sure, I still got the requisite and well-deserved smack, but it was all so worth it.

Subversion 1.5.0 commit history, visually

I was recently introduced to the code_swarm project, which produces this nifty software for generating visual representations of version control repository activity. For kicks, I pieced together a visual history of Subversion 1.5.0. Enjoy! (You might need to view it in fullscreen mode to actually read the committer names and datestamps.)

Subversion 1.5.0 (code_swarm) from C. Michael Pilato on Vimeo.

Aaron Spuler — making Mozilla smile

I've been using Aaron Spuler's Mozilla themes for a few years. I don't know the guy, but for some reason his graphical vision just leads him to places that put happy thoughts in my head. (This is rather in contrast with the default Firefox and Thunderbird themes, which are, shall we say … uninspired.) Anyway, peruse his (free) wares at http://www.spuler.us, and consider sending him a small donation if you dig it, too.