Freedom, Granted by Law?

James 1: 25
25But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

I've been thinking lately about the concept that God's laws grant freedom. I've heard this many times in my life, but it never made sense to me. How can a set of restrictions give freedom? How can limiting what one is allowed to do be freedom?

I finally understood it through a conversation I had with a friend this past weekend. He was talking about the director, Stanley Kubrick. For those of you that don’t know, Kubrick is a highly regarded director, known for movies such as The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Spartacus, Full Metal Jacket, and many others. Apparently, when Kubrick prepared to shoot a film, he would go through the set, the costumes, the film, the cameras, the lighting, every last detail you could imagine, to make sure everything was ready. He was a perfectionist, and he knew what he was doing. However, he would never pre-plan the camera angles. Those would be decided on the day of shooting. Why?

He spent so much time establishing boundaries, so that when the day of shooting comes, he had the freedom to do whatever came to his mind right then and there. He never had to worry if an area was lit properly, or re-shoot a scene because you could see the backside of the set. He had total freedom to work within the limits he had set up for himself.

That’s what God’s laws are like. He set up boundaries for us so that we have complete freedom within those limits. Like rock music? Listen to it! Prefer classical? OK. Singing hymns your way of worshiping? Awesome! NIV or KJV? Sure! How about, having a few drinks? Abstaining from all alcohol? Watching R rated movies? Only G rated? Play guitar? Piano? Be a preacher or a plumber? Vegetarian? Barbeque hamburgers? OK! His laws are not to restrict our freedom by outlawing certain behavior. We have freedom because that’s what His law is about!

What Is Love?

Those who know me well, know that I'll often have a thought in my head, buried deep within, mulling it around for weeks and even months before it finally gets pieced together. This is one of such thoughts.

What is love? In life, I've been given many different answers. My religion says, God is love. My church says, serving is love. My military peers say, sex is love. The Army says devotion is love. Many say that good feelings is love. Many say sacrifice is love. To a degree, there is an element of truth to all of these.

The Bible says, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

This got me thinking. The phrase, "lay down his life"....what does that mean? Traditionally, I grew up thinking that that meant death. But what does "lay down his life" really mean? Is Jesus talking about giving up breathing and moving for someone else? Or perhaps He is pointing to something much bigger than death.

Whenever someone asks for an example of love, Christians point to Jesus' death on the cross as the ultimate example of love. But can we really reduce all of Jesus to one final act, as if everything before the cross meant nothing? What about the life Jesus laid down to become human? Before Jesus was born, He was God, the Son! In a way that I don't believe can ever be adequately explained, Jesus was God, but also the Son of God. Equal to, yet at the same time, under the God of the universe! Yet, He laid all of this aside to come to live as a human. It wasn't forced on Him. At any time, He could have said, "forget this, they aren't worth it" and gone back up to be with God. But He didn't.

I'm not trying to diminish the significance of the cross, that is not my point at all. But I think that Jesus' greatest act of love was His entire life, and His death on the cross was the final culmination of His love.

So why do I say all of this? It goes back to the original question, what is love? To paraphrase the Bible (and add some personal opinions), greater love has no one than this, that he give up his way of life, his hopes, his dreams, his possessions, his reputation, all that he has and all that he is......for a friend.

JP OUT!

Classes.....sigh

So inevitably, the question arises, "How are classes going?"

All things considered, not too bad. I'm still waiting on my book for Calculus, so I've been borrowing the book for homework, forcing me to cram all homework and studying into a 1 day time span. I'm actually not doing to bad, in spite of this. It's hard, but doable. My marketing course is rather laid back and it's pretty easy as well. I have a course that deals with energy and it's effect on the environment.....kinda boring, but not super difficult....then there's physics....

I think I may be the only one in the class that is taking it without taking Calculus first. The book, and the teacher, both come at it from a prospective of...."you remember how to do this from Calculus, right? Well, we're going to add onto that concept." Meanwhile, the original concept is something we'll learn in the Calc class in about 2-3 weeks. So studying for Physics consists of pouring over Google for calculus concepts (since I don't have my calc book) and learning it from wherever I can find the info. (Including Wikipedia).

I've done math problems with letters before, but usually the answer is some sort of number. It's crazy when the problem AND the answer is entirely letters. We're dealing with vectors now, and the symbol for a horizontal vector is pronounced, "i hat". You know, like if Apple made a headcovering. The vertical vector is "j hat" which is the Jesus version of the "i hat" (see video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRiijctGcAY). The vector that deals with depth is known as "k hat", which I don't have an alternative meaning for that. My point is, I still find it odd, and slightly funny, when the teacher says, "the direction the object moved is 30.0 meteres in the i hat and 45.0 meters in the j hat".

Anywho, that's how classes are going! Hope you all are having a great day, and I'll talk at ya later!

JP OUT!