emb3r.com

that’s my baby! booya! a 15 lb Chum Salmon. 

This is me approximately 2 seconds before I disclocated my knee. I’m on the left side of the pyramid trying to push my brother in law off and I got pushed back. As I did my left leg went into the hole and my body fell left causing my knee to bend right and my kneecap to pop to the left. Ouchie. But thankfully it’s all healed now. I just need to start working out so I can jog on it again.  

glyer boys 

Well I have a penchant for writing long entries in the wee hours of the morning.
Prepare.

Jon’s Big Issue with Biola #382:

Here it goes.

When the Biola student registers for school, she/he signs contract with Biola commiting to a certain standard of behavior. This standard amounts to the Biblical standard for believers and then some. Click here to read the entirety of the “Life Together Statement”.

From a Spiritual Perspective:

The long and the short of it is; certain behaviors which the Bible, and therefore God, permit us to engage in, are outlawed. These are not extravagent requests and are easy enough to abide by. However, I think that we need to be careful about what role we allow Biola to play in our lives. Should Biola’s code of conduct be above the law of God and the prompting of the Holy Spirit? It is true enough that God is pleased when we err on the side of holiness. It shows that we are dedicated to obeying to two greatest commandments - “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” - Matthew 22:37-39

But here’s my point which is based on a couple premises.
1. The goal of the believer is to be transformed into the image of Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit in his/her life.
2. When we abide by a standard for the sake of abiding by the standard, it does not benefit us.
3. When we are sensitive to the Spirit of God, He will reveal to us the things in our lives which must be removed or added or acted upon for us to be changed and renewed.
4. However, if we are not allowing for the Holy Spirit to guide us into truth and godliness, merely obeying a rule or standard made by man, we do not grow in our spiritual discernment and discipline.

Here’s another kernal of truth - thanks C.S. Lewis - God cares more about the kind of person you are than he does about the things you do. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason doesn’t honor God nearly to the extent that it does when we are the kind of person who is caught up in a love relationship with God and therefore choose to obey Him.

I believe that now is the time for us to have a looser Biola Code of Conduct so that during our 4 years at Biola we can go through the struggle of listening to the Holy Spirit bringing us to understand what is permissable in our personal walks within the bounds of Scripture. The alternative being: We get out of Biola and into a world without the moral code of the school and we were never given the freedom hear the Holy Spirit guiding us in difficult moral choices.

From a more Administrative perspective:

Biola is really going to begin to dig itself into a socio/political nightmare with this code of conduct. They have set their standard of spiritual behavior as the moral code of the school, issuing punishments to those who do not meet up to it. All university’s have a “code of conduct” of sorts. This document is usually a set of rules put in place for the safety of those who attend.

The problem is, by including their moral standard into the overal legal/security/safety rules that most campuses have, Biola has put every single student into a situation where their sin, or in this case, their breach of Biola’s moral law, is grounds for expulsion and refusal for admission.

If you visited the link you noticed the clause, “We also do not condone practices that Scripture forbids, such as…homosexual behavior…”.

Disclaimer: I understand that homosexuality is a sin according to the Bible, I’m not questioning that.

Biola has put itself in a place where those who struggle with the sin of homosexuality are put into a category of behaviors/activites under which, “The University reserves the right to refuse admittance to or dismiss any person who does not conform either to the stated guidelines and regulations governing student conduct, or to the expressed principles, policies, and expectations of the University.”

Do you see the issue?

In conclusion, the Biola Contract and “Life Together Statement” hinder the Holy Spirit’s work in spiritually developing students and create an unhealthy situation where the administration is forced to put a student who drinks on the same level with a student who breaks into a girls dorm room and steals her computer.

Me and my cousins Reed, Brian and Marty. 

my friend “vegan straight-edge josh”. 

One other thing. I want to start a musical endeavor. I don’t know what it is yet, still kind of percolating in my brain but here are some ideas I have been kicking around. Getting better at my Harmonica and performing/recording, Learning how create techno music and recording it, Continue to songwrite vocals/guitar. Regardless of what I do, the effort will be called “Scimitar Sound”. A hot name in my opinion.

On a completely non-related subject, I have thought a lot about what to name my childer, when I have them. I want something unique but not over the top or lame and if possible I would like to throw my dads name in there. So what I was thinking for a boy is Remy Paul for first and middle names. If Remy is a no go, which would be sad, then I would really like to name him Paul.
We’ll see. I’ve got time.

Well aside from my iPod purchase giving my general temperment a rather positive boost, I’m doing really well. Everything is just…right. Praise God.
Man this is an open invitation to have things go wrong. O well.

So I finished my chapel makeups and in the process of turning them in, found a very useful piece of information: The CD with the make up chapels is available at this time to prevent an end of the semester crunch. I will most likely spring for that.

I also just found out about a very cool thing at my school called the Collegium. It is basically the commuter lounge 2.0. It’s a cozy room with an interior kind of like the interior of the Grand California Hotel in Anaheim. It feels that way more than looks like it, but it’s a cool place that would probably serve a purpose for me in terms of a place to be between chapel and my class on Mondays and Wednesdays. Benefits of Collegium: Cool place to hang, cheap food, computer/printer access, Wifi, games, coffee, ambience, a greater sense of inclusion in the Biola community. Drawbacks: $75 fee per semester. So I have to decide whether it’s worth it.

This little bad boy makes my iPod so much better. It’s called the iTrip. It plugs into the top of my iPod and transmits a short FM radio frequency.

Practical Application: Plug it in, tune my car radio to the station i have it set for, I hear my music from my iPod through my car radio. …genius.
I’ve only had one problem with it which was resolved with the help of the online troublshooter guide so…easy enough. Man, I’m using alot of elipses in this post. I must stop that. 

beauty personified. i…i…i’m in love.