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Is the American Church too dependent upon experiences and too ignorant in orthodoxy? And are these two elements where a balance must be enjoyed? I wonder sometimes…

Oh, by the way–next week I’m traveling to Bogota, Colombia. Pray for me! And having just received an email from a friend of mine in Malaysia, I thought I’d share his photo of the two towers at night:

I still really love this song…I was talking (sort of) with a friend recently about how we need all three Persons of the Trinity, and I just remembered this song from years past which spoke of all Three. The Triune God, at work within us!

You in the mirror, starin’ back at me–
Oh, conscience let me be…
To the pure, all things are pure,
To those who’re defiled, unbelieving,
Nothing is pure!
Their minds, their conscience defiled–
They profess to know God
But deceive Him by deeds all the while…

Where do I stand–
On the Rock or in the Sand?
Oh Holy Spirit,
Won’t You help me understand?

Holy Spirit, won’t You say a prayer for me
With your groanings?
My mind, my conscience defiled–
Send the blood of the Lamb, don’t leave me in exile!

What was that promise on the cross at Calvary?
Confess the Lord
And the truth shall set you free!

Create in me a clean heart, O God–
Renew a steadfast spirit within me!
To my prayers
You’ve always given heed!

Blessed be the God
Who never turned away from me!
He hid his face from all my sin, and forgot–
Forgot my iniquity!

Go on and raise your hands, sing praises to the Lord!
He is the King and He’ll reign forevermore!
He died on the cross at Calvary!
He died to save a wretch like me!

The past couple of days I have watched a four-hour Frontline special on AIDS (see “currently watching”).  Much of the special, which aired last summer, marked the history of the virus, our knowledge and understanding of it and our response to it.  Fascinating stuff, I’d have to say–I shared some of the most amazing details with Brooke over dinner last night, and she too marveled.  Here are a few of the things which have most struck me…I cannot claim to be thoroughly knowledgeable about this material, so don’t quote my explanations as Bible truth (smile)…this is the best I can do to figure out how this virus works at present.  And I’m still learning…

Science as a Mimic

In my reading today, I began to realise just how much of our health science revolves around mimicry.  Our methods for treatment or avoidance of most diseases are not stand-alone but are instead dependent on the “natural” efforts of the body to fight infection or disease.  In fact, in most cases scientists will study how the bodies of some people overcome viruses and bacteria, and then build their remedies around this.  Unfortunately, in the case of HIV, no person has ever been able to entirely remove the virus from their system, and so this intelligent observation cannot come about.

But I am so struck with how God has formed the body’s defenses, how detailed and minute and impressive all of its immunising capabailities are as He has fashioned it!  Corrupted are these bodies, yes, and yet such a marvelous machine!  And how much goes on within us each day of which we are entirely unaware.  The body itself is a weapon against disease, and most of our scientific helps and heal-alls do nothing more than unsheath the built-in weaponry of our cleverly designed bodies.  Marvelous. 

Sadly, HIV disarms the body altogether.

Sugar-Coated Assassin

The HIV virus actually contains within it genetic information which corrupts certain cells (T-cells) in the human immune system, genetically rewriting these T-cells to become HIV manufacturers.  The T-cells then multiply HIV in an infected person’s blood until at last the T-cell is destroyed.  HIV reproduces billions of times everyday within an infected individual in just this way.

Why does our marvelous immune system not attack this foreign threat?  Primarily because all of the dangerous material possessed by HIV–the RNA code, the genetic material which corrupts the T-cells–is on the inside, while the outer shell of HIV is a near-solid capsule of natural sugars.  These sugars are common and natural within the human body, and so the immune system doesn’t recognise that HIV is a threat.  HIV then sidles up to a T-cell and bonds not once but twice (almost like a kind of security measure for itself), and when it has twice bonded to the T-cell, it begins to enter the cell and corrupt it.

Interestingly, there are gaps in the sugar-coating which camouflages the virus, but these gaps (in molecular terms) are so profound, so deep that they are practically impenetrable to our immune system. 

Morphing Ability

HIV is considered a retrovirus because it contains RNA which, in operation with a living T-cell, then translates to DNA (the work orders of the cell, if you will).  RNA usually does not create anything permanent but is manufactured by DNA to perform certain tasks–it typically follows this model:

DNA  ——–>  RNA  ———–> proteins

But in the case of this virus, the RNA converts back to DNA, instructing the T-cell to do something very different from its normal operation.  The same thing occurs when viruses cause cancers–they corrupt the DNA within the host’s normal living cells, converting them into cancerous or precancerous cells.  The body can fight many kinds of cancerous cells thanks to the immune system; but again, sadly, as HIV attacks the immune system itself, there is no natural defense to it.  This is also why many persons who become infected with HIV eventually develop cancers of varying kinds on their bodies–the immune system is no longer able to counteract the effects of other viruses or diseases.

When the HIV virus transmutes RNA into DNA, it’s a pretty complex process and one fraught with corruption.  The example given in the material here was that of a child at a keyboard trying to type the same thing again and again really quickly–a young child will hit wrong keys and the message will come out a little different again and again.  This is the situation with HIV–as it makes copies of itself, the copies are altered just a little bit–mutated.  This happens all the time within individuals who are infected: every person with HIV has, in fact, many slightly modified HIV cells moving about inside them. 

Thus any vaccine for HIV will have to prove effective against not one simple virus but, in fact, many varying and slightly altered forms of the virus.  There are now two main strains of the virus, with many subtypes from each strain–a vaccine will have to stop them all.

Treatment

It took several years of AIDS research before doctors realised that the only way to fight a virus which multiplies and mutates itself so rapidly with a single human system was, in a sense, to corner it.  Dr. David Ho was one of the men instrumental in this–I actually emailed him a few questions this morning, and he emailed me back some information to help me along in my understanding, which I’m fairly excited about.  He and several others developed a means of using multiple medications to sort of keep HIV on its heels, attacking it on several fronts at once.  (Interestingly, doctors may need to use the same method in creating a vaccine–an HIV vaccine may require several different vaccinations together to really guard against the virus.)  These groups of drugs or “cocktails” must be changed regularly, as the virus can become resistant to them over time. 

There’s much more, but all in all I’m fascinated…almost a shame I have to change tasks to something else for the rest of the day, but I’ve miles to go before I sleep and promises to keep…

    Just thought I’d mention here what I’m listening to.  Very happily.  Yeah.

Last night at midnight I stretched out upon a sofa and turned the television on, flipping through stations until I landed on a PBS special which sounded interesting. They were examining Einstein’s equation “e=mc2” by breaking down each element in the equation and giving a history of the most important scientists to develop those parts. For example, first they turned to Michael Faraday, the British scientist whose research gave rise to the notion that magnetism and electricity and other such forces are not entirely separate forces but are instead all related in the one concept of “energy.” Then they turned to an 18th century Frenchman whose name I can’t pronounce, who through intense exactness and calculation recognised that all mass is fixed–when something decays, its matter changes form, but if one were to add up all of the consequential substances, the total mass would exactly match the original amount (the example given–burn wood, and the mass of the smoke molecules, ashes, and so on, when added together, would equal exactly the mass of the original piece of wood). Here they talked about the universe as a “closed system” from which nothing truly enters or exits…and here I started falling asleep.

Don’t get me wrong, I found the material fascinating, and I heard snatches of what followed in the next few minutes: the fact the “C” is used to represent the speed of light due to the Latin word “celeritas,” meaning quickness or swift. Thought that was interesting.

But after I woke up half an hour later, to move to my bed, my head was in full turning, processing and analising several things at once. It was now early morning of the 21st, both in date and century, and so I wrote my thoughts down in the darkness of my bedroom. Some thoughts stemmed from my evening with friends playing cards and talking, other thoughts from the study of Hebrews I am undertaking, and still others regarding capillary attraction/capillarity, which is “the action by which the surface of a liquid where it is in contact with a solid is elevated or depressed depending upon the relative attraction of the molecules of the liquid for each other and for those of the solid” (how does that work?).

But I began to wonder too about the notion of the universe as a closed system. Is the universe truly a closed system? How would this correspond to a slowly expanding universe, if indeed it is expanding? But of course, I think of the fact that while seeds are planted and water is poured, it is God Who makes it grow, and it is God Who knits all men and women together in our mothers’ wombs–does this not defy the “closed system”? Since I began working out again, I have gained fifteen pounds, seemingly of muscle–how would one compute the source of this mass gain? It seems as if Life defies the closed system…

P.S. Last week, during colder weather, I wrote the beginnings of a poem concerning wintertime, and now as the air has turned cool again (with rain, not snow–alas) I thought I would share the stanza with you…

O Winter, Thou silent memento mori
With breath as cold as Death doth breathe
To unmask trees both grim and hoary
‘Til they with frozen fury seethe,
Now unmasketh me.

What do you think–should I keep working on it or let it fall?

I woke up this morning and lay in bed thinking for awhile, then eventually got up and shuffled off to the shower. While in the shower I started to sing, just one line coming out as a prayer: “You are all, all I need.” And I realised that the repitition of the word “all” was not for effect, but instead the truth that I need more than just one person in this world.

This is where I began to wonder at how, often, we sing or speak of how so-and-so is the only person we need…and we do this in order to express “love.” The dramatic man signs of how he needs his beloved, and only her, in order to live in this world. The love-stricken woman writes a note of romance to her lover, claiming she thinks or desires him and only him. Thus, by our singling out of this one creature or person against all others, we are making them “special” and this specialness we consider “love.”

But that’s not what love is. And that is not the truth of our need. We never need only one person, whetehr they be the sweetest, fairest, most lovely person in the world or not. Two cannot satisfy each other. You need more. Even spiritually this rings true, for God is three and all three my humanity has desperate need of. Need needs more than one…

Hey, gang.  Now that my xanga page has become little more than brief news updates (smile), I thought I’d pass along that we’ll be having a Christmas movie night next Sunday evening.  Should be festive!  We’ll try to watch two flicks, if we can…the options for the movies are as follows:

1. It’s a Wonderful Life
2. The Muppet Christmas Carol
3. The Bells of St. Mary’s (which I’ve never seen)
4. Elf
5. A Christmas Story

There are a few other Christmas movies out there, so why don’t you all pick the two you’d like to see and leave me a comment here or text me (smile)…

My ears are still ringing.

Switchfoot puts on an incredible show.  Jumping, shouting, thrashing, cymbal-smashing, stock-still-standing, strobe-flashing…so much energy it’s inhuman.

I highly recommend it, even if you have to drive to Nashville to get you some.

Oh, how I love the depth and weight of God’s glory in this song!  Who can but feel the strength in Him as he sings the words below?  Read them slowly, friends, and be lifted up, O heavy heart!

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
   our helper He amid the flood of mortal ills prevaling.
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
   his craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate,
   on earth is not his equal.

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing,
   were not the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?  Christ Jesus, it is He;
   Lord Sabbaoth, His name, from age to age the same,
   and He must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
   we will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us!
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
   his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure;
   one little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
   the Spirit and the gifts are ours, through him who with us sideth!
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
   the body they may kill–God’s truth abideth still;
   His kingdom is forever!

Fear not the devil, friends, for his doom is sure.  “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet!” (Romans 16:10)  Instead, turn your eyes upon Jesus–look full in His wonderful face (2 Corinthians 4:6)–and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the Light of His glory and grace!

P.S. I don’t know if this will work, but something I discovered recently was a group called “To Write Love on Her Arms”–believers who are reaching out to cutters.  Reminds me of a concert I attended two years ago with Kelly Chambley…Juliana Theory with opening act Zao.  Kelly told me how Zao’s music (which is primarily screaming to the point of insensible sound) draws a large fan base among cutters, and I was grieved at the thought of a group of Christian musicians providing a place where people struggling with such anger or depression that they would lash out against their Maker if only by marring the image of God in themselves, could come and in some way feel like what they are doing is right or fitting because others are also doing it.   That to me was not wise.  There must be a truer way to reach out to such individuals with the Gospel.

My hope is that this group has found that way.

For all of us who have grown in our desire to serve the living God overseas somehow, taking the Gospel among a people we have not known, I wanted to share this sermon.  I found it encouraging, and hope you will. too.  So when you have twenty free minutes on a lunch break or in a quiet hour of the afternoon…Le Tigre, Heather Anderson, the whole crew from the Romania and Yemen missionary ventures, and others…hit this link and be encouraged!

“The Aroma of Christ Among the Nations” by John Piper

I was much amazed as I thought about Paul leaving one open door to the Gospel, for the sake of his restless heart regarding the Corinthians and Titus.  But even in this he was as one who has been conquered by Christ…