Ben, Jill, and Alice Holt
I just hit a rating of 2000 today on lichess! I have been getting a tiny bit better over the years. I don’t study much but my favorite player is Tigran Petrosian, I resonate with his prophylactic, defensive style. He is considered one of the hardest players to beat in chess history.
Here’s my performance chart since 2017. Now that I’ve hit a personal record, I’m bound for a losing streak!
This topic has been coming up a lot lately, both in our house church group and in conversation between Jill & I. Like many of my theories, I mull over them for years. I’ll get into great discussions or come across new evidence that either supports or disproves them. The typical “these are largely my own thoughts” caveat applies – thoughtful responses are welcome!
First of all, let’s define the word. Like many similar words in the “Christianese” dictionary, people have an idea how to use the word, but can’t explain what it means. This leads to confusion because we don’t always agree on what we’re talking about.
Edit: As it turns out defining this word is harder than I thought, which certainly explains the confusion. The word “temptation” can mean a few things:
“The desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise.”
Oxford Dictionary
A desire means “I want”. In this case temptation (according to the dictionary) means “I want something I should not have”. The Greek word “epithumia” means a “desire, lust, urge, impulse, or craving”, but is never translated as “temptation”. The other dictionary definition is:
“A thing that attracts or tempts someone.”
Oxford Dictionary
This refers to the object of your desire. We might say, “That cake is tempting me.” That nasty cake is testing your resolve by offering you a choice between short-term pleasure and long-term goals, just by sitting there! You now have two conflicting desires: to lose weight in the long term, or to eat the cake right now. The cake demands an answer.
Another Greek word, “peirasmos”, means exactly this kind of test! It’s always translated “temptation”, “trial”, or “test”. In the Lord’s prayer we plead “do not lead us into temptation”. This is essentially saying, “Please do not put us in situations that will test us.” It’s not a sin to go through temptation – Jesus himself was tempted:
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted [peirasmos] in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin.”
Hebrews 4
Although we ask God to keep us from these trials, James tells us we should consider them joyful:
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials [peirasmos] of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.”
James 1
You can see how things are getting confusing. So far we have two Greek words and two dictionary definitions! And confusingly, somewhere along the line the Greek word “epithumia” got hijacked and lumped in with “peirasmos” in English.
Let’s go back to our cake. Can you spot the temptation?
Now you can understand why we are confused when we talk about this. Here’s a verse where both Greek words come into play:
“…each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.”
James 1:14
That is a funny mental image. When someone is abducted, it’s against their will. But can you imagine being “dragged away” by your own desire, with your consent? When we sin, we are personally responsible, or culpable. The trial (peirasmos) we undergo is often our own fault! True, someone else can lure, entice, coax, snare, seduce, tantalize, coerce, manipulate, or bait us into sin. Someone can “tempt” you (including Satan), and that means they are making your test harder to pass. But ultimately we cannot blame the test itself, only ourselves for failing the test.
With Eve, the serpent instilled doubt about God’s commands, the reasoning behind them, and the penalties for disobedience; but also used her desire for power and knowledge, to be “like God” in forbidden ways, to entice her. And the forbidden fruit was visually appealing. Let’s sum up our definitions:
#1 and #2 are simply things that make #4 harder. Eve’s desires (#3) are not temptation at all, but her hidden motives that drive her to stick around instead of fleeing from the situation.
Now let’s talk about avoiding temptation – meaning the unpleasant time of testing (peirasmos). It is not a sin to go through, but it’s better to avoid if possible. It’s better not to play near the edge of a cliff if you don’t want to fall off.
To prove criminal culpability in court, a person must have means, motive, and opportunity (MMO) to commit a crime:
MEANS – The ability to commit the crime.
MOTIVE – A reason, hidden desire that leads to action
OPPORTUNITY – The specific circumstances that enabled the crime to happen
All of these must be in place (as much as possible in a courtroom) to prove someone guilty of a crime. When someone sins all of those things were present. Removing any one of the above will prevent sin. For instance, Jesus famously told us how to rid ourselves of the means to sin:
“If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away… if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.”
Matthew 5
This may seem drastic, but it’s that important to remove sin from our lives that merely losing an eye or hand is worth it. Also, it removes the capability (means) to sin.
For instance, if someone struggles with pornography a simple solution would be to cut all internet/wifi/data services to the home and not own a phone, computer, or TV. Drastic? Maybe, but it also removes the means to sin in that way. This is wise. A monk taking a vow of silence or poverty is similar. You can’t be addicted to possessions if you own nothing.
Removing the opportunity to sin is a constant battle, but much easier when one is proactive about habits. If an alcoholic makes sure that he never walks by the bar or liquor store, that will save him from sin most of the time. It would be stupid of him to walk by the bar every day, just hoping he will “pass the test”. There is wisdom in taking steps to avoid opportunities to sin, knowing we are often weak and often give in when we have the chance. This is why we pray for God to keep us from temptation!
Jill has struggled with gluttony at times in her life, like many Americans, and at one point she was part of a woman’s ministry where there was always lots of food – snacking and a special “break time” for eating. Jill simply decided not to go into the room with the food. Easy solution, and it worked, even if the other (mostly overweight) ladies could not understand why she wasn’t pigging out.
Removing the desire (epithumia) to sin is a lot more difficult – and also the most difficult of the three to prove in court, because it’s a matter of the heart. Rather than changing your desires, shift your perspective toward God’s ways.
Some people are simply not tempted by certain things. Why? How can they seem to be immune? How can they say no to cake?! It’s often because they are convinced that the benefits or short-term pleasure of giving in to a desire simply isn’t worth it. They have formed beliefs, habits, and a lifestyle around not feeding that desire.
When you structure your life in this way, you make it less likely that you will want to sin, and the arguments in favor of sin will seem pointless and hollow. This is very hard and takes years of continual renewing of our minds, but it’s the most effective way to avoid temptation. David did it this way:
“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
Psalm 119
We can also remember that Jesus himself went through, and passed, every test – and because of this he can help us best:
“Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
Hebrews 2
Remember, when you sin you are culpable – you had means, motive, and opportunity. If you sin, take proactive steps to remove at least one of those things in the future.
Oh look, it’s a blog post not about politics! Hooray!
This video is just groups of two, having fun in the living room like I do in winter. It’s far too cold to shoot outside!
I picked up a new electronics hobby lately – lamp making! This was a natural progression from my 12V LED projects. I ran out of bulky adapters and started cannibalizing lamps from various places to make new ones.
I’ve done some junior woodworking as well on some of these – nothing really complex. A lot of the tools I have I’ve had for over 20 years. My dad got me a great set of tools when I was a teenager, and it took many years for me to truly appreciate it. At the time I thanked him out of simple obligation (like you would thank an aunt for a gaudy sweater), but now I use my tools nearly every day, and it’s very satisfying to have the right tool for the job.
If you’re on a Unix-based system like Linux or Mac, aliases in the terminal make life so much easier. It’s like making your own custom commands for things you do often.
Here’s just a few of mine so you can get the hang of them. On Linux, assuming bash is your login shell, these will go in the .bashrc file in your home folder (files that start with “.” are invisible by default).
alias cs='conkystart'
This one just runs a custom script I wrote to (re)start Conky without a lot of fuss. The script kills all running Conky processes and then loads up all my config files in one go.
alias s='killall conky; sleep 2; xset dpms force off'
I used “s” for “sleep”, and I run this right before I go to bed. As you can see it runs multiple commands separated with a semi-colon. This one shuts off Conky and my monitors.
alias duck='find ~ -type f -ls | sort -k 7 -r -n | head -20'
This will search my entire home folder for the 20 largest files. Useful to find bloated log files, and all I have to type is “duck”!
alias n='xed ~/Documents/File.txt &'
Use aliases to open commonly-used files. Typing “n” will open my notes file instead of fishing around in the file manager for it.
alias ls='ls --color'
Use aliases for command substitution. Whenever I use the “ls” command I always want it to use the color option, and now it does.
As a present (largely funded by a generous client of mine) I got Jill a bunch of equipment to realize a dream of hers – to make shirts and other items with designs on them!
After lots of research, I decided on vinyl and the following equipment. I surprised her all at once with it:
It’s actually turned out to be quite a joint hobby. I’ve been fairly good with learning new programs like Inkscape for the cutter, and Jill is far more artistic in other ways, including the application part.
It’s been quite easy to find free graphics and watch tutorials on how to do tricky things, although finding cutting software that worked well and was compatible with Linux wasn’t easy at first. I’ve settled on Inkcut, which has worked very well.
Jill is keen to turn this into a business, so if you have ideas for a t-shirt or other clothing, we may be able to make it happen. Here’s some of our designs so far:
I hope you’ve been having fun too. For introverts who aren’t working much, like me, this time is awesome. I know, some things are crappy out there, and the economy will take a long time to get better, but in the meantime I’m not worrying about that.
I always have a few hobbies going at any given time – the things I’m doing when not gaming or hanging out with Jill & Alice. Here’s some things I worked on just today!
Indoor Archery
This poor box has been turned over a few times, but it’s the third target this year I’ve shot so many arrows into that it breaks in pieces. Fortunately our local dump is full of boxes and old carpet and stuff, so it’s cheap to make more targets.
This week I’ve been researching nocks for greater speed. Regular nocks are my current limiting factor (I think). I also ordered a new bow, a 40 pound horsebow. Can’t wait!
I also repaired a lot of arrows this week. I taped up the fletchings where they take the most abuse, and installed some pin nock adapters (I break nocks almost every day speed shooting).
This is a really fun hobby because I just keep my bow strung up and shoot whenever I’m walking around the room, like five minutes at a time.
Electronics
This past month I’ve been working on (and repairing) a bunch of lights for the kitchen. They are controlled by a motion sensor and go off automatically when no one is nearby for five minutes. I did all the wiring and cabinet hole drilling, and built the circuit in a little box above the sink. It worked great but I had a couple loose solder joints lately. Fixed the last one today, I hope.
Here’s how it looks installed again. Each set of wires goes to a different LED strip underneath a cabinet. It’s a bit messy but we don’t use that cabinet much. This week, with the help of my friend Torsten (a real electrical engineer) I wired up the power supply to AC. I was careful, but scared, since this was my first foray into anything AC related (normally I work with only DC).
Altogether the circuit draws about 8A, which is why I used two power Mosfets in parallel with heat sinks! Here’s how it looks working – no more dim kitchen! The black wire on the left is all you can see of the circuit.
On the left in the back is the new wine we bottled yesterday! And the cocktail in the wine glass is actually ant poison made of sugar and Borax. No idea why Jill used that glass 🙂
Greek
Just for fun, today I learned some Greek. I know, a little Greek can be dangerous 🙂 But lately I’ve found myself looking up verses with Strong’s a lot, and got curious about the alphabet and decided to learn a bit. I don’t think I’ll be a very good scholar, but I had fun making my own chart with actual pen and paper.
Recently one of our local rock radio stations got replaced with K-Love, a nationally-syndicated “Christian” station. It left a lot of puzzled/angry rockers wondering what the world was coming to.
In one sense I was glad. As a Christian, I love to see the name of Jesus put out there.
“But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.”
Philippians 1:18
But I’m also sick of this type of music. As an experienced churchgoer, I’m familiar with both traditional hymns and “P&W”. It’s an entire genre, played in almost every “modern” church in the US today. As a professional guitarist, I’ve played this music for years and still do.
I dislike that this music has become associated with what everyone means when they say “Christian music”, and that even the words “praise” and “worship” have been hijacked. When someone in church says, “It’s time to worship,” what they really mean is, “Let’s sing some ambient light rock that 20-year-old girls may like, but grandpa won’t be offended by.”
Despite my current aversion to the genre, I have started listening to K-Love in the car. I wanted to try (again) to get past the cheesy music and figure out what was really bugging me about it. Why do I cringe inside when I listen? Is it me?
As usual, it is my problem. Sometimes I wish I could turn my analytical self off and just appreciate music, especially music that claims to praise the God I love. But that hasn’t happened. I still cringe. I have been able to figure out some reasons.
The music of K-Love is extremely feminine. This is because their target demographic is women, the majority of their listeners. They sing about grace, love, mercy, light, all the fluffy, uplifting things about the faith, and none of the challenging things.
In contrast, the Bible is full of dark, depressing, and difficult things along with the good, like real life. But K-Love is billed as “positive and encouraging” and that’s all it is. This video by John Crist humorously explains the industry around P&W music. “You can only reference your struggles in an abstract way.” This is what people think “Christian” music is, both inside and outside the church.
“K-Love, America’s largest syndicated Christian music radio network, targets its programming at eighteen- to forty-five-year-old females. Two-thirds of K-Love listeners are women… The K-Love disc jockeys have created a mythical average listener, whom they call Kathy. She is a mother in her mid thirties with two kids, a minivan, and a mortgage… Kathy’s name comes up frequently during staff meetings, and the DJs make sure their on-air antics won’t upset or offend her sensibilities.”
David Murrow, “Why Men Hate Going to Church”
Even the song lyrics seem carefully crafted to soothe Kathy’s fears, to reassure her that Jesus is, and always will be, her boyfriend. The man who always listens, always sympathizes, never says anything mean or offensive, and always comes to the rescue – unlike her real-life husbands/boyfriends, who always seem to disappoint.
The majority of these songs are sung by a soothing male lead vocalist who pronounces the word “pray” like “pry” because he has some kind of weird Australian accent. He sings everything Kathy wants to hear. It’s romantic because he’s “leading” her to the Lord in a special way.
I get mad at this because it’s not the whole picture. Jesus is a man who commands the loyalty of the men he trains. He is downright offensive and rude at times, occasionally violent, always challenging, unpredictable. He died like a lamb but lived like a lion. Men dropped everything they were doing because he said “follow me”. Then they died for him. He commands respect, he’s not a whimpering boyfriend who bows to Kathy’s every whim.
“He was not at all like the psychologist’s picture of the integrated, balanced, adjusted, happily married, employed, popular citizen. You can’t really be very well ‘adjusted’ to your world if it says you ‘have a devil’ and ends by nailing you up naked to a stake of wood.”
CS Lewis, The Four Loves
But none of this is ever in songs that K-Love would play. For contrast, check out the Psalms. The range of human emotion is staggering and covers just about everything. Songs that are poetic, honest, raw.
Finally, none of the music makes me *think*. I have a theory that this is due to the repetition (yes Lord yes Lord yes yes Lord) and limited vocabulary of K-Love P&W. So I actually did a comparison today.
I used five different sources:
I then randomly selected four songs from each. For the radio stations, recently played songs. In the hymnal, four random hymns. I used Psalms 12, 24, 36, and 48, for no particular reason.
Then I found lyrics for every song, put them in a document, and removed all punctuation. I found a count of unique words using the following code:
cat "lyricfile" | sed "s/ /\n/g" | sort -u -f | wc -lThis sorts each word onto a separate line, removes all duplicates, and finally tells us how many unique words. You can see the songs and lyrics I used here.
So what do you think? If you listen randomly to 90s R&B, classic rock, read the Psalms, sing the hymnal, or listen to K-Love, which has the biggest vocabulary? I laughed pretty hard at the results. It’s much more fun as a graph:
The R&B station has more variety of words by far because one of the songs (Hip Hop Hooray) is rap and has a lot of words per minute! That song alone really pushed it over the edge.
And there’s K-Love way down there at the bottom. If you check out those lyrics the reason why becomes clear. There is SO much mindless repetition in these songs. I feel like my brain cells are dying when I listen.
I didn’t factor in the length of the songs – K-Love P&W songs are often really long. Five-minute songs are not rare, like in many churches – just endless choruses stuck on repeat.
“What I, like many other laymen, chiefly desire in church are fewer, better, and shorter hymns; especially fewer.”
CS Lewis, “On Church Music”