Today's primary elections remind me of a worry I've had for a while.

It occurs to me that within the next decade the United States could face a far more difficult situation than terrorism - China.

China is growing strong economically, technically and militarily, and while I have no objection to a strong China, and I don't see why China couldn't be a good friend and trading partner (especially if it cleans up its human rights problems), I really don't want a strong China with a grudge against the U.S., simply because I don't want what could be an extremely serious war.

Unfortunately, there is a grudge - Taiwan. The U.S. is guarding Taiwan from China and that annoys the Chinese, who regard it as part of China. Whatever. I won't get into that.

But this brings me to my point. I think we should sit down with Taiwan and China and encourage them to cooperate and resolve their differences, and we should do it now while tempers are still under some level of control and we're not waving missles in each others faces.

For whoever becomes president, I hope he (or she) will make this a priority. Waiting until it is a crisis would be just plain stupid.

Not long ago a young man told me he couldn't remember a single instance of God working in his life.

I think he is very mistaken and has simply missed what God has been doing, because when I look at his life I see God at work as he becomes a godly young man.

But I think I understand what he meant. I think he meant that he could not feel God working in his life. That I can relate to. The times I have felt God at work in my life are very few and very far between.

What helps me with this is remembering an old illustration that showed a train, with "Fact" as the engine, followed by coal car, "Faith," and then trailing along at the end was the caboose, "Feeling." The train can run without Feeling, but it needs the engine of Fact and the fuel of Faith in the coal car.

I believe a lot of Christians today unconsciously base their faith on feelings. I sympathize. I want good feelings, too. But feelings are the caboose; they're not critical. Live life based on the Fact of the Gospel fueled by Faith, and if Feeling comes along for a ride sometimes, fine, if not, que sera. And don't count on feelings always being there; they won't be; or always being pleasant; they won't be; and certainly do not base your faith on them.

I don't know if I just missed it when it first came out, or if it never appeared in the theaters, or what, but I recently saw a DVD movie called, "Luther," about the life of Martin Luther. I don't usually recommend movies, but this one was really great. It did not sugar-coat Luther and it's intent was not to slam Catholics. And it was very professionally done.

From what I know of Luther, it did a great job of presenting his life - "warts and all," to quote another famous German (Frederick the Great, I believe). After I saw it, I recommended that our fellowship group watch it. We did and everyone seemed to really like it, and one guy said he thought he'd recommend it to our new pastor. So anyway, rent the DVD. I think you will really enjoy it and learn quite a bit about both Luther and the Reformation.

If you are like me, you've always had this idea in the back of your mind that the Puritans were stiff and formal and unemotional, but in reading some of the stuff they've written, well ... I dunno. In one sense what I've read does seem very methodical and scholastic at times (not that I object to that, but it can be dry), but then in the midst of a scholarly essay (in this case dealing with the role of memory in heaven - O brother! Does that sound dull, or what?) you may get something simply overflowing with passion, such as this (which I've edited into more-or-less modern English):

From the height of heaven the saint can look back and compare the past with the present. And what an inconceivable appreciation that soul must have. To stand on that mountain, where we can see both the Wilderness and Canaan at once; to stand in heaven and look back on earth, and weigh them side-by-side, how it must transport the soul, and make it cry out, "Is this what the blood of Christ has bought? No wonder it cost so much. O blessed purchase and blessed love! Is this the result of believing? Is this the result of the Spirit's workings? Have the winds of grace blown me into such a harbor? Is it to this place that Christ has allured my soul? O blessed path and blessed destination! Is this the glory of which the Scriptures spoke and ministers preached about so often? I see the Gospel is indeed good news, news of peace and good things, news of great joy to all nations! Did my mourning, my fasting, the sad times I was humbled, my difficult path, come to this? Did my praying, watching, and fearing to offend, come to this? Did all my afflictions, Satan's temptations, the world's scorn and jeers, come to this? O my vile nature, that resisted such a blessing so much and so long! Unworthy soul! is this the place you came to so unwillingly? Was duty tiresome? Was the world too good to lose? Could you not leave all, deny all, and suffer anything for this? Were you afraid to die, to come to this? O false heart, you almost betrayed me to eternal flames and would have lost me this glory! Are you not ashamed, my soul, that you ever questioned the love that brought you here? that you were jealous of the faithfulness of your Lord? that you doubted his love when you should only have doubted yourself? that you always quenched any working of his Spirit? and that you misinterpreted his actions and were unhappy at what he did to bring you to this end? Now you are convinced that your blessed Redeemer was saving you just as much when he denied your desires as when he granted them; when he broke your heart as when he healed. No thanks to you, unworthy self, for this crown; but thanks rather to Jehovah and the Lamb to whom be glory for ever."

Kind of takes my breath away. That's from The Saints' Everlasting Rest, by Richard Baxter, if you're interested.

Recently I heard - for one time too many - a speaker introduce his remarks by saying that the Christian life is not a list and that lists are inadequate for expressing the Christian life.

And then, rather apologetically, he said that despite that he was going to preach a sermon that used a list.

Well, good! I'm glad he bucked the trend, and it was a mighty fine sermon, but I really wish he didn't feel the need to apologize for something that is not only innocent, but positively useful!

I think perhaps the apology had something to do with the current postmodern movement that emphasizes "story" as the way to communicate and kind of looks down its nose at lists.

Fine. Tell stories. There are lots of them in the Bible. They're a good way to communicate. I like stories. But there are also lists. The - ahem - Ten Commandments?

I admit that stories are more memorable than abstract information, but that's the beauty of lists - they can make abstract concepts easier to remember and understand, and those who adopt a pointless bias against them will fail to teach all the Bible has to offer because some things simply do not lend themselves to being told as stories. For example, how do you teach the book of Romans - or Hebrews, or most of the other epistles - as a story? Are we just going to skip them, or try to force them into some artificial storybook format?

Yes, I admit lists can be abused. I've seen it happen. But I can also say from painful experience that stories can also be abused. I remember one sermon that wandered off into a story about the preacher's sick pet. I assure you that its being a story did nothing to redeem it.

So how about we all recognize that the Bible contains both stories and lists (and abstract information that is well-suited to being expressed with lists) and without apology simply use the type of format best suited for the topic and the audience.

When I was growing up my family ate dinner together. We all sat down around the table and it was nice.

Sadly, I don't think that happens as frequently these days, at least, not at my house, and I think part of the reason - aside from my absentmindedness and slackness - is technology. You can yell out to your kids that their dinner is getting cold, and they'll think, "So what, I'll put it in the microwave later." Or they'll just get out some instant soup or prepackaged dinner, nuke it, and they're set. Unless you run a tight ship, any kid who knows how to work a microwave can prepare his or her own dinner on his or her own schedule. I know it may not be very nutritious, but I don't think that makes much difference to a lot of children.

In addition to food technology, there is also entertainment technology. Not only is there television, as there was when I was a kid (and that was hard enough on family dinnertimes), now there are also video and computer games. It used to be that talking at dinner kind of was the entertainment, but nowadays it's hard for mere talking to compete.

You can't rely on hunger or the fun of being together anymore. I think that having family meals now means additional pressure on parents to make them a requirement. Get a bit slack and you loose it.

Jason Robert Carrol breathed his last.

He lay in the hospital with his wife and children nearby and an attentive nursing staff and competent doctors. It was pneumonia, the old man's friend, as he used to jest.

As his body was removed, his wife sat down in the one visiting chair and the children on the floor, and they all shut off.

As the body was taken away, the hospital staff sat down in place and shut down. Then the hospital lights went out. The body was buried as Carrol's will had indicated and, their job complete, the burial crew shut down.

Carrol was the last one, and with him humanity died, never fully knowing.

It had begun in 2035, with the first marriage between a man and a robot. It was, of course, a very beautiful robot he had married, and as people rightly suspected, it had been just a physical interest, and the marriage did not last long.

But the robots improved rapidly. People took batteries of psychological tests, and then factories built and programmed robot spouses that matched them perfectly. Some wanted submission in their spouse; others preferred a bit of fire. Intelligence, stupidity, fawning adoration, beauty, sex, whatever. They got what they wanted.

They could even have children, robotic children who were updated regularly until they grew into adulthood, and then - like their parents - they appeared to age.

With mass production, the cost of robots dropped, and these pleasures of the rich became increasingly available to all. More and more people married - or simply lived with - robots. And life with a robotic man or woman who matched you perfectly was very beautiful.

But fewer and fewer people married other people, so the number of people began to slide, though where even one human existed, the streets were full of cars, the shops and restaurants were all open, and the media broadcast the news, though what part of the news was about robots and what part about humans it was impossible to tell, as the two were difficult to tell apart and because it was considered very rude to make such distinctions.

And in the end, the humans died out, never fully aware that it was even happening.

But the fearmongers were wrong. The robots never took over the world - they never even tried. They died with their masters. Although scientists had succeeded in making robots intelligent, they had never figured out how to give them a will.

No robot ever wanted anything, any more than a brick ever wanted anything. Oh, true, they acted as if they wanted things, and their apparent desires were indistinguishable from human desires, but it wasn't real.

Some scientists thought that if they combined the right software with enough processing power to make a computer's brain, that the computer would become self-aware and have a will. But it never happened, any more than a pile of bricks is more self-aware than a single brick. More and more on-off switches combined with more and more instructions for flipping those switches on and off never resulted in a computer that wanted so much as an ice cream cone or cared a bit or a byte whether it existed for a single additional second.

Oh, when the humans were still alive it certainly looked that way, and many scientists argued that robots had indeed achieved self-awareness, but when the last of the humans died, the robots - seeing no tasks before them - reverted to their most basic instruction set, and simply shut down to save power.

I was recently reading an old scifi classic called The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein (quite good, by the way) and came across a passage in which the main character is talking about a time-traveling guinea pig.

The thought came to me that time travel provides a neat illustration of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which, if you are not familiar with it, is essentially this mind-bending statement: There is only one God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Each of them is wholly God but none of them is the other.

If you are confused, you are hardly alone. This doctrine was not proposed because it is easy to understand, but because the Bible teaches it.

So anyway, Heinlein's story got me thinking of this illustration.

Let's pretend that the genius scientist who lives next door to you has just invented a time machine, which you get to test. You step into the machine and it sends you back to last week. You walk home, open the door and stand face to face with ... you.

Hmmm. Now here is an interesting situation. Which of these two quite distinct, quite solid and quite real individuals is you?

Ahhh... both.

So does that means there are two of you?

Wellll, there are two individuals that are you, but - I know it sounds weird - there's just one you.

Does that mean that each of the individuals in the room is only part of you?

Noooo. Each of the individuals in the room, by himself, is completely and wholly you.

(Notice also that the "you" who went back in time came from the "you" who inhabited the past, and therefore the "you" in the past could - in a way - be said to be the source or "creator" of the future "you," but that doesn't mean the "you" from the future is younger than the "you" from the past. You are the same age as you.)

Similarly, the Father can be completely and wholly God and the Son can be completely and wholly God, but the Son is not the Father and the Father is not the Son (or the Holy Spirit, but I tried to keep it simple). The illustration also shows how a father-son type relationship could exist without the father existing before the son.

Big caveat: I'm not suggesting that this is how God is triune; I'm just trying to illustrate how it might be so in a situation we can imagine.

Some other things I've written on the Trinity:

The Trinity
Thoughts on the Trinity