Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday.  Happy Birthday to Me!

Marvel IV

Marvel vb \‘märv-ǝl\ : to become filled with surprise, wonder, or amazed curiosity

Having nothing to do with science.

Last week I posted that I had just finished my first year in Med School. This is just a little bit of an elaboration.

First in line is a little back ground. For all those who would believe that being a doctor is my life-long dream, you are wrong. For all those who think that I am doing all this for that doctor “lifestyle,” wrong also. I didn’t want to go to med school. I didn’t want to be a doctor. I just wanted to be a regular guy living in a regular town with a regular wife and some regular kids. I didn’t want any of this action. I didn’t have any aspirations or ambitions.

I also had no passions.

Then one day, on the mission field, the Lord called me into mission work. Now I’m not saying that I got some fuzzy feeling in my chest somewhere and that was the calling. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that He made real to me the need for his Word and Truth and Grace in the world. I already understood that missions was what he commanded. And I was going to do some of that in my life. But it was then that I realized that my whole life’s purpose was supposed to be centered around the Great Commission – making disciples of all nations.

I would point out here that the Great Commission is for every believer. Not just some weird people (like me) who had no plans without it. If Christ’s call to cast your burdens on him and let him be your rest is a call for every believer, then his call to make disciples of all nations is too.

So I prayed about different things. Seminary was one. But the Lord shut every door to me except the one that he had already opened. I was in college at the time. I was pre-med (but I had no idea why). Now everything made sense to me. I knew the path that I was on was a path that God was making.

Fast forward to med school. It is hard. It is real hard. We have between 20 and 25 hours of classes every week, and these are 800 level classes. For those of you who think that some people are smart and stuff like this is easy for us, you are wrong. It takes studying. Its hard work. There were days I didn’t think I could go on. There were times when I didn’t think I would pass. There were times when I doubted the Lord’s call on my life and I doubted that he could even bring me through. I was wrong. He is a strong and mighty warrior.

There were times when I put my relationship with my wife after my studies. I was wrong. For that I am sorry. And the Lord is good to forgive. Thankfully, my wife, Maryem, is also.

As I posted earlier in a very short post, last week, I took my last test of my first year. What a relief it is! What a joy to be done with one year! I’m a year older. I feel ten years older. But I know that I could not have made it without the Lord. He gets the credit and the glory. To him is all my hearts joy. I just have to marvel, I just have to stand amazed at how good the Lord is. He is faithful and he is good. I have to stand in wonder at how good our God really is.

Batman’s Blog

I just want to take a minute to highlight another blog. Its the blog of Batman. Just a good look into the everyday life of a super-hero. Its a brand new blog but I highly recommend it.

Where Resides the Soul?

John Calvin referred to the Psalms as “an anatomy of the soul.” In our modern age, it would seem that the existence of the soul itself has been called into question. Following is an essay I wrote some months ago shortly after beginning the infamous course: Gross Anatomy.

Where Resides the Soul?

The student interrupted as his professor was about to begin the dissection of the cadaver, “But sir,” he asked, “where resides the soul?”

This is an interesting question. Where does the soul live? Is it in the brain (the thinking part)? The heart (circulator of the life’s blood)? The kidneys (cleanser of the body)? The lungs (remember that God “breathed” life into Adam)? The liver (got to have it to live, hence the name)? Where does the soul reside.

As I stood aside the body I’d named Chickering Smith, one thing was for certain. It did not come very close to resembling a person. A person’s body? Yes. A person? No. It wasn’t even close. This was a far cry from a person. A person’s personhood is no longer present in the lifeless vessel of a dead body, the thing we call a cadaver, an “it,” the thing I gave a name. It is a far, far cry from being a person, from being a “him” (or a her as the case may be).

Where resides the soul? This is proof, to me at least, that a person is not purely physical, but “soulish” as I will describe one (or all) of us. But where does it come from? And where does it go? Its there. Does it die. So what if… where is it? The body dies and we have remains. Shouldn’t there be remains of the soul? Something to show that at some point there was something else to what you see than, well, what you see. It was a person. What happened to the personhood.

For thousands of years questions of the body and questions of the soul were not at all separate. They were linked at the most basic level. An ancient Greek would never consider the body without considering the soul. If doing a dissection (which, as in the manner in which dissections are carried out today, was illegal then), of chief concern would be the residence of the soul. Would it live in the “spirit pump” as the brain was called? Or elsewhere. Was it a physical thing that died along with the body or did it “go” somewhere.

The enlightenment rolled in one day and physics and metaphysics were separated, as they remain to this day, for the most part. Philosophy and medicine are seen as 2 distant fields, both requiring scholarship, but having little if anything else in common. The student of the body, be it for medical or purely scientific motivation, would never ask the question “Where resides the soul?” A question such as this is immaterial. We wanted to move forward in our understanding of how the thing worked, not what made it tick. And so we, humankind, divorced the two questions, those of the workings of the life of the body and the workings of the life of the soul. The superstitious ideas of the soul were thrown off, and the body was worshipped.

Scientific searches for the soul have come back to some extent today, but lack the weight that they once carried. The people who delve into such matters are dismissed as foolish while we knowledgeable scholars carry on without a care to something as unimportant as the soul.

But consider for a moment American culture’s way of indicating oneself by body language. It is our way to point to the middle section of ones chest to indicate “myself” or to ask “me?” Does this lead us to believe that the soul resides in the chest? Consider the common Japanese technique of pointing to one’s own nose (which I have observed numerous times) to indicate self. Does the Japanese man’s soul reside in a different part of his body than the American man’s soul.

Consider this. A man can loose an arm, and continue to live. Can a man loose a limb of the soul? Is this possible? What could the dynamics of the soul be? Is consciousness the blood of the soul. Is this consciousness circulated by the brain, or by a metaphysical part of the mind, enabling the soul to live on? How does the soul work, anyway? Is the soul undying and unending? If so, is it necessarily unresting? Or consider for a minute the birth of the soul. The body is born and then decays, but if the soul cannot decay, then is it ever actually born? Interesting questions indeed, none of them posed or considered by our medical student who questioned his professor on the residence of the soul.

If we are to consider Christian doctrine, and I believe that we surely must on questions of the soul, then we are to find that there certainly is a part of the person that is not the body. For there are some who can kill the body, but after that are powerless, and then there is God who, after killing the body, has the power to put the soul into some type of hell, the specifics of which we can only guess, but it is most certain by the words spoken of it in scripture (whether metaphorical or not) that hell is most certainly a horrible place for a person (or a soul) to reside.

Maybe the soul resides not in the body at all, but in some other dimensional space. Maybe.

It is clear (to me at least) that the soul is real and that it will survive after the death of the body. It will dwell forever in enjoyment of God or in torment separated from God, except to be exposed most brutally to his wrath. It is also clear that God cares about the well-being of the soul. The question is why do we, as biological scientists treat it so flippantly or ignore the concept.

In all this I believe that we can be for sure of one thing. I think that the search for the soul is more of a search of what the soul is and what state it is in that what part of the body it is found in. But let the absence of the soul from the body serve to us as a reminder that a person is more than a body, but also, in some form or dimension, possessing a soul. And let us, as God does, value that soul and care for it, nurturing and caring for it at every possible opportunity.

Finished!

I’m proud to announce to you that I am finished with my first year of medical school.  I just finished up with my last mega-test as I call it, and I am so happy.  There is much thanks to the Lord in line.  Only in his strength was it even a possibility.  He has sustained.  He is good.  I am finished but to God be the glory!

Church and State

Matthew 16:18 I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

It seems that the Reverend Wright controversy will never die. And I say why should it? His statements were caustic and hateful. He spoke against his country and its leadership and for the opposition of our nation. But more importantly is the fact that he spoke this from the pulpit.

The political pundits can talk politics all they want, but the last I checked there is not one government on this earth that is not on its way down to the ground. Every President, every King, every Prime Minister, every political leader down to the Somalian warlords who are currently holding food from their country men will some day see their power stripped away – either by death, politics or else the second coming of Christ. But there is one institution in this world that is eternal and that is the church of Jesus Christ. The US Government is a drop in the bucket. God has raised it up and will set it down. But the church of Jesus Christ is eternal.

I believe Reverend Wright out to be allowed to say whatever he wants about America or about anything else. But when he stands in the pulpit, such talk should be put away.

We are moving toward one cosmic moment at the speed of time. We are moving toward one moment when all who are alive or dead, who are humans or spiritual principalities will see everything put under the feet of Christ. And on our way we have men who stand in the pulpit, a platform set up for one reason, to preach the Gospel, and spout political hatred. We have men who stand in the pulpit and talk about freedom from an oppressive government. We have men who stand in the pulpit and talk about freedom from debt, from sickness, from struggles and from low self-esteem. We have men who stand in the pulpit and preach but what they are preaching is not the gospel.

A church should be concerned with the political and social climate. Issues concerning the sanctity of life most certainly matter. The institution of marriage which our children grow up seeing is of great importance. How we care for the hungry and the unemployed is a concern. But of first importance is the gospel. Our Lord said that the gates of hell would not shake the church. The church can thrive be light in a dark world. It can thrive in a culture where the unborn are stripped of dignity in the public eye. It can thrive in the most hospitable and irreverent society Satan can throw at it. The wolves may prowl around at its door, but the Good Shepherd will protect the church.

Let us bear up as a church and grow a burden, not for what a man may say politically but what he may say theologically. Let us protect our churches from the wolves who we would otherwise invite in to show us the way to destruction. Let us first of all pray. Pray for the strength, the purity, and the character of our churches. Pray for their protection and for their cleansing. For we are all in the body together. Let us be watchful in our own churches, not suspiciously spying, but biblically discerning the teachings and the ideas we are embracing. And lastly let us be ready to share an accurate and Christ-exalting word with an unbeliever who may have questions about such matters as incorrect doctrine coming from the pulpit.

We live in a society that is moving toward a day of judgement, and we have forgotten that. Let us hold true to our first love. Lets not get so caught up into who our president is that we forget about our King. And when the next political upheaval rolls through, lets not get up into arms, but let us rest quietly in the arms of our Lord and Protector. The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name.

Reality!

Every Thursday night (with just a few exceptions), I play guitar and lead worship at my church for a service known as Reality. Philip Brown usually speaks (on the gospel). It meets on Thursday night at 7 pm. Its a great time of worship and fellowship, a time of real relationships with God and with people. I would just like to invite the readership here to come out and spend some time with us on Thursday night.

I would also like to make a request of the people who are at Reality each week. I am continuously searching for the songs that you like, songs that minister to you, songs that exalt Jesus, songs that bend your heart to be more like his. But I dont know what these songs are for you. And that is my request. Just let me know which songs you would request. In the past I’ve done some that people have requested. One of them I had never heard when it was requested. So let me know. I will try to find it, learn it, and sing it and invite you to sing it with me.

Also, I have an open door policy for the band and for singers. If you play something, let me know. We can work it in. Just want to play with me every now and then? Thats OK. Just let me know. Or just show up on a Thursday night at 5:30. Thats practice time. Just show up with your weapon of choice and join the party. All are welcome.

You can leave a comment or just tell me when you see me.

- Nate

A Poem

This is a poem I wrote based on something Flannery O’Connor said about faith not being an electric blanket. It reminded me of a passage in Luke. Hence the title.

Luke 9:58

The man who came to Jesus

Was told to count the cost.

Faith’s no electric blanket.

It will lead you to a cross.

It’s not a thing to run toward

To flee from pain or life.

The way of faith is suffering:

A life of sacrifice.

Marvel III

Marvel vb \‘märv-ǝl\ : to become filled with surprise, wonder, or amazed curiosity

Molecular biology is sometimes the most mundane of the sciences …but sometimes it simply astounds.

Cholesterol – everybody’s got it. The body constantly balances the cholesterol levels by attempting to maintain homeostasis. Intake and synthesis of cholesterol is normally balanced with degradation (into bile acid) and excretion of cholesterol. If you didn’t get that: when you eat cholesterol you’re body converts cholesterol to bile acid and gets rid of it. When you dont eat it, your body makes its own. This is how we balance. Its called homeostasis.

The main step, the hump in the process, of cholesterol synthesis is controlled by an enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase. Never mind what all those letters mean. In short, its a protein in your body for making cholesterol.

When cholesterol levels in the cells are low, a protein called SREBP (sterol responsive element binding protein) is cut off from another protein. It travels into the cell nucleus where it hooks to DNA and says to the other proteins “Hey, I’m important! Come manufacture some stuff.” That stuff would be the aforementioned HMG-CoA Reductase. So the appropriate “machinery” makes haste to that spot of DNA, it manufactures some “stuff” and the cell is happy. The newly manufactured HMG-CoA Reductase then goes to make up some good ole cholesterol. (Cholesterol is very important even though some of us avoid it like the plague.)

As long as SREBP is hanging out with DNA, HMG CoA Reductase is getting churned out. But pretty soon, cholesterol levels in the cell get pretty high. Then its time to put on the brakes.

When Cholesterol levels rise, these other things called “oxysterols” are formed. We dont care what oxysterols are. We just care what they do. They go and get the SREBP and say “hey, thats enough of you sounding the alarm. Just chill out for a while.” And, like a good little boy, SREBP pulls itself away from the DNA. HMG-CoA Reductase levels drop. Cholesterol synthesis s-l-o-w-s down. And everybody is happy.

According to my professor, “it really is an ingenious way” to moderate cholesterol levels.

I find it quite amazing. And I can’t even see it. I have to think about God making this stuff up who knows how long ago and just watching it. And all along, its just waiting for humans to discover it and say Wow. Truly God is amazing to have created such and “ingenious” control device in the cell. Just think of how creative this God must be. Oh, he’s artistically creative. You can see that in a Pacific sunset. But he is also incredibly practical in his creativity. Divinely amazing. What an incredible Creator we have!

Give me Grace

I dont know if anyone else is familiar with Andy Gullahorn.  He’s a songwriter who lives in Nashville.  He’s one of the best songwriters I’ve ever been exposed to.  I’m his number 1 fan (#1).  I told him this when I met him.  ”I think you’re my only fan” he said through a grin. Here’s one of his songs.  For your digestion.

 

Last time I was here I swore that I would change

And said only a fool would make the same mistakes.

Being the fool that I am, I’m back again.

 

I’ve got no good excuse. I’m out of things to say.

I’m starting to believe I’ll always be this way

My only hope inside is that you would hear my cry

 

Give me grace for when I can’t stop falling.

Give me strength to help me get back up.

Give me faith without proof.

Give me wisdom and truth.

Give me You.

 

I know I’ve got a choice but I don’t want to choose

I’ve tried that before and I know I stand to lose.

I can not control these failings on my own.

 

Give me grace for when I can’t stop falling.

Give me strength to help me get back up.

Give me faith without proof.

Give me wisdom and truth.

Give me You.

 

Here’s his picture: