Night Owls vs Early Birds

With the recent time change for some of us around the world to standard time (sorry, we are not in daylight savings time), it effects a lot of us with regards to sleep patterns.  It's almost like dealing with jetlag.  But interestingly, I do not mind this time change as we "fall back" and gain an extra hour of sleep that first day of standard time and I get to wake up at a more "normal" time relative to the sunrise.  But for others, some may wake up at 4:30am instead of 5:30am and feel rather alert, maybe annoyed.  I definitely fall under the "night owl" category waking up after the sun has risen while those that can wake up at the crack of dawn are "early birds."  

But... That leads me to question... 

Why? 

Why do we have night owls (such as myself) and why do we have early birds?  And how do these two types of people work in today's society?

If we were to remove any type of time keeping devices (clocks, sun dials, TV with set time for shows, etc.), and just go by the sun, how would that really effect us?  Was there any evolutionary advantages between night owls and early birds?

According to this website, there seems to be some advantages back when people group themselves into tribes.  Some people may stay up late to guard the village until late into the night while some would wake up early to guard the village in the wee hours of the morning.  Make sense.

But in the modern world, it seems like the "good paying jobs" are for the early birds, whether you're in the office or in construction or have to work a mechanics job that starts the shift before the shop is open.  Luckily, some office jobs do have flexible hours where night owls can start later but those companies are few and far between.  Most of us night owls have to suffer in silence while working in the early bird world.  But there are a lot of jobs at night as well with regards to healthcare, food services, and maybe writers/authors, artists, and musicians.  

There does seem to be some advantages to early birds: healthier and thinner, more positive, have a steadier sleep schedule, and can be more sociable.  Surprisingly however, night owls tend to be more intelligent, can focus more later in the day, and can be more creative.  

So, in conclusion: both of these types of people in the world came about through our evolutionary development as people interacting with other people.  What worked in our early days at humans being in tribes can still work today in our modern working world of the various occupations we have in our world.

Spooky Season

2012 NC State Pumpkin

I have been working on a blog but it's taking a bit longer than expected.  I guess when it's a topic that is heavy, it will take some time to write through and research.  So I thought I would write something else to fill in the gaps.  

As some of you know, it's Halloween and for those who know church history, it's also Reformation Day.  And although I could write a long explanation of the two, I think other resources on the inter-web can do a far better explanation than I can.  (Linked for the holidays in the first sentence of this paragraph but I think there are other resources you can search as well that might offer a better summary.)

Since my early adulthood, I never really celebrated Halloween.  After becoming a Christian and being on the more conservative side of the Christian spectrum, it was a holiday that was never encouraged or celebrated at the past churches that I've attended.  These churches would have a "Fall Festival" or "Truck or Treat" instead.  The main reason behind some Christians not celebrating Halloween is the connection between Halloween and the Celtic pagan holiday of Samhain.  Some Christians believed that the ancient Celts worship the spirits of the Otherworld as they pass into the real world during Samhain.  But the real story behind the Samhain festival is that the Celtic believed that on this day, the boundaries between this world and the Otherworld is broken or thin, allowing fairies and spirits to come into this world. The Celts would try to appease these spirits by feeding them food so that the spirits won't ruin their crops or livestocks for the winter. They would also dress up as ghost and such to scare off the ghost. There are other stories but this is probably the one most closely connected to where Halloween came from. So, it seems like they weren't worshipping evil spirits, rather they were trying to rid of them. When the Catholics came to Ireland in the 5th century, it was easier for the Catholics to adapt some aspects of the Celtish/Irish culture to convert them, thus All Hallow's Day or All Saint's Day was created to celebrate the Catholic saints. Samhain then became All Hallow's Eve which eventually shortened to Halloween. 

I think in recent years, I've been okay with Halloween and personally do not have an issue with it because of the reasons above.  Another reason is found in the passage in the Bible that talks about our approach to eating foods sacrificed for idols, 1 Corinthians 8.  The passage pretty much says that it shouldn't bother us if we eat the foods of idols because we know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is only one God, all things come from God (even the food), and that food doesn't bring us closer to God.  However, for those who are new to the faith and/or still weak, it's best if we, who are older in our walk with God, shouldn't eat it in front of those who are weak, as that could cause a stumbling block and have them fall back into their old habits of worshipping idols.  I think by that, for those who used to worship demons, even though Samhain/Halloween isn't about that at all, if dressing up around these people could cause an issue, then don't do it for their sake.

However, I think it's a time for kids and some adults to dress up, have fun, and hopefully scare off evil spirits along the way.

Life of a Church Nomad

The life of a church nomad (me) hasn't always been that easy.  When I was in college, I became a believer in the Christian faith and came to accept a certain type of church culture.  It worked for me and I enjoyed where I was.  But after coming back to the Charlotte area, I have been bouncing around different churches ever since. 

I can't seem to settle on a church but some of the similarities I see in every church I go to:

• Sermon style - Most denominations in the U.S. have a Sunday church service which is auditorium style or classroom style.  
• Music - Some services start off with three songs (no more, no less, unless it's a worship singing service).  Some services will also end in one to three songs as well.
• Offering - Before the pandemic, there is usually a plate, basket, nets, or trays that get passed around to collect money for the offering.  Now-a-days, I see mostly either a box with a slit on top at various points around the church facility or giving online.
• Building - Speaking of buildings, most Sunday church services are held in their own buildings.
• Hierarchy - Moving away from talking about sermons, each denomination, big or small, have a hierarchy of pastors, elders, deacons, lay people, and so on and so forth.  Mostly those who are pastors or directors are paid positions, while elders, deacons, lay person, and other types of leaders are voluntary positions.
• Financial structure - Most churches, in my understanding, are registered as non-profit organizations in the U.S.  But if you look at some of these megachurches, you would think it's a corporate business.  

Most Americans, especially the older generation, grew up going to a Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Catholic church, which you have to dress to the nine on Sundays, sit still in pews, and listen and participate in a service.  There is generally a hierarchy of leaders which can be good (gracious accountability with love) or bad (politics and authority struggles, or distrust and immorality - I won't get into all the details there).  There are other types of churches but these are your main ones in the U.S.

The church that I went to in college was more or less the same as described above but there was a big emphasis on "homegroups" or small groups.  There were different ones and flavors but typically, the small groups start off with songs, prayer, and then a Bible study.  There might be food, there might be some game playing afterwards, but the point of it was to build relationships within these groups and function as the church functioned in Acts 2:42.  We considered ourselves a "Acts 2:42" church as this is what we believed is how a church should operate and this is how the early church gathers for fellowship and sharing in each others lives.  No auditorium, no rock band, no classroom style teaching.  We got together, shared our resources, broke bread, sing and pray.  

Some of these traditionally churches have been trending towards offering more of these small group style fellowships.  But I think because Charlotte and the surrounding areas are so transient and fluid, it's really hard to have the same group of people stay in one church or one location for a long period of time to build these relationships.  And I get it, these churches are trying and I'm not faulting any one of them.

I think my ideal church and the reality of the church has started to clash many years ago.  What I grew used to in college is something I can't find in Charlotte.  So, in the past 10+ years, I became a church nomad.  While a lot of the churches have very good things, I haven't been fully satisfied by any one of these churches.  But during the pandemic, God blew my idea of what church should be, sort of like a huge reset button.  What I came to dislike is the institution of church, organized religion, and things I mentioned earlier in this blog.

So, it really brought me to question about the church.  What is the church supposed to be?  What was Jesus ultimate mission regarding his followers?  Did Jesus intended to establish an institution?  I think various answers I have heard in the past is that Jesus never intended to start a new religion (much like John Wesley didn't intend to break away from the Anglican church and start the Methodist movement).  I've started researching this to see what others have written and researched about.  

I think until I find a satisfactory answer, I will continue to be a church nomad.  

The Great Deconstruction: Part 2

I don't know if I made any progress since I last wrote about deconstruction. But maybe I have.

I started to write down my thoughts and feelings about different topic of Christianity.  I have this book called Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know by Wayne Grudem, and for each topic, I started to write down what I really thought.  Take for instance, "What is the Trinity?"  In traditional Christian theology, it centers on the belief that God and His nature is represented as three parts: Father (God himself), Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit (playing himself).  But as I learned from watching a bunch of YouTube videos, this thought or theology didn't really appear until later in church history.  And this idea has been challenged even in churches that called themselves church that doesn't believe totally on the Trinity of God and His nature.  (There is a channel I follow on YouTube called UsefulCharts which the narrators use charts to explain history and family trees of different monarchs and dynasties and also to explain the different relationships in the Bible and other characters in other religious text.  There is an 8 episode video series of church history and denominations and at least one or two of them, the narrator Prof. Matt Baker explains how a few churches broke off from other churches because of their belief or non-belief of the Trinity.)  

So what do I think? Well, there are some particular passages in John chapter 1 of the Bible and then again in verse John 3:16: "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."  And if you really believe in Scripture, you would believed that Jesus is truly the Son of God but he also referred to himself as the Son of Man.  But what does that really mean?  Should we believed that Jesus is the God incarnate? Or understand this passage like an actual human boy is a son of a human man?  (Side note and something I heard recently: "Man" in Hebrew is "adam", but when Jesus referred to himself as Son of Man, some believed he was trying to connect to his listeners at the time and identifying himself as Son of Adam, like he was one of them, decedents of the original humans.  The actual sons of Adam are Cain and Abel, which Cain murdered Abel.  Where Cain murdered and Abel was buried, Christ came as a sacrifice for this sin and a resurrection of Abel.)

The real question is: why?  If God is the only God, why is there a Jesus, a Holy Spirit, angels, and demons?  It challenges the thoughts that God is the only God and that there are no other God, but yet He's allowed to create and reproduce himself as Jesus Christ which sounds a little bit like reincarnation or a regeneration, and He's allowed to create angels which some become demons.  In Hinduism and some other religions that believed in other gods and goddesses, it almost looks like (or it does look like) that Christianity also believes in these many spirits or ghosts or what-have-you, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  But the difference is that, where Hinduism has many gods and goddesses that are on the same level of spiritual hierarchy and that many Hindus truly believes in the power and authority of these gods/goddesses, the Christian angels and demons are a lower tier compared to God and they should not be believed-in as the same level as God.  God is the ultimate God.   However, Jesus and the Holy Spirit is the same level to God, as they are God's essence, which brings me back to why Jesus and why the Holy Spirit.  The trinity is one of those theologies that might remain a mystery for me.

Thus, that is one topic that I'm still wrestling with about the Bible.  But I think in all of this, I still do believe that there is a God.  In my mind, there needs to be a catalyst for the Big Bang, where God made something out of nothing.  I know a lot of astrophysicists are in a big race to find the beginning of time and space, but I think believing in a God is not completely off the table when it comes to creation.  

Hello, World!

I've been MIA from blogging for a little over a month, so I guess I gotta blog something.  😁

August has been the longest month.  Not only does it have 31 days, it also is the hottest month of the year.  Many days, it was hot, dryish, and no matter the amount of air, it felt like God put the weather on air-frying mode.  The last few days, though, we have had a few pop up thunderstorms, which helps a little bit.  And I did not take a day off, which I probably should have just to use up some PTO time.  So the majority of the time, I worked, with weekends of running errands, and meeting with friends and family for meals.

So, what other things have I been doing?

Lately, I've been watching a lot of videos on the Chinese language and Chinese/Hong Kong culture.  I like to follow other folks who either know Cantonese, Mandarin, and/or know the culture but have a different experience/angle to it.  Most folks I follow are either half Chinese, half something else, have grown up in Hong Kong and live somewhere else, or grown up somewhere else and live in Hong Kong.  The different perspectives and experiences kind of enriched my knowledge of the different variations of what other have grown up knowing, and some of these stories are rather humorous as it usually have a Western spin or incorporates Western humor.  It's one of those "IYKYK" kind of things, and maybe something I uniquely know since I grew up in the United States.

I've also been watching a lot of videos on astrophysics and astronomy.  I think deep down, there is a connect of us to the universe, and learning more about the weirdness of space makes me think how odd and strange and beautiful our universe truly is.  Recently, I learned a little bit more about neutrinos and the nature of these very micro/sub particles.  I have heard about neutrinos but never really understood them.  And I think many space scientist are also wondering the same things about the nature of these things.  To me, it's like the Holy Spirit, it just kind of zips around the universe and can pass through us as well as around us.  I also heard that neutrinos may travel faster at the speed of light but scientist are kind of skeptical.

I've joined a local Christian singles group and so far, it's been fun and interesting.  Most times I join the group for lunch on Sundays but sometimes some folks in the group will organize other events (movies, going to dinner, tubing, hiking, going to the park).  They just recently went on a beach retreat but I didn't go because I just went to London and took a week off for that.

That's it, I think.  That's what's been going on in my world.  I hope the next blog I have more fun and interesting things to share from my brain.