"God's Communication" Study: Genesis 1-3

I need to know more about how God communicates. So I'm going to be taking a closer look at the things he says in the Bible. Today I read Genesis 1-3.

In Genesis 1:28-30, God issues a command and makes a gift.

• God's command is life-affirming. It encourages humans to reproduce and make more of their kind.


• God's command also affirms the value of responsibility. Humans are to be good stewards of the creation, to exercise authority over it.


• God's gift provides for his creation: both the humans in charge and the animals to be ruled over. What does the gift communicate?

In Genesis 2:16 God gives another command.

• God's command creates boundaries for our protection. Some knowledge is healthy for man, and he should pursue that knowledge. God's boundaries are intended to protect us from the knowledge that will break us.


• I am reminded of John 16:12-13, in which Jesus says, "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear." In time, Jesus explains, the Spirit will reveal what the disciples need to know, as they learn to trust God. Perhaps eating from the tree in the garden is a sin not because it is pursuing forbidden knowledge, but because it seeks to obtain that knowledge outside of a relationship with God, from a source other than God. It's just a hypothesis, but it could be the case.

In Genesis 3:8-13, God asks several questions.

• Human beings ask questions in order to gather knowledge. However, God is omniscient and already possesses knowledge of everything. Why does God ask questions?

Music to nap to

I've got this Winamp playlist of about 50 or so songs, all of them slow stuff, a lot of instrumental video game remixes. Lots of piano pieces. And I like to put on this playlist when I take a nap. It's good to have music that I can fall asleep to.

Joe Loves Crappy Movies

"I want to be funny at no one's expense": that attitude is the reason why I enjoy Joe Dunn's comics as much as I do. He really is a stand-up guy.

Article about standards in creativity

"On Editorialization And The Lack Thereof"

Wisdom for artists.

The Adventures of the Irrelevant Webcomic Critic

Lately, Penny Arcade has been falling flat for me. Some of the recent strips have been good--like the one about the crystallized demon blood in the guy's refrigerator--but a lot of them I have just not found funny. The other day I was thinking about why this is, because I really want to like PA, every time, if at all possible. They consistently come up with the craziest stuff, and Mike Krahulik is a killer artist. So here's what I figured out.

Some of Penny Arcade's funniest and most compelling work, I realized, revolves around the concept of shame, particularly characters' perceptions of merited and unmerited shame. Consider the following comic, in which Tycho is reluctant to share the content of the user-targeted in-game advertising he is seeing. His discomfort, and the ensuing disjunction between his words and the billboard, are the source of the humor. Here's another one, where Tycho has forgotten his embarrassment and gets far too enthusiastic about, um...the possibilities of science-fiction extraterrestrial...encounters. Gabe often doesn't know when it's appropriate to feel or display shame: for example, here. Or here. He is far too open about his endeavors! And that's funny. Sometimes other characters violate the boundaries of propriety as well, oblivious to their gaffes of disclosure.

But within the past month or so, that well of shame has scarcely been tapped. And the well is deep, my friends, replete with the potable and refreshing waters of comedy. The last place we really saw situational humor of this sort, relying on characters' differing expectations of what should and should not be was this comic. Now, Penny Arcade has a rich and diverse past of jokes, and they need not rely on shame to create quality material. For example: they're typically excellent satirists. However, Samus kicking Pikachu in the face is simply less robust as a comedic concept than Gabe's obliviousness to his own social dysfunction. I feel as though Krahulik and Holkins wander in a desert of comedic stagnation these days, sustained by sips from insubstantial oasi as they seek afresh the path to the towering citadels of the City of Funny. As they brave the wasteland, journeying back to comedic society, I hope they remember the well of shame. Propriety is the foundation of civilization, and the lucid waters of that well possess a thirst-quenching potency to sustain their return to the cradle of hilarity.

Article on Faith

I just wanted to share this. This short, informative essay is the most accessible, sensible, and fair discussion of religious belief that I have read online in a long time. I am so sick of the shrill atheistic insistence that religion is bad and terrible on the one hand, and the Christian refusal to even acknowledge the existence of doubt. This, on the other hand? This is good stuff. It's refreshing.

3:54 PM at Work on a Friday Afternoon

Want nap

One more hour