Heart-felt fidelity

I ran across a fantastic article and felt the need to post it. Here it is!

"But Ruth replied 'Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.'"

In some blessed relationships, fidelity isn't an issue that even enters a conversation. In the case of my parents, and for many of my friends, I know that they have relationships where the temptation of unfaithfulness doesn't enter their home. And for my own part, I'm lucky enough to be one of those people who -- when I'm in a relationship with someone -- sees no appeal in any other member of the opposite sex.

Yet I've learned over the years that I am one of the lucky ones. Many single men and women of faith don't have it that easy, even in the context of a serious and responsible dating relationship. In the modern office of expansive social atmospheres and younger workforces, the likelihood is extremely high that you will eventually work with or deal with someone on a regular basis who you find appealing. You may even end up spending more time with that person, due to the demands of work, than you do with your girlfriend or boyfriend or fiancee -- the person you love and intend to marry.

This can lead to bad situations. Oftentimes, the person on the outside doesn't know about this growing office relationship, and for many single people, it's easy to give in to the temptation to cross the line into flirtation and more. The excuses: It's just talking at work, it's just drinks afterward, it's just fun, after all.

Except that it isn't a game; it's playing with wildfire. Before long, you may find yourself in a situation where, without ever making a conscious decision, you've slipped into infidelity. You've been unfaithful to the person you are dating or courting, in thought or in deed. In selfishness, intentional or not, you've hurt and possibly destroyed a loving relationship.

I've been on the other side of this kind of relationship, and felt the painful ramifications more than once. I've never been shellshocked, but the overwhelming hurt, nausea, and directionless feelings must come close.

When secular advisors talk about relationships, everything comes down to "feelings." How does the person make you feel? Do you feel happy? Does flirting or carrying on with someone else make you feel happier? You should be honest about your feelings.

There's an element of truth to that -- honesty is a good thing -- but it misses the big picture. Love isn't just about moment-by-moment feelings. If it was, our human love would be as fickle as a middle school crush.

Ruth's pledge of fidelity to Naomi, often used by brides and grooms in pledging fidelity to one another during wedding ceremonies, is one of consequence. Did Ruth really intend to love her husband every moment of every day, without ever being unhappy with him? Of course not -- she committed herself to loving him, and being faithful to him, even when he forgot to take out the trash or hogged the remote, even when the Senior VP started asking her out to long lunches at nice restaurants. She committed to love with the entirety of herself -- promising that not just her heart, but her mind, her lips, and her very being would remain faithful.

True faithfulness endures in spite of temptation. True faithfulness exercises self-control, to the point of avoiding an area of danger as a recovering alcoholic avoids a bar. True faithfulness, in the context of Christ and the Church, is loving and sacrificial -- even to the point of death.

Be careful how you act toward members of the opposite sex. Don't let yourself fall into temptation. And if you do, be honest about it -- repent, ask forgiveness, and flee from sin. And if you are on the other side of this: don't let yourself become bitter. Christ loved the Church even when there was nothing intrinsic about the Church to inspire such boundless love, and we are called to do no less.

Abandoned and discontent

When I saw the headline to the story "500 Student riot at Cali highschool", I was shocked. It is impossible not to blame people for their own actions, and that certainly includes kids after a certain age. But that age isn't 16, it is more like 3-4...if that. But there is a greater problem here, one that starts at the heart of it all: in the United States, our families are falling apart.

We are turning into a weak nation. People simply do not want to fight anymore, for anything. They want to maintain the status quo, to remain under the radar, and just get by. Lost in consumerism, materialism, and myriad other "isms", we have simply lost sight of what is important.

Last year, when another relationship of mine came to an end, I questioned every ethic, every standard, every paradigm I had learned. I learned that I had no idea what it meant to be a Godly woman, or what I should look for in a Godly man. Then I read "Getting Serious about Getting Married." And while I learned a lot about really dating someone, I learned a lot more about what it means to start a family, and the power and significance the institution of the family really has on the individual and society.

I'll speak from my own experience on this point: I went to a high school where disrespect for authority was rampant. I was as much a part of it as anyone, though perhaps not as much as some. I come from a broken home and have felt the anxiety, self-doubt, and fear that comes from that. Even so, I'm taking time in preparation for marriage to relearn how I behave so that I can be a Godly wife and mother.

Those students are only partially to blame in the big picture. While they are wholly accountable for their actions, their parents and our society are too. If my generation does not start taking family more seriously than it does, does not stop serial dating in lieu of something much more fulfilling, then things will never change.

Brandon came down from Boulder (where he is for this semester on internship) for the weekend. We went to our first "nearly-wed/newly-wed" bible study. The bible study leader, Brett, said that confidence starts from within the marriage, not from anything outside. I can't rely on job performance, grades, or anything else to give me that. I must rely first on my God and then on my spouse. Likewise, children learn their behaviors from their families, from their parents. But how can they do that if their parents are never home, are always fighting, or are divorced? Abandoned and discontent, they are left to wander the roads of life practically alone. To change this, we must strengthen our marriages and families to give them the support structure they need.

Fractals

I'm not sure at all how we transitioned into the topic of fractals today in my Business Entitites class, but we did.

In colloquial usage, a fractal is a shape that is recursively constructed or self-similar, that is, a shape that appears similar at all scales of magnification and is therefore often referred to as "infinitely complex."

Alas, upon reading the Wikipedia entry, I was reminded of those dreaded days of Geometry way back in high school, most of which I slept through! Nonetheless, here is what I picked-up: a very cool graphic! The explanation behind it aside, all I have to say is "oooooo, coooool!"

The surface of a mountain can be modeled on a computer by using a fractal: Start with a triangle in 3D space and connect the central points of each side by line segments, resulting in 4 triangles. The central points are then randomly moved up or down, within a defined range. The procedure is repeated, decreasing at each iteration the range by half. The recursive nature of the algorithm guarantees that the whole is statistically similar to each detail.