Fan into Flame the Gift of God

I've had little desire to blog as of late. Life has been too real, too pressing, too crushing. What would I say, if I wanted to maintain a degree of levity and optimism? I will not allow this blog to be a place to rant and mope (any longer). If I have something to say to the world, it should be worthy and uplifting.

Perhaps that is why I'm writing today. I've been pulled up, accomplished much, and find myself in a good place. My marriage is strong. My work is going well. My bank account is full. I live in an apartment with no cracks in the doors and central air.

I work now at Truline Bearings, a Christian airplane parts machine shop. It is an astounding place with no premium health insurance, an excellent work environment, meaningful pay, and every chance for advancement. I'm a machinist there, running a CNC lathe, doing facing and turning operations on our bronze, aluminum, and aluminum-bronze bearings. It gets repetitive and my body aches from standing and wrenching off tight parts, but I have never felt more valued or valuable in an occupation. I'm constantly placed in situations of responsibility and trust, even despite my mistakes.

I live in Hartstown Village Apartments in Mentor, OH. The apartment is smallish but so completely our own. Jessica and I painted many of the rooms such vibrant shades. Our bedroom is a chocolate milk brown and a rich, velvety red. Our living room is a sandy tan and a forest tree-green. It wouldn't be the same without the paint on these walls. We are fortuitous, both for our income and our landlord's consent.

The basics of my life before you, blog of mine, I now must let you know what I pursue. Our house is filled but disorganized. I hunger to see it cleaned and set aright. Particularly, I want to see my kitchen transformed into a place of shelves and pot racks, spices and sauces. I have let that day slip away from me, but now I have energy. I shall seek it.

I want to be freed of my tuition debt. Graduate school has not been kind to me, leaving me with half the credits needed to graduate, but also $8000 in debt, in addition to the $20000 remaining of my college debt. The value of the education I set aside to later discuss. The financial fallout is my target. I seek to be debt free in two years. Already, by aid of my parents and Truline's excellent pay, I have cut my indebtedness to the Federal Loan service to $21,269.03. With time, I shall be debt free.

I want my marriage to remain strong. We have faced many trials, fought many fights, suffered much suffering. But I would not face these things and survive on without my beloved beside me. I must do my duties as  a husband, to support, to clean, to do other small tasks about the house. I must plan vacations to preserve our mental stability. Even now we are considering a day vacation to the aquarium.

A friend of mine has been talking to the Internet, explaining his life and the plans he's laid out to accomplish mighty goals. I am no speaker, nor do I have a video camera to speak to. But I find something useful in declaring my intentions, even if no one hears them. It makes them more real. And it seems I need more real things in my life, not less, only that they be good and not ill this time.

Online Training

In order to begin my shadowing period at Chik-Fil-A, I must complete a rigorous battery of video watching and testing. The concept intrigues me. On one hand, I feel like they are essentially getting free work hours by having me do this on my free time. On the other, I know how flippant other food service venues can be about their training. At the very least, Chik will know that I've seen all the videos and that they will be reinforced in the shadowing process.

Signed up for classes today, waitlisted on two others that I would've preferred to get in. Only two this time, to see how I'll do with my schedule in Chik-Fil-A, Grace Extension, and youth group. My pastimes have already taken the brunt of loss in this season of my life. I resigned as an officer in World of Warcraft and will most probably cancel my and Jessica's subscription soon. D&D may soon follow, depending on how my schedule with Chik works out (40 hours fit into evenings are not a simple task).

I feel inspired by a victory in a friend's life. A wise man, he has saved a significant amount of money and is going to finish paying off his college debt soon. This is a mighty feat in this day and age, one I hope to imitate. It is a positive envy, not wishing him to be placed back in debt, but a desire to join him in a debt-less (or lessened) freedom. I will have to set up a new budget soon.

Today has not gone very successfully. Tomorrow I will act with firmer diligence. The sooner I finish this training, the sooner I am able to start getting paid.

Young Adults

It is bizarre, looking at my life. I have such a wretched tendency to avoid maturity. Throughout college, throughout marriage, throughout seminary, I continue in my childish manner. I play WoW and other assorted video games. I am lax in my bible readies and devotionals. My hygiene is lackluster as I'm sure my wife will most readily attest. Even the very thing I think I should devote my entire life to, the acquisition and teaching of biblical and theological knowledge, I procrastinate and care little about.

My life has been a sad tale due to my immaturity. My friendships weaken. My marriage tenses. My work relationships are strained. My house relationships (as I currently live and have lived in another man's home) are always just on the brink of confrontation. I spend half my life pretending that I'm a responsible adult and the other half shirking those very same responsibilities.

The future is terrifying. For the first time in my recollection, I will be employed full time at a position in Chik-Fil-A Mentor. For the first time, I feel inspired, concerned over my performance. If I succeed, I will be a stable bread winner for my family, a successful adult in at least one fashion. If I fail, I will most probably get fired, or worse, eke out an existence of self-loathing and job-loathing. I have another job, working as a teacher in a homeschool program. If I succeed, children shall know about biology, physical science, and logic. If I fail, they will be unprepared for their future education.

Adulthood is responsibility, serious business. Success and Failure are grand things, real potentialities. There is no one to hold my hand, no one to let me slip by if I don't do well enough. Real life, real consequences. God save me. At least I have a life interesting enough to write about again.

Ghostcrawler was a Jerk, But...

After dialoguing a little more, I've started to understand some of the frustration of healers in the Cataclysm era. It's not that the content is more difficult (though it is a part). It's not that people don't understand this difficulty and modify behavior to defeat it (though it too is a part). There's a large part of anger due to the arrogance and dismissiveness on Ghostcrawler's part, but that doesn't explain the backlash entire.

The problem is that Blizzard did not orchestrate this transition as well as they should've. LFD in Wrath required a very low threshold of communication and strategy due to the presence of extreme gear. It conditioned players to expect survival and victory, to view healers as subpar if they could not keep up with the fallout of ignoring mechanics and chain pulling. There needed to be some more exemplary work done to ease the transition to a mana conversation/ survival-focused (as opposed to survival-given) PuG style.

Hindsight is 20/20, but they could've done this using the pre-Cata events. It's a situation where you have a ton of players experiencing the same, new content. Why not explain the new mechanics using it? I'm imagining minibosses that can't just be healed through, adds that NEED to be CC'd to prevent a wipe. Extreme examples to illustrate a point: this is not Wrath. Cata is not what you're used to.

But personally, I put the brunt of the responsibility of individual players. Blizzard does not make players rude or judgmental; players do that to themselves. Given any threshold of communication or strategy, it is the players' duty to adjust with consideration for the other players. If the players as an aggregate gave grace and expected hurdles as we adjusted to the new system, no matter how jarring, it would've been a thousandfold smoother.

Ironically, here is where being a Calvinist becomes useful. Our nature is so depraved, I have no reason to expect such grace. This unpleasantness, at its root, is the result of human brokeness, partly on Blizzard's side, mostly on our side.

Cataclysm Saved 5-man Instances

This post is in response to a good friend of mine, particularly this blog post: http://cellotlix.blogspot.com/2011/01/ghostcrawler-youre-fucking-moron.html

Wow, that’s a lot of angst. My natural response is to defend the game, a source of delight for myself. So, I will dialogue against your position. I apologize if anything I say is too antagonistic; it is not intended to be.

As a tank/dps, I view the changes to healing from that perspective, which admittedly limits my anger. I don’t see this so much as a nerf to healers as a challenge to tank/dps. In Cata, you are no longer free to say when you die, “IT IS THE HEALER’S FAULT!” In Wrath, that wasn’t necessarily the case.

For example: Heroic Trial of Champion, tank was standing in the Death and Decay on the last boss. Never moved out of it. At least two melee dps were dancing in and out of it to deal some damage. The healer never went below 50% mana. A source of raid-quality gear, when run by a reasonable healer and a stupid tank, is completely manageable. This is the norm of Wrath: dangerous mechanics are safely ignored, because the healer COULD heal you through. That potential carrying, though, becomes a burden for healers. It’s your DUTY to heal through the fail. A tank dies, the subtle undertone would always be, “But the healer could’ve done better.”

Now, as a tank/dps, I cannot say that, even theoretically. Example: If I run in, even as a 76 tank in a 74 dungeon, I empirically observe I will die if I pull too much or ignore fire or dots or don’t use my cooldowns. I, and I ALONE, can help the healer keep me alive. If I die, the burden was on my shoulders, never the healer’s.

In ironic contradiction to your assault, Ghostcrawler and Blizzard are trying to move the community away from the “Blame the healer” mentality, not pushing them towards it. If the healer COULD save your sorry butt, there is the subtle but easily attainable implication that she SHOULD. If she cannot, the burden is not upon her. Now, people are still in the Wrath mentality, assuming that this is still a manageable burden. If things work well, it is entirely possible that healers will be judged, not more, but less!

But what if they don’t convince people that this change is the case? What if people still yell and complain that the healer should keep them alive, when it is not their capacity to do so, given player stupidity? Put simply, that is not Blizzard’s capacity to solve. Indeed, it never was.

Telling Blizzard they need to make a fun environment for healers is like telling them they have to moderate the Internet. Anonymous self-centered people are far more vocal then IRL self-centered people, always. Blizzard cannot make these people stop judging you without giving you a 100% of success, no matter what the failures of your party members. Even then, people will stick out their tongues and say “Healing is EZ Modezors!!11one.” This was the place of DPS in Wrath. It doesn’t matter how many bosses you kill, you’re still expendable, replaceable meat, a warm body to fill out a raid or party quota.

In summary, the healing changes Blizzard made were not out of hatred of healers, but out of love. The trajectory of Wrath style 5-mans was easy to easier, inevitably putting blame on the healers as the decider between success and defeat. Cata dungeon philosophy, however, reminds us of the group nature of 5-mans. Your healer is now a person, one who needs your help. She is not and never can be again an anonymous stream of endless heals, which if insufficient, imply failure on her end. DPS have regained their dignity: we need to interrupt, CC, do things BESIDES our rotation. Tanks are weaker now; they can no longer be the rockstar instaqueue gods who bless us with their presence (though undoubtably some will continue in this manner). The tank needs his healer and dps, just as they need him.

It is my contention that Cataclysm has been a great equalizer. Tanks are not invincible. Healers are not pocket Jesuses who can raise all runs from pits of defeat. DPS actually do something besides DPS. It's a sharp and ugly transition, but it was necessary. Therefore, I am grateful.

Blessed Assurance

It takes a lot to knock a Calvinist off his assurance. Books have been written (a particularly good one by James Hogg about it going too far) concerning our unflagging trust in our own election. Our God is absolutely sovereign and his choice is so ironclad absolute that if he picks us, we can rest assured (hah!) that no devil or man, even our own foolish self, can wrest us away. This has its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantage: we never have to toss at night, doubting whether God truly loves us or whether we are good enough to receive his love. No matter how black the night may be, God is confidently there and still holds this relationship.

Disadvantage: we get lazy. Having so perfect an assurance, we don't delve into the moral and ethical aspects of Christianity as much as we should. Now, this is merely an expectation; many great Calvinists are mightily moral. But on the whole, a Calvinist will have less reason to perform righteous works, given that our salvation is not in question.

Methodists, as my observation allows, have an assurance based on the inner witness of the Spirit. God speaks to them, warms their heart, assures them that they are well within the family. This witness of the Holy Spirit is interwoven with one's own spirit's witness, that through reading Scripture's precepts and coming one's life to Scripture, we can rationally deduce that we are within the good graces of God.

Without question, this results in a motivation to holier living. Your assurance is linked to your holy behavior; living as a sinner will earn a rebuke from the Spirit and, reasonably, put your correlation with Scripture into doubt. But I feel like it holds a great weakness compared to the Calvinist assurance: it immediately falters during the dark moments when God feels distant. The assumption is that when one is right with God, his warm assurance is constant, never ending. But it seems that there are time of perseverance where God does not warm the soul, where darkness lies on the heart and closeness seems empty. The answer from a Calvinist is simple; cling to the Lord all the more, but be assured, Christ is still in you. From a Methodist, I'd wager, the answer would be to pray, read, and worship more, seeking that assurance to return. But if the assurance is not present, if you do not having the witness of the Spirit at a moment, can you truly call yourself saved? If Calvinists are too complacent in their sovereign God, Methodist are too dependent on an experiential aspect that may not always be present.

Now, application. As a Christian, nominally a Calvinist, I feel pulled to the necessity of holy living, but perhaps I needed a Methodist kick to get there. The theology of Methodism is backed by an an astounding bounty of spiritual fruit. Pondering it, I wonder if I would not benefit from integrating some portions into my Calvinism. Is it strange to say, by going to a Methodist seminary, I will become a better Calvinist?

Who I am to Myself

Self-identity: by this I mean, the categories and adjectives you place on yourself and understand yourself through (and thus, not necessarily how others categorize and define you unless you choose to incorporate their perspective). We all have one, be it good or bad. Some people are nerds and devote themselves fervently to a subgenre of esoteric skill or knowledge. Some people are jocks and excel in a sport or sports. Some people thrive in leadership and see themselves, even subconsciously, as directors and initiators of group purpose. But self-identity is such a wider thing than these. Nationality, ethnicity, religion, relationships, education, and every ounce of one's history play into self-identity.

So who am I? I'll describe the part of my identity that inspired this thought. I finished my Hebrew test and know, passionately know, that I aced it. If I didn't, it was by a severe moment of hallucination. This sense of doing well on a test, being an excellent student, being graded for my knowledge and proving worthy, it is an integral part of who I am. I am the good test-taker, the smart guy, the scholarly pursuant. I forgot how good it feels to be in a system where my talents are the prime manner of judgment. It is ego-boosting. I am puffed with pride and all but strutting.

Is this a sin? Am I placing value in something that is not the Lord? Shouldn't I derive my self-value, my self-identity from kinship with the Christ? Indeed, these are true, and as a healthy Christian, I would define myself and value myself in this way. But I would say I have not been healthy in my spiritual life for some time, and while I do know I should find value foremostly in Christ, I find so much affirmation in this simple thing, a mere mid-term.

If anything, this part of myself is what I lost my senior year in college. I did poorly on my final paper and I lost this feeling, this academic pride. I just might be regaining it in this semester. God willing, I will learn to integrate my identity as a Christian seamlessly with my academic identity. I exhibit many anxieties and flaws as an academic because I still doubt myself and don't perform as well as I know I could. But until I become full, I praise God who gave back to me a little missing piece of me.