Classes are done, students are gone for the summer, town population has thus been cut in half. If you ever have to be in State College, PA, summer is the time to be here. I got a new bike the other day, and have been saving gas money like crazy the last few days. :) Hopefully this will provide a necessary venue for exercise before frisbee and softball start up. The State College Ultimate League (SCUL) is very much hard-core--nothing like our games at Calvin, even with the occasional temper tantrum thrown here or there. The funny thing is, for all its competetiveness, people are very nice and have really good sportsmanship, not to mention they all know the rules of the game like they wrote them up themselves. Anyway, that starts in a week or so, and will be great. I wish we could have another Calvinist game, however. It will be interesting if we ever get together one of these years (when we're all old and decrepit)...
There are a lot of things I miss about Calvin. The assumption that there is a God, and being grounded in that helps to resolve many an ethical and moral argument with people. Try using God as an excuse to tell people why you think they shouldn't be living with their girlfriend/boyfriend (I've pretty much given up on the pre-marital sex issue), and they'll kindly tell you how naive you are, and how they respect me for my beliefs and such, you know, the typical post-modernistic reply (what's good for you may not apply to me, etc.). So what is the foundation in these peoples' lives? What concrete source do they turn to when faced with a difficult question or decision about reality?
I don't know about other fields of study, but in biology, if you try to argue that it was much more likely (p-value<<< 0.05) that God 'formed' the earth, rather than it 'becoming' what it is now by random events, people will again, look at you kindly and say you're naive, then probably mark you off their list of 'potentially good scientists'. I had to do a paper regarding this subject--i.e., what regulates plant development, outside and beyond genes and the environment? I took that to say 'what regulates life in general?', and actually had to try to convince everyone in my class that a) you cannot prove this with science (that was part of our assignment--to prove it with an experiment), and b) it was not random formation.
I don't know if any of this is making sense, because I am in a rambling mood, but it has been one of those days where you just don't quite feel like you're doing your job as a Christian in a non-Christian (and sometimes anti-Christian) society. Those are the days when I think I miss Calvin the most, and wish I could just go to a chapel service in the morning, just to be calmed down. Even seeing Maestro Rienstra at a LOFT service would cheer me up quite a bit right now. :)
That's enough complaining for today. I'll try to write a more cheery message next time. :)