Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

Proselytizing in Prison: Letting our faith see the light

I once ditched a boring "team building" academic meeting to hang out for a bit with a bunch of jail prisoners.  One of them was a man who had been incarcerated for sleeping in the snow on someone's private property.  He was planning a Bible study session with the rest of his Christian inmates.  In this podcast, we look at Paul, who also proselytized while in prison - and quite successfully.  We see what this means when it comes to living not for the things of this world, but for the joy of God's world.

We Are All Ants: Carrying holy crumbs

Quantum physics tells us that we understand very little about the physical matter that makes up the universe, the way we proceed through time, and the nature of events in the universe.  We consider Tony the ant, who lives in an anthill, bringing carrying huge crumbs of unidentifiable organic material back to the anthill.  The most important and powerful people who live in this world, who live in the Kingdom of People, are like Tony the Ant when he manages to bring back a piece of pure dark chocolate.  It is a blazing success that, in the greater scheme of the universe, is incredibly minor.  What truly matters is what we do in the Kingdom of God.  We consider what this means, how to accomplish it, and what the Bible says about the way God wants us to live in the anthill.

A Good Name and a Good Website Name

We look at Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and at how I managed to get BuzzKing.com as my domain.  We see that Proverbs and Ecclesiastes both tell us about the importance of having a good name.  They also tell us that it is important that we, as believers, remember that we represent the Church at all times.  We need to protect our good name - and the good name of the Church.  We also see that there comes a time - at death - when all that we might have obtained by corrupting ourselves in this life disappears, and all that is left is our name. 

Every Day Is Easter: We can all rise

I once sat with a woman in her nineties who was on comfort care.  Her adult children could not be there because they were out of the country, so I was with her.  She ended up telling me why she had no fear whatsoever of death - and it had to do with Easter.  We take a bit of a biblical survey, looking at both the literal version of the Easter story, and at the more personal side of the resurrection story.  We see that getting caught up in defending the resurrection from a scientific perspective misses the true gift of Easter to each of us personally.

The Skull: Faith and Forgiveness

Luke tells us that Jesus died at a place called The Skull, from which we derive the Latin word Calvary.  I once saw a skull of a Pueblo Indian.  The goal of the display was to show us that the Pueblos ground corn with sandstone, and so when they ate cornmeal, they also chewed on grit, thus wearing down their molars.  But to me, the skull reminded me that real people - long dead - once lived in those cave dwellings.  Jesus chose his death at The Skull to tell give us the most important advice ever offered humanity, and he backed it up with Old Testament references.

Palm Sunday, to a Kid of Cement and Steel: The donkey as a symbol of peace and royalty

We look at the two times in my life that I have encountered donkeys, once as a boy on the edge of town, and once in Santorini, Greece.  These incidents remind me of the two biblical qualities of donkeys, and why this makes the donkey the perfect animal for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem.  We also look at why Jesus was not the savior that many people in Jerusalem were hoping for, and this reinforces why he was indeed on a donkey.  We look, as well, at the Old Testament prediction of a king on a donkey...

3D Animation: Was Joseph an autistic genius?

I taught 3D modeling and animation at my university.  I had a student who apparently was on the autism spectrum, and one day I knocked his notebook computer off his desk onto the floor - and he did not react.  We look at a figure from the Old Testament, one of the fathers of the Israelite people, Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers.  There is a theory that he was also on the spectrum.  We look at what we can learn about faith, forgiveness, and achieving all we can as we strive to serve God and God's people.

The Meeting Place: Riding on three tires and a rim

We look at the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus - and at a man whom I once drove behind as he bounced along on three wheels and a broken rim.  His determination to make his journey, to get to his meeting place, reminds us of where God is truly located, where God lives.  We also see that although history has assumed that the Israelites and Jews thought that they had to be in the Temple to be with God, their beliefs were not so different than ours, or of that man throwing up sparks as he drove down Venice Boulevard.

The Sylmar Earthquake: Fish all over the floor

When I was 15, there was an Earthquake that did a lot of damage in Southern California.  A fish store that I frequented had all its aquariums land on the cement floor.  It was a huge failure, a loss for the owner.  We talk about one of the biggest failures in the Bible, Peter denying Jesus after Jesus had wanted him to serve as the rock upon which he would build his church.  Peter did rise up, however, and do just that.  He overcame his failure.  But he was also executed, we believe, for his trouble.  We talk about letting God take our failures and turn them into successes - and about letting God decide just what sort of success we will achieve.

Making it to Spain: The Pickpocket

We look at the long-standing mystery of whether Paul the evangelist ever made it all the way to Spain - and we look at Buzz making it to Spain, but hardly behaving the way Jesus would have.  We consider the historical data that supports the theory that Paul spread the Word in Spain.  We look at what Paul had to say about forgiveness in Romans, the letter to the church he wanted to visit on his way to Spain...

Only one rudder, only one sail

We look at Noah's ark - the story that is eerily similar to older, polytheistic flood stories.  We consider the act of God destroying all of humanity, due to its total corruption, but showing enough mercy to allow a remnant to survive.  We look at a natural disaster, a much smaller flood, that happened in Colorado, and how such natural phenomena remind us of our vulnerability, our dependency on God.  We note that in the flood story, the Ark is engineered by God to very specific details: height, length, width, the number of decks, and what it is to be made out of.  But nowhere does God provide what would seemingly be very critical information when making a boat that humans are going to occupy.  Why was this information left out?

Voyage au centre de la Terre

My mother identified strongly as French.  Thus, when my best friend's mother lent me Voyage to the Center of the Earth to read, she immediately took me to get the real version: the original French.  We look at the story of these adventurers and their naivety.  We also look at Proverbs, Chapter 2, and a speech to a son by a father, who is trying to teach the son about the importance of gaining wisdom and living the way God wants us to.  We see the hidden relationship, as detailed by my friend's mother, between Voyage au centre de la Terre and Proverbs.

A torque wrench is like giving: Gaining Leverage

When I was a boy, my father ran a car shop with a buddy of his I called Uncle John.  One day Uncle John taught me about torque wrenches and - more importantly - leverage.  We talk in this episode about the reasons that a Christian gives, and the constrains on our practice of giving.  We also talk about why giving is very much like the leverage we get from a torque wrench with a very long handle.

Pursued by God and a Turkish Carpet Salesman

Wendy and I were once in Istanbul.  We were pursued aggressively by a Turkish carpet salesman who was desperate to make a sale, given their terrible economy.  We look at Psalm 23, traditionally used at funerals and memorial services by Christians.  But this Psalm is not about saying goodbye to a loved one.  We look at what Psalm 23 is truly about - and why it reminds us of this relentless carpet salesman.

From the Old to the New Testament: From Fact to Fiction?

I once had dinner with Sony Bono.  I did not write about this dinner contemporaneously and am only now talking about it more than forty years after this occurred.  So, I might have some of the details wrong.  The Bible is also not a contemporaneous document.  There were also some reasons for the authors to twist or exaggerate parts of the story - they were telling us about faith, not about the literal details of ancient history.  So what do we make of this?  How does this impact our understanding of the Bible and our belief in God?