How Far is Too Far?

There's been a lot of talk as a result of Mark Driscoll crashing the strange fire conference and I'm not going to weigh in those matters at this late point in the game because they're not important to what I want to discuss.  What I do want to talk about is a common response I saw in the midst of these discussions.  A conversation would be going along about what various people thought about Driscoll's actions and the theological truths of Cessationism versus Continuationism and suddenly someone would chime in with:

"What does it matter?"

I was always taken aback by this response.  I know that they weren't trying to be flippant with God's word, and it came from people who I know to be solid mature Christians, but are legitimately asking the question as long as we have the fundamentals down isn't everything else of secondary importance?

So the question that springs to my mind in the midst of all this is at what point have we perverted so much of the rest of the Gospel that we are now teaching a gospel of our own making?  At what point do we, like this Justin Bieber fan

go too far? (yikes!)

The short answer is I don't have an answer.  I don't think it's possible for anyone but God to weigh the inner most workings of a man's heart and go "This one has truly trusted in Me alone".   That said, I think there are three points that are worth considering:

1) Secondary issues are a misnomer
2) We've been given instructions to test the validity of our own faith and the faith of others
3) It shouldn't be about how far we can get on secondary issues (see #1)

(Does this seem too long and you just want to skip to a short summary?  Skip to the tl;dr section, and read the rest when you have the time.

1: Secondary issues are a misnomer

2nd Timothy 3:16-17 states that

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

We also know from Deuteronomy 4:23-25 that God jealously guards the sanctity of His divinity and Leviticus 20 verses 22,23 and 26 states

"You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them.
You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine."

This does not paint the picture of a God who doesn't care about "secondary issues" We have been called to live in perfect accordance with God's commandments.  We will fail, constantly and miserably fail, but we are called to strive for that perfection of holiness because everything in the scriptures are of primary importance.

Now yes, I understand that when people say "primary" what they mean is that which results in Salvation namely a proper faith in the Gospel that Christ died for our sins, was raised from the dead on the third day, and it is salvation through faith in His works alone that justifies us, that we're all one body of believers and it doesn't matter at the end of the day if you believe that the miraculous works of the Spirit have ended, or if they continue.  Which is a great segue to number 2!

2: We've been given instructions to test the validity of our own faith and the faith of others.

There are two main illustrations we are given to test our own faith and the faith of those around us.

John 13:35 - "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 14:15 - “If you love me, you will keep my commandments"

The first quote by Christ is rather self explanatory someone who has truly placed their faith in Christ will love the body of believers, but it's the second one that relates to the matter at hand.  Someone who has genuinely placed their faith in Christ, what people call the "primary" issue will be directly reflected by how they treat so called "secondary" issues! 

Which is why it very much matters how people either misinterpret or fragrantly abuse passages to support/undermine a given position.  Now I don't want to get into the meat of Cessationism and Continuationism, I think that would be a great post for another day, however it is worth noting that those who teach that the Spirit still works trough miraculous signs and wonders typically teach that one should speak in tongues because "A spirit language is the greatest gift the Holy Spirit can give a believer." (Reason #4 on this page).  Now ignoring for a moment that I would say that the Holy Spirit sealing our salvation for all eternity as taught in Ephesians 1 is the greatest gift given by the Holy Spirit and also ignoring that 1 Corinthians 14:5 states that prophecy is a better gift than tongues, the problem is that 1 Corinthians 14 also gives strict guidelines for speaking in tongues such as


²⁷ If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. ²⁸ If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.

 This is very clear and direct teachings yet it is completely ignored within the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement.  

Now no, I am by no means claiming that as a Christian I keep 100% of the Bible, I am still subject to the flesh and live in a fallen world.  However, when confronted with such a clear cut verse that attacks something I enjoy doing, I respond with submission.  Oh I will fall, sometimes I will fall so hard I'll find myself living in the old pattern of sin again, but I will strive against the temptation because I love God with all that I am and I desire to do his commandments.

Which brings me to the last thing 3: It shouldn't be about how far we can get on secondary issues (see #1)

My dad used to work in a Nuclear plant when he was in college.  He tells a humourous incident in which one of his co-workers was carrying a container marked "Hazardous Waste".  As he was transporting it, he accidentally stumbled and dropped the container.  Can you imagine this man had just stood there?  If he said to himself, "I can safely be exposed for X seconds so there's no rush"? Or if he said, "I need to be 10 feet away to be safe" so he methodically counted out 10 feet then stood there?

From what I'm told, this man, who was rather tall and gangly, resembled something more like this:

As it turned out the container was mislabelled and he was never in any danger at all, but he wasn't going to stick around to find that out! 

I posted the question how far is too far?  How far can I go down bad theological trails before a denomination ceases to be a part of the church and becomes a cult teaching heretical doctrines?  But it shouldn't be about  how far someone can go and "still be a Christian" Recognizing that God is a holy God who demands we follow His commandments, when we see a brother or sister following bad doctrine our response should never be, "Oh well, it's a secondary issue so it doesn't matter". 

Sadly in modern Christianity, the passage "judge not lest you be judge" has been so badly abused and mistaught that we think you cannot hold anyone accountable for doing something wrong.  In 1 Corinthians 5, however, Paul is practically yelling at them "Why are you not judging sin within the church?!"

When we see someone sinning, which includes following false doctrine, we should with all love pull them aside privately and take them to the scriptures so that they can respond to them.  Of course we should allow freedom in the Spirit on areas where God has not explicitly stated what we should or should not do, but when the Bible clearly teaches something such as "don't speak in tongues without an interpreter and then limit it to 2 or 3 at a time" and we see whole congregations speaking over one another without any interpretation then we need to call them back to proper worship.  If they respond with repentance then we've strengthened their walk in the Lord, if they respond with disdain then using the above passage as a litmus test we can reasonably assume that because they do not delight to keep God's commandments then they are not His followers and we should be bold enough to treat them as such.  (i.e. pray for their salvation and witness to them)


tl;dr version/summary:

I don't believe that I or anyone can with all authority say "here is a line in a sand and anyone teaching more than X number of theologically false statements has created a new gospel"

I believe that saying anything in the Bible is a secondary issue is a misnomer and demeans the Holiness of God.  While there are grey areas that God has given us freedom to do as the Spirit leads us to do, every theological truth is a primary part of the perfection of God that we have been called to perfectly emulate.

I believe that it is important to test our own faith and the faith of others.  We won't agree on everything about the Bible and that's okay, but when we are flagrantly disobey the commands of the Bible then we need to be rebuked.  Those who are in Christ will ultimately rejoice at the discipline because they love God and His commandments.  Those who continually chafe or lash out against discipline should be regarded as on who is unsaved (as described in Matthew 18 on Church discipline)

I believe that it shouldn't be about how far one can safely go into bad theology before we call them out on it.  1 Corinthains 9:24-27 (emphasis added) says:

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified."

We are to be in constant spiritual training constantly strive and checking ourselves and likewise encouraging fellow believers around us so that we can have confidence in our salvation lest we come before the throne of God and find ourselves saying "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name" only to hear

"I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness"

And I suppose that's kind of the thing.  At the end of the day I believe that those who are truly in Christ will leave churches who teach an abundance of false theology because those who are truly in Christ don't desire to be far away from Him at all and that those who stay in such church do so because they cannot stand sound doctrine but desire to have their ear tickled pink.

How Far is Too Far?

Raging Against the Machine?

I posed this question on (inyour)Facebook the other day.

“Obama professes to be a born again believer. Giving him the benefit of the doubt that this is true, how should that affect our attitudes and actions towards him and what he does as a fellow believer? Or to pose it another way, is it possible to rage against the machine without raging against the Creator who placed the machine there?”

Unsurprisingly, I have an opinion on the matter. We first know from Romans 13:1-7 that God has divinely appointed governments and rulers for His purpose and that we are to obey them (Here are the first two verses)

“1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

That is a fairly significant warning in verse 2. The one who resists the will of the authorities is actually resiting God! Consider the context of the people Paul was writing to in Romans, the Jewish people were dispersed from their home land with a foreign power in charge, Paul had recently gone on his mission to kill all the believers, and every time Paul turned around he was being violently attacked by the religious leaders of the day; both pagan and Jewish.

God was certainly not blind to these facts nor was He forgetful of them when He, working through Paul, penned these words for our benefit. This raises a whole host of questions worth considering such as “From a Religious perspective should the colonists rebelled?” or the question I seek to answer here, “Are we sinning when we attack Obama/Leaders in Congress?”

Long story short? It depends. See we have a unique situation in the way our government has been established. Our government revolves around the reality that “we the people” are in charge... more or less by proxy of the fact that we get to elect those who are in charge. One of the founding principals of our government is that we can call out the foibles of our leaders and indeed we are encouraged to do so! (which is a beef I have with Obama, the man believes himself to be foible-less a perfect man in all his does, but that's neither here nor there)

However, this is not some carte blanche invitation to rip into our leaders. I don't think it is appropriate to say any leader is in place as a punishment, nor do I think it's right to go around screaming hate at our leaders the way democrats did under Bush and now Republicans like Glen Beck and Mark Levin do under Obama. Scriptures give us instructions on how we are to deal with confronting someone in 1 Timothy 5:1&2

“1 Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father. Treat younger men like brothers, 2 older women like mothers, younger women like sisters, in all purity.”

So yes, it is appropriate for us to call out our leaders when there is hypocrisy in their statements, it is appropriate to quote what they say and discuss the what the Bible has to say about those statements, it is even appropriate for us, working within the confines of the due process of our government, to remove a corrupt politician from office. What I fail to see, however, is scriptural support for tearing into a politician with no other purpose than to make them loose face or even for two politicians to engage in a smear campaign on each other. Where's the Christ like love in that?

Raging Against the Machine?

My LASIK Experience Part 3

The Followup

A friend of mine just messaged me wanting to know everything about my (intra)LASIK experience and I realized that I never did a follow up post.  I'm 10 days shy from my 6th month anniversary of LASIK and still completely loving it.  Here's the run down of my post-op experience follow by some general advice for people thinking about getting.

1) My vision is slightly better than 20/20 - It's not 20/15 or anything like that, but when I do the eye test, I can read past the 20/20 line.

2) My vision feels (but isn't) slightly worse at night time - This was an odd adjustment for me.  I've always had *really* good night vision.  LASIK actually increased the amount of light entering my eyes (a common side effect).  At night time this has the unfortunate side affect of creating halos around light sources which gives the impression of your vision being worse.  It also had made it slightly harder to read street signs at night time, but not significantly so.

3) Expect to spend another $100 in eye-drops - For the first 2 months you need to use special eye drops which don't have preservatives in them.  So instead of being able to buy the cheap bottle that you stick in a pocket, you have to buy these little tubes that get about 3 uses before you need the next tube.  Keeping your eyes hydrated helps it heal correctly.  If you let them get dry... well you know how your contacts crinkle up when they get dry?  Imagine that little flap they cut in your eye doing that.  Plus it helps to keep things sterile.  I went through 3 boxes of the disposable drops and two bottles (once it was no longer necessary to use the kind without preservatives) in the past 6 months.  I might need an eye drop when I stay up too late every couple of weeks, but once I got past month 4 my eyes stopped feeling so dry.

4) I still forget I don't wear contacts anymore - No I don't poke my eye trying to get them out, I'll just be sitting there and go "oh yeah, this is just what my vision is now.

5) My vision has remained stable - This might be a factor of age, but my vision had remained at the same level for the past couple of years and had only slightly gotten worse the past couple of years before that.  Lord willing, I will enjoy this level of eye sight until I start going far sighted with in my older years.

Overall summary: I've been thoroughly satisfied with LASIK, it was well worth the money for my particular circumstances.  If my vision was only slightly bad (say -2.00 or better) I don't think it would have been worthwhile, however, it's been a long time since my vision was only -2.00 so I might be underestimating how bad it is.  I also wouldn't get if my eyesight was still changing every year.  Additionally, women have the further consideration that your eyesight can change during a  pregnancy.  It's not too common from what I hear, but it's still something to think about.

General advice to anyone getting it:

1) Shop around.  Most of the LASIK docs I talked to would do a price match of a competitors provided it was an equivalent service (for example, they wouldn't give you intraLASIK for the price that a competitor was doing regular LASIK, but they would match the competitor's intraLASIK price).

2) Wait for a good sale.  Almost every holiday these doctors would have some sale (Memorial Day sale, Christmas sale, thanksgiving, president's day, etc)

3) Don't get tricked by gimmicks - One place was offering lifetime touch up work to the procedure provided you came once a year and did your eye exam with him.  The cost of the exam was inflated and out of network for insurance companies.  You're not going to want to do LASIK twice.  It's worth is once, but unless there is something majorly wrong you're a) not going to need yearly eye exams and b)  not going to want to go through the hassle of preping your eyes for surgery and spending two months keeping them hydrated!

Find a place that gives a good deal and is reputable and you'll be fine.

4) Ask around... a lot.  Seriously, ask friends who they went to, problems they faced, check yelp and google, and anything else you can think of.  You want a good deal, but you also want to make sure you've chosen a doctor who has your back in the very miniscule chance something does go wrong.

5) Do it! I've been rather frank with any slight thing that was negative with the procedure so I can only hope you haven't gotten the wrong impression.  LASIK has been non-stop amazing since the very first moment they finished the procedure.  It was pricey (especially for someone like me who wants to get a $10 product for $3), but it was worth ever last cent!

My LASIK Experience Part 3

The Garage (Creative Writting Idea)

I had this idea for a starter for a creative writing exercise:

Ben and Kristen are newly weds who have just found their dream home.  Unfortunately, it's way beyond their price range, or rather it would be if the owner hadn't come up with an interesting compromise: He'll sell them the home for a fraction of the price as long as they promise to never go into the garage for a year.

He needs to sell the home quick, but he doesn't have his next home finished yet, so he's going to store some stuff in the garage and promises to move it out within a year max.  If he doesn't he says anything in the garage will become the property of Ben and Kristen.  If they open the door, however, they'll immediately be responsible for the full cost of the home.

Things to consider:

1) What qualities does the home posses to make it a "dream home"?  Remember it's not a mansion, just a dream home!

2) How do Ben and Kristen feel about this?  Obviously they accept the deal or else there would be no story, but are they both okay with this situation?  Would one of them be upset by the conditions?  If only one of them is okay with it does it create tension in their first year of marriage?

3) Do they make it the full year? What are some scenarios that might arise that result in the door opening?  What if the man never came back?  What if he came back frequently in the middle of the night (but only went into the garage)?

4) What do they find in the garage (do you even allow the reader to find out what he kept there, is the story about what is in the garage or about Ben and Kristen's first year of marriage together and how the mysterious garage affects that first year?)

(Side note, if you make a fun story from this starter, please send me a copy/link!)

The Garage (Creative Writting Idea)

My LASIK Experience Part 2

The Disclaimer

    Warning this post contains plain talk about medical stuff.  If you're the sort that get's a little green at medical talk, well you probably want to skip past "The Technicals" and "The Procedure"

 The Technicals

   First off, though I call it LASIK, I technically had INTRALASIK surgery.  The difference being that with traditional LASIK they use a metal blade to cut a flap in your corneal epithelium (the top layer of your cornea) and with IntraLASIK they use a laser to to the cutting.  The idea is that by using a laser they are able to more precisely gauge the depth of the cut to precisely cut just deep enough into your eye to only get the fast healing corneal epithelium and not nick the corneal stroma (the slower healing, middle layer of the cornea).  The end result being happier eyes that heal faster (Of course, I have nothing to compare it to, so I'll have to take their word on this one).

 The Lead-in

     I didn't mention it previously, but I had to wear glasses for at least 5 days prior to the initial exam and leading up to the surgery.  Normally, that would be no problem, but some time ago my glasses lost a spring in one of its arms, so I spent the week with it constantly having to be repositioned and sitting lopped sided on my face.
     The day before the actual procedure, they have you blast your eyes with some steroids (Prednisone) and an antibiotic (zymax) along with some general gentle scrubbing of the eyelids to get them as healthy as possible for the actual procedure.
     Once I arrived at the Dr. Tylock's office I signed in and had a short wait in the lobby before being brought back to an exam room where they took my glasses, gave me a Valium, and had me watch a video on what to do post-op in terms of eye drops (your eyes will practically being swimming for a week with all the medicine and tear drops they have you putting in them!).  The nurse came back and explained it all again after the video and made a joke about me probably not remembering this conversation.  I guess most people are fairly loopy at this point from the Valium; I was not.
     In fact, through the whole thing I was *extremely* alert.  I was told wonderful stories by my friends and family who had this procedure done that you'll be off in la la land just doing whatever you're told to do.  For most people, this is very true.  For me, and my grandma Ruby, I think we went from a 10 on the anxiety scale down to a 9.5, maybe even a 9.
     Thankfully, the hardest, and most painful, part of the procedure was the almost 2 hour wait time from this point until I actually went into surgery!  As an ADHD guy it was literally a painfully boring experience.  You're lead into a room where you can hear the sound of the lasers, so that when it's you're turn you're not freaked out (as someone who was completely alert, I can confidently say I didn't even notice the sound lasers during the procedure, I had other things occupying my attention), and told to sit there with your eyes closed.  No TV with the news on, no radio, just waiting.
     I tried to strike up a conversation with the people around me "Anyone up for a game of eye spy?" I would ask, and there would be dead silence.  "So what are y'all in here for?" I would say; more dead silence.  I finally caught a guy before the Valium knocked him out and found out that he was a welder, I started to tell him that one of my father-in-laws used to be a welder, but he was out by then.
     It should be noted that my wait times were slightly inflated as they were running behind schedule, but since most people nap through the whole thing, it's not that big an issue!

The Procedure

     When it was finally my time, I was brought into a very cold room and given a nice blanket.  They did one more cleaning of my eyes with what I assume was a saline solution or some iodine (I remember being asked at one point if I was allergic to it, so surely it must have been used at *some* point, but it might have been in the exam stage), and it was my turn under the laser.
      While most places, I'm told, have two separate chairs, one for the cutting of the flap to expose the corneal stroma so they can shape it with the laser, and one for the actual shaping with the laser.  Dr. Tylock had a single bed which rotated you to the two different devices.
     Now remember I was fully alert at this point.  They gave me some numbing drops for my eyes, and then used a spring device to hold my eye open and, I suspect, to keep my eye from moving.  Then came the unnerving part.  Though I couldn't feel anything but pressure, they placed something over my eye at this point that was largely uncomfortable.  Yes, that's right the worse part of the actual procedure was only "largely uncomfortable." I rank routine dentist visits as worse than "largely uncomfortable"!
     At this point I'm sure my corneal epithelium was cut, but I didn't feel it, and I was largely focused on this uncomfortable pressure caused by whatever they placed over my eye so I didn't notice any sounds, but 20 seconds of this tops and they were done with my right eye and another 20 seconds and they were done with my left.
     Then the bed rotated me over to the cool laser (the one that would shape my eye) and used another spring to keep my eye open.  At this point they used a little tool to gentle fold back the flap they had just made in my corneal epithelium and everything went blurry.  I thought I knew what blurry was being as near sighted as I am, but this was a whole new level of blurry.  Everything literally lost shape and definition.  Mind you none of this was painful, but it was certainly fascinating.  After this they turned on the laser for 15 seconds and you smelled something burning.
    At the dentists office, when they pull that drill out and shove it on your teeth and you smell something burning you go "wow, that's my tooth they're doing their best to set on fire" and you're right.  When you smell something burning at LASIK, don't panic!  It's not your eye, you're only smelling ozone created by the laser.
    Dr. Tylock then cleaned off the flap to make sure he wasn't slapping any nasty bacteria on my eye, gently laid the flap down, repeated the procedure on my other eye and that was it!

The Aftermath

     I had really bad near sighted vision (-5.75 in both eyes, it's worse than many of the people I know, but not the absolute worst I've ever heard of), so from the very moment I stood up I had a marked improvement.  As in I could see.  Not 20/20 level or anything but close.  It was absolutely amazing.  At this point Dr. Tylock took the time to make sure the flap was lying down the way it should, and answered any questions I had for him.  Then it was another 30 minutes of waiting with my eyes shut to make sure everything was healing nicely and I was released to Amy's care.
     Now I have to do those tear substitute drops you buy at the store every 20 minutes for the next week and every couple of hours after to keep everything healing like it's supposed to, plus I have to do the Prednisone every 2 hours for the next 6 days (and 2 a day for the next 6 days after that), plus the Zymax 3 times a day for 4 days.  So like I said earlier, you're eyes feel like they're swimming in water for a long time.
    But it's so worth it.  I wake up in the middle of the night and look out through these funny little goggles I have to wear when I sleep for the first few days (they don't want you rubbing you're eyes in your sleep and messing with that flap), and I can see everything in the room (I have very good night vision).  No more do I see non existent shapes or fumble for my glasses.
    Of course, I have to go to the DMV in the morning and get my Driver's license changed to reflect the fact that I no longer need corrective lenses or else they'll give me a ticket, but that's a small price to pay for vision which the day after the surgery was hovering just shy of 20/15, and will get better as the swelling goes down (and my eyes stop being water logged with all these tears I have to drop in them!)
    So long story short, Lasik is extremely worthwhile, and Dr. Tylock is definitely someone I will recommend to family and friends!


As a side note, I went to the DMV this morning and was a little disappointing that they  had me read such an easy line for my eye test.  I had to resist the urge to say "come on, couldn't we try something a little more challenging?"

My LASIK Experience Part 2

My LASIK Experience Part 1

Making the Choice

      I have been thinking about doing Lasik for many years now.  Ever since I was in the third grade I've needed corrective lenses.  Well actually, when I was in the third grade I thought glasses were the coolest thing ever and lied on my eye exam so I would get them (I did feel guilty about that later and confessed, but I fear the damage was already done and while I would have eventually needed glasses anyways, I had hastened the time table!). 
    Since then, my eye sight has been getting progressively worse, but I didn't mind too much.  I had to use glasses or contacts to see no matter what, so it didn't matter if my eye sight was negative 2.75 or negative 5.75 (which is where it's at now).  What I do care about is I tend to wake up in the middle of the night feeling slightly confused and not being able to see tends to freak me out in these instances.  For a long time I wore night and day contacts and that was blissful!  30 days of uninterrupted vision.  Unfortunately, a couple years ago I went to a doctor by a place of previous employment who was lack luster.  They were trying to market themselves at rich trendy people (which is a double strikeout for me), while providing sub quality merchandise.  It was a miserable year for my eyes as the contacts just never seemed to fit quite right.
    Thus, for the past 2 to 3 years I have been unable to wear my night and day contacts.  This year, I finally decided that it was time to get serious about checking out Lasik.  My eye sight was stable and I had the choice of either shelling out for contacts year after year, or make an upfront investment for hopefully 20ish years of not needing glasses (well after 15ish years I'll have to start getting reading glasses I'm sure, but such is the fate of age).
    It was time to bust out google.

 Choosing a Doctor

    The first couple of places I contacted where places I had heard advertised on the radio.  People like Key-Whitman, Kleiman/Evangelista, and Boothe.  Key-Whitman was good, but they require you to come back every year for an eye exam that won't be covered by your vision insurance in order to keep their "lifetime warranty" on your eyes.  Kleiman/Evangelista were good, but too expensive (in the over 3K range), Boothe... well not many people had anything bad to say about the surgery itself, but everyone did say he was a bit of a jerk and when things did go wrong he would avoid you and send you to someone else.  He was very much in it for getting people in and out and gone.
    After a bit of google searching, I found two more options South Western Medical Center (which I ended up not contacting so can't provide any information on) and Dr. Tylock.  After a pleasant talk with one of their finance people, I decided to come in for a "free" exam.  Free in the Lasik industry, for the record, means $150.  They get away with calling it free because if you decide to get Lasik from them, then the cost of the exam is applied to the cost of the surgery. Of course, that means that if you don't want it from them then you're out $150.  It seems underhanded to me, but everyone I called had this exact same setup, so at least it was underhanded across the board!

The Exam

     The exam was a rather quick affair.  I came in and waited for a bit, was taken to a back waiting area and then in quick succession had some photos of my eyes taken, had an eye exam to confirm my prescription, had my pupils dilated, some bright lights to check out the insides of my now dilated eyes, another eye exam, my eyes number, and a cell sample taken from the surface of them.  Then I was charged for the exam, set up a time for the surgery, was given a pair of sunglasses and Amy drove me home.
     Funny story about them dilating my eyes.  The guy said, "Okay, we're going to put these drops in your eyes and they will burn a little" at which point he came in to put the drops in my eyes.  I stopped him and said "Wait, if they're going to burn, why are we putting them in my eyes?"
     He looked a little shocked at this, like "no one has ever asked me this before, they just let me do it".  What he actually said was "We need to dilate your eyes".  Now call me crazy, but that's not actually an explanation.  That is telling me what the burning drops do, but not telling me why we need to do them.  I could tell I was really messing with his flow though and let him do it.  For the record, my eyes burn worse when I get a bit of shampoo in them.  I also found out later, from another guy, that the reason for it was the dilated pupils let them see the inside of my eye better.
     Another one of these moments happened when a doctor said "Okay we're going to put these drops in your eye that will numb them".  Why on earth they would immediately start to move after saying these things without waiting for confirmation from the patient is beyond me.  I stopped this guy again and asked "Why are we numbing my eyes?  Are you going to be poking them?"  There was an uncomfortable silence that yelled "yes" Before he gave a noncommittal answer. 
     Later when he brought the poking stick out and moved towards me without so much as a how-do-you-do? I stopped  him again and said "what is this now?"  I tell you, questions really catch these guys off guard!  I finally did get a straight answer though.  The poky stick was actually a swab stick and it was to take a sample of the cells on the surface of my eye in much the same way as a doctor swabs your tonsils to check for tonsillitis. 

The Aftertaste

    All things said, the exam was a very pleasant experience.  Despite them being floored by me asking a question, they were extremely friendly, they were clearly paying attention to how I was feeling the whole time and it was obvious that had I been freaking out they would have taken the time to work with me rather than strapping down my wrists and moving this along.  At the end of it, we talked to a guy to schedule my Lasik (which is today in a couple hours!) and he was very nice.  There were no high pressure gimmicks, no pressure to get it done.  The most he did was when I was trying to decide if I could do this today, he said, "if you like, you can schedule it for today and then call us to cancel it if you change your mind".  To follow up on this they actually called me yesterday to confirm that today was going to work out and just to make sure we didn't need to change things.
     Having dealt with very push salesmen in the past (and even at some of the Lasik places I called), I was extremely impressed with their professionalism.  Rather than say I felt I was at a car lot, I felt like I was at a doctors office where he was saying "this is an optional procedure, we can schedule it if you want it, but it's ultimately up to you"

Hopefully in a couple days I can write how the surgery itself went and hopeful it will have been as pleasant as the exam.

My LASIK Experience Part 1

When 1 = 2

(Grandma inspired short story time!)

We thought we were so smart.  We had the universe mapped out and explained.  We knew the life cycle of the very universe itself!  Or so we thought.  There’s so much to say, but so very little time left.  Where to begin explaining all this?

I suppose we’ll start with an example.  At the university where I teach part time as an advanced math instructor, each semester I make sure to run through the dangers of mathematical fallacies in their work.  In the example I start off by letting A=B, then by the end and some liberal use of mathematical principles, specifically using the variables of “A” and “B” to hide the fact that I divide by zero at one point, I end up with the answer that 1=2.  It’s a humorous exercise that’s always good for some chuckles and shocked expressions, but my point is what if you actually based your formula off this?  If you didn’t catch that you were letting 1=2 you could write massively complex formulas based of seemingly legitimate simple equations.  My application for them was to not be conceited and gloss over the basic algebra stuff just because they were in an advanced math class. How ironic that I failed to heed my own warnings! 

What does this have to do with anything you might be asking at this point?  I’m getting there, I promise, but first let’s go to the beginning when I first began to thing that something was amiss.

My first glimpse of the impeding disaster came in the 7th grade during science class.  I may teach advanced mathematics part time, but my passion is astronomy, and it started right in this class.  My science book explained how they had *proof* that the universe was expanding because they could look at the distant stars through a special telescope that analyzed colors and when they did so they saw every star had a shift in it’s natural color towards red.  This proved that the stars were getting more distant from one another.  In fact, the book said, a blue shift, a sign that the stars were getting closer had never been observed!  On the very next page, it told how the Milky Way, our galaxy, was approaching another galaxy and that in a few million years the two might absorb each other and become a single galaxy.

This news stopped me cold.  Oh I didn’t care that someday millions of years after I died the earth might be in peril.  I cared that they had just told me a galaxy was approaching ours, yet there had never been a blue shift, a sign of objects coming towards you, observed.  How could this be?

I should have left well enough alone, I should have continued in my pleasant ignorance with the rest of the world, but I had to have the answers and I charged ahead foolhardily!

I scraped and saved every penny I could from teach and devoted every bit of free time I had to building a series of small drones that would fly into deep space out beyond our solar system and perform high speed tests approaching and leaving one another at various angles.'

I should have grown suspicious when my lab was ransacked twice, and then seized by the government as suspected terrorist activity but I was too blinded to see the signs!  I went underground and through various secret donors completed my work for a fourth time.  I hid my drones on various private shuttle flights and waited patiently for the data to start coming in.

At first everything was going exactly as expected, as they approached one another there was a subtle blue shift and as the departed there was a red.  I wanted more though and so I sent them out farther and farther from one another and that’s when everything came crashing down.

None of the data made any sense anymore.  The drones were suddenly impossibly far from each other, then right next to one another. They couldn’t seem to travel in a straight line towards another it was if they thought they were headed towards each other then on the next signal find that they had passed each other or one was headed off into empty space.

Then they started slowing down.  The data showed their engines were running at the same speed, other drones could see the light from their engines, but they weren’t moving as fast as they should have and their internal time stamps were becoming corrupted often being weeks too fast or too slow than they should have been.

It wasn’t until I saw a picture of one of them suddenly being crushed when I realized what had happened.  Most people, when they think of space think of nebula and stars, galaxies and great distant planets, but the truth of it is most of it is black emptiness.  In this darkness with no light to absorb there is no way to see a black hole.

My little drones had flown right into a cluster of these behemoths each one having found a perfect balance pulling at and being pulled by surrounding black holes.

I made a new batch of drones, these equipped with delicate sensors to detect the slightest pull of gravity and sent them out mapping the space around our solar system.

We are surrounded.  There is no danger from them, oh no, they are in perfect balance.  Some of them are large, and some no larger than a penny, but we are surrounded.  It was then I realized that all our great knowledge about the universe was built on mathematical fallacies!  We thought we had mapped out the life of the stars, but it is a lie!  Black holes don’t just suck in matter they bend light itself.  All our constellations, the nebula, they are nothing more than the light of our own sun in its life being bent and refracted back among the black holes until they eventually find their way back to us.  The great white giants are just our own sun whose size and color is being distorted like a fish under rippling water.  All of our great assumptions built up about life in the universe were nothing more than bad math built upon an improvable assumption to give us the illusion of superiority, of being learned!  Those red shifts we see are just the result of the black holes stretching our the light as they bend and contort around the large black holes, or as the light is diffused by passing to close to one of the micro black holes.

It worse though.  So much very worse.  You see black holes distort time as well.  We are caught within a bubble of time being bounced and bent all around us keeping our sun forever young while the rest of the universe, vast and untamed, ages and dies all around us.  How many eons have passed the quiet earth by while the rest of the species of the universe grow smarter, while they war and rage against one another?  While their own suns die out?

What might a race who has survived to the very end of the universe do to keep from going quietly in that last night?  Might they learn to navigate the cluster of black holes that have kept us safe and isolated thus far?

And what might such a race do when they arrived in our time locked bubble and find such an ignorant and undeveloped species as ourselves.  A species that stands between them and a sun kept forever young locked in time?  What did man do to undeveloped species it encountered on its unending march of progress?

The government knew, they tried to stop me from finding out to let me live out my life in comfort and peace, but now my devices have let me see the truth too.  The north star isn’t a star at all.

We thought we were so smart, but in the end all our great knowledge was built on the belief that one equaled two.

When 1 = 2