Humans Are Complex

     Alan Turing’s favorite movie was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Every night before bed he would eat an apple, sometimes leaving it unfinished. Turing was complicated, brilliant, and troubled. His tenacity changed the course of World War ll. Mystery and intrigue weave through what we know of his story. This intricate web of brilliance - this clash of darkness and light - becomes more intriguing when we look at this individuals’ life and see our own reflected back.

Alan Turing grew up in the educated way of England, attending Sherborne School, Cambridge, and Princeton. ​​In 1936 he delivered a paper titled On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem. The concept Turing discovered allowed machines to compute data in a more comprehensive way. Many consider it to be the first computer.

Using this concept, Turing broke a code the nazis used to secretly communicate with each other using a machine that had 150,738,274,937,250 possible ways of connecting ten pairs of letters. Turing, with another machine that could read instructions and then follow them, broke this code, known as enigma.

After someone broke into Alan Turing’s house in January of 1952, he admitted to the police who the perpetrator was - a 19-year-old Arnold Murray - who was also Turing’s lover. Homosexuality was illegal in England at this time, so Turing had to choose to be imprisoned or undergo hormonal treatment. He chose the treatment, and grew breasts, becoming sexually impotent.

On June 15, 1954, Alan Turing died. He left an apple next to his bed with one bite taken out of it. Following a postmortem exam, it was determined that he died of cyanide poisoning - and his death was declared a suicide.

Turing has affected our lives. We work from computers, scroll through phones, and use Apple products. Many of us live because of our ancestors that survived WWll.

Each of us creates webs of influence. Some of us are brilliant, some are stupid. Some require tenacity of themselves - some require manual labor. Each of us has a way of seeing the world and loving others - it may be perverted or it may be beautiful - and sometimes it is both. Some of us are average ordinary citizens...with extraordinary backgrounds. Some of us are extraordinary people, with ordinary backgrounds. The point is, the mystery and intrigue does not end with Turing’s miraculous story, and it does not end with you. Humans are complex. This complexity is what makes life interesting, dark, and...remarkable.

My Worldview Is Always Changing...Almost

My worldview has many facets and dimensions - but it's not complicated, because its purpose is to make the world less complicated. It's when my worldview is challenged that things get tricky.

This is my very simplistic way of seeing the world: There is truth, and there is non-truth. Truth should be accepted, non-truth should be rejected. Some people would say that is a "black and white" way of looking at things. I don't really know what that means - especially when that phrase has a negative connotation. My Mom has warned me against this supposed negative way of seeing things. Here's what I've translated her words to mean:

-You don't always have to vocally disagree. "Truth" doesn't always have to be voiced. When you don't say what you think it doesn't mean you are lying.

-Be open to different perspectives. You may think you know truth but life can be so convoluted that most of the time you are wrong.

-Everyone has the freedom to choose, and lots of times people think they are doing what is right and truthful. Part of loving them is accepting and willingly participating in that because people do it for you.

-People are complicated. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are bad. Even amidst a plethora of untruth, there is truth.

-Laws, commandments, right and wrong, truth, etc. are all complicated and circumstantial. Something could be wrong in one instance and right in another.

-It's not my role to be the final judge or to inflict justice.

These are things that to my Mothers dismay I've had to keep learning through experience. I understand them. I just don't understand how this list doesn't fit in my current worldview. Because I have to keep learning these lessons again and again - it makes me feel like something is inconsistent...something is not right with the way I see things.

Lately this inconsistency has come to my attention. I have a teacher at college that lives his life thinking that passivism is superior to choosing a side/fighting. In what world? Do I think he is wrong? Most of the time, yes. An author came and lectured at our school and talked about how to talk to people that disagree with you.

Unity is everyone having one purpose, one heart. But is it? Goodness doesn't have bounds - there will be no clones in heaven. Can we all have one purpose, and separate purposes at the same time?

What if there really is no such thing as truth? Of course, there is. But what if truth really is subjective?

I don't know if my Mom would ever go as far as to say that - but that is what she will have to say in order for me to be convinced that my worldview actually needs changing.

I wonder if part of what makes people heroes - what makes them significant and helpful and good - is the way they view the world.

Racism is Systemic, Pervasive, and Worsening.

 This is a rebuttal for a debate I was in but should make sense regardless.

There is No Need to Fear and Stress

 “If it is God’s work done in God’s way, He will supply all of our needs.” 

Do you often find yourself stressed? Freaked out? Afraid of being embarrassed? Scared that you aren’t the person you need to be? Worried that things won’t work out? If you do, consider taking a lesson or two from Cameron Townsend, a Presbyterian missionary during the early 1800’s. The quote above is what Cam himself alluded to when discussing how to provide funds for a pressing missionary endeavor. No fear from Cameron. No worry. Just pure, simple trust.

In the New Testament in the book of Matthew, as Jesus is dispensing His beautifully simple Sermon on the Mount, in chapter 6 verse 28 He says “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.” This verse of scripture has popped up often in my life a lot of late, which I do not believe is a coincidence. On the contrary, I believe that God has given me the ability to recognize the messages I need for my life today...He provides for my spiritual needs. Cameron Townsend also did not believe in coincidences. He knew that if he did what was right, if he did not toil and stress like the lilies, God would supply all of his needs.

Cameron’s life was riddled with many many moments where God did, in fact, supply all of his needs.  So much so that it literally cannot be considered coincidences for one that believes in God. Take Cam’s schooling for example. He had every reason to get a job like the rest of the kids his age and start supporting his family. Yet, his loving family, and especially his sister, wouldn’t hear of it. Somehow they found a way to pay for Cam’s schooling. God had a work for Cameron to do and He knew Cam needed some schooling in order to do it. Cam’s life includes many other experiences... he was able to talk to his captain and become a missionary rather than being drafted into the army, he, most likely due to his friendliness and effort as a missionary, was able to talk to a random man on that street that helped him unlock the Cakchiquelian language, Cam was able to run into a godly woman who made a great missionary wife, and he was able to obtain those funds as mentioned in the first paragraph through a generous donation. 

Cam’s life just seemed to work out. God watered him and gave him sunlight so that he could bloom like a lily. Maybe Cam’s life didn’t turn out the way he thought it would, but experience after experience led him down a path that was far better then I’m sure Cam even hoped for. He rarely had to seek and stress life decisions, he did what was right and the opportunities appeared before him like an open door at the end of a hallway.

In the end, Cam’s life experiences provide a powerful lesson. So often in today’s world, we stress about the very things God provided for Cam. We wonder how we will pay for school, or which school we should go to, what we should do with our lives, who we should marry, how we fund our important endevours, and how to better learn and progress. This stress is unnecessary, and often detrimental. It causes us to toil, twist, spin, and force things to happen. It displays a lack of faith in God. Cam was the master at having faith that God would provide. Because of this, God did provide. 

So, why take ye thought for your raiment? After all, “If God’s work is done in God’s way, He will supply all of our needs.”

A Time When I was Profoundly Dissapointed

 December 23rd, 2019 is marked as one of the worst days of my entire life.

All my life I’ve wondered about true love. Is it real? Is it complicated? How is it complicated? Can I find it? What does it entail? How do you know? Is the world really that magical and wonderful?

Cinderella’s story is one that is probably dearest to my heart...not the version by the Brothers Grimm, but the fantastical and actual happy version we’ve come to accept. As a child I absolutely adored the disney version, as a teenager, a few tears always leaked out as I watch the live-action version on repeat, and as an adult, I have become more cynical - though in my heart still hold on to the hope that at least a part of life has to be magical, even if it is infinitesimal.

The weeks leading up to December 23rd I was serving as a missionary for my church in Colorado Springs. I was about 9 months into my mission - halfway. My companion was...complicated. My relationship with her was deep and conflicting. We talked about everything and anything: often disagreeing - but disagreeing with interest and curiosity. I had met Sister Gland before she became my companion. A couple of months back my former companion Sister Parley spent a day with Sister Gland and did not have good things to say. I generally always have critical things to say about people - so of course, I was willing to piggyback off whatever Sister Gland had to say...so much so that I emailed my family all about the situation - ranting and explaining how ridiculous and hypocritical leadership was. Little did I know a few months later I would become a “leader” myself - and become companions with none other than Sister Gland. Funny the way life works out.

Though there were wonderful things about team Sister Gland and Johnson (that’s me), there were complications. I struggled to deal with relationships in a way I had not learned before. I didn’t feel like I had the resources I needed to come to conclusions and solutions on what should be done and said. We’re going to skip over all these complications and only focus on the one which leads up to December 23rd, the worst day. Sister Gland did an audit on my phone - which was missionary protocol. What was not missionary protocol, was searching her name in my gmail account. She found the email I sent to my family - what seemed like eons ago. She read what I remembered to be an honest and realistic assessment of her character - but from her mouth sounded brazen, grating, and utterly conceited. This was December 22nd.

December 23rd was Monday, preparation day. We got to call our families. I called my Mom in a closet. I told her what had happened, and expressed mild frustration. My Mom is a lot like me. Or, rather, I am a lot like my Mom. She often expresses her hopes that I can skip the tough lessons that she had to learn. I began to tell her about the trapped feeling I had - that I couldn’t be honest about my feelings anywhere with anyone. I couldn’t get rid of this feeling that there was nowhere safe to go, nowhere to be wholly myself, no place or circumstance I could live where it didn’t feel like I was always on the brink of bursting with emotion and opinions - but having to keep them restrained - because almost all of them were cynical and critical. I was just ranting. My Mom, good-intentioned though she was, told me

“Ella, there’s no one you can be completely honest with. Not even your spouse.”

Whether or not that phrase was true, I could tell my Mom thought it was true, and that was enough for me. From her seemingly constant advice, I knew she knew it was true.

That did it.

I sobbed. I never sob. I felt utterly and completely hopeless that life would ever have any piece of magic. There was no Cinderella, there was no true love, and there was nowhere to be comfortable, real….whole. I have never been so disappointed by the bleak reality of life.

I’ve learned a lot about life since then. Well, what I think to be a lot - though compared to those 4x my age I’m sure it is just a little. The hopelessness has ebbed, but my understanding of reality has deepened. The magic of my childhood faced the great wall of grown-up disappointment. The trick is now to make sure the reality I see - whether it’s a telling by the Brothers Grimm, Disney cartoons, or Kenneth Branagh - the trick is to see things as they really are, not as I think they are.