God-Fearing Nerds
So I use a computer pretty much on a daily basis. Big deal…so do a lot of other people. It’s becoming a common trend amongst many people and is becoming incorporated into their work and their lifestyle. Does this mean I’m a nerd that fits all the typical social stereotypes? Maybe. Let’s see…
According to the following very silly and in-accurate test, I’m not as nerdy as I think:
Your Score Summary
Overall, you scored as follows:
39% scored higher (more nerdy), and 61% scored lower (less nerdy). What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:
Low Ranking Nerd. Definitely a nerd but low on the totem pole of nerds.
My friends will attest that I interact daily with other people in a very friendly and professional manner, that I actually have friends, and make them quite easily, that I spend a lot of time outdoors or otherwise exercising. I shower daily and I don’t spend all day in a dark room surfing the Internet or playing video games. How boring would that be?
However, I do like computers and technology (I can assemble and fix computers), I like exercising my mind with games and puzzles on occasion, and I can speak the language of nerds if I have to (my job requires it sometimes). Even though I didn’t score well on the above test, I think I hit rock bottom on my personal nerdy scale when I bought my own soldering iron to make a repair to my computer once.
So if I’m not truly a nerd in the stereotypical sense what am I, then? I like to refer to myself as a technologist. A carpenter will use tools such as a hammer, nails, saw, etc., to build houses and cabinets, a physician will use a stethoscope, eye-scope-looker-thinga-ma-jigger, and tongue depressor to help determine if people are healthy or not, a school teacher will use textbooks, workbooks, visual aides, and chalk-boards to teach, and an auto-mechanic will use socket-wrenches, car-jacks, screwdrivers, and other things to fix cars. These are all examples of using technology. It’s just that my use of technology is my toolbox for doing my work. In fact all human beings use technology each and every day. It’s just that our society is yesterday’s future and we just take it for granted. Does anyone remember watching that old cartoon series the Jetsons and ever wonder if our society would reach the age of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and machines that do our work for us?
Okay for flying cars, I think this is a bad idea…very bad. Adding a third dimension to allowing every day people moving around on their own power will cause accidents to increase by at least another dimension. How many accidents occur because people are human and end up wrecking their cars on flat surfaces?
Moving sidewalks? We already have them…well, sort of. In airports, we have moving treadmills that help us get down long corridors faster. Escalators, are moving sidewalks that have stairs on them.
Machines that do our work for us? Among other things, these are personal computers, of course. People who develop software for computers are really only engaged in the work of developing solutions to problems that are difficult to complete under our own brain and motor power. In some cases, the results are sorely needed. In many cases the results can make us very lazy, indeed.
Okay, I think my point is made. The reason for this post is to force myself to take a look at society’s definition of what a nerd is, and then to see what happens when you cross a nerd with someone who also has a deep personal belief in God and a deep perspective on what life on earth is all about.
First of all, did God create nerds? Well, He created everyone, including all the high school groupies: beauty queens, dweebs, losers, jocks, cheerleaders, cowboys, skaters, surfers, geeks…you get the idea. These are only labels that human beings place on other humans. For some reason our minds naturally have a way of attempting to classify behavior of other people by making up labels (because it’s easier to say one word that means a whole list of attributes than it is to actually say the attributes), and often in the process we leave out the individual before we really get to know them. What is important to God is that we know where we really came from. In my findings, I have come to learn that we are all part of a humongous family, with God as our Father in Heaven. When we label other people, we are doing so to our literal brothers and sisters. This is a natural trend that we have been taught to try and avoid by God-fearing people, especially ecclesiastical leaders. But guess what, those people are mortal people and make mistakes too just like non-God-fearing people, right? A true understanding of who we are will reveal to us that we are all mortal and make mistakes, and not one of us has been perfect or otherwise mistakeless unless we are a god ourselves.
But I’m obviously not a god. But I do want to be like Him in terms of the way that He loves other people. I’m glad that we have a perfect example of how to do this. I believe that one of our most important brothers, is the literal Son of God: Jesus Christ. We learn about Christ through his teachings recorded in scripture by writers who were commanded by God to make sure that we wouldn’t be left alone during our lives here on earth. Our first model of how to be like Christ is our family experience. When we are little, we take our childhood experiences and absorb them into our brains naturally, and that forms the map by which our saftey and security is maintained, and also defines much of the way our thinking patterns evolve. If we have parents who are unruly or display incorrect behavior as to the principles of God, then it is more natural for us as children to also ‘inherit’ those behaviors, and subsequently reap the natural consequences of that behavior.
I would like to write some things about my dad, that I am very proud of. My dad is a great man who has taught me many things. I have great memories of sitting in his lap when I was young and he and I would read together out of books about science, or the Sunday comics while we were waiting for dinner to roll around when we got home from church. My dad is a very smart man who can fix just about anything. He is known as the local fixit person and freely gives his time to make sure people’s stuff is working if it isn’t and they call him for help. More than once in our house he would have something pulled apart that he was fixing and he would say, "Jeffrey, come over here and look at this…". And then proceed to tell me how the thing he was fixing worked, and I would try and understand.
When I was in cub scouts as a little boy, we used to have these cake auctions to raise money. When these auctions got organized, a theme was chosen, and then every boy in the group needed to come up with a cake that was designed according to that theme. The first year’s theme was communications. We didn’t have to do it this way, but since my dad was an electrical engineer by trade, he made a cake in the form of a satellite. This cake was special in the sense that it had little lights on it that blinked. The world’s first electronic cake. (At least by my standards). That cake sold for the most money in the auction. The next year’s theme was halloween. Of course we could have done the simple typical halloween characters (ghost, witch, skeleton), but oh, no…we had to have a cake that topped last years. So back to Radio Shack it was. Out of that came a haunted house cake complete with glowing pumpkins, skeletons, and a bat that was flying out of the window with blinking lights for eyes.
By today’s social standings, my father might be classified as a nerd because he likes science and can invent things with electronics. But this is a man who also taught me to be humble and respect other people and their feelings. Most of all he loves his family and he loves God. So I’ve inherited much of his traits. I can invent things with music, technology, and software engineering. But the trait I’m most proud of is my ability to love God and other people to the best of my ability. It’s this ability that I’m constantly working on, but at least he planted the seed. For that, I’m eternally grateful.